anera527

[anera527]

'And there shall be a great cry in Egypt, such as never has been or ever will be again!'

#prince of egypt #the symbolism in this movie is *chef's kiss* #you watch this as a kid and all you pay attention to is the dramatic music and pan shots and 'oh no a crocodile!' #then as an adult you realize the full horror of the staging of this particular scene/moment and all you can think is 'oh god'

[anera527]

'A sickness known as hate. Not a virus, not a germ-- but a sickness nonetheless, highly contagious, deadly in its affects. Don't look for it in the Twilight Zone-- look for it in the mirror. Look for it before the light goes out altogether.'

#twilight zone #rod serling #I'd somehow missed this ep growing up #but i came across it recently and was blown away by how relevant it felt #60 years later #have we learned anything?

[anera527]

I refuse to believe that Jedi younglings, before they learned proper shielding, didn't accidentally broadcast an earworm song to the rest of the class and then get it stuck in their heads too.

#star wars

[anera527]

I see Crowley’s ‘you idiot’ and agree it’s utterly heartbreaking...

But I raise you Aziraphale’s pleading, ‘Come with me’, is just as much.

#good omens #Aziraphale #crowley #crowley/aziraphale

[anera527]

This right here is one of my favorite moments for the dynamic between Hardy and Ellie. Throughout the first series he’s the one teaching her the finer points of interviewing suspects, he’s the one who leads. Then things go all to hell the last couple episodes and Ellie has to be the one who leads the questions. (Her talk with Susan Wright is fantastic, and showcases exactly what sort of detective Ellie is-- hard and steely when needs be, but soft and sympathetic when that’s needed too.)

And then here we have the climax of Sandbrook, when they’ve got their suspects in custody. Hardy leads initially, as he’s done throughout so much of the series, but as soon as Ellie finds a way to crack their suspect’s armor there is no moment of hesitation, no glances aside to see if Ellie should take the lead or not. No, he simply sits back and lets her.

He has absolute faith in her abilities as a detective, and this moment right here is where he proves it.

Also that grin on Ellie’s face conveys so much, and I love it. She’s been constantly looked down upon and underestimated in her abilities as the DS and it turns out she’s the secret weapon that breaks Sandbrook’s case wide open. That grin and her sitting forward like that is a hound smelling a hare, and it’s both thrilling and terrifying to see it.

#Broadchurch #alec hardy #Ellie Miller

[anera527]

I loved Jodie's send-off as the Doctor. The writing has definitely been rocky the past three seasons but as dear old Nine put it, she was absolutely fantastic.

Thank you, Jodie, for bringing us such a beautiful, fun, and brilliant Doctor.

#doctor who #thirteenth doctor

[anera527]

Rereading SW legends!verse for the first time in fifteen years, and having just finished with LotF: Inferno I HAVE THOUGHTS (specifically about Luke):

His and Jacen’s duel at the end of the book is freaking epic and it makes me so mad to know we’ll never have that realized on screen or in comic book. They’re both supremely talented in lightsaber dueling so it was interesting to see uncle and nephew going head to head-- I would have loved to have seen who would have won if not for Ben’s stabbing Jacen in the back.

(Maybe not really loved, because of the implications if Luke had been the one to win, which brings me to my next round of holy s***.)

Luke’s toeing the line this novel. Losing Mara, killing Lumyia, his grief, it’s all festering and you just get the feeling the entirety of the book that he’s not really in the best headspace. (Really, though, who would be?) I’m thinking specifically of his confrontation with Jacen/Caedus, when the former threatens the younglings:

“I'm sure you’re not threatening the younglings.” {Luke} pointed at the base of Jacen’s meditation chair and made a tapping motion with his finger. the pedestal gave a loud whumph, and the seat dropped a quarter meter. 

“Because you really don’t want to see me angry.” Luke made the tapping motion again. The pedestal emitted a metallic shriek, and the seat dropped another quarter meter. “And I think you’re smart enough to know that.”

Luke tapped a last time, and the pedestal collapsed with a loud crump, depositing Caedus on the floor with his feet sticking out in front of him like a child.

“But if you want to try me, go ahead and make that threat.”

Luke’s actions here reminds me a little of my paternal grandfather, who has never once my twenty eight years of life raised his voice in a shout. My parents have been married for forty years and my mother has never seen him angry. My dad can count on one hand the times he’s ever seen my grandpa angry or shouting. Apparently, when my grandpa gets angry it’s terrifying-- precisely because he so rarely gets to that point.

At this point in Luke’s EU arch, he’s still performing awesome feats with the Force, still proving that he’s the son of the Chosen One. But this moment with Jacen/Caedus hits harder, because he’s using the Force so casually. Such casual use of the Force on Luke’s part has been something he’s eased up on in the last few series of the EU, and to find him using it now so blatantly is terrifying in its implications.

Which leads us to his discovering Caedus torturing Ben in the Embrace of Pain:

...He started to accept that the horrible scene was real. He was, in fact, standing in the doorway of a secret cabin filled with Yuuzhan Vong torture devices, watching his twisted nephew taunt his captive son.

Luke didn’t give Jacen a chance to surrender. He just sprang.

Definitely not the Luke we’re used to in this moment, and it gets even worse as the fight continues, as he’s injured and draws on the pain to give himself strength; he lands some serious blows on Jacen and relishes in the pain he inflicts. Dark Side traits, anyone? He snaps out of it when Ben asks to be the one to kill Jacen, but it’s a near thing, and it’s an interesting plot point that’s only compounded in LotF: Invincible, when Luke looks at possible futures and sees that if he’s the one who kills Jacen the galaxy is plunged into a darkness worse than even Palpatine’s Empire. 

More thoughts to come, but this post is long enough already. Feel free to debate or share your own thoughts if you want!

#Luke Skywalker #jacen solo #legacy of the force: inferno #star wars

[anera527]

Honestly, I love a lot of the humor in MASH, but I think my favorite moment is in S8E9 Mr & Mrs Who, when they play So Long It’s Been Good To Know Ya during the ceremony to dissolve Charles’ and Donna’s “marriage”.

#tv: mash

[anera527]

Theodore Roosevelt listed Ulysses S Grant as one of the greatest Americans in history (alongside Washington and Lincoln). This was said in 1900.

Only fifty-so years later, President Dwight Eisenhower would state that Robert E Lee was one of the greatest Americans of all time. 

This post is not an assassination of Lee or his character-- that’s not the point of this. What I am curious about is how this reverence of Grant, who played a key point in keeping our country together and helping African Americans get the right the vote during his Presidency, could then turn so sharply to a reverence of Robert E Lee (a man who, despite his personal disapproval of secession, still fought on behalf of the Confederacy). This strange twisting of reverence is a clear example of the Lost Cause narrative taking root.

We weren’t taught much about Grant’s Presidency during Social Studies/History class. We barely touched on him as a General in the Civil War, except as the man who was called The Butcher and who drank a lot. 

So my question is just how much has this Lost Cause infiltrated our own History books?

#american civil war #Ulysses S. Grant #robert e lee

[anera527]

I didn’t think it would be possible to find any similarities between two of my favorite shows, Broadchurch and MASH. I was wrong.

Spoilers after the cut (for both shows)

Specifically, the similarity lies between Alec Hardy and Hawkeye Pierce in terms of trauma. Both suffer from varying degrees of PTSD, but their individual experiences are opposite from the other’s. 

Hardy in BC is already deeply traumatized by something in the first series, but we don’t see its cause until S2, when he reveals he was the one who discovered and carried out a murdered girl’s body out of a river. Ever since then, he suffers from nightmares and by his own admission rarely sleeps soundly anymore. It’s honesty one of the saddest scenes of the series and it adds a lot more weight to Hardy’s character seeing that moment as he’s carrying Pippa Gillespie out of the river:

Unlike Hardy, whose experience happens well before we actually meet him as a character, Hawkeye’s in MASH happens right at the end of his story arch. We’ve watched him become more and more unstable and exhausted as the series continues; his nightmares and bouts of insomnia have already been going on for quite some time, and he’s shown having the tendency of rewriting traumatic memories. Which is why we find him in a mental hospital in the beginning of the final episode, being treated for for what he thinks is absolutely nothing. Then we hear about an incident on a bus when he and the rest of the MASH unit are hiding from Chinese and North Korean soldiers. He’s adamant about the fact that a South Korean woman hiding with them killed her chicken when he ordered her to keep it quiet, until finally the truth comes out:

(Sorry for the crappy quality- I can’t screencap from itunes, so a video on youtube was the best I could do.)

Now, I’m all for stopping the usual fridged-wife causing manly pain backstory, but damn it this isn’t much better! 

#Broadchurch #alec hardy #tv: mash

[anera527]

Throughout all of my recent research into Ulysses S Grant and William T Sherman, I realized that we were never really taught in school about the Western Theatre of the Civil War; i.e., Grant’s mostly-successful campaigning around the States of Kentucky, and Tennessee, and Missouri. It’s his and others’ victories there that later helped win the Mississippi River and cut the Confederacy in two.

But what do we learn about in Social Studies/History? Gettysburg. Fort Sumter. Bull Run/Manassas. Antietam. In other words, the Eastern Theatre of the War. And those battles were dominated by incompetent Union commanders for a large majority of them: McClellan, Burnside, Hooker, McClellan again-- men who were more likely to retreat at the very cusp of victory than jump forward and seize the day. It’s bad enough learning about the Eastern Theatre that I remember saying to my parents that with such incompetent commanders the Union deserved to lose the Civil War.

I understand that History class has only so much time to teach students, and I understand that the Civil War is too big to teach in-depth, but why do we focus so much on McClellan and Lee, Hooker and Lee, Burnside and Lee, Meade and Lee, and brush over such an important part of the War as the Western Theatre? We effectively forget about Grant and Sherman until they’ve entered the Eastern campaign, let alone all of their fellow commanders and soldiers, and their years of fighting to take back and then keep the Mississippi in Union hands.

#american civil war #Ulysses S. Grant #William Tecumseh Sherman

[anera527]

Maya Lopez in Hawkeye | 1.06 “So This Is Christmas”

[anera527]

HECK yes, it's Echo!

I've loved Echo since the New Avengers comics that first introduced her years ago. Very excited to see her in the MCU!

#mcu hawkeye #maya lopez

[anera527]

So how is that no one has ever made a documentary about the life of Clara Barton? I’m quite miffed about this, because she was such an inspiration. 

#clara barton #american civil war

[anera527]

She'd never really noticed how often Daisy spoke to her father with her hands. It simply wasn't any of Ellie's concern and she had other things to worry about, like her job and her boys, and whether or not she would eventually snap and murder Hardy when he was being a knob. And today she was absolutely furious as she walked through her front door.

The absolute nerve of him! Brushing off that boy's concern like it didnt matter at all, practically ignoring him and handing it to Ellie to handle. Where did he get off acting like that? Her mood was not improved when she realized she didn't have anything for dinner, and that meant going to the store to buy something. With a curse, she grabbed her coat and headed back outside without even having had the chance to take her shoes off.

The store was on the other side of town, and of course she was caught in traffic on the way. Cursing to herself at this blatant ill luck granted to her by the cosmos, she happened to spy two familiar figures walking down the sidewalk: Hardy and Daisy, out buying fish and chips together. Daisy was in full conversational mode, engaged with her story-- but then Ellie noticed her mouth wasn't moving.

Her hands were. Quickly, precisely, and so casually that it was clearly habit, and what was even more amazing was that Hardy was doing it right back.

Ellie sat with her mouth open until a car behind her beeped for not moving forward.

She finally understood what it was Daisy did with her hands, and it wasn't simply gesturing.

*****

"So why do you need to use sign language with your dad, Daisy?"

She said it easily, without judgment, the next time she stopped by the Hardy residence. By chance, he wasn't home yet but Daisy was, which made it the perfect time to ask her questions.

Daisy wide-eyed her, sizing her up. "I don't know," she said smoothly, "why does someone need to know sign language?"

"Don't be so sarcastic," Ellie said, " that's your dad's job. My guess would be that you use it to talk to him because he's deaf, but he wouldnt be a detective if that were the case--"

"Partially deaf. It was an accident years ago, I guess on a previous call out. He suffered an ear injury, and he's almost eighty percent deaf in his right ear, a little below forty in his left. He's gotten really good at reading lips and studying body language, but it's easiest to talk to him using sign language. He doesn't have to work so hard to understand that way."

"Why didnt he say anything, the knob?"

"He didnt want you to think less of him, this ability to do his job because he's so hard of hearing. Are you going to be?"

"I--" Ellie paused before she tried to use some excuse. Of course she would have judged him; she was a little judgmental now, but she was also hurt. They'd known each other a long time now-- did he still not think he could trust her? "Do you have any books on how to learn sign language, Daisy?"

The sunny smile she got for that question told her she'd asked exactly the right thing. "I'll give you lessons."

*****

Of course she didn't tell Hardy she knew about his deafness, but the day she approached him and signed, How are you today, sir?, the way his whole countenance lit up was well worth the surprise.

so idk why but I headcanon Alec Hardy as deaf/hard of hearing but I cannot, for the life of me, find a fanfic about it! So if anyone comes across one or even writes one, please send it my way. I just love the idea of him using sign language with Daisy and Miller seeing and finding out he's deaf/hard of hearing and learning sign language to communicate with him. I'd write it myself but I don't think i'd do it justice!

[anera527]

Everybody likes to poke fun at Midwesterners and our strange slang, but seriously I think it’s hilarious that it never leaves our vocabulary. My aunt has lived in Florida for the past thirty years and she still catches herself saying, “Ope!” when startled, and calling soda “pop”.

#midwest #United States

[anera527]

You know what character in the Outlander series was shafted in the television show?

Duncan Innes. That's who. And it makes me really mad to think about the fact that this incredibly shy, loyal, hard-working, slightly-bumbling, flawed man was literally written down to nothing but a plot device to add drama between Jocasta and Murtagh.

Practically nothing exists of his backstory from the books, and none of the characters feel for Duncan in the show the way they do in the books. He's not a former inmate of Ardsmuir so he doesn't have any of the backstory with Jamie, nor the mutual respect that forms so much of their friendship in the books. He's not with the Frasers at all in S3 (Voyager), so he gets no time at all to bond with Claire and tell her his past of being a fisherman caught up in Culloden, and any of his visits he pays them in Drums of Autumn (S4) is given to Murtagh instead. He simply appears in s5 as nothing more than drama that doesn't need to be there, and the series writers even admitted that in the show Jocasta marries not for love for Duncan but out of fear of being hurt by Murtagh. The major difference shows in the exchange between Jamie and Claire in the episode 'Better to Marry Than Burn':

Jamie: It should be Murtagh at Jocasta's side.

Claire: If Murtagh isn't here today, then it's his own choice.

While in the books, while I wouldnt say it's true love between Duncan and Jocasta, there is mutual respect and fondness, and it's made very clear that Jocasta does choose Duncan of her own free will to finally marry for her own satisfaction and not by the machinations of others. What's more, Jamie gives his full blessing to the match, pleased to hear that Duncan has proposed marriage at the end of Drums of Autumn:

'"I've no claim on any of my aunt's property, Duncan-- and wouldna take it when she offered. You'll be married at the Gathering? Tell her we'll come, then, and dance at the wedding."'

There are so many other examples I could find in the books to further my case but I currently don't have the time to read through books 5 and 6 again looking for specific passages. So just know that Duncan Innes in the show is a pale imitation of the Duncan in the books, and I sincerely hope that we'll see a bit more fleshing out of his character in the upcoming season 6. He's not perfect by any means in the books, but he feels so much more real than he does in the show. I love Murtagh to bits as a character, but I feel like his survival after Culloden in the show takes a lot away from situations that happen later in the story, and certain characters, and adds a lot of unnecessary drama to an already dramatic story. Duncan is an unfortunate casualty in that way.

#outlander #duncan innes #jamie fraser #claire fraser #jocasta #murtagh