#the only parody here is harry's life

[that-ari-blogger]

A New Face (Separate Tides)

During its second season, The Owl House had hit its stride and wasn't slowing down. This is my favourite season, and that isn't an unpopular sentiment.

Separate Tides is the opening episode of this season, so it needs to recap the previous goings on and themes in a cohesive way for new viewers, and take the series in a different direction that stays loyal to those themes and plotlines. I think this episode does that well.

But this isn't a summary blog, this is a blog where I find something needlessly specific and gush about the implications of that something.

So... The Golden Guard is so ****ing cool.

Let me explain.

SPOILERS AHEAD (The Owl House, The Harry Potter Series)

I've mentioned in the past that The Owl House uses archetypal storytelling to a truly masterful degree. It takes tropes and meets them on a superficial level, then twists them in a way that adds depth and makes the series unique.

For example, the series is directly drawing inspiration from the works of Robert Galbraith, with Willow being the bullied kid with a passion for herbology, and Amity being the school bully who definitely has a crush on the main character. Both take the archetype and shake it up a bit, as is the way with parody, but the baseline is there.

This leans into the themes of being your own person rather nicely, as it makes the deviations from the archetype more important.

I took great pains to point out that Luz is the only character who doesn't fit the mould at all. She has no analogue and is her own person completely. She has nothing to restrict her.

However, leaves the analogue for the actual protagonist of Galbraith's books. Obviously, not every character from the series is parodied, but the chosen one main character seems like a weird one to miss out on.

I would argue that Mr Potter does have an analogue, Hunter Whittebane (Or Hunter Noceda or Hunter Demonne or even Hunter Clawthorn. Whichever name you prefer, its the same guy).

He is a child soldier, raised by his uncle and manipulated into giving his life away for the cause by an old wizard. He bears a scar on his face, and is technically half witch, half human.

Although we don't actually see any of that in Separate Tides. Instead, we are introduced to the Golden Guard, a character who is suave and cool and confident.

The first time we actually see this character is in the final scene of the previous season.

"Worry not, Kiki. We'll be keeping an eye on the inhabitants of the Owl House."

The Golden Guard is a goon, an elite goon, but a goon none the less. He is simply a character whom Belos turns to in order to get the job done.

But, I find the use of vernacular here interesting. Belos doesn't refer to the Golden Guard with any name, or even as a separate entity from himself. Not "he will be watching them" or "this is the Golden Guard, I trust him to get the job done". This character is referred to as "we". He and Belos are connected. This character is simply Belos' eye.

Then, in Separate Tides, it is established that, when Lilith fell from grace, she was replaced by the Golden Guard.

"He always got special treatment because he was the genius teen prodigy. But he's really just a brat."

So, this is a child, but a gifted child. Lilith is dismissive here, but not of the Golden Guard's skill, just his personality. This is someone for whom things come naturally, allegedly, and who has never had to work for his abilities. Allegedly.

"Unfortunately, you won't have the chance."

The Golden Guard's first line is just cool. He is calm and collected. He is in control. And he has just easily captured one of the protagonists.

I also love the little fact that he has spent the entirety of this voyage in a dimly lit room, eating crackers. The room has nothing to do in it except books. So, he was definitely just sitting there, reading, and had to improvise when King burst into the room. He's a bookworm with an ability to think on the spot.

I'm saying this guy would definitely play Pathfinder or D&D if he was given a chance.

Anyway, the Golden Guard's actual introduction comes fourteen minutes into the episode, and it immediately sets this guy up as a threat. He's martially competent, magically adept, and fully in his element. This is a character who revels in control, just like the Emperor.

And that link to Belos is interesting. Because forgive me for asking, why would an Emperor's elite goon be a child? As in, there has to be a connection to Belos beyond what meets the eye for the Golden Guard to be anywhere near where he is.

We don't get told that here, but we do see that this character's skillset is kinda similar to Belos', in theory. He's commanding, and he gets people to do what he wants. But in practice, this isn't Belos at all. This is someone trying very hard to be like Belos, but coming at it from a different angle.

I do, however, think that the Golden Guard's greatest strength as a goon is revealed subtly in this scene.

"The Emperor ordered me to slay one. I'm just following orders."

We've seen through Lilith in the previous season that Belos covets blind loyalty, and that is what the Golden Guard offers him. He doesn't know or care why the Emperor does what he does, he just follows orders.

Essentially, the Golden Guard is a traditional Disney villain at this point. He is fun, bisexual, charismatic, and a physical threat. The Golden Guard we get introduced to is enjoyable to watch, and it sounds like Zeno Robinson is having a blast voicing him.

However, there is one element of the Golden Guard that we get introduced to in this episode that might fly under the radar. The Owl House is no stranger to masks, and people putting on a show to get the job done, but when we are first shown the Golden Guard in this episode, he is taking it off.

The intro sequence of this season features three characters who are under Belos' command. Lilith, The Golden Guard, and Kikimora. It then unmasks them, with Lilith becoming apologetic, and Kikimora becoming more aggressive. But the Golden Guard sits between them, removing his own mask to reveal... a single purple eye.

The eye is the window to the soul, of course. But there is something to the manner in which this is happening. Kikimora has been angered to the point of lashing out, and Lilith has been brought low with remorse. The Golden Guard, however, is lowering his own mask and staring directly at you with an air of "I'm doing this of my own accord. I see you, you see me, your move."

I wonder if agency is going to be a theme with this character.

Final Thoughts

I love Hunter so much it is obscene, and there is a ton of ambiguity about him right from the bat. What is his stake in this? Who actually is he? And why does he have a purple eye?

As for the rest of this episode, Luz's guilt is starting to be expressed. In my opinion that is for the first time, but I have heard it said that this isn't a new character trait for her.

And Lilith... *sighs* There is a sentiment online as to the expedience of Lilith's redemption arc. Some people like it, others think she should have been "punished" more, and I would like to take a third rout.

I don't believe in punitive justice for fictional characters, and I certainly don't believe in telling writers how they should write. I do, however, think that it could have been slightly more interesting if the consequences of cursing Eda were explored more psychologically.

In any case, however, the series we got is the series we got, and I think it is perfectly fine, if not better, as it is. I don't see a point in getting angry online over what could have been.

Next week, I am looking as Escaping Expulsion and boy, do I have thoughts about Odalia Blight. So, stick around if that interests you.

Previous - Next

[the-rewatch-rewind]

I love Poe Party too much to feel like any words will do it justice, but I keep trying.

Script below the break.

Hello and welcome back to the Rewatch Rewind! My name is Jane, and this is the podcast where I count down my top 40 most frequently rewatched movies of the last 20 years. And today I will be discussing number 13 on my list: Shipwrecked Comedy and American Black Market’s 2016 mystery comedy Edgar Allan Poe’s Murder Mystery Dinner Party, directed by William J Stribling, written by Sean Persaud and Sinéad Persaud, starring Sean Persaud, Sinéad Persaud, Mary Kate Wiles, Sarah Grace Hart, Joey Richter, Lauren Lopez, Ashley Clements, Tom de Trinis, Blake Silver, and a whole bunch of other incredibly talented and underrated actors.

Edgar Allan Poe (Sean Persaud) wishes to impress the beautiful Annabel Lee (Mary Kate Wiles), so he enlists the help of his ghost roommate Lenore (Sinéad Persaud) to throw a murder mystery party for Annabel and a group of famous authors. But then guests start actually being murdered.

So, first of all, I realize that this isn’t technically a movie; it’s an 11-episode webseries available to watch for free on YouTube, which you should absolutely pause this podcast to do if you haven’t seen it yet (link in the show notes). But there is a feature cut that’s about an hour and 45 minutes long, and that’s what I counted as a movie. If I’d kept track of the number of times I watched each episode, I’m sure that even my least-watched episode would easily beat number one on this list. But as for the feature cut, I watched it 12 times in 2017, three times in 2018, four times in 2019, twice in 2020, and three times in 2021. To a certain extent, every movie on the Rewatch Rewind has changed my life in some way, but this one has changed my life to a degree that I would never have believed possible. Every single day of the last seven plus years of my life would have looked different if not for Edgar Allan Poe’s Murder Mystery Dinner Party. All of the guests I have had on this podcast who are not my siblings, I met either directly or indirectly because of this show. So fasten your seatbelts: this episode is going to be a ride.

My journey to Edgar Allan Poe’s Murder Mystery Dinner Party, or Poe Party for short, or Edgar Allan Poe’s Murder Mystery Invite-Only Casual Dinner Party/Gala for Friends Potluck for long, began years before the project itself was even written. In the late 2000s-early 2010s, my sister was relatively plugged into the YouTube scene, at least compared to me, and she first introduced me to a group called Team Starkid around 2009-2010-ish. At the time, they were a bunch of college theater kids who had put together a Harry Potter parody musical and on a whim posted it to YouTube, where it went viral, so they started making and posting other musicals – which they are still doing. I feel like I might still have discovered Poe Party if I hadn’t been a Starkid fan, but that definitely helped. A more crucial step on my road to Poe Party started on April 9, 2012, when my sister posted a link to a new YouTube video on my Facebook wall, with the message, “Fictional vlogs by Lizzie Bennet. (actually Hank Green.) There’s only one so far, but I’m kind of crazily excited for this!” Hank Green, of course, along with his brother John, is basically one of the fathers of YouTube. I don’t think I’d seen a ton of their videos at that point, but I was familiar with and liked them. And of course, I knew Lizzie Bennet was the main character in Pride and Prejudice, a story that I loved very much – more on that in a future episode. So I was also very excited for this new show, called The Lizzie Bennet Diaries, but I could not have imagined the intense emotional journey it would take me on, through two short episodes a week (plus spinoffs) for almost a year. There had never been a TV show that I was more invested in than LBD. I was double majoring in college and working part time, but the main thing I cared about was these modern Pride and Prejudice characters. The show was clearly very low-budget, but I was blown away by the writing and acting. I was particularly impressed by the person playing Lizzie, Ashley Clements, and the person playing Lydia, Mary Kate Wiles. And, like, it wasn’t just me – LBD had a huge following for what it was. Not, like, millions of fans, but hundreds of thousands by the end. As the finale approached, the producers launched a Kickstarter to release the show on DVD and – ostensibly – pay significantly more to the cast and crew who had been incredibly underpaid. If you’re at all interested in hearing more about that, I highly recommend checking out The Look Back Diaries on Ashley Clements’s YouTube channel; she just did a whole deep dive into the show and its aftermath in honor of its 10th anniversary that I found fascinating. But anyway, coincidentally, right around that same time, Starkid also launched their first Kickstarter, since most of them had graduated from college and no longer had access to the same resources but wanted to keep making more musicals. So they were raising money for Twisted, a Wicked-style villain redemption retelling of Aladdin, which sounded interesting. I had never pledged to a Kickstarter before, but I backed both the LBD DVDs and Twisted on the same day: March 25, 2013, according to my emails.

After that, I kept following Starkid and some of the cast members of LBD, but not particularly closely. In early 2014, Mary Kate Wiles was in a webseries called Kissing in the Rain that I think I watched part of at the time, and I thought it was fine, but I wasn’t particularly into it (imagine, me, an aromantic, not particularly into a show about kissing!) and there was a lot of other stuff going on in my life so I honestly can’t remember if I saw all of it when it was first coming out. I definitely couldn’t have told you that it was on a channel called Shipwrecked, or even the name of the actor she was kissing. But in May of 2014, a new Kickstarter launched for a series called Muzzled the Musical, which was going to feature several cast members from LBD as well as Joey Richter from Team Starkid (Lauren Lopez also ended up being in it but I don’t think that was known during the Kickstarter). And I thought, whoa, cool, worlds colliding, and backed it. And promptly all but forgot about it.

A lot of strange, confusing, and rather upsetting things happened in 2015 that I don’t really want to get too deep into here, but I will say that in hindsight most of them had to do with a combination of amatonormativity and heteronormativity, and I started feeling pretty bad about myself. Before then I had managed to convince myself that I was too young to seriously fall in love anyway, but suddenly I was 25 years old and had never had any interest in dating anyone, and I felt like there was definitely something wrong with me. I didn’t exactly want to change, since I liked not dating, but I had always thought that that would just automatically change when I got older, and facing the fact that it wasn’t changing meant facing the fact that I didn’t know what the point of my life was. I liked my job but I didn’t want it to be my sole purpose. I loved movies, but that didn’t feel like it mattered. All my life I had taken in the message that finding a spouse and creating a family was what made the struggle of life worth it, and I felt lazy for not even trying to pursue that. I remember hearing at some point in my late teens that if you didn’t find your significant other in college, you needed to look online, but I didn’t even know what I would be looking for. And I truly don’t know where this line of thinking would have ended up if it had gone on much longer uninterrupted – I may have discovered my identity a bit sooner, or I may have ended up hurting someone by trying to pursue a relationship I ultimately didn’t want, or I may have just continued to spiral – but what actually happened was I got an email in late October that that random fantasy musical series I had backed on Kickstarter a year and a half earlier was being released on YouTube.

So I watched Muzzled, and it was very fun and silly, but the main thing I got out of it was, man I miss the Lizzie Bennet Diaries. So I finally opened that DVD set I’d gotten from the Kickstarter, and I binge-watched the whole show (I didn’t count it as a movie because there’s no feature cut, and also it is very long). And then I re-watched the whole thing with the DVD-exclusive commentary. And then I thought, I wonder what this cast has been up to lately, so I started searching for them on YouTube. And that’s when I learned that Mary Kate Wiles had been posting two videos per week on her channel for years, and I had been missing it. As I got caught up on her videos, I learned that I had just missed a Kickstarter for a musical she was going to be in called Spies are Forever, made by the Tin Can Brothers, which were a group of people who were also involved with Starkid, and that she seemed to be getting ready for a new Kickstarter with a group called Shipwrecked Comedy, the same people who had made that kissing show. They had also made a show called A Tell Tale Vlog about Edgar Allan Poe and the valley girl ghost Lenore who was haunting him, in which Poe had been played by Sean Persaud (the guy from Kissing in the Rain, who was apparently dating Mary Kate in real life) and his sister Sinéad (who was in the second half of Kissing in the Rain, which I definitely hadn’t watched before). Mary Kate had made a brief appearance in A Tell Tale Vlog as Annabel Lee, and this new show was going to be related to that, but bigger. I was so intrigued by this new project that I started supporting Mary Kate on Patreon to ensure that I didn’t miss any updates about it.

The Poe Party Kickstarter launched on February 2, 2016. By then, I had watched and enjoyed everything on Shipwrecked’s YouTube channel, but that Kickstarter video was my favorite thing they had made. I initially pledged the same amount that I had given to the Lizzie Bennet DVDs, thinking that would be my final pledge, but I ended up giving almost six times that much by the end of the campaign. Every $5,000 they raised, they revealed a new character and cast member with a poster, and each reveal made me more excited. Joey Richter was playing Ernest Hemingway?! Ashley Clements was playing Charlotte Brontë?! Lauren Lopez, who frequently played male characters, was playing George Eliot, a woman with a male pen name?! They got Jim O’Heir from Parks & Rec?! And then, as if the reveals weren’t enough, they had weekly 4-hour livestreams that I found incredibly entertaining. It had become clear that Shipwrecked Comedy now consisted of four people: Sean, Sinéad, Mary Kate, and Sarah Grace Hart, who had played Emily Dickinson in a stand-alone video and would be reprising that role in Poe Party. Various other cast members showed up in the streams with the Core Four, and I distinctly remember thinking, if these people are this entertaining to watch when they’re just hanging out, this show is going to be so amazing! In the second livestream of the campaign, they started writing people’s names on papers to stick on the wall if they pledged or raised their pledge during the streams, which was an excellent incentive, but I would have kept raising mine anyway, because I was desperate for this show to get made. Apart from a few weird troll messages, the stream chat was full of lovely conversations between people who seemed like my kindred spirits. I had never felt more at home in a community. And I had never been more excited than when the Kickstarter exceeded its goal.

And I’m telling you all of this because I need you to understand how astronomically high my hopes and expectations for Poe Party were. Some of the movies I’ve talked about so far ended up in my top 40 partly because I had fairly low expectations going into them and was pleasantly surprised, but that was absolutely not the case here. I had seen excellent work from several of the people involved before, and they seemed particularly dedicated to this project, and I knew they were going to make something incredible. I also desperately needed something in my life to go really well, and this seemed like it might be it, although I knew it wasn’t fair to put that kind of pressure on these independent filmmakers. I tried to temper my expectations, reminding myself that they had only raised a little over $72,000, and Kickstarter was going to take a chunk of that, and some of it had to go to perk fulfillment, so they weren’t going to have nearly enough to make anything super fancy. They released some prologue videos that were very fun but also very small, and I tried to tell myself that the actual show was also going to be small. And I kept reminding myself how long Muzzled had taken to come out, and that I was probably going to have to wait a while for Poe Party too, so I needed to chill. But then in late July – only four and a half months after the Kickstarter had ended – Shipwrecked released a trailer for Poe Party, which said it was starting in less than a month, and there was no tempering my expectations after that. The trailer looked fabulous. It was witty and clever and dramatic and intriguing, the music was perfection, and, shockingly, it looked like an actual studio movie. Not like a super high-budget one, but like they had at least a million dollars. Certainly way more than $60k. My already-ridiculously-high expectations soared to new heights. Part of me was sure I was setting myself up for disappointment, but I couldn’t help it.

And then it was August 22 and the first episode (Chapter 1: The Bells) dropped and it was so much better than I was hoping for. First of all, the look set the tone perfectly. The lighting was exquisite, and the location – incidentally the same house where Muzzled was filmed – was perfect. And then there was the writing. One thing the Persauds had mentioned during the Kickstarter was that they were inspired by the movie Clue, which will be featured in a future episode of this podcast, so I was expecting similar vibes to that, but I was not expecting there to be so many direct references to Clue. All of them made me extremely happy. It felt like the show was made specifically for me. It was like Clue, but even better. I already loved every single character and knew I would be sad to see some of them get murdered. It was also very clear from even just that first episode that this was going to fall into the “everybody was having way too much fun” category of film that I love. But while most movies like that tend to have pretty weak stories and just overall mediocre scripts, and the cast having fun makes up for that, Poe Party was different. The writing was fantastic, AND the acting was perfect, AND it looked gorgeous, AND everybody was having fun. Again, I tried not to have unrealistic expectations, I tried to tell myself that not every episode could be quite the banger that the first one was, but I was still incredibly excited for the rest of the show. And I was not at all disappointed. Somehow it just kept getting better. The running joke about everyone forgetting Emily Dickinson was there or who she was just kept getting funnier. Ditto the joke about George Eliot thinking she needed to convince everyone she was a man when everyone was clearly fine with her being a woman. I remember at one point, when around three or four chapters were out, Mary Kate tweeted that they were working on editing her favorite part of the show, and I thought, surely it doesn’t get better than what I’ve seen already. But it turned out she was talking about chapter 8, and yes, it absolutely was better. The constables, Jim and Jimmy – played by Jim O’Heir and Jimmy Wong – and everyone else trying to fool them, are so delightful to watch. Even though chapter 8 features probably the second saddest death in the series, it’s overall the funniest episode. This show touches an incredibly wide range of emotions and moods, especially considering it takes place in one house over one night.

I want to make it clear that I would still love Poe Party even if I’d stumbled upon it years after it came out, and even if I didn’t recognize any of the actors. The show is excellent enough to stand on its own. But being part of it from the Kickstarter, being familiar with some of the actors, and being online as it was coming out, certainly enhanced my enjoyment of it. Shipwrecked had a weekly “competition” of sorts where they would give a vague prompt and people would make fan art or write fan fiction and post it on social media (#PoePartyFTW), and each of the four members of Shipwrecked would pick their favorite to re-post. I wrote a fic after each of the episodes, and several of them got chosen by Shipwrecked, and I hadn’t felt that good about myself in years. I loved the show so much that I couldn’t confine it just into weekly fics; I was shouting about it on every social media platform. I also started weekly speculation Tumblr posts, using Clue references as my guide, many of which led me astray – I was convinced there must be a secret passage between the kitchen and the study that didn’t turn out to exist – but I did figure out part of the solution relatively early on. While the mystery aspect of Clue is ultimately nonsense if you think about it too hard, Poe Party actually tracks. And if you’ve listened this far and you still haven’t seen Poe Party, please go watch it now, because I’m going to start getting into story specifics and spoilers, and I think everybody should get to see it once without knowing what’s coming. (I’m also going to spoil some of Clue, so you could go watch that too if you want, although I don’t feel like Clue spoilers matter that much.)

In her episode of A Tell Tale Vlog, Annabel mentioned that she had started seeing a banker named Eddie, and then in the Poe Party Kickstarter video, she asked Edgar if she could bring Eddie as her plus one to his party. So Eddie (played by Ryan W. Garcia) shows up late to the party with Annabel, and then becomes the first murder victim. EXCEPT, spoiler alert: he’s actually NOT DEAD, and is, in fact, one of the murderers. And from the very first episode, I recognized Eddie’s similarities to Mr. Boddy in Clue, who is also not dead when you first think he is, and I was therefore suspicious of him from the get-go. But I was still very much open to any possibility (or so I thought) because the Persauds had done an excellent job of making everyone at least somewhat fishy. But there was one thing I was not prepared for, and that was the end of chapter 9. Because it absolutely never occurred to me that Poe’s beautiful Annabel Lee would die, and I’m honestly still kind of devastated about it, even understanding why it had to happen, and at the time I was almost inconsolable. Mary Kate Wiles had led me to this brilliant show, in which she played the kindest, most likable character, only to be brutally murdered? Some fans at the time had thought Annabel might be the killer, which I never did, and honestly I would have been kind of angry if she had been because we need to have more genuinely nice characters in things. I was upset that she died, but I would have been more so if she’d turned evil. (Not that I have anything against MK playing villains – I’m all for it, under the right circumstances. And thankfully the Persauds know when the right circumstances are.) And like, okay, I know I complain about too much romance in stories, but Annabel’s “It was always you” as she died in Edgar’s arms – that got me. Annabel had been planning to marry Eddie because he was more respectable than the unhinged poet she actually loved, and I think that that whole trying to fake the life you think you’re supposed to have thing spoke to me. I had been so tempted to try that, and this was almost as clear of a message as the constables’ “Don’t Do Murder”: Don’t Fake Romance.

At that point, I was pretty much convinced that Eddie must have had something to do with this; why would anyone else kill Annabel? Also, chapter 9 reveals that Annabel wrote the invite list, and I thought it made sense that Eddie, her boyfriend, could have told her whom to include, especially since it had already been established that most of the guests had some connection to Eddie. The prompt for that week’s Poe Party FTW competition was “Confession,” so I decided to try something different from the short stories I’d been submitting, and I re-wrote the poem “Annabel Lee” from Eddie’s perspective as if he was the murderer. And I know this episode is already longer than most of my solo episodes and I have a lot more to say, but I’m still proud of this poem (even though it’s not completely accurate, since it turned out that Eddie didn’t kill everybody), so I need to share it with you:

It was many and many a month ago,

           In her cottage by the sea,

That I first read the words that Edgar wrote

           For my girlfriend Annabel Lee;

And he said that she lived with no other thought

           Than to love and be loved by he.

“He’s just my friend and I’m just his friend,”

           She quickly explained to me;

But we loved with a love which was worse than love –

           I and my Annabel Lee –

With a love that was founded on secrets and lies,

           Fueled by jealousy.

And this was the reason that, later on,

           Faced with opportunity,

I took advantage of an offer made

           To innocent Annabel Lee;

For when Lenore asked whom to invite

           To that cad’s dinner party,

Annabel deferred to my input

           Which I gave most willingly.

All authors, not half so worthy as bankers,

           Who had e’er quarreled with me –

Yes! – they were the ones (no one would know;

           I’d met them all secretly)

That Edgar would invite to his house that night,

           At the behest of “his” Annabel Lee.

For our love it was weaker by far than the love

           Of vengeance I carried in me –

           Of justice toward those who’d wronged me –

And neither the psychics who bring back the dead,

           Nor the cops fresh from Academy,

Can hinder my murderous plan; no one can!

           No, not even my Annabel Lee.

As I watch them point fingers I find my gaze lingers

           On the beautiful Annabel Lee;

When they mention invites, she suspects, knows she’s right,

           Out the door runs my Annabel Lee;

Can’t let her get away: who knows what she might say?

So I kill her – I kill her – my eleventh kill today.

           Instead of revealing me,

           Her last breath says it was always he.

So yeah. I was deep into this. But then nobody in Shipwrecked chose it that week, and I thought, okay, maybe it wasn’t that good, or, maybe my theory is laughably far off the mark. Maybe Eddie’s too obvious. Maybe he really is dead. Then in chapter 10, Charlotte Brontë confessed, and revealed that her sister Anne had been there the whole time helping, and at that point I was pretty sure Eddie was also involved again. We clearly saw that Annabel’s killer was wearing pants, unlike either Brontë sister. And then it was Halloween and the finale finally arrived, and I was right about Eddie, but I was still completely unprepared for how awesome that final chapter would be. I think there was still a small part of me that didn’t believe it was possible for the end to live up to the buildup of the first ten incredible chapters. But it absolutely did. The finale was everything – everything, I say – that I wanted it to be and much more. The evil slow clap. The revolving villain trio of creepy neck touching. The flashbacks. The fights. The pet rock’s revenge. The literary references. And of course, the surprise reveal of Jane Austen, played by Laura Spencer, who had also played Jane Bennet in the Lizzie Bennet Diaries. The episodes were posted at 9 am on Mondays, when I was at work, so I couldn’t watch them right when they dropped, but after the first one I couldn’t wait until I got home either. My work’s wifi blocked YouTube, and I had an extremely limited data plan at the time, so on my lunch break I would walk to the McDonald’s down the street and watch the new episode using their wifi. And when the camera panned to Jane Austen, it was all I could do not to yell “OH MY GOSH IT’S LAURA SPENCER!” in that McDonald’s. I definitely audibly gasped, but I don’t think anyone noticed. The thing is, I would have still been blown away by the finale without that extra surprise. But that’s what Shipwrecked does. They make things that can appeal to a wide audience, and then they sprinkle in some extra treats for people who have been following them for a while. Of course, LBD was not a Shipwrecked project, but finding Shipwrecked through LBD is a fairly common path. And I’m still so impressed with how well they kept Laura as Jane Austen a secret. As a Kickstarter perk, I’d had a video chat with the Core Four that summer, and I’d mentioned that Jane Austen was my favorite author, and I was disappointed that she wasn’t going to be in Poe Party, and they were just like, “Yeah, we thought about including her, but we figured she would be too similar to Charlotte Brontë,” and betrayed not a SINGLE HINT that she was, in fact, in the show. Which is another thing Shipwrecked does: make a very specific, deliberate plan about what to reveal when, and stick to it.

As another example of that, the Poe Party Kickstarter had reached a stretch goal to produce an epilogue. I had completely forgotten about that, but other backers remembered and started asking about it after the finale. Shipwrecked was pretty cagey with their answers, but then directed us to a mysterious Twitter account that was dropping strange clues. I watched as the Shipwrecked fan Facebook group decoded them and ultimately unlocked the epilogue a day before it was released publicly. The epilogue is not included in the feature cut, and now I don’t really think of it as part of the show. Chapter 11 ends so perfectly – Poe stares at the floor as the heartbeat grows louder, a floorboard creaks, fade to black: chef’s kiss. But at the time I was feeling so many overwhelming feels about this show that I desperately needed that epilogue. I was so utterly relieved to see Annabel and HG thriving as ghosts. And I was so thrilled to be surrounded by such a great fandom, who all worked together and helped each other to solve the puzzles – it was a beautiful weekend. And it was also the last weekend before Donald Trump was elected president of the United States and I had to face the fact that the country was more broken and divided than I’d wanted to believe, which definitely adds to my nostalgia for that epilogue adventure.

The show may have ended, and the world may have been falling apart faster than usual, but I could not have gotten Poe Party out of my head even if I’d wanted to, which I didn’t. For over a decade I’d been searching for something that felt like a classic movie, but with some modern sensibilities, and these independent filmmakers had made exactly what I was looking for, zillions of times better than I’d imagined it. That clever, witty dialogue, perfectly delivered by quirky characters, almost felt like it came from a 1930s screwball comedy. But it also felt fresh and new and different from anything I’d seen before. It had so many similarities to Clue – in fact, I taught myself how to make gifs, or [other pronunciation] gifs, in order to highlight specific parallels between Poe Party and Clue – and yet remained unique. Where Clue was mostly just comedy, Poe Party was comedy, tragedy, romance, and intrigue, and absolutely nailed all of those. (Sadly no ravens, though, they didn’t have the budget for that.) Anyway, the series held up shockingly well upon rewatch, and I could not get enough of it. And despite the socially anxious part of my brain that remains convinced that everyone always is annoyed with me, that I have nothing worthwhile to say, that I should just shut up and stop bothering others with my existence – people seemed to like what I was posting about Poe Party. Other fans would engage me in conversation, and I started making internet friends for the first time. And, shockingly, the members of Shipwrecked seemed to genuinely appreciate what I was saying as well. After the finale had aired, Mary Kate reblogged my Annabel Lee poem on Tumblr and said, “I legitimately thought this was brilliant, and only didn’t choose it that week because of spoilers. Every single fic Jane wrote for this ftw has been wonderful, and I have so enjoyed them all, but this was above and beyond.” And maybe it sounds like I’m just boasting at this point, but the reason I’m sharing this is because a year earlier I had felt like a failure of a human who had no place in the world, and now this incredible actress/producer I greatly admired, who had just made my new favorite show, was saying that I had enhanced her experience of releasing it. People were liking and appreciating me, just for being myself and enthusiastically enjoying a movie. And I no longer felt like I was supposed to change who I was.

In early 2017, I got the rest of my Kickstarter perks, including behind-the-scenes goodies that featured not one but two fabulous commentaries. I love them both, but the second one is particularly chaotic in the best way. Ashley Clements and Ryan W Garcia, true to the villainous characters they played in the show, keep derailing the conversation and it’s incredibly amusing. The commentaries are over the feature cut, so many if not most of the views that I counted were with one of the commentaries. And I also bought the feature cut without commentary so I could show it to other people and still count it on my list. Now I tend to watch it episodically because I want the Shipwrecked YouTube channel to get more views for the algorithm, although I’m not sure that actually helps. But anyway, the feature cut and commentaries and other bonus features are still available to rent or buy on shipwrecked.vhx.tv, which I will also link in the show notes, if you’re interested.

Also in 2017, the first episode of Poe Party was shown at a festival near me, so I got to meet the Core Four members of Shipwrecked and some fans in person. That was very exciting, but I was also extremely nervous, although I didn’t need to be. The Shipwrecked people were so lovely and actually wanted to talk to me and the other fans who were there. And then I got to see Poe Party win some awards, which was awesome. And then a few months later, Shipwrecked launched another Kickstarter, and I pledged even more to it than I had to Poe Party even though the goal was lower, and then they kept making more stuff and I kept supporting it, and also continued to love everything they made (yes, even the Fart Feud with the Tin Can Brothers). I continued to support Mary Kate on Patreon, and I also started supporting other cast members on Patreon, like Whitney Avalon who had played Mary Shelley and does a lot of her own stuff on YouTube, and of course Ashley Clements, as I’ve mentioned previously, and as soon as Shipwrecked finally got their own Patreon, I was all in at the top tier. And, like, I don’t want to go on about this too much, because I do truly believe that I would love their work even if I’d never interacted with them, but I don’t know that I’d be quite the die-hard, take-all-my-money-to-make-more-things Shipwrecked fan that I am, if I hadn’t had so many wonderful interactions with the members of Shipwrecked over the years. I didn’t set out to become friends with them, but I kind of have – although I still feel a little weird and presumptuous to claim that. I feel like this will sound to some people like an out-of-control parasocial relationship, but like, it’s not that, because they do know me. Other people in my life have referred to Shipwrecked as “the people you pay to be your friends,” but it’s not that either: I give them money so they can keep making things, and we also happened to hit it off as friends – which again feels like a presumptuous label, but I can’t come up with a more accurate word. They make what they love and I love what they make, so it’s not that surprising that we’d get along. And for similar reasons, it’s not surprising that I’ve made so many very close friendships with other Shipwrecked fans. Our love for these projects brought us together, and then turned out to be far from the only thing we have in common.

I feel like I’m talking way too much about my own personal experiences, I’m so sorry if this is boring. Back to Poe Party itself. I’ve hinted at it already, but I need to emphasize again both how incredible the script is, and how amazingly the cast brought it to life. The story was so well thought out: every scene, every character, every moment was there for a reason. Like, I thought George Eliot disguising herself as a man was just a nod to female authors having to use male pen names, but then that turned into an important clue that led to the Brontës. Yes, you can poke plenty of holes in Poe Party if you want to – not all of the characters based on real people were actually alive at the same time, some of the technology is anachronistic, etc – but none of that stuff really matters. It’s clearly meant to be silly and fun, so you don’t really need to know what year it is. But the fact that they managed to write something silly and fun that didn’t completely devolve into absolute nonsense is so incredibly impressive. Sean and Sinéad wrote an absolutely brilliant script, and then they assembled the perfect cast for it. Every actor is on the exact same page about what this project is, and they each know exactly how their character fits in. Even when they’re in the background, everyone is giving 100%. I want to especially shout out Joey Richter, since Ernest Hemingway is drinking all night, and Joey did a tremendous job of tracking how drunk he was supposed to be. By the finale he’s having to slap himself to stay awake in the background, and it’s hilarious. Everyone else is also a delight to watch, and I feel like I’m still noticing little background moments I hadn’t clocked before. There aren’t very many close-ups, which I think was mainly because they didn’t have the budget for the time it would take to shoot them, but it works perfectly because a lot of the funny moments become even funnier when you can see multiple characters’ reactions at once. If you’re watching the background acting closely enough, you may notice a few instances of people almost breaking, but personally I just choose to interpret that as the characters finding it difficult to keep it together when other characters around them are being silly, and who can blame them? I appreciate that the writers and director trusted the cast enough to let them play around and improvise, because some great ad-libbed lines ended up in the final cut, and many more went into the best blooper reel ever, which is 24 minutes long and I love every second of it. There are some moments from the bloopers that I find myself saying sometimes when I’m watching the actual show – Ashley’s “Don’t be mean to me!” is probably the one I quote the most.

There is definitely romance in Poe Party – the whole reason for the party is because Edgar is in love with Annabel. Lenore and HG Wells develop feelings for each other over the course of the evening…until he dies. And several other characters flirt with each other. But none of the romances end well, and throughout the story, there is a lot of emphasis on friendship, and acquaintanceship, and other types of relationship. And that’s a running theme in most of Shipwrecked’s projects. There hasn’t been a kiss in any of them since Kissing in the Rain. Of course, much of the Poe Party fandom was, and is, into shipping characters with each other – for any listeners who may not be terminally online, shipping characters means that you want them to be in a romantic relationship with each other. I joined in somewhat, mostly because I felt like I was supposed to, but I couldn’t have articulated that at the time. And, as I mentioned earlier, I was particularly fascinated by the Eddie/Annabel dynamic, but I was only able to fully comprehend how much I needed the “don’t fake romance” message in hindsight. This show and its fandom made me feel less alone and adrift, but I still didn’t figure out I was aroace for a few more years. Although it was friends I made in the Shipwrecked fan community who first really helped me understand and accept that part of my identity, so I can still say that Poe Party was an important step on that journey.

I want to say so much more about this utterly brilliant show – I don’t feel like I’ve even come close to doing it justice here – but there truly are no words to adequately express my love for it. It still holds up nearly 7 years later, but Shipwrecked has come a long way since then. When their most recent webseries, Headless: A Sleepy Hollow Story, was about to come out, they said it made Poe Party look like it had been done by a bunch of kindergarteners, and I was upset at the Poe Party slander, but once I watched that series, I understood what they meant. Headless is so far above and beyond, but unfortunately it came out too recently to make it into my top 40. Currently they’re releasing an audio narrative called The Case of the Greater Gatsby, which should be on the same platform you’re listening to this on. That is a sequel to their short film The Case of the Gilded Lily, which I will be discussing in a future episode. I really hope that someday Shipwrecked gets the level of recognition they deserve – their fandom is still relatively small, although we are mighty and devoted. At the very least, I hope that the current strikes will help enable them to make a living from writing and acting.

Thank you for listening to me discuss another of my most frequently rewatched movies, or at least attempt to. Following this will be a two-way tie of movies I watched 25 times, both of which feature Cary Grant, my favorite leading man apart from Sean Persaud. As always, I will leave you with a quote from the next movie: “Hi! Mellow greetings, ukie-dukie!”

[floof-writes]

i love when tragedies are like “the love was there. it didnt change anything. it didnt save anyone. there were just too many forces against it. but it still matters that the love was there”

-Starpeace, tumblr

This isn't my normal type of post, but I just closed my high school's production of 'Puffs, Or: Seven Increasingly Eventful Years at a Certain School of Magic and Magic', and I can't stop thinking about it. This show broke me and put me back together and I don't know what to fucking do about it.

I played the role of Megan Jones, and she taught me how to be a person again. Skip straight to the next heading if you just want to know what the hell I'm talking about, otherwise, here's my Love Letter to Puffs: you deserve the world and the world doesn't deserve you, but every person reading this deserves to see this show at least once in their life.

First of all, this show is hilarious. Like, 'laugh until your stomach hurts and you can't breath and you start coughing up your sanity' hilarious. Your abs will hurt after seeing this show and your tear ducts will struggle to keep up with demand. But, despite that, or maybe because of that, it is also heartbreaking. Maybe the best kind, I think. The kind that rips your heart into pieces but then sews it back together, tells you that you have to carry on, but somehow that's worse, because hope hurts more than anything else.

And to see Puffs is one thing, but to be in it?

I don't know what to do or how to feel. For the rest of my life I will have carry this grief nestled next to my soul. The characters have the faces of people I know, and goddamn that makes it so hard to think about but just as hard not to.

I am changed, for this show. I am a different person at the other end of this nine week love-stained, obsessive hell. It found me when I was in a very vulnerable place, only halfway to healing, and picked me up and straight up told me to my Megan's face that I "shouldn't have to be alone"! Told me safety is love and loneliness is a lie we tell ourselves when we hate ourselves too much to see reason. That justice is the only pursuit that brings both self-love and heartache.

Live theatre is a powerful, powerful thing and yes, a professional recording of Puffs is available on Amazon Video and some pretty good bootlegs are up on YouTube, but if this show is open anywhere near you at a local high school, college, or community theatre, then I'm begging you to go see it in person. High school-age actors are uniquely suited to this show so don't let that make you wary!

If anyone, ever, wants to talk about Puffs, I'm more than available. PM me, ask me, tag me in your post. I don't care if you're seeing this post 2 months or 2 years or 10 years from now, if I am still on this hellsite, I will respond.

Go see Puffs. If everyone on this planet did, I think the world would be just a slightly better place.

Okay, hold on, what's Puffs?

Puffs tells us the story of a certain badger-aligned house during the seven years a certain orphan boy wizard attends a certain school of magic, plus ✨it was the 90's✨. If you can't tell, Puffs is technically a Harry Potter parody, and it very intentionally gives JKR no money and is not licensed with Warner Bros. Maybe that's a small part of why it spoke to me so much, because in the simplest terms: Puffs won custody of me in the great JKR/Fandom divorce. I really felt betrayed by JKR's transphobia and treatment of representation issues and this show was a bandaid and a kiss better for my aching, eleven year-old heart.

The story follows the Puff Wayne Hopkins, a young British orphan who was raised by his uncle in New Mexico. Wayne is the nerdiest, 90's-est kid you've ever met and well, as a fan of Star Wars and Dungeons & Dragons and Lord of the Rings, when he gets his school letter he gets this idea in his head that his life is about to become as awesome as that of the average fantasy protagonist. That he's gonna be a hero! Of course, he isn't. That's Harry. It's Harry at every single turn and Wayne and his friends are constantly being screwed over as unmentioned side characters in Harry's world-shattering and school-wrecking life, not to mention that the Puffs are the laughingstock of the school anyway, constantly failing classes and being bullied by the Snakes.

The Puffs work hard to become better but it rarely turns out. I mean, just look at Cedric, who plays a huge role in mentoring Wayne and his classmates the first act. Yikes. As the Puffs grow into their teen-hood it even gets a little spicy (in the hilariously awkward, teenage way), and eventually, they each come to understand that Puffs matter, Puffs are the best, in fact, Puffs are the "Mighty Ducks of wizards. No. The Mighty Ducks 2 of Wizards!"

[go-scottishgal14]

UK Times skewers H&M...

After a month of glorious silence, Meghan’s back — as wronged and stoic as ever

Hilary Rose

Wednesday October 05 2022, 12.00pm, The Times

Because I always strive to be a happy little elf, I will start with the happy news. It’s been four weeks, nearly a whole month of glorious silence, since the last episode of Meghan’s podcast.

To recap, previous episodes proved to be the most persuasive argument ever heard for living off-grid. The Duchess of Sussex delayed the next one until the official mourning period for the Queen was over and, to be fair, a month without Meghan is surely what the Queen would have wanted.

But all good things must come to an end and now she’s back, as wronged and stoic as ever, telling the sad truths we must all take on board if we are to become better people. Or something. I won’t lie, these are tough times to be a happy little elf, although the news this week that she employs a fact-checker on the podcast is beyond parody and cheered me up no end. Is one enough? Will she ever develop the ability to fact-check before she opens her mouth?

● Meghan Markle’s Archetypes podcast review — almost entirely preposterous

In this episode, she starts strongly, if incomprehensibly, with ghormeh and larb. Apparently they’re foodstuffs. Her guest is Margaret Cho, a successful Asian-American actress, activist and comedian. Cho has many interesting things to say about the perceptions and stereotypes surrounding Asian-American women, and whole seconds go by in which she is allowed to say them uninterrupted.

Ultimately, though, it falls to Meghan to point out that “all people” are multidimensional and layered, although no mention of elves, which makes me wonder if I am truly seen. She also confides that she loves Los Angeles because it is “full of culture”, which makes me sad, not happy, because if only we had some culture of our own, maybe she’d have stuck around.

It’s been a busy time for the Sussexes. Watching the Queen’s funeral, did they recall hitting back at her with the jibe “Everyone can live a life of service”? Probably not. The brand building is going brilliantly, though, or at least better than that tin-eared visit to a Californian cemetery on Remembrance Sunday.

Only yesterday, in a last desperate plea for privacy, they released new photographs of themselves. Meghan goes for smouldering stateswoman. Harry, bless him, manages something closer to gormless or, in the word of royal biographer Hugo Vickers, sad.

The Duke and Duchess of Sussex were pictured holding hands before attending the opening ceremony of One Young World in September -- MISAN HARRIMAN

Back home in California, there are reports that they’re trying to row back on the Netflix documentary that pays the mortgage, and that Harry is frantically trying to tone down his memoir now that his father is King. He might be panicking because it’s too mean about Camilla, as some suspect, or he might just want to bring it bang up to date with all the many slights he no doubt feels they suffered while they were here. Some were uniform related, as they always are.

My favourite is the story that Meghan had to be banned from going to Scotland, a country she usually flies straight over. Just this summer, the couple allegedly declined to holiday at Balmoral, when the Queen was still alive, but perhaps the fact-checker can get to the bottom of it.

They’ve parted ways from their American PR company, Sunshine Sachs, which successfully remained in their employment for more than half an hour and deserves a long-service medal with the P45. And they appear to have suffered the indignity of being NFI to the launch of George and Amal Clooney’s charitable foundation.

For legal reasons, we must consider the possibility that they were invited but chose not to go, before snorting into our tea and proceeding. The event featured exactly the sort of Obama-heavy guest list they’d like to be on, and it is exactly the sort of glitzy foundation, honouring worthy people, which they’re struggling to establish for themselves, possibly because the fascination with their navels remains strong.

We don’t yet know the pain they’re feeling about the continued uncertainty over Archie and Lilibet’s titles, but we can be sure they’ll keep it to themselves. Harry spent his entire life cursing his royal title, so it must be excruciating for him that his children may never get to experience the full horror of being an HRH.

Anyone who thinks, “Hmmm, didn’t he once speak about severing the cycle of genetic pain suffered by royal children?” must have misremembered, as Meghan once told a High Court judge. I will leave you with Meghan’s closing remarks, as rendered by the transcript of the podcast, which it warns is automatically generated and may not be accurate. Judge for yourself. I’m just an elf.

“Be yourself your full complete whole layered, sometimes weird, sometimes awesome, but always best.” Quite so. I couldn’t have put it better myself.

[saintmeghanmarkle]

Kinsey Schofield and Enty Lawyer Part 1 (a few nuggets paraphrased by me) by u/daisybeach23

Kinsey Schofield and Enty Lawyer Part 1 (a few nuggets paraphrased by me) Thinks Meghan is trying to “luck” into something like Jessica Alba with Honest and Kim Kardashian with Skims. Both Harry and Meghan known for lack of work ethic. They are desperate for connections. Recall, their original plan was to earn money doing speaking engagements for Big Business. People are interested in people with actual work experience, like Whitney Wolf (co-founder of Tinder)Audible rumor not true. Meghan was manifesting.The “from the behind” photo pic of Harry and Meghan on Halloween is their trademark. They did the same on Netflix show. Agrees with CDAN post that the photo was staged. They are obsessed with security.Enty says Meghan and Harry did not get a standing ovation Katy Perry concert.Kardashian collab is a possibility. Kim K. Does not need help with Skims but she is curious if Meghan can help with click through rate. Enty Lawyer thinks Skims would have same results with many other people who are as popular or more than Meghan.Kinsey says Princess Diana, if alive today, would never have gone on Kardashian show. She did strategically upstage Charles by allowing paparazzi to photograph her. Diana would have attended a Katy Perry or Beyonce concert.Enty Lawyer knows Bill Simmons and Harry utterly failed at Spotify. Couldn’t produce any content at all. Not even a series about veterans, military life. Thinks Harry only wants to eat edibles and mushrooms all day.Meet me at The Lake is not going to make any money for Meghan and Harry because Netflix owns the rights. Netflix is trying to get something from Meghan and Harry. They weren’t coming up with anything good, Meghan wants to be known as a producer. She dreams of being an Oscar nominee. The book isn’t as popular as originally believed. It was a bestseller for two weeks only - vs a Killers of the Flower Moon bestseller over 100 weeks. If this movie is made, it may not even be a hit. Meghan and Harry have no good ideas. The only content they have produced for Netflix that succeeded was their docuseries.Meghan’s brand is failing. The Family Guy skit showed Meghan as a parody. Agrees with Lady Glenconnor that Meghan did not understand what being Royal means. Thought it was another form of celebrity. Thinks Harry just wants to be left alone. Thought he looked miserable at the most recent San Diego event. This event is in his wheelhouse. Thinks it’s ridiculous Meghan changed her clothes at this event. Her wardrobe looked bad and thinks her clothes must be on consignment. The photos at the event looked grainy and terrible.This is part 1 of her talk with Enty Lawyer. Here is link to videohttps://youtu.be/w9Co0IYp5jE?si=6-AWB42BiF4PGucxToodles Sinners! post link: https://ift.tt/J3FNqHn author: daisybeach23 submitted: November 12, 2023 at 09:52PM via SaintMeghanMarkle on Reddit

[neil-neil-orange-peel]

loved the rik and ade fest you arranged with @/xgardensinspace recently! it made me curious, if you would rank your favorite rik and ade projects how would you rank them? :)

Aw thank you! I'm glad you liked it. The fest is always fun to run. ❤️

Now that's a tricky question! I'm very bad at ranking my favourite funny shows at the best of times. 😂 A lot of it just depends on my mood in the moment. Here's an attempt:

Joint first - The Young Ones and Bottom - sorry! Far too difficult to decide which of these beats the other for me. They're both brilliant and changed my world. While containing obvious similarities, they both also offer differences. So, yeah, really depends on my mood. The world of TYO is certainly more raw and surreal, which I think makes sense as it was the gang's first proper foray into television and sitcom, but that's part of what I love about it. And, perhaps because of that factor, it captures something true about youth, which is why multiple generations of young people have found it resonating with them. It's very exciting and angry and just, bloody hell, so entirely accurate. Richie and Eddie, on the other hand, have more depth and emotional realism as characters (feels insane to say that about Bottom, but still 😂). You can feel Samuel Beckett oozing out of the mouldy walls of their flat. The situation in Bottom should be extraordinarily depressing - a warning, even, about what happens if you just let life happen to you - but instead it's brilliant and hilarious and full of pervy, disgusting joy. That's the magic of sitcoms.

Third - The Comic Strip Presents... - I really like anthologies. It's a shame they're so rare these days, given recent examples like Inside Number 9 and Black Mirror have been so successful, though I get that they're generally more expensive and more of a gamble as far as viewing figures are concerned. I love the world of the Comic Strip. The series just felt really creatively inspirational to me when I first watched it. I love the idea of a gang of mates all writing and producing stories. How insanely cool? That said, it's not got the top spot for me because not every Comic Strip is gold standard. There are definitely a few I've only seen once. There are some with flaws that I still love, but there are also a fair few (of the later series, perhaps when the magic was wearing off) that just don't cut the mustard for me. But there are some truly great offerings: both Bad News episodes, Mr Jolly Lives Next Door, the Famous Five parodies, Consuela (my fave ❤️), Dirty Movie, A Fistful of Travellers' Cheques, The Strike, Red Nose of Courage, Demonella, Gregory: Diary of a Nutcase, the list goes on. For the most part, the imperfections and rough and ready style are part of the various Comic Strips' charm.

Fourth - The Dangerous Brothers - I absolutely love this double act. This is where it all started for Rik and Ade, after all! Richard being the dominant one is also an interesting twist on their usual dynamic - they're basically Laurel and Hardy but more violent and a lot ruder. 😂 But seriously, you can tell Ade takes a lot of inspiration from Stan Laurel. There's this specific face he does. The only reason they're fourth here is because, as sketch characters, I suppose there was only so far they could go with them. That's not to shit on sketch characters! A good sketch character is gold dust, just check out Harry Enfield's repertoire. And it's not as if sketch characters can't grow into something more versatile Alan Partridge Alan Partridge Alan Partridge since that's arguably what Richie and Eddie of Bottom were (the pinnacle of an ever deepening progression of Rik and Ade's dynamic). The Dangerous Brothers are mad fun, but with so many other Rik and Ades on offer, I've had to be harsh. Sorry lads. 😂

Fifth - Kevin Turvey - Ade appears in The Man Behind the Green Door, so it counts! I have a lot of love for Kevin Turvey; compared to most of Rik's characters, he's a sweetheart. I also really like it when comedians have a character inspired by the place they grew up in. The world of Kevin Turvey still has the anger and surrealism we'd expect from Rik Mayall projects, but it's much more toned down. This was very early Rik, so Kevin is just very interesting, in that respect. I'm sure he'd appreciate that. The fact Rik let him write a chapter of his autobiography says a lot about his relationship with him, even if he was ultimately superceded by a bunch of other bastards called Richard. 😂 The main reason he's so low down on this particular list is just because Ade doesn't feature much, so it's not super reflective of their double act.

Sixth - Filthy, Rich & Catflap - Look, I'm not here to contribute to the FR&C hate in the world. 😂 I don't think it's as bad as people at the time made out, but I'd also be lying if I said it's their best work. Richie and Eddie are important as a crossroads point between Rick & Vyvyan and Richie & Eddie of Bottom, and Nigel is amazing as Filthy, but they're never gonna be as beloved as those who came before and after them. Also, Richie Rich's hair is worse than Richard Dangerous' to me. 😂 I think it was a mistake, though I understand why it was done, to advertise FR&C as the successor to TYO. Of course, in comparison, it was going to fall flat. Although it's satirising the old British showbiz world, why on earth would the young audience they picked up from TYO - who didn't necessarily feel enamoured by that - want to watch their favourite characters morph into people from that world? It's similar in tone to TYO, but the world it inhabits just doesn't come alive in the same way. FR&C is also very wordy - which, kudos to Rik and Ade primarily for remembering all those lines, and to Ben for writing them - but, in the first episode especially, this definitely slows the pacing down. Rip.

I've only included stuff with Rik AND Ade, hence the absence of The New Statesman etc. Apologies if I've missed anything!

Thanks for the ask! ❤️

[kaasknot]

Hey! I have a paper on Buster Keaton coming up in my History of Film class? Would you be willing to info dump everything you know about him? I've only heard of this man through your blog and don't know where to start haha

bruh you're lucky you weren't standing next to me when i read this, my screech would have blown out your ears.

okay, buster keaton 101. he was one of the giants of the silent comedy era, alongside charlie chaplin and harold lloyd, and from the period of 1920 to 1929 he put out 19 short films and 10 feature length films under his own studio, plus two more silent films under MGM that can creditably be called his creations (i use his filmography page on wikipedia to keep it all straight). he also had the unique distinction of doing all his stunts himself, as well as doubling for many of his co-stars. most of these stunts have never been replicated, because honestly they'd probably kill people; his crew called him the "little iron man" because he was fearless and nigh indestructible. he was also a genius behind the camera, in ways that unfortunately i probably can't fully appreciate.

he was born october 4, 1895 in piqua, kansas, during a one-night stopover. his parents were working with a traveling medicine show at the time, to little acclaim, along with harry houdini before he got big. buster's first known stage appearance was as a toddler, interrupting his father's act. at first they tried to shoo him offstage, but his antics drew bigger laughs from the audience, so they decided to incorporate him into the act—leading to what would eventually be called, once they reached vaudeville, "the three keatons." buster said in interviews that his first salaried year was at 5 years of age, in 1899. that was when his family finally hit the big time—and he was almost single-handedly responsible for it.

their act is incredibly difficult to describe. the central conceit was: joe keaton threw little buster across the stage in a parody of strict parenting, while myra keaton played accompaniment on the saxophone. the best description i've found is biographer rudi blesh's, in his 1966 book, Keaton, on pp. 30–33 and 47–48. you can borrow a copy here. (be careful with this book; the author has a way with words, but he sets aside facts in favor of mythology more than once. for a rigorously researched and trustworthy biography, one with all the dates and weights, go for A Filmmaker's Life (2022) by james curtis.)

vaudeville was buster's early training ground, where he learned tumbling, comedic timing, improvisation, and how to construct a gag. most film comedians of the era got their start in vaudeville or comparable music halls, and many of the gags buster performed in his movies were adapted from vaudeville stage magic or repurposed from the family act. if there's one single book on buster keaton i'd recommend, it's Camera Man (2022) by dana stevens. it's not as dense or as thorough as the james curtis book, but it's an extremely good overview of the main events of his life AND the surrounding historical context—including vaudeville. it's also just a really fun read.

buster's vaudeville era ended in 1917, when he was forced to break up the family act over his father's worsening alcoholism. the official party line is that joe couldn't handle the fact that he was getting older, which i think is partly true, but i think a more true explanation is that he couldn't handle the fact that he was outshone by his own son (pretty much all sources agree that buster was the better comedian). he took his anger out on buster onstage during performances, and out on his wife offstage between performances, until myra finally had enough. she and buster ditched joe in los angeles when buster was 21 years old. here's an interesting paper that digs into buster's rough childhood and the impact it likely had on his films.

buster almost immediately found work as a solo act, but a chance encounter with an acquaintance introduced him to roscoe "fatty" arbuckle, then one of the highest-paid, most well-known comedians in film. it took one day on set—and one night disassembling a camera—to convince buster to abandon the stage for a film career. as a bonus, he and arbuckle became life-long friends. they spent the next three years working non-stop, making 14 short films together (plus a couple more buster wasn't involved in, during the 10-month period he was overseas for ww1). the grueling schedule wasn't without its downsides, and arbuckle, tired of making short films, decided to move to feature-length films, which had a slower, more relaxed pace. he left buster his entire studio and crew.

and that's when the real magic began. buster started (continued) with short films: 20 minute "2-reelers" that were played before a feature film, basically doing what looney tunes cartoons would do later. the best way to understand how different buster was from the dominant comedic idiom of the time is to watch a couple of arbuckle shorts ("coney island" and "the garage" are good choices), then watch a couple of buster's own ("one week" and "cops" are probably the best known). buster catered his humor to an older audience, and his gags were sophisticated, subtle, often cynical or ironic, and intricate to construct and film. "keaton made you laugh, then think" (blesh, xi).

in 1923, buster dropped short films in favor of feature-length films, starting with "three ages." he was a little behind the curve on this, but not through lack of trying; if he'd gotten his way, he'd have been the first major comedian to switch to feature-length films. unfortunately, studio contracts and his producer's cold feet held him back for a few more years, so chaplin and lloyd got there first. not that that slowed buster down; his output in the eight years he had creative control is virtually unmatched. despite getting married (in 1921, to natalie talmadge) and having two children (james, 1922, and robert, 1924), he continued filming at breakneck pace. to see what he could do with a camera, i'd recommend "sherlock jr." to see him at his cinematic best, i'd recommend "the general" "the cameraman" (i just committed cinematic heresy with that recommendation, but IN MY DEFENSE it was thee romcom training film for 20 years at MGM, well into the talkie era, so it's hardly a dud :p).

in 1928, buster's producer, joseph schenck, sold his contract to MGM. buster wasn't the owner of keaton studios, just an employee, so he didn't have much say in the matter. both chaplin and lloyd tried to talk him out of it, but in the end he signed the new contract anyway. later, he said it was the worst mistake of his career. denied the creative control he was accustomed to, he gradually descended into full-blown alcoholism, running away from his studio responsibilities and his disintegrating marriage alike. his final film for MGM, "what! no beer?", was an attempted buddy comedy with jimmy durante, and buster was visibly drunk or hungover in almost every scene. MGM fired him in 1932; his divorce, started in 1932, was finalized in 1933.

from there, buster had some dark years. he got married a second time, in 1934, to mae scriven (who mostly seems to have been a con artist), before they divorced in 1936. he was in and out of various rehabs, and nearly died at least once, before he managed to buck the odds and dry out. he spent the last years of the '30s working as a gag man and consultant for other comedians at MGM.

after that, things started to get better. he met his third wife, eleanor norris, in 1938 and they married in 1940. he had a couple high profile cameos in big movies, my favorite being the one in "sunset boulevard," where he played one of norma desmond's waxworks. then, a massively popular article by james agee, titled "comedy's greatest era," was published in LIFE magazine in 1949, kicking off a resurgence of interest in silent film as an art form and as a feature of cinematic history. agee paid special attention to buster, and that, combined with buster's own fascination with the up-and-coming technology of television, led to his comeback. he worked steadily and enthusiastically in television (and occasionally in movies) up until he died of lung cancer on february 1, 1966, living long enough to see his films receive the recognition they deserved. (also here, have this nice article i found while trying to find the one by james agee.)

i've never taken a film history class myself, so i can't begin to explain all the ways buster keaton advanced filmmaking. here's an article that analyzes the gag as a staple of film comedy; a book that analyzes buster's comic and directorial style chiefly through "the general"; and another article that explores gags, this time specifically mechanical gags, and has lots of nice things to say about buster. if this isn't enough and you decide to go whole chicken fried hog on buster like i have, hit up me, @spokir, or @busterkeatonsociety and we can connect you with all the material you could possibly want.

enjoy!!!

(colossal, chrysler building-sized thanks to spokir, who sourced most of these articles. seriously, talk to your local librarian, they WANT to find things for you.)

[princesssarisa]

A Christmas Carol Holiday Season: "Scrooge" (1970 musical film)

Here we find the first lavish big-screen musical version of A Christmas Carol. It clearly follows in the footsteps of another Dickens-inspired movie musical, 1968's Oscar-winning Oliver!: not only is it similar in tone and musical style, it was filmed on some of the same sets. In place of Lionel Bart, however, this score features music and lyrics by Leslie Bricusse (Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, Stop the World – I Want to Get Off, and more), who also wrote the screenplay. And the star is the unlikely Scrooge of 34-year-old Albert Finney, affecting a hunched walk and a croaking voice under considerable makeup and prosthetics to play the old miser.

In general the plot follows Dickens' book faithfully, but with a unique tone of wry and sometimes dark humor that sets it apart from other adaptations... yet which never crosses the line into parody or detracts from the serious themes. Marley's Ghost (Alec Guinness) has a particular sense of dry gallows humor about him, and the Ghost of Christmas Present (Kenneth More) trades his poetic speeches for a cheerful yet biting sarcastic wit. Bob and Mrs. Cratchit (David Collings and Frances Cuka) are a young couple in their early 30s instead of the usual middle-aged pair, Bob has a lively, playful personality in place of other versions' careworn meekness, and the mischievous humor of Scrooge's nephew, here renamed Harry (Michael Medwin), is likewise enhanced. On the more poignant side, the sequence with the Ghost of Christmas Past (portrayed as a stately elderly lady by Edith Evans) places special emphasis on young Scrooge's romance with his fiancée Isabel (Suzanne Neve) and the older Scrooge's sad pining for her. But most unique are the scenes with the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come (Paddy Stone), where Scrooge's poor debtors turn his funeral into a song-and-dance celebration, and where Scrooge plunges into his own grave and finds himself in a darkly comic version of hell. Little wonder that after he wakes up, Scrooge is so elated that he creates a grand musical finale in the London streets, dressing as Santa Claus to give toys to all of Camden Town's children and cancelling every debt that's owed him.

Albert Finney's attempt at performing old age is slightly cartoonish, but he still gives an engaging performance that captures Scrooge's wide range of emotions and transformative arc. The supporting cast of distinguished British names are equally strong, and Bricusse's songs – "A Christmas Carol," "Christmas Children," "I Hate People," "Father Christmas," "December the Twenty-Fifth," "Happiness," "You," "I Like Life," "The Beautiful Day," "Thank You Very Much" and "I'll Begin Again" – are full of charm.

In the realm of Christmas Carol musicals, this is a quirky one, but unforgettable, and it always brings a smile to my face.

@ariel-seagull-wings, @reds-revenge, @faintingheroine, @thealmightyemprex, @thatscarletflycatcher

[kalitera-stin-erimia]

Short reviews of Lovecraft RPF

One of the subsets of my Lovecraft obsession is finding and exploring fiction about Lovecraft, and I finally wrote up my short impressions of most fiction works about Lovecraft that I read/watched. Some of these definitely need larger reviews, and maybe will get them in the future, but one has to start from somewhere and these writings can at least make a foundation for them.

So, let's start. Some mild spoilers may appear.

Shadows Bend by David Barbour and Richard Raleigh: Lovecraft and Robert Howard travel the West of the USA during the Dust Bowl, persued by monsters. I'm surprised that these two meet so rarely in fiction - I mean, they never did in real life, but it still sounds like an obvious idea. Clark Ashton Smith also makes an appearence. I enjoyed the "road movie" feel of the book, and it seemed like the author tried to weave in some lore from the Bishop collaborations, which is the thing I'd love to see more often; however, the book was too plotless and the characterizations too exaggerated, too reliant on the out of date scholarship.

Gilgamesh at the Outback by Robert Silverberg: Another one about HPL and REH meeting, this time in hell. I skimmed this one, reading only the parts about them. Lovecraft is rather bland here, while REH is just bizarre. He has an over-the-top crush on Gilgamesh. WTF was going on in the Robert Howard scholarship in the eighties???

The Planet of Tastless Pleasure by Harry Harrison: One scene parodies Gilgamesh at the Outback. I enjoyed this one more than the Silverberg's book. I like Harrison's humor, what else to say?

Marblehead by Richard Lupoff: I already wrote a large review of this one. Well-researched and I guess well-characterized, but so dry that I'm afraid it doesn't live to the fullest potential. Everything just ends up feeling strangely muted, which is especially jarring in combination with the sensationalist plot and very pulp culmination.

Pages Torn from a Travel Journal by Edward Lee: Ooooof. Lee is not a bad writer, and unlike many others writing about Lovecraft, he clearly knows a lot about him and likes him very much. The other things he likes are (1) rednecks, (2) gore, (3) rape porn. The book is full of all these things and you can make a guess about how well they mix with Lovecraft. In spite of how gleefully campy the book is, the treatment of redneck characters is more sympathetic than I usually see in redneck horror, which is a plus, I guess? On the other hand, Lovecraft getting into an adventure during one of his bus travels seems such an obvious idea for a story, I'm surprised it doesn't get used often.

Trolley 1852 by Edward Lee: I liked this one less than the previous one. It's more creative though, and closer to Lovecraft's kind of horror - which is not surprising, considering that the major part of the book is supposed to be "written" by him as a book within a book (while Pages was rather, ehhh, "historical fiction".)

Pulptime by Peter Cannon: New York period Lovecraft meets aged Sharlock Holmes. Hijinks predictably ensue. A cute calm story which is probably good for removing unpleasant aftertaste of Lee's books (that's how it worked for me, anyway.) What bugged me was that the plot felt too thin for a mystery, and the author seemingly treated the anti-immigrant sentiment of The Horror at Red Hook too uncritically. Lovecraft's characterization was okay, Cannon is better at it than most, but in this book it relied on quoting too much.

The Lovecraft Chronicles by Peter Cannon: Definitely a better book than Pulptime, and the best exploration of the question "What if Lovecraft lived longer?" so far. May get too farcical at places, but I think Cannon finds a good balance between crackfic and seriousness.

The Night Ocean by Paul La Farge: A Very Intellectual postmodernist book which is also a kinda shitposty Lovecraft/Barlow slashfic. Absolutely not worth the hype it had been met with in some mainstream big journals. As far as Lovecraft's characterization goes, I'd say the author tried, however, it's still weirdly superficial and subtly mean-spirited. The treatment of Barlow is even more dissappointing - he was meant to be the center of the book, but the author seems strangely dismissive of his literary and scholarly work and desinterested in his personality. Besides, the majority of the book is not even about them, but about the dull original characters and endless cameos of other historical characters.

Night Gaunts by Brett Rutherford: The play is written by a fan from the zine fandom, and it shows: both in solid characterizations and in bad poetry. I liked this one.

The Lamp of Alhazred by August Derleth: A sentimental story about Lovecraft's legacy. One of the better Lovecraftian works by Derleth, and certainly the one with most feeling.

Balsamo's Mirror by L. Sprague de Camp: Good old "but you probably wouldn't be priviledged in your favorite historical period, gotcha". I've seen better works that poked fun at Lovecraft.

When Death Wakes Me Up to Myself by John Shirley: I was so impressed with this one that I've already reviewed it. What I like the most about it is that it's catches the cosmic wonder aspect of Lovecraft's personality, which was just as important for his life and work as cosmic horror, yet gets written about so less often.

HPL by Gahan Wilson: A story by Gahan Wilson about Lovecraft being a brain in a jar could have been more entertaining.

The Lurker in the Shadows by Nathan Carson: It starts as a very indulgent story about correspondence between the elderly Lovecraft and Stephen King in the 1970s, and then takes an unexpected turn into dark comedy about body switching. Simultaneously one of the least racist portrayals of Lovecraft and one of the most villainous ones, though I'm afraid the author didn't think it through. On the other hand, it's not often that you read about Lovecraft marrying Beyonce.

Lovecraft in Heaven by Grant Morrison: Bad trip.

Night-Gaunts by Joyce Carol Oates: An examination of Lovecraft's life, or, rather, an alternative Lovecraft. Unfortunately, it's one of these tiring takes that talk about how Unhappy, Troubled and Neurotic Lovecraft was, and how Gothic and Gloomy his life was. As far as Oates stories go, this one is far from her best, very slow-going and hard to follow at times. More could have been done with the possibility of Lovecraft's father living longer than he did, though I agree he would probably leave less favorable impression on Lovecraft in such case.

The Premature Death of H.P. Lovecraft, Oldest Man in New England by Thomas Ligotti: Seems to be an another take on body hopping, but subtly so? Very short. Well-written, but I'd expect more from a Ligotti story about Lovecraft.

The Exiles by Ray Bradbury: Lovecraft appears in one version of the story, sitting near the fireplace and eating ice cream. Everyone in this story is benevolently caricatured, so I'm fine with it.

Letters from an Old Gent by W.H. Pugmire: The style reads nothing like Lovecraft (but I think it wasn't really the intention, anyway) yet it still works, somehow. Pugmire's case is similar to Lee's, that is, their fondness for Lovecraft is such that it actually improves the quality of their writing. His emotional intellect also appears to be more developed than in most other Lovecraftian writers.

Lovecraft by Hans Rodionoff and Enrique Breccia: A mix of Lovecraft's biography (in the out of date interpretation) and the usual "but what if what he wrote was real???" I heard there were plans to make a Hollywood adaptation of it, and it certainly felt like one at times. The art was great, but the story was way too visceral and hysterical for either Lovecraft's biography or Lovecraftian horror.

Providence by Alan Moore and Jacen Burrows: Well-researched and well-thought out. Moore definitely cleaned out his Lovecraft game after the dissappointing Neonomicon. The comic is more about Lovecraft's characters, Lovecraft himself appears only in one issue, but plays an important role in the entire story (well, duh). His characterization is satisfying both as realism and as metafiction, though the usual Moore bullshit is still present in small amounts. Not a huge fan of art, and Lovecraft gets black hair yet another time (and looks like in his forties at 1919).

The Strange Adventures of H.P. Lovecraft by Mac Carter: I don't remember this one well, but I remember that Lovecraft here doesn't have much in common with the real one neither in personality, nor in biography, nor in looks. Some things are done with the "underappreciated artist" part of his life, but without the context of his life, they don't amount to much.

H.P. Lovecraft: He who Wrote in the Darkness by Alex Nikolavitch and Gervasio-Aon-Lee: Well, this one is a straightforward biography of Lovecraft, or, rather, his life from 1925 on. As such, it was alright. I liked the way the artist used colors, and that some people from Lovecraft's life like Loveman got more attention than they usually do.

One Night with Lovecraft (Une nuit avec Lovecraft) by Philippe Marcele and Rodolphe: A fan from the future gets a chance to hang out with Lovecraft in the 1930s. Not bad, but had too much padding at times - do we really need shortened adaptations of some Lovecraft's (and one Poe's!) stories within such kind of comic? The artist was great at drawing urban landscapes, but much worse at drawing people.

R.H.B. by Andreas and Riviere: An old French comic about Barlow, his time with Lovecraft and later life. This one would have been better if the artist knew what Barlow looked like. His real appearence would go well with the artist's style.

Rough Riders: Ride or Die by Adam Glass: Lovecraft briefly joins the main team as someone who can see ghosts. I liked the main characters, who were also historical personalities, but Lovecraft himself was super bland. At least the art was decent (and he didn't look grotesque like he often does in the comics.)

Out of Mind: The Stories of HPL: This one is memorable, but mostly because of the actor's performance. The plot is a mess.

[mortallyclearwonderland]

Ruby Gillman: Teenage Kraken/Meet the Gillmans vs Luca

Critics, Reviewers, Comment section, News outlets, etc.

TOP 10 things Ruby Gillman: Teenage Kraken/Meet the Gillmans copied from Luca.

Child: Mom can we watch Luca? Mom: We have Luca at home! Luca at home

Luca, but American.

DreamWorks’ Ruby Gillman: Teenage Kraken/Meet the Gillmans is just like Pixar’s Luca but with a girl.

What if Luca was a girl and it happens in Florida?

DreamWorks: Can I copy your homework? Pixar/Disney: Yes but change it a little. DreamWorks: Ruby Gillman: Teenage Kraken/Meet the Gillmans

It will just like Antz vs A Bug's life, Shark Tale vs Finding Nemo, or Megamind vs Despicable Me.

(Art by F16 - Lift Those EyebrowsPublished: Nov 7, 2010By jbwarner86. It’s not her opinion! It’s just a comic.)

I'm going to be honest. I love DreamWorks movies, so I might be bias. But everyone is entitled to their own opinion. This is mine! I'm tired of everybody calling their movies ripoffs! Hollywood only cares about Disney and Pixar. They're the studios that get all the awards, except once in the blue moon. The media has many times shown bias towards Disney. Not to mention people who don't think of animation as art or think anything animated is made by Disney.

A movie can have a completely different animation, characters, tone, plot, humor, message, story arcs, execution, etc. But as soon as it shows even the smallest similarity with another movie that came out around the same time or worse comes out after it then it's labeled as a ripoff and if not it's constantly compared to its older film siblings.

Even Rise of the Guardians gets compared to Avengers because it came out around the same time, in 2012, and has characters that form a team to stop a bad guy. Seriously!?! 

(That’s actually a fun parody!)

What's next? In this movie, people breathe, walk and talk it's just like the other movie where people breathe, walk and talk. Totally the same!

I get it. People want to describe a movie in the shortest amount of time possible without getting anything away and using a vastly popular movie that most people watched or is so prevalent that most know it in great detail even without watching the movie itself. But those descriptions are mostly misleading and are stretching a lot to find anything similar, as I previously mentioned.

There are hundreds if not thousands of things that go into the making of a movie and even changing one thing can make someone love, hate, or feel indifferent about it.

You might love Avengers but hate Justice League, love Cinderella but feel meh about Sleeping Beauty, and vice versa. They are what a lot of people would call ''the same movie'', ''similar movie'' or ''basically the same''.

Unfortunately, I don't think it's ever going to change. Not everybody has the time or wants to listen to hours of essays about why a film is great or bad, and it’s especially hard to praise something without getting into spoilers.

And I need to remind you that you have your own will, opinions, and tastes. It sounds pretentious but a lot of people seem to forget that. Even if the person describing a movie to you is someone with whose opinions you many times agreed or knows you personally and knows what you like and dislike or even you may think ''I hate - insert what you hate in movies here - ! No way I'm going to like this movie.'' and then you watch it and love it.  

Everybody and their mother makes fun of Shark Tale on the internet but I think it's funny (Polish dub). Almost no one talks about Monsters vs Aliens in a flattering light but I love it. Everybody seems to love the Guardians of the Galaxy movies but I found them unfunny.

Maybe I just didn't find those videos yet.

So, when you hear someone compare one movie to another take it with a huge spoonful of salt.

Can't wait when the Wizard of Once movie comes out and everybody will compare it to Harry Potter because it has magic and the main boy character has black hair.

What movie do you think gets this unfair treatment?

[the1975attheirverybest]

I know you probably don't want people to vent to you, but I just had a close friend put me down for liking Matty and it's kinda messing with my mood. They said it was "kinda fucked up" that I liked him. They are a good friend and this kinda came out of nowhere and now Im sad. I know he says some bad stuff sometimes, but my life is so chaotic rn and my enjoyment of this band and Matty is kinda a reprieve from my life. I just don't want them to think I'm a bad person. I don't believe that Matty is bad, but some people don't see that and only assume the worst, and then I feel like the asshole.

- 🦝

Hey, listen, you can ALWAYS vent to me! Promise!!

Also, like, who else are you supposed to talk to? People who don’t know Matty/the band kinda won’t get this sort of thing. Only other fans do! So, this is totally fine.

And, yeah, to be honest, I used to get that a lot. From my sister even! Like, she’s really into punk and emo music. Like really hardcore shit. She does NOT like the 1975, lmao. Even though I’ve told her a thousand times that if she likes punk, she’d love Matty. Cuz he’s legit more punk than whatever bands she likes these days…the genre has devolved into a parody of itself, you can’t really do punk in punk anymore…BUT I DIGRESS!! My point is, she gets all of her impressions of Matty from Twitter. And, we all know what Twitter thinks of Matty. Like, when the podcast shit was going down, she was texting me screenshots everyday like “this is your Matty Healy?” It made me really sad.

It’s difficult cuz it’s not the same type of thing as when people make fun of me for, like, liking Harry Styles. They just think Harry isn’t a “real musician” (whatever the fuck that means) but, with Matty, some people actually think he’s a Nazi!!!!! Like my sister and I got into it a bit cuz she was like “If you’re fine with Matty Healy…I feel like you’re the type of person to end up in a toxic relationship cuz you’ll just let men say shit.” BUT, my thing is, she’s my sister. She knows me. She knows the millions of ways that I stand up for my students when our department policy is discriminatory against some of them. She knows my personal politics and who I am. So, if she can’t give me the benefit of the doubt and/or realize that, if I like Matty, then there must be something about him that PERHAPS! Twitter isn’t showing her??? Then we are in a sorry state as a society. You know?

Besides, I know lots of people say they wish Matty would tone it down for the sake of the rest of the guys and/or the band’s general image, but, I think that’s exactly why he doesn’t what he does. He’s asking for a little more nuance and real thought in debates around art. He doesn’t want art to become sterilized, corporate-friendly, performative activism, cuz art is where real thought and real resistance happens. And if there’s no space in it for push-back, then we lose as a society. So, the way I see it is, the fact that not everyone loves him, that he’s not another Harry Styles or whatever, is proof that he’s right and it’s working. You could try and explain that to people? Some people will get it, some, like my sister, will be like “yeah, sounds like you’re being brainwashed by a dude” … her loss honestly, cuz Matty has given me so much courage and joy and if she wants to dig in and miss out on it cuz punk Twitter can’t candle that Matty is more badass than them…then alright. She’s my sister and one of my best friends but she’s objectively wrong here lmao.

Bottom line is, they don’t have to love Matty but they love you. And if they do, they’ll understand who you are as a person is proof enough that you’re not a homophobe/Nazi/whatever the fuck the world misunderstands Matty to be. If they can’t see that, then, sorry but you may need a new friend? Hope that makes sense?

YOU CAN ALWAYS FANGIRL WITH US THOUGH 💗💗

[briefcasejuice]

all hail neil cicierega the creator of the web-animation hit "hyakugojyuuichi" is a home-schooled aspiring screenwriter -- and he's only 14! - - - - - - - - - - - - april 21, 2001 | by katharine mieszkowski and amy standen

neil "trapezoid" cicierega, who has at times described his occupation as "youthful dipwad," may not be a household name yet (he is, after all, only 14), but judging by his emerging track record, he's destined for great things.

he's the creator of the animated movie hyakugojyuuichi! which stars, among others, peewee Herman, hello kitty, harry potter, elton john and jay the jetplane, all set to the lively tune of a pokémon anthem. his movies may be just bizarre amalgamations of randomly chosen objects (a budweiser logo, a thumping pacemaker, justin timberlake's head), but they can easily be viewed as biting satires of the american media, trenchant observations about consumer culture -- or, at the very least, clues to unlocking some of the universe's deepest mysteries.

what seemed at first to be just another baffling web phenomenon turns out to have come from a real-life, lucky charms-eating, home-schooled kid from massachusetts. and here he is.

where do you find the music for your animations? last summer jules, a friend of mine, used to bring over CDs he got from japan featuring several pokémon songs. i liked them so much they stuck with me. finally, one day i cracked and had to find some MP3s to make music videos out of. what other kinds of music do you like? i have a wide spread of musical interest, including they might be giants, oingo boingo/danny elfman, several MP3.com artists, etc. how did you learn to do this stuff? in flash? well, by the time i made the infamous japanese pokerap video i had owned Flash for about seven or eight months. i learned to use a lot of programs just by tinkering around with them.

how long does it take do one of these movies -- like "hyakugojyuuichi!" for instance? it varies. hyakugojyuuichi only took me one day, but i had just finished the japanese pokerap and was on a roll. my two latest animutations took longer, but they were spread out over a week or two each. sometimes i just can't be insane enough; other times i can't do anything else.

is it true you're only 15 years old? i'm actually 14, but i'll be 15 in August.

what are grade are you in? i'm home-schooled, which explains all this free time. i finish the school year after i do the california achievement test, which i just completed a week ago. so, i'm in ninth grade now, although i always have the choice to skip a grade if i think i can do it.

what do you do when you aren't animating? on the computer i make all sorts of things, from music to games, etc. i'm also the drummer for a band and an aspiring screenwriter.

do your parents know about your animations? what do they think of them? they love them. they're always bugging me to see the feedback.

what are these movies about? they're kind of a parody of insane japanese commercials. remember the episode of "the simpsons" with mr. Sparkle? like that.

what is "team rocket's journey" about? in that one team rocket are just trying to destroy stuff with a giant colin mochrie robot and a giant bonzi buddy robot. saddam hussein sort of runs around. david letterman joins team rocket. justin timberlake sort of gets in the way and is shot into space at the end. in other words it's just the usual random imagery.

why do you use japanese songs? because they're fun, and they leave a lot up to the imagination. i'm working on a new video that features a song in english, although it's done by a japanese band, i believe. it's fun.

what other animation do you like? i'm not really an animation fan, but i do have a soft spot for claymation. geddit? soft spot? clay? bah.

what's a recent movie you've liked? we've had a lot of dumb movies lately, so I can't say. someday i'll change this with the creation of "animutations: the movie." maybe.

what did you eat for breakfast this morning? i skipped breakfast this morning. If i did have breakfast it would've been some lucky charms.

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[agentnico]

Weird: The Al Yankovic Story (2022) Review

Before we start, serious question - what the hell is The Roku Channel?!

Plot: The unexaggerated true story about the greatest musician of our time. From a conventional upbringing where playing the accordion was a sin, "Weird Al" Yankovic rebels and makes his dream of changing the words to world-renowned songs come true. An instant success and sex symbol, Al lives an excessive lifestyle and pursues an infamous romance that nearly destroys him.

When Weird was first announced, I’m not going to lie, I shrugged it off. And no, it wasn’t simply because it was going to be released on whatever the hell The Roku Channel is, but because I thought ‘oh look, here’s yet another music biopic, not like we have many of those around!’. However then the trailer released, and that’s when I realised that this wasn’t a conventional biopic, but in fact a parody of the genre itself. And that made perfect sense. Weird Al Yankovic’s entire career is based on parodying, so of course the movie of his life would be a parody too. Immediately the casting of Daniel Radcliffe made so much more sense, as let’s be honest here, Al Yankovic and Harry Potter look nothing alike. However recently Radcliffe had been appearing in very niche and unique indie films where his roles ranged from playing a farting corpse to a man with horns to a straight up Nazi skinhead. Imagine that, one day you’re a kid at Hogwarts learning spells and shit with an owl and the next day you’re a Nazi. So he’s proven to be willing to go as far and wide as you can, so having him play an exaggerated Weird Al (I say that as if the original Al isn’t exaggerated) made perfect sense. 

Now I have seen Weird: The Al Yankovic Story, and nope, still no clue what The Roku Channel is, so you can make your guesses on what means I used to find and watch this movie... So anyway, does it live up to the parody shenanigans it promises? The answer is yes. Look, it’s nothing ground-breaking, however it’s silly and goofy, and if you’re in the mood for something stupid, this is it. Everything is very over-the-top, and every moment of the movie pokes fun at the stereotypical parts of the biopic genre. How much of it is true to life? Well, Weird Al has said in an interview that he only met Madonna once, however in this movie she is featured very prominently, so that’s your answer.

The cast are all very game here. Daniel Radcliffe is very amusing as Weird Al, and what makes him work is that he delivers lines very casually, without forcing the joke, and as such his straight faced performance actually adds to the ridiculousness surrounding him. Evan Rachel Wood is delightfully evil as the villainous Madonna, and Rainn Wilson as Dr. Demento is basically his character Dwight from The Office, just nicer. There are also a load of surprising cameos sprinkled throughout, and no, don’t expect any A-list cameos, these are more obscure ones, but if you know them you’ll recognise them. But yes, the entire cast plays the comedy very straight, which only adds to the absurdity and heightens the jokes. 

Weird: The Al Yankovic Story is a farcical spoof that just gets weirder the further it goes. I mean, the entire final act revolves around Al going up against a certain leader of a drug cartel, and at that point I completely lost it. Also, a minor complaint I’d say is that the movie looks very cheap, in that the many characters that appear seem to be wearing the cheapest Halloween-sale get-ups possible, though now I think that was a purposeful addition to the overall stupid shenanigans the movie is going for. This movie exists for the pure means of fun, and though I do wish we could have gotten more snippets of Weird Al parodying his own music videos, I still got a hoot from witnessing the very true and non exaggerated origins behind such hits as “Eat It” and “Like a Surgeon”. It’s a good time, and though I still think Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story is the superior music biopic parody, Weird is a delightful piece of goofiness that should provide you with enough laughs, should you be able to find wherever The Roku Channel is. 

Overall score: 6/10

[bisluthq]

https://www.tumblr.com/bisluthq/757777034966712320/my-swiftie-fandom-comes-in-like-a-waves-i-got?source=share

16-year-old anon from earlier, and yeah, same! If you'll allow me to rant for a minute (though I may have already done so in the past) here is MY experience as a Taylor Swift fan over the years:

First remember being aware of who she is around Red/1989. I think the first song I heard was IKYWT and it was on the radio. From that point I would find any Taylor-related content on YouTube. This included music videos, interviews, parodies, the occasional bit of gossip (the only tidbit I remember pre-rep was Calvin at the Massage place that gave happy endings😭), and of course, speed-up versions of her songs because this was pre her adding her catalogue BACK to streaming, not that I WAS streaming at age 7, but yk.

I had a vague knowledge of some of her boyfriends. I knew Harry (duh) and Calvin (also kind of duh) and Joe Jonas. I knew of the Jonas Brothers (mainly cause of the purity ring jokes, which if we're being fr is their main legacy) and I also knew he did Cake By The Ocean which was EVERYWHERE circa 2016. I don't think I knew he'd dated Taylor, though. I think I also only found out about Hiddles and that whole circus around Rep.

Around 2015ish i saw a 1989 CD at Target and asked my mum to buy it. I then got a Red CD soon after. Cut to 2016/2017, Taylor's music isn't being played on the radio, and my 9(?) year old self is sad and confused. I knew nothing of the #taylorswiftisoverparty. I just knew they weren't playing her music anymore. Cut to 2017 - i, alongside the rest of the world, sat and watched the LWYMMD music video. I also remember watching the lyric video and being scared by the snake😭

After this, I tried very hard to listen to rep in full, but had no idea where to find it. One night, I was a scrolling on YT and found Delicate (or Dress), and then came across Better Than Revenge. My 9/10 year old self was SCANDALISED and VERY confused, as I had never seen the Speak Now album cover in. my. life. and thought she had already put out an album. Anyway, sometime between the release of Rep & Lover, I stopped seeking stuff out. When the Lover singles came out I hated ALL of them. From memory, ME! felt like a personal violation (I was BIG into PAN!C at the time, and hated that the song was so ass - though, in retrospect, the stuff of theirs (later work. Very little early stuff) that I listened to was objectively worse), Lover (song) was boring, and You Need To Calm Down made me viscerally angry due to me starting to realise I was not straight and desperately trying to believe I was wrong. I did not seek out Lover the way I had done Rep and was, at this point, a genuine anti.

Then folklore came out and people RAVED about it, so I decided to check it out. I liked it, but didn't click with it in the way other people had. It did inspire me to check out her back catalogue + rep/Lover. By the time evermore dropped I was IN IT, and I became even more in it upon hearing evermore. I got very involved in fandom culture (also got very into Glee... you can imagine what the combination inspired in 13 year old me), until around 2022, when I began being frustrated with Taylor’s jets and perfomatitive activism. I once again went anti (I also got very into Stranger Things around this time, specifically Max... played by Sadie Sink... Taylor Swift is the only constant in this world). Then, she reeled me back in with the Midnights marketing campaign. Once again, I was there the second it dropped (as I have been for all of her releases since evermore). WCS broke my brain (as right where you left me had the year prior) and I had no choice but to go FULL swiftie. And since then I've maintained it pretty solidly.

That's about it. If you've read through to here, thank you🙏 hopefully you found it interesting/somewhat entertaining.

that’s fair! It’s okay to like stuff more at certain stages and super fucking normal of you xx

I will also say that some of the stuff I say on here is probably not super age appropriate for my younger anons lol but at the same time I do try to be cognizant of y’all and idk it’s real life so I also try not to encourage people to do stupid shit. *I* have done stupid shit but that doesn’t mean you guys should. I do sometimes worry I glamorize like unhealthy behaviors and I hope y’all have the sense not to do a lot of the shit that I’ve done 💀

[nightcoremoon]

my experience in the Harry Potter fandom (before we all realized Rowling was a talentless hack, an attention whore, and a spiteful bitch) from ages 6 to 12 was blind adoration, until the last book came out and was a steaming pile of shit thus killing my interest in the series and turning me into the most jaded of teenagers you’ve ever met in your entire life.

i still read the odd fic here and there, but ages 13-16 I was way more into avatar the last airbender, avengers, pokemon, jak & daxter, warcraft, inheritance, death note, invader zim, and all of my contemporaries were into HP and twilight and thus by extension so was I. and I still occasionally was like okay yeah the books are mediocre schlock at best but hey they helped destigmatize the occult in the mainstream eye, and the movies did the best job they could with what they were given, and the books COULD have been good if only you’d just changed like 90% of them. the fandom wasn’t about the books themselves, it was all about the culture that the books had created. because nobody really read any of the books more than once because everybody just watched the movies (DON’T EVEN LIE AND SAY THATS NOT TRUE).

we all rolled our eyes at rowling jingling her keys to make us talk about it again and again but it’s like, ok so dumbledore is gay but you didn’t fucking show it and you made the actual gay character lupin die offscreen, ok so snape was apparently a good person underneath being a toxic shitlord but you didn’t fucking show it and you made the actual only good person hagrid a complete non-entity, ok so Anthony Goldstein was apparently your jewish representation but you didn’t fucking even say his goddamn name once in the entire series and the only black characters were racebent for the movies because you didn’t fucking even mention they were black because we know full fuckin well that every single character was white except for CHO. GODDAMN. CHANG.

all you really had to do was say, okay yeah in my youthful ignorance I accidentally made a contribution to problematic media and so I will now strive to fix my mistakes and write a new series that shows how I have grown as an author. except she didn’t do that. she just greenlit the cursed child and accepted royalties for fantastic beasts. and if it weren’t for eddie redmayne and the fact that it’s part of a licensed franchise, the movie would have totally flopped. it was not very good. and jude law and johnny depp did their best but the script was awful and it suffered from prequelitis (which so far only Star Wars has avoided and even then only very narrowly due to saturation). rowling didn’t even have any fucking writing credits on the movie but she made a fat stack of cash anyway. that’s a trend you’ll notice.

every single way I ever found enjoyment in the fandom was in reading people on here suggesting ways to improve it, or to parody it. like desi harry and black hermione, a very potter musical, potter puppet pals, a billion different rewrites that were all way better than the source materials. i even read my immortal, AND YES IT IS REALLY REALLY BAD not even in an ironic so bad it’s good kind of way, I mean that it was just absolutely godawful in every conceivable way, and was only a highlight of how not to write a fanfic. it was so bad that I reread the original books as a palate cleanser. and let me tell you this, harry potter and the sorcerer’s stone is one of the clumsiest books I’d ever read as a teenager. it’s completely amateur in every way, and it made me understand just why it was so popular with the 13-16 year old crowd. it was written at their reading level. the passages from the actual HP books are all virtually indistinguishable from fanfictions I read over a decade ago made by people who are in their early 20s now. in fact there are plenty of fanfictions written by teenagers that are better written than even the least shitty HP book which is defaulted to half blood prince if only because for once there’s actually some narrative cohesion that isn’t a complete and total ass pull and because if you’ve written five full length books then you goddamn well better understand the basics. engaging with the source material was not fun at all and the only way to milk any fun from it was to make fun of it. and by age 16 I was sick and tired of the cynicism. and around that age is when I joined the my little pony fandom.

and they were the two best years of my life at the time. it was nice to be engaging with wholesome content while also making memes that poked fun at its occasional harmless flaws. I watched other fandoms from a distance but MLP was my primary and honestly it still is, I just haven’t been as heavily involved with it these days beyond listening to the music and rebubbling fanart and even on occasion dabbling in the fanfic realm. but it was integral to me figuring out that hey wait a second I’m not a boy after all haha oops. so when I was 18 and finally transed my gender everything was… fine. ten years later I’m more into games that end with craft lmao

and then everything changed when the terf nation attacked.

by the time the queer parts of the Harry Potter fanbase (who weren’t abject pieces of garbage) were shocked & appalled by the betrayal I was the old coot in my rocking chair holding back the urge to say I FUCKING TOLD YOU SO. when people went back and were like, hey actually wow the books were full of racism and antisemitism, all of the black brown jewish etc parts of the former fandom did not hold back the urge to say we fucking told you so. but as a whole white trans people didn’t really seem to care about its problematic natures until it affected them. which is not a good enough reason to bully harass and suicidebait them especially since they were like 12. thankfully that seems to have done wonders in having the collective media literacy of white trans teenagers increase somewhat. that was a few years ago now and I’ll freely admit that I’m somewhat out of touch with the youth right now, I don’t have a tiktok, I don’t use twitter or instagram, I barely use tumblr. i couldn’t tell you the name of one single popular singer these days, and if I did it would be someone that the kids would roll their eyes at and call me a boomer because I said rihanna or beyonce or nicki minaj or something from the 00s and/or 10s. my favorite musicians all started in the 90s. if I asked out somebody who was only 20 it would be weird and creepy. i know where I stand in society these days and that’s fine. but I don’t exactly know where things stand as far as where most teenagers are at. i hope they’re doing fine. i hope they escaped the clutches of the damage HP did. oh wait I forgot about the blood libel game, gOD DAMN IT-

[twistedtummies2]

Gathering of the Greatest Gumshoes - Opening & Rules

I know I only just finished a big countdown this past January, but this one has been on my brain for a LONG time, and I think the time has finally come to unveil it before the unsuspecting world. Be very afraid. Ha Ha.

Anyone who knows me probably knows that I love crime stories. From Whodunnits, to noir-style thrillers, and to everything else in-between. I’ve always loved detective stories, of pretty much all sorts…and a big part of what makes a great detective story is, of course, the detective or detectives on the case. Whether they’re facing an arch-nemesis or just trying to figure out a baffling mystery no one else can solve, detectives are probably one of the most quintessential kinds of protagonist characters: they’re people who essentially make order out of chaos. They come into a situation filled with fear and uncertainty, and they do everything in their power to fix the problem. Sometimes it’s a job, sometimes it’s a weird hobby, sometimes it’s done in a vigilante fashion, but all methods fulfill the same basic function: bringing a just and rational solution to a most unfathomable problem.

I decided it would be fun to do a countdown talking about my favorite sleuths, and…I’m going to be honest, this might be the single hardest countdown I’ve ever made in my life. There are SO MANY characters I love who fit the bill, and choosing and ranking the ones who would make it here was very difficult. To pick and choose who would or would not count, I had to develop a LOT of rules, determining which characters would be selected. I’ll go over some of the basics here…

No “supernatural detectives.” These are characters who don’t so much catch criminals so much as fight monsters, aliens, ghosts, and so on. This includes characters like Kolchak (Kolchak: The Night Stalker), Ichabod Crane (FOX’s Sleepy Hollow), Harry Dresden (The Dresden Files), Lucifer Morningstar (Lucifer), and…anybody from “Supernatural” or “The X-Files.” While there will be some detectives on the list who face inhuman foes, their stories fit more in the vein of crime fiction than horror/fantasy fiction, which is where I feel most of these characters really fit.

No characters who are technically detectives, but where the focus isn’t necessarily on them BEING detectives. (One example is Inspector Javert from Les Miserables.) Similarly, with one exception, no characters who aren’t the focal sleuths of their respective series. (An example here is Inspector Lestrade from Sherlock Holmes.)

No characters who are more “superheroes” than “detectives.” Characters like Batman can count, because they’re essentially “super detectives.” However, characters like Superman or Spider-Man do not count; both have their “detective moments,” but that’s not really the focus of their stories or characters, typically speaking.

No characters who are “noble criminals.” These are characters who aren’t so much “detectives” so much as anti-heroic or misunderstood hero figures that fight crime by committing crimes. Characters like Arsene Lupin, William James Moriarty, or the Netflix version of Carmen Sandiego do not apply to this countdown. Similarly, characters who can be classified as "crimefighters that aren't detectives," who straddle a fine line between these sorts and more direct heroes - like the Green Hornet or the swashbuckling Zorro - will not be counted, either.

Finally, no parody or pastiche characters. Comical detectives are allowed, but they have to be their own characters, not satires of pre-existing figures. Tied to that, detectives with multiple interpretations will only be eligible for one spot on the list. Characters like Sherlock Holmes, for instance, have been spoofed, adapted, and reimagined countless times. It would be greatly unfair to include multiple entries with the same basic character over and over again. So you won’t be seeing anybody like Basil of Baker Street or Sherlock Hemlock here.

There is a lot of gray area to be found with many of those rules, and as I do think I mentioned, one or two exceptions may be found. Even with these strictures in place, I had to leave many characters I love out of the running, and I’m pretty sure I might have even forgotten a few I enjoy. There’s just only so much room I can make. So if a favorite character or franchise you’re familiar with doesn’t appear anywhere, just know it’s either because I don’t know them, or I just didn’t have room for them.

With that said…it will soon be time to get a clue. Tomorrow, I shall post my requisite Honorable Mentions – Twelve Terrific Detectives who almost made the cut, but not quite – and then the countdown will begin in earnest. Welcome to an event I like to call…A Gathering of the Greatest Gumshoes!