#the movie seems to depict him as a wolf through and through but i think his um. downfall in the book is so much more compelling.

[j0lyn3]

.

[princeescaluswords]

And oh gosh, now I am overthinking my overly blasé comment at the end of what I just sent. I am absolutely not wanting to come across as dismissive of what the fandom has done to your favorite character and the actual pain you might have gone through, and I apologize if it came across that way. I just wanted you to know that I wish and mean you well!

First off, thank you for your concern. I'm not being sarcastic. We'd all be a little better off if we took a moment to reflect on not only what we're saying but how we say it. I appreciate it. And while my words below might seem to run counter to this, it's okay if you don't share my attitude toward the fandom.

But, to be clear, I haven't devoted a significant amount of my online presence to this particular situation only because it causes me pain. I didn't join a fandom until I was middle-aged, and if my participation mostly served to make me miserable, I would simply stop participating. After all, I have enjoyed media for decades before that, sometimes quite intensely, without it. I feel my motivation goes deeper than that. I am motivated by justice. I am motivated by teenagers. I am motivated by Ronald Reagan, and I am not joking.

I know it might sound a little over the top, but as a product of my life's experiences, I see this fandom's behavior and I know that it is wrong. The usual counter to a statement like that is that while it might be wrong, it's trivial. Even if people are disappointed by the rampant racism and misogyny, it's about a fictional character on a television show. How much hurt could it cause?

I remember growing up as a teenager in the 80s, and while I've talked about this before, this is from where my conviction arises. We lived in the suburbs where there were limited cultural options. We moved around a lot due to my father's occupation, so I never developed a large friend group. My father practiced an authoritarian parenting style, limiting my options. So when I became aware of my own sexuality, the only resources I had for what this might mean was on television. Gay characters on television in the 80s fell into three major categories: clowns, predatory criminals, and victims. That's what I saw. Without peers, without parental support, that's how I came to view myself. It was damaging, and I had to struggle with internalized homophobia for a long time. I sometimes daydream about what I could have accomplished with my life if I had been born twenty years later.

I experienced first-hand how cultural depictions can shape identity, so I am indeed sensitive to the fact that they still do. When I watch as the Teen Wolf fandom -- and it's not the only fandom that does this -- goes to extreme lengths to establish value in white male characters and only white male characters regardless of these characters' narrative purpose or even their behavior, I am fully confident that this is not just. It's not about something as personal as liking or disliking something. We are indeed individuals with our own wills, but those wills can only act in the environment in which we find ourselves. Parts of the Teen Wolf fandom work hard to create a toxic, racist environment. They should stop.

We see the impact it has beyond influencing the narrative or fandom interactions. It's been known that Dylan O'Brien wasn't going to be in the Teen Wolf movie for nearly a year before it came out, and he's still the primary media focus. The response to movie has been primarily driven by this. How is this remotely a good thing? Imagine the decision making in the editor's room about how to cover this story: "We know this show isn't about this white man, we know this white man isn't in the movie, but we're going to focus on it anyway." The sad part, the source of injustice, is that this isn't an innovation. Hollywood has always been this way.

And that's when we get to Ronald Reagan. I spent a lot of time during the 80s and the 90s thinking about him in terms of the AIDS crisis. (And if you think that crisis didn't scare the crap out of a young gay man, let me disabuse you of that notion.) Unlike some people today, I don't think he personally hated gay people. I don't think he turned to Nancy and said "Let those Sodomites die." He had to have known gay people; he had to have worked with gay people. He spent three decades in Hollywood before entering politics. But here's the thing -- the way Hollywood dealt with gay people during those three decades was to pretend they didn't exist. This isn't my opinion -- read any history of that time period in Hollywood. Sexual minorities were part of the day-to-day business, but to function the powers that be simply edited them out of their perception of reality. So I believe that at least part of what motivated Reagan's response to AIDS was habit. He was so used to not mentioning what was behind the curtain that he simply didn't perceive any value in talking about it openly. People like him created an alternate reality where what actually happened didn't matter as much as what they wanted to have happened.

See the connection? It doesn't matter how many actors of color Hollywood employs or how many stories about characters of color they tell if at the end of the day the production and the audience still act as if white characters are the only thing worthy of time and attention. Fandom has become a significant part of media. It's undeniable. So anodyne bullshit like "Don't like; don't read" or "Fiction =/= Reality" isn't just distasteful to me, it's the root of the problem. This false consciousness -- this daydream that fandom can create enormous amount of content vindictively transforming a story about a Latino character into a story about white male characters and it's not about race at all -- is just another manifestation of an ongoing social injustice.

I'm not, and I never will, ask people to see this situation exactly as I do. But I won't stop talking about it. Not yet. I think it's too important.

[jpt1311-blog]

Wolf Children

Wolf children at first glance seemed to be something along the lines of fantasy and more cosplay type, however it was interesting to see how it was based in such a realistic world. For a movie centered around how a “normal family” faces challenges And how they go about adapting. This movie really depicted the main idea and topic of social conformity and how people change themselves so that they are perceived and accepted by other people. As someone that has battled with fitting in their entire life this movie really spoke to me as the children came to terms with being half human and half wolf and showing how they grew and really learned to accept themselves through how they saw other people perceiving them. I think the main theme of this movie was embracing oneself and learning how to really stay true and also not let other people influence you in a way that isn't how you are. Seeing these children in this movie really embrace their identity and learn to be not only human but also wolf because of their lineage really touched home as that was something that most people in the LGBTQ+ community have to go through and experience as it is not a community that people show support for, for the most part. As someone that is a part of the community and has had to go through accepting oneself and embracing my identity this movie really emphasised the idea that you are the only person that matters in your own identity and I think that the message was greatly written. I also liked how we got to see the different children go about accepting their identity in different ways, you see Yuki changing herself to fit the people that went to her school thus showing that she was wanting to embrace her humanity more so than the wild natures of her wolf side, then Ame showed that he wanted to embrace the wolf that was in him despite seeing his older sister was embracing the human side of her. Overall great movie about self identity and expressing your true self would definitely recommend!

[yellow-side-things]

"Love, Victor"

Dear friend,

"Love, Victor" had been on my watchlist for quite some time but I haven't watched it until a couple of days ago and let me tell you: I'm very glad I did. I just need to get these thoughts off of my mind, otherwise I'm going to combust:

1) First and foremost: "Love, Victor" is way more realistic and authentic than "Love, Simon". The latter is by no means a bad movie, it's just now that I have a comparison Simon's coming out is depicted picture-perfectly and very cliche, when in reality it isn't always like that. Coming out is the one thing, dealing with the aftermath the other. People are not always as accepting and tolerating as you'd like them to be.

2) I like that multiple issues make up the show which makes people relate on different levels: Most importantly homosexuality in a religious household that is also heavily influenced by culture (especially older generations). Emotional and mental trauma of children of mentally ill and unavailable parents (e.g. Felix and his with depression dealing mother and him having to take care of her, Mia and her neglecting dad, Lake feeling worthless and ashamed of her body because her mother trimmed her on diets from a young age). This one may be odd but the fact that Victor and his siblings cannot properly speak their mother tongue - I can kinda relate...

3) I really like that it takes Isabel a long time to come to terms with the coming out of her son and that she doesn't accept it after one oder two episodes. It makes it more real.

4) Felix and Lake were cute together but they reminded me too much of Stiles and Lydia in Teen Wolf - The "loser" gets together with the popular girl. Although they didn't have as much screen time, I think Pilar and Felix would make a great couple and I'm very excited to see more of them in season three!

5) Honestly, Mia got on my nerves for the majority of the time but in the end she just feels lonely and wants to be loved. The love she can't find at home she searches for in other places. We all just want to be loved, so I do understand why she acts the way she does (at least sometimes...).

6) I do understand that it must have felt very embarrassing and humiliating for Benji that Victor found out about his past as a teen alcoholic, especially on his birthday and on a get-together with his parents. However, confronting Victor in terms of him being new to all the "gay-stuff" and considering him a burden is just hurtful. Yes, they were both very vulnerable and hurt in that situation and again, yes, in such situations you say things you regret afterwards but still. There was most likely someone leading Benji through that stuff as well when he first came out. Words stick with people and you can't take them back. You may apologize afterwards but in the moment of speaking those words, a tiny bit of truth resonates.

7) Rahim is a very cool character and I like how comfortable Victor feels around him, particularly because Rahim can relate to him on a level Benji can't, which is coming out to very religious parents. And I must admit, I've felt more tension between these two than between Victor and Benji, especially when they sang "Holy" together. However, I find it sad that Rahim literally pops out of nowhere. He makes his first appearance in the sixth episode which makes it seem like they wanted to squeeze him in. If only he had been around since the beginning of like season 2 and then became more important each episode. But this way it's like, "Yeah, let's just add him because the first love isn't meant to work out all the time."

8) I think it's beautiful how Adrian reacted to Victor being gay. Adults always have that fear of disturbing children when telling them certain things, things that - in their way of thinking - "don't conform to the norm". But sometimes you don't have to be that terrified. Children have that beautiful way of taking many things with such an ease, you'd be surprised. And that ease slowly but surely transfers to Victors parents (especially his mother) and they start to come to terms with their son's homosexuality because it's not a phase; that's just who Victor is.

9) The scene that made me cry the most was when Felix showed up with his social worker in front of Victor's apartment and broke down in Isabel's arms. He really needed a motherly hug and the song playing in the background intensified the moment. It's so impressive yet sad how good he was at keeping this major part of his life (the situation with his mother) a secret from his best friend who literally lives in the same building. He hid his sadness and sorrow so well by constantly acting like the funny friend, which by the way is a response to emotional trauma.

10) Last but definitely not least: Why make such a big fuss about telling the entire school you're gay? You don't owe anyone an explanation. Like, why do you even feel the need to tell them, it's none of their business? Just tell your loved ones and that's it... We live in the 21st century, can we please just normalize that there are other sexual preferences other than being straight? Especially older generations: I know it's different from what you know and what you were taught but please try to loosen up a bit.

Needless to say, there are many more things and scenes making this show so special and important but these are just some of the things I've thought about a lot.

Just because I feel like it here are some song recommendations from "Love, Victor":

- "Heaven Is a Hand to Hold" by Duncan Laurence

- "Somebody to Tell Me" by Tyler Glenn

- "Brave" by Riley Pearce

- "Holy" by Justin Bieber, Chance the Rapper

- "Two of us" by WRABEL (this song hasn't been released yet but AHHH, I NEED IT. NOW!!!)

Lots of love <3

[auroracalisto]

for the first time

summary: the reader finally sees her life in a new point of view, thanks to carlisle, who has helped her with her abusive husband, her baby girl luna, and her life in general.  

pairing: carlisle x female! married/widowed! abused! reader

word count: 1.6k words

warnings: female reader, married and eventually widowed reader, reader is abused by her husband, reader has the surname Wolf in this bc comedic reasons, reader has a child named Luna by said husband, mentions of murder, no depictions but carlisle definitely did the stabby stab (at least if that’s what you wanna assume he did), uhhh reader got them widow benefits by the end but that’s a story for another time, ALSO for some reason i put this in the year 2005 and it goes on to 2006/2007?  so this would technically be the same timeline as bella and edward meeting.  so first movie.  yes.  i love the technicalities of everything.  honestly didn’t mean for it to happen but it did so 

a/n: i have no words

Carlisle first had the honor of meeting you at your then-husband’s Christmas party.  It was December 20th, 2005.  Your child was most definitely due by the end of January.  You were quite literally glowing, and Carlisle believed you were the most beautiful thing he had seen in some time.  However, most of the beauty was because of your skill with makeup.  Without it, bruises galore would be revealed to the outside world, and your husband would not be too happy to find out that you showed off the newest shiner he gave to you. 

Even while pregnant, he did not care for your wellbeing.  Hell, he made it quite obvious that he would never care for the little girl growing in your midsection.  But even if he was a terrible prick, you decided to have this child.  Of course, maybe it would have been better for you to end the pregnancy early on.  However, a part of you didn’t want that.  A part of you wanted to have the baby and leave your husband.  Whichever order it came in would be fine.  But knowing now that it would be the latter made you nervous.  

The second time Carlisle saw you was in the middle of a grocery store, calming down your newborn baby.  Your husband had sent you out in the middle of February, just a month after giving birth.  You were alone, and everything was upsetting.  Your baby’s little cries caused your own tears to well up in your eyes.  

When the two of you made eye contact, you finally broke.  You didn’t want anyone to see you like that, and yet, here you were with your husband’s co-worker, crying in the middle of the bread aisle.  

“Mrs. Wolf, please.  Let me help you,” Carlisle softly said, leaving his buggy on the other side of you.  He came over, looking at your baby.  “I’ll get her to calm down.”

You took his word for it, allowing Carlisle to comfort your crying child.  “Please.  Don’t call me that.  [Your name] is fine.”

He watched you with soft eyes and nodded.  “And who is this?” he softly asked, looking down at the fussing infant.  Her eyes were shut and she never once had actual tears—one thing that never sat right with him was how babies couldn’t form tears until they were about two months old (sometimes even longer).  

“Luna,” you softly spoke, watching as your little girl started to calm down in his arms.  You sniffled softly, wiping your eyes with the back of your sleeve.  You should have been more careful, but you didn’t care at this point.  It was getting harder and harder to do this; if someone saw a bruise, someone saw a bruise.  

“That’s a beautiful name,” Carlisle spoke, looking back at you.  “She is very lucky to have you as a mother.”

By the third time Carlisle had properly talked to you, your husband had died.  Under mysterious circumstances, but he was gone.  And you couldn’t have been happier.  You had an idea of what had happened.  Especially when you once opened your eyes in the middle of the night to see a flash of blond hair.  But you drifted off back to sleep, not thinking anymore of it until the morning after when your husband was missing.  However, you never once said anything.  

Weeks after he had passed, you had hired a babysitter for the evening.  Carlisle’s two girls.  

And for once, you did not have to worry about the makeup covering your bruises.  In fact, you wore your makeup how you liked it instead of having to wear it to protect your dead husband.  You found yourself sitting in your car, in front of the hospital.  Alice had informed you that her adoptive father was currently at work—that he was constantly working, and he never once took a break.  

Maybe you should have just turned around.  Maybe you should have just left Washington, altogether.  But your legs started moving before you could stop them.  And once you saw Carlisle, you knew that you had to speak with him.  

You didn’t even have to say hello to him for the man to walk in your direction.  He smiled kindly at you, and you wanted to say something.  You desperately wanted to thank him for saving you, even if he never admitted it.  

But the words never found your tongue.  Your arms wrapped around the doctor, your face buried deep in his blue dress shirt and his white lab coat.  Carlisle had never been more grateful for not carrying his clipboard around.  He wrapped his arms around your body, holding you close.  

Although the two of you never said anything, one thing was clear; you were both grateful for each other’s existence.  Even if you lived vicariously through passing glances and thoughtful actions.  

Luna was nearly one by the time you decided enough was enough.  You were a widow, now.  You did not have to worry about what your husband would say.  And one thing was certain; the blond-haired doctor had your heart in more ways than one.  

He was so kind to you, always offering help and joyful smiles.  His conversations carried you through your long days and kept you awake at night as you thought of how you could tell him how you truly felt.  

But now, you knew enough was enough—you knew that you were not getting any younger, and neither was Carlisle (of course, because he was human—of course, you wouldn’t learn that until later).  You needed to talk to him.  You needed to take a course of action.  

You grabbed your keys, walking to your door.  Luna was babbling in her car seat.  You sat it down to get the door open, nearly jumping out of your skin when you saw Carlisle standing there, prepared to knock.  

He had a bouquet of your favorite flowers in hand and a rather awkward smile.  

“My apologies... are you going somewhere?”

Your cheeks began to burn.  You sat your keys on the table beside your door, shaking your head.  “I was going to see you, actually.”

Luna giggled up at the man when he came into her line of vision.  She adored Carlisle.  

“Oh, that makes this easier then,” he let out a soft laugh, hesitantly holding out the flowers to you.  “These are for you.  I... I had asked Alice what your favorites were.  I hope you don’t mind.”

You smiled.  “No...  No, I don’t,” you said, clearing your throat.  You moved out of the doorway so that he could come into your house.  “I was hoping that.. well, I am hoping this now.  I’ve needed to talk to you.  For a while now.  I really, really need to just get this off my chest, you know?  I just—”

“—could I be of any assistance?” he chuckled softly.  “Perhaps I can find the words that you are searching for.”

You rolled your eyes, unable to keep your smile from forming.  “Carlisle, I’ve... loved you since before my husband died.  I know that for a fact, now.  And I... hope that you feel the same way.  About myself.  And Luna.  We’re a package deal, you know.”

He chuckled softly and nodded.  “I know that you are a package deal.  I... am very glad you feel that way, too.”

“Too?”

“Yes,” Carlisle smiled at you.  “I have loved you since the first time I have set eyes on you.”

You snorted out a laugh, crossing your arms over your chest.  “That long, huh?”

He just smiled, watching you with kind, golden eyes.  “There are many things I need to tell you, [Your name],” he said, finally shutting the front door behind of him.  He looked down at Luna and got her out of the carrier, especially when she happily reached for the man.  “Perhaps we can take this evening to talk?”

You smiled, nodding.  “I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about, but yeah.  I’d like that.”

All of you made Carlisle’s beatless heart skip.  He could only hope that it was the opposite for you (he could definitely hear how fast your heart began to beat the closer he got to you).  Luna entertained herself with the buttons on Carlisle’s shirt while the two of you talked until she fell asleep against him.  

Perhaps it was that moment that you truly knew that you were in love with Carlisle.  No—that action only fortified your love for the man.  You knew you had loved him just as long as he had claimed to love you.  And for once, you were not afraid of what love could do. 

Because you believed you loved your deceased husband, you married him.  You slowly watched him become a horrible person.  And then you had Luna with him.  Of course, that was the one good thing that came out of him.  Perhaps the chance of meeting Carlisle as well.  

But you knew that now, the love you felt for Carlisle was as real as the infant in Carlisle’s arms.  And it would never burn like your last loveless love.  

For the first time, it felt like you were seeing yourself in a new light.  You were seeing everything from a different perspective.  And Carlisle allowed that.  Carlisle helped you find that.  

Even if he hadn’t have been there, you would have still found it.  However, you knew that he made it so much easier than it would have been.  

For the first time, you knew real love.  With Luna, and now with Carlisle.  

Despite everything that had happened to you, it seemed as though the universe was finally connecting the dots.  And you couldn’t wait to see what she was going to give you, next.  

[lady-of-lyon]

So, I made one post a while back about how awesomely feminist the show Wild Kratts was, with how its two main female characters were women of color in engineering and deserving roles of power, female villains who weren’t motivated by spite or quest for youth, etc, but today I wanted to talk about something slightly different, that I’ve wanted to cover for a while now, because I also think it’s very good - and that’s how the show portrays masculinity, in a way that’s really positive!

First, we have our two main characters, Chris and Martin Kratt. Keep in mind these two are basically self-inserts - and there are plenty of creators, especially males, who have used self-insert characters in really scummy ways - all I have to say is Powerpuff Girls reboot and you know exactly what I’m talking about. Even if they weren’t literal self-inserts, male characters, superheroes especially, oftentimes serve the male power fantasy, being just the strong, stoic, all-powerful person so many boys are told they’re supposed to be. I could get into a whole discussion about how the male power fantasy is present even when males are not (ever look through a fashion magazine and wonder why there are so few men? Sure, part of it is that the industry thrives off exploiting women’s insecurities, and men aren’t as concerned for their appearance, but another part of it is so that the guy, looking through it, can feel like he has no competition for these women - there’s a reason so many comedians have jokes about fashion magazines being their sexual awakening as kids. It’s really scummy) but that’s not what this is about. So, the bros had every opportunity to do just that - make themselves these traditional heroes who aren’t actually really good role models, like batman or what have you. It’s certainly not uncommon for celebrity cartoons to do stuff like that. But Martin and Chris chose a different approach. They’re pretty strong standouts for positive masculinity. They’re openly affectionate - both with eachother as brothers, and with their friends. They cry, sometimes over little things - most of the time when big superheroes cry, it’s ‘cause they lost the girl they loved or their mentor or something like that, only in the big, most agonizing moments do they shed a tear. But here, Chris or Martin will cry just because they’ve had a bad day, or because they’re overwhelmed and overjoyed that someone named a mantis after them! In a lot of shows or movies when a guy cries over something little, it’s usually played for laughs, or to emasculate him, but here it’s casual without being unreasonable or overdone. The brothers cry just ad much, maybe even more (haven’t gone back and counted or anything) as the girls do. Not to mention, it’s a very nice depiction of a loving, healthy sibling relationship. As the youngest sibling myself, it’s refreshing to see a pair who don’t abuse eachother with noogies or cruel and snarky remarks. When they do fight, it’s never a screaming match, and also because they had a conflict of interest or disagreed over a fact, not because, say, one of them stole the other’s shirt or is neglecting the other’s feelings. Kids, being very impressionable, get exposed to a lot of abusive sibling relationships played as normal in media, and start thinking this is how siblings are and should act. For instance, my sister (who is now my best friend and has gotten over all these bad habits over time) when she was younger watched a lot of Kim Possible, a show that is great, but has a bad family dynamic with Kim and her little siblings. The “tweebs” as she calls them are always irresponsible, destructive, and making Kim annoyed to no end. My older brother was one of the most polite, reserved, kind little kids, but she still treated him like he was a brat and a nuisance, because that’s what shows like Kim Possible taught her little brothers were. Additionally, I was always treated like a spoiled crybaby who just wanted attention and got away with everything - I was not any of those things, ever, but that’s what shows teach you little sisters are. Sure, Wild Kratts has a smidge of that, with Chris seemingly being the stereotype of the know-it-all little sibling, but instead of being constantly looked town upon for being too “perfect” like with Hailey Long in American Dragon, Martin often praises his brother for his abilities. Sure, Martin gets annoyed when Chris tries to correct him on things, like in the episode Wolf Hawks, but everyone else does too, so it feels more like a take-down of mansplaining than a sibling spat.

I talked too in the feminist post about how refreshing it is that Chris and Martin more or less willingly put themselves under the authority of Koki and Aviva, two women of color. I don’t think it’s possible to say any one character is the “leader,” they all work as a evenly balanced team, but it’s safe to say that Koki and Aviva make the more responsible decisions. The bros try to get out of their calls a few times, but the show plays it more like they’re being irresponsible, and less like they’re renegade cool dudes who don’t take nothing from nobody, especially not two girls. They are pretty much always punished via karma for their reckless choices, most especially in To Touch a Hummingbird, where their arrogant attitudes blow up in their faces rather spectacularly. We also never see the narrative most present in sitcoms, where the male leads mess up and go out of their way to cover it up and ultimately gets away with it - after all, you have to root for them, right, because sure they messed up and had no consequences, but aren’t they just so lovable? No, here Martin and Chris always have to fix their wrongdoing, and it’s always deserved when they get comeuppance. Another aspect of the show I like is that, many times, when the bros get captured or are in peril, they are saved by the women - and most refreshing of all, there’s never a moment of “wink wink nudge nudge wow I can’t believe I had to be rescued by a GIRL” or even “wow you saved me you’re pretty good honey guess I shouldn’t have underestimated you, you go girl!” No, when the girls save them, it’s just - you know, relief? Because they were saved? It’s never a scenario played as an exception, or any more dire than when the bros need to rescue eachother. The bros are genuinely happy to have them as teammates. The show even did the standard “boys vs girls” episode in the form of When Fish Fly - but instead of being actually girls vs. boys, it’s engineers vs. adventurers. There’s nothing really gendered about it - the girls happen to be engineers, and the boys happen to be adventurers. And the episode doesn’t end with the boys being “wow gosh darn I shouldn’t have doubted you girls are better at everything,” it’s a mutual agreement that both parties have hard jobs. Basically, the bros are very naturally respectful of women. That plays more into their feminist narrative too, but either way, it’s refreshing.

Then, we have Jimmy! Jimmy, the lovable gamerboy pizza man. At first glance Jimmy seems like the stereotypical cowardly, pathetic, emasculated loser. He’s frightened of most things, as of yet has no power suit, and he BAKES for crying out loud! But none of these things are framed as terribly bad traits. Sure, we laugh when he screams and runs from an animal, but though it happens over and over, the crew doesn’t get sick of it. They don’t berate him or belittle him because he’s so gosh darn cowardly. There’s a great scene in Rattlesnake Crystal where Jimmy has to deliver something to the bros alone, in the middle of a spooky desert. He is terrified the whole time, sprinting off after he delivers the goods. When Martin and Chris run into him, they don’t laugh at him for being spooked, they just greet and then bid fair well to their friend. To them, this is just Jimmy, and there’s nothing wrong with it. Jimmy isn’t coddled, but he is reassured many times that he’s a valuable member of the team. I love that little message, that you’re just as important of a person even if you can’t do as much or have greater limits. When his friends do try to get him over his fears, it’s not because they have to, that the day will somehow be ruined by Jimmy’s incompetence p, but because they’re his friends, and want him to experience fun and wonderful things that he would otherwise miss out on. But what Jimmy CAN do is just as important! Jimmy is a gamer, which in a lot of shows, is portrayed as a lazy, useless, mindless hobby. But here, because he plays video games, it makes him essential for piloting the ship and teleporting important items. There’s always the joke that video games improves your hand/eye coordination, but recent studies have shown it has much better effects. It can make you much better at keeping track of multiple moving objects and processing technical but variable information- two traits which, fittingly enough, are really really important for air traffic controllers and airplane pilots! He also demonstrates a lot more courage behind the wheel of the Tortuga, which makes sense - in an impersonal setting, he would have more sense of calm and control and courage, because it’s so similar to a video game world. It’s not all too different with how I feel more emboldened to pick fights with people on the internet, but get crazy anxious if a real person so much as looks at me. So Jimmy’s love of video games isn’t because he’s irresponsible, it has real benefits. A quick last point - Jimmy also eats a lot, but they thankfully don’t make him fat or greedy or anything like that. He never takes food from people, he actually bakes, and shares it with others! Having the baker be a boy is a lovely touch.

I might do another post about the toxic masculinity of the two villains, (or four villains, I guess, if I wanna discuss the minions) but I’ve got other work to do, and this post is long enough already, so I’ll get around to it later. I’ll sum it up with this - Wild Kratts is a show that teaches boys it’s not only ok to be kind, but essential. The brothers protect defenseless animals, advocate for things “icky” and “weird,” like bugs or snakes or worms - not because they’re boys, and boys like icky things, but because they genuinely see the beauty in all life, and are encouraging us to slow down and do the same. The Wild Kratts are heroes who save the world not by being the strongest or smartest or coolest, but by looking after those who are exploited and vulnerable, who are essential to the world, even if they can’t always do everything. In Wild Kratts the only weaknesses a man can have isn’t what he can’t do, but what he does do that he shouldn’t have. Sure, it’s a cute show about two funny guys who have cool powers, but it’s also a show about accountability, compassion, respect and trust. The show says “boys will be boys” in all the right ways - Martin is a lovable goof with a heart of gold, but he still has to get his act together when he messes up, and he’s still creative and smart and openly sensitive. Chris is a bit of a know-it-all show-off, but he can also mess up as much as his brother, and is still bold, brave, adventurous, and can put his money where his mouth is. Jimmy is a cowardly, napping, eating machine video-gamer, but he’s still a valued member of the team, has incredible skills and talents, and will always help his friends, even if he is really, really scared. It is so important to have role models like these, in a world dominated by unhealthy machismo. The Wild Kratts are heroes who save the world - both animated, and real.

All they need now is a canon queer character, and I’ll stan them forever! My money’s on Aviva!!

[madalice31]

So about this Lord of the Rings show…

Isn’t it funny to listen to individuals who are so upset over black elves and dwarfs. These are the same people who claim to be not racist or “hate it” when people bring up racism for why they have a problem. But honestly, what else would it be? I mean put aside the fact that these are fictional characters not based in any lore that is attached to race. No where has it ever said that black elves and dwarfs are not allowed. But because Tolkien was suspect in not including any type of diversity in his works, we’re supposed to continue perpetuating that misstep today? If some dumb ass isn’t yelling stay true to “history” it’s stay true to the source material. They are staying true to the source material. The story is based on Tolkiens works. Them changing the skin tone of a character is not getting away from the subject, the feel, or the point of the stories. And the fact that a person would be upset solely because all of the characters are not white says a lot about that person.

Let’s get one thing straight. There are absolutely times where a character’s race should not be changed. Like when that character’s story is wrapped up in heritage and culture. For example, Black Panther’s race is not interchangeable. His whole schtick is that he’s from Wakanda, a fictional but still African country that is made up of nothing but black and brown people because they’ve been separated from the rest of the world. Not much room for diversity race wise. Although there was still plenty of white people in that movie.

You can’t make Vikings black because that definitely was not a thing historically speaking. But I mean you know, they make Egyptians white all the time. Breakfast at Tiffany’s has a white man pretending to be Asian. We have several depictions of white actors dressed in Native American garb. Nobody seems to care about any of this. But god forbid a black elf!

When it comes to characters, especially in Fantasy and Science Fiction, who’s only idea of race is whether they’re a dwarf, a wizard, or an elf, or even a vampire, a wear wolf, or a pixi fairy, it reeeeaaaalllly doesn’t matter.

Tolkien lived in a time where writing about people of color, outside of slavery stories of course, was not at all common. I’m sure Tolkien had little if any experience at all with anyone non-white. That’s just the reality of the situation. So I don’t really blame him tooo much for his lack of diversity.

But sitting in 2022, a person is mad that an elf is black, and you expect me to not take that as racism? If your friends, family, and loved ones are upset or debating over black elves and dwarves, and you’re a white person who claims themselves to be an ally, then I hope you open up your mouth and explain to them how ridiculous they sound.

Because remember, if you’re only an ally when you’re around black people, than you’re not an ally. You’re a closeted racist pretending to be forward thinking. We call that fake woke. Which is what Amazon is too for their token black characters that we’re supposed to be impressed by. I keep seeing the same two black actors in all the promo footage and they expect a reward for it. Y’all still don’t get it. People of color make up … let’s just say a good bit of the American population and yet we’re still so underrepresented in entertainment outside of sports and music. Being made to feel like only one or two of us could succeed in film and television at a time. And then when we do get the tiniest bit of representation, it’s dragged through the mud as if we have no right to be recognized as part of the population. That’s the problem with America. As much as white media wants to scream woke from the hill tops, y’all don’t even know what that shit means. Instead it’s become a buzz word. Y’all will never get it because you’re not actually woke! And at the rate we’re going, who knows if you ever will be.

[euphoricdumpsterfire]

It Was Enchanting To Meet You (Edmund Pevensie x Mutant!FemReader)

Chapter I: Nightmare

Summary: Y/N has been having the same kind of nightmares for the past six years. She's been told to ignore it and that they're finding a solution for it, but when she starts hearing voices, she's even more determined to find out what's causing these unusual events.

Masterlist

Word Count: 1313

Warnings: nightmares, depiction of violence

A/N: Most of the story takes place during the Golden Age of Narnia however it'll be years since their coronation so the ages of the Pevensie siblings in this story are as follows: Peter (21), Susan (20), Edmund (18), Lucy (16). However in Y/N's world the year is 1975, almost in between Days of Future Past and Apocalypse movies.

It was a gloomy winter day. Y/N stood right across a throne made of ice. She took a deep breath and let it out, her foggy breath being visible in the cold temperature. It was quiet... Until a wolf jumped out of nowhere and tackled Y/N as she struggled to get out of the vicious creature's grip.

Y/N gasped as she opened her eyes realizing it was only a dream. However it had been the same dream for years, first of which happened the same day she had gotten her powers at the ripe age of twelve. She looked over at her clock, it was 5:30 in the morning and the sun had barely risen.

She walks through the long halls of the school, nothing in her mind but the recurring nightmares. Y/N then stood in front of a painting of the forest, deep greens and browns that felt like a deja vu to her. Suddenly she started hearing faint voices. "Y/N!" It was the voice of an unfamiliar girl calling out her name. "Y/N! HELP ME!" the voice was now loud and clear. "Y/N! Y/N! Y/N!" the voice kept yelling which made her cover her ears and her face shrivel up.

"Y/N?" Professor X called the young student. Y/N looked up

"Good morning professor!" She said as she awkwardly straightened up her posture.

"What are you doing out here early in the morning?" He asked,

"Oh you know," Y/N awkwardly chuckled and started stretching, "Just getting a head start with the day and workin' out."

"Was it the nightmares again." It almost didn't sound like a question, the professor already had an idea what was going on. She shook her head but the professor sighed and approached her.

"I know it's hard, but trust me Y/N we are trying to figure out how to get rid of your nightmares. I know you're strong... Just a little bit patience." Professor X said with a comforting smile but Y/N couldn't help but think about the sleepless nights, and the nightmares of her continuously being attacked by wolves or drowning in a lake.

She lets out a fake smile and nods, "I should go now, my friends might be waiting for me." She said,

"Of course, you wouldn't want to miss breakfast."

Later that afternoon, everyone was out in the yard spending their free time. Y/N sat with Jubilee and a bunch of other teenage mutants. They were all playing uno and Jubilee was having a heated argument with Jean about the game. "That's not fair, you can read everyone's minds! " Jubilee yelled,

"I wasn't even doing it!" Jean exclaimed.

Y/N stared blankly at the cards that were thrown in the middle of the circle, not completely focusing on what was happening. "Hey, Y/N?" Jubilee called and Y/N snapped her head to look at her friend, "You good?" she asked,

"Yeah... I just-"

"Didn't get enough sleep, I know. You should probably take a nap, your dark circles are getting real worse." Everyone in the circle agreed, including Y/N,

"You want me to walk you to your room?" Jean asked,

"No it's okay." Y/N smiled and waved goodbye to her friends as she went back into the school.

As she was on her way upstairs, she noticed that Professor X's door was open. She debated about it but decided taking a peek wouldn't hurt. In the office, there was Dr. McCoy and Raven. They had worried expressions on their faces which had Y/N intrigued so she used her powers to get a better hearing of what they were talking about.

"I've tried looking for other solutions, meditation, pills, not even therapy would work..." McCoy said,

"She can't just live with those nightmares forever, it's gonna take a toll on her!" Raven exclaimed, "What have you told her Charles?" She asked, and the professor sighed.

"I told her that we're still looking for a better solution." He answered.

"I don't think there is... And she needs to know." McCoy said,

"No! I've seen her breakdown, these nightmares aren't just regular nightmares, she feels it. You can't just tell her that she's going to suffer for the rest of her life!" Charles exclaimed. Y/N covered her mouth in shock. She took a step back which made a creaking noise.

Raven turned around to look at the door, "Who's there?"

Y/N rushed upstairs to her bedroom and hid in her blanket. Tears kept flowing which made her pillow soaking wet. Then, she started hearing a voice again. This time it was an older woman. "Do you think your silly little powers are a match for me?" the woman cackled, Y/N got up and tried to cover her ears again. "You are weak!" the woman shrieked and a jolt of pain hit Y/N's chest, she clutched it with both of her hands and screamed in agony.

Tears fell down to her chin as she continued to feel the pain, she closed her eyes and saw the icy throne once more. This time, a woman dressed in white was surrounded by a pack of wolves. Y/N opened her eyes and looked at the mirror that she had broken with her tumultuous scream. The irises of her eyes had turned from Y/E/C into the palest of blue.

Startled by the change of eye color, she closed her eyes and shook her head. Upon opening her eyes she heard the loud horns coming from multiple cars. She turned to see a bunch of cars in traffic in New York City, but it wasn't the cars she was used to seeing. It seemed to be a car that was popular during the 1920s, Y/N furrowed her eyebrows. One moment she was standing in front of her mirror in her room, and now she's outside in New York in the 1920s. Y/N assumed she was dreaming until a man bumped into her.

"Hey watch it!" The man said aggressively,

"What year is it?" Y/N asked.

The man looked at her from top to bottom. To him, she was wearing the most unusual clothes. "It's 1923." He answered and Y/N's eyes widened. The man didn't say anything else and rushed to where he was going.

"What the hell?" Y/N rushed to the nearest newspaper stand to check the date and the man was indeed correct. It was June 6th, 1923. Y/N walked back to where she stood unsure of what she was about to do.

"Okay, I've got this... I think." Y/N closed her eyes once more, now focusing on the energy of her powers. Her hands formed orbs of energy in the color of deep blue and in a matter of seconds she was back at the X mansion from where she last stood.

The voice of the old woman came back, "Narnia is mine to rule!" she yelled and an idea sparked in Y/N's mind. However, before she could even do what she was planning there was a knock at her door.

"Y/N, we need to talk to you." It was professor X. Y/N ignored him and continued with her plan.

She closed her eyes and focused on the energy within her. Soon enough, a sphere that glowed deep blue formed between her hands, she opened her eyes and slowly grinned. The sphere grew wider, and wider but the door opens revealing professor X. "Y/N STOP!" He exclaimed. Raven rushed into the room but before she could even reach the young student, she had already vanished.

"Where do you think she went?" McCoy asked,

"I don't know, but we need to start figuring it out now." professor X said with a worried tone.

[lightadept]

Character Analysis: Mythological Relationship of Griffith and Guts

Whether intentionally or not, Guts and Griffith’s relationship seems to be heavily rooted in one particular mythological theme, which further colors their attraction and antagonism to one another. I’ll quickly go through the mythos in the first half of the post, and then discuss in the second half how it relates to their relationship and also to Casca. I apologize in advance for all the nonsense that’s going to come out of this. @bthump​​, here’s the analysis I promised to make a few weeks ago!

Proto-Indo-European mythology, whose traces are visible across cultures in entire Eurasia, shows a recurring conflict between two opposing principles. There’s a devouring chthonic creature on one side, a beast (most commonly, a snake or a wolf), and it’s associated with the lower world of matter. Then on the other side, there’s a hawk, a falcon, or an eagle: aerial, graceful, spiritual, and predatory, suggestive of celestial realms. Slavic mythology, which is an offshoot of Proto-Indo-European mythology, in particular, uses very often beast vs. hawk symbolism. In later dualistic interpretations, the spirit is good, the matter is vile, and the spirit triumphs over the matter. However, in older, naturalistic interpretations where this symbolism originated to begin with, spiritual and chthonic currents are eternally bound together, both necessary, both neutral, both caught in perpetual conflict. It could be that Berserk simply borrowed hawk/wolf dynamic from Ladyhawke (1985), however, Ladyhawke merely uses forms present in this myth, but not their underlying meaning. Berserk, on the other side, delved deep into it, and the driving force behind attraction and conflict of Griffith and Guts seems to have roots in it.

These two opposing mythical sides - hawk which stands for spirit, and beast which stands for matter - have different faces, different hypostases. Sometimes they are represented as archenemies always killing one another, sometimes as lovers always searching for each other, reflecting the idea that they cannot exist separated, yet almost whenever they combine, they inevitably hurt one another. Spirit suffers when it’s brought down to earth from its heights and entrapped in matter, and matter suffers when it is taken into the heights because it loses its roots, its relation to the chthonic earth. There’s always an imminent danger in combining them.  

Mythologically, the joining of these two opposing principles is usually depicted as a marriage of sun and moon - which, especially in some later philosophies that were a continuation of the original mythical thought - is often depicted as an eclipse (Ladyhawke uses this theme too). It is a moment when the spiritual is touching upon the physical, and if the union is successful, a third element is produced out of the two, containing both and reconciling them. However, if something goes wrong during the union, the result is a disaster. Old Slavic lore is chock-full of folk tales and legends that describe this event. There’s an attempted marriage of two persons - who are always the respective echoes of the mythical beast and hawk gods, or to be more precise, of their children, who are not enemies like their parents, but instead in love with each other. In the myth, the god, who comes from the realm of the beasts, is traveling from depths to heights (matter is rising to meet the spirit) to meet his to-be-bride. And the goddess, who lives in the heights and comes from the realm of the hawks, is also starting to lower (spirit lowering to meet matter), and they are supposed to meet midway. Yeah, it’s the “I want to be his equal” thing. On her way down, things usually get super dirty. Their attempted wedding is immediately preceded or followed by a disaster, usually a massacre that leaves everyone present dead. This massacre is caused because, suddenly, instead of two lovers, we have three people involved. It’s usually one man torn between two women, one of whom is the bearer of the spiritual and the other of the material principle. Sometimes the person who massacres everyone is the jealous bride herself because she learns that there is “another woman”, and sometimes it’s the third person who doesn’t want to let the other two wed, usually a possessive mother. Metaphysically, what is happening here is that at the moment of conjunction, of spiritual and material realities trying to unite, that third element - which is supposed to be produced through their union - is already present. It’s a triangle now. Spirit, body, and soul are all present at once. Soul, which is always in the middle of the conflict, is being torn between spirit and matter, cleaving to them both, and as a result, someone always ends up being the third wheel. In other words: spirit and soul wed and unite, but they forget the body. Or body and soul unite, leaving the spirit out. This third left out element punishes the other two, having been left out, and everyone inevitably suffers. This legend is a fantastic psychological metaphor for the terrors that psyche undergoes when one of its aspects is suppressed and denied. This love triangle represents the body-soul-spirit dynamic, where the soul is torn between the other two. It’s an allegory on what happens when the soul chooses (or seems to choose) one side over the other, and then as a consequence and a punishment, matter castrates spirit, or spirit castrates matter. There are many variants of this legend across Slavic folklore. All of them always echo the original Proto-Indo-European mythological conflict, involving the spiritual hawk vs. chthonic beast god. Did Miura know about all this? I don’t think so. It seems very unlikely. But he didn’t need to. He maybe knew about beast vs. hawk mythological conflict, or he simply borrowed the symbolism from the Ladyhawke movie. However, this myth merely personifies the human conflict present in almost all religions or philosophies. This theme is everywhere but in some less recognizable forms. Everyone eventually feels that it’s difficult for a soul (or psyche in our modern language) to be grounded in both spiritual and physical matters. It’s either inclined more to the spirit, or more to the physical reality, and if one goes all introspective and muses on this, one will inevitably be caught in this unfortunate love triangle of spirit-soul-body, where something is always being excluded at the expense of something else. I see Guts in this as a soul, torn between Casca and Griffith, between earthly and ethereal. So, Miura probably simply repeated the same tragedy that has been told throughout centuries in all cultures. Not because he knew these myths, but because these myths are imminent conclusions personified. They are just echoes of the age-old humanity’s struggle to understand itself that’s already embedded in the human psyche. Now let’s look at Guts, Griffith, and Casca through the lens of this symbology. Those three are that tragic, messed up triangle of spirit, soul and body. Guts is the soul, which is in a way always the center of the triangle because everything is perceived through it. He has substance, depth, but not a place in the world. At the beginning of manga, Guts is broken to the very core: he is essentially a man without a purpose, roaming and wandering, scattered. He doesn’t feel any higher call, he has no personal agenda, no personal wishes - he just exists and does things without knowing why he does them. Moreover, he is not just spiritually starving but physically as well, scarred by the trauma of what Donovan did to him. So, both his body and spirit have been butchered early on, leaving him with connection to none. But then he meets Griffith. And for the first time, Guts is fixated on something, there’s finally meaning, a purpose. He has something to fight for, something beyond himself. Griffith. Finally, a higher call. Griffith very clearly personifies the spirit principle. He’s all mental, aerial, detached, calculating, not earthed. White-bluish appearance, pretty evocative of aerial heights. He follows a higher call, he is messianic, but like with all spirits, his “dream” is not earthed. It’s detached from matter, from physicality, from ordinary life. He sees none of this, none of it is genuinely important to him, nothing touches him - that is, until he meets Guts. Guts brings him down, he earths him for a moment, and for the first time, through his interaction with another being, he’s an actual human, he is involved. For the first time, he is personally caring about someone. He’s cared about things before, yes: about his fellow men, about the Hawks, but in a detached matter, from far away, from the top, in a way that doesn’t involve him. With Guts, he cares personally. Guts invades him psychically, he reaches him from the inside. This is a violation of spirit by the soul, something completely new and unfamiliar to Griffith, so impactful that he is utterly baffled and ultimately shattered by it. There’s always a danger when it comes to involving a spirit into human affairs. In the aforementioned myth, eagles were used as symbols of spirit not just because they are graceful, but because they are predatory and ferocious - meaning that there is an innate tendency to destroy matter, to kill what crawls on earth, to want to detach from it. Matter is not their territory, it baffles them. When they engage with matter, the impersonal heights are suddenly made intimate and personal. Detachment suddenly becomes attachment. This soul-spirit union, personified by Guts and Griffith’s relationship, where they both invade one another’s psyche, can either result in something beautifully sublime or something utterly disastrous. If Guts only realized that he already was Griffith’s equal, and if only Griffith realized that Guts never truly abandoned him, these two characters would have redeemed one another’s weaknesses. It was Guts who misunderstood it first, or at least first acted it out. Remember how in the legend the mythical characters were supposed to meet midway: one was supposed to climb up and the other to come down. There’s a saying in alchemical philosophy - which, by the way, is philosophically identical to these myths: earthly must be made spiritual, and spiritual must be made earthly, and only then the union can be successful. Curiously, Ladyhawke somehow also ended up using this theme, probably accidentally. So, there’s definitely something going on here. After Guts overhears Griffith’s conversation with Charlotte about what being an equal means to him, Guts starts to think too low of himself, not being worthy of Griffith, not worthy of these sudden spiritual heights. After defeating Griffith in a duel and walking away from him, Guts says how he thinks Griffith is above all this, how this abandonment shouldn’t bother him because it’s just one of the many pebbles on the road.

You’re a soaring spirit, so what the fuck are you doing with a petty soul like me? This scene is not just Guts abandoning Griffith. It’s the soul - stripped of confidence before a soaring spirit - abandoning it because it thinks it cannot catch up to it - although, in a way, it already did. That’s the tragedy. The soul wants so desperately to bond with the spirit, but it thinks it can’t. Guts thinks he will never be Griffith’s equal, at least not in his current condition. And then he abandons him. As a reaction, Griffith, the spirit, loses all ties to the one thing that earthed him, that plunged him into the realm of the personal, and made his spirit more humane: Guts, the soul. It’s really the ultimate irony that Guts never abandoned Griffith, or the heights and the meaning that Griffith came to embody for him. He was bloody loyal to it all along. But Griffith doesn’t know this. All he knows is the sudden sensation that he is being left behind. From his perspective, the spirit just got ditched by the soul, and right before Eclipse, the soul (Guts) chose body (Casca) over spirit (Griffith). That’s what Griffith sees.  

Which brings us to Casca: the perfect tragic image of the body, of physicality. When she joins the Band of the Hawks, she abandons her womanhood in a way, she cuts off her hair, goes seemingly insensitive and brute. All these actions and traumas are representative of the terrors of having a body, and one’s responses to it, attempts to deny it because she was born a fragile woman in a cruel man’s world. On a positive side, it is Casca who saves Guts from his own physical trauma, who teaches him the ways of the body he long denied. It is Casca who provides a sense of belonging for a while, who gives him a taste of normal life. However, she only reaches a part of him. The other part responds to spirit only, to Griffith. For Guts, Casca was that fleeting semblance of a normal, earthly life that needs to be protected (I won’t go into whether this was out of genuine romantic love) and Griffith was that higher call, what set him aflame both intellectually and emotionally.

To me, the fact that Casca had to spend chapters and chapters in a mentally vegetative state, being reduced to a body without any substance, is absolutely genial. It’s kind of a sleeping beauty scenario in one of its atypical interpretations, where the protagonist - the principle of the body - sleeps throughout the whole story, while the soul (the prince) is out there fighting the dragons. The body is first to be destroyed, left behind when there’s a conflict of soul-spirit-body. It’s the first to take damage because it is the frailest of all three, because there’s an inherent tendency of spirit to hate the body as the body steals the soul from it. The soul can always dissociate from the body and exist in a somewhat detached state, where it can even bond with the spirit, but the body will always be dead and dormant without the soul. So, metaphysically, the concept of the body is perhaps the most tragic one. It always takes the blame for everything. Spirit is eternal, but the body is what limits the existence in space in time, and thus castrates the spirit.

Griffith’s rape of Casca could in a way be a reflection of this. In Griffith lingers a terrifying, dangerous interplay and clashing of body and spirit. He sold his body for his dream. He prioritizes ethereal over physical, the fate of the collective over fate of the individual. In his scenario, body entraps the infinite spirit in a finite, confined space, suffocating it. After sleeping with Charlotte, he personally experiences this in the dungeon where he was tortured and disfigured, by which his spirit was reduced to a rotting body. His disfiguration is the triumph of the material over spirit in him. Suddenly, he’s no longer a soaring hawk and his wings are cut off. It’s an outright spiritual fall for him, and he takes it terribly. In Greek mythology, mortal encounter with the divine is often represented as rape, madness or dismemberment (gosh, I fucking love Greeks for this) because it shatters the psyche. It terrorizes it. For Griffith, this mythical transition, the descent from ethereal to earthly was disastrous to his state of mind. When Griffith rapes Casca, it’s not just a revenge against Guts - it’s spirit raping the body, getting back at it, while the soul watches and suffers. Just previously in the dungeon, it was body that violated spirit in his case. It’s as if the rape of Casca parallels Griffith’s very own disfiguration, which is also a violation of sorts. By raping Casca, Griffith is essentially saying something like: I no longer need you, now I’m above you.   Because he is so traumatized of terrors of losing Guts - meaning, losing soul - and as a consequence, being “reduced” to something earthly and trivial and ordinary (without Guts, nothing makes sense to him anymore), he needs to be free of it. Of both body and soul. He needs to be freed from his attachment to Guts and freed from this earthliness. When he becomes Femto, he’s finally pure of spirit, a god. Man, I hope it bites him in the ass. He needs to be brought down from his godly heights, and forced to experience the terrors of emotions he cut off. The revenge has to be full psychological. 

[sheerfreesia007]

Scaredy Cats

Title: Scaredy Cats

Fandom: Teen Wolf

Pairing: Stiles x Reader

Author: @sheerfreesia007​​

Words: 1,974

Warnings: Fluff, Cursing (I checked it but I couldn’t find any but I’m exhausted right now so I’m just gonna put this here as a catch all. Y’all should know by now that I curse.)

Permanent Tag List: @paintballkid711​, @fioccodineveautunnale​, @phoenixhalliwell​, @synystersilenceinblacknwhite​

Teen Wolf Tag List: @linkpk88​, @pure-ghost​, @awkwardnesshabitat​

Author Notes: This was super cute to write and I had originally planned it going a different way but alas, my mind has been uncooperative lately so it went a totally different way. But I love it! I hope you enjoy! Feedback is always appreciated.

Gif Credit: Google

It was finally Halloween and you were excited for the Halloween party that Lydia was throwing for the pack. It was Friday night and you were excited to let loose with your friends. Beacon Hills had been relatively safe for the month of October and the pack had been able to relax a little bit, so of course Lydia had decided that a party was in store.

         You had volunteered to drive her up to the lake house ahead of everyone else to be able to help her set up for the party. On the way there the two of you had stopped at a store to pick up even more Halloween decorations than what she had at the lake house. That’s where the two of you were now roaming the aisles of the holiday section of the store as you peruse their selection of decorations.

         “So I’m thinking maybe these little ghost lights to hang in the front windows.” Lydia said as she picked up two boxes of ghost lights and set them in the cart that you were pushing around.

         “Oooohhh, I’ll get this and we can make that bubbling witches brew drink for the pack.” you said excitedly as you held up a black plastic cauldron meant to hold punch.

         “That’s a great idea!” Lydia said as she moved to walk next to you as the two of you continued to shop. “You think they’d all want to do party games or just hang out?” she asked curiously.

         “I think Isaac said that they were planning on bringing horror movies for us all to watch.” you said with a grimace on your face. Lydia looked over at you with a sympathetic look. You shrugged before continuing. “They did a vote and the majority was for the horror movies.” 

         “Well I voted no.” she said as she shook her head and you grinned over at her before leaning into her side.

         “I know you, me and Stiles voted no.” you said softly. “Though I’m surprised you voted no, you normally don’t have an issue with the horror movies.” you said as you looked over at her, her only response being a shrug of her shoulders. The two of you continued walking down the aisle and browsing whatever else decoration you could pick up for the lake house.

         “You know maybe we could use this to your advantage.” she said slyly as she held up a creepy old looking lantern before placing it back on the shelf. You tilted your head curiously as you placed a package of fake spider webs in the cart.

         “What do you mean?” you asked, distracted as you shopped. You didn’t see Lydia look over and smile widely at you.

         “I mean with your little crush.” she teased and you choked on air before turning around to glare at her. That’s why she voted no, she didn’t want to single you and Stiles out.

         “You said you wouldn’t talk about it.” you hissed quietly as your eyes darted around the aisle. Thankfully only the two of you were there.

         “I said I wouldn’t talk about it around any of the pack.” Lydia reminded you as she flung her arms out from her body to indicate there were no pack members around. You sighed softly and nodded at her to continue. “You should sit next to Stiles and whenever a scary part comes on you can inch closer and closer to him.” You laughed softly at her advice and shook your head.

         “Lyds, he doesn’t see me that way and he’d probably be just as scared as me during the movie. I’d have to protect him.” you said shaking your head. Lydia looked contemplative for a minute before nodding her head.

         “You’re right you’d be the knight in shining armor and he’d be the damsel.” she said giggling brightly. “That’d be a sight to see.” You both laughed happily imaging Stiles as a princess and you as a knight while you checked out at the register.

           It was hours later when you and Lydia were just finishing up setting out the snacks for the halloween party. The pack was due to arrive soon and the two of you had managed to get up all the decorations that you bought to make the room look festive. You were standing in the large kitchen filling the cauldron with the smoky punch you had made when you heard the rest of the pack arrive. Looking up you smiled brightly when Kira squealed and rushed over to you giving you a warm tight hug. Malia was next as she sauntered into the room with a slight scowl on her face.

         “I don’t like halloween.” she said testily and you smiled as you wrapped your arms around her.

         “Well you’ll enjoy the horror movies at least. It’s all blood and gore and scary things.” you told her as you pulled away and saw her grin.

         “Yeah Isaac said that he picked out the really scary ones for us to watch.” she said happily. You laughed along with Kira as you shook your head. Your eyes darted over to the doorway when you heard a commotion and saw Stiles and Scott bringing in bags filled with the take out that you had all decided to order. 

         Scott sent you a grin and a nod while Stiles walked over to wrap you in a warm hug. You felt your body begin to melt against him as you returned the hug. It was always like this with Stiles, so easy and familiar. And he was always giving out hugs. You had once told Lydia that hugs from Stiles were the best because it seemed as if his whole body curved around you keeping you in a warm protective little bubble.

         “Wanna be my movie buddy tonight?” he asked softly into your ear making you shiver. You looked up at him with a raised eyebrow. “I mean, so that we can get through this together. You know everyone else is alright with the scary movies.” He tried to explain as you kept looking at him. A soft smile then fell onto your lips.

         “What about Lydia?” you asked him and he looked down at you confused.

         “What about her?” he asked in his confusion.

         “She voted no on the movies too. Why don’t you be her movie buddy?” you asked a little unsure of yourself. You wanted to be his movie buddy but he had had a crush on Lydia for years and you didn’t want to be his second choice if Lydia had already told him no.

         “Lydia only voted no because she didn’t want to go with the rest of the pack. You know she doesn't’ have a problem with scary movies.” he answered easily. “Besides she’d pick on me if I got scared next to her. You don’t make fun of me, at least not too much.” You laughed brightly at his words and smirked over at him.

         “I can’t help it when you make it too easy.” you teased him and he grinned down at you before nudging your hip with his.

         “Yeah well, what do you say? Suffer through the movies together with me?” he asked softly. You grinned up at him and nodded your head.

         “I’d be delighted to.” you answered. Neither one of you noticed the six pairs of eyes watching you both with a knowing look in them.

           You couldn’t see anything but you could hear all of it. All of the screaming and the squelching noises of death. The body that was tightly wrapped around you in fear kept jerking whenever a new sound would resonate from the speakers of the tv.

         “Don’t look, it sounds horrible.” Stiles muttered into your ear as he tugged you tighter against him while he buried his face in your neck and hair. The two of you had commandeered the love seat in the living room as your own stating that no one would want to sit with the two scaredy cats of the group anyway since there’d be a lot of flying limbs. Shifting against him you curled further into his chest as his longer legs lay on either side of you on the sofa. Stiles had his back to the armrest of the sofa and had easily placed you in between his open legs when he had sat down. You had at first been shocked and embarrassed but when Lydia, Kira and Malia had each sent you a knowing look you had known your face was heated for a completely different reason. Thankfully none of the boys had looked at you or you’d probably be even more embarrassed.

         “Geeze Stiles why don’t you let the poor girl breathe.” Liam said teasingly and you peeked over Stiles’ arm that was wrapped tightly around you. He was grinning over at the two of you from his spot on the floor next to Malia. 

         “Yeah it looks like you’re trying to smother her.” Malia said with a wink shot your way and you huffed softly at her. You felt Stiles’ arms loosen around you and you got a full look at the tv screen in front of you. Blood, gore and death was depicted as the killer came at one of the victims with a large blade.

         “Nope, nope, nope.” you said quickly and completely turned into Stiles’ body so that your face was now pressed into his neck so you didn’t have to watch the movie. Stiles chuckled softly and wrapped his arms around you again.

         “You okay?” he asked softly into your ear as you got situated comfortably against him.

         “Don’t listen to the newbs on the floor.” you said adamantly and felt Stiles’ chuckle vibrate against you.

         “Noted.” he responded and you easily fell into a lulled state of content as the movie continued playing.

           You slowly felt yourself coming up from your deep sleep when you heard whispered hurried voices around you.

         “You think we should wake them?” came a soft voice that you knew was Kira.

         “They look so cute together. You’d think he’d finally make a move on her.” Lydia said softly and you heard the shutter click of a photo being taken.

         “He doesn’t get it that she’s into him too.” Scott responded. “He’s cautious, doesn’t want to get his heart broken.”

         “Well then maybe I’ll make a move, I think she’s cute.” Liam said brightly and suddenly you felt Stiles move from underneath you. You had obviously fallen asleep on the boy and he hadn’t moved you an inch, probably too comfortable himself as body heat the two of you had created was quickly lulling you back into a sleepy daze.

         “You even try to and I’ll bury you in wolfbane where no one will find you.” Stiles threatened sleepily and you shifted against him when you heard the raspiness of his voice. The pack all waited as you pretended to fall back asleep on him before the pack laughed softly at his words.

         “You wanna head up to bed or stay here with her?” Scott asked Stiles softly.

         “Stay here. If she wakes up I’ll help her up to bed.” Stiles responded and you felt your heart begin to pick up in your chest. You heard the movements of the pack as they all left to head up to bed and you shifted against Stiles again. “How much of that did you hear?” he asked softly and you grinned as you nuzzled against his neck feeling him shiver against you.

         “Make a move on me Stilinski.” you whispered in his ear and heard his sharp intake of breath. When you pulled away to blink dreamily up him he cupped your face and pulled you into a soft sweet kiss.

         “Gladly.” he responded after pulling away.

[moviemunchies]

How the FUDGE do we even begin talking about Dances with Wolves?

It’s become shorthand for ‘White Savior’ film, and I don’t think that’s entirely fair to this movie. But it’s also not baseless--it’s entirely from the point of view of a white guy and the Native characters’ lives all more or less revolve around him and his relationship with their group. And while I’m told (and I want to emphasize that I don’t know this for sure, feel free to correct me) that at the time this is one of the first depictions of Native Americans in mainstream film that gives them depth, personality, and you know, doesn’t have them as a group of mooks for good guys to mow down in Westerns.

Not being an indigenous person, it’s not for me to make a definitive judgment on whether or not the movie’s good in that regard.

Though for what it’s worth, the Lakota officially adopted Kevin Costner as an honorary member of their nation.

So the movie goeth a bit like this: John Dunbar is a soldier in the Union army during the Civil War, and due to helping his unit win a battle he’s given a promotion and told he can pick a post. He decides to go out West because he wants to see the frontier before it’s gone. His outpost turns out to be abandoned, and since there’s no word about reinforcements coming. So he sits and writes as he goes about his business, befriending a local wolf he calls ‘Two Socks’ (because the paws of its feet are white, and look like socks). He starts interacting with the local Lakota, and because of his willingness to help them out whenever he can, he gets adopted by the tribe and is dubbed with the name ‘Dances with Wolves’--after him they witness him playing with Two Socks. He marries Stands with a Fist, a white woman adopted into the Lakota from a young age, and finds happiness and peace of mind he hadn’t before.

But of course, 

Also it’s way too long of a movie.

Okay, I get that this isn’t an action movie--there are action scenes in it, but it’s not a war movie in the sense that there are massive battles (though there are skirmishes) and that’s fine. But I was expecting more of that? I was expecting to see more conflict between the Lakota and the US army. And there is conflict, but in the sense that they have opposing views. After Dunbar gets posted, he doesn’t actually encounter the Army again until the last forty minutes or so of the movie.

This movie is three hours.

So for something that was meant to be the focus of the story, Dunbar’s relationship between these two groups, it felt a bit off that he didn’t have any interactions with the Army until the end of the movie. It’s also a bit odd that he’s not giving up anything, really--he doesn’t fit with the world of white men because they kind of suck? He doesn’t have any friends among them. They’re all rude or crude or bastards.

The Native Americans, or rather, the Lakota of this movie are just better than everyone else. They’re not technically magical Native Americans, but they’re clearly better than the white civilization in this film. That sounds like praise, but in a sense it’s almost fetishization? It’s putting a group of people on an unrealistic pedestal of poetic naming conventions and a peaceful, nature-loving lifestyle. Sure they’re more humanized than in most Western films, but it goes hard in the other direction.

Sure, Dunbar’s not a White Savior, per se--and he’s definitely not the Mighty Whitey archetype. He helps the Lakota out, but he’s not better at what they do than they are. And in the end, they save him. But their lives revolve around his in this movie. And I THINK I get that they were going for: introducing a different culture through a character from a culture that is more identifiable to most of the moviegoing audience. But it doesn’t change that it’s still all about him. Unlike other examples of this kind of story, like The Last Samurai or Marco Polo, we don’t actually get that much about the Lakota culture. Everyday lives and language I guess, and that’s not nothing, but religion? History? And how does Dunbar react to them? It’s a big question mark. And those are kind of big questions, considering he drops everything to go with them at the end of the movie! 

The alternate examples I gave above (which have the benefit of having come out years later, and hence the conversation around these things were much more developed, but they still have their own baggage) can use the excuse, effectively or not depending who you ask, that they’re using a white character as an audience surrogate to introduce the viewer to cultures and peoples they’re less familiar with. But while _Dances with Wolves_ does introduce the viewers to Lakota culture, it’s not in a particularly in depth way. Again, it’s good that they’re shown as people, that’s a good step, and I don’t know enough about the atmosphere at the time to know how revolutionary or big of a step that was. But watching it today, it doesn’t feel like that large of a step.

Dunbar’s also a guy who already admires Native Americans--he asks about them when he’s on his way to the posting, and he comes up with every excuse to talk to them when he gets stationed there. He’s already a fanboy, mostly because he seems to see them as a part of the Western Frontier that hasn’t been yet eliminated, so his joining the nation doesn’t feel like so much like a massive character change as a fanboy living out his dream.

I’m sorry, I sound like I hate this movie. I don’t. I don’t think it’s a bad movie, but I can’t help but think critically about it given the subject matter. Especially because it’s a long and thoughtful movie, it sort of invites one to think about it. I’d like to think this movie was a step in the right direction, and that shouldn’t be understated. But it’s still a step. You can’t watch this movie, especially nowadays, and say you’ve got a good grasp of Native American culture and history and struggles. It’s worthwhile to watch, but I can’t say my life has been changed that much in the viewing.

I can say though that watching this, James Cameron’s Avatar was this movie but IN SPACE.

Also, you know what? I should watch Smoke Signals.

[watching-pictures-move]

Movie Review | Ilsa, She Wolf of the SS (Edmonds, 1975)

This review contains spoilers.

Despite my love of cinema in even its less reputable forms, one genre that I’ve hesitated to dive into is Nazisploitation. Quite frankly, a genre built around milking one of the worst crimes in human history for sordid entertainment value seemed a little too tasteless, even for a wildly undiscriminating viewer such as myself. I’ll admit to even having been bothered by allegedly respectable takes on such material (The Night Porter might be one of my most hated films). Yet, as one does when stuck inside during a raging pandemic with limited ways of keeping oneself occupied, with one’s interest piqued by a viewing of a documentary on the subject (Fascism on a Thread, available on Tubi, the best bang-for-your-buck streaming service in that it’s free and actually has a decent amount of good shit), I figured that perhaps I should give it a chance. (I have previously seen Salon Kitty, although I understand that might be a borderline case with its relatively high production values.) And what better way to get acquainted with the genre than by seeing one of its best known and most notorious entries, Ilsa, She Wolf of the SS? After all, the film opens with text telling us that it’s “based on documented fact” and is dedicated with “ with the hope that these heinous crimes will never happen again.” Perhaps it wouldn’t be as disrespectful as I’d expect?

That sentiment lasts for about as long as the opening text is displayed. We first meet Ilsa as she’s getting it on with a prisoner. After they finish, in a wild overreaction to a lousy lay, she has him castrated in the first of many graphic torture sequences and says she’ll be sending off his dismembered...member to some kind of museum dedicated to Aryan superiority. (Depending on how often she does this, I wonder if she ships them in bulk?) The rest of the movie follows a similar pattern. Lots of admiring nudity of both the female prisoners and the female guards, with Ilsa’s cleavage subjected to an especially loving gaze. Various torture scenes with an undeniable fetishistic element: shaving pubes, insulting the male prisoners’ penis sizes, an electrified dildo. (Less overty fetishistic but still notable: there is a scene of a pressurized chamber containing a busty prisoner played by none other than Russ Meyer regular Uschi Digard.) Ilsa herself is undeniably a dominatrix-type figure, her Nazi uniform practically serving as fetish gear. The atrocities depicted in the film are an extremely objectionable step or two beyond what some might call a good time, posing a kind of challenge to the audience: how low will you sink to enjoy some T&A?

The film does have some sense of arc, driven by two primary developments. One, Ilsa beds an American prisoner who not only is able to bring her to climax but can refrain indefinitely from climaxing himself, which results in her becoming the female equivalent of “whipped”, so to speak. (The two funniest moments in the movie involve the drum-and-fife music that plays after this scene, a cross between “Yankee Doodle Dandy” and “Dixie”, and the shocked reaction of another prisoner upon learning his abilities. The American is also tested later with a threesome.) Two, a visit from a general (during which he is entertained by a naked woman hanging over the table onto a block of ice while he has dinner) who seeks to learn about Ilsa’s progress with her experiments but strongly objects to her “private research” (which doesn’t seem all that different from the rest of her handiwork). At the end of the night, he begs Ilsa for a golden shower, an act which manages to repulse even her (despite, you know, everything she’s done in the movie up to this point). The movie climaxes with a revolt by the prisoners led by the American, featuring some low rent action and a fetishized comeuppance for Ilsa (in lingerie, tied with stockings to her bed), followed immediately by the German army putting down the revolt immediately, a downer ending to an overall pretty dismal affair.

On one hand, Ilsa is undeniably a pretty offensive affair, trying to exploit the Holocaust for schlocky entertainment. On the other hand, it’s pretty hard to really be offended by. The movie, despite the opening text, makes little pretense of dealing with its subject in any serious capacity, meaning that any insult to its real life inspirations doesn’t hold water the way it might in a more serious film about the subject. (The Night Porter filming its concentration camp scenes like softcore is more objectionable than Ilsa doing the same as the former actually expects you to take those scenes seriously while the latter is clearly going for thrills, albeit of an extremely degraded kind.) The film was made fast and on the cheap, shot in under two weeks on the sets of the recently canceled Hogan’s Heroes, but the artless, rudimentary filmmaking gives it a certain stylistic purity. The movie delivers exactly what it promises you, no more, no less, without any attempt to alleviate it with style or class. A certain campy quality results from juxtaposition of the bargain basement production values with the slipping German accents of the cast, so that the movie plays like a sketch comedy where the jokes have been replaced by war crimes. If you think the worst thing a movie can be is boring, this certainly isn’t guilty of that.

And it must be said that as Ilsa, Dyanne Thorne is quite watchable. She definitely looks the part, having landed the role after she showed up to the audition dressed in her uniform from her day job as a chauffeur. She plays the character through enthusiastic teeth gnashing and grimacing, doing justice to her character’s dominating and sadistic qualities. (I understand the director Don Edmonds thought the script was the “worst piece of shit [he] ever read.” If she had a similar low opinion of the project, it doesn’t come off in her performance.) She figured heavily as a talking head in Fascism on a Thread, and from her interviews she comes off as a sweet lady who I’m glad got this moment in the spotlight. I understand she reprised the role in a few sequels (one of which was directed by Jess Franco) which mostly sound less morally objectionable than this one, and I can’t say I’ve ruled out seeing them at some point.

[hardcorehardigan]

[Cover: GREG WILLIAMS/AUGUST IMAGES]

Tom Hardy interview and exclusive David Bailey shot

Tom Hardy interview and exclusive David Bailey shot

By DANIELLE DE WOLFE

02 September 2015

ShortList meets the British actor who took on the Kray twins and won. Plus an exclusive image of the actor taken by the inimitable David Bailey.

Interviewing Tom Hardy is not like interviewing other film stars. From the moment he arrives – alone, dressed down in hiking trousers and black T-shirt, puffing away on a complex-looking digital e-cigarette – it is immediately clear this is not someone who will be exhibiting any kind of on-promotional-duties polish. He is very, very nice (I get a hug at the end of the interview), but there is unmistakably a wired edginess about him. When we sit down, it starts like this:

Me: I’m going to start with an obvious question, which is… Hardy: Have you seen the film? Me: Yes. I… Hardy: Right, well that’s the first question, then. The second one is, “What did you think?” I tell him I loved it, and why, and he is pleased (“That’s a f*cking result!”). When we move on to me asking him questions, his answers – again, in contrast to other film stars, with whom the game is to get them to veer slightly away from prepared, succinct monologues – are smart and eloquent, but long, drawn-out and enjoyably all over the place, veering off into tangents prompted by thoughts that have clearly just formulated. At the end of our allotted time, we are told to wind it up not once but twice, and even then he is still going, launching into theories about American versus British gangster films and life and humanity and such things (“Sorry man, I can talk for f*cking ever!” he laughs). He will be talking with a seriousness and sincerity (“All the risk was taken by [writer and director] Brian [Helgeland], to be fair…”), then will switch without warning into a piercing, mock-hysterical falsetto (“…letting me PLAY BOTH F*CKING ROLES, MAN!”).

In fact, briefly, while we’re on the subject of the way he speaks…

Tom Hardy’s normal speaking voice is not something we have been privy to onscreen. Since he delivered – whatever your opinion of it – the most imitated cinematic voice of the decade in The Dark Knight Rises, we haven’t come close. That thick Welsh accent in Locke, The Drop’s quiet Brooklyn drawl, the Russian twang in Child 44: we just never hear it. And this might be because it doesn’t exist. It’s five years ago, but if you watch his Jonathan Ross appearance in 2010, where he is very well spoken, he confesses he “sometimes picks up accents, and sometimes I don’t know how I’m going to sound until I start speaking”. If you then watch another video of a feature on GMTV, dated just a month previous, while addressing some young people from troubled backgrounds as part of his charity work with the Prince’s Trust, he is speaking to them in a south London street kid drawl. Today, in the flesh, he is about halfway between these two.

A natural-born chameleon.

Tom Hardy shot by David Bailey for ShortList

BEING DOUBLE

The role we are here to discuss today does not, by Tom Hardy’s own standards at least, involve a huge stretch accent-wise. But it is “the hardest thing that I’ve ever done, technically”. This is because, as mentioned, he plays not one role, but two. In the same film. You will likely have seen the posters for Legend by now, depicting Hardy as both of the Kray twins. Which seems an ambitious, almost foolhardy undertaking.

Hardy agrees. “It is one of them situations,” he says. “You get an actor to play two characters, and immediately, it’s pony. It’s gonna be rubbish. Just: no. It’s a bad idea.”

This particular “bad idea” came to him when he first met writer and director Brian Helgeland (who had previously written screenplays for – no biggie – LA Confidential and Mystic River) for dinner. Brian wanted Hardy to play Reggie (the hetero, alpha male, more-straight-down-the-line Kray). Hardy, though, had read the script, and of course, being Tom Hardy, was drawn to the more complex character. “I was like, ‘Well, I feel Ronnie,’” he says. “So which actor am I gonna give up Ronnie to, if I play Reggie? Errrrrggh…. I can’t have that. ’Cos that’s all the fun there! And Reggie’s so straight! But there was a moment when I could have come away just playing Reggie. We could have gone and found a superlative character actor to play Ronnie, and that would have been the best of everything."

But Helgeland sensed the dissatisfaction in his potential leading man. “I’m sitting there thinking, ‘Oh, he wants to play Ron,’” he tells me. “And the paraphrased version is that by the end of the dinner, I said, ‘I’ll give you Ron if you give me Reg.’”

And so began their quest to turn a risky, potentially disastrous idea into something special (as Brian puts it to me, “the movie’s either gone right or gone wrong before anyone even starts working on it”). Hardy found some comfort in Sam Rockwell’s two-interacting-characters performance in Moon. “I’m a big fan of Sam,” he says.

“And Moon gave me reason to go, ‘I know it’s possible to hustle with self, to create a genuine dialogue with self.’ So then it’s the technical minefield: can you authentically create two characters within a piece at all? So that the audience can look past that and engage in the film? It is what it is: it’s two characters played by the same actor. But I think we got to a point where people forget that and are genuinely watching the story."

This was the ‘why I liked the film’ reasoning I gave to him at the beginning of the interview. And it is a remarkable performance, or pair of performances, or triumph of technical direction. The opening shot features both Tom Hardy Krays sitting in the back of a car, and feels strange, but very quickly, within about 10 or 15 minutes, you settle into it, and forget that it is actually the same guy. This was made possible, in part, by Hardy’s stunt double from Mad Max: a New Zealander named Jacob Tomuri.

“He inherited the hardest job of my career,” Hardy grins. “I put on a pair of glasses, played every scene with Ron, then took ’em off and played Reg. And we went through every scene in the film, recording it on the iPhone. So he’s got every scene of me doing both characters, on his iPhone. He actually played both brothers, had to learn all of the lines. He was paying attention twice as hard to keep up. But he superseded that, and was eventually ad-libbing. There’s a line that ended up in the film, where Ronnie goes, ‘I bent him up like a pretzel, I hurt him really f*cking badly.’” “Where did that come from?!” Hardy shrieks, in that falsetto again. “It came from New Zealand."

The wife’s tale

The other big potential pitfall, as Hardy sees it, was contributing to the ongoing glamorisation and eulogising of two brothers who were, to say the least, not very nice. Somehow they have become almost as iconic a piece of the Sixties puzzle as the Beatles or the Stones. But this was not something that Legend would be setting out to reinforce. “One has to approach these things thinking about the families of the victims who were involved in the other end of it,” he says. “Before you find the heart to like somebody, you’ve gotta look at their track record as best as possible: the people who’ve been hurt, the bodies, the suffering, people who were bullied, who lived in terror, who lost significant parts of their lives in the wake of these two men. There’s a lot of sh*t to wade through. And a lot of people who do not, quite rightly, want to see anything to do with these two men. And if I were them, I wouldn’t want to be involved myself, but there’s also part of me that wants to know. That wants to get under the skin.”

So how do you go about doing that? About humanising, to any extent, such people?

“I think the first port of call is, ‘Wouldn’t it be nice to be able to do and say whatever you wanted to do and say in the world, regardless of the ramifications and the consequences?’ Ultimately, when I – we – go to the cinema or read a book or we go to escape, we respond to certain types of characters that go, ‘F*ck it: I’m gonna do whatever I want.'

And that’s because we can’t. Because most people would feel a responsibility.”

The answer to how Legend would do this came in the shape of a person who did feel some responsibility, namely Frances Shea: the troubled wife of Reggie, who died in 1967. Played by Emily Browning, she became the centre of the film when Helgeland met Krays associate Chris Lambrianou, who told him that “Frances was the reason we all went to prison”.

“We could have put more of the carnage and the crimes in that film,” says Hardy. “Not to say that it is not there, but what you do see, really, is Reggie, Ronnie and Frances. That’s the dynamic we focused on, that space, which hasn’t been seen before. What was that dynamic like? I don’t know if we came anywhere near the truth, because we weren’t there. But that was the playing field, if you like: Frances Shea, future ahead of her, caught up in something, and no one with her, the suicide. That sits with me in a way as the lead. She’s who we forgot. Ronnie, Reggie, they’ve done their bit. Frances was forgotten. And that kind of all ties it together for me."

FUTURE LEGENDS

The initial praise for Legend has been plentiful, but the mindset of Tom Hardy right now is such that he does not have the time to bask in it. There are other quite ludicrously challenging projects to be pressing ahead with. Coming in autumn is The Revenant, starring his good friend Leonardo DiCaprio and directed by Alejandro González Iñárritu of Birdman fame. Its trailer, as well as doing the not-going-anywhere trend for big beards no harm whatsoever, suggests that it will also match Mad Max in terms of an unrelenting barrage of intensity. Further into the future there’s the Elton John biopic Rocketman (initial challenge? Hardy “can’t sing”) and another foray into comic-book adaptation with 100 Bullets (news of which broke just after our interview).

And right now, as in this week, he’s working on a BBC series called Taboo, which is set in 1813 and stars Hardy as an adventurer who comes back from Africa and builds a shipping empire. The story has been developed by his production company Hardy Son & Baker (formed with his father, Chips) and has been written and directed by Locke/Peaky Blinders creator Steven Knight, with Ridley Scott also exec producing.

“We’re sat on something really awesome,” says Hardy. “And it’s trying to piece it together. I’ve never produced anything before, so I basically don’t know what I’m doing. But I’ve got some options and solutions: if you say something is not working, you better come up with at least four other options. But it’s good. It’s just different.”

Another day, another big challenge. Another chance to do something different. It isn’t an easy life being Tom Hardy. But neither will it ever a boring one, and that’s good news for us.

Legend is at cinemas from 9 September

Words: Hamish MacBain. Images: David Bailey, Studio Canal

You can also read the Hardy interview in this week's ShortList Magazine. It'd be a crime to miss it.

Source: https://www.shortlist.com/news/tom-hardy-interview-and-exclusive-david-bailey-shot

[coll2mitts]

#35 Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (1971)

“Everybody aboard, you’re going to love this, just love it.”

Both Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory are on this list.  This is the only instance that both the original and its remake are featured.  These movies are based off of Roald Dahl’s novel “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” and each change the original source material in its own way - Charlie by adding backstory to Wonka, and Willy Wonka by changing Wonka’s character into a deranged sadist that seems to take pleasure in torturing his guests.  But we’re not there yet, let’s poke around in this world first before I rip into Wonka.

The Wonka Chocolate Factory is famous worldwide for their confectionary marvels.  Children in Wonka’s hometown flock to Bill’s Candy Shop to check out Wonka’s latest creations, and Mr. Bill basically chucks it all at their face for free while singing a sort of creepy ditty about being a candy man.

All I can think of when I watch this scene is how hopped up on sugar these child actors must have been.

Meanwhile, the hero of the story, Charlie Bucket (which is the best name for a character in all of literary history and gives Lazar Wolf a run for his money), comes from a poor family and can’t afford the admission to Mr. Bill’s Diabetes Deluge.  If that weren’t enough disappointment, he also has to walk by Wonka’s factory, where he wistfully gazes through the gates at the building until a very ominous man with the best line delivery in the entire movie informs Charlie that “NoBoDy EvEr GoEs In AnD nObOdY eVeR cOmEs OuT”.

Charlie lives with his mother, a laundress, and his four invalid grandparents who haven’t left their iconic collective bed in twenty years.  The novel itself is fairly low stakes, but does depict Charlie’s family’s position in life as wholly destitute.  It describes how emaciated Charlie looked because he was a growing boy without food, and how selfless he was by refusing to eat his family’s portions when they were offered.  I was thankful they decided not to translate these particular facts to film, but instead they removed the father character and forced Charlie to work to support his family, essentially robbing him of his childhood.  Him and grandpa Joe even bicker because Charlie wants to step up and pay for his tobacco, which is a bizarre thing for a child to be forced to advocate for, even in the 1970s.

Charlie tells Grandpa Joe about his encounter with the weirdo in front of Wonka’s, and Grandpa Joe educates Charlie on the history of the factory.  After Wonka discovered there were spies working for his competition getting intel from his factory, he fired all the workers and closed it off completely.  In present day Wonka announces a competition - he has hidden 5 golden tickets in his Wonka bars, and the children who find them will win a lifetime supply of chocolate.  Additionally, they will be allowed on the Wonka factory premises with Willy Wonka himself guiding them on a tour of his chocolate factory.

Charlie, of course, doesn’t have the money to purchase several chocolate bars, so he can only watch with envy as Augustus Gloop, a glutton, finds the first bar.  The envious Veruca Salt, the daughter of a rich peanut factory owner, gets the second spot after her father forces his employees to deshell Wonka bars until a golden ticket appears.  Golden ticket number 3 is found by the prideful and focused champion gum chewer Violet Beauregarde, and the fourth ticket is awarded to lazy and wrathful Mike TeeVee, who, as his namesake suggests, spends the majority of his time awake viewing the television and is subsequently obsessed with the firearms his favorite pictures feature.

The vignettes of people around the world trying to find the golden tickets are genuinely funny.  Between a computer programmed to predict where the tickets are located telling its operator it won’t divulge that information because that would be cheating, to a woman debating if she really wanted to pay her kidnapped husband’s ransom with a case of Wonka bars, it does a great job at illustrating how Wonka-crazy the entire world was.

Charlie is despondent when the last golden ticket is found, but his luck almost immediately changes when he finds some money laying in the street.  He goes to Bill’s to buy some candy, and on his way home with his new bounty, overhears the last ticket found was a fake.  The concept of the forged ticket isn’t a feature of the book, but is a feature of the two movie adaptations.  I’m positive its inclusion was intended to add a bit of drama into the story that has little conflict for Charlie other than his extreme level of poverty.  To Charlie’s surprise, the Wonka bar he bought with his found money contains the last golden ticket.

On his way home he runs into Mr. Slugworth, the owner of another candy company, who asks Charlie to steal an everlasting gobstopper from Wonka in exchange for $10k.  This is an insane amount of money for someone like Charlie, but he doesn’t seem to pay this offer much mind.  When Charlie finally returns home to tell his family the good news, Grandpa Joe surprises everyone when he rallies enough to climb out of bed and waltz around the room to prove he’s fit enough to accompany Charlie on the tour.

The morning of the tour, Charlie and the 4 other children arrive with their parent chaperones.  Wonka welcomes them inside and forces them to sign a contract, which I assume absolves him of any wrongdoing in case anybody gets injured.  Everybody acts as if contracts are a newfangled thing that only suckers agree to, but each of the children put ink to paper to allow themselves admittance to the factory.  I’m not sure how legally binding an agreement with an underage child is, but it’s the 1970s, so who knows...

The factory itself is a maze of funhouse tricks, with each room designed to unsettle the guests a little more as they progress deeper into the building.  Their discomfort is rewarded though when Wonka finally leads them into the chocolate room.

Gene Wilder singing this song while baiting the kids with access to the room before almost hitting them with his cane is his entire character in a nutshell.  Just a detached, wealthy company owner who likes to withhold joy from children under the threat of violence.  For as much as I’ll quip about Wonka being kind of a terrible person, Gene Wilder is a fucking legend in this.

Also, the chocolate room looks so freaking awesome, especially considering these are practical effects paired with really good set design.  While the chocolate river looks slightly... distasteful (and allegedly smelled terrible because the cream they mixed in it curdled), the rest of this is appetizing as fuck and I would have gone HAM in a room like this as a kid and ate jelly with my hands out of a bucket, too.

We’re then introduced to Wonka’s biggest secret - the Oompa Loompas, a race of people that Wonka literally upended for free labor in his factory under the guise of “rescuing” them from predators.  What kind of white savior nonsense...

ANYWAY, while the guests are fascinated with Wonka’s workforce, Augustus decides to help himself to the contents of the chocolate river, falls in, and gets sucked up into a pipe that leads directly to the fudge room.  The Oompa Loompas sing a song about not eating too much shit, and Wonka decides to hand wave this away and usher the rest of the group onto his boat for the next part of the tour.

The child actors apparently had no idea what was going to happen on this boat ride and their reactions of horror as Gene Wilder starts to manically sing is actually genuine.  The mindfuck Willy Wonka subjects these poor people to really makes me wonder if they “won” anything.

The boat’s final destination is the invention room, where Wonka shows the kids his latest creation: the everlasting gobstopper.  He makes them promise not to share it with anybody, and all the kids halfheartedly agree and take their ten thousand dollar candy.  Wonka then taunts Violet with a stick of gum flavored like an entire 3 course meal, and she easily takes the bait.

I love this Oompa Loompa song so much for the mere fact they’re rolling around a inert mannequin dressed to look like a human/blueberry hybrid.

One of the other major deviations from the book was the following scene where Charlie and his grandfather almost fucking get chopped to pieces by a ceiling fan because they sample some of Wonka’s fizzing lifting drink and float higher and higher into certain peril.  They manage to escape this fate by burping their way back down and are not immediately caught by Wonka, but it makes Charlie as guilty as every other child who is on this factory tour.  And what is he or any other child guilty of really?  Not being able to restrain themselves from eating candy on a tour of a candy factory?

The other two children whose actual hubris get them in trouble are Veruca and Mike.  Veruca tries to have her father buy a goose that lays golden eggs, which Wonka refuses to sell.  Veruca throws a tantrum, and the egg quality control mechanism determines she’s a “bad egg” and drops into the garbage chute.  The book has her try to buy a nut shucking squirrel, but I appreciate a good pun, so I’m fully on board with this change.

Next, Mike TeeVee wants to be the first human to travel over television waves, and in turn gets shrunk to the size of Thumbelina.  Again, can’t really fault a literal child for not having impulse control, or the critical thinking skills to understand the consequences of being disassembled and reassembled on a television screen. I mean, I can’t say I miss the violent brat, but I wouldn’t say his excessive viewing of television made him a dumb zombie who wanted to be a part of the picture.

With Charlie the only one left, he is then surprised when Wonka acts coldly toward him, decides not to give him the lifetime supply of chocolate.  When pressed for a reason why he’s withholding Charlie’s bounty, Wonka gives him and Grandpa Joe an earful for drinking his fizzy lifting drink and smearing their dirty hands all over his sterilized environment.  This incites Grandpa Joe, calling Wonka a crook and storming out of Wonka’s office and vowing to give Slugworth the everlasting gobstopper as revenge.

Yell at me more, candy daddy.

Charlie doesn’t feel the same way as his grandfather and gives the gobstopper back to Wonka before leaving.  Wonka’s demeanor does a complete 180 and he tells Charlie he’s passed a test he didn’t know he was taking.  They board the Wonkavator and thankfully don’t fulfill Wonka’s suicide pact by successfully launching the glass elevator out of the building.  Once flying around outside, Wonka tells Charlie he’s won the grand prize - his entire chocolate factory. Not only that, but Wonka would also take care of Charlie’s family, lifting them out of poverty and ending their food insecurity.  The end.

I know a lot of people around my age that absolutely love this movie, specifically Gene Wilder’s depiction of Willy Wonka, so it pains me to inform you that the author of the novel was less-than-pleased at this rendition of his tale, and also with Wilder’s interpretation of the titular character.

Wilder only accepted the role if the following scene of him faking out the children with a limp could be included, because it established that Willy Wonka could not be trusted.  The movie’s portrayal of Wonka as a gaslighting daddy was I think where Roald took the most issue with it, and most likely why I, as a child, found it hard to connect to. 

Willy Wonka is scary in this movie, like The Joker made for tater tots. He spends the entire factory tour traumatizing the children he invited there, and at the end of the movie screams at Charlie and his grandfather for drinking a beverage.  When Charlie gives up the gobstopper, Wonka’s entire countenance changes, rewarding Charlie with the grand prize because he deems Charlie trustworthy.  While they’re celebrating in the elevator, I’m just waiting for the other shoe to drop.  This happy Wonka is not the Wonka we've been witness to the last hour, so it’s hard as a viewer to let my guard down and take his offer at face value.

He hugs Charlie and offers him the world, but before then, Wonka doesn’t seem too particularly concerned with the children’s well-being.  In fact, I’m not sure he even likes children?  The only reason he wanted to bequeath his factory to one is because he’d easily be able to convince them to run it in a way that Wonka intended.  No fully-formed brains adding new ideas or questioning processes, just unformed gray matter for Wonka to pump his influence into.  And that’s not an issue with this adaptation, as the novel ends this way as well.  But Slugworth and the gobstopper test are additions from the screenplay, presumably to prove the other children are unworthy of Wonka’s grand prize.  Unfortunately, the side effect of this is making Wonka further look like a scheming dick.

I’m an old, curmudgeonly 30-something who feels no joy, so do not take my criticisms of the character of Willy Wonka as an indication of the quality of this movie.  This is an excellent children’s story that inspires an excessive amount of imagination.  It’s a world where your wildest candy dreams are a reality in Wonka’s factory.  There’s also the added benefit of watching a bunch of wacky ways in which children could potentially mutilate themselves, but come out completely unscathed.  Where I think it might fail is in its moral messaging on moderation - if you excessively eat chocolate, chew gum, demand things, or watch TV, bad things will happen to you.  I don’t think any kid came out of this movie a better person, but I’m sure they had fun watching it.

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory will come later this week, god help me.

[spiritus-sonne]

"Humanimality"

July 9, 2021; Explores themes of animality & monstrosity in numerous media stories and within my own self

So I’ve been watching various shows lately, skipping between different ones or different episodes or seasons, to the whims of my mind, but they generally have some element of human animality in them, and it’s interesting to me to compare and contrast how that theme is handled in the different series and even more interesting is how I personally respond to watching them in regards to that theme. I rewatched the anime series “Claymore” since I hadn’t watched it in a long time and honestly didn’t remember much from it beyond there being women in it that could shapeshift to monstrous forms. “Claymore” handles the contrast between human and nonhuman through themes of monstrosity and heavily blurs the line that supposedly separates human from monster, including showing that some of the claymores (the half-monster women) can surpass that line into physical monstrosity beyond what others believe are their limits (to which they wouldn’t be able to retain, let alone return to, being human in mind), but they still manage to come back to their human side. Although the show doesn’t instill any ‘shifty’ feelings in me despite the large amount of nonhuman shifting it shows, my reception of it is overall positive in how they handled the themes of humanity and monstrosity, though I think it could have used a bit more emphasis on human not necessarily being an “opposite of monstrosity” kind of thing since humans can very much act monstrous to extents Earthly nonhuman animals don’t or can’t.

Then there’s the CW’s “Beauty and the Beast” series, which I vary as to how much I like how the show is handled depending on the episode and season. Part of season 3 was leaving me feeling tired and annoyed at the over-glorifying and romanticizing of the concept of “being human” and acting like there is some hard line between human and animal and if someone (such as the main character, Vincent) passes that line they are forever a monster and can’t return to ‘being human’ no matter what. By the end of the season they loosened that hard line and heavily implied that even if such a line is crossed the individual can still return to being more human rather than being “doomed to forever be a monster” (in the bad, derogatory sense). So my response to how they handled the human verses animality theme improved as the season went on. I have a special fondness for most of the first season, though, especially since Vincent’s animality was front-and-center for much of it and it was something he was much more learning to control and handle as being part of how he was and how to live with being more animalistic at times. As opposed to some parts of the series in which he tries to live as ‘human’ as he can, shifting to his animal side as little as possible, and leaving that shifting or the use of his heightened senses to basically being a tool uncommonly used to fight off some foe or to help ‘solve’ a case. I do wish the show included a stronger sense of Vincent embracing instead of rejecting or hiding his animality, and that the line between human and animal was treated as being much more blurry instead of a bold, solid line. Maybe some therians would be better at writing something like that. Heck, I’d write fanfiction like that if I was actually any good at writing fiction--which I’m totally not.

I’ve tried to get into Freeform’s “Siren” series about mermaids--I watched the first season but kind of slowly got through it and barely managed to watch through the 2nd season’s first episode. Which is unfortunate because I rather like the design of the mermaids--their physical design with fangs, claws, and gills, but also their mentality as predators and pack animals. Yet there’s just something about the characters or how the story is told or something else that just makes it difficult for me to really get into the series and enjoy it. I do kind of dislike that parts of it focus on making the merfolk more “human”, including there being one that’s basically lived decades of her life out of the water being essentially totally human and out of touch with her roots of being a mermaid. I feel like they took a great concept of merfolk that are animalistic humanoids and tried to ‘humanize’ it too much for the sake of a longer story (whereas if it was a shorter story like a single movie, maybe they could better leave the merfolk more animalistic--though hopefully not as the villains).

The anime series “Vampire Knight” is another I recently have started rewatching. Despite the number of vampires in it, the only one I really connect with is one of the main characters, Zero. The story in part deals with him coming to terms with slowly transitioning into a vampire, a more feral type than the other recurring vampire characters in the show, and there’s something about him and his story that I connect with and gets me a bit vampire-shifty. Most of the vampires in it are just “too human” feeling to me. Which is kind of funny because my own kind of vampire, blutpirs, are still overall rather human in form and mentality, though they can do minor shapeshifting (eyes, teeth, nails) and do have more cat-like mental aspects at times, but I think it comes down to me personally experiencing being a blutpir, non-physically, through times in which I feel not “just human”--the shiftyness is an important aspect of how I experience my vampire ‘type.

When it comes to the game "Prototype" I love that it allows the player to be a humanoid monster that can fight and consume others. It blurs the line between human and monster and is morally grey about the main character's position as a monster that needs to consume others (be the prey human or monster, civilian or military--it's kind of left to the player as to who or what to consume) in order to survive and heal, and even potentially be a hero of sorts. I enjoy being able to play as an animalistic, monstrous predator and maybe I'll go back to replaying it sometime as it's been a long time since I've played it. But I do have a strong fondness of the protagonist that goes into teratophilia.

Another TV show, MTV's "Teen Wolf", can make me feel kind of shifty, as well. I do like that, at least in the seasons I watched, there was a lot of embracing of the characters' nonhumanity, that being nonhuman or partially human didn't automatically mean "bad" or "evil", with the villains being human or nonhuman but it really came down to the individual's personality instead of their species. And I rather like that approach but it's uncommon for me to come across.

Lastly, a somewhat odd one is the 2000 Syfy series "Invisible Man" which can get me a little shifty at times. I said odd because it may seem a story about an invisible man wouldn't deal much with themes of animality and monstrosity but it really depends on the angle in which it's approached (I've seen and heard of other invisible man stories exploring monstrous themes, though, but this one in particular really stands out to me). The protagonist is fully human but due to certain factors, he has times of basically ferality and a predatory mindset that I kind of relate to with my vampire 'type, possibly more so because ultimately my own animality isn't something that's physical, it's a mental and behavioral thing despite me of course being fully physically human. I also like that the transition in mentality is preceded by severe pain, which kind of feels like a parallel with the pain of physical transformation that many shapeshifters are depicted going through.

I do have a soft spot for numerous stories that involve a person just coming into a new power or aspect of themselves that is animalistic in some form and them learning to control and/or embrace it. It's just something that I tend to connect with and enjoy both from a monstrous and animalistic otherkin/therian perspective and from a monster-hearted perspective. These stories leave me kind of empathizing with the character, feeling myself in their place and connecting with their struggle to balance human and nonhuman in their life and selves. But when/if the story turns toward fully rejecting that animality or being “saved” by becoming fully human, then my interest vastly wanes and the connection is lost. I’m so tired of stories about how being human is “the best thing ever” and is infinitely better than being nonhuman, especially animalistic, despite the fact that humans ourselves are animals and animalistic. It’s a stupid dichotomy that I’m bored and annoyed at hearing throughout my life.

My mind scrapes around various media--pictures, TV shows, movies, books, etc.--to find stories and characters that don’t give into that tiring theme of “humans are best”, media that I can relate to more in the fact I’m nonhuman and human--blended and fluid, animal and monstrous--because it’s just such a rarity, such a gem, to find those little scraps of this stuff, and unfortunately it sometimes ends up being in the form of a villainous or antagonistic character. I’ve sought out this media since my early childhood, though I’ve tended toward hiding away that kind of thing from others, privately enjoying it because of fear for how others may react to me finding such satiation in the monstrous and the nonhuman humanoids rather than in the ‘glorious solely human’ stuff. I still hide it most of the time from my partner, not really anymore for fear of what they may think but rather out of habit and because privately partaking in it is more comfortable for me, especially if it does get me feeling shifty, and I’m overall okay with that.

I also relate to these fictional 'monsters' in that I feel like I live a "split" life between human and nonhuman, that my nonhumanity is something that remains hidden from most people--albeit, because it has to in that it is so highly non-physical, just mildly behavioral, that others can't be aware of it, rather than it being a physical thing. But there's still that empathy I feel of "I'm hiding my animality and monstrosity from other people for fear of consequences and them not understanding". I feel a deep sense of familiarity and sameness with these animalistic or monstrous humanoid beings. And that's where my monster-heartedness and otherkinity really meet. I know that unfortunately I'm limited my whole life to these nonhuman aspects being so strictly internal and subjective, even though I came to terms about that a long time ago and generally don't have species dysphoria, there's still part of me that wishes I could live this, or part of it, physically and to be loved and cared for by someone else (be they fully human or not) despite this or maybe in part *because* of my nonhumanity. To be loved so much even though the other person can clearly see my monstrosity and animality--that would speak volumes to me.

[prompt-a-klainefic]

Why Kurt Hummel HATES Werewolf Stories

by @grlnxtdr30

I originally posted this as a prompt, but since no one filled it, I wrote it myself!

Why Kurt Hummel HATES Werewolf Stories

“Please tell me that’s not another werewolf movie?” Kurt asked as he entered the Warbler’s Commons for their weekly Friday Night Movie Marathon, his voice dripping with contempt as he saw the video playing on the massive flat screen TV.

“It’s The Howling,” Jeff replied, not looking away from the screen. “It’s a classic. What’s your problem with werewolf movies, anyway?”

Kurt let out a delicate snort. “They’re just so unrealistic!”

David laughed a little at that. “Yeah, cause werewolves aren’t real.”

Kurt just rolled his eyes and took his seat next to Blaine on one of the couches. He put his earbuds in and opened his book, ignoring the movie completely. After The Howling, they put on Fright Night II, and Kurt actually pulled out his earbuds and closed the book to watch.

“So, werewolf movies are unrealistic, but vampire movies are okay?” Nick questioned when the second film had finished. Kurt just shrugged.

“It’s not just werewolf movies,” Kurt said. “Werewolf books are just as bad. And don’t even get me started on fanfiction! Do these people even know how pack structure works?”

Several pairs of eyes were staring at him. “You seem to be an expert, so tell us what’s wrong with werewolf stories?” David demanded.

Kurt let out a snort. “Fine! First off, the movies always get the graphics wrong. The way they depict a werewolf shifting is physiologically impossible. Bones and tissue would snap and rip apart if that was how the transition worked. And what is with all the slimy liquid flowing off the body during the shift? Just ew!”

No one answered as he went on. “But that’s only the half of it! All those so called romance novels and fanfictions talking about The Alpha male searching out a submissive omega mate is just a bunch of bull! In a true wolf pack, there is an Alpha pair. Generally the Alpha Female chooses the strongest Alpha Male to mate with, so they can produce healthy, strong pups, but in some packs, the Alphas are siblings, or even two males that have, for one reason or another, been forced out of other packs and have to form their own. In those rare occasions when there are two Alpha males, they find a surrogate female to mate with.”

“And just how do you know so much about wolves?” Thad asked.

Kurt shrugged, picking up his book and beginning to read again. “My mother was a biologist. She spent years researching wolf packs in the region.”

“You never told me that about your mom,” Blaine said, watching his best friend. He could see the tension in Kurt’s shoulders that he knew meant the paler boy was holding something in.

“It’s never come up in conversation,” He said, still staring at his book, but Blaine could see the tear in the corner of his eye that he fought hard not to let fall.

…

Two and a half weeks later

“Hey Kurt! Blaine! Wait up!” Nick called out as they were walking to the parking lot after Warbler practice, heading to the Lima Bean for their weekly coffee-not-a-date.

“What’s up?” Blaine asked, turning towards his friend.

“You guys know Jeff’s birthday is Saturday, right?”

“Yeah?” Kurt said.

“Well, I’m setting up a surprise party for Saturday night, and I want you two to be there!”

Blaine grinned. “Of course I’ll be there!”

Kurt frowned. “Sorry, I can’t make it. Have a family thing this weekend.”

“Oh come on, Kurt!” Blaine teased. “That’s what you said last month when Wes called for a Warbler bonding game night. And the month before, when David’s dad got that promotion and treated the Warblers to a pizza party to celebrate. Can’t you get out of it for one night?”

“Believe me, I wish I could, but it’s an important family tradition. I can’t miss it.”

…

Three weeks and a couple of days later

“So what is this sacred family tradition?” Blaine asked, sitting in the chair at Kurt’s desk in the auburn haired boy’s dormroom, watching as he packed his overnight bag.

Kurt just shrugged. “It’s not really that big a deal. My family owns a cabin near Lake Cody. We go up there and hang out and watch the local wolf pack.”

Blaine’s eyes went wide. “Really? That would be cool. Maybe I could go with you sometime?”

Kurt’s head jerked up. “No!” Blaine was startled by the fear in the other boy’s voice. Kurt took a calming breath. “Sorry, I just meant it might not be safe for you. The wolves are used to us being there, but I don’t know how they’d react to an outsider. I wouldn’t want you getting hurt. You understand, right?”

Blaine studied his best friend, knowing Kurt wasn’t telling him the truth, but not knowing what about. “Oh. Well yeah, I guess I understand. Have fun!”

Kurt gave him an awkward smile. “Thanks.”

Blaine glanced at his watch. “Oh, gosh, I’m late! I promised Trent I’d tutor him in calculus!”

…

Blaine sat in his car near Lake Cody later that evening, wondering why he was here. So Kurt had lied to him about something. It wasn’t like it was that big a deal. Maybe he was just embarrassed about some silly family tradition he didn’t want Blaine to know about.

Why couldn’t Blaine just accept that fact and move on? As Blaine got out of his car and moved into the woods towards where he had seen Kurt pull off the main road, he noticed the moon just beginning to peak over the horizon. The sun hadn’t even fully set yet. He hadn’t really thought about the fact that there was a full moon tonight.

Come to think of it, Kurt’s mystery family get-togethers always seemed to happen on the full moon, even if it was mid week. Blaine paused mid-step. The thought that filled his mind was so ludicrous, he almost laughed it off. Sure he was insane to think that Kurt might actually be a werewolf? Was that why he hated werewolf movies and stories?

“Get a grip, Anderson! Kurt is not a werewolf!” he muttered to himself.

Shaking his head, he began trekking through the woods once more, but had only gone about twenty feet when a sound brought him to a halt once more. A low growl seemed to reverberate through Blaine’s spine. He turned slowly towards the sound, fear and dread filling him as he came face to face with a large dark grey wolf.

The animal was beautiful and terrifying at the same time, as the low growl continued to rumble from the creature’s throat.

“Nice doggy!” Blaine said, slowly raising his hands to show he was harmless. “I’m not going to hurt you! Please have the same consideration!”

“Luna!” a familiar voice called out from close behind Blaine. Kurt spoke harshly in a language Blaine didn’t understand, but the wolf seemed to. It stopped growling, and dropped to its belly, letting out a little whine. “Go back to the hunt, Luna! Now!” The wolf let out a little yip, and then ran off.

Blaine lowered his hands and turned to face his friend. 

“What are you doing here, Blaine?” Kurt asked, sounding wary.

“I…” He couldn’t think of one plausible excuse for his presence, and didn’t think Kurt would believe a lie. The pale boy let out a little sigh.

“I told you it might be dangerous. Luna might have attacked you if I hadn’t come along.”

“Thank you for saving me. What language was that you were speaking?”

Kurt crossed his arms over his chest. “Shoshone. My mother taught me how to speak it, along with French. You’re lucky, Luna is young. She probably wouldn’t have hurt you too badly, at least not on purpose. The younger wolves are on a practice hunt tonight.”

Blaine studied the taller boy. “How do you know so much about the wolves, and what they are doing?”

Kurt sighed again. “I really wish you hadn’t come tonight, Blaine. Any other night, I might have brought you out and introduced you to the pack, or at least half of the pack, anyway. The natural wolves. But tonight the rest of the pack is here, and it’s too late.”

Blaine looked at Kurt in confusion. “Why is it too late, and what do you mean by the natural wolves?”

Kurt’s lips turned up in what should have been a smile, but seemed off to the curly haired boy. “It’s the full moon, Blaine, and I’ve been fighting my nature around you for months. I’ve wanted to stake a claim on you since the moment we met, to put my scent on you so the others would know you are mine.”

“What are you talking about, Kurt?”

“I can’t hold him back, anymore, Blaine. He wants you. I want you!” The last words were shouted on an inhuman howl, as the form of his best friend seemed to shimmer as a moonbeam broke through the trees and caught the pale boy in its light.

Blaine’s eyes went round with shock and disbelief as the distortion around Kurt shifted, and changed shape. Suddenly, instead of a human boy, there was a large, red wolf standing just inches away from Blaine.

Blaine’s mind had barely comprehended what it had just witnessed when the creature lunged at Blaine, knocking him flat on his back, and powerful jaws latched onto his shoulder, biting down, piercing flesh, and causing Blaine to scream as pain filled him. It was too much for him, and the world faded to black.

…

Two weeks later

“Oh please! Not another werewolf movie!”

“Why not?” Wes asked. “Besides, it’s not technically a werewolf movie.”

“No, it’s worse,” Kurt said. “It’s Twilight! As much as I love looking at Taylor Lautner and fantasize about letting him deflower me in a meadow of lilacs, there is no excuse for the horror of this film!”

“I agree with Kurt,” Blaine piped up. “Werewolf movies are so unrealistic.”

“Oh for pete’s sake!” David shouted. “There are no such things as werewolves!

Blaine shared a secret smile with his new boyfriend. “Whatever you say, David.”