#topher would weirdly get into it after a while | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

violetwolfraven · 4 years

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40 for sprace?

We’re playing love interests in a play and long story short I think I might actually be falling for you.

Ooh! Fun! Also lmao my blog is kinda turning into a Newsies blog. At least for now. Until I get obsessed with something else. Don’t worry, though, guys. That ain’t gonna happen for a while the way I’m currently going. I’m pretty sure I’ve lost followers because of my current hyperfixation but somehow I don’t give a single fuck

Hope you don’t mind some background newsbians. Also that I don’t actually have a Cinderella script, so I’m not using any actual lines from it.

...

Race had to appreciate how chill Miss Medda was, because he didn’t think just any theatre club advisor would let the kids change the genders of a bunch of characters just so they could make it all gay.

Oh, well. Theatre was gay culture. There wasn’t a straight person in their club, and they might as well reflect that.

Basically, they were doing Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Cinderella, and with Bill and Darcy as their rewriters, they’d changed Prince Topher to Princess Tina (which was no easy feat, given that he had about a million middle names they had to find feminine versions of) and put Katherine in the role, as the only girl who could hit the lower notes.

Sarah played Cinderella, Albert played one of the stepsisters, Charlotte (which were now brothers) and Race played the other, Gabrielle. Or, Charles and Gabriel, now, with the two of them.

Jack was Marie, the Fairy Godmother, Smalls and Romeo tumbled as the fox and raccoon, and Davey hung back as the student director.

And Spot Conlon was playing Jean-Michael, the revolutionary, and Race’s love interest.

That totally wasn’t a problem because Spot totally wasn’t Race’s type and singing a duet with Sarah about him and Katherine totally didn’t hold any truth at all.

Yeah... Race had a deal with her that as long as she didn’t tell anyone about him having the hots for Spot, he wouldn’t tell anyone how whipped Sarah was for Katherine in real life.

Unfortunately, that deal was definitely not going to work to Race’s favor, now that he’d accidentally let slip about it.

To. Katherine.

While Sarah was within hearing range.

Fortunately, everyone else was on break while Race (being dance captain) helped Saz and Kath out with some hard waltz choreography, but still...

Shit. Shit, shit, shit.

“Hey, Spot?” Sarah called.

“Saz!” Race yelped, “Saz! Sarah! I’m sorry, okay? You don’t have to do this! I have so much to live for!”

Sarah rolled her eyes, as if that would make her be blushing less as she refused to look at Katherine, “Spot Satan Conlon, where are you?”

“My middle name ain’t ‘Satan,’ Sarah!” Spot yelled from the catwalk.

Oh yeah. Spot was primarily friends with the crew kids. Hotshot, Bart, Bluebird... those kids. The ones who would straight up murder you if you touched something you weren’t supposed to on the sets.

“Well, until you tell me your real one, I got nothing else to use!” Sarah yelled back, “Can you come down here?”

“Physically? Yeah! Will I? No!”

With a mischievous glance back at Race, Sarah ran for the stairs up to the catwalk.

“No, no, no—“ Race gave up on trying to stop her. This was kind of fair, after all, actually.

Katherine gave him a mildly afraid look, “So... what was that about?”

“We had a deal that long as I don’t tell anyone ‘bout her likin’ you, she don’t tell anyone ‘bout me likin’ Spot.”

Kath laughed suddenly and loudly, mostly just sounding nervous, weirdly.

“What?” Race asked.

“Nothing,” Katherine said quickly. Too quickly for her to actually have nothing to say.

“Kath.”

“Race,” Katherine sighed, “Look, you’ll find out soon enough. With any luck, within the next few minutes.”

“What?”

Spot came down from the catwalk suddenly and Race lost his train of thought. Sarah wasn’t far behind him with a shit-eating grin.

Spot pointed at Race, then at the door out of the theatre, “Higgins. You and me. Hallway. Now.”

Race was already following, but he couldn’t help but shoot a kind of terrified glance back at the girls.

“We’ll send a search party if you don’t come back within ten minutes!” Sarah called.

“Oh, you and me are having a talk, too,” Katherine said pointedly.

Race laughed at the look on Sarah’s face, but his inner monologue was definitely still 90% swear words right now.

Spot was waiting for him out in the empty hallway. Most of their friends were out in the lobby, but they still wouldn’t be overheard if they used their inside voices.

“So,” Race said awkwardly, “I don’t know what specifically Sarah told ya, but—“

“Shut up, Race.”

Race shut up.

“We ain’t practiced one part of that scene toward the act of act 2.”

“What scene?”

“You know the one.”

Race did know the one. It was the scene where Spot and Race were supposed to kiss, but Davey had said that nobody had to kiss until hell week if they didn’t want to.

Davey, being Sarah’s twin brother and Race’s close friend, knew about both of their crushes, so he was probably just trying to give them time to make a move, but Race hadn’t been planning on making one. He’d figured it was just a stage kiss. It didn’t have to mean anything.

“Spot, are you sure we shouldn’t talk about this or—“

Spot just got into character and recited his line.

God, that was still weird. How Spot was absolutely nothing like Jean-Michael, and yet he still managed to sell the character completely accurately.

He said the line right before their kiss.

It would not be hard for Race to refuse, to stay out of character and say no. That was probably the point; that Race could get out of this situation easily, but if he wanted to stay in it, Spot didn’t have to talk about his feelings. At least, not yet.

It was a situation they both felt comfortable in, oddly enough. They were both in their element.

Race took a deep breath and said Gabriel’s next line.

Spot still hesitated, leaning in close, but hovering a couple inches away.

Race closed the distance between them, leaning in for the quick kiss the scene called for.

When he pulled away, the other boy’s face was unreadable.

“Spot..?” Race whispered.

Spot grabbed him by the back of his neck, pulling him down to kiss him deeper this time.

Race was... surprised, but he managed to kiss back, bringing his hands up to Spot’s shoulders.

“It’s about damn time.”

They jumped apart just in time to see Davey standing in the doorway to the lobby with a shit-eating grin.

“Oh shit,” Race groaned, hiding his face in his hands.

“Don’t worry, I ain’t gonna tell Jack or anything. You might want to, though. Anyways I’ll be inside if you need anything.”

“I wouldn’t do that if I was you,” Spot warned, “Katherine and Sarah are probably makin’ out in there.”

“Seriously?” Davey and Race yelled at the same time.

Spot shrugged like it wasn’t a big deal, “Kath and I had a deal that I wouldn’t tell ‘bout her crush if she didn’t tell ‘bout mine.”

“Are you kidding me?” Race asked, “That’s what I had with Saz!”

After a couple seconds of processing this, Davey chuckled.

“Well, at least the chemistry onstage will be real.”

The chemistry was very real. And Kath and Sarah were totally making out on the stage of the empty theatre.

#newsies #sprace #racetrack higgins #spot conlon #race x spot #newsbians #katherine plumber pulitzer #sarah jacobs #katherine x sarah #violet’s writing

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scanned-goods · 4 years

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Spider-Man 3: Editor's Cut

This isn't a revelation one way or the other. It adds a brief scene with the Sandman and his family, while deleting the scene where Harry's butler tells him the truth about his father, making it so he just chooses to help Peter and MJ instead of having the truth about Norman dropped on his head like a load of bricks. (Man, remember when you could point out a giant plot hole in a movie, like Harry's butler never telling him that his father was the Green Goblin, and people would agree it was a plot hole instead of calling you a Nazi?)

So if you don't like the movie, you probably still won't like it, but if you did like it to begin with, this might make you like it a little more.I will say a few things that I noted this time around.

1. Okay, even as a certified Raimi lover, I can't defend the inexplicably British newscaster at the climax and how she basically narrates the movie for the vision impaired? Sandman is beating Peter to death and we cut to a news anchor going "Is this the end of Spider-Man?" Yes, that's the question, could you let us keep watching the movie so we find out? We can see what's going on. You don't need to point out.

2. Likewise, the bit at the climax where Jameson buys a camera off a little girl to capture this huge news story shouldn't work--it should be the worst kind of MCU bathos-in-the-midst-of-drama--but it's J.K. Simmons, so it works.

3. As spectacle, I still don't think this has been topped. When Harry and Peter team up as fight bros at the end, it's legitimately thrilling and something we hadn't seen before in a Spider-Man movie, and still haven't. In the MCU, we got what was supposed to be a Spider-Man Iron Man team-up movie and Tony just lectured Peter about being a crappy superhero. They never fought together or teamed up at all.

4. I think Peter figuring out that Venom is vulnerable to sonics and quickly using that at the climax is the one time in a Spider-Man movie where he actually uses his scientific knowhow. In the ASM movies, Gwen does all his thinking for him, and in the MCU, he has Tony's suit to do everything. Raimi, baby.

5. I do think the special effects can be iffy, even for the time. I remember Spider-Man 2 as having pretty untouchable effects, and this seems like it was more rushed. But the trade-off is that if you want Spidey action, this movie has a real steady supply of it. And even these days, Spider-Man's costume itself is a pretty unconvincing effect. I don't mind Spider-Man turning into a CGI effect in this to flip and dodge around in mid-air, but him being a CGI effect with a Tom Holland head when he's just standing around... bleh.

6. There are more contrived coincidences and "just go with it" plotting this time around. But I think if you're cool with the "baby mountain goats" scene in Spider-Man: Far From Home, you have no right to complain about Peter disco dancing. One is Peter acting weird within the realistic world of the movie, the other is the world being weird and making no sense because the movie is being a dumb comedy. But still, you've got

a. Flint Marko, the man who killed Uncle Ben, escaping and accidentally gaining superpowers.

b. Harry Osborn losing his memory after a fight with Spider-Man (and regaining it soon after).

c. The symbiote landing nearby Peter Parker during a meteor shower--and even if you want to say that it honed in on him somehow, you still have to explain it showing up right when Harry decided to go through with killing Peter and Flint getting his powers.

d. Eddie Brock being present as Peter gets rid of the symbiote.

e. Mary Jane believing Peter is in such danger from Harry Osborn that she'll break up with him on Harry's orders to save his life, instead of saying something like "Watch out! Harry has superpowers and he hates you and he's threatened to kill me!" (Okay, no technically a coincidence, but it is awful convenient.)

7. That said, look at this shot of Flint Marko picking up his shirt from right out of the comics.

Raimi is the only director who would not only dress Flint that way, but give his 'costume' this FUCK YEAH treatment. Marc Webb would probably put him in just, like, a black hoodie--because he's a bad guy!

8. Likewise, this seems about the last time we had real aerial duels and city-spanning action in a Spider-Man movie. When Harry and Peter fight, they go on top of rooftops and through alleyways. When Peter fights Venom, the fight goes from a giant web at the top of a construction site, to the girders, to the sand at the bottom, and everywhere inbetween. (And remember when Doc Ock and Spidey fought from the top of a clocktower onto a speeding train?) The fights in future movies are generally confined to single, easily greenscreened locations--I don't think Spider-Man and the Vulture ever really had a fight--and it feels so much less Spider-Man. Any superhero can have a fight on the top of a really tall building, but only Spider-Man can fight on, around, and on top of a speeding truck as it barrels through traffic.

8a. Speaking of, maybe they spent a ton more money on the security truck chase in Amazing Spider-Man 2 than they did here, with the bazillion crashing cars that Andrew Garfield blithely ignores, but man, Peter is so much more in-character here. He confronts Sandman, exchanges words with him (itself a sign that he's becoming arrogant and up his own ass), and then it's down to business. He doesn't do a stand-up comedy routine or call his girlfriend or remember what Denis Leary looked like while people are dying by the droves. Man, those ASM movies sucked so bad, they almost suck worse than the MCU movies.

9. As for the villains, it's a bit of a mixed bag, at least in terms of visuals. No one reaches the heights of Doc Ock, but no one is as dire-looking as Green Goblin either. Harry Osborn's "New Goblin" is bland, but functional. I like the twist of the skyboard instead of a more traditional Goblin Glider, but with his basic mask and bodysuit, he looks like he's going to play airsoft.

Of course, the same criticism will be made of the MCU's Taskmaster--'New Goblin' mostly just takes the mask off and talks to Peter face to face. Also, there's a part of my brain that can't help but wondering where he keeps all the pumpkin bombs and missiles, not to mention fuel and engine, on that tiny little rocketboard.

Sandman looks note-perfect, down to his actor even having a strong resemblance to his comic book counterpart, but then, how hard is it to get right a guy wearing a shirt? (I say, remembering that the MCU Luke Cage doesn't even wear a yellow T-shirt.)

And Venom is, well, Venom-y.

He's not really much bigger than Tobey Maguire's Spider-Man, the webbing and spider-emblem on his costume is weirdly subdued, and he spends a lot of time unmasked to show off the very arguably miscast Topher Grace as Eddie. And between Grace's performance of Broke as a slithering reptile and everything else, Venom comes off as more of a screeching REEEE type villain instead of a guttural RRRRRRRRR! type villain. He's supposed to be brute force in contrast to Spider-Man's speed and agility, but instead he comes off as more of a gremlin. It's a bit of a bewildering choice. We know what a dark mirror to Peter Parker looks like--he's his own dark mirror for a lot of the movie. Shouldn't the Venom that's the ultimate manifestation of the symbiote be a completely different creature altogether, since the point of the movie is that vengeance is turning Peter into someone else? The Tom Hardy Venom is properly bulky in comparison.

#spider-man

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pass-the-bechdel · 5 years

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Dollhouse s02e06 ‘The Left Hand’

Does it pass the Bechdel Test?

Yes, twice.

How many female characters (with names and lines) are there?

Five (50% of cast).

How many male characters (with names and lines) are there?

Five.

Positive Content Rating:

Two.

General Episode Quality:

Dumb as shit.

MORE INFO (and potential spoilers) UNDER THE CUT:

Passing the Bechdel:

Bennett is still torturing Echo when the episode starts. Bennett talks to Echo more later.

Female characters:

Bennett Halverson.

Echo.

Cynthia Perrin.

Adelle DeWitt.

Madeline Costley.

Male characters:

Daniel Perrin.

Topher Brink.

Stuart Lipman.

Boyd Langton.

Victor.

OTHER NOTES:

Enver Gjokaj’s mimicry skills are insane. His version of Topher is impeccable, and easily the best thing about the episode. I mean, the rest of the episode does not put up strong competition for that trophy, but anyway. Even if it had, this would still be the best thing.

“Your skin is like a pig”

Pfffffttt initially, when Echo and Perrin go to remove their GPS strips, they’re fully clothed and just gonna cut it out and go like normal. We cut away and then cut back, and they’ve both got their shirts off, we do this lingering shot of Echo’s breasts while she hands Perrin the knife (weirdly, across her body, so that we can keep the camera trained on the tits the whole time), and then they perform the GPS removal in a series of quick shots that focus on the intimate closeness, Perrin breathing on Echo’s neck, him gripping her arm to hold her still. No dialogue, just gratuitous states of undress and breathy noises for a scene which literally doesn’t even need to exist since we already established what they were doing in that first scene before we cut away. This is hilariously transparent objectification (with knife-play). They didn’t even try to make this look like a normal thing that existed for a reason.

“She was kind of a hooker” Topher says awkwardly, to explain why his imprint in Echo is nowhere near as complex or impressive as Perrin’s. The optics of that excuse are awful no matter which way you wanna slice it.

Perrin gets assassin-triggered and beats the shit out of Echo. Four of six.

Mrs Perrin also gets in on the Echo-beating action! Yay. Let’s not forget also that Bennett subjected Echo to nebulous psychic torture at the end of the previous episode and the beginning of this one, too. I know it’s not the same as being physically beaten, but it certainly still is an excuse to have Eliza Dushku writhe and wail. I hate this show. I’m dropping the content rating - not for this dot point specifically, but for the overall atmosphere of VIOLENT GARBAGE.

URGH, this is definitely NOT an improvement on the previous episode. Nothing about this whole thing makes any actual sense, there’s no reason why Rossum’s best way to push forward legislation would be to expose the Dollhouse and to have their planted senator target them just to clear them since no one was after them in the first place, all they did was draw negative attention to themselves. Also, why did Bennett let Echo escape with Perrin? He wasn’t imprinted with assassin protocol yet and she and Topher hadn’t even figured out how to do the remote-wipe trick so it’s not like she had a nefarious plan in place to ‘punish’ Echo at that time. AND THEN there’s the whole thing with Perrin saying that someone on the inside had imprinted him with the knowledge he needed, like, they didn’t follow up on that at all, that was just convenience. Nothing happened for sensible reasons in this episode (and, consequently, this whole multi-episode plot) and to top it off, it was fucking boring. I’m shocked they didn’t get a third season, after this calibre of television. Shocked, I say.

P.s. Enver Gjokaj deserves so much better.

#Dollhouse #Dollhouse season two #The Left Hand #Bechdel Test #female representation

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