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mst3kproject · 4 years

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Light Blast

What’s this? A death ray movie in which we actually see stuff get death rayed? Aw, man, that might disqualify it for MST3K right there! Fortunately for us, however, Light Blast was directed by Enzo Castellari, who brought us Escape 2000, and it stars Erik Estrada. Estrada was never on MST3K but he was on pretty much all the 70’s cop shows they kept referencing, including Mannix and Police Woman, and Mike and the bots would never have let him forget it.

So what do we want out of a death ray movie? I dunno, some faces melting like the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark would be cool, and Light Blast apparently read my mind on that count because we get the first melting face action before the ten minute mark! A couple of young people go to have sex in a boxcar (this scene includes a real classy upskirt shot, just three minutes in) while the bad guy tests his death ray, and in the fine tradition of kids just trying to bone at the beginning of movies, they get zapped. Meanwhile, somewhere else, Erik Estrada in a speedo takes down a couple of bank robbers by hiding a gun inside a roast turkey.

This is gonna be a weird movie, isn’t it?

Sadly, Light Blast never again rises to that height of absurdity. Evil Professor Yuri Svoboda has a death ray, and has decided to hold the city of San Francisco hostage for the princely sum of:

Was that even a lot of money in 1985? According to dollartimes the conversion rate is about 2.5, so that would be $12.5 million today... still seems a little low for a major city. Anyway.

To show he means business, Svoboda death rays the announcer’s box at a demolition derby. Thence ensues a series of extremely uninspired car chases and a scene in which Estrada is repeatedly kicked in the avocados by a woman dressed as a nurse (I liked that bit). Eventually he puts the pieces of the puzzle together, and never even bothers to tell us what the finished picture looks like before running off to what looks like it’ll be the final Power Plant Confrontation. No such luck. Svoboda escapes again, and Estrada has to chase him down to the final final confrontation.

There are two things here Castellari seems to really like. One is digital clocks, which are frequently the focus of the death ray for some reason. The other is men staggering around on fire, filmed in the type of loving slow motion that turns this agonizing death into a moment of over-dramatic hilarity. Remember in the Making Of Documentary for Return of the King, when Peter Jackson acknowledges that Denethor falling off the top of Minas Tirith while on fire is ridiculous? Enzo Castellari is definitely not that self-aware.

He is also fond of car chases. There are three or four of them in Light Blast and they’re competent, I guess. They’re definitely better than the budget version you sometimes see in really cheap movies, in which the camera turns to watch one vehicle pass by, then repeats the shot with another. There was probably a storyboard and so forth. But they’re still pretty monotonous and mostly just look like people driving around with no sense of a destination or a narrative. Instead, the movie tries to add interest by giving them ‘gimmicks’.

In one of the chases, Estrada doesn’t want the villain to know he’s being followed, so rather than using his own vehicle, he just hops into random people’s cars and makes them do the following. In one he shows his badge and tells the driver he’s a cop. In another he tells the woman driving that he’s playing a practical joke on a friend from college. Astonishingly, he never gets slapped or shot.

In another, he steals a race car in order to chase down Svoboda, who is fleeing to a boat from which he plans to death ray the entire city or something. This chase includes two separate shots in which Estrada jumps the race car over some obstacle in his way, again filmed in slow motion. In neither was there any sort of ramp to get the car off the ground. It’s like that scene in Speed where the fucking bus somehow jumps over a gap in the highway except they did it twice and slowly to give the audience time to think about how stupid it is. Then Estrada jumps the car again onto Svoboda’s boat, which has already left the dock, and somehow manages to stop on a dime rather than falling into the water.

I recognize that movies are not bound by the laws of physics, but those that get away with breaking them do so by walking a fine line. Things have to look possible. People running away from explosions looks like it should work, and very few of us have ever been in a position to find out what it’s actually like first-hand (partly because those of us who have probably didn’t live to tell about it). The car jumps? Nah.

Wikipedia includes a couple of reviews of this film that have been translated, not very well, from Italian. They’re kind of hard to understand but they do seem to fixate on the preponderance of car chases. They also reference another staple of 80’s action movies, which is excessive police brutality. Estrada shoots a whole bunch of people, breaks into a power plant and a funeral home, steals cars, causes a dozen accidents and untold property damage, and bullies his girlfriend into risking her job in order to get him the information he needs. Our hero, ladies and gentlemen.

Other clichés drift by. The villain gives a pretty classic monologue all about how he Showed Those Fools At The Academy and how his death ray will make him supreme ruler of the world and he’ll bring about a new age of peace. There’s a bit where Estrada and his partner, the Tall Guy (these characters do have names, I just don’t care) sit down at the kitchen table and put together what they’ve learned… but instead of some exposition to tell us, the audience, what that is, we get a Ryan And Shane Look For Forrest Fenn’s Treasure montage but without the irony. We can just barely hear fragments of voices through this, as the characters talk about it… enough to tease us with what they know and we don’t.

I dunno, it’s possible the audience is supposed to have already figured this stuff out and I just wasn’t paying attention. I was pretty bored during most of this movie.

During the montage, the bad guys sneak up outside Estrada’s house (which is on a boat? I think?) and open fire, basically shooting everybody but Estrada himself, who escapes completely unharmed. His personality-deficient girlfriend isn’t so lucky… but she was only in this movie so it would have a part for Estrada’s real-life girlfriend Peggy Rowe. This bit is right up there with The Phantom Creeps as a perfect example of why Women In Fridges is screenwriting for hacks. Estrada is already determined to get these guys. He already cares about the people they’ve killed in the past and the ones they plan to kill in the future! He is already frustrated by his failures to catch them! ‘Making it personal’ is completely unnecessary! Did the writers really think her death would add anything, or were they just trying to fill up their Action Movie Cliché Bingo card?

In the villain’s evil monologue, Svoboda reveals that apparently Estrada killed his wife? I guess she was the mortician? This doesn’t help, because I don’t think Svoboda actually knows that Estrada’s girlfriend is dead and even if he does, she wasn’t his target. His henchmen were after Estrada and Tall Guy.

Then there’s the ending, which is in no way a ‘climax’ and barely even counts as an ‘end’. Remember I said Estrada jumps his racecar onto Svoboda’s boat? This knocks the death ray over and it melts Svoboda himself. Estrada watches this, then basically just shrugs and walks the fuck away. So… that was it? No confrontation? No fight? Just a failure to properly secure the superweapon?

Isn’t the rest of the boat gonna melt now, too? In previous uses the death ray seemed to melt things over a fairly wide area. Isn’t anyone worried about that? No, we’re just rolling the credits? Okay, fine. At least the movie’s over.

Is there anything nice I can say about Light Blast? Well… I guess it passes the Bechdel Test. There’s a bit, completely irrelevant to the plot, where two women who work at the police station discuss perfume. It’s as if one of the writers had read about the Bechdel Test and shoved that in there just to pass it, without bothering to think about what the point of the ‘test’ is.

For all I’ve bitched about it, Light Blast isn’t a full on disaster. It’s merely a mediocre 80’s action movie. What makes it so damn disappointing is the wackiness of that early scene with Estrada in his underwear and the gun in the turkey. That bit has the same effect as naming your movie Hercules Against the Moon Men – it gives the audience the impression that you have a sense of humour, and then the rest of the film can be nothing but the slow downward spiral of realizing that you were, in fact, serious. Even then, it still could have been fun if the writers and director had kept up that kind of cheese throughout but no�� Light Blast couldn’t even be bad enough to be good.

If any of you MSTies reading this are aspiring film-makers, let this be the lesson for you: the introduction of your main character sets the tone. Do that wrong, or in a way that doesn’t match the rest of your movie, and you’re sunk. And if you only have one interesting or funny idea, for love of Apearlo put that at the end of the movie, not the beginning!

#mst3k #reviews #episodes that never were #light blast #women in fridges #80s

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duhragonball · 5 years

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Describing Stuff

I’ve had this rattling around in my brain for a while, and I’ve got the day off and I’m trying to get used to this ergonomic keyboard I bought, so I figure I’ll write about this for a while.

Recently, I’ve been seeing more examples of really terrible writing where a male author describes a female character, and they seem to go out of their way to make it awkward and creepy and weird. I don’t really feel like quoting any excerpts here, but you can find all sorts of examples on Twitter @men_write_women .

I feel like the common thread with all the ones I’ve seen is this compulsion to describe a woman in exhausting detail. It always seems to boil down to how sexy the woman is, and why exactly she’s sexy, or what flaws she has that disqualify her from being sexy. It’s sexist, because the emphasis is on the character as a sex fantasy for the author, and presumably the reader. If the character has any other purpose in the story, it’s going to be undermined by a 500-word treatise on what her boobs look like. It also insults and dismisses a sizable portion of the audience that, you know, may not be that into boobs.

Writing is about setting priorities. People talk about unlimited creative freedom and building entire universes at the point of their humble quills, and that’s horseshit. Writing is all about deciding which parts of your daydream to keep and which to leave out. You can’t capture every tiny detail of a character, or and object, or a scene. Even if you could, it would take too long to document it all, and the reality is that the reader’s not going to parse that much information anyway. So you have to decide which parts are important and which ones aren’t. And if you blow 1,000 words trying to explain why breasts are cool, you’re sending a message to the reader about what your priorities are. The message is: “I’m horny right now, and my libido is more important to me than this character or your enjoyment of the story.” I don’t think that’s the message authors want to send.

There’s also probably some ego bound up in this. Every excerpt I see on @men_write_women seems to be completely unaware of any of the others. It’s like each writer has deluded himself into thinking he’s the first person to try to describe sexy ladies in print. That, or they think it’s been done before, but never quite right. I sense such an enthusiasm whenever I read these things, like the author is going to pull out all the stops and come up with this literary salute to badonkadonk. And it always ends up looking absurd, because they overthink it. How can they not overthink it? They're trying to come up with an extra-special description of something people see all the time. I’m pretty sure that’s how the word “badonkadonk” was invented, because no existing words were sufficient.

I’m going to talk about professional wrestling here in a minute, but first, let’s class the joint up by looking at the poem “Trees” by Alfred Joyce Kilmer.

I think that I shall never see A poem lovely as a tree. A tree whose hungry mouth is prest Against the earth’s sweet flowing breast; A tree that looks at God all day, And lifts her leafy arms to pray; A tree that may in Summer wear A nest of robins in her hair; Upon whose bosom snow has lain; Who intimately lives with rain. Poems are made by fools like me, But only God can make a tree.

It’s that last line that made me think of the poem just now, because Kilmer recognized that he could never hope to recreate the beauty of a tree in mere words. At best, he could only string together a few lines to remind people of how nice trees look, which is an achievement in itself, but it’s never going to be as good as the real thing. If poems about trees can be beautiful, then how much more beautiful a poem is the tree itself?

But look at all the stuff he leaves out. He doesn’t mention the trunk at all, or the rough texture of the bark, or the way the leaves turn color in the fall. That’s because Kilmer wasn’t writing a monograph about the appearance of a tree for space aliens who’ve never seen one. He was making the assumption that his readers were already familiar with trees and referencing imagery they might have seen before.

I think the same trick can be applied to women (or any humans for that matter), since readers can be trusted to know what they look like. I also think it’s safe to assume that the inherent beauty of humans is comparable to that of trees, so a quick, simple description can be plenty.

That’s kind of my approach to this sort of thing. I’ve always struggled with describing things in stories, mainly because I would see these lengthy, detailed descriptions in books, and I thought I was supposed to imitate that and couldn’t really pull it off. But eventually I realized that I didn’t need to, and maybe I’m better off if I don’t even try. One of the stories that clinched this for me was “Gold” by Isaac Asimov. The main character is contracted to make a movie adaptation out of a book, which happens to resemble another Asimov story, The Gods Themselves. The problem is that the aliens in the book are sparingly described, so the guy has no idea where to begin. Through the author character, Asimov defends his own writing style, opting to keep things fairly abstract, and relying on the reader to fill in the gaps.

I could relate to this, because when I read Les Miserables in high school, I couldn’t get past Jean Valjean’s name, because it reminded me of Jean Paul-Valley, the DC Comics character who filled in as Batman while Bruce Wayne was injured in 1993-1994. Try as I might, I could not shake the image of Valjean trudging through the novel in an armored Batman costume. So eventually I stopped trying, and ran with it. I have no idea what Valjean was supposed to have looked like. Victor Hugo might have described him, but I only ever imagined a young man with long blond hair and glasses. Wearing an armored Batman costume.

I’m not sure exactly when I put it all together, but eventually I realized that it’s all theater of the mind, and ultimately the reader is going to imagine whatever the reader wants, regardless of what you put on the page. If you say this guy wore blue and the reader likes red better, they’ll just start imagining it’s red. They may know factually that it’s blue, but you can’t stop them from making that switch. Now, knowing that, doesn’t it seem a bit futile to describe exactly what shade of blue it is? You can pontificate about the profundity of the color blue, and how the guy’s shirt was the color of the ocean on a blustery afternoon off the shore of Maine, but your reader is like “Nah, mate, I like red better”, then you’re probably wasting words.

I’m not saying it’s pointless to specify details. If a reader was completely unwilling to cooperate with your story, then they’re probably not reading it in the first place. But I think writers need to make peace with the fact that readers are looking for cues and stage directions for their imaginations, not immutable details. That’s why it’s so important to prioritize. Take the most important details and get them out there up front, when the reader is most receptive to them. Boob size is not important. If boob size is one of the top three details for your character, then you either haven’t finished creating the character, or you probably don’t actually have any use for the character.

Just to demonstrate what I mean, I’m going to try to write a description of AEW referee Aubrey Edwards, as if she were a fictional character in a story. I wasn’t sure what to use for an example, but I watched All Out Saturday and she officiated the main event, so I decided to go with her. That’s her on the left, but I probably didn’t need to tell you that, since I think we all know how to spot a referee.

Now, first and foremost, if I were writing a story about a wrestling match, I probably wouldn’t bother mentioning the referee much at all. Their whole role in these events is to be as inconspicuous as possible. They just enforce the rules; it’s the wrestlers who are supposed to be the main attraction. I’d probably just keep it simple.

“The referee was a woman, but Dirk Hardcastle paid little mind to her. His main concern lay in the competitors, and which of them, if either was his archnemesis, Tad Plowshare, in disguise.”

Or I might not even go that far, and just use “she/her” pronouns whenever the referee is mentioned. I want the reader to think about where Tad Plowshare is, not the referee.

Of course, if the big twist is that the ref is important, then I have to go into a little more detail, because now she’s in the spotlight.

“It couldn’t be. Dirk knew it had to be true from the way she looked directly at him and smiled deviously. He would recognize that sinister grin on a thousand different faces. But he had already ruled out the officials and production staff as suspects. He had been so certain of this that he had ignored the referee completely, but she was definitely the one. And now that it was too late, Tad Plowshare dropped the act entirely. She pulled off the tie that held her brunette ponytail in place, and removed the black nitrile gloves from her hands. Only moments ago, her expressions and movements had been those of a consummate professional, focused entirely upon adjudicating the match. Her bright red lipstick had been the only sign that she had any sort of personal life outside of her work. Now, as she laughed in triumph, the red on her lips only reminded Hardcastle of the blood of thousands of innocents, which would soon be spilled as a consequence of his failure.”

Maybe I’m laying this on too thick, but the core things I’m trying to convey about Edwards are her no-nonsense attitude, the way she wears her hair in a ponytail, and the red lipstick she wears, which seems to contradict her serious demeanor. I wouldn’t even bother describing her referee uniform, because everyone has a general idea of what those look like. The other night, I found it kind of odd how the stripes on AEW’s refs look wider than what I’m used to seeing, but a lot of wrestling refs don’t even wear stripes at all, so it really doesn’t matter a lot. I’d probably only bring it up if there was a need to mention variations in uniform. Like if she was officiating water polo instead.

What I don’t need to spend a lot of time on is her figure. I don’t see much point in talking about how fat or thin she is unless I plan to have her crawl through a ventilation shaft, and then I could just confine it to “She fit”. And that doesn’t tell you anything because you don’t know how big the ductwork is.

Physical attractiveness is something I try to shy away from, because I figure that’s a subjective thing, and I don’t see much point in trying to cram my own standards down anyone’s throat. I don’t think it does much good to just declare that such-and-such character is attractive; it’s better to have another character do it instead, and that way it says something about both characters. This one finds the other one to be hot. If I want examples of what they find so hot in the other character, I’ll try to keep it vague. “Well, Dirk Hardcastle has a cute chin. What’s cute about it? Who knows? Who cares? The character who’s admiring his chin, that’s who. But why should it need to be explained in greater depth than that.

The handy thing about this approach is that it leaves large swaths of Dirk’s body open to interpretation. He could look like a troll doll and still have a “cute chin”. He could have chest hair or not, be chubby or skinny, and so forth. So if you want to join in the notion that he’s attractive, you can rule in your own type, whatever that is.

I don’t know if that’s making any sense, but that’s how I try to approach it. When I read these long things about knife-like boobs or gentle slopes of buttcracks or whatever, it annoys me because it feels like whoever wrote that was losing a game they never should have bothered trying to play. All they needed to do was have the character who’s looking at this woman be like “Wow, this is the hottest lady I’ve ever seen” or something like that, describe whatever sexy dress she’s got on (briefly), and you’re done. And only do that when you need to. Dirk Hardcastle doesn’t have time to size up all the ladies, not while that bastard Tad Plowshare’s running loose.

#/#//#///#////#/////#writing

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the-concealed · 6 years

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Giving Chase: a Monster Prom fic

Brian didn't really care much about anything. In fact, he could care less about prom and relationships but now due to a misunderstanding between him and Damien. He's forced to go on a scavenger hunt with the demon to "confess" his true feelings to Amira when in reality, he's just here to prove that Amira was never into him in the first place. Proving LaVey wrong would be pretty sweet, rubbing it in his face for the rest of high school would probably be even sweeter.

AO3 link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14794778/chapters/34227776

Lyfe suxx! Eat dik n snort coaine!

These were words that were in the process of being scratched into the bathroom stalls. Brian was beginning to find out small acts of vandalism were a regular thing whenever one hung out with a certain drug-laced spirit. The stink of unflushed urine and mud wafted through the room, it was a smell so familiar to Brian he began to look back on the bittersweet memories of the past when his father raised him. From the dead, of course.

Ah, sweet nostalgia.

“Wipe that grin off your face, zombitch. It’s creeping me out.” Brian blinks once slowly and swivels his head to stare blankly at a smirking fire djinn. He had almost forgot that there were also other people in here with them, it seemed like half of the gym class skipped yet another one of Coach’s dodgeball matches. Amira and Damien hover close to the door. Each one taking a seat in between the sinks, watching Polly expertly scratch vile language with the help of a blue glitter pen. Brian merely grunts in response to Amira’s insult, zombitch was one of the tamer jabs. It seemed like they were feeling merciful today.

A husky voice breaks out into a chuckle, Damien high-fiving Amira and pointing a vicious finger at the undead boy in front of him, “Nice one, Torch. Zombitch. I think I might keep that one. Who the fuck is this kid, anyway, Polly?”

“Oh, Brian? He’s in our gym class, dummy. He keeps saving my ghostly, and perfectly perky, ass at dodgeball so he totally rocks!” Polly grins widely and shoots you a wink, raising two pale thumbs in approval. Brian nods in thanks and leans further back towards the wall, to avoid the glare and wrath of Damien. The demon was easily set off and while Brian wanted nothing more than to put him in his place, he would also really rather keep all of his slowly deteriorating limbs.

“Think you’re better at dodgeball than me, don’tcha?” The demon’s eyes were alight with a poorly hidden hunger for a fight, a challenge or anything to pass the time, Brian would bet. But this wasn’t the day to prove which monster was better at throwing foamy balls at high speeds. In fact, Brian wished there wouldn’t be any days for it. Damien continued, on his feet now, and with Brian’s tall stature, had to crane his neck up a bit to deliver the threat, “Given the chance, I could crush you like a fucking cake in a fat kid’s birthday party.”

The threat didn’t prove to be as effective as Damien would have hoped, considering that Brian was taller than him by more than a few inches. It was like being threatened by a violent fire-starting raccoon, dangerous but come on it’s a raccoon. Brian grunts again in response which only seemed to piss Damien off more, “What the fuck? Can’t you say anything more than just grunt?”

“Oh don’t worry, Damien, I’m sure Brian doesn’t just grunt. He could moan for you too.” Amira snickers, setting her finger alight and flicking the small flame, it wavered towards Damien. It lands, sticking onto the demon’s leather jacket and sizzling. Polly lets out a loud, “Pffffbbt!” and squeals delightedly, a very loud and open advocate for gay monster sex. The zombie wishes that he could just push aside the boy in front of him and strangle Amira for suggesting that he’d do something as vile as having sex with that pyromaniac. Damien brushes off the small flame and scowls at the other two, taking a quick step away from Brian, “Eat shit and die, Torch. Don’t you have a stupid fucking scavenger hunt with Miranda soon?”

Scavenger hunt? Knowing Amira, it didn’t seem like it was their scene. Hell, hanging out with Miranda was very few people’s preferred scene, less you were one of her serfs in which case you were pretty much forced to. For the first time, Brian’s jaw unhinges and he talks, startling Damien beside him, “Scavenger hunt?”

“Christ, you sound like you smoke three packs a day.”

Brian shrugs and clears his throat, he knew that his voice was deep and somewhat guttural but that was just one of the few traits he took on after being introduced to the afterlife. He couldn’t help it, much like Polly couldn’t help but phase in and out of the bathroom walls. She was clearly on something, or the usually talkative Polly would have been bouncing up and down trying to pry information from Amira about the hunt. He ignores the top half of the poltergeist sticking out from the ceiling and tries again, “What’s that for?”

“Sorry, Brain,” Brian’s eyebrows furrow at the nickname but stops himself from correcting the fire djinn, and lets them continue, “I can’t give you any deets or else me and Miri will be disqualified from the hunt. It’s top secret stuff, you know. All I can tell you is that a bunch of weird guys in robes gave Miranda a list and a map with a skull and crossbones at the end...”

“Uhh..doesn’t sound safe,” Brian tries to interject to which Amira completely ignores. Why did he even ever bother trying to steer the djinn away from any kinds of danger? It seemed clear that the idiot was a natural born magnet for fucked up situations. Amira equaled bad news and bad news equaled a pain in the ass for Brian, these were just facts.

“...and we all know that skull and crossbones are the signs of a killer rager. Miri loves scavenger hunts and I love me a good fucking party so its a win-win situation. It’s an invite only event though, so I can’t have you guys tag along. Soz. Anyways, gotta bounce! It’s almost 3pm, Miranda’s meeting me at the gates for a shopping spree. Catch you lamesters later! Bye, Green!”

The last part was aimed at Brian and with a wink and a wave, Amira was out of the bathroom and jogging towards the main entrance, quickly disappearing out of sight. Brian knew that he should have gone after them but at the time, it didn’t seem as urgent. Amira was feisty and wouldn’t go down so easy in a fight. So he lets them go, making a mental note to send them a text later. Amira may be a bully but they were his bully and somewhat friend, so he felt partially responsible should they meet a violent end. But at the very least it was quiet now, he hoped that the demon and the poltergeist would leave but no such luck.

The silence was broken by yelling soon after. Damien released an earth-shattering yell and punched a bathroom door, the veins in his neck becoming more prominent as he strained himself further and further. What the fuck? The zombie took a step closer to Polly, in case the demon started throwing objects. The last thing Brian wanted was a hurt Polly, not that he cared about Polly much in particular. It’s just that he’d never hear the end of it should he choose not to protect her. Chivalry is dead, he could imagine her whining. Thankfully, however, Damien didn’t seem intent on chucking toilets out left and right so Brian, bewildered, just stood there and stared incredulously.

“Are you ok-”

“I’m fucking PISSED. Why did I get called a lamester and you get a nice fucking nickname?” Damien is bent over, hands on his face and seething in anger. That was...it? Brian wasn’t sure what to do after such a bizarre outburst of childish anger.

“Oh...Uh, I’m sorry?” As soon as he spoke, in a blink of an eye, Damien was right in front of him and gripping the front of his jacket. He forces the zombie down to his height and hisses, “Damn better be! Now listen here, fucknuts. Amira seems to like you,”

This was a debatable fact, but Brian kept his mouth shut.

“So I’m not going to beat your rotten face in right now. They were calling you so many nicknames it doesn’t take a genius to figure out that they’re probably in love with you.”

“I’m sorry.” This was the wrong thing to say as the zombie had meant to pose it as a question but it ended up coming across as if he was apologizing about being the sole carrier of Amira’s affections. This was absolutely not the case. That was just the kind of person Damien was, full of assumptions and violent temperament. Once something was in his head, it was rather hard to get it out. So Brian tried a different route to diffuse the situation but Polly interrupts him before he could get anything out, “Amira isn’t in love with him. They’ve seen him before he turned into one of the undead, and trust me he’s prettier now than he was back then. No offense, Bri.”

Ouch. A little punch to his already fragile self esteem but it was true, he had been one ugly motherfucker back then but still she didn’t have to say it like that. The only thing to do was ride this wave out, he adds, “Amira doesn’t talk about love, everything is about sex with them.”

This was also the wrong thing to say. No matter how true it was.

“You absolute bastard, how dare you invalidate Torch’s feelings like that? You think it’s easy to be so nonchalant when you’re around the person you like? It’s like not being able to kill someone for a long time, the anxiety and need for it just sits at the bottom of your stomach and festers and festers. And you know the only thing thats gonna relieve it is if you slide a dull butter knife through someone’s gut and watch the life seep out through their eyes.”

“Oh! Oh! Oh! Like not doing meth after two days and you just start itching everywhere and looking for a fix. Oh em gee, love is totally like an addiction to drugs and murder.”

Where was the exit again? Of course, Damien would be blocking it. Someone please get him away from these weirdos. The demon’s grip on his jacket became tighter and tighter, the neckline began to get a tiny bit more uncomfortable as it rubbed against Brian’s skin. “Why do you care so much?” Brian, as emotionless as he tries to appear to be, couldn’t help but glare at the demon.

The demon’s eyes widened for a fraction of a second but then quickly narrowed, he bared his fangs, “I’m their friend, don’t friends look out for each other?”

Brian cocks his head curiously to the side, the glare melting off his features, “No, it’s more than that. I’ve known Amira for a while but I’d never get heated about something as stupid as this.”

“T-then you just don’t care about them as much as I do.” His grip on Brian’s jacket loosens and he takes a step back, wiping a red hand over his flushed face. Or perhaps it was just his red skin that made it look as if he were flushed. Either way, Brian’s pretty sure he’s already got the reason why Damien was being so touchy on the subject. The idea of love really had a way of turning people into spastic intense idiots, it was somewhat nauseating. Briian’s been undead for a while now and he’s glad that most of his more passionate emotions got left behind along with his mortality. If he ever turned into a mushy pile of overly jealous goo like Damien did, someone else could eat his brain.

The zombie fixes his clothes, straightening the wrinkles Damien had made. Polly sighs and glances over at the demon, “If you like them that much, why don’t you go and join their scavenger hunt. Confess at the end of it and take them to prom. It’s simple and not as flashy as some promposals are but Amira was never one for romantic gestures anyway. No need to get so physical, jerkface.”

Damien growls, “I don’t like them, dumbass.”

“Don’t you?” Brian asks curiously. The scowl on the other boy’s face deepens as a deeper red crawls its way up from his neck and spreads to his ears. Like Brian said, nauseating.

“I told you, they like you. Not me. Get your head on straight, Stiff.”

The zombie grunts once again, pushing Damien aside to leave, “Whatever, lover boy.”

“Fuck you.”

It was at this time Polly chose to interject, “Yes! Just fuck each other already. God.

But you two should totally go after that scavenger hunt though, maybe it’ll strengthen the bond between two monsters. It’s not as exclusive as Amira wants you to think tbh. Half of the coolest ghouls in town know about it. The party is going to down at the crazy Doomsback Mountain, or named hopefully in your case, Brokeback mountain.”

Damien scowls and Brian merely blinks at the saucy wink Polly sends both your way, “If you weren’t already dead, I’d kill you right now. Anyways, let’s go, Stiff.”

“Uh, where?” As if he would go anywhere with that psycho alone. It would be stupid to think that Damien LaVey wouldn’t have at least five knives stuck to his person at all times.

“To Brokeback mountain!” Polly cheers, raising a pale fist high up in the air.

“To Doomsback,” The demon insists, his glaring silences Polly as she sticks her tongue out and phases out of the room. Damien turns back to the other boy and narrows his eyes, “You’re gonna tell Amira how you really feel so they don’t waste their time pining.”

“Wasting one day of my undead life to prove you wrong would be so good,”

A dark chuckle rises from deep within Damien’s chest as he cracks his knuckles menacingly, a glint in his eyes as he replies, “And beating your ass after you apologize to Torch would be pretty fucking sweet too.”

“We’ll see about that.”

#monster prom #visual novel #monster prom fic #damien lavey #green monster prom #brian monster prom #damien lavey fic #damien x brian #miranda vanderbilt #polly geist #scott howl #liam de lioncourt #vera oberlin #fanfic

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punchdrunkdoc · 7 years

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5x20 aka: Olicity heaven (with a bit of hell in the last 4 minutes)

It's official, season 5 of Arrow has started! It's a shame the season is so short (starting at 5x17 for some reason. Weird) but I'm enjoying it so far!

I'm only slightly kidding. There was very little about the previous 16 episodes of the show that remotely interested me, and I doubt I'll ever watch them in full; I saw all the 'best' parts in gif-form and short clips and that will do as far as I'm concerned. And you may think that disqualifies me from giving my opinion on the final 7 episodes of the season...but I'm going to anyway. Because what I have to say about 5x20 really only concerns one aspect of the show.

Olicity

This episode was amazing for us shippers. So many wonderful moments. And a few terrible ones as well, but I'll save them for last, lest I be accused of harshing people's buzz or being overly negative.

So first, the positives.

This is gonna be nothing groundbreaking. You've all seen the episode; you've posted and reblogged and tweeted the gifs, with all the appropriate accompanying squeeing. But let me break down my favs:

The flashback scenes were DELIGHTFUL!

(gif by @just-me-and-the-tv)

Tipsy Olicity was on my wish list for Arrow for ages (I ended up having to write my own scene to satisfy my desires) - its so clear that they're FRIENDS first and foremost. They enjoy spending time with each other, and basking in the other's actions and reactions.

The whole salmon ladder sequence was a joy, from Oliver's earnest teaching technique to Felicity's babbles, then the slooooowwww slide she took down Oliver's body, to her initiating the kiss...

(gif by @whoeveryoulovethemost)

And the kissing was uber-hot. I don't know if it's because we were deprived of new material and the old kissing gifs had become a bit too familiar, but man those kisses were on another level! You really felt how much they'd missed each other's lips. How much sinking into those kisses was like coming home; so familiar, but with a new edge of longing and tempered joy.

Perfectly captured in this moment, which was my favourite bit of the whole flashback:

(gifs by @ironstarkasm)

And when Oliver grabbed her and spun her around...I swear I gasped out loud thinking we were gonna see a whole 'nother dominant side to Oliver. But we ended up with Felicity on top again, which felt really fitting. The girl really likes the view from up there!

I loved the present day interactions as well; so much harsher and layered with new pain and frustration, but still with that unshakeable core of love and respect. The EW recap said it best:

THIS is the Arrow I love to watch. Characters working together, supporting each other, facing conflict drawn from their differing view of the world - not from contrived plot points and 'shock value' moments. And, most importantly, confiding in each other:

(gif by @felicitys)

This moment was heartbreaking, not least because to Oliver it was almost a deathbed confession. He NEEDED her to understand where he was coming from. It was imperative that she knew that his apparent lack of trust was not because of her. It was because of him.

The concept and execution of this confession was beautiful; the content...that will be in the negative section.

For now, more positives. I loved the tension and physicality of the bunker sequence. The stunts were incredible - and it was obvious why SA was hitting the gym hard in the lead up to filming. The dude was hauling EBR all over the shop. My absolute favourite moment was after Felicity injects Oliver with adrenaline. SA's comic timing and delivery (something we don't get nearly enough of) was on point! Why aren’t there a million gifs of this! I can watch this on a loop!

And after is slightly crazy-eyed ‘Good’, he just matter-of-factly Oliver pulled Felicity on to his back. He would carry her to the ends of the earth if need be.

And she would sacrifice herself so he wouldn't need to:

(gif by @felicitys)

Goddam, this is how you OTP!

Which is why...I'm kinda bummed the episode was brought down from potential 'best episode ever' status by some questionable writing choices that have more to do with other episodes rather than 5x20.

First up, the issue of break ups and apologies. Oliver has still not uttered the words 'I'm sorry for lying and sneaking behind your back' to Felicity. I know some people in this fandom feel his actions and his vows in the fake wedding were an apology of sorts, but its not enough for me. And I doubt we'll ever hear him apologise properly at this point.

Because the party line of the show has always been that the lies themselves were merely symptomatic of bigger issues: trust and judgement.

Trust

Felicity feels that Oliver doesn't trust her. Oliver explained that the problem was never with her, it was with him. This is the content of that scene I eluded to above, when Oliver confesses his secret. It just feels like a convoluted leap in logic to me. Oliver's convinced he enjoys killing..ergo Felicity feels he doesn't trust her.

Oliver likes killing = Oliver is bad = Oliver is not deserving of love and trust.

THIS logic I can understand (I don't agree with it, because Oliver is good and deserves all the happiness in the world), but I can see the thought progression. I don't understand how that equates to not being able to trust others.

Oliver likes killing = Oliver is bad = the team should not sacrifice their souls in his name = he doesn’t want Felicity going bad

Fine, this works for explaining his objections to Helix. But the scene after this confession immediately switched to the flashback where Felicity said:

(gif by @felicitys)

In the context of William, that explanation makes little sense.

Oliver likes killing = Oliver is bad = Oliver cannot trust himself = how can he trust others if he can't trust himself.

Maybe this is what they're getting at? Still feels a little flimsy. But that's Arrow-logic for you.

Judgement

When I first watched the scene in the hospital I was severely pissed that Felicity apologised (AGAIN) for the break up. In the flashback she apologised for walking instead of talking things out. This I can (grudgingly) understand.

But then she apologised for judging Oliver too harshly and holding him to a high standard she herself fell short of in S5. An understanding she gained by joining Helix.

Because joining Helix = morally questionable = difficult decision made for the right reasons, even if people get hurt = the same as lying to your fiancee about your secret son.

Okay, Arrow. Fine.

I'll accept your premise: Oliver didn’t tell Felicity about William because he enjoys killing and therefore doesn’t trust anyone...and Felicity broke up with him because she hadn’t yet joined Helix and therefore didn’t understand the difficult position lying points you in.

I give in.

It's done, you've addressed it (and retconned it to fit in nicely with your S5 arcs) and we should just move on. I’m willing to ignore all of that INCREDIBLY FRUSTRATING AND INFURIATING MESS OF A STORYLINE and just look forward to the reconciliation.

And I will...after one last point, which is more to do with the S5 writing disaster.

It was explicitly stated in 5x20 that Felicity's motivations for joining Helix and going hard for Prometheus...was because of Billy. This just felt like Wendy finally getting the chance to put her head canon on screen after giving interview after interview explaining Billy as the motivation for Felicity’s ‘dark arc’. It doesn’t matter that, until now, Billy was barely mentioned, and it was much more obvious to the viewer that Felicity was gunning for Prometheus because of OLIVER.

I would have LOVED to have seen a moment like this:

Oliver: I know you joined Helix because you wanted justice for Billy-

Felicity: No. I mean, yes. Maybe that was the start of it. But, Oliver...what Prometheus did to YOU - the kidnapping, the torture, the mind games...I was doing all this just as much for you. You've suffered enough over the past 10 years. You've sacrificed for everyone you love, I couldn't bear to see you in any more pain. And if I could stop Prometheus - by whatever means - I was going to do it. For you.

But no. It was all for Billy. The guy we didn't even see her meet, or know when that was, or how their relationship started, or what she liked about him (apart from being bland and nice)...Despite the flimsiness of that character, HE was her driving force.

The Billy-of-it-all, also leads on to my next gripe.

I STILL DO NOT UNDERSTAND THE POINT OF YOU, TINY-HANDS MAN!

Going into this episode, I posted some thoughts on the supposed intentions of the flashbacks, i.e. to explain the Olicity interactions in 5A. As I mentioned in that post, the success of 5x20 would depend on its ability to make sense of 5A....and I think it did the opposite. Don't get me wrong, I think the flashbacks worked, in terms of paralleling the present time (Felicity wasn't ready to talk, now she is; Felicity didn't understand why Oliver couldn't trust, now she does).

But they do NOT explain 5A. Because I still do not understand why Felicity was suddenly in an established relationship with another man. The flashbacks ended with Felicity basically saying she needed time before talking about the breakup, and Oliver said he would be waiting for her when she was ready. The only reason to bother talking about the reasons for the breakup would be to reunite! So this scene, to me, was Felicity very much leaving the door open to reconciliation.

Begin Rant:

Which makes her relationship with Billy (a handful of months later) so inexplicable! When/why/how did she decide she was just going to push aside her relationship with Oliver and try with someone else? And she KNEW he was waiting for her, so her incredulous ‘No!’ when he asked if she was keeping the door open for them in 5x05 was insensitive at best, when viewed in the context of 5x20.

Similarly, how does Oliver's 'I’m totally fine you’re seeing someone else’ make any sense given how they left things after Bunker!Sex:

He should have been PISSED! Because she never gave him the courtesy of telling him she was moving on. And waiting until she knew if it was 'real' is bullshit. The fact she started dating in the first place, even if only casually, was a MAJOR step that he deserved to know about.

I didn't understand 5x05 the first time, but figured Felicity wasn't obligated to tell Oliver anything because she firmly closed the door on him in 4x16. They were O.V.E.R.

But she opened that door during that flashback. And she knew Oliver was waiting on the doorstep.

So why did she sneak out the back door and start fooling around with a cop? IT DOES NOT MAKE SENSE!

Plus this all gives credence to my assumption that 5x20 was never in the original plan. Otherwise, 5x05 would have been written differently, to incorporate the 5x20 FB dynamic better.

End rant.

So those are my thoughts.

Well done if you reached the end - I did ramble on a bit, but I needed to vent.

And it’s turned out to be therapeutic. I’ve since rewatched the ep after writing out all these grievances (and with my ‘giving in to the narrative’ frame of mindI) and it actually made the episode even more enjoyable! Arrow is never going to fix the mess they made, so I’m going with the out of sight, out of mind approach by just concentrating on the goodness to come.

Bring on the rest of the season!

#Arrow #Olicity #5x20 #my thoughts

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furynewsnetwork · 7 years

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By Paul Meekin

“You don’t need to be ‘straight’ to fight and die for your country. You just need to shoot straight.”

– Barry Goldwater

A Transgender Military Ban? Really?!

God. The T in LGBTQ is the trickiest letter in the whole post-modern world. When it comes to social issues, public policy, and accommodation, the rule book is being re-written daily as society moves past traditional gender roles into something a bit more… fluid.

Thanks to modern medical technology, that fluidity includes the freedom to change your sex via surgery, hormones, or both. With this freedom comes vitriol from the establishment and some understandable concern about how this affects our societal institutions; primarily places where we’re naked in front of each other.

There are many medical, mental, and interpersonal questions that need to be addressed not only by transgendered persons, but by society at large. Addressing these issues on a national stage requires nuance, patience, eloquence, and the understanding of a compassionate, studious leader.

So of course President Trump was, well, President Donald Trump regarding these issues, announcing on Twitter his desires for a Transgendered ban in the U.S Military.

“After consultation with my Generals and military experts, please be advised that the United States Government will not accept or allow transgender individuals to serve in any capacity in the U.S. Military…Our military must be focused on decisive and overwhelming victory and cannot be burdened with the tremendous medical costs and disruption that transgender in the military would entail,” he tweeted.

This comes after Secretary of Defense James Mattis delayed an Obama-era trans-inclusion initiative to evaluate how their participation would affect ‘the readiness and lethality’ of the armed forces.

Clearly, Trump and his military advisors thought there would be too much of a disruption. But why? What about trans-people could affect the readiness and lethality of the armed forces? What kinds of trans-people are banned?

If I don’t take hormones, still have my penis, but like to dress in women’s clothing and be called ma’am, am I not allowed in?

What about a buff woman who wears a compression bra, is 6’1″, has short hair, and wants to be called sir? Can she serve her country?

If the two examples above aren’t allowed in, President Donald Trump can f**k right off.

What Trump is getting at – I think – is trans-people who have undergone, or want to undergo, a physical transition; meaning they’ve started taking hormones, undergone gender re-assignment surgery, or want to. Meaning they’ve started modifying their body’s chemistry to fix their head chemistry.

And that concern, I think…at least warrants some exploration. According to the DSM-5, Gender Dysphoria is classified as a disorder of the mind. Meaning technically someone born male who wants to be female (or vice versa) has a fundamental issue with their brain – to the point where they may want to modify their sex organs or take hormone medication to make them more ‘like’ their desired sex.

Disorders that currently disqualify you from military service include ADHD, bi-polar disorder, schizophrenia, dyslexia, depression, suicide attempts, a history of drug dependency, and several more. Some of these are exempted on a case-by-case basis (for example if you stopped taking ADHD medication at 13).

According to a study of 300+ young trans-women in Chicago and Boston, those with Gender Dysphoria are up to three times as likely to suffer from depression or drug dependency then the ‘general’ population, with a 20 percent rate of suicidal thoughts.

But that doesn’t matter – you can’t ban a trans-person from the military just because trans-people are more likely to have mental issues; if they haven’t been diagnosed and don’t show symptoms, it shouldn’t be a problem.

BUT there’s major physical considerations. By definition, transitioning to female via hormones and surgery drastically alters your body chemistry. It’ll be harder to build muscle on the testosterone blockers often given in conjunction with estrogen for trans-women.

Same with a surgical transition: losing your primary testosterone producer – your testicles – would have similar affects on muscle mass and affect bone density – in addition to transitioning women being required to monitor and dilate her neo-vagina to make sure it stays open and functional – though that may qualify for leave.

On top of that, if a post-op trans-woman stops her hormones, it’s possible she’ll begin to experience the effects of something called ‘over-night’ menopause, Unless she starts taking testosterone, which may not be on hand.

Speaking of, the testosterone given to trans-men would, arguably, have a beneficial affect; increasing physical strength and the ability to build muscle mass; though a sudden stoppage of the testosterone has adverse side-effects as well.

I bring this up because war is hell. If you’re in a combat unit or on a mission and either lose your kit or are stranded without the medication you need to continue being ‘you’, numerous concerns arise of both a mental and physical nature. In the heat of battle or the terror of retreat, these concerns, however minor, could be a problem.

This is not to say transgendered people are more prone to panic or fear – I’d say it takes a major amount of bravery to be openly-trans, even if it shouldn’t – nor am I saying they couldn’t handle the sudden shock to their system that a sudden stoppage of hormones would create.

Rather it’s just to say if your personal identity and mental health hinges on the medication you take, that is a legitimate cause for concern – and a reason why the military is very stringent on anyone who takes daily medication.

The whole point of the military is to break you of your identity and build you up as a soldier. To quote a smart guy I know, “You don’t join the military to be you. You join the military to become a team and to break who you were.”‘

That said NONE of the above warrants a blanket ban on trans-people in the military. 85 percent of soldiers in the military are non-combatants. They’re your pilots, your mechanics, your telecommunication technicians, and so on. If there’s a job in civilian life, you bet your ass there’s a version of it in the military. Heck, here’s a list.

And all of my concerns are based on ‘could’. I have no idea what’s actually happened and what, if any, problems trans-people have caused in the military. More than anything I’m just trying to figure out the thought process of those in power beyond the traditional ‘they’re all horrible transphobic assholes’ rhetoric.

It’s entirely possible they are horrible transphobes and that’s why we have this ban.

Trans-people make up such a small portion of the military and there has to be a way to allow them to serve while also respecting their identity and the physical particularities of it.

Speaking personally? I need more data. I think if you’ve never had hormones and never had surgery, you should be allowed to serve however you damn well please, regardless of whether you think you’re a guy or a gal.

If you have? I still think you should be allowed to serve your country – but based on my informal research I’d lean toward making combat-intensive positions or positions that will strand you for long periods of time away from medical facilities be relegated to people not on any kind of altering medication, regardless of gender – I’m unsure if that’s the case now.

Regardless, the way this entire thing was handled was bungled (seriously, Cost?!). There were no details on how a trans-person is defined or what happens to the trans-people currently in the military. Vintage Trump.

There are many things I don’t know about this subject, and I’d advise you look for what transgendered service people say about this in the coming weeks and months.

Here’s an interview with a trans-marine. Although she left due to physical fitness requirements butting up against her desire to complete her transition.

What I do know, and hope to start, is a serious conversation about this and the many challenges that come with being a trans-person in our society – the least of which is where you’re allowed to go the bathroom.

The worst way to start any conversation is via cannon fire. Thanks to our President, battle lines have been drawn and there will be no peace.

Semper Fi?

EDITOR’s NOTE: The views expressed are those of the author, they are not necessarily representative of The Libertarian Republic or its sponsors.

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