riding the echo down

thoughts for a pre-recorded con panel: archival storage for your yaoi

2026-03-01T17:24:22Z

i mentioned this idea on fedi but wanted to jot down an outline somewhere it'd be easier to format while still being open to public comment. if there's anything you think isn't already addressed here but would be helpful to see discussed pls lmk! there are no stupid questions, but i don't have the bandwidth to do the live q&a now lol.

alternatively, if anyone has fannish horror stories about storage they want to share i'm happy to include them in the presentation and discuss how they might've been avoided.

archival storage for fans on a budget (workshop the title, i'm terrible at these) - individual-scale solutions framed in a way that's accessible/relevant to fen rather than normie grannies

INTRO

dammit jim i'm an archivist not a conservator, not giving professional advice, some of this will be out of your control and that's ok. some of the solutions may be out of your current budget but let's take ibuprofen together and make informed decisions
basics of agents of deterioration, inherent vice

CORE

focus on paper-based (doujinshi, etc) but touch on things like pins, figurines, and other physical media (itabags!)
most important things to avoid if possible (touch on off-gassing, etc. eta: including plastic sleeves, thanks tabby)
what can you do on a budget? you do not need museum-grade environmental monitors.
- location in some ways more crucial than the containers
- give irl examples: larry archive, arcv doujins, hellsing merch?
- binders&c for display purposes? paging through lobby cards etc.

OTHER CONSIDERATIONS

cataloging as you go
- easy DIY collection management solutions
unbinding bound media: when is it a good idea? how to do it safely, how to label pages if needed (pencils, erasers to recommend)
address ipm? unlikely to be a concern for most fans (hopefully) but share a resource
not to be a corpo shill but... recommended vendors for officially archival-grade supplies

comments

notes from richard monette's "this rough magic"

2025-12-27T21:14:21Z

was able to borrow a copy of the book through partner's university job. i know monette best from his scene-stealing turns in find the lady so i was curious whether his book says anything about his film roles. not really, since the focus is understandably on his stage career and how he became director of the stratford festival, but it's still an interesting read, especially when he's talking about his time in the stage version of "oh! calcutta".

won't be ordering a copy of this for my dane archive, so here are some notes about items of interest to my research project.

- page 41, while discussing his turn as hamlet at the crest theater in 1963/1964, about ken james (with dane in rituals, the heatwave lasted four days, cop, and others): "Horatio, Hamlet's friend and fellow student at Wittenberg University, was played by Ken James, a pugilist as well as an actor, and a man considerably older than me, even though we were supposed to be peers. One day, he turned to Marigold [Charlesworth, one of the directors] and asked, in his throaty boxer's voice: 'Hey, Marigold. How come I'm still in school with this guy? Am I a dummy?'"

it's not clear to me if this anecdote is james intending to be mean towards monette for his being 19 years old at the time, or if it's a good-natured joke about the age difference. monette doesn't indicate either way.

- page 236, about his appearances on television: "...I'd appeared in such other CBC TV dramas as Mary of Scotland, The Reluctant Agent, and Certain Practices."

the reluctant agent was a serial that lawrence dane co-wrote, and there's a couple surviving episodes available through LAC. it doesn't seem as though dane acted in it, and it's not clear to me how involved he would have been on set.

still, it's a little striking to me that he completely omits any mention of find the lady. as a proud canadian, why not mention working with john candy? was it really that much of an unmemorable blip, or did he not want to talk about it for some reason? well, we'll never know.

comments

find the lady (1976)

2025-12-07T02:22:45Z

he plays such a dumb character in this movie. (ariel needs legs voice) i can't not fuck him

the "is it worth watching this for lawrence dane" rating: 3/5

the plot: remember the cop characters from "it seemed like a good idea at the time"? no? that's ok, it doesn't matter, there's no continuity here other than some reheated gags. john candy's dumb pizza-loving cop kopek and his superior officer, lawrence dane's sergeant broom, end up responsible for investigating a sexy woman's kidnapping. except there's a second kidnapping note for her, then a third. she's supposed to be making an opera debut even though she can't sing and would rather do burlesque at her boyfriend's club, but her rich guardian (played by peter cook phoning it in) is having her kidnapped for an insurance scam and she tries to kidnap herself so she doesn't have to debut. so who's responsible for the third and real kidnapping? broom and kopek do not find out. not on purpose, anyway.

like its predecessor, this is not a good movie. that said, there's a charm to it that the first movie doesn't have at all and it's mainly due to dane and candy. richard monette as a drag queen trying to help strippers with their choreography is an absolute scene-stealer and an instant highlight of the movie. i expect he and dane already knew each other since monette was part of the stratford shakespeare festival in 1965, around the same time dane was getting his start there as larry zahab, before monette went on to become its artistic director in 1994. wish i knew what their interactions were like.... this one is also complicated since it's got some period-typical anti-asian racism and other racisms as well, technically? except they're all typical examples of jokesters trying to have it both ways since every time the point seems to be that the white people are dumb/incompetent compared to the non-whites. arguably more tolerable than something like "sixteen candles" which full disclosure i never finished because of that one character. i don't know what dane would have thought, especially with his experience of being pigeonholed into roles as ethnic stereotypes when he was first starting out versus being treated as white here. the joke where dane's character thinks he needs a spanish translator for someone speaking italian is pretty funny to me tho.

he is also Very Physical With Other Men in this. sure, some of it seems like it's supposed to be along the lines of "ha ha the homophobe is made to look gay and the idea of being gay is hilarious", but i will take it. i will take his unquestioning acceptance of monette's female impersonation and his nervous attraction to the same. a fascinating follow-up to the arguably best and definitely most controversial scene from the previous movie where broom and kopek are dropping anti-gay slurs like there's no tomorrow.

this is pretty easy to find online since it's now marketed as a john candy movie which, yeah, technically. it was one of the very first movies he did, which is still notable even if he wasn't given many chances to shine. (he had a little more energy in his first movie as kopek, versus the writers now seeming more interested in emphasizing his weight and candy seems a little checked out as a result.) the recent john candy documentary included a couple clips from these two movies but didn't discuss either at all, which seemed a little strange to me. (the documentary also completely omitted any mention of the clown murders, which is a shame because it's one of the first roles where he was given something a little meatier.) the documentary didn't really get into his beginnings as a film actor even though it was focused a lot on his feelings as an actor, so i was a little disappointed in that but otherwise it's a fine feature and you should consider watching it. should you consider watching find the lady? i mean, i guess? for dane, sure. he's in it enough that a dane cut isn't warranted, and it's not unfunny imo. mickey rooney as one of the criminals gives a mildly amusing performance in the dane-less scenes. watching it under some kind of influence might get you the best results tbh.

highlight: there was a bit where he was combing his hair while looking in the rearview mirror. very sexy of him

( acab but also. yknow )

comments

10itemsorless signup/exchange letter

2025-09-01T01:49:34Z

thank you for your interest in whatever we matched on! here's some thoughts to help you with your chosen assignment :D

GENERAL LIKES REGARDLESS OF SHIP/CHARACTER:

- awkward first times (date, kiss, sex, hand-holding, conversations, etc)
- obvious crushes
- vomiting and/or sickfic where the one that's sick is the one that's usually very concerned about self-image and/or easily flustered
- situational humiliation (e.g. becoming nauseous in public, trying to hide a boner in public, blurting something out, coming untouched/ejaculating in pants, etc)
- premature orgasm and/or multiple orgasms
- breeding/pregnancy kink
- trans characters
- bossy bottoms
- priest kink. seduce that priest!!! ditto teacher kink. love figures of authority abusing their power, but also potentially being abused :3c role reversals are very tasty~
- related to the above, uniforms! generally wwii era or earlier
- with trans men, i looooove gushing (aka squirting but that word makes me uncomfortable lol. you get the idea tho) and it can be part of orgasm or something preceding orgasm, i just really enjoy that being part of the whole sexual package.
- dubcon! i can enjoy noncon too but it's more situational, so dubcon is the easier way to go. intoxication, manipulation, mixed messages, being in denial.... if it's in-character, it's good!

rituals (1977) - mitzi/anyone

- i adore this movie and i adore mitzi. i do love the idea of mitzi having pre-canon "no homo" interactions with marty, but i would also be very curious to see how people interpret his interactions with any of the other characters from the movie! he and harry clearly have a rich and complicated history that harry doesn't want to talk about and mitzi only brings up when he's trying to guilt harry or seek solidarity in shared experiences.... and he's known the other doctors for a long time as well. hell, if you want to explore whether something might happen with the pilot before their breakfast, be my guest. his reaction to the pilot showing off that surgery scar was kind of indecipherable....

- i enjoy the way he drops a slur or two in the movie like he's scared of looking at what he could become, but i don't think he'd noncon another man. just give me mitzi being a catty and confused repressed middle-aged man!

- see also: multipurpose dear creator letter

DO NOT WANT: please don't do anything erotic with his death. the scene in general, sure, with the rope bondage and everything, but not the actual process of being killed and dying.

reanimator - carl hill/herbert west

- they are both unapologetically exploitative people in different ways. they hate each other because they're more similar than they'd like to admit! they don't like the funhouse mirror being held up to them! hill wanting what he can't have, west wanting to do what he's told he shouldn't, hill's jealousy of west's youthful drive, the endless possibilities of hypnosis.....

- hill force-femming a (trans) west is classic, always love that. west somehow penetrating hill's esophagus, whether it's the part still attached to hill's body or the part that's attached to his head, and hill being shocked and ashamed by how good it feels to what's left of his senses/psyche would be chef kiss.

- these are nasty people so go as nasty as you want! i love misuse of human organs for sexual purposes, vomit, reagent/drug abuse, mind control, making dan sit in the cuck chair, evil sexy misgendering of a trans man, object insertion, hill unexpectedly orgasming while being decapitated...basically if it would fit in the movie i will love it.

DO NOT WANT: no scat and no consensual daddy dom stuff, pls, any daddy dom stuff must be in the context of hill being a creep.

- see also: multipurpose dear creator letter

teen titans (2003 cartoon) - brother blood/cyborg

- ok brother blood is such a weird guy in the teen titans cartoon i need more of him. he just wants to have a nice school! but he's also obsessed with this teenager to the point of wanting to emulate him?? and cyborg is only briefly won over. the desperation of this man... my favorite dynamic is when blood has cyborg cornered somehow and his blatant thirst is not deterred by cyborg's repeated refusals, but he still wants cyborg to like him!

- love this staying one-sided. also love the fucked up teacher/student dynamic. so sexy. please also feel free to lean into the pseudo-religious elements! i do prefer brother blood before his body modding but that could be fun to explore too. something about modeling his new body off of cyborg's in more ways than one...?

DO NOT WANT: no daddy dom stuff please.

find the lady (1976) - kopek/broom

- they are both so incompetent it's adorable. broom berates kopek all the time but at the end kopek offers to donate his vacation time to broom! they should accidentally end up sharing a bed and things escalate without them meaning to make it happen. slapstick mutual masturbation. misunderstandings culminating in broom bottoming and he keeps bitching but loves it actually.

- i love vomit and piss and i can see one of them making a mess somehow so the other one has to care for him and also clean up.

- feel free to include the bruce larousse character! that actor is an absolute delight and i am so curious about broom's interest in bruce's drag getup.

DO NOT WANT: no daddy dom stuff please, unless it's played for laughs.

- warning if you choose to watch the movie: there's some racist jokes involving an east-asian character, but it's not nearly as bad as what's in 16 candles. there's also a joke about a black cabaret performer in white-face. it's all oddly self-aware (the jokes are usually more about the white characters/viewers' expectations) so it's mostly just. very strange lol.

rpf - john candy/lawrence dane

- they worked together on three movies before candy's career really took off, and there's a very touching quote from dane in a book about candy:

“He celebrated too hard,” remembers Dane. “He opened up the faucet and it all came out. It was as if he said to himself, ‘My mortality is on a string, so I might as well throw caution to the wind.' Unfortunately he attracted people who wanted to take advantage of him. And it seemed to me he was just terribly hard on himself.”

i'd love to see something that explores how dane came away with this impression of him.

- feel free to lean into the 14-year age gap!

DO NOT WANT: no noncon or daddy dom stuff please. any dubcon should be abortive and not go beyond intoxicated groping. vomit ok but no other non-sexual fluids with these two please.

smiling friends - charlie/allan

- these two are so awkward with each other it gives me life. charlie has a hard time reading allan and allan finds charlie a little easier to read except for the times charlie just comes at him from out of left field and they get into a fight. a sexy fight. i like the idea of charlie being the older one. allan isn't very humanoid compared to charlie or pim so please have fun with fantasy/alien genitalia if you go in that direction!

– i love it when they're in mundane situations and it goes sideways. the gang goes to the laundromat and they forget something important. charlie's trying to give himself a t shot and allan startles him so he messes up the injection. allan coming back to charlie's apartment after examining it during s2e5. what about the rest of the wedding at the beginning of that episode, before or after the ceremony? did charlie try to put any drunken moves on allan? did he throw up in front of allan? on him??

- if you prefer musical inspo: tom cardy's "mixed messages" is them (charlie is the singer)

dc comics - jimmy olsen/superman

-i specifically like the version of them in the 1950s comics, where jimmy has the fan club and is constantly getting himself in trouble and trusting superman will come save him. he's canonically a teenager so as long as he's under 20 you can do whatever :3

- jimmy likes crossdressing. he likes it a lot. maybe something where he poses as a girl hoping for superman's attention but instead it lands him in hot water and supes has to perform a cool rescue and decide whether to tell jimmy he knew all along....

- i like superman being awkward and not sure what to do with jimmy's advances, regardless of whether it's one-sided or mutual. i also like the idea of him gently reciprocating because he does care for this kid.... maybe as an alien he doesn't fully appreciate the gravity of what it can mean to have sex with someone, let alone another man?

- you can read several of the comics online! i would be so tickled to get something in this style, whether written or visual.

DO NOT WANT: no daddy dom stuff please. no jimmy transformations involving weight gain.

yugioh arcv - shingo/gongenzaka

- i am fascinated by gongenzaka growing to tolerate and even support shingo. how much of that is for yuuya's sake? how much of that is because shingo allows himself to be changed by yuuya? by gongenzaka?

- it would be really cute for yuuya to make them go on a get-along date and they do in fact end up getting along, even if it's a bit of a disaster at first.

- please feel free to have background yuuya/shingo in this! background shingo/yuzu is also fine :D shingo throws himself at a lot of people but he does love yuuya and the people that yuuya loves. no mentions of sora or dennis tho please lol.

-i live for trans shingo. i will die for trans shingo. him wanting to prove his own kind of masculinity against gongenzaka's, especially if it includes him trying to assert sexual dominance and topping from the bottom? i could read endless variations on that theme.

- gongenzaka is big. trans shingo is a size queen. 2 + 2 = incredible sex. if shingo can get him to cooperate.

DO NOT WANT: no sora and no dennis. no blushing uke shingo. no feederism please.

- see also: multipurpose dear creator letter

jjba - kira/hayato

- the bathroom scene. the scene where kira is taunting hayato about the time loop. need i say more.

comments

the beginning and end overlap, and that's the middle

2025-08-07T20:15:19Z

long time no post, but who cares. i'm alive and kicking and that's what matters. yesterday i saw that letterboxd posted a recommendation list of lesser-known summer horror movies and it included rituals! i was so proud and excited (even though i did nothing to make that happen lol) that i just had to watch it again. didn't get to do my yearly re-watch in april because i was in the middle of a big move and job change, all for the better so far, and i'm going camping this weekend so what better choice for a last-night-in-civilization movie than one about a camping trip gone horribly wrong??

it's not as texture-rich a movie as some others i've rewatched, sure, but i still feel as though there's something new for me to chew on every time. it's like a piece of gum that never loses its flavor, with all the pros and cons that implies (microplastics, etc).

this time i came away really wanting to watch picnic at hanging rock (i know, way overdue!) because the sag in energy once jesse is introduced was practically palpable and it reminded me of how the screenwriter hadn't wanted to take that direction originally, but also because that movie sounds like it's more about the relationships and dynamics between a group of younger women than any horror just like how the focus of rituals feels more locked in on the relationships and dynamics between these middle-aged men than the gritty details of their suffering.

( musings on trauma and isolation as themes )

comments

snowflake challenge #4 - goals for 2025

2025-01-12T02:27:05Z

Challenge #4

Since this is the start of a new year, this challenge will be to set your own goals! Of course we can all make large or ambitious goals, remember that small and/or short goals are also good! Post your answer to today’s challenge in your own space and leave a comment in this post saying you did it. Include a link to your post if you feel comfortable doing so.

- i want to write and draw more often. signed up to getyourwordsout for a boost with my writing habits, and just now my partner was talking to me about how i used to draw a lot more back in 2014-2016 so that gave me the idea to start with baby steps and get back into doodling while watching something that doesn't require my full attention. even just once a month should be good. there's also my art piece for ygorarepairs but i started that last year, so....

- make progress with uploading backlogged reviews from dreamwidth to lawrencedane.com. might need to redo some of the screenshots since idr if i kept the uncropped originals when doing the earliest ones, but i'll enjoy getting those again if needed.

- and speaking of my man larry, maybe a nice shorter-term goal would be to get a post up somewhere about "heavenly bodies" in time for his birthday. i've already done some background research on the production and reception, i've watched it once, and now i have the blu-ray so image/video grabs should be a breeze. biggest obstacle really is deciding how to structure the review since he didn't act in it, lol.

- finish my makuderu fst and upload it to the appropriate comm(s) since i started it a couple years ago so it's time to stop sitting on it!!

- another shorter-term goal: do year 3 of my hellsing mini exchange with more promo and see how it goes so i can contribute that experience to a citruscon panel about organizing fan events.

five goals for 2025, nice. i think these are decent low-pressure goals that'll still help me feel accomplished no matter how stressful the rest of my year ends up being.

comments

the littlest hobo: lumberjacks (1983)

2024-12-31T20:09:16Z

the way his handwriting stands out, the height difference, the playing with his suspenders, the hhggrAAAGH

the "is it worth watching this for lawrence dane" rating: 2.5/5

the plot: a small-town lumberjack gets injured in a lumberjack competition with money riding on it, and our doggy hero smells sabotage. also there's hockey-related posters wherever possible. could this be any more canadian? it's very much a children's show and it shows in the writing and overall lack of imagination in the direction, though at least unlike wishbone there's no annoying children (not in this episode anyway).

that said, dane's acting is more than decent given the context and he has so much screentime. so so much. i wanted to rate this more highly because he's in this a lot and he's still in the era where to me he is in peak physical form (roughly speaking my preference is for 1967-1987, 1990 at the latest, though of course he's devastatingly handsome prior to 1967 too) but i showed this to an objective yet still supportive second party and they said that in their opinion it'd merit a 2 at most because, well, it's a children's tv show episode. nothing especially artistic about it, and even from a cultural studies angle there's not a lot going on that'd be interesting to analyze. which isn't to say there's nothing--i do find myself curious about the way they styled the appearances of the "bad guys" and the hint of a backstory for one of them that goes completely unexplored--but if i take off my horny goggles i'm compelled to agree with the lower rating since you wouldn't be missing much by not watching this, so the 2.5 is my compromise between id and ego.

this is pretty easy to find online with autocaptions at the moment, though it seems that the only version available is one specific vhs rip of a tv recording since i've yet to see any uploads with better quality. here's the episode on youtube, and here it is on the internet archive (episode 5x08).

highlight: those eyes......

( there is so much in this children's tv show episode that can be taken out of context it makes me feel ill )

comments

rated x (2000)

2024-12-20T21:16:26Z

the "is this worth watching for lawrence dane" rating: 0/5

he doesn't show up until an hour into the movie (-1); he only has the one scene (-1); the movie's script is weak and the direction is a hot mess (-2); it has charlie sheen (-100000).

the plot: a potentially interesting biopic about the brothers responsible for "behind the green door" and key players in the onset of the brief era known as porno chic. the movie kind of gets into the legality & ethics of it all but cares more about the interpersonal drama between the brothers and doesn't do justice to either topic. maybe if you go into this with rock-bottom expectations you'll find it enjoyable despite charlie sheen?

despite having an almost two-hour runtime it feels like the movie was trying to cram in too much and didn't have a clear vision beyond "check out these two assholes". like, why even bother to incorporate dane's turn as a mafioso if they're not coming back to the mafia poaching the movie due to lax intellectual property/copyright protections for erotica? what was the point? don't get me wrong, great look for him, fun performance, but why was it necessary? there's a lot of scenes that seem like they're supposed to be connected to something else but ultimately aren't. disappointing.

( scene starts with him holding up a nudie mag so enjoy but also beware )

this time i swear next review will be the littlest hobo episode. he was very cute and charming and one of the main characters to boot. a great palate cleanser after the trainwreck of this movie.

comments

the virginian - the wind of outrage (1968)

2024-11-04T03:02:14Z

the way that shirt drapes over his torso..............

the "is this worth watching for lawrence dane" rating: 2.5/5

he has a pleasantly meaty role as the secondary guest star. top-billed guest is ricardo montalbán (!) and they play off each other quite well; it's believable that they're childhood friends. he gets to sing a little, play with guns, have a ponytail thing and unleash his curly hair, be charming but also menacing... that fake facial hair looks so bad tho, it's tragic. (i know i said i was gonna do him in the littlest hobo next but it was the 56th anniversary recently of this episode's air date so. there we go)

the plot: the episode opens with dane and his group of métis fur trappers intercepting the main characters; the cowboys are looking for an inn and the fur trappers are not welcoming. it turns out they're all looking for the same inn - one that happens to be owned by a character clearly modeled off the real-life louis riel, played by montalbán. dane's group has come to try and persuade him to return to canada after the british government reneged on promises made to the métis and first nations in exchange for montalbán's exile. meanwhile, there's a subplot between one of the main characters and montalbán's wife where apparently she used to be a desperate scammer trying to support her son and scammed the guy out of money he was carrying. (what is it with this show and people getting butthurt about their boss's money? same thing in scathelock lol.) instead of letting her get away with the money so she could feed herself and her son, he ratted her out to the cops and she lost custody of her son. and he's supposed to be the good guy?? at least he respects her wishes not to reveal her past to montalbán. they both have no idea who the other person was before they met.

there's a lot in this episode about past lives and social perceptions, but it doesn't really go anywhere because the majority of the episode is dedicated to the political intrigue around montalbán's character and figuring out the motives of dane's character. i couldn't bring myself to care about anything involving the main characters tbh but montalbán and his wife, played by lois nettleton (who i know best from the "midnight sun" episode of the twilight zone) work well together. i think montalbán just works well with a lot of people haha he had a commanding screen presence! dane does a pretty good job holding his own in their shared scenes, though.

since he features relatively prominently, i haven't done a dane cut. at the moment the episode is available via amazon for free if you can tolerate the ads, or elsewhere if you know where to look (season 7 episode 5, tho it might be mislabeled in some s7 torrents).

highlight: i really enjoy seeing him with the facial hair! such a shame it's so obviously fake that it only looks good in low light :pensive:

( joke about jacques and cocks sounding similar that i'm too tired to string together )

comments

waking the dead (2000)

2024-06-09T23:41:48Z

the "is this worth watching for lawrence dane" rating: 0/5

he was listed right after hal holbrook on imdb, and holbrook's is the last "featured" name on the poster, so i thought he might still have a handful of scenes. he had One scene and it was less than three minutes long not even 20 minutes into the movie. i watched the whole thing because i was so sure he was gonna come back given the film's apparent emphasis on the main character's political wheeling and dealing. nope. maybe his character was more prominent in the book?

the plot: i actually watched this while it was on the criterion channel and i still don't understand why it was on there. it was basically just a hallmark movie with slightly better production values and acting. nothing conceptually original or aesthetically inspired to redeem it like scanners. boringly broad social stereotypes (the uptight yuppie falls in love with the hippie radical! he has man pain because she dies following her dreams and he compromises his own dreams so he's seeing or hallucinating her ghost out of white guilt! or maybe she didn't actually die, dun dun dun, waking the dead more like wake me up i'm dead asleep) and the pacing is strange. there's moments with reasonably striking cinematography but they're few and far in-between; i can see how this would've been a better movie in the right hands, but as it is i really don't think this was worth watching all the way through.

the best part was dane sharing the screen with holbrook again. like a rituals au where mitzi survived and he went into politics with harry, lol. even the dynamic between them was similar and dane's character said "fag" just like mitzi in rituals. full circle! here's the scene so you can see for yourself, and the obligatory screenshots are below.

( at least they gave him a suit that isn't comically oversized like the one they made him wear in his tropical heat episode )

it's been way too long since i felt like i had the time and brainpower to sit down and do one of these. feels great to do it again even if this one is on the short side. think next time i'm gonna review his episode of the littlest hobo because it was unexpectedly VERY erotic. he gets chained up!! look forward to it :3

comments

happy birthday to me 2.0

2024-04-01T19:19:52Z

a while back i intended to write an updated review of HBTM reflecting my newer position of "ok it wasn't that bad, i was just expecting something different, so it could have a higher rating" but now i'm getting 'round to it.

so:

the "is this worth watching for lawrence dane" rating: 3/5
dane's not in this a ton but his part is reasonably substantial and he's very cute in each of his scenes and when he's finally hamming it up at the end he's so fun to watch. he's very handsy and god i wish that girl were me, etc. it's a pretty bad movie but charmingly bad for the most part, as opposed to just boring. certainly more entertaining than some of the other bad movies he's been in. i might make/link a dane cut later.

the plot: whenever people talk about this movie they talk about how the twist ending was written at the last minute after they'd filmed like half the story. there's no way to avoid talking about that because the plot is a mess and executed in a bizarre way with all these comically ominous attempts at making everyone a red herring. is it a good movie? no. but it's a fascinating one. there was something at its core that could have been really good, and the wildly uneven acting skills just drive that home. dane and his character's wife are the best actors in this movie, plus one of the "high school" guys. there's a threat about keeping them out of harvard so i assume they're not college age? but they all look way too old for high school, every last one of them. very confusing. anyway, i stand by my original conclusion that "if you get drunk/high you'll probably have a great time watching this".

note to self for website version/later: find those reviews mocking how often dane said ginny lol.

comments

shadow of a pale horse (1960)

2024-03-23T17:45:36Z

baby boy. baby

the "is this worth watching for lawrence dane" rating: 5/5

this is the role that launched his career. the apparent controversy over its content certainly helped, but he really does give a terrific performance here considering he would've been just 22 and still new to acting. (it was filmed in january of 1960, according to the director's account, and his 23rd birthday would have been that april.) he's a bit limited by the dire straits his character finds himself in, so he's not given a lot of substantial dialogue but when he needs to deliver real emotion then BOY does he deliver. also he is just so handsome here; when you combine this with his friend gordon pinsent describing him as "the Very Tall, Dark, and Ruggedly Handsome Lawrence Z. Dane" with a tendency to be "immediately drawn to the most beautiful girl in the room" when they were working together on another 1960 production, it's easy to believe he had plenty of luck with his flirting.

the other actors are good, especially the man who plays rigger (father of the man dane's character is accused of killing). it's a stage-y production because it is meant to be a televised play, and it's interesting seeing how theatrical styles and expectations have changed since the 1960s.

the plot: in a remote australian mining town during the 1800s, a man's son is found dead. near the body is a drunken young ex-convict named jem, played by dane. the boy's father wants to hang jem right then and there, but jem is defended by his boss and the father is persuaded to hold a trial instead. in an attempt to ensure fairness, jem's boss is assigned to prosecute him and his defense is left in the hands of the dead boy's father.

spoiler alert, jem is hanged. if the viewer wasn't already dismayed by the sense of injustice suggested throughout the play, dane's performance makes it pretty upsetting. this was the crux of the controversy - the show's sponsor, General Motors, felt that the scene was too graphic and pulled its sponsorship but the CBC decided to air the show anyway. all of the reviews at the time mention this and praise the CBC for pushing through.

however, the version i got from LAC includes the sponsorship! (i also had to do some editing because it was digitized with a couple scenes out of order somehow but anyway.) given the director's description of the filming, i think the LAC version was a slightly censored re-run. that said, being able to see, what, 99% of it is enough to make me agree with the reviewers who took notice of him. david macdonald wrote for the ottawa journal that "A group of Australian outlanders hanged a young Ottawa actor on television the other night and a star was born." he went on to quote the director paul almond saying "Larry Zahab is a very powerful actor. I have great hopes for him" and editorialized that "Indications are that Mr. Almond's hope has not been misplaced." gordon bell with the calgary albertan wrote that "The debut of young Ottawa actor Larry Zahab on the national TV scene marks the opening of a potentially fine acting career." i'd like to think they were both right, even if he didn't land very many leading-man roles.

and about the director's description of the filming.... according to a lengthy anecdote in almond's book "the inheritor", dane decided to pull the mother of all pranks and pretend that a harness malfunction led to him being well and truly hanged while this was being filmed essentially LIVE. talk about good method acting i guess?? i love what this tells us about him lol. becoming an actor certainly helped him get over his shyness quickly by any rate.

this is a crucial part of his filmography and personal history and i'm so glad i could finally witness it. in order to respect the agreement i signed with the CBC/LAC and not be blacklisted as a researcher, lol, i will not be hosting this anywhere online for now. please contact me if you are interested in viewing this production.

highlight: just look at those gorgeous eyes. wish it weren't fading in from another shot but still. beautiful man.

( he's a gem as jem )

comments

the virginian: journey to scathelock (1969)

2023-12-23T16:44:30Z

yes i made this my icon a while back, just look at that absolutely adorable face

the "is it worth watching this for lawrence dane" rating: 1/5

it looks like my original rating for this episode was 0.5/5, but i rewatched it recently in order to write this post and would have given it a 1.5, maybe a 2, so i'll split the difference by giving it a one. i was prompted to put this together because i was reminded that dec 10 was the anniversary air date of this episode, though the post itself was delayed because i've been fighting covid.... maybe that's why i was feeling more generous with my rating this time around. but burr debenning is good as the sleazy Bad Guy du jour and anne helm gives a solid performance, so it's not a drag watching the dane-less parts.

the plot: a visibly young-looking guy who i guess was a new series regular or something is sent to take care of business instead of the main character, since the main character has to deal with something more urgent. he suffers some frankly comical prejudice from older men who are skeptical of him due to his age, then proceeds to basically prove them right when he gets scammed by a man and woman who make off with a shitload of money meant for a business deal. he tracks them to the canadian border where lawrence dane is helping them hide out.

you don't need to know anything about the series to watch this one, really, since all the important facts are communicated pretty well early on. the pacing is slow - the episode is about 75 minutes long and dane shows up for the last third of it - but if you think of it as a short film then the pacing works better. the acting isn't terrible, though dane's character as written is kinda cartoonish (still cute tho) and the plot twist during the climax felt a little like an ass-pull. also, the conflict in the second half was kind of incomprehensible to me: baby-face man is mad at the female half of the con artist team because she took "his" money, but she points out multiple times that it's not his but rather his boss's money and it's money that was gonna go to yet another rich asshole so it's not worth risking getting murdered for, and he simply has no argument for this. he just goes "you don't understand" and that's the end of that? lmao. he'd probably report desperate walmart shoplifters to the police.

at least dane's character is less morally confused - he'll help whoever pays him best but he's not gonna risk actually getting arrested. is he a "good" guy? no, but honestly i respect him more than the guy who seems like he'd defend shitty landlords. and the man knows how to cook omelettes! i can ignore the attempt at a french-sounding accent because at least he tried and he's still a delight to watch. such an easy physicality....

dane cut is here, no autocaptions, sorry, but this season 8 episode isn't hard to find online with captions if you're willing to sit through ads or watch a low-res vhs rip (or pirate it, but it's been difficult for me to locate english subtitle files). if you're just curious about dane, then skip to about 47 minutes in.

highlight: *screaming white cat gif* *disney stitch licking glass gif*

( he sure looked good in westerns )

comments

first/last lines meme

2023-11-20T18:32:16Z

the past couple weeks have been mentally exhausting and spiritually draining etc etc but i tried using this past weekend to recover and then i have most of this week off so i'm looking forward to doing some writing. it's really easy to get into a cycle of "i feel bad so it's hard for me to write, but not writing makes me feel bad, but when i feel bad i can't write" (ad infinitum). so when i saw tempural post this writers meme it sounded like a great idea to do it myself. i'm good enough, i'm smart enough, and doggone it, people like my writing. so if you've also been having a hard time, consider giving this a try!

Rules: go through your last 5 posted fics and share the first and last line. No context.

1: surface reading

first: Bumblebee got there just too late.

last: He had bigger things to worry about at the moment.

2: the hands of other men

first: Maurice had heard of Father Wilhelm Burnell before.

last: “I’ve heard of you.”

3: wartime is no time to grieve

first: Enrico Maxwell was dead.

last: There was nothing God could do now that would be worse than this night.

4: chapter two of "Malis Avibus": Love in Suffering

first: West of Versailles the land was gripped by plague, bubonic fingers digging deep even into fortified towns like Loudun.

last: They were neglecting their duties in their unseemly excitement, Sister Bakura thought as they watched the young ladies too busy giggling over Loudun’s most notorious priest to give any thought to their devotions.

5: anybody else's touch

first: Amelda wasn’t sure how he’d ended up here under Kaiba’s boot.

last: The certainty helped him hold his head high on his way out past all the employees’ knowing eyes.

comments

fic or treat update

2023-10-23T13:51:11Z

i'm posting fic or treat responses early because it turns out that i'll be busy on october 31, but feel free to request them whenever!! click on that link and see if anything tickles your fancy :3

also, i managed to extract some more pictures from lawrence dane's old website so now i gotta decide whether to update that post or just make a follow-up post. very exciting!

comments

fic or treat 2023: light is on!

2023-10-20T20:27:55Z

ficortreat

miscellanium's Door

DW username: miscellanium

Light is on for: anybody!

What's in the Bowl?

pics of my cats

drabbles (strictly 100 words)

weenie-approved horror movie recommendations from someone new to horror movies, or recommendations for pre-1980s english-language queer media

a random pic from my downloads/meme folders

Let Me Know:

for the cat pics, which flavor (black, tuxedo-calico, orange) and packaging (flattering, unflattering, cryptid-style) or just say you want a surprise!

drabble prompts - a word, fandom/characters/ships or, if you'd like original work, a mood to go with the word prompt

what you'd enjoy/dislike in a horror movie, or what you're looking for in ~vintage~ queer media

if there is any content you would NOT want to see from my downloads/memes (e.g., nothing nsfw? nothing fandom-specific? is context for the weak?)

Other info:

check out my ao3 or my profile page on dw for fandoms. political rpf prompts for american politics also welcome, lol.
caveats: did not watch spn past season 8 or teen wolf past season 3. inuyasha also an option but i haven't finished the original tv run, only as far as the second movie. have only seen first few episodes of s1 of ofmd, tho have gotten quite a bit via osmosis.

if prompting for a hellsing drabble, my landmine is alucard/anderson. feel free to request literally anything else.

hope you're having a nice october!

ETA: i will post replies to all comers whenever, not limited to october 31!

comments

fansite/webhost musings

2023-10-12T15:06:04Z

slowly getting lawrencedane.com together - i went with liberato.io for my host and it's been a steep learning curve going from neocities' handholding to having to do literally everything from scratch. (i guess i don't have to do it from scratch since it's possible to do a wordpress plug-in thing? but when i tried installing it, it seemed like more trouble than it was worth lol.) but their customer support has been very patient with me which i really appreciate.

i decided on liberato after reading tempural's post about site hosting resources - the post is from about a year ago now but their tos still distinguishes between fictional content and irl harmful content in a way that gives me optimism that they won't suddenly decide to be weird about it, even though there won't be anything on the fansite dealing with (for example) fictional sexual material with underage characters. i did email them before signing up to ask about nazi iconography, since they say no hate symbols are allowed, and they responded promptly to clarify that discussions of/screenshots from media like dane's jericho episode would pose no problems. i do also like that they make it very clear that live-action sexual material is allowed as long as it's consensual, since i'm well aware of how hostile most of the internet has become towards sex workers.

i know neocities can be loosey-goosey with what kind of content they allow to be hosted, for better or worse, but i also know they have no customer support and it was absolutely a given that i would need it.

now that i've started to understand how the directories/subdirectories work in liberato's interface, including linking to images, i think my next step is going to be using a static site generator to help me with the css lol. much easier to tweak a template than code a page from nothing. i don't know if i need to be concerned about disabling hotlinking to images? it's something i thought about since one of my inspirations, the phantom of the paradise fansite the swan archives, has right-click completely disabled so you can't look at the source code for the pages or anything. i'm sure it's a bandwidth-control tactic but possibly also a copyright thing, which may be a factor i need to be thinking about in the long run...? trying to understand how to implement that kind of thing has been pretty confusing to me though, so for now my priority is just to get the site functional and reasonably attractive. then i might go back to customer support and ask them to walk me through implementing that function like i'm a five-year-old.

( thinking out loud about image hosting and site organization )

when you visit fansites/fanpages what are the first things you look for, as a fan or just someone who's curious? what kind of organization have you found helpful for navigating the sites/pages?

comments

jericho: the loot of all evil (1967)

2023-10-06T01:14:35Z

this looks like the beginning of a porno tbh it's killing me.

the "is it worth watching this for lawrence dane" rating: 2/5

the plot: not to be confused with the series of the same title from the early 2000s, this show takes place during world war two and follows a team of spies/saboteurs from allied countries (america, britain, non-vichy france) getting up to wacky hijinks behind enemy lines during 1942-44 or thereabouts. the show didn't last long because it was up against batman and other well-established tv shows but at least it had a full season so they could bring in lawrence dane as a guest star for their last episode and go out on a sexy note. his character is a very stereotypical nazi officer and he really leans into that lol, cartoonish attempt at german accent and all. in this particular episode there's a plot where the nazis are printing money in italy and the team has to figure out how to take the operation down. the operation is being supervised by dane's character, who's a bit smarter than the team initially accounts for, and there's a couple other wildcards that complicate the mission.

even though dane was billed as a guest star he's not in it a lot since he's mostly just the bad guy du jour, but the rest of the episode is mildly interesting if you like studying american depictions of wwii stories. i was very surprised to see that they had a little person playing a pretty nuanced character - he's not a tragic figure in the way that you'd expect from stories by abled people depicting disability, especially in the 1960s, and it's basically a non-issue. he's even allowed to express desire for the young woman helping him run his bakery, the daughter of a man who just happens to be at the center of the money-printing operation. most of the performances are solid enough but the pacing kind of drags, though - i think mission impossible tended to have better pacing and they had a similar premise for the show, which means that it's not the format that's the problem - and the british blond spy character has like no chemistry with anyone else, making his scenes kinda painful lol. so that pulls the "worth it" rating down in conjunction with dane's less-than-ideal amount of screen time.

given the more recent show of the same title that is apparently something of a cult favorite and how quickly this one was cancelled, i've yet to find any fansites and since this was just a caper-of-the-week show it’s also difficult to find newspaper reviews. after some digging i did find a couple reviews of the whole series from when it was released online and then as a print-on-demand dvd - it sounds as though the series as a whole was cancelled for good reason, honestly, and that second review describes the episode with dane as "underwhelming" which seems fair to me. through no fault of dane's, though - it does seem like he gave it his best effort and he did a good job matching the overall tone of the show by hamming it up just enough to make me hope he had fun with the role.

it's pretty easy to find the episodes at least - they're currently airing on free-with-ads platforms like tubi or the roku channel and have closed captions. but i did upload a dane cut here if you just want to watch him in that uniform lol

highlight: (screaming white cat gif)

( he sure loves playing with his riding crop )

comments

once more for the public

2023-09-29T19:42:10Z

well, the odds are currently 99% in favor of me not being able to report to work for at least a week. probably significantly longer given the absolute chaos happening in the house of representatives. so today i made politicalrpf as a place to let off some totally-not-work-related steam! there was a really funny quote i read in the paper this morning that inspired me - check out the comm profile page to see what it is. you don't have to know a lot about politics to join, maybe just some of the main players, but you must have a willingness to Get Silly. it's not limited to americans so if you have other political figures/commentators you want to bring to the table then strap them on down so we can all have some fun.

this will be in addition to the projects i've assigned myself - get lawrencedane.com off the ground, work on fiction deadlines (kidscomefirst and a zine), try to design a bumper sticker, and generally keep myself busy. i have a dane cut for his jericho episode ready to go so i'll compile the screencaps for a review post asap. that'd be quite the inaugural post for the fansite, lol, but i'll probably just start things off with a more polished version of that rough bio of his early years that i wrote a little while back. i'm hoping to find out soon when i'll get a copy of his first major filmed work (shadow of a pale horse) because i paid for it last week. very excited for that! also really looking forward to footage of him doing a sit-down interview (that might also be game-show-themed?) and speaking at an awards ceremony - the only videos of him i've seen so far have all been of him acting, so while i've read interviews with him i've yet to see what he's like in person when not playing some character or another. not counting those skiddoo commercials, lol.

with all of this free time coming up, i'm also hoping to be able to watch more movies in general so expect a post or two about that as well! ichthyocentaurs turned me on to a great-sounding collection of vincent price films and i'm excited to inhale them all before they're pulled off criterion's streaming platform.

comments

multipurpose dear creator letter (WIP)

2023-09-11T16:15:08Z

thank you for your interest in creating something for me! here's some broad strokes to help you get started.

GENERAL LIKES REGARDLESS OF SHIP/CHARACTER:

- awkward first times (date, kiss, sex, hand-holding, conversations, etc)
- obvious crushes
- vomiting and/or sickfic where the one that's sick is the one that's usually very concerned about self-image and/or easily flustered
- situational humiliation (e.g. becoming nauseous in public, trying to hide a boner in public, blurting something out, coming untouched/ejaculating in pants, etc)
- premature orgasm and/or multiple orgasms
- breeding/pregnancy kink
- trans characters
- bossy bottoms
- priest kink. seduce that priest!!! ditto teacher kink. love figures of authority abusing their power, but also potentially being abused :3c role reversals are very tasty~
- related to the above, uniforms! generally wwii era or earlier
- with trans men, i looooove gushing (aka squirting but that word makes me uncomfortable lol. you get the idea tho) and it can be part of orgasm or something preceding orgasm, i just really enjoy that being part of the whole sexual package.
- dubcon! i can enjoy noncon too but it's more situational, so dubcon is the easier way to go. intoxication, manipulation, mixed messages, being in denial.... if it's in-character, it's good!

GENERAL DO-NOT-WANTS REGARDLESS OF SHIP/CHARACTER:

- scat
- snuff
- feederism
- stereotypical blushing ukes or suit semes
- "daddy doms"

( details for fandoms most likely to be requested )

comments

control of inmates (1965)

2023-09-07T19:05:38Z

legit one of my fav images of him - the framing is so interesting and also fuck he's super cute. so cute. also. the eroticism of that pose..... hfdhgfjkd

the "is this worth watching for lawrence dane" rating: 4/5

ohhh my god he is so young in this. this was made three years after "lion of quebec" so he wouldn't have even been 30 yet.... this is a short film, around 25 minutes, and he's what amounts to the lead character inasmuch as training videos can have a lead. he's super handsome and tall and he smiles a bunch in this and you can see him singing! in a group so you can't make out his voice, but still.... one point off since it's a video by and for cops - even worse, prison guards specifically lmao.

the plot: as noted above, this doesn't really have one in the typical sense. apparently it's based on a true escape story, according to a guy who worked on the production. we follow dane's character from intake through his attempts to ingratiate himself with the officers and then his escape. it's a bit funny how lax/incompetent the security would have been at the time compared to current understandings of prison practices, and it's interesting in a depressing way to see what hasn't changed at all.

at the time of my writing this post, "control of inmates" isn't listed on his wikipedia or imdb pages. but digging into the bowels of an internet search for larry zahab led me to that letter linked above and i knew i had to see if i could find it since the NFB also produced "lion of quebec" and the surprisingly good 1975 tv movie "the heatwave lasted four days". earlier this year i emailed them and did my best to describe the movie based on the information given in the guy's letter, and they said they had a 1965 police training film by douglas jackson under the title of "control of inmates". i promptly checked to see whether it had an imdb entry to potentially cross-check any acting credits and the answer was yes but the only credits are director douglas jackson and the narrator. since jackson worked with dane again for "heatwave" that made me sure this was the movie i was looking for. (heatwave will get a review eventually, don't worry lol.) still a bit of a gamble, though, so it was super exciting when the dvd arrived and i could prove myself right!! there were no actor credits in the film itself but my man is unmistakable.

highlight: waist................................. the only time i've wanted to be a cop

you can view a version with autocaptions here. and now for the selected screencaps! none of them has been altered.

( since it's so short there's not a ton of screencaps here. could have done more but i did try to exercise some restraint. enjoy the treat! )

comments

steely dan: gaucho

2023-08-16T17:01:21Z

i'm not a music reviewer by any means. in the past others have encouraged me to write about music i enjoy, since i do like reading reviews whether i agree with them or not - i remember spending hours on progarchives and places like this one guy's website where his rating system didn't use stars or numbers but something that iirc was derived from math or something? i can't find it again unfortunately* - and i'm also very interested in the history/production of a given album and following connections to find cool music by relatively obscure artists (bobb trimble, anyone?), but it's difficult for me to actually write my own reviews because, well... i know i'm not getting the same auditory information as most other people. but here's an unorganized attempt (pitchfork this certainly ain't) so let's see how it goes - aiming high by starting with steely dan even if it means retreading well-trodden ground lol.

apparently steely dan's discography has been experiencing a re-evaluation lately and i had no idea - only found out when i was browsing reviews of donald fagen's solo albums the other day and fell into a rabbit hole. (this brand-new book focusing on the characters in the band's songs sounds interesting and i'll have to see if i can get it from a library first or something - the illustrations are a cool idea, but the author's "don't do drugs, kids" comment at the end of the interview is annoying enough to make me not want to buy the book sight unseen lol.) i grew up mostly hearing about the band as a punchline the same way a lot of other '70s stuff was made into the butt of jokes during the 1990s/early 2000s and never actually listened to them until last year, entirely by chance. i asked my parents recently about their memories of the band and they both said that they remembered some songs being radio hits but didn't have strong opinions either way. they didn't have any of the albums in their record/cd collection when i was a kid even though they did have a fair amount of jazz music. at any rate i'm glad i finally introduced myself to steely dan - i've tended to prefer music with tightly-crafted lyrics that invite closer reading and/or are dense with references&meaning, and steely dan's work fits right in. distinctive voices also tend to feature a lot in my favorites and while i wouldn't put fagen on the same level as orbison/nilsson/mercury/darnielle/etc, he's still recognizable enough for me to hear 'I.G.Y.' on a recommended-for-you playlist and be like, huh, this sounds like steely dan and then look up the singer's name for an oh-shit moment lol.

my favorite of steely dan's albums at this point is the 1980 "gaucho" which, in addition to having a rather notoriously tortured production history, is apparently also their most divisive. some people feel it's too polished and/or too simple compared to earlier work... can't speak to the "polished" sound but if it is relatively simple then that's to its benefit imo - makes it easier to follow what individual instruments are doing so appreciation comes faster. wall-of-sound can be fun but it typically takes me several listens to figure out what i'm even hearing. (thinking about how long it took me to appreciate masato nagai's "wild drive"....)

thematically it feels like a spiritual companion to pulp's "this is hardcore" and that's probably why i'm drawn to it more than the other albums - i've been a big pulp fan for a long time and still go back and forth on whether i like "this is hardcore" or "we love life" best, but i've not found anything else that really reminds me of the latter. "gaucho" and "this is hardcore" have similar themes of dissolution and longing, with less defiance than in the earlier albums from either band. the songwriters for both tend to simultaneously make fun of and empathize with their seedy male subjects - but they're not necessarily asking the listener to sympathize. their lyrics are more aimed at reminding us that we're all capable of being terrible to each other in one way or another, and that beneath the fucked-up actions there's still a person there who's hurting. sometimes, anyway. other times it seems like they're just having fun writing about creeps, and i can dig that too! both titles are also almost concept albums, tightly wrapped around a unity of sound and theme that each band's earlier (or later!) albums don't quite have, which is another thing that makes the overall listening experience that much more rewarding imo.

steely dan continued to revisit these themes, of course - 'things i miss the most' from "everything must go" is a real fucking earworm with their signature sensitive-yet-sardonic lyrics - but "gaucho" as a whole is so laser-focused that it comes across like a collection of short stories by raymond carver with more of a sideways sense of humor. and i'm seeing now that there's some who class carver as "dirty realism" and that midnight cowboy is considered a great example of the subgenre, which tracks since i adore both the herlihy book and the schlesinger film.... i don't know if steely dan would fit the literary definition here but there's a definite throughline with regards to subject matter that i find interesting.

anyway, back to the music: this is a short album, easy to listen to all the way through in sequence as intended, though i can also understand why people might not enjoy that experience much. to continue the short story comparison, it's a bit like flannery o'connor - great in individual doses, but if you sit and read a full collection of her in one go then you might find it a bit repetitive after a while. (not my personal opinion! one i've seen other people express, though, including people whose opinions on writing i tend to respect even when we disagree.) so imo if you only listen to one from this album, make it 'hey nineteen'. i'll talk a bit about each track below, including why that one is my favorite.

( you gotta shake it )

comments

fandom meme

2023-07-19T16:31:37Z

thanks to pendulumscale & tempural & kradeelav for getting me thinking about these questions!

1. How long have you been in fandom?
oh jeez, depends on how you define "fandom" but i would say since starting middle school? so about twenty years, dang. when i was in elementary school and writing fanfic for pokemon i didn't share it with anyone besides my family lol and i don't remember reading fanfiction (not sure i even knew it existed as a Thing tbh) so i'm not going to count that.

2. Which fandoms are you in now?
can i count my little cult for lawrence dane as a fandom? lmao. hellsing is one that i've most recently been active in, and i still have ideas for things i want to do there, but i've pulled back a lot from trying to engage with the wider english-speaking fandom since it's a fucking mess. ygo arcv has its weird thought police but in my experience they haven't been as bad, which is a bit ironic considering that arcv's meant for a younger audience and hellsing most decidedly is not. ah well. still consider myself currently in the arcv and dm fandom, albeit more on the inactive side. if i listed ones i'm not presently active in but still interact with i'd be here forever. i've also been doing a lot with one of my own ocs, since i adopted him out of hellsing and gave him a backstory where he literally had nothing and so on.

3. Do you create transformative works (fic, fan art, podfic, etc.)?
fic, art, fan soundtracks, yeah. Back In My Day people put time and effort into making covers and tracklist graphics for their mixes!! dang spotify ruining everything. when i was in high school it was a pretty even mix of fic and art but since finishing undergrad i've mostly been writing. i keep meaning to pick visual art back up....

4. What was your first fandom?
yugioh is the fandom that won't die for me, or my bedrock fandom as i've seen tempural put it - dm and then arcv specifically. my level of activity in a given media might wax and wane but if it hooked me then the interest never fades. i don't understand how people can be super into something for a month or a year then just move on. like, i'd probably still be writing prolifically for arcv right now if i hadn't had a lousy experience with the big bang that some fans tried to run back in uhh 2017? killed my motivation to write for a while but my love for the series never faded.

( further rambles )

comments

hellhole 1985, aka "we're not actually gonna show hole but we might as well have"

2023-06-30T13:47:32Z

in my hellsing server we were discussing the possibility of watching the polish film "hellhole" (2022) together so i checked to see if it was available anywhere or whether it'd need torrenting, and learned that there was a 1985 film with the exact same title but a wildly different plot summary. my partner and i decided to watch it because we were both intrigued by the outrageous premise and also the fact that one of the characters was played by a famous ex-evangelist preacher (i want to see the documentary about him, "marjoe" from 1972) and boy oh boy what a ride.

i've watched a couple exploitation films before but i feel like i'm never prepared for the reality of them, lol. the true star of the movie imo was ray sharkey playing an Evil Leather Punk who went by the nom de guerre of silk - he was so fucking funny and over-the-top he made even the relatively boring parts of the movie worth it. (i'm sorry, as somebody who's mostly interested in men i'm very particular about the type of woman i find attractive..... if you like seeing lots of conventionally attractive women get in fights, naked or otherwise, and have erotic drug-taking scenes together then this is the movie for you by a mile.) i say "relatively" because tbh i found the whole thing fascinating in an anthropological way, but idk if it's a movie i'd recommend unless you also enjoy watching exploitation movies for what they say about the people involved in the production. it also has vibes of re-animator and i was amused to realize they came out the same year. it'd be interesting to read an argument connecting movies about medical malpractice vis-a-vis innovation to the visibility of the AIDS epidemic in the 1980s.

i want to see the other things sharkey was in now because he was incredible. marjoe was good too, though his performance was more restrained than sharkey's (which isn't saying a lot tbh but he played it more normal). every time they said his character's name, dr. dane, i had to do a mental double take haha. i also liked mary woronov - she has a very striking face and she owned the role she was given. it was fun discovering i'd seen her before in "the house of the devil", though she would've been much older in that one. i'd like to see more of her movies some time when i have the chance.

speaking of movies, though, i want to do another danepost soon. i think it'll be bear island, since that was on the last poll, unless people would prefer to read about the national lampoon movie.... or i might do the "control of inmates" short since i might already have all the screenshots necessary for that. if you have a preference for some reason, let me know in the comments!

comments

new hampshire, new home

2023-06-25T19:11:16Z

earlier this month my partner and i managed a cross-country move - driving three days with three cats.... really do not recommend doing this unless you have to lol. but we all made it to our new apartment in one piece. my first week at my new job was really hectic but i'm enjoying it so far. from the sound of it this next week will be more normal now that a big site event is over with - they wanted me to start at the beginning of the month but that timing just wouldn't work for me.

i haven't been able to engage in my hobbies much with all the packing/driving/unpacking/new job orientation stuff but yesterday i finally got my pc unpacked and set up with a fancy new monitor to replace the one i had to leave behind. everything seems to be in good shape so far! and while i was in the middle of a move i got an email response from the PR person for the organization that runs what used to be known as the genie awards - they're willing to give me reproduction permission for award ceremony footage where the LAC description makes it sound like dane gave a presentation. this is exciting for me since i've yet to see video footage of him just being himself. i do also have permission from the CBC to get a copy of a brief sit-down interview he did with a local tv station in the 1980s but i haven't put in a request for that yet with the moving and everything. now i have my new mailing address and things seem to be arriving here with no problems so i'll act on that soon.

i'm stll catching up on a lot, including dreamwidth, but the more things we manage to unpack the more time i have to just chill and do my thing. i'm enjoying new hampshire so far, partly because i really missed being around mountains and also because it is not going to be nearly as hot here as it was in the midwest. even with climate change it's not as bad. the cats like it here too. we're using a projector instead of a TV now and one of them keeps wanting to climb on the platform, so we'll have to figure out a way to stop him....

the other night we watched "magic" - the 1978 film with anthony hopkins - and it was an interesting experience. i had more fun watching "the italian connection" from 1972 with my father when he was here to help us move in, even though the structure of that one was a little confusing to me at first. the hopkins movie had some great performances but a weak script imo - mostly hamstrung by the fact that the female character didn't really have any kind of interiority. an example of the male gaze in the original sense of the theory, where she's just there for the men to act their desires upon. a bit disappointing with the pedigree of the screenwriter but it was still fun to see hopkins so young when i only know him from his more recent work, and again the performances from hopkins and the supporting cast were quite strong. (i was very excited to recognize david ogden stiers in a brief appearance lol, and burgess meredith was a pleasure to watch.) i also dug the aesthetic, of course. "the italian connection" was an engaging character study and it had a couple truly nuts chase sequences - i can totally understand how it's a cult favorite. it was kinda funny tho since the female characters in that are also pretty limited development-wise (one's dialogue was mostly about how she's a "whore") but they're still given more to do than ann-margret in "magic". all in all a movie i could see myself rewatching.

baked some beer bread earlier with a local ale even though it's hot today and it turned out nicely so i'm gonna kick back with something cold and play some eso until the place cools down haha. hoping that soon i'll have the mental energy to write prose again!

comments