featuring my media obsession.

the gay-ass love affair between me and my screen. sideblog of ~starboards.

[ladyhawke]

BLACK SAILS + Who We Are by Hozier (insp.)

[aflawedfashion]

Melanie & Bennett | Snowpiercer

[ormundshightower]

ALICENT HIGHTOWER and RHAENYRA TARGARYEN HOUSE OF THE DRAGON — S2E8: The Queen Who Ever Was

[movie-gifs]

Don't cry. If you have become human enough to cry, then all the magic in the world  cannot change you back

THE LAST UNICORN 1982, dir. Arthur Rankin Jr. and Jules Bass

[aoya]

[gaybuckybarnesss]

AARON TAYLOR-JOHNSON Giorgio Armani Acqua Di Giò

[idontwikeit]

Ask a historian, “What was mankind’s greatest invention?” Fire? The wheel? The sword? I would argue it’s history itself. History isn’t fact. It’s narrative, one carefully curated and shaped. Under the pen strokes of the right scribe, a villain becomes a hero, a lie becomes the truth.

-Gaal Dornick, Foundation

[cinefiliz]

Aaron Taylor Johnson for Esquire Magazine

[john-silvers]

BLACK SAILS, XXX

[daniel-bruehl]

“Survival requires sacrifice.”

Zach McGowan as KING ROAN KOM AZGEDA THE 100 (Season 3 - Season 4)

[the-breath-in-air]

I don't know the details of decision making in production of The Sandman on Netflix, obviously, but it feels like some of these good changes were like...

'Hey maybe now that Constantine's ex girlfriend is a queer Black woman, she shouldn't also be a thief and an addict. Let's not fall into that stereotype.'

'And maybe the nonbinary Desire could get, like, quasi-dream-consent from Unity Kinkaid instead of just flat out raping her in her sleep...especially now that Unity is a Black woman. Actually, wouldn't Desire want Unity to...desire...them before fathering the child anyway.'

'And what if The Corinthian fucks a guy and doesn't kill him because, like, maybe let's separate his queerness from the fact that he's a nightmare & serial killer.'

Some folks might claim these kinds of changes are 'sanitizing' the story...and maybe so. But really, it feels like adjusting some of the 'edgy' 'grimdark' remnants from it's 90s origin.

[hangingfire]

The Sandman TV adaptation is so interesting to me because in a lot of ways, it's gentler and more thoughtful than the original comic, while still being faithful to the essence of the story, its unearthly mood, and quite frankly its Goth sensibility. And I imagine there are probably people who think it's lost its "edge", but maybe those exact edges weren't what made it good or significant in the first place.

Look, I'm more than thirty years older than I was when I picked up Sandman #9 ("Tales in the Sand", Nada's story) at a rummage sale. I don't need to prove—and I don't need my fiction to prove—"realness" and "seriousness" by being all dark and gritty and mean just because Real Life is supposedly always dark and gritty and mean. In some ways I'm a LOT angrier than I was when I was sixteen, but the things I look for in fiction are not always exactly aligned with that anger anymore.

Which is to say that of the many memorable comics panels from that late-80s, early-90s period, this one from Grant Morrison and Chas Truog's Animal Man #26 ("Deus Ex Machina") is maybe the one I feel the most deeply these days.

We'll stop at nothing, you see. All the suffering and the death and the pain in your world is entertainment for us. Why does blood and torture and anguish still excite us? We thought that by making your world more violent, we would make it more "realistic", more "adult". God help us if that's what it means. Maybe, for once, we could try to be kind.

[hunterschafer]

HUNTER SCHAFER for SHISEIDO

[dylanobrienisbatman]

Saw a take that the boys wouldn’t stick up for each other or die for each other and did we watch the same show? The entire plot with Leah and Raf was centred around the fact that these boys saw one of their own go through a horrifying trauma, banded together as a group to protect him, and then not ONE of them said a word about it, like Josh asked. The scientists couldn’t get a single one of those boys to talk. The dark spot around day 15 was these boys keeping that secret locked up. They kept that secret for Josh, because no matter what the fucking suits asking them questions wanted, they were never going to betray him like that.

And their WHOLE arc is about learning to protect each other, about learning that the survival of the group has to outweigh everything else. That’s the point of Bo and Scotty stealing food and then finally learning that they don’t have to, that the other boys won’t let them starve. That’s the point of the arc following the assault, where it revolves around the boys all deciding that as much as the detest what Seth did, they can’t just let him die in the woods alone, because they’re all in this together. They all decide to come together, even knowing what Seth did, until it’s revealed that Seth is too much of a monster for them to feel safe with him around. They gave him a second chance, until his lies come apart and they expel him for the good of the group.

And the boys also had to deal with one of their own being a monster, which the girls did not have to deal with. It’s easier to create a strong, familial bond when you trust that you’re safe with these other people. What Seth did to Josh broke the trust they had built. They come together and slay an apex predator. They’re clearly on their way to building a strong, close bond, and then it’s completely shattered by Seth. The tension we feel between them all comes from the sudden awareness that they don’t actually know if they’re safe together anymore. They thought that the one thing they could count on on that island was that, with literally everything else trying to kill them, the eight of them would be safe together, and that was ruined. That’s why, especially at first, it’s an all or nothing, us or him mentality. That’s why they fight over what to do with the fish, how to handle the situation with the lighter, etc. They aren’t just at odds with Seth now, they don’t trust each other at all.

The boys aren’t supposed to have the same level of connection and community as the girls. They can’t, because of Seth. To say this makes their story less compelling makes no sense. The fact that a group of teenage boys heard that one of their own had been harmed by the most charismatic and well loved member of the group and they banded together to protect him, and that all of them kept the secret together, shows that their bond and dynamic is just as steadfast as the girls, it’s just going to be shown differently. It’ll be interesting to see in s3 how the boys dynamic will shift once one they know the whole story and especially once they realise that not only is Seth gone but he was also the mole.

[aimeegbbs]

THE UNSINKABLE EIGHT: NO CONTEXT

[beingharsh]

Severance (2022), Season 1

[ladyinquisitor-deactivated20211]

Inquisition camps - Emerald Graves

[rhinozilla]

You know what I'm a slut for? When a character visibly drops a ruse. Like, the way their face changes the moment they give up a facade and reveal themselves.

This applies to revealing love, apathy, anger, evil intent. I mcfuckin love it.