Raven

When Helen was of age to be married, all the Lords of Greece came to seek her hand. This was an issue for her stepfather the King of Sparta who could only pick one husband and then would have to deal with the far greater number of angry rejected suitors.

One suitor was Odysseus, then a younger man. He quickly ascertained that he had no chance of marrying Helen. Ithaca was too poor for him to even bring any proper gifts, let alone a dowry. But he did catch the eye of the King's niece, one Penelope.

Now Penelope was still a bit out of Odysseus' league, but not so much as Helen was. So he makes a deal with the King of Sparta. Support my bid to marry Penelope, and I'll give you a solution to this suitors problem. The King agrees, so Odysseus suggests all the suitors swear an oath to defend Helen's marriage from anyone who might strike against it. They all, including Odysseus, so swear, and Helen is married to Menelaus. The King proves as good as his word, and Penelope is wed to Odysseus.

Of course this means that Odysseus has now bound himself to fight for Helen and Menelaus. After an attempt to feign madness he is forced to fulfill his duty.

settings in cinema: video rental stores

Lucky for us, this isn't just any director, and this isn't just any film. This is Cherly Dunye directing Watermelon Woman, and it's a masterpiece.

The narrative is, of course, impressive. The main character, Cheryl (played by Dunye herself), is attempting to research and document the life of an uncredited plantation film actress identified only as The Watermelon Woman, which kicks off a quest to preserve the fleeting memories of black film history that still exist as Cheryl fights to uncover the Watermelon Woman's identity before her memory is lost to time.

In a straightforward narrative film this would be all the film needed to hook me, even without the look at the most swagful outfits of 1990s lesbian culture, but Dunye's a master of her work, and doesn't leave it there.

What stuck out to me specifically was the editing, that specific flavor of 1990s indie that pulls heavily from french new wave jump cuts. Think Slackers, One Night On Earth, even Brick, to a lesser extent. It's exquisite, and for all the critical acclaim that Dunye's gotten for Watermelon Woman, I don't think the film gets talked about enough.

The production, on too low of a budget to license footage of 1930s black actresses, created all the vintage footage and photographs we see in the movie from scratch, recreating the vintage media with impressive attention to detail. It's everything I've ever wanted in an indie film like this. Truly one worth watching.

"AU" stands for "Alternate Universe" or "Alternative Universe" (same difference) and is basically any thought scenario for a fandom that isn't canon and can't fit within the canon universe. If it takes place in the canon universe but something is notably different, that is typically what's known as a "Canon divergent AU," because it diverges from canon.

an AU can be absolutely anything. There's a couple of widespread pan-fandom au scenarios that often get thrown around, like coffee shop aus, genderbend aus, hanahaki aus (hanahaki is a whole thing in itself i'd recommend researching on your own), etc. One you might hear sometimes is "crossover AU" which is when you have characters from one fandom interacting with characters from another.

You can have as many aus as you want. They can be whatever you want and you can do whatever you want in them. It's a sandbox for you to play around in and explore how things would be different or how the characters would act in those circumstances or environments. Maybe they have different relationships with each other. Maybe they behave slightly differently. Or you can just say "Okay, [x] is true. How did they get here? How would things have to be different for this to occur?" which can also be fun.

If you are ever confused about why people ship something that seems completely out of the blue or doesn't make sense to you in the canon setting, there's a good chance they like it in an AU setting! Not everything everybody is interacting with is necessarily the canon! Not everybody wants things to exist in canon and just want to explore playing dolls in a different sandbox and that's okay. And their sandbox might look a lot different than yours, and that's also okay. You have the freedom to make your sandbox whatever you please. Do whatever you want forever. Get funky with it. AUs are fun.