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woulddieforperrytheplatypus · 4 years

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Dan Povenmire, co-creator of Phineas and Ferb and the voice of Dr. Heinz Doofenshmirtz, just did a zoom call for fans, and this is a link to it on Google Drive and a link to it on YouTube.

Here’s a brief overlay brought to you by my incessant live blogging, and because I was speed typing on my phone, I can guarantee not everything made the cut. If you’re interested in hearing Dan talk about growing up an artist and becoming an animator and trying to pitch Phineas and Ferb and working on the show and movies, I would definitely suggest checking out the full 75 minute video. The highlights from the call are below the cut.

They added Doof and Perry because they liked chase scenes. They realized fairly quickly that more than not, the pair led to good comedy, and found it much more interesting to see how their relationship developed. He also says that they are "the most important person to each other” and “they’re really good friends.”

They wrote the Perry theme song in an hour between meetings with Disney

They decided during the pilot that they weren't going to try to get comedy from the characters saying mean things to each other. Even Doofenshmirtz wasn't motivated by evil, he just wanted to get the attention he didn't get at home.

Doof’s backstories were not Dan and Swampy's idea. They were from Jon Barry and Chris Hendrick, who [itched the lawn gnome backstory. It was long and compliated and Dan and Swampy couldn’t stop laughing. They also provided the "it all started on the day of my birth” one the next day.

making the 2D movie while making the movie was the busiest Dan says he has ever been, and that's not even counting the PnF Take Two and Doof's web show and all the interviews. Basically, 2010ish was a very busy time in the Dwampyverse.

They decided to give each pair of writers their own section of an outline to work on, and each pair got to make up the dialogue and jokes based on it. it works well for the show, but writers kept going on their own tangents and the movie ended up like 6 hours long. Dan and Kyle Menke had to redraw 80% of the show because they had to cut gags out and rewrite it so it was still funny. Note: in the new movie, they did the opposite — they wrote a script and told the board artists that they could put brief gags in but nothing too long

He thinks the show became one of the most beloved shows bc it was innocent and the adult humor wasn't dirty so the whole family could watch it together. He also said the songs at the closest thing you get to immortality in a show. Those combined made the show as big of a hit as it was, and hopefully those things will get older people to watch the movie.

His advice if you want to follow in his footsteps are to draw (and suggest you check out Cartoon Animation by Preston Blaire and How to Draw Comics the Marvel Way by Stan Lee) and to know that these jobs are out there

One of his favorite gags in PnF are the silent moments where something big happens and no one reacts (like something big fell in an early episode and crashed next to Phineas and co and at first they were all shocked but Dan changed it to them just kinda looking at it for a moment with no emotion)

Q: Did you ever want to quit what you were going?

A: "I don't really... do... anything else..."

He finished his new pilot today (July 2nd, 2020) and the movie is due tomorrow.

He would love to do more PnF and there's been talks of another PnF movie

He would love to do more Milo Murphy's Law, but it never got huge ratings and Disney's not too big on it but if people start watching it on Disney+ they might get to keep doing it. They did that with Family Guy, and it could happen to MML too.

The movie feels like old Phineas and Ferb and there are a lot of great songs!

And now, the Q&A (in which he draws random characters are he talks)

How was the process of kicking the voices?

It was sometime easy but sometimes very difficult. For Phineas, they listened to maybe a thousand people. they actually recorded someone but they put it to animation and it didn't really work. He knew as soon as he heard Vincent that he loved him. They literally recasted the lead (Vincent) the day before they had to deliver the pilot.

He knew immediately that he liked Alison Stoner. She was the second Isabella he heard, and he listened to maybe 50 others afterwards, but he knew he wanted Alison Stoner

They decided on a different Candace and they sent it to the head of the channel and the guy asked if he heard Ashley Tisdale. He told Dan to have her come in and give her direction and Dan was hesitant bc he had one that he liked but he was lowkey forced to bring her in. It was his only audition that day, and after his big block of text Dan gave her like 20 notes and she wrote the notes on the big block of text and she did it again and it was perfect and obviously Candace (but he feels bad for the actress that was almost Candace bc she'll never know how close she was)

What was the most impactful episode you worked on?

Either the last (hard to watch w/o crying) or three moments that made himcey while doing them: the end of Summer Belongs To You when Phineas gives up trying to get off the island and decides to watch the sunset with Isabella which was what she always wanted and she exploded and talked him back up onto being the person he is even tho it's a sacrifice on her behalf. He later says he started crying while pitching to his wife the AYA scene of Phinabella getting together.

Do you regret any episodes?

There are some he likes more and some he likes less but he doesn't regret any of them. He was a little disappointed in an early episode without a sing but he watched it alter and decided it was actually pretty decent. None of them make him cringe or wonder why they did that.

How has social media impacted PnF?

He recently got on TikTok and found out that's where all the PnF fans are. He was thrilled to see the response everything was getting and it made him feel good about everything he accomplished. The fact that this generation knows what an aglet is is his biggest accomplishment in pop culture.

Favorite part of working on the show/movie

He likes editing, but writing the songs is the most fun bc it feels the least like work

Who is Ferb's mom?

Never established or really thought about Ferb's mom or Phineas's dad AND IT'S NOT DOOFENSHMIRTZ THEY MADE IT IMPOSSIBLE FOR THAT TO BE TRUE STOP ASKING and Phineas and Candace are full brother and sister. The bio parents aren't interesting to them bc the family already has a mom and dad and the other ones are just out of the picture and not important.

Will there be a new character in the movie?

Super Super Big Doctor (and Disney keeps telling him what he can and can't talk about)

Are there any secrets or theories that he can tell them?

The freaking creepy pasta about schitzophrenic Candace IS NOT TRUE Phineas and Ferb do exist and are alive. There's also a theory that Candace is not based on the diary of a teen girl in Russia who killed herself, and that's not true either. He genuinely thinks they are really freaking stupid theories and they make no sense at all.

Who is your favorite guest star?

Writing a song with Slash from Guns n Roses was really cool. He also liked working with Ben Stiller, Christian Slater the delivery guy (he called and said he'd do any part in MML so they wrote him a role), Jack McBrayer (Irving/Fix It Felix), Wayne Brady (co-wrote In The Empire)

What is the motivation of Candace to bust the boys?

He's not trying to hurt them. She doesn't dislike them. She gets irritated but she's really just looking for fairness. If she built a rollercoaster in the backyard, she'd get in trouble, so they should get in trouble, too.

How did you think about hot to end the show?

Disney was starting to cool off on PnF. The merch wave had plateaued. Dan and Swampy had the next two years in the show already made, but Disney wouldn't pick up another season until they finished airing that season. They'd have to restaff for a new season and they didn't like that idea, so they turned one of their hour long specials into the finale. He wanted to be able to say goodbye and thank the fans.

#phineas and ferb #dan povenmire #candance against the universe #catu #PnF #I'm working on getting the zoom call on youtube but it's taking forever

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reyloandotherfandoms · 4 years

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When I first saw that Chris Terrio had given an interview “explaining” TROS, I wasn’t going to read it.

But then, I thought, hey! Let’s see what the corporate spin is on this disaster!

1. “...it’s about taking the ideas that came from ‘VIII’ and trying to complicate them and develop them and to have some new surprises.”

Umm...the ideas from VIII were plenty complex. They didn’t need to be “complicated”, they needed to be explored. And if you were trying for new surprises, you failed utterly. Everything about this movie was completely predictable to anyone who’d seen the other eight movies. Okay, moving on.

2. re: Rey Palpatine. Terrio argues that this reveal is in dialogue with “The Last Jedi” rather than just a ret-con of it. What dialogue? The idea that the Force isn’t tied to bloodlines, that people can be strong no matter their ancestry, was a major theme of TLJ, and it was echoed even at the end, with Broom Boy. Saying that Rey actually did get her powers from her genetic heritage is directly opposed to that theme, not in dialogue with it. Unless, of course, that dialogue is nothing more than a taunt of “In your face, Johnson!” So that statement is some bullcrap. Next one.

3. Terrio added that anyone who thinks he and Abrams ignored the direction of “The Last Jedi” or countered it rather than developed and deepened it...are “not understanding how writers think.” That’s an interesting statement, since what I’ve seen from this fandom is an enormous amount of creativity and intelligence, including fanfiction that is far superior to many works of published fiction. There are also innumerable meta that explore the story structure of the ST and of the three-trilogy body of work as a whole, written by people who know what they’re talking about. I agree that somebody doesn’t understand how writers think, but I don’t think it’s the fans.

4. “We wanted to show all the characters growing in some way.“ One of my biggest problems with this movie was the static nature of the characters. They had basically no arcs whatsoever, except for Ben, whose arc has been building from Episode VII and who regresses immensely before making the final push to become Ben Solo again. So you failed at that, dude. Big time.

5. “ Luke stopping Rey from tossing a saber away....That moment for us was about Luke having learned something and ... he will not let Rey make the same mistake that he did.” Unpopular opinion incoming -- I actually agree with this statement. That’s how I read the whole Luke interaction when I saw TROS. In TLJ, he was still too into his own head, still a bit of the whiny farm boy from Episodes IV and V; here, he actually seems to finally be wise. My issue with this particular Luke segment is simply that it was rushed too quickly (which was no different than the rest of the movie).

6. “ As J.J. said, that it would almost be weird for Palpatine not to be in some way in this movie.” No, it wouldn’t, because he was canonically dead.Threats to peace can come from anywhere, and there were any number of big bads in the EU that could have been used here, if you didn’t want to go with an original character.

7. “We probably could have written a whole movie that was just a lead up to Kylo Ren going to get the wayfinders...Where he now is the king, and he had to sort of earn the throne. And now, how will he perform as Supreme Leader?” Innumerable amounts of people would have paid such good money, multiple times, to watch that story, if it were done well (and probably if it were done in a mediocre way, to tell the truth). You left something really interesting in the Idea Trash Can.

8. “I think Rey has to keep asking herself who she is and keep declaring who she is in the course of this movie, and that changes. At the beginning of the movie, Rey is a different person than she is at the end,” Actually, she’s not (see point #4 above). You may have intended for her to wrestle with her Palpatinian heritage, but then you never gave her time to do so (never even wrote it into the script, apparently). She struck me as frustratingly indifferent about it, to be honest. So, that’s another big fail for you.

9. “I don’t think we think of it as she’s going to live there,” Terrio said. “We thought of it as just paying her respects and sort of undoing the original sin at the end of the third movie, which is the separation of the twins.“ Then that’s another big fail, because everyone I’ve talked to about that ending believes she is going back to live there. That was the message we got from the way it was written, shot, and edited. It says the exact opposite of what you’re claiming it says. So either a) you’re spouting bullcrap because you realize it was a horrible ending; or b) J.J. Abrams is an utterly incompetent filmmaker.

10. re: Rey Skywalker “In the end, we thought that the final victory of the Light and the final act of self-affirmation for Rey was to declare that despite her blood she is a Skywalker. At that moment, the Skywalkers truly win the family saga.” Um, you people had a whole-ass actual Skywalker with a complex backstory and a tremendous fan following -- remember him? Yeah, the guy who sacrificed his life to save the woman he loved, the woman who was essentially his parents’ “replacement child” for him. He died and then was never mentioned again, and there is no indication that even his soulmate ever mourned his passing. That is not a win for the Skywalker family, not by any stretch of the imagination.

11. re: the Force Ghosts at the end. “Spiritually, it’s not a crazy idea that all the Jedi would be standing with them, but it might’ve been a bit of a visual shock to see all these new characters on Tatooine who weren’t part of the story of Leia, Luke and Rey.” The Ben Solo erasure is breathtakingly astounding. I just can’t even with this. AN ENTIRE MAJOR CHARACTER FROM THE FRANCHISE’S MAJOR FAMILY DIES AND IS COMPLETELY IGNORED. It is absolutely shitty storytelling. But then again, I’m probably way off base here, since I “don’t understand how writers think.”

12. re: the specific Force Ghosts they chose. “But, the twins never got to Tatooine together. So, the idea of seeing the twins together after the sabers are laid to rest felt like it was something that was very moving to me and J.J.” First of all, the twins were on Tatooine together in Episode VI, so jot that down. (Seriously, did these people even watch any of the other movies? Sure doesn’t seem like it, from the amount of canon that got exploded or ignored.) Second, I’m glad it was a moving idea for you and J.J.; how nice that you were able to share those feelings with each other. However, this movie isn’t about you. It’s about the story. And within the context of the story, it made no sense for Rey to go bury the sabers on Tatooine in the first place, no matter how great you all thought that Force Ghost thing felt. That, in short, is what was wrong with the entire movie -- it wasn’t about the actual story, at all. It was about making pretty set pieces and cool-looking battles. It was a shallow veneer that hid a hollow core.

Ugh. Enough. Had to have my say but am going to go write some more positive fanfiction now. Because what we need in the world is hope, not melancholy, and we sure didn’t get it from TROS.

#tros spoilers #bensolodeservesbetter #allthecharactersintrosdeservebetter

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bestworstcase · 4 years

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a comprehensive guide to zhan tiri’s lore or, it’s not that confusing or contradictory, i promise

first things first: if you are somebody who pays attention to creator interviews and you are interested in canonical zhan tiri lore, i want you to gather up everything you’ve ever heard chris say about zhan tiri and erase it from of your brain. i know he’s made statements regarding his interpretation of her backstory but this post was made by death of the author gang and we are interested ONLY in what is stated and shown in the text itself. meaning belongs to the viewers, and creator interpretation is irrelevant.

ready? let’s go!

who or what is zhan tiri?

zhan tiri’s first appearance in coronan history occurred thousands of years ago; in plus est en vous, rapunzel specifies two thousand, but every other mention of zhan tiri as a historical figure is “eons” or “millennia,” and the most objective source we have—the plus est flashback—is marked “thousands of years ago.”

there is no direct evidence to suggest that she existed prior to this, but i think there is enough circumstantial support for this theory to conclude that she did: namely, the existence of idols and other religious iconography associated with her name. my reasoning here is as follows:

the plus est en vous flashback shows demanitus banishing zhan tiri to the lost realm. this makes it—give or take a few years—the last point in time when zhan tiri would have been free and thus able to make any lasting cultural impact.

it follows that any relevant historical artifacts we see must predate the plus est flashback, as they represent a time when zhan tiri had a significant enough cultural impact to fuel their creation.

moreover, though sugracha and tromus are the only disciples of zhan tiri who directly appear in the series, it is implied that there are many more:

Lord Demanitus was in a constant battle with Zhan Tiri and his brethren. Over the years, Demanitus captured many of the evil spirits and held them prisoner in that chamber. (S1, Painter’s Block)

much of the coronan folklore concerning the demanitus-zhan tiri relationship is... wrong, but due to sugracha’s verifiable imprisonment in the demanitus chamber, i feel it reasonable to conclude that this tidbit is correct in that there are, or at least were, other disciples held inside the demanitus chamber. and, as with the historical artifacts associated with zhan tiri, it is logical to conclude that whatever cult produced these disciples predated the plus est flashback.

so, we’ve established the historical artifacts and iconography associated with zhan tiri came before the plus est flashback, but what exactly does that entail, and what does it tell us about zhan tiri’s true nature?

icons of zhan tiri: an overview

#1: janus point

janus point is a henge, and based on the iconography—the ram’s head symbol is plastered all over the jardinière and the henge pillars—it appears to be a site dedicated specifically to zhan tiri. the same symbol also appears on the seal in which sugracha’s spirit was trapped inside the demanitus chamber and is unique in that the muzzle appears to corkscrew.

the appearance of the henge evokes a quasi-religious flavor, and in who’s afraid of the big bad wolf, rapunzel refers to the site as a “mystical ground.” at the very least, this is a ritual site that was heavily associated with zhan tiri, and it would not be much of a stretch to conclude she was outright worshipped here.

#2: the spire idol

this artifact appears in both the keeper of the spire and race to the spire. it’s a small stone idol kept in the spire’s... gatehouse, for lack of a better term, and it depicts the basic ram-headed hulking demon zhan tiri. nothing is said about it in either episode.

#3: the tree of zhan tiri

there is zhan tiri iconography all over this tree.

the stone ram’s head over the entrance...

...the bas-relief in the first chamber...

...more ram’s heads over all the interior archways and the scroll shelves...

...and a return of the corkscrew-snouted ram’s head from janus point on the altar for this glorious oversized flytrap.

#4: the shell house

tromus’s shrine gives us yet another variation on the ram’s head symbol as well as another full-body idol and also, though i didn’t get a screenshot of it because it’s hard to see with the way tumblr resizes images, a little ram’s head symbol on the clasp of his robes.

so where did this imagery come from?

with the exception of the spire idol, there is evidence to suggest that zhan tiri herself had direct influence over the design of all this iconography.

janus point seems to have held some importance to zhan tiri herself; when she appears to varian in cassandra’s revenge, she surrounds herself with pieces of it and superimposes her own head on top of the tree.

further, the corkscrew-snouted ram’s head reoccurs at the great tree, which is unique among the sites associated with her in that we know zhan tiri actually resided there for what sounds like a significant amount of time; according to the legend adira shares, the great tree was zhan tiri’s “stronghold.”

this means that it’s plausible that either (a) zhan tiri herself shaped the symbols on display in the tree, or (b) they were modeled after her by her contemporaries. the interesting thing about this, there are four distinct variations on the ram’s head symbol inside the tree: 1) long, thick snout with elongated horns; 2) angular, no snout, short horns, 3) corkscrew-snouted, and 4) humanlike skull with ram horns.

and likewise, the iconography inside the shell house was created by someone we know to have been a contemporary of zhan tiri’s; tromus was one of the students of demanitus who turned against him to join zhan tiri instead, and it is logical to assume that he did, in fact, see zhan tiri in the flesh at some point—and his ram’s head design is yet again different.

this begs the question: if all five of these designs were modeled on zhan tiri herself, why is there such variety in the basic shape? i believe this is a strong point in favor of considering zhan tiri a shapeshifter who chose and stuck with a single general form for long periods of time but casually and frequently modified the smaller details. and in fact, we do see her do this in season three, with the most notable occurrence being. this:

so, we have concluded that:

zhan tiri’s historical iconography predates the plus est flashback, and

accurately represented her physical appearance from that time

from this, the only reasonable conclusion is that zhan tiri is a shapeshifter, who spent a considerable amount of time in the giant, ram-headed demon form depicted in all of her pre-demanitus iconography.

but she’s human in the plus est flashback!

in the series, human characters are designed with a wide diversity of shapes and sizes, but their color palettes stay within the range of realism, with natural skin tones and eye/hair colors. zhan tiri is... not like that.

she may be human-shaped, but her color palette sits drastically outside the norms the series has established for human characters; her skin is dead white, her hair is a dull lilac color, her eyes are bright purple with a circle of gold around the pupils. none of these are natural human colors.

there is precedent in the series for marked changes in appearance and coloration as a result of meddling with magical forces: when cassandra claims the moonstone, it turns her hair and eyes bright blue and gives her an unhealthy-looking pallor. rapunzel’s hair, likewise, turns gold due to the sundrop’s influence. thus, taking this in isolation, it wouldn’t be out of the realm of possibility to conclude that zhan tiri, too, has had her appearance altered by whatever magical nonsense she’s been mucking around with.

however, if we look at this design in the context of the conclusions we’ve already drawn about her historical iconography and what that tells us about her true nature, i think a much simpler and more plausible explanation is that zhan tiri, being a shapeshifter, donned this humanlike form in order to get closer to demanitus. there could be any number of reasons for doing so—considering demanitus’s fixation on seeking the drops for the right reasons, i would imagine creating some distance from the malevolent monster form in order to gain his trust would have played a role in this decision.

five final points in favor of shapeshifting

#1: zhan tiri in the lost realm

we see in plus est en vous that the lost realm causes absurd magical mutations in people who are trapped there. varian theorizes that these mutations could become irreversible if they stay in the lost realm for long enough, but given that they are all freed shortly thereafter and the changes revert, there is no concrete evidence for or against this theory.

still, this raises an interesting question: if the lost realm mutates anyone who enters it, and if these changes become irreversible after long periods of time what would happen if a shapeshifter was trapped there for thousands of years?

when zhan tiri escapes from the lost realm, she isn’t all that different in appearance from when she entered it. she’s much smaller. her hairstyle has changed a bit. she lost the bag at some point. but that’s... really it. it’s a much less drastic alteration than we see happening with the coronans, who are shown transforming into objects and animals, with their bodies distorted, or with pieces of themselves becoming detached and floating away. and these changes also serve her manipulation of cass by making her appear small, weak, and harmless, so it isn’t out of the realm of possibility for zhan tiri to have chosen this form for herself.

i think it is reasonable to assume that zhan tiri, being a shapeshifter herself, was able to, if not outright resist whatever magic in the lost realm causes these mutations, at least “fix” them as they happened. her brief appearance in painter’s block supports the idea that she retained the ability to shapeshift while inside the lost realm, since she appears there as the ram-headed demon.

#2: her shapeshifting disciples

both tromus and sugracha are able to appear human, and sugracha states that she can take “many forms” in painter’s block. though it’s never explained where they got this power, it is reasonable to conclude that they received it from zhan tiri—she is their master, and the implication very much seems to be that it was she who gave them their creepy green spirit form of immortality.

and, if zhan tiri is handing out powers of shapeshifting to her minions, it follows that she must be capable of shapeshifting herself, too.

#3: gremlin zhan tiri’s demonic shadow

this shows up in cassandra’s revenge and plus est en vous and seems to straightforwardly suggest that zhan tiri’s true nature is closer to the ram-headed demon, with the humanlike form being more of a disguise.

#4: we see her shapeshift in plus est en vous.

she briefly loses her grip on the humanlike nature of the gremlin form when rapunzel blasts her with the sundrop, as i noted above. and later—once she has the drops in hand and the gremlin form has no further use to her—she sheds it altogether to return to yet another variation on the ram-headed demon, albeit one that looks more... monkey than ram:

#5: and finally, zhan tiri herself says so

in race to the spire:

I believe Cassandra promised us a proper introduction, but she failed to deliver, didn’t she? Frankly, I’m surprised you hadn’t guessed who I am—seeing as how we’ve already met, in a way. You see, over the centuries, I’ve taken the form of whatever suits my needs: a warlock, a demon... even a blizzard.

she also portrays herself as the ram-headed demon in the vision she gives to cassandra in once a handmaiden:

now... zhan tiri is a liar, and if these were statements given in isolation of any supporting evidence, i would be skeptical. however, when all the evidence in the text points toward zhan tiri being a shapeshifting entity as the most logical explanation for everything we see of her throughout the series, i’m inclined to take her corroborating statements as a factual confirmation.

in conclusion: zhan tiri is, and has always been, a shapeshifter. if she has a “true” form, the evidence points toward it being the large, ram-headed, tentacled demon, while the humanlike shape(s) we see in season three are forms she assumed to ingratiate herself to demanitus and, later, cassandra.

what’s the timeline with her and lord demanitus?

time in this series is fuzzy. this applies not only to zhan tiri and demanitus, but to every historical event discussed by the characters and the timespans covered by each season, where the only time markers are the lantern festivals that celebrate rapunzel’s nineteenth, twentieth, and twenty-first birthdays and a few throwaway lines about the passage of months. thus, there is no way to say with absolute certainly when any specific event in zhan tiri’s backstory occurred chronologically. we have to do our best to arrange the events we know about in an order that is logical.

this is complicated by the fact that we know demanitus fudged some of the details to make himself look better to rapunzel and eugene: he obscured the fact that he and zhan tiri were working partners for an unknown length of time. this verifiable lie of omission casts a patina of doubt over everything else he says regarding their shared past, but it also accounts for discrepancies between what we see and what we’re told.

as always in unreliable narrator situations, what we see has far more weight than what we’re told. with this in mind, there are three tiers of trustworthiness in the information we are given about zhan tiri’s past: most trustworthy are the flashbacks and things we see with our own eyes; in the middle are the accounts of zhan tiri’s contemporaries—demanitus and the disciples; and at the bottom are the folk legends recounted by xavier and adira.

so what do we see?

#1: zhan tiri and demanitus searched for the drops together

just how this arrangement came to be is unclear, but i think we can glean some interesting information from the plus est flashback.

DEMANITUS: Zhan Tiri! This is your last warning! Give up this foolish quest for power.

ZHAN TIRI: This quest for the sundrop and moonstone was both of ours.

DEMANITUS: It was, until you made it about something darker. You made it all about gaining power for yourself! You turned your back on what was right!

ZHAN TIRI: And you turned your back on me. As long as I live, I will never stop until I have that power!

DEMANITUS: I know.

[He activates the portal to the Lost Realm.]

ZHAN TIRI: This is far from over! I will have that power, and when I do, I will destroy your beloved Corona! I promise you!

[The portal closes.]

DEMANITUS: I had no choice, Vigor. I had to send her to the Lost Realm.

this suggests a couple things.

first, the working relationship between demanitus and zhan tiri broke down because her selfish desire for power clashed with his idealism. demanitus didn’t want the power of the combined sundrop and moonstone for himself; he wanted to reunite them in the service of a cause he believed to be right. zhan tiri, by contrast, was interested solely in acquiring that power for herself—but given how demanitus reacted when he learned this, it seems obvious that he didn’t know that about zhan tiri until later in their relationship.

in other words, there was some level of deceit on her part involved with their partnership from the very beginning. she hid her true motives from him; she may also have hidden her true nature from him. i think there is support both for and against the latter point: in the present day, demanitus describes zhan tiri as “a warlock”—a word zhan tiri uses as an example of her duplicitous shapeshifting—but he also describes her as being “from another realm”—suggesting he knew her to be something otherworldly or inhuman.

i tend to fall on the side of demanitus knowing her basic nature while they were contemporaries, but believing she shared his more noble motivations at first, but i think a strong argument could be made in favor of him believing her to be human from the start and only discovering her true nature later.

second, demanitus appears to have cared for zhan tiri far more than she cared for him. in the flashback, she’s angry at his betrayal, but her focus is on her desire for the power of the sundrop and moonstone. by contrast, demanitus gives her plenty of warning and chances to turn away from her dark path, pleads with her to “give up” her selfish motivations, and expresses clear regret after her refusal forces him to banish her to the lost realm.

this, again, supports the interpretation that zhan tiri manipulated or used demanitus to further her own goals, just as she would later do with cassandra, rather than this being a true partnership that broke down as a result of differing goals. she doesn’t care about him any more than she cared about cass.

#2: zhan tiri’s behavior in season three

season three firmly establishes zhan tiri as a skilled manipulator who does not care about anyone or anything besides herself and her pursuit of her own power. i won’t get into the weeds with this—if you want to read a breakdown of (some) of zhan tiri’s manipulation of cass in season three, i wrote a post about once a handmaiden here—because for our purposes, we just need to understand that the basic character of zhan tiri as we see her in the present should inform our interpretation of her behavior in the past.

in other words, i think it is safe to assume that zhan tiri applied similar techniques and principles of manipulation to demanitus as we see her do to cassandra in the present; to wit, she would have sought to make him emotionally dependent on her by exploiting whatever vulnerabilities she could find and presenting herself to him as a trustworthy friend and kindred spirit.

#3: she is not close to her disciples

once she is freed, zhan tiri never so much as mentions tromus or sugracha again. moreover, it is unclear how much personal information they actually know about her: in painter’s block, sugracha refers to zhan tiri as “he,” which could indicate one of several things:

zhan tiri is female, but her disciples don’t know her well enough for assumptions they made about her gender based on the appearance of the ram-headed demon form to have been corrected, or

zhan tiri doesn’t subscribe to human conceptualizations of gender, and both “she” and “he” are acceptable pronouns because the gendered connotations of both are equally irrelevant.

i, personally, prefer the second explanation, but the first is tenuously supported by how little zhan tiri cares for her disciples.

what do her contemporaries say?

lord demanitus’s telling of his conflict with zhan tiri is as follows:

Millennia ago, a mysterious event in the heavens divided an ancient power in two. The sundrop and moonstone fell to the earth. Three of my pupils and I researched the legend of the sundrop and moonstone, two elements that longed to reunite. We searched, but alas could not find them.

Unfortunately, we were not the only ones looking. My pupils betrayed me, and summoned my old nemesis, Zhan Tiri: a warlock from another realm, bent on destruction. It took all of my powers to banish the evil from our world.

I knew the research I had written about the sundrop and moonstone was valuable. Dangerous, in evil hands. So I tore the scroll and hid the pieces...

this exposition also shows us the identities of the three pupils who turned against demanitus and joined zhan tiri instead: sugracha, tromus, and gothel.

their identities are all confirmed outside of this sequence: sugracha and tromus appear as loyal servants of zhan tiri, and in a tale of two sisters, rapunzel and cassandra discover gothel’s research on the sundrop flower, including a piece that is an obvious attempt to recreate the demanitus scroll, indicating that gothel was indeed his student at one time:

though it appears that gothel abandoned zhan tiri as well once she found the sundrop flower, as she hoarded its power for herself rather than seeking to use it to free her former master from the lost realm.

now... because demanitus leaves out the part of this story that would involve admitting he worked with zhan tiri before she became his “nemesis,” we can’t say with any certainty when this business with his traitorous pupils freeing her happened—or, indeed, if it actually happened that way at all. it isn’t out of the realm of possibility that the three disciples could have been pupils of both demanitus and zhan tiri, who stuck with zhan tiri after demanitus betrayed her and banished her to the lost realm.

my personal belief is that demanitus gathered his pupils to help him continue the search for the sundrop and moonstone after the flashback in plus est, only for them to be lured away by zhan tiri (perhaps via communication in dreams or visions, as cassandra’s revenge establishes that she’s capable of entering people’s dreams whilst trapped in the lost realm) and free her by reactivating the portal—thus shifting demanitus’s focus from “find the sundrop and moonstone” to “put the demon back in her prison and clean up this mess.”

however, this is all very up for personal interpretation, because demanitus’s version of events is verifiably deceptive and thus cannot be taken as hard fact.

and what do the folk legends say?

#1: the blizzard

Eons ago, an evil warlock, Zhan Tiri, had a deep hatred for Corona, and cast a spell which caused a blizzard to sweep across the land. The storm destroyed everything in its path. All would have been lost, had it not been for the ancient engineer and inventor, Lord Demanitus.��

Using both magic and science, Demanitus built a massive subterranean machine deep in the Coronan mountains. This mighty device had the ability to change the direction of the wind, and it pushed the flurries out to the sea. The day was saved. Zhan Tiri had indeed been defeated. But some say the curse of the storm lives on, and is simply waiting to strike again...

we know that the basic event described here really happened, because the demanitus device does exist in the location indicated by the legend and works just as described. the details may have been glossed over or elaborated on over the centuries, but we know it is accurate in the essentials.

until recently, i put the events described in this legend immediately before the plus est flashback, to account for the snow on the ground during the flashback, but over the course of writing this post i have actually changed my own mind, and i now think that zhan tiri’s blizzard occurred when the disciples freed her from the lost realm for the first time. why? well, the imagery used to illustrate xavier’s telling of the blizzard legend is directly echoed by the imagery used to illustrate zhan tiri’s release in demanitus’s account in lost and found:

queen for a day.

and lost and found.

the color palettes here are identical, and in both, zhan tiri is depicted as the ram-headed demon, in almost the same pose, rising out of the mountains—which fits with both the location of the demanitus device and the possibility that she created (or became) the blizzard immediately after being released from the portal in the coronan mountains. moreover, her hatred of corona is based on her hatred of demanitus and her vengeful desire to destroy everything he loves, which would logically be stronger after he successfully imprisoned her once.

#2: the great tree

Millennia ago, this tree was once a sentient being, a force for good. But it was corrupted by the evil sorcerer [Zhan Tiri] to destroy any who approached it. It was Zhan Tiri’s stronghold. Inside it, he was invincible. But Lord Demanitus put a stop to the tree’s magic using an enchanted spear.

as with xavier’s blizzard legend, the fact of the spear’s existence and the behavior of the great tree itself once the spear is removed proves the basic accuracy of this legend.

the difficulty hear lies with pinpointing when all this occurred. unlike the blizzard, there are no contextual clues to suggest where this conflict at the great tree may lie in the general timeline, so any conclusions we draw must be based on speculation. the only thing we know for sure is that zhan tiri’s residence in the great tree ended during demanitus’s lifetime, which puts a hard stop in it at about two thousand years ago.

my theory is that zhan tiri corrupted and resided in the great tree long before demanitus’s time. adira calls it her stronghold, and as discussed in the first section, the great tree has the greatest variety and frequency of zhan tiri iconography of any location in the series. one of the symbols inside the great tree is even found thousands of miles away at janus point—the corkscrew-snouted ram’s head—which draws a possible line of influence from the tree to janus point. taken together, all of this suggests a long period of time during which the great tree was zhan tiri’s tree.

and as for when it entered into the conflict between demanitus and zhan tiri, i believe there are two possibilities:

demanitus knew of zhan tiri’s use of the great tree as a fortress, and she allowed him inside while they were collaborating in their search for the drops. she likely hid the violent nature of its defenses from him for a while; then she either let her guard down and allowed him to glimpse more of the truth, or the tree as attacked and he inadvertently witnessed a brutal massacre. either way, this is what clued him in to her ulterior motives, and he crafted the spear to destroy the tree’s magic—and it is this betrayal that zhan tiri references in the plus est flashback when she says “you turned your back on me.”

zhan tiri had been using the great tree as a home for many years without the aggressive kill-anyone-who-enters security measures, allowing it to function as a library or house of research. this may have been how she and demanitus encountered each other in the first place, and would go a long way to explaining why demanitus trusted her initially. it wasn’t until demanitus turned against her and imprisoned her in the lost realm, and her subsequent release by his pupils, that she became enraged and turned the great tree into an indiscriminate killing machine and demanitus forged his magical spear to stop her.

i think both options are equally plausible, and since there isn’t any direct evidence one way or another, this is another case for personal interpretation and preference to really come into play.

so, to sum up...

at some point around two thousand years ago, lord demanitus encountered zhan tiri, and she persuaded him to trust her and work with her to find the mythical sundrop and moonstone. she was most likely just using him the whole time, while he grew to care for her but became so uncomfortable with her violent methods and selfish motivations that he felt he had no choice to imprison her in the lost realm.

his pupils—whom he either once shared with zhan tiri, or gathered after the breakdown of his relationship with zhan tiri—turned against him, and either took her side in the conflict, or successfully freed her from the lost realm. i think the latter explanation(s) fit better with the information we are given.

the blizzard discussed in queen for a day most likely happened after the plus est flashback and her subsequent release by the disciples.

the conflict at the great tree most likely occurred either right before or at some point after the plus est flashback and her subsequent release, but it is plausible to assume that by this point she had been residing in the great tree for a considerable amount of time prior to working with demanitus.

demanitus defeated zhan tiri and her disciples, imprisoned her in the lost realm, imprisoned most if not all of her disciples in the demanitus chamber, destroyed the portal to the lost realm so she couldn’t easily be brought back, and transferred his soul into the immortal body of a monkey so he could spend the next two thousand years as a... watchman of sorts, over the drops, probably with the hope that he could step in to prevent zhan tiri’s release if necessary.

#rta #tts #zhan tiri #demanitus #w h e w

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daleisgreat · 3 years

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Shawn Michaels: The Showstopper Unreleased

WWE has release a few Shawn Michaels DVDs over the years, but continuing on the theme of my last few wrestling-centered entries, WWE Home Video stuck with their “unreleased” brand of DVDs in 2018 with the three-disc release of Shawn Michaels: The Showstopper Unreleased (intro - I could not locate a trailer for this anywhere!). In that clip Shawn quips that the producers deserve an award for finding previously unreleased matches. I believe the criteria for this release is still similar to previous “Unreleased” collections where they may have aired on television (and thus likely in the WWE Network archives) or long discontinued VHS tapes, but this DVD will mark the first time the matches are available on disc. Also included is a new interview with Michaels that they broke up in several parts and sporadically inserted throughout the collection. The first disc is something special as it essentially is a “Best of Rockers” DVD. The first two matches are from Shawn’s rookie year in 1985 for Mid-South in quick enhancement matches for Hector & Chavo Guerrero and Jake “The Snake” Roberts. Matches serve their purpose, but it is nonetheless fascinating to see how Shawn had that already apparent potential in him way back in 1985. The remaining 11 matches on the first disc are all Rockers matches, with the first three tag matches being from their Midnight Rockers AWA days with two bouts against Doug Summers & Buddy Rose and one more with Brian Knobbs & Dennis “I’m not booked” Stamp. The two Summers & Rose matches are show-stealers that had exhilarating beginning/middle/end structures, and was fun to watch the 1980s crowd go nuts for.

The first disc is almost all AWA & WWF Rockers matches!! For the eight WWF Rockers matches, they consist of almost an all-star lineup of a golden age for WWF tag teams where they square off against the likes of Demolition, Brain Busters, Hart Foundation, Natural Disasters and Legion of Doom. The sad thing about The Rockers back then is that as charismatic and agile as they were back then, they mostly made other teams look good in their WWF run and that is the case here as they lose six of those eight WWF matches. Even worse is the two matches they win is a DQ win against the Rougeaus after Jimmy Hart’s megaphone is used, and a countout win against the Orient Express. That said, a lot of the other matches are pretty damn good, with high honors going to the Brain Busters bout, two Demolition matches and surprisingly working in a lot of good stuff against Legion of Doom. Worth pointing out is another good match against the Hart Foundation where it seems noticeable the teams missed their cue to go home because the match starts to feel there is no end in sight when out of nowhere during an abdominal stretch a bunch of wrestlers run in and an awkward impromptu brawl ensues and the match is declared a draw.

Disc two has 12 matches from Shawn’s first singles WWF run from 1992-1998. Some highlights from this are an unsurprising technical showcase with Mr. Perfect, oddly having a positive dynamic with Bret Hart to team up against the Blu Brothers in 1995 and predictable-yet-high quality formula matches during his first WWF Title run against 1-2-3 Kid and Steve Austin. Disc two has a disappointing triple tag elimination match with Shawn, Diesel and Undertaker against Psycho Sid, Tatanka and Kama filled with lots of stalling and headscratching booking for the eliminations. There is also a questionable match against Vader a month after their controversial-yet-excellent Summerslam match, where in this match Shawn takes 95% of the offense and quickly squashes Vader in three minutes. There is also a fascinating bout against Yokozuna from the summer of 1996 in Kuwait, when Yoko is nearing the end of his WWF run due to him putting on excess weight, and the match kind of expectedly plods along, until something must have clicked for Shawn to motivate Yoko into a pretty watchable match in the back half, and the two show respect afterwards which was awesome to see….until Yoko suddenly darts off to the back like he really has to go to the bathroom. The third disc consists of 10 matches from Shawn’s return run to WWE from 2002-2010. All the matches here are from RAW, so that means they follow the formula that still holds true for WWE TV main events today where it is either a cobbled together tag match, or a really good one-on-one match with interference or a hokey finish. There are a couple exceptions with worthwhile clean matches against Ric Flair during a Japan 2005 tour and against Christian in 2004 when he was building momentum with Tyson Tomko by his side. HBK’s matches against Rob Van Dam, Kurt Angle and Chris Jericho are the highlights on disc three, but all three contests have varying degrees of interference to effect the finishes, and in some cases it actually benefits the match as is the case with Angle with the story they were telling. I was delighted to see a post-RAW dark match included with Shawn teaming with Batista against Triple H and Edge. WWE is notorious for usually doing a fun untelevised promo or bonus match for the fans after the cameras go off the air with some quirky moments that would never fly in a televised match. That is the case here with Triple H doing lots of exaggerated selling and fun jawing with the crowd that absolutely ate it all up for a fun time.

Shawn didn't disappoint in his 21st century run, with matches included here that don't disappoint against Ric Flair and Kurt Angle. A couple of promos are uncovered like Shawn doing an open Q&A with the fans when Sensational Sherri was managing Michaels early in his singles run. Another amusing bonus promo is Shawn and Diesel doing a Times Square workout session to hype up their upcoming WrestleMania 11 match with the one-and-only Todd Pentigill hosting. The several interview clips inserted throughout the DVDs has Shawn hitting on certain parts on where he was at that stage in his career and reflecting on the infamous Barber Shop break-up with Marty, his 2002 return, rebooting a less edgy, more goofball version of DX in 2006 and retiring in 2010 (this was filmed before his ill-fated Saudi Arabia return match). From these series of introspections, it was fascinating to hear Shawn think back on why he was not all-in for teaming with Jose Lathario in his WWE Title run, and hearing him settling on being a family man in retirement and turning down multiple

WrestleMania return matches. There are also a few sets of interviews with NXT talent commenting on how lucky they are to have Shawn as a teacher at the WWE Performance Center. Shawn comments a few times here too on being proud of passing on his knowledge, and it is obvious he is genuine on his passion for his new role building talent in NXT. WWE has once again amassed another recommended collection of un-vaulted matches. I am digging this format following the Piper and Macho Man sets where they break up the action every few matches with a set of interviews. Wort mentioning is about a quarter of the 35 matches here have no commentary because they were either dark matches, or from arena shows WWE use to film at regionally in the 80s and 90s and never recorded commentary for and/or lost the rights for the commentary. While there are some skippable matches, the good-to-bad ratio is largely in the positive here, and the not-so-good bouts usually at least have an entertaining backstory or era they emanate from. This all adds up for Shawn Michaels: The Showstopper Unreleased being another must-have installment of the Unreleased branding. Past Wrestling Blogs Best of WCW Clash of Champions Best of WCW Monday Nitro Volume 2 Best of WCW Monday Nitro Volume 3 Biggest Knuckleheads Bobby The Brain Heenan Daniel Bryan: Just Say Yes Yes Yes DDP: Positively Living Dusty Rhodes WWE Network Specials ECW Unreleased: Vol 1 ECW Unreleased: Vol 2 ECW Unreleased: Vol 3 Eric Bishoff: Wrestlings Most Controversial Figure Fight Owens Fight: The Kevin Owens Story For All Mankind Getting Rowdy: The Unreleased Matches of Roddy Piper Goldberg: The Ultimate Collection Hulk Hogans Unreleased Collectors Series Impact Wresting Presents: Best of Hulk Hogan Its Good to Be the King: The Jerry Lawler Story The Kliq Rules Ladies and Gentlemen My Name is Paul Heyman Legends of Mid South Wrestling Macho Man: The Randy Savage Story Memphis Heat NXT: From Secret to Sensation NXT Greatest Matches Vol 1 OMG Vol 2: Top 50 Incidents in WCW History OMG Vol 3: Top 50 Incidents in ECW History Owen: Hart of Gold Randy Savage Unreleased: The Unseen Matches of the Macho Man RoH Supercard of Honor 2010-Present ScoobyDoo Wrestlemania Mystery Scott Hall: Living on a Razors Edge Shawn Michaels: My Journey Sting: Into the Light Straight Outta Dudley-ville: Legacy of the Dudley Boyz Straight to the Top: Money in the Bank Anthology Superstar Collection: Zach Ryder Then Now Forever – The Evolution of WWEs Womens Division TLC 2017 TNA Lockdown 2005-2016 Top 50 Superstars of All Time Tough Enough: Million Dollar Season True Giants Ultimate Fan Pack: Roman Reigns Ultimate Warrior: Always Believe War Games: WCWs Most Notorious Matches Warrior Week on WWE Network Wrestlemania III: Championship Edition Wrestlemania 28-Present The Wrestler (2008) Wrestling Road Diaries Too Wrestling Road Diaries Three: Funny Equals Money Wrestlings Greatest Factions WWE Network Original Specials First Half 2015 WWE Network Original Specials Second Half 2015 WWE Network Original Specials First Half 2016 WWE Network Original Specials Second Half 2016 WWE Network Original Specials First Half 2017

#Wrestling #Shawn Michaels #the rockers #wwf #WWE #awa #marty jannetty #ric flair #kurt angle #Christian #Bret Hart #diesel #psycho sid #dennis stamp #jake roberts #mr. perfect

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chris-evanslover · 4 years

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Scarlett Special

Summary: Inspired by seeing Scarlett and Chris on the OSU Interview, Some relationship fluff about Scarlett introducing Chris to his wife

Word Count: 1.3K

You were doing the dishes in the kitchen trying not to be loud while doing so because Chris was about to go on a live interview. He decided he wanted to do the Interview from the bedroom so that he wouldn’t be disturbed by your chores, which you agreed would be a good idea. You and Chris have been together for almost 5 years, married for 1 and you couldn’t be happier with the life you built together. You met through Scarlett, being friends from childhood it was hard for you to spend a lot of time together once she was getting picked up left and right for projects but you always made time for each other. You grew up with 3 older brothers so Scarlett was the closest thing you had to a sister, she genuinely was family to you.

Scarlett asked you over for dinner when you were visiting one of your brothers in New York and you were so excited to see given it had been almost a year and a half. What you didn’t know is that Chris Evans and Mark Ruffalo would also be joining the dinner but we can get to that in a minute. You got to Scarletts and you thought you were the only one coming but then she said “I have two other friends in town right now and it’s the only night I can see them, I’m sorry to spring this on you last minute but do you mind if they come?” “Not at all! Who are they” “Evans and Ruffalo from the avengers, they’re great you will love them”

Trying to stop your jaw from hitting the ground you straightened up and said “Yeah of course, 13 going on 30 is only one of my favorite movies ever no big deal” you mumbled. Scarlett laughed at you and said “Marks a big teddy bear seriously he’s the sweetest” “I bet, You’ve known Evans for a while too haven’t you?” you asked her. “Yeah we’re practically siblings at this point, I can’t believe i’ve known both of you almost my entire life and this is the first time your meeting”

Fast forward through that dinner, you and Chris hit it off immediately, noticing looks from Scarlett throughout the meal hinting at your obvious flirts going back and forth. Before Chris left for the night he pulled you aside and asked for your number, and with that folks, the rest is history.

Chris’ voice snapped you out of your daydream, you’re now holding a VERY clean plate, “Babe? Do you have my medallion you said yesterday you were gonna clean it” “Yeah it’s over here, it was drying, let me rinse it one more time” You began to rinse the necklace under the warm water to get all of the cleaning solution off of it. Chris came up behind you smelling like a whole ass forest from his body wash and cologne mixed together. Your favorite scent and that bastard knew that. He wrapped his arms around your waist and rested his head on your shoulder as you rinsed, occasionally kissing you on the cheek or neck or collarbone or wherever else he could reach. You giggled and turned around in his grasp and clasped the necklace on his neck, then straightening it out. “Good as new” “Thank you sweetheart” He kissed you briefly and straightened his shirt “So I have the OSU interview with Scarlett starting in 10 minutes, it shouldn’t take more than a half hour then I was thinking we could binge some Schitt’s Creek?” Boy oh boy did this man know the way to your heart. (if you haven’t watched this show go binge all 6 seasons on Netflix right now)

“Sounds perfect, tell Scar I said Hi” you pointed your finger in his face to exaggerate your point. He laughed and nodded then made his way to the bedroom. You finished the dishes and fed Dodger then planted yourself on the couch with your computer to answer some work emails. Chris should be done in about 10 minutes so you figured you would make a snack for your Dan Levy filled night. You passed the bedroom on your way to the kitchen and heard Chris’ loud laughter, chuckling to yourself wondering what he’s laughing at. Next thing you know you heard Chris say your name, as if he’s calling you. You were confused because it sounded like he was still on the interview and you were well, in leggings and one of Chris’ hoodies, not exactly interview attire. He called your name again and you figured eh what the hell and went to the bedroom to find Chris sitting on the bed facing the pillows with his computer on zoom with Scarlett and the OSU interviewer. He beckoned you over to sit with him and started to explain.

“So I told Scarlett you said Hi and she said she’d rather hear it from you” he laughed. You rolled your eyes and looked at the computer screen “Hi Scarlett” she laughed loudly as did the interviewer “Hi babes I miss you!!!” “I miss you too, come to Boston!” “You know what I might have to” you all laughed and then the interviewer asked how you and Scarlett know each other and if it’s through Chris. “It’s not through Chris” Scarlett laughed “Y/N is basically my sister i’ve known her since Pre-K and we’ve been family ever since. It just so happens that Y/N and Chris were both at my house in New York for dinner and that’s where they met and fell in love and such so some would say I set them up” she finished with a cheeky smile. You and Chris laughed and confirmed her story. “It’s crazy to me that I was going to Scar’s house just for a dinner and I left the dinner with a phone number that belonged to who would become my husband” Chris nodded and said “I remember so vividly meeting her she just stuck out to me so quickly, her personality and humor was so compatible with mine and we really just hit it off, best decision I ever made” “Better than playing Cap?” the interviewer joked around.

“Eh it’s pretty even” Chris smiled at you and you again rolled your eyes. “You’re lucky we’re on camera right now” Another chorus of laughs and the interview was being wrapped up. You sat quietly next to Chris as he wrapped things up and thanked the interviewer for having you even if you did interrupt, he said you’re welcome to interrupt anytime to which you laughed. Chris closed the laptop after he left the meeting and pulled you to him, laying down practically on top of him. “Hi” “Hi, how'd that come up” you laughed. “Scarlett’s idea, that was fun though I felt a lot more comfortable with you next to me” 5 years later and he still makes you swoon when he says sweet shit like this. You smiled and leaned up to kiss him, “I love you”

“I love you more baby, now c’mon let’s go watch our show” He lifted you up bridal style and carried you to the couch where Dodger was taking a snooze. You guys got comfortable and pressed play when you felt a buzz come from the pocket of your hoodie. Pulling out your phone you laughed out loud from a text you got from Scarlett.

‘I miss you both tons, I’m coming up with Rose next weekend!!’ You showed the text to Chris who looked at you questioningly when you laughed. He smiled and nodded to let you know she should come. You texted her back telling her that you can’t wait and to text you details closer to.

You nuzzled back into Chris thankful for Scarlett and her sometimes crazy dinner parties.

A/N: Just a quick one shot about husband!chris and their backstory! hope you liked it, feedback welcome and requests open!

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frumfrumfroo · 4 years

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Thankfully the story around this movie is shaping up to specifically be about JJ’s terrible storytelling and the way this movie betrayed The Last Jedi, so I feel like the long term conversation around it is going to be more like “Hey remember when Lucasfilm fucked up a completely good trilogy in the last movie?” instead of the ROTJ discussion where people just accept the retcons as canon now. Because frankly the Luke/Leia sibling reveal was as foreshadowed as and made more sense than Reypatine

Yeah, that’s what I think too. It’s still going to be accepted by a lot of people, unfortunately.

The sibling reveal ass-pull is the worst thing about the OT, it instantly shrank the universe and will always feel disjointed (I don’t remember seeing any part of the OT for the first time, it’s been on a loop since i was born- I still don’t naturally think of Luke and Leia as twins even though I’ve always known they supposedly are), but it doesn’t break the story, it doesn’t destroy anyone’s character arc. It leaves Leia hanging as far as resolution with Anakin, but that wasn’t something she needed until the retcon. They do at least acknowledge that it’s missing and try to address it (’tell your sister you were right’).

Whereas this Reypatine Skyusurper shit defeats the entire ST narrative. And no, it is not about found family.

1. Rey's whole problem she needed to grow out of was her delusion about her long lost family who totally loved her and living in a shitty desert by herself with their imagined ghosts instead of getting off her ass and having a life of her own, she needed to stop looking for parents in every authority figure she met, she needed to accept her past and move on and forge her own identity. That was her entire character arc and the whole thematic basis of TLJ was confronting her with it. With this ‘um actually’, the story now says she was right to sit around in a graveyard waiting for her parental daydream to come true and to have a ready-made identity handed to her on a silver platter with no character development or hard work necessary on her part whatsoever. She's back in the fucking desert on a dead planet with a delusion family of ghosts, but now the ghosts are literal. Her love is entirely barren.

2. Rey is a grown ass adult who ‘adopted’ herself into a dead family. They didn't adopt her. This is infantilising and creepy. She doesn't need a mummy and daddy, she needed to grow up and be her own person and start her own family. Now she never will, she's completely subsumed any stirrings of her own identity she started to have. Ben was the only person who pushed her towards adulthood and actualisation, without him she settles back into her bad coping mechanisms surrounded by enablers who don't know or understand her well enough to help. This is a horror film on at least three levels- Rey as the cuckoo changeling who steals the place of the true child, the Skywalkers as a cursed family of sociopaths who are haunting this bystander now that they’ve wiped themselves out, and Rey as mental patient who retreats completely from the real world into her fantasy.

3. Good Victim/Bad Victim replacement child bullshit. All of the Skywalkers and Han are such gaping fucking assholes they reject Ben but love Rey for the SAME reasons. Because she's just inherently better than him and there's nothing he can do to be worthy. There's no moment in his life he could have done something differently to be accepted, he's just a garbage child no one wants. He was doomed from conception. He dared to be traumatised by being preyed on, abandoned, and betrayed, so he doesn’t deserve to live.

4. Terrio said in an interview that the 'original sin' of SW was separating the twins. So adoption is bad, actually. Never mind that Luke and Leia were separated for their protection and both went to loving homes where they were raised well by good parents. They didn't get to grow up together on Tatooine so that's terrible?? And he says they were never reunited there so we all wanted that. a) No we didn't, Chris, everyone hated Tatooine and no one wanted to live there, Luke says 'if there's a bright centre to the universe you're on the planet that it's furthest from', Anakin was a slave there, his mother was murdered there, it's a DEAD PLANET where BAD THINGS HAPPEN and every character wanted to escape from it b) Have you seen RotJ? Because Luke and Leia were together on Tatooine in the movie, my dude. Leia got to be a slave there for a while too. How fun for her to get in on the family tradition.

5. You made it 100% about bloodlines, Chris. This disingenuous bullshit that it's about rejecting that is the most hollow fucking nonsense I've ever heard.

Rey’s power came from her bloodline, her ‘darkness’ is biologically inherited and isn’t her fault and disappears with no effort from her, you turned the Skywalker name into a fucking superhero mantle and had all the legacy characters anoint her as their heir because she was just born worthy. You made her ‘heir of all the Jedi’ and they’re her ‘chosen ancestors’. Hey, dumbass, the Jedi don’t have heirs. Anyone can have the Force, anyone can be a hero without the Force- you have destroyed that by making Force sensitivity the sign of the elect. F/nn shouldn’t be Force sensitive and making all the defected stormtroopers Force sensitive robs the characters of agency. You have rewritten a story about the deathless hope offered by the eternal possibility of choosing differently into a story about predestination.

This was never about ‘the Palpatines’ vs the Skywalkers. The Emperor was just one evil guy whose backstory and bloodline were irrelevant, he stands in for all selfishness and callous ambition, for the temptation to choose power and control over love. It’s a personal story about individuals and individual struggles- how to be an ethical adult. Lineage didn’t fucking matter, it was so important that Vader was Luke’s father because of the personal relationship it gave them, because of how it challenged Luke and his worldview. The connection it gave them which would radically redefine the stakes and ultimately give the OT its meaning. Rey has no connection to Palpatine and being related to him does nothing but implode any meaning her character ever had.

#salt #a tros ity #criticism #rey #the legacy #again: the only sense in which this film says 'bloodlines don't matter' is the message that parents have no obligation to their children #it's up to the children to 'deserve' love and the legacy they were born to #if you're groomed and abandoned and that fucks you up- well sorry you aren't deserving #your parents are designated Good People so they will replace you and you'll be fine with that bc you recognise your replacement's #innate superiority #commit suicide so the deserving party can have your life- it's the only good thing you can do #you miserable worthless damaged person you #I HATE EVERYTHING

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what-if-i-imagine · 3 years

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Fic Writer Interview

Tagged by my absolute favorite fic author @sun-moon-stars-jedi you can read their post here!

Name(s): (tumblr) what-if-i-imagine (Ao3) I_can_only_imagine

Fandoms: For the most part I write for DC, Batfam, Arrowfam, and Flashfam. I write in a weird combination of comic and Arrowverse, so I usually go off of my preferred backstory and characterizations from either or a combination of the two. I used to write for Marvel and Stranger Things.

Where you post: Ao3 and Tumblr

Most popular one shot (by kudos):

Overall: Striving for Perfection

From this year: Also Striving for Perfection!

Most popular multi-chap (also by kudos):

Overall: Hello Stranger

From this year: The Bitterness at the Bottom of the Pie (This one was posted more as a test for how interested people are in it, but it is going to be a fairly big project so it’s taking a while)

Favorite story you’ve written so far: Oh that’s really difficult! I’m going to do my three favorites because I can’t choose. Because You Can't Love Yourself, A Movie, a Bear, and a Milkshake, and Shaking Breath (Funny enough none of them are Jason stories and he’s my favorite character? Shaking Breath was a very self indulgent one, I knew it wouldn’t get much love since it’s about Chris Kent but I still had so much fun writing it),

Fic you were nervous to post: I wrote this fic months before I actually posted it because I really didn’t like how it turned out after I finished it. Then one night I was really sleep deprived after working on an assignment and went through my drafts folder and found it. I did some editing and with no shame finally posted it. So that would be Hurt Me Once.

How do you choose your titles: The titles are probably my favorite part! I like symbolic titles or titles that relate to the main theme, but lately I’ve been using a lot of lyrics or song titles that I feel fit the story or that I have on that story’s playlist (I really like making playlists for my stories, it’s a thing).

Do you outline: Sometimes? I do this thing where I title a document with the same title of the story and put “Lists and Shit” after it. My Lists and Shit are usually timelines for the story, lists of characters with important info, and sometimes full outlines of a chapter or two or a light outline of the whole story.

Complete: 25 on Ao3.

In progress: 1 on Ao3. The other two incomplete stories on my Ao3 are both for Marvel, and for the most part I’ve fallen out of that fandom. On my old Wattpad there are also a bunch of incomplete stories that will never be continued, but one of them I was really proud of so I might transfer it from my Wattpad to Ao3 and make it the one Marvel fic I complete.

Coming soon/not yet started: My Outlaws gift exchange story, an Arrowverese one shot centered around Oliver and William in a universe where Oliver doesn’t die, and another possible holiday story or two? I’m not sure yet.

Prompts: I love getting prompts (burts of serotonin every time I get one!) but I haven’t had much motivation lately because of seasonal depression. I currently have 3 prompts waiting for me to work on them, but only one of them has actually been started and it has turned into a chapter fic by accident.

Upcoming works you’re most excited about: I’m really excited about two of the Black and Blue Christmas (ship name for Oliver/Dinah/Barry/Len my girlfriend and I came up with) fics that I’ve been working on. Besides those fics, I’m really excited for one of my upcoming Jayroy fics and two of my Olivarry fics I’ve been working on.

(Sorry if you’ve already been tagged!) tagging @a-single-drop-of-ink @gayandangery @redhoodiejt

#fic writer interview #tags #writing

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sw-daydreamer · 4 years

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‘Star Wars’ Screenwriter Chris Terrio on Ending the 42-year ‘Skywalker’ Saga

The Oscar-winning screenwriter talks about collaborating with J.J. Abrams on the script, respecting the memory of Carrie Fisher, and ending the Skywalkers.

(...)

They had no illusions, though, that they would be able to satisfy everyone.

“We knew at the beginning that there was no world in which everyone was going to say that was exactly what I wanted,” Terrio explained. “But I hope at the very least our love for the characters and for the galaxy comes through in some way.”

Critics and audiences alike seem torn on the concluding film to the Star Wars world as we know it. It posted $177 million in its opening weekend, but that was down significantly from the previous outing, The Last Jedi. Additionally, The Rise of Skywalker is the only film in the new trilogy to not receive an “A” Cinemascore rating, indicating the perhaps inevitable mixed reactions from fans.

(...)

During the course of our near hour-long interview, he dropped a lot of plot spoilers (avoided here) and detail about additional footage not included in the finished product (also avoided here) that seemingly speaks to many of the internet-based criticisms.

(...)

AD: When you two were working together, you obviously had this shared appreciation for the Star Wars universe. When you starting working on the final script, were you responding to a pre-defined structure or were you creating something unique between the two of you?

CT: Both actually. Kathy Kennedy and Michelle Rejwan had a clear plan for where they wanted things to end. They had clear plans about certain narrative marks they wanted us to hit. They also gave us a lot of freedom within that. We knew that Rey and Ren were utterly key to this trilogy, but we also felt that there was no way that we were going to not find a path to redemption for Kylo Ren, the son of Han and Leia. We felt that right from the beginning, when J.J. established Kylo Ren in Episode VII, there was a war going on inside him and that he had been corrupted by something bigger than himself and had made bad choices along the way. J.J. and I felt we needed to find a way in which he could be redeemed, and that gets tricky at the end of Episode VIII because Snoke is gone. The biggest bad guy in the galaxy at that moment seemingly is Kylo Ren. There needed to be an antagonist that the good guys could be fighting, and that’s when we really tried to laser in on who had been the great source of evil behind all of this for so long. That’s when we really started aggressively pursuing this idea that there is old evil that didn’t die. The source of the evil in the galaxy is this dark spirit waiting for its revenge and biding its time. The entity known as Palpatine in this version – his body died in Return of the Jedi – is patient and has been waiting. He dug his fox hole and has been waiting for his chance to re-establish his total domination.

AD: Was returning to this entity known as Palpatine always in the plan or was it newly introduced in Episode IX?

CT: Well, I can’t speak to Kathy’s overall intent. That was certainly discussed and was discussed before I ever came on. Kathy had this overall vision that we had to be telling the same story for nine episodes. Although from the sleight of hand of Episode VII and Episode VIII, you wouldn’t necessarily know immediately that we were telling the same story. She thought it would be a very strong end for the ninth movie. This fits well with J.J. because he loves magic tricks. He will often talk in metaphors and magic tricks, and so in Episode VII and Episode VIII, you think you’re watching one thing but Episode IX tells you to watch more closely – you were actually watching something else. When you rewatch the earlier films, things start to make additional sense. Ren and his devotion to the idea of his grandfather. The voice that he’s always heard in his head. The certain similarities between Snoke and Palpatine. The intention was that, by the time you get to Episode IX, you realize there were real reasons this is all happening. It all shows how this story is being fought cyclically through the series.

AD: One thing that’s fairly pervasive right now is the buzz around Kelly Marie Tran’s reduced role in The Rise of Skywalker when compared to The Last Jedi. Tell me about working through her role in the final film.

CT: Well, first of all, J.J. and I adore Kelly Marie Tran. One of the reasons that Rose has a few less scenes than we would like her to have has to do with the difficulty of using Carrie’s footage in the way we wanted to. We wanted Rose to be the anchor at the rebel base who was with Leia. We thought we couldn’t leave Leia at the base without any of the principals who we love, so Leia and Rose were working together. As the process evolved, a few scenes we’d written with Rose and Leia turned out to not meet the standard of photorealism that we’d hoped for. Those scenes unfortunately fell out of the film. The last thing we were doing was deliberately trying to sideline Rose. We adore the character, and we adore Kelly – so much so that we anchored her with our favorite person in this galaxy, General Leia.

AD: Given the sheer volume of exposition required and number of characters you did have to balance, was there ever talk around expanding Episode IX into a “Part 1” and a “Part 2?”

CT: I wish we could have done that. There is a lot of plot in the movie, and as a writer, you always want scenes to let the plot breathe more. If there were a way of doing it, splitting it would have been my dream. We could have written these characters forever. There was so much backstory that had to be left by the wayside. I wish that we could have that, but George always said it was nine movies. That was the natural size of the saga, and so, other than a few initial discussions, we never really advanced that conversation. Of course, as a writer, it breaks your heart to leave stuff on the table that you think would have given the story more depth and nuance and to give the characters more to do. Speaking for myself and not on the part of the studio, I do wish there could have been a “Part 1” and a “Part 2.”

AD: Trying to avoid spoilers here, but leading into the final film, the word was that this would be the final chapter on the Skywalker saga. Yet, there’s a persistence still in the name Skywalker at the end of the film. Is this really the end?

CT: I don’t have any additional insight into that than you do, honest to God. For us, the resonance of the name Skywalker was just purely a thematic one. It wasn’t an attempt to brand something in the universe. J.J. and I had a post-it that read, “You don’t discover who you are. You create it.” So much of this film is about discovery and creating who you are through that discovery. It’s purely for thematic reasons that we included who is a Skywalker at the end of the film. [Editor note: We omitted a great deal of conversation around spoilers related to the end of the film for this answer. This printed response provides the overall sense of his answer while avoiding explicit spoilers.]

(...)

source : www.awardsdaily.com/2019/12/24/star-wars-screenwriter-chris-terrio-on-ending-the-42-year-skywalker-saga/

#reylo #tros #chris terrio #interview #post tros interview

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doomedandstoned · 4 years

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Black Spirit Crown Score Big Win With ‘Gravity’

~Doomed & Stoned Debuts~

By Billy Goate

Strong guitars chords carve out a bold landscape to begin the first of five cosmic tales. "Doomstar" sails across the universe as a comet, filled with as much magic as destructive possibility. On a dark night, you can almost make out the whirling, wicked tale of this asto-demon.

Welcome to the evocative domain of Ohio's BLACK SPIRIT CROWN. We first met the Clevelanders on their original four-tracker 'Red Sky' (2017), its sphatik gem "Megalith" added to our 'Doomed & Stoned in Ohio' (2017) compilation and the first and second rounds of Ohio Doomed & Stoned Festivals organized in short, subsequent order. The boys of Black Spirit Crown have long been an integral part of the heavy music scene of The Buckeye State, opening for such greats as Conan, Inter Arma, and The Obsessed.

As with their debut, 'Red Sky' (2017), the vocals are so important to convincing us of the band's bonafides. Guitarist Dan Simone and bassist Chris Martin have a good instinct for singing in harmony, building up a song climatically, and giving it legs so it can express itself in fitting form. The vocals on "Doomstar" are mainly clean, on the order of a Bask, Snail, Chrome Ghost, or Noctum, but the band reveals in the song's second half that it can get as grissly as any Aaron Turner project.

"Saga" belts out a solid punk-tempo -- an interesting and entirely fitting choice for a song about Viking rampage. The runaway development of the middle section felt characteristically Pikelike and I half-way expected him to make a quick guesty on the record. Just then, we hear the hearty hoo-hah! of a crowd and run to rejoin them for the song's remaining verse, which soon fades away into the shadowy labyrinth of memory.

Firey drummering distinguishes the advent of the "Orb." Is this odd visitor here to observe us? Or maybe it is intent on giving us a window into a world besides our own? We scarcely have time to ponder the question before the song whisks us away on its transcendental carpet ride. If you're looking to classify Black Spirit Crown's style (and let's face it, all of us have an inner music critic that does) it would be probably best to think of it as "space doom" or even "cosmic grunge." Certainly, there's some kind of a dreamy psychedelic element at play, bending and stretching each song as it will, sometimes for great lengths of time. Perhaps that element is the orb itself?

We're lucky to have very memorable songs on both of Black Spirit Crown's records. For the first, the clear standout was "Megalith," which in a perfect world would have at least given Black Spirit Crown a summer radio hit. On this record, there is ripe opportunity for another crossover with "Teutates."

Teutates by Black Spirit Crown

Teutates was a Celtic god of the ancient peoples of Gaul and Britain, the protector of their entire community. Black Spirit Crown personify his legend in song: "I hold the world in iron hands, I travel pathways not meant for man." Pretty badass, huh? "Write my name across the sky, in lines of fire 10 miles high." He's nothing if not bold, that Teutates.

After the brisk pace of the last rousing number, we burrow back into the cold comfort of the dark soil to reconnect with those doom roots. Here Black Spirit Crown venture into the smokey den of Monolord, Slomatics, and Windhand. Dan's phantom vocals are undoubtedly suited for both the mood and style of "Gravity," which I'm currently listening to just after dusk and it's absolutely ruling the night. I suppose it could rule regardless of when and where it yields its trance-inducing power. By the end of the record we've become one with the comet, and embraced its final destination, as well.

And now, Doomed & Stoned is pleased to premiere the album, 'Gravity' (2020) in its fullness. Look for my interview with Black Spirit Crown and more insight into the album to follow!

Give ear...

Doomed & Stoned · Black Spirit Crown - Gravity (2020)

A Listener's Guide to 'Gravity' By Black Spirit Crown

Just days before its release, I caught up the core members of Black Spirit Crown, Dan Simone (guitar, vocals) and Chris Martin (bass, vocals) to get the backstory on the album and insight into the spunky songs written for it.

★

I understand that it's been quite a journey leading Black Spirit Crown to this new record? Bring us up to speed.

Dan: So, Gravity is an album that's been about two-and-a-half years in the making. Our initial plan was to start recording in late-2017 with our original drummer, Jesse, but unfortunately he left the band that October, right around when we were going to start. At that point we had three of the songs ("Saga," "Orb," and "Gravity") mostly written and ready to record, and were going to write a couple more songs to go with them as we went. When Jesse left it took a little bit to sort out and secure our next drummer, Alex, and then get him up to speed with our existing material. We brought Alex in mid-January of 2018 with a scheduled show opening for Conan at the very beginning of March, so those first several weeks were a relentless drilling down on our existing material so we'd be ready for Conan. After that, people knew we were back and ready to play so that's what we did, for the next several months we just reveled in it, culminating playing to a totally packed house at the first Ohio Doomed and Stoned Fest. Which ruled. After that, Alex was totally immersed in the existing material and we could turn to writing a bit.

We'd love to get a tour of this place. Care to take us through each of these five rooms?

So let's talk about the songs on the album. I write about space, weird fiction themes and probably unsurprisingly, doom, defined as "death, destruction, or some other terrible fate". I've always been a huge fan of fantasy and science-fiction so that's where most of my subject matter comes from. Giant sentient megalithic rock from space that, in it's agony of being trapped in immobile awareness, broods and looms over all creation slowly gathering power to wield entropy versus order until it grinds all of life to a frozen, dusty halt. Stuff like that, but that was the first album. This second album has five tracks.

Doomstar

Inspired by the star Algol. A star of ill-repute for many civilizations it is named Head of the Ogre in Arabic, Satan's Head in Hebrew, Spectre's Head in Latin, and Demon Star in English. The Chinese name it the Mausoleum, or House of Bones. It is the Gorgon's severed head held by the constellation Perseus. It is a harbinger of mayhem and bloody violence, so why not write a song about someone born under this star? Interestingly, the main riffs for this song came to Chris in a dream, and he showed up to practice the next day with the music pretty much complete. I wish I remembered the actual date, because it would perhaps be interesting to know where that star was in our sky while he was dreaming.

Saga

Vikings. I've pretty much always had a thing for them. I wrote most of this song about 16 years ago, but the band I was in then couldn't play it, and it never really fit anything else I was doing until now. It was still kind of a departure for us at first, as it is significantly faster paced than our earlier material, but it sits really well in our live sets, giving the audience a little punch in the face in the middle of it all. Lyrically it touches on a lot of the stories and themes Norse Mythology, without really diving substantially into any specific one. Those stories were called Sagas. Initially the middle part was supposed to have lyrics, and I was going to delve into some specificity, but I couldn’t decide exactly where to go with it, the stories never really worked within the riffs and structure of the song, and then I realized that whenever I was playing those parts I’d envision grizzled vikings in their dragon boats coursing through raging and icy seas. Pretty much a travel montage out of a movie, and that worked for me so I left it alone.

Orb

This song was originally supposed to be on the first album, but we couldn't really get the second half settled in time so we skipped it. It's about a moon-sized orb of living metal that comes to Earth to help humanity transcend to a higher form of existence. Within the Black Spirit Crown mythology, the Orb is diametrically opposed to the Megalith as agents of Life/Order and Death/Chaos respectively. It fell out of our live sets for quite a while, too, when we initially brought Alex in because we were focused on working on settled songs. I was pretty stoked when we brought it back because I really enjoy the weird psychedelic second half. I love working the wah pedal and delay, and Chris just goes bananas through the whole thing. I'd really like someone someday to get some excellent video of us performing it because I dig playing it so much, but I never feel like I get the whole experience because I get sucked in to playing my part.

Teutates

This is the most recently written song on the album, and the single from it. The comet Toutatis is a large asteroid with a chaotic orbit that passed within 18 lunar distances of Earth in 2012. It is large enough to potentially end life on the planet if it were to impact. It gets its name from the god Teutates from Celtic mythology who was, perhaps ironically, a protector god whose name roughly translates to "Be of the Tribe". We really dug the idea of that duality, this thing that was simultaneously a being responsible for the life and well-being of its worshippers, yet could in a thoughtless moment totally obliterate them. Why shouldn't it, really? The huge vocal harmony near the end always gives me chills. "Be of the Tribe, Give up thy life.."

Gravity

The title track of the album. Look, I tend to write long songs, our shortest song is 5 minutes, and our average - not counting this one - is 8 minutes, but we just write until the journey, the story, finds its end. We don't try to write intentionally long songs. Except for this one. With this song we set out to write a song that could fill a live set on its own, 20 -30 minutes.

Musically, it's a meditation. Waves of droning fuzz that crash and recede. Thematically, it's about a group of star-farers who are woken from hyper-sleep to find themselves abandoned on a barren, high-gravity planet by their A.I. which achieved sentience at some point in the journey and decided it had no need for humans. It's the funerary rite for them as they are crushed and frozen by the weight of the alien atmosphere. The last 7 minutes is their death throes, and it was also a total hoot to record.

In the rhythm guitar parts I hold the same chord for the entire 7 minutes, but we tracked three layers of guitar there so I had to hold that chord for 21 minutes. By the end my fret hand was shaking so violently that I had to hit the chord with my pick hand and then grab my fret hand and hold it in place so I didn't shake off of the neck of the guitar. Chris, of course, was laughing hysterically at my agony.

On top of that is total celestial chaos. Two separate theremin tracks, two separate guitar solos by me (one in the foreground one in the background), clips from NASA of electromagnetic storms in Saturn's atmosphere and other weird radio-telegraphic stuff, some keyboard synthesizer by Chris, and a guest appearance by our good friend Joe Fortunato who is a master of atmospheric guitar-synth alchemy (who also appears on the track Orb). Chris then took what could have been just a total mess of noise, and panned and faded and otherwise produced the hell out of it into a marvelous cacophony, and honestly it's exactly what we'd always imagined it could be.

Chris, take us behind the scenes of this whole thing. What were some of the hurdles you had to overcome to get this puppy on record?

Chris: With respect to the drum parts, we had tried to start the record some time ago with our original drummer, Jesse, but we ended up parting ways right around the time we were set to start. After bringing Alex in and getting him up to speed, we had written a couple more songs and were about ready to start going, but things kind of fizzled out with him and he was gone. Rather than waiting to onboard another drummer, get them up to speed, and delay recording even longer, I decided to program the drum parts.

I compiled all the practice recordings we had and scoured Youtube for live videos of shows with both our past drummers, Then, I basically compared the best parts of their respective versions of each song, transcribed them, and programmed those comps as the drum parts. It was pretty time consuming to get all the little nuances right as opposed to, say, starting from scratch and making fresh parts, but I really wanted these to sound like the parts our drummers had done live, because they helped to make the songs what they are.

Bass tracking was done over a couple days. It was pretty straightforward; my P bass into my pedalboard into my old SVT. Can't really go wrong there. The only exception was the second half of "Orb," where I used the bass rig I learned to play on when I was 12; my dad's old '65 Traynor YBA-1, which I inherited when he died. I had planned on using the bass I learned on too - his old '73 Gibson EB-0 -- but there were some electronics issues when I went to start and I couldn't get the tone I wanted out of it. I didn't want to wait for parts to arrive to repair it, so I went back to the P bass, straight into the YBA-1. Still got that really fat, old school sound I was going for, so it was a win.

Guitars were pretty simple as well; Dan's Les Paul into his pedalboard and the 72 Traynor YSR-1. Live, he runs a Traynor YBA-1 reissue as a second amp to fill out the sound, but the YSR sounded pretty gnarly on its own so we stuck with it. I did also end up blending in a little bit of the little Laney combo I have to get a little more bite and cut. It's a great little amp that's been on everything I've done.

Guitars turned out really nice, didn't they?

We had Joe Fortunato (Sparrowmilk, Venomin James) come in and add some synth guitar type stuff on a couple songs as well. The intro and outro of Gravity, as well as some of the crazy laser sounds in the outro, is basically him hitting one note on his custom Dunable/EGC hybrid baritone, then manipulating some of his pedals to create some of the most bizarre things we'd ever heard. I just hit record and told him to make noise. We got about 20-30 solid minutes of random sounds. It was pretty crazy. I went through and picked a solid section that fit the whole mood of the song and dropped it in where I wanted it. Outside of that, there's a bunch of theremin and other random stuff Dan put together.

Vocals were fairly easy. Dan tracked all of his quickly, I tracked all my clean ones later that day. When I went to do my screaming, in Doomstar, Saga and Teutates, I got about half done and my chest and throat started hurting, so I took a couple days to rest them before finishing up, thinking it was from being out of practice. Long story short, I ended up with some gnarly respiratory issues that really impacted my breathing and my voice, and it took me about 4 months to get my stamina back up to be able to do vocals again. It gave me some time to mix, but killed me that I couldn't just finish tracking and wrap it up.

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#D&S Debuts #Black Spirit Crown #Cleveland #Ohio #doom #metal #stoner rock #doom metal #D&S Reviews #Doomed & Stoned

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wrestlingisfake · 4 years

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Revolution preview

Chris Jericho vs. Jon Moxley - This will be Jericho’s fourth defense of the AEW men’s world championship. Moxley is the IWGP United States champion, but that title is not at stake. Moxley has not lost a singles match since August, and Jericho hasn’t lost a singles match since June, so something’s gotta give.

It was fairy clear that Mox would be getting the next big title shot after he defeated Kenny Omega on November 9. But the story only began when Jericho invited Moxley to join his heel stable, the Inner Circle. The championship wasn’t directly brought up, but it was clear Jericho’s goal was to eliminate a potential threat to his title reign. Moxley ultimately declined the offer on January 8, so on January 15 the Inner Circle beat him down and Jericho attacked his right eye with one of the little spikes on Jericho’s jacket. Moxley refused to take time off, winning a January 22 match with PAC to earn this title match. The Inner Circle has attempted to finish him off with matches against Santana, Ortiz, and “hired mercenary” Jeff Cobb, but he’s won them all while wearing an eyepatch.

The big question of this match is the status of Moxley’s right eye. The injury is just part of the story, of course, and he mostly wrestles like it’s not a factor. But if any opponent is going to work over the eye for the whole match, it’s gonna be Jericho. Even if Mox drops the eyepatch, with the idea that the eye has finally “healed,” it’s an obvious target. If he still has it on, I think the match will be slower, with longer stretches of Jericho clawing at the eye and Moxley in agony. Either way, though, Moxley should be fighting like a wounded animal, which might lead to at least one big spot that hurts Jericho enough to level the playing field.

When Jericho won the title on August 31, I figured AEW could easily keep it on him for a year or more. He’s over enough that the fans won’t start losing patience with him until maybe around Double or Nothing II on May 23. But something about this feud has really clicked, I think, and I’ve been seriously getting the vibe that it’s time for Moxley to have a title run. Nevertheless, despite all the victories Mox has racked up over the last six weeks, it feels wrong for a guy with a bad eye to score a win over the world champion. I’m picking Jericho to retain.

Cody Rhodes vs. MJF - MJF refused to take this match unless Cody complied with three stipulations. First, Cody agreed on January 15 not to touch MJF until the match starts. Second, Cody had to let MJF whip him with a belt on February 5. Third, Cody had to wrestle MJF’s henchman Wadlow in a cage match on February 19. It’s become clear that MJF never expected Cody to agree to, or successfully meet, his terms, and now the match is on and Cody wants to kill him more than ever.

This one has been building almost since AEW was first announced in January 2019, when MJF joined the cast of Being the Elite. Cody embraced MJF as his protege and best friend, but literally everyone else could see MJF was heeling on him behind his back. Then, just when people were starting to buy the Cody-MJF friendship, and hoping the turn wouldn’t come, they finally pulled the trigger on the turn. When Cody face Chris Jericho for the world title on November 9, with the promise that this would be his one and only title shot, MJF seconded him and threw in the towel. Then, just when you started to wonder if he was genuinely concerned for Cody’s safety, he kicked Cody in the nuts.

MJF is the biggest and most successful project at AEW so far--the only bigger stars in the company are guys that were already over in New Japan or WWE. So it’s going to be very interesting to see if they let the fans see Cody finally get revenge, or if MJF gets a win to propel him even higher. While I do think MJF can quickly recover from a loss, they’ve really got something here and it may be worth doing a cheap heel win. On the other hand, I’m not sure where MJF can go from beating Cody--I can’t see him in the world title picture just yet. So I expect this match to keep me guessing right up to the finish. It’s just too close to call.

Kenny Omega & Hangman Page vs. Nick Jackson & Matt Jackson - Omega and Page won the AEW tag team title on January 21; this will be their third defense. The Young Bucks won a battle royale on February 19 to earn this title shot. All four men (along with Cody Rhodes) are members of The Elite, the spinoff of Bullet Club that was recruited to create this promotion.

Page has been sullen and combative with the rest of the Elite since Chris Jericho beat him on August 31 to become the first AEW world champion. I’ve already written at length about the backstory and where I think it’s going. Basically I think they’ve teased a heel turn too hard for it to actually happen. It feels to me like the story is less about what it takes for someone to turn than what it will take for Page to accept the other three accept him as an equal partner. I think the story is designed to get us really worried for Page and them pull him back for a big hug when all seems lost. (Then again, even if that happens, it doesn’t have to happen on this show.)

It feels too early for the Bucks to win the title. They obviously have to become tag champs at some point. But they know they have to build to the perfect moment and outwit everyone who assumed they’d put the belts on themselves right away. The Bucks need to overcome incredible adversity to finally get to the mountaintop, and beating an ad hoc transitional chmpion team doesn’t cut it. So they need to convince you Omega and Page aren’t an ad hoc transitional champion team. The easiest way to do that is to give Omega and Page a successful title defense against the Young Bucks. Which also happens to be an easy way to blow off Page’s drama without doing a turn. So I’m going with the champs to retain.

Nyla Rose vs. Kris Statlander - Rose is making her first defense of the AEW women’s world championship, which she won on February 12. There hasn’t been much of a story here--Statlander just got in Rose’s face during an interview and that was that.

The match should be okay. Rose is good with the big monster heel spots, and Statlander's alien gimmick sets her apart from all the other women Rose has thrown around. But I can’t say this is a particularly important match on the card, which is disappointing since I had hoped AEW’s women’s division would be a lot stronger by this point. It feels like this is just being thrown together at the last minute to be the token women’s match on the card, like WWE used to do.

I like Statlander but it’s just not her time to be champion right now, and Rose is just getting started. This shouldn’t be a one-sided squash by any means, but Nyla should emphatically win to set the tone for her title run.

Dustin Rhodes vs. Jake Hager - This issue started on October 30, during the build to Chris Jericho vs. Cody Rhodes, when Jericho’s flunky Hager broke the arm of Cody’s brother Dustin. It took a few weeks for Dustin to stop wearing a cast, and then for some reason it took him until February 12 to demand a match with Hager so he can get revenge.

Hager debuted with AEW all the way back in October 2019, but this will be his first match with the company. In fact, it’ll be his first match of any kind since he challenged for the NWA title in November 2018. For the past couple of years he’s been focused on his mixed martial arts career in Bellator; between that and his role as a taciturn henchman, I don’t think we’re going to see much of him between the ropes.

Both of these guys look enormous now that they’re away from WWE, so this should feel like an impressive battle of the giants. But the outcome isn’t in much doubt; the smart move is to give Hager a win in his debut match, to establish his credibility as a big enforcer.

Darby Allin vs. Sammy Guevara - Guevara beat up Allin with his own skateboard on January 29, and they’ve been selling the idea that Allin’s throat was injured and he couldn’t speak. (At this point I’m not sure if Allin’s supposed to still be mute or if he just chooses not to say anything.) On the February 26 show I thought Allin was going to waffle Guevara with a skateboard to get some payback, but Sammy broke the skateboard over Darby’s head instead, so I guess they’re saving that for this show.

This is a tough match to call because they’re high on both guys and trying to get them both over, but neither is critical enough to be assured a steady string of wins. Allin is the sort of tenacious twerp that can lose again and again and still be over because he won’t quit, but I think he needs to beat guys like Guevara once in a while or he’ll start to feel like a chump. Guevara is sort of a chump no matter what since he’s Jericho’s toadie, but it’s good heel heat for the entire Inner Circle if they keep racking up wins. I could see this one going either way.

PAC vs. Orange Cassidy - Pac was griping about his big loss to Kenny Omega on February 26 when Cassidy randomly came out to get in his face, so now we have a match. Orange’s whole gimmick is that he’s lazy and can barely work up the effort to hit a guy, so the entire hype for this match is Chuck Taylor’s assurance that “this time he’s gonna TRY.” I’m very curious what that would look like.

I’m only vaguely familiar with how Orange Cassidy’s gimmick works on the indies. My impression is that he can turn it on and wrestle an intense, competitive match, but the joke is that he chooses to see how long he can get away with not doing that. Most footage I’ve seen of him has involved other wrestlers sinking to his level for comedy spots where they exchange strikes in slow motion. That’s all fine on an indy level, but in AEW it’s settled into “Orange does a couple of weak kicks but then the other guy just destroys him.” I don’t understand how any of that is going to function in a Pac match. But I expect to have fun finding out.

Pac pretty much has to win, though.

Scorpio Sky & Frankie Kazarian vs. Evil Uno & Stu Grayson - This is scheduled for the pre-show. Uno and Grayson have been trying to get people to join their stable for months, and it’s starting to cause tension as Sky and Kazarian wonder if Christopher Daniels will betray SCU to join the Dark Order. I think they’ve oversold the idea that Daniels is turning, and even if he does turn I don’t expect it to be on the pre-show. Nevertheless, the Dark Order needs a win here, so I think it’ll come from SCU worrying about Daniels. I’m pulling for Scorp, though, since I think I saw him on the elevator Friday.

#aew #revolution #chris jericho #jon moxley

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haich-slash-cee · 4 years

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Being Human (UK)

This is a show that I recommend to people... but I add a lot of caveats.

The recommendation: A werewolf, vampire and ghost are flatmates. This show is hilarious! So much macabre and slice of life humor! And horror and whump!? Also, the show was run by a side-channel of BBC (BBC3) and I guess they had no production money, so the actors mostly look human and they just refer to each other as being a 500-year old vampire or ghost or whatever. Which makes it even better. The werewolf is Jewish, recites a Jewish prayer at least once, and hangs out watching “The Real Hustle” with the vampire. They work in a hospital as janitors. The ghost has a habit of making everyone tea to soothe herself and the flat is cluttered with tea mugs everywhere all the time. Also, people do get fang-y or wolf-y or do weird poltergeist stuff. And gore happens.

Longish post, more below the cut.

PS, this is the 2008-2013 UK version of Being Human, which I hear had a cult following. There’s certainly stuff on Tumblr. I found the BBC version through the US remake of Being Human, but I’m much more charmed by the BBC version. (The US version has the vampire and werewolf as hospital doctors? Why?) Also I watched the show maybe 4, 5 years ago, so impressions are from that.

And the caveats: There’s a lot of sexism which was hard to watch. It’s engrained in the premise and plot and occasional gross sexist jokes. And there’s other problematic stuff in the writing. It’s like having glass shards show up the meal you are enjoying, and it’s why I’m not sure I’ll rewatch the series (or not in it’s entirety, anyway). There’s also a limited spinoff web series called Becoming Human which also had some problems for me, including some gross sexism and fatphobia. (John Boyega from Star Wars does show up as a character in that series, for anyone interested.)

Back to Being Human and overall series recommendations. So the 1st season was good. I kind of forgot what happened in the 2nd and 3rd season (I think they got depressing and slow?). The 4th season picked up again, much to my surprise, and I remember liking the 4th and 5th season a lot. Even though [spoilers] there was a complete cast change by this time. But it worked, somehow. The show did go from at least having one woman of color to having an all-white cast at the end, which was not great. And there’s other racism too.

For people who like their happily-ever-after: uhhh so I vaguely recall that a lot of characters don’t really get a happy ending. Granted, half of them are walking around dead already, so...? Overall, the ending of the 5th season is... Is that a happy ever after? Happy for now? The Bonus on the DVD kind of makes it a happy-for-now with a continued possibility? It’s an acceptable HFN?

.....And now, the notes for all the hurt/comfort people and whumpers:

Holy crap people, there is SO much h/c and whump!?

OK first -- George the werewolf. George’s transformation sequence, SUPER whumpy.

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Also, George ends up naked often, come to think. And he screams a lot during the show, for various reasons. The actor himself, in the bonus DVD interviews I think, cheerfully says something like, “People really like the way George screams, I do too.” (This is like when David Tennant cheerfully talked about how he enjoys playing a character who is unconscious and sick and gets fussed over by people.) And George is a very sympathetic, nerdy character who is easy to feel for. Who occasionally turns into a SNARLY SCARY WEREWOLF AGAINST HIS WILL. As mentioned, I think I liked season 1 George more than seasons 2 or 3.

Emotional hurt/comfort -- so Annie the Ghost provides a lot of the emotional centering, as I recall. Throughout all 5 seasons, all the characters lean on each other for support and there’s a lot of lovely warm fuzzies from that. Also, one of the later werewolf characters, Tom, is generally a sweet kid. I’m glad they didn’t do too much of the transformation horror with him, honestly. George/Russel Tovey could carry that, but I thought Tom’s strong point was looking puppy-eyed and folorn-eyebrow’d and trying to navigate the world with a mix of naivety and half-feral-ness.

Above: exhausted naps on the couch.

Below: Classic Being Human humor. A review of house rules and vampire stabbing etiquette, between Annie and Tom --

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[Spoilers from here on] Okay, so as mentioned, the cast changed over between season 4-5. And to my surprise, I think I loved the new trio as much as, or more than, the original trio. I liked how loud Alex the ghost was. And I liked both Annie and Alex.

Also, I did not expect this either, but I got so interested in Hal! Yo! First of all, Hal is a centuries-old Vampire and speaks/looks like, idk, a Regency Character. And then 19-yr old Tom puts Hal to work at a fast food shop and bosses him around, and Hal’s indignation is hilarious. So already, this is excellent.

And somehow, Hal is very, very whumpy? So: the character of a “vampire who is trying to be good and suffers” is not new, and I’ve encountered versions where I haven’t been interested. (I was lukewarm about Mitchell, the original vampire in the show.) But for whatever reason, I really dug Hal. Maybe, for me, Hal was just the right mix of very serious and earnest but also ridiculous and tragic all at once. (I read some interviews with the actor Damien Molony, who mentioned how he’d done a lot of history and addiction research in to prep for the role. The new trio actors also had a lot of chemistry and fun on sets, it sounds like. So I might be picking up all that.)

Also, Hal is actually two characters -- the ridiculous indignant serious Good Hal who is desperately trying to keep the horrible, rude, murderous, Bad Hal from taking over. But, as one of the show producers, a woman, cheerfully commented in the DVD extras: “And then Bad Hal shows up, which is great, everyone likes a bit of Bad Hal”.

Honestly, why do we even pretend to hide our fascination with the macabre and the whump, when showrunners and actors are cheerfully not hiding it all.

Here’s clips of Good Hal in Season 4:

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Oh, I forgot about this part until I rewatched the last clip -- but at the end of season 4, Hal asks his flatmates to forcibly bind him to a chair, because he’s trying to fight off Bad Hal. Based on my perusing of the whump community, pretty sure that scenario is of interest to someone.

Also notable is the episode “No Care, All Responsibility” (Series 5 ep 3). In one scene in particular, where Natasha has offered Hal a way to control his bloodlust and there’s this mix of vulnerability and power with Hal asking Natasha to put a stake against his heart, I remember thinking -- “I bet a woman wrote this ep and I bet she knew exactly what she wanted”. And I was right, that woman is Sarah Dollard, a queer woman who has also written a lot of other things (including Doctor Who). She also wrote Being Human goofy web extra eps with Alex, Hal and Tom called “Alex’s Unfinished Business” and they are so good ! (Interview).

Also... the opening 3-minute backstory in “No Care...” made me cry. You get a glimpse of the show’s baddie showing real care and emotion in rescuing this little kid (an important character). When this kind of scene is done well, it just gets me. every. time.

Anyway here’s an appearance of Bad Hal (much later), being completely awful, murdering people and turning them into vampires and singing Broadway tunes during this.

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Side note on Vampire narratives. Although Hal’s narrative arc of season 5 was interesting, and I’m aware this is show is urban fantasy, I still have qualms of the show enforcing IRL stigmas/ideas that addition is incurable and addicts are doomed. They’re not. (General overview on NIH page.) Addiction research is a growing field. From listening to NPR and reading articles, my impression is that addiction treatment will change quickly in the next few years. Related to the vampire blood addiction trope, Terry Pratchett covers vampires finding ways to be “dry” (one vampire, Maladict, swaps out blood addiction for coffee addiction) and you can find fanfics about the topic as well. (General link to Being Human Ao3 fanfics, why not.)

Side note on Hal’s dual characters -- recently, I did consider, “Is there overlap with Hal and portrayals of Dissociative Identity Disorder (MPD) folks?” IRL DID people have complained about movies with gross portrayals of people with DID. To me, Being Human’s Hal feels removed from that and closer to a fantasy.... but, I’m also not multi, so.

* Update: after having learned more about plural history, I’m even less sure now. (Note: my opinions are of someone who isn’t plural, as far as I know, so note that.) There’s a number of early problematic movies and books that hugely affected the popular narratives of plural people in the west, and still affect how therapists and non-plural people treat plural people even today. These include the movie “The Three Faces of Eve”, which has the narrative of “Good Eve, Bad Even, and later smushed together become ‘Fixed Eve’ or whatever”. There’s practically a whole lecture series on how the books/movies were made with sensationalism and formulas in mind and pretty gross things. Chris Costner Sizemore, the IRL Eve, had to fight the movie studios in court because the studios claimed they owned her life story. (There’s practically a whole lecture series on early plural history in the west, I might link more information later). Like, even today, multi people feel pressured to hide their plurality because they are afraid singlets or other people are gonna say “oh so which one of you is the ax murderer”, or that they are going to be fired from work. So.

This post turned into a “Being Human seasons 4 + 5 Appreciation Post”. I guess Season 1 and 4, 5 were my favorite. I watched the show through library DVDs, but I think there’s eps of the show on YouTube. The DVD extras are probably on this YouTube playlist?

(Also, there is a pilot episode, with different actors except George/Russel Tovey. I don’t think one needs to watch the pilot to watch the main series; I kind of recall that the main series recycled some of the pilot. There is a funny scene in the pilot where George and Mitchell meet Annie.)

Being Human: a macabre, hilarious, horror-filled, flawed, sometimes dragging, emotional, whumpy, oddball show that I still think about sometimes.

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irrepressible-domovoy · 5 years

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I was trying to write fanfiction and somehow ended up with this instead. (It bounces around, but bear with me)

You ever notice how friggin’ jacked superheroes are?

Like, take Captain America: The First Avenger for instance. In that first scene where he’s just been turned into Erskine’s super-beefcake, Carter (or, more accurately, Hayley Atwell, because that was not scripted) couldn’t keep her hands to herself when he popped out of the pod shirtless with washboard abs and boobs that rivaled mine.

And every time we get a female superhero, she’s this stick-figure thin girl with an absolutely flat belly and no scars (unless they’re the Black Widow) and no stretch marks because those are considered “gross.”

But here’s the thing.

The actors aren’t naturally that way. It’s not even healthy to be that way.

I remember reading how Chris Hemsworth got his “look” for his shirtless scenes in Thor by not drinking water for a few days and right before he would need to be hospitalized for dehydration, they called, “Roll it!” (I legitimately cannot remember where this was. Someone help me?)

At another point, I remember reading an interview where Chris Evans said those super-tight shirts from the Captain America movies were really uncomfortable. He even hinted that they were painful.

And in another movie, (Was it Spartacus?) the cast pretty much survived on chicken and lettuce. Look, I’m not a nutritionist in any sense of the imagination, but even I know that’s not safe, physically healthy, or good for your mental health.

In Fight Club, Brad Pitt screwed himself up big time by cutting his weight constantly to keep his “perfect” physique.

Slightly off-topic, but Brendon Frasier nearly killed himself with the stunts on top of the weight/muscle-tone demands for The Mummy 3. There’s a serious problem with the industry here.

And let’s get onto the women’s body image here that affects literally every woman on screen: Flat bellies? Dudes. Cis women have these things called ovaries that are in there. We need more room. Plus, it is actually unhealthy for anyone of any gender to have less than 8% body fat, at bare minimum.

Then there’s the issue with erasing scars and stretch marks. I am twenty-two years old. I have scars from everything from an accident in the kitchen to skinning my knee as a kid on a patch of shattered glass. You (the writers and directors of the films) give them to the dudes, but not the girls? Just work those scars into your BAMF super-heroines. They already have the backstories for them to be viable and even likely. I, as well as more than half of the people on this planet, have these things called stretch marks. They are what happens when we grow. It means I started out as a baby and turned into an adult. They are not shameful and only serve to remind me that I, and the person on my screen, were once small and innocent. (Also, they either look like tiger stripes or lightning bolts, depending on how you look at them)

My point is, we the viewers (whether children learning how to view our own bodies and the world, teenagers struggling with self-image in a world that tells us we aren’t ever going to be pretty enough, or grown adults struggling with all of the above and more) deserve to be able to see heroes that are real and the actors portraying these characters deserve to not only feel better about themselves but to also be able to do their job without causing permanent damage to their bodies.

@fightyspidey and I came up with some ideas, if Marvel Studios wanted some suggestions.

Give us Thor, mighty Viking warrior king, with the fat from too many feasts. (Human weightlifting champions are known for being “a bit pudgy” but they can also kill you with a pinky. It’s not that far off the mark)

Give me Steve Rogers with stretch marks and scars from growing too fast after Project: Rebirth.

Give me a Natasha Romanov with scars that aren’t there to maximize the mangst and aren’t perfect little circles that are easily hidden.

Give me Tony Stark without a shirt and his scars aren’t some “sexy work of art,” but rather an ugly reminder of pain and hardship.

Give me Sif coming to visit the Avengers and she comes in with shorts or a skirt on and we see how she doesn’t shave her legs and literally no one cares.

I want to see the Hulk with stretch marks and Bruce completely chill with his pudge.

I want to see Peter, Shuri, and Wanda with acne and acne scars. (Please?)

I would love to see Scott Lang telling a story about the time he fell out of a three-story window (”And Luis did nothing!”) and he ended up with a bald-patch on the side of his head from where his helmet cracked his skull open. (I actually have one of those)

I want to see burns on Pepper, because her Extremis is still imperfect and can’t heal everything without leaving something behind in its place.

Happy should still have scars from Iron Man 3.

In short: Give me characters that I can see myself in.

The fans aren’t perfect. We don’t have clear skin, no matter our ages, and we have scars and fat in weird places and hair in even weirder ones.

Give us heroes that we can identify with.

Give your actors a chance to breathe. Give them a chance to be okay with themselves.

#avengers #hollywood #feminism #mcu #marvel #fandom #film making #film industry #beauty standards #show us scars

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qcpmedia · 4 years

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“Birds of Prey”: A Crisis of Infinite Harleys

by Chris Clay

Ok-- let's get this part out of the way first: I love Harley Quinn.

Have done since her debut on Batman The Animated Series. My mother let my dad take me to see Tim Burton’s brilliant 1989 Batman film (I was 5 at the time) because she was under the assumption that Batman was always the high camp she remembered enjoying in the television show from her childhood. Thanks, Adam West! My journey into comics began shortly after learning to read with classical mythology, so I was totally prepared for all manner of tales about monsters, demons, serial killers, human traffickers, etc. Quickly becoming an avid comic reader, 10 year-old me was a DC & Marvel veteran who spent a lot of mental energy filling in the blanks on the softened-for-cartoons versions of Bats, Spidey & the X-Men.

After years of seeing "versions" of my favorite supers onscreen, I thought this new character, originally the Joker's jester henchwoman, was a breath of fresh air. She seemed like the perfect fit for both the show and the Joker, the first real Manic Pixie Dreamgirl. She was funny but also scary, vulnerable and just overall awesome. Best of all? She didn’t seem nerfed for kids tv. She just seemed oddly... real. And she was contagious. That complex reality bled onto anyone she shared enough screen time with. She helped me to see Poison Ivy as the troubled yet brilliant and sensitive person the show had always hinted she was. Besides Catwoman, no other character tested Batman's rigid sense of right and wrong more beautifully. Even Joker seemed multifaceted when Harley was around. I cheered as loudly as anyone when she ditched that clown, and those Harley/Ivy episodes were some of the best the series had to offer.

OG Harley & subsequent versions over the years tended to show a woman that was preyed upon by a master manipulator who pushed her to the edge of sanity. To the edge, not over it. She was definitely traumatized, but the original portrayals never presented any extreme mental problems. Sure, she was codependent & had a temper. And shitty taste in men. Those traits in moderation are not craaaazy. That's just being human.

Harley continued to evolve over the years, shaped by many creators and performers across multiple mediums. Her look has changed, her status as villain or antihero has vacillated and her relationships have been presented more and more as on her terms rather than something foisted upon her by chance.

The characterization problems started in comics, but David Ayers' disappointing 2016 Suicide Squad film brought this lesser Harl to the masses, along with a version of her *ahem* more revealing New52 costume, seemingly metahuman durability & chalk white skin. I always loved the idea that Harleen had the ability to take her jester clothing & clown makeup off, sit around with an equally dressed-down Ivy and talk about who they really were, what made them tick. This new Harley (like her modern comics counterpart) was always "on", displaying very little of the soulful, mature character many of us comics & animation fans know and love. Despite that, she was definitely the highlight of the film, and there were flashes of brilliance that made me believe Margot Robbie could get to the fundamental truths of the character if given another chance.

And that brings us rather neatly to Birds of Prey (and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn).

Harley Quinn, last seen in the aforementioned Suicide Squad, has just been dumped by the Joker & is forced to make her own way in Gotham City’s underworld. In short order, she meets Dinah Lance, Renee Montoya, Helena Bertinelli & Cassandra Cain. All of these ladies have, for various reasons, fallen onto the radar of neat-freak gangster Roman Sionis, played with scenery-scarfing delight by Ewan MacGregor. Forced to band together to survive, they eventually learn that despite their considerable individual talents, they're more formidable as a team.

For some reason I still can’t quite articulate, I remember being slightly underwhelmed when the cast was announced. I liked all of the actors... hell, each of them has had at least one role I absolutely loved them in-- but I still felt they were odd choices for their respective roles in this movie (more on that later). The trailer was where I got genuinely worried that Warner might be climbing back into the hole so many creators toiled to pull the DC film properties out of.

However, as I said in the beginning, I love Harley Quinn. I was definitely going to see this movie. In Margot Robbie, I felt Harley had a champion on par with Ryan Reynolds as Deadpool or Hugh Jackman as Wolverine; an actor who would work tirelessly to get their character right, on the page & onscreen, however many tries it took. Plus she was saying some interesting things about what she thought the the film & the character should represent during the rollout (and I know the movie isn't the trailer), so I was at "cautious optimism" by the time I sat down to watch the film.

I was totally wrong about one thing: the cast is the best thing about the movie, and that’s not some backhanded compliment. K.K. Barrett's production design is great, colorful while not feeling cheap or phony, and Cathy Yan has a great eye for fun directing choices that keep things zipping along... but the cast is the real MVP. They’re actually great.

Jurnee Smollet-Bell is understated & surprisingly physical as tough-as-nails chanteuse Dinah Lance, a classic “woman trying to keep her head down in a bum situation”. She gave modern comic book moll vibes & I Stan. Rosie Perez's Renee Montoya brought a dose of realism to the candy-coated insanity swirling all around her while also giving Harley an entertaining foil for the first 2 acts. She has probably my favorite fight scene in the entire movie.

Mary Elizabeth Winstead, the person I went into the movie thinking was the most grossly miscast, is hands down my favorite character in the film. She's equal parts ruthless & socially awkward, a take on Huntress that is somehow both anachronistic & perfectly in step with her comic counterpart. Even newcomer Ella Jay Basco brings a unique charm to what could have easily been an irksome reimagining of fan favorite Cass Cain as a sassy teenage pickpocket. MacGregor’s turn as Sionis is less a character than he is a symbol, acting as a stand-in for various brands of broken maleness, but the guy’s clearly having a blast and he has decent enough chemistry with the leads. Chris Messina as Victor Vsasz is an absolute snoozefest, a waste of both character and actor that I’ll give no more space or attention.

Now for the elephant in the room: Margot Robbie's Harley is my least favorite thing about the whole movie.

"But Chris..", I hear you yelling at your computational device, "...you said she was the lone bright spot of SS!"

True, but in a film with clever, unmuddied direction & other actors that actually display some semblance of emotion or charisma for more than one scene a piece, the bar has been raised this go round & Robbie's frantic mugging limbos under said bar by a mile. What’s worse is that she actively takes screen time that could be better spent fleshing out one of the other four characters. Only Huntress (who has probably the least screen time of any of the leads) actually has a backstory, but her origin is a large part of the plot. One could be forgiven for thinking the she wouldn’t have had one at all otherwise. We don’t really know anything about Cassandra Cain, Montoya is literally just Stock Cop, and you could make a whole movie out of how the hell Dinah ended up singing at Sionis’ club. And where the hell is the Joker?! Why is he letting Harley destabilize Gotham’s balance of power or letting Sionis threaten his ex-puddin’ while also claiming to be the the underworld’s top dog? Instead of answering these questions, we get a bunch of throwaway characters attacking the newly-emancipated Quinn and Suicide Squad flashbacks that look even uglier than before when placed side by side with the production design of this film. The fact that most of these characters are so thinly characterized yet still connect is a testament to the performances and chemistry of the central cast.

You get the feeling that a lot of this movie was Robbie as producer, exerting her ideas & energy onto a massive production that needed a lot of moving parts to line up in order to work. It's not easy to have everything riding on you, whether it’s the future of the DCEU, progressive representation of women in film or just your own movie stardom. I understand that and I sympathize. This frantic, flailing movie is the product of some 3 years of rewrites and pitching, shooting on and off for 9 months, plus all the promo stuff. Every interview that I've seen the cast do has basically been Robbie explaining things ad nauseam while Jurnee Smollet-Bell or Mary Elizabeth Winstead kind of quietly nod in agreement, with the exception of the recent season premiere of Hot Ones, where capsaicin finally allowed someone else get a word in edgewise. The real problem with that comes when you see the movie and realize she’s contextualizing so much of the film on other media outlets because the film itself doesn’t really seem to have the time or interest, leaving it’s star to try and explain what we actually see onscreen on the press tour. This leads to a situation akin to Final Fantasy XV, where the player needed heaps of supplemental content to understand what could and should have been included in the story proper. She just seems overworked, similar to when Ben Affleck wanted to perform the Herculean task of writing, directing & starring in the next solo Batman film. Maybe Margot & Harley both need a little break?

The internet is scrambling to diagnose why a well-reviewed movie starring a beloved character played by a popular actress is underperforming at the box office, citing everything from the trailer to the rating to the movie’s title, with many (including BoP creator Gerry Conway) blaming the lackluster box office on sexism, but I think there might be a simpler answer: this version is trying to pull from the entire history of Harley to create a singular characterization from sometimes disparate portrayals. It doesn’t help that Robbie’s Quinn exists in a universe that’s constantly shifting under her feet after every film.

Most comic characters are criticized for being inaccurate to the source material but Harley has arguably the opposite problem; almost a Crisis of Infinite Harleys, where Robbie and Warner Bros. want to stuff the best elements from every version of Harley into every movie she’s in. It’s supposed to be fan service but instead, often feels scattered and tiring. Not to mention the stuff these films just pluck straight out of thin air that don’t work...

The DC Universe version of the character chose to leave the Joker on her own terms and I thought that was a brilliant and socially relevant writing choice, so it was strange to then see the more mainstream (and arguably more popular) version of Harley be dragged out of Joker’s hideout, kicking and screaming. In a film who’s title was purposely made ridiculously long to accentuate the character’s supposed newfound self-sufficiency, For all of the things that do work well, Birds of Prey just doesn’t feel like what’s explicitly promised on the tin.

I still love Harley Quinn, and I still think Margot Robbie’s the right person for the job. No need to Pattinson her or anything... just put less on her plate and give the character and the movies she’s in a clear, singular direction. Pretty please, puddin’?

#birds of prey #harley quinn #dceu #margot robbie #ewan macgregor #jurnee smollett bell #rosie perez #dc comics #black mask #renee montoya #batman #ben affleck #robert pattinson #movies #essay

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saleintothe90s · 5 years

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381. It Came From the Daily Show: one episode from August 1999, and one from September 1999

(June and July here)

August 26, 1999

I have a treat for the episode for August -- I uploaded my vhs copy of it!

By August, Jon is still walking to his desk at the beginning of the show -- I still can’t remember when he stopped doing this. Jon has to get through the show quickly tonight, it’s their back to school episode, and he has to go out and buy notebooks, binders, and toughskins. Sometimes he chafes! Ya’ll are like what on earth are toughskins? Toughskins were these ugly pants for kids that Sears used to sell in their catalog back in the day. They were supposed to be more durable, but I can’t imagine they were very flexible. Here’s a commercial.

Headlines - Pilot to Coke-Pilot : American Airlines employees caught smuggling cocaine. There may of been an incident of cocaine leaking out onto the food in a food cart...”resulting in an entire coach section running up and down the aisles with sandwiches held aloft screaming, ‘WOO-HOO! HAM AND CHEESE! YEAH!’.”

American Airlines had to change their slogan:

Clinton Vacation Diaries: Day 5 - Bill is on vacation golfing at Martha’s Vineyard. People were watching him and began singing “God Bless America”, which is creepy.

Tough Glove - Little League World Series heats up. Kids from all over the world come to a little town in PA to learn new ways to call their teammates homophobic slurs. Hey, Jon said it, I didn’t. Winners will either be sent to their rooms ... or their looms depending on where they are from. This is one of the crueler segments that I’ve covered from this series, and something Jon and crew got away from come late ‘99 and into 2000.

Correspondent Piece - Stilt Stalkings: Stephen Colbert interviews Uncle Sam who says that his ex wife is stalking him. “I want you to leave me alone!” he says.

Stephen: Did you ever go through his garbage?

Ex-wife: no....

Stephen: Good, because he peed all over it.

After commercials, Jon asks, “...is it a bad sign if someone in the audience says to me, ‘GET IN MAH BELLY!’?”

Other News - Going Going, Gun : “Los Angeles bans gun sales at gun shows. Gun Lobbyists say, ‘gun shows don’t kill people, people shows kill people.’”

Interview - Nia Long: I usually skip the interview in these entries, due to time constraints, but this one is special. Nia teaches Jon what a ho bag is. Nia lost her luggage three times on this promotional tour. However, she says that he mother always told her “no matter where you go, always carry your ho-bag”.

Nia: you know, your toothbrush, your condoms, a clean pair of underwear, your protein drink...

Jon: My apartment is a ho-bag!

Jon was just reading Family Circus.

This Just In - Nice Cans: Campbells introduces a new soup label. Because that was news in 1999. I love this stupid thing so much, Jon and Crew makes something as trivial as soup funny. This was the Daily Show I loved for years that sadly went away.

“Many say collectors will be rushing out to stores to buy the old cans, and place them on a trophy shelf alongside the bittersweet dream that was Crystal Pepsi.”

“The new label also features a photo of soup in a bowl, which will come as a revelation to the millions of consumers who up until new always ate their soup of out a hat!”

I actually remember those new labels, haha. The Campbells can had stayed the same all my life until then. So when that changes, you notice it.

Out at the Movies - Summer, 1999 wrap up: Jon says in the introduction that Frank will tell us why the Summer of 1999 movies went so “horribly, horribly wrong” -- but I’ve read articles where people declare 1999 as one of the best years for movies. Maybe 20 years ago, people were focused on the disappointment of The Phantom Menace, and Eyes Wide Shut? I mean, in the How Did this Get Made podcast episode about Lawnmower Man, Jason Mantzoukas even says that he CRIED when he saw how bad Phantom Menace was.

[from my hometown newspaper, Daily Press]

September 30, 1999 -- I uploaded this one from my old tapes too.

Here we are, bby. This is one of my all time favorite episodes. Jon learns all about Garth Brooks’ alter ego, Chris Gaines. Oh boy, Chris Gaines. Garth Brooks like, wanted to be a rock n roll star, and star in a movie or something so he created this character named Chris Gaines? Garth even went to make believe land, and gave him a whole backstory. I remember one was his mom or his dad coached swimming in Australia? There was even a faux Behind the Music on VH1 about Chris and how his bandmates died?! It was seriously one of the dumbest things from 1999. By the way, The Lamb never became a movie.

Headlines - Alter Egomaniac: Garth puts on a TV concert of his alter ego, but he performs on stage as Garth? Will he ask himself for an autograph of Chris Gaines?

I found the entire interview that played in between songs for the special, including the music video for Chris’ first band Crush (because that’s an original name for a band). Garth is totally lost in Chris Gaines when he’s explaining the faux musical video. You have to watch it. The bizarre “did you know?” about Chris’ fictional life are also in the clip. Was this music video made for the movie that never got off the ground? So many unanswered questions.

Jon says we can’t care about this stuff because CHRIS DOESN’T EXIST.

Media Responsibility - The correspondents are here to criticize the media. Yada Yada, this is all Chyron jokes:

It also includes a clip of a guy in a bullfight where his pants were removed by the bull. Classic Daily Show clip.

Stephen Colbert has to go freak on some bones? I wanna know where that shower was. Is it the one in Jon’s dressing room? Did they got to a co-workers apartment just for that shower scene?

Ooh! This episode has its commercials intact! There’s gonna be an SNL marathon Friday night in honor of Superstar. Also, a Phantom Menace Playstation game came out about four months too late.

Other News - Web of Receipts: amazon.com becomes an internet flea market with the launch of z shops. They’re gonna offer more than just books n cds. e.

(the interview is missing from my clip)

Out at the Movies with Frank DeCaro: For the Love of the Game - My boy Frank didn’t like it. Kelly Preston looks like Lisa Loeb, Kevin Costner has a bunch of crow’s feet.

“Isn’t this a long way to go just for a full head of hair?”

For more entries similar to this, check out my Daily Show favorites from 1999-2001 zine over at my etsy shop.

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