#also the Simpsons has two swings and misses | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

punkandsnacks · 4 years

Text

Between Wolves & Doves, Chapter Five; Moonlight

Author: @punk-in-docs & @adamsnackdriver

Also on AO3-

Trigger Warnings: !!! Violence and gore in this chapter !!! As-well as graphic mentions of death - yeah Kylo’s a hungry boi. Gets a bit deathy when he’s around.

Synopsis: Vampire!Kylo x OC love story. Inspired by BBC’s Dracula. Also inspired by Austen’s Pride & Prejudice.

He’s been stalking this earth long since civilizations can possibly fathom. Before records even began. He sneers at the fact that this pitiful young world has only just begun to see his reign of it.

He’s dined with moguls, emperors, princes. He’s consorted with bloodthirsty ruthless Queens in their courts, and whispered into the ears of powerful King’s, whose names still echo through millennia.

In his myriad of centuries gifted to his immortal self he’s been many many things. He’s been a lowly pauper. A crusading knight. An assassin. A sell sword. A soldier. A wanderer. A simpering suitor and a voracious unyielding lover. Aimlessly lost in time- besieging this earth. Ripping it apart and drinking what’s left.

He was made in the hinterland between snow and dirt and pine trees. Crusted with ash and blood and gouged from battle. Born anew. Sired from the hell-mouth of war. He was made in 789 AD.

He’ll come undone, one bitter winter night, in England, in 1816.

~ ~ 🥀 ~ ~

Not two days later and the Ashton’s are bid to the Phillips to dine.

They are all in Westwell’s meagre foyer. Mother is fussing with Fathers cravat knot. Posy and Flora are fighting over who gets sole use of the looking glass. They tease at the spilling curls of their hair, they pinch at their cheeks to make them pinker.

They’d already been scrapping all afternoon over who got to wear Iris’s sapphire earrings. Their screeches rang like sharp little butterflies all throughout the house. Posy won the battle for the gems in the end of all things. Iris stayed well out of it. She bid good fortune to the winner.

She’s dressed tonight in another one of her ‘’matrimony inducing’ gowns. According to her mother. But she won’t deny it is a very pretty piece. It sits daintily rasped just off her shoulders, with three-quarter length sleeves. Indian silk fabric, the colour of dusky robin egg blue. It makes her hair look more brilliant, according to their local dressmaker, as she flapped swatches around Iris’s ears to help her mother make a choice.

The neckline at the back drapes low to a row of matching blue buttons marching down her spine. Julia helped tease the teal silk ribbon Posy secured her, into her low done coiffure. Which sat braided and low at the back of her neck. Silver pins shining among the tumble of her dark hair.

This wasn’t a ball and she could gladly forgo gloves. She’s wearing pearl drops from her earlobes. And mother insisted on a draping necklace around her throat. Simple silver necklace. With an oval aquamarine beryl, and a freshwater pearl dropping off it. It sits low in her clavicle and mother ensured the cut of her dress was low. Drawing attention to Iris’s shoulders and her comely bosom.

She does as she’s bade - as ever. She steals a second in the mirror to check her coiffure. Now Posy and Flora are by the door, arguing over slippers and slipping the dainty things on their feet. Spitting fury at each other.

Iris toys with her hair just for a second in the glass. At the wispy muddy bits that curl in front of her ears. She plucks them out of the hair arrangement. Aswell as one gentle curl down the nape of her neck. She lets it rest there. Clasping delicately at her skin.

The care-worn face of her beleaguered father appears behind her in the looking glass reflection. With his greying rust hued hair, his squared fashionable sideburns and his tired, deep eyes the colour of jade marble.

He loosens the linen knot his wife had just pinched tighter around his neck. His eyes warm like a sun baked green meadow when he peers at his eldest. Wrinkles bunch and crease at his eyes and at his mouth when he smiles. He had such a ruddy, open face.

“You look very well tonight my dear.” He comments softly. Tugging at his tight collar. Fixing his green velvet lapels. Iris smiles at her father.

He always was the gentle backbone of encouragement to her. Never once raised his voice to her. He never seemed to grow angry or vexed. Or have a swing of a temper. Those nasty sharp attitudes belonged solely and respectively to her mother. She’s the one who shouts and snipes. Father remains taciturn.

“Thankyou, papa.” Iris beams at him. Turning around as he handed her, her indigo blue cloak. Iris seemed to be the one he favoured. Posy and Flora have slithers of acerbity in their temperaments, like mama. Iris seemed to flourish after his more witty and lenient nature.

She brushes the lapels of his bottle green jacket down. Eyed the fraying seam that’s been stitched up in his shoulder. The faded linen of his shirt. It almost makes her want to go through with this marital farce that’s being forced so thoroughly upon her.

“You look very handsome tonight too, might I add.” She smiles. Adjusting his cravat for him. Loosening it from the choking noose mother had tied. “I know how little you care for the Phillips.” Iris smiles thankfully. Not letting mama hear.

“Mrs Phillips is most agreeable. Her husband however? Most odious man alive. It seems all he can converse about is how cumbersome the grouse is this season.” He relents quietly.

“I deem it unwise to try and escape the acquaintance now. Mama would quite have a fit.” Iris supposed. Hushing quietly as she soothes down the points of his collar.

He gives her a sober smile of agreement. His conduct and his temper always so agreeably timid. Humble. Like waves breaking on the dashed sharp rocks. Always yielding.

She finishes with his coat and he goes to pick up his hat from the stand in the foyer, nestled by the front door. Julia is just helping Mama shrug on her coat. And pin her purple and black trimmed shako hat on securely.

She harshly jerks her calfskin black gloves up her wrists with tugging severely sharp motions. Her coat is trimmed with the same onyx and lilac as that of her hat. And her dress beneath is a punchy lavender mauve. And she’s wearing her black lace fichu around her neck in a matronly manner.

Posy and Flora have gone for their best washed silk dresses. Trussed up like twins. Posy is in a muted sage-emerald. And Flora has gone for a waxy and humble tulip-orange. Both have a white lace trim at the waist from the new Belgian lace they bought. Dainty white slippers and stockings on their feet.

“We must go now. The dratted carriage better be here soon, or else we’ll be late.” Mama snaps. Fussing with her coiffure. Issuing orders to the maid after their departure.

If Iris was lucky enough to be spared this outing? And be in their positions. She knows where she’d be. Curled up in the oak farmhouse chair in the kitchen, book in hand, with a cup of chocolate nearby as she warms her toes near the stove.

As it is; she’s off for an evening of white soup by candlelight, strict conversation and a dazzling staggering show of the Phillips wealth. One that will grind mama’s teeth that they can’t compete with such affluence. And one that will have Flora, Posy, and father bored to tears within minutes. Wanting to gouge their eyes out with the ivory soup spoons for something to do.

Iris will not have the time to be bored; she will have to comport herself and display her loveliness to every eligible man in attendance.

She is at the door pulling on her warm gloves when Posy and Flora skip happily up to their elder sister. Posy sing-songs something about Lord Ren. “Maybe your suitor is invited tonight, Iris?” She teases.

Iris levels her a look. Father turns around with his solid brow shooting up to his hairline. “I didn’t know you had a suitor, my dear?” He supposed kindly.

Iris jams an elbow into Posy’s ribs. “That’s because I do not have one-” She insists blithely. Growling intemperately at her pest of a sister.

“She does! She does Papa! And she’s smitten.” Flora speaks up. The little tick. Iris tries to swat at her with her gloves.

“You say this about any man who so much as glances in her direction. Posy.” Mother says. Stepping past them all.

“We should be so lucky that one of them might form an attachment.” Mother mutters under her breath. Fixing her cuffs and stepping out the front door to see the carriage drawing up ready to escort them all to the Phillips’.

Iris shares a look of teeth gritting annoyance and forbearance with her father. Who pats her shoulder and gives her one of his crinkly smiles of comfort. She steps up into the cold box of the carriage via the step. Shoving herself far across on the bench.

Posy and Flora ram themselves onto the same bench with Iris. Sharp little elbows and knees digging into their sister; complaining of the lack of room they had. Mother and Father sat opposite. Not speaking. Which was their normality. Her sisters squawks and fusses more than aptly filled the silence.

It’s not long before her mother starts speaking at her father about the household gossip of the day. She seldom expected him to respond.

“Simpson told me today we must hire a new pair of hands for seasonal work up at the farm soon. We can not afford such an expense and reliable staff is so hard to come by in winter. I heard the Norris’s lost one of their farm hands just last night...”

Iris tries to pay attention over Posy and Flora’s inane squabbles about their washed silk embroidered shawls. Posy has lost hers yet again- Flora was the suspected thief.

“Apparently they found the man not five paces from the local tavern in the ditch. He’d drunk a skinful and then got run down by a coach. The fool...” She comments. Iris turns to look at her parents.

“That is unfortunate. Poor fellow.” Father remarks in a detached manner.

“Mrs Bishop wrote to me today too. And according to her, a manservant in her employ has gone missing. Her hall boy. And another labourer from Milton Farm was found just this morning in the woods outside Pembleton. Frozen stiff with cold, reeking of Gin, and he’d been attacked for the coins in his pocket. I honestly don’t know what this world is coming too. Really I don’t.” She remarks.

Iris doesn’t know why. But a coiling slither of a snake wraps around her spine and squeezes.

She shivers. And more worryingly, she can’t go about placing exactly why...

“Perhaps a wild animal is loose hereabout these parts?” Father speculated. Uninterested.

Mother harrumphed a snort of displeasure. “I say men who fall afoul of too much drink deserve everything they get. It’s simply not decent.” She says snappily. Sniffing loftily. Hands crossed in her lap. Brushing imaginary sullying specs off her skirts.

Because of course she’s the type of woman who thinks insobriety and being lost to drink rightfully deserves being torn to pieces.

“I do hope they don’t invite Mrs Norris tonight. She’s such a trying woman. And her daughter is such a useless untalented chit.” Mother says to herself. Posy and Flora hop on into the gossip.

Iris watches out the window. She admires up on the smudged glow of the full moon. Sat pearly and proud in a sky netted full of of bursting white stars. So cold. So beautiful. Untouchable. Shrouding the dark world in silver from miles and leagues and scores away. She can’t understand how people don’t see beauty in this.

It may be a cold, pallid light. But she doesn’t think so. It’s the misty magical cyclops of the night sky. The governing beauty. The crowning keystone of it, in her view. Chariot of pearl.

She lapses into simply watching the night woodland pass by. The shadowed gnarled trees curling up to the heavens. Snow and frost still biting the air. It was thawing somewhat. But it’s not vanished just yet. It still crawls up the trees and lurks at the hard ground.

They arrive at the Phillips modest Manor House. Not two miles outside Pembleton. A most pretty house. Abutting the lane leading directly up next to the small local chapel.

There’s pink rosevines dead in winter, but still smothering most of the front of the white stone house. A modest Georgian manor of thirty rooms. Windows big and square and shining gold onto the gravelled drive that their coach crackles and shifts over as they arrive. Chimneys proudly blaze smoke. And the place looks merry and set on welcoming guests to a delightful dinner.

The Ashton’s are seen inside by the astute white wig clad butler. He takes their coats to the cloakroom, gives them to the footmen. And then shows them to the drawing room, the main parlour, where everyone is gathering. Fireplace making the room stuffy.

Candlelight drips apricot blaze of every wall. The parlour is furnished in trims of green and cream. Trimmed with luxurious velvet. Large gilded gold terrace doors overlook the frosty manicured gardens. Mrs Phillips does so love her tea roses. The air in the garden chokes with them even in this deadening winter.

They all graciously curtsey and bow to their hosts. Mama sits with Mrs Phillips and the other elder matrons. Mrs Phillips sits with her little toy poodle in her lap.

The fluffy little thing drowning under the weight of a ridiculous big pink silk bow tied at its neck. Papa begrudgingly folds his hands behind his back and gets beckoned over for a glass of port with Mr Phillips. He sends a look of dismay at his eldest.

Posy and Flora sit and gossip with their friend. Primrose Phillips. Their daughter. Iris stands alone. She wanders to admire the painting hung up by the terrace doors.

She leans closer, admiring the dark tones of the painting. The brushwork and the detail of the of the still life captured. A case of flowers. It’s very remarkable. She wished her parents appreciated such art over austere sketches of county churches.

Her spine suddenly alights with thrashing hot nerves. Like she’s been scorched by a candle flame and had the burn soothed straightaway with ice. It’s sharply powerful.

She turns where she had her back to the fireplace and all the gossiping Mama’s. Her breath catches just a little at the sight of Lord Ren filling the white parlour doorway.

Coming to bid his hosts a good evening. And his thanks at the invite. Mrs Phillips genially flatters the big man. He towers over all the elegant ladies sat down on their settees like some huge tall dark tree she imagines standing in some foreign forest. Massive and wide. Struck by lightning. Charred to dark cinders.

His eyes gaze downwards, and his jaw grits as Mrs Phillips ineffectual little lap dog starts emitting a low yappy growl. Snarling at the sable haired Lord.

It’s pathetic little maw pulling back over it’s tiny blunt slobbering teeth that gnash at him. Kylo raises a brow and looks down at the fetid creature.

He spears a slicing glance right at it for barely a second and then it’s cowering away.

Whimpering into its mistresses lap. Burying its head into her armpit and cowering. She’s cooing and fussing the awful snappy little thing. Promising it a plate of sweet meats, and a saucer of warm milk.

“I do so apologise, Lord Ren. Such a contrary creature. For my Puffin is never usually so shy of strangers.” She offers in her pitchy high voice. Almost as squeaky as that of her dog.

Hugging the intemperate thing and bouncing it in her lap, coddling it like a firstborn baby. Big silk rosebud bow fluttering in the air. Ugly scrunched up little face and nose of it hiding from him. The dog recognised now who the alpha in this room was.

Kylo tilts up a fleeting corner of his mouth in an attempt at a courteous smile.

“It’s nothing to apologise for, Ma’am. I am often cursed myself, with the same affliction of being wary of strangers.” He says in good humour. Making the ladies all titter laughter.

Iris blushes when he looks away from them and nods his bowed parting. Turns to look across to her. Focuses. Vision concentrated solely on her.

Those onyx gems of eyes settle on the back of that neck of hers. Slice into her. Lingering along the dip of the material that skimmed her fine shoulders and spilled down her shoulder blades.

His gigantic frame is not subtle in striding a swathe across the candle lit parlour. Coming straight to her. Making no secret about who he favours. Opening them both up to the speculation of the whole room-

He doesn’t care not even one bit.

The cool shade of him passes over her shoulder. Her cheeks flushed and she turns and politely curtseys to him. A politely soft “Lord Ren.” Leaves her lips. She feels the hair on the back of her neck raise a little in excitement. Bristling to stand like needles.

He smirks. His kind were the reasons humans had that tingling gut sense. That primal indicator of visceral fear. The hairs on the back of the neck existed solely for the simple reason that blood lusting creatures, demons, such as him walked this earth. She should learn to trust in those instincts more.

Danger present more than ever. For now, there’s a devil at her shoulder.

“Miss Ashton.” He greets simply. Hands composed behind his back. Big chest swells again. No part of this man is small. Every muscle is a huge slab, big and brutally built. Long strong plains of him at every turn.

He takes her hand and kisses it. He’s not wearing gloves. Neither is she. His hands are ice- must be the cold out of doors, she thinks.

Their bare hands touch for the first time. Skin on skin.

It’s electrifying. Sparks skip and shimmer through them.

He bites back a growl as he finally finally finally gets a nose full of her bare skin. Touches her hand. His nose nuzzles her flesh for a second.

Just one scant second. And then he has to enforce every shred of willpower he owns and knows, in order to pull away.

She’s as exquisite as he dreamt. As he lusted about. Her skin is the most dangerous thing about her. Because it’s the hardest thing he’s had to do to resist tasting more of it. The gorgeous scent and the salt of the bare skin. Hint of spicy lavender. Chalky bergamot soap she used. The fragrance of silk on her skin.

Bewitching. Her scent sends a tremor through his usually dead spine.

Tonight his garb as is midnight ink dark as it usually is. Velvet black waistcoat. Obsidian breeches and shining proud boots and brushed overcoat. With a cream cravat and a white shirt. Like the full moon out in that black sky tonight. Pearl trim backed with sable. His cravat diamond pin glitters - oddly enough - like a far off star.

If he looks like a winters sky shrouded by a pearly moon. She looks the opposite. Her blue dress is the colour of the brightest searing shade of a summers sky. Her eyes made brilliant by it. And he likes the silk blue ribbon tumbled prettily into her hair. Like some stream trickling through a golden meadow on a midsummers eve.

“If I may say, how beautiful you look tonight. Miss Ashton.” He smiles. Hands folded back once more. His wide chest puffing out freely. His intimidating size at its usual ferocity.

She feels her cheeks heat a little more. “Thankyou your, Lordship.” She flusters. “I’m sure I deserve no such meaningful praise. It is only a plain silk dress.” She dismisses.

“Made striking by she who wears it.” He insists. She smiles at her feet. Diverting the attention.

“How is that big beautiful horse of yours?” She asks nicely. He smirks a little. His eyes are charcoal-honey from the the nearby candlelight. He likes her enquiry.

“He is very well. Misbehaving himself plenty. And nearly threw me yesterday on account of mutiny and protest for want of more carrots.” He jokes.

“Oh dear.” She laughs. “I seem to have caused dissension in your own stables.” She apologised. Sorry he almost got hurt.

“He shouldn’t be too perturbed at me. I’m the only one who rides him out.” He offers.

“I should like to ride more. We only have the two horses on the farm and they are often reserved for use in labour out in the fields. And there always seems far too many errands stacked against me to indulge in the pastime.” She tells.

“Then I must beg you come over and use Erland as much as you should wish to. He is rather fond of you. And Hellford is a vast estate of which ride on. I should be delighted it gets use beyond someone other than myself.” He offers.

“I thank you for the invitation. I’ve never fully seen all of Hellford.” She explains. “Only the front parlour and that was very long ago. I was only a little girl then.”

“You must come again and honour it with another visit.” He concludes.

“Hellford’s grounds are very handsomely kept. The rose gardens are exquisite. And there’s 4 acres of woodland with plenty of good riding routes. I’d be vastly happy to show you them, any time you should like.” His smile tipped a little at the corners. Breaking up the stoicism of his usually stern scowl.

“That’s very kind. As long as you are sure it won’t interrupt any of your business endeavours.” She offers politely.

“My business was concluded days ago. I’m most happily and currently at my own leisure.”

She smiles in agreement. “That must be so relaxing.”

Iris wished she had one day whereby she could be at her own peace. Do as she liked. Go wherever she wanted and not have anyone else’s expectations hanging over her like heavy nimbuses.

“It has its merits.” He smiles lightly down at her. Before his eyes flicker to the painting over her shoulder that she was admiring.

“There’s even a Velasquez in the foyer at Hellford. Just begging to admired by appreciative eyes.” He adds. Her face lights up.

“I’ve never seen a real Diego Velasquez in person. Only pictures from books in my fathers study.” She says in amazement.

“His ‘Los Barrochos’ hangs in my hallway.” Kylo says with a hint of pride. “Now you simply have to visit, to come see it. Purely on unselfish grounds, Miss Ashton. Just for the arts sake.” He smarts.

She smiles back. Apples of her cheeks pinking up again. “I would be delighted. No art should go unappreciated after all. You’re quite correct.” She smiles with good natured levity.

His eyes gleam almost warmly, with wickedly pleased satisfaction. Crushed charcoal and honey of his eyes are captivating to look into. To drown in. That’s exactly what she does.

Across the parlour, where a whole gaggle of mama’s and daughters are watching the room, speculating about it. They weren’t aware, but many eyes were glued to Iris and Lord Ren.

Posy and Flora shared a pleased giddy look that the first time they’ve actually seen the severe man almost lets a smile crack his marble statue façade, and it’s because of their sister.

“I think your dear Iris may have caught the biggest, richest prize in the pond. Mrs Ashton.” Mrs Phillips says with a smug proud expression, leans towards Iris’s mother and gently taps her hand. They were fond companions after all. Mrs Phillips other podgy hand, laden with pearl brackets and fat gemstone rings, was fondly stroking at Puffin’s ears now he’s calmed down.

Caroline looks across at her eldest as she converses with Lord Ren. A slight frown crinkles her brow.

“She would do vastly well to land a Lord.” Miss Smith Interjects. Sat on Caroline’s immediate right.

She was a willowy woman. Figure like many twigs glued together. Gawky face. Beak of a long nose that she took great delight in shoving into business that was not her own. She was a harmless woman really. The general village busy body, and a spinster at three and fifty. Another close confidant and friend in the gossip vine for Caroline Ashton.

“For Hellford is such a handsome house. Biggest land holding in all the county... Think what a lucky girl she would be to be mistress of it!” Miss Smith adds. Giggling in excitement like a young girl.

Mrs Phillips steals another glance at the handsome couple. “They do make a fine pair. For she’s fairly handsome and he’s rich. Their children would be such darling things. Very dark colouring. But I fear he’s not to everyone’s taste...Something very, prohibitive, about his manner that I cannot place.” She decides.

“I heard he takes little joy in anything. It is most odd.” Miss Smith agrees with their host most eagerly.

“He does not dance. He barely drinks. His conversation is little and dry. And beyond the sport of his estate he rarely circulates in society. That must the foreign way of things in Bavaria.” Miss Smith sniffs with disdain. Turning her nose up at the merest intimation of something foreign.

“Foreign and continental European manners are certainly nothing to admire.” Mrs Phillips declares. The ladies three then look at the young couple again.

“Mmmm. I would suspect that an attachment is starting to bloom thereabouts...” She adds cunningly. As casually as if she was looking out her window and deciding the weather.

“If they do marry. One can’t doubt the match would indisputably fine. But we would rarely see her if she marries a man so limited from the ton... what a cruelty that would be on her! Not to mention his estate is in Bavaria. What a grave loss she would be to us all.” Mrs Phillips croons sadly.

Caroline looks over to her daughter. Where the shadow of the inexcusably large man and his dark shade looms over her. They are conversing quietly and genially with each other. If she’s not mistaken, she spots a brush of pink to Iris’s cheeks.

“Indeed. I cannot doubt as fine a proposition as he would be... I would be more greatly comforted by her being settled here. At home. Nearer to us all.” Caroline insists to both her companions.

“What about Brendol Hux’s son? Armitage. Wasn’t there a téndre between them some while ago? Now there. Perhaps that may be rekindled to better everyone’s satisfactions?” Miss Smith nods gladly cupping Caroline’s hand. As if Iris’s affairs were her very own to meddle with.

“Indeed. I should not wish for poor Iris to marry so high above her dignity. She shouldn’t quit her sphere. Lord Ren should go and find himself an Heiress or a nice Duchess, if he must marry. That would do him well.” Mrs Phillips ultimately decides.

Stouton, the excellently precise butler, enters the room and gives a dignified sharp nod to Mrs Phillips. Who announces to the room that dinner is ready. As the highest ranking gentleman in the room, Lord Ren escorts the lady of the house in to dine. Everyone follows in their lead.

The dining room is very prettily done in shades of red and gold. The table groans with the amount of polished silverware. Glassware twinkles in the light off the fire and the numerous candles. Air spiced by the silver tiered platters of exotic fruit sitting in the table centre at measures intervals. Deep scent of plums and fleshy red apples gently radiate their sweet scent up the air. Red grapes drip from these rich arrangements.

Everyone is seated according to rank and hierarchy. Mrs Phillips crowns the head of the table in her gown of demure blush muslin. Train drifted behind her like a galleon setting sail when the stout portly woman moved.

Kylo is placed to Mrs Phillips’ right. Iris is lower down in rank. But she is placed two places opposite him across the finely laid table. Smooth as a square of white marble is the laid linen tablecloth.

Mrs Phillips oversees the serving of the white soup. A frothy pallid broth made of veal stock, egg yolks, ground almonds and cream. To be eaten demurely along with the light conversation. Of which is quick to flourish along the table in this bored-rigid country society.

Kylo sups down his soup, and he is caught by the change in topics as it shifts. Mr Phillips is speaking up to Mr Ashton about it.

“Did you hear that the Norris’s lost one of their farm hands last eve. Just dreadful news...” Mr Phillips croaks up. Shaking his head into his wine glass.

Kylo watches Iris innocently turn her head in the conversations intended direction. Two seats down from her. His eyes follow the pretty turn of her head. He tried not to look too closely at the elegant line of her pale throat. Nor at the little drop of red wine that lingered in the corner of her lips.

He imagined it dripping its smooth rolling path down her neck. Over that pearl necklace. Only he didn’t exactly imagine it was wine...

More people engage in the horrid nature of the conversation. Society being shocked by it. “Where was the Norris’s farm hand found?” Miss Smith piped up. Eager for details. Aghast. Clutching her chest in overdone fright.

“Middle of the woods apparantly. He’d run for some time away from whatever terror hunted him. Looked like an animal had set to him something vicious, according to the local magistrate. Poor fool.” Mr Phillips announces morbidly.

Ah yes. Kylo remembers the one. The second farm hand he’d feasted on.

He’d watched from the shadows as the letch tried to snatch a young maids purse outside the chapel. She’d been coming back from a dance on her own late at night. He’d watched the man grope her with fat wandering meaty hands. Squeezed her bottom and her bosom and terrified her. Told her gruffly he could either take her money or her virginity. Left her sobbing in the dirt and ran off cackling with her purse.

Kylo followed his foul stench. Gin and rot of sweat and various vile body odours souring his nose. He wasn’t hard to find.

Followed the disgrace of a man deep into the heart of the woods. The idiot soon caught wind of his feral aggressor and ran fleeing. He caught him. And he ripped him to pieces and drank him all down. Was still picking bits of him out his teeth, come to mention it.

His tongue idly strokes the front of one of his canines at the memory of it.

“Is it man or beast that killed him?” Mrs Phillips asks.

“Someone up near Lord Hearst’s estate say that a wolf had been spotted thereabouts lately.”

“A wolf!” Miss Smith shrilled. “Oh, good heavens.” She frets. Dramatically dripping her soup spoon.

“Do not be uneasy. Miss Smith.” Mr Ashton declares. Patting her hand nicely where he’s sat next to her.

“It is folly. Surely. There haven’t been wolves in this country since the Hundred Years’ War.” Mr Ashton declares. “Fret not.”

“Of course those are the rumours circulating on the estates. Especially surrounding Hellford.” Mrs Phillips pipes up. Turning her attention to Lord Ren. Many pairs of curious scared eyes swivelled to the man near the head of table, as he took a sip of his red wine.

“I’m afraid I cannot offer any consolation nor relay any satisfaction upon the matter. I have seen no such beast on my land, Mrs Phillips. Maybe it is a stray dog... after all...” He trails away. Eating another mouthful of the white soup.

“There is always such gossip prone to over exaggerate these things, is there not?” He drawls lowly. His dark eyes flicker up and land in Iris‘s own. His smile smoothly twitches. He couldn’t help it.

His meaning scared her. For she did not know it’s intention. His eyes looked different when he remarked upon that. They looked... odd. Like cloud passing over a sunny day. Something then swarmed his eyes. And it looked feral.

A shiver rockets down her spine. Makes her breath spurt out ragged and catch in her throat.

Posy is sat on Iris’s left and she’s determined not to be left out the conversation. She must have her share in it. “My friend remarked that he heard it was a huge black Wolf with bright yellow eyes the colour of sunflowers.” She remarks.

“Posy. I think that may be idle speculation.” Iris insists lightheartedly.

Posy frowns stroppily. “I heard it directly from Mary Sampson’s mouth. And she never tells tall tales.” She insists firmly. Iris nods and goes back to eating her soup.

“Maybe it’s the work of a mad man?” Miss Smith pipes up worriedly. Iris swore she hears the room collectively heave a sigh of annoyance into their soup spoons.

“Some nasty beastly mad man roaming the countryside and cutting people up who come across his path. He might be vicious. What’s next? He could decide to come and murder us in our beds.” She panics pithily. “Cut our throats in the night!!” She says frenziedly.

“Oh I shall have to get Barlow to put another bolt lock on my bedroom door or I shall never sleep again!” She declares.

She did so fuss over the most inconsequential of things. Like the time she swore that the black plague was making a comeback - for she heard her maid sneeze three times in a row one day whilst bringing her tea. She was so prone to hysterics and exaggeration.

Kylo wants to roll his eyes at her stupidity. Maybe his next victim should be her- maybe he should slaughter her in her bed. Rid the world of her vapid panicking.

Iris smiles gently across at the flustered spinster. “Don’t overexert yourself, Miss Smith. I’m sure it’s just town gossip conjured up with the intention of frightening us.” She soothes.

“I’m sure it’s not as evil as it first seems... There may be more reasons as to why they lost their lives.”

Kylo does look at her right then. His little dove. Sat there with her brow all creased up with worry for this vapid inconsequential woman.

She truly does have a heart of gold.

Mrs Phillips speaks up again. “You know I did hear that two of the men were known drunkards. And one of them was found next to a lane. It seemed he wandered into the road after drinking a skinful and was struck by a speeding carriage. Poor soul.” She declares.

“And the other man was robbed. Though he was rumoured to be the horrid purse snatcher who lurked around the chapel last week. Some other desperate thief must’ve caused his unfortunate death out of want of his loot. There, there, my dear. All is well.” Mrs Phillips ladled comfort into her friend. Smiling heartily at her.

Miss Smith seems to settle down. She nods. Hand clasped dramatically to her chest. Mr Ashton pours her more wine and she takes back great thudding gulps of it.

Iris shares another fleeting look with Lord Ren. He smiles delicately at her. Mr Phillips resumes his usual spouting on and on about the grouse season. He ropes Kylo into an invite to come shoot his grouse whenever he pleases. Miss Smith keenly traps the ladies into a conversation about printed cotton.

They talk all through the next course about more savoury things. They are served broiled partridges with gravy for the next, and an entire haunch of roasted venison. Cooked to retain just a tinge of pink. And just a slight dribble of ichor when the meat was sliced into. Served with stewed sopping celery drowned in cream. And buttered carrots and boiled potatoes. The food swamped the table in great big heaped portions on silver platters.

Kylo was glad they didn’t cook such a rich meat until it was a slab of boiled grey toughness. He tears his sharp teeth into the slices of roast deer and eats his big fill. Licks the iron-copper tinge of blood off his lips. It lightly sates the animal gnawing at his belly. But he needs proper blood.

Needs the liquid metal rush of it pouring down his throat and staining his white teeth crimson.

The full moon was bringing out his more feral senses. It always does. Gets him restless and baying for blood with a hell of a thirst. The need to feed more intense than ever.

As the pudding arrives, Kylo is sipping more claret and letting his suave black gaze wander over to Miss Ashton again. She’s talking to one of her innumerable silly pests of a sister.

He lets his eyes stroke along her, and admire her for a second. Such a gaze doesn’t go unnoticed by Caroline Ashton. Down the table she sees Lord Rens gaze linger on Iris- and she wonders...

Her reverie is broken by the arrival of pudding. As it was still colder, a steaming great whitepot pudding is served. Bread and butter and cream with currants dotted into the sponge. Flavoured with mace and nutmeg. Alongside this is served a tower of marzipan fruit and cold fruit tartlets. Lots of sugar and whipped cream and strawberries steeped in sugar syrup.

Lord Ren does not oblige himself in sweets. He’ll have his fill later. Find some wandering idiot drunk to indulge his true appetites.

Evebtually, the ladies separate from the gentlemen. They are left around the table to smoke cheroots, or sip port, as the ladies retire to the parlour for embroidery or gossip.

Kylo watches his little dove stand and head away. Smiling demurely at him before she goes. He snatched up every second of it.

She turns and walks away, led by her sister. He longs after the nape of her neck as she departs. The pale arch of it kissed by dark twirls of hair.

She feels like she can’t breathe until she gets out of the room. She takes a deep breath and wets her lips as they come to the second parlour.

Mrs Phillips particular favourite room. For her particular use. Iris can see why; it’s gaudy and decorated to drowning point with rosebud fabrics. Its nature was definitely intended to be ladies room. Draped and stuffed with pink velvety drapes, cream carpets and gold gilded French furniture. Pillows and cushions stuffed onto the settee in blush rose print. Ruffles and flounces and so many more eye-watering trims.

Iris feels a little nauseous walking into the sickly sweet room. But she sits dutifully on the settee by the window and sips whatever snifter Mrs Phillips put into her hand. Negus, Iris thinks it might be. A favourite punch at balls. Port mixed with boiled water, nutmeg and sugar syrup.

Mrs Phillips insists something warming helps aid with the digestion. Flora and Posy are feeding little nuggets of sweet meats to Puffin the toy dog as he yips for more. Mother is talking with her matrons again.

And Iris is sat looking out at the moon. Candlelight casts up one side of her face. She lets it’s watery gently light wash over her. Listen to the matrons giggling in their corner. And Posy and Flora gossiping with Primrose.

She thinks how nice it must be to be entirely thousands of miles away. Alone in the sky. Free of burden. Just being known for casting beautiful light onto the earth.

“Pleasant, isn’t she?” Comes a deep voice at her side. Deeper and thicker than oozing warm honey.

She smiles. The gentlemen have come in. Fresh from their all male talk and their port and their smoking. Brandy and cheroot smoke sticks to his coat. Though he didn’t imbibe in either. Just more port.

Lord Ren is stood by her side again. Arms behind his back in their usual place. Looking up at the very orb of a thing that’s firing his blood. Then he glances downwards and sees the earth-bound mortal form of the woman who does the very same. Only she’s touched on more softer, hidden parts of him.

“Such beauty.” She remarks. She tilts her head up at it. “Some remark it is a cold light. But-“

“I disagree.” Lord Ren adds. Interjecting. Smiles down at her. When she looks up. The flash of her pale skinned neck and the side of her jaw cast in the moon and the candlelight makes his mouth water. Her eyes are divinely silver. Just like another soul he knows and loves...

“There is mystery. For even the moon has her burdens and her secrets. The brightest thing in the sky has the darkest side that’s never revealed to a soul.” He supposed. His eyes catching in hers.

She can see by the weighting of his granite eyes. That he means that phrase very deeply.

“Much the same as people. I grant. Enigmatic, if they so choose to be.” She says.

“Some darker sides of people, Miss Ashton, should never see the light.” He tells her.

She feels like he’s speaking from experience. She opens her mouth to ask. But her mother hissing her name and gesturing her over with a spurring-curling motion of her hand, breaks the hypnotic spell his eyes gripped on her.

She looks back up at him. He extends a hand to help her up. There’s that thrill of electricity again. Needles up her arm and wracks at her spine.

“I think it likely my mother will encourage us home soon. I’ll take my leave of you now.” She says sadly. Though she doesn’t wish too- he feels her sadness and her dread.

She curtseys. Bows her neck to him. Dips at her knees. He doesn’t relinquish his gentle clasp of her hand.

“Until next time, Miss Ashton.” He drawls low.

She dies on the spot when her turns her palm over and presses a kiss to her sensitive weak hand. Holding her fingers with one hand and rubbing his thumb over the spot he just kissed.

His lips are devilishly soft and when he looks up at her her spine crumbles. She shivers and he hears it. Her chest flutters a breath with it.

“I bid you good evening, Lord Ren. It was a pleasure.”

“The pleasure was entirely mine.” He hushes so low. He manages to make his words sound sordid. Rascally and humming deep. So deep her bones rang with it and all her the soft tissue meat of her, quivers.

This feels like seduction.

Knee weakening seduction. She feels her cheeks beating out unattractive pink heat. Flushed from head to toe. Breath stutters into her pathetic shrivelling lungs. She doesn’t know what this is- what this man is wielding onto her. She’s never felt the likes of it before.

She takes her hand from him, drags her eyes from the addictive granite pools of his, and steps aside to go to her mother. As she bade. She feels his eyes on her back as she walks away across the room.

She curls her hand into a fist. So she might better preserve the searing memory of his kiss.

It’s ridiculous and silly. But she keeps her hand fisted shut the whole way home. Thinks back to the hunger in his eyes and feels flushed whenever she remarks how it sat there- all for her and her alone.

The whole world seems asleep. When the vampires roam to feed. Kylo swore this whole sleepy county is deaf and dull now. Even the very last scullery maid of every grand house, and kitchen skivvy had extinguished the very last candle hours ago. Night looms thick and bitter.

The moon in all her pallid smudgy eminence, still owns the whole sky and blots out the glory of the stars. Gently kissing onto the navy heavens. Kylo has hunted under that very same silver moon.

It recharged the restless rough animal in his bloodstream.

Tonight, after dining, He took his leave. Took to the woods. Waited. Chased down his prey and drank his fill. Toasting his success under that watery bright light. Left the mangled and twisted body like a mortal offering of a sacrifice to the old gods. Basted the landscape in the blood he didn’t want, watering the icy crusted dirt of the earth. Staining the snow.

Humans all went back into the earth at the end. Returned to the mud and soil and rot of where they came from. Decayed to frail dirty bones and that’s all that remains. He was just helping them get there a tad quicker.

Crimson blooms down his white shirt and white cravat. It trails down the corner of his mouth and chin until he licks it clean. Sucks up the remains with his fingers til his face is clean. Garnet however is still marring his white square teeth.

His eyes are still golder than coin. Fresh off the hunt. Dappled in blood. And he finds himself stepping through the dark-dead, grey wood. To a place that now seemed familiar to him.

The house is dark. Every window dull. Even the dormers in the attic where their maids slept, even there all is deathly dark like the eye of a skull. He sets his sights on one bedroom window in particular.

Her window was cracked open- and when he gets up to it, silent as a shadow, he sees why. The fire makes her room too muggy. This way the stifling sticky heat had somewhere to escape too.

Her curtains are drawn, twitching on the breeze. And the fireplace lit at the end of her bed, across the room in the Morris wallpapered alcove of the hearth, casts the room in amber. As if she’s encased in it. Trapped. Preserved like an item of jewellery in this flamed room.

That wasn’t too far away from an accurate description. She is trapped. One day she’ll be sold into marriage by her mother. Then she’ll be trapped by the fetid husband she’s supposed to serve obediently; to wait on hand and foot, and dole out his heir and a spare, like she’s shelling peas.

He sneaks his big hand under the crack in the sash window, silently lifts it up and slips inside. Curtains rustle and he leaves them pushed apart to fit through. Steps down onto her windowsill, then onto the floor. His clothes barely make a rasp. His shoes don’t even scrape the whining buckled floorboards.

He’s inside, and his golden eyes catch onto the sleeping little dove, huddled up as a lump into the quilts of her bed.

Her hair is loose and crumpled around her head. Face turned away from him. Night down slipping off a shoulder. Wispy thin. Like gauzy moth wings. Exposing her chest, the shadowed mounding globes of her breasts. Swelling and falling.

He can see the thud of her mortal heart wrack her skin. Pulsing her throat. Thudding out her wrists. Beating that lavender and bergamot soap scent out to his senses. Calling to him. Enslaving him. The creature she could never have a hope to tame.

He gazes at her as he rounds the end of the bed. Softly paces around it. She won’t wake. His nature makes highly sure of that. Vampires are after all, darkly magic animals. Predatory too. He can stun his prey the way he wants. The way he needs too. He’ll lull her body into deep sleep like a newborn. Seduce her weak mortal self to bend to his will.

He sits on the mattress near her hip. Watching her face sloped peaceful in gentle rest. His blood crusted hands reach out, drying rust caked at his nails, big fingertips slipping over her knuckles where her hand lay down by her side. The other folded across her waist.

He strokes along her arm. Watches her rest. Soothes his animosity with the tactile soft of her innocent skin.

His fingers travel upwards to her hair. He lifts it off her neck and rakes his fingers through the golden-brown wave of it. It drifts through his fingers like spun bronzed-gold that smells of French lavender.

A big wave of heat and perfume of bare skin hits him when he peels her hair away. Warm from where she’s cosily snuggled into her pillow.

He moans desperately. Like a wounded animal. The most gut-wrenching sob falls out his mouth.

He can’t help it. Moth to a flame. He’s drawn across the bed until his lips hit at her skin. Tracing the jugular in her throat. He tremors with need. From being within the barest millimetre of being able to taste her warm skin. That manna sent from heaven, put on this earth for him alone to savour.

“What in gods name are you doing to me, little dove?” He gasps. His speech muffled into her skin. He kisses at her hot throat and growls low in his when he feels her blood beat under his tongue.

This close to her- and he didn’t want to tear open her throat with the white knives of his sharp teeth. She’s worth more than that.

Oh, he knew she’d taste so sweet to feast on. He just knows it. She will. She’ll taste like thick honey and coins and sugared copper.

“You take me so beyond any lust or any need I’ve ever felt in my entire life.” He promises to her.

He’s still close. Kissing hot embraces of butterfly kisses at her neck. Gold eyes glittering so stark in the blue and amber half light of her bedchamber. Like yellowed cats eyes.

“What is this?” He asks her. “What I feel for you- how does it never stop?...” He begs to know. Begs to be shown clarity over this force.

His chest brushes into hers where she lays on the bed. He kisses up to her jaw. His adoring fingers skim over her cheek. Finding her cheekbone and trailing along its shape under her tender skin.

He kisses her jawbone and moans again. Hum of his deep voice soaking trembling into her skin from his hot blooded mouth. Copper souring in his tongue and teeth.

“I so long to kiss you.” He aches for it. Aches so deep it’s a physical pain in his gut. He groans, hard already at the merest thought of it. And that was just at tasting her mouth-

“But I want you awake and willing in my arms when I kiss you for the first time. I’ll have you trembling and weak for me. Now I just have to wait to be able to taste those pretty lips.” He whispers onto her chin.

Adores her face like this whilst he can. Top of his nose presses under her jaw and he takes a deep breath of her neck, whimpering with need.

He pants into her neck once more. “Sleep well. Little dove.”

He strokes her cheek kisses it one last time before he tears himself off the bed and slips away. Leaving her room as smoothly as a silent shadow.

~ ~ 🥀 ~ ~

15 notes · View notes

dreamsofthescreen · 4 years

Text

The Abstract Point Of A Clockwork Orange - Review

Released for streaming on Netflix two years ago, is this a so called ‘masterwork’ of a film, or just cinematic satire?

Malcolm McDowell in 'A Clockwork Orange'

Based on the book by Anthony Burgess, Stanley Kubrick’s 1971 adaptation of ‘A Clockwork Orange’, proved greatly controversial, yet influential. The dreamy, edgy swinging 60s sets up the scene for ultra violent home invasions and tortuously explicit murders performed by ‘The Droogs’. Released for streaming on Netflix two years ago, is this a so called ‘masterwork’ of a film, or just cinematic satire? Surrounding the idea of free will, this can be tossed around endlessly and reviewed in philosophy as something problematic. But is this film’s talk of freedom and suppression all really necessary? It’s upfront commentary on humanity that can be deemed as abstract, yet is this label of abstract just an excuse to glamorise the utter violence? Or does ‘A Clockwork Orange’ stand strongly with a point in hand? We can say both. The retro aesthetics, in terms of costume & production design that Kubrick can be recognised for, do play into the significance and absurdity of this work.

Set in a dystopian England where the governed rules are anything but at liberty for citizens, morals aren’t only tested, but are completely rejected. In this world, the government find order in good behaviour, something that the main character, Alex, (Malcolm McDowell) completely detests. Alex has no moral limits and gains pleasure from violence with no concern for the consequences. Within the first half an hour of the film, we see him and his gang of ‘droogs’ beat up a homeless man and mercilessly invade an old mans home, robbing it as well as raping and murdering his wife. Though labelled as a lesson in testing how far freedom of choice can go, A Clockwork Orange’s meaning can seem scattered.

Seen to represent someone so outwardly alive in his lack of concern for society, Alex’s mad challenging of human morals tests the meaning of freedom. But given themes, are they just barren and only strive to portray substance? It can just be seen as senseless violence for many. The intensely rebellious attitude is a reflection of the oppression faced in this film’s universe, and ultimately is an exaggerated comment on society today. Yet, you could say this about a film like Dirty Harry or Pulp Fiction, given their brutality. This theme, focusing on order vs chaos in society, is no doubt relevant, but however meaningful is it? The meaning left in it could be that, through it’s distressing realism, it so rawly opens ones eyes to today’s illicit society. Commenting on the confusion surrounding the film’s meaning, Kubrick stated that, “It is a story of the dubious redemption of a teenage delinquent by condition-reflex therapy. It is, at the same time, a running lecture on free-will.” Furthermore, author Anthony Burgess writes in ‘A Clockwork Orange Resucked’, that the meaning is in the title, ‘A Clockwork Orange’ referring to one who “has the appearance of an organism lovely with colour and juice, but is in fact only a clockwork toy to be wound up by God or the Devil or the Almighty State”. In saying this, Burgess does confirm that from his perspective, this is a comment on human nature being sucked away by a totalitarian government. Yet, even given the comment from the author, our perspective as an audience is truly subjective.

In the author’s word, commenting that ‘A Clockwork Orange’ reflects someone who “has the appearance of an organism lovely with colour…but is only a clockwork toy to be wound up by the Almighty State”, refers to our potential for evil, and the importance of it in human nature. This is certainly a thought provoking theme, as most of the film is. The extreme capabilities of human beings can be an incredibly positive light or looming darkness, given which we choose to act on. Yet when this potential is squashed by a higher state, we can question whether one has free will, if it is still controlled. In a scene where Alex’s rebellion in lessened by Ludovico’s Technique, a process in which he is brutally forced to watch films of atrociously violent acts, with treatment in order to make him physically sick at even the thought of committing any crime. In hope to make him less of a threat to present society, he is less of himself. Again, we can think about the fact that is is of course necessary to change such wicked behaviour, but we can also think about how it could be, had we not chosen to create any governed rules.

After seeing state officials confirm that Alex has been cured of his homicidal behaviours, a prison chaplain states, “Choice! The boy has not a real choice, has he? Self-interest, the fear of physical pain drove him to that grotesque act of self-abasement. The insincerity was clear to be seen. He ceases to be a wrongdoer. He ceases also to be a creature capable of moral choice.” In total, Alex’s behaviour is ceased to be wrong, but he is also ‘ceased to be capable of choosing for himself, since he had been rewired to believe what the state had wanted him to believe - that acts of violence simply are wrong. To the normal mind, this isn’t a hard concept to grasp, as we are surrounded by basic morals that tie in with our empathy. Yet to someone with more sociopathic or psychopathic tendencies, this concern isn’t there. So, again, Kubrick leaves us questioning whether or not people in this state of mind should have the choice there in the first place, as they are unable to distinguish that morals are important in humanity.

Furthermore, in 1973, Kubrick decided to ban A Clockwork Orange in the United Kingdom, due to continuous upheaval. Renowned film critic Roger Ebert gave it two out of four stars, stating that it was an “ideological mess”. Comments on it’s explicit sexuality, dehumanisation and violence were made, with some thinking that the point of the film in itself was missed. As some claimed it’s content was to create a raw piece of art, others claimed it an offensive excuse to pointlessly portray horrific scenes. And horrific the scenes are, though with fashionable features, the torturously disturbing scenes of ‘The Droogs’ murders’ are certainly crude, and have no backstory whatsoever. These brutal scenes can be seen as damaging to on audiences, or even dangerous. What kind of insight are audiences given when shown such destructiveness?

If we talk about the stylistic features of Kubrick’s adaptation, they have certainly played into it’s iconic status, having audiences sometimes classify it as a performance art piece, rather than a film. The renowned costumes of ‘the droogs’ have been used repetitively as Halloween costumes, as well as the storyline being referenced in The Simpsons. The production design is, without a doubt, gorgeous, kooky and as abstract as the film’s meaning. The interiors stun with colour blocking wallpapers, framed pictures of 1960s models and record players spinning in one room. The sense of 1960s jazz certainly is there, with a slanted, modern design, that Kubrick is known for in other works like ‘The Shining’. Whilst Alex and his gang members commit crime, they dance along to Gene Kelly’s ‘Singin’ In The Rain’, and as Alex is tested through Ludovico’s Technique, a recognisable symphony by Beethoven is played. The 1960s wardrobe bursts with colour, an exaggerated view of the Britain in the swinging sixties. Audiences are attracted to these joyful features like music and fashion, the stylistic features making it such a cult classic. A cult classic needs to be fashionable, but is this fashion in the film pretentious? Especially when surrounded by such violence, as though to say that it’s chaos can be softened by pretty interiors or a recognisable score. Or does it make it all the more disturbing through adding joyful song or colourful designs, as they so oppose the distressing acts that Alex and his droogs perform. Had it not had Kubrick’s touch, would we view it the same way? Though Academy Award winner Milena Canonero’s costumes and John Barry’s production design remaining outstanding, does their glamorisation gloss over the underlying trauma of the plot? This type of questioning is something we can participate in throughout watching Kubrick’s production, as both it’s ideas and meaning are not black and white.

Kubrick’s adaptation of ‘A Clockwork Orange’ is clever in that it has us wondering whether or not it has a point, yet regardless, audiences are still left thinking about the impact of immoral behaviour and how our society responds to it. However consequential it attempts to be, it really can also be seen as blank, leaving audiences to decide on which to focus on. The pop-art aesthetics of the film can overrun the meaning or either try to stir us away from the barren landscape that it can be seen as. However strongly critiqued and analysed it may be, it’s meaning is all the more subjective, both creating interest and successfully winding up audiences.

Stars Out Of Five: 3.5/5

4 notes · View notes

ahmad01sblog · 3 years

Text

Top Guidelines Of Achors

This text needs extra citations for verification. Remember to enable make improvements to this article by adding citations to dependable sources. Unsourced materials can be challenged and removed. It is shaped like an inverted mushroom, The top getting buried within the silt. A counterweight is frequently provided at another conclusion of the shank to lay it down ahead of it results in being buried. Even though the shank is hooked up on the fluke with 4 bolts, an individual bolt has enough power to deal with the maximum envisioned load over the anchor. Bolt Details. Staying strong and elastic, nylon rope may be the best suited being an anchor rode. Polyester (terylene) is much better but significantly less elastic than nylon. Both equally ropes sink, in order that they steer clear of fouling other craft in crowded anchorages and do not take in A lot drinking water. Neither breaks down promptly in sunlight. Polypropylene ("polyprop") is not really suited to rodes because it floats and is much weaker than nylon, staying barely more robust than natural fibres. Vessels could have many anchors: bower anchors (formerly often called sheet anchors[citation required]) are the main anchors employed by a vessel and normally carried for the bow of the vessel. A kedge anchor is a lightweight anchor useful for warping an anchor, also referred to as kedging, or even more frequently on yachts for mooring immediately or in benign conditions. In some situations, the metal versions Achors can “spin unfastened” during the drywall for those who materialize to employ an influence Software to insert the screw. Does one concur with our ideas? Disagree? Depart a remark below and let us know your favorite drywall anchors or tips about receiving the very best benefits. Bolts, Washers and Nuts are delivered with each and every Mantus Anchor. From the event of replacing a missing fastener, please You should definitely usually use suitable size. Usually use locking washers, or nylon lock nuts, and tighten the nut securely. is designed to penetrate dense, grassy bottoms and established with unparalleled Keeping energy. When analyzed, our anchors On nearly anything lightweight, you'll be able to Just about go with anything at all—like unconventional solutions like Super Hooks photo hangers or a picture hanging kit that works by using hooks and nails. Just don’t use possibly of those options In case the product you cling has a tendency to draw back This letter is intended to handle the general performance of Simpson Powerful-Tie® post-set up concrete anchors in standard-body weight concrete when put in adjacent to holes which were deserted. The vessel will now swing in the course of two anchors, which is suitable in strong reversing currents, but a wind perpendicular to The existing may perhaps split out the anchors, as they aren't aligned for this load. Backing an anchor[edit] Stainless Steel anchors attribute a 2205 Duplex shank and 316L stainless steel fluke. The floor is hardened by shot-peening and after that electro-polished to offer maximum corrosion resistance. We stand by our merchandise and present you with a no questions asked return plan if you discover that the anchor won't get the job done as marketed. Keep to the url under To learn more on returns.

1 note · View note

chpkns · 4 years

Text

BEST ALBUMS 2020

Some albums I enjoyed during quarantine.

Hon Mentions: Campfire Chords - Arkells, A Written Testimony - Jay Electronica, All In One - Jaunt, Punisher - Phoebe Bridgers, Alfredo - Freddie Gibs and Madlib, Thats What They All Say - Jack Harlow, Western Swing & Waltzes and Other Punchy Songs - Colter Wall, This Place Sucks Ass - PUP, Only For Dolphins - Action Bronson, Black Habits - D Smoke, What’s Your Pleasure - Jessie Ware, 3.15.20 - Childish Gambino, Dedicated Side B - Carly Rae Jepsen, Dark Lane Demo Tapes - Drake, After Hours - The Weeknd, color theory - Soccer Mommy, Circles - Mac Miller, Womb - Purity Ring

10) Future Nostalgia - Dua Lipa

One of the lesser, although still significant, tragedies of the 2020 COVID era was that weddings and sweaty club basements the world over were robbed of Dua Lipa’s prolific output this year. Future Nostalgia is hit or miss in places, but the hits come hot and heavy delivering banger after 80′s-disco-inspired banger. Dominant summer jams “Don’t Start Now” and “Break My Heart” are the highlights here, along with “Levitating” (equally good with or without DaBaby). Sleeper tracks “Cool” and “Hallucinate” round out the year’s best pure pop album.

Highlights: Don’t Start Now, Break My Heart, Levitating, Physical, Cool, Hallucinate

9) Women In Music, Pt. III - HAIM

The third album from LA’s sister act rock trio HAIM delivers consistency and growth for the band. There’s plenty of retro heartbreak rock on Women In Music, Pt. III to satisfy fans of HAIM’s first two albums, but lots of new on offer as well including the jazzy Lou Reed inspired sax of “Summer Girl” and Danielle Haim sounding positively Joni Mitchell-esque on “Man From the Magazine”. The auditory production flourishes of erstwhile Vampire Weekend member Rostam are noticeable throughout and help stretch the bounds of the HAIM sisters’ signature Wilson Phillips meets Fleetwood Mac summer rock sound into something more of the moment.

Highlights: The Steps, Summer Girl, Don’t Wanna, Man From the Magazine, FUBT

8) My Turn (Deluxe) - Lil Baby

I’ve almost given up on trying to enjoy or understand most “new rap” but every now and then something breaks through that I connect with for some reason. Atlanta rapper Lil Baby’s My Turn was that album for me this year. There are many reasons I feel I should not like Lil Baby’s music, from his liberal use of autotune to his mumbling delivery, but something always drew me back to it and, listen after listen, it grew on me. Lil Baby’s flow is persistent when he locks in, with matching driving trap production from Quay Global, Tay Keith and others, mirroring in sound the story of Baby’s rise from the streets to prison to the studio. The standout track is late addition “The Bigger Picture”, Lil Baby’s protest anthem on race in America, policing and the turmoil following the killing of George Floyd by police, a political statement from an otherwise apolitical artist, showing that Lil Baby has much more to offer than bravado and autotune.

Highlights: Grace (ft. 42 Dugg), Forever (ft. Lil Wayne), No Sucker (ft. Moneybagg Yo), Social Distancing, The Bigger Picture

7) Miss Anthropocene - Grimes

The third major studio release from Montreal native Claire Boucher, better known as Grimes, doesn’t reach the same highs as its predecessors - 2015′s electro-pop masterpiece Art Angels (which rated number 1 on this list for that year) or 2012′s Visions, the synth-laden fever dream that introduced Grimes to mainstream notoriety (number 2 on this list for 2012) - but it’s still very much worth the time. The vibe of Miss A falls somewhere between Grimes’ previous two albums, and a little darker and messier to boot. Grimes sounds a bit like she’s playing a concert for the end of the world, which feels a bit prophetic for an album released just before a global pandemic took hold. As always, Grimes is out to flex her muscle as a technician and across the album’s ten tracks she mixes diverse sounds ranging from rave synths to banjos showing how far her craft has come since making Visions on Garageband in her Mile End apartment.

Highlights: So Heavy I Fell Through The Earth, Violence, Delete Forever, 4ÆM, You’ll miss me when I’m not around

6) evermore - Taylor Swift

Spoiler alert, this isn’t the highest ranked Taylor Swift album on this list. Surprise released in December, evermore was an early Christmas present to fans of Swift’s surprise summer album folklore (more on that later). evermore continues Swift’s reinvention from pop star to indie singer-songwriter, assisted by songwriting partner Aaron Dessner of The National and a variety of indie darling guest stars - this time around featuring HAIM, The National’s Matt Berninger and another stunning guest turn with Bon Iver. Speaking of Justin Vernon, the album capping title track might be the single best song on either folklore or evermore. And for fans of Taylor’s earlier catalogue like me, the return to country music on “no body, no crime” is like reconnecting with an old friend. evermore is a little messier and less consistent thematically than its sister album, feeling a bit like folklore’s b-sides. But when your b-sides are better than most artist’s a-sides, why not release another album’s worth?

Highlights: ‘tis the damn season, no body no crime (ft. HAIM), coney island (ft. The National), cowboy like me, evermore (ft. Bon Iver)

5) RTJ4 - Run The Jewels

Walking the streets of my neighbourhood with the first listen of RTJ4 in my earbuds, I found myself actually crying at the thought that I would not get to see Killer Mike and el-P perform these songs live in the summer of 2020. The memories of RTJ festival sets past came rushing over me in a wave. That was my first “damn, I miss live music moment” of the pandemic. The fourth instalment of Run The Jewels’ historic rap partnership is more of the same in the very best way. Like the dynamic duo’s previous three instalments, RTJ4 is in your face, moves at a frenetic clip, and takes no prisoners. There’s even another album highlighting collaboration with Rage Against The Machine’s Zack De La Rocha. The politics of RTJ4′s tirades against inequity and the police state feel even more imminent in 2020 against the backdrop of George Floyd, the ensuing protest movement that gripped America, and the 2020 presidential election. I really hope we get a chance to see Mike and el-P tour these songs in 2021, the world needs it.

Highlights: ooh la la (ft. Greg Nice and DJ Premier), goonies vs. E.T., walking in the snow, JU$T (ft. Pharrell Williams and Zack de la Rocha), a few words for the firing squad (radiation)

4) Saint Cloud - Waxahatchee

The majestically twangy folk-Americana of Saint Cloud, the fifth solo album from Katie Crutchfield (stage named Waxahatchee after Waxahatchee Creek, Alabama, where the singer grew up), is a nostalgic cure for the ails of 2020. The soft bluesy rhythms of Crutchfield’s songs feel like a lazy long summer day spent by the water. That was something we needed this year. The songwriting is just as beautiful. The standout track, “Fire”, speaks to Crutchfield’s journey finding sobriety and reconnecting with her southern roots. It also speaks to a longing feeling “give me something / it ain’t enough / it ain’t enough”. On “Arkadelphia”, Crutchfield croons: “We try to give it all meaning / Glorify the grain of the wood / Tell ourselves what's beautiful and good”. In the chaos of 2020, the calm oasis of Saint Cloud is certainly something beautiful and good worth enjoying.

Highlights: Can’t Do Much, Fire, The Eye, Arkadelphia, St. Cloud

3) Suddenly - Caribou

Suddenly was my first genuine pandemic listen and, in the early days of lockdown, I found myself going back to it again and again. So much so, that the opening haunting notes of “Sister” became a kind of touchstone as I adjusted to a weird new work-from-home lifestyle. The chilled out weirdness of Caribou was an extremely welcome presence in 2020. It had been long enough since 2014′s Our Love (2014′s number 1 on this list) that I’d forgotten how enjoyably quirky Dan Snaith’s floaty pseudo-house tunes could be. Suddenly is a little more laid back than the club ready Our Love, which maybe suits it more to a world where dancefloors are closed. The tunes are also tighter, more economical in their length and soundscape. The lead single “Home” sounds downright commercial (in a good way) with it’s motown sampled chorus. Other parts of the album, like the closing “Cloud Song” venture into more experimental territories. All throughout, however, are Caribou’s signature warm chord progressions inviting you to lose yourself in them. Whether you’re looking for a guided meditation or an at-home dance party, Suddenly was the perfect 2020 album for it.

Highlights: Sister, Home, Lime, Never Come Back, Ravi

2) Cuttin’ Grass, Vol. 1 : The Butcher Shoppe Sessions - Sturgill Simpson

2020 was full of unexpected things, many bad but some surprisingly delightful. Firmly in the latter category is Cuttin’ Grass, Sturgill Simpson’s surprise double album made up entirely of bluegrass covers of his own catalogue. A true product of 2020, Simpson recorded the album with a murderer’s row of contemporary bluegrass artists after recovering from COVID-19 and challenging his fans to raise funds for charity in exchange for recording a new album. That album became Cuttin’ Grass, a traditional bluegrass re-imagination of the greatest hits and hidden gems of a country artist who has always strived to avoid being labelled as a country artist. The songs feel effortlessly at home and are given new life amid the frenetic guitar and mandolin picking, flying fiddles, and twangling banjos. If Simpson’s ode to the revelatory experience of psychedlic drug use “Turtles All The Way Down” felt revolutionary on 2014′s Metamodern Sounds in Country Music, it feels like an old standard here with its tempo pitched up and enveloped in the cacophony of the bluegrass ensemble. There is some good old fashioned heartbreak to slow things down too. Mandolin player and backup vocalist Sierra Hull shines on “I Wonder” (a cover of a song originally recorded by Sturgill’s former band Sunday Valley) as she joins Simpson on the chorus: “Tell me am I the only one / drinking and cursing your name?” The juxtaposition of Simpson’s unconventional country catalogue with the most traditional of country music styles just works and the entire hour can be listened and relistened for days. And if you’re still not satisfied, the companion “Volume 2: the Cowboy Arms Sessions” released in December brings back the same supporting cast to explore more of Simpson’s catalogue.

Highlights: All The Pretty Colors, Breakers Roar, Time After All, Turtles All The Way Down, Voices

1) folklore - Taylor Swift

Well, I told you there’d be more Taylor Swift on this list, and here it is. Your number 1 album of 2020 is folklore, the surprise release pandemic project in which the world’s biggest country star turned pop star reinvented herself again as an indie artist. Unlike anything else Swift has put out since RED, nothing on folklore is designed to be played in a stadium. Rather, it’s all more at home in a cabin by the fire, or in your earbuds on a fall walk... basically, it’s music meant for 2020. Like its companion evermore, folklore is the product of Swift’s songwriting collaboration with The National’s guitarist Aaron Dessner. The melding of songwriting styles seems like an odd match at first but sounds like a match made in heaven. Lyrically, Swift’s songwriting makes an evolutionary leap, almost leaving her primary auto or semi-autobiographical comfort zone behind completely (other than, perhaps, in heavily veiled metaphor) in favour of invented stories and semi-historical world building. After a few listens, you discover that the same characters appear in different songs like the imagined history of Rebekah Harkness, the real life former inhabitant of Swift’s Rhode Island home, on “the last great american dynasty” or imagery of “battleships” that “sink beneath the waves” in the ghost story of “my tears ricochet”. In the so-called “teenage love triangle trilogy” of “betty”, “cardigan”, and “august”, Swift tells different parts of the same story from the perspective of different characters. Each song stands on its own, but the discovery that the pieces fit together is wonderful. “betty” is the standout track for me, as a long suffering fan of “country Taylor”. In style, it harkens back to her earlier work, but in substance it’s something new entirely as Swift sings from the perspective of James, the boy who has done wrong by his lover and is seeking forgiveness. The pinnacle of the album is “exile” Swift’s collaboration with Bon Iver’s Justin Vernon. The call and response interaction of Swift with Vernon’s true to for emma form baritone is chill inducing. Like so many of the unexpected good things in 2020, folklore came from throwing plans out the window and doing what felt right for the moment. This is Taylor Swift making the music she wanted to make. In Dark Knight fashion, it’s the album we needed, if not the one we deserved. It’s the best album of the year.

Highlights: cardigan, the last great american dynasty, exile (ft. Bon Iver), my tears ricochet, epiphany, betty, peace

4 notes · View notes

lilyginnyblackv2 · 4 years

Note

Ghost-Harvest-Crow~ please ^^

@lulubara Sure! :D Sorry it took a while to respond. I purchased some recent video games (the new Super Mario 3D All Star set, FF 8 and 9, and Okami HD), so I’ve been sucked into those recently. But, enough rambling, let me answer these questions:

Ghost - Hmm, there isn’t anyone that I miss terribly, in the sense that I think about them every day and wish that they could still be here with me. But there are a lot of people that I’ve lost over the years that make me sad/make me cry when I think about them. My grandparents, my dog, one of my great aunts - I really adored her, but she passed away when I was still in Japan, so I wasn’t able to properly say good-bye.

One of my friends from my childhood passed away a few years ago. We weren’t really close anymore, but when I learned of her death it still shocked me a lot (especially because I’m still not 100% certain how she died, there seemed to be some drama surrounding her death and her sister, who I was also friends with, didn’t want to share - so I didn’t pry).

I know a lot of people here on Tumblr and Twitter, especially, don’t really like discussing 9/11 (for very valid reasons - it is an event that has been taken over by right wing media and propaganda), but that day is still one of the most vivid memories from my childhood(I was 11 when it happened), and that friend that passed away was there with me through most of that day (we had TVs in the classroom and we begged the teacher to let us watch the news cast of the event - so we saw the towers come down, as well as the burning people falling to their deaths). It was a lot to take in and process, and my friend had been worried sick that her uncle may have died (thankfully, he had not).

One of the last times we hung out together, it was on swing sets and we just kinda sat in silence, taking comfort in the other just being there. Our paths parted shortly after that when we entered high school.

Harvest - I can never pick just one character with these sorts of questions, lol. The fictional characters I tend to relate the most to are either characters are ones like Lisa Simpson, Hermione Granger, Yuna (FFX), and Tohru Honda. I have two older brothers, one who was very into sports and athletic and the other who was very into writing, drawing, and lots of artistic stuff. So when I was growing up, I tried to find an area that I could focus on that could separate me from my brothers - academics. So I tried really hard at school (except math, I cannot with math).

My brothers also tended to cause a lot of trouble for my parents and such (they weren’t super bad, but they still caused my parents stress and stuff), so I tried very hard to follow the rules, not really rebel, and make things easy for my parents and others - so...yeah, characters like Lisa and Hermione were really relatable for me in the academic and Yuna and Tohru were relatable to me in the people pleasing sense - all of the characters have a sort of “try to follow the rules” ideology too.

Though, they all also tend to break the rules when they know that following said rules would be morally wrong, and they do end up questioning a lot of things (either about the things they were taught/learned or about authority and parental figures in their lives), eventually rebelling in some way, and learning to be selfish / speak up for themselves.

So I’ve found relatability in that as well, since nowadays I question my parents on pretty much everything and understand my brothers a lot more (and where they were coming from).

Crow - MATH. I wish I could do math. It would open a lot more doorways for me. But my brain isn’t good with math. I just don’t understand it at all. My brain is always just like “but where did those numbers come from? how do I know to use this set of steps over that one? where do I put these random letters again?” I’m not good with spatial understanding of things either. When things get described as being “such and such miles away” or “such and such meters/feet high” or whatever, my brain is just like...Okay, cool (insert a Homer Simpson’s gif of his brain thinking about something totally irrelevant to the conversation he was having).

#random ramblings #stuff about me #lulubara #long post

4 notes · View notes

eddycurrents · 5 years

Photo

For the week of 15 May 2019

Quick Bits:

Age of X-Man: Next Gen #4 hurtles towards the end as Glob, Armor, and Rockslide attempt to track down Anole before he does something stupid. Everything’s really starting to fall together in these minis as the lie of the world starts to unravel. It’s also interesting how Ed Brisson portrays the cultists fighting back against the “no love” edict as just as deluded and indoctrinated by X-Man’s change of reality.

| Published by Marvel

Aquaman #48 begins Arthur’s quest to recover his past in the first part of “Mother Shark”, with one hell of a twist for an ending cliffhanger. The high level of the quality of art on this series continues as Viktor Bogdanovic and his Greg Capullo-inspired style (with Jonathan Glapion and Daniel Henriques providing additional inks) join Kelly Sue DeConnick, Sunny Gho, and Clayton Cowles.

| Published by DC Comics

Batman #71 is part two of “The Fall and the Fallen” from Tom King, Mikel Janín, Jorge Fornés, Jordie Bellaire, and Clayton Cowles. With the heavy reliance on dream sequences and simulations lately, it certainly makes me wonder who’s gaslighting who, whether anything in the story is real or if King is just playing us. Great art, though.

| Published by DC Comics

Bloodborne #12 concludes “A Song of Crows” from Aleš Kot, Piotr Kowalski, Brad Simpson, and Aditya Bidikar. This arc has been even more surreal than the first, embracing that odd mix of depression and existentialism that seems to permeate the franchise. This is going to take a few more readings to really sink in.

| Published by Titan

Calamity Kate #3 gives us a look into the disastrous relationship between Kate and Sandra. Though the accuracy of events might be a bit nebulous, given some missing time and an appearance that not everything is happening as we see it, this paints Sandra as a particularly resentful, hateful person. Also, another clue in Kate’s rival. Great action art from Corin Howell and Valentina Pinto, with an interestingly designed tentacle monster.

| Published by Dark Horse

Daredevil #5 is the gut punch. As great as everything that Chip Zdarsky, Marco Checchetto, Sunny Gho, and Clayton Cowles have delivered in the first four issues (and seriously it’s some of the best Daredevil since Miller and Mazzucchelli), this one tops it. A reckless, dangerous Daredevil, a hazard to himself and everyone around him, having it dawn on him what he’s been doing. And all of the Catholic guilt, shame, and judgement, not just on himself, but on the revelation that he’s seemingly oblivious that all of his friends have also been in his situation.

| Published by Marvel

Fairlady #2 is another great issue from Brian Schirmer, Claudia Balboni, Marissa Louise, and David Bowman. The blend of fantasy and police procedural is seamless, presenting a completely believable world, building up bits of supporting characters and elaborating on the setting as the story unfolds. Also a great shift into a kind of storybook art style from Balboni and Louise during one of the flashback sequences.

| Published by Image

Guardians of the Galaxy #5 sees the other shoe drop. Donny Cates, Geoff Shaw, David Curiel, and Cory Petit deliver an excellent set-up for the finale of the “Final Gauntlet” here as Hela makes her move and we find out what the game actually was. Also, more hints about Rocket that don’t seem pleasant.

| Published by Marvel

Immortal Hulk #17 goes hard for thriller first before leaning back into horror as Bushwacker stalks Banner through the “abandoned” lab. Very interesting new “rules” that Al Ewing is laying out as what makes up a Hulk keeps consistently changing.

| Published by Marvel

Joe Golem: Occult Detective - The Conjurors #1 picks up with our dead hero being nibbled by fish, and it’s just downhill from there for Molly, Simon Church, and all of existence due to Dr. Cocteau’s meddling. Great art from Peter Bergting and Michelle Madsen.

| Published by Dark Horse

Justice League #24 is the penultimate chapter of “The Sixth Dimension” and amidst the dire situations, heroic sacrifices, and stunning betrayals, there’s a great opening sequence about the little disappointments that Superman feels when he lets someone down. It’s like Catholic guilt amplified immensely, but it raises some interesting questions about how superheroes deal with depression. Or not deal with it, as it were. Great work from Scott Snyder, Jorge Jimenez, Alejandro Sánchez, and Tom Napolitano.

| Published by DC Comics

Little Bird #3 is another incredible instalment in this story, with some interesting revelations about Little Bird and Gabriel, from Darcy Van Poelgeest, Ian Bertram, Matt Hollingsworth, and Aditya Bidikar. The artwork from Bertram and Hollingsworth is mind-bendingly awesome.

| Published by Image

Livewire #6 continues the PSEP arc from Vita Ayala, Kano, and Saida Temofonte as Amanda discovers more about the organization and gets introduced firsthand to the academy bully enforcer. The art from Kano, from the characters through the layouts, is next level.

| Published by Valiant

Naomi #5 explains everything. Mostly. Sure, there are still questions, and there’s likely a huge battle coming for the final issue, but we get a full-fledged explanation as Naomi tells her newly-learned origin story to Annabelle. And it’s brilliant. Wonderful parallels to other tales and a hint at implications for the DC Universe as a whole. Also, drop dead gorgeous artwork. Seriously some of the best ever to grace the comics page. Brian Michael Bendis, David F. Walker, Jamal Campbell, and Wes Abbott provide another excellent issue here. Highly, highly recommended.

| Published by DC Comics / Wonder Comics

Oblivion Song #15 is one hell of a page turner. Robert Kirkman, Lorenzo De Felici, Annalisa Leoni, and Rus Wooton barely give us a chance to breathe in this one as the Faceless Men attack, both those who’ve chosen to stay in Oblivion and the exploration teams jaunting back and forth from Earth. Great tension.

| Published by Image / Skybound

Pearl #9 is another visually stunning issue from Michael Gaydos. Seriously just look at this beauty.

| Published by DC Comics / Jinxworld

Sabrina the Teenage Witch #2 throws even more chaos Sabrina’s way as it seems like everything in Greendale is something supernatural or paranormal or straight out of weird science. Kelly Thompson is delivering some great humour, while the art from Veronica and Andy Fish remains perfect for anything and everything in Archie’s world.

| Published by Archie

Superman #11 swings back around to Zod after Superman unceremoniously left him being beaten by Rogol Zaar as this arm of “The Unity Saga” continues, delving further into the battle consuming Jor-El at the moment, but not really explaining anything. This is chaos, but it looks pretty.

| Published by DC Comics

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder in Hell #3 is worth it just for the glorious artwork from Mateus Santolouco and Marcelo Costa. The monster designs are incredible and the red, surreal glow of the colours just give life to the strange and deadly nature of this hellscape.

| Published by IDW

Transformers #5 suggests that there’s a whole lot more going on under the surface of Cybertron and the mystery of the death of Brainstorm that we thought. More interesting things going on with Rubble too, as he gets kind of lost while Bumblebee’s off doing other stuff.

| Published by IDW

Uncanny X-Men #18 adds again to the body count as things continue to fall apart. The nihilism, darkness, and depression in this series has really been getting to me these past few issues. With announcements for House of X and Powers of X, this is starting to feel like a “throw the X-Men down a hole before rebooting” type of story. I’m still not sure if I like it, since it’s putting me in a sour mood.

| Published by Marvel

War of the Realms #4 drills down on Freyja’s defence of the Black Bifrost, intent on taking away its use from Malekith. All of the art on this series has been phenomenal, but Russell Dauterman and Matthew Wilson somehow take it up another notch. This is epic.

| Published by Marvel

War of the Realms: Giant-Man #1 kicks off another front in the War as Freyja tasks Ant-Man, Giant-Man, Goliath, and Atlas to infiltrate the Frost Giants’ bastion on Earth and get revenge, from Leah Williams, Marco Castiello, Rachelle Rosenberg, and Joe Sabino. Very nice bits of humour and wonderful artwork.

| Published by Marvel

War of the Realms: Spider-Man & The League of Realms #1 opens up another front as Spider-Man leads the members of the League of Realms into New Heven territory, from Sean Ryan, Nico Leon, Carlos Lopez, and Joe Caramagna. It’s great to see more Ryan-penned Spider-Man, even if he only ever seems to get to write the event tie-ins. He’s got a great handle on Spidey, effortlessly displaying that humour and humanity of the character every time.

| Published by Marvel

War of the Realms: Strikeforce - The War Avengers #1 is the second Strikeforce one-shot elaborating on encounters spinning out of War of the Realms #3. This one focuses on Captain Marvel’s motley crew of Avengers as they try to strike at the heart of Malekith in Britain from Dennis Hallum, Kim Jacinto, Ario Anindito, Java Tartaglia, Felipe Sobreiro, and Joe Sabino. Some nice Deadpool humour and art in what is one of the more bonkers tie-ins.

| Published by Marvel

Other Highlights: Age of X-Man: Marvelous X-Men #4, Amazing Spider-Man #21, American Carnage #7, Battlestar Galactica Classic #4, Bettie Page #5, Black Badge #10, Black Widow #5, Cinema Purgatorio #18, Farmhand #8, Firefly #6, Gideon Falls #13, Go Go Power Rangers #20, High Level #4, Infinity 8 #12, Ironheart #6, James Bond 007 #7, Kaijumax - Season 4 #6, Kick-Ass #14, KISS: The End #2, Last Stop on the Red Line #1, Life & Death of Toyo Harada #3, Low #22, Lucifer #8, Lumberjanes #62, Marvel Action: Spider-Man #4, Morning in America #3, Old Man Quill #5, Orphan Age #2, Planet of the Nerds #2, Port of Earth #10, Princeless - Book 8: Princesses #2, Spider-Man: Life Story #3, Star Wars #66, Star Wars: Age of Rebellion - Lando Calrissian #1, Star Wars: Tie Fighter #2, Teen Titans #30, Xena: Warrior Princess #2

Recommended Collections: Batgirl - Volume 5: Art of the Crime, Bitter Root - Volume 1: Family Business, GI Joe: A Real American Hero - Volume 22, The Horror of Collier County, Immortal Hulk - Volume 3: Hulk in Hell, Jeepers Creepers - Volume 1: Trail of the Beast, Justice League Odyssey - Volume 1: The Ghost Sector, MCMLXXV, Mister Miracle, Outer Darkness - Volume 1, Outpost Zero - Volume 2, RuinWorld: Eye for an Eye, Star Wars: Age of Republic - Heroes, Star Wars: Han Solo - Imperial Cadet, The Whispering Dark

d. emerson eddy wishes there were more hours in the day in order to write about everything.

#This Week in Comics

6 notes · View notes

fly-pow-bye · 5 years

Text

Powerpuff Girls 2016 - “Brain Freeze”

Written by: Haley Mancini

Written & Storyboarded by: John West, Angela Zhang

Directed by: Nick Jennings, Bob Boyle

An actual one may be preferable to this.

Gold is probably the last thing I think of when I think of the reboot, but that's how this episode starts, anyway. Specifically, it's a field trip to a golden train filled with various golden things named "Fort Knox On Tour." Unfortunately, despite being called Fort Knox, it isn't anything "like Fort Knox", as there's no real security here.

After touring around that train to make any joke they can think of involving gold, including this line that sadly hints at what level of intelligence Blossom is going to be at in this episode:

Blossom: It says here that each gold bar is worth its weight in gold!

No, really?! Anyway, the class gets to have a picnic with their bagged lunches. As soon as the Reboot Puffs open their bags, a monster comes out of it.

That is, Sitcom Dad, showing up via pink hologram. He tells the girls about how much they overdo it on the sugary snacks. He specifically tells them to not buy any candy with their pocket change, and that they should enjoy the healthy food he packed for them.

They tell themselves that it can't possibly be that bad, until they take a good look at them.

Broccoli, turnips, and a block of tofu. They all act disgusted at this. Even Blossom refuses to touch that strange bean curd. One would think she would be the one expressing the virtues of healthy eating. At least she's not the annoying one in this episode, at least not for that reason.

The Powerpuff Girls might actually eat healthy food for once instead of all that ice cream, and someone has to save them from this predicament!

Enter Moo-Joo Moo Moo, with his new brand of ice cream! The Powerpuff Girls can't possibly fall for this, and sure enough, Blossom has to tell the girls not to jump at this opportunity. Oh, not because she clearly recognizes this overly-large-headed ape handing out ice cream, but because the Professor didn't want the girls to spend their pocket change on sweets!

Moo-Joo Moo Moo: It's free!

The Three Maroons: LOOPHOLE!

Yes, even Blossom exclaims excitement over disobeying her dad. That ice cream must be that tempting! Bubbles then feels like this guy is familiar, but Moo-Moo reassures her that he's only familiar because Moo-Moo's head is on every cone! At this point, why not just have him say "because I'm not Mojo Jojo"? Might as well make us suspend all of our disbelief.

Either that reasoning worked or they just really want that ice cream no matter who gives it to them, as the Powerpuff Girls get their free cone. They take their first lick, thinking about how to thank this random stranger for giving them sweets that will not give them the worst brain-and-everything-else freeze ever.

Sure enough, that ice cream gives them the worst brain-and-everything-else freeze ever, as they immediately freeze and drop to the ground. This strange man offering the Powerpuff Girls sweets reveals himself as Discount Jojo.

Everyone else in the vicinity was also taken in by this stranger offering ice cream, so he's able to do what he wanted to do: steal that train full of gold. As said before, we never really see any security. There is the train conductor, but it turns out, he was enamored by all the ice cream, too.

So enamored, Jojo is able to throw him out of the screen to the ground, causing a glass shattering sound effect! Seriously, Jojo just murdered someone on-camera, who said this reboot was toning down the violence?

Eventually, the Powerpuff Girls break out of the ice, realize what's happening, and chase after the train. Unfortunately, they're still holding that ice cream, and they just can't resist taking another lick from it.

See, the ice cream also happens to be formulated with something highly addictive. No, really, that's what Blossom says; one can make their own conclusion on what exactly it is. Buttercup just says its chocolate chip cookie dough, even though she's constantly holding a chocolate ice cream.

The ice cream is so addicting, that the Powerpuff Girls just can't help but take a lick every few seconds. Blossom does manage to slap it out of Buttercup’s hands at one point, but in the next scene, she just pulls it out without any explanation. To be fair, that's the only time that happens, and they do show that Discount Jojo was busy making tons of ice cream vending machines.

At least, I think that's what these are, as they only really show up in one scene. Maybe if the Reboot Puffs chose that one that says ooJ-ooM ooM ooM, they'll get the antidote to that highly addictive material.

The girls desperately try to smash Discount's face in, while Discount Jojo is relaxing on the hood of the train knowing fully well they're just going to stop in mid-air, lick the ice cream, and freeze themselves. It's just the same scene over and over again; it barely even counts as a montage.

After effortlessly escaping, what is he going to do with all of that gold from that train? He apparently already had enough money for those vending machines, so it's not like he needs the money.

Make a giant solid gold wrecking ball on what looks like a water tower to destroy Townsville once and for all! Seems like it would only level the area around this wrecking ball, but what do I know, I'm not an ice cream inventor.

But, uh oh, there's a giant kink in the cable which, for reasons the plot needed to work with, causes the computer controlling the wrecking ball to not budge until it gets fixed. Jojo tries, but he ends up getting tied up in the cable.

Since the error has been corrected, the wrecking ball swings him around town. Essentially, this is just the wrecking ball joke from The Simpsons Movie, except they have to have him say something along the lines of "oh no, the knives factory!" The comic timing is practically non-existent here.

Discount Jojo: Oh, thank goodness, the pillow factory!

This will be a complete shock to everyone: he's not going to hit the pillow factory. In fact, I knew right when this gag started that he was going to joke about a pillow factory and miss it. Instead, he hits the broken glass factory, after talking about how he's going to hit the broken glass factory. After that, he asks why it even exists. See, our ideas are so absurd, laugh, damn it!

As the Powerpuff Girls take a very long time to get to Townsville due to those aforementioned vending machines/R2D2s, they take another lick from the ice cream and, while frozen, they get hit by the wrecking ball. It tends to happen even when they're not frozen.

After seeing Discount Jojo cry about how he didn't want this to happen and that he needs help while being swung around, they come to the conclusion that Discount Jojo is tearing up the town, and they must stop him. To be fair to the Puffs, they're not entirely wrong. Their first course of action is to, in Blossom's words...

Blossom: RESIIIIIST.

Giving this episode some semblance of credit, they don't really do any of those off-model weird faces in this episode. I mean, this face is certainly more eye pleasing than those faces from Buttercup vs. Math. Unfortunately, resistance turns out to be futile. They try to drop the ice cream, but they can't, even though they did smack it off each other's hands earlier in the episode. They then try to hold it but not lick it, because that worked the last fifty times they tried that. Of course, that doesn't work either.

Eventually, Blossom figures out that the only way to break the habit is to stop thinking about it. While staring at this swinging ball on a pole, Blossom sees a similarity between this and another childhood sport that could easily distract her from that strange ice cream.

That is, tetherball. We even get a history of tetherball! It's just like one of those scenes from Teen Titans Go where they ramble on about the history of something, minus any attempted humor. They even have this diagram show up, but there's only scribbles here. I get that they didn't want jokes that wouldn't translate to other languages, as they never do this for the visuals, but it feels like a missed opportunity.

Using this knowledge, Blossom is able to RESIIIIIIST the ice cream and hit the golden wrecking ball as if it was a tetherball. And yes, I wasn't kidding about this reboot not wanting to have tetherballs hit on camera, as each hit is covered up with a hit flash. Sure, Discount Jojo is tied to it, but it's not like he's being directly hit by them. What's even worse is that these hit flash seem to last a whole second and are completely still this time. It is like those accursed Nike swooshes from Season 1 with even less effort!

While Blossom and Buttercup are perfectly distracted by tetherball, Bubbles needs to have a little more convincing. I guess the other side effect of the addictive ingredient is that it turns you into a reptile. Just ask that one drug dealer from that one PSA. Yesssssss!

Their solution: make up a song about a bunny that can only be sung while playing tetherball! No, not that Bunny. Blossom and Buttercup begin while continuing their bashing of this clearly-in-peril-though-it-was-caused-by-his-own-evil-intentions Discount Jojo.

Okay, so they can hit the tetherball on camera if they're singing a song about bunnies. Wow, this censorship is weird. This song just sounds like they're just making it up as they go along...which is exactly what's happening, so good job! Eventually, Bubbles comes in just to save Buttercup from coming up with something that rhymes with "say".

They hit the tetherball so hard that it spins all the way around, causing the whole mechanism to fall apart. Seems like a cruel punishment, but he did outright murder that train conductor, so it's okay. All that tetherballing made the girls hungry, and Blossom suggests they eat those healthy lunches. A few seconds of thinking, and they all decide that's a bad idea, even Blossom. Who can save them from this predicament?

Turns out, having an entire wrecking ball mechanism fall right on top of you does not even give Discount a scratch. Even if those hit flashes didn't exist, the impact the Reboot Puffs had is just completely erased by this ending.

He even repeats the same exact idea with the same exact name, except with chocolate rather than ice cream. No, really, the episode ends with the Powerpuff Girls saying "hmmm" to this, so we can assume he even succeeds, too! As the Powerpuff Girls say, always accept candy from strangers, especially strangers that gave you addictive-ingredient-laced ice cream! What a great message for the kids.

Does the title fit?

They're getting frozen by this ice cream. Not much brains in this one, though it's possible that was supposed to be a reference to Discount Jojo being the villain here. Hmm.

How does it stack up?

I just couldn't find anything to like about this episode, and trust me, I look for any sign of quality in these. It's slow, monotonous, and there's so much wasted time here that ruins any bit of comedy they could have had. Just give me the tofu.

Next, ignorance would be bliss, but instead, I get to do the exact opposite to Bliss.

← Oh, Daisy! ☆ Lights Out! →

#fpb ppg 2016 #ppg 2016 #powerpuff girls #cartoon network #fpb reviews

4 notes · View notes

nathanielwharton · 6 years

Text

My 2018 in Pop Culture

Same plan here as usual. This is what meant most to me last year in pop culture.

Top Forty Things From 2018

40. King Kong on Broadway I wrote about this as an adaptation of the Kong story over at SportsAlcohol.com, but here I'll just say that while I was really disappointed with this as a musical, the execution of Kong himself on stage was breathtakingly rad.

39. Rhyming "is nae" with "Disney" in Anna and the Apocalypse In theory, I don't have much of an appetite left for a zombie comedy, having been well and truly sated by Shaun of the Dead, Zombieland, and the wave of imitators that followed them. I felt like I'd seen all of the moves that are possible with that particular genre mash-up, and then I read about a Scottish zombie comedy that ALSO threw in the musical and the Christmas movie. So it was almost with a sense of grudging obligation that I accepted the inevitability that I'd see Anna and the Apocalypse. It won me over. It's got a winning cast, catchy songs, and a surprisingly effective melancholy tone. But I have to admit, the moment that really won me over was a moment in the song "Hollywood Ending" where "is nae" ("is not" in a Scottish accent) is rhymed with "Disney."

38. The Conners/The Roseanne Revival This was a real roller coaster in 2018. I was excited and apprehensive about the revival, and only slightly relieved when it began and was mostly pretty good. Still, there was an uneasiness with the way that the Roseanne character had been conceived for the revival and that basically exploded thanks to the behaviour of the real Roseanne. Still, overall I've enjoyed the revival and The Conners, and while I'm sad about what happened to TV Roseanne and real Roseanne(for different reasons)

37. "The Queen" episode of Castle Rock I liked the show pretty well overall, but oh man did this episode stand out. For most of the run, I'd just thought it was a cute bit of casting to have Sissy Spacek playing what seemed like a strangely minor role. Then this episode happened. It's a real acting showcase for Spacek and it satisfies with suspense and emotion in equal measure.

36. Kurt Russell performing "Santa Claus is Back in Town" in The Christmas Chronicles I'm a sucker for a Christmas movie, and this one is agreeable enough. There is some attempt at telling an emotional story that might hit you if you're in the right mood, and there is pleasant hint of Gremlins in the movie's portrayal of Santa's elves, but mostly it is a pretty satisfying expansion of the thought, "what if Kurt Russell was Santa Claus?" Russell is a hoot in the role, and the movie hits a peak when his Santa ends up in jail and breaks out into a jailhouse rendition of "Santa Claus is Back in Town." Downloaded and added to my Christmas playlist.

35. Jesus Christ Superstar Live in Concert This new wave of live musicals on TV hasn't always resulted in a great show (I honestly have forgotten a lot of the Peter Pan and Rocky Horror broadcasts), but sometimes they end up with some really cool television. Grease Live still reigns as the champion of these things, but this production of Jesus Christ Superstar was exciting and energetic and featured some neat ideas in its staging. It's shows like this that keep me hoping they'll continue to try these live musical shows.

34. The Death of Stalin Wrote about this for SportsAlcohol.com.

33. Isle of Dogs The visceral aesthetic pleasure of this film might outweigh the delicate emotional effect all of Anderson's films tend to achieve, but even if the complicated story and worldbuilding in the film kept it from succeeding for me fully on a first viewing, it did get me to want to watch it again (and again).

32. Keira Knightley in The Nutcracker and the Four Realms The movie as a whole is a good enough time in the way that all of these lavishly produced live-action Disney fantasy movies tend to be. But Keira Knightley, as the Sugarplum Fairy, single-handedly drags this movie up a notch with her fantastically daffy performance. To explain all the ways that her performance delights would be to spoil what happens in the movie, but I'll just say that she finds a few different registers to play in the film and she is amazing in each one. Think of this snub when you watch the Academy Awards.

31. The Favourite A three-hander where each leg of the triangle is different and spectacular. Turns out that acidic dialogue works just as well in the Yorgos Lanthimos world as alien affectedness, and the cast he's got for this one hurl barbs with aplomb.

30. Ash vs. Evil Dead Series Finale The third season of this show lost a bit of a step for me, not quite balancing the goofs and the horror quite as deftly as the show had done at its best. But it really brought it back around for the last couple of episodes. The finale in particular had some surprisingly big action and an ending that felt perfectly Evil Dead. If that's the last we see of Ash, it feels right.

29. DuckTales The first season wrapped up with some good adventure and some ambitious emotional storytelling. And the second season has seemed, if anything, even more confident so far (including an excellent Christmas episode).

28. Eighth Grade What a lovely, humane, gem of a movie.

27. The Old Man and the Gun I was head-over-heels in love with this one like halfway through the opening scene. If it had ended after that scene, I might have been satisfied, but the rest of the movie was truly wonderful too.

26. A Series of Unfortunate Events Season Two There's no twist for book readers as great as what they did with the Parent characters in the first season, but this second season of the show continued to be really great.

25. Rusty Lake: Paradise & Rusty Lake: Paradox This year I played all of the Rusty Lake/Cube Escape games, and it's probably a good thing that it takes a while between game releases or I might just burrow into these Twin Peaks inspired puzzles and not come out.

24. The last 20 minutes of Halloween I pretty well loved the entirety of this 40-years-later sequel, but the last twenty minutes or so were just next-level great. Basically, once everybody gets to Laurie's compound, this film was as scary as I wanted and as fist-pumpingly thrilling as I didn't know I could have expected.

23. Lost in Space Season One Might have loved this if it was just the one thing after another space survival show, but when you layer on an intriguing mystery and then add on Parker Posey's slitherly Dr. Smith? Yep, loved it.

22. The Haunting of Hill House Mike Flanagan has been doing cool horror work on smaller movies for a few years now, and I'm glad he seems to have found a patron in Netflix. The broader canvas of Haunting of Hill House allows him to do pretty much everything he's so good at, and even allows for some new tricks (like that "one long shot" episode, or the creepy background ghosts that go uncommented on in the story).

21. Creed II Creed was so great, and the notion of Stallone returning to the Ivan Drago well so worrisome, that I was a little apprehensive that this one would disappoint me. What a great surprise, then, that this was basically a best-case scenario for how this could have worked out. Even the Drago stuff is pretty compelling! I'd love to see more with Adonis and Bianca sometime, and I certainly still love Rocky himself, but for this round of playing with fire, I am satisfied.

20. Godzilla: Planet of the Monsters & Godzilla: City on the Edge of Battle The first two (out of three) animated Godzilla films hit Netflix last year and they were much more curious and idiosyncratic than I expected when they were first announced. Slowly paced, with an intentional disregard for the expectations of kaiju fans, they take a brilliant concept and proceed to use it to explore the perils of various belief systems. Each of these ends on a cliffhanger, so the success of the whole thing might depend a bit on how Godzilla: Planet Eater wraps things up, but for now it's a fascinating experiment.

19. The Last Drive-In with Joe Bob Briggs I can't say I sat around missing the horror host thing (I also love and regularly watch the family-friendly Svengoolie), but I was still surprised by how enjoyable and how nostalgic I found the experience of sitting back down with Joe Bob to watch a trashy horror movie. I didn't watch this as a marathon, but it did make for a bunch of swell weekends catching up with some movies I'd never seen and a charming film buff I hadn't seen in a while.

18. Bad Times at the El Royale Everything about this, from the cast to the aesthetic to the story, was just right up my alley. There was a moment late in the film where Maggie and I turned to each other, our jaws literally dropped, and we burst into nervous laughter.

17. BlacKkKlansman Wrote this one up over at SportsAlcohol.com.

16. Three Identical Strangers This documentary knocked me out. It's an amazing story with a bunch of incredible twists and turns and fascinating characters. It also poses some really intriguing questions and left me with a lot to think about. Don't read anything about it, just see it!

15. Disenchantment As a big fan of The Simpsons and i (and knowing the similar arcs they followed pretty well), I was pretty excited for a new Matt Groening animated show, and the first season of Disenchantment might have surpassed my expectations. It's funny, visually appealing, and takes some effective swings at the kind of emotional storytelling that it took the earlier series a couple of seasons to really nail. The finale sent me scrambling to the internet to see if it had been picked up for more episodes.

14. Nancy by Olivia Jaimes As a regular and avid comic strip reader, I propose that I was more blown away than most of the internet by the new Nancy. I regularly checked in on the soggy Gilchrist version of the strip, so imagine my surprise and delight at the change! It is neat to see a newspaper strip make any kind of impact in the culture again. Plus the strip is really fun!

13. Star Wars Star Wars: Rebels came to a close with a run of really exciting episodes and a really excellent finale. The comics continued to be really good. And Solo: A Star Wars Story showed up with smaller, not so fate-of-the-galaxy stakes and still just nailed the iconic characters it was digging into in exactly the ways it needed to. In a year where Star Wars fandom was showing itself to be home to a lot of the same toxicity as other fandoms, Star Wars itself kept up its end with lots of fun stuff.

12. The Last Best Story I thought I had a good idea what to expect from a high school newspaper riff on His Girl Friday, and this book certainly (thoroughly, delightfully) satisfies that. But I wasn't exactly prepared for the emotional depth and lovely observational detail in Maggie's book (I mean, I probably should have been, but it still sneaked up on me). I finished and just wanted to read it again.

11. "The Lost Art of Forehead Sweat" episode of The X-Files This second (and seemingly final) revival season of The X-Files boasted a more confident ratio of hits to misses than the previous one (even the nutso mythology episodes showed a stronger grasp of how the show works and what it means in the current moment) but the highlight, again, was a virtuosic episode written and directed by Darin Morgan. It was brilliantly funny, very X-Filesy, and sneakily provided a hilarious alternate series finale for fans in the event that Chris Carter would botch the actual one a few episodes later (luckily, he did as well as I might have hoped, really).

10. Arrested Development - Season 5, Part 1 I disagreed with most of the complaints people lobbied against the fourth season of Arrested Development, but I do think the batch of fifth season episodes released last year did fall prey to some of the shapeless storytelling and clunky greenscreen they were accused of before (I thought the fourth season did wonders with having the characters separated, while they flailed to meaningfully integrate Lindsay in the fifth season). And because episodes weren't as clearly defined in their storytelling, it left some of the character stories feeling both too dragged out and thinly developed (thinking here of Gob's struggle with his sexuality and Tobias's relationship with Murphybrown) by the time the half-season ended on a slight cliffhanger without really building significant momentum. But for all that, I love these characters so much and the show particularly really does right by the way that Michael and George Michael try to navigate their relationship with each other after the events of the fourth season.

9. Mary Poppins Returns This movie had impossible shoes to fill, and you can tell that everybody involved took that seriously. I saw this one twice. The first time, I really enjoyed it. The second time, it made me cry.

8. Marvel Cinematic Universe Black Panther was so fantastic, Avengers: Infinity War felt like a really special theater experience, and Ant-Man and the Wasp was a delightful trifle with an amazing, playful gut-punch of a stinger. Really, I had a great time will all three movies they put out this year and I loved the ride they took us on all the way through to the final text card in the Ant-Man credits.

7. Surprise, it's The Cloverfield Paradox! Sure, this is easily the least of the Cloverfield movies so far (it's still a fun haunted-house-on-a-space-station movie with an overqualified cast), but I don't imagine there'll be a more fun way to see one of these. I was already feeling that familiar Cloverfield excitement as the online marketing game started spooling up, but I pretty much leapt off the couch when Katie and I saw the Super Bowl ad that announced it would be dropping soon on Netflix, and freaked out even further when I looked on Netflix and saw the tag that it would debut after the game ended! We stayed up and watched it that night, and I went to sleep in the glow of a new Cloverfield. Gonna be hard to top that for excitement next time, but I'm looking forward to seeing them try.

6. Support the Girls Basically a "day in the life" movie about a manager of a Hooters-style sports bar, this movie (starring a perfect Regina Hall) is warm and human and reassuring because of the way it eschews the normal reassurances of this kind of thing and just plays it real. It's a beautiful movie.

5. GLOW I loved the first season of GLOW, and I think this second season is even better. It digs a little deeper into the supporting cast, doubles down on its resonance with things happening in the culture right now, includes that delightful episode within an episode, and ends on a perfect and delicate emotional note.

4. American Vandal Here's one of those shows with a perfect first season taking a shot at a follow-up, and they nailed it. Whatever trades are made in taking on a case with less personal involvement for our investigator leads are made up by the incisive observational writing (and hilarious bathroom jokes), this time throwing race and class into the mix. I'm sorry we won't get to see them take on another case and format, but these first two seasons are perfect.

3. Ready Player One I am in the tank for pretty much any Spielberg movie (I've loved the dramas he's done in the last few years) and here he's made a movie with cameos from King Kong and Mechagodzilla. I enjoyed the book this was based on, but I loved the movie even more. The visuals and action (and that amazing Shining sequence) are terrific, but the way that they restructured the game tasks build to make a moving argument for the ways even popular art are used for communication and connection, and Mark Rylance's portrayal of the Wonka-esque Halliday makes it all land.

2. The Ballad of Buster Scruggs I wrote about this one over at SportsAlcohol.com. I loved it.

1. Harry Potter and the Cursed Child Parts One & Two To be quite honest, this would be hard to beat in any event since I got engaged to be married between Part One and Part Two. Luckily, the show was a really special event even beyond that personal association. A surprisingly moving epilogue to the Harry Potter stories (and more satisfying in performance where the performances of the actors makes up for some of the ways the supporting characters seemed more thinly conceived in the script than they did in the books), it was also a dazzling theatrical experience. The variety of tricks employed to bring the wizard world to the stage meant that just as you figured out how they pulled off one big effect you were met with three other nifty flourishes. I dig Rowling's continued noodling around in her wizard world through things like this play and the Fantastic Beasts films (I enjoyed Crimes of Grindelwald) as a way to tell new stories and explore nerdy minutia without undoing the lovely bow of that original series of books. (Side note: Because my pleasure reading time has been so heavily curtailed as I get through this first school year, I'm only about a third in on Lethal White. Really digging it, but don't feel like I can include it on this list properly.)

Top Twenty Things I'm Excited About in 2019

Godzilla: King of the Monsters Never would I have believed that we'd be getting a big-budget American Godzilla film that would prominently feature Mothra, Rodan, and King Ghidorah as the third film in a shared Godzilla/Kong movie universe. Now it is happening, and everything they've released to do with the film (trailers, posters, etc) have looked incredible. Gonna be hard to top this one for excitement this year.

Marvel Cinematic Universe Captain Marvel looks like a lot of fun, I'm sure Spider-Man: Far From Home will be great, and I'm pretty interested in whatever Marvel Studios ends up doing for the Disney+ streaming service, but the main event this year is obviously Avengers: Endgame. Whatever form this big finale for the first decade of MCU stories takes, I cannot wait to see it.

Star Wars As with Marvel, there's plenty to look forward to this year, with The Mandalorian presumably accompanying the debut of Disney+ along with the revival of The Clone Wars, but the biggest deal will of course be Episode IX, the grand finale of the main Star Wars saga and the story of the Skywalkers.

Arrested Development The original run of the series was nearly flawless. The fourth season is, in some ways, even more ambitious and special. And even though the first half of this fifth season was, to my eyes, guilty of some of the baggy, formless storytelling that season four had been accused of (and splitting the season like this meant that the first half felt weirdly unsatisfying), it still had a ton of joke that I really loved and developed the relationship between Michael and his son in a way that I did find satisfying after the fourth season cliffhanger. Excited for more of the show and crossing my fingers that it nails the landing.

Stranger Things III This one drops on my birthday! Setting the story in summer sounds fun to me, and I'm pretty excited to see these characters again after a year off.

The Twilight Zone The original series is a deep foundation of my pop culture world and I even found things to like about the UPN revival in the early 00s, so I'm predisposed to be interested in this. But giving it to Jordan Peele (also so psyched for Us) seems like a masterstroke and the trailer they just released is so perfect (both for the obvious love it displays for the original and the new energy it promises) that it's driven me to distraction. Cannot wait for this.

The Addams Family I was obsessed with The Addams Family back when the two Barry Sonnenfeld films came out in the 90s. I loved the 60s sitcom, the movies, and the animated series (and more recently was bitterly disappointed by the Broadway musical). But most of all I adored the Charles Addams cartoons. This latest animated film has been kicking around in some form of development for a while now (there was a time when it was reported that they were trying to get Tim Burton to give it the stop-motion treatment) and I'm a little apprehensive that it ended up with Illumination Studios. Still, a new animated Addams Family film is a must see.

The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance This sounds pretty special, and in any case it is exciting to get an ambitious new puppet project from the Henson Company delivered right to my Netflix queue this year.

Once Upon a Time in Hollywood & The Irishman A new Tarantino film would be on this list no matter what, so those photos they released a while back were most exciting to just get a look at what he's going for aesthetically. And of course I'm intrigued and excited to hear that Netflix is throwing money at Scorsese to make a crime film starting De Niro, Pacino, Keitel, and Joe Pesci.

The French Dispatch Not sure if this one will actually hit this year or end up seeking out some awards-friendly release next year, but it's a Wes Anderson film about journalism with a predictably great cast. Exciting whenever it comes out.

Knives Out Rian Johnson writing and directing another mystery film with this cast? Let's do this now.

Little Women Lady Bird was sooo good that I'd be pretty into whatever movie Greta Gerwig made next, so the incredible cast she's assembled for this follow up is just icing.

The Righteous Gemstones When Jody Hill and Danny McBride make another HBO show, I'm going to watch it. Make it about a family of televangelists and make John Goodman the patriarch, and I can't wait to watch it.

My Favorite Thing is Monsters Volume 2 The first volume was a surprise highlight of 2017 and it was a bummer to see this follow up slide further and further back on release calendars. Hoping it finally arrives this year, but the original was so wonderful that I'm ready to wait as long as it takes.

Missing Link There are other animated movies I'll be really excited for by the time they come out this year (Toy Story 4 and Frozen 2 will surely be huge events) but I'm probably most excited that Laika is back with a new feature.

Star Trek It looks like, as an attempt to get people like me to actually keep up their CBS All Access subscription outside of the two months they're offering new episodes of Star Trek Discovery (and I am pretty psyched for this second season!) they are planning on keeping us in new Star Trek as often as possible. An animated Trek comedy! A new series about Picard! More of those very cool Short Treks! I'm pretty into seeing what they have in store this year.

Looney Tunes Cartoons After years and years of grousing about Warner Bros' treatment of the Looney Tunes characters (even when they have something that kinda works, like Wabbit or New Looney Tunes, it has felt like they're on the C-list; and no, Space Jam 2 does not make me feel better), I'm intrigued by this series and am anxious to see some footage to see what they're cooking up.

Penny Dreadful: City of Angels I loved the original series, I'm a sucker for stories set in America in the 30s, and I like the cast they're lining up, so I'm definitely into this.

Amazing Stories I don't even know if or when I'll get to see this (we already have so many streaming services and if I'm adding another one this year, it'll be Disney+), but I love the idea of a new Amazing Stories and if Spielberg directs an episode or two it'll make this a must watch somehow.

3 notes · View notes