#seeing this film in theatres destroyed my life and my soul and my childhood and my stanhood of cats and my heart and--

[honeylikewords]

What’s this?! My favorite writer is now trying her hand at Peter 🅱️ Parker?!?! *i place an offering of candies and honey at your feet* Please, if you have any: some hcs for this foolish soul...

Aw, shucks, I’m your favorite? That’s so darn sweet of you to say! I feel so honored to be someone’s favorite writer! I accept the candies and honey and, in return, here are some Peter B Ponderings for you!

( @regrettablewritings, It He)

General, Non-Romantic Thoughts/HCs:

Peter is actually lowkey lactose intolerant. It was worse pre-bite, meaning he basically could never have cheese or milk without getting horribly ill, and while it’s better nowadays (with the combination of age, practice, and enhanced health from the spider bite), he still gets a tummy ache if he ingests too much dairy. That being said… he always ingests too much dairy. He just loves that good, good pizza cheese too much to resist. 

Peter collects a lot of knick-knacks and tchotchkes. He makes jokes about it being tacky to own one’s own merch, but he does admit he has a fondness for some of the Spidey memorabilia he sees around New York. He’s been known to go to conventions (as a photographer for the paper, documenting the events with his press badge) and end up wandering the artists’ alleys, sometimes buying their unlicensed Spidey stickers or handmade plushies. He thinks it’s sweet that people care that much.

On a similar note, if a child EVER gives him ANYTHING meant for him/Spidey, he keeps it. Every time. Even in his lowest, grouchiest state, he always kept things made for him by children and never declined them. He keeps everything in a filing cabinet in his home, and a couple more in the Spider-Shed/his hideout. The Spider-Shed is wall-to-wall covered in drawings children have made for him, letters from kids he’s saved or who admire him, pictures of him posing with kids who asked for a photo op with their favorite hero. It keeps him motivated: do it for the people who look up to him.

Speaking of his hideout, which is technically on May’s property, Peter B. owns Aunt May’s home. After she passed away, she left the house to him in the will, so he does own it. The only reason he didn’t immediately move in there (and instead got that crappy loaner apartment) was because he felt it would be too big to be in all alone, much less all alone with all the painful memories. He was in a dark, hurting place in his life, and the idea of living in his childhood home without his mother figure, without his loved ones… it ached too badly to even think about. So, instead, he put all of May’s things in storage and rented the house out temporarily. However, after the events of Spider-Verse, he decided to move in, feeling better about himself and his future. It’s what May would have wanted: for him to go home.

Peter is an 80′s kid (born in 1981!), so he has a fondness for the stuff he grew up with, while still being able to enjoy newer things. That being said, he’s a bit of an old coot and codger about certain things. For example, he hated the Star Wars prequels and, if probed, will go on a rant about how they almost destroyed the Star Wars franchise and how, if he could, he’d go back in time and slap George Lucas silly for trying to make all that happen. “Mace Windu is the ONLY good thing about the prequels,” he hisses. “The O N L Y good thing.”

On that note, Peter does actually still own VHS tapes and a player that he keeps fully functional. He’s very techy, very gifted with computers, and very capable of keeping up with every detail of the technical realm, but he also has a fondness for older, clunkier, almost ‘analog’ machines. Plus, there’s just something pleasing to him about the pop and crackle and fuzz of a VHS tape. He has all of his childhood/teenage tapes still, and insisted May never throw away their tapes. Every movie they ever owned is preserved, and he can go back and revisit them any time he pleases. Sometimes, when he’s working on a new gadget, tinkering away at his workbench, he’ll put on a VHS in the background and just let the movie play itself out while he works. He often plays the original Star Wars films, The Goonies, or Jurassic Park. Sometimes he’ll pop in VHSes he recorded of original Star Trek episodes or something like Quantum Leap. He likes sci-fi stuff the best.

Peter’s hair is Like That because it’s the one thing he actually bothers grooming. May used to always get on his case as a kiddo because he had messy hair, and it was the one aspect of his grooming he could control (he didn’t grow facial hair for quite some time, so this was just about the only thing he could do for most of his adolescence and young adulthood), so he knows to at least bother to brush it over. Every time he does it, he can imagine May standing in the bathroom door, watching him brush his hair, and remember the way she’d pinch his cheek and call him “the handsomest boy in Queens”. It makes him smile.

Peter is slightly far-sighted, needing reading glasses. His eyesight was, for the most part, fixed with the spider-bite, but that mostly just gave him incredible long-distance vision. Up close, however, especially now that he’s a touch older, he needs a little help.

Peter B. Parker is, of course, Jewish. He still practices and regularly visits synagogue, and has done a number of community efforts both in and out of the suit. Spider-Man is welcomed at a number of institutions of faith in New York, and Peter has been to at least one service at each (he’s attended church, mosque, temple, synagogue, et cetera) while in the suit. He’s very proudly Jewish, as evidenced by his wedding, and happy to be part of the community.

Peter likes going to the movies, but has found that, now that he’s getting older, if the movie isn’t very good, he might just doze off and fall asleep. It’s embarrassing how many times he’s been caught at the local theatre, slouched in his seat, snoring into his half-empty popcorn bucket. Sometimes the workers will mistake him for a homeless man, and the number of times he’s had to show ID and prove that he’s not homeless is… even more embarrassing.

Peter doesn’t eat too exotically, but he’s willing to try lots of things. He lives in New York, after all, one of the most densely interculturally populated cities in the world! He’s open to experimenting and seeing what lies in the unprobed realms of cuisine. But don’t offer him anything like live animals, slimy stuff, “prairie oysters”, eyeballs, et cetera. Sometimes, you just need to pass on the more questionable dining experiences.

Peter, absolutely, beyond a shadow of a doubt, cannot dance. This video is a reference to how he dances.

Peter thinks white chocolate tastes like grease, dark chocolate is too bitter, and only super processed milk chocolate is good. This guy eats whole boxes of Goobers, too, just because he likes the chocolate. “I try to ignore the peanuts,” he says around a mouthful.

Peter B. Parker has been hit by several taxis. He now hates taxis.

Peter B. Parker has a love-hate relationship with the new Star Wars sequels. He also thinks Poe Dameron is mad hot, but somehow familiar. Where does he know that voice…?

Peter’s favorite time of year is winter. Summer is a b o m i n a b l e in New York, spring’s fine, autumn beautiful, but Peter loves a good, chilly, brisk winter’s day, and the promise of snow. He doesn’t get especially cold in the suit, either, since it’s perfectly designed to always maintain thermodynamic equilibrium. 

Peter loves a good, hard hug. Especially if it’s hard enough to pop his back a little. He’s more of an ‘acts of service’ affectionate kind of guy, but he can really appreciate a good, strong, loving hug. And if it alleviates a little of that pressure in his spine? Well, all the better!

#messages #long post #spiderman #into the spiderverse #peter b parker #gif warning #Anonymous

[neoduskcomics]

What Star Wars Means To Me

I was twelve years old when I saw Star Wars end. I was sitting between my dad and my brother at a screening of Revenge of the Sith, a movie that my prepubescent mind had convinced itself was the greatest thing it’d ever seen.

The movie’s climactic battle had come to an end, and as I watched the final scenes play out, I could feel the film’s looming departure steadily but surely setting in. In the movie’s last moments, Owen and Beru looked out into the binary sunset, cradling their new baby nephew, with John Williams’ score emotionally building toward the final credits, and a hollow emptiness began to overwhelm me. Episode III was coming to a close, and with it, so too would end the saga of Star Wars. Something that had brought so much happiness, so much excitement, so much magic into my life was now ending before my eyes. Everyone knew that there wouldn’t be another prequel or sequel or anything else. This was it—these final frames all-too-quickly spinning past the projector. In just a few seconds, it seemed that Star Wars would be gone forever.

As I left the theater with my brother and my dad, they started up a discussion about what we had just watched, but I was too emotionally drained to join in. It was hard for me to come to grips with the fact that the Star Wars movies were really done with. Sure, Star Wars itself would still go on in some form. The Clone Wars cartoon was enjoyable. And they started making those cool-looking Force Unleashed games, too. Plus, there were the comics and the books and all sorts of other stories being made.

But it just wasn’t the same. You could write a thousand books, make a thousand TV shows and develop a thousand video games filling in whatever nooks and crannies the films overlooked in the Star Wars canon, but they would never, ever be a substitution for sitting in that theatre and seeing the quiet fade-in of the words “A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away...”

When the movies left, it was like a bit of magic had left the world, too. And between the ages of seven and thirteen, that magic inspired me. It made me read and create and imagine more than any time I spent at school ever did. Whenever a new movie came out, I fantasized about what the next one might be like. And when the movies ended, I fantasized about what a whole new Star Wars trilogy might be about. Maybe it would follow Luke creating a new Jedi Order, or maybe it would take place thousands of years before the prequels and show us the origins of the Jedi and the Sith. I hoped and dreamed and wondered, but I knew how unlikely it all was. Lucas would never make another movie, let alone give Star Wars to someone else so that they could go on to make an Episode VII. And so, Star Wars, as much as I continued to love it, slowly faded from my life. There was no use crying over spilt blue milk. Star Wars was done, and it wasn’t coming back.

And then I heard that Disney bought Star Wars and that they were going to make an Episode VII.

At this point, I’d like you to recall the scene at the end of Ratatouille where the evil food critic Ego takes a bite of Remy’s titular cuisine, and then suddenly he’s transported back in time to a moment in his childhood when he could still feel the warm embrace of love and happiness, and the cold, melancholic ice that once encased his withered heart melts away in a matter of seconds, restoring life and wonder to his old, bony body. Do you remember that scene? Because that is exactly what I felt like when I heard this news.

And I am not hyperbolizing here; I was literally shouting with jubilance when I heard that there would be an Episode VII. I can scarcely recall another moment in my life when I felt that level of genuine, startling happiness. It was like throughout all those years of Star Wars’ absence, all those years of resignation, a repressed excitement for the franchise was building up within me, never surfacing, never finding the right opportunity to ignite, but steadily rising and rising in pressure. And then, on that day, at that moment, upon hearing those words, all of that pent-up excitement just exploded out of me like a volcanic eruption. I didn’t know who was making this supposed Episode VII or what it would be about or when it was happening or even if it would be any good. None of that mattered. Star Wars was back, and I was going to celebrate like the Empire had just fallen.

Flash forward to the holiday season a couple years later, and even the non-geeks could see that the franchise had been reawakened in full force (get it, awakened, force, see what I did there). Star Wars logos, T-shirts, cups, toasters, mugs, toys, Lego sets and waffle irons filled the stores and display windows. Star Wars really, truly was back. What a fucking exciting time it was. I couldn’t help but just let all that giddiness get to me. There was magic in the air, and it wasn’t the magic of Christmas, but rather the magic of mystical techno samurai flying across solar systems to murder each other with glow sticks. Holy shit. Star Wars was back. STAR WARS WAS BACK. The hype was real, and it was everywhere.

But with that hype came an extreme and sustained spike of nervousness and skepticism. Criticisms of every new bit of information spread like fire throughout the interwebs. Did you see that weird new lightsaber? Is that another Death Star? Doesn’t that character just look like a rip-off of this other character?

After all, people loved Star Wars, and they couldn’t stop themselves from asking if this revival would live up to their expectations. Would The Force Awakens be a worthy successor to the franchise—a true return to form after decades of waiting for a real sequel to Jedi? Or would this simply be another prequel trilogy to dash the fans’ expectations and burn everything they loved about the series to the ground, buoyed only by the parallel stories of fans and creators determined to make sure Star Wars lived on? Lucas had failed us for the last time. People needed something GOOD.

The Force Awakens destroyed at the box office. Unadjusted for inflation, it became the highest-grossing film ever to hit American theaters, and the third highest-grossing film ever to hit the world. It was released to critical acclaim and massive audience approval. Abrams had done it. He had made a new Star Wars movie that both he and the fans could be proud of. All that hype was justified. All that waiting paid off. Star Wars wasn’t just back, it was good again. Great, even.

But as people celebrated Episode VII’s monetary and critical triumph, and as memes and excited chatter spread across the web, a notably large group of people simply did not feel that The Force Awakens met the standards they had set for it. To the point that they began to convince others that it was actually a bad, perhaps the worst ever, Star Wars movie.

And I’ll be honest—even I wasn’t sure how to feel about The Force Awakens when I first saw it. There was so much pressure on it to be good, and I was spending so much of the film’s runtime questioning whether or not I liked it, that I don’t think I was really, genuinely experiencing it. The movie felt like such a self-contradiction. It was so weirdly, at times even jarringly similar to the Original Trilogy, and at other times it was so strangely and uncomfortably different from it. The Resistance? That’s just the Rebellion. Starkiller Base? That’s just the Death Star. Kylo Ren? He’s not as threatening as Vader. Rey? She’s not as relatable as Luke. Part of me thought it was great, but another part of me felt terribly, soul-wearingly conflicted. I had to search my feelings about this film long and hard before I would be ready to draw a final conclusion about how it fit into the series.

It wasn’t until I saw it again a week later—when the crushing weight of all that pressure and anxiety and anticipation had time to dissolve—that I felt as though I was truly watching the movie for the first time. I was relaxed, passive, and ready to be entertained. I already knew what the movie was. I already knew what was going to happen. There was no more nervously waiting and watching to see what would become of my beloved franchise, what new things they were introducing to it, what old things they were keeping, and whether any of it was any good. I could just sit back and accept the film for what it was. And this time, I absolutely adored it.

The Force Awakens is in no way a perfect movie—far, far from it. But it was a miraculous work of Star Wars storytelling that won over both audiences and critics with its skillful direction, clever writing, compelling characters, great sense of humor and warm spirit.

Yes, TFA was closely and purposefully tailored to the original movies, but it was so, so much more than just another adventure film about a desert-inhabiting youth taking off to explore the galaxy and blow up giant space stations. It was a tale of friendship, hardship, humanity, and facing your darkest fears. It was about Rey struggling to look beyond the unknown terrors that lied before her—to confront her destiny and take up the lightsaber so that she could protect her new family. It was about Finn embracing his own humanity and working up the resolve to fight that which he spent the whole movie trying desperately to get away from. It was about Han reaching the culmination of his character’s growth from self-absorbed, smarmy money-grubber who ran from danger to a damaged and guilt-ridden father who renders himself both physically and emotionally vulnerable in order to save his son’s very soul.

Every relationship feels meaningful. Every dramatic revelation feels earned. Every joke hits. Every effect is dazzling and eighty percent of the time completely practical, which is why this movie will look far better in ten years than the prequels do now.

Poe and Finn are two of the most likeable characters to ever grace Star Wars cinema, and it’s no wonder that everyone wants them to be a couple when they had such an amazingly fun first date. Kylo Ren freezes a fucking blaster bolt in mid-fucking-air with the goddamn Force. BB-8’s thumbs up made every audience I saw the movie with burst into laughter. Poe blows up, like, fifteen TIE fighters in a row, followed by Finn shouting “That’s one hell of a pilot!” not even knowing at this point in the movie that Poe is still alive. The scene where Rey touches Luke’s lightsaber and is thrust into an acid trip of Force visions is both terrifying and mesmerizing. The two guards steadily backing away from Kylo Ren’s temper tantrum is adorable and hysterical. That moment when an emotionally distressed Kylo Ren struggles to pull Luke’s lightsaber from the snow, only to see it zoom past him and be dramatically caught by Rey as John Williams’ iconic score begins to build is fucking fantastic. And Han’s final confrontation with his son is so horrifically tense, and so well-executed and fitting as a conclusion to Han’s story that the internet, as liable as it was to do so, miraculously did not explode with blinding rage when it found out that Abrams had killed off one of the series’ most beloved characters.

Is there reason to be skeptical about the direction of the franchise? Yes. Is Disney perpetrating some worrisome behavior with their successive hiring and subsequent firing of every prospective director they get ahold of? Yes. Will Star Wars just become another MCU where we get two to three new movies every year and they all kind of begin to just meld together without any sense of consequence or meaningful continuity between installments? Maybe.

But I just can’t bring myself to think about that sort of thing right now. And maybe it’s not even really useful to think about it like that at all. Because regardless of what I or anyone reading this thinks, all that stuff is basically out of our hands. Maybe Star Wars will become stale and burned out after a few years of sequels and spinoffs. Or maybe, after establishing their new claim to the franchise with a few safe movies, the company will start to be more willing to experiment with new styles, stories and characters. I mean, with that completely new trilogy on the horizon, it does appear to be where this ship is headed.

But, who knows. Speculation is all we have. And all I can really say for absolute certain right now is that, for the moment, I have Star Wars in my life again, and I’m going to cherish it for as long as I can. Because I spent ten years in a world without Star Wars, and I have a lot of love left in me to give the franchise before I burn out, as a lot of other people seem to have already unfortunately done. I’d rather not go into the future of this series revival already prepared to hate the new Han Solo movie or Rian Johnson’s new trilogy or whatever else might come our way.

Because at the end of the day, despite the way many fans and even some past creators have treated it, Star Wars, pure and simple, is about joy. And when we live in a world that’s so filled with dread, fear, corruption, terror, hatred and downright tragedy, I don’t think it’s unreasonable to just let yourself give into something like Star Wars. I don’t mean to say we should just unconditionally love everything with the Lucasfilm logo on it, but maybe just recognize that sometimes it’s more valuable to be open and understanding and willing to love something than it is to be skeptical, critical, nitpicking and pessimistic, especially with something that is so widely adored and cherished the world over.

Maybe people won’t like The Last Jedi. Maybe they won’t like the Han Solo movie, either. Or maybe they’ll love them. But Star Wars isn’t any individual film. It’s a part of our culture, a symbol of the human spirit’s fascination with adventure, mysticism and the battle between good and evil. It means a billion different things to a billion different people and spans generations.

My dad once told me that when he used to take my brother and I to the toy store—years ahead of The Phantom Menace being unveiled—he was shocked to see that Star Wars toys still lined the shelves when a new movie hadn’t been made in well over a decade. But that’s what Star Wars is. It might have peaks and valleys, and there might be times when it feels like it’s all but left us, but in reality, it never really ends. It’s an invaluable part of human history whose effects will be felt for generations to come, and right now, it’s thriving in a way that nobody has seen in years.

We owe it not just to the franchise but to ourselves to enjoy every moment of it. Because Star Wars is the very embodiment of love, joy, hope, humor and adventure. Because Star Wars is a reminder that sometimes it’s okay to just let yourself be a kid again. Because while everything can be going wrong in the real world, Star Wars will always see to it that the light triumphs over the dark. Because while life is tragically short and full of hardship, Star Wars is forever.

#star wars

[mygangtome]

who were they then, who are they now: richard armitage

My dearest, dearest tumblr user. We’ve been here before, haven’t we? I’ve tried time and again to persuade you to watch this glorious, bonkers, utterly compelling madhouse of a show, and despite my recommendations of yesteryear, you still haven’t been persuaded.

So I’m going to have to bring out the big nose guns.

HEY! ARE YOU IN ANY OF THE FOLLOWING FANDOMS: THE HOBBIT, HANNIBAL, SPOOKS, CAPTAIN AMERICA?

DOES THIS FACE LOOK GOOD TO YOU?

pictured here: god he’s so dashing i hate him so muuhuhuhuch

Ladies, gents, and nonbinary friends, I present to you Richard Crispin Armitage. If you don’t know who he is, you probably haven’t been on Tumblr before.

who he was before?

pictured here: he’s a fiend in feline shape, a monster of depravity

Back in the hazy, long-gone days of 2006, Richard Armitage already had a more substantial following than a lot of the Robin Hood cast. He’d been around a bit in stage and the small screen; he joined a circus in Budapest, played Macavity in Cats, stood by the side of a pool as eye candy in Cold Feet, gave a career-defining performance as Smug Man At Party in This Year’s Love, and even turned up as an extra in Star Wars.

pictured here: DIDN’T KNOW THAT, DID YOU, EH?

The sudden explosion of Richard into the public consciousness is primarily due to the BBC’s North and South in 2004, in which he played a brooding Northerner who primarily wears black and holds a position of power.

Then he got cast as Guy of Gisborne, a brooding Midlander who solely wears black and holds a position of power.

Typecasting? What’s that?

who was he then?

I’ve talked extensively for previous My Gang To Me days about Guy’s character, and his excellently melodramatic interactions with other characters on the show. He’s the big baddie in a show which needs one; the sneering, scowling foil to Robin’s optimistic heroism. But he’s also generous to a fault, obsessively loving, and full of thwarted ambitions. No other character divides the fandom more - is he a misunderstood good guy or an overindulged crybaby? Are he and Marion meant to be or an abusive relationship? Does he deserve a redemption arc? I DON’T KNOW, I’M NOT THE BOSS OF ROBIN HOOD, STOP ASKING ME ALL THESE QUESTIONS.

pictured here: there’s no such thing as too much eyeliner

Two years ago, I wrote the following about Guy, and it holds true:

More often than not we end our hijinks with an exasperated shout of “GISSSSBORRRRRRNE!” echoing through the castle and a shot of Guy slinking off to explain how he got foiled this week… Despite being a handsome devil, he is so deliciously dislikeable in a proper, old-school, tying-people-to-the-railroad tracks kind of way. And I’ll be honest, it’s worth watching the show just for a demonstration of how Armitage is able to smoulder with all parts of his body up to and including his back.

Where the Sheriff revels in his own villainy, Guy never thinks of himself as anything but The Hero Of This Story, and is all the more gloriously villainous for it. It certainly doesn’t hurt that the show is well aware of the fact that Richard looks nice without a shirt on.

pictured here: how many times can i use this screencap before it become gratuitous

Admittedly, my particular preference is for bearded-and-soulful-Armitage (more on that later on) but you know, any Armitage is good Armitage.

richard on guy

The Thing You Probably Know Already About Richard Armitage is that he is a ~method actor, which means that he takes all his roles Very Seriously. He wrote a diary for Thorin. He underwent waterboarding in order to get in character for his role as Lucas North in Spooks. He got extremely into William Blake for Dolarhyde. And, believe it or not, he also got very emotionally attached to Guy.

Today, [Richard] knocks on [series writer Dominic Minghella’s] door with a pencil and pad. Can he ask me some questions about his character? I tell him, truthfully, that I can’t believe he is here - an actor of his talent, sitting on my sofa, talking to me about playing this part. I feel so lucky. Suddenly, I stop myself - do I destroy what little (gamma-male) authority I have by being so candid? I glance at him. My concerns are unfounded. He is blushing. 

source: interview in sunday telegraph, october 2006

pictured here: richard cosplaying as 80s investment banking!au guy of gisborne

I can’t even be mad at this point. 

His own opinions on Guy are about as complicated as the fandom’s.

“I’m really hoping that when people sit and watch this, when Gisborne is trying to woo Marian they absolutely squirm in their seats and their skin is crawling. That was my main aim with this character, to make people absolutely despise him.” 

source: interview on bbc robin hood website, october 2006 

“His love for Marian is something which is beginning to unravel him and he’s becoming more human through her. It’s actually surprising him. I don’t think he quite realises what’s happening to him - he’s becoming human throughout the course of the series, I think.” 

source: interview on robin hood audiobook, “will you tolerate this?”

who did he become?

pictured here: i’ve never seen spooks so i can’t comment but OOH, DASHING

After Robin Hood, Richard officially became a Household Name when he joined the cast of Spooks as Lucas North, a series regular. Technically he started filming it whilst finishing off Robin Hood, which must have been an experience.

He stayed with Spooks for three years, becoming That Guy Off Spooks With The Face, You Know The One, and also turned his hand to a few other television and film roles over the years. 

He warmed the cockles of our collective hearts when he turned up as Dawn French’s love interest and future husband Harry Kennedy in The Vicar of Dibley. Bit of a jump for him, this one, as it’s a handsome and charming accountant, rather than a handsome and charming spy. Still, he rose to the occasion masterfully, and also got to snog Dawn French, so he won on multiple accounts.

In 2011, he turned up as the bespectacled Nazi spy Heinz Kruger in Captain America: The First Avenger. He got to have a secret submarine and run around with tommy guns. One time Chris Evans punched him in the face. It was awesome.

And then Thorin happened.

pictured here: majesty~

I will keep this brief, because if I talk too much about Thorin Oakenshield I’ll burst into tears, but it was the role that changed his life.

“I just think it’s a really amazing opportunity to take a character from a book that I was brought to as a child. My first experience on stage was in a production of The Hobbit at the Alex Theatre in Birmingham, and I played an elf.  And Gollum was a papier-mache puppet with a man offstage on a microphone. It’s been in my childhood very prominently, so to come to it as an adult,  a middle-aged man, and have another look at it is a brilliant opportunity." 

source: ‘the hobbit’ cast press conference, february 2011

Yes, that’s right, Richard Armitage is a Tolkien nerd. He wore elf ears made from cereal boxes to see the Two Towers in cinemas (he was thirty years old at the time).  And in 2012 he first graced our screens as Thorin, the proud and noble long-lost king of Erebor and a significant change of pace for a man who had developed a career as shifty, morally-dubious hired killers. 

He developed a reputation on set for being “moody and broody” (his words, not mine), due to all that method acting stuff that kept him fretting about the fate of the dwarven race when everyone else was fretting about lunch, but his performance was hailed as one of the best in the trilogy and - of course - it absolutely transformed his career.

who is he now?

Good question, and really one for Richard himself, or his doctor or his therapist or maybe a priest, but we’ll take a stab at it anyway.

After The Hobbit, Richard took a break from the massive media scrutiny and did what all British actors do when they’re scared, which is be in a play. In his case, the play was The Crucible at the Old Vic (I saw it, it was INCREDIBLE) and it earned him an Olivier nomination.

pictured here: bad timez 4 johnny p

He bounced from that into a couple of movies that you are, on the whole, unlikely to have seen - disaster movie Into The Storm, social drama Urban and the Shed Crew, bizarre fantasy Alice Through The Looking Glass…

But his most iconic role of late has been in Hannibal, as serial-killer-with-a-heart-of-gold-actually-no-wait-he-murders-people Francis Dolarhyde. He joined Hannibal for the last explosive season, and seems to have had a lot of fun killing people and wearing flower crowns and… I don’t know, I don’t go here, I’m doing my best.

pictured here: @nettlestonenell challenged me to fit at least one additional shirtless shot into this post, so here’s naked dolarhyde doing something that’s probably evil

It seems to have gone down well with the fans. And things are only looking up for our boy, who’s filming season two of his spy thriller Berlin Station as we speak. He’s based in London these days - still famously private about his private life, but happy to chat on twitter and instagram - just finished performing in his off-Broadway debut in Mike Bartlett’s Love, Love, Love, earning rave reviews, and he’s got several movies coming up.

my gang, to me!

Have I persuaded you yet that you want to get to know the man who was Guy of Gisborne? Well, you’re in luck - the boy’s been busy. You might see him on the big screen this year in Pilgrimage, or Ocean’s Eight, or Brain on Fire. He’s aging well, like a fine wine, and you only have to poke a toe into his tumblr tag to find that his ‘army’ of fans are as passionate now as they were when Guy first slithered onto our screens, eleven years ago today.

pictured here: then & now

I think he might actually be aging in reverse.

Of course, if you want to see more of Richard, there’s one surefire way to do it - and it’s the reason I made this post. Come along and join the gang in Sherwood, and get to know Guy for yourself! Buy some DVDs, or fire up a stream, and settle down with a couple of glorious episodes of the friendliest, loveliest show in television - BBC Robin Hood. 

No matter how famous he gets, to us, he’ll always be Guy. And we wouldn’t have him any other way.

Sorry, guys. We saw him first.

-

post by @interestinggin / with thanks to richardarmitage.net & richardarmitageonline.com

#my gang to me 2017 #who they are now #guy of gisborne #richard armitage #bbc robin hood #guy #interestinggin #submission

[farsouthproject]

The Decay of the Angel:

Yukio Mishima and Paul Schrader on the Body, Death, Suicide, Sexuality and the Nature of Evil

Being a reworking of three previous blog posts into one essay.

On a hot day after Christmas, in a second-hand bookshop in Newcastle, New South Wales, I came across The Decay of the Angel by Yukio Mishima. It was one of those books that resonates immediately at some visceral level without even having to open the cover: the book as fetish object. On beginning to read in the shady basement where I was staying, one of the first impressions the book made on me was that the title, in English, seemed to be a mistranslation. The decay referred to pertains to a dimension dreamed by a rich old man, Shigekuni Honda, one of the novel’s main characters. The name of this dimension has been more often translated into English (from many and various Asian Buddhist texts) as the ‘God Realms.’ So the ‘angel’ who loses her wings would belong to a pantheon of gods and goddesses rather than a host like the seraphim.

A closer translation into English might have resonated with Wagner’s Götterdämerung (Twilight of the Gods), that I suspect may have been in Mishima’s mind when he wrote it. One strand of narrative traces Honda’s reconciliation to a less simplistic Buddhist world view than that with which he begins in the book. Could Mishima also be alluding to Nietzsche’s death of god? The allusion to decadence is still there. Despite the questionable title, The Decay of the Angel has been rendered in beautiful translated prose that evokes the sea, the ships, the industrial harbour of Yokohama, Honda’s dreams, and his obsession with a sixteen-year-old boy, whom he takes for a reincarnation of others he has followed in his life, all of whom have died young. Both Honda and the boy Tōru seek to destroy each other in a web of evil that ultimately threatens to destroy them both.

It was after completing the writing of this book, which Mishima considered to be his masterpiece, the last of his Sea of Fertility tetralogy, that he committed seppuku, planned as a grand theatrical staging of a ritual suicide at a headquarters garrison of the Japanese Self Defence Force, or the army by any other name. Mishima is considered by many to be a proto-fascist but the truth seems to be far more complex. Paul Schrader’s film, Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters, takes on the complexities of Mishima’s entire life as art; another resonance with Nietzsche’s idea of life as a constant act of creation: an expression of the will to power.

In an interview about his Mishima film, Schrader says, ‘I do believe that the life is his final work and I believe that Mishima saw it that way, too. He saw all his output as a whole, from the tacky semi-nude photographs to the Chinese poetry to the Dostoyevskian novels to his private army – it was all Mishima.’ (Schrader on Schrader, Faber and Faber.)

The film has never been distributed in Japan. Schrader says, ‘Mishima has become a non-subject. People read about him but there is no official viewpoint, so that if you’re at a dinner party and his name comes up there’s just silence. Now, that atmosphere of cultural discomfort is amplified by the fact that one of the precepts of the Japanese psyche is that outsiders really can’t understand them… So if (the Japanese) don’t understand Mishima, how can a foreigner possibly hope to?’

It’s true that when reading writers of other cultures, or writing about them, or making films about them, inevitably the maker creates his or her imaginary versions of that culture that those who are born into it may not share at all and resent the intrusion on the shared cultural construction of those born in place.

Schrader – as does Mishima’s biographer John Norton – sees Mishima’s suicide as the ultimate theatrical expression of a man who wanted to reconcile art and political action in real life. The film builds toward this climax in a collage of ‘present-time,’ flashback, and novel-dramatization, each with its particular filmic ‘look’ that draws on Costa Gavras, the black and white of the Golden Age of Japanese cinema, and the present day theatricality of the set designer Eiko Ishioka. 

Purity, the Emperor and Suicide

A red rising sun opens the film and the image is underscored by Wagnerian echoes in the extraordinary music composed by Philip Glass. The music quickly transforms into a military snare tapping a march, as Mishima vests himself in the dress uniform of his private militia, the Shield Society. The film begins on the day when Mishima sets out with four cadets from the Shield Society, ostensibly to instigate a military coup but with the intention of committing seppuku because he knows that the coup will inevitably fail.

The end of the mission is foreshadowed in the film’s dramatization of Mishima’s novel The Runaway Horses. A group of military cadets plot a coup. Their leader, Isao, says to his followers: ‘The Emperor’s face is not pleased. Japan is losing its soul. In a single stroke, we’ll assassinate the leaders of capitalism. Burn the Bank of Japan… At dawn we’ll commit seppuku.’ To his military superior he says of the plot: ‘Japan will be purified. We’ll only use swords. Our best weapon is purity.’

In a telling interrogation, the police detective, who has arrested the young plot leader, says: ‘You’re still too young and pure. You will learn to tone down your feelings.’ Isao answers: ‘If purity is toned down it is no longer purity.’ And the detective: ‘Total purity is not possible in this world.’ And Isao’s reply: ‘Yes, it is… if you turn your life into a line of poetry written with a splash of blood.’

As a young man though, it appears that Mishima’s resolve of purity and oneness with the spirit of Bushido was undermined. Schrader’s film depicts Mishima in his late teens where he claims that his dream is to be a soldier and fight for the Emperor and Japan. The young Mishima is mortified when he exaggerates his physical weakness at his army medical and is discharged as unfit for service. In the film’s voiceover, the adult Mishima character says, ‘I always said I wanted to die on the battlefield. But my words were lies, I never really wanted to die.’

Schrader uses this moment as a turning point where the character of Mishima resolves to perfect his body, the better to embody the spirit of the Samurai. And this worship of the perfect body resonates with Mishima’s sense of his sexuality.

The Body and Sexuality

Schrader was stopped from using Forbidden Colours – Mishima’s most overtly gay novel – by Mishima’s widow who wished to play down her husband’s sexuality. Schrader got around this by basing some scenes on Mishima’s semi-autobiographical novel, Confessions of a Mask. He introduces the writer’s sexual orientation as he deals with the writer’s childhood. In the movie’s first chapter, entitled Beauty, at the age of twelve, Mishima is taken to the theatre by his grandmother and through an open door, he sees three Kabuki actors, all of them men, one of whom is playing the part of a woman, the others in effeminate make-up. Schrader’s shots of the boy and the actors creates a palpable sexual tension. At school, the boy is ridiculed by his classmates for being a poet. When the boy Mishima sees a picture of St Sebastian pierced by arrows it arouses him to masturbate.

During the black and white flashback sections of the film, Mishima is dancing with another man in a gay bar. He’s upset when his dance partner jokes that Mishima is too flabby. Mishima takes up bodybuilding to improve his physique.

In voiceover, Mishima says, ‘My life is in many ways like that of an actor. I always wear a mask. I play a role. When he looks in the mirror the homosexual, like the actor, sees what he fears most, the decay of the body.’

In the second chapter of the film, entitled Art, Schrader develops the character’s sexuality using a dramatization of Mishima’s novel Kyoko’s House. The actor in the story takes up bodybuilding as he fantasizes having the physique of a matador so that his body will be as beautiful as his face.

There follows a long voiceover soliloquy as Mishima, lauded in Japan, respected abroad, goes on a journey across the world.

‘As the ship approached Hawaii I felt as if I emerged from a cave and shook hands with the sun. I’d always suffered under a monstrous sensitivity, what I lacked was health, a healthy body, a physical presence. Words had separated me from my body. The sun released me. Greece cured my self-hatred and awoke a will to health. I saw that beauty and ethics were one and the same, creating a beautiful work of art and becoming beautiful oneself are identical. I attained physical health after becoming an adult. Such people are different from those born healthy, we feel we have the right to be insensitive to trivial concerns. The loss of self through sex gives us little satisfaction. I was married in 1958, my daughter was born in 1959 and my son in 1961.’

In the dramatization of Kyoko’s House the bodybuilding actor gets into an argument with a visual artist. The actor says, ‘The human body is the work of art. It doesn’t need artists.’ But the artist replies: ‘Okay, let’s say you’re right. What good does your sweating and grunting do. Even the most beautiful body is destroyed by age. Where is beauty then? Only art makes human beauty endure. You must devise an artist’s scheme to preserve it. You must commit suicide at the height of your beauty.’

The actor signs a sadomasochistic pact with an older woman libertine who cuts and burns the actor’s beautiful body before they commit suicide together.

Evil as Aesthetic in De Sade, Genet and Mishima

In The Decay of the Angel, the old man, Shigekuni Honda steals a glance at the young Tōru ‘and felt that he was seeing in that glance his own life… The evil suffusing that life had been self-awareness. A self-awareness that knew nothing of love, that slaughtered without raising a hand, that relished death as it composed noble condolences, that invited the world to destruction while seeking the last possible moment for itself… his own inclinations all through his long life had been to make the world over into emptiness, to lead men to nothing – complete destruction and finality.’

Honda wants to cultivate Tōru’s evil potential. The evil in The Decay of the Angel is all on the level of personal betrayal. The aesthetic is similar to that of Jean Genet who gives himself over to sordid betrayal and punishment. He makes Evil into Good, or more than that: into holiness and sanctity; hence Sartre’s essay Saint Genet.

In Literature and Evil, Georges Bataille points out that in Sartre’s essay on Jean Genet: ‘It seems to me that the whole question of Good and Evil revolves around one main theme – what Sade called irregularity. Sade realised that irregularity was the basis of sexual excitement. The law (the rule) is a good one, it is Good itself (Good, the means by which the being ensures its existence), but a value, Evil, depends on the possibility of breaking the rule. Infraction is frightening – like death: and yet it is attractive, as though the being only wanted to survive out of weakness, as though exuberance inspired that contempt for death which is necessary once the rule has been broken.’

Just as Honda wants ‘to lead men to nothing – complete destruction and finality’, Sade in Les Cent Vingt Journées de Sodome imagined as many ways as possible to destroy human beings singularly and collectively. Bataille says: ‘In the solitude of prison Sade was the first man to give a rational expression to those uncontrollable desires, on the basis of which consciousness has based the social structure and the very image of man… Indeed this book is the only one in which the mind of man is shown as it really is. The language of Les Cent Vingt Journées de Sodome is that of a universe which degrades gradually and systematically, which tortures and destroys the totality of the beings which it presents… Nobody, unless he is totally deaf to it, can finish Les Cent Vingt Journées de Sodome without feeling sick.’

Sade spent time in jail because he acted out to some extent the frenzies to which he was driven. He did cut a female beggar, Rose Keller, with a penknife and pour wax into her wounds. He did organise orgies at the castle of Lacoste though not to the extent of acting out the fantasies he wrote of in Les Cent Vingt Journées de Sodome, but for sure, women and men were badly hurt. In comparison with characters in the writings of Genet and Sade, the evil of Honda, or of Georges Bataille’s characters, is a little tamer. Honda, as we see, holds back at ‘the last possible moment.’

And Honda’s female friend, Keiko, tells Honda’s protégé, Tōru: ‘You’re a mean, cunning little country boy of the sort we see sprawled all over the place. You want to get your hands on your father’s money, and so you arrange to have him declared incompetent… your sort of evil is a legal sort of evil. All puffed up by illusions born of abstract concepts, you strut about as the master of destiny even though you have none of the qualifications. You think you have seen the ends of the earth. But you have not once had an invitation beyond the horizon… You’re a clever boy, no more.’

Whereas Sade and Genet pushed their criminality in waking life to extremes beyond ‘decency,’ they pulled back at the last moment from death, and left that ultimate ‘expression of freedom’, if it can be called that, to their literature. Mishima did not go so far in his literature as Sade or Genet, or even Bataille, in their portrayals of sexuality. And Mishima is the better writer for it.

Finally, Mishima didn’t pull back – as Honda and Tōru do – in his life or his death. He was determined to unify his actions and his art. It’s Mishima’s obsession with the body and beauty and its connection to his sexuality and ideas of purity that creates the complex psychology that foreshadows his death by suicide and how he made that theatrical performance of seppuku the union of action and art.

In Schrader’s film, in voiceover Mishima says: ‘The average age for men in the bronze age was eighteen, in the Roman era, twenty-two. Heaven must have been beautiful then. Today it must look dreadful. When a man reaches forty he has no chance to die beautifully. No matter how he tries, he will die of decay. He must compel himself to live.’

But Mishima already was losing the desire to live. Again, in voiceover, the adult Mishima says: ‘A writer is a voyeur par excellence. I came to detest this position. I sought not only to be the seer but also the seen. Men wear masks to make themselves beautiful. But unlike a woman’s, a man’s determination to become beautiful is always a desire for death.’

Politics

In the third Chapter of Schrader’s film, entitled Action, Mishima, as writer, has reached the height of his fame, and has perfected his body to the point of narcissistic infatuation. He poses for photographs as a samurai, as St Sebastian, as the successful artist beside Greek sculptures. He founds a private militia, complete with uniforms designed by himself and the tailor to General Charles De Gaulle. He names his militia the Shield Society, a spiritual army to protect the Emperor and the pure spirit of Japan. He is aware of the ridiculousness of his position. In a speech to gathered dignitaries of the theatre world of Japan and the West he states: ‘Some people have called us toy soldiers. But our goal is to restore the noble tradition of the Way of the Samurai. I have always supported the tradition of elegant beauty in Japanese literature. I cannot stop striving to unite these two great traditions.’

When Mishima is invited to speak on campus at a university protest occupation in the sixties, there is something absurd in his facing the vociferous students. They accuse him of being illogical in his purist stance. He says: ‘Having got to this position out of sheer pride, I’m not going to become logical now. We all want to improve Japan. We’ve all played the same cards, but I have the Joker. I have the Emperor.’

In voiceover, he says of the moment where he faced the students: ‘For a moment I felt I was entering the realm where art and action converge, for a moment I was alive.’

Seppuku

Chapter Four of Schrader’s movie is entitled The harmony of pen and sword. Mishima says in voiceover: ‘The harmony of pen and sword. This samurai motto used to be a way of life. Now it’s forgotten. Can art and action still be united? Today this harmony can only occur in a brief flash. A single moment.’

He dedicates more of his life to the Shield Society.

‘Running in the early mist with the members of the Shield Society I felt something emerging as slowly as my sweat. The ultimate verification of my existence… Our members were allowed to train in the facilities of the regular army. I flew in a combat fighter. These privileges were granted to us because of the symbolic significance of our society. Even in its present weakened condition the army represented the ancient code of the Samurai. It was here, on the stage of Japanese tradition, I would conduct my action. Having come to my solution I never wavered. Who knows what others will make of this? There would be no more rehearsals.

‘Body and spirit had never blended. Never in physical action had I discovered the chilling satisfaction of words. Never in words had I experienced the hot darkness of action. Somewhere there must be a higher principle that reconciles art and action. That principle it occurred to me was death. The vast upper atmosphere where there is no oxygen is surrounded with death. To survive in this atmosphere, man, like an actor, must wear a mask. Flying at 45,000 feet, the silver phallus of the fuselage floated in sunlight, my mind was at ease, my thought process lively, no movement, no sound, no memories. The closed cockpit and outer space were like the spirit and body of the same being. Here I saw the outcome of my final action. In this stillness was a beauty beyond words, no more body or spirit, pen or sword, male or female. Then I saw a giant circle coiled around the earth, a ring that resolved all contradictions, a ring vaster than death, more fragrant than any scent I have ever known. Here was the moment I’d always been seeking…’

The final act of the film and of Mishima’s life in politics and art took place on November 25th 1970. Allowed into the barracks of the Japanese Self-Defense Force with his four cadets, and welcomed into the commander’s office, Mishima took the general hostage and demanded that the soldiers of the garrison be commanded to assemble in front of the building in order to hear his speech. The general acceded to his demands. Mishima stepped out onto the balcony and addressed the soldiers. He exhorted them to rise up in the spirit of Bushido and to install the Emperor as the rightful ruler, and to protect the pure spirit of Japan from Western military and economic occupiers. Ridiculed as much by the soldiers as he had been by the university students, Mishima realized that the soldiers had hardly heard a word of his cry for resistance.

Mishima stepped off the balcony from where he had delivered his final address. In the office of the commander of the barracks, he knelt to disembowel himself. He botched the ritual. One of his cadets was supposed to behead him with a sword. The chosen one made a mess of it and another cadet had to take over while the first cadet committed suicide. Tastefully, Schrader doesn’t show the acts of self-butchery. The film closes with a poetic vision of the rising sun and the poetic lines of transcendence  that describe the final moments of Mishima’s character Isao from The Runaway Horses…

What is it in Mishima and in Schrader’s biographical account of his life that holds such a fascination for me?

On an aesthetic level, Schrader is a Western artist who is trying to understand an artist of the East who is a fanatic in his pursuit of perfection. This essay (in the French sense of essayer) became an obsession for me: another way of understanding my attraction to the idea of a pure and unattainable perfection whether in literature or spirituality.

Mishima, as symbol, embodies for me all those weaknesses of systems that strive for such purity of spirit; that are inevitably an expression of the egotism of wanting to be a master – of oneself or of others; combined with the whole traditional set-up of sensei and disciples, that finds its ultimate expression in the blindness or delusion of an inner group convinced of its rightness and purity: the fanaticism of seeking purity in the spirit or in art that inevitably collapses into messy and tragic farce.

Schrader’s film plays this out on screen: Mishima played it out in his life and art. It’s not that Mishima didn’t produced great works of literature. He did. But the extremes that literature permits us to explore belong to art, to cinema, to writing…

De Sade belonged in jail. Genet was happy to end up in jail. Mishima was happy to die as he did. Their literature permits us to go to imaginative extremes, to liberate ourselves of concepts that stop us being internally free; to face up to the dark side of the psyche, to the fascination with the scatological.

Bataille kept his excesses to the literary and the consensual for which it’s possible to have far more respect. Baudelaire, too, to some degree. As a writer who regards commitment to literature and the political to be crucial to life, I can’t help but mention Samuel Beckett. Beckett didn’t shirk his responsibilities to the political world: he risked his life in the French Resistance against the Nazis. At the same time, he had a total commitment to literature.

How much saner, or for me more enviable, is Beckett’s approach than that of Mishima, or De Sade, or Genet? ‘Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.’

Bataille says that ‘Nobody, unless he is totally deaf to it, can finish Les Cent Vingt Journées de Sodome without feeling sick.’ There were moments in writing this essay where I felt something similar in confronting Mishima’s outlook and embracing Schrader’s interpretation of his life. No doubt, the subject touches something terrifying in the darkness of my own psyche.

At a physical level, Mishima’s choice to die at forty-five when at the peak of one’s power is ridiculous: there is so much more living to do. It’s easier to understand Hemingway’s decision at the age of sixty-two. With mind and body passing sixty, there is a sense of fearing death less than facing mental and physical deterioration and incapacity.

In 2016, I lost my brother to early onset Alzheimer’s Disease. Even without such a tragic and heartbreaking illness, at the moment, I’m aware that my physical and mental capacities must inevitably diminish. Having witnessed in another, so close to me by blood, and more, the ravages of such a debilitating illness, the engagement with Yukio Mishima’s writing and Paul Schrader’s film of his life, makes this essay a direct confrontation of my own fears of old age, sickness and death. No matter how much the idea of death as less frightening than physical and mental deterioration, I take solace in Nietzsche’s understanding of our constant becoming as an irrepressible expression of the creative will, aware that there is a part of me, no matter how deep the moments of desperation, that still insists on its expression in life.

#yukio mishima #de sade #georges bataille #jean genet #samurai #japanese literature #paul schrader #nietzsche