#it's entertaining as fuck and i love watching the deep dives into its history and its timeline

[winterskyfirefly]

been playing the sims 4 history legacy challenge and i JUST got out of the fucking stone ages (which already is a hard start, you have almost NOTHING you can actually buy, you have to wait for the SECOND generation of children to move on to early civilization) and i've been playing it a bit more hardcore than even the original challenge gives you like i didn't buy the easel or any tables or countertops or anything, it was literally they got some shrubs to piss in and a shitty cheap wooden tub to bathe in and i put a lot of trees and flowers and decorative foliage to disguise them, they had a big tent and they lived in sulani so they were near enough to the waterfall to occasionally shower there, they had a grill and insect farms and i maxed out their gardening and fishing skills REAL QUICK and one sim actually got so good at making off the grid recipes using only what they had that they can now "write a book about it" (sorry babe yr gonna be an elder in 6 days and i don't think we'll hit computer technology before you die) and frankly i am BLESSED to have candle light and sinks and i was able to build a house, i made it real hovel in the ground style just a bathroom in a separate room and then one big room with three beds for the parents and child and then the cribs for the twins that my first gen child had (TWINS WHY) and some counters now for the grill, still no stove, no fridge, but they can store some of their food on the selling table so it lasts a BIT longer, and it's STILL so hard cos all i can really buy is the chess table and a bookshelf and like a guitar for entertainment. It's a fun challenge and I'm intentionally trying to make it harder but OH MY GOD.

and just to go along with it tonight i will be watching little house on the prairie tv show because i was obsessed with laura ingalls wilder's books as a kid and listened to the wilder podcast today that kind of did a deep dive into them and their legacy and it's been very interest, a wild ride if i may, and i figured playing sims history legacy challenge would go well with prairie times, and i think about wanting to step out into prairie grass and feel the sun and listen to the wolves howl at night, i think about the stories that i was fed that weren't all necessarily true, things like mary slapping a bear, pa going out for three days in a blizzard, laura having to teach students older than her to help her parents make money, the locust swarm, just all the things that were part of that series

and the podcast even calls out cottagecore and how hard that life really was and how we buy into the soft cute culture of it, and yes i honestly do want to live somewhere quiet and small and close to nature, i would love to grow my own food, learn to sew, talk to the birds and bugs and look at the stars and think, i would love to live a life further from consumerism and i would love to find some medium between laura ingalls prairie time and now modern capitalistic times, absolutely, and i recognize my luxury of my current life and how blessed i am to even want that compared to some, and of course you still have to be critical that she was writing about a family forging its way in a land where the inhabitants were slaughtered for their way to be forged, and what viewpoint we are fed is it really ethical, but honestly, i just want to live a life critically but softly, care about this world and the people around me, make the world better and not destroy it and get to something better and more connected and less capitalistic

i say, even as I play my silly game on my silly computer that i bought with silly specifications and paid extra silly money for (but i mean my keyboard lights up multicolors customized, i bet laura would have loved it) and anyways i don't really know where i was going with this but i hope you all have a good night, i'm going to play my history challenge early civilization mode while watching little house on the prairie and thinking of a kinder day tomorrow for everyone out there, because i think a lot of people need it.

[omgthatdress]

How to make Cats a good movie.

I watched Cats, and once I got over the initial horror, I was actually pretty entertained and found myself enjoying the shit out of it. Like god bless it, for as nightmare-inducing as much as it was, Tom Hooper was clearly *committed* to his vision and you gotta give him credit for that. The scenery was actually really beautiful and the cinematography was frequently breathtaking. Like it really did have a lot of elements that really worked for it. But for every bit of genius, there was something terrible that the movie just couldn’t overcome. So let’s dive in.

First of all, you kind of have to understand Cats: the musical. It’s an adaptation of poems that T.S. Elliott of nihilistic lost generation fame wrote for his godchildren about cats. And the poetry is charming af and totally captures the nature of cats and why they’re so lovable. In the in the 1970s, Andrew Lloyd Webber did a shit ton of cocaine and decided to make a musical out of these poems. As a result, Cats has no plot. It’s a bunch of cats singing their songs about who they are and doing a lot of dancing. The thinnest of narrative devices is created with the “jellicle” ball and the deciding of which cat gets to ascend to heaven or some shit. So yeah. Cats is actually pretty controversial among theater nerds, it’s very much a you either love it or hate it thing. Is it stupid? Yes.  Is it going to make everyone happy? No. Does it lend itself well to film adaptation? fuck no. I get the feeling that Tom Hooper was really going for deep, meaningful poetic cinema here and trying to make another Les Mis (which was way overly long and ultimately sank under its own sheer weight as a movie and probably is better viewed as a play). I’m operating under the assumption that Hooper was going for ground-breaking cinema that would have made millions and swept up during awards season and cemented him as a legendary director and gone down in movie history, because every little detail of Cats is clearly meant for maximum impact. You kind of need to drop all expectations going into Cats, so once you’re there, you can have fun with it. So how do you make it a good film?

1. The HORRIBLE hyper-realistic cgi human-cat hybrids. YES, it’s a technical marvel, and the CGI artists who made it all deserve a ton of credit for the work they did. And I understand why the actors were kept in their human shapes: live dance is a huge part of what makes Cats work. One of the smart decisions made was hiring theater veterans for the filler roles in the cat chorus, so when you have the choreographed numbers, it’s really spectacular. It’s just the end result was way too uncanny valley and bizarre for any of the film’s good parts to ever rise above it. I think a minimalist approach would have actually worked best. Cat ears and simple costumes with clean lines that show off the dancer’s bodies. Go for the suggestion of cats, and kind of let the viewer’s imagination take over, and showcase the cat’s personality. A huge part of what I enjoyed was hearing the poetry and imagining these cats and how they all relate to cats I’ve known. The dance and the music helped heighten this experience, but hybrids kept reminding me of the joke: what do you get when you cross a human and a cat? An immediate cessation of funding and a stern rebuke from the ethics committee.

2. The schlocky, honestly amateurish attempts at slapstick humor. I’m gonna come out and say it and say that Hooper is pretty deeply entrenched in *dRaMa* and has no sense of how comedy works. There was a lot of added in comedic bits from Rebel Wilson and James Corden, and it was honestly terrible. I mean really, a crotch hit? That kind of lowbrow comedy is so crude and base that it’s actually really hard to pull it off well. Slapstick comedy actually lends itself to the whimsical tone, and slapstick done well can be utterly sublime, but Cats seemed satisfied that fat people falling over is the height of comedy and should be left at that. And a second note on the comedy? Weirdly fat-shame-y. A saw a post about how odd it is to see James Corden, who has been very frank about how he’s struggled with dieting and come to accept that his body is fat and can’t be made not fat, playing this role where fat is added to his body, his CGI vest strains at the buttons, and he’s literally stuffing his face with garbage. The theme of fat people as lazy, stupid, and slovenly carried over from Rebel Wilson’s role, in which she also plays a fat lazy cat who is leaned on heavily for comic relief. I know the role is about a fat cat, and gently laughing at a fat lazy cat who loves to eat is fine, but, speaking as a fat person myself, this felt like a gleeful exploitation of a nasty and cruel stereotype. James Corden and Rebel Wilson are both extraordinarily funny people who happen to be fat, and their comedic gifts were tremendously mis-used here, reducing them to simply two fat bodies to be laughed at.

3. Jennifer Hudson. She’s a talented actress who can sing and emote like a motherfucker. And emote she did. She was clearly GOING for that second Oscar. I really don’t want to call her performance bad. The same level of emotion, tears running and snot flowing, in another movie, would have been devastating (Hello, Viola Davis in Fences). But this isn’t Fences, it’s fucking Cats. You need a level of character depth and development that Cats doesn’t afford to make those tears hit. All the crying and misery was an odd maudlin and over-dramatic break in the fun and whimsy. With a subtler performance and a hint of self-awareness, it could have actually brought in an emotional anchor for this light-as-air film, but Cats doesn’t make any attempt at nuance, and as a result the scenes just hit you out of nowhere like a load of bricks. 

4. Francesca Hayward. Okay, before we go anywhere, I want to say that this girl is not un-talented. She’s the principal ballerina of the Royal Ballet, and has a very long list of ballets that she’s lead in. So it makes sense that she’d be hired for a role that’s primarily ballet. This girl is a really really great DANCER. But Cats was clearly trying to make an A-list actress out of her. They tried to make her into Florence Pugh, who has been acting for a while and is blowing up right now because she’s very talented. Like everything about Francesca’s role in the film said “This is a star-making role.” A new song was written just for her to sing as an addendum to Cats’s show-stopping signature song. But the song was just okay, it didn’t carry nearly the emotional weight or all-around beauty of “Memories,” and all in all felt wedged-in and totally unnecessary and really just felt like a grab at that “best original song” Oscar. Francesca’s voice is high, thin, and child-like. It’s not unpleasant, but next to the richness and depth of Jennifer Hudson’s voice, it crumbles, and it’s not the sort of voice that I want to seek out to listen to over and over again. As for her overall performance, she largely keeps the same look of wide-eyed wonder throughout her numerous close-ups, so much so that I found myself thinking of the the MST3K “dull surprise” sketch. But I don’t know if that’s really entirely her fault. There was an attempted romantic storyline with the magic cat, but again, because of the nature of Cats and its lack of real character development or depth, the chemistry fell flat. There really isn’t much of a chance to show off a lot of dramatic range, so to keep going back to her character, it kept reinforcing the one-notedness of her performance. Really, I just kept wanting to see Francesca dance. Ironically, I think they really blew an opportunity trying to make an A-list actress out of her. All she really need to make people want to see more of her is one spectacular dance number, but for some reason, she never really gets that show-stopping moment. 

5. Dignity? I guess this goes back to the whole CGI cat thing, but there were a lot of moments when I felt this tremendous wave of second-hand embarrassment hit me on behalf of the talented actors in this film. Watching Gandalf lap up milk from a saucer was a wholly uncomfortable experience, like come on, grant the great Ian McKellan some fucking DIGNITY here. Which goes back to whatI said earlier that a suggestion and interpretation of cats would have worked better than all-out just being a cat. Or it could again just be how much Cats just fails its attempts at comedy. But then again there was no fucking reason at all for Idris Elba to be that fucking NAKED. I guess they were trying to make him sexy? But his sexy smolder and just being Idris Elba wasn’t enough they had to make sure that we all saw his chiseled pecs and thick thighs. And then at the end when he’s dangling off of the rope of a hot air balloon and what’s supposed to be a funny scene, I think, I kept thinking “I’m so sorry this is happening to you, Idris.” 

There’s a bunch of other small, nit-picky things that I could go into. Those cockroaches would have worked so much better if they weren’t humans with an extra set of arms. Watching them get eaten was some horror movie shit. Taylor Swift’s Macavity song would have worked a lot better if the cat chorus full of cats we’ve gotten to know had sung it, but instead Taylor Swift is brought in as a new cat we don’t know whose only purpose is to sing the Macavity song? but of course a big oscar-bait movie needs to have that pop star that draws in the people who wouldn’t otherwise see it and making her a part of the cat chorus would have had her performing throughout the whole movie and she would have floundered the way pop stars tend to do when performing musical theater around a bunch of musical theater actors. So I guess I get why she was thrown in.

So.... yeah? Is there anyone else who found themselves enjoying it in spite of everything? I’m glad I have dogs and didn’t have to watch this mess with actual cats around me.

#Cats 2019 #Cats

[aedanstarfang]

Welcome to Morgyn’s Drag Race

I've been away from my blog for quite a while, working on a (stupid) project that has occupied my time. And like all defiantly proud persons, I needed to see through this project to the end...and I also had fun (kinda) working on it. So without further ado, here is the Blogspot premiere of Morgyn's Drag Race: Season One!

Having made its official premiere on August 30, 2020; Morgyn's Drag Race was originally just a fun side-project that blew up into a full size in going 'The Sims' mini series. Meet the Cast

Morgyn Ember

Hailing from the Magic Realm, hidden deep within Glimmerbrook; Morgyn is a non-binary sim though that does not make him ineligible from being one of the sickest drag queens in Sim Nation (look up the real world history of Drag; trans and NB persons were the pioneers of drag culture).

Morgyn introduces himself as the 'head judge' of the inaugural season of Drag Race, alongside his co-judges; Siobhan Fyres and Izzy Fabulous, truly a stylish and LGBTQIA+ inclusive judging panel.

Morgyn's critiques of the queens come from the heart and he laces every critique with a compliment, embracing and appreciating said queen's individuality while criticizing their work. Morgyn can be best described as an fair, constructive and sensitive judge, and unlike real world judge/critics such as Rupaul or Simon Cowell; Morgyn actually critiques the queen's runway rather than barking out trendy one-liners or simply discrediting a queen's work because 'he doesn't like it'.

Siobhan & Izzy make up the rest of the judging panel acting as the defacto Michelle Visage and Santino Rice respectively; though it's a little deeper than that. Siobhan Fyres is more like co-judge 'Stacey McKenzie' of Canada's Drag Race or former Drag Race judge 'Merle Ginsberg', often giving constructive criticism while not shying away from criticizing a queen's sloppiness or lack of runway presence.

Izzy could be compared to ex-Drag Race judge 'Santino Rice', though that comparison falls a little flat when you see that Izzy's personality is less sharp-tongued and 'mean girl'-esque and more blunt and impartial on similar lines as 'Simon Cowell' or 'Piers Morgan'. Izzy openly displays boredom or disinterest within the first few seconds of seeing a queen's runway, and is often chided by Morgyn for being too hasty.

The Pilot or first episode showed us Eliza Pancakes acting as Morgyn's second-in-command as a literal expy of drag race judge 'Michelle Visage', being very quick to dismiss a queen for being weird or different, criticizing a queen's look for not being 'trendy' or 'mainstream' enough and even going so far as taking offense with an Asian queen's pun-name.  She was fired by the second episode and instead blackmailed placed into a hosting position of 'What's In the Bag?', which is basically a Sims version of 'Whatcha Packin?' It's a humorous after show type of series that revolves around Eliza interviewing eliminated queens, all the while getting several jabs in at Morgyn, the producers, the company and of course shading the guest queen themselves.

The Contestants

Morgyn's Drag Race was announced on August of this year, which included a special series of 'Meet the Queens' videos focusing on all twelve of the competing queens. This season I am proud to say that it features a diverse range of queens ranging in size, nationality, gender identity and drag/performance style.

The initial twelve 'meet the queens' videos are still available to watch on my youtube channel, however they will soon be made irrelevant as newer, updated MTQ videos shall take their place - featuring a fluid, solid theme for the promo (which never got an official release oops!)

So without further ado, let's do further and get to know these twelve quirky queens shall we (in alphabetical order)? (*Note: That characters who are competing drag queens are referred to as 'her/she' and 'he/him' interchangeably via the rule of 'when a queen is in drag they are she, when they are out of drag they are he, there are of course expections).

Also, MAJOR SPOILERS AHEAD - YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!

Baga Trash

Sy Jefferies

AKA "

Baga Trash

" 34, is a well-known drag performer from Windenburg. Now I know what you're probably thinking; "he's an obvious parody of Baga Chipz" well no, not really. While Baga Trash IS a British queen (even if my impression is shite), he was inspired by several different characters and queens including but not limited to 'Tammie Brown' and 'Daphne Moon'. Baga aspires to become the world's top trash queen, and applauds 'trashion' as the style of the future. Interestingly enough, Baga Trash has little to no interest in ANY of the features from Eco Lifestyle, odd since dumpster diving is right up her ally.

Caliente

Nicholas Contreras

aka

"Caliente",

at 24 is one of the youngest competing queens this season right after Terra Ryzen. Caliente prides herself on her youth, beauty and bubbly personality and actively proclaims her "youthful vigor" to be the secret to success. Now what is "youthful vigor" you might ask? Youthful Vigor is the total tetratic composition of youth, attractiveness or beauty, personality and talent. With that mantra in mind, Caliente remains ever cheerful and confident throughout the competition.      Having originally been brought up on a large farm in Brindleton Bay, Caliente was no stranger to receiving the occasional odd glance from passersby as she gallivanted down main street in her pink designer miniskirts and halter tops, and to be honest she loved the attention more than anyone could know, this of course would boost her confidence into moving out to Newcrest where she would officially compete for the title of 'Morgyn's Magical Queen'.

Crow

Corbin Corvidae

AKA

"Crow"

30, is an adventurous and experienced queen hailing from Oasis Springs. As many would point out that Crow has glaringly obvious similarities to a certain

real life queen

and I will be 100% honest, yes Crow is an homage to many former Drag Race queens. Crow's personality I think is what sets her apart and standalone from other queens, both real life and fictitious. The most obvious similarities being Crow's seemingly bitter attitude towards the younger queens (particularly Caliente and Terra Ryzen), which plays into the same trope of "

this is a competition

" and "

blame the edit

". When starting Morgyn's Drag Race, we needed an antithesis to who we figured would be the standout protagonists of the season (being either Galaxia, Lapis or Caliente) and Crow fits that bill nicely.

Crow's moniker stems from her fascination with the color black, darkness, midnight and the very bird itself while the demeanor and overall look of her character is derived from her love of the 1990's film of the same name. Crow's experience and expertise with drag make her a force to be reckoned with, while her demure and sultry demeanor set her apart from the competition. Regardless of how you feel about Miss Crow, no one can deny that she serves some serious looks each time she hits the runway

Extra

Lance Proffitt

(pronounced 'Pro-feet') aka

"Extra"

29, is a professional

"background artist"

from Del Sol Valley, and no we're not talking about the actual profession of the

same name

we're talking about an

extra

, as in an uncredited background character in a film or series. Basically Extra is really talented at not being the lead character in movies or TV.  Extra's personality is kind of a composition of an egotistical and yet eerily self-aware celebrity. Extra doesn't NEED others to remind him that he's a star, because in his world he is already a star. He mentions in his initial "talking head" during Episode One/Pilot that he had background roles in such serials as;

"Touched by an Alien"

,

"Abducted for Real"

and

"The Great Awful Cook-off"

. He also noted in his

"What's In the Bag"

segment with Eliza Pancakes, that he is a musical queen and that his talent for the talent show challenge would have been a live rendition of his hit song;

"Boy is a Bear"

. This is a bit of a spoiler so I rupologize in advance, but even Extra's book title for episode six;

"Suck More"

must be a callback to a certain real world queen, right? Whatever the case, Extra's willing to put int the time so long as you're willing to pay the dime.

Fortuna Cookie

Shūfáng Shāncháhuā ('Shu' for short) aka "Fortuna Cookie" 25, is a young queen from Strangerville who's motto is undoubtedly "here to make it queer", has certainly came to the right show hasn't she? Shu started drag at a shockingly young age; 3, when she dressed up in her mom's clothes and makeup and impersonated 'Miss Piggy' to entertain her family, though they were more red-faced from secondhand-embarrassment than laughter.

  Cookie is a very artistic and personable queen, having done drag professionally since at least high school and performed at the 8-Bells in Strangerville since her university days at Britechester. She was taken in by her would be drag-mother, 'Mint Cookie' and quickly made friends with newfound family; 'Sugar Cookie', 'Fudge Cookie' and 'Samoa Cookie'. Shu's drag name had always just been 'Fortuna' (for luck) before being adopted by the Haus of Cookie, where she became "Fortuna Cookie".

Galaxia

Cosmo Nebulon AKA "Galaxia" 28, is quite possibly the most unique queen in this lineup; not only is she the only queen from Sixam, but also the very first 'Alien' contestant in the series history (but surely not to be the last). Galaxia moved to Del Sol Valley shortly before being cast on "Morgyn's Drag Race", because as he puts it the "drag scene on Sixam is boring!" Self-described 'Xenomorph Queen' Galaxia certainly has a lot in common with real life queens such as 'Alaska' and 'Pandora Boxx', though I think Galaxia's uniqueness in both style and personality make him standout from the crowd, that and he's "a fucking alien!" 

For everyone who's seen the initial airing of the pilot will know that Galaxia is here to bring it on a galactic level, having aced the "Trash to Treasure" challenge seemingly flawlessly (though editing does play a part in EVERY reality series) and unanimously impressed the judging panel, even stone-cold bitch Eliza Pancakes. Spoilers ahead for recently dropped Episode 5; Snatch Game saw Galaxia in the bottom for the first time, but little did her competition know that she was no slouch because she TURNED. IT. OUT! Not one, not two, but three reveals during the lipsync - I COULD NOT, BELIEVE IT (and I'm the one who created everything)"! Clearly Galaxia is not playing around and takes the competition VERY seriously, going so far as to plan ahead for a possible lipsync for your life with three reveals to boot, it's curious what else she had planned up her sleeve for the previous runways and if she had similar reveals planned.

Icy

Myron Frost AKA "Icy" 27, of Willow Creek came to the competition pulling no punches and dressing to impress from the get-go. Icy began drag during her teen years, and started performing professionally during college. Aside from being the series' first black queen to walk through those doors, Icy also brought her own sense of style and class to the initial competition. Professionalism, style, and class are all words synonymous with Icy; a queen who carries herself as though she has already won (because let's be honest, you NEED a fiery attitude in order to get ahead in these sorts of contests). Though behind the confident and stunning exterior, belies a person who detests drama of any sort, and can be seen at any time an argument erupts - Icy is sure to stay out of the line of sight.

When I think of Icy, I think of former Drag Race queens who carried a similar air of confidence, professionalism and style such as Chad Michaels and Jaida Essence Hall, though honestly Icy is as much her own identity as anyone else, and the aforementioned queens merely served as inspiration, vocal fry and all.

Jackqleen Qkwueeen

Jackson King AKA "Jackqleen Qkwueeen" 37, is Magnolia Promenade's premiere expert in classical theater and the bardic arts. And I'm not going to start this article off with a lie, when I conceptualized Jackqleen I had originally envisioned a different kind of queen entirely which can be seen in her original 'Meet the Queens' video, which if I'm being honest, pretty much all of the queens had different personalities and quirks that differ from their current/later personas. Jackqleen was originally supposed to be a faux Shakespearean expert who would occasionally slip into talking with her rural dialect or twang, which I disliked for a multitude of reasons and decided that making Jackqleen a legitimate, classically trained thespian of Magnolia Promenade, was more interesting. And to make her standout vocally and personality-wise, I just kept picturing Frasier Crane. 

Despite having fallen into the bottom two the first episode, and let's be honest that "Trash to Treasure" challenge was not tailored to make everyone look good, which in Jackqleen's case made her look worse than Velvetta Baggins, whom was described as someone having walked out of a day spa. We can't deny that Jackqleen has a refined and sophisticated outlook to drag, and that being a professional theater actor can only help propel her career as a drag artist

Lapis

Bleau Rathbone AKA "Lapis" 31, is one of San Myshuno's most eclectic, eccentric and unique artists. Having performed drag since his nineteenth birthday; Bleau introduced himself in drag to the world of performance art for the first time and then and there 'Lapis' was born (*Note: Lapis prefers to be referred to as 'they/them', but only when in full drag). Lapis' namesake stems from the gemstone itself 'lapis lazuli', the fact that it is mostly blue and their love for the color blue, taking all of these facets into consideration it's not hard to see why Lapis incorporates everything into their drag.

If you've been watching 'Morgyn's Drag Race' since Episode One, then you're already familiar with just how iconic a queen that Lapis is, having served looks since Episode One with the upcoming Episode 7 and 8 possibly being their strongest serves yet. Lapis believes in and identifies with the individual, priding themselves with being as unique and as standout as possible all while continuing to stay on-brand with the Lapis name (everything blue, black, eclectic and electric).

Parsley

Parsley 32, is quite possibly the single-most polarizing figure from 'Morgyn's Drag Race'. Hailing from Evergreen Harbor, Parsley describes herself as being "lean, green and mean" and the "green meanie". The second she steps through the entryway she insults her competition by calling them all "douchebags" (originally calling them "motherfuckers"), and also easily dismisses them as being 'basic', 'boring' and 'not impressive'. With a raspy growly voice that would give Patty & Selma a run for their money. 

Parsley was inundated into the world of drag years back when she lived in San Myshuno and roomed with a popular Drag Queen named 'Darren Leek', who at the time was also her roommate. Darren welcomed Parsley into the Leek family of drag, becoming her drag-mother in the process. Though Parsley stood out from the crowd, having picked a green theme and sticking to it, she polarized a large majority of folks she came into contact with, many finding her to be rude while others found her to be downright terrifying. Parsley's own drag-mother, Darren Leek cut ties with her because of her behavior, and quite possibly out of fear.

Terra Ryzen

Scotch Golddig

AKA

"Terra Ryzen"

22, is another queen hailing from Strangerville and is also the youngest competing queen in the competition to date. Some who have browsed the Sims reddit may remember Scotch making a few appearances

pre-drag race

as "

Florida Man

", a member of the infamous "Golddig" clan; a family of reputed 'gold-diggers' who are always looking for their next claim. His grandmother, 'Dusty Bones' made occasional appearances on reddit as a burnt-out version of '

Matilda the Chef

'.

Terra enters the competition as the youngest queen and also the most inexperienced, asking the more experienced queens for help with her makeup and nails shortly after making her entrance. Terra is almost immediately denigrated by her older, more experiences co-competitors as being "busted" and looking a "mess", though despite all that Terra manages to maintain a confidence bordering on cockiness that she will succeed and in fact win the competition, though anyone having seen the first episode will know Terra's ultimate fate.

Velvetta Baggins

Wilberforce Armitage XVII AKA "Velvetta Baggins", is an oldschool queen from Windenburg. She speaks with a High-British or a classically 'posh British' accent, and frequently bemoans about all of the times that the French ave supposedly terrorized her and her comrades while on active duty during the war, which war you ask? She can't remember, though it was likely sometime during the ice age as woolly mammoths and spear-throwing cavemen were involved. The running gag involving Velvetta is that she is old, like really very old. In truth she is probably somewhere around 50-55 years old, however Caliente refers to Velvetta as being "90" in her talking head and Terra Ryzen speculates that she is from the Mesozoic era, basically Velvetta is the oldest queen of the season which makes her target for everyone else. A pianist classically trained in the styles of baroque, Velvetta has entertained audiences for generations and continues to do so using her oldschool style, while fellow Windenburg queen Baga Trash utilizes modern pop culture and of course 'rubbish' to entertain audiences. What's interesting about fellow Windenburg Queens; Velvetta and Baga Trash is that they are both so intrinsically different, despite hailing from the same place. It can be argued that since Velvetta has been performing drag at a time since before Baga Trash, that the two styles will naturally be different.

I think the truth of the matter is that Velvetta is just another quirky, cooky queen with a bizarre sense of humor and a unique self-styled sense of fashion, not unlike Tammie Brown. The constant callbacks to the wartime tactics and the French are either a clever joke in the guise of obfuscating reality or she actually is senile and is suffering from false memories, either way Velvetta certainly is an interesting queen to have on the stage.

So now that you've gotten to know our judges, and all twelve contestants on a more personal level, maybe you will remember to set that timer to watch 'Morgyn's Drag Race' this Sunday, at 12:45 PM Pacific Standard Time.

#AedanStarfang #RuPaul's Drag Race #Morgyn's Drag Race #Drag Race #the sims 4 #the sims

[broadwaymarzipan]

Quarantine ideas I’m going to be using :)

These are a mix between my ideas and some I got from tumblr or friends. I may do a master list of EVERY idea I come across in the future even if I don’t use it. I don’t know. I’m in quarantine I don’t have anything to do. Let’s start

1. Listen to new musicals

I love broadway and there’s tons of musicals I haven’t listened to yet that I want to listen to. If you don’t like broadway, now is a great time to get into it. Join the cult.

2. Watch bootlegs

Another musical theater thing. Watch bootlegs. If you’re new, know that you can find a lot of them on YouTube by searching ���[musical name] slime tutorial”. Enjoy!

3. Finish the books you’re currently reading

Finish them. If you don’t enjoy them, you don’t have to finish it, even if it’s a classic but if you do like it and you just don’t have time, now is your chance!

4. Listen to the entire discography of an artist

Pick an artist. Listen to every song they ever made since the beginning of their career. If you don’t feel like doing that, at least listen to one album, IN ORDER. The albums are in a certain order for a reason, it’s the artist’s choice to put it that way because they thought it was the best way to listen to it. So trust them.

5. Write an essay

It can sound boring but hear me out. You don’t have to have a perfect essay with a good thesis and antithesis. You can just write about anything you like. Your essay can be “The top ten sexiest women poetry writers of all time”. Literally write about anything you enjoy. If you’re alternative or belong to a subculture that is really present in tumblr, you can write about that too.

6. Draw whatever the fuck you want even if it’s bad.

It can be the ugliest drawing ever. Doesn’t matter. Draw it. Explore new art styles. If you always draw cartoons, try to explore something like cubism for example. If you like to draw realistically, how about trying a cartoonish style just once?

7. Watch a movie/TV show

Watch a movie without doing anything else or being on your phone. Just watch a movie and enjoy it. Or binge watch a TV show. It can be fun. Try a new one.

8. Call your family and friends

Ask them how they’re doing. Even if it’s just 5 minutes and then you pretend you can’t hear them and hang up. Call them.

9. Stretch

I use this more since I’m a ballet dancer, but stretching a little bit before going to bed or whatever time in the day can feel really good. (Some people like to do it first thing in the morning, I personally don’t because I feel like it’s the moment where I am absolutely not warmed up, but that’s just a personal choice)

10. Learn a choreography

If you are a Kpop Stan, congratulations, you have an entire world of choreographies in front of you. Learn one or at least the chorus. If you are a musical theater fan, you can easily find some too. And if you are neither, doesn’t matter! Find a song you like, either choreography it yourself or find an online tutorial. Even learn a tik tok dance if that’s what you want to do. It doesn’t matter if you suck at dancing, its entertaining and it makes you move a bit.

11. This is a hard one but work out.

Put on some music, find a tutorial on YouTube and do it. Even if it’s just 5 minutes. It’s something.

12. Bake/cook!

It’s fun, and you can eat it afterwards. Putting on your music while baking something can be really relaxing and you have endless time. Try it.

13. Plan a murder

Don’t murder anyone, but if you’re bored you can plan it. Thoroughly. Just please don’t get in trouble.

14. Perform a play alone

It’s fun. Even if you aren’t a good actor or if you have to read your lines. It’s really entertaining. Get in character. Perform, enjoy, use your voice.

15. Make OCs

Any fandom. They don’t even have to be fandom based. If you can’t draw, find pictures online, write down how they’re like, their backstory..... Make one, I promise it’s fun.

16. Do research and write down what you find

Look into something you like or are interested in. An artist, a social phenomenon, a TV show, rocks, plants, Marie-Antoinette..... You can either just read it or you can grab a random notebook and write down what you find. It can be really interesting.

17. Read fanfiction

Do I really need to say anything else

18. Write fanfiction because we are all that low in life and no has to see it and it’s fun

You don’t have to post it. It doesn’t have to be good. Just write fanfiction.

19. Write letters

You don’t have to send them, you can just have them in a notebook or piece of paper. Write a letter to your grandparents, to your best friend, Freddie Mercury, that cute girl from the grocery store... Just to get your mind off things

20. If you have a balcony, enjoy

Sit down in your balcony, with a cup of tea or hot chocolate or coffee or a glass of wine and observe. Is there people on the street? Are there more birds than usual? Put your phone away while you do this. This is also a way for you to get some fresh air. If observing isn’t for you, then read, or listen to music or a podcast.

21. Write an “apocalypse survival guide” because why the fuck not. It can be anything

22. Re-read your favorite books.

They can be easy to read. You can re read the entire Harry Potter series for example. And notice all the hints that Wolfstar exists.

23. Try new music.

Go to the Spotify recommendations. Let the YouTube auto play decide. Ask your friends. Make a playlist if you want to.

24. Deep dive into a Tumblr subculture

Enjoy feeling like Strange Aeons. Document your research. What is the aesthetic like? How do you get into it? Some examples can be witchcraft, dark academia, cottage core...

25. Make a 47+ slides power point about your favorite band

Look up every moment of their history and make a power point presentation about them

[asoulinthewind]

Fruition

Another day and I have found myself in a weird space somewhere between understanding and not, My energy is agitated and fragile, and in need of some comfort and tenderness yet I am unable to move past the need to push and test. It was the realization that its Easter, that being the first real trauma my life had encounter, the first time I found out that boys lie and that my heart could be used against me by someone by telling me what I want to hear, its no wonder I don’t believe the words of any man whose hand  touches me, that I am always cynical as to whether or not a man could be trusted. I did not even remember this until I heard and old song, thought about Easter and Nate and OH  FUCK!!!!! The mountain, and the tequila and the 14 year old me, being taken by 2 men who I thought were safe. And fighting to disappear so that I didn’t have to face the fact that I love you was a lie and I was used. I was seen as an object for someone else’s pleasure, or entertainment or conquest, not as me or even as a person, I was simply a means to an end, That is why I am angry…..I found it just now and I dont’ know how to feel about it or how to dig up the deepest root threatening my foundation. The inability to trust men, and the illogical desire to want to find a man that will be my protector.

Dedication. 

I would have to say that this started in a classroom of a penitentiary. I was led through a guided meditation where I met my wise woman. She was not only me, but every other soul I ever crossed, both known and unknown. She came to me like everything and nothing all at once. History ran through her skin. There was fire in her eyes, and a dark form of compassion I found hard to identify. She told me to take a deep breath, break the surface and dive. For that Divine Inspiration, I offer up my all. And for all her Children, whose stories I tell. For Olyvia, who has been to me, the greatest and brightest treasure I found in the abyss, to Nate, To Doc...whom were there when I was both the darkest and brightest, in the very beginning. Thank you for teaching me some of the most profound and difficult lessons. But most of all to my CRAZY KIDS who have challenged my sanity and loved me through the thick and thin. You have taught me more about life and love and about myself than you will ever know. You are gifted and so perfectly complete just as you are. You inspire me and give me hope, all the while talking shit, cracking jokes and challenging everything I thought I knew. There is nothing you can not do.

Now…

The dog just shit on the floor, I still have not done even one useful, logical thing I should be doing, meaning, I am restless because I do not know what to do. I have moseyed through the house looking for one project or another to actively engage all my mental energies, only to still find myself disengaged. So I sit, put on yet another random playlist, and begin to write. I have been meaning to do this for days. I know that my soul has been very quietly calling out for me to begin the process in which I give words to all the unseen that is inside of me. If for no other reason than to release it. More than that though, it has been put on my heart to do this for a long time. I don’t know that anything I have to say is all that important, or if it might be meant for someone else to read. If the message is relevant or revolutionary is beyond me. It is to me simply because it’s MY inner world. I know this place, I live here. In this unseen place inside the spaces of my thoughts and fears and emotions is a landscape that has no other occupants. It has no visitors, no polution, no other agenda than simply to be, to love and be loved. I watch the exterior world from a position of curiosity, wonder and hope. The problem I face is that sustaining awareness in this place is tough. It disappears when my logical, rational mind ,in its attempt at defending the center of my being , uses fear to protect me. Fear disconnects my awareness, it blocks the channel by which i assimilate  the outside world to my inner realities. Its outter sanctuary my ego, my shadow and its many shades that masquarade like actors on a stage, pretending and wanting to be real. All the while silencing the truth that quietly screams to for its liberation. The funny thing is that sometimes I get this feeling that there are other world and its inhabitants that are trying to rise up and gain manifestation as well. I wonder...am I really just being over imaginative, suffering from grandios delusions, if Im making shit up for my own narcisistic need to be important. It could be that, but if I accept one possibility then I also must accept the opposite. That I am not insane. That my inner world and its silent observer is in fact bringing me to Truth, and Purpose. That I am who I think I am. That there is Divinity and humanity embodied. That there is something very important going on that I am meant to be part of. Silly right? Maybe, but if I am that then so is everyone else. We are equal. We are all lost, and forgetful and struggling to remember, searching for something, or refusing to open themselves. I say this because really I am speaking of myself. I dont know how to look inside because my ego doesnt want to die. I am not nearly as good nor as bad as I may think, but I am confounded by the mirror. Im good when I think its all bad and bad when I think i am good, I am weak when i lean on what I think is strength and strong when I feel like I am falling apart. How do I find the homeostasis and not the juxtaposition of existance? How do I extract from my soul the joy and lightness? How do I laugh and dance and embrace the unencumbered freedom that is inside? I want to let peace reign, and laughter to echo out healing all the self inflicted wounds I dont know how to relinquish. Allowing and trusting myself to deconstruct and remodel every thing I thought I knew, all my constructs of reason and self preservation. This is counter intuitive, to let go when from the shadow the critic says Bitch you better hold on, You better run, You are not safe, you cant even trust yourself, how many times have you said you would not and then you do, you are broken, you are lost, you are slowly falling away, you are following away, you are powerless. At some point from beyond those shadows, came the silent truth that I ought to have hope, that something about all of that was wrong, and it was untrue. That if I searched for it, I would find the opposite. That there was something out in the world or in myself that was good, and safe. That love as elusive as it had been in my life could be real, that I could believe in something other than the inevitable failure and fear I had seen. But how did I know that it was there if I had never actually seen it, if I could not quantify it. I did not have words for that. THere was no point of reference, no comparison in my memory stores that would justify my theory. I wanted to experience this love. But why? I didnt believe in God, I didnt believe in love and I certainly did not believe in myself. I did know that I wish that i could, because then I wouldnt feel like “this” This being the shaking, a violent force I felt in my diaphragm that I could not escape, nor could I tame unless I was lost in the ether of the intrevanous injection of hard drugs or wrapped up in some mindless drama that kept my from myself. 

But I think I am getting ahead of myself. I have referenced the before. The Shaking, as I called it, was the state I was in about 10 years ago when my whole life went upside down. I have to say that I cant find a point of reference from even my earliest memories that is without clouds or shade. Not because anything was so traumatic or terrible in my childhood, or due to abuse or neglect. I still cant tell you where the sense of brokeness began, because it was always there, not that I was not whole, but I had yet to collect the remaining segments of my soul. The microcosm of the Collective Conscousness I believe we are all part of, had yet to reveal. But was still somehow always there. Hidden and protected perhaps until the conditions were right, and I was ready to wake up. 

[lordgeebsdom]

2019, a year in review: Superlative Edition

-Gareth Bill

Athlete of the year:  Lamar Jackson - QB Baltimore Ravens.  HM: Kawhi Leonard - SF Toronto/LA

Lamar Jackson came out of nowhere to light the league on fire in 2019 breaking Michael Vick’s all-time record for rushing yards by a Quarterback and redefining the position in the process.  From his five touchdown performance in Miami to being the assumed MVP, there wasn’t a week where Lamar Jackson didn’t dominate headlines and he continues to show superiority as Baltimore has secured the Number 1 seed in the AFC.  Honorable mention goes to Kawhi Leonard for producing the first ever buzzer beater in a game 7 in NBA history and for also bringing Canada their first NBA title.  Even against a Kevin Durant-less Golden State Warriors team, Leonard stepped up and delivered when it counted most.

Song of the year: Lost Lately- San Holo.  HM: Daemon Veil - EPROM & G Jones

Sander van Dijck, better known by his stage name “San Holo” surprised us with “Lost Lately” in June of this year.  A melancholic and melodic ballad of discovery and feeling “lost in aftermath of a breakup” spoke to feelings of insecurity and extends a friendly hand to those in need.  From an endearing marketing campaign featuring “lost” posters where fans could call a “helpline” to hear an exclusive sample of the song, to a music video taken straight from EDC: Bitbird executed an almost perfect build and drop for “Lost Lately.”  Great followup work to last years “Album1” and I definitely am excited about his future projects for 2020.  Honorable mention goes to the IDM monster “Daemon Veil” by EPROM and G Jones.  Plain and simple, I loved this ear worm.  There’s so much going on from the initial baseline drop to the stuttering minefield of drops and turns that follows before a calming conclusion.  Every time I hear this track, I see it too: the flying snares, the zips, zooms and wubs, the story it tells me….its captivating and satisfying.  While it isn’t as friendly for casual listening like my 2018 song of the year “Time” (also by G Jones), Daemon Veil is an IDM banger that I’ll continue to blast well into 2020 and beyond.

Album of the year: Good Faith- Madeon.  HM: Hollywood’s Bleeding - Post Malone

This was a tough call for me, there was a lot of great albums that came to us in 2019 but Madeon’s “Good Faith” stands tall above the rest.  From the initial singles of “All My Friends,” and “Dream, Dream, Dream,” to the unexpected bangers of “Miracle,” and “No Fear, No More,”: “Good Faith” makes a solid argument not just for album of the year but possibly even for the decade and I simply cannot recommend it enough.  Honorable Mention goes to “Hollywood’s Bleeding” by Post Malone.  Like many, I have thoroughly enjoyed the evolution of Post Malone from SoundCloud sensation to certified super-star, and “Hollywood’s Bleeding” continues to show us that this artist is just getting started.  I loved “Goodbyes,” “Circles,” “Sunflower,” and many other tracks on that album, and I’m confident many others did as well. Rapper, Rockstar, Soul-singer and bro: best of luck in 2020 and beyond Post, we’re all eagerly watching.

Movie of the year: Its a Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood.  HM: Avengers: Endgame

Easily the most contested category of the year and the hardest decision made in these superlatives.  2019 produced some awesome films but Tom Hanks’s take on Fred Rogers gave me chills that I hadn’t felt since seeing Christopher Reeve’s Superman as a child.  Like Superman, his presence among adults and children alike would universally cause awe and calm, almost god-like tranquility through security. In a year that was defined by division, unrest, cruelty, and anger: Fred Rogers reminds us that there’s still a great deal of hope for humanity, and it all starts with being a good neighbor.  Young, old and everyone in between can learn something from this deeply affecting story about humanity and connection.  Honorable mention goes to Avengers: Endgame for managing to be the only major franchise ending this year (Game of Thrones, Avengers, Star Wars) that managed to do it with a consensus BANG!  It was a 3 hour film that somehow felt like an hour and half, and when Captain America held Mjornir with every Avenger ever at his back and said “Avengers, Assemble!”, I couldn’t help but fist pump with a grin from ear to ear.  Tony Stark’s dying words of “I am Iron-Man,” gave me goosebumps and Black Widow’s death made me feel genuine loss: The Marvel Cinematic Universe managed to execute a singular plan and vision over 23 films and that is truly exceptional. 

Actor/Actress of the year: Joaquin Phoenix as Arthur/Joker.  HM: Florence Pugh - Midsommar

Joaquin Phoenix’s long anticipated and controversial performance as Joker was the best singular work I saw this year.  Authentic, gut-wrenching, thought-provoking, and anything but boring: Joker gave us the next step in comic book cinema and a new cultural icon in the process.  Arthur Fleck is a poster child for mental illness, something that currently is at the forefront of our society and gave the general public a poster child for such conditions.  Phoenix’s Joker will one day be recognized in the same light as we currently see Che: an underdog figure of resistance and revolution standing against a seemingly unstoppable status quo and inspiring the unseen masses in the process.  Honorable mention has to go to one of my new favorites in Florence Pugh and her performance as Dani in “Midsommar”.  Her pain, confusion, and ultimate triumph that unravels throughout a trip to a small village in Europe during their mid-summer festival is the stuff of “slow-burn horror” wet-dreams.  There’s a scene early on where her character has to convey immense grief after suffering a personal tragedy and I can still hear that crying in the most haunting way.  Pugh’s performance stuck with me in a year full of great ones, and I’m very excited to see her future work including “Black Widow” in May.  

Television show of the year: Watchmen- HBO.   HM: Good Omens - Amazon Prime

Watchmen blew my mind, and I the less I say about it, the better.  A continuation of the story told in my favorite book of all-time, “Watchmen” managed to tie together many loose plot threads from that story while also moving the universe forward in new and exciting ways that matched the tone of the graphic novel.  Regina King’s “Sister Night” was a complex, likable, and tragic protagonist uniquely qualified to walk us through this new chapter, and without spoiling things anymore than I already may have: YOU NEED TO WATCH THIS.  Honorable Mention goes to Good Omens on Amazon Prime.  To any familiar with the story or Neil Gaiman’s work in general, you know what to expect: deep stories, complex and likable characters, and witty dialogue that will make you pause and think or laugh feverishly in equal measure.  Its only 5 episodes, so there’s really no excuse to not dive into this one and see how the world ends…..or rather was supposed to…

Game of the year: Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice - PS4/XboxOne/PC. HM: Apex Legends - PS4/PC/XboxOne

From Softwares’ “Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice” stands tall in a year that finally saw long awaited projects like Obsidian’s “Outer Worlds” and Kojima’s “Death Stranding” get long-awaited releases.  An exciting and more stealthy evolution of the Dark Souls combat system made me feel like a real Ninja for the first time since Ninja Gaiden Black on my original Xbox.  The demanding, but fair gameplay combined with a variation of environments including haunted Japanese forests, Sengoku Temples, Palaces and gory battlefields came together to give the most complete package I played in 2019. Just don’t be too surprised if the final boss gives you problems because that f***er can almost made me break a controller.  Honorable mention goes to the game that managed to dethrone “Fortnite” as the most popular game for like a whole two months.  Respawn entertainment developed the awesome Titanfall series that I personally enjoyed and rumors had been circulating for quite awhile that they were looking to expand Titanfall into the booming genre of BR or Battle Royale.  Apex Legends is the answer to those prayers and still continues to push out new skins, content and weapons at a regular rate.  Did I mention it is also completely free to play? 

Story of the year: President Trump becomes the third President to ever be impeached 12/19

HM: Henry Nobrega wins the fucking BVN Football Fantasy Football title. 11/19

To be perfectly honest, this is the first category that really could have gone either way for me.  President Trump becoming the third President in US history to be impeached for abuse of power and obstruction of congress was massive; regardless of how you feel about President Orangutan.  His tenure as President has produced a number of newsworthy moments but this story stood out among the others for sheer importance and international embarrassment.  Speaking of embarrassment, that’s essentially what my good friend Henry’s fantasy football team has managed to be every year that I’ve played with him.  A perennial basement dweller that typically auto drafts due to some BS excuse, and a resident near the bottom of our power rankings but this year he flipped that script on its head.  He managed to draft my Athlete of the year, Lamar Jackson, and the last great white running back in Christian McCaffrey.  Not only did Henry surpass his preseason ranking of bottom, he managed to win both regular season and postseason titles and beat a solid team by Graham Heck in the process.  I got love for you bro, but I’m still perplexed on how your season managed to be as dominant as it was.  Sorry Greta Thunberg, but these stories had my jaw on the floor, maybe next year lil’ Queen.

Meme of the year: Baby Yoda of the Disney+ show “The Mandolorian” 

Was there every really a doubt here?  Baby Yoda or “The Child” as he’s known on the show is the biggest pop culture icon born on the internet in 2019.  The gap between Baby Yoda and what I considered to be an honorable mention was so wide that he will officially stand alone in this category.  Baby Yoda’s cuteness managed to melt even my stone cold heart this year and that is absolutely an achievement.  What made this creature so endearing was the universal applicability though music, sports, culture, and food: Baby Yoda was everywhere and the internet found common ground and shared meaning through sharing little graphics everywhere prominently featuring him as the centerpiece.  Well played Jon Favreau, we love this little guy and everyone thanks you for creating him.  

[dmydfilmreviews]

MARVEL MOMENTS

 So what they really did, as well as making a good load of films, was actually make a vast tapestry of genius interwoven moments like flicking through a big comic book! Ten years! Twenty something movies! A load of rubbish images at the end of the list because the last three films weren’t officially out on Blu Ray! Avengers assssssssssssssssssssssssssssssss

Tony Builds the First Suit

 Really it was a stroke of brilliance to start the whole shebang with Iron Man the self-made superhero. The backbone of the whole universe is that of Tony making himself and that all kicks off here, in a sequence that’s hugely thematically satisfying given what comes later. There’s also the fact that back in the day all this construction stuff was just fucking cool, a Nolan-lite bedrock for a blend of realism and fantasy that comic-book cinema had never quite nailed before. Seeing Tony improve his tech step-by-step is a quiet pleasure of these movies, the suits getting more and more outlandish but staying absolutely believable, just like the films, and that all kicks off here with one guy and a non-magical hammer.

Pepper Pulls Out Tony’s Heart

 I noted these all down before Endgame, honestly. Sob. It was always his story really. The best example of the foundational relationship of the MCU: They finish each other’s sentences!

‘Truth is… I am Iron Man.’

 They knew what they’d got from the very first. This ballsy coda sets the tone for the whole MCU, one of backed-up swagger, a willingness to fuck with the source material in the name of story and the general feeling that Robert Downey Jr. was God. All in like two hours. That they flipped the egotistically iconic line into an era-defining declaration of responsibility, growth and heroism a decade later is nothing short of remarkable.

Hulk and Betty in the Rain

 It’s uh… it’s a nice comic-book visual of a classic comic book romance, I guess? Look, Hulk came a long way later, but his forgotten love for Betty was the closest they ever came to the source material outside of the Hulk generally smashing and being awesome. It was sweet!

The Bit Where Hulk Suplexes a Giant Zombie Wolf on the Rainbow Bridge of Asgard

 wait was this in the Incredible Hulk

I’ve Successfully Privatised World Peace!’ ‘Fuck you, Mr Stark.’

 They got Garry Shandling in these movies!

The Suitcase Suit

 Now that is a cool-ass adaptation.

Black Widow Kicks Asses

 Yeah, after a whole movie of being reductive eye-candy she was still reductive eye-candy here. But the scene as a whole’s basically a perfect realisation of her moves in the comics, and showed Marvel were capable of doing someone who wasn’t Iron Man. Then they did EVERYYYYOONNNNNNEEE bonus points for Happy taking out that one guy and yelling ‘I got him!’

Tony and Rhodey in the Japanese Gardens

 Look, they just look cool, OK? No one said this was going to be deep.

Tony and Pepper as the Stark Expo Explodes

 They haven’t managed a lot of great romance, but this one hella works: Tony’s overblown mess of a movie expo exploding behind the true love of his life is a visual so great that Shane Black nicked it wholesale for the climax of Iron Man Three: Christmas in Croydon.

The Frost Giant Throwdown

 Wait, what’s happening? I thought these were the movies where Jeff Bridges rode a Segway? Are we in SPAAAAACCCCCEEEE?

Thor Can’t Pull It Off

 Out of the big three Thor’s arc of mythology to humanity might be the deepest and most satisfying of all. That starts here with his tearful inability to be worthy of his father, his world and, crucially, himself, leading directly into the first great Thor/Loki exchange, then a whole host of movies that eventually put him through the emotional wringer to self-acceptance. Hopefully?

Thor and Loki Battle on the Rainbow Bridge

 Yeah, it looks kind of goofy, but this is pure sixties Kirby, shorn of the irony the series would develop later. Beautiful.

Erskine Points To Cap’s Heart

 That’s it. That’s the character.

The Star Spangled Man!

 Who’ll hang a noose on the goose-stepping goons from Berliiiin?

That Whole War Montage That Ends With Bucky Falling From The Train

 Just smash after smash after smash of wartime Cap goodness that we’d never see again, ending with the ‘death’ that’d define the rest of his story. Steve lost as much as Thanos in his quest for peace but, y’know, he wasn’t a total fucking intergalactic dick about it.

‘I gotta put her in the water!’

 Man alive he waited for that date... whether you think the ending of Endgame ruins the moment somewhat (it doesn’t. sort of), this was still the biggest heart-tugger in the MCU at that point, and defined the characters of Cap and Peggy for years to come. Watch Agent Carter! Just bloody watch it!

'Lemme Put You On Hold’

 The stand out moment of The Avengers is basically all of it, but let’s start with the moment Black Widow finally becomes a character, a sequence of broad-strokes skill from Scarlett Johansson and Joss Whedon that begged for a movie she finally got way too long later. Bonus points for possibly the greatest Coulson reaction shot in a history of great reaction shots.

The Helicarrier Ascends

 OK, shit – this is series is big now.

The Whole of Stuttgart

 Whedon’s love of classical posh entertainment is seen in Angel’s superior ballet episode and his fondness for Sondheim, and he even gets a bit of the ol’ jewellery rattling in here in a perfectly pitched Loki-loving sequence that culminates in some fantastic bits for Cap before Iron Man AC/DC’s all over the place. This is where the comic book stuff really kicks off.

‘YOU COME HOME!’

 This Hemsworth’s fella’s really got something...

Forest Bro Down

 Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God. The first real Avengers mash-up is just wonderful. This is where the wish-fulfilment really begins, in a quiet clearing, where three superheroes nearly beat the shit out of each other in classic comic-book style. The Avengers assembled.

The Whole Fuckin’ Helicarrier Sequence

 An absolute masterpiece of blockbuster juggling that had never been done before, this could be the third act of any other film. Over what plays out weirdly like a piece of theatre we get terrifying Hulks, mewling quims and awesome heroics, all expertly laced with wonderful character mash-ups and action we’d never seen before. Then Coulson dies. This is what Joss Whedon does.

‘There was an idea…’

 Fuck shit yeah there was, and it made for a hell of an Infinity War trailer six years later.

ALL OF NEW YORK

 Yep, all of it, but if we’re being picky it’s Hulk v Loki for the comedy side, the tracking shot for the action. As a sequence it’s never been bettered in the MCU, even in the open-mouthed joy-gush of Infinity War and Endgame. FIGHT ME

Go Fish

 Iron Man Three is a wonderful movie that works best as the sum of its parts, but there’s one bit that’s up there with the pantheon: the sky-diving rescue above the bay is such a joyous subversion of the usual third-act super-fisticuffs that it’s like something out of a 70’s Superman movie, only with a hilarious capper at the end where Iron Man explodes under a truck. Beep beep!

Running the Lemurian Star

 The Russo Brother’s action calling-card for their incredible MCU run, this sets up their vision of Cap’s super-subtle-super-serum-super-moves. From the off it’s a game changer in the way action’s shot across the MCU, clean-cut raid-alikes becoming the order of the day. AND THEN HE FIGHTS BATROC ZE LEAPER

Elevator Throwdown

 Yeah, yeah, we all know the actual bit in the elevator that’s spoofed to tremendous effect come Endgame, but remember this sequence ends with Cap TAKING DOWN A FUCKING QUINJET SINGLE-HANDED. The look on his face at the end says it all.

The Winter Soldier Street Fight

HE FLICKS A KNIFE MID PUNCH

Come and Get Your Love

 We’d seen a lot of cool shit from the MCU by this point, but this was something else again. It’s funny! It’s funny as fuck! What the fuck is this movie? And again, they know their own best bits: the return to this in Endgame is top drawer. What a moron.

The Kyln Sequence

 This whole breakout is the Guardians at their very best; squabbling in space, reluctant teamwork, loads of cool shit and leg theft. The bit where it all goes anti-grav is a treat.

WE ARE GROOT

 That’s it. That’s the movie.

…Stark…

 It’s a shame they didn’t delve deeper into Scarlet Witch’s hatred for the man who murdered her parents, but her barely contained rage is the keystone for Age of Ultron: deeper, nastier, more questioning of it’s heroes and their heroism. This one they brought on all by themselves.

Sun’s Gettin’ Real Low

 Yeah, maybe it’s for the best the slightly bumbled Hulktasha relationship was forgotten about, but this moment was pivotal in the character development of both. Beautifully shot, and leads to a primo Ragnarok gag.

Lift That Hammer

 You genuinely could have made a whole movie of these characters hanging out at an open bar. The Stan cameo’s great, the War Machine story bit gets an Endgame alien planet boost much later, but it’s the drunken worthiness competition that’s the real highlight, a seemingly fun throwaway that actually almost single-handedly sets up the whole character of Vision and the most fist-pumping moment of Endgame, a movie nearly entirely composed of fist-pumping moments.

Hulk vs Hulkbuster

 Pure comic-book wish fulfilment again, and how. From Hulk spitting out a tooth to Tony desperately pleading ‘go to sleep go to sleep go to sleep’, this mad clash of science pals knocks every Transformers movie straight through a freshly-bought-building. Veronica!

Well Done.

 Alright, Vision’s no one’s favourite Avenger, but he’s one who’s the satisfying product of several movie plots, one beloved supporting AI and the combined brains, magic and cool red capes of his team. Whedon performs his own mad-skillz level script trick to make us accept this fucking weirdo, first by giving him Jarvis’ voice, then having him stare out at a world and see his reflection in it, then having him lift an unliftable character-establishment hammer. None of this could be done by any other film series.

The Geometry of Belief

 Ultron’s climactic church-a-maggedon is short but perfect, a swirling mass of splash-page insanity that culminates in a glorious trinity of Vision, Iron Man and Thor blasting the shit out of their mad son like a magic triangle. The Avengers at their peak.

Vision and Ultron Have a Chat

 Whedon pops out these gems of detached humanism from time to time, and his sundown final exchange between The Avenger’s success and failure is a doozy. The most poetic little scene in the whole MCU, voiced by two creatures who look like nightmarish dildos. ‘A thing isn’t beautiful because it lasts’ is an all-timer.

Big Bathtub

 Ant Man’s bedrock might be its family values, but it’s the shrinking that makes it stand out. The first time Scott drops into tiny-town is a Pixar-esque fun-burst akin to Stephen Strange’s nutso jump into infinity later, with deadly bath taps, thunderclap vacuum cleaners and mid-day apartment raves (?) all bringing a new level of threat and adventure to a series already teeming with variety. They should carry these ones on foreverrrrr

Cassie’s Room

 There’s something about this scene that sums up Scott’s whole character and hopefully sets up his daughter for future ant shenanigans: he is (was) unique as a hero with a family, and no matter how many Pym Particles he stuffs into his suit he’s always looked like a giant to his daughter. Plus, y’know, Thomas the Tank Engine.

Some Guy Crashes a Car at Night

 The catalyst for the great middle schism. Civil War is a masterclass of twisting, gut-churning reveals, and this is the quiet moment that starts it all.

QUEENS

 The perfect Marvel character, introduced into the perfect realisation of the Marvel Universe, perfectly.

Running Into Each Other At The Airport

LITTLE MAN IS BIG NOW I’M CLINT WE HAVEN’T MET YET I DON’T CARE WHERE YOU FROM KID QUEENS BROOKLYN I’M YOUR CONSCIENCE WE HAVEN’T SPOKEN IN A WHILE YOU GUYS KNOW THAT OLD MOVIE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK HOW OLD IS THIS KID ETC ETC OH MY GOD MY BRAIN HAS EXPLODED

Cap vs Iron Man

 ‘I don’t care. He killed my mom.’  

The Big Brain Burst

 They keep doing bits to expand themselves, and this is one of the best, with the most potential for the future. Fleeting, but dazzling.

New York Mirror Fest

 If the next Strange movies delve into this deranged nonsense then they could end up the greatest of all of them. This is the tip of the iceberg, and it’s still unlike anything else being done in mainstream cinema.

Mr Blue Sky

 In a movie that frequently reaches big and misses, at least it hits the spot at the beginning. This glorious celebration of family, space-craziness and genre subversion is everything Guardians does best. The Gamora / Groot bit is adorable.

Peter’s Civil War Adventure

 The perfect tone-setter for the story’s most-average joe, this ground-level view of the universe’s biggest clash acts as a whippet quick intro to Peter Parker’s world in the big bad MCU. It’s always a thrill to see him where he belongs.

The Homage to Getting Buried Under a Tonne of Crap

 Homecoming’s riffs on classic Spidey-lore are generally pretty subtle, but when it comes time to show what Peter’s really made of Watts rips directly from the best, first with the iconic Parker/Spidey face split and then with him holding up a whole fucking building like he’s nerd Hulk or something. The added ‘come on Spider-Mans’ are the adorable icing on the homage-o-cake.

Anytime That Immigrant Song Plays

Another!

Thor vs Hulk

 Yeah, it’s not perfect and it’s a little CGIey. But it’s Thor fighting the Hulk in a fucking galactic gladiator arena place run by Jeff Goldblum and it smashes and it’s full of fun callbacks to previous movies. Yes! That’s what it feels like!

Thor and Loki Do Get Help

 The perfect encapsulation of Waititi’s irreverent-but-with-tonnes-of-heart freshgasm on the story of Thor, this bit of hilarious dumb shit acts as amusing action beat and neat character resolution all in one. They’re friends again! They’re brothers! Thor throws him around like a rolled up carpet!

What Are You The God of Again?

 Oh right, so he’s the best Avenger now.

Killmonger in the Afterlife

 The bloody heart of the most emotional Marvel movie, when Erik Killmonger enters the Wakandan afterlife he finds himself in his own tiny Compton apartment, exiled with his father forever with the plains of eternity just out of reach beyond the window. Heartbreaking, and brilliant.

Thanos Arrives

 The opening of Infinity War is another example of their absolute mastery of tone; after the megaton funblast of Ragnarok we’re thrown into the end of that movie being ripped apart, before Thanos appears, dragging a battered Thor into frame, beats seven shades of green shit out the Hulk and murders two beloved supporting characters, all without breaking a sweat. If you weren’t excited before you were now.

New York Tussle

 The opening New York section of Infinity War is all very clever, acting as the only grounding Earthy moment in what’s a pretty out-there narrative in terms of existential stakes. You get Tony and Wong helping people off the sidewalk and Strange winking after halting the space-death-machine, but from there on out it’s full-bore comic-book smackdown fun, clashing characters who’ve never met and providing top-drawer banter about wizards and children’s parties. This is the page, up there on screen.

BRING ME THANOS!

 BRING ME THANOS!

The Thanos Fight

 Jesus fucking Christ. Up there with the end of Avengers and the Civil War airport battle, this is a perfect realisation of superhero action, with a bigger dose of high-level insanity courtesy of the Infinity Stones and Doctor Strange. Sublimely realised, incredibly satisfying, with real weight and thought put into the spectacle, it’s also fantastic in the narrative of the film, the culmination of its themes of desperation and inevitability. The first time you saw them try to rip off the gauntlet was unbearable.

The Snap

 Well, yeah. You’ll never get back the first time you saw this. And imagine seeing it as a fucking kid.#

Just a Girl

 Sure the big level-up CGI fest at the end is good, but it’s the comedy smackdown on the Kree ship that’s the most satisfying part of Captain Marvel, the shit-eating joy on Carol’s face as she discovers she’s way more powerful than the assholes who’ve been holding her back. It’s corny sure, but it’s hella fun.

Thor Goes For The Head

 Endgame is a shocking, disorientating blur to begin with, all the characters you loved acting in strange, desperate ways in a super-hero version of post-traumatic stress disorder. Tony’s meltdown is bad enough, but it’s when Thor just straight up fucking murders Thanos that you know this is going to get dark and serious. It doesn’t, it remembers it’s a Marvel movie, but the shot of him walking out into the blurred alien sun, cape aflutter, is a fitting goodbye to a more innocent time of heroics.

Ant Man and Cassie

 A moment that could be worthy of a whole movie itself, a desperate Scott Lang meeting his five-years-older daughter gives a joke character a serious moment in the same way Infinity War did for Guardians. It’s very odd, very sweet and very Marvel.

Love You 3000

 Morgan H. Stark is almost a little too on the nose as a wrap-up for Tony, but hell, she’s still sweet as all hell and a perfect capper to his story of fatherhood and responsibility. It’s a mark of the work they’ve put in that we’ll almost immediately accept the tired trope of kid-taking-over-mantle when she inevitably puts on the armour in a few years.

Steve and Peggy / Tony and Howard

 This is the bit in Endgame where I finally started tearing up: a lot of it is too-neat fan-service, but fuck it, they’ve put in so much effort that it works. This is the scene where you realise both of these long arcs are coming to an end, the resolution of Steve quietly making his decision to go back to Peggy and Tony getting the closer of discussing parenthood with his unknowing father. It’s corny sure, but so are comic books, and setting the whole bit at the height of seventies Marvel Comics mania is a loving nod to the imaginations that made all these crazy possibilities possible.

Widow and Hawkeye

 There’s a theme here. All of these moments are kind of cheesy and rely heavily on callbacks to previous bits… but at the moment it doesn’t matter because ENDGAME WOW. Maybe we’ll look back at it as a corny misstep, but for the moment, Clint and Tasha having one last, ludicrously overblown tussle for who gets to live is a sweet capper that never goes as deep as the others because they’re supporting characters. It still stings, and it’s a neat mirror to Gamora and Thanos in Infinity War. The red’s gone from her ledger! It’s on the rocks! Urrrgh

Nebula Kills Herself

 Again, they’re so good that they can spend a big chunk of time in what’s ostensibly the last big movie for their most beloved characters on making a lesser character beloved. Endgame spotlights Nebula even more than Infinity War did Gamora, using her self-hatred and fear of her father for compelling, wibbly-wobbly plot and character beats. The resolution of her story and her newfound place with her team should make for a whole different Guardians before we even get to Fortnite-Thor joining up.

Cap Wields The Hammer

 ‘I KNEW IT!’

Thanos’ Army

 One last escalation of scale. When Thanos’ army finally arrives it’s like something out of those apocalyptic Turner paintings, where the hordes of a ship-wrecked hell confront eternity under skies ripped from heaven. Only this time they’re facing one guy called Steve, and they’re fucked. Incredible.

Avengers… Assemble

 It almost lives up to what you always had in your head. The Marvel Universe, somehow done right.

Tony Hugs Peter Back

Awwww!

New Avengers Run the Gauntlet

 A surprising amount of Endgame’s grand finale is given over to the future hopes; while Strange gets stuck in with holding back a Biblical flood it’s up to Black Panther to grab the Infinity Gauntlet from Clint in a delightful callback to Civil War, before embarking on an intense relay race across the entire battlefield that begins with Scarlet Witch crushing the shit out of Thanos’ testicles and ends with Captain Marvel engaging the Mad Titan in a bone-crushing show of super-strength. And along the way if finds time to have Peter Parker dragged through the air by Thor’s hammer which was thrown by Captain America before landing on a Pegasus flown by Valkryie across an exploding sky of alien whales. Maybe the most satisfying run of action since the first Avengers.

I am Iron Man

 It was always going to be him really. Bonus points for Downey Jr. originally telling Thanos to ‘Fuck off’. Did anyone else keep thinking he was going to wake up and quip and everything would be OK? That’s how you make movies.

The Funeral

 It looks a little weird actually, like they weren’t all on set. But they were! The Marvel Universe again, holy smokes.

The Kiss

 Now that’s how you end ten years and twenty one movies. They’re movies! It was romantic! It was exciting! It was fun!

For TEN FUCKING YEARS.

Swing a Ding Ding Sir

 After five movies of fresh shit they've finally starting dumping some classic Spider-Man on us; the Euro stuff's fun and all, but it's Far From Home delirious climax that sees Spidey and MJ thwipping through the canyons of New York before bumping into ugly ol' J. Jonah JJ Jay Jay likes it's a freakin' comic book or something. Delightful, and also serves as a wonderful image of hope and joy post-Endgame.

What a fuckin’ ride. Here’s to the next... seventy six? Seventy seven?

wait did I leave any out

#marvel moments #captain america #Iron Man #thor #doctor strange #black widow #captain marvel #black panther #spider man #spider-man #marvel #mcu #stan lee #guardians of the galaxy #ant man #civil war #infinity war #endgame #avengers #avengers assemble #iron man 3 #iron man 2 #spider man far from home #spider man homecoming #benedict cumberbatch #tom hiddleston #chris evans #chris hemsworth #chadwick boseman #chris pratt

[anhed-nia]

PROFONDO ROSSO/THE APPLE

For some disgusting reason that may never be explained, I recently watched THE APPLE back to back with DEEP RED, and the experience produced a powerful moral outrage that I didn’t even know I had in me. Readers may be aware of the latter-day cult classic THE APPLE, a US-West German nightmare vision from 1980 that was exhumed in recent years by masochistic thrill-seekers and subsequently elevated to appropriate infamy. In fact, nonsensically, THE APPLE may have enjoyed wider visibility in our time than PROFONDO ROSSO, a virtuoso directorial effort from giallo master Dario Argento arriving the year before the more popular SUSPIRIA (not a giallo, by the way). PROFONDO ROSSO was exported under the ironic american title DEEP RED: THE HATCHET MURDERS--ironic because the film was hacked nearly to death, with the fatal amputation of more than twenty minutes of character development, leaving behind a movie that was too confusing and too revolting for foreign audiences then unfamiliar with the italian thriller genre. Happily, the film has enjoyed loving restoration and increased circulation since its 1975 debut, giving one a feeling of justice served. It is hard to feel that same sort of cultural pride in the endurance of THE APPLE, which is similarly impossible to look away from, though for quite opposite reasons.

So the thing is, Dario Argento is an artist who, in spite of his notable misanthropy, has given something to the world. He works in what I would call the most complex artistic medium in human history, and for more than a decade, he consistently lives up to its many intricate challenges. Here you have a guy who wakes up one day and says, "You know, I have something to say. I see the world in a certain way, and I need to tell everyone about it. I'm going to shoot a movie that's really going to make people feel something." And he does. He makes PROFONDO ROSSO, a perfect film. He really cares about it. Every single thing is just so. He takes these absurd miniature tableaus, and photographs them in a way that transforms them into another universe. He makes you feel like you're seeing the color red for the first time. He positions flashy modernity against grave antiquity, and seductive trash against high art, creating juxtapositions that communicate vividly about the dazzling contradictions in the very soul of Rome. This dichotomy is mirrored in his main character, a nervy but vulnerable pianist who has to hide his full artistic sophistication, lest he lose his job playing in seedy dives. This being a giallo, he witnesses a mysterious murder, the key to which is buried in his own memories--he himself becomes the only substantial evidence of the crime, and he is forced to live out his life in an escalating nightmare until he gathers enough context to make meaning out of what he knows. PROFONDO ROSSO is indeed profound and savage, offering reflexive commentary on its own existence as a primal and salacious piece of entertainment that is executed with almost impossible elegance and wisdom. Dario Argento is an artist who recognized the full multifaceted power of cinema, and then with great deliberation, fashioned this gift to the world.

Meanwhile, this same world also contains a guy like Menahem Golan. Golan may be forgivable as the crass commercialist behind the Cannon Group, who shat out a number of dusty-looking vehicles for goons like Chuck Norris and Sylvester Stallone. However, nothing forgives THE APPLE. Nothing even explains it. It appears to be marketed to no one at all, being that no human being who has ever walked the earth could derive pleasure from it. While it may be hard to imagine possessing Argento's talent, it's easy to imagine him contemplating the vast potential of cinema, identifying its prismatic means of expression, and approaching it with both the humility and the courage to make of it something flawless. He does due diligence. He is responsible. He may injure his audience with his brutality, but he’ll never hurt their eyes. It is in no way so easy to even begin to estimate what Menahem Golan was thinking when he dreamed up this grueling fundamentalist christian sci-fi fantasy in which a pair of dopey Adam and Eve-like folk singers tries to save the distant future of 1994 from a literal disco inferno. This dystopian fable, apparently shot in the mass transit hubs of West Berlin, describes a world that has been taken over by a tyrannical music production company-cum-government, Boogalow International Music. The defining characteristic of its rule is enforced disco dancing. The viewer will never find out what is gained by all this disco dancing, or what else this company/government does; there is almost no apparent violence, physical or institutional, and there seem to be no consequences for the disco-averse other than that they are occasionally fined for failing to wear their "BIM marks" (a sort of "mark of the beast" that's obviously just a dead stock skate sticker). BIM's worst crime is trying to turn cherubic hippie chick Bibi into a disco diva, while keeping her apart from her beloved folksy musical partner Alphie. The action culminates with the lovebirds running away to live with a bunch of dirty hippies who leave unattended fires burning all over the public park where they live, and who are presently rescued by a godlike intergalactic being (or just god, but he flies around in outer space, I have no fucking idea) in a white tuxedo, who ferries them all off to another planet in his flying Rolls Royce.

That is how THE APPLE resolves itself. It's almost a feat in and of itself that, in spite of being based so transparently on the story of the Garden of Eden and certain parts of the Book of Revelations, THE APPLE manages to have no clear message whatsoever. There's a tenuous thing about how it's good for people to love each other, but it's impossible to imagine what BIM's point is, why they care whether or not people love each other, why they oppress people, how they oppress people, and what happens if you defy them, other than that you get a ticket and someone chases you out of the civic space that you're vandalizing. Besides that, the movie is simply bad in every single way. The music is the worst you'll ever hear, vacillating between being purely idiotic, and being militantly offensive, as in the case of a reggae number comparing the rule of BIM to the American slavery period. The costumes are beyond ugly, leaving every single character looking like they've been scribbled on and thrown in the garbage by an angry child. At a certain point, THE APPLE seems to be meticulously checking off a list of things that no person would ever wish to see in a movie, from filthy gangs of sack-clad children shrilly repeating nonsense lines, to warty old jewish stereotypes being sexually molested while they spoon-feed unctuous folk singers a greasy-looking stew

The film is so hideous in every dimension that you wouldn't even take a picture of it if it were happening in front of you. It's bad enough that the people who collaborated on this movie actually did any of what you see on the screen even one single time, without someone actually deciding to record the whole thing and distribute it to the world at large. What I'm essentially trying to say is, on the same planet in the same timeline, you can somehow have a person like Dario Argento, considerately and patiently crafting an incomparable work of art that speaks to the artist's economic and historical context--and you can also have someone like Menahem Golan, who can't even figure out how to make meaning out of the fucking Bible, who has the fucking nerve to shoehorn a bunch of degenerates into grimy leotards and make them twirl batons in a world covered in shitty stickers, and he calls that a fucking movie. He charges money for people to see it. It is literally maddening to even try to imagine what would motivate all this wasted motion, the product of which is so aesthetically and emotionally destructive that it is actually evil. It can be evil, to make a bad movie. This is the one and only lesson of THE APPLE.

PS I've seen THE APPLE like a hundred times so I guess I actually love it in some perverted way, I mean I'm not above it. Just, something had to be said.

#blogtober #deep red #the hatchet murders #profondo rosso #dario argento #the apple #men ahem golan #menahem golan #musical #sci-fi #fantasy #religion #giallo #horror #thriller

[bartsugsy]

Hello lovely Lo! I was wondering if you listen to podcasts (like on Spotify) and if you have any recommendations on what's good to listen to I'm order to make the working day move a little quicker? Lol! Thanking you!

i god damn love podcasts anon (i literally listen to them at work when i’m doing mindless stuff to keep myself entertained)

i don’t know what you’re into - i mostly listen to a mixture of politics, history-related things and comedy, but here’s a list of my faves:

the guilty feminist

my number one podcast recommendation to anyone, everyone and all people. i’m on a mission to get every person in the world to listen to it. this is a podcast about feminist issues, told from the perspectives of women, examining both our ideals and what we truly believe in but also the very real “hypocrisies that undermine” those beliefs, as deborah francis-white always says at the start of every episode. i.e. it talks about the way we support feminism whilst acknowledging that we all do a thousand and one things a day that maybe don’t fall in line with our feminist ideals, because that’s how humans work and that’s how the world works. it’s amazing. it’s funny, but also responsible and inclusive and real - it’s real women talking very honestly about their real experiences and feelings about any number of topics. honestly every single woman i’ve recommended this to say that she listens to it nodding, because everything they talk about it so relatable. PLUS they look to inspire women to help themselves and ways to help dismantle the patriarchy~~ and it’s just…. it’s so fucking good, i can’t stress this enough. i’m not doing it justice at all.

their most recent episode is an international women’s day special on the subject of ‘innovation’, which i’m listening to right now   

also - if you ever have a friend who doesn’t quite believe in feminism, get them to listen to this. i’ve literally converted other women through this podcast, because it always starts off like an easy gateway before tackling big and serious issues, whilst never losing it’s humous

which, did i mention it will literally make you laugh out loud, because…

the beginning segment of every show, “i’m a feminist, but…” alone is worth the subscription tbh (”i’m a feminist, but some days my life doesn’t even pass the bechdel test” - taken from the beginning of the first episode)

it’s basically a comedy panel show about feminism and it’s perfect and i feel like every single person should listen to it and then go to a live taping if it’s round your way (usually they film in london but they do take it round the world) because it’s so funny and so relatable but also really fucking inspiring.  

slow burn 

i recently finished listening to what seems to be the first season of this (they’re working on season 2 now). it’s nine episodes long and takes a very in depth look into the watergate scandal and richard nixon - a podcast that slate decided to do because of the incredibly topical parallels you can draw down from a celebrity president being voted into power, attempting to somehow pevert democracy and then lying about it. there’s a lot of information but its actually really easy to digest and incredibly well put together. 

slate also produce trumpcast which looks into the hows and whys of trumps rise to presidency and his current administration, which i haven’t listened to, but worth mentioning because it’s on my list, if you’re into looking at politics from a historical or analytical slant

the new statesman podcast

i just really like listening to stephen bush talk about politics tbh? i stan one man.

the rex factor

this is what i’m currently making my way through - it’s a podcast that looks at every single english (and then british) monarch through history individually and then ranks them, with the aim of eventually deciding upon the ultimate monarch. the value i personally place upon the present day monarchy extends to the amount of tourism revenue they bring in tbh (it’s a lot) but i’m a real fuckin history nerd, which is really what this podcast is. it’s told in a conversational way between the two hosts, in a way that’s both very easy to digest and honest to god fun to listen to and i’m loving it. (i’m currently finishing up henry VI and the war of the roses, if u were wondering, which i know you were not)

hello from the magic tavern

this is a comedy improv roleplay podcast that’s really fucking stupid but also hilarious - it takes a good few episodes to find its groove but then it goes hard. it’s about a dude named arnie, who fell through a magic portal behind a burger king and ended up in a magical land of foon and decided to host a podcast back to the people of earth to talk foon and interview special guest foon residents. it’s great. i find that the success of episodes depends a lot on how good the guest is, but like… jesus fucking christ, i have listened to this stupid podcast on the tube before and literally started laughing out loud. 

i also love: 

the storywonk podcasts, which involves the storywonk team deep diving into different series in media (their outlander podcast is amazing, if you watch that insane show) 

myths and legends 

you must remember this, about stories from the history of hollywood

sleep with me podcast, but i literally just use this to go to sleep so don’t listen to this at work

i’m not gonna rec serial and my dad wrote a porno bc they’re like… part of the podcast starter kit, aren’t they? they’re both high key great tho.

also, i’ve been working my way through the rex factor for a while, but my ‘to listen to’ list, for once i’m done, includes:

making obama

a history of oil

the butterfly effect

#about me #answering anons #long post

[tilltheendwilliwrite]

Rise Up

Chapter Three

Previous Chapter

Pairing: Steve Rogers x Reader  |  Word Count: 2986 Warnings: Swearing

Song: How Long Will I Love You by Ellie Goulding

She stomped away, heading toward the living quarters with an astonishing amount of accuracy, leaving Steve trailing in her wake. The words pouring from her mouth were not ones he could understand, but the wild gesturing as she stalked away gave him a general idea of how upset she was.

Still, the language in her sweet voice tightened a certain portion of his anatomy he wasn’t currently willing to acknowledge. As it was, he was caught between three emotions. Anger, amusement, and amazement all vying for first place. So far, anger was losing.

Was he mad? Damn right. They’d just got past this whole keeping things from him bullshit. To find out she wasn’t merely a Valkyrie, but the Valkyrie had him stumbling somewhere between pissed off and proud.

She was a beautiful and deadly fighter, full of cunning and talent; he’d always thought so. So many things about her were clicking into place, making more sense, tumbling like the mechanisms of a lock to complete the mystery which was (Y/N).

She’d once said she wasn’t anything special, that winding up on the Avengers team had been mostly a fluke, but even if it had been fate or destiny which had brought her to them, it was her skill that had them all choosing to keep her. Her fiery nature and fighting spirit hadn’t hurt none either.

The amazement and amusement blended together. Her fit of pique was entertaining, and even though he wasn’t sure what she was going on about, every so often she slipped back into English, and the words loud-mouthed Asgardians or enormous oafs peeled forth in a tight snarl.

He’d never seen anyone but Thor go head to head with Loki and have the Asgardian back down, but, clearly, there was some deep history there, especially on the part of the self-proclaimed god. He looked at (Y/N) with a longing Steve remembered all too well. It was a look of hope, one that appeared when someone dear to you came back; like Bucky had for him.

Loki loved (Y/N), as did Thor, but Loki had been nearly feral when he’d come out of the Hound’s facility to find her unconscious and bleeding in his arms. Thor had had to contain him physically, and only the reassurance of Bruce and FRIDAY were able to calm him down. After, Loki had prowled the compound like the wolf which had taken out a good chunk of the Hound’s militia until (Y/N) had woken and, well, snarled at them both.

A small smile curled his lips. It was such a (Y/N) thing to do.

She stalked, literally stormed down the hall, hips swaying, hands swinging wildly. If she’d been a cat, her tail would have been lashing violently behind her.

The amazement came from the fact it appeared she’d forgotten, as strange as that sounded, she couldn’t see. It was as if she was running entirely on instinct, a wild thing heading for the safety of her lair. She made the turns when she needed to, moved around things like garbage cans, chairs, people, as if she genuinely could see. It was incredible to watch, right up until the moment she stopped dead in the hallway before their door.

Her entire body stiffened, fear pouring off her in a sudden rush as her breath hitched and her hands shook. “Steve!”

“Right here,” he said, gathering her to him from behind. “I’m right here.”

“I don’t… how did I get… where the hell am I?” she asked as she clung to his arms.

“Where were you trying to go?” he asked, holding tight to her shaking form.

“Our... room.”

Releasing her, he took a step back. “Turn to the right and step forward. Reach for the doorknob.”

She did so slowly, her metal encased fingers scrabbling on the frame. Lifting her left hand, she laid it against the flat of the door, then leaned her forehead on it. “How?”

“I don’t know, sweetheart, but it was damn impressive.”

***

He crowded you into the door, his big, warm body a safety blanket you craved at regular intervals. Again his arms curled around your waist as the fear slowly subsided.

You’d been so angry at Thor and Loki you hadn’t even thought about what you were doing,  wanting to get away from all the people staring at you like you were now even more of a freak than you had been. It was like a beacon had gone off in your head, a direction appearing as if by magic.

Anger had ripped through you with such strength it was almost as if the entire world had lit on fire. You could smell everything, feel the change in the air when you neared an object, the sound of your steps had seemed to echo back to you off the walls. It had been… freeing.

Then, as suddenly as it had come, when the anger at the two Asgardian dumbasses had faded, so had the world back into darkness and you’d been lost. The fear had poured in so fast it had stolen your breath until the sound of Steve’s heart registered in your ears.

“You gonna open the door?” he asked.

Turning the handle, you pushed it inward feeling very disoriented and stumbled toward the couch where you caught your hip on the arm, managing to tumble over it, falling face first into the cushions. A yelp left your lips when you tried to catch yourself only to miss the seat, one hand going straight to the floor, sending you rolling off the edge of the sofa, and landing back first on the carpet. The sharp crack which accompanied your less than graceful swan dive was the sound of your head connecting with the coffee table.

Groaning, you grabbed for your skull. “Shit!”

“Jeez, (Y/N)!” Steve’s hands slipped beneath your arms, lifting you with an effortlessness which amazed you even as your head throbbed wickedly. “Let me see. Did you crack your skull open?”

He set your butt gently on the sofa. “I can’t smell blood,” you assured him. “But fuck that hurt like a wicked bitch!”

“What does a wicked bitch feel like exactly?” he asked, the chuckle in his voice muffled but present.

“I could punch you in the nuts, Rogers if you’re really interested,” you grumbled.

“I’ll take a pass, doll.” His hands in your hair were careful before he sat down beside you. “Got a good smack, but the swelling is minimal.”

You rubbed at the goose egg with a sigh, the throbbing already less than it had been.

“So,” he said, and you could feel his eyes boring into the side of your face, “we gonna talk about this… your majesty?”

The snarl which ripped from your lips caused him to jump at the viciousness. “Call me that again, and you’ll be finding another bed tonight, Rogers.” You pointed a deadly sharp talon his direction. “And I didn’t lie or keep a secret from you. I’m not the Queen. Not in this life.”

“You keep saying that. Not in this life, but you were, weren’t you?”

There was no heat in his voice, no accusation, just curiosity and your anger deflated. “I was, every Valkyrie life before this one.”

“How does that work?”

Sighing, you slumped against the sofa and closed your eyes. “Tove, my mother when I was Sváfa, she was the Queen of the Valkyrjur. Eylimi was my father, King of our land. They went into battle together, fought side by side, right up till the day of her death. Being Queen, it’s not necessarily a hereditary thing like on earth. I wasn’t guaranteed to be Queen. I fought for the position and won, defeated the then Fullmakt. I became Queen when I was twenty summers, five years after she’d died.”

He shifted closer, his arm going behind your shoulders, lifting you, so you were cradled between his thighs, leaning back against his chest. “I heard you tell Bucky about this.” His fingers traced the partial gauntlet.

Resting back on his shoulder, you smiled. “Were you eavesdropping, Captain?”

“Maybe. You and Matt seemed to be hitting it off and then Loki showed up. I was curious, but Buck beat me to the draw and headed for Loki. I… didn’t want to step on your toes.”

The fluctuation in his heart when he said Matt had your brow arching. “You don’t have to worry about Matt, Steve. You don’t have to worry about anyone. I see no one but you.”

“He held your hand… twice.”

Chuckling, you wiggled around until you could wrap your arms around his neck. “Were you jealous?”

“No!” he scoffed.

You skated your talons lightly up his neck causing him to quiver against you. “Really?”

“Maybe…” he sighed. “Little,” he muttered.

“You, Steven Rogers are my one true love, my sjelevenn. You might not remember what that means, but I do.”

“Maybe you should explain it to me.” His hands stroked gently up and down your spine.

“It means my heart, my soul, and my body belong to you and only you, from now until the end of all things.”

He kissed your forehead softly. “That’s good, doll face, cause I ain’t letting you go. Not ever.”

Sighing happily, you wiggled around until you were back in your previous position, a much more comfortable one, where he threaded your fingers together, playing with your hands.

“Does it bug you I don’t remember?” he asked quietly after a few minutes of silence.

“You never remember.”

“What?” he gasped softly. “But you do?”

“Its how it works. Sjelevenn, it’s a Valkyrjur thing, unique to us and incredibly rare. When I’m reborn as a Valkyrie, I grow, I learn, and when I come of age, I’m taken to the temple where under the guidance of the high priestess I’m guided through my past lives, my Valkyrie lives. I remember everything and seek you out.”

“Okay, okay… but… how are you still Queen?”

You inhaled deeply of his scent. “I’ve never been defeated before my natural death by another Valkyrie.”

“You’re that good?”

“I’m the best.” You couldn’t help the cocky smirk. “I’m not the same girl you knew, Steve and once I learn to deal with this,” you waved at your face, “I’ll prove it.”

“But if your mother died and she was Queen, wouldn’t she be Queen again once she was reborn? If she wasn’t defeated?”

You turned to look his direction and placed your hand on his heart. You revelled in the warmth of his skin through his button-down shirt. “Steve… she wasn’t sjelevenn. When she died… she died. There is but a handful of us who are sjelevenn. Most Valkyrjur live a normal, though longer than human, single life. Even if a soul is reborn, it's not known unless they find their sjelevenn, and only their lives from that moment on can be remembered.”

“But what's the point? Why this constant… rebirth?”

It was a question you had asked on many occasion. Many times in many lives you had pondered the same thing. “When I asked the high priestess, she said it is because the pairs are meant for great things.  We are world changers, world savers; we are needed because together we are stronger than any evil.” You gently cupped his cheek, thumb stroking over the bone. “Even in these lives, quiet lives in which we live as mortals, we have done some grand things, Steven.”

“Like what?” he asked.

You shrugged. “I know you've seen the file. Nat showed, well, read it to me. There are a few historic names on that list.”

“You seriously expect me to believe you were Abigail Smith, eventually Adams?” A small rumble of laughter chuckled from him. “That I was the second President of the United States? John Quincy Adams. I look nothing like him.”

“No. No, you don't. But in these mortal lives, we usually don't. It keeps us safe. But this life, this strange life, you look so much like Helgi....” Was it a strange twist of fate? Or was it some preordained destiny which had him appearing so? You didn't have the answers to that, and you weren't sure you ever would.

“But President?” 

He sounded so unbelieving you dug deep in your memory. "I look back to the early days of our acquaintance; and friendship, as to the days of love and innocence; and with an indescribable pleasure I have seen near a score of years roll over our heads, with an affection heightened and improved by time - nor have the dreary years of absence in the smallest degree effaced from my mind the image of the dear untitled man to whom I gave my heart.” The hard thump of his heart against your hand made you smile. “I wrote those words to you, and even though our letters are ones now treasured by the nation, I remember every word, every line, every emotion I felt when yours came to me.”

“Baby,” he sighed almost reverently before tugging you down to his chest where he held you tight. “I don't remember… but…”

“Your soul knows. You can feel the truth in my words. It's why we come together life after life. Valkyrie or mortal, on Asgard or Earth, we belong together. Every time I found you as a Valkyrie,” you closed your eyes to see it all so clearly, “you would look up, our eyes would meet, and you would smile… oh!” you gasped when the realization dawned. “Oh god, Steve! It was the same smile, the one when Nat introduced us.” You hadn't even realized it till now. “Soft, but still knowing. You knew what it meant every time I appeared.”

His hand delved into your hair, pulled gently to tip your chin up. “Do you know what I thought when I shook your hand that day?”

You shook your head slowly against the hold of his fingers.

“There she is. It shocked the hell outta me. I couldn't explain it, but yeah, there she is.”

“Stevie,” you whispered, heart tumbling over.

“Min vakre skjoldpike,” he murmured against your lips, pressing the softest kiss to your mouth.

… my beautiful shield maiden.

You made to shift closer only to have him tighten his arms around you. “Vennligst min kjære kriger.”

“Damn, sweetheart. You know what that does to me.” His hands stroked down your spine to clench and knead your ass. “Translation?”

“Please, my beloved warrior,” you breathed against his mouth.

“Soon, baby, soon. But I've still got questions.”

An irate hum left your lips. “Ask them fast, Captain.” You dragged your talons lightly down until you caught on the first button at the base of his throat.

“Why can't you be Queen in this life?”

You reared back only to come up against the solid wall of his arms, shocked that that was his question. “I can’t. I'm not supposed to be Queen. Even if I tried, I can't protect my title like this.”

“So you lose it. You could get it back in the next life.”

Shaking your head, you sliced the button from his shirt. “It doesn't work that way. If I lose my throne, it's gone. Valkyrie fight under the principle that a Queen never loses. It is victory… or death.”

His hand immediately locked around your upper arms. “What!?”

“Victory or death, Steven. If one of them were to find out about my disability…”

“They would challenge you for your place, and kill you to take it!?” he asked horrified.

Nodding slowly, you looked down and away, even though you couldn't see him. “I'm not the Queen. Not in this life. I can't be.”

His gentle hands cupped your face. “Okay. We’ll keep this under wraps. No one but our team knows, and if we explain it to them, it won't spread. Will Thor and Loki keep your return a secret?”

“If they know what's good for them,” you grumbled, plucking another button from his shirt.

“Three more questions,” he said, grabbing for your hands.

“Ask them swiftly, Rogers!” you huffed, wiggling your fingers free to stroke his newly bared flesh with your left hand.

“What are the Caverns of Svelic?”

“I told you about the places on Asgard only Loki dared go. That's one. It's where his… lair, for lack of a better term, resides. It's a myriad of tunnels, dead ends, pits, fissures, and cave-ins which could easily have you lost should you not know the way. They were discovered by Svelic who mapped them, then proceeded to lose the map. Old codger.” You proceeded to slice another button from his shirt.

“Pit of Alemik?”

“It’s a pit — dark, dank, full of slime slugs. Harmless really, but their excrement causes one to hallucinate if left too long on their skin. It's not going to kill you, but it's also not fun. If Loki put Garry in the pit, he'll be chained to the wall, likely in Alemik’s hole, a pit within the pit containing no light where the slugs will be attracted to his warmth. They'll crawl on him, causing him to likely see things until the toxin works its way out of his system. Add to the fact something is sliding its way over your skin?” You shuddered in distaste at even the thought, slicing the last button free, sending it pinging away to bounce on the carpet.

“Sea of Klank?” he asked, breathing fast and ragged.

“Lava fields. They call it a sea because the lava swells in waves. It's so hot it never forms a crust, allowing the lava to move and flow like the ocean.” Wrenching his shirt open, you pressed your palms to his chest with a soft sigh. “Enough talking.”

“Yes, ma'am,” he said, voice deep and filled with arousal. Getting to his feet, he took you swiftly to the bed, drawing the zipper down on the back of your dress in the same move.

Next Chapter

#rise up #Steve Rogers #steve x reader #steve rogers x reader #steve rogers fanfiction #captain america #captain america fanfiction #captain america x reader #Avengers #The Avengers #avengers au #avengers fanfiction

[theremightbecupcakespodcast]

Social Distancing Self-Care: Links

Being chronically ill, I am used to being at home for days and even weeks on end. But I know most of my listeners are not. The only change for me right now is that my doctors’ appointments and physical therapy appointments are being canceled, which does also mean not writing at Starbucks or Barnes and Noble. My anxiety, of course, is heightened by everything that is going on, but the actual social distancing aspect is normal life for me. I know most of you are feeling cabin fever (which is a great movie, by the way, and about a virus–more about using horror to safely experience real-life fears in the next episode), coming right up. My love goes out to you guys. As I wrote on the Facebook page, in the Facebook group, and in the Goodreads group:

I have such empathy and love for all of you. Being forced to stay home and act like the world might make you sick…I know how scary and uncomfortable it is. Please take a moment and sit in empathy, as you struggle with your new reality of social distancing. This is how I have been living for the last six years. Not as strictly. But still the same. Some weeks I only go out of the house for my therapy appointment and a coffee afterwards. Know that when I say this, I am remembering my first days and weeks home from work, and the first days and weeks after each new diagnosis, and how very difficult they were. I am so sorry; I don’t want anyone else to feel this way. I promise the cabin fever goes away. Take very good care of yourself and each other, see this as an opportunity. That’s the lesson it has taken me years to learn.

So I am working on the above-mentioned episode, and other future episodes, and also working on intense self-care. This self-care includes distracting myself with creativity and fascinating media I have been meaning to consume. I thought I’d share some of that media with you, in order to inspire and encourage you. Share some of your own in the comments, or wherever you post your own thoughts. Feel free to promote those links in the comments as well for my listeners.

Letterboxd: Carol Kane’s movies

A horror movie I’ve never heard of! And it looks terrifying. The Mafu Cage (1978), directed by Karen Arthur. It stars Carol Kane and Lee Grant (The Omen), and I can’t wait to watch it. It looks like true 1970’s horror grittiness mixed with the likes of Whatever Happened to Baby Jane and The Bad Seed: psychological horror movies where it really comes down to the interpersonal relationship between two people who may not be sane. And a la Clive Barker’s Lord of Illusions, horror of horrors, there’s a simian involved. Those Illusions scenes, short as they are, nearly do me in.

A terrifying love story.

Two strange sisters live in a crumbling mansion, where they keep a pet ape, which belonged to their late father, locked in a cage. While one of the sisters seems to be keeping her head on straight, as it were, the other appears to be sinking further and further into barbarism and insanity.

For lighter fare, and a good laugh, here’s a horror spoof I found: Pandemonium (1982):

Tom Smothers (of the Smothers Brothers) stars as the brave mountie, who along with his trusty horse and bitter deputy Paul Reubens (Pee Wee Herman!) must track down a killer who is stalking coeds at a nearby cheerleader camp.

Also stars Carol Kane, Edie McClurg (Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, Carrie), Judge Reinhold (Fast Times at Ridgemont High), Phil Hartman (Kiki’s Delivery’s Service, How I Got Into College), Eileen Brennan (Clue), Donald O’Connor (Singing in the Rain), and Tab Hunter (Damn Yankees, Grease 2). I am definitely going to seek this out, and will report back. I’m not normally a fan of horror comedy, but this looks so cute and funny. And Carol Kane! Letterboxd, Amazon (not currently available, but you can add it to your watchlist to let Amazon know you want to watch it). Just knowing this exists makes me feel better.

A spoof of camp horror movies with Canadian mounties thrown in. Yes.

Then there’s Trees Lounge: Steve Buscemi, Carol Kane, Chloe Sevigny, Samuel L. Jackson, Debi Mazar, Io Tillet Wright. Directed by Steve Buscemi. What the what. How did this get past me?!

Tommy has lost his job, his love and his life. He lives in a small apartment above the Trees Lounge, a bar which he frequents along with a few other regulars without lives. He gets a job driving an ice cream truck and ends up getting involved with the seventeen-year-old niece of his ex-girlfriend. This gets him into serious trouble with her father.

One of my Letterboxd friends called this “Cheers without the happy”. I cannot wait to see this./> Letterboxd, Amazon

These are the movies written by my friend Eric Garcia–I met Eric at Yale Summer School 1989, between our junior and senior years of high school–he was taking Drama, I was taking Psychology, and Gender and Political Science; we initially bonded over our similar sense of humors and Goodbye Yellow Brick Road (oh oh whoa whoa whoa whoa): Letterboxd:

Matchstick Men (2003): Nicholas Cage, Sam Rockwell, Jenny O’Hara:

A phobic con artist and his protege are on the verge of pulling off a lucrative swindle when the con artist’s teenage daughter arrives unexpectedly.

(the novel: Matchstick Men: A Novel About Grifters with Issues)

Repo Men (2010): Jude Law, Forest Whitaker:

In the future, medical technology has advanced to the point where people can buy artificial organs to extend their lives. But if they default on payments, an organization known as the Union sends agents to repossess the organs.

(the novel)

Strange But True (2019): Greg Kinnear, Blythe Danner:

A woman surprises the family of her deceased boyfriend by telling them she’s pregnant with his child.

Yes, “Matchstick Men”, if you are my age, that should induce a half-remembered earmworm…

…inspired by the Camper Van Beethoven song, since we’re entertaining ourselves here. And guess what, o happy of happies? Ozzy Ozbourne covered it, with Type O Negative. Have fun!

As always, to follow what I am watching, here’s my Letterboxd diary. Feel free to follow me on there, and I will follow you back.

As for books…I just finished Ronan Farrow’s Catch and Kill: Lies, Spies, and a Conspiracy to Protect Predators. I will never give NBC any of my time nor money again. Also, excuse some brief vulgarity and anger, which is rare for me: fuck Matt Lauer, fuck Lester Holt for being an enabler and minimizer for Matt Lauer, fuck the legal team and highest management at NBC and MSNBC, and fuck Harvey Weinstein and everyone that helped, enabled and ignored him. I say all this as an aghast survivor and an aghast human. About Matt Lauer: that softpedal they gave us, with Savannah Guthrie crying that morning of his firing, reading a statement about “harassment” and “inappropriate work environment”, it was farthest from the truth. Matt Lauer is a violent rapist, and know that going into reading this book. It’s explicit, and much more that you will ever expect. Also, Weinstein is much, much worse than you even knew.

In better news, I posted about this book and how it helped me, and Rose McGowan posted a comment of solidarity on my Instagram post. I cried, and I cry every time I think about it, tears of happiness and healing.

So, while we’re at it: Letterboxd: Rose McGowan’s movies

Rose McGowan: Instagram

Rose McGowan Arts: Instagram: her photography and videography art

Her book Brave is next on my list. According to Letterboxd, there’s an accompanying documentary in the works, about which I am very excited.

If you are into true crime, and i know many of you are, here’s the list of recent 5-stars I finished, including those by my talented friend Caitlin Rother:

Lost Girls * Caitlin Rother

I’ll Take Care of You * Caitlin Rother

My Daddy Is a Hero: How Chris Watts Went From Family Man to Family Killer * Lena Derhally (deep dive into this case by a therapist–the whole second half of the book is a thoughtful, intellectual examination of what might be wrong with Chris Watts)

Scarred: The True Story of How I escaped NXIVM, the Cult That Bound My Life * Sarah Edmondson with Kristine Gasbarre (narrated by Sarah, and the audiobook was directed by Kate Winslet)

The Five: The Untold Lives of the Women Killed by Jack the Ripper * Hallie Rubenhold (more history than true crime, incredibly moving and marvelous detective work)

My long-suffering library hold for Madeline Miller‘s Circe finally came through, and I am beyond excited. I loved her gorgeous Song of Achilles so very much. It was so luscious in its imagery and relationship, and its retelling of myth.

I am also reading, on my Kindle, His Garden, Conversations with a Serial Killer, by Anne K. Howard, about William Devin Howell. I’m listening to The Wild Heart of Stevie Nicks written and narrated by Rob Sheffield, the author of the thought-full and moving journal of essays Love Is a Mix Tape: Life and Loss, One Song At a Time. It’s only two hours long but it’s taking me forever because I keep having to pause it to listen to her music.

I’m also knitting a blanket for Wil Wheaton. It all came about from an Instagram conversation about coziness and Muppets last year. There’s been a reboot of this blanket; I won’t bore you with the details and carnage…suffice it to say I won’t be using chenille yarn ever again. I’ll follow up here and on Instagram with new photos. The concept is a warm Muppet hug, and the base pattern is the Elm Avenue Throw Blanket by Lauren Scungio. (Feel free to follow me at Ravelry, my user name is CarlaYarn.)

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Rebooting @itswilwheaton’s Muppet hug blanket. Why? It’s a long story involving many struggles, ending with the strong resolution that I will never knit with chenille again. Stitches kept gapping and stretching; it was a crime scene. Anyway! Revamped, and the end result is going to be much more joyous and colorful, and durable. I chose colors of @knitpicks Brava that corresponded to 19079’s old-school Muppets, including overlooked intrepid reported Prairie Dawn. The Muppets are Big Bird, Bert, Ernie, Cookie, Prairie, Kermit and Herry. The original yarn retained from the original plan is the fuzzy one—the Caron Latte Cakes—it adds the furry aspect as a carry-along. The pattern is the same: the Elm Avenue Throw Blanket by #laurenscungio and #loopsandthreads. I’ve making it on larger needles than called-for for extra squish. Wil, I hope this brings you and @annewheaton much coziness and comfort. Now that I have worked out the frustration (and my health is cooperating), this blanket should be “Movin’ Right Along”. If anyone wants to follow along or check it out. I made the project public on Ravelry at https://ravel.me/CarlaYarn/eatb. #knitpicks #knitpicksbrava #caronyarn #caronlattecakes #muppets #knitting #wip #ravelry #sesamestreet #prairiedawn #bertandernie #cookiemonster #bigbird #herrymonster #knittersofinstagram #knittersofravelry #knitstagram #knitting_is_love #knitlove

A post shared by Carla Hufstedler (@carlahaunted) on Mar 18, 2020 at 9:14am PDT

I shall return with, of course, the aforementioned podcast episode, and more links, more suggestions, and more photos, especially photos of the knitting. I hope this long collection has helped–I spent all afternoon aggregating it. As always, any of the books mentioned can be collected for free with a trial membership from Audible, which helps me out, through this link: http://audibletrial.com/mightbecupcakes. As well, using any of the links in this or any post on the site helps me out. Our family budget is on lockdown. You know I still do not receive disability, and now my husband cannot go out to work. So your clicks and purchases really help, thank you so much. I will also be uploading more scripts to the show’s Patreon, and updating the Patreon levels. Please consider joining, and thank you. If you are not a fan of Patreon, you can also leave me a tip at Flattr. Episode 59 is on its way. I love you, and I hope you find something in this post fun.

To leave this on the most possible fun note, puppies must be involved, right? Well, my parents have three dogs (to my two), and the youngest, still a puppy, is Olivia Benson, and she is a very rare full hermaphrodite. She is cute as as a button as well as fascinating (her vet is going to publish a paper on her). We (meaning me, prompted by my parents via text message as they send over pictures as well) have been chronicling her journey on Instagram at @oliviathespecialpug. Give her a follow. She’s cute and sassy and ridiculously smart. Her older brothers Spencer Reid the pug and Preston the long-haired dachshund show up occasionally as well, and they’re all just stinkin’ adorable. I’ll leave you with her most recent shots. This first one was from Sunday, I was watching 48 Meters Down: Unchanged (I know, I know, here’s my review), and she was falling asleep with her arm on my shoulder, like a human, then there were birdies! She pointed at the tv then looked at me with great confusion then pointed again. The next one was from her spaying + neutering–yes, she had to have both, in a compound, complicated surgery, and she is stoned out of her gourd. I laugh every time I look at these. To me, she looks like a furry toad. I hope they make you laugh, too.

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I heard birdies in @carlahaunted’s horror movie and pointed. #pugstagram #puglife #puglifechoseme #hermaphrodite #olivia #oliviabenson #detoliviabenson #svu #lawandordersvu #oliviathepug #oliviabensonthepug #oliviathehermaphroditepug #puppiesofinstagram #pugsofinstagram #pugpuppies #pugpuppiesofinstagram #pugs #pugchronicles #flatnosesociety

A post shared by

Olivia Benson Pettigrew (@oliviathespecialpug) on Mar 15, 2020 at 7:54am PDT

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Teething pug = sleepy pug. #pugstagram #puglife #puglifechoseme #hermaphrodite #olivia #oliviabenson #detoliviabenson #svu #lawandordersvu #oliviathepug #oliviabensonthepug #oliviathehermaphroditepug #puppiesofinstagram #pugsofinstagram #pugpuppies #pugpuppiesofinstagram #pugs #pugchronicles #flatnosesociety

A post shared by

Olivia Benson Pettigrew (@oliviathespecialpug) on Mar 15, 2020 at 7:40am PDT

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I am recovering from my complicated neutering/spaying surgery nicely, but my first experience with pain meds has me very confused and doing a really good Baby Yoda impression. @carlahaunted was dogsitting me, and I kept standing up stiff legged suddenly, like I had forgotten something (Carla said it was like I had remembered I had locked my keys in my car) and then standing up on my back legs like a meerkat. I finally slept with a good, juicy pain meds + pug flatnose snore. I figured out how to untie my stuffed cone of shame. I am one clever puppy, even on pain medication. My big brothers are worried about me, but being very gentle and very well behaved. I can’t wait to play with them again. #Pugstagram #puglife #puglifechoseme #hermaphrodite #olivia #oliviabenson #detoliviabenson #svu #lawandordersvu #oliviathepug #oliviabensonthepug #oliviathehermaphroditepug #puppiesofinstagram #pugsofinstagram #pugpuppies #pugpuppiesofinstagram #pugs #pugchronicles #flatnosesociety

#babyyoda #babyyodapug #coneofshame

A post shared by

Olivia Benson Pettigrew (@oliviathespecialpug) on Jan 23, 2020 at 10:27pm PST

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[rilenerocks]

The other day I exchanged messages with a friend I’ve never seen. We met in an online Merkel Cell cancer support group. Her husband was a decade younger than Michael when he was diagnosed with Merkel, in his early fifties. The course of his disease was short, less than a year and a half from discovery to death. I got banned from that support group after being in it for a little over a week. I was bringing up questions about emotional issues rather than just talking about the nuts and bolts of the disease and its possible treatments. After I was kicked out, this friend begged the administrators for my email address and we’ve been corresponding ever since. The anniversary of her husband’s death was last week and I always check in with her on that day. I expressed my hope that she was getting along well and had found some space for small joys in her life. When she answered, I felt like she was troubled by her current emotional state. She wrote that we’d both had wonderful experiences in our marriages but that now we had to learn how to live again in real time. That caught me up short.

Live in real time? I’ve been living about as hard in real time as a person can, in my opinion. Since Michael’s death, I’ve traveled alone several times, organized my 50th high school reunion and seen my favorite tennis player, Roger Federer, twice in real life tournaments for the very first time. I’ve been to half a dozen music concerts from John Prine to Pete Yorn to Janis Ian and Paul McCartney, among others.

I swim five days a week. I go to movies and have joined a book club. I’m going to serve on my city’s historic preservation committee. I’ve taken a number of classes, had both my knees replaced and knocked many items off my to-do  list. Isn’t this living in real time? I think what she meant was that my constant emotional engagement with Michael means I’m living in the past. But that’s simply not true for me. Our long and deep emotional connection is still alive in me. He’s only been gone a tiny percentage of the time we were together. And he’s not going anywhere, not out of my head or my heart or my soul.

But that seems to be a point of contention in regard to how people are “supposed” to be after a death. Michael isn’t in my way in terms of daily life. I am. He doesn’t interfere with what I do. He didn’t when he was alive either. And that’s the way it is.  I thought to myself, this exchange is another case of more and less, the story of my life. I am always talking about the things which are “more” while many around me could do with a little “less.”

I certainly know more now about lots of things than I ever have  in my life. And that “knowing” is not yet close to its endpoint. I’m learning every day. I’ve always been learning. I’m motivated. As long as my brain is healthy I expect I’ll continue increasing my stash of both useful and useless facts and ideas. I retain volumes of it, stuffed in the corners of my mind. And I like to talk about it all. In traditional terms that seems ok. Certain areas of my conversation are acceptable. For example there are topics which are nice and neutral. There’s gardening. Sometimes there’s politics, although I can’t say I’m exactly neutral in that regard. But there’s  school.  This fall I’m taking three classes. One is about current affairs in the Horn of Africa about which I know very little. Another focuses on Persia and Rome and will feature readings from Herodotus. I’ve always wanted to read Herodotus, especially after watching the smolderingly sexy Ralph Fiennes carrying around a battered leather copy of his histories in the film The English Patient. The third is about early Scottish history. I know a little bit about that, but after watching the Outlander television series with the equally smoldering Sam Heughan, (who just happens to look like my husband when he was young,) I figured it couldn’t hurt to learn more. I’m a curious mixture of intellectual and pop culture knowledge – I can disappear into the classics world and pop back into current entertainment pretty seamlessly.

I was taking biology classes for a time during the past couple of years. Another socially acceptable conversation topic. But the science class offerings this fall weren’t that interesting to me this semester and frankly, I’ve got enough cancer stuff happening in real life without exploring more theory right now. Fucking cancer. I know several people who are actively engaged in their cancers, some of which are new and others which are old pals that lay dormant for a long time before reappearing in new places to create havoc. Now I’m moving into the “more” arena. This is where things get uncomfortable in my world. For example,  I think that the majority of people who live for a long while will get cancer. We actually have it every day, mutations that crop up at the genetic level but are squashed and eliminated by healthy immune systems. That is, until the mutations get tougher or the immune system gets weaker. After all my years of reading, that’s what I’ve concluded. Some treatments buy time. Others are still primitive. You don’t get to know whose body will react poorly or positively to what is attempted. Until there are wholly individual treatments that’s the way it’ll be. So where does that take me? I try to be a helper and do what I can for those I know.

I think about myself too. I have no idea when my turn might come. I think a lot about the advocacy I was able to provide for my family and most especially my husband. Will I be able to advocate well for myself if necessary? That’s one question I have no answers for at this point. I think about this stuff a lot and I try talking about it but my kids don’t like it and some friends are taken aback. They say what I know they intend to be nice, defusing comments that move rapidly away from the morbid topics. I guess that having thought about death for all the years during Michael’s illness, coupled with my longheld death anxiety from my childhood, as I watched my mom go in and out of hospitals, has locked me into what some think is the morbid side of life. To me it’s more practical than morbid. But it’s one of “those” topics that I tend to bring up that is off-putting to a lot of people. When I talk about it I’m not sad or scared or maudlin. I’m just wondering. Death is something that will happen to everyone and pondering it doesn’t stop me from living a reasonably positive daily life. But the death arena fits into the “too much” category.

The issue of my feeling Michael’s presence so often is another “more” topic. I guess it makes some people uncomfortable. Maybe they think I’m nuts. Maybe they think I’m not living a healthy life. I don’t view other people’s opinions as my problem. I’m open to sharing but am also aware that red flags pop up when I start waxing eloquent about my “ghost.” I can feel that it’s time to move on to something else, a subject more palatable for whomever is the listener.  It seems that I’ve always brought up issues that no one wants to talk about. Michael used to say that if I would only be quiet about certain topics life would be perfect. But I never believed anything was really perfect. Rather, I thought that if you kept working on problems or disturbing ideas like death, or basically anything that caused people psychological discomfort, that the process itself was almost more important than the end goal. I really enjoy thinking and discussing and sorting through virtually everything. I always thought that the more I knew about any issue, the better off I’d be. Michael, more reserved and less prone to the deep inward dives I do, loved me enough to go outside his comfort zone, sometimes kicking and screaming, into places he’d rather have ignored. In the end these explorations brought us incredibly close and gave us the stamina to go through our personal challenge that ended with his death. But what’s perfectly clear to me is that a lot of people prefer doing with less of these internal explorations into what I think are life’s and death’s fascinating mysteries. So when I bluntly bring up one of the off-limits topics, I’ll often feel the invisible hand up in my face and I know I’m supposed to be quiet. Despite the fact that I think we humans share a considerable amount of commonality in life’s essential business, talking about those things out loud just doesn’t happen enough for my taste.

There are all kinds of self-help books and advice websites about virtually everything. But say I decide to open up a sex conversation? Lots of people cut me off fast. I want to talk about how dreadful it feels for me to acknowledge that this most essential part of my life is over. I know that because I’m completely uninterested in being with anyone but Michael. But my drive isn’t dead. I’m going to miss intimacy and kissing and being touched in the way you build with bonds with another person for as long as I remain cognitive. But that’s a “less” conversation. I often wonder what other people feel and if they’re still sexually engaged but I rarely talk about this stuff because it feels like I’m crossing a social boundary line. Maybe I am.

I just think there’s comfort in sharing information and feelings that to me, must be widespread across our species. Am I outrageous? I guess some people might think that. But to me, I’m just myself. I’m still struggling with the separateness that I feel when shut down by the unwritten rules of social exchange. I just can’t stand all these implicit boundaries. Still, I have to live in the culture I occupy so I mostly abide them. More and less. Death and illness and sex are apparently for my private ruminations except for a very few people who accept me for who I am. With the others I guess I can talk about taxes and the weather. I’m glad I still feel Michael so strongly inside me. I can still talk to him about anything and he knows I’m living in real time. With a vengeance. Another thing he always told me was that he thought I was very polite to ask him his opinion on an issue when we both knew I would do exactly what I wanted to no matter what he thought. Still valid. Ultimately, I really don’t care what anyone thinks about my choices. But I’m pretty sure they’d like them if they gave me a chance to say more.

More and Less The other day I exchanged messages with a friend I’ve never seen. We met in an online Merkel Cell cancer support group.

[fashiontrendin-blog]

Kieran Culkin's Shirt Is Off

https://fashion-trendin.com/kieran-culkins-shirt-is-off/

Kieran Culkin's Shirt Is Off

When Kieran Culkin first started reading the script for “Succession,” he wondered whether it had been sent to the wrong person. The HBO powers that be originally thought he’d be a good fit for the character of Greg, a bumbling nitwit who gets high in his first scene and spends the rest of the first season failing to sidle his way up the ladder of a massive media and entertainment conglomerate owned by his great-uncle, Logan Roy.

Almost from Greg’s first line, Culkin knew he was wrong for the part. “He’s already a lot younger than I am, and just the voice ― I was, like, this is not me. I am not right for this.”

When I met Culkin at a small restaurant in the Noho neighborhood of Manhattan last Monday, it was just as clear to me as it was to him that he’s too old to play a character like Greg. But something in the Roy family’s dark saga held Culkin’s attention anyway. He said he kept reading the script, which follows the foibles of the billionaire Roy clan as its individual members vie for power within. A few pages later, Logan’s overconfident third son, Roman, appears, led into a meeting by a man hired explicitly to burn sage.

“Hey, hey, motherfuckers!” Roman proclaims to a room full of his father’s business associates.

“And I was, like, ‘Oh, who’s this fucking guy?’” Culkin said.

Culkin eventually got the part of Roman, an incompetent and lazy man-child who believes he wholly deserves the title of chief operating officer, even though he has little interest in doing any of the work that comes with it. Among the many nefarious faces that make up Logan’s Waystar Royco empire, Roman stands out as perhaps its most cynical ― a ratings-obsessed media executive motivated solely by profit. At one point, in his interpretation of corporate disruption, he takes off his shirt in a meeting, flexing and joyfully screaming “Blood!” at the thought of layoffs. During another, he gleefully tells his sister about a new viral video that is “evidence of precisely the kind of disgusting, liberal, metro butt-love that makes our viewership angry enough to buy pharmaceuticals.” To Roman, nothing could be better.

Culkin can’t say exactly what drew him to the morally depraved heir, described by his father as a “moron” and his brother as a “walking fucking lawsuit.” But it’s not hard to imagine some small part of Culkin was intrigued by the idea of playing such a sneering member of a media empire.

After all, Culkin’s distaste for the tabloid industry is beyond well-established. (“No matter what’s written there, it’s a total lie, even the person’s name, lie, lie, lie, lie, everything’s a lie,” he once told New York Magazine.)

But let’s not lump Culkin into that hyperpartisan Level 10 “FAKE NEWS” category of 2018 American paranoia. Mostly because when he told me “Now it’s a thing, ‘fake news,’” and I said, jokingly, “Fake news. You’re a believer,” he got nervous and pushed out a quick “no,” immediately realizing the millions of different ways such a quote could be aggregated, recirculated, quoted out of context and otherwise misinterpreted. You can almost see it now, can’t you? “Kieran Culkin Joins the Chorus: Media Is ‘Fake News.’”

Culkin’s distrust is of a more justifiable form, born out of a lifetime of his surname showing up in headline-grabbing tabloid fodder. From the moment his parents, Kit “The father from hell” Culkin and Patricia Brentrup, entered into an ugly, obsessively covered custody battle to when the National Enquirer proclaimed his eternally famous brother, Macaulay, had “6 Months to Live” in 2012 (he’s still alive), Culkin’s last name has served as a way to move and make paper ― the most intimate moments of his life repackaged as factually questionable entertainment content to sell ads against. 

Ron Galella via Getty Images

Macaulay and Kieran Culkin at the fifth annual American Comedy Awards back in 1991, just months after the release of the blockbuster hit “Home Alone.”

“There are things that are out there in the world as fact because it was written in print that are just completely false. My brother did not divorce his parents. They did not fight over his money,” he said. “But that’s out in the world as fact.

“I learned at a very young age to be, like, ‘Oh, I get it: It’s bullshit,’ shit that’s written in print.”

In person, Culkin ticks most of the boxes of adulthood: In his 30s. Takes his coffee black. Enjoys talking about his favorite East Village dives. Married five years. Nice watch. Clothes that fit. Hair slicked around his head just so. Like Roman, Culkin drops a “fuck” or “shit” every ninth word or so, as when he said to me, “Hold on, I’m going to eat the fuck out of these pickles. You say something for a minute, ’cause I’ve got a mouth full of shit.”

But no matter how many fucks he lets out ― and by my count, he let out around 25 over 40 minutes ― Culkin remains stuck with a membership to the official Former Child Actors club. Macaulay, or Mac, if you’re in the know, was always the main draw ― history’s most famous kid actor without a drink named after him. But Kieran was there too, in “Home Alone” and “Home Alone 2.” He found himself on the stage of “Saturday Night Live” before the age of 10, and schmoozed with Jay Leno on “The Tonight Show” before his voice dropped.  

Which is probably why ― and here I’m guessing ― Culkin might have been a bit annoyed when HBO suggested he audition for Greg.

But after 10 episodes of watching Culkin-as-Roman take part in his family’s imperious game of human chess, it’s hard to imagine the actor playing anyone else. If Jeremy Strong ― who plays Kendall, Logan’s cocaine-addicted second son ― is the show’s tragic star, Culkin is its nervous energy. There’s something in the way he pushes out a phrase like “What a pathetic beta cuck,” or belittles doctors and waiters alike.

What sealed Culkin’s interest in his character came in the first episode during a family softball game, when Roman points to a kid on the sidelines, the son of the site’s groundskeeper. Everyone grows quiet as Roman whips out his checkbook and starts writing a check for $1 million. Hit a home run in their game, Roman tells the boy, and the money is his. For the child and his family, it’s a potentially life-changing moment. For Roman, the child is nothing but a momentary subhuman toy to mess with and cast aside. After the child is tagged out at home, Roman can’t control his laughter. “I’m sorry, I can’t give it to you,” he says as he tears up the check. It is a degrading, truly awful moment of television.

“Oh, I get it,” Culkin remembered thinking, “he’s a fuck face.”

When Culkin filmed the scene, he embodied evil, letting out a cackle so cruel it sets the show’s moral compass for the remaining season. Culkin himself is not sure where his ability to play somebody like that came from.

“Being able to connect to some degree, not in a positive way, with these characters is odd to me because I don’t know the multimillionaires, I don’t know the super-rich, yet I know assholes like that,” he said. “I can’t even quite specifically pick out who I know that is exactly like that, but it’s weird that you can still, for me, relate.”

“Succession” suffered from a slow start, only truly hitting its stride around Episode 6, when Kendall leads the board in a tense vote of no confidence against Logan, who’s recently suffered a stroke, unleashing a sequence of events within the Roy family that are both comical and horrifying.

Culkin owns up to that. “The first three episodes to me, it’s not like they’re unwatchable,” he said, “but it’s not quite the show yet.”

Which, according to him, is fine. Some shows don’t grab you on first watch, and one in particular in his opinion: “I probably shouldn’t even say this on record. The example I have is actually [the British comedy] ‘Peep Show,’” which was coincidentally also developed by “Succession” creator Jesse Armstrong.

But the first season of “Succession” gained enough momentum before concluding Sunday evening for HBO to pick it up for another season ― making this the first time Culkin has ever been part of a television show that made it to Season 2, according to his IMDB page, a small victory in his more than two decades on-screen.

Culkin’s most acclaimed role came in 2002, when he earned a Golden Globe nomination for his role in “Igby Goes Down.” But that time the victory led to a full-blown existential crisis.

United Artists via Getty Images

Claire Danes and Kieran Culkin talk at a coffee shop for a scene from “Igby Goes Down.” Culkin entered an existential crisis after the film and took a breaking from acting. 

“[I] found myself at the age of 20 with a career I never chose, [and I] freaked out,” Culkin said. “I think everybody around that age has some sort of crisis. Usually, it’s like a straight-up ‘Oh, I don’t know what I want to do.’ Mine is, ‘I don’t know what I want to do with my life, yet here I am doing it.’”

Culkin took a break before eventually returning to acting, mostly because he wasn’t sure what else to do. “I was just sort of doing it in the meantime,” he says now. He took parts in movies like “Lymelife” and “Scott Pilgrim vs. the World.” Did two episodes of “Fargo.” Performed multiple versions of a stage play he loved, Kenneth Lonergan’s “This Is Our Youth.” In 2014, he was still apprehensive. “I often think about getting out of this job, but I’m terrified that there’s nothing else,” he told The Daily Beast.

Since then, Culkin said, something clicked. He remembered coming home from work one day and thinking, “Oh, I think I’m actually enjoying this.”

“I think I know what I want to do now,” he said to himself. “I think I should do this.”

Now deep into his 30s, Culkin has established himself as a stronger and more serious actor than the “essentially retired” Macaulay ever did. And in Roman, Culkin has stumbled upon something as special as it is sinister. TV Guide described Roman as “the very definition of the hate-f―k,” but he’s probably more accurately categorized as sexual overcompensation personified. He tells his brother that his “face is drowning in pussy,” despite the fact that his various partners claim he rarely wants to have sex. He masturbates to his office view of New York City while a string of emails piles up behind him. (“It’s to gain some sort of control,” Culkin surmised.)

More interesting than his sex life, though, is Roman’s complex relationship with his manipulative and emotionally abusive father. While most people want to prove their competence to the people around them, “Roman, for the most part, doesn’t give a fuck about that,” Culkin said, adding, “If his girlfriend says, ‘No, but you did a great job,’ it’s like: ‘Fuck you. Don’t patronize me.’” What he wants, Culkin said, is his dad’s approval: “That’s the only person that can get him, the only person that can look at him and make him nervous.”

Logan does exactly that when Roman prepares to stand against the tycoon in the vote of no confidence. With his father staring down at him, Roman can only muster a meek “maybe” before he slouches into his chair like an admonished child and votes with his father. Thanks to Roman, Logan lives to fight another day atop his dynasty, while Kendall is forced, temporarily, to surrender.

Earlier, in Episode 2, Roman finds himself watching as the world repackages his family’s tragedy into viral content. He and his family are huddled together in a New York hospital, awaiting information about their famous father’s deteriorating health post-stroke, like characters in a Gothic novel, when Roman starts scrolling through Twitter. His sister, Shiv, asks what people are saying.

“Eh, rumors, you know,” Roman replies matter-of-factly. “Some of Twitter says he’s dead ― and also a good deal of rejoicing at our father’s potential demise.” He notices a short video of the “South Park” kids yelling, “Oh my God, we’ve killed Logan! We’re bastards!” and asks an employee to “find out who these fuckers are and report them or screen grab their shit.”

When Culkin’s own father was hospitalized after suffering a stroke in 2014, TMZ, The Daily Mail, Perez Hilton all repackaged the tragedy as well. The National Enquirer pounced, too, running a headline that read, “Macaulay Culkin Rejects Dying Dad: ‘Rot in Hell!’” But unlike Roman, Culkin wouldn’t have been sifting through Twitter. “That would never be something that I would do willingly,” he says of social media more generally. “Because already at a young age, there was a public perception of me.” 

Francis Apesteguy via Getty Images

Kit Culkin, Macaulay Culkin, Kieran Culkin and Patricia Bretnup pose for a photo one month after the release of “Home Alone.” The father is now estranged from his children. 

Like Roman, however, Culkin and his siblings have a less than ideal relationship with his father. By all accounts, they have been mostly if not entirely estranged from Kit ever since their mother won custody of the children in the 1990s. Patricia, the mother, claimed during the custody battle that Kit had been abusive, and Culkin’s brother Macaulay has continued to do so throughout his life.

“He was a bad man,” Macaulay Culkin told comedian Marc Maron earlier this year.

When I asked Kieran Culkin if he has spoken with his father recently, he answered with two no’s so quickly that I couldn’t bring myself to ask a follow-up question, only saying, for reasons still unbeknownst to me, “Fuck ’em.”

“Fuck ’em,” Culkin agreed. “I’ll go on record: Yeah, fuck ’em.”

After a lifetime of his last name being splattered across the front pages of tabloids, Culkin seemed ready to move on from the controversies that have dogged him since he was a child actor with moppy hair and oversized clothes. That’s not him anymore.

What we’re looking at instead is Kieran Culkin, age 35 ― no longer a Greg and fully embracing life as Roman.