#the tragedy will ever repeat itself and you are doomed to repeat it until you gain courage to face it and break out of it

[phanfictioncatalogue]

30k-40k Words (3) Masterlist

part one, part two

baby can't you see? (i'm calling) (ao3) - danfanciesphil (thejigsawtimess)

Summary: Two years after Dan's ill-advised stint up a mountain, and Phil's escape from a Royal psychopath, their dramatic flying off into the horizon hasn't had such a steady landing. Phil is consumed by his new venture in giving back to the world, but Dan is receiving none of this graciousness. Their living situation remains unstable, and they're barely in the same room long enough to hold hands.

It's all about to break apart, when the pandemic hits them where it hurts. Once again, Dan and Phil find themselves thrown into isolation with one another, back up where it all began. The memories of The Secret of the Alps are both fond and traumatic; being there again, trapped and in a bitter feud, is worryingly familiar. Can they make it out together a second time around? Or is this cycle doomed to repeat itself forever, until one of them calls it quits?

clean the kitchen (ao3) - angelmichelangelo

Summary: after a tragedy destroys everything he had, dan finds himself living a life far from what he had once expected.

everything seems like a huge mess, and all he can do is do his best to clean it up, piece by piece, little by little.

Cold, Empty Mattresses and Falling Stars (ao3) - conshellation

Summary: 2009 au where phil and his family own a campground/cabins in an area that is known for stargazing and phil has lived his entire life there, therefore knowing a lot about stars. dan and his family come from the city to said campground because dan is a nerd and asked to come there for his birthday.

colors in the gray (ao3) - dizzy

Summary: In a different world living a different life, Dan works at Starbucks and is about to publish his first novel when Phil (literally) steals his way into Dan's life.

Just Like Magic (ao3) - waylesssad

Summary: There is a lot more to magic than waving your wand and saying a few funny words.

Learning Curves (ao3) - winstonlives

Summary: Dan, a youtuber, sees an old A levels teacher in a gay bar years after he left school. That same teacher is Phil Lester, the hunkiest teach Dan ever did see. He makes a plan to subtly bump into him and reintroduce himself as a successful adult. While the reintroduction doesn't go quite as planned, the two end up in bed together, much to Dan's delight. Phil on the other hand has some reservations about the whole thing, throwing a wrench into Dan's lustful plans.

Live Incidentally (ao3) - yikesola

Summary: At thirty-two, Phil’s fine with this lot in life— manager for Printzoid, a flat he rents on his own in a relatively nice part of London, friends he sees at least twice a month for board game nights, an ex-fiancé he’s trying damn hard to get over, and a brother who means well even if Martyn doesn’t understand why Phil insists there’s a distinction between their father’s artwork being creative and Martyn’s music being creative and Phil’s novelty t-shirts being... not-creative.

A fic about adulthood and opening up.

married at first sight (ao3) - nothingbutniall

Summary: Dan and Phil get matched together on the new season of Married At First Sight.

No Man Is An Island (ao3) - strawberrysunflower

Summary: While drunk and desperate to get away from the creatively-stifling hubbub of London, Dan rents a farmhouse on the Isle of Man for four weeks to finish writing his latest book. All he wants is silence. Peace. Solitude.

Then he meets Phil, the farm owners’ dorky, clumsy, stupidly handsome son.

Our Flaws Are Aligned (ao3) - phantasizeit

Summary: Dan and Phil are YouTubers, but they hate each other. Phil is reminded of this when he’s forced to interact with him at the Spain Creator’s Summit. Their situation isn’t helped by their complicated past when their firecracker relationship crashed and burned. When Stop, Speak, Support contacts Phil to be a headlining speaker in their tour across schools in the UK, he is more than excited, until he finds out he’ll working next to his YouTube enemy. Phil doesn’t expect their time planning the tour together to rekindle old feelings he thought he’d long since buried.

Practically Perfect In Every Way (ao3) - americanphancakes

Summary: Unhappily married father of two Phil Lester needs to hire a housekeeper-slash-babysitter when work gets crazy. The new babysitter, Dan, is kind, articulate, into video games, and absolutely gorgeous. Phil begins to doubt that it's worth trying to make his failing marriage work... and his kids agree.

RIFT (ao3) - A_Million_Regrets

Summary: Phil is just a mere eight-year-old naive child when his mom keenly introduces him to his new stepbrother, Dan. They become friends and start living together fairly quickly. As years slip by, Phil slowly realises three things: First, Dan looks at him with pain in his gaze. Second, an inexplicable rift is separating them. Third, what he feels for Dan is more than just brotherly love.

Seaspell (ao3) - orphan_account

Summary: A kiss, a curse, a quest.

When Dan discovers that the prince of his kingdom and childhood best friend, Phil, has been been hidden away in the castle for years after his disappearance, he quickly understands why. A curse has been passed down through the Lester family for generations, marking Phil with magic and transforming him into a creature of the waves and sea, forcing him to hide from a kingdom that is afraid of the unknown. But curses are made to be broken, and Dan joins him on a journey across the ocean to find the Witch that cast the spell, as his own growing feelings and a hidden danger rise to the surface.

Siren Call (ao3) - natigail

Summary: Beware of the siren's call, they tell you.

Dan had heard enough horror stories about sirens to be thoroughly terrified. He never wanted to go near the water, but as fate would have it, Dan's father had to sign him up for on a merchant's ship bound for the siren's passage. Dan had a sinking feeling that he was not going to survive an encounter with one of the deadly predators. Those touched by the siren's kiss were bound to drown. Except... it doesn't go quite like that.

stardust trail leading back to you (ao3) - toffeelemon

Summary: Phil is a full time alien conspiracist, a PhD dropout using his extensive Astronomy knowledge to justify his quarter life crisis of running around London all day chasing so-called aliens.

Phil just desperately wants to believe that he is not alone in the universe.

Agent D is the best Men in Black agent that London has ever seen in the last decade, promptly forgotten, dismissed and excluded from human society. He likes it that way. An emotionally constipated galactic agent only has so much room in his heart for a handful of extraterrestrial immigrants.

Until a particularly persistent man keeps disrupting missions, and a permanent fixture by the name of rookie Agent P eventually carves a space into Dee’s lonely existence.

Super Experiment (ao3) - orphan_account

Summary: What happens when someone who usually stays inside on the internet goes for a night out just for once and then gets dragged into a crazy scientist's weird experiment? It's a specific question but it's the question Dan and Phil have been asking themselves since they got dragged into this. Now while not accidentally killing themselves or others with new found powers from the experiment, Dan and Phil have to find out who is behind this and somehow stop them all badass and video game like. Or probably not.

the beast you've made of me (ao3) - azurephil (orphan_account)

Summary: Phil’s eccentric aunt lives hours away in the countryside and needs someone to house-sit while she goes on holiday during the summer. He expects it to be peaceful, albeit boring. Then he meets the gardener.

The Chariot (ao3) - throughtheirsnoses (det395)

Summary: Phil Lester is a psychic but a really bad one at that, with no luck at tarot cards or tea leaves or magic 8 balls, only muddled, incoherent nightmares to follow. In the middle of finishing his grad degree, losing and making friends, and transitioning into adulthood, it’s hard to keep protecting himself. Dan is the hardest part, the young and confused man who keeps dominating his most intense dreams.

the last act of the show (ao3) - vvelna

Summary: Phil has made a living from faking relationships for nearly a decade. His new client is an actor named Dan Howell.

The Lovers (VI) (ao3) - Tarredion

Summary: Dan, guardian of the forest, feels inadequate to love and of love. His best friend Phil loves him despite that.. but doesn't know quite what to do when Dan becomes a hypocrite- playing with both their feelings

The Path to Happiness (ao3) - nebulous_frog

Summary: Phil, Prince of Stratalary, has an arranged marriage with Daniel, Prince of Iridacia. He doesn't think he'll have any feelings for the prince, that is, until he meets him.

they don't know (about us) (ao3) - calvinahobbes

Summary: Dan and Phil in Jamaica, July 2010.

This Could be the End of Everything (ao3) - rainbowchristy

Summary: Dan’s finally starting university, the phase of his life he’s been waiting for since he was a small child. His first real chance at freedom, away from his parents. Unfortunately, the universe has other plans for him.

to let the light in (ao3) - cityofphanchester

Summary: Searching for a fresh start after a decade of dead ends in London, Dan becomes obsessed with a storytelling show on Rossendale Radio and a voice that hasn't been broadcast in years.

to roll with what comes (ao3) - symmetricdnp

Summary: But Phil had thought those were just stories. Stories that people would stumble upon online or hear from a friend, that’d make them think of how lucky they were that it didn’t happen to them.

Phil's comfortable yet decidedly average life gets turned upside down when he ends up bonded to a barista that he's exchanged about three sentences with.

Trying New Things (ao3) - orphan_account

Summary: The first thing to catch Dan’s interest is what he’s wearing, of course: a pair of weather inappropriate jeans and a red jacket, a pair of thick framed glasses balanced on his nose. He’s tall but not in the gangly, awkward way Dan is tall; not in the way that would suggest he hasn’t quite grown into his body. Dan’s new neighbour is confidently tall, like he has muscle hiding under that restrictive outfit.

***

In which Dan has a not-so-subtle crush on his new neighbour.

Virus (ao3) - Lackless

Summary: Set in a dystopian future, Dan is a super-smart, super-lonely hacker who discovers an old piece of tech and gets swept into an intrigue that will change his world...

when it rains, it's lemon cakes (ao3) - gogystyle

Summary: Sneaking around. Crushed pastries at the bottom of the tray. Kisses at dawn and the impending threat of an arranged marriage.

Phil meets a tall stranger on a late-night rendezvous through the castle. What happens when that stranger's smile and laugh fill an entire room, burrowing besides Phil's heart and refusing to leave?

Wifey (ao3) - transdimensional_void

Summary: Phil's known since she was young that she is Very, Very Gay.

She's known since about a month ago that the goddess of a makeup artist at the M•A•C store makes her knees weak.

Now, if she only knew how to ask her on a date...

with a bullet (ao3) - waveydnp

Summary: phil returns to his room after a party thrown by his housemates only to discover that there’s already someone in his bed

World's Greatest First Love: The Case of Daniel Howell (ao3) - yiffandquiff

Summary: Dan Howell wanted a clean break from his father’s publishing company. It was why he applied for a different company in London: to stop the ridicule of his coworkers for riding on his ‘daddy’s coat tails’. But he wasn’t expecting to suddenly be going from a literature editor, to a graphic novel editor. And he certainly wasn't expecting to come face first with his first love who broke his heart from when he was a teenager: who just happens to be his new editor-in-chief.

[lobpoints]

e

[herinsectreflection]

Top five unintentionally resonant metaphors in Buffy and Angel.

Ooh, this is interesting. I had to ruminate on this for a while. The writers put in a lot of metaphor that is intentional and resonant, so on one level it kind of feels unnecessary to look for unintentional metaphors, and it’s also difficult to tell what’s intended and what isn’t. I also guarantee that I totally forgot something far more interesting and resonant than some of these. But here’s what I came up with off the top of my head: 1) Chosen as revolution. The main theme is obviously choice, with Buffy reshaping her life to allow herself control over what she will do next. But also, she overthrows an old system to replace it with something better. She specifically calls out that the system she lives under is merely a construct, created by “dusty old men” because it suited their agenda. They wanted to concentrate slayer power into one girl so that they could control her, deny her choice, and have that power used as they saw fit. Buffy destroys that constructed world in order to create a better one. What she distributes to the masses of potentials is not just slayer power, but the power of choice. They now have the means to produce their own stories, thanks to Buffy. 2) Buffy and Faith as a tragic love story, and a repeat of Buffy/Angel. Some of that subtext is obviously intentional, but I don’t think it’s necessarily intended as a love story. Except that is very blatantly is, and it’s better for being read that way. The Buffy/Faith arc of S3 is structured almost identically to the Buffy/Angel arc of S2 - a tentative courtship in the early season that suffers a setback in episode 7, then the two of them get gradually closer again until the climax (heh) of episode 14. At this point Faith/Angel turns evil, teams up with the bad guys, and spends the rest of the season proving how much they don’t care about Buffy by obsessively deconstructing her life, until she kills them via stabbing in the finale.

It’s specifically Angel’s return that drives a wedge between them initially, and I think it’s more resonant to consider this not just as one friend lying to another, but as the trauma of one relationship tearing down a potential new one. There are several scenes in early S3 that can be read as Buffy being interested in Faith, but pulling back because of everything regarding Angel. Buffy’s unresolved trauma from the events of S2 causes the same thing to happen again in S3. Pain begets pain - that’s the cycle of tragedy. 

3) Adam as Season Four itself. I love season four, I think it’s criminally underrated, but it absolutely has its issues. It never quite grasps the student experience in the same way it does the teenage experience or the adult experience. The plot feels cobbled together and directionless. As is Adam. He is cobbled together and does not know his purpose in the world. S4 is a transitional season, and Adam is a transitional state between human and demon. In Superstar, he perceives Jonathan’s warping of the narrative as a lie, because he himself is the true narrative. His ultimate plan is to turn all other beings into creatures like him, just as S4, if the show had not course-corrected, could have spiralled into more S4s, more doomed transitional seasons that do not know themselves. By summoning the First Slayer and ripping out Adam’s core, Buffy, taking on the role of the writer, destroys the core plot of the season and summons a more interesting finale. 4) The fawn that Willow kills for the spell in Bargaining is Buffy. Some of the language used in this scene is really interesting. “Come forward, blessed one. Know your calling.” She refers to the fawn as “blessed” and having a “calling”, just as Buffy is blessed with power as part of her calling. "Accept our humble gratitude for your offering. In death... you give life.” Willow might as well be talking to Buffy, whose “offering” (or “gift”) was her own death, in order to give others life.  "May you find wings to the kingdom.” Clearly evoking the idea of heaven here. Buffy believes that she was in heaven. She found her wings there. Until Willow drags her back. But unlike Buffy, who defied the idea of sacrificing someone else and instead sacrificed herself to give life, Willow sacrifices another creature. She goes against Buffy’s wishes by literally killing metaphorical Buffy. And so she curses the entire project, and what she tells the fawn/Buffy is reversed. Buffy’s wings to the kingdom are torn off her, and in life she feels dead, and so she neglects her responsibilities and calling. Buffy feels empty throughout S6 because her metaphorical self was killed, by her metaphorical spirit no less. Only death may pay for life, and the cost of Buffy is... Buffy. (There also might be something to the fact that it’s a deer/fawn. Obvious symbol of innocence but also sounds kind of like Dawn? Maybe? Could be a stretch.)

5) Finally I feel I’ve got to throw an Angel one in here, so let’s say the Senior Partners as the network executives. They are a powerful but unseen group with total control over Angel’s ultimate destiny, and the name very clearly evokes a load of men in suits sitting in a board room deciding things, aloof and disconnected from the creative process, and from lived reality. The show is very clear that Angel only lives by their mercy, and avoids death/cancellation because he is useful to their agenda. The point in real world where it becomes clear that they will not renew the show is the point where in the show, Angel becomes aware that the apocalypse is afoot, on their terms. So he rebels against them, cancelling himself and bringing about the end on his own terms. Instead of going quietly and sadly, he creates one of the best finales ever and so proves the senior partners/networks wrong.

[thespicn]

—  July 19th, 1845, afternoon on the Promethean. The Sick Bay.  ;  @delocean​

                  —  Bastien is supine on a bed, with their head nestled in the crook of their elbow. The patient room was quiet today, as it so often was, leaving them nothing to do but nurse the darkness, in and out. They’re here because they infiltrated this haven on the sly, this place where they don’t belong. They latched on the doctor’s goodwill like a tick, thriving in this climate of urgency and usefulness, where everyone has something to take care of, some miniature bottleneck mission, except for him. Nyi found a place in the cooking quarters. Tristan went back to that bloody island, some Orpheus doomed to repeat the journey, to lead the unbelieving on a patrol. Teodoro likely loomed about, intimidating anyone who reached for a weapon. Bast’s purpose is built through absence, these days. As long as he doesn’t stir up crap, he fulfills as much as humanly possible from his part. All he has to do, as survivor and figurehead of tragedy, is provide answers to the curious questions. As if he somehow became a poster headliner for the Agathe narrative — the Agathe truth, which, bon merci, jury is still out on. Audiences must be persuaded. Audiences must be begged. It suits them just fine. It leaves them the privilege of sitting here, at liberty to count down the seconds of dryness in their throat. Idly rocking through oceans of laudanum and wine. They take more than they did on land; than they did in their entire life. And this is not a problem, ever, really, until it is. Specifically when they open their eyes to see Calypso enter. At first, Bastien doesn’t register the implication - she’s just a form clad in something bright. A beauty that borders on the surreal. She could be an apparition; he sees them sometimes, brushes of silver cutting against reality. But then Bast does a double take. Calypso in the Sick Bay means Calypso spotting him slumped on the bed. Merde. Merde. The actor has no idea, really, how much from his current state betrays itself; she could just think him drugged up with sleep. He entertains some hope to it.

                They rise on the bed to regard her, drags their body fully upright. He calls out to her on the edge of a chuckle: ❛ Cal, minou. This is my kingdom now, tu sais? I took over like a little usurper. So whatever you want from this room, I will grant you. ❜

[lemon-writings]

Writing Update: Hamish Pt. I

Genre: Adult literary fiction // Status: Rewriting // Progress: 13,359 words

I first wrote Hamish, my Hamlet retelling, in January of last year. It was my first foray into literary fiction, and I can genuinely attribute my current literary writing to this book. It’s actually one of the most solid first drafts I’ve ever written. I’m keeping most of the first draft, only changing a couple things.

The tea is that whenever I write for Hamish, I don’t stop unless I get stuck or have to leave for school. The first draft was the cleanest I’ve written so far. Rewriting this is a breeze. 

Chapter I

Epitaph: “Knock knock. / Who’s there? / No one.”-Warsan Shire, “The House”

Chapter I is best described as “Horacio gets rich people culture shock”. Poor dude just went from believing Hamish was the son of some small-time politicians to knowing that he is the son of a Governor and a Senator. We’re introduced to the narrator Horacio, Hamish (the “you” in the story), Hamish’s mother, and most of the other important characters.

The character introductions. Gosh, I adore introducing my characters, just because I get to describe them in this horribly gothic, pretentious way.

Claude looked like you, if you looked more like a Greek statue and less like a dying Romantic poet. His features are sharper, frame broader, with a crushed cherry-colored suit fitting him perfectly.

And of course, what would Hamish be without Horacio waxing poetic about his past? Genoveva asks Hamish why he likes Horacio in the first place, and when Hamish replies that Horacio is his life, Horacio thinks back on a past boyfriend. (tw for abuse, blood, and sex)

The one who liked me most was Terry, who would press me against any surface he liked, hold my hands over my head, and devour my mouth like I was his last meal. We broke up after nine months, after he’d grabbed me by my hair and slammed by face into the side of our bed frame. I’d told him, nose broken and gushing blood, rapidly swelling black eye and tears blurring my vision, that if he didn’t leave in five minutes, I would make him regret ever touching me.

And, of course, this stray line Horacio just casually thought:

My heart slammed against my ribcage, child’s hands pounding desperately. I was that child, once. 

Chapter II

Epitaph: “The people you love become ghosts inside of you, and like this you keep them alive.”-Rob Montgomery

Our first ghost appearance! Hamish has a Ouija board (the man shops at Hot Topic and lives for pretentious gothiness, of course he has a Ouija board) that he uses to communicate with his father, something they’d only been doing in the last year of his father’s life.

Horacio is a skeptic until the board, like, starts talking back to Hamish. We get this glorious moment when he’s like *John Mulaney voice* this might as well happen. Life is already so goddamn weird.

At the time, I supposed that this was the sort of thing that would happen around you: you attracted weird, unusual things, as you were one of them, and they felt home alongside you.

(He still doesn’t believe that they’re speaking with Hamish Herbert I and not, like, a demon.)

Did I mention that Hamish is a philosophy major? No? Oh, well, he is, and that means one thing and one thing only: he waxes poetic about as often as Horacio does.

“You do. You’re not a bad person. You’re not evil.” I unwrapped my arms from around your waist and moved them up higher, splaying my hands over your chest as if laying a claim. “You’re a good man. You’re… my life,” I said.

“Maybe evilness is genetic. Or a part of humanity.” You laid a hand atop both of mine, guiding them over your heart, arranging us like a director particularly focused on posing. “Maybe we’re predisposed to good or evil, or maybe we’re not. What do you think?”

“I think this is why you’re a philosophy major,” I said.

You know, the type of conversations you have when you’re convinced that your mother and uncle murdered your father. That #relatable content.

Chapter III

Epitaph: “What is a ghost? A tragedy condemned to repeat itself time and time again? An instant of pain perhaps. Something dead which still seems to be alive. An emotion suspended in time like a blurred photograph, like an insect trapped in amber.”-Guillermo Del Toro, The Devil’s Backbone

This chapter begins with Hamish having a Moment over the death of his father. Horacio tries to comfort him, but soon they’re chasing ghosts again. Hamish Herbert I’s ghost is not happy that the retribution against his murderer hasn’t happened yet even though it’s, like, maybe a day since he first made the murder request. Chill out, your spooky highness.

On the bright side, Horacio’s always saying beautiful, profound things that look so pretty in pictures, and we’ve got a couple in this chapter.

“We romanticize the dead like that. We give them the traits we wish they had possessed in their lives.”

Horacio also reads Hamish for filth when Hamish is scared of a little murder. To be fair, Horacio is no Lady Macbeth, but he does point out how ironic it is that someone who carries death in his pocket is scared of killing someone.

You wrote poems that reeked of dead roses and formaldehyde, read books where pages were spent waxing about eternal darkness, carried around ghosts and shadows as if they were just a part of you, but, in the end, you were just as scared of death as the rest of us were.

And, of course, what’s a writing update without a baller playlist? This is what I’ve been listening to while writing this post these chapters.

Grave Digger - Matt Maeson

Wait - The Dear Hunters

Creve Coeur 1 - Hobo Johnson

Peach Scone - Hobo Johnson

We Are Beautiful, We Are Doomed - Los Campesinos!

The Other Side of Paradise - Glass Animals

Archive - Mal Blum

So that’s what’s up with the first part of this Hamish rewrite. Stay tuned for the next portion, alternatively titled: When Will Horacio Get His Shit Together?.

[teleportationmagic]

Golden Castles and Endings

When I was younger, there was a story that built and parked itself in my brain for quite a while. It was a story of a young girl, who when she was very young came across a castle. It was beautiful and big, lined with bookshelves and chaises, castle walls built out of gold and glass and best of all, it was her’s. She was the only one who frequented it, and she was the only one who ever roamed it’s halls. It was her space, her domain, and no one could contradict that.

As the story festered in my mind, it changed not a small bit. The castle got more elaborate, for one, and I spent more and more time fussing over its details - the architecture, funnily enough, was something I could never quite decide on. But what stayed, always, was that it was mine, and mine alone. It was the one headspace no one else could occupy, when every other headspace of mind was obsessed with other people, in all the forms that took.

As winter turned into summer turned into winter again, the castle took its biggest change. The castle grew colder, gradually, the glass fogging up as frost grew across it. The bright yellow gold turned, quickly, to a sort of bright-dull grey-blue iron, spiraling up and down and twisting. The castle was never inviting, per say, it was mine and I wanted it to be elegant, and it was that, elegant I mean. I’d always loved winter, and the color blue, and I’d grown past what child-me had wanted - while it was still a castle it was not a princess’s castle, and I’d thought that that was a sign I was growing older, that I was maturing - my castle was a reflection on how my wants had changed, after all.

I can’t quite tell you what made the castle grow restrictive, however, because this was always meant to be a happy story, but eventually the glass frosted over and the chaises became metal and the castle, even in my mind, had an odd chill. Whenever I imagined it, the girl’s fingers were tucked into her chest or in front of her mouth as she blew warm air over them. The books were always there - would always be there, I’d presumed, though that’s a story for another time. But even in this imagining, they were worn and old and more than anything else repetitive.

It was odd, again, because this place was supposed to be everything I’d ever wanted. But it changed gradually to be something it wasn’t, and that was again, odd.

For the little girl, I’d finally decided that enough was enough, and this was her ending. A lonely ending, to be sure, but tragedy seemed again, mature and happiness felt trite, and it felt shockingly fitting to give this little girl who’d I dedicated quite a bit of my time to imagining a lonely ending, where she spent a long time sweeping her way through halls that were lonely, that were empty. The price for her foolishness, perhaps.

As time flew me by again, though, this story, which had paved its road and been finished, began to change again. It felt like sometimes someone ought to be knocking on the glass, ought to be making a fuss. And so it happened, I imagined a person - sometimes they were a boy, sometimes they were a girl, sometimes they were neither or both, it didn’t particularly matter. What did matter to the little girl was that someone was banging on the glass, and wiping away at the frost and for what felt like the first time in forever there was something outside the castle for that little girl to look forward to. I can still imagine, vividly, the person’s breath clearing away the frost as the warm air makes droplets skate down the glass.

In some version of the story, she freezes, slowly, her skin turning whiter and whiter until she collapses. In others, she shatters the castle and it collapses to the ground, burying her under the gold turned iron and the glass turned ice. In others still, she boards up the castle and makes entry impossible.

The one that I always was the most fascinated by, however was when they little girl grew and had a little girl of her own. And how that little girl would stumble across the castle, and repeat all her mother’s deeds, and how she was always found, again and again and again, no matter which she it was, whether it was that she or her child, or her child’s child. And so the story rung around, a tale of a self sufficient cycle that was doomed o repeat itself again and again and again.

Even now I’m unsure of what feels fitting, what should have happened. And so it sits, never finished, a fairy tale with no suitable ending. And maybe that’s the ending the little girl deserved, a branching pathway where she can choose, not me.

But I would have still liked an ending.

[secular-jew]

Zio Upbringings and Kvetchings in the Trumpian era

Zio Upbringings and Kvetchings in the Trumpian era.

I'm an American Jew who has does not suffer from moral wavering. I'm also an American Reform Jew that is neither Kashrut nor Kosher-observant.

My synagogue growing up was located in the the Boston suburbs, nestled amidst Protestant communities and dotted with Jews who somehow landed a port shy of Ellis Island. Attended shul almost exclusively during important Holidays and Hebrew school weekends through Bar-Mitvah.

At the age of 10, I remember the start to the Soviet-armament-supplied multilateral Arab-state war against Israel, a Pearl-Harbor style event lasting three harrowing weeks and almost wiping Israel off the map.

Word spread fast to reach North American Jews some 5,500 miles (8,800 kms) to the west. I remember hearing the tragic news Saturday morning during Yom Kippur services. The attack occupied 100% of the Sermon delivered by our Rabbi, who was known as Moses because he actually looked and spoke like Moses. He worried aloud that this could portend the end of our homeland, but concluded that the spark of Zionism was eternal: something that could never be extinguished by modern would-be colonizers. This thought that resonated deeply inside my soul.

This was thankfully a war that Israel survived, but was also a battle that Golda Meir ultimately lost, as she resigned just 1 month following her Labor Party's 1974 election win. Remember her final words as Israel's leader: "I have reached the end of my road."

My first physical intersection with Israel occurred in my late teens and early 20's, when I visited extensively what was the modern chapter of an 4,000-year old ancient Jewish story. Exploring 1979-1982 Israel meant stints to some obvious places; Jerusalem, Tel-Aviv, Haifa, Jaffa, Tiberius, and Eilat, Sinai (including a climb up/down Mt Sinai), the northern Golan Heights, the donut-hole known as Hebron, and the Dome of the Rock, the Jew's oldest extant relic. This is the place where Abraham is said to submitted to God's request that he sacrifice his son. Strange how this shrine has now submitted to a colonialist Islamic overlord.

Then came the Kibbutz experience, which meant living the communal lifestyle in Lower Galilee, sleeping on cots in the international guest quarters, up at 4:30am transported out to the fields, and picking pears until it got so hot, you felt like you were standing on the side of the sun.

All well worth the effort as the work day ended around lunch, at which point, we ate a lot of hummus and squeezed copious quantities of ruby-red Israeli grapefruits chilling in large stainless steel refrigerators. After lunch, we cooled down in the community pool, and in the evenings, hung with our Israeli contemporaries while listening to Bob Marley or the Doors, and smoking hashish for the first time. These are two experiences that transcended culture. I felt so at home, and even gained a Sabra girlfriend by the name of Rachel רָחֵל‎ (pictured).

In short, what I considered to be a typical Reform Jewish-American upbringing. (Or American-Jewish?)

Fast forward to present political leanings. Raised a JFK-liberal (liberal in its true meaning; rooted in idea-tolerance and acceptance of diverse views).

As a middle-schooler, I recollect being enamored by McGovern, although not sure exactly how or why. We were all indoctrinated into believing Nixon (one of the greatest friends to Israel, not something I had any clue about) was innately evil. Looking back at that period now, my political stylings appear to have been crafted mainly by academia, the news media, and my peers - all who seemed driven by a sanitized, 1980's version of TDS that could have been called: 'Nixon Derangement Syndrome.'

Once legal age, I was a 'de rigeur' Democrat, which thankfully lasted only a few short minutes. Not able to cast a vote in the 1976 election, I remember nonetheless favoring Jimmy Carter, a folksy down-to-earth ex-peanut-farmer who seemed very popular in the state of Massachusetts where I grew up. Carter morphed into nothing less than a clueless and spineless "progressive" who oversaw the dismantling of principled American leadership.

In high school, a few of us in the dormitory got to stay up late every night to watch "The Iran Crisis–America Held Hostage: Day "xxx" (where xxx represented the number of days that Iranians held the occupants of our U.S. Embassy hostage). The only TV in the building was located in the dorm-masters living room. I watched sitting next to my hall-mate Abdullah Hussein, the same person who became the King of Jordan and who sits on the Hashemite apartheid throne today. We had many discussions in which I defended Israel and lauded her accomplishments in defeating Arab imperialism, while Abdullah retorted with accusations of Jewish occupation and bloodlust at Deir Yassin. I did not have enough knowledge of the incident or of earlier examples of Arab genocide (such as the Hebron massacre and other Jewish genocides) to counter-punch effectively.

During my college years, I tended towards Democrat "moral" policies and candidates, until that goofy Georgian came along. At first, I naively admired Carter's straightforward folksy persona. But eventually, the President’s peanut incompetence drove me to #WalkAway from a party-lone Democrat.

I was proud of myself for making an independent decision (pun intended) and have little idea if any of my peers followed suit, but suffice to say, I have voted forcefully against Democrats up and down the ticket pretty much ever since, with a few exceptions. I consider Trump an pragmatic Independent masquerading as a Republican, not dissimilar to Democrat Bloomberg - who as Mayor of NYC masqueraded as a Republican.

Much as my odium for Carter drove me to #Jexit and advocate for Reagan, my contempt for Obama's virulently anti-America values drove me to become a self-assertive 'deplorable.' Between Reagan and Trump, every other voting-booth decision appeared to present itself as largely a Hobson's choice between a lesser of two evils.

Although Trump possesses virtually no tact and represents the antithesis of my personal style, I appreciate the skill and speed with which he accomplishes things, from building tall luxury residential condos -- to creating a global brand, to the refurbishment of Wolman's Rink in Central Park. His support of Israel, unlike his predecessors, is legion, documented, and consistent. Trump not only moved the Embassy to its rightful place, not only installed an incredible Ambassador, not only praises Israel at every turn, he constantly rebukes Israel's enemies (who should be everyone's enemies). I love that Israel renamed the Golan Heights in his honor. It's almost better than getting the Rec Room in the Ft. Lauderdale condo named after someone rich in your extended family.

Today? There's no political party for me. The Democrats are a shrill hodgepodge of looney-tunes and ill-tolerant blabbermouths who are given way too much airtime on CNN and what I now call MSLSD (aka, MSDNC).

In terms of policy, On social issues like marriage equality, I'm a dyed-in-the-wool Liberal. On local/national fiscal issues, I'm a decided Conservative. On international affairs, I'm a Hawk who majored in International Relations while attending Sciences-Po in Paris (an excuse to massively inhale croque-monsieurs) and firmly believe the US had relevant ethical global leadership responsibilities, a mantle given up by Europe. This meant leading from the front, not from behind. My philosophy became characterized by the notion that appeasement of tyrannies led by autocrats or theocrats was a policy doomed to failure, proven again and again throughout every civilization. Appeasement in the face of aggression has led to more death and destruction, and more insecurity, not less.

It's becoming evident, sadly, that history promises to repeat. Why? This seems to happen in a matter of a few generations. Case in point: Millennials (aka snowflakes) who are too far removed from the trauma of warfare to comprehend evil. Millennials steeped and indoctrinated in re-written and falsified academic narratives. Millennials who virtue signal intolerantly through the lens of victimization. The generation that seems to have lost a sense of moral courage and severed any emotional ties to the 'never-forget' tragedies that are meant to not be forgotten.

My thoughts on our homeland:

I'm a devout 2-state (Israel-Jordan) Zionist as per the 1917 Balfour Declaration and affirmed by the 1920 San Remo Conference (attended by Chaim Weizmann). I see Israel as an inherently Jewish state in its DNA, but which is secular in its jurisprudence.

Next year in Jerusalem.

[aotopmha]

Attack On Titan Chapter 116 Thoughts

Attack On Titan at this point for me: GET ON WITH IT. DROP THE SHOE. MOVE ON. GET GOING. CHOP CHOP SOLDIER.

Tell me what Eren's motives are and what's actually up with him. Tell me what Historia's motives are and what's actually up with her.

Just DO SOMETHING ALREADY.

There is setup to get where we need to go, but I feel like it's really strongly testing my patience now and as I've said before, we have explored the various thematic ideas quite a bit now.

This isn't like the Uprising arc where this was all cool and new.

We've known something is up with Eren and Historia and their situation for a while now. Just reveal what's up already.

This is pretty much the most basic extent of my thoughts this month.

We've already been indirectly and directly told Eren's reasons might be more complicated than they seem several times by the story. (This chapter might be hinting to the possibility that he's just pushing everyone away to sacrifice himself to save them or the like once again - again, more endless seesawing about what's actually going on.)

The framing around Historia seems to indicate something might be/is probably up straight-up since the reveal itself. It was never 100% confidently framed as the truth.

The negative part to this dragging is that if the reveals are exactly what we've been told they are, they are going to be massively anti-climactic.

The most important parts of this chapter only serve to repeat these questions about their situation and what's actually going on with them.

The new stuff we got with the characters is good, but also a thematic repeat.

I love Pieck more than ever: she's smart and cares for the Eldians and now we know she seems to also be pretty aware of Marley's shitty system and dislike it instead of entirely going along with it and being unaware of it unlike many of the other Marleyan Eldians (like Gabi and Zeke who never got a chance to develop a broader perspective beyond their own - and to be more specific, Pieck is simply influenced differently by her experiences to have somewhat stronger awareness of the shitty system).

She's clinging to the good things she still has under the horrible system of Marley: her friends and the trust in them. She wants to stick with those she loves despite knowing how shitty Marley is and she genuinely seems to want good for the Eldians. (Gabi's arc also continues to be built up here, by Pieck telling her they're all Eldians all the same.)

The question with Pieck then is if she is selectively self-aware or the like because sticking with Marley, even if she says Marley is shitty, isn't actually going to save anyone.

There is also the simple consideration here that Pieck is simply taking the best out of the situation she has.

What Eren and Zeke have planned is pretty shitty, too, so it's a situation where both sides have shitty things going on that endanger the Eldians - Pieck is simply going with those she trusts.

It seems Petra's idea of trust still lives on in some ways and it's used as a direct opposition to Eren this time around, which ties back to this arc's theme of trust, as well.

Eren is acting the exact opposite way to how Petra's team worked together. Right now he seems to have chosen the second choice out of those Levi gave him in the forest: to trust his own strength, rather than that of his friends.

What it misses is that trusting your strength doesn't have to involve treating everyone that cares about you like shit and abusing their trust.

So we have the two choices Levi gave back in the forest clashing here through Pieck and Eren, both with their possible flaws.

The real answer is probably to be flexible and go with what seems right depending on the situation. It could be a combination of both, it could be one or the other, it could be any other variation of the choices because in the end nobody knows how things might work out.

Eren is also acting extremely arrogantly and I think it's potentially because of the amount of power he has now - he knows he is powerful and important. You could say he knows he's special.

The fact that he's been put into positions of weakness several times throughout the story and again, also has seen his father’s memories could possibly contribute to this.

This is all going against the point particularly Annie (and to a lesser extent Reiner) were making back in the training flashback and other points of the story to not rush into things, that with great power comes great responsibility and that he should use his strength in controlled and smart ways.

He gets parts of this right as we see in the battle at Marley, but his recklessness remains in other ways, as we also see in Marley. (He was extremely competent and controlled in the battle itself, but the base idea of taking action was really unthinking and reckless.)

Jean also wonderfully points out how screwed up the euthanasia plan is.

Independent of what Jean brings up, as I’ve said before, the fact is that this whole plan is a few people deciding the fate of their race and what's good for them and taking away the freedom of hundreds of thousands of people, but Jean more specifically points out that it also leaves everyone helpless in the long run, unable to defend themselves because everyone eventually ages and dies.

So, this just dooms everyone to misery until they all just die or are killed by the rest of the world. It's genocide with a different coat of paint.

Along with going against several of Eren's prior lessons he's gone through, this plan is extremely self-righteous and also goes against the core idea Eren held prior to the Marley arc that everyone is born free.

He has pretty strongly become the anti-thesis to everything he believed in prior to the Marley arc and thus become his own and the Eldians' biggest enemy:

He really has become what he percieved the very Titan he saw kill his mother to be back as a child: he's someone who takes away people's lives and their freedom just for selfish destructive purposes, just as he thought the Titans did back when he was a kid:

*He* is free, not everyone else. Such is the effect of his current position of power:

(Chapter 112)

I can finally also point out how Erwin and Eren are different and Eren is currently worse: Erwin is an adult.

Erwin to some extent shares his hyperfocus on his goal with Eren, but he acts in much more nuanced and controlled ways. His tactics can be unsettling and involve loss of life, but they aren’t unthinking.

As of this chapter (again, Eren’s real motives are still ultimately unclear, so this is 100% with emphasis just as of this chapter), Eren is acting in a single-minded and reckless way that is completely selfish, but he doesn't seem to realize that. He is back to fighting his old flaws of recklessness and single-mindedness that we saw at Trost and Shiganshina, but in a different, much more negative form.

When he ran in to avenge Thomas and defended Armin to be saved, he was at least fighting for selfless reasons. He was fighting because he cared for them. Here he thinks he might be saving everyone, to end it all, but he's actually choosing a path that’s causing everyone harm and suffering. 

He's basically the worst version of himself right now. Also, again, ripe for disaster and everything going to hell.

On a positive note, though, if he overcomes this, it’ll be extremely cathartic. Eren’s dual arc has always been fascinating to me. At different points of time, his character could go in a positive or negative direction - both are possible because he has both, positive and negative development.

If his arc goes in a negative direction, the story’ll just be a tragedy because he could not overcome his flaws and rise above himself.

The thing is, this is all everything we already knew to some extent, though.

So yeah, there is a bunch of repetition this chapter. Thematically and plot-wise. I think it's all still interesting and consistent, but just drop the shoe already, please. I’ve thought it was dragging for a while, but now it’s really getting to me.

At the very least, it looks like we're actually finally moving somewhere with the opposing side finally arriving and making a move this chapter.

[dewbond-blog]

Shallow Dive: Fate Stay Night: Heaven’s Feel II. Lost Butterfly

This shallow dive is going to be a bit different because to discuss this movie the way I want to, I have to get into major spoilers of the film itself and overall plot points of the main Fate timeline. So before the cut, I’m going to list off the main points that people will probably want to know about the flick, then get into more spoiler stuff afterward.

This movie is absolutely amazing and Ufotable has done it again. Well worth the wait and is the payoff we needed.

Yes, this movie has a “sex scene” in it and it is done in a tasteful way that strikes a perfect compromise between adaptation and tribute to the original visual novel. I expect a bit more skin in the blue-ray release. I applaud the director for having the courage to acknowledge the O.G Fate visual novel.

Illya’s role in the route has been scaled back significantly so far. Obviously, the director wanted to have the entire focus be on Sakura and Shirou. I (and I’m a huge Illya fan) agree that this was probably the best way to go. I’ll have more to say on this once I’ve read the Heaven’s Feel route.

There is only one real action scene and while it is animated BEAUTIFULLY, it is a bit hard to follow sometimes.

This movie, along with Presage Flower is absolutely not for first time Fate Fans. I said that in the last review, but it goes double here. You need to have at least watched Fate/Zero and Unlimited Blade Works to fully enjoy this film

Alright, after the cut let’s take a dive into the second movie of the Heaven’s Feel trilogy: Fate Stay Night Heaven’s Feel II. Lost Butterfly.

I once said that I believed that it was Illyasviel von Einzbern who was the “great tragic character” of the Fate Franchise. After watching this movie, however, I feel I might have to eat some crow on that. While Illya’s own history is rife with and loss tragedy, it is not the raw naked nerve that is the history and life of Sakura Matou.

Sakura may be the third heroine of the Fate route, but she has been a character that has been criminally underused in the greater Fate Universe. Simply put, before this movie she didn’t have much to make her stand apart from the other two heroines. Saber is pretty much the mascot of Fate with her iconic design and fighting abilities, while Rin Tohsaka has slipped into the shoes of Final Fantasy’s Cid and is the most recurring character, as well as being one of the best female heroines in anime. Sakura, however, doesn’t have much going for her aside from being the “quiet kouhai with big boobs”

Until this movie.

If you’ve watched Fate/Zero you have a gist of Sakura’s history: the little sister of Rin who was given to the Matou family to be raised as a magus, because the mage laws forbid any family from raising more than one magical heir. While her parents in Fate/Zero attempt to justify this by saying that it was to protect her, Lost Butterfly reveals that their giving of Sakura to the Matou family pretty much doomed their youngest daughter to eleven years of absolute hell.

Lost Butterfly may tell the story of the holy grail war spinning out of control because of the mysterious shadow, it is really about revealing the absolute horrors that have been put on Sakura. In the span of this two-hour movie, we learn that Sakura has been subjected to numerous magical tortures, physically and verbally abused by her grandfather and brother, and worst of all, subjected to the repeated raping and sexual assault by Shinji, who loathes Sakura for usurping his place as the Matou family heir.

All of this has, in turn, made Sakura become withdrawn and emotionally dependant on Shirou the first person who has ever treated her with kindness. What’s worse is that the arrival of the Holy grail war and the rampage of the mysterious shadow is beginning to unravel the final defenses of Sakura’s sanity. Combined with the holy grail war causing Rin, who is apparently indifferent to Sakura, and Shirou to work together and grow closer, this risks taking away the one thing that Sakura has left. By the time the credits roll and the final levee has broken, we see that Sakura has fully embraced her darkness and will be ready unleash a tide almighty rage upon anyone in her way. This entire movie can be seen as escalation after escalation into madness until finally there is nothing left but an unfiltered rage of a woman who has learned to treat the world the way it’s treated her: Pure Hatred.

Frankly, there is so much I want to talk about with this movie, because despite being excellently paced (aside from maybe being a bit too rushed at the start) there is just so much that happens, and all of it so different from the previous route Unlimited Blade Works. One of the best things about Fate Stay Night is that the three routes help fill in corners that would have otherwise been neglected in a single story. Feeding in the subtext and character development from other routes helps fill out the characters that play only supporting roles here. Most notable for this is Archer whose path in Heaven’s Feel differs wildly from his start turn in Blade Works.

Then there is Shirou who is probably at his strongest as both a character and a man in this film. While Blade Works served as a rebuttal to the very idea of Shirou’s Dream, Lost Butterfly shows what happens when the weight of real life comes into conflict with it. Seeing Shirou make the choice to put Sakura over his dream, to abandon his desire to be a hero of justice to protect her, and support her is deeply moving and made, even more, better when you feed in everything from Blade Works into his personality. While I still think Rin and Shirou make the strongest couple, his relationship with Sakura is done extremely well and hits all the right notes perfectly.

And there is so much more. The dream sequence (oh the fucking dream sequence), Gilgamesh, The fight with Assassin, Saber, Rider’s role, everything to do with Shinji. All of it could be posts on their own, and none of it feels forced or tacked on. Ufotable and the directors have pulled off an amazing feat here, juggling multiple balls and being able to handle it with the skill of a master. If there is any minor flaw, it is that Illya’s role is again, significantly reduced, but if that was the price to pay for everything else to work, then I pay it gladly, and I am HUGE Illya fanboy.

I could go on guys, but Fate Stay Night: Heaven’s Feel II. Lost Butterfly is not only one of the best anime films in the last five years, it’s one of the best FILMs I’ve seen in that time. It is a success story in every which way, and while not perfect (nothing is) it is solid final proof that Fate Stay Night is more than just a cash cow franchise that lives off waifu figurines. I absolutely cannot WAIT to watch it again and to see everything come to together in the final installment Spring Song, next year. If you are a Fate Fan, don’t miss this movie.

[englishgeek82-blog]

Great Scott! Is Back to the Future the best film trilogy ever?

I was watching the Back to the Future films recently, and it dawned on me that I'd forgotten just how brilliantly enjoyable the trilogy is. In fact, I enjoyed it so much that I started to wonder if it just might be the best film trilogy ever made. I know it wouldn’t be first choice for a lot of people, but I thought that nevertheless, it might be worth comparing it to some of the other standard choices to see how it measures up. The major issue of course, is how you define “best”. I’m looking at the films as a collective whole, the overall story and effect of the entire narrative. I’m not judging it on solitary acting performances, or even the depth and development of the major characters, but rather how enjoyable and convincing the story is, and how easy the films make it for the viewer to enter and accept the premise of their world. For instance, the Back to the Future trilogy is about as unrealistic as any films could ever be. But so are Lord of the Rings, Terminator, Star Wars and The Matrix. The Bourne films and the Godfather films have a more realistic feel to them, although I’m not sure anyone would really defend them as being 100% true to life if placed under oath, so let’s remember that suspension of disbelief is an important part of any film experience. But what counts is that once you are inside that world, that the films stay true to it. This is a glaring error in the Matrix trilogy, which seems to make its own rules up as it goes along. The Indiana Jones trilogy seems to suffer the same problem, with Temple of Doom really never making up its mind as to what kind of film it wants to be, and consequently ending up as not much of a film at all. Plus, of course, there’s a fourth film in that particular trilogy but I’m being polite and not mentioning it.

I’m also judging the films as a trilogy, not as single films. Die Hard is an incredibly brilliant film, but the trilogy of which it is a part is not. There’s a fourth AND fifth entry in that trilogy, but I’m being polite and not mentioning them. The same goes for The Godfather, The Empire Strikes Back, and The Matrix. I’m also not counting “unofficial trilogies”, like Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo and Juliet, Strictly Ballroom and Moulin Rouge. Plenty to recommend in all those films, and they have been lumped together by Luhrmann, but as far as I’m concerned, it simply doesn’t count. Even Kevin Smith’s films in the View Askewniverse aren’t going to be counted in this, largely because there are more than 3 of them anyway, and second of all because the films are completely different stories linked tenuously together by supporting characters and locations, which doesn’t quite cut the mustard, and so they too, do not count.

The reason they don’t count is that unofficial trilogies aren’t telling the same story, and so you can’t have sly little references to the other movies therein. One of the many things that impress me about the BTTF trilogy is the self-referential nature of the films, which is common in a lot of sequels and trilogies, but rarely as subtle as it is here. Even the way Marty crosses the road when finding himself in a new time zone by the clock tower is consistent, not to mention the supporting characters such as the Statler family’s horse/car business, and the Texaco filling station, shown in the first two films and referenced in the third. This is one of the cleverest techniques in this trilogy and makes the films feel all the more familiar and makes repeat viewings all the more rewarding.

Now, obviously I realise that when it comes to epic genius in terms of acting and directing, the films may not be up there with The Godfather. That being said, Godfather III is notably poorer than the other two, and it could be argued that it's not even thematically consistent, which I don't think you can say about BTTF. The first two Godfather films are undoubtedly cinematic masterpieces, (though on a recent viewing I was surprised at how the first one has aged) but they certainly don’t have any of the feel-good factor of the Future films. You don’t just channel surf, spot Godfather II and decide to watch it for a laugh – like so many other classics, Citizen Kane, Casablanca, Lawrence of Arabia, Gone with the Wind, to name but a few, you have to make a decision to sit down and watch it. This is all well and good, but it’s a solitary journey. It’s a rewarding one too, but you could never sit down with friends at a party and play those films and expect the humour levels in the room not to nose-dive. Al Pacino is incredible, in all three films, and Brando still sends shivers down the spine in the original, not to mention the more-than-able supporting cast who ply their trade with such style alongside them. But the story and cast of Godfather III seems completely out of kilter with the tone of the original two, and this was commented on heavily by critics. I personally think the third film has much in its corner, another fine performance by Pacino, a fitting conclusion to the epic story of Michael Corleone and Andy Garcia’s impressive turn as the young hot-headed Vincent. But there’s no denying that it stumbles through some very tenuous plot lines and is over-populated with characters that completely fail to enhance the story. Finally, Sofia Coppola, although she is not as bad as everyone says, is still bad. The Godfather is so hugely different from Back to the Future that it’s almost pointless to even hold them up under the same light, but for a trilogy that I would pick to watch when I was at a loose end and wanted cheering up, there is no doubt that I would dive for the Delorean every time.

I also know that in terms of Sci-Fi influence and impact, the films are not up there with the original Star Wars films. And the Star Wars films hold the aces in some areas too. For instance, Biff and the other Tannens are effective villains for their genre of film, but they’re more pantomime than would be allowed in a film that took itself seriously. Darth Vader, on the other hand, is a truly great villain, especially when his story is further revealed and his tragedy brought to the fore. As heroes go, Luke Skywalker certainly undergoes a more immense journey of personal development than Marty McFly, but he doesn’t have Marty’s quick wit and he’s a whiny little so-and-so, a trait that he obviously picked up from his father, if the god-forsaken and indeed critically-forsaken, and indeed audience-forsaken prequels are anything to go by. As for things that are wrong with the films, there’s very little – especially with the first two films, but by the time of Return of the Jedi, the Ewok storyline grates on even the most sympathetic fan. Once you compare the original three to the prequels, the originals look like genuine masterpieces, but then once you compare the home video my grandmother shot of my 10th birthday to the Star Wars prequels, you get the same result. And once you start to bring in the storylines of the prequels, the rule about staying true to the world that you have asked the viewer to enter goes flying out of the window like a drop-kicked Ewok. The prequels are truly three of cinema’s great horrors in my opinion, and sadly because they are prequels, their very existence adversely affects the original films. Incidentally, and strangely, even though the insinuations of incest are much greater in BTTF, and in fact both sets of films contain exactly the same amount of screen-time for blood relatives kissing each other, it’s much more unsettling in Star Wars than it is in Back to the Future.

So, we arrive at this century’s most titanic Sci-fi achievement (if you ask some people) - Christopher Nolan’s Batman trilogy? Batman Begins is one of my favourite films of all time, with Christian Bale’s performance so impressive that I thought I’d never see a better turn in a Batman film, until Heath Ledger’s incredible Joker burned itself into all our minds. I remember thinking  If the third Nolan/Bale film was even half as good as the two that precede it, I would find it almost impossible to pick holes in it. Fortunately, it wasn’t. I wanted to like The Dark Knight Rises, I really did – and I did like it, but it was not the conclusion to the story for which I was hoping. Bat Bale’s growl whenever he speaks (which seemed like a good character move on Bale’s part in the first film) is irritating at best by the end of two hours plus of The Dark Knight and another two hours plus of The Dark Knight Rises. Tom Hardy’s Bane is menacing in appearance, but a big softie deep down and also speaks through his (ostentatious, to put it lightly) space mask in a way that makes him sound like the Head Boy of a southern private school who is addressing his prefects via a home-made walkie-talkie. There are also plot holes so massive in both TDK and TDKR that you could quite comfortably drive a DeLorean through them. The plot hole accusation is also true of the BTTF films, but since they never took themselves too seriously anyway, you could argue that the minutiae of time travel physics don’t matter as much as the overall effect of having a really good laugh.

The Back to the Future trilogy might not be considered as impressive, visually, as the Lord of the Rings films, but if you look at the standard of visual effects against the era in which the films were made, I think there’s a fine argument to be made that BTTF was hugely impressive. The LOTR films have been received incredibly well, and have plenty to recommend them, although they're all 16 hours long and if you don't like that particular genre, you'll be asleep before you see your first hobbit. And yes, I know they won a million Oscars, but that doesn’t always equal sheer enjoyment. Titanic won Best Picture because it looked nice, but was it really the best film of that year? Here are some films that didn’t win Best Picture at the Oscars, just for fun.

Citizen Kane, 12 Angry Men, To Kill a Mockingbird, Dr Strangelove, Bonnie & Clyde, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Cabaret, The Exorcist, Dog Day Afternoon, Jaws, Taxi Driver, Star Wars, Apocalypse Now, Raging Bull, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Goodfellas, Dangerous Liaisons, Born on the 4th of July, My Left Foot, JFK, A Few Good Men, The Fugitive, Pulp Fiction, The Shawshank Redemption, Fargo, LA Confidential, Saving Private Ryan, The Green Mile, The Sixth Sense, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Hudson Hawk. All masterpieces.

For action and adventure, it's possible that the Back To The Future films don't compare with the Indiana Jones films; although they have more than their fair share, they admittedly are not as action-oriented as the Indy films. Sadly, following the below-average-but-probably-still-better-than-Temple-of-Doom “Kingdom of the Crystal Skull”, that trilogy has also been unnecessarily tampered with. Even if it hadn’t been, (or if Crystal Skull had been really good), the fact remains that Temple of Doom is pretty naff compared to the other two original movies. I’m not sure any adventure film will ever rival The Last Crusade, because that film pretty much has everything you could ever want from an action movie. Nazis being crap? Check. Exotic Locations? Check. Sean Connery? Check. Harrison Ford? Check. Biblical epic-ness? Check. And finally, Alison Doody...check. So, on its own, yes I would concede that Last Crusade is a better film than any of the BTTF flicks – but only just. As a trilogy though, our survey still comes back with a big X.

For Biblical allegory, although not for mind bending “ooh, makes you think”-ness (which isn’t really a thing, I just made it up) – the films don’t compare with the Matrix trilogy, but then unlike the Matrix trilogy, the second two BTTF films aren’t redolent of the Chernobyl aftermath. The first Matrix film is a really good (not great) film, with a really good (not great) idea behind it. As a standalone piece of cinema, it must rank as an important contribution to the art. However, the sequels are so mind-bendingly awful and lost in tracts of their own self-righteousness that really the whole concept is ruined and the brilliance of the first film is lost.

Pirates of the Caribbean is probably the closest set of films in terms of the general style, some wacky characters, good old fashioned escapade fun and some funky special effects and pretty far-out plot lines. BUT, the films are long, especially the completely directionless third one. This is nothing compared to the fact that Orlando Bloom AND Keira Knightley “act” in all three films. Now, Keira Knightley is a strangely alluring actress, despite her funny mouth, and in the last decade she has proven some admirable acting chops, but here her wooden stylings are not to my tastes, and for the schoolboy crush factor, she’s certainly no Lea Thompson. As for Orlando Bloom, well, I’m really not a fan. Yes, you could argue that Jack Sparrow is a better single character than any in the BTTF films, and Johnny Depp a more accomplished actor than any of the “Future” cast, but that on its own isn’t enough to rescue it. Also, by the third film, Depp has disappeared so far up his own Black Pearl that the character doesn’t have any of its original charm anymore.

For hard hitting pace and action and gritty realism with intrigue and espionage, it definitely doesn't come close to the Bourne trilogy, and I can't really think of anything bad to say about that one. It’s different, for sure, but the Bourne trilogy actually reminds me of the BTTF films in more than one way. For instance, there’s no single performance in any of the three films that truly stands out. Brian Cox is excellent, as always, as are Joan Allen and Matt Damon, but none of them put in an Oscar-winning turn. This is a good thing, in my opinion, because the films don’t demand it. The story and action is enough. Like BTTF, the cast are brilliant in their roles, but none of them dominate the screen and take away from the rest of the film, like Heath Ledger does in The Dark Knight. When he’s not on screen, all you can think is that you wish he was. This is not the case in the Bourne films, where no single character is so crucial that you can’t live without them. The films are not made for fun, and have little humour in them, and so there is no comparison there, but they stay thematically consistent and tell a story that stays completely true to the world it inhabits. If I had to pick a fault, it would be that the non-linear style of the end of the second film and start of the third is hugely confusing, but then I could hardly deny that certain parts of the third BTTF film could have been trimmed, so let’s not get too close into criticising brilliant trilogies.

Other notable trilogies could include:

·       Die Hard (except there's 4 of them now, and the second one is rubbish)

·       Home Alone (only joking. The first two are good though.)

·       Jurassic Park (maybe if the third one had had some effort put into it by anyone associated with it, director, actors, etc)

·       Evil Dead (first one, brilliant – other two, I’m not sure)

·       Spiderman (Hmmm, the first two are superb. But any trilogy that includes that pointless “Emo Spidey” section of Spiderman 3 doesn’t deserve a place at this table. I mean, seriously, what the HELL were they thinking? It’s a bad film without that, but that absolutely nails its coffin permanently shut.)

·       Terminator (third one rubbish, and there’s a fourth one now anyway)

There are also other film trilogies of course, like High School Musical, Matrix, X-Men, Mission: Impossible, Ace Ventura (yes, they made a third), Austin Powers, Mighty Ducks, Beverly Hills Cop, Blade, The Ocean’s films, Robocop, Rush Hour, Scream, Spy Kids, Transporter, Ice Age, I Know What You Did Last Summer, etc but all of these are discounted for either being a) completely terrible or b) let down by at least one entry in the set.

So, this is obviously a gigantically subjective theme, and a very subjective blog – and I’m fine with that, and I hope that everyone has different ideas about what constitutes the perfect film trilogy. After all, all of the above is only my opinion. But, fellow film lovers, let me ask you this - if someone sat you down and said "Right, you've got to watch an entire trilogy all the way through for pure enjoyment," is there a better choice than Back to the Future?

[tatticstudio55]

Is Dany going to (**fill the blank**)?

I’ve been reading a lot about Daenerys following an ultimately tragic arc: because she’s digging her own grave. Because her ancestors followed the same arc and ended up on the loosing side. Because history is repeating itself. 

Or is it?

That would foreshadow a grim conclusion to GOT/ASOIAF: the dead won’t be dealt with for good; merely pushed back beyond a wall, until, after thousands of years, they march again. Jaime will kill Cersei, becoming a kingslayer twice, like his reputation couldn’t get more in the gutter already. Dany will eventually fall into her ancestors’s footsteps - well, she already is, in a way - and will meet the same end as them. 

But then what would be the point in writing ASOIAF, if it’s just the same story all over again? There’s no resolution. Only repetition. 

What if, this time around, the characters thought “something went wrong 8000 ago, or ever since. We must deal with this another way, or  everything will just start all over again eventually”  

What if, this time around, people came to look at Jaime as a morally gray character - with more white than black - who was cornered into a no-win situation, instead of as a plain, two-dimensional kingslayer?

What if, this time around, Dany actually took a step back to really face herself and realize “wait, am I becoming like my ancestors?” 

I’m putting this on the table because, by the clues the show gave us (I’m talking about the show because 1) I didn’t read past book 1 so far, and 2) because the show is closer to the resolution than the book is) points to:

1) The WW threat WILL be dealt for good, permanently. How, that we don’t know yet. 

2) Jaime’s redemption arc doesn’t lie only within himself, but also within the way people sees him. He is the way he is in season/book 1 because that’s the way people expect him to be. He’s bitter. 

3) Dany, more and more, is looking back on her actions. She went from “If I look back, I am lost”, to:

“I can’t keep on burning slavers. Missandei, what do you think I should do?”

(To Tyrion) “That wasn’t impulsive. That was necessary”. “When did I loose my temper?” Next thing we know she’s at the dragon pit, by Tyrion’s side and glancing sideways at him as she politely brushes off Cersei’s provocation. I’ve never seen Dany so calm and poised during a meeting with foes. She knew Tyrion was right, even if she only admitted it to herself. 

To Jon: “The dragons were extraordinary. We weren’t.” “You were right from the beginning (translation: I was wrong)”

 To Jon: “I hope I deserve it”

The 7x06 scene where she flee with Drogon, leaving Jon in icy water, is powerful as hell: she’s flying on Drogon’s back and she looks back. And she’s horrified by what she see. She can’t forget it - she said so herself. 

Seeing Viserion die was also a major reality check for her. She’s not invulnerable. She’s not god. She can fall. She can end up like her ancestors. 

To me, season 7 Dany went from conqueror mode to “woooooow, hang on, what am I doing here?” So I guess whether or not her arc ends in tragedy is now up to her. But if she does end up like her ancestors, what was the point of her story?

Looking back won’t be her doom. It will save her. 

[aion-rsa]

Cobra Kai Season 3: What to Expect

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This article contains spoilers for Cobra Kai season 2.

It’s been a year and a half already since the Cobra Kai season 2 finale cliffhanger took the show literally over the edge. 

The climactic West Valley High School fight in “No Mercy” pushed Miguel (Xolo Maridueña) over that cliff – off a hallway balcony and onto a back-shattering staircase rail. It was a first-rate “long take” fight scene (what’s called a “one-er” in the film biz), the epitome of stunt cinematography because it is so technically challenging. The slightest mistake from anyone involved and everyone must start all over again. That season 2 finale fight was the best piece of fight choreography of the entire franchise, finally levelling up Cobra Kai to the martial arts showcase it always deserved to be. The challenge for season 3 is whether the show can top itself.

Cobra Kai has been a surprise hit from the very start, already triumphing against major challenges. Launched in 2018 as a tentpole show for YouTube Red, Cobra Kai appeared doomed after YouTube’s foray into a subscription-based premium access service model fell short of expectations. YouTube let go of all their original scripted shows not bound by contract. Even though the Cobra Kai season 2 premiere set a record for the platform, it seemed destined to end after two seasons all the same. That was until Netflix picked it up, restoring the series like Mr. Miyagi’s healing hands. The show has since become a breakout hit all over again on its new home.

Now season 3 is the first true Cobra Kai Netflix exclusive. After the “cruel summer” of 2020, Cobra Kai season 3 is set to arrive in January  and Den of Geek spoke to its stars about what it means for the beloved Karate Kid franchise.

Flashback to Karate Kid Part II

Netflix dropped its first Cobra Kai season 3 teaser last August, and ended it with a mysterious offscreen line “Are you sure about that?” Fans quickly surmised that the speaker was Chozen (Yuji Okumoto), the villain from The Karate Kid Part II. It wasn’t hard to guess. The teaser showed Daniel (Ralph Macchio) returning to Okinawa, and some press coverage revealed that season 3 had shot there, so who else would it be? The stabbing sai was another telltale giveaway because it was Chozen who brought traditional Okinawan weapons into the Karate Kid fray. 

The potential of Chozen’s inclusion in Cobrai Kai has enormous, and perhaps dangerous implications. While Johnny Lawrence (William Zabka) beat up Daniel-san in some high school fights, Chozen and Daniel were full-on prepared to fight to the death. As Mr. Miyagi (Pat Morita) said just prior to their match, “Daniel-San, this not tournament. This for real.” Cobra Kai has been masterfully placing Easter eggs that hail back to the original ‘80s films throughout the series with cameos of many members of the original cast. Adding Kreese (Martin Kove) to the cast for season 2 was a game changer. Chozen was a perfect tease from Netflix because anyone who saw The Karate Kid Part II would hazard a guess that the conclusion of their death match did not restore Chozen’s honor.

When the official Season 3 trailer dropped in December, Netflix gave Chozen’s inclusion away. Not only did we see Chozen, but we also see Kumiko (Tamlyn Tomita), Daniel’s second love interest from The Karate Kid Part II. Tomita just beamed down from playing the inscrutable Commander Oh on Star Trek: Picard. She’s been working steadily in television ever since her breakout role in The Karate Kid Part II. 

What’s more, there were a lot more merciless fight clips in that trailer. It was another well played lure for fans of both the original and the ongoing series. Great throwbacks, great humor and great drama are what makes Cobra Kai so engaging. And now that they’ve upped the ante in the fight choreography department, can they keep the momentum going? Will we see another death match between Daniel and Chozen? That stabbing sai landed so close to Daniel’s head and that’s a good way to put out an eye. 

Growing Challenges

“The challenge of season 3 is obviously cleaning up the mess that was created both on LaRusso’s watch and Johnny Lawrence’s watch,” says Ralph Macchio, who first began playing Daniel LaRusso in 1984. 

The “No Mercy” High School fight left every character horribly scarred, both physically and emotionally. In its wake, Amanda LaRusso (Courtney Henggeler), Daniel’s wife, told her family “No more Karate. It’s over,” prompting Daniel to take down Mr. Miyagi’s picture from the Miyagi-Do dojo wall. Carmen (Vanessa Rubio), Miguel’s mom and Johnny’s (William Zabka) love interest, told Johnny “I never want to see you again.” When Johnny goes to his Cobra Kai dojo, he is greeted by Kreese who repeats his meme-worthy line from the original The Karate Kid, “We have a visitor.” With both Miyagi-Do and Cobra Kai dojos out of their hands, what’s left?

“The biggest challenge of season 3 was probably stepping out,” reveals Zabka. 

“What is Johnny going to be without the skin of Cobra Kai? But it was also kind of a rebirth because at the end of season 2, Kreese takes the Dojo. So who is Johnny without the Cobra Kai banner wrapped around him? That was a fun challenge.”

After all the tragedy that befell their teenage kids, can Johnny and Daniel finally bury the hatchet for the sake of their children? Macchio says they will try in season 3, but we’ll have to watch and see how that goes. 

“From a performing standpoint, there was an excitement to it because I knew script wise, I was going to step up to Johnny Lawrence and say, ‘Let’s put our differences aside and let’s go help this kid, your son, my student,’ and set off on that journey,” Maccho says. “Upfront in the season, these two rival characters have to coexist and work together, where so often in the previous two seasons, it wasn’t until late. We have a handful of scenes during the year in the season.”

However, there’s much more to Cobra Kai than Johnny and Daniel’s 30+ year feud. This is a Karate soap opera for the next generation. Teen drama was the heart of the original films, the story of Daniel-san’s coming of age. Now it’s about Johnny’s son Robby (Tanner Buchanan) and Daniel’s daughter Sam (Mary Mouser) and all their high school friends and rivals. It’s their turn to find themselves and they’ll have to do so in a much different world than that of Johnny’s and Daniel’s. 

“I’m excited for people to see it,” says Mouser. “In Season 3, it’s just recovery and growth, and learning from her own mistakes, learning from other’s mistakes, and trying her best to be the better next generation. I think that’s everybody’s goal all the time. We’re learning from our parents, we’re learning from the past, we’re learning from history, and we’re learning from each other. We’re doing our best to improve as people. So I hope Samantha continues on that path. Although, sometimes she falls off the wagon.”

What about Ali with an ‘I’?

Prior to the season 3 premiere, the possibility of the most requested cameo remains unknown. At the end of season 2, Johnny’s Facebook pinged the acceptance of his friend request to Ali Mills Schwarber (Elisabeth Shue). What a tease! Fans have been clamoring for the return of that Encino cheerleader who stole all our hearts so many years ago. 

Shue has been steadily working in TV and film since her breakout role in The Karate Kid. She was nominated for Best Actress at the Academy Awards for her gritty soul-baring performance in Leaving Las Vegas and was recently seen playing Madelyn Stillwell in The Boys. With the return of Chozen and Kumiko, might Ali make a cameo too? There’s no hint of her in the trailer. No spoilers here. You’ll just need to wax on, wax off, and tune in. 

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Cobra Kai season 3 premieres Jan. 1 on Netflix.

The post Cobra Kai Season 3: What to Expect appeared first on Den of Geek.

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[starwarsnonsense]

Darren Aronofsky’s ‘mother!’ as a feminist fable

* Spoilers for Darren Aronofsky’s mother! follow *

I must begin by apologising for what can only be a digression on a Star Wars blog, since mother! (beyond the inclusion of Domhnall Gleeson in a tiny role) has absolutely nothing to do with everyone’s favourite space opera series. However, I can’t feel too bad about it since I really, really need to talk about mother!. Excuse my indulgence, and I hope that those of you who do read these find my thoughts interesting.

I watched mother! for the first time at the weekend and it truly blew me away. I left the theatre with a deranged grin in my face, amazed and overjoyed that Aronofsky had convinced Paramount to fund, promote and distribute something this batshit crazy (amusingly, they actually felt the need to explain themselves in a statement). However insane you expect mother! to be, nothing can surpass the actual experience of watching it in a theatre and hearing the disquieted murmurs of an unprepared and steadily more agitated crowd. 

mother! is any and all of the following, depending on how you choose to approach it - a black comedy, a parable, a pretentious pile of nonsense, an allegory, a muddle of metaphors, a home invasion film, an affront to all reasonable standards of good sense and decency, etc., etc. But what I’m going to focus on here is how mother! is also a rather shattering feminist fable. Just allow me a few paragraphs of scene-setting to get there.

To get right into the thick of it, it has been well established by many others (not least Aronofsky himself) that mother! is a biblical allegory - Jennifer Lawrence’s Mother (upper case mine, out of principle) is Mother Nature, Javier Bardem’s Him (note that all-important, end credits-sanctioned upper case!) is the Judaeo-Christian God, Ed Harris’s ‘man’ is Adam, Michelle Pfeiffer’s ‘woman’ is Eve, and so on and so on. mother! is, in essence, a microcosm of the entire Christian Bible - it is even neatly divided into discrete halves that correspond to the greatest hits of the Old and New Testaments. The characters here are not individuals so much as representations of concepts - they are forces of nature and qualities of man. The film bends time to breaking point, compressing thousands of years of progress, conflict and bloodshed into two hours and reducing the entire Earth to an increasingly dilapidated house.

By borrowing its structure from the Bible, mother! is, by default, a portrait of humanity and its capacity for harm - and it is upsetting people precisely because Aronofsky’s view of man is extremely bleak. Humanity is framed as an ever-swelling deluge of insatiable, greedy and thoughtless brutes, with only the barest glimmers of kindness and compassion visible amidst the chaos. At the film’s end, the only acceptable solution for Mother Nature - her heart black and withered, her love all-but extinguished by her suffering - is to burn them all to ashes. 

mother! is a condemnation of humankind, but it is also a condemnation of the baser qualities of God Himself: His demand for worship, His indifference towards the natural world, and His insistence on the continuation of man even in the face of its violence and destructiveness. Him is portrayed as more akin to the curious, selfish, playful gods of the Ancient Greek pantheon than the bearded, stoic sky-father that the Christian God is now usually framed as - he has a short memory for the horrors wrought by mankind, and demonstrates inexplicable and senseless investment in perpetuating them, even as Mother Earth rages against their existence. The film takes the idea of the six days of creation and, rather brilliantly, makes it look as if God created man out of idle curiosity once he’d become discontented with the tranquil perfection of his creation.

One of the richest and most fascinating interpretations of mother!, as far as I’m concerned, is the one that approaches it as an allegory for the diminishment and sidelining of the divine feminine. This is conveyed through something as basic and obvious as capitalisation - while the exclamation mark in the film’s title has got all of the attention, the lower case ‘m’ means more than you’d first think. It is a very well-established convention that God is always referred to with upper case pronouns (His, Him, He) - this is done to distinguish Him from the petty, fading gods from other religions, and from all those lower creatures with no claim to divinity (or, as it turns out, upper case pronouns). By introducing mother! with lower case in the title of the film, the disadvantage of Mother Earth is being established from the outset. 

To venture briefly into theology, the feminine divine is now usually considered inferior to the masculine one - it has been this way for many centuries, with the ancient goddesses of wisdom, fertility, love and creation being sidelined in favour of warlike, dominating male deities. As Bettany Hughes observes in The Guardian:

At the birth of society and civilisation I find a religious landscape littered with feisty female deities who make wisdom their business. There's Nisaba the Babylonian goddess who looks after the stores of both grain and knowledge in Mesopotamia; the Hindu goddess Saraswati; the Zoroastrian Anahita; the ancient Greek Athena; and the Shinto Omoikane (a fine goddess of holistic thought and multitasking).

But come the end of the bronze age and many of these deities have been demoted. Here we witness a precursor of the Judaeo-Christian scenario. Up until 1400BC, citadel settlements are stable. Goddesses – notably in charge of fertility and learning – have a crucial role to play. But as civilisation gets greedy and society more militaristic, these wise women are edged to the sidelines in favour of a thundering, male warrior god.

It is my feeling that we see this dynamic - with the divine female creative force being forced to the margins by an overbearing figure of male authority - played out in the marital relationship between Him and Mother in the film. Mother is the central creative actor - she is the one who makes the house at the centre of the film (which is analogous to the Earth) beautiful and vibrant following its destruction in a fire. Without her, it is impossible for Him to create. But her efforts are constantly overlooked, scorned and belittled - the guests in her house destroy her belongings, invade her sanctuaries, and show outright disdain for her wishes. Her attempts to resist them are perceived as comical, with her will only being enacted on those rare occasions that Him deigns to support her. Mother is clearly expected to be a passive source of inspiration for Him, an ornament whose attempts to assert herself or share her opinion are swiftly shut down. Just as history has erased goddesses and female deities as patriarchal structures have become more and more entrenched, the characters surrounding Mother in the film seek to trample her down and ignore her role in creation.

A big point is made in the film of the generational divide between Him and Mother - Him is middle-aged, his face lined and weathered, whereas Mother is a beautiful young woman with immaculate skin and an abundance of golden hair. This distinction drives home the imbalance between them - it is a divide designed to unsettle and disquiet from the moment you first see them together, the kind of union that makes your skin crawl from an instinctual sense that something is profoundly wrong with it. 

As the film unwinds, this suspicion becomes fully realised - the film is cyclical in that it begins and ends with a mother setting herself and the house aflame, her heart transforming into a shimmering crystal that Him places on a stand in his study as a new mother forms from the ashes of the marital bed. In this way, He is revealed as the collector of countless women’s hearts - He is essentially a Bluebeard figure (with the study functioning as his forbidden bloody chamber), and the central tragedy of mother! is that the heroine is offered no escape from him. In keeping with Aronofsky’s dim view of existence, the relationship between Mother and Him is destined to repeat itself in an unending cycle of destruction and rebirth. We are all doomed to repeat the same mistakes, being nothing more than the playthings of a capricious God.

There is no sense of lessons learned or mistakes avoided here, and one of the greatest injustices on display is the sheer contempt with which Mother is treated. Aronofsky has been open about the fact that mother! is an environmentalist film, and the vitriol that Lawrence’s character is dealt with is, of course, a statement on how we treat the Earth. But it is also effective precisely because it frames this contempt towards Mother Earth as a very specific kind of contempt - misogyny. The misogyny is most overt in how the avatars of humanity treat Mother, with their subtle disapproval, judgement and objectification building and building until they overflow into a riot of violence and verbal abuse at the film’s climax. The allegory is three-fold - we are witnessing contempt for women generally, contempt for women as a force for creation (in everything from the mundane sense to the divine one), and contempt for nature as a maternal force.

Some commentators have misconstrued the film’s depiction of misogyny as evidence that the film itself is sexist, but I could not disagree more strongly - Aronofsky’s film is a pin-sharp deconstruction of how society treats women, and it is uncomfortable because it is meant to be. Misogyny is real and it is ugly, and by depicting its evolution across a spectrum ranging from a disapproving look to seething violence we are being forced to confront it. The film is entirely told from Mother’s perspective, which makes the brutality and cruelty of her treatment inescapable - she is the only character we can truly feel empathy for, with her suffering registering on an acutely visceral level because it is portrayed so intimately.

While the film offers its characters no escape from a cycle, I like to think that Aronofsky designed mother! to be as shocking as it is in order to confront us with some of the hardest truths - the truth of how we treat the Earth and the truth of how we treat women. Too much cinema is the audiovisual equivalent of junk food, encouraging passive and unthinking consumption. The very fact that mother! has inspired such emotional responses - from passionate hatred to profound admiration - is testament to the fact that it did exactly what it set out to do by jolting people from their complacency.

[frazzledsoul]

So I've got a few opinions about the "spoilers" out there of the last 2 eps of GoT

First of all, anyone who's telling you they have concrete info is shitting you. There's a ton of conflicting info out there, and with the reports of fake scenes, multiple endings, and even actors not being certain of what the ending is, no one really knows for sure what's going to happen.

That said, my theories for the three possible endings under the cut.

Jon is forced to kill Dany after she goes batshit insane. Tyrion is either executed by her or rules a council to run Westeros afterwards. Jon takes off for the North to live amongst the Free Folk.

I see this as the most realistic ending. Like it or not, the narrative has been building to this for years as Dany progressively gets worse and worse and is willing to do more and more awful things. It also fits in with the mythology, which as Davos reminded us, still mostly remains a mystery.

Let’s go back to the original legend of Azor Ahai:

Darkness lay over the world and a hero, Azor Ahai, was chosen to fight against it. To fight the darkness, Azor Ahai needed to forge a hero's sword . . .with a heavy heart, for he knew beforehand what he must do to finish the blade, he worked for a hundred days and nights until it was finished. This time, he called for his wife, Nissa Nissa, and asked her to bare her breast. He drove his sword into her living heart, her soul combining with the steel of the sword, creating Lightbringer, the Red Sword of Heroes.

That’s the first part. Here’s the second:

There will come a day after a long summer when the stars bleed and the cold breath of darkness falls heavy on the world. In this dread hour a warrior shall draw from the fire a burning sword. And that sword shall be Lightbringer, the Red Sword of Heroes, and he who clasps it shall be Azor Ahai come again, and the darkness shall flee before him.

The rumors about Jon stabbing Dany are very similar to this. Is it really a coincidence that the way this all goes down is almost an exact replica of the legend?

What if the darkness that flees before him is simply Dany’s madness if her reign would have to go unchecked? What if it had nothing to do with the Night King at all, but is all just a metaphor?

Or is that all there is to it? (More on that in a minute).

If events do unfold this way, I could understand Jon going “fuck this shit” and heading off to go live with Tormund and Ghost, free of all the misery and turmoil and death that power has brought him. I think it’s a happy ending: like he said to Tormund directly, he’d rather be there anyway. I know people will say that it’s giving up on life or randomly going off to be a lumberjack a la Dexter, but when your hero directly states that this is his true heart’s desire, why not let him have the peace and happiness that he wants?

We might as well give someone a happy ending.

Jon kills Dany. Tyrion is either executed or helps run the kingdom. Jon heads off to the North, either to man the Wall again or to hang out with the wildlings because . . . Dany is resurrected as the Night Queen, and Jon is needed to help balance out the cosmos between the two of them. Darkness cannot exist without light, ice cannot exist without fire. They’ll remain together either as a melding of the elements or as an uneasy existence until they’re fated to repeat the cycle of their doomed romance in the next Long Night.

I know, I know. A really crazy ass theory. But let’s go back to the legend of Azor Ahai:

Benerro has sent forth the word from Volantis. Her coming is the fulfillment of an ancient prophecy. From smoke and salt was she born to make the world anew. She is Azor Ahai returned ... and her triumph over darkness will bring a summer that will never end ... death itself will bend its knee, and all those who die fighting in her cause shall be reborn.

Sounds like raising a zombie army to me. Maybe Azor Ahai is something they were supposed to avoid.

And I have to think back to the scene in 8.01, when Jon and Dany were by the waterfall, and she talked of staying hidden there for a thousand years.

It’s possible the Jon-kills-Dany surface theory (aka the metaphor) is just intended for the show and GRRM would do the Ice Zombie thing if he ever got around to writing it. But I’m sort of attached to the idea Dany as Queen Ice Zombie. 

Jon doesn’t kill Dany, and they are actually endgame in the completely mortal sense. Tyrion has been betraying them all along and he destroys most of King’s Landing by wildfire. He is tried and executed by the Starks. Sansa oversees his sentence. Dany and Jon either co-rule or run away to the North.

Of all the rumors floating around, the one that supports this theory has been dismissed as the most dubious. However, it also it is the only rumor to support the very detailed rumors about Tyrion’s trial/execution that have been out there for months and line up with verified information about the cast shoots.

There’s no payoff with the mythology, but I could see this happening.

This has been described as a “Disney ending”, but I don’t see it that way. If Tyrion is a traitor and condemned to death by Sansa, I don’t see how that fits in any way as an ending anybody wants. If this happens, it’s going to be absolutely devastating, and giving Jon/Dany a happy ending is not going to make up for it.

Of course, Tyrion could be executed and they could do Jon-kills-Dany as well (Dany and Jon are supposedly not present at Tyrion’s trial) but I just don’t see the show being that dark.

Leaving Jon and Dany to rule together as expected may seem like a happy ending, but there’s still a touch of tragedy to it: Jon’s true heart lies in the North with Tormund and Ghost, but he gives it up for love and duty. (I can easily see why GRRM would think this would be absolutely terrible). He thought he would be the one to sacrifice himself in the battles he’s fought since he was resurrected, but nope. Dany as well has to learn to manage her impulses and accept that she’s a ruler, no longer just a conqueror.

(Yup, pretty boring. I prefer the Zombie Queen theory).

I just don’t see Jon and Dany both rejecting the Throne and heading up North to hang out by the waterfall, but that’s apparently part of the rumors now. I’d dismiss this as completely unlikely if not for the fact that the trial stuff lines up with outside information.

I have heard nothing positive about Jaime and Brienne whatsoever. I remain optimistic and hope that he lied to Brienne and headed south to take down Cersei and will die doing so. I don’t really hope for much beyond that.

I guess we’ll all know in a couple of weeks

[forsaken-city-rp]

Welcome to the Forsaken City!

We’re glad to see that you have arrived safely within the city limits.  You have three days to make your facebook and add the admins Z.Tao, Hoseok, and Seunghyun.  But be careful, the sun is rising quickly, and hunters are always on the move.

NAME, STAGE NAME, AND GROUP: Xukun, August, Nine Percent AGE: frozen at 20, 566 SPECIES:  Matagot

A matagot or mandagot is, according to some oral traditions of southern France, a spirit under the form of an animal, mostly undetermined, frequently a black cat, but rat, fox, dog or cow types are said to exist too. Matagots are generally evil, but some may prove helpful, like the “magician cat” said to bring wealth into a home if it is well fed. Traditionally, a wealth-bringing matagot must be lured with a fresh, plump chicken, then carried home by its new owner without the human once looking back. If the cat is given the first mouthful of food and drink at every meal, it will repay its owner with a solid gold coin each morning. In Gascony traditions, you must not keep the matagot all your lifelong: if the owner is dying, he will suffer a long agony, as long as he doesn’t free the matagot.

LIT RP SAMPLE:  It was a dry night tonight. There wasn’t much snow on the ground anymore, but still the bite of the wind as it rushed past made him shiver. Out here, on the edges of the city, it felt a lot more desolate than the artificially lit streets that people normally remembered. That’s what he liked. His arrival should be encased in a feeling of mystery, of doom, of the beginning of a tragedy… or something like that. Perched upon a tree with his legs swinging in the air, the matagot peered down towards the previously empty street. Only now, the previously abandoned crossroad was sparsely populated by four or five men, dressed in all black with suspicious baggage- the very image what people would deem shady on a night like this. They were doing a summoning, alright. He’d been hearing the call for a while, drifting across the country until on the fourth night, promptly as always, the cat had arrived at the location of the offering. This place was… Seoul, if he recalled correctly. Interesting. He hadn’t been here yet, in fact it was surprising he’d been summoned here at all. Few people beyond the magical community knew of his kind anymore. But certainly the ones below weren’t the usual witches and warlocks, no; they smelled like hunters. The kind that normally killed monsters, but… well. People didn’t simply kill matagots, not unless they were enslaved under you. Yet once you had one- why’d anyone want to kill something that brought them fame and fortune? Humans were all like that, really. Magical or not, he could always predict what they wanted. It was the reason for his existence, after all. He was supposed to be a curse and a blessing all at once, that’s what they said. All that work on an innocent little cats shoulders, did they have no conscience?

At this thought, the cat allowed a distinctly feline smirk to curl his plump lips, eyes glinting with interest. No, of course they… of course the humans wouldn’t. History had a tendency to repeat itself, somebody famous had told him that once. These ones would be no different than any other. Selfish, small brained, and greedy were the traits of the race, and it seemed that after centuries of breeding it remained strong. But that was good for him, wasn’t it? They’d do anything for themselves, so as long as it favoured them, they’d help his as well. And while he knew so many others in his world would spit at lowering their head for a hunter, it wasn’t a bother for cat. A matagot’s wants were very simple: good food, a warm bed, and to be pampered and cared for. There was little else a kitty could ask for in this world, after all. If humans wanted gold or whatever they dreamed of getting, then they should also know that the price for it was to treat him like royalty. Something of a ‘you scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours’ kind of thing. Nevermind that cats never had issues scratching themselves, it just felt better having it done by somebody else. After all, his instincts demanded the best of the best and if he was going to get it from these humans, then there wasn’t a reason to refuse. They already went through the trouble of finding the ritual and getting him such a nice chicken, it’d be a shame for him to refuse now and not take the bait, right?

The kitten in his arms let out a small meow of protest as he jumped, landing nimbly onto the cracked asphalt below. (A terrible choice for roads, he always thought. It hurt the delicate pads of his paws and stank like harsh chemicals. Dirt was much better.) It only took a moment, really, but he’s sure it was unsettling to have a phantom appear from the dark, cheshire grin glinting in the dark. Perhaps they weren’t expecting to see him come so quickly, for the bunch of them froze with the unexpected sight of the youth. Maybe he should have waited a little longer? It didn’t do well to his royal pedigree if he seemed too greedy for the food, he supposed, but at the same time he couldn’t keep honored guests waiting. What a dilemma for a cat. Ahh… or maybe it was because he didn’t look like he was supposed to. The matagot was dressed in human skin right now, courtesy of his last 'chicken’. It was just easier this way, but he supposed they would have been expecting a huge black cat or something alone those lines. Regardless, he wasn’t that far off the mark, a long tail sweeping the air behind him and two ears perched atop his head. Well, let them gawk if they had to. He had the grace and dignity to allow it. Although, he was getting just the slightest bit impatient. If they weren’t going begin the contract making anytime soon, he’d take it upon himself to inspect his offering for the day. It’d been a long journey getting all the way over here from another landmass, and he hadn’t been allowed much time to relax and enjoy a good meal for once.

Ah, but what’s this? Some frozen poultry, dead weeks ago, and not even fattened up enough for him to properly enjoy? Were they making light of him!? The pleased smile on his features descended rapidly into a condescending sneer. How dare they go at this like it was child’s play. He had such high expectations and plans ready to go, and now it was all ruined because one half of the equation didn’t do their part properly. Terrible, terrible, terrible. The worst he’d ever seen, really. He couldn’t believe it, this subpar treatment. A noise behind him drew him out of his thoughts. Somebody -one of the hunters probably- was saying something, and though he certainly registered the syllables, he didn’t bother to connect them into recognizable words. Human thoughts were… invaluable, to say the least. Yet he needed a proper explanation for this mess. “You. You were the one that summoned me?” Moonlight colored gaze slid across one of the hunters and if looks could kill, he’d be sliced to shreds by now. There was no need to wait for an affirmative, the cage and chain said it all. So it was one of those fools who thought that they, with their measly power, could toy with a messenger of the gods. How utterly, totally, foolish. Yes, he and his kin had a long tradition of agreements, bindings to the mortal world, but nobody would give a monster to a baby and expect it to stay tethered to its leash. So who’d ever give such a group of lowly beings the permission to even touch the likes of him? It was a disgusting to even think that he’d been expectant only moments ago, dreaming about a splendid master.

To be honest, this whole thing was a waste of his time. He loathed to get his paws dirty but occasion called, it always did. Fate had a way of always letting him down like that. At least the few of a red splattered sky was one of his favourite sights, even if the vessel that his paint had previously belonged to was unworthy of such as masterpiece. They moved first, greedy hunters, firing a single bullet that was aimed at his leg of all places. Were they expecting him to run away? If he had wanted to run, they’d be too slow to catch him. Just like how they were snails against his pace now, vicious claws ripping across a throat in mere moments. The beast’s leg, of course, was unharmed. It was over just as quickly as it began, angered shouting twisting to screams of agony until finally all that was left was a dying breath, wheezed out as blood bubbled with each gasp and twitch. What was he? Well, he thought it was obvious, considering that they’d ask him to come. “What are you saying? I’m the matagot, of course.” Then, belatedly, remembering to attach on the name of this current body, “Cai Xukun. Only a harmless little cat.” Of course he was harmless. There was no proof he was anything but, no carcasses left on the crossroads, not even proof that he’d even been there at all. Everything would disappear just like a bad dream, for him that is. One day the humans ought to notice the disappearance of their kind here and there but- who knows. Turns out you couldn’t count on them for anything, so maybe they treat each other the same way too.

A sigh broke the unsettling quiet at last, Xukun patting himself for some kind of tissue to wipe off his claws with. That was another failed contract, so it was time for him to go again. At least he was supposed to, but he was so hungry and the city seemed so very bright. Surely, surely it didn’t hurt if the population grew by just one… no two, wandering kitties with nowhere to go? “Seoul, huh. I think I’ll stay for a while…”

[glenngaylord]

…AND THE REST - My Capsule Reviews of Stray Films from 2018

Call it sheer laziness, or perhaps I’m fulfilling some twisted fantasy where I get to slay a bunch of proverbial dragons all at once, but I caught up on some year-end screeners and just didn’t feel like writing full-on reviews.  So here are my hot takes on the strays that almost got away:

THE SISTERS BROTHERS (4 Stars)

An extremely engaging anti-Western featuring fantastic performances from John C. Reilly, Joaquin Phoenix, Jake Gyllenhaal, and Riz Ahmed is slightly marred by an anti-climactic yet still unexpected ending.  Up until then, I loved its subversiveness, the beautiful cinematography and score, and the bursts of tragedy erupting from its often comical tone.  A simple tale of two hitmen charged with killing a gentle chemist who has invented a new way to pan for gold, the film finds its beauty in little details such as when Reilly uses a toothbrush or flushes a toilet for the first time.  Bonus points for casting the great Alison Tolman, a vividly hardened Carol Kane, and especially trans actor Rebecca Root as a nefarious town owner.  I’m especially proud that Root plays a cis female. More talented trans actors like her should get cast in roles which have nothing to do with gender identity.  That it happens in the most patriarchal of genres, the western, speaks volumes about this film. There’s also an unexplored hint of a gay relationship, which gives the movie a sense of unfulfilled longing.  Each character seems to want something they can never have. It’s a subtle but lovely undertone which gives this often goofy film a little depth.  Jacques Audiard (A PROPHET, RUST AND BONE) makes his English language debut here and has a great feel for quirky interactions and the loopy storytelling at play.  It’s the BUTCH CASSIDY AND THE SUNDANCE KID of its time…but instead of going out with a bang, it does so with a beautiful whimper.  Flaws and all, it’s one of the best films of the year.

BEAUTIFUL BOY (2 Stars)

Ugh. This isn’t even a movie. There’s no real story. It just keeps repeating itself to death and then ends.  Yes, it mirrors the cycle of addiction that plague so many people, but that doesn’t make for good storytelling.  Timothée Chalamet does some great work when portraying his character’s addiction to heroin, but I never believed him as a meth addict.  There’s a distinction that I don’t think he quite captured.  Steve Carell here has that annoying high pitch in his voice we typically see from Tom Cruise when he plays an end-of-his-rope character.  Major points deducted for the terrible choice to edit a montage to “Sunrise/Sunset” from FIDDLER ON THE ROOF.  Who thought that worked?  I want names!!

THE WIFE (3 Stars)

If Glenn Close wins the Oscar for this, it will be well-deserved and not the Al Pacino/SCENT OF A WOMAN award for past legendary performances.  She holds a master class in controlled, silent rage in a film which, unfortunately, would have been better realized as a stage play.  The 11th hour on-the-nose dialogue feels like a misstep, but what comes before works so well in showing off a thoughtful, true, unexpected study of a life subjugated to a man who got to coast.  

THE OLD MAN & THE GUN (4 Stars)

A simple, easygoing joy anchored by Robert Redford delivering a charming swan-song to his career portraying a lifelong bank robber who refuses to quit.  Just seeing him paired up with the wonderful Sissy Spacek made me wonder why that has never happened before.  A third act montage brought me to tears as we flipped through the pages of a diary, understanding in some cockeyed way, that to stop what you love doing means to die.

THE CAKEMAKER (3 1/2 Stars)

This surprisingly beautiful, subtle film is perhaps the best movie ever made that has the worst poster EVER MADE!  I mean seriously, who thought the Dime Store Novel approach would adequately represent such a warm, cinematic experience. The tale follows a German pastry chef who falls in love with a married Israeli man, who dies, launching an obsessive journey for our titular character.  He travels to Israel and ends up working for the widow of his dead boyfriend. It takes some unexpected turns, features very little dialogue to visually convey the different ways grief plays out on loved ones.  It’s tender, sweet, heartbreaking and perfectly acted.  It doesn’t hurt that it’s also dessert porn heaven.

BLINDSPOTTING (3 1/2 Stars)

A tad overstuffed…oh who am I kidding…it’s completely overstuffed in that first time director kinda way…but it’s filled with energy, passion and a unique look at friendship, race, gentrification, and how we see or don’t see each other simultaneously.  David Diggs and Rafael Casal, who co-wrote, take a buddy stoner comedy and turn it on its ear.  It spins its wheels at times, but there’s something fresh and bold about it nonetheless.  Like the inferior SORRY TO BOTHER YOU, it has a lot going on, but our two BLINDSPOTTING leads make you care.

A PRIVATE WAR (3 1/2 Stars)

It’s nice to see a fierce woman at the center of the familiar journalist in a war zone story, and Rosamund Pike’s unsparingly aggressive performance as Marie Colvin, a BBC correspondent who lost an eye and wore a patch, makes her a “Fifth Estate Pirate” for the ages.  This true portrayal of a woman whose outrage led her into deadly conflicts may seem like a lot of typing at computer screens, smoking, and fighting with editors to let her get into increasingly dangerous situations, but this urgently directed film wants to shake us out of our selfie-culture complacency and ask ourselves if we would be anywhere as ballsy and brave as Marie.  Jamie Dornan surprises with an earthy, edgy performance as her photographer, reminding us that he has more than 50 shades to him.  It’s an imperfect film, episodic but impactful, but Pike is the real show, literally and figuratively exposing us to a woman whose imperfections were matched by her passion and heroism.  

THE BALLAD OF BUSTER SCRUGGS (4 Stars)

In this anthology of short Westerns, the Coen Brothers mine the subject of death for all it’s worth, producing a thrilling, at times hilarious, ominous, tragic, dazzlingly shot experience.  While I loved each segment, Zoe Kazan broke my heart as a single woman on a wagon train searching for a way to pay her driver in “The Gal Who Got Rattled”.  Tim Blake Nelson uses his physicality and down-home country chops to create the disarmingly dangerous title character, and Tom Waits has the final word on playing grizzled as a gold miner who just might be digging his own grave.  Liam Neeson has one chilling moment you won’t soon forget and James Franco, who looked just like Dominic West in his opening tight closeup, has the best line in the bunch when he looks over at his fellow doomed man next to him.  Each story is preceded by a a drawing, the title, and a few key words, and it’s fun to find out how they play into the story to follow.  The Coen Brothers, no surprise here, are among the greatest absurdist storytellers of our time, and with these cohesive, beautiful films, they show subtlety and great heart.