Reblogging not just because special effects are cool but because body doubles, stunt doubles, acting doubles, talent doubles — all the people whose faces we’re not supposed to see but whose bodies make movies and tv shows possible — these people need and deserve more recognition. We see their bodies onscreen, delight in the shape and motion of those bodies, but even as we pick apart everything else that goes on both on and behind the screen, I just don’t see the people who are those bodies getting the love and recognition they deserve.
We’re coming to love and recognize actors who work in full-body makeup/costumes, such as Andy Serkis, or actors whose entire performances, or large chunks thereof, are motion captured or digitized (lately sometimes also Andy Serkis!). But people like Leander Deeny play an enormous part in making characters such as Steve Rogers come to life, too. Body language is a huge part of a performance and of characterization. For characters/series with a lot of action, a stunt person can have a huge influence on how we read and interpret a character, such as the influence Heidi Moneymaker has had on the style and choreography of Black Widow’s signature fighting style. Talent doubles breathe believability and discipline-specific nuance into demanding storylines.
Actors are creative people themselves, and incredibly important in building the characters we see onscreen. But if we agree that they’re more than dancing monkeys who just do whatever the directors/writers say, then we have to agree that doubles are more than that, too. Doubles make creative decisions too, and often form strong, mutually supportive relationship with actors.
Image 1: “I would like to thank Kathryn Alexandre, the most generous actor I’ve ever worked opposite.”
Image 2: “Kathryn who’s playing my double who’s incredible.”
[ Orphan Black’s Tatiana Maslany on her acting double, Kathryn Alexandre, two images from a set on themarysue, vialifeofkj ]
I’ve got a relationship that goes back many, many years with Dave. And I would hate for people to just see that image of me and Dave and go, “oh, there’s Dan Radcliffe with a person in a wheelchair.” Because I would never even for a moment want them to assume that Dave was anything except for an incredibly important person in my life.
[ Daniel Radcliffe talking about David Holmes, his stunt double for 2001-2009, who was paralysed while working on the Harry Potter films. David Holmes relates his story here. Gifset viasmeagoled ]
With modern tv- and film-making techniques, many characters are composite creations. The characters we see onscreen or onstage have always been team efforts, with writers, directors, makeup artists, costume designers, special effects artists, production designers, and many other people all contributing to how a character is ultimately realized in front of us. Many different techniques go into something like the creation of Skinny Steve — he’s no more all Leander Deeny than he is all Chris Evans.
But as fandom dissects the anatomy of scenes in ever-increasing detail to get at microexpressions and the minutiae of body language, let’s recognize the anatomy in the scenes, too. I don’t mean to take away from the work Chris Evans or any other actors do (he is an amazing Steve Rogers and I love him tons), but fandom needs to do better in recognizing the bodies, the other people, who make up the characters we love and some of our very favourite shots of them. Chris Evans has an amazing body, but so does Leander Deeny — that body is beautiful; that body mimicked Chris Evans’s motions with amazing, skilled precision; that body moved Steve Rogers with emotion and grace and character.
Fandom should do better than productions and creators who fail to be transparent about the doubles in their productions. On the screen, suspension of disbelief is key and the goal is to make all the effort that went into the production vanish and leave only the product itself behind. But when the film is over and the episode ends, let’s remember everyone who helped make that happen.
[ Sam Hargrave (stunt double for Chris Evans) and James Young (stunt double for Sebastian Stan, and fight choreographer), seen from behind, exchange a fistbump while in costume on the set of Captain America: The Winter Soldier. Image vialifeofkj ]
I applaud these guys as much as the suit actors in my japanese tokusatsu shows. They do just as much work.
All of this. Also anyone who says VFX is ruining films needs to learn about film history and then apologise to everyone for being simultaneously ignorant and arrogant.
Andy Blake, better known on Tumblr as andythanfiction, is not at all what he seems. Presenting himself as a friendly, enthusiastic, artful member of the supernatural fandom, Andy would appear to be harmless and even comes off as extremely cool and likable. This could not be farther from the truth. Andythanfiction is a harmful, dangerous cult leader. Yes, for real. Cults still exist. I know, I was shocked, as well.
My intent in writing this post is twofold:
Warn and protect the friends I made at DC Con
Warn and protect the cast of Supernatural
I met Andythanfiction at the most recent Creation Ent. Supernatural Convention, in Washington DC, where he not only won the cosplay contest for Best Castiel, but also donned an extremely good Kevin Tran cosplay (pictured above) for most if not all of Friday and Sunday. He was delightful. He was impressive. He actually got Mark Sheppard to use props in a photograph. I liked him.
Earlier today, I remembered where I’d heard his name before. It wasn’t, as I’d suspected, from reading his Destiel meta. No. It was something far more sinister.
I remembered reading an article about a man who liked to flit from fandom to fandom, become popular and well liked, and slowly begin to draw in a “posse”. A group of friends. A following. And then proceed to use them, leech them of their money and identity, take what he wanted from them, and when they began to catch wise, dump them out of his “protection” with no money, no friends outside the cult, and no idea of who they were without him.
I thought to myself that it couldn’t have been the Andy I met. And then I checked my blog. Not, as you’ll notice, this blog. And I found the post I’d been thinking of. I will not link it here, as to not endanger the author of the original ask post. They’re a dear friend of mine and the entire point of this post is to keep the people I love safe. But, I will copy the text of it, below.
Anonymous asked: who is that andy guy? what did he do? i never heard of him
I included a link in that post — though I’d say it’s probably best that if you haven’t heard of him, not to trouble yourself with reading into it. Unless you like reading about sociopaths and cult leaders. In that case, it might be considered an interesting read.
Suffice it to say he is a well-known destiel meta writer on tumblr and years ago he did some very awful things in another fandom, and I am worried for my own little SPN fandom. I am also vaguely worried about Misha, but I don’t think that one’s a very valid worry. You can read the information in thelinked postfor more information.
Go on and read the linked post. I’ll wait. While you’re there, feel free to click on the other posts that one links to. Trigger Warning for gaslighting, brainwashing, sexual assault, sexual abuse, cults, and emotional manipulation. If I have forgotten to warn for something, please do message me and I will append this paragraph.
The above post was written in October of 2013. At that point, Andy had not gone to any Supernatural conventions, and was still in the process of assimilating himself into our fanmily.
He has now begun to escalate, as he has done before. At this last convention, he was buddying up to Osric, and telling fans that Osric gave him his phone number. This is yet to be confirmed, but if he has, the situation is even more troubling.
Andy has been working on gaining the trust of not only Osric but of many fans of the show. One way he earns people’s trust is by playing the victim card. He then uses that trust to victimize others. If you doubt that he could, then he has probably gotten to you.
Because he’s likable. He really is. You may read the post above and think, “Wow, what a monster, I bet he’s actually really creepy.”
He is not. He is very good at what he does. If he was noticeably creepy, even to one’s intuition, people would not trust him, and he would not be a threat.
If you met him at the convention a couple of weeks ago, you may already like him. You may already consider him a friend. You may even be going to his Season Nine party, or traveling with him to San Diego con.
Do. Not.
Even if you tell yourself that you do not and will not trust him, do not go near him. Keep. Your. Distance. He will weasel his way past your guard just as soon as you’re not looking. He will find the cracks in your defenses and slip silently in through them and the next thing you know, he’ll be inducting you into his Posse and you’ll be telling yourself that he really isn’t so bad, and then I fear it will be too late for you.
He WILL play the victim. He WILL say that this and all other posts exposing him are unfair and ruining his life. He WILL refuse to own up that he is only ruining his OWN life by continuing to act this way and follow these patterns of behavior. And if he DOES own up it will only be to say that he’s changed now. But do you see how his “friends” call themselves his “posse” now? How he refers to them as a herd?
By the way, none of this is to blame any of his friends. It is extremely important to remember is that they are not foolish people. They’re intelligent, good people. Do not think that by being “smarter” or “more careful” than them that you can avoid the harm that Andy inflicts on the people around him.
The ONLY way to avoid harm is to stay away from him. If you do know him, immediately do everything in your power to cut ALL contact with him.
Spread the word.
THIS IS A VERY IMPORTANT AND COMPLETELY LEGIT POST.
Five or six years ago, thanfiction was in Harry Potter fandom. A good friend of mine was abused cruelly by him. She started out as a friend of his, and when she pulled back, his abusive behaviour escalated, to the point where her LJ was completely locked down, and he was using some of her best friends to spy on her private LJ posts which were then reposted and ridiculed by him and his followers. It took her ages to find thanfiction’s moles in her friendslist. I’ve seen some pretty horrific behaviour from people on the internet over the eighteen or so years I’ve been on it, but this was some of the worst.
Another friend of mine commissioned artwork from him for a fest she was running – he took her money, took forever to mail her the work, and when she did receive it, it was pretty much destroyed, inside the packaging. He blamed a friend who he ‘gave the art to to post for him’. My friend never received a refund.
thanfiction also tried to court me as a potential for his clique in this incredibly narcissistic comment on the final chapter of a story it took me a year to write. Luckily, I’d been a victim of abuse, both in real life and on the internet before, and after I shot him down in the politest way I could manage given the self-aggrandising tone of the comment, he never bothered to approach me again. (Had he properly done his homework on me, he would have known that my partner, kath-ballantyne, had been illustrating chapters of my story from the very beginning. While fanart is always a lovely compliment, in this case, it certainly wasn’t the irresistible lure he thought it would be.)
(Converting this to a text post rather than a photo post because I don’t want Andy’s stupid face on my blog.)
Your semi-regular reminder that Andrew Blake is an abusive, narcissistic sociopath who uses other fans and celebrities to further his own agenda.
And, wow the linked comment is just… wtf. “As someone who doesn’t really fancy slash” haha okay dude.
I know, right? You’ll notice that from the very first word, everything he says is about himself. I think what makes it all the more startling is that we’d never had a conversation before this comment. He’d never read or commented on one of my stories. He didn’t even have the ‘cover’ of showing interest as a friend. And he states right at the beginning, ‘I have not read your story and I never will’, and that begs the question. ‘Well, then why are you here? And I know exactly why. Allow me to demonstrate with a short reinterpretation of that comment to be slightly more honest.
Hey there. I see you wrote a story. I wrote a story and it’s big and it’s beautiful and it’s amazing, and I have heaps of people who love me and love it because, well, naturally. I deserve it. So, I notice you’ve got a lot of people reading your story. That’s nice. I want them, because I always need more followers, and they’re obviously misguided if they’re over here, reading your, whatever-it-is, when they could be reading my story and basking in my magnificence.
So, I’m going to offer you something of a present.
I’m going to make a gloriously generous offer that you’d be incredibly rude to turn down because I’m giving you fanart, and everyone loves and appreciates fanart, because fanart is like gold. Better, it’s my fanart, so it’s more like diamonds.
I’m going to make you a piece of fanart for a scene that you choose (awesome, because then you’re happy and I don’t have to read through however many words of your drivel to find something to inspire me). It costs me nothing but a bit of my time, and it’ll have the added bonus (original intention) of linking your dinky little story with ME. Then, every time one of your readers (adorable) looks at your… thing, they get a free advertisement to me! They have to think of me, because I’M THERE, IN YOUR STORY, EVEN THOUGH I HAD NO PART IN MAKING IT AND I HATE SLASH AND WILL NEVER READ IT. And because we’re now inextricably linked, your readers will flow to me and my magnificence like water flowing downhill, and what was yours will be mine – readers, credit for your creation, everything.
This is where you say thankyou. YOU’RE WELCOME.
If anyone reading this reads the original comment and thinks I’m inflating the weight and meaning of the approach thanfiction made, trust me, I am not. What he said and how he said it was CLASSIC GROOMING BEHAVIOUR. Grooming is a term very familiar to those of you out there who have personal or professional experience with child sexual assault. It’s the honeymoon period where an abuser flatters a mark, gives them gifts, tells them how special they are, before they escalate into isolation and assault. It is a very telling behaviour of intent and for those who know how to spot it, it is unmistakeable. Grooming is never about what the abuser can offer a mark, it’s about how they can best make a mark feel indebted to them, the classic ‘I gave you something you wanted, now you have to give me something I want.’ In the case of thanfiction, the only thing I had to offer him was access to the readers following my story. I wasn’t rich, I wasn’t a BNF, I wasn’t in the same country and I wasn’t emotionally or sexually available. So I didn’t take the lure, and I protected my readership as best I could by refusing his advances.
REBLOGGING DEC 2017 FOR CRITICAL ROLE FANDOM
For anyone wanting a refresher or evidence of my past interaction with thanfiction, here you go.
So the thing is in the actual book series JK Rowling never said what House Hagrid was in. We find out that Hagrid actually went to Hogwarts as a student really in the 2nd book–when we see Tom Riddle, the Slytherin prefect confront Hagrid in his own dorm room, and the two seemed pretty familiar with each other.
Hagrid was expelled as a 3rd year. He was born in 1928, and Riddle was born 1926. So Riddle was a 5th year prefect,
Hagrid doesn’t seem like he was particularly good at any branch of magic other than Care of Magical Creatures, so how would the two know each other? Hagrid is 2 years younger than Tom, so how would they have known each other well enough for Hagrid to call him ‘Tom,’ not Riddle?
Now, the prefects are some of the only people the oblivious Harry Potter recognizes from other Houses, other than Quidditch players. And yet we’ve never heard about prefects from other Houses coming in to discipline Gryffindor students. Hell we’ve never heard about people from other houses in the Gryffindor common room period. You really think that Tom Riddle would know enough about a 3rd year Gryffindor nobody, someone who isn’t even his year?
Not to mentionthis is when the Chamber of Secrets is open, a girl was killed. You think Gryffindor is going to let a powerful Slytherin traipse around their tower, when tensions are running high after being terrified all year? No.
But you know what’s much more plausible? Hagrid was a Slytherin.
Whereas it wouldn’t make any sense to be friends with a young Gryiffindor, young Slytherins are Tom’s responsibility. Tom knowing, and being able to access a 3rd year Slytherin’s dormitory–how he knew Hagrid well enough to know about Arigog, and where he’s kept– makes much more sense. Not to mention they are looking for the heir of Slytherin. Guess what hint hint they’re probably looking at a Slytherin to be accountable for Myrtle’s murder. Not a Gryffindor.
The only reason suspicion fell on Harry was because he could literally talk to snakes, and people who didn’t know enough about what happened in the past made the obvious leap “Slytherin’s monster=Snake; harry can talk to snakes=Harry’s the heir of Slytherin.”
And damn, it makes sense that Hagrid’s a Slytherin. If there’s anyone who’s a true friend to Harry it’s Hagrid, the man who tried to make sure Harry had everything he ever needed (I still get emotional thinking about Hagrid making that scrapbook for Harry. @Dumbledore maybe Harry wouldn’t have been so enraptured by the Mirror of Erised if he actually had a damn photo of his parents).
And it makes perfect sense for Hagrid to be prejudiced against Slytherin. These are the people who threw him away, who got him kicked out of Hogwarts, who would have taken away his home if Dumbledore hadn’t allowed him to stay on as groundskeeper. And yeah don’t get me wrong Hagrid definitely has morals but he’s like the definition of Slytherin loyalty, he’d do anything for the people he cares about. Just think of him hiding Gawp in the Forbidden Forrest. It’s not safe or wise or brave, he keeps that knowledge from even Dumbledore (Dumbledore, who he believes in not because of his ideals or what he stands for but because he is Dumbledore, someone Hagrid is loyal to).
But this is his brother, who is going to get hurt if he stays with the other giants. Think of how Hagrid loves Harry–now, think of Narcissa Malfoy, willing to do anything if it meant the chance her son was alive, even defy Voldemort and go against what her family had been working towards for decades. Hagrid is such a Slytherin parent.
tl;dr sure, JKR might have posted on her twitter or Pottermore that Hagrid was a Gryffindor, but writing is about showing, not telling. And she might have told us that he’s Gryffindor, but she’s showed us he’s Slytherin
Plus when you look at basically everything he does, both as a teacher and in his personal life, Ambition seems to be the guiding trait. Gotta teach kids about care of magical creatures? Go big or go home; I have already ordered a crate of super illegal giant death bugs. Dragon? Dragon motherfucker. Gorgeous half-giantess headmistresss of the most elite and snootiest academy in europe? Mack on immediately.
“Someone’s gotta take care of them, and that someone’s gonna be me.”
The most hilarious thing about the fact Buckbeak had a trial and lost is that later on JKR resolves the issue by having Hagrid take him in again and renaming him Witherwings. That’s literally all it took. What if in POA, Hagrid simply said, “Sorry, Buckbeak flew away.”
“There’s a hippogriff right there, Hagrid.”
“A different hipprogriff.”
“I’m… pretty sure that’s the same hipprogriff.”
“Prove it.”
no dna tests we die like scientifically underdeveloped societies
Prisoner of Azkaban continues to be the most frustrating book
Someone should have just adopted Sirius and started calling him Gerald.
Remus: Erm… this is our new order member, my… cousin Gerald. Gerald White.
“Mr. Lupin that is Sirius Black with glasses!” “Oh come now Minister, Sirius Black doesn’t wear glasses. That wouldn’t make sense.” “Well have Mr. White take off his glasses then!” “He can’t he needs them to see.”
it got better
It’s honestly a miracle to me that wizarding society doesn’t collapse every other week because like
You’ve got this world full of people who can destroy whole buildings or turn people into beetles or make vehicles fly just by waving a stick at them
And there is literally no common sense
Anywhere to be found
Voldemort would never have had anyone find out he was back if he just went around calling himself Steve
Okay, see, I thought I saved this post to comment on it but I’d like to bring up
The Minister would NEVER EVER disbelieve in Gerald White. He’d buy it hook line and sinker. The wizarding world would buy it hook line and sinker. The GOBLINS wouldn’t but wizards have been shown to be pretty blindingly clueless. Still, Gringotts would grudgingly give Sirius access to the Black fortune.
But, but, but, you know the one person
the one person
who Gerald White would drive AB-SO-LUTELY FUCKING BATSHIT?
Severus Snape.
Snape would do everything, EVERYTHING, to get people to believe that it’s Sirius. But the Order would ignore it (they accepted Sirius as Sirius before anyway) and Remus would just be so… so affronted.
‘Severus, he is my cousin.’
And Sirius would love it. He’d love the fact that Snape just hated it. He’d be the BEST DAMN GERALD WHITE EVER b/c Snape is doing everything from dropping veritaserum into his firewhisky to capturing a dementor in a box and releasing it on Sirius when he least expects it
That one causes problems for a bare minute because SHIT A DEMENTOR ATTEMPTED TO GIVE GERALD THE KISS MAYBE SNAPE IS RIGHT except Harry comes forward and is like ‘excuse me, I’ve never committed a crime and dementors are ALWAYS attacking me, I think they’re attracted to glasses’
and the magical community is like ‘shit, yeah, you’re right’
and just
Spare. Snape goes spare.
Picturing Snape as Mr. Crocker from the Fairly Oddparents now.
Gerald White eventually becomes a fully registered animagus. When he turns into his animagus form right in front of Snape, Snape’s bursting at the seams, just pointing at him and spluttering:
‘HE’S A BIG BLACK DOG! A DOG – THAT IS BLACK. SIRIUS BLACK. BLACK DOG DOG BLACK.’
And Remus calmly says: “That’s absurd, Severus. Sirius Black was never an animagus and besides which, people’s names don’t have any influence over their animagus forms or anything like that. That’s ridiculous.”
And Snape yells: “Shut it WEREWOLF MCWEREWOLF!”
Everyone looks at Remus, who blinks and sighs as Gerald White turns back into his human form.
“Pure coincidence,” Gerald says. “My aunt was into Roman mythology. Has to happen sometimes.” Then he pauses to give Snape an overly concerned look. “Are you alright, Severus? You’re looking a little red.”
knitting in the dark 
