#all those monsters in the 80s are the 'children' of the Universal Classic Monsters and most of them are from old literature

[thebittervampire]

Not sure to understand: monsters have always been ways to speak about taboos, so of course it uses some concepts that well raised people don't usually talk about (especially during around the 80s), but I think you 'overfocus' on some details that keep you from seeing way beyond.

Like about queerness. Freddy Krueger as a queer? He's a pedophile, not queer, that 'queerness' you mention, I think, is only in the second film and it's more the freedom of sexuality, like in Hellraiser: it's like defying authority (I mean... they kill as a f*** hobby).

About being different (may it be physical or mental), sure, some parallels may seem blunt. But that's it: those parallels are rough, and only if you think about them literally. You mention Michael Myers, Samuel Loomis is his psychiatrist, so yeah, first thought: Michael Myers is mentally ill. But when you dig it: Samuel Loomis is totally unable to heal this patient, worst, it seems he takes advantage of this case to become famous, to turn Myers into some Devil. Is he right? Is he wrong? This is fiction, and Michael Myers is indeed evil (and Loomis isn’t really clean). No mental illness is explained or anything. Because it’s not real and can’t be.

Sure, like you said, "it has a very real effect on how we view things", but this is an old problem: some people, really stupid, will think only mentally ill people can stab them when in fact they have much more chances to be killed by a loved one (and totally healthy, just bad). If we worry about all those stupid people, then let's stop fiction (may it be romance, may it be comedy), because they'll never learn the difference.

But in the end, the most important thing I think you forgot: Freddy, Jason, Michael Myers, Pinhead, Leatherface and so many more... why do they all have so many movies? Why are they so iconic? Because they're loved. For being evil, for being different, for bringing what old society tried to ignore.

For some people, 'monster' isn't an insult, it's a privilege, it's because we're weird that we can face the world. And we're allowed to love every monster in horror movies because it's fiction. They don't represent a deformity, an illness or something precise: they represent difference, freedom, darkness.

Like Julia Ducournau said when she won the Palme d'Or: 'thank you for letting the monsters in', because it's so important to admit we like horror in art and in the most fictional way.

okok Serious Post Time for the horror community (i have. a lot of thoughts and would like to write them down)

most of this is through the lens of classic horror but it carries over to other subgenres

here’s the thing about horror. it sets itself up for demonizing stuff so readily, be it physical appearance (freddy krueger, jason vorhees, etc), queerness (freddy krueger etc), mental health (too many to count. in terms of The Big Ones michael myers is probably the best example but think how many horror villains are Scary Psychopaths) and anything else you can think of

more than other genres horror has such incredible power when it comes to negative portrayals of anything, but my main thought i want to get across is about the way we handle the genre and its media

because you can’t just write this stuff off as irrelevant since although it’s fiction, it has a very real effect on how we view things that has to be acknowledged both as a community and on a personal level

but i’m also not gonna argue for throwing out the whole genre or even the offending content. i’m a big fan of classic horror myself and a lot of other people are too

so my main point is be conscious of all this and be critical of media and the way you consume it, and like. educate yourself, yknow??

if anyone has anything to add please feel free, just wanted to like. write some stuff down

[carriagelamp]

April l was apparently the month for me to revisit some children’s authors who are steeped in controversy at the moment. So here’s my hot (well, lukewarm) takes on issues that absolutely do not need a single other person talking about them. Also some actual good books that I read this month!

Badger in the Basement

The Animal Ark books are a childhood classic — though I recently found out that apparently there’s a difference between American and British publications, and the American versions didn’t include a lot of actual COOL animals which is… bizarre. As a Canadian stuck in the middle of this, this nonsense drives me nuts. This one was about the main character, the daughter of pair of vets, trying to protect a local badger sett from men wanting to participate in badger digging and baiting. These books are always feel-good, and it was a nice single-day-read while I waited for a library book to come in.

Chi’s Sweet Home

The cutest manga series about the misadventures of a little kitten, Chi, who has been adopted by a loving family. I’ve never bothered to read them in order, but apparently this time I stumbled across the last in the series -- whoops! Still, stood on it’s own pretty easily, and it was a fun read! Things get tense when the family realize that they may have found Chi’s original home… and may have to give up Chi forever.

Earth Before Us: Dinosaur Empire!

This was an odd graphic novel, I feel like I’m not sure who the target audience was exactly. It was a nonfiction comic done in a Magic School Bus style, with the purpose of teaching current, up-to-date facts about the animals that lived in the Mesozoic Era. If you’re into dinosaurs, you’ll probably enjoy this! The art is absolutely adorable, I love the dinosaur illustrations, and I learnt some really neat facts. That being said, the pages are really dense, and there’s a lot of info crammed in… some of it will probably go way over a child’s head without specific additional teaching or a very strong personal interest. But that being said, a dinosaur obsessed kid is still probably going to really dig this… as would a dinosaur obsessed adult. It wasn’t my cup of tea exactly but I’m sure it is someone’s.

assorted Dr Seuss Books

I love these types of controversies because it means getting to listen to every moron who has never had an opinion on Dr Seuss ever start generating a mile of them out of the aether. So many people are so mad about the six books that are getting retired and I bet most of them haven’t even read them. These are not the friggin Cat In The Hat or The Lorax or even the likes of Yertle The Turtle. I was raised by a grade one teacher, was a voracious reader who loved Dr Seuss, and wrote my university thesis on children’s literature, and I still only knew two of the six books on that list. So by all means, if you want to write an essay explaining why those specific books are worth clinging to, feel free, but if you haven’t even heard of them maybe it’s not a big deal. *grumble*

Anyway, my grousing aside, it gave me the urge to reread a bunch of Seuss books, including the two retiring books I personally knew: McElligot’s Pool and To Think That I Saw It On Mulberry Street. I do still enjoy both, especially McElligot’s Pool which always sparked my imagination, but it’s obvious why they’re being retired and I personally think it’s the right choice. There’s so much good kidlit out there, we can survive without these.

Goodbye, My Rose Garden

A f/f romance manga, fairly standard fair though cute if you’re looking for some historical angst, pretty dresses, and mutual pining. A young Japanese woman moves to England in the hopes of meeting a writer (Mr Frank) who she has long admired. Along the way she is employed by an enigmatic woman with plenty of money, rumours, and melancholy following her. I’ll be honest, uncut romance isn’t really my genre, but I’ll probably still try to the second book to see if the story picks up.

From The Holocaust to Hogan’s Heroes: The Autobiography of Robert Clary

It’s no secret that I’ve been on a Hogan’s Heroes kick. This is the autobiography of Roberty Clary, who plays my favourite character in the show, Louis Lebeau. And holy shit what a life this man has had. He was a Jew growing up in France before the start of the war, and who was one of many children taken away from his family and sent off to the concentration camps in Germany. This was an amazing, intense, inspiring, and heartbreaking read… it has Clary’s voice all over it, and it tells everything from the charming childhood he had, to the horrors of the concentration camps, the brutality of survival, and then about his exciting journey into the entertainment industry afterwards. It’s an experience, would recommend if you’re a fan of the show.

The Ickabog

The second controversial author I read this month. Originally I was going to give Rowling’s new book a miss, given everything that’s been going on over the past few years, but in the end my curiosity got the better of me. Politics aside, it was a fun read! Not groundbreaking, but enjoyable enough and written in an interesting style. It didn’t read the same as a lot of modern kidlit, it felt more like a cross between a classic fairytale and a Dahl book. Perhaps a bit like Despereaux. It tells the tale of how an idyllic country gradually falls into ruin through the ignorance, inaction, and greed, and how a supposedly fictional monster hides the very real, human monsters at the heart of the country. It was cute and pleasant and I’m glad I decided to get it from the library, though for anyone who is choosing not to engage for political reasons: you aren’t missing anything major.

Franklin In The Dark

A Canadian classic. I don’t think there’s a single person my age who hasn’t read or been read a pile of these books, and the nostalgia is so comforting. I found this on Youtube and listened to someone read it to me, and honestly 10/10 would recommend for a calm evening.

The big reason I decided to seek this one out though, was because I finally got to the M*A*S*H episode that inspired this entire series! In the episode C*A*V*E, in which Hawkeye is freaking out over his claustrophia while the camp is forced to take shelter in a nearby cave during some intense shelling, he mentions that if he had been born a turtle he would have been afraid of his own shell, and that the other turtles would make fun of him cause he’d be forced to walk around in his underwear. And so this first story about a young turtle who’s afraid to sleep in his own shell and drags it around behind him. So if you were ever curious, Franklin the Turtle is in fact named after Dr Benjamin Franklin Pierce. (this is also why the French version is named Benjamin!)

Wolves of the Beyond: Lone Wolf

I loved the Guardians of Ga’Hoole books as a kid but I never read the Wolves of the Beyond series. This first book was an interesting read, Lasky does a great job creating worlds and societies for the animals that inhabit them. Lone Wolf is about a deformed wolf cub who was abandoned in the wilderness to die. And he would have, if a desperate mother bear, who had recently had her only cub killed, hadn’t stumbled across him and saved him, vowing to raise him as her own...

Petals

A “silent” graphic novel. It has beautiful artwork and is told entirely through pictures, no text at all. It’s loves and heart-wrenching, though it left me feeling somewhat unsatisfied… I felt like there should have been more. Still, a neat story.

The Southern Book Club‘s Guide To Slaying Vampires

What a banger of a novel!! I can’t recommend this one enough. It’s about a group of suburban mothers in the ‘80s who form a book club out of a shared need for community and a love of grisly true crime novels. But when a strange drifter appears in town and starts setting down roots… and when children begin disappearing… these women need to band together to confront the horrors that have invaded their neighbourhood, and face down not only a terrifying monster among them but the patriarchal system that allows it to flourish. To quote the preface:

“Because vampires are the original serial killers, stripped of everything that makes us human — they have no friends, no family, no roots, no children. All they have is hunger. They eat and eat but they’re never full. With this book, I wanted to pit a man freed from all responsibilities but his appetites against women whose lives are shaped by their endless responsibilities. I wanted to pit Dracula against my mom.    As you’ll see, it’s not a fair fight.“

The Weirn Books: Be Wary of the Silent Woods

I love Chmakova’s graphic novels, though I’ve only ever read her slice-of-life middle grade series before. This one is pure fantasy and very fun. It’s about two cousin “weirns” — witches with demon familiars — who attend the local night school. Things get strange though when an ominous figure appears outside the old, abandoned school house deep in the Silent Woods, and begins tempting children down its path…

I’m very much looking forward to word of a second book and was honestly kind of surprised that I haven’t heard more about this book given how popular her other series is. This has all the same charm and quirks but for those of us who prefer stories based in fantasy rather than reality.

And A Bonus...

For some masochistic reason I got a Garfield book out of the library. Jeez, if I didn’t love these as a kid, I found them absolutely laugh out loud hilarious, and now I just don’t see it anymore. But here I will share the one strip in the book that actually made me laugh

[wehavethoughts]

CadaverCast Review!

CadaverCast: A Father-Son Monster Movie Podcast 

Alistair and Jeff Burnham 

Podcast Genre: TV & Film

Rating: 4/5 Hot Mics

"Welcome to Frankenstein's Monkey Farm!" - Al Burnham

CadaverCast Cover Art (Photo Credit: Angel Onofre - Instagram 'angelonofre')

 I'm not really a horror fan, so when CadaverCast was recommended to me, I almost skipped it. But after being a faithful listener for three years, I'm so glad I gave it a chance! Listeners are invited to join 'CadaverDad' Jeff Burnham and his son Alistair in delightful reviews and funny conversations about getting 'cinematically spooked'. This charming podcast features almost 100 episodes, each with an average run-time of about thirty minutes. The audience is welcome to listen in on silly, spooky, and insightful criticisms as father and son discuss both modern and classic horror films.

Alistair and Slimer (Photo Credit: Jeff Burnham)

 When the podcast first started off, Al was four years old, but you wouldn't know it by listening to him. From the very beginning, Al spoke with intelligence and empathy, and his passion for spooky things was clear. CadaverDad (an instructor at DePaul University’s School of Cinematic Arts) helped to guide and mediate the conversation, while encouraging Alistair to think critically about media. CadaverCast often takes requests to cover certain movies, but not all of those movies are appropriate for Alistair to watch while he’s so young. (There’s a big difference between Texas Chainsaw Massacre and the 1931 version of Dracula.) When they get requests to cover the more intense horror movies, Al produces his own segment called ‘Who the Al is…?’, where, based only on the cover art/trailer, he creates movie plots on the fly about his take on what the horror movie might be about. Sometimes, he’s surprisingly accurate!   

CadaverCast Episode 80 Cover Art (Photo Credit: Jeff Burnham)  

 Each episode follows the same basic format, with father and son introducing the movie first and giving a basic summary of the plot. There are a few recurring review questions/themes that are usually discussed, such as ‘Beastly Best’ and ‘Get Spooked’. Al advises what parts of the movie might be too scary for younger children, and CadaverDad Jeff fills parents in about content warnings within the movie that are not suitable for children. One thing I particularly appreciate is the way Jeff teaches his son to recognize harmful tropes, especially ones that target minorities. For example, in one episode, Alistair notes that a doctor, who is a woman, is never referred to by her title, just her first name. His dad takes the opportunity to have an honest discussion with his son about why this is a problem, especially since another male character is repeatedly referred to by his title.

Al and Jeff Burnham in action!  (Photo Credit: Jeff Burnham)

 Listeners of CadaverCast get the wonderful opportunity to witness how the podcast and conversations grow and become more in-depth as Al himself grows up. In the earlier episodes, when prompted to talk about that episode’s chosen movie, Al would often jump right to the end of whatever movie they were discussing. CadaverDad took it in stride (albeit with amused exasperation) and helped walk Al through the review questions. Now seven years old, Alistair is a pro at analyzing and critiquing the media he and his dad discuss on the podcast. (He even takes his own notes before they record.) He still jumps to the ending of the plot sometimes, but I am constantly impressed by Al’s ability to examine media and communicate his thoughts. Especially when he is able to articulate a difference of opinion and establish his own boundaries.

CadaverKid Al and CadaverDad Jeff (Photo Credit: Jeff Burnham) 

 Every good podcast has a social media presence, and CadaverCast is no different! I will provide the links below, and I strongly encourage people to check out their facebook fan group, the “CadaverCast Critters and Creeps Club”. You can find cool articles on horror movie news, spooky memes, and updates on the Burnham family endeavors, including some awesome pictures drawn by Alistair himself!

‘Attack of the Killer Tomatoes' by Alistair Burnham, 2016  (Photo Credit: Jeff Burnham)

 Over all, CadaverCast is a charming little podcast that is enjoyable even for those who are not hardcore horror fans. It's easy to listen to and lighthearted, even if the topic is horror. This more than deserves a rating of 4/5 Hot Mics. And major props to CadaverDad Jeff (and CadaverMom Amber) for raising such a well-spoken, empathetic child.  

 Happy Podcasting!

 PodMod

Images posted with the creator's permission. Podcast icon by Jejen Juliansyah Nur Agung at the Noun Project.

[yourvirtualgame]

There is something irresistible about feeling scared. Not just the slight shiver when you’re home alone and hear a floorboard creak, or the fleeting panic that a monster could be lurking within your cupboard, but the spine-tingling, blood-curdling and frankly exhilarating feeling of jumping out of your skin.

The sense of sheer fright isn’t just irresistible, it’s healing. A hair-raising shriek is nearly always followed by a laugh; just picture the last time you howled with fear while watching a scary film or wailed when you spotted a spider in the bath. That’s why a trip to Universal Orlando’s Halloween Horror Nights felt like the best therapy I’d ever had.

The terrifying Halloween extravaganza takes place at the resort every year between September and November and puts all other Halloween parties you’ve ever attended to shame. This year, the season is from September 6 to November 2, running an average of five nights a week, and like last year, will haunt visitors with a kitsch ‘80s theme.

While the resort’s main highlights – the electrifying rides, The Wizarding World of Harry Potter and the thrill‑filled Volcano Bay water park – are open as usual, the Halloween period adds an extra dimension to an Orlando trip, plus the shoulder season is less busy than the summer even though the weather is still fantastic.

Houses of horror

During the event, the park is transformed into a horror zone that’s so expertly fearsome it feels like you’re starring in your very own horror movie. The creative brains behind it construct 10 incredibly realistic haunted houses based on well-known horror franchises or on haunting creations they dream up themselves.

No maze is ever repeated, so each year’s version of Halloween Horror Nights is the only chance your clients will have to experience that unique brand of horror, and they’ll need at least two nights to enjoy every maze.

As well as exploring each haunted house, they’ll also be entertained by hundreds of scare actors employed for the sole purpose of terrifying visitors. And there are five themed scare zones which are impossible to walk through without being shocked by a conglomeration of awaiting costumed creatures.

In addition, there’s also live entertainment, and many of the rides still function just in case you feel like punctuating the mazes with a rollicking rollercoaster.

Embrace the terror

Plunging in at the deep end, my first maze was Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers, which had me leaping onto a stranger for comfort after the shock of seeing what seemed like hundreds of real-life, knife‑wielding masked Michael Myers.

I went to all 10 of the haunted houses and each scare zone during my visit in 2018, and each time, I vowed to be braver. But eventually, I gave in to the exhilaration of fear, accepted I would lose my voice from screaming, and enjoyed the primal, visceral feeling of terror.

Cuddling a stranger was, unfortunately, not a one‑off incident. I found myself embracing countless other fear-seekers as I battled my way through the realistic Freeling house from Steven Spielberg film Poltergeist, encountered the Demogorgon from Stranger Things – the Netflix show about teenagers battling supernatural forces – and learnt just how frightening sudden flashes of light can be in the original attraction, Dead Exposure: Patient Zero.

Even if your clients aren’t horror film fanatics, they’ll soon be swept up in the excitement. Bear in mind, though, that these really are intense and heart-thumping scares, so it’s definitely not suitable for children under 13. Even brave adults who wouldn’t baulk at a spider in the bath will find themselves screaming at some point.

After you’ve yelped your way through each maze, you’ll find yourself back in your hotel room, checking the cupboards for monsters, downloading horror films on Netflix and watching them alone in the dark, if only to recreate the uniquely therapeutic sense of terror you can only experience at Halloween Horror Nights.

Three things not to miss

Accommodation: Stylish, funky and modern, Universal’s 600-room Aventura Hotel is an affordable choice within easy reach of CityWalk and all three parks.

Food: Guests can enjoy more than 20 dining options at CityWalk, including the Cowfish Sushi Burger Bar, which offers a wide range of burgers and sushi rolls.

Rides: Try new ride Hagrid’s Magical Creatures Motorbike Adventure, take a virtual reality rollercoaster ride with The Simpsons or bask in nostalgia on the E.T. Adventure

Halloween Horror Nights 2019

Seven of the 10 mazes for 2019 have already been announced.

This year’s version of the Stranger Things house will take visitors into the heart of the show’s second and third seasons.

There’s also a Ghostbusters maze based on the 1984 comedy, as well as a haunted house themed on the 1988 film Killer Klowns from Outer Space – not one for those with coulrophobia, or fear of clowns.

Original concepts include Yeti: Terror of the Yukon, in which visitors will journey through a Canadian forest while fighting off yetis; and Classic Monsters, where guests will be confronted with old-school movie monsters such as Dracula and Frankenstein.

[uhnoodles]

Stobin Shipping (ST3)

Hello all!

I’ve been debating whether or not to post this because conflict and confrontation make me physically ill and I’m not usually one to start anything of any sort that would invite such a thing.

I’m not writing this post to invite such a thing either, but unfortunately, I don’t think I can post this opinion without getting a lot of hate. I wouldn’t even be putting my voice out here unless something big happened, which has.

So, here goes.

Stobin is a ship from the 3rd season of Stranger Things featuring Steve Harrington, a character from every season, and Robin, a character introduced this season.

Steve and Robin work together at Scoops Ahoy and seem to be warily civil with each other in the beginning of the season. Various plot points drag them together, and eventually they bond and begin to grow warmer and friendlier with each other, a classic enemies to friends trope that is seen in many a fiction story. What usually comes next in this line of relationships is lovers or something synonymous. And we got a taste of it when Steve admitted his growing romantic feelings for Robin. Robin, however, turns him down because she is a lesbian. Steve is oblivious, then accepting and friendly with her from then on. There is absolutely no hope for them to ever be together in the show because she is a lesbian. I don’t want them to be together in the show because She. Is. A. Lesbian.

...Having said that, I feel slightly more comfortable approaching the purpose of this post.

A lot of people feel that it is homophobic/lesbophobic to still ship Stobin even after Robin came out to Steve, turning down his romantic advances. And I’m not going to tell you how to feel. I’m not in the business of doing that, because I’m not you and I don’t dictate your emotions or reactions. And honestly, if someone does still ship Stobin because they think it’s stupid that Robin is a lesbian and that she doesn’t “fit the bill” or they are just fucking homophobic, then fuck that guy. Because that’s not cool.

But. In my opinion, which is an opinion and not a fact, Fanfiction and shipping were made so fans can live out their non canon dreams.

I ship Stobin. Not because I think Robin being a lesbian is dumb or disgusting, or even because I wish she wasn’t a lesbian. Because I don’t wish that. I’m a lesbian. I was so fucking ecstatic when she turned out to be a lesbian! She is a cool, funny, complex character and she’s ours! Holy shit! YES! I honestly can’t wait for the writers to explore this in season 4 and give us all the sweet lesbian content I want.

Representation matters. I know that, and I feel that. I’m white- so I have had the privilege of being represented in the media my whole life. Hell, I remember when I first saw Beauty and the Beast, Belle immediately became my favorite princess because she had brown hair like me. I’ve also been lucky enough to grow up in an era where the LGBTQA+ community is slowly being accepted by society. I’ve also been lucky enough to have absolutely no issues in that area of my life. I’ve never been faced with prejudice in any way regarding my sexuality. I’m lucky, and I know I’m one of the few. So maybe Robin isn’t hitting me as hard as she is a lot of lesbians.

Don’t get me wrong, please, don’t get me wrong! She is a lesbian, I know this, and I never want that to change! If she and Steve got together in the show, I would be fuckin pissed! That is erasure! That is queer baiting! (I think that’s the term?) Her presence as a lesbian in this show is important because Stranger Things is set in the 80s, a very homophobic period in American history (which is true for all of American history through pretty much now for a lot of people). The fact that we have not just Robin but also Will- and both are accepted and still loved by their friends- is amazing and I have cried multiple times over it! If their presence in the show is of the utmost important to me, a lesbian who has faced zero kicks in the ass in her life, I can’t imagine how important she is to a lesbian who has faced every struggle in the world.

I believe, as I’ve stated, that fanfiction exists so fans may live out their non canon dreams. I ship Stobin because I thought their warm and fuzzy moments slowly building up throughout the season were very believable and they lit up the fan girl in me so fuckin quickly. “Yes!” I thought, “Steve is getting a romance again, and with arguably the coolest girl in the show!” And then she came out as a lesbian, which didn’t even phase me because I knew I could read fanfiction of Stobin to satisfy that whirlwind of fangirling emotions inside me that would never be satisfied canonically, which is completely okay with me.

That’s what fanfiction and shipping is to me. Satisfying my unmet fangirling needs. Am I mad about any of my unfulfilled ships? No! Absolutely not! Every fandom I am part of, I ship most ships in existence. I also ship Steve with Billy, Jonathan, Nancy, I’ve even read Steve and Kali (008) and enjoyed it! The thing about Robin is that, in season three, she only interacted with Steve and 2 children, and her and Steve had many faux romantic moments. I’ve read RobinxOFC and shipped the two! Hell, there’s this Haringrove fic with an OFC that I think she would be really cute with! I guarantee that as soon as she interacts with literally any female character, I will go buck fuckin wild. However, the in-depth character connection she has is Steve.

I know to a lot of you guys, these are just excuses, and I’m honestly very very sorry if I am hurting you in any way by continuing to ship them, completely apart from the canon, in the fics I read a write. I definitely would have kept my fuckin mouth to myself, but I noticed something quite alarming.

“Kill yourself”. Two words. Both simple words. Put together, they could destroy a life. They have many a time. I’ve been the target many times when I write a fic with a ship people don’t like. So alarming. So fucking alarming. Those words can do real damage. In real life. Not a fictional universe, such as the Stranger Things universe. But in real life. Now, I know that representation is so very fucking important, and I know that Robin is a lesbian. I support her as a lesbian and will accept no less in canon. Threatening another human’s life over respresentation in media isn’t okay, not in my books. Even if I didn’t ship Stobin and was as affected by it than a lot of you guys are, I would still be writing this post, just minus the explaining my view of Stobin and fanfiction in general. Because death threats, disturbing messages, and mocking one-off comments won’t get your point across. They’ll just root tour subject of hate more firmly into the ground and harm their psyche along the way.

It’s not worth it. Stranger Things is not worth it. Someone, a human being, in real life, could be hurt by careless, aggressive words. Over something that you could ignore so easily if you don’t support it. And I know that ignoring something you find abhorrent and a violation of human rights can be downright near impossible sometimes, but resorting to such terrible words just isn’t okay. Explain your side, debate, argue, don’t berate, don’t get furious. Or at least don’t let your fury turn you into a monster who threatens another human being’s life. Because doing that, saying those things? It’s monstrous.

I know this will get replies, and I’m not looking forward to it because confrontation, again, makes me hate my life. But you have the right to express your opinion to me if my own displeases you, but know that I will definitely ignore threats and furious massages that I’ve seen circulating around this particular ship.

I don’t know if I properly expressed myself or if this came across at all how I wanted it to. Bottom line:

-Robin is a lesbian, I support her

-I got attached to the teased romance between her and Steve, so I will be reading fanfiction and imagining scenarios myself to satisfy my hunger

- I, personally, don’t think that makes me a bad person or a homophobe/lesbophobe for reasons I’ve listed above

- I sincerely apologize to anyone who is offended or hurt, that is truly not my intention

-I only opened my fat mouth about this because death threats and hostile behavior have been circling this ship and it crossed a line in my head

I’m sorry this is so long. @pelegringo is a blog I know has been experiencing a lot of these threats and I don’t know how many others have been dealing with it. I’m so sorry if my opinion is unwelcome, but I saw someone being hurt and couldn’t ignore it.

I wish you all the best, and I hope you have enjoyed my Ted Talk.

[popculturebuffet]

Analysis of X: Uncanny X-Men #159 “Night Screams!”

Happy Halloween! For our Halloween special, I take my first dive into Claremont’s classic X-Men Run proper, as Claremont’s future New Mutants partner Bill Sienkiewicz drops by just in time for the X-Men to battle Dracula for the soul of Storm! Get your stakes ready and join me after the cut.

Welcome everyone to my special Halloween Edition of Analysis of X. I love this holliday: Scary movies, adorable children in costume, more sugar than I probably need… it’s the best. And it’s on this sacred day I’ve decided to take a second look at one of my faviorite X-Men stories and see if it still holds up to me the second time around. I first heard about this story in the back of Wizard Magzine in this old beatup issue I got from my brother,  and was blown away by the descrption of an event we’ll get to towards the end. When I finally read the issue years later thanks to an issue of Classic X-Men, it exceded my expectations, and hence here I am to see if it still holds up. And since the few bits of exposition needed can just be done as we go, let’s sink our teeth into “Night Screams”

We open on the Uncanny, the powerful, the misunderstood, the brave X-Men!... barging into someone’s apartment and being confused by the occupant. Naturally both parties are confused: The young lady because it’s her damn apartment and suddenly a blue elf, a smelly hairy Canadian, a metallic Russian, an African goddess and a masked teenager come rushing into her place. The X-Men are confused because this apartment belongs to their friend Misty Knight. Those of you who watched Netflix’s excellent Luke Cage series probably remember her from that. In the comics she’s not far off from where she ended up by the end of the Netflix/MCU partnership: a private eye who used to be a cop and has a robot arm, in the comics provided by Tony Stark because back in the 70’s and 80’s tony would make some sorta gadget for anyone who pulled a dump truck of money up to his house. As I mentioned in Excalibur, Chris Claremont never really forgot any character he ever had anything to do with, and since she was a major supporting character during his run on iron fist along with her partner in asskicking Colieen Wing, who you may remember as the best part of Iron Fist’s own Netflix series, he had the two pop up in his X-Men run during a time when they thought the professor and jean were dead, because no one bothered to pick up a fucking phone. As such Misty had apparently offered her place to the X-Men any time they were in the city proper… but herself didn’t pick up the damn phone and tell her in the past few months she got a roommate, so said roommate is understandably pissed off to find a bunch of strangers in her place.

As the above should make obvious, the young lady is Harmony Young, famous model and misty’s new roommate. At this time Mary Jo Duffy had taken over Luke Cage, at the time Power Man,’s book and, in an attempt to keep the book from being canceled, brought Iron Fist in as a second protagonist and made the book into a buddy picture with the two’s contrasting personalites and backgrounds playing off each other. Having read this run, it’s fantastic and well worth a read and is the backbone of later runs of Luke and Danny while creating one of the best friendships in all of Marvel.  As for how the hell this relates to this story, Harmony is a supporting character from that run and at the time, Luke’s Girlfriend and thus moved in with Misty when Misty needed a roommate.

With the confusion cleared up the X-Men try to smooth things over, minus Logan who, now knowing he dosen’t have a fight on his hands is going to get drunk because logan frankly has three states: boning, drinking and killin, and Kurt’s already swooping in there, and while you’d think hitting on Luke Cage’s girlfriend would be dumb, Luke is not above a three way. I mean why do you think danny sleeps at his and jess’s place every other Sunday? Storm being the leader she is offers to leave, but Harmony, seeing three handsome young men and likely having an open relationship with Luke, decides what the hell and lets the X-Men stay. Kitty scoffs at her and.. oh god I’m going to have to talk about the Colossus and Kitty thing aren’t I? Fuck me…. Yeah for those of you who weren’t aware, Kitty had a crush on Colossus.. a grown man at the very least 6 years older than her. They eventually DID enter a relationsip, that THANK CHRIST, wasn’t sexual till Jim Shooter, in one of the few times he actually made sense as Marvel’s Editor in Chief outright told Chris to cut it out and broke the couple up himself by having Pitor fall for someone else. And while that whole romance was forced and rushed, it both ended an annoying subplot and gave us a DAMN good issue of Uncanny I’ll get to some day. We soon find out WHY the X-Men are in town in the first place:

I do like the story progression so far: it feels organic and the opening of the X-Men barging in on an apartment is a nice hook and the following pages quickly explain the situation without feeling too clunky about it. But yeah Kitty’s Parents want to see her and while as Ororo notes she dosen’t have anything to wear, Harmony being a true friend to this person she just met offers up her vast wardrobe which Kitty herself quickly gets herself a piece of. The two get dressed and head off to meet the Prydes. We then get a short scene of Cyclops, whose on vacation visitng his brother Alex alongside his space pirate dad. As you can tell i’m not really going that much into it as it’s only one page of the isssue and has nothing to do with the rest of the plot other than informing us Professor Xavier’s in a coma, which tells me why he wasn’t with the rest of the team.  Back in NYC, Kurt is still flirting with Harmony when the team gets a call from Kitty... who wonders if Ororo got home okay. Kurt’s instantly put on alert because she’d told kitty she was heading straight back.. hours ago. And as we see bellow, she’s been attacked with two marks left on her neck... which can only mean one thing.. NEIL BREEN HAS KILLED AGAIN.. or you know vampires. 

Storm is rushed to the hospital and Logan and PItor soon get the call thanks to Storm’s wallet to come get her. While the doctor wants to keep her overnight Storm is.. oddly calm, finding the night realixing and getting the feeling something’s watching her, but shaking it off. The fact she’s not CONCERNED about that or seems chipper after having her throat torn open just screams red flag don’t’ it? Storm returns home to rest , shooing the rest of the X-Men away and well. if you were wondering when the hell this turned into a vampire story besides the whole neck bites thing... 

The scene is haunting and well done and Bill, since his last name is hard to spell and I’ve mangled enough names as is on this blog, does a fine job with it, portraying the horror of it as well as how entrhaled Ororo is well. IT’s this sort of moody atmospheric stuff that would serve him well when he became artist on New Mutants and thare’s damn good reason his run is where the book really starts to pick up steam. Kitty returns home.. and is greeted with the news Storm has turned ill. When kitty tries visting storm is afraid of the sunlight, has a mysterious scarf from an admierer with a large D on it, and flinches when Kitty’s star of david brushes up against her. Kitty, sensing the obvious heads off to do some errands. Later that night Ororo lets her her “lover” and the one behind all this...

Yup. I wasn’t lying or exaggerating in the teaser: The one behind all this is DRACULA. That Dracula, not some alien or some other vampire. The prince of Darkness himself has designs on Ororo. And if your wondering if this is just some one issue weirdness… NOPE. Around this time, Dracula had his own ongoing started in the 70’s, Tomb of Dracula and what I’ve read is excellent. As a result Dracula was a part of the Marvel Universe, had his own backstory and enimies, and fought the likes of Dr. Strange and Spider-Man and earlier this year was the center of a major plot in Jason Aaron’s Avengers run. But before he can turn her, help arrives..

IT’s kitty who got a nifty Van Helsing getup and a cross.. but in an intresting twist on the mythos the cross does nothing. But not for the by this point cliché reason of “we’re just not using that old chesnut”, no in the Marvel Universe one needs genuine faith for the religious symbols weakness to work… and as the star of david showed earlier, Kitty is Jewish .. but when Dracula tries to choke a bitch, it’s said star of David that saves her. Tragically, Storm is too brainwashed to run and leaves with Dracula, begging Kitty to forget her and leaving the poor child in tears as her surrogate older sister leaves with a monster, possibly forever and there’s nothing she can do to stop it. On a side note though nice entrance line. While it’s no “Begone monster you do not belong in this world!” it’s still pretty sweet. 

The rest of the team burst in and Kitty explains what’s going on: that while she didn’t know it was DRACULA till now, she was supscious but rightly suspected the others wouldn’t belive her and Logan dosen’t, trying to write off the scarf as Harmony or Misty’s.. but Kurt shoots it down, stating that Kitty is no child and her word means as much as Logan’s own, with his own time in Bavaria telling him to not take vampires lightly.. ESPECIALLY Dracula. Even if Logan still isn’t buying it, Kitty does point out that wether she’s right or not, Ororo is too injured to leave out in the wild, let alone with some strange man who may or may not be Dracula. Given this is a superhero comic, a fight naturally breaks out, with Dracula summoning his wolves, where’d he purchase those, to fight while Kurt tries fighting the big man himself.. and quickly gets his fuzzy blue ass handed to him. Colossus and WOlverine take the wolves out and prepare for the big man himself. 

As you can see Dracula is handing them their asses.. which is no surprise: not only are the X-Men two members short, and even if they weren’t Dracula would still be able to take them. It also helps ease him into this shared universe: the reason why he hasn’t been beaten for good with so many heroes out there is simple:  besides having the cover of being so famous that most wouldn’t belive he’s real, he’s also really damn powerful and only one vampire hunter after him has any sort of powers, that being Blade who was introduced in Tomb of Dracula. And while he’s a vampire, he dosen’t have Drac’s broken number of extra powers.

With it now being clear given he fuck slammed Colossus that Dracula is out of their league Kurt suggests a straight up fight won’t work and they need plan B.. and with that we get the best scene in the issue, the one that made me want to read it in the first place. 

Just as a recap, in a brilliant callback to a few pages ago, Wolverine tries, cleverly, to use his claws as a cross.. but as Dracula mocks him, it won’t work. Like Parappa the Rapper says you gotta belivie.. and unfortunately for Dracula, Kurt does in what is, to my suprise, the first time his religion comes up but it works well and adds a sizeable amount to his character. Sadly as fucking epic as this is, it only holds him off for a second and he soon sendds lightning after him because.. apparently he can do that now? I dunno.  While this goes on Kitty runs into the castle which Dracula has morphed into his own kinda castle, and while Kitty dosen’t find dracula she does find an almost turned storm and readies a stake, though Ororo points out it won’t do much good.. and we get another powerful scene as Kitty decides she’s right. 

While that goes on, the rest of the team presses on but have no more luck and soon Dracula has them beat and Storm arrives seemingly having slain kitty.. only to shed her Dracula outfit for her uniform and start kicking Dracula’s ass, kicking off an awesome fight between the two.

She ends up slamming him into a party where Drac, being a sore looser, tries to force her to submit.. but she stays her ground and he gets desperat holding a hostage to try and get her to submit

But as seen she will not and refuses to.. and Dracula admits defeat, realizing he was genuinely attracted to her and he’d have to snuff out what made her worthy of being his queen to do so. Granted he’s still a creepy mind rapist, but it’s still a nice character touch. He books it out of there, and being good at evading people as his solo would show, tells Ororo following would be a fools errand and givne how beaten down her team is , even with her back to give them the edge, he’s right. So for now he escapes, but the X-Men have one the night and Ororo is free and back to being just a mutant again and tearfully reunited with kitty at misty’s place.

With that touching scene done, our heroes runite with Harmony, with Misty and Coleen now present and celebrate their narrow victory. There’s also a quick stinger with Moira MacTaggert telling the X-Men xavier’s condition has gotten worse, but for the most part, it’s a happy ending as our heroes, however narrowly have won the day and I thankfully got this done before Halloween ended.

Final Thoughts: This issue is every bit as good the second time around, if not more so now I know who Harmony is and have read some of Dracula’s own title, though it’s not a necessity as none of the stuff from Tomb is important here, and Harmony is introduced well enough. This issue is a masterpiece, having atompsheric moody horror, the drawings well done and there’s so much I didn’t show that’s just awesome and Bill would only get better from here. The character work is also great as most of the X-Men get moments to shine. While wolverine is mostly there for his usaul schtick as is Colosus, how easily dracula manhandles them shows just how strong he is without feeling forced. But the real stars are Kurt, who gets one of his finest moments here and even after that fails still presses on anyway, Storm whose transformation is truly horrifying and whose ultimate victory is made all the sweeter and Kitty, whose at her best with: her youthful naivity matching well with her refusal to give up as she stares down both Dracula and her big sister in equal amounts. The issue is a must read for what’s left of this Halloween and every one after it and a great little done in one. Even with the btis of other storylines, it’s still easy to read and understand on it’s own and is one of the best one and done issues i’ve ever read and still holds it’s position in my eyes as one of the best X-Men stories period, taking what should be a rediculous premise and owning the hell out of it. A must read if i’ve ever read one. 

[pantheon-pjorp]

Karina Omaña | 15 yrs old | Daughter of Athena | CABIN SIX

↳ The LIFE of KARINA OMAÑA —

Raúl Omaña, a Venezuelan linguist making his doctorate studies in the US, met the smartest woman ever after a conference on Etymology and Classical Languages. She seemed delighted with his reasoning on the origin of certain specific words, and offered some theories of her own over a glass of wine. Nothing happened, but they kept meeting at conferences and exchanging emails and she seemed to make incredible discoveries on missing translations from Ancient Greek, discoveries that might or might not have helped him with his PhD thesis. There were plenty of long stares and hands brushing and it was a very Victorian deal, but nothing happened between them beyond that, even though Raúl was sure he wasn’t the only one feeling things. He’d been back home for a while, teaching at a university, when there was a knock on his apartment door. A cute, round cheeked baby was sleeping on a basket, with a letter next to her. Apparently, he’d been intellectually courting no one other than the goddess Athena and she’d decided to bless their intellectual not-romance with a grey-eyed bundle of joy that he’d definitely not conceived in the usual way. He named her daughter Karina (after his favorite singer from the 80s) and he raised her during her first years as a single dad. Karina was raised around academic discussions and university students, some of which offered to babysit her during class while her dad was explaining things on the blackboard. She named all the cats and all the dogs that roamed the university hallways, and when it was time for her to attend school she was easily ahead of her class. Words and languages were the family thing, so she learned to love them as much as her dad did, and she became his favorite research assistant. The family eventually had to migrate to the United States, and it wasn’t a very smooth adaptation process for Karina. She started wearing thick glasses (even though she didn’t need them) to hide the unusual color of her eyes and oversized sweaters and t-shirts (depending on the weather) so she wouldn’t draw any more attention; she got enough of that because of her grades and the slight accent she couldn’t get rid off when speaking English. The bullying, however, was nothing compared to the weird things that started happening around her. Spiders, those awful, horrid, no good creatures started following her everywhere, even her dreams, and she woke up screaming and crying because of a hairy, eight-legged nightmare. Random creatures straight out of mythology books stared at her in the street, and some of them even tried to approach her with no good intentions, but somehow she always thought of a way to lose them. She only felt safe at home, around her dad, but her dad had classes to teach and a girlfriend too, and he couldn’t be at home all the time. Things changed for the better when she was close to turning eleven. She’d been walking home from school when one of those monsters, some kind of seal-dog hybrid of sorts, got in her way. As any sensible girl would, she screamed and started running, only stopping when she crashed into a solemn looking woman. That lady reminded her of her teacher, of someone she could trust, and when the woman told her everything was fine, that it was safe to go home now, Karina believed her. The lady also told her not to be sad about leaving, something Karina didn’t understand until she made it home and found a half-goat man talking to her dad about her having to leave for some summer camp. That was how Karina ended up making it to Camp Half-Blood, where she was immediately claimed by her mother and met all her siblings at Cabin 6. According to Malcolm and everyone, Camp had gone through a very rocky period, with wars and attacks and Roman emperors, somehow, but they were finally enjoying some peace, which was fine and dandy for her.

↳ P e r s o n a l i t y —

Karina is a chatty, outgoing, sometimes dorky girl. She feels more accepted at Camp Half-Blood than anywhere else, but she still hides under her glasses and oversized shirt, self-conscious of her appearance. She’s also self-conscious of her laughter, which sounds closer to a snort, and tries to hide the sound of it. No matter how safe Camp is, she hasn’t forgotten the mean things she was told over the years and that can make her feel insecure, so she won’t be her true self around a stranger, turning almost into a shrinking violet. Her mother’s sacred animal might be the owl, but she loves cats and everything cat related. She owns a cat hoodie, and cat shoes, and cute cat socks, and her room at her dad’s apartment has a cat motif, and “cat” is the one word she’s learned to pronounce in almost every language. Still, she won’t talk about it if she doesn’t trust the other person not to make fun of her.

↳ A b i l i t i e s  a n d  w e a k n e s s e s —

✔ As a daughter of Athena, Karina is knowledgeable in a broad array of subjects, but she’s specially knowledgeable in languages, linguistics, and –to her very own surprise- battle strategies. She’s also skilled at crafts, such as weaving..

‣ Like all Greek demigods, Karina suffers from ADHD (to keep her alert to threats) and, because her brain is hard-wired to read Greek, from dyslexia.She’s also fluent in Spanish (being her mother language) and Latin (thanks to her dad).

✘ She’s not much of a fighter, preferring fleeing instead of fighting. Like all other half-blood children of Athena, Karina has immense arachnophobia, freezing up when she sees a spider or anything bearing a close resemblance to one.

↳ T h i n g s  t o  r e m e m b e r —

She still wears her glasses out of habit, not because she needs them.

She has read complete dictionaries –for fun.

She speaks English with an accent.

She wants to master a handful of other languages.

She’s experimenting with her sexuality.

She LOVES cats, but she’s mildly allergic to them, so she’s never had one.

↳ R e l a t i o n s h i p s —

TBD

FC: Isabella Gomez

[ask-joeydrewstudios]

((SO. This AU has gotten way more off-canon and hectic than I intended waay back when I first started this blog, so under the cut is a crash-course for this AU and how it differs from canon and other things to take note of for folks that are new and/or who don’t keep up with every single little post. Confused? This should have answers :3c))

FIRST OFF, AN IMPORTANT THING TO NOTE Is that this AU has been going since just after Chapter Two, and a lot of it was planned between chapters two and three. Also, this blog PREDATES and TOTALLY AVOIDS canon. There Is No Bad Ending. Only Happy Times(tm).

It’s heavily implied the studio is in New York in-canon, but I can confirm here that the studio is indeed in New York in this AU.

The toons are really Joey’s creations, they’re in no way stolen from anyone else.

I made and characterized my Joey before we got his first log in chapter three, and for me, voices need to sync to their characters. As such, my Joey doesn’t at all sound like he does in the game. I haven’t found who the voice belongs to, but I’ll update this when I do. Joey’s the only character in the AU with a voice different here than in-canon. (For anyone curious, he’s actually in the realm of sounding like a slightly more masculine Blue Diamond from SU xD it’s very light and gentle like that)

Joey’s a bit out of his mind in this AU, but he’s not uncaring. He’s still into rituals and the occult, but he’d never harm his employees or the toons.

He thinks of the toons as his children, and they think of him as their Papa Drew. They’re a very cute oddball family.

Joey has no (human) family of his own, he lives in an apartment in the studio with the toons. It’s right behind his office.

Henry has not been with the studio since it started. Joey started the studio on his own, and only met Henry later. He was too young to hire at the time, so it was several years before Henry actually got to join the studio staff. Henry and Joey stayed in close contact, though.

Speaking of Henry, he’s more Joey’s apprentice and surrogate son than business partner or anything else canon implies.

Henry’s wife is actually named Dianne here, because I accidentally made him a wife before we knew anything about Linda. Linda still exists somewhere in the city though, she’s just an ex. She broke up with him because of his work habits.

And speaking of Family, I don’t have a lot of family headcanons but here’s what I’ve got in a list: Joey just has the toons, Henry has a wife and a baby, Sammy’s an only child, Susie’s got an oldest brother and an older sister, Wally’s got six other siblings, Norman has five kids (and something like 20 grandkids iirc), shawn’s got a wife and two kids, and thomas had a wife and a kid but she left him and took the kid with her (now he only has his dog, poppy - she is his everything). susie and sammy go on to get married in a year and end up having twin boys, Stephen and Stanley Lawrence, in late 1940.

The toons were made in the first half of 1936, making them all around two years old as of when this was posted. They were made as-is so they were never babies, and they only age mentally. They were “born” with incredibly limited knowledge and experience, and with the way they learn at about the same pace regular human kids would they all have a tendency to act like small children. 

Naturally they do get smarter and wiser as time goes on, but they still act pretty childish and toony even 100 years from now.

The toons weren’t made by individual human sacrifices. Joey bonded his soul to the ink machine so it could produce possessed ink, which can then take on the form and personality of a toon in a ritual. The rituals still need blood, but Joey uses his own.

Speaking of that, that means Joey lacks a soul. This has had subtle influences on him as a person, both physically and mentally, but they’re very subtle.

Also, The Ink can manipulate things that already exist, people and objects included. Even inhaling too many fumes from it can cause one to act goofy. Physical contact or consumption of The Ink will lead to anything from toonish (childish/goofy) behavior to going full toon or ink monster, depending on quantity. explains why wally’s such a darn goofball, with how much of that stuff he cleans up all the time... this boy has inhaled Too Many Ink Fumes

Related to the above, but if The Ink gets into your system and deems you “incompatible”... it’s rare, but it’ll just outright kill you with ink poisoning instead of trying to do something Fun to you. it’s rare, and it hasn’t happened yet, but it can happen. Joey is the only one that knows this.

A handful of items in the studio are possessed by now after coming in contact with The Ink from leaking pipes or other spills.

The toons are ink all the way through, unlike their canon counterparts that have bones and organs. If you tried you could literally punch straight through them, and it wouldn’t hurt them all that much. It’d heal right back up as soon as you moved your arm. In fact, the only things that can harm them are water, religious symbols, and types of paint thinner (acetone, turpentine, etc etc. bleach will probably do it too.)

Because ink can take on the physical properties of other materials, that means the toons don’t just feel like ink - hair and fur still feels soft, fabric feels like fabric, etc etc... but everything’s got a subtle chalky texture to it, especially skin.

The toons have a lot of toon-superpowers, including but not limited to: shapeshifting, toon physics, hammerspace, consuming ridiculous amounts of food, teleporting through ink puddles... If it’s Classic Cartoon Slapstick(tm), they can probably do it.

Toons only really need to drink possessed ink to survive in day-to-day life, they need it much like humans need water. They can (and do) eat food for enjoyment but they don’t have to. They can also eat things that aren’t actually food, for some reason. Bendy’s really the only one that does this. the worst offender is pens, don’t leave your nice pens laying around he will eat them

The toons are all technically imperfect for in-universe unknown reasons. Bendy has a tail, Boris also has a tail and is fluffier than his cartoon counterpart, and Alice’s horns are just bits of hair that stick up. She also has holes all the way through her hands, and a longer dress. (The meta reasoning for this is just that I found it more fun to draw them these ways, they make them a little more my own ;P) (plus we didn’t know what alice looked like from the waist down until ch3 so uhhhhhh I Winged It)

This AU parallels Disney heavily, also they are technically Disney so that means they’re producing a lot of non-bendy related things alongside the Bendy cartoons. This includes full animated feature films that are more or less just like their disney counterparts. Yes, they did a snow white.

Studio never bankrupts in this timeline, it mirrors Disney’s success as well.

This also means that the theme park that was being worked on in-canon actually doesn’t exist for another 20 or so years, as Disney got to their first theme park in the 1950s.

Blog progresses in real-time, minus 80 years. There are slight tweaks to the exact time of day and the studio’s hours of operation exclusively for the ask-blog feature, however. this is why sometimes characters are answering asks at 9PM, when everyone is actually home in-universe

This is more meta but it’s a fun-fact, I try to simulate the ‘late 1930s’ vibe as well as I can, I do a loooot of research. More than I should, given this is a silly AU ask blog. I find history fascinating though so I go overboard.

The studio uses a mix of the current in-game layout, and the pre-ch4 updates layout. For example, there’s that new animation room behind henry’s desk here, but the ink machine and it’s room are still relatively undramatic.

Regardless of what I end up doing with Allison, she will not replace Susie as Alice’s voice. Susie is still and always will be Alice’s voice actress.

Susie’s also not nearly as... insane as her canon-counterpart, but that can be said for just about everyone here.

Alice was actually modeled after Susie. Joey was inspired by her incredible voice talent and general personality, so he made Alice as a character not long after Susie started working at the studio.

The studio was founded in February 1928, and they released the first Bendy cartoon in August 1928.

This will be updated as time goes on, and I’ll put those updates below this note so folks can find them easier instead of trying to remember what changed! c:

[whatshehassaid]

Favorite Things

I’m bored out of my mind at.... hell, I don’t even know what time it is. 

Food and Drink

Favorite Fast Food Restaurant? 

Umm, it really depends. I like Chinese/Asian type foods and pizza and a lot of things, so... I can’t really choose one? I really love Thai Express though.

Favorite Ice Cream Flavor?

It’s a toss up between pistachio and mint chocolate chip. Chocolate chip cookie dough is really good too

Favorite Chocolate Candy?

Ferrero Rocher or anything with a chocolate/hazelnut mix

Favorite Fruity Candy?

Sour Skittles or wine gums

Favorite Flavor Starburst?

Either the pink or the red

Favorite dish at Olive Garden?

I’ve actually never been to Olive Garden.

Favorite kind of sushi?

Uramaki (California rolls)... I also like maki.. (oh boy, now I’m craving sushi)

Favorite Asian dish?

I’ve really only had Westernized type Asian food, so.. I love spring rolls, sushi (see above), chow mein...

Favorite Italian Dish?

There’s a lot to choose from there as half my extended family is from Calabria... so...  chicken parmigiana or angel hair primavera

Favorite food of all time?

There’s a lot to choose from there... I really love steak though. Like, a little too much. 

Favorite way to cook a steak?

Medium, sometimes medium well

Favorite pasta dish?

Angel hair primavera

Favorite cookie?

White chocolate macadamia nut

Favorite fast food french fries?

Mcdonalds

Favorite cereal?

Raisin Bran. Don’t @ me

Favorite breakfast food?

Mmmm, omlettes. 

Favorite pizza toppings?

Pepperoni, green pepper, sometimes pineapple.... sometimes olives.

Favorite fruit?

It’s a tie between strawberries, cherries and pomegranates. 

Favorite vegetable?

Broccoli

Favorite dessert? 

White chocolate cheesecake.

Favorite comfort food?

Homemade chicken soup

Favorite way to eat bacon?

On its own, honestly.

Favorite thing at a buffet?

I don’t really go to buffets..... 

Favorite pumpkin flavored treat?

Pumpkin spiced lattes........................ don’t start with me

Favorite dish at Thanksgiving?

Stuffing.

Favorite cake?

Strawberry shortcake... or angel cake w/ strawberries.

Favorite ice cream sundae toppings?

Hot fudge, maraschino cherries and whipped cream

Favorite thing to cook?

I love making pizza..

Favorite soda?

Cherry coke.

Favorite alcoholic drink?

Vodka coke.

Favorite drink at Starbucks?

Skinny cinnamon dolce latte

Favorite flavor coffee?

I just.... coffee? and espresso... I love espresso.

Television & Movies

Favorite 80′s movie?

Um, toss up between ET, the Indiana Jones movies (Last Crusade has always been my fave), and The Shining.

Favorite Harry Potter movie?

Toss up between Prisoner of Azkaban and Half Blood Prince in the HP series... Crimes of Grindelwald (so far) in the Fantastic Beasts series.

Favorite Hobbit from Lord of the Rings?

Bilbo.

Favorite Simpson’s character? 

Lisa.

Favorite cartoon cat?

Felix the cat. 

Favorite TV sitcom?

I Love Lucy. Does that count as a sitcom?

Favorite cartoon?

Peanuts (does that count?) or Looney Tunes

Favorite scary movie?

I’ve watched a LOT of horror movies, but Halloween (1978) hands down.

Favorite funny movie?

Hmmm... I don’t watch many comedic movies, honestly.. Bridesmaids? I don’t know..

Favorite celebrity?

Y’all really gonna ask this? We all know it’s Jude Law.

Favorite South Park character?

I never really got into South Park, tbh.

Favorite chick flick?

Um, The Holiday and maybe Confessions of a Shopaholic....

Favorite Pixar movie?

I’d have to choose three ‘cause I can’t choose one... Ratatouille, Coco, and Toy Story

Favorite Family Guy character?

Don’t really watch it. I watched the first season. Stewie, I guess?

Favorite Leonardo Dicaprio movie?

Aw, you gotta do this to me? Top 3: Titanic, The Great Gatsby and Shutter Island.

Favorite Actress over 50?

Do people who are dead count? ‘Cause I’d choose Marilyn Monroe in a heartbeat.

Favorite Marvel movie?

Captain America: The Winter Soldier

Favorite TV Show?

A tie between Hannibal and Twin Peaks.

Favorite cancelled TV series?

Hannibal. Definitely Hannibal.

Favorite show on the Discovery Channel?

I don’t really watch it all that much.... can I use a show from the History Channel instead? (Hunting Hitler)

Favorite classic movie?

Niagara (1953) or Dracula (1931)

Music

Favorite Beatles song?

Golden Slumbers

Favorite string instrument?

Acoustic guitar

Favorite instrument?

Piano

Favorite band or music artist?

I have too many so, Neutral Milk Hotel, Nirvana and Lana Del Rey.

Favorite music genre?

Indie, alternative, whatever.

Favorite style of dance?

I love the way swing dancing looks.

Favorite boy band?

Oof, ya outtin’ me. NSYNC.

Favorite disco song?

Don’t Stop Til You Get Enough - Michael Jackson or Night Fever - Bee Gees

Favorite 80′s song?

I love a LOT of 80′s music so... I can give you a few (I can’t choose one, that’s impossible): Call Me - Blondie, Take on Me - Aha, Total Eclipse of the Heart - Bonnie Tyler, You Spin Me Round (Like a Record) - Dead or Alive, A Criminal Mind - Gowan, Maneater - Hall & Oates, Smooth Criminal - Michael Jackson (THERE ARE A LOT MORE)

Favorite cover song?

Byaginc’s version of Losing My Religion - REM and I also really like Lo-Fang’s version of You’re the One That I Want.

Favorite one hit wonder?

Sex and Candy - Marcy Playground

Favorite song you’re embarrassed to like?

Ummmmm.. if I have to pick one.. Irresistible by Jessica Simpson (also the version with Lil Bow Wow is a banger?)

Favorite foreign band/artist?

Catatonia (does that count, I mean, I’m not Welsh.. so). I also like Pink Floyd.

Travel & Recreation

Favorite state you’ve visited?

I’ve only visited one state in the US and it was Florida.

Favorite country you want to visit?

Italy or England

Favorite thing about America?

If you’re referencing the US, I live in Canada, so... I don’t know?

Favorite kind of vacation?

I love beaches... but I also love art and architecture so *shrug*

Favorite car?

1950′s VW Beetle. 

Favorite road to drive on?

I don’t drive.

Favorite way to travel?

Car, I hate planes.

Favorite beach?

I haven’t been to many honestly.

Favorite place to go with family?

DISNEY WORLD.

Favorite vacation you’ve taken?

The first one I ever went on to Universal Studios in Orlando.

Favorite fictional place you’d want to visit?

Hogwarts, let’s be real.

Favorite ride at a carnival?

Those swing carousel things.

Favorite thing to do at the beach?

.....read

Favorite rollercoaster?

I do nOT do rollercoasters.

Favorite theme park?

Disney DISNEY D I S N E Y

Favorite thing about traveling?

I love nice hotels, I don’t know why that’s my fave part, but it is.

Nature & Animals

Favorite dinosaur?

Um, I’ve never really thought about that? T-Rex, I guess?

Favorite breed of dog?

Poodle.

Favorite season?

Autumn

Favorite flower?

Hiscibus

Favorite animal at the zoo?

Elephants... if they have them or pandas

Favorite type of bear?

Panda bears

Favorite natural disaster?

....what kind of question is that?

Favorite reptile?

I love snakes.

Favorite animal?

Tie between cats and sloths.

Favorite bird?

Owls.

Favorite thing in the sky?

The moon.

Favorite thing about a rainy day?

Hearing rain on the roof.

Favorite sea creature?

Can I say the Loch Ness Monster? (haha) Jellyfish.

Favorite color rose?

Light pink or dark red.

Favorite small mammal?

KITTENS!

Favorite big cat?

I love snow leopards. 

Favorite thing about spring?

Flowers.

Favorite wild animal you’d like as a pet?

A sloth.

Sports

Favorite sport?

Soccer

Favorite extreme sport you're too scared to do?

Does snowboarding count?

Favorite Olympic sport?

Figure skating.

Favorite football team?

Don’t watch American football.

Favorite basketball team?

Don’t really watch that either.

Favorite hockey team?

I know I’m Canadian, but I’m honestly not that invested. I’d choose the Maple Leafs ‘cause I’m from TO, but they’re.... aw f ul.

Favorite baseball team?

Blue Jays

Favorite sport to play?

Soccer.

Favorite winter sport?

I do not do winter sports. I’m a klutz as it is.

Favorite sport you wish you were a pro at?

Figure skating would be AMAZING.

Favorite professional athlete?

Serena Williams, Evgenia Medvedeva

Favorite sport to watch in person?

Hockey.

Childhood

Favorite nursery rhyme?

Didn’t really have a favorite.

Favorite childhood memory?

My grandfather. 

Favorite board game?

Monopoly or Scrabble

Favorite children’s show?

I looooooved Looney Tunes. I still do, honestly.

Favorite toy as a child?

I had a Barney the Dinosaur plush (I had Barney everything)

Favorite teacher?

My sixth grade teacher was a pretty cool dude.

Favorite thing about school?

Art class.

Favorite age?

Don’t really have one, maybe 4 or 5?

Favorite Christmas present?

My mom bought me a N64.

Favorite Dr. Seuss book?

Green Eggs & Ham

Favorite Halloween costume you've worn?

Technically I wore it as a teen, but the Silk Spectre II costume I wore when I was 17.

Favorite lunchbox snack?

Dunkaroos!

Favorite Winnie the Pooh character?

Pooh & Eeyore. 

Favorite thing to do during recess?

Read.

Favorite superhero?

Wonder Woman.

Favorite video game?

Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time.

Favorite color Power Ranger?

Pink.

Favorite fairy tale?

Does Beauty and the Beast count?

Favorite game to play outside?

Catch the flag.

Fashion & Beauty

Favorite department store?

Does Sephora count as a department store?

Favorite place to shop?

There’s a lot of places I love to shop. Mostly bookstores though.

Favorite store in the mall?

Indigo/Chapters (I love my books)

Favorite perfume/cologne?

YSL Black Opium or Chanel’s Coco Mademoiselle

Favorite hair color?

On me? A mix of auburn and dark brown

Favorite makeup you can't live without?

Eyebrow pencil 

Favorite shoes?

My thigh high dark brown suede go-go boots. ;)

Favorite occasion to dress up for?

I’ll honestly dress up for anything. I love dressing up.

Favorite hairstyle?

Anything wavy/curly with or without braids.

Favorite outfit you have?

Right now I have a super cute wrap dress that I like.

Favorite soap scent?

I like the smell of Dove soap, is that weird?

Favorite article of clothing?

I love high waist mini skirts.

Favorite place for a piercing?

Upper ear.

Favorite piece of jewelry?

Right now I’m a dork for the replica pendant from Crimes of Grindelwald. I also love this bracelet/ring/hand jewelry thing I have.

Favorite thing to wear to bed?

Sometimes lace and silk stuff ;) Sometimes just huge t-shirts

Favorite luxury brand?

YSL

Random

Favorite candle scent?

I love coconut scents.

Favorite extracurricular activity?

.....reading? (again)

Favorite day of the week?

Sunday

Favorite holiday?

Does Halloween count as a holiday?

Favorite website?

Well, I’m on Tumblr QUITE a bit...

Favorite way to communicate?

Usually face to face.. I hate talking on the phone. Text message is a close second.

Favorite Youtube video?

I love this dork. [x]

Favorite kind of house?

Victorian

Favorite car color?

Teal?

Favorite baby boy name?

I don’t know...

Favorite baby girl name?

Charlie, Evelyn

Favorite thing to do when you’re sick?

It’s an odd habit of mine to watch The Mummy or HP or Spice World for some reason

Favorite person you’ve never met?

Famous? Bryan Fuller Person in my life? MY THREE BEST FRIENDS!

Favorite question you’ve answered so far?

I don’t know...........

Favorite thing you’ve done in the last 24 hours?

I literally slept most of the day. Don’t judge me.

Favorite place to meet up with friends?

Kitty Cafes and.... cafes in general.

Favorite hobby?

Reading, making art.... listening to music

Favorite way to cheer you up?

Anything to do with Jude Law usually does the trick, bahaha

Favorite thing to look forward to?

Leaving this god awful small city to go explore other places.

Favorite kind of gift to receive?

Things that are heartfelt... things that people make whether it be handmade or... whatever... it’s really sweet.

Favorite crafty thing to make?

Does sketching count? Funny story, I used to get in trouble in art class in high school for sketching human anatomy (hands, collarbones etc) instead of reviewing art history notes, which I also loved by the way.

Favorite way to relax?

Reading, bubble baths.... other ways ;)

[churchyardgrim]

What are OCs, what's the purpose of them, and can you tell me about yours? 👀

yes to all!!

ocs are original characters, these lil nerds I carry around in my brain and that make me completely ignore the world around me bc I’m thinking about shit like the logistics of Why Vampires Don’t Rot and also how much more cute can I cram into my poly gay witch triad before something ruptures. as for purpose, they’re fun to have! there really isn’t a distinction between my ocs and the characters in a published novel, except popularity and reach. every character in fiction is someone’s oc!

most of what I have on my ocs is in my “oc talk” and “my writing” tags, which hopefully will continue to be accessible for the next few days/weeks, bc I care a lot about them and I’ve put a lot of thoughts and worldbuilding work into those tags. but a quick rundown of my current favorite garbage children is as follows:

harker! she’s a physics witch with a scandinavian guardian spirit stapled to her brain, and a concerning amount of hyperfocus for the magical mechanics of outer space. she’s very gay, very trans, and dresses like a raccoon discovered hoodies. her story involves coming to terms with having a permanent spiritual hitchhiker, and learning to use its powers to further her own goals; namely, staying alive when someone else very badly wants that power, and also taking a big heaping handful of the Secrets Of The Universe for herself. and also finishing those extra grad school projects she took on to make up for the last round of actual assignments she blew off to work on other extra projects, etc etc.

gregory! awful garbage grandpa whom I love! he was a monk way back when germany was still the holy roman empire, in like 1070, and never did anything wrong ever in his life which means it sure was a shame when he got murdered and then popped back up like a half-feral bloodhungry daisy. his story is a long one, involving werewolf vikings, semi-sane rampages across europe, spending 20+ years imprisoned by a monster hunting english family, and getting hex-maimed just in time for the renaissance to roll around! in the modern day he’s that kind of rich you get when you learn how to game the banking system reeeaaally well on account of never dying, and also selling off all the antiques that just collect like flotsam in your life. he will 100% steal your blood.

erika! harker’s girlfriend, erika is mildly clairvoyant and very neurotic. you know those girls you knew in college that looked very much like the classical bitchy queen bee but turned out to be literal rays of sunshine and positivity who always had advil in their purses and legitimately cared about your problems? that’s erika, with a heaping side of anxiety issues managed almost entirely in private, and centering around time and the unpredictability of it all. she plans out whole months in advance down to the hour. she makes all her lunches for the week ahead of time. surprises and unexpected events throw her into panic spirals, and she somehow manages to go jogging most mornings. the clairvoyance Does Not Help. also very gay, also very trans, also kinda angel-haunted.

ifian! harker’s other girlfriend, ifian is a textiles witch that specializes in emotion work; she works feelings into fabric sophie hatter style, and can capture and contain strong emotions enough to use in spells for sometimes explosive effects. she’s decisive, The Mom Girlfriend, and tends to step in and assume control when her gfs are having their own lil moments, for which they are eternally grateful. ifian’s is the driving will in the relationship, as she’s good at wrangling people and helping them figure out what they want, which is not always an easy thing to know. she very much does not trust the goat harker’s toting around now, and worries over both her gfs bc god, they are disasters aren’t they. very, very gay, somehow The Cis One, and makes her own clothes bc shopping for good outfits while fat is a nightmare at the best of times, she’s got fabric magic, she doesn’t have to put up with that.

felicity! picture a feral raccoon. now picture a twelve year old. now combine them and give the resulting monstrosity a knife. that’s my horrible goblin child. her story goes like this: gregory, being a responsible corporate monster, tries to keep the local vampire population to a bare minimum. sometimes when the Disturbance looks minor enough he deals with it himself, bc he’s maimed and old and can’t fight as well as he used to. on this occasion, he finds a broken-into house, two parental-shaped corpses, and a traumatized child repeatedly stabbing the body of the fresh vamp that did the crime. naturally, he looked at this kid threatening him with a kitchen knife, and said “this is mine now” and that was that. she’s a feisty kid, busy repressing whatever the fuck went down and aggressively climbing trees n shit. someday she’ll grow up into 80% limbs and 20% Hit And Run by LOLO. someday she’ll die, on purpose, so she can come back hungry and powerful and protect her crippled old father figure forever.

thems the main kids I’m working with right now, and dear god did that get long I am so sorry. I am 100% down to talk about these losers anytime anyplace so hmu with any more questions you got!!

[salavante]

Ethem-Cailo

Full Name: Ethem-Cailo, The Divine Squire, God of Aspiration / Jovix-Cailo, The Ravenous, God of Greed

Gender and Sexuality: Male, Bisexual (but uncomfortable with it)

Pronouns: He/Him

Ethnicity/Species: Threnghelleon God 

Birthplace and Birthdate: All of the OG Threnghelleon gods are born from experiences that Glory had in hist first years on their world. Ethem-Cailo was born when Jovix-Diocunigast decided he wished to scale the world’s highest peak, which would one day become their version of olympyus. After a long journey, Diocunigast and his accompaniment found a boy sitting cross legged on the mountaintop, who introduced himself as the God of Aspiration.

Guilty Pleasures: Probably a bunch of creepy shit better left unsaid, to be honest. At a certain point though, Jovix-Cailo revels in any pleasure he finds, so, nothing is really a guilty pleasure.

Phobias: Fears of being inadequate, being alone, being forgotten, being unloved or working/suffering with no reward. Wybjorn makes him really insecure because it shows that there is not some foundational problem with Cailo himself that makes him inherently unloveable or irredeemable, he’s just a jerk. 

What They Would Be Famous For: Being a God!  

What They Would Get Arrested For: violating a restraining order or killing someone, lol.  

OC You Ship Them With: Cailo, and Wybjorn by proxy, have had two canon long-term romantic relationships. One is his first and only wife, Eleanor of Warns, Breaker of Horses, a sturdy lass who was the daughter of the man who he was supposed to train to unify Thregelleon’s tribes. It was a whole big thing that ended in tragedy and the start of the Red Age, Threnghelleon’s big nasty barbarian period. The second is a less documented romantic relationship with a champion male wrestler that he squired, named Raske Callhand, but male/male romance was not something looked on well in their culture so it was kept quiet. This is all stuff that occurred thousands of years before our game started. In the present, Cailo has actually been secretly hooking up with a human girl who saved his life, named Helena Kirsch, but that is very much a secret and is not going to be plot relevant until our next game. I feel like any other relationships (Like Cailo/Ozzy or Cailo/Celair) kind of dial up a skeev factor that I’m not comfortable with, and are better left to ol Wybjorn, who is a significantly better version of him.  

OC Most Likely To Murder Them: Ozzy is supposed to murder him but is not sure if he can! Wybjorn would kill him, The Helmsman would kill him, Rumenthlay and Apherhaim would kill him, Celair would kill him, Diocunigast would kill him…lots of people would try to kill him, to be honest. He is not a popular guy.

Favorite Movie/Book Genre: He likes a little bit of everything, he’s seen it all. Things most relevant to his interests in movies are are sports films, shlocky action movies and 80’s teen romance, and in books he’d like poetry (both epic poems like The Odyssey and Beowolf in addition to like, Robert Frost and Bukowski and etc) and classical literature.

Least Favorite Movie/Book Cliche: “Why does the jock always get the girl in those stupid teen movies, huh? When’s it gonna be the nice guy’s turn!” But in seriousness is very trope-savvy and probably gets tired of most genre conventions really easily.

Talents and/or Powers: Ok well he’s a TTRPG boss so, Ethem-Cailo’s powers, and also Wybjorn’s, are built around a series of three different runic magical shields and provide passive buffs as well as effects when they are broken. Jovix-Cailo additionally can tell whatever gross dirty thing your heart longs for by looking at you with his awful red peepers. Other than your usual godly fare (can change his size, supernatural endurance and strength, flight, etc) he can make constructs out of stone, which is where Wybjorn came from.  

Why Someone Might Love Them: In rare moments, Cailo is emotionally sincere and tender, and is in general very passionate and old-school romantic (sonnets and poems, small tokens of affection, etc). Objects of his affection are protected at great lengths, and obsessively adored. Some people might dig that. He has great investment in the rights of children and is very sensitive to situations when they are taken advantage of in any way, due to his personal experiences as a squire to mortal champions. His temples on Threnghelleon generally doubled as a gymnasium/YMCA kind of deal, and woe fall upon those who fuck with its younger members or try to use its systems to exploit them. He really wishes he could’ve had a family with his (ex and thousands of years dead) wife, Eleanor.

Why Someone Might Hate Them: As Ethem-Cailo he is emotionally needy, has an obnoxious need to prove himself, is selfish, buys too much into toxic masculinity, has physically violent tantrums, hardly ever accepts blame unless it’s in a self deprecating fashion and is creepy/awkward/obsessive around the girls he likes, so, what’s not to hate. He is the reason the Lapinine (Rumenthlay’s race) are all dead. He’s the reason why a LOT of people are dead! As Jovix-Cailo, he is a vicious, cruel, hedonistic monster who takes everything he wants by force and purposefully stirs the pot to break apart Jovix-Diocunigast’s ranks, with the long-term goal being to overthrow him. He’s more confident and cares less about what people think, but he’s still a fuck.  

How They Change: I mean, spectacularly for the worst. He goes from being the God of Aspiration to the God of Greed because his hate and entitlement and desperation is too much to pack into his tiny body. I feel like I go over this pretty thoroughly across the board so I don’t want to repeat myself too much.

Why You Love Them: To be honest the only reason why Wybjorn exists is because I got way too attached to Ethem-Cailo and when we saw a way to give me an outlet for that and really embrace Cailo as a villain, we took it. He’s my favorite antagonist that I’ve made for a TTRPG. His core desires are not things that are inherently bad - a desire to be loved, recognized for his struggle, have his pain acknowledged and respected for his hard work. But his fatal flaw his his inability to reflect and look internally for a solution to his troubles rather than seeking it externally, and so he is always a victim in his mind, and always desperate to prove things to people who couldn’t care less. He started as a good person with good intentions, and while he isn’t evil, he’s definitely a capital b Bad Guy. I find him sympathetic while still enjoying how just depraved and cruel he is, and he has a certain just rock solid conviction to get revenge on the universe that I find really compelling. To me, Wybjorn and Ethem-Cailo represent a divergence in processing complex trauma - self reflection, remaining open and compassionate, accepting you may fail as you try to heal vs. clinging to the past, an obsession with being the victim, and embracing cruelty so that you can direct it towards a world that you feel has failed you. I mean, as far as I relate to it anyway. It’s my way of working through some stuff that I probably chose to ignore for a little too long, lol.

[tokupedia]

Japanese Hero Show Case: Tetsujin-28

The year is 1956, Japan was still recovering from World War II and Tokyo is getting a new landmark with the Tokyo Tower under construction and nearing completion. Akira Kurosawa and Godzilla made their marks on the world 2 years prior.

Amidst all this change, the shadow of the Second World War hung heavily over the nation after its defeat. Some became bitter, others mourned the immense loss of life of families and friends, some proclaimed their unending hatred of the US for being so cruel as to use them as a live testing target of a new weapon. Others who witnessed the horrors of the atomic bomb and the war or heard about it growing up developed an anti-war mentality, wanting to never again experience such tragedy and show the world why war was a bad thing. 

We know some of their names because of this thematic narrative: Ishiro Honda and Tomoyuki Tanaka with Godzilla, Yoshiyuki Tomino with Gundam, Shotaro Ishinomori with his Cyborg 009 manga and Go Nagai with Devilman who mused humanity will inevitably destroy itself if it succumbed to violence. Among those many names was Mitsuteru Yokoyama. 

Mr. Yokoyama is considered the template builder of many of the anime, tokusatsu and manga genres we now take for granted: Ninjas, Jidaigeki, supernatural and sci-fi, Magical girls and of course, humanoid robots that fight evil controlled by a human. 

While Go Nagai is credited as the father of the Super Robot Genre which expanded this to involve them being piloted from the inside by humans, Mitsuteru Yokoyama is the one of the origin points of our modern association of the island nation and robots with the other being the legendary Osamu Tezuka and his creation; Astro Boy.

In an interview with a Japanese magazine, the manga artist said the inspiration of his most beloved creation was one from the terror of war as a child. He said: 

"When I was a fifth-grader, the war ended and I returned home from Tottori Prefecture, where I had been evacuated. The city of Kobe had been totally flattened, reduced to ashes. People said it was because of the B-29 bombers...as a child, I was astonished by their terrifying, destructive power." 

Adding to this was his fascination of experimental vehicle superweapons the Nazis tested. Despite most of them being impractical or outlandish, their size and seemingly threatening appearance made the creative spark in his mind along with that childhood traumatic horror. A final inspiration was reading Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein, with Yokoyama feeling sympathetic to the Monster as he was not good or evil, just misunderstood and driven to evil by the cruelty of the world. This lead to the idea for a robot who was a superweapon made by the Japanese Imperial Military meant to destroy the Allies, but became a force for good for all mankind in the hands of the succeeding generation.

BIRU no machi ni GAOO  Yoru no HAIUEE ni GAOO DADADADA DAAN to tama ga kuru BABABABA BAAN to haretsu suru BYUUN to tondeku Tetsujin Nijuuhachi-gou!

Original Story: In the 1950s, Dr. Kaneda revealed to his son Shotaro that he had worked on an top-secret experiment during the last phases of the war that would have turned the tide in Japan’s favor had the atomic bombs not dropped and Japan surrendered. A series of powerful giant robots that would have crushed the Allied forces. 

Deciding that a device that was intended for war would be able to be used for peaceful purposes, Dr. Kaneda entrusted the 28th model and its remote to his son. Shotaro used it to stop crimes, disasters, kaiju and other robots that had been stolen, created for evil or fallen into the wrong hands. Shotaro is a famous genius private detective and despite this breaking all known reason, he can legally drive his 1953 Austin-Healey (or a Volante depending on the incarnation) around Tokyo despite being 10 years old. Shotaro also has to keep the remote on hand or others could use the powerful Tetsujin-28 for evil.

This story has been adapted several times. Aside from the manga, there was a 1960 tokusatsu TV show. The series is an interesting time capsule... if a bit primitive. See, while things like Godzilla could pull off the scale of giant things on the big silver screen, Japanese TV hadn’t perfected that trick just yet. It would take until Ultra Q and Ultraman to get it just right and the live action adaptation of Giant Robo (another Yokoyama creation) to give TV one of its first baby footsteps into live action giant robots. Thus this incarnation of Tetsujin-28 is giant...by only a foot or two. In other words, he was human sized, which I’m sure disappointed some fans.  Then there was the 1960s anime which was brought over to the US as Gigantor and rebroadcast years later on Cartoon Network. (Oldtaku love this show and have fond memories of it. Remember, without this series as one of the gateways, we wouldn’t have anime here!)

Its next retellings was in 2004 with a reboot anime that followed its own story and a 2005 live action movie that transplanted the events into the 2000s. 

An animated reboot film by Imagi Studios was planned, but ultimately terminated as the studio went bankrupt. Interestingly, the trailer showed it borrowed an element from Giant Robo by having Shotaro control Tetsujin-28 with a voice control radio wristwatch. 

The 1980 Reboot:

The Reboot moved the story into the 1980s and several things changed. First was Dr. Kaneda built Tetsujin-28 to fight aliens (WWII was a sensitive subject to some TV viewers) who wanted to destroy Earth and conquer the universe. Another change was Shotaro was a junior agent of Interpol. But the most radical change was the star of the show, slimmed down to a sleeker design and stronger than ever. Theme song is pretty good too, because its pure 80s rock/pop.

The TMS made sequel series- Tetsujin 28 FX:

It is the year 2002 and robotics technology has advanced rapidly since the time of Tetsujin-28 back in the ‘50s. Shotaro Kaneda is now a middle aged man who still uses his robot every now and then and mentors young kids to succeed him in his detective agency business and his wife is part of a tech company. Sakaki Electronics wants the children of the world to live by Shotaro’s example and protect the future with new robots. Unfortunately, said robot tech attracts the attention of evil aliens called the Neo Black Group who wish to use them for war. While old Tetsujin puts up a good fight, the tech he runs on is too old to be a match for the evil space menace on his own. Fortunately, a new and improved Tetsujin called the Iron Man Future X Project or Tetsujin-28 FX has been built and is controlled by Shotaro’s son Masato via a remote gun. Together along with thier friends and family, they fight the Neo Black Group to save the Earth! 

The original Tetsujin still puts up a good scrap and helps his successor when the situation calls for it, nice of TMS to not render the classic character useless.

(Like father like son!)

The series was planned by Yokoyama himself and is sort of a sequel to the 1960s anime. There is a G Gundam vibe as some of the mechs are very stereotypical, like Iron Eagle, the official robot of the United States of America controlled by Michael Justice! (No, I swear I am not making that name up.)

Look at him, red white and blue with gunmetal gray, covered in bullet bandoliers, has a fighter pilot helmet head and wields a shotgun weapon. All that is missing is a cheeseburger and a cowboy hat! 

There was another Tetsujin series recently..Tetsujin-28 go Gao!

But it is more comedy based and has slice of life scenarios. Outside of that, the famed robot did a live action ad for NTT’s wi-fi internet service in 2009.

Powers: Tetsujin-28 is made of a super steel alloy that makes him difficult, and in some cases near impossible, to damage. It has super strength from complex hydraulics that allows it to lift buildings or smash a robot with his bare hands! Tetsujin-28 can also fly using the rocket boosters on his back to carry Shotaro to wherever he needs to go at super speed.

As to be expected from the granddaddy of Japanese Robots, he is awesome based on the fact he doesn’t need any fancy weapons. Simple brute force gets the job done!

Weaknesses: Tetsujin can be controlled by someone else if the remote is stolen or its remote frequency is jammed and manipulated.  It also didn’t work well in the old days when a thunderstorm was going on as the lightning interfered with the signal and made it liable to get zapped. Since its body is made of super steel, intense heat can melt its armor. Lastly, Shotaro is both vulnerable to attack and needs to stay close to Tetsujin-28 in order for it to keep moving.

Tetsujin-28 is a classic character that has transcended its WWII origins and endured for over 60 years. Its influence is everywhere, from Akira to Pacific Rim. Here’s hoping we see more of the lovable potbellied robot in the future!

*flexes arms like Tetsujin-28*

[jakelace]

2017 IN FILM - PART 1 (84-71)

It’s the most wonderful time of the year again! No, not Christmas. It’s Awards Season, my friends. The time of year where we look back at the films that graced cinemas over the calendar year, and where, just like last year, I tell you all about every new movie I saw in that time. With the announcement of the Academy Awards nominees I’ve decided that we’ll begin our journey today with the worst of the worst that 2017 had to offer. Over the course of the year I saw 84 films. Some were good, some were bad, and still others had Emoji in the title, so without any further ado, my ranked list of every 2017 movie I’ve seen.

84. The Emoji Movie

“We’re number two! We’re number two!”

The Emoji Movie, despite being at the bottom of my rankings, is not the worst movie of 2017. That’s because this ninety minute misstep isn’t a film, it’s an advertisement. While it might seem silly to make such a distinction (there is a plot that actually makes a shred of sense, it’s at least feature length, etc.), it’s incredibly hard to get past just how often this advertisement detours from its central plot just to make a cheap and out of touch product placement for an outdated app like Candy Crush. The Emoji Movie’s greatest offense, however, is when it tries to capitalize on the inherent meme culture that surrounded itself from the pre-production stage by creating a new dance called ‘The Emoji Pop’, that I am absolutely certain they thought was going to catch on with the youth of the world. Sony Pictures Animation’s latest cash-grab is an unoriginal, unfunny, and morally questionable mess. At least the animation is decent?

83. Unforgettable

“There was a time when I thought we were on the road to getting back together...but then he met you.”

Here it is, my lowest rated film of 2017! While a lot of times a movie can be bad for being incoherent, unoriginal, or offensive, I often say that the worst sin a film can commit is being boring. Unforgettable commits that sin. While I can admire Rosario Dawson’s commitment to this truly awful retread of the “crazy ex-wife” trope that was popularized by every Lifetime movie ever, its Katherine Heigl’s performance that makes the film somewhat endurable. It’s over the top in all of the best “so bad it’s good” ways. After thirty minutes of being bored out of my mind I found the best way to get through this cinematic torture was to watch for the next hilariously overacted bit of poorly written dialogue that would come out of Heigl’s mouth. In the end though, you can’t blame her for trying to make the best out of such a predictable and horribly paced film. Unfortunately it would seem that Unforgettable is by far the most forgettable film of 2017.

82. Phoenix Forgotten

“I just want to apologize to Mike's mom, Josh's mom, and my mom. And I'm sorry to everyone.”

Do you remember Phoenix Forgotten? No? Neither do I...yes I know that’s two jokes about forgettable movies with some form of ‘forget’ in the title in a row, but I just couldn’t help myself. Just like the screenwriters for this film couldn’t help themselves from stealing every plot point in the movie from not only the 1999 horror classic The Blair Witch Project, but also taking several ideas from last year’s sequel; Blair Witch. It’s absolutely shameless how little originality can be found within the film’s eighty minute runtime. The film follows three college high-school students lost in the woods desert, searching for a witch aliens who terrorize a town, while footage from the present day follows the protagonist’s brother sister who is still haunted by the sudden disappearance of their sibling. All of this blatant plagiarism wouldn’t have even been so bad had the movie at least been decent, but who needs to make a good film when you can just ride on the coat tails of a horror film that is already beloved? No other release this year sparked such a passionately heated response from me which shocks myself the most considering I’m not even that big of a fan of The Blair Witch Project in the first place! Oh well...at least they don’t fight about a map in this one...or did they?

81. The Bye Bye Man

“Don’t think it! Don’t say it!”

If Phoenix Forgotten is horrible for being unoriginal, then The Bye Bye Man is horrible for being completely and laughably incompetent in every way. The entire film is based on the premise that if you say or think his name then he will come and...make you go bye-bye? The rules are completely unclear, and that’s a huge part of the problem. The threat of the Bye Bye Man (I seriously hate that name) is hindered by the fact that it’s impossible to understand what his powers are. Sometimes he can make our poorly acted main characters see things that aren’t really there. Sometimes he can possess them. Sometimes he can...make them impotent? Who encouraged the thought that that would be a good thing to include in their supernatural horror film? Like, I get it, erectile dysfunction is a serious and scary thing that affects more than three million American men every year, but it’s not really the kind of fear I’m looking for in a movie called The Bye Bye Man. I’d continue to discuss this one, but, I mean, it’s all in the name. Also in this scene from the movie. Enjoy.

80. Amityville: The Awakening

“God gave up on us, sweetheart...”

I had been watching the post-production and release of this film very closely for years before it was eventually released this past October. While that might not seem too out of the ordinary, you have to keep in mind that this was filmed in 2014. That is three years of reshoots and pushed back releases. However, when all seemed bleak and I thought I might never get the chance to watch what was sure to be a glorious train wreck, the film was released to own for free on the Google Play store. However, even with my rock bottom expectations, I was still disappointed by Amityville: The Awakening. While I was expecting something laughably bad, what I got was an end product that was more boring than anything else. And while I haven’t seen any of the other films in the Amityville franchise, I can’t help but feel contempt for its continued use of a real family’s suffering all in the name of making money. I guess it’s a good thing this one only made $742 dollars on its opening weekend then, yeah?

79. Wish Upon

“Hold up, you dig on multiverses?”

One shot. I liked one shot in this entire movie. Everything else is lazily written drivel. It’s not all that hard to get me on board for a movie with Final Destination style deaths. I love how silly and over-the-top those films are, and I’ve always thought that bringing that style of Rube Goldberg death traps into more films could provide for entertaining new ideas. This movie has none of that. Its biggest offenses, however, come when it also tries to tackle the well-worn “be careful what you wish for” message. Besides the weird moment where Joey King’s character wishes that her dad would become cooler which then in turn leads to her friend wanting to to sleep with him, the moral of the story is so trite at this point that even adding a horror element into the mix can’t save this from being nothing but bland. Looks like the director should have wished for a better movie.

78. Rings

“There's a mark on your hand. It says ‘rebirth’.”

If Rings was an attempt to bring the horror franchise into modern technology by presenting Samara’s video as a metaphorical computer virus, or even commenting on the state of internet content as a whole, then this movie completely fails on that front. Seriously, the only time this movie even brings that aspect into play is in the last two minutes of the film. No joke. Everything else up to that point is a senseless retread of the previous two American films in the franchise. On top of that, it is easy to tell that Rings fell victim to countless reshoots and rewrites. There is no finer example of that than the fact that this film has two cold opens. It’s almost as though they had the plane cold open (the one from all of the trailers) from a previous version of the movie and thought it was just so good that they couldn’t leave it on the cutting room floor. If it were up to me I would have left the entire film on the cutting room floor.

77. The Mummy

“Sometimes it does take a monster to fight a monster.”

How do you kill an entire cinematic universe in one fell swoop? Ask The Mummy. Sure, that might be a low blow, but The Mummy is one of the most sorry excuses for a blockbuster I’ve ever seen. When the entire conflict of your entire supernatural action flick can be boiled down to ‘who would Tom Cruise rather sleep with? A mummy or an alive woman’ you know you went wrong somewhere down the line. The worst part about this is that there are moments where you can see where they’re coming from and what they’re trying to accomplish, but they just can’t seem to make any logical sense of it. Scenes are often rushed or dragged on for far too long and it becomes clear that nobody involved had any grasp on how a film should be paced...or written...or acted...or made at all.

76. Rock Dog

“Dad, I’ve decided to become a musician.”

I barely remember this movie. There is a dog. He shoots lasers out of his hands (not kidding). He rocks I’m guessing. I know I watched this, but everything about it was so generic and well-worn that I felt like I had seen this before, just done a lot better. I had never seen laser dog hands before though. Sure the moral about following your dreams and standing up for what you believe in is good, but when it comes to children’s entertainment you can do so much better. Unless you want to see a dog shoot lasers out of his hands. This movie has got you covered on that.

75. Fist Fight

“Teachers can’t fight!”

I wanted to really enjoy Fist Fight. It’s filled to the brim with actors I find quite funny, like Charlie Day, Jillian Bell, and Kumail Nanjiani, but it’s hard for these comedic talents to find anything to work with when the plot for the film is so bare-bones. Outside of the original comedic value in thinking of teachers fist fighting in the schoolyard, it’s hard to find much else to do with that premise. Nothing speaks more to the failure of this film than the fact that I didn’t laugh even once. The story is dumb, the jokes are played out, and worst of all the director wastes some of the best comedic actors in the industry on a movie that barely even functions.

74. Split

“Someone's coming for you, and you're not gonna like it.”

Controversial Opinion Alert! When I first saw Split I felt like I was alone on my island of disapproval of this film. The world seemed to be completely sold on M. Night Shyamalan’s most recent directorial endeavor, but something just felt off to me about it. It took me a few months and discussions with my friend Aaron when he finally cracked the case wide open; while everyone was expecting the film to vilify individuals with mental illness, the exact opposite comes true in the final act. Split goes so far as to glorify mental illness and being ‘broken’ in a way that feels unbelievably gross to me. If you want to read more of my thoughts about the exposition-heavy writing side of the film you can do so here, but I can’t even begin to explain how horrible of a message this is, so let’s just move on, shall we?

73. Sandy Wexler

“You can’t stop a shooting star, scientists have proven this.”

If it weren’t for its ungodly long runtime and constant detours into meaningless garbage, Sandy Wexler might actually be alright. In fact, this film does something that an Adam Sandler film hasn’t done for a very long time: it made me laugh. Sure it was just once and every other attempt at humor is just as overdone and juvenile as anything else he’s made, but a small step in the right direction is still a step. Last year for my ‘year in review’ I covered another Adam Sandler flick called The Do-Over, and in that mini review I called Sandler’s recent string of films a downward spiral in quality and ability. Now, if that was true, then Sandy Wexler is the first step towards getting out of that creative hole he’s found himself in. What can I say? I’m an optimist.

72. Despicable Me 3

“You told me my father died of disappointment the day I was born!”

Despicable Three (yes I’m calling it that and there is nothing anyone can do to stop me) is the same brand of gutter trash we’ve come to expect from Illumination Studios. The story is nonsensical, the animation is sinfully simplistic, and the Minions...my god...the Minions. Once again, I have to ask how Illumination Studios have become so popular with American audiences? I truly do not understand. Every character, every plot line, every joke feels focus tested to death. There is no originality in any of these frames. The heart and soul of the original is gone and replaced with Minions merchandise. Every decision seems to be based around how merchandisable they can make every second of their sensory overloading piece of garbage they have the nerve to call a film. I hate Despicable Three and everything it stands for. That being said, I love hearing Trey Parker’s voice come out of a children’s cartoon. 

71. The Circle

“Knowing is good, but knowing everything is better.”

I love how much I hate The Circle. If you’re looking for a basic description of what this YA fiction masterpiece in preaching is all about, then imagine Black Mirror, but remove all of the subtlety and nuance about a world run by tech and replace it with a caveman grunting “technology bad.” There you have it, a screenplay worthy of Tom Hanks and Emma Watson’s time and talent. Just kidding. Why would they ever agree to this? Maybe they too hate the dangers of social media so much that they can look past all the good it can do. The worst part about it all though is that the film constantly insults the intelligence of its audience by claiming that there is no healthy middle ground to take between being completely obsessed with technology and living off the grid entirely. Which reminds me? Why are you reading this online? Go make weird deer antler ornaments or something you tech junkie.

That’s all for today, but join me tomorrow as I cover three bombastic blockbusters, two unsettlingly bad thrillers, and one movie about a baby that’s also a boss...no hints.

[brokehorrorfan]

Best New Horror Movies on Netflix: Summer 2017

I know there's an overwhelming amount of horror movies to sift through on Netflix, so I've decided to take out some of the legwork by compiling a list of the season's best new genre titles on Netflix's instant streaming service.

Please feel free to leave a comment with any I may have missed and share your thoughts on any of the films you watch. You can also peruse past installments of Best New Horror Moves on Netflix for more suggestions.

1. Clown

Before Spider-Man: Homecoming swings into theaters, watch director Jon Watts' feature debut. Beginning as a faux-trailer that went viral, Clown was essentially willed into existence with the aid of genre favorite Eli Roth (Hostel, Cabin Fever) as a producer. Andy Powers (Oz) stars as a dad who comes across an old clown costume to wear to his son's birthday party, only to find that he physically cannot remove it. He then develops an insatiable hunger for children, soon learning that he must sacrifice five kids in order to remove the suit. Laura Allen (The 4400) plays his wife, while Peter Stormare (Fargo) provides the ancient, demonic history of clowns. Not your typical killer clown movie, Clown combines classic monster movie motifs, body horror elements, supernatural undertones, and gallows humor into one coulrophobic package. Read my full review of the film here.

2. Beyond the Gates

Beyond the Gates was clearly made by horror fans for fellow fans. The 80-minute romp can best be described as Jumanji meets The Beyond. Estranged brothers Gordon (Graham Skipper, Almost Human) and John (Chase Williamson, John Dies at the End), along with Gordon’s girlfriend, Margot (Brea Grant, Halloween II), find and play an old VCR game. They must obey the tape’s host (Barbara Crampton, Re-Animator) in order to solve the mystery of their father's disappearance. It's slightly hindered by a limited budget - the set-up is slow and the ending is a tad anticlimactic - but it's so spirited along the way that the faults barely register. First-time director Jackson Stewart taps into the VHS nostalgia to create a film that would feel perfectly at home on a mom-and-pop video store shelf in the late '80s. Read my full review of the film here.

3. The Eyes of My Mother

The Eyes of My Mother is too pensive for horror fans look for typical blood and scares, but those who appreciate arthouse fare are likely to get wrapped up in its unsettling tone. Writer/director Nicolas Pesce makes an impact with his debut, utilizing stark black-and-white photography to explore a character study illustrating the repercussions of murder. The story is told in three chapters, which each one showing a significant familial moment in a woman's life that shapes her into the disturbed individual she ultimately becomes. It’s a slow burn, even at a mere 76 minutess, but every moment is spent ruminating in its dark tone.

4. Backcountry

Backcountry is based on a true story of a black bear attack. The predator doesn't show up until two thirds of the way through the film; the rest of the time is spent developing the relationship between Alex (Jeff Roop) and Jenn (Missy Peregrym, Reaper), who embark on what's supposed to be a romantic and relaxing weekend hike through the woods. Tensions first rise upon the introduction of an Irish backpacker (Eric Balfour, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre), then again when the couple gets lost in the dizzying forest. It finally takes the form of a suspenseful survival thriller when the ferocious bear begins attacking their campsite. The investment in character development is worthwhile, as it causes the viewer to care about them, thereby making the final act even more harrowing. Real bears were used during production, adding to the ripe intensity.

5. Dig Two Graves

The first act of Dig Two Graves could be mistaken for a coming-of-age drama - not only thematically but also stylistically - as a young girl (Samantha Isler, Captain Fantastic) from a podunk town attempts to reconcile with her brother's death. Things really heat up when a trio of creepy men tell her they can bring him back to life... but someone else has to take his place. The story is structured in an interesting way, sprinkling in flashbacks that contextualize the actions taking place in the present. Isler delivers a brilliant performance, as does Ted Levine (The Silence of the Lambs), who plays her grandfather, the town's sheriff.

6. XX

XX is a horror anthology made up of four segments written and directed by females, each one strong and unique. “The Box” by Jovanka Vuckovic adapts a Jack Ketchum short story about a boy who's forever changed upon seeing the contents of a mysterious box. “The Birthday Party” by Annie Clark (better known as musician St. Vincent) is a darkly comic tale about a woman who finds her husband dead on the day of her daughter's birthday party. “Don’t Fall” by Roxanne Benjamin (Southbound) turns a serene hike into a blood-thirsty creature feature. “Her Only Living Son” by Karyn Kusama (The Invitation) finds a mother learning a deep, dark secret about her son. There's not much of a through line outside of them all being female-led (3/4 of which are maternal roles), though neat stop-motion animation wraps around the tales. Several familiar faces populate the cast, including Melanie Lynskey (Heavenly Creatures), Natalie Brown (The Strain), and Mike Doyle (Law & Order: Special Victims Unit). It's no secret that we need more female voices in film, and XX is a potent declaration that's impossible to ignore.

7. Stake Land II: The Stakelander

Despite a terrible title that could be mistaken for a joke, Stake Land II: The Stakelander is a sequel to Stake Land, Jim Mickle's impressive 2010 vampire film (which you should watch first; it's also on Netflix). Mickle resigns to executive producer, but his co-writer, Nick Damici, returns to pen the script. Damici also reprises his role as Mister, reuniting with Connor Paolo as Martin. The vampire slaying duo embark on a journey across a Mad Max 2-style post-apocalyptic wasteland infested with ferocious vampires, which resemble zombies more than your traditional bloodsuckers. As is often the case, it's the other humans that prove to be the real threat. Like its predecessor, the film finds a rare balance between drama and intensity. It's not as effective as the original, but fans won't be disappointed by the follow-up.

8. Tag

Tag (also known as Riaru onigokko) is not for everyone, but it's too gleefully weird not to warrant a recommendation. Written and directed by Sion Sono (Suicide Club), the Japanese film opens with a bus full of school girls getting sliced in half in one fell swoop. It only gets stranger from there as the infinite possibilities of multiple universes are explored. One girl survives each time, continually awakening in different realities after watching all her friends get killed in gory fashions - including a teacher mowing down her class with a mini-gun. I thought it might be adapted from a manga, as it has that bizarre, fantastical feel to it, but it's instead based on a novel. It's dreamlike and absurd but not without heart.

9. The Windmill

The Windmill (formerly known as The Windmill Massacre) is a slasher film from the Netherlands, although it's (mostly) in English. It follows a guided bus tour of Holland that breaks down near a mysterious windmill. One by one, the passengers are picked off by a cool-looking killer armed with a scythe. With glossy production value and a dark tone, it feels more like a throwback to late '90s slashers rather than the golden age of the '80s - but there's still some solid gore and practical effects. It doesn't reinvent the wheel, but the film offers a slightly more involved plot than the average slasher, including flawed characters and supernatural elements. It's also gleefully mean-spirited to the very end.

10. Man Vs.

As you may have guessed from the name, Man Vs. uses a survival reality show as the framing device for a creature feature. Doug (Chris Diamantopoulos, Silicon Valley) is the survival expert/host, filming himself in the Canadian wilderness - only to learn that he's not alone. It would have been cheaper to make a found footage film, but it's more effect as a traditional movie - though there are some shots from Doug's gear. The set-up is a bit slow, however you may learn some survival tips along the way. The story essentially becomes Survivorman vs. Predator in the final act. Unfortunately, the CGI creature is Syfy-level bad, preventing the big reveal from having much impact, but Diamantopoulos delivers a solid performance nonetheless.

11. Abattoir

Abattoir is directed by Darren Lynn Bousman (Saw II-IV, Repo! The Genetic Opera), based on the same named graphic novel he created. It follows a real estate journalist (Jessica Lowndes, 90210) and a detective (Joe Anderson, The Crazies) as they investigate a series of houses in which tragedies occurred having the offending rooms torn out. They end up in a Twin Peaks-esque town where a local (Lin Shaye, Insidious) tells them of Jebediah Crone (Dayton Callie, Sons of Anarchy), an enigmatic reverend attempting to build a gateway to pure evil. Although set in the present, the picture is an unabashed love letter to film noirs of the 1940s and ‘50s. While the execution of the fascinating concept is lacking, Bousman manages to create a wonderfully imaginative neo-noir universe rife with spooky atmosphere. Read my full review here.

Bonus: The Keepers

If you were among the throngs of viewers morbidly captivated by Making a Murderer, The Keepers will be your new true crime fix. The Netflix original documentary series is every bit as compelling and frustrating as Making a Murderer, but the heinous crimes are even more stomach churning. The story revolves around an unsolved murder case of 26-year-old nun in 1969 and her then-students who have teamed up decades later to try to get to the truth. There appears to be a cover up that involves sexual abuse at the hands of a priest. The show consists of seven hour-long episodes. It probably could have been shaved down to five, but it's structured in such a way that make you want to keep binge watching.

Bonus: Riverdale: Season 1

Riverdale is like Twin Peaks meets Pretty Little Liars by way of Archie Comics. It reinvents the classic Archie characters for a modern audience with an interesting murder/mystery plot. I'm admittedly beyond the key demographic for the trashy teen drama that ensues, but the first season is fun enough, albeit inconsistent, to hook me. Several of the younger actors deliver great performances, given the heavy-handed material, but it's even more fun to see the parents played by '90s stars like Luke Perry (Beverly Hills, 90210), Mädchen Amick (Twin Peaks), Robin Givens (Head of the Class), and Skeet Ulrich (Scream). If you enjoy MTV's Scream, you'll likely get a kick out of this one as well.

[adjameson]

Like a lot of people my age, I just missed out on seeing the original Star Wars movies in the theater. Instead, I grew up with them on VHS. And right around when I was really getting into them, in 1986, Star Wars went away.

Which perplexed me at the time. Why did Star Wars disappear in the mid 1980s? And why did it come back, and come back differently, starting in 1991? These questions haunted me so much, I eventually wrote a book about the subject: I Find Your Lack of Faith Disturbing: Star Wars and the Triumph of Geek Culture. Because it’s an interesting story, I’ll explain what happened in this series of blog posts.

Let’s start by going back to the beginning. The first Star Wars film came out in 1977, and was followed by two sequels: The Empire Strikes Back (1980), and Return of the Jedi (1983). Because they were big hits, they spawned a lot of peripheral products. For instance, there was the Star Wars Holiday Special, which aired on 17 November 1978.

There were also Star Wars comic books, published by Marvel, and featuring characters like Jaxxon, a giant green rabbit.

In ’84 and ’85, respectively, there were two television movies starring the Ewoks: Caravan of Courage: An Ewok Adventure …

… and Ewoks: Battle for Endor.

In addition to Ewoks, the latter film featured Teek, an annoying alien who pestered Wilford Brimley.

And there were cartoon shows, like Droids and Ewoks, which first aired on 7 September 1985.

Droids didn’t last all that long, ending in June 1986. Ewoks made it to the end of the year, wrapping up on 13 December.

As you can see, there were a lot of Star Wars tie-in products released between ’77 and ’86. But after 1986, there was … nothing. The movies, the TV shows, the comics—as well as the action figures—they all came to an end. (In fact, the toy line, beloved by children at the time, ceased production in ’85.) When the Ewoks cartoon went off the air in December 1986, that was it. The following four and half years were Star Wars free.

At the time, I couldn’t understand it. Wasn’t Star Wars the biggest thing ever? Weren’t there going to be more movies, more toys, more comics, more TV series? How could something like that go away, disappear, less than ten years after it started? Weren’t they even going to mark the ten-year anniversary of the release of the first movie?

No. The four-plus years that followed were the Dark Times …

Of course, as we all know today, that wasn’t the end of the story. Star Wars returned in May 1991, with the publication of Timothy Zahn’s novel Heir to the Empire.

  It was followed by two more novels, and then dozens more, going on to become what was known (at the time) as the Star Wars Expanded Universe.

Meanwhile, in December of that year, Dark Horse Comics picked up where Marvel had left off, publishing the miniseries Dark Empire.

Just like with Zahn’s novels, this opened the floodgates, and led to a great many more Star Wars comics.

There were also Star Wars video games: Star Wars for the Nintendo in ’91 (finally!), then Super Star Wars in ’92 for the SNES. Both of those games got sequels, and the following year saw the release of X-Wing, which led to a whole line of Star Wars-themed flight simulators for PCs.

And that’s not all! There was also a series of technical guidebooks, the Essential Guides, which started in 1995, giving fans a wealth of information about the franchise’s weapons, vehicles, planets, aliens, and more.

All of those product lines were successful, and are, more or less, still in production today (though some of them changed publishers, and some of them changed form—the Essential Guides, for instance, were supplanted by the Wookieepedia). Unlike the Ewok movies and Droids cartoon, they didn’t fade away.

What’s more, looking back now, it’s easy to see that the 1990s products were categorically different from the stuff released between 1978–1986. All of that old merchandising was aimed at kids. And a lot of it was goofy, looking to us today out of character for Star Wars. Most of it’s been forgotten, and if it’s remembered today, it’s mostly considered campy, or cringe-inducing.

So what happened? Why did Star Wars disappear, and why did it come back? And why did it change when it came back?

The obvious answer is that the kiddie Star Wars fans (like me) were growing up. But I couldn’t help but think there was more to the story. Because adults had been into Star Wars, too, back in the 1970s—everyone had liked it. (That’s what made it such a hit!)

It’s important to understand that, back when Star Wars first came out, it appealed to three different groups—three different demographics. First, it appealed to general audiences, people like my parents, who went to see it in the theater (how lucky). They had a great time, but they didn’t become big Star Wars fans. For instance, they didn’t go see the next two movies in the theater, and they sure as hell didn’t watch things like the Star Wars Holiday Special, or the Ewoks cartoon.

Star Wars also appealed to children. Lucas clearly realized this, because he made a lot of products for those fans—nearly all of the Star Wars merchandise released between 1977–86 was designed for them. But here’s the thing. Kids grow up quickly, and they age out of kiddie products just as quickly. In the mid-1980s, I wasn’t into things like the Ewoks movies or the cartoons. Baby stuff like that embarrassed me, Star Wars connoisseur that I was. (I wanted to see Darth Vader duel Obi-Wan on a planet made of lava. How awesome would that be!)

In addition to general audiences and kids, there was one more group that liked Star Wars—a third demographic. Namely, geeks!

In my book on geek culture, I argue that geeks aren’t just fans of all things science fiction and fantasy. Geeks tend to be techie people, people who like the STEM disciplines. As such, they like seeing those disciplines—science, technology, engineering, math—applied to fantasy. They don’t want fantasy that’s childish, or hokey, or campy, or goofy. Rather, they want realist fantasy.

This is another important point to understand. People routinely think of realism and fantasy as opposites, but they’re not. Realism is a mode, or a way of making art, while fantasy is a genre. Any given artwork in any given genre can be made to be more or less realist. It all depends on what kind of choices the artist makes. (If you’re interested the relationship between realism and fantasy, so am I, and I write extensively about it in my book.)

George Lucas was himself a geek, someone who first got into cars as a kid, then got into cameras and filmmaking equipment (which is what led him to develop Industrial Light and Magic, as well as things like the THX audio company). At the same time, Lucas loved fantasy. In particular, he loved the Flash Gordon serials, which he watched on television in the ’50s.

By the mid-1970s, Lucas couldn’t help but wonder what Flash Gordon might look like if it were remade, and done in a more realist style. His inspiration was the realist movies being made around him—the so-called “New Hollywood,” of which Lucas was a part—in which a number of filmmakers were busily applying realist techniques to staple Hollywood genres, such as crime films …

… and “creature feature” monster movies.

Today, people often think of Star Wars and Jaws as the films that brought an end to the New Hollywood, killing off realist, adult films like Bonnie and Clyde and The Godfather. But the reality is more complicated, and that argument misses the fact that Jaws and Star Wars were themselves classic products of the New Hollywood. Just like movies by Arthur Penn, William Friedkin, and Francis Ford Coppola, Jaws and Star Wars derived their power, and became smash hits, in large part by applying realism to popular genres, and thereby revitalizing them.

The realism of Star Wars appealed mightily to geeks. At the time, geeks were mostly underground, but they were out there, and they were starting to find one another through things like Star Wars conventions and fan zines. In the late ’70s and early ’80s, they embraced Star Wars. But they thought about it differently, and approached it differently, than kids did, and general audiences did. Indeed, they immediately began embroidering Star Wars, and expanding it, the same way they’d done with Star Trek, speculating about how lightsabers worked, and what the Kessel Run was, and what the Wookiee home planet was like—which are the kinds of things that geeks do.

… To be continued in Part 2!

The Death and Rebirth of Star Wars: Part 1 Like a lot of people my age, I just missed out on seeing the original Star Wars movies…

[jjkirbs]

PORTFOLIO - WRITING PIECE - LIST

This piece was written as part of a selection process for a role a small media company. I never heard anything back. Word counts were strict, so each entry is around 80-95 words long and American English was a requirement.

Biggest Box Office Flops 

Hollywood is a land of promise, not just for new actors hoping to make their big break or even the burnt out actors hoping to make their big comeback, but also for the studios that inhabit those hills of glitz and the glam in the hopes of making their next box office smash, making huge movies with huge budgets with the promise of making even huger profits; and after all isn’t that what show business is all about?! 

For every billion-dollar blockbuster making over five times its budget from box offices worldwide there’s an utter flop to go along with it. Most studios sink hundreds of thousands of millions into their star studded, CGI soaked, explosive ridden and camera wizardry filled movies, hoping to make most of, if not all, their budgets back; so, it stands to reason why sometimes for one reason or another there are flops to go with their hits — a lot can go wrong or impact production. 

According to Business Insider at least eight films in 2012 each cost a staggering $200 million to produce! Our eggheads here have worked out that in 2017 the average cost of a blockbuster hit would have been around $250 million! 

The following movies are ones we have picked that failed to meet their astronomical budgets for one reason or another; from poor marketing, market saturation, badly written scripts to just sheer fatigue of audiences worldwide. 

Of course, when a film does flop or it’s panned by critics, it doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s total trash, as that will inevitably be down to audiences worldwide as they sit down to watch in the sticky auditorium seats or rather in the comfort of their own home with the home release.

47 Ronin – loss of $98 million A fantastical Japanese setting, exciting CGI monsters and even Hollywood A-Lister Keanu Reeves weren’t enough to save this film; helmed by arguably novice director, Carl Rinsch; Universal Pictures suffered commercially and critically with this magical take of the legendary 18th Century event of forty-seven samurai avenging their fallen lord. The film competed with Martin Scorsese’s “The Wolf of Wall Street” as well as Will Ferrell in “Anchorman 2”, so it makes sense that moviegoers weren’t exactly torn between established franchises and directors to see this. 

The Lone Ranger – loss of $100 million Oh wow, Johnny Depp stars as yet another strange individual! Over the last decade; audiences and critics alike have grown tired of this shtick...  Not to mention there were issues casting him as Tonto, a Native American character; Depp’s portrayal came under fire as caricature. According to the Hollywood Reporter, personal issues cited by Depp cost the filmmakers up to $4 million. In 2011, as estimated costs skyrocketed Disney even scrapped the film from its schedule! And with its loss perhaps it should have stayed scrapped?!

 Jupiter Ascending – loss of $90-$110 million Created by the Wachowski twins, you know, the same pair responsible for the acclaimed science-fiction The Matrix trilogy, it was quite the surprise when this film, with superb CGI and an outstanding cast flopped in 2015. A potential new space opera franchise, but critics agreed that what it had in visuals, costume and creature design it sorely lacked in believable dialogue, character chemistry and a believable connection between the two leads; audiences expected the next big sci-fi blockbuster but were left just scratching their heads. 

Fantastic Four – loss of $80-$100 million FANT4STIC, Fant Four Stick? This reboot of the Marvel property was met with derision and cynicism from both the industry and fans alike. In the lead roles were relatively unknown stars, it exuded a dark and serious tone when in all likelihood a comical approach would be much better and honor the source. It seems audiences worldwide couldn’t get behind them nor the tone of film. Pacing issues thanks to re-shoots an unsatisfied Fox demanded made way for continuity errors and perhaps the absence of Stan Lee didn’t help either… 

John Carter – loss of $200 million Originally titled, as critics suggested the more intriguing, “John Carter of Mars”, but in the infinite wisdom of Disney changed to a generic one; newcomer Taylor Kitsch starred as the lead, in an unusual story of an American Civil War veteran being magically beamed to Mars to live among the natives. With a science-fiction and fantasy setting, marketing was surely the blunder for this film, based on books by Edgar Rice Burroughs, the trailers and reviews didn’t impress a wide audience and what buzz there was, was negative. 

Power Rangers – loss of $76 million The children television classic of the 90s, with brightly colored costumes, overacted fight scenes and giant robots, it seemed Saban were on to something by rejuvenating this franchise. However, everything great about that series was discarded when a dark, gritty and serious tone was favored. A decent cast of young newcomers portrayed the five teenagers with attitude and the CGI was on point; yet brash product placement and glossed over character development led to disappointment in fans old and new.

Cowboys and Aliens – loss of $63-$75 million Daniel Craig and Harrison Ford starred in this graphic novel adaptation, which by rights should have been a blockbuster. It has cowboys and it has aliens!? What could go wrong with such a concept? Well... quite a lot; criticism came from the seriousness of the script, without a hint of ironic humor. Audiences were also probably fatigued in 2011 with many other alien films having been released.  Also worthy of note that seven(!) production companies financed this picture, and as the saying goes - “too many cooks spoil the broth.” 

Alexander – loss of $71 million You’d be forgiven for having never heard of this Colin Farrell movie; in the early noughties he had something of a bad boy image and playing the real-world historical figure: Alexander the Great was his chance at doing away with it. Warner Brothers certainly took a chance to make a biopic of this historical figure not many people know of. Surrounded in controversy from historians, film critics and other groups it makes sense that Warner Brothers would rather everyone forget this film was ever made.

Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within – loss of $94 million Despite the name, this film had nothing to do with the games; so, it’s unsurprising that fans weren’t pleased. The praised visuals bordered on the ‘uncanny valley’ side of realism and a questionable plot wherein two-dimensional characters and clichés littered the second half, audiences weren’t impressed either. If anything, the film holds a legacy for paving the way for CGI in the 2000s, proving to the industry it would soon have to take notice; in the same vein as “Snow White”, as the first all color animated feature in 1937.

Gods of Egypt – loss of $79-$90 million Combining Ancient Egyptian mythology with science-fiction and fantasy, Lionsgate-Summit hoped this would be a franchise starter; Gerard Butler portrayed the antagonist, with hits under his tunic including socks and sandals romp “300”. Complications arose when the Egyptian pantheon were cast without any Egyptian heritages. The actors were mostly either veterans or rookies, so it lacked any real star power. Audiences could have been wary of the setting; with other recent flops such as “Hercules”, “The Legend of Hercules” and “Pompeii”. Poor quality CGI and unfavorable reviews truly sealed the sarcophagus.