Today I'm thinking about how playing Frodo Baggins is a thankless job in much the same way Frodo actually carrying the Ring was.
Like, when people talk about performances in LOTR adaptations, they talk about Sam, they talk about Gollum, they talk about Gandalf and Galadriel. All these characters that have iconic lines and big flashy moments of greatness or bravery or twistedness that let the actor show off. Frodo doesn't have any of those. What Frodo does have is the arguably harder job of making something external that is almost entirely internal, and, in most adaptations, having the most to do, just from a time-on-stage/screen/microphone perspective. But this never seems to get acknowledged and that's always kinda weird/interesting to me. I suppose people just respond to the big heroic/heartwarming/menacing moments, and not so much to littler moments of the same kinds. In the musical, in one of the dialogue breaks in "Now And For Always", Frodo says to Sam "It's not me they'll remember, you know". And that's funny because even if Sam tries to fight that in-universe with the finishing of The Red Book, it consistently ends up being true in a meta sense.
Anyway I suppose what I'm saying is appreciate Christopher Guard, Sir Ian Holm, Elijah Wood, James Loye, James Byng, and Louis Maskell or die by my blade.
deeply refreshing to see someone critical of Swift who also like, genuinely likes her. Like i'm neutral to positive on her, but the online discourse has been absolutely rancid. flipping between "Taylor Swift has never done anything wrong ever and she's a fucking genius" and "Taylor Swift is the worst lyricist of all time and also a bad person" is exhausting, so thank you for like. nuance or something lmao
not to make it serious for a sec but i genuinely think that being able to like things that are bad is really important. like I think that it's an important skill to be able to look at something and see what you personally enjoy about it and then take a step back and acknowledge that objectively it's flawed. and to also be able to acknowledge that liking something isn't necessarily an identity or a moral stance. and i think that fandom space in general could really benefit from more people taking the time to learn how to do that. it's okay to like things that are bad
pretty minor but in the new bts, from the angle of all their hands, it looks like Mike and Will are across from each other. Great angle if you want to do a shot where Mike and Will catch each other's eyes, exchanging glances and the camera lingering on it to show that there's a more intimate understanding between the two. Maybe with a little smile at each other before the moment fully breaks??? As a treat?
my TWO FAVORITE THINGS IN THE WORLD, VAMPIRES N COWBOYS...
deacon keller is SUCH a fun character, hes charming and funny but ALSO formidable and STRONG when he feels he needsta be.
i hope him and arthur can get a chance to talk more and be better friends.
l ike really good friend s. . like. like really good f. hangon i gotta go i think i hauve rabies.
Thinking about Mitski’s explanation of “My Love Mine All Mine” and how she’s sad that she can’t leave behind her love and that it’ll die with her, only for me to realize that by Mitski creating this song, she has immortalized her love. It can never be taken away from her and it will live on long after she’s gone.
the day am fans realise that miles/milex shippers are less problematic and harmful to the fandom than lv/her supporters will be one of the best days of my life
rant incoming because I'm going insane:
i will never ever understand why am fans have so much beef with milex shippers.
i have been in SO many fandoms throughout my life, I've been obsessed with SO many bands whose members are shipped to the point of insanity, and it was never a problem. sure, some people didn't like the ships, but why are so many am fans acting like this is something unique? bts, mcr, dan and phil, harry potter, I've seen fucking everything. every other fandom in the world are just this obsessed with their ships, trying to prove that two men are fucking, posting theories and so on. shipping was always a thing in fandoms and always will be, especially if we're talking about male celebrities and teenage girls.
having said this, the kind of fandom i have never been in is one where grown ass women bring this much toxicity to the community and behave like children. there are hundreds of celebrities whose girlfriends are not liked by the fans, but no girlfriend ever engaged this much with the haters, probably because they realised that it would only make things worse, and the fans would hate them even more.
we could've had some peaceful end of the tour content, but no, we have this instead. every few months something has to be done by a certain someone in order for people to pay attention to her, and so that in the end fans will forget the reason they're fans and engage in stupid shit like this, defeating the whole purpose of being a music fan.
all this drama is slowly making me not want to have anything to do with am or the fandom anymore. if not for miles and him being connected to am, i would've stopped giving a fuck about alex years ago (technically not through his fault, but then also because of him). this whole thing just makes me sad because miles does not deserve to be associated with these people and the fact that he will never be able to get rid of them is so not it.
You want me to go full on crazy Tedependent theorist? Because I will, I will go full on crazy Tedependent theorist. What do I have to lose? (Except my dignity but that’s non-existent to begin with so 🤷)
Ted once said this: "I remember being a little kid, sitting in front of the television and watching Queen perform right over there during Live Aid."
He has a moustache that resembles Freddie Mercury’s. He’s even brought up the whole back story as to why he has it. (Also being told that he shouldn’t have a goatee right before he walks down the aisle and then he decided on this moustache and he never looked back…) in the same speech he says “Since I was a straight fella in Middle America working in sports.” Which leads me to episode 11.
In this episode they mention that Freddie Mercury owned Richmond briefly in 1980 and that he tried having “Fat Bottomed Girls” as the team’s song. And Rebecca tells Keeley and Higgins that her father went to art school with Freddie and that Freddie supposedly said that his greatest talent was “flipping straights”. So young Ted saw Queen perform at Live Aid and then when he was older he grew a moustache similar to Freddie Mercury’s? 🤔
Then we have the song in itself. You know who wrote “Fat Bottomed Girls”? Brian May. Who famously has fantastic, long hair.
Whose hair was brought up for the first time, explicitly, in the show this episode? Trent’s hair. And it was brought up by Ted’s mum. And Ted has previously commented on hair as something he seems to like. (He kind of alluded to Trent’s hair in the second episode of the third season but he never outright states that he likes it. And Trent asks Ted if he assumed that Trent could ride a bike because of his hair and the whole vibe). And I’ve talked about hair in THIS POST but the gist of it is that hair has been referenced before, in relation to romantic couples with Roy and Keeley, Higgins and his wife, Sam and Rebecca.
I can’t verify this quote because I don’t have the magazine. But I’m adding it here anyway:
May told Mojo magazine October 2008: "I wrote it with Fred in mind, as you do especially if you've got a great singer who likes fat bottomed girls… or boys."
“Fat Bottomed Girls” is also connected to the song “Bicycle Race”, written by Freddie Mercury, they were released as a single together. And they both reference each other. “Bicycle race” is sometimes viewed as a metaphor for being bi. (Sport as a metaphor, anyone?)
Who doesn’t know how to ride a bike? Trent. Who has a moustache similar to Freddie Mercury? Ted. Who might be bi? Ted.
Look, I told you it’s crazy but I couldn’t help myself. I’ve talked about Queen/Freddie Mercury in relation to Ted before. So I couldn’t let this opportunity pass me by.
Tell me a fun Bill and Ted fact? I know nothing about them really
Bill and Ted is such a fascinating franchise to me bc it's Super Obvious that a majority of people's awareness of it begins and ends with the first movie - Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure - and yet there is so much to uncover about these dudes. There are three films, one novelization, like 7 comic series, a cartoon that ran for 2 seasons, a musical, a live action show that ran for 7 (bad) episodes, like 3 video games, and a pretty longstanding run as a Halloween Horror Nights show.
They're also extremely fun characters because there's like, such a prevalent tendency to generalize their character types, but they're actually Super specific personalities. Like, Bill and Ted don't ever use the words 'rad' or 'bro' nor any 'surfer lingo' or 'valley speak', they're not ever sarcastic/ironic they're like Painfully earnest constantly (the writers even specified that Bill and Ted are "these innocents who would wander wide-eyed into any situation and treat everyone exactly the same - completely open, completely friendly" and the Director also refers to the 'Puppy Factor' wrt Bill and Ted, meaning they should both "Be like big Labrador Retrievers who just bounce along and love life",) they Do use the word 'dude' nigh constantly BUT people always underestimate how often they'll use each other's names equally as often, and also they're really not slackers or deliberately dismissive of schooling/education - they are trying really hard, they just genuinely struggle/can't learn things right (you can tell they even kind of Value it because they do make an effort to use like, Expanded Vocabulary, it's just that they don't always fully understand the words so they'll use them wrong on accident) - i just love them so much
Sorry what’s up w the Ethan slater stuff? I know him only from your posts / SpongeBob stuff
HI HELLO please buckle in
yep -- the same guy from the spongebob musical, and my posts abut the spongebob musical.
he blew up completely and now the general public knows him as 'ariana grande's new boyfriend' - their relationship seems to have started off the back of co-starring in the upcoming wicked musical film adaptation.
it's just been like. a monkey's paw curling sort of a way for him to get catapulted to fame, as i had always really enjoyed him as a performer (as spongebob, yes, but also in the other roles i'd seen him in,) and my biggest hope back around 2017 was that he would continue in and be really successful in theatre, get a lot of broadway roles, maybe take on some existing parts i thought he'd really suit, like seymour in little shop or ogie in waitress.......... but instead he booked the role of boq from wicked in a massive hollywood film production instead, where he met ariana grande. THE ariana grande.
and then yeah. at some point, he and grande broke up with their respective partners, (slater leaving both his wife AND newborn son) jumped into a new relationship, and now the whole wider internet knows who he is but certainly not for the right reasons.
there's been speculation regarding whether or not grande and slater had cheated on their previous partners before their relationship began with various sources coming out of the woodwork saying "yes they did" and others saying "no they didn't" -- humans are all perfectly capable of making stuff up, the media especially, so i simply don't know who to trust and i admit it had completely shattered my whole good impression of him - PLUS it gave the wider internet an absolutely awful first impression of him, resulting in, yeah, the (frankly, unflattering, sometimes downright cruel) memes of him popping up on twitter and, as i discovered yesterday, in non-theatre youtubers' videos who would literally never have heard of him if not for the slater-grande romance 🥲
FULL COVERAGE of the situation as it was happening can all be found on the lovely @notasimpleslater's blog under the tag 'ozgate' if you want to delve deeper!
I don't know if anyone else feels this way but I think a big reason why I'm so chill about the changes made to the PJO show from the books is because I kind of look at each other as their own seperate canon.
Like, I read a lot of anime and manga, and anime adaptations have a huge habit for changing plot points for various reasons, and as a fan of said anime and manga, I've found that I can enjoy both versions of the same story even with the differences when I look at them as their own universe or canon. That's not to say I don't want them to be faithful or true to the source material, but if a scene or situation plays out differently for a logical or entertaining reason, than I can still appreciate that deviation from the manga even if I still like the other original version of that part more. And I can even like the reversal way if I feel an anime does something better than even the manga. But if I want to, I can look at certain moments as more canon than others because I got 2 different versions of that same scene or moment.
And, I don't know, I kind of apply that reasoning to the PJO series as well, mainly with the books, the show, and even the musical (not the movies put that right back where it came from). So far I'm loving the TV show, and while I miss some of the things they changed (like the pink poodle), this adaptation really is doing a great job with staying true to the heart and spirit of the original book that I personally am not even really bothered by the changes, especially when I remember that the books will always still be there with it's own version, or canon, of events.
Like, I will say 1 thing I adore in the books that isn't really in the show is the fact that a lot of Percy and Annabeth's "rivalry" during TLT has more to do with the rivalry between Poseidon and Athena. I just really like on how this adds a level of "forbidden friendship/love" to their relationship 'cause I personally eat the forbidden relationship trope up, especially when it's done well like with Percabeth.
Yet, even if this isn't really the reason percabeth have beef with each other in the show, I can still appreciate and enjoy that according to the show's canon, they have issues because they genuinely have problems with each other as actual people rather than their parents' rivalry, because at the end of the day, that's the PJO TV show canon, and I can always turn to the books for that version of Percabeth's "rivalry", as that is the PJO book canon.
Same goes for the characters too. I will always have and love my dark haired Percy and blond haired Annabeth in the books, but I can also welcome and love Walker's Percy and Leah's Annabeth from the show. And so far, they along with Aryan are KILLING IT as those characters.
I can love both versions of the characters.
I can love both versions of the same story.
I can look at both versions as they own seperate canon or mix them together if I so wish too (especially since both versions of PJO are written by the same guy)
And that's ok. The adaptation doesn't have to be a complete copy of the books. It doesn't have to have things play out eactly the same way. The characters don't have to look exactly the way they are described as in the books. And that's ok. I will still always have the books to love and appreciate, but I can also start to love and appreciate the new adaptation for it's new spin and twists to the same story that sets it apart as it's own canon while still staying true to the spirit of its predecessor.
Anyway, sorry if I'm not making a lot of sense. I just think the people complaining about the changes in the show are looking at it all the wrong way. The show has it's own canon just as the books have their own canon, or even the musical. At the end of the day, isn't that kind of cool to have different versions of the same story and characters? Doesn't it give you so many more options to look at the story in different ways that you can prefer or choose from? Doesn't it give you new versions of canon that you choose from? And really, as long as the PJO adaptation, or any adaptation for that matter, stays true to the heart and spirit of the original story and characters, do the changes made really matter?