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sondepoch · 4 years

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HC: MC is more flexible than them!

Perfection is certain. Perfection is solid. Perfection is the body of a demon or an angel, where there is no room (or need) for bones to crack and muscles to stretch. You and Solomon, though? You’re human. Not so “perfect” when compared to the other inhabitants of at RAD—but that just makes it all the more interesting when they finally see the way the human body can crack and bend

Word Count: 5.5k

SFW + mild descriptions of cracking body parts

Characters: All brothers + All Undateables + Luke

MASTERLIST

Lucifer

Instant panic mode

Man just learned that it’s possible for humans to break bones, so when he hears you casually crack your knuckles, he instantly assumes that all your fingers are broken

Finds it even more terrifying when you lean your head back and crack your neck

Honestly, the look of sheer horror on his face would be terrifying if you didn’t find it so funny

Is actually super confused when he realizes that you’re 100% fine but will not lower himself to actually asking you about it. That is not the Lucifer way, and so this man instead decides to secretly binge Satan’s collection of human anatomy instead

But uh, he gets scarily into it

Seriously, you’re starting to get concerned when it’s been nearly two full weeks of Lucifer ignoring you to bury his nose in a book, eyebrows furrowing every goddamn time he finishes one, and still has no clue what that cracking sound is

It’s only when you casually do it at the dinner table and Asmo cringes, complaining about how weird it is that humans get pockets of gas inside certain joints and they actually have to crack it out, to which all his brothers nod their head and cringe when you do it again, that he understands what it is

Has never been more relieved

He isn’t as disturbed by the sound as he was before, so it’s not as fun to tease him with it - but you can count on the fact that if you ever crack anything in his presence, he will pause whatever he’s doing to study you for a moment and make sure your face isn’t contorted in pain or anything

After all, he needs to be completely certain that you haven’t broken a bone

But someone help this man when he realizes how much more flexible humans are compared to demons

The first time you do a backbend in front of him, he actually flinches

Man can’t help but imagine himself in those poses - and no matter how sexy you look when you’re winking at him and stretching your body like it’s glue, his bones would have to be shattered to bits for him to do the same

Quietly asks you not to stretch yourself into such positions in his presence

On the bright side, you can shut him up in the middle of any lecture by “casually” stretching your arms back until the demon is so disturbed that he stops in the middle of his sentence and asks you to leave as soon as possible

All in all, not a big fan - but he can tolerate your antics (if only to save face)

But if you ever show him videos (or even pictures) of a contortionist, he may actually be scarred for the rest of his almost-eternal life

Mammon

Man really needs to learn how to knock

He barges into your room without warning, as usual, only to see you all but straddling the ground, legs spread wide apart as you lean to one side and touch your right toe

It’s the most basic human stretch there is - but it’s terrifying to Mammon

You don’t even get the chance to say hi to him before he’s lifted you onto your feet, pulling you up from under your arms, desperately asking why you weren’t screaming for help

Cannot process the fact that you were actually in that position willingly, much less the notion that it felt remotely good

Of course, you respond to his obvious aversion by showing him all the other ways your body can bend, flopping onto your bed and bending your body into a perfect bridge position

Mammon’s screeches when he sees the arch your back makes

It lowkey gives him nightmares the next night

Also becomes very touchy after he sees you move your body around so comfortably

In his eyes, you’re now the equivalent of a giant teddy bear - and really, what are the differences, now? He uses you for cuddles and hugs, can seemingly bend your body in any way and you’ll bounce back, and your skin is so soft compared to the hardness of his own body

Man actually grows used to your body after a while, holding a strange fascination for the way you can move

Begins to think that it’s cool when you show him how you can crack your knuckles and such

Absolutely makes use of the fact that some of his other brothers hate the sound, casually walking up to them with you by his side and asking them (while you crack your knuckles) to forgive his debts

Works 90% of the time

The 10% when it doesn’t work, though, he gets into trouble

In his free time, though, he actually likes lying with you and trying to figure what other body parts you can crack

Courtesy of Mammon, you learn that you can crack your hip if you stretch at a certain angle

(Bonus:) He one day tries to stretch his body the way you stretch yours and does a basic hamstring stretch on the ground, trying to touch his toes, but the exertion is too much for his inflexible body and he sort of locks a joint, so he’s left on the floor for nearly half an hour until you find him in his room and help him out of it

(Bonus bonus:) After his trauma from the above incident, he immediately goes back to assuming that you’re in great pain every time he sees you do a particularly difficult stretch and instantly lifts your body out of the position, no matter how you protest and say that you’re fine

Leviathan

"What a normie”

That’s the only reaction you get when you crack your knuckles in front of him, eager to see what he’ll do after realizing how much it disturbs his other brothers

Needless to say, you’re disappointed by his utter nonchalance

But that’s only because you have no clue what happens to Levi when he runs to his room and closes his door, jumping into his bathtub with a shook expression on his face

“Oh my god!” He squeals. “iT wAs LiKE iN tHe aNImES”

Nah, fr tho

Man has seen more than enough human-world shows which feature characters cracking their knuckles before getting down to work, so he’s pretty familiar with the concept

Like many things in anime, he was only 60% sure that it was real

But you actually did it

And it was in real life

Man is practically fanboying over a perfectly normal phenomenon

While you’re sitting in the living room, thinking that he was utterly unfazed by it :(

But when the two of you have a whole year to spend together under the same roof, it’s honestly inevitable that the truth comes out

“You like it?” You ask, pure confusion settling over your faces. After all, he’s the first of the brothers to not be utterly horrified by your little habit

“N-no!” Levi shouts, hiding his face. “I mean, maybe...just a little...sort of...but not in the normie way!”

Boi is too cute for his own good

Of course, you humor him and proceed to crack every single joint you can think of, sending a wink Levi’s way

It would be so easy to tease him, wouldn’t it? To mess with him and call him strange, to compare to his brothers and remind him that you’re not an anime character - and that anime is, in fact, based on humans, so it shouldn’t have come as a surprise that humans could crack their knuckles the way he’s seen online

But, he’s too precious. And too cute. And he’s too adorable, staring at you with that utterly captivated expression, so you can’t help but humor him again, asking if he wants to see some of the other differences between humans and demons

And when you show him how you can bend your body, man is shook all over again

He 100% thought that the absurd stretches (like a split? how preposterous) were merely fabrications of animation - flourishes added in by animators to make the visuals more interesting

But seeing you move like that? And when you show him the other stuff?

Congratulations. Boi is officially convinced that humans are more interesting that anime can ever be.

Satan

One of the few demons who was already familiar with the fact that humans are ridiculously flexible and can crack nearly everything in their body

He was actually the one to approach you about it

“Stretch for me, human.”

Or well, the same thing but in less blunt words

Actually invites you to have tea with him where he first broaches the subject, confirming that you'll be fully comfortable with everything he wants to study

Lmao man really arranges to have a safe word in case he pushes you too far

Once you’ve agreed to letting him study how the human body can bend and crack, the two of you set a time and meet up in his room (and yes, he does clear his books out of the way to make room for you)

And so the stretching begins

It actually feels quite awkward at first with Satan showing you pictures from human world yoga books and asking you to mimic them, taking notes in a book on everything

Gets really excited when he realizes that your flexibility is a function of how often you stretch, and once he realizes that you’re able to go a little farther each day, he becomes lowkey obsessed with finding out whether there's a limit or not

Boi may or may not secretly try to stretch in his own room in case demons are just naturally less flexible and need to stretch regularly to become like humans

Also almost breaks his arm attempting that, so he never tries it again

The whole ordeal fits itself into your routine after long enough: after school, you go to Satan’s room and do yoga while he jots down notes on how your body moves, and after everything is done the two of you have tea

Satan never touches you while you’re stretching for fear that he’ll physically push you into something uncomfortable, but when you explain that certain positions are easier to hold if someone helps, he’ll definitely try to be a helping hand

He starts out really tentatively, hesitant that he’ll be too strong and will push you to the floor or something, but he’s pleasantly surprised to find that humans are more resilient than he’d initially thought

After his notebook is filled with notes and he’s suitably convinced that all his questions are sated, he’ll express his gratitude and tell you that you don’t need to continue

But if you tell him that you’ve been enjoying your time together, man will 100% clear that space in his room permanently, so that you can spend time there together while Satan asks you calming questions about your day and you stretch the tension of the day out of your muscles

Asmodeus

Jelly boi

Nah but fr

Man couldn’t care less about your ability to crack your knuckles and neck - if anything, he finds the habit to be irritating

But boi is jealous when he sees how easily you can bend your body and stretch into positions that even he can’t

Obviously, his mind is in the gutter when he’s thinking about the way your body can bend - but he’s equally furious of the fact that human skin is so much softer than demon skin

Like, yes. Most demons have near-perfect skin because of its taut texture - and yes, that gives them the illusion of perfection

But human skin, blemished as it is, is like a teddy bear next to a rock when compared to demon skin

And obviously Asmo’s skin is softer than everyone else’s (this man is NOT skimping out when it comes to his skincare routine), but it infuriates him that his skin isn’t as soft as yours

Of course, man bounces back quicker than anyone else (as expected)

He grows content with the texture of his own skin the moment he realizes how easily penetrable human skin is - namely when he’s doing homework with you and he sees your skin get sliced open by paper, of all things (man nearly chokes when he learns that this is a regular occurrence for humans)

But he never quite loses his fixation for the human body

It’s highkey the reason why he likes touching you so much - your skin is softer than some Devildom blankets! If he could fall asleep with your arms wrapped around him every night, he absolutely would

But he won’t genuinely request that of you unless you explicitly offer, so he’ll settle for simply hugging you at every opportunity

Ofc, the moment he grows content with the texture of his skin, he’s jealous of your flexibility all over again, so it’s kind of nuts

You eventually have to sit him down and tell him all the downfalls of being able to bend yourself into awkward positions (ex: getting stuck in said position or causing a cramp) for him to finally be content with his own body once more

The moment he’s back to normal, all the usual flirtatious jokes come back and he’s offering to let you show him the ways your body can bend

You deny instantly

But if he ever takes you to a club and has the opportunity to dance with you, do a body roll

Man will get on his knees if that’s what it takes to have you do it again

And then he’ll whisk you off to his room, stubbornly ignoring his brother’s protests, declaring that he needs to “reeducate” himself in the art of dance, and that you’re going to be his teacher

And hey - give him a private show while you’re at it ;)

Beelzebub

The first time you crack your knuckles in front of him, he’s eating

Man doesn’t really register it, just assumes that he bit something crunchy

The second time you do it, it’s in his and Belphie’s room - and Belphie is taking a nap

Man gets a little suspicious, because the sound definitely came from your end, but he dismisses it and decides that the sound must have been a hitch in Belphie’s breathing

But the third time, the two of you are alone

And Beel’s protective instincts come rushing to the surface when he realizes that you really are the one making that sound

“Are you dying?”

First question, no matter what. Man has heard of medical conditions that cause bones to become brittle and crumbly, so he needs to know

Then again, he won’t really believe you when you tell him the truth

“You can...crack stuff at will?”

beelisconfuzzled.exe

You have to show him methodically, portion by portion, which of your body parts you can crack

He isn’t disturbed by the sound (he’s eaten things which sound much worse, he can assure you) but man is intrigued

(”But how?” He’ll inevitably ask, struggling to yank his own knuckles off in an attempt to crack them and get that feeling of satisfaction you kept talking about)

All in all,he has a decent reaction - probably one of the only people who won’t overreact about the information

But then the fateful day comes

And he cracks your back

It happens while he’s giving you a big bear hug, proud of you after you came running to tell him about a good grade you got in Devildom Literature - and he places his palm on your back in just the right area, pressing down as he hugs you

And pop

Man is so mortified, he almost drops you

You, on the other hand, cannot be more pleased with this development

“Again! Again!” You shout, trying to get him to repeat the action - but while Beel loves hugging you, cracking your back is something he’s not willing to risk

“It’s okay when you do it, because you know how much your back can take” is his biggest argument. "But I don't."

And unfortunately, calling him a chicken won’t work when you try to convince him otherwise :(

What will work, however, is convincing Beel that this can be a sort of strength training - because he needs to have full control of his body to do it right

He’ll agree to do it once (mainly because you’ve been begging for so long)

But, obviously, “once” means as many times as you want, from there on out ;)

Belphegor

It’s one of the few times where Belphie isn’t in tune with his brother

And he hates it

He doesn’t understand how Beel isn't disturbed by the sound - every time you crack your knuckles, it sends a shudder straight down Belphie’s spine

And it’s not the ick factor taking place. It’s just that Belphie can’t help that his mind wanders to darker places whenever you do something like that, the sound abruptly reminding him of his time in the Celestial War and all the awful things he heard there

Like others, the sound reminds him of how weak you really are

And so, if you ever crack your knuckles around him, expect him to leave instantly

He’s the one brother who will never learn to tolerate it - not when he can remove himself from the situation so easily

And honestly, it’s kind of amazing how sharp his ears are

Is he taking a nap on your lap? If you think you can subtly crack anything without his eyes shooting open, you’re wrong

Is he preparing dinner with you in the kitchen? Nope, the sound of boiling water will not cover the sound of your body stretching too far, and Belphie will shoot you a glare before swiftly exiting the room

Is he simply doing homework with you in the RAD library? You’d think that the sound of chatter from the table next to you would hide the noise you make when you subtly lean back to crack your back, but Belphie is gathering his things mere seconds later, huffing and muttering under his breath

So yeah

Not a fan

On the other hand, he loves how accommodating your body is in terms of how flexibly you are

It brings him great joy, honestly, to just watch you flop your arms around aimlessly because humans’ movements are so fluid, so smooth, so unhindered by the rigid joints of demons

And, obviously, your flexibility makes for better naps

He likes to sleep next to you with his arms wrapped around your waist while you latch onto him in whatever position you deem comfortable

Without a doubt, the position you find is something that would be wholly impossible for a demon (how are you bending your legs that much?!) and it sometimes scares him to realize the full extents of your flexibility (can all humans twist their arms like that, or is it just you?) but he loves that you use your body’s oddities to pull him closer

And he’ll never deny you a comfortable nap if you’re willing to cuddle so readily

Never

Unless you crack your knuckles, that is

Solomon

Life is war and cracking body parts is your only weapon

Aka nonstop competitions between you and our resident wizard boy, both of you cracking body parts back and forth until one of you either fails or runs out of things to crack

Knuckles? Come on, are you even trying? Give him something less basic

Back? Oh yeah. Both sides, too - and the loud ones

Hips? You didn’t think it was possible, but Solomon will look you in the eye and hit one side of his hip, the movement a prelude to an instant CRACK which rings out oh-so-gloriously from the other end

Ribs? You realized you could crack them once and never stopped - you’re actually the one to teach Solomon how to do this

Neck? Always the finisher. So loud, and so satisfying

Neither the House of Lamentation nor Purgatory Hall ever wants to have the two of you over at the same time, because the residents know that you and Solomon will have these competitions. And they absolutely hate it.

So what do you do?

Go to the library and disturb the demons there, of course

It actually becomes a pretty sick form of payback to all the annoying demons that look down on the two of you for being humans, because they always cringe so hard when you guys do this

The two of you have deduced that the sound of knuckles cracking is the demon equivalent to the sound of nails on a chalkboard

And you fucking run wild with it

No one wants to piss either of you off, because you’ll both glare at the demon in question and proceed to crack every body part known to mankind (like seriously - it’s reached the point where you guys can crack your TOES, and if that isn’t absolutely amazing, then you don’t know what is)

It actually highkey annoys the demons in your classes, because you guys always crack everything right before an exam and while it helps you focus better, it effectively ruins their concentration

Ofc you guys don’t really care so they can suck it

But uh

Okay so the demons at RAD may or may not get fed up of you both one day and petition for Diavolo to instate a “No cracking body parts” rule in school

So yeah your primary source of entertainment sort of disappears after that point

But no worries, you and Solomon head to the downtown shopping districts instead and become the BEST hagglers in town

“Hey, can we get these shirts on a discount? Huh? You don’t do discounts?

*Aggressively cracks everything until the demon just wants them out of the store*

“How about now BICH?”

Simeon

You’re actually not the one to introduce Simeon to the idea of humans being able to crack their body parts at will

No, it’s Solomon who steals that pleasure from you

But will Simeon ever let the sorcerer know just how much it unnerves him? Absolutely not. So what does our beloved angel do?

Why, there’s only one option

Come running straight to you.

Man is disturbed. Honestly, disturbed is phrasing it lightly. If he were in his angel form, you’d be able to see how his feathers ruffle and flutter at the very thought of that sound

Needless to say, he hates it

(You 100% consider cracking your knuckles in front of him, just to tease him, but you decide against it)

See, Simeon is an angel. And that means 99% of the time, he’s surrounded by other holy spirits, all of which have bodies molded to perfection that simply cannot crack the way yours can. Whereas demons are forced into human interaction a little more (oft when they're summoned), Simeon really isn’t used your fragility, no matter how much he tries to remind himself of it

So yeah

He hates it

On the other hand - man loves how flexible humans are

The first time you flop down onto your bed, assuming a position that would be impossible for any demon or angel to take but is deemed “comfortable” by you, Simeon is enraptured

It’s not sexual, he just thinks it’s really amazing that you have so much control over your body when he can hardly do a standing glute stretch without breaking a limb

It’s almost funny, his fixation

Actually no - it’s not almost funny. It is wholly and completely hilarious, and you will not stop leading him further down this rabbit hole

When you send this man picture of an contortionist, he’s utterly mesmerized

Show him human ballet, and he will not stop watching it

So yeah

He appreciates parts of the human body, hates others - but as long as you never crack your muscles in front of him, he’s down

Also - after you’ve thoroughly interested him in the art of being a human, he may just write about it in his next book. If you read the next set of chronicles detailed by Christopher Peugeot, you already know who the “feisty but good-hearted human who can bend themselves into a pretzel” is based on

(Bonus: Do a body roll in front of him and he might faint - man knew the human body could but like that? You might just have corrupted an angel)

Luke

“So...cool...!”

Boi loves it

He cheers you on like a champ, laughing merrily as you crack your knuckles into oblivion, scaring away the other residents in Purgatory Hall

And no matter how many times Simeon warns him not to urge you on (”The human already has no sense of self-preservation, and you don’t need to help that along,” he said), Luke can’t help but watch with excited eyes as you show him how different the human body is

He’s almost like Levi with his ardent admiration, and he honestly finds nothing disturbing about the sound of you cracking knuckles

Just finds it cool

It actually serves as a catalyst for his relationship with Solomon, because Luke will 100% go up to him and ask him whether he can crack his body like you, and obviously, the man will laugh and prove that centuries of knowledge have made him better than the average human - even in this area

But yeah

You can really see his inner child come out

(Though don’t say that last part out loud - he’ll ignore you for three days in an attempt to be “mature” before you convince him to accept your apology)

But really - he may be the only person who can not only tolerate the quirks of your body, but openly endorses all of them

On the downside, though, he’ll also try to crack his knuckles...which won’t bode too well, given that his body was built to perfection by God

Boi almost rips his finger off

Simeon proceeds to instate a no-cracking-knuckles rule within Purgatory Hall to discourage any further attempts from Luke

But you know what he didn’t ban?

Backflips.

It doesn’t matter if you can or you can’t do them - Luke will happen to see a video of a human doing one (ahem, Solomon showed him it in an attempt to stir up trouble), and now he’s begging you to do the same thing in real life

Which doesn’t work out too well, given that backflips are hard

And you may not be successful 100% of the time

And obviously, Simeon eventually finds out that the two of you have moved onto a new fixation, and so he instate the no-backflips-in-Purgatory-Hall rule

But you know what he didn’t ban?

Cartwheels.

And so it continues on and on, indefinitely because the only way to cease your and Luke’s shenanigans would be to ban humans in Purgatory Hall, and Solomon is thankfully preventing him from doing that

Barbatos

Hates it, hates it, hates it

More than any of the brothers, more than any of the angels - this man loathes every oddity of the human body that makes it different from a demon’s

But not for the reasons you’d expect

See, it’s not the sound that bothers Barbatos

No, he’s heard the screams of the damned before. You cracking a few measly knuckles hardly makes him flinch as he pours your tea

But what Barbatos does hate is the fact that he doesn’t know what it means

Every single time you crack a knuckle in his presence, it doesn’t matter if the prince himself is speaking, because Barbatos’s eyes will fly straight to you

And yes - you guessed it:

Barbatos can’t tell the difference between the sound of you cracking your knuckles and the sound of you breaking a bone.

And for that reason, he hates it

It’s hardly his fault - he doesn’t even know if there is a difference between the two sounds. But this butler has no faith in you and no faith in humanity as a whole, so every time you crack your knuckles, it sends a rush of worry straight to his stomach, and the demon has to watch you for a solid ten seconds to make sure that you haven’t actually hurt yourself

Poor man

He’s the kind of guy to take everything in stride, so he'll probably never tell you how much he hates it when you crack your knuckles (and honestly, what would he say? “Hi, can you please stop cracking your knuckles because I care about you and it makes me concerned for your health???” No, that’s not going to work. And he doesn't know what will work, so he suffers in silence)

Seeing you stretch is even worse

It can be a casual stretch, simply pulling your arms above your head just slightly beyond what would be physically possible for a normal demon, but it sends a chill to Barbatos’s heart, and he’s worried all over again

See, when you crack your knuckles, at least it’s over. But when you stretch? Sometimes you hold your position for a minute, if not more - and Barbatos simply can’t turn away because he’s terrified that he will, and you’ll somehow hurt yourself

So yeah

No rest for this butler, not as long as you’re going around with that weak body of yours and are cracking and stretching your way into oblivion

On the bright side, it means that he’s almost always watching over you when you visit, an added layer of protection

The only difference is that while the others are focused on protecting you from other demons, Barbatos is preoccupied with making sure you don’t hurt yourself

Diavolo

Timing is everything

And indeed, you just happen to be in the midst of cracking your knuckles and neck the moment you’re transported to the Devildom, every single one of the most powerful demons in the land staring at you in horror as your body pops some more

"Oh no,” Diavolo whispers, frowning as he looks at Barbatos. “We got a defective human :(”

Nevermind the insult you feel at his words (who does this strange, unfairly-attractive redhead think he is, calling you “defective???” He might be correct in his judgement, but he had no right to voice his thoughts!), you are shook

Definitely not the best first impression for either of you to make

Of course, Lucifer is quick to pick things up with his explanation of what this place is and who he is, and the whole situation is mostly forgotten as you come to realize that you’re standing in front of a literal prince

But the past has a way of resurfacing

And obviously, several months later, you crack your knuckles once more in the presence of the demon lord

The immediate wince on his face is more than enough for you to read his mind

“You’re thinking I’m defective again, aren’t you?”

“YOU REMEMBER THAT?!”

Poor bby

He’s honestly such a brilliant ruler, but when it comes to maneuvering the minds of humans, it’s just not his strong suit

Anyway, the two of you have a long talk (aka you rant and Diavolo listens) where you explain to him that cracking knuckles is a normal phenomenon, and that - look, you can even crack other parts of your body

And the prince is fascinated

He knew humans were built differently than demons, but he’d simply assumed that your body was just as perfect as his, and that yours could simply handle less extreme conditions

Clearly, though, that wasn’t the case

Man decides that, as the ruler of hell and the man spearheading efforts to unite the three realms, it is his moral obligation to learn about the other ways humans differ from demons

And so the shenanigans begin

It’s honestly time-consuming, but Lucifer doesn’t mind because if you’re with Diavolo, you’re out of trouble, and Barbatos doesn’t mind because if Diavolo’s with you, then he’s out of trouble

All in all, it becomes the prelude to a LOT of time spent together, and a LOT of differences between demons and humans come to light.

Aka various iterations of “What do you mean, humans can’t bite through steel?”

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yunsoh · 3 years

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alrighty season 3 ep 2 thoughts. this post got ridiculously long so the rest is under a read more:

- literally i love every single time we see akito sleeping in this long and empty room. there’s something very encompassing about how empty it is + how the angle emphasizes it, especially when we can clearly see she’s sharing her bed

- shigure and tohru’s moments alone are always soo so sweet. their relationship so far is very much one where there’s a lot of affection between them (which ofc makes one of their biggest scenes together during the final act feel especially hurtful even though it’s a side of shigure we’re well aware of by that point -- it’s just something that tohru up until that point hadn’t witnessed, much less been directly confronted with. but i’m getting ahead of myself lmfao moving on)

- actually related to the above love tohru asking “wouldn’t i just be interrogating him?” and “the things kureno told me make me feel like i’m looking into a deep, dark well” just ahh i do love this background progression of shigure and tohru’s relationship and how it reaches a head when they have their talk about kyo later.

- this is perhaps unintentional but: having this shot of machi noticing yuki + clearly having some new feelings about him overlaid with/directly followed by momiji and tohru, where we still know momiji has an unrequited crush on her. yes it makes me laugh a little but it’s also fitting because at this moment in time yuki does not have a crush on machi in return + sees her only as a friend.

- it’s been mentioned but it bears repeating. why are they not progressing momiji’s height whatsoever lmaooo. funny because yuki and kyo have had gradual changes but they’re really just trying to make this growth spurt reveal super jarring huh. also holy shit he looks TINY next to haru in this shot. next

- the one kid in class asking hana to fuck the priyuki girls up but she’s like “actually i really don’t care” LMAO........ love her

- ugh i really love this moment with yuki.......... i think it’s been a while since we’ve seen the general student population (not just the prince yuki girls) still treat him in a revering way, now also in part because he’s the student council president but definitely still because of his reputation as the prince. this was something that was so deeply ostracizing to him early on in the series, and does still remind him of his loneliness -- but that loneliness isn’t crippling to him anymore, because now he does have friends who like him and who he can have fun with.

i’m going to write a bigger post on this later probably because this is a really important progression point in how yuki understands himself to exist in his school’s ecosystem + how his self-esteem is still developing.

- additionally i just want to say that this scene isn’t yuki suddenly falling for machi, or really something to be read as mutually romantic between them -- machi i think absolutely has a crush on him at this point (because he is. the only person who is actually nice to her and considers her existence aside from kakeru but moving on) but yuki’s perception of her at this moment is heavily tied to how he thinks of himself as a friend + whether he’s a worthy enough person to befriend. the fact that machi shatters those doubts for him in such an overt way is important.

- anyways machi is rly cute here i loooove that she’s comfortable being more expressive around him even though it’s mostly out of embarrassment LMAO...... she’s learning how to display her feelings and trusts him with that..... cute.

- also of note yuki putting his hand on the top of her head which is like... he’s trying to convey that he feels they have (or are starting to have) a trusting friendship with each other but it’s like. a bit too much for machi to handle omfg. honestly this goes in hand with way back when ayame patted yuki’s head in praise which was clearly something yuki didn’t receive much of as a kid, and i’m assuming machi also rarely if ever received that same sort of praise. what i’m saying is they’re both trying lmaoo

- also as usual shimazaki’s deliveries are spot on yuki is soooo fucking cute in this scene. “what? seriously? they’re even worse than the ones i made” he’s so casual and funny with her it’s so good

- okay the timeskip to sunset makes me laugh it makes it seem like tohru and kyo have just been waiting in that room alone for hourssss

- ugh how sexy would it have been if the brief flashback to kureno + the music overlay had been cut out here. like tohru seeing the birds and then turning to ask kyo what he would think if someone’s curse had been broken would have gotten the message across just as well + i think would have been more emotionally impactful.

- tohru’s expression here though is so good just. ugh. will say this point in hers and kyo’s relationship is just so tasty because he really is her most trusted confidant but she’s also so aware of anything that could be construed as him rejecting her or pushing her away, which now that she’s getting especially wrapped up in the family’s secrets...... it’s a thin line she’s walking w wanting to protect him but not wanting to push him away bc he’s resigned to what will happen

- this visual is so weeeeeird aoghjksd the screen being framed by her bangs. what. why

- hmmmm in general idk if the flower scene hit very well. it felt kind of awkward? kyo and tohru both seemed really stiff which is weird because literally just a minute ago they were animated pretty well tbh

- this post is already so long and i only JUST started the akigure part of the ep....... i’m so sorry

- machi and kyo both handing off white flowers to yuki and tohru respectively and then we’re hit with shigure giving akito a red flower instead. obviously because akito is symbolized by red camellias + to refer back to her memory of shigure giving one to her, but also just basic color symbolism -- white being more indicative of purity and new beginnings, red being something both passionate, evocative, dangerous.

- oh we’re back to the kids. it is not in fact akigure time yet.

- i loooove this tohru outfit so much she’s so cute in it. also ig it bears mentioning because i didn’t say anything about it last time, but the reboot hinting more directly to the audience that something bad happened to rin, rather than just her disappearing entirely, is def more overt than in the manga. that short scene of ren intercepting rin in the last ep was chronological yes, but in the manga we don’t see that happen until after we know that akito’s been keeping her in the cat’s room. so just by tohru mentioning that she hasn’t seen or heard from rin in a while, we’re clued in that something bad to her must have happened because of ren. which i don’t think is a bad decision honestly -- since ren is set up as the antagonist for this season, it might make viewers assume that ren did something bad to her, only for it to be revealed that it was akito and that akito is still becoming more and more unhinged. but that also ren is unhinged. disasters.

- “i’m sorry, i’m afraid i do have parents” this rly is just the mid-20s mood isn’t it

- mitsuru fucking hissing at shigure i cannot

- nakamura’s acting during this phone scene is so goooood oh my god. the LOATHING. honestly this alone just makes me crazy abt the insanity that is akito + kureno + shigure like jesus christ.

- kureno’s pitiful little “nii-san” after shigure obliterates his entire life. there we go

- honestly it’s funny how shigure’s expression looks when akito yells at him for sleeping with ren because for a moment it looks like he has NO idea what she’s talking about but then. nope. he fucked her mom.

- do like the little detail of akito pointing as she tells shigure to get out, but when he leaves he just turns in the opposite direction. like truly he has never followed orders to the t once in his life.

- this shot of ren is so fucking absurd oh my god. pls get ur male gaze directing out of here.

- “i... thought you forgot” man the way this is delivered feels really striking. i think because akito is never caught off guard in a way that surprises her in such a quiet way, or in a way that leaves her plainly vulnerable. like her vitriol towards him has to do with the fact that she feels he’s abandoning the bond they used to have (and ofc they bond they have through the curse), and that memory of him does act as a linchpin.

- it’s primo bitchy shigure hours. primo akito meltdown hours.

- this shot is soooo foreboding wow. straight up darkness. tho i kind of wish this shot was used instead for the “i want to crush her to a pulp” line, or at the very least that the shot for that line was just framed differently

- god they’re so fucking awful for each other. purely just a disaster duo. shigure taking control of the conversation + dismissing akito’s meltdown and emotional manipulation leaves akito feeling the only way she can have control over him is through seducing him since no other method works. the convo that has with her accusing him of sleeping with a lot of other women + her not knowing how to handle the fact that he slept with ren, and ofc the convo it has with her misogyny and how she views herself. they have this really vitriolic push and pull for control because akito doesn’t know what to do when she loses any control at all, and shigure’s grasping at what little control he can have considering how their power dynamics work with the bond -- walking away when she’s being manipulative, refusing to coddle her. like shigure’s wish for them to be on an equal playing field without the curse is a pipe dream because their relationship is just so, so damaged as is and is so heavily informed by what has already happened between them. takaya why did you have them end up together for realsies why did you--

- what is with the reboot team making akito break down the walls and doors all the time lmfao. bro the structural damage caused by this little 90lb disaster.

- i think i understand why they took it out (like maybe it would have been too overt with how they’ve set up the audience to expect something bad happened to rin after running into ren) but man they really just didn’t adapt one of the most haunting parts of the series huh. like this shot of rin being trapped inside the cat’s room right beside shigure thinking “i’ll be waiting for you” maaaan man!!

- okay addendum: apparently she is in the room. in hindsight i did notice this but it did not register as a person because i thought it was just a glare on the window 😭

#fruits basket #fruits basket spoilers #holy shit this post is long i'm so sorry LMAO..... i had so much to say

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letterboxd · 3 years

Photo

Blurring the Line.

As a new Space Jam film beams down to Earth, Kambole Campbell argues that a commitment to silliness and a sincere love for the medium is what it takes to make a great live-action/animation hybrid.

The live-action and animation hybrid movie is something of a dicey prospect. It’s tricky to create believable interaction between what’s real and what’s drawn, puppeteered or rendered—and blending the live and the animated has so far resulted in wild swings in quality. It is a highly specific and technically demanding niche, one with only a select few major hits, though plenty of cult oddities. So what makes a good live-action/animation hybrid?

To borrow words from Hayao Miyazaki, “live action is becoming part of that whole soup called animation”. Characters distinct from the humans they interact with, but rendered as though they were real creatures (or ghosts), are everywhere lately; in Paddington, in Scooby Doo, in David Lowery’s (wonderful) update of Pete’s Dragon.

The original ‘Pete’s Dragon’ (1977) alongside the 2016 remake.

Lowery’s dragon is realized with highly realistic lighting and visual-effects work. By comparison, the cartoon-like characters in the 1977 Pete’s Dragon—along with other films listed in Louise’s handy compendium of Disney’s live-action animation—are far more exaggerated. That said, there’s still the occasional holdout for the classical version of these crossovers: this year’s Tom and Jerry replicating the look of 2D through 3D/CGI animation, specifically harkens back to the shorts of the 1940s and ’50s.

One type of live-action/animation hybrid focuses on seamless immersion, the other is interested in exploring the seams themselves. Elf (2003) uses the aberration of stop-motion animals to represent the eponymous character as a fish out of water. Ninjababy, a Letterboxd favorite from this year’s SXSW Festival, employs an animated doodle as a representation of the protagonist’s state of mind while she processes her unplanned pregnancy.

Meanwhile, every Muppets film ever literally tears at the seams until we’re in stitches, but, for the sake of simplicity, puppets are not invited to this particular party. What we are concerned with here is the overlap between hand-drawn animation and live-action scenes (with honorable mentions of equally valid stop-motion work), and the ways in which these hybrids have moved from whimsical confections to nod-and-wink blockbusters across a century of cinema.

Betty Boop and Koko the clown in a 1938 instalment of the Fleischer brothers’ ‘Out of the Inkwell’ series.

Early crossovers often involve animators playing with their characters, in scenarios such as the inventive Out of the Inkwell series of shorts from Rotoscope inventor Max Fleischer and his director brother Dave. Things get even more interactive mid-century, when Gene Kelly holds hands with Jerry Mouse in Anchors Aweigh.

The 1960s and ’70s deliver ever more delightful family fare involving human actors entering cartoon worlds, notably in the Robert Stevenson-directed Mary Poppins and Bedknobs and Broomsticks, and Chuck Jones’ puntastic The Phantom Tollbooth.

Jerry and Gene dance off their worries in ‘Anchors Aweigh’ (1945).

Mary Poppins is one of the highest-rated live-action/animation hybrids on Letterboxd for good reason. Its sense of control in how it engages with its animated creations makes it—still!—an incredibly engaging watch. It is simply far less evil than the singin’, dancin’ glorification of slavery in Disney’s Song of the South (1946), and far more engaging than Victory Through Air Power (1943), a war-propaganda film about the benefits of long-range bombing in the fight against Hitler. The studio’s The Reluctant Dragon (1941) also serves a propagandistic function, as a behind-the-scenes studio tour made when the studio’s animators were striking.

By comparison, Mary Poppins’ excursions into the painted world—replicated in Rob Marshall’s belated, underrated 2018 sequel, Mary Poppins Returns—are full of magical whimsicality. “Films have added the gimmick of making animation and live characters interact countless times, but paradoxically none as pristine-looking as this creation,” writes Edgar in this review. “This is a visual landmark, a watershed… the effect of making everything float magically, to the detail of when a drawing should appear in front or the back of [Dick] Van Dyke is a creation beyond my comprehension.” (For Van Dyke, who played dual roles as Bert and Mr Dawes Senior, the experience sparked a lifelong love of animation and visual effects.)

Julie Andrews, Dick Van Dyke and penguins, in ‘Mary Poppins’ (1964).

Generally speaking, and the Mary Poppins sequel aside, more contemporary efforts seek to subvert this feeling of harmony and control, instead embracing the chaos of two worlds colliding, the cartoons there to shock rather than sing. Henry Selick’s frequently nightmarish James and the Giant Peach (1996) leans into this crossover as something uncanny and macabre by combining live action with stop motion, as its young protagonist eats his way into another world, meeting mechanical sharks and man-eating rhinos. Sally Jane Black describes it as “riding the Burton-esque wave of mid-’90s mall goth trends and blending with the differently demonic Dahl story”.

Science-classroom staple Osmosis Jones (2001) finds that within the human body, the internal organs serve as cities full of drawn white-blood-cell cops. The late Stephen Hillenburg’s The Spongebob Squarepants Movie (2004) turns its real-life humans into living cartoons themselves, particularly in a bonkers sequence featuring David Hasselhoff basically turning into a speedboat.

David Hasselhoff picks up speed in ‘The Spongebob Squarepants Movie’ (2004).

The absurdity behind the collision of the drawn and the real is never better embodied than in another of our highest-rated live/animated hybrids. Released in 1988, Robert Zemeckis’ Who Framed Roger Rabbit shows off a deep understanding—narratively and aesthetically—of the material that it’s parodying, seeking out the impeccable craftsmanship of legends such as director of animation Richard Williams (1993’s The Thief and the Cobbler), and his close collaborator Roy Naisbitt. The forced perspectives of Naisbitt’s mind-bending layouts provide much of the rocket fuel driving the film’s madcap cartoon opening.

Distributed by Walt Disney Pictures, Roger Rabbit utilizes the Disney stable of characters as well as the Looney Tunes cast to harken back to America’s golden age of animation. It continues a familiar scenario where the ’toons themselves are autonomous actors (as also seen in Friz Freleng’s 1940 short You Ought to Be in Pictures, in which Daffy Duck convinces Porky Pig to try his acting luck in the big studios).

Daffy Duck plots his rise up the acting ranks in ‘You Ought to Be in Pictures’ (1940).

Through this conceit, Zemeckis is able to celebrate the craft of animation, while pastiching both Chinatown, the noir genre, and the mercenary nature of the film industry (“the best part is… they work for peanuts!” a studio exec says of the cast of Fantasia). As Eddie Valiant, Bob Hoskins’ skepticism and disdain towards “toons” is a giant parody of Disney’s more traditional approach to matching humans and drawings.

Adult audiences are catered for with plenty of euphemistic humor and in-jokes about the history of the medium. It’s both hilarious (“they… dropped a piano on him,” one character solemnly notes of his son) and just the beginning of Hollywood toying with feature-length stories in which people co-exist with cartoons, rather than dipping in and out of fantasy sequences. It’s not just about how the cartoons appear on the screen, but how the human world reacts to them, and Zemeckis gets a lot of mileage out of applying ’toon lunacy to our world.

Bob Hoskins in ‘Who Framed Roger Rabbit?’ (1988).

The groundbreaking optical effects and compositing are excellent (and Hoskins’ amazing performance should also be credited for holding all of it together), but what makes Roger Rabbit such a hit is that sense of controlled chaos and a clever tonal weaving of violence and noirish seediness (“I’m not bad… I’m just drawn that way”) through the cartoony feel. And it is simply very, very funny.

It could be said that, with Roger Rabbit, Zemeckis unlocked the formula for how to modernize the live-action and animation hybrid, by leaning into a winking parody of what came before. It worked so perfectly well that it helped kickstart the ‘Disney renaissance' era of animation. Roger Rabbit has influenced every well-known live-action/animation hybrid produced since, proving that there is success and fun to be had by completely upending Mary Poppins-esque quirks. Even Disney’s delightful 2007 rom-com Enchanted makes comedy out of the idea of cartoons crossing that boundary.

When a cartoon character meets real-world obstacles.

Even when done well, though, hybrids are not an automatic hit. Sitting at a 2.8-star average, Joe Dante’s stealthily great Looney Tunes: Back in Action (2003) is considered by the righteous to be the superior live-action/animated Looney Tunes hybrid, harkening back to the world of Chuck Jones and Frank Tashlin. SilentDawn states that the film deserves the nostalgic reverence reserved for Space Jam: “From gag to gag, set piece to set piece, Back in Action is utterly bonkers in its logic-free plotting and the constant manipulation of busy frames.”

With its Tinseltown parody, Back in Action pulls from the same bag of tricks as Roger Rabbit; here, the Looney Tunes characters are famous, self-entitled actors. Dante cranks the meta comedy up to eleven, opening the film with Matthew Lillard being accosted by Shaggy for his performance in the aforementioned Scooby Doo movie (and early on throwing in backhanded jokes about the practice of films like itself as one character yells, “I was brought in to leverage your synergy!”).

Daffy Duck with more non-stop banter in ‘Looney Tunes: Back in Action’ (2003).

Back in Action is even more technically complex than Roger Rabbit, seamlessly bringing Looney Tunes physics and visual language into the real world. Don’t forget that Dante had been here before, when he had Anthony banish Ethel into a cartoon-populated television show in his segment of Twilight Zone: The Movie. Another key to this seamlessness is star Brendan Fraser, at the height of his powers here as “Brendan Fraser’s stunt double”.

Like Hoskins before him, Fraser brings a wholehearted commitment to playing the fed-up straight man amidst cartoon zaniness. Fraser also brought that dedication to Henry Selick's Monkeybone (2001), a Roger Rabbit-inspired sex comedy that deploys a combo of stop-motion animation and live acting in a premise amusingly close to that of 1992’s Cool World (but more on that cult anomaly shortly). A commercial flop, Back in Action was the last cinematic outing for the Looney Tunes for some time.

Nowadays, when we think of live-action animation, it’s hard not to jump straight to an image of Michael Jordan’s arm stretching to do a half-court dunk to save the Looney Tunes from slavery. There’s not a lot that can be fully rationalized about the 1996 box-office smash, Space Jam. It is a bewildering cartoon advert for Michael Jordan’s baseball career, dreamed up off the back of his basketball retirement, while also mashing together different American icons. Never forget that the soundtrack—one that, according to Benjamin, “makes you have to throw ass”—includes a song with B-Real, Coolio, Method Man and LL Cool J.

Michael Jordan and teammates in ‘Space Jam’ (1996).

Space Jam is a film inherently born to sell something, predicated on the existing success of a Nike commercial rather than any obvious passion for experimentation. But its pure strangeness, a growing nostalgia for the nineties, and meticulous compositing work from visual-effects supervisor Ed Jones and the film’s animation team (a number of whom also worked on both Roger Rabbit and Back in Action), have all kept it in the cultural memory.

The films is backwards, writes Jesse, in that it wants to distance itself from the very cartoons it leverages: “This really almost feels like a follow-up to Looney Tunes: Back in Action, rather than a predecessor, because it feels like someone watched the later movie, decided these Looney Tunes characters were a problem, and asked someone to make sure they were as secondary as possible.” That attempt to place all the agency in Jordan’s hands was a point of contention for Chuck Jones, the legendary Warner Bros cartoonist. He hated the film, stating that Bugs would never ask for help and would have dealt with the aliens in seven minutes.

Space Jam has its moments, however. Guy proclaims “there is nothing that Deadpool as a character will ever have to offer that isn’t done infinitely better by a good Bugs Bunny bit”. For some, its problems are a bit more straightforward, for others it’s a matter of safety in sport. But the overriding sentiments surrounding the film point to a sort of morbid fascination with the brazenness of its concept.

Holli Would (voiced by Kim Basinger) and Frank Harris (Brad Pitt) blur the lines in ‘Cool World’ (1992).

Existing in the same demented… space… as Space Jam, Paramount Pictures bought the idea for Cool World from Ralph Bakshi as it sought to have its own Roger Rabbit. While Brad Pitt described it as “Roger Rabbit on acid” ahead of release, Cool World itself looks like a nightmare version of Toontown. The film was universally panned at the time, caught awkwardly between being far too adult for children but too lacking in any real substance for adults (there’s something of a connective thread between Jessica Rabbit, Lola Bunny and Holli Would).

Ralph Bakshi’s risqué and calamitously horny formal experiment builds on the animator’s fascination with the relationship between the medium and the human body. Of course, he would go from the immensely detailed rotoscoping of Fire and Ice (1983) to clashing hand-drawn characters with real ones, something he had already touched upon in the seventies with Heavy Traffic and Coonskin, whose animated characters were drawn into real locations. But no one besides Bakshi quite knew what to do with the perverse concept of Brad Pitt as a noir detective trying to stop Gabriel Byrne’s cartoonist from having sex with a character that he drew—an animated Kim Basinger.

Jack Deebs (Gabriel Byrne) attempts to cross over to Hollie Would in ‘Cool World’ (1992).

Cool World’s awkwardness can be attributed to stilted interactions between Byrne, Pitt and the animated world, as well as studio meddling. Producer Frank Mancuso Jr (who was on the film due to his father running Paramount) demanded that the film be reworked into something PG-rated, against Bakshi’s wishes (he envisioned an R-rated horror), and the script was rewritten in secret. It went badly, so much so that Bakshi eventually punched Mancuso Jr in the face.

While Cool World averages two stars on Letterboxd, there are some enthusiastic holdouts. There are the people impressed by the insanity of it all, those who just love them a horny toon, and then there is Andrew, a five-star Cool World fan: “On the surface, it’s a Lovecraftian horror with Betty Boop as the villain, featuring a more impressive cityscape than Blade Runner and Dick Tracy combined, and multidimensional effects that make In the Mouth of Madness look like trash. The true star, however, proves to be the condensed surplus of unrelated gags clogging the arteries of the screen—in every corner is some of the silliest cel animation that will likely ever be created.”

There are even those who enjoy its “clear response to Who Framed Roger Rabbit”, with David writing that “the film presents a similar concept through the lens of the darkly comic, perverted world of the underground cartoonists”, though also noting that without Bakshi’s original script, the film is “a series of half steps and never really commits like it could”. Cool World feels both completely deranged and strangely low-energy, caught between different ideas as to how best to mix the two mediums. But it did give us a David Bowie jam.

‘Space Jam: A New Legacy�� is in cinemas and on HBO Max now.

Craft is of course important, but generally speaking, maybe nowadays a commitment to silliness and a sincere love for the medium’s history is the thing that makes successful live-action/animation hybrids click. It’s an idea that doesn’t lend itself to being too cool, or even entirely palatable. The trick is to be as fully dotty as Mary Poppins, or steer into the gaucheness of the concept, à la Roger Rabbit and Looney Tunes: Back in Action.

It’s quite a tightrope to walk between good meta-comedy and a parade of references to intellectual property. The winningest strategy is to weave the characters into the tapestry of the plot and let the gags grow from there, rather than hoping their very inclusion is its own reward. Wait, you said what is coming out this week?

Related content

Rootfish Jones’s list of cartoons people are horny for

The 100 Sequences that Shaped Animation: the companion list to the Vulture story

Jose Moreno’s list of every animated film made from 1888 to the present

Follow Kambole on Letterboxd

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nightswithkookmin · 3 years

Text

RE BigHit vs Jikook

@sizzlingpatrolfox

I appreciate you trying to clear things up after my last post on this topic.

I skimmed through your rejoinder and I get where you are coming from. But it seems the point of my response to you flew right over your head too.

You know what gaslighting is great but do you know what whistling is and how the erroneous use of reductios- reductio ad absurdums, the act of reducing another's argument to absurd extremities in order to critique is a form of whistling- exposing a person to online attacks or placing a target on an individual's back?

I really, really don't believe BigHit would HIDE TWO PEOPLE interacting within the group either you know?

I don't think asking two people to tone things down or slow down because they are acting risqué is the same as HIDING those two peole. That's gaslighting and is tacky.

Are you aware that by intentionally misconstruing and misinterpreting my theories in the way that you are doing in your reblogs can subject me to unwarranted negative attention and could potentially lead others who come across your reblogs out of context to attack, disparage and critique me harshly unprovoked?

Cyber Trolls and bullies looking for attention on the bird app often use this tactic to direct hate and abuse towards individuals they've tartget.

They intentionally distort their targets words, twist it around, reduce it to something absurd that they know will inflame passions or take it out of context, and post it online to incite and direct mass hate and violence towards people knowing full well that not everyone who comes across the content they've posted would grasp the context or go out of their way to find the right context of those texts.

These people try and often succeed at weaponizing the mass attention by appealing to the crowds sense of 'cancel culture' as a means to suppress and oppress people they've targeted on the internet.

I have been subjected to this form of online abuse one too many times, I'm used to it by now. But I don't find it funny at all. People will intentionally distort and reduce my theories to extreme absurdities or take certain bits out of context and would post these to Twitter, facebook, their GCs or whatever platforms they have in order to fuel or direct hate towards me either because they don't like me as a person or they don't like the things I say out here.

And their go to code word of attack is always, Taekook_lives because they know how passionate half the fandom is about that person.

You refer to your statement, 'BTS are ashamed of ships' and 'Jikook gets punished whenever they look at eachother' as a literary resource, whatever you mean by that, but you made it seem in your post like it's a theory coming from me or one I had espoused when in fact it's a reductio from you.

Am I the author of those statements? No. Have I said or implied those premise. No. But you have. Those are your assumptions about my posts. The emphasis is yours not mine. It's your interpretation of my work and like you said YOUR opinion on my work.

But ask yourself. Would you be dragged and attacked for it if it gained attention or would I ?

Do you see the problem here?

I get called out for people's interpretations of my posts all the time which to me is ridiculous.

There is nothing wrong with misunderstanding a post, or falling on the fallacy of reductio ad absurdum to argue your points, it can be humorous sometimes but understand it's a fallacy especially if you are appealing to the extremes of the argument like you keep doing in your reposts- please credit those posts appropriately next time you quote me by using disclaimers such as 'the emphasis is mine' where you assume a a meaning out of my posts or use 'the reductio is mine' or 'I assume by this statement you mean' 'correct me if I'm wrong'

Get creative with it. Lol.

Where none of these markers are used I assume without prejudice malice rooted in the fiery pits of hell are intended and I treat it as such.

As for the rest of your argument about Jikook not being a brand. It's fine. Do you.

But I disagree. Jikook is a brand in of themselves within BTS.

I see them as a brand. I see them as being managed by BigHit as a brand.

Also, I believe BigHit is aware they are dating and they are well aware of instances where Jikook gets negative attention too like whenever Christian organizations in South Korea lead online protests against them for promoting homophobia in South Korea because of their 'fan service.'

Side note: People are out here screaming Jikook is fan service every day but apparently South Korean Christians disagree. Lmho.

As for how BigHit manages Jikook in instances where they attract negative attention, I think their approach to JK's Tattoo girl scandal says it all.

The company asked the shop to lay low until it all blew over. I assume this is the protocol. I don't think it's crazy for me or anyone to assume that BigHit does the same with Jikook and ask them to tone things down when they are recieving negative attention or are moving in a way that is likely to attract negative attention.

I don't know how you arrived at 'BigHit is hiding Jikook' when all I said is I felt around a period BigHit had asked Jikook to tone things down- perhaps because they had a strategic partnership in the pipelines but sure go ahead and compare me to Taekook_lives because what better way to punish me for the opinions you don't agree with or shut me up than to get the do before complain gassed up 13 year olds roaming these streets to come for me😊

Or better still set loose the Kookie monsters of tumblr on me- those are a lovely bunch😊

Unfortunately, tactics like these don't work on me honey.

I'm gay and a Christian.

Hell fire doesn't stop me from doing the gay. I don't think retweets from faceless chipmunks will slow me down out here💀

As for my theory on JK and Jikook getting punished when they breach company policies or come close to breaching their glass closet- actions have consequences.

They are employees at the end of the day and as much as they have self autonomy they are required to honor their contracts, terms of service, and obey company rules in order to continue to be employed by the company.

BTS themselves have talked about recieving punishments for defying company rules every now and then. Tae Kook have said they are partners in crime because they often get into trouble with the company and get 'scolded' for it. Jin have said he got into trouble with the company for cutting his hair himself or something. He's said he was pulled into a long meeting with staff over his hair once when he dyed it by himself- cross check, I don't remember accurately what that long meeting was about.

Jimin have said the same thing- getting in trouble for doing certain things that defy company polieces. BTS have said they aren't allowed to do certain things like drunken tweets, drinking or even swearing on VLive.

Do I think they get pulled into long meetings for a word or two when they act risqué yea. Do I think sometimes drastic measures are taken to serve as a warning or deterrent to others yes.

I really don't know why you find it absurd that I assume Jikook get punished for certain actions or that they get regulated by the company.

The look on RM and JM's face in the Be. TS Vlive when JK talked about preferring white to black to me is indication JK was going off script in that moment and was acting defiant as fuck. I don't think it's far fetched for me to assume JK wasn't supposed to say what he said or that he was going against the collective will of the group to uphold the kumbaya image of the group in that instance.

It's equally not far fetched for me to assume JM or RM would ask him as politely as possible to check his attitude next time during a VLive.

Hell, we've seen Hobi advice Jikook to be careful the way they conduct themselves on stage.

We've seen RM glare at, tap, and touch JK and the others several times on stage or during interviews and awards to get them to behave themselves and Tae has explained its because RM wants and tries to get them to act and look 'cool' in front of the cameras most times.

Tae did say he wasn't allowed to record a song with Jimin now didn't he?

Aren't all these a form of regulation? Why then do you think it's absurd for me to believe Jikook are sometimes regulated?

Please listen to BTS's song, A Typical trainee's Christmas to understand in what ways the company controls them. They've said it themselves, not I.

I recommend you watch Rookie King to understand the relationship between the boys and the company. Tae and Jin were not complaining about the company for no damn reason.

Of course they've matured now and their success guarantees them more status and freedom within the company as they are royalty and shareholders of BigHit but they are employees nonetheless.

Listen to RM- the leader of the group talk about that the company disregards their ideas and their creative inputs into their visuals and marketing I presume during the TaeNamKook YouTube live in 2020.

I promise you, just think of Jikook as real and in real life settings and the mystery will go away.

They are two gay men who work together under a company that is queer friendly but set up in homophobic society.

What advice would this company give them?

There you have your answer and if you still believe it's too fantastical to assume then agreed to disagree.

Sign,

GOLDY

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plaidshirtjimkirk · 5 years

Note

“Do you have any idea how beautiful you are?” for Chahura if inspiration strikes.

Pairing: ChahuraSeries: Star Trek TOSRating: MSummary: Two things are certain for Christine Chapel: Starfleet is a bureaucracy and Nyota is simply gorgeous. [AO3]

.*Universal Constant*.

Christine wasn’t sure what boggled her mind more: the expanse of the Alpha Quadrant alone, or that Starfleet could secure a runner-up position for most bureaucratic organization this side of Antares. It was a staggering achievement, given the vast amount of fascinating politics (to put it politely) in the proverbial starry seas.

That wasn’t to say she was a woman of anarchist philosophy, though—no; standards and regulations, rules and directives were of sure necessity where the complexities of space exploration were concerned. The calling of these formal social parties in luxurious locations, however…well, that was a different story.

Red Tape Events were how they’d been described by anyone without their backside weighing down a chair in San Francisco. In theory, a starship captain always wanted to receive an invitation to one, because it meant their crew’s valiant efforts were recognized by the top brass—and standing out as an individual from the entire fleet was no minor triumph. On the other hand, there were very few captains who relished the reality of actually attending, and those who did simply weren’t in the know of the grander implications.

Opulent scenery, alluring music, rivers of liquor: entertainment and good times to be had abound, and all under the watchful eye of executives just looking for either mistakes or recruits for operations…or both. Blackmail was a hell of a compelling thing, after all. It was a conundrum, hosting an affair to laud best behavior so the very same honorees could be scrutinized and coerced down different paths because Admiral So-and-So needs a new Title-of-the-Week. Absurd.

In any case, Andorian champagne was similar to its pale ale cousin, just with more effervescence and sparkle as one might imagine. Her half-filled glass cradled by graceful long fingers, Christine glanced around the venue, taking in the view of crew mates outfitted as much to the nines as she, herself, was.

Flowing dresses, stark tuxedos, the best of both worlds captured in vest tops blended down into cascading ruffled skirts, and a whole array of formal attire in between filled the space with color and vibrancy, while individuals from all walks of life cavorted about each other and their ever-observant brazen overlords.

She’d already made her rounds tonight, served her time. The rest was up to the good graces of the captain and first officer, and not to mention one very grumpy Chief Medical Officer who was expertly hiding his annoyance over a tumbler of Saurian brandy on the rocks.

Unable to keep the smile from hinting at the corners of her lips, Christine let her gaze drift through the hazy pearl lighting, slowly taking in the sight of the people she’d grown so close to over the last four years.

There were Hikaru and Pavel in their stylishly coordinated suits, side-by-side as ever and brushing arms while they laughed softly through quiet conversation. And Scotty, who was putting on just as impressive a show as McCoy for someone who would damn definitely rather be holed up in a Jefferies tube than having his ear talked off by Admiral Nogura—the poor man. Naturally, Janice was flawless as ever in a coral dress of twining silk and lace, set off by another extravagant updo.

And then…there was her. And not for the first time, Christine’s heart pounded its ribbed prison a little harder.

As expected, Nyota was surrounded by others, conversing and her face alight with joy while her company chortled in kind. She was in her element, a star in her own right as birth name suggested, and looked downright stunning amid the dewy atmosphere of the hall.

Their eyes met then and one of Nyota’s fell in a slow, flirtatious wink while her lips pursed. Christine exhaled through her nose, and with a small shake of the head, couldn’t fight the grin which pulled outward to her cheeks—or the blush, for that matter.

Two could play this game, of course, so she broke visual contact with a graceful turn and floated toward the open balcony doors, as light as the sash curtains framing them.

Moonlight spilled silver over an ivory stone floor—nothing short of storybook glamor, and complete with a faint scent of jasmine permeating the air.

With her elbows braced against the balcony ledge, Christine’s fingers entwined lazily together over the side as she took in the view of a rolling valley that stretched to the glittering horizon. And when the familiar pointed taps of stilettos informed her of approaching companionship, she tried to maintain the hard-to-get facade to no success.

Who could resist the presence of a living, breathing goddess, after all?

The mauve dress danced with elegance about Nyota’s curves as she closed in slowly, her eyes half lidded as Christine straightened her spine and pivoted to receive her.

“Nurse Chapel,” Nyota purred with a regal tilt of her face. She reached out to Christine’s forearm and took gentle hold, the pads of her fingers massaging in small back-and-forth motions. “Do you have any idea how beautiful you are?”

Funny, how this woman could steal the very words from her mouth before they even had a chance at leaving her tongue. Christine covered Nyota’s hand with her own, her digits folding in and coaxing it free; she brought it to her lips. “Lieutenant Uhura,” she replied with the same level of sensuality before bestowing a kiss there, “It takes one to know one, wouldn’t you say?”

A soft chuckle fell from Nyota and her eyes fell closed with an exhale. “What’s with all this flattery?”

“Flattery nothing. You’re stunning, Nyota,” Christine insisted without pulling her attention from her girlfriend’s ravishing features. “I thought for sure you’d choose the tux tonight, but this dress…” A soft hum followed. “It was definitely the right decision.”

“Let’s just say I was dressing to impress someone,” Nyota began matter-of-factly, and after a beat added, “…and we’ll leave it at that.”

“They’re very impressed, I promise.” Before releasing the hand she still held, Christine peered down to admire the intricacy of nail art adorning the tips. “These are so pretty. Did you put them on after I left to meet Leonard? I like him just fine but I still wish we could’ve arrived together.”

“Mm, that’s right.” Nyota lifted her pointer finger in the air and beckoned Christine closer. “And what’s more, let me tell you a secret.”

She leaned forward—felt Nyota stroke a lock of curled hair behind her ear before breath feathered lightly over her sensitive skin with a whisper. “They’re coming off again tonight.”

Blinking, Christine went to pull back and meet her gaze, but not before Nyota placed a small kiss to her cheek. “Just a little FYI, Nurse Chapel,” she declared in an airy, sing-song voice and stepped back. “A little…something to think about, right?”

Exasperation was in the subsequent reply. “Nyota…!”

“If you’ll excuse me now, I have to get back in there to manage those admirals.” With another wink, she purred, “I’ll see you later.”

And like the breeze, she turned to resume her task, nodding gracefully at McCoy passing by her on the way.

“Nyota,” McCoy drawled with a kind smile and tip of his head. He repeated the greeting when he arrived at Christine’s shoulder. “Came out to escape the heat from inside but it’s damn warm here too.”

“I’d say…” Christine exhaled, agreeing for more than one reason. “You have to admit, there’s a lot of hot air in there for a place that’s supposedly air conditioned.”

McCoy chuckled and lifted his glass before indulging. “Amen to that.”

Oh, it was going to be a longer night than expected…

It was after much too many hours when they finally, finally, found themselves back in the hotel room. Christine braced herself impatiently at the edge of the bed as Nyota knelt on the mattress behind her and undid the lacy bodice ties of her dress—slowly.

“Nyota,” she uttered in a half whine, half whisper.

“Yes, Christine?”

“Could you…” A moment so she could swallow. “…hurry, please?”

Nyota dropped the ribbons and took hold of Christine’s shoulders, leaning in with mock concern. “I’m sorry, are you in a hurry for something?”

A groan came forth and Christine let her lashes fall.

“Oh, I suppose I should stop being cruel, huh?” With that, Nyota made quick work of unbinding the rest of the material. “I don’t know why everyone hates these parties so much, Chris.”

“Red tape, Nyota.” Christine stood and let the garment fall free, slipping down her body to pool at her feet.

“Yeah? And I love unraveling you from it.”

Drawing a deep inhale, Christine’s eyes widened, and with burning cheeks she turned quickly on her feet to pounce at Nyota. “Oh my gosh, shut up!”

Nyota fell back against the soft bed, her chin tilted up while she laughed heartily. Upon stopping, another huff left her as she looked into Christine’s eyes. “Make me.”

Their lips met once, twice, and remained locked until the necessity of breathing pulled them apart again. They shared those same breaths before diving right back in, hands entwined and hearts beating to the same metronome: a universal constant.

#bisexualpirateheart #asks #chahura #long post #writing on plaid paper

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kcwcommentary · 5 years

Text

VLD2x05 – “Eye of the Storm”

2x05 – “Eye of the Storm”

Zarkon’s forces, who showed up at the end of the last episode, attack. The Castle takes evasive action. This is the first time (is it the only time? because I don’t remember these things) that it’s shown that there are weapons drones separate from the Castle itself. Of course, the writers decided that in a tense situation, one that could be life or death, to have the never explained “rivalry” between Lance and Keith be a thing. When you’re in a situation like this, you’re fighting for your life, you’re not going to care about such petty things. Allura using the moon for a gravity assist was really nice though; I’m surprised the show could actually get something science right for a change.

The Castle makes it into a wormhole and escapes but falls short of their intended destination. Allura collapses from stress and everyone’s tired. Coran gets “the slipperies.” This plot for him doesn’t do much for me; it doesn’t bother me, I’m just eh about it. He eventually reports that the Castle’s teludav, the system that enables wormhole creation, is under severe need of maintenance. While Coran works, everyone else tries to rest.

Lance heads off to the pool, and when he sees Keith is doing the same, he gets all angry/annoyed. “What the heck do you think you’re doing?” he asks Keith. This “rivalry” is so senseless. Seriously, writers? Keith can’t even go for a swim without Lance being bothered by it? It’s tiresome. The power cuts out while they’re in the elevator though. Two people antagonistically stuck in an elevator together is a trope, but this episode doesn’t let it play out; we move on to out of the elevator almost instantly.

Meanwhile, Hunk is baking because of course he is. I can understand his explanation though, that it clears his head. This is a reasonable application of the Hunk-likes-food single bullet-point of characterization the show gave the character. It expands his liking food beyond just fat guy = food, and instead explains how it’s applicable to his psychology. Baking is meditative for him. His “cookies” are weird though, and when challenged on it, he responds, “Are you going to try and tell me these aren’t cookies?” as he looks through clear, blue discs. Are you telling me he just randomly threw unknown substances in a bowl, stirred, and then portioned it out and baked it? That’s not how baking works. If he truly is even a novice yet serious baker, he would know that baking requires precise measurement of ingredients. The show again thinks doing a faux x-ray shot of bones breaking, this time Hunk’s teeth when he bites a “cookie,” is funny. It’s not.

Lance and Keith are trying to cooperate in climbing up the elevator shaft. The “rivalry” continues as they rant at each other each step. They eventually make it out and to a spot under the pool. The water is above them for some no other reason than it’s weird.

Pidge meanwhile tries to learn Altean, but for some absurd reason, the language instruction software attacks you if you mispronounce words. And the words it teaches are just creatures/monsters. The episode later makes Pidge’s wanting to learn the Altean language have relevance, but this particular scene does nothing to advance to that point, so this scene is wholly unnecessary.

Shiro and Allura have a brief, but nice, tender moment. She can’t help but to continue to be worried about Zarkon. Shiro tries to encourage her that it’s okay to take a bit of time to rest. Unfortunately, while they’re talking, Galra forces attack the Castle. The crew goes to stations. Lance is baffled that Zarkon could have found them. I don’t know why though since this isn’t the first time; the show has established that Zarkon can do this, and the Paladins know that he can do this. This shouldn’t seem like an out-of-nowhere surprise anymore. Coran’s slipperies remains a problem. I still don’t find his condition to be funny, but the emotion of his apology to Pidge and his asking for help makes his situation have narrative/characterization value. Keith and Lance are back to controlling the weapon drones. They call out targets for one another, which I guess is supposed to be them setting aside the rivalry to help one another, but it’s not realistic. One, an advanced weapon system like these drones would have tracking systems built into them, so each one would have fighters/potential targets being presented on their operational displays. Two, each of them would be too busy operating their own drone to be able to monitor for targets for the other.

The drones go down, other systems, the shields, Coran and Pidge have to take them all offline to power the wormhole generator. The Castle makes a short jump and end up at what looks like a giant gas planet, but they have at least a moment to breathe. Shiro’s worried about how they’re being tracked, and Allura assures him the Castle’s systems would have detected any kind of tracking device. Coran reports the teludav is even more damaged now. Pidge describes the thing that looks like a planet as being a “giant metallic storm.” This show finally has something that looks a fair bit like a realistic planet – it’s kind of Jupiter/Saturn-ish – but it’s a “metallic storm?” Whatever.

The storm should hide them from any technology that could detect them, but Zarkon’s there almost immediately. The shots of Zarkon’s ship above the eye of the storm are beautifully animated. With no known tech being identifiable as letting Zarkon find them, Allura assigns blame to herself. Saying that’s how the Galra found them on Arus too. I guess it’s just the stress of the moment that makes her blame herself. Shiro says none of that matters. (He’s so supportive in moments of crisis! How anyone could think his character is boring, I don’t know.) He says that Voltron needs to lure Zarkon away so that the Castle can get out. He says to Coran, “I need you to do the impossible.” So much leadership!

Galra fighters following Voltron into the storm end up being destroyed by the storm. I don’t understand the structure of this storm. It has an eye, but only on one end? Zarkon’s ship is stationed at that end of the eye, but there’s apparently something beneath the cylinder of the eye of the storm that blocks the other end, and thus the Castle can’t get out that way? That’s the problem when you make up something like this: you have to explain it/depict it in greater scope to let the reader/viewer understand what it is. If this is just a weird, spinning storm in space that has an eye, we’re going to instantly compare it to a hurricane to try to understand it. The eye of a hurricane is open on top and bottom. But this has no bottom opening?

Zarkon rages, “The Black Lion is all that matters.” The Castle flies out of the eye right past Zarkon’s ship. Even if Zarkon is focusing himself on the Black Lion, I can’t believe the entirety of his ship would just stop and not attack the Castle while it flies past. Voltron starts glowing purple and being pulled toward Zarkon’s ship. Shiro states Zarkon’s trying to take control of the Black Lion. Voltron struggles against the pull, and the Lions start emitting beams of light from their eyes. It’s visually confusing because Zarkon’s ship starts exploding, so it makes it look like it’s those beams of light that are damaging the ship until three camera shots later when it’s revealed that the Castle is blasting huge holes through Zarkon’s ship. Given how much damage the Castle is doing, they should be able to easily destroy the entire ship. Zarkon’s concentration is broken, allowing Voltron to escape.

Hunk’s cookies turn out to be made of the stuff that the lenses that need to be replaced in the teludav. It’s a convoluted, silly scene of the Paladins holding the “cookies.” But it doesn’t bother me. Everyone is freaking out. Lance is screaming, “We’re going to die.” And Shiro is just standing there thoroughly unbothered, with an almost resigned, “whatever” look on his face. It’s like the poor guy’s been through too much to even care at this point. The lenses aren’t enough; they need to be shined, and Coran uses his slippery goo to do so. The system works, they Castle jumps into a wormhole and escapes.

This episode does change the dynamic between Team Voltron and Zarkon. He’s no longer just standing around somewhere distant being a villain from afar. Now he’s actively pursuing them himself. The episode thus heightens the overall tension in the show’s ongoing plot.

#voltron legendary defender #voltron #vld #voltron criticism #vld criticism #voltron critical #vld critical #vld season 2 #vld 2x05 #commentary

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jaywrites101 · 5 years

Text

Jay Reviews: Captain Marvel

Higher, Further, Faster. Emotions are a weakness, or are they? Today at JayWrites101 we're looking into the cinematic adventure that is Captian Marvel. Critics everywhere are pitching in on this one, giving it reviews ranging between Masterpiece and Disaster with very little room for leeway. How accurate are those reviews? Let's find out together.

The purpose of this review is not to promote, nor offend. We're here to break down The Good, The Bad, and The Strange to find out what makes this movie so unique.

Spoilers ahead.

Medium: Movie Genre: Superhero, action, drama Premise: A superpowered woman with amnesia must find out the truth of who she is so she can stop an interstellar war from destroying her homeworld.

My, that's such a simple premise, isn't it? Boy, the context of this premise changes dramatically. Our Protagonist, Vers, starts off as a Kree soldier fighting to protect Halla from the Skrulls, big green aliens with the power to shape-shift into anyone. As more information is revealed, she ends as Carol Danvers (not to be confused with Karra Danvers, DC's Supergirl) a human pilot who absorbed a fraction of power from an infinity stone whose mission is to protect Earth from the Kree as they try to use her to take over the galaxy.

It's funny how the entire plot reverses itself completely, but the basic premise never changed.

Plot: We start off learning about Vers, as she and her team gears up to rescue a spy whose cover has been blown. The mission turns into a complete fiasco when the spy turns out to be a Skrull in disguise. Vers is captured and "interrogated" using some kind of mind-reading technology. Thing is, she's remembering stuff she couldn't possibly have remembered. Things like getting chewed out for crashing a go-kart, or falling while doing a military course. Vers manages to escape her captors and flee to Earth. After contacting her team, she joins forces with Nick Fury, an agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. who's thinking about putting together a task force to protect the Earth from major threats. Not a bad idea, that.

Together they investigate the fragments of memory that Vers recalled from her capture, all while being chased relentlessly by Skrull agents who also made it to Earth. Vers eventually finds a friend who knows the truth and learns that she is, in fact, Carol Dan-vers, a human. Before this revelation has time to sink in, the Skrull offer a flag of truce. They reveal that they're not a military force, just a few survivors trying to hide from the Kree who hunt them relentlessly. As proof, they offer Carol a recording of the incident that robbed her of her memories where it's shown unarguably that her teammates, the Kree, deliberately captured her to find the Tesseract, a device that holds an Infinity Stone, and accidentally gave Carol her powers when she tried to destroy a device that used that energy.

In the end, Carol and her new friends are captured by the Kree and Carol realizes the device she believed was giving her power, was actually suppressing her powers. She destroys the device and becomes Captian Marvel, a superbeing whose massively undefined powers include energy blasts from her hands and flight. Powers that allow her to tear through a Kree spaceship like it was tissue paper. If you've watched Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 1. then you know these things are no joke, but Carol destroys one in three seconds flat by flying through it.

Bad guys leave, Carol takes the surviving Skrull to a new planet on the opposite side of the galaxy and Nick Fury begins his Avengers Initiative. Fast forward to the Present and Carol returns in the end-credit scene to a very confused Captain America and demands to know what happened to Fury.

This was one heavy plot. I cut a lot out of it and it still took me thirty minutes to give a summary that wouldn't leave you more confused than you began. You wouldn't think this movie was so plot-dense until you have to try to explain it.

The Good: I just broke down the plot, but what's great about Captain Marvel is that this plot is engaging. I had to go to the bathroom about a third of the way through the movie, but I didn't once consider actually leaving because every second of this movie was filled with something.

I've heard it said before that a good plot structure is "X happened because of Y and causes Z." There are precious few films that encapsulate that principle into the core of it's being better than Captain Marvel. And the nods to future films and plot points were fun to discover as well.

Another thing worth noting is how much of the story is conveyed nonverbally. They spend a lot of effort to say as much as they can, using as little dialogue as possible. This helps the viewer to remember plot details better since they're not just passively listening, but it also means that removing attention away from the screen can cause you to miss things crucial to understanding what's going on. I'm leaving this in The Good because Captain Marvel used this feature well. It's always nice to see a visual medium like film use visual storytelling to great effect instead of having someone constantly dumping exposition all the time.

As a subset of the above, lack of exposition in a movie that is a plot-heavy as this one is always worth noting as praiseworthy.

The use of humor to break up the heavier scenes was a relief, and it often came when I least expected it. Real early in the movie there was this scene where "Vers" was escaping the Skrull's and one of them does this growl at her and she growls back! It was such an absurd little moment of humanity and character that I lost it. And almost anything with that cat! I swear, how they made that monster scratching out Nick Furry's eye out into something hilarious, I'll never know! But they did, and all those little moments made this movie shine.

Real briefly, I'd like to address a common complaint I've heard against this movie, Carol's lack of character. These people are full of fluff. Is that it? Can I just leave it here? Do I really have to explain this? Yes?? *sigh* Okay.

The idea that Carol lacks character is born from her "reserved" personality type. Now, I'm not calling anyone sexist! But this is a personality type that is very often shown in Men ™ , and it doesn't even raise an eyebrow. But to any dude who actually is sexist, and refuses to look at anything other than how large Brie Larson's chest is outside of her superhero suit, this personality type can easily be swapped out with a piece of cardboard and they wouldn't notice.

Now, guys have been pulling off this “kind of quiet, but kind, but I'll seriously kick your ass if you mess with me,” attitude in film for ages. And quite a few even have had success with it. (I'm thinking Resse from Person of Interest, a show that is definitely getting its own review someday.) But it's exceedingly rare for a woman in film to have this personality type.

It's not uncommon in reality, however. And I, personally, like this touch of realism.

The few moments where Carol allowed herself to laugh felt warm and genuine. All her interactions with her niece were heartwarming. Again, some very important people, some of whom I even respect, say that the side characters never got a chance to shine, and Carol never got a chance to have a character arc.

But again, they're full of fluff. If anything, expressing emotion was Carol's character arc. By beating up the man in her life that insists that she never feel emotion, Carol shows that her emotions are her strengths and she does not at all have to prove herself to anyone.

Why?

Because she kept getting back up.

This is a powerful message to tell anyone. Not just women. We heard a variant of the same message in the Dark Knight trilogy. But in this one, it's even more satisfying because the people who kept knocking her down were cheating to begin with.

Now, I'm not going to say that this message was transferred across the eight sexes evenly. I have no doubt that women felt this message more acutely than men. This specific message was made for women. Duh. But there's only one reason why any man could come out of this film feeling attacked.

They saw themselves in Yon-Rogg.

I'm just saying, if you related to the one male character that got attacked in this movie, you prolly need to be offended. Just a little. It's not going to kill you to take a hard look at yourself, even if you eventually discover that you have, in fact, been an ass at some point in your life.

Congratulations. Welcome to the human race. Now, move on.

Before we take our own advice and move on, I'd like to address one more thing Captain Marvel did exceptionally well: The sound design.

This movie sounded wonderful, from the effects to the actual factual background music. Most notably in the third act. There was a point where a character said "The music is a nice touch" and I agreed completely. A lot of these films use similar or recycled music to amp up "the moment" but this movie... well, they didn't turn it up to eleven, but the got it up to ten.

They had music with lyrics, and that's more than 70% of movies these days. Thumbs up.

The Bad: Remember how I said I loved how engaging this plot was? It's still a freakishly dense plot! This whole thing was so tightly edited there was very little time to just unpack the things that happened. Often, you had to try and unpack the thing that just happened while actually doing the next thing.

This helps the movie be engaging. But it hamstrings it when it comes to actually following what’s happening. There is just no way to condense this movie. I've left out tons of stuff just because I have to stop typing this thing eventually!

The Strange: This part of the review is dedicated to the bizarre. To elements or ideas that seem half done, or just really questionable. Not usually bad enough to be constituted as a plot hole, these things are... just... things.

So, for example, the Kree team. What were their names? How many of them were there in the first place?

Don't know? Me neither, and I took notes when I watched this film. I remember Minn-Erva, the sniper, and Yon-Rogg the main villain. And if I'm honest, I actually forgot their names and had to look it up. I didn't even know their group was called "Starforce," until I discovered it looking for the correct way to spell their names.

This is not the best way to set up your main bad guys. Especially if your audience is supposed to care about them at all for any reason.

And while we're at it, the antagonist himself, Yon-Rogg, could do with a little bit extra development too. We don't really know much about him except that he thinks emotions are weaknesses in a fight, and that Carol using her full power is cheating.

We don't really know anything else about him, so there's no real sense of betrayal when Carol turns on him. The "evil all along" trope works best when it's a character you've been with the whole story who's secretly had a plan the whole time. It works because you, the audience, feels betrayed too. Here... it just kinda happened. And, depending on how cynical you are, you probably even saw it coming.

It's like they were going for a sucker punch but aimed it at your forearm; doesn't really hurt, and does little to actually surprise us.

Strongest Scene: When making the strongest scene, I don't mean I look for the scenes with the most meaning packed into them. If I did, the climax or the Intro of a story would win every time. No, what I look for in a strong scene is pure storytelling. How is it shot, who is in it, how does it connect with the rest of the story, and how much does it say.

For Captain Marvel, my subjective vote goes to the bar scene between Nick Fury and "Vers." Even though they've technically met already, the two are really seeing each other for the first time. Nick, newly awakened to the idea of aliens, and Vers, finally respecting Nick's skills as a competent agent despite his comparative backwater setting.

Nick realizes he's in about a mile over his head, and Vers realizes she can't work alone.

They have a nice discussion about their past and aliens, complete with its own little humorous jabs, and there's a very real sense that these two are full partners afterward that carries all along the rest of the movie.

Weakest Scene: As much as it saddens me to say this, I'm going to have to put the introduction to the movie here.

Don't get me wrong, it does a fully competent job of setting up Vers and her amnesia. But we don't get a good sense of anyone else in Halla. To me, it's the things we don't see that really spoil this intro. We don't see any of Carol's friends, and the one guy we do see is in a bit of a mentor position. We don't see how people in this world live, and because of that, we don't get to know if the people of Halla are happy, or miserable. And while this does little for the plot of this movie, it would've done marvels at giving the villains characterization or justifications.

Coulda, shoulda, woulda; didn't.

Luckily, I can gladly say that every other scene in this movie was made stronger than this one.

Conclusion: Captain Marvel is an excellent story from start to finish. Anyone who tells you otherwise is stuffed so full of fluff you can call them Whinee the Poo. And yes, that is my way of saying they're full of crap.

There's a stigma around female characters that they're almost all considered Mary Sue's, and that being a Mary Sue is the WORST CRIME EVER!! But I never got that from Carol. Mostly because at every opportunity instead of powering her way through her problems, she had to cave and struggle and even fall.

And then she got back up.

#captain marvel #movie #marvel mcu #brie larson #avengers

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rivertellsstories · 5 years

Text

The Tuck family throughout the years

Word count: around 6000

Proofread: ha. Please tell me if there are words missing, it happens a lot

Summary: a prequel to the musical from Mae’s point of view

Warnings: Jesse falls from a tree (starts after ‘that’s just how parenting works’ and ends at ‘it wasn’t like Mae Tuck had never noticed…’)

The first time Mae had really spoken to Angus was when she was a tiny, but feisty eleven year old and he a clumsy twelve year old with two left hands. Of course she knew his name, because in this little town in the west, everybody knew each other.

She had been feeding the chickens on the farm when her father had introduced a gaggle of boys to her. None of them had been farmers’ sons and her father was kind enough to teach these children all about a farmer’s life. When these boys got married, they would probably be marrying into a farmer’s family and it would be a bit late for them to learn how to milk cows then. By letting these boys help him, her father killed two birds with one stone. They got education out of it and he a helping hand.

“Mae, could you tell them what you are doing right now?” The urge to roll her eyes became nearly unbearable, but she decided to be polite. “Feeding the chickens. Does one of you want to help me?” Some of the boys scoffed and one grinned. Typical. The lot of them felt too high and mighty to get mud on their shoes and approach a bunch of stinking birds. She felt sorry for the future wives of these boys.

“I’ll help.” A big boy said and Mae flashed him a smile. While he climbed over the fence and went toward her, she observed him. She noticed how he fiddled with his sleeves and the way he carried himself. Insistently he looked at the floor, as though he was hoping that it would swallow him. She handed him the bucket with food and watched as it slipped from his fingers and crashed onto the ground. Perplexed she blinked a few times and as she stared at him in bewilderment, his face coloured a deep shade of red. He kneeled to get the bucket while simultaneously getting mud on his pants and Mae groaned, while the other boys laughed in the background.

The malicious sound of their laughter made Mae glare into their direction. With her hands on her hips, she yelled: “You lazy bunch of good-for-nothings should shut your traps!” For a moment it shut them up, but then the snickering started again and some of them mimicked her stance while whispering in high-pitched voices. Frustrated, she grabbed Angus’ sleeve and pulled him along to the house. “Let’s get you cleaned up. I can’t handle this much stupid at once, so I’ll come along.” From a distance she could hear her father lecturing the boys and she smiled in satisfaction, though she still hated it that they hadn’t taken her seriously.

A few days after that incident, she ran into Angus again. Well, it was hard to not run into someone if they were in the same class as you. There were around fifty children in their class, all from various ages. The teacher didn’t get a lot done with his enormous group of students, but Mae had learned how to read, write and count so she was pretty much satisfied.

He was seated on the corner of a bench on the last row and the other boys on the bench were trying to shove him off of it. Irritation was painted across his face, but he still said nothing to them. Stubbornly, he kept pushing them back. The whole scene was so damned stupid that Mae couldn’t help but comment on it.

“You know, if you all stop pushing and pulling, you could all sit comfortably on that bench. Hell, I could join you all and there still would be space enough.”

“Are you that desperate to join us sweetheart?” a boy named William leered. Unimpressed she gave him a onceover. “No, I have more class than that. I just saw you all being stupid and thought that it would be kind of me to help you all out.” Immediately after that sentence she turned around and took her usual seat in the front. The whole lesson long, the boys she heard the boys whisper but paid them no mind.

That afternoon, she found herself at the river just outside her town. Those boys had gotten tired of gossiping about her and had taken to tugging on her hair. It had been grating on her nerves, but she was far too proud to even spare them a glance. As she watched the river slowly lapping at the shore, she calmed down. People were and would always, be kind of stupid. Life was just trying to figure out how to deal with all the different kinds of stupid you met.

Behind her, she heard a branch snap and someone breathing a soft “Oh.” As she turned around, she recognized Angus. Her eyebrows shot up in confusion until she saw the fishing rod in his hand and remembered that he was the son of a fisher. He gave her an awkward wave and said: “I’ll leave if you want me to.”

She tilted her head in confusion. “Why would I want that? I don’t own this place.” He shrugged. “I feel like we’ve ran into each other an absurd amount of times this past week and I didn’t want to make you feel uncomfortable. I swear I’m not following you around.”

“That’s considerate of you. Your presence doesn’t bother me, so feel free to…” she gestured at the river. “fish or something.” Nervously he nodded and picked at his shirt. “I’m not very good at doing things when people are watching me.”

“Well then”, Mae said and a smile tugged on her lips,“ I suppose that you’ll have to get used to my presence then. Let’s be friends.” She mimicked tipping a non-existent hat. “Mae Miller, pleasure to meet you.” He curtsied clumsily and she laughed. “Angus Tuck at your service.”

Over the years, Angus and Mae became regular appearances at each other’s houses. Angus had become quite skilled at feeding chickens by then and James, Angus’ father, had dubbed Mae an expert fisherwoman. Seventeen year old Angus had also grown out of his gangly awkwardness and had become, as Mae’s mother put it, a most handsome and capable young man. Mae had snorted at that comment and Angus had kicked her underneath the table.

Angus’ mother had called Mae a gentle and most beautiful lady. Angus had laughed out loud at that and she had chased him around his house with a fishing rod. Just as she thought she had cornered him, he opened the door and escaped. She could have given up at that moment, but stubborn as she was, she let out a war cry and followed her friend.

At the river, they collapsed underneath a tree. As she laid her head on his shoulder, she gave him a half-assed tap on the head with the fishing rod. “You deserve that. For being mean.”

She got a snort in return. “Excuse you. You also made fun of me when your mom complimented me.” With a smile dancing around her lips, she squished his cheeks. “It’s not that I don’t agree with my mother. You are a most handsome man, but it’s the ‘capable’ part that got me. I got instant flashbacks to our first meeting.”

Groaning, he laid his head upon hers. “Erase that from your memory please. Forget it ever happened.” As she answered him with a: “No way, that’s my best memory of you”, he got up and took the rod out of her hand. With fondness she watched as he wrote with it on the wet riverside. Angus loved to write poems on the wet sand and watch the water erase it forever. Mae held this knowledge close to her heart and wondered if he would ever tell her what he wrote down. She could never decipher his writing but hoped that maybe one day, he would tell her.

Suddenly, a smug smile broke through his pensive demeanour. “So you think I’m handsome huh?” For a moment she was confused as to what he was talking about. Then it hit her and she shrugged. “Duh, I have eyes.” She’s not going to stroke his ego by blushing and stuttering, though she felt like her heart was going to leap right out of her chest. “But I’m not the only one. If I have to listen to Catherine Davis talking about you one more time, I will fling myself into this river.”

The annoyance on her face made him laugh. “I suppose you don’t have the trouble of people talking like that about me.” He shrugged. “It’s not like I’ve got many friends beside you, Mae.”

“Even if you did, I doubt that they had anything nice to say about the redheaded goblin girl.” With a frown on his face, he sat down beside her and jostled their shoulders together. “Hey, hey. What’s that face for?” he asked as he gently poked her cheek. “I don’t know”, she said listlessly as she held a fiery red curl between her fingertips. “I just feel…less than the other girls. I feel as though I’m too annoying, as though my laugh is ugly and my hair too red. I feel as though being less visually appealing makes me less of a human being to other people.”

She let out a choked laugh. “Isn’t that funny?” she asked with tears brimming her eyes. “Mae Miller” he breathed and wrapped his arms around her. Immediately she buried her face in his chest and hoped that he wouldn’t notice that she was crying. But her shoulders jolted as she sobbed and he hugged her tighter. Being in his arms was warm and soothing and slowly she calmed down.

As she withdrew herself from his arms, she apologized. “Sorry. That was a bit overdramatic of me, I believe.” The sentence made him glower. “Like hell it was. You listen to me Mae Miller and listen well. First off, whoever made you feel this way can go to hell. Second off, sometimes you are annoying, but you annoy me in the best way possible. You’re fierce, stubborn and gentle at the same time and it’s amazing. Thirdly, your laugh isn’t ugly. You may sounds like a dying pig, but it’s cute I swear. And lastly, your are gorgeous.”

In the way he set his jaw, she knew that he was ready to argue about it for hours if needed. “I’ll accept that I’m awesome”, she said and Angus pumped his arm in victory. “But I stand by the fact that red is an ugly colour.” When she saw his raised eyebrow, she knew that he had taken the sentence as a challenge. “I’ll make you eat those words”, he promised her.

It was barely six in the morning and someone was tapping on her window. Confused and still sleepy, she got out of bed and walked towards her window. When she saw Angus’ face, she looked at the fishing rod on her wall. It had been a gift for her twelfth birthday. She hadn’t been friends with Angus that long at that point and he had been quite clueless about what to give her. Over the years the rod had become an object that she connected with fond memories. It would be a shame if she broke it while whacking Angus over the head with it, but it would also be a beautiful tribute to their friendship. The handing over of the fishing rod would become a full cycle as it got reunited with its first owner.

Sighing deeply, she opened the window. “What are you doing here? The sun isn’t even up yet.” He gave her a self-satisfied smirk. “Exactly. Now get some clothes on and come with me. I promise it’ll be worth it.” The protest died in her throat as she heard the excitement in his voice. “Give me twenty minutes”, she groaned.

Twenty minutes later, she and Angus were sitting on a hill, a blanket underneath them and a basket between them. “Angus, what are we doing here?” she asked and he shushed her. “Wait”, he told her and passed her some bread from the basket. As she slowly munched on the fresh loaf of bread, the sun started to rise.

A gentle red coloured the sky and Mae forgot to breathe for a moment. Soon other colours followed and various shades of red, orange and yellow danced across the sky. The chill morning air and the chirping of birds, combined with the taste and smell of fresh bread turned this sunrise magical in a way that Mae would never be able to describe. “Oh Angus”, she sighed. “This is stunning.” As he watched sunbeams highlight her freckles and morning light set her red hair ablaze, he breathed a quiet: “Yeah.”

Angus’ eighteenth birthday was coming up and Mae had a vague idea about what to get him. The only problem was that to get her gift, she had to leave town. To make the surprise bigger, she decided to not tell Angus that she would be gone for a few days.

When she returned, she had a hard time finding him. This was both confusing and worrisome at the same time, because she thought that knew Angus well enough to tell where he would be by now. What was even weirder to her, was the fact that Angus’ mother had refused to talk to her and had slammed the door as soon as she saw Mae.

There was one place she hadn’t checked yet and she felt kind of dumb when she found Angus there. Of course he would be at the river, scratching poems into the mud. She frowned when she saw the bitter expression on his face. “Hey Angus, what’s going on?” she yelled and when he turned to face her, she saw tears on his face. Within seconds, she had his face in her hands. “Who?” she asked furiously. “I thought you decided that I wasn’t worth the effort anymore”, he confessed. “I thought you left.” While swallowing her own tears down, she reassured that she wouldn’t, hell she couldn’t, would never be able to leave him. “Angus Tuck, you’re one of a kind. There’s no way you’ll ever get rid of me.” She pressed a packet into his hands. “I was actually getting this for you. Eighteen tomorrow huh?” With shaking hands he opened the present, unveiling a sketchbook and a set of pencils. “Now you can write your poems down, if you want to.” He stared at the present for a long time and Mae started to get worried. “Angus? You alright?” He threw his arms around her and spun her around enthusiastically. “Mae Miller, you’re amazing.”

“Mae, I need your help”, nineteen year old Angus said as he stormed into her house. She looked up from the table she had been setting and saw her friend wiping his undoubtedly sweaty hands on his trousers. “Hello Angus”, Mae’s mom chirped and gave her daughter an big wink. Mae stared at her mom in utter confusion before turning towards her friend. “Whose body do I need to bury?” she asked grinning and her mother bristled. Angus ignored Mae’s mother and blurted: “Teach me how to dance.”

For a moment she was confused, but then she remembered that within a week the spring festival would be held. “Angus you sly dog”, she grinned. “Are you planning on asking a girl to dance on the last night of the spring festival?” Asking someone to dance with you then, was like asking their hand in marriage. He nodded. “Yes. I’m planning on asking the best girl of all.” The words made something inside of Mae twist and churn, but she decided to ignore it. “Well then big boy, auntie Mae will make sure that you don’t stomp on her feet too often.”

“Angus, what are you doing?” “Dancing” he huffed in a frustrated manner. He was getting impatient but there was no way that Mae was allowing him to enter the dance floor with his current skills. She told him that he was dancing off beat and he grumbled that there was no beat to be off to. “Wait a minute”, she said and let go of his hands. When she returned, she had a music box in her hands. “Here’s your beat.”

Admittedly, it went way better with the gentle music playing in the background. “You’re doing rather well”, she told him and he grinned. “Should I try anything fancy? Maybe dip you or something?” “Absolutely not”, she laughed. Twirling through the living room with Angus’ arms around her felt pleasant. His body was warm against hers and she swore that she could feel his heartbeat. When their eyes met, she shivered and the grip he had on her tightened the tiniest bit. “I think you’ll do great”, she managed to say and pulled back. “Good luck with asking your girl.”

The evening of the dance Mae pestered Angus to go seek his girl. “Man up Angus Tuck and ask her!” He gave her a confident nod and strode away and came right back. “Angus, what are you?” Mae stared in confusion until he held his hand out. “May I have this dance?” For a moment she was completely and utterly speechless. Then she threw herself into his arms with a dazzling smile. “Yes Angus. I personally give you permission to ruin my toes again. I love you, you big doofus.” Before they got to the dancing part, they were already kissing.

There was something different about todays twenty year old Angus Tuck and Mae couldn’t put her finger on what exactly it was. He had been grinning and smiling all day and whenever she asked about it, he rebuffed it. Her and his parents seemed to be in on it as well and they wouldn’t give anything away either. It was frustrating to say the least.

Seeing her mother’s music box in Angus’ hands was what finally gave away what was about to happen. Her mother had told her how Mae’s grandmother had given it to her daughter’s future husband. The day of the ceremony itself, Mae’s father had given it to her mother. Now, Mae’s mother had given it to Angus and Mae couldn’t be happier.

It was late in the evening and Angus had taken her to the river. Out of his pocket he got the sketchbook she had given him for his eighteenth birthday. This was the first time he allowed her to read one of his poems and anticipation built in her chest as he started to speak.

“April’s kiss, our very first

May there be more to come

In true love I’ve been immersed

And each day, I’ll give you some

You knew it all along

So did I

It was plain to see

April, May, June, July

A Sunday when the chapel’s free

True love is in short supply

Darling Mae,

Marry me”

“Yes” she breathed and kissed her future husband deeply. “Gods yes.”

The news spread fast. Everywhere they went, be it alone or together, people wished them luck with their future marriage and although she got these wishes on a daily basis, she never got tired of them. People whom she had known all her life were congratulating her and it filled her with warmth. Girls who had been in her class stopped her on the street, smiling as they told her about their own wedding and older ladies and mothers told her all about the joys of motherhood. She welcomed every piece of advice about that topic with open arms.

Angus got winks and secretive smiles from the other villagers as well. He went a step further than she did and actively sought out older, married woman to ask them how to be a good husband and listened intently as grandmothers told him fondly about all the little things that made starting your own family so enjoyable.

“Last chance to run lad” an older man had said and Angus had shot him a confused look. “You’re getting tied down soon buddy, this is your last chance to run. Run, or its bye bye freedom and hello to your wife.”, he clarified and Angus had smiled wide. “Wife.” He repeated, letting the word roll around in his mouth before he repeated it louder with a beaming smile. “I’m getting married!” he yelled and ran towards her, picked her up and spun her around. “I’m getting married and you’ll be my wife. I will be your husband.” He was stating obvious facts, but the giddy and obviously elated way he did it, made Mae grin as well. “Indeed. Mae Tuck has a nice ring to it, doesn’t it?” Angus didn’t stop smiling for the rest of that day.

It was a night in November when they tied the knot and Mae spent the day drunk on utter happiness. She remembered her mother braiding a blackberry bow into her hair, whispering about how her child was growing up. The tears were evident in her voice and Mae had forbidden her from crying with tears in her own eyes. “No crying on my wedding”, she choked out. Mother and daughter hugged before she walked down aisle.

The one who broke the no crying at the wedding rule first was not her mother, but her husband to be himself. As they met before the altar, she gently wiped away the tears on his cheeks. “If you start crying, I’m going to cry too. Stop that you doofus.” He gave her a watery smile. “I’m just so damn happy.” As tears streamed down her face, she chuckled. “Me too.”

They exchanged their vows and had to keep themselves from giggling while doing it. When she was fifteen she had told Angus that vows were stupid and he had agreed. She had it elegantly put it this way: “I don’t give a damn about what he promises me in front of a priest. It’s the everyday life that’ll make me appreciate my future husband, not his fancy words at an event that happens only once in our lives.”

“Mae Tuck”, he started and gave himself to smile about it. “Mae Tuck”, he repeated “You’ve grown on me. Or rather, you stubbornly attached yourself to me and never let go. I love and admire you and I don’t think anything will change that. I look forward to building a life and family together with you, I look forward to waking up next to you, I look forward to…you. And I always will.”

She opened with: “My dearest husband” and Angus gasped at that. God, she loved him. “I look forward to looking back.” The sentence seemed to confuse him, so she explained: “One day when I’m old and grey, I’ll be sitting in a rocking chair as our children and our grandchildren play in our garden. I’ll take your hand like this.” She gently his hand and squeezed it. “and reminiscence about everything we’ve done together. I can’t wait till that day, where I can’t tell my grandchildren about all the times you’ve made me happy in one afternoon, because there will be way too many.”

The two of them were so busy staring at each other that they barely heard the priest say: “You may now kiss the bride.” The kiss they shared was one they would cherish forever.

That night her father danced with her and told her this was one of the best moments of his life and Mae couldn’t agree more.

Roughly nine months later, Angus knocked on the Miller’s door in a state of panic. As Sarah, Mae’s mother, opened the door, he gasped: Mae’s giving birth. Please help.“ Within minutes a bunch of older women were helping his wife. They had tried to get him out of the room but he had refused. "Like hell I’ll leave her alone right now”, she heard him say and she giggled through the pain.

A long nine hours later, she was tired out of her mind and her both her husband and new-born were crying. Between his tears he managed to say: “Another milestone in our relationship.” He looked at her with shimmering eyes. “Let’s call him that.” She sat herself up and glared at her husband. “Angus, we’re not calling our son milestone.” He shook his head. “No not milestone, have a bit more faith in me. Miles. Let’s call our boy Miles.” That night she fell asleep with her little Miles tucked between her and her husband.

Miles definitely took more after her than after Angus. But he was way more himself than he was either of them. The stubbornness, that was all her and his studiousness was definitely from Angus’ side. But the things that made Miles unmistakably Miles were his blunt and sharp words. He was polite (they raised their boy right after all), but not interested in faking interest in people or topics he wasn’t interested in. He said exactly what was on his mind and it was both frustrating and endearing.

Five years later, they were blessed with another child. A few days before the child was born, Miles decided that he was going to hate ‘it’ with all his might. The then family of three had sat together and she and Angus had pried until they knew why Miles was so intent on hating his future sibling. “Lizzie says that parents make another child because they aren’t happy with the first.” Her son burst into tears after that and she placed him on her lap and hugged him close. “Oh honey, that’s not true at all. I love you dearly. Daddy and I just thought it would be swell for you to have someone to play with.”

“I already have Rose to play with”, he sulked, “and I’m five and babies are…not.”

Her husband kissed their son on the forehead. “That’s true Miles. But the baby will take a lot of attention and you can help if you want to. Also, never doubt that mommy and I love you. If you ever feel like we’re ignoring you or you want attention, just tug on one of our sleeves. We’re here for you Miles and we’ll always be.”

Miles hiccupped and nodded. “Okay then. I’ll judge it-” “them”, she corrected her son and he pulled a pouty face. “It”, he stubbornly continued. “When it’s born. Acceptable?” It wasn’t ideal, but at least he was willing to compromise. “Acceptable.”

Another baby boy joined the family, Angus cried again and Miles watched his little brother with distaste. “He’s…” Miles seemed to be considering his next words carefully. “Jucky”, he decided and her husband messed up his hair. “We have to wash him dummy.” Miles exited the room immediately with the sentence: “Good luck dad.”

Later that day, Miles climbed on her bed again and watched his brother with curious eyes. “He’s less jucky now”, he said and poked the baby’s cheek. At that moment, he opened his eyes and he and Miles stared at each other. Miles broke the silence. “He can’t do a lot, can he? He’s tiny, dumb and immobile. I’ll have to take very good care of him, don’t I?” Although he had insulted his brother, she heard the affection in his voice and silently, she was proud of him. “What’s his name?” Miles asked, still looking at his sibling. “Daddy and I thought that it would be nice if you chose a name for him.” Miles looked at her in surprise. “Really?” She nodded in confirmation and Miles pondered over it. “Jesse then. His name is Jesse.” The name rung a bell in the back of her mind, but she didn’t know exactly where she had heard the name before. “Jesse is a wonderful name, Miles. Thank you.”

A few days later, Mae left the house with Jesse in her arms. As she exited the door, she heard Rose, their neighbours’ five year old, yell: “Jesse, come here! Here, Jesse, here!” Totally confused she looked at her son in her arms and then she scanned the surroundings. When she laid eyes on Miles, Rose and Rose’s dog, everything fell into place. “MILES TUCK” she screamed. “TELL ME YOU DIDN’T NAME YOUR BROTHER AFTER YOUR NEIGHBOUR’S DOG!“ The guilty look in his eyes told her everything she needed to know.

Jesse and Miles couldn’t be any more different, but Mae Tuck loved her boys nonetheless. Jesse was a naïve kid with an ever-present smile on his face, ready to believe everything people tried to sell him. Miles was a natural scowling sceptic, but both boys shared a curious nature. The could bicker for hours but if both of them wanted to know or do something, they got it done in record time.

The year Miles and Jesse turned twenty-two and seventeen respectively, they left their little town in the west to settle in the east. Miles had been grumpy for the whole journey and Jesse wouldn’t stop pestering him. She suspected that Miles’ foul mood was because he had to leave Rose behind. The two had been steadily growing closer and she felt sorry for her oldest son, but their farm had gone up in flames and they had wanted to move eastward for years.

When they were the thirstiest they had been during the trip, they stumbled upon a spring. Before she could stop him, Jesse jumped straight into it. Miles had a little more reservation and kneeled down to drink. While he was drinking, Jesse pulled him into the spring as well and both boys started to fight like little children. Mae watched them with a fond smile and decided to drink as well. Next to her Angus sighed and joined his family as well. The worst this spring could probably do was get one of them sick for a week.

Barely a year later, Miles and Rose were reunited. It had been a lazy Monday evening when somebody had knocked on their door. “I’ll get it”, Miles had sighed and when he opened the door, Rose had kissed him smack dab on the lips. For the first time in her life, Mae saw her oldest completely speechless. Her husband snorted in amusement and told Miles: “Let the lady in, you fool. I raised you better than this.” Miles nodded dumbly and stuttering, he offered her a chair.

That evening Rose told them that her old town held no future for her, so she decided to leave. “That town didn’t have what I wanted, so I decided to look for my fortune somewhere else”, she said as she slyly eyed Miles, who turned an interesting shade of red. “That fortune being my brother’s-” “JESSE”

It came as a surprise to nobody when Miles and Rose showed up with matching rings and smiles. With tear-filled eyes she congratulated them and kissed her son and daughter on their cheeks.

The day of the marriage, she braided her own blackberry bow into Rose’s hair. The girl’s own mother didn’t approve of her daughter’s actions and had decided that she wanted to break ties with her daughter. “Rose darling, I want you to know that, even though I wasn’t the one who gave birth to you, you are my daughter and you will always be. You’re a Tuck now and Tuck ties are everlasting. The young woman kissed her cheek and whispered: "Thank you mom. I love you.”

When Thomas was born, Mae saw Angus in Miles more than ever. Just like her husband, her son cried as he held his new-born child and through his tears he smiled and vowed to do everything in his power to protect his child. Jesus Christ, she was a grandmother now.

Everything was perfect and Mae found herself wishing that this moment would last forever.

Miles was a loving, but strict parent. Every day he taught Thomas new things and the lessons always started at twelve o'clock sharp. Today, the bouncy seven year old had managed to escape out of his father’s clutches and ran away screaming, Miles hot on his trail. The two of them zoomed through the garden and Thomas yelled for Jesse’s help. Never one to say no to his nephew, Jesse ran past Thomas, gave him a quick high-five and ran straight towards his older brother. “You’re going down Miles!” he screeched as he tackled him to the ground. Thomas had also turned around and just like Jesse, he sat down on his father.

“Dad, we’ve got you! No more lessons for me!” the kid whooped and Miles groaned. “Oh no, I’ve been caught” Miles sighed and played dead. “Noooooo!!!!” Thomas squawked. “You can’t die daddy. Never!” From beneath his son and brother Miles wheezed: “That’s a bit hard kiddo. But I’ll promise you this: I will always be there for you.” Thomas looked at his father with the wide eyed look all children seemed to possess up to a certain age. “Promise?” he asked and Miles pushed Jesse of his body and snuggled his son close. “Promise buddy.”

Something unreadable crossed over Rose’s face, who had been watching the scene unfold as well. “Something wrong, honey?” Mae asked and Rose shook her head. “No, just thinking.” Mae watched her with curiosity. “Worrying that hard will give you wrinkles, love.” Rose looked at her husband and son and she seemed to make a decision in her head. “I was just thinking that I would do anything to keep Thomas safe.” Mae gave her an affectionate pat on the head. “You and Miles both, love. That’s just how parenting works.”

Everything seemed fine until Jesse fell from the tree in Miles’ backyard and as she caught the moment her youngest son’s body made contact with the ground with a sickening sound, she screamed. Within seconds, she was seated beside him and as she lifted his upper body from the ground, his head lolled back lifelessly. With shaking fingers, Miles reached out towards Jesse. “Mom?” his voice sounded so small and instantly she was reminded of him and Jesse playing as children in their old yard. “Mom is he…” Miles couldn’t get the word ‘dead’ over his lips. Rose, who hadn’t seen what happened came closer. “What is going-oh my god.” She softly tucked a few strands of bloodstained blond hair behind his ear. “Jesse”, she breathed and Mae could hear the pain and sadness Rose felt as she looked at her younger brother’s body. Mae herself felt numb. There was no way that Jesse, her youngest, was gone already right?

With a cough, Jesse shot up. “Fuck!” he yelped. “That hurt!” While he was busy spitting out blood, the realisation that he had survived falling from a great height while landing on his head. The same disbelief was painted over Miles’ and Rose’s faces, but what could they do?

It wasn’t like Mae Tuck had never noticed that she looked really good for her age. This seemed to be a shared family trait, as her husband and sons seemed to be ageless as well. It could be considered a blessing, until the moment Jesse barely looked older than Thomas and Rose had almost as much grey hairs as Mae herself.

One day, Mae came home to her oldest sitting at her dinner table, hands in his dark brown hair. “Miles?” she called out and when he looked up, his face crumpled and he broke into tears. “They’re gone.” She wished that she didn’t immediately know what he was talking about. Rose had done what she considered the best for her child.

Hopelessly, she tried to console him. At that moment, Jesse entered the room with dishevelled clothes and rapidly healing bruises on his face. Without him telling her, she knew that he had taken a fall again. She didn’t want to think about the fact that it may not have been a fall at all.

As she sat there with her boys in her arms and her husband nowhere in sight (he was probably sleeping again. As of late, thathad been happening a lot), she hoped that time would heal their wounds. Time. They had plenty of it now and Mae wondered if it was worth it.

#tuck everlasting #tuck everlasting musical #mae tuck #angus tuck #miles tuck #jesse tuck #thomas tuck #rose tuck #fanfic #rivers stuff

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gyromitra-esculenta · 3 years

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Somewhat Discussed 3

Ok. So, chapter 3 of this monstrosity. In which field medic Jack 'Perpetually Not Getting Enough Sleep' Morrison gets co-opted to Strike Team after FUBAR military offensive.

Warnings: Crack treated seriously; Smurfs; Pokemon; Blood and Violence; Neeeeeeeeeeeerds!

Fifteen minutes in, Gabriel had read (and not skimmed!) all the applicable reports, analyzed all the current projections and formulated the initial plan of action - pending approval, but a plan nonetheless. Then, boredom set in right on schedule. He eyed the trash panda sleeping in the chair and began the excruciatingly slow process of extracting himself from the bed stealthily, which, on its own, was met with a considerable amount of success up to the precise moment he decided to check his surroundings and looked up.

The trash panda was, in fact, very much awake, and observed him with a modicum of amusement as Gabriel froze with his bare ass hanging off the bed.

With the same amount of deliberate care, Gabriel pulled himself back into the bed while the trash panda sipped on his cup of coffee. If the liquid in the cup had any property indicated by the smell that still lingered, it was both highly corrosive and bitter enough to kill off all taste buds too weak to survive a serving of salty licorice.

"Good," the trash panda muttered as Gabriel meekly pulled back the blanket over himself, and with no unnecessary delay returned to the relaxed posture he held earlier in the chair - again immediately falling asleep on the spot. Only this time, his head fell back, and the snoring started. How, even doped beyond any rational thinking ability, had he ever imagined a person capable of producing sounds so reminiscent of, for the lack of a better word, a petrol chainsaw, to have an 'angelic voice', Gabriel would never understand.

The cup of the volatile coffee the trash panda still held onto somehow remained miraculously balanced.

With far too much idle time left and guarded by the apparent incarnation of Cerberus crossed with whatever survived the wood-chipper after its initial run, Gabriel turned to the contraband on his jailbroken top-secret-military-use-only PDA, not bothering with the earbuds. Halfway into the third episode, the trash panda's watch alarm went off, and Gabriel frantically scrambled to close the video - only upping the volume before he found the back button. With the way the guy blinked and straightened, he was safe.

What had not been saved was the coffee, because as soon as the trash panda woke, he looked at his watch - which required him to rotate his wrist, and, in consequence, pour everything that remained in the cup into his lap.

"Fuck." The trash panda gazed down with a look of defeat. "Fuck," he repeated, adding a special emphasis on the 'f'-sound, giving the word an elongated hissing beginning that came to a rapid stop - like a train hurtling off the tracks on a broken bridge hitting the rock bottom of the canyon below. The pronunciation was deeply artistic and empathetic.

And it was almost enough for Gabriel to feel sorry for the trash panda but, as his father oft said, in this bitch of a life you had to be hard, not soft. He hemmed to draw attention to himself.

"The hour's up, I take it I can get the hell out of here?"

"No."

"No?"

"No," the trash panda shot him a pointed glare at his indignant tone - or as much of a glare as he could muster under the circumstances of the cold coffee all over his lap and the obvious sleep deprivation. "Examination first. Sir. Or there's going to be pictures."

"I'll get them confiscated."

"You really think you're going to win this one?" The trash panda snickered in tired amusement. "Sir," he tacked on the end absentmindedly while pulling himself up, and deposited the now (probably) empty cup on the chair. "I wouldn't make that bet if I were you. Sir."

Gabriel erred on the side of caution and shut the fuck up. For now. The trash panda wobbled to the table, poured the disinfectant on his palms before pulling on the gloves, and, after some deliberation coupled with a hard glare of disappointment at his own crotch, he shimmied into the scrubs. Also, he promptly poured what appeared to be the other half of the bottle all over his surgical gloves, splashing the disinfectant everywhere around. It would be unsurprising if some of it made it even to the ceiling, to terrorize the local germ fauna. Or flora. Whichever one it was.

Gabriel, suddenly uncomfortably aware of the fact that under the medbay blanket he was clad in a typical hospital gown bought from the lowest bidding contractor, clutched the flimsy barrier of thin cotton privacy protectively to his chest.

"Off with it," the trash panda grunted. Having been caught earlier in the act with his ass hanging off the bed notwithstanding, Gabriel still refused to relinquish his grip on the fabric. The trash panda continued, unamused. "Unless you have something worse there than dickachu, or pokeballs, I've seen it all."

The absurdity of the statement got to Gabriel, and he stared dumbfounded.

"Oh, yeah, was trying to get the pants off that one guy, and there it was, smack dab in the middle, almost on his dick, a tattoo of a Pikachu." The trash panda waved his hands in the air, imitating the motion, while he elaborated. "Got past it, and then, bam!, two pokeballs, in full technicolor, on the ballsack, right in my face. If you can top that, more power to you, I won’t judge, but I will laugh."

"...definitely can't." Gabriel, still in a state of moderate shock, brushed the blanket aside. But not all the way, no, he wouldn't be the one to do that, no fucking way. The trash panda shrugged and pulled the gown up and away from his side, at least with enough decency to leave it bunched over the more sensitive areas, and started prodding the injury, none too gently.

"Looks decent." The trash panda hemmed.

"So I can go?"

"No." The trash panda swung the scanner around and lowered it, still manhandling the sensitive healing tissue with his hand. Until, focused on the screen, he jabbed his fingers in, probably trying to get right at Gabriel's kidney from the outside. Gabriel, eyes watering, was now of a mind that he had been retroactively in the right for breaking the guy's face. He definitely did deserve that, and no judge or jury would find him to be in the wrong here. Especially after the sad wheeze the treatment got out of him.

"What should stick, sticks, and the rest is unsticked," the trash panda yawned, stepping back, and promptly kicked the scanner back into its corner - completely oblivious of Gabriel's seething glare. "So, you can call someone to give you something to wear, or, like, walk like that, I don’t give a shit."

Gabriel took his tablet to ping Ana as the trash panda slowly advanced towards the trashcan with the movements of someone on the verge of a full system collapse. He pulled on the scrubs, balled them together with the gloves, and missed the bin from less than twenty centimeters away – which had to be some kind of achievement. He contemplated the situation for a moment before looking over his shoulder.

"Hey, I've got a strange question. Was there Smurfs' theme playing earlier?"

Sweet Mary, mother of Christ, this couldn't be happening. Gabriel almost let go of the PDA for the second time this day.

"What the fuck is 'smurfs'?" Full-on denial it was then.

"Huh? Funny. Auditory hallucinations are setting in earlier than usual," the trash panda mumbled to himself, shuffling out of the room. Gabriel breathed a painful sigh of relief before his brain made a record-scratch sound. The imaginary needle ground to a halt and backed up, suddenly going the other way altogether with an unearthly screech, broken up only with Ana's surprised voice coming from the corridor.

"What happened to your pants?"

"Coffee, ma'am." The trash panda slurred. "Mostly."

"Mostly." Gabriel did not need to visualize the expression that accompanied Ana's curt tone.

"I guess, some blood and guts under?"

"We're flying in half an hour," Ana concluded with an exasperated sigh. "Get your gear together."

"Aw, shucks. I wanted to grab some shuteye before."

As soon as Ana marched into the room, Gabriel met with a faceful of clothes. Compared to the trash panda, her aim was deadly, and her throwing arm never wavered.

"You're lucky we're making a resupply stop on the way before we pick up Liao because this is your last intact set."

"Not like it's my fault," Gabriel muttered while untangling from the pants’ legs that have somehow multiplied into a number higher than the usual two.

"Of course, the mine just happened to jump you, from the other side of the field." This was worse. This was her 'mom' voice. Gabriel winced.

"Difference is, I can take it."

"For how long, Gabriel?"

Not an argument he was willing, or in the mood, to rehash, especially not under Ana's scrutinizing gaze boring into him with the intensity his third-grade teacher (who really, really had it out for him) employed.

"As long as it takes," Gabriel grumbled under his breath, even more uncomfortable with changing in her presence now that he made the connection to his childhood's anathema and felt her ghastly glare drop the temperature in the room by around ten degrees due to a mere flashback.

"Could you, you know..." He whirled his fingers in the air and, with a sigh, Ana turned around, folding her arms in front of her chest.

"I've seen it all already."

"I said I was sorry!" He was. Not a hundred percent, since the shower had been built shoddily, but sorry nonetheless. But it was a train of thought best forgotten (because of a field facilities mishap resulting in not only a disintegrated shower but also in one of Gabriel's own flip-flops gaining a near escape velocity). Thankfully, Ana didn't intend to dwell on it.

"So, what do you think?"

"What do I what about what?" Gabriel paused with pants around his knees, convinced some finer points of Ana's question flew past his head with no context for the discussion they were apparently having right at this moment.

"We are lacking when it comes to a medical specialist, remember?"

No. Oh no. No way in hell and neither above, the sheer discomfort of having around someone who from the very start had that much dirt on him would slowly drive him at least a tad bit paranoid if not outright insane - but the rejection of Ana's proposal necessitated a careful and thought out strategy.

Not unlike crossing a minefield, situational sarcasm intended.

"If I remember, we'd agreed on putting in the requisition order for the attachment? We're going to have a pick then, not the first one that comes along," Gabriel stated matter-of-factly, buckling his belt.

"We will get cream of the crop of the fledglings straight out of the basic and that's why we've been putting it off." Ana turned around and gave Gabriel one raised eyebrow as he finished dressing. Having his own very reasonable arguments used against him sucked balls, honestly.

"This one looks like he might keel over any given moment if anything as much as looks at him wrong." He was flopping around with his reach like a hooked fish.

"He stitched you up on evac, with a broken nose, which, if I may add, you broke moments earlier, didn't you?"

Didn't help the situation that Ana smiled a smile of a cat that not only ate the canary - it gobbled up the whole aviary and left behind a satisfied kind of bloody carnage because it gave no fucks about being discovered and tried for its crimes against the avian folk.

"All slander," Gabriel muttered, "there's no proof."

"I'll testify. Anyway, he's got over a year of active and counting, knows what he's doing, and," Ana tapped her forearm with her fingers, "somehow forced you to take some bed rest, I can't imagine how."

"Threats of violence and embarrassment?"

"Now, that one I'd like to see myself." Ana slowly, with the affectation of a street performer, inspected Gabriel from head to toe, and then, with the same attention to the detail, back from toe to head. "I've sent you his file."

"Is there any way I can say no?" Gabriel groaned, moving out. Ana kept to his side.

"With compelling counterarguments because, at the moment, I'll take Francis over any star-struck rookie they're going to throw at us."

"God, his name's Francis? Doesn't look like one."

"It isn't. He goes by Jack."

"Well, with a name like Francis, I'm not surprised."

"Weren't you insisting a week ago 'Francis is a blessed name' because one 'Francis' made your favorite vampire movie?"

Ouch. Busted.

"That's different," Gabriel muttered. "Fine. Draft the request."

Ana shot him another smug feline smile.

"It's waiting for your signature."

"Fine. I'll think it over," he groused. "I promise nothing."

For the next fifteen minutes, Gabriel refused to acknowledge her presence hovering over his shoulder expectantly as everyone got onto the transport. When Rein asked about the date, and if he's invited to the ceremony, Gabriel suffered a near heart failure - at least until Rein added in his booming voice: ‘you punched his face in, it’s the least a guy deserves after that’.

"You're not invited," Gabriel bluntly retorted.

"It's a sore spot," Ana laughed. "The itty bitty medic hurt his pride."

"And neither are you," Gabriel hissed, looking around from his spot on the bench. "We're taking off and he's not onboard."

"He has five more minutes, Gabriel."

"That's five minutes too late."

"That's perfectly on time." The trash panda - Francis 'Jack' - mumbled as he climbed inside, looking like the only thing keeping him on his legs was his hand braced precariously on the side of the door. The other hand held loosely the straps of his dangling field backpack. He stumbled, focused his unseeing stare on some point on the wall (or well far past it), and then marched forward, swaying. The thrown pack landed on the floor and slid with momentum to stop under the bench, followed feet-first by Francis 'Jack' himself with the efficacy of a frequently repeated action. There, with everyone watching his every move, he propped his back and legs on bench supports and snuggled the backpack like it was his girl and he was just starting his leave.

In the ensuing silence, the first snore sounded louder than the obnoxious electronic bells of that one church Gabriel had the misfortune of having once lived by. Even the takeoff Ana okayed didn't disturb the supposedly peaceful sleep of the trash panda, who was now in active violation of at least three regulations that Gabriel actually knew. Amazed, he observed the phenomenon quietly.

"Fine. You won. He's in."

"Told you," Ana smirked.

#sometimes I write #reaper76 #r76 #it's crack #crack treated seriously #said and done verse

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movieswithkevin27 · 6 years

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Arsenic and Old Lace

Cary Grant and director Frank Capra team up to bring Arsenic and Old Lace to the big-screen. Shot in 1941 only to get a release in 1944 due to the studio’s obligation to wait for the play to close on Broadway, Arsenic and Old Lace may lack Capra’s typical political bend and sentimental instincts but replaces it with an absolutely hysterical screwball comedy. With the comedic talents of Grant and the impeccable cast on full display, Arsenic and Old Lace is focused on a quaint old family, the Brewster’s. Nephew Mortimer (Grant) is a playwright who boasts about his status as a bachelor, only for him to go and quietly wed Elaine (Priscilla Lane). Coming over to visit his staunchly Christian aunts, Abby (Josephine Hull) and Martha (Jean Adair), Mortimer plans to celebrate until he discovers that his Aunts have a dirty secret that they seem to not be aware should actually be a secret. Meanwhile, his brother Teddy (John Alexander) is a mental patient who believes himself to be Teddy Roosevelt. Trying to balance the truth about his Aunts, get Teddy committed as an attempt to cover-up for his Aunts, the fact that he is now married to Elaine, and the sudden arrival of his murderous and violent brother Jonathan (Raymond Massey) who is accompanied by fake doctor Dr. Einstein (Peter Lorre), no one can blame Mortimer for going a bit crazy. Once police Officer Patrick O’Hara (Jack Carson) drops in, things only continue to spiral out of control. However, the only certainty is that nobody, absolutely nobody, should go down into the basement. Uproariously funny and absurd, Arsenic and Old Lace is one of Capra’s best films and a perfect embodiment of the joy his films can create.

As with many adaptations of plays, Arsenic and Old Lace often feels like a play with a very stagey atmosphere to the proceedings as characters go behind doors, disappear, and later come back a few scenes later. With much of the action set in the foyer of the home of Aunt Abby and Aunt Martha, this conveyor belt of appearances keeps the film’s staging quick and fast-paced. There are a sort of manic energy to the film that Capra really helps as he lets the action unfold rapidly with quick dialogue and constant visual gags - namely around the window seat - that allows the film’s pacing and staging to be truly in-tune and become rather infectious. For Capra, many of his film have this giddy and upbeat feeling with Arsenic and Old Lace certainly not being an exception to this and being, perhaps, one of his most upbeat films. It is a film that seems to happen at a 100 MPH, rarely taking a moment to catch its breath. The performance of Cary Grant often mirrors this pace, especially once he learns the secret about his Aunt’s. With a befuddled look on his face, a refusal to believe it, and overwhelmed by this feeling that he has to try and fix this issue, Grant races around the screen, runs around the home, sputters and squeals with his words, and seems to be everywhere at once. As a phenomenal physical comedian - as he had established in films such as Holiday - Grant is right at home with this role, while taking and blending it with his sharp and quick wit from films such as His Girl Friday to turn in one of his finest roles. A lot of this is due to how his performance works with the rest of the film’s pace and manic energy with the end result being a film that delivers a joke-a-minute. Often times, its comedy is upfront and at others it is more subtle, relying upon a witty sense of dramatic irony.

Yet, what often makes Arsenic and Old Lace so funny are the performances of Josephine Hull and Jean Adair. As a tremendously well-written work, Arsenic and Old Lace first introduces us to these elderly sisters in a conversation between Officer O’Hara and Officer Sanders (John Ridgeley). Retiring, Sanders is giving up his beat to the younger O’Hara and stops in to visit the sisters to pick up some toys for donation. Outside their home, we see a sign that says “Room for rent”, which Sanders explains is to attract wayward travelers for these two deeply Christian film to help. As they approach the door, Sanders warns O’Hara to watch his language as he would be surprised by what they find to be a curse word. It is with this that the door opens, we see the sisters, and eventually learn their dark secret later on. The way in which the film creates fantastic comedy from this absurdity - two quaint old Christian women who, on the side, kill lonely old men with arsenic in their wine as a perceived act of charity only to then have Teddy bury them in the basement (aka Panama) under the guise of the dead bodies being victims of yellow fever - is really what makes the film so effective. It goes so out of its way to establish them as these good-hearted people who would give the shirt of their back to anybody, only to then pull the rug out from under the audience and Mortimer alike. In selling this as a completely natural turn from faithful churchgoers to killers who celebrate how many bodies they have buried yet still insist on proper Christian burials for their victims, the film relies upon the performances of Hull and Adair. Together, these small powerhouses paint their actions as the work of somebody who is totally sane. In fact, to find it wrong at all is quite absurd. Gliding gently about the home with the look and dialogue of somebody’s grandmother, both Hull and Adair’s committed comedic performances allow the juxtaposition created by the script to really hit all of its comedic notes. It is absurd to see these two little women as serial killers and, yet, Hull and Adair make it seem so normal that it is hard not to believe that, well, maybe it is charitable to kill lonely old men.

Furthermore, Arsenic and Old Lace’s aforementioned great script comes into play both in the dialogue and in the progression of jokes. The dialogue features a lot of classic Golden Age Hollywood wit and zip that, as I work my way through classics, has become a defining feature of many comedies I love. Here, the wit from Julius and Philip Epstein’s script really shines through thanks to great delivery from the game cast, while also playing perfectly with the aforementioned pacing and staging installed by Capra. This is a fast-paced, heavy-hitting comedic work with the script to match this pace as jokes come fast and heavy. However, it is not just the jokes. It is also the great visual gags included in the film. As characters stumble about in the night to bury a body or as Mortimer races and checks the window seat every five seconds or as Mortimer unwittingly sets himself up to be strangled by Jonathan, Arsenic and Old Lace hits on great and consistently funny jokes that are as funny as they are due to both the marriage between the great comedic lines and the way in which the action is put together. However, one real highlight comes towards the end of the film. As the home is crowded with cops and the Brewster family, Lieutenant Rooney (James Gleason) is elated to learn that Jonathan is an escaped convict who, as his description says, looks like Boris Karloff (another great visual touch). In reading his description, Rooney looks at the description of his partner-in-crime, Dr. Einstein, who also escaped. As he does so in the background, Peter Lorre stands in the foreground and reacts to every bit of his description. For example, as Rooney says Einstein has protruding eyes, Lorre closes his eyes defeatedly. As he mentions his short stature or his German accent, Lorre slouches further. However, as Rooney comes to shake his hand and wishes him a good night, Lorre comically slinks his way out of the home in case the cops woke up and used their eyes.

Though Capra is often not known for outstanding visuals or great tricks of lighting - namely because his films are often so flush with light they practically glow - Arsenic and Old Lace often delivers some great shots and atmosphere as a result. Set on Halloween night next door to a graveyard with bodies buried in the basement, it is not hard to see where Capra is able to elicit this undercurrent of tension and mystery, but the visuals certainly help particularly once Jonathan arrives. Not only does he look like Karloff, but as Jonathan and Dr. Einstein approach the front door, Abby and Martha rush to shut off the lights inside. The end result is that all we seem of them, at first, is their shadows through the glass paneling of the door. Looming ominously in front of the door like a pair of dastardly hand-puppets, the lankiness of Jonathan and the portly-ness of Einstein creates a terrific image that serves as a great visual cue to the fact that these are not welcome guests by any stretch of the imagination. Later, as Jonathan plans to kill Mortimer in a long, slow, and painful way, Capra opts to show nothing but Jonathan’s shadow looming over the reluctant and good-hearted Einstein who pleads with Jonathan to let Mortimer love or, at least, do it quickly so that he may go to bed soon. Earlier, as the pair of Jonathan and Einstein stumble in the dark to bring in their dead body from the car or as Teddy comes up from Panama to grab the body left behind by Abby and Martha, Capra manages to cover the whole scene in darkness yet still let the audience visualize what is occurring. There is some very minimal lighting that helps this, but using the sound, the dialogue, and our knowledge of the stage design, Capra creates a scene that allows the audience to know what is happening (and keep the fact that they are carrying mannequins remain a secret) while also creating a sequence symbolic of the moment. This is murder and these are dead bodies. It is a dastardly dead. In turning off practically all of the lights and leaving the stage entirely dark, Capra creates a scene that is the antithesis to his flush-white scenes that have made him into a Hollywood legend. Visually, it creates an exact foil to what Capra is known for and perfectly captures the ominous nature of the actions that are transpiring.

Absolutely hysterical, Arsenic and Old Lace is a fast-paced, witty, beautifully written, terrifically acted, and tremendously shot film that stands as one of Frank Capra’s very best films. Though perhaps not as theme-driven or even as good-natured as many of his other films, the subtly dark Arsenic and Old Lace nonetheless delivers great screwball laughs in a film that seems capable of turning almost anything into great comedy with nearly perfect efficiency. It is a film that tosses a lot at the wall with nearly all of it sticking, which is perhaps one of the greatest accomplishments a comedy can have. Truly one of the finest films from a legend and from the tremendous collection of stars in front of the camera.

#1944 movies #1940s movies #arsenic and old lace #film reviews #film analysis #movie reviews #frank capra #cary grant #priscilla lane #josephine hull #jean adair #raymond massey #peter lorre #jack carson #john ridgeley #john alexander

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hub-pub-bub · 5 years

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LONDON — “This is really the money shot for this hotel,” said Philip Blackwell, gesturing at a marble fireplace, soft-lit lamps with printed shades, and books, books, books.

He was showing off the library at the Ham Yard Hotel in Soho, for which Mr. Blackwell’s company Ultimate Library selected about 5,000 books for the shelves, an act of curation that’s literary and visual.

Ultimate Library sells books by the meter to luxury hotels like the Ham Yard. Founded in 2011, it has capitalized on an explosion of interest in books as decorative objects, shown plainly in popular bookshelf images on Instagram and Pinterest, with the hashtags #shelfie or #bookstagram.

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Books can be aesthetic signifiers, colorful set pieces of sorts, their spines telegraphing a certain gravitas — or a certain playfulness, depending on how they’re arranged. “I like to compare physical books to candles,” Mr. Blackwell said. “Light bulbs do the job, but there’s a strong aesthetic of a candle that puts soul into a room. Books do that, too. They create theater and drama.”

Mr. Blackwell, 60, is erudite, affable and well read; he says he gets “twitchy” when he doesn’t have a book on him. He comes from family that has been in the book-selling business since 1879, when one of his ancestors founded Blackwell’s Bookshop in Oxford. Mr. Blackwell was involved with the company until 2006, when he stepped down as C.E.O. of the book-selling arm and began traveling while on gardening leave.

It was then that something started to bother him: In the hotels where he stayed, the libraries were ill kempt, full of what he called “orphan books.” They were also, apparently, ugly. “Hotels would put so much effort into every other aspect of interior design, but not books,” he said. That led to Ultimate Library, which Mr. Blackwell affectionately calls his “gap-year project gone wrong.”

The company has selected books for clients in more than 40 countries, including the Philippines, Greece, the Maldives and Tanzania. In addition to hotels, they include restaurants, private apartments, shops and boats (in case, for example, your yacht lacks a suitable library).

Ultimate Library honors highly specific requests: a restaurant in Paris that wanted only books with red spines, or another client who wanted a library based around the subjects of China and horse racing.

Books as design objects are nothing new. In the 1820s in Britain, custom-bound books started to become popular for elites, with collections that were meant to be uniform for a single family, sometimes bearing their crest or other signature design.

The concept of collections trickled down into the mass market. In the 1920s, American publishers like Modern Library put out reissued set of classics with pretty spines that you could buy as a set: starter kits, of sorts, both for reading and showing off your reading.

Pride of place: a rainbow book display by Decades of Vintage.

The rise of the #shelfie has created a whole new economy of books-as-backdrops. At the high end of the market is Ultimate Library, which peddles what Mr. Blackwell calls “intelligent luxury,” books handpicked one by one to give a highly specified feel to a space. Mr. Blackwell said prices range from roughly $2,000 for small collections to $150,000 for whole libraries on a grander scale.

But there are also D.I.Y. options for anyone interested in pulling together a pretty library quickly. Nancy Martin, the owner Decades of Vintage, sells vintage books by the foot, in sets by color or style. One foot of blue or red books costs $68; you can get rainbow shades for $80.

“My theory is that before social media, you decorated your living space and then you went and lived in it,” Ms. Martin said. “Now, with the onset of pictorial engagement, you have people who want to be influencers or popular online, and the way to do that is new content. So people have started styling for holidays or seasons, and just making tweaks to their living environments. Books are a really inexpensive way to decorate.”

Her colors sell seasonally. “Around this time of year people start buying green, and in the summer, aquas and turquoises and yellows,” Ms. Martin said. “In the fall, what a phenomenon. People buy brown and brick and terra cotta and orange.” Around the holidays, people will buy gold and white, or sometimes special collections she makes of red and green. Blue is evergreen.

It’s easy to feel a little uneasy about the idea of books intended explicitly for staging photos. (The old decorator’s trick of arranging them by the rainbow is particularly polarizing; Kinsey Marable, a private library curator with clients including Oprah Winfrey, said, “I really scoff at that. I think it’s just ridiculous. It’s just absurd.”) Then there’s the obvious question: Are people actually reading any of these books?

A book color group called “Sea Glass” from Books by the Foot.

An all-white arrangement from Books by the Foot.

Mr. Blackwell thinks they are, though even if they aren’t, there’s still value to it. “Someone might see a book on a hotel shelf they’ve always wanted to read, and then it’s in their head, that title, and they’ll carry it with them later,” he said. And even if nobody does, clients are at least buying books, some of which no one wanted to read in the first place, giving them a second life.

Chuck Roberts, a used-book seller, calls this “book rescue.” He had always sold decorative books in his stores and eventually started a side business, Books by the Foot, as a way of repurposing books that wouldn’t sell in his stores: a health or diet book that’s gone out of fashion, or a Stephen King best seller, of which the store has hundreds of copies. Almost all these books would be pulped by other book dealers, Mr. Roberts said.

Books by the Foot sells by the color (“Rainbow Ombre,” a best seller, goes for $69.99 per foot) and by subject matter, including “Architecture” and “Well Read Bibles.” The company also does styled collections around themes whose names are reminiscent of air fresheners. “Cape Cod” is a best seller; there’s also “Irish Stout” and “Whispering Willows” and “Modern Enchanted Forest.”

“I went to the Aran Islands a while ago, and they have all these sweaters there, and I felt we could duplicate that feel with books,” Mr. Roberts said. “So that’s our ‘Aran Islands’ mix, which sells pretty well.”

At Vintry & Mercer, a new boutique hotel in the City of London, the lit-mosphere created by Ultimate Library might be best described as Funny Money. “We were really focused on location here, which is the City, with its financial history, but also East London, which has a certain quirkiness,” Mr. Blackwell said.

In an coffer along the high perimeter of the hotel’s downstairs library, all out of reach, are “Kudos,” by Rachel Cusk; “The Last London,” by Iain Sinclair; “Empire of Secret,” by Calder Walton; and a collection of Virginia Woolf. The spines are mostly shades of white and gray and black and brown to match the ceiling, which is wallpapered with a vintage map.

But there are some light blue spines that pop out, to match the robin’s-egg blue of the walls. “Look at those accents,” Mr. Blackwell said.

#libraries #books #aesthetic

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biofunmy · 5 years

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A Room Without Books Is Just Very Sad

LONDON — “This is really the money shot for this hotel,” said Philip Blackwell, gesturing at a marble fireplace, soft-lit lamps with printed shades, and books, books, books.

But there are some light blue spines that pop out, to match the robin’s-egg blue of the walls. “Look at those accents,” Mr. Blackwell said.

Sahred From Source link Travel

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#IFTTT #WordPress

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nofomoartworld · 7 years

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Hyperallergic: The Case for Tom Burckhardt

Tom Burckhardt, not yet titled (2017), 28” X 28”. (All images courtesy of the artist.)

The day after I visited Tom Burckhardt to see his recent paintings and to hear more about “STUDIO FLOOD,” the installation he is preparing for his upcoming show at Pierogi ( opening September 10, 2017), he sent me an email. It contained a quote from the recently published The Inkblots: Herman Rorschach, His Iconic Test, and the Power of Seeing (2017) by Damion Searls. While I think this quote is a good place to start reflecting on what Burckhardt is up to in his abstract paintings, I first want to establish a context for it.

During my visit, Tom and I talked about Rorschach, inkblots, and symmetry. We briefly touched on works by Andy Warhol, Kerry James Marshall, Bruce Conner, and Jasper Johns. Both Warhol and Marshall appropriated Rorschach’s inkblots, while Conner devised a method that consisted of drawing wet ink lines on one half of a sheet of paper and then folding it down a pre-made crease to leave a mirror image on the other side – an act that slowed down and compartmentalized drawing. Conner’s spidery, symmetrical, linear forms suggest insects and ancient signs. Control and accident mirror each other. In Johns’s paintings and prints titled “Corpse and Mirror,” some of which are sectioned into six rectangles, one rectangle imperfectly mirrors the one adjacent to it, establishing a series of visual echoes.

One reason Rorschach’s inkblots came up in the conversation was because all of Burckhardt’s recent paintings are abstract and many are symmetrical. In fact, imperfection is built into the process because Burckhardt always starts with a single panel, with the blank one set aside until the first is completed. An improvisational artist, he works in oil on the panel, sometimes using a roller to cover an area yet allowing the under-layer to peek through, until he arrives at something he considers finished. This and everything else in the first panel has to be redone in reverse on the second panel.

Tom Burckhardt, not yet titled (2017), 44” X 40.”

By working on two panels at different times, and then abutting the so-called original and its mirrored copy together, Burckhardt calls attention to the paradox of a symmetrical image that is physically split down the middle: it is at once total and divided.

It does not take long, however, to begin noticing slight differences between the panels in hue and thickness of line. Given the symmetry and the physical split, I found myself asking whether I was seeing more than what was there. This ever so slight push-pull between each panel introduces a tremulous hum into the experience: I begin focusing back and forth between the total image and the two panels, never settling down in either perceptual mode for very long. The dance between similarity and difference doesn’t end. Complicating this experience is the way the figure and ground are often entangled, especially when there is layer of overpainting. I am left wondering, what is the relationship between the dominant form and the partially hidden one?

However, before discussing Burckhardt’s abstract paintings further, I want to circle back to the quote he sent me. One of the people that Searls writes about is the German philosopher Robert Vischer, who coined the word “einfuhling,” which means “feeling in” or, in English, empathy. According to Searls, “Empathy, for Vischer, was creative seeing, reshaping the world so as to find ourselves reflected in it.” Vischer’s “creative seeing” links up with Burckhardt’s longtime interest in pareidolia, or the way the imagination creates patterns, so that you see something you know (face, bat, or gondola) in abstract images.

Burckhardt’s abstract paintings form one distinct body of work within his diverse oeuvre. In addition, he has done installations and made a series of works painted on vintage book covers. I have seen travel journals full of portraits of people he encountered while bicycling in Indonesia. He has made ink-on-paper views of a variety of landscapes and seascapes – often including the motif of a blank stretched canvas — that incorporated digital images. Burckhardt works across these mediums without trying to fit them all together, but, despite all the differences, in each of them he is meditating on the nature of art.

“STUDIO FLOOD” continues a line of thought the he first explored in “FULL STOP” (2005-2006), which is his walk-in version of an artist’s cluttered studio, complete with a doorway entering from a graffiti-covered storefront façade. Everything in this three-dimensional trompe l’oeil environment is made from brown cardboard, hot glue, and flat black paint.

In “STUDIO FLOOD,” the artist’s studio will also be made of cardboard but this time it will supposedly be partially full of water, with the corners and tops of paintings sticking up like shark fins. Disaster has struck, and we must deal with the aftermath. In this scenario, as we enter the studio, we would have to walk on the surface of the water, which is not the metaphor the artist wanted. Instead – as the model he shows me makes clear – the studio will be constructed upside-down, and we will walk on the ceiling: the ground has been pulled out from under us.

Tom Burckhardt, not yet titled (2017), 24” X 30.”

Pareidolia is a phenomenon the Rorschach inkblot test makes use of. This is what Tom said in an interview we did in 2011:

The whole idea of pareidolia is that it’s an evolutionary thing that we had to develop to instantly recognize friend or foe, it’s a subcortical kind of image, it’s the primary kind of image processing that we have had as a species, and I want to tap into its hook, as in a pop song hook, and to make use of that. If I were a really good abstract painter, as soon as that face starts appearing, I’d want to turn the canvas and run in the other direction. I’m perversely trying to cultivate the thread that comes out of pareidolia, the creation of images, a facial image out of a random stimulus, basically, because random stimulus is the basis of abstract painting, right?

Pareidolia is what Robert Vischer called “einfuhling,” which Damion Searls defines as “creative seeing.” As his observation about this phenomenon suggests, Burckhardt does not want to be “a really good abstract painter,” which is to say that he resists the institutionalized model regarding what constitutes an accomplished abstract painting. This resistance is what threads many of Burckhardt’s distinct bodies of work and styles together. He wants to subvert the standards of judgment integral to our understanding of abstract painting, while being committed to the act of making: he wants to inhabit his doubt and certainty without seeking a one-size-fits-all solution. He is interested in – to use his own words – perversely cultivating the tenuous relationship between “creative seeing” and the randomness of nature without becoming explicit. Can he walk that tightrope without toppling into irony or? He is also interested in following the ramifications of an idea (or something seen in his mind’s eye) to its fullest fruition, no matter how absurd the journey.

In “FULL STOP,” an empty canvas (made of cardboard, of course) sits on an easel at the center of the artist’s studio, waiting to be worked on. The studio feels abandoned and, because of that, disconcerting. Why did the artist stop?

Tom Burckhardt, not yet titled (2017), 30” X 46.”

The objects in the studio include a slide projector, dial telephone, and other obsolete objects we associate with an earlier era. Everything we see in the studio has a counterpart in reality. For all the considerable and evident effort that Burckhardt put into making this room, and the many things in it, the inexpensive materials work in counterpoint. What does it mean to make a cardboard replica of Johns’s “Painted Bronze” (1960), a sculpture of an old Savarin coffee can crammed with dirty paintbrushes, which is a hand-painted bronze recreation of an artist’s tools? By some measure, doesn’t Burckhardt return this artist’s tools to its original setting, which is a studio, however fictional it might be? Isn’t what he made both a tender homage and an absurd replica in equal measure? Isn’t it also a comment on the art market? If you cannot afford Johns’s “Painted Bronze” – which you can’t – perhaps this replica will do.

I am intrigued by Burckhardt’s interest in the appearance of a thing, and that he has not become programmatic about it. In this regard, Burckhardt shares something with Richard Artschwager and his non-functional faux furniture, not to mention his blurring of the boundaries between painting and sculpture. In his installation, “Slump” (2008), Burckhardt fabricated stretcher bars, paint cans, boxes, and crates. The fabricated paintings literally slumped against the wall: there was something funny, ironic, and – let’s face it – truly weird about these works. It is the weirdness that propelled these works into a new domain (or reality) all their own. Like Artschwager, he seems to be able to copy whatever he wants, but prefers to undermine his gift for mimicry, often by giving himself a ridiculous task: make a painting that slumps against the wall as well as the crate it is resting on, while ensuring that both look as if they are real. Like Buster Keaton, Burckhardt wants to joke about a disaster with a straight face. Which raises the question: what is real and what isn’t?

For years Burckhardt has painted on uneven cast-plastic surfaces, adding black dots to the sides to mimic the tacks used to hold a stretched canvas to its wooden support. In his last exhibition, AKA Incognito at Tibor de Nagy (May 7–June 12, 2015), which I reviewed, he showed two groups of paintings, one on cast plastic supports, the largest of which measures 32 by 40 inches, and larger works done on stretched canvas, including a two-panel painting, “Gunung” (2015), which measures 60 by 96 inches and is done on two panels. The paintings currently in his studio extend out of “Gunung.”

When I saw these two groups of paintings, one on plastic and the other on canvas, I wondered how would connect the two, the fake to the so-called real? One thing he did on the “real” paintings in his studio, all canvas on stretched linen, was to use a jigsaw on the stretchers, making the edge wavy. At times, while looking at the paintings, the wavy edge became a soft irritant: I was aware of it the way I am of a distant, buzzing bug. At the same time, it contradicted the straight and curving edges of the forms, as there was nothing wavy about them.

The edges of these new paintings invite closer scrutiny; are they composed of hardened paint extending beyond the physical edge, as in some works by Miguel Barcelo? What does it mean to contradict Donald Judd’s declaration, in his landmark essay, “Specific Objects” (1965)?

The main thing wrong with painting is that it is a rectangular plane placed flat against the wall. A rectangle is a shape itself; it is obviously the whole shape; it determines and limits the arrangement of whatever is on or inside of it.

There is no dialogue between the painting’s gently wavy edges and the interior forms. They are two different languages spelled out simultaneously.

Tom Burckhardt, not yet titled (2017), 48” X 60.”

In the new paintings – none of which have been titled yet – Burckhardt uses brushes, rollers, and a drywall knife to scrape the surface. He also uses a Mylar sheet with hand-cut holes in tandem with a brush or roller to make rows of dots that hover between the handmade and machine-made. The palette for each painting is different. The combination is never charming or seductive. The paint varies from solid to porous.

A number of visitors to Burckhardt’s studio, after seeing these paintings, have mentioned Pacific Northwest art and the American science fiction film, Transformers (2007), and the toys it was based on as possible inspirations, but this seems too reductive. Besides, I also saw forms that evoked the time Burckhardt has spent in India, Sri Lanka, and Indonesia. He has looked at a lot of stuff and has never been hierarchical about it.

My sense is that these paintings court a figural reading but never slide comfortably into that perceptual category. Are we looking at the abstracted image of a mechanical figure, or an imperfect, symmetrical abstract painting? By courting a legibility that is rooted in Pop culture, while, at the same time, resisting it, Burckhardt asks, how and what do we see? And why? What is it that we want from abstract painting?

By finding ways to foreground his conflicts about painting, while also expanding its definition, Burckhardt has become one of the most interesting artists of his generation.

The post The Case for Tom Burckhardt appeared first on Hyperallergic.

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Latour On Finally Tying Up His Loose Ends with Brunner & Renzi

In 2007, the comics industry landscape was very different, with some of today’s most popular creators toiling away in relative obscurity. One such creator was Jason Latour who that year teamed up with artist Chris Brunner and colorist Rico Renzi to release “Loose Ends,” a four-issue Southern crime series.

The book, which developed a small, but devoted fan base thanks to Latour’s writing and Brunner’s breathtaking visuals, is an especially significant moment in Latour’s career because it directly led to the titles he’s known for today; “Spider-Gwen,” which he co-created with Renzi and artist Robbie Rodriguez for Marvel Comics, and “Southern Bastards,” the Eisner Award winning Image Comics series by Latour and co-creator Jason Aaron.

RELATED: Southern Bastards Announces Anti-Harassment Charity Variant

Sadly, the fourth issue of “Loose Ends” was never released, denying fans the chance to read Latour, Brunner, and Renzi’s story in it’s entirety. That all changes this month, as Image Comics gives fans of the creative team’s work, both old and new, a chance to rediscover and finish one of the their seminal works by repackaging and releasing all four issues of “Loose Ends.”

CBR: Image Comics is releasing “Loose Ends” #1 in January. I know some of your newer fans will be experiencing this book for the first time, but will that will be the case for long time fans of your work as well?

Jason Latour: Well for context— “Loose Ends” is a comic that originally came out in 2007, and was essentially self-published between the four of us (the creative team and our editor Keven Gardener). Creator-owned comics were a different beast ten years ago; audiences paid less attention, the market was less diverse, and we were still building our careers. You couple all that with how much we poured into making this comic, and it was just a real uphill climb. So despite a really great response from folks who read it, we only managed to complete three issues of what was intended as four-issue miniseries.

Luckily for us, we’re here ten years later, and all the doors “Loose Ends” opened for us — especially for me — have made it very possible to re-present this book through Image. Which is just tremendous, because I love working there and I love the idea of this comic finally having a home beside the amazing stuff they do.

So we’re reprinting the existing material — along with the last chapter. And the cool thing about that is — again, this is the comic book that all but started our careers, one that very few people got to see. So it’s essentially like making a new comic.

We’re very excited about it. I feel like it still looks and reads pretty fresh considering that it is from another era. It’s a fun road trip genre crime comic, but also a meditation of sorts on what it was like to come of age in an era where George Bush was as his height, we were at war in the Middle East, almost no one had ever heard of Barack Obama, and Trump was just a dumb show TV host. I think it’s an interesting time capsule in that sense. Hopefully it’s taken on some new relevance.

Has the end of the series changed at at all? Did you go back and revise “Loose Ends” #4?

Sure, we’re going to do some light things to repurpose, repackage, and re-present the series as a whole. But for all intents and purposes, though, there’s not a lot of George Lucas-ing going on. [Laughs] Han still shoots first.

Both plot wise and story wise, the fourth issue is all in stone. The only thing that I could possibly allow myself to change is — well, it’s my opinion comic books are not finished until they’re in print. [Laughs] So for the fourth issue, I might do some little lettering re-writes (which is convenient, since I letter it by hand). We’ll see. I’m trying to keep it more or less the same in terms of my involvement.

At a certain point, you’ve got to stand beside what you did. There certainly are reasons to readdress things, but I always like to try and stand on the work that we did, and just trust that even if you were in a different place, you still gave it your best effort at the time.

Let’s talk a little bit about the main characters and the inciting incident of “Loose Ends.” What can you tell us about your two lead characters, Sonny and Cheri, and the events that bring them together?

The comic more or less is a road trip gone sideways. I guess, for lack of a better word, you could call Sonny the protagonist. [Laughs] He’s a young man who has come back from Iraq and Afghanistan with potentially a new lease on life. He and his friend, Reggie, have decided to sell heroin. It’s a get rich quick scheme that is very quickly eating away at Sonny’s conscience.

So Sonny returns home to try and make amends for something he left undone, and at the end of one bloody night he and a young woman from his past named Cheri end up on the road and embroiled in the machinations of a pair of corrupt cops. So in the course of one night, these characters lives take on this breakneck momentum that forces them to rehash and reassess their lives.

So if you’re a fan of films like “True Romance” or “Drive” (which it still stuns me that we pre-date), this might be for you. Of course, it’s set in the South, which makes it obviously very personal to me, and I think separates it from just the genre elements of those stories a bit.

In terms of elevator pitches, it sounds like you could describe it as sort of a Southern fried “True Romance” by way of someone like “The Wire’s” David Simon.

Yeah, that’s a good elevator pitch. There’s certainly a lot of David Simon in it.

I started writing this around 2005. There was a period where I moved away from the South and lived in New York. I read a lot of David Simon during that time. He’s clearly a heavyweight intellectual, and he really got me thinking. At the time, I was living in a pretty impoverished area of Brooklyn, and being from the South, I was thinking about the commonalities of people growing up in different places and how everything is all a lot more interconnected than people seem to want to acknowledge. That helped this book really coalesce in a way.

You mentioned “Southern Bastards.” I assume “Loose Ends” is also like that book in that it can be quite dark at times, but it can also be quite funny at times.

Yeah, I would think so. I certainly take myself way too seriously a lot of the time. [Laughs] But if anybody follows my terrible social media feeds, they’ll see that I also can’t resist making dumb jokes. So there’s a lot of my own particular, warped sense of humor, and the senses of humor of Chris and Rico both slide in there too.

I’m just a big believer in embracing the interplay between what’s absurd and what’s super serious. More and more that’s reflected in our society and real lives.

What I’ve seen of Chris and Rico’s art for “Loose Ends” is, I don’t want to use the term magical, but it kind of feels that way.

Yes! There is literally no other artist that I felt would be capable of bringing this to life. That’s the highest compliment that I can give.

Chris was my roommate for the better part of four years while we were working on the bulk of this. I got to see him struggle with putting that magic on the page. He really bled for it and earned every bit of it. I truly think people should pick this comic book up, if for no other reason than for the art. It’s a virtuoso performance by somebody who is, unfortunately, a little underrated. Not among other artists, but as far as fans. I think it will really be worth people’s time to experience what he’s done here. Hell, he could be one of the biggest names in comics, and he’d still be underrated.

The same goes for Rico, who is obviously a collaborator of mine on pretty much all the stuff I’ve been doing at Marvel. That guy is my drummer, man. The steady beat to all this stuff. If you’ve read “Southern Bastards” #12, or the first story in the “Spider-Gwen Annual,” that’s a little taste of how this team works together.

But I can’t stress enough that — we really didn’t want to do a crime comic that felt old and dusty. [Laughs] A lot of crime comics end up using the same palette and the same sort of visual presentation over and over again. So this is sort of what I’d call neon noir. We all really like the early Michael Mann movies. His films like “Thief” are definitely an influence.

Finally, how does it feel to revisit and bring “Loose Ends” to a long awaited close?

I stand behind everything we’ve done, 150 percent. But it does feel a little weird to put a comic out ten years after you wrote it. Mostly because readers don’t often know or seem to care about the context of when something was made. Why should they? Their job is to enjoy it. And then there’s the idea that— well it’s not so much the fear that they’re not going to like what you did then, it’s that they’re going to like what you used to do a lot better. [Laughs]

It does feel really rewarding to get it all put together and all done, though. It felt like for a while we might be pulling a prank on everybody by calling it “Loose Ends.” [Laughs] It’s like our own little Andy Kaufman/Tony Clifton prank.

This was a comic that opened a lot of doors for me. It was the first comic that I put on Marvel’s desk and said, “Hey, I can write.” It’s also a comic that was very influential and essential to me and Jason Aaron creating “Southern Bastards.” So it means the world to me to get to re-present it and repackage it. Plus, it will be new to so many people.  Even if only 10 more people read it it’s really gratifying to put Chris and Rico on that stage again. Giving anything that you worked that hard for a new chance at life is an opportunity that you should never take for granted.

“Loose Ends” #1, by Jason Latour, Chris Brunner and Rico Renzi, is on sale now.

The post Latour On Finally Tying Up His Loose Ends with Brunner & Renzi appeared first on CBR.com.

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