“Because the truth is, tech doesn’t have an image problem. It doesn’t have a message problem. It has an intention problem. What’s wrong with the axe murderer who broke into my house is not that he hasn’t successfully persuaded me to buy into his narrative. What’s wrong is that he’s trying to kill me with an axe. Similarly, when you launch a product that’s designed to put millions of people out of work, block access to sources of verifiable truth, replace human creativity with slop, and lower the barriers to every sort of atrocity, the problem isn’t that you haven’t told the public a good story about those things. The problem is that you are trying to do them.”
The way adult fandom people hold indie online creators and cartoons to a much higher standard than their actual local politicians. You could be putting that energy into terrorizing and protesting conservatives at your town hall and actually make a good material impact on the world but instead you're background checking everything the trans woman who made the amazing digital circus has ever said
She was also part of the editing team for Martin Scorsese’s 1970s films “Taxi Driver,” “Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore” and “New York, New
Marcia Lucas was the editor on 1983’s "Return of the Jedi" and the pre-"Star Wars" George Lucas-directed films "THX 1138" and "American Graffiti."
She was also part of the editing team for director Martin Scorsese’s 1970s films "Taxi Driver," "Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore" and "New York, New York."
Marcia Lucas was often called the unsung hero of "Star Wars," the original film that after sequels, prequels and spinoffs has come to be known by its subtitle, "A New Hope."
She convinced husband George that he should have Obi-Wan Kenobi, played by Alec Guinness, in his light saber battle with Darth Vader and become a spirit guide to Mark Hamill’s Luke Skywalker.
And she had to make sense of the raw footage that could’ve been a mess in the wrong hands, including the climactic rebel attack on the Death Star.
[....]
"Her influence on film is indelible, but those who knew her best will remember the way she made life feel more vivid, more beautiful, more fun, and more full of love," a family statement said. "Her work was known for its emotional intelligence, rhythm, and humanity — a rare ability to find the truth of a scene and bring heart, momentum, and clarity to the screen."
Still mind boggling to me that Bendis wrote Ult. Jess living under the name Julia Carpenter at the same time that Kitty was establishing herself as Shroud, and--as far as I can tell from statements made at the time--did this completely without any intention at all.
I like to think that the whole time they were living in the morlock tunnels together, Kitty was using their guilt over Peter's death to manipulate them into a fujoshi situation for her.
funniest convo ever with a guy who said 2 me "nobody uses journalism degrees" and i said "my mom has a bachelors in journalism" and he smiled like knowingly and said "yeah, but what does she do?" and i said "she runs a newspaper and publishes romance novels on the side." and he literally said "oh" and nothing else. like he ended the whole conversation there.
i've just been informed he has a trombone degree. like the study of playing trombone. which is all well and good, i genuinely think we should all have the opportunity to chase our academic bliss but i do think the trombone studies guy should hesitate to judge the economic value of other people's degrees no
I know that twenty-five years ago is a long time in the past and I know that Season 4 of Buffy aired in a cultural context very different from today, but I am once again begging you to understand that -- even though neither Willow nor Tara will describe themselves as lesbians anywhere the audience can hear until halfway through the next season, and even though they won't so much as kiss on screen until several episodes after that -- we are definitely meant to understand that Willow and Tara are sleeping together for a large part of Season 4.
They are not friends for a long time first before starting a physical relationship, as I've seen some people claim (largely to compare Kennedy unfavorably with Tara). Tara's decision to describe herself as "yours" to Willow in Who Are You? doesn't come out of the blue at all. Oz smelling Willow "all over" Tara when he comes back to Sunnydale in Bad Moon Rising isn't a strange misunderstanding or leap of logic. Willow and Tara have been "doing spells together" from the very first episode they meet, and it is not even slightly subtle what "doing spells together" is intended to be a metaphor for. Subtle enough to fool a TV network censor, maybe, but the intended audience are not meant to be under any illusions about what's happening.
By A New Man -- Tara's second episode! -- Tara and Willow are meeting in Tara's bedroom late at night to "get together" and Willow is promising Tara they'll "start out slow". Tara even lampshades this by asking "start out slow doing what?" What could it mean? Furthermore, this scene is explicitly juxtaposed with a scene in which Ethan and Giles -- who Jane Espenson, the writer of the episode, is on the record as writing as if they had a shared sexual history -- meet up at a bar to get drunk and discuss their past, with Giles indignant that somebody has recently questioned his masculinity and Ethan ruefully describing the two of them as "a pair of old ... sorcerers", musing that "the night is still our time" and (though it's played for laughs as a misdirection) seemingly telling Giles that he's "really very attractive". We know, too, from something Buffy says later, that Willow didn't go back to her room at all that night after casting a spell with Tara. Where did she sleep? Why is she embarrassed about it enough to lie when Buffy asks her where she was? For that matter, back in Hush, Tara's first ever episode, Willow and Tara do a spell together too. That episode ends with three parallel scenes: Buffy having a conversation with her future boyfriend Riley, Giles having a conversation with his soon to be ex-girlfriend Olivia, and Willow having a conversation with [... well, come on, what do you think this relationship is being framed as?] Tara.
By The I In Team -- only Tara's third episode! -- Tara is very explicitly being written as though she's a girl Willow is regularly hooking up with in secret but isn't ready to introduce to her friends yet. She's trying to gift Willow emotionally significant old family heirlooms and looking hurt when Willow doesn't want to accept them. She's saying suggestive things like "maybe tonight, if you're not doing anything, you could come over and we could ... do something" and getting (justifiably) upset when Willow tells her she's already made plans "with people" whom she's clearly not ready to introduce Tara to ("it's kind of a specific crowd ... you might feel out of place"). And Willow does end up going to see Tara that night, when Buffy in turn brushes her off to go and hang out with her boyfriend (and the rest of the Initiative). What do you think is happening when Willow knocks on Tara's door late that night and asks if she "still want[s] to do something?" and the door closes behind them? Were they staying up late to read a book or play checkers, do we think?
This is the wider context in which we're meant to understand the conversation Willow and Tara have in Goodbye Iowa. Willow wistfully says that she "had so much fun the other night, those spells...". before rushing to reassure Tara that "I hope you don't think that I just come over for the spells and everything. I mean ,I really like just talking and hanging out with you and stuff." Or Tara saying in response she's okay if that's the only thing Willow wants to do tonight and shyly admitting that she's "been thinking about that last spell we did all day." They are emphatically not friends who later fall in love and start a physical relationship. That's exactly backwards. They start off fooling around "doing spells" together, then they quickly develop deeper emotional feelings for each other. The magic -- and everything that represents -- explicitly comes first.
Yes, it won't be until New Moon Rising that Willow tells any of her friends about Tara as a possible rival or replacement for Oz. It won't be until the end of that episode that Willow will tell Tara she loves her (indirectly, at that), and it won't be until the following episode The Yoko Factor that Willow will describe Tara as "my girlfriend". And, as I said above, we won't see them so much as kiss on screen until well over halfway through Season 5. It was the early 2000s -- it was, in fact, literally early in the year 2000 -- and there were very clear limits to what the writers could actually get away with showing on network television. Not only was this fifteen years before gay marriage would become legal across the country, it was three years before Lawrence v Texas. Multiple states still had laws prohibiting same sex relationships. To modern eyes it's all a bit tame and understated, sure, but the writers were trying to be as clear as they thought they could be!
But every now and then I read posts that seem to just ... ignore all of that subtext entirely. That seem to proceed on the basis that Willow and Tara were just good friends who, sure, secretly got together at night and did spells together, but seem entirely unaware of the mere idea that this could be read a metaphor for anything. That assume because they aren't officially a couple until the end of Season 4, they can't possibly have been doing anything physical before that (as if this season isn't full of examples of the rest of the core four Scooby Gang members having casual sexual relationships with people they've yet to formally label as their boyfriend or girlfriend). Posts where people complain that Kennedy and Willow got together too quickly, in contrast to Willow and Tara who -- they seem to think -- had a much longer period of getting to know each other as friends first (when? I always want to ask, when do you think this happened?). Posts where people think Tara's just being weirdly intense when she tells Willow "I am, you know. Yours" in Who Are You?, as if the two of them hadn't been symbolically (and presumably literally) sleeping together for weeks by this point. People for whom the central metaphor of Willow and Tara's relationship -- something the show itself introduces and repeatedly calls attention to throughout Season 4 -- just doesn't exist. People who assume Willow is just randomly awkward about introducing her new platonic friend to Buffy or Xander, in a way she's never been about any other friend she's had (witch or otherwise) and that there's no deeper meaning to it than that.
And, well.
On the one hand: so what, right? People have lots of odd takes on this show. This isn't even the most egregious popular reading of Buffy I can think of. But I guess this bothers me more than some other readings I dislike because it doesn't seem like a deliberate attempt to ignore canon, the way some takes that rub me the wrong way do. People aren't reading the show this way because they want to downplay Willow and Tara's relationship: on the contrary, the people who post this way are fans of that relationship. And yet, to me, it just makes the whole thing feel ... I don't know, kind of chaste and bloodless. I mean, in this reading, Giles and his "orgasm friend" Olivia are having sex throughout the first half of the season and Buffy and Riley are having sex throughout the second half of the season (especially so in one particular episode) and Anya and Xander are having sex pretty much all season and meanwhile Willow and Tara are ... what, holding hands and looking at roses and thinking pure, innocent thoughts? I just find that kind of grating.
Yes, if the show was airing for the very first time now, in 2025, then Willow and Tara could -- and I believe would -- have been a lot more explicit about their mutual physical attraction, right from the start. But the fact that the norms and prejudices of the time meant the writers couldn't show us that explicitly doesn't mean they didn't try to make it obvious. It doesn't mean that they didn't succeed in making it obvious, for the people watching along as the show first aired who understood the metaphor. And I just think it's something of a shame that this point seems to be lost on some modern audiences.
Ok. So. Having lived through this in real time, the OP is right.
When S4 was on the air, one of the big megachurches told the congregation to leave messages on The Bronze, which was the online posting board for Buffy fans, condemning the show for promoting homosexuality. This started well before the "I'm yours" moment so it went on for months. We'd be having a normal day chatting about whatever and them some random post often spewing the most vile shit would show up.
This was before social media as you know it existed. You couldn't just find a public page on the internet to leave a nasty message for a public figure. But it was known that the cast and crew including Joss Whedon not only read the board but would post there. (During breaks in filming Joss would sometimes randomly show up and do the equivalent of an AMA.) So in addition to thousands of letters that were sent to the studio objecting to "glorifying lesbianism," the online community also got bombarded with shit.
For months. Long before Willow and Tara would kiss on screen for the first time. Everyone understood what was happening, including the people who were furious. NOBODY THOUGHT THEY WERE JUST FRIENDS. This relationship was historic for US television. Xena and Gabrielle weren't on a network in the US, but Buffy was. There were multiple firsts for Willow/Tara. There were essays written about the use of magic as a metaphor for discovering that you're queer. This was a landmark moment and a lot of people were very angry about it.
We had a troll come to the Bronze one day, much more erudite than the drive by bigots we were getting. His name was Morgan. He seemed reasonable at first, but he was saying the same thing as the others, just in prettier words. We argued with him for hours to no avail. Someone who ended up becoming a friend of mine delurked for the first time that day and just ripped Morgan to pieces. It was a spectacular piece of writing that I wish I had saved.
Amber Benson (the actress who played Tara) showed up and argued with this guy too. The cast and crew knew about the posts just like they knew they were getting hate mail.
Morgan wasn't deterred though. He kept coming back. No matter how thoroughly he got proven wrong, he wouldn't stop. So finally another friend of mine, who I knew offline, pulled a Spartacus and said, "Well Morgan, I'm gay and I disagree with you." She wasn't, AFAIK, but that wasn't the point. So I posted it too. Then someone else, and more and more people. That wall of solidarity finally drive the asshole away. "Gay for a Day" went down in the history of the Bronze. It wasn't the end of the shit but it was a message to the queer members of our community that we were on their side.
When the "I'm yours" moment happened and the relationship went from being alluded to as subtext to just the text, some of us from the Bronze went a little crazy. We bought Joss Whedon a toaster. (Yes, I know what you're thinking, but we didn't know what was going on behind the scenes back then.) The episode of "Ellen" where she comes out involved a joke about getting a toaster for "converting" enough women into bring lesbians. That episode aired in 1997, the year BtVS premiered. That was another big first for network tv and the Ellen show was cancelled after the following season partly due to the backlash. We had raised enough money that we also got the toaster engraved with the dialogue and the date the episode aired.
After we sent the toaster, Joss posted on the Bronze that his Emmy nomination paled in comparison to the toaster. He showed it to the cast and crew. Another message in the barrage of hate that we all understood what was happened we supported it.
Y'all don't understand how different things are in your media just 20 years later.
the power of hitting 'end task' on a glitchy program in task manager is intoxicating. i feel like an assassin. i feel like a tyrant. you don't want to work properly? begone. off with your head. i need to kill my apps with a guillotine
Maybe an unpopular Dune opinion, but I don't really love the way the whole Golden Path thing was handled in the books and I don't think it'll be included in the third movie.
Long post ahead whoops
The thing is...the image of Paul going into exile is so powerful *because* it's a selfless gesture that ultimately unites him with the Fremen when he's spent a book and a half doing anything but those things. In the end, as I understand it, he does it for his kids -- so they will be accepted as fully Fremen. As well as for the sake of leaving his own myth behind at last, to it all being finally over. It's a sacrifice (and I have a firm belief he intended for it to be his final act), and retconning in the implication that it was actually because of cowardliness or weakness really ruins the impact that the end of Messiah presents. Turning "Paul accepted the Fremen tradition of self exile as a blind man for his children's sake with the full knowledge that he could die doing it, after doing nothing but bastardizing their traditions for his own self preservation," into "Paul left because he couldn't face his true terrible destiny so he left his son to deal with it" is kind of...icky.
And in my mind it's pretty clear Frank Herbert *did* retcon it. There's zero reference to it in either of the first two books (though there is a trend in Frank Herbert's writing style to not get specific about Paul's visions until they come true, and then reveal he's Of Course known it all along so...).
And listen, it could work if done one of two ways: one, Paul *did* know about it the whole time, and it's an added on part to his arc -- ok kid so you're gonna be this intergalactic dictator but then there's also this other even more horrifying thing you gotta do after that. And throughout Messiah he's grappling with that. But the books *don't* do that, and crucially, neither do the films. The whole Big Thing for Paul in book one and then retroactively in Messiah was "I'm going to one day become a terrible intergalactic dictator".
Other way it could've been done is to have him *not* know about it, or suggest in COD that he saw unclear visions he didn't have context for -- and only upon meeting his son and discovering the path he's walking does he realize with horror what he'd missed and misinterpreted, that this path was meant to be his and now by choosing a different one he's doomed his own child. There's a terror in him believing he's escaped and is "free", only for him to see he's still trapped, and has also trapped Leto. This is kind of how I've chosen to interpret it, even if the books say different lol.
That being said...part of me honestly wishes Paul had just died at the end of Messiah?? Or at least been ambiguously absent without much presence in COD, maybe he meets Leto at the very end but dragging out his arc when Messiah ended it on such a strong note is. frustrating to me.
And honestly I don't think the third movie will bring up the Golden Path, even if Leto II is a part of it. Denis Villeneuve has said he wants to end Paul's story with Part 3, and of course you can argue that "well, technically Paul's story ends in COD" and yeah sure, he *dies* in that book, but Messiah is still the end point of his arc. His final act is to make his children Fremen, and bind himself forever with the people he tried to save and then ended up subjugating. @fuckyeahisawthat has made some wonderful points in the past about Paul's journey from colonizer to being in solidarity with the colonized, and I think this ending so importantly ties into that. Because after finding solidarity, he of course then goes onto become the Ultimate Colonizer -- only for him at the very end to commit an act that puts him finally in unity with the Fremen. It mirrors Liet Kynes' death in the books, in a way, though Paul's exile is voluntary.
So while yes, in the books his character is alive in COD, one; it's not really his story anymore. it's his children's. That's like saying "well Obi Wan Kenobi is still in ANH, so technically his story ends there", like yeah, he is present in ANH and appears as a force ghost later on, but the original star wars trilogy isn't *about* Obi Wan, it's about Luke and Leia. Obi Wan and Anakin's story was the prequels, and their story ended there. So even with Denis' comments about ending Paul's arc...I still think he's referring to his arc In Messiah.
The Golden Path is Leto's thing. Imo it was a mistake to retroactively also make it Paul's thing, and I don't think the film will go that same direction. I really don't.
The Golden Path was definitely a retcon. There's not even a tiny hint of it in Dune Messiah.
And I agree with you that it's not happening in the movies; there's no time for it and it would require more movies that aren't going to be made. At least by Villenueve.
But also, Leto's whole attitude basically undercuts the central theme that Paul is a false messiah, that he has no actual cosmic role - he's exploiting fake prophesies for his own gain to get revenge. So he traps himself into unleashing the Jihad in which billions die. And the Fremen wreck themselves by getting revenge.
(It's also not clear if Paul ever had the degree of presience necessary to even see thee Golden Path.)
(Also, I think Leto's entire plan is delusional and the world that ensues after him seems to be far worse for humanity than the pre-Paul empire or even Leto's own rule. But of course, Leto is utterly out of touch with normal humanity.)
#they also have aragorn's elvish ancestors on their father's side! #as well as mithrellas on their mother's (via @bretwalda-lamnguin)
Yup! I think their Silvan-Elrosian-Edainic background is an interesting context for the emphasis on how staggeringly beautiful Boromir was, including Legolas's "he was so pretty, RIP" eulogy:
There was a tall man with a fair and noble face, dark-haired and grey-eyed
His fair and pleasant face was hideously changed
“From the mouths of the Sea the South Wind flies, from the sandhills and the stones,
The wailing of the gulls it bears, and at the gate it moans,
‘What news from the South, O sighing wind, do you bring to me at eve?
Where now is Boromir the Fair? He tarries and I grieve.”
His head so proud, his face so fair, his limbs they laid to rest
His face [after death] was more beautiful even than in life
Pippin gazing at him [Faramir] saw how closely he resembled his brother Boromir ... looking on the fair face of Faramir, [Ioreth] wept
Meanwhile, the description of Boromir and Faramir's part-Silvan mother Finduilas:
She was a lady of great beauty and gentle heart, but before twelve years had passed she died. […S]he withered in the guarded city, as a flower of the seaward vales set upon a barren rock. The shadow in the east filled her with horror, and she turned her eyes ever south to the sea
[To Faramir, a small child when she died, she was] but a memory of loveliness in far days and of his first grief
Legolas, meeting Finduilas's younger brother, Imrahil, is struck yet again by this incredibly hot family:
At length they came to the Prince Imrahil, and Legolas looked at him and bowed low; for he saw that here indeed was one who had elven-blood in his veins.
“That is a fair lord and a great captain of men. If Gondor has such men still in these days of fading, great must have been its glory in the days of its rising.”
Meanwhile, Boromir's father:
Denethor looked indeed much more like a great wizard than Gandalf did, more kingly, beautiful, and powerful; and older.
Denethor was a proud man, tall, valiant, and more kingly than any man that had appeared in Gondor for many lives of men
Indeed he [Denethor] was as like to Thorongil [Aragorn] as to one of nearest kin
[Denethor] was very tall and in appearance looked like an ancient Númenórean
his [Denethor’s] appearance of premature old age, first observable when he was not much above sixty years old (UT); he bought the knowledge dearly, being aged before his time (Appendix A)
Also: the passage that basically all the information specifically about Mithrellas and Imrazôr comes from (the Dol Amroth family tree in Peoples of Middle-earth) pretty strongly implies that the princes of Dol Amroth did not traditionally intermarry with the "royal offshoot" noble houses that got to use Quenya/were descended from the Noldor, Vanyar, Sindar, and Maiar via Anárion (multiple times over, undoubtedly), including the Stewards.
I'd guess this was only possible over that length of time as a very deliberate policy; the princes are described as nearly autonomous rulers of their own province apart from sending tribute (a form of taxes, presumably) to Minas Tirith, and they may have deliberately held themselves apart from the rest of Gondor and almost exclusively intermarried within the heavily Númenórean population of their own principality for most of its history. If so, it seems like Prince Adrahil had ... different priorities than pretty much all the preceding princes, given that his cousin married the heir to the throne of Rohan and this alliance carried weight with Adrahil's son, and Adrahil's daughter married the heir to the lordship of Gondor.
At any rate, the marriage of Denethor and Finduilas seems to have been envisioned as very probably the first time that the main part-Elvish "lineages" in Gondor intermarried—the descendants of Mithrellas and Imrazôr in Belfalas (a rumor confirmed by Legolas in LOTR) + the descendants of Anárion constituting the uppermost echelon of the Númenórean nobility elsewhere in Gondor, including the House of the Stewards. So the house of Dol Amroth, the other Númenórean houses they've intermarried with, and the house of Eorl are all descendants of Mithrellas, a Silvan Elf; Aragorn, the junior branches of the house of Isildur, and the Stewards and other nobles of "royal origin" are all descendants of Elendil and thus Elwing and Eärendil; Faramir and Boromir's Elvish heritage, therefore, includes Silvan Elves, Grey Elves, and High Elves (Noldor and Vanyar).
Honestly, I would guess this combination of Elvish heritages is pretty damn uncommon among Elves themselves. There's something—I don't know, a little bit apropos—about these factions of Elves, whose relationships with each other ranged from "tense" to "open warfare" over centuries, only becoming a single bloodline through the marriage of two mortals from Gondor, Denethor and Finduilas: strange and eldritch mortals with their own peculiar forms of development and aging, but doomed to die nevertheless, and both dying prematurely. Legolas's colony of Silvan Elves in Ithilien live under the aegis of a prince and princess, Faramir and Éowyn, who both owe their existences in part to a Silvan Elf fleeing into Gondor.
Putting the term "Catholic guilt" on a high shelf where fandom can't reach it until everyone learns how to identify characters who are very very clearly coded as Protestant.
i write about thirteen's character all the time but in truth, none of that truly explains why she's captured my imagination over the years. so i'll take a different tack and explain why thirteen is a necessary counterweight to the show's familiar narrative.
every week, the show forces patients into situations where they have to accept increasingly risky tests for a chance at survival. giving up is not an option. house berates rebecca that there is no such thing as death with dignity, he violates dnrs, he tricks ezra powell into one last diagnosis. and after all that, there is an answer (and usually a cure) at the end of the tunnel. it's a neat narrative. it's fun, comforting. but that's not how life is.
enter thirteen. she--while auditioning for a diagnostics fellowship, no less--tells house that she doesn't want to know her diagnosis. and the show presents her as right! sometimes, there is no power in knowing, and house's manichean insistence otherwise is a self-justifying rationalization. during her self-destructive arc in season five, thirteen asks why she shouldn't do whatever the hell she wants and no one can come up with a good answer. foreman offers up the drug trial but despite his best efforts, he cannot fix her. in life and in medicine, sometimes there's no just reward for making the hard choices.
when thirteen leaves the show in season seven, she leads the team (and the show leads the viewer) to believe that she's going for another drug trial--a plotline that would fit in the show's familiar narrative of risk and reward. but no. instead, the show unfurls a much stickier story: her brother wanted to give up and she aided him. that act of destruction is one of the purest acts of love ever depicted on the show.
thirteen's story is like a dark undercurrent beneath the explicit narrative of the show: when knowing doesn't help, when there are no hail mary passes to be had, when giving up is the bravest thing you can do. the show would be so much flatter without it.
