#I'm not tagging the inhumans
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why-the-heck-not · 15 days ago
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me, a responsible being, working on the coding project as I should vs. me, a dysfunctional shithead, getting distracted by reading about brains (once aGAIN damnit (it's my favorite "I need to study my field but bc I should do that it's an impossible unthinkable feat now, so I'm reading about something else to fool my brain I'm still being productive"-topic))
#but after my thesis me & brains have been on a break bc got tired reading abt them during that (bc I had a topic that sorta allowed me to#sidetrack to brain stuff also) but seems I'm over the brain overload now#yay? i guess#also no one who actually studies medicine/brains/etc. yell at me abt wikipedia and like ''why are u studying that like that''#I'm just going through the wikipedia & reading article abstracts path; nothing serious#also my procrastination has reached inhuman levels like it's a full-time job now#bc I have like a chill week's worth of work to do and then I've done the courses for my bachelor's degree#but sending in that ''heyy i'm done with the courses let me graduate''-thing fills me up with sO MUCH anxiety & dread I'm working so slow#now (even tho couldn't send that in for like a month bc gotta first wait the courses to be graded and stuff so in actuality I should#not be slowing down even a bit bc I need to finally be done with this damn degree asap; gotta move on and should've ages ago (it's actually#super bad how late I'm with it (1.5 mf years jesus christ; I'm not even like a little bit proud abt getting a degree anymore like I'm sorta#just embarrassed if I have to tell ppl like ''yea I graduated'' bc dude ?? only now?? u were supposed to be done with that 1.5year#ago what have u been doing (fuck if I know) so I'm keeping it like ''if anyone asks'' basis)))#(the tags and parantheses started a life of their own lol sorry abt that)#studyblr#studyspo#bookblr#booklr#study#november 2024#2024
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batsplat · 2 months ago
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like the motogp unlimited moment where joan is kinda terrified of him and marc looks like he's trying to figure out whether he can muster the energy to eat him
😂😂😂😂😂😂
This one is going to carry me through the day. Picturing cat marc contemplating with his tail swishing if he wants to raise his paw and squish this thing or go back to nap.
(extremely belated follow up to this)
referring to this clip from motogp unlimited, on the off chance anyone hasn't seen that masterpiece yet - in which we get to see mir on camera criticising marc for his towing addiction, mir panicking about the media reporting how he criticised marc for his towing addiction, and then mir telling first the honda guys and then marc himself how the media had made up that he had criticised marc for his towing addiction
say what you will about that show, but this clip is just absolute perfection. it has been living rent free in my head from the first time I saw it. the editing is on point... how it completely stitches up joan with the juxtaposition between him literally criticising marc and him insisting he totally hadn't been criticising marc... the way it cuts to a random clip of marc entering a building with the air of a trigger happy warlord, as if he's about to order joan's execution... joan talking to the honda guy - the "you'd better say to his face" line, mir visibly deeply unhappy at this response... hard cut to mir's tremulous explanation to marc. mir's gaze wandering somewhere bottom right while marc is serving full cannibal realness and is staring right at mir with a wide grin and dead eyes. the painfully obvious relief on mir's face when marc accepts his explanation. if you told me marc was sky high on painkillers during this whole conversation, I would not question it for a moment
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this is not a grin I would want levelled at me. it's the kind of grin where I'd start worrying if I might find myself chopped up in pieces in the other guy's freezer in the immediate future. at this point in his life and his career, marc had bigger things to worry about than being criticised for something he had been repeatedly criticised for already and would be criticised for again countless times. this whole episode does matter in the vague sense that mir was the defending world champion who had replaced marc, but realistically it's just not the sort of thing marc will have spent more than two minutes thinking about. which was really mir's best hope - that marc simply could not be bothered to make space in the freezer for him
I compared this moment in the mind games post to casey suffering a mild case of headloss because he thought valentino had deliberately hidden his tyre compound from the competition (bridgestone had run out of paint) - and there is something to how your reputation for mind games can become so strong that eventually you don't really have to be doing any work because your competition will freak anyway. marc isn't actually doing anything in this clip... he's just vibing. admittedly he's doing so in that uncanny valley ever so slightly inhuman way he has about him, like he's currently hashing out the logistics of sauteing your liver, but he is just vibing
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utilitycaster · 2 months ago
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Idk man the more I think about it the more I feel like the idea of Vax becoming not just de-orbed but brought back mortal is like, maybe the most simultaneously literal and figurative Monkey's Paw allusion one can get, on top of missing the core themes of every main campaign character Liam has played.
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i-dreamed-i-had-a-son · 3 months ago
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Broke (2016): BBC Sherlock is a phenomenal piece of media and anything that seems like a flaw just hasn't been fully explored yet
Woke (2020): BBC Sherlock is an incredibly flawed series run by an egotistical writer, it never deserved the hype and is actively bad on so many fronts (especially representation)
Bespoke (2024): BBC Sherlock is flawed and bogged down by increasingly poor writing, which many fans refused to see while it was airing, leading to hugely misplaced expectations (particularly for the final series), AND it has the seeds of some compelling characterizations and portrayals, some genuinely solid performances, and touches--albeit imperfectly--on complexities that are still being discussed today (particularly as it relates to the relationship between Sherlock and John). The huge cultural impact of the show has created a massive pendulum effect in its public perception, leading to most people today remembering a caricature of the show (whether positive or negative) rather than appreciating its nuanced merits and failings...that being said Season 4 sucked
#these just sum up my personal takes at the years in question and also what i'm seeing on tumblr/other social media#bbc sherlock#sherlock holmes#and i actually have a lot more thoughts to share on this series#specifically relating to the cultural impact#there is SO much about the show that goes unappreciated in hindsight because of how public perception of it has soured#and i totally fell into this as well--i still regularly rewatch hbomberguy's video absolutely dismantling the series and he isn't wrong!!#but what i'm saying is that i think it's easy for us to look at a piece of media (especially one so massively popular) like sherlock...#with very black-and-white lenses. it wouldn't have become so popular if there wasn't something inherent in it that resonated with people#and that's being buried (and i totally forgot it) because 'sherlock is cringe and problematic. can't believe i liked that'#which again it IS full of issues and those are well-documented as they should be. future portrayals should not repeat those mistakes#BUT being able to impact so many people is a merit in itself. and that's only possible because of other genuinely good things about the show#yes the way they handled the relationship between john and sherlock was riddled with problems YES it was often queerbaiting#AND the way they portrayed that relationship had a deep effect on me. i saw a lot of myself in sherlock and the complex way he loved john#the nuanced feelings he had about john's marriage to mary. the part (in s4!) where john calls him inhuman for not feeling romantic love#there was genuine intention and care put into some parts of this show and it comes through in scenes like those. they impact people.#and because of this realization i'm going to (eventually) do a rewatch of the show. i'm much older and i want to see how i'll view it now#but i want to go into it--and i want everyone who engages with it still--to have an open mind and evaluate it for what it is#not what we expected it to be (secret episode anyone?) or what the cultural drift has turned it into (the tiktok of sherlock's mind palace)#but the messy problematic somewhat-heartfelt massively significant and ultimately meaningful piece of media it actually was#anyway that's my thoughts would love to hear y'all's perspectives#funny how after all this time making a sherlock post still feels like i'm poking a bees' nest lol please be kind!#kay can i just catch my breath for a second#kay has a party in the tags
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beneathsilverstars · 21 days ago
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sometimes i think about writing a post-canon human loop who, by the time they rejoin the party a year or two later, has become terribly addicted to alcohol. but even though i'd probably find it satisfying to write i think it would be miserable to read lmao
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bucketsofmonsters · 4 months ago
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Would you guys want me to post fanfics on here if they're still monster romance?? I asked this before for a one-shot and people said yes but this would be a long series I'd be posting weekly so I feel like I should gauge interest again.
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petrichorvoices · 6 months ago
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I wish people talked more about headmates that act out the trauma the system has been through. I wish people acknowledged more often that we exist. And I hope that anybody reading this who does that in their system knows that your role in it doesn't make you unlovable if you don't want to be.
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laces-and-pearls · 1 year ago
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If you think that it is okay to make s*x a duty for your wife even when she doesn't want it and push her to do so, you're a vile man and not a patriarch and certainly not a Godly man.
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agalychnisspranneusroseus · 21 days ago
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Man if Marcy keeps ending up with like child protection services in all these fics over her parents being slightly distant then my parents should be in JAIL
#idk if I'm wording it correctly but this goes hand in hand with some posts I#I've made abt Marcy's parents not being super great but also not being like...#like i didn't imagine them as outright abusive or deserving of losing custody over her#and people kept reblogging them and tagging them as abuse?? 😭😭#like if THAT is abuse. then what the fuck what up at my house#c'mon! her parents growing to kinda hate her because they couldn't stand her personality and failing to fulfill her emotional needs#while still always making sure she always had her material needs met#and doing their best not to blow up at her#resulting in them always acting mildly annoyed towards her#is not *really* abuse. right? like that's just how pretty much every parent feels tbh#like i've never seen a parent who genuinely likes their kids. every parent i know is either sick of them or morbidly depressed#like wondering why the hell they chose this life for themselves#some parents are just better at being optimistic and focusing on the nice parts than others#but not all have the mental fortitude to smile through the disgust and resentment they feel all the time#which tbh is an inhumane thing to ask from a person. parents are humans too and there's only so much a person can repress#i'm convinced parents like the boonchuys only exist in fiction#i just imagine Marcy's parents as being average parents who just don't always have the patience a kid like Marcy needs#like over here my parents are breaking my assistive devices and spying on me while i'm in the bathroom and I never considered that abuse#i just used to drive them insaneeeee back in the day lol#just like with friends and couples. sometimes parents and their kids aren't meant for each other y'know? and maybe that's just Marcy's case#i do know that's my case#but strangers online are here crying abuse for less#so now i'm like. hehehehe. say what now#personal
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lankylunatic · 2 years ago
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Small doodle to do with something from an rp with a friend :3 I gave himb sharp teef becaues nobody can stop me doing so The extend outward when he opens his mouth wide enough, ie. a yawn :3c He just an eepy deepy plant boi
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sskk-manifesto · 4 months ago
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Ep 4 :)
#I LIKE Dostoyevsky. I like how mysterious and unreadable he is. What is his goal!!!! Why does he do what he does!!!!!!! He's very cool#I think knowing his ability now REALLY adds to his character. Him being so smart so manipulative so disruptive in the way he–#seemingly kills people on touch! Only added to this impression of him being “demon” and “inhuman”#But now that we know his ability you realize... That's all his doing; no ability.#His ability in a way does help humanize him by reaffirming that except for the moment he dies– he's got no superpower at all!!!#It's just him.#And yet at the same time also solves the exact opposite role of dehumanizing him because if it's not his ability that makes him like *that*#then he's even different than other ability users!!! Then‚ if not an ability user‚ if not a non ability user: what is //he//?#It's all SO compelling!!! Also makes for an extremely insightful narrative parallel with Dazai#Not an ability user not a non ability user. Not good not evil. (I feel like Dostoyevsky does exceed the definitions of good and evil as–#much as Dazai does. If he causes evil‚ yet does so with the intention of bringing salvation to humans– is he really *simply* evil?)#Both have these borderline superpowers that make them extraordinary beings (we can call it super intelligence‚ but it goes from controlling#their own heartbit to everything else) but are unrelated to their respective abilities! Once again making them neither this or that#I find Karma's words at the end to be extremely insightful.“Ace was evil for sure‚ but this man isn't even evil.#He's a being from the beyond. A being that exceeds human limits.” Like!!! That's all that there is to it!!!!!!#Back to this chapter / episode. There's some themes / worldvies once again I don't agree with but narrative wise I think it's extraordinary#I feel like after the Guild arc the writing really matured a lot and this is a kind of preview of what the doa arc is going to be like#(aka very very well written especially if compared to the previous arcs)#The plot twists of this episode are all so unpredictable and exciting!!! I think it's remarkably witty how it takes advantages of previous–#clichés - villains always revealing details about their own ability in a way that is quite baffling - to actually surprise the audience.#It's so effective. How skillfully unpredictable Dostoyevsky is to the point you can never guess what he will do next!!!#Him killing Karma is... Idk so so soooooooo interesting. I could talk about this forever but I'm being very dispersive in the rable and–#running out of tags. The whole episode you're sorta rooting for Dostoyevsky. He's very cool and comes out charming in the way he keeps–#surprising the audience. He looks bothered by Ace's disregard of other people's lives and that makes him sympathetic too.#But then he kills Karma out of nowhere and it's an “Ah! You fell for his lies too– remember he's nothing but evil. He cares just as little#about life as Ace does”. And then??? Karma in his last words is himself so generous in his words to Dostoyevsky. It's baffling.#And it almost feels like thenarrative is once again turning around and telling you you should root for Dostoyevsky.#It's endlessly fascinating.#I have more to say about the worldviews I don't share and the art style Dostoyevsky was portrayed with this episode (love it!!)#But alas ran out of tags
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outlawssweetheart · 10 months ago
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THIS IS MY ROMAN EMPIRE. 🖤
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iccarian · 2 months ago
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personally although i know she wasn't ready for it at the time it was discussed, i do love the idea of daisy becoming director of shield
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crowleywasagryffindor · 1 year ago
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Fuck it Friday
Tagged again by @theotherluciferr ahhh <3 <3 <3 We must share a similar time zone cause it is also Saturday for me but currently 1:30pm.
No idea what the rules of what you should share in these tag games are, so I decided to put up a snip from the next chapter of 'Lifeline' because I just had to laugh writing this and the chapter will be out tomorrow anyways. And also I have to go to work soon.
"Buck!" Christopher's loud voice from right beside his elbow startles him. Buck jumps, nearly losing his balance as his shoulder slips away from the door frame. He manages not to fall, catching himself on the doorframe and pulling himself upright, his other hand splayed dramatically over his heart. "Jeez, Chris, you scared the sh- uh, daylights, out of me!" "That's cause you were too busy pining after Dad," Chris retorts, rolling his eyes with a sly grin. "I called you like four times!" "You what - Pining after - I was not -" Apparently, his brain has forgotten the concept of how to English in the wake of Chris' accusation. "Do you even know what that means?" "Ugh, I'm thirteen, Buck, not three. Of course I know what it means. And," Christopher gives him a smug look. "You were totally pining." "Dios mio, how is this conversation even happening right now," Buck mutters, trying to ignore the heat building in his cheeks. And as if triggered by the sound of Buck using Eddie's favourite Spanish phrase so casually, Chris succumbs to uncontrollable laughter. He bends over, his laughter echoing through the room, a joyful chorus that even Buck's good-natured grumbling can't suppress.
I discovered how to find my mutuals but still have no idea who to tag and don't wanna in case it's bad form or they've already shared or anything so yup o.o
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soldier--poet--queen · 1 year ago
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what came first, the body dysphoria flare up or the internet deciding now was a fantastsic time to show me transmasc content
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marypsue · 2 years ago
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that post I promised about villain visuals
So I’m working my way (slowly) through Stranger Things season 4, and one of the things that came up as an issue, for me, early on, was the...aesthetically kitchen-sink nature of the season’s main Upside Down-related baddie. The further I get into the season (currently I’m between episodes 4 and 5), the more it’s looking like all of the disparate visual elements that the show is relating to the villain they’ve nicknamed Vecna are supposed to be connected because of Lore(TM) which is being dribbled out throughout the season. On the one hand, I can respect that as a storytelling move. But on the other hand, aesthetically, it’s still not working for me in this specific case, and I’ve devoted entirely too much brain power to trying to figure out why that might be. 
After making a case study of two of the Big Name Iconic Horror Movie Villains that the season namedropped, and a number of other Visually Iconic Horror Villains I have loved, I’ve come up with a handful of theories of why, say, Freddy Krueger feels instantly recognisable and memorable and aesthetically distinct, while Stranger Things’ take on ‘Vecna’, despite drawing heavily on Freddy Krueger for inspiration, doesn’t.
First off, I don’t think having a large number of visual/symbolic elements linked to your villain is necessarily always a problem. Or even that using various apparently unrelated visual elements to create a visual shorthand for your villain is a problem! But if you’re going to have a bunch of different, apparently unrelated symbolic visual elements associated with/representing your villain, you’re gonna want them to a) immediately and unmistakably cause the audience to draw an association with your villain, which means you’re probably going to want to b) use relatively few of them, so that that impact isn’t diluted. 
One of the easiest and most effective ways to make sure you don’t end up with all your visuals confusing your audience and failing to convey that immediate association is to establish a hierarchy of symbols/motifs/visual elements linked to your villain. So you have one or two elements that draw up a strong association with your villain from your audience, and then in concentric circles radiating outwards, you have more and more tangentially-associated symbols/motifs/visual elements. 
And a good way to establish a primary visual element, and link it strongly and directly to your villain in your audience’s mind, is to make it either a part of or directly connected to the villain’s physical presence/distinctive silhouette. If your primary visual element is something that, especially in a visual medium like television or film, can be repeatedly seen onscreen with the villain, it’s much, much easier for it to become linked to the villain in your audience’s imagination. 
Like. Let’s take a closer look at the Big Names the Duffers are dropping in season four. What’s the most immediately recognisable element of Michael Myers’ iconography? It’s the inside-out Bill Shatner mask. The most recent Halloween trilogy even used the image of it on its own as marketing material, since it’s such an immediate, obvious symbol of Michael, and pulls up the association at a glance. You see the mask, you know that’s a Michael Myers. 
Then you go down a level in the visual hierarchy, and there’s the coveralls and the big bloody knife. If you take away the mask, this is less immediately obviously a Michael, but it’s still recognisable once you link it to the mask again. The mask is the primary visual element to which some of these secondary visual elements are linked. The mask is the single element at the top of the hierarchy. 
Go down one more level, and you get into stuff that’s less related to that primary visual element of the mask, less related to the villain’s physicality and distinctive silhouette, and more related to the Lore(TM). I’m talking like the clown suit from the murder of Judith Myers (which they did use again for visual association with Michael, at least in Halloween 4), the jack-o’-lantern, the abandoned Myers house, even Judith’s tombstone. These elements, that orbit Michael’s hashtag aesthetic deal at a slightly greater distance, can be used to conjure up a sense of unease or building dread. But if you want instant recognisability and that sudden sharp jolt of fear, you go directly to the mask. If you ask somebody on the street to picture Michael Myers, they’re gonna think about the mask. 
I’m not as familiar with the Nightmare on Elm Street franchise as I am with Halloween, but it seems to me that Freddy Krueger, the more obvious aesthetic influence on Imitation Vecna Flavour, has a similar deal to Michael Myers going on. Freddy gets two primary visual elements - the knife-glove and the burn scars. Then you go down a level and get into costuming stuff like the terrible sweater and the jaunty little hat, and then down another level for stuff like the nursery-rhyme-singing creepy children and the horrible boiler-room nightmare realm (which, again, connect back to him less through immediate visual identification/actually seeing them onscreen with him, and more through Lore(TM)). 
Because Freddy has those few main visual elements established as his aesthetic calling card, he can pull whatever nightmare bullshit he wants, and we the audience can see and understand that we’re not meant to be remembering and associating every Bed That Eats or whatever with him as a Distinct Visual Element Of His Whole Deal. If you as a creator throw the entire kitchen sink of ‘nightmares’ at him, and every visual element that gets associated with him (or a pale imitation of him trying to do the same shtick) is introduced on the same ‘level’ or at the same time, the audience isn’t going to form a strong mental link between him and any of those visual elements. And then he won’t have any memorable signature visuals at all. And that makes a villain more forgettable. 
This is, actually, probably one of the main reasons why the slasher genre fell into a pattern of ‘distinctive mask + signature weapon’. It’s an easy formula for creating a visual shorthand for your villain, and relates those visual elements that you want to be primary directly to the villain’s physicality. To bring up the third Big Name of slasher horror, there’s nothing inherent to, say, a hockey mask that links it to Jason Voorhees. Except for the fact that we almost never see him without it. The why of it being a hockey mask is not as important as the fact that it’s a fundamental aspect of his whole Look(TM). 
“But Mary,” I hear you say, “you’re talking about slashers. Stranger Things’ ‘Vecna’ isn’t technically a slasher. And what about villains who are more inhuman than slashers? Villains whose physical presence isn’t fixed or doesn’t even exist? Villains who are outright monstrous?” Well, you have a point, rhetorical strawman! I was specifically talking about slashers since the show was so obvious about drawing on Freddy, but I think these theories can also be more broadly applied. 
In terms of visually distinct, recognisable, memorable monsters, what comes to my mind first and foremost is the lineup of Universal movie monsters. And I’d say they’re actually incredible examples of the theories above in action. They tend not to have such a kitchen-sink assortment of visual elements associated to them, but rather, to stick to one or two primary visual elements, directly related to their physicality and silhouette. I’m thinking the flat-topped head and huge feet of Frankenstein, the hunched hairy figure of the Wolfman, Dracula’s widow’s peak and high cape collar, the Bride’s beehive, the Creature from the Black Lagoon’s armoured fish-face, the Mummy’s wrap...
These images became so famous, so memorable and recognisable, that they have visually defined entire genres of monsters. They get echoed and parodied across pop culture (Grandpa and Hermann Munster! Lurch! Abe Sapien and the Shape of Water fishman! Dave Vanian and Gerard Way in the Bela Lugosi evening dress and facepaint! etc etc etc!) to the point where people don’t even know where the originals come from (vampires in cartoons from the 70s-90s frequently had blue skin, because actors playing vampires in black and white films from the 30s-50s would be painted with pale blue facepaint to make them appear more deathly pale onscreen, because blue read pale and red read dark. This is the same principle behind the set of the 60s Addams Family sitcom being mostly pink!).
(As an aside, the whole ‘one or two primary visual elements related to the villain/monster’s physical presence’ thing might have contributed to why I feel like the Invisible Man doesn’t get nearly as much play in lineups of classic monsters. Gonna have to percolate on that thought.)
In terms of a villain or monster without a set physical form, I believe it’s even more important to establish a primary visual element associated with them. For something like a shapeshifter or a nebulous eldritch idea, they’re by necessity going to have a broader range of visual elements associated to them/involved in the storytelling around them. Having a primary visual element as a visual shorthand for that villain/monster means it can carry through the various scenes of that villain/monster exerting their influence on the world/the story, so that the audience can then identify it as that villain/monster’s calling card - and it can be used to create dread and terror easily and effectively without having to invoke the villain/monster by name or in person every time and breach the Law of Conservation of Shark (which is also the major storytelling problem I’m having with Stranger Things’ ‘Vecna’, but that’s a related but separate post). 
In terms of examples, I’m thinking of Mirrors, or Oculus, both of which had some nebulous, unembodied concept of evil reflections as their villain. Mirrors specifically linked its villain to any reflective surface. Oculus kept returning to the image of the ornate mirror where the evil made its home. I’m also thinking of Grave Encounters, which had a similar setup - the villain is an entire haunted mental hospital - and which did an okay job up until it abruptly fell into a trap at the end that I’ve seen at least one other villain fall into. (But I’ll get to that later.)
“But Mary,” you cry, “these examples you’re examining are all on film! Surely you cannot apply these theories of yours to a villain or monster with no set appearance, such as those featured in such media as books or podcasts? Surely it must be different when the eye of the audience’s imagination is responsible for all the visuals?”
To which I say: you make another point, rhetorical strawman! There’s a reason I believe Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House to be (rightfully) unfilmable. Her haunting is so deeply psychological, so wrapped up in what is unseen, unspoken, indescribable, that to try to put it to film - or even put it into images - is to do it a massive disservice. The idea of boiling it down to a couple of pieces of iconography is downright laughable.
But not every literary villain or monster is a Hill House. And I believe that there are a great number of cases in which these theories still apply. Stephen Graham Jones’ My Heart Is A Chainsaw - which, you may be unsurprised to learn, I loved - came up with two possible slashers right out the gate and immediately gave them each a set of primary visual elements. Stacey Graves and her Sadako hair and broken jaw, Ezekiel with his huge hands (and, a level lower, his creepy church). You don’t even see the slasher until the very end of the book, but you already know what you’re looking for, so the reveal Works. There’s Coraline’s Beldam, with her button eyes, spider hands, black keys, and world of putty. There’s Long John Silver and his peg leg. I keep seeing people say that, no matter what she looks like, they always know fanart of Ianthe Tridentarius on their dashboards by her golden skeleton arm. 
Hell, even returning to Frankenstein’s monster: in Mary Shelley’s text, he’s immediately distinctive. He’s Huge, and looks like someone who should have been beautiful based on his disparate parts but, as a whole, is instead corpse-like and repulsive. And this imagery is so thematically linked to his whole deal, so the imagery feeds the story and the story feeds the imagery, and the resulting creation is so visually distinct that even Frankenstein’s monster designs based on the book rather than the Universal movie are instantly recognisable to me when they cross my dash (which happens not infrequently). Frankenstein’s monster is so immediately visually recognisable and so memorable that he’s lasted more than two hundred years in popular culture. I think that’s a point in favour of primary identifying visual elements, even in text. 
And here, now that I’ve talked about these principles in relation to non-embodied villains and villains in text, is where I’m going to take a brief detour and talk about book!Pennywise the Dancing Clown.
In a lot of ways (a lot of ways), Stephen King did this right. Pennywise is a shapeshifter, without a set physical form (so no distinctive silhouette) and takes the forms of people’s worst fears. There is a whole kitchen sink of visual elements connected to this - literally a kitchen sink, since in one scene King has Pennywise taunt parents with the voice of their dead child from their kitchen sink drain. 
But King did a very clever thing in establishing two primary visual elements related to Pennywise from the outset. He gave Pennywise a favourite form - Clown - and a favourite haunt - sewers - and, from there, tied every other nightmare thing in some way back to those two elements. All of Pennywise’s monster forms have some kind of aesthetic element from his clown costume included - orange puffballs are the ones I remember most strongly. Almost all of the big setpieces that directly involve Pennywise and not someone under his influence, the fights and the near-misses and escapes, happen in or around plumbing. Which isn’t incidental, it’s very deliberately brought to the foreground. And these threads carry through the whole book - right up until the end. 
Right at the end of IT is where Stephen King makes the same mistake that Grave Encounters makes right at its end, a mistake that sits at the opposite end of the spectrum of You Fucked Up A Perfectly Good Aesthetically Coherent And Memorable Villain Is What You Did from what the Duffers are doing with Imitation Vecna Flavour. King tries to bait-and-switch the audience from the primary visual elements we’ve come to associate, strongly and immediately, with Pennywise, for some hitherto completely unrelated visual element that has nothing whatsoever to do with the extremely aesthetically compelling villain he’d built up until that point. There are a whole host of reasons the climactic fight of IT felt flat and anticlimactic to me, but the aesthetic betrayal is definitely a contributing factor. 
Anyway. Up until the end of the book, I’d say Pennywise is a beautiful example of how you can have a whole sideshow of creepy bullshit associated with your villain, and still make them visually distinct, memorable, and compelling. You just need to make sure you understand what you want the primary visual elements to be for your villain, establish them well, and thread them through the constellation of images and motifs you collect around that villain. 
And the problem I have with the Duffers’ ‘Vecna’ is that they simply haven’t done that. They haven’t identified any primary visual elements, they haven’t established a hierarchy of visual elements underneath those one or two primary ones, and they haven’t established a clear aesthetic link between any of the visual elements they’ve tried to associate with their villain. 
Part of the problem, I think, is that they tried to show too much, too soon. They really threw everything but the kitchen sink at the guy right in episode one. Is his main motif supposed to be spiders, or clocks, or the vines, or the rotting corpse thing, or the eye thing, or the flying demo-creatures, or the haunted house, or or or? I don’t know, and so I haven’t formed a strong association between him and any of them. And that’s before you even pull in the nightmare murder sequences, which I know now are tailored to the victim experiencing them and not meant to be recurring motifs, but I didn’t know that in episode one, when they should have been establishing their hierarchy of imagery! So I was trying to throw all of that spaghetti, mentally, at their Big Bad, and none of it stuck. 
It’s actually even worse for Imitation Vecna Flavour, too, because of the comparison that’s invited by his nickname. I’ve never played D&D and my familiarity with it comes primarily from The Adventure Zone, but the Duffers very kindly went out of their way to have their characters establish in dialogue that D&D’s Vecna does have an immediately recognisable primary visual element! Vecna’s missing (iirc) his left arm and his left eye! The characters all know immediately by that description that that’s a Vecna! The show itself told me this! So, by inviting the comparison, the Duffers just made their own shit look worse. (Which is exactly the problem they’re having with all of their previous-season callbacks, also, but that, again, is a separate post.)
“But Mary,” the voice of the rhetorical strawman whispers, in the back of my mind, with vicious satisfaction, “you love Dracula, which is an enduring classic and the source of a major recognisable, memorable pop culture monster. And isn’t this exactly like what Dracula would have been like for Victorian audiences? Bram Stoker basically invented the modern vampire mythos singlehandedly. And the Bela Lugosi evening dress, widow’s peak, high-collared-cape image didn’t exist until at least thirty years after it was published. Wouldn’t Victorian audiences, who would only maybe have heard of vampires through Slavic folklore, also have seen it as like throwing too much spaghetti at a villain and seeing what stuck?”
Unfortunately, as usual, the rhetorical strawman has a point. Dracula does have a whole lot of Apparently Unrelated Creepy Bullshit associated with him, aesthetically and visually. You could argue that the blood-drinking becomes his primary visual element, but in the whole novel, I think we only actually see him do it once, and it doesn’t exactly tie in to all the other bullshit he’s got going on. And he doesn’t even have the flimsy excuse of Tragic Backstory(TM) to tie it all together. He’s old and gets younger? St. George’s Eve? Lack of reflection? Wolves? Decaying castles? Coffins and grave-dirt? Lizard Fashion? Blood-drinking? Renfield? The brides? Burning eyes? Shapeshifting? The straw hat that suit neither him nor the time? Holy symbols? Garlic?? Victorians would absolutely have been justified in being like ‘hey Bram you’re sorta throwing the kitchen sink at this one’. And yet, for whatever reason, Dracula has endured long enough to get a visual shorthand so iconic it’s become a meme and a joke. 
The only theories I have to offer are: 
1) The ways in which the various visual elements related to Dracula were introduced was gradual and mysterious enough that they weren’t all introduced at the same time and with the same level of apparent importance, and the mystery made them memorable. 
2) The construction of Dracula as a villain was unfamiliar enough to Victorian audiences that they didn’t have an existing frame of reference to compare him against and find him a pale imitation of, and instead, they had to create an entirely new ‘kind of (horror) guy’ box to put him in, mentally. 
and/or 3) I just like Dracula better. Sue me. 
Anyway. This post has gotten more than long enough, and has wandered somewhat from its initial purpose, so I will simply say that even with the red thread of Lore(TM) starting to string together the visual elements of Stranger Things’ ‘Vecna’, I still find him unmemorable, not at all visually interesting or compelling or coherent, and basically the aesthetic equivalent of CRT TV snow. Visual white noise. 
(Also, to cap this rant off, since I mentioned the Law of Conservation of Shark a few times - is there any more iconic, recognisable, or memorable villain image than that great white shark fin, slicing silently up out of the water?)
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