#to another decade of fulfilling experiences good roles and songs!

[lyselkatz]

Yáng KéYî 楊可以 from Overworking Man 滾動吧小齒輪 is another favourite from ChàngChàng's filmography. His character's song Can I be myself - 可不可以做自己 reminds me every day to work on my perseverance and self-confidence.

For @dmbjexchange 's Liú Chàng characters fortnight. 04.16 Free day.

...☕?/commission

[arewedoneyet]

men's folio article via mens-folio.com/my

With buttery vocals, princely features and the penmanship of a lovelorn poet, Jeff Satur is about to sing his way into your heart — one story at a time.

What makes a good story? And what makes a good storyteller? For music savant Jeff Worakamol Satur, these are the two questions that have kept him on his feet the past decade, fuelling his fearless desire to know, love and showcase his most authentic self to the world.

Magnetic in look, sound and craft, Jeff has managed to dabble in multiple genres of music — and play various instruments — without losing his signature, velvety sound. While he did skyrocket to fame portraying Kim on the TV show KinnPorsche: The Series in 2022, Jeff singing its theme song, “Why Don’t You Stay,” was what converted many casual onlookers into full-time Jeff fans (or SATURDAYs). They are now hooked onto his buttery vocals — which not only eloquently and evocatively sing in Thai, English and Chinese — but Jeff is also the very person who produced and wrote the stories in these tracks.

With ancestral roots tracing back to China, India and Italy, it is no wonder that the Phuket native navigates expression and interaction in these vastly different languages without losing their nuances. It is the openness to embrace diversity in cultures and ideas that his fans continue to grow in numbers from all corners of the world.

Since starting his personal studio — Studio On Saturn — at the end of 2022, Jeff has held concerts all over the region, most recently completing his Space Shuttle No. 8 Asia Tour in April to celebrate the release of his first full album. His appearances on music variety shows like China’s Call Me By Fire Season 3 and, most recently, Chuang Asia: Thailand — a Thai idol survival show spin-off based on the Chuang franchise in China — have also appealed to fans in a new way. His hold over both seniors and juniors in the music industry is a testament to the piercing allure he has that transcends age and gender.

Then there is his relationship with Valentino, which comes to a surging point in this interview’s accompanying visuals — each party egging one another in their courageous pursuit of new, creative frontiers.

This is not the end. There is still so much more power that Jeff has yet to harness from stories — which communicate and entertain without the boundaries of time and space, and have decidedly become a grand purpose that he is working to fulfil. From music, the big screen, and finally the horizon, Men’s Folio sits down with the prodigious artiste to discover what makes him tick and perhaps what kind of tale he would charm us into next.

Hi Jeff! How have you been?
I’ve been very good. Fantastic, actually.

We noticed you have said goodbye to your signature long hair. Why did you decide to cut it?
I had to change my hairstyle for a movie I was filming. I also had to change many other things about myself, including how I spoke, reacted and moved — so much so that I had to attend workshops. So, I thought changing my image would help me immerse myself in the role.

Congratulations on completing the Space Shuttle No.8 Asia tour! You have mentioned before that going on a solo tour has been your dream for the longest time — now that both your debut album and solo tour are done, how are you feeling?
It’s a pretty weird feeling — I just want to do more and more. I wanted to tour more and create more songs. It’s a strange feeling to me. It’s more fun to me now, especially since I’ve completed it. It’s like the end of one dream is leading to the start of another.

What is something new about yourself as an artiste or person you learned from going on tour? It must’ve been tiring, but seeing all that support (from guest artistes or close friends attending) must have been very empowering too.
What I’ve learned along the way is to be present with the audience. They give you so many different experiences and learnings from place to place. The show is never the same, even if the song and setting are. Everything is different. For me, I like to be there with them; I give my all and soak in the moment from my fans. Being in the moment without a script really pushed me to be a better artiste, and I believe it made me a better human being.

We have to talk about about your first on-screen mentoring stint on Chuang Asia, especially after that “Dum Dum” performance. How was it like mentoring so many aspiring artistes-to-be at once?
Guiding and mentoring new artistes is a dream that I only just recently realised (I had). It means a lot to be there, to guide and watch these artistes where they are now, doing things they previously couldn’t. I just have so many feelings. I’m so proud. There are many things in the industry that might break you along the way. While I don’t know it all, I hope what I’ve experienced in my career can be, in some way, helpful to them in their journeys. I hope that with my stories, they can break their boundaries and avoid the same traps they might find along the way. I hope that they not only become great artistes but also become better humans, stay positive in the industry, and are able to create and find themselves along the way.

Did this experience help you reflect — in any way — on your artiste career so far? In retrospect, would you redo anything?
It reminded me of my childhood. It was a time when I had so much passion for music, and seeing all the high-intensity passion in them brought me back to that time. It freshened me up. I wouldn’t change anything because I love the way things are now. Changing the past would mean changing the present, and I love where I’m at and what I’m doing right now.

What do you feel is the most important trait that any aspiring performing artiste should have?
Every artiste is different, but all artistes should try to be themselves. For me, I want to be true to myself, to be able to discover my own direction, create my own work, and be brave enough to show that to the world.

What about in a song? Everyone likes to ask questions about your views on music because your personal touch does not escape any part of your music’s creative process — from melody-making, lyric-writing to the final performance. What is your definition of a good song?
“Good” in itself is a subjective word, and a good song, to me, can mean something very different to another. You can love jazz; you can love metal. So long as you’re satisfied with what you have released, be able to listen to it back and forth, and even enjoy that track after 10 years — that’s what I define as a good song.

Regardless of shape or form, good music should always capture the essence of a story, one’s feelings, or who the artiste is at their core.

Does any existing song come to mind? Either one you are proud of or one from an artiste you look up to.
The first song that comes to mind is “Endless Rain” by Yoshiki Hayashi. I’m not too sure if he wrote it when his mom or dad passed away. But it’s a song written with lots of emotion, and it very clearly shows his style of music. It’s just very Yoshiki.

I have many songs that I am proud of — actually, every song. But if I had to pick one, it might be “Dum Dum”. I had a lot of bad feelings bottled inside me when I wrote the song, and I really wanted to release that toxicity from inside of me. It sounds as angry as I felt when I wrote it, so listening back and feeling that anger gives me satisfaction. I think I wrote it in an honest and heartfelt manner that was true to my emotions at the time.

In your previous interview with us, you talked about the different charms (and challenges) that come with writing lyrics in Thai and English. Your debut album has both English originals and English translations of your Thai songs — which song’s story or specific lyrics are you most proud of putting together, and why?
Like I said, I love and am proud of all my songs. But if I had to pick one, it would be “Black Tie”. In that track, I had to relive many memories and feelings. Honestly, even at 29, I still feel like a kid. Until today, I still address everyone around me with “P” — how people in Thailand show respect to those older than them — because l feel I have a lot more growing up to do, and that spirit to learn is still alive inside me.

As a kid, I was always told to do this and that, learn this and study that. In retrospect, those who ended up following these instructions all somehow turned out the same. I really don’t like that. I don’t want all these rules and boundaries to limit who we can be, and who I could be. That’s why I chose to sing about this in “Black Tie”, using the concept of the suit to talk about breaking those boundaries, tying in with the freedom and individuality that the Valentino collection at the time championed and empowered its wearers to embody.

Are there any stories you are looking to tell with your next music release?
It’s a secret. You’ll know when you know.

More on your love for story-telling — which seems to be a common thread that links all the creative works you have released so far together — what do you think makes a good story?
All stories are worth telling, even those without a happy ending. What makes a good story is how you tell it. Capturing the essence or feeling of the story and delivering that to the listeners is more important. You know it’s good if the listeners can experience the story with you,

You mentioned in an interview that if you were not an artiste today, you would be a writer. These days, it is hard to have an original voice, yet yours (both literal and figurative) is quite luminous in its own way. How do you maintain that voice despite all the noise?
I don’t think an original voice is something that can be created. An original voice can only come from trusting your instincts, being honest in your work, and staying truthful to your feelings. Only then can you create work that represents you. You should never lie to yourself.

And more importantly, never lose that kid inside of you. That’s who is creating the all the art, instead of you.

More importantly, how do you rest? Are there any go-to activities (or non-activities) you like to do to return to yourself and rest your voice?
I actually have a lot of time to rest. Then again, I also don’t feel like my work encompasses “working”. It’s also my vacation. Sure, even when I’m actually on vacation, I have to think about work. But I don’t mind it; I love what I do.

If we’re talking about physical rest, I prioritise resting my voice. I used to sing during my free time, but I try not to use it that often now to be ready when I actually have to sing. I think it’s important to know how to control and use my voice in the right way.

For those who are only discovering your music today, can you compile a three-track introduction to Jeff Satur’s playlist and explain why?
“Dum Dum”, “Fade”, and “Loop”. “Dum Dum” shows my darker side because it’s a release of some pent-up frustration and anger. “Fade” is more romantic — it shows you how I experience love and what I am like in a relationship, and I try to tell that story in a more emotional and evocative manner. Then we have “Loop”, a more introspective exploration of who I am. Listening to these three songs will give you a good idea of the breadth of my personality and style as an artiste.

In recent years, you have been bolder with your style. How would you describe your current relationship with fashion? Has it changed over the years?
I think fashion is about doing what you love, wearing what you love, and enjoying what you see in the mirror. Every morning before I go out, I feel like I should love what I see in the mirror — regardless of what other people think. Your body is a canvas, and whatever colour or pattern you choose to put on yourself that day is a form of self-expression you should enjoy.

Over the years, I’ve definitely become more confident about trying on things out of my comfort zone. I used to be scared of wearing certain things because of what others might think, but I’m no longer as shy. I’m just breaking one boundary at a time.

What values of Maison Valentino does Jeff Satur — the artiste — embody?
I think Valentino and I have many things in common. Fundamentally, we both embrace the act of constant reinvention and enjoy the challenge of finding new ground, and there’s no better expression of this chemistry and kindred spirit than the soundtrack I created with and for Valentino. The brand is quite sentimental and romantic, and my body of work doesn’t stray far from these sensibilities — especially if you listen to the three tracks I mentioned earlier. A valiant kind of courage persists throughout, and I feel like that syncs up nicely with what Valentino stands for as a brand.

What is next on your cards? Will we get to sees Jeff Satur, the actor again soon?
Without a doubt. In fact, more and more because actor Jeff Satur is an important part of me, and there are a lot of upcoming projects that I’m passionate about and very excited to share with the world.

Last but not least, you have said before that any interaction or activities you do for SATURDAYs feels like an everlasting dream. Is there anything you want to say to your fans right now?
Always be happy. Yes, sometimes it’s hard, and sometimes the world isn’t as beautiful as the ones we read about in our favourite fairytales. Focus on the good and avoid the bad. Surround yourself with good people. Never give up on yourself. You’re beautiful, you’re great, and you’re you — and no one else can do what you do. Even I can’t do what you do. Everybody has something unique they can do. Appreciate and love what you do. Follow your dreams, and I’ll follow mine. Someday, we’ll sing together again.

[bhajanmandali]

Jagran/Chowki Group in Shravasti Bahraich

"Sargam Jagran Party" is the best in Jagran, Chowki, Bhajan & Sai Sandhya, Khatu Shyam Bhajan, Ladies Sangeet & all Devotee type program in Lucknow, UP, India. ☎+91-9919805315. "Sargam Jagran Party" has been conducting Mata ki Chowki, Mata ka Jagran and Bhajan Sandya from last 10 years with lots of memories and with great success.Blessing of God and Goddess is needed to overcome every rough course of life. Everyone should conduct Mata Ki Chowki and Mata Ka Jagran to get blessing and her devine power and all the needs to be fulfilled.

Poeple mostly like to call us at the time of Weeding, Engagement, Birthdays, Anniversaries or during Ganpati Pooja and Navratri festivals and we promised to serve a memorable Jagran or Chowki. Working for over a decades, we are having the experience to make it more devotional and memorable when we organised it. Our party has experienced chorus group, vocalist, musicians and artists which are required to make it successful. Its main origin is based in Lucknow and we operate almost all the States in India. Pooja Sargam is the Director and also a Lead Singer of the "Sargam Jagran Party" organiser. Starting from the Pooja Aarti to the Bhog or Prasad everything is done by our organie team.

From last 10 years we are providing the best Mata Ki Chowki, Mata Ka Jagran and Bhajan Sandhya also currently dealing in the Lucknow (Uttar Pradesh) and to the another State's.

So next time whenever you are planing to conduct Mata Ki Chowki, Mata Ka Jagran and Bhajan Sandhya, make sure to contact us and make your spiritual experience more devotional and delightfull.

Mata ka Jagran is a holy programme for all the Hindu community. In this programme all night Kirtan has been sung by the singers and Maa Durga worship has been done.

At Mata ka Jagran firstly we light Akhand jyoti of Mataji. After that Vandana is sung ( devotional song) by the singer or any other devotee who wants to sing. Bhet is offered by the devotee (red color chunni) coconut fruits and shingar matriail along with soe bheta and sweets. Then comes ardass and bhog is distributed to the people who are present there by the devotee. Short break are taken and around half an hour again we start for the further process. Lastly after Aarti and devotional song’s Lonkra and Kanjak Pooja we distribute bhog and Prasad to all and comes to the end of Jagran as an samapti.

Sai Baba is one of the most famous and kind hearted lord of Hindus and Muslims both. Hindus and Muslims both religion devotees are bending their heads on Sai’s royal court. For such kind hearted Lord, we are doing special bhajan and kirtans or Sai Sandhya. Multiple places in UP we did Sai Sandhya’s. From a long time, we providing Sai Sandhya services to our Sai devotees in Lko and other cities of UP. We know that Sai Kirtan playing a very vital role in our Sai devotee’s life, they have special affection and love towards their Sai Baba on every steps of life. We always being take care of your emotions for Sai BABA. We doing all the the work that is necessary to make your Sai Sandhya evergreen or long term memorable. We have a very simple mission that is make the event very special for our Sai devotees and they can remember us for life time therefore we always sargam Jagran party always gives their 100% in Every spiritual event. We become one of the best Jagran party in the Up. So If you are thinking about Sai Sandhya so please once contact us.

With the grace of God and good wishes of devotees, our team of Sargam Jagran Party are growing day by day. Now we can count us as one of the best Spiritual event organiser party in the UP state. Our Balaji Jagran very famous in LKO and Outer Areas. We have done a no of Balaji Jagrans most of the cities in Up and we got very nice compliments too. Balaji Jangran is the story of Ramayan’s Sundarkand where whole story is based on Lord Hanuman and their Lanka Visit. We organises the whole event in such a way that you can feel the event in reality with a lots of emotions. You will find yourself connecting with the God. Our Sargam jagran Team always take care our devotees on every single step of the event and organise the all things in such a way that you will find 100% satisfaction from us within your decided parameter of budget. So Please give one chance when you are making plan of Balaji jagran.

[yibennianyaji]

Tian’s Favorite Things: Movies (20 to 16)

Settling on a film list for this go round ended up being a ticket to the Village of Excruciation. Perhaps it’s the shorter time investment, and all that that implies – more time to watch more, more sustainable on an experiment than a long form series, more easily fed into a larger impression – but I find my relationship to movies hugely different to how I approach TV series.

That’s not to say I don’t love movies – I do, a lot – but the list is a lot more mutable, and favorites tend to be relegated to a time and place in my life when they were meaningful rather than something carried through the decades. So when I was putting this list together, I settled for the following: movies that were significantly influential, impressed me with some unique and lasting aspect (enough that they’d become a go-to in listing “good examples of x”); or, plainly put, movies that if I heard someone hadn’t seen them, my response would be siddown, this is our night now. And while there’s plenty of great things I haven’t seen yet, and those future movies might someday overtake some items on this list, they’re still recommendations I’d stand by.

20. Legally Blonde (2001)

After her boyfriend dumps her for not being serious enough, sorority girl Elle Woods determines the only way to win him back is to follow him….by getting into Harvard Law School.

Considering that it’s coming up on over 20 years old now, it’s rather amazing to step back and see how unique this movie still is – a film that doused itself in pink and tried so, so hard to singlehandedly bring some conception of third wave feminism to the Hollywood film industry. It’s not an entirely successful venture – it’s a story populated about 90% by upper class white people, Elle’s love of feminine-coded things is filtered entirely through a fierce consumption of high-end fashion, and there’s That One Scene in the second act that relies on a veeeeeeeery turn of the century grasp of gay stereotypes – but there’s so much good at the bones of the thing that I simply can’t dismiss it.

For starters, it accomplishes what surprisingly few commercially successful movies, even in the “girl power” mini-swing that was sort of going on at the time, managed to do: it’s really a story about its lead finding purpose and self-fulfillment primarily through her bonds with other female characters, with a male love interest whose place in the story is included in a way that lets them mutually support one another but also never makes him integral to her development as a character. The script is both charming and earnest, taking little beats to humanize all of the characters, male and female, who aren’t wearing big We Represent the Patriarchy signs over their heads (it’s not really interested in interrogating the whole femininity-as-consumerism thing, but baby steps). And the cast is downright charming, starting with but by no means limited to Reese Witherspoon in the role that really landed her the future spotlight.

Also there was a musical…we’ll talk about that another day.

19. The Great Mouse Detective (1986)

Mouse detective Basil of Baker Street is called to help a young girl find her kidnapped father – a case that leads him once more into the clutches of his nemesis Professor Ratigan.

I’m tempted to say “but Vincent Price” and call it a day, but that wouldn’t be fair. Sure, Vincent Price is the shining beacon of every scene he so much as breezes past, to the point that the film’s composers wrote him not one but two songs in what winds up being an unusually trim film. And sure there’s evidence that Katzenberg was tightening belts left and right, not just in that shortened running time but in the early fades on scenes, dropped subplots, a plot stitched together out of solely its most crucial beats, and the studio-uncharacteristic restraint in the film’s music.

But if anything, all of that makes it more impressive that the film oozes with such love. Basil and Ratigan get the most attention, as the star billing of this detective story, and their character animations are filled with beautiful little touches – quick, furtive movements and twitchy distaste in the former; grand theatricality and looming menace in the latter. The rest of the cast is fine, well designed and suitably executed in their narrative purposes, but it’s that leading rivalry around which the film turns. And boy do the actors know it, with both Barry Ingham (Basil) and the aforementioned Price (Ratigan) giving performances that are both delightfully hammy and yet never larger than the film allows for. It was endlessly delightful to watch as a child and remains little detracted as an adult, even now that I can point out the many nods it owes to a certain other great adventure film.

18. Angels in America (2003)

America, the late 1980s. The AIDS crisis is at its peak, killing enormous swaths of people within months of infection. Two couples find their fates crossed in unexpected ways: Joe Pitt, a Mormon man who’s just realized he’s gay, and his pill-addicted wife Harper; and Louis, who is unable to cope with lover Prior’s increasingly debilitating AIDS symptoms.

Angels in America is a seminal work of queer literature, and a majorly important work in the American canon at large. It’s one of the first major works of art to truly dramatize the hell of panic and anguish that was the AIDS crisis (five years before RENT premiered off-Broadway), and combines what was then an even more raw, open wound with thematic ruminations on death, grief, denial, real life historical figures, and faith. The stage play is technically two scripts – Millennium Approaches and Perestroika – and when performed without cuts can run for nearly eight hours. Even with more popular modern editings (taking a lot of the trial stuff out of Perestroika, as recommended by the author even) it’s still close to the half dozen mark.

All of that is probably why HBO decided to break it up and present it as a mini-series. But since it’s technically meant to be watched all in one go, I’m cheating and putting it here. It’s a breathtaking adaptation, done with clear love and reverence for the original text (though they’re thankfully not so precious about it as to avoid making a few tweaks for the switch from stage to screen). The cast is packed with acting juggernauts giving their all to the material, from Al Pacino to Emma Thompson to Meryl Streep. And it is simply gorgeous. In some ways it’s difficult for me to separate the story as art from the historical sketch it represents, but I’m not sure it’s meant to be done. As a piece of queer history it’s unmissable. As a well-crafted drama, it stands firm more than two decades on.

17. AKIRA (1988)

Set in Neo-Tokyo after the nuclear destruction of World War III, a gang of biker punks runs afoul of a strange, elderly-looking blue child while out on one of their rides. The government officials tasked with retrieving the boy also kidnap gang member Tetsuo. While gang leader Kaneda tries to get his friend back, government testing awakens Tetsuo’s telekinetic potential, and the tormented boy looks for answers regarding the mysterious “Akira.”

There’s something to be said for ambition. It’s no secret that the last 15 minutes or so of this film is an arguable trainwreck, pushed by the constraints of adapting six telephone book-sized manga (which was still running at the time) into a two hour film. And while there are narrative aspects of the manga that I miss – predominantly the fact that Kei’s role in the story is reduced from an active player to The Girl Character – for the most part I can’t say that I’m overly fussed. Akira works about as well doing vague metaphor duty as being a proper character, and the narrative itself has aged into a portrait of nuclear anxiety in both versions.

What the film, with its forced abstraction (this is a film that lives and dies by its visual effects, after all, from the sickly blues of the nursery and warlike red of Tetsuo’s berserker outfit to the slithering triumph of body horror he becomes and then-unheard of budget, manages to preserve is the very feel of shonen as a genre (albeit a rather gorier one than what you’re liable to catch in Jump). There’s so little room for actual narrative events that the story often seems to operate on dream logic…and that ends an echoing power to the way that dreams, memories, hallucinations, and psychic visions are woven throughout the story. This is a story of children being turned into weapons and dreams becoming nightmares, and the melting hallucinogenic quality that carries us from scene to scene invites an emotional experience that fits that kind of story. Even Kaneda and Tetsuo, with their memetic screaming scenes, are a fairly simple friends-to-rivals story that’s a dime a dozen in action anime these days…but the film takes that often stale relationship and boils it down to raw moments of emotion – tears and tenderness and, yes, raging shouts. It’s not a peerless script, but it’s nigh unmatched as a raw emotional experience.

16. The Incredibles (2004)

Superheroes have been forced out of the public eye for decades, and masked vigilantes have all assumed civilian lives. But Bob Parr, formerly “Mr. Incredible,” has never been able to let go of the glory days (often at the cost of lying to his equally superpowered family) – a fact that a mysterious benefactor is more than happy to take advantage of.

I love hero stories, internet. I love their idealism, their bombastic visuals, and their frequent absurdity. I love, when they are good, the humanism that shines through even in the face of surface-level grime. And Brad Bird (who also directed the wonderful The Iron Giant) seems to love them too. It nods to classic comics (the premise, after all, is straight out of Watchmen) while also smartly centering its heart on the subject of trust, fidelity, the inherent value of an individual versus the exceptionalism that’s pretty well baked into the genre, and a tight cast of well-drawn and memorable characters.

And that’s before we even get into the bright, primary color palette; the incredibly (sorry) smart use of simplified character designs that minimizes CGI’s problem with the uncanny valley (see exhibit B, The Polar Express) and the equally lush and vibrant scenic designs; that memorable, bombastic and jazzy soundtrack that Tiger & Bunny went on to crib to great effect. It’s a great genre tribute, thoughtful but never cynical.

And it features Sarah Vowell as Violet, and I so rarely get to see authors I love in films I love.

[omniscientwreck]

With Every Single Thing I Have

Beginning note: ***MAJOR SPOILERS FOR C2 E141***

CW: Character Death, Talk of Death

This is my interpretation of the canon description of Essek and Caleb’s days with some good angst thrown right in there. I have no knowledge of what is or isn’t cannon about the afterlife in Critical Role so this may be canon divergent but I needed it to cope. I hope you enjoy! Title Is Taken From The Song Two by Sleeping At Last

Caleb Widogast is dying.

He’s old, nearly 90 years of age. His body aches with every rain, stairs become more difficult, but his casting never fades. His mind is sharp and he reads, learns, and teaches until the end comes for him. Up in his tower, exhausted and bed-ridden he hears shuffling outside the door before it opens without so much as a touch and a tray of food is brought in. Essek Thelyss glides gently into the room, “Oh good, you’re awake. I prepared a light lunch for you, would you eat?”

Nodding back at the drow, the bittersweet smile that’s become a companion to him in Essek’s presence settling again into his wrinkled features. Essek sits on the bed beside him, book in hand as he often does and the memories written all over Caleb’s face come flooding back.

They had gone back to Aeor after the business in Rexxentrum concluded. Jester had helped Caleb locate Essek and when he found out he wasn’t too late, he was still at the outpost, he’d gone almost immediately. The winter clothes they’d bought all those months ago to chase their lost friend still fit and they carried many memories in them with the promise of more to come.

Their time together in Aeor was long. They took many months scouring the ruins for every book they could find. Between his Vault of Amber and Essek’s Wristpocket as well as a borrowed bag of holding they were able to collect the knowledge of Aeor. They found every device, every tiny dunamantic stone. They went back to the machine, the one that promised Caleb his dreams, closure, a chance to atone. The one that could change Essek’s past, that would give him his freedom.

Essek gazed upon the machine and he decided to remain in hiding. He looked directly at Caleb, made the decision to live forever with the consequences of his actions, because without them they wouldn’t have this. This moment, this trip, these memories.

It is Caleb’s turn now to gaze upon his destiny. He looks into the lavender eyes boring into him with the question Will you do it? His plan is perfect, the only thing that changes is that his parents are not dead and one day maybe he can reunite with them. He can see them grown old, he can tell them everything he’s done. They can be proud of him.

His mind shifts to the Nein, to Veth, Jester. To Astrid and Eodwulf. Back to Essek. It’s impossible to know what would happen if he did this. If he’d be able to come back. Is it really worth giving up everything he knows? Potentially giving up the Mighty Nein not only for himself but for them too?

He reaches into his components bag, smears dust across his forearm and with a green ray he carves away the experiment. He destroys, permanently, any hope of ever going back, in favour of hope for the future. Essek helps him burn everything and when they’re done he can only stare at the drow. The man who’s come so far, allowed himself to be so changed by the love of friends (Caleb’s love) that he went from enemy to beloved companion. He stares and divergent futures flash before his eyes as if he’s staring deep into the Luxon. They all end the same, he dies and Essek lives on without him for many years. The change is in the times in between now and then.

He knows which one he want and if the last two months were any indication Essek had his own hopes.

A week or so later, they ate in the tower. When the Nein first separated the tower had felt empty, he usually elected to sleep in a hotel room or in the dome under the stars. With Essek it’s easier to be there. They’ve fallen into a comfortable routine while researching that involves them spending the day immersed in ancient secrets forgotten to time. They would spend hours in complete silence, reading in tandem or copying runes and arcane patterns and then one of them would find something truly tantalizing and the silence would be broken as they began theorizing. When Essek gets excited his lavender eyes brighten and his whole face lifts and it’s no secret to Caleb that his heart races and his face melts into a soft, tender expression that Essek catches and matches.

After, they’ll go into the tower and eat, served warm soups and breads by little fey cats and then they read in the study in companionable silence until they retire to separate rooms. This night, a week before their time was up, Caleb’s keen mind caught up with him. Suddenly he became very aware of the passage of time, the potential futures slipping away and he rests his spoon on the table, overwhelmed by the shrinking timeline ahead.

They talk that night, instead of reading. They sit in two armchairs in a quiet carpeted room lit by purple globules of light, gently bobbing around their heads and they talk. They talk for hours. Essek tells Caleb his sins and Caleb elaborates on his own. They talk plainly and it’s hard to do, but at some point the chairs moved closer, and then their hands touched, eventually Essek’s hands were folded into Caleb’s.

He felt closer to Essek after that. For the rest of the week it was easier to reach out and grasp his hand, to pull him into a hug. Two weeks later, they talked again and after that they kissed. Their kisses weren’t frequent but they were familiar, a warm comfort over those last weeks in Aeor.

Theirs was not a whirlwind romance. It was something more precious and much more difficult to describe. It burned slow and and steadily rose until something had to be done. They kept in close contact after Aeor, it is those letters that begin the new collection that fills Caleb’s left holster.

They visit occasionally until the burn of the eyes of the Dynasty on Essek’s back became too hot. Caleb has taken to staying in Nicodranas when he and Beauregard are taking a break from dismantling centuries old systems to weed out the rot so he asks Essek to come stay with him. Quietly, out of the eyes of the empire and most of their friends, they begin to build a life. They construct with care, laying a sturdy foundation because though they both know this arrangement is temporary they promise to always be together in one way or another; because though gravity can be altered, it always rights itself and the pull Caleb feels towards Essek, has felt for some time, is a law of his nature.

They allow themselves as long as the other will have them and they spend years together. The kisses become more frequent as they gradually abandon inhibitions. Caleb’s life is a blink compared to Essek and he becomes more aware each year of the limited time he has. He and Essek stay together in varying locations for as long as he can bear it, he realizes now that they have earned this happiness, however fleeting. It will always be a larger portion of his life than it will be of Essek’s so he holds out as long as he can. He begins to teach in this time and though Essek cannot really be free he still has his work studying their findings and occasionally he travels.

Caleb watches him advance so much in their decade together and he gets bleary eyed imagining all Essek will do when he’s gone. They learn together, share every meal, he learns Undercommon and teaches Zemnian, and they spend every possible night together in every possible way. They share a sweet and intense passion and Caleb’s love sinks deeper and deeper into his heart.

When his forehead wrinkles and his hair is greying he realizes his time is up. He has goals, he needs to teach, he needs to fully commit to being in the Empire and his short life must be spent doing as he promised all those years ago, making each place better than he found it. That is the hardest conversation he’s ever had. “I wish it were not this way. That it didn’t have to be, but I do not have as much time as you so I must burn brightly to make my impact. I will always love you Essek Thelyss.”

“And I you Caleb Widogast. When you stumbled into my life all those years ago, Empire infiltrator holding my greatest crime in your hand I had no idea what would happen. You were a variable I did not account for, could never have foreseen. Of all the possible futures in store for me this one, where I am here with you, where I have been here with you for ten years and where I will continue to be by your side thought it is not the same is the best one I could have never predicted.”

They give themselves one last year. They don’t travel, Caleb takes the year off and they spend 328 days exactly together, in bliss. They do their best not to allow the apprehension of good-bye to creep in. Caleb knows it’s not good-bye, not truly and not forever. But when the day comes though he tries to hold it back he cries bitter tears and holds Essek tight and the smaller man shakes with his own sobs. But they loved each other for eleven years, and they manage to continue loving each other for another fourty or so.

Essek leaves and travels for a while to do his own work. This is frequent in the latter half of Caleb’s life but every time he comes back and his friend brings him stories and listens to all of his own. They help each other research, Caleb still tells him everything and relishes every moment they spend together. They no longer kiss but they are still partners.

Caleb’s life has been better, more fulfilling than he could ever have hoped stumbling out of that wretched prison at the beginning of his second life. He learned peace through the Nein and later through Essek and now that he’s at the end of his time he knows he could not have lived a better life.

Caleb Widogast is old, older than he ever thought he’d be and while his bones and muscles give out and he goes to the Blooming Grove where Caduceus has always said he will end up, to spend his final months, Essek follows.

He cooks the soups the cats used to, they remember everything together, Caleb’s mind keen but Essek has kept up well. At just the right time, Caleb knows. Essek is sat beside him in the bed, the wizards reading in tandem as they’ve done before and fallen into again in this late stage. They have been kissing again, Caleb allowing this last indulgence, one last selfish act. Essek needs it too.

“Essek Thelyss, thank you for everything you’ve done for me. My constant companion, the center of my gravity. You who bent time and space for me and taught me so many things from magic to forgiveness. I have loved you all my life from the moment I could and I would never dream to change a single thing.”

“Caleb Widogast. I have treasured every moment we have spent together, you changed my life, saved a man who knew not that he was dying. I have been happy because I know you and I will continue to be happy because you will never be far from my heart.”

“Please promise to me that you will take care of the others. Allow them to care for you. Find new people and care for them and allow yourself to be cared for in return, live your life as fully as you are able, and when you are done I will see you again just as I am about to see my family.”

“I will. You have loved me all of your life and I will love you for all of mine. I will never know someone like you again. Thank you for allowing me the privilege of your companionship. It is an honor to love you and it always will be.”

The quiet conversation fades and they share one final kiss and Essek sits as Caleb drifts to sleep, gently running his fingers through his hair. Then he goes to get Caduceus. Caleb Widogast is dead.

---------------------------------

Essek Thelyss is dying.

He is nearly 740 years old and he is in decline. He, like his friends before him, retires to the Blooming Grove to live out his remaining days, however many they might be. Caduceus’ kin are caring and when he shows up on their doorstep they expect him. “He told us you would arrive one day. Welcome home and thank you for being here.”

Essek’s life has been a thing of remarkable chance, nearly improbable. He has learned to manipulate as much as he can but even he could not have foreseen the path he ended up taking. He has lived so long, and his life has been full but he is tired.

Fjord had been the first of the Nein to pass. After him Caleb. After Caleb the group coalesced around him. They had never shared many details, but they seemed to know. Keeping his promise to Caleb he allowed them to care for him. To bring him food, to message him to make sure he was okay. They invited him on adventures when they needed and he never turned them down.

They continued asking him to teleport them and every single time he did. Kingsley goes next and then Beauregard. Those years are full of so much loss condensed into such a tiny portion of his existence. He isn’t used to things happening so quickly and he begins to reach out. New connections. He finds people to care for, to mentor and to bolster. He dedicates his life to using aliases to research and study and publish materials to help the mages after him and Caleb. He finds himself beseeched by parties of assholes for assistance and while he never fights alongside another group he makes himself useful in any other way in his ability.

He always imparts the lesson to leave the world better than they found it, and if they listen, if they are the same as his friends, the best people he’s ever known, the world will survive yet. There is a pause between good-byes for a number of years. Then he loses Yasha and Jester. Jester is one of the hardest, the friendly little blue tiefling with a heart for adventure who hugged him when touch had still burned. After her goes Veth and after Veth, finally Caduceus goes back to the earth.

He promised Caleb to live a full life, but every year, the anniversary of the day they met several lifetimes ago, he visits the Blooming Grove. He walks the grounds, he sits with Caleb and he tells him of his research, he reminisces and he whispers love to the flowers that grow. They are fiery orange and yellow with some deep purple and blue spattered among them. Caduceus says on his first visit that the blue ones are called forget-me-nots. Essek picks one every year and presses it into a book, like Yasha showed him once upon a time.

Caduceus and Essek drink the tea from the flowers Caleb gave them. For centuries they sat together, telling stories, having extended conversation year after year. Some years Caduceus travelled so Essek made his vigil alone, but he never forgot Caleb and he never forgot the Mighty Nein. They lived as long as he did for they were in his heart always.

The last time he visits Caleb they talk for hours. “Every good thing I have done, every positive emotion and happiness I have known in these centuries has been because of you. You allowed me to feel again and the best decision I could have ever made was letting my plan go to allow myself to grow close to you.”

He is lying beside the grave twirling a delicate blue flower between wrinkled, aching fingers. “Caleb Widowgast you have lived with me for a long while and I thank you again for the gifts you gave me while you were here. I hope you are proud of me. I love you to the end of my days my friend.”

He falls asleep then, in the night of the Blooming Grove, fireflies and an infinite expanse of stars casting gentle light across his stilling form.

As Essek Thelyss fades he finds himself again in a garden. It is brightly coloured and lush, well cared for. There is a small cottage there and as he glides to the door, drawn to it as if by gravity, it opens and he sees copper hair, vibrant blue eyes, and the widest smile he’s missed the most, “I told you my friend, we would meet again.”

“I never doubted you Caleb Widogast.”

[9w1ft]

feels a little early to be writing a year-in review but i find myself in a quiet moment so i thought i’d tap a few things out

in 2019, in all facets of my life, i faced a challenge of some sort and i surprised myself as i held my ground more often than ran away, which felt new. what *also* felt new was this sense of ease i began having professionally, when it came to conceptualizing and making decisions. sorta feels like a lot of things are crystallizing.

in terms of life on here, i didn’t have TSL for the majority of the year (anybody out there remember TSL?!) so i busied myself with crafting fun memories on my own. there were spans of weeks where i’d just get on a tear and run into one new thing after the other and it was all really just fantastic. i gave myself permission to indulge in the most decadent of things and to follow the most mercurial of assumptions to places i thought closed off.

i’m pretty sure i’ve smiled and laughed more over this year than i ever have in my entire life. no joke.

here are some kaylorverse moments that brought me joy in 2019:

it’s nice to have a friend

2018 was my first year being a kaylor and i just sort of was moreover on the contributor or commenter side of things so 2019 was interesting in that when taylor really leaned into the gay imagery leading up to album release, i started getting newer people sending me stuff! and asking me my takes on things! and like, my words suddenly had weight for some reason? it felt weird but i truly enjoyed getting to talk with so many different people and hear their ideas and laugh and such. that was markedly different from last year. from within this, 79-swift reached out to me with the eye theory, the most beautiful and rare of observations by a singularly lovely individual that i have dedicated my life to protecting and promoting. and i feel like i’ve gotten to know many people i knew through 2018 more deeply and have come to accept the role i play, lean in to it, and formulate my own truth of the matter, and that sort of heightened perspective on it has been a blessing and i’m so thankful for this strange sense of camaraderie that has formed with many of you? thank you??? and my conviction, and my wishes, for the girls to find happiness have only strengthened this year... im committed to seeing this through whether people like it or not!! harumph!

block ‘em

i also started proactively curating my experience.. that’s right! i began blocking trolls with reckless abandon, and i turned anons off! 😂 and damn it’s so much more worthwhile of a time on here when you set aside people that only want to ruin your day.

i got over my fear of eyeballs!!

😂 no seriously, body horror and in particular eyes out of context was actually sort of a thing that previously creeped me out BUT LOOK AT ME NOW. i’m gonna do my best not to rehash the eye theory, please read the post and recall the number of times i filipped out 😂 each and every one is precious to me

also

geeking out with bert and ernie gifs with kaylorfossil and making empsmd-blog drop her debit card need a mention.

the ME! music playlist.

i fell in love with so many songs and like, running into eye motifs in so many of the songs, lyrically and visually, was the most hilarious thing. but really just a lot of the songs really tapped at my soul with an ice pick and i even went to go see The Japanese House live in Osaka which was transcendental and i’m just so thankful for having taylor introduce Good At Falling to me because it was a *necessary* album.

i made and collected stuff

i made and amassed many artifacts that one day i can look back on and remember what a wild ride it has been. some favorites are my procuring of the pixel art heart ring from the ME! mv (a nod to my tsl days..), as well as the evil eye ring.. i didn’t physically make this but the eye theory made the taydar podcast and there’s nothing i enjoy more in this world than making someone giggle and i just love that the episode exists. making that kaylor straw was 👌 working on a mock-up of the golden locket has been very satisfying. i started incorporating fun kaylor winks into my artwork as well which was fun, and i also commissioned a collage from the very talented and lovely valheria and i couldn’t have asked for anything better 🥰

wildin in the TS7 tag was the best.

i made this observation that there’s this type of cocoon that looks like a cobra, which transforms into a butterfly over a period of 13 days, and like, the post got so many notes and i just had a lot of swiftie eyeballs all of a sudden on my blog which led to some hilarity. but honestly i just love geeking out over theories and it’s fun to get to do that as fans of taylor at large. things felt warm and effervescent.

my newspaper subscription

i subscribe to the TTB Times and let me just say the submissions and anons this year were overwhelmingly a delight to read through every day. also like, we did get cued in to stuff before album release and i am just thankful that there are people out there both who want to give us that and people who work to help them give us that. thank you ttb for moderating your blog (my newspaper of choice) however it is that you do and to everyone that contributed to her blog.

the whole lead up to the ME! video release

so glorious... but particular the hour before. i was rushing to pick up my kid from school and suddenly i kept getting messages from people that taylor was covering her face and framing her eyes, and i was like oh please yeah sure BUT THEN when the snake in the video had a blank eye like i don’t think you guys understand i had to wait at a bus stop and exchange pleasantries with the other moms but it was a *five alarm fire* in my mind

cause shade never made anybody less gay

stealing away to listen to YNTCD for the first time and hearing Taylor Alison Swift use the word gay in a released song for the first time was a transcendental moment

karlie’s hand in the YNTCD mv.

‘nuff said

daisies. daisies everywhere.

taylor said daisy kaylor rights, and she said it everywhere. *everywhere*. cannot, will not, get over how blessed we are.

gay gay gay gay gay.... taylor’s

sorry not sorry that wiz khalifa collab with elohim on her track FYM was ethereal and i still hope it’s a part of the preshow playlist for Lover Fest

clue hunting in klossy videos and karlie ads

call me a corporate shill all you want like, there’s always a little something in there and i also enjoy the little flickers of goofy karlie that jump out from time to time. and i know this is not the case for everyone but post eyepocalypse, karlie leaning in, winking that eye of hers time and time again was just pique comedy for me and it always made me chuckle. the brands karlie has repped have been really laying it on thick too and it’s been a joy to see. when taylor does it with her music it’s art, and for me karlie’s media presence is a form of art too 😌

oh kaptain my kaptain

kimby liked a comment of mine on her insta which was a distinct honor and privilege 😌 and really she was dropping clues left and right through spring up until she got her snazzy new job and things calmed down 🥰 of which i am so proud talk about an on brand job! also partially clearing the air about my TSL theory and the lead up to clearing that air was quite fulfilling for me and i am forever grateful for the time we shared. and to this point, the seesters in general (and kurt omg) have been quite active all year and we don’t deserve it but they’ve stuck around and it’s been calming.

album cover art release on the livestream

LIKE I HAVE NEVER IN MY LIFE NEVER HAD A FOURTH WALL BROKEN SO DULY

i love you forever, thank you for everything

when taylor came to visit tokyo this year i was basically reenacting the swamp scene from OOTW trying to get a ticket to the secret event... i listened to ME! on LINE MUSIC for over 2000 plays, i bought multiple CD’s, it was such an ordeal and then to not have a ticket after all but still putting on my thinking cap and managing to figure out where the event was while i was at disney sea and literally running from disney sea to the venue in high heels with The Man playing on my phone was oscar-worthy and actually *being correct* and the moment i knew i was correct and how i knew i was correct was so amazing 😉 and i play by the rules so i didn’t try to get in without a ticket and i didn’t lurk. but just to have figured it out and validated it was such a thrill. seeing her on TV live was amazing as well ///

lost in japan, reprise

oh and, last year for rep tour there was this theory i had which didn’t pan out but it had to do with the clues i thought shawn mendes was dropping through autumn 2018 and anyway that’s a story for another day but as i was bopping around town, looking for lockets, staying in rooms i have no business being in, drinking lots of whisky...just to know that while i was doing *everything but* successfully meeting taylor, she literally phoned shawn and had him record lines for that eye theory remix like, i will never ever, like, guys. guys. 😂 it’s too perfect for words. the world is weird like that sometimes.

Lover

and omg Lover the album? i absolutely love lover and i loves that honeymoon period of theorizing and parallel unearthing that we did and i love how slightly creepy-cute it is and i love the whole wabi-sabi thing going on and i absolutely love every song on the album, every one, they all have so much meaning to me... and each one is teeming with little blips and bloops and sound samples and seconds of silence and i love all the brass instruments and so many lush moments... i guess my shortlist (in no particular order) would be the archer, lover, i think he knows, daylight, cruel summer, false god, cornelia street, ME! (yea i really like me 🥰). and to think about everything that went in to the album and the thrill of what it might have been and the vastness of what we don’t know, but like, the weight of that potential?? it’s like this vast pastel and black abyss of drowsy and deep feelings and i love every inch of it. it’s a vibe that reflects so much of what this year has been for me and i’m happy to have existed in this time to have had it with me.

jesus this has gotten too long, and i still have like 24 more things to write out but um, basically, as i’m sure you’ve been able to assume? i wanted to say that despite 2019 being somewhat of a slasher film affair for our fandom, i still had a goddamn great time this year and i hope everyone can find some good memories and relive them as well 🥰

[recentanimenews]

OPINION: The Life and Times of an Indian Otaku

  Makoto Shinkai's Weathering With You marked a historic first in my anime watching career. Contrary to popular belief, being the first anime to be released in Indian theaters is not the historic first in question (that honor goes to Shinchan: Bungle in the Jungle). Rather, Weathering With You would become the first film I'd ever watch on opening day — "first day first show" as we Indians call it. In the mad scramble to get tickets, I'd emerged a winner. Was it worth the struggle?

An emphatic yes. It was so good I went on to rewatch it twice.

    To fans in India: I’m so happy to tell that ‘Weathering With You’ (Tenki no ko) will release in India this October! We have licensed the Indian distribution rights to PVR Pictures and BookMyShow backed company Vkaao.

— 新海誠 (@shinkaimakoto) August 10, 2019

  The Indian theatrical release of Weathering With You in 2019 marked an important moment in the history of the Indian anime fandom. The story of how Shinkai noticed (and fulfilled) an online petition by Indian fans asking for its release here is already the stuff of legend. Because access to anime (especially in theaters) was so scarce in India, even in 2019, fans sought to have the film legally released in theaters. And thanks to Shinkai, it worked. To Indian anime fans, this represented the moment Japan — and the rest of the world — recognized our existence in the fandom. But Indian otakus didn't spring up overnight. Anime has had nearly three decades of history here. It just looks a little different than the rest of the world. The origins of anime in India go back to the '90s. Prior to the economic reforms of 1991, we had one — yes, only one — TV channel, the state-owned Doordarshan. The post-1991 wave of private TV channels brought with it a flood of international TV shows, among them anime like Robotech (which aired on the newly-created Star Plus). Ramayana: The Legend of Prince Rama, the anime adaptation of the Indian mythological epic of the same name, was released in 1992 and had a long and troubled production history, but the end product was a grand success, with its all-star Hindi cast and catchy songs turning it into a TV fixture for well over a decade. It even received a US release, with Bryan Cranston voicing the lead role. The remainder of the '90s would see various anime achieve varying degrees of success, from Nippon Animation's 1989 adaptation of The Jungle Book — which became a nationwide hit — airing in India starting in 1993, to late-night anime like You're Under Arrest and Gunsmith Cats. Despite this, there wasn't yet an actual fandom surrounding anime at the time. That would all change upon the turn of the century.

  Cartoon Network revolutionized the Indian anime market when the channel arrived in 2001. The launch of dedicated anime programming block Toonami brought with it two anime that would permanently shape the future of the fandom: Dragon Ball Z and Cardcaptor Sakura (albeit in its heavily-edited Cardcaptors form). While I never watched Dragon Ball Z (compared to all my friends at school), I did watch some Cardcaptors with my sister, which would actually be the very first anime I watched. My own viewing habits notwithstanding, DBZ was very much the anime of the moment. Schoolkids would frequently shout out famous lines from the iconic English dub. We'd even invented various hand games based on attacks and moves from DBZ. In 2003, another monumental shift would come as the childhood classic Pokémon hit the small screen, followed closely by Digimon, Yu-Gi-Oh!, and Beyblade. The merchandise associated with these franchises turned them into smash hits with a younger audience. All the cool kids had Pokemon cards and Beyblade tops. Battling with them at school was the stuff childhood was made of. To this day, these toys continue to sell well. Beyblade tournaments are still very much a thing. While many of my schoolmates were avid fans of DBZ, there were other trends in anime that could be observed, trends that had to do with language. From my experience, certain anime were only available dubbed in Hindi — a language spoken largely by the northern half of the country. Coming from a south Indian city with a significant north Indian population, I could observe a clear trend wherein Hindi-speaking north Indians grew up with these Hindi-dubbed anime, while people in the south (who spoke other languages) largely grew up with titles that were available in English (or Tamil, as fans of DBZ's Tamil dub can testify). Interestingly, these Hindi dubbed anime tended to be ones that were popular in Japan but not so much in the West — stuff like Doraemon, Shin-Chan, KochiKame, and Case Closed. This gave the north Indian anime scene a rather unique flavor. An even more interesting case is that of India's northeastern region (comprised of states like Nagaland, Manipur, and Meghalaya). Being culturally different from the rest of India, these states have had a history of consuming Korean and Japanese media, and they embraced anime and manga in a way the rest of the nation had not. Anime-related cosplay is huge in the northeast, with some of the best cosplay conventions in the nation taking place there and becoming a part of the local fashion scene. The general acceptance of otaku culture in the region continues to be high.

Eventually, anime would become a little more accessible to all. The launch of dedicated channel Animax in 2004 represented another watershed moment in the fandom. The shows Animax brought over were unlike anything we'd seen in the medium. Shows like Bleach, Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood, Inuyasha, and K-On! redefined what anime meant for Indian audiences who had previously seen anime as a childhood interest and no different from other cartoons. As the channel slowly began to shift its focus to the older teen/young adult demographic, more mature anime like Cowboy Bebop, Hell Girl, Akira, and Welcome to the NHK challenged our conservative notions of what was acceptable to air on TV, especially considering these shows aired in daytime slots rather than late-night. This honeymoon period did not last. Animax was delisted by service providers in 2012. The years to come would be some of the most frustrating for us anime fans, as availability was at its most inconsistent and uncertain. While the channel attempted to make a comeback later on in 2016, it eventually disappeared for good in 2017. Despite all these problems, I look back on Animax fondly. Thanks to it, we became aware of the existence of the entity known as "anime." We began to actively seek out anime over other forms of animation. In short, it resulted in the formation of an actual fandom centered around anime. Anime fan clubs began to pop up in major cities like Mumbai, Delhi, Bangalore, and Kolkata. Widespread conventions outside of the northeast region came next. Anime Con India was started in 2010, followed closely by Delhi Comic-Con in 2011. Anime conventions in India are a curious thing. They are very unlike the sprawling, sophisticated conventions of the West. The funds simply aren't there for that sort of thing. I don't recall a single Indian anime convention that was attended by a voice actor, animator, or the like. So what are Indian cons about? In an interview with The Citizen, Anime Con India founder Nitesh Rohit talked about his reason for starting the con: "like any other belief and faith they all needed a temple to congregate (at)." This statement really resonates with me, and sums up what Indian cons are about. What they lack in scale and facilities, they make up for in intimacy and a feeling of togetherness. They are more or less small-scale events for anime fans to find other fans, to network with them, and basically feel less alone. Because feeling alone was part of the original Indian otaku experience. The early fandom was largely an urban phenomenon, as going to cons wasn't an option for everyone and the internet wasn't what it is today. So, you had these disconnected pockets of fans. People around you were unlikely to share your interest in anime and may have even judged you for it. The general consensus in India was (and still is) that animation is a medium for children. And remember, for a long time, anime accessibility varied by region. So, if you were lucky enough to find a kindred otaku, there was no guarantee they were into (or had even heard of) the same titles as you. This meant that we hadn't really had the ability to develop any sort of unique culture or traditions of our own. Things like going to cons, renting anime DVDs, memes and in-jokes — these things didn't exist for the vast majority of early fans who were school-going kids or college students of little means. A culture of our own wouldn't arise until much later — when that generation grew up.

  Of course, it wasn't just us who grew up — technology did, too. The internet became more ubiquitous. Social media and forums enabled us to network with each other regardless of location, in ways we'd never have imagined. To the scattered fandom of the early days, this has been nothing short of a blessing. The other big change ushered in by the internet was the era of streaming. Until then, most of our anime viewing took place on television and as previously stated, was not always very consistent. Accessibility improved greatly with the launch of Netflix in 2016. In today's India, Netflix is a household name, with a significant portion of young adults having access to a subscription. With a catalog of over 200 anime, Netflix has been responsible for pulling in many new fans. Plenty of people "come for the movies, stay for the anime." Series like My Hero Academia, Death Note, and One-Punch Man have become mainstream successes in this fashion, with a significant following even among non-anime fans. Another streaming service that is beginning to make inroads into the Indian market is Crunchyroll, with simulcasts like Boruto and originals like Tower of God, and the fact that it is free makes it accessible to anyone with an internet connection. Most Indian anime fans I know of have heard of Crunchyroll, and as more titles get licensed it is inevitable that its popularity will rise. And us otakus are doing plenty to help it do just that.

The success of Weathering With You is a shining example of the tight-knit nature of the Indian anime fandom. All it took was one person (an anime fan named Divishth Pancholi) to create a Change.org petition asking for its release in Indian theaters. The petition went viral, getting over 50,000 signatures and attracting the attention of Shinkai and the producers, resulting in its release here. Today, that event is seen as a smaller part of a greater Indian anime movement that is pushing for increased availability and acceptance of anime in India. Hashtags like #IndiaWantsAnime frequently make their presence felt on social media. This fandom isn't without its problems — it isn't the most inclusive when it comes to non-male fans, the "animation is for kids" specter hasn't been fully shaken off, and I'd love for anime BluRays/DVDs to be more widely available here. But I am grateful for the fandom's existence for getting me into anime in the first place. Without them, I'd have never been sitting in a movie theater on October 11, 2019, watching Weathering With You.

By: news+feed@crunchyroll.com

[melisa-may-taylor72]

Queen's hectic days in Argentina: secrets behind the shows, the meeting with Maradona and a love affair for Freddie Mercury

The band arrived in the country in 1981. Curiosities and "pearls" of a very special visit

By Matías Bauso- Infoshow

An exultant and provocative figure, who may appear in tight white pants provocatively exposing his ass to a heated audience or who sits at the piano with a very short and tight satin pants that would blush the most enthusiastic devotee of sadomasochism, a guitarist who plays in a t-shirt with an immense Union Jack, crazed masses, street chases in search of an improbable autograph, China Zorrilla, Miguel Romano, Diego Maradona, ItalPark, the military, the repressive climate, the Rambla marplatense and even an unknown love affair. This story has everything. Queen's visit to Argentina in 1981 was much more than a musical tour.

Queen's enthusiasm - both current and retro - is a faint reflection of what happened in the country at the end of February 1981. Like the Beatlemania in the sixties, the presence of the English quartet unleashed a collective madness never before seen in Argentina.

▪Queen at Velez Sarsfield Stadium

Queen monopolized the attention for more than a week. Television news, radio programs, magazine covers, conversations in bars, newspaper supplements (not so the covers of the main ones: at that time it was still not allowed to put show business news on the cover; only Chronicle excepted for that rule).

The band led by Freddie Mercury gave five concerts in Argentina. Three in the Vélez stadium, one in Mar del Plata and another in Rosario. The public success was colossal.

The first performance was on February 28 in Velez, repeated  the next day, then stop in Mar del Plata and Rosario. The last show was again in Buenos Aires. That day the capacity of the stadium overflowed. The contagious reaction had taken effect. Those who had not gone, wanted to go; those who had already witnessed some of the shows wanted to be there again.

▪Queen gave five shows in Argentina

The regulations of the spaces in the public spectacles, in those times, were at least, morose. Just look at the photos of any grandstand in a superclassic of the early 1980s. Producers sold more tickets and that fifth show was the busiest. It is estimated that between those who paid for their tickets and those who snuck in more than 60,000 people attended that night. At one point the capacity The crowd could barely move. Whoever reached into the pocket to take out the lighter for a cigarette could set in motion a human tide that would end up crashing into a paravalanche or the barbed wire. In the field, the situation was a little more relaxed. Being the first experience in which this section was offered for sale, the estimates were more cautious. Thus, the police decided that the best way to decompress the people was to drill holes in the Olympic fence and allow part of the public to pass into the field through these improvised holes.

The magnitude of the event and its immense repercussion can be explained. It was the first time that a rock band had reached the country at the peak of its career. These shows were part of the world tour to present the album "The Game". Queen was one of the most important bands in the world and arrived in Argentina at its peak.

Although the specialized critics did not treat them very well (it was a habit that had started in the United Kingdom and had spread to the United States) the album contained several hits: Another One Bites the Dust, Crazy Little Thing Called Love, Play the Game, Save Me. The British band was a pioneer in including Latin America in their itinerary. Until then the world tours were not such, they only included the United States, Europe and Japan.

The history of Queen's Latin American tour shows why this was so. In Mexico, six of the scheduled performances had to be cancelled, Pinochet did not authorize the performance in Chile, in Brazil the Rio and Porto Alegre shows were suspended, and in Venezuela two more due to the official declaration of mourning for the death of an ex-president. However, the band's bet, beyond these improvisations, unthinkable today, (in times of presales, early birds, insurance and armies of lawyers), was more than successful.

There was a precedent in the country of an international star appearing in a stadium. In 1973 the Mexican guitarist Carlos Santana played with his band in old wooden stadium of San Lorenzo. But despite his reputation and fame, Santana did not have the repercussion of the English band and at that moment in his career his musical search was turning towards fusion, towards jazz-rock. The lack of experience made the stage stand in the middle of the arena and there was no audience in the field. The closest spectator was, hopefully, 40 meters away from the artists. The sound - the lack of it - was another problem.

In 1981 Queen came to the country with only that antecedent. The show they brought was unlike anything seen in the country. A huge stage, consoles of moving lights, an impressive sound power, fireworks and tricks, a worked scenic staging, immortal hymns and a performer like Freddie Mercury.

Queen's vocalist's ability to perform - but especially on stage - exceeded expectations. There he was, in front of more than 50,000 people, imposing the rules. What he wanted was at stake. A game that had no public exposure in the country, that was silenced and repressed. He did not modify his proposal despite the repressive climate, the censorship. One of the particularities of his performances in the country was that at the five of them they played a song that was somewhat lost in their discography and that many Argentinians did not know: Get Down, Make Love. It was a carnal, erotic and explicit song, with direct references to oral sex.

▪Diego Maradona and Queen

Queen did not show any major itching in regards to those who ruled in the places where they performed. This South American tour was a good example; in its initial schedule it passed through three countries governed by dictatorships. Years later it was also presented in South Africa despite international sanctions due to Apartheid.

It is often claimed that Queen's musicians met with Argentina's president, Roberto Viola. The truth is that Viola had not yet assumed that role. He was a member of the military board, Chief of the Army, but the president was still Jorge Rafael Videla. His investiture would take place weeks after the visit of the British.

Viola had a more political profile and believed that a slight opening was convenient. In that plan, and instigated by his son -who had been a football player-, he met at home with Freddie Mercury, Brian May and John Deacon. Roger Taylor, the drummer, missed the appointment. Today, almost four decades later, many affirm that his absence was due to his political positions, even though he neither at that time nor now has issued any opinion on the matter.

▪ The band met with Roberto Viola, one of the members of the Military Board

The memories of several of those involved - members of the band, technical staff, manager and even the photographer - are impregnated with political valuations that seem to have been concocted with the passage of time and do not represent what they thought and felt at the time. If so, it can be said that they had a unique capacity for dissociation, almost constituting multiple personalities. The presence of military and police personnel was strong. That was because the arrival of the English band had unleashed an excitement rarely seen. Every movement, every displacement was followed by hundreds or thousands of fanatics. And no one wanted any disturbance to happen or the musicians to do any harm.

The repressive vocation of the Argentine military forces of those times does not need to be underlined or exaggerated. For example, the correspondent of the American Rolling Stone magazine described the ditch that separates the South stalls from the playing field at the Stadium as a key to the Argentine dictatorship.

This interpretative excess (most of the Argentine stadiums built in the forties and fifties have a ditch) is combined with certain data, with images of police and military forces repressing whoever approaches the musicians, violently liberating their path. Around the Sheraton Hotel,  teenagers stood guard to try to and get in touch with their idols.

▪ Another of the Argentine magazines that showed the presence of the group in the country

In Mar del Plata, the musicians stayed at the Provincial Hotel. Freddie Mercury's movements were limited. Enclosed in his room, the best in the hotel, he let time pass watching the movement of the Rambla from the window. So it was that one afternoon, that habit turned into a love split. His partner at the time, Peter Morgan, offered him to go shopping around the city. Freddie explained that it would be impossible for him to go ten meters without being buried under the youthful enthusiasm. A couple of hours later, the artist saw from the window of his room his partner talking to a young man on the Rambla. The jealousy was immediate and so was the breakup, despite the fact that Morgan denied that he was the one who was walking with another young man on that Mar del Plata sunset.

This concert was the worst of the five. The security was very bad, thousands of people entered the stadium without tickets, the mounted police attacked the public in the same field of play of the World Cup Stadium. To continue the tour, the musicians demanded that the security issue be adjusted. The condition was fulfilled.

 ▪ There were strong police operations to “protect” the band

The press and the local public were dazzled by the performance of the quartet. The visual proposal was unique, Freddie's vocal and histrionic abilities, May's musical skills, the solvency of the rhythmic base, the impact of the staging. However, international critics still treated the group with disdain. The Rolling Stone critic gives them no more merit than a pub band. He even mocks their incompetence. Only the dedication in each show and the enthusiasm of the Argentine public stand out. One of the events that most surprised the local public, beyond the almost perfect succession of invincible hits, was Mercury's display and magnetic attraction. The local rock leaders were static, even somewhat modest.

As their stay in the country continued, the musicians received more and more affection from the public. They were amazed by the reaction of their fans to each song, how they knew the lyrics, how they participated enthusiastically and actively in the show. The peak was unfailingly produced in Bohemian Rapsody and, almost on the other side of that opulent and operatic work: Love of My Life was played with Freddie on the piano and Brian on the guitar. The audience sang the entire lyrics, without pauses. In the video recordings of the song you can see the mixture of surprise and joy of May and Mercury.

For the last concert of the tour in the country, they returned to the Vélez stadium. In the encores came the surprise. Freddie re-entered with the Argentine National Team shirt and addressed the audience in English: "I want to introduce you to a friend of yours: Maradona". The pirate recordings allow you to hear the roar of the crowd, you even hear some "Maradooo, Maradooo". Diego with his tight, high curls came on stage with sweatpants and a blue t-shirt. The footballer spoke fluently: "I want to thank Freddie and Queen for making me so happy. And now “Another bites the dust”.

Deacon and Taylor start Another One Bites the Dust, the group's latest hit.  Then would come the famous photos in the locker room. Freddie with the light blue Argentine T-shirt from Diego (in the show he used another one), and Maradona with a T-shirt with a big British flag that covered all his torso, similar to the one worn by Brian May in some part of the concert. That photo, would have been unimaginable a year later (Fauklands's War). At the time of the concert, although today it seems unreal, Queen was better known worldwide than Maradona.

 ▪ Miguel Romano, one of the stylists of the moment, together with the musicians

Journalist Juan Manuel Cibeira says that in a barbecue at the Argentine producer's house, Mercury announced that he would go out with the Argentine t-shirt. The Argentines present tried to dissuade him. They had a hard time explaining the situation to him. Rock and football in those days were two worlds that in Argentina had no point of intersection. For the rock people, football was something without brightness, without any evaluation. Any reference to it or the adoption of any of its rites or symbols was frowned upon. Mercury, more accustomed to the crossing of these two popular passions by what he saw in England, did not listen to the advice. And, in this way, he produced one of the first contacts between football and rock in the country, a situation that became naturalised in the mid-nineties.

Maradona was not the only local celebrity who came into contact with Queen. In Youtube circulates a video of an interview that the actress China Zorrilla did to Freddie Mercury. The Uruguayan actress in perfect English speaks about the answers of the singer, monologue, almost does not ask questions and forgets the simultaneous translation, thus a bizarre truncated dialogue of more than three minutes in English takes place in central time.  

Local Journalist Juan Alberto Badía, on the other hand, was the one who interviewed the musicians for Channel 9, which broadcasted the first live concert for the whole country and for Brazil ( it made very high rating peaks). The presenter was also the one who introduced them in the stadium. In the magazines of the time you can also see how the stylist Miguel Romano cut Mercury's hair before the last show and how in his free time, Brian May took his family to Ital Park, playground where several generations of citizens spent their childhood.

Queen's five concerts in the country marked an era, pioneering the arrival of great rock figures to Argentine stadiums. Many years would pass, the monetary convertibility and a much more global structure of the record business so that international stars would take the country as a reasonable place for their presentations.

[jj-lynn21]

Thank you for following...

Thank you for following, reading, liking, commenting ect. Currently I am working on a Roman Godfrey AU x reader called Castle in the desert. Most of my stories are continuation like subtitles like AU Bill skarsgard, Roman Godfrey, Mark from Assignation nation, and Mickey from Villains. There are a few with multiple actors like Tom Holland, Cody fern and other Skarsgards that start with The Charity & the Island. lots of fluff, smut and a bloody good time...18+ for content

Story teller — List of stories updated April 16, 2020

List of stories updated April 16, 2020

Thanks for following. Thanks for reading, thanks for creating. Thanks for sharing.

Warnings 18+ lots of smut, angst, fluff. X-reader, mostly AU Bill Skarsgard & his characters but a few stories include other Skarsgard brothers, Deadpool, Tom Holland and other actors. Feel free to send requests/ideas & reblog. I will try to keep this updated.

Rock star Axel

You Will Remember Things That We Never Said: In this Alternate Universe fiction Axel meets Stephani while he is singing in the local band Zeitgeist. Its set up when he is in college. ch 1 ch 2    ch 3    ch 4  ch 5    ch 6​   ch 7 ch 8

starring Bill Skarsgard: My own stories with original character(s) he could play

The Stay starring Bill Skarsgard as Chris Ryan creepy slight horror genre. All I will say is this character is right in the wheel house of what Bill could play.      ch 1 ch 2 ch 3 ch4

THE CLUB starring Bill Skarsgard as William Casik - Alice is a prim and proper elementary school teacher. Her Husband William owns a company that does business around the world. But he has a secret. When Alice find out about his alter ego, The Sir, her life will never be the same. ch 1 ch 2  ch 4  ch5 ch 6 ch 7  ch 8 ch 9 ch 10

Bill Skarsgard (AU) & X-reader/Princess

The Charity- various fandoms & x-reader This a AU mystery piece that includes most Avengers actors and skarsgards plus a few others I love. Some chapters are  very smutty. used suggestions from readers.  ch 1, ch 2, ch3, ch 4, ch 5, ch 6, ch7, ch 8

The Island: various fandoms, Its a continuation of The Charity. ch1 ch 2 ch3 ch4 ch5

The Dress: Just because I like writing the continuing story of Bill & Princess. This is her first time at an awards show. Also includes Alex Skarsgard, Scarlett Johansson and a few others. ch1 ch2 ch3 ch4 ch5

Bill& X Reader: Jealousy,  You are dating Bill Skarsgard & get invited to a ex’s party.

Early home coming:  Bill & X-reader warnings: angst, slight smut, fluffy. Bill comes home early after an annoying work issue forces him to leave a project. You attempt to help him get over it all before he has to go promote another project.

Bill and Princess/x-reader: long distance Valentine? Bill has to leave the night before Valentine Day for a meeting the next morning.

Bill & Ex-Reader: EVERYONE IS WATCHING sometimes the bedroom isn’t as private as you think.

The Bake off: Bill and x-reader/Princess are quarantined together. A month into their time together they come up with the Bake-off idea. Lots of smut, some baking lol. Ch 1   ch 2

Villains fan fiction

Borrowed time: Mickey & X-Reader . This is a continuation of Villains in a AU. Something like this should happen. ch 1 ch2 ch3 ch 4

Prequel Villains: Mickey and Jules Celebrate Christmas

Mickey’s Valentine’s Day surprises This is only 2 chapters. AU Mickey, Sweetie Pie and Jules several months after the event that brought them back together after the movie Villains. If you want to know how they got to this point read Borrowed time: Mickey & X-Reader. But you don’ t have to. Ch1 Ch2

Mark: Assassination Nation

Assassination Nation Mark and X-reader AU Mark survived his town going nuts and is now in college where he meets you.  ch 1 ch 2 ch 3 ch 4 ch 5 ch 6 ch7 ch8

Assassination Nation Mark and X-reader: Merry Christmas ch 1 ch 2

Mark and x-reader: You’re mine, Valentine. The first in my Valentine’s  themed stories. This is more of the reader and Mark at college several months after what happened in the last story. ( Assassination Nation: Mark and X-reader) Mark is pretty much just horny & wants sex but he will put together some Valentine’s day surprises to get it.

Mark & X-Reader:Party At Greenwald’s A virus is sweeping the county. The University closes. You might make it home but Mark insists you stay with him in Salem. Memories haunt him from this place.ch 1 CH 2   ch 3  ch 4 ch 5 ch 6 ch 7

Castlerock fanfic

Joy and The Angel This is a Castlerock fanfiction

A Castlerock New Year’s Eve party: The Kid & X-Reader This plays off some talk of who the Kid really is in the Steven King Universe. ch 1 ch 2 ch 3

Hemlock Grove Fan Fiction: Roman Godfrey

CLUB VEE This is the first thing I posted on Tumbler. It is a vampire-type romance that I connected to Roman and Princess starting with their Valentine’ s Day plans. So its an origin story for Club Vee. Ch 1Ch 2 Ch3 Ch 4 Ch 5  Ch 6 Ch 7 Ch 8 Ch 9 Ch 10 Ch 11 Ch 12 Ch 13 Ch 14 Ch 15 Ch 16 Ch 17 Ch 18 Ch 19 Ch 20 Ch 21

It is all in the eyes :Roman & X Reader , A crazy Hemlock Grove alt reality fanfic part 1  part 2 part 3 part 4 part 5

Roman & his Princess Valentine’s Day This story continues the relationship from It is all in the eyes :Roman & X Reader. It will also include characters from VEE. But you really don’t have to read either to follow this story if you don’t want to. ch1 ch2 ch3 ch 4 ch5

A story of friendship: Roman Godfrey & X-reader AU Hemlock Grove. I was in a Roman mood so this is what came out  ch 1, ch 2, ch 3, ch 4 ch 5

Roman & his Princess: blood wolf moon eclipse Princess is having a hard time with her hunger. Is Olivia the only one that can really help her?

Roman & his Princess: Life is Just a Fantasy A little role play night out with these characters where Roman is the Dominant more than usual and Princess plays  the submissive role. ch1 ch 2 ch3 ch4

Roman & Princess: Let’s up the game Roman wants to make a sex tape. ch1 ch2 ch3

Roman & Princess: The agreement Princess plays with her dominant personality. Roman decides maybe he could handle the threesome she wants if he looks at it as a business agreement. ch 1  ch 2 ch 3 ch4

Stuck in the Madness with You A virus has found its way to Hemlock Grove driving people to self quarantine. How will this effect Roman and those he cares about? ch 1 ch 2 ch 3

The Dinner Party Roman invites Peter and Letha to a dinner party so Letha can get out a little more since they have all quarantined her to Peter’s trailer.

Deadpool Presents:

Deadpool Presents: Once upon a Zeitgeist this is in and AU after all the stuff in Deadpool 2. ch 1 ch 2 ch 3 ch 4

Deadpool Presents: Axel’s Valentine’s Day special story Axel plans a special Valentine’s romantic over night excursion. With two kids it is difficult to have longer intimate time with his wife.  To read more about how this couple met refer to Deadpool Presents: Once upon a Zeitgeist Axel suggests Deadpool watch the kids which is the last thing his wife really wants ch1 ch2 ch3  ch4  ch5

Fairytales rewritten to include favorite actors/characters

Snow in Hollywood This is a reimagining of Snow White starring all Skarsgards Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5

Red and the Full Moon This is a reimagining of Little Red Riding Hood incorporating the lyric to the 60s song Little Red Riding Hood. Featuring Bill Skarsgard and Alex Skarsgard.

King Bill and his Queen Genevieve: A fairytale begins original smutty fairytale  where Bill of Skarsgard plans to take a diplomat’s daughter for his own. When he discovers Lady Genevieve is a virgin he still wants to fulfill their destiny in the middle of the forest clearing.

Being part of the film industry in a small way

A  Little Extra for the Extra This is extremely loosely based on my time working as an extra in a Tom Holland and Bill Skarsgard movie. It was great fun. Tom was cool to the extras if you were at the right place at the right time. I only got to see Bill from afar but maybe that was a good thing LOL. In place of Bill & Tom you can easily put in your favorite actor or actress in your mind.

Moroccan Sands: This is Bill Skarsgard and Tom Holland with x-reader. It takes place on a movie set for the most part. Ch1, ch 2 ch3 ch4 ch5 ch 6 ch7 ch8

Santa’s fav ELF Bill & X-Reader You are an extra in one of Bill’s movies and you you get a long very well. ch1 ch2 ch 3 ch 4

The Calling in this extras dream job you will be working with Bill Skarsgard, Tom Holland, Sebastian Stan, Robert Pattinson and a few other surprise actors on a movie that moves through decades 50s, 60s, 70s,80s. Sure your scenes don’t seem to fit together but they rarely do when filming and you just enjoy that you get to do this sort of work. Even though this is same caste as Devil All the Time it has nothing to do with that movie. enjoy this only 1% truth about being an extra. I love it but as of now it never got this good. ch 1, ch 2, ch 3, ch 4, ch 5

Take a seat x-reader & Bill mostly. You are a seat filler at the 2021 Oscars. Its such a unique experience. But since you break some of the rules will you ever get to do it again? And is the out come with it anyway? I think, probably.  ch 1,  ch 2 ch 3 ch 4

[silverbastardgoldenfool]

Realm of the Elderlings Ask Meme Thing

Created by @hermitknut and brought back by @elderling-magic

Thanks @blackandwhitemotley for tagging me :) this is gonna be unnecessarily long because I’m a messy bitch with too many feelings and not enough brain cells

Favourite RotE Book: God it’s impossible to choose properly so let’s just go with the one that always gives me flashbacks when I see it on my bookshelf: Golden Fool

Why: I was already deeply obsessed at this point and had laughed, cried and panicked countless times throughout the series BUT Golden Fool stands out because of the Fitz/Fool confrontation which all but gave me a panic attack. Sure, I’ve been overly invested in book characters my whole life but the fact I was like physically fuckin sweating just because these guys were having a verbal fight, which had nothing to do with the actual plot, is fuckin wild my dude. Also despite my distress I was thrilled in a way because I never expected Robin to address the homoerotic tension in the actual text - and I was even more impressed that she makes the Fool the winner in this fight. You feel for him (ouch!!!!!!!!) but he gets the last word and the whole time you’re on his side and wishing Fitz would just keep his goddamn mouth shut (unless he’s gonna use it to kiss the Fool). She makes you empathise with the Fool without compromising his dignity, without making him a pathetic pining gay stereotype. He is hurt, he is human, but Fitz is the fool in this exchange (forgive the unintentional pun). It’s crazy how this one scene defines this whole huge book for me but it overwhelmingly does. Man it fucked me up.

Top Three Favourite Characters: I’m excluding Fitz, the Fool and Nighteyes cos that’s just a given honestly and there are too many incredible characters to choose from. Also I’m going to choose three characters I think are exceptional on a technical level since that’s the easiest way for me to pick a few out.

1. Burrich - Forever fascinating to me because I disagree with him probably more often than not AND YET I love him so much. It’s seriously like I have the same relationship with him that Fitz does - and/or the same relationship many of us have with father figures. That weird thing where you can fundamentally disagree on some pretty important stuff, and he makes a lot of mistakes and probably irrevocably fucked you up in a lot of ways but you can’t help but love him because you know he’s not doing anything from a place of malice or pettiness or selfishness. He simply knows what he believes and is righteous to a fault. He’s always doing his best - whatever that looks like to him. There are so many things he says or does that make me amazed that I don’t hate him. I think in another series he is the kind of character I would hate. The fact that Robin makes me love him - and conflicted about that love - is a marvel.

2. Malta - I won’t harp on about this too much because we all know the deal. Malta’s early POVs were a tween nightmare. I had to skim them because they were so viscerally irritating. I guess it’s a huge testament to the writing that it really did feel like you were stuck in a tween girl’s head; the problem is that is the worst hell imaginable. It’s an even greater testament to the writing that, through some of the most masterful character development I have ever witnessed, you actually end up loving this girl.

3. Kennit - He’s such a monster that I hate actually saying he’s one of my favourite characters but it’s true. Especially from a writing perspective; it’s fucking witchcraft how Robin has you judging everyone around Kennit for falling for his charms even while you are in some way charmed by him. He’s intelligent, charismatic, enigmatic. You know he’s not a good person yet you enjoy spending time with him, you’re kind of rooting for him just because he’s interesting and you want to see what he’s going to do next. You even know - the narration straight up tells you - that most of his successes are down to pure dumb luck yet we still kind of buy into this persona of his. Absolutely brilliant writing. Not to mention his backstory, which is so tragic and compelling, and manages to explain his actions without excusing them. Without a doubt one of my top five favourite villains of all time.

Top Three Least Favourite Characters: Okay so again going for the writing angle; characters I just felt weren’t handled all that well on a technical level. Keep in mind that this is suuuuuper subjective. Also I can only think of two.

1. Molly - I’ve seen a lot of people assume that people who dislike her feel that way because she “gets in the way” of Fitz/Fool but that’s not true for me. I’ll try and keep this shortish because I have way too many feelings about this topic lol. Having read the whole series I wouldn’t change anything, but for a long time I really felt like the story would have been better if she wasn’t in it, or especially if she had not come back after Assassin’s Quest. Maybe that’s harsh, but I honestly just generally dislike the whole “first love, last love” trope (and in my personal experience have found it v toxic). I never found her character particularly engaging, but by the end of Farseer I had made my peace with her role in Fitz’s story; the way I saw it, she represented the life Fitz wanted but could never have. Of course you could argue then that it makes sense for Fitz to get her back once he is allowed to have a window of normal life - and that would be true EXCEPT the whole reason I saw her as a symbol and not a real love interest was because their relationship was TERRIBLE. It was seriously toxic and literally based on lies. I really felt what would have been healthy for Fitz at the end of Tawny Man would have been to find peace in realising that Molly was his past, not his future, and that what they’d had was teenage lust and not the stuff of soulmates. I don’t like the implication that Fitz was right to idealise this tumultuous, dishonest, immature relationship he had as a teenager all these years. Honestly this is why I was FURIOUS when I finished Fool’s Fate lol, even though I knew this wasn’t the ultimate ending. Now that I know where Robin went with this and that Fitz wasn’t really fulfilled in his life with Molly I don’t mind it as much but I still don’t love it. There was never enough of an honest, genuine, selfless connection established between the two of them for it to feel like anything other than an unhealthy fixation that Fitz projected all his unattainable fantasies onto. He never seemed to see Molly as a fully realised person which made it hard for me to do so. Also seriously, if I had been pining after my high school fling for the last ten years everyone would agree that the best thing for me would be to move on, not get back together with them. I’m not saying Fitz didn’t deserve his little bracket of peaceful years, but it just didn’t have to be with Molly. Sometimes not getting what you thought you wanted is the happy ending - I guess it’s just really jarring in a series that’s generally so subversive to get a standard fantasy trope like this. I really truly was shocked when Fitz got his feelings back from the stone dragon and his realisation was not “Molly is kind of just a girl I used to know a long time ago and our paths have long since diverged” but “yes no actually that girl I haven’t talked to in over a decade is my soulmate” like, wig in the worst way. ALSO SHE WAS FUCKING HIS DAD ALL THAT TIME. SHE BORE HIS DAD CHILDREN. HIS DAD HAD TO DIE SO THEY COULD BE TOGETHER. BRUH. Seriously it did feel like Burrich was sacrificed solely so these two little shits could get back together, and again, that was so infuriating and so not like these books. This and Burrich not being canonically in love w Chivalry are the only two points I actually get riled up about from a writing/critical perspective lol, every other flaw and quirk in this series I will absolutely pardon but for some reason these just get to me dude.

2. Starling - Promise this one is simpler lol. I always found Starling quite irritating “as a person” but didn’t mind her as a character. What I didn’t love was the way her lifestyle (promiscuity, independence, nomadic etc.) was kind of justified when it didn’t need to be, with the typical explanation that she’s only like this because she can’t have kids. It just felt really unnecessary, and it was even worse when she did get pregnant and basically just became a completely different person. But I’m generally touchy when it comes to female characters and fertility/pregnancy storylines as I just feel like they’re rarely done well. And I just really don’t like it when infertility is implied as a justification for character traits (usually traditionally male traits) that don’t need justifying.

Favourite Ship (of the floating kind): Paragon of course, we love a problematic fave.

Top Three Favourite Ships (of the people kind): Fitz/Fool, Sedric/Carson, Althea/Brashen (the only heteros whomst deserve rights)

Would you rather be Witted or Skilled: Honestly wouldn’t want either but if I had to choose I guess the Wit? I’d much rather be inside an animal’s head than another human’s no thanks bb

If you were Witted, what animal would you bond with?: If I’m still living in my current situation in this hypothetical then I guess a house cat. If I really get to go wild then I am absolutely bonding with a big cat, like a tiger or a panther IMAGINE THE SNUGGLES.

Would you rather live in the Outislands, the Mountain Kingdom, the Six Duchies, Bingtown, the Rain Wilds, Kelsingra, Jamaillia, the Pirate Isles, or Fool’s Homeland?: Dude I am so bad at visualising locations so idk lol, I guess queer utopia Kelsingra although obviously it has its drawbacks.

How were you introduced to the books? My mum had been telling me for years that if I liked A Song of Ice and Fire I would like Realm of the Elderlings. I was putting it off because there are so many books and I also knew how much she loved them so I was worried I wouldn’t like them and she’d be let down. But I eventually got so close to rereading ASOIAF (which I swore I wouldn’t do til Winds of Winter is released) that I decided to finally give RotE a go in its stead.

Share a quote you love: I don’t have a book on me rn but that part in Fool’s Errand when Fitz is talking about how the Fool has wandered into the place he’s been living for years and immediately, effortlessly made it a home is TENDERNESS BEYOND COMPARE ARE YOU KIDDING.

Tagging: if you see this and haven’t done it yet, consider yourself tagged!

Take the thing, copy and paste it into your own post, tag it “elderlings” and then tag as many people as you can that you know in the fandom.

[whoispeytonjames]

Why God is the Ultimate Villain of the Supernatural Series

Warning: The following article contains quotes and spoilers from the television series Supernatural. If you have not watched up until season 15, please stop reading now.

While sitting around the dinner table with my partner, his father, and his stepmother, it occurred to me that after 15 years, I am in the minority of television viewers who are still as in love with Supernatural as the day that it first aired. During a discussion of iconic television series, of course, I had to bring up Supernatural. What could be more iconic than a genre show that has lasted long enough to make God a villain? Considering that my comments led to laughter and a discussion on when shows have “jumped the shark,” I can conclude that my main point was missed. Looking back on everything that has happened in the past 15 seasons, it makes sense that God is the true villain in a show about the threat that supernatural entities pose to humanity. Canonically, God created Archangels, Leviathans, Hellhounds, Angels, Humans, Souls, Heaven, Hell, and Purgatory. Considering all these entities have created a major threat within the show; it seemed fitting that God was revealed as being the shocking twist ending at the end of Season 14. By revealing himself as being a cold and manipulative author, as opposed to a caring and benevolent God, Chuck became the “big bad” of the entire series.

When Supernatural first aired, the premise of the show centered around the two brothers, Sam and Dean Winchester, traveling around the United States to investigate and fight paranormal entities and urban legends. With the inclusion of Christian mythology in season 4, the overarching plot line of the series shifted so that the brothers were now saving the world from the apocalypse. Viewers of the show saw the aversion of the apocalypse at the end of season 5 and creator, Eric Kripke's departure, as being where Supernatural should have sung its swan song and disappeared into the archives of American genre television. Yet, the fan base had some other ideas, and kept the boys around for another decade despite some unfavourable moments (The British Men of Letters, anyone?). We have seen the Winchester brothers fight everything from demons and angels to the Leviathans and The Darkness, so what could be next? Well, God, of course.

From a logistical standpoint, Supernatural is entering into its final season, which means that it's imperative for the writers to escalate the level of threat that the Winchester brothers face. Since the face off with the Devil in season 5, the writers have struggled with the task of creating a villain or situation more dire than the apocalypse. With being forced to up the ante each season, it's no surprise that Supernatural has chosen to end after 15 seasons. How can you end a long-running television show that satisfies the most loyal fan base? By ensuring that the final season presents the greatest challenge that the Winchesters have faced to date. The odds need to be firmly stacked against the heroes and the show needs to present a spectacle for the series finale that is novel for the viewers. By making God the villain, whom is an omniscient and nigh-omnipotent character, the writers are sure to deliver on all the earlier listed criteria. This poses Sam and Dean with the impossible task of trying to stop a foe that can expect their intentions; not to mention that killing God will overthrow the Cosmic Balance. Although God's sister, Amara or The Darkness, has the power to wound him, and Death has claimed to be the one to reap God at the end of everything, doing so would destroy all the universes that he has created and the creations within them. If the brothers are all about "saving people [and] hunting things" how can they possibly hunt down God without destroying all creation? That's a question that I will leave for the writers to answer.

Beyond presenting viewers with a powerful antagonist for the final season, the writers of Supernatural are also alluding to an underlying thread that could make God the ultimate villain of the entire series. The apocalypse, Raphael's civil war, Leviathans, Naomi's control of Heaven, the fallen angels, the Mark of Cain, The Darkness, the corruption of all the other universes, as well as Jack's birth and death can all be traced back to God. As I mentioned before, God is the creator of the perilous threats that have plagued the Winchesters over the past 14 years; but as his existence is that of an absent father, he has also allowed his two chosen ones, Sam and Dean, to clean up his mess. Since his abrupt leave from Heaven after his creations, namely Lucifer, didn’t meet his expectations, God lived among humans as Chuck, your average everyday Joe, who enjoys nacho cheese, playing his guitar, and living his life as an out and proud bisexual. When Metatron challenges his decision to leave as being a cowardice act, in "Don't Call Me Shurley," God responds by saying that he was "done watching [his] experiments' failures." Beyond his disappointment, Chuck wanted to stay hidden and allow humanity, the archangels, and the rest of his creations to take responsibility for their actions, claiming that, "No one likes a helicopter parent." This sentiment is later echoed during season 14's "Moriah," when he reminds both Sam and Dean that he may have created the "sandbox," but he has remained "hands off." 

Although God has presented himself as an occasional ally to the Winchesters throughout the years, he has never dealt with any of the obstacles that have arisen as a consequence of his absence. Instead, he ensured that the Winchesters would be present to settle each of these dilemmas in his place. Thus, the Winchesters were instrumental in Chuck's grand manuscript, as they played the all important heroes in his "favourite show." Instances of Chuck's meddling can be traced back to his coupling of John and Mary Winchester. When Sam, Dean, and Castiel meet up with Cupid in "My Bloody Valentine," he reveals that Heaven doesn't care about human matches, unless they lend to certain bloodlines and destinies. Cupid goes on to clarify that, "the union of John and Mary Winchester [was a] very big deal upstairs, [a] top priority arrangement." This was to ensure the existence of Sam and Dean Winchester. Without them, the apocalypse would have occurred as the archangels had planned and the world would have been destroyed, as shown in Apocalypse World. This is precisely why Chuck declares this world's Sam and Dean as being his favourite in all the multiverse: they are his self-sacrificing heroes. In Apocalypse World, for example, there's destruction and constant chaos with no sense of ease. When the antagonist is always winning, it's uncomfortable and boring to a Western audience that constantly consumes the narrative of the hero's quest. This literary trope has battling forces of good and evil, with the hero prevailing in the end; and for 14 seasons, Chuck has been weaving together narratives that pit the heroes against villains of his own creation. With the curtain pulled back to reveal the Wizard of Oz and all his tricks, it's time to face the antagonist left standing: God.

Upon the realization of Chuck's puppetry, Team Free Will has been effectively left shattered. After all, Sam and Dean have been "just hamsters running in a wheel [their] whole lives," or heroes acting out God's plan. Even though both brothers had the strength to escape their destiny as Michael and Lucifer's vessels, they have still been playing into the roles that Chuck had written for them, fulfilling a destiny versus being having the freedom of choice. Mary's death aside, this knowledge has already created a rift between Dean and Castiel; as Dean views their whole lives as being a lie, and Castiel views life as having predetermined obstacles, with a choice of how you overcome them. Not only has the concept of freewill been destroyed for the Winchesters, but the notion of Chuck's interference has also torn apart the Winchesters' familial bond with Castiel. If freedom and family, by both blood and bond, is truly what gives the Winchester brothers the strength to continue to fight evil, then God has already proven his status as the ultimate villain of Supernatural.

Let the end times roll.

[dweemeister]

Down Argentine Way (1940)

In 1940, the United States had not yet entered the Second World War. Despite having zero troops fighting in the European, North African, and Asia-Pacific theaters, the American government was nevertheless preparing for the contingency of war. Since the 1930s, President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s State Department pushed forth its “Good Neighbor Policy” to Hollywood executives, intended to foster U.S.-Latin American relations through various means. With the Axis on the march and making overtures to still-neutral nations, the State Department asked for Hollywood’s assistance, to make films showing Latin American in a positive light while not exactly leaning too heavily on propaganda. Hollywood obliged. One of the first movies crafted in this State Department-mandated spirit was Irving Cummings’ Down Argentine Way, released by 20th Century Fox. In addition to fulfilling these governmental requests, the film also served as the breakout movie for Fox contractee Betty Grable, as well as introducing Americans to Carmen Miranda.

Despite Argentina being reference in the title, it seems Down Argentine Way is confused about what Latin American nation(s) it is representing. At a New York show jumping event, Glenda Crawford (Grable) meets Argentinian horse breeder, Ricardo Quintana (Don Ameche). Despite Glenda ostensibly approaching Ricardo to purchase his prize show jumping horse, Carmelita, the two strike up an immediate romantic interest and decide to have dinner after conversing for about two minutes. At dinner, Ricardo learns that Glenda is the niece of his father’s (Henry Stephenson) longtime rival – the story behind their elder Crawford-Quintana animosity is pure contrivance – and, by his father, Don Diego Quintana’s, instructions, Ricardo refuses to sell the horse and departs immediately for home. Justifiably perplexed by Ricardo’s sudden temperamental change, Glenda decides to do what anyone would: convincing her aunt Binnie (Charlotte Greenwood) to accompany her down to Argentina to demand a straight answer from Ricardo. When Ricardo meets Glenda again over another dinner (complete with Carmen Miranda song-and-dance numbers), he explains the situation and the two reclaim and rekindle their quickfire love – to Don Diego’s horror.

Among the actors playing bit roles are J. Carrol Naish (who so often played characters of varying races and ethnicities he was nicknamed, “Hollywood’s one-man U.N.”) as ranch hand Casiano, Kay Aldridge, Leonid Kinskey, and Chris-Pin Martin (a Mexican-American actor and the only credited actor of Latin American descent in this movie other than Miranda) as Esteban. The Nicholas Brothers have a cameo that contains one of the great on-screen performances, but more on that later.

20th Century Fox musicals crafted within the Golden Age of Hollywood’s Studio System are anything but cerebral. If one is watching these films for intricate plots, dramatic statements, and philosophical themes, you may want to retool your approach to these works. Fox’s musicals are splashy, dripping with Technicolor, and never pretend to be something more than what they actually are. This remarkable energy begins with one of the top-billed actors/ Fox’s Darryl F. Zanuck intended Down Argentine Way as a vehicle for Fox’s two primary musical stars at that time – Don Ameche and Alice Faye. Betty Grable was Faye’s substitution when the latter fell ill. Despite both women being roughly the same age and having camera-friendly blonde locks, Grable’s higher, less husky voice lends the film a more youthful dynamism that Faye – a contralto who was a striking presence in her own distinctive way – cannot. Her chemistry with Ameche feels more akin to screwball comedy, the likes of which would inspire (and eventually eclipsed by) Marilyn Monroe. The Goldwyn Girl alumnus might not have been making her film debut, but this was certainly her coming-out extravaganza (she became a pin-up favorite for American soldiers in WWII), despite a chaotic screenplay and questionable acting from her own performance and of those surrounding her.

Fox’s executives must have realized that Carmen Miranda is a strange fit for a film set in Argentina and partly about a horse ranching family. Miranda’s jewelry-bedecked outfit and exposed midriff (the outfit, a baiana, is an embellishment on the clothes of African-Brazilians living in Bahia) makes her a flashy, exotified novelty in a movie attempting a half-baked narrative between Grable and Ameche. Down Argentine Way presents Miranda and her musical numbers (influenced by Brazilian and Cuban music) as a representation of South America, at large – someone did not complete any detailed research on the vast cultural differences between Argentina and Brazil. Unfortunately, this was the beginning of Miranda’s typecasting at Fox. Though she would garner supporting roles that gave her dialogue and subplots, Fox would make her costumes even more ostentatious than before, serving to further frame her as foreign, lusty, tropically exotic.

Other insensitivities of Latin Americans are sprinkled across the film’s runtime: laziness (how many siestas can Chris-Pin Martin take?), tomfoolery, freeloading, deceitful, longstanding Mexican stereotypes (see: the fiesta scene) carrying over to this film’s setting, and speaking the typical broken or heavy-accented English that Hollywood still associates with those having Latin American roots. American audiences might have enjoyed these Good Neighbor Policy-inspired movies, but Latin American governments took exception. The difference between American and Argentinian reactions could not be more stark. American moviegoers made Down Argentine Way Fox’s highest-grossing musical of 1940. Meanwhile, Argentina’s government, following an official screening of the film, refused to allow Down Argentine Way’s distribution to move forward in the titular nation. Viewers across Latin America would find the depiction of Argentina in Down Argentine Way as an incomprehensible mélange of Latin American influences,  without any care or understanding of the cultural nuances within and between Latin American nations (and primarily Argentina).

Even as Gone with the Wind and The Wizard of Oz headlined an incredible 1939 for Hollywood, color films remained expensive endeavors for the major studios. From the cinematography by Ray Rennahan (1941’s Blood and Sand, 1953’s Arrowhead) and Leon Shamroy (1953’s The Robe, 1963’s Cleopatra); the art direction by Richard Day (1931’s Arrowsmith, 1951’s A Streetcar Named Desire) and Joseph C. Wright (1928’s The Man Who Laughs, 1953’s Gentlemen Prefer Blondes); and the costumes by Travis Banton (1932’s Shanghai Express, 1945’s Scarlet Street) make full use of Down Argentine Way’s Technicolor – which seems to leap from the viewer’s screen. A legitimate copy or print of Down Argentine Way is the best way to experience this and, even then, the current available official prints of this film could use a restoration to further accentuate the glitzy colors that these craftsmen intended.

The Nicholas Brothers, Fayard and Harold, reprise the song in the film’s second half. In the late 1920s and early ‘30s (the height of swing jazz in America), the Nicholas were a headliner act at the Cotton Club in Harlem. There, they innovated their dancing style – a hybrid of ballet and tap that some call “acrobatic dancing” – and brought that to the masses through cinema. Despite their limited number of appearances in the movies due to the institutional racism of Hollywood casting, the Nicholas Brothers, years after the pinnacle of their talents, continue to grow their reputation as among the greatest dancers ever to grace American cinema. Their athletic routine for “Down Argentine Way” encapsulates the dancing expertise they brought to the screen – quick reactions, nifty footwork, and those splits. How can one not be in awe of their mastery?  

Carmen Miranda’s three songs – one at the film’s opening, the other two when Grable and Ameche’s character reunite in Argentina over dinner – are mostly in Portuguese. Only the opening song, “South American Way” has any English, but this is brief. Treat “South American Way” as a brief, one-minute appetizer that follows the opening credits. The two dinner-and-a-show samba songs once Grable touches down in Argentina are “Bambú, Bambú” (traditional music with lyrics by Almirante and Valdo de Abreu) “Mamãe Yo Quero” (music by Jararaca and Vicente Paiva, lyrics by Al Stillman). These numbers are nothing more than exotified showcases for Miranda’s theatrical instincts and singing ability – but what instincts, what ability she demonstrates.

Inconsequential though it seems to modern eyes, Down Argentine Way heralded the changing currents flowing through Hollywood’s relationship with Latin America as well as within 20th Century Fox itself. Down Argentine Way, however entertaining, is a clumsy attempt at placating the United States’ hemispheric neighbors in service of diplomatic goals. Though received poorly in South America, the adulation for this film in the United States prompted a half-decade wave of Good Neighbor Policy movies – most notably Disney’s Saludos Amigos (1942) and The Three Caballeros (1944). American filmmakers would mostly retreat to well-worn stereotypes over the next several years, solidifying cultural misconceptions of Latin America that have endured into this century. In Hollywood, the studios perfected their movie musical formulas over more than a decade following the silent era. With Down Argentine Way’s release, Betty Grable and Carmen Miranda became icons in America. But only Grable avoided being typecast; Miranda would be subject to the racial prejudice baked into Studio System at the time, never to fully escape it.

My rating: 6/10

^ Based on my personal imdb rating. Half-points are always rounded down. My interpretation of that ratings system can be found in the “Ratings system” page on my blog (as of July 1, 2020, tumblr is not permitting certain posts with links to appear on tag pages, so I cannot provide the URL).

For more of my reviews tagged “My Movie Odyssey”, check out the tag of the same name on my blog.

[entergamingxp]

A Blessing in Disguise Review — Always Trust the Pizza, Zach

July 8, 2020 9:00 AM EST

Deadly Premonition 2 marks the return of Francis York Morgan and his brand of weirdness. He can also skateboard now. It’s rad.

To call the first Deadly Premonition a cult classic feels like a bit of an understatement. Swery65 and the team at Access Games created one of the most intriguing, yet technically terrible games in recent memory. In 2010, the game felt like a modern-era version of Shenmue’s “gameplay” mixed with an oddball murder mystery like Twin Peaks.

Fans of the original release will be happy to know that the trademark weirdness is still alive and well in 2020. In fact, this prequel/sequel, Deadly Premonition 2: A Blessing in Disguise, feels like it was entirely designed back in 2010, and then Swery just held onto it for 10 years.

As such, this makes it a very difficult game to give you a clean-cut review score. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if several people just read the score and skip my text in their haste to take to the comments section to complain. Your enjoyment of Deadly Premonition 2 mostly comes down to what you value most in your video games.

In short, if you like wacky casts and a harebrained plot that barely makes sense, Deadly Premonition is probably worth a try. However, if you need your games to play at a consistent framerate or want precise control over your actions, maybe look elsewhere.

That dichotomy between two thoughts of game design is represented in nearly every aspect of Deadly Premonition 2. It might be tough to fully explain all of my thoughts on my favorite game outside of NieR: Automata or the Yakuza series over the last half-decade while also feeling hard-pressed to call it good. That said, I’ll do my best while going into some spoilers, so fair warning.

“York is, perhaps, my favorite protagonist in gaming history.”

Let’s start with the most important aspect of Deadly Premonition 2, which is the characters. This cast of misfits is often hilarious, always compelling, and sometimes full of more emotion than you previously thought possible. Obviously, the star of the show is Francis York Morgan and his alter ego, Zach. York is, perhaps, my favorite protagonist in gaming history. His encyclopedic knowledge of B-movies and his willingness to explore anything in the search of truth make him the kind of guy you’d love to have on your side.

At times, he might seem to not really understand normal humans, but then you realize that he’s just on another plane from the rest of us. Sure, he refuses to call Arnold Schwarzenegger anything but Arnold S. And, I’ll grant you that mentally hopping out of conversations to talk to what some would call an imaginary friend is probably not the best way to handle an investigation, but York is always there to surprise you with his deep understanding of how people work. He’s able to assess situations in ways that other characters can’t because his worldview is so different from the norm.

York isn’t the only character worth talking about. There’s David, whose four separate personalities fulfill the roles of your hotel’s chef, concierge, bellboy, and owner. There’s also Mrs. Carpenter, the bowling granny. Or maybe, like me, you love the always-cursing crawdaddy farmer Chuck. The man might have a short temper, but when he goes off on you in his heavy Louisanna accent, it’s a thing of beauty. You haven’t seen a better putdown wordsmith in video games.

And, it would be a mistake to not also talk about York’s young assistant, Patti. As a foil to York’s oddball behavior, Patti is sublime. She refuses to put up with his crap and even takes a few Jim from The Office-like moments to look at the camera, asking “is this guy for real?” with her blue eyes.

Unfortunately, while all the characters in the game are memorable (yes, even you, The Mirror), when you actually start playing the game, it all starts to fall apart.

I’m no frame rate expert. Frankly, as long as it’s consistent, I don’t really care for most games. That said, calling Deadly Premonition 2’s framerate smooth is like calling games with randomized loot boxes a fun form of “surprise mechanics.” It’s just an outright lie.

In the main overworld, the game chugs like a stay-at-home mom whose son just dropped out of college and has taken up binge-drinking boxed wine. I can make that joke because I dropped out for a year before going back to finish. Except, I was the one drinking, not my mom.

“As a foil to York’s oddball behavior, Patti is sublime.”

Anyways, don’t expect technical brilliance. Even expecting technical competency is a big ask. But, does any of that matter when you can skate around the beautiful town of Le Carre in 15fps or less?

The answer is absolutely not. See, Deadly Premonition 2 might not understand what framerate is, but it does understand fun. And, to that end, Swery and his team have replaced the boring driving from the original game with skateboarding.

That’s right, friends. York’s rented hybrid card was stolen during his trip to Le Carre and, in its place, he’s become a true “Sk8er Boi.” At first, all he can do is ride around, but, once you meet your very own Mr. Miyagi in Emma, you’ll quickly learn the “FORBIDDEN ARTS” of skateboarding. Basically, you’re going to become an impossible-landing machine. It’s super rad.

At least, it (and the rest of the game with it) is as long as it’s working. We talked about Deadly Premonition 2’s frame rate, but that was only the tip of the iceberg. Expect to run into several bugs. The game only hard crashed on me once, but, like a jealous former lover, it teased me all the time. Load times in Deadly Premonition 2 are apparently something the game thinks you should savor.

They’re incredibly long and sometimes you’re just looking at a black screen for 10 minutes wondering if you Switch exploded on the inside from running this Xbox 360-looking game. Additionally, I also ran into several soft locks during my playthrough. Basically, what happens is randomly your buttons stop working. You can’t shoot bad guys. You can’t run. Heck, you can’t even skate. Truly, it’s the worst timeline.

That first problem will really hurt you, though. If you can’t shoot, you can’t fight off bad guys in the game’s dungeons. This means you have no choice except to load back to a checkpoint.

Speaking of the dungeon, imagine you’re playing a Persona game. The only difference is that, in place of deep rock-paper-scissors RPG combat, you’re shooting enemies in the face. The best you can say about it is that it’s so easy, you barely have to think about it.

Seriously, I don’t think I used a health pack until the last boss. At the end of the game, I had well over 100 healing items, and it wasn’t because I was being stingy. Personally, I didn’t really mind. The story and characters were the reason to play. However, if you’re looking for good gameplay, this ain’t it.

“Like a good book, the story is a page-turner.”

Deadly Premonition 2’s often bonkers story is full of heart. If you asked me to tell you exactly what happens, I’d be hard-pressed to tell you. However, what I will say is that I was glued to the TV throughout the game.  Like a good book, the story is a page-turner. I’m just not completely sure if the total tale makes sense or not.

To me, it’s an exploration of a man who lost everything and is trying to get it back. It’s also about a man who is willing to follow any possibility in his search for the truth. And lastly, it’s about RED TREES. I’m sure that last line means something to a small number of you.

But, while the main story is a bit of a wild one, I can say one thing with absolute certainty; In his time in Le Carre, York has developed an obsession with bridges. I know this because he’s told me that somewhere in the neighborhood of 150 times.

See, while the cutscenes are mostly great, York only has 15-20 stories that he tells while you’re exploring the town. And he’s going to tell them to you over and over again. If you wanted to hear York wax poetically about Charles Bronson’s name, you’re in luck. He’ll be doing that a lot.

Deadly Premonition 2 is a test of how much crap you can put up with for one of my favorite experiences in this generation of video games. It’s like if a chef brought you the finest crab in the world, but to eat it you have to crack open the shells with your toes while getting mud thrown at your face and being forced to listen to your least favorite song play over-and-over again. At some point, you have to ask yourself, is the crab really worth it?

For me, the answer is a resounding yes. I don’t know if Deadly Premonition 2 will end the year ranked as the best game of 2020 in the annals of DualShockers’ history, but it will probably be my favorite one.

“Deadly Premonition 2 just wants to tell its story, tell it well, and be its own weird, little self.”

The game actually provides one of the best analogies I think of to describe itself. York is a student of cinema. He can tell you the director and year of release for almost any film in existence. However, he’s never heard of E.T., a seminal movie in film history.

Only crazy people and children haven’t heard of E.T. You might not like it, but you’ve heard of it. You probably know the story. You’ve certainly heard about him phoning home. But York hasn’t. He’s too focused on Scatman Crothers’ performance in The Shining to pay attention to that popcorn movie. He doesn’t have time for your summer blockbusters.

Imagine a man who not only hasn’t seen a Marvel movie in 2020, but hasn’t even heard of them. That’s York. He’d see a poster for The Avengers and be like, “This masked man in red, white, and blue tights reminds me of Simon Wincer’s 1996 film The Phantom starring Billy Zane and Kristy Swanson.” And then you’d have to hear him talk about it lovingly for five minutes, while some great smooth jazz plays in the background. Did I mention the music rules? But, like every other aspect of Deadly Premonition 2, that has to come with a caveat. Because, just like the first game, the audio mixing is all over the place.

Anyways, Deadly Premonition 2 is exactly the same. It’s a game that feels like it has never played any games released after the original. It doesn’t care about frame rate or good controls. It’s made a few changes to the overall formula but mostly casts aside the advances game design has made in the last ten years. Deadly Premonition 2 just wants to tell its story, tell it well, and be its own weird, little self. Your ability to either live with that or not will determine how deeply you fall in love with the citizens of Le Carre.

July 8, 2020 9:00 AM EST

from EnterGamingXP https://entergamingxp.com/2020/07/a-blessing-in-disguise-review-always-trust-the-pizza-zach/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=a-blessing-in-disguise-review-always-trust-the-pizza-zach

[myhahnestopinion]

THE AARONS 2017 - BEST TV EPISODE

My consumption of serialized TV seems to be inversely correlated to the amount of bing-watching I do. I love the more complex storylines and engaging characters of serialized TV, but I also like having time to reflect on how each episode works as a piece of the whole. That’s why I designed this award to look at the exemplary singular efforts in TV this year. Here are The Aarons for Best TV Episode:

#10. “The Ricklantis Mix-Up” (Rick and Morty, Season 3, Episode 7)

The promise of Rick and Morty taking their absurd antics to the realm of Atlantis was enticing… but it was not meant to be. Instead, the show flipped the script, transporting us into a trio of trope-blasting adventures with some unexpected, but amazing, dark social satire. In a miniscule fraction of the time and budget, Rick and Morty create a high-concept buddy cop examination of systemic racism far more enjoyable and insightful than Netflix’s Bright could ever have hoped to be, along with a surprisingly affecting coming-of-age tale, and a sublime political thriller. A lot of Rick and Morty episodes had a chance at making this list, but “The Ricklantis Mix-Up” ultimately got it for delivering a holy trinity of the show’s brilliant meta-narratives.

#9. “Stupid Piece of Sh*t” (BoJack Horseman, Season 4, Episode 6)

Since its inception, BoJack Horseman has been a blistering portrayal of the depths of depression, but “Stupid Piece of Sh*t” (Netflix’s censorship there) found a way to be even more cutting than usual by finally giving us a glimpse inside BoJack’s head, narrated by Will Arnet’s haunting voice work. Taking advantage of the cartoon format, the episode’s innovative departure from the show’s traditional animation style brought mental illness to life in painfully real fashion, and made it clear that the show’s honest look at these struggles is indeed a story best told through the animated format. Well, that, and because the episode also delivered plenty of wonderful animal puns and sight gags, as always.

#8. “New York, I Love You” (Master of None, Season 2, Episode 6)

Similar to “The Ricklantis Mix-Up,” a large number of Master of None’s second season could have made this list, including its wonderful send-up of Bicycle Thieves and the touching “Thanksgiving” episode, but “New York, I Love You” stood out for its narrative swerve and its triad of empathetic stories. Departing from our regular cast to follow the stories of unique New Yorkers by way of camera pan, the episode showcased Master of None’s knack for finding compelling stories and wise commentary in the simplest of stories. Stories about the characters that make up the character of New York City may be rote material for TV, but Master of None’s unique viewpoints and celebration of diversity, from a Burundian cab driver to a deaf couple, made it one of 2017’s most powerful and important stories to watch.

#7. “Duet” (The Flash, Season 3, Episode 3)

Like Barry Allen with Singin’ in the Rain, I’m a sucker for a good musical, and The Flash’s celebration of the talented cast of Broadway stars and Glee-alumni amassed by it and its crossover show Supergirl was just way too much fun to not include on this list, despite a confusing direction for the episode’s central villain. The stars were all clearly having a grand time getting to put a superhero spin on a classical musical style, and while the show’s covers of existing song were stirring enough, it’s really the two original numbers that made this episode such a delight, including the tender “Running Home to You” from La La Land’s songwriters, and the clever wit of “Superfriends” from Rachel Bloom of Crazy Ex-Girlfriend fame.

#6. “Chicanery” (Better Call Saul, Season 3, Episode 5)

If Better Call Saul indeed ends up lasting as long as its predecessor, than “Chicanery” will sit as the exact middle of the show, and is appropriately a game-changing episode and the height of emotional drama thus far. The entire show has been building towards watching Jimmy McGill and his estranged brother Chuck going head-to-head in the courtroom, and the resulting conflict was one of the most intense watches of the year. The sharp plotting and rich characterization provided the perfect framework for a show-stopping performance by Michael McKean, whose vitriolic courtroom meltdown was absolutely shattering for viewers. Honestly though, the real reason this episode was guaranteed a spot on this list is because, of course, it also marked the return of Huell to the Breaking Bad world.

#5. “The Law of Non-Contradictions” (Fargo, Season 3, Episode 3)

“The Law of Non-Contradictions” was an outlier in the already peculiar early episodes of Fargo’s third season, moving the location of the show outside of frozen Minnesota for the first time, and transplanting Carrie Coon’s Officer Burgle to sunny California. While the pieces all falling into place in its final moments made Fargo my favorite show of the year, “The Law of Non-Contradictions” is one of my favorite episodes precisely because it doesn’t fit into the show’s larger narrative. Burgle’s investigation of her murdered stepfather’s past as a pulp science-fiction novelist ended up irrelevant to the case at hand, but its examination of the role of stories in our lives and the frequent failures of good intentions, themes that are enhanced by a beautiful animated story within its story, made the episode a key piece of the lingering power of Season 3.  

#4. “USS Callister” (Black Mirror, Season 4, Episode 1)

While Black Mirror’s terrifying Twilight Zone-like looks at technological trepidation made it into such an addictive show, it’s the episodes that break this mold that become some of my favorite episodes of television ever. “USS Callister” is the most visual effects heavy episode of the show ever, and, given it also runs at a full 80 minutes, could very well be considered a movie, but, like “San Junipero” before it, the true power of the episode comes from its place within the show’s loose anthology structure. The episode certainly gives a haunting look at the dangers of potential technology through its scathing indictment of the toxic masculinity festering in certain sects of fandoms, given form in Jesse Plemons’ perfect parody of William Shatner’s Kirk. However, what makes it one of 2017’s best episodes is its fulfillment of the intentions of its parody subject, Star Trek, with its thrilling adventure of a diverse crew working in harmony to overcome insurmountable odds. 

#3. “Hero or Hate Crime” (Always Sunny, Season 12, Episode 6)

It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia continues to show it deserves to become television’s longest running live-action sitcom, because every year it manages to put out at least a handful of great new episodes. Season 12 had a couple highlights, including a wickedly fun Always Sunny take on The Wiz, but “Hero or Hate Crime” understands that the greatest moments of the show come from just letting the cast bounce off one another. The gang’s debate over whether Frank’s use of a slur to warn Mac of a danger to his life constitutes as a hate crime is a fantastic source for the show’s riotous and outlandish, though never truly offensive, brand of dark humor. It’s all great fun, but it’s the episode’s unexpectedly moving ending, perhaps the first time Always Sunny can be considered an emotional experience, that cements “Hero or Hate Crime” as one of the finest episodes of the long-running series.

#2. “Dance, Dance, Resolution” (The Good Place, Season 2, Episode 3)

In what I like to consider the unofficial spiritual mascot of the Reboot Already Underway podcast, “Dance, Dance, Resolution” was the most madcap episode of a very madcap sitcom, an episode so intent on tearing down its status quo that watching it made one extremely nervous that the show had pulled yet another bait-and-switch and its finale was going to come unexpectedly in only the third episode of the season. Thankfully, the show didn’t end, finding a way to subvert all expectations yet again at the end of this extraordinary, joke-a-millisecond entry directed by Cabin in the Woods’ Drew Goddard. “Dance, Dance, Resolution” suggested that The Good Place truly does have an eternal source of cleverness to draw from for its twisted afterlife, made even clearer by the lengthy list of unused punny restaurant names that episode writer Megan Amram released on Twitter the following day.

AND THE BEST TV EPISODE OF 2017 IS....

#1. “Cryogenics, Lightning, Last Review” (Review, Season 3, Episode 3)

“Dance, Dance, Resolution” may have been such a clever deconstruction of its show’s premise that it seemed like The Good Place’s finale would come in just the season’s third episode, but Review actually did it. Review is perhaps the most underappreciated show of the decade, and, had the viewership justified it, I’m sure it would have never stopped being entertaining to watch Forrest McNeil’s absurd quest to review everything in life, no matter the cost to his health or personal relationships. While it’s sad to see such an ingenious show end, I couldn’t imagine a more perfect note for Review to go out on, an episode that saw the show’s cringe-inducing absurdism and glorious dark comedy in peak form. The tragedy of Forrest McNeil truly deserves a place alongside the great works of the Greek poets and Shakespeare, a downfall that simply must be experienced in its entirety for yourself. So, I’ll say no more than: I give this episode… all the stars.

NEXT UP: THE 2017 AARON FOR BEST TV PERFORMANCE!

[ars-historia-est]

I had in mind something completely different when I sat down to write yet another review...but my hand moved itself over the keys and here I am,presenting to you “Vous n’avez encore rien vu” or,in English, “You Ain’t Seen Nothing Yet!”.

Some introductions are due,before delving into the meat of the plot. The director,Alain Resnais,is un monstre sacré du cinema français, famous during the ‘60s for his Nouvelle-Vague-inspired,ponderous films,rife with experimental narrative techniques,leftist political commentary and often abstract imagery. Spanning decades,his work became radically different from the eighties onwards,strarting with new steady groups of collaborators and exhibiting an interest towards the intersection of cinema and other forms of art,such as music,song and theatre. His films became more personable,more humane, if not less idiosyncratic and divergent from the artistic norms,their premises more approachable and seemingly “mainstream”,but in reality no less complex and alienating. He ressurected cinematically forgotten genres like the french musical comedy of the ‘20s,he adapted international theatrical works and experimented with multiple narratives, elements from the opera and the musical,and the subjective and interactive nature of acting,be it cinematic or theatrical. And thus we are lead to this film,in my humble opinion a maligned and misunderstood masterpiece.

We open with some actors getting phone calls informing them an esteemed playwright and theatre director has died. These are all real French actors, with more or less long and illustrious careers in French cinema and theatre. They are playing themselves,as actors in-universe. All knew the deceased, Antoine d’Anthac (fictional!),all counted themselves his friends. More importantly,all had at some point had a role in productions of his magnum opus, “Eurydice” (heavily based on Anouilh’s play of the same title”). According to his last wishes,they all gather in his secluded estate in the mountains,a dream villa resembling more a theatre set than a house. There,the reason for this gathering is announced : they are to watch a recorded performance of that very same “Eurydice”,put forth by a young acting company, “La Compagnie de la Colombe”,and in the end they are to decide if the effort is true enough to the spirit of his work to merit an official production. Their own experience in their respective roles will help them formulate a correct judgement. They are thus all reunited in the private cinema of the villa,and the butler of the deceased puts on the cassette. The lights dim. They play starts.

The actors of the company are fresh,lively,energetic. They bring to the play the youthful passion and idealistic naivety that suit Orpheus and Eurydice.Of the actors watching,none is young anymore. And yet the sincere,heartfelt performances move them. They remember their own turns in the roles. They refind for an instant their past youth and passion,and with them their innocence of the world. They start to live again through their characters as if this is the first time,as if they don’t know the end of the story. First an older gentleman in the audience,having had in other times a small but critical role (french legend Michel Piccoli) stands up and starts reciting his part along with the actor on screen. Then another,and another,and finally the protagonistic couples (there are two of them,two men playong Orpheus,two women playing Eurydice,and the difference in their acting approaches is in itself a masterclass on the subjectivity of acting,on the way one word can change its implications entirely in accordance with the way it’s being said). They recite at the same time with the recorded performances,they are transported into the action,the action is transported to them,in split-screens,in simultaneous shots,in antithetical movements.Their surroundings often empty or blur into darkness,and nothing exists but them at that moment.And at some point they stop playing,they stop pretending.They act.And then,they are. And the play becomes real life,real emotions,and the illusion is complete.

Sabine Azéma and Pierre Arditi are a more energetic,more hopelessly romantic couple,living and hoping against hope till the last moment. Lambert Wilson and Anne Consigny play the characters with a kind of beaten-down despair that only the young can feel,with a quiet and tender resignation where a last spark of hope burns flickering,till it,too, is gone. The only connection between the two couples is the character of Mr. Henri,wisely played in both old productions by Mathieu Amalric (Death?Fate?Hades?),the only one who knows,and with no hate or malice for the lovers,must lead them to fulfill the roles they are consigned to. The end of the spectacle brings a twist,though if one paid attention,maybe it was only expected that it would end thus. After all,we all know what happens to Orpheus and Eurydice,...don’t we?

There is no review that would be enough for this movie. It is a reinvigorating experience for the audience,like it is for the aged actors of the story. Rich intertextually and thematically resonant, it vibrates with the love of its makers for the craft,for theatre,for cinema,for acting. It is a tribute to actors,to the power that,beyong any director or writer they have over their source material,but at the same time it illustrates through the different acting choices the steady directing hands that give decisive form to all manner of representational arts. It is useless to talk thus about performances,or even direction.They cannot be classified as good or bad,only as that that they should be to tell this beautiful, moving story about the stories we tell,how we tell them and to which hands we trust them to be told. Ignore the ignorance and low ratings it has gotten from the critics,and do yourselves the favour of watching this movie.

[nathanielwharton]

My 2019 in Pop Culture

Same plan here as usual. I discovered this as a draft from back in January that I hadn’t found images for yet. Posting it now, without edits.

Top Forty Things From 2019

45. A Town Called Panic: Agricultural Fair I made a last minute dash into the city to see this at the New York International Children's Film Festival screening (I ducked in, huffing and puffing, as the lights went down), but I was so glad I did. I love these shorts, and this one was an absolutely bonkers, madcap wonder.

44. "Gotham City Guys" from The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part I enjoyed the second Lego Movie pretty well, but I loved this song.

43. Finding Drago This is an Australian podcast about the search for the author of Drago: On Mountains We Stand, a book about Ivan Drago from Rocky IV. It was a delight.

42. Crawl I had a pretty good time with a bunch of horror movies this year. Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark made some good use of 3D realizations of Stephen Gammell's potent artwork. Ready or Not was a good cat-and-mouse with a fun ending to see with an audience. Happy Death Day 2U kept the comic frisson of the original, pushing it further into nutty science fiction, while slipping in some real emotion. But the one that probably gave me the most thrills was Crawl. An expertly nasty little piece of work, it efficiently keeps turning the screws up the the very end. Jesse and I remarked afterward that we basically alternated leaning forward with our hands on our faces and leaning back, bracing on the armrest, throughout the entire movie.

41. When They See Us Urgent and harrowing.

40. Mindhunter (Season 2) The rhythms of this show are so distinctive and engrossing. It's not exactly Zodiac: The Series, but it is fascinating in some similar ways and I hope they come back and make more of it.

39. Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt (Season 4, Part 2) I might (okay, definitely) be underrating this final batch of one of my favorite shows on TV. Blame it on Netflix’s half-season strategy, and not on these episodes that were as overstuffed as ever with a breathtaking array of jokes delivered by a note perfect cast. I’ll miss if, but I'm grateful for those final moments. (The line "Your books make me feel safe” definitely made me tear up.)

38. They Shall Not Grow Old in 3D This documentary was fascinating as a look at the less-covered (at least in my lifetime) First World War, and it was AMAZING as a visual experience, watching 100 year-old documentary footage in such an immersive way. And the short documentary that followed my screening showing the process of making the film was worth the price of admission on its own.

37. Glass at the Shyamalanathon Few things can top the weird thrill of seeing the ending of Split before hearing even a hint about the ending (Jesse and I were audibly shocked and delighted, and then spent part of the credits explaining the reveal to the kids in front of us after they asked us about it). So I was pretty psyched for this one. I caught Glass at the end of a Shyamalanathon at the Alamo Drafthouse, where they showed Unbreakable, Split, and a preview screening of Glass, with a Q&A with Shyamalan himself. I had a GREAT time.

36. Amazing Grace I saw it with about 8-10 people in the theater, and folks were still witnessing with Amens and hallelujahs from the back of the auditorium. They were well warranted.

35. The Twilight Zone Revival I definitely preferred this to the last revival, and the hit-to-miss ratio felt pretty standard for an anthology show. Highlights for me were "Nightmare at 30,000 Feet," "Replay," and "A Traveler." Looking forward to the next batch of them.

34. One Cut of the Dead A twisty, surprising one-shot zombie thriller that reveals itself to be something much different (and much more charming) than you'd expect.

33. Star Trek: Discovery - Pike sees his future This season of Discovery had a number of really strong elements (and I'm super intrigued to see what they do with that setup for the third season), but the part that probably most moved me was in episodes 12, "Through the Valley of Shadows." Captain Pike (a wonderful performance all season by Anson Mount; definitely looking forward to that spin-off) is given a vision of his eventual fate, which we know from the original series, in which he is severely disabled in an accident. He is told that if he takes the time crystal from the Klingon temple to help save the day in the season's storyline that he cannot change this fate and is essentially dooming himself. And he gives the most moving, Starfleety performance in choosing the greater good over himself.

32. Genndy Tartakovsky's Primal This was a visceral, thrilling surprise. I caught the first four episodes as a screening at the Alamo and it knocked my socks off. The final episode of this initial run was also really rad. Pure animation.

31. Under the Silver Lake Seeing this one at a late night screening felt just right, as it creates such a bewitching, hallucinatory spell. As someone who enjoyed reading about conspiracy as a youth and recognizes but (hopefully!) avoided indulging the kind of solipsism on display in Garfield's character, I was pretty into this movie.

30. Missing Link This Laika joint was an easy lay-up for me (an adventurer helping Bigfoot to find a lost civilization of yeti? sold.) and it did the trick.

29. Frozen II It's not as clean a narrative as the original, and Kristoff's storyline is too sitcommy, but this still packed a lot of emotional punch for me, and I love that it's a huge Disney animated movie that interrogates colonialism and the way that our history can obscure misdeeds and trauma.

28. The Righteous Gemstones Another acridly funny and tonally daring series from the McBride/Hill/Green team. Loved this first season, and certainly excited to see where they want to take it next.

27. A Series of Unfortunate Events (Season 3) This show continued to be a really marvelous adaptation of the books and the adaptation of the final story (and the elements they included from the ancillary Snicket books) really landed wonderfully. I really wish Netflix had already announced the same team was doing an adaptation series of the All the Wrong Questions books (with Warburton somehow still involved as Lemony Snicket).

26. Klaus & Noelle Two streaming services served up two new Christmas movies this year, and I dug them both. Noelle doesn't quite pull of the same magic trick as Elf, but I found it charming and the cast (and the fact that it is set, in part, in Arizona) went a long way to endearing it to me. And Klaus was a gorgeously animated, very enjoyable surprise. Odds are decent that I pop both of them on again at some point next holiday season.

25. Deadwood: The Movie A bit of bittersweet nostalgia, a post-script, and an elegy. Just the right balance of warm and melancholy. And while the movie definitely didn't give us the Al Swearengen I expected, I was so moved by his story (and McShane's performance).

24. The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel (Season 3) The obvious surface pleasures of this show (the costumes and set design, the snaky sinuous camera work, the charming and charismatic performances, the rat-a-tat dialogue) continued apace, while the storytelling continued to strike a really enjoyable balance between joyful wish-fulfillment and (semi-)realistic period exploration.

23. Adam Sandler & Eddie Murphy on SNL and in the movies The two biggest SNL alumni that had not been back to host (ever, in Sandler's case, or since he was still a cast member, in Murphy's) Adam Sandler and Eddie Murphy both returned too the show that had given them their start and pretty much lived up to decades of expectations. Sandler came back at the end of the 2018-2019 season and it was such a warm, funny homecoming that was really funny without just spending the time revisiting his old characters (the travel agent commercial he was in was one of the best sketches of the season and benefited hugely from his performance), and a genuinely touching tribute to Chris Farley. (And he capped his year with a fantastic, nerve-jangling performance in Uncut Gems, which was a Safdie special, exhausting and exhilarating in equal measure.) Then, following his really galvanizing lead performance in Dolemite is My Name, showing how hilarious and wonderful in a dramatic role he can still be, in the last episode before Christmas in the 2019-2020 season, Eddie Murphy returned to host, coming in with the enormous expectations that would accompany his return to the show at any time with the recent example of having seen it done so right. And they crushed it. His episode understandably featured more of the play-the-hits style of character reprisals, but they generally had clever ideas for using the characters (Mr. Robinson returned to a gentrified neighborhood, Buckwheat was a Masked Singer, and Gumby gave a hilarious Update rant) and, best of all, Murphy brought the necessary energy to make it all work. On top of that, he elevated the non-recurring stuff like a great Baking Championship sketch that he underplayed to perfection, or a North Pole newscast that he knocked out of the park. Both episodes were a joy.

22. Doctor Sleep I liked a lot of stuff in the book, but I think the movie improved on it! I love Mike Flanagan's style of horror story anyway, and it was a really good fit for Doctor Sleep. And the movie does a remarkable job of squaring itself with the Stephen King and Stanley Kubrick versions of The Shining, including a really moving appropriation of elements from the original book and potent movie imagery into a surprisingly touching combination.

21. Stranger Things 3 The run-up to this season was so much fun (special ice creams and store decorations at Baskin-Robbins, a whole Fun Fair set up at Coney Island), and then the season itself was a big summer blockbuster blast that Katie and I spent a whole day on.

20. The Lighthouse This one lingered! Two great performances, a beautiful visual scheme, and a bracing spiral into madness for a story.

19. Parasite Bong Joon-Ho with another what-genre-is-this masterpiece.

18. Watchmen on HBO This was so much richer and provocative than I expected. A compelling and mostly satisfying sequel to a book I didn't much demand a sequel to, it was one of the best shows I watched all year and honored the original by actually being about something.

17. The Farewell A warm and delicate story that really moved me, with a terrific performance by Awkwafina.

16. Jojo Rabbit I've been on Taika Waititi's wavelength since Boy, and this one worked for me as designed, which meant that I was delighted and then devastated.

15. Apollo 11 Like They Shall Never Grow Old, there was such power to seeing a new, vivid angle on major 20th century history.

14. GLOW (Season 3) This season, with it's Las Vegas setting and it stage-show status quo, created a bunch of new dynamics and fun developments (the Christmas Carol version of their show was a delight) while continuing to deepen the characters. Love this show.

13. Dumbo I am generally a Tim Burton guy, but I was surprised by how much I loved this movie. And every moment Michael Keaton was on screen was a great one.

12. Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker This was a weird year for Star Wars, with Star Wars: Resistance coming to a satisfactory (but disappointing compared to the previous two animated series) ending and publishing having a handful of fun tie-ins to Galaxy's Edge and Rise of Skywalker, without anything particularly standing out. And all of it was capped off with The Rise of Skywalker, a film that definitely suffers from a bunch of competing storytelling interests. But the big moments that need to hit all pretty much hit for me and the final moments on Tatooine especially got to me.

11. The Irishman We went to see this movie during it's special engagement in a Broadway theater, which felt like an appropriate experience for such an epic. Surprisingly funny and, in the end, almost breathtakingly melancholy, this was a really special movie.

10. Lethal White Another cozy, gripping read. The mystery was less nasty/scary than the last one, but it was still pretty involving, and I certainly want to see what happens next for Strike and Robin.

9. Toy Story 4 This felt truly unnecessary (and even kind of unwelcome) when it was announced, but it turned out to be a genuinely worthy entry. It hits or improves on the expected Toy Story elements (the jokes hit and the characters are lots of fun, and it may be the most beautiful Toy Story, with stunning widescreen animation), and Woody's story builds to a surprising and very emotional climax. Once again, I'd be happy if this was where we left the characters, which is no small feat for a movie that has to push beyond the ending of Toy Story 3.

8. Disney+ (The Mandalorian, The Imagineering Story, Forky Asks a Question, etc) I was still working full time at school and working on my master's degree this fall, so it's not like I really needed a new streaming service to spend time on. But this was such a fun thing to explore. The Mandalorian immediately became appointment television for us (if that whole first episode hadn’t have done it, the final scene would have). But so was The Imagineering Story (one of the best showbiz documentaries I've seen) and Forky Asks a Question ("What? No!" definitely entered our daily lexicon).

7. Once Upon a Time...In Hollywood I loved it for the hang out (I want to watch Cliff Booth and Rick Dalton watch episodes of TV shows together!). I loved it for the incredible tension of the Spahn Ranch sequence. I loved it for the wry wistfulness of the neon sign sequence. I loved it.

6. Knives Out Such a thoroughly great time. I love Rian Johnson's movies in general, but this might be my favorite since Brick.

5. Us I'm reasonably receptive to the "bigger and more rococo" sophomore film, so I was ready to respond to this movie. But it still really knocked me out. I love it for all of the great surface pleasures (scary "monster" design, tense scare sequences, incredible dual performances by Lupita Nyong'o) and I loved it for the chewy thematic ideas it teases at. Peele is two-for-two, in my book.

4. Little Women I was only familiar with this story in a vague sense (like, I am sure I knew one of the sisters died in the book, but I didn't know which one going in). But I LOVED this movie.

3. Avengers: Endgame For this big, climactic year of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, I had made note to include the Skrull reaction shots in Captain Marvel (Talos and the milkshake being the top of the heap), and Spider-Man: Far From Home was as consistently delightful as it's Spidey predecessor, but it's hard to think of a collective audience experience that was more fun than Avengers: Endgame. It basically played out as a series of huge payoffs and shocking moments for about three hours, and between the laughs and cheers and audible sobs, it really ran the full audience-reaction gamut. Hard to imagine another movie building up this kind of steam for a big finale again, and it was pretty special to see on opening night.

2. The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance I was pretty excited for this show. The original movie is dear to me, I'd heard really cool, encouraging stuff about the show, and the trailers were pretty gorgeous. And the show exceeded all of my hopes for it. It was funny and exciting. It developed the mythology of Thra in cool, intriguing ways. It was absolutely dazzling to look at. It jockeyed for position with the number 1 spot on this list. I adored it.

1. Godzilla: King of the Monsters I loved this. I wrote about it at SportsAlcohol.com. I saw it five or six times in theaters. A full meal for my imagination.

Top Twenty-Five Things I'm Excited About in 2020

Godzilla vs Kong No question, I'm spectacularly excited to see this one. I loved all three of the previous films leading up to it, and the status quo hinted at in the credits of King of the Monsters suggests some directions that I really hope to see explored further.

Animaniacs revival & Looney Tunes Cartoons Here's hoping that this is finally the year we get to see the new Looney Tunes they've been cooking up (seems like HBO Max will be a good place to put them...) and while it feels like a while since there's been new word on the Animaniacs revival that's due on Hulu, maybe that'll show up this year too. Looking forward to whatever Warner Bros. animation we can get.

Bill & Ted Face the Music One of the few decades-later sequels that I've actively been wanting to happen. I'm so glad this finally happened, and I can't wait to see what it will look like. I love the title. I love the details they've shared so far. And I'm glad to have an excuse to watch the previous two movies in the run-up to this one.

West Side Story Spielberg finally doing his movie musical! And it's a great musical! With a script adapted by Tony Kushner, no less. Sign me up.

Muppets Now I don't know enough about the format of this show to know how excited to be yet (they're generally good at improvising, but the notion of ad-libbed shorts doesn't sound quite like the Muppet Show revival I'd really like to see on Disney+). Still, new Muppets!

The French Dispatch Seems like this one should hit his year after a festival run. Really looking forward to getting a look at what he's cooked up this time.

Death on the Nile #thirtyBranaghPoirotmovies

Onward & Soul Two original Pixar movies in one year! Super excited about this. (Also pretty psyched for another original film from Disney Animation Studios in Raya and the Last Dragon.)

MCU at the Movies I glad to finally get that Black Widow movie this year, and I'm certainly interested to see The Eternals, which has a great cast and sounds like another new avenue to explore in the Marvel movie world.

MCU on Disney+ As excited as I am for the two theatrical Marvel movies this year, I'm also pretty into The Falcon & The Winter Soldier and WandaVision. Now that my beloved Captain America has effectively retired, I'm pretty excited to see what happens to his best friends as Sam Wilson becomes the new Cap. And the word on WandaVision (that it's going to be pretty weird), coupled with the hints that they are taking inspiration from Tom King's run on the Vision comic book, makes this one sound pretty special. The Mandalorian set a high bar for how exciting these Disney+ shows could be, so I'm looking forward to seeing what Marvel comes up with.

In the Heights Hamilton melted my brain five years ago, and the trailer for this movie adaptation of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s first Broadway musical is so wonderful. Can’t wait.

Jungle Cruise Mulan looks super cool, but I've got pretty high hopes for Jungle Cruise. Jaume Collet-Serra is responsible for some wild genre excellence and I'm hoping he was able to bring some of that cracked vision to a big Disney adventure movie with the Rock and Emily Blunt. Sounds good to me.

Tenet Certainly looking forward to seeing Nolan return with another big, original genre picture with a great cast.

Dune Denis Villeneuve's last two science fiction films were aces and he's assembled a great cast here, so I'm hoping he'll do something special with this book.

Ghostbusters: Afterlife For as bad a taste as the ghost-bros left me with in their furor over the pretty fun 2016 remake, I'm loath to admit that I'm really looking forward to this. I liked the trailer, I'm excited to see the original characters return, I really like the new cast members, and I'm looking forward to a story with a different setting and everything.

Last Night in SoHo I like all of Edgar Wright's movies, and this sounds like an interesting change-up for him.

Star Trek on CBS All Access First up this year we know we’re getting Star Trek: Picard, and I’m particularly excited because this is a Star Trek that will be reaching past everything we’ve already seen and showing us a story set in the galaxy after the destruction of Romulus and Spock’s trip back in time. It looks really cool, and it’s pretty exciting to see Patrick Stewart playing the role again. Beyond that, we should have Star Trek: Lower Decks, which sounds like it should be a lot of fun, and the third season of Star Trek: Discovery which, based on the ending of the last season, promises to also explore previously unseen corners of the Star Trek universe/timeline.

Penny Dreadful: City of Angels I loved the original Penny Dreadful, and I'm pretty into the milieu they've set this...sequel? revival? spiritual successor? Pretty cool cast, too.

F9 Still really enjoying these big, wild, nutty movies. And I know my #family will be excited to roll out and see this one together.

Cosmos: Possible Worlds I loved the last Cosmos revival, so I'm really looking forward to seeing what they've come up with for this one.

Over the Moon Netflix is supposed to have a new animated film directed by Glen Keane this year, so I'm looking forward to watching it.

The Witches I love the book (and the original film version, for the most part) and I'm always rooting for Robert Zemeckis to make another stellar entertainment. Hoping this is one!

My Favorite Thing is Monsters Volume 2 Maybe this year!

Halloween Kills I loved the 2018 Halloween sequel, so I'm fully down to see the next two installments, starting with this one.

No Time to Die Daniel Craig’s swan song as Bond, this one has had some pretty rad trailers and a very cool director. Hope he gets to go out on a great one!