#the way other characters keep telling othello basically that he's “one of the good ones”

[yeah-thats-probably-it]

emilia's speech to desdemona in act 4 scene 3 is so fucking good. othello is such a good fucking play. what the fuck

[365days365movies]

March 21, 2021: Orlando (1992)

Tilda Swinton...confuses me.

Like, in a good way. Because Tilda may be the most versatile actor working today. I mean, look at the goddamn filmography, and you’ll see what I’ve mean. I’ve seen Tilda Swinton in a lot, surprisingly, and I don’t think anything I’ve seen was bad. For example, I am an ARDENT defender in the portrayal of the Ancient One in the MCU.

I understand the controversy here, but I actually think this is excellent casting. Especially considering...being comic book-accurate would NOT have been a good idea with this role, if we’re trying to AVOID controversy. But Tilda Swinton FUCKING KILLED IT in this role, and I will always be happy for this choice.

Let’s see, there’s Jadis in the Narnia films, as shown at the top, there’s Snowpiercer, as Mason (an amazing character, and an acting job that Swinton disappears into), Moonrise Kingdom as Social Services, The Grand Budapest Hotel as Madame D., and Gabriel in Constantine. Which is a good segue to the next talking point...

Gabriel is pointedly androgynous, and honestly, Tilda Swinton kind of is as well. You may have noticed that I haven’t used any pronouns in referencing to Tilda Swinton, entirely out of respect. Gonna be a little hard to keep up with, so I’ll be using she/her from here on out, only because those are the pronouns that Swinton’s most recently promoted for herself. She’s also referred to herself as queer of some variety, as well as being famously gender non-conforming.

Which is fitting, given that a lot of that public image began with today’s movie, one of her first big roles. I’ll be revisiting Swinton in the independent movie scene in a couple of months, but this may be a good introduction. Instead of spoiling anything off the bat, I’m gonna jump right in. And so, I present: Orlando. SPOILERS AHEAD!!!

Recap (1/2)

We begin with a young man named, well, Orlando (Tilda Swinton), a young man with a feminine appearance and a good upbringing. His name means power land and property, but all he really wants is company. He writes and rests by a tree in the day, but falls asleep by mistake. When he wakes up, he runs back to where he’s meant to be, with a tribute to Queen Elizabeth I (Quentin Crisp) playing in the background. And that’s a REAL song, by the way, actually sung in the 1600s for Elizabeth! Very neat.

A title screen flashes, reading “1600: Death”, and we see where Orlando is meant to be. He speaks poetry for the Queen and her court, but is interrupted by the aged queen, who asks whether or not his poem is appropriate for her presence, as the poem is about youth, and Queen Elizabeth is not that. Orlando’s father (John Bott), who is serving as host to Elizabeth, intervenes on his behalf. However, it doesn’t seem to matter to the Queen, as she invites Orlando back to England to serve as her “favourite”. He accepts, and soon lives alongside the Queen. She quickly promises Orlando much land and property, for him and his heirs, but on one condition: that he does not fade, wither, or grow old. 

The same wish cannot be applied to Elizabeth herself, nor to his father, as both grow old and die soon afterwards. Fast forward 10 years, and it’s a cold winter in England. Visiting Orlando’s vast estate is a woman from Russia, named Sasha (Charlotte Valandrey), and Orlando quickly falls for her. This is to the dismay of Euphrosne (Anna Healy), his fiancée? I’m not sure, to be honest, but they’re definitely involved, and she’s definitely upset.

However, this is also a scandal for everybody else as well, not just because Orlando’s already engaged, but also because Sasha is Russian, during a particularly poor economic period for the country. Euphrosne angrily throws his ring back at him, and Orlando speaks directly to the audience, telling us that a man must follow his heart. The two go to his private cottage, and they start to make out, when Orlando suddenly comes down with intense melancholy.

Because this is such great happiness that he feels, but this happiness too will one day end. Which is, like, the most emo-shit I’ve ever heard, but I’m kinda here for it. And yet, that happiness does indeed end, when Sasha is forced to return to Russia, despite Orlando’s pleading for her to stay. He asks her to meet him at London Bridge, so that they may elope together.

Later, Orlando happens upon a performance of Othello, noting to us that it’s a terrific play. This is as the death of Othello is being played out, so that’s probably foreshadowing, right? Anyway, Orlando leads two horses through the thick fog, waiting for Sasha to arrive and come away with him. But as a storm sets in, there is no sign of Sasha. And Orlando stands there in the rain. Said rain, though, soon becomes ice, underneath his feet, floating away down the river, along with his hopes of a happy future with Sasha. The treachery of women, according to Orlando.

Over the next week, Orlando languishes in his bed, asleep for the entire time. Increasingly more servants are brought up to try and rouse him, only for him to remain asleep, no matter what they do. But then, he wakes up, noting that he can only conjure three words to describe women, none of them worth explaining.

Forty years later, and the title screen cries “Poetry”! And Orlando looks exactly the same. Guess he really took that whole “don’t grow old” thing from Elizabeth to heart, huh? He speaks to a poet, Nick Greene (Heathcote Williams), and gushes about his poetry, which is a pursuit that he loves greatly. But Nick is...well, Nick is kind of a dick, to be honest. Orlando wants only to share his love and his poetry with him, but Nick’s only in it for the money. Not a true artist, and he mocks Orlando’s poetry, which he reads only after Orlando offers him money. And then, he writes a poem mocking Orlando further, which angers Orlando...but doesn’t stop the money flowing to Nick.

Orlando moves onto his next pursuit, in 1700, in the next section: Politics. Now over 100 years old, Orlando becomes an ambassador to the Ottoman Empire, and travels to Constantinople. There, he receives a somewhat rough and awkward greeting, which Orlando is not helping with. They share some Turkish coffee, Orlando has trouble drinking that Turkish coffee, they drink a LOT of Turkish coffee, and they toast to multiple things, including the “beauty of women, and the joys of love.” Orlando pauses at this, and reveals that he is still suffering quite a bit of heartbreak. His Turkish friend, the Khan (Lothaire Bluteau), bonds with him about this.

After 10 years, Orlando has fully retreated into life as a Turkish man. This is interrupted by a British emissary, sent to bring him news of a new appointment and power from the Queen. However, something goes wrong when the Khan arrives and takes Orlando hostage. The city is under attack, and the Khan asks Orlando if he will help against their enemies. Orlando agrees, and gives them arms, and heads to help himself at the walls. There, he witnesses a man dying, and it shakes him greatly. And just like before, he sleeps it off for seven days. And then...she wakes up.

YUP. WHAT.

Yeah, um, Orlando is now a woman. Like she says: “Same person, just a different sex.” Which is a very interesting premise, not gonna lie. Looks like Orlando now has to live life as a woman, which is going to be...difficult in 1700s Turkey. Or England. Or anywhere. Or any time.

Still, Orlando approaches this new life with aplomb, and without really any needed caution. Parading in some awesome dresses, she greets fellow nobility as the lady Orlando. However, the emissary from earlier, Archduke Harry (John Wood), begins to recognize her as similar to the lord Orlando.

In speaking with a group of poets, however, Orlando learns EXACTLY what men think of women in this society, and it’s not even a little bit good. She leaves, enraged and embarrassed. Harry also speaks with her, assuming that she was a woman all along. However, Orlando’s in EVEN MORE shit, as she’s quickly served with papers that are an attempt to take away all of her property and titles, because Lord Orlando is legally dead, and Lady Orlando is a woman, which one of them says is basically the same thing. FUCKIN’ YIKES, BRUV.

Ah, but Harry tries to help by proposing to her ON THE FUCKIN’ SPOT. He believed that Orlando was perfect as both genders, and is happy to do it. However, Orlando understandably refuses, and after Harry tells her that she will die as a spinster, alone and dispossessed, she runs into a nearby hedge maze. And while in the hedge maze, time passes, and her outfit changes to match the period accordingly.

Forward 140 years now! The year is 1850, and a new chapter begins: Sex.

And as she runs from the maze, she runs into who else...but Shelmerdine (Billy Zane), a man who...Shelmerdine? SHELMERDINE? What fuckin’ witch cursed his entirely family line to have THAT name? That’s the kind of family that was named AFTER a bridge, not the other way around! WHAT KINDA NAME IS FUCKIN’ SHELMERDINE?

Well, I’ve looked it up now, and it is apparently a real name. So, if any Shelmerdines are reading this...I mean, I’m sorry, but also, FUCKIN’ SHELMERDINE? OK, back to Shelmerdine. He’s twisted his ankle falling off his horse, and Orlando is now taking care of him. She reveals, in the process, that she’s about to lose everything. The reasons for that aren’t quite said, but Shelmerdine offers a place at his side, back to the great free land of America.

After having a conversation about the roles of men and women in the world (which is interesting given the context of the film in general), the two fulfill the chapter’s imperative. And we never see the act, but we do get some interesting angles and hand-holding. But the next morning, this post-coital reverie is interrupted by the lawyers from the Queen. The lawsuits have been settled, and Orlando has been legally declared a woman, meaning that unless she has a son, all of her possessions will be lost.

Shelmerdine (I swear, every time I say that name, a fairy gets chlamydia) leaves as well, with the southwest wind. As he heads back to America to fight for freedom, Orlando stands in the rain, facing an uncertain future, and broken fully by the politics of the time period.

And then...the sound of planes overhead. Looks like a new time period once again, heading into the periods of World Wars, and Orlando is now...heavily pregnant. OH. FUCK. Welcome to the next chapter: Birth.

We jump past the period of World War II, and to the 1990s! Orlando is presenting a book to a publisher, and he believes that the book will sell. With her young daughter in tow, she finally goes back to her old mansion, now finally able to go back after losing it 100 years prior. The narration from the beginning repeats, recontextualized for Orlando’s new life. She is over 400 years old, and finally, FINALLY...she is happy.

And that’s Orlando! I think I loved it. Real talk, this was a fascinating movie, and I’m into it. I’m very much into it. I’m sure there’s more to be gleaned from this film, but I’m glad I watched it regardless. More in the Review, though! See you there!

[shiramoonshadow]

This is the last part of the vip panel with Jason, Luc and Adrian. 

What’s your favorite character you didn’t voice?

Adrian: Oh, I don’t know, everybody. Seriously, everybody’s so amazing. You know, I’m exciting to eventually be...I’m not there yet, just in the countenance of my voice and the age of my voice quite yet, but one day I aspire to voice a Viren like character, now I’m a dad I just find that fascinating, the very complex relationships he has with his children and his own ambitions. Yeah, I’m not jealous, I love what Jason does but I can’t wait to play a Viren character.

Luc: First, let me just say that once again I love everyone on the show and I don’t just say that to make everyone feel good, like I watch every episode and I’m blown away and sometimes even the small characters I have to pause and be like “who was that? who did that?” That was fantastic. Um...it’s Amaya, she’s got me right from the beginning. I think I’ve always had a thing for female like warriors for some reason? Like she is just the ultimate badass warrior. She’s caring, she’s protective and she’s strong and all the fight sequences are just so dope. She gets the one up on Harrow, even on Harrow she’s like “this dude”, you know? I just love her. I think she’s fantastic.

Jason: That’s the same for me. Episode six on s1 where they’re at the statue and they’re sharing a lovely moment, Viren and Amaya but she still says “listen let’s cut the bs, I don’t trust you”. She’s just written so well.

Jason, what movie or tv show would your characters love?

Jason: This is interesting. I’ve done this sort of thing I just wrote down, you know, music shows...Loves...Um...loves classical music and heavy metal. I think a really good comedy like a belly laugh sort of comedy, just a sitcom that’s good, so like 30 Rock or The office.

Luc: I think he likes looks to other great leaders and people of history stuff, right? So he’s like watching James Earl Jones do some Shakespeare, like play Othello or something like that, you know, he’s downloaded illegally or something, like the 1996 production of the globe theatre or something like “ah, this is it” or like The West Wing or something like that.

Adrian: I would say The Golden Girls.

Is there a favorite theory that you have for what happened to Harrow?

Luc: So right in the middle of s1, right after we finished recording those first three episodes. My personal theory is that Viren actually sacrificed himself and used the soulfang to switch their bodies and that Harrow is now inside of Viren’s body and we just didn’t know. Now, since watching more episodes I realized that is obviously not. Like right after we recorded those I was like “oh yeah, it’s going to be this great actual sacrifice and we’ll find out at the end of the first season that Viren has actually sacrificed himself and Harrow lives inside of…” No, that’s not the case. Honestly? After I realized that I was wrong I stopped trying to guess and I know all the fan theories but when I work on a show and something like this happens I try not to create these theories for myself until I see the scripts because it’s just either going to be disappointment or...I don’t know, it’s like I like to wait till the writers actually-

Tell you what happened?

Luc: Yeah. Otherwise I just like to believe that what they say is the truth and he was assassinated. Until we know differently, you know?

One of my favorite things that Jack revealed was that he always shipped Rayla with Callum and so he performed as if that was the end, even with the whole Claudia thing, he said he always... in his head his goal was to get with Rayla. I was like “I think he made it happen” like he literally changed like how confident he was because he is like this person showed up to kill his brother, so like he had to be very strong and in charge and have it together and so there was like such a great version of Callum with Rayla that eventually they just wrote it that way. I'm just trowing that out there in case you want to guide this reveal. You're more than welcome to pick your favorite fan theory and just make it happen.

Jason: I have favorite theories but I'm not going to say what I actually think. Only because I like to...I will certainly share my opinions if it’s really against something strong that I disbelieve, but because I know... the three of us, we look at our scripts and we prepare characters and we prepare...we know stuff that we’ve been told by writer, director, creators. We know stuff that we’ve talked about and I don’t like to let any of that stuff go because I’d like to keep it for myself. I love to throw lines out there, to throw people off and mess around but… One that I heard was that Harrow is out wandering somewhere and that’s my favorite theory, he’s just sort of gone and he’ll be back someday.

Luc: How do you explain the bracelet falling off?

Jason: Exactly, but I like the idea of Viren and Harrow looking at each other saying “brother, I will see you again one day” and Harrow puts his backpack on and walks out into the...he’s on a boat somewhere.

We’re gonna ask you again I’m gonna have you back on when we...to see how close where you are at personally turns into. You know, what I’m saying like, because you’re gonna keep that close to the chest and I think it’s part of what’s again, I really think Jack shaped what happened and it’s clear that the writers are that “this is a participatory story that’s being told and you guys are really…” So what do you think Adrian?

Adrian: Somebody blew my mind and said that Harrow became the bird? Like switched souls at the bird. I thought that was pretty crazy. That kind of blew my mind, yeah.

Luc: That’s the biggest fan theory.

Adrian: Is that the biggest one? Okay. I had never heard it, someone brought that up and then I was like “okay, that’s actually kind of cool”.

Jason: Justin and Aaron have debunked that. They’ve said that’s not the case.

Adrian: But what do they know?

Jason, do you think Viren still has an avenue to redemption?

Jason: Do I think he has an avenue to redemption? Yes. Do I want the very last thing people to see is Viren holding dead body over the planes and Eric’s voice over saying “and they lived in harmony, forever”.

Luc: And then he pulls off his mask and he’s actually just Jason.

Jason: Or Harrow.

If you were picking your live-action actor who played your character?

Jason: Michael Fassbender.

Adrian: I think Tom Holland would actually be a great choice. He’s just got a ton of heart and I think he could convincingly play that naivete and wholesomeness.

Luc: The looks wise I would say like Makhi Phifer? I want him to play but I don’t know if Makhi fighter has the gravitas to handle like a live-action Harrow? So I think like Chiwetel Ejiofor.

Adrian: I would do Idris Elba as Aaravos.

Luc: There you go.

Jason: Michael K. Williams as Harrow.

Luc: Michael can play anyone.

If someday we get a flashback with Callum meeting Harrow. What do you think? Because we haven’t seen that, right?

Luc: No, we get a couple flashbacks to when their relationship is first kind of building and Harrow gives him his sketchbook and you know, he sees him as a child but I wonder about that. I wonder how old Callum was? If he knew him before him and Sarai got together? Like if he knew them as a family unit or if he had to be introduced to him after him and Sarai had already been seeing each other? I kind of see it like he falls in love with Sarai and she kind of keeps that relationship separate, like a mother who doesn't know if this new thing is really going to take off and that eventually introduces him and I imagine it's pretty awkward at first, like Harrow's trying to drop his best dad jokes and they're like “no” and Harrow tries so hard and he realizes “oh this isn't going very well” and kind of backs off and takes some space. Harrow talks about how he wishes that he would have reached out a little more. He didn't want to disrespect the memory of his dad, so I think there was definitely some separation at first and some awkwardness and then it took some time for them to really be able to build their relationship and get to this point where they're basically like blood father and son.

What other character that you played would love to see interact with your character from tdp?

Jason: Rengar from the league of legends. Can you imagine him just sidling up to Viren? I've never thought of that ever! But now I’m excited about it. 

Luc: Live action… I was recently in Apple TV See and my character Arca is this warrior with these long dreadlocks and I imagine that they would just get on like that, like Arca would become Harrow’s crownguard immediately.  

Adrian: I think it’d be cool to see the chemistry between Gren and Adam from The Hollow. Adam’s got a temper and I could see like Gren getting sucked into the hollow, if you don’t know it’s like a game world that they’re all in and they’re trying to escape and yeah, I could see those guys linking up.

Jason, Viren’ ex-wife. What is she like?

Jason: 6 '4. Opinionated. Okay, 6 '2. Psychically strong, doesn’t take any crap off anyone but also tender and...Is that where you want me to go with that?

[infinitelytheheartexpands]

Traversing the Verdi Canon #29: Otello

Production: Munich 2018, which took me fucking forever to find but a) Kaufmann, b) Harteros, c) Finley, and d) no blackface.

Synopsis: it’s basically Shakespeare’s Othello but with Act I chopped off and some scenes reordered and stuff. if you’re not familiar with the plot, here’s the play synopsis and here’s the opera synopsis.

Experience: got to know this one through the iconic del Monaco/Tebaldi recording in 2015. I’ve seen it a few times but the last was in early 2019.

Thoughts: I finally get this opera.

on an earlier post in this series, I wrote that there are three Verdi operas that could reasonably be given the title of Verdi’s Most Perfect Opera: Rigoletto, Un ballo in maschera, and Falstaff. well, really there are four. this is the fourth. and it’s only taken me somewhere in the neighborhood of six and a half years to realize it.

let me tell you a story. when I was ten, I was a huge book nerd. I still am, to an extent, but the summer before sixth grade, way back in 2013, I used some of my very own money at the bookstore to buy a copy of William Shakespeare’s Othello. it was my first time ever reading a Shakespeare play. I can tell you based off this experience that it is not a particularly good idea to make your first Shakespeare experience be reading Othello with no real glossary as a barely-ten-year-old on a family trip to Texas. (eventually I did read it in tenth-grade English class, for those of you wondering). now what is the point of this story? it’s simple, really: sometimes things just come with time and experience. particularly Shakespeare and related media. I’m still ever-so-slowly working through Shakespeare. but I digress.

back to Otello. twelve-year-old me who first listened to the opera still didn’t fully understand either the play or Verdi’s musical take on it. neither did almost-sixteen-year-old me the last time I watched/listened to it in full. this is why I have largely stuck to a very, very select few highlights. now, am I saying that eighteen-and-a-half-year-old me fully understands either play or opera? not for a moment. but I’ve lived a lot in the ensuing time and I’ve grown a lot and my understanding of music has deepened immensely. so now, returning to this opera for the first time in nearly three years, I understand it a lot more.

one of the things that strikes me most is how perfectly paced it is. right from the beginning, bam! BAM! we’re squarely in the middle of the action and even though this music does not retain much of that opening bombast most of the time, that same sense of musical excitement, of investment, of always moving forward at just the right speed to keep things barreling along while simultaneously giving us a window into the characters’ worlds. like I wrote with Rigoletto: every note seems to perfectly match the moment to some level or other. and the thing is: it looks long on paper. it is not long in practice.

and the music! insanely expressive, insanely high on the Pretty Verdi list (yes, Boccanegra is still the standard in this regard; yes, Otello is so close to being on top), fun, bombastic, thick with tension, ethereal by turns: Verdi was in his early 70s. he knew by now how to craft a damn good piece of expressive music, the kind where you have to listen to it again and again (*sheepishly raises hand in “I listened to Anja Harteros’ Ave Maria, piena di grazia three times in a row while watching this*). and of course, it’s based on Shakespeare the legend, with the one and only Arrigo Boito adapting it. 

[quick side note: yes, this opera has a rather uncomfortable history. yes, this production manages to avoid that. yes, I want the Canadian Opera Company to release their recent production with the INCREDIBLY talented Black tenor Russell Thomas. again, I digress]

so basically what I can say: Verdi, Shakespeare, Boito. a perfect trio. and yes, you can not understand things and dislike them and then grow and find yourself and that you like them after all. that’s beautiful,. that’s true growth.

almost to the end, peeps. Falstaff to bring it all to a close on Friday.

[darisu-chan]

whatever our souls are made of (his and mine are the same), pt. 2

Hi!

Welcome back to the second one-shot in this collection. 

I hope you guys like it!

You can also read it here.

See you guys tomorrow!

to be (the man in your heart)

Prompt: fantasy vs reality

Summary: Everybody sees Ichigo the way they want to see him. But only Rukia sees him whole.

“Today we’re going to talk about the hero’s journey,” the professor drawls out one cloudy August morning, ignorant of the blank stares and yawning coming from his students. He probably thinks he’s being engaging enough, completely unaware that he has already lost his students.

 Even Ichigo feels lost before the introduction.

 He would probably have paid more attention if he hadn’t felt so drowsy.

 Then again, it’s barely eight am on a Friday.

 And he doesn’t know precisely why, but lately it has been hard to focus on anything more than a couple of minutes. He hopes this doesn’t get reflected on his grades though. He doesn’t need a repeat of his less than stellar grades the last year and a half of high school.

 He can’t help but curse himself for choosing to attend an early morning class.

 Although it’s not like it is entirely his fault.

 By all means, this class was supposed to be engaging. Or at least Ichigo had been excited to take it when he had enrolled in a course about folktales, particularly Western ones. The purpose of this class is not only to study tales from European cultures, but to analyze them according to different approaches and literary theories. As someone majoring in English Literature, this class had seemed essential and Ichigo had not hesitated to take it. Now he realizes it is less about the folktales and more about the theory of what makes something a story.

 Which is not really what he had wanted to study. But… can’t do anything about it now.

 There have been only two other classes, as it is the beginning of the semester. They haven’t really done much so far, but today, they are apparently starting with the basics. This means they are studying the monomyth, also known as the hero’s journey, a way to categorize stories featuring heroes. Because in most folktales, heroes are the protagonists of stories, and everyone else is just someone there to help the hero or to oppose them.

 (Ichigo hates this idea)

 “But before we start, can anybody tell me what a hero is?” The professor asks, interrupting his lecture and startling his sleepy students.

 Have we mentioned that Ichigo hates heroes?

 It is definitely too early in the morning to think in general, much less about such a contrived term. But yet, here he is. In this class he himself had chosen to take. Past Ichigo had been such an idiot, huh?

 Before he can continue down this line, a girl suddenly raises her hand, distracting him from his musings.

 “Yes, Yamada-san?” The professor calls her.

 “A hero is the person who saves the day in a story.” She obediently recites, as if she had memorized her answer before saying it out loud.

 Ichigo can’t help but roll his eyes at her.

 But of course the goody-two-shoes of the class would give the most basic of definitions.

 Because that is the only thing heroes are good for.

 Saving the day, as if that was their purpose, their whole life, who they are.

 Saviors.

 (Ichigo hates this idea)

 “Yes, in very broad terms, you’re correct, Yamada-san.” The professor says in such a dismissing way that stops Yamada from preening any further. “However, what is the essence of a hero? What makes him any different to other characters?” He asks again, prompting his students to elaborate more on their answers.

 Another student raises his hand.

 “That he’s the protagonist of the tale.”

 “Right, Uehara-san. He or she is the protagonist in most stories. But that is just a characteristic within the story. What I am asking is what makes a hero, well, the hero? What is it that makes a person act heroic?”

 Ichigo cannot help but snort.

 In hindsight, maybe he shouldn’t have, because that makes the teacher focus all his attention on him.

 “Ah. Kurosaki-san, do you know the answer to the question?” The professor seems to ask almost mockingly.

 Ichigo bits his lip.

 Because, try as he might to hide it, he knows what is it the professor is asking, probably better than anyone in the room, even the professor himself.

 “Selflessness.” He replies at length. “A willingness to sacrifice everything just to protect someone else.”

 The professor excitedly moves his head up and down. “Yes! Thank you, Kurosaki-san. The reason heroes are saviors is because they are selfless!”

 And he continues on with his lecture, talking about heroes, villains, monsters and damsels in distress, but Ichigo is no longer paying attention.

 Ichigo hates heroes.

 Well, not heroes per se, but the idea of them.

 Selfless and protective and smart and charismatic and just plain good.

 They don’t seem human.

 There are human qualities in them, of course, but there is also something entirely unrealistic about them.

 Because nobody is perfectly good all the time.

 Where are the bad qualities?

 Where’s the ugly in heroes?

 He cannot find it.

 Which is why Ichigo prefers the protagonists of tragedies.

 None of Shakespeare’s heroes are ever, well heroic. Not even in comedies.

 There is always something beautifully damaged about all of them.

 A tragic flaw, it is called.

 That singular defect which unleashes the tragedy.

 You might say that it is that which ends up biting them in the ass.

 For Othello, it was his jealousy.

 For Macbeth, his ambition.

 For Hamlet, his inaction.

 And for Ichigo, it is his own weakness.

 Because that is what, in fact, almost destroyed not only his world, but the entire universe as every being knows it.

 Nobody blames him, of course, because in his reality, he is the hero of the story. And he hates it. Every part of it. How he can become blameless of everything even when he had caused it or had failed to stop it.

 And he doesn’t think of himself as such.

 A hero, that is.

 Though everyone sees him this way, from his sisters in all of their innocence, to his friends, to the whole Soul Society.

 Why do they keep praising him when they had almost died because of him?

 Why do they hail him as a hero when the danger is not over, when, if he even dares to be happy, that demon of a man is going to come back to destroy them all?

 Ichigo doesn’t get it.

 Heroes don’t really exist in real life.

 And the heroes in all stories have to be perfect, or else how are they even good?

 It’s a load of shit.

 Ichigo is not a hero, as he protects people out of his own selfishness.

 Because, deep down, he doesn’t want to feel alone.

 Because he wants all of his loved ones to be safe and happy.

 And that’s it.

 That’s the reason.

 But others don’t see it that way.

 They see him exactly as all the heroes in tales.

 All good and strong and able to overcome anything that gets in his way without giving up.

 A prince charming.

 A guardian angel.

 But he’s just...not any of those things.

 And he’s done trying to live up to their expectations.

 It was easier when he was fifteen, to go along with whatever they wanted him to be.

 So he acted happy when around his sisters and father, even though he was still carrying all the weight of the guilt of his mother’s death.

 It seemed easier, back then, to try to appear unaffected by that and all the little things, like the bullying he had suffered due to his hair color.

 And at school, he had tried to be just another guy who just happened to have brightly colored hair.

 His friends knew this Ichigo. And not to say he was a phony, but he wasn’t all himself either.

 He never showed them the scars scattered all around his soul for fear they would leave him behind.

 Because who could ever love someone as hideous as he?

 (Someone who had caused his own mother’s death)

 But t had gotten better for a while.

 When he had become a Shinigami and had known the strength of carrying a zanpakutō and all that comes with that power.

 However, he had just as quickly learned that such power came with the responsibility of not just protecting his loved ones, but anyone, really.

 That he couldn’t just stand still while others needed his help.

 He needed to do better.

 And so, he had tried really hard to become the kind of person that was deserving of that power.

 Ichigo had become so good at it that others had bought it, especially after his first true test.

 What had followed had been months and months of trying to prove he was as heroic as others saw him.

 Because not only did the Soul Society see him as one, but also his closest friends, who, even though had seen him fall, still thought of him as a savior.

 And that weighted on him even more.

 He started wondering if, after so many battles fought together, they saw the true Ichigo or the mask he wore.

 It was only after the last war, when he had so utterly failed and they had still given him praise, that he had found the answer.

 Chad and Inoue and Renji and, hell, even Byakuya, lived in a fantasy where he was always strong and would power through everything. That he truly never failed.

 Even Ishida was sometimes guilty of that.

 (After Yhwach was defeated, saying he had won, as if it hadn’t been Ishida who had done him in)

 They all congratulated him, patted him on the back, and happily resumed their lives because Ichigo had won again. He had defeated yet another villain and thus they could live their lives in peace.

 But all he had wanted to do was scream.

 He had been defeated over and over by the Quincy King, and the only reason he wasn’t a threat anymore was because Ishida had been there to deliver the final blow. And even then, absolutely no one was sure if he was gone for good.

 And the reason why was because Ichigo had been weak.

 If he had had true strength, he would have been able to win for sure.

 And this doubt wouldn’t be eating him away.

 Now every night, before going to bed, even two years after the war had been won, Ichigo still repeats Yhwach’s threat like a broken record.

 During his happiest moment, the Quincy King will come back to kill him and destroy everything, according to his plan.

 The thought terrifies him.

 To think he had failed them all, because at any moment, Yhwach might come back, and it will be it for the universe.

 He’s no hero.

 No savior.

 Because even if the Soul Society hasn’t said so, he knows they are all still in danger, and it all depends on his happiness.

 And Ichigo is selfish.

 He could have sacrificed that promise of happiness for everybody’s sake. Yet he still holds onto it and is unwilling to let go.

 He’s not the person they all expected him to be.

 And that weighs on him.

 (If only he was as heroic as his mother─)

 “Hey, Ichigo! Welcome back!”

 It is Rukia who distracts him from his dark thoughts as he opens his bedroom door and finds her already there, having come over for the weekend as she has done for the past few months.

 And for the first time in the day, he smiles.

 “Hey.” He greets her, letting his bag drop on the floor, and joining her on his bed.

 “How was university today? What did you learn?” Rukia asks him excitedly, and he can’t stop his lips from quirking up at how adorable she is, wanting to learn about college through him.

 “Kinda boring.” He shrugs, content to just observe her as she raises an eyebrow at him.

 “Why? What did you study?”

 “We talked about heroes.” He answers her, moving up his head to appreciate the way her skin glows in this lighting.

 “Heroes?” She scrunches her nose like a bunny.

 “Yeah. Like in tales and stuff.”

 “Oh right.”

 Then they fall into a comfortable silence as they are wont to do. Ichigo takes his time to delight himself in the image she delivers. And as she is all light and white and pureness, he remembers a piece of memory he keeps close at heart ─the one and only time he has felt like a true hero.

 There’s fire and a will and a promise.

 And in the midst of all, there’s Rukia and her big doe eyes staring right at him as if he were a miracle.

 “Yo!”

 I remember now… the reason why I wanted to save you so much.

 “Hey, Rukia.” He suddenly calls out to her.

 “Yeah?”

 “Do you think I’m a hero?”

 She snorts and flicks his forehead. “Nope.”

 “Hey!” He rubs his assaulted head, but is more intrigued by her answer.

 “I mean… we could say you are… but you’re more… you know…” She gesticulates towards him.

 “Uhu.”  

 “You’re Ichigo.” Rukia says at last.

 He thinks he understands it then.

  Because if there is one person in this world that has seen him at his best and worst and has still got him, is Rukia.

 She is the only one to have ever seen him whole.

 And even when she knows about all his failings, she still has the capability to hold him in high esteem.

 Because for her, Ichigo is who he is and so much more.

 “Thanks, Rukia.” He says with more emotion than he probably should have, but it is worth it when she beams at him.

 “That’s my line.”

 Ichigo still hates heroes.

 Probably will always do.

 But for Rukia, he thinks he might be able to become a little bit more heroic.

 To be less selfish.

 To be the man he is in her heart.

 To be a little more like she is.

[abybweisse]

How do you think the manga will end?

Please do a search on my blog for “end of the series” (“series end” will bring up even more posts, but some of them aren’t quite as pertinent). Other tags to check out would be “series ending”, “end of the manga”, “predictions” and “mother3 predictions”. You can simply click those tags at the end of this reply to see what comes up.

A (not very) short recap of my series end predictions:

A lot more people die. Well, I think most of us knew that already. Here are two versions of me trying to figure out who’s in that pile underneath our earl. Yana-san could change her mind and save one or more of these people. She could also kill all of the people shown... as well as kill off others never included in this panel. In fact, she’s definitely going to kill off people not included in panel, since this pile seems to only represent our earl’s supporters, allies, friends, etc.

Madam Red is already gone. Others here that are easily identified are: Finny, Tanaka, Lizzie, Bard, Mey-Rin, Chlaus, and Lau. There is a dark-haired person that could be Soma or Sieglinde (or someone else, for that matter). The one I initially identified as Snake could possibly be Edward, but I think it’s meant to be Snake. There is also a person at the back, with their head behind the throne, someone in a pale suit and a hand up but hanging limp. I suspect that is a character that hadn’t been introduced at the time of that chapter release. Given the clothes, it could be numerous people, including Othello... though I’m not sure this pile of bodies should include anyone who is no longer human, like a reaper. 🤔 It also shouldn’t include anyone who was never an ally, so it shouldn’t be the Viscount of Druitt. Perhaps... we have Snake and Edward shown here. Keep in mind this is quite a pile, and the people we can see are not the ones at the absolute bottom... or on the other side of it. Expect quite a death toll by the time this series is over.

Our earl and Sebastian will have to defeat the queen and her servants... or at least the queen and John Brown. I say that because I still think they are behind the attack at Phantomhive Manor. If that’s not true, then it’s been set up that way for us to believe it, not just in the anime but in the manga, as well. Victoria and John Brown are pretty shady (with their matching shades, no less). I think they have a contract like the one between our earl and Sebastian, but I have a feeling the contract terms are not nearly as well-defined. That puppet of Albert — that is not simply a hand puppet; it’s a control device.

They will have to defeat Undertaker and the Lords of the Stars; that, of course, includes the bizarre doll of real Ciel. Real Ciel will have to be destroyed, most likely. In fact, at some point real Ciel might come to realize how messed up things have become, and he might ask to be destroyed. The other “lords of the stars” will have to be destroyed. Undertaker? Three possibilities I see: 1) destroyed by Sebastian and/or the reaper organization, 2) captured by the reaper organization and returned to their realm, or 3) sees the outcome (good or bad) of his actions and willingly leaves the human realm.

Once the contract has been fulfilled, Sebastian will devour the soul of our earl, his Young Master. This might happen in conjunction with the battles against Undertaker, the Lords of the Stars, and whoever else joins the fray, like some reapers. Because I have a feeling that Undertaker, at least, will not make it easy for Sebastian to get his meal/payment. It could include Undertaker trying to manipulate any loopholes he thinks he can find in the contract. It could include Undertaker trying to collect/steal our earl’s soul and placing it into the body of real Ciel (Undertaker is experimenting with Baron Heathfield’s wife’s body and souls of a matching shape for a reason, you know). There is also the slight chance that Sebastian gets to take his time, after all the battles, and truly savor his meal, but I do have the feeling he will have to fight for it, and that might force him to rush his meal. Even our earl might have to demand it be done quickly. I do not expect to get a scene in the manga that looks like the ending scene of s1 of the anime. None of this morbidly romantic nonsense about making it hurt, making his agony add extra flavor to every bite. Because that anime scene was Sebaciel with vore kink. **Shudder** I do expect, however, that fans that enjoy that sort of thing will still get something to cling to... just because; Yana-san does like to do fan service, and she knows those fans are out there. I’m just — hoping, really — that she chooses to portray the manga canon death/soul devouring scene in a way that isn’t so... shippy.

Eating our earl’s soul should change something in Sebastian. Eventually, I do think our earl and Sebastian will succeed in completing the contract, including the matter of payment. Like Hannah devouring Luka’s soul in s2 of the anime, I do expect Sebastian to be forever changed by devouring our earl’s soul. Sebastian is the main (even the title) character, after all... and he has seriously lacked any lasting character development, so far. There has been much foreshadowing about this, like telling Beast he understands not one “jot” of the feelings of love or loss “yet”. How he cries from the mustard gas and is shocked by it, saying to himself he lacks the emotions to do so. Heck, even Mother3 has a character who never cries until the very end, and it’s a shock to everyone, including that character. (Yes, Gregory Violet is the main parallel to that character, Kumatora... aka “Violet”, but that doesn’t mean we can’t get another shocking crying scene. Besides, in Mother3, the crying scene with Kumatora/Violet is described as “beautiful” or “cute”... and our Violet has a really “ugly cry” in Bath.) Sebastian could finally cry from all the emotions that wash over him, and it might be just... beautiful.

The earl’s death should happen December 13, 1889, the day before his 14th birthday... and a Friday the 13th. It could happen just as midnight approaches, heading towards the 14th. That’s not much timeline left in the series, only about two weeks, but the way it’s being dragged out chapter by chapter (flashbacks, overlapping “Meanwhile...” action, etc.) we will see monthly chapter publications for... probably at least a few more years. The series could end just like that, with our earl’s death, but I suspect not; Sebastian is the main character in this, so the story doesn’t completely end with our earl’s death. We should get to see how Sebastian has been affected by our earl’s death (an ultimately willing sacrifice, I should think). How will this change the demon’s behavior toward humans? I expect he won’t consider them mere insects anymore. If ordered to do so before our earl dies, he would stay afterwards and help “tidy up the mess” in the wake of all these battles. But, it’s also possible that our earl never orders him to do anything like that... and Sebastian does it anyway. Then, perhaps Sebastian leaves, having learned a valuable lesson? Having grown up a bit? This is his Bildungsroman, right? I hope so.

I don’t think Undertaker will be able to get rid of Death, the way the reapers seem to fear he might. Some reapers might die before all is said and done, including possibly Undertaker, but I think most of them will have to deal with the soul collections and all the paperwork this generates for them. Talk about massive overtime.

I guess that’s about it, without me getting way deeper into details.

And this could easily lead to a setup for a sequel to or spin-off from the manga.

Sequel idea: What Sebastian does later. Does he make other contracts, or does he decide to help humans without claiming their souls...?

Spin-off idea: What Undertaker does if he returns to the reaper realm. Does he get severely punished... then make new plans for escape and basically try to destroy the organization again...?

Spin-off idea: Stories about the other reapers. Before, during, and/or after the events of the first series.

Thanks for the ask! 🖤

Please make sure to look at this post’s tags for more about this, though this post includes some ideas that have changed a little over the past four years or so.

[queenkeeleyhawes]

REPOST: queenkeeleyhawes’s official ranking of keeley’s male character counterparts

**reposting because i added theo (i forgot him the first time), added martin (mutual friends) because i recently watched it. removed david from top tier after i revisited some things. moved sven to top tier because it’s what he deserves. and moved gene hunt lower because let’s be honest, he’s the worst.**

this list includes: husbands, boyfriends, bosses, and other male coworkers. there is some of her work that i left off because her part was too small. i started this list originally at 5 am a couple of weeks ago. these are my personal opinions. please don’t come for me. most are pretty self-explanatory too but i did list reasons anyway. if you happen to disagree with me, that’s fine, but i’m pretty set in my ways so even if we have a nice conversation, you’re unlikely to change my mind. ** SEMI(?) SPOILERS AHEAD**

Top Tier 

Spiros - hello he literally did everything for her and her family. took such good care of them from day one. literally found them a house when they got on the island. and furniture. and a maid. he got her ring back when she sold it to bribe those thugs in series 1. attempted to tutor gerry when she couldn’t find anyone else. held her when she needed a good cry after hugh nearly died and after florence could have died delivering her baby. watched her children while she went back home briefly. built gerry his zoo. the list goes on and on.

Caspar -  saw her for who she was. was impressed by her mind. “you’re beautiful as well as good. one of those things i can't change. the other i never will.” that is all. 

Fabian - *crying emojis* he literally cared so much for her. always wanted to be with her. literally put her aunt into a home and paid for it when it was not cheap. pretty much disowned his eldest daughter for her. after everything still adored her.

Samuel P. - hoo boy it’s a lot. clearly they made a connection. but he respected her and her marriage to not pursue it further when she put an end to it. was so happy for her when she found her son.

Jarvis - he just loved her so much. the lil hotel kissing scene. the way they looked at each other. ugh. we’re not even going to talk about them singing together in rehearsal. i don’t have it in me.

Dick Dewey - i mean hello. good on the eyes. sweetheart. loved her so much. the hand washing scene. the lake scene. saved her father from the bear trap and let some other dude take the credit.  made all the boys apologize to her via song after they humiliated her in church. 

Danny - let her move in with him when he saw how terrible her living arrangements were. so much more. i really wanted them to end up together.

Theo  - obviously, he belongs in Top Tier because he was always just absolutely wonderful to louisa and to gerry (duh) and he always gave her the best advice. like I truly believe they were best friends and though he didn’t include himself, he was definitely part of the “men she loved the most on the island.” also he’s an “honorary woman.” the end.

Sven - literally saved her son from dying. brought her nets for her olives. let gerry borrow a goat. eventually i liked them together and i think they could have worked...but...you know.

Good Tier

Harry - cool dad. loved their relationship. he took care of her.

Tom - they were very good friends and he treated her so well. he genuinely cared for her as an employee. obviously the real chemistry was there but i'm honestly glad they didn’t go in that direction.

Ray - listen i know he’s an ass but he’s the ass that you actually love. and she changed him for the better. i loved the dynamic between him and alex and as they grew as friends. plus dean and keeley just played off each other so nicely.

Daniel - she just wanted him to call about that damn flat but he finally had his little break through by the end so he can stay and obviously matthew and keeley working together is *heart eyes.*

Richard Shaw - he had his issues but he really did love kathleen and even though he was basically in denial about their son and did some things she didn’t like...he was a good man who took care of her.

David - i mean it was literally his job to save her and he did try (we’re not gonna talk about the end of episode 3). i believe he really put her at ease and was making her change her opinions and views on so many things. but there were issues...we can’t deny that.

Mr Morley - we didn’t see them interact much...but he’s fine.

Chris - he’s fine as co-workers go. i think he definitely respected alex eventually but he wasn’t my favorite.

Will (MI-5) - he was fine. a little boring but fine and he literally was not even cute. really zoe??? he did love her. and she did end up having a good life with him.

Bad Tier

Martin Grantham - almost cheated on his wife for revenge. told her potential boss she had mental health problems just to keep her from getting the job. believed a rumor that she had hired a solicitor so he hired one out of spite. umm the bar scene with their son. everything he did with peter. enough said.

Rob Graham - he almost cheated on his wife. he was in slight denial about their son. didn’t want to get a dog. loved her and he clearly fought to stay with her. a few points for that.

Joe M*cb*th - was just kinda there? not horrible but not great.

Steve A - do i really even need to explain? he’s just so infuriating. you’re probably wondering why he’s not lower on this list...but...well just wait until you see the rest.

Mr Royal - he just generally sucks and also he ruined her dessert in that one lil scene and was just horrible. and he fucking slapped her, knocking her to the ground???? no sir.

Peter - the jealousy i mean come on and he terrorized her. nearly killed her best friend. not to mention i’m about 99.8% sure he stole her cat.

Hugh - ugh he was with her to make vasillia jealous. i don’t care what he tried to say. and i hate that he called her angel when that’s what her husband called her. also i think she just liked the idea of them and then realized how quickly it wasn’t going to work out, especially when he wanted her to go back to england when they hadn’t even been there that long and clearly corfu made her happy?!?!? purposefully hurt spiros.

Miles Mollison - it literally took him hearing his mother calling his wife a failure for him to grow a spine?!?!? and dude your wife looked like that *long sigh*

Trash Tier 

Billy - how many times did she have to ask him about getting a job. the jealousy. he didn’t do anything???? he took care of jake so he gets points for that. but he made her feel like crap for it so….bye. and he told tina even though angela didn’t want to tell anyone.

Michael - literally tried to murder her.

Othello - actually murdered her.

Dennis Hamilton  - crazy, jealous. possessive. made her get an abortion. spent all of her money. just gross.

Alec Wilson - hello he literally had another wife and two other children that she knew of. and he only gave her 5 measly fucking pounds….rude. 

Terry Leather - had an affair with another woman. kinda redeemed himself in the end but not really. 

Hallam - literally had an affair with her sister. forced her to take in lotte when she was terrified she’d lose their baby. was trash to his little sister after making a big deal about getting her out of the asylum. was horrible to blanche. was fine (?) with the staff but not really?? 

Sam Webster - had an affair. got another woman pregnant when that’s something his wife wanted again. literally never believed her about anything. blamed her for alice’s death and then later tried to tell her not to blame herself when she was depressed. horrible to their son. just an all around shitty person.

Roger - jealous of j’s power. racist remark about david. tells her something she specifically said she doesn’t care to hear. and let’s be honest he was probably bopping some blonde 20 year old.

Dryden - wouldn’t leave his wife. forced her to get an abortion. literally picked up a 15 year old at some gathering for a bj. gross gross gross.

Gene - grade A asshole. i literally do not understand why people love them together??? he was the one who saved her as a child??? but then almost hooked up with her in the afterlife??? creepy. no matter how many times i re-watch, i cannot find any redeeming qualities in him or any reason why they should be together. also he was a sexist, homophobic, RACIST pig. i don't care it was the 80s...gross. this one you definitely will not be able to fight me on.

[brightbeautifulthings]

The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas (trans. Robin Buss)

"'I have heard it said that the dead have never done, in six thousand years, as much evil as the living do in a single day.'"

Year Read: 2019

Rating: 3/5

Context: Last year’s year-long Les Mis read went so well, I decided to choose another intimidating classic to tackle in the same fashion this year. I know myself, and if I don't deliberately pace out a book like this, I'll try to read a thousand pages in a week, and it will just be a miserable experience. (That's not to say some classics aren't miserable experiences regardless of how you read them, but that's another issue entirely.) The Count of Monte Cristo was calling to me from the shelf, and by pure luck, I already owned the edition I wanted to read (plus a B&N abridged version that promptly went into the donation box). Reviews overwhelmingly praise Robin Buss’s translation for ease/modernity, and the Penguin Classics haven’t let me down yet.

For my less coherent updates in real-time: I, II, III, IV, V, VI, VII, VIII, IX. My review is spoiler-free, but my updates are not, so read with caution if you’re not familiar. Trigger warnings: In a book with a thousand pages? Everything, probably, but for sure death, parent/child death, suicide/suicidal thoughts, severe illness, guns, abduction, poisoning, slavery, mental illness, sexism, ableism, grief, depression.

About: When forces conspire to have sailor Edmond Dantès arrested for a crime he didn't commit, he spends years in a hellish prison, fighting to stay sane. Through bravery and good fortune, he manages to escape, and he assumes a new identity for himself: The Count of Monte Cristo. Under this guise, he inserts himself into the lives of the French nobility, vowing revenge on those who wronged him.

Thoughts: Like most thousand page novels, there's no reason this novel needs to be a thousand pages, but the one thing I can say about them, collectively, is that I come away feeling like I have a relationship with them that I usually don't get from a shorter book unless I've read it multiple times. And it makes sense: I've been reading this book for a year. I've had relationships with actual humans that were much shorter than that. Dumas's prose (helped along by Buss's translation) is accessible and not overly dry, if not quite as humorous as Victor Hugo’s. Thanks to both of them, I now have a rudimentary understanding of the French Revolution and the difference between a Royalist and Bonapartist (because truly the only way to make me read about history is to put it in a novel).

Dumas proves himself more capable of staying on topic though, with one or two exceptions. The only margin note I cared to write was, apparently, "Horrible digression", and I stand by that. As soon as the novel leaves Dantès’s perspective, it gets less interesting, beginning with Franz encountering Sinbad the Sailor on Monte Cristo and continuing with the Very Weird and Terrible Side Anecdotes about bandits in Rome. Otherwise, much of the storyline is more or less linear, without the intricacies of Waterloo or the Paris sewer system. It grows more chaotic as the book goes on though, with frequent digressions into every character's backstory.

The plot takes such a drastic turn that it's almost like reading two different novels with two different main characters. At the beginning, it’s most like an adventure story. There are sailors, prison breaks, and buried treasure. Yet, for all those things, it’s surprisingly un-suspenseful. Dumas has a very stolid way of story-telling. The pace is almost supernaturally consistent, so that even things that probably should have tension in them are presented as a matter of course. (Or maybe I’m just hugely desensitized by media.) I wasn’t as excited as I thought I should be during some of the more compelling parts, but there’s something reassuring about Dumas’s relentlessly straightforward story-telling.

The middle takes a major dip in interest. Cue a lot of long and tedious backstories, plus Monte Cristo's elaborate set-ups to take down his enemies. It basically devolves into a soap opera of the various dramas of Paris’s rich and powerful families. Monte Cristo barely needs to lift a finger to destroy these people, since with a few mostly harmless suggestions, it looks like they're all going to self-destruct at any moment without outside help. The ending never really recovers from the action of the beginning, thanks in large part to the characters. There are more than it's worth keeping track of, including a lot of side characters, family members, and name changes. A detailed, spoiler-free flow chart of how everyone is connected to everyone else would have been helpful. (But be careful about Googling those because spoilers.)

Edmond Dantès is an easy hero to pull for, since he’s honest, good, and capable, and he has a kind of earnest faith that things will work out that’s endearing. He goes through a fair amount of character development in prison, and his father/son relationship with Faria is especially moving. On the other hand, it's difficult to like his alternate persona, The Count of Monte Cristo. Dumas goes a bit overboard in making him filthy rich and knowledgeable about literally every subject, and no matter how generous he is to his slaves, they're still slaves. Whether he’s playing the part of a pompous ass or is actually a pompous ass is sort of irrelevant by the end. There are a couple of flailing attempts at character development in the last sections where he wonders whether he had the right to do everything he did, but it's too little/too late to make much of an impact.

The story wouldn't work without some Shakespeare-level villains. Danglars is Iago whispering in Othello’s ear, and Villefort is even more insidious because his upstanding citizen act is so convincing. Caderousse is just a coward, and it’s interesting to see how jealousy, ambition, and fear all play an integral part in condemning an innocent man. Mercédès is a bland love interest; Valentine and Morrel are basically the Cosette and Marius of the novel, but at least there are some decent people on the page to pull for. Much as I dislike all the descriptors of Eugenie as “masculine” (because she must be less of a woman if she has a mind of her own), she's a powerhouse, and I was living for her lesbian relationship with her piano instructor.

It's clear Dumas has no idea when to end a story, since every time I thought we'd wrapped up a plot with a certain character, they'd resurface a few chapters later to spin it out a little further. Though everything (and I do mean everything) moves much more slowly than necessary, I was satisfied with the way it all played out. It's hard to come back from a main character I can barely stand though, and I happen to not like novels where nearly every character is terrible. While I found Les Mis surprisingly relevant on its social commentary, I’m struggling to see why Monte Cristo has stuck around. Only the first parts could reliably be called an "adventure novel," and the rest is purely middle of the road.

[teababe27]

Notes From the 2019 Myanimelist.net Challenges - Part 2: Manga

This post will be talking about the Manga Reading Challenge. As with Part 1, this post will be talking about some of my favorite manga I read for this challenge, as well as some others I had thoughts about.

Let’s do this.

Honorable Mentions/Other Notables:

My Girlfriend’s a Geek - completed for the task “Read a comedy or Slice of Life manga”

College student Taiga mainly wants two things: money and a hot older girlfriend. When Taiga applies for a part-time job, he falls right away for his senpai, Yuiko. They eventually get to know each other. When Taiga asks Yuiko to be his girlfriend, she has a confession: she’s a fujoshi. Not knowing what that means, Taiga says he doesn’t care what she is and they get into a relationship.

I thought this was heartwarming and funny at times (reminded me of when I had to tell my mom what yaoi meant - don’t ask), but I feel like the premise kinda wore thin after a while and some of the jokes fell flat near the end.

If I had to pick, this would be the Worst of the Challenge this year.

Arisa - completed for the task “Read a manga with less than 10,000 completed members”

Tsubasa and Arisa are twin sisters who haven’t seen each other in a while. Tsubasa has a reputation of being a fighter and has mainly guy friends. Arisa is more of a girly girl and is the popular girl in her class. Tsubasa just wants to be more like Arisa. When they reconnect one day, Arisa suggests, for fun, that Tsubasa take her place at school for one day. Tsubasa later learns some dark serets about Arisa’s school life and plans to get to the bottom of things.

This may look shoujo-y, but is more of a psychological mystery/thriller, which I like. Generic at times, but fun. I feel like the ending had some problems, though.

Othello - completed for the task “Read a manga ranked below #1000 in the database”

Yaya is shy, naive, trusting, and afraid to speak up for herself, which makes her an easy target. Her “friends” are huge dicks, call her names like “Yaya the cry-ya”, and take advantage of her and play pranks on her. She has a crush on a classmate, she dreams of being a singer, she cosplays occasionally; pretty average things.

Little does anyone - including Yaya herself - know, she has a split personality who is Yaya’s opposite in every way. Nana is loud, bold, brash, fashionable, and not afraid to speak up and dispense justice against Yaya’s “friends.”

This manga was actually pretty fun. I was worried it would be kinda repetitive from the first volume or two (Yaya gets tricked --> Nana comes out and dispenses justice --> Yaya’s crush is curious, etc.), but it got a little deeper into some of Yaya’s psyche. Seeing Nana dispense justice was also pretty fun, even though it could be a little unrealistic at times.

Hana and Hina After School - completed for the task “Read a manga with a cast consisting of mostly one gender”

Hana and Hina are two girls working a part-time job at a toy store. Hana is small and shy. Hina is tall, fashionable, and secretly a model on the side. They get off on the wrong foot at first, but they eventually become friends. Since their school doesn’t allow part-time jobs, they help each other keep their secret and their feelings eventually grow past friendship.

This manga was ADORABLE!!!

I find it good to read yuri/shoujo ai written by a woman rather than a man. The progression of their relationship, while seeming a little fast, was so nice to see. So pure, cinnamon rolls too good for this world. Especially when the manga shows each girl laying in bed thinking about how cute the other one is. A heartwarming ending as well.

Beach Stars - completed for the task “Read a Sports or Games manga”

Nanase Iruka is a short tomboy who loves volleyball. When her school’s volleyball club is shut down, Iruka is pretty upset. When her club-mates try to cheer her up, Iruka discovers beach volleyball. She forms a beach volleyball club at her school with a goal of winning against the local volleyball champion.

A bit fanservice-y at times, but I had fun with this one. It was fun to see Iruka and her friends compete and succeed. I also liked the growing friendship of a couple freshmen who come into the story several chapters in.

Favorites from the Challenge:

Koi Dano Ai Dano - completed for the task “Read a prequel/sequel to a manga that you’ve already read”

The cast from The Secret Notes of Lady Kanoko is back, and now they’re in high school!

Kanoko and Tsubaki are now attending the same high school. They end up getting recruited into their school’s newspaper club by one of their senpais. Kanoko becomes the Chief Strategist and helps the club out in their rivalry against other clubs, including the Broadcasting Club. Also, Kanoko is oblivious to Tsubaki’s growing crush on her.

Pretty much everything I liked about Lady Kanoko makes an appearance here. I still love Kanoko. She has a good head on her shoulders. These characters are not typical shoujo characters. I also love Tsubaki and Kanoko’s chemistry together. Comedy, romance, and a little suspense. Good mix.

The Embalmer - completed for the task “Read a manga serialized in a josei magazine”

Mamiya is an embalmer, a profession treated with disdain in Japan. He seems okay with being an outcast, though. Throughout the manga, we learn why he chose his career, what goes through his mind, and stories from his job.

This manga really made me think. I did not know until now that embalming wasn’t really appreciated everywhere as it is in the US. I honestly did not expect this (pretty sad at times) meditation on love, loss, and grief, but I appreciate it all the same.

Annarasumanara - completed for the task “Read a manhua or manhwa”

There are rumors in town of a magician at a tent in the abandoned theme park. He always starts his show by asking “Do you believe in magic?”

Yoon Ah-ee, a student who is living in poverty, has a chance encounter with this magician that changes her life forever.

The art in this one is pretty unique and cool. The plot was very interesting and the characters had some depth. This is another manga from the challenge that made me think. Thumbs up.

Alice 19th - completed for the task “Read a manga by a female author/artist”

Alice has always been jealous of her older sister, Mayura. Mayura is good at everything she does and is popular at school. Alice is bullied at school and is afraid to stand up for herself. She also has a crush on Kyo, who starts dating Mayura.

One day, Alice encounters a bunny, who turns out to be a magical girl named Nyozeka. Nyozeka tells Alice that she is destined to learn the Lotis Words and become a Lotis Master. When Mayura disappears during an argument with Alice, Alice becomes determined to learn the Lotis Words and get her sister back.

This manga was great. I feel like this should get an anime adaptation. The art is great. The story is pretty cool, with magic focusing on words being something I hadn’t read before, or at least in a while. It’s pretty shoujo-y, but not too cliche.

Kasane - completed for the task “Read a manga that started serialization before 2015″

Kasane Fuchi has inherited her actress mother’s talent, but not her good looks. No one will give her a chance because she is so ugly. Fortunately for her, she has something her mother left her: a lipstick that allows her to swap faces with whoever she kisses for 12 hours.

One day, a talent agent who knew her mother ropes her into being the body double for Nina Tanazawa, a struggling actress. Things go downhill from there.

This wins Best of the Challenge this year on the manga side for me. This manga blew my mind a few times while I was reading it. The story is interesting and unpredictable with plenty of twists and turns. Everyone basically crosses the Moral Event Horizon at some point. An interesting psychological manga. Highly recommended.

[janiedean]

Idk if anyone already asked this but: what about ASOIAF/GOT characters and opera? Who are the experts, the casual fans, and the one who don't care but get dragged along anyway? Does anyone relate to a particular character? *cough* Is Tyrion the biggest Rigoletto fan? *cough* And/or, does any OTP relate to a particular opera pairing? :)

OKAY SORRY IT TOOK ME AGES BUT HERE I AM

(spoilers: you can find 80% of the following or will find it in my amazing opera singers au series)

lannisters & partners

tyrion is 100% an opera nerd and he identifies with rigoletto in frankly worrying ways - he’s like me with la traviata and cries at rigoletto’s first aria every single time and then at the ending PERIOD I DO NOT MAKE THE RULES but he also likes unconventional stuff ie russians/20th century germans (TYRION LOVES ALBAN BERG YOU CAN PRY THAT FROM MY DEAD HANDS)

bronn is the friends he drags with but the only character in any opera that he likes is sparafucile

cersei only listens to wagner because everything else is for the plebs and ofc her favorite is the valkyrie YES YOU KNOW THE ONE WITH THE TWINCEST she’s the biggest sieglinde stan

jaime likes it tho not as much as tyrion but he hates both dramas and wagner and tends to like comedies/stuff that ends well better and he and brienne meet bc tyrion set them up and sent them to see fidelio with his tickets and YOU KNOW THAT JAIME AND BRIENNE ARE 100% LEONORE AND FLORESTAN YOU DON’T CHANGE MY MIND ON THAT EVER IT’S THE MOST JB OPERA THAT EVER JB-ED

brienne also likes more the happy stuff than the sad stuff but yeah fidelio is Their Thing okay

tywin went because joanna liked it and then he stopped 

starks & partners

ned & cat are that couple of nerds who goes to the opera for their anniversary and likes just about most stuff except a few single things they find boring but not as much to argue about it. for themselves, cat tends to like those donizetti operas with sopranos who at some point 100% lose it, ned is more into verdi and probably would agree with tyrion on rigoletto because y’know, FATHERS RELATE

but they also wanted their kids to get into it so their family tradition is that all go to see the magic flute together bc it’s kid-friendly and it worked bc all the stark kids love it ;)

robb’s totally into the comedies and hates the dramas and not counting the magic flute which ofc he loves because IT WAS HIS FIRST his fave is 100% rossini’s cenerentola FOR REASONS

addendum to say that theon is the friend he dragged with and thought would be boring but instead loves it and ends up converting and theon’s favorite - bc he’s a nerd - is most likely le comte ory ie THE ROSSINI CRACK OPERA WITH THE THREESOME WHERE THE TENOR IS CROSSDRESSING AS A NUN AND THE MEZZOSOPRANO PLAYS THE GUY AND THE BASS SINGS AN ARIA ABOUT STEALING ALCOHOL

but their ship they see themselves into are carlo and rodrigo from don carlo because lmao IT’S THEM

(robb prob. also have a soft spot for la clemenza di tito bc he and tito are the same person but nvm)

jon’s like 100% into dramas ALL THE DRAMA ALL THE TIME his fave is 100% la forza del destino ie the most terribly dramatic telenovela in history of dramatic opera

(he introduced it to ygritte who ofc is instead into all the rossini comedies with the a++++++ main lead ie italiana in algeri, barbiere di siviglia and so on which is a cause of endless amusement on her side because then they have to compromise)

(sam doesn’t need to be introduced because he’s 100% a nerd who cried over la traviata too but he likes all kind of stuff and who’ll go to both sand and fun operas and HE ALSO LIKES CENERENTOLA BEST THO)

sansa ofc is into THE ROMANCE so her fave is totally la traviata but she and robb totally agreed on cenerentola as well basically she robb and sam are the cenerentola stans cinnamon roll brigade

arya isn’t that much into it but she’ll go to most fun stuff and admittedly she has a soft spot for la fille du regiment because she totally identifies with maria (and tonio’s... well tonio is gendry let’s be real lmao)

(gendry is the friend she brought with once bc she likes that one and he immediately noticed)

bran goes with the others and he’s fine with it but he’s more into symphonic and not opera but he does like the family magic flute xD

rickon at some point got dragged to see the firebird when he was like six and everyone thought he’d sleep through it and instead he comes out of it like ‘guys I want to play the drums when I grow up’

baratheons & partners

robert thinks it’s boring af and wouldn’t set foot inside an opera ever, he just went once with ned to see don giovanni as a compromise

renly thinks it’s boring af and never went, then turns out that loras is 100% into it especially ACTUAL older stuff ie gluck and he totally dragged renly to see iphigenie en tauride BECAUSE ORESTES AND PYLADES ARE THE TWO OF THEM and renly had to relent and actually liked it

stannis is The Opera Nerd. he has a subscription to the local theater, he knows everything there is to know, he has a knowledge of minor baroque authors that would scare music professors, he also always goes alone because robert and renly wouldn’t go with him IF they cared, and his favorite is 100% rossini’s guillaume tell but only in the original french version WITH THE BALLETS or it’s a travesty

and he realizes davos is His Guy For Real when he shows up for their anniversary with tickets and then realizes that maybe someone who never went won’t want to see SIX HOURS OF FRENCH GRAND OPERA but davos just blinks like ‘k sure I’m open to everything’ and actually likes it (spoilers: davos’s fave becomes rossini’s la gazza ladra after he gets into it bECAUSE HE TOTALLY RELATES TO THE GIRL’S FATHER WHO SHOULD GO TO JAIL BUT IS ACTUALLY A GOOD GUY but he also likes le nozze di figaro bc YOU FEEL THE LOVE FOR THE LOWER CLASS)

tyrells

all of them used to go with olenna so all four are into it

loras as stated is into early-mid 18th century stuff ie gluck/handel/the likes (he’s the only one who actually likes julius caesar)

willas totally is into romcoms he cried the first time he went to see l’elisir d’amore and he’s been mercilessly mocked since

garlan is a sane person and likes more or less everything except extradramatic stuff

margaery is into bellini don’t tell me norma isn’t her fave

tullys

lysa never was into it bc cat was and so she always refused to go

brynden totally introduced cat to it but he’s a man of not much taste for EXTRA DRAMA so while he likes his verdi he just wants to relax with his mozart gdi but his fave is something totally overlooked ie PROBABLY IDOMENEO BECAUSE WHY THE HELL NOT HE’D LIKE IT

edmure totally went with cat & brynden and also was more into comedies turns out that his favorite is eventually falstaff and he’s always grumbling that verdi shouldn’t have made just ONE comedy ffs

targs:

viserys prob is a nerd but just of his favorite stuff and he’s either into countertenor stuff OR obscure shit or french grand opera AT BEST, he’s probably the only person other than loras who likes julius caesar

dany’s into it but very casually, she probably likes il trovatore because fire imagery everywhere tho

rhaegar is 100% into verdi drama like jon took ONE thing from him and that’s it, he probably is the kinda person who likes othello best for the Sheer Drama Factor

greyjoys:

balon and victarion legit hate it

euron is the only person other than cersei who actually willingly would go to see the ring and loves wagner

asha only goes with theon but she doesn’t mind it also bc alannys is 100% crazy into it that said she hates drama

alannys loves it her fave is la traviata I don’t make the rules

martells:

oberyn’s the hugest don giovanni stan in existence I DON’T MAKE THE RULES HE IS HE IDENTIFIES TO A T

elia’s chiller but the martells have the best taste and so they’d all like mozart she’s prob. into le nozze di figaro best because she totally relates to the countess

arianne likes così fan tutte and would punch anyone who says it’s sexist

other ppl:

sandor was dragged by sansa and he had been like WHAT DO I EVEN DO IN A THEATER HELP but then she picked something like gounod’s faust which he would like, turns out that then he ends into the most obscure SAD stuff and likes boito’s mefistofele best lISTEN HE’D BE INTO FAUSTIAN DEALS OPERA

lf is the kind of person who says they love opera but then criticize every single thing in every single staging and keep on saying opera should have died with maria callas

pyp/grenn/edd/the nw crowd went with jon once to watch something REALLY fucking sad TBH IT’D BE ERNANI and they’re like ‘jon wtf this is the worst’, then when sam learns it he goes like GUYS NO LET’S RECTIFY THIS and he brings them to l’italiana in algeri or SOME rossini fun opera and they change their mind

... okay I think I got MOST OF THE RELEVANT ONES IF I FORGOT ANYONE/YOU WANT ANYONE ELSE PLS ASK ;)

[seyaryminamoto]

I've seen A LOT of people thinks Azula is one of the best villains created ever. Can you please list the reasons why? I'm interested.

Well, I’d think it’s kind of obvious, but if you would like to know…

Azula is a really successful character, and that makes her an even better villain. She defies a lot of typical villainous tropes because of many reasons I’ll explain later, but first of all I will insist on one thing: she is a CHARACTER, and not simply a villain. She’s not written merely as a foil in the way of the protagonists, even if she indeed serves as a foil. But she has her own goals, her own strengths and flaws, and as the story progresses you discover the complexities of her character that make her, by far, the best villain in the Avatar franchise. Yes, some people might say she’s not the best villain of all time, I’m not going to force you to agree on that if you like anyone else better, but the reasons why she stands out so much begin right here.

So, first off, she’s a character. She’s not omnipotent, she’s not undefeatable, she’s someone with a mission and who stops at nothing to achieve it (stubbornness of this kind is usually seen as positive traits in main characters, but it’s seen as terrifying in villains). She sets herself up for failure in some ways, as she has unstable and unequal relationships with her friends and everyone else around her, and she has unresolved issues with her mother and her father, not to mention a tumultuous relationship with her brother. So with both her strengths and flaws in mind, Azula feels like a villain who fits in the world we’ve seen so far. Nothing about her is particularly over the top, her bending skills are above and beyond everyone else’s because that makes her a bigger threat, yet Iroh can bend lightning too, for instance. It’s not presented as something unthinkable, even if she is extraordinary for it. She doesn’t really disrupt the rules of the Avatarverse for having blue fire, or for bending lightning, so she’s basically perfectly plausible in this universe.

Azula raises the stakes. Azula gives both Aang and Zuko a brand new villain they both struggle against in their own ways. Azula is out to capture them both, and she will do whatever it takes to succeed, so with her arrival into the show, the characters are somewhat split into three groups in Book 2: the common factor is that she’s always their enemy. A girl who only travels with two other girls can fight and chase both your show’s protagonists and keep them on their toes all along. Have you thought about how awesome that is?

Now, why do I say she defies villainous tropes? Well, I only just reblogged a fun post where they pointed out that Azula strikes Aang down when he’s in the middle of his Avatar State transformation. How many times have you watched shows where this happens? I watched plenty of magical girls shows as a kid, and I am a known Digimon fan: how many times didn’t I joke about how villains should just take out the good guys when they’re wasting 15 seconds of screen time, more or less, by transforming and acquiring all their powers? If you were anything like me, these tropes take you to a point where you have to knowingly suspend your disbelief and simply accept the lack of logic in the matter.

But no, Azula strikes. She sees Aang is floating up there, all extraordinary with his Avatar State mojo, and she decides there’s no point in fighting evenly when he’s in full power. She decides to take out this threat in whatever way she can, regardless of how underhanded and morally wrong it may be. But isn’t that the kind of behaviour you’d expect in a villain? The kind of thing that suits a bad guy, the thing that makes them a serious threat?

A huge thing that makes Azula absolutely extraordinary in my eyes, and it makes me think of Iago from Othello often: Azula plans and succeeds, at least in Book 2 and half of Book 3. She works hard, she doesn’t always win, things go wrong at times and yet? At the very moment where it mattered, Azula got what she wanted, just as Iago got what he wanted. No kidding, Iago gets caught, but not before he destroys Othello in the exact way he intended to. And THAT is what makes a villain worthwhile. The villain’s goal can be something as simple as stealing candy from a child, but if he succeeds and gets away with causing exactly the effect he intended to, regardless of what it costed, that villain is miles better than your average “I want to destroy the world because the writers were giving the hero something to fight against” villain.

So, Azula’s biggest scary factor is that she can be successful. And she’s NOT a big hazy bad guy, like her father, or all other Fire Lords: she’s out in the field, fighting her own battles, planning her strategies and making everything fall into place if she can.

As I said before, she CAN fail. She does, lots of times. But the show does something LOK, for instance, never really did: Azula wins in Book 2. In LOK Amon’s cause allegedly helps fix the bending privilege problem, and Unalaq gets to bring the spirits back, and Zaheer nearly makes Korra disappear forever, and Kuvira somehow gets to fix the Earth Kingdom in her own way. But… they’re all defeated. Zaheer and Kuvira end up in jail, Amon and Unalaq even DIE. None of these bad guys got to actually succeed, their causes apparently did, in roundabout ways, but not them as individuals. 

Azula, on the other hand, succeeds in every level. Azula succeeds where so many others failed, even being the only character who ever came remotely close to killing Aang. She takes over Ba Sing Se with a plan that comes into place right in front of the viewer, and if you love her you relish in this (as I did), if you hate her you are horrified by how EVERYTHING IS GOING HER WAY. It’s not merely her cause that succeeds, the show doesn’t try to tell you that Azula’s victory is good in some roundabout way. Azula is portrayed in a bad light, as a villain, as a real threat to the heroes, and to the values the show is presenting. And she doesn’t wait around for others to fulfill her orders: she goes out to take care of things herself, even fighting without her bending if that’s is how she can protect her nation and father.

As a comparison: how many times in Book 1 did any of us ever really think Zuko was going to succeed at capturing Aang? I, personally, never really thought he was going to do it, not only because of spoilers but because Zuko didn’t feel nearly as threatening as Azula did. Was it because of his temper? Was it because of humorous situations written around him? I don’t really know, but Zuko, as annoying and persistent as he was, and as often as he showed up in pursuit of Aang, never seemed likely to get what he wanted. And he didn’t, despite he had a few chances for it. The writing always frustrated his attempts to capture Aang, or to set traps for him… basically, Zuko always failed when it mattered most.

And Azula failed, plenty. But she didn’t simply fail: she changed her tactics, found new ways to handle the problem, and eventually when Book 2′s ending arrives you’re left with the feeling that this girl simply cannot be stopped. She’s not like Zuko, who worked hard but it never paid off. She’s not like Zhao either, who also made his efforts and found new resources but still failed more often than not. She’s not simply a bending powerhouse like Combustion Man, nor was she like Long Feng, who, yes, was successful for most his life but we only get to meet him when things start to go wrong for him. And she’s also not like Ozai, who was indeed the ominous final boss waiting to show himself at the very end of the story.

So, Azula manages to be a character while being a villain, something rare in mainstream media (seriously, this is the problem of every single Marvel film except for the original Thor. This is why none of their villains are truly memorable or meaningful). And she also manages to be a successful villain, rather than another of those “scary” ones who really seemed to be about to succeed but were stopped at the very last minute: no, she gets what she wants, kills the Avatar as far as she knows, captures her uncle, brings her brother home, and takes over Ba Sing Se. She hits the jackpot, pretty much, but it wasn’t a matter of luck: it was a matter of skill, of adapting to the circumstances and working hard for the sake of her mission.

And that’s just Book 2. In Book 3 she keeps up the efficiency until the betrayal, foiling the brilliant Invasion plans and succeeding at stopping the heroes yet again. By the time her breakdown happens, it’s source really goes back to Azula’s own flaws and problems, to character issues that, although present, were yet to be explored. Yes, it’s terribly convenient for Zuko that his sister would lose her mind exactly when he needed her to, but even then, Azula’s downfall serves to enhance her character’s complexity. It could have been handled better, but as it was, it allowed the viewers to see how damaged she truly is, deep down, and that, again, is what makes her a character and not simply a villain.

That’s more or less the gist of it, but there’s other reasons too, no doubt. All the same, Azula sets a hard bar to match for many villains in mainstream media, and only a handful of them have reached it (if they have, I don’t know how many have overcome it). And that would be why saying she’s the greatest villain of all time has become such a popular thing to do as of late :’)

[actualhockeyrobot]

Nurseydex & Acting Class

Eyoooooooooooooooo, the CP Resident Shakespeare Ho/Theater Major is back with more shamelessly using these characters as a means to talk about my major Nurseydex Antics!

As anyone who follows me knows by now, I’m a theater major. Dex and Nursey are comedy gold, and the thought of them working with any of the texts I’ve worked with is just DELIGHTFUL.

(Click here and here for my other Shakespeare Ho/theater major posts)

So without further ado!

Dex needs and art credit. Just one more fucking art credit. But his schedule is insane and there’s only one he can take this semester

it’s an acting class

He doesn’t want to do it. Mostly because his boyfriend will be I N S U F F E R A B L E

But he just wants to get this over with so he registers and just waits for Nursey to find out

Nursey is delighted. And registers for that class, too.

“YOU DON’T NEED ANOTHER ART CREDIT, DEREK!” “Dude, you really think I’m gonna miss this?”

Dex doesn’t really know what to expect going in, but he definitely wasn’t expecting the prof (let’s call him Casey) to be this hot middle aged guy who dresses like Indiana Jones and lives in a cabin and recites Shakespeare to trees

(we’re talking Adventure Indy, not Professor Indy)

(what no I’m not basing him on my prof Kerry who is also currently directing me in Julius Caesar why would you think that)

Nursey and Casey hit it off because Casey is this great mix of Passionate and IDGAF and Nursey wants to be him when he grows up

Dex’s main reaction to him is “?????????” until he starts talking about his cabin in the woods and then they bond over Practical Shit like fixing window panes and Nature

(the rest under the cut because this always happens my posts are always long af)

basically this class turns out to be acting but also Theater Lit because Casey wants them all to actually KNOW WHAT THE FUCK THESE PLAYS ARE, DAMMIT, THAT’S THE ONLY WAY YOU DO THEM PROPERLY

Nursey knows all this shit and is in HEAVEN

(but Casey also fucking BLOWS HIS MIND when he talks about Othello being Iago vs Desdemona rather than Iago vs Othello and that Iago loses because her goodness still withstands everything and Nursey walks around in a daze for the rest of the day Dex is worried)

(he also rants about how he was cast as Othello instead of Iago in high school)

(Casey and Dex just kind of exchange a look like “does he know....?” “yes he knows just let him continue yelling about being robbed”)

the class is basically a bunch of freshmen who are going into the theater department next year and this class is require + Nursey and Dex

Dex is.... honestly just worried about keeping all the playwrights straight

“Dude, it’s nbd. If there’s a closeted gay guy and a sad southern belle who goes crazy, it’s Tennessee Williams. Bonus points if there’s a dramatic mom or the girl goes to an asylum. If all the guys just kinda... SEEM gay, it’s Oscar Wilde.”

“Wait I thought Tennessee Williams hated the American Dream.”

“Well, you’re not wrong, but you’re thinking of Arthur Miller.”

“He’s the one who married Marilyn Monroe, right?”

“Eeyup.”

Dex Cannot with Eugene O’Neill’s dialog

“nurse wtf is this”

“Ah yes, I remember when I first looked upon the unholy fucker that was Desire Under the Elms”

Dex’s horrified reaction to pretty much everything Sam Shepard’s ever written

“WHY DOES HE ALWAYS WRITE ABOUT INCEST”

“idk man”

“WHY DOES HE STILL WANNA SLEEP WITH HER WHEN HE KNOWS SHE’S HIS SISTER”

“idk man”

“JESUS FUCK, THE BABY WAS BURIED IN THE CORN FIELD?!”

“it’s called Buried Child what did you expect”

“I DIDN’T THINK IT WOULD BE  L I T E R A L”

Nursey and Dex getting into the DI S C O URS E over whether or not The Cherry Orchard by Anton Chekhov is a tragedy or a comedy

(Dex says comedy, Nursey says tragedy)

“FUCK YEAH NORA, YOU LEAVE HIS ASS”

“ah so you finished it”

*cue long discussion about how Henrick Ibsen being like “fuck you women are people” and August Strindberg being like “Women Are Sexy And I’m Scared”*

Casey absolutely Loves Them because class discussions are fucking Fire with them around

(after those particular class sessions they /race/ back to one of their dorms/the haus depending on what year this is and bang)

(the class discussions are basically foreplay for them)

they do like... actually act in this class, too

Dex has to do Fool For Love by Sam Shepard for his midterm and is still H O R R I F I E D by everything this man writes but you know it’s not so bad, his scene partner’s really nice, and Nursey helps him memorize his lines so it could be worse but holy shit his character is fucking hIS SISTER

Nursey does a scene from The Three Sisters by Chekhov.

“I’m just saying, why doesn’t Andrei just TELL Natasha he wants to be a professor in Moscow????”

“Derek that’s the point”

for their finals, they get to pick partners, and Nursey calls dibs on Dex because of course he does

“Dex. Hamlet and Horatio. We HAVE to.”

“wait.... they’re gay, too?!”

“WILL WHY ARE YOU EVEN SURPRISED ANYMORE DO I NEED TO MAKE YOU A PHYSICAL LIST OF QUEER SHAKESPEARE CHARACTERS”

Dex is Horatio to Nursey’s Hamlet

“Derek, you were born to play Hamlet.” “I feel like I should be insulted.”

they do the scene where Horatio tells Hamlet that he saw his dad’s ghost and he plays it like Horatio is Definitely In Love with Hamlet and Hamlet is definitely in love right back but he’s Distracted because MY DAD IS DEAD AND I HAVE TO GO BE EMO

they perform and the freshmen are like “I can’t believe I never realize how gay this was”

they get an A

[hoenursey]

Hi, can I ask the I guess story of Othello real quick even just a summary if you don't want to go in depth because I was excited about hearing about it, but then I was also really thrown off seeing Othello being a slave and all and now I'm just kinda confused?? Because Nursey in silk with a choking kink DOES sound amazing but I guess I'm just confused af now

lmao, okay, so. originally i was writing just an au of nursey and dex playing desdemona and othello, respectively. however, othello’ character background is that he was a former slave and a moorsman, or a person from the moor, and moorsmen are black people.

the beginning of othello starts with roderigo and iago outside of the house of brabantion, desdemona’s father. roderigo is jealous of othello because he’s in love with desdemona and she pretty much turned everyone down and she’s like dainty and pretty and hot as fuck, like the most beautiful fair girl ever and shit, but she’s falling in love with othello. also i’m pretty sure roderigo saw her and othello chilling or w/e. so basically, in the middle of the fuckening night, roderigo and iago start yelling to brabantion to come outside and talk to them. brabantion is generally a pretty cool dad and he’s like “bitch she doesn’t like u stop getting drunk and coming to my house my daughter turned ur ass down already”, rod and iago proceed to say a bunch of racist shit and say “check her bed she’s out being a slut with a black dude lol” to which dadbra says “she would never she’s so sweet and she’s also turned down literally everyone who’s ever wanted to date her” but desi, my girl, is actually gone from her bed, so dadbra is like “you’re right!!! i can’t believe my daughter is fucking around before marriage in the middle of the night!!! i trusted her!!! time to go chase after othello, who i welcomed into my house, with a bunch of pitchforks” which they do. they show up to othello’s crib like “what’s up here’s our accusations time to throw you in jail for fucking my daughter because if she turned down all the hot dudes in the entire city she’s definitely not gonna fuck a black dude out of wedlock unless there was some type of witchcraft involved” to and othello is like “uhh okay cool i’m dealing with the house of senators rn so like. can this wait a second my dudes” and they’re like “perfect! we’re gonna show them what a terrible black dude you are!”

they go in front of the senators and they’re like “what’s the sitch why is this angry mob here my dude” dadbra is like “uh he fucked my daughter, i’m sending him to jail for witchcraft or kidnapping bc there’s literally no other way she’d fuck a black dude when she doesn’t even like these hot white dudes”

othello’s like “uh actually i married her”

everyone: “what”

and he kind of explains like “buddy yeah i’m not super good with words so i’m not gonna bs you. i married your daughter. no kidnapping, drugging, or witchcraft. she fell in love with me and so now we’re married. she’s at the inn down the street also so like i’m def not fucking her since we’re at my house and she’s at a hotel”

everyone except dadbra is like “oh okay that sounds reasonable” but dadbra is like “you’re telling me that my good white upper class daughter fell in love with a black dude who she’d be afraid to look at? i’m calling bullshit it’s clearly witchcraft”

the duke p much is like “uh… but where’s the receipts tho i don’t see any witchcraft” and the senators are like “go get desdemona so we can confirm this also othello bro keep talking”

othello’s like “yeah i was a warrior and i travelled a lot and dadbra used to like me a lot so he invited me over to hear my stories about the wars and how i fought and battles and being on ships. i told him my entire life story from when i was a kid all the way until now, how i was captured and sold as a slave, how i bought my own freedom and just all types of cool shit and then when she did her chores around the house for dadbra she would come around as soon as she finished and ask me more and ask me to tell her more stories” essentially desi thinks he’s hot and a tragic hero and she’s like “everything that happened to you sucks but you’ve also got some sick ass stories so maybe that makes it a little better? idk sorry all this bad shit happened to you but you’re rly interesting to talk to. if any friends had any stories like yours i’d probably fall in love with them”

othello’s like “yeah uh i’m not that smart and i’m more of a military dude than an intellectual but i know a fucking hint when i see one”

he says the sweetest thing too like “she loved me for the horrors i had been through and that i had the strength to come out on top, and i loved her for feeling so strongly about me and having passion. here comes my wife now and she’ll tell you the exact same story”

desi comes in and is like “yeah dad sorry i shouldn’t have like run out in the middle of the night to get married but i really do love him promise no messing around”

and this is part of the reason i think brabantion is kinda cool bc he’s not actually a racist he just said some shit without rly thinking and let the things that he’s used to hearing influence him and he’s like “oh, well, you’re in love. that’s fine then sorry i didn’t realize. i’m super glad you’re my only daughter because after this whole disaster, if you’d had any younger sisters i know i would have overreacted and acted like a prison warden to them and women don’t deserve that. i’m still a little upset abt u sneaking out in the middle of the night but like blessings on your marriage i guess.

so that’s like…. act one

later on some fuckery happens, iago decides to be a dick, because they’re all together for some reason that i don’t feel like saying idk something abt the turks and also because he’s a miserable worm

cassio is one of their friends who’s also there and he’s, like, some type of foreign i think (probably spanish or italian) and has respect for women and his wife (who’s not there) but bc he’s spanish or italian (probably italian as verona is mentioned and shakespeare REALLY has a thing abt italy??? idk he’s a pasta fucker) or whatever he does the thing where he kisses people on the cheek and because it’s the elizabethan era, he kisses women’s hands, and earlier he had like politely greeted desdemona and iago’s wife and called them beautiful and smart and shit and called iago out on being a misogynistic piece of shit. iago like actively hates his wife and also literally anyone else’s happiness so he’s like i’m gonna fuck up cassio’s life and i’m gonna fuck up othello and desi’s and also he’s a jealous racist misogynistic asshole wants to fuck up othello and desdemona’s (healthy, loving, trusting, equal) relationship so he’s like

"hey othello. ur wife’s a slut. she’s fucking cassio behind ur back lol”

and othello, who thinks his wife is the shit, is like *daveed diggs voice* “whaaaaat”

iago: “yeah totes she’s a massive hoe”

and othello is like “nah not my wife. maybe someone else’s wife, but not mine”

and iago is like “no bro im serious. we’re sleeping in the same bed (i don’t know why i mean his fucking wife is there isn’t she) he’s been having like wet dreams about her and saying ‘damn i wish u weren’t with that black dude’ and he’s been rolling over in his sleep and dry humping me whilst moaning ur wife’s name” (honestly iago the reason you don’t like women is because you’re gay and jealous calm down)

(literally that was so extra i can’t believe how overwhelmingly bisexual shakespeare was that he needed to slide that gay ass shit in there)

anyways othello’s like “okay so that’s a little weird but that doesn’t mean she did anything. maybe cassio just wants to bang my wife. that’s understandable, as id also like to bang my wife” (they’re super into PDA they’re so in love)

iago: fair. also iago: i mean there’s no way to prove it but like… maybe your wife gave him something. like, idk, does she have a hand embroidered handkerchief maybe? just a thought just a thought lolothello: ya i gave that to her as like a courtship gift she never goes anywhere without it bc she loves me so muchiago: yeah well uh i cassio wiping his beard with it so they’re definitely fuckingothello, my dumb son: NO!!! THAT DEFINITELY MEANS THEYRE FUCKING IF MY WIFE GAVE AN ITEM OF GREAT SENTIMENTAL AND PERSONAL SIGNIFICANCE TO HIM!!! MY ABSOLUTELY TOTALLY FAITHFUL AND COMPLETELY INNOCENT UP UNTIL THIS POINT WIFE!!!!

so he’s like “uh i have to kill her i guess now :(((((((”

problem is he’s still fucking in love with her like he literally loves her so much and can’t even bear to stab her like a normal person would do if they’re trying to kill their wife, so what does he do? he fucking kisses her awake to explain what he’s doing and why he’s doing it and then gently smothers her to death

so gently, in fact, that she doesn’t actually die, just passes out

a servant walks in and is like “boi what the FUCK”

othello: uh

it’s desi’s handmaiden lmao and he’s like “i had to she’s fucking other men” to which she says “no she’s not you idiot” and then desdemona wakes up to say something dramatic and then properly dies

except no she doesn’t bc othello literally is just really really fucking in love with his wife so he’s an incredibly ineffective murderer despite literally having been in the military for almost all of his life but that’s all i’m explaining bc my hands are tired and i answered this all on mobile plus that’s all you need to know for my story

[lindaeatmon-jones-blog]

Truth-telling - Can Words Be Trusted – Under all Circumstances?

What is trust? According to Merriam-Webster’s Online Dictionary, trust is an assumed reliance or the character, ability, and strength of someone or something. My definition of trust is someone who can do something without being checked up on or being able to depend on someone or their word. The focus of this blog will be ‘depending on someone’s word’. Can words be trusted? And, too, how grave are the consequences if trust is broken? Follow me on this journey as I explain how to better determine if the trust being requested or extended is authentic. Let’s begin with the classic American fable about the “The Girl and the Snake”—most will know it. Sometimes, it is presented as the ‘Farmer and the Viper’. The Girl and the Snake A young girl walking along a mountain path to her grandmother's house heard a rustle at her feet. Looking down, she saw a snake. But, before she could react, the snake spoke to her. "I am about to die," he said. "It's too cold for me up here in the mountains, and I am freezing. There is no food in these mountains, and I am starving. Please put me under your coat and take me with you." "No," the girl replied. "I know your kind. You are a rattlesnake. And, if I pick you up, you will bite me, and your bite is poisonous." "No, no," the snake said. "If you help me, you will be my best friend. I will treat you differently." The young girl sat down on a rock for a moment to rest and think things over. She looked at the beautiful markings on the snake and she had to admit he was the most beautiful snake she had ever seen. Suddenly, she said I believe you. I will save you. All living things deserve to be treated with kindness. She then reached over, put the snake gently under her coat and continued toward her grandmother's house. Within a moment, she felt a sharp pain in her side. The snake had bitten her! "How could you do this to me?" she cried. "You promised that you would not bite me, and I trusted you!" "You knew what I was when you picked me up," he hissed as he slithered away. Using the fable, let’s examine how we can better spot when we should give our trust or not to minimize being so easily fooled, deceived and sometimes victimized. Point One – Creating Empathy In the fable, the snake knows it has to gain the trust of the girl in order to achieve his goal. It attempts to create an empathetic situation vis-à-vis itself that is selfish, not selfless. "I am about to die," he said. "It's too cold for me up here in the mountains, and I am freezing. There is no food in these mountains, and I am starving. Please put me under your coat and take me with you." When a person is asking that you trust them to complete a task on an agreed upon time, meet you at a given place, follow-thru on a promise or commitment, etc.; you assume the person’s word is trustworthy. That the person is not taking your needs lightly and the consequences resulting from their not following thru. Selfless is the opposite of selfish. If the person is selfless, they think less about themselves, and more about others. Being selfless is similar to being altruistic—they see their word as “a bond” to give to others without looking for personal gain or opportunity. As in any commitment, life happens and there are times we all have conflicts in our schedules, family/work/school obligations or illness. However, a selfless person who commits, typically comes with ‘no surprises’—you will know as soon as they know they cannot follow-thru. Generally, they will exhaust all avenues to try to keep the commitment – because they see the obligation as something they own and will work with you to try to resolve the dilemma you are now in. Now that's true empathy—seeing another's plight from a selfless perspective On the other hand, like the snake, for many people what is convenient or meets their needs is what is pursued or promised. How many times have you heard these phrases?: Please let me borrow your ___; and, I trust to treat it like my own and return it by ____. Or, presenting what I call a ‘situational commitment’—with many reasons that could keep them from following through but want you to still see them as trustworthy. Point Two – Honesty is the Bedrock of Trust Honesty is a very abstract word. It is defined by the Merriam-Webster dictionary as “adherence to the facts; refusal to lie, steal or deceive in any way.” Without a doubt, one of the main themes that run throughout Shakespeare’s tragic play, "Othello", is that of honesty. In the play, the most interesting character is Iago, who is known as "Honest Iago." However, this could not be farther from the truth. Through some carefully thought-out words and actions, Iago is able to manipulate others to do things in a way that benefits and moves him closer to his own goals. He is smart and an expert at judging the characters of others. "No, no," the snake said. "If you help me, you will be my best friend. I will treat you differently." We most often have either experienced or have knowledge of this type of honesty in our lives. Patterns of behavior will help to alert us to sort out honest vs dishonest promises or commitments. Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice (or more), shame on me. Point Three – Wanting to Believe We all want to believe that inside each person is basic decency and goodness. When we listen to it and act on it, we give each other the kindness we all deserve. Or, do we? Suddenly, she said, "I believe you. I will save you. All living things deserve to be treated with kindness." Clearly, the girl wanted to believe the snake and provide help to lessen its concerns. How does one know what is true or not? Truth can be divided into two types: The empirical truth and the truth defined by our beliefs or experiences. Empirical truth - what is observed, what can be tangibly learned from observation, not perception. For example, we know Starbucks makes coffee and other hot beverages. On the contrary, there is truth defined by our beliefs or experiences which we encounter the problem with the nature of truth. Considering that our experiences and beliefs differ from someone else's, we develop our own versions of truth. In most cases, our experiences and beliefs will go a long way as a “truth filter” for when to trust. Many times, our experiences of seeing consistent behaviors will sharpen our gut; thereby, giving us another reason to question the honesty of the situation or person. It does take courage to listen to that inner voice that may go against our own nature of kindness and goodness. Point Four – When Reality Sets in "How could you do this to me?" she cried. "You promised that you would not bite me, and I trusted you!" "You knew what I was when you picked me up," he hissed as he slithered away. A snake bites you because it is a "snake" by nature—and a stunning liar to charm and manipulate you—until 1) you either open your eyes and ears, wise up and leave; or, 2) it moves on to the next victim. Remember, the snake doesn't have a conscience or morals like decent, God-fearing people, and any moment of regret it may feel, if any, will be quickly forgotten—that's how these kinds of predators operate, it's in their DNA. You cannot change the snake or the "snakes” that you encounter in life. Even the most beautiful, charismatic of God's creatures, especially those who call themselves our friends, when the need is to be selfless can fall to the selfish side of truth. Depending on what is at stake, the selfish behavior can turn to lying and manipulating. Do not allow your trust to be so easily manipulated by those who exploit, bully, and use others. Pay attention to the patterns of behavior—that is generally where the truth lies and where trust can be invested.   Do you want to know what we can learn from the millennials? Click here. Read the full article

[hominininae]

Since it’s the end of the year, I thought I’d make a list of the Shakespeare plays that I read this year, mainly for my own records. I’ve read quite a few since September, so I need to have it written down someplace.

So, in (somewhat) chronological order:

Hamlet: This was the play that got me into Shakespeare! Obviously, Hamlet is a deeply flawed character and we all love to hate him, but I couldn’t help relating to him in his deeper and  more introspective moments. This was the first literary work that I have read that depicted depression and mental illness in a way that I could closely identify with. To be honest, it was kind of a surreal experience to see some of my innermost thoughts put into words in a play that was written over 400 years ago. That’s not to say I think the character of Hamlet is a good person or that all of his decisions were justified -- quite the opposite really! He’s incredibly misogynistic, self-centered, and (directly or indirectly) causes almost every death in the play. However, I am more sympathetic to his character because of my own personal experiences with mental illness. (This is the play that I’ve thought about the most, if you haven’t noticed! I could write so much more but this post is going to be too long as it is)

Macbeth: I read this play immediately after Hamlet, which made for some interesting comparisons. They are both tragedies with ghosts, kings, and murders, but the contrast between Hamlet’s inaction and Macbeth’s immediate action was super cool! Were their actions due to an inherent difference between their personalities? Is it because Macbeth has people actively encouraging his murderous tendencies? What is the role of fate/destiny in their decisions? So many things to think about! Macbeth is also just a really fun play to read. I mean, it’s got witches, misleading prophecies, full-on war, and everyone’s favorite badass, Lady Macbeth.

Julius Caesar: This was my first reread of the year. I read it about two years ago for school, but I figured I should go back to it. Obviously, this is a play that is very relevant to our current state of political uncertainty. It addresses really important questions about idealism vs. realism, revolution, and how to deal with a failing/dying system of government. I listened to an interesting podcast about it, but if I’m being honest this play didn’t stick with me as much as the others.

Romeo and Juliet: This play gets so much undeserved flack from people who think it’s showing how love is stupid and teenagers are reckless. It’s a beautiful and tragic story about how society forces young people to make bad decisions, and it’s sad to see how many people hate it because of their experiences in school. There are so many heartbreaking moments and incredible lines of poetry and this play deserves so much better than being taught to every single edgy high school kid who just rattles off whatever their teacher told them. However, to end on a more positive note, I absolutely loved it and its commentary on society/generation gaps!

Much Ado About Nothing: Just. Nonstop. Roasting. So many burns in one play! I wasn’t a fan of the constant fears from men about women being unfaithful, but that’s exactly what the play was commenting on! Beatrice and Benedick are a great couple, and basically every man in the play is an asshole.

Coriolanus: This whole play could have been fixed if Coriolanus could just keep his mouth shut for 5 minutes. Seriously though, I liked the fact that Coriolanus refuses to play political games and always speaks his mind (characteristics that we find theoretically likable) and is still an incredibly unsympathetic character. He makes it clear that he hates the common people and always “tells it like it is”...sound familiar? 

King Lear: Wow this play is huge! I really need to reread it because there is so much in it that I probably missed. There are about 100000 different plots going on at the same time, which can get kind of confusing. This play really ripped my emotions to pieces. It’s so bleak and depressing, but beautiful at the same time.  

Twelfth Night: Another that I need to read again. I had to read it online, so I really want a physical copy so I can annotate and have the textual notes. My main takeaway: everyone is gay and it’s great!

A Midsummer Night’s Dream: Probably the play that I was most familiar with before reading, because my local ballet company did a production several years back. I learned the story then, and then I read the play in middle school. It’s a fun play, and I would love to see a production of it! 

The Tempest: Reading this play from the perspective of colonialism is really interesting. I had mixed feelings about Caliban’s treatment the whole time I was reading, and seeing it as a metaphor for how the Europeans treated the native peoples of lands they were colonizing helps to clarify those emotions a little bit. I’ve also just finished it, so I need some time to sort out my thoughts. 

Goals for next year: Currently, I am reading Richard II. I want to read King Lear again, and I also want to read Othello. Hopefully, I can tackle some more histories and comedies as well, since I’ve gone pretty tragedy-heavy this year! I will admit that I have found the tragedies more interesting to read (I own 6 of the plays and they’re all tragedies), but maybe I just haven’t read enough of the other genres yet.

[topmixtrends]

THE OTHER SIDE of the Wind, directed by Orson Welles between 1970 and 1976, was intended to be his great Hollywood comeback. It was a movie for the New Hollywood era about exactly what it was: a legendary director trying and failing to make his great Hollywood comeback. It was also so patently Welles’s own situation that he cast John Huston as the lead and talked a good game about how the director was actually a stand-in for Ernest Hemingway, as if by layering all that other life over his own he could generate a fog of dissimulation that might convince anyone it wasn’t his story after all. Welles’s protagonist would commit suicide, like Hemingway; and he would be pushed to it by panic at his own repressed homosexuality, perhaps like Hemingway, certainly like Welles’s understanding of Hemingway. But he would talk, and leer, and smirk, and smile, like Huston.

The film’s frisson of autobio-bio-biography, of bioallegorical industrial psychoanalysis, of scattershot score-settling directed at Peter Bogdanovich, John Milius, Pauline Kael, Michelangelo Antonioni, and so many others would have swamped the coverage of the movie had it been finished in Welles’s lifetime. But it wasn’t so it didn’t.

In 1975, Welles was given a lifetime achievement award by the AFI. With The Wind basically shot and several sequences edited, he took the occasion to announce that all he needed was “end money” to bring the production to a close. No one came through, and the film remained unfinished. By now, though, you know that it is finished and streaming on Netflix. If it is the sort of thing you want to watch there is a good chance you have watched it, or you may have watched They’ll Love Me When I’m Dead, the feature-length documentary directed by Morgan Neville that accompanies it and tells its backstory. Or you may have watched both. If you are a completist, you may also want to watch A Final Cut for Orson: 40 Years in the Making, a fascinating, 40-minute making-of directed by Ryan Suffern that you can find under the “Trailers and More” tab. All three, according to producer Filip Jan Rymsza, were included in the 2015 term sheet they signed with the studio/streamer. The Wind is finished and then some.

For us, today, after the scores no longer need settling, and after the layers of biography are largely antiquarian, The Other Side of the Wind arrives as a muted lesson about Hollywood’s past and as a contemporary landmark available for immediate, and intensive, critical attention. It is not simply the movie Welles would have made had he completed it; it is the movie Welles would have made had he been the digital filmmaker he was not.

In the making-of and in person, everyone involved with getting The Wind finished says it couldn’t have been completed until now. It took new digital tools to find the right snatches of the original negative to match up with Welles’s workprint. It took Industrial Light & Magic to complete and composite shots of a bunch of dummies being shot. And, of course, the production made use of the whole range of now-ordinary digital processes to get the score ready, to loop missing dialogue, to edit and color correct and execute the final shot in which a drive-in screen fades to white as a dawn train rolls by.

In this mishmash of now and then, of state-of-the-art digital processes and radically innovative analogue processes, Welles has indeed made and been made into a portrait of the industry — today’s industry. “We are only here tonight because of Netflix,” producer Frank Marshall explained at a USC screening. “They stepped up; they never wavered; they supported us all the way.” They were the end money, at last.

The central conceit of The Other Side of the Wind has remained consistent from its first elaboration until now. The film contains two movies. The first is a piecemeal documentary set on the last day of the life of Jake Hannaford, played by Huston. The second is an eponymous film-within-the-film that exists in an incomplete state. Following the credits, the movie launches with Hannaford grabbing the final shot of the day — a group of laughing, naked women in a steam bath introducing our heroine (Welles’s companion and co-writer Oja Kodar) to a strap-on. It isn’t a single shot, but a dozen, giving the lie immediately to the faux documentary, but the rapid editing continues into the mad dash to the director’s ranch where there will be a party for his 70th birthday. Subsequently, we see extended portions of the nested film in three locations. One chunk is shown to a potential funder in a studio screening room. The funder passes. A couple more installments are screened at Hannaford’s ranch. Those screenings are punctuated by power outages and party overflow. Finally, after everyone has given up trying to get the power back at the ranch, the whole party decamps to a drive-in for the last bit. There, Hannaford’s relationship with his successful protégé Brooks Otterlake (Bogdanovich) will come apart; after, Hannaford will die in a car wreck.

The phony Antonioni of Hannaford’s film is visually stunning. Low horizons, blue-black skies, vague intrigue, and lots of sex. It’s also vapid, intentionally so. Hannaford is losing it, and despite his conviction that he can shoot the thing without a script, he has missed important shots. The would-be funder (a shot at Paramount’s Robert Evans, the subject of The Kid Stays in the Picture) is put off by the missing details about a kidnapping/robbery/bomb plot. The partygoers (who are usually playing themselves when not playing analogues of New Hollywood icons) encounter “SCENE MISSING” intertitles more than once. And the drive-in audience is treated to reels out of order. The upshot is clear from beginning to end: having driven away his young male star in a spate of sexual provocation, there’s no chance Hannaford can finish the film.

Just as stunning, but radically different, is the pseudo-documentary that surrounds the Hannaford film. A crazyquilt of different stocks, sound sources, and levels of craft, the assemblage is fun and assaultive, giving dozens of speaking characters the chance to break the fourth wall, giving Hannaford the chance to perform and be caught performing, giving the film a sense of the New Hollywood scene, this re-professionalized society, breaking down in full auteurist self-obsession.

Whatever Hannaford’s plan, the diffused production of The Wind was not the result of a principled commitment to improvisation. Welles’s film wasn’t unscripted. It was tightly written but constantly evolving. Everyone involved in principal photography was amazed at his ability to track what footage was still needed — to remember that there were reverse shots to be picked up across several years and a couple continents. And Welles’s editors were amazed by his work in postproduction, a more radical version of the work he’d been doing in Europe, swinging, incredibly quickly at times, from decentered and theatrical social portraits to tight, realist psychological revelations. Everything about the production of The Wind bolstered the notion of an auteur at work, endlessly. Only a studio with endless money could possibly keep up, and, for now, Netflix has endless money, a stream of monthly subscriptions and a willingness to spend it on content, up to $13 billion in 2018.

Both The Wind and They’ll Love Me bend toward death, yet both comfort themselves that the great directors miraculously direct from beyond the grave. Wind gives the very last word to Huston, after the final credits roll: “Cut.” And They’ll Love Me cagily suggests that our interest in the endless obsession with Welles-not-finishing might be exactly what Welles imagined all along. (There’s footage of him saying as much in 1966. There’s also a late interview in Josh Karp’s book, Orson Welles’s Last Movie, where Welles suggests that if he did get access to the film again, he’d add a third layer of self-reflection. Then again, there’s footage of Welles saying or imagining doing everything. “Don’t look for keys,” he said about the search for his biography in the movie. That goes at least double for multi-decade-spanning strategery.)

Neville and Karp and plenty of reviewers besides depend on the idea that the decades of struggle to get the movie finished are colorful and fascinating, replete with interesting characters and dramatic turns. I’m not inclined to agree. The frittering away of the film in a thicket of negotiations and legal actions is just a drag. The real-world characters never quite come off. Welles’s French producer relied on Iranian funding courtesy of the Shah’s brother-in-law. He might have been the bad guy, but over the years, everyone who met Mehdi Bushehri was taken with his gentlemanliness. When the Shah fell, the new Iranian government — certainly bad-guy candidates! — might have seized or destroyed the film. They didn’t. They simply requested a decent accounting of its chaotic budget and wondered if they might make a return on the people’s investment. Presented instead with a bill for past-due taxes, they dropped the whole thing. The other conflicts over The Wind simply waste themselves in drawn-out contract negotiations while the negative sits safely in Paris.

The lawyers never appear in They’ll Love Me. Instead, Neville’s documentary makes use of a nifty trick that pulls you in precisely by making you self-aware. When interviewees are recounting conversations with Welles, instead of having them continue to speak and deliver Welles’s words as they remember them, Neville grabs a version of Welles saying them from somewhere — from Kane or Lady from Shanghai or Filming Othello or a TV interview or a recording made for Bogdanovich’s book, or, really, anywhere. It’s cute when we’re only getting a single word from Welles, but it’s uncanny, and almost deep, when we get a full line. The documentary all but declares that Welles’s entire corpus is not just of a piece, but a piece of continuous performance, rendered in just a few tones. As a result, the context is always erasable — because it is a corpus — and the great lines are always quotable.

The technology that makes They’ll Love Me’s infinite quotability possible may be simple enough (text searches on transcripts), but when that technology is scaled for “enterprise” uses, it produces the equally uncanny reality of uniform, ideological discourse. When The Daily Show or Last Week Tonight, for example, patches together a string of Fox News talking heads maundering on about “the caravan” or whatever the issue of the day might be, they are relying on a tool like SnapStream. In days gone by, and still for the underfunded, clip montages took the efforts of dozens of bleary-eyed tape loggers. Now, those lowly assistant producers can conduct non-linear searches across the text of vast transcripts. The results will then take them right to the exact moment in the video file which they can then clip and export — to a reel for the show or to social media.

The technological similarity between Neville’s nonlinear searching and the political comedians’ presumes and instantiates a baseline claim: there is ideology here. Yes, there is the ideology of the auteur, but there are also Welles’s political commitments. So far no one has been talking about those, but they, too, are remarkably consistent across his career. The politics of The Other Side of the Wind are very nearly Welles’s version of the politics of the Popular Front. As Michael Denning has argued, Welles is fascinated by the psyche of the great man, ideally the great media magnate, and he remained so. Like Kane, The Wind begins with its protagonist’s death. Like Kane, The Wind involves a lot of drunken stumbling by its aging hero. Like Kane, The Wind revolves around documentary practice. In Kane, that is the “News on the March” sequence that gets the investigative narrative rolling. In The Wind, the documentary is essentially everywhere, and the film-within-the-film centers on the explicit sexuality — the nudes on the march — that was prohibited in 1940s Hollywood.

Denning contends that “Welles’s gigantic hero-villains were both fascinating and repulsive, tricksters that disobeyed any straightforward political logic.” At the same time, the Popular Front context of Welles’s work in the ’30s and ’40s made it clear that despite any ambiguities, these were fascist showmen — fascist because they were showmen. But as Welles evolved into a perpetual showman himself, the political equation had to be rejiggered. Where the analogy between Kane and Hearst was irresistible, no one involved in making The Wind drew any comparison between Hannaford and Nixon, much less between the chaotic party scene and the political ferment in the wake of the ’68 revolts.

To put it more polemically: The sort of politically prophetic credit extended to Francis Ford Coppola’s The Conversation with its magic anticipations of Nixon’s taping obsession doesn’t seem to apply to Welles and his equally tape-obsessed movie. Instead, just as so much Welles criticism forgot his Popular Front politics until Denning put them back at the center, so the broader significance of The Wind has been unexplored, and the film, perhaps, already reduced to a guessing game of autobiography.

The nearly empty “Zabriskie Pointed” politics of Hannaford’s film seem to short-circuit any political reading. Still, the shadow of Vietnam appears in Kodar’s vague role as a bomber in the film-within-the-film and in her spooky silence, playing to and playing up the taciturn Indian stereotype. (She is in redface without makeup.) That colonial/genocidal undertone comes to the fore on several occasions at the ranch, but, again, critics seem to have ignored it in favor of formal fascination. At one point, Huston smashes his glass against a wooden Indian. At another, he viciously recounts a story of white genocidal violence to Kodar before presenting her with an engraved Indian bone. This, too, Welles loved about his great men: their power and their arrogance make them ideal candidates to confess the violence that underlay the whole place. That such confessions take the form of verbal abuse captures the ambivalence at the heart of the project.

In They’ll Love Me, Welles explains that although his protagonist is a he-man, “This picture we’re gonna make is against ‘he-men.’” Welles makes that rejection real by showing that Hannaford’s sexuality is a mask for his repressed homosexual attractions. He puts the insight in the mouth of the Pauline Kael figure (Susan Strasberg), and for her insight Hannaford smacks her across the face. Repressed homosexuality as biographical key is cliché, but within Welles’s lingering, post–Popular Front conception of the tycoon, that cliché overwhelmed a longer reckoning with mass-mediated populism.

Stepping back into the autobiography, it is clear that Hannaford’s sexuality isn’t Welles’s, but his relationship to Bogdanovich’s Otterlake is. As Alan Cumming explains in his voiceover narration to They’ll Love Me, over the course of the production “Peter Bogdanovich went from playing exactly who he was in 1970, a young writer, to exactly who he was in 1974, a celebrated movie director.” Bogdanovich, in character, provides the tag: “My book on Hannaford’s been cancelled. Indefinitely.” (He published This Is Orson Welles in 1998.)

For a time, Rich Little played the young critic-acolyte-turned-director, but he left the movie after three weeks (accounts differ as to why: his time was up, he was fired, the usual Wellesian fog). Bogdanovich, who’d been playing a documentarian while doing his Jerry Lewis impression, stepped in to replace Little. With that change, the mania or broad comedy of the initial conception of the film gave way to a more comprehensive sad-sackery. (The mania survives in some bullhorn addresses, a sequence where Hannaford and Kodar shoot up dummies, and, regrettably, a pair of wandering “midgets” who break into the wine cellar and also set off fireworks.) The final stretch of Hannaford’s movie (and nearly the movie as a whole) suffers from this tonal shift. We see a naked Kodar standing amid the titular wind. It blows the head off a dummy, and it knocks over the giant flat of a building facade, very nearly crushing her. The scene is a hyper-Freudian vision of Buster Keaton in Steamboat Bill, Jr. Kodar then takes a pair of scissors and Psycho-stabs away at a plastic-shrouded, chicken-wire Watts Tower that is ludicrously phallic, but, alas, not actually ludicrous.

Those around Hannaford seem to see his films as confessing the sexuality he can’t admit to himself. That is the reduced, if not entirely depoliticized, version of Welles’s 1930s politics, where the Mercury Theater struck a series of what Denning calls “compromises between Popular Front struggles and the culture industry.” To escape, or at least dwell in those compromises, Welles amplified his ambivalence about his heroes and turned reflexive. “Kane’s story becomes a hall of mirrors in which the cultural apparatus sees itself,” Denning explains in one version. By making his tycoon a media baron, Welles “allows the mass media to reflect on the mass media.” The Wind takes to heart that reflexive auteurism and so short-circuits its power. The Popular Front contradictions — between populism and dependence on mass media, between horror and admiration for the tycoon — have lost their purchase.

In place of contradictions, we now find an endless ordering of preferences, a vast bibliotechnological apparatus that promises to allow us to locate ourselves according to protocols constantly reinvented and reprioritized. Last year at Netflix, that looked like American Vandal, with its own stunning party sequence. This year, it is The Other Side of the Wind. Welles was the wetware version of the algorithm, constantly reconfiguring his movie to serve his own evolving preferences. Watching him work, his collaborators saw the future.

That future takes many forms. One is the humanist narrative of The Wind, with its impossible coherences and endless prolepses. Another is the contradictory omniscience of They’ll Love Me, with its ability to cash any prediction or any retrospection at the bank of Wellesian discourse. A third appears in the short making-of documentary, Final Cut for Orson, in which Video Gorillas, a gutty startup in an L.A. garage, saved the production, or at least saved it a lot of money. Welles left behind a workprint including several fine-cut sequences and several other assemblages. But he also left behind 100 hours of negative, a pile of reversal film in smaller gauges designed to simulate the documentary footage, and a patchy, largely handwritten, logging system. Finding the original negative for the edited sequences in the workprint would have been tremendously time-consuming and, as a result, prohibitively expensive (according to market logics, which, again, are taken for granted in this process). Enter Video Gorillas, which has developed a way of largely automating the intensely laborious processes of conforming and comparing. First, all the negative (and reversal) was scanned in. Then it was digitally compared with the edited, positive footage through the use of some very complex math and the reduction of images to “Frequency Domain Descriptor Interest Points.” (It only pays attention to the things that change.)

At one end, then, Neville treats Welles’s entire corpus as a means of narrating its endless and endlessly predictable auteurism. They’ll Love Me gives voice to the sense that it’s all just waiting for a voiceover. At another end, Welles’s own chaotic improvisation of the party reveals itself to his collaborators as endlessly, surprisingly a means to his prescripted-yet-evolving ends. In between, we have Video Gorillas, where that evolution finds its source and destination.

Inside the New Hollywood, The Other Side of the Wind might have found its place alongside mode retro entertainments and downbeat genre exercises, and it might have signaled Welles’s continuing political commitments even in the wake of their relevance. The Wind arrives already accompanied by its avatars, whether those are its trailing documentaries or its corporate neighbors. Welles never finished it — thwarted, of course, but also enamored with the endless process of preferring: this shot to that, this cut to that, this actor to that. Now at Netflix, the movie takes its place in a matrix of possible preferences, where our own endlessly monetized processes of preferring have been part of the plan all along.

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J. D. Connor is an associate professor of Cinema and Media Studies at the University of Southern California. He is the author of Hollywood Math and Aftermath:The Economic Image and the Digital Recession (2018) and The Studios After the Studios (2015).

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