#a time bomb set into motion | aesthetics

[theblazingpoetess]

The Woman & The Man

The woman flits around the room in figure eights. She hops from one corner to the other, carrying out her movements like a worker bee before her maiden queen. Barely keeping a grasp on her physical body as she falls in and out of dimensions, her impatient vessel leaping for its next victim.

The man is sitting blankly in front of me, staring at the wall behind. Or is he looking straight at me? Perhaps, he’s doing that trick where you stare in between someone’s eyebrows. So as to not look directly in their eyes. He’s not blinking. Just staring.

The woman walks in, carrying a clattering tray of aesthetically pleasing charcuterie pieces. Not a very modest feast for a worker bee; more fit for a queen herself. Two miniature goblets with a mysteriously unidentifiable liquid are set to one side.

She places the tray down in front of me and the man. The table, which I hadn’t really noticed, is a curved-rectangular sort of shape made of hard leather. It looks so soft and yet…incredibly sturdy.

The woman is now sitting to the right of the man on the sofa. The peach-toned wall complements them as their mood board. Her head is turned away from the man, looking down, deep in thought. Her face indicates she might mourn. There’s a strange feeling in the air like the inescapable, scorching heat on a scathing summer’s day.

It’s golden hour. The sunlight is streaming through the window to the right of where the couple are sat, my left. One can just make out the street and houses below; a miniature village from here up high.

The couple sit next to each other, but idly. Waiting for time to pass as the clock ticks on, on, on. Their voices are almost echoes now.

The clock drones out the daylight with its idle ticking…like a time bomb in slow-motion.

find me on Instagram: @theblazingpoetess

[jedivoodoochile]

Godzilla is a landmark in film history, a cinematic colossus with an inmensurable legacy. Like Mickey Mouse or Spider-Man, Godzilla himself is a timeless global icon, unmistakable all around the world and infinitely larger than any one film, product, or even time period. The Godzilla film franchise is recognized as the "longest continuously running film franchise" ever, with dozens and dozens of films spanning more than half a century. It all grew from the unflinching mastery of the first film, released in Japan in 1954 and localized for American audiences in 1956 as Godzilla, King of the Monsters.

Toho Co. pioneered tokusatsu, a style of genre films that utilize a distinct form of special effects, with Godzilla. Some techniques can be traced to a lost Japanese film from 1934 titled The Great Buddha Arrival, but Godzilla spawned the boom that would lead to properties such as Gamera, Ultraman, and countless others. Godzilla was inspired by King Kong and The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms but when stop motion animation proved unrealistic for the production the tokusatsu methods of miniature sets and actors in suits (suitmation) was born.

Producer Tomoyuki Tanaka and Director Ishiro Honda brought the vision of Godzilla into reality and would work together on the series for the next two decades. Toho’s team of special effect artists, led by Eiji Tsuburaya and Akira Watanabe, revolutionized the entire industry with their work on the film. An unforgettable soundtrack and portfolio of sound effects by Akira Ifukube have endured within the franchise for generations.

In subsequent sequels Godzilla became a hero in increasingly family friendly monster battles but the first film is famously somber and grim, reflecting worldwide nuclear anxiety and the post-war fallout of 20th century Japan. It confronts themes of humanity’s helplessness in the face of natural and manmade disasters, pointing directly to the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and a fishing boat crisis of radiation poisoning in 1954. The nuclear metaphor is well known and documented, it is impossible to see the bleak scenes of devastation and not instinctively feel the allegory. It may be harder for modern audiences to appreciate how naturally terrifying something like this was at the time, when the world still felt uncharted and full of dangerous mystery. This was the era of Bigfoot, Nessie, and UFOs in the sky, so the prospect of a city crushing dinosaur ignited imaginations, especially as the world grappled with the consequences of the nuclear age.

The Americanized release added actor Raymond Burr, changing much of the setup and story to center around his character, while largely staying true to the aesthetic and themes of the film. The original release carries more weight and class - it is quite simply a better made movie - but King of the Monsters propelled the picture to an international audience in a respectable way and deserves credit for building a bridge to the brand’s enduring success. With tragic beauty the Japanese original portrays the sincere gravitas of the subject in a way King of the Monsters only brushes against but it is still considerably more serious and dark than most American monster movies.

Godzilla transcends time, genre, and the film industry as a whole, it’s an immortal work of art that is representative of an entire era in human history. The character will be with us forever now; as long as there is popular media there will be a concept of giant monsters that destroy cities irreversibly linked to Godzilla. The 1954 masterpiece that started it all will persist too, with its everlasting message about humanity’s self-destructive hubris living on in its indestructible avatar.

[watchmenanon]

There's something I have to explain about the song that plays during Dr. Manhattan and Vecna's origin scenes.

For starters, "Pruit Igoe and Prophecies" from Zack Snyder's Watchmen are two different conpositions that were put together for the Dr. Manhattan's origin scene.

The original songs are called "Prophecies" and "Pruit Igoe" composed by Philip Glass for a film called "Koyaanisqatsi" that was released back in 1982.

This is what I found in the film's article on Wikipedia:

The film consists primarily of slow motion and time-lapse footage of cities and many natural landscapes across the United States. The visual tone poem contains neither dialogue nor a vocalized narration: its tone is set by the juxtaposition of images and music. Reggio explained the lack of dialogue by stating "it's not for lack of love of the language that these films have no words. It's because, from my point of view, our language is in a state of vast humiliation. It no longer describes the world in which we live." In the Hopi language, the word koyaanisqatsi means "life out of balance".

The film is the first in the Qatsi film trilogy: it is succeeded by Powaqqatsi (1988) and Naqoyqatsi (2002). The trilogy depicts different aspects of the relationship between humans, nature and technology. Koyaanisqatsi is the best known of the trilogy and is considered a cult film. However, because of copyright issues, the film was out of print for most of the 1990s. In 2000, the film was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress for being "culturally, aesthetically, or historically significant".

And this is the sypnosis of the film:

The film begins with the Great Gallery pictograph in Horseshoe Canyon, Canyonlands National Park, depicting several tall figures standing near a taller, crowned one. The next scene depicts the Saturn V rocket during its Apollo 11 launch. It then fades to a desolate desert landscape, before progressing to various natural phenomena.

The film then incorporates humanity in the environment, with shots of choppy water, cultivated flowers, the artificial Lake Powell, a large mining truck causing billows of dust, power lines, mining operations, oil fields, the Navajo Generating Station, the Glen Canyon Dam, and atomic bomb detonations in a desert. A shot sees sunbathers on a beach, with the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station in the background, before moving on to an aircraft, cars, and military vehicles. Time-lapses of cloud shadows move across skyscrapers, and various housing projects are in disrepair. Destruction of large buildings were depicted, including the demolition of the Pruitt-Igoe housing project in St. Louis. A time-lapse of a crowd queueing is followed by shots of people walking along streets in slow motion.

The next sequence features a sunset reflected in the glass of a skyscraper, before depicting people interacting with modern technology. It sees visceral depictions of traffic, followed by people hurrying to work, and the operation of machines packaging food. Many labors are aided with the use of technology. The sequence begins to come full circle as the manufacture of cars in an assembly-line factory is shown. Daylight highway traffic are shown, followed by the movement of cars, shopping carts, televisions in an assembly line, and elevators. Time-lapses of various television shows being channel surfed are shown. In slow motion, several people react to being candidly filmed; the camera stays on them until the moment they look directly at it. Cars then move speedier.

Shots of microchips and satellite photography of cities are shown, comparing the lay of each of them. Night shots of buildings are shown, as well as of people from all walks of life, from beggars to debutantes. A rocket is seen lifting off to sudden explosion; the camera follows the flaming engine and a white smoky trail as the debris falls. The film concludes with another image of the Great Gallery pictograph, this time with smaller figures. It ends with the definition of the titular Hopi noun ("crazy life; life in turmoil; life out of balance; life disintegrating; a state of life that calls for another way of living") as well as the translation lyrics that was sung in "Prophecies", one of the musical tracks in the film.

And when we look at the meaning of the film in the same article, we read this:

Reggio stated that the Qatsi films are intended to simply create an experience and that "it is up [to] the viewer to take for himself/herself what it is that [the film] means." He also said that "these films have never been about the effect of technology, of industry on people. It's been that everyone: politics, education, things of the financial structure, the nation state structure, language, the culture, religion, all of that exists within the host of technology. So it's not the effect of, it's that everything exists within [technology]. It's not that we use technology, we live technology. Technology has become as ubiquitous as the air we breathe ..."

According to Hopi Dictionary: Hopìikwa Lavàytutuveni, the Hopi word koyaanisqatsi (Hopi pronunciation: [kojɑːnisˈqɑtsi]) is defined as "life of moral corruption and turmoil" or "life out of balance". The prefix koyaanis- means "corrupted" or "chaotic", and the word qatsi means "life" or "existence", literally translating koyaanisqatsi as "chaotic life". The film also defines the word as "crazy life", "life out of balance", "life in turmoil", "life disintegrating", and "a state of life that calls for another way of living".

In the score by Philip Glass, the word "koyaanisqatsi" is chanted at the beginning and end of the film in an "otherworldly" dark, sepulchral basso profondo by singer Albert de Ruiter over a solemn, four-bar organ-passacaglia bassline. Three Hopi prophecies sung by a choral ensemble during the latter part of the "Prophecies" movement are translated just prior to the end credits:

"If we dig precious things from the land, we will invite disaster."

"Near the day of Purification, there will be cobwebs spun back and forth in the sky."

"A container of ashes might one day be thrown from the sky, which could burn the land and boil the oceans."

During the end titles, the film gives Jacques Ellul, Ivan Illich, David Monongye, Guy Debord, and Leopold Kohr credit for inspiration. Moreover, amongst the consultants to the director are listed names including Jeffrey Lew, T. A. Price, Belle Carpenter, Cybelle Carpenter, Langdon Winner, and Barbara Pecarich.

In my opinion, it's very on brand for Zack Snyder to use two songs from a cult film known from its visuals, the use of slow motion and with the intention to create an experience for the viewer. I don't know if the Duffers are familiar with koyaanisqatsi or its influence, but it's very intriguing that they decided to use the same ost Zack Snyder used for a film that Christopher Nolan thought was "before its time", a film that it's an adaptation to one of the most influential comic books ever created and a film that reflects the 80's nostalgia that the Duffers have infused to Stranger Things.

tagging @heroesbyler and @wibble-wobbegong because they said they were interested in my thoughts.

[vvitchraft]

tag dump !

ariel  |   ❛  featuring.  ❜   (  blank.  )

ariel  |   ❛  thread001.  ❜   (  blank.  )

ariel  |   ❛  timestamp.  ❜   (  blank.  )

ariel  |   ❛  event.  ❜   (  blank.  )

[apocalyqse]

tag dump !

nora  |   ❛  featuring.  ❜   (  blank.  )

nora  |   ❛  thread001.  ❜   (  blank.  )

nora  |   ❛  timestamp.  ❜   (  blank.  )

nora  |   ❛  event.  ❜   (  blah.  )

[alfcrtscue]

tag dump!

[vvizardry-archive]

tag dump !

[vvitchcraftt-old]

ariel - tag dump.

[jovialjuggernaut-draws]

RiddleBat Week Day 6: Alternate Universe/Favorite Version

"He's an egocentric narcissist who can't let anyone else win."

"If only you two had met under different circumstances…"

Bruce rounded on Selina, hand paused on the rusted orphanage door handle, softly illuminated by Nigma's overzealous use of green lighting. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"Nothing, nothing…" Selina placated, tucking her hands behind her body as though it would make her look innocent.

Bruce narrowed his eyes at her, but moved to swing the door to Nigma's next challenge open at her silence.

"...say, how was it you two met, again? I seem to remember him complaining- you know, when we were both fitted with nanobombs and forced to work together by the lovely Miss Waller- I seem to remember him complaining about hypocrisy and surveillance and something about you being a control freak."

Bruce slammed the door behind her with more force than intended, that little rat of a man getting on his nerves, even without being physically present. He stormed off down the short hallway (there's the key case, should keep that in mind), throwing open the other door to reveal Nigma's final 'game'.

"Ooh, touchy… a little too close to the truth, purrhaps?"

"No," Bruce snapped. "The very first thing I came across of his doing was a corpse. He decided a man deserved to die for the crime of going in to work."

He circled the pit, examining the mechanisms. A simple sliding block puzzle, it seemed, with electromagnetic generators. The circular blades, he presumed to be some sort of punishment for incorrect solutions. And, at the back of the room, an electronic lock awaiting his sequencer.

"So…" Selina ventured, hovering behind him. The sequencer finished with the lock, setting the bookcase in motion and revealing a room cluttered with manic notes beyond. "What if he hadn't broken Batman's one big no-no?"

The tables, walls, and floors were all strewn with blueprints, each covered in Nigma's distinctive scrawl and doodles of Bruce meeting some sort of grisly end. "He stole, blackmailed, and coerced information out of people-"

"Like you do?"

"-and threatened to use it to topple the city," Bruce finished with a growl.

"By airing out the dirty laundry of the corrupt people in power? At least, that's how he phrased it. I'm sure you have some other way you tell it."

"I do." Bruce huffed, snatching one of the blueprints from the table. Concepts for Selina's detonating collar, it looked like, with more attention paid to aesthetic design than power. "Why are you defending him? He's kidnapped you, outfitted you with a bomb, and forced you to play his unhinged games all night."

Selina touched the collar with just the tips of her claws, her aggressively-plucked brows furrowing. "Oh, he'll get what's coming to him for this, mark my words." With a sigh, her hand dropped, landing on Bruce's, gently pulling the collar's blueprint from him. "...But he's running you ragged, Batman, and I think… If there's some way to fix this, without having to wear yourself out running back and forth across the city all night…"

She glanced over at the table, and Bruce picked up the helmet there. A ping came through his cowl, telling him he'd solved one of Nigma's riddles.

"You forced this contraption over my brain, I'll reward you with punishment, debasement, and pain."

"...And, well, I know you don't care about it as much, but… he's running himself ragged, too. Me and Eddie, we're not exactly close, but… I still don't want to see him killing himself over you. You go too far-"

"Enough," Bruce barked.

"No! You go too far with him! Don't you see it?! This, right here, all of this, it's because you fucked with him last time, got on a little power trip after solving his stupid fucking puzzles- and for what?! One fleeting moment of satisfaction out of bullying a guy you know won't fight back-"

"He hurts people, Selina-"

"He only does that to get to you!" She threw her hands up, pacing around the cluttered study. "It's all revenge for the bullshit you put him through! Fuck, if you did that to me, I'd come up with something twice as bad! But for some stupid reason, he gets under your fucking skin-"

"Don't compare yourself to him, you're nothing like-"

"But you are, Batman! That's what I'm getting at! This is all because the two of you are the exact same kind of stubborn fucking asshole- I'm sick of it! I've spent all damn night in this place, in this collar, without even anywhere to fucking sit, because two stubborn men can't get their heads out of their asses and fuck each other already!"

Bruce dropped the helmet in shock, certain he must have misheard her. "...What did you-"

"You heard me!" She insisted. "Suck him off, fold him in half, whatever you have to do, just- God, just leave me out of it!"

She stormed out of the room, marching off toward where the circular blades ended and the pit could be accessed.

"Selina…?" He called.

"Just- Let's just get this over with. When we finish this one, I can leave, and I don't have to hear any more of your self-righteous garbage or Eddie's Freudian fucking innuendos."

Bruce caught up to her, already fishing his remote electrical charge from the belt, but she stopped so abruptly he nearly ran into her.

"Promise me one thing, though," she insisted.

"Sure."

"Promise me you'll at least try, alright? Talk to him. For both your sakes- Or, fuck, for my sake, since you clearly don't care about your own self-preservation any more than you care about him. Just try to talk it out. He can be a reasonable guy, you know… when you aren't involved."

"I'll… try. That's all I can say."

"That's all I ask."

[fuckyeahfightlock]

Today’s scary movie was an interesting one, the 30-years-in-the-making stop-motion animated MAD GOD. Director/animator Phil Tippett has created a hellish, hopeless, gruesome little world of grotesques, beasts, and endless/pointless suffering out of some fantastically impressive models and backdrops. There are a few human actors sprinkled in, and a lot of distressing sound (baby babble/crying, wordless voices, grinding gears, clanging machinery). What there is very, very little of, is plot.

A steampunk looking fella--the Assassin--with a gas mask and a briefcase descends in a diving bell. And descends. And descends. Then he goes down stairs, ladders, elevators, down, down, forever down. (I thought this sense of endless, futile climbing downward--to the center of the earth? to hell? or are there no limits to how low people can go?--was the most effective part of the film) He sets a bomb near a mountain of briefcases, which fails when its timer sticks. The Last Man (punk rock filmmaker Alex Cox with long white acrylic tips that must look that way on purpose because they really stand out--not in a good way) sends down another Assassin in another diving bell. A surgeon and nurse perform a gruesome, in-it-to-elbows “surgery” on the first Assassin, removing guts, books, treasure, and finally a squalling, maggot-like creature from his abdomen. The creature is delivered to a sort of ethereal plague-doctor, who brings it to the Alchemst for liquification. It turns to gold dust, explodes with a big bang wink wink nudge nudge, a civilization rises and falls and I guess this film is either about The Monstrousness of War or The Futility of Fighting Time.

I don’t really know what it’s about. The aesthetic is horrific; Tippett definitely got the memo about Hair Teeth And Eyes. The film is impressive when you consider the stop-motion animation with its attendant detail, monotony, and probably a certain kind of madness (Phil Tippett himself may be the titular “mad god,” in the end). I don’t know what I would have thought of it had I not known its origin story. Nice to look at, but lacking any real substance.

[maximura]

ATEEZ: GUERRILLA

It has taken me three days to calm down and form coherent thoughts. This turned out longer than expected so it’s behind a cut. If you haven’t watched the music video, this is your sign from God. 

1) Firstly. Who does all the screaming. I want to know. It’s a very important piece of information that I need to know. The laugh is Hongjoong’s but does he also do all the screaming. I need answers, NASA! 

2) The Energy. Every single reaction I’ve seen about this song uses the word “energy”. Ateez do what other groups think they’re doing when the genre is hype because I’ve never NOT ONCE seen Ateez slack off. They leave blood and sweat on the floor for their rivals to slip on. When I first heard the song I thought my heart was just pounding from the excitement but my oximeter said I was actually having a near svt episode, lol. I shouldn’t laugh, it’s kind of unpleasant but HR 120 bpm? Yeah, only Ateez tbh. 

3) Production Quality. I’d like to thank the Academy and KQ for the increase in budget for the MV because it really shows. They used it in a way that wasn’t an empty flex (expensive clothes, meaningless sets, fireworks) but rather, added to the world they’ve been building up since debut. You can see the narrative continue and I really appreciate that. The audio production on the song is just flaw free for me. I usually have so much to nitpick, even in good songs, but I have nothing else to add to Guerrilla. It must have so many layers and tracks to it but it was quiet when it needed to be and absolutely feral at the right parts. What a way to end a track. It didn’t fade out but exploded like a grenade. You can’t ever say that Ateez don’t commit to a concept in every single sense. You’ve heard of Ugly Crying, well Ateez Ugly Hype and have never been afraid to do that. 

3) War Aesthetics. Okay bitch, listen, the creative team really stepped up 800% here for this era and this MV. There are so many warfare references in those 4 minutes that it makes my mind exhausted just thinking of the planning that went into all this. The speaker-bombs were fucking inspired. The use of zeppelins immediately remind me of war, particularly WW1, and an alternative steampunk reality. This part of the MV, which is a piece of art tbh, has got to be a homage to ‘Raising the flag on Iwo Jima’ during WW2 as well as Banksy’s Rage, The Flower Thrower piece in Jerusalem. I think that part of the MV was deliberately in slow motion because the inspiration came from still images. They make very clear statements about war and anti-war sentiments. Without boring you all, the last thing I wanted to mention is the font and colours used for the choreo scenes looks straight from vintage propaganda media. I could keep going but this post is already way too long.  

4) Metal/Rock Aesthetics. That band room? With all the cables and amps? The mics? The spy cameras? The tv monitors? The fisheye lens? You can tell the team has watched a billion 1990s music videos. It also reminded me a lot of American Idiot. That’s all I wanted to say about that. There’s just a lot of influence in those shots. 

5) Screamo in KPOP?! The way it was incorporated was really well done because it’s not prominent enough to scare away the more sensitive casual listener but it was definitely prominent enough for metal fans to have a crisis. We talk about Cultural Reset-This and Cultural Reset-That but nobody has produced a track like Guerrilla before. Nobody. This is one of those times where you can use hyperbole and be right. Nobody has made a song like this and there is no other song like this in KPOP right now. Respect to the Ateez team and the members for their total commitment because they operate like one big breathing organism and that’s why everything feels cohesive. I’ve been waiting 84 years for this. I hope we get to see it with a band one day. 

6) Kim Hongjoong. I don’t know if it’s true or not but I feel his influence all over this. This is HIS era and the style/genre suits him the best. I know he likes Linkin Park and at the very least, this style of music, but I do wonder how much he was able to dictate the Ateez sound and direction. Guerrilla is so good and fed me so well that even if they never do this style again, I’m actually fine with that. 

7) Literally. I just think it’s so amusing how literal this whole song/mv is. There’s just no “hidden meanings” or subtleties here. I’m not sure Ateez can even do subtle. Even their soft material is aggressively emotive. Haha. 

8) People sometimes wonder why I only write long reviews about Ateez music but it’s because they always give me meat to sink my teeth into. Answer is still my Top 3 favourite kpop songs of ALL TIME. There’s just always so much to talk about and it doesn’t even hinge on how hot the members are. You know a group is Legit Good when visual appeal isn’t the first thing I want to talk about. We’re so lucky to live in the Ateez Era. 

[assignmentimprobable]

A Mission Impossible (1996) Appreciation Post

When I think about MI ’96, I think a lot about the aesthetic and stylistic choices it made  (how I’ve been chasing that high ever since) Allow me to enumerate some of those things in another list formatted post:

Sound: The movie’s comfort with total silence. not a beat pause. No a music drop and then a rising crescendo for triumph. The deeply uncomfortable *cough cough* *sniff sniff* silence. You never get the sense that the movie is desperate to fill the space, point in fact it thrives on your discomfort. As a viewer of any cloth, you know its likely that Ethan Hunt is gonna come out of this, but you really ask yourself how far the team pulls before the rubberband snaps.  Hearing Luther talk near the sound sensor makes you want to jump out of your skin…. The suspense. The urgency. Donloe is coming. He’s coming but they can’t move at any pace except the one they set. Because if it’s not the decibel monitor, it’s the heat sensor, if it’s not the heat sensor it’s the motion sensor, and if it’s not any of that it’s the fucking knife! The one thing we weren’t even worried about! 

Space: The claustrophobic & contained nature of space need to be talked about. An all white room so vast and sleek- yet so small. Max’s car, the diner, the elevator shaft, the train cars, the phone booths. The safe house too. There’s all this space around each, but the amount that the characters are allowed to occupy as is narrow. It’s paramount that they take up as little space as possible to pull off the NOC List heist. The sets themselves do a lot of work, but we have to give ms. camera her dues. which brings me to my next ‘S’; 

Style: motherfuckin dutch tilts baybee!!! You get two (2) things out of their use as a technique:  (1) a sense of urgency for Ethan and Sarah when they’re under the elevator. One wrong move and they’re crushed, the camera accommodates and gets some foreshadowing in on what happens to Jack from a top down perspective and (2) the sense Ethan’s entire world has been tipped on its axis when Kittredge drops the big bomb in the diner scene. It’s as shocking for him as it is for us that *it was all a trap*. 

The first Mission Impossible movie was made with a film style that doesn’t? really exist anymore? I think that’s a bit of a shame, really. Then again, I’m glad the time of grossly framed pat-downs and “Ethan fucked my wife” allegations have passed. Claire might’ve aided and abetted the slaughter of her teammates, but fuck you for treating her like a piece of meat anyway @Director.

[letterboxd]

Blurring the Line.

As a new Space Jam film beams down to Earth, Kambole Campbell argues that a commitment to silliness and a sincere love for the medium is what it takes to make a great live-action/animation hybrid.

The live-action and animation hybrid movie is something of a dicey prospect. It’s tricky to create believable interaction between what’s real and what’s drawn, puppeteered or rendered—and blending the live and the animated has so far resulted in wild swings in quality. It is a highly specific and technically demanding niche, one with only a select few major hits, though plenty of cult oddities. So what makes a good live-action/animation hybrid?

To borrow words from Hayao Miyazaki, “live action is becoming part of that whole soup called animation”. Characters distinct from the humans they interact with, but rendered as though they were real creatures (or ghosts), are everywhere lately; in Paddington, in Scooby Doo, in David Lowery’s (wonderful) update of Pete’s Dragon.

The original ‘Pete’s Dragon’ (1977) alongside the 2016 remake.

Lowery’s dragon is realized with highly realistic lighting and visual-effects work. By comparison, the cartoon-like characters in the 1977 Pete’s Dragon—along with other films listed in Louise’s handy compendium of Disney’s live-action animation—are far more exaggerated. That said, there’s still the occasional holdout for the classical version of these crossovers: this year’s Tom and Jerry replicating the look of 2D through 3D/CGI animation, specifically harkens back to the shorts of the 1940s and ’50s.

One type of live-action/animation hybrid focuses on seamless immersion, the other is interested in exploring the seams themselves. Elf (2003) uses the aberration of stop-motion animals to represent the eponymous character as a fish out of water. Ninjababy, a Letterboxd favorite from this year’s SXSW Festival, employs an animated doodle as a representation of the protagonist’s state of mind while she processes her unplanned pregnancy.

Meanwhile, every Muppets film ever literally tears at the seams until we’re in stitches, but, for the sake of simplicity, puppets are not invited to this particular party. What we are concerned with here is the overlap between hand-drawn animation and live-action scenes (with honorable mentions of equally valid stop-motion work), and the ways in which these hybrids have moved from whimsical confections to nod-and-wink blockbusters across a century of cinema.

Betty Boop and Koko the clown in a 1938 instalment of the Fleischer brothers’ ‘Out of the Inkwell’ series.

Early crossovers often involve animators playing with their characters, in scenarios such as the inventive Out of the Inkwell series of shorts from Rotoscope inventor Max Fleischer and his director brother Dave. Things get even more interactive mid-century, when Gene Kelly holds hands with Jerry Mouse in Anchors Aweigh.

The 1960s and ’70s deliver ever more delightful family fare involving human actors entering cartoon worlds, notably in the Robert Stevenson-directed Mary Poppins and Bedknobs and Broomsticks, and Chuck Jones’ puntastic The Phantom Tollbooth.

Jerry and Gene dance off their worries in ‘Anchors Aweigh’ (1945).

Mary Poppins is one of the highest-rated live-action/animation hybrids on Letterboxd for good reason. Its sense of control in how it engages with its animated creations makes it—still!—an incredibly engaging watch. It is simply far less evil than the singin’, dancin’ glorification of slavery in Disney’s Song of the South (1946), and far more engaging than Victory Through Air Power (1943), a war-propaganda film about the benefits of long-range bombing in the fight against Hitler. The studio’s The Reluctant Dragon (1941) also serves a propagandistic function, as a behind-the-scenes studio tour made when the studio’s animators were striking.

By comparison, Mary Poppins’ excursions into the painted world—replicated in Rob Marshall’s belated, underrated 2018 sequel, Mary Poppins Returns—are full of magical whimsicality. “Films have added the gimmick of making animation and live characters interact countless times, but paradoxically none as pristine-looking as this creation,” writes Edgar in this review. “This is a visual landmark, a watershed… the effect of making everything float magically, to the detail of when a drawing should appear in front or the back of [Dick] Van Dyke is a creation beyond my comprehension.” (For Van Dyke, who played dual roles as Bert and Mr Dawes Senior, the experience sparked a lifelong love of animation and visual effects.)

Julie Andrews, Dick Van Dyke and penguins, in ‘Mary Poppins’ (1964).

Generally speaking, and the Mary Poppins sequel aside, more contemporary efforts seek to subvert this feeling of harmony and control, instead embracing the chaos of two worlds colliding, the cartoons there to shock rather than sing. Henry Selick’s frequently nightmarish James and the Giant Peach (1996) leans into this crossover as something uncanny and macabre by combining live action with stop motion, as its young protagonist eats his way into another world, meeting mechanical sharks and man-eating rhinos. Sally Jane Black describes it as “riding the Burton-esque wave of mid-’90s mall goth trends and blending with the differently demonic Dahl story”.

Science-classroom staple Osmosis Jones (2001) finds that within the human body, the internal organs serve as cities full of drawn white-blood-cell cops. The late Stephen Hillenburg’s The Spongebob Squarepants Movie (2004) turns its real-life humans into living cartoons themselves, particularly in a bonkers sequence featuring David Hasselhoff basically turning into a speedboat.

David Hasselhoff picks up speed in ‘The Spongebob Squarepants Movie’ (2004).

The absurdity behind the collision of the drawn and the real is never better embodied than in another of our highest-rated live/animated hybrids. Released in 1988, Robert Zemeckis’ Who Framed Roger Rabbit shows off a deep understanding—narratively and aesthetically—of the material that it’s parodying, seeking out the impeccable craftsmanship of legends such as director of animation Richard Williams (1993’s The Thief and the Cobbler), and his close collaborator Roy Naisbitt. The forced perspectives of Naisbitt’s mind-bending layouts provide much of the rocket fuel driving the film’s madcap cartoon opening.

Distributed by Walt Disney Pictures, Roger Rabbit utilizes the Disney stable of characters as well as the Looney Tunes cast to harken back to America’s golden age of animation. It continues a familiar scenario where the ’toons themselves are autonomous actors (as also seen in Friz Freleng’s 1940 short You Ought to Be in Pictures, in which Daffy Duck convinces Porky Pig to try his acting luck in the big studios).

Daffy Duck plots his rise up the acting ranks in ‘You Ought to Be in Pictures’ (1940).

Through this conceit, Zemeckis is able to celebrate the craft of animation, while pastiching both Chinatown, the noir genre, and the mercenary nature of the film industry (“the best part is… they work for peanuts!” a studio exec says of the cast of Fantasia). As Eddie Valiant, Bob Hoskins’ skepticism and disdain towards “toons” is a giant parody of Disney’s more traditional approach to matching humans and drawings.

Adult audiences are catered for with plenty of euphemistic humor and in-jokes about the history of the medium. It’s both hilarious (“they… dropped a piano on him,” one character solemnly notes of his son) and just the beginning of Hollywood toying with feature-length stories in which people co-exist with cartoons, rather than dipping in and out of fantasy sequences. It’s not just about how the cartoons appear on the screen, but how the human world reacts to them, and Zemeckis gets a lot of mileage out of applying ’toon lunacy to our world.

Bob Hoskins in ‘Who Framed Roger Rabbit?’ (1988).

The groundbreaking optical effects and compositing are excellent (and Hoskins’ amazing performance should also be credited for holding all of it together), but what makes Roger Rabbit such a hit is that sense of controlled chaos and a clever tonal weaving of violence and noirish seediness (“I’m not bad… I’m just drawn that way”) through the cartoony feel. And it is simply very, very funny.

It could be said that, with Roger Rabbit, Zemeckis unlocked the formula for how to modernize the live-action and animation hybrid, by leaning into a winking parody of what came before. It worked so perfectly well that it helped kickstart the ‘Disney renaissance' era of animation. Roger Rabbit has influenced every well-known live-action/animation hybrid produced since, proving that there is success and fun to be had by completely upending Mary Poppins-esque quirks. Even Disney’s delightful 2007 rom-com Enchanted makes comedy out of the idea of cartoons crossing that boundary.

When a cartoon character meets real-world obstacles.

Even when done well, though, hybrids are not an automatic hit. Sitting at a 2.8-star average, Joe Dante’s stealthily great Looney Tunes: Back in Action (2003) is considered by the righteous to be the superior live-action/animated Looney Tunes hybrid, harkening back to the world of Chuck Jones and Frank Tashlin. SilentDawn states that the film deserves the nostalgic reverence reserved for Space Jam: “From gag to gag, set piece to set piece, Back in Action is utterly bonkers in its logic-free plotting and the constant manipulation of busy frames.”

With its Tinseltown parody, Back in Action pulls from the same bag of tricks as Roger Rabbit; here, the Looney Tunes characters are famous, self-entitled actors. Dante cranks the meta comedy up to eleven, opening the film with Matthew Lillard being accosted by Shaggy for his performance in the aforementioned Scooby Doo movie (and early on throwing in backhanded jokes about the practice of films like itself as one character yells, “I was brought in to leverage your synergy!”).

Daffy Duck with more non-stop banter in ‘Looney Tunes: Back in Action’ (2003).

Back in Action is even more technically complex than Roger Rabbit, seamlessly bringing Looney Tunes physics and visual language into the real world. Don’t forget that Dante had been here before, when he had Anthony banish Ethel into a cartoon-populated television show in his segment of Twilight Zone: The Movie. Another key to this seamlessness is star Brendan Fraser, at the height of his powers here as “Brendan Fraser’s stunt double”.

Like Hoskins before him, Fraser brings a wholehearted commitment to playing the fed-up straight man amidst cartoon zaniness. Fraser also brought that dedication to Henry Selick's Monkeybone (2001), a Roger Rabbit-inspired sex comedy that deploys a combo of stop-motion animation and live acting in a premise amusingly close to that of 1992’s Cool World (but more on that cult anomaly shortly). A commercial flop, Back in Action was the last cinematic outing for the Looney Tunes for some time.

Nowadays, when we think of live-action animation, it’s hard not to jump straight to an image of Michael Jordan’s arm stretching to do a half-court dunk to save the Looney Tunes from slavery. There’s not a lot that can be fully rationalized about the 1996 box-office smash, Space Jam. It is a bewildering cartoon advert for Michael Jordan’s baseball career, dreamed up off the back of his basketball retirement, while also mashing together different American icons. Never forget that the soundtrack—one that, according to Benjamin, “makes you have to throw ass”—includes a song with B-Real, Coolio, Method Man and LL Cool J.

Michael Jordan and teammates in ‘Space Jam’ (1996).

Space Jam is a film inherently born to sell something, predicated on the existing success of a Nike commercial rather than any obvious passion for experimentation. But its pure strangeness, a growing nostalgia for the nineties, and meticulous compositing work from visual-effects supervisor Ed Jones and the film’s animation team (a number of whom also worked on both Roger Rabbit and Back in Action), have all kept it in the cultural memory.

The films is backwards, writes Jesse, in that it wants to distance itself from the very cartoons it leverages: “This really almost feels like a follow-up to Looney Tunes: Back in Action, rather than a predecessor, because it feels like someone watched the later movie, decided these Looney Tunes characters were a problem, and asked someone to make sure they were as secondary as possible.” That attempt to place all the agency in Jordan’s hands was a point of contention for Chuck Jones, the legendary Warner Bros cartoonist. He hated the film, stating that Bugs would never ask for help and would have dealt with the aliens in seven minutes.

Space Jam has its moments, however. Guy proclaims “there is nothing that Deadpool as a character will ever have to offer that isn’t done infinitely better by a good Bugs Bunny bit”. For some, its problems are a bit more straightforward, for others it’s a matter of safety in sport. But the overriding sentiments surrounding the film point to a sort of morbid fascination with the brazenness of its concept.

Holli Would (voiced by Kim Basinger) and Frank Harris (Brad Pitt) blur the lines in ‘Cool World’ (1992).

Existing in the same demented… space… as Space Jam, Paramount Pictures bought the idea for Cool World from Ralph Bakshi as it sought to have its own Roger Rabbit. While Brad Pitt described it as “Roger Rabbit on acid” ahead of release, Cool World itself looks like a nightmare version of Toontown. The film was universally panned at the time, caught awkwardly between being far too adult for children but too lacking in any real substance for adults (there’s something of a connective thread between Jessica Rabbit, Lola Bunny and Holli Would).

Ralph Bakshi’s risqué and calamitously horny formal experiment builds on the animator’s fascination with the relationship between the medium and the human body. Of course, he would go from the immensely detailed rotoscoping of Fire and Ice (1983) to clashing hand-drawn characters with real ones, something he had already touched upon in the seventies with Heavy Traffic and Coonskin, whose animated characters were drawn into real locations. But no one besides Bakshi quite knew what to do with the perverse concept of Brad Pitt as a noir detective trying to stop Gabriel Byrne’s cartoonist from having sex with a character that he drew—an animated Kim Basinger.

Jack Deebs (Gabriel Byrne) attempts to cross over to Hollie Would in ‘Cool World’ (1992).

Cool World’s awkwardness can be attributed to stilted interactions between Byrne, Pitt and the animated world, as well as studio meddling. Producer Frank Mancuso Jr (who was on the film due to his father running Paramount) demanded that the film be reworked into something PG-rated, against Bakshi’s wishes (he envisioned an R-rated horror), and the script was rewritten in secret. It went badly, so much so that Bakshi eventually punched Mancuso Jr in the face.

While Cool World averages two stars on Letterboxd, there are some enthusiastic holdouts. There are the people impressed by the insanity of it all, those who just love them a horny toon, and then there is Andrew, a five-star Cool World fan: “On the surface, it’s a Lovecraftian horror with Betty Boop as the villain, featuring a more impressive cityscape than Blade Runner and Dick Tracy combined, and multidimensional effects that make In the Mouth of Madness look like trash. The true star, however, proves to be the condensed surplus of unrelated gags clogging the arteries of the screen—in every corner is some of the silliest cel animation that will likely ever be created.”

There are even those who enjoy its “clear response to Who Framed Roger Rabbit”, with David writing that “the film presents a similar concept through the lens of the darkly comic, perverted world of the underground cartoonists”, though also noting that without Bakshi’s original script, the film is “a series of half steps and never really commits like it could”. Cool World feels both completely deranged and strangely low-energy, caught between different ideas as to how best to mix the two mediums. But it did give us a David Bowie jam.

‘Space Jam: A New Legacy’ is in cinemas and on HBO Max now.

Craft is of course important, but generally speaking, maybe nowadays a commitment to silliness and a sincere love for the medium’s history is the thing that makes successful live-action/animation hybrids click. It’s an idea that doesn’t lend itself to being too cool, or even entirely palatable. The trick is to be as fully dotty as Mary Poppins, or steer into the gaucheness of the concept, à la Roger Rabbit and Looney Tunes: Back in Action.

It’s quite a tightrope to walk between good meta-comedy and a parade of references to intellectual property. The winningest strategy is to weave the characters into the tapestry of the plot and let the gags grow from there, rather than hoping their very inclusion is its own reward. Wait, you said what is coming out this week?

Related content

Rootfish Jones’s list of cartoons people are horny for

The 100 Sequences that Shaped Animation: the companion list to the Vulture story

Jose Moreno’s list of every animated film made from 1888 to the present

Follow Kambole on Letterboxd

[pointnumbersixteen]

Imagine if captain saw Captain America: The First Avenger as most of it is set during ww2

I think Cap would love the first part of Captain America: the First Avenger. First, there's the 40's aesthetic, the music, all the handsome men.

And, I mean, you can easily interpret that there's some sort of romantic relationship between Bucky and Steve (who will be known as Steve through this writing, because the Captain is Cap for me and things could easily get confusing). I mean, just look at the way they look at each other. Just look at the way they talk to each other. Steve has no interest dancing with those two girls Bucky picked up. This is a longstanding disagreement between them. Bucky thinks it would be best if they both had beards (by which I mean young women to go through the motions of dating, to prevent people from guessing they're gay) and Steve really isn't interested in doing that.

And then it gets better: Steve, who really wants to be in the military, but who has basically none of the qualities desirable to the military besides a willingness to jump on bombs and a very occasional clever thought, gets picked anyway, to be The-Best-Soldier-Ever-TM. And the Captain, who really was in the military and devoted to it, but who had basically none of the qualities desirable to the military besides a willingness to jump on bombs and a very occasional clever thought, likes this idea.

And then it gets better: Steve goes into the super-soldier machine and comes out with pecs and abs you could just lick. I absolutely believe the Captain would have this thought. (Well, I certainly did anyway.) This just gets better and better, doesn't it?

Except it doesn't. First, it sort of stalls. Cap's in the rear when we see him in the wartime flashbacks in Redding Weddy, but I think, at least, that he would have much rather been at the front. Steve could probably quite easily go to the front after taking the serum if he wanted to, but instead he agrees to stay in the rear... and join a chorus line show? The chorus line show does speak to the Captain's inner theater gay, but he doesn't necessarily understand or approve of this choice. I mean, Bucky's out there. Go join him, dude.

Then it gets worse: part of the movie's going to be set in wartime Britain... but most of the British people we see are extra shitty, to help prove how great the Americans are in comparison. And really, the British took the harder blow from Germany in WWII, but in this movie, as in life, America gets all of the glory and a lot of the credit.

Then it gets worse: instead of this actually being a movie about WWII, but with a very hot super soldier, a premise that Cap would probably very much enjoy... we use the fight against Hitler and fascism as a backdrop for a bizarre film about a madman who melted his own face off to gain superpowers then used ancient Norse magic-ish to make pew-pew vaporizing guns, but pew-pew vaporizing guns none of the bad guys can apparently use to any effect, because they never seem to hit any of the good guys with them, which we see when Steve the super-soldier-hero raids the weapons research facilities various times, plowing his way through scores of scientists and security guards who can't shoot (and super soldier against weakling untrained scientists and bottom-of-the-barrel soldiers who can't shoot really isn't much of a fight, is it?).

Then it gets worse: there's a hope spot where Steve rescues his boyfriend Bucky from a POW camp housed in one of these research bases and it looks like this could be turned into a lovely gay hurt-comfort plot. But no. No. No. Bucky is killed off shortly thereafter instead, plunged off a mountain utterly senselessly, after one of those Cliffhanger failed give-me-your-hand moments instead. It looks like it's a bury-your-gays sort of day.

Then it gets worse: because suddenly Steve is very straight? And very in love? With a woman? Whom he's only spent a matter of probably a few hours with, at least that we can see? Almost always in company, and almost always bickering when not? And he is madly in love with her? And she is the love of his life?

Then it gets worse: because the big-baddie suddenly decides to deal with the problem of Captain America destroying most of his facilities by... blowing up all the major cities in America? Like, I feel like there are a host of solutions that would make more sense. And then he touches the magic-shiny-box and gets sucked off to magic-shiny-box land.

Then it gets worse: because Captain America deals with this whole plane issue by... plunging himself to near certain doom into the freezing ocean. Like, I feel like there are a host of solutions that would make more sense than that, too.

But wait! There's a twist ending: but it's kind of meh. Steve's actually alive, frozen, rescued, and dethawed in modern day New York City! Except... while for us, that's a pretty cool ending, in a look-the-WWII-super-soldier-is-in-our-time-now way, for the Captain, modern day New York City is as meaningless to him as it was to Steve. More so, even, because he at least is from NYC and future Times Square is probably recognizable as future Times Square to him. Future (Modern) Times Square means nothing to Cap. And maybe he thinks the idea is a bit cool... like, what would it be like if he was suddenly alive in modern times? But of course, Steve's major regret at the end of the movie is that he missed his heterosexual dancing date, so the whole thing ends on a low note.

Overall, I do not think the Captain would come out a big fan of the Captain America movies, first or otherwise. But he might sit through the first part of it again, if someone else wanted to watch... because damn those abs you could lick... and that chorus line bit with Hitler really isn't bad stuff.

[legionofpotatoes]

we decided to watch all story cutscenes from the new resident evil village videogame on a whim, since it’s not really our cup of tea gameplay-wise but seems to be this massive zeitgeist moment that made us morbidly curious. And I know how much everyone cares about my thoughts on things I know very little about, so. let’s get into it huh gamers. and yeah spoilers?

for context, I’ve only played resident evil 4 and a small portion of 5. I also read the wikipedia entry for 7’s plot recently. all this to say I was only vaguely aware of how tonally wacky the series was going in

I also completely gave up following the plot of the mutagens’ soap opera, so that paid off in spades here as you might imagine

anyway so that baby in the intro. that baby’s head is just massive. humongous toddlerdome. when ethan finds the baby’s head in a jar later on. there is no way that head would fit into that jar. bad game design. no not even game design. basic stuff. one hundred years in prison for jar modeler

if I see a single functional hetero marriage in video games I will cry tears of joy. I understand their misery is kind of The Point irt them badly working through the hillbilly romp trauma but like. sheesh. at least set that up as an emotional story goal the plot will help resolve. but nope they start off miserable and it goes nowhere

I know I know the mia thing has a huge wrinkle in it but like. not really in terms of dramatic function?? set up a happy end to the re7 nightmare (miranda can keep up appearances for all she cares) and then take that all away from angry griffin mcelroy for manpain. it will still absolutely work to set up the dramatic forward momentum. why throw in this cliche Hollywood Tension in their marriage if you’re not going to address it oh maybe because it’s normalized as automatically interesting because nuclear families are a self-propagating pit of a very narrow chance at emotional happiness relying on social stigma to preserve their empty function oops my baggage slipped in yikes abort mission

I called him griffin mcelroy because I saw his face on twitter and. yeah. I will continue to do this occasionally. my house my rules

... fuck the reason I’m hung up on this is specifically because the rest of the game is so tonally dexterous (which is a shining point to me! more on that later!), and yet they felt weirdly compelled to create the aesthetic trapping of a family-at-odds trope without following it through too well. a sign of both the good and the bad stuff to come

but listen the real reason why I wanted to talk about any of this is to nitpick the fascinating backwards-engineered nucleus of the entire thing; in that this game essentially creates a melting pot of just SO many disparate horror tropes and then makes a no-holds-barred unhinged effort at weaving thick lore to piece them all together. it is truly a sight to behold. like straight up you got your backwoods fright night situation, your gothic castle vampires, your rural-industrial werewolves, and don’t forget your bloated swamp monsters over there, with then a hard left turn into robotic body horror, and the entire ass subgenre of Creepy Doll writ large, and the bloodborne tentacle monsters, and a hellboy angel bossfight, which rides on the coattails of a mech-on-mech pacific rim bonanza, and just jesus henry christ slow down

almost all of these are textural hijack jobs that don’t really get into the metaphor plain of any of those settings but the game sort-of makes an argument that the texture IS the point and revels in it. It is kind of admirable almost. The same reason why the intro felt boxed in and unmotivated is also why the rest of the game just blasts off of its hinges to the point of complete and self-indulgent tonal abandon. I kinda loved that about it. lady dimitrescu made sure to hold her hat down as she bent forward in mahogany doorways and then suddenly she’s a giant gore dragon and you settle in your temp role as dark souls man with Gun to take her ass down. Excellent??

this rhino rampage impulse to gobble up every horror aesthetic known to man comes to head when the game wrestles with its FPS trappings in what is the most hilarious solution in creating visceral player damage moments. Since most cinematics and the entire game is in first person, that leaves precious little real estate for the devs to work with if they really want to sell griffin’s physical crucible. To wit. This dude’s forearms. Specifically just the forearms. They are MASSACRED throughout the story. The poor man lives out the silent hill dimension of a hand model. by the end cutscene he looks like a neatly dressed desk clerk who had decided to stick both his grabbers into garbage disposal grinders just a few hours prior. like in addition to everything else it manages to rope in that tinge of slapstick violence into its general grievous genre collection except this time it IS for a lack of trying! truly incredible

but wait his miracle clawbacks from everything his poor paws go through are retroactively explained away, yes, but far too vaguely and far too late to console me as I sat and watched everyone’s favorite baby brother reattach an entirely severed hand to his wrist stump by just. placing it on there. and giving it a lil twist ‘n pop terminator-style. and then willing his fingers back into motion right in front of my bulging eyes. this game just does not care. it does not give a shit. and boy howdy will it work to make that into one of its strongest suits

cause generally speaking resident evil was THE premiere vanilla zombie content destinaysh for like a decade, right? and as the rest of the world and mainstream media started encroaching and bloodying its blue ocean it went and just exploded in every single conceivable horror trope direction like a smilodon on catnip. truly, genuinely fascinating franchise moves

yeah the big vampire milf is hot. other news; grass... green. although I do love the implication that her closet is just identical white dresses on a rack. cartoon network-level queen shit

apropos of nothing I’ve said there’s also this hobo dante-devimaycry-magneto man, and I can’t believe this sentence makes sense. anyway he made that “boulder-punching asshole” joke referring to chris redfield and it was probably the only easter egg that really landed for me and boy did it land hard. I have not seen him punch the boulder in re5, mind. I had only heard about how funny it is from friends. and here this dude was, probably in the same exact mindset as me, trying to grapple with that insane mental image. with you on that ian mckellen, loud and clear

I advocate vehemently against the shallow pursuit of hyper photorealism in art direction but I gotta admit it works really in favor of immersive horror like this. the european village shacks especially gave me super unchill flashbacks to my rural countryside retreat in western georgia. I could smell the linoleum dude. not cool

faces are weird in this game. can’t place it. nice textures, good animation, but the modeling template is... uuh strange? and the hair. it has that clustered-flat-clumpy look that harkens to something very specific and unpleasant but I just don’t know what. sue me

griffin’s mental aptitude to take all this shit in stride and end every seemingly traumatizing bossfight involving some fucking eldritch being yet unseen through mortal eyes by essentially throwing out an MCU quip is just. What the fuck dude? I mean that was funny how you casually yelled the f-word at a god damn werewolf that you considered a fairy tale an hour ago but are you like, all right?? it was swinging a sledgehammer the size of a bus at you, ethan

oh oh the vampires are afraid of cold and your last name is winters. I get it haha

Pro Gamer Nitpick: boss fights seemed a bit unnecessarily long?? idk why the youtuber we picked decided the ENTIRE propeller man fight counted towards the vital story scenes he was stitching together, but man mr big daddy lite there really had some get up and go huh??

why are they saying dimitrescu.. like that. is it really how you say that word or is the english language relapsing into its fetish for ending every single word with a consonant at all costs

I’m not saying it’s a dramatic miss of a twist in context of all that’s going on, but the “you died in the last game actually and have been DC’s clayface ever since” revelation is low-key. it’s. it’s just funny to me, I dont know what to say. century-old god-witch fails her evil plan after she mistakenly removes heart from what was definitely NOT just some white guy with eight fingers after all

chris realizing he’s about to become the player character and immediately swapping out his tsundere trenchcoat for the muscletight sex haver sweater

the little bluetooth speaker-sized pipe bomb he taped to his knife was nuclear?? really??? I must have missed something because that is just too good. I buy it though I totally buy it. chris just got them fun-sized nukes in his car trunk for, you guessed it, Situations

anyway this is all for now just wanted to briefly touch on how unexpectedly funny and tonally irreverent this seemingly serious game turned out to be. did not articulate any cathartic story beats whatsoever but my god it had fun connecting those plot points. he just fucking put his severed hand back on his stump and it Just Worked todd howard get in here

[parcy-anda]

I adore the idea of Ruv & Sarv together both platonically and romantically,  and that goes double for Whitty & Carol, but I’m also a piece-of-trash multi-shipper with a strong lean towards fluff.

Heads up: no ideas are my own — the inspiration came from  this. >v<; I just wanted to shake off some dust and enjoy what I thought was a sweet concept.

My silly rambles are below the cut if you’re interested, but I’m super awkward and will go hide now.

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I was a bit conflicted about posting art of these two, as from what I’ve read, drama following the mods ruined these guys+ for their respective creators but I keep up on some tags out of curiosity, and seeing the post linked above made me want to try something that condensed most of their ideas. I'm a sucker for anything soft and wholesome.

While I did visual research for the characters, dinghies and an intentional + aesthetically-appropriate design for Ruv based on a few species of cold-water [comb] jellies, I had no idea/was-too-stubborn-to-further-research how to draw [jellyfish] sirens or how to handle the lighting effects for a pic like this — and it shows.

Finally: GEEBUS, I don’t know if this is even worth sharing, but as prep, I did sketch a rough concept of siren!Ruv based on visual research. I have no idea if I’ll try to polish this concept, as while Jellies are often inherently frilly, it seems painfully out-of-place for him. @v@

Update: I wrote a silly ficlet to follow up this pic. I’ll hide it here, rather than put it on display in a fresh post. =v=; Apologies for address-repetition, rambling, and the obliviousness trope but if anyone actually likes it, sweetness.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

Whitty kept his eyes on the stars, of which there was no shortage out here. Beyond the light, passing swells, he'd heard the gentle splashing against the boat, and felt something slippery and mitten-like wrap around his shoe. His foot twitched, but he didn't pull away. He knew who it was; after, all, they'd agreed to meet here... in this general area. The open ocean provided few landmarks, but they'd settled on a few miles northeast of the dock Whitty always started from.

It was still really, really strange. He was getting better about trusting the siren, but jellyfish are jellyfish, and he was in no hurry to be stung, accidentally or otherwise. Without moving, he chanced a glimpse to the other end of the boat — Ruv was looking down at something. The sentient bomb heard a gravelly shift — oh... more "treasures".

Lately, the gelatinous merman had been in the odd habit of bringing stones and coral fragments with him, and this time, he'd brought a bucketful. Whitty stifled a hissing chuckle at what he could now tell was bright green plastic. Ruv must have taken some child's beach toy from somewhere. The only thing he didn't really get was why.

Ruv wasn't much of a talker, and was stone-faced as they came. All the bomb-man could tell was that the siren seemed to bring these things for him... and the slight glow of his bioluminescence flared every time Whitty looked at him or said so much as a word. And today, he was ALIGHT. Whitty tensed as he felt Ruv squeeze his shoe tighter... was this in his head, or did the siren look nervous?

Carefully, Ruv lifted the bucket out of the water completely, over the edge and placed it squarely on the floor of the dinghy by Whitty's outstretched leg... and stared. At Whitty. In the glowing, ember-y eyes. Inky drops of "sweat" seeped through the sphere of his head and dripped back down to the fuse... an anxious laugh tumbled between his teeth set in a forced smile.

"Thanks, man." He finally managed to say, glancing briefly at the bucket before looking back at Ruv, who hadn't moved, save for the lightest lapping  against the underside of the boat, to keep his balance and place. Whitty usually didn't mind the stargazing, but then, it had never been this quiet or... intensely awkward. You're making it weird, man. Whitty thought to himself worriedly, but gave it a few seconds.

Things did not get better. Silent as before, Ruv's behaviour drastically shifted once more. The glow faded, he sank out of Whitty's view, and the grip on his shoe loosened before disappearing completely. Just slightly alarmed, Whitty planted most of his weight in the middle of the small boat, before stretching his neck to look out over the edge — the siren was still there, face half-submerged and, by the angle of the lone, now-barely luminous eye, not quite facing the boat. With just a crescent moon to light the seascape, Whitty was relieved to see anything... if the glow had wholly vanished, he would have been impossible to distinguish from the water.

"... what did I do, now?" Whitty sighed, trying not to sound too annoyed. He was certainly intrigued by the merman, he wouldn't keep coming back to visit otherwise. They could probably be really good friends if Ruv would actually communicate. But he didn't. He always kept Whitty wondering, and the bomb hated that. He hated not knowing what to expect.

When Ruv stayed silent and with his back to the dinghy, Whitty huffed quietly and turned his attention to the bucket. It was quite the assortment, this time. Some where rough, some smooth, some glossy, some blue, some... very, very round. He picked up that oddball, and his eyes widened as he realized what it was. It was a pearl, a black one, and a pretty good size.

"Okay, w-why? Why do you keep bringing me stuff like this?" He sputtered, holding up the pearl and bucket. He'd tried asking questions before, but seldom got normal or satisfactory answers. He hoped this time would be different.

He got a reaction, at least: he caught the eye angling slightly back toward him, and a flicker of light returning. He could have sworn he saw the mouth twitch, though mostly into a frown. When Ruv's hands weighed delicately on the top of the stern, Whitty sat back in an effort to keep the boat level. Taking in what body language he could, Whitty saw now, just how tired Ruv appeared to be, as if it was all he could do to keep his one eye open. With a sense of urgency, Whitty dragged himself back to reality, gesturing emphatically as he asked again: "Why? What's this for? Use your words, man."

Immediately, Ruv's eye narrowed and his slight frown deepened, prompting a small flinch from the bomb. Whitty was fully expecting to be stung, and braced himself for it, eyes closed. He nearly jumped out of his skin when instead, he heard a THUD against the dinghy's edge. Then again, and again. Opening his eyes, he saw Ruv repeatedly, quite deliberately, throwing his forehead into the side of the boat. Apparently, he was frustrated, too.

Whitty was about to tell the siren to cut it out when it suddenly stopped. Ruv's head was now set still against the stern, shoulders rising, then falling in a quiet sigh, before he rested his chin on the rim between his hands. The face Whitty took for 'tired' before now simply looked defeated. The bomb-headed young man refrained from saying anything, realizing words were only flustering the merman, but he knew Ruv could talk. They'd talked before... mostly Ruv just said he wasn't going to sting Whitty, but still, Ruv had spoken. There was no point in acting like he couldn't.

So lost was he in his thoughts, he'd hardly noticed himself nearing the boat's edge. For a moment, he thought he'd leaned in on his own, as if to listen closely for an answer, but... no. The movement had been completely subconscious. Oh, f- this isn't some legit-siren shit Ruv's pulling, right? Probably not, hopefully not. I mean, I'm definitely in control of my thoughts. He was snapped out of those thoughts by another sigh from Ruv, even though he had yet to say a word.

Silently, Ruv took the pearl and held it up between his and Whitty's faces — he should get that, right? Looking around it, Whitty's face proved puzzled still. Agitated, Ruv snatched a piece of volcanic glass he'd found from the bucket, placing it over Whitty's hand and wrapping his own over both, before expectantly looking back up to his land-dwelling friend's face. That nervous smile was back, and Whitty had to laugh off the awkwardness while he searched for the words.

"Aha...ha... this stuff looks... kind of like me?" He asked more than said, glancing a few times between the contents of the bucket and Ruv — there were a number of articles reminiscent of his clothing and skin's colors, not to mention textures. Whitty's heart spasmed violently at the way Ruv's face quite literally lit up. Reluctantly, he spun his free hand in a wheeling motion, continuing, "... which means...?" The glow flickered, but remained and Whitty thought he saw Ruv's eye twitch. The bomb grimaced before trying to intuit the meaning behind this, "Yes, please! Spell it out!" It was weird as hell, but he needed to know what it meant, and it was high time Ruv just gave him a straight answer.

Mista-BIG MISTAKE. — was the only coherent thought Whitty managed, as for a moment, all his senses could register was a splash and icy water enveloping him face-first. He'd been hauled from the boat and into the dark, frigid ocean. On instinct, he struggled, panicked against the feeling of cold seeping into him, and he gasped the second he felt air on his face. He took a second to process what was happening now:

He was breathing, his head was back above water... he was... not being strangled, even though it felt terrifyingly similar. Ruv was thoroughly wrapped around him, his face pressed into the bomb's neck and... nuzzling? It made Whitty squirm at first, it really was a bit of a disturbing sensation, but then suddenly, he stiffened and warmed all over as a blush spilled across his face and the realization dawned on him. If the siren hadn't been keeping him afloat, he'd have sunk for lack of movement. He was frozen in an entirely different sense now.