*benoit blanc voice* now that is just amazing, mister kira, but you seem to be a lot less bright then i musta thought... we're only broadcasting this program to the kanto region of japan.
slapstick shenanigans as Light fails to spell Benwah correctly for ten episodes
*benoit blanc voice* now that is just amazing, mister kira, but you seem to be a lot less bright then i musta thought... we're only broadcasting this program to the kanto region of japan.
slapstick shenanigans as Light fails to spell Benwah correctly for ten episodes
In the finale it's revealed that he's actually spelled "Benoit" correctly several times through sheer frustrated trial and error, but it didn't work because he's consistently been spelling the last name "Blonk".
my favourite thing about tumblr is that we all accept the concept that the concept of a “world famous detective” is a feature of “the mystery genre” despite this post obviously being about Knives Out/Glass Onion and literally nothing else
World famous detectives. That is, people who are in-canon famous, and either directly famous for solving crime, or famous for something else (e.g. as novelists) and well known to their fan bases to have solved several/many crimes.
Sherlock Holmes
Hercule Poirot
Richard Castle
Jessica Fletcher
All of the above have at least one adventure where someone knows of their crime solving by reputation, and comes to them for help because of it, and not simply because they had an ad in the paper.
I would say the world famous detective is as much a genre staple as people in horror movies never having apparently seen a horror movie, or the lack of super hero comics in-Universe in superhero comics and movies.
‘world famous detective’ is a significantly bigger ask than ‘at least one person in their country of residence has heard of them’ actually
So first, yes obviously the original post was primarily and centrally reacting to the Benoit Blanc movies.
But I think the point was, no one watches that movie and says "huh, this is a funny premise of this movie in particular that it has a 'world-famous detective' as part of the premise". World-famous detective, sure, that makes sense.
In the real world, there's no such thing as a famous detective. It's not that Benoit Blanc is "too" famous; that's not a thing people are famous for! But in mystery stories—or at least the ones that I, as not a mystery genre fan, am familiar with—famous detectives are a recurring theme.
In your tags you flag Sherlock Holmes, who was certainly the second character I thought of when I originally read this post. My impression is that Poirot is a famous, if not world-famous detective; he shows up and people say "Oh the detective Mr Poirot". A Murder in Haversham Manor, the play within The Play That Goes Wrong, has a plot-point of "I've called my friend the famous detective who lives nearby", which is not a thing that has ever happened in real life. And sure, Haversham Manor is supposed to be terrible, but it's terrible in a schlocky genre way.
I would throw less-adult characters like the Hardy Boys and Encyclopedia Brown in there as well; they're known as, like, people you can bring stuff to, detective as a notable vocation rather than a job. You can see this in Batman's origin and original tagline as the "World's Greatest Detective".
So like it does seem like a true thing about the mystery genre, that some of the conventions set up prepare us to accept "a world-famous detective" despite that not making any sense in real life.
death note postulates not only that there are world-famous detectives but also that there is an explicit ranking of who the most famous detectives in the world are, with agreed #1, #2 and #3 spots (all of whom are secretly the same person)
my favourite thing about tumblr is that we all accept the concept that death note is mystery fiction
(spoilers for Glass Onion)
the first Knives Out told the tragic story of a fucked up family, and family is always a convenient justification for a bunch of messed up people to be hanging out together and one that most of us are all too familiar with in real life.
Glass Onion told the story of a bunch of college (?) friends who hung out together at a particular bar, when one of them brought in a smooth talking idiot loser who must have had superpowers of some kind as he hooked the rest up with successful careers before becoming a billionaire himself based on her work and then betrayed her with the support of the others who defended him in court.
that's already a little weird! "a reclusive rich guy invites a group of people to his private island for a dinner during which someone will be murdered" is a classic premise but having the people all be college friends from way back doesn't add anything when they're already tied together by the fact that they committed perjury to defend the rich guy in exchange for his support!
business partners falling out is a solid premise (The Social Network) and if they were lovers (were they? I'm actually not sure) then that adds even more drama, but having this quite disparate bunch of characters be college friends only matters if you delve into their relationships and group dynamic, which the movie has little interest in doing.
and it's such a wordcel movie, oh my god, it could not be less interested in how a billionaire becomes a billionaire or what distinguishes a good idea from a bad one, it doesn't try to take its own premise seriously at all, unlike the first movie which was at least about a writer who writes books, solid wordcel territory.
look at the characters:
technology is writing "AI" on a napkin and having that be worth billions of dollars, while knowing the right words to say and how to say them is a Prized Skill that is actually Important.
(it's notable that the woman who is supposedly going to start the next Google ("Alpha") moves to the well-known tech hub of New York after finishing high school, not San Francisco!)
now these may seem like silly points to harp on for what is a silly murder mystery movie but the lack of sincere commitment to the premise undermines the emotional arc of the characters: it could be a comedy about them finally breaking free of the self-interest that has kept them loyal to the bad guy, or a tragedy about the ramifications of failing to break free and continuing their descent into hatred for each other and themselves, but both of those possibilities fall flat if the writers don't really care as why should we.
the hero and protagonist of the story ends up being the victim's sister, but the victim herself is barely given the chance to speak, let alone to explain what she saw in the bad guy, why she made that deal with the devil, and what other compromises she made to create a giant AI tech empire (!).
there are better stories here waiting to be told.
I dunno, I’m okay with it just being a multimillion dollar Elon Musk diss track. If we’re gonna spend millions on making movies no matter what, I’d rather more of them shit on Elon Musk, instead of taking his ‘real life Tony Stark’ shit seriously.
Also, I wasn’t really sold on Norton as not-Musk for most of the movie- he doesn’t really capture Musk’s arrogance or pathetic insecurity -until that I realized it was all just building to a giant Fight Club reference.
The star of the movie that coined the phrase ‘I feel like destroying something beautiful’ ends with someone literally torching the Mona Lisa. Perfection.
does that explain the painting of him in the background in what I assume is fight club pose? doesn't seem to actually connect with this movie though...
I haven't yet seen a recent evil billionaire movie that shows both sides of the coin in a convincing manner, the way that they are in fact just regular people not superheroes, the banality of evil etc., but also the way they succeed, the undeniable powers that they do have, to shape events and profit from outcomes, the system that they operate and inhabit, honestly I'm not sure if a movie can even do that today.
Argumate's got some pretty good points here!
That the movie hangs so much on the scratchings of a napkin is very goofy. It privileges this conceit that it is ideas that are scarce instead of execution. The napkin didn't even have obvious computer code from what I remember.
I got more Neumann, Jobs, and maybe Kalanick out of this than Musk.
Also, the flashback about the bar mentions they were all over 30 when Norton's character joined their group.
What REALLY stands out as wordcel-ery is that these chucklefucks were all what, the earliest backers of this Alpha company that became Amazon or Alphabet sized? But only one of them is obviously technical in a way that would serve them at all [and in the wrong field, chemistry instead of CS]. So why did they get such closely hitched fortunes? Surely the people that did the relevant work at Alpha would get rich by doing the technical work of their first hundred billion dollar product.
that's a good point, one of the friends could have been like Google's first chef or some other staff member with stock options, but it's unclear how a fashion model or a streamer would have any relationship with the company, nor are they likely to have any significant capital to invest.
what draws them altogether is the fact that they jointly defended him in court, but then why were they all willing to do that, why couldn't she make them a better offer, especially if they'd known her longer
It’s not that they have direct relationships to the company (except for the one guy who directly worked for it), it’s that not-Musk (and yes, he was clearly supposed to be Musk, was the sports car thing not giveaway enough?) brought them along with him on his ride to the top.
This is spelled out super explicitly like, maybe twenty minutes into the movie. Streamer guy got banned from Twitch, not-Musk bankrolled his move to YouTube and promoted him. Celebrity girl had her sweatpants line angel-invested by him. The politician lady’s campaign was being funded by him. They were all financially dependent on him in some way.
Again, they literally say this out loud in the movie. They supported him and his co-founder early on when they were starting out, and he repaid them by taking them to the top with him- but made them dependent on him in the process, creating resentment.
Admittedly, the napkin thing in particular is pretty silly- I don’t think that would exactly hold up in court. But it serves more as a metaphor, something tangible to represent the idea that not-Musk is a fraud, that he wasn’t really responsible for his success. Realistically, it wouldn’t be that easy to prove, but this is a movie! And the smoking gun goes up in smoke by the end anyway, so it’s all moot.
I didn't see how they supported him early on though? they had nothing going on, it seemed like it only showed him supporting them, at least until the court case
maybe they didn’t even support him in any way besides just allowing him into the friendgroup- he only brought them along with him out of some sense of loyalty in the first place! what’s relevant is that they’re all financially dependent on him, personally, not the company itself
(they’re dependent on the company in the sense that it’s the source of his wealth, but even if the company remained solvent, he could personally turn off the money tap at any time)
it’s sort of reminiscent of Peter Theil (Thiel? whatever) and his various orbiters- all of them have their little pet projects, like JD Vance and Blake Masters going into politics, or the rationality crowd writing erotic fanfiction, which he supports by throwing money at them
in that case, it’s less about personal loyalty than because he thinks they can do something for him, like change regulations in his favor, or use erotic fanfiction to make him immortal, but the principal is the same
yeah I guess that kind of near feudal patronage is a thing, although I think in that case the movie really needs to expend more effort on those relationships, or maybe I just need to get better at reading between the lines -- like the way the older model looked at the newer model was as they say a Clue.
they could probably have trimmed the extended flashback sequence down a little to expand on the character relationships a little more- but honestly, I think the relevant stuff was all made pretty explicit
everybody is dependent on not-Musk for succor, Andi threatens to bring his empire down, so they all have motive to kill her and protect not-Musk. that’s basically all you *need,* the rest is just icing
oh yeah just to be clear I do feel that the plot relevant stuff is all there, I'm mostly griping at the emotional arc of the characters, like do we give a shit that the survivors end up kind of reconciling at the end? not with her sister of course, but with each other, like does that matter to us as an audience after what we've seen, is it compelling?
I think it's weak, and I also think the ending of the original Knives Out was weak, and people were just like "yeah, the help got the house!" like that was enough to justify it when it really wasn't.
I thought the ‘everybody turns on him in the end’ bit was weak, and worse still, *predictable.* Like, twists and turns aside, it’s not really all that hard to guess that the friendgroup is gonna turn out to be Not All Bad in the end, because once Faux Rogan is dead, they’re all women and POC. (Blanc’s a white guy too, but Johnson heavily implies he’s gay which means he’s free of sin)
This isn’t to say that Rain Johnson is a ‘reverse racist’ or whatever, I just think he was afraid of pissing off people on Twitter if he made a woman or POC a bad guy. Even though the Black scientist guy is arguably worse than not-Musk, because he knew the risks of the alternative fuel full-well and signed off on using them to power a manned flight anyway! But he made a performative show of turning against not-Musk at the end, so all is forgiven.
Even Helen surviving being shot was predictable, for largely the same reasons. But really, the ending was hugely undercut by not indicting all of not-Musk’s orbiters along with him. When she torched the house, I thought she was straight-up planning to kill all of them, and that would have been a much better ending. Maybe that was Johnson’s original plan and Netflix made him change it, but I kind of doubt that.
I could definitely believe that ending was in an early version of the script. The painting felt so superfluous and was basically never in the same shot as any of the actors; I could quite easily believe it wasn’t there on set.
Plus, come on, the mutual immolation would have been such a more entertaining ending :P
recent detective stories like Knives Out, Glass Onion, and The Residence want to get political at the end in a way that weakens the impact of the murder mystery I think, mostly because the political part isn't well thought through: the bad guy has to be Elon Musk or whoever but the writers are too precious to really get to grips with his motivations or even the simple mechanics of his life, so the villainy ends up feeling flimsy and fake.
The Residence can hardly help getting political considering it's set in the White House -- I like a story with a strong sense of place and the White House is a really fucked up place, which works out pretty well for a murder mystery -- but the politics is mostly backgrounded until the very end, and the series benefits from that decision.
it's not that it's bad to include politics in a story: even if it can date the story sometimes, it can also make a story more powerful, giving it a stronger impact, but the politics of it have to be meaningful, they have to make sense, they have to be based on understanding of the world and not just an anxious exercise in box checking to get approval from shallow reviewers.
The trouble is that they're using the wrong kind of detective story.
The Knives Out series is based on what most people think of as the classic sort of "detective story" and even more so the "murder mystery" - the Cosy. (This
right, I think I get it — Miss Marple’s continued refrain that no matter where you go, it’s the same petty, mundane evils that play out, driven by the same human passions and vices. The characters need not be directly relatable but they must be familiar. Whereas
here's a hot take i think it is human nature to think you could use the death note responsibly. i know making fun of people who are like "rip to light but i'm different" is a meme at this point but when people are like "i would NOT use it" i'm like well you can think that right now, because it's an entirely fictional weapon that is not in your hands in this very moment. death note reduces the entirety of human history to what is a shockingly succinct trolley problem: if you could press a button and kill the people who YOU think are making the world a worse place, would you do it? the only way to opt out is to exist in a vacuum, to have no investment in the state of the world. but the personal is political. when push comes to shove i do think absolute power corrupts absolutely, except for me, who would only kill oligarchs and billionaires and politicians with bad vibes
I was like, oh wow, this is kinda sweet wholesome thing to think.
Like:
And then
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I read the rest of the tags
Like:
me doing this to prev just so i can resurrect them to nightcore remixes of hozier for the vine.
I know I haven't posted regularly on this blog in years but I'm not seeing a whole lot of posts on this site about what's happening in Minneapolis right now. And the posts I am seeing are not covering the scope of it. I'm genuinely surprised because tumblr is usually where I find out about things organically through my feed. So I'm making a post about it.
A brief summary of events, from someone who pays attention and also lives here, best taken with a grain of salt and some fact checking:
2020: George Floyd is murdered by Minneapolis police. There are weeks of protests about it. It makes national news. Protests happen in DC. The infamous Trump and his bible photo shoot happens.
2024: Gov. Tim Walz is Kamala Harris' running mate in the presidential election. He starts the "they're just weird" thing. Is folksy, Trump personally hates him.
November 2025: ICE starts showing up to "crack down" on "illegal immigrants" in our Somali community. I may remember the numbers wrong, but something like 90% of our Somali neighbors are either naturalized or were born here. People distribute ICE whistles and are on high alert. Localized to the twin cities.
December 2025: Nick Shirley is paid by a bunch of MN Republicans to do an exposé on daycare fraud. I didn't hear much about this. All I really know is this was an ongoing investigation that MN officials were already taking care of and some of the guilty parties have already gone to court from a COVID era food assistance program. Mostly, if not all, legal US citizens. He did a really bad job at doing journalism and just showed up to day cares with a camera crew and went "YUP nobody's here" as if they weren't in lock-down procedure because some fuck ass white men showed up with camera equipment that could easily be mistaken for guns. I believe. I will fact check all of this and will correct myself in a reblog if necessary. (source but not all the details that I remember hearing about but they said there was no recorded evidence of fraud)
Conservative internet explodes. Kristi Noem sends a mess of agents. I know it's more than a thousand more. They call it Operation Metro Surge. They are going everywhere. There are protests. People try to interrupt the arrests. It's a lot.
1/7/2026: Renee Nicole Good is shot by an ICE agent in the middle of a protest. A few blocks away from where George Floyd was killed. Broad daylight. In front of a crowd. While she was following instructions to turn her vehicle around. Jonathan Ross, the piece of shit Nazi who did it, was recording on his phone the whole time, switched his phone to his non dominant hand so he could more effectively shoot her in the face from 2 feet away. Claims self defense, several angles immediately disprove him. He releases his video, he calls her a "fucking bitch" as her corpse drives away. Does not help him at all. (source) He has not been seen since. Some photos/reports exist of a bunch of agents showing up to his house and taking some tubs and art away. His wife is an immigrant. (source but it's the daily mail so grain of salt.)
Not hours later they go raid a school and tear gas a bunch of kids. (source). Minneapolis has switched to distance learning. I'm not sure about St. Paul.
The last week: There are up to 3,000 ICE agents here. Keep in mind Minneapolis and St. Paul only have 600 or fewer police officers each. So these dudes are roaming in packs. It's 2-4 dudes to a car and 2-5 cars per pack. People are "commuting with" ICE agents to honk and alert people that they're there. People are going on patrols with their neighbors.
ICE is no longer asking "are you a citizen." They are simply walking up to you and taking you into custody. They are going door to door. They have started just breaking the door down if you don't comply. They are driving recklessly to just grab pedestrians and drivers alike (source). People are afraid to go get groceries. It's all over the state. I am learning names of cities in places I thought were just factory farm land and I've lived here my whole life because they're doing raids there. I had to text my family in the suburbs because I saw reports of my small little hometown an hour away getting door knocks today.
It's insane and I am not doing it justice. There are thousands of masked federal agents roaming around all of Minnesota with no warrant or specific goal. They are just trolling around looking for people. They are detaining anyone and everyone. They are beating people. They are pepper spraying people. They are kidnapping people. They are acting unconstitutionally, aggressively, and unpredictably. They are creating situations that are dangerous so that they can try to justify beating or shooting their way out. I will run an errand and then get fed a tiktok that was shot from the Cub Foods that I just left and there's 20+ ICE vehicles parked there now. They're taking people from work, from day care, from schools, from shopping centers.
Iceout.org tracks ice sightings. This is a screen shot with the date set to 12/1/2025.
And from today.
They have cut off SNAP and WIC benefits. Just for us. Not any other state, just Minnesota. They're saying it's because of fraud but I think it's because they hate that we use federal funds to give free breakfast and lunch to every public school student.
And this is breaking just now, 1/13/2026: the DOJ is trying to investigate Renee Good's widow. 4 people have resigned about it. (source). I don't even want to read the article to see what they're saying.
So that's a brief history.
Unicorn Riot is doing a lot of good reporting and they don't seem to have the spin that a lot of local news stations will have where they downplay everything. This article specifically goes into a lot of the specific instances of brutality.
It's also a rumor on TikTok that all of the videos of ICE and protests and the such and the like are being geo locked. So my feed is all footage of people being detained and talking about the "commuting" they're doing and what they're seeing but people outside of the state are not seeing it. So if you're also on that infernal app, try searching for Minneapolis or Minnesota and see what you see. I'm kind of curious if this is true. Because I've been living and breathing ICE and doomsday prepping content for a week. I'm sure those two topics aren't connected.
I don't really know what my goal with this post is. I'm tired. I'm in the first ring of suburbs, so it's been pretty quiet. But I have friends in south Minneapolis. And I'm worried for them. And I know it's a matter of time before my quiet pocket is affected. Because they're coming door to door.
Pay attention to Minnesota, I think an example is being made of us.
I've been monitoring this closely because I have friends in the area, and because I think every city in the country is at risk of having the feds come to do what they're doing in Minnesota, and we all need to get ready.
There are some Twin Cities activists who have been very clearly laying out what they're doing, and why it's effective at slowing down ICE. It sounds like all you really need, is neighborhood group chats where people can let one another know when and where ICE is present, and then people show up, start recording, and blowing whistles, and then ICE will leave again more often than not. This VERY SHORT thread by a Twin Cities activist outlines what to do and how it works.
Also: Minnesota Public Radio has been doing great coverage of what's happening, and the local NBC affiliate has some excellent interviews with activists who were arrested and detained for hours.
And finally, some good news: the courts restored SNAP funding.
so i'm no huge fan of rideshare and delivery apps, but this? this post?
completely fake. the article linked above thoroughly debunks it.
