#Zeebo is a good name

[inspired-lesson-plans]

From

#I was actually reading a study on this today

#they’re actually useful for brain-related things like test anxieties and migraine pain

#the placebo effect is actually so effective that you can imagine taking pills and see a reduction in some symptoms

#which is something I personally do for headaches when I’m on the go

#the brain is wild

@elldritch-horror, I think I found the study you were reading, or at least a related one. Apparently Buergler et al (2023) broke the test-anxiety-suffering undergrads into three groups :

Take Open Label Placebos (like the Zeebos)

Take imaginary placebos (literally playing pretend multiple times daily)

Don't do anything about it at all

And guess what... both of those bogus treatments had real effects! Even non-deceptive placebos are pretty good!

This post is now about the fact that I have wanted to sell "honest placebos" for years.

First of all, they work. In fact, just a quick little bit of research revealed that it's common for medical practitioners to give their patients placebos (if it's not serious) because it's cheaper and doesn't have any side-effects (Wernsdorff et al, 2021). And when researching new medical treatments, so-called "deceptive placebos" are so potent that researchers will give participants Open Label Placebos (like the Zeebos), and even these result in statistically significant effects on patients! (Gupta and Verma, 2013)

Second, as a teacher I can think of 3 kinds of kids who would immediately benefit from this.

Hypochondriacs who legitimately cannot tell whether or not they are unwell and are probably really anxious about asking to go to the nurse all the time

Avoidant kids who want an excuse to leave class for 10-30 minutes.

Very impressionable kids whose stomach pains and headaches really can be treated with placebos.

Give them a placebo (deceptive or not), tell them to wait it out for 15 minutes, and if it doesn't get better, then they go to the nurse. Thus, they stay in class and aren't bothering the already-overworked nurse.

In America (at least in New Jersey), teachers aren't allowed to give any kind of medicine to minors. I cannot imagine getting in trouble for giving placebos.

Even if you're a grown adult, if you're feeling symptoms of some kinda illness but you don't know if you're sick, you can take a placebo. If the symptoms go away, you don't have to worry about it. I get headaches a lot, and I would love to know if taking a few cheap sugar pills would do as much good as 1000mg ibuprofen. I'm going to take a hot shower to relax my muscles anyway, and if my headache is still there afterwards then clearly I need the medicine.

My only criticism is... ugh, those look terrible to swallow. Make them soft-gels or make them sugar-coated so they're pleasant to swallow. Also, get better graphic design! That bottle looks like a prop from a 2000s SyFy Channel movie. I want to feel delighted that I'm taking an Open Label Placebo!

Footnote, I found this while reading How To Winter, so take that as you will.

well I guess this is the logical next step in, you know. everything

[testure-1988]

The Are You Afraid of the Dark? revival is quite good. You can tell it was made by millennials who really loved the original series and horror movies. It utilizes practical effects, and the scares are heightened to appeal to viewers over 30 (which is the primary audience). There are also many references to the original show (like a person in the background wearing a mask of Zeebo's face and the main villian is named Marcus Cochran. And then one of the kids calls a story "The Return of The Ghastly Grinner"). The first season reminds me of The Silver Sight movie because it takes place in the real world with the members of The Midnight Society. And then I believe the next two seasons follow the original format, where the kids just tell stories. And of course, the acting in the reboot is 100x better (because one of the main issues with the original is the BAD acting from the kids in a lot of episodes).

Ohhhhh and the kids go to "Herbert West Middle School" and it takes place in a town called Argento. Lol

And Human Fly by The Cramps is in episode 2!!

[taocc-refs]

Info and Tag List

Hiya, Mod Gryphon/Vian here! I thought it would be a good idea to have a blog that has references for the characters in TAOCC!

Let me know if you want me to make a post for a character, or edit any posts already here! I'm more than happy to scour through a blog's archive to find art! And I always welcome suggestions to make this blog better!

I'll try and keep the ref posts up to date, though I likely won't remove any art, just put outdated art under a read more.

If you want to go to a random post on this blog go to this link (it doesn't work on the app): https://taocc-refs.tumblr.com/random

Or if you want to use the Wheel of Names instead you can use this link: https://wheelofnames.com/rpu-qn2

Tag List

Sadly, I can't link every OC because of limits to how many links I can have per post, so I'll only link to each mod's tag. All OCs do have their own tag though! Format for the OC tags are #OC: Name

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Mod Basil

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And asks get tagged as askbox

Post Template

Character: [name and blog here] Height: [height here] Additional Notes: [any important design notes for people that might draw them] Art Credits: [credits for the art in the post]

[slime-stew]

i hate how reblog icon just goes away so the only way i know if i have reboggef is the little 'like icon but this is not enough because sometimes i do not know if if have just liked it or i liked it last momth so i apoligize if i just reblogged the same shit you already saw. then again thats all anyone posts anymore its all just tumblr post of tiktoks of tweets of facebook posts that got reposted to reddit twice and the jpeg is so fried it becomed burnt . i am in so much pain and i cannot sleep so hopefully a stream of consciousness will stop my brain from yelling at me. i dont like how the joke of "there's too many standards so we should make our own standard that works with all if them". in some ways this is how i feel about conlangs and numbering systems cuz they're kinda cool but i can barely speak english so a useless language hurts me on a deeper level. it feels like a waste of brain for me to even comprehend. if you don't use a language to communicate then is it language? why not say theway to conjugate your past tense is to piss really loudly. go crazy. actually there is that hat one i think called kay fop b or whatever who cares we're gonna die at some point and i dont want my longest lasting contribution to society to be some joke hat language. actually what happened to hats. we went from like fedora trilby and it all lead yp to beanies and shit. even baseball cap feels like a dying breed. shit is so itchy i hate how it feel i do not understand how people wear hats. maybe thats it but theres still so many of u beanie people. i am not the person to ask for fashion advice i can barely find clothes to wear on a given day sometimes. i got hella fat and now i feel terrible about myself and my appearance and none of my clothes fit. i got so many garments that have negative stretch like if i even attempt to fit in this it will break. i just wanna wear an infinite clothiny that i dont have to care aboit. just like a big gray bodysuit that makes me imperceptible. granted even when i was less chubby i didnt want to be percieved either so maybe i just dont like how i look lmao. probably dysphoria in there somewhere who knows i just feel so tired and lazy i dont got shit and i have nothin to feel good about so i have just put up with feeling snd looking like human waste all the damb time . i think they should make a new flavor of powerade thats like coconut or coconut lime kinda like that drink from sonic the ocean water. if it was coconut you could make it just light blue cuz theres no cloudy light blue powerade and that would look good. like one of those fortnite drinks they have in the jars that looks kinda tasty. if you made it coconut lime it could be cloudy green like that terrible cucumber lime gatorade. the last time they made new flavors of powerade was like summer 2021 and those flavors are discontinued now. but they only made zero versions of them so im not surprised if they did poorly. also they never make cool names like. Glacier Freeze. thats the berry orange one. Cool Blue is literally just orange or blue curacao flavor. Arctic Blitz was supposed to be honeydew watermelon but it tasted so awful and i love both of those flavors. even just like Fierce Grape is a cooler name but its literally just grape or whatever. Sorry i meant

Grape whoa this shit is neat i'm so glad tumblr has actual text markup options like lets go i love strikethru its so handy i use it on discord all the time too. in a way it somehow both useful as a serious and as a joking indicator but in very obvious ways... probably because i start them with "but" or "except" or stuff like that. i love that i can just type into this box forever and nobody will ever see it and its all just for me yippee! but at least i have the option and unless someone loves stupid walls of text nobody will be forced to see it. gordon freeman big naturals. gorgonzola freeman. spinda pokemon wearing jorts. who up playin with they zeebo. what ever happened to that gon go gab galab guy wheres his revival bring that energy into 2011 fr. wish i was better at chess but i'm so scared of other people so i only play against my friends and the computer. i was in the middle of typin out all this shit amd i was informed that there is a limit to paragprah soze but if u hit enter its chill. it goes away so i made a newline on Grape because its funny to put that there. i think we should work on milking funnier animals. we already milk nuts and rhey dont even have udders but like whats kangaroo milk taste like. i bet its all churned up and creamy cuz they be hopping all the damn time. actually its probably bitter and shitty snd the only reason joeys drink it is because theyre too young and small and crap poopoo to know any better. its like kangaroo buttermilk or kangaroo soylent. reminds me of that angry slappy the squirrel she said something about buttermilk i barely remember animaniacs but it was a good show i had that shit on multiple dvds. i wanted to try that new soylent because it is my guilty pleasure that i want the future to be at least slightly cool about eating stupid foods and not dystopian. 🎁 i seriously cannot believe that someone has ever licked their elbow. it probably has piss on it. luigis mansion 3ds remake. its crazy how most of thr star fox games are either just the snes game again or are some weird shit like adventure or guard. in a way counter strike is the same cuz theres just the first game and then a remake and another remake and then there's a different game entirely that was supposed to be the single player but its a new game. and then there's cs go which was at launch kinda like the second remake but with new shit? like they named the guns correctly and u can play on a l4d map and thry replaced the tmp. but now cs2 is basically a csgo update even though its look like a new game but u play through the csgo launcher and u play on the same dust2. so theres like 3 games but somehow we sre on counterstrike 2. chicken enchilada. thatd a funny trick to play on god. i bet they got some crazy ass soup on mars.i gotta wait so long to see the mario movie. i bet you could jist randomly generate memes by putting hip hop vocals over kevin macleod instrumentals and people woild eat that shit up. my eyeballs are stsrting to hurt goodnight tumblr or is it good morning? ive been typing for so long i cant help it

edit: metal gear solid 2. its good but 3 is better and should have been the Action Game for the ps2 at the smithsonian that shit is rad

[goldblumstandard]

No sooner does Eefa indicate the bag receptor space than Wiploc and Zeebo dump their loads. Mac shakes his head in irritation and careful disengages from his own. He hadn’t understood anything Eefa had said outside of his name (and Wiploc’s and Zeebo’s), but tone—tone is music. Music is simple. Her tone had gone from pinched and concerned to warm and broad, and that generally indicated good things.

Eefa isn’t alone in unloading her wares: the other two lend a less-than-helping hand, holding up items and gabbing excitedly. They show the flimsy materials to Mac, explain the armor coverings from the room-within-a-room, and while Zeebo explains about foot coverings with weapons in the back, sharp pointy sticks, Wiploc pulls a protector on over his chest. It dangles strangely behind his back, little rounds of plastic making one side slightly heavier than the other. Zeebo is describing a particularly sparkly sharp-stick-foot-cover when Eefa calls his name again. Mac patiently shushes Zeebo and turns his attention to Eefa with a very serious expression. He is determined to find some sort of understanding with her. She’s been nothing short of gracious, agreeing to help them get their ship un-waterlogged and letting them stay in her domicile, and all without knowing the first thing about them! (She’s lucky they’re Jhazallan, frankly—other species would see that kindness for weakness.)

“Razer,” he repeats, tasting the word. It’s metallic and somewhat unpleasant. She glides the razer across her leg and the other two—with only one thing on their minds anyway—stop their exploration of her wares to ogle her instead. Mac nods his head and watches carefully. After the razer is one cream, and after that one another. The last smells of hydrangeas, a fragrance that makes him smile; he doesn’t know what it’s called, but he knows enough to know they grow only a little differently on Jhazalla. Perhaps things are not so different even between such different sides of the galaxy.

This seems to be a very involved culture lesson. She hasn’t only brought them a few samples to explore but enough to—. Mac’s eyes widen in understanding and his mouth falls open in a delighted smile. It’s enough to share! She isn’t just sharing her culture with them, she’s sharing her culture with them! And so uncertain and shy of it, too. Mac stops her with one hand held up—another gesture he learned from the one-male plays—and turns to Zeebo and Wiploc, calling them back to order with an annoyed click. Zeebo’s mouth is full of a semisolid gel that reeks of mint (another galactic standard, it would seem, and one he usually enjoys in smaller doses) that Wiploc has spread over his fingers, mouth open in dumb wonder.

With all the affectionate exasperation that comes with being the mature friend, Mac takes the mint-tube out of Wiploc’s loose grip and closes it again, repeating the highlights of what Eefa’s likely said: these are cultural markers she’s brought to share with them, and she—he stops speaking for a moment, glancing at Eefa with empathy—seems self-conscious in her sharing efforts. Wiploc sits up, drying his hand distractedly on Zeebo’s side; Zeebo swats at him and shifts in his chair, also giving his attention to Mac. And, by extension, Eefa.

Mac takes the razer and clicks it on, only a little surprised to feel it vibrating. Deciding it must clearly be what it seems—a massage device—Mac clicks it back off and lifts his own leg, indicating with a finger as he describes the massage-and-double-lotion technique involved. Zeebo interrupts him with a question and Mac admits surprise, confusion. He turns to Eefa and clears his throat, brows lowered, as considers how to translate the question.

“Razer….” No, no, that isn’t going to work. He falls quiet, working through something, before taking a sudden breath in as inspiration struck. “Razer Eefa,” he explains, gesturing again with his finger in the direction of her calf, “razer…Mac?” He grips the blue fur on his arm and twists it towards her to help make himself clearer. Could it only provide naked species massages, or did it work on furred species, too?

How long has he been staring at the screen? He’s enraptured. To have gone into hypersleep and wake up to a shipwreck in progress, that had been terrifying! But to follow that up with so many uninterrupted hours at the screen, learning the planetary culture through these miniature plays…! It isn’t the exact reason he agreed to go on this mission, but it’s very, very close to one.

If he was one to complain—he isn’t, of course, but if he was—his only one so far might have been that all the little plays so far had had the same handsome male in them, and that that sometimes broke the spell the art otherwise had over him. Without an understanding of their language just yet (oh!, it was rudimentary, laughably simple!, but without context it was a mouthful of sounds and nothing more), the plays were difficult to follow: perhaps the same male continued to appear because he was, in some way, the central character of the play. He has led a very storied life, if that is the case! He is also fascinatingly poor at playing instruments. There is music, the universal language, and there is much of it!, but except for what little he can produce vocally and the percussion he provides with his body, he is not talented with it.

Wiploc and Zeebo had abandoned the cultural play study well before the first song, their tragically short attention spans having drifted in the interval between the written-songs and the more plentiful non-written ones. The pair had made a study of the food storage facilities first, then a room within a room that had turned out to be an armory all full of padding and protective layers, and then a different room within running water! (imagines having that all the way out here!), and now were investigating the initial crashsite, staring up at the sun and wondering how the sky was so blue here. So of course there was only Mac in Eefa’s domicile to hear her.

He couldn’t pull himself away from the screen all the same until Eefa said his name. He looks back and over at her in mild surprise before standing up, a soft sound leaving his lips as he realizes she is overburdened.

“Ah…! Here-let-me-help-you-with-that.” It’s the right words to say, he’s seen enough of the plays to know that, but he still doesn’t quite grasp what it means. He takes two armloads of the bags from her, turning over his shoulder and sounding out for Wiploc and Zeebo. His annoyed klaxon is answered by two sullen echoes of it, preceding the pair’s reentrance. Each one takes an armload from Mac, who in turn takes the last of Eefa’s bags. He watches Eefa’s face carefully and nods his head forward, the way they do in the plays when they want someone to lead the way.

[deluxinn]

Amogus

This is @iinsectaa s fault :)

It was my first day on the job as an astronaut! Or rather just an outer space bodyguard/waiter/escort if paid enough because this is apparently a billionaire space sex party or some shit.

But I remain humble despite being tipped thousands of dollars just for being stepped over (sometimes literally,, sometimes in the bedroom) by these pompous individuals.

Therefore, when I see someone struggling to put on their space suit on top of their nice tuxedo suit, I’d help them! Though, I could have sworn I’ve seen them struggling due to having teeth way too big for a human. Nah,, that’d be what I call impossible. There’s a lot of strange things in space such as zero gravity, black holes, and satellites that have so much reflective surface that it’d fuck up the light pollution beyond repair but we’d never have anything like aliens!

So I’ve decided to keep it to myself after helping this individual put their helmet on. I gave them a good ol thumbs up because nothing could go wrong on this ride.

The party’s host Zeebos encouraged the service to walk around the space ship and do certain chores around the place because whoever worked the hardest would get a $100 bonus! You know, that’s really generous for a billionaire. And that’s what I like to call a fine investment into the discord nitro yous know what I’m saying?

Occasionally the rich asses would press a button, thus calling all the workers in the dining room in case they needed us so other than that, there’s no interrupting our work!

On my way to clear the dangerous asteroids (I also took the trash out, I don’t know if I mentioned that, because I’m a chore master), I noticed some red fluid on the floor. Well snap, I wasn’t aware they stored wine here. Except it wasn’t wine! It was a tad less fun.

It was blood! From a corpse! A stinky one at that. You know, they coulda had the foresight to put in the garbage shoot before I cleaned that. Now we have to wait till next garbage day so that was a little inconsiderate of them, to be honest.

In a shock, I took a picture of it for my instagram because that’s my coping mechanism. I forgot I had an instagram but I only ever used it for really traumatizing moments in my life so it’s on private.

Or not because I just got a like, and now I hear Zeebos running toward me with a crowd. Wowza! I wasn’t even aware he followed me (like on insta not literally).

“I can’t believe this! It’s the first line of dialogue in this story and I have to use it to call you out for killing one of my guests! This calls for a meeting! An emergency one!” He yelled.

We all gathered in the very nice dining room. It was a circle table which is very nice because it felt like we were all equals and there was no head. Obviously that wasn’t true though because I only have $3 and a murder accusation to my name but who am I to say?

Regardless, I knew exactly how to clear myself of any suspicion.

I pulled out a sheet of paper.

“So if you see here, at the start of the story it clearly states that I helped one of your guests out with a helmet because they’re an alien! Obviously, it was them.” said I.

“Objection!” A voice shouted.

“Or, this is a case of unreliable narrator. A very cheap and easy tool used to fool the ones involved, even the audience!”

“Okay that’s a fair point but also what would I have to gain for doing that? Killing people won’t get me a redemption code for discord nitro but shooting meteors might!” I replied.

It seems that I’ve won the argument so everyone returned to their activities.

I had to find that guest again and make them do a dna test to prove they’re 100% that bitch.

Someone beat me to the punch and had already asked, because the alien claimed another victim. They dashed quickly toward me to dispatch me as well, but they were just standing there.

“Uh, you’re not gonna kill me?” I asked.

“Yeah um.. Just give me like 15 more seconds okay? It’s like my first time.” The alien replied.

“Holy shit! It’s my first time too! That’s crazy. You know I feel like we got a lot in common.”

The alien laughed shyly then spoke.

“You know, if we take out all of them, you could get as many months of subscription as you want right? They’re so rich they’re practically begging and shouting ‘Ah, mug us!’ “

“Ah, mug us?”

“Yes. Ah, mug us!”

“Ahhh mug us.”

The alien had a good point but I feel like maybe something more moral would be better like stealing a millionaire’s credit card and sucking their bank account dry.

All I knew was…. Break time was over so there’s no time to continue this story.

The End?

[thisisemilysfault]

Go Set a Watchman Liveblog: Part Six (pp. 114-162)

Look, it’s still happening! (No one cares)

- I get why we’re having the infodump on Atticus here, since we haven’t gotten the whole character history yet in this draft, but I’m not excited about it.

- Also, the whole “he lived his moral code to the letter and without flinching, like a good Christian” deal rings  bit hollow when he’s, y’know, a chairman of the Klan.

- Ooh, interesting, Mom gets a name. Also, her death scene is v. cinematic here.

- Did we really need to know that the only time Atticus didn’t know what to do was when Scout got her period? I feel the answer is no.

- I feel like Scout’s anguish here mirrors that of the readers who read this book and had to place this information about Atticus next to the hero worship they got from TKaM. 

- Jaunty Ice cream man has not noticed that she definitely vomited behind his ice cream shop.

- Weird cliffhanger, and she gets Jem’s symbolic color-blindness, since he is too dead to be a moral center.

- How old is this guy with his tongue in her mouth in 6th grade? Scout is ELEVEN, back up, sir.

- Awkward inaccurate sex talk triggered by news of sexual abuse in a county family. Yay.

- This extended “haha, kids don’t understand how sex works” pregnancy scare thing just reinforces my theory that she is pregnant here in the current timeline.

- This Scout likes school a lot more than TKaM Scout

- Suicide attempt based on pregnancy scare is pretty dark here.

- Oh, Henry saves her. Isn’t that nice. (I still hate Henry)

- Aw, Jem’s a good brother.

- It would be nice if thoughts were different, typographically, than the narration.

- why give Aunt Alexandra a habit of making malapropisms? It just makes her sound dumb. What does this add? it made sense with little-kid Scout in TKaM, because she’s a little kid, but not here.

- omg, Henry SAW HER eavesdropping on the Klan meeting and doesn’t get why she’s upset, awkward...

- Calpurnia is Atticus’s “I’m not racist, I have a black friend!” friend

- Oh, Atticus is only helping so that the NAACP can’t. That’s considerably less noble than helping because of Calpurnia.

- Scout’s family has been radicalized by the Southern 1950s version of Fox News, and she is v. confused. I feel you, Scout.

- Alexandra is racist,too, in a Grace Merriweather sort of way. Awesome.

- Helen is Zeebo’s wife now, rather than Tom’s.

- Despite the off-putting stereotype Zeebo is now and how Helen is bound up in that, I like Helen. “I don’t want no man who don’t enjoy his wife” (157).

- Oof, Calpurnia’s faith in Atticus hurts.

- Jean Louise, making this moment all about you when Calpurnia’s trying to deal with her grandson being involved in vehicular manslaughter is Not A Good Look (TM)

- “Everything used to be fine” is not super convincing, as meditations on race and segregation go.Is Scout going to realize this? One hopes so.

- Aaand have some racist children’s rhymes!

[aion-rsa]

How The Twilight Zone Influenced Are You Afraid of the Dark?

https://ift.tt/37XgiEH

In the last half decade, D.J. McHale has noticed a significant uptick in interest in Are You Afraid of the Dark?, the Nickelodeon anthology series he co-created nearly 30 years ago. Though he spent much of his career as a television writer, director, and producer, he’s had a successful second act as an author of sci-fi, fantasy, and supernatural novels. When fans of his novels put it together that he also produced all 91 episodes of the original run of the Nickelodeon classic, he started receiving an outpour of appreciation. 

“Suddenly this wave of social media came to me about Are You Afraid of the Dark?,” McHale told Den of Geek. “There isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t speak to someone in some way, shape or form about [the show].”

Are You Afraid of the Dark? premiered on Nickelodeon on Oct. 25, 1991. Each episode started with a member of “The Midnight Society,” a group of teenagers who gathered at a secret location in the woods, offering up a scary story around a campfire. The anthology tapped into a range of stories that touched on the supernatural, classic monsters like werewolves and vampires, and a nightmare inducing clown named Zeebo. The series kicked off a golden age (an upcoming documentary dubbed this successful time period the “Orange Years”) of live-action and animated shows for the network. Yet during the series’ original run from 1991 to 1996, McHale says there was “no mechanism to get feedback” like there is now for TV showrunners who are bombarded with instant social media gratification or scorn from viewers. 

“I wasn’t that kind of person who every week I’d try to get the ratings,” he says. “I was too busy making the show. Everyone seemed to like it. But I didn’t get any real feedback from viewers. I didn’t feel in the moment that this ground swell of this revolutionary thing was happening. It wasn’t until maybe the late ‘90s. It wasn’t until Nickelodeon stopped being that way, that I realized what we had back then.” 

These days, interactions with fans or media attention often comes with questions about what the scariest episode is. Initially Nickelodeon rejected McHale and co-creator Ned Kandel’s pitch out of fear that scaring kids would result in backlash from parents. It took another pitch meeting and three script proposals to convince the network that the tone of the series was not overly scary for a young audience. 

“Our goal wasn’t necessarily just to be scary,” McHale says. “Are You Afraid of the Dark? sprang more from the kind of short story spooky tradition, of which I’d put Twilight Zone in that category. I tried to come up with [different] types of stories, whether some be more dramatic, some maybe romantic, some flat out scary, some with vampires. Each season was crafted to have a whole range of stories. And that’s straight out of the Twilight Zone. They always made you think a little bit, and there’s always a little bit of a twist to it, and it was more unsettling and weird than it was flat out scary.” 

McHale notes that there was no traditional boogeyman in The Twilight Zone, though Willam Shatner might disagree. He suggests Are You Afraid of the Dark? was likely the scarier of the two shows. 

“I would argue that we were scarier than Twilight Zone, because we did have those episodes where there were monsters coming at you. But that was more the guidepost for me, to be able to tell a wide range of different types of interesting stories, and that was the big Twilight Zone influence.” 

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Inside the Return of Are You Afraid of the Dark?

By Rosie Knight

McHale’s direct homage to Rod Serling and The Twilight Zone is unmistakable. The storyteller in Are You Afraid of the Dark? begins each tale with “Submitted for the approval of the Midnight Society,” before midnight dust is tossed onto the campfire. The phrase “submitted for your approval” is closely associated with Serling and The Twilight Zone, though it was only used in the opening monologues of three episodes: “Cavender Is Coming,” “In Praise of Pip,” and “A Kind of a Stopwatch.” A 1995 American Masters documentary film on the television giant was titled Rod Serling: Submitted For Your Approval.  

The Twilight Zone and Are You Afraid of the Dark? are intertwined through more than direct homage and the anthology structure. The Midnight Society itself functions as a narrative device in the vein of Rod Serling as the narrator of The Twilight Zone. 

“I smartly created the Midnight Society that becomes a through line through the whole thing,” McHale says. “It’s amazing to me that The Midnight Society is as important to people as it is, because to me the Midnight Society was like Rod Serling.”

It’s been 61 years since Rod Serling first introduced viewers to The Twilight Zone. Its legacy is immeasurable. But even by the most basic metric, proof of its enduring longevity is in its revivals. After years of tussling with network executives over censorship, budgets, and advertising, Serling decided not to fight the cancellation of The Twilight Zone in 1964. Since then, the series returned as a feature film in 1983, and been revived three times, in 1985, 2002, and most recently by Jordan Peele in 2019. 

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Are You Afraid of the Dark? is following in the footsteps of its forebearer. The original run ended in 1996 after five seasons, but was revived with a new Midnight Society in 1999 and ran for an additional two seasons. In recent years, Nickelodeon saw an opportunity to bring back its classics for a new generation of kids whose parents likely grew up with grand dreams of being slimed. It led to revivals for ‘90s hits All That, Rocko’s Modern Life, Double Dare, and an Are You Afraid of the Dark? mini-series. 

The 2019 return for the horror anthology was a hit and the network decided to greenlight a second season. McHale himself is not involved with the revival and says was not asked to be part of it, which left some bittersweet feelings and bad blood with the network. But he did offer advice for the revival’s producers. 

“One of the things I said to the producer was, ‘Be careful because you’re making a show that people who are in their 30s have great memories of, and chances are you’re not going to live up to those memories.’ And those memories are probably better than the show was, frankly. You’re not really making a show for them because they’ve moved on. You’re really making a show for the same age group that we made it for. And they did. I think they’ve just hit the right tone. I think they’ve done the show a good service. I’d be really upset if they somehow ruined it, but they didn’t, so that’s good.” 

The new Are You Afraid of the Dark? is more of an anthology in the mold of Ryan Murphy’s American Horror Story, a departure from McHale’s original vision. Yet The Midnight Society has become something bigger than McHale could have ever imagined during the early days of making the show, and clearly his creation still resonates with scores of fans around the world. And much like The Twilight Zone, the mark of a show that stands the test of time is that new storytellers continue to want to put their own spin on it. 

“I did see a Twilight Zone episode the other day, and it ticked me off,” McHale says with a laugh.  “Only because it went to a place that I wanted to go with Are You Afraid of the Dark?, and I couldn’t come up with a good story to do this. And it turns out they did it on The Twilight Zone.” 

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