#and that overall approach did a lot I feel for the series tone

[daydreamerdrew]

The Bill Everett Archives vol. 1, reprinting a story from Amazing Mystery Funnies (1938) #3a

[mockerycrow]

UNDERCOVER VII (Soap x GN!Reader)

undercover series masterlist — previous | next

summary: taking a break from telling your experiences, Soap and you spend the day together. He takes you from your room as to allow you to see more. Unfortunately for the both of you, Soap didn't bother to inform anyone of this decision. 3.8k words.

a/n: HELLO!!! YES!!! you are not imagining things! chapter seven is FINALLY out. i went on two separate impromptu hiatuses and i am going on another one at the end of this month until around november, so i wanted to get this out for y’all. i appreciate all of y’all’s patience. i love you guys. during this flashback/ptsd attack, bolted italics are present when characters are speaking russian. [THIS DOES NOT FOLLOW REBOOT MW CANON.]

[WARNINGS; light fluff(!!!), ptsd, death/suicide ideation, angst, hospital setting, death and gore, reader is not a good person morally, military inaccuracies, overall TRIGGER WARNING.]

“Who has not asked himself at some time or other: am I a monster or is this what it means to be a person?” ��� Clarice Lispector.

Lucky for me, my internal request about being left alone was granted. I skipped a meal, despite the worried glare of the main nurse taking care of me. I’m sure they wanted to put the feeding tube back into my throat—they surely looked like it. Or was that the look of genuine worry? Did I forget what it looked like? When I woke up this morning, they certainly made sure I got some food in me. I appreciate the nurses and the doctors and their efforts in taking care of me. I recognize I cannot be an easy patient by any means; whether that means the paperwork, the security… My behavior? I applaud them.

I wish I could get them a gift or something. Maybe once I’m out of their care. Is that weird?

I’ve always woken up pretty early—courtesy of Makarov’s strange routines—so when I woke up and didn’t see Soap by my side, I wasn’t too surprised. He probably has drills and routines of his own. Woke up, ate breakfast which looked absolutely immaculate, however I’m in a very weird.. flux right now. I’m not sure how to exactly describe it, but the food looked great but felt like flavorless blobs. Perhaps my tastebuds are deceiving me, or what they gave me was just pure shit. Hm.

Before he left last night, Soap assured me today was a rest day. I couldn’t help myself, but I winced at his statement. It probably wasn’t for my benefit, but for theirs. Any information I have can be a lot of paperwork, a lot of.. Meetings, I guess. I don’t know. I’m bitter, but I’m grateful for the break. 

By the time 0900 rolled around, Soap strolled into my room. Fucker had the brightest smile on his face, his lip curling just enough to expose his gum around his right upper canine. “Back on babysitting duty?” I ask, my tone flatter than usual. Soap chuckles, his boots clicking against the waxed tile as he approaches my bedside. My eyes scan his attire; dark grey t-shirt, tucked into a dark grey pair of cargo pants and regular boots. Belt, holster with the gun. Huh, surprising. My eyes glance back up at his face as Soap spoke.

“Don’ be like that, aye? Ye don’t hafta think of it like that.” Soap insists, his hand grabbing my shoulder, gently might I add. I huff—his touch burns until he removes his hand. “Look, I’m sure ye don’t want t’be held in here all day. I have an idea.” He proposes with a twinkle in his eyes. I raise an eyebrow, unable to disguise how intrigued I actually am. “Oh?” I ask, my voice low like earlier. There’s a funny feeling in my stomach. Soap throws his thumb over his shoulder, pointing to the stationary wheelchair that’s remained in the corner since last night. “Why don’t we take a walk?” 

My lip curls for a moment, my eyes darting between him and the wheelchair. “You mean ‘wheel around’?” I raise an eyebrow, poking fun at him. Soap lets out a tsk and shakes his head. “Haud yer wheesht.” Soap utters before turning around, crouching down to unlock the wheels of the wheelchair. “Jokes on you, I dunno what that means.” I reply snarkily, unable to keep the smile out of my voice. “It means ‘shut up’.” He replies as if he’s gracing me with great information.

I roll my eyes, cautiously pushing the blankets down off of my legs. I wince for a moment and Soap’s legs as well as the wheelchair come into view as I get myself settled. “I’ll wheel ya, you just need t’hold the.. The fuckin’ IV thing.” Soap mutters, gesturing to the IV pole. “Soap.” I say, my tone flat.

He looks back at me with his big blue eyes—all innocent like. Fucker. “It’s a pole to hold IV bags on. So, what is it called?” I ask him like he’s a child, my tone high pitched and overly nice. Soap’s face tints pink and taps the wheelchair with his foot, pulling at the collar of his shirt. “You have an attitude, might I say.” Soap lets out a nervous laugh; he’s embarrassed and nothing is making me happier than this moment right now. I grunt as I allow Soap to help me into the wheelchair. My legs happen to be fine, but my stomach and ribs are still quite tender and sore.

“It’s called an IV pole, Soap.”

“Jesus Christ, I know.”

I hate to admit it, but Soap is a pretty good babysitter. I don’t think many people would willingly take me out of my room and help me get some fresh air, at least not like this. We’ve gone a couple of laps around the ward I’m allowed to roam and in a way, I’m appreciative of him allowing me to grasp more of the area I’m in. I wonder if he’s ever been in my position, or has known someone to be in a similar position? Bedbound, anxious? …Paranoid?

I wonder.

I’m snapped out of my thoughts as I hear a light beep from my right. I turn my head to where my IV pole, the little electronic box attached to it is lit up. “Hm?” Soap hums, his eyes trailing to where I’m looking. He grabs the pole and spins it towards himself, eyes scanning over the screen. Soap’s lips part for a second in understanding, but my eyes stay on the scar hidden underneath his mess of stubble. “Jus’ administerin’ more painkillers. It’s on a timer.”

I force myself to look away with a nod. I nearly slip back into my thoughts when I feel Soap begin to pull the wheelchair backwards. My eyes widen and I quickly grab the IV pole to drag along. I twist my head to face him the best I can despite the screw in my jaw. “Where are we going? My room’s just down the hall.” I question, turning my head, watching the door get smaller in size. Soap hums, turning the wheelchair around to push to where he was pulling it. He doesn’t answer me.

My fingers twitch around the IV pole and I quickly stop myself. Stop. Soap would’ve hurt me already if he wanted to. He has a pistol in the holster against his hip right on his belt. If he were to wish to hurt me, he would’ve already spilled my brains. Shut the fuck up.

Like you spilled hers?

What?

I blink, a beat passes, and we’re in a different hallway. One I haven’t seen before. “Soap..?” I ask louder, my heart fluttering in my chest. I’m getting nervous. Soap bends down to my ear; I can feel the wheelchair adjust under the added weight on the handles. “S’alright, just goin’ to take a longer walk. New areas, fresher air.” Soap murmurs, his breath brushing against my ear. I let out a harsh breath as he stood up straight, and.. And that fucker is humming. “Is this even allowed?” I ask, my voice quiet as my eyes dart around.

Soap lets out a laugh, slowing down a bit with his walking. “Does it matter? I’ve done much worse, this is nothin’.” 

“I don’t want to get in trouble,” I protest, but my protests are clearly weak because the bastard continues to push me down the hall. Soap lets out an amused chuckle, one of his hands coming down on my shoulder, squeezing it through my hospital gown. I flinch a bit as I didn’t expect him to touch me. “Ye’ll be fine. I’ll take the fall if it comes down to it.” His touch was gentle.

I go to argue with him again because it’s likely that it wouldn't work and wouldn’t matter, but I decide against it. Only then does his hand return to the other handle of the wheelchair. 

That’s one thing I’ve noticed about men like Soap. They’re much more touchy than you would think they would be. Most folks think that military men would have an aversion to touch, they think that these men are the epitome of their versions of masculinity. Men like Soap, though? They have no problems giving each other a hug, have no quarrels giving each other a forehead bump with each other. Hell, when you’re stuck in the middle of a blizzard, you don’t get choices; you huddle and cuddle, or you fucking die.

Soap’s touch, though.. His hand was heavy, big. Radiating heat like a portable heater through my hospital gown. It makes me wonder if his teammates are the same? They’re all in one task force, they must have seen some shit together, been through shit together. Hm. 

Soap could’ve survived the harsh winters I had been through due to him. 

Maybe. Maybe not.

I shouldn’t keep thinking of him right now, not when I don’t have to, but he won’t fucking leave my brain. I can almost hear his voice sometimes and it’s absolutely nauseating. I can’t say that I was the closest to him, but I was pretty damn up there in his ranks. I was always a go-to for a multitude of things. Things I no longer wish to fucking remember. Maybe he should’ve ended me right now. Maybe I should’ve finished the job when I got the chance.

His men were kind of touchy which was never surprising to me. Being under harsh conditions together, relying on each other to keep the other safe? It creates a bond like no other. They tended to be touchy with me in due time, too. I’m not sure how I was able to handle it for so long. Every brush of their hands on my shoulders, every shoulder and elbow bump, it felt like hot irons painfully maiming my skin, branding me for everything I’ve done.

He was touchy at times, too. It made me wanna vomit. 

..Well, now it does. At the moment, though, not really. Which just.. Makes everything worse. One part of me wishes I refused the assignment. I truly fucking feel like I should’ve. Now he’s everywhere in my life, invading the parts he was never supposed to be in. It’s not like I exactly expected this assignment to go incredibly smoothly, no. That’s quite frankly really fucking stupid to do, but I at least expected this to be smoother than it has been. Perhaps that’s been my flaw this entire time, I’m not sure. 

With him, you can never know. That’s one thing that I had to learn pretty damn quick. If you thought you knew what his plans were, you better backtrack five steps and rethink it all because you are definitely not on the right track. I guess that’s one thing I can give him; he’s always been intelligent, so much so to an annoying degree. With every report I gave, it felt like everything I was finding out was contradictory to my previous report. Even now, is the information I’m giving the 141 accurate? 

I’m not even sure anymore, not after the fact that he left me alive in that warehouse. I seriously doubt he left me alive for a reason. He’s the one who’s always put two in the head to make sure the person was dead. That’s perhaps the singular good thing he ever taught me.

I feel those leathers hands on my shoulders in my dreams.

There’s a touch on my shoulder and I jolt out of my thoughts, jerking my shoulder away, causing a lightning bolt of pain to pulse through my arm. I hiss, my hand grabbing my shoulder. “Shit,” Soap’s voice filters through my ears, and it does little to calm my pounding heart. When did it start pumping this hard..? “Are ye alrigh’? Didnae mean to startle you.” 

Fucking hell.

My hand is on my chest, feeling the desperate pound underneath. I realize I haven’t answered him and I give him a little nod. “Just startled me, is all.” I croak out. It takes me a second to look around, to get my bearings. “Was worried for a sec, was talkin’ an’ ya didn’t respond. Couldn’t tell if you were spaced out or ignorin’ me.” Soap jests. We’re still in a hallway, but possibly a different wing?--- The hallway of my ward had a long red strip in the middle of the wall, following the hallway. The stripe on this wall is yellow. I need to focus and pay attention, Jesus Christ. 

“Was thinking,” I utter. “Sorry.”

“About?” Soap begins to push the wheelchair again; my fingers twitch around the IV pole. How am I supposed to explain that? Do I lie? Do I tell the truth? 

How am I supposed to tell him I was thinking about him?

“Just..” I begin, my lip twitching as I rack my brain for an excuse. “I had a—”

“OI!”

I flinch at the booming voice from down the hall, jolting so hard in my wheelchair it scoots forward a bit. My free hand instinctively forms into a fist as suddenly, it was an empty hall and now I’m back in a fucking warehouse with a pistol in my hands. The, the fucking smell of the warehouse burns my nose, the concrete floor caked in blood and somebody’s organs—looks like a kidney, honestly. I don’t fucking know, what the fuck is happening? My hand is shaking; my finger is still on the trigger. My hand is vibrating. I pulled it, didn’t I? I glance forwards where the puddle is and there’s two bodies. I don’t.. I don’t remember their names, but fucking hell. 

“Don’t fret over them. They lived and died like the dogs they were.”

‘They were fucking human beings! They had lives, fucking friends and family, aspirations! Don’t tell me who and what to not fret over, you fucking freak!’ I try to scream at him—he’s behind me. My mouth opens and it’s moving, but nothing is leaving. I cough and choke, dropping the pistol, which rattles against the ground with a clank. My throat is tight and I reach for it, my eyebrows furrowed. I pull my fingers back and they’re slick and hot with my blood.

Fuck. FUCK. 

I blink; he stands in front of me, holding the pistol. His fucking.. Leather gloves, holding the grip, his finger hovering over the trigger. Am I dreaming? 

Please fucking tell me I’m dreaming.

The gun is aimed at my head and my hands naturally raise upwards—fuck, I can’t stop shaking! Cold sweat drips down my temple—he aims at my stomach and the pistol fires, so loud that my ears ring. I flinch, and I feel horrible bile bubble up in my throat as fierce, hot pain lights up my stomach. I try to talk but that vomit decides to bubble and hurl out of my mouth. I bend over, my eyes filling with hot tears.

It hurts—it hurts so fucking bad and none of this makes sense. 

It fucking burns.

I blink—and I gasp, and suddenly I’m back in the hospital. My vision is blurring, I’m laying down on something—it hurts, it hurts it hurts it hurts—

“I know it does, I know.” A deep voice says. Soap? 

..M–

No, it’s Soap. Soap.

It isn’t him.

There’s hands on my wrists, holding them down at my sides as someone wraps something around my head, something bumping against my nostrils. I feel vomit bubble out of my mouth and—then it’s dark.

I’m not sure how long I’ve been out, but my head fucking hurts. And so does my stomach.. And my back… and my jaw. Along with everything else.

I feel myself laying on a plush surface; there’s some soft beeping present, too. My throat aches and I find it hard to open my eyes. It takes a few minutes, definitely. Once I’m able to open my eyes, I squint to adjust my eyes to the room. The familiar room comes into focus with the red stripe in the room; it’s dark, it’s night-time. My hand comes up to my face, feeling an oxygen tube on my nose. I groan softly and I try to move my other hand, but something is restricting it..?

Don’t tell me.

I lift my head and I look down. My heart drops, seeing one of my wrists shackled back to the railing of the hospital bed via handcuffs. I swallow some spit that accumulated in my mouth before letting my head drop back down onto the pillow. It did nothing to soothe the ache in my throat. “Fuck.” I croak out. Of course—I lose privileges. For something that wasn’t my fault.

I’m alone.

Moments like these make me wish I could retreat into my mind and hide like I did when I was in that warehouse, or when I had committed violent crimes for him. I could blink one moment and I would be in a different room. There’s probably a lot that I don’t remember—I’m not sure how my recounts will be useful. Maybe it’s because when it comes to Makarov, it’s not like he’ll be subjected to an international court.

If they get their hands on the monster, they’ll kill him. Torture him, maybe. I don’t know. Nobody follows rules all of the time, that’s for sure.

I hear the hospital door swing open and my eyes immediately flicker over to it—I see Soap walk in with two plates of food. His eyes glance over to me and he lights up for a moment before he looks a bit somber. “Hey, you’re awake.” Soap utters; his voice is a special type of soft. Guilt, probably. “Yeah.” I respond quietly, my handcuffed hand twitching a bit. He walks over and grabs the rolling over-bed tray, carefully rolling it over my lower body. My eyes track his movements as he does. Soap sets the plate down before clicking a button on my bed, slowly sitting up the head of it.

I glance down at the food. I’m definitely hungry, but I’m not sure how much I’ll be able to hold down. I wince, the pain jaw aching from the angle change. “Sorry.” Soap murmurs, his own plate of food in one hand, the other reaching back to drag a chair closer to my bed. I just hum, closing my eyes for a moment in an attempt to calm the throbbing in my jaw. My eyes open after a moment and I look at the food once more. Definitely more appetizing now, and I notice Soap only got light foods, stuff you can hold down with an upset stomach.

“I’m sorry,” Soap utters, leaning closer, picking at his food. I look at him, seeing how his brow is furrowed and he’s kind of pouting. My lip twitches from the display. He looks up from his plate to me, lifting his plastic fork to dig it into the fat of his lower frowning lip. “You were right, y’know? Handcuffed ‘cause of me.” He mumbles, letting out a sigh. He seems genuinely apologetic, and a bit guilty for what happened earlier. 

“Partially my fault,” I respond, trying to minimize the movement of my jaw. “Had a little freak out. I don’t do so well with yelling, it seems.”

“So you say.” Soap immediately quips before he sinks down a little. “Too much?”

“Just a bit.”

He nods in response, eating a little piece of overly cooked steak. “Got it.” Soap chews it and swallows it, eyeing me. “Not eatin’, hm? Pain?”

I let out a tense sigh and I mutter a quick, “yeah”. Without missing a beat, Soap leans over and clicks the nurse button in order for a nurse to come to my room. “Bit weird, I thought it was on a dispensary timer.” He responds, but gives a shrug. His eyes scan my face, which causes me to look away for a moment because his eye contact is, I don’t know. It’s bothering me right now. “Do ye want t’talk about what happened?” Soap questions. I can hear food in his mouth.

Do I want to talk about what happened? Would it be for the record?

“I don’t know.” I respond honestly. “I barely remember it.” That isn’t exactly a lie. “It makes me feel like I’m losing it if I do.”

I glance at Soap and he takes a moment to process my words, chewing whatever's stuffed into his mouth from his plate. “Everybody has their demons, [name],” Soap murmurs, his voice deep and gritty. His words hold a heavy weight to them, and I feel a metaphorical weight on my chest for a second. “There’s no shame.”

I let out a huff. “I’m not the first, and I won’t be the last, huh?” I mumble. “Aye.” Soap responds. He goes to speak once more, but a nurse, the one from the beginning, walks in with a concerned face. “What’s wrong?” He asks, his voice tight. I swallow hard. “My, uh, jaw.. Everything else, it all hurts.” I try to explain, trying to keep my voice steady but there’s an uncomfortable croak to it.

I watch the nurse walk over to the IV pole and fiddle with the lines. I then close my eyes and lay my head back against the pillow properly, the nausea kind of getting to me. I have this uncomfortable, empty feeling in my belly and it’s almost anxiety inducing. Maybe it’s from anxiety in general. I don't know. 

How do you recover from something like this? Do I deserve to recover from something like this? After everything that I’ve done in the name for the “greater good”, something both my handler and Makarov told me.. Two sides to the same coin. Was all of the bloodshed and death worth it? 

Was any of it worth it?

Maybe this is something I’ll be thinking about until I die. Hell, I really did think I would die before coming back here. I thought maybe one day I would slip up on a random loyalty test Makarov would administer and he would be done with me right then and there. I wonder if dying then would’ve been better? Oh, I slipped up and failed my mission, I wouldn’t have to be here to suffer the consequences.

Maybe that’s why I am still here. To suffer any consequence of what I’ve contributed to, and done. I wonder if they will still see use, or value in me once they get the information they need from me. Will they discard me like a toy so easily just as Makarov had? Breaking someone is easy, but it depends on how good someone is able to put the pieces back together. I’m certainly broken, even though I don’t want to think about it.

But will they be able to put the pieces back together?

..Will I?

The pain in my jaw eases as well as my ribs and stomach. I think I can eat now.

🏷️; @hardnutpost @glitterypirateduck @elowynnlane @boycigs @wolfyland07 @escapefromrealitysm @tapioca-marzipan @cj-theyoungling @fullmoon-94 @gothgirl6-6-6 @thriving-n-jiving @paniniii @calloumii @the-spartan-himself @bi-witch-bxtch @dammn-dean @jinxxangel13 @meimhem @hannathetrololol-blog @kool-aidd @aliendous @roarndoodles @supernaturalstilinski @blob-11 @cumbermovels @jisungfanpage @mysteriouslydeafeningwerewolf @p3achfairy @darling006 @nyushkawritesstuff @pepsicolacoochie

this is my undercover series taglist. if you wish to be tagged, let me know. if you are wrongfully tagged or no longer want to be, let me know! absolutely no hard feelings.

[tkachuktkaching]

Matthew Tkachuk returns to Edmonton as Public Enemy No. 1

Tkachuk spent the first six seasons of this NHL career with the Calgary Flames, combating in the Battle of Alberta, the decades-spanning rivalry in which the Flames and the Edmonton Oilers would bludgeon each other to the delight of neighboring fan bases. It's a feud that stands next to any geographic rivalry in sports based on its championship prestige, Hall of Fame talent and unwavering vitriol.

Tkachuk remembers those rivalry games well.

"I guess I know them more than probably most guys by playing in Calgary," Tkachuk said. "But we just had the one playoff series against them that they won, and played a bunch in the regular season. There's a lot of different guys over there now."

Calgary traded Tkachuk to the Panthers two years ago. He has returned to Edmonton twice since.

"I know last year I was booed every time I touched the puck. This year there was nothing, so I have no idea this time," he said.

How close did Tkachuk come to becoming an Oiler? Four years ago, he told TSN Radio that they appeared ready to draft him before Dubois went to Columbus.

"During the draft, on the draft floor, it was kind of a weird moment where some people at the Edmonton table -- you could ask them, they would probably deny it -- but they're kind of staring me down and kind of giving me some smiles. The only people that saw it were me and my mom. So we're like, 'All right, we're going to Edmonton,'" he said. "Then Pierre-Luc Dubois went third overall, and the phone started to ring like crazy at the Edmonton table. They threw the jersey under the table and it looked like they stripped off a name and gave it to Puljujarvi with the next pick."

Tkachuk was drafted sixth overall by the Flames. The rest is (alternate) history.

TKACHUK SAID HE HAD "kind of like a Christmas Eve feeling" before the Stanley Cup Final, giddy with anticipation for trying to win the Cup after the Panthers lost in the championship round last season to the Vegas Golden Knights.

When asked about the Oilers, there was no trash talk, no bulletin board material.

"They're a great team. Finally got to watch some of their games against Dallas, since we were playing every other night. It was good to watch their games," he said. "They played really well and ultimately deserved to win the West. It should make for a great final."

After Florida went up 2-0 in the series with its Game 2 victory, Tkachuk was asked if the Oilers were rattled.

Again, he deferred.

"No, I don't think so. It's just sometimes the way it goes," he said, before leaving the media scrum.

The story of Matthew Tkachuk vs. the Edmonton Oilers is also a story of a young, brash superstar at the apex of his brashness who says he's a much different player today. Tkachuk speaks with pride about what he perceives to be the Panthers' maturity as a team and his own discipline on the ice, in contrast with how he'd played in the Battle of Alberta, for example.

"I'd say that used to be a part of my game. Now it's pretty nonexistent," he said. "I've kind of learned what works, and what works is playing as hard as I can for 30 to 45 seconds -- well, sometimes I take the long shift, so 30 seconds to a minute. There's no need to waste your time doing extra stuff."

Panthers coach Paul Maurice has cited the 26-year-old Tkachuk's maturity throughout the season, starting with how he approached this campaign after Florida's stunning run to the Stanley Cup Final last season.

Maurice said Tkachuk was part of the leadership group that got the Panthers locked in to their defensive game this season, which was a byproduct of missing Aaron Ekblad and Brandon Montour at the start of 2023-24 after surgeries. He said Tkachuk's attitude from the start of training camp help set the efficient, business-like tone of Florida's approach.

"Last year, I think we were just kind of riding the wave," Tkachuk said before the conference finals. "Going into this, we know what it's going to take to ultimately come out on top."

Tkachuk is tied with Aleksander Barkov with 19 points to lead all Panthers scorers. He hasn't had the soaring moments as regularly as he did last playoff run.

But Maurice is confident that Tkachuk is still capable of them.

"His game is better. He's more disciplined. He's matured with this group over two years. I think he's ... primed," the coach said. "I would never bet against him coming up with some heroics, but it's certainly not the only thing we have to expect now when we come to the rink from him."

Article taken from espn.com I Photos : Getty Images

[nerdyfan1]

Fairy Odd Parents and Mean Spiritedness

Pasted over a mini Discord essay thingy cus I think I had a good point here lol

Actually something else that I guess I can talk about is an opinion I’ve seen floating around is “A New Wish is so much better, it’s less mean spirited” and like even as someone who was kind of mixed on the original I want to like defend it there. Especially since I think it’s only half true. The mean spiritedness was in concept supposed to have purpose here. Which is good. Just because something is mean doesn’t make it bad. I should know my favorite show like ever is The Amazing World of Gumball. There definitely a lot of times where I agree it was too mean. The first example that came to mind is “It’s A Wishful Life”. An episode that fundumenltally misses the point of this by basically hammering in that Timmy was right in thinking that everyone be better off if he wasn’t born. Yet overall before the season rot hit the balancing act was handled really well.

Now we can look at A New Wish. Yes this show is definitely not as mean. That’s because thematically it wouldn’t make sense given Hazel’s character. Hazel didn’t have a life where she’s constantly being beaten down. She’s more a girl struggling to adapt to her environment. Like that’s what Dev’s character is here for (which I’ll get to later). If Hazel’s episodes treated her like the original did with Timmy it be overkill. It also wouldn’t make any sense. Wouldn’t the story narratively want to make the new town more inviting? As I said Hazel’s conflict is about her growing to learn to love her new home. So the tone is reflecting that.

Leading me to Dev cus this is where I start my argument against the idea that A New Wish isn’t mean spirited at all. A better way to phase it is it isn’t *as* mean spirited as the original. A New Wish can be incredibly mean to Dev. My first example the scene where Cosmo pretends to be Dale in Peace of Pizza. Heck you can argue any of his scenes with his dad are mean spirited too. Yet that’s not a bad thing cus it has a purpose. It’s to establish Dev is miserable and needed a fairy. It also comes up a lot in his story to far especially in OBTB. It also explains his behavior in the beginning of the season.

Just like the original the mean spiritedness here has a narrative purpose. It also nicely ties it back to core idea of the franchise itself. Fairies are supposed to be here to help miserable kids or kids who need help. You know like a life coach basically. Dev’s character takes the idea of the main idea of the franchise and runs with it. Cus yeah realistically there are some horribly miserable kids who are gonna be maybe a lot more troubled than others. I can’t really say as much as where exactly they’ll take it cus there still going and we’ll have to see where Dev’s character takes the idea of a more serious even kind tragic take on the original concept of the franchise. However it’s so clear from what we’re shown they plan to try a very different approach with this boy. This show establishes Dev so well too. Both letting the audience get attached while establishing him as a person and showing how in reality his life is miserable. And he keeps the main spirit of that concept while still letting us keep a more different feeling main character then Timmy.

Dev is here to keep with the main idea of FOP conceptually while Hazel is here to give us something more different and let this series take episodes in a different approach the og show couldn’t really do with Timmy. I actually appreciate Hazel’s character for this reason.

[oddygaul]

Zenless Zone Zero

Well, I’ve been playing the shit out of this game, so fair warning, there will be significant brainrot ahead.

Overall, I really dig it. I’m a huge mark for character action games, and well-done life sims tend to suck me in; Zenless Zone Zero is nailing both those aspects pretty damn well. In fact, it’s nailing them well enough that… how do I put this… it starts to slip into the territory of being A Good Game Generally, rather than just a gacha. And while this is a big accomplishment for ZZZ, this also puts it into direct conversation with other full-price games, resulting in its gacha elements causing more friction than Honkai Star Rail’s ever did*.

*I’ll be comparing this to HSR a lot, because I play way too much of both and they’re made by the same developer. I recognize that it is pretty odd and potentially even problematic to A / B compare them when I could be looking at the game through the lens of, you know, Gaming At Large. But hey, that’s why this is a subjective journal and not a holistic review blog! It is what it is.

So, the aesthetic of this game fuckin rules - it’s like, late 90s to early 2000s VHS-core. The main characters run a Blockbuster, for Christ’s sake. Presentation-wise (and systems-wise, and, hell, music-wise), ZZZ is obviously borrowing a lot from the Persona series, but like… great? I’d love it if more things cribbed that style and made it their own, from the confidant hangouts, to the small but comfy explorable areas, to the dynamic menus with edgy character poses. The character design itself is all superb, all the way down to the crowd NPCs - some the shopkeepers here have cooler designs than the main characters of some other games. Even aside from the designs, ZZZ is doing a lot with lighting and color desaturation that really lends it its own unique vibe. They actually have a cohesive artstyle in here! wild.

The presentation of the story is also killer. Sure, a decent chunk of the conversations are just models lip-flapping at each other - although they at least emote and pose a bit here, unlike the Star Rail dialogue scenes with their demure princess waves. In the main story, though, we get not only a heap of fairly lengthy cutscenes, but also this really cool comic panel-style presentation.

I feel like there was a bit of a trend in the PS3/360 era of games to present a game’s story in this comic panel / storyboard style. I understood the motivation: games increasingly demanded a more involved, consistent storytelling approach, rather than the ‘One big rendered cutscene at the beginning and end’ they used to get away with, and the generation’s increased visual fidelity meant that doing even basic, in-engine cutscenes took a lot more resources to make something half-decent. In Spyro the Dragon on PS1 you could get away with a fun little 15-second gag with a barely animated polygonal yeti or whatever; in the PS3 era, you were going up against tryhards like Metal Gear Solid 4. Amidst this landscape, the pitch of having your illustrators pretty up some storyboards and put them in the game sounds like it’d save a lot of work - plus, consoles were finally outputting a high enough resolution that this sort of flat image wouldn’t be compressed to hell.

Thing is, I always kinda hated that approach. In some cases, I think that’s the popular opinion - I fuckin love Bayonetta, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone defend its weird slideshow cutscenes. Even in games where the execution is perfectly fine, though, it rubbed me the wrong way. I think of Infamous - objectively, the art’s solid and fits the tone of the game, and the motion graphics aim to capture some of the dynamism typical cutscenes would provide. Despite all that, it still feels cheap to me - all of the panning, effects, and graphic imagery feel like they’re trying to polish up something that inherently doesn’t fit.

In ZZZ, though, I’m loving every one I come across. It’s obviously still done for efficiency reasons - there’s already a handful of characters that exist only in these panel scenes, saving the team the effort of having to model and rig them. But the freedom this allows for staging and storytelling is huge; the characters are more expressive here than anywhere else in the game, and we’re able to see situations with huge crowds and new locales much more often than would be possible in typical cinematics. And the illustrations are genuinely good, too - full of character, cool poses and creative compositions/angles.

if everything actually had to be modeled, there's no way we would've gotten Legally Blonde Nicole

Plus, the cutscenes are constant, and boy do I love the animation here. It feels so rare nowadays for a high-budget game to do stylized 3D animation of this ilk. Your biggest budget games are all going for the cinematic look, and pushing realism as much as they can - and while I know an immense amount of work and craft goes into animating something like The Last of Us, boy, I just could not care less about something so lacking in flair*. Even bigger properties that use a stylized artstyle these days, like Breath of the Wild, still tend to lean towards fairly naturalistic animation. Zenless Zone Zero’s cutscenes, on the other hand, spin and stretch motherfuckers around like we’re back on the PS2, are filled with forced perspective, and I am absolutely living for it. It’s not even reserved only for bombastic action scenes, either - we get honest to god character acting-focused conversation cutscenes.

*Seriously, take me back to the Naughty Dog that animated Jak & Daxter. Jak’s hero animation is top tier to this day

Of course, the combat animation slaps too; each of the playable agents is absolutely dripping with character. Even characters whose designs initially left me cold won me over once I saw the amount of care put into their movement and combo strings. It’s honestly shocking to me that this is the same studio that made Genshin Impact, a game I dropped after about 2 hours because of how lifeless all the animation felt*. Unique run cycles for every character, actual non-human designs, the flourishes everyone has when stopping mid-combo to snap them back to idle, the absolute synergistic audiovisual bliss of the parry… it’s really impressive stuff from a young team.

*Same studio in name only, totally different team, I know, but still

Mechanically, I have some mixed feelings about the combat as a whole. Zenless Zone Zero is, without a doubt, aiming to present complexity and depth as a team battler - that is to say, it’s more about team synergy, tag combos, and knowing who to use when, rather than soloing as any particular character. Nonetheless, I really would’ve appreciated individual characters having a bit more depth to their movesets; a jump, a launcher, cancels, anything. As outstanding as all the animation work is, there’s some characters that only have a normal attack string on square and one special attack on triangle. Like, sub-Dynasty Warriors level of complexity here. It’s rough.

This is where ZZZ’s gacha nature gets a bit ugly: so far, more complex kits and skill expression are mostly locked behind rarity, which is kind of scummy. In Star Rail, for the most part, 4-star characters are defined as such due to their numbers: they still have mechanics and complexity, they just aren’t tuned as high as the limited characters. Hell, in some cases they have more complexity. Ruan Mei is an almost incomparably stronger unit than Asta, but Ruan Mei’s play pattern is fucking boring: you use skill every three turns when it runs out. Asta, meanwhile, basically has her own risk & reward minigame that demands more thoughtful SP management.

In ZZZ, on the other hand, the lower-rank characters straight up have less going on in their kits. Nicole has like… one tech, sorta. Anby has one single animation cancel to chain her normal into her special quicker. Lucy’s only skill expression is choosing whether to tap special or hold special. Meanwhile, Zhu Yuan, a limited character, has a normal string that bounces between melee and ranged attacks, can be dodge-canceled at any point in the combo to branch into variations of the string, and a hold-normal attack string that’s completely different and has the same branching dodge-cancel tech.

It’s one thing to lock raw damage and meta viability behind a gacha, but locking the characters that are mechanically more interesting to play straight up sucks. If I hadn’t been lucky enough on the standard banner to pull exactly the two characters I find the most mechanically satisfying, I don’t know that I’d still be playing - and this is the point where ZZZ begs comparison to other, non-live service character action games. Sure, it’s probably not fair to compare a random A-rank’s moveset to Devil May Cry V’s iteration of Dante, a feature-creeped nightmare of a kit 3 console generations in the making. But what about Sengoku Basara Sumeragi, my personal character-action GOAT? By all accounts a mid-budget title, yet it offers 40 full characters chock-full of more unique mechanics and animation cancels than you can shake a stick at.

Fuck, can we please get a new Sengoku Basara? Please? I’m desperate out here. I’ll take anything, y’all.

There’s also the inherent issue that plagues every action RPG (usually deftly avoided by the character action genre), which is the delicate balance of player success depending on the numbers vs actual mechanical skill - a balancing act made even more noticeable due to the gacha genre-standard of characters taking weeks of grinding to level up. This is a topic for another day, but suffice to say, a big part of the reason Honkai Star Rail works for me as a very pretty version of Cookie Clicker is because of the Autoplay option. In Zenless Zone Zero, if you’re not willing to grind out the same mob fight for a week or two, you’re gonna hit an endgame roadblock of doing chip damage to a boss you’ve mechanically mastered because you’re underleveled, and boy, that never feels good.

For all those issues stemming from the gacha, I will say, it’s great that the story missions let you use the characters that are actually supposed to be present for those missions, even if you don’t own them. Aside from how nice it is to have an opportunity to put the whole roster through their paces, it goes a long way for actually getting invested in the story. Honkai Star Rail’s storytelling is a hot mess for many reasons, but it’s always particularly jarring rolling up to a sidequest at like, a local theater troupe with a wanted space criminal, the sitting president of a completely different planet, a ten year old child, and a shirtless cyborg cowboy, none of whom have canonically met each other; ZZZ’s approach sidesteps this issue. The proxy angle even provides a pretty valid diegetic explanation for why agents that don’t know each other might be working together.

Now that we’ve sort of meandered back to the story after talking about animation led us on a long detour - the story is surprisingly solid. In particular, I really appreciate how straightforward the writing is. I don’t know if the issue lies with the original text or the localization, but Star Rail’s dialogue, even in simple missions, tends to be incredibly meandering and overstuffed; ZZZ is a lot better about letting all its characters talk like actual humans. It also helps that the plot so far is a lot more grounded, and spends more time focusing on each faction’s group dynamics rather than the overarching plot. These games live and die by their characters, so leaning into those strengths is a smart move.

Zenless Zone Zero is, unfortunately, fully in line with Hoyo’s weird conservative politics - in particular, 1.0 and 1.1 are absolutely stuffed full of copaganda. With how many safety regulation jokes they made at the construction company, I initially hoped they’d lampoon the police faction a bit, or make a commentary on how comically heavily armed New Eridu’s police force are. In a vacuum, Zhu Yuan shouting combat lines like “Stop resisting!” or “Freeze, hands up!” while blasting someone with her gigantic, ‘JUSTICE’-emblazoned rocket launcher shotgun feels like it ought to be satire. Every time we talk to the officers, though, it’s just line after line about their solemn duty to protect the people of the city, how essential and important they are for the community, and so on and so on.

This wholehearted embrace of the world’s current power structure is something Zenless Zone Zero approaches in nearly the exact same way as Star Rail. In both games, your playable character is someone that’s sort of operating outside the law - in Star Rail, as the maverick organization that is the Astral Express, while in ZZZ you work as an illegal proxy. Despite this setup, any time the protagonists come into contact with a governing body, they are no less than thrilled to help them enforce the will of the law.

In Star Rail, you aid the local governments (one of which is an undemocratic monarchy) in committing massive cover-ups to hide their failures from the populace not once but twice. In ZZZ, you aid the police to an obsequious degree - playing along with them to not arouse suspicion is one thing, but helping them organize a fucking community day on Sixth Street? Fuck that. Hell, said community day is even shown to initially be DOA because none of the local residents trust the police - and you best believe we get two full scenes of the MCs changing the resident’s minds, resulting in them spouting shit about “Oh, it was our fault for judging the police too harshly - they really do have our best interests at heart!”

is it tho

There’s an argument to be made that the N.E.P.S. are a little different, given that they exist in a post-apocalyptic world with monsters popping up every day - and ZZZ’s copaganda is certainly a little less flagrant than something like Spider-Man helping the NYPD install civilian surveillance networks in Insomniac’s Spider-Man. And, sure, perhaps this can help excuse why they post fully armored, rifle-wielding soldiers in the Lumina Square DMV, and provides some justification that their existence is more helpful than the real world’s civilian-murdering property guards.

Thing is, though, at every turn you’re hit with dialogue and situations which make it clear that, no, they’re the normal cops. Every other sidequest seems to involve calling the N.E.P.S. in on somebody or helping with an investigation, and for every time we see them handle ethereal activity, there’s two instances of them being called in for petty property theft or something similarly minor - even the playable character has heaps of dialogue choices threatening to call the police on someone*. Much like Star Rail’s reactionary politics were strangely at odds with the ‘blazing a new path’ ideals of the trailblaze, Zenless Zone Zero’s obsession with the police puts a damper on its underground, counterculture aesthetic.

*Including a case where both options threatened this, leaving me without a non-narc dialogue choice.

illustration by Lv01KOKUEN

And finally… I don’t know where to fit this in, so I guess it just goes in its own little section at the end here. Lots of people, myself included, have touched on the Persona inspirations - and they’re certainly significant. One thing I’m surprised I haven’t seen anyone mention as a huge influence is Yasuhiro Nightow’s Kekkai Sensen / Blood Blockade Battlefront. From its sense of style to its worldbuilding, ZZZ damn near feels like fanfic to me. Hell, it’s right in the name - BBB? ZZZ? And this is on top of the dimensional crossover / big city vibe, the retro fashion, the different factions. Victoria Housekeeping might as well be Libra 2.0 - Von Lycaon is a damn near perfect 50/50 expy of Klaus and Stephen Starphase. And then Belle / Wise, who assist these powerful fighters in a noncombat role just like Leo, also turn out to have some sort of special magical eyes granted to them by untold powers from within the dimensional rift??

I’m here for it, don’t get me wrong - love Nightow. But that can’t be coincidence, right?

[desertfangs]

I feel for people just getting into the books lol. But I agree and I think it's fair to ignore Merrick since Anne also ended up disregarding it herself. I remember during the book tour for The Wolf Gift, Anne did an Q&A talk, she said she didn't consider Merrick, Blackwood Farm, or Blood Canticle canon by the time she began writing Prince Lestat.

Which I found confusing because she mentioned Quinn in Prince Lestat, but she felt that just because the character exists doesn't mean the events that unfolded are canon. Which I found more confusing. I also recall Anne saying (maybe in the same interview maybe in a different one?) she tried to merge her witches and vampires together, but she never felt like she managed to reach the right tone. Which I do agree with.

Oh anon!! I also feel for people just getting into the books! In some ways, it's probably nice to just binge the books back to back and not wait years wondering (like after MtD came out and it was like... Is Armand really dead?????? Where is Daniel???) but also a lot gets shifted or retconned and it must be jarring to go from one to the other with the discrepancies and changes so apparent.

For me, I feel like canon has always been sort of nebulous. Like you can just pick the things you like, you maybe explain away the things you don't (Armand was TOTES lying when he said he sold most of Night Island! 😒), and you can also just sort of ignore stuff if it doesn't really work for you. But that said, I also totally get the desire to be as true to canon as possible and trying to reconcile all of it the best you can, which is a total valid approach as well! I do think canon has a lot of little unexplored nuggets and things to unpack and try to figure out. It's like the crossword puzzle of book series which is part of why I think it has so much staying power for me personally. There's a lot left off the page to explore or explain or try to work out.

It's so interesting to hear she didn't consider Merrick or Blackwood Farm canon anymore!! I don't think I'd heard that, although I am not surprised about Blood Canticle, that book feels like a failed experiment and I agree it did not succeed as a VC/Mayfairs crossover. I think the Talamasca's existence and maybe Quinn was enough of a crossover, tbh, I don't know anything more was needed. (Granted, what I remember about BC is Lestat being in the midst of a manic episode and Rowan being involved, and that's pretty much it.) I do recall she was trying to build up to some war with the Talamasca and I guess that never really came together.

Prince Lestat definitely felt like more of a return to form and trying to get all of the vampires in one place and even wrap up some loose ends from previous books and tell us where everyone ended up. Well almost everyone. I agree it's funny Quinn gets a mention.

As for Merrick, I'm sure there's some interesting stuff in there, at least about Louis, but I've never been able to convince myself to reread it. I do like the implication that he and Armand came together after the events of that book and he moved in Trinity Gate because of shared trauma over suicide attempts, and that they found some healing with each other. But overall, it wasn't a book I enjoyed.

Thank you for sharing, anon!! This is really good stuff! Also LMAO thank you for reminding me The Wolf Gift exists. That book was a wild ride for sure! 💖

[pants-magic-pants]

✧⊹JARETH BALLROOM COAT⊹✧

[This post is part of a series about constructing Jareth’s entire masquerade ball costume. Visit the master post here.]

Making the Buttons [Post 1 of 2] - This post is an explanation of the process. - Post 2 is a video.

The buttons were the very first thing I made, once enough pretty shiny materials had been collected. They were so much fun. They weren't hard, it just took a bit of time and attention to detail. With that, let's get to it...

The coat has two in front and two in the back. Here are two different photos, the first from Aria Couture and the second from Yosa Addiss.

You’ll see that they’ve suffered some damage through the years, and as of now there are no high definition close-ups of them, so that we can really look and discern what might have been there back when everything was intact. One of the front ones is gone!

What I did notice was a general warmth and multidimensional sort of coloring about them, which is why my approach involved layers. A lot of aspects of this costume don’t present themselves as definitively colored; there’s always a two-toned or iridescent quality to them. For that reason, I built everything on top of a layer of copper flakes. It gave the buttons the warmth they needed despite that the rest of what is seen within them is cool-toned. 

There are the blue, spherical cabochons lining the outside; spherical, not angular. Within them, there is seemingly a mix of silver/metallic beads, and “crystals” that may have been anything from blue, to green, to yellow. Hard to say. This part comes down to the individual!

Does this diagram make sense and it is necessary? Probably not.

My choice was to do alternating silver and transparent grey beads, and then pool the center with hot glue and sea glass shards that were left over from the breaking down process. Since making the video of the replica, I did start to feel that less vs. more looked better for the glass, so I pruned a few pieces out of my buttons. I like them overall, but they need to be secured really well, and there was/is still a risk of shards popping out. It is a delicate costume. 

Next, we need to discuss the actual button bases. This was tricky. The whole thing is going to be covered, so they can’t be stitched on in the normal way, as there’s no outlet for the needle. You might be thinking a shank button would be good, since they are flat with protruding holes underneath:

BUT there's so much stuff that needs to go on them, they would definitely end up drooping. My solution to this problem was to buy flat just run-of-the-mill 4-hole buttons that were stapled onto cardboard, and remove the cardboard with the staples still attached. Then tighten the staples so that my needle could juuuuust get through. 

How do you like these puppies?!

Attaching them wasn’t too hard. I held the button a little bit away from the coat, brought my needle to the inside interfacing, and poked it out where the button should go, then brought the needle underneath the staple, then back into the coat, etc. etc. making 5-10 loops before pulling the thread and drawing up the button against the coat. Then, the needle was brought through the inside and knotted tightly into the interfacing, almost exactly where it had begun. 

Yayyyy buttons.

Because these were so delicate, they were almost the last thing added to the coat. They had to go on before the lining was closed, obviously, so that’s the only reason they came before the glue shenanigans. Glue shenanigans were all top switched once the coat didn’t need to be handled or laid down anymore. 

So... there it is. Some of this felt redundant but then I remember that there are new people visiting my blog, and I want things to be easy for them.

----------------☆--------☆---------------

[nightly-valkyrie]

'In the Shadow of Sierpinski' post ACT-1 writer's rambles

Forgive me, I'm so brain-rotted about my own fic that I can't help but talk about it even down to the design decisions and process of writing?

Mostly to cover some influences, inspirations, reasonings, and concepts I wanted to carry on into the narrative as it developed from early drafts into what was posted in the fic. Most spoilers for the fic and the game will be kept to below the cut:

Influences & Inspirations :)

>So of course a big influence on the fic was Signalis itself, I could talk on and on about what I did and didn't want to expand on for the purpose of the fic. However, for the sake of brevity I will be kinda short for this part at least. The melding of technology to this point of advancement well beyond what humanity is capable of today, and yet seemingly also stuck in the past is such an appealing look. An almost 'Alien' movie approach that really makes it stick out. That was a feeling I wanted to capture, not just because of a desire to stay faithful to the source material, but also because of my own affections for the cyberpunk genre which 'Signalis' also seems to share a love for. I will get into this later though. One of the biggest tones I wanted to carry over was this glazing over of some of the more dystopian aspects the game carries, Rose Engine leaves a lot of hints toward the state of the in game governments, its beliefs, and its inspirations (East Germany etc...). What they don't do though is ever quite dwell on a lot of the implications the notes and dialogues carry. It was, that, which I wanted to emulate. I tried to make clear in the text many things, but leave what exactly that implication is up to the reader to determine. I hesitate to mention these moments because I really do feel like they're better noticed on your own.

>Another really big inspiration this fic had, and I'll keep this next one shorter, is the cyberpunk genre. The idea of human robots, retro-futuristic technology, and even gifted individuals with telepathic powers all feel pulled straight from the cyberpunk genre and media related to it. And that is just things shown in game (I am also aware of the game's anime inspirations 'Evangelion' and 'Blame' but as far as I'm aware those do have some cyberpunk dna in them as well, i just have much knowledge in the realm of anime). For this fic, I really felt compelled to include the influences of these stories to write this fic. 'Blade Runner 2049' especially had some influence over concepts like Replika identification being linked to the eye/optic.

This detail along with some of the tone is a just small parts that show how it was an overall inspiration. The tone especially in some of the general treatment/attitude toward Replikas by those in power will also give that sense.

>The second to last inspiration I really wanted to mention here was 'Alan Wake 2' and whether or not that is a surprise may depend on your personal familiarity with the game/series. This inspiration is a smaller one but in some of the more dream like confusing parts of the story, the way the wording is meant to loop and double back in a way that feels almost poetic was a huge part. Warning for an early 'Alan Wake 2' spoiler (Intended reading for manuscript page written in alt):

Another inspiration that may become clearer later is the general dealing of how a dreamlike perception over reality. Images like this one from the early game live rent free in my head and help me think about how to describe certain abstract things:

Remedy's general handling of this form of weirdness in a visual medium truly is pretty genius and the work of reinterpreting it into writing has been and will continue to be very enjoyable as i expand more on it in the future.

>Final inspiration I very quickly wanted to touch on is 'The King in Yellow' another fairly obvious one, I have an excerpt in the prologue, it appears in the story and in 'Signalis'. The game especially has a lot of references to it. Ahead of really starting writing I read most of the way through the collection of stories, and finished it while I was writing the first couple chapters. I knew from the start I wanted to really lean into some of the general themes of the anthology and though not obvious as if the end of ACT-1, I will continue to. I highly recommend reading it if only to get a greater understanding of some of the ways 'Signalis' references it. I really feel like it puts a lot in perspective. 'The Demoiselle d'Ys' especially, the latter half of that story really gave me a sense of the love and devotion that is put on display in game.

Okay because describing my decisions behind certain concepts and reasonings requires me to go more in detail I'm putting it below the cut because it carries a bit more spoiler-potential than mere inspiration talk. So if you haven't read the fic please go enjoy it here, beware heavy 'Signalis' spoilers though.

Concepts & Reasonings (Beware Spoilers)

>One of the main things I set out from the start to include in the fic was a lot of the 'weird' things that happen in the game. Moments like when you open the butterfly box and suddenly you're on a mountain top, or when you leave the Penrose for the first time at the beginning of the game. This moment, as well as whenever you first encounter a corrupted Kolibri unit always stuck with me as some of the most memorable moments off the game. That's why I wanted to go out of my way to include them, or moments like them. The first was in the second chapter where Falke uses her bioresonance to infiltrate Tempo's mind and is mentally assaulted in a moment where the narrative intentionally twists and loops over itself which ends with this image:

The image is one of the 'Isle of the dead' paintings overlaid with a German translation of an excerpt from the beginning of the 'King in Yellow'. If you want to read you can refer to this post which has the entire excerpt in full in English. This image was one I made in Krita by of course editing the original and mostly adding details to it to fulfill the vibe that is given when you walk into a room with a corrupted Kolibri and it starts getting bad and you can barely see anything, etc... When it came down to actually including it in the text I was a little on the fence, I for one think that images used sparing enough can really emphasize a moment. Much like some of my other decisions, I know it won't work for everyone, but given the intentionally jarring nature I do feel it fits.

>As for how I went about including the vibe of those first person sequences, I wanted it to feel just as alien and initially sudden as the game handled it. This was done by the use of second person, present tense. As I think was beautifully pointed out in a comment on AO3 by @lopadopalis

The intent was exactly that. To contrast not just in perspective but also subtly in tense as well. To give this almost dreamlike quality I think the first-person sections of the game nailed so well. It's enough that if you glaze past it, you won't pick up on it but it may still leave you that off feeling. That in mind using second-person present tense is likely going to be my way of handling these types of moments going forward, as for the same reason as the image in the text, it gives that slight jarring feeling that is exactly what I'm going for. Hidden in here though is a kind of secret influence I didn't mention before and that is 'Harrow the Ninth'.

While its not so much an influence in terms of content, it is an influence in terms of feeling. This books is in my mind the gold standard of second-person narrative, and it's done so well that no other book was able to make me feel as insane as the first few chapters of this book did. And I say that as a compliment. Go read it (after you read the first book in the series ofc).

>Another thing that was mentioned in the comment from Lopadopalis was the death of the Sierpinski survivors. And that is something I do on some level feel the need to explain. In deciding to kill these characters even as most of them are not shown, I felt a great need to do it well. From the start, I knew I wanted to have them decommissioned, and a big part of that was to really show Dr. Lee's true colors even after they made it clear what stance they hold in regards to Replika life. It was startling to have characters that-were they shown in detail-would have been recognizable to anyone who had played the game, and many did seem to recognize the Ara as she appeared. What worried me was that I would accidentally sweep past it too fast. And I hope that isn't the case. Even if mostly referred to as opposed to shown, it carries some impact and does on some level respect them as legacy characters.

>I feel like I keep giving tanks a million times but I really can't stress how much I appreciate @lynxfrost13 for not just allowing me, but also helping me in including the HOPR who I don't know how to link perfectly so I am linking a lore post that was made: here. Please check it out, and also follow Lynx, genuinely without them I'm not sure I would have made my personal deadline. More generally about the HOPR reference around the middle of Chapter 5; I knew I wanted to include other original Replikas as the ones shown in the game aren't the only ones to exist. However, I'm lazy and didn't want to keep coming up with a ton of Replikas that would end up under-cooked because I couldn't give them each the time they deserved. So I made a post and that's when Lynx reached out and we coordinated a way to include the HOPR as a part of the story not just as a character who will be seen more later, but a part of the lore, connections to existing characters and all. I was (and honestly still am) honored to have have been trusted to write with this unit as a part of my story and I'm so glad Lynx had been available to answer any questions and to check over anything and everything to make sure I'm doing their creation justice. ALSO, that need for original Replikas is still ongoing by the way, if you have one and think it may be cool to have it included, send me a DM or ask! I'd love to try and come up with something, the only one that would probably not work is a Schwan Replika, as the Schwan is the one I've planned for the story (if you did do the same as me though still tell me about it! I'd love to hear about your original Replika types!).

>As one of the last things I very briefly wanted to touch on the relationship as it is portrayed in the fic. One of the things that really pushed me past the 'wouldn't that be neat?' stage of planning this fic and into the 'oh shit it's happening' was the kind of lack of very many Falke/Elster/Ariane fics out there. It was my want to see more that partially caused me to start writing. Many other reasons too, but godddd I have to mention that one. Those 3 make me so ill. It was also partially out of wanting to make a work that will get a lot of eyes on it that kinda presents my interpretation of the Sierpinski S23 Falke having Ariane's memories in addition to Elster's. And thus loves Elster as she does Ariane. It just seems like a thing that isn't necessarily a deep-cut theory, but one that is also at least in my opinion not talked about as much as it should be. Though I do feel like it's picked up a lot of traction very recently. I did write a post on this, most that are willing to read this far into this post have probably already read it but I am gonna link it here anyway.

>Okay, this last part is maybe the most interesting section for the purpose of understanding the general scope of ACT-1 and what changes were made in writing that made it what it is now. To anyone who followed me prior to the publishing of ACT-1, maybe even around when I first started talking about the fic, they may know the intent was for this first part of the story to be much bigger, or maybe a better way to say it is more condensed. ACT-1 was meant to encompass nearly all the time the story spent in the Sierpinski facility. The starting intent was to end with the finalization of the new Replika line teased at the end of Chapter 5, and also in the summary. Overall, things would have been pushed together and likely less time given to characters like Dr. Lee to grow into what they eventually became. The decision to change this scope actually came much later prior to posting than is maybe expected. It was around 2 weeks prior to the 27th, I decided (helped along in the decision by my girlfriend) to make the first ACT what it is now, and expand what was initially 3 chapters into a whole 4 then but now 5. This decision was made not just due to the anniversary growing closer and my concern about missing it, but also because I kept wanting to add more. Chapters began to balloon in length as they became closer to what they now are. It hit a point that, eventually, I had to look at what I had and admit it had far outgrown the initial scope. Deciding then it worked better as the new ACT-1 than all of the time in Sierpinski together. Looking back having posted it, I stand by this decision. This allowed Dr. Lee to bloom into a the character they are now and make the reveal that was their change in demeanor better overall. It also allowed me to expand on some of the aforementioned weirdness moments, the entire section with the Falke looking into Tempo's mind in Carcosa was only a few sentences in that first draft. Lastly it also allowed the build up to where Falke ends up this first draft to feel much better telegraphed and overall better earned; her situation is more believable when more is shown and what that extra space allowed me to set up makes for better moments in the future too!

AND THAT'S THE POST! It's a fuckin big one, but then again there was a lot to talk about. Hopefully this really shows that I mean when I say how much love went into this fic, and how much continues to as it goes on. From fanart (some that's even yet to be released), to incorporating my own enjoyments and personal writing inspirations, even just making the hard decisions so what I make is something I'm proud of. If you read the fic, thank you so much, from the bottom of my heart. And if you read all the way through this monster of a post, then I really appreciate your dedication to my brain-rot.

[syncopein3d]

Left Alone 6: Regeneration

Tropes/content warnings: M for mature themes overall. vampire whumpee, male whumpee, non-binary caretaker, general morbidity. There will be a lot of play with, and discussion of, the concept of consent in this series, as it applies to many topics. There will be angst. Vampire biting can be painful, platonic, or NSFW and I'm not sure what direction that will take, but Tolly will definitely continue to fantasize about subtextually or literally sex-murdering Arden, as vampires often do.

If you would like to be added to, or removed from, the tag list of this series, please let me know!

Part 5: Bearing Gifts

Black Tolly stood and walked around the rug with gallon in one hand and glass in the other and resettled himself in front of the threshold of his cell, cross-legged across from Arden. For a moment they regarded one another. He watched the mortal once again go through a cycle of fast breathing, forced slow breathing, looking at him and then away as they worked at the idea that a dead man was talking to them. Then they turned to pull a plastic shopping bag out of the crate.

“I got some cleaning wipes and a trash bag you can tie shut,” Arden said. “There’s not a Big and Tall here in town, so I went to the thrift store and just tried to guess at sizes. I washed everything this morning. I hope it’s dry. I couldn’t find the iron. I know it’s not what you’re used to - ”

In spite of the condition of my clothing, young Arden has noticed that it was tailored. This is more observant than one might have credited.

“Arden,” Tolly interrupted, and now his voice at last rewarded his attempt at conveying gentleness of tone. The relief he felt was tremendous. Something of himself had come back. “I am used to the rags I have been wearing for ten years. You didn’t have to do anything at all. Whatever you have brought me, it will be welcome.”

Arden was red to the ears as they used the ruler to nudge the bag over the line. Tolly collected it carefully and looked inside, setting aside the wipes and the trash bag. His fingers touched a polycotton blend as he picked delicately with his talons. It was more or less dry, a little stiff from hanging: a white button-down shirt. There were black dress pants with a plastic belt. There were black socks and tangas, which were new with labels, so the town’s thrift store must be a Goodwill and not a Value Village now. There was a gray blazer that was almost new.

The socks were soft, the first pleasant thing he had felt in years. Before Nicholas had tricked him, he wouldn’t have used them to buff an automobile. Now he rubbed them between his fingers as if they had been the finest silk in the world. All of it had been made for someone wider than Tolly’s normal proportions even before he had shriveled up, but it would cover him, and it would feel wonderful compared to what he had now. “Thank you,” he whispered. In spite of himself, there was a lump in his throat. Get hold of yourself, idiot.

He drank his second glass of blood. It tasted no better than the first. A curious crawling movement on his scalp became hair growing on his head, slowly pushing its way from the follicles, so blond that it was almost white. His flesh began to fill out slowly, wrinkled, hideous in a way that could not be explained by aging, but approaching something human. For a moment he could smell himself again, the hint of old incense gradually becoming less bitter and more appealing.

“I’ll get some dry shampoo tomorrow,” Arden said. Now, as Black Tolly’s senses gradually expanded, their exhalation told him everything they had eaten that day. It wasn’t difficult to parse out, just the morning’s sweetened coffee and long-past sour hints of some kind of bottled protein drink. Their pores breathed out the faint scent of an unfamiliar medication – no, not unfamiliar. It was herbal. Cayenne, salt, St. John’s Wort. Witchbane.

Did Arden know it was witchbane? Tolly had been expecting some sort of antidepressant or anti-anxiety medication, or at least an unhealthy amount of caffeine. The descendant of Nicholas Telep does not know their family’s history, did not know I was here, yet still they suppress what they have inherited. I think perhaps someone has been trying to keep them from the truth.

They must not be entirely succeeding, or Arden was not remembering to take the medication. The scent of them hinted of adrenaline, unsurprising in the present moment, but also of stale fatigue, the sort of thing that could not entirely wash off. Trouble sleeping. The Outside calls to them, but they don’t know what it is.

They were looking away from him again. He hadn’t blinked in too long. He was out of practice.

“I got this. That rug can’t be comfortable.” Arden hauled a sleeping bag out of the box, a tight roll of flannel and plastic outer coating, and pushed it over to Tolly. As he reached for it his hand came within inches of theirs, and across the barrier he felt the warmth of their flesh. He would swear he could hear their heart beating now, faint and far away.

Tolly caught himself running his fingers over the flannel lining of the hood, mesmerized by the physical sensation of touching the soft fabric. He set it aside with the shopping bag.

“I’m sorry,” he said, managing to force a small, strange smile onto his withered lips. “It’s just – ”

“It’s been a long time,” Arden said. “I get it. I hate stiff fab – that’s not important. Look.” They turned quickly to reach into the bottom of the tub and pull out a stack of books. Tolly recognized them immediately as he reached out to carefully collect them. They were from the library upstairs: the collected Sherlock Holmes, a travel volume from the eighties about Germany, Marguerite de Valois, an occult studies book that Nicholas had once called quaint, and what looked very much like the collected Chanur saga by C.J. Cherryh. Arden must have grabbed things at random.

“I didn’t know what you would like. If there’s something specific, I can get it for you,” Arden said.

Tolly turned over a few pages of the travel guide with its color photographs, rapt. A single tear plashed onto the dust jacket. He wiped it away before it could leave a stain. He was water again now, wet eyes, wet throat. He must be careful of that.

“Thank you,” he said hoarsely. “Forgive me, I - ” he shook his head. How could he explain the constant battle of wills between them, how Nicholas had kept taking away his privileges and his things for trying to trick him, trying to find a way to have him, trying to escape? The threat he presented had been real - 

Just like the threat he presented to Arden.

"I will read all of them," he said. "I will treat them with care. This, this is." His hand caressed the flannel again, then the page, eyes looking down at it in something like awe. "Thank you. I cannot possibly express to you how precious this is to me."

“My uncle locked you in the basement and left you to die down here,” Arden said. “I think it’s probably the least I can do.”

Tolly looked at them from where he now sat, travel guide still clutched in his clawed hand like a lifeline. The hair that had come loose around Arden’s face was limned in dim gold light, almost silver, like the halo of a saint. How had he never seen it before?

He did not want them less. Oh no. Now he was more aware of every detail of them than before, and that made it worse. But now guilt wrung his heart along with the rest. How could he have even thought of surrendering them to his thirst when they were capable of this, unasked, unsought for? He rose to move the books and lantern and sack to the desk, away from the blood. Now he moved without pain, joints working properly for the first time in years and years, but he was more careful not to go too fast.

And more importantly, with his back to them they wouldn’t see him trying not to be unmanned again. There would be time for stupid sentimentality later. For now, he sat back down on the floor and took his third glass of blood. Maybe it would ease the pressure of Arden being so close. He didn’t want them to leave yet.

“I never knew he was like this,” Arden said. “He was nice to me. But this, this is unforgivable.”

“I wouldn’t go as far as that,” Tolly said. They looked at him directly now, obviously thinking he was insane. Or maybe they were staring because he was changing again. Years were gently rolling away from his face. The third glass had brought back enough flesh to make his features recognizably human, he could tell as he ran his hand along his own cheek. He still looked like a man who had died elderly of some wasting illness, but at least he looked like a man.

“There were reasons for what he did,” Tolly said.

“What reasons?”

“He knew I wanted him,” Tolly said. “He was irresistible to many, was your uncle. I was not immune.”

“I – oh.” Tolly watched them contemplate this subject and then firmly push it to one side. “My parents didn’t like me talking to him. I used to sneak out and come over here when I was in high school sometimes,” Arden said. “Sometimes we’d talk, or garden, or he’d play the piano.” Their face contorted for a second, eyes pressed tightly shut. “Oh, god. You were down here that whole time, weren’t you?”

“Since you were about eight years old, it would’ve been,” Black Tolly said. “He didn’t want me to know about you. When I asked who he was playing for, he said he was having men over.” He was genuinely amused by that, tilting the glass to and fro in his hand as he rested his wrist on his knee. “I believed him, too. A point to you, Nicholas.” He toasted Arden ironically with the fourth glass of blood before he downed it. That made a half-gallon.

Now his skin grew smooth, deceptively soft-looking. His white hair hung heavy and straight to his shoulders. He looked a younger corpse than before. Perhaps he might have been in his fifties, to look at him. He had a nose now, aquiline and slightly crooked. He had eyelashes. He had lips that covered his teeth and had a real shape. But he was white, white as snow, a color living flesh would never have without makeup, and he was still gaunt and hollow. Even an albino would be pink from the blood under the skin. Every drop Tolly had taken in had been spent like base coin, already burnt away by the process of healing. That was all right. He still had a half-gallon to go, he told himself, stifling the beginning of panic. And he could have Arden bring the rest tomorrow, if he needed it.

“I never even really knew him,” Arden said slowly.

“No more did I, it seems. He tricked me into his ritual very easily,” Tolly said. He shrugged one shoulder. “And he bound me here, so that he could bleed me at his leisure. An undead’s blood has certain properties. Did you never wonder why he always looked so young?”

“I thought it was plastic surgery! He always said it was!”

Tolly considered that for a moment. “Reasonable, I suppose. He was well-to-do. One doesn’t naturally assume there is a monster in the basement.”

“I don’t think you’re a monster,” Arden offered cautiously. “I’d feed you, too, if you want. It seems fair when he took so much from you.”

“Absolutely not,” Tolly said. He was more in control of his tone now, but the edge was there beneath the careful enunciation. “As I am now, I wouldn’t trust myself outside of this room, not for one second. You saw what happened the first time I saw you.”

“You’d kill me?” Arden said, startled.

“Immediately,” Tolly said. “And without hesitation. You wouldn’t suffer, of course.” His voice caressed the syllables. “I have ways of ensuring this. But I have not tasted human blood in twenty years, and in this moment, I am utterly without the ability to control myself. I am not human. I am not alive. I am not safe.” He leaned forward slightly, as close to the edge as he could physically get. Arden did not lean away, but he could see them breathing harder, nostrils dilated.

“What the Hell am I supposed to do?” Arden asked. “With all of that? What do you want?”

“It’s because I am grateful for all you’ve done for me that I tell you this, Arden. It is vitally important that you understand,” Black Tolly said. “I want you safe from me.” He didn’t want that at all. He wanted to drink every last drop of them, to see their last moments of ecstasy and know they were his, consumed by pleasure, never knowing they were dying. But giving in to that would mean being trapped in here forever, and he was more master of himself every minute.

Arden nodded slowly. One hand reached for the tub. They’re leaving. Make them stay, say something!

“You’re not like other people, you know,” Tolly said. “You’ve always known, haven’t you? Do you hear them outside of the world, the lost ones? Do they call you by strange names and beg you to let them in?”

“Stop,” Arden breathed. They scooted backward away from him, hurriedly grabbing at the plastic handles of the tub.

“It’s not a disease. It’s your birthright,” Tolly said. “Nicholas had a ring that could silence them, protect him from them. It would serve you better than the witchbane you’re taking.”

They didn’t answer, shaking their head, either in disagreement or in general negation of the entire subject. Arden climbed to their feet a little too fast and stood swaying for a second, shaking their head. Then they hurried away, hauling the empty tub and the other gallon of blood.

“Eat something,” Tolly called after them. The basement door slammed.

Part 7: Riddles

@fleur-a-whump, @bitchaknso

[montyterrible]

Miller’s Actually-She’s-Eighteen

Pithy Letterboxd-style review (read: attempted virality): They finally made a movie adaptation of the YA-obsessed adult’s idea of what adult literature is.

You might get the impression a movie about an inappropriate student-teacher relationship that opens with the line “What is an adult?” and ends with Janis Ian’s “At Seventeen” is some kind of self-aware parody or satire. While Jade Halley Bartlett’s Miller’s Girl (2024) certainly has moments of what might generously be called “clarity” (re. subjects like writing and sexual dynamics)—more tortuously: “quasi-didactic”—it feels more or less like a straightforward, even predictable telling of this kind of story. (Or, in an era of excessive self-awareness—“He’s Right Behind Me, Isn’t He?”—maybe this is the radical approach.) I found the film’s tone fascinating, however. There are fleeting notes of horror in the visuals and soundscape, and then there’s stuff that feels artlessly moving or wistful or romantic. It strikes me as, overall, not at all the “slick” sort of movie where I should be seeing pop-ups highlighting messages from people’s cellphones, but there they are.

Similarly, the dialogue is a mix of the sort of awkward, “unrealistic,” strained, “literary” style that I personally enjoy with an occasional frankness or even crassness that borders on parody again by virtue of its extreme contrast. Here are several examples, all taken from throughout the same scene:

“I’m smokin’ now. No plans for it to define me yet.”

“It becomes a conversation about achieving emancipation from your inherited beliefs about sex and age.”

“We’re like the fuckin’ American wet dream. Young girls with ambivalent sexuality.”

“I don’t wanna drop it for some rando jock-twat whose sexual standards are mandated by the shit porn he downloads. That’s deli meat.”

“No, you’re being… Shut up.”

The highest compliment I can pay Miller’s Girl is that I did pause it early on to Google and find out if it was based on a book. I also think it’s risky to write a movie about writing and then have a bunch of characters’ writing shared in it, as the danger is that the audience won’t agree that the work is actually that great. This is obviously a matter of personal taste. As I mentioned before, I… liked it, but the writing uniformly has a tendency toward being “verbose” more than anything else, coming off like the characters are constantly deep-throating a thesaurus. It’s what a lot of people could (justifiably) call pretentious.

Obviously, there’s the question of the movie’s Content: As someone who has worked in education, I always respond negatively to bad teachers in art more or less as a matter of reflex. I recently finished re-watching season one of the 2015 comedy-horror series Scream Queens, for example, and one of the characters has a father who teaches a truly abysmal film class in certain episodes, which seems to consist of him just showing the students movies and then lecturing for a few minutes afterward. In Miller’s Girl, the issue is less how Martin Freeman’s titular Miller teaches and more about the mistakes he makes in handling Jenna Ortega’s precocious Cairo Sweet. It’s a necessary conceit of such stories that the teacher behaves in a way that lets those boundaries ultimately get crossed, but it’s hard not to watch those “slips” happen and not feel like this guy is just terrible at his job, with no sense of propriety whatsoever. Although, obviously this does happen for real. I went to school with someone who ended up crossing that line as a teacher, in fact.

The resonance I feel with stories like this one and also with the way weirdos on the internet talk about girls/women, the age of consent, fertility, birth rates, and so on is just how young people this age actually look. In contrast to the famously skeevy line from Dazed and Confused (1993), teenagers don’t “stay the same age”—I keep getting older, and they keep getting younger. I didn’t know how young I actually was at eighteen when I was eighteen. This here is meant to be a Heightened reality, where predatory teenagers who rattle around alone in their Southern Gothic houses emerge from the mist of the spooky woods to seduce you, but it’s hard for me not to see this Cairo as a flimsy phantasm, this schemer who seduces and then ruins her teacher so that she can write a really bangin’ application essay for Yale about the experience. She’s a sort of mythological figure in a Culture War, MGTOW, incel-ian mode—handled here with a certain ambivalence and enthralling grace even as the film technically panders to boring, old cishet male fears of entrapment and exploitation and degradation at the hands of wily Females.

It's another area where the film threatens to fall into parody—that and how it’s not just Cairo, but also her friend Winnie (Gideon Adlon) doing this. They’re both seducing teachers, but Winnie maybe genuinely likes hers and ends up falling out with Cairo in the end over it. The whiplash of Winnie’s transformation from short-skirted bisexual seductress to frumpy, teary-eyed defeat is also pretty comedic. Meanwhile, the mirrored pairing of Mr. Miller and his friend Boris (Bashir Salahuddin), Winnie’s target, further feeds into that sense of ridiculous excess. Boris’ ultimate rationalization of his own behavior is perhaps frustratingly brief, though intriguing for its moral ambiguity. Again, though, the fact that this is happening twice in the same school, simultaneously, with people this closely connected to one another, feels almost like unintentional comedy.

I’m sure Seth Rogen is a consummate professional, but knowing that he was a producer on this movie made me really want a commentary track from him, or to be a fly on the wall when he read the script. Like, I can just imagine his reaction to the scene where Mr. Miller is whackin’ it to Cairo’s midterm short story in what amounts to a shed. I thought it was pretty funny! I partly blame the “Peterotica” episode of Family Guy for me having this impression, however: You could just not take your shirt off while driving! You could simply not jork it to your student’s writing! That these reactions seem so… involuntary is part of what makes me laugh. Miller dramatically cranking hog does strike an ok balance between eroticism and thrills, I feel, and I don’t want to only disparage it. This is probably the stylistic—erotic and thrilling—high point of the movie. One criticism that could be levied against Miller’s Girl is that there isn’t actually enough of this sort of thing. It’s a real “Yes, and what else?” sort of deal.

Miller’s more successful writer wife, Beatrice (Dagmara Domińczyk), is a frustrating element of the story because of just how off-putting she is. She’s often demeaning toward her husband and only seems more drunk and belligerent as the story goes on. She’s meant to contrast with Cairo, obviously: The younger girl is sweet, whereas Beatrice is not. She lounges around the house in sexy sleepwear, and she’s not not into the story Cairo wrote when Miller shares it with her, which is… problematic. While Cairo is clearly antagonistic after a point and isn’t meant to represent a real option for several reasons (her age, her sort-of madness), the film doesn’t make staying with Beatrice feel like much of a viable choice either. It reminded me of a similar issue that I had with Woody Allen’s Midnight in Paris (2011). The fiancée in that film is so obviously a bad match (and person) that there’s not much tension where the question of staying with her is concerned. I think if Beatrice was just a skosh less aggressively dismissive of Miller, then it would make this situation more thrilling.

The film is perhaps surprisingly slight: Not much really happens, and I think it could have afforded to go a bit bigger and darker (embrace more of the grotesque potential of the tentative gothic flourishes), though the slightness of it all might add a smidgeon of verisimilitude or else at least make it feel that bit more Literary. In that sense, Bartlett may understand something about writing that Cairo did not—the value of doing less, in more than one sense.

[rmbunnie]

Some thoughts while reading through Grant Morrison's Batman and Robin 2009 (doing my best to be unbiased and also to not sound like the CinemaSins guy:)

Just finished issue 2. I don't know if the art is quite my thing but it is unique and interesting, I just find some of the textures unsettling. There's a weird kinda Meet the Robinson's retrofuturism thing going on? I don't get the toad, in general I find the original villains perplexing, there's a sense of humor going on there that i don't think resonates with me. Professor Pyg grosses me out as a character but he's effectively creepy and the bright coloring does a lot to support the very visceral grossness there is to his scenes. Dick approaching Batman as a performance is interesting and a good character move incorporating his past, although I'd argue Batman is already a performance to some extent considering the way Bruce intentionally creates a mythos/widespread perception of Batman as a symbol to build fear among criminals, so i'm not sure how unique this is to Dick beyond the link to his backstory.

Issue 3, they seem to really like stretching one sentence out over the whole page, which is a really memorable working well for the action scenes. The onomatopoeia made out of various materials like explosions and blood is interesting. The Professor Pyg disco sequence was... weird... which I guess it was meant to be? I don't think it was much of anything in particular for me, not scary, or funny, I get that it was meant to convey Pyg's insanity but I got that with the faces, a lot of the dialogue was more confusing than enhancing the issue for me. Sasha though, is in a scary spot. The pages with her getting left behind in the lab setup are HORRIBLE. Overall I feel like the tone is a nauseating type of unsettling, a very Killer Klowns From Outer Space kind of aesthetic going on. Jason just showed up and I am. not particularly enthused by that.

Up to issue 5. The "hood becoming a blindfold" line Dick says to Damian is pretty clever with the angle they're taking of Red Hood being... the way that he is. The aforementioned angle they're taking with him is odd, to me. This isn't news to anyone. The social media, the branding, the way he talks with/about Sasha ("The mask made her crazy??????") is bewildering. Regardless of whether it's good or bad characterization (which don't get me wrong I sure don't think it's good) I don't understand the choice to make Red Hood the character linked to this theming, there's really not any cohesion there with his earlier character expressly abandoning the (debatably) empty imagery Batman used in exchange for logoless pragmatism. All theatrics in previous appearances past a dramatic personality were for either the purpose of communicating with Bruce, who is dead here, or just sending a message to black mask or his colleagues, not the general public of Gotham. Regardless of whether or not it reads as lame it doesn't read as HIM, which is more of a sticking point to me. Also minor line but WHY did Dick call Sasha his girlfriend. Like it's not even that i'm offended or shocked genuinely why is that line that. If it's to characterize him as a more lighthearted Batman it wasn't particularly funny, but I get the feeling there's a good amount of humor that just isn't landing for me.

Issue 6. Casual Homophobia Damian is the first joke in this series that's been funny to me but MAN is it funny to me. Perhaps not in the intended way but it is kinda hitting!

Also still on issue 6 was Jason's response to Dick offering help meant to be genuinely emotional? The panelling and lack of action gives me the sense it might have been but if so it did not hit. If it was meant to be comedic/a dig it was slightly more effective but still overall confusing. I REALLY don't get who the "archenemy" is supposed to be. Sasha's ending was DEFINITELY meant to be emotional and maybe if i had less of a cynical mindset from the issue before it it may have been, but it just seemed weaker than the entirety of like, everything before that's happened with Sasha. Idk what's going on with this issue. It's funny that Judd Winick comes in a dozen issues later and completely retcons the Sasha thing. Also why is Talia's medical team here now. Talia isn't in this one???

Issue 8. I understand there is some kind of tie-in going on but what the FUCK is happening. army of batman replicas????? Why is everyone here british. (side note, Kate Kane says "hate to say i told you so" here and it's criminal that that hasn't been repurposed for a Good Luck, Babe! edit.) I was going to ask why Dick's so unconflicted-ly down to use a Lazarus Pit for Bruce but they address this by saying Jason's trickery has influenced him? Which 1. this take on Jason does not seem competent enough to do trickery and 2. when has Dick ever succumbed to Jason's trickery on Jason's best day? "I have to die, no, i'm serious, I have a plan" is unfortunately REALLY funny dialogue. Point 2 on the jokes, Grant Morrison.

Issue 9. "this is horrible... her radio's still sending out an SOS which nobody can hear way down in a coalmine...." Point 3 Grant Morrison. "Y do oll my thots turn 2 smashed glass wen i try 2 think?" this moment with pretty strong potential for horror is also featuring lolcat speak? I feel like this could have been avoided if we kept the oddly split up phonetic speech and didn't incorporate numbers but the "2"s really are giving this a uniquely Myspace tinge. Like the dialogue is really interesting here, but also How are you doing that with his mouth. "STEPPING IN GASOLINE WAS YOUR BIGGEST MISTAKE????" good lord Damian was born to be in the comments section. "your pickup lines need work" ???? i guess a kinda snappy one liner but that is Bruce's lesbian cousin WHY does Dick keep accusing his family of being in weird and concerning hetero relationships like this is a pattern now. "I have this thing for crimefighting readheads..." !!!! WHY'S DICK FLIRTING WITH KATE NOW LEAVE THAT LESBIAN ALONE????? she was a lesbian in 2006 too i really don't understand why we're doing this.

Issues 11 and 12. "permission to terminate." ok namedrop. They're doing talia really weird in this one. The way she speaks like an over-controlling soccer mom, the way she's drawn, it all just feels very odd. Again, not news. Dick confronting Slade about Bludhaven is a neat concept. WHY are they doing an "everybody on the count of three" hands thing. OH FUCK OFFFFFFFFFFFF THIS STUPIDASS JOKER REVEAL IS THE WORST THING SO FAR BY FAR

I like the Damian fight paneling in Issue 16. There's definitely a unique style to the writing. It has a pretty quirky tone.

WELL! That's that, I've now read the 2009 Batman and Robin run! I also read the Tomasi, Cornell, and Winick 3-parters, as well as the final issue, but I feel like those aren't really so much part of Morrison's continuous run. That was a comic, and now I know what happens in it! I will get around to reading Morrison's Animal Man run because I really do want to see what others seem to see in their writing and I love a good metafictional narrative so hopefully I'll get more out of that than i got out of this. I see the stylistic appeal, the brand of horror Morrison uses here is really unique, there's a very off-kilter and weird vibe to the whole thing, and many of their contributions to Batman lore such as Professor Pyg and Damian (I need to read Son of Batman sometime too, just because it's such an iconic Damian book) are very interesting! Having said that, I honestly don't know if I can say I enjoyed reading this series. I found large chunks of it deeply confusing, and not in the way that I didn't understand what was happening, and many of the elements that caught my attention such as the horror in Issues 2 and 3 didn't persist throughout the book. I'm glad I did tho! Also I maintain that that Joker reveal was HIGHLY bullshit (in the sense that i didn't like it.) I have to admit I clocked out a little emotionally after that.

[cosmicjoke]

Okay, I’ve got to talk about this latest episode of “Vinland Saga”, because good lord, it was amazing.

I’ve said before that I felt the anime improves on the manga in a lot of small, but meaningful ways, and I felt this episode was a prime example of that.  I’ve noticed throughout this series that it’s done a lot to tone down the sillier, more comedic aspects of the manga which I always felt clashed in an unflattering way with the overall tone and seriousness of the story, and this episode did maybe the best job yet of cutting away that excess and ill-placed humor.  In the manga, after Thorfinn takes his beating in order to talk to Canute, we get this comedic sequence in which his face swells up to ridiculous proportions and everyone is sort of having a bit of a laugh at his expense, and I always felt it was incredibly jarring after the weighty grief of Arnhied’s death and all of the events that lead up to it.  And so I was overjoyed to see them cut that entire sequence from the anime, and replace it instead with the poignancy and emotional depth that the climax of those events deserved, especially Thorfinn asking Einar to come with him to create a land free of war and slavery, their vow to Arnheid to build a land she would have felt was more appealing than death.  In the manga, the comedic relief following this scene undercuts the moment terribly, but here they completely avoided that mistake, and that truly was a superior approach.

I also felt that Thorfinn’s interaction with Canute was better handled, and came across less absurd and unrealistic as it did in the manga.  It still seems a bit far-fetched to me that Canute would just give up all his plans to forcibly take farmland in order to fund his standing army in England, and then proceed to disband that army, but the way the anime handled it and presented it gave it an emotional impact and beauty that I didn’t feel from the manga, and so it lessened the issue I had with the idealism of it. 

I adore this anime specifically for the fact that it treats its subject matter so seriously and is incredible at conveying the poignancy and feeling of its story, and of Thorfinn’s journey in particular, seeing where he started, and where he’s ended up.  Seeing his growth as a character.  How could one not feel proud of him, and admire his strength and resolve?  I love that they aren’t diluting it with silly, misplaced comedy like the manga has had a tendency to do in later chapters, and I hope to continue to see this trend throughout the series.  I was dreading the moment with Throfinn’s face being swollen, because I remember how it took me out of the drama of the story in the manga.  So, once again, when they didn’t do it, and instead maintained the seriousness of feeling that this entire series has had, I was so, so happy.

Phenomenally done, truly.  I can’t praise this anime enough.  I know I’ve been ragging on it for making Thorfinn too tall, lol (which, incidentally, they did a better job this episode of showing his actual height), but truly that’s the most nitpicky of nitpicks.  Everything else is literally pitch perfect, and I think this episode encapsulated why.  It had me on the verge of tears a couple times. 

[soyouareandrewdobson]

Dawn of Justice: A pointless comic to a rather pointless movie

I really don’t have much of an idea for an introduction here, so let me just hand you the comic and then explain why it is rather dumb.

The comic in question came out sometime in late 2015 or early 2016, certainly BEFORE the movie “Batman vs Superman: Dawn of Justice” had come out in March of 2016.

Now let me just say this: I am not a fan of that movie really. Frankly, Warner’s approach of creating a cinematic universe/franchise for DC akin to the MCU, has in my opinion always been a bit of a tonal trainwreck, starting with Man of Steel itself. Mind you, I have nothing against the actors involved in it, but I thought for a first “outing” for Superman it was a bit too heavy on the last act level of destruction and trying to emulate overall a tone more akin to “Batman Begins”. As for “Dawn of Justice”, I hated the way Lex Luthor was portrayed in it more like a knock off ginger version of Joker and it was silly in my opinion, how they already, in their second major outing for the DCEU, made a vs crossover movie with Batman and Superman, even though not really anything was much established of the cinematic world it was set in. To me it was already just in concept the equivalent of jumping from “Iron Man” in 2008, to “Age of Ultron” without the movies inbetween narratively.

That said, I do not hate the movie and if you find enjoyment in it, fine with me. I am at best indifferent, at worst I think we should look at it, see what worked and what didn’t, and learn from it for a future take on the idea, once the superhero boom and fatigue has ceased.

Somehow, that makes me however already more stable in mind than others, who hate the movie with a passion that’s  ridiculous. At least moviebob should reevaluate his life, when he thinks his greatest achievement (or one of them) is to talk for over 4 hours how much the movie sucks, believing by doing so he has shown Warner Bros how much of a smarty pants he is. Even though by doing so, he spend more time talking about it than the movie runs, even in the director's cut.

As for this comic… it is to me just reactional garbage like a lot of stuff Dobson did once he heard something “awful” in regard of entertainment he didn’t even care much for. Like how he thought the Mario movie will be a disaster, cause Illumination was animating it

Now to be fair, he wasn’t entirely wrong to react worried, as the movie was not that good. However, his very first reaction to the trailer alone (which he posted on twitter) is telling you already more about how he really feels and is just utterly dismissive of it, without outright saying it.

Yeah Dobson, Dark Knight Returns is not necessarily my favorite Batman comic of all time either, but even with Miller turning out not quite right in the last 15+ years, you have no right to really treat it like it has no value at all in the field of comics, as even your beloved Batman: The Animated Series took in part inspiration from it.

It is however his second tweet I could find about it, that kinda makes me chuckle

After all, it is essentially the very same thing/opinion he lets say the older man in the picture state about Superman and Batman, and how preposterous the idea of them fighting against each other would be, seeing how they are SUPERFRIENDS.

Which brings me back to the comic in itself and me actually wanting to explain, why it is kinda dumb in proper detail.

First, as stated before, it came out way before the movie even got released. So aside of some poster design that he could copy paste into it and some trailer material he had seen to make up his mind, Dobson had nothing to judge the product by. And I genuinely doubt he ever even bothered to look into it and judge it then based on the actual merit of quality or lack thereof. As long as he could rage about Zack Snyder and Snyderbros being neo nazis or whatever years later, why bother as a cartoonist and critic of nerd culture, to actually talk about a superhero movie. After all, he also never played a Metal Gear game, and that makes him still an expert on Kojima.

Second, the “generational gap” Dobson tries to show here is ridiculous. The “young” comic book fan -likely to be in his twenties, even though he looks older- actually being hyped for it, seemingly because he craves the violence of such a movie. As indicated by making a claw with his hand, having a facial expression that indicates less geek out and more “bloodthirst” as well as how he emphasizes the “Dawn of Justice” in a format that is normally saved for slasher movie titles like “Friday the 13: The Bloodbath at Menarche Lake”.

For fucks sake, Dobson comes off like some old geezer shouting at the clouds how the “younger” generation is craving for blood instead of a decent plot, even though many people younger than him at the time (quick reminder: Dobson was only around 33 to 34 years old when that comic came out) also had a problem with how that movie looked as well as its tone.

Also, the second person who is actually opposed of the idea of them fighting/ is confused about it, trying to portray the other age group, supposedly opposed to the concept of the movie? That character looks like he is in his late 50s. And I can tell you of actual experience, not many people in that age group would even care for superhero movies anyway. They have other things to worry about, like actually being responsible adults and getting their kids through college.

Okay, I apologize if that was rather insulting to some, but let us be real here: Most people at that age are not necessarily into comics anymore as an age group of 20-30 somethings in the 2010s would be And those that still are, would likely not act this confused at the idea, because with all the stuff that has been going on in DC comics within the last 30-40 years, this would likely just make them roll their eyes and think “aww shit, we go the vs route first” or be slightly intrigued if they can pull it off or not. After all, Superman and Batman/ Clark and Bruce may be friends, but that hasn't stopped people from writing stories where the two had to fight against each other. Just ask the people familiar with Injustice.

Really, the only reason we have that early retirement citizen look at the poster in confusion, is because Dobson needed someone to represent him and his opinion. And to be honest, the fact that Dobson, someone in his late 30s at this point identifies more with someone 15+ years his senior, is kinda weird. Like, is Dobson that old fashioned? Or did the years already have a bad effect at his looks and in real life he looked more to that, then he would ever admit?

Anyway, it just stinks of creating some sort of schism between generations, by insinuating that the younger generation is essentially bloodthirsty, while an older one would love something more positive. Which frankly, is dumb to assume, as age does not necessarily account for taste in some cases.

Honestly though, the funniest aspect of the comic for me however, is the way it is structured. Cause it reminds me of that pile of trash

And yeah, I know that Stan Kelly is meant to be a joke by the Onion about political comic artists in newspapers, but I honestly think those joke comics are to a degree so accurate to the mindset of some people on either side of the political spectrum, it hurts. And in regard of Dobson… well, Kelly is a joke. Dobson is the real deal.

Finally, like with many of his comics, Dobson likes to complain, but he does not really “offer” an alternative. Neither did he in comments or on twitter. And what alternative am I talking about?

Well, simple: If he thinks Dawn of Justice will suck cause he wants something more child friendly and comic like…

Why doesn’t he just recommend for others the animated movie “The Batman/Superman Movie: Worlds Finest” from 1997, based on the Superman and the Batman Animated Series of the 90s, on which later the JLA cartoon based its design and style?

Oh right! Because a Dobson only wants to complain but never help improve the status quo

[jcmarchi]

Artem Rodichev CEO & Founder of Ex-human – Interview Series

New Post has been published on https://thedigitalinsider.com/artem-rodichev-ceo-founder-of-ex-human-interview-series/

Artem Rodichev CEO & Founder of Ex-human – Interview Series

Artem Rodichev is the Founder and CEO of Ex-human, a company focused on building empathetic AI characters for engaging conversations. Before founding Ex-human, Artem was the Head of AI at Replika from 2017 to 2021, where he led the development one of the most popular English-speaking chatbots, growing its user base to 10 million in the U.S.

You spent several years as Head of AI at Replika, building one of the most popular conversational AIs. What inspired you to leave and found Ex-human, and how did your experience at Replika influence your vision for Ex-human?

During my time at Replika, I had the opportunity to help shape a conversational AI that resonated with millions of users, which gave me deep insight into how people connect with technology on an emotional level. As rewarding as it was, I always felt there was more potential for AI beyond what we were building. I saw an opportunity to expand AI’s potential across multiple sectors and use cases.

At Replika, the focus was primarily on creating a companion AI, but I began to envision how conversational AI could be integrated into diverse applications, offering personalized, emotionally intelligent interactions for a wide array of use cases — from entertainment to enterprise. That realization sparked the idea for Ex-Human, where we aim to develop AI technology that not only provides companionship but also powers innovative experiences for businesses and consumers alike.

Ex-Human was born from the desire to push the boundaries of AI even further, making it more adaptive, engaging, and capable of transforming how people interact with digital characters across various industries.

Ex-human uses AI avatars to engage millions of users. Can you explain how your AI avatars are designed to be empathetic and responsive?

We’ve spent a lot of time refining how our AI characters interact with users, ensuring that they’re not just reactive but truly responsive to the emotional tone of the conversation. One way we do this is by training our models on millions of open-domain conversations, allowing them to learn how to engage in a way that feels natural and emotionally aware.

The goal is to make users feel understood and heard. These characters aren’t just programmed to provide answers; they’re designed to foster authentic interactions. They pick up on subtle emotional cues and respond in ways that feel human-like and comforting. That’s why our users spend significant time interacting with them.

Beyond just text, our avatars are capable of multi-modal interactions. They can respond with voice, send contextual images, and even video, which adds a layer of richness and depth to the conversations. This variety of interaction styles helps users feel more immersed in the experience and enables them to build full stories with the AI characters. At the end of the day, we aim to create AI that goes beyond standard interactions, offering users a deeply engaging, emotionally intelligent experience that keeps them returning.

How does the data collected from your B2C platform botify.ai influence the training and development of your AI models?

With millions of users engaging in conversations with a wide variety of characters on our platform, we’re able to collect an enormous amount of real-world interaction data. This helps us understand not only how users communicate, but also what makes those interactions emotionally meaningful.

By analyzing this data, we’re able to fine-tune our models to be more responsive and empathetic. It’s a continuous cycle: user interactions provide insights, allowing us to fine-tune and evolve the AI. This approach allows us to improve the conversational flow, tone, and the overall emotional intelligence of our avatars.

In essence, our B2C platform is a kind of real-time testing ground. The data we collect enables us to constantly evolve and adapt our AI to meet user expectations, and those improvements directly influence how we develop our B2B solutions as well. It’s how we ensure that our AI stays not only cutting-edge but also deeply human in its interactions.

How does Ex-human ensure data privacy and ethical AI practices while using large amounts of user data for training purposes?

Data privacy and ethical AI practices are our top priorities, especially given the amounts of user data we work with. First and foremost, we ensure that all data is anonymized before it’s used for any training or analysis. This means personal identifiers are removed, so the data can’t be traced back to individual users, protecting their privacy throughout the process.

We also have strict data handling protocols in place. Users’ data is never used without their consent, and we’re fully transparent about how the data is collected and utilized. Additionally, we regularly review our practices to stay in line with evolving data protection laws and ethical guidelines.

When it comes to training our AI, we place a strong emphasis on ensuring that our models behave in a responsible and unbiased way. By constantly monitoring and testing our AI, we work to prevent any unintended biases from appearing in our interactions. This combination of privacy safeguards and ethical AI development ensures that we can deliver emotionally intelligent and responsive AI without compromising user trust or security.

Ex-human’s avatars have significantly higher user engagement than platforms like Instagram. What’s the key to achieving such high levels of user interaction?

The key lies in the emotional responsiveness – it is what keeps users coming back and spending more time interacting with our avatars.

Another factor is the level of customization and personalization we offer. Users can create and interact with a wide variety of AI characters, each with its own unique personality and style. Whether it’s chatting with a fictional character or creating a completely customized avatar, users feel more involved and connected to the experience, making it much more engaging than simply scrolling through content on social media platforms.

Additionally, our focus on multimodal interactions, where avatars respond with text, images, audio, and even video, adds to the immersive experience. This makes users feel actively involved in a narrative that adapts and grows with them, rather than passively consuming content. All of these elements together contribute to the higher levels of engagement we see compared to social media platforms.

You’ve formed partnerships with companies like Grindr. How do businesses benefit from integrating Ex-human’s AI, and what measurable results have they seen?

We allow businesses to offer more personalized and engaging user experiences. Our technology enables them to build characters that engage users in thoughtful, natural conversations. For example, in the case of Grindr, we’ve introduced features like an AI wingman that helps users improve their profiles and a virtual companion to practice dating conversations. These features not only make the platform more engaging but also provide practical value to users.

In terms of measurable results, companies have seen improvements in user engagement and retention after integrating our AI solutions. This shows how AI-driven characters can add real value to businesses by creating deeper connections with users.

How does your AI-driven engagement compare to traditional marketing methods in terms of customer retention and conversion?

We are able to offer something far more immersive and personalized. Traditional marketing often focuses on short-term attention grabs or delivering static messages, but our platform is built around continuous experiences—which allows for deeper engagement over time.

What really sets us apart is the level of interaction. On average, users spend over 60 minutes a day with our avatars, and our paying users engage for even longer, exchanging hundreds of messages. The combination of multimodal capabilities creates a much more engaging experience, akin to an AI-powered Netflix, where users become part of the story. This goes beyond what traditional marketing can achieve.

How do you see the future of AI avatars and digital humans transforming industries like customer service, healthcare, or entertainment?

In customer service, they could handle routine queries more efficiently while maintaining a high level of consistency, freeing up human agents to focus on more complex issues. This blend of automation and personalized support can significantly improve response times and overall customer satisfaction.

In healthcare, AI avatars could assist with mental health support, offering companionship or even coaching, particularly in scenarios where human professionals are stretched thin. They could also be used to guide patients through administrative processes, making healthcare more accessible and less intimidating for people who might otherwise avoid seeking help.

In entertainment, the possibilities are even broader. AI avatars can create entirely new types of interactive content, allowing users to engage directly with characters in ways that traditional media can’t offer. Whether it’s a game, a virtual concert, or even digital influencers, AI can generate unique experiences that are tailored to individual preferences, opening up new revenue streams for the industry.

What key lessons have you learned from your transition from Head of AI at Replika to founding and scaling your own company?

A key lesson I’ve learned in the shift is how dramatically the role changes. As an engineer, I could dive deep into technical challenges and focus on problem-solving, but as a founder, the scope expands significantly. Suddenly, you’re not just building technology—you’re also managing teams, working with investors, making strategic decisions, and ensuring the company’s growth on multiple fronts.

The toughest part was moving from a hands-on, technical mindset to one that involves constantly switching between different roles and responsibilities. It’s less about solving one specific problem and more about managing everything simultaneously, all while keeping the overall vision in sight. This broader perspective has been essential for growing Ex-Human and navigating the entrepreneurial landscape.

Thank you for the great interview, readers who wish to learn more should visit Ex-human.

[certifiedplayerhater]

had this drafted but didn’t post:

4/52: Zig by Poppy

I already quite liked the singles that Poppy released ahead of this project and i ended up accidentally listening to the whole thing while I was getting some work done, so here’s the main idea: this is her most disjointed album released thus far, blending the industrial grit of her gothic metal leaning tracks and the sense of liberation that permeates all her music. Despite the whispers of innovation, it was a pretty tame project as a whole with some really high points and everything else was pretty alright! an interesting listen but nothing to write home about.

i was worried Zig would have a similar effect to some Lady Gaga albums, where the first couple tracks are so stacked that it’s hard to follow them up. Church Outfit as an opener was such a fascinating choice, almost treating this project as the church outfit described in the song. I don’t know if that’s indicative of her attitude towards the album, but it did have a very penultimate aura to it. Coming out of the three singles, What I Become was a bizarre follow up as a dark melodic and gothic track compared to the three varying degrees of industrialization, but nonetheless proved a smart choice. It completely shifted the tone from something gritty to scary, feeling like a horror movie climax. It also served as a pretty solid bridge between the next section and the first, which was much brighter.

I’m not generally a fan of this brighter electronic sound, but it wasn’t a waste of the album. There was almost an air of pop to this section, feeling like the traditional Poppy twist on dark sounds as opposed to throwing yourself into the genre like the first three songs. It was a little disappointing because this felt like a safe approach to what she was doing and resulted in some very Poppy-esque songs /neutral.

Zig was a fascinating song! It felt like we were going back to the oomph of the first couple tracks — campy, dark, and a little bit silly. Which is why Linger was such a bizarre track to follow it up! It’s like Zig was randomly placed somewhere near the end instead of being somewhere it made sense, like before 1s + 0.

Motorbike is probably the strongest of the pop-inspired tracks, being once again a Poppy take on some classic tropes in music. another song that just kind of felt out of place, but less offensive than Zig. But the last half of the album did feel entirely thrown together without a lot of consideration for form and flow, like Prove It being a thematic closer but sonically quite disjointed. It borrowed from genres that weren’t explored earlier on and was overall very bizarre. and short. some of these songs would have been greatly enhanced if they explored their ideas in more than 2 minutes.

overall, this album was remarkably safe. it promised some kind of maturing of the Poppy-isms that listeners have grown accustomed to but fell flat with a series of shelf stable decisions, which amounted to an inoffensive Poppy album. I hope for her next release she commits to what was strongly established in the opening tracks and dives all in. otherwise im worried her next album will be just as memorable as this one.

next album might be bladee’s icedancer, weezer’s ok human or whatever CD i find next time i go shopping

[kinetic-elaboration]

August 6: Scream 3

Moving along through the Screams with Scream 3. I realized as I was watching that I was sort of looking for reasons to dislike it, which wasn’t really fair. Overall, and trying to be as fair as possible, it was fine, just… long. Kinda exhausting. Despite its best attempts to have some sort of plot or at least through-line or something, and to connect that plot or mystery with Sydney even though she had very little screen time, it didn’t feel so much like a coherent story as just sort of a landscape or a universe, where various random plot points, many of them murder, were happening. And like that’s fine if you enjoy the universe and just want to settle in and be in it for a while. But even though I just finished watching, it already feels like sort of a wash.

I was disappointed that they killed off Cotton so early, because he seemed to me like a character who could be interesting to see develop, a good combination of funny/ridiculous and actually quite menacing. Also, for a franchise, Scream really does kill off most of its decent characters. The ensemble in 2 was nowhere near the level of the ensemble in 1996, and yes I am one of those people who is mad about Randy getting killed in Scream 2.

Gale and Dewey carrying much of the film was fine. I do like them a lot, and their romance was probably one of the stronger story lines in the movie—and one of the more coherent. They’re good at carrying both the mystery (with their intrepid reporter and cop traits) and the humor. In truth, for being a horror-comedy series, I haven’t really been finding the movies all that funny. I would say they’re really primarily horror-slashers. Most of the humor in 1996 was of the meta variety, and when 3 included jokes, they felt, to me, often a bit randomly placed. I mean there were some good ones, like everything about the Carrie Fisher cameo, and most of the stuff with the 2 Gales, and the little joke about the broken statue or the ‘are you threatening me exchange,’ but a rollicking sense of humor did not move the plot swiftly along.

It had some good set pieces, in particular the explosion at the mansion and the encounter between Sydney and Ghostface in “Woodsboro” and I suppose the final killing spree was okay. I was pretty exhausted by that point, kind of done mentally. Also really distracted by the set being the same as the school in H20 lol. I respected the devotion to adding ever more layers of meta—not just referencing the movie-based-on-the-movie but following its actors, visiting its sets—and I liked that, versus Scream 2, it used more of the lore and backstory of the original.

I had mixed feelings about the use of the voice changer as a plot point. On the one hand, that certainly is a way to continue to push the boundaries of the scary voice on the phone, and it’s true that technology, whatever is the cutting edge of it, is a big part of the whole Scream thing. And I also get that this movie was playing around a very little bit with the is the horror psychosis angle, which gets a little deeper when characters legitimately cannot tell who they’re talking to. And yet, though it worked intellectually, somehow I didn’t feel it. I guess I like the familiarity of the Scream killer always approaching first on the phone. That is scary in itself to me, without, like, thinking you’re talking to a loved one first, without that scam of it. It’s hearing the phone ring and immediately being afraid, not having the fear come in later, when the voice switches tones.

I also felt, connecting again to how it was about 10 hours long, that the misdirection with the order of the kills was a little… unnecessary. The same misdirection existed in Scream 2, honestly. How important was it that the first victims had names that matched the Scream 1996 victims? Not very. Similarly, how important was it that a few victims had kill orders that matched the ones in the film? Not at all. And an awful long time was spent following that track, before the film just veered away into something else. Again, this is all fine if you just want to hang out with the Scream characters for 2 hours. It’s only a complain on the level of, like, plot.

And then finally, the Maureen stuff. I…. have such mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, I appreciated a lot of it. I liked that they fleshed Maureen out, I liked that we saw Sydney’s trauma return to the loss of her mom, I liked that we saw the ways in which Maureen herself was a victim, the why of her only alluded to unhappiness. And I think it was quite ballsy for a film like this, essentially a fun slasher, to get right up to saying the r-word, so that even without it, we all know we’re talking about a rape. But then somehow it all became about Maureen the villain again, didn’t it? The rape seemed like it was just there to explain the brother’s existence, and then to put another sin at Maureen’s feet: that she didn’t want to accept a child born of rape into her home. Well, she shouldn’t have to. That’s what I think. So what am I supposed to feel for Roman? Sympathy because his mom rejected him? Disgust because he’s the killer? Surprise at the twist and not much else because just like every Ghostface, he’s another interchangeable horror psychopath? What was that extended hand holding with Sydney at his (first) death? Was that supposed to be meaningful and deep?

I wish the killer had been a secret sister and not a brother, and that her purpose was to draw attention to Maureen’s rape. The Sydney Prescott story is famous, so you leverage that with another meta layer of murders, and leave clues about Maureen at each one, hoping at last someone will uncover her story and right the long-ago injustice. As Sydney says early on, none of the murders would have happened if her mother wasn’t… the way she was, and why was she like that? Because of entitled male violence. And the man behind the assault, if not the rapist than the instigator, the one who created the situation in which it happened, doesn’t even feel bad! And his kill is so short and unsatisfying, like an afterthought. The killer-sister would have planned to frame him, and she would still be the villain, and Sydney would still defeat her, but their final handshake would have real meaning, because she's sympathetic, and she’s a counter to all of the scuzzy men who have inhabited the franchise so far (I don’t mean all of them (Dewey) but see my notes on Scream 2).

And if it’s too unrealistic to have a female horror director in 2000, she could be the woman playing Sydney (by the way, a weird sort of sleeper favorite character of mine, among the smaller parts, I don’t know why): the big sister who wanted the life of her little sister, identifying with her, feeling she is her. Maybe part of her plan is not that Sydney takes the blame for her murders but that Sydney joins her in the murders, really and legitimately. Maybe she even considers it, for a brief moment. But only very brief, because of course, Sydney would never do that.

I will say I liked the ending a great deal, especially as an intended finale for the whole “trilogy.” A happy ending for our surviving characters, and a happy ending for Sydney, and the happiness is shown by the way she lives her life openly and with friends, not shut off, not isolated, not scared. The door swinging open in a breeze, and left open: that was really, really good.