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popculturebuffet · 2 months

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Here Comes Garfield: The Fantastic Funnies (A Comission For Emma Fici)

Hello all you happy people! And welcome one and all to Here Comes Garfield, my look at all things garfield. For the rest of the year this feature will mostly be a look at the 11 garfield specials, minus babes and bullets which I covered previously, as well as his appearence in Cartoon All Stars to the Rescue for last 420.

So for those just joining us: I'm a lifelong comic strip nerd, ever since my dear Aunt Paula gave me her spare copy of the Indespensible Calvin and Hobbes in the 3rd grade. From there I slowly glommed on to other strips over the years: From FoxTrot, to Doonesbury, to Get Fuzzy to Zits to Cul De Sac, to recent faviorites like Pheobe and Her Unicorn, Crabgrass, the Steenz version of Heart and the City, and Breaking Cat News, which i'm wrapping a huge retrospective of soon, and whose place this retrospective is taking on my friend Emma's Patreon slot.

I love talking about this fine art, fitting your best work in just 4 panels, all the wonderful characters many simply don't know exist, all the weird shit that happens.. it's good stuff. So naturally I also gained a love for specials based on them. And while I loved the Peanuts ones and will climb THAT massive mountain someday, as a tween.. my faviorites were Garfield's and it's how I fell in love with the fat cat, the cool cat the nobody's cool cat.

While younger me did like garfield as a strip, especially that one arc where Garfield gets caught in a window blind and it conttinues to suck in an escalating number of people

Truly the "Snoopy's Awkward Nephew" of Garifield comics. Pure art. But while I liked it, it was watching the specials on the DVD garfield as himself that sucked me into the character. The DVD"s were released around the time of the first movie and releases of Garfiled and Friends to cash in and they certainly got my money. 12 specials, all ranging from excellent to watchable, and all wil lbe covered this year.

However before I can tell you that story, I have to tell you this story: See while Here Comes Garfield was Garfield's first SPECIAL.. it wasn't his first apperance in animation. Two years before that Garfield lept onto screens and into the inky depths of animation with a short but scene stealing apperance in the 1980 special the Fantastic Funnies, an apperance I honestly didn't even know existed till recently, but is such a weird and important piece of garfield history I had to cover it and Emma was on board to comission it.

So what exactly IS the fantastic funnies you may ask. Well i'll tell you.. you may ask. The Fantastic Funnies was a sequel to the earlier special The Fabulous Funnies, a celebration of comic strips interviewing various creators and including a live action on animated bit with Rob Reiner. I haven't seen it but if there's enough intrest I might cover it. The special was a hit for NBC, with CBS regretting having passed over the idea when animation maestro and peantus producer Lee Mendelson suggested it. After they remembered he'd pitched it and they'd been stupid at all of course, as is the executive way. They called dibs on the next time.

The next time was 12 years and an animated series that didn't do so good later, and CBS was front and center for the Fantastic Funnies, taking the concept but spiffing it up: this time the interviews were, with two exceptions, each accompanied by an animated short, there was an animated bit to start it off, and we also got a few musical numbers and live performances from the broadway cast of annie.. well two of the broadway cast of annie bu tthat's still more of the broadway cast of annie than has been on this blog so touche Fabulous Funnies, touche. It's the most 70's thing to come out of 1980 and i'll be covering the whole thing under the cut.

Fantastic Funnies is hosted by Loni Anderson, who at the time was on CBS' hit WKRP in Cincinatti.. and what i've seen of it is excellent. She hasn't really done anything else i've seen, but she seems nice enough.

This makes it awkward as hosting wise she feels shoved into the special. The script she's given feels awkward, with her only genuine enthuasim coming from Barney Google. I honestly wish I could be as jazzed about Barney Google and his go go gooogly eyes as Loni Anderson apparently was in 1980. I AM that jazzed about Snoopy's awkard teenage nephew

But it's not the same alas.

I can't even blame her as anderson was already frustrated with her pay for the series she did do and would demand more from the network leading to a brief exit from WKRP. I can't be too hard on her for not giving a fuck about an extra gig they saddled her with she didn't ask for with a script written by a block of wood on several pounds of qualudes. She did her best under the circumstances.

The circumstances also include getting animated as a cartoon, lucky, and getting to introduce a panel of various comic strip all stars of the time.

Okay so going row by row, with the strips self titled unless otherwise stated.

Front Row: Charlie Brown and Lucy (Peanuts), Nipper (Wee Pals), Dennis the Menace (US Comic), Nancy and Sluggo and Little Orphan Annie. Second Row: Blondie and Dagwood, Dick Tracey, Barney Google (Snuffy Smith), Alley Oop and Prince Valiant

Third Row: Pogo, Tumbleweeds, miss Peach, B.C., Beetle Bailey

Back row: Michael Doonesbury (Doonesbury), Broom Hilda, Drabble, Cathy and Hagar the Horrible

And in their own section because dogs apparently don't get bleacher seats at Walden, where I assume this is taking place as the only college out of these strips, we also get the dogs and one very special cat in their own section.

So Snoopy, Daisy (Blondie), Fred Basset and Garfield who are all about to throw down when Lonnie announces they have to get back to the human world for the show. But before that a song they all prepared, and it was at this point in the special I had to ask myself the tough question:

I still don't know. But yes the song is like living in a living nightmare and I don't care for it. It's thankfully short and Broomhilda takes them all to the real world. But that's a story for another day

Sadly not that day.

For now the special settles int' it's formula: Lonnie introduces a cartoonist, they talk about how their strip came to be, we get an animated segment about it. The only exceptions to the last part are Wee Pals, which instead has it's creator voice over one of his strips directly and Prince Valliant, who gets jack shit.

It was at this point I also realized a bit of an issue. While I mentioned my love of comic strips.. most of the ones I adore come from the late 70's onward, with Doonesbury and Peanuts being the big exceptions. I don't have anything against strips from before that time, I've read what I could of Pogo and want to read more and Krazy Kat is still well loved for a reason. I've also recently gained an appreceation of popeye thanks to Randy Millholand's take on the franchise.

The thing is I started devouring every comic strip I coudl in the 2000's. It was a great time for that as every strip got at least ONE collection, so even if you didn't read the newspapers, you could get a sample of a wide range of strips in book form. Boondocks even got a hilarious title out of it for it's first book.

So I got to sample a wide range of strips, many of which I still read today: Get Fuzzy, Zits Pooch Cafe, For Better or For Worse, Baldo, La Cucaracha, Cul De Sac, Lio, Luann, Rudy Park, Adam@Home. Many strips I first found in collection and binged later. Sadly this went down in the 2010's but thankfully the kids comics boom has meant many newer strips have gotten collections. It's why I have collections for heart of the city and crabgrass on my shelf.

But as you may of noticed... most of those either started in the 2000's or in the 90's. Most of the kings features based strips simply didn't get collections and thus I didnt' notice them.. and by the time I could i'd mostly heard of them by reputation as dinosaurs that would go on till the heat death of the universe via various legacy artists who wouldn't really change a thing.

And I do GET why: a lot of these legacy strips.. are ran by family members who want to honor the legacy and may simply not feel comfortable altering the strip too much. I'm not asking that dagwood suddenly become a t-rex... i'd love that, but I get i'm not everyone's target audience. Not every strip can be Pooch Cafe and go entirley off the rails AND still be every bit the strip it always was AND be good

It's hard. So I do have some sympathy. It's not limitless: while I get not doing so say in the 2000's when handing your strip off to another cartoonist, let alone your DAD'S strip wasn't a thing unless they were going to stay the course, in the 2020's and late 2010's we've had a bunch of great reboots and soft reboots of legacy strips: Randy Millholand of Something Positive fame did such a fantastic job on popeye sundays he got a weekly slot with olive and popeye, giving other creators the chance to do their own olive oyl strip basically alongside his. Mark Tatulli got tired of doing heart of the city (Lio both continues and slaps hard) and rather than phone it in or end it, handed it over to the talented Steenz, whose work on the strip is both something entirley diffrent but something entirely fresh and fun with some tight continuity. Olivia James made people care about Nancy for the first time in decades and has a nice dry wit. And while Henry Barjas keeps the soapy stylings of gil thorpe and hasn't changed as much as his contemporaries he still isn't afraid to shake things up having Gil go through a divorce, get two new assitant coaches, a third assitant coach who was once his arch nemisis and making the teen cast far more diverse including trans and non binary characters, being one of the few creators to do so in comic stripery.

While I don't want you going after these old men, and please for the love of god DO NOT GO AFTER THESE MEN. I do not want that. I may gripe, but these seem like decent guys just ones who won't evolve and have no reason to. I'm just outlining why maybe i'd rather read strips that keep growing with age or have fresh new voices rather than "Dagwood still hasn't left the 1950's and when theyt ry to it's embarassing for everyone involved. "

I.. didn't mean for this to turn into a screed on legacy comics that never really changed but it makes it all the more special tha ta lot of these creation stories for these comics still fascinated me.

The big standout was Wee Pals, a strip I hadn't heard of as it ended in 2002. Wee Pals was created by Morrie Turner, a cartoonist and protege of Charles Schultz who bemoaned the lack of black characters in the newspapers. Charles told him why not make one, and Wee Pals came about, with Turner diversifying the cast to drum up intrest creating one of the more diverse casts in earlier comic strips as a result. Nowadays it's a tad quaint, but I can't fault the man for trying to make comic strips less white and i'm glad I know this pioneer exist. I'm also mildly annoyed his strip wasn't animated, as it was one of the funneist present, with our heroes talking about one's pet chameleon.

There were other intresting stories too: Cathy Guthwise based Cathy on her own life, just changing Cathy's job from cartoonist to "whatervers funnier". Broom Hilda, a strip about a wtich, was something his creator tried pitching as an add character first. IT's small stuff but it always fascinates me how a strip comes about.

The only outright hilarous one is Johnny Hart, who kept trying to sell a caveman character, his friends asked him to put up or shut up so in his words "He drank 4 beers and the caveman slowly came into focus." He just.. outright got hammered to fuck because that was a normal thing in 1980 and created a classic comic strip out of it that later became obessed with jesus. Amazing.

The interviews are neat and while I may not like these strips I respect their creators.. and the creator of Hagar for putting on a viking helmet. Good stuff.

As for the animated segmets.. their eh. Like I said most of these strips are pretty gag a day and it seems like the shorts just flat out animated a strip. Which can work as it does for the raeson we're all here, garfield will come soon I promise, but for the most part it just dosen't land for me

In two cases they just flat out take bits from pre existing specails: For Doonesbury they take a bit of Joanie at the daycare.

For those less drenched in the deep and complex lore of doonesbury as the werido who has a ton of print books and bought digitals of strips he already had and books he already bought years ago just to have a copy on kindle: Joanie Caucuss was once a house wife, who got tired of it and her husband clinton and hitched the first ride she could away from his sexist ass. That ride happened to be with strip lead Mike and his best friend and revolutinary Mark on a motorcycle trip to find america. They took her back with them, she joined them at their commune, and soon got a job in daycare while trying to become a law student, which is the status quo the special used. Soon after she'd become a law student, head to berkley, find the love of her life and a long LONG list of other stuff up to present day where she works as a campaign manager on occasion during her alleged retirement.

It's not a bad bhit, but I get the sense they wanted to pick the least political thing they could.. yet weirdly DIDN'T go with the musical number or the dinner the group have. Or you know just accept doonesbury is political and include frank discussions of the 60's in this special.

For Peanuts, they just include an animated bit of snoopy singing suppertime from your a good man charlie brown. It's new animation far as I can tell, as the bit wasn't in any of the specials and they woudlnt' adapt the musical till the mid 80s. It's fine I just question why they didn't recycle anything from the specials.

Finally Cathy is from it's special, but fits, with her "wanting to have it all". A very cathy joke and frankly had I not found out she has three specails, i would not have been able to tell.

As for the other material either recycled from the fabulous funnies or made for this special, i'm going in no paticular order.

Beetle Bailey: Beetle runs away from sarge to try and get out of doing the obstacle course

Hagar the horrible has a trite bit about his wife telling him to take out the garbage VIKINGS DON'T DO THAT. YOU SO SILLY HAGAR.

Dennis the Menace keeps drawing out bed time because kids do that, even immortal children who aren't all that menacing.

By now your starting to get what a mountain it was to climb this special: short interview, unfunny skit, short interview unfunny skit, rinse repeat, toss away my sanity. I TRY to be positive on this blog, try not to be a dickhead.. but this special is so damn boring half the time. The interviews are kinda neat but the animated bits are just.. so lame.

So as a break let's talk what else the special did to fill time. Loni Anderson sang the radio themes to Popeye and Little Orphan Annie. IN the former's case.. that's all you gets. No adventure, no high seas just her singing the popeye theme. We dont' even get a musical number from the popeye movie because it hadn't happene dyet. I want to hear bluto say i'm mean over and ove rand over again. I"m that desperate.

Annie DOES get the cast of the broadway show, a huge hit then and forever, to do two numbers, both iconic and both well performed: The first is I dont' Need Anything But YOu, the cute duet between Annie and Warbucks, and then of course Tommorow best sung by bill the cat.

But the kid they use here does pretty good herself. They have it sung at the only playground in budget for some reason, but they did their best.

We also get a truly batshit bumber about peopl eneeding their funnies, from reading them as they go down the fire pole to IN A MOVING CAR. Yes even serial murderers need their funnies as they mow down pedestrians. It's nature's way. I do relate to tha tboost you get from reading them every day, I do so and I have to use three diffrent sites: one for andrews mcmeel, one for king features, and one for the webbcomic kevin and kell. So I get it. Three's also a closing number I ran away form.

The final non torture bit is Johnny Fever from WKRP. Due to a news strike he's tasked iwth reading the comics and drmatically reads flash gordon. Howard Hessman is hilarous as always, the bit is fucking great, and it woke me up after several strip adaptions put me to sleep. good stuff.

Back to my cycle of torment, and we have a Blondie cartoon and one of the few animated bits in the specail that was intresting. And unintetionally hilarous as Blondie gets dagwood THIS haircrime done to him.

What makes it funny is that not only is this haircut too much even for the 70's, but Blondie LOVES it, as do the kids.. despite all three of them having never updated their styles. Granted Blondie's hair game is timeless, so I get her point but it's just a .. weird plot to pick for blondie.

Naturallyt his being blondie instead of forcusing on the problem of "his wife wants him to try a hair cut that makes him not feel himself" it's in part him worried tha this friends and co workers will laugh. I mean they will, it's as if Luke Skywalkers hair started to eat into his brain, but that shoudln't be your takeaway and him washing it out while Blondie's alseep solves nothing and isn't funny. "Haha he can't be honest with his wife and she's going to later cite this incident to thier marriage counclier". Granted I would ENTIRELY read Dagwood's hair causing a divorce between them, but i'm not sure that's an arc Blondie readers want. I do wnat reprints of golden age blondie as it apparently involved Dagwood having to get disinherited to marry blondie, getting drunk, and other soap opera stuff more intresting than Dagwood trying to single white female mark hamill. Huh now THAT'S a Disney + series i'd watch. get on it disney

The other really fun one is Marmaduke. This one's just kidna fucked up. Marmaduke want sto go sleep in the same bed with the kids, which can somehow fit all three and is adorable so I don't get why not, but the dad tries to make him go outside because that was the thing with dogs. It hasn't aged terribly with charlie brown because snoopy clearly likes having his own pad and the inside is larger than most mansions, let alone the brown house

And when the whole thing burned down in one of the more sobering strips in the series run

Charlie Brown dutifully helped him plan his new house

Honestly I could talk about Snoopy's house burning down all day but it's not what you came for. You came to hear me tell you how it relates to Marmaduke. My point is Marmaduke just has a regular ass Dog House, and just wants to sleep in bed. I get this was normal at the time, it used to be the norm that dogs woudln't sleep in bed.. but my Dog YOshi curls up on my mom' sbed every night and maddie, my other dog , only dosen't when she's not on her own bed restfully asleep as she is as I type this. what i'm saying is maybe just maybe forcing dogs to live outside at night was cruel jackassery and maybe letting the big old dog curl up at the foot of the bed or, if he prefers tucked in while old man bastard can sleep outside and think about his life choices. Also i'm shocked this wasn't the plot of either marmaduke movie. It's so perfect. One man's journey to be a better dog owner .. or Marmaduke repeadely hitting him in the nuts with a tennis ball machine and other various objects. I"m not picky. Also i'm not touching either of those films unless someone pays me the 15 dollars it'd take to comissoin it. I'll review plenty of garbage on my own time, but I have limits. Pete Davidson is very much a hard and fast one. Owen Wilson is fine though. We love owen in this house.. but even he can' save cgi marmaduke and we all know that.

Pogo also takes a bit from the then upcoming film I go Pogo.. a guy I don't know tries to take two passing critters for a ride using the old shell game.. only to have put something under every one. i'ts a nice joke and it works well, and the gorgeous claymation. Given it's both election based and based on a comic i'd like to know better, me reviewing that .. would still be 15 if anyone wants it but far less of my own personal hell. But i'm more likely to do that one on my own. Fun fact: pogo's election storyline's inspired bloom counties, which I will be covering this year or at the very least the 1984 one.

BC has some bit with a turtle. It sure does exist

Broom Hilda asks who the fairest in the land is and her mirror calls her second. She responds by breaking it. This bit.. was actually funny. I'm not sure Broom Hilda would be for me as it's main gag seems to be "Gee isn't a woman chasing men against their will funny" which

Same other way around or with non binary folks. But I did like this and her horning in on mike's close up

She looks like she's about to hit on him but adorably so and he looks just.. so done with it as he always is. I mean.. I can't have turned out worse than Mike's actual first marriage. his second is pretty ballin though.

Mama has her Son say that life is a song.. onlyf or her to sing about him neglecting him. Get it because guilt tripping is funny! This is apparently most of what Mama is.

Finally before our main event we have tumbleweeds with sexual harassment as some lady refuses to let tumbleweeds go. And that's not me being lazy that's his actual name. Though to it's creator's credit he retired rather than let it become "a zombie strip", so good on him.

Okay now for what you all came to see

Also garfield

Garfield's first aniamted special was MOSTLY worth the pilgramage here. While ti's only a few strips repeated, it's fascinating for just how diffrent it is from Here comes Garfield a few years later.

For starters the Fantastic Funnies used an early design for our faviorite cat, not the iconic entirely weird by this point earliest garfield but one more in between, not quite upright yet, but not nearly as realistic as day 1 garfield.

To the classic peanuts team of Mendelson and Mendez's credit they did a wondreful job, likely why they were chosen to produce the specials till the companies backing peanuts asked them to stop helping out rival specails, and this version of garfield heavily resembles what he was like in the strip this frame is based on

It's also telling how fast Jim Davis was evolving the special that by the time it aired Garfield had already changed his look up a bit, if still not fully to his more classic 80s look.

It's not a HUGE change, just a little thinner, with the bigger change being in how he sit's/stands

It's just a testament to how slowly but surely the character evolved in apperance over his first decade or so and part of what makes this intreresting: while the specials help chart this evolution, and helped cause it as Jim needed to draw Garfield with SKinnier legs for the opening dance number of here comes garfield, it's nice to have this bit of his evolution frozen in amber.

The voices behind the characters are intresting: to my shock Thom Huge ALWASY voiced john and basically only stopped doing it when he retired. Thom did voices for commericals and was an old frat brother of Jim Davis who Davis asked for help with this special. While the producers would recast huge for Here Comes Garfield, he sent them a tape and became THE voice of john in the same way Lorenzo Music became THE voice of garfield.

WHile that's weird enough... what makes this special stand out besides the earlier designs... is Garfield's Voice. It's not Lorenzo Music, who would DEFINE the character in my eyes and is THE garfield, no question, though Frank Welker and Bill Murray are admirable.. but Radio DJ and voice guy Scott Beach.

Beach is take is intresting as both Murray and Welker clearly take from Music, while Beach largely does his own thing. Instead of the dry, sarcastic bored tone Lorenzo perfected, Beach has that but it sounds more like Jean Shepard'ss narration in a christmas story. Shepard isn't bad but his voice for Garfield is less relaxed, mor ebooming and confident. It dosen't COMPLETELY fit and makes the short feel a tad weird.. but it's also hard to judge the voice as, like I said EVERY voice after took cues from Music. he left the perfect blueprint. The fact Chris Pratt isn't that dry, sarcastic , laid back voice the character has been defined by hasn't helped his case voicing the character at the time of this review. Beach does a good job, but he just didn't quite fit and it's hard to compare a 2 minute performance with dozens of hours worth of material from Music. Beach did a decent job, but he just wasn't the right guy for the part, simple as that. his voice just didn't fit Garfield's give no fuck nature that well.

Finally we have the specific strips adapted. nd the garfield wiki was a huge help here. Seriously fan wikis can have a bad rap but many are done by dedicated people who save me a LOT of work and do a lot of through research> Kudos guys, thanks for your help. So the wiki has each strip adapted. Excluding the "I have feet? " one we have

Not bad choices: they get all the garfiled bases: he dosen't like catching mice, likes food and Jon weight shames him a lot. Simple, quick and well done.

Overall the garfield shorts for this special are excellent. It's a short bit but it gets the character down and it's easy to see why, despite being the new kid on the block at only two years old at the time, garfield's the one who go ta specail out of the deal.

Now does he make the specail worth watching?

I mean if you like comic strip history like me, you'll get something out of it. There's a bit on the inductees into the hall of fame, but even then it's a long slog of interviews that are fairly short and shorts that are both short and tedious. The good bit here or there cannot save this.

Other than Garfield .. there really isn't much to write home about for the casual viewer or if your a fan of Peanuts and Doonesbury like I am, as both bits can be found elswhere. It's easier to either fast forward to the bit with a comic you like or find the garfield bits in their own little video, of which there are plenty. I'm glad I reviewed the special.. but it just hasn't aged well and probably wasn't that fun to begin with. Even as much as I ranted about how much I didn't know the strips.. i'ts still presented so dryly even if it had strips I liked more in it, it'd still be a bit of a slog. There's just not enough genuinely good stuff or loveable nonsense to keep this afloat. Skip the special but DO check out the early garfield stuff. It's brilliant.

Next Time: The first proper special as Garfield must save Odie from the pound.. after he grooves to Lou Rawls a bit. As is nature's way. Thanks for reading.

#garfield #peanuts #doonesbury #comic strips #comics #wkrp in cincinnati #doonebury #charles schulz #charlie brown #lucy van pelt #snoopy #hagar the horrible #blondie #wee pals #marmaduke #broom hilda #cathy

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ramp-it-up · 3 years

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Chris Evans

Imagines (RPF)

AdorkableChris777*

You meet Chris and don’t know it. What happens next?

Choices *

It’s the first weekend alone with your husband after childbirth. What do you choose to do? The choice is yours.

Don’t Touch My Hair*

Even though he’s your crush, Chris can run off at the mouth sometimes.

Shorts Story

Beauty turns into a beast when you see Chris in this shorts.

Sorry, Not Sorry*

Is someone going to be sorry they were a brat? Maybe. Maybe not.

Asks

Maëlle

A German exchange student catches Chris’s eye.

Easy *

It was absolutely necessary to write a CE drabble due to his piano thirst trap. How I Met Your Father universe.

Peek

You’re cooking up something good for Chris.

TikTok Challenge

You prank Chris.

Mountaintop

Chris takes you there.

Warm You Up

Chris says goodnight..

It’s Over

If you and Chris had just communicated, none of this would be happening.

Chubby Dumpling

Chris misses his chubby dumpling.

Work from Home

When Chris works from the kitchen table, you get to as well.

Kitty Kat

A Kitten is eagerly awaiting Chris when he gets home.

Santa, Daddy

Thanks to a bet with Scott, you are Santa’s helper for the night.

Series

Again Series

You do it again and again and again…

Bottle Rocket Series

Seb is your Daddy. But you also want Chris to be your Sir.

The Customer Series

Chris is a bit of a fuck boy. But everyone knows how he feels about you, his favorite interior designer

The Fit and the Feel Series

You’re caught between a rock and a hard body. Chris and Henry.

How I Met Your Father Series

Your kids ask you how you and their dad met. It’s a funny story.

The List Series (Dark! Chris)

Chris loves you, but he goes too far. How long until you find out, and will it be too late?

The Princess & Mr. Evans Series*

You interview Chris for your dissertation and it’s love at first sight. The journey to the altar and beyond is like a fairy tale.

A Starting Point Series

You are Chris’ Director of Diversity at A Starting Point. And he’s in love with you.

———————————————————

Chris Evans Characters

Andy Barber

The Bar AU Series

Barkeep! Andy + You = ❤️‍🔥. How does your fellow bartender Frank factor into the equation?

Andrew & Princess Muffin Series

You were Andy’s paralegal. Now you’re his everything.

Ransom Drysdale

The Minx Series

You are cute, smart, and have one man in your sights. Ransom Drysdale

Lloyd Hansen

The Perfect Shot

It’s just another day at work as Lloyd’s intern.

TEACH ME + R U SHY?

More than just candy hearts, Lloyd gets his just desserts.

Jake Jensen

Angel Baby Series

Jake finds his perfect girl, you, but you’ve already found him.

Great Minds

To Jake, protecting you as an asset means more than just keeping you safe.

Ari Levinson

Little One*

Dom Ari teaches you a lesson in front of his friends.

Ari Love

Ari is your superior for this mission. Will you both survive the training?

My Favorite Things

Ari is your best friend in town. Could he be a little more?

Personal Growth

Ari was learning a lot of things about himself in this leadership program. Thing #1: He was a simp for you.

Johnny Storm

Make it Hot

Johnny just wants to make it up to you.

Steve Rogers

Always and Forever Series

The team finds you. You find love with Steve. Then he leaves. And then you find love with Bucky. Will you make the right choices?

All the Stars Series (w/Clark Kent)

Angst. Smut. Cheating. Choices.

This Thing of Ours AU (w/ Bucky Barnes and Sam Wilson)

This band of brothers by choice are running a crime syndicate while managing the women in their lives. Let’s see if they survive love and the mob. Includes Try a Little Tenderness.

The Greatest Series

You are your superstar little sister, Aria’s, publicist. She sets you up on a blind date with Pilot Steve Rogers. You two get along like oil and water, but it’s fire and desire with just one bed when you all go on Aria’s honeymoon in romantic Italy.

Sugar is Sweet Series

Steve and Bucky. You’re caught in the middle but these two friends don’t share, they compete. Who will win? And will it be you?

The Sweetest Nectar (w/ Sam Wilson)

Steve is pining for you and the fact that you are Sam’s girl doesn’t mean a thing.

The Avengers

Shield High School Faculty AU

What happens when hot, horny teachers get together?

Those Who Seek Release

You hang out with the crew and decide to chemically unwind. What could happen?

108

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lovetorn · 3 years

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Life Was A Willow [Part 3]

Witch Hunter!Dream x Witch!Fem!Reader

Part 1 Part 2

Summary: It's always been hunters vs. witches, right? Not anymore.

Word Count: 3k+

Warnings for Part 3: swearing & cute fkn shit

A/N: the final part, i'm weak :,) anyways, enough sap, i hope you guys enjoyed this series as much as i did writing it. i've been working on it for a long ass time and it's finally finished. thank you for everything, the feedback etc. it means so so much !! i hope you guys like the final part even though it’s a little rushed !!!

“Are you sure this is a good way to do it?” Dream asks, nearly running into Y/n as he turns around. “I don’t want to force this idea on people, they won’t like it.”

The witch nods, pushing the flyers into his chest. “We’ve talked about this Dream; we’re not shoving it down their throats. They can choose how to act when they see the posters.”

Dream grabs onto the papers as Y/n backs away, spinning to collect her sunhat and basket. “Let’s go!”

Making their way from the abandoned cottage, which they made their own little space, they walk towards the castle and small surrounding village. Y/n and Dream walk closer than usual, their hands brushing lightly. Birds chirp and fly around them, their singing lifting the spirits of the pair that stroll below them.

“Have you told Sapnap yet?”

Dream rolls his eyes and sighs deeply at the mention of his best friend. “No. I know how he gets with shit like this, so, I guess he’ll have to wait like the rest of the kingdom.” Y/n nods silently in reply and looks up at the blue skies.

“What do you think the moon is thinking right now?” Her question confuses Dream. “In relation to what we’re doing, of course.”

“I’d imagine he’s happy that we’re doing it—we’re making peace, aren’t we?” His answer pleases Y/n as he hoped it would. He hasn’t really thought about it before.

“I agree! I talked with him last night and he told me good things are coming.”

Dream looks at her incredulously. “You talked to the moon?”

“Of course I can. I’m a witch. What else am I supposed to do when he sits there in the sky? Ignore him?” A small smirk plays on her lips. Dream is unsure whether or not she’s messing with him but chooses to believe her, considering everything he’s learnt recently.

They walk further, nearly entering the kingdom village when a grey bunny hops onto the path and Y/n’s eyes nearly pop out of her head. “Honey!” Her voice is dripping with it.

Dream furrows his eyebrows when he sees she’s speaking to the rabbit. “What? You can speak to animals now?”

The rabbit’s nose twitches while Y/n approaches it, its eyes glistening in the sunshine. “Yes.”

“Why don’t you tell me any of this? It’s cool.”

Y/n shrugs. “You never ask.”

Dream squints at her, watching as she runs her hand over the animal’s soft ears. He inches closer, catching the rabbit’s eye. Its body freezes at the sight of a human and Y/n coos, it’s okay, he’s my friend. Dream tilts his head and squats next to Y/n, reaching his hand out for her to take. Her fingers are gentle when she holds it, pulling him closer so he can pat the bunny. Its fur is softer than he thought and he melts when it stares at him with its big eyes. Awww, Dream breathes. He feels Y/n’s gaze on him before he blushes.

“Dream—”

Suddenly, the tranquil moment is cut with the kingdom bell and the bunny rushes away, ducking into a line of bushes. The pair jump at the sharp noise, Dream’s hand still sits softly in Y/n’s. He wonders what she wanted to say.

“We should go.” She whispers and Dream nods once, but neither one moves to leave. The sun beats down on his neck and Y/n’s hat sits sideways on her head, probably from when she ran towards the rabbit. Dream blinks and decides to leave it, she looks cute.

“Yeah, uh, let’s go.”

The walk through the gates goes smoothly, nobody suspects a witch amongst them as they walk in the crowd.

“Here.” Y/n points at a wooden lamp-post and Dream agrees. The first poster goes up and while they walk away, they hear mumbling from behind them. Craning his neck back, Dream sees people surrounding the poster already; some nod and some curse, but overall, it looks positive.

He leans down to Y/n’s ear. “I think people are going to show up.”

His breath on her ear and the rasp of his voice causes a shiver to go down Y/n’s spine. She turns her head to look at him and sees how close he is, and smiles. She hopes so.

—

“Citizens of Grogington, the war between magic kind and humans has gone on for far too long! Today, we will be presenting the idea of a truce between the two groups.”

Turns out, the entire kingdom showed up for Y/n and Dream’s proposal. The pair stand on a low podium in front of the castle and stare out into the sea of people. Dream spots Sapnap in the middle of the crowd, with the rest of the hunters, and could almost cry when he sees him smile and throw a thumbs up. Y/n stands next to him, her hand dangerously close to his. Her gaze drops to Wilbur who stands in the front row with Niki, despite the complaints from many people behind him—she nearly laughs at the height difference between him and the humans. But, Y/n feels a twinge of guilt when she watches him smile at her before he encourages her to continue.

The presentation continues and nobody leaves and everybody watches with intent. Y/n throws a glance at Dream while he’s explaining the truce and its outcomes. Her heart leaps into her throat when he notices and continues to turn his head to look at her too.

Although there will be a few people against the idea, the majority of the kingdom is keen on peace and that’s all they need to begin the revolution.

After the proposal, Dream helps Y/n off of the podium, her hand placed gently in his. “Dream!”

At the sound of his name, his real name, Dream smiles. George. There’s a patter of footsteps and then Dream is being jumped on by the Prince. Y/n giggles as she watches Dream wrap his arms around his best friend. “I can’t believe you would do this! You're crazy!”

Dream’s laugh is loud and Y/n wishes she could listen to it all day. Dream puts George’s feet back on the ground before he turns to her. “George, this is Y/n.”

Mischief swirls in the Prince’s eyes as his gaze lands on the witch. “Oh, I know. You’ve told me everything about her: the way her eyes look brighter in the moonlight and how her lips are the same colour as cherries—oomph.”

Dream darts his eyes at George, narrowly, his hand placed over his mouth. “Ha, ha, shut up!”

Y/n feels her cheeks heat up and she covers her smile with her palm. “That’s sweet.”

“That’s what he says about your laugh—stop!” George’s voice is muffled but Y/n still hears him and she gets giddy.

“Dream~” She sings. Dream’s cheeks are on fire and he swears the tips of his ears have burst into flames.

George still remains next to him. “Ok, I won’t embarrass you anymore, big man. You can remove your gross hand off my face now.”

Dream drops his arm and watches George hold his hand out for Y/n to take.

Y/n places her fingers in his and swoons when he brings her knuckles to his lips. Dream gets antsy when he notices Y/n giggle.

“Ok! That’s enough flirting, George.” Dream snatches Y/n’s hand from him and holds it by his side. George giggles from beside him.

“Dream, who doesn’t want to be kissed by the Prince?” She teases, reaching up to squeeze his cheek between her fingers. Dream rolls his eyes and swats her hand off his face.

“Dream!” Another voice interrupts them.

“Hey, Sap!” Although he’s excited to see his other best friend, Dream’s tone is wary. “What did you think of the presentation?”

Sapnap’s expression melts to one of awe. “Man, I loved it. I actually came over to apologise for everything I’ve said about it in the past and you know that I love you, and George, and I know I can be a bit of an idiot when it comes to things like this, but—” George slaps his shoulder.

“Ouch! Okay, okay. I’m sorry for being an entitled dick, and I fully support anything you want to do, Dream. You’re my best friend and I cannot let some outdated opinion be a burden to our friendship.”

Dream swears he feels his chest open up and admit the brightest light you’ve ever seen. His heart almost bursts at the sweet look on Sapnap’s face and tackles him into a hug. “Thank you, man.”

Dream unwraps his arms and sighs loudly. “Sapnap! This is Y/n, Y/n is this Sapnap.” Y/n raises her hand to wave at him, her smile beaming but mischievous.

“I know her already, she tied me to a tree,” He laughs, reaching his hand forward. Y/n giggles, shaking his hand. “It’s nice to meet you properly and not when you’re using your cool witch powers to lift me off the ground.”

Y/n nods, her smile still shining. Dream’s heart rate skips as he looks at her. Her face is like the sun. He could stare at her all day and not care about the risk of going blind.

“Yes, Snapmap. I can call you that now, we’re friends!”

The group collectively laugh and they bid goodbye to George and Sapnap. Y/n turns to Dream. “I’m so happy they’re on board with it.”

“Of course George would be. I’m a little surprised about Sapnap, but, nonetheless, I’m ecstatic.”

Y/n takes his hands and brings them up to her mouth. “I’m so happy, Dream.” She places soft kisses on his fingers and then his knuckles. He watches in awe as she does so.

“Hey, Y/n!” Their moment is cut short as Dream twists to see a tall man and a girl walking towards them.

“Wil! Niki!” She releases Dream’s hands and circles around him to embrace the pair in a hug. “Did you like it?”

Her voice wavers slightly and Dream picks it up. Niki nods excitedly. “Yes! Oh my gods, Y/n!”

Niki’s enthusiasm rubs off on Y/n and she almost forgets Wilbur is standing next to her, he’s so silent. She’s nervous about his response.

Looking up at Wilbur, Y/n sees a soft smile on his cheeks. He pulls her into a hug immediately and Y/n wants to cry. “Thank you.” He whispers.

“You’re welcome.” She murmurs into his ear, and his grip tightens around her. Y/n knows why he’s thanking her but doesn’t elaborate to the others when they pull apart.

“We just wanted to come to say hello before we went back home,” Niki says, raising her hand to wave at Dream.

“Oh! This is Dream,” Y/n motions towards him and Wilbur nods once in greeting. “He did most of this, you should be thanking him. I was simply there to observe.”

And although the other two don’t read deeply into the reply, Dream’s eyes cast down to Y/n at her suggestive comment. The pairs bid goodbye to each other and then Y/n spins back to him again.

“Observing, hm?”

A cheeky grin splits her face into two.

—

“Ready?”

“Ready.”

Y/n grasps Dream’s hand and stares up at the large double doors that lead to the Great hall in the castle. Placing his other hand on the door, Dream pushes. The doors swing open and on the other side of the room sits the King. The man looks large in his throne, his dark hair long and crown placed lopsided on his head.

The pair bow before him and then return to their usual heights. The King squints at them and then a smile breaks out. “Dream!”

The blonde lets out a laugh. “Good morning, your Highness.”

“Oh, stop with the titles. I’m James to you, young man.” The King waves his hand around. Dream exhales and steps closer, his hand coming loose from Y/n’s.

“I—We called this meeting to ask for your approval for the possible truce between humans and magical kind,” Dream appeals, holding his breath when he finishes. The King turns his chin up.

“And what has brought this on, Dream?” Dream sighs deeply and takes another step forward.

“I have recently learnt about some of my family history and it has changed my view. My views now pose the same as George’s.” He says apprehensively, fidgeting with his fingers. Y/n stands behind him, chewing on her lip in silence, confused about his recent learning. The King squints again, his glare hard.

“And why do you believe this is a good idea? Hm? What benefits will this bring the kingdom?” He seethes and Y/n screws her eyes shut. She wants to leave, she shouldn’t even be in the castle.

Dream fumbles his words before the witch speaks up. “Your Highness, I believe that peace between your kind and mine will—”

“You brought a witch into my castle?” The King yells incredulously. Dream winces and turns to look at Y/n. But he is surprised when he sees her with a neutral expression.

“Yes, he did. Because he knows that you won’t listen to a human on issues that are only a threat to you. Did you see the citizens of this kingdom when we proposed the idea to them? They were ecstatic, to say the least—”

“Enough. Dream, please enlighten me on the benefits, I’ve been waiting far too long.”

Dream glances at Y/n again and faces the King. He must propose points that appeal to him. “James, don’t you see? A truce between the kinds will be economically beneficial since you won’t have to pay for services that are only implemented to harm magical kinds, like hunters. And the wellbeing of the Kingdom will enhance greatly from the lifted stress of not having to worry about potential dangers—”

“Yes, but those potential dangers will now be inside the Kingdom walls.”

“I understand, James, but if there is peace, then those dangers won’t be a threat anymore.”

“Yes. All we want is peace.” Y/n says, her voice soft from where she stands. Dream steps backwards and reaches back for Y/n’s hand.

King James brings his hand up to rub his chin, his glare is still cold on Y/n. “Kids like you will be the death of me. Even my own son will give me a heart attack before I’m 50.”

Dream smiles. “So, that’s a yes?” The King sighs and drops his gaze to the floor.

“I guess it is. But, if there is any harm placed on my people, there will be bloodshed. Understood?”

Y/n looks up at Dream as they both grin. He looks down at her and their eyes shine with joy and tears.

“Thank you, Sir. I will make you proud.” Dream exclaims, his voice full of excitement and appreciation.

“You always make me proud, son.” The King smiles warmly at Dream before he nods. “Now, go, you have a Kingdom to celebrate with.”

The village roars with cheerful shouts and whistles. As cliche as it is, it's a perfect summer’s day, and it’s not too hot. Magical-kind had been wary at first, entering the kingdom grounds, but soon warmed up when the humans would throw arms over their shoulders and laugh with them.

“Let me down, you fucking crazy duck! Is that what you are? A fucking duck?” A whining voice yells, although there’s a twinge of joy in his words. Quackity has a cheeky smile on his face as he flicks his hand around, messing with some of the younger humans. One of them, named Tommy, has quite the mouth on him, which earns him up in the air, upside down.

His friend, Tubbo laughs from beside the wizard in question. Karl sits behind them, a spell-book in his lap, shaking his head when Tommy’s feet finally land on the ground. “Longer!”

“No~!”

“Tommy! Yes! You’re annoying, so this is what you get!”

The young boy groans again when he feels his body lift off the floor.

The village is alive and full of flashy, bright colours, but, upon the top of the hill in the distance, sits a couple.

The juice from the strawberry dribbles slowly down Dream’s chin. His cheeks blush as Y/n giggles and she reaches her hand out to catch the juice with her thumb, her cheeks heating up too.

The pair had decided their first date would be a picnic on the grass hill that overlooks the kingdom instead of attending the festival. Y/n brought a red and white checkered blanket and a vanilla cake, and Dream brought a basket of snacks and other desserts from the Castle. He had tried convincing Y/n that he didn’t overpack and that he ‘was just a hungry boy’, to which Y/n laughed and told him to shut up.

On their journey there, Dream had pulled a bunch of baby’s breath flowers from the basket he was carrying and shoved them in Y/n’s hand. The action made the witch giggle as she watched him blush. “Thank you, Dream. I love them.” She had said, smiling at him from behind the flowers—the sight made Dream’s heart leap.

Upon arrival, they set up their spot and sat down amongst the ankle-high grass and sparse wildflowers. The sun was light on their skin and the wind blew softly as the pair laid down and watched the clouds pass whilst talking about everything and nothing; Y/n would point out a cloud and say it looked like a goose, and Dream would disagree and say it was shaped like a cabbage, and then they would argue about how the other was wrong and vice versa for a while. They spoke of their childhoods and eventually, Y/n would bring out a book from who knows where and start reading to Dream—who was more than happy to listen to her talk for hours. The two moved from opposite sides of the blanket to right next to each other, Dream’s head on Y/n’s shoulder as she read.

Now, as late morning turns to late noon, the bright blue sky swirls into a fusion of pinks and oranges and then morphs into indigo as the sun dips beyond the horizon—a perfect end to a perfect date.

Dream drops his head to the floor in an attempt to hide his red face. The strawberry juice from Dream’s lips now stains Y/n’s thumb as she moves her hand to cup his cheek, and watches his eyes flutter closed. She traces his scar lightly and her gaze flickers to his lips.

“Y/n,” Dream whispers into the wind. Y/n almost doesn’t catch it. “You know how I told you I nearly didn’t make it when I was born.”

Y/n nods and remains silent as a sign for him to continue. “It wasn’t a miracle at all.”

“What do you mean?” She asks him, her voice soft too.

“My father was a wizard,” The news startles Y/n; she wasn’t expecting that. “And my mother told me that he died because he was defending us from magic, not that he was killed for having magic.”

“Dream…”

“So I just assumed that magic was bad because it killed my father—and I guess in a sense, it did, but not in the way I thought.” Y/n is speechless as she listens to Dream talk, although his voice remains just above a whisper the entire time.

“So that’s why you want the truce? So other children don’t lose a parent like you did?” Dream nods, an outline of a smile gracing his cheeks.

“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you earlier.”

“Dream, look at me,” She whispers. Dream lifts his head slightly to meet her eye, his enchanting eyes reflecting the orange and pink fire in the sky. She runs her hands down his neck and down to his chest.

“Dream,” Y/n mumbles again, her nose brushing Dream’s lightly. His heart beats quickly and he hopes she can’t feel it through his white buttoned shirt where her hands lay. “Thank you for trusting me enough to tell me that.”

Y/n tilts her chin up in an attempt to meet Dream’s mouth. He laughs breathlessly as their lips bump together, the kiss not really being a kiss yet.

“Just kiss me.” He teases, leaning further back.

Y/n sighs, her eyes closing in annoyance at his antics. “Dream, seriously. I want to kiss you.”

And soon their lips are meeting in a soft pash. There are no fireworks, no goosebumps; just airy headaches and the feeling of finally relieving the ever-growing anticipation of revelling in each other. Y/n smiles, her teeth clanging with Dream’s. He laughs again, pulling her body flush against his.

“I can’t believe it took me this long to make you mine,” He mumbles against her lips.

Y/n visibly cringes. “Gross.”

Dream giggles at her reaction and pushes his lips back onto hers. Y/n pulls away abruptly.

“Wait, does that mean you can do magic?” She asks, her eyes wide with wonder and curiosity.

Dream shrugs one shoulder. “I’ve never tried, but I’m sure if I got the right training from an amazing, gorgeous, intelligent teacher, maybe I could learn.”

Y/n scrunches her nose up and swats his shoulder. “Shut up.”

Dream laughs shortly before he dips his head back down to her lips, his knuckles brushing her cheek lightly. The wind around them picks up slightly and Y/n feels static on her skin before she opens her eyes, turning her head to see glitter falling from Dream’s fingers. “Oh my god.”

Feedback is always appreciated xx

#life was a willow fic #lwaw #dreamwastaken x reader #dreamwastaken imagine #dreamwastaken imagines #dream x reader #dream imagine #dream imagines #mcyt imagine #mcyt x reader #mcyt imagines #dream smp imagines #dream smp imagine #dream smp x reader #dream x fem!reader

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youreonlylow · 2 years

Note

Oooh please do tell more about this fic project of yours 👀

basically like a year and a half ago i got really into Lewis. Like i had watched it a lot growing up, having a dad who has most of morse on burned dvds, and started watching it chronologically for the first time. and thats when i first starting showing my head around the lewis tag on here. i think there has been like 5 episodes i fully hadnt seen or couldnt remember/probably fell asleep during, so lewis wasnt a new thing and hathaway was already one of my favourite tv characters

i started writing down notes in my phone as i was watching each episode and trying to create some analysis of hathaway based on canon things and just my own little queer and neurodivergent lense. (the notes is titled gay hathaway moments but quickly evovled into much more)

im not a big fic writer but lewis and especially hathaway and his elusive character has taken up so much of my brain space but im having a hard time like organising my thoughts and putting words on them other than the vague idea of who hathaway is and what i think could be his canon implied backstory. i was looking for like a big fic that had this comprehensive feeling to it and there wasnt much that fully scratched the itch though i have read and reread many great fics and im not gonna lie at first i wasn’t reading lewis/hathaway fics and that itch has been much more satisfied in that tag but i suppose it took a while for me to come around to ship them enough to read fics about them as i started out prefering thinking of what a canon queer relationship for james could look like but there are very few james/ocm or other somewhat canon male character fics. im still kinda in both trenches about what i prefer, and im still not sure what direction my fic wil go. however, my little notes on hathaway did very much include moments in the show i thought alluded to some lewis/hathaway stuff even if it was onesided so its not like i was blind. i dont know, im a little ambivelant about it i suppose.

ANYWAY sorry for the rambling i very rarely get prompted to talk about Lewis and especially hathaway lol

my fic didnt really start taking shape until very recently when i found this song and i was deep in a lewis watch at the time so immediately my brain started connecting the song to moments that fit what we have somewhat been told or canon things (eventhough idk how much of the song and the rest of the album is actually applicable the vibes are great) so i started having this story in my head i guess including how the story would unfold and this scene of james singing this song and lewis showing up (i thought about this scene a lot and it made me very unsure whether or not to write their ship in this fic like i hadnt planned it and then suddenly my brain was just like well what if)

I think the fic will be kinda heavy and im not sure if i have the skill set to fullly realise the idea that i have but im enjoying it a lot so far and even have some other hathaway centric fics in mind to satiate the need for those plots and ideas without bringing them into what i hope will be very close to the fanon and my personal interpretation of events (i can already tell its gone a little off the rails but thats okay)

(other hathaway fic i really want to write is one where he goes through psychosis following the creveceour case from lewis’ pov bc i felt like maybe it deserved its own fic and attention and im not sure i could make it work in the master fic without taking heavy liberties regarding canon)

I have written a little now but since that initial idea its just grown a lot and im super overwhelmed with how to structure it and how to include the songs and if i should just do one long fic or like a series of fics but i want to have a lot done for it before i find out what works best.

also im really bad at having a consistent or concrete idea of character or how people behave and what they think etc, which is very annoying when youre trying to write a fic that relies heavily on that basically it needs to be extremely wild for my brain to go thats out of character for x person both in real life and in fics lol

TL;DR: i have lewis brainworms and am going to hopefully write a big hathaway analysis in the form of a fic and i am very stressed but also very excited

sorry for any typos im writing on my ipad keyboard as i was actually just about to sit and watch lewis on it before i decided to check tumblr (i am on the first episode of the last season and im very emotional)

#itv lewis #james hathaway #mine #master fic project

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gofancyninjaworld · 4 years

Note

Why do you think Genos isn't weak? I agree that he can fight monsters but he won't stand a chance against strong monsters. He has been with Saitama for the longest time but he never learned anything. His naivety is the reason why he is weak, he is still consumed by the "normative awareness". His reaction to Amai Mask's transformation is a proof of that. His mindset never grew. He respects Saitama but does not understand him, which is why he is weak.

Please let me apologise in advance. First, this is long. Second, I do have a lot of thoughts.

Yeah, But

There isn’t a character in this series where the fanbase disagrees with the writer so deeply as this guy. When interviewed, ONE insouciantly said ‘Genos is rather strong, even for a Class S hero,’ and fans went, ‘huh? You could have fooled us!’ It’s not without cause. No matter how well his fights go, ONE always makes sure that we can append an asterix to it, that we can go yeah, but*

Right from the get go, every victory is downplayed. He thrashed Armored Gorilla, but we had no idea how strong Armored Gorilla was. Not for many, many chapters, until a much-shrunken, unarmored Armored Gorilla killed a tiger-level monster with one punch. He clears a city and defeats two troublesome demon-level monsters in a matter of minutes? Yeah, but look at the state of his arms and oh! see, see, he just got flattened by that other monster! Bang needs to save Garou from his clutches? Yeah, but what if Garou was well? He’s turning monster after monster into Cubist expressions without getting a speck of blood on him? Yeah, but it’s not like we can see what’s going on – the camera pans everywhere else. He does the unbelievable against Elder Centipede? We start going wow, followed quickly by – yeah but the monster regenerated, he’s fated to always lose. He destroys G-5 without effort? Oh My GAWD! The Honour of Atomic Samurai [1] Has Been Besmirched! (me: huh how does that follow? No, don’t explain – I do understand. Because Genos is seen as weak, if he does what another character couldn’t, then it’s seen as a disgrace to the other character, not an achievement for him.)

battle without honour – if he beat Garou, then he’s a bully, if he didn’t, then he’s a wimp

Of course, the converse is also true. If Genos is having a bad time, the camera lingers in 4K with extra slow-mo. And if the action switches, like when he went from struggling against G-4 to working out how to shut the robot’s lasers down and pull it into punching range, the camera pans away, returning only to feast on the grisly aftermath.

The final clincher is Genos himself, who never reacts with the slightest sense of celebration or triumph no matter how well a fight goes. His lack of joy in fights is something that ONE has emphasised to Murata. Being able to celebrate with characters is half the joy of watching them fight.

by contrast, hell yeah, Metal Bat! The story leaves no room for doubt that Metal Bat’s to be found awesome. And he is! :)

The reason I go into all this is that I get it: Genos is presented to us in a way that gives us cause to doubt his strength. In that, he’s like the opposite of Saitama, who is presented to us so we can have no doubt as to his strength, but to the internal audience in a way that keeps raising doubts in their minds.

But Genos is strong. He’s physically very strong, very fast, and versatile. And he’s far less fragile than he is popularly made out to be. There is no reason he shouldn’t be able to take on very strong monsters, subject to match up (like almost every other hero [2]). However, ONE will make damn sure that Genos does not get to appreciate how much more powerful he has grown. What’s it going to be? What’s it going to take this time to knock down Demon Cyborg? Are several cadre going to attack him at the same time? Or will the super-insane monster that looks like the lovechild of Smaug, better-looking Sauruman and a hydra perched at the top of the mile high tower do him in first? What’s going to *keep* him down? Place your bets, folk: the outcome is sure to be gruesome.

Which actually brings me directly to addressing your assertion: “…but he won’t stand a chance against strong monsters.“ Because it presupposes that Genos MUST be weak, any monster he defeats can’t possibly be strong. A more honest rephrasing would be ‘I’m not prepared to accept that any monster that Genos could defeat is strong.’

No mental growth? Really?

That’s the physical part. Let’s go onto mentality. Annoyingly, I have to treat the manga and webcomic as separate entities at this point. If you like the detail, I’ve written an extensive side-by-side comparison essay: link. You can skip it for this answer. :)

You know what would have made me think Genos weak? If Saitama’s fears for what might be happening to him the morning he caught up with Garou had come true:

Before Elder Centipede showed up, Genos had told Garou that he’d finally begun to understand what Saitama had been saying to him about strengthening his spirit. And then ONE put that to the test when he put Genos in the worst pinch the latter had ever been in: chopped in half and about to be devoured by a monster, with the only heroes watching those who’d proved impotent [3] to do anything to the monster. Instead of giving up the way he had against Mosquito Girl, Genos dug deep and not only saved himself, but counter-attacked and burned the monster from stem to stern. That is excellent: there is no place for a character who cannot find self-efficacy in a pinch.

Without doubt, Genos has further to go, but in the manga it is wilful blindness to claim that he hasn’t developed mentally.

Now, let’s move onto the webcomic.

Even though ONE has done far less with his character in the webcomic than he has in the manga, Genos is back and fighting when most of his classmates are still rolling on the ground, unable to come to terms with losing. There is a real strength to getting up again and moving forward.

It’s not that Genos doesn’t have any doubts: he does. From his crushing realisation that he had made a mistake in giving up his human body to asking if he can really become stronger by changing his parts, Genos is very aware of a sense of stagnation and appears very worried by something. But still, he’s not giving up and he’s not stopped looking to make progress.

even as Saitama despairs of being able to help, he cannot fault Genos for his determination

Still, why cheer for a loser?

There’s a real cognitive dissonance in fans who praise to the high heavens and write as inspirational Saitama’s words to keep trying and moving forward, no matter what, and yet are happy to mock Genos for doing exactly that.

There’s no honour for you if you laugh at characters taking Saitama’s advice

It’s amazing. Does anyone imagine that before Saitama became too strong, he never failed? Really? Saitama himself will disagree with that! Sometimes success looks like reaching the summit of a mountain, but often, it’s only visible in the rearview mirror. We saw it took Saitama a long time to finally accept that yup, he was just the strongest.

Something I came to realise a while back, people say they love seeing struggle, but real fights don’t sell well in mass media (yes, I have more extensive thoughts on this, here). We like the struggle, but we want the assurance that the underdog has something in their favour that will guarantee that we’re backing a winner. At one level, we know we’re just watching *how* Garou is going to succeed… at least until Saitama body-checks him to great dramatic effect.

Goodness knows that everything is arranged against Genos and success. I’m sure you’ll have no trouble recounting most of them:

His lack of a biological body to train up.

His dependence on a mechanical body with its set in stone limitations.

His dependence on the cleverness and resources of others.

His lack of innate talent or heritage (and if he had any, they’ve long since been binned).

His stubborn persistence on a pathway we’re sure cannot possibly succeed.

His mentality, which is getting better, but isn’t there yet.

His persistent psychological problems that put him at high risk of turning into a monster instead.

The unresolved mysteries surrounding him, which make lots of fans think there’s a devastating revelation at hand from which he cannot recover.

And oh, he’s not the most likeable or relatable character out there. It shouldn’t be a factor, but it totally is.

And yet, Genos hasn’t stopped moving forward. No idea how far he’ll get, but so far, Genos has not set himself a limit to the number of times he’s willing to get himself up and try again. Not only that, he’s raised his sights higher, not lower.

For that and more, I’m not only happy to call Genos strong, but I’m willing to follow along with him however far or short his journey ends up being.

The risk of heartbreak is worth the excitement of seeing a real fighter working out his uncertain destiny.

no one can accuse him of lacking ambition. Gambatte!

Asides

[1] I know there’s a meme going round about Atomic Samurai being weak, but it’s as much in jest as the one about King being strong. Anyone believing Atomic weak has piss-holes for eyes.

[2] There’s a reason Phoenixman highlights four heroes in particular – Blast, Tatsumaki, Metal Knight and King (Saitama). They’re the heroes who are so strong that they’ve broken out of the tyranny of match up. Everyone else has something they can’t deal with.

[3] You’re calling two old men impotent? Have you no shame?! In general, no, I haven’t much shame. In this specific instance, it is entirely warranted.

#OPM #meta #asks #replies #Genos #long answer #fandom #aren't you sorry you asked? :)#the trouble with feats is that it makes one very easily led by the presentation #if Genos gets what he wants and stays human #especially if he grows strong #just watch how many people will jump on the bandwagon of 'always having been a fan'#and will look for inspiring quotes to put up #I'm only slightly cynical why?

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ellynneversweet · 4 years

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⭐️?

In reference to this post, which it took me fucking ages to find again. Thank you! And I’m so sorry for taking so long to reply — I realised that what I wanted to talk about was what I was in the middle of writing, and then I couldn’t find the original post FML.

For my free choice, I’m going to carry on about everything that gets broken (so far) in A Pillar I am of Pride, and why including literal babies as characters in fic is real fucking hard (ie they have next to no character or plot agency), so without further ado, may I present:

Stains and Spills and Smashed Pots, Oh My!

Right, so, Pillar started out as something along the lines of ‘five times the Darcys and the Rushworths had dinner together, and one time they didn’t,’ but because I am bad at sticking to a plan, it evolved into something slightly looser, and then I decided what I really wanted to do was write a something with a very formal and elaborate grammatical structure that was, on the face of it, about a bunch of posh, mostly dignified adults having a series of dull and unpleasant parties, and smuggle in a series of smutty jokes and wink-wink-nudge-nudge moments about which of the characters are getting it on (or failing to) with whom. To that end, everything I can think of gets to be a metaphor, and, by the way, looking back I’m slightly pissed that in the opening scene I missed a trick and wrote the Darcys buttering toast instead of muffins.

So far the list of smashed, stained, and broken items goes:

Item: Mr Darcy’s ornamental orange tree in a chinoiserie pot, and (nearly) his gigantic hallway mirror. Damage: the former is tripped over by Mr Rushworth while blind drunk, and the latter he catches himself on. All of this is scene-setting ‘rich people showing off’ decor, and what this does on a literal level in-fic is aggravate Elizabeth and Darcy, who do not appreciate their stylish, comfortable home being smashed up by an oafish guest. On another level, it’s building on canon!Darcy’s associations with gardens and gardening, being someone who creates and produces within the community. On the jokey metaphor level, orange blossom is associated with marriage, and (smashed) mirrors with bad luck. The Rushworth marriage isn’t going to last, and they’re going to cause some stress to their married neighbours.

Item: Elizabeth’s evening outfit, and probably her dignity. Damage: stained by leaky breasts as a result of startled-awake-and-crying Darcy baby The cherry on top of the ruined evening. Elizabeth spends the evening watching half her guests delving into a previously unknown family feud and in the process accidentally insulting the other half, then finds out her husband is, unexpectedly, completely wasted (along with five other increasingly-less-decorous gentlemen, two of whom are her overnight guests while the others are theoretically responsible for getting their female family home safely after dark in an city and era not known for being particularly safe) and ends up trying to resolve everything in the middle of a wardrobe emergency while comforting a distressed baby. On the metaphorical level, the point is this: everyone’s body is betraying them. The resident drunks are telling, or at least alluding to, deep dark secrets, and generally making smutty jokes, and Elizabeth, who is trying very hard to be Mrs Darcy v1 (dignified society hostess with the mostess) instead ends the evening as Mrs Darcy v2 (frustrated, upset and hormonal young mother).

Item: Mr Bennet’s letter to Elizabeth, in which he probes her opinions on Maria Rushworth and Henry Crawford. Damage: squirted by breastmilk when Darcy toddler picks a fight with Darcy baby during breakfast. This part is where I got stuck for ages. The Rushworths (Mr and Mrs) have seriously offended Elizabeth, who is a champion grudge holder, but she needs to continue to be around them on some level without overtly influencing the overarching Mansfield Park plot, in order for the fic to progress. Maria in particular has insulted Elizabeth’s parenting, so it makes sense to bring the children in. Only problem is: they’re babies. There’s a limit to what you can do with characters who are babies. In this case, they get to be useful metaphoric sounding boards for the actions and beliefs of the adults around them. Elizabeth is in this scene (and the fic more generally) meant to be set up as Maria’s foil. Elizabeth has a successful-by-regency-standards marriage, which means money, respected social status, and production of a (male) heir and spare. That she gets on with her husband is a cool bonus. So, on the metaphoric level, the kids are representative of the key regency gentlewoman KPI: legitimate fertility (and, by extension, legitimate sexual activity). Elizabeth has children, Maria doesn’t (yet), which puts Elizabeth up a peg on the social pole. Also, Mansfield Park is, among other things, heavily focused on siblings fighting with each other and older siblings in particular fucking things up for their younger siblings. The Darcy kids are having a playful wrestle, not trying to destroy each other’s lives and inheritances — the worst that happens is that Darcy baby gets his breakfast interrupted — but it’s a chibi reflection of the Bertram and Crawford siblings arguing with each other. On a jokey level — a bit of stray bodily fluid gets squirted onto a sheet (of paper), and literally stains Maria’s name. It’s crude, but hey.

Item: Broderie Anglaise table runner. Damage: ripped as a result of Darcy toddler playing racetracks on it with a toy horse. The table runner was originally Elizabeth’s sleeve, but that got changed because it didn’t quite flow, scene-structure wise. Darcy toddler is busy practising being a gentleman’s heir, which for a three year old in a century where hotwheels haven’t been invented yet, means playing with a toy horse. This carries on from the previous two incidents, but it basically boils down to Darcy toddler (and absent Darcy baby) being physical, living proof of Elizabeth having a sex life. Ripping a bit of white lace with a miniature Trojan horse is, again, probably a bit crude, but it is meant to reinforce the previous points made about married (prospective) mothers whose bodies conspire to produce proof of just what(/whom) they’re doing.

Item: baby rattle. Damage: Darcy baby throws it out of his pram, and eventually has his toy-chucking privileges taken away by Elizabeth after it gets dropped in something nasty. Small babies like to drop and throw stuff, which, I am assured, is a normal part of child development that works around concepts like figuring out how their hands/gravity work and engaging in trust exercises with their carers. Darcy toddler — Edward — and Darcy baby — Richard — are pretty deliberately named after Elizabeth’s decent, respectable Uncle Gardiner, and Darcy’s witty and sensible bestie/cousin Colonel Fitzwilliam, who got the standard fandom first name this time round. Darcy baby takes after his (wilful) mother. In canon, pre-fic, Elizabeth Bennet, country girl next door, does a fair bit of damage by failing to consider the consequences of her actions. Obviously, at this point, Darcy baby is...a baby...and a toy accidentally thrown into a pile of horse manure is not, say, a ruined housemaid or pile of gambling debts, but grown up Richard Darcy, wealthy and charming second son of a very important family, exists in potentia as the sort of problem young man that turns up over and over again in Austen (George Wickham, Tom Bertram, Henry Crawford etc). His parents, who are all too aware of what it means to let a man in that social position regard himself as untouchable, are making a point of teaching both their sons that their tiny baby actions have tiny baby consequences. Which leads to 6 and 7:

Item: A red ball. Damage: the ball, offered by Mary Crawford after Richard has had his rattle taken away, meets the same muddy fate. This whole scene was structured around Mary getting to say ‘boys will be boys.’ Mary Crawford is a perennial fave of mine, but I do have one problem with her, and that is her blaming Fanny for Henry’s part in ruining Maria’s life. Mary, who has just been asked not to encourage Richard throwing his toys, goes ahead and does just that. She’s been raised with Henry, and it shows — she sees nothing wrong with indulging privileged kids and encouraging thoughtless behaviour. Darcy baby here also serves as a stand-in for his adult namesake, Colonel Fitz, another second son, whom Elizabeth is considering attempting to throw together with Mary. Mary is playful, charming, and fascinating, but possibly not very reliable. And, of course, because the original sin metaphor is inescapable in western culture, the toy she offers in this show of defiance is red, round, and chewable.

Item: Elizabeth’s redingote. Damage: drooled upon by Darcy baby In keeping with the Elizabeth-as-Maria’s foil theme, Elizabeth suffers a (very minor) public disgrace, and her various female companions attempt to address it. Georgiana Darcy suffers an acute case of fremdschamen, and immediately informs Elizabeth of the issue before attempting to fix it but becoming overwhelmed, Anne Wentworth actually does fix it quietly and without a lot of fuss, Julia Bertram is completely ineffectual, and Mary Crawford, after ignoring what was going on right in front of her eyes and letting things progress past where they should have been, tries to cover it up by using the gentleman culprit as a shield, and relying on him to do something he is absolutely not going to do, ie, sit still (Not suggesting that Darcy baby is at fault or malicious — he’s just the unfortunate teething stand-in for Mary’s complicity in adult!brat Henry’s bad behaviour).

#my fic #my writing blather #asks #a pillar i am of pride #for the record all the Darcy children will grow up to be nice and responsible people #they're my OCs I do what I want #maybeindigo

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enbouton · 6 years

Text

Better Call Saul Rewatch, Part 7/30: Guilty As Sin

Bingo (Season 1, Episode 7)

Written by Gennifer Hutchison / Directed by Larysa Kondracki

If someone asked me “I want to get into Better Call Saul, what’s a good episode to start with?”, I would tell them “START AT THE BEGINNING and don’t skip anything!!!”, but I would also be tempted to say “Bingo”. It has everything: Chuck and Jimmy together, Kim at work, sweet McWexler moments, inept criminals, Jimmy charming the elderly, a What’s Mike Doing?™ sequence. It’s poignant and heartfelt and makes you feel for our long-suffering protagonist as he’s thwarted once again, but there are notes of hope and optimism too.

Having said all that, it feels weird to pivot and point out that the episode opens with a shot that quite clearly frames Jimmy as a wanted criminal:

Irate Abbasi comes for his notebook, which Jimmy claims to have stumbled upon in the parking lot. Abbasi isn’t buying it, but he can’t prove the theft, any more than he can prove that Mike is the killer he’s after. He leaves after delivering Mike a breathtakingly cruel parting shot: “Hopefully whatever you are didn’t rub off on the rest of your family.” Mike takes it on the chin.

Sending Jimmy away, Mike talks with Sanders, who you get the feeling knows exactly what happened that night in Philadelphia. He says that if Stacey has nothing to tell them, that ends it. He’s not unsympathetic: a lot of people thought that Hoffmann and Fensky had it coming. His younger colleague just needs to learn that “some rocks you don’t turn over”. The world isn’t as black and white as Abbasi would like it to be.

A chrysalis hangs from a leaf in the foreground as Jimmy drives up outside Chuck’s house. He finds Chuck outside, attempting to build up his tolerance to EMFs. After what happened, he says, he has to find a way to get better; it’s a rare, pure moment of hope, and it energises them both. Jimmy brings in boxes of case files, claiming lack of room in his office. He just needs to fill out the 413s on some wills, he says. “You mean 513s,” Chuck corrects him. A deliberate error to entice Chuck? Either way, he takes the bait, and Jimmy watches him through the peephole as he starts rifling through the files.

At a palatial office building, Kim and Jimmy explore a vacant suite. Huge and bright, it could not be more dissimilar to his cramped nail salon digs. “It’s time to invest in myself,” Jimmy says, using the language of self-improvement again. “Gotta look successful to be successful, right?" But he’s saving the very nicest room, the corner office with the sweeping views, for her.

I like the handling of Jimmy’s romantic gesture here. Kim is genuinely touched by it, but her attachment to HHM isn’t something that she can just shake off, nor is she ready to change the course of her carefully planned career. (This is also the first scene that refers to HHM having put Kim through law school and the debt she owes them.) Noting his disappointment, she defuses the awkwardness by saying she wants to see the kitchen. Jimmy lingers in the empty corner office, looking crestfallen.

At HHM, Craig and Betsy sit hand in hand. Kim is outlining a plea deal she’s arranged for them. Betsy hates the very word “deal” (”a deal is what they got O.J.!”) Kim tries the word “arrangement”: sixteen months in prison (down from 30 years) as long as the money is returned. “But there is no money,” Betsy says. Kim— who stays patient and professional despite her obvious frustration— reminds them that if they go to trial, Craig will most likely end up in prison for decades. She asks them to consider their children, “seeing their dad through bars on visiting day”. Betsy coolly tells her that she’s fired.

Howard blames Kim for this, which is the kind of thing you might think would account for a lot of why Jimmy seems to hate him so much.

Called away from the bingo game he’s officiating (the bingo machine on this show always sounds like a pot of boiling water about to spill over), Jimmy meets the Kettlemans at Loyola’s. The moment where the server comes over with coffee and Betsy waves them away just as Craig reaches out his mug is just perfect. The Kettlemans want to hire him, with certain stipulations: zero jail time and no deal. Jimmy, reluctant from the outset, tries to convince them to go back to HHM (sweetly, he adds “and apologise to Ms. Wexler”), but they won’t budge. “If there were any money, there would have to be a full accounting of it,” Betsy tells him. “Every penny.”

(“All of it,” Craig chimes in, after Jimmy has got the message. “That includes the $30,000…” / “He knows, Craig.”)

At HHM, Jimmy finds that Howard has evicted Kim from her office and sent her to the unseen east wing, the “cornfield”. We get a gorgeous repeat of one of ep. 1’s best shots:

In defeat, Kim is wry. They discuss the hopelessness of the case. No deal is possible without the money. Back in his office, Jimmy rifles through legal texts (one copy of the New Mexico Statutes is open to the page headed “Embezzlement”), then looks up. Toward the ceiling.

Mike is up to something. In a lovely, deft, unhurried sequence, he sprays a stack of cash with some substance, puts it on the back of a remote-control car in the Kettlemans’ yard, then retreats to the back wall with his transistor radio and eats apples off a nearby tree while listening to baseball. Several apple cores later, Craig retrieves the money. After the Kettlemans have gone to bed, Mike enters the house and uses a blacklight to follow traces of fluorescent dye to a compartment where they’ve stashed the money. Later, Jimmy ruefully adds the $30,000 he’d stashed in his ceiling to the pile. He’s doing “the right thing”, he tells Mike, making air quotes.

In the morning, Jimmy goes to the Kettlemans’ house— interestingly, he’s back in his dark brown double-breasted suit here, after an episode and a half of Matlock linen— and confronts them. They have to take the deal; the money is on its way to the DA’s office. “Criminals have no recourse,” he quotes Nacho. They could report the bribe he took, but that would implicate Betsy as well as Craig. Jimmy does twist the knife just a bit with the reference to “inter-prison visitation”, but then Craig entreats Betsy to think of the kids, and she breaks down and sobs. The show invites us to marvel at Betsy’s wilful blindness to reality, but when she confronts it at last, it’s not pretty.

Jimmy returns the Kettlemans to HHM, where Kim mouths “thank you” at him through the open elevator doors. It’s a bittersweet victory, though: without their bribe, Jimmy can’t pay for his new office any more. Even the suit he’s wearing reflects that he’s back where he was pre-Kettlemans. Alone in the large, airy suite, he kicks the door repeatedly and cries. Then his phone rings; he composes himself. “Law offices of James M. McGill, how may I direct your call?"

Misc.

“As you well know, there is a 60-kilovolt transformer 200 metres south-southwest of my front yard." I love Chuck because he’s a nuanced, sympathetic, complicated character and also because he says things like this.

Jimmy wants a cocobolo desk. He doesn’t know what it is, he just likes saying it.

For those keeping track of colour symbolism, Betsy wears a bright coral suit to their meeting with Kim; Craig wears pale pink, literally a watered-down version of Betsy’s colour. Later, orange features in both Craig and Betsy’s clothing:

As the Kettlemans hurry out of HHM, you can hear Betsy telling Craig “don’t look back, honey. Always look forward. Always in life.”

Craig and Betsy aren’t sure what elder law is. “Maybe if we were older...” Craig muses.

Timeline: a few days in early to mid July, 2002

Music

"Tune Down” by Chris Joss (2009), as Mike steals the money back

References

Cracker Barrel (hey, I didn’t know what it was until I visited the U.S.) is a Southern-style, country-themed restaurant chain where the front porches are decorated with rocking chairs.

Guy Lombardo, one of Jimmy’s bingo references, was a big band leader and member of the Royal Canadians.

Mrs. Landry’s cats are named after Oscar Madison and Felix Ungar, the lead characters in The Odd Couple (play, film and TV series).

The 25th Hour is a 2001 novel about a man’s last day of freedom before imprisonment for dealing drugs. The reference may or may not be anachronistic; the film adaptation was released in December 2002, a few months after the events of the episode take place. Ned and Maude Flanders, meanwhile, are Homer Simpson’s relentlessly cheerful Christian neighbours.

< PREVIOUS EPISODE: FIVE-O > NEXT EPISODE: RICO

#bcs rewatch #better call saul

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my-arya-underfoot · 7 years

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Debunking the Sansa-Lyanna Parallels

For whatever reason, the Lyanna = Sansa interpretation has been getting increasingly popular in the fandom. There’s this growing theory that Sansa and Arya are both equally like Lyanna and represent the different sides of her. In the extreme, there’s arguments Sansa is actually more like Lyanna than Arya.

“Arya and Sansa represent two faces of Lyanna.” “Denying one is actually denying Lyanna’s story in complete.” “Sansa’s romantic soul and Arya’s wild nature.”

Which, honestly drives me crazy – because you have to twist all three women out of character to justify the parallels.

There are way too many Lyanna/Arya parallels to explain here. If anyone wants a summary here are some good ones. But tbh, it’s not even something you need meta for – the books are incredibly explicit about the parallels, from their personalities (“wilful”), Stark-ness (wolf blooded), skills/interests (sword fighting and riding) and appearance (Northern beauties). Ned, Harwin and Bran all compare them outright.

Meanwhile, here’s the one explicit Lyanna/Sansa comparison: “He could still hear Sansa pleading, as Lyanna had pleaded once.” – Ned, AGoT.

Btw, this is not an anti-Sansa meta. Sansa has multiple parallels to other characters and inherits traits from many family members. (Ned, Catelyn, Jon, Sandor, Dany, Lysa, Cersei, Littlefinger, Brienne etc.) And there’s obviously overlap in characters she and Arya share connections with. But Lyanna Stark is not one of them. This is a debunking of the general Lyanna = Sansa evidence (book based).

Sansa/Joffrey = Lyanna/Rhaegar

1. Sansa was blinded by love for Joffrey, Lyanna was blinded by love for Rhaegar

A. Don’t know how anyone missed this but – we don’t know the full Lyanna/Rhaegar story. The whole point of the event is how murky it is. We can't assume it was as simple as Lyanna being blinded by "love" Rhaegar and losing all common sense like Sansa did around Joffrey. That’s one of many interpretations. It could have been about the prophecy, closer to a straight kidnapping, Rhaegar being the one blinded by love, Lyanna running away by herself initially. Using the most unreliable story in the entire series as a basis for this theory is headscratching.

B. Lyanna is presented as perceptive and realistic about men, not idealistic. From actual quotes: Lyanna “Robert will never keep to one bed.” Lyanna “love is sweet dearest Ned, but it cannot change a man’s nature”?? That girl was blinded by infatuation for Rhaegar? Blinded in the way Sansa you-literally-tried-to-kill-my-sister-in-front-of-me -but-I-repressed-it-to-keep-my-fairytale-alive, was by Joffrey? Doesn’t line up.

C. A far better comparison to Sansa/Joffrey is Lyanna/Robert. Both Sansa and Lyanna were faced with marrying a young, handsome noble who was friends with the family and would give them status and a comfortable life. Sansa was overjoyed and Lyanna was unhappy. Both were faced with unpleasant truths about their betrothed: Joffrey was a monster and Robert was unfaithful. Sansa, the romantic rewrote events, idealized Joffrey and convinced herself he was wonderful and she loved him. Lyanna was clear-eyed, cynical and stated the facts. Completely opposite reactions.

D. Fun fact. What character saw Joffrey for what he was, is good at reading people's true character and isn't blinded by looks or status? Arya.

2: Both Sansa and Lyanna fell in love/had romances with Princes

We’ll put aside the question marks over R/L. Let’s say it’s a straight love story. It’s still starkly different from Joffrey and Sansa.

A. Sansa/Joffrey was an arranged marriage – Rhaegar/Lyanna was a forbidden affair. For most of the time Sansa was “in love” with him, Sansa’s relationship with Joffrey was fulfilling expectations of what she should be doing. Only at the eleventh hour did Joffrey become "forbidden.” Meanwhile, Lyanna and Rhaegar fell in love while they were both betrothed/married. It was always a rebellion against acceptable behaviour. Again, Lyanna/Robert is a much better parallel to understand the characters.

B. Even if R/L was a love story…then the argument is Rhaegar did love Lyanna and it was mutual. Sansa and Joffrey wasn’t mutual because he certainly never loved her.

C. Apart from being Princes I’m still waiting on similarities between Joffrey and Rhaegar. Aerys? Sure.

3: Lyanna and Sansa both betrayed their families for love/infatuation and started a war

A. We still don’t know what went down between Rhaegar and Lyanna. Certainly, not enough to parallel Lyanna running off with him to Sansa betraying Ned to Cersei.

B. Again, Sansa’s “betrayal” of her family was to uphold her arranged marriage. Lyanna’s “betrayal” was to turn her back on society and arranged match, and vanish for months with a married man. Vastly different circumstances.

C. Sansa going to Cersei was notably out of character for "eager to please since she was 3" Sansa vs. "wilful, wild" Lyanna and Arya. In the same book (chapter?) Sansa even compares her disobedience to feeling "almost as wicked as Arya."

D. The causes of both wars were complex and Sansa at least played a pretty minor role in hers. Her actions in contributing to the War of the Five Kings aren’t given nearly the same weight as Lyanna’s disappearance.

4: Sansa is more likely to run away for love than Arya

A. Um. No. Sansa is repeatedly characterised as dutiful and living by society's standards. Her causing the scandal of the century by running off with a married guy/someone unsuitable? No way. Not if she was in Lyanna's situation with a comfortable future before her. We see Sansa persuade herself her situation/match is fine – rather than flee from it – with Joffrey.

B. You know who is known for running off? Arya. In her first chapter, she runs away from being a lady, she runs off after the Trident incident, she fantasies about running home while in KL, she’s literally on the run for ACoK-ASoS, she runs from Harrenhal, the Brotherhood, Westeros itself. If one of the Stark girls has a *screw all this, I’m outta here* attitude, it’s Arya. And a teenage Arya running away from an arranged marriage? 100% plausible.

C. Also, falling for someone unsuitable? How about that infamously wilful younger Stark daughter? Arya falling in love with someone forbidden - *cough* bastard blacksmith *cough* - would be totally in character.

5: Both Lyanna and Sansa were held prisoner in the South during war

A. This parallel undermines the previous basis for Lyanna being a romantic. (I.e. The argument that she wasn’t a prisoner but went willingly with Rhaegar).

B. Let’s say Lyanna was kidnapped – still starkly different from Sansa. Sansa was held as a political pawn and on show. Lyanna was kidnapped for unknown, possibly personal reasons and hidden away from society. Sansa has more parallels with Elia’s role in the war than Lyanna’s.

C. If we start making a list of every character who is held prisoner during wars – Jaime, Tyrion, Ned, oh look Arya! – we’ll be here forever. Very weak parallel.

Lyanna and Sansa are romantics – Arya is a realist/cynic

To reiterate, everything we see of Lyanna’s reaction to Robert indicates she’s a practical realistic, not a romantic. But let’s break down the evidence.

1: Lyanna cried over Rhaegar’s song so she’s sentimental like Sansa not Arya (“The dragon prince sang a song so sad it made the wolf maid sniffle…”)

A. Yes, Sansa's more sentimental and loves songs. But interpreting the scene as a Lyanna/Sansa parallel, blatantly discounts the rest of the sentence: “…but when her pup brother teased her [Lyanna] for crying she poured wine over his head.” NEVER in a million years would Sansa do that. Not at a public Southern tourney and feast. Man though, you know a Stark girl who would do that? Who is far more wild and playful with her brothers? Arya. The Sansa parallel lasts Iess than a sentence before we’re back to Lyanna/Arya.

B. The fact Benjen bothered to tease Lyanna at all suggests it was out of character for her. I can't see the Stark boys teasing Sansa for crying, as it's the kind of thing she'd be likely to do all the time and wouldn't be ashamed of it. No point in teasing her. Teasing gutsy, sighing-over-songs-is-stupid Arya for crying though? Sure.

C. "Sang a song SO sad it made the wolf maid sniffle." The point is the song was exceptional in being able to make Lyanna cry. It’s “man, that’s unusual” not “oh, typical Lyanna sniffling away”. That comment is more about the Lyanna/Rhaegar relationship, not Lyanna’s allegedly sentimental personality.

D. Arya likes songs and Arya cries. That’s not exclusive to Sansa and Lyanna. This great meta goes into more detail both about the significance of songs for all characters in Asoiaf and how emotional Arya can be. But enough to say, Arya may not love songs as much as Sansa does, but she likes them and has favourites – Nymeria, Wenda the White Fawn etc. For all we know Rhaegar was singing a Nymeria/Wenda fanfic. And Arya cries a lot throughout the books, right from her first chapter over messing up her needlework.

2: Sansa and Lyanna both loved flowers. Lyanna was crowned Queen of Love and Beauty at the tourney at Harranhal = Sansa was given a rose by Loras at the Hand’s tourney.

A. News to me that “flowers” are a motif exclusive to Sansa’s character. Not only are flowers sprinkled all over the series, they’re more present in Arya’s story. In Sansa’s first chapter, Arya brings Ned purple flowers (Ned who brings Lyanna's statue flowers) and is excitedly discovering new plants while Sansa is sitting in her carriage. Not to mention the heck ton of nature imagery in Arya’s chapters. This is a weak link.

B. Lyanna gets a crown from a prince who spurns his wife? Sansa gets a rose from an implied gay guy? Much love. Much romance. Much parallels. If GRRM wanted that parallel, he’d have actually crowned Sansa QoLaB. There are hundreds of tourneys in the series, both of them attending doesn’t mean anything.

C. This is the same tourney where Lyanna first beat up a bunch of squires and may have gone on to dress up a knight and compete in the joust. Go ahead anyone who wants to argue that’s a Sansa not Arya move.

3: Arya has no interest in romance, Sansa and Lyanna do. Arya thinks love is stupid and Sansa is silly for liking it

A. Still very little evidence of Lyanna being some diehard romantic.

B. We cannot compare a 9/10yo Arya to a 15/16yo Lyanna. That’s skipping Arya’s entire puberty a.k.a when girls start to explore romance, love and sex. You can't take a few lines from a child as a blanket statement of Arya's views for love forever. It’s also comparing a Lyanna who grew up in a secure environment until she hit her teens vs. Arya who was thrust into a warzone as a child. Sorry Arya isn’t thinking about romance while starving on the run.

C. Arya’s dismissal of romance is entwined with her own insecurities about failing as a lady, her ‘ugliness’ and being inferior to her sister. It’s a defence mechanism for something she worries she can never have. Also, she rejects Sansa’s versions of idealised love and conventional expectations of romance – not love full stop. Lyanna didn’t seem sold on the conventional marriage set up either.

D. Despite her age and circumstances, Arya still manages to have a ship tease with Gendry – a relationship more genuine and straightforwardly romantic than anything Sansa’s had. (Not discounting her complex dynamics with Sandor, Joffrey, Willas, Harry and Tyrion).

E. For the record, in the same conversation Arya told Ned Dayne "love is stupid" that people like to cite, she was mortally offended by the suggestion that her father loved anyone else ever other than her mother.

Sansa represents Lyanna’s “beautiful and feminine side” and Arya her “wildness and rebellion”

These aspects are not exclusionary and there's no indication Lyanna had these two opposing sides. In the same conversation that Ned tells Arya that she's like Lyanna, he refers to Sansa and Arya as "different as the sun and moon." (Not “two sides of the same coin” as is commonly quoted - that’s about the Targs).

So really. "Arya, you're the opposite of your sister! And almost exactly like Lyanna!" = "Sansa is like Lyanna". But let’s go through.

1: Lyanna and Sansa the beauties

A. Arya is beautiful as well. For more detail go here – she’s growing into her looks. She doesn’t think she’s beautiful but other characters are commenting on it. Trying to imply Arya is “too ugly” to parallel Lyanna, so Sansa has to fill that part is gross on multiple levels.

B. Arya is explicitly describe as looking like Lyanna. By Ned. Lyanna’s brother and Arya’s father. If Arya isn’t beautiful, then Lyanna isn’t either.

C. Lyanna wasn’t a conventional Southern beauty. She was a “wild” beauty, Northern looking and even boyish. None of which matches with Sansa’s appearance – but all of which tallies with Arya.

2: People saw Lyanna and Sansa’s beauty but not “the iron underneath”

A. Ned's comment about Robert not seeing Lyanna's iron seemed far more about Robert’s blindness than Lyanna hiding her iron. The conversation was about Robert’s version of Lyanna, not how Lyanna herself behaved.

B. Nothing suggests Lyanna “hid” her iron. She publicly tipped wine over Benjen, she beat up the squires in the open. There's little indication she hid her strength under courtesy and ladylike behaviour like Sansa did.

3: Lyanna and Sansa were feminine

This may be the argument that raises my hackles the most. For a start this bizarre use of ‘feminine’ gets thrown around without defining what it means. So, just what.

A. Let’s assume ‘feminine’ refers to Westerosi ideal of the perfect lady that Sansa embodies: Girly, concerned with appearances, gracious, a submissive wife etc. Then…everything tells us Lyanna was the opposite to that. She was off wanting to carry swords, squabbling with her brothers, resisting marriage proposals and possibly entering jousts. None of that is traditionally “feminine.”

B. If we take a wider view of feminine as women owning their gender, femininity and role as a woman – Arya isn’t a genderless blob. Her being disguised as a boy and Faceless Men training is about how desperately she clings to her true identity…including her gender. She constantly corrects people about being a girl, takes on a caring and even maternal role (Weasel) and has female heroes.

C. Suggesting Arya is less “female” than Sansa – and thus unworthy of paralleling Lyanna – because she has traditionally boyish interests and fails the Westerosi ideal is pretty appalling tbh.

Random Parallels

1: Lyanna and Sansa were betrothed to a Baratheon

A. Not sure how anyone missed this – it was kinda a major plot point way back – but Joffrey wasn’t a Baratheon. He didn’t act or look like a Baratheon. He was a Lannister through and through.

B. You know who did have a major connection to a Baratheon? You know a Stark girl, Robert’s son legitimately fell for? Oh whoops, Arya. While Robert and Gendry are very different and the Arya/Gendry relationship is more genuine than Robert’s infatuation with Lyanna, it’s a more concrete parallel than Sansa/Joffrey.

C. Don’t know how many times I can say this, but the Joffrey/Sansa vs. Robert/Lyanna parallels highlight Sansa and Lyanna’s differences not their similarities.

2: Lyanna and Sansa Defend the Weak (Howland Reed and Dontas)

A. Yes, Sansa does defend Dontas, that was a great moment. But "defending the weak" is a recurring theme for Arya, while it’s a one off for Sansa. Arya has Mycah, Weasel, going back for Gendry, saving the Northernmen, hanging out with the defenders-of-the-helpless Brotherhood without Banners, saving Sam in Braavos, "they should have killed the masters not the slaves" etc. Arya's story is entwined with defending/befriending the oppressed and downtrodden. Sansa's is not.

B. Arya and Lyanna had much more similar approaches to defending Mycah/Howland scenes in physically beating off the attacker. Sansa's approach differed in using diplomacy and flattery. And "saved someone once" is a pretty loose thematic parallel.

3: Lyanna rejected Robert = Sansa rejected Tyrion

A. Sansa was horrified at marrying a dwarf old enough to be her father after she'd been a prisoner of his abusive family for months. Lyanna didn't want to marry a young, handsome lord who was a good match and arranged by her family.

B. Sansa resisted Tyrion yes, but she didn't reject him and she didn't run away. She endured. Again, going with the Lyanna-went-willingly-with-Rhaegar/ran away version of events – Lyanna rebelled in a much more blatant way.

C. Sansa/Joffrey is a much better parallel to Lyanna/Robert, than Sansa/Tyrion. How Sansa reacted to that situation – an ideal, arranged match – is an accurate point to compare her character to Lyanna. (Man, people really hate these Sansa/Joffrey vs. Lyanna/Robert parallels).

This Ended Up Very Long and I’m Sorry

Ultimately, the problem with framing Sansa as an equal half of Lyanna is you have to mischaracterize all three characters to get there – Claiming Sansa is more likely to rebel, that Arya has no soft side and Lyanna was a blind romantic. Until we get more book details on the Rhaegar/Lyanna relationship, the main argument falls apart.

If we're talking parallels, it's less that "Sansa was one half of Lyanna" and more "Sansa was the inverse of Lyanna." One was dutiful and one rebelled, one went for her arranged marriage, one rejected it. Which makes sense as Sansa is a foil to Arya…a character who, as the books made clear from the start, does parallel Lyanna.

There are plenty of characters who connect to both Arya and Sansa. Ned and Catelyn reflect different aspects of their daughters. Brienne has two sides that reflect the two of them – both a romantic idealistic and unconventional woman. Let’s talk about those parallels instead.

#my lyanna meta #arya stark #lyanna stark #arya and lyanna #sansa stark #lyanna stark meta #stark meta #arya meta #sansa meta #anti lyanna sansa

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kuyarexdelsdiaries · 5 years

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CONTESSA: ONE YEAR OF WOMEN EMPOWERMENT

In the United Kingdom, it will air on Weeknights at 8:30 PM before Family Guy. The UK Version will be dubbed in English by British actors. It will also adopt the GMA version for their title card. If aired on CBS, It will air on Weeknights at 9:00 PM.

March is Women's Month but on GMA Network, Something is coming to empower to your screens

Following the successful year-long run of ‘Ika-6 na Utos’, GMA looked to fill in the big shoes that the former left. They decided to replace ‘Ika-6 na Utos’ with a series that reminded viewers of another successful teleserye from a rival network.

From the moment ‘Contessa”s teaser was aired, netizens immediately compared the series to ABS-CBN’s ‘Wildflower’ due to their similar storylines of revenge. But ‘Contessa’ lead star Glaiza de Castro (from Ikaw Lang Ang Mamahalin, Berks, Spirits, Amaya, Temptation of Wife, The Rich Man's Daughter, Encantadia 2016, Mulawin vs. Ravena) had a different take, saying that her upcoming show focuses more on a woman’s constant quest for justice. In ‘Contessa’, Glaiza is initially known as Bea, a woman who is accused and imprisoned for a crime she never committed. Determined to seek revenge and reclaim those who were taken away from her, she assumes a new identity, that of Contessa.

Throughout the series, ‘Contessa’ will feature some important characters who will be crucial to the story of Bea/Contessa. Marco (Mark Herras, from Click, Love to Love, original Encantadia, I Luv NY, Party Pilipinas, Time of my Life, Hiram na Puso, Sunday All Stars, Rhodora X, Pari'Koy, Little Nanay, Wish I May, Sa Piling ni Nanay) is a writer and Bea’s long-time boyfriend whose gruesome murder will be central to the evolution of Bea into Contessa. Marco’s brother Gabriel (Geoff Eigenmann, from Ang TV, Kiara, Ano ang Hukay ng Pag-Ibig, Kahit Kailan, Love to Love, Hiram, Ikaw ang Lahat sa Akin, Rounin, Lobo, SOP Rules, Rosalinda, Party Pilipinas, Show Me Da Manny, Grazilda, Dangwa, La Luna Sangre) is a successful OFW who returns to the country following his murder. Meanwhile, Bea’s best friend Jong (Jak Roberto, from The Half Sisters, Pari'Koy, A1 Ko Sa'Yo, Meant to Be) is a secret admirer of hers who hopes to love him back.

The Imperial family, led by the matriarch Charito (Chanda Romero, from original Villa Quintana, Vietnam Rose, Kidlat, My Husband's Lover, Ismol Family, Pari 'Koy, The Half Sisters, Once Again, Legally Blind) and her children Vito (Gabby Eigenmann, from Palibhasa Lalake, Love to Love, Sugo, I Luv NY, Marimar, Darna, All About Eve, Mundo Mo'y Akin, Pari 'Koy, InstaDad, Sa Piling ni Nanay, My Love from the Star) and Daniella (Lauren Young, from Lobo, Dahil May Isang Ikaw, Tanging Yaman, Midnight DJ, Mula Sa Puso 2011, Oka2Kat, Mundo Mo'y Akin, Dormitoryo, Genesis, Hiram na Alaala, MariMar, Poor Señorita, Legally Blind), will serve as a major obstacle to Bea/Contessa’s plans for justice. In typical villainous fashion, the Imperials are considered manipulative, influential, sophisticated and powerful individuals who will do whatever is necessary to destroy the protagonist.

Completing the rest of the cast are Tetchie Agbayani (from Basta't Kasama Kita, Got to Believe, Flordeliza, Dolce Amore, The Greatest Love), Leandro Baldemor (from Encantadia 2016), Dominic Roco (from Qpids, Super Inggo, Zorro, Darna, Grazilda, Indio, Destined to be Yours), Bernadette Allyson, Melissa Mendez (from Esperanza, Anna Luna, P.S. I Love You, original Pangako Sa'Yo, Indio), Tanya Gomez (from Kokey, Oka2Kat, Alyas Robin Hood), Karel Marquez (from Magandang Tanghali Bayan, Berks, Pidol's Wonderland, My Husband's Lover, Rhodora X, La Luna Sangre), Phytos Ramirez (from the both versions of Encantadia, Gulong ng Palad, Mara Clara, Mula Sa Puso 2011, Oh, My Mama!, Alyas Robin Hood), Denise Barbacena (from Little Nanay, A1 Ko Sa'Yo, Legally Blind, Bubble Gang) and Will Ashley (from Villa Quintana 2013, Alyas Robin Hood, Destined to be Yours). ‘Contessa’ was directed by Albert Langitan who came from his previous work Impostora 2017.

Replacing a top-rating series in ‘Ika-6 na Utos’ will be a daunting one for ‘Contessa’. In order for viewers to commit to this new series in the long term, some interesting bits and pieces are needed to make ‘Contessa’ worth watching, a task that is difficult to fill considering it will go head-to-head with ‘It’s Showtime”s ‘Tawag ng Tanghalan’ segment and "Ipaglaban Mo".

With all things considered, GMA should only hope for the best with ‘Contessa’. It may never be able to replicate the ratings of ‘Ika-6 na Utos’, but if it all goes well, who knows what will happen next.

Through its first nine episodes, GMA’s ‘Contessa’ was only able to average 10% in the ratings according to Kantar. In contrast, ABS-CBN’s ‘It’s Showtime’ raked in around 17%, and while its numbers declined by around 2% during the Holy Week, it was still enough to dispatch ‘Contessa’.

Even the first Saturday episode of ‘Contessa’ on March 24 was a flop, as it earned only 9.9% compared to ‘It’s Showtime”s 17.4%. By comparison, the finale of ‘Ika-6 na Utos’ which aired the previous Saturday finished with a 20.6% rating, 10.7% better than its successor.

The slow start of ‘Contessa’ should cause plenty of concern within GMA Network. Following up a successful afternoon drama in ‘Ika-6 na Utos’ was no easy task, but no one expected ‘Contessa’ to fall way below expectations. However on the AGB Nielsen, Contessa registered high ratings compared to It's Showtime and Ipaglaban Mo, both from ABS-CBN.

In the days leading up to its premiere there were some doubts on whether or not ‘Contessa’ will have a Saturday episode. Initially, GMA considered having ‘Contessa’ air only from Monday to Friday, but when the network realized that they lack suitable replacements for the 2:30 p.m. slot, they reluctantly added a Saturday episode on ‘Contessa’.

In doing so GMA gave ‘Contessa’ enormously high expectations to succeed. Unfortunately, ‘Contessa’ didn’t come close to sustaining ‘Ika-6 na Utos” high viewership, and it also didn’t help that its first foray into Saturdays failed to produce the desired result. Perhaps it is those bandwagon viewers that only showed up during ‘Ika-6 na Utos’ and then switched to ‘It’s Showtime’ and other programs once it ended. Or perhaps GMA dramas have had a history of starting slow and then occasionally picking up ratings midway through. Whatever the reason, it was clear that ‘Contessa’ underachieved from the get-go. Adding a Saturday episode was a huge mistake and the possibility of viewer burnout became more apparent. But as far as GMA is concerned, ‘Contessa’ has had only one Saturday episode so far (there was no episode during Black Saturday) so it is too early to tell. Still, it remains to be seen whether or not succeeding episodes will increase viewership and give ‘Contessa’ some much-needed respectability. The series concluded on September 8, 2018 after 147 Episodes the was replaced by "Ika-5 Utos" then "Asawa Ko, Karibal Ko" on October of that year after Ika-5 Utos took over the 3:25 PM timeslot from "The Stepdaughters". The theme song of the series was "Dito Sa Aking Mundo" by Glaiza de Castro. That song was originally sung by Richard Reynoso.

Aftermath Glaiza de Castro, who played a double role as Bea and Contessa would appear in Victor Magtanggol as Pirena reuniting with fellow Encantadia casts, Kylie Padilla, Sanya Lopez and Gabbi Garcia before resuming her music career.

Chanda Romero would later appear in a Telebabad series "Cain At Abel" together with Leandro Baldemor two months later. However, the show would be replaced by Roberto's next series "Kara Mia".

Lauren Young would appear in a late morning series "Hiram na Anak". Gabby Eigenmann would appear in another Afternoon Prime series "Inagaw na Bituin" alongside Patricia Tumulak.

Jak Roberto would appear with his girlfriend Barbie Forteza in a Telebabad series "Kara Mia" which replaced Romero's and Baldemor's last show "Cain at Abel".

International Broadcasts In Kazakhstan, The series premiered on January 15, 2019 as "Kohtecca" on Channel 7 Kazakhstan. The series was dubbed in Kazakh instead of Tagalog. But it wasn't aired in Latin America similar to Legalmente Ciega (Legally Blind).

However, If Contessa brings to the United States, It will air on either Networks: ABC, CBS, Fox and NBC. This series will be dubbed in full English by American actors. The title card will adopt the GMA Version.

If aired on ABC, It wil air on Weekdays 10:30 - 11:00 AM before The View on ABC Daytime

If aired on CBS, It will air on Wednesdays at 9:00 PM.

If aired on Fox, It will air on Weeknights at 11:00 PM

If aired on NBC, It will air on Weeknights at 9:00 PM

In the United Kingdom, it will air on Weeknights at 8:30 PM before Family Guy. The UK Version will be dubbed in English by British actors. It will also adopt the GMA version for their title card.

In Australia, it will air on Mondays to Sundays at 8:30 PM on 10 Bold. This version will be dubbed in English by Australian actors. It will also adopt the GMA version for their title card.

(DISCLAIMER: This post is for factual basis and is to be veirified at the soonest possible time by some sources. Don’t be assured yet, but it is just for the contributor’s point of view.)

(NOTE: The contributor of this post is Carl Veluz, a good friend of the EIC/Publisher of KRD.)

KRD Welcomes everyone who can contribute to ‘The Blog that tells Stories and More’. Send in via email: [email protected] with the subject ‘KRD Contributor’ with your draft as attachment, and your details of your work. You may include your personal details, but we respect your privacy if we opt to include some other details or not depending on the individual’s request. You can also send in as private message via Kuya Rexdel’s Diaries Facebook page (fb.com/KRDOfficialPH).

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mysteryofthings · 7 years

Link

Marvel.com: It’s also very intriguing that Trish allows Will Simpson [Wil Traval] in after that very traumatic first encounter with him…

Rachael Taylor: She has a blind spot when it comes to Jessica, and because Will assaulted Trish when he was Kilgraved, that’s such a blind spot for Trish. She has such tenderness in that domain because Jessica was Kilgraved and she knows how damaging it was to Jessica. And I do think there’s a little bit of codependency, a little shred in there, by getting closer to Will and helping Will and helping repair Will, she can salvage the fact that she truly wasn’t there for Jessica – whether Jessica cut her out or didn’t allow her to be is kind of a moot point.

The end result is that Trish wasn’t allowed to be there in the way that Jessica was there for Trish and I think because Will was Kilgraved, Trish walked right into that. She walked right into that relationship because it was a proxy for her friendship with Jessica in a way. I could always understand that. What’s a good “as if”? A good “as if” is, if your best friend in the world was a heroin addict and then you met someone who also was a heroin addict, you would feel a kind of kinship there. You would feel more kindly toward them because of your experience. I think she could understand Will, which is very dangerous. It was not the right choice for her, but I think that was her justification of it.

Marvel.com: After she takes the pills to amp up, and there’s a moment where you see her relish that to a certain degree, at least initially. Do you think there’s a point where she almost understands Will a little too much? Is that a hint of that darker undercurrent that you’re talking about?

Rachael Taylor: I think so. I don’t think Trish wants to be powerful to anybody’s detriment, certainly not Jessica’s, because I do think one of the core elements of the series and of the first season and why I wanted to do the project was the friendship between Trish and Jessica is an anchoring element for the show. It’s grounded; it’s the one genuinely warm and intact, positive piece of the show. And that was something that Krysten [Ritter] and I really wanted to do; we wanted to keep that friendship as a safe space for the two women, which I think is impressive that it exists there as an element in the show because it’s a dark series. And I think to have that one surviving relationship of humanity is really important.

Underneath all of it, there’s a part of Trish that is very covetous of what Jessica can do and very frustrated that in Trish’s eyes, Jessica somewhat squanders her gifts to a certain extent. Aside from the fact that she’s very damaged, she’s a reluctant super hero, which is part of what makes her such a lovable character. She’s post-super hero, in a way, and I think Trish would much more be the Captain America version of a super hero, fully embraced, fully realized. She has that very clean, All-American streak. I do think that twists in some really dark ways and I think when she takes the pills, we get the first glimpse of how badly Trish really wants some of the things that her friends have. ...

There are a lot of contradictions in all of the characters in “Marvel’s Jessica Jones.” And Trish’s main contradiction, I think, is that she’s very pure of heart but she has a kind of unholy ambition right under the surface. She’ll take that pill, she’ll fight back against her ex-boyfriend, she’ll entangle herself with someone who is dangerous from the outset. Will Simpson is dangerous from the outset with Trish but she’ll entangle herself with him because, well, she’s got a blind spot because he was Kilgraved but also maybe that’s going to get her closer into the drama that’ll entangle her a little bit further. There’s a bunch of different dynamics going on.

Marvel.com: That blind spot for Will, do you think that still exists after everything that happened in the first season?

Rachael Taylor: Kind of, but that’s just my opinion. I have no idea where it goes. I don’t think that blind spot would be something that’s completely closed. I think he could show back up and Trish has that, that’s her Achilles heel. She wants to make it right. Marvel.com: And she wasn’t able to save him. Rachael Taylor: Yes. Marvel.com: If she used him as a proxy for not being able to save Jessica, but by the end of the season, she has saved Jess but she wasn’t able to save Will, would it seem like the roles were reversed?

Rachael Taylor: Right. You would think he would be primed to come back in some way, and also there’s this other strand that we set up in the first season and I have no idea where it goes, but Trish has started to scratch the surface on the pharmaceutical company that is responsible for Jess’s super powers. She started to get close to why she is who she is and I wonder how that could lead back to Will or what that might mean. That’s a pretty intriguing avenue to open up, and I think around the tenth episode is when her mother comes in with the kind of dangling carrot and goes, “Do you want this?”

#jessica jones #trish walker #marvel #Rachael Taylor #will simpson #kilgrave #link #interview

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mostlysignssomeportents · 7 years

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Concrete buffer snaps, goes loco, terrorizes its former masters

It's the narration of two gentlemen (Spencer Laboda and his father) who record and comment upon this incident in which a crew of construction workers improvise a series of tactics (some very unwise ones included!) to recapture, a spinning, potentially lethal concrete polisher on a jobsite that really makes this work. Laboda notes, "nobody was injured... we bought lunch for some of the participants. This was a great construction crew and they built a magnificent facility for us to enjoy every day." (via Wil Wheaton)

https://boingboing.net/2017/02/27/blinded-and-mad.html

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ramrodd · 5 years

Video

youtube

An Outsider Visits a Lutheran Church

COMMENTARY:

Visualize Whirled Peas

"Enthusiasm" means to be filled with god.

This guy has enthusiasm and a mastery of his subject. This is a pretty good example of my experience of military leadership as an invitation to glory.

I was an instructor with the Ranger Department at Ft. Benning. My dad was involved in the Ranger School at its creation, ff not its conception, as one of the go-to guys at the Secretariat of the Chief of Staff, US Army, in the North Face of the Pentagon. During the 60s, my dad worked for a general at DSCPER/CONARC, but he reported to a general with the same job and office as the general from DSCPER who died on 911.

My dad had connections with a part of the army called OPO that distributed talent in the officer corps around the Army to anticipate contingencies before they emerge. I was originally assigned to a training batallion in Seattle, but I stumbled across an opening for junior officers interested in getting on the Airborne-Ranger-Green Beret career track in the Ranger Department and I got my dad to put me in that slot. And he did.

That was part of Plan A. I wanted to be around people like this preacher. This is what Jesus is talking about in Matthew 8/Luke: "Not in all of Israel have I found such faith".

You are familiar with "Onward, Christian Soldier!"? Connect the dots between this guy and "The Battle Hymn of the Republic". Connect "The Battle Hymn of the Republic" to US Army Airborne Training and this guy as a drill sergeant, nearly too drunk to stand, bellowing with the other veteran paratroopers at various time "...there was blood upon the risers, there was gore upon his boots...And he ain't gonna jump no more!"

When Jesus introduced a prayer of communion and thanksgiving before the mean, He perfected Judaism.

The Shema is a required daily prayer, a lovely poem across the lips "Hear, O Israel' of the Torah.

"The Shema is one of only two prayers that are specifically commanded in Torah (the other is Birkat Ha-Mazon -- grace after meals)". http://www.jewfaq.org/shemaref.htm

For the Roman soldiers, the prayer before the meal, the communion, is a nice way to share a moment of spiritual repose. In terms of the wicca of Jesus, the communion ritual is a collective post hypnotic suggestion more or less pushing the same emotional complexies in the personal ecology of the mind as Auld Lange Syne. As I've described in a twitter feed. Neuro-Linguistic Program is a legacy of the process theology Jesus demonstrates (or "models") in the healing of the deaf and speech impaired man and the healing of the blind man that had two phases. Among other things, Jesus is operating like a combat medic: in fact, He reattaches an ear Peter had cut off to prevent Peter from being arrested, on the "no harm, no foul" principle. Peter's destiny was to fight another day. Just that moment of serenity when visions of Christmas Past are summoned, that's when the Holy Spirit can restore the Spirit of the Lord in each person breaking bread, together, by osmosis. And that's what Jesus meant when He said He came not to deny the Law but to fulfill it, to enthuse it with the Spirit of God.

You don't have to believe in God to believe in Esprit de Corps. Even the commie cocksuckers. globally, believe in Esprit de Corps as a quantifiable effect. The Washington Nationals just won the World Series on Esprit de Corps. In French manageement theorgy, Esprit de Corps is a principle of management and, in the Harvard Business model, Esprit de Corps, as a principle of management, is almost universally violated by Fortune 500 CEO's like Jeff Bezos. The communion Jesus introduces into Judaism leverages Esprit de Corps. The reason why the National couldn't close the deal in DC is because of the spiritual pollution caused by the political agenda associated with the MAGA hat nation: the political agenda that came to town with Reagan and persists in the House Freedom Caucus and Moscow Mitch, as a constitutional saboteur, is designed to suck the joy out of everything they touch and joy is a huge part of Esprit de Corps. Conservative politics has been a 38 year bummer, the boss from hell in the Oval Office and political commissars in Missouri charting women's menstrual cycles to ensure the big bucks Pro-Life Pac constributions. But when the Nats got to Houston, The Texas Esprit de Corps flowed back into the Nats Esprit de Corps and rewarded the superior collective effort. Democratic Socialism as a capitalist tool.

And that's what the guy in the Lutheran Church is selling. Everything in the church is designed to celebrate the beauty of the Lord as it flows as living water into the soul of the individual pilgrims. And, as they flow out into the world on their mission of liberation, just like Paul, they carry that beauty and joy with them and leave heaven on earth in their wake.

I first heard The 4 Spiritual Laws when I was 19 and my first reaction was "Yeah. Then what". There is no "The what" in the Salvation Gospel: it's all cosmic navel gazing to prevent apostasy. In contrast, the Liberation Gospel is focused on the horizon and leaving Salvation in the wake. That's why I went to Vietnam.

Imagine Wil Wheaton as your jumpmaster for your first parachute jump. Or the Mobile Infantry Sargeant in Starship Troopers. Or Jesus, saying "Abandon Plan A and Follow Me!" and thinking about it. years later, over bread and wine. And days of Auld Lange Syne.

I'll give you an example of the sense of humor of the Holy Ghost in my experience. In May, I happened upon the statistic that the Nats were 19 and 31. Both these numbers are important markers in my relationship with the Holy Ghost, one method he employs to get my attention or to validate data I extract in various ways.

In this case, the number came up in a conversation I overheard outside at the Adams Morgan Starbucks and the Holy Ghost whispered in my consciousness "They will take the Series in 7" clear as a bell.

The joke, for him, is I can't do anything about it. I don't want to say anything and jinx the team, if it was possible if improbable and I can't bet on it for the same reason. In fact, just bringing it up in this context is to risk being ridiculed for prophecy after the fact.

And that's been a running joke his running joke, since 1954. I'm surrounded by a lot of bad theology by people who claim to believe in God but deny the Holy Spirit who debate with evangelical antitheists who claim, when it comes to God, there is no quid pro quo.

In this regards, my relationship with the Holy Spirit is like that warner Brothers cartoon about the construction worker worker who discovers a bull frog that does a big splash song-and-dance routine and he invests all his savings staging an act featuring this frog, but, when the curtain goes up, all the frog will do is croak "Ribbit" in the manner of a bullfrog. And the guy goes broke and ends up taking the frog back to where he had found it and sealing it up for the next sucker to suffer.

Like Esprit de Corps and Fortune 500 CEOs, the Holy Spirit is almost universially ignored by the white Christian churches. The first important step in discerning the Holy Spirit is to separate the Holy Spirit, a man, from the Spirit of the Lord, the demi-urge. The enthusiasm of Wil Wheaton is the demiurge. His Christian literacy is a result of his relationship with the Holy Ghost, a man of his own heart. Wil Wheaton is what would happen if the bullfrog did more than just croak "Ribbit"

Visualize Whirled Peas

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topsolarpanels · 7 years

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50 documentaries you need to see

Ten of the best nonfiction film-makers today choose their own favourites, from serial murderer tales to meta pranks.

Joshua Oppenheimer

The Texan directors feature debut, The Act of Killing ( 2012 ), and its follow-up, The Look of Silence ( 2014 ), explore the consequences of the carnages in Indonesia. Both were nominated for Oscars .

Joshua Oppenheimer, photographed at home in Copenhagen. Photograph: Katherine Anne Rose for the Observer

Salaam Cinema, Mohsen Makhmalbaf, 1995

For this film, Mohsen Makhmalbaf announces a casting call: thousands of people turn up and theres a riot to get in. Each participant is channelling their worries and hopes into the desire to be in a movie. He interacts with them in this autocratic route, which builds the cinema ultimately about power and authority. He demands that people scream on command. One girl becomes so frustrated that she does start to cry, so he tells OK, youve attained it. And shes so happy, but then theres the frustration as she realises this was her moment on screen. She thought thered be a script and a real movie to make afterwards. Its a devastating, beautiful film.

A scene from Close-Up by Abbas Kiarostami.

Close Up, Abbas Kiarostami, 1990

A man pretends to be Mohsen Makhmalbaf, the director of Salaam Cinema . He insinuates himself into a familys life out of loneliness, to make friends. At one point the family realise hes not really the director and have him apprehended. The cinema follows this mans trial in an Iranian court, and then the real Mohsen Makhmalbaf satisfies the man and takes him to the family.

The impostors fragility ultimately embodies what it means to be poor and fighting in life, and through that you feel how sad it is that we live in a world where people are measured by wealth and power, and the cruelty that any human being could ever feel insignificant.

Gates of Heaven, Errol Morris, 1978

This was Errol Morriss first cinema. He was taking his time with it so Werner Herzog promised If you finish this film I will eat my shoe, which he did. Its about two families in California who operate pet graveyards, and it looks at humen relationships to their pets. Its an odd mystery, a pet. We eat animals, we use them for labor, but then we keep them in our home as objects upon which we project love that we maybe lack elsewhere. Morris has these carefully crafted tableaux: theres one continuous shooting where a woman has a 15 -minute lament, complaining about aspects of their own lives, and thats where the movie becomes something altogether greater and more mysterious.

Loss Is to Be Expected, Ulrich Seidl, 1992

This was constructed shortly after the fall of communism in eastern Europe and it looks at two communities on either side of the Czech-Austrian border. Theres an elderly human in Austria looking for a new spouse, and he fulfils a lone single woman on the Czech side of the border.

There are these amazing scenes where they go on a date to a funfair and then to a sexuality museum. Shes much more sexually comfy than he is, which is a source of incredible comedy. But its about passion and love and the fulfilling of our quotidian needs and the necessary, wilful blindness towards our deeper needs because ultimately, to contemplate those requires is to contemplate our own mortality.

A scene from The Hour of the Furnaces. Photograph: Tricontinental films

The Hour of the Furnaces, Octavia Getino and Fernando e Solanas, 1968

This is a furious, angry cinema about neocolonialism in Argentina, and its the most devastating look at colonialism Ive seen in nonfiction films. The sections about Argentinas oligarchy, and the exploitation on which they flourished, are so poetically rendered that you relate to the horror of totalitarianism purely through your emotions.

It was built secretly and was screened at illegal opponent meetings, in defiance of the authoritarian rule. People were arrested for screening it. I imagine that ensure it at the time you would come out feeling like youd “re going to have to” do something about the situation. There are segments of The Act of Killing where I surely had this film in the back of my head. KB

Lucy Walker: The Up series showed me what the medium was capable of

Director Lucy Walker. Photo: Linda Nylind for the Guardian

British director Lucy Walker has been Oscar-nominated twice, for Waste Land ( 2010) and The Tsunami and the Cherry Blossom ( 2011 ). She is currently working on a remaking of Buena Vista Social Club .

Hoop Dreams, Steve James, 1994

Hoop Dreams follows two very talented African American boys in Chicago who get a basketball scholarship to go to a prestigious, predominantly white high school. It follows them for five years and its a spectacular example of a longitudinal documentary where you get to glimpse the machinery of life. You get a real sense of hour unfold and the big forces that act on us. The twistings and turnings are subtle , nothing much happens, and yet it feels unbelievably dramatic and compelling because its so well crafted and the characters are so beautifully rendered. I watched it repeatedly when I was stimulating my first cinema, Devils Playground , because it follows young people through this pivotal period in “peoples lives”, and I was trying to understand how you could get so much narrative, feeling and character into a movie. Theres a scene where the mum is icing a birthday cake for her sons 16 th birthday. Its an interview, in the sense that the film-maker is asking her the issues and shes talking to camera, but it doesnt feel like one, its so much more cinematic and compelling and the activity is so perfect.

Streetwise, Martin Bell, 1984

This film had its beginnings in a photojournalism assignment for Life magazine by the photographer Mary Ellen Markabout a group of street kids living in Seattle. She persuaded her husband, Martin Bell, to make a film about them. Its just so intimate that its hard to believe the film-maker is actually in the room with these kids. Its like hes put on a cloak of invisibility. I could have chosen any number of cinema vrit masterpieces but for some reason this moves me. Ive made quite a few films with young people and its fascinating because the plot of their lives is so close to the surface: one conversation can change the course of your life when youre young in a way that is rare when youre older and you are able to capture that nano-second when the course of a lifes direction is altered. When you put a camera and a cinema crew into a room, the observers paradox is almost always true you cant capture life because youre in the way of it. But these kids seem unaware of the camera and theyre behaving in a way that feels like life unfolding. The filmmaker is so present with them, you cant help but understand what theyre “re going through”, and to understand is to feel empathy and to want to help.

The Five Obstructions by Lars Von Trier.

The Five Obstructions, Lars von Trier and Jrgen Leth, 2003

In this underrated cinema the iconoclastic Danish director Lars von Trier challenges experimental film-maker Jrgen Leth to remake one of his earlier movies, The Perfect Human , 5 times, each time with a different creative constraint. The first obstruction imposed by von Trier, for example, was that the cinema had to be made in Cuba, using shootings of no more than 12 frames. Another was that it had to be made as a cartoon. Its basically these two creative egos going up against one another and it dedicates a fascinating insight into the film-making process, what goes on in a directors head and how you cope with stress and constraint and challenge. Its delicious and playful and theres never a dull moment watching these two maestros needling each other.

The Gleaners and I, Agns Varda, 2000

This film was made during the early days of the hand-held digital camera, when for the first time you could capture something high-quality enough to show on a big screen on a camera that would fit in your handbag. Its an essay about the people who pick through other peoples leftovers, whether it be the remains of the harvest in the countryside, or in cities. Its very casual, but Varda is so astute and the quality of the film-making is such that it becomes something very beautiful, a meditation on life. Were having this golden age of documentary right now and its being driving in technology. In the past you would need to write a script first because the editing process was so laborious but now you are able to shoot a whole bunch of stuff and capture life in a way that you couldnt before and this movie, shot by a 72 -year-old woman employing a very low-key format, shows you just what level of artistry is possible.

Jackie in 21 Up, 1978. Photo: ITV

Up series, Michael Apted, 1964

Im fascinated by longitudinal film-making and this series, which has followed the lives of 14 British infants since 1964, when they were seven years old, showed me what the medium was capable of. This series is head and shoulders above any other attempt to record dramatically a whole human life. And because its a whole group of people, you learn not just about the individual but also about the organizations of the system in which theyre living. I cant think of any other artefact in our culture that can tell us so much about Britain in our lifetime and how society is evolving as this body of work. Its light and fascinating and its one of the things that inspired me to do the work that I do. JOC

Alex Gibney: Fake home movies dont bother me you might as well object to dreams

Going Clear director Alex Gibney. Photo: Larry Busacca/ Getty Images

Alex Gibneys award-winning films include Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room ( 2005 ), Taxi to the Dark Side ( 2007) and Mea Maxima Culpa: Silence in the House of God ( 2012 ). Last year he released documentaries on Scientology and Steve Jobs. He tells: I dont believe in five best films. But I do believe in influential films. These are five of mine .

Night and Fog, Alain Resnais, 1955

What really impressed me about this movie was its concision. Its about the Holocaust, but it has a simple and horrible beauty to it, because it describes the scaring nature of the Holocaust through a powerful series of images and a narration that was specific, naming the collections of items of the prisoners and survivors. Its the cruel verse of detail that is so heartbreaking: the handles of the ovens, the fingernail scrapings on the ceilings of the cells. We assure piles of combs, shaving brushes, shoes and a vast mountain of human hair. It took something so horrible but discovered a way to go to the heart of the matter through simple details.

Gimme Shelter , Albert and David Maysles, Charlotte Zwerin 1970

Here you assure the Rolling Stones on tour singing about empathy for the demon, but their posturing about satanism blows back at them at the Altamont music festival. Its structured like a detective tale: it starts with a assassination a Hells Angel stabs somebody who seems to have a gun in the audience and then you go back in time. Maybe one of the most powerful scenes is of the Stones listening to a playback of Wild Ponies in the studio. Its stunning in its simplicity. That movie went route beyond a concert reveal; it celebrates music but its really about a few moments in time and how dark forces-out get unleashed. Its powerful both in its observation and its analysis, which is a rare combination.

Leon Gasts When We Were Kings. Photograph: Sportsphoto Ltd/ Allstar

When We Were Kings , Leon Gast, 1996

This is perhaps the greatest sport cinema ever attained. It has wonderful cinema vrit footage of the Rumble in the Jungle, the famous 1974 battle between Muhammad Ali and George Foreman. Gast has the most magnificent material, particularly in Muhammad Ali on a running, dancing, gooning for the camera, at his most charismatic. And then the dwell figure of George Foreman. But Gast wasnt be permitted to put that footage together, and in arrives Taylor Hackford, shoots some interviews with people who were there , notably George Plimpton and Norman Mailer, and through their recollection you also have a sense of analysis and understanding rather than mere observation. So its combining those two things in the film that really is magnificent.

Stories We Tell , Sarah Polley, 2012

This is a detective narrative thats very much in the first person. Its about identity, trying to understand your childhood, and ultimately paternity. Sarah Polley is digging back into the relationship between her mother and father, who she discovers isnt her biological father. In some quarters she was criticised for using a series of fictional home movies that she manufactured, but it didnt bother me at all they might as well any objections to dreamings and memories, because those are everyday recreations. The trick is receiving the verse in their own homes. Its a very powerful movie about memory and exploration and love, because she comes to appreciate her adoptive father in a manner that is she might not otherwise have done.

Waltz With Bashir, an animated documentary.

Waltz With Bashir , Ari Folman, 2008

Part of the small but growing category of the animated documentary, Waltz With Bashir is actually a film about repressed memory, and the recollection of Israeli soldiers trying to understand why theyre having these nightmares. The notion of using animation to convey what is mostly going on inside their heads, in their imaginations, is such a powerful one. It doesnt become clear until nearly the end that the soldiers all took part in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camp massacre in Lebanon in 1982. And the very end of the movie includes just the slightest bit of real footage: a woman whimpering in the wake of that carnage. It really is one of the most poignant movies about the trauma of war. KB

Kim Longinotto: All the very best Tv documentaries are on the BBC at the moment

Film-maker Kim Longinotto. Photo: Martin Godwin for the Guardian

British film-maker Kim Longinotto tackles topics such as female genital mutilation ( The Day I Will Never Forget ) and women opposing abuse ( Sisters in Law ). Her most recent cinema, Dreamcatcher , is on Chicago females trying to leave the sexuality industry .

Shermans March, Ross McElwee, 1986

I saw this at film school, then watched it again at a festival a couple of years ago and thought it was so charming, so good. It has a very simple premise. The director is meant to be making a film about General Shermans march through Georgia during the course of its American civil war, but he falls out of love with the idea. Instead, the film becomes about his attempts to find a girlfriend, shooting as a kind of video diary an approach that was completely new at the time. Its so candid and affectionate and lovely, and everyone at the celebration loved it. Not many cinemas bear rewatching, but this one does.

Tales of the Grim Sleeper, Nick Broomfield, 21

Nick Broomfield has become much more serious and political in recent years and this is a difficult and perpetrated cinema. Its about a man who was arrested in 2010 for killing as many as 100 prostitutes in Los Angeles over a period of 25 years. Whats extraordinary is how he managed to get away with it for so long the police didnt seek because his victims were mostly black prostitutes. Its a very timely cinema, in terms of Black Lives Matter and police abuses in the US, and I thought he got it just right. Its also a really good crime story.

Solar Mamas.

Solar Mamas, Jehane Noujaim and Mona Eldaief, 2012

This is a film about Bedouin women trying to get solar energy in their village in Jordan. It follows one woman travelling to a college in India to become a solar engineer. I like it because its not saying, Oh, look at these poor women. Instead, it presents women actively changing their lives and I found that very inspiring. So many documentaries tell you what to think. This one doesnt it puts you straight into the story and you get to know the characters merely by watching them. It was part of a very good BBC series on poverty. Thats where all the good Tv documentaries are at the moment: on the BBC.

Virunga, Orlando von Einsiedel, 2014

I watched this in the cinema, which was good because its very beautifully filmed a real spectacle. Its set in a reserve in the Congo, which is home to the last mountain gorillas on earth and it follows the people who are trying to save them, as well as the corrupted people trying to get the land to drill petroleum. Theres a moment when the person or persons in a neighbouring village are assaulted. It was filmed so well, I dont know how they did it. Youre right in the thick of it and you feel so angry, because you know it all come to corrupt practices and greed.

Five Broken Cameras.

Five Broken Cameras, Emad Burnat, Guy Davidi, 2011

This is about a Palestinian man who films the destruction of his villages olive orchards by the Israeli army. His cameras maintain get broken by the Israelis, hence the title, but he just maintained filming. I think he was feeling: Theres an incredible incorrect being done to my people, Im going to film it, even if I succumb doing it. Then he linked up with an Israeli film-maker, who edited the footage. I recollect people saying he shouldnt have worked with an Israeli, but I thought it was so great that they came together and made something very powerful which showed us what is really going on in Palestine. KF

James Marsh: In my view there should be no borders to film-making

James Marsh at the 2015 Palm Springs film festival. Photo: C Flanigan/ Getty Images

James Marsh is a British film-maker, best known for the Oscar-winning documentary Man on Wire ( 2008) and the acclaimed Stephen Hawking biopic, The Theory of Everything .

Man with a Movie Camera , Dziga Vertov, 1929

This was the first truly subversive, playful documentary. Its notionally a day in the life of a city in the Soviet Union and so it has, on a purely sociological/ historical level, great value. But what it does beyond that is to show you the means of production: the filming, the trim room, the editing all the things that are going into the stimulating of this film. Its style before its period, the Tristram Shandy of documentaries, if you like. Its so inventive and it has techniques that, 87 years later, still look pretty revolutionary: the freeze frames and slow motion. Its simply full of inventive and brilliant formal ideas as well as being a very beautiful cinema to watch. And its informative too, showing us the Soviet Union in a halcyon period before Stalins terror, when you felt that things were still possible in a new political context. Of course we now know that Vertov suffered in the Stalin era, as many other independent artists would have done, but theres a sort of optimism and a playfulness to it that you wouldnt expect from a Soviet documentary from 1929.

Le Sang des Btes , Georges Franju, 1949

This is a documentary about an abattoir that was built in Paris just after the second world war. If the cinema had been shot in colouring it would be unwatchable, its so gory and weird and disturbing, but its in black and white and so it becomes a bit more abstract. There are images in that cinema that I think are some of the most powerful Ive ever seen. Theres a surreal sequence where lots of sheep have been beheaded and theyre all dancing without their heads on this conveyor belt. Its like a bit of choreographed horror, but its all real. The director Georges Franju went on to have a career doing very artistic horror movies in French cinema, most famously a cinema called Les Yeux Sans Visage .

The War game by Peter Watkins.

The War Game , Peter Watkins, 1965

In this film, Watkins takes a possible scenario a nuclear attack on London and shows you very carefully, each step of the style, what is likely to happen. It was banned by the BBC for many years because it was just too harrowing a depiction of a reality that all individuals at that time was very concerned about: this was in the middle of the cold warand at the time there were dozens of warheads pointing at us. Its like a documentary made by Brecht youre staging something to flush out a reaction in the audience, and that reaction is one of utter horror. Some people would say this is not a documentary because everything was staged, but its a speculative documentary the director is saying: This is how it could be and Im going to show you this in a way thats very truthful.Its very responsible, even if the imagery is very disturbing: youre find bobbies firing at people in the street, people with their clothes burned off. His information is sourced directly from the government and based on scientific fact, so the bed of it is factual, and people responded to it “as if its” a real documentary.