Chapter 1.5: In which I establish that deep and meaningful connection between the two main characters
If you’ve been following this blog at all, which I don’t know why you’re not, because I’m hilarious, you would know I’m writing my own Twilight-style story, only with awesomeness.
According to Tarot cards, naked people ALWAYS have a deep and meaningful connection.
“You know,” said the main male character, because I hadn’t come up with a name for him yet, and even if I had, I don’t really like the one I chose. “I feel like there’s some sort of deep and meaningful connection between the two of us.”
“Really?” gasped Whatsername, which I really need to come up with a better one by now. “I feel a deep and meaningful connection too.”
“I think, if we say it often enough, people will believe that it’s true,” said the mysterious guy.
“Deep and meaningful…” she said.
“Connection,” he finished, because that’s how deep and meaningful their connection was, they could totally finish each other’s sentences.
TV is officially out of new ideas
I think I've always hated you, Winona Ryder, even before I dated that guy who was obssessed with you and all his exes kind of resembled you.
When I was in junior high, my best friend Brandi and I would hang out (hi, Brandi!), read her mom’s paperback romances (we’d've read my mom’s romances, but they were much tamer and, thus, boring) and watch movies with Christian Slater. The best of these was Heathers. It was, coincidentally enough, also the best movie of Winona Ryder’s career (note: my irrational hatred of Winona Ryder has led me not to research this statement by watching any of her other films, so we’re just going to assume it to be true, OK?).
Now, unless you’re a teenager or very, very old, you’ve seen Heathers. If you’re neither of those things and you haven’t seen Heathers, you should probably not be on the internets either, because you are Amish or something. Possibly a cult member.
Why am I talking about Heathers (why indeed)?
Because TV wants to make it a series now. Come on, TV, I already knew Hollywood hates me, but I thought maybe you, TV, might have some fondness for me, after all that time we spent together in the ’90s. Remember the X-Files, TV? And Homicide: Life on the Streets? And my love of Law & Order that died with (God rest his awesome soul) Jerry Orbach? Remember those times, TV? We laughed, we cried. We ate popcorn (I ate popcorn, TV, but I did throw some at you occasionally). Is that it? Are you mad about the popcorn thing? ‘Cause I was trying to share, TV. It wasn’t done out of meanness. No, it was done out of love.
But why you got to do me like this, TV? How the hell do you expect anyone to make a non-craptacular weekly series of a movie that ended when one of the leads got blown up? Is it because I haven’t been spending much time with you lately? Well, Battletar Galactica‘s off the air and Chuck hasn’t come back on yet. Look, I’m looking forward to Human Target too, but that’s not till January or something, stupid mid-season replacements, why have I got to wait! I’m sorry for the run-on sentence, TV. I’m just. So. Mad.
So please, TV, if you could just tell me why or how Heathers? I mean, if someone has a good idea for it, I’d love to know. It’s just that, well, TV, I don’t think the people you’ve asked to do it are going to have very good ideas. I mean, one of them wrote Sex and the City episodes for God’s sake. I just lost my female audience, didn’t I, TV? Well, I don’t care. That’s how mad I am, TV.
So, TV, please, just … tell me why.
But Disney ruins EVERYTHING!
At least I get to hang out with princesses now. I love those guys.
Q: How do you feel about Disney’s $4 billion acquisition of Marvel comics?
A: I am confused about exactly how many zeroes are in a billion anyway, and also: NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!
Ten badasses ruined by the Disneyfication process
Disney’s destroyed a lot of things. Countless reels of their early racist cartoons. Small nations. My will to live.
Not least among those things is what makes certain badasses truly badass.
A list follows.
1. Tinkerbell.
Gah! It's a fairy! I mean one of the little people! Please don't smite me, powerful one!
Pre-Disney: Tinkerbell, as we all know, was Peter Pan’s pet fairy. As you may not know, people don’t actually keep fairies as pets and Tink was only hanging out with the lad because of a strange sense of fondness. Later, when Peter brought the young girl Wendy to Neverland, Tink convinced the Lost Boys to shoot arrows at the strange “Wendy-Bird.” That’s right, she was bad-assedly trying to off her competition for Peter’s affections.
Post-Disney: Look, I don’t remember watching Peter Pan any more than the rest of you, but I’m pretty sure that everything Tinkerbell now is aimed towards 5-year-old girls.
2. Captain Hook.
Pre-Disney: He was “Blackbeard’s boatswain, and that he was the only man Long John Silver ever feared.” Also, he was actively trying to murder a prepubescent boy.
Post-Disney: Do the words “bumbling fool” mean anything to you? If they don’t, perhaps you are in need of a dictionary. Disney had to ruin everything good about Peter Pan.
I know Disney tries to convince us she's a feminist, but would a feminist really wear such a skimpy top? Sure she would! She owns her boobage, dammit! I forgot what point this caption was trying to get across.
Pre-Disney: A little mermaid wondered what it would be like to have a soul. A little mermaid discovered that the only way to get a soul was to have a human fall in love with her. Note: it says nothing about falling in love with the human in return. A little mermaid, near her fated death, can ward it off if she kills the human man. Does she? No. She lets him live, marry his true love and turns into sea foam (actually, she turns into an air spirit, but she thought she was going to turn into sea foam, so it counts). That last thing is what makes her truly badass. Well, that and the way she danced for the prince even though each step felt like she was walking on knives. Bad! Ass!
Post-Disney: Ariel falls in love with a human man. Who needs a soul when you can have steaming hot human sex, am I right? Offered the same choice as the original little mermaid, she also staunchly refuses to stab the guy to death, but in the end, she ends up married, not sea foam and presumably the proud possessor of a soul. Nicely tying a neat little bow in everything and kind of defeating the whole Christian theme Hans Christian (hey!!) Anderson had going.
4. Hera.
Pre-Disney: Zeus’s oft-cuckolded wife (can women be cuckolded? Hell, I don’t know), she took her revenge not on her scoundrel of a husband who couldn’t keep it in his pants and was sticking it to everything that moved, but on his lovers. She turned Io into a cow. She detained Leto’s childbirth so that her labor with the twins Apollo and Artemis lasted for a couple of weeks, which is very goddamn evil, if you have ever experienced the horror that is childbirth. If she couldn’t get to the lover, she went after her husband’s progeny, even if said progeny had been named Heracles as an attempt to appease her. She even went so far as to strike Heracles with a madness that led him to murder his wife and children. Pretty badass, huh?
Post-Disney: Hera and Zeus are the loving parents of Hercules and … what the hell? Really? You’re serious? Frak you, Disney. Just: frak you.
5. Cinderella/Snow White.
Pre-Disney: Look, there’s really no point in doing two separate entries on these two. They’re both basically weak women who sit around doing chores and hoping that wonderful things will happen to them and then wonderful things do, hurrah! Hurrah! But what made both ladies truly badass was the punishments that they let be inflicted on their tormentors. Cinderella’s stepsisters had their eyes poked out by doves that were sitting on the new princess’s shoulders. Snow White’s stepmother was made to dance in iron-hot shoes until she was dead. It takes a pretty spectacular badass to let those things come to be.
Post-Disney: Read the first part again, up until “punishments that they let be inflicted on their tormentors,” and you’ve got a pretty good idea of the general wussiness of these ladies. Also, they sing a lot. *shudder*
6. Maleficent.
Actually, she reigns as the evilest Disney villain ever. Partly for the pointy head cones.
Pre-Disney: Look, I don’t know if your parents ever told you this, but these are words to raise your children by: Don’t piss off the fair folk. If someone sneezes, bless ‘em before the fairies steal their soul. If you’re caught in a fairy ring, well, just expect to die. And for the love of God, don’t forget to invite a fairy to your princess daughter’s Christening because that is poor form, sir, very poor form indeed. In fact, it’s such poor form that the highly pissed-off fairy is likely to curse your child unto her death, although that curse may be tempered by another fairy whom you actually remembered to invite.
Post-Disney: Actually, Maleficient, which is a name invented by the folks at Disney and is kind of awesome, remains pretty badass and turns into a dragon and somesuch. However, she was just evil from the get-go, which, while badass, seems less badass than teaching people proper manners by killing their kids.
7. Shere Khan.
Disney's Shere Khan. Not pictured: your liver-chewing doom.
Pre-Disney: The Jungle Book’s man-eating tiger was a man-eater for one reason and one reason alone (coincidentally, it’s the same reason tigers become man-eaters today!): people can’t run very fast. Shere Khan was born with a lame leg, which would be a hindrance in the whole hunting and killing existence, except for the miracle of slow, slow villagers.
Post-Disney: Why does Shere Khan eat people? There’s no reason given? That’s pretty badass then … wait, what do you mean he doesn’t eat anything in the whole movie? What’d they kill him for then?
8. Wall-E.
Maybe Disney is doing us a favor and prepping us for the impending robot apocalypse.
Pre-Disney: Not Wall-E specifically, but all robots were things to be feared and obeyed, Isaac Asimov’s rules of robotics notwithstanding.
Post-Disney: Awwww! They’re so cute and helpful! Cute and helpful!
9. Aladdin’s genie.
Pre-Disney: Folks, there is a reason that most djinn are found stuffed into bottles and it’s not because they like it in there. It’s because that’s where they could be safely stored because, holy Allah, are they powerful and generally selfish beings. It’s best if you use your third wish to wish your genie back into its lamp, if you don’t want to end up disembowled on top of your riches and half-naked harem.
Post-Disney: Here’s a lesson for the ages. It is impossible to be a badass and be voice-acted by Robin Williams.
10. Johnny Depp.
But seriously, folks, is Johnny Depp EVER unattractive?
Pre-Disney: Depp was a hotel-room thrashing, method-acting, crazy hot guy. He had a “Wino Forever” tattoo (ha ha, take that, Winona Ryder)!
Post-Disney: Disney turned Depp into an eyeliner-wearing pirate. Now, you might think that pirates would be pretty badass, and you would be right, except in the cases where they were eyeliner. The only movie character ever who is still a badass despite the wearing of eyeliner is L from Death Note, and that’s only because Japan used up all their CGI funds on the shinigami effects in the movie (I’m assuming Japan is both a country and a film studio).
Dishonorable mention:
Simba, a.k.a. Disney’s “Hamlet.”
Pre-Disney: In the Bard’s epic tragedy, everybody dies because Hamlet can’t make up his goddamned mind.
Post-Disney: I’m not saying I like Simba and his stupid yet catchy songs, but at least the lion cub was a little bit proactive, you know?
For once, I don’t even have to watch the trailer
I hate Final Destination so much, I didn't want to dignify it with a photo. Then, I was going to use the Flukeman, but he's just gross, so I figured, hey! Mulder and Scully are always nice to look at.
When I’m picking out a “Movie I’m not Seeing this Weekend,” I usually do a little research. Very little. I watch a 30-second to 2.5-minute trailer and pre-judge away! Sometimes, however, I get lucky, and the fourth (or so) movie in a series comes out, and I don’t even have to waste that much of my life watching the trailer because we already saw the trailer the first three times and why is there even a Final Destination franchise?
Created by James Wong and Glen Morgan, the series seems designed only to make people forget about their good work on X-Files episodes and also to prove that you can’t avoid death, which we know, because, hi! Mortality! I can only assume Glen is jealous of his more talented brother, Darin, aka “The Flukeman.” I don’t know why I assume that, I only know that I am jealous of the man for writing the four best X-Files episodes ever, and you know his brother would have to be too, right?
In conclusion, death takes us all (and sometimes in 3-D!). In further conclusion, if you want to see attractive teens bite it, you might as well watch that Rob Zombie Halloween II remake, even though I don’t know why you would want to do that either.
Speaking of Planetary …
Which I was, in that last post, because — squee! — issue 27!
In honor of my favorite Waren Ellis work (it’s tied with Global Frequency, but I’m not a fan of Transmetropolitan, and I await my hate-mail … now), we (and I mean I) shall now have a character-off between the two greatest icemen of our time. (Hint: One of them is Iceman.)
The Fourth (spoiler alert!) Man looks out over the city, which is part of the world that he has saved, because he is just that awesome. Elijah Snow, I love you.
I mean, why would you even WANT to turn your entire body into ice? Super power? More like STUPID power, am I right?
Thus begins the epic battle between Elijah Snow and that kid from the X-Men.
Name memorability: Clearly, this one goes to Elijah Snow, because what the hell is that kid’s name anyway?
Immortality? Once again, Elijah is the clear winner, as he is a “Century Baby,” one of a variety of folks born on Jan. 1, 1900, who show no signs of dying any time soon (ignore Jenny Sparks‘ fate, please). Iceman’s a mutant, but X-Men are as mortal as the rest of us. Except for some of them, because immortality is probably their mutant ability. Not Iceman, though. Mortal.
General bad-assedness: Elijah, Elijah, he’s our man! If he can’t do it, he’ll probably just freeze your urine stream and threaten to snap your penis off! (What? You think all these categories are just gimmes for Elijah Snow? Fine. We’ll give a kid a break.)
Dated Rogue? At least in the movies and Ultimate X-Men, Iceman has dated Rogue. Elijah lives in an alternate DC-style universe, so there’s no such person. The winner? Iceman.
World-saving abilities? Look, they’re both superheroes, but at the end of the day, only Elijah Snow has been saving the world since the 1900s. Iceman is an X-Man and, thus, whines a lot. Winner? Our boy Elijah Snow.
Physicality? Here my weakness for young boys goes up against my weakness for white (dammit Google, stop giving me links to actual Artic foxes, you jerk!) foxes (stupid Urban Dictionary, it can be men too!). Well, since I’ve already demonstrated a clear bias for Elijah Snow, we’ll give the win to him here as well. Brains are sexy.
Overall winner? Elijah Snow, obviously, because he is a godlike being of supreme power and possibly the best superhero ever, and Iceman is a whiny X-Man who whines and doesn’t utilize his powers to his full potential. I love you, Elijah Snow.
In related news, the 27th issue of Planetary is coming out in October. I. Am. So. Bleeding. Happy.
Chapter 2 maybe: Possibly the big reveal now
Furthering the adventures of Whatsername and The Mysterious Guy who everyone says is mysterious and probably has hair that looks like he rolled out of bed like that but he actually spent hours on it.
Perhaps I should say “The further adventures of…”.
Meh. Either works.
“They said you were mysterious,” said Whatsername.
“There’s nothing mysterious about me,” said Jonas mysteriously, whom I just now named Jonas, because it seems like a mysterious name, but maybe I’ll change it to Elijah (and speaking of Elijahs, is anybody else almost dying that the last issue of Planetary is finally coming out) or Noah or something else vaguely (or specifically) Biblical. “I’m just like everybody else.”
According to Google, Bulgarian demons are totally made of beer. I have created the most awesome hero EVER.
“Except for that eyeball thing,” said Whatsername, referencing an earlier chapter because I totally remember what I’m writing and shit.
Jonas (or Elijah or whatever) sneezed a little bit, or maybe it was laughter. No, it was a sneeze. “You caught me,” he said. “I am a little mysterious.” The way he said it, it sounded like a synonym for “gay.”
“Oh,” said Whatsername, and she was a little bit disappointed because all the good ones are gay, at least that was what her mother said before she left Whatsername and her dad. Also, she was talking about lesbians and her new lifestyle.
“I mean,” said Jonoahas (I decided to combine Jonas and Noah. I think it works.), “I’m a vampire. I mean, I’m a candarian Bulgarian demon.”
Because if there is one thing the Bulgarians are known for, it’s their demons. Also the not suing me. Especially the not suing me.
I want to be a cougar when I grow up
Rowr!
Q: Have you ever heard that Lords of Acid song “Young Boys“?
A: Yes, and it is my anthem.
Because I’m feeling bad about using creepy pictures
Since my last two posts had Madonna’s nasty arms and a scary bunny costume (Eric Elbogen is totally cute though, and I want to hug him or whatever), I figured now was about the time for a nice picture (or three).
Thus, a top ten list! It shall be … let’s see … the top ten crushworthiest actors in Lokifire’s humble opinion, which we all know isn’t that humble, otherwise she wouldn’t keep telling people about it.
I want to go swimming now. Really, really bad.
1. Takeshi Kaneshiro. He’s part Japanese, part Taiwanese, and all male model turned actor. I love male models turned actors. Why? Because they are the prettiest actors of all.
2. Cillian Murphy. Cillian’s cheekbones could cut glass, and if there’s one thing we look for in men, it’s glass-cutting ability. Also, this guy can actually, you know, act, so he’s got a leg up on some of the other gents in this list, without getting too yaoi on everyone.
Coherent thought processes ... failing .... "Mrow" is all that's left.
3. Hugh Laurie. Mr. Laurie is funny, British, tall and funny. Also, he’s one of those guys who got handsomer as he aged, which is great!
4. Jeffrey Donovan. He plays a spy on TV, and also, he is hot.
5. Tak Sakaguchi. Another actor from across the seas, who is also a stuntman, who is also one of the prettiest men I have ever seen. I have nothing but respect for Sakaguchi-sama. Except lust. I also have that.
6. Zac Efron. I know you think I’m edging into pedophilia here, and perhaps I am, but I’m pretty sure he’s at least 18, and also, he has some of the bluest eyes I’ve ever seen. And such floppy hair! I just want to! Tousle! It!
7. Kenichi Matsuyama. Look! Another model turned actor! Also, he played L, who is my favorite detective ever, except for Sherlock Holmes, and we already discussed that.
Because I couldn't squeeze him in between Mssr. Kaneshiro and Laurie, here is Cillian Murphy and those cheekbones he should register as weapons.
8. Kyle Secor. One of my most enduring crushes. From that first moment I saw Homocide: Life on the Streets and they hadn’t made his character a murderous bisexual yet to when he showed up on Veronica Mars, I never stopped loving him. Unlike the people who ran his various fan sites, as they are all apparently defunct, and that makes me cry for the fate of all Kyle Secor lovers out there (and I don’t mean, you know, lovers lovers, or Lokifire would be the happiest girl on the planet).
10. Chuck. OK, the actor is Zachary Levi, but he always seems to have this scraggly beard when he’s not filming the show.
Blah Blah Blah may be the best vampire song ever
I forgive you for the scary bunny suit, Eric Elbogen, because I love you that much.
Back when Eric Elbogen from Say Hi went by the moniker Say Hi to Your Mom, which is unrelentingly cute and I kind of miss it, he created an entire album of songs about vampires, The Vampire Album. Just kidding, he is much more clever than that. It was called Impeccable Blahs. While nearly every song on that album is genius (genius, I tell you!), Blah Blah Blah is more genius-y than most.
Why, you ask?
A couple of reasons, which is why this doesn’t make one of the Top Ten lists:
The song is called Blah Blah Blah.
It’s about vampires.
Eric says “resistance is futile.”
There are other awesome things about the songs, such as the tight instrumentation and Elbogen’s delicious voice (if voices had a flavor, his would be a soft-serve ice cream with huckleberry dip, and, baby, Lokifire would eat it all up), but those things are really the standouts.
Especially the Star Trek quote thing. Man, that kills me every time.
