Can you imagine, though, how radical a modern-day adaptation of Les Miserables– the book, not the musical– would be considered by the general public, though? Especially if it never actually said it was based on Les Miserables in the promotional materials? Like, 156 years after that book was published, people would freak out about the ‘blatant agenda.’ Yeah, because a lot of the same problems haven’t gone away and the same topics are considered controversial. And the sympathetic treatment of ex-convicts, sex workers, poor people, and rebels who protest and even want to overthrow the government– I feel like that’s only accepted now because they’re dressed in 19th century clothes.
No wonder the preface says, “
SO long as there shall exist, by reason of law and custom, a social condemnation, which, in the face of civilization, artificially creates hells on earth, and complicates a destiny that is divine, with human fatality; so long as the three problems of the age—the degradation of man by poverty, the ruin of women by starvation, and the dwarfing of childhood by physical and spiritual night—are not solved; so long as, in certain regions, social asphyxia shall be possible; in other words, and from a yet more extended point of view, so long as ignorance and misery remain on earth, books like this cannot be useless.
Race 100% does matter here. Not only would a Black Hermoine give HP some desperatly needed representation, it would also change Hermoine’s story. A Hermoine who has to face racism in both worlds, who came to the wizarding world to get away from bigots only to find that she can’t, that there will always be someone somewhere who will hate her for being who she is, is different than the white Hermoine we got in the movies. Her experiences at Hogwarts would have been fundamentally different.
Would a Black Hermoine have cried when Malfoy called her a mudblood if people had been throwing the n-word at her since the day she was born?
How would a Black Hermoine, who’s seen what a mob of hooded white supremacists can do (and what they can get away with), view Voldemort and his death eaters? How safe would she feel at Hogwarts knowing that their children are sitting in the same room as her? She was almost killed her second year for not being “pure enough.” She’s heard those words before, this isn’t new to her.
Imagine what it would have meant for Victor Krum to fall for a Black girl who never seen anyone who looked like her be called beautiful? For Hermoine Granger to walk into the ball with Krum on her arm and be the darkest girl in the room. Imagine her standing out like a sore thumb in a sea of white faces and for once in her life feeling pretty.
It’s canon that the students of hogwarts make fun of Hermoine’s bushy hair. Imagine if on Hermoine’s first vacation home, she begs her mother to let her get a relaxer. She’s tired of being teased for having 4c hair. Her mother refuses and 11 year old Hermoine is sent back to school, her hair as bushy as ever. Over the course of the story, picture Hermoine learning that her hair is fine the way it is. Her fifth year, she decides to grow it bigger. When someone calls her hair bushy Hermoine thanks them. It’s a compliment to her now. By her seventh year Hermoine is rocking Bantu knots, twist outs, braids, and an afro that she wouldn’t trade for anything.
Imagine Black Hermoine sending her eleven year old Black daughter off to school, knowing that the system is rigged against her in both worlds and still having every confidence in her daughter succeeding. Imagine Ron worrying about things he’s never had to worry about before. Does he panic when the muggle police stop his daughter on her way home? Does he notice that his eleven year old daughter gets followed around in stores when he doesn’t?
Black Hermoine is still a genius and brave. She’s the same person but her experiences are different and that would affect her behavior. Implying that she’s identical to White Hermoine except for her skin color implies that white experiences are universal (they absolutely are not). What all of you “All Hermoine’s are equal and good so who cares of she’s Black or White??? 🙂 🙂 :)” stans are saying is that White Hermoine™ + Black Skin = Black Hermoine which is OFFENSIVE and UNTRUE. Cut that shit out.
technically aren’t the people in fandoms that like intensely adore a villainous character and jump straight to another one when they appear also minions by definition
next time can you just come kill me in person it would be kinder
okay, so everyone has set up the main rivalry in Black Panther as Killmonger vs T’Challa. And obviously that’s the main narrative structure of the story, not arguing with that. But I feel like from a purely character arc standpoint, the actual battle is Killmonger vs Nakia, and she obliterates him.
Erik Stevens is a CIA covert operative; basically, he’s a spy. So is Nakia. And when you look at their various actions through the lens of “who accomplished their mission better?”, it becomes pretty clear that Erik spent 20-some years preparing to destabilize T’Challa’s reign, including having inside knowledge and a birthright on his side…and Nakia spent roughly 36 hours successfully destabilizing his reign, in turn, with nothing but her incredible ability to network disparate resources.
Let’s just review her actions over those 36 hours okay:
– Gets the surviving members of the royal family successfully out of danger within seconds of the coup (aka the only living people with a competing blood claim to the throne aka the greatest threat to his regime)
– Sows enough doubt in the “greatest warrior in the country” about Killmonger’s ability to lead that when the time comes, Okoye and the entire Dora Milaje all defect (eventually saving hundreds of lives)
– Steals a heart-shaped herb from under his nose as he’s identifying it as the most important power resource in the country and trying to prevent it falling into anyone else’s hands, lol too late buddy
– Immediately identifies the person in the country with the best platform to mount a counter-insurgency (M’Baku), identifies what it will take to get him on their side, and casually resolves a centuries-long division in their country while she’s at it
– Correctly predicts Killmonger’s opening move of distributing vibranium to the war dogs, and assists in a comprehensive strategy that shuts it down cold–a strategy they wouldn’t have been able to use if she hadn’t gotten Shuri, Ross, and T’Challa all in one place with the right information at the right time
As soon as T’Challa is back she takes an immediate backseat again (she said it herself, she’s a spy, not the leader of an army), but, seriously, if you have to pinpoint the one person who took down Killmonger, it’s undeniably her. And she did it by clearly demonstrating that her skills as a war dog are miles ahead of his as a CIA agent (due in part, I’m sure, to being trained in a superior country, but also she’s Just That Good).
Yes! Erik’s real misfortune was coming up against a much better and smarter intelligence operative. She also gives the lie to the stereotypical spy narrative (embodied by Erik) that you have to be heartless and violent to achieve your ends. She is the moral center and touchstone of film, so filled with goodness it comes off her like a glow, but she kicks the ruthless Erik’s ass from Wakanda to Kinshasa.
Another thing Nakia was good at was identifying where the necessary resources weren’t, namely in herself. That was why she argued Ramonda out of the idea of taking it herself. It wasn’t self-effacement or modesty, it was a clear-eyed calculation of what it would take to win and the best chance was with M’Baku, not her.
And she did much of this while she thought the man she still loved was dead. She admits as much to Okoye, too. Think of how much sheer fortitude that took, to work through a grief like that to save your country. She is a hero and her heroism is no less amazing for not being flashy or center stage.
It kind of baffles me that a lot of people never got to experience the Mishapocalypse. Not like it was something that was good, more like, it was something you’d only see on this website in like…10 years.
Imagine you wake up on April Fool’s day. You log into tumblr. Immediately your dash is encompassed with Misha’s face. Everyone’s icon has been changed to that same, staring, blank face. You check your followers. Every single one of them has that face. You try going into your normal tags. Even those are filled with Misha’s face. Nowhere is safe. Misha is everywhere. You go to Twitter to complain about it. Misha’s face is there too.
Within hours of the event starting, there’s already a wiki entry and an urban dictionary entry for it. Gifs that you may have recognized of being popular at that time have Misha’s face photoshopped over them. Repeating patterns of Misha’s face. Misha illusions. Misha’s face OVER MISHA’S FACE.
Eventually, even Misha is like, “Yeah, this is fucking weird. What the fuck are you guys doing.” But it doesn’t stop. People hit post limit. They can’t post anymore. Suddenly, you notice that your dash is starting to thin out, slowly, one by one. There’s a hypothetical tumbleweed bouncing across your dash by 10pm that night.
Anyone who tried to blacklist the Mishapocalypse suddenly found that their dashboard was sent into the shadow realm. Nothing is there. They tried to unfollow people who were participating in it. They had no blog content at the end of the day.
The next day, we all wake up and continue on with our lives like nothing ever happened. It was like a fever dream. What the fucked happened. Where did our lives go for that day.
That was the Mishapocalypse.
It looked a little something like this
and it was absolute hell
It was over within like a day though that was he weird part. There were stragglers through the following weeks but the main bit was over within hours it was the weirdest shit I’ve ever seen
I think the most baffling thing is that whoever set this up did it without it leaking. and it originated from a fandom that had all the subtlety of a foghorn. this was the fandom that used to put those REBLOG IF U SUPPORT GAY MARRIAGE posts on your dash with 5000 flashing rainbow gifs and superwholock edits. A wide variety of image macros were premade for the occasion. it was literally the single slickest moment this website has ever and probably will ever pull off and so of fucking course it was wasted on this nonsense
Most composers spend just 10-12ish weeks working on a film’s music. John Williams spent around 14 weeks on each Star Wars movie, 40ish weeks total for the whole OT……but composing the LOTR trilogy’s soundtrack took four years
The vocals you hear in the soundtrack are usually in one of Tolkien’s languages (esp. Elvish). The English translations of the lyrics are all poems, or quotes from the book, or occasionally even quotes from other parts of the films that are relevant to the scene
When there were no finished scenes for him to score, Howard Shore would develop musical themes inspired by the scripts or passages from the book. That’s how he got all Middle-Earth locations have their own unique sound: he was able to compose drafts of “what Gondor would sound like” and “what Lorien would sound like” long before any scenes in those places were filmed
Shore has said his favorite parts to score were always the little heartfelt moments between Frodo and Sam
Shore wrote over 100 unique leitmotifs/musical themes to represent specific people, places, and things in Middle Earth (over 160 if you count The Hobbit)
The ones we all talk about are the Fellowship theme, the main Shire Theme, and the themes for places like Gondor, Mordor, Rohan, and Rivendell…but a lot of the more subtle ones get overlooked and underappreciated
Like Aragorn’s theme. It’s a lot less “obvious” than the others because, like Aragorn himself, it adapts to take on the color of whatever place Aragorn is in: it’s played on dramatic broody stringed instruments in Bree, on horns in battle scenes, softly on the flute with Arwen in Rivendell….
Eowyn has not just one but three different leitmotifs to represent her
Gollum and Smeagol both have their own leitmotifs! Whose theme music is playing in the scene can often tell you whether the Gollum or Smeagol side is “winning” at the moment
The melody for Gollum’s Song in the end credits of the The Two Towers is the Smeagol and Gollum themes smushed together (it’s Symbolic)
And then there’s the really obscure ones. Like there’s a melody that plays at Boromir’s death that shows up again in ROTK in scenes that foreshadow a major death or loss
Shore wanted the theme music to grow alongside the characters– so that as the characters changed, their theme music would change with them.
You can hear that most clearly in the Shire theme. Like the hobbits, it goes through A Lot
Like compare the childish lil penny whistle theme you hear in Concerning Hobbits/the beginning of FOTR with (throws a dart at random Beautiful Tragic Hobbit Character Development scene because there WAY TOO MANY to choose from) the scene when Pippin finds Merry on the battlefield, where you hear a kind of shattered and broken but more mature version of that same theme in the background
I could write you a book on how much I love the way the Shire theme grows across the course of these films
Unlike the hero’s themes, which constantly change and grow, the villain’s themes (The One Ring theme, the Isengard theme, etc) remain basically the same from the very beginning of FOTR to the end of ROTK. Shore said this was an intentional choice: to emphasize that evil is static, while good is capable of change
Shore has said that between all the music that made into the movies and the music that didn’t, he composed enough for “a month of continuous listening”……..where can I sign up
Their Moana is very talented, and their Maui is a local newscaster whose daughters made him audition!
Rachel House still voices Grandma Tala, Temuera Morrison still voices the Chief, and Jemaine Clement still voices Tamatoa.
Rob Ruha and Jemaine Clement translated and rearranged the music so that the songs still worked while sung in a different language, which is super impressive.
this news is from earlier this year, you can now actually listen/watch the te reo version in clips on youtube now. this one is pretty exemplary of the original and new voice actors together! ❤
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