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gold-from-straw · 5 years

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Writing Ask Game

A little while ago I was tagged by @stardustloki to answer these questions about fanfic, and decided they'd be quite good questions to write about my original stuff as well, so here you go! (Some questions were deleted because I gave the same answers, or because they weren’t relevant to original stuff)

At what age did you start writing?

I think ALL children write stories at some point or another when they're very young, but the first story I remember finishing (that wasn't for school) was about two stowaways on a big tanker ship who find a girl who's been living in the bowels of the ship, sneaking around and making her home in the hidden corners where nobody can find her. I think I was 14 or so when I wrote it, and I can't remember how it ended - and it's one I don't have any more because I used to hand my stories around school and it sort of never came back to me!

What is your favorite book?

Oh god… OK, I can’t choose just one! So here’s a bunch! Radio Silence by Alice Oseman, I just love literally everything about this story, and I can't really talk about my favourite part without spoiling a major plot point. But Aled Last deserves the world, and Francis' mum is the mum I want to be - she supports her daughter, and even helps her in a way that literally never happens in YA books! You SO RARELY get a parent helping their child against another adult, but they SHOULD.

Also The Trees, by Ali Shaw, which is wonderful and creepy and disturbing. And The Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue by Makenzie Lee, which is sweet and bonkers. And Marian Keyes' books - This Charming Man was traumatic and I can't read it again BUT it was SO clever and I loved the resolution - women working together ftw! Things by Kate Atkinson are always brilliant but I can't choose a favourite, and also anything in the Discworld series! OK, I'm going to stop now, or it'll get silly...

What stories do you avoid like the plague?

I can't watch horror movies, and I find creepy books very hard to deal with as well. The pictures in Miss Peregrine's School for Peculiar Children was about my limit, and without the story that went with them I think I would have had nightmares! I've tried reading Mills and Boon books but I found it REALLY hard to believe in the romance at all, it was like they ended up together because... reasons? But one of them had the guy allow this girl to believe that Tara was his wife back at home, she got insanely jealous and really bitchy (like dude... you're not even together, chill?) and then it turns out Tara was his dog. Why? Why would you do that to each other? Do you LIKE each other? Are you SURE??

Ahem.

(Read Elegance by Kathleen Tessaro instead. Their relationship was cute. Or If You Could See Me Now by Cecelia Ahern! So cute!)

I also tend to avoid those books about abused children. Triggery!

What story do you wish to write but feel like you won’t manage?

I have SO MANY novel ideas, and I'm really precious about most of them (I WILL get to them, just... it takes me a while, OK?!) But one book that I've wanted to write and been too scared to attempt is called Morningstar. It's actually inspired by a fanfic I wrote where Loki and Jesus are good friends (and no, it's not religion bashing, I may be a pagan but I think Jesus is a pretty great character) called Happy Birthday, Jesus! (It was written on Christmas Eve, and it's really silly and fluffy!)

The thing is, I wanted to write a prequel about how they became friends. And then I ended up going to church with a friend and reading the bible (it was a book and it was RIGHT THERE don't judge me) and noticing a lot of references to punishing the children of the devil for the actions of their father. Distressing, for a start, but also reminded me of the Lokasenna.

So it turned into an idea where Lucifer decides to come and visit this so-called Son of God, and finds him at age 13, when he's annoying the hell out of all the priests by being a little too well-informed. Lucifer joins in and spreads discord and actually quite likes the kid, and over the years, he keeps in touch with him. Then, when Jesus is an adult, Lucifer's children are killed, and he's trapped (similar to how Loki was, with the snake venom) and Jesus comes to help him get out. Lucifer starts hanging around with the disciples. He annoys the absolute hell out of Peter for laughs, because Peter's really pious, he gets on really well with Mary Magdalene and Levi, the ex-tax collector. Jesus is just kind and happy to everyone, and while he listens to Lucifer ranting, he always argues with him - they just never let their very opposing views get in the way of their friendship. When Jesus goes out into the desert, Lucifer tempts him because he's worried about him, and angry, and eventually Jesus tells him to leave him alone because doing this is important to him.

It would change nothing about the story. Jesus still dies and is resurrected. It's just that Lucifer's around the whole time, being a twisty, sarcastic, bitchy arsehole, with fundamentally different views to Jesus, and still be his friend on a personal level. There would probably also be some natural disasters when Jesus dies.

However, I'm terrified of doing this story wrong! I would end up insulting a large group of people and aaahhhh! Maybe I'll write it when I'm an old woman and don't give two shits what people think of me any more...

What has been your favorite story to write so far?

Hmmm... probably Zero Degrees - it involved a lot more research than any of the others, because I decided to use references to so many different gods, but it was also one of the most visually creative things I've ever done! I was able to just go crazy, imagining dragons fighting giant spiders in a magical library, and rituals where the hair of a summer god is woven into gloves. It was so much fun! And I have no idea where most of it came from, but it made me realise I enjoy writing magic and magical realism way more than I thought I would!

On the other hand, The Forest Hotel is the only book I've ever written where it turned out pretty much how I wanted it to, practically on the first draft! I did like 7 edits anyway, but they weren't huge plot edits, more adding things in, and I'm still happy with how it turned out!

Why did you start writing? Why are you still writing?

…I really wanted to. That’s basically it? It seems like the more I write, the more ideas I get, and I love that feeling of creating something that I would want to read. These characters live in my head and I get to just peer into their world every now and again to see how they're doing, and it's just so enriching to me. I love it. I write because I want to, and I publish because it brings in a little bit of money and therefore justifies me writing a bit more ;)

Tagging anyone else who writes original fic! Off the top of my head I can think of @chronicintrovert , @focusdumbass, @deborah-writes, @luninosity, @nano-writer, @elizabethhollowswriting and @mosellegreen! If you also write original fic and I haven’t tagged you, please feel free to do this and tag me! I want to know!!

#original ramblings by Lyn H #Lyn's Writing #tag game #tag you're it #Zero Degrees #The Forest Hotel #morningstar #Book Recommendations

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rahirah · 5 years

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via Barb's Place We went to see Crimes of Grindelwald Saturday, and while it was moderately enjoyable in parts, it was definitely not in the class of the first movie. This morning I went out to the back yard to dig a hole to plant the sugar cane. About a foot or so down, I struck the corner of a big hunk of concrete. It was too far down to be left over from our recent fence construction, and I was curious, so I dug the whole thing out. It was a fence footing; there was the rusted remains of a metal post in the middle. It was outside the fence line that existed when we bought the house; Kathy suggested that it might have been a fence around the long-dry-and-capped-off well on that corner of the yard. The interesting thing, though, was that once I'd dug out the concrete, I found something underneath it. This bottle was buried upside down in the dirt, placed precisely so the end of the metal pole would have stood on it, as if upon a pedestal. I'm lucky that I didn't accidentally hit it with the shovel and break it. It must have been done deliberately – possibly to hold the end of the pole up off the bottom of the original hole, so that cement could get underneath it when poured? I don't know. It's not an especially old or valuable bottle (given the age of the house, I think it would date, at the earliest, to the 60s). But the knowledge that there could be small secrets hidden in any random patch of soil is a strange and wonderful thing.

I spent some time this weekend doing digging of another kind. Over at seasonal_spuffy there was a post asking people who'd participated in the first round back in 2005 to share their memories. So I went back into my journal archives to hunt for any relevant posts I could link to, and I ended up skimming through a bunch of old entries from late 2005 through mid-2007. It was a nostalgic treat to see so many old names who've long since left fandom, and sad at the same time. There were several notable fandom kerfuffles in that time period: the Cousin Jean thing, the fall_for_spike brouhaha (which led directly to the founding of seasonal_spuffy) and a lot of other, smaller squabbles, many of which I'd entirely forgotten. It was strange reading my old posts. My writing style was a good deal more performative in those days; reading them, I feel as if I'm reading someone who's desperate to impress people with how witty she is. (Which I was. And still am, alas.) Occasionally I ran across things that made me cringe; did I really say that? But at the same time, I envy that old me her willingness to engage in debate. (Even, ironically, as she professed herself to be too worn out on fannish debate to indulge. Ha, Younger!Barb had no idea.) I stopped reading at about the point that the first issues of Buffy S8 were published; it's at that point that Spuffy fandom started to gradually become rancorous again, as people disagreed about the comics, and I didn't feel like revisiting that particular era. (It's not that 2004-2006 were completely free of fannish conflict; as I said, there were several notable wanks during that period. But 2007-2010 was more of an eat-your-own period.) Even in the posts I read, I noticed the beginnings of a few conflicts that came to a head later. For one thing, you can gradually see the political polarization of fandom growing. Prior to the 2004 election, I can't remember politics ever coming up in fannish space. But the huge anti-gay political backlash of 2004 brought politics into fandom with a vengeance. Buffy fandom skewed liberal, as one might imagine – indeed, I'm really not sure why the show would appeal to most social conservatives. Though I certainly knew my share of conservative fannish women who thought homosexuality was a sin in the real world, but nevertheless read and wrote reams of porny male/male slash fiction. A number of my own readers were against civil rights for same sex couples; they didn't like it when I pointed out that if they were willing to consume my fan fiction and exchange friendly comments with me, while at the same time voting to keep me a second class citizen, they were not really my friends – that a polite homophobe was still a homophobe. By 2006, the conservative fans were complaining that liberal fans were oppressing them. (The precise form of this oppression was never very clear.) By 2008, IIRC, the most vocal conservative BtVS fans had closed their journals in a huff. Of course, Strikethrough happened in 2007, and a lot of people closed their journals in a huff. I think the last big argument along those lines happened in 2009, when Aadler objected to the presence of slash programming at Writercon 2009. The roots of some more personal kerfuffles were there, too. One was a person who disagreed with everything I wrote – they claimed to be a Spike fan, but I honestly can't remember them ever saying anything positive about the character, ever. We'd become acquainted at the Tea At The Ford forum, but never friended each other on LJ. Nevertheless, any time I posted meta, they felt the need to come over to my journal and tell me in great detail just how wrong I was. I had long since decided that there was zero point in arguing with them, because our premises were incompatible. But in those days I strove to respond politely to everyone who commenting in my journal, so there are quite a few long comment strings of us going back and forth. Eventually, IIRC, they compared my fan fiction to Silas Marner, while admitting they hadn't actually read any of it, (my fanfic, that is, not Silas Marner) and that made me cranky enough that I stopped responding to them. Another one was a person who was a Buffy/Spike fan, but they only liked the dark, dysfunctional S6 part of the relationship. They were very grouchy about Spike having been redeemed in canon, and even grouchier about the fact that the vast majority of Spuffy writers preferred to write the pairing as more or less functional. To this day I have no idea why they were hanging around my journal (like Person #1, they never friended me, just popped in occasionally to comment on posts they disagreed with.) Eventually, IIRC, I made some sort of grumpy post about something in canon I disliked; I don't even remember if it was about the comics, or Seasons6-/7, or what. But they responded, telling me that if I didn't like canon, I should leave the fandom. Looking at it now, that was a pretty ridiculous thing for them to say, considering how much they themselves disliked the fact that S7 Spuffy wasn't a total trainwreck. I could have just laughed it off. But they caught me in a bad mood, and I was tired of them coming to my journal just to tell me that they didn't like my fic and thought my meta was dumb, so I snapped at them. I don't remember if I outright told them to stop commenting on my journal, or if I just asked them why the hell they were reading me when they disliked everything I wrote. Either way, they were highly insulted, called me a bully or something similar, and stomped off in a huff. I never heard from them again. There were much rider-ranging kerfuffles that came later, towards the end of S8, which culminated in me bowing out of the fandom entirely for awhile. But reading these old posts and seeing the first stirrings of these smaller arguments felt like signs of things to come, signs I should have taken heed of. I always like to think of myself as a reasonable person who can get on with most people, even the ones I disagreed with. Someone who can handle criticism. But a lot of the time, I fail in that. Which is depressing. But all one can do is try to do better next time. That's all any of us can do, really. comments

#IFTTT #Barb's Place

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forsetti · 6 years

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On Defending Misogyny: Ross Douthat Edition

Ross Douthat’s latest nonsense in the New York Times is quite the pile of crap, even when compared to other piles of crap written by Douthat. Here is my take on the article (Douthat’s article in bold.) One lesson to be drawn from recent Western history might be this: Sometimes the extremists and radicals and weirdos see the world more clearly than the respectable and moderate and sane. All kinds of phenomena, starting as far back as the Iraq War and the crisis of the euro but accelerating in the age of populism, have made more sense in the light of analysis by reactionaries and radicals than as portrayed in the organs of establishment opinion. Not one single person with an ounce of credibility thinks that extremists and radicals and weirdos see the world clearly because SEEING THE WORLD CLEARLY IS ANTITHETICAL TO BEING AN EXTREMISTS, RADICAL, OR WEIRDO. The ONLY way Douthat's statement makes any sense is if he thinks people with enough common sense to know invading Iraq on bogus reasons with zero plan on what to do after the initial invasion was a fucking horrible idea, were extremist, radical, weirdo.

This is part of why there’s been so much recent agitation over universities and op-ed pages and other forums for debate. There’s a general understanding that the ideological mainstream isn’t adequate to the moment, but nobody can decide whether that means we need purges or pluralism, a spirit of curiosity and conversation or a furious war against whichever side you think is evil.

For those more curious than martial, one useful path through this thicket is to look at areas where extremists and eccentrics from very different worlds are talking about the same subject. Such overlap is no guarantee of wisdom, but it’s often a sign that there’s something interesting going on.

A classic Douthat move-lay out a completely bogus claim right out of the block and then construct a whole argument on top of it.

Which brings me to the sex robots. People having opinions about the Iraq war and the European Union logically leads us to sex robots because of course it fucking does.

Well, actually, first it brings me to the case of Robin Hanson, a George Mason economist, libertarian and noted brilliant weirdo. Commenting on the recent terrorist violence in Toronto, in which a self-identified “incel” — that is, involuntary celibate — man sought retribution against women and society for denying him the fornication he felt that he deserved, Hanson offered this provocation: If we are concerned about the just distribution of property and money, why do we assume that the desire for some sort of sexual redistribution is inherently ridiculous?

If you use “libertarian,” you don't get to follow it up with “brilliant.” Never....fucking ever. As crazy as that juxtaposition of terms is the casual acceptance by Douthat of what “incel” means is even more disturbing. The idea that women in society have to have sex with men is repulsive on every level. That someone gives voice to this notion and give it its own term is fucked up beyond reason. Sorry men, women are not here for you to have sex with. Here's a thought, if men want to have sex with women, then maybe, just maybe, they should behave in ways that women deem appropriate enough to where they will give up their bodies willingly to them. Anything short of this is misogyny at the least and rape a the most. After all, he wrote, “one might plausibly argue that those with much less access to sex suffer to a similar degree as those with low income, and might similarly hope to gain from organizing around this identity, to lobby for redistribution along this axis and to at least implicitly threaten violence if their demands are not met.” Let me de-fuckify this statement because it is a Ceasar's Word Salad of nonsense. “Men who don't get as much sex as they want, think they deserve, need to band together to find ways, even through violence, to get women to fuck them against their wills.”

This argument was not well received by people closer to the mainstream than Professor Hanson, to put it mildly. A representative response from Slate’s Jordan Weissmann, “Is Robin Hanson the Creepiest Economist in America?”, cited the post along with some previous creepy forays to dismiss Hanson as a misogynist weirdo not that far removed from the franker misogyny of toxic online males.

I can't understand why the “mainstream” would find the unionization of violent, horny men hell-bent on making women their sexual subjects offensive. But, see what Douthat has done. He has already constructed his argument where the mainstream is the ones who don't “see the world clearly.” Since the mainstream has been pigeon-holed as not seeing reality for what it really is, then it logically follows for Douthat that their view cannot be correct.

But Hanson’s post made me immediately think of a recent essay in The London Review of Books by Amia Srinivasan, “Does Anyone Have the Right To Sex?” Srinivasan, an Oxford philosophy professor, covered similar ground (starting with an earlier “incel” killer) but expanded the argument well beyond the realm of male chauvinists to consider groups with whom The London Review’s left-leaning and feminist readers would have more natural sympathy — the overweight and disabled, minority groups treated as unattractive by the majority, trans women unable to find partners and other victims, in her narrative, of a society that still makes us prisoners of patriarchal and also racist-sexist-homophobic rules of sexual desire.

There is a lot to unpack here. First, Douthat uses a philosopher, in order to bolster the credibility of his argument. As someone with two degrees in philosophy, I can tell you that there are a lot of batshit crazy people with philosophy degrees who throw out outlandish arguments for no other reason than to be controversial and get their shit published in order to placate the Publish or Perish Gods. Second, having sympathy for how a culture views and treats groups outside the accepted norms like “overweight,” “trans,” “disabled,”... who have a difficult time having sex for a host of reasons is, to quote Samuel L. Jackson in Pulp Fiction, “...ain't the same fucking ballpark. It ain't the same league. It ain't even the same fucking sport.” Third, Douthat, a devout Catholic who has carried water for the patriarchy, for misogynists, for homophobes...for years now doesn't get to pretend he is worried about the very structure he helped build.

Srinivasan ultimately answered her title question in the negative: “There is no entitlement to sex, and everyone is entitled to want what they want.” But her negative answer was a qualified one. While “no one has a right to be desired,” at the same time “who is desired and who isn’t is a political question,” which left-wing and feminist politics might help society answer differently someday. This wouldn’t instantiate a formal right to sex, exactly, but if the new order worked as its revolutionary architects intended, sex would be more justly distributed than it is today.

Not only did Douthat use a philosopher to bolster his argument, he completely misused their words in order to do so. Notice how he uses Srinivasan's comment, “who is desired and who isn't is a political question,” and dovetails his own comment “which left-wing and feminist politics might help society answer differently someday,” as if they were one and the same statement. Every culture has their own ideas of what is/isn't sexually desirable. It has nothing to do with “left-wing” or “feminist” politics. Some cultures sexually value heavier companions, those with smaller feet, those with longer necks, those with fairer skin... We can argue the rationality of all of these but none of them are based on leftist or feminist beliefs. In fact, left-leaning and feminists would argue the fuck against these arbitrary sexual values.

A number of the critics I saw engaging with Srinivasan’s essay tended to respond the way a normal center-left writer like Weissmann engaged with Hanson’s thought experiment — by commenting on its weirdness or ideological extremity rather than engaging fully with its substance. But to me, reading Hanson and Srinivasan together offers a good case study in how intellectual eccentrics — like socialists and populists in politics — can surface issues and problems that lurk beneath the surface of more mainstream debates.

By this I mean that as offensive or utopian the redistribution of sex might sound, the idea is entirely responsive to the logic of late-modern sexual life, and its pursuit would be entirely characteristic of a recurring pattern in liberal societies.

Shorter Douthat: “Smart people reacting honestly to the arguments of a libertarian nut job don't know what the fuck they are doing but I, a dyed-in-the-wool social conservative does because of some magical reason that is never explained.” If you think placating angry, resentful, horny men is the way to utopia, I'm pretty sure you are either stupid as fuck and/or just about the most intellectually dishonest person I've ever read.

First, because like other forms of neoliberal deregulation the sexual revolution created new winners and losers, new hierarchies to replace the old ones, privileging the beautiful and rich and socially adept in new ways and relegating others to new forms of loneliness and frustration. Douthat's use of “neoliberal” was done on purpose and as meaningless as the term itself. What Douthat really means by this statement is, “In the past, men could do whatever the fuck they wanted to women, whenever they wanted and women had to take it because that is the fucking way it was. Now men can't do this and they are having a sad about it so we need to blame the women and those who support them instead of the fuck wad misogynists who were morally wrong 50, 100, 200... years ago for their behaviors.”

Second, because in this new landscape, and amid other economic and technological transformations, the sexes seem to be struggling generally to relate to one another, with social and political chasms opening between them and not only marriage and family but also sexual activity itself in recent decline.

“The sexes seem to be struggling generally to relate to one another, with social and political chasms opening up between them.” Holy Both-Fucking-Siderism! NO!!! The “sexes” are not having a problem. MEN caught up in an archaic belief system are having a problem-a big fucking problem. Douthat doesn't get to lay the responsibility and consequences of men not adapting to women's rights on the doorstep of women.

Third, because the culture’s dominant message about sex is still essentially Hefnerian, despite certain revisions attempted by feminists since the heyday of the Playboy philosophy — a message that frequency and variety in sexual experience is as close to a summum bonum as the human condition has to offer, that the greatest possible diversity in sexual desires and tastes and identities should be not only accepted but cultivated, and that virginity and celibacy are at best strange and at worst pitiable states. And this master narrative, inevitably, makes both the new inequalities and the decline of actual relationships that much more difficult to bear …which in turn encourages people, as ever under modernity, to place their hope for escape from the costs of one revolution in a further one yet to come, be it political, social or technological, which will supply if not the promised utopia at least some form of redress for the many people that progress has obviously left behind.

There is an alternative, conservative response, of course — namely, that our widespread isolation and unhappiness and sterility might be dealt with by reviving or adapting older ideas about the virtues of monogamy and chastity and permanence and the special respect owed to the celibate.

So let me get this straight, the problem with sex in America is because of feminists and leftists but, “ the culture’s dominant message about sex is still essentially Hefnerian.”? I've never known a single feminist or leftist who was not only okay with the views and attitudes about sex espoused by Hugh Hefner but who used them as the basis of their sexual ethics. In fact, it has been the direct opposite. Douthat's view of feminism and left-leaning is comical and beyond conservative stereotyping.

But this is not the natural response for a society like ours. Instead we tend to look for fixes that seem to build on previous revolutions, rather than reverse them.

In the case of sexual liberation and its discontents, that’s unlikely to mean the kind of thoroughgoingly utopian reimagining of sexual desire that writers like Srinivasan think we should aspire toward, or anything quite so formal as the pro-redistribution political lobby of Hanson’s thought experiment.

By defacto argument, the sexual revolution was bad so men trying to come to terms with how to really treat women as equals would be a misguided approach to the problem. We need to go back in time to when women had limited rights and almost none with regard to their bodies, their sexuality, and start from there in order to build a more perfect union where men get to get laid when they want by whomever they want.

But I expect the logic of commerce and technology will be consciously harnessed, as already in pornography, to address the unhappiness of incels, be they angry and dangerous or simply depressed and despairing. The left’s increasing zeal to transform prostitution into legalized and regulated “sex work” will have this end implicitly in mind, the libertarian (and general male) fascination with virtual-reality porn and sex robotswill increase as those technologies improve — and at a certain point, without anyone formally debating the idea of a right to sex, right-thinking people will simply come to agree that some such right exists, and that it makes sense to look to some combination of changed laws, new technologies and evolved mores to fulfill it.

Whether sex workers and sex robots can actually deliver real fulfillment is another matter. But that they will eventually be asked to do it, in service to a redistributive goal that for now still seems creepy or misogynist or radical, feels pretty much inevitable.

So, for Douthat, the need to address and placate incels is important but we shouldn't do it with legalizing prostitution or other means. What Douthat is really saying is, “If men cannot dominate and be in control of women, then any sexual solution won't be acceptable. Not legalized prostitution. Not sex robots. Nothing short of actual, real women being subservient to men will do.”

At no point in this entire article by Douthat are men held responsible for their beliefs, for their actions. NOT ONE SINGLE FUCKING TIME! “Feminists” and “left-leaning” people are the real reason behind backward thinking, immoral. egotistical men for behaving the way they do towards women. GTFOH!

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mrsspidermanmaryjanewatsonparker · 6 years

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Can we also please kill the lie that OMD and Sins Past means J. Michael Straczynski run is worse Slott’s?

Can we also please kill the lie that J. Michael Straczynski run is worse Slott’s because of Sins Past and OMD?

Because it’s objectively not true.

I’ve already addressed how it’s really not fair to blame OMD on JMS because it was more Quesada’s story than his.

Sins Past on the flipside is a story that yes JMS SHOULD be blamed for and has major problems but probably not in the ways you think. And as bad as it is there are Slott stories that match or exceed how bad it is and deal as much if not more damage to the Spider-Verse than it.

Let’s first contextualize some things. Sins Past was a story that like OMD had editorial interference. As intended by JMS he wanted the Stacy twins to be the children of PETER and Gwen not NORMAN and Gwen. Much like his original resolution to OMD editorial stepped in and wound up playing damage control, one of the few times I will thank Quesada.

At the same time (unless I am mistaken) editorial also SUGGESTED that Norman be used as a substitute for Peter as opposed to just telling JMS he couldn’t do a story about Gwen’s secret pregnancy.

Then again JMS and editorial figured it wouldn’t matter because even way back in 2004 when Sins Past was being published they knew they were going to do SOMETHING to cosmically retcon Spider-Man’s history and thereby erase the marriage. JMS wrote Sins Past with the presumption that he was going to be able to erase it from existence when all was said and done. This was part of his anger when OMD happened the way it did.

But hey, this doesn’t exactly redeem the story JMS actually wrote right?

It’s still got a lot of problems and is still the worst story under his run that he is genuinely to blame for.

And what are the ways in which the story is bad?

Well:

It turns Peter and Gwen’s relationship into a big fat lie because Peter never knew the ‘real Gwen’. She was lying to him and realistically not going to be acting the way she normally would because she was both pregnant, lying about it and naturally worried. And after the pregnancy she was now a parent which naturally changes your outlook on life…oh and she was still lying about their existence. Peter’s relationship with Gwen was formed during two big extenuating circumstances during which Gwen was unlikely to think, feel or act in ways she ever had before or probably ever would again.

By extension of Gwen’s pregnancy and parenthood now retroactively dominating most of her canonical history WE the audience never really got as good of a picture of who Gwen was a person before she was thrown into this exceptional situation. Which is on the one hand okay because you can say that of countless characters, the problem being that with Gwen the original intention was for that to NOT be the case. Instead of now knowing who Gwen is and how she’d act under certain situations we now only know those things within the context of when she was pregnant/had recently had children and was lying and stressed out over it

Gwen’s pregnancy makes no sense. You have to get ridiculously loose with the actual amount of time that events are supposed to unfold across including when exactly Gwen gave birth. Moreover we were privy to Gwen’s inner thoughts multiple times across her history and got exactly zero indicators that she was dealing with a stressful pregnancy.

This goes well beyond MJ retroactively knowing about Peter’s identity. We didn’t get as good of a look into MJ’s head during the Silver (or even bronze) age and MJ had at least plausible grounds to deny and suppress the truth to herself. If Gwen was fucking PREGNANT that isn’t something that you could as easily say ‘oh she was just suppressing that it was happening behind the scenes’. Not with the degree of access we had to her private life.

More egregiously though Gwen was clearly NOT pregnant. Look at any given image of her from the period she was allegedly pregnant and she is very obviously not showing. Sure, some women do not show when pregnant as a quirk of their or their child’s metabolisms. But they do when it’s fucking TWINS.

The retcon in one way makes Gwen stronger and more admirable as a character for dealing with this huge burden on her own but it also makes her as a person look really, really bad. I’m not talking about sleeping with Norman, or lying about that. I’m talking about expecting Peter to be a father to her children. Okay, maybe that one is forgivable. She’s a young kid in a big stressful situation she is not prepared for at all. But even if you run with that idea…why does she abandon her kids by returning to the United States without them and even risk her own life by going to the fucking SAVAGE LAND when she has two babies in another country relying upon her to return for them?

It gets worse when you consider she had multiple clones all with her memories who also never mentioned or seemed to give a single shit about their CHILDREN. Some of those clones matured further into adulthood than Gwen so there is really no excuse. Even if they argue that those children are not theirs because they’re just clones of their mother, fucking TRY to help them and check up on them. They’re goddam babies!

The story makes no sense for Mary Jane, undermines her relationship with Peter and makes her look really, really bad as well.

Whilst forgivable it is somewhat undermining to Peter and MJ’s relationship that MJ would spend years lying to Peter about Gwen and Norman’s affair and her pregnancy. Although it does speak volumes that Peter forgives her for it relatively quickly.

What’s more irksome about the story is the implication that MJ wonders if Peter loves Gwen more than her when he doesn’t and she does know that. But okay, you can No Prize that one.

What’s NOT forgivable though is how MJ apparently never told ANYONE about this situation. Not Peter, Ben Reilly, Gwen’s clones, Gwen’s extended family whom she was friends with, the police, child services, NOBODY.

Basically MJ in spite of knowing that there were two children out there in another country who were now orphans didn’t even try to look in on them or put someone else onto doing that.

She just ignored them. In doing so she condemned them to be raised by their abusive father Norman Osborn. MJ didn’t even tell her best friend Jill Stacy about Gwen’s children when Norman revealed he was still alive in the 90s. Wouldn’t she have PRESUMED Norman would have found those kids?

MJ let two innocent children out to dry because of this retcon.

The story straight up rewrites history because it takes panels from ASM #121 and depicts them with different dialogue and body language that never happened but needs to exist to facilitate the retcons

The story does not adequately justify Gwen’s attraction towards Norman or even explain when exactly it happened

And yet in spite of all this you know Sins Past up until the big reveal was actually a really, really good story. The mystery was gripping and the subject matter highly appropriate to Spider-Man. Mostly good dialogue as always by JMS and beautiful artwork by Deodato Junior.

Those are the big problems with Sins Past. Notice something? I didn’t mention Gwen and Norman sleeping together or Gwen cheating on Peter.

Wanna know why?

Because they’re not what’s wrong with the story.

Gwen was established as being attracted to older men way back in the 1990s and it is far from unrealistic for her and Norman to make a mutual mistake and sleep together.

It’s pure soap opera and that’s very much in line with Spider-Man. It isn’t spinning the relationship positively and encouraging other 19 year olds to sleep with men old enough to be their fathers who are also actual friends of their father and also the parent of one of their friends whom they had dated recently. The opposite is true if anything considering how Norman is clearly framed as utterly evil and despicable and Gwen as someone who made a big, stupid but common and human mistake.

As for Gwen cheating on Peter I guess that depends upon your definition of cheating but by my standing that would require her and Peter to actually BE in a relationship of some kind.

At the time Gwen canonically is supposed to have slept with Norman they were not. They’d been on one or two dates and that was it. They were not a couple and were not going steady or serious about one another at all. Peter was in love with her but he wasn’t in a serious relationship with her.

So Gwen wasn’t cheating on anyone.

Also across the years I’ve not really liked how Gwen is the one who’s demonized for the ‘affair’ with Norman.

Like…she was literally 18 or 19 years old at the time the story happens, 20 at a push.

Why the fuck is SHE the one who gets blasted for sleeping with Norman when he’s the grown ass man in the situation. Shouldn’t it be HIS responsibility to NOT sleep with the girl young enough to be his daughter, is the literal daughter of one of the people from his social circles and close friend of his son’s?

I know, I know…he’s evil.

But just because one person is evil in this situation doesn’t therefore make the blame attributable to the other non-evil person there.

Sins Past is bad because it’s retcon doesn’t make sense and equally importantly is damaging to the characters and narrative. NOT because it features a young girl sleeping with an older man after being on 2 dates with another man.

Here is the thing though, it was ignored pretty much immediately and so aggressively makes no sense and just does not fit into the canon at all that it’s actually not that hard to simply ignore.

It does NEED to be retconned out don’t get me wrong, but you can sort of cordon off the story and then continue reading with little difficulty.

The same cannot be said for Slott’s run.

Here is a BRIEF list of the crap Slott has pulled:

· Portraying Doctor Octopus as a rapist

· Presenting Peter as a manchild who is mentally 15

· Having Peter interfere illegal in the affairs of foreign countries

· Removing Norman Osborn’s powers

· Killing off Doc Ock, making multiple Doc Ock clones and then making one of those an alt-right allegory in league with effective Nazis, HYDRA

· Having Mary Jane victim blame Spider-Man by breaking up with him (when they were not together) after he was abused by Doc Ock in Superior

· Portraying Otto as BETTER than Peter during Superior

· Implying Peter was willing to endanger a child’s life for his own sake when he made Doc Ock’s hand shake during surgery in Superior #8

· Killing off MC2 Peter Parker and thereby invalidating the entire point of Mayday Parker as a character. She is driven by being the daughter of Spider-Man and her relationship with her father. See also removing her iconic costume

· Making Ben Reilly into a straight up asshole villain

· Retconning the death of Gwen Stacy so that Gwen died hating Peter Parker and was conscious when her death came

· Killing off Ashley Kafka AFTER portraying her as believing a villain was irredeemable. For context Kafka believed CARNAGE was redeemable!

· Wasting the 50th anniversary of Spider-Man on a worthless character like Alpha solely to launch a spin-off mini-series

· Destroying Peter Parker’s everyman status by making him an internationally famous rich guy in charge of the world’s biggest tech conglomerate

· Shipping him with Mockingbird in direct opposition to both characters’ established characterizations

· Introducing Silk who despite zero combat experience was better at superheroing than Spider-Man himself oh and also had the power to compel Spider-Man to sleep with her against his will...which would be yet more rape

· Ignoring Black Cat’s history by pretending she had a secret identity (she didn’t) and then making her into a murderous psycho crime lord for irrational reasons even though she’s supposed to be morally grey

· Frequently portraying Spider-Man as secondary in his own title and requiring help from guest stars and team up characters

· Portraying MJ as weak willed, stupid, shallow, and passive even though she’s absolutely none of those fucking things

· Presenting Silver Sable as an school girl with the hots for Spider-Man, again against her characterization and ruining the unique professional relationship they shared

· Ruining the unique character of Phil Urich by just turning him into ANOTHER cackling Goblin villain

· Doing a story about Betty Brant being assaulted wherein Spider-Man decides to let the criminal go because Aunt May guilt tripped him. How did she guilt trip him? By claiming he was irresponsible when at age 15 he wasn’t there to comfort her, a 50-60 year old woman the night uncle Ben died

· Portraying EVERY character as unrealistically idiotic in Superior Spider-Man in order to ensure that the Doc Ock could remain Spider-Man

Now...tell me again how JMS is worse?

#j. michael straczynski #Dan Slott #Spider-Man #Peter Parker #Gwen Stacy #Norman Osborn #Green Goblin #The Green Goblin #Doc Ock #Doctor Octopus #superior spider-man #The Superior Spider-Man #otto octavius #Black Cat #felicia hardy #mjwatsonedit #MJ Watson #mary jane watson #Mary Jane Watson Parker

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wannabanauthor · 7 years

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Seven Shades of Shit Book Review with Caitlyn Lynch: Chapter 6 Part 1

Hello everybody, and once again I’m reviewing Cassandra Dee’s Seven Brothers of Sin. It’s a horrible book so far, and I expect Chapter 6 to answer the question “Can this get any worse?”

Don’t forget to check out the lovely @caitlynlynch review as well! She is my partner in suffering at the moment. Her review will be linked here!

Here is the link to the masterpost.

Now onto the horror show…wait, I need some chocolate pie before I attempt to read this garbage.

This chapter is from Macy’s POV, and apparently she needs to recap everything.

I’m going to caption this as “Last Time on Seven Brothers of Sin…”

They’re probably drugging you, Macy. You should stay away from them. They’re weird as fuck.

This is a classic example of Plot Convenience, and it’s asking the readers for an unusually high Suspension of Disbelief threshold.

I’ve read taboo/pseudo-incest erotica that didn’t sound this creepy. You think I might be exaggerating, but I’m not. This author’s writing really is that bad.

I’d like to remind you of Caitlyn’s first chapter review where she mentions the possible child molestation that took place when the Morgan’s brothers played doctor with Macy 10 years ago when she was 8 years old.

I’d like to also reiterate that the taboo erotica I’ve read never ever mentions a sexual or romantic relationship/interest between the man and the woman before she was of legal age. Think about that for a moment. Erotica centering on step-family members fucking each other has better morals then a non-taboo erotic book. How’s that for a comparison?

Unless you’re actually a diagnosed sex-addict, you are not addicted to your vibrator. A lot of teenage girls masturbate, look at porn, and read romance novels. However, that should not be mentioned or referred to in this book since she was underage at the time it happened. If anything, the author could have focused on her playing with herself and everything when she was at college.

Bitch, Smith just touched you down there. You have six guys panting over you, and I guarantee you that men do not care about “how much flesh” is down there. They just want to fuck you. If that means they got to spread their fingers apart a little wider to pave the way, they don’t give a fuck. Pussy is pussy.

When did Macy make out with them? I don’t remember any kissing. You can’t be a slut without having sex. If you’re using a vibrator internally, then your hymen is not intact. One time I wrote a virgin character, and in order for her have a hymen, I made sure to mention that she didn’t finger herself or use tampons. But I’m just extra like that.

And when was Matt’s tongue on you? Continuity errors or I was just that drunk?

People have hang ups over food? No shit, Sherlock. Have you seen how the media pushes fatphobia to the point where parents will starve their growing kids just so they can be thin? Vegans care about animal rights and the negative effects of eating meat on the environment. Noble goal when they aren’t being classist, racist, fatphobic, and a whole bunch of other shit. Other people have dietary restrictions. Some just want to live a healthy lifestyle, and others have eating disorders. Fuck you for shitting on anyone’s diet and being dismissive about the real reasons behind it.

I’m sitting here trying to collect my thoughts to respond to this false rhetoric calmly, but fuck that. I give zero fucks anymore.

Macy, you’re not dumb or insignificant for taking pleasure in small things. You are dumb for a whole other list of reasons that I don’t care to get into right now. Feminists want equality, especially for women who like to do traditional “feminine” things. They want it to be a choice, not a requirement.

Macy, I’m going to stop you right there at “big careers”. Even my sorority sisters who are working for TV channels, our alma mater, famous companies, and or in government don’t have big and glamourous careers yet. Only the older ones who graduated a decade ago come close to that. If it makes you feel better, I don’t you being a tax expert, lawyer, or grad student. Your stupidity would cause someone to be audited, thrown in jail, pay a huge fine, or take up a valuable spot in a graduate program.

White privilege is calling your parents by their first name and not getting knocked the fuck out.

While I could go on a rant about her white privilege, I could also use this time to point out how utterly stupid she is. Does she think that everyone working a cubicle job wants to be there? No, a lot of them have bills to pay, so they do it anyway. A lot of them are also smart and work on their passion in their free time so that they can build up enough experience to eventually transition into doing their passion as a full-time job.

But then again, white privilege plays into this. It doesn’t even occur to her that she can do both. Every person of color is taught from birth that they need to have a side hustle for extra money or as a backup plan. I am one of the rare fortunate ones that has a day job that I love, and I get to be an independent author in my spare time. I am living proof that you can do both. My black coworkers at my current and former job all have businesses or side hustles. One of my former coworkers has a full-time job and ten companies that she runs.

Of course, Macy is too stupid to figure this out because she thinks she deserves to have everything fall into her lap at her convenience while the rest of us work our asses off so that we can survive and do what we love.

You’re going to be a fucking awful chef and cookbook author if that’s the case. Creating recipes requires equations, problem solving, presentations, and effective communication. And the kitchens in America are notorious for the verbal abuse that the cooking staff face. Even when I took a cooking class, the professor was blunt but honest. You don’t have the buoys to work in a kitchen. It’s not all fairy dust and daydreams.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! She wants to self-publish, but she can’t problem solve or make presentations? Oh man, that is a disaster waiting to happen. Self-publishing is not easy. Anyone can write a book and publish it, but in order to be successful you have to research and study your ass off to actually sell your books. If they don’t sell, you have to analyze the situation and problem solve for a solution.

Keep this dumb bitch away from the kitchen. The following information took me five seconds to find:

Don’t use runny cheese on pizza, you fuckwit!

Is the virgin slut slut-shaming other women? Who would want the perfect resume? Who would want to drink and sleep around? She must be new here because that’s exactly what people tend to do to relieve stress.

You just made soggy pizza, you dipshit, so your comparison is correct. You’re not going to know what you’re doing, and you’re going to fuck it all up.

While her mom is right about the education and job part, she is also a humongous snobby privileged white bitch who just insulted every single cook and chef in existence. Well, if the bitch hates people who cook so much, she should just stop eating and save them the time.

Head, meet desk, please. Repeatedly.

Oh honey, you think you’ll start out at a high-class restaurant? You can’t do math, problem solve, or take criticism. All it takes is for one uppity rich white woman to complain about your food, and you’ll be fired for your incompetency. Well, after you finish crying your eyes out in front of everyone.

Macy, everyone knows what rushing is. I’ve been on the sorority side of it, and trust me, it’s a learning experience. You learn how to conduct two-way interviews, evaluate candidates, sell people an experience, and you end up networking with some of the women. If your dream is to be a celebrity chef, joining a sorority is the way to go. Once you pay your dues, you get instant access to thousands of women in every industry imaginable. You get an entire network of women willing to help you just because you joined an organization. Make fun all you want, but rushing is essentially convincing hundreds of young women to spend thousands of dollars per semester on an experience that has lifelong benefits. Sounds like the thing you need to do what you want to do.

I’m with Martha on this one.

You are as dumb as people think. You can go to culinary school after you graduate from college and get a job. Trade schools usually have a few class you can take during outside of 9-5.

You really are fucking clueless if you want a baby at eighteen even though you have no desire to go get a degree or get a monotonous job that pays the bills.

And where did this desire for a baby come from? You know what’s even harder than a college education and a boring job? A baby!

Sorry to burst your bubble, but breastfeeding can be very painful and frustrating. It’s one of those things they don’t usually tell women until after they’ve given birth. Or at least that’s what they do in the States. If you don’t believe me, go look at Chrissy Tiegen’s tweet after she gave birth when she said “they didn’t tell me that I’d be going home in a diaper too”.

Breastfeeding can be so difficult that lactation consultants exist. Sometimes the babies just don’t latch or just don’t want a nipple. My friend had trouble breastfeeding her first kid, but her second kid was a natural with breastfeeding. Then there’s the leaking milk, pumping milk, not producing enough milk. You need to study all this stuff before you have a kid.

Don’t kid yourself. You’re not smart enough to become a CEO.

This is exactly why you shouldn’t have a fucking baby! Even Domo Wilson waited until she was financially stable to get inseminated, and she had been wanting a child since she was a kid herself. She talked herself out of intentionally becoming a teen mom because she wanted to wait until she could actually provide for the child. She’s a lesbian too, so she had to pay some serious money for the entire insemination process.

You don’t know jack shit about any of those things, so you’re already off to a bad start.

(Tumblr is refusing to post all the photos, so this is a two-parter)

#seven shades of shit #book review with caitlyn lynch #seven brothers of sin #cassandra dee #the book from hell

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gublernews · 7 years

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Fantasia 2017 Interview: Trent Haaga and Matthew Gray Gubler on 68 KILL, Death, Love, Sex and Biting

Trent Haaga has a new film out produced by Snowfort Pictures -- 68 Kill -- but he’s been in the gore and exploitation biz for a while now, with his earliest professional beginnings at Troma. Creative people often have a myriad of interests, and Haaga is no exception.

He’s written several screenplays, most notably for Cheap Thrills (directed by Evan Katz, and also produced by Snowfort) and Deadgirl, but moonlights as an actor, too. Similarly, the cheerful Matthew Gubler is a popular actor, most known for his role on Criminal Minds, and he’s directed some episodes and a few shorts, as well.

So, what happens when you mix the talents of Haaga, Gubler, Snowfort, AnnaLynne McCord, Alicia Boe, Shelia Vand, AND an adaptation (screenplay by Haaga) of a crazy novel by Bryan Smith? 68 Kill -- a kickass, nonstop explosion of Southern Gothic gone awry. I was able to chat with Haaga and Gubler at Fantasia 2017, who were at the festival for their Canadian premiere. Check out a bit of the madness they’ve created in the trailer for the film -- now out on VOD --below.

Tell us how 68 KILL came to be adapted from the book.

Trent Haaga: I was a big fan of Bryan Smith; he’d published four novels under the Leisure imprint. I’m a voracious reader. When Leisure shut down, their authors got the rights back to their work. They started self-publishing on Kindle and dusting stuff off. Smith was hyper-prolific, and I liked his horror stuff a lot, but he also published three novellas that were pulp, which was really my bag. I came up in the horror world, but I really like pulp thrillers. I read 68 Kill, and I thought Smith was really great, but no one knew about him, so I thought about getting the word out and how the book would be an amazing movie.

When you pick an author like that, it’s real easy to find and reach out to them. He doesn’t have a manager or agent, and neither do I. We were able to just exchange emails and do a handshake kind of deal. Being an independent artist, I scraped up some good faith money and we created a simple option deal.

Then when Snowfort got involved, I’m sure they had some paperwork, but I had nothing to do with that. Bryan was happy, he had some money to pay some bills. A lot of these authors don’t believe that a GOOD film adaptation is ever going to happen. A lot of indie filmmakers want options for free for backyard productions, so that’s what the authors expect. (Gubler laughs in the background.)

When I approached Bryan, I told him I’d done some stuff and sent that over, but when I say I’m going to do something, I’m really going to get it done — we’re going to get this thing made. I might end up filming it in Indiana for $20,000, but I’m going to get this thing made.

Is that where you filmed it?

TH: No, Indiana was where my parents are, where I grew up. But I did some location scouting in Ohio, because we had a producer there. Eventually, because of the tax incentives, a deeper cast pool, and more able crew, we ended up going to Louisiana and shooting there.

But every step of the way, I’d write to Bryan, like “you know what, man? We’ve got a great producer on board, and we’re gonna try to get slightly bigger names — rather than just people that I know. (Gubler laughs again.) And it kept happening in steps; we got a little bit more money than the $20,000 that I raised.

Everything exceeded my expectations — the idea is to push it as far as you can. Here’s the budget; okay, but I’m still going to these locations and do the car chases, even though a lot of people with my experience wouldn’t try those things. The entire thing was, “oh, you’re gonna give me an inch? Let me see if I can take a mile!” And that was for every step of the project.

What special flavor did Snowfort bring to the film?

TH: I’ve known Travis for years; I wrote Cheap Thrills, which is a Snowfort movie. I acted in American Muscle and Starry Eyes, and I got cut out of that. But I’ve known and worked with Travis for awhile and knew he was the right guy for this material. If I made something that was worthy, I knew Travis could get on the phone and get people to watch it. He was on set the entire time, too. We have a friendship where we can yell at each other if we need to (Gubler laughs), or hug each other if we need to — it’s not like he was a guy in a suit standing over there with a calculator, you know?

Let’s talk about your awesome cast. Did you have to do a lot of screen tests or audition rounds?

Matthew Gray Gubler: This was after Trash Fire (Ricky Bates, Jr.’s film, another Snowfort production, also starring Gubler), but I’d never met Travis until this.

TH: It’s like anything; you announce you’re gonna make a movie and they ask you how much money you have. And you go: “I don’t know yet; what kind of names do you think we could get?” People start punching numbers into a column and figure it out , and the money guys have their own ideas. Meanwhile, I’m making my own list with Matthew Gray Gubler at the top. (Gubler: “Awww.”)

You know I would have chosen Gubler immediately, but we had to go through this list with their guys. We do that, and we exhaust all those. Then I get to say, “Let’s try Gubler, we have a Snowfort connection to him, and I really want him — at least get me a meeting with this guy.” After that meeting, it had to be him.

I don’t want to say it was the power of “The Secret,” but it was about mentally projecting me making the movie with Gubler in the role. Then Ricky helped us out with AnnaLynne, and I think Shelia Vand came to us through a casting director, yeah Samy Burch. Sam Eidson (who plays Dwayne), I’d seen in a movie and wanted to cast him in this role. They asked who he was, and I said, “don’t worry, he has Zero Charisma" — that’s Zero Charisma, the movie, guys! We reached out to him directly and he didn’t have an agent, so we were able to reach out to him directly.

Obviously, there’s a lot of violence in the film. Can you tell me about your stunts?

TH: You get some stunt guys and coordinators. It’s interesting — I’ve made way more violent movies! (Gubler laughs again.) If you choose the right moments and create the right impact, people think it’s so gory and violent. In reality, I’ve done way more violent movies that had less impact.

We had a stunt coordinator from Louisiana named Kevin Waterman that was great, and a deep pool of people there that’ve been working for awhile, but Kevin helped us out with a lot of fisticuffs, gunplay, car chases, and things like that.

It’s very tricky; shooting these things take up a lot of time for what ends up being a small portion of the running time of the film. It’s a balance; I can’t take five hours to shoot what will make up two seconds of a 90-minute film.

MGG: That car chase was two days, right?

TH: One night. It’s always a constant balance between making it look good and the amount of time it takes to shoot.

Now, I had a lot of fun watching the crazy, kickass women in the film, but I wanted to give you the chance to answer back to those who might say the film is misogynist. I don’t get that feeling personally, but I wanted to see how you felt about that, and give you a forum to do so.

TH: It’s one of those things where I feel that it’s a statement more about those people and their beliefs, more than about me or what I’m trying to do, ultimately. I’m juggling a 150,000 things, from costume decisions to performance choices to whatever. As the artist, it’s not my to job to go, “here was what I was trying to say.” Subconsciously, things come out, but I’ve been married to a very strong woman for over twenty years.

MGG: Raised by a strong woman.

TH: I love, respect, and admire strong women.

MGG: It’s a movie ABOUT strong women!

TH: I think so, too!

MGG: I never got the misogynistic thing, because to me, I read it and thought, “oh, this is going to be a movie that’s going to be awesome for the females!”

TH: Right. I also did a movie called Deadgirl, which dealt with toxic maleness; part of that movie’s theme is a male character who sees a woman chained up and dehumanizes her and puts another female character on a pedestal. But what if you have a character who’s beautiful, sexy, and owns her sexuality, but what if she’s a bad guy? She can be that!

MGG: I love that! Yeah, why not?

TH: Exactly! To say that she’s super tough AND virtuous… All I’m doing is not making you a character, but making you representative of all women. That’s not my job. (Pointing at Gubler:) He’s not representative of all men. He’s Chip, the character. Each of these people are their own character, I’m not looking at it in broad stokes, or looking at it like, these women are representative of all women. They’re not. Liza is Liza.

MGG: Violet is lovely! I’m lost. I can’t believe that anyone would think that! What movie are they talking about? 68 Kill?

TH: (laughs) I can understand it; you do have to be prepared for this. The more people you show the film to, the more opinions you’re going to get.

MGG: It’s a Rorschach test!

TH: But I thought the message of Deadgirl was completely clear and concise — these boys were toxic, and clearly not good — but people told me I was a monster and I endorsed raping of women. If that’s what you want to think, cool, but that’s you. How you feel about it is how you feel about it. No matter how much talking I do, I probably won’t change your mind.

(To Gubler) Well, I imagine you must have had fun being tossed around by beautiful ladies?

MGG: I’m used to it in real life! I legitimately mean that.

What’s the difference between the film and the book?

TH: I’m glad that you asked that.

MGG: It’s massively different, but the book is great!

TH: The author is super happy about it. It was important to me to who loved the book, then watched the movie NOT know what exactly was going to happen. I’d like the fans of the movie to also be surprised by the book and get a whole new experience.

There are certain things in the book that are great, but a movie has different beats. For example, in the book, Liza and Dwayne disappear after Chip runs away. It was an interesting choice. But for a movie, I felt they were part of the main story, so I brought them back. Violet in the book is more of a maneater, she doesn’t represent the possibility of love. The oral pleasure requests at the convenience store were also made by a man, not a woman. But when Matthew has to do it (at the request of a woman in the film), it turns into comedy.

(To Gubler) Last time you were here at Fantasia, I heard someone trying to get close to you got angry she couldn’t, and bit someone.

(Haaga and Gubler explode into laughter.)

MGG: Where’d you hear that??

Publicist Kaila Hier (in the background): It was legendary.

Did you know about that?

MGG: I don’t know about that!

Kalia, do you want to tell them?

Hier: I wasn’t on the ground for that. It was one of our Fantasia volunteers who got bit trying to keep the women away from him.

TH: What the fuck!

MGG: They were probably relatives!

TH: Is this what we’re looking forward to, man?

MGG: No, no, no! I doubt it!

TH: Oh… this is my favorite!

#68 Kill #Matthew Gray Gubler #Trent Haaga

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bountyofbeads · 5 years

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It wasn’t just Ilhan Omar — Trump disparaged 8 women during his speech in North Carolina

By contrast, he said nice things about zero.

By Aaron Ruper | Published July 18, 2019 2:00 pm | Vox | Posted July 18, 2019 | VIDEO on Website

President Donald Trump, amid a rant about Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN), a Somali refugee turned Congress member, promoted his fans to break out into chants of “send her back!”

He also went after each of the four members of the so-called “Squad” — which in addition to Omar includes Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), Ayanna Pressley (D-MA), and Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) — with whom he’s been embroiled in a public feud since he posted racist tweets last Sunday asking them to “go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came.”

Trump’s naming of these women in particular is no accident. They symbolize the rising power of progressive women of color in America. Though they are all from very liberal districts, something even House Speaker Nancy Pelosi likes to point out, they represent a deep fear among the conservative base: that their grip on power is slipping to the AOCs and Ilhan Omars of the world.

Trump also went on to speak negatively about four other women. In fact, he didn’t have a single positive thing to say about any of the eight women he brought up on Wednesday.

He’s making what some would say is a risky bet. Though polling shows that a large majority of public disapproves of his racist statements about the Democratic congresswomen and that he’s more unpopular with women than with men, he knows that it could also fire up his base to turn out. Trump seems to believe that stoking the grievances of white voters is what got him victory in 2016, and he’s hoping to do it again in 2020. His speech in North Carolina indicates just how key white men are to his strategy.

The proof is in Trump’s words: “So these congresswomen, their comments are helping to fuel the rise of a dangerous, militant hard left. But that’s okay because we’re going to win this election like nobody has ever seen before,” he said Wednesday night.

Trump attacked each member of the Squad

After bashing Omar with remarks that were reportedly read off a teleprompter, Trump took aim at Tlaib for using the f-word during a MoveOn event in January in which she was recorded saying about him, “We’re gonna impeach the motherfucker!” Trump characterized her comments as evidence that Tlaib doesn’t love America. Omar and Tlaib are America’s first two Muslim congresswomen.

“That’s not nice, even for me,” Trump said, alluding to Tlaib’s comments. “She was describing the president of the United States and the president with the big, fat, vicious — the way she said it, vicious — f-word. That’s not somebody who loves our country.”

Trump then accused Ocasio-Cortez of conducting “outrageous attacks against the men and women of law enforcement ... she said essentially Nazis are running concentration camps” at the border. But Trump’s characterization of AOC’s comments was misleading — she did describe migrant detention centers as “concentration camps” but never compared border agents to Nazis.

Trump went on to accuse AOC of describing “contemporary America ... as garbage.”

“Garbage. We’re garbage. Remember ‘deplorables’? I think that’s worse,” Trump added. This too was misleading — AOC never compared Trump or his supporters with garbage, though she did say during an appearance at South by Southwestearlier this year that “this idea of like 10 percent better from garbage, is, shouldn’t be what we settle for.”

Trump even went as far as to mock AOC’s name: VIDEOS ON WEBSITE

AOC is a popular figure in conservative media, often mentioned far more on Fox News than the actual House speaker.

Trump also went after the fourth Squad member, Pressley, saying she “thinks that people with the same skin color need to think the same.” He suggested that she sympathizes with antifa, alluding to a recent incident where Pressley refused to answer a question from a right-wing reporter who demanded she denounce antifa in a hallway near the Capitol.

After attacking each congresswoman individually, Trump wrapped up that portion of his speech by taking shots at them collectively and reiterating his admonition that they should consider leaving the country: VIDEO ON WEBSITE

So these congresswomen, their comments are helping to fuel the rise of a dangerous, militant hard left. But that’s okay because we’re going to win this election like nobody has ever seen before. And tonight, I have a suggestion for the hate-filled extremists who are constantly trying to tear our country down — they never have anything good to say — that’s why I say, “Hey, if they don’t like it, they can leave.” Let them leave. Let them leave! They’re always telling us how to run it, how to do this — you know what? If they don’t love it, tell them to leave it. I don’t know. And now watch, I’ll go back tonight — “Oh, sir, that was so controversial. Sir.” No, I’m just saying it’s their choice. They can come back when they want. But you know, they don’t love our country. I think in some cases they hate our country. And they’re so angry.

But Trump’s attacks on women on Wednesday night weren’t limited to Democratic congresswomen of color.

Elizabeth Warren was a major target too. Hillary Clinton, in an unusual twist, was not.

Trump attacked a number of the front-running contenders for the Democratic nomination for president, including Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders, but his most vicious attacks were reserved for Elizabeth Warren, whom he repeatedly referred to with his now-familiar “Pocahontas” slur.

“Pocahontas is gaining a little bit because we probably used the ‘Pocahontas’ a little bit too early, but that’s okay, we will bring it out of retirement very soon,” Trump said, alluding to Warren’s rising standing in the polls.

Later, he added: “I was driving her crazy. So she went out and hired a guy to check the blood. I’m sure he had a lot of fun doing that. He checked her blood and found out that many, many, many, many, many, many years ago, there could’ve been somebody. And he could’ve been Indian. And then the Indians got together and they said, ‘We don’t want her! We don’t want her.’”

Trump was referring to Warren releasing her DNA test last year, which indeed drew some criticism; many are justifiably uncomfortable with tracing one’s race to DNA. Nevertheless, Native Americans are not a monolithic group, and while many did criticize Warren’s effort to claim Native American heritage, others support her.

In a departure from his typical speeches, Trump only mentioned Hillary Clinton and Nancy Pelosi in passing. But he didn’t have good things to say about them. He mocked Clinton for falsely believing she would win North Carolina in 2016, and criticized Pelosi for objecting to his characterization of MS-13 members as “animals.”

Trump also mentioned German Chancellor Angela Merkel in an unflattering context, suggesting he needs to hector her to pay her country’s bills.

“There was a recent poll — Germany likes Obama better than Trump. A lot better. I said of course, because I’m making them pay their bills,” Trump said. “I’m saying you got to pay. I say, ‘Angela, Angela, you’ve got to pay, Angela!’ Obama would go in, make a speech, leave. I go in, make a speech, I say, ‘Let me speak to Angela. Angela you’ve got to pay your bills, you’ve way behind.’”

There’s a method behind the ugliness

It’s worth remembering that Trump went out of his way to insert himself into a feud between House Democratic leadership and the Squad. His Sunday tweets admonishing them to leave the country weren’t in response to anything in particular, other than his desire to make himself part of the story.

Trump clearly views racist attacks as a winning strategy. On Wednesday, Axios, citing sources close to Trump, reported that Trump views his attacks on Omar and company as a way to motivate white grievance voters to go to the polls next year.

“He hopes he can crank their turnout even higher, especially among older, white evangelicals. He knows most of those voters are unlikely to ditch him, no matter how offensive his comments,” wrote Axios’s Jim VandeHei and Mike Allen. “He watches Fox News and knows AOC, in particular, is catnip to old, white voters, especially men.”

But even if he’s counting on white men, he still pays lip service to women.

“You know, it’s interesting with women. So women want to have strong military protection. They want to have strong borders. They want to have strong law enforcement. They want to have great education. They want to have low taxes for their family, not high taxes,” Trump said during his speech on Wednesday. “They want to have all the thing that we talk about — why wouldn’t they want Trump more than anybody else? The other side is going to go the opposite way. And they did in the last election and we’re doing a lot better.”

What Trump didn’t mention is that women voters favored Democrats by an estimated 7 points and turned out at historic rates in 2018.

#u.s. news #politics #donald trump #trump administration #politics and government #president donald trump #white house #republican politics #trump #us: news #republican party #must reads #racism #hate speech #hate crimes

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jessicakehoe · 5 years

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How Many Facecloths Should You Own?

Unless it’s laundry day, linens are something you likely think about very little—and probably something you’re even less likely to call a passion. And yet, when one man raised a question about household towel quantity, Twitter went into a heated 28-hour frenzy.

A few weeks ago, Abdul Dremali, an award-winning astrophotographer and host of the podcast Unrelatable, asked an open question to the adults of the internet. “Hello, fellow adults. my gf and i have a question…what is the correct amount of towels to own?” he wrote. “I said 10 and she looked at me like i was crazy. we have zero frame of reference on the appropriate amount of towels in a household of two.”

hello fellow adults. my gf and i have a question… what is the correct amount of towels to own? i said 10 and she looked at me like i was crazy. we have zero frame of reference on the appropriate amount of towels in a household of two.

— abdul (@Advil) February 17, 2019

Chrissy Teigen, the Dictionary and IKEA (whose savvy social media manager dubbed the controversy #towelgate) are just a few of the 2500 users who weighed in on the conversation. It was a response from journalist Yashar Ali, however, that sent Twitter into a tailspin. “As a couple you should own a minimum of the following 10 bath sheets, 10 bath towels, 10 hand towels, 20 wash clothes, preferably more,” he tweeted.

As a couple you should own a minimum of the following

10 Bath Sheets 10 Bath Towels 10 Hand Towels 20 Wash Cloths

Preferably more https://t.co/CWqd8kp5vJ

— Yashar Ali 🐘 (@yashar) February 18, 2019

Am I willing to give up 50% of my closet space for something that nobody outside my house will ever see? No, I think I prefer shoes to bath sheets. But, at the same time, I have to ask: is the time and money I invest in skincare rendered obsolete by my towel habits? To keep my skin smooth, glowing and bacteria free, how many facecloths should I own, and how often should I be washing them?

Instead of taking my query to social media, I thought it best to consult an expert. But first, I took the question to my coworkers. The office-wide consensus reached as far as the Twitter debate: Lesa Hannah, our beauty director, uses a facecloth once as part of the first step in her double cleanse and tosses it in the hamper; Ben Reyes, our video editor, doesn’t use a facecloth at all; Pahull Bains, associate editor, disputes the word “facecloth” and says the word I’m looking for is “washcloth.” The most interesting response came from Isabel Slone, our fashion features editor, who has developed a very meticulous method that maximizes her facecloth use: she uses the space in each of the four corners of the square towel, saving the middle for last, allowing her to use the towel five times before washing it.

When I begin asking Jennifer Brodeur—the Montreal-based founder of JB Skin Guru and facialist whose client list includes Michelle Obama, Ashley Graham and Oprah—what she thinks of Isabel’s crafty use of cloth space, she practically cuts me off. “No,” she states flatly. “That’s clever, but no.” Here are the top facecloth tips I took away from our chat—starting with her use of the word washcloth over facecloth. (You win this one, Pahull.)

1. Stay away from coloured cloths.

“The first thing that I tell clients, and I say this to every single person I’ve ever worked with, is that you need to walk away from anything that is coloured. You don’t want to use a washcloth that has any dye. So you’re going to walk away from the blacks, the reds, and the purples because if you wear lots of makeup, you can’t really see it on the cloth. But also, a lot of women are very sensitive to dye. So first thing’s first, you want something that’s completely white.”

2. For your face only.

“You’re going to want to have a washcloth that is really, really specific—something that’s just for your face. It isn’t the same one you’re going to use to wash your pots, wash your feet or wash any other body bits or parts. It’s face, neck and decollete only.”

3. Invest in a quality product.

“And then, what I usually recommend if you can, is to invest in the organic bamboo muslin facecloths.”

4. One cloth per wash.

“You need a minimum of seven. Which means you use one a day. In the best of worlds, you would only cleanse in the evening. I usually tell women that in the evening, you’re going to want to wash with your washcloth. Then, in the morning you won’t need it. So you should need just seven—but if you’re cleansing twice a day, morning and evening, you need 14.”

5. Wash it like a nappy.

“If we’re going to be sensitive about what’s on that washcloth in terms of dyes, we’re also going to be extremely sensitive about how we wash that washcloth. I treat a washcloth in the same way I treat reusable nappies. Like, for example, you wash it with all your other towels.”

Chances are, you’re now planning to go buy a few more washcloths. Here’s where to start:

1/6

Organic Muslin Facecloths

Aurelia Probiotic Skincare Monday to Sunday Bamboo Muslins

($32 for seven, Net-A-Porter)

Buy Now

2/6

Organic Muslin Facecloths

Eve Lom Muslin Cloths

($29 for three, Sephora)

Buy Now

3/6

Organic Muslin Facecloths

EcoTools Muslin Polishing Cloths

($8 for two, iHerb)

Buy Now

4/6

Organic Muslin Facecloths

Muslin Cleansing Cloth

($6, The Body Shop)

Buy Now

5/6

Organic Muslin Facecloths

MV Organic Skincare Muslin Cleansing Cloth

($33, The Detox Market)

Buy Now

6/6

Organic Muslin Facecloths

Pai Skincare Organic Muslin Facecloths

($20 for five, The Detox Market)

Buy Now

The post How Many Facecloths Should You Own? appeared first on FASHION Magazine.

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latestnews2018-blog · 6 years

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There Were Zero Things Better This Week Than Beto O'Rourke's Post-Hardcore Band

New Post has been published on https://latestnews2018.com/there-were-zero-things-better-this-week-than-beto-orourkes-post-hardcore-band/

There Were Zero Things Better This Week Than Beto O'Rourke's Post-Hardcore Band

Welcome to Good Stuff, HuffPost’s weekly recommendation series devoted to the least bad things on and off the internet.

The single greatest thing I learned this week is that Beto O’Rourke, the Texas Democratic challenger to Ted Cruz for his Senate seat, once played bass in a post-hardcore band called Foss with one Cedric Bixler-Zavala on drums. And he kind of went hard? Harder than Mike Huckabee anyway.

If you don’t know Bixler-Zavala’s name, you will not care, and I don’t blame you. But for the small contingent of us who do, it is the single most random thing ever. By far. No competition. HOLY MOLY I’M GETTING EXCITED ALL OVER AGAIN. WHAT!?!?

Bixler-Zavala would go on after Foss to become the lead singer of two bands that defined my childhood, the Mars Volta and At the Drive-In, making this a perfect melding of my teenage self and whatever the hell you would call my current state. ― Maxwell Strachan

“Kim’s Convenience”

Between “Crazy Rich Asians” and “To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before,” August has been such a landmark month for pop culture featuring three-dimensional portrayals of Asians that there’s a hashtag for it: #AsianAugust. (If you haven’t seen either of those, go do that!)

“Searching,” a thriller starring John Cho, the first Asian-American actor to headline a mainstream, modern movie in that genre, joins the party this weekend before rolling out to more cities next Friday.

And don’t sleep on “Kim’s Convenience,” a Canadian sitcom about a working-class Korean-Canadian family that premiered in 2016 but is now available in the U.S. on Netflix, which added it in July. In between reveling in how wonderful “Crazy Rich Asians” and “To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before” were, I watched a few episodes last weekend and was immediately hooked. It will definitely be relatable to anyone who comes from an immigrant family. But it also has the classic conventions of any great, slice-of-life family sitcom, with endearing characters and an abundance of irreverent jokes. ― Marina Fang

My Colleague’s Love For “To All The Boys I’ve Loved Before”

On the evening of Tuesday, Aug. 17, my colleague and dear friend Claire Fallon watched “To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before” for the first time. “It fucking wrecked me,” she tweeted of the now-beloved Netflix rom-com. By the time I saw her at work the next morning, Claire had watched “TATBILB” three times already. She seemed… different. There was a twinkle in her eye, a bounce in her step — the unmistakable signs of a woman in love.

Claire confirmed as much with her bombshell story: “Report: I’m in Love With Netflix’s ‘To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before,’” and she didn’t stop there. She RTed every article horny for the film’s romantic male lead, Peter Kavinsky, adding commentary like “i am hurting myself every time i watch it and realize he isn’t real.”

Before long, Claire’s husband was drawn into the fold. “They say you should include your partner in your fantasy life so I made my husband watch to all the boys I’ve loved before with me,” she tweeted on Aug. 18, a time she would later describe as “the most romantic weekend” of her life. This marked her fifth viewing of the film and potentially, I foolishly thought, her last.

Claire is now up to 10 viewings and shows no sign of slowing down. On Monday and Tuesday, when she normally live-tweets “Bachelor in Paradise,” Claire instead posted six GIFs of Peter Kavinsky — in a hot tub, on a school bus, smiling all sexy in a bathrobe. Where am I supposed to get my snarky “Bachelor” commentary now, Claire?! Her obsession became my obsession. Thanks to Claire, I now find myself talking incessantly about a movie I haven’t even seen, filtered through the lovesick gaze of my talented co-worker.

“If you’re wondering, i did watch it last night,” Claire slacked me today, unprompted. “I do little else.” If this post was a rom-com, this is the part where I’d declare my love for Claire and suggest that instead of Peter Kavinsky she take notice of the girl working at the desk across from her all along — fave-ing her tweets, offering her goldfish, casually suggesting they open the mail together. But it’s not, and Claire is married and I have more journalistic ethics than that! ― Priscilla Frank

The Greatest Sentence In The History Of Language

This was a bad week ― all weeks, now, are bad ― but at least we were blessed with one of the great sentences in the history of language.

“Suck my dick and balls I’m working at NASA” is a literary delight, nine words strung together so perfectly that there’s no way to misread them or misinterpret the emotion they intend to convey. The person who wrote them, who had the misfortune of directing them toward someone who oversees NASA, apparently lost out on an internship opportunity at the space-exploring government agency. This is a shame, not just because no one should be fired over a tweet but especially because no one should ever be fired after penning such a beautiful tweet.

Homer Hickam, the former NASA engineer who was best known for writing “Rocket Boys” but will now enter history as the man who elicited the greatest piece of writing humankind has ever produced, is apparently helping our glorious author find an even better opportunity in the aerospace field. But the real hope here is that one day our dear friend ascends to the top of NASA, resumes the shuttle program or some other form of space exploration, and paints our new motto on the side of whatever sort of craft eventually finds other forms of life out there, so that our newfound alien friends’ first brush with the English language is the English language in all its glory. And if we’re not going to cure cancer or solve climate change or find aliens or do any of the other cool shit science is probably capable of, we should put all of our resources and expertise into finding a way to project “Suck my dick and balls I’m working at NASA” onto the moon. ― Travis Waldron

Temi Oni’s Latest Poem

I see a lot of my experience in Temi Oni’s latest poem. I walk a lot. I’m catcalled far too frequently. I’m always minding my business. I’ve been hit on by teenagers, men my age, men my father’s age, men his father’s age. I’ve been asked if I suck dick, if I wanna fuck, if I want a dick in my ass and much worse. My initial silence has agitated the men harassing me to the point of them getting too close — just like Oni’s decision to at first ignore the man who asked her if she sucked dick irked him to the point of walking up on her. Like her, I’ve wonder who the fuck these dudes were talking to. I’ve wished my homies or my man was around because I also have a tendency to fly off the handle when I’ve been disrespected. I size the man up. Sometimes I say something smart, ask him who he’s talking to. Sometimes I don’t say anything at all.

And then, it happens: They threaten to rape you. It freezes you. You want to defend yourself, but you don’t know if you physically can. You want him to die because he thinks it’s funny. You’re paralyzed by your anger, but within moments your guts will churn and you’ll start to realize that you may very well be in danger.

You feel bad for this black person. You want better for them. But you also want to feel safe. As Oni says, seeing the police won’t calm you. Black women are constantly put into compromising positions by black men, but the most harrowing is the decision of whether or not we should sacrifice our own safety for theirs by not calling the police. You don’t want a black person to die at the hands of the police, even though they just threatened to harm you. On the flip side, the police often don’t even see black women as worth saving.

In these moments, I often feel a sense of loneliness that is much deeper than me being harassed while I am literally alone. Whenever a black man has walked up to me on the street or tried anything, no one has ever defended me. People can be around and yet no one does anything. At their best, they ignore it. At their worse, they watch. It induces a rage I still can’t explain, a fear I often feel and a pain that seems generational.

It’s the black woman’s Catch-22. ― Julia Craven

“Support The Girls”

Magnolia Pictures

Lisa (Regina Hall) often reminds people that she works at a “family place,” insofar as the Hooters-type watering hole she manages does not allow the predominantly male clientele to harass waitresses. As it turns out, the establishment is family-like, at least in the way its female staffers protect and fortify one another — a fitting theme for a movie titled “Support the Girls.”

Andrew Bujalski’s new film is one of those indies that comes out of nowhere and lights up the screen, the perfect cap to a wobbly summer. When a sports-bar chain comes to town, the forces of capitalism threaten to nullify Lisa’s mom-and-pop restaurant. The hourly-wage sisters who maintain the Texas joint are doing it for themselves, and they’re lucky to have the patient, affable Lisa as a lodestar amid the careless dudes in their paths. Hall gives an Oscar-worthy performance, delicately screaming into the void alongside Haley Lu Richardson (“Edge of Seventeen”) and Shayna McHayle, better known as the rapper Junglepussy. When she’s finally had enough, Lisa tosses a middle finger to the sky, a rare release for someone who’s burdened herself with always needing to keep it together. We’re right there with her. ― Matthew Jacobs

Bowen Yang

Bowen Yang may not be a household name, but you may as well learn it now.

The comedian and Vulture host became a viral sensation this week after a handful of celebrities — including Chrissy Teigen and Sarah Silverman — tweeted out some of his lip-syncing videos.

Yang has been uploading clips of himself lip-syncing various pop culture moments since May. But his most recent video, of him imitating Meryl Streep as Miranda Priestly in “The Devil Wears Prada” is what has put him on the map. It’s flawless, funny and just a delight to watch. ― Saba Hamedy

Terrific Human Mariska Hargitay

Academy Award-winning actress Hilary Swank got married this week. She looked lovely in Elie Saab with custom Christian Louboutin shoes. Her husband looked dapper. There was a tap dance! The wedding looked like it was ripped right from a high-class Pinterest page. But the best part of Hilary Swank getting married this week was actually Terrific Human Mariska Hargitay.

One of the photos featured in a Vogue gallery on Swank’s wedding shows Hargitay lurking in the background, seemingly holding up Swank’s veil as part of her duties as maid of honor. Swank and Hargitay are known BFFs, but still, could you imagine having Hargitay around on your wedding day? To give you pep talks, or hold up your dress while you pee or dab the sweat off your forehead after dancing too hard? For sure she’d make sure your Champagne hand was never empty. Congratulations on that, Hilary Swank. ― Paige Lavender

The R-Rated Puppet Movie That No One Liked

DAMON DAHLEN/HUFFPOST

Priscilla Frank with her date at a press preview of “The Happytime Murders” on Monday in New York.

Some critics have deemed “The Happytime Murders” the worst movie of the summer, if not the whole year. Other people, like my colleague Priscilla Frank, have called it “the only movie that mattered, and the only one that ever will.” Listen, I probably won’t see the film, but I will scroll through photos of Priscilla and her Puppet Boyfriend performing nose kisses in an empty theater at least a couple times this weekend. You should, too. ― Katherine Brooks

Christian Covington’s Very Lifelike Madden Character

Guess I have to accept the fact that I’m ugly now…. Say it ain’t so Madden…. smh pic.twitter.com/fTcmitdrEw

— Christian Covington (@thetangibleC4) August 22, 2018

Who knew you could play as Shrek on Madden?

The difference between how Texans DE Christian Covington looks in real life and how he looks on Madden is basically the same as photos you post vs. ones you’re tagged in… if people were to draw faces on garbage cans and tag you in them. And like ogres and onions, this thing has layers: Is it so sweaty because it knows it shouldn’t be here? Does it look like a thumb? Is that mean to thumbs? With all the attention this has gotten after Covington poked fun at it, it’s only a matter of time before Madden tries to take this away from us like a bunch of Farquaads. So before that, farewell sweet prince. Like Shrek, may you live happily forever after. ― Bill Bradley

Read last week’s Good Stuff.

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vitalmindandbody · 7 years

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Tragic, fascinating, brilliant- life of’ wild child’ Zelda Fitzgerald revisited

Two films and a TV series out soon portray the life of the jazz-age novelist and spouse of F Scott Fitzgerald

She is thought of as the original wild child, a pearl-twirling party girl who died at the age of 47 after a flaming broke out in the North Carolina sanatorium where she was a patient. Now Zelda Fitzgerald, the countries of the south belle changed jazz-age protagonist, dubbed the first American flapper by her husband and partner-in-drink Scott, is to have her own Hollywood make-over two cinemas are in the pipeline and a television series will air on Amazon Prime early next year.

All three programmes have starry mentions affixed: Jennifer Lawrence will take the lead in Zelda , a biopic directed against Ron Howard and based on Nancy Milfords best-selling biography; Scarlett Johansson will bob her fuzz for The Beautiful and The Damned ; and Christina Ricci will play the young and impetuous Zelda in the Amazon series Z: The Beginning of Everything. The name of the Tv succession comes from Scotts awestruck provide comments on satisfy Zelda: I cherish her, and thats the beginning and result of everything.

So what is it about Zelda that mesmerizes virtually 70 years after her tragic intent? In persona it is that the disturbances the couple lived through find an resemble in our own hectic times.

Interest in the Fitzgeralds has definitely been on the increase not only since Baz Luhrmanns film of The Great Gatsby in 2013 but likewise from the many similarities between their lives and operate and the period were living through right now, says Sarah Churchwell, author of the critically acclaimed Careless People: Murder, Mayhem and The Invention of the Great Gatsby .

Its a floor of boom and bust and it reverberates as “weve been” grappling with our own boom and bust, our own worries about the cost of our excess and our own social loss. The lives and fates of Scott and Zelda peculiarly simulated their eras: in the 1920 s they were roaring for all they were worth, but with the crash in 1929, everything fell apart.

It helps, more, that Zelda was so vibrant a anatomy. It begins with her elegance, says Churchwell. But too with the stories told in the 1920 s about the high jinks and fun she and Scott seemed to have. Parties really liked her: she was surprising, intelligent, astute, funny and adoration a good party. She likewise liked to be the center of scrutiny, and so had her detractors too. These stuffs combined to draw her a legend.

Scott frequently returned to their relationship in his myth, most notably in his second fiction, The Beautiful and Damned , which details the heady early days of their matrimony; and his mournful fourth, Tender Is The Night , in which the gilded daydream has faded into a more tawdry world. Zeldas exclusively novel, Save Me The Waltz , presented the relationship from her side.

They were arguably Americas first luminary pairing: a carefree golden couple who wrote their practice into the spotlight, developing their own mythology of gin-soaked dates and fun-filled nighttimes, simply to persist too long once the light-footed had started to dim. Their recklessness acquires the floor exciting and stunning, says Churchwell. But they paid a the highest price.

After a few giddy times, all the boyish promise crumbled away, leaving Scott a stunned and drunk jobbing hack in Hollywood and fetching Zelda to breakdown at the age of 30, a diagnosis of schizophrenia , now widely thought to be a bipolar affective disorder, and their own lives in and out of sanatoriums.

Her story is both fascinating and unfortunates, says Therese Anne Fowler, on whose novel Z the Amazon series is based. Here we have a woman whose knacks and vigour and ability should have stirred her a brilliant success, who was determined to be an fulfilled creator, columnist and ballet dancer in an era where married maidens were supposed to be spouses and moms, interval. Her devotion to Scott was, in many ways, her undoing[ although] he was just as imprisoned as she was. Had they cherished one another less, they might both have come to better ends.

The idea of Zelda as a bright woman captured by her duration has gained traction in recent years, with a number of occupations re-evaluating her through the prism of feminism although it is not always the easiest of fits. As early as 1974, the couples daughter Scottie balk such claims, writing the purpose of which is to vistum her father as a classic put-down spouse, whose efforts to express her sort were frustrated by a typically male chauvinist spouse were not accurate.

Writing in the New Yorker in 2013, Molly Fischer concurred , mention: Saving Zelda Fitzgerald is no easy proposition …[ she] does not want to be anyones domesticated, and theres something mortifying about the literary readiness to domesticate her, to transform an irritating girl into an appealing heroine.

The new cinemas may well further Hollywoodise Zelda, sanding away her bumpy boundaries and reinventing her as a relatable heroine for our modern times. The molding of Lawrence so often described as Americas Sweetheart in the Howard biopic is no accident.

A report about the upcoming Johansson film in the Hollywood Reporter showed it would draw on previously unreleased textile to indicate that her husband misappropriated his wifes opinions as his own.

Mark Gill, chairwoman of Millennium Films, the yield companionship behind The Beautiful and The Damned , concurs : She was massively ahead of her time and she took a vanquish for it. He plagiarized her ideas and threw them in his works. The matrimony was a codependency from inferno with a jazz-age soundtrack. The movie has, nonetheless, fastened the co-operation of the Fitzgerald estate.

Fowler agrees that there is a changing predisposition to refer our own concerns to Zelda. We do anoint her as a kind of proto-feminist heroine, even though she didnt hear herself as a feminist and didnt fully replace at anything, she says. But her original reputation is based on conventional paternalistic the terms and conditions of what the status of women, father and partner ought to be and do. Her ambitions and her insistence on engaging them were considered inappropriate and unhealthy; after her psychopathic disintegrate she was literally told that this insistence had created her divide recollection and that the path to a cure lay in giving up all aspirations that didnt conform to the paternalistic ideal.

Scarlett Johansson, Jennifer Lawrence and Christina Ricci are all set to play Zelda Fitzgerald in the forthcoming products The Beautiful and the Damned, Zelda and Z: The Beginning of Everything. Composite: Getty Images

The backlash against this image is intelligible given that popular opinion of Zelda was initially driven by Ernest Hemingways notoriously caustic descriptions in A Moveable Feast , published posthumously in 1964, in which he dismissed her as insane and accused Scotts developing dependence on booze on his wife.

Our perception has very much changed, says Churchwell. We have come to sympathise with her frustration, to recognise her talents and to be more fair-minded about her selects. That said, she carefuls against attempts to create a Team Scott/ Team Zelda subdivide, as is so often the occurrence in far-famed literary partnerships. Its important to say that they always loved one another and wouldnt have appreciated parties taking surfaces Fitzgerald wrote a few years before he was dead that it was a moral responsibility that their friends understood the latter are a duo, a group and would abide that practice, even if her illness intended they couldnt live together.

Churchwell is likewise scathing about attempts to suggest Zelda had a larger role in her husbands operate than previously presumed. “Theres” those wanting to recognition Zelda with Scotts work, which is just silly and doesnt do females any preferences, she says. Its not a zero-sum activity: we are in a position recognise both of them for who they were.

Zelda had many abilities, but where writing was pertained she was probably more ill when she started to hone her knacks, and while it is true that Scott didnt especially want her to write partly out of territoriality but partly because medical doctors told him it was bad for her its too true-blue that her work isnt in the same class as his. Her individual sentences are often lovely, and she can create a mood and has clever revolves of word but her studies tend to be sketches rather than full fibs. If they had induced different options, maybe she could have been an important scribe, but the reality is that she wasnt.

Perhaps, then, the real key to Zeldas continued pull on our imagery lies not in her study but in her modernity. I dont want to live I want to adoration firstly and live incidentally, she proclaimed and it is that vitality and avarice for all of lifes knowledge, both good and bad, that extends down over the decades, granting each generation to see something new.

Z: The Beginning of Everything will air on Amazon Prime early next year

THEY SAID

I have rarely known a woman who uttered herself so delightfully and freshly: she had no ready-made words on the one handwriting and no striving for gist on the other. Critic Edmund Wilson

I fell in love with her spirit, her candour and her blaze self-respect, and its these occasions I would believe in even if countries around the world indulged in wild ideas that she wasnt all that she should be.

F Scott Fitzgerald

I did not have a single pity of insignificance, or shyness, or suspense, and no moral principles.

All I crave is to be very young ever and very irresponsible, and is of the view that my life is my own to live and be happy and succumb in my own way to please myself.

Other publics ideas of us are dependent mainly on what theyve hoped for.