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ladyeliot · 3 years

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Sergeant Barnes.

Superhero vs Villain!Reader Prompts

Request: @imerdwarf Ooooh I love your prompt idea!! Could I request #6 with Bucky Barnes please? 💜

Prompt #6: "Wait, are we supposed to be enemies?"

Pairing: Superhero!Soldier!Bucky Barnes x Villain!Fem!Reader

Summary: You joined the Strategic Scientific Reserve with the sole intention of avenging your father's death.

Warnings: Violence. 💔 Angst. II WW.

Word count: 1761

A/N: Sorry for my spelling and grammatical mistakes, English is not my native language, I am learning.

The day a Colt 45 M1911 pistol was pointed at your face, you realised how long the journey to that moment had been. Events in your life had led you to become a Hydra agent, infiltrated as an agent of the Strategic Scientific Reserve, a top-secret US agency during World War II.

The world seemed to have gone mad, war was turning people upside down, people were fighting each other for the honour of their country, and you were in the middle of the chaos.

You were born in the United States, your father had dedicated his entire life to honouring his country, practically gave his life in World War I, and in 1940 he and Chester Phillips founded the Strategic Scientific Reserve. However, all his efforts were in vain when he was sent on a secret life-and-death mission, causing him never to return. Your father was the only thing you had in your life, your guide and your hero, so you wanted to follow in his footsteps, to make him proud of you. Chester Phillips took you under his wing, as his right hand. He was the one who instructed you, who taught you everything you know, who allowed you to complete your first missions as SSR agents and who opened your eyes.

The United States entered the Second World War in 1941. During your third mission in Europe, in which you were to enter the secret Hydra base, Arnim Zola and Johann Schmidt were waiting for your arrival. After hours of suffering, both physical and mental, they made you understand that the mission your father was sent on was a trap, set by Chester Phillips who wanted to take over the supreme command of the SSR. It all made sense to you, everything was connected, your father could not have made such a stupid mistake as the one you had been led to believe he had died for, it must have been a trap.

Having brainwashed you, HYDRA let you return to the United States. You arrived with an idea in mind, an idea that Schmidt himself had introduced to you and that made you change your attitude, thinking of your revenge.

You had been in Italy for two months, where the 107th Infantry Regiment, led by Chester Phillips, was based. The American soldiers were fighting continuous battles against the Germans, managing to extend the frontier line. They were exhausted, hardly had any rest and their spirits were gradually failing, but your thoughts were elsewhere, not far away.

During the little missions you had done in Europe, you had had the occasional encounter again with Johann Schmidt. His level of persuasion was unmatched by any other your mind had ever felt, and inside you let yourself be carried away by his words. No one in the SSR knew anything, no one in the camp had any inkling of the situation and that was a plus for you.

One morning like any other you emerged from Colonel Phillips' tent, having been lectured on the importance of discipline because of his morning moodiness, having encountered two soldiers who had broken the time regulations. You were on your way to the intelligence tent, where, together with the regimental superiors, you would begin to analyse the German army's progress through Italy, but, as it happened, Sergeant Barnes accosted you.

"Lieutenant," he said, coming to your side and giving you the rigorous salute.

"Sergeant," you replied without looking at him and quickening your pace. "I don't have time for your games Sergeant Barnes, I have a lot to do this morning."

Bucky let out a small laugh and continued to stand next to you, combing his hair back with his hands, trying to look as decent as possible in front of you.

"As you know, there's a screening of Casablanca tonight, and I was wondering if you'd like to join me," he said with a crooked smile on his face. "I can pick you up at 8.00 p.m. if that's all right, Lieutenant.

You stopped dead in your tracks and frowned as you turned to face him, Bucky pulled himself upright without removing the half-smile from his face.

"Are you asking me out on a date, Sergeant?" you asked authoritatively, causing the smile on your partner's face to fade.

"Uh..." he hesitated. "That's right lieutenant."

"I don't think it's appropriate for you to ask me out on a date, Sergeant," you said, crossing your arms.

"And why is that, Lieutenant?" he asked amused. "Wait, are we supposed to be enemies?"

You arched an eyebrow in response to his question, and with extreme straightness you inspected every part of the soldier in front of you, and could see the lack of decorum in his uniform.

"And do you plan to come looking for me with the shirt tails out, the gallons askew and the tie not buttoned properly?" you asked, arching your right eyebrow, but your words elicited another smile from Bucky.

"Of course not, my lieutenant," he lifted his chin as he licked his lips.

"All right," you said, nodding. "Don't be late Sergeant Barnes."

With those last words, you made your way towards the intelligence tent, listening to the applause and cheers that the other soldiers offered Sergeant Barnes for getting an affirmative answer from you. The relationship between you and James could be described as one of mutual interest, but much more explicitly on his part, for since your arrival at the camp there had hardly been a day when he had tried to get your attention, and although you did not show it, you liked it.

Over the next few hours you found that the German army was slowly retreating, just as Johann Schmidt had informed you. Your plan was only to get Chester Phillips to him, but you had no intention of anyone else getting hurt in your revenge.

By late afternoon, the sun was low enough to enjoy the screening. The regiment had not been able to take a break for months and this was their first entertainment, so spirits were high. Your first thought was to put your uniform back on, it wouldn't do to go out without it, but you decided that a night was a night, and you needed to take a break too, even if it was only for a couple of hours at least. In your suitcase you found an evening dress, which you wore during your mission to the French capital, it was discreet, but perfect.

You were just finishing your hair when a voice was heard just outside your tent.

"Lieutenant Y/L/N?" exclaimed Sergeant Barnes' voice.

"I'll be right out Sergeant."

After taking a last look at yourself in a small hand mirror you took a deep breath and headed for the exit. As you pulled back the curtain James Barnes' blue eyes swept over your body, making a sweeping inspection and taking his breath away. You arched an eyebrow in recognition of the event, while at the same time downplaying it due to the situation you were in. You more subtly noticed that he looked completely different from that morning, his uniform was impeccable and there were no longer any locks on his face.

"You're..." his mouth was still open without providing any words.

"Shall we go, Sergeant?" you asked waiting for him to react.

"Of course, Lieutenant," he finally said offering you his arm but not taking his eyes off you. "You look really beautiful."

"Thank you, Sergeant," that was one of the few times you gave him a smile. "You're not bad yourself."

You were both heading towards the central esplanade of the camp, where the film had been set up to be shown. It all happened very quickly, the siren started to sound, the spotlights around the area flashed blinding you and countless shouts from the soldiers filled the air. You looked around you, it was an ambush, James pulled out a weapon he had on him and wrapped his arms around you. It didn't take you long to react, because you quickly pulled out a revolver you had hidden in the garter of your stockings and took aim, looking for a shot. Bucky looked at you a little surprised.

"Don't lose sight of the target, Sergeant," you said, taking him by the arm and hiding behind your tent.

The HYDRA soldiers were numerous, perhaps even double your numbers, and you had to take into account that you were unprepared for this abominable ambush. You pulled a knife from your cleavage and slit the back of your tent so that you could both quickly reach inside and grab the weapons you kept inside. Bucky had your back and you quickly made your way to the boot hidden under your desk.

"Don't you dare take another step," Sergeant Barnes' voice drifted towards the entrance door.

In front of you stood Johann Schmidt with his hands raised and a smile on his lips.

"I see you have security," he said in a thick German accent. "But don't worry, she doesn't need it."

You stood up slowly and looked at him seriously.

"This is not what we had planned," you said hating yourself that Sergeant Barnes heard those words, making you known as a traitor.

"I was tired of waiting," Schmidt shrugged.

James, completely stunned and lost for words, didn't know what to do or which of the two of you to watch.

"I told you I would hand you over to Colonel Phillips," you reminded Schmidt, filled with hatred inside you.

"And I have come for him," he approached you.

"Then take him and go," you spat those words.

"I will," he said, smiling, slowly walking past you, approaching Bucky.

You stood watching the situation, you knew you were lost, the power you possessed had fallen from your hands, you were in no man's land. James who all that time was pointing his gun at Johann Schmidt suddenly looked into your eyes and changed his aim, you had his gun pointed directly at your face. Your countenance did not change, you kept a serious look on your face, watching him. His hands were shaking and his breathing was rapid, he didn't know what to do. Schmidt looked amused as he watched the situation in silence.

"Do what you have to do sergeant," you said, clenching your jaw tightly. "My mission is accomplished.

Tag list: @imerdwarf @mycosmicparadise

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#bucky barnes x reader #superhero x supervillain #hydra #shield #IIWW #james barnes #y/n #masterlist #prompts #avengers: endgame #marvel #mcu #angst #40s #one shot #sergeant barnes #femreader #sebastian stan #winter soldier

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welllpthisishappening · 3 years

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Welllp These Are Books: the January 2021 Edition

Tumblr’s gif search leaves a lot to be desired, so there’s no actual gif of her slamming the book shut, which is—y’know, disappointing. Still, the continued ability of the public library system to send books to my Kindle ensures that I continue to read every romantic comedy and fantasy story I can find. Of which I have plenty of thoughts and opinions. But, like, what’s the point of having thoughts and opinions if you’re not putting them on the internet? There isn’t one, obviously. Books and links and feelings and more ridiculous headlines all under the cut.

BEST BOOK AWARD WINNER OF A VERY WEIRD JANUARY THAT HELPED DISTRACT FROM A VERY WEIRD JANUARY

The Wrath & the Dawn by Renee Ahdieh Every dawn brings horror to a different family in a land ruled by a killer. Khalid, the eighteen-year-old Caliph of Khorasan, takes a new bride each night only to have her executed at sunrise. So it is a suspicious surprise when sixteen-year-old Shahrzad volunteers to marry Khalid. But she does so with a clever plan to stay alive and exact revenge on the Caliph for the murder of her best friend and countless other girls. Shazi’s wit and will, indeed, get her through to the dawn that no others have seen, but with a catch . . . she’s falling in love with the very boy who killed her dearest friend. She discovers that the murderous boy-king is not all that he seems and neither are the deaths of so many girls. Shazi is determined to uncover the reason for the murders and to break the cycle once and for all.

This was so good?!?! I finished the first book and them immediately started the sequel, like no break whatsoever?!! I wish they weren’t teenagers?!! But seriously I wish they hadn’t been teenagers. Like, I get it. It’s YA. That probably sells better, something about markets that I don’t understand. I don’t care. It was weird that they were teenagers. Also, some of the plot points just kind of...happened? And I’m not entirely sure they were ever resolved. (Although there are a bunch of short stories, so. Maybe I just haven’t gotten there yet.) Despite that, the writing was gorgeous, I remain as prone to swooning over sad boys patent pending as I was when I was sixteen and Shahrzad was a fantastic heroine. Nine out of ten (would have been ten if they weren’t teenagers) and have already put holds on other books Ahdieh has written.

OBLIGATORY RAGE-INDUCING ROM-COM

Head Over Heads by Hannah Orenstein The past seven years have been hard on Avery Abrams: After training her entire life to make the Olympic gymnastics team, a disastrous performance ended her athletic career for good. Her best friend and teammate, Jasmine, went on to become an Olympic champion, then committed the ultimate betrayal by marrying their emotionally abusive coach, Dimitri. Now, reeling from a breakup with her football star boyfriend, Avery returns to her Massachusetts hometown, where new coach Ryan asks her to help him train a promising young gymnast with Olympic aspirations. Despite her misgivings and worries about the memories it will evoke, Avery agrees. Back in the gym, she's surprised to find sparks flying with Ryan. But when a shocking scandal in the gymnastics world breaks, it has shattering effects not only for the sport but also for Avery and her old friend Jasmine.

I stopped reading it. Honestly. I got, like, 46% of the way through, kept complaining to Justin about how goddamn annoying Avery was and how no one had any personality and I wanted them all to fall off the beam and he was like—stop reading it, then? And I was like—I can do that? And then I did! Also, I understand it needed conflict, but the “shocking scandal” in the description is a sexual assault that was not only NOT my cup of tea, but felt like a massive attempt to be topical by using what happened at Michigan State without actually saying it was about Michigan state.

PEOPLE WHO DON’T KNOW SPORTS WRITE SPORTS AND DO IT OK

Evvie Drake Starts Over by Linda Holmes In a sleepy seaside town in Maine, recently widowed Eveleth “Evvie” Drake rarely leaves her large, painfully empty house nearly a year after her husband’s death in a car crash. Everyone in town, even her best friend, Andy, thinks grief keeps her locked inside, and Evvie doesn’t correct them. Meanwhile, in New York City, Dean Tenney, former Major League pitcher and Andy’s childhood best friend, is wrestling with what miserable athletes living out their worst nightmares call the “yips”: he can’t throw straight anymore, and, even worse, he can’t figure out why. As the media storm heats up, an invitation from Andy to stay in Maine seems like the perfect chance to hit the reset button on Dean’s future. When he moves into an apartment at the back of Evvie’s house, the two make a deal: Dean won’t ask about Evvie’s late husband, and Evvie won’t ask about Dean’s baseball career. Rules, though, have a funny way of being broken—and what starts as an unexpected friendship soon turns into something more. To move forward, Evvie and Dean will have to reckon with their pasts—the friendships they’ve damaged, the secrets they’ve kept—but in life, as in baseball, there’s always a chance—up until the last out.

I am admittedly a sports snob. Writing about sports is my thing and I’m super particular about reading about it. But this sounded good and for the most part it was good. Emotional, too. Like, “jeepers, that was intense” kind of emotional. But also some of the things Dean talked about were just...not how sports work and that drives me nuts. Also another story that was, as mentioned, super emotional only to get tied up in this nice little bow. Which, cool, but also...not? Just felt rushed at the end.

IN WHICH SHIPPING IS QUESTIONED AND I JUST LIKE BEN BARNES

Shadow and Bone by Leigh Bardugo Soldier. Summoner. Saint. Orphaned and expendable, Alina Starkov is a soldier who knows she may not survive her first trek across the Shadow Fold—a swath of unnatural darkness crawling with monsters. But when her regiment is attacked, Alina unleashes dormant magic not even she knew she possessed. Now Alina will enter a lavish world of royalty and intrigue as she trains with the Grisha, her country's magical military elite—and falls under the spell of their notorious leader, the Darkling. He believes Alina can summon a force capable of destroying the Shadow Fold and reuniting their war-ravaged country, but only if she can master her untamed gift.As the threat to the kingdom mounts and Alina unlocks the secrets of her past, she will make a dangerous discovery that could threaten all she loves and the very future of a nation. Welcome to Ravka . . . a world of science and superstition where nothing is what it seems.

I wanted to like this so much. So, so much. And sometimes I did. Sometimes I did not. At all. World building is my weakness and this has got it in spades, but the characters are kind of—boring? I couldn’t really bring myself to care about Alina and I wanted to kick Mal in the shins sometimes. The only interesting one was The Darkling who’s like the embodiment of all evil and I am not here to ship-shame anyone, but it’s kinda weird to ship him and Alina. I pictured Ben Barnes the entire time. I’m still excited for the show. I’ll read the sequel at some point, probably.

BEING A JERK IS NOT ROMANCE, YOU’RE JUST A JERK

Would Like to Meet by Rachel Winters It's Evie Summers's job to find out. Because if she can't convince her film agency's biggest client, Ezra Chester, to write the romantic-comedy screenplay he owes producers, her career will be over. The catch? Arrogant Ezra thinks rom-coms are unrealistic—and he'll only put pen to paper if Evie proves to him that it's possible to meet a man in real life the way it happens on the big screen. Cynical Evie might not believe in happily ever after, but she'll do what it takes to save the job that's been her lifeline . . . even if it means reenacting iconic rom-com scenes in public. Spilling orange juice on a cute stranger? No problem. Leaving her number in books all over London to see who calls? Done. With a little help from her well-meaning friends and the adorable father-daughter duo who keep witnessing her humiliations, Evie is determined to show Ezra she can meet a man the way Sally met Harry. But can a workaholic who's given up on love find a meet-cute of her very own?

I love cliches. Love ‘em. Want to read about ‘em, want to write about ‘em. Here for happily ever after. Much less here for the overused and antiquated cliche of dude doesn’t believe in love like girl does, dude ridicules girl’s belief, dude was secretly in love with her the whole time. It’s super dumb. And we should stop writing it. Also really done with rom com girl can’t figure out her life! she’s overworked! she doesn’t have time for her friends! Super duper dumb. I don’t know guys, this book happened.

FAST-PACED ROMANCE ISN’T AS WEIRD WHEN IT’S WELL WRITTEN AND THERE’S A MOOSE INVOLVED

The Tourist Attraction by Sarah Morgenthaler He had a strict "no tourists" policy...until she broke all of his rules. When Graham Barnett named his diner The Tourist Trap, he meant it as a joke. Now he's stuck slinging reindeer dogs to an endless parade of resort visitors who couldn't interest him less. Not even the sweet, enthusiastic tourist in the corner who blushes every time he looks her way...

Two weeks in Alaska isn't just the top item on Zoey Caldwell's bucket list. It's the whole bucket. One look at the mountain town of Moose Springs and she's smitten. But when an act of kindness brings Zoey into Graham's world, she may just find there's more to the grumpy local than meets the eye...and more to love in Moose Springs than just the Alaskan wilderness.

This story of Alaska marries together all the things you didn't realize you needed: a whirlwind vacation, a friendly moose, a grumpy diner owner, a quirky tourist, plenty of restaurant humor, and a happy ending that'll take you away from it all.

I’m not one for slow burn, but I also have a hard time believing romances that happen in, like, a blink. Not the case here! It was so goddamn cute! There was a moose! Graham kept calling Zoey darlin’ and it made my heart try to explode in my chest! Stars Hollow-levels of small town with lots of side characters and a good plot and a restaurant that everyone always went to! You guys know I’m trash for everyone always going to hang out in the same restaurant! I’m reading the sequel now, so that’s how much I enjoyed it.

AMAZON BOOKS THAT CONTINUE TO BE WAY BETTER THAN THEY SHOULD BE

Elodie of the Sea by Shari L. Tapscott (part of the Eldentimber Series) Eight years have passed since the marriage tournament that decided the fate of Princess Pippa of Lauramore and strengthened alliances between the kingdoms of Elden. The competitors have moved on with their lives. Some have found adventure; some have found love. Prince Bran of Triblue, however, has put his life on hold, preparing for his father's crown. Two days before Bran's winter coronation, just when the prince cannot afford distractions, a girl washes onto the Triblue shore. She has no memory of her past life, no clue who she is or where she belongs—nothing but a ring on her finger and a peculiar marking on her cheek. And the newly crowned king has more than a mysterious girl to worry about. The sea has become unpredictable. Storms claim ships in the dead of night, and sailors return with horrifying stories of monsters from the deep. It soon becomes clear the girl and the bizarre events are connected. The girl came from the sea... and the sea wants her back. But Bran isn't willing to give her or his kingdom up without a fight, even if it means he must request help from every corner of Elden.

Listen, sometimes you have to read about a mermaid who lost her memory and the soon-to-be-king who’s, like, immediately in love with her. I mentioned Tapscott’s books in the 2020 post and the sentiment remains the same. You ever read a book that reads like fic? Lots of banter, some romance, steady pacing. That’s what her books are like. There are five in the Eldentimber series, all about a different princess in a different kingdom, but they all connect so characters pop up again and again and then they kiss. It’s real good.

#book reviews #the wrath and the dawn #laura reads books #i'm making my way through some of the recs you guys sent last time around too #but don't hesitate to send more #seriously i am down to read anything #welllp these are books

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cookiedoughmeagain · 3 years

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Haven DVD commentaries: 5.15 - Power

5.15 Commentary with Adam Higgs and Speed Weed (writers for this episode and the next episode)

SW: By the time anyone’s listening to this, we’ll both be writing on different shows. But we can’t tell you which ones yet. Not the same show as each other sadly. AH: Yeah that was a shame. But we will one day in the future, I have a good feeling about that. However for Haven stuff, I think the thing here was, we were trying to reboot the show in a way. SW: That’s right. AH: 514 is the start of the season, or of season 5 part B, but these two episodes [515 and 516] really encompass the new world order. SE: That’s right, they define the world after the shroud is down. Did we call it the shroud in the show? AH: The shroud, yeah. That’s actually a good point because we spent a lot of time talking about what the shroud was going to be called. I can’t remember the other names we thought about, but we went back and forth for a long time. SW: And we talked about what we called it - because often there’s a handle that you use in the room for what you’re talking about, and then you have to remember, did you actually put the same term in an actor’s mouth so that the world inside the show knows what it’s called? AH: My favourite is when you don’t realise that. On another show I did that, it was in the edit that I was like; Oh have we ever mentioned that that’s what that’s called? And going through scripts we realised that no; no we did not - OK, let’s ADR some stuff in.

AH: So this was fun. We’re both fans of The Walking Dead, and we got to do a Haven kind of version of The Walking Dead, or of them just trying to survive. It’s not the Trouble of the Week things so much, it’s … SW: It’s Haven’s version of a post-apocalyptic world, it’s true. These episodes were directed by Rick Bota who also direct 9 and 10 that Adam and I also wrote, so it was good to work with him again.

[Dwight and Nathan talk outside the school] AH: So here we get to see that time has passed since we last saw everyone in 514 and we spent a lot of time making sure that everyone had their own intro so we could showcase how things have changed. And a lot of this episode is about putting strain on these episodes and just seeing how everyone reacts to this post-apocalyptic kind of situation they’re in

SW: There’s Tony, he becomes a bigger character in the next episode. AH: Yeah we spent a lot of time seeding a lot of things. And we shot these episodes in between our set move. So, for other other seasons we shot up until October, or earlier than that even? And everything was shot on our sound stages in Chester. And then this year, half way through the season everything got moved up to Halifax, because of hockey. SW: That’s right. We shot on a hockey rink in Chester. Really anything that has a lot of space and a tall ceiling can be a sound stage for a television show - if it’s quiet outside, if there’s no noise from the street coming in. *pause for the break*

[Duke driving to work in Halifax] AH: This is actually Halifax, this bridge here. SW: That’s right, and I think this is actually one of the first scenes we shot in Halifax. Oh no, we shot that later. AH: Yeah this was shot quite a bit after. And here we’ve got our wonderful mechanic here played by William MacDonald. I worked with William on an episode of Republic of Doyle, so I was happy when I saw him in the auditions for this, and he did a great job. He just has that look, that imposing feel.

SW: So anyway, the people in Chester wanted their hockey rink back, so when we got a 26 epsiode order (seasons 5A and 5B) we had to move sets at this point as we were shooting. And the reason these episodes take place almost entirely in the school (this storyline [Duke in Halifax] excepted) is because all of our standing sets were being taken down in one place and being put up in another. So you’ll see in later episodes those sets coming back AH: We slowly start to see the sets getting put back up. But these scenes with Duke in Halifax were shot after - well after - because we had to shoot everything in the school for this whole block.

[As Duke is leaving his voicemail to Monty talking about the kind of job he’s looking for] SW: What do you do when you’re responsible for having given Troubles to thousands of people? AH: Go to disneyland. But no, that is exactly what we were trying to figure out here - what happens to Duke? After the explosion how does everyone pick up the pieces and move on?

AH: And another goal for these episodes was trying to get the characters to an interesting place, or a place we can build off of. And the relationship between Audrey and Charlotte was an important one to build (over this and the next couple of episodes) to see if we could get them to a place where they can trust each other. Because it’s like Speed said, what do you do after you gave everyone Troubles? What do you do when you find out that this woman that you’ve been missing your whole life [your mother] has been an obstacle for you for the last couple episodes? How do you respond to that? And we do try really hard on this show to create some level of reality, maybe not in terms of the supernatural, but at least in the emotions characters have.

SW: The other thing that was a challeng early in the design of these episodes, and it was really cool talking through with Adam in the room, was how we got a super deadly - oh I should pause, people are psyched about this kiss [Nathan’s and Audrey’s ‘I like the view’ moment], enjoy the kiss. AH: This hasn’t aired yet, I just realised. And I’ve been waiting to see the Twitter response to these kisses, because we ramp up that lovefest, in these two episodses especially. And there’s some really powerful scenes in 516. SW: It’s true. Or I should say, I believe you. I’ve actually forgotten what happens in 516. You know we do have a portion of fans who are not on Team Naudrey. We have a portion of fans who are rapid Duke/Audrey lovers.

SW: So, we really worked hard to design a Trouble that was super-deadly, and really scary, and didn’t require any production budget. So we talked a long time about the darkness, like - when you were in the dark a monster would come and eat you, but then we thought you’d have to produce something for that. So it became just the darkness itself. AH: And we even talked later about whether there would be a sound cue or not a sound cue. SW: Sound is cheap. AH: Yes, but this was a good one. We went back and forth on what to make this look like. And you’ll see some of that production-friendly magic throughout these two episodes. But the darkness I think worked well in just keeping everyone scared. Because it’s kind of human nature to be afraid of the dark.

[Dwight giving his banishment speech to the assembled crowd in the school hall] AH: We got to give Adam Copeland some cool stuff to do, and just showing where Dwight would go if you pushed him to the edge. And I’ll admit, we went further with Dwight in the early drafts. Dwight was Ned Stark in the early drafts, and he was a little bit more complicit in some executions. But we looked at the character and had to pull back a bit on that, I was a little zealous there, I think it was good to pull back. SW: Well you had The Walking Dead in mind, you know. But the truth is ultimately, we’re not that show. We are more heartfelt and lighter, and we protect our characters.

[Nathan discussing his trip down Trouble Alley, and Audrey pointing out cell phones don’t work.] AH: Cell phones. SW: We talked a lot about cell phones. AH: We did, we talked about whether or not we wanted them to be able to use cell phones, or not to use cell phones, could cell phones work that way? SW: Could they get through the shroud? Well, we knew they couldn’t get through the shroud AH: How did the shroud work when it came to people outside? There were a lot of rules that we inside the room spent a lot of time discussing how things would work.

[As Nathan is telling Audrey who he’s taking with him to the power plant, and the camera cuts away to show those people, and Vince and Dave’s argument] AH: Speed, I have to give you big props for pushing with the intercut here, because it’s not something we usually do on this show. And you really encouraged me to push it further and I think it ended up working really well. SW: Well you did have the instincts to do that, and TV now can really jump all over the place and audiences follow it. Haven has typically followed a pretty standard way of story telling. But, for film students out there, this started (and we’re now back to) a conversation between Nathan and Audrey, that cuts forwards to a walking shot [of the group coming up to Trouble Alley], that cuts back to a flashback of Dave and Vince, and then comes back to the overarching narrative [Nathan and Audrey’s conversation]. You’re following that as you watch it, but it is - at least to the tastes of this show - a risky re-arrangement of time. AH: It looks good though. SW: And it’s very efficient story telling. You can get more story in in less time. AH: We did get very efficient on this show, I have to say.

[Vince and Dwight’s conversation in the office about the batteries] AH: This relationship was a lot of fun. And it was great to build it, and talking to Adam Copeland about it, he really thinks of the character, of Dwight, that Vince is his dad so to speak. When he’s thinking about how to play a scene really works in that kind of structure.

SW: To be clear, in case we got confusing before, Trouble Alley has no cell phones working. Cell phones work within the school, and around town inside the shroud, except for Trouble Alley where - did we explain it, I can’t remember, but there’s some kind of electromagnetic Trouble there. AH: Yeah and EMP kind of Trouble that’s knocking out a lot of the power.

AH: This episode moves a quite a clip. And again we’re back here in Halifax. SW: Actual Halifax. And here is Hailie. AH: Hailie, played by Tamara Duarte. SW: She just had a spot on audition. I think Shawn Pillar, our executive producer director, knew her, and she delivered a tape that was just perfect. We needed somebody who was broken and hard, and yet also vulnerable which is not easy to do. And she’s a young actress. AH: And she can sell stuff so well with expression, that’s one of the things she brought to this. And this character ends up growing. We originally only had her in these two episodes [515 and 516] but then she becomes integral to the story. And that was interesting because we hadn’t actually shot these scenes yet - as we were talking about earlier, the Duke scenes were shot much later than the rest of the episode - so we had to go back and change things a little bit to make sure it lined up with the mythology that we were putting in to the show to pay off in epsiodes like 21, 22, 23. It was interesting. SW: And we designed her Trouble before we thought how we were going to use her later (to phase through the shroud). But it was kind of cool, we essentially took a tool that we’d built off the shelf, instead of designing it specifically. SW: I love the story Matt McGuinness tells about when he was in Vegas with some of his friends from Franklin & Bash on a retreat there. And they were getting into a hotel van to go down town for dinner or something like that. So they’re this goupr of 50 year old men, and in climbs a group of good looking 50 year old women who were there for some sort of party. And they get to talking and flirting. So it’s like; What do you do? Oh we write for TV, Franklin & Bash. And that drops like a lead balloon; nobody cares. So Matt says; Well actually I write for Haven - and they all light up. And one woman says to Matt; You know what I love about Haven - it’s so complicated, but I know that you guys have everything absolutely planned out right from the beginning, so even though it feels confusing at times, I feel safe in your hands. AH: *laughing* What did Matt say to that? SW: He nodded and said; You’re right. And then he came back and told us that story. And, it’s just not true folks, I’m sorry. We are scrambling at every moment to figure it out. I think we do. AH: I think we do. That’s the thing, we make it work. Unlike other shows (nothing against them) we do take pains to make sure that if we set it up, we fix it, we make sure it works. We sometimes spend long days on getting that stuff to work.

[As Nathan is about to take the group into Trouble Alley] AH: I do enjoy this bunch of ragtag misfits working together. SW: Notice, another invisible Trouble. That’s a crew member with a wire in their hand; that’s cheap. AH: But if you’re wondering what I think it looks like, I’ve always thought of it as like Godzilla, a smaller version of Godzilla. SW: Cool! AH: Just invisible.

[As Charlotte gets her foot caught] AH: Oh, and again, talking about The Walking Dead transitions, Nathan in the original draft was super dark here where instead of saving Charlotte, Nathan basically blackmails her freedom in exchange for information. SW: Right, it was jumping up a wall originally, and he was only going to pull her up if she gave up the information about the aether. Whereas here now she offers it because she’s in trouble. AH: So I think it was a good note to pull back on that, but again it was just getting into that head space of Game of Thrones, Walking Dead.

[Duke on the phone to the bank who refuse to recognise the existence of Haven.] AH: And again here we are putting in some rules of the shroud, how does it work with memory, what do people of think of Haven, that are outside of the shroud. SW: Yeah, important for the rest of the season. AH: And are these - yes they are, the first episodes to really start Duke on this journey of him walking the earth. SW: Oh yeah for sure. Last episode he was in Haven. AH: And that plays out for quite a while. SW: Yeah he’s out of town for a while.

[Nathan and the others arriving at the smashed up Herald] AH: This scene I felt was important, just to show how the world has changed so much for everyone. You know, no one is safe. And it’s not just Troubles, there’s looters and stuff where the Troubles have set off a fuse, but at the end of it is just crime and everything. SW: And very poignant that it’s Dave here in the Teagues home, because for most of the series they were the keeper of the secrets. If everyone else was confused, they knew what was going on. And then a little bit in season 4 it started getting out of their hands , and then certainly in season give they are way out of their depth. And this their vault of secrets has been affected.

[As Charlotte is telling Nathan that aether might help her solve the Troubles AH: Here we had to be very specific about this receipe for success and how it would work.

[Dwight to Audrey; It’s easy making choices from the side lines] AH: This is the ‘heavy is the head that wears the crown’ aspect

[As we see the power plant] AH: This was actually a power plant SW: Yeah it’s so cool. Very unusual looking place. AH: So that was neat that we were able to get an actual power plant with the turbines and everything. I will say for myself, that I am not mechanically inclined at all. So there was a lot of help from the room in figuring out how electricity works. And this is Kira Fletcher, this is our third Fletcher that we’ve used on this show.

AH: It was nice to get everybody in the dirty clothes and everything too. And they wore it all well.

[As Nathan takes the wires from Kira] AH: That’s the other thing, in these episodes I really wanted to make Nathan as active as possible. He’s trying his best to put this genie back in the bottle. And just every time he tries to do something good it seems to backfire. SW: Well, it’s sort of the theme of the show; No good deed goes unpunished. AH: And we’re going to see that with Duke right here.

[As Hailie is asking Duke about her mom’s ‘superpower’ AH: And again, a lot of this story we had put in here, and we didn’t have to alter it when we came up with the fix or the solution or the mythology for 21, 22, 23. SW: Well and episode 20 as well. AH: Yeah, her mom is seeded in right there. SW: If you haven’t seen it yet, epsiode 20, Sam Ernst and Jim Dunn wrote a retro Haven episode that features Hailie’s mom. AH: And I remember there was talk about using Tamara to play Hailie’s mom. But I don’t think we did that in the end.

[As Duke and Hailie finish their conversation outside the garage] AH: Oh, somebody listening in. SW: 26B, is that what Matt calls it? AH: Yeah, 26B SW: Matt’s code for someone overhearing.

AH: This was fun with Charlotte as a character where she comes from another world that’s much more advanced, so she’s not a mechanic, she’s not an engineer by trade, but our technology is so simple to her. SW: It’s like playing with a paperclip to her. There’s a word that we use all the time in the room that isn’t actually in the show; Arcadians. Just to ourselves, Charlotte and Mara and her father are Arcadians. And William.

[As Audrey finds Vince with Rolf’s body, the latest victim of the No Marks Killer] AH: And this was some heavy mythology to drop as well. There is a lot going on in this episode! SW: Yeah it’s really the season premiere AH: It was nice to bring the Teagues back into the main cast. They’ve been out on an island almost, having their own plot and learning a lot of stuff that was very important. But it was nice to bring them back so that they’re interacting again with Audrey and Nathan, and Dwight. SW: And they do well when they’re holding secrets. They’re built for that.

AH: Eric Cayla, our Director of Photography, did some great work with darkness and shadows in this episode. [Audrey; Did they force you to do this? Because I can get you out.] AH: And there’s that Audrey compassion that’s going to play a big role in 17 SW: We like to, on this show to set up things, especially as it’s become more serialised. And with that litle line there, Audrey just sealed her fate for episode 17, or the end of 16. AH: Yeah, that was another one, like we talked about with 9 and 10, where the ending moved back and forth.

[Dave to Charlotte; Is there anything I can do to help? Back rub? Water?] SW: *laughing: Oh Adam. You have a way of getting humour in. That’s just terrific AH: *also laughing* I remember there was some debate though about that ‘back rub’ if he was coming on to her. And I was just like: No, no - he’s just in an awkward situation and doesn’t know what to do. Being an awkward person myself, that’s coming from real experience.

AH: And this was great work by the art department on these power schematics. It really helped tell the story.

[people in the school fighting over a flashlight] AH: Chaos! And this is again that post-apocalyptic landscape [Dwight; Alright everyone take a deep breath SW: That’s what I say to my kids when they throw tantrums AH: But not the rest of the speech. And this just shows how Dwight has elevated in the eyes of the town.He really is the leader. So interesting where you started with this character and where he ends.

[As Nathan and Kira find the mine shaft where the aether seems to be] AH: So we were talking this through, if this is where William’s stash of aether is held, our idea behind it is that he stashed it in a natural cave or underground area, geological formation of some kind SW: Like 500 years ago AH: And then things were built over it. It’s not that William went there when that building was built and buried it there. SW: Right, just to line up with the backstory that William and Mara were trapsing round New Engliand in the 1500s.

[Mechanic on screen; I looked you up Hailie Colton] AH: Oh I remember we didn’t have a last name for her initially. We had to go back and add that in.

[Duke runs the mechanic over and drives through Hailie] AH: Yes, Duke knew that was going to happen. He was not trying to kill Hailie. And props to Shawn and Rick for blocking this, it was not the easiest scene to block - a lot of moving pieces.

[As Audrey is packing a bag to go look for Nathan] AH: And here we were trying to have a nice mother/daughter moment SW: Yeah you did a great job. The slow arc of getting them together. AH: I think that’s the other thing we tried to do with these episodes is re-establish that anything could happen. That this is a new world order, bad stuff, people are dying. And it could be one of our characters. SW: Yeah we talked about where to end this episode and start the next one [The implication being they considered ending the episode before Nathan gets back, and so with the suggestion that he is actually dead] AH: I think a lot of these background extras here [as Nathan arrives in the hall full of people] were comped in. SW: They had 300 extras on the day AH: Was it 300? Maybe they weren’t then, maybe it was all practical.

AH: Thank you for listening SW: We’ll see you on 16

#haven syfy #havensyfy #syfyhaven #haven maine #haven 5 #haven dvd commentaries #5.15 - power

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lovemesomesurveys · 3 years

Text

survey by starsareonly2nd

Have you ever been to Las Vegas? Nope. I’d like to go sometime, though. I’m not into the casino scene, but they have fun shows and other stuff to do there.

What did you have for breakfast this morning? I didn’t have anything. I’m about to have dinner soon, which is the first thing I’ll eat today.

Do you have any loose change in your pocket? I don’t have any pockets right now, but I never use pockets anyway.

Do you like Taylor Swift? Not a fan, personally.

What's your favorite Disney Channel movie? I have several from my childhood and teenage years.

If you met your favorite celebrity, would you be calm or star struck? I’d be starstruck in a calm way; like I’d most likely be too shocked to get more than a few words out. I’m sure I’d come off as shy or boring haha, which is why I’ve refused to meet or interact with my favorite celebrities even if I’ve already had the chance to. <<< Aw, omg I’d be the same way. I’d be freaking out internally for sure. I wouldn’t know what to do or say. My awkwardness would definitely shine through.

Are there any lights on in the room you're in? Yeah.

What's your favorite subject in school? Mine was always English. And obviously psych in college.

What's your favorite holiday? Christmas and Halloween. Do you ever have to do yard work? I don’t do the yardwork.

Is your school close to your house? The schools I attended are all local and pretty close by.

Speaking of school, how did you get there today? I’m done with school.

Do you think Bad Romance is a catchy song, or an annoying one? I like it.

Do you use perfect grammar online? Yes. I’m one who texts that way, too.

Are you currently using a laptop? Yep.

Do you have any live versions of songs in your music software? Nope.

Did/do you listen to Britney Spears songs? Yeah.

Is it a windy day? It was a little windy today.

In the past week, have you ridden in a taxi? No. I haven’t taken a taxi in several years.

What shorthand do you use the most? “lol”, “wtf”, “wth”, “omg.”

Do you ever wish on stars at night? Nope.

What color are your eyes? Brown.

What album is the current song you're listening to off of? I’m not listening to music, I’m watching Eli Roth’s History of Horror on AMC. I love this show, each episode discusses different aspects and themes of horror movies through interviews with actors, directors, etc of horror films and show clips from the movies talked about. Tonight’s episode is about body horror and the movies they’re discussing are pretty disturbing :O Like, Hellraiser... wtf is that??! I’ve never seen that movie, but yikes. Or this Japanese movie, Audition...

What are you doing after you finish this? I’m about to have dinner. And after watching that show ^^^, I’ll watch this other show called Cursed Films. That’s an interesting one, too. As the title suggests, it discusses films that have been said to be cursed. Like, if you’d heard about the Poltergeist curse. Last week they did The Crow and what happened to Brandon Lee is so sad. Tonight they’re discussing Twilight Zone: The Movie.

In your opinion, what song is the most overplayed right now? I don’t listen to the radio, haven’t for a few years now, so I don’t know.

Are you in a band? Uh, no. I can’t sing or play an instrument.

How clean is your bedroom? It needs a little tidying up.

Is there a pen within reaching distance of you? Yeah.

Are you sitting at a desk? No, I’m sitting on my bed.

Does your favorite band have a male or female lead singer? One of my favorite bands, Linkin Park, had a male lead singer. RIP Chester Bennington. :(

Do you normally shut your bedroom door before you go to sleep? Yep, always.

Have you seen the movie Moulin Rouge? I haven’t.

Would you ever dye your hair a different color? I’m gonna stick to dyeing it red for now.

Are there any framed pictures in the room you're in? Yes.

Have you ever been to a Broadway show? I’ve seen Phantom of the Opera.

Do you watch So You Think You Can Dance? No.

What's your favorite movie soundtrack? Hmm. I don’t know.

Do you prefer group or individual work? I much preferred doing my own work. Group projects added more stress for me. Although, I did like group presentations better than doing one by myself. Being up there with other people to back each other up and not having the focus solely on me helped a bit.

Do you have a key to anything besides your house? Just my car.

Are you wearing anything with stripes? No.

What time did you go to sleep last night? I kept falling asleep off and on, but I didn’t fall asleep for good until after 9AM. :/ I ended up sleeping until 5PM.

Did anyone tell you you were beautiful today? No.

What show did you last watch? I’m watching the show I mentioned earlier, Cursed Films.

Do you think you'll do anymore surveys today? Yes.

What's your favorite ice cream flavor? Strawberry.

When was the last time you stayed home from school sick? I don’t recall, I’ve been done with school for 5 years now.

Could you ever complete a 500-piece puzzle? I have before. I used to like doing puzzles when I was a kid. I get the urge to do one every now and then. Perhaps I’ll get into them again.

If you could run a red light and not get caught, would you? Um, absolutely not. Getting caught is the least of it when you run the risk of possibly KILLING someone or yourself or getting badly injured. Doing stuff like that is how accidents happen. Don’t do it.

Do you like to listen to music as you do your homework? I did sometimes.

Did you think Adam Lambert's AMA performance was really that controversial? I don’t recall that performance.

Do any bands flat-out annoy you? Not currently.

Do you have a mirror in your bedroom? Yes.

Was today a birthday for any of your friends? No.

When was the last time you rode in a limo? My dad actually used to work for a limo service when I was a kid and I got to ride around in one a few times. It was fun.

Do you take naps daily? Not daily, but I have been taking one more often lately.

Do you still make Christmas lists? Yes, my family and I make one for each other.

Do you watch the show Dexter? No.

What's the background on your phone? The lock screen is a pretty picture with a Bible verse and my home screen is Halloween themed. I’ve been switching the theme each week this month with different Halloween themes. I love the new update that allows you to add widgets to the home screen and you can change the background.

When were/will you be a a sophomore in high school? I was a sophomore in 2005.

Are you scared of any animals? I mean, I wouldn’t want to encounter any lions, tigers, or bears. ha. But I’m not afraid to see them at the zoo or in a photo or something, but killer whales? Nopeeeee. Not even a photo or on TV.

Have you ever been to any sort of convention? Hmm. No, I don’t think so.

Which song did you last listen to on repeat? I don’t recall. I don’t usually listen to songs on repeat. Not literally, anyway. I’ll listen to a song a lot, but not back to back to back.

Where do you want to live when you grow up? I am “grown up”, but I better have my beach home one day.

Are you currently using a blanket? I actually do my blanket over my legs right now. :O It’s finally getting cool at night, which is nice.

Are there any songs that make you cry? Yes, a few.

How many siblings do you have? Two.

What are you doing this weekend? Yesterday I slept until 5PM, got up to make coffee and checked my social medias and emails, started this survey, watched Carrie, Eli Roth’s History of Horror, Cursed Films, and Pet Semetary, had dinner, did my Bible study, read, ate ramen, and now I’m finishing this and watching YouTube videos. Today, I’ll watch my church’s livestream and then do much of the same things but with different TV shows/movies, ha.

Do you prefer swimming at the beach or in a pool? I don’t like swimming at all. I definitely never swam in the ocean, though. Nopeeee.

When was the last time you had a haircut? I got a trim back in February.

Which musical instrument do you think sounds the prettiest? I love the piano.

Are you in band or chorus at your school? I was in choir for a few years and did violin for one year in elementary school.

Do you know what you want for Christmas? I have a few little ideas.

Do you watch fireworks on New Year's Eve? On TV, ha. I like watching the New Year’s Eve festivities every year.

Is your birthday within the next three months? No, my birthday was back in July.

How long is the song you're listening to? I’m not listening to music. I don’t even know the last time I was when asked this question to be honest. I like to listen to ASMR videos while doing surveys.

Are you anticipating anything this week? I’m anticipating it to be a typical week for me.

Is your mom or dad the older parent? My dad is by 4 years.

Have you taken the SATs yet? I never took the SATs.

Do you watch anything on E? Yeah, KUWTK and Daily Pop. They play movies sometimes, too, so I might tune in if they’re playing something I like.

Are you going to get off the computer now that you've finished this? Nope. I’m going to do more surveys.

#personal #text #survey #surveys

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somediyprojects · 4 years

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Sharon Mossbeck | Forgotten Spaces exhibition

Drawing upon the singular atmosphere of the basement as a contemporary art project, Forgotten Spaces presents an exhibition of new works by Sheffield based artist Sharon Mossbeck looking at prison cells, oubliettes, and dungeons of Medieval Europe.

Cross-stitch is a versatile medium rarely seen in the context of contemporary fine art and is here utilised by Mossbeck to depict the scale of these forgotten spaces. Working with Aida (cross-stitch fabric), an unforgiving material, and making the most of its similarities to graph paper, these works take on the manner of a blueprint and depict the torturous dimensions of these spaces, chilling in their cruelty.

Oubliette, Unknown Origin. Cotton on Aida. 2018

Little Ease, Chester City Walls. Cotton on Aida. 2018

Oubliette, Warwick Castle. Cotton on Aida. 2018

Pozzi, Doge’s Palace. Cotton on Aida. 2018

Oubliette, Bastille. Cotton on Aida. 2018

Forgotten Spaces

My exhibition Forgotten Spaces has taken a long time to come to fruition. As a lover of history I have come across many cruel dungeon cells, designed to torture the unhappy resident, and these stories have stayed with me. As an artist with a preoccupation with death, I have long wanted to make work about them, but the right way to go about this had never presented itself until now. By chance, one day I saw the word Oubliette in a completely unrelated situation. I remembered the word from the 1980’s classic film The Labyrinth, and realised that I had never quite looked up the exact meaning.

Oubliette: A secret dungeon reached only via trapdoor. From Middle French oublier "to forget”

The coldness of the meaning “to forget” only adds to the horror of such places, and it was this that jolted my project to life.

Thinking back to the dungeon cells I had read about over the years, I decided to create a set of work based on five of them. It is the torturous scale of these spaces which makes the most impact, and so I needed a medium which could reflect this.

A lot of my fine art practice consists of Contemporary Art Cross-stitch. This means Cross-stitch used in a contemporary fine art context. The work may have a conceptual basis, or simply be using cross-stitch in a way which makes best use of the medium. The grid-like fabric used for cross-stitch (called Aida) is very similar to graph paper. In fact, I plan my patterns out on graph paper when designing a piece of work, and have long been interested in using Aida as graph paper. In 2017 I made a small piece of work which mimicked architectural plans for a medieval gothic church window, stitching the 10x10 squared guidelines onto the cross-stitch fabric.

I decided that, in order to show the scale of these spaces, using Aida as graph paper would work well, and the actual dungeons would take on the appearance of blue prints, with a guide to the height of the average Medieval man to give a real sense of the practical scale of the spaces.

Oubliette, Unknown Origin. Cotton on Aida. 2018

The smallest dungeon cell featured in this series of work is from Chester city walls, and, as with all of the dungeons featured, is hidden deep underground. There is an interesting contemporary account of the size of this cell by someone who visited it as a gruesome tourist attraction, long after it was last used. They described it as a small space, carved out of the rock to fit the dimensions of a man. It had room for the head, and became wider to fit the shoulders and chest. When the door was closed on the person inside they had no room to sit or lie down. This type of cell is known as the “Little Ease”, and to make it even more torturous, wooden boards could be added to reduce the height of the space, meaning that not only could the prisoner neither lie down or sit, but now they could not even stand. They were contorted in a tiny awkward space. There is even an account of one particularly overweight prisoner who was squeezed into the tiny cupboard like space, and was said to have “burst” when the door was forced shut on him.

Little Ease, Chester City Walls. Cotton on Aida. 2018

Another small cell can be found at Warwick Castle, where once again the victim a cannot sit or stand, but this time they lie at an awkward angle underground with a metal grill closed above them, so that they are little more than a body trapped in an underground cage.

Oubliette, Warwick Castle. Cotton on Aida. 2018

A slightly different kind of cell, which perhaps looks more appealing than the others at first, is a Pozzi cell, found at the Doge’s Palace in Venice. Pozzi means Wells, and this is because they were wet. The cells were built from wood with a wooden raised bed in the middle and, depending on the prisoners’ height, there was possibly not enough room to stand. Because they were wooden, the walls creaked and oozed, and were infested with insects.

Pozzi, Doge’s Palace. Cotton on Aida. 2018

The largest dungeons featured are the Oubliettes. These were deep holes in the ground, already in the underground dungeons where there was no chance of seeing any daylight. The victim was tossed into the hole via a trap door in the floor, where they would fall and probably break some bones. One style of Oubliette is a long tube, and if the prisoner were capable, they could possibly climb up the walls, only to be greeted with a metal grill locking them in from above. In reality though, the injuries caused from the fall (not to mention any torture they may have already received before being imprisoned in the Oubliette) along with the malnutrition they would suffer there, would mean that there was no escape. The other type of Oubliette is bottle shaped, so that the hole in the floor through which the victim is tossed is the bottle neck and then the cell becomes wider. There would be no way out of this unless a ladder or rope was let down. Prisoners in these Oubliettes were possibly not fed and were left to die there. If anyone did pass by they would only see a grate in the floor, and so these poor people truly were forgotten.

Oubliette, Bastille. Cotton on Aida. 2018

#cross stitch #inspo #x

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standfortheangels · 5 years

Text

Instructions: Always repost with the rules, answer the 11 random questions left for you, and leave 11 more for the people you tag!

Tagged by: @illicreatxm

This got long so I’m going to stick it under a read more ^^

1. If you could write any canon character, which would it be and why?

Hm. I’m not sure. I have roleplayed a couple of canons before, but I find it harder to keep the muse for them. I could probably do Elsa okay, I could jump between her locked in the castle personality and her open, welcoming character post-film, which might help, but the inconsistencies in her Over-powered Powers annoy me, so I think I’d add a few limitations in there.

2. Favourite Disney movie?

Maybe Aladdin because Robin Williams is of course amazing and so perfect in that role~ Ohh but there’s also Atlantis.. And Dumbo! Aw no... Let’s just call this my top three before I get carried away >w>

3. Least favourite MCU character?

I haven't seen the more recent ones, so, I can't take into account characters like Thanos or Dr. Strange or, whoever else they've been bringing in. So out of what I've seen, I'd have to go with Bruce Banner/The Hulk.

It seemed in the earlier films that they didn't give much attention to Banner. They were all over using the Hulk to make bits interesting, but Bruce was boiled down to "quiet smart guy who CaN TuRN inTo THE HULK" so, yeah.

And the hulk himself later did like a 180° change for me. In his stand-alone film I think Hulk says like 3 words, maximum. Then rarely talks in his appearances in the other avengers brand films. Cool. We had "Puny God" and that was a-okay. One short, memorable, funny quote seems perfect.

But then what was all that when Whedon got his hands on it? (I mean don't get me started on that, I am really reigning myself back here but) They start off needing ways to calm Hulk down enough to get him back inside and give control back to Bruce, fair enough. But then like... He winds up not letting go of Bruce's body even though he isn't enraged anyway? And suddenly he's emotional enough and smart enough to take- what was it a plane? And seperate himself off from everyone and look all solemnly at Natasha before he does it or something?

Obviously my memory of it isn't great, honestly I stopped paying attention after Natasha's "I'm a monster- not because I was raised in a heartless environment full of violence and raised to literally kill people, that bit's whatever- but because they took away my fertility and now I can't have babies." speech. And that's the last MCU film I watched. I didn't want anything to do with them after seeing what Joss Whedon did with the characters and the overarching plotline and... Everything. x') So I might have gotten some of the hulk stuff wrong.

(I did watch Deadpool though, that I enjoyed~)

4. If you had to create any new character, what occupation would they have?

Ooo good question.

I think something proactive, where they could seek other characters out, but.. I'd kinda like a bad guy~ Someone who lies so much for their job, they have a dual personality to work with. They can be your smiling friendly neighbour, wishing you well on your holiday, then turn around and grit his teeth because this poses a major problem for his mission, and he can't lose his target, so now he has to follow, but he can't do that as your happy neighbour, no, you know he isn't going on holiday, certainly not today, not on your flight, not to the same ski lodge you're going to. No, he has to make a new cover- maybe say his neice phoned him with a family emergency and he'll be leaving to go be with her a while. Then shed this identity, find out where his target is going, quickly pose as some other tourist who blends into the background and get to the lodge first, all the while planning out some plausible skiing accident he can set up.

Wow that got more detailed than I expected x'D I think I just reinvented hitman, whoops.

5. Favourite sport?

[Image ID: Kiki from Kiki’s Delivery Service, laughing hysterically.]

My biggest concern when I'm on my feet is not falling over so, obviously sports aren't really my deal. x')

I used to swim a lot when I was a kid, I loved that, but, don't do it now.

And I'm not really into watching sports either tbh. Most of it seems over-hyped. Most football teams (real football, it is not soccer. The hint is in actual football, the ball, is hit, with your feet. Picking it up and running with it and then sometimes kicking it does not qualify as football, come on USA. Your thing is closer to Rugby than Football.)

Anyway most teams aren't much better or worse than any other if you actually watch objectively, which makes it look like they both suck because they're too well matched to score goals more than once in a blue moon.

Rugby I don't really understand the appeal of either. Scrums are weird and it wouldn't be entirely bizarre to see a guy walking away from the game with blood down his face and an ear in his hand. You'd almost expect him to stick the ear on ice and be back in a few minutes with his bandages on.

Really the only sports than interest me are the gymnastic types. Ice skating is good for a while but it can start getting dull if you don't have people willing to break the mould a bit. (Which is why I absolutely love the free skate bit. Where they aren't being scored and they just do whatever the hell they want, omg I live for that)

Floor routines are awesome, the pommel horse and rings are usually a little samey for me but the one with those two bars at different heights, that's fun to watch~ there's a little more variety there.

(And I don't wanna hear anyone in the replies saying these aren't sports, every example there including figure skating is a separate event in the Olympics, so. There.)

6. What’s your dream car?

I don’t really have one. At this point in my life I don’t actually have the option to learn to drive so I haven’t really thought about it. My only criteria is, it has to have a nice face. x)

Since I was tiny I have always seen cars as faces. The headlights would be eyes, and usually the number plate would be the mouth, but some cars have other stuff like a grill that might be the mouth instead. So like...

This would be a grumpy car with a pig-like nose and frown.. Actually those look like jowels either side of the mouth part. It looks kind of like a bulldog. X’)

And this would be a happy car. That black part around the number plate it wide and smile-shaped, and the headlights- rounded on top and straighter on the bottom, like the little creases we get when we scrunch up our eyes laughing~

This car looks like someone just said something really stupid to it, and it is not impressed, and lets the silence hang not knowing what to say.

Happy car

Terminator car

Happy car but in a mean way.. Like it’s on its way to cause mayhem or poking fun at someone. You get the general idea -w-

7. A movie that you think should have a sequel?

Hmm... this is a toughie.

8. A movie sequel that you think should be deleted from existence?

I don’t remember which number it was or even the title, but the Shrek sequel where Shrek like, hates having kids so much he makes a deal to change time? And Fiona winds up as like a vicious warrior leader because no-one ever saved her from the tower, and rumplestiltskin is in it? What even was that...

9. Design your dream outfit using this game ?

I wouldn’t say this really is my dream outfit, but from the options on offer~

(also discounting the enormous hair bun >w>;)

10. Favourite fairytale?

I’m not sure if this actually counts as a fairytale, but I love the story of the jolly roger. That classic skull and crossbones flag has a story behind it that a lot of people don’t know.

In a nutshell, a man (i guess a pirate) develops an intense crush on a young woman, who is about to get married. But just before her wedding, she dies. She is buried, but the man doesn’t take death for an answer. He digs her up and has sex with her body. When he’s done, a disembodied voice speaks to him, telling him that he has basically impregnated this corpse, and to come back in nine months.

For some reason, he does. He digs up the woman again. And sat below her pelvis is a small skull and two bones. The disembodied voice tells him to take these bones with him on his ventures, and they will bring him luck.

It’s bizarre, and kinda gross, and.. I dunno if being rewarded for sexually desicrating a corpse is the best moral? x’) But I was amazed when I heard this story, because I’d had no idea there was this whole tale behind the flag~ and I still love that it exists~

11. Create an avatar of your favourite muse using this creator? ?

First, it’s so cruel to ask me to pick my favourite child how dare you >w> haha

I went with Chester though because he’s the one I’m usually most connected to.

I can’t think of anyone I want to tag right now (at least not anyone who hasn’t probably done this already), but I’ll put the new 11 questions for anyone who does feel like doing this~ :) __

1. What’s one thread/plot you really want to do that you haven’t had chance to yet?

2. What is the reason for, or meaning behind, your blog icon?

3. Do you have any pets? Tell us a bit about them!

4. What is one thing you would never want to change about your appearance?

5. There is an ultra secret spy group, and you’ve just uncovered their existence. Now they say that you must either work for them, or they’ll find a permanent way to keep you quiet. What kind of work would you offer to do for them?

6. If you met your muse in real life, how do you think the two of you would get along? (multi-muse blogs, pick one of your muses at random.)

7. You have been given a huge budget to remake one film in your own vision. You can change anything, add anything, choose the cast, you have no limits. What would you do?

8. What is one skill you wish you could automatically master?

9. A genie offers you a deal. An unlimited lifelong supply of one food of your choice... But, you have to sacrifice your ability to chew. Does any food still tempt you?

10. What do you think is the funniest animal?

11. Share one memory you have that makes you happy to think about~

#literally anyone can do this #and you can tag me in it too if you want #even if we've never interacted #I love reading posts like these #x)#ooc #long post #I loved the game questions on this btw!#I've never seen anyone include something like that before #it was fun!#illicreatxm

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arecomicsevengood · 5 years

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A YEAR OF READING ACKNOWLEDGED MASTERPIECES #3: E.C. SEGAR’S POPEYE

So, while the original idea behind this series was for me to read an acclaimed comic I expect I’ll like but had not yet actually read, or to read something I’d read a little of but not its entirety, covering E.C. Segar’s Popeye is something of a cheat. When Fantagraphics began their reprint series, a roommate had the first volume, of what would eventually be six, and I read that; I later ordered my own copy of volume 3, and I own a copy of The Smithsonian Collection Of Newspaper Comics, which reprints the “Plunder Island” series of Sunday strips covered in volume 4. I enjoyed all of it, but didn’t feel a pressing need to acquire more, and now Volumes 4 and 5 are out of print and command high prices on the secondary market. This motivated me to get a copy of the still-available volume 6, which might seem less appealing because it’s the last stuff Segar did before he died, and health issues led there to be periods of time where the strip was entrusted to his assistants, in sequences not included.

The editors say those strips aren’t good, I’ll take their word for it. Other people have tried to sell other Popeye product, and I’m sure some of it is quite good: There are some people who take pains to point out that the Segar comic strips are not similar to the Fleischer brothers cartoons, but I’m sure those cartoons are good fun, I generally like the stuff that studio produced. I have seen the 1980 Robert Altman movie, starring Robin Williams and Shelley Duvall, with a screenplay by Jules Feiffer and songs by Harry Nilsson, which is a notorious flop, but with some admirers: Still, it’s a slog, which the comic strip never is. IDW’s comic strip reprint line put out books collection the late eighties/early nineties run of former underground cartoonist Bobby London, what I’ve read of that stuff (just previews online) is unfunny garbage. I think they also were behind reprints of comic books by Bud Sagendorf, and a revival written by Roger Langridge, neither of which I’ve read, though Langridge’s work is always ok; good enough for me to think it’s good, not compelling or transcendent enough for me to spend money on it. It’s all work done by those who have rights to the license, which makes me view it as essentially merchandise, like a pinball game or something. The Segar stuff is where it all comes from.

While other masterpieces of the first half of the twentieth century comics page, like George Herriman’s Krazy Kat or Winsor McKay’s Little Nemo are definitely acquired tastes, Popeye was not only popular enough to make its creator a rich man back in the day, it remains functional as populist entertainment today. I feel pretty “what’s not to like?” about it, and would recommend it to whoever. It’s funny, the characters are good, there’s adventures. The humor is three quarters sitcom style character work and one quarter the sort of silliness that verges on absurdism.

This light touch separates it from the first half of the twentieth century’s “adventure strips” that didn’t age as well, despite having well-done art that would influence generations of superhero artists. Segar’s art isn’t particularly impressive, but every strip tells a joke or two, and even if you don’t laugh at every joke, you’ll appreciate its readability, especially if you’ve ever tried to read a Roy Crane comic, or even Chester Gould’s Dick Tracy. I don’t want to praise E.C. Segar by merely listing works his comics read better than, but it really is notable how many people today are basically trying to do what he did, but are failing at least in part due to not understanding that’s what they’re trying to do. If you want to do a comedic adventure story that becomes popular enough for you to be financially successful, it might be worth reading a volume of Popeye and observing its rhythms. When I was reviewing Perdy a few weeks ago, I was thinking “This basically just wants to be a R-rated Popeye.” I recently found 3/4 of the issues of the Troy Nixey-drawn comic Vinegar Teeth for a quarter each; despite that comic’s high-concept pitch involving Lovecraftian monsters, it would probably have been better if it thought of itself as being a descendant of Popeye, rather than something that could be adapted into a movie. I’ll just phrase it in the format of a popular Twitter meme: Some of you have never read Popeye, and it shows.

Lesson number one, which just sort of emerges naturally from the format of the daily strip, is you’ve got to make jokes, and they can’t just be the same one, over and over again. To that end, you need a cast of characters, who each have their own bit, and who play off each other in various ways. It is easy to see why people don’t do this: Large ensembles grow organically, and most people start telling a story with either a central character or something precisely in mind they want to chronicle. The comic strip, with its long runs originating from a practitioner’s ability to tell a joke, can be a bit freer to stumble onto something that works, without even necessarily having a title character to return to. The collections might be named after Popeye, but the comic strip being collected in these books was called Thimble Theater, which ran for a decade before Popeye showed up and circulation sky-rocketed. For a while, I think the consensus on the early stuff was it was pretty boring and hard to read before Popeye came in and livened the whole thing up, but recently there was a reprint of this earlier material, and I know the dude who reviewed it for The Comics Journal liked it, though I’m sure it’s easy to find someone at The Comics Journal who will like an old comic strip even if it’s bad. Either way, modern cartoonists don’t have Segar’s luxury, or having their work run for a half-disinterested audience until something clicks so much word spreads.

The gag-a-day pace, built around getting into new situations and adventures, itself creates a pressure to be inventive today’s graphic novelists can’t really match. After Popeye is established as a good character, prone to getting into scrapes, Segar can show us the comedy of him caring for a baby. He can also introduce Popeye’s dad, Poopdeck Pappy, that this character looks basically exactly like Popeye but is a piece of shit is a funny idea that would not occur in the early days of planning a project.

One reason why you wouldn’t necessarily do such a design choice is because, if you’re thinking of different media as a way to success, having characters with the exact same silhouette runs counter to the generally accepted rules of animation. Thimble Theatre, as per its name, is based on theater staging, rather than the more expressionist angles of film: We’re looking at characters from the side, usually seeing whoever’s talking in the same panel unless one of them is out of the room. These characters tend to have the same height, basically. Someone once said that looking at Popeye, printed six strips to a page, is kind of like looking at a page of sheet music. It’s not a particularly visually dynamic strip, the amount of black and white on a page is close to unvarying.

This is why I don’t believe in prescriptivism, or a suggestion of rules: I’m pretty sure that Popeye works because it’s not working super-hard to be visually interesting. This would be the number two lesson of what there is to learn from Popeye. I think this transparency in style is what allows this comedy/adventure hybrid to work, though I know others would blanch at this. It’s going for a big audience, and while I think this visual approach serves that end, I know why others, especially those who’ve been struck by later superhero comics or manga, would see visual excitement as the best way to achieve that goal. The audience that read newspaper comics wasn’t necessarily adept at following visual storytelling, and the sort of relationship that newspaper strips could have with a wider readership is not going to be achievable now. The folks that ride for Segar these days are mostly alt-comics people, like Sammy Harkham or Kevin Huizenga, who aren’t attempting the sort of popular entertainment extravaganzas he trafficked in.

Reading Popeye feels like reading, basically, which is a nice, contemplative experience, that not all comics can capture. I read a few pages of it before bed. Obviously, this pace is not how people consumed it in its heyday, but the pace people took it in at, a strip a day, is even more deliberate and steady, and I think, was crucial to its popularity. For a comic to be popular, it has to have characters that are interesting, obviously; there is probably no better way for an audience to build a relationship with fictional characters than over extended periods of time. This speed corresponds to the pace it was created at, one that now seems insanely luxurious to anyone whose workflow is dictated by the internet’s demand for content. It’s a total crowdpleaser, but it existed at a time where crowds could slowly gather. Popeye’s a popular entertainment from an era of reading, listening to the radio, going to plays or movies. It holds up, owing to a basic pleasantness we can understand as low stakes, and that’s helped along by the restraint of the art. It’s telling a story. It’s not a farce, crowded with visual jokes, and it’s not dictated by characters’ emoting either. I love a visually expressive art style, but here it’s important that the visuals remain “on-model,” reinforcing the stability of the characterizations. This sort of thing is also evident in Chris Onstad’s Achewood, which I would argue is the preeminent 21st century character-driven comic strip, with an audience that feels relatively “wide” rather than pointedly “niche.”

Lesson number three to how to make a popular comic is the thought I find myself thinking all the time, which is “Everyone needs to chill out.” The number one impediment to making entertainment that just quietly works is the desire to stand out and make a name for yourself as quickly as possible. This is similar to how the number one impediment to a peaceful and contented life is the demands of a failing capitalism where we are all competing for a shrinking pile of resources. To read these books now is a luxury, an indulgence, and while I don’t much go in for those, reading older comic strips carries with it this sort of nostalgic appeal for an era where it didn’t feel like everything was screaming at you for your attention all the time. As broad as Popeye is, it now possesses a certain dignity, owing to this dislocation in time from its origin. I don’t know if this felt like a feature at the time. I do think that if you are an artist that wants to be successful now, you should do what you can for the sort of circumstances that allow for genuine, long-lasting success to build, which involves a certain degree of permission to fail. Mainstream comics companies, with their mentality of “we’re going to print hundreds of comics a month, in hopes some find a niche large enough to be briefly profitable we can then try to milk for their last dollar and they quickly become exhausted,” act against this. As in a garden, there needs to be space for things to take root and grow.

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afrosocialism · 6 years

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Crimes of the US Presidents

CW: mention of sexual abuse, slavery, theft, imperialism, colonialism, war crimes, anti-black/brown/indigenous violence/policies, repression, racism, xenophobia, overthrows, invasions, and police violence.

Hey y’all, I intended to do this list on Presidents Day, but I didn’t. Anyway, I’m going to list every crime that every President did because all Presidents are guilty of crimes. Here’s the list.

1-5) The first five aka The so called founding fathers - Created this nation by enslaving Africans and the theft of Indigenous land. Owned huge number of slaves. Thomas Jefferson owned over 600 slaves, and raped one of them (15 yo Sally Hennings). Some of them supported the colonization of Liberia. They were also horribly capitalist, racist, and sexist.

6) John Quincy Adams - Nothing great about him. Moving on

7) Andrew Jackson - A genodical slave owning fuckface. Responsible for the Trail of Tears, forcing many Native tribes of their land. Got involved in wars that removed Natives from their land, including the Seminole Wars. Owned slaves and supported it.

8. Martin Van Buren - Continued Jackson’s Indian Removal policy and did nothing to stop slavery and owned some slaves.

9) William Henry Harrison - His reign was too damn short. So nothing about him, although he did participate in the Indian Wars before he was president.

10) John Tyler - Theft of Texas from Mexico. Owned slaves and didn’t stop slavery and was okay with it. A forgettable name tho.

11) James K Polk - Continued the theft of Mexico through the Mexican American War. Was a huge slaveowner and supported it and used the territory from Mexico to expand slavery. Asshole.

12) Zachary Taylor - another short run, but was a slaveowner and supported it (the last president to own slaves during his presidency). Also was a General in the Mexican-American War. Nothing great about him. Another forgettable one.

13) Millard Fillmore - Wanted to expand slavery to the new territories stolen from Mexico. Enacted the Fugitive Slave Act that criminalized slaves that escaped from their owners.

14) Franklin Pierce - Continued the enforcement of the Fugitive Slave Act. Wanted to push slavery in Northern territories via the Kansas–Nebraska Act which also pushed Indigenous land off their territories. This caused a violent conflict between pro and anti slavery forces, preceding the Civil War. He continued the theft of Mexican land and tried to steal Cuba to make a slave state.

15) James Buchanan - Did nothing to stop slavery and defended the Dred Scott case. He also wanted Kansas as a slave state. Another forgettable name.

16) Abraham Lincoln - Now here’s some good stuff. But first, the Civil War was fought over slavery, not over that states rights bullshit. Anyway, the so called Great Emancipator was a far cry from what he is seen as. He never gave a damn about freeing slaves, his actions were plain opportunistic. He said he would preserve the Union without freeing a slave and don’t believe in rights for black people. He also planned to put freed black people on Liberia as an attempt to recolonize em. Another thing, the 13th Amendment never fully abolished slavery as slavery could be legal as a crime, which was instrumental in creating mass imprisonment and the influx of private and state prisons. He also ordered the massacre of Dakota Indians after an uprising by them. Racist as hell. The Great Lie. That’s what he is.

17) Andrew Johnson - One of the worst presidents ever, if you can say that as all presidents ain’t shit, Johnson’s incompetence and his attempts to veto any rights for black people got him impeached. He wanted to re-slave and recolonize black people (he tried to vetoed the 13th and 14th Amendment). He also owned slaves, which probably caused his thinking. Good riddance to bad rubbish.

18) Ulysses S Grant - Even though he pushed hard on the Reconstruction, improved rights for black people, Jews, and Natives, and criminalized the KKK, he was a corrupt fool who had a number of corruption cases that weakened the Reconstruction. He also tried to claim Santo Domingo (now Dominican Republic). He was the last president known to own chattel slaves, although he freed his, despite his family still owning slaves.

19) Rutherford B Hayes - He was the final nail to the coffin of the Reconstruction as he pulled troops out of the South, letting the racist as fuck Southern Democrats take over. This intensified racial violence and discrimination against black people such as lynchings and voter suppression. He was the one that created the Dawes Act, that enforced assimilation on Indigenous people and them losing any ownership of their land. He also sent troops crushed a railroad strike (the Great Railroad Strike of 1877). Did nothing about the corruption, labor conditions, and wealth inequality during the Gilded Age.

20) James A Garfield - Another short one. Nothing great. Moving on.

21) Chester A Arthur - Signed a law targeting Chinese immigrants and citizens as they were blamed for low wages and unemployment. Did nothing about the rampant anti-blackness going on. He also continued the assimilation policies of Indigenous people and the theft and blockade of their land. Also did nothing about what’s going on during the Gilded Age.

22 & 24) Grover Cleveland - Did nothing about the poor labor conditions of the workers and let capitalists multiply their wealth while letting workers suffers. Sent troops to quell the Pullman Strike, which resulted in the imprisonment of socialist Eugene Debs. Also did nothing about the anti-blackness in this country. Continued anti-Chinese policies. A fave among libertarians. I can see why.

23) Benjamin Harrison - Let the Wounded Knee Massacre Happened with many Lakota Indians being massacred in order to destroy the Ghost Dance movement. Also supported assimilation of Natives. Supported the colonization of Hawaii after the Kingdom was overthrown by American missionaries and plantation owners. Also did nothing about anti-blackness and the robber barons. Continued anti-immigration policies.

25) William McKinley - Now we’re getting into the big imperialism. Finally colonized Hawaii as a part of the US. Took Puerto Rico, Cuba, Philippines, and Guam from Spain, transitioning power from one colonizer to another one. He also sent troops to China to quell the Boxer Rebellion, which resisted cultural imperialism and colonialism from missionaries and other colonial interests. Also did nothing about anti-blackness.

26) Theodore Roosevelt - Progressives favorite president was a big ass imperialist. But Square Deal, trust busting… yeah he regulated businesses and put out many social reforms, but as an attempt to quell any revolutionary changes. Anyway, increased military presence in the Philippines leading into the Philippine-American War, which was responsible for the deaths of many Filipinos. Expanded the Monroe Doctrine, which the US the right to intervene in Latin America aka imperialism. Took control of Cuba after briefly giving it independence and Puerto Rico, Dominican Republic, and Panama too. Targeted anarchists, socialists, poor and disabled immigrants, and sex workers with another anti-immigration law. He okayed the discharging of black soldiers after they were accused of Brownsville Raid, ya know black people were accused of harming wite people at the time and were killed because of it. Never cared about black people. Hated Natives and once said a good Indian is a dead one. After his presidency, he killed around 11,000 animals that were Indigenous to Africa for a fucking Museum. So much for being progressive.

27) William Howard Taft - Didn’t care about black lives. Sent troops to try to stop the Mexican Revolution as he was a supporter of Mexican dictator Porfirio Diaz. He also planned a coup against Nicaragua.

28) Woodrow Wilson - A despicable name who is another fave of progressives. An extremely racist motherfucker. He support segregation, banned black people from Princeton when he was President over there, and was pro-wite supremacist and played the pro KKK film Birth of a Nation in the White House. He also occupied Veracruz, Mexico and tried to quell the Mexican Revolution which also include the attempted capture of revolutionary Pancho Villa. He also invaded Dominican Republic and Haiti, the former led to the rise of DR dictator Rafael Trujillo. He got the country into WWI, getting the country into a war that had nothing to do with it. He started the Espionage Act and the first Red Scare which targeted socialists, anarchists, unionists, and anyone who opposed the war. Continued Teddy’s anti immigration policies. A fucking fascist is what he was.

29) Warren G Harding - Another corrupt motherfucker. Privatization of multiple industries and implemented tax cuts for the rich and corporations. Let wage cuts happened and oil preserves be control by private oil companies. Let corrupt officials in his government. Possible member of the KKK, and barely did anything for black lives. He was a terrible person.

30) Calvin Coolidge - Continued the capitalist policies of Harding. Refused farm subsidies. Didn’t do nothing for the black victims in the Great Mississippi Flood and let em suffer. Signed an anti-immigration bill. Sounds like something familiar that would happen almost 80 years later.

31) Herbert Hoover - While he’s known for his mishandling of the economy which was the final nail to the coffin that led to the Great Depression, he refused to sign any anti-lynching laws, favoring the interests of the Southern whites. He also put black victims of the aforementioned flood in poor conditions in the camp during his Vice-Presidency.

32) Franklin D Roosevelt - Here’s another progressive fave I’m gonna expose. But muh New Deal and Second Bill Rights… I don’t give a shit. The New Deal existed to save capitalism and not to radicalize the country. Most progressive reforms existed to preserve and maintain the capitalist system. Also, black people faced restriction and discrimination from the New Deal programs. Refused to sign an anti-lynching bill. Supported dictatorships in Latin America like Batista (Cuba), Trujillo (DR), and Somoza Sr.(Nicaragua). Let banks finance Hitler. Only went to WW2 after Japan attacked Pearl Harbor because he froze trade towards Japan, which was a huge mistake trading with Japan. His administration planned creation for nuclear weapons. Put anyone of Japanese descent into concentration camps. Some progressive.

33) Harry S Truman - Committed one of the worst crimes in history. Nuked Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which was responsible for many deaths over there. Help kickstart McCarthyism in America, one of the most repressive eras in America that targeted any radical leftist and even caused the downfall of some of them (ie Paul Robeson). Not only that, he’s instrumental in starting the wide support for brutally oppressive dictators and overthrowing popular leaders that would follow later presidents. He also help form the CIA. Supported Chiang’s repressive KMT government in Manila China and Taiwan (ROC). Helped in trying to stop revolutions in Greece and Turkey. Started the Korean War, which resulted in the death of multiple Koreans, the destabilization of DPRK (North) and the rise of multiple dictators in ROK (South). He also flirted with being a member of the KKK prior to being a president.

34) Dwight D Eisenhower - The OG of hardcore American imperialism. He continued the McCarthyist policies of targeting socialists and communists and let COINTELPRO exist, which was responsible for the repression and destruction of many black and brown revolutionary movements and targeted other black and brown activists. He also used McCarthyist policies against LBGT people. He supported repressive dictators like Francisco Franco (Spain), Chiang Kai Shek (ROC), Ngo Dinh Diem (South Vietnam) and Fulgencio Batista (Cuba). Supported France in maintaining control of their colony of Vietnam, and suppressing the Viet Minh revolution led by Ho Chi Minh, sparking the Vietnam War. Let the CIA plan coups in Iran and Guatemala, resulting in the power of the Shah Reza Pahlavi and the rise of military dictatorships in Guatemala respectively. Ordered the assassination of Congolese prime minister Patrice Lumumba. Tried to overthrow Cuba after Batista was overthrown by Fidel Castro and the Cuban Revolution. He was too chickenshit to come to Castro after he went to the US. Equally loved by liberals and conservatives and I see why.

35) John F Kennedy - Not good ole JFK! He was set up the USA! But Jack got blood on his hands too. He fully got the country into Vietnam, supporting South Vietnam and continuing one of the most unpopular and deadly wars, a war that existed to maintain colonialism and imperialism in SE Asia. Not only that, he tried to overthrow Castro in the Bay of Pigs invasion, which almost got the country involved in a nuclear war with the USSR and Cuba. Also planned a coup in Iraq, which resulted in the Ba’athists taking. Not only all of this, he let the COINTELPRO spy, target, and harass black activists, including Martin Luther King Jr., who Kennedy pretended to be his friend. He played a lot of civil rights and Black Power activists. Malcolm X saw through his game and critiqued the March of Washington as a farce to control any black activism and radicalism. He’s also instrumental in the long term goal of the Democrats and liberals manipulating black people to support him. So much of him being a good president.

36) Lyndon B Johnson - The fucking manipulator. Continued the repressive policies of the COINTELPRO and Mccarthyism. Even tho they also targeted (via spying, wire tapping, and harassment) anti-war and communists and socialists, their main targets were the black activists and radicals. He targeted MLK after he spoke out against the Vietnam War and caused his breakdown, some friend he was. He also let the COINTELPRO target Malcolm X, SNCC, the Black Panther Party, and other black radical movements. He perfected the manipulation of black people to the Dems and liberals, and said once I’ll have those n***ers voting Democrats for next 200 years. He only passed out Civil Rights Acts and anti-poverty programs to quell any revolutionary movements, like all liberals do. Intensified the Vietnam War by sending more troops over there, resulting in more casualties and massacres over there like the My Lai Massacre. Started the bombing of Cambodia. Aided Israel in their Six Day War against Egypt, Syria, and Jordan. Let the CIA overthrow democratically elected and revolutionary governments in countries like Indonesia, Congo, Ghana, Greece, and Brazil, replacing them with military dictatorships. Supported repressive dictators around the world, including the aforementioned. Got the CIA to capture popular Argentine revolutionary Che Guevara, which resulted in his execution by the Bolivian military. He also increased the power of the police after multiple riots happened as a response against racism and police brutality. A true champion for liberals.

37) Richard Nixon - Oh hell yeah! I got so much dirt on this motherfucker. A legit criminal and tyrant. Continued McCarthyism and the COINTELPRO through violent suppression, harassment, wiretapping, and spying. Suppressed revolutionary and anti-war movements, including Kent State, SNCC, the Chicago Seven, Black Panthers, and Black Liberation Army. The destruction of the BPP by the FBI, CIA, and police happened during his presidency. Started the War of Drugs which criminalized black people (his intention). First president to fully use the Southern Strategy, which appealed to Southern wites by promising state rights to them, which is wite power in smaller steps. Continued the War in Vietnam, which also includes invading and bombing Laos and Cambodia (which also includes a coup) respectively. However, he withdrew troops from Vietnam in 73. Sent arms to Iran, Israel, and Saudi Arabia. Let the CIA continue overthrowing democratically elected and revolutionary governments, which includes overthrowing democratically elected Chilean president Salvador Allende and replacing with a repressive military junta led by Augusto Pinochet. He also supported and defended Pakistan in their war against Bangladesh, which includes a genocide against them. He also military supported dictators around the world like the Philippines, Greece, aforementioned Chile, Spain, Congo (Zaire), and Haiti. He got exposed by the Watergate scandal that forced him to resign. Too bad that never got indicted for his crimes.

38) Gerald Ford - Really nothing but a transitional president from Nixon to Carter. However, he did pardon Nixon for his crimes. Along with that, he did got involved in the Angola Civil War, supporting the neo-colonial and right wing forces over there. Supported Indonesia in their war against East Timor. Yeah he was just there.

39) Jimmy Carter - He maybe seen as an incompetent president, but Carter got blood on his hands too and is another one liberals love to praise because of his post-presidency. Anyway, he funded the muhadjeen in Afghanistan, an Islamic fundamentalist paramilitary group that is a predecessor to many Islamist organizations like Al-Qaeda and ISIS, to overthrow communist rule over there. He also stood by the barbaric Khmer Rouge of Cambodia. He said his foreign policy supported human rights, but that was a lie as he supported dictators like Mobutu Sese Seko of Zaire (Congo), the Shah Pahlavi and Muhammad Zia ul-Haq of Pakistan. He also didn’t say shit about the repressive nature of the countries he supported. He also expanded the War of Drugs. So much for him being a humanitarian.

40) Ronald Reagan - Beloved by the right, somewhat loved by the liberals, The king of neoliberalism, McCarthyism, and American imperialism. There’s so much I gotta say about this fuckface cuz he got so much blood on his hands. His neoliberal Reaganomics is the most toxic economic system ever. He made cuts to a majority social services, and created a huge fucking wealth gap that increased the wealth of the capitalists and bourgeoisie. Not only this, black and brown suffered the most from Reaganomics as poverty increased in black and brown communities. Cut multiple civil rights bills and acts, and used the Southern Strategy to a tee. Coined the term welfare queen (which is racist, classist, and sexist) to rum up fear and hostility against welfare recipients. Expanded the War of Drugs that continued the constant incarceration of black people. Speaking of that, he let CIA plant drugs (cocaine) in the black neighborhoods, while him and his wife told people to say no to drugs. Went to Bitburg, Germany to celebrate the memory of SS officers. Let thousands of people die from AIDS and didn’t give a damn about gay rights. Also, during his time as Governor of California, he ordered a witch hunt against communists, which included Angela Davis, and worked the NRA and police/FBI to disarm and crush the BPP respectively. Now to his imperialist record. His Reagan Doctrine existed to crush revolutionary movement and replace em with barbaric and despotic governments/extremists. A major example was his increased funding of the muhadjeen, going where Jimmy Carter left off, and y’all know how well that went when they took over Afghanistan. People forget (tbh ignore) that these Islamist extremists were funded by the US (esp the CIA). Not only that, he supported Saddam Hussein (he was an US ally) and gave him military weapons, which he used to kill the Kurds in Iraq. Funded the Contras to quell the Sandista revolution through trafficking cocaine (via the CIA) and selling arms to Iran. Almost got into a war with Lebanon, but got the troops out after he realized he fucked up with his plan. Invaded Grenada to destroy the remnants of the New Jewel Movement and replace with a puppet leader. He also support neocolonial paramilitary forces in countries like Angola, Afghanistan (muhadjeen), Cambodia, Nicaragua (the Contras), and El Salvador. Supported repressive military dictators of the likes of Pinochet (Chile), Mobuto (Zaire/Congo), Baby Doc (Haiti), Suharto (Indonesia), and Rios Montt (Guatemala) like other presidents. He also gave Baby Doc Duvalier and Ferdinand Marcos (the Philippines) refuge after revolts against them happen. Supported and defended apartheid South Africa. Bombed the fucked outta Libya and let a US Navy Ship blow up a plane full of Iranians. Yeah an inspiration of all spectrum of the right and a bit of the center. I see why. Some of this sounds similar to a latter president, more on that later.

41) George HW Bush - Son of a Nazi financier (Prescott Bush’s banks funded Nazis), father of a war criminal, Papa Bush perfectly bridged the gap from one dirty presidency to another. Stood by and supported Reagan during his tenure as VP. His campaign showed a picture of black criminal Willie Horton as a smear campaign against the other presidential candidate as they said that he is soft of crime and oppose the death penalty for criminals like Horton. Yeah, the type of shit that wite ppl pull, using a black face to advocate the death penalty, like they do, and associating blackness with crime, like they always do. Went to war with Iraq over it’s invasion of Kuwait, but it was right thing, the UN… please. It happened because the US sees Kuwait as their oil colony. It was a property war as both the US and Iraq saw Kuwait as theirs and it was responsible for the destruction of Iraq. Invaded Panama for drug trafficking, despite the US (via the CIA) doing the same thing and them knowing of it, and put another puppet leader over there. What’s ironic about this that we supported Panama and Iraq and we have them political/financial support and weapons (in the case of Iraq). When the Cold War ended, we stopped supporting em and stood against him just to look good. Also, put troops in Somalia under the guise of humanitarianism just to attempt to colonize it rather than giving it reparations. The theme of military intervention under the guise of humanitarianism would be a recurring theme for other presidents. Signed the toxic NAFTA which was responsible for horrible labor conditions and environmental violations. Targeted rappers (with his VP) like Ice-T and 2pac because of their content. He eventually lost re-election because he wanted families to be less like the Simpsons, even though his policies made the Simpsons look like the Waltons.

42) Bill Clinton - Ugh. Another Democrat who exist to look good and got blood on his hands. He was also a shitty person. During his time as governor of Arkansas, he and his wife made black prisoners take care of and clean up the governor’s mansion with no compensation. Yes, this is slavery. They essentially owned slaves. He was a disgusting predator who sexually assaulted and harassed a number of women, before and after his presidency. His predatory behavior led to his impeachment, which only limit his power. Now his presidency. Used the Southern Strategy to gain wins. Continued and Oked NAFTA. Continued the neoliberal policies that dawned over America. Signed a 1994 Crime which expanded the power of police and prisons and increased the mass imprisonment of black people. During that time, his wife called black boys superpredators. Killed the remaining remnants of the welfare state by forcing recipients to work for their welfare because muh welfare queen, targeting mainly poor/working/Black women. Was behind multiple corruption scandals like Travelgate and Whitewater. Wanted to target Sister Souljah when her outspoken views was misconstrued by the media, and portrayed her a racist and a pot stirrer. He was the one that enforced the immigration laws that would continue in the country that was responsible for restrictive borders, ridiculous immigration laws, and xenophobic attacks and targeting cuz illegal immigration, despite this country founded by illegal theft. Continued the US intervention in Somalia, but when shit got tough, he got em out. Knew about the Rwandan genocide and blocked any assistance of the country. The only reason he didn’t intervene because Rwanda wasn’t seen as profitable. Expanded the powers of NATO (North Atlantic TERRORIST Organization), which was bad. This expansion led to the 1995 and 1999 bombing of Yugoslavian nations (Bosnia and Herzegovina/Yugoslavia respectively), which was another one under the name of humanitarianism. The bombing did nothing but target civilians and bring damage and they didn’t end the conflict. The US protecting Kosovo was essentially them preying on a vulnerable country and making into a puppet state. Sent missiles to attack Iraq, when it didn’t do anything. Attacked a pharmaceutical company in Sudan. He still prove to be a piece os shit after his presidency when him and his wife exploited funds that was meant for Haiti and decided to went after BLM. And he’s labeled the first black president. Da fuck?! Fuck him (and his wife too).

43) George W Bush - Ol Cowboy George. The notorious war criminal himself. The biggest joke ever. Never forget, most of the whole world hated him because of his actions. Lets begin, but first… let’s talk about 9/11. No conspiracies please, even tho enjoy making jokes about it. What happened on 9/11 wasn’t because they hated our freedoms. That’s Grade A pure bullshit. 9/11 was a result of our toxic foreign policy and the fact that who did was our Frankenstein. What I mean? Never forget, OBL and his Al Qaeda buddies, and the whole fucking Taliban were created by the US. The US (like always, with the help of the CIA) made these people by shipping weapons to them and training/teaching them with a reactionary ideology cuz Cold War and we let em overrun Afghanistan. We also turned against em when the Cold War ended, and they turned against and attacked us when we kept fucking with the Middle East. Therefore, this was a case of chickens roosting. Saddam was also an US ally, but when we found him useless and fucking with our oil colony Kuwait, we turned against him. This led to the War on Terrorism (Afghanistan and Iraq) which was bullshit because it was foolish to wage war against terrorism when we have funded and supported terrorisn, we created these terrorists in the first place, war is terrorism itself, there was no WMD (it was an excuse just to kick out ol Saddam), and the fact that anyone can be a terrorist. Ironically enough, the USA had done nothing about the terrorists in their own country like the KKK (oh wait! They’re wite). These wars are responsible for the death of multiple Afghan and Iraqi lives and this wasn’t a fight for freedom. It was for imperialism. It was for resources, especially oil (in the case of Iraq). The theme of these wars are humanitarianism, and lemme tell you this, there’s nothing humanitarian about war because war is violence and profit. Afghanistan was led by a corrupt puppet leader, while Iraq fell into despair which led to the rise of ISIS. PS, his buddy Dick Cheney’s corporation profit ire from Iraq. Not only all of this, this began the targeting and discrimination of (Black and Brown) Muslims, Africans, (S, SE, and W) Asians, and some Latinos and Sikhs. This included racial profiling, xenophobia, racism, wiretapping, violence/harassment against said groups, and toxic policies such as the Patriot ACT, TSA, and NSA. Targeted dissidents and Started the drone program which would be carried by his successor. Bush was the match that sparked the fire of things like racial profiling, police brutality, anti-immigration policies, xenophobia (ICE started under his rule), racism including anti-blackness, ultra-nationalism/patriotism, McCarthyist/Espionage like acts, imperialism, the rise of US neo-fascism, and neoliberalism. Continued neoliberal policies which would later result into austerity, which would spark the rise of wite supremacist/new fascist groups and increase economic inequality. While he did say it wasn’t his intention to cause all of this, but he let it happen. Let black people (esp in NOLA) drown and suffer under Katrina, and how he dealt with it? Sending the Natl Guard on them out there like a bunch of rabid dogs. Also planned to overthrow Cuba, Iran, Syria, N Korea (DPRK), and Venezuela and was possibly behind the coups of Haiti and Venezuela. Started the No Child Left Behind Act, which pushed more state testing and in schools, that hurted schools, teachers, and student, and it was low key push for school privatization. Now, he has a library, painting pictures, and condemning racism, despite his war/imperialist crimes, sparking racism and xenophobia, and institutional racism. Aye, he was fucking horrible and he (and the libs) are trying so hard to erase that and make himself look good.

44) Barack Obama - (Please refrain from using terms like Uncle Tom if you ain’t nonblack. That’s a black people’s thing) Aye, I use to support him so much, and I will defend him from wite supremacy (his right wing critics were fucking horrible), but that doesn’t excuse the fact that he was a successor to Bush. If Bush was the match, then Obama was the fuel to the flames of neoliberalism and imperialism. He continued the war of Afghanistan and took forever to end Iraq. He started a war with Libya and Syria which contributed to the destruction of them. He also funded terrorists to take care of that, which includes ISIS and Al-Qaeda, that led to Syria almost being taken over by ISIS, and Libya being toppled and overran by extremists and reviving the enslavement of black Africans. Expanded the drone program and drone the shit outta the Middle East and Africa, killing multiple people, including women and children. Also, invaded Mali for its resources and almost backed up the Ukraine coup (which was led by Neo-Nazis). Had thoughts of overthrowing Iran, Venezuela, and DPRK. Let Killary Clinton into his administration and she backed him in the wars of Syria and Libya. She was also behind the coups of Egypt and Honduras and the destabilization of countries like Venezuela and Haiti. Anyway, Obama, like the previous ones, continued neoliberal policies and austerity cuts, which added fuel to wite supremacist/neo-fascist groups and increased economic inequality. Continued the Espionage Act/McCarthyist like policies. While posing as a civil rights president, he didn’t do shit about the massive police violence against black people (especially LBGTQs, women, children, and the underclass) and trans people especially trans women, didn’t do nothing about the continued anti-blackness, racism, anti-LBGTQ-ism, Islamophobia, and xenophobia in this country, and let anti-immigrant policies happen including mass deportations and the ICE. Let the near privatization of public schools happen. Signed a deal with the TPP, which was a continuation of NAFTA. His policies and actions were the final nail in letting the next president. He’s still trying to make himself look good to this day. Another liberal with blood on his hand. However, if McCain won, he would’ve done the same thing as in whatever Bush did, the next person can do better.

45) Donald Trump - The final one for now. Ahhh!!!! What the fuck happened? I shoulda knew this damn bastard would win with how much the previous presidents destabilized this country. Fascism is what happens when the wite cishet patriarchal capitalist structure is in a dire situation. Trump is a fascist, no if, and, or buts. He’s a capitalist trying to appeal to working class as in I’m on your side (populism), like a fascist. He targeted non-Christians and nonwites and planned to take care of him, like a fascist. Ultranationalist and ultra patriotic, like a fascist. Uses racism, sexism, xenophobia, and anti-LBGT-ism, like a fascist. Uses a hell lotta cult of personality, like a fascist. Supports privatization of services and industries, like a fascist. Anyway, Trump in his beginning has done so much. Centers his presidency on racism, sexism, xenophobia, and Islamophobia, and let his cult followers attack nonwites. He has been exposed as a sexual predator who has sexually assaulted a number of women, including a 13 yo girl and his ex-wife. He also been exposed of discriminating against black tenants in the 70s, and supported a conviction against four black boys and a Latino one after they were accused of raping a wite woman jogger, ya know the same fucking cases where black men were accused of raping WW. Hires a wite supremacist and someone who’s pro-privatization of public education into his office (Steve Bannon and Betsy DeVos respectively, although the former is gone). He also hired Mike Pence as VP, who’s horribly homophobic and has ties with toxic lobbies like ALEC and the Koch Bros. Plan to privatize and cutting many services and industries. His whole administration was full of capitalists and bigots. Tried to abolish Obamacare and cut funding to it. Dropped a huge bomb on Afghanistan and ordered air strikes at Syria and had thoughts of invading Venezuela and Iran. Defended wite supremacists and Neo-Nazis when they attacked and called em fine SOBs. Ordered a Muslim Ban and amped up anti-immigration legislation, including the rise of the ICE, targeting of brown and black immigrants, deportation of said immigrants, and separation and detainment of immigrant children. Targeted NFL players who kneeled during the Anthem, and attempted to make it illegal. Let police continue with their brutality, and stood by them, and released a Blue Lives Matter Bill, that increased their power. Oked the Keystone Pipeline, which would build through protected and sacred lands, including Indigenous land. Let the FBI target black radicals and BLM, under the excuse of black identity extremists, despite the issue of wite supremacists and Neo-Nazis and their shit. Did nothing about the rampant racism, sexism, anti-LBGTQ-ism, xenophobia, and Islamophobia, both individualized and institutional. Also, his cult followers are fucking terrible. I’m gonna stop there for now. Anyway, Trump is a terrible human being and he needs to be off social media. He deserves to be hated, fuck what you say, and I’m tired of his ass kissers making excuses for him. As long he stays, fascism remains, and the libs and conservatives are keeping him there.

So that’s it for now.

#allpresidentsarebastards

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pass-the-bechdel · 5 years

Text

Marvel Cinematic Universe: Captain America: The First Avenger (2011)

Does it pass the Bechdel Test?

No.

How many female characters (with names and lines) are there?

One (7.69% of cast).

How many male characters (with names and lines) are there?

Twelve.

Positive Content Rating:

Three.

General Film Quality:

Excellent! Full of as much heart as action, the film takes on the complicated task of delivering a Captain America for the modern world, avoiding jingoism while also acknowledging the origins which brought the comic-book hero into being. Against the odds (and my personal expectations), it is a sound success, and I consider it easily the best of the Marvel franchise’s early films.

MORE INFO (and potential spoilers) UNDER THE CUT:

Passing the Bechdel:

Obviously, that didn’t happen.

Female characters:

Peggy Carter.

Male characters:

Johann Schmidt.

Steve Rogers.

James ‘Bucky’ Barnes.

Howard Stark.

Abraham Erskine.

Arnim Zola.

Gilmore Hodge.

Chester Phillips.

Brandt.

Fred Clemson.

Timothy Dugan.

Nick Fury.

OTHER NOTES:

I’m mad about the Hydra symbol being the coolest insignia in this franchise. I would wear the heck outta some Hydra merchandise, if it weren’t for the, y’know, evil Nazi fascism stuff.

I love little Steve. They pulled that off so well.

I don’t love that Peggy’s introduction revolves around her being disrespected by a guy and then knocking him on his ass. It feels far too prescribed, too Strong Woman Cliche, so expected as to be rendered essentially meaningless. It implies that these are the most important things about the character - she’s a woman and she’s tough - and it panders to the sexist perspective by requiring Peggy to ‘prove herself’ upon arrival in a traditionally-masculinised way. They could have handled this introduction much better.

Man. This movie has such a good cast. The goodness of this cast has no chill.

“So many people forget that the first country that the Nazis invaded was their own.” This the good shit.

“Go get him! I can swim.” Snort.

Sometimes, when I can’t sleep, ‘Star Spangled Man’ plays over and over again in my head. That’s probably why I can’t sleep.

“Do you...fondue?”

The thing where someone gets hit and they fly off-screen in an exaggerated fashion is never not funny to me.

Characters surviving explosions without a scratch, however, is never not rubbish to me.

A super-soldier is never late, Peggy Carter, nor is he early; he arrives precisely when he means to.

Steve really isn’t very precious about choosing his team: they’re all just Bucky’s friends. He basically just went “ok, show of hands, who loves Bucky Barnes? Good, you guys are with me”. I mean, it’s solid reasoning - he trusts Bucky, and these guys have Bucky’s endorsement, and that’s good enough for Steve. I note that only one of the other guys on the team besides Steve and Bucky is a white American - the other guys are a black American and an Asian-American (and I see you there, recognition of racism against Japanese-Americans which led to their incarceration during the war, etc.), and then there’s a French dude and a Brit. That’s Captain America’s elite team: not all-American, and racially inclusive. I DIG that subtext.

*hisses* why is this whole Natalie-Dormer-mackin’-on-Steve thing even here? It’s a useless contrivance, plus I am extremely displeased at having Peggy being so petty in her jealousy that she actually fires a loaded gun straight at Steve. I sure hope she heard Howard’s explanation about the properties of the vibranium shield, or that she already knew them, because otherwise this is completely outrageous, but even then: what if the shield hadn’t performed as advertised? What if a bullet ricocheted and hit someone else? This is such a dangerous thing to do, and did I mention it is in service of a useless contrivance anyway? Peggy deserves better writing.

Lemme tell ya straight up: I thought I was gonna hate this movie. I mean...it’s Captain America. I expected cloying patriotism, a blandly self-righteous hero, probably some good ol’ war glorification as well. What we got instead was a film that barely even mentioned the good ol’ USA outside of the (explicitly recognised as) propaganda rigmarole that Captain America slogs through - a tool used to excellent effect to acknowledge the character’s history (the comic was created as propaganda during WWII in real life) while also carrying through the idea that what Captain America stands for is something far grander than nationalist fervour - and Steve himself is imbued with unassuming charm, fueled by the strength of his personal convictions but never forcing those convictions upon others in a show of moral grand-standing: an essential facet of the character is that he’ll pursue what he believes to be right regardless of whether anyone else follows him, and he accepts that there are consequences to his actions; he never props himself up with holier-than-thou declarations, he never shames anyone for disagreeing with him, and he never claims any kind of superiority over others (an important distinction when you’re juxtaposed with a Nazi Ubermensch villain). Other characters are inspired by Steve, but the film wisely never positions them as if they were weak or wavering without the symbol of Captain America to unite them: the war is a grindhouse, and they know the only way out is through. No one is fighting because they perceive battle as a great and noble cause, nor because they are righteously empowered; they fight because their enemy is too terrible to let pass, and there is no room for glory in that.

I can (and will) still quibble about the representation of war in the film: while the fact that it is sparingly shown does help to avoid the glorification of violence and death in battle, it also undersells the horror of war, which runs the risk of looping back around to glorification by making it all into fun skirmishes with faceless goons and glow-weapons. Additionally, Captain America clashes exclusively with Hydra and its operatives; while Red Skull severs his ties with Hitler early on through the welcome disintegration of a few Nazi representatives, the film cannot entirely distance itself from Hitler’s legacy (which Red Skull actively takes on for himself), and I take long-standing issue with anything which uses Nazis as an evil catch-all but fails to acknowledge and respect the victims of their reign. After Steve’s heroic nose-dive in the Valkyrie ends Hydra’s campaign, the film cuts to celebrations of the end of the war; they don’t actually state that it was Captain America who just defeated the Nazis by taking down Red Skull (despite the fact that Hydra’s soldiers with their fancy tech and also, um, actual-Hitler and his armies, are all still out there), but the implication is there, and it feels a mite bit insensitive, to say the least. I do think it is better that Steve has his own corner of the war to fight, rather than taking on the whole thing and battling actual-Hitler in the end (now THAT would be insensitive), but I do wish that the destruction and evil of the war at large were the backdrop of the film, rather than the comparatively sanitised Hydra operation that we see.

In this context, the weight of the war and the toll that it takes on the psyche of those suffering through it is carried almost exclusively by Bucky Barnes, who emerges from the unseen tortures of a Hydra work camp changed, his buoyant enthusiasm from the beginning of the film subdued, locked up behind the shattered look in his eyes and the fragile way he carries himself, determined to see this thing through to the end so that he can fall apart later, if he makes it that far (he doesn’t). Fandom has made much of Sebastian Stan’s understated performance, and with good reason: despite a minimal number of scenes there is a richness of detail in Bucky’s character, and as the emotional sinking ground for tragedy - both as the personification of the war’s devastation, and as a personal loss for Steve Rogers - Bucky’s narrative importance belies the amount of time dedicated to him in-text. Fandom has also made a strong point - with which I agree entirely and for which I will not pretend to take unique credit for noticing - that despite expectation, Bucky’s archetypal function in the film is not as the Hero’s Sidekick; he is, in actuality, fulfilling the cliche of the Love Interest, not in competition with Peggy Carter but instead of; Peggy, likewise, is not an archetypal Love Interest at all, because she’s the Hero’s Sidekick.

I am entirely of the opinion that this is an essential part of what makes Peggy - the sole named female character in town - work out so well, against the odds. As Steve’s sidekick, Peggy’s primary functions are to support him and give him advice; the sidekick is traditionally a rational role, someone who keeps the hero grounded and helps them to make the right choices, especially when they are emotionally conflicted. The Love Interest compels the hero’s emotions, sometimes (often) framed as driving them to acts of recklessness, to joyous heights, and depressive lows. Bucky is Steve’s damsel in distress; Steve is compelled to act when he learns that Bucky has been captured by the enemy, action which is tempered and assisted by Peggy’s influence and which ultimately brings Captain America out of propaganda mode to practice what he has preached, and be the soldier Steve always hoped to be. When Bucky falls, Peggy is there to talk to Steve, as a friend, and help him stop wallowing and concentrate his grief into the resolve which carries him through the climactic confrontations of the film’s final act. I’m not going to argue that Steve wanted to join the army just to be with Bucky (presumably that was a factor to some extent, but to call it the primary motivator would be to ignore the value set which made Steve into Captain America in the first place), nor that he was willing to sacrifice himself in the end because Bucky was gone (Steve’s mourning for Bucky certainly played a role in his mental state at the time, but ultimately, bringing down the Valkyrie was a practical choice, not an emotional one), but undeniably, Bucky was either integrally or tangentially attached to all of Steve’s major decisions across the film, as is common for a Love Interest, whereas Peggy consistently filled a support-and-guidance role, as any good sidekick should.

This is not to imply, by any measure, that Peggy can’t or shouldn’t be seen as a viable (lower case) love interest (or that Bucky’s time as a hero’s sidekick somehow doesn’t count as what it is); actually, I think that both character’s relationships with Steve benefit from being framed in this switched fashion. Bucky’s lifelong friendship with Steve comes across stronger and more meaningful due to the emotional pitch, allowing it to resonate as something deeply significant to Steve despite the limited exposure we have to it in action - extra important considering that Bucky is also fulfilling that sacrificial-character role. For Peggy, the fact that she is presented as a love interest but coded as a Hero’s Sidekick is even more important in its effect: since she is the only woman around, we have been taught by approximately All Media Ever to perceive her as the Love Interest from the second she steps on screen, and with that perception we are also encouraged to devalue her character as essentially existing for no other purpose than to be an attractive female prize for the Manly Male Hero to win by story’s end. By reinforcing Peggy as a friend to Steve, we subvert the expectation that she has no real function and/or that her personality is irrelevant, because narrative coding has taught us that sidekicks (almost exclusively male) matter, they have things to say and their influence on the hero is meaningful. Whether they are stalwart sidekicks, or bumbling fools, comedic, or secretly-insidious, a sidekick should be noted, because they’re a lot more likely to have something plot-relevant going on than a boring old Love Interest. Being presented as a helpful, sympathetic presence in Steve’s life who also Has Her Own Shit Going On allows Peggy to meet Steve on more even ground, and her interactions with him are not built around being romantically or sexually available: by having a working relationship built on a foundation of understanding friendship rather than attractive chemistry, the development of feelings between the characters comes across more as extraneous and organic, rather than a prescribed cliche. It still is a prescribed cliche, but it’s not one that compels Steve to do dumb stuff or that undermines Peggy’s relevance as a person in her own right, and that makes it a much more palatable romance than what we usually get.

This is also why that idiotic ~jealousy~ contrivance I flagged earlier is so out of place - I mean, it’s out of place because it’s idiotic, it has no impact on the story in any way and its an insult to the characters and I don’t know why it exists or why they kept it in the final cut of the film because it’s asinine rubbish, but it’s also out of place because it approaches Peggy as a Love Interest, scorned and emotionally lashing out, an attempt to generate Love Interest drama where it has no place in the movie, for the characters as the people that they are, with the established dynamic that they have, or in the context of their situation. Throwing a misunderstanding and some hurt feelings on top of a relationship which has worked refreshingly well thus far because of the honest and open conversations the characters have shared is utterly tone-deaf, and it’s one black mark on what is otherwise a shockingly strong and tonally-consistent film. She may be all alone in the movie, but I will happily argue that Peggy is the best, most-rounded female character in the MCU at this early stage, and she’s playing across from an eminently worthy leading man in Chris Evans’ charmingly-sincere Steve Rogers. The supporting cast is there - Seb Stan, of course, but also Stanley Tucci! Tommy Lee Jones! HUGO WEAVING! - being wonderful and engaging across the board, and there are no weak links (except Natalie Dormer, but that’s not her fault, and at least the misstep is brief and POINTLESS so that it doesn’t taint the rest of the film). Captain America: The First Avenger may not be absolutely perfect - nothing is - but it is a great ride, sometimes surprisingly nuanced, sometimes intriguingly subversive even while it plays straight with the expectations of its genre. I went into my first viewing of the film just hoping it wouldn’t make me mad, and I gotta tell ya: I ain’t mad at all. As far as I’m concerned, this is the platonic ideal of superhero films.

#Captain America: The First Avenger #MCU #Marvel Cinematic Universe #Bechdel Test #female representation

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i-writeandread-blog · 6 years

Text

Wonderland - Chapter 6

Jared, thank you for an incredible night. You were right, living this fantasy was worth it. I'll never forget how it felt to be in your arms. I'm sorry that it has to be this way. Maybe we will cross paths again, perhaps in another life.

-Ali

I read and reread the note a dozen times. She left sometime in the middle of the night after I was so sure she was mine to keep. Waking up alone wasn't unusual for me, but it didn't lessen the pain that I felt in my chest. I've always had good intuition, but Ali muddled my vision, made me weak and unable to see what was right in front of me.

I crumble the note up and try to forget her. I proceed to go through the motions of a typical day. I shower, brush my teeth, throw on whatever is clean, eat a bowl of Muesli, then go into the studio. We are desperately trying to finish our latest album that I just recently decided should be called America, and our label is pressuring us into an early spring release. I've pushed the date as much as I can and we finally agreed on April.

As soon as I sit down my phone begins ringing. Most of the calls today will be about securing venues in Europe. With the album deadline looming over our head, we are now working out upcoming tour dates to support the release. I look at the phone and decide it is a call that I can skip taking. I think to myself that it is probably a good thing that Ali left. I am much too busy to even think about a relationship. This is the reason I've stayed single for so long.

The phone rings again, this call I have to take and I push my thoughts away. After an hour on the phone tying up loose ends, Tomo walks in ready to work. Shannon won't be coming in today as he has been dealing with severe anxiety and depression lately. Something I have been keeping under wraps and closely watching. We don't need another Chris or Chester. I can't think about that though. Shannon is my best friend, my confidant, and the only person in this world that truly understands me. He'll get through this. He always has.

After awhile Jamie and Stevie show up together laughing. I'm not in the mood to joke around or carry on with them. I ignore their banter and try to keep working on this one lyric that doesn't seem quite right. I do five takes, fucking it up each time.

"Jesus, Jay what's gotten into you?" Jamie asks.

"Nothing!"

"Somethings wrong. What is it man? You can tell us." Stevie adds.

"If you two would stop fucking around and acting like god damned three year olds, maybe we could get this line right and I wouldn't be making an ass of myself!" I yell and then storm out of the room, slamming the door behind me.

I walk outside and try to gain some semblance of normal when I spot the bottle of water that Ali left on the chair. Damnit, I can't catch a break. I storm back into the house and head upstairs to my bedroom. I lay down on the bed not exactly knowing what the plan is. I need to be working, but I also feel the need to see Ali. I reach for my phone so I can call her, but I can't bring myself to click on the contacts to ring the number. Instead I hover over the message icon.

I click it and shudder. Immediately, I am faced with the picture I took of her last night. There she is as beautiful as ever. Her strawberry blonde hair appearing golden in the candlelight, her flawless skin, her full and amazing breasts. I had deleted the photo. I needed her to see what I saw, so I sent it. But I needed her to trust me, so I deleted it. I completely forgot that it was still sitting in the text messages to her.

I am instantly hard. How could I not be? She is so stunning. The fact is she looked nothing like most of the women I had been with. She wasn't overly thin, her height and weight prohibited her from ever being a model. She was by all accounts just a really beautiful, yet ordinary girl. And that made her all the more sexy. I wanted her. I needed her. I wanted to feel myself inside of her.

Before I even register what I am doing, my hand is on my dick rubbing and stroking it. I stare at her picture and pull my cock out of my pants. I imagine my hand as her hand. Running it up and down the length of my fully engorged cock.

It feels wrong to be masturbating to her picture, but it's all I have left of her. Her note made it clear that it would never happen again. I push that out of my mind, and continue to work my dick in my hand.

I glide effortlessly up and down my shaft, then turn the focus on massaging the head. I tug hard and rub my thumb over it again and again. The sensation has me breathing deep. I stroke myself a few more times and cum all over my hand. I regain my composure realizing that it isn't enough. It isn't what I desire.

Work is going to have to wait. If I can just see Ali, I know I can reason with her. I know I can convince her to give me a chance. I get off the bed and go into the bathroom to clean up. I wash my hands and take my pants off. I throw them in the dirty clothes pile and change.

I run quickly downstairs and enter the studio. Gone is the laughter and joking from earlier. Everyone is busying themselves on one thing or another. I should apologize, but the perfectionist in me tells me I was justified in my outburst from before. No one stops or even looks at me.

"I uhhh." The apology is stuck in my throat.

"I'm... umm, I'm going out. I'll be back later."

I turn on my heels and head out to the garage. I take a look at the truck and I decide on discretion. I call for a car service and patiently wait. 15 minutes later, a black Cadillac with tinted windows pulls up to the gate and I walk to it, hopping in.

"Hey man, I need you to take me to 3400 Cahuenga Blvd."

He nods. He's an older man and he looks like he's been driving people for many years.

"That's the old Hanna Barbara Studios." He says matter of fact.

"What?"

"The address. It was the Hanna Barbara studios. If you're trying to get to Universal Pictures, that's not the right address."

"No, I'm not working on a film. Just take me there."

I'm not interested in small talk. I remember that the studios he is talking of was converted into apartments a few years back. It's exactly where I want to be headed. It's where Ali will be.

We pull up and I see immediately that it is a gated apartment community. The driver rolls the window down and states his purpose of dropping off a client. Thank God the security at the gate is lacks because we are buzzed in. I get out and realize that I don't know what her apartment number is. I don't even know her last name. I pull my phone out and dial.

"Hey, I need you to do me a favor. Go back into the database from camp and pull up the info for anyone there named Alice."

I know my staff is not going to question my request and I wait patiently for them to answer me.

"There was a Mary Alice Carpenter, Alicia Ericsson, Allen Pinelli. That's all I'm seeing."

None of these sound right, albeit the Mary Alice seemed the closest. I sigh.

"Check again. Look at anyone who maybe changed their package." A few moments pass.

"Ohh here ya go, Mr. Leto. It's Alice Foster. She had signed up initially without the extra day. She was on the updated list. I'm so sorry."

I tell her it's fine and hang up. I walk into the lobby and am greeted by a receptionist. She looks up, blushes, and blurts out a fast "oh my God, Jared Leto. What can we do for you?"

I turn on the charm that is needed. "Yes, I have someone who works for me that lives here. I need to pick up some confidential materials that she has for me. I don't know her apartment number, her name is Alice Foster."

I don't like lying but this could easily become gossip fodder otherwise. I'm sure I could actually find something for Alice to do at the Lab if she did ever need a job. Anyway, it isn't outside the realm of possibility, except I've never went to any of my employees houses for documents. They always come to me. Upon thinking, I realize this white lie is more and more unfeasible and I start to question myself. If I backtrack now it could be worse so I just smile and wait.

"Oh, normally I wouldn't give that information out, but I mean... you're Jared Leto, I guess you wouldn't be here to cause trouble. She lives in apartment 34. I can show you where it's at?"

"No that's okay, thanks so much."

I walk away glad to have my celebrity status if only for these types of instances. I find my heart is pounding fast and am unsure of what will happen when she does open the door. I find 34 easily enough and calm myself down. I shake my head and think about how easy it is for me to stand in front of thousands of people with no hint of nerves but yet this one girl has me anxious.

I decide there is no time like the present and knock loudly on the door. I don't hear anything and there is no indication that anyone is inside. I knock again. And again. Just as I was about to give up I hear her say "I'm coming."

As soon as the door opens her eyes are wide and her mouth drops. She clearly is not expecting to see me and her surprise is evident on her face. I don't even think about my next move. I reach my hands to her cheeks and cradle them.

"Jared, what are you..."

I kiss her with all the passion I can might in that moment and she relaxes into it. I push her back out of the threshold and close the door with my foot. It bangs loudly making her jump. I guide her further into the apartment, not breaking the kiss. My tongue is dancing wildly with hers and I can tell she wants me to continue. We reach something that stops our movement. A wall? A couch? I have no idea, it doesn't matter. I lift my shirt over my head and she does the same with hers.

There's no words spoken, we are both seeking the same thing. I press against her which makes her sway. I pull my pants off along with my underwear and then I grab her ass and pick her up. She's naked except for her skirt and panties. With one arm holding her up and the other hand moving her underwear aside I am able to ease my cock into her. With her help she is bouncing up and down at a decent pace, but I tire more rapidly than I want to admit. I back her up against the nearest wall and continue to pound into her.

Her moans mixed with the delicious feeling of having her wrapped around my cock means I won't last long. I slide out of her and lower her down.

"Bend over." She does what I say.

I spread her ass and admire my view before running my fingers over her clit. She cums right away. I slam my cock into her and hear her shriek. I set a fast pace, assaulting her pussy. Within seconds I cum. I pull out of her and find my clothes. I dress while she stands there in shock. I stop and look into her eyes.

I smile widely, shrug, then say "you lived your fantasy, now I want to live mine."

@nikkitasevoli @msroxyblog @lolainblue @lady-grinning-soul-k @burritoverload @branded-with-a-j @snewsome756

#jared leto #jared leto smut #jared leto fic #jared leto fiction #jared leto fan fiction #jared leto fanfics #jared leto fanfic #wonderland chapter 6

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doomedandstoned · 6 years

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Conan Share Earth-Shaking Set at The Live Room in Belfast (plus Interview!)

~Doomed & Stoned Debuts~

Doomed & Stoned is proud to partner with CONAN and The Live Room Belfast to share this striking live studio performance of the band playing three of their standards: "Total Conquest," "Satsumo," and "Gravity Chasm." This comes just weeks ahead of Conan's new album, 'Existential Void Guardian' (2018), releasing September 14th on Napalm Records.

Start Together Studio recently launched The Live Room Belfast to invite touring bands in for special recordings, usually between 3-5 songs, as a way to capture the intimacy of a live studio performance. This set was recorded, mixed, and edited by Niall Doran, with help from Assistant Audio Engineer Paddy McEldowney, and filmed by Ciara McMullan. The team did a fantastic job of capturing the massive weight of the Liverpool trio's legendary riffs and especially the fearsome caveman vocals of frontman Jon Davis.

This all took place on May 16th, the morning before Conan took the stage with Monolord and Elder Druid at Voodoo Belfast for an unforgettable show. Jon also sat down with Elder Druid guitarist Jake Wallace (who organized our recent Doomed & Stoned in Ireland compilation) for an in-depth interview.

And now, it's time for Jon Davis (guitar/vox), Chris Fielding (bass), and Johnny King (drums) do their thing! Enjoy...

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Conan On Tour

10.08.18 PT - Moledo / Sonic Blast Moledo Fest 11.08.18 UK - Winchester / Boomtown Fair 16.08.18 IR - Galway / The Loft 17.08.18 IR - Cork / Cyprus Avenue 18.08.18 IR - Limerick / Dolans Warehouse 30.09.18 UK - Sheffield / O2 Academy 02.10.18 NL - Eindhoven / Effenaar 03.10.18 DE - Bochum / Rockpalast 04.10.18 DE - Hamburg / Logo 05.10.18 DE - Berlin / Musik & Frieden 06.10.18 PL - Wroclaw / Firlej 07.10.18 PL - Warsaw / Poglos 09.10.18 LT - Vilnius / Rock River Club 10.10.18 LV - Jelgava / Melno Cepuriso Balerija 11.10.18 EE - Tallinn / Sveta 13.10.18 FI - Helsinki / Blow Up 4 Festival 15.10.18 SE - Stockholm / Kraken 17.10.18 SE - Malmo / Plan B 19.10.18 DK - Copenhagen / Stengade 20.10.18 NL - Leeuwarden / Into The Void Festival 07.11.18 AU - Canberra / The Basement 08.11.18 AU - Melbourne / Max Watts 09.11.18 AU - Sydney / Manning Bar 10.11.18 AU - Brisbane / Crowbar 12.11.18 NZ - Wellington / Valhalla 13.11.18 NZ - Auckland / Whammy Bar 16.11.18 RU - Moscow / Aglomerat 17.11.18 RU - St. Petersburg / Zoccolo 23.11.18 UK - Nottingham / The Loft 24.11.18 UK - Leeds / Temple Of Boom 25.11.18 UK - Newcastle / Byker Grave Festival 26.11.18 UK - Glasgow / Audio 27.11.18 UK - Manchester / Rebellion 28.11.18 UK - Coventry / The Arches 29.11.18 UK - Cardiff / Clwb Ifor Bach 30.11.18 UK - Milton Keynes / The Craufurd Arms 01.12.18 UK - London / Boston Music Rooms 02.12.18 UK - Oxford / Buried In Smoke X-Mas Weekender

Interview with Jon Davis of Conan

~By Jake Wallace (Elder Druid)~

Recorded May 16, 2018 in The Live Room Belfast

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Do you enjoy being on the road so much?

Yeah, we do. We have always tried to tour as much as possible, ever since the very beginning. I remember the first time we played outside of Liverpool with Charger in late 2010, and that was a really big thing, something we were pushing for to try and breakout of Liverpool gigs. We almost immediately started getting opportunities to tour and play, and for a year or so it was just weekends here and there, I really loved that. Then we got the opportunity to go touring around Europe. Of course, that brought its own problem then, because we had to get a van, so we invested a bit of money in an old Ford Transit. And I remember spending nearly £600 on installing a cool sound system in there, so that we could listen to Iron Maiden on the road full blast. Like with speakers right by our heads in the bulkhead.

There's something about being on the road, and everyday just looking forward to playing the music that you've written, and the law of seeing the reaction of people who are listening to your music, that you've written sometimes easily, sometimes songs have come together when they've been difficult to write. I've always found it really rewarding to play music, whether I'm on my own, or whether in the practice room with the lads, or whether onstage. And I remember when I was 16, promising myself I would do this, telling myself that I'm gonna play music cause I saw playing music as a long term thing that I would be in charge of. I never really wanted to work for anyone else, I always wanted to do music, and I remember as a shy and less than confident teenager, thinking this is a path that I can grow, and I really enjoy, something I could do for the rest of my life, hopefully.

When I get too old to lug cabs then I'll just pick up an acoustic, and do something with that. So getting on the road has been something we've loved from day one, and now were touring all over the world. This year already, we've had a US of 5 weeks, we've been to Japan for a week, and we've got more far-flung shows lined up for the end of the year, not announced yet, plus European tours, another UK Tour, and we've got an album out soon. I mean it's just -- we love it. I couldn't do anything else now, if I had to have an office job, I'd probably commit suicide, seriously. (laughs)

What make Monolord the perfect match for this tour, and will you be back in Ireland anytime soon?

I mean, we wanted a band as physically attractive as us, and we've finally done it with Monolord. Seriously though, they are a really cool band, they are really good people to tour with, they're professional, friendly, really interesting people, and they come from a different culture to ours, and we enjoy being on the road with them. We're not sharing a van with them, although we have done, we shared a night liner with them in October last year. And we didn't know what to expect then, as we didn't know them very well on that tour, but we got along really well. They're from a different culture but very similar people, at the same time, at the core of what we all are in a love for music, and they put their money where their mouth is, in terms of that. They also like to tour a lot, they release really great music, and they're a really good live act. So when you are choosing a band to tour with, our booking agent puts forward bands and it was really natural, that us and Monolord tour together. It's cool that we get to this joint headliner, switch headliners every night. Yeah, they're just great. I mean, I don't think we've ever toured with a band that we didn't really like, some more than others, obviously, but they are cool as fuck.

I suppose it's an interesting parallel, between both bands having three members, you get to see how another band performs as a three piece as well every night. Tell us about the origin of the band name, and how you guys have created a genre known as 'Caveman Battle Doom.'

Well, Conan could have been called anything, really, from '70s and '80s science fiction movies. You know, Krull was one idea that I had for a band name, very briefly I thought about that. We were called Elf-Beater for a time in our practice room -- that's obviously an awful name so we were never going to use that one long term. Conan just came to me one day, you know, I was going through some personal stuff and I'd had to move into my parent's for a little while, and I started this band up with an old friend of mine who was a bass player, but he played drums a little bit. So we started and we actually wrote and recorded "Satsuma." We had these songs, and we didn't really have a settled name. We were going to call ourselves Pazuzu for a little while or Demon-Demaro, as like a Bebo page in that name. There's some really old demos if you can search for that.

Initially, I wanted it to be a little bit occult-ish type of stuff, and then quickly I realised the lyrics weren't really going in that direction, and we were more about Sword & Sorcery, Science Fiction, and Mythology. Then I remember sitting there one day just kind of thinking, "What do I for a band name?" and then it just came to me. And it stuck, there wasn't really any other bands, well there was an Argentina metal band called Conan, but I think they had expired in the '80s, so there was nothing, no current bands within our scene, with that name, or anything close to it, so we grabbed it with both hands.

How did the name 'Caveman Battle Doom' come about?

The very first show that Conan did in Liverpool was with friends of ours, John McNulty and Gemma McNulty. They weren't married then but they are now, and they're really close of mine, and the band, they recorded at our studio. But they put us on our first ever show, when it was just me and Paul O'Neil, a two piece, and on the poster for that show, I think it said "primitive battle doom," "caveman battle doom," or "caveman doom." The label we were on, fast forward a couple of months, we recorded Horseback Battle Hammer and we released stuff on CD with Aurora-Borealis Records. They used that phrase as part of their sales pitch, on the website, taking it from that first ever poster, and then we thought we’d put that on a t-shirt because it looks cool and it sounds cool and those t-shirts just sold like hot cakes. So we thought, that's a cool name to make a joke about. Obviously, we haven't created our own genre; it would be awesome if we did cause we'd obviously make loads of money then, but it's just a bit of fun.

I know yourself are involved in Black Bow Records and Chris is involved in Skyhammer. How did both of those projects come around? Was it through the band that this became something you were interested in, or what was the path towards a label and a studio?

When I moved into a large house in a rural location, not far from Liverpool/Chester, there was a couple of extra buildings. One of them was a large coach-house and I actually wanted to turn that into a rehearsal studio initially. But it needed a lot of building work, which would have cost a lot of money, so I thought, "I wonder if I could somehow turn this into something that would repay some of that investment? So I'll do a practice room and then I may be able to rent the practice room out to bands." And I thought, "Nah, I don't think that will make generate enough money to make it worthwhile, unless we have people in there all the time." And if we did that, it could just be people in there 2-3 hours at a time and it would be a bit of a nightmare to manage, with it being a home. I then thought of, "Well I could turn it into a recording studio." So I got a couple of quotations for layout and stuff like that. It became obvious that it was going to be really expensive to do. So I thought, "I'll do that and see if I can maybe learn the ropes, I might work in there myself as a recording engineer."

For an extremely short-lived time I recorded bands in their practice rooms. I had one band ask for a refund, so then I thought, "Maybe I need to practice a little bit more." So I was going to set up the studio and decided not to, in the end, when Chris got in touch. Me and Chris had been friends and I'd been asking him what microphones to get and what stuff do I need really to set up a studio. We got chatting then one day out of the blue, and he wrote to me saying he had a really crazy idea and could he ring me. So I said okay. He gave me a call and Chris' idea was that he would come and work in the studio and take over and run it, and I waited a little bit and spoke to my wife. Then in the morning, we chatted again and it became obvious that yeah, it was going to be a great idea. Chris and I started working in the studio from August 2013, the build started in May the same year. We had a company called Studio People do it and they were brilliant.

The first band in there were called Bast and they came into the studio. They didn't have a label, I think they had been in talks with Candlelight Records, but nothing had been agreed at that point. So they recorded this album called Spectres and I said, "Why don't I just release it for you?" It was cool to release the first thing we ever recorded at the studio and that album did quite well. I had to repress it and then another band came in and I released theirs, as well. Then I spoke to Fister and Norska from America, I did a 7-inch split. Before you know it, I'm releasing music from bands all over and it's just snowballed. I didn't expect it to and I didn't really try very hard, to be honest.

I'm still learning all the time about running the label, make mistakes all the time, but I love it and it fits in nicely with the band, fits in nicely with the studio. I'm able to really diversify within music now, because obviously everyone has to earn a living somehow and unless you're very lucky, you can't earn a living from just the band. Some people can, but I can't, so I have to add other things on to make it possible to have a career in music. So that's all I do now, thankfully.

You guys feature heavily in the upcoming documentary 'The Doom Doc' which is due out this summer. How important is a documentary like that in promoting the underground?

I think it's cool, because it engages with people who may not have necessarily have checked out the bands that are being talked about on it. It gives a good overview of what the scene is like and it's something that you can take all round the world. We're friends with Joe Allen, one of the lads who made the documentary, and we played in Japan with him recently and his band Kurokuma. We played a sell-out show in Tokyo in a venue called Earthdom, which hadn't sold out for ten years or so. And part of the reason why it sold out so well was because the documentary was really popular over there. It's really cool, because it's shone a light on the very grassroots level of heavy music in the UK and beyond, and I don't think a documentary has done that really for UK heavy music, the very grassroots level, or I've never seen one that does it. Obviously, in America you have Such Hawks, Such Hounds. It's good that something like that has been made in England.

Finally, you've got the next album 'Existential Void Guardian' coming out in August. What can you tell us about that?

Well, it's all recorded and mastered now. We're just waiting on a video getting done for one of the songs and I'm not going to give any of the songs away, but it's cool, it's heavy as fuck, and we're really proud of it. It's the first album that we've done with Jonny on drums and it was quite a challenging album to make, because if we'd had anyone else on drums I don't think we'd have been able to manage it. But fortunately, Jonny being as professional as he is, he came in after touring with us for one month, just practicing a riff or two here or there in sound checks, and we sat down in the studio and we kind of wrote the drum parts of the album within a week -- or a weekend event, maybe 3-4 days -- so it came together. It wasn't easy, but the fact that it came together at all was a miracle, because we didn't allow ourselves the usual amount of time to write an album. So we pushed ourselves to the limit to get it written and get it to a level that were really happy with, because we wouldn't have released it otherwise. We wrote the drums and the guide guitar in the first few sessions, and then we went back and recorded guitar and bass, and when we got back from Japan we recorded vocals.

It came together in a different way to all the other albums. Maybe Revengeance was a bit like that, but everything up until then was the product of weekly practices, an hour or two every week. So we're kind of getting into this vein now, where we're writing music almost like as soon as we sit down. We get together and we can all play and write music together. It's really cool. I think a lot of that is to do with Jonny, because he's got a particular style that really blend in with what me and Chris are doing. It comes out mid-Sept. Tony Roberts is doing the artwork, as many people would expect, the artwork's cool. And we've got a really good video coming out, it's been done by the same people who shot the "Foehammer" video, and I gave them this idea of what I'd like them to do with this next video, and it's insane. It's everything I would ever want from a Conan video -- it's so sick, it's amazing.

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#D&S Debuts #Conan #Liverpool #England #UK #Doom #Metal #Live #Concert #The Live Room Belfast #Napalm Records #Jake Wallace #Elder Druid #D&S Interviews #Doomed & Stoned

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badbookopinions · 6 years

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Purple Hearts (Front Lines, #3)

By Micheal Grant

This book was brutal. Abso-fecking-lutely brutal. If you don’t like gore, don’t read this. If you aren’t okay with some really, really dark thoughts and scenes, don’t read this. It’s not for everyone.

But if you can stand things like that, this book - and this entire series - is fantastic and deserves to be read.

Micheal Grant doubles down on the horrors of WWII in this one, introducing POV characters only to kill them in their first battle, killing tons of favourites we’ve seen since the first book, and taking all of our protagonists to really dark places. At while it was hard to read sometimes, it was also fantastic.

I’ve always loved the characters and the growth we see them go through in this film. Our heroes Rio, Frangie, and Rainy all start out with big dreams and innocence, even if they want to hide it. Over these three books, they’ve gotten wiser, and stronger, and harder. They’ve also gotten ruthless. While dealing with the war, they also have conflicts with morals, how to go on when everything is so horrible, and what they’re going to do after the war. I liked that at the end, Grant gives us an epilogue and eulogies for each of the characters and their legacies.

Favourite characters:

- Cat Preeling, a badass WWII lesbian

- Hansu Pang for no particular reason except I love him

- All three of our mains, honestly, they’re all fantastic.

- Lupé Camacho, we hardly knew ya but you seemed awesome

- Rosemary Manning, this absurdly tall driver who regularly pats grow men on the head

- Frangie’s love interest, Walter Greene, for having a stroke every time he talked to Frangie

Favourite scenes (a tad spoilery)

- The Cat’s a lesbian scene at the very end

- The return of Sergeant Mackie

- (After a rookie loses his spare socks in a card game with Cat)

“Dammit, Sweetheart, don’t you have more sense than to play poker with Cat Preeling? Have you ever met anyone that’s beat her?” Rio raises her voice to a yell, but one that comes with stone I’d amused exasperation. “Cat!”

Through the air comes a pair of balled-up socks, which Pang snags in midair and then tosses to Chester.

Five out of five suns and a spot on the favourites list.

#favourites #purple hearts #front lines #micheal grant #alternate history #5/5

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shirlleycoyle · 3 years

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The Hard Science of Reincarnation

The nightmares began when Ryan Hammons was 4 years old. He would wake up clutching his chest, telling his mother Cyndi that he couldn’t breathe and that his heart had exploded in Hollywood. But they didn’t live in Los Angeles; Hammons’s family resided in Oklahoma.

A few months prior, in early 2009, Ryan had started talking about going home to Hollywood and pleaded with Cyndi to take him to see his other family. He would yell, “Action!” and pretend to direct films when he played with friends; he knew scenes from a cowboy movie he had never watched; and said a cafe reminded him of Paris, where he had never been. He talked about his child, worldly travels, and his job at an agency where people changed their names. Cyndi didn’t think much of it until the nightmares set in and Ryan started describing death.

Hoping to figure out what he was talking about, Cyndi went to the public library and checked out a few books about Hollywood. She was flipping through one of them when Ryan got excited at a photo from the 1932 movie Night After Night. “Hey Mama, that’s George. We did a picture together,” he told her. “And Mama, that guy’s me. I found me.” George, Cyndi discovered, was George Raft, an actor and dancer who specialized in gangster films in the 1930s and 1940s. She couldn’t track down the name of the man Ryan had identified as himself.

Cyndi had never encountered anything like this before. She was a county clerk deputy who’d been raised in the Baptist church. Her husband, Kevin, was a Muskagee police officer and the son of a Church of Christ minister. She considered them to be fairly ordinary people, but she was starting to wonder if Ryan wasn’t so ordinary. Cyndi contemplated the possibility that this could be a case of reincarnation.

Cyndi contemplated the possibility that this could be a case of reincarnation.

Though she could have looked to one of the religions that hold a belief in reincarnation, such as Hinduism or Buddhism, instead, Cyndi turned to science. In February 2010, she wrote a letter to the Division of Perceptual Studies in the psychiatry and neurobehavioral department at the University of Virginia School of Medicine. Within weeks, they wrote back; Ryan was far from alone in having memories of a past life.

The roots of the Division of Perceptual Studies stretch back to the 1920s, when Dr. Ian Stevenson was growing up in Canada. A sickly child, he contracted bronchitis numerous times and spent hours in bed, devouring his mother’s extensive collection of books on Eastern religions. It was in those pages that he was first exposed to reports of paranormal phenomena. He claimed to possess an unusually good memory and earned his medical degree at McGill University in 1943, before moving to Arizona. He briefly studied biochemistry before moving to psychosomatic medicine, in search of “something closer to the whole human being” than what he had found in biochemistry. From there, he trained in psychiatry and psychoanalysis.

His academic career flourished in the U.S. and he was named chairman of the department of psychiatry at the University of Virginia (UVA) in 1957, while still in his 30s. Around that time, he revived his childhood interest in the paranormal. He dipped his toes into the waters of parapsychology—the study of mental abilities that seem to go against or be outside of the known laws of nature and science—by writing book reviews and articles for non-academic publications like Harper’s magazine.

The most convincing cases, he realized, all involved young children, generally between the ages of 2 and 5, who spoke in great detail of places they had never visited and people they had never met.

In 1958, he won the American Society for Psychical Research’s contest for the best essay on paranormal mental phenomena and their relationship to life after death. His essay, “The Evidence for Survival from Claimed Memories of Incarnations,” looked at 44 cases of individuals around the world who had memories of past lives. The most convincing cases, he realized, all involved young children, generally between the ages of 2 and 5, who spoke in great detail of places they had never visited and people they had never met, or who had birthmarks corresponding to injuries incurred by other people when they faced violent, untimely deaths. Most of those cases were in Asian countries where belief in reincarnation was already high.

Chester Carlson, a wealthy physicist who invented the photocopying process that led to the Xerox Corporation’s founding, read Stevenson’s winning essay. Having become interested in parapsychology through his wife Dorris, Carlson contacted Stevenson with an offer of funding; Stevenson declined. But Stevenson fell deeper into his new research, taking his first fieldwork trip to interview children with past-life memories in India and Sri Lanka in 1961 and publishing his first book on the topic, Twenty Cases Suggestive of Reincarnation, in 1966. He reconsidered Carlson’s offer; the following year, the funding allowed him to step down as chair of the psychiatry department to focus full-time on his reincarnation research—a move that pleased the dean of UVA’s medical school, who was not thrilled with the direction that Stevenson’s work was taking. But when Stevenson stepped down, the dean agreed to let him form a small research division in which to do his curious new research within UVA that still exists today.

Carlson died unexpectedly the next year and left UVA $1 million to support Stevenson’s research. Over the following decades, Stevenson traversed the globe tracking down instances of children with past-life memories, logging an average of 55,000 miles a year and identifying over 2,000 cases. Along the way, he authored more than 300 publications, including fourteen books.

The new research division at UVA was called the Division of Parapsychology—a name forced onto Stevenson, according to Dr. Jim. B. Tucker, the division’s current director. Stevenson changed the name to the Division of Personality Studies, concerned that parapsychology was isolating itself from the rest of academia. The vagueness of “personality studies” suited Stevenson, as he continued working to gain the respect of mainstream science. That mission permeated his studies: He ceaselessly quantified his data—coding 200 variables in his database of cases, calculating the probabilities of one or two birthmarks corresponding to one or two wounds on another person’s body, and painstakingly examining every possible normal, as opposed to paranormal, explanation—in a bid to be taken seriously. Now, the research unit is called the Division of Perceptual Studies, or DOPS, and remains up and running despite Stevenson’s death in 2007. There, Cyndi Hammons’s letter about Ryan’s Hollywood memories found Tucker.

Tucker traveled to Oklahoma to meet the Hammons family in April 2010. With help from a TV crew that was following Ryan’s case, they identified the man in the photo from Night After Night as Marty Martyn, who died in 1964. Tucker showed Ryan photos of people Martyn had known in sets of four, asking if anyone looked familiar. He later realized this wording was too vague, especially for a 6 year old, but Ryan did pick out Martyn’s wife, saying that she looked familiar, but that he wasn’t sure how he knew her. Together, they flew to Los Angeles and met Martyn’s daughter, who’d been 8 years old when her father had died. Ryan was confused to find she had grown.

Tucker fact-checked some of Ryan’s memories with Martyn’s daughter. A lot of the details proved accurate; a lot of them did not. Some couldn’t be verified. Martyn had acted as an extra in movies before becoming a talent agent. He and his wife had traveled the globe. Ryan had talked about dancing on Broadway, which Tucker thought unlikely for someone who’d been an extra with no lines, but Martyn’s daughter verified those memories. He had mentioned two sisters and a mother with curly brown hair—also true. He recalled his address having Rock or Mount in its name, and Martyn’s last address was 825 N. Roxbury.

Ryan Hammons recognized the actor George Raft in old Hollywood photographs when he was a child. (John Springer Collection/CORBIS/Corbis via Getty Images)

But his heart had not exploded. Martyn had leukemia and died of a cerebral hemorrhage in 1964. Ryan had also said that his father had raised corn and died when he was still a child, which didn’t prove accurate. Still, the case presented “strong evidence for reincarnation,” Tucker wrote in his 2013 book, Return to Life, in which he documented this story, but it was certainly not definitive.

“What this offered was an opportunity to look at the big picture, this question of there being more of us than just the physical.”

When Tucker first heard about Stevenson’s research on reincarnation, he was a child psychiatrist in private practice in Charlottesville, Virginia, where UVA is located. He didn’t believe in reincarnation, but his wife was open to ideas about reincarnation and psychics, so he gradually opened up to those concepts too. And his wife wasn’t alone: A 2018 Pew Research Center poll found that 33 percent of adults in the United States believe in reincarnation. After reading one of Stevenson’s books, he heard that DOPS was doing a project on near-death experiences—another field of research within parapsychology—and reached out. He began working there part-time in 1999.

“What this offered was an opportunity to look at the big picture, this question of there being more of us than just the physical. That was really quite appealing—and not just the question but also the approach to the question, that these were rational, serious-minded people that were doing this work,” he told VICE News.

Ten years prior to meeting the Hammons family, Tucker gave up his private practice to join DOPS full-time. For nine years, he also served as medical director of UVA’s Child and Family Psychiatry Clinic alongside pursuing his parapsychological research through DOPS. Most of Stevenson’s work focused on reincarnation in Asia, but as Tucker plunged into researching past-life memories, he realized that if he were to get Americans to consider his work seriously, he needed to search for cases among those in the U.S. that didn’t believe in reincarnation.

Tucker has now published two books documenting cases of children with past-life memories—a term he prefers over the flashier “reincarnation.” He writes in a decidedly more approachable voice than Stevenson did, aiming for a mainstream audience instead of an academic one. “Ian's primary goal was to get the scientific world, the scientific establishment, to seriously consider this possibility [of reincarnation]. And that's a pretty tough audience,” he said. “But beyond that, if you just write for that audience for decades, at some point you have to decide that the rest of the world needs to hear about it too.”

Even in Europe, where parapsychological research is more common in universities like the University of Edinburgh and the University of Northampton, the broader psychology community remains skeptical of this work.

In spite of Stevenson’s attempts to turn reincarnation studies into a hard science, parapsychology is still a stigmatized niche within academia, where it is not viewed as a very respectable field. It’s one of the reasons that Tucker, as well as many other parapsychologists, keeps one foot in mainstream psychiatry or psychology while pursuing their parapsychological research. Even in Europe, where parapsychological research is more common in universities like the University of Edinburgh and the University of Northampton, the broader psychology community remains skeptical of this work.

Tucker and his colleagues at DOPS are not the only academics in this field in the U.S, either. “I think there's an assumption oftentimes that if you're studying parapsychology, that means that you absolutely believe everything you're studying, and I try and work hard to say that you don't have to believe in everything you study. It's an academic interest and these are experiences that human beings have reported across different times and across cultures, and we really need to try and understand all aspects of human experience,” said Christine Simmonds-Moore, a parapsychologist and associate professor of psychology at the University of West Georgia.

Simmonds-Moore gravitated towards the paranormal as a child in the UK, but it wasn’t until she was far into her psychology degree that she realized she could actually study paranormal phenomena seriously. After getting her PhD in England, she moved to the US to research at the Rhine Center, an independent parapsychology research center in North Carolina that was once affiliated with Duke University. It was while working there that she first encountered the researchers at UVA.

She never met Stevenson, but she distinctly remembers her first visit to DOPS. “It does send shivers down your spine when you go into the room and you see all the filing cabinets containing all of the cases of the past lives that were investigated by Stevenson,” she told me. “You see all of his work and you see all of the things that he collected from his travels whilst he was doing the investigations. So there are lots of artifacts on the walls there. It's quite a beautiful experience just to see the room with these filing cabinets.”

Not everyone is so moved by Stevenson and Tucker’s work. Christopher French, a professor of psychology at Goldsmiths, University of London, considers himself a skeptic when it comes to paranormal phenomena, despite conducting some of his own research on past-life memories. He began his career studying mainstream neuroscience before embracing anomalistic psychology, the study of human behavior associated with the paranormal but based on the assumption that nothing paranormal is involved. French’s new direction was, he described, “tolerated” by his department, and he had to keep up his more mainstream psychological research in parallel with the anomalistic work that interested him far more.

“I think they are false memories that have arisen as a result of a kind of interesting social psychological interaction between the child and those around them.”

He thinks the most plausible explanation for the majority of cases is that the children are experiencing false memories, though he maintains respect for Stevenson’s meticulous research. “I think they are false memories that have arisen as a result of a kind of interesting social psychological interaction between the child and those around them,” he argued. “You do wonder to what end the researchers are kind of just finding the things that match what's gone on.” He thinks that young children will often say things that don’t make sense to their parents when they first start to speak and the parents will then inadvertently feed them information as they begin to wonder whose life the child could be describing—perhaps showing them photographs and asking if they remember the people in the picture and “having this interaction that ultimately will produce a situation where they've unintentionally implanted false memories,” as French put it.

Stevenson’s work informed French’s own forays into investigating children with past-life memories. Many years ago, the two men met when seated next to each other at a conference dinner. “He came across as a very intelligent, reasonable person,” French recalled. “I think his work is very good as far as it goes, but I don't think it's the whole story.”

He doesn't, however, question the necessity of the research itself. “There could only be two possibilities. One is that there is something genuinely paranormal happening, and if that is true, that would be amazing,” he told me. “Or, alternatively—which is more the line that I do favor—it tells us something very interesting about human psychology. So either way, it's worth taking seriously.”

Dr. Anita H. Clayton, chair of UVA’s psychiatry and neurobehavioral department, which houses DOPS, echoed that sentiment: “My question is, Where should DOPS be if it's not in the department of psychiatry? And where should it be if it's not in academics? Because I think what scientists do is dispassionately investigate phenomena that we don't yet understand.”

And yet, mainstream science still largely relegates parapsychology to its own community, with researchers struggling to get their work published in major journals. Instead, they often publish in parapsychology journals, which, all the parapsychologists I spoke with agreed, is a bit ineffective—they are preaching to the choir when they would rather be reaching the skeptics.

On April 30, 2011, the TV show that had followed Ryan Hammon’s case, The UneXplained: A Life in the Movies, aired on the Biography Channel. As a young child, Ryan had always been shy about sharing his Hollywood memories out of fear that people would think he was crazy; his parents, too, had been nervous about what people in their small town would think of them. But just over a year after Cyndi sent that first letter to DOPS, her family’s story appeared on national television. In the end, the family thought the producers did a great job. Soon after the episode aired, Ryan stopped talking about Marty Martyn. Within six months, Ryan had taken down his Martyn-themed bedroom decorations—an iron Eiffel Tower, pictures of New York—and told his mom it was time to be a regular kid.

After more than two decades of researching children with past-life memories, Tucker is still getting letters about children like Ryan and he is still seeking out new cases. At his last count, there were about 2,200 cases coded in his database. He describes himself as “spiritual but not religious,” and his goal remains unique from Stevenson’s, who was open about his unfulfilled quest for mainstream science to value his life’s work.

“A lot of it, to be perfectly honest, is trying to figure out the answers for myself,” Tucker told me. “Hopefully my work or my writings have had a positive impact on some people, but they're still trying to answer the question of, What is the level of evidence that, in fact, there is this part of us that survives after the body dies?”

The Hard Science of Reincarnation syndicated from https://triviaqaweb.wordpress.com/feed/

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Haven DVD Commentary: 2.11 - Business As Usual

There are two commentaries for this episode. Here are some notes on the first one:

Shawn Pillar: Executive Producer of Haven and Director for this episode Brian Millikin: Script Co-ordinator and writer (though not for this episode)

Topics covered include:

“The way we talked about this episode in the writer’s room as as part one of a two-part season finale.”

Shawn being delightfully enthusiastic about getting to direct a whole episode.

It’s a big episode because everything changed at the end of the last one with the Rev’s death. “Haven has been flipped upside down. Duke is now on the path to learning about himself.”

The stretch of road by the sea that we see the runners running along is somewhere they have shot at a lot, including for episode 13, the Christmas episode.

Shawn enjoying the aerial shots, because he is terrified of heights and he was in the helicopter shooting them.

Shawn enjoying directing Adam Copeland, “Edge” because he is “a very natural actor who just keeps getting better every episode.” And how it was fun to direct him because he’s a great performer and “comfortable in his own skin” and loved to be directed; he’s a director’s dream because did everything exactly as he was told. “Either you’re a really good actor, or I’’m a fantastic director … hopefully it’s both.”

Brian talks about when they were hiring him and all it really took to make the decision was when they watched his retirement (from wrestling) speech on YouTube.

This being an interesting episode for showing a bit more of how the Troubles (and fear of the Troubles) are affecting the town e.g. the bystanders watching the argument between Stu and Patrick. “The cat is getting out of the bag.” “We wanted to try and escalate the level of tension in the town following the Rev’s death,” and in a way that starts to pull at Audrey and Nathan. And how the episode gives us a better sense of Haven as a town.

Shawn talks about how Brian started with them as an intern after college, and was assistant to his father Michael Pillar. And after “years of toiling with us on our different shows; Greek and Deadzone and Wildfire, Scott Shepherd and Matt McGuiness and Sam and Jim,” took him under their wing and decided he should write an episode this season. He wrote an episode which Shawn directed. But “being the writers assistant in the room gives him an unique perspective on every episode and he becomes the guy who has to co-ordinate the scripts and type in changes and …. Type up all the notes and keep the writers organised. So in some ways, he knows where the bodies are buried more than anyone.” And Brian agrees that he probably does know the show better than anyone else.

Shawn talks about how one of the things he wanted to do in directing the episode was to have the camera moving. “I think it adds a lot of tension, and a lot of mood.” And he says that in this episode “basically every single shot is moving.” In some ways it shoots faster, and looks better than when you don’t move the camera. He adds that it’s “a little tougher to edit sometimes”. Brian says he loves it and that “you can always tell when Shawn Pillar has directed an episode,” from whichever series it is, and adds that it “brings a lot of energy.”

The talk about the importance of picking the right locations for each scene so that they flow together, and trying to anticipate what the DP is going to want to do with the lighting, and what the art department is going to want to do with the background etc.

Shawn refers to directing as “the most fun I’m allowed to have. Normally I’m fixing problems; this time I got to create my own problems and fix them myself.”

As we see Duke on the phone to Evi’s mum, Shawn talks about wanting to feature the whole boat set, and how there was originally much more to this conversation but they had to cut it. But they originally would have shown Duke on the phone in the distance walking back and forth across the set and would have shown more of the set because there’s a lot of it which we never get to see which is a shame, “because the sets are gorgeous”. So “let’s pretend we’re making a feature film” and shoot lots of wide shots rather than just relying on close ups all the time.

As we see Duke read ‘Crocker’ on the lid of his silver box, Brian talks about how they have been waiting all season to get back to this point. “We introduced this box back in episode four” and now seven episodes later they finally got to bring it back. And Shawn talks about how a lot of the set up they laid for the season got paid off in this episode, which spiked the arc of the story telling to the finale, which then itself sets them up for season three.

Shawn talks about the woman who plays Colleen Pierce; her name is Crystal Allen, he describes himself as “a huge fan” and says that she “was almost Evi.” She was one of the final three for that role. And he talks about one of the advantages of his role in relation to this episode is that he didn’t need to do any casting; he was able to use people he already knew and whose work he admired, including for both Colleen and Stu Pierce.

Brian talks about the evolution of ideas from a storytelling standpoint i.e. how the episode evolved in that the original idea was for something where it looks like a Troubled person is killing other Troubled people. And then we find out that it’s someone has framed a Troubled person as a weapon against all Troubled people. Originally there was going to be a group of people that had kidnapped Stu, and a race against time to get to him, but “based on some network notes” that was condensed, and that allowed them to get to some of the other things in the episode they wanted to get to; e.g. the plot line with Duke and Dwight, and Audrey and Lucy, and Audrey and Nathan’s interactions which “came to dominate the episode; in a good way.”

As we see Audrey and Nathan argue in the interview room after Nathan lets Patrick go, Shawn talks about liking this scene as the first time we’ve ever really seen Audrey and Nathan argue. And how it was a pleasure to get to direct that, and to be able to let them play with it, and how he pushed Emily and Lucas to fight and to be more intense, and then pulled them back for another version. And then they cut together the best moments from all of those different versions and that it worked out really well.

They both comment on the “return of the tandem bike” as we see Vince and Dave bringing more copies of the Herald. And Brian comments that he loves the TOWN GRIEVES newspaper headline. As Duke talks to the Teagues, Shawn comments that this is a good example of the value of staying in wide shots and medium shots for longer, because it shows of the town (of Lunenberg) in the background. And that it was nice to be able to do that because although they go to Lunenberg for Duke’s boat “rarely do we get to shoot in downtown Lunenberg”.

And then they comment on the divide that we see between Vince and Dave, and “seeing that they’re on two different sides of something that we don’t totally understand”. And what a great job the actors always do with these characters. “You can tell that they love each other and hate each other”. And about Vince and Dave as being brothers first and foremost, but then also enemies, and you “see that bubble up sometimes, that they have a differing agenda.”

And they agree that “Eric Balfour is always fantastic, and always finds ways to pull it off the page and make it a little bit funny, a little bit quirky.” “I think he makes everything better.”

They talk about how there are a lot of fathers and sons in this episode in terms of Nathan missing his father and living in his shadow, and Duke discovering things about his father, and also Duke and Dwight talking about their fathers. And Shawn continues, “And Vince, we may find in Season Three …” and then Brian interrupts him to compliment the camera work and we never get back to the point about Vince.

They talk about the Duke and Dwight fight sequence, noting that “Eric is a trained fighter” and obvious Adam came to Haven from wrestling, and so him and the fight co-ordinator were able to work with the actors to get their suggestions for it as well. He comments that they shot the scene really fast with a hand held, and mentions that the key that flies out from the box was CGI.

They note this is the first real fight they’ve done in Haven and that fight scenes can be tricky because they take a long time to shoot and there can be safety issues. Adam was injured in his previous career as a wrestler, so they wanted to be very careful not to ask him to do too much “Because a) I love the guy, and b) we definitely need him in work the next day”. Shawn also notes that “there was a stunt man ready to step in for Adam, but he didn’t quite match.” So they staged it in a way that Eric took the brunt of most of the hits.

Adam got smashed in the head with the candy glass, but they only had the budget for two or three of those, and Shawn was worried that Adam might get cut, so they shot everything else until they were happy and then did the glass smashing after. He adds that a lot of the choreography was more between the actors and the cameramen and that worked because the less rehearsed the fight is the more real it feels.

They both agree that they love the scene where Nathan and Audrey talk (argue) in the car, and Shawn adds that it was shot in two separate bits, because the wide shots were shot on location in Lunenberg and the closeups were shot a couple of weeks later in Chester, with fake backdrops outside the windows.

Brian talks about the shooting schedule, how they shot Duke’s phone conversation with Evi’s mother, and Duke and Dwight’s fight, and Duke and Dwights conversation, all in one day; one day in the boat to shoot all the inside boat scenes. They had a day in Lunenberg. A day on the boat outside.

They talk about how visible Duke’s boat is in Lunenberg and how you can just walk about and see it, and how they have both met fans there. And Shawn talks about meeting a couple of fans “I think they were English and they happened to be in town” and he invited them to come to set and they came to the boat and “we gave them headphones and let them listen to us filming”. [I am not jealous at all, oh no :/ Who are you, English Haven fans? I want to hear all about it!]

For the scene where Audrey and Nathan argue while Patrick is tied up on the other side of the room, they shot this in Lunenberg; inside the building that we see Patrick coming out of earlier. For the part where Audrey goes upstairs, they shot part of that ahead of time, because Emily was down at Comic Con, and then part of it (the parts with real fire) were done on the soundstage with a stunt person. So they didn’t have real fire in the actual building; there they shot with Emily and just smoke and CG fire, and then cut in with the stuntperson running through real fire. And the smoke we see coming out of the building from outside is the actual building they were in, with CG smoke. When Audrey kicks down the door to go into the room to find Stu, they “cheated” in that Emily kicked down the door and then actually came back into the same room they were already filming in. So basically when you can’t see Audrey’s face, that’s the stuntperson on the stage running through real fire, and where you can see Emily’s face, that’s her on location with CG fire added after.

As we see Duke and Dwight on Simon’s old boat, Shawn says “We cheated Duke’s actual boat in Lunenberg, as this other boat. Because, a boat’s a boat, you can’t really tell the difference.”

On small spaces like inside the boat where they couldn’t fit dolly track, they shot with handheld cameras to keep the movement and the energy up.

Brian talks about the initial reaction to the idea of Simon hiding stuff on his boat; “a lot of people thought that didn’t make any sense at all” that you could hide something on a boat that well. But Matt McGuinness (who co-wrote this episode) is himself a sailor and insisted on it and threw in all this boat terminology to convince them.

As Sal comes down the ladder, Shawn says, “I love this actor; he looks perfectly Haven. I’ve been saving him for a while to use and I finally selfishly had to put him in my episode.” He was originally brought in for a different part in another episode and it was felt he wasn’t right for that part, but “when we need a pirate, when we need a salty old dog” he would be perfect. He adds that the first time round the actor was playing it “a little too drunken, a little too piratey” so Shawn told him “just be yourself” and he was brilliant. There was a lot more to this scene that was quite funny between him and Eric, but it got cut for time.

They mention for the Stephen King fans that the name of the previous owner of the boat (Ray Fiegler) was a Stephen King reference. Brian adds that it’s his job to get in as many Stephen King references as he can, so when the script gets changed he just quietly puts them back in.

They note that the concept of the meeting of Troubled people was a little controversial among a lot of the writers and producers, the idea of the Troubled getting that organised, and this well known. But he says he thinks they pulled it off and it works. Shawn adds that it’s a natural escalation; if you’re going to keep things realistic, then the town is eventually going to notice at least some of what’s going on, and they’re going to start talking about it.

They add that was one of the challenges in working on Dead Zone; not making Johnny Smith too famous, so there they always kept people skeptics. But in this show they have to walk that same fine line where some people don’t believe in the Troubles, some people believe because they live it day to day, and then some people are scared of the Troubles/Troubled. Which Shawn adds “I think is symbolic of other social issues … and I think that’s one of the great things science fiction can do is take contemporary issues and put them … in a context that allows you to examine them in a different way.”

Brian asks Shawn about the shooting of Nathan and Audrey’s kiss and how they went about it, and Shawn says that his mom was on set for the shooting of this episode and they have this thing where they always show the pilot for a new show to his mom and “if she cries, then we know that it’s good.” So she is their test audience. And his mom was there on set for the blocking of this scene [which Google tells me means “working out the details of an actor's moves in relation to the camera”] and “she started crying during the blocking … and I was like ‘people, my mom is crying, this is a great scene’. And so that was hilarious and awesome and we knew it was going to be a great scene.”

Shawn adds that this is something that the two actors have been wanting to play for a long time “and I was honoured and privileged that I got to direct it, and it was really fun. They did a really good job.” And he remembers the cameramen being really enthusiastic about it as well during filming. And he says it was “really cathartic to finally shoot this scene.” And Brian agrees that “it’s so heartfelt.”

When Nathan starts to say something and then cuts himself off with a “never mind” Shawn says that there was no line there. There was something they had that they didn’t like and they cut it, and not knowing what to put in its place they used the “never mind” as something realistic that people do.

They note that at this point the episode turns, because the case of the week is ended and it becomes all about Audrey going to see Lucy and the fall out with Duke and “it’s a unique episode in that regard”.

They note that the important line in this scene is when Nathan says, “I hope you come back and tell me what they are,” because there is a sense that he could lose her. He knows she has a bigger role to play, though he doesn’t know what it is.

This was a difficult episode to get it to not be too long. A lot of times if something’s long you cut out the not-great stuff and find you’re too short, but with this one there was so much to they really wanted to include that it was difficult; “everything worked, everything was good, all the acting was good, it just looked beautiful, and it was such a fully packed script that it was really difficult” to cut it down to the right length.

As Audrey and Lucy are sat down to talk, they comment that the only issue was this scene was that it started raining, so that as we are looking at Lucy, it’s not raining; when we’re looking at Audrey it is raining in the background, “but hopefully nobody notices that.” That scene was shot in Chester; the production office is in the background. They’re just down the road from where they shot Duke on the phone by his car in the previous episode, and the soundstages are just up the street in the other direction.

They talk about Audrey (or her previous Lucy incarnation) as a living time capsule, a bag of evidence that Audrey left for herself; this warning that she left with Lucy a long time ago.

They talk about loving this episode for the fact that it is really significant in terms of the relationship between Audrey and Nathan, but then when Audrey learns about Simon Crocker being after Lucy, it also becomes really significant for the relationship between Audrey and Duke as well.

They talk about the shot were we look down on the Rouge with Dwight on deck as Duke finds the box, this one:

And then where the camera tracks down closer to them. “This was an incredible shot; one of the best shots we’ve ever done in the history of the series”. It was technically difficult to do because it was actually done on the boat, and with the right equipment it would be easy; but they did not have that type of crane, so it was really complicated (“a ballet dance”) to move down and keep the shot straight. “Our whole camera team really had a tough time pulling that off, but they nailed it and it looked pretty damn smooth. It looked like we had the most expensive equipment in the world and actually we didn’t.”

They talk a little as well about maximising efficiency by shooting multiple things from the same crane angle to save time.

They made two versions of the silver box; one was just a solid wooden thing that didn’t open, for when it was pulled sideways out of the can. They talk about how there was a lot of discussion for a long time about exactly what weapons were going to go in the box “we were emailing photos of weapons from Assassin’s Creed for months”.

The blood on Duke’s hand was CG effects added after; they didn’t have time to “mess around” with blood on the set. As Dwight flies across the Rouge, that was a stunt man and a crane pull that was anchored on a pole that is there that is actually used for fishing nets.

There were a couple of shots in this scene (shot on three cameras) where one of the other cameras was visible in the shot and they had to CG that out.

The scene of the meeting in the Herald at the end; when they were shooting this, Adam Copeland had a 104 degree fever.

There were also various comments throughout this about how everyone did a great job; writers, actors, cameramen, crew; in relation to the sets and the music. I didn’t write all the names down, but; everyone did a great job.

As ever there is always the possibility that I have got their voices muddled up at some point.

#haven syfy #haven dvd commentaries #2.11 - Business as usual #long post

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