#Serial Adaptation

[meowmeow1meow]

i wanted more scenes of them hanging out

[nyaagolor]

I'm playing through Edgeworth Investigations rn and I genuinely cannot believe that Yamazaki wrote this and also 5/6. What did Capcom Do To Him

[serialsunset]

I'm curious! You once made a great post about why you love Isaac so much, but why do you love Julia as much? :3 I agree that she is super underrated and more fascinating than most give her credit for, especially in the way she hides her feelings. In Yamane's words, she is "forced to bear the fate of her brother, yet she's the one healing Hector"

Aaaah! It’s a bit hard to articulate but I’ll try, there’s a lot of reasons!

First of all I just adore her design. It would be so easy for her to slip between the cracks with the rest of the Kojima Blondes (said lovingly), but the vibrant rich colours in her palette and her more mature looking face make her look so distinguished and regal, she’s just got an air about her.

In regards to her actual character I really enjoy the bright spot she provides in the midst of everything, with all the characters being at each others throats throughout most of the story it always feels like a relief when she shows up. But even as a ‘bright spot’ she still has some darker qualities that I think about a lot.

Her shop is my favourite location in the game because it just radiates calm and safety, but there’s still an edge that throws things off kilter. Her theme descends from airy and light to melancholic and never quite gets back up there, it’s like you can feel a mask slipping the longer you spend time in her house. Her bookshelves are littered with skulls, she’s always fully stocked with weapons, she’s a caretaker not for animals but for demons from Hell. she’s a healer, yes, but she’s still a witch, what magic is she capable of that you don’t see? This little one-room location does more to characterize Julia for me than any of her actual dialogue (after all, in those scenes we’re just seeing her as she presents herself to Hector, and even then there are a couple moments where she slips and her frustration with him comes out).

Of course I also have to mention Isaac and her relationship with him. I don’t wanna get too far into headcanon, so I’ll just say that the sister of such a destructive person being a healer is very interesting, and it makes a sad sort of sense. While I’m absolutely certain that they love each other, Isaac isn’t really a healthy person for Julia.

I read Yamane’s quote of ‘forced to bear her brother’s fate’ in a couple of different ways, other than the obvious ‘she’s going through a lot emotionally but she’s focused on healing Hector’. First of all, Julia does sort of bear responsibility for Isaac’s actions, at least in her own mind. Every second trying to keep him alive is enabling him to fuck things up for other people. (I think it was you that mentioned how she sounds guilty when explaining that Isaac almost killed Trevor, and that tracks with this idea). But also, I read it as her giving herself the responsibility of protecting Isaac from his fate.

I view Isaac as a character who, well, isn’t really meant for this world. He wasn’t ever going to live very long, and that’s part of his tragedy. And part of Julia’s tragedy for me is that she’s trying in vain to prevent that. She’s a healer, if she can’t save her own brother what does that mean for her? It’s like she’s stuck in a perpetual period of mourning while trying to delay the inevitable. I think that Julia has been forced into the role of healing for so long that she’s completely neglected the idea that she needs help too. I see her as sharing Isaac’s self destructive tendencies, it just manifests in a different way, letting yourself slowly and quietly wither vs taking everyone down with you (I mean she threw herself in front of a murderously enraged Hector to stop him from going after Isaac, that’s not exactly practicing self love).

Really I just absolutely love my tragic siblings.

AND I love that despite it all Julia is not defined by her tragedy. Much like the skulls on her bookshelves and the sadness in her music, it’s a part of her that always lingers but never makes up the whole of her. She knows the world to be cruel and she remains kind. She sees pain everywhere and she chooses to heal it. She knows love because she’s full of it and I will always get behind a character like that. And I don’t care what Iga says, in my brain she ends the story leaving the shadow of the mountains and those cursed ruins to heal herself, it’s what she deserves!!

[lemurlord]

Despite the visceral horrors that a TV adaptation of Worm would entail, there would be silver lining.

We would get an AI cover (or even the actress herself, if gods are in the giving mood) of Bakuda singing Sexbomb by Tom Jones.

[piratesexmachine420]

goddammit.

My SilverLink cable is dead -- somehow either the firmware was lost or corrupted, and it's just showing up as a generic microcontroller to lsusb. Doesn't seem like there's a way to flash it, though I am still looking.

So much for going back to calculator programming tonight.

[ja-khajay]

[margridarnauds]

Ngl at this point I’m just blocking people who are complaining about Nosferatu (2024) not being Dracula, because like. Nosferatu (1922) is a VERY SPECIFIC adaptation of Dracula that Eggers is adapting, there is a middleman in the adaptation process

[sunbedo]

OMG WAIT TGSWIIWAGAA IS GETTING AN ANIME?????

[thisbluespirit]

Jacqueline Pearce as Rosa Dartle in Episode 3 of David Copperfield (BBC 1974).

[pandoramsbox]

Sci-Fi Saturday: Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon Conquers the Universe

Week 19:

Film(s): Buck Rogers (Dir. Ford Beebe and Saul A. Goodkin, 1939, USA); Flash Gordon Conquers the Universe (Dir. Ford Beebe and Ray Taylor, 1940, USA)

Viewing Format: DVD and Streaming

Date Watched: 2021-10-08, 2021-10-22, and 2021-10-29

Rationale for Inclusion:

So far we have covered adaptations of some of the foundational literary works of science fiction, but this week we move onto two influential franchises that originated in the funny papers: Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon.

To some degree, I know that I am doing both characters a disservice by lumping the two together, as the general public tends to view them interchangeably, but the motion picture serials featuring the characters were both produced by Universal Studios and shared actors, behind the camera talent, and props. In fact, Buster Crabbe stars as the title character in both Buck Rogers (Dir. Ford Beebe and Saul A. Goodkin, 1939, USA) and Flash Gordon Conquers the Universe (Dir. Ford Beebe and Ray Taylor, 1940, USA).

The Buck Rogers in the 25th Century A.D. comic strip was first published in 1929. Modern day former aviator Buck Rogers ends up getting trapped in a cave while carrying out a surveying job, where a strange gas renders him unconscious and keeps him in suspended animation until he awakens 500 years later in 2429. In the future that Buck awakens in, the Mongol Reds have conquered the United States forcing Americans into rebel organizations to fight back to retake their country. Buck is supported in this strange new world by love interest Wilma Deering, plucky boy sidekick Buddy Deering, and scientist Dr. Huer. Together they fight forces led by Killer Kane and his lady Ardala.

Flash Gordon was created in 1934 in response to the popularity and commercial success of the Buck Rogers strip, and with an initial plot lifted from the 1933 Edwin Balmer & Philip Wylie novel When Worlds Collide, which itself would be adapted into a motion picture in 1951. During the present day, polo player and Yale graduate Flash Gordon, his love interest Dale Arden and scientist friend Dr. Hans Zarkov use Zarkov's newly invented rocketship to prevent planet Mongo from colliding with the earth. In the process, they run afoul of Mongo's malevolent ruler Ming the Merciless. Their adventures later include various kingdoms on planet Mongo and later planets.

Despite being created second, Flash Gordon was adapted into a motion picture serial first in 1936. Motion picture serials, or chapter plays, had existed since the silent era and made the transition to sound. The two-reelers, 15-20 minute episodes, were screened along with newsreels, cartoons and stand-alone shorts as part of a motion picture theatrical presentation culminating in the screening of a feature film. Audiences had to return to the theater each week for the next installment, with serials lasting 12 to 15 chapters. The format ceased to be by the mid-1950s due to television becoming the preferred mode of distribution of episodic moving image entertainment. The serials did, however, become known to new audiences when they too ended up broadcast on television in subsequent years.

Since Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon were both action oriented, episodic comic strip narratives, they were perfect candidates for serial adaptation. In addition to Flash Gordon (Dir. Frederick Stephani, 1936, USA), Flash and friends appeared in the serial Flash Gordon's Trip to Mars (Dir. Ford Beebe, Robert F. Hill, and Frederick Stephani, 1938, USA) before the serial we watched for this survey, Flash Gordon Conquers the Universe. The reason for the selection of this Flash Gordon serial was ease of access as well as having the comparison of an already established hero in a serial versus one that required an origin story, as was the case with Buck Rogers.

It was always a given that one or both serials would have been featured on this survey, as these space operas have influenced, and been parodied and homaged by, subsequent sci-fi films and television shows from their creation to the present day.

Reactions:

My partner either did not know or had forgotten that the vertical title, chapter and prologue scroll frequently associated with Star Wars (Star Wars: Episode IV: A New Hope, Dir. George Lucas, 1977, USA) had originated with these sci-fi serials. His reaction of "that's where that comes from!" was fantastic to witness.

I, meanwhile, was amused to note that amongst the production elements that both Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon Conquers the Universe share are excerpts from Franz Waxman's score for Bride of Frankenstein (Dir. James Whale, 1935, USA). Perhaps Universal Studios took a comment made by the reviewer for the Winnipeg Free Press to heart when they noted that the laboratory equipment in Bride of Frankenstein would have been more appropriate in Buck Rogers? More than likely the score was used for the same reason preexisting sets, props and stock footage were used in both of the Universal Studios produced serials: to save money.

In fact, props and costumes used in Flash Gordon's Trip to Mars were used in Buck Rogers, and then the "chamber of death dust experiments" from Buck Rogers was used in Flash Gordon Conquers the Universe.

The saminess between the serials resulted in us only watching half of each one. Not even the daring cliffhangers could bring us back after a certain point. Buster Crabbe plays Buck and Flash as essentially the same character despite the differences in their back stories and skill sets. The recaps at the top of each episode also made the serials hard to watch in rapid succession. Since the serials were created based on the understanding that people would wait a week between episodes, and may not have seen the proceeding episode or episodes, content overlaps quite a bit between installments. In their original edits, serials were not meant to be watched in one sitting.

Another grating aspect for modern audiences is the Yellow Peril influence on the way the villains are named and portrayed in the serials, especially in Flash Gordon Conquers the Universe. Befitting of a sci-fi narrative that heavily borrowed from preexisting content, Flash Gordon's arch enemy Ming the Merciless (Charles Middleton) is based on the supervillain Dr. Fu Manchu. Like his inspiration, in the moving image adaptation Ming is portrayed by a white actor in yellowface. This insensitive tradition would continue in future adaptations well into the 1980s. 

Those criticisms aside, after having seen Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon parodied in everything from a Daffy Duck cartoon to Star Trek: Voyager, we expected the serial episodes to be a lot more cheesy and kitschy than they were in and of themselves, and in the context of the survey. The plots, settings and costumes are certainly ripe for the exaggeration that followed, but the originals aren't as over the top as the popular imagination would have you expect.

Buck and Flash will return to the survey in their own feature films in 1979 and 1980 respectively, thanks to the success of Star Wars making retro, space opera cool again in 1977.

[poirot]

some book recs: the haunting of hill house, dr jekyll and mr hyde, the phantom of the opera, the turn of the screw, the yellow wallpaper, sharp objects, the girl on the train

thank you so much for the recommendations, anon <3 it‘s funny because I put ‚the haunting of hill house‘ on my ebook just a few days ago ahsjs haven’t started it yet though because I wasn‘t sure if it‘s too scary for me lol but I think I might read it next!! the phantom of the opera, sharp objects and the girl on the train are on my tbr list since forever, so I definitely should get to them! the other ones I already read (actually just read the yellow wallpaper last week ahsje) but again THANK you sm for the recommendations 💗

[littleeyesofpallas]

Kachikujin YAPOO[家畜人ヤプー]

Yapoo The Human Cattle

[esterigermaine]

Concept:

Resist durge and Bhaal having the same sort of relationship that Malcolm and Martin from Prodigal Son have.

[sirompp]

every time i think about riverdale i get so incredibly fucking mad and i try and make a coherent post about it to get across why its whole concept of existing is So Shit and i can never do it and i delete the post before its even made.

[ask-the-achs]

*SYSTEM BOOTING UP*

*20% battery*

*left leg damaged*

*right arm damaged*

*torso damaged*

*head damaged*

*movement compromised.*

*weapons offline*

*defenses unavailable.*

'So I did take a heavy fall...'

'You must wonder who I am. Well, my name is Serial Designation M'

'Yes. Like those Murder Drone from Copper 9'

'In a sense, I was one. I was a Worker Drone who was built as a care unit for any robot I found, but then I was changed into a war machine of untold damage.'

'How long have I been here? Why was this human worshiping me? Where was everyone else?'

'Am I covered in moss?'

**the machine hummed to life as it stood. It was a broken machine it's barely able to walk and stumble but the Non backed away scared. It looked like an old destroyed golem. The machine called itself M and as it walked it stopped as it saw the non who woke it up.**

'Those eyes...so bright. Such pale skin...those adorable dimples.'

**the machine had flashbacks to a small scared baby it had picked up in a radioactive destroyed wasteland and took care of. It was built to kill and destroy but instead it nurtured it named the little boy Fredrick while also calling him Sunblood because he was so bright she was sure he was a star in the form of a human. As she walked to the non the machines arm gently caressed it's cheek. She kept rubbing it making the human confused. Soon several magical beings stormed the curch mad that their slave ran away. M forgot everything that happened but one lighting bolt later and she blacked out when she came too her weapons were online her battery was fully charged she was covered in blood and every mage was dead. The non scared was trying to ask her what she yelled. When she asked what she said she heard it and looked down.**

**it was the last thing she said that day. The day the gods sealed off heaven from mortals and stole her boy. Her baby boy, the last straw, was apparently this curch to worship another reality's god of madness just for the slightest chance of going to the afterlife with her baby.**

**the phrase?**

**ВЕРНИТЕ МНЕ РЕБЕНКА!**

'....you have his eyes.'

**as she fell over thanks to a damaged leg, she saw him try to fix her leg.**

'Such a good kind boy....you're so much like him.'

@2003s-greatest-horrorshow

In a world dominated by magic, a metallic cube lies covered in moss. Those devoid of magic are known as “Nons” and are slaves to the gifted. The hand of a Non touches the cube, and for the first time in 10,000 years, the heart of a long forgotten machine god churns once more.

[st4rshiptr00per]

tummy hurts. gets in bed and thinks about chris cwej and roz forrester