Ghost Kitchen (brought to you by criminal entrepreneur, Red Hood)
Danny’s got the easiest job in Gotham.
He works as a fry cook at a shoddily-run, independent burger joint. Hardly anyone comes in, despite prices being criminally low, and portions insanely large, and while the manager looks like the average tough-as-nails ex-con, he lets Danny mess around in the kitchen whenever the place is empty. (Which is often. This place has to be the city’s hidden gem or something!)
Mr. Manager’s the only one ever there with Danny, except for sometimes when his buddies come over to smoke and play cards. Danny would find it shady, except part of his job is not to ask questions. Literally, he was told during the interview.
(It was a weird interview. Why would they need to hire someone who’s been in a gunfight before? Like, he has, but Gotham’s idea of “hirable qualities” is so bizarre.)
So instead he whips up some killer burgers with the frozen ingredients, and basks in the praise as the guys tell him he shouldn’t have, he does too much for this joint, ain’t that friendly!
Now, Danny’s a chef on the newer side. As a teen he’d preferred the look of Nasty Burger over anything with Michelin stars, and he only really took up cooking after Jazz moved out for college. But just like ecto-exposure used to turn the groceries sentient, Danny’s low-level ecto signature imbues all his food with something historically haunted Gothamites just love! And Danny’s never been one to half-ass a job when it makes people happy.
With fresher produce, real meat, Danny’s sure he can take his dishes to the next level. It takes a couple months of badgering, but his manager finally agrees to contact the mysterious store owner, who keeps the place going, despite profits Danny knows have to be in the red.
Danny spends the morning prepping. He pours his heart into his food, eager to impress. The big boss will be here soon, and he wants to prove that despite the dangerous location, this place has real potential!
It isn’t until the Red Hood shows up that Danny realizes he’s been working for a money laundering scheme.
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Been watching that new Hazbin Hotel show as it's coming out (🏴☠️) and I'm pretty disappointed with it. I'm not super familiar with the Everything about it, but I remember watching the pilot way back when and liking the premise.
I hadnt kept up with it after the pilot because I wanted to see it with fresh eyes. Now that the show is coming out, somehow I feel like an outsider watching it lol. It presents a lot of concepts, but it just assumes the watcher is already familiar with the characters, and it makes the pacing reeeeally odd. It's all payoff, no buildup (unless you count the years fans had to wait for it as 'build up'). I feel like I REALLY need to look for supplementary material to understand what's going on,, like.... why was there a whole emotional power ballad for a character who was only introduced 10 minutes prior?? Was I supposed to know who she was?😭 (her heels were cool though)
Tonally it's strange, too. It feels like an adult show written for teenagers a lot of the time, which is the BIGGEST disappointment. I was really hoping for more thoughtful explorations of the characters, but we really only get that for Angel Dust and like .... no one else lol. (Sir Pentious is the 👏FUCKING👏BEST👏)
Charlie and Vaggie feel ESPECIALLY underbaked. Considering how overtly sexual the show is, it's SHOCKING how little chemistry they have. Like, it's not there at all. I watched the show with a friend who had no knowledge about Hazbin Hotel whatsoever, and during episode 4, she asked me,"So why is Vaggie helping here?" which I feel is the best example I can give for how poorly developed their relationship is.
I like the music. The song transitions are usually really jarring (Respectless and Hell's Greatest Dad come to mind) but the songs themselves are usually bangers. I'm a big fan of Loser, Baby.
The designs are ..... not for me. But that's not necessarily a criticism. A lot of the character designs feel very dated, but I respect them for sticking so hard to the aesthetic they present, even if its not for me. I wish there was more outfit and body type variety in the characters, but literally EVERYONE says that, so I'll just leave that there lol.
Overall I think this show is a shining example of why """"filler"""" episodes are so important. If this were a 12 or even 24 episode season I think it'd be way better, but as it is, they're trying to cram like 15 different character arcs + a dramatic overarching story into 8 episodes, and it's really REALLY suffering for it.
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okay so. hear me out. but. au concept--
joel is one of many people affected by a Vanishing. its a phenomenon sweeping the country--people simply not showing up for work, school, life one day, as though they've vanished from the face of the earth. it's almost possible to mistake for normal missing persons cases, if it weren't for the way a few of the higher-profile Vanishings have happened to people who shouldn't have been able to vanish at all, let alone in a way that wouldn't be noticed until too late. look at joel's hometown. the people monitoring the dam were supposed to be redundant, and yet--
anyway. not like he cares or anything, except for the fact this stupid disaster or whatever has left him without anywhere to live or anyone to live with, and he still has a year of high school left, so he can't just do whatever he wants. luckily there's this school in a town called new hermiton that agreed to give him a scholarship to finish his education in the name of recovery and solidarity or whatever, and it's kind of a shwankier school than he'd normally go for, but it's free and, more importantly, they're willing to pay for his lodging, and he can't really turn that down. and it's not like he has a choice but to upend his entire life now. so packing what few of his belongings survived into a bag and getting on a train and moving across the country to a new school it is, he guesses.
(he's been having nightmares that inexplicably feature swarms of blue butterflies. last time he checked, lakes don't have butterflies in them. although maybe it's a metaphor or something, on account of the butterflies saying stupid stuff about how people who are remembered can't disappear, and even a false world cannot be erased if it's watched over, and how fate depends on him holding people in his heart. thanks for saying the same stupid shitty platitudes his social worker told him, just more cryptically, butterflies. real cool.)
new hermiton, it turns out, is a small city. while new hermiton academy is a newer school, much of the city is older. he's moved into a nice enough flat in an older apartment building. he has another cryptic butterfly dream. he thinks he remembers someone trying to urgently warn him of something, but it's all... shaky. that morning, he goes to the school for the first time. he's greeted by a fellow transfer student, skizzleman, although apparently he already knows some of the other folks in town, and transferred here so he could stay with them. but it's at least someone else in a similar enough situation to joel, especially since joel can just tell by the way people are looking at him that skizz didn't have much of a choice but to be here, either, and best friends with impulse or not, he's on his own too.
so. a friend. maybe this school won't be that bad, even if joel keeps having nightmares, and even if the weather here is weirdly cold for july, and even if his new homeroom professor keeps on looking at him really weirdly. (aren't professors supposed to be better about stupid rumors anyway? what's that mr. hills's deal?)
and then, two days later, he waves skizz off at the end of the school day, and gets skizz's friend, impulse, at his door, desperate to hear that skizz had just come to stay the night in joel's shitty lonely apartment, because otherwise it looks like--come on man. joel's already having a shit time. the universe deciding to go after his one existing friend too? he promises impulse to help investigate that night, in the vain hope that Skizz isn't one of the Vanished. joel gets a splitting migraine trying to follow their path back, though, and they have to stop for the night.
skizz is reported missing the next morning. joel resigns himself to cutting himself off from the people around him, as per usual. then, strangely, mr. hills corners him as he goes home.
"you'll need this," he says, and shoves what feels like a cheap butterfly knife into joel's hands. "uh, remember, trust your heart! you'll know how to use it."
"what," joel says. "hold on. you're supposed to be a teacher. why are you giving me this. i know for a fact my file says i have like, ptsd or whatever, which is stupid, but you definitely aren't supposed to be giving me a knife, you weirdo?"
"you'll know how to use it," joe hills says again. "goodbye! believe in yourself!"
mr. hills sprints behind a building before he has to explain anything else. joel is left standing on the sidewalk holding a knife, staring after him.
so. that's weird as hell. joel shivers in the cold and continues on his way home. the butterfly knife feels heavy in his pockets. he should probably report that guy to his social worker or something, but actually talking to his social worker feels like conceding defeat. joel can take care of himself. he can prove he can take care of himself. just watch him. step one: go out to get ramen because he forgot to buy any food for his apartment.
he sees impulse putting up signs as he eats. impulse looks miserable. joel thinks about how skizz, just in the short time he'd known him, had sort of unintentionally given away that he felt isolated after his mother Vanished. that impulse was a great friend, but impulse didn't understand what it was like. he never really SAID as much, but--
it's not fair to impulse, for that to be the last thing impulse remembered of what was apparently a friend since childhood. and joel doesn't care about any of these guys, but he can still pay his check and go out and help impulse go looking. he's no good at comforting people and doesn't know this guy, but joel had been alone too, sitting on the roof and crying, when the helicopters came.
except when they go back to the path by the school, joel's head starts to hurt again.
he looks up and there's a butterfly.
"hey, impulse, are butterflies common here?" he asks, a little desperately.
"i mean, not really, why?" impulse says.
"uh," joel says, and gestures. the two of them stare as the strange yellow butterfly circles in place.
"okay, so that is kind of weird," impulse admits.
"right?" joel says. "the only way it would be weirder is if it were blue." impulse gives him a look. joel does not explain.
it starts to fly away.
"we should follow it," impulse says, his voice getting a little dull. "yeah. we should follow it."
"what? no! no we should not follow the haunted butterfly, are you nuts?" joel says, but it's a bit too late. (maybe this is what the knife is for: stabbing impulse. it would be an effective method of stopping him!) he chases impulse down, down to the river, where yellow butterflies are swarming. impulse, as though possessed, simply steps into the swarm and falls through them to the water.
joel's, uh, freaking out more than a little bit? he'll admit he's freaking out. he dives forward to try to grab him, only to realize that he doesn't see impulse anywhere.
a single blue butterfly lands on joel's shoulder. "do you hold his heart next to yours?"
"i'm going insane," joel says.
"no heart is meant to be completely alone. do you hold his next to yours?"
"this isn't happening," joel says. "this is like a stupid manga or something. it's not happening."
"there is still time to save them; you must hold your heart strong, or the consequences will be dire. i believe in you."
the butterfly vanishes.
"fuck it," joel says. "if i drown then it's nothing people haven't expected of me anyway."
he steps through the swarm of butterflies.
that night, he drags both impulse and skizz out of the river. they're all freezing cold. shadows and strange, yellowy liquid still cling to all of their skin. also, joel stabbed himself, which like, glad to know that's what the knife was for, apparently, and the scar is warm and comforting. he can feel his--persona, and don't ask him how he knows that--shifting under his skin, under the mark on his hand. it said its name is pygmalion; it says it is a piece of joel's soul.
this is all patently insane. but skizz and impulse are alive and NOT eaten by shadow monsters, so even if they're both a little unconscious, joel takes that as a win.
they lie on the ground outside the river. someone stumbles across them. "well give me some teeth and call me an alligator. you got out on your own," breathes a fellow student clutching a dagger. joel thinks he's in the class across the hall. also--
"what are you talking about," joel wheezes.
"you found it on your own. you can find them?" the student says. his eyes are wide. something in joel's soul recognizes something in the student's. something in joel's BRAIN puts two and two together and realizes why mr. hills gave him a knife.
"no. no, go away, i don't want to be involved in this," joel says.
"well, don't you think it's too late for that?" the student says, and joel passes out. he's pretty sure the butterflies have to be laughing at him. in fact, as though to mock him further, after passing out, he doesn't even get to avoid it forever, because he wakes up in a glowing blue boat. there is a man with white-blonde hair, blue eyes, and a blue outfit leaning over him, poking him.
joel takes no responsibility for punching him. he'd do it again, too, as the long-nosed man sitting next to the unmanned steering wheel welcomes him to the velvet room.
(this, joel realizes later, all rather sets the tone for what the next year of his life is about to become.)
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ngl I always find it wild to see Star Wars stuff that's like "if you think about it in terms of realistic statistics/science then..." about almost any aspect of it.
I mean, what about the Star Wars films gives the impression that this universe abides by realistic statistics, or realistic anything else? SW is broadly a fantasy epic projected onto an IMAX screen with a space background painted on it. Yeah, the planets and moons in the films almost always have improbably limited biomes and two major locations max, because narratively these locations are usually just fantasy city-states with space aesthetics.
Starships travel at the speed of plot and we simply jump past the amount of time that presumably is passing, and sort of imply the passage of that time through shifts in the character dynamics. But this passage of time cannot be analyzed with any kind of consistency because the only logic governing it is the pace of the story.
Just how long did it take the Empire to send a full contingent of forces to Dantooine, search the entire planet, find the Rebel base, and then report back to Tarkin between one scene and another? No one says and no one appears to care. How long did it take Han and Leia to reach Bespin and what exactly went on between them while Luke was, in the same time frame, going through a protracted training over multiple days at an absolute minimum? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
How do giant space worms survive inside asteroids that somehow have an Earth-approximate gravitational field and I guess an atmosphere? Shhhh don't think about it. The point of the sequence is not "how does the giant space worm subsist off this random asteroid and how does it breathe and how does gravity work in this context, seriously" but that the giant worm sequence is fucking sick.
There's probably some after the fact EU justification invented by people who had nothing to do with the original writing of the space worm (or perhaps there are several mutually incompatible explanations) and I am profoundly disinterested in them. Nothing could make this even slightly realistic and it was never intended to be. Star Wars sings space shanties at scientific/mathematical realism as it sails past on a completely different ship going in the exact opposite direction.
And I do mean "sails" because while astronomy might tell us that space is unfamiliar and wild on a level we as Earthbound lifeforms can barely comprehend, Star Wars understands that space is basically an ocean, yet with stars and cool but survivable planets in it, or sometimes it's air but combined with a super cool space background so you can have early 20th century aerial combat that would make no sense in actual space conditions and doesn't need to.
"If you consider relativity, then just running the Empire would be..." General relativity does not govern the galaxy far, far away. Space magic does. I'm not sure there are even time zones.
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really love how throughout a lot of smith and jones martha is really skeptical and apprehensive towards ten (+ one of my favorite exchanges between them - "what, people call you 'the doctor'?" "yeah?" "well, i'm not. far as i'm concerned, you've got to earn that title."), not taking everything he says at face value, even doubting the fact he's an alien until over halfway through the episode.. And like. i really truly think the thing that wins her over isn't him kissing her or any of the other insane mixed messages he manages to send, it's this scene here, where he /earns that title/ in her eyes:
(+ david's bit in the commentary, where he says: "[the doctor] has actually sacrificed himself, and - i would say, that that final act of selflessness is what finally, eventually, welds martha to him. [...] and she now returns it. she returns that act of selflessness.")
this is what their relationship is built on. it isn't about martha being the second-best replacement to rose or a rebound or whatever. bc it isn't really about rose. it's about doctor-in-training martha meeting someone (quite literally, "the doctor") whose ideals she aspires to, and doing her best to be the same person to him as he is to everyone else. it's about ten in return admiring her intelligence and inquisitiveness and how she cares for human life, recovering his compassion, letting himself lean on her for support - and then remembering at the most inopportune moments that he's supposed to not need anyone and be on his own forever. And around in their little nightmare loop they go where they save each other over and over until one of them breaks
i've seen ppl look at martha and go "why she does she admire/why is she so in love with ten if he acts like that to her?" or something along those lines and like. it's not just the fact she's in love with him (in fact i'd argue she actively tries to push it aside post-gridlock). it's the fact that she knows he's the kind of person to put everyone else's lives/well-being over his own. she trusts him to save her when she's in trouble even though it's been like two days at most that they've known one another bc she recognizes that same "deep all-encompassing drive to help others" in him. and she also recognizes, much much earlier than him, that he needs someone to save him, especially when he's unwilling to save himself. and yeah for a bit she thinks he returns her feelings and is just playing hard-to-get, but she realizes pretty early on that this probably isn't the case, and i think that realization fully solidifies here:
(this is when she's listening to ten talk abt gallifrey). And idk it might just be me but i think this expression isn't just her empathizing with his loss. it's also guilt, for wanting something from him that he's clearly unable to give when he's wracked with so much grief. (and you see it in the next episode, where tallulah asks if they're together and martha says for certain that they're not, and that he doesn't know about her feelings for him. she keeps everything to herself bc she now knows that when he shut her flirting down at the end of 3x01 it was the genuine reaction of someone who a) isn't interested and b) is scared of getting close with someone else again)
freema described their dynamic as "she's keener than him" and i think about this all the time. martha doesn't really take what ten throws at her. what she does instead is constantly poke holes in his already-failing front of "i will show someone the wonders of the universe so i can ignore what is wrong with me". what she does is stand up and fight him when he tries to go off on his own. what she does is put aside her well-being in favor of helping someone - just like what she saw him do for the people in the hospital when they first met. tldr, that's the doctor and his doctor and rip martha you would've loved who's gonna save u now by rina sawayama
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