Average Evangelion Enjoyer

[baiwu-jinji]

Having waded through enough sloppy and uninspired performances from recent xianxia/wuxia series and feeling the general decline of the quality of acting in Chinese entertainment in recent years, my mind kept going back to Chen Jianbin's performance as the emperor in Empresses in the Palace (甄嬛傳, 2011) and wondering if there has been any acting in cdrama in the past 10 years that could even remotely approach that level of excellence.

When I watch actors in these dramas, I usually have an ideal version of line deliveries in my mind and rate their performances against that ideal version - nowadays most performances couldn't get a grade higher than 70 (out 100) in my marking scheme. But Chen Jianbin's performance in Empresses in the Palace renders my marking scheme meaningless because you know he's gonna turn in the perfect answer every time and it's gonna be more perfect than that ideal version in my head. His acting is precise, nuanced, and never over the top, and I felt I was in such safe hands being guided by his performance - I say "safe" because his acting is so precise that I feel very safe to hinge my interpretation of the character on his every change of tone and every micro expression; with lesser actors, sometimes you'd doubt if you could understand the character solely based on their performances since they might miss the mark.

There's this one scene where someone said to the emperor (Chen Jianbin's character) something along the lines of "it's so touching to see your majesty missing the late empress so much, you must have loved each other very deeply." Chen Jianbin replied with an absent-minded and perfunctory "嗯" (could be translated as "yep" / "emm" / "sure"), and you just know from that half-hearted grunt that the emperor knows very well that his love is actually one-sided and the late empress never truly loved him; that this whole narrative of "alas, I have lost my beloved wife and soulmate and we'd have been perfect for each other if she had lived" is only a fairytale he tells himself and performs for others.

[vivziepoparchives]

Charlie pride prints available June 17, 2025. Art by Kanomareki. Signed by Erika Henningsen.

[source]

[starvariety]

i really love the motif of windows in Backrooms. mary’s book being called “the window within”. the curtains in her office always being drawn. the shot of her behind glass in her own home during the gathering at her house. clark looking through the window into his own house. him being unable to see kat through the glass she can see him through. the window in mary’s mother’s house. the windows in the hospital her mother is brought to that only look out to another building. the drawing that mary finds of captain clark reaching someone up towards a window. the fale window in clark’s “home” in the backrooms that just looks out to more of the same empty space. the window in the interrogation room that’s too high to see out of (and thus to determine if it’s real). the fact that the backrooms lacks any windows to a true “outside space”, and how terrifying that makes it. there is no window within. or, at least, not one that any of them can find

[altades]

Have you found yourself?

I've watched backrooms with friends and this movie really stuck with me. The concept and visuals are fascinating

[3hkowalski]

my Barbenheimer crossover this weekend

went to see these 2 movies and I love them a lot!

[toskarin]

a lot of things "killed" destiny 2, but it's hard not to place the blame on them removing the entire first half of the game and starting you at endgame. not just because that personally disappointed me, but because that's visibly still stopping new players from trying the game in its final state

[bgm05]

[the-frog-blog]

“What if I derp?”

Oh my child, but what if you me gusta?

[bowhaus]

The window within

[cowboy]

Don't even have sex

[trekkiesagainstchastity]

Unless you and your partner(s) want to, in which case: do have sex!

[cowboy]

Absolutely fucking not

[cowboy]

Oh I didn't realize you were a designated pro-sex star trek blog that's my bad. Sorry.

[theehorsepusssy]

[theehorsepusssy]

[northwest-by-a-train]

Average British Fantasy Author of the 20th Century: Born in Hong Kong, raised in Singapore, Kingston and Oxford, he kissed his first girl at the tender age of 38. He spent 23 years obsessively writing notes for his epic masterwork, the Sword of Gormenlia series, with elements drawn from Indian mysticism, Arthurian mythos, Surrealist poetry, Victorian racism and Radical beliefs[?]. He died in Cyprus where he owned the world's most beautiful houseboat.

Average American Fantasy Author of the 20th Century: Born on the border between Ohio and Montana, Wizjeremiah VanderMcDercken, better known by his pseudonym John "Wizard" Whiteman, was raised in a ghost town and was the only citizen of his county who could read. At the age of 14, he stole a car and drove 30 hours straight to New York City to send his first story "The Alien was Really a Man" to Astounding Stories, for which he was paid a whopping 12$. A string of successes followed, including "The Man was Really a Robot" "The Alien was Really a Wizard" and "The Wizard is Really a Man When You Think About It". He harassed Samuel R. Delany for twelve years over a mild criticism of one of his now out-of-print novels. Died in Yonkers where he had a condo.

Average Canadian Fantasy Author of the 20th Century: Born just outside of Toronto

Average French Fantasy Author of the 20th Century: Despite publishing over 170 novels over a period of fifty years, no one outside of France, or indeed within France, knows who Jean Messac is. Left on the steps of a convent in the south of France, he soon learned to hate the nuns, the books in the local library, Parisians, Americans, specifically the citizens of Syria, the Dominican Republic and Bulgaria, the French literary establishment, Regionalist writers, Sartre, De Gaulle, Casimir, anyone who appeared on TV, Radio, Newspapers and Photographs. He lived in a shoebox gifted to him as a joke from André Breton. He was a high school teacher and wrote for a variety of magazines and publishers, was institutionalized three times and was a Majdanek survivor. His books have all been translated in Russia and Japan following a popular JRPG adapting his saga "Pox-Children of the Kamchadals". He died in the same city where he spent his entire life at the age of 64.

[theehorsepusssy]

[capacity2]

Beautiful images and music will save me I know it I just know it

[capacity2]

[tanolife]

ニックのトルソー。

[dogpuppy]