Part of what makes Dukat such a compelling character is his core belief in his own superiority and that he is the main character of the universe. This is accomplished through writing but also because Marc Alaimo really, really believed in Dukat as a character. He never plays him with a hint of self doubt. If he experiences opposition to this self image Alaimo plays him as deeply embarrassed, angry or even mentally compromised - all signs of someone who's self hinges completely on this image of himself he has constructed. To the point that any real opposition, like the realisation the universe doesn't revolve around you, crushes him if he can't reconstruct it to fit his own narrative.

Alaimo wanted redemption for Dukat and a romance with Kira. I'm very glad that didn't happen. But the fact that Alaimo never accepted Dukat as fundamentally bad is part of why Dukat works. Dukat can't be redeemed. Not because he doesn't have the opportunity. But because he is fueled by greed and lust for power and that's always behind the choices he makes.

So he needs to be played without self doubt. Without a trace of any remorse. Another actor might have been tempted to play Dukat with cracks in the armor of his bravado where he shows remorse or realisation. Because we want to believe villains have complex feelings about their behavior, right? That deep inside, they doubt? But Dukat always carries this unfaltering belief in himself. He doesn't feel sorry. He doesn't regret anything. In fact, he revels in his crime. In his oppression of the Bajoran people.

It really is interesting how Alaimo having a different view of the character is such a big part of what makes him a good villain.

OP I looove what you're saying about narratives and roles here, because I think another very compelling character arc to view through this lens is that of Dukat's main foil: Benjamin Sisko! (I can already feel a giant essay forming so I'm just gonna warn for that and then put it under a cut lol)

Keep reading

Clueless Bisexual Elliot Reid | Scrubs (2001 - 2010)

And by clueless I mean, she's closeted/in denial as a result of growing up in a conservative household with a gay brother who was never fully accepted by her family. She repressed her bisexuality, but she can't fully hide it. Just like her brother, everyone knows. She doesn't simply passively accept a date with a woman while she's drinking. She actively seeks one out. Even her mother would rather celebrate that Elliot's actually dating a man than talk to her about her problems. And I almost didn't include that lesbian coach/athlete fantasy because it's questionable on like 12 levels, but she's fantasizing about finding a man to turn her straight. That's the kind of fantasy she needs to examine a little closer, one of many things she needs to examine a little closer.

What the heck, I’ll give it a shot.

How bad could it be?

Guys I’m not ok

Do tell

Oh jeez where to begin

Ok, First of all, Dorothy Gale is played by a young Fairuza Balk.

These pictures do not do justice to the raw Traumatized Child energy she brings to this role.

A bit of plot: Dorothy Gale won’t sleep. She’s always talking about Emerald Cities and Talking Scarecrows and Ruby Slippers. At her wit’s end, Aunt Em decides to commit her to the sanitarium for electroshock therapy.

Disney made this.

It is strongly implied that her journey back to Oz is a hallucination caused by the electroshock treatment. Herr Doktor flips the switch, lightning flashes, and the supernatural part of the movie begins.

Ok. So. Dorothy gets to Oz by almost drowning in a flash flood. She rides to safety in a produce crate with one of her family chickens.

This is where one of the core Uncanny elements of the film first appears; this movie does not share continuity with the 1939 Judy Garland film.

It is a much more faithful adaptation of L.F. Baum’s Books, but despite being a sequel both objectively and canonically, it really just pretends the ‘39 film doesn’t exist.

They land in a desert that turns people to stone called the Deadly Desert. They get food from a Lunch Pail Tree. The chicken can talk. The Scarecrow is King of Oz, allegedly.

But, like,

Here’s her house from the first movie.

The one that landed on a witch? Right smack dab in the middle of a whole dang Munchkin Village?

There was literally a whole song and dance!

Where did the Munchkins go, you might ask?

Well, while Dorothy was away,

There was an Apocalypse.

OZ HAS FALLEN

And this is where we meet the nightmarish Eldritch spawn of Roller Disco and David Bowie:

The Wheelers

Alright. The fucking Wheelers.

I don’t-

What is-

What these pictures don’t convey is that, as they move, they make the exact same sound the gurneys in the sanitariums make. The Wheelers are played by the same actors who play the orderlies. Oz is the sanitarium.

Now, let’s discuss Jack Skellington Pumpkinhead

This is one of the Good Guys

He’s just a guy. Like, really, very much, Just A Guy of a character. His entire personality, such as it is, is comprised of

• His quest to find his Mom (we’ll get back to that) and
• Commenting on his lifelessness. For example, when faced with death, he comments calmly that he won’t miss eating or sleeping, since he does neither.

His mom ends up being this girl:

We’ll get to her.

I had this fever-dream memory of the Army of Oz in the Hall of Ornaments from when I was a kid as well and I gotta say it’s kinda nice to finally put that memory in some kind of context. A horrible, terrible, awful context, but a context nonetheless.

One and the same, friend.

I LIVE TO PLEASE

Ahem. Sorry. Anyway.

So. I mentioned an Apocalypse.

Behold! The citizenry of Oz!

They have been turned to stone by the evil Nome King! Why, you ask?

For stealing his Emeralds, of course!

But I’m getting ahead of myself. I forgot to introduce The Army of Oz, affectionately referred to as Tik-Tok!

This guy

That’s… apparently the whole army?

He’s spring-wound. Has 3 winding keys: one for moving, one for talking, and one for thinking. At one point his thinking gears wind down while his action and talking gears are still tight and he creates a lot of trouble. He has a… spin attack…

I really don’t know what to make of him to be honest.

Ok so like fully half of what makes The Wheelers so unsettling is the audio so I found a clip:

Hospital gurney noises and echoing, mocking laughter. The way it’s cut doesn’t help. Nor does the… craft store kitsch of the Wheeler outfits. I genuinely have no idea what they were going for. David Bowie vibes, a little bit, but not in a good way.

Oh this film. This isn’t even the end of it.

This is one of the few films that tried for, and managed to succeed for the most part, at capturing the same sort of dark magic of films like Labyrinth, the Dark Crystal, or the Secret of NIMH. That time when some creators were willing to tell stories to children that reflected the darkness that we already saw in the world.

It’s got some problems, but Return to Oz is honestly great. I also never felt like it was patronizing me when I watched it as child, which seemed like an awfully hard ask for most movies.

Yeah this is absolutely of its era, when it comes to terrifying 80’s children’s films.

I used get dad to rent this film for us when I was 8 or so. Mostly because I knew it was the only film my tough little sister was visibly scared of. Children are brutal.

This breakdown doesn’t even touch on Mombi, who scared the living daylights out of me. She is played by the same actress who plays the nurse at the sanatorium. And she is the reason the citizens of Oz up there are missing their heads. She keeps the still living heads locked in glass cabinets in her palace and swaps them out for her own head depending on her mood.

There is a later scene where all the heads are screaming as Dorothy makes a run for it. Mombi’s original head bellowing ‘Dorothy Gale!’ It is genuinely disturbing. I love this film so much.

I’ve never heard of this movie before, and all I can think now is

WHAT THE FUCK

It has been such a long time snice I saw this. I remember reading the books and being terrified of it. Because this is part of more than one book.

I love this movie! WAY better than the first OZ movie, I wanted a Lunch Pail tree SO BAD as a kid.

Karliene wrote a great song about it too!

Scissor Sisters also used it as inspo!

I love this movie so much. It’s weird as hell, but also really charming. Plus the visuals can’t be beat.

oh i loved this movie as a kid!

Antarctic flag proposals

Several flags have been proposed as a broader symbol of Antarctica and the people connected to it. None of these flags have any form of official status, and none are currently in common use on the continent. Here are some of them:

1929, proposed by the crew of the British Australian and New Zealand Antarctic Research Expedition (BANZARE).

The white flag was used to represent Antarctica on at least two occasions on the voyage to Antarctica.

1978 (1985 by some sources), proposed by vexillologist Whitney Smith Jr.

The letter A stands for Antarctica, the circle segment represents the area below °60 south (the Antarctic Circle), and the hands represent human protection of the environment. The negative (orange) space between the hands and the circle segment is the dove of peace. For high visibility, Smith chose international orange, a color commonly used in the aerospace industry to set objects apart from their surroundings. The bright orange color was also chosen due to its rarity among national flags, as no nation with an active research base on the continent uses the color orange in their flag. The design elements are positioned on the hoist side of the flag so that it would remain visible even if the flag were damaged by the harsh Antarctic winds.

1995, proposed by Joanne Cooper and Stefan Tucker.

After seeing Smith's proposal Cooper and Tucker attempted to improve the design to make it more "representational".

1996, proposed by Graham Bartram.

Bartram designed this flag while working on a CD-ROM Atlas project. Unaware of previous flag proposals, he set out to create a flag for Antarctica. He decided to use the outline of the continent. Further, the UN jurisdiction over the Antarctic Treaty suggested the use of UN blue and white. Since the CD-ROM sold more than 2 million copies, Bartram's design was considered the most-distributed flag of Antarctica. Due to frequent, rapid changes in the ice shelves, the silhoutte of the continent is no longer accurate.

1999, proposed by bank note collector Dave Hamilton.

Hamilton, operator of a mint for fantasy currency, printed this flag on his "Antarctican 50 dollar" bill after he found other designs "very stupid-looking and boring". His design includes: a pale blue strip representing the pack ice, a dark blue stripe representing the night sky and a yellow stripe as the representation of the aurora australis. The stellar constellation the Southern Cross is shown in the dark blue stripe at the right.

2007/08, proposed by the plastic artist Olivier Leroy.

Leroy's flag is vertically divided into four stripes — black, off-white, orange, and gray — reproducing the proportions of the colors of an emperor penguin.

2018, proposed by the journalist Evan Townsend and his team from the True South project.

After posting a viral picture of a pride flag in Antarctica, Townsend started to think about designing a flag to raise awareness for the vulnerability of Antarctica and to create a sense of community and identity among those who have experienced the continent firsthand and those who support it from afar. The horizontal stripes of navy blue and white represent the long days and nights at Antarctica's extreme latitude. The design is focused on a white peak representing the mountains and icebergs of Antarctica. The navy blue shadow it casts forms the shape of a compass arrow pointed to the south, a homage to the continent's legacy of exploration. Together, the two center shapes create a diamond, symbolizing the hope that Antarctica will continue to be a center of peace, discovery, and cooperation for generations to come.

×××××××××××××××××××

Sources:

Wikipedia - List of Antarctic Flags

Edward Kaye - Flags over Antarctica, in: Proceedings of the XX International Congress of Vexillology

True South Flag - Flags of Antarctica

Frank Herbert’s Dune, illustrated in Color and Black and White by John Schoenherr.