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bogkeep · 1 year

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i don't know if it's just me, but there's posts that i keep seeing that are like "people need to stop cycling through fandoms so fast," usually with a sentiment about the importance of commenting and sharing people's work and nurture their communities. i think Fandom Sustainability is a very interesting topic so i have THOUGHTS............ like first of absolutely all, that's a weird onus to put on people. Fandom Is For Fun. people don't usually control what their brainworms are gonna wriggle about. nobody should have to sign a five year contract for Enjoying Thing Together With Others. like. i understand that a lot of these posts are directed at people that are Enjoying the works of fanartists and fanfic writers, to urge them to share and react and feed their inspiration - but what about me, A Creator Of Such Things? are you making it my obligation to keep drawing fanart for a specific thing? becuase i've gotten plenty of lovely comments and feedback and all around soft and fuzzy feelings from the communities i've partaken in, but i'm only human. it's not that i lose love or interest for the properties, it's just - sometimes life happens. sometimes my momentum is unsustainable and i gotta slow down eventually. sometimes i want to draw other things! and yeah, i'm only one person, i'm not a whole fandom, and i can only speak on my experiences. i just feel like there's a narrative of "nice comments and engagement can keep an artist/writer go on forever" which i don't really agree with. reblogs and comments absolutely make me want to make more stuff! being part of a community is absolutely inspiring and fills me with ideas! but that can only take me so far. i think plenty of artists carry the same feelings of guilt for not drawing more X, or have gotten asks pleading for more Y. feeling unappreciated is not the only reason people stop creating a specific content.

my next Thought is that i think there are external sources causing fandom lifespans to shorten. i think there's a well documented phenomena that it's easier to sustain a fan community for long running, serial media with waiting time inbetween content, than it is for one-off movies or like, entire showruns premiered all at once for bingeability. and the current climate of "we're probably going to cancel this show after two seasons for capitalist rot reasons" and disillusionment with corporation and streaming services? probably not helping either!

i DO think there's something to be said for the speed of social media as opposed to, what, email lists? snail mail compendiums? but early tumblr was like, dominated by approximately five fandoms or something for years and years, so it CAN be done. clearly. maybe the change for discord servers to be the main hubs for communities, as opposed to old school forums? i think that may be one of the culprits for sure, because servers are so fast and exhuasting and there's Stuff going on all the time and you can only keep up so much before you burn out. i think. maybe it's just me who's burnt out thinking about it, because i know there can be really good servers that are well moderated and paced and sustainable! i've tried fandoming in several formats - i've done old school forum. i've done discord server. i've done Small Group Of Friends. i've done Just Vibing On My Blog/Twitter. and to me - and this is of course personal experience and not speaking for everyone else - the best longterm strategies for me has been the ones where i have the least contact with the actual fan communities. partaking in communities has been amazing and inspiring, i've made lots of close friends i'm still in contact with, but active participation in fandom is not something i can hold up forever. i can either burn in a fiery blaze for a little while or i can keep a low simmer for a long time. it's so much easier to love a story on my own terms when i don't have to be involved in every controversy of its fan community, even if it means trading away ideas and inspiration and drive. there's a balance to be struck between the two, of course. then there's like... sometimes something happens, either with the Media or with the Fandom. there's always going to be a risk with attaching yourself to a community and pouring yourself into it. do i have to keep loving something even if the creator of it makes it too weird for me? should i have to stay in a space that causes me stress or pain? sometimes the right thing for us to do is leave. sometimes we need a change. i think it's lovely when people stay to keep communities good, to keep creating good fanwork in spite of dissappointing creators. i think it's good to nurture love, but. it's a choice everyone has to make for themself. you should stay because you want to, not to martyr yourself for the sake of proving a point. last Thought i want to honor is that yeah, i believe there's Attitudes Afoot that are a sustainability drain: how old can a fandom get before it's Cringe? how large can a fandom get before it's Cringe? either we're all Cringe or none of us are. people love what they love, and is it not cruel to mock someone for something so joyful, based on arbitrary lines in the sand? if pre-2014 tumblr culture was good at anything it was to love hard and fearlessly. i DO think it's worth creating good and sustainable communities, to love well and responsibly, and find joy on your own terms. i think there's many ways to fandom and one way isn't more right than the other. a relationship is worthwhile even when it's not everlasting.

#too long for twitter #hi i'm writing essays based on 2-3 posts i saw on my dashboard over the past couple months again #can you tell i'm burnt out and have fandom trauma #using the word Sustainable fifty times because i think that's at the core of intentionally doing things always

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septembersghost · 1 year

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Am I a bad person if I really want to listen to Taylor today...not excusing her but I miss her music so much

anon bestie. first, *hugs*. second, i do not know how to stress, plead, implore enough with you all that loving music is not a moral or immoral action. yes, of course there are particular artists i myself would never engage with (and that is due to extremes), and there are artists i just don't like for whatever reason and that's subjective. on the "i would never engage with ___" side, i can say that for myself, confidently understand why, yet recognize i still don't have the right to tell others to follow suit. people have different boundaries, different tastes, and different ways of going about separating their enjoyment from other issues.

i know there's sincere concern about supporting "problematic" artists, particularly financially, and i do think that's an important conversation to have, especially when we're discussing people actively doing harm to others or platforming hate speech. taylor is not an abuser, taylor has not been trumpeting racist or homophobic etc rhetoric. i also realize the issue of complicity has come into play here because of that man, and that's why there's so much anger and hurt and disappointment right now, but ask yourself: does that man, who is not in any way, shape, or form a part of any of her music, have the power to steal that from you? do you feel like you have to suffer the loss of her music, which is clearly valuable to you, over one dirty rag of a man? i've been upset and critical too, but also feel like there's a call for perspective here. taylor alison swift is not causing the world's ills. tbh that man has no significant power or influence even compared to, like, a local politician. bigotry should be confronted and called out. at the same time, this is a microcosm of a conversation, and that doesn't mean it's not important to have it, and that doesn't mean people aren't absolutely valid in their criticism or hurt, what it means is that it is not impacting society as a whole. we get very caught up in fury over small things, especially when it's connected to something we are invested in, because it feels simpler to fix or righteous in some way or like the onus is on us to definitively prove we're upstanding people who don't condone harmful things, and that's fine, but at what point does it become futile? at what point are we just screaming into the void and self-recriminating for approval?

part of what's making this harder is we've connected taylor's music to her very personally, and she has fostered that herself, but i think now is the time to change that a bit. detach it from her however you can and think about what it means to you. you singularly not listening to her on streaming is pennies she won't ever notice are gone, it is causing her zero consequence whatsoever, but it sounds like it's hurting you. that, to me, isn't fair. you're suffering for her mistakes? or because that dude is a dirtbag? you do not have to punish yourself and crawl on your knees for forgiveness because you'd like to play my tears ricochet every once in a while. how exactly is the moral burden on us, as listeners, when we aren't condoning any -isms, we just want to hear songs we love?

i sound hyperbolic here but i'm really serious, it's concerning me that we're tying individual morality - am i a bad person inherently? (bad people don't tend to ask this question because they don't care). does listening to this artist whose work i enjoy taint me in some way because they've done things i disagree with? - to enjoyment of art. it's frighteningly conservative to think that you and your character should be called into question because you love something that isn't causing any outside harm. engagement with art cannot make you a bad person! it's (if you've seen the good place) chidi and his almond milk. we're damning ourselves for miniscule actions and so trapped in the anxiety of that it causes far more important things to slip by. what matters is what we do, how we engage with others, how we take action in the world.

the fact that you're worried about this, which means you've been aware and empathetic during this time, proves you care and are not a "bad" person. i haven't been listening to her and it's not because i think that's giving me moral high ground (it isn't), it's because i am very sensitive and don't want any of that music emotionally tied to what's been going on because i do actually want to go back to it someday, it's too cherished and too intrinsically part of me not to, and at the moment distance itself is healing. i also don't believe her music being such an aspect of my heart says anything about my moral fiber, you know? if i suddenly wanted to listen to red tomorrow, i'd give myself permission to do so knowing it is no measurement of my intellect or my moral integrity, and we've got to stop acting like art can make you good or evil.

sorry this became a very long soap box essay! but i'm worried at how much of this specific idea, of someone so far removed from us making a bad choice reflecting on you and making you personally responsible or irredeemable for that, is being perpetuated. listening to an artist because they make you happy or bring you comfort is not having a measurable impact on human rights or global crises, and it just feels super unfair that we're burdening and judging each other with this idea that enjoyment or passion for something harmless makes you fundamentally bad. the world is hard enough. i promise you that it's okay to allow yourself joy.

#we're getting dangerously close to like the social justice version of book burnings and the hays code and that worries me #anonymous #letterbox #fandom discourse #thrown out speeches

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divinekangaroo · 11 months

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S1 teeters on overly dense but relatively entertaining, and despite the density of action/fact also feels quite shallow? Potentially the standardised plot/romantic expectation?

S2 by contrast feels like it doesn’t know what it is, but is way more entertaining.

Sabini (Noah Taylor) is utterly not my cup of tea and his Aussie-Italian accent should be cut from his mouth brutally because it’s awful; but S2 also sets up sooooo many good arcs for later on, and also contains a lot of truly hilarious moments (the glass of gin lolllll; a racehorse is a good investment lolllll, almost everything Tommy says to Campbell including calling him up about Grace’s booty call my God). I also wonder about Alfie and this fannish perception of his perceptiveness; from what I can remember of later series, and now this in S2, Alfie is nearly almost always losing total control of his business, and it’s Tommy that manages to somehow manoeuvre this self-destructive wildcard of a gangster into positions where they can mutually profit.

I feel, better than S1, S2 also shows the boundaries that Tommy consciously crosses and disrespects to get what he wants. The final ep pre-execution scene and his screaming at the sky was so honest, and even though he repeats these themes in later series as his motivation, in S2 I really believe it. He is fucking angry. S1 often felt like it was trying to sell him as a mostly good, petty criminal style man making the most of an opportunity gone complex and wrong; S2 clearly paints him as consciously choosing to abuse, albeit not entirely without sympathy/empathy, just not enough to change his path. And that scene in London where the brothers smash up a club, just the three of them, then go out after on the street absolutely high and bonded on the violence, uh the best. Let’s not forget that side of them, too.

I adore the thematic structure of that S2 final episode where Tommy fails all three of his women (four if you count Polly and that he had to let her sort it out herself).

I adore the emotional swings and roundabouts he has with Arthur’s suicide attempts, which also feels very, very real.

I felt that the sex scenes with May seem to have the camera focus on her orgasm/s, when pretty much every other sex scene in the series, the camera’s very focused on Tommy, and what that means in framing their brief and odd relationship.

I like Michael’s honest hunger for the life and the power.

I also find interesting that end of S1 had Danny (Flashback-Partner #1) die, and the start of S2 had Freddie (Flashback-Partner #2) die, and that all of S2 then has Tommy leveraging the good things war gave him — connections, colleagues, reputation, weaponry skills and tactical skills. He also says to Arthur that comment about ‘closing the door on the war’, which yes, starts to roar open again for Tommy in later series, but right now in S2 the war is almost put to bed for Tommy; part of that being S1 Grace let him see he could sleep/live without it for a bit, but I also think it has something to do with Freddie and Danny now both being deceased. The constant reminder of Danny’s volatility and Tommy’s sense of responsibility to him; the constant moral and ethical battle he had with Freddie about their mutual moral trauma, and Freddie’s constant quasi-suicidal language around Tommy (but putting the onus back on Tommy to execute him) suddenly gone.

In S1, what I carried away more of was character and symbolism rather than plot or theme. Polly hits Tommy around the head a lot, including once nearly with a poker; he allows it. In S2, he’s not allowing it any more. Tommy’s nearly monk-like at the start and there’s lots of symbolic monk references (eg, Monaghan means monk, red dust in Buddhism); in the whole of Episode 1 he doesn’t manage to get a single drink in; yet he’s human and vulnerable and drunk by S6. His white horse (his opportunity for balance against the black horse) and having to kill it himself because he did something not moral to win the horse, sacrificing his potential for balancing light and dark. The whole Monaghan Boy scam and how it’s structured to represent exactly how Tommy plays himself in scams (Tommy takes a hit/pays out so more people buy in; Tommy takes a bigger hit/pays out more so even more people buy in; then turn the tables and cash in when everyone’s gone all in).

Also I quantified the S1 guns in current day pounds:

Tommy’s original scam of four stolen motorbikes - about 50-60k in current day pounds

The value of the guns he finds - about 2.1 million current day pounds

Can totally picture him sitting in the yard staring at his unexpected loot just sweating bricks trying to work out how to turn it into actual money.

#peaky rewatch #tommy shelby #Final comment being #there are still way too many convenience coincidences and people just conforming to the necessary plot steps to make for believability #which is interesting given the effort put into making the Shelby family’s characterisation believable #The plots are unreal but the people are real #A strangeness

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gunsli-01 · 1 year

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Honestly, when it comes to Mu framing it as Innocent or Guilty is the best approach not Forgiven or Unforgiven. Mu's actions aren't really forgivable her entire first trial song is about how I'm sorry won't reach anyone. The anyone in this case being the actual victim because they're dead so of course they can't hear it. During her interogation her only justification for killing is that it was self-defense and she had no other choice but to do it. Something that more easily aligns with a guilty/innocent framework.

Then, when asked, "Do you want to apologise to the person you killed?" during the first trial, she literally says, "I think the person who did something wrong first should apologise first." Making it abundantly clear to me that her actions are unforgivable based on the fact that she doesn't believe she needs to apologize to the person she literally killed making her song come off as nothing but a performance. I feel incredibly uncomfortable with saying I forgive Mu at all cause her apology

1. Is not mine to accept.

2. Blatantly ignores the voice of her actual victim to the extent that a good deal of the fandom really did just heavily partake in victim blaming by going but what did so and so do to deserve getting stabbed.

It just gives off that incredibly blind energy of x person did something bad/offensive towards insert minority group here but I someone who is not a part of that minority group or a direct victim of person x's actions forgive them. I accept their apology. Because they took onus of their wrongdoing and promise not to do it again. So, there's no need to fuss they didn't know any better.

It could just be my own bias cause again black and I see stuff like this happen all the time. Yet, to be completely honest, it's easier to vote her innocent than forgiven for me given these reasons.

Like at least there is a vague legal precedent for her actions under the idea of it being self-defense. Especially given how far bullying can go at times. Yet, her actions are pretty much unforgivable outside of that and she seems very aware of this given she doesn't want us looking too deeply into it anymore. Just saying knocking the Guilty/Innocent translation can ultimately end up screwing her over in some way this time around.

I wouldn't be pointing this out if not for the whole Haruka's life possibly hanging on her verdict thing but like just at least try and give people some reason to consider her positively instead of digging a deeper hole. Cause if she's voted guilty and Kotoko innocent again then she will die. We saw what Kotoko did to Mahiru and Kazui is not spending his time protecting women. So, Haruka is the one in the clear if Futa is voted innocent given Mikoto can protect himself barring something changing. So, Mu fans have got to work harder at this point given the patterns present.

She can not continue to give people nothing and given her song title and the bit of lyrics we've seen so far she may just give people less than nothing. She may just give people every reason to vote her guilty and like as much as I think that'd be deserved when it comes to the possible long-term consequences of that result, I'm wary.

#milgram #kusunoki mu #oh not me the resident alleged mu hater trying to get her voted less guilty it's like you can dislike someones personality #but not want them to die or get jumped odd #odd how that works

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myezblog · 1 year

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On BOC live

Bad idea sure! (PS at the end)

But, i think they are doing it for two reasons:

1. Woke -

For all the good and all the bad, BOC from the beginning has been trying to position itself as a friendly, woke, more open to its fan kind of a company.

And that is exactly what they are doing here. this is in no means trying to be fair to anyone, it is BOC putting the onus on its audience to keep up with that positioning.

2. Decide once and for all about Build

Right or Wrong, Build has been a problem for them. Writers have been a problem for them (that’s why pretty sure they decided to not make KP2). Speculations were always there how Build is good friends with writers (and birds of same feather flock together), there were also issues with him being part owner of Daemi and all that issue with xyz missing from the cover page

I just think this is BOCs way of putting it out there. if Build comes out of it with support, then he continues with BOC.. if not, he will be dropped. The company is not going to bet anymore money on him.

4minutes will get shelved, or Bible will soon find a new actor as his partner.

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Daemi didn’t gain much from KP success, while Build is climbing

Audience hates them. Don’t think their new book did as well. Nobody bought anything from their stall. Build has started a few other companies on the side, including Pastel.. so yeah.. i can also see the other theory playing out, where B would try to distance himself from them after gaining because of them

****************************

PS: one thing you can trust blindly is that corporates run after money. Every single one. So, for BOC to do this YT live, is actually more telling on Bui than Poi. Meaning, BOC can’t or doesn’t have the confidence to back up Bui, so highly likely whatever this drama is , Bui ain’t guiltfree

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Bored of drama!.. just give the actual dramas... don’t care what these guys are doing in private life, unless they are pimps or are murdering/r*ping people

BOC is just irritating me with their shenanigans - first with the WT drama, and then with this whole wokeness drama

#build jakapan #kinnporche the series #kinnporsche #biblebuild #bible x build #build jakapan puttha

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crimsonxe · 1 year

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Alright let’s get some fucking shit correct here @ashelyskies

a) I didn’t say K/din’s case wasn’t problematic, you fucking jackass. I did say that K/din’s case was 8 (EIGHT) fucking years ago with more of a case of ignorant views vs. bigotry. Which my sentiment is backed up by her response to one of the parties where she herself states not holding present people to the guillotine for their past shit. Anyway setting that aside: That whole thing was apologized for by one of the parties involved in it before anything was mentioned to the public (so wasn’t for brownie points) w/ said apology being accepted by her with a statement about not going after people for their past (cause really want to make sure this part gets across); yet this was still brought up and said party was still thrown to the damn wolves regardless of them doing every damn thing right. Mostly because this part wasn’t part of the initial post and was only brought up in said reply to the other party.

Now this ignorance issue is something that can be applied to multiple people, especially with ones raised in certain areas and in a pre-LGBT+ mainstreaming era where someone doesn’t fucking know better. Someone 9 years prior uses a slur, then as they get older realize how bad it is and is horrified at using it in the past. Do I categorize that person as bigoted? No I don’t. Now take that person and have them in present continuing to use the term with full knowledge of its offensive nature? Yeah, that person is a bigot. Though this distinction eludes outrage culture types (usually of the far-left variety) that think the person deserves to be considered a bigot regardless of growth or change. You grew up in a place that was forward thinking and/or in more modern times? Good for your ass, not everyone fucking got that (this will be elaborated on further down).

b) The medical side of things: corps dodge any expense they fucking can and that has nothing to do with LGBT+ status. They’re just shitty and cheap. There’s nothing I’ve seen that goes towards it being at all tied to trans status. That’s not defending RT, its seeing them as what they are a corp; hell it doesn’t even paint them in a particularly good light cause still shitty.

c) Mi/ca presented a case where she walked in to see a white board with a slur on it, as if that was just a thing at RT and/or was meant for her to see it. The full context however: People were doing a damn South Park reference, the slur wasn’t fully there as per the reference, and it wasn’t meant to be seen by anyone but them. If anything it fits the idea of two 20-something idiot SP fans latching onto distasteful SP “jokes”. Still shitty, but context puts more onus on SP that is being referenced and the parties being idiotic 20-somethings. NOT an intentional racist attack on Mi/ca and/or other PoC that’d come across it. It was also from years ago (a recurring theme), considering that episode of SP was from 2007 (yes I googled it) on top of that. It’s called being a dumbass 20-something fan that watched a show that leans on edgy distasteful “humor”. Not only does it only go towards what RT/AH was, “dudebro edgy humor”, but doesn’t reflect current RT/AH attitudes.

Now for anyone that follows me and wants anything to do with this person? Do whatever the fuck you want, I don’t care and I’m not your parent. I’m someone that grew up in a southern state that has experience with let’s say complicated/ nuanced views as a result of it. I used to watch South Park and know the mindset of a 20-something year old in regards to it. Also while I’ve never used certain slurs, I have in my ignorance used the G slur till I ran across information that corrected how to refer to Romani cause the G slur is the only word ever used in reference to them. I have used the r word and honestly still have to fight my own ingrained response towards it, when heated; because it was something that I grew up with and had to learn to not resort to. People are not fucking born perfect or even taught how to be perfect, there’s a growth period and an intent element. Which is exactly what my point is. I’m an LGBT+ center-leftist that grew up surrounded by the right wing ignorant people including friends and family. I’ve seen some evolve from as the times have as well as their ignorance being removed who deserve to be allowed to not be called fucking bigots for past bullshit. ftr that isn’t about RT either, that’s about irl; so yeah miss my fucking ass with the outrage culture bullshit that takes a “forever damaged/tainted”/”irredeemable” approach to the subject. Now in regards to RT: shitty things were said and perpetuated in the past by ignorant younger people of the time and corps are shitty penny-pinchers that care about expenses or hell with RT management’s impression just completely inept at remembering what they agreed to pay for. I won’t get swept into the outrage culture bullshit and have my own views on things.

Now I will say to definitely go fuck your damn self for trying to frame my post in the light that your fucking ass did. I guess if someone doesn’t line up perfectly in-step with your ass, then you have to try to smear them where you can. Unfortunately for you, I ran out of “giving a shit about others’ views of me” a long ass time ago; probably around the time I got tired of burying my LGBT+ status and started using my voice as I wished. In the past meant clashing against incels and right wingers; recently its meant clashing against far-leftists who both use similar ass tactics. I have disgust towards right-wingers and just anger towards the far-leftists that more times than not shoot the overall left’s causes in the foot. “Go woke, go broke (right wing) = outrage culture (far-left).

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incarnateirony · 1 year

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It's hard to explain what reactions to Lateralus Project tell me about people.

The baseline moral of this thought is, "The nature of the healer; he must first be wounded or slain." That the philosopher comes only through experiencing struggle to teach it to others.

In order to understand the value of the argument of Optimism against the gnostics, one must first be acutely and intimately aware of gnostic nihilism.

That is to say, you don't know what you've got until you say goodbye. And some of us spend our entire lives negotiating saying goodbye to people, projects, or ideas.

Lateralus has a way of showing who's too rigidly stuck in a box; who's too quick to give up listening when it gets hard. Who's been hurt, and who has lived some honestly visceral experiences encapsulated in it in Supernatural. Who's willing to break past the white noise.

It's very expositional. And life does this too. When some shit goes sideways and I get a bunch of tonedeaf DMs to "fix" it, you guys don't get it but like, you're adding to the problem because you're giving away you don't listen. If it's the angle or assumption of question thrown or whatever else.

This is an argument Bobo also had with himself, and it manifested in 15x18's title names.

I often reference Persona in regards to jung, tarot, turning over the cards, and more. But persona 4's key villain says something.

Nobody cares who the real culprits are, they'll just go on talking and living their lives. And even if the next supposed real killer was found, then what? Then the public opinion would change, and everyone would move on using it as entertainment. No one cares about The Truth. And when you accept that, all you have left is Despair.

That's it, that was the whole warning signal. That was the moment his spirit broke one final time. And it was something he was already aware of while he, Yockey et all wrote things like Nihilism, Optimism, and Absence between the other hermetic episodes.

But you can tell who's had these dialogues with themselves or not by how daft they are staring at it. Nobody wants to hear that you don't get it or that it makes you dizzy. We call that life. So figure it out. It makes us all dizzy. You either want to figure it out or you don't. That's the problem. That's the problem with the whole thing.

Nobody can make anybody care, or actually listen. And when you're accutely aware of this kind of philosophical argument, it can be real easy to step into the nihilism, behind a public mask. Just because part of me is happy we Won the World doesn't mean I'm still not sour grapes about all kinds of media or personal bullshit. Doesn't mean I don't watch people every day test that good faith in humanity, by proving over, and over, and over they don't listen. Even ones that swear they do.

I shouldn't get DMs like "how are you feeling?" to bait me to start talking for someone else's apology. They call it a check in, I'm sure they believe it's out of good interest. But it's really more, I'm reaching out to tell myself I did a good thing I need to do. There's not the personal investment there. I can tell you haven't been listening.

How? I mean, I've made it very clear. While I go on rants like this, it's just that. It's rants. 99% of my thoughts, communications and more come by way of music. Maybe it's my music industry roots, maybe it's autism and ADHD, I don't know, but that's it, that's my first language, I fuck up in the Letters Kind one, but I'm fluent in Music.

So if I just dumped out a whole mood vibe of songs on a wall, you should already know. You already should know roughly how I'm feeling. You may want clarity on the details, but if you listen, you know the rough shape of it. But this comes down to things like onus-shift to avoid personal culpabilities.

It's just one of those things to note. Just because I've got the Satanael Daddy Persona about SPN fandom issues doesn't mean that's the only person behind a mask. Or that that mask is untrue, rather than partial. That at all times this place literally forces me to have an argument against my own nihilism, but you find people like this anywhere.

Lateralus project--and frankly just base late SPN/current TW and Certain Incoporated Elements--really tells me. A lot. About people.

And damn is it funny when I can see who's willing to pick apart Lateralus project for 40 hours to find the secret of the deancas kiss or whatever but then can't be assed to click a mood video on my wall and be like, yo how you doing i totes care

nah

Today I'll be honest, I'm sitting in nihilism these days. It's post adrenal. Nothing to fight, nothing to kick. Nothing intentionally at least. Accidentally exploding stuff when I touch it still so I'ma stop that.

Kinda staring down victory itself and realizing that this god damn journey has gone on so long that the Truths that were written like 2 years ago--the things I first started talking to you about. The story shape and intent and all this stuff that became the show. Like the person I was then isn't necessarily who I am now (as even relevant to the show). I can look back at That Person who threw That Boycott and sent off That Idea and didn't give up and go, jesus christ. the SPOONS. I could never.

It's just been interesting watching the dust settle. To see who's cared about what more--ships, personal egos, agendas, authors, rep battles, whatever--it's all in the angle people look at things through.

So yeah. Lateralus Project, and the reactions to it, tell me everything I need to know about a person.

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ghostbustershq · 1 year

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Unsung Heroes: Ghostbusters II's Pastrami Sandwich Guy

As has been mentioned countless times on our 300+ episodes of the Interdimensional Crossrip podcast, when you watch a film that is so rich with detail enough, you notice something new almost every time. And so, after viewing five-million three hundred and one of Ghostbusters II, I’d like to present to you the unsung hero in the corner of the frame who now cracks me up every single time that I see him…

Ladies and gentlemen: Pastrami Sandwich Guy.

Pastrami Sandwich Guy commands about a minute worth of screen time. And he chews both his sandwich and the scenery through the entirety. From first frame of celluloid to last, it literally doesn’t matter to this man that the world is coming to a cataclysmic end and chaos reigns around him — he’s finishing his deli, dammit.

With what looks like a delicious pastrami on rye in hand, Pastrami Sandwich Guy epitomizes New York. He does such a great Marx Brothers-like job of listening and watching the action unfolding around him, but the entire time won’t put down his sandwich and certainly won’t cease his slow and methodic mastication. Ben Stein informs us there’s a shell around the museum they can’t dent (holding a photo of Libby’s pedestal)? Pastrami Sandwich Guy observes but continues eating. Hardemeyer is thrown out of the conference room? Pastrami Sandwich Guy tracks him out the door then returns back to lunch. It’s hilarious.

And the best part, as the entire office gathers at the window to watch the sky grown dark with an eclipse and a vortex seemingly swallow the sky whole, who is absent? You guessed it, Pastrami Sandwich Guy can’t be bothered.

Just a brilliant unsung performance by someone probably just making a scale day rate. So who was this mysterious sandwich loving man? I’ve begun my quest to find out.

Best I’ve been able to figure, Pastrami Sandwich Guy got his time under the lights on Thursday, April 27, 1989. The INT. CONFERENCE ROOM scenes were pick ups toward the very end of production on The Burbank Studios lot. For reference, principal photography of Ghostbusters II had wrapped on Wednesday, April 5th. But about a week of pick-ups occurred later in the month, mainly to finish out the final showdown with Vigo.

As we’ve learned over the years, a cameo featuring Eugene Levy as Louis’ cousin Sherman was cut from the film at zero hour, and with it a huge plot hole of Louis asking his cousin to release the Ghostbusters. Not only that, but Hardemeyer receiving his comeuppance by being sucked into the slime wall around the museum had also been cut. This brilliantly rescripted scene smooths out the absence of both plot points, putting the onus on Mayor Lenny to need the Ghostbusters released and also having Hardemeyer thrown out all in one swoop.

Traditionally, only those with speaking or featured roles in the film receive end credits, so it’s tough to figure out who played our sandwich-eating hero. I did some digging into the GBHQ production archives and also came up pretty empty.

While David Margulies (“Mayor of NY”) and Kurt Fuller (“Hardemeyer”) are typed onto the call sheet, several of the actors in the scene are written in as last-minute additions. Ben Stein is written on the call sheet as “Public Works Official” as is Erik Holland and Philip Baker Hall both as Fire and Police Commissioners. My only guess here is that, because these were pick-up days, the cast of players outside of Lenny and Hardemeyer were in constant flux. Most likely, Ivan Reitman had to call in a handful of favors to his friends to come play that Thursday.

Why do I think that’s the case? The first thing filmed that Thursday was a pick-up shot with a dock supervisor witnessing the arrival of the Titanic, played by long-time Ivan Reitman friend and would-be Stripes star Cheech Marin. Who is also written by hand onto the call sheet.

So the best I can figure is that Pastrami Sandwich Guy was a family friend of Ivan’s, background player from Central Casting, or was someone close to the production who stepped in to fill out the scene. Outside of someone out there identifying him, or getting my hands on a Day Out of Days or other production materials that may have shown who this wonderful man was on the day, it will remain a mystery. But whether we know his real name or not, the man is brilliant and deserves a curtain call.

Anyone out there know who he might be? In the meantime, check out the clip below to enjoy Pastrami Sandwich Guy - long may he enjoy lunch.

youtube

#unsung heroes #ghostbusters ii #pastrami guy #easter eggs

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zwoelffarben · 1 year

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Just got back from the movies and my taste in film just keeps winning. I've never gone to see a bad movie in theatres and I never will. Every movie I pick up for my annual theactric release quota is cinematic gold.

Violent Night is the Christmas movie Die Hard wishes it could be. Take Die Hard and substitute bruce willis's preformance as the macho man for a burnt out and barely functional alcoholic Santa Claus, dial the violence up to loony toons levels of upsurdity, and then turn off god mode and watch the good gore flow.

The movie functions both as a love letter to classic christmas films and a teardown of the capitalistic commodification of the christian holiday. No one in this film, besides perhaps our primary antagonist (Codenamed: Mr Scrooge, and yes he picked the codenames), hates what Christmas has become more than Santa.

An irreverant irony driven satire with a bit of something true and beauty underneath, Violent Night is a masterpiece. 9/10.

Spoilers under the read more.

The major thing that bothered me about the film is that it has makes a big motif of penal justice for the attackers; but the logic of the film doesn't get applied to the persons innocent who're killed in the inciting incident; the workers unfortunate enough to, by happenstance, be schedule to work under whichever company the baddies infultrated to initiate their attack, who best I could tell were on the nice list, who get fucking slaughtered with hardly any ceremony. Nor does it extend to the family.

The grandma is a piece of shit buried six feet deep in the naughtlist and still alive to sin. She as the CEO of an unnamed raytheon analogue is directly responsible for the mythical missing 300M dollars in cash which is the onus of the attack,but also whatever business as usual henious shit the CEOs of unnamed raytheon analogues get upto by virtue of maintaining that position of power: she survives the film untouched; I don't think I remember her even getting hurt by the baddies. Not even a little bit bloody. She gets off scotch fucking free which yeah, is what happens with a lot of CEOs doing henious shit.

And I get that you can't kill her if you want the 'happy family waves goodbye to santa' shot at the end of the film; but like, maim her a little bit, as a treat. She can literally afford to lose a few fingers, maybe an ear... a tooth even and have them all reattached. It's all snow outside, you can put any severed grandma parts in the snow and have post credits two show her reflectiong on the incident by looking at the reattachment scars. Girl, if you're gonna do the whole 'naughty gets what naughty gives' motif, commit and give me something she deserves to get. Show me she's not untouchable because she has money.

That's where my last point is being held back. I'm annoyed the evil girlboss grandma didn't get maimed even a little bit. 9/10.

#violent night

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ghostgetsablog · 2 years

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Since I blocked them, I feel comfortable doing what they said and making my own post about it:

You can't assume everyone is coming from the same assumptions you are.

You can't assume your assumptions are the correct ones.

We're all limited by our knowledge base.

Rather than put the onus of action onto a person who doesn't know you to intuit what you want from them, be clear and upfront in your expectations.

When you're in an environment where people are consistently acting in ways that don't match how you want them to, the correct response is rarely telling people to just "pay more attention" and "intuit better".

The base functionality of Tumblr is the ability to write posts, share them, get responses. It's community building!

So if you don't want someone to respond to you, the polite thing to do is explicitly state "don't reblog" or "no responses please" or something.

Make that boundary clear.

Stop expecting the people around you to know your mental state, to ~just know~ what you want from them.

Tell them.

Ask them.

If someone oversteps after being told not to, then they are a jerk.

But if they overstep a boundary they had no reasonable way of knowing you had?

That's not on them. They may have done you a harm, but it was an unintentional and (for them) unavoidable thing.

---

It's true not every single thing on the internet needs every single person's input.

But the whole gist of social media is that it is social.

If someone responds to something you posted, and you wish they hadn't:

A) why did you post it to a public place?

B) you don't have to respond to them, either.

If you literally only want folk to read things, not interact with them at all, get a standard blog.

But let me tell you, people care a hell of a lot less about things they can't interact with.

You don't want folk interacting with a diary entry? Make it private. Write it in a diary. Specifically say on it that it is not for interaction.

Ask yourself why it's important to you to post things up on the bulletin board but never be challenged about them. Do you need the illusion of someone caring about what you say, without any of the fear that they might tell you you're wrong? Do you want to impose your thoughts on others?

If you don't want input, put your outputs where others can't see them.

Because even if you post it to a random ass GeoCities, if someone can see it, they can interact with it.

Think of all the screenshots of tweets that make their way here to get discussed.

All you're doing is making people paranoid that they are going to get called out and labeled an asshole for just... Using the site as designed?

---

I don't know exactly why this got me so riled.

I think because it's a combination of two big issues for me.

1. I am vehemently against people expecting me to intuit their needs.

My family of origin and general upbringing did this to me so much it is a major part of the extreme trauma disorder I have, yay! [sarcasm]

Not everyone intuits things the same way, and expecting them to "just get" the underlying subtext when you say something is ableist as fuck, too by the way.

2. I am vehemently against the current cultural shift that all thoughts/experiences need to be exposed to public scrutiny.

If you make things available to the public, the public is going to see it. Simple as.

If you make it available to the public on an interactive platform, people are going to expect to be able to interact with it.

If something is so private that you want no interaction, consider if it even needs to be posted to a public space. If you only want friends interacting, consider sending it to them directly, or making it clear on the post who you expect to interact with it.

You are not so important that everyone needs to know your thoughts, yet cannot have thoughts about it themself.

---

This got really long. Idk exactly what takeaway point I'd hope you get from this if you're reading, but I guess something like

#long post #rant #found in the drafts

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lasthopesolo · 3 months

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for the past almost 3 months i’ve very much taken a back seat from social media. i haven’t posted much about what’s going on in my personal life, even as certain friendships i thought would last my whole life disintegrated. it was a moment of stillness for me, learning to sit there and take it in and not react. it’s been a good lesson, and a theme for 2024 : be still, feel, breathe

my world didn’t feel like it was falling out from under me with the death of these friendships. in reality, i already went through that last february, when i was told extremely hurtful things when i was already so emotionally fragile in the name of “love”. but it wasn’t love, it was cruelty. it was an attempt to exercise control over my life and my decisions, to berate me back into submission so that i could take the path they collectively deemed to be the best one for me. never mind what i was saying at the time, that i was unsure of my decision and i was such an anxious mess i barely ate. when i decided to work on my relationship instead of just ending it & running away, as i had done in every single romantic relationship, i was told that i was making the wrong decision, that my partner was mud clinging to me and weighing me down, that they had grieved with me and had to give up going to a concert w/ their partner because they took me seriously

as if i was making everything up

how do you say you love someone unconditionally but then list out the conditions required for your love? how do you say you care for someone but will still judge them and their decisions and pronounce your judgements to them?

i don’t understand that. it doesn’t fit into my definition of friendship. i love my friends for who they are, their full human selves which includes everything i admire about them and everything they do in the shadows, things i may not do or disagree with because i understand that my love and friendship is not me approving and co-signing all of their decisions and actions. i understand people will stumble and fall and hurt others and hurt themselves, i allow the space for my friends to be messy humans

friends don’t keep tabs on your behavior to bring up at a later date, to use as ammunition to further keep you underfoot. friends don’t send you long HR texts, they have the decency to call you. friends hold empathy for you in disagreements, they don’t continue the dogpile and bring up unrelated issues in a moment of extreme vulnerability. friends don’t diagnose you and tell you psych meds will help you and gaslight your perception of reality

i want to hate one of them, because i think they’re the absolute worst of the bunch. everything they have said about me is a projection of themselves and their life. but i don’t hate them. i feel bouts of anger towards them and towards myself for not standing up to them. sometimes i think i miss them. but not really. it’s a ghost, a facsimile of what i thought they were that i sometimes long for

the other two i feel rather indifferent about. you threw away four years of friendship for people you’ve barely known a year and a half, tossed me to the side when i wasn’t useful to you. you’ve placed the onus on me multiple times to make amends when i was not the only one who fucked up. i’m not bending under your pressure to do as you think i should

you are all three some of the most judgmental people i’ve ever had the bad luck of coming across

so no more

in this moment of stillness, i choose myself. i choose to protect my self worth and sanity and love from those that are cruel under the guise of love. i choose to invest in the strong bonds of friendship i already have, the people who saw me through your cruelties and see me for my whole self and accept it all, the loud and brash and moody and brooding and indecisive and stubborn and flamboyant parts that make me who i am

i’m not an angel. i know i messed up and hurt people and made a mess. i’m not hiding from that. but i’m not gonna apologize to someone who doesn’t even have the spine to message me themselves, who relies on others to act as messengers. you couldn’t be bothered to reach out to me first, do not expect me to mend a bridge i didn’t even know had broken

as the snows melt and the cold lessens and the darkness fades, i leave more and more of our friendship behind. i am emerging from my place in the dirt, eager to soak up the coming sun and sway gently in the cool breeze. and nothing you’ve said will make me shrink back into the scared little girl who was always afraid of voicing my feelings for fear of reprisal that i’ve been for such a long time

i have all the love i need

#personal #friendships #friendship breakup #i am in a good place #some of the shit y’all said to me was truly fucked up but it didn’t break me. i got back up again after taking the time i needed

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easymoveservices · 1 year

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How are professional packing and moving different

Most people in today's world are in a constant race with time and hardly have any extra to find for a little extra to be added to the day's task list. However, if you are planning to take the onus of the entire packing, loading, unloading, and moving process for your house on your own then you must be someone who never gets tired or has ample time in hand.

Yes, this is the primary reason why most people opt on hiring a moving company when they have to move their home or office to a new location. However, there are many other reasons that many people take simply for granted but they matter a lot.

Packing material: Since their primary service is moving, most of the renowned removalists are always well-equipped with very good quality packing materials. Professionals have different packing materials for different items depending on their fragility, weight, age, and condition.

Skilled staff: Any good company comprises of very convincing staff force who know their job right. They are usually very thorough and equipped with supplies and their usage for dismantling (whatever is supposed to be dismantled) and packing every item allocated with utmost care and safety.

Safety of your items: Since packing is done very meticulously, you can be ensured that your belongings will reach their destination in safe and sound condition. This applies heavily to those who are moving interstate or a long distance.

One-stop Solution: Any professional removalist takes the responsibility of completing tasks starting from dismantling, packing, boxing meticulously, loading, unloading, unpacking to assembling. Outsourcing the job to a moving company takes an entire load of transferring your belongings to the new location. Taking the task of each of these steps on to own head is practically going to hurt very bad.

Augmented Technology: Many renowned removalists across Victoria have lately upgraded themselves well with the demand of the era. Most of them provide advanced tools which are very helpful for us to anticipate the expenses that involves in moving and according helps us in planning for one. The furniture volume calculator and entire volume calculator are two of the most popular tools that are free to access for customers even before contacting the moving company via their websites.

Timely compilation: Often when we shift to a new place total by our own, it takes us a long time to settle down quickly because we either procrastinate or genuinely have no time to unpack and assemble entirely. But removalists as a part of their whole job will make sure that they prep up the new house in a livable and functional condition.

Commercial moving: Most of us today have a lot of electronic items in our homes. Particularly when the world had to suddenly shut down at the sudden flush of Covid in 2019, most people had to curate their office room at home, and children's classrooms from their bedrooms. Likewise, all of us have accumulated a lot of electronic items, that need special care while moving. They need to be packed particularly and professional commercial movers are aware of handling every electronic item with total care.

It is certainly a good idea to hire a professional to get your job right and to avoid any damage to your belongings while you can keep your anxiety away and focus on the other important formalities that need to be attended to before moving to a new place.

#moving company #house movers melbourne #Furniture Volume Calculator #commercial removalists #house removals melbourne

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nikethestatue · 3 years

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I think it’s time for a RANT

Why is it Elain’s responsibility to reject the bond with Lucien?

Here is an example from my own life--when I was a kid, I grew up in a lot of different places, but primarily in countries, where engagements did not exist. There was no concept of an ‘engagement’. There was no dropping on one knee, no formal proposals, and certainly no ring or other expensive jewelry. Men asked women to marry them, hopefully it was a ‘yes’ and then they maybe planned a wedding celebration, if there was enough money. And if not, then they went to to justice of the peace, signed a paper and went home to celebrate. That’s it.

So, once I moved to the US, for the longest time, I couldn't understand the concept of engagement. Like what was it for? Why the waiting period? If you want to get married, just marry, and that’s it. (There was also no 40K weddings where I lived that you needed to mortgage a house for, to afford). It was just a weird cultural thing and it took a while and acquaintance with the US culture to begin to understand.

Why would Elain, who grew up a human, and has no knowledge of bonds, and places no importance on them (much like Nesta, mind you) be the one who should be dealing with this bond fiasco?

Just because Rhys explained it to Feyre, doesn’t mean that Elain is aware of everything that this stupid bond entails. Does she know that Lucien can potentially go insane or some other dramatic thing like that? All she knows is that she doesn’t really like him or want him, he is part of the reason her engagement fell through and she was rejected, and she clearly doesn’t feel pressed by this bond. She isn’t feral, she doesn’t miss him, she isn’t going crazy if he is hurt (or feels it at all)--none of the ‘normal’ bond emotions and cravings apply to her. She is also desiring another male, and doesn’t care that Lucien is even in the same house when she engages in a romantic interlude with this other man.

Of course it beckons the question as to what is wrong with their bond, but that’s a whole different conversation.

But, let’s ask this--if Lucien is so invested in this bond (which he clearly isn’t, since he is shacking up in the human lands with 2 other people), then why doesn’t he sit down with her and explain it to her? Why does he not offer to court her? She comes from a certain background, where it’s clear that there are formalities that have to be acknowledged and followed around engagement and matrimony. But does HE know about any of it? Does he try to find out how courtship/engagements/marriages work in the human lands? Doesn’t seem like it. Yet, the expectation is that Elain spends hours in the Library poring over tomes, learning about the bond.

So, if we are asking the questions ‘well, why doesn’t Elain reject the bond? why doesn’t she give Lucien a chance? why doesn’t she learn more about it?” then why are we not asking the same questions of Lucien--why doesn’t he take her on a date? Yes, she could decline, but then, at least he tried! Why doesn’t he ask Feyre, for example, to talk to Elain about the bond and how to operate within its confines?

Why do readers, and characters, have this expectation that ‘Elain should deal with the bond’? Elain is not obligated to make Lucien, or any other male feel good about themselves, or make them comfortable, or not hurt their feelings (though again, I don’t feel like she is hurting his feelings, because he doesn’t seem to care).

Elain was brutally rejected by her fiancé, in front of a crowd of people, she was also thrown at this other male that she doesn’t know anything about and isn’t attracted to. As far as we know, she was also called a ‘mistake’ by another male, to whom she is clearly very attracted. Her brother-in-law, unbenounced to her, has made all these detrimental decisions about her life, without giving two thoughts about her or her wants. Did anybody care about Elain’s feelings? Elain is expected to be nice to Lucien? Why? Because he is a nice guy? Do we, as women, go out with every ‘nice guy’ that asks us out? No. We should have a say to whom we offer our affections. And we are not obligated to make any and all ‘nice guys’ feel good, and acquiesce to their desires, at our own expense.

Elain should not be expected to traumatize herself further, by entangling herself in some bond-related brawl, with indifferent Lucien, and freakin’ Beron snapping at the heels, and power-hungry, politically motivated Rhys, and the pining Azriel. The bond is not her thing. The bond is not her responsibility. She can do whatever the hell she wants--ignore it, accept it, reject it, breaking it, because the onus should not be on her, as a female to please all these males around her and offer them an answer.

Nesta had the bond actually snap into place, and still she didn’t want to acknowledge it, standing in front of angry, puppy-eyed Cassian who is melting with love for her, and she is enflamed by love for him. And she was basically ‘yeah, I don’t want it. I am calling in the bargain! I don’t care. I wanna go be with my girlfriends! We are not discussing it.”

Feyre, while clearly in love with Rhys, who is also badly injured, leaves him in the mud in an Illyrian training camp and demands to be hidden, because she can’t deal with the bond.

Yet Elain, who is barely a participating party in this fiasco is somehow expected to make firm declarations and quick decisions.

Hey, but that’s just me.

#elain archeron #lucien vanserra #anti bond #mate bond #acosf #elain #elain acosf #elucien

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sharkselfies · 3 years

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The Minds Behind The Terror Podcast Transcript - Episode 1

Since some folks requested it on Twitter, I’ve started transcribing The Minds Behind The Terror podcast episodes! Below the cut you’ll find episode 1, where showrunners Dave Kajganich and Soo Hugh talk to Dan Simmons, the author of the novel The Terror, about episodes 1-3 of the show. They discuss Simmons’s initial inspiration for writing the book, the decisions they made to adapt it into a television series, and the depictions of some of the characters such as the Tuunbaq, Hickey, and “Lady Silence.”

The Minds Behind The Terror Podcast - Episode 1

[The Terror opening theme music plays]

Dave Kajganich: Hello! Welcome to Minds Behind The Terror podcast. I’m Dave Kajganich, I am a creator and one of the showrunners of the AMC show The Terror, and I’m here in the studio with executive producer and co-showrunner Soo Hugh.

Soo Hugh: Hello!

DK: And we welcome today the author of the sublime novel The Terror, on which our show is based, author Dan Simmons, calling in from Colorado. Welcome, Dan! Hi!

Dan Simmons: Hi Dave, thank you.

DK: So let’s start with the very beginning. This was a mystery from actual naval history that you decided to transform into a novel that was crossed with Gothic horror. Can you tell us a little bit about where you got the idea from this, how you went about preparing to write it, anything that can give us insight into how you blended all of these remarkable genres into this incredible book.

DS: I’ve known since I was a kid that I wanted to tell a story about either the North or South Pole. And the reason is in 1957, 58, when I was very young, actually I was just a fetus, they had the international geophysical year, and that really caught my imagination. Now the international geophysical year saw cooperation between American and Soviet scientists, it was the height of the Cold War, that’s the first time they submit(?) a permanent base at the South Pole, and I fell in love with Arctic stories. I had one book left on a book contract with a publisher I really liked, and we hadn’t decided what that book was, and I wanted to write a scary story about the Arctic, in this case the Northern Arctic, and that happened because I was doing a lot of research on Antarctica and just couldn’t figure out what the macabre, Gothic, scary part would be. I wanted to put it in, but I didn’t think they’d go for, you know, an eight foot tall vampire penguin.

[laughter]

DK: You might be surprised!

DS: There was a footnote on a book I was reading about the Franklin Expedition, which I had never heard of, and I decided that’s what I was gonna write about, and it had a tremendous amount of the unknown that I could fill in, that’s what novelists love. And so I told my editors excitedly that this was what I was gonna do, I would call it The Terror after the HMS Terror that went with the Erebus, got stuck in the ice, all the crew disappeared in history… And they said no.

[laughter]

DS: ...it was the first time the publishers did that. I said, “Why not? I think it’s gonna be a pretty good novel.” And they said, “Look, nobody’s interested in a bunch of people that’ve been dead for 150 years.”

SH: That sounds like some of our meetings.

[laughter]

DS: So I did what maybe you do, in such a meeting, I just thanked them, and I liked them all, and I had a good dinner(?) and I said goodbye, and bought back my last book on the contract and went out and wrote it on spec.

SH: Well why don’t we take a step back, Dave, and why don’t you tell us about how you found Dan’s book and that experience?

DK: Sure! Dan, you might remember some of these steps from your side of it, which is that originally this was auctioned by Universal as a feature, and I sort of tried to get the rights and was a bit too late, and tracked them down to the producers at Universal who were running the project and got myself hired as the screenwriter for a feature adaptation. By the time I was ready to start actually committing an outline to the paper, Universal had let the rights go because there was a competing project. It was interesting to sort of rack up reasons why people wanted to make it but didn’t feel that they could pull the trigger, and we were so grateful when AMC finally called us back and said, “Look, we’ve figured out a model where we can do this as a limited series,” it really felt like ten episodes was a great length for this, because we could blend genres in a way that, you know, we could unpack sort of slowly, more slowly than a lot of shows would’ve done, and drive the plot as much as we could, like the novel, with character choices and decisions as opposed to just horror kind of entering the frame and taking over for one set piece after another. So it was a long journey, getting this to AMC, but at the end of the day I think we found the right home for it.

DS: I can no longer imagine a two hour version, feature film version of this story, and I can’t imagine a second season of this story, I think it was just right.

SH: It does feel like we did a ten hour cinematic novel.

[audio from the show]

Crozier: Only four of us at this table are Arctic veterans. There’ll be no melodramas here--just live men, or dead men.

SH: Dan, Dave and I talk about how addictive the research gets for this when you start going down the rabbit hole, how did you approach the research?

DS: I think most novelists run into that, but since I write a lot of quasi-historical novels, at least set in history, I get totally addicted to going down the rabbit hole. Readers say, “Well, Simmons’ book is too long, and the descriptions of things are too exhausting,” but I watch your characters go on deck and there are all the things and views and everything that I tried so hard to describe and then people tell me, y’know, “talky, verbose,” and in print I have to do it that way, but you just pan the camera a little bit.

DK: You have words, we have images! For every thousand of yours, we get one!

DS: Yeah.

SH: But I remember this passage in your book where it talks about all the different ices, and you vest it with so much psychological import. We talk about that passage a lot in the writers room, it was one of our highlights, of this is how you do great descriptive writing.

DK: And you made so many parallels between things like the environments of the ships and characters, you built a kind of code book for the show without realizing you were doing it, which is making visual metaphors out of a lot of these things that would normally just be exposition or historical detail.

SH: Well especially between Crozier and the ship, I mean when you hear about Crozier’s relationship with Terror, and you have so many amazing passages about, you know, the groan of the ship and how it, y’know, and you cut to a scene with Crozier and how you feel that the bones of Crozier is embedded in the ship, and we really took a lot from that.

DS: Well I noticed that on one of the episodes where Lord Franklin [sic] is trying to get back in touch with Crozier, you know, trying to be friends with him again, I think it’s a brilliant episode you guys wrote.

[show audio]

Franklin: You’ve succeeded in avoiding Erebus most of the winter.

Crozier: I’m a captain. I’m--I’m peevish off my own ship. I leave it and I hear disaster knocking at its door, before I’m ten steps away.

DS: And that was beautifully written, that. You got so much of Crozier right there.

DK: It was a pleasure to write these characters on the backs of your writing of these characters, because you really--I mean, it’s not the easiest thing in the world to do, as you know, from having written, you know, a whole long string of historical books, is to make these people’s psychologies feel as modern as they must have felt in their day, while still being able to articulate some of the blind spots of being from the eras they were from.

I’m curious from sort of a history nerd point of view, if people watch the series and like the series, and read the book and like the book, and want to know more about this expedition, what’s the first book about the Franklin Expedition you would point people to? What was most helpful or most interesting in your research?

DS: I apologize, I can’t think of the name of it, but it’s a collection of stories about both the South and North Pole, and so it’s a short section on the Franklin Expedition, but it didn’t make mistakes, and most of the other books that I read, uh, keyed, and videos for that matter, like PBS did a story about the Franklin Expedition, but they keyed off a 1987 attempt by several doctors to figure out what happened to the crew, and they exhumed three crewmen’s bodies from the first island where they stayed the first winter, and those crewmen had only been on the ship a couple of months, but they decided because of a high lead content that the lead had poisoned them and then made them stupid, and made them paranoid and everything, but they didn’t compare that test of lead with any background people in London at the time, and later they did, so I didn’t believe the lead thing.

DK: Well that’s the fascinating thing about a mystery with this many parts and pieces, kind of in flux, is, you know, you can create all kinds of competing narratives about it, and what’s fascinating about writing a fictional version is you can’t have that kind of ambiguity, you have to make a decision. I think people will enjoy very much ways that the show and the book have a similar point of view, and also ways that they diverge in their points of view, because there are so many ways to tell this story--

SH: Well you know how much we invest responsibility in the audience as well, right?

DK: Sure.

SH: In terms of your book and our show as well, we’re not against interpretation, that there’s a responsibility on the audience’s part to put together--we’re not gonna hand feed them. There’ll be some people who put more of an onus on Franklin, and others who would say, “You know, if I was in that position, I probably would’ve made the same decision,” “Oh no, this definitely killed the men,” “No, this killed them!” and that dialogue is exciting, you know, when you read fans talk about your show and your books and really smart, insightful ways.

[show audio]

Franklin: Would it help if I said that I made a mistake?

Crozier: You misunderstand me, Sir John, I--I only meant to describe why I brood, not that I judge.

DS: I don’t worry about who or what my reading audience is. People ask me about that and I don’t imagine a certain reader. But I’ve always tried to write for somebody who’s more intelligent than I am. My perfect reader would be just smart as hell, speak eight languages, you know, have fantastic world experiences, and I want to write something that will please that person, and I think your show does the same thing.

DK: Well we were--that was our motto! We wanted to be sort of the dumbest members of our collaboration and there’s a sort of horrifying moment when you realize that’s come true.

[laughter]

[show background music]

DK: Tell us a little bit about why you made the decisions to tell the story in the order you told it, and whether you sort of felt like there was anything from the way you had told it that we were--or a missed opportunity. We’d love to know sort of what your experience of that was.

DS: I don’t think there were any missed opportunities in terms of not adapting my way of telling it, and I can’t remember all the reasons for why I broke it down that way, some of them were just very localized to, you know, when I was writing that particular bit. But I do know that it gains a lot by being told chronologically the way you’re doing it, so for me that seems now the logical way to tell it again.

DK: Have you ever read the novel in chronological order? When we hired writers for the writers room, we gave them a list of what the chapters were like in chronological order, and I think we asked half the room to read it in your order and half the room to read it in chronological order so we could have a discussion, a meaningful discussion about whether there were things about telling it without being in chronological order that we wanted to embrace or not. It was a fantastic experience and I wonder if you’ve ever read your chapters in chronological order? ‘Cause it’s also a fantastic book!

[laughter]

DS: I haven’t read it that way, they were that way in my mind before I started getting fancy and breaking them up and moving them around in time and space, but I would love to have seen that experiment.

DK: The reason we can get away with it in the show is because there is a loved book out there that people trust, and you know, it is a classic in this genre, so I mean this is a perfect example of, you know, the amount of gratitude we owe the book, because we got away with a lot of things that maybe we wouldn’t have been able to get away with because you came before us.

SH: And speaking of those rabid fans, Dan, it’s been really interesting reading audience reactions to the show from people who’ve loved the books and who just naturally will compare the two, and we’ve been heartened by just how supportive our fans have become--are of the show. There is this controversy, some people like our choice to give Lady Silence a voice and some people feel it was sacrilege to your book, where do you fall on that? DS: At first I was surprised. In fact when you were hunting for an actress for Lady Silence and I read about that, it said somebody who’s fluent in this Inuit language and this Inuit language, and I said, “What the hell?”

[show audio]

[Silna speaking Inuktitut to her dying father]

DS: Having seen her with the tongue and heard her, and knowing the different reason they call her Lady Silence, it all works for me and I was also surprised when Captain Crozier could speak fairly fluent, you know, dialect, ‘cause I had him just not understanding a thing.

[show audio]

[Crozier speaking Inuktitut to Silna in the same scene as above]

DS: I love it when readers get rabid about not changing something from a book, and I have to talk to them sometimes, not ‘cause I have a lot of things adapted, this is the first one, but I love movies. They say “Aren’t you worried it will hurt your book?” and first I explain Richard Comden(?)’s idea that you can’t hurt a book anyway, except by not reading it, I mean the books are fine, no matter how bad some adaptation becomes. Books abide, and so I wasn’t concerned. With the changes that I see, I get sorta tickled, whereas some readers get upset, and they just have that set. So I think that the vast majority of viewers haven’t--well, I know the vast majority haven’t read the book, haven’t heard of the book, probably, they’re gonna keep watching because of the depth of the characters, and that’s based on the first two episodes, and I agree with them completely.

[show audio]

[Silna speaking Inuktitut]

Crozier: She said that if we don’t leave now, we’re going to “huk-kah-hoi.”

Blanky: Disappear.

SH: We get asked a lot of questions about the supernatural element of the show and the way a monster does or does not figure in the narrative, and seeing our episodes, did it feel surprising or did it feel faithful to the way you imagined it as well to your book?

DS: It was surprising to me at how well it was done, because it’s hard, I know, to show restraint in a series like this, and certainly in a movie, but it’s hard to show restraint at showing and explaining the monster.

[show audio]

[ominous music, Tuunbaq roaring, men screaming]

DS: The way you did it in the first few episodes to me were just lovely, just, you know, a hint of a glance at something and then you see the results of this creature, so that’s what I tried to do in the novel, one of the reasons I moved around through space and time, part of what I wanted to do was not cheapen the story and not cheapen the reality of these poor men dying by just throwing in a monster, and so I tried to do it in a way that would not disrespect the true tale, and I believe you’re doing it the same way I tried.

DK: The way you incorporated the supernatural into the book, I mean, I was a fan of it when I first read it. It was jaw dropping the way that it fits so well on a level of plot, on a level of character, and on a level of theme. So when we got the green light to adapt it I was so confident that we were going to be able to do something with it that would be able to be nuanced because the bones of it are so organically terrific.

SH: It helped us know what we didn’t want to do. That formed so much of our conversation, of “this is what we do not want, this is what we do not want,” and slowly you whittled down to getting down to the essence of what this thing had to be.

[show audio]

[Tuunbaq growling]

DK: Another character from the book that really stands out for fans that they are wondering what in the world we’re doing with is Manson. [laughter] And I was curious what you made of the fact that he is pretty invisible in the first three episodes of the show, and that some of his plot beats have been given to a character called Gibson, who I don’t remember is--I don’t think he’s featured very much in the novel. And I wondered if that caught you off guard or if you sort of intuitively had a sense of what we were doing in making that change?

DS: Any discussion of Manson to me leads to Hickey converting him to his future, his tribe, the tribe he wants to have, group of worshippers, that I think Hickey wants to have, but he does it by sex below decks. Hickey’s not gay at all, he’s a manipulator, to me, and he was manipulating Manson who was big and dumb, in my book, he’s manipulating him by this sexual encounter. But I was curious whether you were worried about showing that?

DK: Well, we weren’t worried about showing characters having same-sex affairs or relationships. We wanted to make room in Hickey’s character for actual affection, or if not affection then companionship, or some kind of connection.

[show audio]

Hickey: Lieutenant Irving! I was hoping we’d meet.

Crewman: Mind the grease there, sir.

Hickey: I wanted to... thank you… for your help. For your discretion, I mean.

Irving: Call it anything but help, Mr. Hickey. Please. I exercised clemency for a man abused by a devious seducer.

DK: We wanted to make sure that Hickey had access to command in some way that a steward, an officer’s steward, would be able to provide him, that an able seaman wouldn’t be able to provide him, and that was really valuable to us in terms of charting out all of these character stories, was how does he know what he knows about how command is dissatisfied or where the fractures are if he can’t see them from where he’s sleeps in his cot in the forecastle.

SH: I mean we know that there were relations between the same sex on ships, it just was part of this world. Not to belie that there was serious consequences for it, but you know, we have 129 characters, and we wanted them to feel fully fledged and rich, and, you know, passions do naturally develop and have no characters engaged in sexual relations would have felt just as odd and perhaps even more controversial, and when Irving discovers Gibson and Hickey, his shock is from such a subjective point of view of his moral center. It’s not the camera’s perspective, right? Our camera’s very neutral in that scene. It’s Irving, that character at that point in the show, that is infusing a sense of horror, that’s his horror moment.

DS: I’d like to add that it’s not the gay connection that would cause criticism, but I was flayed alive because the most openly quote “gay” unquote character, that is, Hickey, you know, maybe hunting for affection but definitely hunting for power, he’s the only one they said in reviews, and he’s a killer and a bad person, so I’m homophobic, but I was flayed alive for that. The word homophobic appeared in about 80 reviews. Nobody mentioned the purser, who uh--

DK: Right, Bridgens and Peglar.

DS: Yeah. I thought he was a fascinating character. I loved getting glimpses of him in the series because he’s super smart, he’s super wise, he’s probably wiser than any of the commanders, ahd he’s obviously in love with--who is it that he’s in love with in the show?

DK: Peglar.

DS: Yes, that makes sense. And, uh, so Peglar says, you know, “Is this another Herodotus?” and, “No, I’m giving you Swift now,” he’s educating the man he cares for.

[show audio]

Hickey: I understand you cleared up our “association” for Lieutenant Irving? Gibson: You spoke to him.

Hickey: Mhm.

Gibson: Directly?

(beat)

Christ, Cornelius, I’d reassured him.

Hickey: Cornelius Hickey is a “devious seducer.” That was your--that was your reassurance? You’ve got some face, you know that?

DK: We wouldn’t have dramatized Hickey’s story if we weren’t also going to pull in Peglar and Bridgens’ story, because we knew that people, you know, are predisposed to sort of make that kind of quick assumption, and we just wanted to make sure that the show didn’t have that blind spot and reflected the book, which also doesn’t have that blind spot.

SH: We had those same questions with Lady Silence, and I’m sure you did as well. When we meet her, she’s a frightened young woman who’s about to lose her father, and that’s a universal character moment that anyone can relate to, and the otherness is sort of--is secondary, but then once--in the end scene of 1.02, when she’s sitting there grieving her father and then you have that language barrier with everyone else, we worked with Nive on this because we wanted to make sure the language itself was as accurate as possible, so when you say disappear making sure that the disappear in our language means the same thing as disappear in her language. I think whenever you have characters that feel othered in most media and you’re bringing them into your show, Dave and I also just wanted to make sure we weren’t swaying on the pendulum on the other side and being almost too careful about touching them, and with Nive I think when you have an actor of that talent, she was strong, she was representing a voice that she felt very confident in, and that was very reassuring for us.

DS: And it works well, and when her father’s dying, she throws herself on his chest and says “I’m not ready, it’s too soon, I’m not ready,” and I love that in the show because if she’s gonna become a Shaman he’s dying you know it’s not reached that point of education yet where she feels secure and later on you know beyond what we’re discussing today she becomes to me in the show I see her as more and more majestic.

SH: I do love the word majestic ‘cause I think it describes pretty much all of our characters. I agree, I do think there is something very sublime about who they have become at the end because when you go through that much trials and tribulations, it’s this beautiful human spirit to endure.

DS: I think that’s one of the central themes of the story that you’ve brought out so clearly. In most post-apocalypse, you know, terrible situation movies and shows, everybody turns nasty as hell, they start shooting each other, it’s just like WWIII when they should be helping each other survive, and I found even though there was controversy, even though there was opposition in this story, people opposing against each other, still that they rose to the occasion. And that is so rare I think in much media these days or even books where the characters are themselves and they do the best they can, and when things get bad they rise to the occasion.

DK: The first conversation you and I had about the book, you know, I was basically pitching you sort of what I thought thematically the book was about, and I talked a lot about, that in a disaster like this, a kind of moral emergency, that we would get a chance to unpack what is sort of best and worst in these characters’ souls.

DS: I confuse readers often when I was on book tour for this book, and it was a long time ago, I’ve written a few million words since then, but I confused people by saying that if you want a theme for the survival story of The Terror, it’s love. It’s love between the men. And just unstinting love. And this came out in a piece of dialogue, in the first two episodes.

[audio from the show]

Franklin: I’ll not have you speak of him uncharitably, James. He is my second. If something were to happen to me, you would be his second. You should cherish that man.

Fitzjames: Sometimes I think you love your men more than even God loves them, Sir John.

Franklin: For all your sakes, let’s hope you’re wrong.

DS: That to me was right the theme I was working with, and with Crozier who shows it a different way, with Fitzjames who’s struggling to show leadership, and between the men despite their hierarchy and the British hierarchy, the rank and lieutenants and so forth, eventually they come down to loving the men they try to save. And I found that lovely.

[The Terror opening theme music plays]

DK: Thank you so much for listening to The Minds Behind The Terror, join us in our next edition when we talk about episodes 4-6 with the additional guest Adam Nagaitis phoning in from London. We will see you soon!

[preview snippet from the next episode plays]

DS: I’ll confess something else to Adam, the first time I watched it, I thought your character was a good guy because he jumped down in that grave to put the lid back on.

[laughter]

#the terror #the terror amc #the minds behind the terror #david kajganich #soo hugh #dan simmons #personal #eps 2-4 should be up within the next couple days here!#hope this will be helpful!#also i am absolutely not a professional lmk if you see any mistakes or think a dif format would be better #and i'll add a google doc link in the reblogs too the tags will just break if it try to add it now

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