#and because what is a tv series if not a sequence of short movies

[lemon-dokuro]

Finished Frieren just now (instead of getting any work done). It's actually a pretty good anime. I feel like people are expecting too much from it, but if you don't treat it as something high-brow and revolutionary, it's pretty fun. And, well, if you don't mind how understated it is. It's almost jarring to see anime characters be so outwardly calm. Might even look boring to some. To me, it was alright. I like the tone, it's almost meditative, though there are more tense and even exciting moments. I liked it well enough aesthetically. Can't help but mention that some of the clothing designs were really weird. Kanne, I think, that water mage... Why was she dressed like that? I also remember a bunch of background/minor characters with weird costumes that didn't seem neither practical nor even good-looking. This kind of soured the general impression, but most costumes are fairly good. My main complaint is probably how much characters talk about their personal philosophies. I get it, it's supposed to give you insight into the way they act, but it's usually a bit annoying. Himmel was unbearable for me. He just shows up in flashbacks, says #deep stuff and smiles to look all nonchalant. Though it was a bit interesting to hear the exam takers out, since it gave insight into their casting and fighting styles, at least, and, therefore, into how magic works in this show. But either way, it felt... Excessive? I don't know. The only one I really did find interesting is Ubel, though I can't help but feel that her approach simply cannot be so rare that it surprises and scares people. There's no way nobody's just figured out that being extremely abmitious works out. Whatever. I do like the concept, though. The other things I disliked were kind of minor... I really didn't like how game-y some of the worldbuilding was - adventuring parties or whatever are understandable, more or less, but when dungeons with bosses got introduced and were specifically referred to as "dungeon" and "boss" (literally ダンジョン and ボス in japanese, i was watching it raw), it felt a bit contrived. It's kind of hard to suspend your disbelief for this. Another thing I disliked were Fern and Stark's quarrels. Stereotypical boy-girl vaguely romantic petty fighting stuff. It was certainly made better by how they weren't screaming and jumping around with exaggerated expressions, but makes the two seem so unlikeable! Maybe it was to humanize them or something. Whatever. I'd say, among with the worldbuilding, it's really a matter of taste, even if I really disagree with it. It's not an objective failure, just a choice I dislike. Not gonna mention the naming. Gonna pretend I don't know any german. (Actually, it's just a bit funny)

Anyway, back to watching weird old stuff. I'm currently watching Maze ☆ Bakunetsu Jikuu. That sure as hell isn't calm and contemplative. MAZE IN NULL SPACE!

#own post #sousou no frieren #frieren #movie thoughts #i'll use this tag because i've used it before (unfortunately. i don't like that post) #and because what is a tv series if not a sequence of short movies #this one's a bit unstructured

[gellavonhamster]

the brides: beyond dracula

(or, a list for those who would like to see more of the weird sisters)

🩸 A Dowry of Blood by S.T. Gibson - told from the perspective of Dracula’s first bride, Constanta, this is an alternate-universe story of the Brides through the ages, their relationship with Dracula becoming increasingly more abusive, and the three of them finally breaking free of this relationship. A slightly more detailed review here.

🩸 The Deathless Girls by Kiran Millwood Hargrave - a young adult prequel novel about the two dark-haired Brides, here reimagined as two Romani sisters. A slightly more detailed review here. 

🩸 Dracula, Motherf**ker! by Alex de Campi and Erica Henderson - a very short graphic novel about the Brides and a crime scene photographer called Quincey Harker fighting Dracula in the 1974 Los Angeles. A more detailed review here. 

🩸 Van Helsing (2004) - that one action movie where Van Helsing is an immortal monster hunter played by Hugh Jackman, and also Frankenstein’s monster is there. Love this movie or hate it, it can’t be denied that the Brides play quite a big role in it. 

🩸 Bit (2019) - not a Dracula adaptation, but still a vampire movie that draws on the concept of the Brides of Dracula. The main character, Laurel (a trans woman played by a trans actress), moves to LA to her brother after graduating high school, is bitten by a pretty girl she meets at the club, and joins a vampire girl gang. The power dynamics in the group eventually lead to a confrontation complicated by the return of a powerful ancient vampire called ~Vlad~ (there’s a flashback sequence about him set to Rasputin by Boney M. If you even care). 

🩸 The Invitation (2022) - if you don’t mind some randos (because the Harkers would never!) being given the names of the characters of Dracula, here’s a Gothic romance/horror movie about a young American woman Evie, who finds out she has relatives in England, accepts their invitation to a wedding, goes to England where a rich lord starts courting her, and then all hell breaks loose. This one goes the easy way of making Dracula young-looking and handsome, but I’d say he’s still scary enough, and if vampirism was taken away, this could still be a horror movie about fucked up rich people à la Ready or Not.

🩸 The Brides (2020) - before the pandemic, ABC was developing a TV series about the Brides in the modern world, starring Gina Torres as one of the three. Then COVID-19 happened, and the show got scrapped. Only the trailer remains. By the look of it, it would have been cheesy, but I still found it interesting to get a glimpse at what could have been.

#dracula daily #dracula #bram stoker #the brides of dracula #a dowry of blood #s. t. gibson #the deathless girls #kiran millwood hargrave #dracula motherf**ker #van helsing #bit 2019 #the invitation #the brides 2021 #gella talks dracula #talk talk talk #my contribution to the Simping for Female Villains trend on tumblr is caring about these ladies more than stoker probably intended #fell free to add any media if you have any more suggestions!

[veliseraptor]

twenty questions for fic writers

tagged by @feralkwe - thank you! I feel like I've done this before but if I have it's been a minute so

1. How many works do you have on AO3? across pseuds I have 1,010 works. with my "current" one I'm at 607. that is more or less my entire oeuvre, though there's a fair number of short fics on tumblr I haven't gotten around to crossposting though I'd ostensibly like to at some point. eventually. maybe.

2. What’s your total AO3 word count? 4,873,723. aYIKES. but hey closing in on 5 million! wonder when I'll hit that. I bet I would if I posted my unfinished wips for the mcu tbh

3. What fandoms do you write for? ever or currently? the list of fandoms I have written at least one fic for (not counting ones where the one fic was a crossover) is [deep breath] the mcu, the untamed/mdzs, supernatural, the silmarillion, a song of ice and fire, black jewels trilogy, wheel of time, doctrine of labyrinths, death note, the caliban leandros series, avatar the last airbender, kinnporsche, doctor who, buffy the vampire slayer/angel, gentleman bastard sequence, marvel comics, harry potter, temeraire, good omens, code geass, realm of the elderlings, greek mythology, dragon age, sandman, dexter, lymond chronicles, the firekeeper saga, lucifer (the tv series), crimson peak, kushiel's legacy, the x men movies, chronicles of narnia, twilight, and a couple other small book fandoms.

i used to be a lot more multifandom than i am now in terms of what i wrote for, and have been writing fic for which is how this happened.

4. What are your top five fics by kudos? Not my favorite fics, for the most part. They are:

Life in Reverse (MCU)

With Absolute Splendor (The Untamed)

some good mistakes (The Untamed)

half a league onward (MCU)

The Villain Wrangler (MCU)

5. Do you respond to comments? I do not. I feel bad about it, but (a) I don't know what to say, (b) I feel unbearably self-conscious/self-important trying and (c) I already have too much I'm trying to do in my limited time/too many obligations I have placed upon myself to add another one that will just stress me out. Again, I have all kinds of guilt about this, though, which probably kind of defeats the (c) purpose of not doing it.

6. What’s the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending? Almost certainly Mercy, though it's possible I could dig up others; that's the literal murder-suicide one, though, and I'm pretty sure I've only written one of those. I've written a lot where one character dies but another survives and has to live with the grief, which is arguably worse? but I still think Mercy wins. once there was a way to get back home might give it a run for its money, though.

7. What’s the fic you wrote with the happiest ending? I've actually written a fair amount of fic with happy endings! just mostly they have to suffer to get there. but trying to think of fic with a straight happy ending...I feel like I wrote some fairly fluffy fic in Black Jewels Trilogy fandom that I don't want to link to because I don't think it's very good. Maybe Life in Reverse, honestly? That's a fic where I tied up most things and resolved them in a pretty happy way.

Oh, or actually With Absolute Splendor might qualify.

8. Do you get hate on fics? I have in the past! Not a lot, but it happens every so often. Usually I just delete it, tbh; it doesn't feel worth leaving it there and I'm certainly not going to respond to it.

9. Do you write smut? If so, what kind? Sure do, primarily for pairings that are dysfunctional in one way or another, and for the most part I want the sex to say something about the inner life/psychology of the characters I'm writing. truly plotless smut does happen but I find it weirdly difficult. I have to do so much pre-justification work for my smut, at least in my head if not on page.

a lot of what I write at least has a little bit of kink or D/s flavor to it even if it's not explicitly written as such (and a lot of it is at least a little explicitly written as such). I also like to write about power dynamics (in sex) and sex that's sublimating some other emotion or desire, if that latter makes sense.

10. Do you write crossovers? What’s the craziest one you’ve written? I used to, but not anymore, and I probably won't; I don't know why, but I'm just generally not a crossover fan these days. But I did write a Lord of the Rings/Cthulhu Mythos Morgoth/Cthulhu fic back in the day. No, I'm not going to link it, you can find it if you really want.

The Scarlet Pimpernel/Black Jewels Trilogy might be objectively weirder but it was because of an RP and therefore feels more reasonable to me.

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen? I had forgotten about it until just now, but yes, actually. Including one that actually got reposted on AO3, which takes a particular kind of guts that's not the same as reposting on Wattpad or the like, imo. (I've also had fic scraped off AO3 and reposted on other sites.) The person took it down when I called them out on it.

12. Have you ever had a fic translated? I have been fortunate enough to have a number of fics translated into a few languages! I was curious which ones so I went and looked, and it looks like I've had fic translated into Russian, Chinese, and Japanese.

13. Have you ever co-written a fic before? I've started co-writing a fic but never finished one.

14. What’s your all-time favorite ship? Might have to give this one to xuexiao, though there's a lot of room in my heart for many ships! that's just one that hit an incredible number of my favorite things squarely on the head several times, leaving me concussed and helpless. It's so much, you guys.

15. What’s a WIP you want to finish, but doubt you ever will? There's a number of my MCU wips that I look at and am like "yeah what I have of this is good actually, too bad I'll almost certainly never finish it", among which is Dead Superheroes Walking, the fic about everyone who died in Infinity War being trapped inside the Soul Stone and having to work together to fix the ensnappening from the inside. I have about 3/4 of it written if not more and the remaining quarter will probably remain unfinished. It was Wanda POV and a lot about Wanda and Loki bonding.

another one is the one where Hela decides instead of fighting Odin to strategically back down and plan to overthrow him later, and therefore is around while Loki and Thor are growing up. I really liked what I had of this one, and really enjoyed writing Hela's POV, but again. don't think I'm going to end up finishing it.

I have a whole folder called "MCU Salvage" that's basically my MCU wips that I parsed out because I was like "these are pretty good actually, maybe someday I'll have the motivation to return to them", which is probably delusional but, well. one never knows.

16. What are your writing strengths? I think I'm pretty good at dialogue - I love to write characters having conversations, probably to a fault - and, when it comes to fanfiction, characterization.

17. What are your writing weaknesses? Worldbuilding for sure is one. I hate it, I don't think I'm very good at it. also description - I feel like I lean heavily on dialogue in fic and tend to go light on descriptive language. this is probably partly because I'm not a very imagery-focused reader, so I don't think a lot about creating a "visual" with my writing, but also because I just don't like doing it as much as I like writing about internal thought processes and interpersonal verbal exchanges.

18. Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language for a fic? I almost certainly would not do it, as someone who is monolingual and has zero confidence in my ability to do it right in a way that wouldn't read absolutely awfully. The one exception to this is in Lymond fic, and that's because the canon did it first, so it is fully justifiable for me to have this guy spout off in five languages in one fic. Otherwise...not since I tried writing a fake Phantom of the Opera fic mocking bad Phantom of the Opera fics.

19. First fandom you wrote for? I always say Wheel of Time because that's the first fandom of my heart but technically I wrote a crack Harry Potter fic before I wrote for Wheel of Time. But in my heart it was Wheel of Time. That was certainly my first fandom in any meaningful sense of the word.

20. Favorite fic you’ve ever written? This question is my nemesis. My favorite fic I've ever written changes at least once a month. I have a series for this on AO3 that I'm going to link to as a lazy answer to this question even though that's sort of 50 of my favorite fics, so sue me, I've written a lot of things over the years and I actually do like a fair number of them, even if you have to make me say so.

tagging uhhhh @highladyluck, @curiosity-killed, @ameliarating, @gloriousmonsters, i'm not sure how many people i'm supposed to tag for this but if you want to do it, go ahead?

#lise memes #confessions of a frustrated writer

[fostersffff]

The Big Gundam Watch, Part 15: Mobile Suit Gundam: The 08th MS Team

In my War in the Pocket post, I noted that it and The 08th MS Team make up what are considered to be The Good OVAs. Which, if you haven't read that post, doesn't mean that they're the only good Gundam OVAs, but they're the ones some people like to point to when recommending an entry point to the franchise. This is due to their consistently high production values, relatively short length, and stories that are more "grounded and realistic" than most of the other TV shows, OVAs, and movies in the franchise (which I have since learned is code for "No Newtype Bullshit", rather than implying anything about the believability of the giant robots). The 08th MS Team even sounds like a good compliment to War in the Pocket on paper: one was about the One Year War from an uninvolved child's perspective, and the other is about the same event from an actual military perspective.

Now having seen it for myself: people are not doing this OVA any favors by pairing it with War in the Pocket. I've made multiple passes on trying to soften the impact of that statement, because I don't feel that negatively about The 08th MS Team, but the problem is that I also don't feel that positively about it, either. I don't really feel anything about it, which might be worse!

THE STUFF I LIKED:

The number one thing I liked about The 08th MS Team: the characters have zero reverence for giant robots. And there shouldn't be! This is a story about soldiers almost a full year into a war where mobile suits and mobile armors have become the standard for combat. The Gundams are top-of-the-line equipment, but ultimately, still just equipment, so they don't earn much more that an initial wave of awe. The sole exception is Ginius, whose obsession with the Apsaras is his entire character; Aina and Norris's involvement with that project is largely out of loyalty to him, and to basically everyone else it's considered to be a frivolous waste of resources (which is saying something for Zeon, home of the Big Zam).

The number two thing I liked about The 08th MS Team: the staff had tons of reverence for the giant robots. There are so many little mechanical details to appreciate, but the one I want to call out special is when Shiro is coaching Aina on activating the beam saber to create a hot spring, and you see this intricate sequence revealing that there's a little connector in the hand that locks into another connector in the hilt. It's genuinely my favorite scene in this entire OVA.

This ties into the detail-oriented nature of the production, but I do want to reiterate that this OVA looks fantastic the whole way through. To point to a specific example, Battle Line on the Burning Sand uses a super washed out color palette on everything to emphasize the blinding desert light, even at night.

The extent to which Shiro Amada is a White Meat Babyface Shonen Hero Boy is kind of refreshing. He's a remarkably simple, earnest guy with almost no clumsy awkwardness to his character.

He's also maybe the only character in Gundam thus far to have delivered an actually justifiable Bright Slap (other than the man himself) that didn't feel exclusively like 'MEMBER THE BRIGHT SLAP?????? Considering how much I hate when the Bright Slap is referenced for the sake of reference, I wanted to call attention to when corrections are actually used appropriately.

Norris Packard locks in Best Character, without question. Hard to argue against "Ramba Ral Mk-II with a bigger budget for when he pops off".

Wrote down WAOW BEAUTYFUL 90'S OVA WAMEN multiple times in my notes, but I do want to be slightly more specific and say that the character design for this series falls into my favorite style, which is very... "spiky". Being a 30-something, this style of character design hits the nostalgia center of my brain perfectly, despite the fact that I had never seen this particular series before. Like, if you compare Kou and Nina to Shiro and Aina, the difference in my mind would be described as "spikyness".

I'm actually gonna take an opportunity to punch 0083 and say I really appreciate that Shiro and Aina just a have a normal, adult relationship that doesn't introduce a last minute love triangle that feels as confused as it is tepid. Two good-looking young adults in extreme situations who are still drawn to one another despite being forced apart by circumstances is solid!

ELEDORE AND KAREN DON'T END UP TOGETHER ON SCREEN THANK GOD. I was really fuckin' scared for a bit there when Eledore kept going "MY WOMAN, KAREN, WHO I WILL MARRY" out of fuckin' nowhere. Hey, speaking of that...

THE STUFF I LIKED LESS:

Eledore sucks. He is a black hole of suck. Cowardly shitheels are nothing new- they're an institution, even, dating back to Kai in 0079- but in addition to being a cowardly shitheel who receives no comeuppance for being one, like Beecha in ZZ, he's also poorly written. And what sucks the most about that is the fact that he could've been totally acceptable with a grand total of like three expository lines peppered throughout the series. Even a single line about being drafted- something I don't think has ever been confirmed one way or the other in the Universal Century- would've gone a long way towards explaining why this guy was within 1000 miles of a warzone.

They shouldn't have had that last episode. It was fine, but I think the way The Shuddering Mountain (Part 2) ends is pretty much perfect. I genuinely wondered if it was tagged on years after the original, but it appears to have been planned from the start. Bizarre.

Okay, with those out of the way, I need to address what I feel is the underlying problem for this story: the writing in The 08th MS Team is hollow. I made a post taking a pot shot at the at the fact that this series is touted as being "grounded and realistic" when it does, in fact, have Newtypes, and tagged on the fact that it seems like the writer seemingly didn't understand that swans and swan imagery aren't a Newtype thing, they're a Lalah Sune thing. That wasn't something that actively bugged me in the moment, but the more I thought about the problems I had with this series on the whole, the more I thought about that. It's such a weird, superficial mistake to make... and then I latched onto the word "superficial", and it all came tumbling down from there.

Let's start with the theme. Like a lot of other Gundam stories, it can be boiled down to "War Is Bad", but what things lead to that understanding? We see countless reasons War Is Bad across all the preceding Universal Century TV shows, OVAs, and movies: the destruction of the environment, the devastation of the human population, the institutional disregard for human lives, including lives that are on your side, including the lives of children, the trauma- physical and mental- that haunts you even if you make it out alive, the arbitrary division of people who might otherwise be friends or lovers, how easily bad actors can consolidate power during or even with just the threat of war... all those are just off the top of my head, and I'm sure if pressed more can be listed. The 08th MS Team really only concerns itself with one of these- the arbitrary division of people who might otherwise be friends or lovers- because the main arc for both Shiro and Aina is that they abandon their respective duties because they are star-crossed lovers.

It's a weirder arc for Shiro than it is for Aina. Aina's association with Zeon comes across strictly as a birthright thing: the Sakhalins appear to be minor Zeon nobility, and her being a test pilot is all but stated to be at Ginius's request. So when she has two fateful life-or-death encounters with a quirked up white Japanese boy, she only really has to justify herself to her brother, which turns out to be pretty easy since he's gone off the deep end at that point anyway. The only thing that keeps her at the Zeon base past that point is her kindly nature, compelling her to help as many wounded people escape as she possibly can.

Shiro's break with the Federation, on the other hand, implies that he got so horny his higher brain functions shut down. And I get it! Aina's a Beautyful 90's OVA Wamen, but it's a little weird for him to completely renounce war so soon after we see his flashback where Zeon launched a gas attack inside a colony and he had to watch a man liquefy in front of his very eyes. You'd think that would matter more than just within the context of that one scene in that one episode!

(Also only realizing this as I write it, but like... was Zeon established to have used gas attacks before this OVA? 'Cuz gassing colonies was the Titans favorite move. Unlike the Newtype swans, it's fine for this to be introduced here, but in light of thinking about the Newtypes swans...)

Actually, Shiro's trauma being a non-factor is a great segue into weird out-of-character moments that start to crop up towards the end of the OVA. Not all the characters, and not all the time, but enough that I noticed several, including:

Aina swearing she's going to go sicko mode if Norris dies, only to not go sicko mode at all once Norris sends the signal that he's going to die.

Karen turning into Goku and getting excited about the prospect of fighting an enemy ace when Norris's Gouf Custom shows up, despite never having shown to be that kind of person before then, or afterwards.

Kellerne (the Zeon officer who cancels the Apsaras project) revealing he's actually a Noble Soldier in the episode where Ginius kills him, despite being a big brash shitheel not just in personal interactions, but also by breaking the Antarctic Treaty and using a nuke.

The 08th MS Team- the squad- never really felt like they developed any interpersonal relationships beyond being in a squad together (this is actually actually addressed in the short that was produced for the blu-ray), so the crux of the last episode being "IT'S CRITICALLY IMPORTANT TO ALL OF US THAT SOMEONE CONFIRMS THE COMMANDER IS STILL ALIVE!!!" is another contributing factor to why that episode just feels wrong.

These strike me as examples of "we need a character who will do x in this scene, but we don't have a character who would do x... well, for this scene, they will", and it colors the entire thing as utilitarian. It's not putting well-defined characters into situations, and then showing how those characters would react to that situation, it's presenting a conclusion and then working your way backwards to present the situation that leads to that conclusion.

And it's not even like this can be explained with the complaint (from people who don't engage with mecha anime) that mecha anime is more concerned with showing cool robots than it is with characters. This story is about the characters! The only particularly cool mecha stuff I have ever seen people point to in this is the Gouf Custom, which I now know is because that's really the only mecha stuff of note in this. Like, if you put a gun to my head to come up with other setpieces of note: the Apsaras blowing a hole clean through the mountain was striking imagery... the underwater fight with Kiki tumbling around the cockpit was fun... Shiro trying to take down the Zeon squad occupying the guerilla village on foot was probably the overall most compelling scene in the OVA.

Mind you, The 08th MS Team not having tons and tons of hyper memorable giant robot fight scenes is by no means a strike against it. I can probably only vaguely recall most action sequences from the Gundams I've watched to date, and that's because the cool giant robot fight scenes aren't really ever the point. But, with everything else being a bland and hollow as it is, the whole OVA just comes across as Things Happening. It's not even particularly interesting Things Happening; by nature of being a One Year War side story, you know nothing that happens here can really matter in the greater canon of the Universal Century, so in the end it really just feels like "All this stuff happened. Moving along!"

OTHER OBSERVATIONS:

At least some of my disappointment definitely comes from the fact that the OP writes a check that the OVA never really tries to cash. Based on this thing that plays before every episode and the way I've always heard people talk about it, I don't think it's unreasonable to have expected this to be a military drama!

Oh nooo Michel you got Military Cucked Michel nooo, and judging by the picture (getting married after the baby is born) she must have gotten knocked up like right after she sent that Dear John letter Michel nooo!!!

It's a little weird that the last episode takes care to show that Shiro is lame following their escape, but no attention is called to the fact that Aina's normal suit got melted off. My understanding is that space suits are meant to be ultra heat resistant, so the fact that shit melted must mean she suffered horrible burns, right? Maybe it's working on fictional lava physics, where it's only hot if you're touching it, considering that neither the rest of her body nor Shiro suffer any burns from being that close to the beam.

I understand that the implication is that Shiro and Aina taught the kids how to do it, but doing the "using a beam weapon to turn a frigid body of water into a hot spring" twice cheapened how cool it was the first time.

I was trying to hash out whether it would be worse to be subjected to a court martial or get grilled by your older brother slash superior officer for hooking up with an enemy combatant, but I never considered the dimension of the guards and brass just laughing their asses off at Shiro during the court martial, which makes that infinitely worse.

The blu-ray extra for this was a 9 minute short putting focus on Michel and Sanders, which was actually pretty nice considering how little they interact in the series proper. I'm a little bitter that this got a legit animated short while Cima Garahau got a "picture drama", but this was genuinely a much nicer way for the 08th MS Team to go out than Last Resort was.

IN CONCLUSION:

I re-read my post on the original Mobile Suit Gundam recently, and right at the start I talked about how I was originally only planning on checking out War in the Pocket, Stardust Memory, and this. It's actually kind of difficult to speculate how I would feel about Gundam as a franchise if I had watched those three OVAs in isolation. Maybe I'd like The 08th MS Team more if I didn't have have such a large base of things to compare it to unfavorably, or maybe I'd still wind up unenthusiastic about it, without having the ability to really express why. What I can say with certainty is that I've spent this entire write-up thinking about how the two minute send-off for Duker Iq and Renda- two minor recurring antagonists- in Victory Gundam was significantly more affecting and engaging than anything in The 08th MS Team.

If you'll indulge a food analogy, the experience of watching this really was like eating a sleeve of crackers. They're crackers: there's nothing wrong with them, but rarely if ever will you walk away from eating a sleeve of crackers going "damn, that was great!"

Next up: After War Gundam X! I'm super pumped for this one, because I know almost nothing about it besides the fact that it was the only Gundam TV Series to have been cancelled after 0079. Was it cancelled because of franchise fatigue? Or because it was bad? Possibly some third thing? All or none of the above? I'm excited to find out!

Also it's the source of that funny doctor with a gun meme! You know the one!

#The 08th MS Team #Gundam #Mobile Suit Gundam #The Big Gundam Watch #anime #blu-ray #long post

[mthollowell-writes]

I am a mystery reader

Or, Why I Read Forensics by Val McDermid

For the past year, I’ve been inhaling mystery novels to learn about the genre. I often engage with intense genre studies when I have an interest in writing within particular story conventions. It’s always fun and I get to learn about an amazing world of books that I don’t normally pick up.

For most of 2023, it’s been mysteries. And, I can confidently say that I’m now a big mystery reader. I’m obsessed with it. I shouldn’t have been surprised. The clues have been there since the beginning.

I’ve always loved stories with mystery elements to them. I wrote a thesis comparing and contrasting TV/movie adaptations of Sherlock Holmes and the original short stories. Most of the podcasts that I enjoy are true crime because I love learning the details of specific cases, and how certain clues or slips led to the apprehension of the perpetrator. But it wasn’t until 2023 that I would’ve classify myself as a “mystery reader.” I can be really thick-headed, if you couldn’t tell.

Horror reader, sure. Detective enthusiast, you betcha! True crime addict, guilty.

There are so many things that makes a mystery, a mystery. They include, but are not limited to:

Your killer and their motives

Your detective and their unique skill set that makes them best suited (or most motivated) to find said killer

The clues, the false leads, and the red herrings

And most importantly, that the killer is caught: unmasked by the detective. If it doesn’t have this particular element, it’s not a true mystery. (Not to discount genre blends which I adore and champion).

Forensics: What Bugs, Burns, Prints, DNA, and More Tell Us About Crime by Val McDermid goes into the more technical aspects of solving a crime. There’s an umbrella of fields under forensics from DNA to facial reconstruction to forensic psychology to entomology. All these discipline work to make the sequence of events and the truth of the crime clearer in the context of the courtroom.

I picked up this book because I wanted to learn more about all these disciplines. Its filled with countless case studies throughout the centuries, tracking the development of new techniques and their limitations. Val McDermid, who is a veteran of the genre (I’ve read the whole of her Allie Burns series this year and intend to read more), explains all this in a very approachable way with interviews from professionals in every field she covers.

This is a must read for everyone who wants a comprehensive introduction to forensics for either bulking up their knowledge for their own mystery or they just genuinely find the science fascinating (Hello! I am both).

#mt reads #forensics #val mcdermid #book talk #mystery writing #mystery

[irradiate-space]

Disney's Atlantis (2001) will have no more sequels, and Intellectual Property is why.

In short: IP law. But not the "make money by writing it off" thingy.

Epistemic status: a memory of a Q&A panel from 2002.

At length:

Atlantis was released in 2001. It had a giant mechanical lobster,

and some neat steampunk submarines,

These submarines go on a neat adventure through underwater passages past shipwrecks of ages past, break through a big door, and arrive at an underground cavern filled with forgotten machines, which power up when you insert glowing crystals in them.

And that's the whole problem with Walt Disney Animated Series film 41: Atlantis: The Lost Empire, its sequel, and really the entire story and concept.

In 1992, renowned painter James Gurney released the picture-book Dinotopia: A Land Apart from Time, which featured a neat little steampunk submarine, the front one in this series of maquettes by Glenn Ludgate:

In 1995, Gurney published a sequel, Dinotopia: The World Beneath, where a group of intrepid explorers use a steampunk submarine to go on an underwater excursion through the remains of wrecked ships of ages past, through a door, to a cavern full of forgotten machines which power up when you insert glowing crystals in them. Including an evil lobster.

In 1999, Gurney published the prequel, Dinotopia: First Flight, which told the story of where those sunstone-powered mechanical marvels came from: the drowned city of Poseidos. The story included a chase sequence with sunstone-powered flying trilobites.

There are, shall we say, certain parallels.

In June 2001, Disney released Atlantis: The Lost Empire. The film allegedly underperformed at the box office, taking in $186.1 million against a budget of $90-120 million. In 2003, Disney released the direct-to-video sequel Atlantis: Milo's Return, which collected content previously intended for a canceled TV series. It competed with Shrek.

During his April-September 2002 exhibition at the Smithsonian National Museum of National History, an audience member asked Gurney about the parallels between the recently-released Atlantis and Gurney's designs for Dinotopia. Gurney replied that he couldn't comment, but that his lawyers had reached an agreeable settlement with Disney.

Because the lawsuit was settled out of court — if it in fact existed, which is what I here allege — it left no records. I have found nothing by search; if you find any documentation of this, you're welcome to publish it. Disney acknowledges that Atlantis drew from Jules Verne's 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea. For other plagiarism allegations, you will find much more documentation of alleged parallels between Atlantis and Nadia: Secret of Blue Water and Laputa: Castle in the Sky.

In May 2002, Hallmark Entertainment and Walt Disney TV released a three-episode, four-hour Dinotopia miniseries. A sequel series of 13 episodes was released beginning in November 2002, produced by ABC and Hallmark Entertainment. An animated film was released in 2005 by Hallmark Entertainment. There were also a series of Dinotopia video games for PC/MAC GBA, and GC/Xbox in 2002 and 2003. It's this really-tight cluster of activity, right after Atlantis came out.

In 2007, Gurney published the fourth and latest Dinotopia book, Dinotopia: Journey to Chandara. It's very beautiful.

In 2013, Disney remastered and rereleased the Atlantis films in 2013.

------

These Atlantis gifs are hand-cut with ffmpeg in 720p 15fps, straight from the movie, and the Dinotopia images are sourced from James Gurney's blog, "Gurney Journey" which I highly recommend as a source of traditional-media painting advice as well as general art advice. The Dinotopia books are a joy to read, and if you want, there is a YA novel series as well as a pair of novels by Alan Dean Foster. Gurney also wrote several guides to illustration and painting, and in general is a nice old man.

Don't blame James Gurney for stealing Atlantis. Blame Disney for stealing Dinotopia.

------

Reading Comprehension Questions:

What parallels does OP see between Atlantis and Dinotopia?

What sources does OP cite for the core allegations in this essay?

What is OP's stance towards Disney? Towards James Gurney?

Who does OP blame for Atlantis being dead IP?

How would your personal stance on copyright law affect the outcome of a lawsuit between James Gurney and Disney over stolen intellectual property?

Fanfic prompt: The Atlantis expedition wash up on the shore of Dinotopia. The expedition arrives a few years after the Dennisons do, with Will and Sylvia off on their new career, and Arthur having a bit of an empty-nest syndrome. No one knows where Lee Crabb is.

#dinotopia #atlantis #atlantis the lost empire #james gurney #disney #gifs #ffmpeg #reading comprehension questions #title edited several days after posting

[hopeymchope]

"Rascal Does Not Dream" Double Feature review-ish thoughts

I attended the North American "Rascal Does Not Dream" double feature (subtitled edition) yesterday on March 24th. This was one of those Fathom Event things, and it served as the official North American premiere for both Rascal Does Not Dream of a Sister Venturing Out and Rascal Does Not Dream of a Knapsack Kid. At 73 minutes apiece, they're pretty damn short for movies... but I've seen even shorter in the anime world, weirdly enough. These would be the second and third movies after the "Rascal Does Not Dream of Bunny Girl Senpai" 12-episode series and its first movie sequel, 2019's Rascal Does Not Dream of a Dreaming Girl.

If you're completely unaware of this series, I implore you to ignore its admittedly awful titling convention. This is all based on a set of Japanese novels revolving around teenage (ofc) protagonists Sakuta Azusagawa and Mai Sakurajima as they contend with the bizare phenomenon that's come to be called "Puberty Syndrome" (sometimes called "Adolescence Syndrome"), in which the emotions of teenagers/pre-teens/young adults are able to somehow affect reality via quirks of theoretical quantum physics. So in this world, if someone wishes they could redo a bad experience? They might start looping said experience ala Groundhog Day. If someone feels two sides of their personality are diametrically opposed? They could literally split into two separate versions of themselves. Only somehow resolving the underlying issue can fix these bizarre sci-fi events.

The first four arcs of the TV series could be described as "A boy is made to understand and empathize with how hard it is to grow up female." After that, starting with the final arc of the TV series and up through these movies, you could describe the story as "A boy is made to understand and empathize with people who struggle with disabilities." I have tons of respect for how the series is basically all about trying to provide deeper understanding/sympathy for everyone around us.

I'm an anime-only plebe who hasn't read the books these are based on or the manga adaption, so that obviously will affect my view of the story. With that said...

Sister Venturing Out is basically the emotional sequel to the TV series' final arc, the "Sister Home Alone" story. That one contains an emotional sequence that has made me cry on MULTIPLE viewings, which I consider to be some of the highest possible praise. I have to say that Sister Venturing Out has a similarly devastating scene that flips the script on what was so painful in "Sister Home Alone" and effectively shows the pain of the OPPOSITE side of the relationship. So: major props. It's a slow-build sort of tale without the tension inherent to some of the franchise's arcs — the central gimmick of "Puberty Syndrome" barely plays a role here — but it works well at delivering on emotional payoffs and character moments. I previously felt that "Sister Home Alone" was the most emotionally intense story in the series, but Sister Venturing Out is an easy rival to it.

Knapsack Kid, on the other hand, is all about Puberty Syndrome business and the suspense of how to resolve it. Unfortunately, I don't think it works nearly as well as Sister Venturing Out because it's so clearly in need of a longer runtime to flesh out its ideas. As the story stands here, the existence of the titular "Knapsack Kid" is never even remotely explained! Series fans know that we usually expect Rio Futaba to provide some kind of quantum theory that suits the weirdness occuring, but Rio only shows up long enough to vaguely hand-wave the reality-warping shenanigans at play. Nobody ever provides any justification for why Sakuta is being guided by an all-knowing childhood version of his girlfriend. How does she know so much about what's happening? How can she jump between... realities or timelines or whatever she's doing? Why her, and more importantly, why her as a child? Shouldn’t the CHILD version of Mai know LESS about this stuff? Normally, the series would have fun explaining this; here, they want us to stop thinking and just feel it. And admittedly, the emotional moments are still pretty strong. I just think I would've felt them harder if I understood more about how and why this was all happening.

Although the series has always had its emotional moments in each story arc, the fact that these two stories have so little room to breathe means we lose out on a lot of the humor and witty dialogue that the TV series managed. There's still some of it in here; it's just not as common because we don't really have much time to spare onn comedy.

We do, however, seem to have time to spare on setting up future stories! Two plot threads are set up that do not pay off in these films but instead are events for the upcoming "University Arc." A little tease at the end of the second movie (after the post-credits scene; don't miss out on that) says that "Animation Production is Confirmed" for the University Arc — whatever the hell that means. A new TV season? There are four books so far in the "University Arc," so that seems possible. A bunch more movies? It definitely implies something longer than just one additional film. Whatever this turns out to be, I look forward to it.

#anime reviews #reviews #rascal does not dream #rascal does not dream of a sister venturing out #rascal does not dream of bunny girl senpai #rascal does not dream of a knapsack kid #university arc

[kylekozmikdeluxo]

The Sorta-Kinda Thomas Creepypasta I Had In My Head at Age 6

Weird-ass story from childhood time...

Growing up, I was like obsessed... Almost religiously, with THOMAS THE TANK ENGINE. A whole franchise which of course needs no introduction.

Like most American kids growing up in the 1990s, I first caught that blue locomotive and his pals on a PBS show called SHINING TIME STATION. It was a live-action show about some kids visiting their local train station, and the 4 1/2-minute THOMAS episodes would be a show-within-that-show. Usually the episode would relate to what was going on in the train station. The tales were told by a little man named Mr. Conductor, portrayed by the series' first UK narrator Ringo Starr in the first season, and then later by comedian George Carlin.

I have memories of watching that show with my paternal grandfather, when I was about... 3? I remember observing "The trains have faces... But they don't have cowcatchers." My grandfather and I would often draw train locomotives together, too. He'd teach me about the little minute details and such. Right down to the spokes on the wheels. That's part of why I'm an artist.

Anyways, let's jump ahead a little... I was 5, I hadn't seen that show in a while. Maybe because of scheduling, maybe I just wasn't watching that channel back then. Maybe I was watching VHS tapes more than watching TV...

One day, in the summer of 1998, I was given a VHS tape of a few of the THOMAS episodes on their own. SHINING TIME STATION episodes were barely released on home media, only the individual Thomas stories, and tapes were usually random grab-bags of episodes from the show's first 3-4 seasons. That first tape I got consisted of seven episodes, all in UK airing order no less, from season one. It was "James Learns a Lesson and Other Stories".

Now at that age, I had remembered watching the "trains with faces but no cowcatchers" show with my grandfather. I also still had my ERTL die-cast toy of Edward with two coaches that I sometimes played with... So I was like "Sure, I remember Thomas. I'll watch this."

That's where it all went downhill, lol.

And by my birthday and Christmas of that year, I was getting all these VHSes of the show and toys and such. I fit the cliche of autistic kid who was **addicted** to Thomas, add in that I used to identify as male. So yeah, the autistic Thomas boy stereotype through and through right here.

For my birthday that year, one of the VHS tapes I got was "A Big Day for Thomas and Other Stories". It was a compilation of Season 1 episodes, all narrated by George Carlin. Carlin would re-narrate all of the Season 1 and 2 episodes previously done by Ringo...

This was a weird tape, to say the least. It was rather short, and it had some episodes out of order. For example, the episode 'Thomas Breaks the Rules' ('Thomas in Trouble' in the UK) was the 2nd episode on the tape... But the episode that directly proceeds it, 'Toby the Tram Engine' ('Toby and the Stout Gentleman' in the UK) was at the *end* of the tape. Like, that story goes right into the 'Breaks the Rules' story. That's how the continuity was in the early series, as it closely followed the original books - THE RAILWAY SERIES. So it was weirdly out of order. Like watching AVENGERS: ENDGAME first, and then a few movies later, watching AVENGERS: INFINITY WAR.

Second... On old Thomas VHSes, each episode had a small intermission before and after. A sequence of the characters, and white boards in front of them with their names on them. Thomas fans often call these the "Nameboard" sequences. They'd be a few seconds long, with the Thomas theme playing over them. They'd end with an image of Sir Topham Hatt/The Fat Controller, with the text "Next Story Coming Up Soon!"

Usually that screen was silent, or had the last bars of the Thomas theme playing over it...

But for some reason, on the "Big Day for Thomas" VHS... There was the sound of a whistle at the end of the nameboard sequence leading up to the episode 'Trouble for Thomas' ('Thomas and the Trucks' in the UK). Not any of the characters' whistles, but a more realistic sounding one...

Now, as a weird kid who was *easily* thrown off by things... 6-year-old me in 1998 was freeeeaked out by this. Like, why was that weird-sounding whistle there? Why this ONE tape and not all my other ones? Who's was it? Was this some... Secret character?

I was aware of characters I hadn't seen in episodes before... Maybe it was one of them? When I looked at the ERTL die-cast models in the catalogues, I would scope out some characters... For some reason, I thought that whistle would belong to one of the narrow-gauge engine characters. Like Skarloey or Rheneas or Duncan or Duke... For some reason, that's what I thought back then. They looked like engines that would have that whistle, to me!

Now comes something different...

At my maternal grandparents' house, this book was in a drawer in the guest room, among other books:

(image above is from an etsy listing. credit where credit is due.)

I'm assuming it belonged to one of my cousins, who used to stay there a lot when he was really young... And like any kid, I looked through whatever picture book there was. Looking at this book today, I will say that I find a lot of Greg Hildebrandt's illustrations to be very pretty.

Also, it's kinda weird that I'm talking about Christmas in freakin' March, but here we are...

Anyways...

There was one illustration in that book that didn't quite sit right with me when I was little:

It had to have been those dead eyes, lol. How wide open they were, a black dot in a white circle, but on a wooden head and not a cartoon character...

The more I thought of it back then, the more it seemed like a Thomas character face... Albeit, a cursed one!

And I started conjuring up, in my mind, a secret Thomas character who had that off-sounding whistle heard on that *one VHS* volume. He had a face like that, and was darker-looking in his livery than the other engines. It's as if I was making my own Thomas creepypasta in my head, at age 6!! I don't recall drawing this engine though, he could've been an early OC for me!

Eventually, I'd find out that none of the engines had that whistle in the show... And that SHINING TIME STATION would return to TV in time for the release of the movie, THOMAS AND THE MAGIC RAILROAD. Some two years after I started getting into this show...

The whistle was from the show's George Carlin seasons. When he'd blow the whistle, it would go to the Thomas story. The same way Ringo Starr did in the show's first season, but his whistle had a different, higher-pitched noise. I had the SHINING TIME STATION Christmas episode on VHS, and that was with Ringo. So, back then, I didn't know that that whistle originated from SHINING TIME STATION.

But still, it was kinda cool that I was imagining this whole other Thomas character. A sorta more sinister and foreboding engine. Almost like a Sonic-dot-exe situation, that I thought up because I didn't like the sound of a random whistle that was nowhere to be heard in the show, that somehow got onto one part of a VHS volume I had, likely due to an editing error or something.

Some shadowy, creepy Nutcracker doll-faced engine lurking within the darker recesses of the show. Maybe if the tape deteriorated enough, you'd catch a glimpse of him amidst the fuzz... I imagined his nameboard, surrounded by thick dark grey smoke. For some reason, a name sounding like "Mico" coming up. Not at all the raccoon from Disney's POCAHONTAS, although "Nico" would be a good villain name for a cursed Thomas character.

And then the engine himself... just peering at me with those beady eyes as the shadowy smoke obscured just about everything else, during the night. It was like a gritty industrial setting more so than the roundhouse sheds...

The "Early Reel of 1983" ain't got nothin' on this one!

#thomas the tank engine #hyperfixations #autism #neurodivergent #weird fears when i was little #i was a weird kid #creepypastas

[tokiro07]

What does your "fouryearsandaanime" tag means?

I'm pretty sure I've mentioned it before, but you all know I love to hear myself talk, so I'm happy to go over it again!

It's a reference to Community, a sitcom about a community college, wherein one character Abed is a major film and TV buff. In one episode, he was obsessed with a show called The Cape, a short-lived real-world superhero show. When Abed pulls a The Cape-themed prank on main character Jeff, Jeff yells "that show's going to last three weeks!" to which Abed replies "six seasons and a movie!"

Ultimately Jeff's prediction wouldn't be too far off the mark, the show getting 10 episodes out of a planned 13 before its cancelation, but the Community fandom adopted the #sixseasonsandamovie slogan when fears arose that Community would be canceled. If I recall, there were several points where it got close to or even did get canceled, but when NBC canceled it after season 5, Yahoo picked it up for streaming for a sixth season and is ostensibly planning to release the movie this year. Perhaps I should catch up on the last season before that...

Anyway, I've definitely mentioned this before, but I am of the opinion that the optimal run-time for a Shonen Jump manga is four years, with three years often being unsatisfactory and anything beyond five years being diminishing returns (not naming names but I can think of plenty of manga that should have ended waaay earlier). It's not impossible for a shorter series to be good (Death Note ran for only two years) and of course there are plenty of longer-running series that maintain their quality (One Piece being the most obvious instance)

Some of my all-time favorites, Medaka Box and Majin Tantei Nougami Neuro, as well as fan favorites Demon Slayer and Assassination Classroom all had approximately four-year runs and had some of the best endings I've seen in Jump's lineup. Of course there are exceptions, like Promised Neverland's extremely rushed final arc and Nurarihyon's unfortunately timed cancelation (it needed at least one more year to tell the story it wanted to, but it wasn't performing well enough to get the chance outside of a quarterly run in Jump Giga), but like I said, this is just my opinion anyway and an empirical study would likely find fault with my logic

Of course, "andananime" refers to getting an anime, which is effectively the bare minimum requirement for a manga to be considered successful. The manga industry is surprisingly niche, with the more generalized audience only really being aware of it because of anime. More often than not, fans are introduced to manga through their anime adaptations, not the other way around. Attack on Titan and Demon Slayer both performed fine on their own, but their anime adaptations are what allowed them to skyrocket to success. Even the Demon Slayer anime was only performing decently for its first four months until episode 19 came out and set the internet on fire with one particularly well-animated sequence. No one was talking about it before then, and then suddenly it was a household name

Naturally, a bad adaptation won't draw in new readers, which I'm pretty sure is the reason Hinomaru Zumou still hasn't come stateside aside from the chapters that were run when MangaPlus started and got grandfathered in, but that's something only time will tell. For now, the fact that Undead Unluck has an anime announced at all means that the manga is selling well enough to warrant the investment that it takes to advertise it with an anime. I won't go into the economics of it, but the anime industry ain't cheap and requires a lot of different companies to come together to agree that something will be able to produce a return on investment, so making an anime out of a Jump property means that multiple people looked at it and said it was worth throwing money at

In short, #4y+1a is my way of saying I want a manga to succeed and reach a wide enough audience that I won't feel like I'm the only one who loves it. UU is halfway through its fourth year now, and will have an anime by the time it hits the four-year mark, and I've watched its fanbase grow from non-existent to consistently active (albeit small) since its inception, so for all intents and purposes, mission accomplished. CA is still in its infancy and has a much harder hill to climb since it's not a traditional Shonen action manga mixed with Nisio Isin's esoteric writing style, but the transition into this new battle-focused arc looks like it might be able to bolster it just enough to last until it has the chance to snowball into something...not big, but at least decently sized. It just needs to find its tribe, and #4y+1a is my rallying cry to help it do so

Will I use #4y+1a in the future? Maybe, maybe not. It depends on how well anything in the future grabs me. The author of Hinomaru Zumou has a new series starting in the next few weeks, so it's definitely possible! I probably won't start any new reviews, though; the candle's already lit at both ends, I don't have any more wicks to burn. Still, you can't help who you fall in love with, so if something new lights a fire in me, I'll have to find somewhere to put it!

#undead unluck #cipher academy #fouryearsandananime

[mlobsters]

supernatural s5e6 i believe the children are our future (w. andrew dabb, daniel loflin)

girl why are you watching cujo an arm length's away from a big old tv, back up!

while i pause to look up the imdb to see if i know any of these people, i kinda like this season's little title sequence with the whispering. little more ominous than the wings, which were okay. it's all so short so not like it makes much of a difference but. sets the mood a wee bit.

okay another logistics question i think about periodically, especially since sam burned all his fake ids and such when he bounced earlier this season, if they're giving different names all the time then like. is there a stockpile? do they reup with new names and who prints them? they have a seemingly endless supply of not only names but organizations.

getting all my feelings off my chest in this one, i also think they use too many references in this show! there's so many. "that'll do, pig" really? babe? anyway i just think a lot of time they stick out like a sore thumb.

Because don't be so pleased with your own, like, self-referential cleverness? - jessica stanley, twilight new moon

that's right i'm quoting twilight to make a point. anyway that's what i think of whenever there's too many obscure references that sound completely unnatural in the moment.

and again with the episodes being songs but not having the songs 😂 i guess that's just what they're doing now. but now i've got the greatest love of all stuck in my head.

this guy gets around on scifi shows! he was in two episodes of xfiles, an episode of millenium, eureka, the 4400, fringe, the second xfiles movie, v, izombie (i've seen a lot of the small roles people have parts in izombie while doing my imdb stroll but i've never watched it), aah and he was in an episode of riverdale this year! and a whole bunch of other stuff. little parts, but i think it's fun that he's done so much scifi in particular.

the x-files s5e11 kill switch (that's the one with killer ai hehe written by william gibson and tom maddox) patrick keating as donald gelman

the magicians s4e1 a flock of lost birds - patrick keating as shop owner (he was in it for about 5 seconds but hey he was a hedge witch!)

DEAN Yeah, with the sense of humor of a nine-year-old.

SAM Or you.

now that made me laugh, because it's true :p

SAM So we tell him the truth. You say Jesse's destined to go dark side—fine. But he hasn't yet. So if we lay it all out for him—what he is, the apocalypse, everything—he might make the right choice.

CASTIEL You didn't. And I can't take that chance.

wow, cas is more pissed at sam than i would have anticipated. so he's mad because he told sam to stop with the demon blood and ruby etc and he didn't and things went pear-shaped. but i mean, zachariah's role in it all? would it have mattered even if sam did things differently?

huh. kid asks if cas is dean's friend, dean says no, cut to sam for a reaction shot. whatcha doing, show. and always nice to see dean with kids working his magic.

and the kiddo has been in 3 episodes of the boys, that's cool. fun to see someone go back and work with a creator on a different series :) (i've only seen a couple episodes, would like to go back to it at some point)

i don't see how this plot is going to resolve in any meaningful way unless the kid somehow vanishes or gets smited. smote? wishes his powers away?

vanishes it is.

DEAN Yeah. You know, I'm starting to get why parents lie to their kids. You want them to believe that the worst thing out there is mixing Pop Rocks and Coke—protect them from the real evil. You want them going to bed feeling safe. If that means lying to them, so be it. The more I think about it...the more I wish Dad had lied to us.

SAM Yeah, me too.

3 votes for wishing john winchester was a better parent.

#supernatural #spn 5x06 #spnwatch #patrick keating #hiky #spnhiky #the xfiles #the magicians #daniel loflin #andrew dabb

[fatalism-and-villainy]

I've been watching Twin Peaks for awhile in my quest to consume the Hannibal Cinematic Universe (i.e. stuff that served as an inspiration for the show in some capacity). I was sick this week and speed-watched the rest of season 2 I had left.

I'm probably in the small minority here, but I actually got more hooked on season 2 than season 1. No, most of it wasn't exactly "good" - the fact that they were grasping for subplots to pad out the rest of the season was pretty apparent - but for some reason I was still more engaged. Aside from "The Skill to Catch a Killer," most of season 1 just kind of failed to land for me - in honestly similar ways to season 2, but I failed to see the former as some kind of masterpiece that the latter fell short of.

I actually think that even though I'd excise parts of it, I enjoyed the Cooper/Annie romance more than most people - when you take out Cooper marveling over her ~childlike wonder~, they have kind of a cute neurodivergent for neurodivergent vibe going on. And I liked the character and I'm frustrated there's not more exploration into her in the revival. The finale was also great - the extended black lodge sequence was just a masterpiece in horror in the way I expect from Lynch - where the scariness comes from how surreal and wrong it all feels.

But yeah, in general, I don't think I love the show much. Possibly Lynch just makes better films than TV, because even in season 1, the subplots felt a bit too extended and stretched too thin. Also it suffered from my bugbear with TV, which is that it felt like a precursor to the bingeable Netflix limited series - that is, it wasn't nearly episodic enough. Hannibal has been my gold standard for a show with an overall arc in which every episode feels contained and like its own artistic statement, and this show fell waaaay short of that. Very ahead of its time (derogatory). I was always curious what Mulholland Drive might look like as a TV series, as Lynch originally planned, but watching this show made me grateful that his wings were clipped in that regard.

Speaking of which - I watched Fire Walk with Me with my best friend, and that film, I absolutely adored. My best friend agreed and said, as the credits were rolling, "That was better than... all of Twin Peaks," and I completely agree. I'm kind of shocked that it was poorly reviewed at the time, because it's one of Lynch's best films for me, right up there with Mulholland Drive. It helps that I was prepared for it to be not a deep dive into the lore, but a character study of Laura Palmer, and in that it's absolutely wonderful. (Though the smattering of cosmic horror and weirdness is also fun and gives it some unique flavour.) Sheryl Lee is absolutely mesmerizing in the main role - her body language and expressiveness is just beautiful and unlike anything I've ever seen.

And the movie honestly made me care about Laura in a way that the characters weeping over her in the show's pilot never did. I was intrigued by the narrative mechanism of a dead girl as the gaping hole in the middle of the narrative, but frankly the way it was done in the show didn't inspire me at all - the premise of a tragic dead girl who was desired by all but understood by none had just been done so many times, and the show, imo, didn't comment on it in a compelling way, narratively or stylistically. But this film, on the other hand, really sold me the narrative of Laura - constrained by forces beyond her control, but still her own distinct person rather than just a symbol; doomed by the narrative but so much more than her death. And the visuals and soundscape of the film just beautifully capture the creepy tension that's so often present in Lynch's work, but also this profound and inescapable melancholy. It's an incredibly visceral movie, but absolutely worth watching.

Right now, I'm three episodes in with The Return (season 3), and I'm... not sure I'm liking that any more than the original show.

I was never sold on the mundane subplots and folksy interludes of the original show, so I was excited for more of a straight-up horror story. But I'm not sure I'm sold on what they're doing with the revival? I think, despite the enthusiastic reviews, that it is falling victim to 21st century TV revival bad habits. My best friend also watched these first few episodes with me, and he commented that Lynch was getting a little carried away with modern special effects technology, and honestly I agree. The Red Room is a great horror setpiece partly BECAUSE of how understated and low-budget it is. It's not elaborate! It's simple design that's rendered uncanny through how familiar its surface-level trappings are to us. Extended sequences of Cooper floating through space and getting engulfed in purple smoke and taken into a weird purple dimension honestly just... feel like they're trying too hard to be out there.

That said, there was a really cool sequence that really relied on visual glitchiness and the stop-motion effect in a way that really mounted the tension in that eerie Lynchian way, and reminded me a lot of the sequences in Inland Empire. One thing I really love about Lynch is the way he explores the concept of simulation, and the horror of cinema itself, and that sequence really captured that feeling for me. So I am interested in what else he does with this series, and in terms of where the plot is heading.

But honestly another problem I'm having with it is that - although I found the more mundane character subplots and soap opera antics of the town in the original series to be tedious - I think that not confining the revival largely to the town itself is a mistake. This revival is making me realize that I actually liked how small stakes the horror story of the original Twin Peaks was - yes, there's an entire eldritch dimension lying alongside the town, but the stakes are mostly confined to how this affects the town and its people. I don't care for the way this revival is stretched out over basically the entire country - it feels, again, like it's falling victim to the 21st century need to make the stakes consistently bigger and bigger, because clearly that's the only way to make people care. The original run of the series was honestly refreshing in that regard, in a way that I didn't even realize as I was watching it. The seemingly larger scale of season 3 just makes it feel kind of emotionally cold to me. As I said, I'm curious about what's going to happen, but I'm not sure I'm going to be very emotionally invested.

Also, as an aside, I don't love the amount of naked women we see alongside clothed men. The big discussion on Lynch is always how much he toes the line between the male gaze and the women's subjectivity being molded via their awareness of, and intentional self-presentation towards, the male gaze. It's a tension that produces an interesting campy effect. But I don't see any of that kind of self-awareness here - the naked women just feel like set dressing, and it's uncomfortable.

#as you can see i have extensive thoughts but #if nothing else let this post be an impassioned recommendation of Fire Walk with Me #alpha watches twin peaks #alpha's watchlog #queue

[theselittlegreycells]

A character study of Linnet Doyle

“See you, around a person like Linnet Doyle there is so much — so many conflicting hates and jealousies and envies and meannesses. It is like a cloud of flies — buzzing — buzzing...”

I watched Kenneth Branagh’s Murder on the Orient Express back when it came out in 2017, & remember cringing at the just-not-Agatha-Christie-ness of it all. The action seemed over the top (yes, I know changes have to be made when one adapts a book into a movie, but that chase sequence was completely unnecessary), the denouement unearned, and the mention of a death on the Nile at the end felt like a cheap attempt to link two of Dame Christie’s most famous novels together. David Suchet’s Poirot series had started out small, adapting her short stories before graduating building their way to the more well-known full-length novels. In contrast, Branagh’s choice reminded me of Warner Brothers’ approach to the DCEU, with its rush to put the most well-known pieces up first in hope of drumming up audience interest.

I also remember breathing a sigh of relief when I heard that Gal Gadot had been cast as Linnet Doyle, née Ridgeway.

Aside from being slightly on the older side for Linnet — her youth was a legit plot point in the novel, as she wasn’t yet old enough to assume control over her fortune, and her marriage precipitated matters for those handling it on her behalf — I thought Gadot was an example of perfect casting, with the potential to present Linnet as she was written in the book, avoiding earlier incarnations’ cliched characterisation.

Turns out, I was only half-right. Gadot’s Linnet was not explicitly bitchy (unlike Lois Chiles from the 1978 film version and Emily Blunt from the 2004 TV series), but she is equally distant, if not more so, from the book version. I mean, can you imagine Christie’s characters attempting sexual intercourse in an Egyptian temple? When the rock came rolling down, I was willing it to hit them, because if you are deviating this far from the original material, you might as well kill them right there and end everyone’s misery.

Anyway, I should stop ranting about the Branagh version, which murders Linnet’s character way before her actual death in the film, and focus on what she should be.

Linnet, as perceived by those around her

In the novel, Linnet was introduced as a figure to be envied: beautiful and capable (“devastatingly efficient”, as one of her friends terms it), with a tendency to be high-handed in her dealings, but without any sign of active malice. This makes complete sense, given her background: she has the upbringing to know what should be done, the intelligence to know how to do it, and the confidence that she will get her way once she sets the wheels in motion. That’s the way things have always been, and there’s nothing to suggest it will ever turn out otherwise. Why would she not behave nicely, when doing so has never worked against her?

Another character in the novel, also a young pretty girl but one struggling with family problems, has an outburst that likely reflected what many contemporaries feel about Linnet in private:

“I'm odious. I'm quite odious. I'm just a beast through and through. I'd like to tear the clothes off her back and stamp on her lovely arrogant self-confident face. I'm just a jealous cat — but that's what I feel like. She's so horribly successful and poised and assured.”

Such sentiments tend to fly right past Linnet, secure in her own perception of the world and her (central) position in it. At one point in the novel, when confronted with the living reminder of someone financially ruined through her family’s business, she allegedly remarks “It's pretty awful when people hate you without even knowing you,” and this was viewed as a personal revelation. As Hercule Poirot himself observes,

“For the first time she was feeling the burden of her inheritance and not its advantages.”

Linnet, the person underneath

If one strips away all the outer trappings of riches, brains, and beauty, what kind of character does Linnet actually have? In all honesty, I’d say she is rather average. When the story begins, she’s a twenty-year-old heiress who has never been denied anything. While her actions have generally been objectively positive, they have never called for actual personal sacrifice on her part.

“I should say, Madame, that you have had a happy life, that you have been generous and kindly in your attitude towards others.” “I have tried to be,” said Linnet. The impatient anger died out of her face. She spoke simply — almost forlornly.

And she has. When her newly wedded & much poorer husband protested against splurging on their honeymoon, she gave in to accommodate what she perceived as his pride talking.

Poirot said: “There is one plan you might have adopted. In fact I am surprised that it did not occur to you. After all, with you, Madame, money is no object. Why did you not engage your own private dahabiyah?” Linnet shook her head rather helplessly. “If we’d known about all this--but you see we didn’t — then. And it was difficult.” She flashed out with sudden impatience. “Oh! you don't understand half my difficulties. I’ve got to be careful with Simon. He’s — he’s absurdly sensitive — about money. About my having so much! He wanted me to go to some little place in Spain with him — he — wanted to pay all our honeymoon expenses himself. As if it mattered! Men are stupid! He’s got to get used to — to — living comfortably. The mere idea of a dahabiyah upset him--the the needless expense. I’ve got to educate him — gradually.” She looked up, bit her lip vexedly, as though feeling that she had been led into discussing her difficulties rather too unguardedly.

When she makes an honest mistake in opening another passenger’s correspondence, she immediately goes off to apologise, without taking offence at said passenger’s initial rudeness since the mistake is on her part:

“Excuse me, that telegram is for me.” And Signor Richetti snatched it rudely from her hand, fixing her with a furious glare as he did so. Linnet stared in surprise for a moment, then turned over the envelope. “Oh, Simon, what a fool I am. It’s Richetti — not Ridgeway — and anyway, of course, my name isn’t Ridgeway now. I must apologise.” She followed the little archaeologist up to the stern of the boat. “I am so sorry, Signor Richetti. You see my name was Ridgeway before I married and I haven’t been married very long and so — ” She paused, her face dimpled with smiles, inviting him to smile upon a young bride’s faux pas.

In fact, she seems like an embodiment of the Spoiled Sweet archetype--except the first time she faces a difficult choice, she gives right in. Poirot is unsparing in his appraisal of her actions:

“I am going to speak to you quite frankly. I suggest to you that, although you may have endeavoured to gloss over the fact to yourself, you deliberately set about taking your husband from your friend. I suggest that you felt strongly attracted to him at once. But I suggest that there was a moment when you hesitated, when you realised that there was a choice — that you could refrain or go on. I suggest that the initiative rested with you — not with Mr. Doyle. You are beautiful, Madame, you are rich, you are clever, intelligent — and you have charm. You could have exercised that charm or you could have restrained it. You had everything, Madame, that life can offer. Your friend’s life was bound up in one person. You knew that — but though you hesitated, you did not hold your hand.”

But aside from that one choice, which weighs significantly on her conscience, Linnet of the novel is described as a charming young lady. Until Poirot started digging up every passenger’s background in search of motives, the public perception was that she had no enemy in the world (aside from Jacqueline, of course). Likewise, Simon Doyle’s act of ditching his old flame for Linnet was seen as understandable (if not particularly honourable), and the fact that he did not care for her is a plot twist.

Side note: The 1978 film version changed Linnet & made her actively disagreeable to those around her, in order to give more people (e.g. the doctor) a motive for murder. Personally, I’m not a fan. If you want a victim that everyone absolutely despises, set in an exotic locale, & written by Dame Christie during the golden age of crime fiction, I recommend Appointment with Death.

The missed opportunity with Gal Gadot

Hollywood has no shortage of beautiful actresses who can do justice to Linnet’s physical description as a first-rate beauty, but few can be believable as the character herself.

Take Jennifer Lawrence, for example: when I think about her, I think of someone eating pizza and tripping on the steps as she goes on stage — in other words, someone whose public persona hinges on her being ‘one of us’, and hence too down to earth for Linnet.

Or Anne Hathaway, who has been perceived as the opposite of Lawrence in many ways: she seems like someone who’s always trying to say and do the right things for every occasion, which is not Linnet either. Linnet is not constrained by other people’s opinions in her behaviour (if she did, the inciting incident in the novel wouldn’t have taken place at all).

Fresh from her triumphant turn in Wonder Woman, I felt Gadot would be able to sell that obliviousness in Linnet, the naïveté in not really knowing what advantages she had, compared to other people. Gadot’s Diana had shown that same quality, conveying the impression of a goddess walking among mankind, inspiring admiration and envy in the same breath without actively trying in either direction.

And to some extent, she did. Gadot’s Linnet was self-assured and charismatic, sweet-natured compared to the earlier film/TV incarnations (admittedly not a high bar), but by golly did she come across as DUMB. Instead of having the other steamboat passengers being strangers she met by chance on her honeymoon trip, here they are her own wedding guests — when she subsequently gripes about everyone on board wanting to kill her, I can’t help but wonder why she invited them in the first place. Also, in this version she throws her wealth about like no one’s business, so why, why, why didn’t she charter a private boat? This is illogical, yet we are supposed to believe that Linnet is a sound business woman who could have spotted someone leeching off her wealth once she assumed control.

Here’s the direction I wish the film could have taken (& yes, I’m well aware that I’m complaining about how the director didn’t produce the film in my head): After being confronted by Jacqueline once again on board the steamboat Karnak, Linnet finally faces the facts one night, admits to herself that she has committed a reprehensible act, and resolves to apologise to Jacqueline the next day. She knows they can’t turn back the clock, and she’s already married to Simon (whom she believes has chosen her over Jacqueline), but she intends to start making amends somehow — exactly what she has in mind is not revealed, since she’s found dead the next morning, and the plot carries on. This, I feel, adds more depth to her character, as well as more poignancy to her death, as she’s struck down at the very moment she starts climbing up from the moral low ground she has sunken to, since the start of the novel.

Final thoughts

In Murder in Mesopotamia, Dame Christie described a murder that centred on the personality of its victim. While Linnet — at heart an untested little rich girl — has little in common with that novel’s La Belle Sans Merci, the same point ultimately applies. Her death is inextricably linked to who she was while alive, her personality and her choices, and to change all that for the sake of convenient plot devices cheapens one of Christie’s best crime novels.

#death on the nile

[cookisugarrdraws]

You know what one of my least favorite parts of httyd thw is? The fact that not ONCE do we ever get the iconic shot of Hiccup's leg and then the direct cut to Toothless' tail change position. This shot, which is seen EVERYWHERE in httyd is never seen in thw.

We see it in movie 1, Gift of the Night Fury, Riders/Defenders of Berk, movie 2, rtte.. etc. But we never see it in httyd thw. The only other pieces of httyd related media (aside from the video games and that I can remember) we don't see this shot in is Legend of the Boneknapper and Httyd: Homecoming. And I'd say here LotBk is an exception because Toothless is only seen for a few minutes and then isn't present in the rest of the short. None of the rider's dragons are present in this short after the teens and Gobber leave for the island either so it gets a pass. In Homecoming, this could technically also be an exception since this takes place in between when the dragons leave and the epilogue of the film. However, I won't be considering the short as an outlier because I group Homecoming as a packaged deal with the Hidden World since it takes place in between.

These two shots, which are some of my favorite shots in the franchise, are absolutely everywhere in httyd media. They frequently appeared in the first movie (makes sense, you'd need to do that) in scenes like Test Drive, when the riders battle the Red Death, and of course the end of the film as well when Toothless gets his new tail.

Something interesting to note is that often, when these shots appear, it's to emphasize an important change in Toothless' tail. In See You Tomorrow, Toothless' tail has changed because Hiccup has finally made some more final modifications to the saddle. In Test Drive, it appears quite a few times but the most significant instances are at the beginning, to symbolize the beginning change of Hiccup and Toothless learning to fly together as one and towards the end when Toothless is trying to catch his fall before they slam into the rocks. This was a change in faith for Hiccup and Toothless both as they finally fly together as one, the score mixing their themes together into the iconic "Hiccup and Toothless" theme we all are familiar with. When they're fighting the Red Death and Toothless tail catches fire, there's the more literal change of Toothless' tail caught fire and they don't have a lot of time left. When they're flying away from the fire caused by the Red Death's explosion, the tail is gone and only wire is left. Another change, they've run out of time. Finally, at the end of the movie, Toothless has a brand new tail; bright red with a white viking symbol. A symbol that both Hiccup and dragons have been accepted amongst the Berkians.

These shots do appear in the TV series as well although I could only pick out a few instances where these shots necessarily symbolize change. Typically these shots are used in high stakes action/fight scenes which I'm fine with. These shots do end up being mostly preserved for action based sequences in the first movie anyways. In race to the edge, we are this a few times, mostly when Toothless gets a new tail fin to try out.

In the second movie, these shots also don't appear as often but they still keep the concept of change. In the "Where No One Goes" sequence, we see the tail change a couple times. We first see it when Hiccup and Toothless are flying across the ocean at a break neck speed, full of excitement and adrenaline. A moment to symbolize the change from uncertainty and freshness to confidence and familiarity between the two friends now that they've been together for 5 years. We see it again as Hiccup fixes Toothless' tail to a certain position to brace for Hiccup's flight suit part of the scene. A change to introduce a new part of Hiccup's character. This also appears again at the end of the movie when Hiccup and Toothless go up against Drago's Bewilderbeast. I'd say this is a moment to symbolize the change of Toothless' is now fully on Hiccup's side again and trusts him to guide him even with the blindfold on.

But in the Hidden World? We don't see this once. ONCE. You'd think they would have shown it at least one time or even made a parallel to this shot! (Honestly if they had made a parallel shot to the tail change with Toothless' new tail, I would have rioted). But we NEVER see this happen! We don't see the important change moment between Hiccup and Toothless' friendship or dynamic because the movie DOESN'T ALLOW FOR THIS TO HAPPEN. Hiccup and Toothless' characters are so out of character that the movie doesn't even feel the need to change their dynamic or develop it in a new way BECAUSE THEY COULDN'T. Hiccup and Toothless have a completely new dynamic in this film which would warrant the movie incapable of keeping the iconic shot. We see this shot in the storyboards though! In the deleted version of the Light Fury knocking Hiccup off of Toothless, we see Hiccup grab the slide of Toothless' saddle with his hand, and then the tail immediately opens up again, giving the two of them the chance to fly down to a mountain top to catch their fall. And this shot still keeps the change motif for Hiccup and Toothless!! The change is that the two of them are facing a new kind of (temporary) opponent: The Light Fury!! That aspect and idea is still kept even in the storyboards!

The fact that this shot, which is integral to the lifeblood of Httyd, just as much as the music, animation, characters, and dragons are, is removed from the final installment of the franchise, goes to show how little this movie's artistic merit was valued by DreamWorks. And it makes me sad that this is the case. That this movie was viewed so narrowly as a money maker instead of an artistic opportunity, makes it all the more heartbreaking. These shots were such small details of the franchise but they were so, so important.

#httyd #httyd thw #httyd 3 #httydthehiddenworldisntcanon #long post #httyd salt

[whileiamdying]

How "Twin Peaks" shaped the entire golden age of TV

"Mad Men" and "Breaking Bad" wouldn't exist without David Lynch and Mark Frost's dark, strange, intricate series

By JAMES ORBESEN PUBLISHED JUNE 22, 2014 9:00PM (EDT)

"Mad Men" and "Breaking Bad" wouldn't exist without David Lynch and Mark Frost's dark, strange, intricate series

If we do indeed live in a golden age of TV, when exactly did this age begin? Did it start in the desolate sands of New Mexico? How about on the upper floors of a Manhattan office building? Maybe on some deserted island? What about New Jersey’s Meadowlands or, going back even further, some dark corner office in the depths of FBI headquarters?

No, this golden age grew out of a small, tree-ringed town in Washington state. A little place, with damn fine coffee and world famous pie: Twin Peaks.

With its upcoming Blu-Ray release, “Twin Peaks” is being repackaged for a whole new audience that missed out on its April 1990 debut. This might indicate some sort of lingering nostalgia or demand for this premium format. However, this show, influential as it is, seems almost forgotten. Who talks about David Lynch and Mark Frost’s televised masterpiece these days, one of the first water-cooler shows? Almost 25 years old, this short-lived series casts a large shadow on contemporary television.

Many of the defining aspects of “Twin Peaks” can seem clichéd today: Its narrative intricacy, its darkness, its reliance on antiheroes. But that's just because we are by now so used to the show’s sensibility in our televised diet. What set this show apart has so thoroughly been assimilated that talking about it is like pointing to the sky and calling it blue. But this engaging, surreal and occasionally frustrating, 30-episode series about the hunt for a prom queen's killer was ahead of its time. Many of today’s modern classics owe it a debt audiences might not be aware of.

For instance, the show was a pioneer in seeding a dense mythology, complete with flash forwards, dream sequences, extra-dimensional spirits and otherworldly villains. Much like another trailblazing program, the British “The Prisoner,” this gave loyal watchers a sort of inside status and secret knowledge that could be analyzed and debated in small cultlike circles. This quality could be hair-pullingly frustrating, but helped immerse viewers. This aspect was wholly replicated by both Chris Carter’s “X-Files” and Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse’s “Lost,” two shows with fan bases full of encyclopedic knowledge.

“Twin Peaks’” overarching story lines and multi-episode narratives echo in “The Killing” and “True Detective.” The search for Laura Palmer’s killer could be the hunt for Rosie Larsen’s. The two are even killed in the same setting: the Pacific Northwest. Instead of the typical one-and-done detective story, a staple of a “Twin Peaks” contemporary, “Murder She Wrote,” the mystery wore on, eventually webbing to encompass more threads than the sleuth could possibly handle.

“Mad Men’s” cast of double-life-leading ad executives also has origins in “Twin Peaks.” Don Draper’s upstanding and conformist exterior is contrasted with his tortured, reckless inner self. Much like high school golden girl Laura Palmer, who secretly prostituted herself for vast quantities of cocaine, outside and inside do not match.

On “Breaking Bad,” Walter White’s transformation from mild-mannered chemistry teacher to drug kingpin mimics the extra-dimensional BOB, a metaphor for the darkness inside us all, from “Twin Peaks,” who sneaks in and slowly corrupts formerly upstanding members of the town. Loving Leland Palmer, Laura’s father, becomes corrupted to the point where he commits the ultimate crime.

Even the look of “Twin Peaks” has defined modern television. Lynch brought a whole new sensibility to the medium: This was a show that looked like a movie. Through the editing and attention to cinematography, Lynch expanded the vocabulary of the small screen. Compared to “Twin Peaks”’ main competition on Thursday nights, “Cheers,” the difference couldn’t be starker. The wide, flat, utilitarian angles of that sitcom clashed with “Twin Peaks”’ quick cuts, multiple locations and composed shots -- to quote Lynch, they were “pretty as a picture.”

Dramas made before “Twin Peaks” now look undeniably dated. It’s like comparing those sad, fixed-camera sitcom holdovers, like “The Big Bang Theory” or “Two and a Half Men,” to the free-flowing, dynamic hand-camera work of “Arrested Development” or “The Office.”

However, these are all surfaces. The true debt modern televised masterpieces owe to “Twin Peaks” is that it brought the hand of the show runner to the forefront. Mark Frost and David Lynch were both granted a level of creative control that ensured their vision made it to the screen. All television is a collaborative process and it is hard to work out exactly who contributed to what. But, with Lynch’s strong, authorial voice, cultivated previously in, perhaps, his greatest film, 1986’s “Blue Velvet,” “Twin Peaks” had a feel unlike anything else on TV at the time.

The pilot episode, which registered some of ABC’s highest ratings at that time and bears the strong evidence of Lynch’s stamp, is filled with edges that would have been sanded down without a clear artistic vision. An actor flubs a line and it’s kept in the final cut to add a bit of naturalism. A faulty fluorescent light flickers on and off during an autopsy scene, furthering the audience’s discomfort. Set dresser Frank Silva is accidentally caught in the reflection of a mirror during a shot, almost accidentally making him the series’ main villain. All of these wrinkles were kept in at Lynch’s insistence.

The role of the show runner is clearly essential to understanding our current golden age. Trying to make “Mad Men” without Matthew Weiner's attention to detail, you end up with period flops like “The Playboy Club” and “Pan Am.” They look right, but feel all wrong. Art by committee ends up looking like a Spirograph painting: Jackson Pollock without the Jackson Pollock.

The truncated first season of “Twin Peaks,” only eight episodes long, was heavily curated by Lynch, whether directly or through his choice of directors. However, once he departed to direct 1990’s “Wild at Heart,” the show slowly lost focus in its second season. Without the driving mystery of Laura Palmer’s death, both drawn out and resolved too quickly in a piece of painful fence-sitting, the series petered out. “Twin Peaks,” despite all its innovations, died an ignoble death, hemorrhaging viewers. Not even Lynch’s sort-of prequel film, “Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me,” could salvage the show.

Still, “Twin Peaks” lit the way for modern television’s renaissance. Despite its short life and many flaws, the DNA of this show has mapped itself onto contemporary TV. We’ve absorbed it and expect it, now, in our great dramas. When tracing our golden age’s roots, look to a place covered by green.

#Twin Peaks #Serial drama #Mystery #Drama #Horror #Mark Frost #David Lynch #Kyle MacLachlan #Michael Ontkean #Mädchen Amick #Dana Ashbrook #Richard Beymer #Lara Flynn Boyle #Sherilyn Fenn #Warren Frost #Peggy Lipton #James Marshall #Everett McGill #Jack Nance #Ray Wise #Joan Chen #Piper Laurie #Kimmy Robertson #Eric Da Re #Harry Goaz #Michael Horse #Sheryl Lee #Russ Tamblyn #Salon

[bladtvedel63]

Unveiling the Digital Legacy of music of Skibidi Toilet

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#Skibidi Toilet

[anthony-stewart-head-fan]

Saturday 23 November 2013

interview: Anthony Head

Okay, Buffy fans - how many of you can name the American telefantasy series that Anthony Head starred in before he was Giles? It was a short-lived thing called VR.5, starring Lori Singer, and it was the subject of this phone interview on 4th October 1995 (by which time it had already been cancelled). A short version of this ran in SFX but the full version has never been published. (NB. At this time Buffy the Vampire Slayer was just a 1992 movie starring Kristy Swanson so there’s no mention of it here. Sorry.)

Was it planned in advance that you would come in on episode four of VR.5, or was it something that was decided during production?

"No, I think it was basically that, after the pilot, they realised that the professor character was great up to a point. It helped establish (a) that she's vulnerable, (b) that what she's doing is very dangerous. But there was very little antagonism between them, and once they had established that they were both coming from the same place, there needed to be another character introduced who would stir things up a bit. It was planned after the pilot. The pilot set up these basic characters and from there on in, it transpired that you need to go somewhere else. For the theories to have a stronger line and for the committee to be more imposing.”

Did you have to audition for this?

“Oh yes."

What did they tell you about the role?

"Very little. There were keeping it extremely hush-hush. Then on my second reading - my first call-back - they started to explain roughly what it was about. The general description of the characters was that he is 'more Armani than Brooks Brothers' and he's a bit like a Svengali figure. You can't work out whether he's taking care of her or usurping her."

Have they told you stuff about the character that they haven't revealed to the audience?

"Oh, yes. Well, it gradually becomes revealed as the series progresses. You find out why he is such a strange, guarded chap and what dark secrets are locked in his past. They did say at the interview that initially he gives very little away, and it's exasperating because of that. Eventually you do start to discover that he does have dark secrets. We find out what makes him tick. It's a very interesting part. It's not your ordinary run-of-the-mill series, and it's not your ordinary run-of-the-mill part. In terms of American episodic TV it was very different from anything else I'd ever seen or been up for."

Was the series doing quite well when it was dropped?

"It was doing extremely well. It was very controversial, it was extremely well critically received. There are still discussions about its future - it's by no means dead - and in fact I'm going out there next week for negotiations. It's something that has developed an enormous cult audience. So much so that people have gone to Canada to get pirate copies of the shows that didn't get shown on Fox."

How many episodes did they make altogether?

"Altogether we made 13, which will all be shown on Sky, but they only showed ten on Fox because it was a mid-season replacement. We had extremely good viewing figures but they were up and down, they were all over the place. It wasn't obvious; one week we'd be up there, the next week we'd be down. So the overall viewing figures were not stunning, but the general response was brilliant. You had TV critics in the New York Times praising it hugely. It was all very good. But I wasn't expecting it to be received like any other American TV programme. It requires more work than they are normally used to. The audience has got to work quite hard to suss out who's doing what to whom."

Did you do any of the sequences in VR?

"Couple of times, yes."

Was that an unusual filming experience?

"Yes. One of the things they were very specific about was that they wanted to do most of the effects on camera, rather than relying on a lot of post-production. So for instance there's a court scene that we did that was shot in the hotel where Bobby Kennedy was shot. We did it in this enormous lounge, a bizarre courtroom setting. All the uprights supporting the balustrade were perspex pillars, so when you shine light through it, it's the most beautiful, extraordinary effect."

What's Lori Singer like to work with?

"She's very, very good indeed. The thing that I think she's exceptional at - and that I don't think your run-of-the-mill Hollywood actress would have been able to cope with - was the transition that she goes through from her 'normal life' persona, which is a bit geeky, very shy, very reticent, to this stunning charismatic beauty that she becomes in virtual reality. This is why she enjoys going into virtual reality, she can't keep away from it because she suddenly becomes incandescent. She's very good. It's nice to be able to talk through dialogue and work out things that aren't working and be able to bounce ideas around. She's very up there for ideas and things. It was very interesting, very good."

Whilst it's a very interesting show, the basic premise of VR.5 is complete hokum. What was the feeling towards the scientific aspects of the show on the production?

"Hokum inasmuch as you can't take someone into a virtual reality set-up on the telephone, you mean?"

Yes, that's this big leap of believability, that's not really what virtual reality is. It's a nice idea, but there's a lot of technobabble in the series.

"I think there were certain rules that they set up within the boundaries of what they'd elected to generate. There was always a key that she would touch to get out. The virtual reality set-up to which she would go would always be something set up by herself on the keyboard. it wasn't just something that she leapt into and out of like a time machine. At the same time, it's not that far removed from possibility. If you think what people would have thought about virtual reality ten years ago, in terms of commercial uses, and people are now using virtual reality to walk into buildings that are just on a piece of paper. So (a) I don't think it's going to be long before virtual reality using all five senses is attainable, but (b) I also don't think it's that far removed from the possibility that you will be able to access people's subconscious thoughts. It's all feasible, that's as far as it goes. No, it's not available in the shops, but it's not that far removed from possibility. It has to be an extrapolation, it has to be what happens next, because we've got this far and we all know about that. You can't really make TV programmes about that because we're already there. What we do want to make programmes about are the uses of VR and how it shapes our lives from the next generation on. I think in terms of those extrapolations, it's quite an interesting hypothesis."

Does it bother you that you are still 'Anthony Head, that bloke from the coffee ads'?

"No. Not remotely, it's been very good to me. Why should I deny it? I don't get people ribbing me and giving me a hard time about it. I get people smiling and saying hello. It was a good thing to have done. It had a good vibe about it, it was well shot, it was intelligently written, as much as you can in an advert. Humorous, witty, romantic, it was just like doing quite a good little mini-series every six months for forty seconds."

How many did you do?

"We did twelve here, and I think we're on number twelve there, and we've just shot two more."

So the American ones are shot separately?

"Oh yes. The story has gone on, and has changed. They've taken a different line. But whatever you do that achieves some sort of fame or notoriety, you are then going to be known for that. Trevor Eve - Sharon's husband - is still known for Shoestring, and he's done a lot of extremely interesting things since then. He will always be 'Oh yeah! Shoestring!' but that's not a big deal. The bottom line is that Gold Blend is something I'm proud of. It had an effect on doing TV and film here for a while, but then it opened up a market in America so I was able to go over there. It also made me box-office over here for theatre, so I was able to do lots of theatre that I might not otherwise have done. Life deals its cards, and it's the way you deal with them, or the way you learn from them, that makes it interesting or exceedingly boring."

You were Frank N Furter in The Rocky Horror Show. That's tremendous fun, isn't it?

"Wonderful, wonderful. I did it four or five years ago at the Piccadilly, and I had such a good time. They've asked me a few times if I'd do it again, but it always meant touring. This time they said, 'Do you want to do six weeks in the West End and I said, 'Yes!' Because he's wonderfully wicked and very dark, and a great little spirit to play. He's fab, just fab. Where else do you get that much vibe off the audience?"

Were you aware of the amount of audience participation?

"When I first did it? Well, they told me about it, but you're never quite prepared for it. The first Friday night that you do is like: 'Jesus!' But then when you get it right, you get incredible power off them. Not so much at the Duke of York, but at the Piccadilly, which is a fifteen hundred seater. To be able to stop somebody dead with just a look, because you couldn't always put them down verbally, otherwise the play would never get on. But you could just flash somebody a look in the back of the circle and they'd shut up. It was great. Great power. My own little virtual reality set-up."

Do you prefer doing stage work or TV work?

"It isn't a question of preferences. They're so different, and there are so many different excitements in both of them, that you can't compare. I've been very lucky to flip about between one and the other, and musicals as well. They're another thing again, not like doing a straight play. When I've wanted to sing somebody's said, 'Would you like to do Rocky Horror for six weeks?' It's like: 'Whoa! Yeah!' Then I think, 'I've done some theatre, I want to do a bit of film,' and suddenly something crops up. The more you put into life, the more you learn from life."

You were in an episode of Highlander: The Series. What did you play in that?

"I was about 38 or so at the time; I had to play it older than myself because I had a 24-year-old son in it. I played an American ambassador whose son has raped a local girl, whose father just happens to be an immortal. And so the guy lays siege to my chateau, and old Highlander turns up and helps me out. It was a good little episode, one of those at the end of the series when they have to stay in one set because of they've used their budget up. So you've got to have a reason to stay in one place, and so it happened to be a chateau surrounded by fog. It was a very good episode actually."

Did the guy kill you at the end?

"That was the only sad thing. I got shot with a semi-automatic weapon with bullet-holes across my chest. They cut to me croaking on the settee, and people saying 'We must get him to hospital...' In real life, you shoot someone with a semi-automatic weapon across the chest and they don't make it to the settee. Unfortunately this is what we teach our children happens. I don't know; I'm very confused about the argument about TV violence. I think it does have an effect on children. Depends how much you let them watch I guess."

What's this new thing you've made for the BBC, The Ghostbusters of East Finchley?

"It's a series starring Jan Francis, Bill Paterson, Ray Winstone, Joe Melia, it's got a whole list of people in it. It's written by Tony Grant, and it's about 'ghosts' who are people who don't really exist in order to avoid paying taxes. Bill Paterson plays a tax inspector. I'm part of the sub-plot. Ray Winstone has some odd deals going on the side, and I play this sort of East End wide-boy who sells cars to Ray Winstone in Spain. I come back to pick up some cars and waltz into their life. It's beautifully written, very funny.”

website: www.anthonyhead.org

interview originally posted 3rd December 2005

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