#they literally state it's a political statement IN THE FILM

[butterfly-in-the-moonlight]

hey can we slap people's magazine?

[fairuzfan]

Is there anything I can do to help Palestinians besides call my representatives and beg them to stop killing people?

This is a great question. There are a few things you can do—just off the top of my head:

BDS (Boycott, Divest, Sanction) https://bdsmovement.net/

Direct Action https://www.palestineaction.org/

Urge your University/School/Organization to put out a statement denouncing Israel

Organize a Protest/Participate in a local one

You might already be doing this but while calling your reps, tell them that as a voter, you're unwilling to support them in the upcoming election unless they urge the White House to take a stand against Israel and stop funding them

Share art/writing/films around Palestinian culture

If you're part of a union, ask them what they're doing to urge their industry leaders to take a stand against Israel + pressure the White House OR urge them to start a strike/walkout/etc if they're not doing anything already

Talk with your friends IRL about Palestine, whether in an activist capacity or watching a movie or literally anything

Reach out to a mosque to see if you can help them with anything

See if your city/state council has put out a statement in support of Gazans. If not, try to push them to do so.

Donate to Palestine Legal or Direct Action if you have some money to spare

KEEP TALKING ON SOCIAL MEDIA!!!!!!!! PLEASE!!!!!!!!!!!!

I know some of these don't feel like they have as big of an impact on helping Palestinians, but we do need to make an effort not to forget their humanity in the face of continued erasure and the media's sensationalist rhetoric.

Talking on social media and posting—while not seeming like a lot—does SO much. I know in USAmerica, it's like yelling into a void, but political analysts are saying that most of the "Global South" has completely lost any amount of goodwill it may have had the past few years. Hopefully, countries will start to put sanctions and embargoes en masse on the US and Israel soon.

Our goals here are BOTH short-term and long-term. We hope for the life and liberation of the Palestinian people, so anything that you can think of might help at some point in the future is encouraged to at least try.

If anyone else has any more ideas, feel free to reblog and add on. Thank you for asking, and here is to a liberated Palestine where Palestinians can live and thrive without fear.

[themattress]

OK, I need to say something because I am sick of this garbage.

The ONLY true statement in this exchange is "while he's aping Vader visually, Kylo is not meant to be cool". And in that regard, there is no "swerve". Kylo Ren stayed the same vulnerable loser throughout the entire Sequel Trilogy. The whole point was that for as much power as he gained and as far as he advanced on the Dark Side, he could never escape being the awkward, conflicted young man he was at his core. The Ben Solo in him just wouldn't die no matter how hard he tried to kill him. This was a contrast to Vader, who had successfully killed the Anakin in him until Luke resurrected it. Kylo wishes he could become the cold, unfeeling machine-like being Vader was, but no matter what he can't ever pull it off.

Everything else here is hogwash, plain and simple.

The filmmakers NEVER intended for Kylo Ren to be an alt-right Neo Nazi allegory. That wasn't even a thing that was commonly being talked about in political discussions when The Force Awakens was being written and filmed; it being released after Donald Trump entered the Presidential race was pure happenstance and wasn't something Lucasfilm wanted to parallel in their story. But even so, the film already had a way more obvious parallel:

Being a "neo fascist" is the point of Hux's character. It's not the point of Kylo Ren's. He wasn't supposed to be a "radicalized well-off white boy" because for one thing him being white means jack shit in the Star Wars universe and for another he wasn't even all that well-off given that he was born into one of the most fucked-up families in the galaxy and mentally targeted by Palpatine from a young age. He didn't just go down some pipeline willingly in spite of his parents; an evil old space wizard was literally talking in his brain and constantly trying to drag him down that pipeline! This was stated right from the start in The Force Awakens: Snoke (read: Palpatine) corrupted Ben, he didn't do it all by himself. He's not supposed to be a "giant incel man-baby throwing a temper tantrum whenever he doesn't get his way" because for one thing where the fuck did he ever suggest not getting laid was a pressing issue for him and for another him being a man-child prone to violent tantrums wasn't about him "not getting his way", it was about how stunted his growth was thanks to Palpatine being in his head for most of his life. It's an aspect of him you're supposed to feel pity for.

The "it's incredibly obvious messaging" is the perfect encapsulation of the problem. These kinds of fans don't want a story, just a reaffirming message. They don't want a character, they want a strawman they can despise and not have to think about or feel any deeper and conflicting emotions toward. But that isn't Kylo Ren, it's not ever what he was designed to be. It's a shame they saw a "white boy" in a fascist organization and then just wrote his entire character in their heads from there rather than actually engage with the character as he actually was on screen. Because while evil, it's a pretty fascinating and layered character.

[morsking]

earlier today some comrades and i had a discussion on dialectical materialism and we spent a lot of time talking about the unity of opposites. the unity of opposites argues the way in which concepts are understood is by comparing things that exist in opposition. opposites can only exist in relation to one another and cannot be inherently defined in isolation. the example given in rob sewell's text is light and darkness, cold and heat, life and death, the finite and infinity, thinking and being, among others. we understand that in existence, under the laws of physics as we understand them, all matter must change and move and though things can be opposites and therefore seem irreconcilable, the fact of the matter (heh) is that just like the yin and yang, you will find in everything traces of its opposite. that is why under capitalism, you will inevitably find the seeds of socialism germinating, and once socialism flourishes, within you'll find the seeds of communism. this is because capitalism in itself came from the seeds of feudalism, and that too came from a pre-existing shape of society that kept evolving in an endless chain of cause and effect where conditions necessitated change. and that chain predates and will likely transcend communism into a new form of society, on and on, at least according to how i understood the text.

understanding this gave me a greater appreciation of the politics of the film snowpiercer, which i just watched with my roommate tonight, purely on a whim. the engine of the titular train is touted as eternal. it'll never stop and it'll never die, and as such humanity can keep existing long after the earth was frozen. the inherent contradiction of this statement is the engine itself needs constant maintenance. it is only as eternal as its creator, wilford, can keep throwing parts (and eventually, people) into it to keep it running. no matter what, the engine, though being described as infinite and mechanical, still exists within the constraint of that which is human to keep moving. and that contradiction is underscored by the fact the seemingly eternal (infinite) engine can only exist in the constrained (finite) space of the train which is stressed to have a head (front, beginning) and a tail (back, end).

thought and therefore people exist in a state that is markedly limited. an alternative form of existence that does not split people into the binary of front (bourgeois) and tail (proletariat) passengers is violently discouraged, because the existence of the train and dominion over it by wilford can only justify themselves through that dialectic, that life can only happen inside and that death is the only thing that waits outside. there is an extended contradiction in that message in the form of wilford culling the population at the back of the train periodically so the train can sustain itself by not straining its stockpiled resources. meaning that even inside the supposed sanctuary of the train, people will die arbitrarily. wilford and his cronies all stress this is natural, that there is a preordained relationship of sacrifices and beneficiaries, and those at the tail are the intended sacrificed who must not rise above their station (heh). furthermore, this highlights the contradiction that though humanity survives on the train, everyone is, in some form or another, objectified and dehumanized within it to justify the absurd inequality and abuses that occur within as people are thought as parts of a machinery that need to be in place for it to work. this metaphor is made literal by how children from the tail younger than 5 become unwilling replacements for extinct parts of the engine, meaning the system, the machine, only works by breaking people so profoundly they cease to think of themselves as human and can only think of themselves as machinery.

this is all so wilford can enjoy the luxuries of the train unimpeded and undisturbed, far away from the squalor of the tail. he has built the train, yet has prevented himself from running its whole length, of seeing the end to his beginning. this is in opposition to protagonist curtis, who has seen the train end to end and thus can see it for what it is in a way wilford thinks is identical to his yet could not be more different. wilford doesn't have a high opinion of humanity, as he tells curtis that people are naturally selfish and destructive despite the fact he built the train in such a way that deliberately fostered conditions that turned people desperate for food at the tail to resort to murder and cannibalism and people at the front to be selfish and destructively hedonistic. he should have no reason to want humanity to survive if he's that convinced humanity is inherently unworthy, and yet he knows he can only enjoy leadership, recognition, and comfort by having people to exist below him and shape their behavior to conform to his need of preserving a stagnant hierarchy he is aware he can only enjoy so long as he is alive. he wants the train to be his legacy, for it to be eternal in a way he cannot be as a mortal. humanity in the train will stay the same and he has no hope of the world outside being different, and if the world outside cannot be different then humanity is also forbidden from being different. within the train you cannot think, you can only be, yet you can only be because one the thought of how you can exist has been created by someone else who operates under a self-serving and restricted view of what humanity is. wilford's definition of humanity in nature only works in an artificial space.

but dialectical materialism is about change and evolution, about events that build up over time and burst into a force that sets things in motion once more for the next major event to happen. though wilford had thought he created a societal structure that was permanent, he unwittingly set the conditions for individuals who wanted to overturn it and discard it to rise and succeed. that is why namgoong, the train's security specialist, wants to cause a literal explosion that will blow the train apart and free him and his daughter yona from existence within the train. he has noticed that for years, the ice covering the earth has melted gradually, meaning that heat is slowly restoring in the frozen world and it just needs a push to keep falling apart and uncover what remains. within a frozen world, there was the undeniable and real potential for a world that thawed. sooner or later, there would not be a need for the train as the world changes, and people would have to (re-)learn to live in this changed world, themselves needing to change the relationship they have to it and themselves. which is why neither yona nor timmy, a boy kidnapped to be a replacement part in the engine, have surviving parents or comrades at the end of the movie. they too must learn to survive in a world with traces of life without their predecessors to guide them. and that is why the message of the movie is to embrace change and transform throughout the trajectory of socioeconomic change from one structure to another rather than limit humanity, a species that constantly needs to overcome its limits collectively, rather than individually, to survive as a whole.

[tactidoll]

Dollypop, got any rap recs?

so ive been planning on doing a series of playlists as a kinda introduction to rap, especially so after the dot vs drake beef has put rap back in the spotlight and made more people than ever actually aware of the lyrical content of these songs, its mostly been an issue of executive function beating my ass 5 ways to sunday lately, but suffice to say rap recommendations has been on my mind a lot lately

i could probably go on for a few hrs about hip hop and its place as the culmination of all music prior, but rap is a genre that more so than others rewards album listening so i will more often than not recommend albums over singles/tracks but ill try my best to isolate what i consider to be a well rounded list (no links cus i dont use spotify lmao)

theres a lotta ways to split up rap and hip hop as a whole into a thousand micro genres, especially when you take regions into consideration but i think im gonna go with just 15 tracks that cover as many bases as i can and give a little explanation for each track starting with

NY State of Mind - Nas: ny state of mind is THE classic in my books, dj premier provides the perfect boom bap beat for nas to make the final push to usher in a new generation of rap, literally sampling eric b and rakim in the chorus, the previous pair to bring the genre from the 80’s into the 90’s, furthering that push with more complex rhyme schemes and blending the street/gangsta rap of nwa and wu-tang with the jazzy introspection and philosophy of de la and tribe, a perfect set piece for the album of a desperate kid rapping and telling his stories like its his last day on earth because it just might be

Doomsday – MF DOOM: the manifesto of a super villain, a rulebook on rap, a re-emergence of a forgotten rapper, after the death of his brother and issues with the record label dropping KMD Zev Love X disappeared in ‘94 and then in ‘99 MF DOOM dropped operation: doomsday, the dizzying rhyme schemes and word play, the casual humor and pop culture and sampling referencing lends to a true statement of a song, that DOOM was here and was gonna change the world

4th Chamber – GZA: a dozen wu-tang tracks could’ve appeared on this list and all would be justified but 4th chamber is my favourite by far, starting with the now iconic samurai or kung fu film sample and then kicking into a crazy intro beat that calms slightly in time for ghostface killah to come in and pick it right back up with the first verse of this slick posse cut

Mathematics – Mos Def: Yasiin Bey Is a genius plain and simple, another track produced by preemo another masterpiece of a beat, Bey raps about the sociological statistics that work to keep the black population down in this mathematically driven guide through the politics of the late 90’s

You Got Me – The Roots: this track really shows just how good live instrumentation can be, black thought is one of the greatest of all time, simple as frankly I don’t have too much more to say its just a brilliant song

Wesley’s Theory – Kendrick Lamar: the opening to the greatest album of all time, opening with the mission statement of the album, the sample at the start before the james brown esque hit me pulls the tone back down to earth, part one of the track being a young kdots reactions to the money hes been looking for and part two kendrick plays the role of uncle sam the mascot of white supremacy looking to exploit over eager black artists and talents and lump them with a bill and lock them up when they cant pay it, the deep seeped politics, the groove of thundercat and george clinton of the parliments and funkadelic collectives and the dr dre break really helps sets the tone of the album

Jazz (We’ve Got) – A Tribe called Quest: the perfect jazz rap song, the beat was original made by pete rock before being remade by q-tip, a quintessential classic of the genre simple as

Shook Ones pt 2 – Mobb Deep: the greatest gangsta rap song of all time and frankly its not close its something spectacular, the hardest two 19 year olds ever sounded, over a dark almost evil beat produced by havoc this track is an absolute landmark for not just queensbridge but the entirety of the east coast

Introvert – Little Simz: this track is nothing short of spectacular, a powerful, cinematic, orchestral masterpiece, deep diving into her inner turmoil and her roots, the corruption of the british government, this song shook me to my core when I first listened to simbi, a rallying cry that calls for a war against the oppressing forces further tightening the chains if we ever are to be freed from the oppression

Don’t Cry – J Dilla: this song is gorgeous, chopping up I cant stand (to see you cry) by the escorts into a wonderful beat, made by jay dee in the final throws of his life, half worked on while hospital bound, frequent collaborator and fellow soulquarian questlove stated that this was a message to his mother as J dilla knew the end was near

Nuthin’ But A G Thang – Dr Dre ft Snoop Dogg: the quintessential G-funk banger the genre doesn’t get better than this

SORRY NOT SORRY – Tyler, The Creator: a weird choice for this list, I wasnt sure if I wanted to include it because its so tied to tylers discography but its honestly one of the best rap songs ever when you have the context, especially when you take into account the music video where tyler and all the various versions of himself stand before an audience of ex’s and other notable judgemental presences in his life, as he kills almost every version of himself barring the ‘ugliest’ sides of himself in igor and goblin era tyler potentially insinuating those parts of him still reside inside him

I Used to Love H.E.R – Common: this song is so very important, maybe the best use of metaphor in the whole genre, a fallen out of love story for that very same genre, fantastic storytelling and a great beat by no I.D. one of the most important producers and figures in hip hop out of chicago

Aquemini – Outkast: the title track from one the duos third album and really the record that put the dirty south on the radar on a nationwide level, a sign of their decision to stick together for as long as possible, andres verses really shows hes one of the all time greats and that big boi is not far behind at all

Hazard Duty Pay – JPEGMAFIA: this song was all I listened to for a few weeks after it release, an aggressive single verse track over a soulful beat what more could you want

[howl-fantasies]

Good day! I dont know if your request are open but if they are,

Can I request a story where Ed and Victor constantly butt heads with each other for y/n's attention/affection while y/n in the background is just filming the whole thing with Oswald in her lap? I adore Riddler x y/n and Victor x y/n in your stories, but I wanna give Oswald some love too[:

Hello dear, thank you for your request! Of course you can!

Here it is. It takes place just after the Skyfall drabble and @flaysthings alternative end. Here are both if you want to read it:

SKYFALL

SKYFALL ALTERNATIVE END 1 by @flaysthings

Warning: profanities, Gotham universe: so twisted relationships, slight NSFW themes, English isn't my first language, sorry about it I'm working on it.

Word Count: 2.029

UNDIVIDED ATTENTION

"RED!" Screamed both voices at the same time, just before a deafening silence took its place in Cobblepot's living room.

"Correct." A feminine bored voice sighed from one on the couch. A camera hanging nonchalantly in her right hand. "But it wasn't too difficult to figure it out, I mean, I always wear something red... You just have to look at me or sleep with me to know it..."

"Now dear, don't sound so defeated, and please, don't bring your sexual life in this mess. I just wanted to make sure both idiots knew the most basic things about you before hardening our little game," Oswald's own bored voice said.

Currently perched on the woman's lap like he would on his throne, the king of Gotham threw the little card abhorring purple and black questions marks he was holding nonchalantly on the floor.

"Care to explain, again, why we are doing this stupid game while I could be outside beheading some dude who wronged you? And why do I have to film it all? " She asked, nodding politely when Cobblepot presented a cup of tea in front of her mouth.

A sign of his head encouraged her to let him help her drink the warm liquid. "Don't worry, it's not too hot, I made sure of it." He added, earning dirty glares from the two other men in the room. "To answer your question," continued Oswald when he was satisfied about the amount of tea she drunk.

"First, you're not ready to go on a french killing spree my dear. You were shot badly two days ago and still need to recover. A beheading would open your stitches again.

"Second, because we have to stop this stupid competition between your dear husband and... your...uh... other informal one? The camera is for other purposes, mainly for my own entertainment, later." His statement made her raise a brow. "Excuse me?"

"Don't try to complicate things, Oswald!" Spat Riddler between gritted teeth from his own couch. "I was the one who found Y/N bleeding in a shady alley. I was the one who started to stop the bleeding and make sure she wasn't freezing to death.

"So, logically speaking I had to be the one who transport her to Leslie's clinic." The man in green ranted while making frantic movements with both hands and arms.

"Logically speaking, it would have to be ME, her fucking HUSBAND, who should have held her, transported her and monitored her state during the operation. Not you, fucking nerd." Victor hissed as his hands were clenching the armchairs of his seat so hard the wood whined.

"Ah!" Ed scoffed. "Because you're a freaking surgeon now? So well versed into human anatomy you would have helped Lee when she asked someone to literally plunged both hands inside of Y/N ribs cage?!"

That was it. Victor's right hand rushed under his arm to grab his gun in his holster as he jumped out of his couch, Ed imitating him but seizing his brand new cane, ready to smash the electric part of it on the other man's face.

"Want me to show you the whole extent of my human anatomy knowledge, Nygma?" Threatened Zsasz with a numb voice. The kind of voice - with him - meaning you were now walking on thin ice. As thin as rice paper.

A kind of voice, which made Y/N zoom as much as she could to be able to capture the wrinkles just between the hitman's eyebrows. Now she started to have some twisted kind of fun.

Ed felt a cold drop of sweat licking his neck and back. He never liked Zsasz. Never. His mere presence was enough to make him cringe. But he wouldn't change what happened two days ago.

Y/N was barely alive and he was, with Leslie, her best chance to stay alive. He wouldn't lose her to contempt Victor's bruised ego. Out of the question. And he would never let go of a chance to be close to Gotham's no.2 assassin. Sorry not sorry.

"Gentlemen!" Screeched Oswald who hadn't moved from his cozy spot. "Let's not repeat the shooting contest, which took place in Lee's clinic. I'm not going to threaten you with a scalpel, but I swear to impale both of you on a freaking umbrella should you not stop THIS INSTANT!"

"You still owe me an explanation concerning this shooting by the way, " added Y/N's tired voice from under Cobblepot, who immediately turn around to scrutinize her.

"Nothing much to tell dear, just continue to film. Victor shot Ed's privates parts. Ed dodged and also tried to shoot his jewels and missed. End of the story. You're tired. Don't concern yourself with their stupid shenanigans." He cooed, just before turning on his spot again to glare at the two other men still facing each other with their gun and cane out.

"Stop it! Both of you! Y/N isn't feeling well enough to kick some sense into your thick heads." Yelled Cobblepot. Nygma and Zsasz didn't move for a good minute. Still killing each other visually. Slowly, both rose their weapon and finally put it back into their respective place.

"Good." Spat Oswald. "Now sit back. Let's resume our game." The little man clapped his hands once and leaned a bit in order to reach the deck of cards he had to put on the coffee table in front of him when Ed and Victor lost their calm.

Once again, Oswald shuffled the cards before clearing his throat. "Where were we? Ahem. Ah! Yes. I like this one. You're trap with Y/N in a burning building. All issues are condemned. You're doomed. But! She isn't panicking. Why?" He asked.

Zsasz and Ed sighed heavily.

"Cause she has a rocket launcher."

"Cause she was the one responsible for the arson and knows another way out."

Silence again. And the sound of squeaking armchairs from both seats occupied by Edward and Victor. "Well?" Asked Oswald, turning a bit to be able to catch Y/N's eyes.

The woman groaned loudly and let her back fall brutally against the seat back. "Oof! Fucking hell!" She cursed when white hot pain fused into her whole body. "Language!" Chastised Oswald automatically as he took the camera from her hands and put it delicately on the furniture in front of them.

He leaned back, and let her took a shaking breath to ease her pain. "So? Who's correct?" He pressed again.

Another Groan from her. "Fucking both." She said. "Victor is right, I would have a rocket launcher. And because of it, Ed is right too, I would know another way to get out.

" As he's also correct in his reasoning: if a building is burning to the ground and Firefly isn't in the middle of the flames, then the culprit would be me."

Now she was facepalming hard. "Look, it's not going anywhere. Plus it's embarrassing. We aren't organizing a huge lottery, and I'm not its fucking first price!"

"Absolutely. You're my wife. End of the story." Added Victor as he was throwing the cushion of his seat to Ed's face. Nygma yelled in outrage and smashed his left palm on the armrest.

"A wife you coaxed into the wedding! Screw you Zsasz! I am still working on finding a lawyer who would agree to send you divorce papers and I won't stop until finding them!" He shouted, also throwing his own cushion at the other man face, earning a petty middle finger from his opponent.

"Good luck with that one, nerd." The bald man said sadistically with one of his shit-eating grins.

As Oswald was opening his mouth to screech again a shot resonated in the living room, making Ed scream and jump on his seat and another made Victor pulls his legs up and cross them under him.

"What the hell Y/N?!" Yelled Edward as he was looking at the bullet hole a few millimeters from his left foot. "I saved your life!" He continued.

The woman nodded in an aggravated way. "Yeah, that's why I missed. Same for you, dearest." She added in a dangerous neutral tone. "Yeah, I figured it out myself. Since I know my wife well."

Another shot answered him, piercing the cushion just next to his ear. "Love you too", he mockingly purred earning the middle finger from her.

"I said no guns for you until you fully recovered Y/N!" Hissed Oswald as he grabbed the barrel of her weapon and pulled it out of her grasp. It joined the camera on the coffee table. "Where did you even hide it?! I asked Olga to search you before our meeting!"

The woman looked at him like a second head just popped next to his current one. "Did you think I was just happy to see you dear?" She taunted with a wolfish grin which made a blush explodes on Oswald's cheeks and neck. "It's not funny Y/N! Stop being lewd!" He yelled in a too high-pitched voice.

Her face lost her mischievous glee soon, though. Becoming all bored again. "Look. Everybody in this room knows about my favorite color, that my aka when I need one to work for someone is Persephone, and that I have a fucking tattoo on the back of my upper thigh, just under my fucking buttock.

"You all saw it two days ago. Gods, even Olga saw it and called me a whore in her natal babbling for it. So stop the questions Oswald. We're just wasting time and energy." She sighed while playing with a wild string on her own armchair.

Cobblepot gritted his teeth loudly. She was right, he knew. But it didn't solve their current issue. And he had enough of Ed and Victor constant head butting to gain her undivided attention like two little kids. "So, what do you suggest then? Because it has to STOP!"

The only woman in the room shrugged. "Not my problem. I'm not their mom", She spat before leaning a bit to be able to see them, despite Oswald still perched on her thighs .

"You're fucking grown men, act like it guys. I don't know, kill each other or something. Again. Your rivalry isn't my fucking problem." She said.

"Victor is my husband. I have made my peace with it a long time ago, Ed. And it's convenient. And he's terrific it in bed." The hitwoman added making Ed cringed in disgust and Victor beam like the sun. But his smile was quickly ripped off his face when his dear wife continued.

"And Ed is one of my most precious frenemy in town. Always was and always will, Victor. I love his stupid wit. His riddles amuse me beyond measure, his awkwardness too. It's just too cute", She added.

Oswald felt two hands grab him under his arms and lift him up from his sitting position on her lap. His feet gently found the ground, and he turned to be able to see Y/N also on her feet, dusting her leather suit. Her little scolding had the merit to let Edward and Victor froze on the spot.

Their three gazes were now on her, scrutinizing her moves like birds of prey. They followed her when she walked across the immense room and when she brutally stopped in front of the open double doors. "I'll not divorce my husband. Ed. Good old bitch me is way too loyal for that." She muttered.

"But I'll gladly sleep with Ed or start any romance he might want, Victor, should you ever betray me again like you did with Sofia." She added with a devious smirk.

Chaos. That's what she created when the three men's voices started to shout in perfect sync. Absolute chaos, in where she only was able to hear her own name being called, as well as a "Don't touch my camera you brutes!"

She also had enough, though. And did what she was best known for: living the total crazy mess she actively created without a glance back but a way too large smile on her sadistic face. Like she just told Ed, she was a bitch. And didn't have any problem with acting like one.

A/N - I hope you liked it dear! Have a beautiful day/night and take care!

[theageofthemovies]

PORCILE - (Pier Paolo Pasolini, 1969)

I (re)watched yesterday this harsh, uncomfortable, apparently cryptic semi-unknown, if great, philosophic movie and, after the end, I confirmed and heightened the judgment I stated many years ago: "Porcile" is the most sincere (and consequently: the most outrageous) among all the movies (better: artworks) of the great Italian literate and filmmaker."Porcile" is a poor film: it was shot in a month with a ridiculous budget and has been considered by decades a Pasolini's minor movie despite, at a closer look, it appears as one of his richest to the extent that it is capable to dissect at its limits the apparent contradiction of a modern thought (his) that, indeed, cannot actually exist without continuously confronting with an "archaic heritage" that saves that sense of "sacred" (the infinite, the entirety, the inner human nature) that is crucial and essential to the soul of a poet/phylosophe.One initial stone inscription makes clear the theme: "After well questioned our conscience, we have stated to devour you because of your disobedience». that is: we (the public opinion); you( Pasolini himself).The movie is made of two separate (but intersected) narrations; the first story, set in France in the XVIII century, tells of a young man (Jean-Pierre Léaud) who, neglecting the love offering of his promised wife (Anne Wiazemsky), refuses any social behavior and has shameful sexual intercourses with pigs... ; the second story takes place in the Middle Age in a wild, desolate, vulcanic land (actually the Mount Etna) and tells of the chief of a bunch of murderous outlaws (Pierre Clémenti) who kills his father and eats his flesh. Both these transgressive "counter-heroes" will end their life eaten by animals....The meaning of "Porcile" all relies in trasnsgression; it is committed to demonstrate the statement that "the saints, like the different, anticonformist and disobedient people, don't make the history but suffer it" (PPP), they act by and for themselves and, by their diversity, they are doomed to die as victims of their anti-conformism, of their never be lined up with the masses.Pasolini's merit stands in his will to share with his readers and his audience this suffered message, the only irrepressible way that could allow him to bear the weight of the many crusades brought against him without retreating on the easy aristocratic position of "artist disengaged from the world" (and this is a reason for which we should never cease to be grateful to him).Pasolini says; "... the film bears also a political meaning; its esplicit object is Germany (its historical situation) but the target is the ambiguous relation between the new and the old capitalism; Germany has only been chosen as it represents a borderline case. The implicit poliitical content of the movie is a desperate distrust in all historical societies, consequently the genre of it (if there is one) is: apocalyptic anarchy. Being "the sense" of my movie so atrocious and terrible I only could treat it: a) by a quasi-contemplative detachment; b) with humor».The meaning is clear: after the horrors of the recent history (Hitler's Germany) we have the social desolations of the new capitalism. Julian's starvation (Léaud) is the result of this dramatic passage and his sad end (to be eaten by the pigs) blatantly tells of the impossibility of adapting to a reality in which "everything" becomes conformism (to be a revolutionary included, how the last sequence demonstrates).Similarly touching is the end of the "cannibal" Clémenti  who, weaponed by his "apocalyptic anarchy" (and the resulting general contestation on an esistential plan), kicks, bites, beats whoever would submit him to a power that unavoidably would subjugate him. He enacts a man (or an idea), that is without pity just like those who would reduce him to a state of slavery (that he could never accept). His choice is so extreme that he prefers to move freely on the cold slopes of the Etna eating butterflies, snakes and human flesh, pushed from the instinctive pulse to live in contact with a sacred nature that has nothing of "moral".A unique movie, a deep reflection on the various ways to consider the human condition.

R.M.

[mythologeekwriter]

Israeli director receives death threats after officials call Berlin film festival ‘antisemitic’ (msn.com)

[Full article under cut]

An Israeli film-maker who won one of the top prizes at the Berlin film festival has said German officials’ description of the awards ceremony as “antisemitic” has led to death threats and the physical intimidation of family members, causing him to hold off plans to return to Israel.

Yuval Abraham, 29, was on Saturday awarded the Berlinale’s best documentary award for No Other Land, which charts the eradication of Palestinian villages in Masafer Yatta in the West Bank.

Abraham’s acceptance speech, in which he decried a “situation of apartheid” and called for a ceasefire in Gaza, was one of several moments during the closing ceremony in which film-makers expressed solidarity with Palestine. It sparked an outcry in German media the following day, with several politicians alleging the speeches had been “antisemitic”.

“To stand on German soil as the son of Holocaust survivors and call for a ceasefire – and to then be labelled as antisemitic is not only outrageous, it is also literally putting Jewish lives in danger,” Abraham told the Guardian.

“I don’t know what Germany is trying to do with us,” he added. “If this is Germany’s way of dealing with its guilt over the Holocaust, they are emptying it of all meaning.”

Abraham said he had planned to return to Israel the day after the closing ceremony, but that he changed his plans during a stop-off in Greece, when he learned that Israeli media outlets were describing his speech as antisemitic, with some citing German officials.

As well as receiving death threats on social media, Abraham said several individuals turned up at his family members’ home in southern Israeli, causing them to vacate the premises out of fear for their safety.

Abraham, whose grandmother was born in a concentration camp and most of whose father’s family was killed in the Holocaust, said: “You can criticise our acceptance speech, you can say that we should have mentioned the events of 7 October – all that is legitimate. But Germany is weaponising a term that was designed to protect Jews, not only to silence Palestinians but also to silence Jews and Israelis who are critical of the occupation and use the word apartheid. This is also dangerous because it devalues the term antisemitism.”

Abraham’s Palestinian film-making partner, Basel Adra, said during Saturday’s ceremony that he struggled to celebrate his film’s success while people in Gaza were “being slaughtered and massacred”, and urged Germany to cease arms exports to Israel. Abraham said he was concerned for the safety of Adra, who has since returned to his village in the West Bank, which is surrounded by Israeli settlements.

“Basel lives under occupation and the army or settlers can take revenge against him at any moment,” Abraham said. “He is in much greater danger than me.”

The backlash against the Berlinale ceremony in Germany also involved calls for the resignation of the minister of state for culture, Green party politician Claudia Roth, who was seen applauding Abraham and Adra’s speech in footage of the event.

Roth’s office tried to clarify that she had clapped at the Israeli but not the Palestinian half of the duo in a statement on X on Monday. Her applause “was directed at the Jewish-Israeli journalist and film-maker Yuval Abraham, who spoke out in favour of a political solution and a peaceful coexistence in the region”. Roth’s office also said that reports of death threats against Abraham were “alarming”.

Abraham said: “This tactic of divide and conquer feels more familiar from military occupations. We will stand united, because our film is about envisioning a future where we can live together with equal rights.”

[awfullydxpeched2]

Something I did this week: 

I listened to Zombie by Fela Kuti for my album club, of the genre afrobeat. I started listening to the album, and found I did not enjoy it. The music itself did not speak to me, but I did appreciate the message behind it. It was very political music, about what was happening in Africa at the time and was making a political statement through music and was punk seeming to me, it reminded me a lot of The Clash, not in it’s musical style, but with the themes of politics embedded in it that is represented through music. 

2. Something I am researching:

I am researching the role of fashion in the goth subculture. Fashion plays a large role in one being identified as goth. While the subculture is largely music-based, fashion was one of the key parts of the subculture developing it's unique style, but it is also part of the many stereotypes that lead to misinformation about the goth subculture.

3. Response to assigned reading: Google takes on ChatGPT with Bard and shows off AI in search

To me this idea of a Google AI was a little ridiculous, I understand the idea of having it be able to plan things like events or to be similar to Chat GPT, but those things already exist, in already highly advanced formats. Amazon Alexa, for example, is an AI system that can connect to your device and do things similar to what Bard is doing, but in a more efficient format that makes programs like Bard seem unnecessary.

4. Meta-analysis of your own work as a blogger, thinker, writer, student, keeper of a commonplace book, etc.

I keep a different blog on Tumblr, mainly music related. I think I could improve my blog, not with writing necessarily, but by being consistent and having a variety of topics discussed on it. I think it could be improved by keeping a list of ideas to write on, but also having a posting schedule.

5. Five resources:

Brill, Dunja. Goth Culture: Gender, Sexuality, and Style. Berg Publishers, 2008.

Newman, Sabrina. The Evolution of Perceptions of the Goth Subculture. Johnson & Wales University, 2018.

Bibby, Michael, Goodlad, M.E Lauren, Goth: Undead Subculture (United States, Duke University Press, 2007

Hades, Mamie. What is Goth? A Brief History of the Subculture, 2022.

 The Height of Goth: 1984  A Night at the Xclusiv Nightclub in England, Annie and Pete Swallow. 

6. Two quotes:

“Publicity is, in essence, nostalgic. It has to sell the past to the future. It cannot supply itself the standards of its own claims. And so all its references to quality are bound to be retrospective and traditional. It would lack both confidence and credibility if it used a strictly contemporary language…. Publicity makes all history mythical, but to do so effectively it needs a visual language with historical dimensions… The purpose of publicity is to make the spectator marginally dissatisfied with his present way of life. Not the way of life of society, but with his own within it. It suggests that if he buys what it is offering, his life will become better.”

“But in the sense that money is the token of, and the key to, every human capacity…. those who lack the power to spend money become literally faceless. Those who have the power become loveable.”

7. Something I did this week:

I created a instructor hand out for a workshop on thesis statements for the Reading and Writing Center at Folsom Lake College, focusing on making it in an accessible format, but also to bring a new take to workshops on thesis statements as the same one has been done for a while at Folsom Lake College and my supervisors wanted it revised.

8. Responses to assigned readings (assigned for our class or for another class):

In Galili's text Ancient Affiliates, television is examined and the cultural and media practices embedded within it as a medium. The technology evolved from the telegraph and technologies that transmit images, coming from the idea that light could be transformed to signals or the concept of wave theory. Film technology was not electrical but rather developed into a different area than electronic technologies and was distinguished from electrical technologies. There were two aspects of moving imagery media, the annihilation of time and space, which is not literal, according to the text, but rather an interest in technology potentially conquesting natural concepts. With instant communication arising, it was thought electric technologies would change relations amongst nations and could potentially bring peace and harmony universally across cultures. I found this reading interesting but was confused by the idea that image-transmitting technologies, or cinema, are not electric; maybe even disagree with it. I think to me cinema is electric in a sense since it is images being transmitted amongst wavelengths. Still, these images are produced through electronic technology, like DVD players on television. My ideas on it may be incorrect, though, and I think the medium of television needs to be considered differently with the rise of streaming like Netflix, Hulu, or HBO Max.

[miralbits]

The guilty netflix

#THE GUILTY NETFLIX MOVIE#

#THE GUILTY NETFLIX WINDOWS#

They also go out of their way to soften a central plot point: so much for Pizzolatto as the screen poet of hardboiled nihilism. Indeed, whatever the connotations of the image of a city on fire, they don’t seem keen to be caught making a political statement of any sort. Shot in November 2020, the film implicitly takes place during the summer of the nationwide Black Lives Matter protests that followed the murder of George Floyd, an association unavoidably summoned by the theme of a troubled cop with a willingness to bend the rules.īut Fuqua and Pizzolatto have even less to say about this explicitly than they do about COVID. The US version of the story also introduces a different kind of subtext. Likewise, Moller’s leading man Jakob Cedergren gives a far more subdued performance than Gyllenhaal’s: his character spends a lot of his screen time processing information, where Joe typically seems to know what he’s going to hear in advance. The office in Moller’s film starts out as just an ordinary office, the visual style heightening very gradually along with the drama. One difference is that famous Scandinavian drabness. The Guilty is a remake of a 2018 Danish film. Rather, the spirit of the performance is one of grim commitment, suggesting not for the first time that Gyllenhaal may feel he’s overdue for an Oscar. Nicolas Cage as a paramedic in Martin Scorsese’s Bringing Out the Dead would be a roughly appropriate comparison, although there’s no trace of the gonzo energy which Gyllenhaal, like Cage, can summon on occasion. Left to his own devices, Gyllenhaal goes through the acting equivalent of a full-body workout: ranting, sweating, smirking, hanging his head, swivelling on his chair and testing how many shades of anguish he can convey with his big hollow eyes. But in practice they’re just voices, whose circumstances have to be imagined by Joe and by us his colleagues a few metres away are made to seem still more remote, often literally inaudible and out-of-focus. Some of the people on the other end of the line are played by well-known names, including Ethan Hawke and Riley Keough. When the dialogue invokes the image of an aquarium, it’s a hint about how we’re meant to see Joe: as a figure operating in seclusion, way down below the surface.

#THE GUILTY NETFLIX WINDOWS#

She says that her little brother Oliver is sleeping in the room, and she is terrified as her mother has left her alone.The conceit of the film is that we never cut away from Joe at the office, a stylised space characterised by dark reflective surfaces, venetian blinds that lend themselves to mood lighting, and banks of computer monitors that replace more direct windows onto the outside world. He then gets on a call with Abby, Emily’s six-year-old daughter. He immediately informs the patrolling officers about whatever information he has. Denise Wade (as Christina Vidal Mitchell) Eli Goree Rick Ethan Hawke SGT. A troubled police detective demoted to 911 operator duty scrambles to save a distressed caller during a harrowing day of revelations and reckonings.

#THE GUILTY NETFLIX MOVIE#

Joe concludes that a woman named Emily has been kidnapped by her ex-husband/partner and her two children are alone at home and in grave danger. The Guilty Photos 24 Top cast Jake Gyllenhaal Joe Baylor Riley Keough Emily Lighton (voice) Peter Sarsgaard Henry Fisher (voice) Christina Vidal SGT. Movie United States Netflix Crime Disapperance. He formulates his conjectures based upon the fragmentary conversation with Emily. Joe senses the fragility and precariousness of Emily’s situation and therefore starts asking her yes and no questions. Jake Gyllenhaal menjabat sebagai aktor utama sekaligus produser dalam film tersebut. Emily pretends to talk to her daughter, while in reality, she is making a 911 call. The Guilty, film terbaru Netflix yang hanya syuting 11 Hari (Sumber: IMDb) Penulis : Dian Septina Editor : Gading Persada JAKARTA, KOMPAS.TV - The Guilty, film orisinal Netflix bergenre thriller yang dibintangi Jake Gylenhaal dapat disaksikan mulai 1 Oktober 2021. Joe has to fill in the blanks at a lot of places. The disclosure of the information is ambiguous in nature. Emily blurs out facts about her whereabouts and the danger that she is stuck in. He often judges the inconsequential nature of problems these people have until a caller named Emily gives him a call. Though he attends these calls, we often see him losing his temper and patience on the callers. He tries to mend those broken pieces, but it becomes as difficult as bringing two like-poles of a magnet together.Ī police officer, Joe, is on duty for attending 911 distress calls. The film takes you on a journey where you see a protagonist burdened by guilt, and everything he touches just breaks into fragments.

[fortunelomo]

Backtrack movie 1989

The film becomes a sort of “opposite’s attract” love story, with a dose of Stockholm syndrome thrown in for good measure. Thus he plays the sax very poorly, but becomes drawn to Anne’s art style because she can express things so clearly. He knows what he likes, he knows what he desires, but he has difficulty in expressing it clearly. His hobby, when he’s not collecting art, is playing the saxophone. Opposite of Anne is Milo (played by Dennis Hopper), a hitman for the mafia who also has a taste for the abstract art. She isn’t truly happy, and she subconsciously wants something different, but she can’t figure this out for herself because she is so literal. While her art is easy to understand, her wants/needs/desires are not. Normally they are used for advertisements, for shallow consumption but she aims to use them for artistic merit.Ī reference to another artist, Georgia O’Keefe.īut in so making her art so literal, the abstract is sacrificed (to the point where other artists, including one played by Bob Dylan, look down on it). LED lights appeal to her because they are familiar, they are everywhere, and people are drawn to them. She specializes in LED light art for politics, personal relationships, cliches, and for statements on the excessives of average people. This is the art style of one of our main protagonists Anne Benton (played by Jodie Foster). I WALK IN AND OUT OF THE CRACKS OF MY SKULL WHEN THERE IS NOTHINGīlatant, literal, with very little wiggle room for interpretation. I AM CRAZY BORED AND FAMILIAR WITH THE ENDING The statement is made early on with one of the LED art signs which states: had yet to hit, but it was just around the corner after this film’s release. Granted I’m only speaking from my current experience, but I do recall there being plenty of 70s and 80s films that generally had bleak endings and/or formulaic plots and atmosphere/progression that seem to come straight out of an assembly line the independent film wave of the 90s. A film that is aware of how stale films in general have gotten, which is something more relevant today than back when this was made. This film is a cry for something different. Also underrated because it is misunderstood, primarily because of the TC treatment, also because few have seen the DC version, and because those who do watch it tend to view it more as a guilty pleasure than anything else (though I will admit, that’s how I initially viewed it until giving it a closer look). This is a criminally underrated film, underrated because of the ravished treatment it got by studio interference which made it more shallow than intended (to the point where Dennis Hopper demanded his name be removed from it as director). To make a long story short, the DC is far superior to the TC. Also hurts that it’s not available in widescreen unless it’s the TC version. So I had to settle for lesser video quality, which is a shame because it becomes impossible to make out some text that, while not mandatory to see, would certainly improve the viewing experience. It has never gotten a DVD release, let alone a Blu-Ray release. But as far as I can tell, it’s only available on VHS. The Director’s Cut (DC), on the other hand, can be found and can be viewed. Either way, it’s most likely the theatrical cut (TC). Sometimes the film goes by the alternative title Catch Fire, other times it goes by the intended title Backtrack. Upon my first viewing, that’s the version I saw. This is one of those films not many know about, and if they do know about it they’re probably only aware of the theatrical cut.

[hintsofhoney]

alright, *cracks fingers*. so. I’ve written up a transcript just to lay it all out for myself and get the most important parts. listen, everyone. for all intents and purposes and legal reasons, THIS WAS A DREAM. alright? I dreamt this. and he is literally the nicest human being ever so I don’t want to just like... put our whole convo out there like that, but I think he said some stuff that was important for people to hear so... here we go

my *dreamt* zoom call with thee crowley below the cut

The first five minutes (of my dream) was just a bunch of introduction stuff and talking about my favorite Supernatural seasons which eventually led to him telling me how they filmed the Season 8 finale (which they did over the span of three days, and in between takes the crew members were like dead silent, as to keep the moment going, which Mark thought was really cool. Said it was one of his favorite things they did on Supernatural.) Anyways, he eventually asked me if I had any questions, so, I’ll start there.

MARK: So, do you have any questions you want to ask me about aaaaaannyyyythingggg? 

ME: Um, I guess the number one thing I wanna know… um, so, I know you can’t speak for Dean and I don’t want to talk about Dean because you’re not Jensen, but, there’s like a lot of questions I guess or subtext or whatever concerning Dean’s sexuality and what not, but I want to know about demon Dean and Crowley’s relationship and if there was, I don’t know, anything like, any implied –

MARK: Well I think – I think you’re talking about… there’s a massive difference between sex and love. There’s a massive difference between, um, well, they can intertwine perfectly, that’s not the issue, but I mean you would believe with all the things that Crowley did for the Winchesters, that he was – that he very much loved Sam and Dean or loved who they are or what they are. To reduce it to, you know, a crush, or to something that – I mean, I don’t know, I think Crowley is very probably pansexual more than anything else; I don’t think anything phased him. I think, that’s why the whole stuff with Lucifer and licking the floor was kind of really stupidly boring for me because Crowley did weirder and crazier things on his own. I mean, it became this joke of trying to humiliate somebody who can’t be humiliated. There’s nothing you can humiliate Crowley with. So, that never sort of made sense, that was just a sort of writer’s glitch of thinking, “oooh, this would be funny to knock him down into subservience” and that’s what he does on a Wednesday, I mean it’s like the most un-inspiring thing. I think so much is projected onto the relationship between, certainly the four main characters, um, and, you know, look, getting comfortable with one’s sexuality and one’s identity is a massively complicated things, and if you want to live vicariously through what you believe people’s identity is and you can relate to that, great!  Who cares? I mean, can I be absolutely honest? Apart from – what I do care about, you know, don’t ever take this and piece me or misquote it, because it’s very, very specific – um, somebody stopping somebody being able to express their own identity or whatever is an issue for me. That will always be an issue for me. Um, we should all be treated equally, and we all have the rights to believe and follow those things that we wish to follow, but to project relationships onto characters is an odd thing to do. I mean, it’s wishful thinking in a lot of ways, I mean, actually it’s quite… it’s quite reasonable because in the past if you think about it, if you ask your parents or anyone else, the only way sexuality was used was to, uh, literally demonize somebody. It was only ever used to say somebody was bad because this who they’re in love with. You know, that’s, that’s the thing. And it’s a massive change in the world that we’re moving towards, I should say, uh – a lack of consequence for who one loves, apart from the obvious consequences of human nature. You know, political consequences for who one loves – I’ve just watched Pete Butteigieg being, you know, sitting in congress with his husband there with him; that’s the first time that’s ever happened in United States congress and I’m so proud of that. Not just because the man is gay and happily married – that’s not even the issue for me, it’s because he’s the best man for the job and one of the smartest people on the planet. You know, it’s like using sexual templates, as they were, or gender templates as they are, or orientation templates as they are, we always use to disclude people from things. They were always used to discriminate. You know, labeling somebody was a way of discrimination. And where as labels are very important, to ones self, and they’re very important politically and they’re very important socio-economically and they’re very important in all those aspects, I yearn for a time when nobody gives a damn. I really do. But I mean, we have to go through so much to get there. I mean, let’s be honest, you can’t, you know, right the wrongs of hundreds of years of oppression in 20 minutes by saying, “let’s all move forward”. It just doesn’t work that way, it never has. But there’s a responsibility there, that if you’re going to represent, that you represent all. That you don’t just represent you. So, one has to be careful with a television program or, or, you know, Misha or myself, or, not speaking for the boys, but just generally, um, you have to be careful that what you advocate is inclusive, not disinclusive. Not excluding people... and it’s so hard to frame these conversations, that they’re equitable, it’s so hard to do that. And so, you know, we spend years pointing out the inequity and the injustice and the unfairness of the whole situation, and… I don’t know if the trick is to rise above, or, uh, maybe it’s as simple as love and coming together as a human race and make it very difficult for people to discriminate and exclude based on gender, race, color, religion, any of the subsets of humanity that we’ve decided we have. So, I think personal responsibility is the most important thing, but if one is in a position of power on a TV show, you got to remember what you’re representing, that you have a, you know, you have to cover all or cover none. So, you know, but if you stick to a story and you have a story about a person or two people and their journey, that’s shining light on things. If you try to advocate for all, I think it becomes a little more complicated. Does that make sense?

so, i just feel like he said some important things there, but like I also don’t really understand what he’s getting at really, y’know? oh! also, he didn’t watch the finale lmao 

also! there’s this:

MARK: Because if you come down on one side or another, you’re admitting the sides, and that has its own political ramifications. If you push the ball up in the air and say, “you decide”, I don’t think that’s copping out. I think that’s, maybe not fulfilling everybody’s expectations, or not fulfilling everybody’s hopes, but at least you’re getting the question asked. You know, at least you’re getting the question asked. At least people are relating to it and going, “well, what if?”. Because it’s all “what if”, I mean, it’s a TV show, so it’s “what if”, you know? It’s not Misha being in love with Jensen, I mean as much as he loves Jensen, I don’t think that’s his thing – I mean you never know – but I’m saying yet again, I don’t exclude anything from anybody (I LITERALLY CAN’T BELIEVE HE SAID THIS LMAO). But to force my opinion or my identity belief upon a situation has a cost. It may be right, it may be absolutely right, and it may be necessary in many, many cases. But, in that circumstance, I think… there are a lot of people in the world that say that Jesus, for example, was anti-homosexual and that he was – and none of that is true, and none of that is provable in the New Testament, and I’m not talking about Leviticus and I’m not talking about early Bible and I’m not talking about the fact that more than 25,000 words have been changed in the King James edition and all of this stuff, but these things that people hold so sacred, the confusion that arises from that is being told that a man loving a man or a woman loving a woman or a man loving a man and a woman or whatever combination being there is either right or wrong because you’re being told by a pastor or the leaders of your church, is a very difficult thing to break down. I think what you have to do is at least put it out there so it’s visible, and so it becomes less and less deniable. And you know, people change over years, that’s the trouble with youth, is shit doesn’t move fast enough. “I need a decision now!”, and unfortunately, when you’re dealing with centuries of prejudice and centuries of un-enlightenment, I think that sometimes the best thing to do is reach as many people as possible and pose the question. And sometimes it’s essential to make a statement, absolutely, no question. It is essential to make a stand, in some circumstances. But to polarize a TV show, can be very disingenuous to those who need to go ask their own questions, who need to go say, “well, where does Jesus say this is wrong?” you know, if that’s your beliefs.

he also said, when we went off on a tangent about doom patrol:

MARK: There are issues that are being addressed here [on Doom Patrol] that are not being addressed on other shows, and yet again, we have the format, and I don’t know that Supernatural ever had the format because it was on the CW.

anywho, in conclusion, fuck the cw.

also, again, for all intents and purposes this was a dream I had :)))))))

[fannish-karmiya]

The Terrifying Reach of Censorship

The Guardian just ran this article on tech moguls and censorship in China, and beyond being absolutely terrifying, it provides some really fascinating (and, again, terrifying) insight for fans of Cdramas and novels as to why sometimes a drama falls under the cutting block for no apparent reason:

“No matter what kind of hotshot you are, we will always have a way of showing you who’s boss,” the person said, making an offhand remark about Tencent’s owner, Pony Ma. “Don’t think because you control a billion users and moved to Singapore or some overseas country that we can’t do anything about you.” The official told me that when regulators felt Tencent needed to be taught a lesson, they would step up censorship efforts, block or shut down web services till the company got the message.

This is talking about tech services like WeChat (slow messages for global users down as a message to the company, yikes), but the same attitude seems to be at play with TV shows winding up blocked in mainland China. They didn’t necessarily contain any content which the CCP genuinely found objectionable; they were just targeted as a message to the companies that own the rights to them that they are not in charge.

I think fans of Chinese media outside of China often forget just how omnipresent and terrifying the CCP is, and how just about anything can wind up on the cutting block because they want to make a statement and remind citizens that they live under their heel. Another article discusses how Hollywood studios are encouraged to self-censor their movies in order to make it past the censors of the CCP and gain access to the Chinese market:

There's a literal list of rules that the censors in Beijing use as something of a checklist. So when a movie has finished filming and it is ready for release, a copy of it is sent to Beijing to the Ministry of Propaganda, where a collection of censors who tend to be a collection of state bureaucrats and even some film studies professors watch the movie. 

[...]

In 2006, Mission: Impossible III filmed some scenes in Shanghai that feature Tom Cruise running through the streets, and in the background there is laundry drying on clotheslines from apartment buildings, and the Chinese authorities requested that that laundry be edited out of the frame because they thought it presented an image of China that was more backwards than they wanted the world to see. 

[...]

So for example, there was a film that came out more than a decade and a half ago called In Good Company, and it's a pretty innocuous romantic comedy starring Topher Grace as this young guy who gets a job and displaces the older boss. And it seems like a pretty run of the mill PG-13 family friendly film. It nonetheless did not get into China. And at the time, the head of the Motion Picture Association started asking around in Beijing why that was the case. He couldn't understand why a movie that obviously was not nearly as politically charged as something like Kundun would not get into China. And the authorities said, "It's a movie about the younger generation challenging the system and taking on the powers that be, and that's a theme that we cannot abide here in China."

Even though neither article is about things like dramas and novels or any of the media we’re interested in, I think they still give us some great (and frightening) insight into just how omnipresent the CCP’s censorship and control is, and how it affects every aspect of what stories can be safely written and published in China.

I honestly feel terrible for artists in China; it must be both frustrating and terrifying to live like that, having to self-censor your own work for your safety and fear that you might still wind up being targeted not because you did anything ‘wrong’ but because the government simply wants to send a statement about its own power.

*

(note: I just saw these articles in the news and decided to write up something short about this. I haven’t gone digging for more information specific to censorship of dramas, novels and the areas fandom is interested in. I may go digging for some in future, but for now this is just a ‘before lunch’ post, not a full essay or analysis of censorship, which might make me cry.)

[mntalbrakdown]

Dreadful Energy

Sebastian Stan x actress! Reader

Requests open!

Mentions: of angst, and implied smut

masterlist!

“Hello mama!” you say with a big grin Sebastian couldn’t help but laugh.

“That is y/n y/l/n, and I am Sebastian Stan”

“And we are doing the Wired Autocomplete Interview” you go on saying what you and your costar are about to do. You get a board from the workers behind the camera and say thank you.

“Ok, so the first question, is y/n dating Sebastian Stan," you said giving off a half-hearted chuckle.

"Straight to the point, I love it." you ignored the question and continued going on, "Also do you guys have a trash can, I don't want to throw it on the floor," they handed you a small trash can and you said thank you.

"Someone is a bit OCD" Sebastian joked

"It's not being OCD, it is being polite, continuing on, when is y/n’s birthday" you threw the paper into the trash can. "I am wondering you searched this up to find my zodiac sign, which means you want to know if we are compatible, which also means you like me, or you just wanted to know my birthday, well my birthday is on-"

"y/b/d" Sebastian cut you off, you looked at him and bit your lip, you nodded gesturing he was correct.

"what are some movies y/n will star in," you read aloud "Umm, there are a bit of projects coming up, not only films but some other things in the works, but for movies specifically, that the public shall now know, I'll be in the Black Widow movie and I'm actually starring alongside Anya Taylor-Joy which will be exciting" you can feel Sebastian's eyes burning into you.

"Ok, last one for me, what is y/n y/l/n favorite scent or smell? Great question, I hope Sebastian can answer this" you look over to him meeting his blue eyes.

"Easy, strawberry, she literally has her whole house smelling like strawberries, plus her perfume is strawberry, wait isn't strawberries your favorite fruit?" Sebastian asked

"Yes," you said through a laugh "May I break this?" you asked referring to the board, they said yes and you broke through it

“You did that so respectfully" you laughed at what Sebastian had said

"My turn! Thank you, hand me that trash can will ya'?" You put the trash can in between the two of you.

"Someone is a bit OCD" you mocked his previous words

"It's not being OCD, it is being polite, continuing on, is Sebastian Stan dating y/n y/l/n" he mocked you and then his face fell. "As much as she's a marvelous person, no," he said through gritted teeth, something in his demeanor changed, you weren't oblivious, but whenever someone says they like you, more than a friend, you always took it as a joke. He cleared his throat.

"How is Sebastian Stan so attractive" he read aloud and laughed, his laugh was contagious and made you laugh.

"Stop guys he's a Leo, you are feeding to his already enormous ego," You said while rolling your eyes. Sebastian laughed at you.

"Not everything is about zodiac signs y/n," Sebastian said with a hint of annoyance

"Of course, that's what a Leo would say," you said with a laugh, confused why Sebastian didn't take your sarcastic tone.

"What is Sebastian Stan's favorite song, umm that's a good question, I usually just listen to y/n's Spotify playlists, as much as she may be annoying, she does make a mean playlist," he said, not looking at you what so ever, he was ignoring you. He finished tearing up the questions and then later broke the board.

"Tom was right, those boards are annoying" the boards were made out of what seemed like styrofoam and you just couldn't handle the styrofoam sound. When you said that Sebastian let out a loud groan.

"Are you ok?" you asked, Sebastian of course ignoring you, you gave up on trying to talk to him, two can play at that game.

As the interview was going to a close, the air progressively got intoxicated with hatred and annoyance. You hated when people were mad when you didn't know why, especially when they don't want to talk about it.

"That was y/n y/l/n and Sebastian Stan doing the Wired Autocomplete Interview!" you ended the video off because you knew Sebastian wouldn't. You thanked everyone who was there and left, leaving behind Sebastian, after everything that happened between you and Sebastian the other day, you thought this interview would go great. Much to your surprise, all you did the night prior was talk and have fun. You got into your car, you gave Sebastian a ride to the interview, so he will need to find a ride now.

"Hey! Wait up" Sebastian said. "I thought you were going to leave me behind" you rolled down your window

"I was," you stated coldly

"Ouch," he said

"I'm not trying to waste my time on someone who is clearly mad at me" you looked at his eyes

"I'm not mad at you-"

"Oh but you are, I can read a room Stan" if words can cut deeper than a knife.

"Fine, I'll find my own way home," He said annoyed, he knew that you were right, he was mad at you. You rolled your window back up. Connected your phone to your car and started driving, you tried to distract yourself from crying.

buzz buzz buzz

"hello?" you answered your phone

"Hey, so I heard you and Sebastian are having some couple issues" Anthony joked and you rolled your eyes. "Did you find a brain in there?" Anthony joked yet again which made you let out a laugh. "Anyways going back to me, you were going to have an interview with him, but if you'd like, I can take it"

"Thanks, Mackie" you sighed hanging up

My loneliness is killing me (and I) I must confess I still believe (still believe) when I'm not with you, I lose my mind give me a sign hit me, baby, one more time. You sang along to the ...baby one more time cover by The Marias that was playing in your car. You didn't want to go home just yet, because if you did then you would overthink, and driving around is much more interesting than crying your eyes out. You stopped at a red light and waited for it to turn green. You looked at the sides of your car, your eyes met with a young man who had this look on his eyes that looked like he recognized you, but doesn't know quite where. You laughed and that's when the light turned green and you sped off.

After a while of doing this, you decided it would be a great idea to just go home. Still listening to your music and driving. When you arrive home you are greeted with rain. A bit confused as to why now it started to rain, but you took it You got your phone, got out of your car, locked it, and started to walk to your front door. To your surprise it was already open, when you walked in you saw the whole cast seated around your living room.

"Hey, how y'all doing?" you asked confused and in the middle of the circle, there was Sebastian sat. You scoffed grabbing his attention and shook your head. Running up your stairs.

"Wait y/n" Sebastian grabbed your arm making you stop, making you look at him in the eyes. Oh, those blue eyes staring deep inside you, knowing your deepest darkest secrets. They have seen it all, your cries, your laughs, the way your eyebrows knit together whenever you are confused, they have seen it all. Oh and don't get me started on those lips, they look so soft, but you will never know because you just can't bring yourself to believe he may actually like you. But that was all cut short with one simple word that leads anyone to a dead end.

"No," you said completely discarding what you have just felt by looking at the man's eyes.

"No?" he was confused the only time you said no to him was when he wanted to go on a ride on Disneyland.

"yeah, no" you confirmed your prior statement.

"y/n wait" but now it was Elizabeth

"I am not going to wait, I don't even know how you got it into my fucking house" you stated confused, everybody looked at Sebastian.

"Well, that's definitely not going to help my case anymore guys" Sebastian looked at them and then at you with pleading eyes.

"No those puppy dog eyes are not going to help you anymore, I am done."

"Why are you even mad at him?" Tom asked

"He never shows his feelings to me, he doesn't want to explain why he was mad at me when we were doing an interview, and acts like everything between us is ok. I am tired of it, and he of all people knows how frustrated I get when he doesn't talk to me. I am not a real-life Marvel character, I can't read minds, nor do I want to" You stated now looking at him. his face looked down.

"Well, fine my bad, I'm sorry that I don't know how to tell you how much I have feelings for you, how frustrated I get when any other person gets a bit too close to you that isn't me. The way I have kissed you more than once and yet you still can’t catch my drift. I thought yesterday I was finally getting somewhere and then all we did was talk and dance, don't get me wrong I love it, but I just wished you can actually read my body language to you and not just the room." He looked at you almost as if there was still much more to say but wanted to see what you had to say.

"Oh," was the only audible sound to come out your mouth and you looked around to see an empty living room once again, and a Tom at the door waving to say goodbye.

"So?" Sebastian looked at you.

"I caught your drift, or maybe I missed it, I don't know just yet, can you show me it please," you said leaning in for a kiss.

"Sure will, princess," he said and just like that, now you were his pretty princess.

[bubblyhoney]

sarah i have thought of another fic request or like a cute idea i guess! i didn’t have anyone in mind when i thought of it so you can write it for whoever you want honestly :)

okay so the reader is a streamer but streams games like animal crossing, standew valley, etc. then (insert who you’re writing for) says they don’t like that game, but later ends up buying it and the reader is like “i thought you said you didn’t like this game” and they’re like “well i like you” and they confuses their feelings and they end up playing the game together and reader gives them a tour of their island or farm

i feel like this request isn’t good, but the scenario seemed cute and i wanted to share it. sorry if this is confusing or just too specific cuz i know it can be hard to write requests like that! but yeah i hope it gives you inspiration and you like the request <3

new horizons

warnings: language, a Marvel reference (hint: natasha said it about tony), stupid idiots who don’t realize they like each other, use of pet names, Uno rage, Hasan Piker's presence

words: 1473

tags: sapnap x gn!reader

A/N: i’ve been trying to catch up a little on my requests (i’ve only got a couple so i’m not super overwhelmed) but school and outside life has been taking up most of my time so this one took me a while to make! tbh— ive never played animal crossing so i did google some of the game mechanics and i apologize if anything is inaccurate about the game…. but i liked relaxing and writing this cute one so thank you for requesting hails :3

requests/inbox status: open

-

“This game is trash.”

Your head quirks, fingers stopped on the screen. You’re in the process of giving your character a cute new nickname; it’s kind of hard to decide between “awkward dude” and “elderly skater”.

“Excuse me?” Your chat comes alive with emotes and ‘KEKW’s, obviously entertained by you and your almost-more-than-friends-friend.

There’s a story for that later.

Sapnap’s rough laugh comes through your headset and he audibly swallows, the sound of a water bottle dropping onto his desk echoing.

“I’m just saying—it’s boring. It’s like Minecraft but you don’t like… do anything.” The grainy image of his bearded face shifts and you see him pull out his phone.

“It’s— you can’t even compare it to Minecraft! It’s a completely different game system—you actually interact with other people live in the game.” You huff out a dramatic sigh, slumping in your chair with a pout. “Just because you go into this lucid state where all you know is ‘touch block, hit George’ doesn’t mean this game isn’t fun.” (He scoffs at your awful impression of his voice. Your viewers love it.)

“Jeez,” he mumbles, fumbling with the cap of his water bottle. “Touched a nerve there, bud.”

You roll your eyes, getting back to the village in the game.

“Don't ‘bud’ me.”

The call falls comfortably quiet, the sounds of him tapping obsessively on his phone and you clicking away filling the silence. A gentle bedroom-pop YouTube playlist remains in the background, prompting you to hum along and glance at the chat to see a flood of “check twitter” and “Y/N TWITTER!!”.

“What happened on Twitter?” You mumble, confused, and pull the website up on another monitor. Sapnap just makes a curious noise, swinging back and forth in a circle. “Oh my God,” you say to yourself, fingertips brushing your parted lips.

“What?”

“Hasan Piker just followed me and retweeted one of my not even remotely political old tweets. Like from a year ago.”

“That’s— wow. Congrats?” Sapnap’s voice cracks, and his ears flush pink the tiniest bit when you glance at his face on Discord.

“I’m gonna go on record and say that he could get it.” You shake your head in disbelief.

Sapnap falls uncharacteristically non-hyper-verbal, so you look past the frenzied chat and to his screen— wait. He muted and turned his camera off.

“Um,” you start, furiously typing question marks in your private chat. “Where’d you go?” You mute and turn screen share off for your stream, concerned that he might’ve fallen off his chair and broken his neck and needs you to call the ambulance.

The characteristic ding of a twitter notification sounds through your bedroom, and you look at your phone quickly.

“That’s where I went.”

Sapnap Tweeted: “all Y/U stans can choke on my dick”.

“Jesus, Sapnap,” you say, and rapidly refresh to read the replies. This tweet was deleted. “That’s so— that barely makes sense, bro. Why— literally what?”

His snicker floods your ears and you relax in your chair. Crisis: averted. “Don’t fucking— what’s wrong with you?”

“I thought it would be funny,” he offers, shrugging, and fiddles with the straw in his water bottle, smile fading. “And also Hasan pisses me off.”

“Why, ‘cause he wants a piece of this? Jealous?” You think back to your viewers, knowing they’re probably spamming question marks and coming to ludacris conclusions about both of your absences. No offense to them. You remember your stan days very vividly.

“I mean, kinda.” He rubs once at his nose, glancing at the camera (and what feels like you) before taking a sip from his water bottle.

“Wow.” You watch one strand of his hair fall from beneath his hat and brush against his full eyebrows. “I’m uh—I’ll get back to my stream. You coming? Or is it time for a Sapnap-snack?”

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” He snorts and leans his chin onto the balance of his arm.

“That means you like to take a little snack break mid-stream and come back approximately nine hours later and you didn’t even eat.”

“You know what— fuck you.” He flicks the camera as you laugh at the look on his face.

The teasing mood is easily kept as you switch games from Animal Crossing to Uno, all the while slamming Sapnap with +4’s and skipping the newly-arrived BadBoyHalo at any chance you can get. It unironically pisses him off and he has to take a Sapnap-snack break midway through (only a fifteen minute break this time, during which you and Bad take a “What Kind of Bread Are You?” quiz). The rest of the night is filled with devious cackles (you), loud and sudden bangs that sound suspiciously like someone hitting their desk in anger (Sap) and the stupid barking of Rat, AKA Lucy (Bad). She’s cute but a menace to the sound quality of Bad’s microphone. You sign off stream around 2 a.m. with various forms of thanks and kisses blown to the camera. It’s been a refreshing night, actually; you’ve been busy organizing a partnership stream all week and all your friends have been busy filming or editing or what-not. Quackity had time for a little Roblox every couple of days, though. He’s got your back.

The next time you see Sapnap is after a two hour stream of him try-harding in Valorant and you finishing responding to an email from your partnership in the VC.

“Okay, I’m back.” You hear him shift in his chair and click a couple more times on his keyboard. You perk up in your chair, closing the email browser you’d been looking at.

“Do you want to play anything else? I’m down for anything.”

“Absolutely not Uno. You can go to hell for giving me 6 cards that one time,” he jabs. You scoff, crossing your arms and leaning back in your chair.

“Okay, the +4 was on me but it’s Bad who gave you the last two. That’s not my fault, sweetie.”

“Yeah, yeah,” he mumbles, trailing off as the clicking of his keyboard stops. “Hey, um—Guess what?”

Your heart beats loud in your ears at the tone of his voice. He sounds nervous; that’s never good.

“I’m scared to guess,” you try, playing with a little Minecraft dog figurine you have on your desk with fidgety fingers. “What?”

“I bought Animal Crossing.”

Silence. You stare at his discord icon blankly, trying to reroute the wires of your brain.

“Tell me you love it.”

“Well… I haven’t actually played it— but you said you liked it, so.”

“So,” you repeat him, ears warming but continuing on. “Is that what you tell all your friends when you buy something they like? That it's because of them?”

He seems to choose his next words carefully, pausing a beat to consider your questions.

“Well, I don’t have a crush on all of my friends.”

“You—what?” You stutter, caught off guard and stumbling. What did he just say? “Don’t tell me you mean you have a crush on me.”

“I’m almost positive I just did.” His discord icon stares right back at you, taunting.

“You know, you’re very casual for someone who just admitted they like-like me.” Your cheeks flush pink and you have to press a hand to your chest to keep your breathing sounding stable.

“Yeah, I’m kind of cool like that,” he offers, a huff of a laugh punctuating his statement. The conversation moves into a lull that you can’t help but know is because of you. He must expect you to say something about it, right?

“You are very cool, Sapnap.” You tilt back in your chair, sucking in a breath to prepare yourself for your next words. “And—Isortakindofhaveacrushonyoutoo.”

He must understand you, for you can hear the grin in his voice when he asks “Really?”

“Y-yeah.” You feel like a preteen again, all shaky and giddy in front of the boy you just asked to a middle school dance.

“Um, alright. What do we do now?”

“I don’t know,” you answer genuinely and swing in a happy little circle in your chair. “We could play Animal Crossing.”

“I’m down.”

You swear you’ve never heard more beautiful words.

He keeps his camera off for most of the time you two play, too focused on creating his island and asking you questions about how to fish to turn it on. He silently flips it on when you help him decorate his lawn, needing to show you in real-time the decorations he has bought and where you think he should put them. He looks cute. I mean, of course he does. He always does.

You tell him goodbye late in the night, eyes saying a little more than just “see you tomorrow”.

You like him. He likes you.

It’s even better when you two have matching gardens.

-

A/N: anybody and everybody (especially my precious hailey) let me know what you think!! :]

[blind-rats]

The Rise & Fall of Joss Whedon; the Myth of the Hollywood Feminist Hero

By Kelly Faircloth

“I hate ‘feminist.’ Is this a good time to bring that up?” Joss Whedon asked. He paused knowingly, waiting for the laughs he knew would come at the creator of Buffy the Vampire Slayer making such a statement.

It was 2013, and Whedon was onstage at a fundraiser for Equality Now, a human rights organization dedicated to legal equality for women. Though Buffy had been off the air for more than a decade, its legacy still loomed large; Whedon was widely respected as a man with a predilection for making science fiction with strong women for protagonists. Whedon went on to outline why, precisely, he hated the term: “You can’t be born an ‘ist,’” he argued, therefore, “‘feminist’ includes the idea that believing men and women to be equal, believing all people to be people, is not a natural state, that we don’t emerge assuming that everybody in the human race is a human, that the idea of equality is just an idea that’s imposed on us.”

The speech was widely praised and helped cement his pop-cultural reputation as a feminist, in an era that was very keen on celebrity feminists. But it was also, in retrospect, perhaps the high water mark for Whedon’s ability to claim the title, and now, almost a decade later, that reputation is finally in tatters, prompting a reevaluation of not just Whedon’s work, but the narrative he sold about himself. 

In July 2020, actor Ray Fisher accused Whedon of being “gross, abusive, unprofessional, and completely unacceptable” on the Justice League set when Whedon took over for Zach Synder as director to finish the project. Charisma Carpenter then described her own experiences with Whedon in a long post to Twitter, hashtagged #IStandWithRayFisher.

On Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel, Carpenter played Cordelia, a popular character who morphed from snob to hero—one of those strong female characters that made Whedon’s feminist reputation—before being unceremoniously written off the show in a plot that saw her thrust into a coma after getting pregnant with a demon. For years, fans have suspected that her disappearance was related to her real-life pregnancy. In her statement, Carpenter appeared to confirm the rumors. “Joss Whedon abused his power on numerous occasions while working on the sets of ‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer’ and ‘Angel,’” she wrote, describing Fisher’s firing as the last straw that inspired her to go public.

Buffy was a landmark of late 1990s popular culture, beloved by many a burgeoning feminist, grad student, gender studies professor, and television critic for the heroine at the heart of the show, the beautiful blonde girl who balanced monster-killing with high school homework alongside ancillary characters like the shy, geeky Willow. Buffy was very nearly one of a kind, an icon of her era who spawned a generation of leather-pants-wearing urban fantasy badasses and women action heroes.

Buffy was so beloved, in fact, that she earned Whedon a similarly privileged place in fans’ hearts and a broader reputation as a man who championed empowered women characters. In the desert of late ’90s and early 2000s popular culture, Whedon was heralded as that rarest of birds—the feminist Hollywood man. For many, he was an example of what more equitable storytelling might look like, a model for how to create compelling women protagonists who were also very, very fun to watch. But Carpenter’s accusations appear to have finally imploded that particular bit of branding, revealing a different reality behind the scenes and prompting a reevaluation of the entire arc of Whedon’s career: who he was and what he was selling all along.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer premiered March 1997, midseason, on The WB, a two-year-old network targeting teens with shows like 7th Heaven. Its beginnings were not necessarily auspicious; it was a reboot of a not-particularly-blockbuster 1992 movie written by third-generation screenwriter Joss Whedon. (His grandfather wrote for The Donna Reed Show; his father wrote for Golden Girls.) The show followed the trials of a stereotypical teenage California girl who moved to a new town and a new school after her parents’ divorce—only, in a deliberate inversion of horror tropes, the entire town sat on top of the entrance to Hell and hence was overrun with demons. Buffy was a slayer, a young woman with the power and immense responsibility to fight them. After the movie turned out very differently than Whedon had originally envisioned, the show was a chance for a do-over, more of a Valley girl comedy than serious horror.

It was layered, it was campy, it was ironic and self-aware. It looked like it belonged on the WB rather than one of the bigger broadcast networks, unlike the slickly produced prestige TV that would follow a few years later. Buffy didn’t fixate on the gory glory of killing vampires—really, the monsters were metaphors for the entire experience of adolescence, in all its complicated misery. Almost immediately, a broad cross-section of viewers responded enthusiastically. Critics loved it, and it would be hugely influential on Whedon’s colleagues in television; many argue that it broke ground in terms of what you could do with a television show in terms of serialized storytelling, setting the stage for the modern TV era. Academics took it up, with the show attracting a tremendous amount of attention and discussion.

In 2002, the New York Times covered the first academic conference dedicated to the show. The organizer called Buffy “a tremendously rich text,” hence the flood of papers with titles like “Pain as Bright as Steel: The Monomyth and Light in ‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer,’” which only gathered speed as the years passed. And while it was never the highest-rated show on television, it attracted an ardent core of fans.

But what stood out the most was the show’s protagonist: a young woman who stereotypically would have been a monster movie victim, with the script flipped: instead of screaming and swooning, she staked the vampires. This was deliberate, the core conceit of the concept, as Whedon said in many, many interviews. The helpless horror movie girl killed in the dark alley instead walks out victorious. He told Time in 1997 that the concept was born from the thought, “I would love to see a movie in which a blond wanders into a dark alley, takes care of herself and deploys her powers.” In Whedon’s framing, it was particularly important that it was a woman who walked out of that alley. He told another publication in 2002 that “the very first mission statement of the show” was “the joy of female power: having it, using it, sharing it.”

In 2021, when seemingly every new streaming property with a woman as its central character makes some half-baked claim to feminism, it’s easy to forget just how much Buffy stood out among its against its contemporaries. Action movies—with exceptions like Alien’s Ripley and Terminator 2's Sarah Conner—were ruled by hulking tough guys with macho swagger. When women appeared on screen opposite vampires, their primary job was to expose long, lovely, vulnerable necks. Stories and characters that bucked these larger currents inspired intense devotion, from Angela Chase of My So-Called Life to Dana Scully of The X-Files.

The broader landscape, too, was dismal. It was the conflicted era of girl power, a concept that sprang up in the wake of the successes of the second-wave feminist movement and the backlash that followed. Young women were constantly exposed to you-can-do-it messaging that juxtaposed uneasily with the reality of the world around them. This was the era of shitty, sexist jokes about every woman who came into Bill Clinton’s orbit and the leering response to the arrival of Britney Spears; Rush Limbaugh was a fairly mainstream figure.

At one point, Buffy competed against Ally McBeal, a show that dedicated an entire episode to a dancing computer-generated baby following around its lawyer main character, her biological clock made zanily literal. Consider this line from a New York Times review of the Buffy’s 1997 premiere: “Given to hot pants and boots that should guarantee the close attention of Humbert Humberts all over America, Buffy is just your average teen-ager, poutily obsessed with clothes and boys.”

Against that background, Buffy was a landmark. Besides the simple fact of its woman protagonist, there were unique plots, like the coming-out story for her friend Willow. An ambivalent 1999 piece in Bitch magazine, even as it explored the show’s tank-top heavy marketing, ultimately concluded, “In the end, it’s precisely this contextual conflict that sets Buffy apart from the rest and makes her an appealing icon. Frustrating as her contradictions may be, annoying as her babe quotient may be, Buffy still offers up a prime-time heroine like no other.”

A 2016 Atlantic piece, adapted from a book excerpt, makes the case that Buffy is perhaps best understood as an icon of third-wave feminism: “In its examination of individual and collective empowerment, its ambiguous politics of racial representation and its willing embrace of contradiction, Buffy is a quintessentially third-wave cultural production.” The show was vested with all the era’s longing for something better than what was available, something different, a champion for a conflicted “post-feminist” era—even if she was an imperfect or somewhat incongruous vessel. It wasn’t just Sunnydale that needed a chosen Slayer, it was an entire generation of women. That fact became intricately intertwined with Whedon himself.

Seemingly every interview involved a discussion of his fondness for stories about strong women. “I’ve always found strong women interesting, because they are not overly represented in the cinema,” he told New York for a 1997 piece that notes he studied both film and “gender and feminist issues” at Wesleyan; “I seem to be the guy for strong action women,’’ he told the New York Times in 1997 with an aw-shucks sort of shrug. ‘’A lot of writers are just terrible when it comes to writing female characters. They forget that they are people.’’ He often cited the influence of his strong, “hardcore feminist” mother, and even suggested that his protagonists served feminist ends in and of themselves: “If I can make teenage boys comfortable with a girl who takes charge of a situation without their knowing that’s what’s happening, it’s better than sitting down and selling them on feminism,” he told Time in 1997.

When he was honored by the organization Equality Now in 2006 for his “outstanding contribution to equality in film and television,” Whedon made his speech an extended riff on the fact that people just kept asking him about it, concluding with the ultimate answer: “Because you’re still asking me that question.” He presented strong women as a simple no-brainer, and he was seemingly always happy to say so, at a time when the entertainment business still seemed ruled by unapologetic misogynists. The internet of the mid-2010s only intensified Whedon’s anointment as a prototypical Hollywood ally, with reporters asking him things like how men could best support the feminist movement. 

Whedon’s response: “A guy who goes around saying ‘I’m a feminist’ usually has an agenda that is not feminist. A guy who behaves like one, who actually becomes involved in the movement, generally speaking, you can trust that. And it doesn’t just apply to the action that is activist. It applies to the way they treat the women they work with and they live with and they see on the street.” This remark takes on a great deal of irony in light of Carpenter’s statement.

In recent years, Whedon’s reputation as an ally began to wane. Partly, it was because of the work itself, which revealed more and more cracks as Buffy receded in the rearview mirror. Maybe it all started to sour with Dollhouse, a TV show that imagined Eliza Dushku as a young woman rented out to the rich and powerful, her mind wiped after every assignment, a concept that sat poorly with fans. (Though Whedon, while he was publicly unhappy with how the show had turned out after much push-and-pull with the corporate bosses at Fox, still argued the conceit was “the most pure feminist and empowering statement I’d ever made—somebody building themselves from nothing,” in a 2012 interview with Wired.)

After years of loud disappointment with the TV bosses at Fox on Firefly and Dollhouse, Whedon moved into big-budget Hollywood blockbusters. He helped birth the Marvel-dominated era of movies with his work as director of The Avengers. But his second Avengers movie, Age of Ultron, was heavily criticized for a moment in which Black Widow laid out her personal reproductive history for the Hulk, suggesting her sterilization somehow made her a “monster.” In June 2017, his un-filmed script for a Wonder Woman adaptation leaked, to widespread mockery. The script’s introduction of Diana was almost leering: “To say she is beautiful is almost to miss the point. She is elemental, as natural and wild as the luminous flora surrounding. Her dark hair waterfalls to her shoulders in soft arcs and curls. Her body is curvaceous, but taut as a drawn bow.”

But Whedon’s real fall from grace began in 2017, right before MeToo spurred a cultural reckoning. His ex-wife, Kai Cole, published a piece in The Wrap accusing him of cheating off and on throughout their relationship and calling him a hypocrite:

“Despite understanding, on some level, that what he was doing was wrong, he never conceded the hypocrisy of being out in the world preaching feminist ideals, while at the same time, taking away my right to make choices for my life and my body based on the truth. He deceived me for 15 years, so he could have everything he wanted. I believed, everyone believed, that he was one of the good guys, committed to fighting for women’s rights, committed to our marriage, and to the women he worked with. But I now see how he used his relationship with me as a shield, both during and after our marriage, so no one would question his relationships with other women or scrutinize his writing as anything other than feminist.”

But his reputation was just too strong; the accusation that he didn’t practice what he preached didn’t quite stick. A spokesperson for Whedon told the Wrap: “While this account includes inaccuracies and misrepresentations which can be harmful to their family, Joss is not commenting, out of concern for his children and out of respect for his ex-wife. Many minimized the essay on the basis that adultery doesn’t necessarily make you a bad feminist or erase a legacy. Whedon similarly seemed to shrug off Ray Fisher’s accusations of creating a toxic workplace; instead, Warner Media fired Fisher.

But Carpenter’s statement—which struck right at the heart of his Buffy-based legacy for progressivism—may finally change things. Even at the time, the plotline in which Charisma Carpenter was written off Angel—carrying a demon child that turned her into “Evil Cordelia,” ending the season in a coma, and quite simply never reappearing—was unpopular. Asked about what had happened in a 2009 panel at DragonCon, she said that “my relationship with Joss became strained,” continuing: “We all go through our stuff in general [behind the scenes], and I was going through my stuff, and then I became pregnant. And I guess in his mind, he had a different way of seeing the season go… in the fourth season.”

“I think Joss was, honestly, mad. I think he was mad at me and I say that in a loving way, which is—it’s a very complicated dynamic working for somebody for so many years, and expectations, and also being on a show for eight years, you gotta live your life. And sometimes living your life gets in the way of maybe the creator’s vision for the future. And that becomes conflict, and that was my experience.”

In her statement on Twitter, Carpenter alleged that after Whedon was informed of her pregnancy, he called her into a closed-door meeting and “asked me if I was ‘going to keep it,’ and manipulatively weaponized my womanhood and faith against me.” She added that “he proceeded to attack my character, mock my religious beliefs, accuse me of sabotaging the show, and then unceremoniously fired me following the season once I gave birth.” Carpenter said that he called her fat while she was four months pregnant and scheduled her to work at 1 a.m. while six months pregnant after her doctor had recommended shortening her hours, a move she describes as retaliatory. What Carpenter describes, in other words, is an absolutely textbook case of pregnancy discrimination in the workplace, the type of bullshit the feminist movement exists to fight—at the hands of the man who was for years lauded as a Hollywood feminist for his work on Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel.

Many of Carpenter’s colleagues from Buffy and Angel spoke out in support, including Buffy herself, Sarah Michelle Gellar. “While I am proud to have my name associated with Buffy Summers, I don’t want to be forever associated with the name Joss Whedon,” she said in a statement. Just shy of a decade after that 2013 speech, many of the cast members on the show that put him on that stage are cutting ties.

Whedon garnered a reputation as pop culture’s ultimate feminist man because Buffy did stand out so much, an oasis in a wasteland. But in 2021, the idea of a lone man being responsible for creating women’s stories—one who told the New York Times, “I seem to be the guy for strong action women”—seems like a relic. It’s depressing to consider how many years Hollywood’s first instinct for “strong action women” wasn’t a woman, and to think about what other people could have done with those resources. When Wonder Woman finally reached the screen, to great acclaim, it was with a woman as director.

Besides, Whedon didn’t make Buffy all by himself—many, many women contributed, from the actresses to the writers to the stunt workers, and his reputation grew so large it eclipsed their part in the show’s creation. Even as he preached feminism, Whedon benefitted from one of the oldest, most sexist stereotypes: the man who’s a benevolent, creative genius. And Buffy, too, overshadowed all the other contributors who redefined who could be a hero on television and in speculative fiction, from individual actors like Gillian Anderson to the determined, creative women who wrote science fiction and fantasy over the last several decades to—perhaps most of all—the fans who craved different, better stories. Buffy helped change what you could put on TV, but it didn’t create the desire to see a character like her. It was that desire, as much as Whedon himself, that gave Buffy the Vampire Slayer her power.