#the things the director did were all in line with that fucked-up form of sacrifice.

[high-voltage-rat]

Actually I'm still thinking about it. Another interesting way in which RvB is anti-war is the way that the Director fills the role of a villain and antagonist (especially in the Recollections trilogy, where he's a faceless villain we never see but is responsible for everything that happens).

In his memos to the Chairman, the Director emphasizes his sense of duty and obligation to the military- he becomes irate for the first time when he feels that it's being implied that he was derelict in his duty... or that the work he did out of that duty is being criticized for being against the military's interests. He also talks about Allison's death in a way I find... interesting.

"You see; I never had the chance to serve in battle. Nor did fate provide me the opportunity to sacrifice myself for humanity as it did for so many others in the Great War. Someone extremely dear to me was lost very early in my life. My mind has always plagued me with the question: If the choice had been placed in my hands, could I have saved her? [...] But, given the events of these past few weeks, I feel confident that had I been given the chance, I would have made those sacrifices myself... Had I only the chance."

The idea of sacrifice is central to the way he talks about his wife's loss, to the way he talks about the war in general. He talks of sacrifice with a sense of veneration- that it's something he aspires to do, that he longs for. There's a few ways we can interpret "I would have made those sacrifices myself"...

-That in Allison's place, he thinks he would have laid down his life too.

-That if given the chance, he would have given his life to save hers.

But most interestingly...

-That he would have sacrificed Allison's life for the continued survival of humanity, if that was what duty called for.

...And personally, I think all 3 are true.

In most war media, the Director's perspective on sacrifice is very common. Sacrifice is glorious and heroic- to die in battle is an honour- and it's the only way to ensure the group you serve survives. This is a tool of propaganda- nobody wants to go to war just for the sake of it, you have to give them a reason that the risk of dying or being permanently disabled isn't just acceptable, but desirable. Beyond that, most people don't want to do things they think are immoral- you have to convince them it's important, a necessary lesser evil. You teach them to sacrifice their morals, too.

The way they train soldiers to follow orders and to kill, is to convince them that they, and the people around them, and the people they care about, will all die if they don't. It's drilled into your head from day one. It's the way they ensure their commanding officers won't shy away from sending their men off to die. The message is constant- sacrifice is your duty, and duty ensures your people's survival.

In the Director's eyes, the damage Project Freelancer caused was his sacrifice. He never got the opportunity to sacrifice himself during the war- so he sacrificed others, as military brass do. The Freelancers- including his daughter. The countless sim troopers. Any people he considered "collateral damage" on missions. And when the opportunity to do so presented itself, he sacrificed a copy of himself- Alpha- and he sacrificed a copy of Allison- Tex.

The very thing that derailed his life- the loss of his wife- he made it happen again. He put her copy in dangerous situations, let her exist in the position of constant repeated failure, created the circumstances that would eventually lead to her death. He put their daughter in deadly situations that nearly killed her repeatedly, provided her with impossible expectations leading to self-destructive behaviours in the name of duty, implanted her with two AI knowing they could cause her permanent harm. He was confident he "would have made those sacrifices himself" because he did.

The Director is the embodiment of the military war machine. As an antagonist, he is a warning against buying into the glorification of sacrifice. He's a condemnation of the idea that one should be willing to do anything to win a war- that duty to the military is the thing that ensures survival... All the messages that are pushed to ensure recruitment and obedience of soldiers.

He's a reminder that swallowing the propaganda leads to you doing terrible things... and in the end, you're a broken man left mourning the losses that you suffered even as you repeated them, convinced that it was all necessary.

[appleciders]

Rachel + Leah + Water, the Director’s Cut!

Okay, so I made this gifset exploring Rachel and Leah and the ocean, but because there’s a ten gif limit and a major point of gifsets is for them to look nice, I had to sacrifice a lot of the behind the scenes thoughts and initial versions that came along the way. I still wanted to talk about them though, because I found a lot of them really cool, so I figured I’d stick all that in this post. It’s gonna get long, so you can find the rest under the cut!

So first up, we have Leah as we first see her in the water. (I’m using shitty screenshots because tumblr has a 2mb limit for gifs on text posts and I don’t feel like compressing these down lmao.) Here, she’s face-down, unconscious, floating on a fragment of the plane. This is the first time we see any of the girls in the water.

As Leah gives her dramatic speech talks to the detectives, we see flashbacks to the girl’s lives pre-island. There we see that one of them already has a very strong relationship with the water already, in her before-life: Rachel.

Rachel, as we know, is a diver. We see her take a magnificent tumble into the pool, but when she surfaces, her coach is sternly head-shaking. She corrects Rachel’s form, and after she walks away, Rachel echoes the correction, clearly frustrated with herself. 

Back to Leah. We next see Leah waking up on her lil chunk of flotsam. When she realizes what the hell’s going on, she does what we all would do and starts screaming in terror.

Her panic gets interrupted by Jeannette’s classic Raise Your Glass ringtone. (This was my alarm for two years in high school, and when I watched this for the first time I did have an out-of-body experience). She swims her way over to the Hello Kitty suitcase and—irrationally—unzips it, but we’ll cut her some slack because she’s in some serious shock. As she tries to get the phone, it slips through her fingers and starts spiraling down to the bottom of the ocean. She dives after it.

Unfortunately, she quickly runs out of air and has to give up. She then spots Jeannette floating nearby, checks her out, judges her to be “just a little roughed up,” and then sees land and has a big oh-thank-fuck moment. Because we saw Gretchen’s team placing all of the girls, we know that Linh and Leah were the only two that were put out in the open water. The other girls were put in the beach, or, in Martha’s case, near the shore. This was probably done to quell some of Leah’s suspicions about the crash, but it does give me a couple questions about how they got the other girls wet—did they hose them all down? Pour a couple buckets over their heads? Bob each of them up and down a couple times in a big net like fries in a fryer?? 

Anyway, not important. 

Next that we see, Leah has pulled Jeannette/Linh in from the water. (My Australian parents, who can never pass up an opportunity to give ocean safety tips, chimed in at this point in our first watch to say “See how she’s doing it! You always want to hold someone from behind and pull them in that way. Good job, well done.” So there’s some approval for you, Leah.) As Leah nears the shore, Dot and Toni come tearing in and they help pull the two of them out. 

The rest of the episode after that really only concerns fresh water—Toni and Shelby set out in search of it, to no avail, and Nora helpfully plugs Diet Coke reminds us multiple times that sugar’s heavier than water, so “sugar sinks.” We do set up a goal for the next couple episodes, though: Rachel says, “I'm gonna swim out to the plane tomorrow. See if I can find anything,” and Leah volunteers to come with. Rachel gives her a nod of respect.

Moving on to episode two, we have Rachel and Leah’s (iconic) first real conversation. Rachel says she’s still going out to the wreckage. Leah looks out and looks back at her, incredulous, and says, “Rachel, the water’s insane.” Here’s a big recurring association—the water and “insanity.” (I use insanity here because that’s the language they use, along with psycho/crazy. In no way does that reflect my actual beliefs about their behavior nor am I condoning the way they use those words.) Leah points out the rip current (“well done,” said my mum), and explains her very brief stint as a norcal surfer. Rachel still looks set on going, but then Leah says:

Turns out, Leah can be as ripe with foreshadowing as Fatin. This marks the appearance of their second main association with the ocean—death. After she says this, Leah turns Rachel’s attention inland, and the two agree to climb a big hill to scope out their situation.

Episode two is also obviously Rachel’s episode, so we see a lot of her relationship with diving. 

We see her plunge over and over and over again, drilling technique and form, but despite all her hard work, we learn her coach advised her to quit the team. Instead, Rachel throws herself in twice as hard, and ends up with an eating disorder. By the time the nationals come around, she’s too physically weak to dive safely, and she ends up hitting her head as she goes down. She surfaces in the pool with blood flowing around her.

She refuses to see that as the end of her diving career. She says she’s gonna “get back out there” and “be fucking great again” and she tells Nora at the end of the episode that she needs her to let her believe that.

In episode three, we finally see Leah and Rachel’s trip out to the plane! Nora comes along with them, her relationship with Rachel smoothed over after the events of ep two. “Nora’s a good swimmer,” Rachel explains as she invites her, “We were both water babies.” Water’s clearly been central to Nora and Rachel’s identities since they were really young. 

The three of them make their escape from the rest of the girls as the topic of building a shelter comes up. “Not interested in putting down roots!” Rachel calls. In keeping with the elements theme, Rachel isn’t looking to be grounded. She climbs super high into the air and she dives deep into the water, but earth isn’t her thing. (See: the quicksand scene. Whoops.)

Anyway, the three of them paddle out into the water. Rachel dives down, scopes out the plane, tells Nora she doesn’t expect her to “fucking free dive in open water,” and then looks to Leah and asks if she’s ready. Leah reluctantly agrees. 

We get our first shot Rachel swimming down into the ocean and our second shot of Leah (first the phone, second the plane). In the wreckage of the plane, they discover the black box, affixed to the wall. They keep trying to wrench it free, but it’s stuck, and Leah—who’s primary activity is, like, reading—keeps having to surface for air. Rachel gets frustrated and grabs her leg, holding her down. 

Leah screams and fights, but Rachel doesn’t let go. We cut away, and when we see them again, they’ve emerged victorious (Rachel) and drowned as dogs after a bath (Leah and Nora) with the black box in hand. Later, Leah mutters the above line to Fatin, calling Rachel a “psychopath.” For those keeping score at home, here’s where we refer back to the association between water and “insanity.”

In episode four, the ocean benevolently bestows a bag of takis upon Nora, and we have our whole shelter-building shebang. It’s all very land-based until Leah and Fatin go head to head, which ends with Fatin smearing her blood all over Leah’s face. Leah, with her usual flair, strips off her clothes as she walks into the ocean. She stays down there, passively letting the water wash the blood from her face.

This shot parallels a couple things. First, the drifting blood visually parallels Rachel in the pool after her diving injury. Second, we have Rachel staring out at the water where Leah’s disappeared and going, “Man, that is some real Virginia Woolf-type shit.” Dot has no fucking clue what she means, so Fatin interprets: “It means that bitch is crazy. She said you were the psychopath of the group.” Now it’s Leah who’s done something in the water that’s been deemed insane. The water and “insanity;” the water and accusations of insanity within their relationship. 

Those accusations pop up in episode five, but the episode is pretty focused on the inland search for Fatin, and revolves around fresh water, not salt water. (That could be a whole nother post lol.) It’s in episode six where we again see these two return to the ocean. 

Rachel is diving in the ocean! For fun! She’s picking up pretty shells (which granted isn’t the safest thing to do in the pacific, cone snails are not our friends), and she’s grinning, and she’s generally enjoying herself. With the, uh, finale situation, we’re probably not gonna get to see her smile for a bit, which is sad, because she should get to do this more often! This shot visually echoes her diving for the plane and Leah diving for the phone, except she can be in a better mood because there is no end goal. 

So she goes diving, ends up finding a bunch of mussels, gathers ‘em up, and brings ‘em back to camp. They all chow down, but wind up with serious food poisoning. Martha and Toni ring death’s doorbell a couple of times. Rachel blames herself—she’s the one that went swimming out there, she brought the mussels back. Again, we see that connection between the ocean and death.

And that association comes back bright an early in ep seven! The tide surges higher than they’ve ever seen, taking down their shelter and leaving them all scrambling. 

While Leah convinces Fatin that her life is more important than her suitcase, Rachel is left with a decision: help Nora, screaming to her from where she’s clinging to a rock for dear life, or grab the black box. In a move that contrasts Toni’s immediate and unquestioning aid of Martha, Rachel picks the black box. 

After, when they’re debriefing, Nora’s quick to bring it up. She doesn’t hide her hurt. “It happened so fast,” she says, “we all acted irrationally. Like Fatin, who jumped into a rip current to save her toothbrush. Or Rachel, who left me for fucking dead.” I think this counts as a double whammy for the “insanity” and death count—I think “acted irrationally” is as close as Nora gets to calling anyone crazy, and is honestly a better descriptor of all the other instances of “insanity” that we’ve seen, and the ocean was the source of the very real risk to Nora’s life. 

(Honestly, I think Rachel thought she was making a rational choice here—just with some grim fucking calculus. Still, given that nobody’d responded to the black box by then, I think it was a decision fueled by the need to keep hold of hope more than actual rationality.) In a fun contrast to the rest of the episode, it’s Leah that keeps a level head in this situation. 

The rest of the episode is low on water scenes, though Leah’s paranoia about Shelby is fueled by her sneaking off to the water, which could fall under the “insanity” category. It also marks where Nora begins to take an active role in breaking apart Rachel’s fantasy about diving again. 

Ep eight has one of the best montages in a series of great montages, with the playing in the water scene! A plane has seen them, they’re gonna be saved, and they all get to get high and act like kids. 

I have this lingering and probably irrational concern that the entire water play scene is choreographed and that it’s chock-full of foreshadowing. Like I know to some extent they likely were just like “yeah guys go goof off in the water,” but like...the wave pulling Rachel and Nora apart here...I mean.... (Rachel is probably gonna get more blood on Dot in the near future, too. ) That aside, their horseplay gets interrupted when Leah notices some blood on Dot, which Rachel realizes is her own period blood.  

Fatin then chimes in with her ever-gleeful foreshadowing: “Shark week for Rachel.” So while this whole encounter with the water actually seems mostly good for a change, it’s colored by the tie-in to what we know is coming.

In ep nine, reality has set in that rescue isn’t imminent. Everyone’s starving, Leah has started to spiral, and Rachel’s unusually skittish. By the tide’s edge, Nora asks for her help fishing, but Rachel refuses, saying that she’s weak. Nora flicks water at her, and Rachel flinches, clearly scared.

Starvation seems to have triggered Rachel’s trauma around the water leftover from her diving accident. In response, Nora reaches out a hand and says, “Let’s go for a walk.”

Meanwhile, Leah’s spiral has reached critical. She starts ranting about the ocean and the water and pushes past Dot, sprinting into the waves:

And so she’s taken to heart the way they think Jeannette’s body “escaped” the island—the tide—and it’s been spun like cotton candy in her head. She’s right, technically—Jeanette/Linh’s body was moved off the island by boat, and there’s definitely an argument that if they really did all swim out Gretchen’s team would save them, or at least try to. This is also a very real suicide attempt. So it’s kind of a culmination of the threats of death and mental health issues that’ve been wrapped up in the ocean since the start.

On Rachel’s end, Nora has taken her up to a cliff. Rachel calls the whole thing “borderline insane,” walking up when they’re so low on energy, but Nora tells her she needs to make a truce between herself and the water. 

“You’re afraid of it now,” she says, and Rachel replies that, “All it ever did was make me sick.” Nora immediately surges forward to say “That’s not true!” Rachel, incredulous, says, “Isn't this what you want? For me to hang it up? For me to forget the whole fucking diving game?” Nora says, “No. I don't know. I don't want you to forget you.” She then tells Rachel she should dive off the end of the cliff, that she marked it to make sure it’s safe. Rachel says she can’t.

There’s a lot here. First, there’s the first time we’ve seen of Rachel explicitly call herself sick. In episode two, even in a treatment center, she still denies it, says she’s just an athlete who knows what it takes. But now she’s reached a place where she acknowledges her eating disorder—and also probably her recent illness with the mussels—and ties it directly to the water. It’s the reason she’s sick.

Nora’s fear that Rachel will forget herself also just hammers home how central the water has always been to Rachel’s identity. Cutting herself off from the water would be cutting off a core part of herself. (...whoops) And we’ve seen that it does bring her actual joy, when she’s allowed to relax with it, but she’s had such traumatic associations rolled up into it now. Nora doesn’t want Rachel to do diving as a sport anymore, because of how badly it’s hurt her, but she does want Rachel to keep diving and swimming as like, a form of unevaluated personal expression.

At the moment that Rachel’s refusing to jump, she and Nora hear shouts from the mainland. They see Fatin and Dot screaming after Leah. Confused, Nora asks, “Where is she going?” but Rachel understands immediately, with absolute certainty, without needing to be told—“To fucking drown to death.” Seven episodes after Leah called heading into the water a death wish, she’s finally proving it true. Rachel squares her shoulders, takes a few deep breaths, and sprints into a dive. 

Unlike all her other dives high altitude dives we’ve seen her do, this dive isn’t qualified based on aesthetics. This dive matters because of what it will do, not on how it looks. And what it does do is bring her into the ocean, where she needs to be for her friend. So with strong strokes, she swims out towards Leah.

When she reaches her, she takes hold of her, pulls her into her chest from behind. She begins to swim with her back to shore. This rescue directly parallels Leah’s rescue of Linh that we talked about above. It also, as the Out in the Wilds podcast insightfully pointed out, really calls Rachel and Leah’s relationship back to the beginning. Whereas Rachel had initially held Leah down in the water, putting her in danger of drowning, Rachel here pulls her out of the water, saving her from drowning. Together, they make it all the way back to the shore.

Finally (and, like, if you’ve made it all the way down here? bless you. thank you), we have episode ten. The ocean doesn’t really figure into episode ten until the very end. Rachel has had a long episode of healing—she’s happy to be full and she’s in a good place with her sister and things seem to be going pretty okay. She decides to heal her relationship with the water, too. She heads out, telling Nora that she’s “Just gonna float, Nor. Just float.”

Just floating. After all the times we saw her plunging into the water, purposefully, with frustration, with drive, with so much to prove and with so much sacrifice and self-abuse to prove it with, Rachel finally just wants to float. She wants to let herself relax. She wants to let the water carry her.

Of course, that means there has to be, like, a massive marine carnivore waiting to mistake her for a seal.

Visually, this shot really parallels the opening shot of Leah on the fragment of plane. Instead of being face-down, though, she’s face-up, and she’s conscious, just not of the threat from below. 

The shark bites.

In a horrible parallel to Leah’s Virginia Woolf moment and Rachel’s diving accident, we see blood pool in the water. Rachel is pulled under. The girls on the land start screaming and running toward her. We know Rachel doesn’t die, but this is still a near-death experience, one that probably cost her her arm. Leah, covered in dirt and her own blood after crawling out of the pit Nora led her into, can only stand and watch, shocked and horrified.

So that got! Way longer than I meant it to! And honestly most of this was condensed into very concise tags in a post I made a few days ago! But if you made it all the way down here, you’ve now seen everything I wanted to fit into that gifset but couldn’t. Thanks for sticking with me, friend <3

[jonsa101]

Max Goodwin and Randall Pearson: The Well-Meaning, Incredibly Self-Centered Leading Men We’ve Grown to Love.

Hey fam! Like I said, I’ve been writing a ton of meta lately and this is another one that’s just been sitting in my drafts. It’s basically a This Is Us and a New Amsterdam meta which is something I haven’t done before but something I want do more of. In my Game of Thrones days I used to write a lot of meta about shows and characters that had similarities so this is fun for me. I hope y’all enjoy this. ALSO THIS HAS SPOILERS FOR BOTH SHOWS!!!!!!!

Without a doubt the two most popular shows on NBC is This is Us and New Amsterdam. And what’s not to love? They’re both emotionally driven, heartfelt, shows that focus on incredibly deep and complex topics. Though one show focuses on family dynamics and the other focuses on the healthcare system, these shows are very similar in more ways than one. Case in point, Max Goodwin and Randall Pearson. The more I watch these two shows, the more I realize how these two characters are so alike!!! These two men are kind-hearted, well intentioned, individuals who genuinely want to make some sort of positive difference. They are incredibly ambitious and always have “bright ideas” and “goals” they want to accomplish and somehow they’re able to meet those goals without ever having to sacrifice their wants and needs. By every definition these men are the “main characters” or the ultimate “protagonists.” These are the folks that we are supposed to root for. At the same time, though these men have many traits to be admired, when you truly look at it both of them can be incredibly self centered and selfish especially when it pertains to their romantic partners and love interests. No matter how appealing you make these characters out to be these men clearly fall under the Behind Every Great Man trope.

The Behind Every Great Man trope has been used countless of times throughout Cinema and TV History that I’m sure that I don’t even have to explain it to you but for the sake of this meta this is how it’s defined.

“Behind Every Great Man...stands an even greater woman! Or in about a hundred variations is a Stock Phrase referring to how people rarely achieve greatness without support structures that go generally unappreciated, and said support structure is a traditionally female role via being the wife, mother, or sometimes another relation. This trope is specifically about a man who is credited with something important, but owes much of his success to the woman in his life.”

This trope usually has a negative connotation (and rightfully so) because the man who often benefits from this is an asshole and unworthy of this type of support!

For example:

Oliva and Fitz

Cristina Yang and Burke

Cookie and Lucious

Ghost and Tasha

There are countless others but these are a few of the couples that come to mind for me. Randall and Max aren’t comparable to any of these men that are listed above but they are still operating under the same trope. It just looks nicer because Max and Randall are inherently good and inspirational. They are the heroes of the story. I would even argue and say that both men fall under the Chronic Hero Syndrome trope which is defined as

“Chronic Hero Syndrome is an "affliction" of cleaner heroes where for them, every wrong within earshot must be righted, and everyone in need must be helped, preferably by Our Hero themself. While certainly admirable, this may have a few negative side-effects on the hero and those around them. Such heroes could wear themselves out in their attempts to help everyone or become distraught and blame themselves for the one time that they're unable to save the day. Spending so much time and effort saving everyone else can also put a strain on the hero's personal or dating life.”

Just because Max and Randall have these incredibly inspiring aspirations, is it fair that their wives and love interests are always expected to rise to the occasion and support them. Is it ok for their partners to continuously sacrifice their wants and needs because they love these men? 

Let’s dive into it. 

Truth be told, Beth Pearson, Helen Sharpe and Georgia Goodwin had to endure a GREAT DEAL to emotionally support the dreams and aspirations of these men while sacrificing so much of themselves in the process. In media we often see women sacrificing so much of their wants and needs out of love for these male leads and rarely do men do the same thing for their romantic partners and love interests. All three of these women clearly fall under the Act of True Love trope defined as

“The Act of True Love proves beyond doubt that you are ready to put your loved one's interests before your own, that you are truly loyal and devoted to them. Usually this involves a sacrifice on your part, at the very least a considerable effort and/or a great risk. The action must be motivated, not by morals or principle or expectation of future reward, but by sheer personal affection.When your beloved is in dire need of your help, or in great danger, and you do something, at great expense to yourself, for the sake of their safety, their welfare, or their happiness, thus proving beyond any doubt that you put their interest ahead of yours.”

Over the past few seasons we have seen all three of these women truly live up to this trope without any true consequences or accountability from the men they’re making all these sacrifices for. For example, in Beth and Randall’s marriage, how many times did Randall spring an idea on Beth without truly talking to her or considering her wants first? Everyone thinks these two are an ideal couple but she has endured A LOT for Randall.

Randall has spontaneously quit his job, moved his dying biological dad into their home, bought his biological dad’s old apartment building, fostered and adopted a child and also ran for city councilman outside of his district. In all of these decisions, Randall “consulted” Beth about it but at the same time didn’t really consult her. In a way there has always been this expectation of Beth to just go along for the ride with what Randall wants. Is anyone else exhausted from reading that list?! That’s a lot for partner to endure and lovingly support. But Beth has endured and has been Randall’s rock through it all!!! What worries me is that the one time Beth spoke out about her wants and needs of pursuing dance again, he couldn’t match the same energy she was giving him and eventually it led to world war three between them. Though things are looking up in their relationship  and he’s starting to support her more, has Randall nearly given to Beth as much as she’s given to him? Absolutely not!

Similar to Randall, Max also had a wife who was a dancer. in fact, she was a prima ballerina. Unlike Randall and Beth, Max relationship with Georgia was rocky from the start. When we were first introduced to them Max and Georgia were separated and rightfully so. Georgia was never Max’s first priority. The hospital always came first in their relationship. He couldn’t even dedicate a full night to her for their proposal. In order to “save” their marriage they decide to have a baby and they both committed to taking a step back in their careers in order to do so. The problem was Max didn’t keep his side of their commitment and took a job to become the medical director at the biggest public hospital in the U.S. She gave up her career to start a family and he totally and completely betrayed her trust. So throughout season one we see them trying to rebuild their marriage but even in the midst of trying to rebuild a marriage based on trust and mutual respect Max still keeps things from Georgia. For several episodes he didn’t tell her that he had advance stages of throat cancer. He only told her when Georgia asked him to move back home. That’s fucked up! Then throughout their pregnancy he was never fully there for Georgia because he was either to preoccupied with the hospital or himself. At the end of it all, Georgia died tragically at the beginning of season two and really had nothing to show for it in her relationship with Max other than her daughter Luna.

Now let’s bring Helen Sharpe into the fold. While all of this stuff was going on with Max and his wife in season one, Max was developing a deep friendship, borderline emotional affair with Helen. Their relationship started out with Helen being his oncologist. As the new Medical Director of New Amsterdam, he swore Helen to secrecy about his diagnosis so that he could still run the hospital. Through that secrecy they eventually formed a deep bond but as his cancer got worse his secret was let out of the bag. He realistically needed someone to step up and run the hospital when he was going through chemo and though Helen already had commitments she stepped up and became his deputy medical director. Somewhere along the lines Max and Helen started developing feelings for each other. As Helen becomes aware of those feelings, she made a choice and decides to remove herself as Max’s doctor. He BITCHES about it but eventually accepts the boundary she’s clearly trying to set. Mind you, as this is unfolding, like Max, Helen is also in a new relationship with her boyfriend Panthaki. As Max’s cancer seems to be getting worse with his new doctor, she goes back on her boundary and decides to be his doctor again. This pisses her boyfriend off because he could already peep the vibe between them and he breaks up with her. When we get into season two, Max’s wife died and Helen set him up in a clinical trail (with a doctor she previously fired) that’s helping his cancer.  Unbeknownst to Max, this doctor ends up holding his life saving treatment plan over Helen’s head and in order for his treatment to continue she gives this doctor half of her department!

Helen has sacrificed a lot for Max and now in season three she’s finally prioritizing her current wants and needs first! Like Randall, Max is starting to turn a page and is starting to support Helen and truly listen to the wants and needs that she has. All of this is good but my question is did any of these women have to sacrifice so much for the men in their lives to get a clue?

Why is it that this is a trope we see in media time and time and time again? Even if these men are good, why don’t we still keep these male characters accountable when they put their significant others in these situations that are clearly not fair? I’ve watched countless tv shows and I’ve seen a lot of tv couples but I think I have only come across one couple where the male counterpart has selflessly loved his significant other and has always put her needs above his own. 

That character my friend is none other than PACEY WITTER

I might be mistaken but I think Joey and Pacey are the most popular ship in tv history and honestly, rightfully so! This is only example I can think of where the male in the relationship so willingly puts the wants and needs of his partner first. It is a completely selfless and sacrificial love. He never wants to hold her back and he never asks her to compromise her wants or needs for him. That’s why I think so many women love Pacey because in a sea of TV relationships, Pacey Witter is a fucking unicorn.

So to wrap this up does this mean that I hate Randall Pearson or Max Goodwin? No! I adore them. I love both of their characters so much. I just think that when we see the media continuously play out the sacrificial wife/love interest for the sake of their male counterparts, it should be called out. I’m all about sacrificial and selfless love but it should come from both sides.❤️❤️❤️

Anyway I hope y’all enjoy this! As always my DMs are opening here or on Twitter @oyindaodewale

[imagitory]

Star Wars Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker review [SPOILERS]

Hey, everybody! So I just got back from seeing the newest Star Wars and...whew, am I tired!

For those of you who want a spoiler-free review, I’ll just say that there’s a reason people are so split about this movie. In some ways, I could argue that TRoS is trying to be its own stand-alone thing, and it does so by shoving in way too many plot beats and new characters without enough development or even a satisfactory conclusion for them...and yet at the same time, it tries so hard to evoke the original trilogy like The Force Awakens did, whether through iconography, cameos, or other kinds of fanservice. To put it very simply, if you disliked The Last Jedi, you might come out enjoying this more, since this movie and its director clearly shared your view, but even if The Last Jedi is a flawed film, I feel it still ended up having better direction, character arcs, and storytelling than this film did.

For those of you who don’t fear spoilers...journey on.

The Good!

+Just like in the other installments in this new trilogy, there were some great action moments. I liked when Kylo and Rey were fighting over the First Order ship with the Force, pulling it back and forth like they had previously done with Anakin’s lightsaber. Poe’s lightspace jumping in the Millennium Falcon was a cool trick, and I actually really enjoyed the short suspenseful bit with Poe, Finn, Rey, and the droids sneaking around in the wintry planet Kijimi, too.

+The trick at the end where Rey passed Kylo Anakin’s lightsaber through the Force and the two battled side-by-side while in different locations was neat. I might’ve liked to see that trick used differently (see below), but it was still really cool.

+Poe and Finn were acting like SUCH boyfriends during this entire movie. I don’t care how much “NO HOMO” J.J. tried to slap on these guys in the script (and I’ll discuss that in a minute), these two were friggin’ boyfriends and that was canon, end of story.

+I liked that Leia was able to mentor Rey, and Leia’s death was appropriately sad. It felt like I was mourning Carrie all over again, especially since we’re so close to the anniversary of her death.

+It was kind of cool to see Luke’s old X-Wing again. I might’ve had it reappear in a different way, but it was still cool.

+Rey hearing all of the Jedi in her head for the first time when she was facing Palpatine at the end was great. I might’ve pushed it further and made it more visually interesting, but I’ll get to that in the more negative section.

+For all of the rather unnecessary fanservice, there were a few music cues that really worked -- namely, the Imperial March echo when Rey arrived in the old throne room on the Death Star, Leia’s theme upon her death, and the Jedi theme when Poe saw the fleet of reinforcements arriving.

The Not-So-Good...

+The Reylo-ness of it all. *dodges knives* OKAY. LISTEN --

If you’re a Reylo shipper, then good for you. I mean that sincerely. But I’m sorry, I am convinced that this ending could only have been satisfying to you if you were on the Reylo ship from the very start due to your own personal shipping preferences, because there is NOTHING in the films that justifies the powerful emotional bond that these two supposedly share. Rey and Kylo only met two movies ago, and in both movies, Kylo showed no interest in improving himself and being a better person. None. I don’t care if Rey “sensed” goodness in him -- that is a terrible, weak short-cut for a writer to use, to tell us that Kylo is good without showing it to us. We still see him slaughter people en masse in the very first scene of this movie. We still see him trying to force Rey to join him, even if it puts the people she cares about in danger. We still see him hooking up with Palpatine -- FRIGGIN’ PALPATINE -- after he’d only just rid himself of Snoke. I don’t care if Kylo thinks he can get rid of Palpatine like he did with Snoke -- I don’t care if he’s conflicted and worried about Rey -- we the audience see no evidence that Kylo has truly changed his ways and is worth saving. Leia SACRIFICED HER LIFE to try to help him -- for what?? I know she’s his mother, but I’m sorry, Leia: if your husband couldn’t save your son from himself, why would you be able to? Why didn’t you almost dying in The Last Jedi not affect your son more, if he really cared? Why was calling his name all you had to do? Why didn’t you do that before he started killing all these people? Because it wasn’t dramatically convenient? Because he was fighting Rey at that exact moment and the writers needed to find a way to end that action scene that otherwise could’ve ended with either Rey or Kylo dying? And I’m sorry, but this whole storyline resulted in the one thing I’d dreaded more than anything would happen in a story that shipped these two -- Rey became a tool to Kylo’s redemption. Rather than standing apart as someone with no legacy who builds her own through being a good, noble person, she became defined by her familial and romantic relationships more than she was by her actions. I know Rey ended up defeating Palpatine in the end, but most of her screentime still ended up devoted to her “bond” with Kylo Ren and showed how her love brought him back to the Light. Because seriously, screw the love Kylo’s parents showed him, or Luke showed him -- all they did was sacrifice themselves trying to help him while also standing by their morals and never being tempted to fall like Kylo did -- no, only Rey could’ve brought him back to the side of Good.

And before any of you even try to wave the Sith Lord of my Heart, Darth Vader, in my face, as Snoke said in The Last Jedi, Kylo Ren is no Vader. Vader was tethered to the Empire and to the Emperor, thanks to the injuries he sustained on Mustafar that left him trapped inside his mechanical suit -- if he’d left the Empire, he would’ve died, and on top of all that, he’d already lost his entire family and turned everyone he’d ever cared about -- who were all Jedi -- against him by falling to the Dark Side. Vader had been Anakin -- a slave who was bought out of enslavement by the Jedi, who then turned around and taught him to -- to borrow a phrase -- “conceal, don’t feel,” even if it meant turning a blind eye to the death of his wife and unborn child. Kylo Ren turned to the Dark Side because...honestly? WE NEVER GET A GOOD ANSWER. The best I can get from the films is that Kylo Ren was manipulated by Snoke, who went on and on about how powerful Kylo was and how he should use that power to “bring order to the galaxy” and stuff like that, and then one night Luke held a lit lightsaber over his head for a minute. That justifies falling to the Dark Side and slaughtering all the wittle Jedi? No! And yet Kylo never once has to grapple with what he did -- he never has to make amends. He’s just forgiven, like that! And although Vader likewise never got the chance to make amends, his sacrifice means more than Kylo’s because Vader, through his sacrifice, finally learned the true meaning of love after an entire lifetime of knowing so little of it. The only people who had ever loved Anakin either died or left him -- Kylo always had people who were willing to forgive him, and he spat in their faces. Vader had no one, until his son discovered who he was and tried to reach out to him. And when he reached out, Vader didn’t stab him through the chest or immediately brand him with the murder of his evil master -- Vader followed orders and brought Luke before the Emperor, yes, but when Luke was about to die, Vader saved him.

Kylo Ren’s story could not and SHOULD NOT be Vader’s story, so giving him the same ending is completely unjustified and mismatched with the story being told. Even if the story of a girl and a guy saving each other with “the power of love” was somehow equal in emotional resonance to that of a son trying to reconnect with his father and his father sacrificing his life to save him, that story of a guy and a girl was not built up properly, as we never get much backstory about why Kylo fell, much action on his part to acknowledge his mistakes, or rationale for why we should care about him despite what a terrible person he was and still is. He cares about Rey -- great! Does he care about the Resistance? Leia? Luke? Han? Lando? Chewie? ANYBODY excluding himself and Rey? Han as a Force Ghost at one point suggests that Leia will never die as long as they remember what she stood for -- since when is that something KYLO REN ever cared about?! Leia DESPISED the Empire and Darth Vader, and yet Kylo Ren and the First Order have done nothing but wrap themselves up in their rhetoric and iconography!

On that note, though, I will acknowledge that Kylo Ren, as a character, has always given me certain troubling real-world-like vibes, and that may be part of the reason why it really infuriates me that the movie tried to redeem him. Kylo Ren is a privileged young man from a respected, powerful family who embraces and romanticizes the atrocities of a previous generation, resents others (rather appropriately, a young woman and black man with no greatness in their family names) for taking what should be “rightfully his,” and vows to bring things back to when that previous evil institution was in its full glory -- isn’t that exactly what modern alt-right Neo-Nazi types do? Romanticize the Third Reich and the Klan and wrap themselves up in their supposed “glory,” while being nothing but a pale, pathetic, anger-driven imitation? Even if you don’t personally see Kylo the same way I do, I hope you will at least respect that -- given this lens I see the character through -- it makes sense why I dislike any attempt to give this character sympathy.

+ *inhales heavily* ...Rey...is a Palpatine. *groans in aggravation* J.J., ARE YOU FUCKING SERIOUS? Did you not get why Rian Johnson made Rey’s backstory the way he did, or were you just so in-line with anti-TLJ fans that you wanted to spit in his face in film-form? I know a lot of people were pissed off when Rey was determined to be a “nobody” after what felt like hints of a more developed backstory in TFA, but I seriously can’t help but think that those people missed the point. Rey being a nobody and yet being talented in the Force fixed the whole problem brought up by the Midiclorians in the prequel trilogy -- namely, the thought that you can only be born special, because of your genes. With Rey not being a Kenobi, or a Skywalker, or a Palpatine, it says, “Yes -- you don’t need to have been born special. Anyone can tap into the Force, because it is everything, as are we.” This is even why it’s hinted in previous movies (and once or twice in this movie, though it doesn’t go anywhere) that Finn is Force-sensitive -- Finn, a ex-Stormtrooper! But by turning Rey into a Palpatine all along, J.J. has once again made the Force only something that a select few can tap into -- only special people can have the power needed to stand up to evil. Sure, ordinary people like Poe and Finn can blow things up, but only special people like the Skywalkers and the Palpatines can stop the Sith from destroying the entire rebellion. Instead of this being a story about a girl who had no legacy and yet earned the title of heir to the Skywalker legacy purely through her noble heart and selfless deeds, this became a story of two people -- one from a good family and one from an evil family -- having to come together to deal with their family drama and save the galaxy. Maybe some people wanted to see that from the start, but frankly I didn’t, and even if that story could’ve been told well, it was not the story that we were set up to watch, after we saw The Last Jedi. It also irritates me because of how much the film tries to play Rey’s parents SELLING HER ON JAKKU as them “saving her” from Palpatine. I call BULL. Even Luke was only “saved” from Vader by being given to relatives on a backwater planet -- Rey’s parents ABANDONED her. If you thought that Frozen 2 retconning Elsa and Anna’s parents’ attitudes toward Elsa’s magic was problematic, whoa, boy, have a gander at this. (I actually kind of like Agnarr and Iduna as individual characters in Frozen 2, but I actively have to distance Frozen from its sequel because of canon discrepancies like this.) Rey’s parents didn’t need to have a “good reason” for dropping her off on Jakku -- this film even acknowledges that Rey’s real family is the family she found: Finn, Poe, BB-8, Chewie, Leia, and the Resistance. Rey’s parents could’ve been assholes. Many people’s parents are assholes. Rey is not their child anymore: she is a Skywalker, and that’s all that matters.

+Oh yeah, and speaking of The Last Jedi, NOTHING matches up in this. J.J. literally wrote two complete movies and shoved them together in this one in a vain attempt to completely retcon the last film. Poe earning back his position in the rebellion after learning a lesson about not always barreling into danger without thinking? His character arc has vanished and he shows no more talent for strategy or leadership than he did before. Rey only seeing herself when she was looking for her family? Nope, turns out she was a Palpatine all along: the Force was just trolling her, I guess. Kylo accusing Rey of killing Snoke? Doesn’t come up at all. The young boy using the Force to pick up the broom? Never appears. The signal sent across the galaxy asking for help? Poe says half-way through the movie that nobody came, so it may as well have never happened. Rose and Finn? No mention of the kiss on Krait or anything -- they act like they barely know each other, and Rose has almost no screentime. Even Lando’s return, which should’ve been great, happens when he appears on this random India-like desert planet -- why was he there? Why does he no longer live in Cloud City? Wasn’t he its leader? Wouldn’t he have better fit in a planet like Canto Bight, one that was glitzy and kind of seedy, instead of a pastoral place like that? It’s like reading the first six books in the Harry Potter series, only to end on a version of Deathly Hallows where -- surprise! -- Hermione was actually a pureblood witch all along and she’s actually related to the Lestranges and also Hagrid pops up in Godric’s Hollow to save Hermione and Harry from Nagini for no reason at all, plus Ginny is just a side character now and the author seems to want you to think Harry likes Hermione even if Ron and Harry totally have more chemistry but NO HOMO YOU GUYS COME ON.

+Hahaha, on that note, WOW, have I never seen a film more desperate to try to prove to its audience that its two male main characters are not totally boyfriends. Even though J.J. decided to placate angry fanboys by rather unfairly marginalizing Rose Tico (come on, she may not have been written the best in Last Jedi, but you’re not going to fix that by IGNORING HER ALL TOGETHER), he still thought it best to introduce two new female characters, Zorii and Jannah, who both could’ve been very interesting if they’d had their proper amount of screentime and development, but instead only serve to be substitute “love interests” for Poe and Finn. That might sound harsh, but they literally have no other substantial relationships that get explored in this movie outside of the ones with their respective “guy.” It felt like the film was going, “Look -- Poe’s not gay! He’s got history with this chick, and he gives her a look at the end! And look -- Finn’s not gay! He might’ve been trying to confess his feelings to Rey which totally made his not-boyfriend uber jealous BUT THEY’RE NOT GAY YOU GAIS, and he’s doing stuff with this girl, who was also a Stormtrooper!” Sorry, film, but methinks you doth protest too much. (Even Poe’s actor Oscar Isaac apparently thinks so.)

+Another theme from The Last Jedi that I loved and J.J. clearly didn’t is that the dichotomy between “Jedi” and “Sith” doesn’t inherently equate “good” vs. “evil,” and therefore just because the Sith are evil, it doesn’t mean that the Jedi -- who preached detachment from all affectionate emotions and familial ties -- were right. Even the Resistance is flawed. It’s actually something the prequels and the Clone Wars TV show preach too, and it brings so much more grayness to the Star Wars mythos. In The Rise of Skywalker, however, the Jedi and the Resistance are just seen as the good guys, period, end of story. Who cares if it results in your story being shockingly simplistic and oddly shallow, when compared to the rest of the Star Wars universe?

+The treatment of the Stormtroopers in this movie was actually kind of infuriating. We consistently get reminders about how the First Order’s Stormtroopers were child soldiers who were stolen from their homes and brainwashed, as evident by both Finn and Jannah, and yet throughout the entire movie, they still get cut down in the hundreds without care. Even Finn -- an ex-Stormtrooper himself -- shoots them up like they’re NPCs in a video game! For a film trilogy that did something so powerful by showing the humanity underneath the white helmet, we sure got a film that didn’t give a shit about these people unless they had their helmets off.

+Speaking of the First Order, I saw the Hux-as-the-traitor “twist” coming and I hated finding out that I was right. Honestly it could’ve been played very interestingly if Hux maybe tried to overthrow Kylo and take over the First Order himself, therefore showing how Kylo’s fear-stoking and hatred don’t bring out any loyalty in his followers, but it only results in Hux immediately getting axed off and replaced with another First Order officer we’ve never seen in any of the previous films and therefore don’t care about. Why couldn’t we have reused D.J. the hacker from the previous movie as the spy, or better yet, have the “spy” actually be Kylo, leaking information that he thinks might coax Rey to the Dark Side? The last two films built Hux up as an interesting character, but he was tossed out even more unceremoniously than Commodore Norrington was in the Pirates films.

+This problem of “replacing one antagonist with another out of the blue” is replicated on a large scale with the return of Palpatine. This entire film series has been centered on Kylo Ren and the First Order, but all of a sudden, out of nowhere, we’re just expected to turn all of our focus onto Palpatine and the Knights of Ren, both of whom have had no bearing on the story previously. It could’ve been cool to learn more about the Knights of Ren, but we don’t learn anything about them -- we just see them suddenly being there, when they’d never been there previously. As for Palpatine...did we REALLY need him brought back? Really? The First Order was a threat because they’d wrapped themselves up in their romanticized, false view of the Empire -- that was a choice they made. It didn’t have to be because Palpatine was secretly alive all along and was pulling the strings -- people can do things of their own accord, without a grand, evil mastermind coming back from the dead out of nowhere. Kylo Ren finally got out from under Snoke’s shadow in The Last Jedi and I was so excited to see him come into his own as a villain, but instead all he did was skirt around the coat-tails of Palpatine the entire movie, and it was really disappointing. I WANTED a final confrontation between Kylo and Rey in the climax, like the films had been building up to -- instead all we got was a half-baked “redemption” for Kylo where he teams up with Rey to fight somebody else who just wandered into the story out of nowhere. Even Palpatine’s plot didn’t make any sense -- he tells Kylo for the first half of the movie that they need to kill Rey even though Kylo really wants her to turn to the Dark Side instead, only for Palpatine to (I guess) change his mind at the last minute when Rey arrives in his lair, and yet they play it off as him having planned for that to happen all along because he needs Rey to kill him so she can become one with him and all of the other Sith -- look, I know Palpatine’s whole characterization is hinged on him being a criminal mastermind, but all I want is some consistency! How are we supposed to know what the threat is if we don’t know what our villains want?

+“The Force” is used to rationalize a lot in this movie, from where Rey decides to walk to what plot devices our heroes will need later to why our characters do what they do. Even Finn, who in The Force Awakens accented that he made a choice to break away from the First Order because he saw what he was doing was wrong, now apparently believes that the Force decided that he should join up with Poe and Rey...and I just don’t like that, let alone buy it. The Force was never equivalent to “destiny” -- yes, Anakin was the Chosen One, but he only fulfilled it because the Jedi believed in it enough to train him and he fulfilled the prophecy in a way no one could’ve imagined...and even so, the Force doesn’t dictate everything. Everything is part of the Force, and the Force is part of everything -- but it shouldn’t just be a deus-ex-machina that moves the plot along or does whatever the author needs it to do. For instance, why can the Force suddenly heal wounds?? Since when is that something it can do?? If it could do that, and someone largely self-taught like Rey can do it, then why didn’t Jedi Master Anakin or Obi-Wan ever do that? Why didn’t Anakin use some of his life force to save his dying mother? Why didn’t he think to use it on Padme, or why didn’t Obi-Wan use it on Padme? Why didn’t Luke think to use it to save his father? The only reason why the Force can do that now is that the writers needed to justify why Kylo could give up his remaining life force for Rey, but in order to do that, they give the Force an ability it’s never had previously and doesn’t match up with the previous canon.

+If we’re talking about the Force, though, I have to write a separate bullet point accenting this -- WHY. DOESN’T. FINN. USE IT?? The film clearly likes the thought of Finn being Force-sensitive, but it’s too cowardly to just make Finn a Jedi. When Kylo and Rey were fighting over the ship, why didn’t Finn do something to help?? Why didn’t he blast Kylo or, more relevantly to this discussion, show off some of his latent Force talent by helping Rey yank the ship back? Why didn’t Finn use his Force ability to reach out to Rey while she was fighting Kylo, or fighting Palpatine? He could’ve been the one to wield Anakin’s lightsaber and fight side by side with Rey in that final battle, if Kylo had been the villain like he should’ve been. Maybe Finn confronts Commander Hux inside the command post while Rey’s fighting Kylo, and when Rey tries one last time to connect with the Jedi of the past, she’s able to connect to all of the Jedi, living or dead -- including Finn, as he also has been nurturing a talent in the Force! Through their new mental connection, Rey and Finn are able to help each other, while also being surrounded and spurred on by the corporeal, translucent spirits of Anakin, Obi-Wan, Yoda, Mace Windu, Ahsoka Tano, and the rest, all appearing and disappearing one after another around Finn and Rey as they fight. Poe should’ve been commanding the troops from above in Luke’s old X-Wing, it being the only ship he could get his hands on (because I’m sorry -- Han gave Rey the Falcon, she should be the one using it, yet this film just stubbornly kept her out of the driver’s seat for some reason), giving them all of the support he could from the air so that the rest of the First Order can’t interfere with the four-way duel between Finn, Rey, Kylo, and Hux. Maybe when the electricity in the ships gets messed up, Poe’s even able to remember something Rey or Finn told him to tap into the Force enough himself to keep himself airborne until he’s able to crash-land safely. While Hux and Kylo fight to destroy their opponents individually, each seeking glory and victory solely for themselves, Rey and Finn fight together as friends, taking lessons from the Jedi that are their mentors but also standing apart from them and being better than them.

+This movie really felt like two stories smashed together because there were way too many plot lines that were dropped like a hot potato not long after they were introduced. Finn having something to tell Rey? No conclusion. 3PO getting his memory wiped? Resolved quickly a few scenes later with little fall-out. Chewie supposedly getting killed? We find out within minutes that he survived. All of the new characters we meet, like Zorii and Jannah? They get one or two short scenes each where we barely get to know them at all. Even the India-inspired planet I mentioned earlier gets blown up because the First Order thinks it’ll upset the Rebellion and get them to come out of hiding, but...this film is the first time we’ve even seen this planet! We barely spent any time on it! This is really the obvious first choice of a planet whose destruction would upset the Rebellion? We don’t even know any of the characters who live on it personally! At least when Alderaan got blown up, Leia’s parents were on it, so we feel sad for Leia’s sake, but we haven’t built up any emotional investment in that planet that was just blown up.

+Along with this movie feeling like it had too much stuff in it, it also felt very, VERY long. The pacing was very bad, with there being no organic rise and fall to the action and the climax really just feeling like a bunch of plot turns stacked haphazardly on top of each other. When I came out of the theater, I even heard a little boy say to his dad, “That was really long,” and I had to agree with him. It’s not even that long compared to other Star Wars movies, but I just felt like I was being yanked around by the arm throughout the entire run-time, so rather than feeling invested in what was happening, I found myself tuning out and wanting the filmmakers to just get to a point.

Overall, I really don’t think I can recommend this movie. Every Star Wars fan should probably see it, and it’s possible that quite a few of you might get more out of it than me if you disliked The Last Jedi and want to see a movie that “sticks it” to that movie for whatever reason...but even if you do, surely you would agree that stories should not be written like this, where one part is completely invalidated by another and there’s no build-up for anything that happens? Stories should not be just something that you’re passively pulled through by the author -- they should engage you: make you feel for the characters, make you think about its themes, make you guess what might happen next. A story doesn’t mean less if you can make educated guesses about where the story might go if you see where it began -- it also doesn’t mean less if it subverts old literary or canon tropes. But this movie didn’t subvert anything -- instead it openly contradicted and retconned just about everything in the last movie, to the point that Rise of Skywalker clearly wanted to be two movies but didn’t have enough development or care put into it that could prompt a real emotional reaction from its audience. In short, it ended up being an overly complicated, watered-down retread of Return of the Jedi with none of the power in its supposedly “bittersweet” ending. The first two installments in this trilogy got me excited for a new take on Star Wars, to the extent that I for the first time actively looked into the fandom surrounding the films instead of just enjoying the films on my own. It’s therefore quite disappointing to me that the trilogy had to end on such a weak, petering note.

Overall Grade: D

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Marvel Movie Night: X-Men The Last Stand

So - when this came out, I worked at a theater.  We got to see an early screening of it.  When we walked my mom turned to me and said -- that wasn’t good, right? I had to agree.  

So.  Here we are.  I feel like I have a very complicated relationship with this film, because I know a crap ton about X-Men and knowing more means this film feels like even more of a mess than maybe a general audience would know.  It’s hard to really comment on whether or not this is a good film.   It’s definitely far more watchable than the Fantastic Four, or the other Marvel related films coming out at the time that weren’t Spider-Man.  However, it doesn’t hold together too well overall.  

The biggest issue this film has is that it’s trying to shove too many story lines with too many mutants into one film, and it kind of fails at everything that it’s trying to do.  

But first - a comment on production.  It was kind of a mess (though, I’m super fascinated that there was an original draft of this that Emma Frost played by Sigourney Weaver.  Damn, I’m sad we didn’t get that).  Directors switched, writers switched, actors were no longer under contract -- and I mean, most productions have things change, but all of this resulted in this film getting pulled in fifteen different directions, and I do thing that did have an effect on the final result.  

So - let’s talk about what this film is trying to do.  

The Dark Phoenix saga.  One of the most iconic X-Men stories ever told, and it is for a reason.  Having just reread it last month, it’s egregious to me how much this movie misses the point.  Look - I’m fine, in general, when other media changes original stories for adaptations.  Film is not comics, but I do think you need to understand the essence of the story in order to do it well in an adaptation.  And The Last Stand just doesn’t understand the Phoenix story.  

See - in the comics, it’s a lot about manipulation, control, and power - and how Jean Grey is being manipulated, but breaks out of it with her extreme power.  (There’s also a ton about crazy space forces, but I understand why they didn’t go there, it’s... uber complicated.)  But, the point is that this ends up being an internal story -- how Jean deals with the power once she’s broken free from the manipulation, how how her relationships with various X-Men help her cope with split identity.  At the end -- with her friends behind her, she decides to end her own life, and her sacrifice is make sure she doesn’t destroy the universe.  And it’s very beautifully told.  

There are three things (major) things I have issue with in this film -- 1. With the exception of Cyclops, in a limited role, and slightly Xavier, Jean’s relationships with other people are just not explored enough to have an emotional impact; 2. At no point is Jean ever back in control of her own agency.  Xavier manipulates her, then Magneto, then she just stands around for a long time until Wolverine finally kills her.  It cheapens everything about Jean Grey and agency the original story has, and I hate it.  3. The story in the movie seems to service the goddamn Logan/Jean Grey love story that I hate in the comics, and I hate it more here - but I’ll spare you the diatribe.  

The other thing, though... The animated series got this right -- but it could because it had time to.  See, the comics drew this whole story out for years, and it’s emotional pay off works better over a long period of time, which a two hour movie just doesn’t have.  And it’s especially hurt when it’s truncated due to a whole other plot in the film.  Which leads me to... 

The Cure - the second plot of the film.  Joss Whedon’s Astonishing X-Men at the time was a big hit, so they decided to use this story.  It’s not a bad story -- it has to do with the big political element that the X-Men always are dealing with, and that’s fine.  But, because it can’t be the full focus, it too feels overstuffed.  (Really the film wants to be this plot, and should have never done Dark Phoenix in the first place.)

Unfortunately, because they need to shoehorn in Magneto, the brotherhood, the Morlocks, and every other mutant in the X-Universe (except Gambit for some reason) - this turns into a mess, where Magneto is his Silver Age, scenery chewing self, and a whole lot of people punch each other because that’s what these third acts usually devolve into.  The Cure story line is and can be a much smaller story, too, and maybe works better as such, but this is a major blockbuster - which I’m sure studio mandates a certain amount of CGI nonsense.  Ah well.  

Other Thoughts (dear god, get ready for all the thoughts!): 

The Danger Room scene at the beginning of the film is a goddamn delight -- that is how you use the X-Men working as a team, and that’s how you use Wolverine in a good capacity. 

One thing I’ll credit this film - it does better with its action sequences, and specifically letting the X-Men actually work as a team.  

I can’t help but feel, though, that I wish more of the classic X-Men teams had been together for their last stand.  Something about Wolverine’s little pep talk felt hollow - maybe because these characters we’ve barely met and/or interacted with and the emotional resonance isn’t there. 

FWIW - the special effects in this film are such an upgrade than all the crud had has come before it -- especially Fantastic Four, which was only a year or so earlier.  

Hugh Jackman has finally really settled in his role as Wolverine, he’s great, yadda, yadda

Famke Janssen continues to be an excellent Jean Grey, and I’m sorry her story line stunk so badly.  The scene with her and Wolverine, where she goes through the gamut of emotions, is really quite wonderful.  It’s a shame she spends half the movie just standing (or sitting) there.  

I understand that James Marsden kind of tapped out of the franchise to go do Superman, but I’m so sad that they really didn’t do Cyclops well in any of these films.  He’s such a great character, and you wouldn’t know it at all by these films. 

The Beast! Who’d have thought that Kelsey Grammer would have been a good choice for Beast -- but it works.  

I think Halle Berry asked for more to do as Storm.  Well -- she has more to do, but she still doesn’t feel like Storm.  I want an X-Men film where she Ororo Monrue is given the proper chance to shine. 

Oh - I should mention Storm vs Callisto is a thing here, as an easter egg to long time fans, but it’s not satisfying to me as a long time fan because, like, most everything in this film, they kind of fucked it up.  

Meanwhile... oh Rogue, maybe we shouldn’t get me started on how my favorite X-Man is the utter worst in this film.  Not only is she barely in this film but... this is such a complicated issue for this character -- to be given five minutes of screen time is just the utter worst.  And no, Rogue would never do that.  No, no, no.  

Ellen Page as Kitty Pryde is amazing, and she should have had her own movie.  I find it hilarious, though, that she and Iceman kinda flirt with each other here -- since Iceman is canonically gay, and Kitty is subtextually bi.  It’s just... funny.  

Iceman - in his ice form.  Yes, more of this. 

Angel is here! He literally does nothing, but he doesn’t do much in the comics either, so it kinda hilariously works.  I like the actor, too, he’s a great match.  

The dude playing Colossus is a delight - again, more screen time needed! I kinda love that he’s just carrying around a TV to show his strength. 

Lord help me - the Juggernaut is the worst.  I hated that meme.  I hate that he looks like a literal dick head.  I hate that he’s portrayed as a mutant when he’s not, etc, etc.  

There’s so much more to comment on, but I’ll spare you the time -- I mean there’s Moira MacTaggart, and the Morlocks - who are also the Omega Gang?, and Leech, and Eric Dane playing Multiple Man, and really... they brought in Stacey X (you guys ask me about Stacey X...), and apparently Psylocke is supposed to be in here somewhere, and sentinel camoes, and Trask, and Mystique...  But, this review is long enough. 

I do need to point out - the President is played by Josef Somer, who played Ducksworth in The Mighty Ducks, and I can only think of ‘quacking’ whenever I look at him. 

Final Thoughts: It’s probably more enjoyable for a non-fan than a hardcore X-Man fan.  It’s not as bad as people make it out to seem, but it’s not good either.  Overall, there’s a lot of potential that gets squandered and exploded.  Ah well.  

[dreadnought-dear-captain]

Steve’s Ending: What the Fuck Just Happened?

                            ************WARNING*********** 

BIG-ASS ESSAY WITH SPOILERS FOR AVENGERS: ENDGAME AHOY

I have been largely out of the fandom sphere for a spell because of personal stuff that went down and then subsequent Endgame anxiety (I’m sorry, I really will get to some BW asks as soon as I’m done reeling from this film), but I wanted to get out some thoughts about Endgame while they are fresh in my mind. I have seen Endgame twice since its release. I saw it Friday morning, debriefed with my beta @pitchforkcentral86, and then turned around and bought tickets for an evening showing the same day. Why? Because I had to process Steve’s last scene. I had to see it twice just to comprehend what the hell happened and then try to interpret it. I went through several hypotheses and waves of accompanying emotion and then came to a tentative personal conclusion about what the hell Steve’s ending is to me.  But first I had to ask— Is this a true happy ending? Is this lazy writing? Is this a character assassination? Is this a legitimate choice Steve would make? Some combination of the above? So, here go my hypotheses—

Hypothesis 1: This is a legitimate happy ending for Steve and his timeline.

If you only look at the images shown to us and don’t devote much thought to the implications of Steve’s choice for other people in the world, it might appear to be a beautiful ending. After a decade-and-a-half of compass-gazing and pining for the good old days of segregation and boiled food, Steve gets what he wants. He gets the person who is — surprise! — “the love of his life.” This plays into the ongoing narrative that Steve has never been able to find contentment in the modern world or with modern people (some of whom he refers to as “family,” interestingly enough). This hypothesis also assumes that he can only be happy if he is with one woman, because he assumes shared life experience is a prerequisite for partnership, which means that he has essentially preemptively foreclosed on any relationship with anyone who is not Peggy.  Since Bucky’s name has barely even entered Steve’s consciousness lately, except to emotionally whump his past self into not choking him to death, even their friendship seems to be a question in the last two films in this series.

So if we take the arc of these films into consideration, including the last two films, he has apparently resigned himself to a position of “Peggy is my only viable romantic relationship, and she is dead, and I am incomplete as long as this is true.” When you write this thesis for Steve Rogers, which is a sad thesis indeed, this ending might seem like a relief for him. (It could also be argued that it is terribly lacking in resiliency and flexibility and is naive, at best, in terms of what is love versus infatuation versus idealization.) Problematic in this happy ending scenario: The writers clearly did not consider the second and third order effects of this decision. They just needed to tie up Steve’s timeline and get Chris Evans out of the franchise, and this was a way to do it that resonates at face value. Man out of time gets put back in his time. Gets love. Quote: “It was beautiful.” Ignore all of the following and more: -There will now be two Steve Rogers in this timeline. -One of them will presumably be with Peggy Carter for at least a good chunk of time, unless things went south. -Peggy Carter is the director of SHIELD. Her close associates are undoubtedly known to them as a result. -Thus, Steve Rogers probably could not just stay hidden in the pantry. SHIELD would want to debrief him. They would want to know how the hell he got there. Questions would get asked. This could not remain a secret forever. -Is Steve Rogers going to sit out history? Hang on the couch while the world burns, shield unused? -Is Steve Rogers, knowing that Bucky is alive, going to leave him to rot with Hydra? -Even if they made some sort of arrangement beforehand, like Bucky saying it’s okay, don’t come get me, would they both sit well with continuing to let him kill all of the innocents he killed? -If Steve did go get Bucky, he would likely find him some time in the span of however many years he’s in the past. The future would be completely changed. -If he intervened and found Bucky, Sam Wilson would not be Falcon because TWS would not happen. This version of Bucky would not exist. This end scene could not happen. -Thus, this does not seem to be something that Steve chose to do during his life with Peggy. (Debunked-ish, along with other “Back to the Future” science hereafter, below) Which brings me to my second hypothesis about this ending. Hypothesis 2: This was thought out, but it represents writers Markus and McFeely’s disconnect from the character they built. This is where the “there is no way in hell Steve would sit on the couch where the world burns, where Bucky suffers with Hydra etc.” argument comes in. This taints the ending in a particularly sour way, because they have labored so hard to build an image of Steve as someone who would wreck the world to save Bucky Barnes from harm and stop at nothing to prevent serious harm in the world where he could. It’s what he wanted in the first place! It’s where we all started in TFA! The Steve we know and love would want to go to Korea. To Vietnam. He would want to stop the Khmer Rouge and all the bad shit he could intervene with. Right? And his ass would try to save Bucky, especially knowing exactly where he’s kept! Right?? He would keep going and going until he was worn down into a nub of nothingness. Right??? Which meanders me to— Hypothesis 3: This was a decision that Steve Rogers made that is plausible for his character and was deliberate on the part of the writers. Second and third order effects included. This may be a stretch, but I think it could be argued on the grounds of good becomes great, bad becomes worse. Steve does nothing by half measures, an intrinsic trait that is amplified by his transformation. I have always argued that Steve has a very real selfish streak, or else he never would have tried to enlist in the Army so many times knowing he is absolutely unqualified to serve. Serving in his original condition would have put so many lives at risk, and others would have had to pick up his slack, because he would have been next to physically useless in combat as small Steve. But he would not accept reality, and he would not accept a “lesser” form of helping because it had to be the way that served his ego and his sense of rightness and justness for himself, consequences to other soldiers and the mission be damned. It was myopic and self-serving. And if good becomes great and bad becomes worse, maybe this is a form of that. Maybe he and Bucky agreed (because they were clearly in cahoots with that final scene business) that he would not intervene and rescue him, because then there would be no Falcon, or simply on the principle that the timeline must remain as undisturbed as possible. And maybe this one time, Steve didn’t say “fuck you, Bucky” and do what was right. Maybe Steve Rogers was done. Fucking done. Maybe he realized that what he first wanted at the beginning of TFA is not tenable. That he can’t fight forever. That he, like Tony, needs to rest, and that he can’t do that in the modern world. Which is interesting, because he essentially becomes Tony Stark v1.0 in the end, only caring about himself and his own. And Tony Stark becomes Steve Rogers, making the ultimate sacrifice for mankind. So Steve enjoys a life with Peggy while the world burns because he just can’t do it anymore. He’s paid his dues and he’s done being Captain America or Nomad or anyone else. (Wonder how she likes that version of Steve...?) Though how he could possibly say “It was beautiful” is utterly beyond me. I can’t fit that into this hypothesis, unless he has compartmentalized so hard and so well that he has forgotten about Bucky’s existence completely. And if he has, this is a very sad ending for his character.

There are probably many other hypotheses out there. They just didn’t percolate through my mind yet.

Which brings me to some things @pitchforkcentral86 brought up:

Why was Tony Stark’s arc so perfectly completed, so beautifully closed — truly, even I shed a tear — when we have to sit here writing stupid billion word theses on a nearly defunct blog site, grasping for straws, scratching our heads, wondering what the fuck just happened to Steve Rogers? It’s like getting to know somebody for eight years, being told the same stories about their behavior, learning their values system, their truths… and then being thrown a parting image that can only make sense if  a) the writers cannot be trusted — and maybe could not be trusted this whole time, or b) the character is actually not the person we thought he was.

Is either of these what we want to be left with as we close this phase of the MCU? Either the writers failed or Steve Rogers is not the person we love? And do we really not get to see Bucky and Steve’s friendship arc get closed in a meaningful way after building its depth for three movies? Are we really supposed to count a cheap recycling of a TFA line and some shimmery-eyed SebStan woobieface (TM) and some secret time travel hook-up conspiring off-camera (AS THEIR ENTIRE RELATIONSHIP HAS BEEN SINCE CIVIL WAR, PRESUMABLY, OFF-FUCKING-CAMERA) as “closure”? So, what do I think? I think this was lazy, crap writing, and I think Markus and McFeely thought we wouldn’t consider the timey-wimey implications too much. I think they know this character, and I don’t think they figured this would assassinate his character. I think they just really, really needed to tie this story up in a superficially pretty bow, and they couldn’t kill off both Tony and Steve, so they needed to give him something that took him out of the franchise. And that scene at the end with Peggy was aesthetically BEAUTIFUL. I smiled the first time, ear to ear, until my brain kicked in two minutes later and realized what it meant. They have been building up to this forever, kindling Steggy pretty much every movie. We Stucky people are all like yeah, yeah, Peggy, so sad, but the films have been consistent all along about saying a) Steve is a man out of time, and b) he loves Peggy Carter. (However you wanted to interpret that love... until the support group, where the interpretation is made for us). Support group side note: First, I squeed that Steve was running a support group in what I’m pretty sure is a VA auditorium. And on one hand, I loved the super chill gay Russo cameo and Steve’s untroubled reaction. Three cheers for the first openly gay character in the MCU [eyeroll]. But also, it felt like a total concession, like okay all you Stucky idiots we’ve been queer baiting over the years, we are gonna drop an A-bomb your little kingdom, but look, at least Steve isn’t a homophobe! See? He’s cool with the gays and so are we. Thanks for playing. Maybe you’ll get a REAL queer character in the next phase of the MCU! (If you even stick around after the shit we’ve just pulled.) But this laziness is problematic, because it feels terrible and discrepant. Intended or not, it does have serious implications for the timeline and/or the character, and the final scene existing the way it is potentially means at least one of two things: 1. Time doesn’t work the way we think it does. (In other words, what if there is a world where time travel Steve did all these good things like free Bucky, end the Vietnam War early, etc.?) However, since he is here on this bench with Bucky and Sam, dropping off this shield, this is implausible. If he just disappeared for good and Bucky explained the situation with a tiny, knowing smile, then it would be possible that he started an alternate reality where he did all these very Steve-congruent things and freed Bucky in that timeline, which would not affect this one. Wouldn’t that be nice? I could live with that. Just disappear into the sunset and we can write fics to fill in all the gaps of his Steve-ness. His core character is retained. Hooray. 

But if he started an alternate timeline, he would not be here with Bucky and Sam like this in the original timeline as an old man, which suggests that he jumped back in the same timeline. Unless they invented technology to jump between timelines. Or Dr. Strange jumped him back to this bench just to drop the shield off and high five with Sam and then is going to take him back any second or some dumb shit that has no basis in anything we have seen on screen (see @pitchforkcentral86’s point above about grasping for bullshit just to make sense of this). Or it means that— 2. Steve did not do anything and did not give a fuck about it. Both of these are terrible. Terrible. I would rather have had Steve die than have this ending. And this has nothing to do with Stucky for me, because Stucky is mostly just a fun fandom thing for me. I don’t mind that he ended up with Peggy per se. It’s the implication that he didn’t save his friend, knowing EXACTLY — geographically and historically — where he was, not only saving Bucky but also all the innocent people Bucky would kill. OR I hate the implication that the smug motherfucker let Bucky rot — perhaps per their agreement, maybe he kept a promise, whatever — and he had the gall to call it “beautiful.” And this is after Markus and McFeely slaved for three movies to convince us that these are best fucking friends from childhood who are with each other “‘til the end of the line.” At the very least, even if they are not going to be physically together, friends do not let friends suffer for decades at the hands of Hydra, and if they do, they do not fucking enjoy themselves while it’s happening. If this is the Steve they are leaving us with, I do not want him. And I kind of don’t know what to do now.

Am I missing something? Please tell me I am. I’m desperate for a way to make sense of this. Truly.

OKAY, EDIT: 

@koubashii  very kindly sent me a message reminding me that Bruce spent quite a bit of time belaboring on the point that changing the past doesn’t change the future. She reminded me that Nebula killing her past self didn’t obliterate her from existence. I did forget about all this. So I can’t use Sam and Bucky Prime’s existence in their current form as evidence that Steve did nothing, if he went back in time. Point taken. THANK YOU!! 

(Edit: As far as I can gather from some research from actual astrophysicists and not MCU Bruce Banner, this “changing the past doesn’t change the future” stuff is just one small theory and does not appear to be the prevailing theory. However, this is the quantum realm, so we can make up all sorts of silly rules about infinite possibilities, infinite realities, yada yada, because nobody understands quantum physics except Hank Pym. Comic book science wins again!)

So, if he’s creating a separate timeline, let’s say he rescued Bucky early. Is there another Bucky running around with him? (New fun theory to make the pain better: He danced with Peggy, had a good time, went to find Bucky, married HIM, and that’s why he doesn’t want to talk about it with Sam. THERE. Fixed it.) 

But this still suggests that he broke off into an alternate timeline, one that did not disturb the current one. So if he went off into this entirely new timeline, how did he bounce into this old one? Pym particles? Sure. Fine. Comic science Whatever. Maybe he gets some. Did he just drop in by the lake and pop a squat on the bench right before Bucky told Sam to look? Sure. Was he there the whole time? Perhaps. Fine. Who the hell knows. 

So, one possible explanation is that there IS an alternate timeline where Steve did the right thing. And he jumped back here because Pym particles. His character’s integrity is potentially saved and who the fuck knows who he ended up with in the end. Let your imaginations run wild. It’s too late for Bucky Prime to get saved, poor Bucky. At least he has Sam and their upcoming Disney spinoff series, which sounds like a fucking joke when I write it (but srsly I’m dying and cannot wait). 

And there are still problematic things with this narrative for me, such as the idea that Steve’s entire happiness hinges on one woman he barely knew, largely because she didn’t scoff at him when he was smol and I will be DAMNED if Peggy kept his picture on her desk, and there is no effing way that she would even have her back to the door, but whatever. And I still hate that Steve and Bucky’s relationship arc was treated so horribly by these last two films. NO HOMO, indeed. Just in case we got the wrong idea from the intensity of the relationship that the MCU created for us. I will be posting more on this later. 

AND STILL — we should not have to work SO HARD for this kind of "meh” explanation. You should not need a group effort to make sense of your character’s ending, after so much wallowing in despair. And this might still reek of bullshit to many of you. I need to percolate more. 

Pym particles and Wakandan Vibranium trauma-healing brain magic — quick and dirty shortcuts for real character development. Thanks, MCU. Consider my brain exploded.

[areiton]

whatever it takes

Square: K2 Accidental Villainy 

Title: whatever it takes

Pairing: Tony Stark/Peter Parker

Warnings: Dark fic, moral ambiguity, dark Peter Parker 

Summary: 

When things are quiet and calm and empty, his mind turns where it always does—to Tony. To the gaping hole where he should be. And to the little thorn of knowledge. He takes a shuddering breath, and goes to the workshop.

Read on AO3

~*~ 

For a while, the world is too insane for him to think about it. It’s there, digging like a thorn in the back of his mind, but there’s Europe and MJ and fucking Mysterio and his bullshit to sort through, and then—when the dust settles and he’s on the quinnjet home with Happy and Ned, when he’s talked to MJ about why this isn’t going to work out, when he’s home and has given Morgan and May and Pepper hugs and explanations, when he’s tucked Morgan into bed and spent most of the night watching her sleep—

When things are quiet and calm and empty, his mind turns where it always does—to Tony. To the gaping hole where he should be.

And to the little thorn of knowledge.

He takes a shuddering breath, and goes to the workshop.

~*~

He doesn’t tell anyone.

That makes it harder—but he isn’t stupid, know damn well that Fury would shut him down. Pepper would look at him with those big, tragic eyes and tell him this isn’t what Tony wanted. May would worry—they’d all worry, wrap him in her arms, suffocating, and he can’t handle that, can’t handle anything but the work.

He doesn’t tell anyone, and he thinks that probably means something. Probably means he knows what he’s doing is wrong. He doesn’t care, is the thing.

Mr. Stark deserved to live. He deserved his family and peace and rest. He saved the world and he should have lived.

And Peter is going to fix it.

~*~

It takes him almost a year to get it right, to work out the physics and magic and tech to open a door to the multiverse.

May worries. He knows she does, sees it in her eyes, when he bothers to go home. He doesn’t, much—it’s easier to stay in the workshop, pass out on the couch and let the bots cover him. There’s food and he leaves to go to classes, to patrol, before he’s right back here, working feverishly working on fixing things. It takes him almost a year, to get it right.

And then he opens a door.

~*~

Mysterio said—he hates him, hates what he did to them, in Europe, hates that for a few breathless moments, while Beck kissed him, he’d forgotten the numbing pain of losing Tony—that it was a gamble. That you couldn’t ever tell, what world you’d open up into.

It’s one of the reasons why the multiverse was so dangerous.

Peter gambled.

~*~

When you open a door—it opens both ways.

He could go through—but other things could come in.

Peter thinks, as he fights a giant fucking squid oozing through the Upper East Side alongside Rhodey, this is worth it.

Opening doors, exploring the other worlds—it’s worth it.

~*~

Sometimes, nothing comes through. Sometimes, he slips into the other world and he finds Tony.

It always breaks his heart.

Because there is a Tony Stark for every world and some he’s dead, and some he’s still making weapons, his hands soaked in blood. He is Ironman and a businessman, a mechanic in Tennessee, a single father, a lonely drunk, happily married. He is a professor and a CEO and one memorable world, the long-suffering assistant to Miss Pepper Potts, running Potts Industries while Pep slept her way through the socialites of New York.

And there are the worlds, where Tony loves Peter.

~*~

“Peter,” May says, gently. “You should get out of the lab.”

“I’m working,” he says.

“Morgan misses you,” Pepper tells him.

It’s not a recrimination—but it stings. Because, “I’m doing this for Morgan.”

They stare at him, big brown eyes and worried blue. “Doing what, sweetheart?” May asks, gently.

~*~

He’s in a world where Tony and Peter are engaged. It’s painfully similar to his own—Spiderman and Ironman, SI and all the rest. Thanos didn’t come here, and Pepper never came back to Tony after the fallout with Cap and Co.

It’s only Peter and Tony and for a moment, watching them, watching how happy they are—he thinks about it.

Thinks about slipping in and taking his other self’s place.

It would be easy. Easy.

And he would be so happy.

His fingers itch, and he takes a half-step toward his other self—and then his thoughts catch up with him and he makes a noise, broken in the back of his throat, and bolts, swinging up and away and back to his world.

~*~

“You’re playing with fire,” Fury says. He’s in the lab, his eye sharp and cold. The bots are unnaturally still, around him, quiet and hovering behind him, almost afraid. It makes Peter irrationally angry. He’s tired and hungry and his side is still aches from getting into a fight in the last world he visited—a world ruled by Hydra, where the Winter Soldier was a revered state hero and Ironman a wanted fugitive.

“I’m shutting you down,” Fury says, abruptly, when Peter doesn’t say anything in response. “You can’t just go wandering through the multiverse, Parker—you’re tearing holes in reality.”

Peter doesn’t any anything. There isn’t anything to say, not that Fury will listen to.

“Have you even seen what you’re letting in? There were three attacks from some Godzilla looking fuckers last week, and a goddamn Winter Soldier came through the week before that—Barnes had a helluva a time fighting his own damn self.”

“I don’t care,” Peter says, stubbornly.

“You don’t care. Boy, you have to care. You’re endangering the world you swore to protect.”

Peter smiles at that—it’s not a friendly smile. “I didn’t swear shit, Director.”

Fury makes a wordless noise of anger, takes a half step toward him—

And Peter moves.

~*~  

He leaves the body in a world that’s full of darkness and iron spiders—it disturbs him, but distantly, and he slips back into his world while the metal clatter of legs

~*~

Peter wonders, standing in the back of the debriefing, with everyone tense and worried and arguing over Fury’s disappearance—he wonders how far he will take this.

How much he will sacrifice.  

He knows the others are worried—Rhodey and Sam keep looking at him like he’s fragile, and Winter watches him with narrow, knowing eyes. Strange avoids his gaze entirely. He wonders—is there a line?

One he won’t cross to get Tony back?

Is there anyone who he wouldn’t eliminate, to get Tony back?

Peter looks at the room full of heroes, and the answer makes him shiver.

~*~

The world is dark. Peter looks at it, sometimes, from the Tower that Tony left to him, and he thinks—it’s flawed. Not quite whole. There are holes in it, dark spaces where other worlds seep in.

“This world doesn’t deserve you,” he whispers. “It’s broken. It doesn’t deserve what you gave.”

Lightning cracks across the sky, bright and jagged and lighting up a world he doesn’t quite recognize.

~*~

“Please,” May murmurs. She cleans  his hands—they sting, oozing black sludge seeping into the cuts from where it clings to his suit. It’s acidic, and he thinks, idly, that it’s going to suck if a hole opens from that world.

He thinks, maybe, he should tell Sam or Rhodey—someone.

Warn them.

“Please stop, Pete. You have to see what you’re doing.”

“I’m close,” he says.

She looks at him, and her gaze is so sad it makes him ache. “You have to let him go.”

Fear and fury dance down his spine and he looks at her. “Tony wouldn’t want this,” she almost begs.

Her grip is tight, tight, tight, on his hands, holding him still, and her heartbeat is pounding in her throat. “What did you do,” he whispers.

“Peter,” she tries. He shoves her from him, bolting toward the lab.

There are three of them—T’Challa and Ant-man and Wasp, and he feels a pang of regret—his suit forms around him, and he murmurs, “Activate instakill,” a moment before he attacks.

T’Challa goes down easy, startlingly easy, and he sees surprise on Hope’s face, an instant before his electric webbing wraps around her shrinking body and she goes down, twitching and smoking. Scott—Scott is harder, and bloody and he limps away from it.

But in the end—they’re dead, and he—he isn’t. The portal is untouched. He sighs, intoxicating relief, and goes back to May.

~*~

He doesn’t understand, completely.

She’s crumpled, a cut strings doll, sprawled on the ground. Her skull is dented in on one side, blood pooling and eyes vacant and he remembers, abruptly, pushing her in his panic, her startled cry and the sound of her hitting something.

He crouches next to her, and his eyes sting, familiar grief clogging his throat.

“Why’d you have to help them,” he asks. “Why’d you gotta do that, May?”

He holds her, blood soaking his knees and his suit and turning his fingers sticky and thick.

~*~

He's tired. He slips in and out of worlds, but none are right, none are his Tony and he is so tired. Sometimes, he wonders if they're right--if he can't do it.

If he should let go, move on.

He does--for three nights, he lets the portal lie closed and dark, chases demons down alleyways and rescues innocents.

And it cuts, deep and insistent, under his skin. The need to go looking. The need to find Tony. To bring him home.

He ignores it for three nights.

And then he goes back, blows the portal wide and goes looking for Tony.

~*~  

Winter watches him. "It's dangerous. What you're doing."

Peter doesn't bother dying it. He just watches Winter, as assessing as the assassin.

"Will you stop, when you find him?"

Peter nods, vigorous and earnest and Winter gives him a final look.

“I will keep them from you--but you stop. When it is done and he is home--you stop. And it never hurts Sam.”

Peter doesn’t agree--but Winter slips out, and he thinks--we all have someone we would destroy the world for.

Winter just told Peter his.

It is enough.

~*~

Once--purely by chance and accident, he stumbles upon Mysterio’s world. It gleams golden and green, and he stays there for a heartbeat, two, three--and Tony smiles at him from the mist.

He smiles, and it’s the one Peter remembers, warm and fond and inviting him to laugh at the rest of the world.

Peter aches with want, the urge to go throw himself in Tony’s arms so strong it’s a physical pain.

He remembers, though--Uncle Ben smiling at him in Venice and Mysterio killing Flash.

He bolts through the portal, and hides, shaking and scared, in Tony’s empty bed for hours.

~*~

He’s in the kitchen, when he hears a small gasp. A broken little noise that makes him twist around, a piece of toast dangling from his fingers.

Tony is standing in the doorway. He is pale and his eyes are wide, and his hands shake as he stumbles forward a step. “Pete,” he whispers, and that tone.

Peter knows that tone, knows the desperate hope and hunger in it, has heard it every time he’s whisper, “Tony?” in a world that wasn’t his, to a Tony that wasn’t his.

He catches Tony as he falls, holds him close, inhales the scent of him that is just like he remembers, and he kisses his hair as Tony whispers, frantic and desperate, “I found you. I found you. I found you.”

~*~

“I died,” Peter says, later. He’s fed Tony, dressed him in clothes that fit perfectly. Catalogued the minor differences--the lines around his eyes, the hand that is scarred and shaking, the gray at his temples and scars on his arms, when he shoves his sleeves up. “Didn’t I?”

Tony nods, helpless. Still staring at Peter like he’s seeing a ghost, or maybe just something precious that he’d given up all but the wildest of hopes of ever seeing again.

“How long?” Peter asks.

“Two years,” Tony rasps.

Peter closes his eyes. He can’t even imagine that. It’s been nine months since his Tony died on that battle field--and every moment has felt like an unending agony.

“Oh, sweetheart,” he murmurs and Tony is suddenly there, kissing him, and it’s desperate, frantic and hard, biting and rough and demanding, almost begging Peter to be real, to be his, and Peter--Peter sighs and yields, and gives him what he’s always wanted to give Tony Stark.

Everything.

~*~

Tony stands naked at the window, after, staring at the city, sprawled below. Peter watches him, his body delightfully sore and spent and sticky. “You didn’t do as much damage to your world,” Tony says, softly. “Did you have to eliminate anyone?”

Peter briefly wonders who Tony killed, to keep searching for him. He nods and doesn’t ask. Some things are better not discussed, he thinks.

“Do you want to stay?” Tony asks.

Peter thinks of the worlds he’s seen. The ones of fire and acid and ironspiders, the one where Winter ruled and the one where a blue eyed Tony laughed at him and called him pet.

He thinks of the one where Ironman and Spider-man were not needed, where peace was real and not a fleeting dream.

He thinks of everything he’s ever wanted and how very tired he is.

“I want to be with you,” he says, because peace is enticing--but he has killed for this man. He has torn universes apart, for him.

Tony smiles and it feels like coming home.

[buckywintersoldierbarnes2017]

I Want You.

Request from @bellasett: Hello this idea just came to me I was wondering if u could do a Steve rogers where he just got unfrozen and his sex drive is up (bc it's like a side effect from the ice) and the reader has had a crush on captain America for like ever and they meet at stark tower and he ignores her and she thinks it's her but he just can't be alone with her without wanting to do the deed and maybe he's think of all the place he could have sex with her sorry this is really long if u don't do smut it's fine tho.

Note: I am soooooo sorry that it has taken me a while to get this written. Between my mind deciding to hate me and a whole lot of changes in my life everything has been a little too hectic for my muse to work. I hope this is what you were looking for! <3 I didn’t do too much smut though as my muse is very slowly coming back lol!

Steve x Reader

Words: 2,225

Warnings: Mild language and some minor smut. I haven’t gone into full detail with it and the majority is simply implied but figured I should warn you anyway....if I have missed anything please let me know :)

Disclaimer: GIF used is not mine so all credit goes to it’s creator. <3

You couldn’t believe it, not one bit. He was within arm’s reach of you, currently sleeping on the hospital bed in the room, his chest clearing rising up and then falling back down again at a steady pace….but still there was a part of you that was convinced you were going to wake up soon and be pulled back to reality.

Ever since you were a child you had grown up knowing his face, his name, and he was the very reason you now had the job that you did – working for Shield. He had made it his life mission to save others, never once expecting anything in return, and he had made the ultimate sacrifice in doing so. As far as you were concerned doing this job was your way of thanking him, something you never thought you would get to do in person.

Not only that but you were just like any other red blooded woman and you had developed quite the crush on him despite having never been in the same room as him until now.

A tired groan interrupted your thoughts and the rather perverted gaze you’d had on him as his eyes started to open.

“Captain Rogers?”

All hints of admiration faded from your face as a look of concern replaced it. This guy had been frozen for over 70 years, so he was going to have no idea where he was, who you were, or what year it even was. Agent Hill and Director Fury had both considered creating a façade to make him believe that he was still in his own time but you had quickly put the idea down; if you start with a lie how could you possibly expect him to ever trust you?

“Wh-Where am I?”

“You’re somewhere safe.” You sat yourself down onto the edge of his bed and although the temptation to take his hand was hard to resist you knew that it wouldn’t be the right course of action. He didn’t know you and when someone was both confused and scared they become unpredictable. “Now I know it is easier said than done but I need you to remain calm and just listen to me okay? You have been through quite the ordeal.”

As his eyes finally opened fully and his blue hues fell on you, confusion etched itself onto his face.

“What do you mean?”

Here it was, the moment you had been dreading, your next words were going to change his life forever and you couldn’t even begin to think how he would react.

“You’ve been asleep Captain…..for 70 years. Now I kn-“

You had started to rush into the reassuring part of your speech, noticing the glint of worry igniting in his eyes, and the reservations you’d had just moments before about placing your hand onto his flew out of the window completely as you encased one of his strong hands, but your words were cut short as he shot upright in the bed and his free hand gripped onto your arm hard.

Panic quickly built up inside of you but when you saw his cheeks beginning to glow a deep crimson colour confusion soon overrode it. He was…..blushing? Out of all the scenarios you had pictured in your head of how this conversation would go this was most certainly not one of them. Anger? Yes. Confusion? Absolutely! Maybe even a little sadness at the fact that everyone he had once known was either dead or dying. But what reason could there be for him to be embarrassed or nervous?

His eyes weren’t meeting your gaze at all, not even for a split second, and after a moment or two you finally followed his line of sight and immediately noticed the bulge that had formed underneath the sheets. Now it was your turn to feel the heat rising in your cheeks.

“You need to leave.”

The tone of his voice had you pulling your eyes away from the rather unexpected sight of his arousal and in a rather flustered manner you left the room. Your heart was racing as you silently signalled for two other Shield agents to head in and speak with the Captain

Things only got even more weird after that day…

                                                * * * * * * * * * *

ONE YEAR LATER

Your job at Shield was becoming increasingly harder to achieve with each day that had passed since Captain Rogers had woken up. Every time he entered the same room as you his entire body stiffened, and his eyes frantically looked at anything but you…or he simply left the room before he had even finished stepping through the door.

The first few times this had happened you simply shrugged it off and put it down to the fact that he was nervous and unsure of all the new people are him but now, a whole year down the line, it was just getting stupid….and rather hurtful if you were perfectly honest with yourself.

“Did you ever find out what it was you did?”

It barely registered with you that someone had taken a seat on the sofa next to you, or that it was your closest friend, as you continued to watch for any other reactions from the Captain.

“Earth to [y/n]!” A hand waving itself in front of your face snapped you out of your little surveillance mission. “Starting to think you have seriously insulted Rogers you know. You’re the only one here he doesn’t speak to.”

“Tell me about it…” Your words showed your annoyance at the situation and rather reluctantly you pulled your gaze away from the blonde Avenger and placed it onto the redhead sat beside you instead. “Maybe he blames me. I was the first person he saw when he woke up after decades of being frozen…he might think that it was me who woke him up.”

You didn’t even bother to hide both the fear and the panic you felt at such a scenario being true and the volume of your voice rose enough to start gaining the attention of others currently in the room – except the one person who was causing this turmoil for you.

“Fury has already explained all that to him [y/n]. He knows full well that you were not responsible for that.”

Her words went through one ear and then straight out of the other as the sound of footsteps stole your attention. Surprise, surprise! Steve was yet again leaving the room with a rather flushed look on his face. Well he wasn’t going to get very far this time because you’d just about had enough now.

“Then maybe it is about damn time I get the truth out of him.”

“[y/n] wa-“

In athletic fashion you had jumped over the back of the sofa you had been sitting on, Nat’s hand only grazing your shoulder and failing miserably in her attempts to stop you from going after Steve.

“He is definitely about to get his arse handed to him.” She sighed in defeat.

                                              * * * * * * * * * *

“Steve!”

Your voice echoed through the corridor as the door to the shared living area closed behind you.

“Not now [y/n].”

Everyone else in the tower got the kind-hearted Steve Rogers, the one that would crack a joke whether it was funny or not, but you got nothing like that, quite the opposite in fact. His words were always cold and even on the days where you knew full well he wasn’t busy he would push you away as though he didn’t have the time to talk with you.

“NO!” That made him stop dead in his tracks. No one had ever heard you shout with such an anger but it still didn’t seem to be enough to make him turn and face you…something which only fuelled your anger even more. “You don’t get to walk away from me until you tell me what the fuck your problem is!”

“Language.”

“Seriously? You’re going to scold me for my cuss word while you have been ignoring me for going on a year now?!”

He must have been out of his mind. It was an apology you had been expecting from him, an explanation even, but a scolding? He had literally just rid you of any hint of patience you’d had, which was made apparent when you stormed towards him and took a rough hold of his arm. Up until now you had only ever seen his body tensing but now you were feeling it with your own hand and it made you feel worse than you had ever done so before….sick even.

How could someone hate you this much?

Everything that happened next did so at a speed which left your mind still trying to catch up after your back had hit the wall and an animalistic growl rolled from the Captain’s lips. Thanks to his enhanced speed he had managed to pin you to the wall of the corridor and now you were the one who wasn’t going anywhere anytime soon.

“You should have just left it [y/n]. You have no idea how hard it is for me to be around you.”

“Why?! I haven’t done anything to you! It wasn’t me who decided on unfreezing you.”

The only response you received from him was a quiet laugh laced with a mischief that was completely foreign to you as one of his hands glided down the length of your arm.

“What the hell is so amusing Captain?”

“Oh just the little fact that all this time you have been thinking that I hate you my mind has gone in the complete opposite direction.”

His hand continued to make its way down your arm until it came to rest on your hip, the sharp blue hues of his eyes never once leaving you. Never had you been this close to him, not even when he had woken up a year ago, and it was only now that you noticed the flecks of green in his eyes….good god he was incredible…

“Ever since the day I woke up and saw you for the first time I haven’t been able to control myself.”

“Wh-What?”

Out of all the scenarios you had pictured in your mind as to how this conversation would go the words that he had just spoken hadn’t been in a single one….there was no way that Captain America, the poster boy of World War Two himself, would see you in that kind of way.

“Don’t believe me?” With a single raised eyebrow, the hand of his that wasn’t resting on your hip reached for one of yours and slowly moved it nearer to his body. “This is what you do to me. This is what I have been trying to stay away from.”

You didn’t need to ask him to clarify what he was talking about because the bulge in his trousers currently pressing up against your hand was more than enough for it all to click into place. Of course you were still rather annoyed at him for the way that he had handled it, for ignoring you all this time, but right now you couldn’t focus enough to devise a plan to punish him…..not when his arousal was growing even more underneath your touch.

“I don’t….I don’t understand..”

“Did they stop teaching sex education in schools while I was frozen or something?”

A playful smirk tugged at the corner of his lips as he left your hand where it was, enjoying the sensation building up inside of him, and his lips started to lay gentle kisses onto the crook of your neck.

“No I didn-“

All your childhood you had fantasised about being in such a situation with Captain America, just as all the girls now did, but feeling his lips pressing up against your bare skin blew all of those thoughts you had conjured up right out of the window…..they paled in comparison to the reality. Biting down onto your bottom lip while you tried to compose yourself enough to continue speaking you refrained from letting a groan slip from you.

“I meant how….and why hide it?”

If he had noticed you reacting to him he didn’t mention anything, only pulling away from you after you had voiced your question.

“Because every time I saw you I could do nothing but picture you…and me…inside every room of this building. I hid it because I didn’t want you to think I was a sleaze ball. This is hardly the image of me that you grew up with [y/n].” Both of his hands rested themselves onto your hips as the pads of his thumbs traced light patterns onto the vest top you were wearing. “Even now…when I know you deserve better….I can’t keep my hands off you.”

“Who says I want you to keep them off me?”

Now it was his turn to look surprised but before a single word could escape his lips you were dragging him down the corridor; a task that wasn’t at all easy given his muscular frame but you didn’t care….you had fancied this man for the majority of your life and now you knew he’d thought of you in that way for a whole year you weren’t about to waste another minute.

                                        ~~~~~~~~~~

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[aion-rsa]

How Zack Snyder’s Army of the Dead Expands on Dawn of the Dead

https://ift.tt/3f7FCKZ

This Army of the Dead article contains spoilers.

The premise of Army of the Dead was originally intended for a Dawn of the Dead sequel. No, really. Director Zack Snyder is not shy about this point, mentioning to the press, including us, that he’s virtually had this concept in the back of his mind since time immemorial.

“Just exploring Dawn, in doing that movie and taking it apart [was exciting],” Snyder recently told Den of Geek. And while the idea of doing a direct sequel to his 2004 remake of the George A. Romero classic fizzled in the years after Snyder’s debut picture, the premise of a heist movie where the heroes have to break into an abandoned Las Vegas hotel to steal the proverbial jackpot has been a Snyder pitch “for forever.”

Now that Army of the Dead is finally here, thanks to Snyder partnering with Netflix, it is very much its own movie. Nonetheless, it is also happy to reference other cinema touchstones more than any other film in Snyder’s filmography. This includes winks to An American Werewolf in London, nods to Aliens, and most intriguingly overt expansions on what Snyder did in the Dawn of the Dead remake. Thematically, it even arguably feels like Zack is coming home.

This is obvious during the opening credits of the film, which may very well be the movie’s highlight. With Las Vegas under siege by the undead, we get a wonderful sequence of everything going to hell. Some might mistakenly feel it’s apiece with another 2000s zombie movie classic, Zombieland, which showed via slow motion vignette how zombies took over the world. However, Army of the Dead more overtly homages Snyder’s own Dawn of the Dead and then builds from that foundation.

The first major wink and nudge comes from the song choice. While Snyder elects to use an old standby for any movie set in Sin City, “Viva Las Vegas,” it is not Elvis Presley’s iconic rendition. Instead, we’re listening to Richard Cheese and Allison Crowe offer their own modern vocal stylings on the classic.

Cheese, the face of an intentionally comedic lounge act, has spent decades offering swinging covers to traditionally un-swinging tunes. That memorably includes his jazzy rendition of Disturbed’s “Get Down with the Sickness,” a heavy metal song with nihilistic implications. Cheese’s cover came to mainstream prominence, too, thanks to Snyder’s Dawn of the Dead.

In that 2004 film, we hear Cheese singing, “Get ready to die!” with maximum joyfulness as the last survivors of a zombie apocalypse find a bizarre definition for their “new normal” inside of a shopping mall with hordes of the undead outside.

For Army of the Dead, Snyder asked Cheese and Crowe to specifically cover Presley’s “Viva Las Vegas,” a song that was always meant to be a lounge act. However, the new version has added menace in 2021 since it’s now recorded with a self-aware detachment about the horrible images we are witnessing: zombie strippers murdering their customer in the bathtub; a paratrooper descending into a flesh-hungry mob ready to devour him whole; Vegas’ mini-Eiffel Tower crushing a poor old Zombie Elvis impersonator—killing him all over again.

The Army of the Dead opener also tells a grim story about how society both descends and stays the same. Unlike Zombieland, we follow a wordless narrative in the opening credits as a mercenary we later learn is Scott Ward (Dave Bautista) goes on a mission to save the Secretary of Defense. In the end, he gets the prized asset out, but the little girl his team also stumbles upon ends up crushed by the makeshift wall the U.S. government is forming around the city: a literal body in the foundation of this new world (which, by the by, alludes to a line of dialogue in Watchmen).

The opening credits of Dawn of the Dead (2004) actually use a sparing amount of original footage shot for that movie. Much of the imagery we see is from recordings of real moments of social unrest and war, which feeds into the frequent original Romero subtext that the living are already zombies. The more things change—be that by zombie virus or otherwise—the more they stay the same. Army of the Dead takes this further. Snyder has the budget this time to film an entire sequence of a world upended and carrying on. Hence showing how the U.S. government is able to prevent a global zombie apocalypse (for now) by walling up Vegas.

Read more

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Afterward, the government now has a refugee crisis with detainment camps located all around the ruins of an American city, and in the movie’s universe a simpleton is still president, ordering a nuclear strike on the town on the Fourth of July because it’d be “really cool.” Years after zombies destroyed the town, guys like Scott Ward are also still flipping burger—or getting him and his friends killed while doing the bidding of shady wealthy elites like Bly Tanaka (Hiroyuki Sanada).

The opening sequence and whole first act of Army of the Dead builds on the idea of Dawn of the Dead, which suggests we were doomed to this disastrous fate even without zombie bites. But Army of the Dead uses world-building to expand on this concept in visceral and sometimes unique ways. Consider that in 2004, the Dawn remake was only the second zombie movie to have “fast zombies” after Danny Boyle’s 28 Days Later from two years earlier. Dawn then went a step further by introducing a… zombie baby.

In Dawn of the Dead ’04, Andre (Mekhi Phifer) and Luda (Inna Korobkina) are about to be parents when the very pregnant Luda is scratched by a zombie. Andre hides this fact from the rest of the survivors in the mall until his eventually zombified wife gives birth to an undead babe. The concept is never carried further than the crib since the other characters wind up killing the zombie baby as soon as it opens its dead eyes.

Army of the Dead winds up building off of that idea in alternately interesting and disappointing ways. Once again a zombie baby figures heavily into the plot, with a zombified woman pregnant with another zombie male’s child. Eventually, the zombie mother-to-be is beheaded and her child, still barely in utero, dies in her severed corpse.

Once again we are denied a full exploration of what a zombie baby would mean in this world, and if it could grow or develop, which is a bit disappointing. But by implication of being conceived by two zombie parents, Snyder is clearly attempting to build on the idea of what a zombie can be.

“I think the conversation I was starting to have with myself is: What will people allow in this genre of film?” Snyder told us.

So, what will people allow zombies to be? More than any non-comedy film before it, Army of the Dead leans into the idea that zombies can grow, learn, and essentially evolve into a new society. As another character in Snyder’s movie says, Las Vegas isn’t their prison; it’s their kingdom. One in which living humans barter for safe passage by offering literal sacrifices to the “alpha” zombies who’ve built a society.

It is the original zombie alpha who’s become a king (or “god” with his nickname of Zeus) in this world. And unlike the human characters in Army of the Dead, Zeus and his fellow alphas are immune from deceiving, backstabbing, or betraying each other. Snyder riffs on the Aliens line that they aren’t “fucking each other over for a goddamn percentage,” which is more or less said about his zombies here. But he’s also expanding on how far you can push zombies on screen.

In his first zombie movie, Snyder remade a Romero classic from 1978. But Romero’s later zombie movies, including Day of the Dead (1985) and Land of the Dead (2005), toyed with the idea of zombies growing more sentient and going their own way. Bub the Zombie in Day learned loyalty to human protectors and how to use a gun. “Big Daddy” in Land learned how to lead an exodus of pissed off shamblers against humans. But that was still working on allegorical terms about income inequality, and inequality between nations.

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With Army of the Dead, Snyder goes much farther than the genre has before by imagining zombies building their own society and hierarchy. For arguably the first time since a baby zombie opened its eyes in Snyder’s Dawn of the Dead, these walkers are growing up.

The post How Zack Snyder’s Army of the Dead Expands on Dawn of the Dead appeared first on Den of Geek.

from Den of Geek https://ift.tt/3ywErfN

[vileart]

Shit I'm in Love with Dramaturgy: Rachelle Elie @ Edfringe 2017

Bawdy Romp through Life, Love and Family with Cheeky Songs About Sex

Rachelle Elie can tell you more about love and relationships than Gwyneth Paltrow, Madonna and Katy Perry could ever do – and she’s laying it all on the line.

The Outstanding Canadian Comedy Award winner is bringing her critically acclaimed one-woman show Shit I’m in Love With You Again (SIILWYA) to the Edinburgh Fringe for the first time. Packed with witty observations, tales of embarrassment plus cheeky songs about sex it’s a joyfully bawdy romp through the ups and downs of her life that covers teenage lust, family, marriage, parenthood and therapy.

What was the inspiration for this performance?

For the last 15 years I have been creating and touring one-woman comedy character shows such as Joe: The Perfect Man and Big Girls Don’t Cry. After years of marital distress, my obstetrician/gynaecologist husband and I managed to rescue our love from the cliff’s edge, a recovery that inspired my own story. 

I realised I knew more about love and relationships than Gwyneth Paltrow, Madonna and Katy Perry could ever know. So six years ago I decided to strip away the characters, get on stage in stand up clubs and find my own voice, a decision that led to Shit I’m in Love With You Again. The show is my life, including my time spent in Kenya where my husband worked in a hospital and I taught art to HIV positive adults shunned by society. 

Medical politics forced my husband to resign his post just as I, after making sacrifices and overcoming doubts to accompany him, found my niche and was making a real difference to people’s lives. The rest is history – a history laid bare for all to see on stage. Shit I’m in love With You Again is my first autobiographical show and this is me laying it all on the line.    

Is performance still a good space for the public discussion of ideas? 

I feel theatre is still one of the best ways to share ideas. What I love about theatre is it is an art form that requires an audience. As a performer I get immediate feedback about whether my idea is being understood and it affects my performance.  

With so much social media and texting, face-to-face communication is harder to get but theatre is an old fashioned art form that offers modern present day idea sharing and expression.  

How did you become interested in making performance?

From a very early age I would do silly characters to make my siblings laugh. My brother always pushed me to do the characters for others to make them laugh. We would be driving through Florida and he got me to walk up to strangers and do my characters. I got addicted to the laughs. 

Those were early performances. By being weird I realised I could affect a stranger’s day. I failed Grade 8 and at that time a guidance counsellor encouraged me to audition for a high school of the arts. I didn’t know it but I was an artist. I got into the art and dance program and thrived.  At 16 I was working as a professional model and at a Ralph Lauren show we were told to completely ignore the audience. 

This was impossible to me and that realisation led me to persuing a degree in acting at Bishop’s University. Making performance was something I gravitated towards but as I got older the type of performance I was meant to do became clearer. I went to theatre school to be a serious actress but my true calling has always been to be a clown and to do comedy.

Is there any particular approach to the making of the show?

Every show I have created has had a slightly different approach but most of the time it involves collaboration with clown experts. I have worked with Philippe Gaulier, Sue Morrison, Mike Kennard, James Keylon, Francine Cote, Adam Lazarus, David Shiner and others. T

hese people are masters of clown and physical comedy. When starting a new project I often get in a room with one of these people and start jamming. They help me get clearer with my ideas. I also get on stage as much as I can because the audience will immediately let me know if something is working. I am not a linear thinker so I often work with dramaturges or directors to shape the show. 

Once I feel I have at least an hour of strong material I will schedule previews so the show can further develop in front of an audience. I will video those previews and make major cuts at that point.  Friends and family feedback also influences my work. 

Does the show fit with your usual productions?

In the past my work has been theatre based and the shows have revolved around over the top characters. This show was developed in front of audiences in stand-up clubs, cabarets and bars. It became clear after hundreds of 5-30 min sets that a new show was in development but I was to be the central figure. 

Many comedians will say it takes years to really find your VOICE, after six years of consistent performances and feeling like my comedic voice was surfacing it became clear that I needed to create a new piece. I knew I wanted to perform it in theatres so I returned to my usual approach; to shows which involved several collaborators and mentors. 

What do you hope that the audience will experience?

More and more people need to laugh. As a comedian my favourite part of my work is doing just that and I believe this show provides some comic relief. I am also a trained clown. Clowns go too far, push boundaries and talk about things people are usually hesitant to discuss. 

I hope audiences jump on board with me when I go into the good the bad and the rauchy experiences of life. My specialty is “being too much” and “going too far” I hope audiences will enjoy my unique brand of comedy developed over the last twenty years that involves storytelling, stand up, clown, characters and acting.  

Near the end of the show, when we get more into the crisis of my relationship audiences get to see the worst of me. It is very intimate. I try to always come back to the light of it which is fun because things get crazy and then we laugh about how ugly things got. I had a friend who went through a nasty divorce and at the end of the show he was teary and said he wished he saw the show before they broke up. 

Another elderly overweight gentleman said he wished he had "fucked first" in his first marriage. Maybe it would of saved it! I tell the truth about love and relationships and the shows message is that even if a relationship appears to be shit it may be fixable. I hope audiences will laugh and when conflict part of the show comes up that people will relate to my struggle and to my universal message about love.

What strategies did you consider towards shaping this audience experience?

A few years back I discovered Aristotle's “Fryetag's Pyramid". Exposition, Rising action, Climax, Falling action & Resolution. I am not by nature a linear thinker and this tried and true triangle for story development is a strategy that helped me shape my chaotic ideas. Also I perform as much as I can in front of a live audience so that I can ensure my writing and performance are consistently funny for all types of audiences. 

Lastly and most importantly as a performer doing what I have to do before a show, to be in the moment with the audience that is in front of me, is crucial to shaping an audiences experience. There is a magical place, a five star place, between an audience and a performer on stage and when I access that place the audience and I have the ultimate experience. I am getting better and better at stepping into that place and it is the part of theatre that is like skydiving: life and death.

The show was a sing and shout-along success across Canada. Mums empathise with the “Ring of Fire” scene where Elie discusses that unforgettable sensation during childbirth, just before the baby arrives. 

And we can all learn from the Fuck First ditty and its core message about going to bed together before, rather than after, a romantic restaurant curry. 

SIILWYA rips through every key moment from Elie’s fall out with Jesus and enthusiastic embrace of sexual freedom, to true love and a marriage that came within an inch of divorce.

Described by legendary French master clown Philippe Gaulier as “fucking funny”, Elie has won bucket loads of praise. Critics delight at the energy and charm with which she delivers this autobiographical tale. Elie’s comedy can switch in an instant from naivety to raunch and then into the pathos of the realisation that she “loves everything about her husband – even the things that she hates”.

Elie treats universal themes in unexpected ways. She says: “It’s all there from splitting up with Jesus to the need for patience, tolerance and blow jobs in saving your marriage. I know more about long-term relationships than Gwyneth Paltrow, Madonna and Katy Perry combined. I’ve been in the trenches of love for 20 years with my husband. We’re raising two boys together. I talk about the things most people are afraid to discuss.”

The songs are co-written with Luke Jackson, who provides live musical accompaniment.

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[some-triangles]

PART 4

Utena has turned into a car.

I think it is incumbent on the viewer at this point to try to unravel both why this makes sense as a gesture and why it seemed like a good idea at the time.

Point 1: It’s a magical girl transformation sequence.  Ikuhara, having worked on Sailor Moon, knows all about this stuff.  The beats of a transformation sequence are as follows: upon activation of an arcane device, a girl loses all her clothes and emerges clad in fetish gear.  The ideal transformation sequence from a commercial perspective ends up with a girl wearing an outfit which appeals as much to young girls as it does to grown men.   As has previously been established, grown men like cars – but this car is hot pink, shaped like a uterus and is trying as hard as it can to be a horse.  Or two horses.   It is a “car” in the same sense that Sailor Moon is a “high school girl”.   It has been optimized to serve all of the needs of the academy at once.

Point 2:  What we are dramatizing here is the fact that despite her avowed wish to leave the academy Utena has still been socialized in patriarchy and therefore cannot fully transcend her status as a player of the academy’s game.   When she took Anthy’s hand and led her in the general direction of “out” she was still playing prince, saving the damsel in distress.  This gesture does not work because the academy owns it.   When she attempts it, she is revealed as what the academy forces her to be: an object.  An exciting, ambiguously-gendered object, admittedly, an object which is absolutely up to date and this year’s model, but an object that is nonetheless made to please a particular audience.  As long as Utena can still be the receptacle of male fantasy – as prince or princess – the story cannot work.

Point 3: Back in the old academy Anthy’s role in the final confrontation was to get stabbed a whole lot and lie in a coffin.   Of course, something important and transformative did take place there, and the gesture that changed the academy did come from Anthy in the end; but she didn’t look cool doing it.  Utena did all of the on-screen work.   If Anthy is retelling the story here she wants to emphasize that despite all of Utena’s princely self-sacrifice the most difficult thing anyone did in that room was reach out of that coffin.  She also wants to emphasize that she’s the top.

Akio killed himself earlier because he was unable to find his “key”.  He lost it when he realized that Anthy was, if not enjoying herself, at least tacitly “consenting” to what he had been doing to her, which was, as far as he was concerned, not nearly as hot as the whole drugged princess routine. Anthy, however, already has Utena’s key. Get it?  What we are emphasizing here, in case anyone got the wrong idea from the TV-mandated chasteness of the original series, is that queer desire is actually an integral part of the revolutionary moment.  Anthy is able to go through with this because she really, sincerely wants to fuck Utena’s brains out.

So Utena’s sex car is saved from rusting away from disuse.   The shadow puppet girls arrive to give Ikuhara’s old buddy Anno a shout-out and the race is on.

It’s worth considering whether there might have been a way to do the car metaphor without going full bananas zany with it – whether we might have found some kind of tonal harmony between Touga in the cabbage patch and Anthy in the driver’s seat.    It would probably not have worked but I would have loved to see an attempt.  As it is, the narrator has gone manic and we are flying, buddy, we are up in the clouds.

The shadow puppet girls (who apparently all have pink hair in this universe – emphasizing their artificiality, I suspect) complete their setup and a new challenger enters the race.

Shiori’s car looks kind of like Soundwave from Transformers.  I always liked Soundwave.  Her car is also considerably more phallic than Utena’s, having as it does a cycloptic bull for a figurehead.   Shiori is acting as an agent of the academy here simply by making this a race, rather than an obstacle course - the idea that only one special person gets to leave the academy at a time plays right into the prince/princess narrative.  It’s not a part of the story that Anthy particularly wants to dispel, either, which may be telling.

Shiori says the line of century, which I’m going to render literally for maximum effect: “It’s a big mistake to think that you were the only one who was able to turn into a car.”

Behind the bull Shiori is a big ol’ Chrysler station wagon with frilly upholstery. She underscores the crabs in a bucket motif by saying that only she is cool enough to do something as neat as escaping the world before crashing into a retaining wall and exploding in a completely unforced error, which makes sense when you consider that nobody’s driving her.

Anthy has a nasty sense of humor.

Next up are the thousand drone tanks of the world’s resentment.  The jokes are flying thick and fast now – the shadow puppet girls pick up the encroaching horde on a “vegetable scanner” which superimposes the danger on a picture of a salad, and the three filler dudes who were so fillery that I never mentioned them once in my recap of the original series show up with radar guns. The drone horde also makes a lot of really high-pitched honking sounds.  The director wants us to know that he knows that this is stupid.  The viewer may well ask what all that trauma from before was about, in that case, but there’s no time, the drones are attacking.

Utena’s chassis is effed up in much the same way that her uniform was back when she fought Touga that one time.  Like the opening theme says: “what I want is to find my place in life and my self-worth, taking who I've been up until today and heroically stripping her down until she's bare, like the roses whirling in freedom.”  Cast off that magical girl fetish gear, and be free!  And nude. While we continue to film you.  Trust us, it’s all very liberating.

Just as our heroes are about to be splatted by the biggest drone of them all, a tow hook shoots out from nowhere.  It’s our heroes’ friends!   Or… people who we can assume they made friends with, off screen, at some point!

Ikuhara shouting in the distance: “Oh, the whole bandminton game thing was too subtle for you, huh?  Need to have everything spelled out for you, huh? FINE”

They are driving Wakaba, a Jeep.  (The utility vehicle is truly the plain friend of the motorsports world.)  Explaining their presence, Juri says that high ideals attract noble companions. (I like overtly conceited Juri, and wish her incarnation from the original academy had had a little bit more of that going on.)  Miki tells Anthy that they will definitely follow her outside at some point.  I do not believe him.

The final challenge approaches.  It’s a giant Disney castle on wheels.

Thanks, Ikuhara.  I am beginning to see a Point 4 emerging to complement points 1 through 3 above, straight from the director: “If I make this as shiny, noisy and overt as possible, maybe you idiots will pay attention this time.”

The castle hoves massively into the lane in front of them as somewhere in the distance the bongo player goes nuts.   The shadow puppet girls implore Anthy to turn around and head back, but she’s not running anymore.  Suddenly, the car is wearing a dress.  Car Utena gets a secondary transformation - like, that wasn’t even her final form – like, you got your DBZ in my Sailor Moon, you got your Sailor Moon in my DBZ – like, we are now somehow even more uterus-shaped –

The extended dance mix of Rinbu Revolution starts playing, and let me just say that it is an incongruous choice for a car chase/demolition derby.  Anthy makes it through the castle, to general rejoicing, but there remains one final obstacle.

Point 5: to make all this masculine bullshit appear as silly as possible.

Akio tells Anthy that if she goes out there all she’s going to find is the end of the world.  Which is true, of course – the point of the whole castle palaver, the point of all this fetishizing of youth and innocence, is to keep death at bay.    If you can’t grow, you can’t die; but of course if you can’t grow, you can’t live, either. 

Akio tells Anthy to go back to being a living corpse.  (He can’t find his key, otherwise.)  Anthy tells him to fuck off so he squeezes them between some giant tank treads.

 Utena there, getting denuded again, of course.

Then this happens.

The prince is very, very dead.  The castle collapses in a hail of rose petals and eurodisco.  The shadow puppet girls lose their animating essence and become straw dolls named “Tenjou Utena” and “Himemiya Anthy.”  Cause they were puppets the whole time, see?

“Real” Anthy and “Real” Utena chat about how there are no roads in the outside world and so they will have to make one themselves.  They say this as they are literally driving on a road.   Still on screen and still being filmed, the two girls recline naked on a speeding motorcycle and make out, as you do once you have been freed from the male gaze.  

We end on a shot of another castle in the distance, which seems like a hopeful sign but should be the most ominous fucking thing in the world, if you’ve been paying attention.

The only possible conclusion is that they have not actually escaped.

In the end I can only interpret the last act of this movie as a titanic shrugging of the shoulders, an admission of a failure to envision what escape from this milieu actually looks like.  In this failure it invited other authors to take a crack at the same problem using the same kind of symbol language, which is how we got Madoka and its “let’s reframe choosing to be the Bride, who is still absolutely necessary to the functioning of the universe, as a revolutionary act in and of itself” thesis, among other things.   Ikuhara has a lot to answer for.

The problem of course is that a genuine escape from the academy should probably not be written by someone who has a vested interest in the academy’s continued existence; and so I think if anyone does end up writing the Utena story with an ending that works, it won’t be Ikuhara, or, not to put too fine a point on it, dudes generally.

Then again it’s possible that outside the academy there are things besides writing and rewriting the same old story to worry about.

[danijimenezv]

It Never Ends Well (Part 2)

Prompt/Summary: Based on “The Ugly Truth”, for @hunters-from-stark-tower movie challenge.

Pairings: Bucky x Y/N, eventual Clint x Y/N, Natasha x Sam

Warnings: Swearing, mentions of sex, vulgarities…

Word Count: 3444

A/N: Some of the lines used in this fic don’t belong to me, I got them out of the movie, so credit to the writers. I’d love to hear what you think, feedback is always appreciated.

Part 1

“Good morning, everyone.” you chirped as you entered your office side by side with Natasha.

“Morning, Y/N.” Wanda smiled kindly at you, “You left your phone here yesterday, so I took it with me.”

“Thanks, Wanda. You’re a lifesaver.” you muttered, placing various papers on your desk, without taking your eyes off some document, “Anything important.”

“Actually, yes. Mr. Stark called early today.” your eyes widened at her words, “He didn’t recognize my voice, so I pretended to be you. I hope you don’t mind.”

“It’s fine.” you dismissed, “Why did Tony call?”

“He called for a meeting.”

“Great, at what time should Nat and I go?”

“Actually, he called all of us to the meeting.”

You stopped in your tracks, Natasha also halting her actions and looking at you with an eyebrow raised. It was usual for you to have meetings every once in a while with your boss, but it was rare for a meeting to involve everyone.

“Everyone?” your friend asked, and Wanda nodded.

“He said he had something important to tell all of us, regarding the magazine’s future, so as soon as we were all here, we should go up to the conference room in the penultimate floor.”

“Okay…” you frowned and took a deep breath, and, taking your block of notes, exited your office, followed close by the two ladies, “Everyone! You have three minutes to get your asses to the conference room in the penultimate floor. Mr. Stark called for a meeting.”

Everyone rushed around, gathering everything that might be important for the meeting. In a matter of minutes, all of Stark Magazine’s employees found themselves seated organized on the multiple chairs around the long table in the conference room. Natasha and you took the places at the side of the head. Tony was already there, and he waited patiently until you were all settled down, your attention on him.

“Great. Morning, everyone. Now, before I play you this, I should warn you… this guy is wild, rough around the edges, but exactly what we need. Jarvis?”

“Right away, sir.” a robotic voice came from above us, and soon enough, a record from a radio show last night played over the room, making you and Natasha widen your eyes and gasp in recognition and in panic as the redhead’s voice blared from the speakers. Sam frowned slightly, probably recognizing his girlfriend’s voice, but decided to say nothing about it.

“Why are we listening to this crap?” you interrupted, bringing Natasha out of her mortified state.

“Because that guy’s a genius.”

“That guy’s a pig.” you begged to differ.

“Pig or not, say hello to our new commentator.” Tony smirked.

“What?!”

“He’ll be starting a new segment of our magazine.”

“How is that supposed to be of any help, Tony? Honestly.” you sighed, “People will send their relationship problems or something like that, and he’ll answer it in a column in the next edition? With all due respect, boss, nobody is going to want to send anything else after hearing this moron’s first response.”

“Yeah, and who the hell is this guy?” Pietro voiced.

“Glad you ask, Maximoff.” Stark replied, still beaming with pride at his new idea, “Name’s Clint Barton.”

“He’s a misogynist who represents everything wrong in society.” Maria rolled her eyes, “I second Y/N; I don’t think someone like him is what this magazine needs.”

“You might not want to hear it from me, Tony.” Bruce sighed, “But they’re right. Having this guy in the magazine could create controversy, which means more work for you and Pepper.”

“Oh, come on!” he bellowed, “It’s not that bad. He’s got a point of view, we don’t have to like it. And, for an independent radio show, he sure gets a lot of ratings, which is what we need. You work in a magazine, people. You’re objective about others’ opinions. Do it for the sales.”

“Maybe we could get other ideas to improve the sales.” Wanda contributed shyly.

“Unless you get juicy pictures of our dear president banging three crack whores and a horse, no one’s going to give a fuck.” a man’s voice came from the door, and your head whipped to the direction of the sound, finding a man in his mid-forties, with dirty-blonde short hair and blue eyes, “I’m sorry, I was eavesdropping out in the hall.”

“See? He’s great.” Tony clapped.

“Thanks, boss.”

“You already hired him?!” you asked, dumbfounded.

“And who would be this delightful creature?”

“Barton, she’s Y/N Y/LN. The editor in chief.”

“Basically, your second boss along with me.” Natasha added, with a scowl etched on her face, but introduced herself nonetheless, “Natasha Romanoff, design director.”

“Hey.” he smirked at us, “I like women on top.”

“You mind not telling that to my girlfriend right in my face?” Sam snapped and rolled his eyes.

“Oh, sorry, man.” Barton apologized and turned to you, sending you a quick wink, “Hey, hottie.”

“You disgust me.” you hissed, “Tony, is he for real? Are you for real?”

“Maximoff-”

“Which Maximoff?” Wanda questioned.

“Pietro.” Tony specified, “Can you show our new asset to his new office?”

“Thanks, boss.”

“You’re going to love it.”

Stark exited the conference room, quickly followed by Barton and Pietro, and stayed in the hall talking to his new favourite. You turned your head to look at the rest of your team.

“He needs to go.” your statement earned small nods from the majority of your coworkers.

You looked away from the scene in front of you, not wanting to see the troubled look on the rest of the guys nor your boss with the new employee. A bitter smile formed in your face as your gaze rested on the small screen in one of the coffee tables, and saw the security footage from outside the building. Tony had made your morning miserable by bringing that poor excuse of a human being; this was karma.

“Mr. Stark.” you interrupted his conversation with the blonde man, “I ought to let you know, your wife just walked into the building and is probably on her way to your floor.”

He groaned loudly, and made his way to his office in the last floor, clearly waiting for whatever problem Pepper was going to bring to him today, leaving Barton with Pietro.

You grabbed your stuff and stormed out, taking the stairs down to get to your floor.

“Y/N, hi.” you encountered Pepper on your way down, as she was ascending.

“Mrs. Stark, it’s a pleasure to have you here.” you nodded.

“Please, call me Pepper.”

“Why aren’t you using the elevator?”

“Oh, it was taking too much. And I need Tony to actually be responsible for once in his life and face some of his company’s problems.”

“Mr. Stark is on his office, at the top floor.”

“Thanks, Y/N. No wonder why my husband keeps you around. You might be the only reason this magazine still works.” she rolled her eyes and sighed, “Anthony couldn’t have done it without you. I swear, sometimes he’s as useless as he can get.”

“Thank you…” you ignored her insult to your boss.

You continued your way to your office. For the next half an hour, you spent your time alone in your office while Nat talked to Sam, pacing on the wooden floor, muttering soothing things to yourself so you could calm down, when the reason of your stress walked in without knocking.

“I don’t know why I was expecting you to have any modals whatsoever and knock, like a civil person.”

“You’re so wound up about me being here.”

“Can’t imagine the reason.” you let out sarcastically.

“Why so tense?” Barton asked in a seductive whisper, “I bet I know exactly how to help you.”

You scoffed and took several steps away from him, eager for some distance, “Have you no respect at all?”

“Seriously, what is really your problem with me? This is something that goes way beyond than simple dislike.”

“We had a little phone conversation last night, live on your show.” you crossed your arms over your chest, “I wasn’t the one directly speaking, but essentially, the conversation was between you and me.”

“That’s why her voice sounded familiar, the redhead…” he muttered thoughtfully, “Well, who would have thought? You two are not ugly at all.”

“Like I needed your assurance.”

“Look, Y/N, right? I want to thank you for this job. I would’ve never gotten it without your help from last night. You have to admit, we make a hell of a team.”

“First, we’re not a team.” you emphasized, “Second, what makes you think we can work together? You create imbecilic trash heard by housebound subdeveloped humans who are so busy with their hands down their pants they can’t change the station.”

“Nice image you’re painting yourself in. Now I can’t stop picturing you with your hand down your pants.”

“I’m not part of that image. I don’t hear your shit, I was just passing through the stations.”

“Sure you were, sweetheart.” you wanted to smack the smirk off his face, but you contained yourself.

“I, on the other hand, am part of a well-known magazine with a variety of subjects of interests, without having to make sexual innuendos about anything.”

“And that’s why your sales were going down and Stark hired me to save the day. Admit it, Y/N, you need me here to keep the magazine afloat.”

“Don’t forget, Barton, I am the editor.” you reminded Clint harshly, “Everything passes through me before printing. And if I don’t want, you’re not in the published magazine. Sure, Stark may be the big boss and everything, but this is basically my magazine. I can tell Tony the printing company had some problems and your page got lost. It would be that easy.”

“You can’t afford to do that.”

“I can’t? Are you sure?”

“Are you willing to sacrifice the future of the magazine and the jobs of several people just because you’re too stubborn to admit you need my help?”

“You think you’re sooo great with relationships, don’t you?” you changed the subject.

“It’s not that complicated. I know men; I know how they are and what they want. I only speak the truth romantic women like you don’t want to hear it.”

“Fine.” you licked your lips as an idea formed in your mind, “If you want to be here, you’ll have to pass the test.”

“Test?” Clint cocked his head to one side in confusion, in a rather endearing gesture, which was odd in him.

“Well, as an editor, I can’t simply let you write whatever you want. You have to demonstrate it really is your area of expertise.”

“Wasn’t last night enough?”

“No.” you pursed your lips, trying to hide your evil smirk, “Follow me.”

As you walked down the hall, some of your coworkers followed you and Barton, curious to see what you had in store.

“I hope you know what you’re doing.” Maria muttered as you passed by her desk.

“I do.”

Once the elevator arrived to the last floor and the doors opened with a loud ‘ding’, you walked out along the rest and pointed to the end of the hall, where it could be seen through the glass doors that Tony and Pepper were immersed in a heated fight, once again.

“I present you Mr. and Mrs. Stark.” you couldn’t wipe the cocky grin off your face, and your coworkers snickered once they realized your idea, “Tony and Pepper have been married for two years and a half. And it’s the most dysfunctional and damaged marriage ever, in the history of marriages. If you get them to be the happy couple they once were, I’ll leave you with your position in the magazine. If you, on the contrary, do not manage to fix them, well, you’re fired. Your call, Barton.”

“And if I refuse to do it?”

“Then you’re fired either way. The only way you get this job is if you pass the test.”

He gave you a blank expression, not showing anything, until a cocky smile appeared on his lips, “Watch and learn, hottie.”

“This might be your best idea yet, Y/N.” Nat whispered in your ear, “Tony and Pepper are a lost case.”

“I know. That’s why I did it.”

“If that man pulls it, he’ll be my idol for life.” Sam said jokingly.

“He’s not going to make it.” Wanda responded, “There’s no way he can fix something that has been broken for more than a year.”

However, your smile faded and your mood dropped as, seven minutes later, after having talked to them for some time and getting them to stop yelling, he pushed Tony’s and Pepper’s chairs together, forcing them closer to each other. Tony had a look of pure uncertainty on his face, while Pepper just looked confused. You couldn’t make out what they were saying through the glass, but you didn’t need to, their body language being indicative enough.

“No way.” Pietro let out a shocked laugh, not believing what he was seeing.

Tony seemed to shout something to Pepper, before joining their lips together and bringing her impossibly close.

“This can’t be happening.” you mouthed, as your gaze was still trained on your boss and his wife having an intense make-out session, and your jaw dropped open in surprise.

“Clint Barton actually managed to fix the unfixable.” Natasha replied, also looking at them with an astonished expression.

You remained in the same place, stuck because of the shock. After a few minutes, the three of them emerged from the room, Tony with his arm around Pepper’s waist as she snuggled against him.

“Y/N, you are amazing.” Pepper practically squealed.

“For what?” you were like a deer in headlights.

“Clint is going to be a great addition to the magazine.”

“It was actually your husband who got me here.” Clint added.

“Well, my husband happens to be a genius, as I’ve always known.” she looked up at him with a loving stare.

You all looked thunderstruck as they made their way out of the building together, still unable to wrap your heads around what had just happened. You turned to look at the blonde, blue-eyed man, still in a daze.

“I’d like my office, thank you very much.” Barton smirked cockily, “Anything you want to say, Y/N?”

You muttered, trying to hide your disdain, “Clint Barton, welcome to Stark Magazine, I guess…”

“I’m telling you, Nat. I’m still not sure if it’s a good idea to have that guy in the magazine.” you sighed, pressing your phone between your shoulder and your ear as your hands busied themselves folding clothes.

“I know, but he did the impossible.” she spoke slowly, “He fixed Tony and Pepper’s marriage; not even the most expensive therapists have managed to do that. I think we should give him the benefit of the doubt and actually give him a chance. Maybe the sales will improve with him.”

“I’m still going to edit most of his part.”

“Figured.”

“What do we even know about this guy?”

“Well, I took the liberty to dig a little.”

“This is why I love you.” you chuckled at your best friend’s antics, “What did you find out?”

“His full name is Clinton Francis Barton, he moved here from Iowa when he was 12, belonged to the Archery Little League with an unbeatable record, which I think it’s cute because archery is pretty useless.”

“That doesn’t tell me anything, Nat. The only thing that tells me is that he’s good at shooting and can possibly be a good serial murderer.”

“He was a regular guy in high school, spent two years in the state university before dropping out and working in a company, was once arrested for peeing out of a moving car, wow, I have to admit that’s impressive.”

“How in the hell you found out about all of this?”

“I have my sources.” you could picture the smirk on her face, “Married then divorced.”

“Wait.” you stopped her, “A woman was mad enough to say yes to him in the first place? That’s shocking. Who’s the miserable lady?”

“Her name is Laura. She actually kept his last name after the divorce for the sake of their kids.”

“He has kids?!” you gasped, “And he still acts the way he does? There’s something wrong with that guy.”

“Cooper and Lila Barton.” Natasha stated, “They live nearby too.”

You were about to reply when your gaze noticed the open window and your cat going out. You groaned loudly, “Natasha, I have to go. Guinevere went out of the window and I have to get her.”

“You left the window open?”

“It was hot inside.” you defended, “I don’t know why she likes to go to the fire exit stairs. I swear she can stay the whole day there.”

“Well, good luck, Y/N. I’ll see you tomorrow at work. Printing day, remember?”

“Yeah, there’s no way I could forget I need to check everything one last time. Bye.”

You started climbing out of your window, being careful not to fall from the second floor. Crawling along the edge of the windows, you made your way to the metal platform, where Guinevere was lying down.

“Hey, Guinevere. Come here.”

However, your cat made no effort to move at all. You cursed softly under your breath and continued your way to get to your pet. Once there, as you crouched down to pick up Guinevere, your foot slipped and got stuck in a whole between metal bars. You yelped in pain, forcefully trying to get your foot out but with no result. Your call for help wasn’t as loud as you tried for.

“Hey, are you okay?”

“Yeah, I’m sorry for botherin-”

Your sentence was cut short upon resting your eyes on the man that had poked half-naked chest out of a wide window. The man before you was absolutely stunning, and you couldn’t help but blatantly stare at him. His dark brown hair was soaked and disheveled, a single strand falling in front of his face and making small droplets fall on his toned chest and abs, disappearing under a white towel hanging loosely around his hips, leaving the rest to the imagination. His factions were simply perfect, with a chiseled nose and a sharp jawline. His blue eyes twinkled and he sent you a disarmingly bright smile.

“Do you need help?”

“My foot is stuck…” you whispered, without looking away from him.

“Let me help you.”

The handsome stranger climbed out of his window and advanced towards you, and proceeded to twist your ankle delicately until you were free once again.

“Thank you.” you mentioned, “My cat just likes coming here, so I had to get her.”

“Cats are great.” he smiled, almost making you swoon.

However, when you tried to put your foot back on the ground, your ankle shot you tingles of pain, making you collapse and fall down, your hand shot up and grabbed the first thing you could, and brought down his towel with you, exposing his naked body completely.

“Oh my God, I’m so sorry.” you covered your eyes as your neighbor tried to cover himself with his hands.

“It’s alright, you can look.” he told you once the towel was safely secured around his hips, “Here, I’ll take you to my apartment so I can have a look at your ankle.”

The man lifted you with apparent ease, and carried you and your cat back to his apartment, entering through the open window. Once inside, he placed you on a couch and worked with efficiency and quickness as he gathered everything he needed and bandaged your left foot.

“I’m Y/N, by the way.” you introduced yourself with embarrassment, “I live next door.”

“James.” he grinned, “I just moved in.”

“So you’re a doctor…”

“Orthopedic surgeon.” his deep voice showed pride, “I do a lot of leg and hip stuff, but I also get the occasional foot. You just had a mild sprain, you should be just fine with this.”

You sighed, blinking rapidly to make sure you weren’t imagining the seemingly perfect man before you, “Thank you. I must be pretty lucky you were the one that moved in here.”

“I’m here whenever you need me.” he offered, and handed you a small business card, “I put my home number and cellphone on the back, in case you need it. If your ankle starts giving you any problems, just give me a call.”

Your heart fluttered at his thoughtfulness, “Thank you.”

Part 3

Tags: @hunters-from-stark-tower, @wonderlandforthemisfits, @buckysberrie, @sebbytrash, @buckytrashbin, @lynzplusg

[joneswilliam72]

Watch: Music and resistance to drug warrior tyranny – Boiler Room’s To Live and Die in Manila.

I caught up with Angela Stephenson, the director behind To Live and Die in Manila (which you can watch free below), Boiler Room's new short documentary on President Rodrigo Duterte's brutal authoritarianism and extra-judicial killings in the Philippines – of not just drug pushers but users too – and the artists who oppose it using their creative output.

Since becoming president of the Philippines in 2016, Rodrigo Duterte's war on drugs has caused widespread fear and devastation across Manila. Set in one of the world's most dangerous cities, To Live and Die in Manila gives a vital voice to the musicians (particularly artists like Eyedress, Owfuck, BP Valenzuela, Teenage Granny and Jeona Zoleta) putting their life on the line for their right to showcase creativity that their country associates with drug crimes punishable by death.

This is actually the second interview I've done with Stephenson on this project. The first can be read here at CitizenTruth.org – it gets more deeply into the politics and happenings underlying the resistance of these Filipino artists to Duterte's authoritarian rule.

Still from TO LIVE AND DIE IN MANILA.

For the interview here, Stephenson and I sat down for a chat more about her artistic methods and the actual aesthetic of To Live and Die in Manila – along with the huge challenges of filming such a fundamentally subversive piece in a country where many basic rights have been stripped away.

Catch To Live and Die in Manila – and the interview – below.

TO LIVE AND DIE IN MANILA.

Hello Angela and welcome to The 405! To start things off, I was hoping we could an idea of your artistic history. What attracted you to film as an art form?

Hi, thank you! I've always been interested in photography, but when I didn't get into my chosen university to study for a photography degree, I put it on the backburner and continued to shoot only as a hobby. I started with doing gig photography for fun, and through that I fell into the music industry. I worked with Boiler Room for several years on their live broadcast team, filming parties all over the world. When they started looking at covering more of the context behind the shows, I expressed an interest in moving into a more storytelling role, and with that I eventually started making documentaries and other short-form pieces, it felt like a natural progression.

What initially inspired you to do To Live and Die in Manila?

I really just wanted to shine a spotlight on the amazing music coming out of Manila. I realised I was in a good position to be able to help put Filipino music culture on the map, but I couldn't do that without addressing the situation in the country that all these artists were subjected to and openly vocal about in a lot of their music.

The visual language of the film really suited the subject matter. Gritty, realistic and this sort of balance between despair and precarious hope (reflected in the musicians and artists too). Could we get a look at your process to get the visuals you did?

I guess it was a case of trying to find the balance between celebrating Filipino culture and capturing the realities of life in Manila. I think despair and hope are feelings that you can flit between on an almost daily basis in Manila. To me, the city is beautiful, colourful, and visually stimulating and I wanted to capture that, but it comes with a lot of hard truths that you need to swallow in order to just go about your day. Accepting the traffic, the poverty, and the underlying feeling of danger is all part of life in the city.

Indeed.

Still from TO LIVE AND DIE IN MANILA.

The visuals were shot over a period of two years on two different trips to Manila. On one of the trips I met Paco Raterta, who is a very talented director living and working out of Manila, and he lent me a lot of the visuals he used to create the music video for Eyedress's "Manila Ice" single. Snippets of the video are also featured in the film, particularly the scenes depicting the anonymous dead bodies that you see before Den Sy Ty's performance. These are the kind of images you were seeing in the news at the time.

Cool. Any interesting or funny moments stick out from the filming process?

The whole process felt like one big adventure, I'll never forget it. People are always pretty curious when you're out filming on the streets. I remember being asked angrily by a stranger if I was a journalist when I jumped out of the car to quickly film the posters depicting Duterte as Hitler. People are very sensitive to criticism of the president, and the Philippines is considered the deadliest country in Asia to be a journalist, they're often killed in their line of work and the current government is very keen on silencing Duterte's detractors, so it was sobering to feel threatened for just trying to capture footage in the street.

Really heroic what journalists do in fundamentally authoritarian countries like the Philippines under Duterte.

The part where Owfuck talks about taking acid as part of their creative writing process used footage shot in the red light district, it's quite a common place for people to shoot in because of all the neon lights.

Still from TO LIVE AND DIE IN MANILA showing a scene from the city's interior.

I bet. The realism it brought added greatly to the atmosphere.

I shot it on a big Russian 16mm camera that I bought second hand, and I hadn't inserted the film correctly so all the footage from that day came back fucked up. It ended up being a total blessing in disguise as it actually visually reflected an acid trip quite accurately.

Gotta love those kind of happy accidents. What were the other challenges like?

Taking what is not a popular stance on the government was always going to be challenging. My Filipino mother falls into the majority of the population, being a supporter of Duterte, and I kept the entire process a secret from her until the film was finished. When I eventually sent her the final edit, she was really upset by it. The fact that I had to release the film knowing it could put a strain on our relationship was a burden, but I knew that her view would be shared by a lot of Filipinos, and it prepared me for any criticism to come, from people who would be unhappy by the way the country and the president had been depicted.

Wow yeah.

The criticism just proves how much this film and more like it are really needed, there's a cognitive shift that needs to take place in order for a lot of Filipinos to sympathise with the people whose lives are being affected by the issues discussed here. Jess Kohl's Anarchy in the Philippines film, which was a great portrayal of a punk community in Manila and Tarlac reacting to the war on drugs, also suffered the same fate in the comments section.

Still from TO LIVE AND DIE IN MANILA.

My challenge was inevitably having to challenge a Filipino audience to put their pride aside. This film isn't about blaming Duterte for everything, it's about asking ourselves what attitudes we're reinforcing by allowing our leader to condemn an entire group of people to death, instead of effectively engaging with the affected communities and helping tackle the problem from the root. It's about what example we're setting for ourselves and the next generation, who have only ever been taught that life is cheap in the Philippines.

That gets excellently into another pertinent question. What do you hope will be the main takeaway for people from the film?

I hope that the film engages young Filipinos in the Philippines and around the world, there's a lot of people out there like me who don't believe that we're going in the right direction, that the government is taking shortcuts to tackle a very complex problem.

I am as well, by the way.

Giving the artists in the film a platform to express how they feel and respond to their surroundings is just one small thing I could do to allow people to see how they're being affected directly and indirectly, how they're suffering mentally from living in a society that doesn't place enough value on human lives. We need to strive for a more peaceful society, and it's possible to leave behind the culture of violence that's been passed down from previous governments, but only if we collectively choose to move away from what is deeply rooted classism and seek the truth without prejudice.

Agreed.

The freedom to live without fear is something we should all be entitled to, not just the privileged few who can ignore the problem because they're happy to live under an increasingly authoritarian regime that only sacrifices the freedoms of those considered below them.

Music and art are pretty profound things in terms of their ability to effect social change. What can our readers do – if anything – to help in that?

I feel lucky to have been given the opportunity to talk about what's going on, I think people just being aware of the issues is important, especially in an age of fake news and the government trying to cover its tracks to deny any wrongdoing.

Still from TO LIVE AND DIE IN MANILA.

Couldn't agree more. It's a scourge really.

Duterte's style of leadership is hugely controversial and that also makes it distracting. Showing support for the journalists, photojournalists, musicians and artists who are often putting their lives or careers on the line to criticise the government, will hopefully go a long way. Their efforts can't be for nothing, and there's few people in the country actually taking them seriously. I urge people interested in this topic to look into the work of Filipinos like Maria Ressa, who has just been named as one of Time's people of year alongside other journalists from around the world. And Ezra Acayan, who is a photographer that has been on the ground documenting the suffering of the families who have lost loved ones to the war on drugs since its inception.

Absolutely. Real journalists need support now more than ever.

One question I ask everybody, what films and directors do you consider most pivotal on forming your outlook as a visual artist?

Y Tu Mamá También by Alfonso Cuarón has been one of my favourite films since I was a teenager, and it was special in the way that it was not only adventurous, beautifully shot, and emotionally stirring but also subtly captured the political and economic realities of Mexico at the time and the classist tension between the two main protagonists.

Watching LoveTrue by Alma Har'el was also quite pivotal for me, she blurred the lines between documentary and narrative in such a fascinating way and you could really feel just how involved she was in the lives of her subjects during the filming process.

Still from TO LIVE AND DIE IN MANILA.

And visually, Robby Müller's cinematography has always inspired me. I actually filmed the Manila sunset scene at the beginning of To Live and Die in Manila for another short film I was making based in the city, but when Eyedress said "to live and die in Manila" during our interview, I had to pull it from the other film to use as a tribute to Müller’s work on the opening credits of To Live and Die in LA, it felt quite serendipitous.

Wow. Very fitting. What makes a great film? And what makes a great documentary?

Personally I'm very visually driven, so the cinematography has to be considered and captivating.

Absolutely.

I think first and foremost however I'm quite emotional so I love films that evoke any feelings that I can relate to but can also introduce me to new feelings, and I appreciate any film that can do this by taking me out of the comfort of reality, even if only for a brief moment. While I think documentaries absolutely benefit from having an impartial view and a lot of them need this in order to tell a story accurately, I also think there's a special place for documentaries where you can feel the director has worked alongside the subjects to really express their point of view – that takes a lot of empathy.

Definitely. Have to get in the thick of it – as you did here – to get something really compelling. Finally, what's next for you?

I hope to continue making films that both celebrate and critique different aspects of Filipino culture. Everyone you meet there has an interesting story to tell and I'd like to depict some of these in both documentary and narrative film formats. It's also worth exploring the huge population of overseas Filipinos – there's a lot of issues surrounding the treatment of domestic workers abroad for example. Eyedress and I also made a music video together after meeting and working on this film, so I'd like to form more relationships with artists and make videos together that way too.

Stephenson directed this Eyedress video.

from The 405 http://bit.ly/2sQgxLS

[tinymixtapes]

Interview: Diamanda Galás

Diamanda Galás is a dark angel — “the singing serpent,” the saint of the pit. Her most notorious performance, Plague Mass, saw her ululating in a church, half-naked and covered in blood. She’s worked with luminaries from Iannis Xenakis and John Zorn through to Derek Jarman and John Paul Jones, but she describes herself as a loner who doesn’t like to collaborate. Her work, the latest of which being last year’s two-album release of All The Way and At Saint Thomas the Apostle Harlem, has dealt with mental illness, the HIV/AIDS crisis, genocide, trauma, and environmental disaster, and she’s contributed vocals to numerous horror films. But there’s nothing daunting or intimidating about the warmhearted, foulmouthed raconteuse I speak to down a crackly Skype line, chatting with me ahead of the US premiere (March 28-30, New York) of her experimental film collaboration Schrei 27, made with director Davide Pepe. It’s 7 AM on a Sunday morning, my time — a sacrifice I’m more than prepared to make for the opportunity to talk to a living legend. Diamanda is in her bedroom, in her robe (“is this getting too personal?”) preparing for a gig in Tennessee. When I tell her I’m calling from Sydney, Australia, she rails against conservative critic Andrew Bolt, who panned her work after an Australian show in 2005. It’s clear that she has a unique thought process and sensitivity in relation to sound — she takes a moment to note that our Skype issues are “very entertaining, hearing one’s voice come back, like a little mouth.” Her erudition is extraordinary; she casually makes reference to artists obscure and popular, in high and low culture, from the medieval through to the present day. And let’s be clear, she doesn’t care for your approval or anyone’s: “They said that I used to do all this soul music and I was really popular, but now I do this really esoteric work, I’ve lost my popularity — and I’m like, if it’s that easy to lose, baby, bring it on!” On that note… --- Tell me about the origins of your new work, Schrei 27? Schrei — it means ‘shriek.’ There was a German theatre [in the early 20th century] called the Schrei theatre that was very minimalistic — there would be one or two words, silence and then movement. We know about it from writings and manifestos — Kasimir Edschmid and others. It was destroyed by Hitler. In 1994/1995 New American Radio at Staten Island asked me to do a piece about Bedlam. Staten Island is where Willowbrook was located. It was an asylum, made notorious by Geraldo Rivera, which was closed down when they found out the patients were being given injections of Hepatitis C just to see how it would progress. I had a friend who worked there, and he saw a woman there who someone had stuck a knife into — having sex with her with a knife. He was told to shut his fuckin’ mouth or else. A horrible place. So I was very moved to do this piece. It related to many of my other works, and I did a lot of research. For many years I had incorporated absolute silence in my solo-vocal works. The idea [for Schrei] was that the sound would be very loud alternating with complete silence, but suddenly I was told that on radio there could be no silence at all. And of course, we know this with radio, because you have the radio show and then you have, “Here’s Frito — Lay!” In the 50s people like Milton Berle had the rights to actually act out the [advertising] part and make fun of it. But that was a different time, and I got into trouble for wanting to use silences. I had to give up and say, “Okay — but [the piece] won’t be very long!” Then in 1996 I decided to do it as a live performance work, and it became Schrei X, now including text by Saint Thomas Aquinas on punishment, as well as my original writing. It was in quadrophonic sound — I was in a cage of microphones, and so were the audience. The piece was brief but it was very intense. When I performed it in Prague, people were screaming at me, “Shut up you fucking bitch!” Bikers had come thinking I was going to do a show with John Paul Jones [who Galás released an album with in 1994]. But these sci — fi guys who were making a film about radioactive worms were really into the piece. I’ve never been consistent with my work, that’s not interesting. I don’t see why it’s my job to do that. Everyone complained about it, but in the meantime I was watching these radioactive worm films. Image from Schrei 27 Speaking of science, I understand you have a background in biology? I did a pre-med program and biochemistry. The unfortunate thing is that some of the med students, myself included, decided that instead of experimenting on the mice and rats, we would experiment on ourselves. That was a terrible mistake, because that got me into this whole drug culture, people who were reading B. F. Skinner and De Sade at the same time. When you start experimenting on yourself you forget that, if you’re not careful, it’ll be a lifelong process. I’ve always regretted the fact that I didn’t stay there. But on the other hand if I’d stayed I wouldn’t be doing the [artistic] work that I later did, which is just as experimental. I’m happiest when I’m doing a lot of research. …we were talking about the Schrei timeline… So in 2004 Xabier Arakistain invited me to do the work as an installation, in blackness, in quadrophonic sound. People entered the space and Xabier locked the door behind them so they couldn’t leave even if they didn’t like the piece. It was really radical. Xabier was a prominent drag queen. I love the word “drag queen,” because it dates me — in those days that was the word that was used, not transvestite — it meant down home, hardcore, Southern fuckin’ hellraising drag queens — who were some of my friends! They were really hardcore run-for-your-life drag queens, that got chased by truckers in the South. They had to take their platform shoes off, jump into the lake, and swim to the other side. They risked their lives opening the first drag queen bars in the South. So that’s what I mean by “drag queen” — like my friend Bradley Picklesimer. He was photographed with me after one show and I said, “you bitch, you fuckin’ had more stage presence than me, I’ll never forgive you for that!” [laughs] He’s amazing. Anyway, in 2009 I saw the work of Davide Pepe in a work called Little Boy, and I was moved by the fact that the work included the sound of the camera in such a way that it was almost like a surgical procedure of the body itself, of mind. It was really part of this film, there was no attempt made to disguise it, and I loved that. So I asked him to do a loop — he prefers to call it a loop rather than a film. So we will be doing this in New York. I also asked Dave Hunt to do some remixing of the work to include lower frequencies. And in addition we added photography by Robert Knoke, and paintings of mine were included that were related to the film. The images act like a slot machine, the way they have fruits that wind around, and it ends with a pineapple. The work was performed at the Spill Festival at the Barbican in London in 2011, and loops have been shown throughout Europe, and a work — in — progress shown at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago in 2012. But this is the premiere of the final work in the US. Some dance companies have used it without asking me — a lot of people have used it without asking me. But there was one dancer who did ask me — Irina Anufrieva, who is a phenomenal Belarussian dancer. She includes part of it in her work Void, and her performance embodies exactly the protagonist of this work. Yoko Ono lied and said, “Without Yoko Ono there’d be no Diamanda Galás.” I thought, “Bitch, you don’t know anything about how press really works — now listen to this one!” There are some clips available on Davide’s website, but they’re very short… The reason is that, true to form, it was performed in Milan recently, and right in front of us was a guy with a cellphone recording the fuckin’ film. I pointed this out to Davide, and he put his finger on the guy’s shoulder like, eh — and the guy turned it off. But it was like, for fuck’s sake! People are monstrous, just monstrous. [Davide] and I really want it to be seen properly, and we don’t want it to be seen as a YouTube thing. You mentioned drag — which at the moment is getting really big in popular culture with shows like RuPaul’s Drag Race. Your own performance work and your makeup can be very over the top, and I guess you’ve spent a lot of time with the gay male community… Of course! My brother was gay, and there was a real understanding that if you couldn’t follow up a conversation in a bar or on the street, you were just out. It was like literary improvisation. But also, I lived with a lot of drag queens in Oakland that worked on the street and that were very, very tough, and I learned a lot from them. I’ve lived in a lot of different situations and I’ve learned a lot from these situations. My makeup’s been done by a lot of drag queens (laughs) — who’ve done makeup for opera singers — sometimes my makeup is kinda out there, and sometimes less so. The popularity [of drag] is something I don’t really know much about. I didn’t know the drag queen thing was getting more popular, because I don’t really hang out with mainstream culture. So chances are, I wouldn’t like it. There is something wonderful about [the] underground mind, but when things get popular they tend to get watered down, and people start to make fun of each other to satisfy the ‘normal people’ — whatever you consider ‘normal people.’ The protagonists start making fun of each other’s ways to satisfy the curiosity and the freakshow element that is wanted by the watchers. But I also don’t like being in any place where there are too many happy people (laughs). That’s my fault, that’s a shortcoming. In your work, there’s a balance between personal psychic torment, and then reflections on trauma and atrocity that have happened in the external world. Are there events going on in contemporary society that Schrei 27 is reflective of? There’s so many that I really wouldn’t be able to get started! It’s so historically fraught. Whether we’re talking about prisoners that end up having to be part of fungus experiments in order to do less time, or in order to get money for card games, being participants in these horrific, deadly experiments that of course they’re told are not deadly — that alone is pretty unbelievable. And I can go traveling and meet up with a military guy whose company is finally getting sent home after years of war. I knew there was something way out about him when I saw him — he starts talking to me about new laser technology and torture, how you can remove a finger just like that and the [victim] suddenly sees he has a hand without a thumb. It’s excruciating — and this is to get confessions. The fact that the technology is getting to the point that our ‘government’ taxes are used to pay for gross malignancies is very, very devastating. People like me, artists, are now attacked for being artists. On the level of taxes, we can’t claim anything anymore, we can’t claim anything that builds our work, so we can’t survive. I said, “Fine! If I can’t claim this, I’m gonna say that it was twenty trips to the gynecologist” (laughs). I’m just gonna be a big fuckin’ liar, catch me if you can! If you’re a big businessman you do get paid, but if you’re in the military you don’t get paid, if you’re a small businessman you absolutely don’t get paid, if you’re an artist, forget about it. It’s scary, I see it happening to people I know and I see it happening to myself. There’s gross demoralization and fear about survival. How am I going to survive? I don’t know, I have no idea. Am I going to have to move to another country? They were really hardcore run-for-your-life drag queens, that got chased by truckers in the South. They had to take their platform shoes off, jump into the lake, and swim to the other side. They risked their lives opening the first drag queen bars in the South. I’ve had other artists say similar things in interviews — Lydia Lunch, for example… I saw her a few years ago in Spain and I like her very much, we have great conversations whenever I see her. It’d be amazing to be a fly on the wall! We very rarely meet, because I never collaborate with anyone. It’s terrible, I hope to change that, it’s a psychological thing, I don’t know why. It’s a hermit thing, a loner vibe. But Lydia, every time I’ve met her I’ve been struck by how smart she is, and how absolutely funny, really funny, in the best sense. You mentioned that you don’t like to spend a lot of time around happy people, and maybe that’s a fault… I don’t. The people I’ve spent time with were also people that were kinda loners, and in the old days we would sit around at cafés and make really terrible jokes, and have these absolutely decrepit dialogues. I loved it, and I was really happy. They’re all dead now, from AIDS. So there it is. I had such a good time. My friend Carl Valentino — I called him my gay husband — he and I used to have the most wonderful times. We’d go into restaurants and he would start singing. If music was playing, like a pop hit from another era, he would start singing really loudly and they’d want to kick him out, and he’d say, “Why do you want to kick me out? I’m just part of your pop…” He would outrage everyone. He made me so happy. Things have changed since then. I’m not saying that people are more humorless… or maybe they are! It’s called wittiness. You can meet somebody like Gary Indiana — there’s someone who’s really witty — but how many of them are there? How many people are like that? This is something I miss much, and hopefully I’ll find it again. In your artist statement for Schrei 27 you say something which struck me — “there is no separation of the mind from the body.” It’s a deep and a loaded statement — can you elaborate? One of the things I find absolutely imbecilic and hard to figure out is the question that the press are asking — why is there an opioid epidemic? And I’m thinking, why wouldn’t there be? What’s your point? You’ve got somebody doing an impossible job all day long, not getting paid properly, so tired at the end of the day that he or she can’t do anything except go to sleep — except maybe three hours in which he or she has the blessing of an opioid so that he or she can go somewhere else other than into the inescapable reality and take a fucking holiday. And then you’re saying that that’s abnormal? What’s abnormal about it? What’s wrong with it? Why aren’t all these drugs legal? They should be. There’s people like me — I don’t like marijuana, it makes me paranoid and it freaks me out. It’s not entertaining for me — it’s like a truth serum of a thousand spiders crawling over me. I get enough truth serum in my day, so I don’t want to add to the problems with something [like LSD] that’s literally gonna make me jump off the bridge, or ketamine that’s gonna make me fuckin’ cut my arm off. Now pot’s legal and I think it’s wonderful, but there’s a lot of people that don’t like it — we all have a drug that appeals to us the most. So people like me would say, “No man, give me heroin, that’s a cool drug and what’s wrong with it?” And then suddenly there’s an opioid epidemic — but since when hasn’t there been a fuckin’ opioid epidemic? There’s all these industrial accidents, people working too hard in really dangerous circumstances and being badly insured, and all sorts of things happen to them. And at the same time, cellphones and computers and landlines, there’s all these ways that people can contact you to make you do something by tomorrow. And the mind is overstrained, it’s overstressed, and insanity is the result. So then, give a man something that gives him relaxation and an escape from an industrial reality [that is] his life — and then blame him for it! I don’t go for that, so I don’t understand the press making it into such a big deal. The only thing that’s a big deal about it is that the medicine’s so hard to get, and everyone who takes it is considered a criminal or a loser. And that it has side effects that are pretty difficult, like stomach problems. It’s a pity that all the money that’s been spent on developing Viagra isn’t spent on things that can help people with their stomach [problems] from taking opioids. They certainly don’t spend the money on preventing breast cancer, but they do on Viagra. So I think that unfortunately, opioids are the remedy for industrial society, and they always have been. And these drugs have always been prescribed to firefighters and soldiers. Then, when the soldiers come back, they can’t stay in places unless they’re clean and sober — so where do they live? In their best friend’s garage. But that’s 25,000 returning military guys? They have no money and no place to stay, and they’re supposed to be clean and sober. That’s a big ticket, man. When I performed it in Prague, people were screaming at me, “Shut up you fucking bitch!” Bikers had come thinking I was going to do a show with John Paul Jones. So this also goes to questions of transcendence, and the human condition. Your work often engages with religion and religious ideas — do you have any kind of spiritual practices or beliefs yourself, or are you a materialist? A materialist? No, that’s Madonna (laughs). If I got a lot of money — and there were a couple of years when I got a lot of money — I would definitely wake up and buy a lot of things, as a fix. But that ended quickly, and it doesn’t work anyway because as soon as you order the shit, it’s over. I wish I were religious — I truly wish I were religious. I’m an atheist, and my whole family have been atheists. The only time I’d ever [engage with] Greek Orthodoxy would be to fight what is happening to the Greek people. They are being disenfranchised. They’re so poor that they don’t have a place to live, or to sleep, and nobody seems to care — especially the Greek leadership. I was there last year doing a performance, and the first thing I did was go to a homeless shelter and buy a dryer for some of the old people. That’s all they wanted — they didn’t want any money, they just wanted a washer-dryer. I wrote an essay in the Athens Voice [newspaper] saying, if you’re gonna go to Greece, the first thing you should do is go to a homeless shelter and give money to the culture that has propagated some of the greatest works in the history of art, that has influenced everyone. Do that before enjoying the art culture, please! I didn’t think that I should be paid for doing a performance unless I could do that. Speaking of contemporary conditions, we’re in a time when women are really speaking out about the trauma that men have inflicted on them. You draw on traditions that speak of pain and suffering, like blues, and the amanes… The amanes are male and female, they’re not women’s songs — and blues are also. Amanes is a cry or a call to the mother by the soldier who’s dying on the battlefield. There’s a song called Prósfygas , which means ‘refugee,’ in which a man is asking: can the little boy sing me an amanes while I’m dying? Here a person has been put on a death march through the desert, separated from his wife and his daughter and put on a death march with the other men, and knowing he’s going to die he wants to hear an amanes sung. The amanes is a series of melodies from which improvisations are derived that [relate to] rebetika songs. It was really composed by the Assyrians, Greeks, Gypsies, Arabs, Armenians, Yazidis — all these people who used to live in Turkey, but were exterminated by the Turks. Turkey now has all these institutions with names like the Institute for the Study of Turkishness, and they teach the amanes as Turkish music. It’s criminal, it’s so sad, because the Greeks don’t have the money to do that, and they certainly don’t have the money to teach. In terms of songs of women’s pain, though, does the #metoo moment have resonance for you? I get a lot of those moments. But because I wasn’t able to kill the motherfuckers that perpetrated their shit on me, I felt a sense of disgrace that they were still living. But you know, I come from a different time. That’s why I praise Aileen Wuornos so much, because she killed these fuckin’ guys. I was thrilled. She’s my hero, that’s the kind of woman I would put on my plate as far as #metoo. But [today] is a different time period, so I encourage all these women to put these guys on the plate. Some of the guys I had experiences with, I don’t even know their names now, and I don’t know where to find them. My idea was, I had this list — but then it became financially impossible for me to do it, and it became very clear that if I did what I wanted to do, it would be me that was gonna be in the joint for years, not them. And who was gonna defend me? Maybe today it would be different, but I doubt it. But my standards were a little bit different — mine were like, you fuck me and you die. That’s how I judged myself, and I judged myself very harshly because I didn’t kill any of these guys. So #metoo is great. But one thing I didn’t like, I have to admit it: I didn’t appreciate these men, these models, that got up and said, “Me too, these photographers molested me.” I’m like, bitch, give me a fuckin’ break, this is a women’s moment right now. Would you just leave it be, would you just let the women do this? Because after all, we’re talking about a male-dominated culture that did this to women, so just lay back a minute and you’ll get your turn, but don’t just jump on the fuckin’ bandwagon when it’s taken women so many years to even give voice to these horrors. The photographer trying to fuck the model is the oldest Hollywood story in the book. At the moment we’re not talking about [male] modeling, we’re talking about a secretary who goes to work, who’s asked to dictate something for her boss, and is raped. Modeling is a rape industry — for example, models today are often sent to Saudi Arabia to fuck some sheikh and it’s part of their job. Male models are next. But can we have women models talk first? There were a lot of drag queens in my life when I was on the street. They had knives in their teeth, they’d be like, “You motherfucker, come over here and I’ll cut your nuts off.” It was a man against a man, equal physical strength. That’s a different situation, and it should be classified as a different situation. It’s like, don’t step on my fuckin’ turf already, just take your turn. A lot of people will disagree with me, but I don’t give a fuck. Disagree! Then what? You’re very much an artist of transgression, but in this day and age it can feel like transgression has been co-opted in the service of consumerism — for example, mainstream artists like Rihanna using S&M imagery in video clips. She would! (sarcastic) She and Beyoncé would. Beyoncé will do anything to make another dime. Madonna started it with that, with her crapola, but at least Madonna, at the beginning of her career, was definitely pushing the envelope for the homosexual community. I don’t use the word ‘gay,’ because the word ‘gay’ used to mean a little curio of a girl on a swing (laughs). I know a lot of homosexuals and I don’t think of any of them as a curio on a swing (except for a few!). But my brother always used the word ‘queer,’ and ‘faggot.’ My friends all use the word ‘fag’ — they prefer that. So I have trouble with the word ‘gay.’ I had a press agent, the most dour Catholic you could ever possibly meet, and she and her girlfriend always used the word ‘gay.’ I said “You know what, can you two bitches cut it out? You are the most humourless, the most unwitty, the most un — gay person I’ve ever fuckin’ met … what you do bumpin’ pussies is none of my fuckin’ business, but let me tell you what, you ain’t gay — so shut up!” Man, that was the end of the relationship. I’m around all these really clever fags and I have to listen to two bitches talk about how they’re gay. I didn’t have the stomach for it. So Madonna — at least she was pro-queer, to the point that she lost some gigs because of it. She trashed a lot of straight men because she felt like they were banal — and they were banal! So at least she started out that way. But you got all these other artists like Beyoncé and Rihanna — I feel like Tallulah Bankhead when I’m talking about these broads: “Oh god, isn’t that marvellous! Whatever next?” Whatever suits them, they’ll become — I don’t know, they’d say they were transsexuals — because of the audience. But I don’t know anything about it, because those of us with vision don’t work that way. And those of us without [vision] work on a kind of a chart, a culture chart, which says: This is what’s hip now, this is what’s gonna be hip tomorrow, so let’s anticipate what’s gonna be hip tomorrow and sell some more records. So that’s what I see their shit as. And the idea of Beyoncé saying she’s a feminist makes me laugh so hard. You should see how many women go around saying, “Oh no, Diamanda, Beyoncé’s a real feminist!” I said, “Really? and she’s hanging out with BJ, RJ, or whatever his name is [Jay-Z] — she hangs out with him, and she’s a feminist? Take that wherever you want, just don’t talk to me!” I mean please, that’s sad. If that’s who the feminists are following, we’re in trouble! I had a friend who worked there, and he saw a woman there who someone had stuck a knife into — having sex with her with a knife. He was told to shut his fuckin’ mouth or else. There are artists coming to prominence in the past few years who are clearly influenced by your work — Anna von Hausswolff, Chelsea Wolfe, Zola Jesus. Do you follow contemporary music, and are there contemporary artists you’re inspired by? I think that what they’re all doing is admirable. They are really doing some strong work, and, not incidentally, I think they’re very unusual in the field of women, that they would praise other women. Because women for years have not done that, and the reason they haven’t done it is because they were dreadfully afraid that they would be seen as having been influenced by that person. Whereas so many of the girls who say that they’re influenced by me don’t seem to be worried about that, they seem to take pride in that, and I think that represents something new in ‘feminism in the music business.’ I admire them for saying that. It’s beautiful. Anna von Hausswolff is doing a lot of really interesting things and so is Zola Jesus, and so are so many women. And they haven’t been influenced by Yoko Ono! [laughs] There was a generation of women who felt that it was really important for them to say that they influenced everyone, that it was not possible for anyone to have existed without them. Yoko Ono lied and said, “Without Yoko Ono there’d be no Diamanda Galás.” I thought, “Bitch, you don’t know anything about how press really works — now listen to this one!” I talked to a guy who was writing a book about Patty Waters and I said, “I’m so happy you’re doing it, because that woman deserves all the renown in the fuckin’ world.” I only listened to one song of hers, and by listening to that one song I realized that all things are possible. I felt that with Annette Peacock also. But I wasn’t influenced by them, I was inspired by them. I didn’t study every work they did, because I was listening to instrumentalists like Ornette Coleman, Albert Ayler, and so many musicians like that. I was developing this big range, and I was listening to opera singers. It was a totally different world they were in than I was in. So I decided to teach Yoko a lesson and I said [to the press], I want you to use the following quote: “Without Patty Waters there would be no Diamanda Galás OR Yoko Ono.” (laughs) Now, shit, Yoko, the quote is all over the place! It’s not true about me, but it doesn’t matter, because it was more important for me to teach Yoko a lesson. Bitch, I know how it’s done. You had a long break from releasing studio recordings, which I understand you spent with your parents. Then in 2017 you released a studio and a live album, and now we have Schrei 27. Is this a reflowering for you, and is there more in the works? What happened is, I was not doing well with Mute Records at all, since 2008 and before. That’s because they sold to EMI — they sold me, Nick Cave, Nitzer Ebb. And they didn’t even tell me that they sold me. I started getting royalty statements that I owed EMI all this money, and I wasn’t getting paid, and it was shocking. So what I did instead was, I did a lot of gigs in Europe. We were recording all the gigs, and I have so many recorded concerts that I haven’t put out — because in 2012 I found out that Mute had sold my back catalogue of 12 records, lots of videos and everything, to EMI, who sold it to Universal, who sold it to EMP, and I could no longer get a hold of it. Since 2012 my life has been total hell trying to get the stuff back. But in the meantime, after my father died I went to live with my mother, who was dying at the time. She’s alive now, but at the time she was dying. I’m a Greek, so there’s no choice, there’s no question — I lived with her. And I went and worked on a new work called Das Fieberspital, which means ‘the fever factory,’ ‘the fever hospital.’ I worked in the studio on that, and I worked on two other pieces, The Devils of the State, and The Blind Man. These were connected works written by the German Expressionist poet Georg Heym, who died before World War One. He was a really visionary poet, amazing. So I started working on a new work that I’m going to be able to run as soon as I get the funds to do the final rehearsal — it’s going to be manifest in many different ways. I was asked by Mute to collaborate with them again and I absolutely said no, no way — you don’t steal from me the first time and then ask me to give you work that you’re going to steal from the second time. It became a pretty awful situation, and I haven’t had a platform on which to work. Now I have distribution for these records, but I’ve recorded so much material live that I either continue putting that material out, or I spend my time on this new work. Being with my mother didn’t stop me from recording — it was that I didn’t want to put the work out until it was complete. The work ended up being 75 minutes, a very intense work with a lot of multitracking of very strange vocal sounds and a lot of electronics, a lot of stuff that took a long time to do. Not to mention learning the German texts in German. Very hard texts and very old texts — not modern German but an older German, from the end of the 19th century. But I’ve met with some people, and I think things are going to be looking up, and I’m very happy about that, because I’ve spent a deal of money and it’s a good time to get a little bit of help. But I’m not complaining about any of this, because you know what: nobody forced me to do the kind of work I do (laughs). Nobody! http://j.mp/2Gf1Xqc