#in which I eviscerate the last episode of my favorite show

[heyclickadee]

So, here’s the thing. The finale is weird. Yes, I’m hurt by the fact that Tech didn’t come back and that a character that’s very near and dear to my heart was badly handled, and that will never sit right with me. But even apart from that, the finale fundamentally does not function as a piece of storytelling or as the end to this story. I’m glad that people are enjoying it, and I will never tell anyone not to. But I don’t think it works. (I get very negative about the TBB finale under the cut.)

It’s not just the Tech stuff or the CX-2 stuff (which may very well have been the same stuff) that got dropped. It’s *everything*. Every theme, Every narrative thread besides retrieving Omega, every character arc except marginally Omega’s, Echo’s (also marginal), and Emerie’s, which was the shortest and gets wrapped up by her deciding to help Echo rescue the kids. It all stops. It makes everything that came before seem cheap and pointless if you take it into account. And this is so, so frustrating for me, because the entire show was driving towards this incredibly rich payoff, it could have been immaculate, and then it whiffed the ball so bad in the last episode that it didn’t just miss, it managed to knock over the bleachers and set the entire court on fire.

Some examples:

1. This season had a really interesting exploration of Crosshair’s PTSD via his hand tremor and how it was something he can learn to manage, but not something that would ever fully go away. Aaaaand then his hand gets chopped off. One, that was stupid. I’ve seen some excellent posts (here’s one by @the-bi-space-ace) detailing why that was a terrible way to handle Crosshair’s lingering trauma, and others talking about how the idea there was that Crosshair needed to move on and it was severing his last ties with the empire. The former, I agree with; the latter, I don’t, because not only—not only!—does this episode stop dealing with Crosshair’s trauma, it doesn’t even deal with having cut off his hand! It just sort of occurs. No one reacts to it, no one says anything about it, there’s no follow up or commentary, nothing happens as a result—it’s an event which occurs with no results coming after it. It may as well be an animation error. You can say it was about Crosshair needing to let go and move on, but that’s something you have to project on to the text, not something that’s actually offered by it. It’s empty.

2. Crosshair again: We also have the lingering issue of Crosshair’s guilt and the fact that he never seems to get to a point where it’s resolved. There’s set up for a resolution. We have that, “Sure you have,” like about Crosshair from Rampart. We also have Crosshair saying he deserves whatever happens to him in Tantiss. And then…no pushback. No resolution. No moment of Crosshair realizing that he doesn’t need to carry that burden. Nothing that says he didn’t deserve what happened to him. He had all this character development this season, but he needed - last little push to forgive himself—and we never get any indication that he does. It, like his trauma, gets dropped like a rock.

3. Hey! More Crosshair! A good chunk of Crosshair’s arc this season was about learning that anyone can change, first, and that no one is beyond saving. Eeexcept that goes no where.

4. Which brings me to my next point: There is set up for the CXs to be saved. Even if we’re laboring under the conclusion that CX-2 was never intended to be Tech at any point in the writing process (I have. Doubts. Yes, I’m calling the creative team liars, here, but with the understanding that they have contracts that may require them to lie), we do have the set up where we learn the electrocyanide zappers can be removed, and with Rex offering forgiveness to CX-1. “Whatever they did to you, whatever you’ve done, you’re still one of us.” CX-Tech or no, Crosshair’s arc was tied up with the CX plot, and because he’s the one the CXs tend to react to—or, at least, understands what was done to them—the set up was there for him to help save and maybe rehab the CXs. At the least, there was an indication that they could be saved. Eeexcept nope! That gets dropped like a rock, too, and they’re not going to deal with it. Time for maximum carnage.

5. Hunter’s arc actually takes a step backwards. Sure, he gets a technically happy ending, but because the squad is basically in the same place they were in “Pabu” back in season two (down a member but successfully hiding from the Empire in a safe place), it negates Hunter’s development towards actually taking action—and actually hurts Echo’s arc, too.

There’s been this tension all through the show between just sitting things out on the one hand (Hunter’s way) and taking direct action despite the futility on the other (Echo’s way), but instead of finding some kind of middle ground or third road, it sort of comes back around to saying that, actually, Hunter was right, they should have just gone to Idaflor back in episode three and never left even though the Pabu invasion said that no, you can’t just hide, and even Hunter’s development was moving in the opposite direction. And this also means that Echo never reaches a point where he feels like he can walk away and that he doesn’t have to get himself killed doing this. Despite development otherwise they both end up back at that conversation in “Tipping Point” without any move in either direction or resolution of that tension.

6. Omega. Okay, Omega probably comes out the best after the finale, and, conceptually, I actually love the idea of Omega becoming a pilot even if the epilogue falls a little flat for me. But stuff with Omega still got dropped, including:

- The force stuff. We have two episodes dealing with m-count (after learning in episode three what Omega was created to do). We also have Ventress telling Omega that she doesn’t have a high m-count as far as she can see, Crosshair immediately calling Ventress out for lying, and then Ventress basically saying, “Yeah, no shit, but if she has force potential she’d have to leave you behind, and it doesn’t matter what your opinion on that is, so I’m not dealing with that.” Aaaand then,m. That. Goes nowhere. Despite a bit of set up for Omega connecting to the force as early as episode one, and some more set up in Tribe, and that whole subplot of her learning how to meditate, and so on.

Now, I don’t think that it was ever going to turn out that Omega did actually have a high m-count or that she had a particularly powerful natural connection to the force. I think she’s probably got a low or baseline m-count. What I do think, however, is that we were going to see Omega connect anyway as a refutation of Palpatine’s and Hemlock’s entire scheme. Their goal (based off of the ST) was to create extremely force sensitive clones as a way for Palpatine to jump bodies without having to waste time re-learning how to connect to the force. You know—dark side, quick and easy path, focus on eugenics and raw power, etc. Had Omega connected anyway because of her big heart and desire to protect, it would have not only paid off that set up, it would have also refuted Palpatine’s and Hemlock’s entire goal. It would have worked so well thematically and the set up was THERE.

- branching off of that, I think the Omega force stuff was probably tied to the Zillo beast. We also had a through-line of Omega being good with animals and taking the time to calm them instead of responding with violence. The first time we see this is in “Replacements,” where she realizes that the ordo moon dragon (also an electrophage—I don’t know what to call these things—like the zillo beast) is just scared and hungry. This is all conjectural, but it still fits with what was set up.

- Moving on from the force stuff, we also had a through-line that started way back in episode two of the series, but which was really emphasized this season, about Omega feeling like she’s the cause of the bad things that happen to the people she loves. This is why she gives herself up during the Pabu invasion in the first place. This is never resolved! We get Omega’s confidence boost when she realizes she has the force kids to take care of, but we never get a moment where Omega realizes that she has no reason to feel guilty. She’s the glue that holds the family together! But nope! Also dropped!

- But wait! There’s more! The first two season finales have Omega watching someone she loves fall away while she’s helpless to do anything to save them. That’s perfect set up to put Omega in the same situation, but be able to save them, because she’s finally come into her own. Instead we just end up with her needing to be rescued again.

- Omega has this big speech in Shadows of Tantiss about spending her life stuck in one place or another against her will, and how she refuses to be confined like that. I don’t think Omega would have been happy just staying on Pabu for the entire rest of her childhood and young adult life, even if I think she’d want to use it on a home base. But! Dropped!

7. I still can’t get over the fact that the zillo beast is on screen for about two minutes and then just. Walks away. It’s a large beastie that’s been locked in confinement for a while and is probably hungry. And somehow it didn’t go straight to the reactors for some delicious energy smoothies. Like. It. Did. The. Last. Time. Someone. Let. It. Out. But no, that would have required it sticking around for something that was probably dropped sooooo ZILLO BEAST EXIT STAGE RIGHT I GUESS. (Edit: I have been reminded that Hemlock does say to turn off the generators once the zillo beast is out, so that at least makes sense. I still think the zillo beast should have stuck around to do something.)

8. You notice how there are a ton of commandos around Tantiss, even up through “Flash Strike?” And how they kind of largely cease to exist? And how Echo says that there are far more clones imprisoned in Tantiss than anyone thought? And then how they rescue, like, a dozen guys? Because we never find our way back to those cells Crosshair was held in during season two? And how Tarkin does mention not wanting to allow clone dissidence to turn into an uprising back in “The Summit?” Because I did. This show was never going to be about a clone rebellion, that wasn’t the point, buuut I do think the set up was there for an uprising at Tantiss itself. Begin the series with clones losing their agency en masse, end the series with some of the most subdued clones taking it back. Except nope, dropped, soooo we gotta pretend the commandos don’t exist and murder the hell out of poor Scorch.

9. SPEAKING OF. The batch does kill clones sometimes, that does happen, but they do at least usually make some kind of effort to be non-lethal even when they’re not using stun, and times when they do resort to lethal tactics are usually born out of extreme circumstances. Not here, though!! NO HESITATION MAXIMUM CARNAGE. For. Reasons I guess.

10. There’s one point IN THE FINALE where Echo mentions signaling for Rex. This never comes up again. Rex does not show up. In fact, despite being called, “The Cavalry Has Arrived,” the cavalry does not in fact arrive. There is no cavalry. Yes, I know it’s a reference to Wrecker’s first line. But I’m sorry if you call an episode that YOU HAD BETTER HAVE A CAVALRY SHOW UP. Especially when you have a one about calling them in! But that also!! Got dropped like a rock!!

11. One positive: the moment Crosshair and Hunter leaning on each other to make that shot was nice.

12. Sorry, but Hemlock’s death was deeply unsatisfying. Let’s do something more than just shoot him multiple times, okay?

13. Rampart’s death, on the other hand, was incredibly satisfying. That said, the conversation about project necromancer? I’m dying. It’s actually hilarious, because it basically goes like:

“Tell me about project necromancer.”

“Wow! How interesting!”

I’m.

Are you serious?

I’m going to become the Joker.

Yes, I know we know what project necromancer is because of a different show. That’s not the point, the POINT. Is that any pay off for project necromancer in this show got dropped. And that’s deeply frustrating from a narrative perspective.

14. Speaking of, we never find out anything more regarding that partially successful m-count transfer from episode three.

15. We also never do anything with those medical records!

16. And Omega has a whole crossbow she never actually shoots despite the fact that her role on the team was as a sharpshooter after Crosshair left, and despite her getting advice from Crosshair on how to be a sniper. The literal chekov’s gun never goes off. I’m going to go eat gravel.

17. AZI, likewise, got toted around for three seasons for no reason. Probably could have helped with the medical records. Given that he was a Kaminoan medical droid. Oh, and that Omega was Nala Se’s medical assistant. So. Hmm.

18. You can cut everything in the season past episode five and skip straight to the epilogue and end up in the same place. This is not because the other episodes are filler. Far from it! The other episodes are great and deliver some amazing set up. But, because the finale does nothing with that set up, it doesn’t go anywhere.

19. And you know what else? From a narrative perspective, there’s no reason for Hunter, Wrecker, and Crosshair to be in these episodes at all. They don’t accomplish anything and make everyone else’s job harder. Omega was doing fine, she would have gotten out with the kids with just Echo and Emerie, and Tarkin was coming to cut off Hemlock’s funding and shut everything down once Hemlock lost control of the facility anyway. I can only suppose that the whole reason they were in this episode ended up getting dropped, too.

20. CX-2. Listen, the answer we get about CX-2 isn’t that he’s not Tech. It’s, “Maybe, maybe not—you don’t get to know.” Because. He’s the only CX whose mask never comes off. After a season and a half worth of buildup of unmasking CXs and people pressing them to learn their names. It’s not a no, it’s a non-answer, which is far less satisfying.

And finally:

21: CX-Tech. I’ve seen some people speculating that there was a planned CX-Tech reveal that got scrapped at the last minute—dropped, along with the other points I’ve already laid out. And, honestly? I have to agree. Despite what the creative team says, because even their denials kind of come out weird (like the Kiners saying that the large brass chord in “Battle of the Snipers” was just a nice sounding brass chord and not a reference to “Plan 99.” They also basically say that the sacrifice theme from “Plan 99” is Tech’s leitmotif. Which. Is all over “Battle of the Snipers.” That theme. Not Crosshair’s. In a scene. Where he’s supposed to be fighting a shadow of himself who Totally Isn’t Tech but we put Tech’s leitmotif here and layered it in Techno music but nooo that was never supposed to be him. Nope. I mean, come on. I’m not stupid).This post is already long enough, so here are some posts by @apocalyp-tech-a pointing out the reasons why I think this was the case, and one by @eriexplosion pointing out why CX-2 as Crosshair’s shadow and only that doesn’t quite work. I don’t need to go over the trail that was laid out again. Up to the finale this was a character that had more screen time—and far more solo screen time—than Echo. Some people will not stop yelling that there was no evidence, and. No. I’m sorry, there was. I can’t agree.

And some people might say, well, okay, the show misdirected you guys and pulled off a twist by having CX-2 be no one, and well, I can’t agree with that either. Twists only function if the twist is more satisfying than the conclusion to which the story seems to be leading. And I’m sorry, you can’t tell me that a season and a half of CX building and three seasons (because I can find set up all the way back in episode one of the show) for Tech survival culminating in what amounts to a boss fight is more satisfying than getting to see Omega have her big brother back. You can’t.

The reason I bring this up last is because, yes, I think CX-Tech was a plot dropped at the last minute, but because I also think that it’s the dropped plot that ripped everything else apart. CX-Tech was an incredibly efficient way to tie up most of the lingering plot threads and dropped character development.

-Crosshair’s guilt? Okay, he faces down the end result of his decision to stay with the empire and possibly something he knew about (Tech would be in this situation because of Crosshair, and were given hints that Crosshair knew) and is finally able to forgive himself because they’re able to save him.

- Hunter’s decision to finally take action and be proactive rather than reactive is validated, because it’s the thing that finally gets him his entire family back.

- Echo saves someone the same way he was saved, and maybe he realizes that it is enough and that he doesn’t have to be a soldier forever.

- Wrecker’s efforts to keep the family together and keep Hunter sane finally pay off.

- Omega is able to protect the people she charges about and finally, finally has all of her brothers.

- Thematically, it rounds off each member of the batch (Omega included) traumatically losing and then taking back their agency in a way that correlates directly to who and how they are as people.

- It also rounds out the OG batchers each being haunted by a failure that has to do with the thing that makes them special.

- You get pushback against “Clone Force 99 died with Tech! We’re not that squad anymore!” because no, it didn’t, and they’re more than a squad, they’re a family.

- It comes around and closes the wound opened in Aftermath and ripped back open by Return to Kamino: they go in for Omega and lose someone, but here, they go in for Omega and get someone back.

- Would allow Tech to close off his lingering threads and finish his character development BECAUSE THOSE REMAINED UNFINISHED.

- Completely subverts the “bury your disabled” trope by making sure we know the character whose disability was explored the most’s life is more important than his death. Seems like an important thing to do in a show that is kind of about disability. Just saying.

- Makes the lack of closure and little mentions of Tech make sense from a storytelling POV because the necessarily catharsis would come from his return.

- And it would actually add some triumph to the ending. Yes, this little family survived. They outlived the war. They’re together, despite every effort to rip them apart. They made it, despite the dark times, despite the Empire, despite what they were made to do and be. They defied all of that. That would have been so, so satisfying.

As is, without Tech, without that CX-Tech reveal, we sort of end up in this weird place where all the themes are half-baked. They are more than soldiers…except Tech, who had to fall out of the story as a soldier (despite us getting the clearest glimpse of what his life outside of soldiering could have been). They get to live how they want…except Tech. They don’t leave their own behind, except Tech that one time. They should value their own lives a little…except Tech. They’re more than a squad, they’re a family…except Tech, the only one besides Omega to say that’s what they are, doesn’t get to see it, and they don’t get to have him around. We begin the series with a broken family and end it with a family broken differently. That’s not dynamic.

So there’s no really punch to the ending. It’s sort of…well, okay, we tortured a family for three seasons I guess. Relieved that the survivors are doing okay, but that’s kind of it.

22. The finale in general is just sort of a bunch of events which happen, but which don’t lead into one other. It’s weird. It’s not that too much happens, it’s that almost nothing happens. Nothing of substance, in a way. The finale is, in a word, the only true filler episode in the entire show.

TL;DR: I think a lot of stuff got dropped from the finale. I don’t know why. I suspect that it might have to do with the strikes—basically, the script was done, most everything was recorded and boarded, and then when the finale was in production they got sudden drastic budget cuts (this was during a time when the studios were disappearing entire completed shows and movies as tax write-offs), had to gut what they had planned, and couldn’t bring the writers or even showrunners in to smooth over what was gutted or to even pick what got taken out. They wouldn’t have gotten to choose or compress things. They were on strike (because the studios wouldn’t negotiate), and whoever did choose ended up just ripping out the stuff that would actually take any time or budget to deal with (so, basically everything I laid out), killing it (literally), and using the remains of what they already had recorded. And who knows how they had to fill in gaps.

But I don’t know for sure. Maybe it was that. Maybe it was a last minute decision to take certain plot points and put them in a different show. Maybe it was executive mandate. Maybe the creative team just sucked the whole time (that’s one I have a hard time buying—we have four other shows and most of this one that tell me that they’re better at their jobs than this). Maybe everyone said screw it, who even cares anymore at the same time.

Maybe nothing happened. Who knows? I strongly suspect something bad did happen behind the scenes that was out of the creative team’s hands—I really do, because that’s the only way I can make sense of this—but until we can get someone talking without six layers of PR and NDAs, we won’t know for sure. All I know is that The Bad Batch is an amazing show with 46 episodes that range from “fine-but-clunky” to “IMMACULATE,” with more leaning towards immaculate than not, and some incredible set up, and one episode so nonsensically bad it makes me want to eat drywall.

It’s just that the one terrible episode comes right at the end.

I love The Bad Batch. I love every single episode and all the things that were set up, but…eh, I think I’ll be ignoring the finale until further notice.

#the bad batch #in which I eviscerate the last episode of my favorite show #this is very negative! #you have been warned! #I did not like the finale! #AT ALL #I will continue to love the show #but that episode is getting memory holed #it’s BAD #in an otherwise remarkably solid and well written show

[ingravinoveritas]

The fact Michael put hands on David in the office writing scene and proceeded to say he would have 'torn David to shreds in seconds' whilst in feral Sheen mode *yer, I dont think anyone thought of them fighting when he said that*. I mean I know most of staged is scripted/directed by Simon but oh man, my brain stopped working for a bit. Also the Damsel in the tower (David forever the pretty princess) and the big spoon dialogue made me laugh so much.

Hello, Anons! Thank you for writing in to share your favorite bits of Staged with me. I’ve had a few other Anons write in to share their opinion of the show overall, but I wanted to group these together since they’re referencing specific moments in the episodes.

Anon #1: I caught that moment in episode 4, too. Here’s the visual, for those who haven’t seen it yet:

What was so interesting to me is that there were two specific instances in this season where Michael and David very deliberately enter into each other’s physical spaces/touch each other, seemingly without prompting. This was one, and then the scene where David touches Michael’s arm that Anon #3 mentioned is the other:

We could sit here all day and discuss what was scripted vs. what wasn’t, and whether Simon wrote these little moments of contact into the script, but my immediate gut feeling is that he didn’t. It’s one thing to write the words on the page, but Michael and David are the ones who bring those words to life and imbue the situations in the show with their own chemistry and connection. And it seems to be their natural instinct to be in each other’s space and to touch.

I think we sometimes forget how important touch is to human beings. It can be a way of grounding someone, of saying, “It’s okay. You’re okay. I’m here for you” when a person is having a crisis or a difficult time in general. Depriving someone of touch who needs it can also be tremendously harmful, mentally and emotionally, so I found it very lovely to see Michael and David giving that to each other so freely. (We got a hint of that from the hug at the NTAs last year, but this seemed to be even greater confirmation.)

I also thought it was very interesting that, of everyone in the third season, Michael had the most on screen physical contact with David, and the married vibes between them were played up so strongly. David seemed to be physical in equal measure with Georgia and Michael, but for Michael, those intimate touches only came from David. And the “old married couple” line completely fits with Georgia repeatedly calling Michael David’s “other wife” in real life.

...Which leads me to the moment you mentioned, Anon #2. I was entirely entertained by this scene at the beginning of episode 5, with Michael and David eviscerating each other’s careers, albeit quite playfully. It actually reminded me of a very similar scene in Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back, where Matt Damon and Ben Affleck do the same thing, re: each other’s careers. (If you haven’t seen it, you can watch that scene here starting at the 2:00 mark.)

The difference is that with Matt and Ben, it noticeably has the feeling of two best friends taking the piss out of each other, but with Michael and David, it very much comes across as that “old married couple” vibe instead. It’s playful teasing underpinned with so much love and affection and something...more than what we see with Ben and Matt, especially with how Michael laughs. Difficult to say whether it was improvised,  but I absolutely believe Michael’s laugh and David being pleased at making Michael laugh were both genuine. 

So many choices were made in this season (the “damsel in the tower” line gets me too, because I swear that is right out of an MS/DT fanfic I once read). The “big spoon” question nearly knocked me out of my seat, too, particularly because a) They answered it; and b) The response wasn’t something like, “Oh, I’d have to ask Georgia about that” but rather Michael and David answering without hesitation, thereby heavily implying that they have, in fact, spooned with each other. Amazing.

I appreciate you all sharing your favorite moments with me, and getting to talk about them definitely made me smile. (Also, Anon #3, if you need a link to watch Staged season 3, please DM me and I can help you out there.) Thanks for writing in! x

#anonymous #reply post #michael sheen #welsh seduction machine #david tennant #soft scottish hipster gigolo #staged #or 'Brokeback Mount Him' which is what I am referring to Staged as from here on out #staged 3 #they are giving off such powerful couple vibes here #very very married #this is what i mean about the lines being blurry #hard to tell what's real life and what's the show #the energy between them just crackles #you love to see it #ineffable lovers #discourse #gifs by me

[beeblackburn]

The First Law for the fandom ask! 😁

The first character I ever fell in love with: In hindsight, Logen Ninefingers, given how much he eviscerates his character trope so completely even then, but in the immediate, at the time, sense? The moment Sand dan Glokta first complained about the steps, my heart was gripped and it took awhile.

A character that I used to love/like, but now do not: On a personal level, too many to count, everyone’s either such a piece of shit or were written sympathetically enough before Abercrombie knocked the pedestal off them in this series. That being said, Sand dan Glokta. I still really like him, partly thanks to The Trouble with Peace and one hell of a choice scene, but after what he did near the end of Last Argument of Kings, and revising the series, I can’t help, but realize what I liked about him was the potential that he’d grow a heart and stop doing awful things, and him doubling down at the end was disappointing, if not surprising.

A ship that I used to love/like, but now do not: Jezal/Ardee. It was cute when I first read it, and I generally think Jezal had enough strength of character to try to do right by her, if the kingmaking business hadn’t been a thing, but I think it’s super telling that, upon being king, he thought about making her his mistress instead of realizing that wouldn’t have placated Ardee and she’d be bitter about the broken promise. In the end, they never fully knew each other, Jezal never knew the full extent of Ardee’s past, and what attracted them to each other was the dream of something better rather than anything substantial. I pity them, but they absolutely wouldn’t have worked out like Glokta/Ardee ended up doing.

My ultimate favorite character™: Logen “The Bloody-Nine” Ninefingers. But Black Calder and Crown Prince Orso are really close behind and they could easily climb overhead Logen with The Wisdom of Crowds. I’m expecting it with Crown Prince Orso, depending on how his character goes.

Prettiest character: Probably Crown Prince Orso? I know Leo dan Brock, Jappo mon Rogont Murcatto, and Stour Nightfall (though Jappo and Stour’s more my type) are objectively more handsome, but I like a little pudge in my handsome boys and Orso’s got that while having a prettier personality.

My most hated character: Collem West, easily, but I think Malacus Quai could've been better, character-wise.

My OTP: Everyone/Therapy. Seriously, Shy/Temple. Abercrombie can write some really sweet couples for such a self-professed cynic, given Calder/Seff, Bethod/Ursi, and Shenkt/Vitari.

My NOTP: Bayaz/Power. Seriously, Shev/Carcolf. Shev, please stop going after someone you know is toxic. Walk away and close that door forever. You deserve so much better, you gay babe.

Favorite episode: Red Country or The Heroes. 

Red Country has such a somber tone of bittersweet past and longing for redemption that I just ate up and broke my heart against. Lamb, Temple, Cosca, Shivers, Shy and the Felllowship, so many people want to do better from their pasts like in his past books but this time, maybe, just maybe, Abercrombie lets some of them win against their inner demons. It’s such a haunting book, men with the ghosts of their pasts hanging around them and the inevitability of changing times creeping onto them as they trek the Near and Far Country.

The Heroes is basically a typical cookie-cutter war story except it’s Abercrombie writing it. The entire Northern subplot of The First Law distilled into a narratively and thematically tight book, with some tremendously strong supporting characters, some of my favorite POVs (PRINCE CALDER! FINREE DAN BROCK! BREMER DAN GORST!) and carrying some of my favorite scenes of the entire series! It’s such a treat and I’ve loved each and all of my five rereads. This book puts all other war stories to shame for not even coming close.

Saddest death: Count Foscar (Monza relating him to the boy Benna was, laughing in the wheat, breaks me every time). Antaup (how dare you take a chapter to establish how heartbreaking a cock-blocker’s death would be, Abercrombie!), Tul Duru Thunderhead and Scale Ironhand. Oh, those hurt. Those hurt so much. And, despite how much of a shithead he was, Nicomo Cosca’s death hit me surprisingly hard. Sad and pathetic and broken.

Favorite season: Tricky. Because The Great Leveller and The Age of Madness have my favorite books in the entire series and the former’s got The Heroes and Red Country... but it’s also got Best Served Cold, which was I admittedly colder (heh) on. I’ll take the bullet that it’s a me problem and it’s still a fundamentally well-written book. The latter’s got A Little Hatred, which was a far better The Blade Itself in some ways, and, especially The Trouble with Peace, which was a roller-goddamn-coaster of a book with absolutely some of my favorite material by far. I’d say The Great Leveller for now, but I’m holding my breath on The Age of Madness usurping The Great Leveller in the end, given The Wisdom of Crowds sounds like it’s getting into all the revolutionary and freaky stuff I love about the trilogy, a relentless inferno for society and the soul.

Least favorite season: Look, I love every book in the Circle of the World, but The First Law was the result of Abercrombie stretching his legs for the first time, writing-wise, and it shows. Logen’s wife and children never fully breathe as a necessary part of him and his early magic shows growing pains in Abercrombie’s writing, West’s material isn’t as incisive a character deconstruction as it could’ve been (dude should’ve been more insidiously a piece of shit in his mind to subvert his “good commoner” trope), Dogman’s only gets by himself particularly interesting at the leg end of Last Argument of Kings, and Craw does his character better I’d say, Cathil and Ferro were underwritten (though I think Ferro’s got interesting stuff in her POV), and everything to do with Terez. Just. That. Ugh. The writing bones are solid and the main trio, Logen, Glokta, and Jezal, are all wonderful POVs, but I think it’s safe to say The First Law is Abercrombie’s freshmen writing, compared to his more affecting material in The Great Leveller and The Age of Madness.

Character that everyone else in the fandom loves, but i hate: ... Shivers? I do love him in The Heroes, Red Country, and The Age of Madness, but it always drives me a little crazy how much Shivers’ worsening moral decline is linked to Monza fucking Rogont and not him instead, making him out to be an entitled hyper-jealous asshole, and I ended up being disgusted by him. Add in the fact that he knew what he was getting into when he took a violent job and kept going, despite at least two targets, and kept caving into Monza’s higher payments, Shivers was always a piece of shit in his own right. He fell, he wasn’t pushed by Monza. I like enough of Shivers’ Best Served Cold material, but I just like his later material far more, even if I respect his earlier journey.

That being said, if he sacrifices himself for Rikke’s life in The Wisdom of Crowds, I’m going to rescind all this, because that’s the sort of perfect grace note to the anti-Logen and paaaaaaaaaaaaain. So let’s just go with Threetrees because, by god, he’s a relative snooze compared to the other “straight edges” of the series.

My ‘you’re piece of trash, but you’re still a fave’ fave: This could define almost anyone in this series, frankly. I guess Logen or Gorst? I really love their material, but they both definitely belong in a landfill.

My ‘beautiful cinnamon roll who deserves better than this’ fave: Can it be anyone but Crown Prince Orso? Dude’s the only one in this world who thinks “there’s a moral question” to rulership aloud to another and isn’t homophobic, racist, or sexist (looking at you, Leo). Even Calder’s got murdering Forley and Reachey in his dark deeds and Temple’s spent years helping Cosca, which... shudders.

My ‘this ship is wrong, nasty, and makes me want to cleanse my soul, but i still love it’ ship: Monza/Shivers. It’s got some good material and I really hope they can make peace in The Wisdom of Crowds, but also *waves hands* everything else about them, honestly. God, they really did both suck to each other.

Also, Leo/Stour. It’s so wrong, yet so right. I don’t even know if it’d be hate-fucking if they got together at this point, but these two morrions deserve each other.

My ‘they’re kind of cute, and i lowkey ship them, but i’m not too invested’ ship: Jurand/Glaward, Rikke/Orso, and Cas/Vick? They’re pretty cute and could easily give each other some happiness, I feel.

#the first law #the age of madness #the great leveller #joe abercrombie

[aion-rsa]

How TCM Resurrects Plan 9 from Outer Space for Ghoulish Table Read

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UFOs are often visible, but not always. Sometimes they make noise, sometimes they are silent. If you’ve never seen a flying saucer, that is proof they are everywhere. This is one of the many amazing things we learn in TCM’s upcoming table read of Ed Wood’s masterwork, Plan 9 from Outer Space.

We once laughed at the horseless carriage, the aero-plane, the telephone, the electric light, vitamins, radio, and even television. But it took a while to get the joke about Plan 9 from Outer Space. Written and directed by Edward D. Wood Jr. in 1959, it was a little-known independent film with a direct line through directors who carried on the DIY-filmmaking spirit like John Cassavetes, Melvin Van Peebles and John Waters. The Cult of Plan 9 began when Ed Wood was posthumously awarded a Golden Turkey Award for Worst Director of All Time in 1980. Though this has been disputed.

Turner Classic Movies is the go-to channel for prestigious films. You can always count on a showing of The Treasure of Sierra Madre or The Public Enemy, or Citizen Kane. But top prize in the Golden Turkey awards carries its own prestige.

“This isn’t ‘Plans One Through Eight from Outer Space,’” Jerry Seinfeld proclaimed at the Chinese restaurant in a 1991 episode of Seinfeld. “This is Plan 9. The one that worked. The worst movie ever made.”

The SF Sketchfest presentation was adapted for the stage and virtual stage by former The Simpsons writer, and self-proclaimed Ed Wood superfan, Dana Gould. He and his Stan Against Evil co-star Janet Varney have been acting in live staged reads with a revolving cast of eager comic actors for over three years. The Zoom production also features Kat Aagesen, Bob Odenkirk, Bobcat Goldthwait, Oscar Nuñez, Deborah Baker Jr., Maria Bamford, David Koechner, Jonah Ray, Paul F. Tompkins, Baron Vaughn, and Gary Anthony Williams. The miniature visual effects, which are by no means just cardboard cutouts, were done by Mike Carano, and the sounds of musical accompaniment came out of Eban Schletter.

Laraine Newman is the narrator. She brings Gould’s adapted stage directions to such vivid life they can reanimate the dead, which is a key element of the actual plan at the center of the cult movie. Originally titled “Grave Robbers from Outer Space,” the film marked the last appearance of Bela Lugosi, who had also acted in Wood’s 1953 feature Glen or Glenda.

Lugosi’s footage for Wood’s unmade film “The Vampire’s Tomb,” was repurposed for Plan 9. Lugosi died of a heart attack on Aug. 16, 1956. To complete the film, Wood cast his chiropractor, Tom Mason, who in spite of his professional familiarity with the human skeletal structure, somehow believed he could mask the fact that he was much taller than the horror icon by pulling his cape over his face.

The table read of Ed Wood’s Plan 9 from Outer Space is part of TCM’s Classic Film Festival weekend, which runs through May 9. For easy comparisons, the original film will air directly after the event. Dana Gold and Janet Varney spoke with Den of Geek about refurbishing the low-budget cult classic, and how, like their predecessor, they proudly spared every expense on its new décor.

Den of Geek: I watched the table read a second time while playing Plan 9 in another window, and I just have to say, recreating those sets must’ve cost a fortune.

Janet Varney: Yeah, just like it cost Ed Wood a fortune.

Dana Gould: That’s the genius of, of Mike Carano. All those things were this big. You can see, I have the Bela Lugosi statue and the saucer. What he did was so amazing, and it really brought [the production] up to be better than it had a right to be. When Janet and I discussed doing this on Zoom, we were like, “Well, how do we take the limits of Zoom and turn them to our advantage? Why is it on Zoom?” By doing it, one, it allowed us to get a cast that we might not be able to get. Got people in different places. Maria Bamford was in Minnesota. Bob Odenkirk was in Vancouver. So, we could get people that normally we couldn’t get. Doing it in black and white helped. And then what Mike Marano did, it made it something unique.

Janet Varney: I would just also add, as a tribute to Ed Wood, we’ve never had anyone that we’ve asked to do the show who hasn’t wanted to do the show. Whether or not they’ve been in town for the live version, every person that we love that we’ve asked to be a part of the cast at one time or another is like, “Oh, my God, I need to do that. I want to do it. When is it? Please say it’s not a date I’m out of town. Please say it’s not. Will you ask me on the next one?”

Everyone knows this movie. And the idea of getting to step into its shoes in any kind of iteration is really exciting for every single person that we’ve ever asked.

Dana Gould: And it’s great to see how different people play different parts. Joel Murray plays the General different than David Koechner plays the General. Bob Odenkirk plays Eros differently than Patton Oswalt plays Eros. It’s always great. And Janet and I, we don’t want to know what you’re going to do. Just do it.

For this production, you assembled the all-star team. But were you ever tempted to use the same kind of players Wood used: wrestlers, tap dancing accordion players, chiropractors, and radio psychics?

Janet Varney: That’s a great question. I feel like we also have pretty good access to all those folks. So maybe that will get the next variety version. Because our friend, Jim Turner, is just about to do a fundraiser for the kind of variety acts who have been struggling in this last year, because of the many myriad things that they do.

So, I actually love that idea, Tony. And you’re right, it would be a totally different experience. That’s an interesting idea too, because we do come at it with a bunch of people who love the movie, but there’s also some major winking going on, as all the comedians and actors try to lean into being: “It’s my first time on stage, maybe my first time saying words,” really playing that up.

In the future, do you hope to see this performance eviscerated on Mystery Science Fiction Theater 3000?

Dana Gould: That would be great. If they did this.

Janet Varney: Especially because Bill and Kevin have done it. They have been in our production of Plan 9. Bill had been what Laraine [Newman] did. Bill did the narration at a show, at SketchFest, and it was great.

Dana Gould: I would like to see Jonah making fun of himself.

Janet Varney: Yeah. Let’s get meta. Our fans can handle it. Fans of MST3K can handle it. Plant 9 fans can handle it. Everybody could handle it.

I know I’m paraphrasing Seinfeld, but as the person who’s trusted with Plan 9 and all that comes with that, did you get to see the first eight plans from outer space?

Janet Varney: And are you allowed to talk about it if you did?

Dana Gould: Exactly. What were they?

Janet Varney: So many questions.

Dana Gould: So many questions.

Were the first eight plans rejected?

Janet Varney: Or were they all executed? And I use that word purposefully. Were all of those plans executed and they didn’t have great results?

Dana Gould: That’s a drunk man at a typewriter, “Plan 9 sounds good.” I remember showing Plan 9 to somebody who’d never seen it before. And they turned to me afterwards and said, “Did he not have any friends he could have shown this to and gotten notes?” He didn’t have those kinds of friends.

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What are some of your favorite mistakes from the movie?

Janet Varney: Oh, God. I was going to say Dana had mentioned that the first time he saw the movie was on a video cassette that Tom Kenny and Dan Spencer, and Bobcat Goldthwait showed him. And I was actually going to ask, did you think it was the tape glitching at the end when the monologue goes from, blip to [makes a noise]? And you’re like, “Wait a minute. Back that up, hold on. Is somebody going to fix this?”

That’s definitely one. That’s a spectacularly new, weird problem in a movie that was not a consistent problem. So, you’re like, “Wait, how did that happen one time, in this very, very overt way?” So good.

Dana Gould: From the very beginning, it’s like the first time you saw William Shatner do “Rocket Man.” I remember, I had a party at my house, and I was working on The Ben Stiller Show, and everybody was there. And back then, there was no YouTube. You would just have these cassette tapes with all of the weird stuff that you had collected on it, like the farting priest and all these weird things that you had, and “Rocket Man.” And I remember showing “Rocket Man” at this thing and Bob Odenkirk just shouting at my television, “You’re a grown man. You’re a grown man.”

I always thought Shatner gave the same line reading for “Mr. Tambourine Man” as he did for “Kahn.”

Dana Gould: Yes, he did. He did. He had a couple of tricks, and he used them. Yeah. There’s one direction he doesn’t get a lot, “You want to just try one big? You want to just see how it goes?” “Take the chains off and let it rip?”

Was some of the background music in this reading, especially the oxidation bit, inspired by The Simpsons?

Dana Gould: That’s all Eban [Schletter, the musical accompanist], you have to ask Eban. But again, that’s great, especially the Solaronite song. Necessity being the mother of invention, that is a brutal chunk of dialogue for anybody, a thankless, brutal chunk. And every time I give it to Paul, I say, “I’m apologizing ahead of time. I give it to you because I don’t want anybody else to do it. Because if it was anybody else, it would be death.”

Eban came up with that. And we were just like, “Maybe we can break this up. Maybe there’s a way to break this up.” And then Eban came up with that kind of thing. And it is one of those things that I love, that it’s like a mutant. It’s grown into its own weird thing to solve its inherent problems. You can’t describe it to anybody. It’s just like, you have to see it.

I used to remember describing Kevin Meaney, the comedian. I used to just tell people, “I can’t describe what he does. You just have to see him, but then you’ll know. You only need a minute, and you’ll get it. But I can’t describe it to you.” That’s really a good analogy.

Laraine Newman, I believe, steals this as the narrator. How much of that is improvised and how much of that is written by you? Because I know that you wrote the stage directions.

Dana Gould: It’s written, but Laraine, I call it “newscaster flat.” Laraine knows how the notes need to be played. It’s like the Wrecking Crew, you have a guitar behind you. I don’t know what Tommy Tedesco is going to play, but I know it’s going to be good. I don’t know what Carol Kaye is going to play, but I trust it. It’s the same thing. It’s a murderers’ row, and I wouldn’t have the gall to tell them what to do.

Janet Varney: It takes a very specific kind of confidence as a performer to be that deadpan. It’s such a specific skill. And it’s a skill, I think, born out of a type of bravado and expertise that’s all just tightly contained in this tiny space, where she’s not trying to sell any of it. And that is the genius behind what she does is just letting it lay out there like that. I mean, it’s hard.

When you have something that you know is funny and you would be laughing yourself, if you were listening to someone else read it, it’s so hard not to want to sell it. Like, can I make this even funnier? And she’s like, “No, I need to take it all the way back, to the back of the house just like, who me, who me? I’m just reading these things.” And it’s just so brilliant.

Dana Gould: This is a person that did sketches on live television with John Belushi and Bill Murray. So she definitely knows where her center of gravity is.

Janet Varney: That’s right. Well said.

Dana Gould: And yeah, again, unflinching. And that takes, as a performer, just like a little inside baseball, a lot of control and to really, to have control of your own ego, to know that I’m going to get what I want by stepping way back. I mean, Sterling Hayden is the only person I’ve ever seen blow Peter Sellers off the screen. And he does it just by, he’s like a statue, but there’s so much weight to it.

In the original movie, I love the “Criswell Predicts.” So I wanted to ask, Janet, do you get asked to do bathroom readings?

Janet Varney: I would if asked, I would love to. That’s one of the things that’s great about Ed Wood in general too, is just having this a sort of fascination with the occult and that kind of thing. And the way that it fits into camp is so appealing. And so, yeah, I would very happily jump back into some bad psychic practices if I could. Hopefully, I will someday.

Dana Gould: And an unerring dedication to Wicker furnishings.

Janet Varney: That’s right. Always that. Paula and her wicker.

Because the table read is done during COVID and everyone feels an immediacy to Zoom calls, were you ever at all concerned about an Orson Welles’ scenario, where the residents of San Fernando Valley will believe they’re under attack by flying saucers from outer space?

Janet Varney: If only.

Dana Gould: Yeah. That’s the least of our problems out here. I don’t know when you visited last time, but the walking dead, they’re around.

The table read of Ed Wood’s Plan 9 from Outer Space airs on Friday, May 7 at 8pm on TCM. Plan 9 from Outer Space airs at 9:30pm.

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The post How TCM Resurrects Plan 9 from Outer Space for Ghoulish Table Read appeared first on Den of Geek.

from Den of Geek https://ift.tt/2Rxjm4a

#aion-rsa #Den of Geek

[nameselect]

Tenchi Muyo is my absolute favorite thing. The universe, the characters, the comedy, everything. I spend way too much time thinking about it. Unanswered mysteries like Mihoshi, ways to fix some of the dumb stuff Kajishima keeps adding, even an idea for how I'd make my own reboot if given the chance.

I bug my friends about, and they humor me (which I appreciate) but I can't help but be jealous of the sort of discussion, analysis, and theories I see from other fandoms. Yeah there's dumb bullshit and in-fighting, but there's at least an active conversation. Not to say there isn't a Tenchi community, but last time I checked it was a bunch of libertarians arguing about the OVA3 translation. Or people who only view Universe as the one worth watching. I don't need that in my life.

Part of the problem is age. Its an old show and even though its still getting new episodes, its presence in the west is behind many barriers. You can watch it on crunchyroll, but its filled with characters who only show up in the creators self printed comics and notes he sells at Comiket. The new stuff also isn't very good! Its not even funny. Half of Tenchi's appeal to me was how it has a bit of everything, but was still a comedy show about the bossest ass bitches in the universe having to divvy up chore schedules and watching a baby. The new stuff has its moments, but it often feels as if Kajishima hates these characters and just wants to replace them with new ones. You have thousands of years of character backstory to explore and all you want to do is to add another identical harem group to the mix? Its worse than lazy, it feels malicious. Half of it is an ad for War on Geminar.

Why can't we explore more of the actual political issues of Jurai as a galactic power, the military complex that is the GXP and how it relates to the Kuramitsu family, Z's life story, Ryoko's life before and during being a puppet for Kagato, etc. I want all these things and I want to see others discuss them, but its just never gonna happen.

Maybe its for the best. I think part of its appeal is that no one cares enough to pick apart its flaws. I've seen people eviscerate certain aspects of other things I love and that can be rough and a little scary. Like I said, I probably put too much of myself into Tenchi. This is long and rambly and I just want to see fresh content that I didn't have to make myself. Have a nice day and thank you for coming to my TED talk.

#tenchi muyo #tedpinions

[sometimesrosy]

Have you ever watched That 70s Show? Arguably the most popular couple on that show was Jackie and Hyde, their relation had been built up all the way from season 1. In the 8th, and final season, the show writers completely destroyed the couple for seemingly no reason. They changed the characters personalities and made them regress on all the development they’d had from the previous 7 seasons. Fans were so angry to the point where, even to this day, fans don’t consider the last season as a canon part of the show.

The 100, was one of my favorite shows, still is not including season 7, and it’s just crazy to see that the exact same thing happen to Bellarke. I wasn’t expecting the turnout of season 7 and I truly believed that we were going to get the ending that had been set up for the last 6 years. I can’t wrap my head around it, why build a story for so many years and just destroy in a meaningless way?

I watched a lot of The 70s Show. I don’t know when I stopped watching but I definitely didn’t watch the last season. Every time I tried it seemed wrong. 

I did like Jackie and Hyde. Well mostly I liked Hyde. Jackie was annoying but I suppose she got better. They were decent together. She was better with him than with Michael. 

Yeah. Season 7, while it had good individual episodes and neat arcs for Indra and Memori, and I really enjoyed Anaconda, failed to follow through with the story we had been watching. Which was CLARKE, the hero, and her relationship with Bellamy, the secondary protragonist, and how they saved their friends and humanity. They just DROPPED the point of the story. So it fell apart.

It just fell apart.

Bellarke was the backbone of the story, Clarke was head and Bellamy was the heart, and they eviscerated the story.  It lost the structure.

But you know what?

I do think there is something you can learn from paying attention to failures in story telling. 

Where were you disappointed? Why were you disappointed? What could the writers have done differently? WHY was is so unsatisfying? How was it twisted? What happened to the narrative arcs? Why doesn’t it work to change the focus from dual protagonists to an ensemble? Or at least why didn’t it work here? (I know why. Because they didn’t wrap up the bellarke story, whether consummating their love or ending it as a tragic love story, they did neither. They pretended like it wasn’t there.

DON’T DO THAT. Don’t ever do that. NEVER pretend that a story you have no patience for didn’t happen. You can’t erase canon. If you act like it doesn’t exist, your story will fall apart. 

IN a narrative you have to have things connect, and make some sort of sense. You can’t just pretend it didn’t happen. Even in real life, random things can happen and people can mess up or act out of character, but there’s still going to be REPERCUSSIONS from the real things that they pretended weren’t real. Clarke should have responded to Bellamy’s death. It should have changed her irrevocably. Even if THAT was what made her go crazy... there was more set up for that happening than her just forgetting he existed. And Octavia and Echo too. Bad storytelling.

You HAVE to follow through or your story falls apart. Even if you want to follow through and make it a tragedy or death or loss. FOLLOW THROUGH. 

[margridarnauds]

Rip idk if I accidentally sent my last ask too early or it it got deleted before I sent it but anywho,, if you’re still bored and wanting to talk about Celtic lore, I’d love to here about grainne ni mhaille or Brigid of tuatha de danann? Alternately, what’s one of your fav stories?

I was in the middle of typing up a response and apparently SOMETHING happened to it because it totally disappeared on me. 

ANYWAY, 

I can talk about both of them, to different degrees. 

Gráinne was one of my first Irish research interests (Thank you The Pirate Queen, you…..interesting piece of media). That being said, I am VERY rusty when it comes to her, the main takeaway that I have being a very visceral reaction to the words “Anne Chambers” because…..suffice it to say….I have Things to say about her scholarship and the occasional sloppiness thereof, but I don’t think I brought my copy of her book on Gráinne with me, the school library is closed, and I generally don’t like to utterly eviscerate something without having it on hand. But I can say that her treatment of Donal O’Flaherty was bad, based purely off of wish fulfillment and her own attachment to Richard Burke, and that my personal reading of their marriage, which I will admit is just a READING, is that Donal and Gráinne actually had a fairly egalitarian marriage. 

Think of it. 

Gráinne, if we believe the legends, and the legends of her early life are very in keeping with what we know of her adult life, was truculent enough that she cut her hair short just to get on a ship. She was defiant, spirited, and ruthless to the core. (The woobification and victimization of Gráinne is something that is ANOTHER post, given that I feel like it does her a MASSIVE DISSERVICE). Donal….would have HAD to have known what he was getting into. And Donal was TÁNAISTE OF THE O’FLAHERTY SEPT. And, as I’ve discussed….that was not necessarily something he got just because his daddy was chieftain. That was something that was AGREED on. He was not a weak man, he was not a coward, and his cognomen was Donal AN CHOGAIDH, Donal OF THE BATTLES. But he seems to have fought his wars on land, Gráinne on sea. Together, they would have been one badass pair. In terms of NAMING, look at the names of their children. Owen - Same name as Gráinne’s father. Murrough - A common O’Flaherty name. And Margaret - Said by some sources to be the same name as Gráinne’s mother. And what was the name of Owen’s son? Donal. Now, there could be a NUMBER of reasons for this naming pattern, it could be nothing. But, what I believe at least is that it shows a certain level of cooperation between the two of them. I am NOT claiming it was a great love story, but I am claiming that what little evidence there is (and there can only be so much), indicates a certain level of respect, especially given that Gráinne, in general, was not the sort to tolerate fools. 

Chambers also claimed, incorrectly, that Donal killed his nephew, but a quick reading of the sources would have shown that it was his cousin, ALSO named Donal who did it. The patrynomics don’t lie on that one; it was Donal mac Ruari, “Donal of the Boats”, not Donal an Chogaidh who did it. 

But. Gráinne. I love talking Donal, but this is about Gráinne. 

Something that I feel really does get underplayed, probably in service of making her a Perfect Feminist Heroine™ (I am a feminist, don’t get me wrong! But my idea of feminism centers around the idea that women can be as fundamentally flawed as men, they can have the same quirks, the same corruption, and they do not have to be perfect, long suffering, soft, or forever victimized) IS that ruthlessness and pragmatism that really underlines her character. People play up her attacking her son Murrough as some kind of righteous fury against him for talking to the English while conveniently forgetting that Gráinne herself spent most of her life alternatively appeasing and attacking the English. She was not a Nationalist, she wasn’t a patriot. She was, however, a survivor, as were MANY of the Irish nobility at this time. Another example of a survivor from this period was Iníon Dubh, probably one of my favorite women in Irish history (though she herself was Scottish by birth), who did try to bargain with the English for the life of her son Hugh Roe by giving over some Spanish survivors of the Armada to English authorities. People (CHAMBERS) try to pin Murrough with the worst faults of his father, but I honestly think that, at his heart, he was more his mother’s son than perhaps even she would be willing to admit. 

(Also like. The entire thing with Risdeárd an Iarainn? I have read the marriage tracts, I have a friend who does law stuff. None of us can think of ANYTHING in the Brehon laws that would allow for a “Marriage” like the one described. Only thing I can think of that’s SIMILAR is the Teltown marriages. Acting like it’s a common Brehon law thing gives it a veneer of legitimacy that I strongly doubt. The oral tradition COULD be lying to us, I’m willing to say that there might be gaps in our understanding of a law, or Gráinne could have actually done it without….how shall we put this…..the usual degree of sanctity and security that we tend to assume, given that what the law said on marriage could be very different to marriage in reality. Tl;dr: She MIGHT have catfished him. Or. The 16th century Irish equivalent. But like. Catfished where you’re actually married and have a kid with one another. Or the story could be a complete fabrication, like I FIRMLY believe Hugh de Lacy’s story was. Who knows?) 

Anyway, as payment for listening to that rant, have some of Sir Richard Bingham Whining, right from the horse’s as-mouth. I of course meant. Mouth. 

I could read this all day. Cry, Bingham, cry harder. 

Don’t think too hard about the fact that one day I might actually be in charge of a classroom, please. 

Brigid I can hopefully talk about less, to some extent, given that we know comparatively little about her. Throughout this, I’m generally going to be calling her Bríg, since I’m talking about her in a mythological context and that is what she is called in Cath Maige Tuired (which is my all time favorite, baby text, answering the third part of your question), though she is called Brigit in Cormac’s Glossary. 

So…what do we know about Bríg? Very little. But she is also an endlessly discussed figure, with the evidence being pored over again. And again. And again. A lot of the arguments have been discussed by Mark Williams in Ireland’s Immortals, the curious fact that, she is described in UNUSUALLY specific terms in Cormac’s Glossary, being described as a patroness of smiths, doctors, and poets, and there being three sisters named Brigit, one for each function. 

At the same time, however, she only really appears in one saga, the aforementioned Cath Maige Tuired, where her role is purely to keen over her son, Ruadan, that she had via her relationship (past or present, it’s kind of left ambiguous) with the former king of the Tuatha dé, Bres. It is a genuinely poignant, heartwrenching scene, a kind of rare moment of pure humanity in a text often saturated with descriptions of blood and gore and sex of literal superhuman proportions. And in all of this, a woman grieves for her son, inventing keening and giving us a reminder of the HUMAN element of war, the mothers, the wives, the women who are left to grieve in the middle of the fighting. Which, in a text that tends to be fairly misogynistic and skeptical of women’s voices, is actually intriguing. (Bríg is also associated with a lot of DARK SHIT in this section as well, such as night whistling, which is absolutely fascinating to me given that we tend to think of her as this kind of healing, sunshine and rainbows figure and this shows a distinctively different look at her.) There is also a Dinshenchas story, Loch N-Oirbsen that mentions her inventing keening for the loss of Mac Gréine, which COULD (underline COULD) indicate that the story might have pre-dated CMT, replacing the figure of her brother with her son. Or possibly vice versa; CMT influenced quite a bit of the mythological literature. 

I believe that it was Elizabeth Gray in her “Cath Maige Tuired: Myth and Structure” who pointed out that Bríg’s situation in-text is reminiscent of what many women would have dealt with during the period, their hearts torn between their fathers and, perhaps, more to the point, their fathers’ peoples, and the husbands and sons they had with the Norsemen. (Though I have…..certain doubts as to whether we should take it for granted that Bríg was WITH Bres at the time of Ruadan’s death, and all things considered, I do also question whether the entire episode was an afterthought, given that Ruadan doesn’t appear in ANY of the other lists of Bres’ children, nor is the story of his death represented in the Dindshenchas, indicating a certain lack of popularity. Nor do I believe it turns up in the early modern redaction of CMT).

This episode is one that I don’t really talk about all that much, mainly because people tend to treat it as a way of slamming Bres, or using Bríg’s grief as a battering ram against Bres, and that is something that, as the unofficial president of the Bres Fan Club….obviously rankles me. Just a bit, and is honestly one of the key reasons why I generally don’t discuss Bríg. Suffice it to say, like with Gráinne and Donal, I don’t really believe that that relationship was quite as unbalanced as people might interpret it, not the least because, in Cath Maige Tuired, a key trait of Bres’ is his dependence on the women of his life, especially his mother. Which….could create an AWKWARD situation, yes, but definitely doesn’t lend itself to the image of Bres being a tyrant at home as well as politically. 

 If they did split apart, it would be more because of Bres’ actions as king, such as his attempt at executing her father or the general treatment of poets under his reign, which, as a patroness of the poets (IF we assume that there is continuity between her appearance in Cormac and CMT, which is not inherently a given; assuming continuity in Irish Mythology is always a tricky subject because individual scribes often went their own way with this sort of thing) she would presumably be opposed to. But, of course. This isn’t really expanded on, Bríg is MASSIVELY underused in this text, and all that I really have are speculation (on an academic level) and headcanons (on a non-academic level.) 

In terms of the connection with the Catholic saint of the same name………..many people have come up with ideas, I don’t believe it’s something that will ever get resolved. I do think that many things we TEND to label as definitively part of the goddess’ traits tend to be overstated, however, with some of them being found in other Saint’s Lives, or having a similar event in the Bible, which, to an ecclesiastical audience, would be familiar. I feel like it can be very easy to get overzealous in that, because of course it’s a very, very natural thing to want something solid for someone who we KNOW was very important, yet have very little real info on. In some redactions of Lebor Gabála Érenn, Bríg is described as the mother of the Trí Dé Dána, “The Three Gods of Skill,” Tuirill, Brian, and Cet, with Bres as the father. These three are notoriously elusive and difficult to pin down, not the least because they tend to be merged with Brian, Iuachar, and Iucharba, the Sons of Tuireann, but John Carey, in his article “Myth and Mythography in Cath Maige Turied” has suggested that, given Bríg’s identification as a patron of poets, her mothering of these three “Gods of Skill,” and the close connection she has to Bres and, through him, to figures like Ogma that the whole lot of them + The Dagda, Elatha, etc. are part of a “Pantheon of Skill,” which is essentially a cluster of gods renowned by the literary elite. So, there is that. She was definitely an important figure, given……Brigantia. 

While I do not like drawing straight lines between Gaulish figures - Welsh figures - Irish figures, I will say that it seems like, at the very least, they share a common linguistic root. It does seem, judging from Caesar’s description of the Gaulish “Minerva” as being a patron of crafts, and given Bríg’s penchant for multiple crafts, that that is the figure being described, or at least someone who followed similar lines (This was argued by Proinsias Mac Cana in Celtic Mythology, pg. 34), since doubtless things would be different across geographical boundaries. (Welsh and Irish Mythology, despite having certain similarities, are distinct, I can’t imagine how much different Gaulish Mythology would be, if any of it had survived.) Something I do find interesting is that, while Mac Cana notes the Gaulish Minerva as a figure beloved by the lower class in particular, the Bríg we see in the Irish tradition is very associated with the upper class, the men of skill. But, then again, all of these written works would have been commissioned and written by and for that same elite, so it might not be that surprising at all. The oral tradition might have been very different, and perhaps the saint reflects that more. Or perhaps not. 

In terms of the connection with the Catholic saint of the same name………..many people have come up with ideas, I don’t believe it’s something that will ever get resolved. If you can get your hands on Mark Williams’ Ireland’s Immortals, I think you’ll find that most of what I say re: this topic (and….a lot of topics in general) will be echoed in there. I do think that many things we TEND to label as definitively part of the goddess’ traits tend to be overstated, however, with some of them being found in other Saint’s Lives, or having a similar event in the Bible, which, to an ecclesiastical audience, would be familiar. I feel like it can be very easy to get overzealous in that, because of course it’s a very, very natural thing to want something solid for someone who we KNOW was very important, yet have very little real info on. 

In terms of what I believe her function was….as hesitant as I am to apply a function to ANY member of the Tuatha dé, given how tenuous the evidence is and how it can kind of miss the forest for the trees in terms of literary analysis, I believe the bulk of the evidence, such as it is, rests on her association with the crafts, specifically as found in Cormac’s Glossary, with all the limitations thereof. I won’t say “No, you can’t worship her like that” to a modern pagan, I wouldn’t WANT to, because my relationship with these figures is not the same as a religious relationship. That is NOT my place. And that, if we are to take them as religious instead of literary figures, they might very well appear to different people in different ways. That being said, on an academic level, I do believe, at present, with the understanding that my views can definitely change and I am not infallible, that there is little to no evidence to suggest that she was a fire goddess, a goddess of spring, a fertility goddess, or a sovereignty goddess. The association with keening, outcry, etc., seems to also be more solid, so there COULD have been some association in there. Generally speaking, my main focus isn’t so much what a figure WAS so much as what was done with them afterwards. 

…For what was meant to be a quick note, that was very long. And tragically, I had no memes pre-prepared for this one, so I went back a month on a friend in the department’s Facebook and found this.

 I am willing to talk CMT if anyone WANTS to hear me talk about it, since it is my all time favorite myth, as well as….ANYTHING else, both the stuff I’ve discussed in this and anything else relating to the field, but I think that for this particular post, I’ll cut you free, with the hope if not the confidence that at least 1/3 of what I’ve written is vaguely coherent. 

#irish mythology #celtic mythology #gráinne ní mháille #grace o'malley #long post #localbeeking

[centaurianthropology]

The Magnus Archives Season 3 Q&A – What We Learned!

So this isn’t my usual analysis, but I did decide to collate a little bullet-point list of all the things we’ve learned from the Season 3 Q&A for those of you who can’t/don’t want to listen for whatever reason, but still want the delicious information that we got.  I’ll also be including my own thoughts about some of the points, so there will be some tasty meta.  This will just be a bit more of an informational post than most are.

·         The metaplot is known through season 5 (which will be the final season), and is hashed out in more detail at the beginning of each season.  The individual spooky stories are not necessarily known prior to the week before writing.  There is usually a general idea, but no specific details until far closer to the deadline.

·         Martin’s crush on Jon was known from the beginning of the series.  No specifics were given about when and how it came about on Martin’s end.  I imagine we’ll probably get more into this as we go forward (I lean toward it developing while he was living in the Archives, as his attitude toward Jon definitely shifted from “I have to prove myself to my boss who doesn’t believe in me” to getting very emotional when he thought he left Jon and Tim to die in the tunnels). But it was known that the crush would or already had happened from the inception of Martin’s character.

·         Tim’s background was known 2 seasons prior to now (so end of season 1).  It only came about at that point because, prior to that, Tim was going to be the one to be replaced by the Not-Them at the end of season 1 rather than Sasha.  There had to be a last-minute change because Lottie (the woman who played Sasha) had a scheduling conflict that meant she couldn’t commit to the continued large-scale time commitment.  So Sasha got replaced, Tim got a backstory, and the rest is history.  Very interesting to think that the descent into bitterness and potentially even the ties to the circus were originally meant to be Sasha’s. Is that why she was so interested in the calliope in season 1 perhaps?  Having the only main female character also be the first to die was also one of the big reasons why they added a lot of major recurring female characters from then on.

·         Basira and Daisy becoming as significant as they were was a combination of the characters being interesting and the actors being fun to working with.  They also very much fulfilled certain necessary narrative roles.

·         They knew Melanie was going to become an assistant from shortly after Lydia’s recording of her initial episode.  I’m guessing this is partly to do with Lydia being already available, but I also have to imagine it was due to the instant, nasty rapport she had with Jon.  She was certainly the character from season 1 who I most wanted back when I initially heard her.

·         Jonny’s original pitch for the show was the 13 fears, though the Slaughter and the Hunt were initially the same, but as he worked through them he realized that the root fear was very different.  It became especially apparent due to the fact that extremely different (and likely very poorly cooperating) sorts of people were driven to each of those powers.  This is interesting, because it implies that Melanie and Daisy, though we have not seen them interact, would not get on at all. They’re driven by instincts that are too close but too different.  

·         Poor, poor Jonny is haunted by Elias’ surge in popularity during season 3, particularly the large contingent of fans who found him suddenly and definitely attractive.  He blames Ben Meredith for all his woes: “It was only after [episode] 92 when he started to be properly, overtly villainous, and everyone just decided how sexy he was!  When we were planning things out, there was no way for us to foresee how sexy Elias was going to be.  Something I blame entirely on Ben.”  And Alex cackled in the background.

·         Melanie’s clap-marker as her statement beginning was actually improvisation on Lydia’s part (and works wonderfully with her background in video production).  By and large, though, there was little improvisation from the actors. There was a lot of lean-in to certain qualities that actors brought out if they were particularly good at it.

·         Jonny’s favorite power to write is the Flesh because it’s super weird and lets him dig into really odd writing.  His least favorite is the Dark because it’s so easy to fall into tropes and clichés, and he doesn’t actually share that particular fear.  He also finds writing the Desolation particularly challenging, as it treads the closest to his biggest distaste in horror: linking spooky fictional stuff with real-life trauma.  The very nature of the Desolation lends itself to trauma-porn, so when writing it he has to be especially careful not to do that.  Alex’s least favorite from a production standpoint is the Spiral because it’s always a nightmare editing it, but the Vast is his favorite, because he adds high amplitude low frequency noise to induce an on-edge feeling in the listener.

·         Alex really enjoys killing all the characters you love.  Sasha’s replacement might have been his favorite moment in the show, because it was subtle enough a lot of people didn’t catch it.  He also seemed positively gleeful when joking about how very dead Tim is.  Of all the changes in personality from character to actor, Alex is always the one who gives me the most whiplash.  Which, I suppose, is a testament to his acting abilities.

·         Perhaps Jonny’s greatest regret is naming the main character after himself and not thinking that would become … complicated.  Apparently, in the earliest drafts he was just the host of the anthology series, and not a character in his own right, which is why he originally just went with his own name.  Then he didn’t think to change it as they made Jonanthan Sims his own character with only vague similarities to Jonny (he was basically all the bits of Jonny that would make a good horror protagonist, exaggerated for effect, right up until about episode 20, at which point the character began to develop along his own lines and moved farther and farther from Jonny), who would like to believe that his own personal decisions were less “overtly horrific” than his fictional counterpart.  Alex described Jonny vs Jon as “I’d like to think that you’re less of a hot garbage-fire of a person”.  They both agreed that Jon (the character) was the absolute king of terrible decisions, and that it was hysterical to listen to Jonny’s parents eviscerate Jon’s incredibly awful decisions.  I love Jonathan Sims, Head Asshole of the Magnus Institute, but I will agree with their assessment of his character.

·         A similar regret was naming the assistants after Jonny’s then-roommates.  Not only did it cause confusion (as all 3 have now also been in the show at some point), but he brutally killed off his fiancé’s namesake first.  Oops?

·         It sounds at least probable we’ll get the last bit of the Daedalus space station story in season 4.  On that note, I found it interesting that all recurring story themes, etc, are mentioned to recur in season 4.  There was absolutely no mention of season 5 at all.  Which makes me leery.

·         US distribution and ratings for podcasts are … interesting.  Jonny could add in all the violence, explicit gore, and even sex he wanted.  The only thing (literally the only thing) that gets a podcast marked *explicit* is swearing.  Which meant that the podcast, in order to not be marked as explicit, had to scale back the language and nothing else.  Every time a character swears, it has to be well-thought-out, and Jonny has to sell Alex on why it’s important.  On the up-side, the lack of swearing was apparently what convinced Sue Sims to be a part of the cast, so I think getting Gertrude is well worth adherence to a laughably odd rule for US ratings.  Also, on that same note, Alex’s imitation of Jonny’s mother nearly made me snort tea up my nose.  So thanks for that, Alex.

·         Jonny believes that what he writes is ‘escapist horror’.  It’s a way of indulging in fear and spookiness in a controlled, safe way, when it won’t suddenly turn deeply unpleasant and traumatic.  He believes that his audience needs to trust that they can enjoy the horror without worrying that it will unexpectedly cross lines. He separates that from literary horror, which often does dig into very traumatic issues through the mechanisms of horror in very thoughtful ways.  All horror, in his opinion, needs to be respectful when it tackles very traumatic subjects.  The reason that Jonny personally doesn’t write literary horror is that he has no personal experience with those sorts of traumas, and would not feel qualified to dig into them in a genuine and thoughtful way.  He therefore sticks to escapist horror that his audience knows they can enjoy without worrying about it suddenly veering from spooks to trauma.

·         The sound of the Anglerfish is a baby crying, slowed down 100x.  Nikola had record scratches layered under her voice very subtly.

·         Jonny’s favorite thing to record in season 3 was his [MUFFLED FEELINGS], and he revealed that he managed to sound like he had a gag in his mouth by trying to stuff as much of his fist into his mouth as possible before trying to deliver lines. Which produced a really amazing amount of saliva, apparently.  They also had a lot of fun trying to record one of the larger group scenes in which most of the participants shouted at one another, because they used up most of the oxygen in the studio and all got very dizzy.  Alex really enjoyed recording his scenes in episode 100, because it was one of the few times he got to improvise, and he and the actress spent the entire episode trying to make one another laugh.  

·         Also, all statements in episode 100 are confirmed to have been supernatural events, simply told badly.  The actors got a paragraph telling them what really happened, as well as some bullet points detailing how they might get side-tracked or otherwise be terrible statement givers.  The rest was slowly improvised, with frequent checks for canon-compliance.  And, yes, episode 100 was absolutely a funny way of answering the question: “Does the magic power also make them really eloquent storytellers?”  “YES. YES, IT DOES.”

·         Alex misses his old analogue mixer.  There was about 2 minutes of eulogizing.  

·         Tim is 100% dead.  They also specify that they will never resurrect characters or bring them back from the dead (which makes Jon’s current situation particularly worrisome, as he’s not quite dead, but he’s inches from it).  Dead characters may still make appearances via tape (Gertrude’s been dead the whole time, and it hasn’t stopped her from showing up plenty) or speak from beyond the grave (thanks Gerry), but if a character dies, they will not come back to life.  This also means that Michael will not be coming back as the Distortion.  The distortion is now Helen, and the story of the Distortion is about what and who she is.  Michael may return as audio, of course, but not in the form of the Distortion.  Likewise, Gertrude and Leitner in the season finale were not ghosts; they were mostly Nikola, with a little bit of Unknowing reality-bending-weird thrown in.

·         Georgie will be returning, but she will be an occasionally recurring character rather than a regular.  

·         The Usher Foundation is the American sister foundation to the Magnus Institute, which is similar to it but different.  It’s a way to broaden the world and give a nice hook for fanfiction/RPG settings/etc. The same can be said of the other institutions like the Chinese research institution.  It’s a way to expand the world and to give a sense of scope without a locked-down story.  There’s just too much story to fit into two more seasons as is.

·         There is a nexus of timeline discrepancies that is 100% part of the plot, but the rest of timeline issues are probably just mistakes.  Mary Kaey’s dates are almost definitely oversights in writing, but Jonny doesn’t discount that he might do something with the discrepancy to make it an interesting plot point in the future.

·         Gerry’s father is not confirmed to be Eric, the research assistant of Gertrude’s who took the statement in ‘Upon a Stair’, as Jonny refused to answer the question.  He did, however, state that whoever asked had been listening very closely.

·         Any character who believes they understand how the powers work is absolutely wrong. This does include Gerry’s interpretation of Robert Smirke’s cosmology, though Jonny did state that what Gerry said is about as close as we’re likely to get to the truth of the cosmology (no exposition dump is a lie, but it’s only a decent approximation).  However, the powers are going to defy any attempt to nail them down or perfectly sum them up.  Plenty of things will not line up with the way Gerry described them, because the powers work on nightmare logic, not normal logic.

·         The tapes are NOT neutral.  They are not simply objects to record.  There is more to them than that, but we don’t know what.

·         Jonny is a massive history nerd.  He got very into Wolfgang von Kempelin, and his imitation of von Kempelen’s speaking machine was hysterical.  His favorite episode to write was ‘Tale of a Field Hospital’ for similar history nerd reasons.

·         The first trailer for the series (with the chanting) was meant as a mood piece, but has absolutely nothing to do with the meta plot.  It was recorded before half of the meta plot was even established.

·         The Magnus Institute, beyond the Archival staff and Elias, is just a legitimate supernatural academic research institution.  The library does exactly what it says it does (house and catalogue valuable texts on the supernatural).  Artifact Storage really does just store and experiment on supernatural artifacts.  Research is mostly students working on dissertations and theses.  They are even confirmed to run on an academic fiscal year (thanks to whatever fiscal nerd asked that particular question!)

·         All the supernatural things encountered in the show are tied to the powers, but Jonny does not categorically deny that other supernatural stuff exists in the TMA universe. It very simply won’t be addressed in the show, as introducing other supernatural stuff beyond the powers wouldn’t work this late in the story.  The powers play with folklore, but they do not necessarily generate folklore themselves.

·         For purposes of the story, every power only has one ritual we need to be concerned about.

·         BIG ANSWER: no power has completed a ritual to date.  The rituals are now confirmed to so radically change the fabric of reality that there is no one on the planet who wouldn’t notice a successful ritual or be effected by it in a massive way.  We are not living in a world in which the Beholding has already succeeded, or any other power.  Jonny would not answer whether or not it was possible to reverse or somehow mitigate a successful ritual.  And that makes me very suspicious that the season finale of season 4 will be the successful completion of the Watcher’s Crown, and season 5 may be trying to reverse or mitigate it in some way.

·         Leitner is likely to return (one would imagine in one of Gertrude’s tapes).

·         Jonny and Alex have made the deliberate decision not to overly describe any of the major characters beyond their plot-relevant descriptors (Tim is described as attractive, but we will not get any details of that attractiveness).  Jonny doesn’t even have confirmed ages for most of the characters. He thinks Jon is his age (almost 30).  Martin is either a bit older or a bit younger than Jon.  Tim, Sasha, and Melanie are ‘young adults’, which Jonny defines as somewhere between 25 and early thirties.  Elias is middle-aged.  Gertrude and Leitner are old.  Trevor is “old as balls”.

·         Jon is 100% on the asexual spectrum, but may not use that term to describe himself.  He would instead avoid the question, and avoid thinking about it too deeply in general.  He would be very uncomfortable describing his own sexuality. Also, Jonny made it very clear that the way Jon grapples with his inhumanity is neither a parallel to nor a comment on his asexuality.  He approaches them very differently.  He didn’t specify this, but so far as I can tell, he avoids even thinking about his sexuality, but he actively agonizes over his increasing inhumanity.  I wonder if we might end up getting a bit more of how Jon thinks about his own asexuality if he and Martin ever get their shit together enough to discuss things.

·         The statements are 90% Intangible Horror colonizing Jon’s brain, and 10% Jon is a massive drama queen secretly.  They also agreed that, if he did amateur theatre as a younger man, he would have been insufferable.

·         Tim, prior to his revenge kick, was into lots of socialization, adventure vacations (rock climbing, kayaking, scuba, etc), and may have also been a bit of a console gamer.  “Lots of socializing; adventure holidays; dead.”

·         There are no specifics at this point on the characters’ families that haven’t been addressed that Jonny was comfortable discussing, as he wanted to hold those details in reserve for later relevance.  He doesn’t want to be beholden to random answers he might throw out right now.  He would say (potentially joking) that Martin has a spider (or a series of spiders) that live in his closet over the past year, and he calls it/them George.

·         The Admiral is a composite of all the cats in Jonny’s life, which all seem to have odd rank-names (Sir Pouncealot, Ambassador Cat, the Colonel).  The Admiral is a reflection of all Jonny’s favorite things about cats.

·         We are not going to be meeting any other plot-integral characters we haven’t already heard of.  There will be new voices, but they will be names we recognize.  There will be no new archival assistants.  They’ve played that card.

·         The characters with horror-writer last names (Martin, Tim, Sasha, Georgie, and Melanie) all have paranormal research backgrounds.  This is why that convention was used for them specifically.  Given that they were not certain of the direction they were going to take Basira and Daisy when they were first written, their last names did not follow this.

·         Jon cannot compel dogs.  Probably.

·         Why an owl is the crest of the Magnus Institute (officially): “Owls are weird.  They are considered very wise, but actually one of the stupidest animals in the world.  They have a very strong field of vision.  And, some species of owl, if you look in their ear you can see the side of their eyeball.”  

·         To serve ANY of the entity is to bring fear and suffering to others.  That is what your existence is twisted into.  

·         Alex is most frightened by the Vast.  Jonny is most frightened by the Corruption, but worries his lack of tidiness might tempt its attention.

·         My favorite question and answer: if they could fight any writer in hand-to-hand combat, who would it be?  They both agreed on HP Lovecraft, because “I could almost definitely take him, and it would be so satisfying.”  They both agreed that neither of them would feel bad for punching Lovecraft, which, even as someone who does a yearly reading of a lot of his works … yeah.  I’d agree.  He had amazing creativity and really laid out my favorite horror sub-genre (debatably Robert Chambers invented it, but Lovecraft properly expanded it into a genre), but there are few authors as in need of a proper walloping as HP Lovecraft. They agreed that others—for Jonny, DH Lawrence, for Alex, James Joyce—were also in need of some fighting, but had serious doubts whether or not they could beat them in hand-to-hand combat (“We’re not exactly prime physical specimens”).  Maybe just kicking them in the shins.  Jonny admitted to an embarrassing love of a lot of literary ‘classics’ people like to shit on, like “Ulysses” and “Moby Dick”.

And that was that!  This is the entirety of the MASSIVE Patreon Q&A.  Apparently the one that went up tonight on the website is a very pared-down version of this Q&A (website version is 43 minutes; Patreon version is 1 hour 48 minutes). Not sure which of these answers didn’t make the cut, but here you go!  All the delicious meta and answers you could want, fresh from the Patreon!

#The Magnus Archives #analysis #ish #more like infodump for non-Patrons #plus my own speculation #now edited for some glaring grammatical errors I noticed

[sshbpodcast]

Top 3 Star Trek The Original Series villains

By Ames

Someone from this mosaic image ISN’T in our favorites villains list, and you’ll be surprised who! (Okay, mainly I just needed a total of twelve to fill the grid, so there’s an honorable mention.)

Last week your hosts here at A Star to Steer Her by flashed back to the simpler days of yore to reminisce about our favorite characters from The Original Series, and this week we’re still exploring those memories. This time we’re sharing who our favorite villains were from Trek of the 60s – an era of some really sinister enemies!

Whether they’re cacklingly evil masterminds or just misunderstood delinquents, these villains stole the show in their respective episodes, and possibly some other booty just for the hell of it. Check out who each of us captured and threw in the paddywagon as you read on below, and listen to our discussion in this week’s diabolical episode (relevant chatter starts at 1:00:07). This isn’t the last you’ll see of these baddies! Mwahahaha!

[images © CBS/Paramount] 

Ames – I’m not bad; I’m just programmed this way

Losira (“That Which Survives”)

Nomad (“The Changeling”)

Charlie Evans (“Charlie X”)

I inadvertently ended up picking all villains who aren’t consciously evil: they just have a few too many malfunctioning wires crossed. From the security program designed to eviscerate intruders with her touch, to the robot who got in an accident and came out genocidal, to the superpowered teenager who simply can’t take integration into society, these villains can’t really help how they are: notoriously evil.

—

Caitlin – The gaseous beings who loved me

Sentient Cloud (“Obsession”)

Space Madness (“The Naked Time”)

Trelane (“The Squire of Gothos”)

Hilariously, Caitlin’s theme ended up being something a little less corporeal: beings and substances that are decidedly incorporeal, in fact! Whether it be an intangible entity so omnipotent that mere matter has become his plaything, an actual disease that nearly takes down the entire Enterprise, or a malevolent cloud that Kirk has a personal vendetta against, keep an eye out for these gaseous beings or they’ll get the better of you!

—

Jake – Mustache- (or rather beard-) twirlingly evil

Nomad (“The Changeling”)

T’Pring (“Amok Time”)

Lazarus (“The Alternative Factor”)

Okay, it was tough finding a theme in Jake’s villain list but I couldn’t help myself. It’s more appropriate to view these baddies as victims of circumstance fighting against their situation: the robot who finds whole worlds imperfect (he’s not wrong), the fiancée who wickedly schemes to get out of an arranged marriage (she’s not wrong either), and the time traveler fighting to save two different universes whose major evil is his sinister facial hair!

—

Chris – Something wicked this way comes

Harry Mudd (“Mudd’s Women”)

Romulan Commander (“Balance of Terror”)

Lenore Karidian (“The Conscience of the King”)

Chris’s villains are all the kinds of characters you’d see on the stage or on the big screen: everything they do is very big and exaggerated and theatrical. We’ve got the conniving flimflam man who tries to deceive the crew, the classic submarine-movie captain who goes down with his ship, and even a literal Ophelia who turns out to be the most murderous (and also most tragic) of them all! I do bite my thumb at thee!

—

While you’re here, make sure you’ve checked out our classic blogposts: Top Five Star Trek TOS Episodes and Bottom Five Star Trek TOS Episodes. You’ll see a lot of familiar faces over there, wink wink.

—

We’ve got one more trip down memory lane planned for next week, so make sure you come on back for more looks back into The Original Series. Also make sure you’re following along with all our latest Voyager coverage over on SoundCloud, keeping up with us on Facebook and Twitter, and twirling that mustache! How else will we know how evil you are?

#star trek #star trek podcast #podcast #the original series #villains #charlie evans #space madness #harry mudd #lenore karidian #romulan commander #trelane #lazarus #t'pring #nomad #sentient cloud #losira #mwahahaha

[scientia-rex]

Masterpost of Fic Recs: Sports Night

Danny/Casey:

Note - many of these authors have multiple works that are good and I haven’t listed all of them; these aren’t quite a random sampling, but if you like one, check out their others.

You Could Turn It On Like a Light - by nightcamedown. 12K. Probably my favorite Sports Night story. The quality of the banter is A++. I went back to re-read some of this to make sure it was the one I was thinking of and I’m laughing so hard I’m crying a little.

There’s No I in Team - by thefourthvine. 15K. Hysterical banter, a satisfying villain, and something other than aliens makes them do it.

the memory of hurts - by sinead. 15K. Wrapped around the last two episodes of the show, HUGELY formative for me, happy ending.

Diversionary Tactics - by shrift. 6K. Brief hurt/comfort.

The First Move - by sinead. 10K. Another all-time MVP, and the source of some of my thoughts on linen.

Like Sailing and Home Runs - by out_there. 62K. One of the longer fics in the fandom; heavy, as any in-depth examination of the guys is bound to be, but interesting.

Alongside (the Don’t Care if I Never Get Back remix) - by 2ndA. 5K. This will eviscerate you and you’ll thank it.

Fan Mail From a Flounder - by punk. 3K. Short, sweet, and one that won’t cut your soul open.

Bert and Ernie - by celli. 1K. A great little short.

Fan Interference is a Stand-Up Double - by Sab and wearemany. 9K. Kind of amazing that it takes so few words to gut me.

Euskadi Six Hour - by Sab. 6K. Very sexy, if you like your sex laden with complex emotions and guilt, which I absolutely do.

Landlocked Blues - by missdeviant. 5K. Much like Euskadi Six Hour, some really nice guilt/emotion/complicated sexiness. 

Almost, But Not Quite - by miasnape. 1K. Hey Do You Like Being In Pain And Turned On? There’s a theme here.

Scenes From a Route - by epigone. 9K. Slash is UST. Worth the emotionally devastating ride.

Where Have You Gone, Tom Glavine? - by Sab. 15K. I’ve been saying “emotionally devastating” a lot, but that’s what the good stuff in this fandom is.

The Offside Rule - by Laura, 3K. Thank God, a happy antidote to 90% of the rest of what I’ve been reccing.

Doing It - by flaming_muse. 2K. Delightful little short about Natalie’s perceptiveness.

Breaking Down is Hard to Do - by Fox. 3K. Short but interesting look at the future.

Faux Pas - by linaerys. 900 words. Established relationship; Casey tries to fix it for Danny.

One Man’s Ending - by miasnape. 1K. Very warm and satisfying look at Casey’s retirement.

ETA from non-AO3 sources:

Call of the Wild - by Helenish. One of the originals, with plenty of laugh-out-loud lines and a strong dash of angst.

Semaphore - by Helenish. I KNEW I was forgetting something that had eviscerated my feelings! This was it. This was the one. I can’t even BEGIN to express how in-character these absolute motherfuckers are and how much I want to beat them both with a badly tuned banjo, which is what makes it perfect.

Every Great Success Story - by S.N. Kastle. I’m starting to see WHY I emerged into my mid-30s with a desperate need to see these suckers get a happily ever after.

a sandwich is a transitory thing - by debchan. Less angst than you might fear and bang-on snappy dialogue.

A Better Game - by kestrelsan. Not big on the explications, but a light, subtle touch that works.

Gen or Het:

Rebirth and Renewal - by anyjay. 3K. Great look at Natalie and Jeremy, among others, in the wake of the sale.

[vid] Take Your Guess - by bingeling. A character study of Danny. I love the music choice, and you get so MUCH of his relationships with the people around him.

The Light - by mojokid. 4K. A look at the friendship between Casey and Danny in the aftermath of a fuck-up. Low-key and thoughtful.

If you have further suggestions, please message me. Other fic recs and my own fic masterposts will be found under the tag #kristophine’s fic masterposts

#kristophine's fic masterposts #sports night #danny/casey #casey/danny #danny rydell #casey mccall

[traitor-boyfriend]

How do you feel about the episode Passion of the Jew? Also- Do you think Kyle is likely to experience doubt in the future about his religion?

personally i think it’s one of the best episodes to point to if you want to see south park actually punching up for a change and my favorite example of them eviscerating a celebrity. which, if you aren’t familiar – ‘the passion of the christ’ is mel gibson’s excessively and graphically violent magnum opus about the last 12 hours of christ’s life, and is also horrifically anti-semitic as is mel gibson himself. things i think this episode does very well:

- it’s heartbreaking to watch kyle, who is normally very proud and defensive of his heritage, not only concede to cartman that he was right about jewish people all along but to then go before his congregation and propose that they as jews apologize for the death of jesus. but it illustrates very well how children of marginalized groups internalize stereotypes they see in popular media. the depiction of all jews in ‘the passion’ as having an eager bloodlust for the execution of christ is not only wildly inaccurate (as is most of the movie itself), but given the early 2000s (the movie was made in 2004) saw a significant global resurgence in anti-semitism, it’s downright dangerous. not to mention the physical portrayal of the jews shamelessly utilizes some of the most longstanding and degrading stereotypes

- probably the most overt way they’ve ever used cartman to show how already virulent racists are emboldened and radicalized by subtle anti-semitism and are able to build movements around it, rallying those who are willfully ignorant when it’s disguised as a separate, more altruistic cause; it’s reminiscent of the moral panic among whites of the mid-twentieth century regarding laws against integration and miscegenation and the use of fear to incite hatred

- the (not so) hyperbolic depiction of mel gibson as a deranged masochist is the funniest part of the episode to me. i grew up catholic and have unfortunately seen ‘the passion’ more than i would ever care to have, and i cannot stress how hard i laughed when stan describes it as ‘a snuff film’ b/c he’s not even wrong; i forget the exact number but out of its 2+ hr running time, there’s only something like a collective 16 minutes where there isn’t blood/violence/torture of some kind, and the raw, relentless assault on jesus and the hyperfixation with suffering was the most insidious yet effective way to incite non-practicing or lapsed christians to rededicate their lives to christ purely out of immense guilt. i believe there’s one woman who says exactly that as she walks out of the theater – “it really guilt-trips you into believing.”

- stan’s assertion that people should base their spiritual devotion in the teachings of christ rather than fear and agony over his crucifixtion is imo south park’s most salient commentary on religion and an argument they had made several times before that i don’t think was fully appreciated until this episode

- just. this quote from kyle:

“Oh, dude, I feel so much better about being Jewish now that I see that Mel Gibson is just a big wacko douche!”  

as for the second question, it’s a little bit harder to answer:

- i can definitely see kyle growing up to be secular; kyle is repeatedly shown (despite sometimes falling victim of it) to be skeptical of believing anything he cannot see for himself and his thought process is often very logical and methodical. there’s also been a handful of instances where kyle has renounced his religion both in pursuit of different belief systems as well as abandoning faith in any and all god altogether. i think it’s also aided in part b/c matt stone is non-practicing but considers himself to be culturally and ethnically jewish which is something that could just as easily be applicable to kyle given his personality

- just as easily, i can see kyle growing up to have a healthy devotion to his religion. though it’s never explicitly stated, imo it seems pretty obvious that kyle’s family practices reform judaism and despite the occasion where it’s shown that kyle doesn’t strictly follow common jewish practices (such as keeping kosher), it’s obvious that the basic pillars of jewish belief are extremely important to kyle’s moral center and worldview and is something that is stressed in their household – i can’t list them all off the top of my head, but there are numerous instances where kyle addresses his parents with something akin to “you’ve always taught me that ___ is a basic jewish tenet” or “you always told me that being jewish means ___”. over the course of the show, kyle has gone from being largely ignorant of his family’s beliefs and being embarrassed by being jewish, to now where he is thoroughly knowledgeable of his culture and beliefs; whereas his defensiveness before was founded in shame it has been replaced with deep pride in himself and in his people

if i’m being honest though, despite thinking it makes sense, i don’t particularly enjoy seeing kyle being written as secular – it seems to be the overwhelming consensus on his religious views as he gets older and i think a large part of this is b/c it’s an easy alternative to the challenge that arises in a non-jewish author writing a jewish character. making kyle non-practicing is easy b/c it then requires next to no effort on the writer’s part to do the necessary research to write a well-balanced jewish character when the topic presents itself. it’s a case by case thing, and obviously it isn’t always apparent or easy to parse author’s intent, but it’s something that i’ve observed enough times to confidently say that it – at the very least – plays a factor

#also full disclosure i'm not jewish so if anyone who is has different thoughts i would love to hear them #kyle broflovski #south park #Anonymous #sorry this took me two days to answer but i like this question so much i wanted to be thorough #also jumped at the opportunity to talk about what a piece of shit mel gibson is lmao

[wozman23]

An Ode To Conan (AKA Conan Ode’Brien)

The year was 1995... or maybe '94... or at least sometime around then, give or take a year. I had just entered, or would be entering middle school, at age eleven... or twelve. With a new school came a later bedtime. So around that time I discovered two things: Saturday Night Live, and Late Night with Conan O'Brien. That was when my world changed.

For as long as I can remember, I've been a silly kid. My parents even used to throw an extra letter in my name and call me “Jokey.” Occasionally, they still do. But now, looking back, nearly 25 years later, I don't know if I'd have ever predicted just how much of my joking nature I'd be able to maintain at this point in my life. Today, at 37, if you ask me to sum up my personality in two words, they'd be “weird” and “funny.” As most age, they lose those traits. They'd instead define themselves as a “Personal Trainer” or a “Civil Engineer.” But I'm still just “weird” and “funny” - a goofball rebelling against the notion of “growing up.” I stubbornly keep the letter 'y' on the end of my name when most Josephs my age pick a more mature alternative. I have little interest in being anything else, and aspire for nothing more.

Much of that is thanks to a tall, freckled, red-headed idol I found on the late night airwaves of NBC, who danced as if he had strings on his hips and let people touch his nipple. I grew up watching cartoons like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Disney movies with comedic voice actors, and blockbuster movies like Ghostbusters and Mrs. Doubtfire, but I'd never seen anything as wildly experimental as Late Night. The (arguably) grown man at the helm still retained such a whimsical, silly, absurd outlook on life. He was a big kid, just having fun. It blew my mind. I was hooked. And it showed me that even if I was weird, I wasn't alone.

The absurdity of Conan and Late Night continues to be unrivaled, even to this day. There was a Masturbating Bear, who just went to town on this oddly nondescript jock strappy looking thing, Preparation H Raymond, an overly goofy looking character, with buck teeth and massive ears, who sang songs about applying a cream to irritated buttholes, and Triumph The Insult Comic Dog, who eviscerated Star Wars nerds and crashed the Westminster Dog Show. Clutch Cargo bits, where moving mouths were inserted into pictures of Arnold Schwarzenegger, Michael Jackson, and Bill Clinton, always brought the laughs in the early days, with both Robert Smigel's impressions and the disregard for making things look authentic. The In The Year 2000/3000 bits provided the rapid fire jokes of randomness that I aspire to write today, one of my favorites being: “Babies will start listening to dance music when Lady Gaga teams up with The Goo Goo Dolls to form the super group, Gaga Goo Goo.” Other recurring bits like Celebrity Survey, SAT Analogies, and Made-For-TV Movie Castings provided similar repeatable formats that brought laughs night after night, as did Actual Items, a swipe at Leno's Headline's bit. If They Mated provided us with the horrors of what the love child of two celebrities would look like, in worst case scenarios. Desk driving bits and car chase spoofs with model towns and cars always delivered. There were the silly Satellite TV Channel bits, with the standout, the Men Without Hats Conversation Channel, as well as the truly pointless – yet my all-time favorite character – Cactus Chef Playing ‘We Didn’t Start the Fire’ on the Flute, created solely to poke fun at the criticism that the show was absurd. Conan Sings A Lullaby was always some macabre fun. At one point, The Walker Texas Ranger lever swept the nation, ultimately resulting in one of the oddest clips ever to grace television. “...Walker told me I have AIDS.” Constant cameos delighted, with frequent appearances from Larry King and Abe Vigoda, who were both always willing to go the extra mile for a laugh. And occasionally, my beloved comedy worlds would combine with someone from SNL like Will Ferrell showing up, dressed as a sexy leprechaun, or engaging in some other antics. Jim Gaffigan birthed the Pale Force cartoon. Hornymanatee.com became a thing. Remote bits, like Conan playing old timey baseball, were always instant classics. Plus, the show birthed the idea of travel shows, with trips to places like Finland and Toronto - the second of which has one of my other favorite remote bits, Conan training with the Toronto Maple Leafs. So much memorable, silly, recklessly avant-garde stuff happened in those years of Late Night. And all the best moments happened when Conan acknowledged the astronomical stupidity of it all. It was always a pleasure to watch, and it all felt expertly crafted just for me.

In the end, a program that got off to a rocky start, fighting off cancellation time and time again, blossomed over the course of fifteen years into a comedy juggernaut and bastion of brilliant buffoonery for my generation. It was practically perfection.

Then the first transition happened...

Like many, I was apprehensive about the switch to The Tonight Show. It was great to see Conan inherit what was formerly known as the pinnacle of late night talk shows, but I wondered if America was ready to watch a bear play with his dick at 11:30pm, especially the demographic that had enjoyed Leno's far more traditional approach. I think we now have that answer. NBC managed to repeat their past mistakes, and fumbled another smooth transition of hosts. Things got kind of ugly, but Conan managed to land on his feet at TBS, where his show continued to run for another eleven years, giving him and his employees - who had relocated to Los Angeles at the start of The Tonight Show - steady work.

The one issue with the migration was that Conan no longer retained the rights to any of his intellectual property. Exceptions were made, but most of this bits and characters were absent from the now titled show, Conan. There was also one less show a week. However, new bits were concocted regularly, like Coffee Table Books That Didn't Sell, Basic Cable Name That Tune, and NBA Mascots That Should Never Dunk. New characters were spawned, like Minty, the Candy Cane That Briefly Fell on the Ground, Punxsutawney Dr. Phil - The best Dr. Phil bit since Letterman’s Words of Wisdom - and Wikibear. Will Forte showed up atop a stuffed buffalo as network owner, Ted Turner. Experimental stand-up sets, like Tig Notaro pushing a stool around or Jon Dore & Rory Scovel being double booked provided some of the best stand-up sets ever. Embracing a digital, web-based format, they introduced new segments like Clueless Gamer, catering to my love of video games. There was Puppy Conan, and Mini Conan. Plus, they doubled down on travel shows, creating the Conan Without Borders series, which I believe to be Conan's best work to date, and a shining example of who he is as a person. There were Fan Corrections, which allowed me to influence his show for five minutes, and throw my own zaniness into the world, and back at the man who stoked the funny fire in me. At some point in life, I may achieve greater things, or have children, but I may still always say that the greatest day of my life was the day I was on Conan.  

So Conan did have bright spots, but to me things were never quite the same. They were still good, but not amazing. Slowly it felt like things were beginning to decline. Longtime writer/performer Brian McCann left to return to New York. A while later, so did Brian Stack, finding a job with Colbert. The show was eventually cut to a thirty minute format. They spun it like it was a good change for the show. I however had my reservations. While I'd hoped for more experimental comedy, it seemed like the first half of the show was cut in favor of still getting in sizeable celebrity interviews. The band was gone, as were the options for nightly music acts. That meant no more fantastic moments like me discovering Lukas Graham with his subdued “7 Years” performance. Stand-up was pretty much gone too, which meant no more killer sets like Gary Gulman's bit on state abbreviations or Ismo's foreign take on the use of the word “ass” in English linguistics. Occasional product placement reared its ugly head. They had to keep the lights on, and they found a way to. So I continued to watch practically every show over the course of the eleven years.

When the pandemic hit, I found myself with more free time. So I decided to check out the Team Coco podcasts, cherry picking from the best guests of Conan O'Brien Needs A Friend, The Three Questions with Andy Richter, and Inside CONAN: An Important Hollywood Podcast. Never having paid attention to any podcasts, I found a love for them. And sometime amidst the pandemic, watching Conan interview some random celebrity, from some show I probably didn't care about, through Zoom, I kind of became at peace with the idea of a nightly Conan program ending.

From middle school, to high school, and then to college, I tuned in when I could. Without the luxury of the internet in its currently glory, or DVRs, I'd tape episodes on a VCR. Barring two or three episode of Conan that I missed while working two jobs, I've seen every episode of Conan, every Tonight Show, and a good streak leading into the end of Late Night. But I will admit that towards the end, it has sometimes felt like a chore.

One thing I didn't drag my feet on was attending tapings. It was one of the first things I did when I came to LA. Over the past few years I was fortunate to get to attend three tapings of Conan. In hindsight, I probably would have went more often. I brought family and friends along with me when they visited, but the treat was primarily for me. When he announced that the final few weeks of shows might have an audience, I knew I must go. I put in for two tapings, and fortunately the stars aligned for the third to last show with Seth Rogen. I was hoping for Ferrell, or Sandler, but it was great! It was the first show where masks were optional and it went recklessly off the rails. Like Conan, I've never been into pot. It's another of the things I enjoy about him. Like him, I don't really have a problem with it, but I've never tried it because I don't think it's for me. I’m the same way with alcohol. With a friend in town this week, I tried one of the beers he bought. I hated it, but I struggled through it. I’ll occasionally drink some fruity wine cooler but that’s about it. So seeing him reluctantly try the joint Seth handed him because he didn't care since the show was wrapping was great. Unseen in the TV edit was that after that segment, Conan and his producer, Jeff Ross, had a lengthy discussion as the band played. As the band wrapped up, Conan came back up and said to expect a rough edit on the show since they wouldn't be able to air them smoking. Turns out they could, which made for good TV. It was a symbolic moment where a man who's spend his entire career blazing his own trail – no pun intended - did so once more, knowing he had nothing to lose. I also put in a ticket request for the last show on the morning of because registration reopened for some reason, but I never got a confirmation. I'm excited to watch it tonight, but also sad to see things come to and end. But at least I can say I was there in the end.

For 28 years Conan and cast have delivered the show they wanted to make. Contrastingly, compared to the other late night shows, its always been far more apolitical, which I appreciate. Comedy to me is about dissociation. It's why I favor and write left-brained jokes about random subjects. No one really needs to hear another hackneyed Trump or Biden joke. Regardless of the state of the world, I could tune in to Conan for a mostly unbiased, silly outlook on the world. Conan always seemed to bring out the best in the guests too, making his show the premier show to tune into when someone was out in the circuit promoting something. Even the stereotypical animal segments or cooking segments provided ample laughs.

Most of the talk will be about Conan himself. But a very large part of what has always made Conan's shows great wasn't even him. A large cast of stellar writers and performers brought countless characters to life. Brian McCann and Brian Stack were longtime favorites. There was the No-Reason-To-Live Guy with his kayak, Hannigan the Traveling Salesman, Artie Kendall the Singing Ghost, and The Interrupter, to name just a few. Even people who had no business performing were utilized brilliantly, like original announcer Joel Godard or Max Weinberg both acting like creeps and perverts, trombone player Richie "LaBamba" Rosenberg being a dolt, and graphic designer Pierre Bernard in his deadpan Recliner of Rage segments. Jordan Schlansky was a comedy well. Andy Richter also deserves more praise. His quick wit makes him the perfect sidekick. I can't even begin to enumerate the amount of instance in which he was lightning fast with a witty response to someone or something. His more recent Sports Blast segments were absurdly stupid, and his Hillbilly Handfishing remote stands out as one of the best.

The late night talk show concept is built around volume. With 4368 episodes among three iterations of shows, there's a lot of time to fill. Things didn't always work, but most of the time they did. That's what you get when you experiment and evolve the medium. I've been thinking a lot about my history with the show, and it's amazing just how many silly bits, characters, and moments still bounce around in my noggin. I've only covered a small sample of the many great moments over the years. It's always seemed really weird to me that Conan has kind of been the underdog. To me, no one holds a candle to his brilliance. I can only liken attending his tapings to a few other experiences: the time I finally got to see Michael Jordan play as a Wizard, or Rush's final R40 tour – three great entities who may not have been at the height of their careers, but were still massively impressive none the less. Conan concluding tonight is very bittersweet. The future is uncertain. The details for his HBO Max show are nebulous. It's going to be far more small scale. I've always admired how much Conan has taken care of his cast and crew. He paid his writers during the strike, and his entire crew during the pandemic. But they will certainly fracture now. Will any of the writing staff follow? Will longtime performer Dan Cronin be there? Will Andy be back? Time will tell, but until then, television, the internet, and the world of comedy, will be a little less funny. In many ways, I wish we lived in a world we he still hosted Late Night, or a successful Tonight Show. But the late night landscape has changed a lot in the last few decades, so who’s to say this wasn’t the better timeline. If there’s one thing I cling on to that keeps me hopeful about the future, it’s Conan’s closing monologue from Late Night. Especially its ending: "It's time for Conan to grow up... and I assure you that's just not going to happen. I can't. This is who I am, for better or worse. It's just, I don't know how."

That hits me just as hard as it did in ‘09, if not harder. The more things change, the more they stay the same. The guy that started hosting in ‘93 is the same guy we see today. He’s still just as childish, just as absurd, just as brilliant, and a man of integrity. And as long as he is, so too will I be.

[narcisbolgor-blog]

How Dennis Miller Became the Least Funny Person on Twitter

You will never believe this, but there was a time when Dennis Miller was actually funny. Now he just might be the least funny comedian on Twitter.

A few years ago, when Rolling Stone ranked all 145 Saturday Night Live cast members from best to worst, Miller came in at number 34, behind heavy-weights like Mike Myers, Tina Fey, and Will Ferrell (John Belushi topped the list), but ahead of current favorites Kate McKinnon and Kenan Thompson as well as comedic geniuses like Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Darrell Hammond, and most egregiously, Norm Macdonald.

Let history record that when the Berlin Wall came down, Miller had the right cheap smirk at the right time, comparing the event to Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis getting back together. I havent really enjoyed any of their previous collaborations, and Im not sure I need to see their new stuff, Rolling Stones Rob Sheffield wrote of Millers six-year Weekend Update stint, from 1985 to 1991.

A year earlier, Vultures Dan Reilly named Miller the best Weekend Update anchor of all time, ahead of Macdonald, Fey, Amy Poehler, Seth Meyers, and everyone else who has held that job over the shows four decades. He wrote that Miller centered SNL every week through his satirical and passionate riffs on topics that favored cutting proclamations over one-liners and posited that the show has yet to find another anchor as versatile or essential as Miller proved to be.

After leaving SNL, the comedian went on to HBO for the Emmy Award-winning, nine-season run of Dennis Miller Live, on which he further honed his hyper-literate political joke style, occasionally veering into self parody but still remaining firmly in the realm of comedy. Before John Oliver or Samantha Bee ever dreamed of eviscerating political foes, Miller would utter the words, Now I dont want to get off on a rant here, as the screen went black behind him before unleashing his ire on some deserving target or another.

And yet, 16 years since that show was canceled, Miller has steadily devolved into just another right-wing blowharda disposition best personified by Miller Time, the regular segment he delivered on Fox News The OReilly Factor.

With Bill OReilly forced out at Fox after alleged sexual harassment, Miller is left with the one platform no one can take away from him: Twitter. Just ask Roseanne Barr, whose show cancellation Miller recently called a Greek tragedy. And like another former Fox News colleague, Mike Huckabee, who has turned his feed into a graveyard for terrible humor, Miller is using his Twitter account to share an unending stream of half-baked jokes that sound more like Andy Rooney complaints than the type of incisive analogies for which he was once known.

The tweet of Millers that got the most attention in recent weeks came the morning after Michelle Wolfs controversial set at the White House Correspondents Dinner. After calling his fellow comedian a horrid human being, Miller said he would need some time to write some brutally mean jokes about her. Since when did this quick wit need three days to write a few jokes about someone?

In an interview last month, Miller tried to explain that his tweet about Wolf was meant to highlight the fact that he had no idea who she is. Apparently, the internet just didnt get it.

After he was instantly mocked on Twitter for his bizarre promise (my favorite, from comedian Joe Randazzo: Dennis Miller hasnt written a funny joke since Daisy Fuentes tripped over a box of limited edition Slobodan Miloevi Beanie Babies on the Save the Whales episode of Supermarket Sweep) Miller backed off, writing on Facebook that he would not be writing any mean jokes about Wolf. I guess she just read the room, he added.

Reading the room has seemingly become a challenge for Miller of late as he continues to try out terrible jokes on Twitter to no avail. Using the hashtag #DennisMillerOption to promote his new podcast, Miller tends to try out at least three or four jokes a day that all seem to lack the important ingredients of setup, punchline, and most of all humor.

For instance, there was this tweet just before last months royal wedding:

Or how about this observation about the new Han Solo movie?

But of course, it is his attempt at conservative humor that really falls flat in Millers timeline.

Even though critics on both sides of the political aisle condemned Michelle Wolf for making fun of Sarah Huckabee Sanders appearancesomething she demonstrably did not doMiller continues to attack Hillary Clinton for hers. Ahh, the sweet irony of Hillary now being known as the Clinton with the bulge under the clothing! Miller tweeted last week, apparently referencing an InfoWars conspiracy theory that claims she is hiding something under her coat.

And when Miller attempts the type of analogy-based joke construction that made him famous, its even worse.

Huh?

Wolf herself may have had the most perfectly succinct response to that particular joke when she tweeted one of Millers signature catchphrases back at him. With one word, the newest late-night host on the scene summed up just how irrelevant her wannabe critic has become.

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[funnythingshere0-blog]

How Dennis Miller Became the Least Funny Person on Twitter

New Post has been published on https://funnythingshere.xyz/how-dennis-miller-became-the-least-funny-person-on-twitter/

How Dennis Miller Became the Least Funny Person on Twitter

You will never believe this, but there was a time when Dennis Miller was actually funny. Now he just might be the least funny “comedian” on Twitter.

A few years ago, when Rolling Stone ranked all 145 Saturday Night Live cast members from best to worst, Miller came in at number 34, behind heavy-weights like Mike Myers, Tina Fey, and Will Ferrell (John Belushi topped the list), but ahead of current favorites Kate McKinnon and Kenan Thompson as well as comedic geniuses like Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Darrell Hammond, and most egregiously, Norm Macdonald.

“Let history record that when the Berlin Wall came down, Miller had the right cheap smirk at the right time, comparing the event to ‘Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis getting back together. I haven’t really enjoyed any of their previous collaborations, and I’m not sure I need to see their new stuff,’” Rolling Stone’s Rob Sheffield wrote of Miller’s six-year “Weekend Update” stint, from 1985 to 1991.

A year earlier, Vulture’s Dan Reilly named Miller the best “Weekend Update” anchor of all time, ahead of Macdonald, Fey, Amy Poehler, Seth Meyers, and everyone else who has held that job over the show’s four decades. He wrote that Miller “centered SNL every week through his satirical and passionate riffs on topics that favored cutting proclamations over one-liners” and posited that the show “has yet to find another anchor as versatile or essential as Miller proved to be.”

After leaving SNL, the comedian went on to HBO for the Emmy Award-winning, nine-season run of Dennis Miller Live, on which he further honed his hyper-literate political joke style, occasionally veering into self parody but still remaining firmly in the realm of comedy. Before John Oliver or Samantha Bee ever dreamed of “eviscerating” political foes, Miller would utter the words, “Now I don’t want to get off on a rant here,” as the screen went black behind him before unleashing his ire on some deserving target or another.

And yet, 16 years since that show was canceled, Miller has steadily devolved into just another right-wing blowhard—a disposition best personified by “Miller Time,” the regular segment he delivered on Fox News’ The O’Reilly Factor.

With Bill O’Reilly forced out at Fox after alleged sexual harassment, Miller is left with the one platform no one can take away from him: Twitter. Just ask Roseanne Barr, whose show cancellation Miller recently called a “Greek tragedy.” And like another former Fox News colleague, Mike Huckabee, who has turned his feed into a graveyard for terrible “humor,” Miller is using his Twitter account to share an unending stream of half-baked jokes that sound more like Andy Rooney complaints than the type of incisive analogies for which he was once known.

The tweet of Miller’s that got the most attention in recent weeks came the morning after Michelle Wolf’s controversial set at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner. After calling his fellow comedian a “horrid human being,” Miller said he would need some time to write some “brutally mean” jokes about her. Since when did this quick wit need three days to write a few jokes about someone?

In an interview last month, Miller tried to explain that his tweet about Wolf was meant to highlight the fact that he “had no idea who she is.” Apparently, the internet just didn’t “get it.”

After he was instantly mocked on Twitter for his bizarre promise (my favorite, from comedian Joe Randazzo: “Dennis Miller hasn’t written a funny joke since Daisy Fuentes tripped over a box of limited edition Slobodan Milošević Beanie Babies on the ‘Save the Whales’ episode of Supermarket Sweep”) Miller backed off, writing on Facebook that he would not be writing any “mean” jokes about Wolf. “I guess she just read the room,” he added.

Reading the room has seemingly become a challenge for Miller of late as he continues to try out terrible jokes on Twitter to no avail. Using the hashtag #DennisMillerOption to promote his new podcast, Miller tends to try out at least three or four jokes a day that all seem to lack the important ingredients of setup, punchline, and most of all humor.

For instance, there was this tweet just before last month’s royal wedding:

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Or how about this observation about the new Han Solo movie?

But of course, it is his attempt at conservative humor that really falls flat in Miller’s timeline.

Even though critics on both sides of the political aisle condemned Michelle Wolf for making fun of Sarah Huckabee Sanders’ appearance—something she demonstrably did not do—Miller continues to attack Hillary Clinton for hers. “Ahh, the sweet irony of Hillary now being known as the Clinton with the bulge under the clothing!” Miller tweeted last week, apparently referencing an InfoWars conspiracy theory that claims she is hiding something under her coat.

And when Miller attempts the type of analogy-based joke construction that made him famous, it’s even worse.

Huh?

Wolf herself may have had the most perfectly succinct response to that particular joke when she tweeted one of Miller’s signature catchphrases back at him. With one word, the newest late-night host on the scene summed up just how irrelevant her wannabe critic has become.

[funnythingshere0-blog]

How Dennis Miller Became the Least Funny Person on Twitter

New Post has been published on https://funnythingshere.xyz/how-dennis-miller-became-the-least-funny-person-on-twitter/

How Dennis Miller Became the Least Funny Person on Twitter

You will never believe this, but there was a time when Dennis Miller was actually funny. Now he just might be the least funny “comedian” on Twitter.

A few years ago, when Rolling Stone ranked all 145 Saturday Night Live cast members from best to worst, Miller came in at number 34, behind heavy-weights like Mike Myers, Tina Fey, and Will Ferrell (John Belushi topped the list), but ahead of current favorites Kate McKinnon and Kenan Thompson as well as comedic geniuses like Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Darrell Hammond, and most egregiously, Norm Macdonald.

“Let history record that when the Berlin Wall came down, Miller had the right cheap smirk at the right time, comparing the event to ‘Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis getting back together. I haven’t really enjoyed any of their previous collaborations, and I’m not sure I need to see their new stuff,’” Rolling Stone’s Rob Sheffield wrote of Miller’s six-year “Weekend Update” stint, from 1985 to 1991.

A year earlier, Vulture’s Dan Reilly named Miller the best “Weekend Update” anchor of all time, ahead of Macdonald, Fey, Amy Poehler, Seth Meyers, and everyone else who has held that job over the show’s four decades. He wrote that Miller “centered SNL every week through his satirical and passionate riffs on topics that favored cutting proclamations over one-liners” and posited that the show “has yet to find another anchor as versatile or essential as Miller proved to be.”

After leaving SNL, the comedian went on to HBO for the Emmy Award-winning, nine-season run of Dennis Miller Live, on which he further honed his hyper-literate political joke style, occasionally veering into self parody but still remaining firmly in the realm of comedy. Before John Oliver or Samantha Bee ever dreamed of “eviscerating” political foes, Miller would utter the words, “Now I don’t want to get off on a rant here,” as the screen went black behind him before unleashing his ire on some deserving target or another.

And yet, 16 years since that show was canceled, Miller has steadily devolved into just another right-wing blowhard—a disposition best personified by “Miller Time,” the regular segment he delivered on Fox News’ The O’Reilly Factor.

With Bill O’Reilly forced out at Fox after alleged sexual harassment, Miller is left with the one platform no one can take away from him: Twitter. Just ask Roseanne Barr, whose show cancellation Miller recently called a “Greek tragedy.” And like another former Fox News colleague, Mike Huckabee, who has turned his feed into a graveyard for terrible “humor,” Miller is using his Twitter account to share an unending stream of half-baked jokes that sound more like Andy Rooney complaints than the type of incisive analogies for which he was once known.

The tweet of Miller’s that got the most attention in recent weeks came the morning after Michelle Wolf’s controversial set at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner. After calling his fellow comedian a “horrid human being,” Miller said he would need some time to write some “brutally mean” jokes about her. Since when did this quick wit need three days to write a few jokes about someone?

In an interview last month, Miller tried to explain that his tweet about Wolf was meant to highlight the fact that he “had no idea who she is.” Apparently, the internet just didn’t “get it.”

After he was instantly mocked on Twitter for his bizarre promise (my favorite, from comedian Joe Randazzo: “Dennis Miller hasn’t written a funny joke since Daisy Fuentes tripped over a box of limited edition Slobodan Milošević Beanie Babies on the ‘Save the Whales’ episode of Supermarket Sweep”) Miller backed off, writing on Facebook that he would not be writing any “mean” jokes about Wolf. “I guess she just read the room,” he added.

Reading the room has seemingly become a challenge for Miller of late as he continues to try out terrible jokes on Twitter to no avail. Using the hashtag #DennisMillerOption to promote his new podcast, Miller tends to try out at least three or four jokes a day that all seem to lack the important ingredients of setup, punchline, and most of all humor.

For instance, there was this tweet just before last month’s royal wedding:

Get The Beast In Your Inbox!

Daily Digest

Start and finish your day with the top stories from The Daily Beast.

Cheat Sheet

A speedy, smart summary of all the news you need to know (and nothing you don’t).

Subscribe

Thank You!

You are now subscribed to the Daily Digest and Cheat Sheet. We will not share your email with anyone for any reason.

Or how about this observation about the new Han Solo movie?

But of course, it is his attempt at conservative humor that really falls flat in Miller’s timeline.

Even though critics on both sides of the political aisle condemned Michelle Wolf for making fun of Sarah Huckabee Sanders’ appearance—something she demonstrably did not do—Miller continues to attack Hillary Clinton for hers. “Ahh, the sweet irony of Hillary now being known as the Clinton with the bulge under the clothing!” Miller tweeted last week, apparently referencing an InfoWars conspiracy theory that claims she is hiding something under her coat.

And when Miller attempts the type of analogy-based joke construction that made him famous, it’s even worse.

Huh?

Wolf herself may have had the most perfectly succinct response to that particular joke when she tweeted one of Miller’s signature catchphrases back at him. With one word, the newest late-night host on the scene summed up just how irrelevant her wannabe critic has become.

[funnythingshere0-blog]

How Dennis Miller Became the Least Funny Person on Twitter

New Post has been published on http://funnythingshere.xyz/how-dennis-miller-became-the-least-funny-person-on-twitter/

How Dennis Miller Became the Least Funny Person on Twitter

You will never believe this, but there was a time when Dennis Miller was actually funny. Now he just might be the least funny “comedian” on Twitter.

A few years ago, when Rolling Stone ranked all 145 Saturday Night Live cast members from best to worst, Miller came in at number 34, behind heavy-weights like Mike Myers, Tina Fey, and Will Ferrell (John Belushi topped the list), but ahead of current favorites Kate McKinnon and Kenan Thompson as well as comedic geniuses like Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Darrell Hammond, and most egregiously, Norm Macdonald.

“Let history record that when the Berlin Wall came down, Miller had the right cheap smirk at the right time, comparing the event to ‘Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis getting back together. I haven’t really enjoyed any of their previous collaborations, and I’m not sure I need to see their new stuff,’” Rolling Stone’s Rob Sheffield wrote of Miller’s six-year “Weekend Update” stint, from 1985 to 1991.

A year earlier, Vulture’s Dan Reilly named Miller the best “Weekend Update” anchor of all time, ahead of Macdonald, Fey, Amy Poehler, Seth Meyers, and everyone else who has held that job over the show’s four decades. He wrote that Miller “centered SNL every week through his satirical and passionate riffs on topics that favored cutting proclamations over one-liners” and posited that the show “has yet to find another anchor as versatile or essential as Miller proved to be.”

After leaving SNL, the comedian went on to HBO for the Emmy Award-winning, nine-season run of Dennis Miller Live, on which he further honed his hyper-literate political joke style, occasionally veering into self parody but still remaining firmly in the realm of comedy. Before John Oliver or Samantha Bee ever dreamed of “eviscerating” political foes, Miller would utter the words, “Now I don’t want to get off on a rant here,” as the screen went black behind him before unleashing his ire on some deserving target or another.

And yet, 16 years since that show was canceled, Miller has steadily devolved into just another right-wing blowhard—a disposition best personified by “Miller Time,” the regular segment he delivered on Fox News’ The O’Reilly Factor.

With Bill O’Reilly forced out at Fox after alleged sexual harassment, Miller is left with the one platform no one can take away from him: Twitter. Just ask Roseanne Barr, whose show cancellation Miller recently called a “Greek tragedy.” And like another former Fox News colleague, Mike Huckabee, who has turned his feed into a graveyard for terrible “humor,” Miller is using his Twitter account to share an unending stream of half-baked jokes that sound more like Andy Rooney complaints than the type of incisive analogies for which he was once known.

The tweet of Miller’s that got the most attention in recent weeks came the morning after Michelle Wolf’s controversial set at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner. After calling his fellow comedian a “horrid human being,” Miller said he would need some time to write some “brutally mean” jokes about her. Since when did this quick wit need three days to write a few jokes about someone?

In an interview last month, Miller tried to explain that his tweet about Wolf was meant to highlight the fact that he “had no idea who she is.” Apparently, the internet just didn’t “get it.”

After he was instantly mocked on Twitter for his bizarre promise (my favorite, from comedian Joe Randazzo: “Dennis Miller hasn’t written a funny joke since Daisy Fuentes tripped over a box of limited edition Slobodan Milošević Beanie Babies on the ‘Save the Whales’ episode of Supermarket Sweep”) Miller backed off, writing on Facebook that he would not be writing any “mean” jokes about Wolf. “I guess she just read the room,” he added.

Reading the room has seemingly become a challenge for Miller of late as he continues to try out terrible jokes on Twitter to no avail. Using the hashtag #DennisMillerOption to promote his new podcast, Miller tends to try out at least three or four jokes a day that all seem to lack the important ingredients of setup, punchline, and most of all humor.

For instance, there was this tweet just before last month’s royal wedding:

Get The Beast In Your Inbox!

Daily Digest

Start and finish your day with the top stories from The Daily Beast.

Cheat Sheet

A speedy, smart summary of all the news you need to know (and nothing you don’t).

Subscribe

Thank You!

You are now subscribed to the Daily Digest and Cheat Sheet. We will not share your email with anyone for any reason.

Or how about this observation about the new Han Solo movie?

But of course, it is his attempt at conservative humor that really falls flat in Miller’s timeline.

Even though critics on both sides of the political aisle condemned Michelle Wolf for making fun of Sarah Huckabee Sanders’ appearance—something she demonstrably did not do—Miller continues to attack Hillary Clinton for hers. “Ahh, the sweet irony of Hillary now being known as the Clinton with the bulge under the clothing!” Miller tweeted last week, apparently referencing an InfoWars conspiracy theory that claims she is hiding something under her coat.

And when Miller attempts the type of analogy-based joke construction that made him famous, it’s even worse.

Huh?

Wolf herself may have had the most perfectly succinct response to that particular joke when she tweeted one of Miller’s signature catchphrases back at him. With one word, the newest late-night host on the scene summed up just how irrelevant her wannabe critic has become.