#and one episode reminds me of why i was scared watching the film alien as a kid

[theveryhornycaterpillar]

Me: I'm having a great time watching Strange New Worlds. This is the first of the newer live action treks that I'm finding really fun.

Me: Spock has body swapped and hijinks ensue, this is fun

Me: they are all characters from a kids book, how fun

Me: *finishes watching The Elysian Kingdom then watches All Those Who Wander*

Me: I am not having fun anymore

[ilovethetalkingclock]

A Not-Sew-Magical Sequel (LALALOOPSY CREEPYPASTA)

(WARNING: THE FOLLOWING CONTAINS CONTENT LIKE LANGUAGE, GORE, DEATH, PARASITES, DROWNING AND DARK COMEDY. IF YOU GET SCARED BY THIS, DON'T YELL AT ME FOR IT. YOU CHOSE TO READ IT.) 

(story under the cut, based on a dream I had)

(don’t worry, it’s not a screamer, i’d never do that.)

No matter how many years passed and will pass, I liked and will still like Lalaloopsy. All the characters and concepts were and still are very interesting (though Jewel was always my least favorite) and the couple episodes I saw of both the original show and the reboot of Netflix were cute and in the case of the reboot actually very emotional. I also watched all the movies and while a majority of them were slightly flawed one way or another, that didn’t stop them from being good. Hearing the toys being discontinued and the Netflix show canceled indeed made my heart sink.

But that’s not all what I wanted to talk about. Onto Lala-Oopsies.

If you don’t recall, Lala-Oopsies was a spinoff line. As the name suggested, the characters were in mixed rainbow colors and body proportions that deviated from the usual Lalaloopsy dolls, looking like, in my own words, mutants. They came as princess/ballerina hybrids and mermaids, with the ‘Littles’ (which in the original Lalaloopsy line, were the younger sisters) as fairies. They had one movie, “Lala-Oopsies: A Sew Magical Tale”. It was like all the others, cute, a bit funny, and a simple Lalaloopsy adventure with the Lala-Oopsies.

What I never knew was that they were apparently planning on a sequel.

I was at a garage sale of sorts (i know, very cliche) when I found a blank DVD case. Here’s what it read:

“LALA-OOPSIES-SEQUEL(UNFINISHED)”

“Is this a joke?”

“Oh, that!” The owner of the sale noticed me and casually went on “I worked at MGA Entertainment… they were making a sequel to the Lala-Oopsies movie… some guy decided to make that, apparently as a joke, and he was fired as it had quite a bit of… crazy stuff. We decided to cancel it altogether as we didn’t have any other ideas... We were handed copies of it from the guy who made it before he was fired. The footage is all there. There’s a lot more stuff that happened after that, but I don’t really wanna go into full detail. If you wanna know completely, it’s worth only a dollar. Not somethin’ I’d wanna watch again.”

Out of morbid curiosity, I agreed to buy the thing.

So I went home, made sure to get my DVD player on, and opened the case. There were two discs. One that read “MOVIE” and another that just had random scribbles on it. I tried to make out if the second one actually said anything, but I couldn’t read it for shit. I got out the one that read “MOVIE”, making sure it was the film itself, and placed it in.

Hoo boy, I had no idea what I was getting myself into.

There was no menu or trailers, though that was kinda expected considering it was unfinished. It just went straight to the movie.

It all looked official one way or another. Some scenes were fully animated, others were simple animatics, others were in between. But I’ll just say before we get on that it was not at all the usual Lalaloopsy fare. There was no sign of anyone’s pets at all throughout the whole movie.  There wasn’t any music, like, at all, and that just made it a bit more unsettling.

Well, most of it wasn’t. It started off like your usual Lalaloopsy movie. Bea was walking down a path and singing a song about math to herself. A rather bad one, if you ask me. So bad, I have easily forgot about it. While walking, she finds the door that leads to Lala-Oopsies Land.

As the first movie took place in mostly a story that Bea was reading, she is surprised that apparently Lala-Oopsies are true. She leaves to find her friends, the rest of the Original 8 to be exact, and tell her all about it. This exchange from the conversation is what mainly caught me off guard.

Jewel: “So you just managed to find something from a story you read once in reality? I don’t believe it one bit.”

Spot: “Jewel. This is felting BEA SPELLS-A-LOT we’re talking about. The brains? The genius? The nerd? The know-it-all? She doesn’t seem to be making it up.”

Was felt their way of saying fuck? That was not in the other Lalaloopsy stuff I knew, as it was aimed at young children. I figured that was at least one of the reasons it was never finished. I decided to keep watching to find more reasons.

The Lalaloopsies were at the door to Lala-Oopsies Land, and as she didn’t believe it before as shown by the previous exchange I wrote about, Jewel was understandably dumbfounded. “Felt me, there really is a Lala-Oopsies Land…”

So of course they all opened the door and entered. Only as it turned out Lala-Oopsies land… wasn’t exactly as the story told.

The skies were orange like the original, but were more of a sickly shade of it. The ground was grey, rotted, and corpse-like. The mushroom ‘trees’ looked much more like actual fungi, and the strawberry-milk rivers and seas looked spoiled and curdled, and I could even make out a skeleton (presumably of a drowned Oopsie) in them. Bea probably put it best.

“Well… it seems the book apparently romanticized a couple details…”

The group decided to venture in and explore anyway. I couldn’t help but bring up the fact that a couple of them coughed quite a bit when they went in. Okay, scratch that, they were coughing violently, like they just inhaled smoke.

Pillow: “Felting seamstress, this place is polluted.”

As they were walking through, some sort of large insectoid jumped right on Peanut’s face Alien-style. Now I could really see why this movie didn’t make it. Obviously, everyone was panicking at the sight and trying to get the bug off. It wasn’t until like half a minute that Bea managed to find a stick on the ground and strongly swatted the insect away from Peanut’s face, though it seemed she also hit the face from this dialogue...

Peanut: “TRY AVOIDING THE FACE YOU IDIOTIC FELTING STITCH.”

...and stabbed the insect multiple times, pink-ish blood spraying from the body, gore getting everywhere. The other seven were so disgusted that Crumbs vomited right on-screen from the sight. Organs were coming out of the creature as Bea stabbed, and as I looked close enough the organs seemed rather human-like. That was pretty weird as the insect didn’t look human at all. 

Well at least I found another reason for this movie’s rejection.

Before Bea turned the monster into an unrecognizable bloodied mush, I could make the colors of the insect to be that of the Lala-Oopsies fairy Lilac, hot pink and sky blue. Nah, I’m pretty sure it was just a coincidence. And yet…

Oh, that reminds me of another scene that happened later on.

The eight were venturing on into the islands riding on some sort of old rusted boat they found, and then suddenly some sort of sea serpent or something like that i dunno with the same color scheme as the mermaid Water Lily rose from the rotted strawberry milk oceans. Bea tried to row the boat away, but the monster attacked and even picked Jewel up and devoured her. There wasn’t any doll stuffing or anything cute like that. Jewel’s remains actually spurted crimson blood and human entrails as she was being chomped down on and eventually swallowed. Screaming as if the actress herself was getting violently disemboweled.

I can still hear her agonized screams as I write this, so that’s pretty annoying. 

Pillow’s reaction perfectly described mine.

“HOLY FELTING SILK.”

My god... how the heck was a doll said to be sewn from a dress able to have human blood and guts?! Then again, it was a cartoon… a rather gory one if ya ask me.

In all honesty though, Jewel’s death was horrific yet satisfying for me. I never liked her the slightest.

During the attack, Mittens and Spot fell into the strawberry milk ocean as the boat was destroyed. It didn’t show the rest of what happened to them so I can safely assume they were either eaten or drowned. Or both.

So the ones left were Crumbs, Peanut, Dot, Pillow, and Bea.

They latched onto the boat’s remains as they headed to a large island.

The island’s inhabitants were all the princess ballerinas, both in the first movie and toy-exclusive, mutated to grotesque proportions, their hair all mussy and in tangles. Most of the princess’s faces were obscured by their hair, but the ones I was able to see were distorted in such a way I can’t really describe that well, though I’ll admit they looked pretty damn cool. Oh, their clothes were also a wreck too so yeah.

Crumbs became an idiot and decided to go up close to one (can’t remember which, i think it was Saffron?) to try and approach it friendly enough.

Saffron, like a wild animal, lunged at Crumbs and proceeded to violently rip her to shreds, and sure enough it was just as gruesome as Jewel’s death.

I remember just thinking to myself, “what the hell was this person on when making this?”

And yes, the remaining girls were horrified by that too and ran from the princesses as fast as they could.

Remember the scene I mentioned earlier with Peanut apparently getting attacked by that bug? Welp, they didn’t forget about that. Peanut immediately fell over, having a rather violent fit as she struggled for breath, her skin deteriorating as multi-colored insect larva ate their way out of her everywhere, some even lunging out like the chestbursters in Alien. (yes I know I already made that comparison before but still) They then proceeded to lunge at Pillow and devour her alive as she could only scream and the final two, Bea and Dot, could only watch.

As Pillow was honestly one of my most favorite Lalaloopsy, I just felt awful watching that.

Another princess, Anise, which I recognized full and clear with her pink and blue coloring, approached what remained of Pillow and grabbed some of the larvae, putting it in her mouth and devouring it, as her mouth was coated in a rainbow goo like that one My Little Pony episode with the zombies. 

I would say it was disgusting, but a mutant doll eating a worm was the least of my worries. 

She managed to speak words, which was strange because the princesses here were, again, mostly animalistic. Her voice was rather gravely, only vaguely sounding like the original.

“WHAT WERE YOU THINKING COMING TO A PLACE LIKE THIS?”

Okay, they weren’t even trying with that line.

Anise proceeded to grab Bea and beat her, but thankfully Bea was able to kick Anise right in the face, knocking her out before the grotesquely mutated princess could finish the job. Dot swiftly took Bea’s hand. Struggling to get up at first, the badly bruised Bea managed to get on her feet and run as Anise came to.

As they ran, Bea and Dot finally found the door where they came in. It tugged my heartstrings seeing the two tearfully look back, apparently reminiscing their friends, before leaving Lala-Oopsies Land for good.

It then cut to Bea in bed, very ill. She was apparently covered in radiation tumors and her hair was almost gone. Apparently the island was highly radioactive. Dot was next to her bed in tears, as Bea weakly said her final words.

“I’m sorry, Dot… sorry… for everything...”

Violently coughing blood, Bea finally kicked the bucket as Dot sobbed hysterically. The movie cut to black and ended there with, surprise-surprise, no credits whatsoever.

All I thought of was “How the hell did Bea get sick from radiation poisoning but Dot didn’t?”

So anyway I took the movie disc out and put in the one with all the scribbles.

It was a compilation of recorded clips, all of them surprisingly in the MGA Entertainment headquarters itself I presume.

One clip I remember was a Lala-Oopsies Princess Anise doll flying, chasing a random employee as said employee was in a panic. Yea it was a weird one.

Another consisted of another employee testing out a Princess Juniper doll. As they were squishing the head, (the Lala-Oopsies dolls had squishy foam heads) the doll suddenly started to bleed violently. Not gonna lie, I laughed at what the employee said.

“GOD DAMN IT GARY WHAT DID I SAY ABOUT MAKING THE DOLLS BLEED.”

Last one I remember was two employees talking to each other. One of them asked the other,

“What exactly was your motivation in making this weird-ass movie?”

The other employee just responded in a weird reverse demonic gibberish I didn’t have time to translate. The first employee’s only response was a flat “what”. Exactly my reaction too. I decided that was enough and took out that disc and put it away.

Where’s the case now?

In one of my shelves. I’m keeping it. I just think it’s pretty unique in a way.

Not like it’s cursed or anything.

The End

[crystallized-iron]

So I got bored and answered an entire ask meme.

Describe your comfort zone—a typical you-fic.

My comfort zone for writing might be emotional angst. 

Is there a trope you’ve yet to try your hand at, but really want to?

Sci-fi, the kind with ships and space aliens, probably similar to Star Wars but with my own spin on it

Is there a trope you wouldn’t touch with a ten foot pole?

I wouldn’t be so dramatic with the wording, but I will not write kidfic (that’s when some are kids and others aren’t, right?) or de-aging. I would only write characters as kids if it’s part of a super long series and they all age together. And I haven’t even done that.

How many fic ideas are you nurturing right now? Care to share one of them?

Charles Xavier supposedly died but his consciousness was recovered by scientists and then transferred to a cloned body of his. Then they get scared when he starts to actually use his power.

Share one of your strengths.

Painful scenes.

Share one of your weaknesses.

Fluff

Share a snippet from one of your favorite pieces of prose you’ve written and explain why you’re proud of it.

He rubbed his head. They just would not stop.

- sun is dropping - did you hear - the bodies should -

Bodies?

- be at the bottom -

His hand lowered to his side. Did he catch the thought of a murderer? He could pick it out over the usual hum. So he was nearby.

The door to the inn opened and someone walked inside.

There was a flash of a moment in Charles’ mind. A group of men. Their faces pierced grotesquely by their own fishing hooks. And dragged to the bottom of the sea.

The screaming was chilling. But… but...

It was no ordinary person that committed that sinful act. He was gifted, like Charles himself.

Someone bumped into him and Charles caught the image of a girl. Bruised. Starved. ‘They give one fish for using us.’

‘Using you?’

‘Our bodies. We would fight, but… Food is food.’

“Private room for one if you can.”

It was not out of pure cruelty, not from an evil nature. He was stopping those that brought pain to others.

“Charles, let’s go,” Raven said, key in hand.

“He is with us as well,” he stated, getting the man to turn and stare at him.

======

The Gifted, Chapter One

I like this scene here. We see Charles’ just picking up the thoughts of others because he cannot control his powers yet. We get a glimpse into what Erik did, and even why he did it (although that is also an earlier scene). But the closer Erik gets, the more Charles can see, showing that proximity is a big factor in what Charles can see when it comes to mind reading.

Share a snippet from one of your favorite dialogue scenes you’ve written and explain why you’re proud of it.

Charles faced him. “I am not sure how much I can tell you.”

“You read my mind.”

“It is the loudest.”

Erik folded his arms. “So what can you tell me?”

“Only about my life after the age of twelve. But I warn you, I am terribly boring.”

“You are a mind reader. How is that boring?”

“But that is just what I can do. Aside from that I'm a boring person, really.”

“Let me decide that,” Erik said.

Charles nibbled his lip while he decided where to start, his mind catching a question from the other man. “Of course you would want to know more about that.”

“Of course. Because you were hurt.”

Shaking his head, Charles said, “I really do not know who she is. That all happened just before Raven.”

“What do you mean, just before?”

He gazed at the floor. “My earliest memory is running. Just running. There is nothing before that.” His arms came up, wrapped around himself. “There is just the stars above me, the cool breeze, the night sky. Cold grass beneath me that crunched with every step.”

Erik came closer.

“My lungs were burning, my heart was racing, I… I just kept thinking ‘run’.”

“And you don’t know why.”

“I don’t. I was in the woods. And I tripped over a tree root. I suppose it was lucky. Raven happened to be hiding nearby. She found me.” He raised his head and looked at Erik. “In the dream, that woman… she… you know.”

“Choked me,” Erik finished for him.

“Yes. Well. That part, it… it must have really happened.” Charles swallowed down the emotions trying to force their way out. “I didn’t… I didn’t know until she said… there were marks.” He moved a hand down his neck. “I know my power is protecting me. Or I would remember all of it, or… maybe be even worse off. Not sure. But whatever it was had to be... really, really horrible.”

Erik stood in front of him. “But you survived it.”

“I don’t know how. I… don't want to know.”

=======

The Gifted, Chapter Four

This scene, I think I pulled it off well. Charles’ emotional explanation of what he does remember from the time just before meeting Raven.

Which fic has been the hardest to write?

That would be So Beautiful, simply because there’s a lot of subs but no comments, anywhere, period. The number of comments really does make a difference in how quickly something might be updated, you know. (And at this point, I’ve temporarily fallen out of MCU love and am now focused on X-Men, cherik specifically)

Which fic has been the easiest to write?

Currently, that is The Gifted. I’m already writing chapter 8, but only up to 5 is posted so far. Probably a good thing because I edited both 6 and 7 maybe three times now.

Is writing your passion or just a fun hobby?

Both. I am passionate about writing, but the fanfiction part has to be a hobby. Now I just need to get working on my original work more.

Is there an episode above all others that inspires you just a little bit more?

For me it’s moves, and probably X-Men: The First Class right now.

What’s the best writing advice you’ve ever come across?

When you’re writing a fight scene, you are doing it because you want the character to get hurt. Even if they run away, you need to have the injury goal in mind, because that determines the way the characters move and all that. So decide the injury goal first.

What’s the worst writing advice you’ve ever come across?

Never use -ing, never use -ly, never use blah blah blah.

If you could choose one of your fics to be filmed, which would you choose?

I can think of three right away, but I would say The Gifted.

If you only could write one pairing for the rest of your life, which pairing would it be?

Fuck... right now, cherik.

Do you write your story from start to finish, or do you write the scenes out of order?

Generally start to finish, but I will occasionally outline random scenes for the end. I’m always planning for the end and then get stuck in the middle.

Do you use any tools, like worksheets or outlines?

I’ve tried. Right now I have a tiny notebook map for The Gifted, and a few scenes outlined, but that’s it.

Stephen King once said that his muse is a man who lives in the basement. Do you have a muse?

I don’t think so. I wouldn’t know if I do or not. Maybe it’s James himself lol. His various characters influence a lot.

Describe your perfect writing conditions.

Cat is napping, tv isn’t super loud, I’m not expected to socialize, nothing I want to pay attention to is going to be on, it’s not after 9pm yet, I have ideas and the perfect soundtrack and plenty of empty pages to use.

How many times do you usually revise your fic/chapter before posting?

Depends. Prompt fills are lucky to get any revision. The Gifted goes through my own editing as well as my beta’s. Promised Love and A Lie to Live, when they were getting weekly updates, had one revision each, right after typing, and then were immediately posted. I stressed over those two a lot during that time though. Not doing it that way again lol.

Choose a passage from one of your earlier fics and edit it into your current writing style. (Person sending the ask is free to make suggestions).

From Comfort Original:

It had been a bad night, the tower getting cooler than usual as the wind whipped around outside. Even with how well it was built, the windows still had a slight rattle against the force of it. Bucky hated the cold, too many negative memories involved. Watching outside, he knew he was safe, knew that the chances of something coming up this high, without him noticing it, were extremely low, but he still worried. He couldn't go back to Steve, though. Things had been getting a little complicated between them, mostly due to the man that had taken them in.

Edit:

The wind howled outside, chilling the tower more than usual. The windows rattled with every strong gust. Bucky stared outside. The cold reminded him of being thrown from the train, of being frozen for days, weeks, months at a time. It made him think of HYDRA, and even though he knew the chances of anyone sneaking up on the team here were extremely low, he couldn’t stop the worry from creeping up on him.

But he couldn’t even seek out his best friend for comfort after their fight over the man that had been kind enough to take them in.

If you were to revise one of your older fics from start to finish, which would it be and why?

I already decided I will be doing this for A Lie to Live, because I know I can write it so much better now.

Have you ever deleted one of your published fics?

Never. Anything I’ve ever posted, you can still find it if you know where to look.

Although it looks like one site decided to delete my work. And my account. I have backups on my flash drive, I’m pretty sure, but still.

Always back stuff up. This was mostly original though. Too high rated for fictionpress.

What do you look for in a beta?

Mostly that they will be okay with the content I want to create. I tend to write darker stuff (had a beta for violent vampire fic and have a beta for dark x-men fantasy au), so it’s good to know they will be okay with that. Also things that I think may be triggering, I mention ahead of time before I write it. Just to be sure everything is still good.

Do you beta yourself? If so, what kind of beta are you?

I tend to be my own beta and mostly catch typos and reword stuff, change the flow if I have to, maybe move a scene or a chapter.

Being a beta for others? I fix grammar mostly. I feel like I’m shit at suggestions though lol.

How do you feel about collaborations?

I love them but they never get finished lol. There’s two people I’ve collaborated with on different stories over the years, one I started a page with, and someone that was interested, but that’s it.

My only issues these days, with the invention of google docs and able to write back and forth and all that, I am a shy writer so I will wait for the other person to leave the document, especially during... certain scenes...

And also, that the breaks in between adding a part does not exceed a week. The last one I worked on has now passed a year since anything added, so I don’t think it will be updated again any time soon.

Share three of your favorite fic writers and why you like them so much.

LadyDarkPhoenix because she got me into fanfic and into the MCU fandom and her ideas are awesome. One of the people I’ve collaborated with for years over different stories.

NotEvenCloseToStraight has some of the best fics. I haven’t read any for awhile for a variety of reasons (not to do with her, my own distracted mind and now fandom switch really) but she is amazing and a sweet person.

Kellyscams has written some amazing stuff. Just, really check them out.

If you could write the sequel (or prequel) to any fic out there not written by yourself, which would you choose?

Um... Oh, this is tough. I think I’m mostly reading prompt fills and wips right now.

Maybe a sequel to Coming Home by helens78, only because I didn’t know how much I wanted Wesley/Charles until then. And then add in the implied interest in Erik as well, and yes.

Do you accept prompts?

I do.

Do you take liberties with canon or are you very strict about your fic being canon compliant?

It varies. Prompt fills lately are more canon compliant, but if I’m doing chapters, it’s way AU.

How do you feel about smut?

I love reading it. I somewhat write it in collaborations.

I panic and stop every other sentence when I attempt writing it alone.

How do you feel about crack?

It can be good.

What are your thoughts on non-con and dub-con?

Depends on the character and the situation.

Would you ever kill off a canon character?

I’ve killed Tony at least twice now.

Which is your favorite site to post fic?

AO3 for sure.

Talk about your current wips.

The Gifted is a fantasy AU in the X-Men Alternate Timeline Movies fandom

Promised Love is an arranged marriage fantasy AU in the MCU fandom

A Lie to Live is a fantasy AU in the MCU fandom

So Beautiful is a modern, no powers, college AU in the MCU fandom

Help Me is a sequel to Bite Me and it is a vampire au in the MCU fandom

Talk about a review that made your day.

This chapter made me feel feelings. My poor boys! :'( And well done with Erik's anger, lashing out and the aftermath. I understand you are upset, Erik, but that is not an acceptable way to treat a friend. And it's good that you realized that too.

===

This one especially. Also their previous two comments.

Do you ever get rude reviews and how do you deal with them?

Not really. Not since, like, high school.

That was a long while ago. I was still really into the LoTR movies.

Write an alternative ending to [insert fic title] (or just the summary of one)

Bite Me

Bucky tried to block Aldrich’s blows with his arms but the monster gave him a harsh stomp to the stomach. Bucky coughed as he rolled onto his side, tasting his own blood in his mouth.

“I truly did want more of a fight than this out of you. How pathetic.”

“T-think so?” He looked up to see Tony coming back.

Aldrich caught the stare and turned, grabbing onto the wooden stake made from the leg of a desk.

“Shit!” Tony struggled.

“Thank you, Anthony.” Aldrich yanked the stake from Tony’s hands and, finding Bucky on his feet, thrust it through the other vampire’s chest.

“No!” Tony cried, trying to get past Aldrich to reach the man he loved, but his Master gripped his shoulder and threw him back.

“You were perfect,” Aldrich growled, “but I will never have your heart, will I? Not as a mate.”

Tony blinked away tears that threatened to blur his vision. “Never.”

Leering at the vampire that held Tony’s affection, Aldrich shoved the stake deeper, Bucky’s cold, dark blood gushing out around it, and then pulled it free.

A grotesque, thick flow fell from the hole in Bucky’s chest.

“No, no, no!” Tony needed to reach him, but he froze once the already stained wood pierced him next.

“You can join him, Anthony,” Aldrich spoke so sweetly, giving it another push to be sure neither would leave.

Tony stared at him. His chest felt wet, cramped, cold. Fear shook his body.

His knees hit the floor. “B-Buck...y...?”

But no response came.

As Aldrich walked away, Tony found himself all alone in a place that reeked of blood and horror. His vision began to falter. He grew so tired... so very tired... so very... very... tired...

[thedogsled]

TFW Get a Dog (It’s not a dog, guys! It’s not a dog!!! STOP. WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!)

Or: The “Didn’t Dean tell you not to put strange dogs in his car?” Meta

Okay, so in preparation for this episode I watched the entire film The Thing, read the script, and listened to the audio commentary. It was quite the freaking effort, let me tell you, because I am not a body horror person by any means. Thankfully with the commentary running it took a lot of the spooky edge off, because the director would say “Oh, this is that scene coming up, now, it’s a real jump scare”, and it was like having my own personal guardian angel watching over me, talking me through it.

All in all, I didn’t get much of a The Thing vibe out of s13x17. I mean it was there, sort of, but I feel like toward the end of the story they couldn’t get the ‘so are you a monster or not?’ to stick while also still having (barely) enough time to launch into s13x18, and leave Bucklemming with enough actual structure that they couldn’t fuck things up too badly. 

Dean and Castiel being separated by the rift was also essential to what the plot was saying about their Hallmark movie romance, paralleling the monsters in love with our monsters in love (and with our plushie dinosaur in love from S13x16). 

This, and also laying down all the Gabriel/Asmodeus/Ketch story in an insane rush (This season is even more convoluted than 12, and I didn’t think that was possible), meant that any subtle things or exploration of human nature that Perez might have - and should have - wanted to do with an homage to The Thing, was lost. It therefore lacked a great deal of suspense, with imo no clear line as to which story really was the A plot of the episode; G/A/K were essential, and Sam and Dean felt like B plot. I felt like, perhaps, there was more in the script originally for the people in the diner to do, but it all ended up cut, and while this is just supposition on my behalf, it would honestly make sense that Asmo was crammed in at a later point, given what we know.

As an aside: a) archangel grace is apparently just lying around in MOL bunkers? and b) weren’t Ketch and Asmodeus just A BILLION times better with Perez’ lines instead of BL’s? I felt they talked a bit fast, which was part of the urgency that I felt, that their scenes were being crammed in, but that suited me just fine. Incidentally I hope nobody kills Asmodeus, I hope him going cold turkey off archangel grace just nukes him from the inside out.

But back to The Thing, and back to why I feel there was originally an entirely The Thing plot to this episode. First of all: It’s perfect. The Thing is, originally, a microorganism that comes from space (I guess we could sort of claim that SPN now has tentacle aliens in it, so this must be act 2, right? Are we exploring the nature of Destiel too?) The Thing infects its host, then absorbs its cells, copies them, and becomes a copy. It is ‘a thing that looks like another thing’. Which of course is why I was instantly suspicious of the immortal woman tied to the altar.

She is our dog. Team Free Will’s dog.

But why? What do you mean she’s a dog? She’s not a dog she’s a god. Oh.

/waggles eyebrows

At the beginning of The Thing, a sled dog (an Alaskan Malamute to be specific) is fleeing from a Norweigian helicopter, racing toward an American Antartic research camp. The dog licks the researchers as it reaches them, and the pursuing helicopter crashes. The last pursuer is shot dead by the American team, concerned that they’ve lost their minds.

So here is the dog, rescued. The Americans dispatch a pair of researchers to check out the Norweigian research camp, while the others discuss it. The dog is put in the kennels with the others. And then the dog is revealed to in fact not be what it seems to be. It is The Thing, the monster, and it attacks the other dogs. I’ve linked the scene, but it’s not for the faint of heart. The point is when the dog is revealed to be the monster, its head opens up like the clutching tentacle in 13x17, and a long, lashing tentacle emerges from its mouth.

So Sandy is the dog. Sam and Dean cannot tell that she isn’t human, and they believe her story, even though I spent at least half the episode wondering why. I thought that maybe it was a lack of meta awareness for the characters, but then I realized that it was inherent to their constant struggle, seeing the humanity in things which are not human, and none of their training has prepared them for it. I’m talking about Jack, obviously.

The other thing they do with this episode is build a vault, and the associated foreshadowing involved in the descent into it. Twice in The Thing, characters descend into the set from above, and make discoveries that push the story. The first descent is into the Norweigian research station, and the second is at the end, when the characters descend into another vault and discover the saucer spaceship that the Thing has made in order to escape.

That’s it. That (and the tentacles) is about as close as an homage to The Thing as I think this episode gets. Oh, apart from the molotov cocktails which weren’t used. See, at the end of The Thing they blow the whole place to smithereens, but in our episode all the effort at prepping the cocktails is dropped. HOWEVER, as well as showing up as a possible reference back to the film, this is also a huge piece of foreshadowing, after all a Holy Fire molotov cocktail was used on Michael in Swan Song. This is such subtle foreshadowing that you could blink and miss it, just as the idea of Dean being possessed by a god from another dimension is, and just as him descending into a vault beneath the earth (but also climbing a set of stairs) before unlocking her cage is...well, you get the drift.

In addition, as Dean descends into the vault, he drops through a halo of light, and for a moment as he crouches there alone, the heavenly light shines down on him, much as I’ve highlighted in other Dean/Michael meta recently that the light from the cross (also visible behind Dean in 13x5) also shines on Michael in 13x7. 

What I found disappointing was that, despite being publicised as an episode that was based strongly on The Thing, I don’t think this one really went there. Of course, we’ve touched on the paranoia of The Thing in Supernatural before. In the episode with the Khan Worm, 6x16, And Then There Were None, we get an episode which deals with the paranoia of whether or not the people trapped with you are the monster. This - the psychological aspect of The Thing - was completely missing in our episode, which surprised me. Again, I think it was related to time issues. The Thing also influenced the X-Files episode Ice, as @justanotheridijiton has reminded us in their recent X-Files meta posts recently. It is one of the episodes of the series which haunts me, because the paranoia is handled so very well.

There was no paranoia in this episode. I expected it. I’m surprised that even though he was writing an episode that was meant to evoke The Thing, there wasn’t even any attempt to bring paranoia into it, even with the MoL at the end being suspicious that maybe Dean was a monster. There just wasn’t time. But those characters in the diner, in a former workthrough of the script, could easily have been hosts for the parasite as it jumped from body to body in order to evade the Winchesters. There was imo unused potential there, psychological drama which could have occurred between the unused diner employees and guests, which in the end barely existed to lay a couple of weak parallels.

So all in all: great Destiel parallels in this ep, huge Hallmark romance stuff that is paralleled completely across the whole episode, and of course as other people have mentioned, reminders for Dean of how Castiel was taken from him the last time they dealt with the rift with Cas beside them (seeing other people killed the way Cas was killed). It’s very raw, but it was WAY too subtle for the GA to pick up on it, just as Cas’ ‘negative space’ was, which is why even seasoned-to-disappointment Castiel viewers were disappointed. In my opinion they made up for this by immediately showing me Husband!Cas in the promo being like DEAN DID WHAT, but without that one-two punch of seeing that content straight away, you’re left all at sea. Also very subtle Michael reminders, very subtle foreshadowing--and I know that this is an unpopular or ‘too obvious’ idea to some people, but at the same time we have our heads way, way deeper into this than regular people do.

(I apologize for not using a cut, finally, because every time I do my formatting gets fucked up. For that reason, and to save people’s dashboards, there are also no images in this post.)

[ayellowbirds]

Keshet Rewatches All of Scooby-Doo, Pt. 15: "Spooky Space Kook"

("Scooby-Doo, Where Are You", Season 1 Episode 15)

AKA "The Mystery Machine Is Itself A Mystery of Interior vs. Exterior Dimensions"

I’m breaking from my standard format for these, because holy jinkies, you need to see and hear this villain’s laugh as video. Text and gifs alone will not suffice.

As seen above, the episode opens in the evening on a view of a fairly run-down rural area. An equally wrecked spaceship flies low over the landscape, orange light pulsing from within, and it comes to a stop and lands out of view. A figure walks onto the road, clad in a space suit that also pulses with an eerie “glowing sound” (if you watch enough cartoons, you know what the sound effects for “glowing, pulsing light” are like) that suggests radioactivity, the head within visible only as a skull. The camera closes on it, and the freak starts whooping and laughing as the interior of its helmet flashes the same red-orange as the spaceship.

It’s fantastic. While not the creepiest, it’s definitely the best villain design of the season, if not the best of all of Scooby-Doo: Where Are You. The ruined ghostly spaceship is a design that both makes no sense at all (why does it look tattered?) and fits perfectly.

Meanwhile, the gang are on the road in the Mystery Machine, and Shaggy offers to make sandwiches for anyone who wants. Only Scooby takes him up on it, and the view cuts to Shaggy assembling what Fred calls a “Jaw-Stretcher Special”.

Mind you, this is overtly the back of the Mystery Machine. Exactly how large is that van supposed to be? It reminds me of the camper van my dad used to own, only far more spacious. Definitely more roomy than its exterior would indicate, by far. We’ve seen interior shots before that showed bare walls, as well as the first episode’s collection of questionable and disturbing equipment. Is it like a TARDIS?

Shaggy adds bologna, meatloaf, and “a slug of double Dutch chocolate syrup”... just as the van cuts out. They’re out of gas, and miles from the nearest station!

...so, I’m going to say it here: Fred is a really bad driver. I don’t know why it falls to him to drive, except that he assumes a leadership role, but as we’ve seen, he’s a lousy navigator, and now it’s apparent he doesn’t keep an eye on the fuel indicator, either. Granted, it seems he was intended as the oldest of the gang, so it may be that he’s just the only one who as a license, at this point.

Oh my gods. Is that why they do what Fred says? Because he’s the only one who has a driver’s license? Did we finally figure out what he brings to the group, aside from traps that never work?

Going to the nearest house to see if they can buy some gas from the residents, they’re menaced by its owner, a surly chicken farmer with a long rifle and a conviction that the gang are actually reporters trying to bother him about “it”—the same spaceship from the establishing shot, and “something” that has been creeping around ever since “it” showed up.

Velma spots a trail of bizarre footprints glowing on the ground nearby, which the farmer confirms is the same kind of print he’s been seeing. The gang decide they’ve found a mystery, and seem to smooth things over, because the next scene is the Mystery Machine back on the road, Daphne having mentioned that it was “nice” that he gave them some gas. Fred agrees, because it means they can seek out the “ghost craft”... just before an eerie light passes over the van, and the gang catch sight of the alien ship setting down over the hill.

They wind up at the wrecked boundary fence of an abandoned army airfield, and follow more glowing tracks through the bent and busted gate.

They’ve only been walking for a few seconds when there’s a clattering, crashing sound, and Velma yelps, “I bet it’s the outer-space ghost,” suggesting i may need to reevaluate my ranking of the gang’s credulity vis-à-vis ghosts. Sure enough, the eerie cackling starts up again from off-screen, and the gang are firmly spooked as they follow the tracks to a work shed from which a strange mechanical noise emits. They find an electrical generator that has only just shut down... and then see the spaceship setting down by the opposite building!

Instead of investigating the craft, Fred suggests they split up and look around. The usual antics ensue, with Scooby and Shaggy’s squabbles over a bag of peanuts leading them right to the space-booted feet of the ghost, and a chase scene that leads through the distinctive setting of the airfield. It’s one of the few times the gang are investigating something other than a castle or mansion this season, and it really stands out, though one wonders why the many planes seen on the field were just left to rust.

Fred, Daphne, and Velma discover a machine shop with fresh grease and recently-used machines, and when Fred winds up hooked and hanging from the ceiling due to the ghost’s machinations, Velma protests Freddie’s assumption that she’d know how to even identify the controls for the hook.

Well, there’s characterization that won’t last. It seems as though, in this first season, Velma’s scientific expertise trends much more academic, including some chemistry but mostly being focused on research and analysis instead of the physical science work that would later be a big part of her interests.

Velma and Daphne meet up with Shaggy and Scooby to get help getting Fred down, and Fred and Velma quiz Shaggy on the details of “this thing you saw”. Apparently he was vague about the details of the ghost alien.

The phantom starts its whooping and giggling act again, and the chase continues as the gang flee in opposite directions, with Scooby and Shaggy winding up in the mess hall (”Never heard of a special place to make a mess...”), proving they have some kind of instinctive sixth sense for snacks that drives them towards the nearest kitchen without even intending to do so. Shaggy finds nothing, but Scooby manages to scarf down a small roast ham, an entire chicken on a bed of greens, and most of a jar of olives before Shaggy comes over to check on him. Shaggy realizes the remains of fresh food are a clue—"Like, how come a ghost from space keeps chicken and ham around?"—and they head out to find the others, running into the ghost again.

The girls and Fred, meanwhile, find a copy of yesterday’s Gazette, with glowing fingerprints left on the front page. “Why would a ghost from outer space be reading yesterday’s newspaper?”

This is why it’s important to maintain details in your haunting site. Big Bob understood that, he even went so far as to make monster-specific food labels.

As the chase continues and the gang reunite once more in the motor pool, they find a busted old jeep with four flat tires... that actually conceal another four wheels, found after Scooby notices that the exhaust pipe smells of gasoline.The jeep even starts remotely, driving out past a larger truck, where the “goony ghost” reveals itself behind the canopy covering the truck bed. But before the gang can react, four more ghosts appear!

Noticeably, the extra ghosts don’t move or even glow, they just stand there looking spooky. It’s enough, as Shaggy and Scooby flee up into a control tower and signal the rest of the gang over the still-functioning loudspeakers with the bugle call for noon mess, still apparently the only one they know. So, Scooby and Shaggy have no idea what a mess hall is, but they know the melody to summon you to one by heart?

Unfortunately, the ghost corners the boys in the tower, and they’re forced to jump out with a parachute. The scene fades to a police car: the farmer saw their car parked by the gate, and in spite of his seemingly ornery character, became worried for the gang and called the sheriff. 

They catch sight of the ghost, who flees into a building, which Fred calls “a bad mistake”—because the steel door the ghost shuts behind itself leads to a wind tunnel for testing aerodynamics.

Fred starts up the turbine, and the ghost grabs hold of a steel ladder as the resulting winds blow off its helmet, mask, and eventually the whole dang costume, revealing an ordinary human: the farmer’s next-door neighbor, Henry Bascombe.

Again, note that the culprit gets a whole name, but the innocent man is just “Mister Farmer”, and the cop is just “the Sheriff”. 

Shaggy reveals his discovery from the airfield control tower: a reel-to-reel projector to beam the image of the spaceship onto the night sky, and an audio player sped-up to sound high-pitched and eerie. The gang “wanna bet” that the extra ghosts were stuffed dummies and that the jeep was driven by remote control, but never actually check. It’s also left unclear what exactly Bascombe filmed to make the spaceship footage, or where his improbable mechanical skills originate.

The sheriff explains that Bascombe heard that the Air Force planning to re-open and expand the field—how does he know that Bascombe knew this?—and the farmer deduces that it was a ploy to scare his neighbors off so he could buy their land cheap and resell it to the Air Force for a profit.

Almost, but not quite.

When will our burden be eased? When will we finally hear “meddling kids”?

(like what i’m doing here? It’s not what pays the bills, so i’d really appreciate it if you could send me a bit at my paypal.me or via my ko-fi. Click here to see more entries in this series of posts, or here to go in chronological order)

[bluezey]

Bluesy ramblings about Spongebob SquarePants

@scribblinglee made a post about Spongebob as a cartoon currently, and it's basically what I hear about a lot. Usually people who talk about the show miss the older seasons and believe the current seasons are hollow or utter trash. Which makes me think, where do I fit in this? Because, I'm not sure myself. So, I thought I decide to talk about my experience with the show.

So, Spongebob began in 1999. And, here's where things get interesting from my perspective: I was a freshman in high school at the time. Maybe that's not weird cause the show can reach teenagers and adults, but I dunno, it still baffles me. And what did I think of the show when it came out? I thought it was a good show. I wasn't obsessed with it, it lived it, but I did see it's potential. I liked it enough to watch it and have a few favorite episodes. One was Pizza Delivery. I think one reason I liked it was how in the end of the episode Squidward stood up for SpongeBob. He does in other episodes, but how he did it in this one felt perfectly Squidward. Another all time favorite of mine was Band Geeks, but that's for a biased reason as I was a band geek in high school. So, seeing an episode about a marching band was awesome to me, and also amazing as I don't remember watching another cartoon that focused on marching bands. While in the end it didn't show off marching bands as accurately, compared to the movie Drumline, Band Geeks was as accurate as band geeks are gonna get. Also, I love the ending of the episode, and how Squidward came out on top.

You know, I'm noticing now that even back then I may have found a favorite character with Squidward. I have my reasons for liking him now, but back then I had no favoritism, I just liked him out of the others. My best guess was even back then his character seemed to be the straight man of the series. He was gruff and mean, but you could sympathize with him as you can tell he got that way from life beating him down when he chased his dreams, while others kept chasing their dreams in the show and not getting much of a beating from life. I think Squidward was and is representing how jaded adults got after trying to pursue their dreams, and every decade I'm seeing people become jaded sooner in life, even before they graduate high school.

But, back to the show. The episodes were funny, clever at times, and even brash with it's humor. I mean, looking back, they got away with a lot of crap in the early seasons. Like the Christmas episode has aired fir nearly two decades, and every year they get away with blatantly calling Squidward a jackass. Oh, and how Sailor Mouth got away with swearing, and the infamous cut scene from Just One Bite and how it managed to make it to air for a while before being cut from future airings. And the characters were loveable, funny and relateable, but if I had to make one critique they did hammer in one particular aspect of their personality. It didn't make them one dimensional, but enough that we only knew Spongebob as happy, Patrick as dumb, Krabs as money loving, Sandy as a cowgirl and Squidward as grumpy. The one who barely had a blatant personality trait to me was Plankton, and that's barely as his motivation for being the villain flipped between evil and jealousy. One episode he just wants the formula to destroy the Krusty Krab, and another episode it's world domination. But they weren't blatant flaws, just little speed bumps that kept a great show from being perfect.

Now I remember watching the Spongebob SquarePants movie in 2005 on DVD, and I thought it was fun and simple like the show. But, I'll admit, as we went into the era of seasons 5-8, I did see a slump in in the show. But, believe it or not, I couldn't grasp why. I just assumed it was going through the same slump all shows go through when they've been on the air for that long. Every show hits their slope, and usually it's a sign that the show would end if it didn't hit that upswing back to what it once was. But, looking back, I can see the problems some fans gripe about. Mr Krabs got a little too greedy for money that he came off as evil as Plankton at times. Patrick would be mean, and at first I thought it was because he was too dumb to know any better, but there are times when even I couldn't see that as an excuse. I mean bratty toddlers don't know right from wrong, but eventually someone would step in and talk some sense into the kid. Squidward kept getting brow beaten by life for seemingly no reason. I mean, I actually believe Squidward getting the shirt end of the stick would work if he did something to deserve it. Like in Scavenger Pants, the more dangerous the tasks he gave the two, the bigger his coneuppance. But in these seasons, most of the time he didn't do anything to get what life gave him, so the joke fell flat because it was a punchline with no setup. And, yeah, eventually it just look like cruel torture at his expense. But, despite these major flaws and the show losing it's spark, I could still see it's potential. It had it's okay episodes, some good episodes, and even some jokes that would get a big laugh. I could still see effort, and the crew trying to make the show work. So while many call seasons 5-8 it's dark times, I just see it as a rough patch. This was after the creator left, and the show was showing that they were running out of ideas.

So, eventually I stopped watching Spongebob around season eight. Now, you may think it's because I gave up on the show. But, funny enough, it was an outside source that pulled me away from the show, as well as Nickelodeon. That's when my college roommates introduced me to Cartoon Network, and their shows were better, funnier and more bizarre than what Nick was making at the time. So I quit watching Spongebob and whatever Nicktoons the network was trying or failing with, and was watching shows like Kids Next Door, Camp Lazlo, Foster's, and Ed, Edd and Eddy. Oh, Chowder and Flapjack too. And, they still had reruns of Courage and the Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy, and I was surprised with how much Cartoon Network got away with such scares.

So, for years I was watching Cartoon Network. I went through it's dark times of CN Real, and it's next generation of classic cartoons such as Adventure Time, Regular Show and Steven Universe. While I switched over to Nick for Avatar and Monsters vs Aliens (I liked the DreamWorks movie and Dr Cockroach okay? Also Staabi was a great character too), I hardly ever saw Spongebob, and when I did catch it it was an episode I saw before.

I did come back to the show, and how is kinda as strange as how I left it. It was also kinda an outside force. It was when I saw the cast of the Spongebob musical perform Bikini Bottom Day at the Macy's Parade. After that, it was a full month of following clips and pictures from the musical, until I came to a point where I needed more, but the bootleg wasn't out yet. (By the way, I keep losing my link to the bootleg!! Can someone link me a good copy of the Broadway show so I can FINALLY see this thing??) So, I went back to the show by watching a livestream on YouTube, full of never seen episodes from seasons nine and ten. And guys, it's like seeing the light of heaven. This is Spongebob! This is the show! They got back on track and are making new episodes for a new generation!

Okay, now that we got my initial reaction out of the way, let's talk about seasons 9-11. First, drastic change in animation. But, you have to expect that for being on for twenty years. There's a wider aspect ratio, and the animation is now digital. But, it's not that distracting, it's just the show, only brighter and bouncier. Now, the controversial thought, I like the bouncy animation. It reminds me of bouncy animation from the 50s, 60, hell, even 90s, and Spongebob is a 90s show. Is it reminding me of Ren and Stimpy? Only because Ren and Stimpy does bouncy, expressive and over detailed still. If anything, the bright and bouncy reminds me more of Superjail. Nice to know where those animators went. (Oh, can we have the Warden guest star?) The characters are back to how they started, mostly. Patrick can be mean, but usually he's just dumb. Krabs isn't mean for money, but damn is he still hungry for it. Squidward gets some torture, but now there's setup and reason. Also, he's not tortured in every episode he's in. Mustard O'Mine had him following along, hell he was happy at times. Mermaid Pants may had him grumpy, but man was his shift at the end perfect! Pate Horse, horse puns. Squid Noir. Squid Noir. Other changes, I can see they're being inventive. Some shows are mixing up character dynamics. At least two episodes have Squidward and Plankton. One episode had Sandy and Karen. An upcoming episode has Squidward and Pearl. Hell, Mall Girl Pearl was all Pearl. They're doing small things that surprisingly make a big difference. For example, Spongebob isn't always happy. Yeah, he can not be happy, like sad, but it was so rare yes almost one dimensional. In Drive Happy, however, we see him get sad, tired and even pissed. In Old Man Patrick, he starts acting like an adult when babysitting the old folks at Bun E Buns. And back to Squidward, but did you know he's germophobic, claustrophobic, allergic to nuts and snails (but he can handle one or two snails in a room) and apparently has an inking problem. Okay, I could go on and on about this part, now controversial thanks to Ink Lemonade, but did you know Stephen Hillenberg himself wanted ink jokes to begin with? The biggest character change I believe is Plankton. Ever since Sponge Out of Water (and yes, I saw that too, a lot, Nick plays it every other week) Plankton has become somewhat of a friend, at least with Spongebob. Sure he's the villain, but Spongebob sees him as a friend who happens to be a competitor, and I think the others do too since the second film. I mean, Grandmum's the Word would never had worked before the second film.

So, we've gone from classic from the 90s, to so downhill that I switched to Cartoon Network, to back to it's original stride. But, is it the same show or us it a hollow shell? Guys, it's neither. Spongebob has gone through a lot of development over the years. It's had it's golden times, it's been out of ideas, it's had it's instant classic and it's blunders. The characters are still the same, but if they appear different it's because they've been through a lot. We all act different after twenty years of life's crap. And yes, to reiterate, this show has been on for twenty years!! It has it's own big task of changing for a new generation while entertaining the old one. It needs to bring in new viewers while keeping the old ones. It needs to be fresh and relevant while remaining classic and timeless. It will follow the trend of theonth, but it will try not to steer too far from it's core of being a 90s cartoon. Will it lose viewers? Yeah. It even lost me for a time. Will it deserve it? No. Even it's bad episodes have a silver lining. Did you know I watched a list of dark kids episodes where the reviewers said good things about Are You Happy Now? (Please send all flames to where they will most likely ignore you https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=hXwhVUWwHlM) Through it's ups and downs, Spongebob's going to be on for years. But, just years. Sadly, the creator has ALS, and if the show doesn't retire after the creator does, every show has to end sometime. But through it's ups and downs, and even the praise and criticisms, we can all agree that fans young and old will enjoy the ride.

[floggingink]

Riverdale, “Episode Twenty-One: House of the Devil”

Jughead writes at the Whyte Wyrm now, which presumably people, there, still think is weird

Fifth period is AP English: Jughead compares the Black Hood to Edgar Allan Poe’s Red Death, which I think was an allegory for like, the Plague

“CARNAL DEFIANCE”

Sixth period is Intro to Film: Why does Cheryl call Archie & Veronica making out “xenomorphs,” which are the aliens in Aliens? I need help

Jughead drops the name “Varchie,” truly proving he is not above the rest of us

I like to think that Jughead chronicling the carnal defiance is him thinking to himself how objective and journalistic he is being

the carnal defiance montage is good, though

Veronica was rich: “The tasting menu at Pourquoi is thirteen courses, Archie.”

literally on a white fur rug in front of a fire?

I like the soft class differences in Archie immediately suggesting they maybe watch Netflix and Veronica immediately suggesting they maybe watch HBO

Veronica as usual is an emotionally-multitasking saint-genius in giving Archie a genuine had-a-good-time kiss as he frantically leaves

Jug calls McGinty “Freddy Krueger,” which I will allow

Jughead doubts it: Jughead is “dubious” that the Reaper is the BH, as he’d have to be in his 60’s. plus, he was MAYBE lynched! or they lynched someone who was MAYBE him!

God, Betty and Jughead Black & Golding it up at Pop’s hit me with some choice nostalgia. remember when they tried to break Polly out of Catholic school? innocent times!

“YOU DON’T HAVE TO, OKAY.”

Betty’s sweater with that red pencil skirt???

Veronica’s sleeveless floral blouse with that bow???

Veronica VERY NICELY looks excited that FP is getting out of jail. I don’t know if she cares, but she will act like she cares. Veronica is just that good

Archie > Dawson: Archie being like, I assume you need help with something because your life sucks and I’ve come to expect it, and Jughead and Betty being like, Yes, continue to investigate this decades-old murder while we plan a working-class graduation party, truly, sums everything up about them

I do applaud the self-awareness of Veronica being like, We’re Bughead right now?

these two angels are up for it. Archie doesn’t give him any nonsense about Moose’s physical therapy (I hope Moose is okay). he’ll Scooby Gang with Veronica for his bro

Cheryl’s pins: Cheryl has her own special red towel, because…..because…..

Gay?!: I do want an unprompted back massage with lavender essential oil from Cheryl, but Josie is one tea with Penelope away from needing to Get Out

What damn high school in America: weirdly, I feel like Ms. Svenson is largely guileless here, but like...don’t just open the door…

Cheryl draws back, the moment over, Josie is like...I gotta go...

Hiram’s exceedingly wholesome red sweater

Veronica gets my favorite line of the night: “Well, I don’t know about those other people, but we’re ACTUALLY SINNERS.”

“Damn good coffee”: I don’t know what “the martial arts” are, but Andre is trained in them

Smithers is dead, right? Smithers is dead

The female gaze: “Archie, as pictured here exiting the shower, would literally die for you, so keep him around.”

can we give Archie a more interesting phone background?

Alice is dusting with an actual feather duster? those DO not work

TBH what is Jughead’s plan with the Mayor? she has demonstrated many times over that she does not GAF about the southside, and Jughead is not exactly a charismatic master salesman. what he needs to do is get Veronica to talk to HIRAM about the southside, but that ship has sailed. I want to say I’m with Serpent Daddy on this one, and you know what if that makes me a little bitch, THEN I GUESS I AM ONE

I do like the Generation Z insurrection from inside of the Serpents, though. phase out the olds! maybe Tall Boy SHOULD shut up and let them fucking try and actually save their part of town. it won’t work, but it will be honorable. plus then they’d be younger and cooler, like the Ghoulies. okay, Jughead, you brought me around. except at this point in time I still think I would rather be a Ghoulie

Jughead drunk on his own righteousness and calling for “a vote” to oust Tall Boy is like the most assertive he has ever been

Veronica, hell-bent that they not talk about It, brings up the murder house, the BH letter, and how she wants to get laid

Veronica has her reading glasses at the breakfast table!!! VERONICA I LOVE YOU. I’LL SAY IT TOO

okay I do think Fred is right that with “those three words,” people are usually “on different schedules”

Please protect Betty: Alice lets Betty “borrow” the station wagon on the condition that she, Alice, drives it

INCREDIBLY SEXUALLY FRUSTRATED? CARNAL DEFIANCE?

“Mom! What?” “Wow.”

brace yourself because the Riverdale prison is called “Shankshaw”

FP leaving the Serpents is fucking news to Jughead

“Working, Warden Cooper.”

oh, AA? AA, FP? I’m looking at my watch

FP lifting his pinkie to drink his coffee like Alice shows just how fierce prison turned him

Sheriff Keller’s continued patience with the Scoobies is the act of a desperate man

“The Devil’s house? What if he’s home?”

Sexy, aesthetic Southside:  Jughead’s motorcycle jacket is good and his helmet hair is great

of course FP has that obnoxious man-child motorcycle with the jacked-up handlebars

FP and Jughead have apparently parked alongside a Civil War battlefield

FP says when he was 16, Jughead’s age, his father kicked him out of the house, so he joined the Serpents. this is like exactly the opposite of what FP & Jughead are doing, but in the saddest possible way

Jughead must ACTUALLY like being in the Serpents. a group where he isn’t the odd one out all the time. the non-joiner joined and now doesn’t want to leave

FP’s condition is that Jughead keeps writing. FP DOES LOVE HIS SON, THE SCREW-UP

“I will. I do, every day.” YOU’RE BETTER THAN ME, JUG

I can’t endorse FP’s knockoff Ray-Bans, though

Cheryl’s sheaths: THAT SHIRT?

The 2001 Josie and the Pussycats movie was a masterpiece: Cheryl is DISGUSTED that Reggie is going to escort Josie to his father’s car dealership opening. $5,000, though?? to some people, Cheryl, that is A LOT OF MONEY

The Blossom spawn: “Clean that up, plebe. The way you did my brother’s blood.”

Cheryl’s a chaos angel from hell: I think Cheryl is allowed at least one lashing-out at FP (FOR DISPOSING OF HER BROTHER’S BODY) and FP knows it

a “king”? a “leader of men”? was he, Jughead?

Betty’s solution is, as always, to throw a party

These students are legally children: Toni is bartending? Toni, a legal child, is bartending? I think if Alice really wanted to hit them where it hurts she could simply report them to the ABC for flagrant underage drinking violations (Toni is not drinking)

I say “X-adjacent” all the time, so I liked Betty calling herself “Serpent-adjacent” 

ALTHOUGH SHE IS JUST AS MUCH A HEREDITARY SERPENT AS JUGHEAD

Byrdie, I think, smokes a couple of packs a day

Jughead wants the Serpents to stick up for themselves through actually viable legal channels. Toni wants to eliminate their sexist, misogynistic initial rituals. Sweet Pea probably wants to include an outreach program and feed little kids before school in case they can’t afford breakfast! PURGE THE OLDS FROM THE SERPENTS, THE KIDS ARE DOING GREAT

Jughead has come a long way from balking at Betty throwing him a birthday party for like six people to convincing FP that a retirement party at the alcoholic bar owned by his old biker gang will be fun, only last “like three hours”

“Don’t bogart the egg rolls.”

Penny thinks Jughead’s “soft underbelly” is his “quite fetching” girlfriend, even more than his well-meaning dolt father

Veronica’s cape!!!!!

FLASHBACK CAM!!!!

of course the SHATTERED PORTRAIT of mother and child is still there, like in Tarzan

this Reaper was a stone-cold motherfucker

OH, THE ORIGINAL BLOODSTAINED WOOD IS STILL THERE?

Archie finds the clue box! Veronica finds the third child’s initials! Archie and Veronica are GREAT Betty and Jugheads!

why is Penny AROUND if EVERYONE is scared of her? because she can actually do a good job when she’s “incentivized”?

Fwoopy hair is the best hair: Toni’s lovely, looping pink side-braids

Alice storms over to Pop’s, preemptively furious that Betty is going to pole dance to become Serpent-adjacent

FP is like, PLEASE SHUT UP

this scene is GREAT. “THEY WEREN’T ALL MISTAKES.” FP’s bowtie! he looks great in white? “Are you high on fumes?”

Alice tries to throw Hal in FP’s face and FP is like, drop that like it’s hot

Best costume bit: Veronica’s perkily no-nonsense Lois Lane outfit during the debrief

I’ve seen Brick like thirty times: Jughead is quick to point out the possible Dexter ramifications on a body having to watch their family get murdered

Jughead sort of coos in Betty’s ear to remind her they have to leave

Betty’s belated invitation amuses Veronica and nonplusses Archie, and Jughead rather gallantly gives them an easy out in case they like DON’T WANT TO GO, “IT’S NOT A BIG DEAL”

Archie’s waist looks particularly small in that shirt

Joseph Conway honestly out here thinking he can outrun Archie! when the only person who can do that is Jughead Jones!

AN EVIL PREACHER!

A REAL MOB!

Summer + Blair = Veronica: Veronica’s interrogation was great because Veronica is a natural Bad Cop

Betty has a picture of herself and Jughead at the Retro Reunion Dance from Hell on her mirror

I think Hermione and Hiram say “I love you” all the time, in many different ways. he calls her a dove. she brings him his coffee. he gets her boyfriend’s underage construction workers beaten up. she claims she wrote a threatening letter about herself

Archie’s brown Henley

Jughead did “a sweep” of “the perimeter”

Archie telling himself it’s going to be a good night, Jughead pats him on the back: “Here’s hoping”

Mädchen Amick, MÄDCHEN AMICK: once again Alice demonstrates that dressing “like the southside” does not preclude dressing fabulously, rather that other Serpents are simply not putting in the time

Alice does not want the worm that comes with her shot of mezcal

Jughead, PRECIOUSLY, clarifies that when he said “You look incredible,” he meant Betty, he was not hitting on Alice

Archie is VERY GOOD telling Veronica that he said what he said because HE was feeling good! GOOD, ARCHIE

HOLD THE PHONE, HAS ARCHIE SEEN DONNIE DARKO?

Archie immediately pivots to passive aggression when his kindness is not reciprocated with declarations of love! BAD, ARCHIE

“Mad World” is a great song. I would hedge on whether or not it’s a great karaoke song. I would strongly hedge on whether it’s a rousing crowd-pleaser at a drunken gangbanger send-off

did Archie like Donnie Darko? did he understand it? if so, could he explain it to me?

Veronica’s silky alto makes another appearance

“DEAD END FP”????

I’m writing a scene where it’s gay.: oh, Sweet Pea’s there! Sweet Pea is standing alone by the wall. Sweet Pea COULD be standing with Jughead, if he wanted. Jughead is also standing alone

apparently Betty has a whole secret drawer of black lingerie

never in ten thousand billion years would Jughead enjoy any sort of exhibitionism on Betty’s behalf in front of other people. BECAUSE HE’S FUCKING SHY, unless he’s calling Tall Boy a bitch

Gay.: Toni is amused. carnal defiance?

50 Shades of Betty: is Betty a Serpent now? BETTY?

I did rather enjoy the possibly inadvertent parallel to that episode of Fresh Prince when Will and Carlton end up stripping together at that rich-lady benefit and Aunt Viv walks in on it and she’s like, “PUT IT ON.”

FP, I want to say, saves the day by taking charge of the fallout: “Ha ha, great! EVERYTHING’S FINE! Put this on.”

Certified pedigree: OF COURSE. OF COURSE. OF COURSE. OF COURSE. OF COURSE FP IS GOING BACK TO THE SERPENTS. of course he does it with the most melodramatic speech possible. of course he does it by dismissing his own son, dismissing his family, dismissing parole, dismissing sobriety. of course he’s actually doing it to protect Jughead but of course doing do by actually destroying Jughead’s life in a different way

“Coyote Ugly” is pretty good

“I AM NOT GOING GENTLY INTO THE NIGHT!” FP, do you read Dylan Thomas?!

FP’S KISS OF DEATH. FP’S FREDO KISS. “YOU BROKE MY HEART, JUGHEAD.”

the shot he takes right to Jughead’s face is just mean

Jughead looks fucking stunned. can you be numb AND horrified? horrifumbed?

Veronica doesn’t have any deep-seated issues, for God’s sake! she isn’t in love with Archie right now! everyone take a breath!

Andre sat in the car during the whole party? I see a missed opportunity here

the hat’s off! HAT’S OFF

Jughead considers Archie gone, that he “cut bait,” a phrase I admit I have never heard before. Jughead is operating with the assumption that Archie has written him off and that Betty needs to do so as well, so it’s like the Archie-Jughead breakup, but sort of sideways

“I’M DRAGGING MY DAD DOWN.”

“You might get...you will probably get hurt.”

I did like the CLASSICALLY DRAMATIC wrenching Jughead back around by the arm and holding his face. IF YOU KIDS WOULD JUST SHUT UP AND HOLD EACH OTHER’S FACES. remember when sorcerer dementia-phantom Nana Rose scared you snooping in Jason Blossom’s bedroom??? innocent times!!!!!

I’m looking at this photograph of the Hangin’ Mob and I can’t tell who’s who, and it fills me with glee!

Every triangle has three corners, every triangle has three sides: I’m not sure what Betty and Archie are supposed to be seeing in each other for the very first time, unless it’s that they scare their partners or something. can Betty and Archie Blue & Gold? maybe! Archie wasn’t great at holding the line against Betty when she was falling down the Black Hood rabbit hole, but he did recognize it when it was happening, PLUS he’s a huge handsome slab of boy meat! TIME TO STEP UP, ARCHIE

hey, is Jughead homeless again?

TOMORROW: WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT?

[anotherbadmovie]

31 Days of Halloween III: Spooky Edition! - The Real Ghostbusters “When Halloween Was Forever” & “Boogieman Cometh” (1986)

Follow AnotherBadMovie for more Halloween nostalgia and horror, cult and genre movie reviews.

Today’s installment was very much a blast from the past - seriously, it must be like 15 years+ since I’ve seen this show. I remember loving it as a kid, but have only very vague memories of what it was like. I’ve never been obsessed with Ghostbusters but it is odd I have never gone back to it. I’ve not seen it on TV since I was a kid, I’ve never stumbled across the DVDs but after today I sense a revival having found it all on UK Netflix!

In hindsight, I surely spent more time watching The Real Ghostbusters than I ever did watching the film. But regardless both I’m sure spurred my interest in ghosts and aliens and junk as a kid - so for that I say thank you!

I’ve picked these two episodes on Cinemassacre’s (who’s recent retrospective brought this show back to mind) recommendation. The first is a proper Halloween themed episode and the second is one considered the most scary. 

When Halloween Was Forever

Egon has a theory that the increase in paranormal activity has a link to the arrival of runic stones from 7th Century Ireland - the origin of Halloween. Sure enough the stones release the pumpkin-headed Samhain, the spirit of Halloween hell bent on summoning all the ghoulies in town and freezing time to make Halloween last forever. Who you gonna call? Yep....

Two things stood out from watching this again show, immediately. Firstly, the animation is great! It’s definitely up there with some classic 80s anime. The mixture of dark twilight colours and near psychedelic vibrant madness is a winner and something you would expect out of more mature content of the period rather than a kids show. It’s a real treat.

Secondly, whilst I didn’t lose my mind over the story in this one, it certainly had an unusual depth for what you would imagine from a kids Ghostbusters show. These could have been really slapped together but they put a lot of thought into them in between the slapstick and gags. I also found there was references and details in it that you can appreciate as an adult. I compare this to recently watching old episodes of Dungeons and Dragons. Compared to this, it’s all surface.

On this note, it strikes me that the episodic format is a perfect fit for the Ghostbusters concept - a new scary baddy every afternoon after school? I’m in. The neat animation coupled with the pulpier stories make for a satisfying adaptation of the franchise.

Boogieman Cometh

As soon as I saw the episodes titular Boogieman it brought back faint memories of this episode terrifying me as a kid - and frankly this was very exciting. This episode seems to have a reputation for giving kids nightmares and as a result as I was watching I was almost trying to unpick whether it had in fact traumatised me as a kid and I’d just forgotten it - or blocked out the memory.

Whilst it did feel eerily familiar retreading an episode I hadn't seen in over a decade I found the scary elements - which hold up, trust me - really reminded me why this show ruled as a kid.

I can totally see producers today saying this episode’s content is “too much” for kids but what was awesome about The Real Ghostbusters was that, just like the film, it didn’t hold back on the scares but it coupled it with humour and jokes making a unique and fun experience.

Think about it. This works even better for a show aimed at kids. Just as the boogieman is a really relatable a fear for kids (the episode goes as far as having one of the heroic Ghostbusters recall the same exact fear from his childhood to add to its power) having the Ghostbusters and indeed the kids who suffered under it overcome the monster and learn that they just have to not be scared is empowering.

Monsters are never more real than when you’re a kid - isn’t that what my 31 days is all about this year? This makes these episodes a really cathartic fun experience for children; show me something scary that needs overcoming and then show me the badass Ghostbusters laughing in it’s face. I love it, and I think it’s good for kids to watch this kind of thing - especially, like me, future horror fans.

This a really charmingly produced show, and brought back lots of fond memories. I was spoilt with this as a kid and will definitely check out more from the shows back catalog this month.

[nh935]

Creepy America Episode 8: The Red Eyed Man

Creepy America Episode 8 “The Red Eyed Man” Memphis, Tennessee

“What was the hardest part about making the show?” was a question I used to get a lot, usually by fans or interviewers curious about us and our filming process. I lied; it’s a hard habit to break once you start. Usually I said something about interviewing people and finding topics, or maybe even chasing down monsters with heavy equipment, but that wasn’t it. Were those things hard? Sure. But they paled in comparison to the frustration I felt when confronted with how much I didn’t know. Even today, with years of hindsight, research, knowledge, and experience, I feel like all I’ve done is scratch the surface of a very, very large iceberg. I know so much about the other side, what lies past the Veneer, and all the players and machinations hidden in the dark, and all it does is remind me how much I don’t comprehend and how much I probably never will.

Red Eyes lies firmly in that camp. He remains just as alien as the first time I saw him and that, more than anything else, makes me fear him. Sure, he was strong. Dangerous, even. But Thorn, Jones, heck, even most of the Little Bookers, I could understand them. I knew why they did what they did, and there’s comfort in that. However, I never saw anything recognizable in those bruning scarlet shapes. There was no trace of human logic or emotion in them.

Nothing except rage and fury, that is.

***

Originally, we had no intentions of going to Memphis. The itinerary had put us in Adams, Tennessee instead in order to get a look at “Bell Witch Cave.” Just for good measure, we did do a quick exploration of the space (after the whole Bunny Man incident, it was getting hard to tell what was fact and what was fiction), but we both agreed that there was nothing spookier than cramped, dark places lurking in there. Rather than pack up and head out to our next destination, though, we decided now was a good time to take a look at that itinerary and replot our course.

Part of that decision had to do with the fact that it was getting pretty close to Christmas and travel was becoming hard. A portion of that was because of the highways clogged with cars and the snow, but mostly it was just hard emotionally. I left on rocky terms with my parents, and it still hurt to only be able to talk with them over email and phone calls. I could see that it was hitting Zoey a whole lot harder. So taking a break and collecting ourselves seemed like a pretty good idea.

That was, until we got the email.

We were longing around the living area, me on my phone and Zoey on the laptop, when she suddenly called out “Liam, come look at this!”

I got up and moved behind her, looking at the text she had brought up. “Someone emailed us?” I asked. That was unheard of. Even though we had scattered official contact info for the show all over where we posted the videos, the only communication we had gotten were likes and the occasional odd comment. This was the first time we had been directly reached out to like this. The excitement immediately drew me out of my holiday doldrums.

“Yeah.” She squinted her eyes and began to read out loud:

“Dear Zoey and Liam,

“To be honest with you, I’m not quite sure if I should be writing this to you. You seem like filmmakers using clever tricks to make your fake stories seem believable. But I’m at the end of my rope here and I have nowhere else to turn, so all I can do is write to you and hope your videos are as factual as you claim.

“I work at St. Magdalene's Home for Children in Memphis, Tennessee. A couple weeks ago, one of the children began to complain about a ‘red-eyed man’ staring at her outside her window throughout the night. A few nights later, and the whole floor of children started to say the same thing. I shrugged it off as a vivid imagination spreading panic to her bunkmates, but a week ago, I saw the same thing: a silhouette of a man with red eyes standing off in the swamp filled with trees near our building. He didn’t move or make any threatening gestures, just stood there and stared, unblinking, until the sun began to rise, at which point he walked away and disappeared.

“I’ve seen him a few times since then, even recorded him on video camera. He doesn’t do anything except stare, then leave before morning. Even so, the thought of him watching fills me with dread. I’ve tried contacting the police, even giving them the footage, but for some reason, they won’t believe me. I’m scared. I’m worried that soon he’ll stop watching and do something, and I can’t bear the thought of what he could do to any of the children here.

“Please, please email me back. I need help. You’re my only hope.

“Sincerely,

“Ms. Shirley Jackson

“Administrator of St. Magdalene’s Home for Children

“Matthew 25:40”

Zoey stopped reading and sat back a bit, then looked up at me. “How far away is Memphis from here?”

I tapped in some information into my phone. “About three and a half hours. Closer to six with this traffic, probably.”

“Right. Who’s driving?”

I smiled. “Not even a question of if, huh?”

Her eyes sparkled for the first time since the start of our holiday break. “Hell no.”

***

As soon as we pulled into the parking lot, Ms. Jackson came out to greet us.

“Thank you so, so much for coming” she said as we exited the R.V. She was an older woman, with streaks of silver creeping into her hair and wrinkles set into the pale skin around her eyes and mouth. A black shawl was wrapped tightly around her, keeping her warm against the afternoon air dotted with the occasional snowflake. “Really, truly, I can’t tell you how much this means to me.”

Zoey smiled. “It’s no problem. We were in the neighborhood anyway.” We weren’t; it had taken us the full six hours plus more. But we were too excited to care.

She guided us into St. Magdalene's, a huge lodge-like building made out of dark, old wood. Inside was warm and inviting, with large rooms filled with bookcases, comfortable furniture, rugs and more strewn about, punctuated by the occasional sight and sound of running, giggling children. It had the feel of a well-lived in home and then some.

“Welcome to St. Magdalene's,” Jackson began. “This is our entrance hall. Over there are the wings with…”

Zoey cleared her throat. “Not to be ungracious guests, but do you mind if we cut to the heart of the matter?”

Ms. Jackson’s expression dissolved into relief. “Of course. Here, follow me to my office.”

We did, moving past a large room filled with long tables and a variety of children and adults seated at them, engaging in an organized craft of some kind. Once we made our way to the back, she opened a glass door into a dark office with a large hardwood desk and two leather chairs seated across from a comfortable office chair.

Zoey nodded to me and I began setting up the camera equipment. “You don’t mind if we film this for the show, do you?”

Ms. Jackson looked up. “Hmm? No, of course not.” After I had gotten everything running, we all sat down.

“Right,” Zoey began. “Could you repeat your story for us, starting at the beginning?”

Ms. Jackson sighed. “It started three weeks ago. Millie Doe, one of our charges, began to complain about a red eyed man outside of her room, staring at her through the night. I simply brushed it off; Millie is well known to have an active imagination, so I simply thought that she had a nightmare of some kind. A few nights later, several of the other children on her floor began to complain about the same thing: a man with red eyes staring at them from outside their window. Believing that Millie was repeating her stories and influencing the others, I asked Susan Darrens to stay with them through the night to convince them there was no red-eyed man.

“Then Susan came back and said that the red eyed man was real.”

She stopped, opened up a desk drawer, and pulled out a bottle of water. She offered one to us as well and, after we declined, took a large drink from the bottle before continuing.

“I didn’t really know what to make of it, but it did convince me to stay up that night and wait outside of that window. Several of the male staff did so as well. We weren’t sure what it was, but if it was a threat, we wanted it gone as soon as possible.

“A few hours after the sun had gone down, we saw it. A silhouette of a large man, bulky, maybe six, six and a half feet tall. We couldn’t make out any of its features in the gloom, save for the large red eyes. They literally glowed, giving off light.

“For a long time, we were all paralyzed with fear. Then Thomas, one of the staff men with me, began to shout at it. Telling it to go away, and whatever prank it was trying to play, it wasn’t welcome. It didn’t move. Finally, he and two of the others took their rifles and headed out into the swamp to confront it. As they got closer, the eyes disappeared, and that seemed to give them enough courage to pick up their pace and run after it.

“Two of them stayed behind with me and we waited for several tense hours, listening to the sounds of sloshing bootsteps and cries of ‘he’s over here!’. Eventually, all three came back soaked and scratched. They said that they had chased it further into the swamp, but every time they got close to the glowing eyes, it seemed to disappear, only to reappear somewhere else, simply staring at them. Once the sun began to rise, the eyes disappeared for good and the men came back.

“Of course we called the police. Two officers came and I told them everything that happened. They stayed and recorded our statement, then told us they were going out to talk to their station over the radio. When they came back, both were pale and terrified looking. They told me not to call them with prank calls and gave me this card for ‘when you have an actual emergency’. Then they left so fast you would have thought they were being chased.”

Jackson handed over a plain paper business card. On it was the number for the police station but drawn in pen in the corner with a slightly shaky hand was a capital ‘A’ with some sloppy looking wings.

I pointed the drawing out to Zoey. She nodded silently.

“We’ve been on high alert since. I’ve tried getting the police back here. I even recorded the thing on video several times as proof. But every time I get the same response. We’ve taken to guarding the place on shifts, making sure that all he does is stare.” She gave a slightly bitter laugh. “Not like we can sleep much, anyway.”

“Has he ever done anything besides watch?” Zoey asked.

Jackson shook her head. “No. Nothing else. But… I’m so afraid.” She put her head into her hands and began to cry.

“Hey,” Zoey stood up and softly took one of her hands, “it’s okay. We’re going to get to the bottom of this, and once we do, we’re going to get rid of him, for good.”

Jackson looked up, sniffled, then nodded. “Yes, of course. I… I’m sorry.”

“No need to apologize.” Zoey turned around, silently asking me what I thought the next step was.

“I think we need to see those videos you took,” I said. “And is there any way we can talk to this Millie Doe?”

***

Millie was seated out in the common area with the other children, engaging in the craft I could now tell was hand-made Christmas cards. She had long blonde hair and a long-sleeved flannel shirt, and was bent over a green piece of paper with a red crayon in hand, drawing with the seriousness and intensity only a nine year-old kid like herself could muster.

Zoey smiled and sat down next to her. “Hey,” she said, “are you Millie?”

The kid just shrugged and kept on drawing.

Zoey looked down to the paper. “Is that Santa?”

Millie didn’t respond.

A group of three girls ran in behind her, one noticing her sitting there and very purposefully bumping into her backside. Something fell out of her pocket and Millie gasped and reached for it, only for Zoey to catch it a split second before it hit the floor.

Zoey held it out for her: a small crystal, clear as glass and tinted slightly green. Millie gave a quiet “thank you” before taking it and putting it back in her pocket.

“Do you like pickles?” Zoey asked out of nowhere.

Millie looked at her like she was crazy. I’m sure I did, too.

“When I was your age, there was a group of kids who bullied me, and my dad told me the best way to get rid of them was to glare at them and think of something you really, really didn’t like. And I hated pickles. So every time they came around, I would look at them and think of pickles, and viola!” she parted her hands with a flourish. “They left me alone.”

Millie watched her, trying to keep a straight face, but a snort escaped her and she smiled. “I like you” she said.

“Of course you do. I’m awesome.” Zoey stuck out her hand. “Name’s Zoey.”

“Millie.” She shook it awkwardly, like she was afraid it was going to bite her.

“Nice to meet you Millie. Do you mind if we ask you a few questions?”

“I guess not.” She picked her crayon up again and continued drawing, but this time she looked up every so often to pay attention to us.

“We heard that you see something at night.”

“The Red Eyed Man,” she responded matter-of-factly.

Zoey arched an eyebrow. “The Red Eyed Man?”

“He stands outside my window and looks at me when he thinks I’m sleeping,” she explained. “He looks like a shadow with big, glowing red eyes, like stop lights.”

“What does he do?”

Millie shrugged. “Just stares.”

Zoey and I glanced at each other. “Just stares?” I asked. “Nothing else.”

Millie nodded, eyes glued to her paper.

I shrugged and turned to leave, but Zoey motioned for me to wait for a second. “Millie, do you mind telling me what that crystal is?”

She looked up at Zoey. “It’s a wishing rock. My mom gave it to me.”

“A wishing rock?” Zoey asked.

She nodded. “Yeah. It keeps your wishes safe until they come true. But you can’t let it break, or else they’ll never happen.”

“How do you know that?” I questioned.

“Timbo told me.”

“Timbo?”

“Yeah. He lives out in the swamp. He’s a big blue elephant who walks on two legs, and he eats cotton candy and maple syrup.”

Zoey smirked. “Imaginary friend?”

Millie looked up with pride. “The best one ever.”

With nothing else to ask, we said our goodbyes and left, the bizarre image of a sweet-addicted swamp elephant still in my head.

***

“So what do you think?”

I was watching the video Jackson had recorded. In it, a large, human shadow loomed in the darkness between two trees. Large red eyes, bright enough to actually shed light on the nearby branches, was leering at the camera. It didn’t move, or blink, or do anything but watch in the black night air.

I gestured to the screen with my palm. “I mean it’s something, obviously. But as for what, I couldn’t tell you.”

Zoey moved behind me so that she could see the screen as well. “Do you think it’s a pagan god like the Bunny Man was, trying to drum up some belief?”

“I don’t think so. Leshy made it sound like he had to use the form of something already made up. And he was a bit more… aggressive, in his techniques. No, this is something else.”

“Like, ‘thing-in-the-pit’ something else?”

“More like ‘creepy-alone-thing’ something else.” I ran my fingers through my hair. “Then again, that’s a complete guess on my part.”

The red eyes on the screen turned from watching the camera and began to stare in a different direction, towards the building itself.

“It looks like he’s looking for something,” Zoey noted.

“Yeah, or someone,” I agreed.

“Maybe he’s looking for Timbo the elephant.”

I snorted. “Good luck with that one, buddy.”

The eyes scanned up and down a bit more before the figure turned around and vanished, leaving the woods empty as the sun began to light up the landscape.

“Do you think there’s a chance that all he’ll do is stare?” Zoey proposed in a soft voice.

I shook my head. “Only until he sees what he’s looking for.”

A few moments of silence passed between us.

“We need to learn more about it,” I stated.

Zoey looked at me. “Stakeout?”

I nodded. “Stakeout.”

***

Stakeouts are boring; I just want to say that. The movies make sitting for hours in a small space waiting for something to happen so you can watch it glamorous somehow, but the truth is that its mind numbing and dull.

However, we had the advantage of having cameras. Five of them, in fact, which was perfect; that gave us enough to put one at each corner of the building, covering the majority of the woods surrounding it, and one to keep just in case. Once the cameras were set up, we could simply watch the stream of the footage on the laptop in the relative comfort of the R.V., waiting for the red glow.

It didn’t disappoint. At close to eleven, the bright light of two shining orbs appeared on the third camera.

“Zoey!” I stood up and exclaimed. She bolted over to the laptop and looked to where I was pointing.

She looked at it in surprise for a few moments, before saying “c’mon”, grabbing our last camera and dashing outside to where that screen was showing, with me following close behind.

Sure enough, there it was, just… standing there, making no attempt to hide itself. Again, the silhouette was human-shaped: a head, two arms, two legs, but the outline of it seemed off. It was a bit too angular, with a few too many perfectly straight lines and a few too few curves. But the most noticeable feature was, of course, the eyes: fiery crimson, with a bright red that bordered on orange, like flames escaping the confines of a furnace, bright enough to cast a solid glow on the otherwise black frames of the looming trees and dark earth.

I picked up the camera sitting nearby, the same one that had alerted us to its presence earlier, and pointed it at the creature. For a few tense moments, nobody moved, us simply recording it in stunned awe and it simply staring back.

After a minute or so of this, it turned away in order to glance up at the building’s many windows.

“What do you want?” Zoey shouted at it.

It ignored her, continuing to scan the area.

“Hey! Answer me!”

It turned back to Zoey and cocked its head. The motion reminded me of the way my old dog Sparky would move and watch you when you were talking to it with words it didn’t understand.

“Yeah! Tell us what you’re doing here!”

It turned back to gaze at the windows.

“Fine, have it your way!” Zoey took off running towards it. The creature immediately saw the motion and began to walk away, further into the trees and the swamp.

“Zoey wait!” I shouted, sprinting after her. The area immediately became confusing and hard to see. I felt my foot slip into water and I looked down in frustration and disgust, only to raise my head and realize that none of the surrounding trunks and puddles looked familiar.

“Over there!” I heard Zoey shout. I glimpsed Zoey’s form to my right, then followed her finger into a deeper section of swamp. There, sixty to seventy feet away, were the eyes again.

I ran after them, no longer caring about the sensation of cold, murky water sliding into my shoes. My vision of the eyes shook as I moved up over fallen branches and down into divots.

I tripped over a submerged log, stumbling a few feet forward to avoid falling face first into who knows what. When my head rose again, the red orbs were gone. Spinning around, I found them almost a hundred feet away, dead behind me.

“Zoey!” I yelled and pointed. She immediately saw it and changed course. We must have cleared that distance in less than a minute, but by the time we crashed into the spot it was, it was gone again.

We jerked our heads around, looking for the eyes, but this time, there was only darkness.

I looked down at my clothes, now thoroughly soaked and caked in mud. “C’mon, let’s go. We’re not going to catch him this way.”

She looked down to her own hoodie, gripped the bottom, and twisted, wrining swamp water out of it. “Yeah, I guess you’re right.” She looked back around at the forest and started to trudge back towards the yellow lights of the building. I followed, and by the time we had made it back, the sun had just begun to rise.

I turned to look at the trees one more time. There, shrouded in the shade of two large pines, were the eyes again. They watched me for close to two minutes, then turned and disappeared.

***

One nap and several hot showers later (of which Ms. Jackson was kind enough to let us use the building’s facilities for, so we didn’t need to worry about draining the R.V. tank dry for once), we were in one of the common rooms of St. Magdalen's, watching the footage recorded from the other cameras last night. On the screen, the red eyes appeared in the camera, staying still for a few minutes, before turning and moving off screen. A minute later, the tiny, panting versions of us appeared, looking around wildly for them.

“Well,” I said, “it looks like it doesn’t just teleport. That makes it a physical entity… I think.” I put my head into my hands. “I feel so dumb right now.”

Zoey clapped a hand onto my back. “Hey, don’t be so hard on yourself. It’s not like you got to take Monsterology 101 or anything.”

The sound of shouting interrupted my thoughts. Looking up, I saw Millie backing away from the three girls who had ran past her earlier. “It’s your fault it’s here, you freak!” the one in front shouted at her.

Millie seemed on the verge of crying. “Guys, I don’t know…”

The other girl interrupted her with a big shove, knocking Millie onto the ground. Her glass-like crystal fell out of her pocket and onto the floor, emitting a high-pitched TING sound, like a tuning fork being struck,

“Hey!” Zoey snapped. The other girls looked at her with panic and they bolted,  leaving Millie alone on the ground holding her wishing rock.

“No…” she sobbed. “No no no no no no no no.”

Zoey walked over and knelt next to the girl, carefully taking the rock out and holding it up to the light. A long, hairline crack had formed in its side.

“It’s okay, see? It’s just a crack.” She gingerly put it in Millie’s hand and curled the girl’s fingers back around the crystal. “The wishes are still safe.”

Millie stopped crying and looked at Zoey. “You promise?”

“Promise.” Zoey turned back to where the other girls had ran to. “What were they talking about?”

Millie sniffed. “They think that it’s my fault that the Red Eyed Man is here. They want me to get rid of him. But I don’t know how!”

“Calm down. I believe you. That’s why we’re here, though. We hunt monsters.”

Her eyes went wide. “Really?”

Zoey smiled. “Yep. You go play. We’ll figure out how to get rid of him.”

She nodded and ran off.

“Bold promise to make, considering we still don’t know what it is,” I observed.

Zoey shrugged. “So? Same goes for everything else, and we’ve still always won.”

I bit the inside of my cheek and stayed quiet; I still hadn’t told Zoey about Sam’s late night visit.

“C’mon Mr. Monster Hunter!” She hopped up on the bench beside me. “What’s our next step?”

I sighed. “I think we’ve got to do another stake out.”

***

Checking our video against the other recordings had confirmed that Red Eyes (the name we had begun referring to the creature as) always appeared in the same spot in the woods every night at eleven o’clock. Knowing this, we came to the second stakeout better prepared, set up with the light-weight camcorders and in more appropriate attire to chase the thing through the muck. One more weapon joined our arsenal, though: a thermos of coffee. The snow has started coming down harder that night and that small container of hot liquid was pulling double duty, keeping us alert and shielding us from the bitter wind.

“He better not decide to be late today,” Zoey warned as she poured out another cup.

I nursed my own mug and looked out into the trees. “Somehow, I don’t think we need to worry about that.”

A flicker of light caught my attention as two flaming lights came into view.

“Zoey,” I whispered, “there.”

She dropped her cup and spun the camera around to face it. I did the same.

This time, something was different. The red lights were getting bigger, and it honestly took me a few seconds to realize what was going on simply because it had never happened before: it was walking towards us.

With one long stride it came out of the swamp, and for the first time, I could actually see it. It was tall. Six and a half feet was the minimum guess as to its height. And in clearer light, I could finally understand the silhouette I had been seeing. Human shaped, yes, but definitely not human. Instead, it seemed to be made out of obsidian, carved out of black, volcanic rock. Not smoothly, like a sculpture, but roughly, with the same hand and technique one would expect arrowheads and other stone tools to be made with. The resulting figure was all jagged edges with no organic curves, and I could actually hear the grinding of stone on stone with every movement it made. The only break in the mass were the two holes where the eyes should be, revealing an inside filled with intense, bright red light.

“Hey!” Zoey walked forward, bringing her right in front of it. “What do…”

The thing cut her off by taking one massive arm and sweeping it into Zoey, lifting her into the air and flinging her aside like a rag doll.

I ran past the creature to the ground where Zoey was sprawled. It didn’t seem to care.

“Zoey!” I fell beside her. “Zoey, are you okay?!”

“Air…” she wheezed. “Can’t…”

A sudden burst of heat hit me and I turned to the source. The thing had firmly planted its feet into the ground and was staring at the roof of St. Magdalen’s. Only staring’s not the right word, because that would imply he was just looking. No, massive, almost cartoonishly large red beams of light were spilling out of its eyes, traveling in a straight line right into the roof, blowing pieces of it apart where the literal laser beam collided into the structure. The pieces that weren’t flung into the air alighted into flame and in no time at all, the entire top of the wooden building was blazing.

I turned back to Zoey. “Are you alright?”

She nodded.

I pressed my cell phone into her hands. “Call 911. Get the fire department out here.” I got up and ran over to the building just in time to run into Ms. Jackson escorting a line of children. “Is this everyone?”

“Yes” she replied. “Liam, what happened?”

I turned back to gawk at Red Eyes. He studied me, before making a strange series of hand motions and head back into the woods. Stunned and in shock, all I could do was watch him leave.

***

The firefighters didn’t leave until dawn.

“You need to be more careful in the future,” one of them told me as the rest packed their gear back into the truck. “You’re very lucky that gas leak didn’t cause more damage.”

“Gas leak?” I asked in disbelief.

“I highly suggest you get this building checked out, make sure it’s all up to code.” He handed me a small plastic card, proclaiming the name and number of a property inspector. In the corner, hand drawn, was another ‘A’ with wings.

I glared at it as the man turned and left. “Of course. You, you…. Cowards!” I grabbed a rock and threw it at the engine, hearing it bounce off with a dull ‘thunk’.

Neither he nor any of his men made any attempt to defend themselves against that comment as he got into the truck and drove away.

***

The rest of the day was a blur of chaos. Ms. Jackson had ordered the staff to help her gather up and move the children away, and we whole-heartedly agreed. But even leaving behind everything that wasn’t essential, there was too much to move quickly. They were forced to carry away supplies and children alike in vehicle load after vehicle load, and the whole process was estimated to take two days, at least.

Which meant at least one more night being visited by Red Eyes.

Zoey and I agreed to stay behind. Our hope was to try to figure out a way to stall him, at least for one night, but it wasn’t looking great. I knew two things about Red Eyes at this point: one, he seemed to be unstoppable, and two, he seemed to be incomprehensible.

I was in the R.V., watching our footage of the thing and repeating the strange hand motions he had done to me over and over again in an attempt to find some logic to them, when Zoey walked in. “Or else what?” she asked.

“Hmm?” I looked up.

She gestured to my hands. “Your signing ‘or else’. Or else what?”

I blinked. “Signing, as in… American Sign Language?” I had known Zoey knew sign language, teaching it to herself to communicate with a deaf cousin of hers, but never in a million years did I expect that to be the thing Red Eyes was doing.

She raised an eyebrow. “Yeah.”

“Those are the motions Red Eyes made at me, before disappearing.”

She looked at me in surprise. “What?”

“Here, what does this say?” I stood up and began to go through the motions as best as I could remember them.

Zoey squinted. “Give it… to? me. Give it to me or else.”

An uneasy silence filled the room.

I sank back into my chair. “So it wants something. Great.”

“Yes, it is” Zoey insisted. “If it wants something, we can use that.”

“And how the hell are we supposed to know what that is?” I shot back. “We have no idea what this thing is, or why it’s doing this, or even why it changed behavior. And we certainly don’t know how to stop it.” I slouched even lower in my seat. “Might as well follow the example of those firefighters. It’ll all be the same in the end.”

Zoey got a few inches away from my face and stared directly into my eyes. “Do not give me that. Not right now. We’ve got a whole building full of kids back there, and we are the only thing standing between him and them. So wherever you put that Red-Like-Roses Liam, bring him out here, because I need him now.”

“Alright, alright.” I exhaled and ran my fingers through my hair. “He knows how to communicate. So he’s intelligent. And we can talk to him. Maybe… maybe we can reason with him. Convince him that working with us to get… whatever the hell he wants, is far better than expending energy getting around us.”

Zoey smiled. “There he is. C’mon, let’s do this.”

***

We spent the rest of the day planning and preparing, trying to come up with a backup plan in case our attempts of negotiation failed. In the end, all we could really think of was to stash fire extinguishers and water buckets everywhere and pray that we didn’t need a backup plan.

And so, come eleven, we were standing outside, waiting for Red Eyes show. And come eleven, down to the second, he appeared.

The large black form moved out of the treeline and then stopped. He glanced to me, then to Zoey, before making several hand motions.

“He wants to know if we have it,” Zoey translated.

“Ask him what that is,” I replied.

Zoey made some hand motions of her own.

He stood for a moment before beginning to march towards us.

“Tell him we’ll find it for him if we know what it is,” I pleaded in panic.

Zoey did so, but he only gave a few motions in return.

“He says ‘move or be moved,’” she replied in fear.

Not knowing what else to do, I stepped in front of him. He reeled back in surprise, or perhaps disgust, before the light from his eyes began to grow brighter, and brighter, and…

stop.

His head suddenly snapped towards a window at the top floor, and I could just barely hear the source of what got his attention over the sound of the howling wind:

A clear, high-pitched TING, like a tuning fork being struck.

Red Eyes immediately shifted his path, making his way towards the door closest to the sound.

Zoey turned to me in confusion. “Liam, what…”

“Millie!” I cried. Zoey’s eyes went wide with recognition and we both bolted, diving into the doorframe before he could reach it.

“Go find Millie!” I yelled. “Get that wishing rock from her!” Zoey nodded and ran up the stairs.

I moved back to face Red Eyes, the crimson from his sockets already growing brighter in preparation for another beam.

I grabbed a fire extinguisher next to me, pulled out the pin and aimed it at the creature, spraying white dust everywhere. It reeled back, the glowing lights disappearing in the chemical fog.

I ran, moving further into the building and onto the stairs. I heard heavy, shaking footsteps behind me in the hallway, turning just in time to see him stomping after me. I grabbed a metal pail full of water and swung it back. It tracked the flying object and fired off a blast as it flew towards its face, causing it to explode in a shower of steam and shrapnel and forcing him backwards a second time.

The familiar feeling of adrenaline began to flood me and I ran up the stairs two at a time, past the second floor, onto the third, just in time to see Zoey talking to Millie, a staff member and the rest of the kids crowded into a corner.

“But... the wishes!” Millie insisted.

“It’s the only way, Millie.” Zoey replied. “We need to use it against the monster.”

Millie’s expression became sad, but she reached into her pocket and removed the clear, slightly green crystal, now with two long cracks set into it, and held it out to Zoey.

Zoey took it and threw it to me. I caught it just as Red Eyes came into view, scanning the room before noticing me and the crystal.

“This is what you want, right?” I held it out. “Here. Take it. Take it and leave everyone here alone.”

“NO!” Millie cried. She darted forward, but Zoey grabbed onto her and held her back.

Red Eyes regarded the outstretched rock for a second before violently snatching it from me. I felt and heard a POP from my hand and immediately sunk to my knees in pain. It watched me fall with an expression that almost looked like amusement before turning and stomping its way down the stairs.

The room fell into a hush, punctuated only by the whispers of the other children, the quiet sobs of Millie, and my own groans of pain. But nothing more came.

It was over.

***

A few more hectic hours later, I was watching Millie in the far corner of the hospital waiting room as I held a cold pack over my newly-splinted finger. She held a small teddy bear by the hands, making him move and dance, but the movements were slow and a sadness that wasn’t there before emanated from her eyes.

The chair next to me issued some squeaks and groans. I turned to see Zoey sitting down next to me. “What’d you get?” she asked, gesturing to my hand.

I held the metal splint out. “Dislocated finger. You?”

She lifted her shirt just a bit to reveal a stomach wrapped in bandages. “Cracked ribs. Nothing I won’t live through.”

“It’s a good thing we’re still on our parents’ insurance,” I noted. “We should figure out what we’re going to replace that with when it runs out.”

“Try to get one with frequent flyer miles.”

I scoffed, then turned back to watch Millie.

“She said anything?” Zoey asked.

I shook my head. “Don’t think she will, either.” I stood up and together, we made our way out of the building, into the dark parking lot filling with snow, and began the walk back towards our R.V.

“What the hell was that, Liam?” Zoey asked.

“I don’t know,” I replied. “And what’s worse is that, whatever it is, it’s new. I mean, we were just getting used to these… other spaces, with the painting and the Hotel California and wherever that empty place is. Then these stupid winged ‘A’s show up, and just when I think we’ve got a handle on that, there’s this buisness with ‘the god of light’ and now… this.” I sighed. “I feel like a blind man locked in a mansion, forced to stumble around and try to find a way out. It’s enough to make me…”

“Scared?” Zoey offered.

“Angry.”

She looked at me with genuine shock.

“It’s not right,” I said. “These… things, they exist in the dark. Nobody knows that they’re there. And because of that, they get to do whatever they damn well please, grabbing people and things for who knows why. And meanwhile, it’s the little people that get screwed over, people like Greg and Sims and Ms. Jackson. People that have no want to be there, no business being in that world, and they get dragged in anyway because of crap luck.”

I withdrew the card from the firefighters. “And I have no idea who these guys are, but they’re the worst of all. Because these guys are the people letting them do this. They’re actively keeping these things secret. They’re practically feeding people to the shadows, and no one can stop it because no one knows it needs to be stopped.”

We continued to walk through the snowing, cold parking lot in silence for a while.

“Liam…” Zoey began, “what do we do when they spot us? These… A guys.”

“Well, we’re not stopping the show,” I replied.

“Of course we’re not stopping the show.” She sounded offended. “I agree with everything you’re saying. We need to expose these people.” Her tone softened. “But they’re going to find us. Soon. And we need to be prepared when they do.”

We grew quiet again.

“How long do you think we have?” Zoey asked me.

I looked up into the sky. “A month. Maybe two, if we’re lucky. But in three weeks’ time… we’ll need a plan.”

Of course, Archangel came for us much sooner than that. Much, much sooner.

[stretchemersonarchive]

Not Just a Trope: How Mental Illness is Battling the Media

By: Hailey Norton

To mainstream medias like film, television and video games, mental illness has become a money making algorithm. In this algorithm, however, there is little truth to be found. There is usually a dramatic twist, or if you’re Hollywood film director, M. Night Shyamalan, a badass super villain known as “The Horde” brewing under the devastating illness known as dissociative identity disorder (DID). Or if you’re a video game developer like Red Limb Studio, your main protagonist actually turns out to be your antagonist who has killed their entire family in a psychotic episode. Or if you’re anyone working on 13 Reasons Why, from the hit Netflix original TV show, mental illness and suicide is a tool to be used for revenge on those that caused verbal or physical abuse.

All of these cases of popular media have a couple things in common. First, they’re problematic. They do not fully or accurately address mental illness in an educational light. By this, I mean, the lack of appropriate and complete depictions of mental health has caused many negative stigmas to build in our society surrounding violence, alienating those that suffer from mental illness. Second, they are aimed at teens and young adults.

The idea that mental illness is something to be capitalized on is not a new or shocking concept. Many things that are culturally sensitive are used as attention-grabbing tools to garner the most amount of money as possible with little or no regard for the implications it could have on an impressionable audience. In an article from the Journal of Community Psychology, it was stated that “Children, whose opportunities to encounter and learn about mental illness from other sources (higher education, job experience, etc.) are far more limited than adults, may be even more reliant than adults on mass media, and thus more susceptible to their influence” (Wahl).

In an article written for the Psychiatric Rehabilitation Journal, Naomi Kondo gave a very honest opinion about the inaccuracies found in film in particular and how they can be damaging for society as a whole. She brings up the point that those that have no connection to mental illness other than in films and other forms of media, may believe that depiction to be true (Kondo 250). She states, specifically, “The greatest fallacy of mental illness purported by the film industry is that there is a direct link between mental illness and violence” (Kondo 250). As someone who lives with schizophrenia and has never had violent urges, Kondo feels alienated by these depictions. One of her most compelling statements was “Sometimes these films even make me wonder about myself, if on some level I have a secret evil side, a side tied to my illness” (Kondo 251). This shows how those that are in the audience watching these films that also identify with the disorder being depicted can be negatively impacted by stigmas even though they know them to not be true.

I, too, have been personally affected by the carelessness of these mainstream media depictions of mental health. As someone who suffers from depression and has attempted suicide in the past, the show 13 Reasons Why seriously unnerved me. Hannah Baker, the protagonist of the show, truly went through some very troubling situations from bullying to sexual assault and rape. Suicidal ideation and intent are very hot topics among today’s youth and so many teens are suffering from depression and anxiety. According to the National Institute for Mental Health, “Young adults aged 18-25 years had the highest prevalence of [mental illness] (22.1%) compared to adults aged 26-49 years (21.1%) and aged 50 and older (14.5%)” (“Mental…”). In fact, suicide is the second leading cause of deaths among the age group 10-34 (Center for Disease Control).

I can understand the appeal of wanting to open a conversation with teens about this big issue and raise awareness. However, I cannot stand for and will not sit silently while a TV show graphically depicts how to kill yourself even though the book the show is based on does not. The suicide scene with Hannah Baker was damaging, triggering and completely unnecessary. It, in essence, showed every viewer, no matter how old, how to commit suicide. On top of just the idea of showing a suicide, they depicted one of the most successful ways to commit suicide by cutting in an upwards motion up the forearm. This can sever an artery which, without immediate medical attention, is completely irreversible. I am not claiming that this show has or will take lives, but it can validate the thoughts someone has when they are already battling with suicidal ideation (ie. “no one would care if I died”) (Henick). Before watching the scene where Hannah cuts her forearm in the bathtub, I had several friends warn me about how graphic it was. I mentally prepared myself in every way that I could before watching the scene. While watching, though, I was still incredibly triggered by how absolutely horrific the scene was. For this reason, I do not advise that those that have attempted or have had experience with suicidal ideation watch this show, or at least skip this scene.

What I am asking for is not to stop talking about these subjects. In fact, I would love for there to be bountiful information and plenty of conversation. I am not writing to end the discussion. I demand, however, that there be more honesty and truth in these conversations that take place, especially in mainstream medias. It is the responsibility of these creators to accurately depict mental illness and the right of the audience to get truthful information. Platforms like Netflix, where 13 Reasons Why aired, and Steam, an online video game distributor that sells games like Rise of Insanity (2018), need to be held accountable for the false information they are distributing to the world and are making money off of.

The movie I mentioned earlier but not by name, Split, directed by M. Night Shyamalan, is a major culprit of demonizing mental illness. Like many other movies depicting mental health in a violent and unreasonable way, only the rarest and most extreme cases make it to Hollywood. Shyamalan depicts Kevin, a man struggling with dissociative identity disorder, as an immediately violent and unstable person. While instability is, in fact, a characteristic of some mental illnesses it does not define the subject as depicted in the movie. Instability in conjunction with violence, in this case, creates an idea that both come hand in hand, one cannot exist without the other.

This reminds me of what Naomi Kondo was saying about starting to question one’s own personality based on a film portrayal. Schizophrenia and dissociative identity disorder are two very different illnesses to live with, but the sentiment remains. The way we portray mental illness not only affects those watching that have no further knowledge about mental illness but also those that do know and live with it every day. Kevin turns out to be a super villain added to a universe M. Night Shyamalan created in his movie Unbreakable. For fans of Unbreakable, this may be an exciting addition to a long anticipated sequel, but for those who suffer from dissociative identity disorder, this can be very damaging. In a CNN article written by Michael Nedelman, an interaction between a patient with DID and their psychiatrist is discussed (Nedelman). This patient wrote an email referring to Shyamalan’s Split asking “Do I ever scare you?” (Nedelman). With nearly 1% of the population living with this disorder (Nedelman) it is hard not to think about the long lasting impacts this could have on those currently suffering.

James McAvoy, the actor who played Kevin, did not speak with anyone suffering from the illness because he could not find anyone that was willing to speak with him (Nedelman). Perhaps getting a firsthand account from someone that suffers from DID would have influenced the way the lead actor would have felt about portraying such a disorder as inherently violent. Nedelman also mentions in his article that Shyamalan was in contact with a clinical psychologist who aired concern over the hostile portrayal of the disorder to Shyamalan himself and nothing was done (Nedelman). Shyamalan even went as far as to say that no one that had seen the finished film gave any form of backlash (Nedelman). As someone who has seen the film, and was compelled enough to write this essay, I would like to prove him wrong. I had several issues with the film that begin with my already mentioned dislike of the irresponsible portrayal of violence that is directly linked to Kevin’s illness. My next issue came when Kevin’s psychiatrist, in the movie, went as far to say that those that suffer from DID are actually superior to the rest of the human race. That they, somehow, have found a way to surpass a normal state of being. Many recognize this moment as Shyamalan’s attempt to reconcile his harsh portrayal of the disorder, but this is also problematic. Instead of villainizing Kevin’s illness like the rest of the film does, it glorifies it. It gives an equally false and damaging image of how we should view those with DID. Glorifying DID and other mental illnesses does not accurately portray the struggle these people live with every day. They cannot climb on walls and do not have super-human strength like the protagonist in the movie. It is not easy to live with a mental illness and describing it as a tool to transcend a natural state of being is ridiculous and minimizes how hard it can be on a day to day basis for those living with it.

John Squires, in an article for Bloody Disgusting, a website where opinion pieces, editorials and reviews for popular forms of media, finds no issue in the way DID is portrayed in Split. Squires does, very early, acknowledge his lack of authority based on the fact that he does not suffer from any form of mental illness and that his article is, in fact, opinion. Squires, similar to Shyamalan, claims that those that take issue with Split have never seen it. He believes that the glorification by the therapist, as I mentioned earlier, is a main reason why the movie is unproblematic. He states, “Those with D.I.D. are not ‘broken,’ Shyamalan is telling us, but rather ‘more than’ the rest of us” (Squire). In fact, this is Squire’s entire argument as to why Split is not the correct “target” when discussing stigmatizing Hollywood roles. This argument, however, is based on the assumption that the glorification of this mental illness is positive which is not true. While Squire may be well-versed in horror movies, he does not use any sources to support his opinion other than another writer for the same website that wrote a similar article. There are no references to articles or journals written by medical professionals or those that suffer from DID that support his claim. It’s hard for a reader to be convinced of an argument when there are no sources in an article that states, specifically, “Here’s Why…” (Squire).

13 Reasons Why, as a TV show, is alarming and should have been a wake up call to many in the U.S. about how we glorify depression and suicide. It is clear that Hannah Baker had serious mental health issues and her pain was dismissed. This is a sad truth that many teens deal with in high school. I will not sit here and say everything portrayed in 13 Reasons Why is not factual. The atmosphere of the high school is an extreme case, but it is a possibility and should not be dismissed. The issue I have with this show is the lack of emphasis on mental illness. Hannah displays signs of depression that I can self-identify with but the show glosses over them to focus on the bullying taking place in the series. It is important to acknowledge that a focus on the bullying aspect of the show is needed, however, the show focuses on little else. Nothing is mentioned about any mental illness and her suicide is almost entirely blamed on the bullying she undergoes.

“Blame” is something this show grapples with a lot. In fact, the entire story is based on Hannah giving out tapes, thirteen to be exact, detailing how the listener added to her decision to end her life. This is possibly the most dangerous aspect of the show, next to her suicide scene as we have already discussed. Suicide, in Hannah’s context, is used as revenge. She is able to pass the blame of her own decision to commit suicide off of herself and onto those that caused her verbal and physical abuse. This evokes an idea that there is some kind of life after death and that Hannah lived on in her tapes. This emulates some kind of retribution that can be had from the grave. Mark Henick describes this perfectly in an article for CNN, “They advance the false notion that suicides are a way to teach others a lesson, and that the deceased person will finally be understood and vindicated. They won’t. They’ll still be dead.” For those already contemplating suicide, this show could cause serious problems. The path that the series takes can be very sensitive to those that have survived attempted suicide and those that have lost others to suicide (Henick). As Henick says, which I wholeheartedly agree with, the show will not “give people the idea” to commit suicide but it could add to what he calls “suicide contagion” or “copycat suicides.”

The blaming of those who were included in the tapes creates a larger conversation about who is to “blame” for a suicide. An article that comes to terms with the ideas of blame in suicide notes in the Journal of Community and Applies Sociology states, “In particular, accounts serve the strategic purpose of avoiding or assigning blame for what happened” (McClelland 227). Blaming those around Hannah for her death is one of the most damaging concepts I have ever seen enacted on television. In the end, it was no one’s decision but Hannah’s to commit suicide and no one else should be blamed. Her suicide was not the direct result of just bullying; it had a lot more to do with severe and untreated mental illness. Instead of directing attention to this fact and promoting that teens with mental illness seek help, the show passes off her suicide as a choice others made for her. Each time I heard “Welcome to your tape” I physically felt pain for those that were about to hear why she blamed them. Also stated in the article, “those reasons which are used to excuse the author for committing suicide can be seen as legitimations of an act which is normally illegitimate. Suicide notes therefore serve as evidence of socially shared beliefs as to the conditions under which suicide is seen as an acceptable act” (McClelland 228). 13 Reasons Why tries to normalize and legitimize suicides when they are “acceptable.” Is it never acceptable to commit suicide. I would not characterize the act as “cowardly,” but I also think it is very damaging to look for reasons for the audience to accept the fact that Hannah’s suicide was warranted because of the injustices done to her.

What is possibly the most shocking aspect of this show is how proud the crew is of their depiction of Hannah’s suicide scene. Nic Sheff, in an article for Vanity Fair states that he wanted and argued for a complete and graphic depiction of the suicide in episode 13. Sheff is a writer for the show and had his own experience with addiction and suicide. In his article he detailed his attempted suicide and what ultimately stopped him from going through with it (Scheff). He had swallowed a whole bottle of pills before remembering the story of another woman who had attempted suicide in which she began vomiting blood and stomach acid and shattered a glass door, injuring herself even further (Scheff). The realization that suicide is never peaceful caused Sheff to rethink his action and was able to throw up the pills he had just taken (Sheff) which is what he credits this show will be able to do as well. Sheff’s story is very powerful and should be heard, however, the young adults and teenagers watching this show do not have a similar experience to make them rethink their actions in the same way. Sheff claimed he wanted “to dispel the myth of the quiet drifting off” that is commonly associated with suicide (Sheff) but that is exactly how Brian Yorkey, the writer of the thirteenth episode, portrayed Hannah’s suicide. After the initial pain of cutting her wrists, Hannah lays calmly in the bath, relieved, which completely discredits Sheff’s argument that this scene would dispel any myths about the serenity of suicide or provide a similar experience as the horrific attempted suicide Sheff mentioned. This show does little to address those in the audience that may misinterpret the “well-meaning” actions of those working on the show.

A few weeks ago, I was watching a gamer on youtube, John Wolfe, play a game made by an independent developer called Rise of Insanity. In this game, your main protagonist is a psychiatrist that works with patients suffering from schizophrenia and dissociative identity disorder. The game begins with a radio broadcast about a crazed man who murdered his entire family. John, jokingly, made an assumption that the protagonist was actually the murderer and that the family was his own (“Rise of…”). Sadly, his assumption was all too right and I shared in on his frustrations. The storyline continuously describes a patient that has become violent and has possibly killed an entire family. This is a common storyline that I have seen among independent developers, and some larger developers such as Konami, the creators of the Silent Hill franchise. The entire point of the plot relies on the fact that the main character is not only mentally ill, but also unstable and violent. The only times that the homicidal ideation of mental illness is brought up is when it is carried out. This is just not a correct representation of the norm.

On their own website, the developers, Red Limb Studio, claims that this game was “inspired by the greatest psychological horror movies” (Red Limb Studio). This was particularly alarming to me because it truly showcases my point: these depictions of mental illness bleed into other aspects of the media and into popular thought. Is it really “just a movie” if it inspires others to adapt and recreate the same storyline repeatedly? It creates a hive-mind that the only way to depict the horrors of mental illness is through violence. I do believe there are ways that mental illness can be accurately portrayed in a strictly horror-centric movie or game. Mental illness is very scary, especially for those living with it every day. It is scary to not be in control of your own emotions. There are so many video games, however, that rely on violence such as Outlast, Remothered: Tormented Fathers, Descent: Silence of Mind, Please, and many, many more.

I cannot simply say that all video games that feature mental illness are entirely problematic, though, so I will mention one that I believe did quite well. About a year ago, I played a video game called Alice: Madness Returns that follows the character of Alice from Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland. This game, in particular, really struck a chord with me because of its depiction of mental illness in context of trauma and memory. While I am not very fond of the title of the game, the word “madness” being one that provokes interest for the sake of insanity, a general money-making move, I feel the developing studio, Spicy Horse, attempted with great effort to create a game that did not villainize or glorify the force of mental illness and instead depicted the trying process of piecing a fractured memory back together.

In Christina Fawcett’s “American McGee’s Alice: Madness Returns and Traumatic Memory,” the true intentions of the game are discussed. As adjunct faculty in the Department of English at the University of Winnipeg, she has been researching the psychological and emotional representation of villains and monsters in video games (Fawcett). She discusses the problem with the therapy Alice is receiving in the game in which Dr. Brumpy focuses on repressing Alice’s memory which weakens her and leaves her vulnerable. The goal of the player is to piece her memory back together by finding fractured memories. Fawcett describes that this method is meant to “[restore] dissociated memories and return a sense of wholeness to the patient” (Fawcett 496). When I first began playing the game, I criticized this process because I felt it was too easy or concise. However, the developer was able to simulate the difficulty of the task by giving Alice side-quests that distract her from her main goal. Her path to recovery is not depicted as a linear, steady path.

This representation of memory trauma is what I hope to see more of in the future with other illnesses as well. The developers of the game never questioned how real Wonderland is to Alice. There is no expectation for Alice to remove herself from “silly fantasies” or discredit her experience. It also does not glorify her trauma as the closer she gets to remembering, the darker and harder the environment becomes to traverse. Wonderland is not a place where she can escape her trauma, she lives in it no matter where she goes, which is very characteristic of mental illness. As the game progresses Alice also becomes engrossed in more combat but this is characterized as part of the game as Alice is never described as violent and it is never linked to her illness. This refreshing take on how mental illness can be depicted in video games is something that is rare and highly valuable as a lesson to other developers.

These stigmas manifest themselves from our television and computer screens into our everyday lives. These stigmas as described by writers for the Graduate Institute of Professional Psychology, “are acquired gradually over a lifetime and that their roots are established in childhood” (Wahl). A very specific instance of this stigma infesting how we view those with mental illness is crime, specifically gun violence. According to a database article written for the Salem Press Encyclopedia, about 64% (1.2 million) of those in jail suffer from a mental illness (Saral). Whether or not their illness was related to the crime they were sentenced for was not included. According to the National Institute for Mental Health, 44.7 million Americans suffer from mental health issues (“Mental Illness…”). This means, that less than one percent (.02%) of those living with mental illness are serving a sentence in an American prison. Saral also states, “among crimes committed by those suffering from mental illness, only 7.5 percent could be associated directly with the symptoms of the illness as a causative factor” (Saral). This information came from a study conducted by the American Psychological Association. Despite these facts, “According to the University of Washington School of Social Work, public perception of mental illness as connected to violent and dangerous behavior has steadily increased, spurred by depictions in news media and entertainment sources” (Saral). This is an interesting assumption for Americans to make since only about 4% of the violent crimes committed in America are done by those diagnosed with a mental illness (Metzl).

There are and should be restrictions on gun ownership based on mental health. That is a necessary way to protect not just the community, but especially the mentally ill person. It is unfounded and truly damaging to claim, however, that gun violence is an issue of mental illness because, “growing evidence suggests that mass shootings represent statistical aberrations that reveal more about particularly horrible instances than they do about population-level events...basing gun crime---prevention efforts on the mental health histories of mass shooters risks building “common evidence” from “uncommon things” (Metzl). The general idea that mental illness causes gun violence and jumping to connections without finding clear evidence ignores contributors like substance abuse, domestic violence, availability of firearms, suicidality, social networks, economic stress, and other factors (Metzl). Mental illness is not a pathway to violence. In fact, according to an article written for the American Journal of Public Health, “nearly 1 in 10 adults has access to firearms and also has a problem with anger and impulsive aggressive behavior” (Metzl). This does not state that the 10% included in this statistic has a mental illness. As this article states, there is plenty of talk of the small population that commits acts of violence but little about the victimhood the mentally ill can face daily and, “blaming persons with mental disorders for gun crime overlooks the threats posed to society by a much larger population—the sane.” (Metzl). Based on my reading of Metzl’s article, there is a much higher chance of a mentally ill person being a victim than they are of being the perpetrator. So, to assume that gun violence is an issue of mental illness, is ignorant and not factual.

I ask that we stop having the gun violence debate as if it is centered solely around mental illness, and talk more about the causes within small communities that could attribute to this larger problem. The issue of gun violence is an ever growing and hot topic currently in the United States but is clouded by the use of false claims and financial gain. It is time to pay more attention to how we give back to our small communities to create a larger change for the safety of all Americans.

Acknowledgement

I have always been very passionate about how the mentally ill are depicted in movies and TV and this was an essay I have been wanting to write since the release of 13 Reasons Why. I want to acknowledge everyone working to break down stigmas about mental illness in their lives that inspire me to do the same. I would like to recognize the Brain & Behavior Research Foundation for their amazing work with connecting researchers to funding. I would also like to thank myself for having the ability and courage to recognize when the media gets it wrong even when their ratings are good.

Works Cited

Brian Yorkey, creator. 13 Reasons Why. Netflix, (2017). Accessed 5 March 2018.

Center for Disease Control. “5 Leading Causes of Death, United States - 2016.” National Center

for Injury Control, Center for Disease Control and Prevention, National Center for

Health Statistics, National Vital Statistics System, (2016).

https://webappa.cdc.gov/cgi-bin/broker.exe Accessed 30 March 2018.

Fawcett, C. (2016), “American McGee's Alice: Madness Returns and Traumatic Memory.”

Journal of Popular Culture, Vol.49, Iss.3 (p. 492-521). doi:10.1111/jpcu.12414 Accessed

15 March 2018.

Henick, M. “Why ‘13 Reasons Why’ Is Dangerous.” CNN, (2017).

https://www.cnn.com/2017/05/03/opinions/13-reasons-why-gets-it-wrong-henick-opinion

/index.html Accessed 28 February 2018.

Kondo, N. “Speaking Out: Mental Illness in Film.” Psychiatric Rehabilitation Journal, Vol.31,

No.3  Boston University, (2008).

http://web.b.ebscohost.com.proxy.emerson.edu/ehost/detail/detail?vid=1&sid=0ec0687c-

ee81-4a9b-85db-f3f17c7bbf8a%40sessionmgr104&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZQ

%3d%3d#AN=2008-00786-013&db=pdh Accessed 10 March 2018.

McClelland, L. et al. “A Last Defense: The Negotiation of Blame in Suicide Notes.” Journal of

Community and Applied Social Psychology, Vol.10, Iss.3, p.225-240, (2000).

http://proxy.emerson.edu/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&

db=aph&AN=11820052&site=eds-live Accessed 25 March 2018.

Metzl, J. PhD. et al. “Mental Illness, Mass Shootings and the Politics of American Firearms.”

American Journal of Public Health, Framing Health Matters, Vol.105, No.2, (2015)

https://ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/pdf/10.2105/AJPH.2014.302242 Accessed 8 April

2018.

National Institute for Mental Health. “Mental Illness…” National Institute for Mental Health,

(2017). https://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/statistics/mental-illness.shtml Accessed 1 April

2018.

Nedelman, M. “What Shyamalan’s ‘Split’ Gets Wrong About Dissociative Identity Disorder.”

CNN, (2017).

https://www.cnn.com/2017/01/23/health/shyamalan-split-movie-dissociative-identity-dis

order/index.html Accessed 15 March 2018.

Red Limb Studio. “Rise of Insanity” Red Limb Studio, (2018). http://redlimbstudio.com/roi.html

Accessed 25 March 2018.

“Rise of Insanity - You Won’t Believe the Twist!” YouTube, uploaded by John Wolfe, 8 March

2018. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HSnk3VxesYY Accessed 8 March 2018.

Saral, T. "Mental Illness and Crime." Salem Press Encyclopedia, 2014. EBSCOhost,

proxy.emerson.edu/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=ers

&AN=95342956&site=eds-live. Accessed 25 March 2018.

Split. Directed by M. Night Shyamalan, performance by James McAvoy, Blumhouse

Productions, (2016). Accessed 30 September 2016.

Nic Sheff. “13 Reasons Why Writer: Why We Didn’t Shy Away from Hannah’s Suicide.” Vanity

Fair, (2017).

https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2017/04/13-reasons-why-suicide-controversy-nic-

sheff-writer Acessed 22 March 2018.

Wahl, O. et al. “The Depiction of Mental Illness in Children’s Television Programs.” Journal of

Community Psychology, Vol.35, No.1, (2007). http://proxy.emerson.edu/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=edb&AN=23289239&site=eds-live Accessed 3 April 2018.

[katefathers]

Kate Watches: Doctor Who 9x10 & 9x11

The holidays are (long) over, which means I can now start wrapping up my Doctor Who Series 9 review. First on the docket are “Face the Raven” and “Heaven Sent”, the beginning and middle of what is essentially a three-part finale. As I spoiled myself long ago and know it deals with Time Lords and Gallifrey, it would be an understatement to say that I’m nervous.

Lord, beer me strength.

Part One of this finale is Sarah Dollard’s “Face the Raven”. I am thrilled that there are finally women writers on Doctor Who again, as we haven’t seen one since Series 4 way back in 2008. As a Doctor Who fan and as a writer, I find that not only infuriating but unbelievable. There are talented women writers out there, both seasoned screenwriters and novelists like Neil Gaiman, who I’m sure are incredibly willing to write for this show. They are out there. They have been out there. It shouldn’t have taken eight years to hire them. 

But I digress; Dollard brings us back to London and reintroduces Rigsy from Series 8. As we delve in to the episode’s mystery, we also see Ashildr again, this time as mayor of a hidden street populated by aliens. “Face the Raven” feels very much like urban fantasy with its Diagon Alley-style community, and I really enjoy it. While Doctor Who is ostensibly science fiction, it’s fun to watch it play with other genres, as we’ve seen in the past with episodes like “Tooth and Claw” and “The Shakespeare Code”. It’s also great to see Clara being inquisitive and taking the imitative, exercising her agency and making her own choices rather than waiting for the Doctor to solve the problem. The concept of death being “passed on” is interesting, and Rigsy’s graffiti on the TARDIS at the end is breathtaking. Overall, this is a decent episode.

But unfortunately, that’s all it is, and I can’t quite pinpoint why. Is it the acting? Although she’s only existed for a single series, Ashildr has become a complex character in the vein of the Doctor and Jack Harkness; they’re all people who are weighed down by the consequences of a long life. Sadly, I don’t think Maisie Williams is able to portray that complexity. She chooses to be cocky when she should be confident; she’s mildly annoyed when she should be bitterly angry. Jenna Coleman, who has turned in a moving performance in Victoria, is too calm and unnatural during Clara’s final monologue. She’s dying! There’s nothing the Doctor can do about it! She should be cycling through the stages of grief, first desperate for a way out, and then angry that the Doctor can’t provide one; she should be crying as she tells Rigsy that she doesn’t blame him and as she thinks of her father who she’s leaving behind. She should be letting out a wet, cynical laugh as she says “Well if Danny Pink can [die], so can I”. Clara’s sudden death should have been a visceral blow to the audience, but the acting fails it. Or is it not the acting, but the direction? Are these performances the result of choices the actors made, or are they the culmination of director or producer input? Or were these directions given in the script? From what is seen on screen it’s possible that in other hands the characters and dialogue could have been presented in a different way, but did Dollard write “calm” in to Clara’s monologue? Did she envision that Clara would meet her unexpected death with a stiff upper lip? Unlike with books where the decisions made are largely the responsibility of a single person, television is the reflection of the decisions of multiple people. Sometimes failures are clear, but sometimes the waters are far too muddied. Ultimately I think that’s the case with not only “Face the Raven”, but with a lot of episodes and characters in Moffat’s era. Which is a shame, because as I’ve outlined above, this episode could have been much stronger.

Part Two of this finale, “Heaven Sent”, picks up immediately where “Face the Raven” leaves off. Clara has died, leaving Rigsy and Ashildr to deal with it off-screen, while the Doctor is teleported to an uninhabited castle on an unnamed planet somewhere in the universe. We open with a voice over, a technique that Grey’s Anatomy completely destroyed any affection I had for it, and for the rest of the episode the only characters we encounter are the Doctor and a creature called The Veil. In a lot of ways this is Moffat’s art house episode; his experimentation with layered images and confusing narrative. It’s also an episode that bears a striking resemblance to his work on Sherlock, where he also played with similar ideas. Like Sherlock, the Doctor narrates his thought process. Like Sherlock, the Doctor retreats to a TARDIS version of the “mind palace”. Like in Sherlock there’s a big leap off a building and some slo-mo. While it’s a little different for Doctor Who, it’s nothing we haven’t seen from Moffat before, and if (as I have) you have watched both shows “Heaven Sent” feels repetitive rather than remarkable. There are also some familiar plot holes: The Veil is either slow moving or teleporting like a super saiyan depending on what suits the story, much like Jamie in “The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances”. Through the Doctor, Moffat establishes that “every room resets [in the castle]; every room reverts to its original condition”, yet he contradicts that a few minutes later, similar to his establishing of the Weeping Angels as stone creatures and then allowing them to be the metal Statue of Liberty. If the castle resets, how are the Doctor’s clothes still present by the fireplace? As there’s the assumption that the first Doctor to appear in that room also found a set of clothes (unless he left his behind and walked around naked), even if the clothes somehow became part of the reset, how did those first clothes appear? And if every room resets, including the one with the diamond wall (and we aren’t told otherwise), how is the Doctor able to break through it? By Moffat’s logic the first punch should have been erased and the wall returned to its unbroken condition every time, so it would have been impossible for the Doctor to break through it. Although these are familiar faults, they are incredibly distracting; the latter stands out starkly given how quickly Moffat contradicts his established rule. Everything that follows has less weight. All tension and gravitas is destroyed.

Moffat needs to take Time Travel 101.

There are some positives to this episode. Rachel Talalay’s directing is phenomenal; this episode is exquisitely shot. Murray Gold’s score is also fantastic, and reminds me a lot of Beethoven’s 7th Symphony. In fact, atmospherically, I’m reminded a lot of Tarsem Singh’s film The Fall, which uses Beethoven’s 7th as the main musical theme. There’s a similar warmth in the lighting, and slowness in the pacing, and a reveling in the beautiful angles of the scenery and actors. I also really enjoy the idea of the Doctor being tired of “winning”--tired of working and fighting and fixing every problem. I am all for exploring the consequences of a character’s actions and lifestyle, particularly in a story like Doctor Who where in its original incarnation it was more focused on immediate action. Russell T Davies’ series played with this a lot; we saw the consequences of the Doctor and Rose’s cavalier attitude towards danger, the consequences of the Doctor deposing Harriet Jones, and the various consequences of the Time War. I wish Moffat had focused on this theme more, instead of spending time on the “hybrid”, which was mentioned so infrequently over the course of this series that I didn’t care about it at all.

I also don’t care much for all the revelations the Doctor was supposed to have given during this episode. He left Gallifrey because he was scared. He’s the hybrid. Moffat frequently creates answers to questions no one cared to ask.

In the end, the Doctor breaks through the diamond wall and in to Gallifrey, thus taking us in to the next episode. Overall, “Heaven Sent” is a beautifully shot, and acted, and scored episode, and it is a stunning piece of television to watch. The story itself, however, drags and is bogged down with both poor time travel writing and an exploration of ideas that I don’t particularly care for. Moffat touches on ideas that he should dwell on, and dwells on things he should totally ignore. As for the return of Gallifrey and the Time Lords, there are dozens of ways they could have been brought back, thousands of ways the Doctor could have found them again. “Heaven Sent”, sadly, does not make Moffat’s chosen route more interesting.

[peanutdracolich]

Peanut Dracolich Watches: Doctor Terror’s House of Horrors (1965)

So this film is different. It’s an anthology of shorter tales, all with a Twilight Zone feel, or perhaps more Tales from the Crypt but I never watched much of the latter so my mind goes to Twilight Zone. Of course the 60s Twilight Zone (I haven’t seen the newer take save an episode or two) was a wonderful series and comparing something to it is not a bad thing. It is just worth noting that in many ways this changes the pacing and effect.

I also had horrible interruptions, so much that I stopped the film halfway and rewatched it the next morning. So the purity of effect was thus diluted. This hit hardest for the 3rd of the 5 tales, for it was both the low point of the film (I believe), and where I got to before I finally had to stop due to interruptions. As such I may be judging it unfairly, as it did not have the proper build up since on rewatching the intensity of the first two segments was reduced.

This is a film I would heavily suggest watching before reading the play by play, in part because the film was all around enjoyable. It was not a grotesque death filled slasher, it was not tense psychological horror, but it was a fun series of horror stories, which simultaneously made use of the advantages of cinematic presentation (sound, images, and acting) but kept the charm of a horror story that is so often lacking in a horror film; of course this is a warning as well, I typically watch horror films for a very different experience than a horror story and while this managed to combine the advantages of film with the nature of a classic horror story (well anthology) it is not the same sort of intensity and danger rush as a horror film. Whether this is good or bad is a matter of taste and the moment. I would say that it might be the film I enjoyed the most of the ones I have watched thus far, but that Vampyre with its nightmare shadow play is the better horror film, and for those normal experiences I desire from horror films I would turn to Prince of Darkness or Alien Covenant instead (or well Alien but that one I only partially watched this year).

The good, the bad, and the ugly and the play by play below the cut.

The Good:

The Acting: Although Peter Cushing really shines, the acting in all 5 of the anthology stories is good. Donald Sutherland gets a special mention, and Christopher Lee is a perennial favorite of mine. Still all the roles ranged from charming with minor mannerisms that added to Peter Cushing.

The Makeup on Peter Cushing: I would not have actually recognized the Grand Moff, time traveling Doctor Who, vampire slayer; he did a good job with an accent and affected personality, and a good job at the make up as well. All in all it was excellently done.

The First and Last Stories: Despite not having Christopher Lee, these two were probably the best tales. Little touches of foreshadowing, classic horror creatures done well, two excellent, short little horror stories and well worth watching on their own though the framing narrative does improve it, and all the stories would be worthwhile episodes of an anthology show.

The Overall Structure: They knew what they were doing with the ordering of tales, starting and ending strong, with a weaker middle which can be supported by the surrounding tales. Placing Lee in the 4th story both made wonderful use of his noble bearing (in the overarching narrative and story itself) and helped prop up what might have otherwise been a fairly average tale.

The Bad:

Predictability: Even on the first watching the stories are fairly predictable, everything foreshadowed well in advanced and the twists (when there are twists) while still quite enjoyable and satisfactory will not actually surprise. This is the worst thing about the film and still not that bad (if I were to rank the films of this month I’d currently place this one 2nd).

The Third Story: I’d say this was the weakest story in the bunch. Still worth watching on its own in a sort of horror story anthology show, but not as strong as the others. I think I’d have enjoyed it a fair bit more with a proper uninterrupted viewing experience, but more than the other 4 stories it relies upon the grip of terror from the other tales and in many ways its upbeat music (throughout most of it) squanders that grip.

The Ugly:

The Bat: Let it be known that the 60s could not make a convincing bat. It will shock and draw you out of the spell somewhat, and require the conscious decision to ignore the badly done bat.

The Plant Special Effects: Not as bad, but there’s a few scenes where it’s pretty bad. It’s the 60s so it’s to be expected and I can’t really hold it against the film, but it is to be mentioned.

The God-Forsaken Interruptions: This was just my personal viewing experience which forced me to rewatch the first two segments due to the sheer number of interruptions and internet failures I suffered.

And now for the Play by Play If you’re interested in watching the film, watch it first while it is highly predictable and nothing will surprise you by the time it happens, it does use twists that are more enjoyable seeing firsthand first (Why I don’t give this warning more... Because most of the films are better known, so that general cultural osmosis has already ruined the twists, or I found bad enough not to care, or I simply omit the Play by Play due to not wanting to give things away, here it is included because of my irritation at interruptions which might be enjoyable to someone)

We've got Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing. I do not expect a masterpiece, but I feel it will most likely be an enjoyable film.

Music in opening credits is suitably creepy, and we have a train station, and a train as well. Several men are getting on the train. One of them has immediate presence. Well actually several of them do. One of them I immediately note because Christopher Lee is a man with Presence with a capital p, but he's not the only one with stage presence that does not require a single word. Just the only one whose name I know and who makes me go Oooh Yay!

Still we've got 'man who plays with children's doll', 'man who makes me think of Shatner in his early Twilight Zone roles', 'man who whistles' (and tried to close the door on Christopher Lee), 'man with the death glare that scares the aforementioned' (Christopher Lee), and 'Man with the Winning Smile'. Lee still stands head and shoulders above them, but Winning Smile is likeable. The music changes and someone is given additional focus, the final member of our party; the Doctor... Terror that is.

And somehow this film makes me feel like I'm missing things if I take my eye off the screen for a moment. Even if it is just how people react to be gazed at by the Doctor. It makes them uncomfortable, even Christopher Lee raised an eyebrow though he was otherwise stoic. It was an expressive eyebrow.

We get a few establishing moments with Lee and the Doctor, using the rest of the cast as support to do so. The Doctor is a doctor of metaphysics, a field Lee calls nonsense; when he dropped his bag asleep everyone else immediately began to help pick it up, Lee did nothing; Lee recognizes the tarot, but seems to scorn it, the Doctor on the other hand is a devotee. It really actually establishes more than that, but pictures are worth a thousand words, and ephemeral impressions are hard to put into words.

The Doctor about how man's destiny is made of two parts natural and supernatural; his tarot deck can forewarn of the supernatural they are to experience in their life. It is his house of horrors. He explains how a reading works (4 cards to tell the future, 1 to tell how to change it if it is possible). Lee then calls it nonsense.

We then get to tarot reading, of man who made me think of Shatner. The Chariot. The High Priestess. The Moon. The Enchantress (though the card says La Force and its number is Strength). And we go to a story with !Shatner (he doesn't actually remind me that much of Shatner it was a brief momentary thing). He's an architect, and as I don't know his name he is now Mr. Brady. He sold his old house to someone who wants to alter the house and the rich widow wants his help altering it. We see some of the servants of the house, one of whom was a young girl when he left and is now quite the beauty and Mr Brady is attracted to.

We learn that the house was his family home.

Having been interrupted for long enough I decide just to restart the film and I must note that the make up artists and Cushing's voice work is good; I'd not recognize Grand Moff Van Who not knowing it was him (I'm not the best with actors in general, but he's one I've seen a lot), and even rewatching the scene it holds me just from the charm and the charisma of the actors.

Of course letting myself fall into the spell of the Doctor I find that when the story about the widow and the island begins it is a little lacking. It's not that the rest of the cast is bad. They've all shown a good bit of charm, it's just that they are not Christopher Lee... or really Peter Cushing (who does hold the scene with his charisma).

Also not being interrupted I must note that Valda (the girl who Mr Brady, actually Mr Dawson, thinks is pretty) gives Mr. Dawson a rather cold look that unsettles him.

But yes this is his family home which was in the family for centuries before he had to sell it. And with a well aged widow, he of course must flirt. We learn that she is in semi-seclusion in the Hebrides because of a breakdown at her husband's funeral, and intends to turn a portion of the house into a ballroom not for dancing, but to make a museum to display her husbands collections. There is a sound like a wolf's howl and Mr. Dawson goes to look into it, but sees nothing out of the windows and finds a locked cellar door. Valda makes a creepy appearance.

The next day the cellar key is missing, hidden by Valda it would appear. Though he gets the key from her grandfather, and Valda... creepily watches. And my fear of old cellars (I blame Evil Dead) rears its head when he enters the creepy old cellar and Valda watches. He immediately finds out someone has been reading too much Poe, for he finds a hollow wall and behind it a coffin, the cellar of a legendary werewolf who claimed the house was stolen from him by Dawson's ancestors. And the plaster is new.

Valda, who had been ominously watching moves away from the top of the stairs and Dawson and the old servant pull the coffin free and try to open it. Failing they go for tools and the werewolf opens it from within. And you know what I'm just gonna pull a foot up. Still the legendary werewolf is free and the men know it.

We get some nice scenes with the widow, and a letter from Valda telling Mr. Dawson she needs to see him. She's immediately found dead (or unconscious and bleeding) outside. There's a trail of (very fake) blood leading into the cellar; and like Kirk Dawson is half shirtless. Still while I mock the barechestedness of our hero, and the effects, the scene isn't bad. One must be willing to let their imagination play along with the 52 year old effects but it's well done.

While I was sidetracked thus, Dawson opened the coffin, found a wizened old corpse, gets his hand bloodied (though he soon seems to forget this), and decides that curse it all he'll melt the silver cross made from the silver sword that killed the werewolf into silver bullets. He takes vantage over the coffin, and finds that when it opens it is empty. The werewolf is attacking the widow. He rushes to save her... and I won't tell you the end.

It was a good, gripping story, a well done, short tale of terror which hit well and was all around well done. Putting me in mind of a Twilight Zone of Horror.

We see a bit more of ... I'm lagging behind the film too much, I'm stopping this because it's too intense to pause. Or at most I'm going to be vague at best.

The next story is set somewhere sunny; suburbia or the equivalent, and a story of a plant. A plant that screams in pain when attacked and resists cutting.

It has advantage of the fear, still extent, from the story before, that well done quick paced thing that packed more punch in 30 minutes than many have packed in their entirety and more per minute than most finales. At the same time it's got a high bar to overcome.

The family dog is investigating the plant and I'm scared. The family dog is dead and I'm sad.

The film defines bacteria as plants were they considered plants in the 60s? Fungus also is mentioned and lichen, before we get into your actual plants. Moss. Ferns. Flowering plants (no mention of conifers). And finally insectivorous plants. There's some really shoddy understanding of evolution here, but it's... I will buy in. An intelligent plant that defends itself and knows its enemies. A plant like that could take over the world. It sounds a bit silly but the film sells it well for the concept.

The plant has brain tissue in its leaves. And my wifi crashes stopping me from streaming. 15 or so minutes later I'm back but that means I have lost much of the build up and effect pulling back to the end of the first story. Still Christopher Lee helps blow the embers but it's definitely a dimmed effect.

Oh and here I get to say his cards: Fool, Magician, Hanged Man, and the Sun. The movie is doing its work to pull me in, but I no longer feel that clench at my heart, and my feet can be lowered once more.

Oh yes since it's not that sort of victim-killer film, I haven't talked about making people likeable so that you fear for them, but the film is good at it. Bill, the man with the doll, jokes with his wife, has a daughter, doesn't do anything asinine. Reacts to weird vine that is acting supernaturally, by contacting botanists (though it seems like he knows them). And the dog dies and with the foreknowledge and reduced grip it's less impactful. Also the brain tissue doesn't look the most brain-like.

That said I'm back where I was. The plant reaching for the botanist. The little girl not wanting to play outside without her faithful dog since it's just not fun without rusty. The plant grabs the man and begins to choke. His struggle could be more intense, it is rather minimalistic, but it works well enough. They call the head botanist for the plant has killed man.

This plant is murderously aware, almost psychic. It cuts the phone line to prevent calling for help. It attacks the man and suddenly has covered the house. It is something else. With the spell broken by RL circumstance it lacks effect, the silliness coming through more. The ordering was important, a strong foot first before a weaker second story, but even this story is a worthwhile episode of something like Tales of the Crypt. Then they realize it fears fire for "There's one thing that every sentient species is afraid of: fire. If something ever develops that isn't it could be the end of the world." Ironically man doesn't fear fire much. Still the botanist escapes. The story ends.

The effect of the story isn't enough on its own, and the ruined tempo hurts. And as I say that I am called and forced to interrupt again.

Still the Doctor presses the whistling man (a musician) to get his fortune told. Judgement, the World, the Tower, and the Devil. He makes a joke, but is told not to jest at the image of a god. For it is a powerful and malign god of voodoo.

Cut to an all white jazz band.

And I'm just gonna start fresh tomorrow and hope for less interruptions; the spell was too good to waste the film with this many souring it.

So I begin again with Dr. Terror's House of Horrors. Opening music is by now a familiar little bit of a chill. It is a nice little opening score, though not really horror except that you expect horror knowing it is. The opening is more Twilight Zone than anything horrific, though again that might just be Mr. Dawson's right side of his face reminding me of Shatner for some reason. The first true horror element is Christopher Lee's appearance, because he counts as horror on his own. I jest of course, while he has an intimidating presence, and uses it here, it's not in and of itself horror. Instead the first is the music that plays as Dr. Terror himself arrives, the way he wipes the fog from the door, the music as he looks about the men. It's not ill done, though it's some masterpiece. Still it is not jarringly hamfisted; this is just me watching the scene for the 4th time in 16 hours.

Pter Cushing has charisma here, a little touch of the classic story teller. It is enjoyable to watch. Lee's stuck up and stick up his krampus persona forms a good foil to Cushing's story teller.

Since he's explaining the tarot, I find it worth noting that for the first two stories (and I suspect the others) the 5th card is Death and he refuses to actually reveal it because it means the future cannot be changed; they will die. Yet Death is a card of change.

With the first story the symbolism of most of the cards is fairly clear. The High Priestess is the Widow, the Moon equates to the Werewolf, the Enchantress is indicative of that she is a witch, but also the battle with the beast. The Chariot... Well I forget its true meaning and its meaning in the story is more obscure than the rest. Maybe just that he'll arrive via a carriage upon the island.

And it leaves me wanting to know more about Valda's situation. We don't get to see how she is bewitched, though that is my suspicion. I am not saying this is a bad thing. The story as presented makes sense, the acting implies and foreshadows that she's a false lead. It's all well done, albeit a little predictable and on the rewatch it does suffer but that's rewatching something the next day it will suffer. Though the less predictable bits (while you can guess the widow is bad, it's harder to guess there's a werewolf tomb) are beautifully foreshadowed as well, the actress playing the widow doing quite a good job.

Still I would like to see Valda's story. Not here, but as a supplemental material. It could be an interesting tale.

Still on a rewatch the effect and horror is substantially subdued and plot holes become more apparent. I'm not going to point out things that only bother me because it's a rewatch, that's not fair to the film as they don't really tear apart the story. And even on a rewatch it works better than some films I've watched this month. Still it lacks the grip upon the heart, the chest squeezing grasp of terror. At the same time it's a child friendly fear. Something that you could watch with a kid and they'd enjoy and yet it'd not create the nightmare causing effects of something like Evil Dead or Phantasm.

Still we are to the beginning of the second story. The Fool is a journeyer, it represents his vacation, and the dog in the picture is his dog. The Magician is the botanist, the hanged man is the vine's method of killing, and the sun is what makes plants grow. For just picking Major Arcana it's a good choice of cards.

The second part is better for coming after the first, but with the reduced effect of a rewatch much of that is lost. It's just not enough to keep it up, but a breather is often needed (90 minutes of tension is too much after all).

Also I like scientists in stories like this. Where it is not a SCIENTIST HAS GONE MAD WITH POWER but science will protect us from the horrors that nature may spawn. And on the rewatch while his struggle is stiff and unmoving (like could be a fake person entirely), his hands are at least in place to try and prevent being choked, ad the vines have his arms. Still in a modern film he'd be futilely kicking. Also I like how the plant is smart enough to cut the phone lines. It's as if it has grown telepathic, able to sense ill-intent towards it and act upon such plans. Still the scientists boss from the ministry escaped, and learned its weakness. While the family may be doomed (as the Death card implies) the plant will be napalmed.

No it's the musician, and I note that as he taps he snaps his fingers creating a beat. It's a nice touch and gives the Doctor a way to know he's a musician, just like the doll told him the man had a daughter.

Still I wonder how much of these stories the people see. This is the one that feels the slowest start. The band practicing as they're told they're going to the West Indies, the music light and upbeat... growing even cheerful when they go to the West Indies and there's a song about how everybody's got love. I feel a lack that wouldn't have been there if I hadn't been interrupted the first time, the tension having bee lower so draining off much quicker.

The musician called Dambala a monster and the club goes quiet, death gazes all towards him. We get stories of the Voodoo dances, the wild half-naked dancing in the woods; and he's told not to go since it's a religious ceremony not a place to ogle chicks. He goes to secretly watch from the bushes, like a peeping tom staring at the.. women in ankle length skirts, and shirts that show some of their stomachs. Oh no, he's not watching the girls. He's stealing the notes of the song, like some musical Prometheus performing a sacrilege against their god by trying to turn his sacred music into a cheap musical trinket for the English.

He doesn't notice the men silently coming up behind him, standing there, watching him, until they carry him within. The priest is pissed at him having written down the sacred music, and is more pissed when the musician suggests going 50-50. Still these Voodoo worshipers are reasonable sorts. He warns that if he steals from Dambala, then Dambala will be avenged upon him. Don't piss off a vengeful god you foolish Brit.

He still intends to steal it when they get back to London, and as he mocks the god's ability to harm him, he topples backwards as the railing falls out from behind him.

The story is not too scary, the grip and intensity is weak, the music is upbeat, the end result is obvious. Still the musician is a charming thief, likeable even as he does things that are foolish and selfish, and the story is enjoyable. It is a shame the spell was broken last night.

Still the film makes a simple door with a loose hinge swinging back and forth creepy. Everyone ignores it, but the winds begin to pick up more and more as they play, and soon papers and flying. Before too long tables are threatening to rise, and lost in the music the musicians still play, no reaction from them. Trumpet wild and it ends and... the musician doesn't belief anything. You were in door when a windstorm struck; Biff what are you thinking.

Of course when he's alone, at night, and the wind is still stirring, he grows uneasy. When he bumps into a large black man he grows scared. When he trips over a trashcan and sees a poster with a monstrous face he grows lost in his own dread. When he almost gets hit by a car stepping out straight in front of it, he is panicked. It's so so.

Still it has gone quiet except for the occasional wind. The wind that is closing windows. Slamming doors. The lights going out at his apartment. It's a good, tense bit. And when he manages to get a light on, there is a voodoo practitioner in full make-up coming for him, an avatar perhaps of the god. He reaches for Biff as if to choke and the musician faints. Still vengeful or not Dambala is not an evil god, he merely takes the music and leaves; if Biff is dead then it was sheer terror. After all the fifth card is Death, and this time they catch out Dr. Terror's attempt to hide it.

He finally gets Christopher Lee to agree and there is no tapping. We begin with Lee mocking some modern art as an atrocity.

We get two ideals of art. 'Art is supposed to have meaning.' And 'Art is supposed to create a reaction from within'. Still Lee praises a chimp's painting, leading him to mockery.It was not just a chimp's painting but a fairly sorry painting in general.

The artist he had been mocking begins to haunt him, mocking him with the fact, driving the art critic deeper and deeper into a corner, till at last he decides to act. He runs the artist down with his car, hitting him, and cutting his arm off with a wheel. An act of mad vengeance... but the artist survives.

Still the guilt, or more fear of being caught out, eats at Lee's character, even as the loss of what made him who he was drives the artist to suicide. Shooting himself through the head. A final act we see from his point of view before the hand that was lost comes for Lee, crawling in his car towards him as he drives. He throws it from the car, shocked and horrified. And that grip that has been lacking is growing once more, my feet and ankles tingle, my chest seizes just a bit.

There comes a rapping upon Lee's chamber door a rapping that will not answer. Frightful he begins to open the door only to find no one there, shuddering afterwards at the terror he had felt. He's jumping at shadows, not realizing the hand is crawling towards him. It grasps his foot and he seizes up with terror for a moment before tossing it into the fire.

Still the event haunts and worries him. And charred but not destroyed the hand returns. The hand can bleed, but it is now out for his life. Still he throws it into a lake in a box to swim with the fishes.

His fear is not gone, but he feels the weight lifted. We do not and upon a... Well let's just say the end is satisfying. And the poetic justice is sweet. While I think the first story was best thus far, it was a good one.

And we get the fifth tail, the blonde, blue eyed man's, the man with the winning smile. The Empress, the Hermit, the Star, and the Lovers.

He's an American, a New Englander. He's marrying a French woman. It's a happy little scene, his new wife moving into the house, but the grip of fear like the artist's hand about the throat, still hangs about. Is he using a screwdriver as a can opener? I know it’s been done but that just seems to be a way to get.. He cuts himself in the process and her reaction to blood is strangely sensual, almost aroused or certainly hungry. After all she cleans his wound with kisses. If it hadn't been sunny I'd be fearing a vampire. That she turns into a bat at night and flies away does little to reassure me she is not one.

We see the morning where we learn that our protagonist of the tale is a doctor, along with one other doctor in town (Blake). His wife doesn't like Blake.

Apparently lacking blood is not anemia now. I'm pretty sure that's a top of anemia, a specific type, but still 'it's not anemia the quality isn't wrong it's the quantity' is dumb to me; though I am not expert on anemia. Still the boy has a vampire bite upon his throat, and Dr. Blake says if it were medieval times.

We get a nice, tense scene of Blake and the vampiress playing a bit of cat and mouse in the lab building, but the bat effect almost ruins it; it's a pretty average bat effect for the 60s but those were always bad.

Another day and the child's blood is drained a bit more, and Blake decides to sit by his window with a pistol, slamming it shut before the vampire and shooting the bat. She comes home with a bloody hands. Blake sharpens his stake, our good 'protagonist' (he's really not the protagonist but) says that Nicolle is his wife. He is wooden, tears in his eyes. He doesn't want this, he's near to breaking down.

Teary eyed he tells her that he loves her after she returns and goes to sleep, kisses her sleeping lips, and stakes her. The cops come and he claims Dr. Blake will confirm it. And then...

We do not see what doom is there for Dr. Terror, but we see his fifth card: Death. They conclude the train is going to crash, they pass through darkness and Dr. Terror vanishes. They slow down, having reached the end early, only to emerge from the train into a dark station in an other worldly realm. The train has crashed, they rode with the Grim Reaper, and now all five are dead.

[milliebobbybrownfan]

New Post has been published on Millie Bobby Brown Fan #MillieBobbyBrown #StrangerThings

New Post has been published on http://millie-bobby-brown.com/pressphotos-millie-for-parade-magazine/

Press/Photos: Millie for Parade Magazine

Netflix’s Stranger Things Serves Up Thrills and Chills in Season Two

Identical twin brothers Matt and Ross Duffer, the creators of the smash Netflix sci-fi horror series Stranger Things, grew up in North Carolina on a steady diet of pop culture—especially the stuff that was supposed to be off-limits.

Like scary movies.

“My babysitter in preschool told me the story of Freddy Krueger,” says Matt. “I was 4 years old! From then on, I just knew I had to watch A Nightmare on Elm Street. When we were young, we knew we weren’t supposed to be watching horror movies. That made the appeal of them so strong.

“It’s like forbidden fruit. You just want to taste it. I remember wandering into the horror section of the video store and just staring at the covers of these movies, feeling desperate to know what it was.”

“We fell in love,” says Ross.

The Duffers, now 33, have funneled much of their adolescent fascination with horror into their hit TV series. The spooky Stranger Things—which is less A Nightmare on Elm Street and more It—will stream all nine episodes of its second season on Netflix beginning October 27. (You can catch up on season one anytime on Netflix.) The first season was set in 1983—a year before the Duffers were born—and centered around a group of kids, the search for their vanished friend and the appearance of a psychokinetic girl. There was a monster, interdimensional paranormal forces and twisted laboratory experiments.

Part of the fun of the first season was meeting the young cast. Noah Schnapp, 13, plays Will Byers, whose disappearance spurred his friends Mike (Finn Wolfhard, 14), Lucas (Caleb McLaughlin, 16) and Dustin (Gaten Matarazzo, 15) into action. They aligned with a mysterious girl named Eleven (Millie Bobby Brown, 13) and confronted an alternative dimension, a dark, cold, forbidding place called the “Upside Down.”

Winona Ryder (Will’s mom), Matthew Modine (a research scientist) and David Harbour (their small town’s chief of police) received raves for their performances as the adults alongside the young actors. The entire cast won Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Drama Series at this year’s Screen Actors Guild Awards.

In season two, the ensemble is joined by Paul Reiser and Sean Astin. Sadie Sink, 15 (who played Annie on Broadway and appeared as one of the siblings in the movie The Glass Castle), will come aboard as Max, a tomboy, and Dacre Montgomery, 22 (from the movie Power Rangers), will portray her older stepbrother.

Shades of Spielberg Sharp-eyed fans have enjoyed finding nods in the show to many of the Duffers’ movie idols and influences—Steven Spielberg’s E.T. and Stephen King’s It, bits of DNA from The Goonies and Stand by Me, even shades of Ridley Scott’s Alien. The tone of the show, often pitch-black but laced with wicked humor, echoes director Wes Craven’s Scream, while the retro look of the show (and the music) recalls John Carpenter’s Halloween or The Thing.

“We had this idea of a kid getting pulled into a different dimension,” Matt says.

“There were a lot of real-life experiments going on at the tail-end of the ’70s and early ’80s. We thought if we set the show in that era, it would allow us to pay homage to those movies.”

Stranger Things is also a throwback to movies like Spielberg’s Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom and Joe Dante’s Gremlins, which were something of a rite of passage for braver kids—never going too far over the edge, but still offering plenty of thrills and chills.

“That’s what we really wanted,” says Ross. “Some of our most memorable experiences were those films. Those movies really affected us as kids, and not in a bad way. We really loved how dark they would get.”

And the Duffers—like many folks—have always loved to be scared.

“Fear is one of the strongest emotions,” says Matt. “It’s an incredible adrenaline rush.” Movies and TV shows, he says, are especially safe ways to experience fright without any serious consequences. “Part of your brain knows, ‘This is completely fine and safe.’ But when you’re in it, you get lost in it, completely immersed in it.”

Scary Things The show’s young cast members agree—sort of.

“People love the thrill of something dangerous if they know they’re safe,” says Schnapp.

McLaughlin disagrees, at least about movies. “I don’t watch scary movies,” he says. “I don’t like putting that in my head.”

“I love The Conjuring,” says Matarazzo. “I love Insidious. Those movies don’t scare me, though. What scares me are movies like Saving Private Ryan and Schindler’s List, where the human mind takes over in its most evil form and causes tragedy that could happen any day.”

“I think it’s all about the moment you get scared,” says Sink. “Then you laugh about it. It’s fun!”

Why do we laugh after we get scared, anyway?

“It’s a release of tension,” says Ross. “It’s a realization that you got terrified of make-believe; your brain is trying to tell you that. I think it’s a defense mechanism, a mask: You make fun of the thing that scared you. It’s a shield.”

The fact that the show’s young cast are the central players in the thick of all sorts of horrific goings-on is somewhat unique. The Duffers make sure the kid actors are treated as professionals even during the darker, creepier and scarier elements of the episodes they’re shooting, and they’re determined to make the kids authentic on the screen. “When I was little and watching movies like The Goonies and Stand by Me, I felt like I was watching myself on the screen. It never felt like adults writing kids; it felt like kids writing kids,” Ross says.“That’s our goal. We want it to feel like a bunch of 12-year-olds sat down at the keyboard, and we just organized it.”

The show is unusual in that the young cast is on set almost all of the time, Matt says. “We spend a lot of time with these kids. If I’m around them for 20 minutes, I forget I’m 33,” he says. “I think they think we’re kids too, which is great. Sometimes you have to remind them that it’s a serious job we’re doing, but for the most part I treat them like everybody else. I think reconnecting me to what it was like to be that age has done nothing but improve the show.”

This new season, promises Brown, will be “exceptional.”

Will Byers, who was trapped in the Upside Down through most of the first season, will take center stage. “We’re really excited for people to see what this kid [Schnapp] can do. He blew us away the way Millie [Eleven] did in season one,” says Ross.

And season two will get darker. “We want to push that line, and for these kids to feel like they’re really in danger,” Ross says. “We wanted to treat this like a movie sequel, and up the ante in the way that our favorite movie sequels did so well.”

“Last year, we were more like normal kids. But now that these things have happened, we’re a little different,” Wolfhard, who also starred in the recent remake of It, hints. “We’re always sort of on edge.”

And so are we—counting the days until Stranger Things can scare us all over again. – Source

2017: Parade Magazine 2017: Photo Session #022

[ninetyfivepercentdantomasik]

10 Cloverfield Lane

JJ Abrams is a great filmmaker on the rise. Actually, when do we agree that someone is no longer “on the rise” and has “made it”? JJ Abrams’ work speaks for itself. Cloverfield, Lost, Super 8, Star Trek, now Star Wars; the guy is a great SciFi filmmaker. With one kinda glaring weakness; endings. I love some of his movies so much, he’s like my teenage Steven Spielberg. The movies are fun, they’re exciting, they’re intense, they’re cool, they’re creative, they are a blast to watch. The ending is.... errr, ehhh, ugh......

How can so much of a movie be great, but once it ends, it all just kinda morphs to “meh” in your mind? It’s one scene, or one element, how can it drag a whole fun experience down? It just can. Lost fans still remember the day their series was killed by its own creator, and they are still furious over it. How many years did that show go for? How beloved was it? How many shows did it inspire that couldn’t even come close to its awesomness? How bad was that ending? Truthfully, I’d give it like a 4 out of 10. Not the worst ending I’ve heard by a long shot, but definitely not good. But I didn’t watch the series so that opinion doesn’t mean squat to the hordes of fans who felt it was The Great Betrayal.

Got a taste of this with Super 8, one of the most fun kid SciFi flicks in many a year. I love the kids, I love the setup, I love the adventure, I love the thrills, I love every second of this film until the end. The alien, who looks f***ing awesome, is just kinda.... meh. The last shot with him flying off is just sorta underwhelming, none of the events taking place during his “rampage” are really explained, how something so big manages to move around without being seen by anyone is a mystery, and it all just seems to close off too fast and too easily. Which pisses me off because as I said at the beginning of this paragraph, I loved every part of the film up to that. Any number of shots or ideas or cool twists from that movie could inspire kids for decades to come, so why can’t I just get over that ending? Honestly, it’s the same for Star Wars. He gives us the Star Wars movie we’ve always dreamed of, with the bar set so friggin’ high by some of the world’s most rabid fans so that no respectable director would dare take the challenge, he meets that bar, a whole new world is opened up; but that ending, man. Blowing up the Death Planet. It just, it doesn’t do it. This movie was going into so much cool new territory and then it just settled for the old ending we already know. Why does that continue to upset me?

10 Cloverfield Lane may just be the movie that breaks JJ Abrams bad record. A stripped-down, bare bones sequel to his found footage kaiju movie with a whole new cast and almost no mention of the events from the first movie, and seeing where it goes from there. More movies like this need to be made! It’s back-to-basics filmmaking and it’s hugely enjoyable to see! And you know what? It has a strong ending! Maybe because this time it didn’t try and settle everything from before, but continued to venture on into the future! Maybe JJ Abrams best ending is due to the fact that it’s not an ending, but a new beginning. I want to build from here! Doubt I’m the only one, too.

Three strangers trapped in an underground bunker following an apocalypse. It feels like an episode of The Twilight Zone in all the best ways, but it still has that high-quality JJ Abrams feel to all of its elements. The constant feeling of nervousness around certain characters, the nagging questions of who, why, and how that permeate every conversation, and the gears in your brain constantly turning as you try and figure out what’s the best move to make from here. Brilliant. Brilliant in its simplicity. I really wish we had more movies like this and not just $100+ million blockbuster after $100+ million blockbuster. This is like a high-end festival flick only a small group of people get to see because it could never get into theaters nationwide against the competition it has to face. Because none of them have JJ Abrams, the Master of Intrigue. He’s like a modern-day Alfred Hitchcock in the way he sells his projects while giving away almost nothing about the movie itself. He sells the mystery and he sells the what-if. And that’s what fills the theaters.

Highlights include Mary Elizabeth Winstead, wonderful under-appreciated talent. Loved her in The Thing prequel, loved her in Live Free or Die Hard, and loving her in Brain Dead. Her characters are sharp-witted and tough, hiding a great degree of tenacity behind a pretty face. These little moments she can offer, little exchanges or looks she can pass, they can scare you. She keeps busy, but for some reason other people don’t seem to remember her. Their loss. Maybe it’s that “girl next door” quality that makes people underestimate her as an actress, but the girl has teeth and this is a perfect showing of all her strengths. It’s also a great opportunity to see John Goodman in a very different, very intimidating role. A mysterious, not quite stable man who brings Mary Elizabeth Winstead’s character into his bunker after her car is run off the road, he keeps you at the edge of your seat for every second he’s on screen. There’s something not right about him, but just because he’s crazy doesn’t mean he’s wrong. The question that plagues the mind is always what is truth, what is fiction, and what comes next. We get montages of a new sort of life with these people, including a lot of “making-do” fun, but always with those sinister undertones peeking out to remind us of the danger just beyond the door.

It’s great science fiction.