#but most of his worst actions towards tim were horrible out of character

[rubydubydoo122]

I’m just gonna say this, the main reason people don’t like Damian Wayne as a character is the same reason people didn’t like Jason Todd back in the 80s

People don’t like either of them because their favorite Robin (Tim Drake and Dick Grayson) got replaced by them.

Damian and Jason are both really interesting and complex character, objectively more complex than both Tim and Dick, but some people (cough, obnoxious Tim fans, cough, and Dick fans who over sexualize him, cough) don’t see that and just want their little blorbos to never grow into their own character apart from Batman.

[valiantarcher]

I have random and assorted thoughts on my Constance Savery reads over the past couple of weeks. I’ve categorised them by work (Magic in My Shoes, “The Waswytch Secret”, The Reb and the Redcoats, The Good Ship Red Lily, and Enemy Brothers) so those who haven’t read all of them have the option to (hopefully easily) scroll past the unread ones if they so desire. I have also put them under the cut due to length.

Magic in My Shoes: I enjoyed Sally as the narrator, and the premise was engaging even with me knowing the secret early in the book. I was a little surprised by the accusations of ill-nourishment and neglect against Aunt Persis, but in retrospect, I appreciate that realism - four growing children are not going to flourish off even generous portions for two of them. Which brings me to my main complaint - Tandy and his unwillingness to see gorging himself was selfish and wrong on many levels. Despite the thin excuse that he had been delicate and sickly at times in the past, I really expected Josset (with Laurence’s support) to put his foot down instead of continuing to baby him (after all, as someone remarked, triplets are all of the same age). Tandy didn’t ruin the story for me, but he made certain parts of it very irritating. I did love the plan involving ten-year-old Laurence becoming a schoolteacher and, when Aunt Persis declared that was nonsense, all the children bring up a moral tale with a six-year-old being so studious that she became a teacher as solid proof.

“The Waswytch Secret”: Given that it was in a collection of ghost stories (well, sort of - most had some sort of haunting element, if only a little, but I’m still not sure why “The Red-Headed League” was included), I wasn’t sure what to expect at first. It was thoroughly Savery, though, and an enjoyable read with an element of mystery. It felt slightly different from her novels, and I think that was due to the choice of one of the younger children as narrator.

Reb and Redcoats: This was a reread and I found it a pretty fun one this time around. Randal’s integration into and relationship with the Darringtons was charming. I couldn’t decide whether Tim Wingate’s inaptitude for stealth and secrecy was more irritating or amusing, but I swung towards the latter by the end, especially given his cheerful nature. My main gripe is that I still feel like the Patty switch was kind of cheating.

The Good Ship Red Lily: I struggled with this one a lot even past (or maybe because of) the tense start. Violet was a horrible child, and I loathed Ingram and disliked Sir Timon. Objectively, of course it’s good that there was reconciliation with Ingram and that he repented and asked forgiveness, but I could not make myself invested in it (though the tiny glimpses we had of it from Michael’s perspective helped a little). I enjoyed Toby as primary character a lot and especially appreciated his resolution to deny the pleasures when he felt accepting them would go against his conscience. I wasn’t very pleased with the treatment of Patience, though - Toby said the others didn’t join him in his denial because they were too young to understand; while that certainly makes sense for the younger ones (and Violet is a category in and of herself), Patience is a year older than him and - although not privy to all the knowledge and trust from their father that Toby is - was Toby’s confidant about plans to escape. She showed a lack of wisdom in following Violet up the chimney, but that could partially have been explained by her caregiving to the younger children. Regardless, especially since all knew about Ingram’s betrayal, I think Patience at least should have been given a reason for not seeing the pleasures as a betrayal of their father instead of being pushed to the side and under the general but false umbrella of “too young to understand”.

Enemy Brothers: Especially after The Good Ship Red Lily, I was afraid this one might not live up to the positive recollection I had of it - but it didn’t disappoint. I very much appreciated that, although Dym was the one who had a special connection with Tony, Tony belonged to the entire family and they to him. I know Tony takes it lightly at the end and chalks it up to their keenness for detective work, but James and Porgy cycling 60 miles after him and the German in the car was no small thing. And, while it bugs me a little bit that Ginger doesn’t recgonise Tony despite the marked resemblance to Dym, I’ll let it go with the idea that he thinks he’s familiar but his brain doesn’t provide the correct context while on ship. I have a new appreciation for Dym. On one hand, of course he is gentle and doesn’t take harm easily from Tony - he’s been searching for Tony for years and so he’s been choosing to love Tony for years. And, on the other, you can tell he still hasn’t forgiven Max’s Mutti for stealing Tony and just how much effort it takes for him to choose to tell Tony to still love her and that he will take him to see her after the war. I also appreciate the honesty that Dym had in discussing England’s past and how they were not always on the side of right but that this time, they were. Also, Dym was a bomber pilot! I don’t know the exact statistics, but this was an incredibly dangerous job. I’m sure it varied some between organizations and aircraft, but if you were on the crew of a US B-17 bomber doing runs, the odds were you would only make it halfway through the 25 runs (I believe that’s right for the year it was published?) you were supposed to before being killed, captured, or severely injured. Even if you beat the odds and made it through all those runs (as some did), you would have had multiple crewmembers who did not and so would not have kept your full crew together (Were there rare exceptions to this, crews who made it all together? I hope so, but I don’t know). At any rate, when Euphemia comments to Dym and his friends to leave croquet until the summer when it was warmer and the way they all looked at each other for a moment as if there was no certainty that summer would come hit hard this time. (Oh, I just found someone noting that the RAF flew night missions and had a higher casualty rate than the US bombers, though it did depend on the year, of course - if they weren’t in the worst year yet, they were heading into it.) And the moment when Tony finds Dym and comes up behind him, nervous and afraid, and whispers “Please, George, I’ve come back” is just wonderful. I think there’s an idea of fear and justice vs. love and mercy, along with the hope that the choice of coming back will make a difference, but I haven’t figured out how to put it into words. I’m actually kind of shocked this book has never been made into a movie or a mini-series, especially when WWII stories have been so popular in somewhat recent years. But perhaps the strong Christian threads have put producers off (...not that that’s stopped others from mangling or removing them from other works).

The Good Ship Red Lily and Enemy Brothers: Enemy Brothers feels like a kind of inverse of The Good Ship Red Lily. Both books deal with children meeting and spending time with family members (and because of kidnapping, no less) and making decisions as to where home is and who true family is, but the role of the family is drastically different. In Red Lily, the dapper uncle is the kidnapper. Ingram tries to act like he is filling the kind, wise, but fun adult role and the children do love him for that. However, he is directly and actively responsible for their kidnapping, for previous imprisonment of their father, and for the current attempt to capture their father. In Enemy Brothers, Dym is ostensibly in the enemy role (being English and responsible for Tony’s “imprisonment” in the White Priory), but his actions are kind, loving, and (mostly) wise. Even when Tony is hating him, he can’t deny there’s a magnetism around Dym that all the children, including him, recognise and respond to. It’s not quite that serious, but I am reminded of the exchange in The Fellowship of the Ring about the enemy’s agents seeming fair but feeling foul, while the good may look foul but feel fair. But where an understanding of Ingram’s true nature leads Toby to separate from him and his grandfather, a deeper understanding of Dym and his true character helps Tony to make the hard but right decision about his home and family. In both cases, repentance and returning bring about reconciliation and restoration, but Ingram is the one repenting in Red Lily, confessing and asking forgiveness of his brother. In Enemy Brothers, Tony is the one who comes back, finally seeking the brother who has sought him for so long. He doesn’t ask for forgiveness from his brother in words and indeed doesn’t need to because his actions speak so loudly of it, but is fully received with love and restored.

[multimetaverse]

HSMTMTS 1x04 Review

Blocking was a very emotional ep that featured some strong performances. Let’s dig in!

Very strong work from Joshua Bassett tonight. We can see throughout the ep how Ricky is desperately trying to keep it together; ending the ep with Ricky hugging a pillow holding back tears was quite the gut punch. Not a lot of shows oriented to a youngish audience actually tackle divorce itself, usually we see the aftermath, and I think it’s great that HSMTMTS is actually delving into the early stages of a divorce when things are at their worst. 

Ricky’s actions tonight were right in line with what a real 16 year old boy would likely do so kudos to the writers for that. And of course it helps that Joshua is a teenager and looks like one. Case in point was Ricky sincerely believing that his parents could still work things out; obviously an adult would have realized that Mrs. Bowen moving halfway across the country months ago was the point of no return for that marriage. It’s in character for Ricky that his first instinct is to run but we do see some growth when he ultimately realizes that he does need to go home.

I really liked the writing for Ricky’s parents and Carol in this ep. I liked that the Bowen's were trying their best to make sure Ricky knew that none of this was his fault and that they loved him; they clearly had gone over what they should say with their therapist but once their plans went awry they scrambled and as most people would, they did a bad job of improvising. On the flip side their plan to spring the news on Ricky at a restaurant was a horrible choice; it makes some sense if they thought a neutral location would be less fraught but a heavy conversation like that should have been done in the privacy of their own home. It’s a nice little touch of imperfection. Very telling that Mrs. Bowen didn’t let Mr. Bowen know that she caught an earlier flight, for most people it would be routine to let their spouse know they’d be home early but it’s a sign that she no longer thinks of him as her husband. I liked that Carol was gentle but firm with Nini in telling her that her day wasn’t as bad as Ricky’s and I liked that she called Mr. Bowen after Ricky showed up which is what most parents would have done.

Great ep for Nicky shippers. Their conversation at Nini’s was the most emotionally vulnerable moment we’ve seen on the show so far. It was nice to see Ricky open up to Nini and tell her that it’s only with her that he feels comfortable talking about this stuff and their embrace was very sweet; you can really tell how much they still mean to each other. As awkward as it was I did like that aborted kiss. It wasn’t the right time but they did have a real moment. We know Miss Jenn added a kiss to the end of the musical which is likely where we’ll see them kiss but I wonder if we’ll see Nini initiate it rather than Ricky, especially since we’re clearly building towards Ricky telling Nini that he loves her. I’m also curious to see if Nini can in fact recover Ricky’s voicemail.

Olivia Rodrigo did so great writing and singing All I Want. Wise for Tim Federle to ask her to write a song for the show and I can’t wait to hear the song that her and Joshua co-wrote later in the season. As Nini said, the song is still about Ricky but he needs to meet her halfway if they’re going to work. And she did a great job with What I’ve Been Looking For, I’ve never heard such a passive aggressive performance, I was chuckling the whole time. 

It does look like NJ is broken up, though I hope we get explicit confirmation in the next ep. EJ giving a girl good poisoning so Nini could have the lead role in the summer camp musical was a great twist. It really paints his behaviour in the past 3 eps in a whole new light, knowing that he was both that ruthless and that dedicated to Nini. Obviously Nini has the talent to be the lead as she showed with her vocal theatrics at the end of What I’ve Been Looking For but would she have had the confidence to audition for Gabriella if she hadn’t won the lead at camp thanks to EJ’s plotting? Good on Nini for blocking EJ’s number. EJ really needs a wake up call, stealing Nini’s phone and deleting deleting Ricky’s voicemail was bad enough but giving a girl food poisoning? That crosses a ton of lines. 

Really not sure what Gina’s grand plan is. Presumably she wants her and EJ to win homecoming king and queen which is supposed to make Nini jealous and spur her to try and get back with EJ? But Gina’s goal is to be Gabriella so it’s not in her best interest to push Nini back with either EJ or Ricky. Gina’s home is small, presumably her family isn’t well off. 

Did not expect to see a flashback to Nini and EJ kissing alone in a tent at night. Pretty spicy for Disney.

Loved Ricky wearing Carol’s Salt Lake Pride shirt. Even a little thing like that would never have been allowed on Disney Channel.

Lots of little funny moments this ep. The whole emotional support hamster thing was funny as was Miss Jenn threatening to bring in her emotional support coyote. Seb’s facial expressions during Nini and EJ’s duet were funny and I chuckled at his line about the hamster being easy to find if he was smiling. 

Not sure if Miss Jenn’s family backstory will ever be relevant but interesting to learn that she never knew her biological father. I also liked the little reminder of her poverty when she said that protein bar was her dinner.

Big Red was funny this ep with him not understanding theatre lingo. If Natalie is back is he still stage manager? 

Kourtney gets some fleshing out this ep. It’s still obvious that her character having an expanded role past the pilot was a late addition to the show but I wonder what the writers would have done without her as Nini would have needed some sort of confidant.

We also got a date for the dance on the poster, October 9th, which fits with the timeline so far and puts opening night in around 6 weeks from then. I always like when shows actually put effort into their timelines. Far too many shows mess up their timelines and its always a sign of sloppy writers and often shows contempt for their audiences.

Looking Ahead:

Seblos starts next week, I’m pleasantly surprised they’re showing it in the next ep promo. I don’t know if we’ve seen Seb in any of the clips of Carlos’ big homecoming dance routine so we’ll see if he actually attends. It will be very interesting to see what happens with Seblos this season and over the course of the rest of the series.

Really hope that they won’t make EJ and Gina a thing, that age gap between the actors is even worse than the one between EJ and Nini. 

We know Ricky goes with Big Red and that Miss Jenn and Nini and Kourtney go out for a girls night and Miss Jenn runs into Mr. Bowen at the bowling alley. Hopefully nothing romantic comes of that.

There’s an actress credited as Sharpay’s mom for 1x05 and I’ve always been confused just what exactly that means. Is she Seb’s mom? Is she the in universe actress who had some minor role as Sharpay’s mom in the movies? 

Matt has said that EJ and Carlos have some important scenes together and the dance might be where some of those happen. Maybe EJ encourages Carlos to dance like everyone’s watching? Mr. Mazzara is chaperoning so I could see Carlos wanting to stick it to him. 

Until next week wildcats

[davetheshady]

🌟 how about chapter 4 of waiting for the bus in the rain 🌟 and only partially because i showed up to yell about the last few paragraphs when it first dropped. also just because i love Julie content and it's the very middle of that fic

::blows dust off inbox:: So! Now that I’ve back from traveling through three countries and recovered from trying to leave most of my arm skin in one of them (PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT: don’t go so fast you flip over on the Alpine Slide, particularly if you’re in the actual Alps) here’s some DVD commentary on Chapter 4 of Waiting for the Bus in the Rain! It’s chock full of my stylistic hallmarks, i.e. way longer than I expected.

(Note to my sister: THIS IS FULL OF SPOILERS. GO READ MY STORY FIRST YOU LOSER)

There’s a Sheriff’s Secret Police officer outside Julie’s window. Considering she’s in her office on the second floor, this is fairly impressive. But when they scream and scrabble against the glass after accidentally kicking over their ladder for the third time, Julie’s had enough.

Even when they’re not under suspicion of using the scientific method, Julie has to deal with WAY more (attempted) surveillance than Carlos ever does. This is partially because she doesn’t have amazing hair, but also because Cecil doesn’t narrate large chunks of her life over the radio that the SSP can copy down and submit as a report.

vulnerabilities include fire and cold iron

and according to the literature high velocity cheese wedges but i’ve never seen anyone test that

My hand to God. Probably my number one complaint about fantasy as a genre is that everyone takes stuff from Celtic mythology so seriously when half of it is just. Completely bonkers.

Originally, most of the relevant exposition about fairies was provided by a different character entirely: Carlos-f’s misplaced smartphone, an AI who Julie called Hex (yes, like in Discworld, hell yeah science wizards) because she refused to give Julie her name. Hex provided such ringtones as “Dark Horse” and “Double Rainbow” and would occasionally get distracted by lists of numbers. Hmm… 

I changed it back because 1) it was a detour and this chapter was long enough already, 2) Julie and Carlos’ friendship is one of the main throughlines and having them talk to each other was better for the story, and 3) him texting during the middle of a battle is hilarious. But as far as I’m concerned, Hex is still canon. 

Andre yawns on the other end of the line and asks, “What time is it?”

“Quit whining, it’s only—” Julie looks at the clock.

Shit.

“—3:00 AM,” she finishes defiantly, because she still has her pride. Embarrassment pricks at her like flying embers settling on bare skin, because now Andre knows she was so out of it she didn’t even bother to try keeping track of the time, and he’s going to think she couldn’t sleep because of feelings, which is both correct and incorrect, because she wasn’t even trying to sleep since distracting herself by going over the minutiae of their data while the Sheriff’s Secret Police scream and fall in the bushes is better than listening to her cats prowl around while lying in her quiet apartment by herself, and any moment now he’s going to feel bad and decide to humor her and answer her in a voice filled with cloying pity and say—

“Would Hiram McDaniels count as one respondent, or five?” He yawns again.

A good chunk of Julie’s inner turmoil just, like, boils down to a recurring loop of that Tim Kreider quote about “If we want the rewards of being loved we have to submit to the mortifying ordeal of being known.” She doesn’t consciously WANT the rewards of being loved, it just kind of… happens… and then she’s stuck with incredibly loyal life-long friends… and now she not only has to deal with her own feelings but theirs too, which is pretty much her worst nightmare… 

Fortunately, since she’s already gone through the mortifying ordeal of being known, they do frequently pull through and offer the kind of support she knows how to accept. 

“Give TV’s Frank a kiss for me.”

“I’m not kissing my cat for you,” says Julie.

I mean, she’ll kiss the cat. Just not on request. 

And yes, all her cats are named after the Mad Scientists’ sidekicks on Mystery Science Theater 3000. ~foreshadowing~

When she opens the door of her workshop later that morning, she finds that someone has been by to leave her a breakfast tray. Well, “tray”, in that it’s a textbook, and “breakfast”, in that it’s a French press, a stale churro, and her blood pressure medication. But the French press is completely full with still-warm coffee, so overall she’s going to count this as a win.

This appeared pretty early in my drafts: it’s just such a funny mental image to me and also encapsulates Julie and Gary’s relationship pretty well, i.e. a string of question marks who somehow get along.

The naturally suspicious part of her wonders if he deliberately provoked her reaction to the flamingo to gather more information about it. The naturally analytical part of her points out that Carlos is more likely to gnaw off his own hand than put someone in danger, especially when he could just put himself in danger instead.

Julie is just a tad cynical, so she’d definitely think of potentially negative interpretations of her friend’s actions. But it’s not actually a possibility she dwells on in any real sense, and every time she interacts with Carlos-f (not to mention Carlos-0) she trusts him implicitly. She wouldn’t admit it in a thousand years, but she considers Carlos one of the few genuinely good people in the world: not because he never makes mistakes or creates personal disasters, but exactly because of those things. She knows he’s a flawed person, and that everyone is flawed, so that makes him genuine – which means every time he’s tried to do the right thing at personal cost, over and over, that was genuine too.

Basically, there’s a reason why in the last chapter she automatically references “scientist means hero” with “Fuck, I’m turning into you!”

“So,” she says. “Nilanjana. Do you need new pronouns, or anything?”

“Does anyone need any pronouns?” asks Gary contemplatively, which Julie takes as a ‘No’.

“Should I drop ‘Gary’ entirely? Do you want me to change your name in our paperwork?”

He thinks about it for a moment. “I don't know, man,” he concludes. “I don’t really believe in labels.”

Gary has galaxy-brained from “gender is a social construct” straight to “identity is a social construct” and beyond. 

“Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” asks Julie.

“I think so, Dr. K,” says Gary. “But how will we get three pink flamingos into one pair of capri pants?”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v-xrnIXQ3iQ

What happens when the wave function ψ is the same as the physical system it describes, and what happens when that physical system collapses?

i.e. what would happen if common misperceptions of the Observer Effect were actually the correct perceptions?

Julie can’t help it: she snorts. “Passionate? Me?”“Well, yeah,” says Romero. “You really care about the things that interest you. You get really involved and angry and never quit or back down.”“Oh,” says Julie, then blurts, “You like that I’m angry?”“I… don’t like it when you’re unhappy?” says Romero. “But – it’s part of you, so… yeah, I guess I do, because it’s how you are. Why? Is – is everything okay?”She’s spent a lifetime having people tell her to stop being angry. No one’s ever told her she’s fine the way she is.

There have been many, many, MANY thinkpieces about how women are socialized not to express anger, often even to themselves. That was never going to work for Julie, who after all is powered by constant low-level rage, but that just means she had to deal with the backlash from not adhering to social programming instead (on top of additional backlash from being a woman in a male-dominated field). Of his own free will, Romero not only rejects that social programming, but also clearly spent time thinking about her empirically to determine that her anger is a positive force instead of a random and horrible personality trait.

He’s a Good Dude.

When she was in elementary school, her third grade teacher had been fond of saying, “If you’re bored, it means you have no imagination,” at least until Julie had decided to deal with her boredom after finishing her science assignment, her homework, and the rest of the textbook by seeing what happened if you jammed a paperclip into the electric socket. (The answer was certainly not boring and, in fact, probably the most exciting and practical thing they learned that year.)

That used to be my aunt’s favorite saying. I personally did not copy Julie’s response, but it is based on research done by one of my friends. (It’s okay, he was very careful about safety and made sure to use rubber-handled scissors to poke random bits of metal into the outlet. Apart from a classmate’s socks catching on fire, everyone was totally fine.)

She wakes to the sound of Cecil talking about the other week’s marathon, which may or may not have been mandatory, whoops. Carlos has texted her an emoji of various hadrosaurids gathered around a campfire singing “We Are the Champions”.

PREVIOUSLY IN NIGHT VALE:

EXT. - THE LABS

Thousands of citizens stream down Main Street, driven relentlessly forward to the Narrow Place. The Harbingers of the Distant Prince hurl themselves towards the building again and again, only to be rebuffed by the wards. Charred corpses lay scattered around the perimeter. Green storm clouds gather overhead as their anger grows. 

INT. - LAB ONE

ANDRE

Did you hear something?

JULIE

[not looking up from her welding]

No.

 Carlos, meanwhile, has NO idea his emojis are not in fact standard. 

“I liked him,” says Josie. [...] “He was trying to do… something, I forget what. I hope he figured it out.” At Julie’s incredulity, she says, “Some people, they’re rough around the edges, but they try. They hope for something better and keep going. That’s important.”

“What if you go where you’re not supposed to?”

“Then you come back and fix what you can,” says Josie.

“What if you can’t?”

“Then you find someone to help you,” Josie replies. “Oh! I love this song.”

She turns up the volume of the radio and treats everyone to the aria from Shastakovich’s Paint Your Wagon.

Vocals by L. Marvin

Angels chilling at your house are, of course, part of the standard retirement package for former Knights of the Church. Old Woman Josie used to carry Esperacchius and passed it on to the Egyptian, after which it went to Sanya. She and Shiro were buds and saw Elvis in Vegas (and also, interestingly, several times in the Ralphs).

Anyway, if you want to suggest that a character is subconsciously mulling over an issue, I recommend having them ask some leading questions without describing their reactions and then change the subject.

“It’s come to my attention,” she begins, then has to stop and clear her throat again. “It’s come to my attention that we have a pretty good thing going on. So I was just wondering if you’d like to keep doing this, you know. For the indefinite future. With me.”When he doesn’t say anything, or look at her, or move at all for that matter, she removes her hand from under her thigh where she’s been sitting on it and points at the lease. “I highlighted where you have to sign,” she says, somewhat unnecessarily. “If you wanted to.”

I think this is the only time we see Julie nervous about anything when her life is not actively in danger.

You can’t write a romance arc without including some degree of emotional vulnerability – it just wouldn’t be satisfying. On the other hand, how that emotional vulnerability manifests is REALLY dependent on the person, and if you don’t base it firmly in their character it wouldn’t be satisfying, either. (I’m REALLY picky about romances in part because of this.) Julie’s not the type to pine or swoon or be filled with self-doubt*, but she is bad at feelings, and unfortunately, she’s determined that an equitable relationship with Romero requires some kind of tangible, committed expression of them. So she does that as best she can. It’s not actively harmful to her, but it does require a stretch out of her comfort zone. 

* ::cough::Carlos::cough::

Yes, Julie has technically registered their equipment with City Hall, in that they’re listed as alternatively “electronic abaci” and “databases” and she’s claimed they only use the internet for checking email. Until now, they’ve coasted on general good will towards Carlos/his hair and the fact that all authority figures have been functionally electronically illiterate since the Incident in the community college’s Computer and Fire Sciences building.

Look, I could have SWORN there was an Incident at the Computer and Fire Sciences building specifically mentioned in canon. Can I find it anywhere? No. Did I listen to an episode that was subsequently erased from history? Possibly.

This time, someone picks up. There are a few seconds of sleepy fumbling, followed by “Hello?” in more vocal fry than voice.“Cecil!” she says. “Is Carlos there?”“Are you in fear for your life from the long arm of the law?” Cecil mumbles.

her current ringtone

“Julie, I said hold on!”“I am holding on,” she snarls as the rumbling stops. “It’s a diagnostic. 75% efficiency? Am I the only one who cares about proper maintenance in this town?”

This combines two of my favorite things: people focusing on hilariously inconsequential details during a stressful situation, and Julie lowkey engaging in supervillainy. Nikola Tesla did not design earthquake machines so Night Vale could install shitty ones they can barely use. STANDARDS.

“I probably wouldn’t have destroyed Weeping Miner,” she says eventually.

“I know,” says Carlos.

“I could have, though,” she says.

“I know that too,” says Carlos.

[...] Carlos shifts. She looks over; he briefly catches her eye and says, “So could I.”It’s not the same. Carlos would probably feel bad about it, for one. But she feels some of her anger dissipate anyway. At least she’s not the only one dealing with this bullshit.

Subconscious concern --> conscious concern! Getting back to Julie’s cynicism: she doesn’t think there are very many good people in the world, and that excludes her too. Sure, she’s risked her life to save others, fight baddies, and make sure the dangerous technology she’s developed doesn’t fall into the wrong hands, but she knows she has selfish reasons to do them, like protecting her friends and making sure the town/world isn’t destroyed so she can keep doing her research.

But at the same time, the fact that she has been dwelling on the ethics of her situation ever since Chapter 19 of Love is All You Need, that she is genuinely bothered that she’d consider destroying a neighborhood, and that she’s talking about this with Carlos, who considers them to have a similar dilemma, suggests that deep down she is dissatisfied by her cynical model of the world because the data isn’t quite matching up. Which, of course, means she needs more data in the form of Chapters 6 and 7.

On one side is a large picture of Carrie Fisher giving everyone the finger

I think Space Mom is mandatory at protests now. 

This whole section (especially the rain) was heavily influenced by the March for Science, which both Ginipig and I went to in 2017. You too can make a difference and also give yourself writing material!

“Any more words of wisdom, Usidork?” she asks instead.

USIDORE, WIZARD OF THE 12TH REALM OF EPHYSIYIES, MASTER OF LIGHT AND SHADOW, MANIPULATOR OF MAGICAL DELIGHTS, DEVOURER OF CHAOS, CHAMPION OF THE GREAT HALLS OF TERR'AKKAS. THE ELVES KNOW HIM AS FI’ANG YALOK. THE DWARFS KNOW HIM AS ZOENEN HOOGSTANDJES*. HE IS ALSO KNOWN IN THE NORTHEAST AS GAISMUNĒNAS MEISTAR AND HAS MANY OTHER SECRET NAMES WHICH YOU DO NOT… YET… KNOW.

* Hoobastank

He blinks at her in polite incomprehension. “I don’t want to miss the Life Raft Debate,” he says. “It’s important to support your department.”

Several universities hold yearly Raft Debates, where representatives from the different disciplines have a debate about which of their respective areas of study is the most vital for humanity and thus should get to take the one-person life raft back to civilization from the desert island they’ve all gotten stuck on.

I should inform you that at my alma mater the Devil’s Advocate, who argues that none of the subjects are worth saving, has won multiple times.

Without taking her eyes off her opponent, Romanoff thrusts out her hand. Dr. Aluki Robinson (Associate Professor of Ornithology) passes her a harpoon, its ivory barbs almost glowing in the dim light.

Nauja and Aluki are both from Cold Case, because no one deserves to be stuck in Cold Case where we’re apparently supposed to be deeply concerned about the main character’s sexual experience but only vaguely perturbed by the powerful white and white-coded women stealing Native American children to brainwash them to their culture so they can be fed to the system seriously WHAT the FUCK Jimbo

ANYWAY, in this universe the Winter fey of Unalaska are discharging their obligations to help the Winter Court against Outsiders by sending some of their people to monitor the prison in Night Vale. This also gets to highlight the fun of an unreliable narrator! Julie is generally not one of those, because she’s a smart and observant person who will happily question everything, but even she has her limits when she’s out of her element. In the case of this story, there are several minor details to suggest there is some Winter and Summer court drama going on in the background (the chlorofiends, an entire academic department of shapeshifters, Molly and Mab personally overseeing bus routes) and most of it just goes completely over her head.

During his undergraduate career, Gary had elicited a considerable amount of interdepartmental discussion about his desire to be exempted from lab regulations for wearing appropriate – or any – footwear in the lab, which evolved into a considerable amount of interdepartmental discussion about whether wrapping your feet in duct tape immediately before said lab time constituted appropriate footwear.

This was based on one of my mother’s students, who eventually resolved the situation by commissioning a handmade pair of moccasins he placed on his feet immediately before entering the lab.

“The scientific method is four steps,” says Carlos with a cheerful inevitability as the officers start shouting panicked instructions into their walkie talkies. “One, find an object you want to know more about; two, hook that object up to a machine using wires or tubes; three, write things on a clipboard; four, read the results that the machine prints.”

This is a direct quote from the book. Was this entire subplot about the scientific method ban designed just to come up with a plausible retcon for why someone with actual scientific training would announce this over the radio? It sure was!

THE SCIENTIFIC METHOD:

1. “Step one, cut a hole in the box,” calls Wei.2. “No, step one is collecting underpants,” says Gary.3. “Step four: make a searching and fearless moral inventory,” says Julie.4. “And then step five, acceptance,” Andre finishes.5. “You see, the first level is ennui, or boredom. In particular cases it may be the desire for somebody or something specific – nostalgia, love-sickness… At more morbid levels it is a dull ache of the soul, a longing with nothing to long for. A sick pining, a vague restlessness. Mental throes. Yearning. And at the scientific method’s deepest and most painful level, it is a sensation of great spiritual anguish, often without any specific cause.”6. “It’s how you decide whether to fix the problem with duct tape or WD-40,” says Julie.7. “I think,” says Osborn, “that it’s a divine machine for making flour, salt, and gold.”

8. “Don’t be absurd,” says Galleti. “The scientific method is two vast and trunkless legs of stone standing in the desert!”

9. “And they say the scientific method is—”

“—the quality of cosiness and comfortable conviviality associated with sitting around a fire in the winter with close friends,” puts in Dr. Chelsea Dubinski, Assistant Professor of Chemistry.

10. “Or is it the special look shared between two people, when both are wishing that the other would do something that they both want, but neither want to do?” asks Galleti.

This section was also a chance to write about the rest of Night Vale’s scientists, of whom we still know so very little. There’s enough of them that there’s a whole science district, and the community college seems pretty well staffed, but the fact that Carlos made such an impact when he rolled into town suggests that they were either pretty lowkey or indistinguishably weird from the rest of the town.

“I don't feel alone,” snaps Julie. “I feel like shit, and I know why I feel like shit, and the thought of outlining that in excruciating detail is, oddly enough, not making me feel any better!”

One of the things I wanted to address in this story (inspired by Ghost Stories, which I uhhhhh did not care for) was the shortcomings of a lot of narratives about grief. Because many of them are not only oversimplified, but also not everyone processes grief in the same way. It’s not necessarily a linear narrative of where you go through the five steps and then you’re totally over it: it might take a long time, or you might be fine until some other, unrelated setback triggers you, or it might be a cyclical process as anniversaries roll around. Grief lingers. Related to that, helping people deal with their grief isn’t always as simple as sitting down with them and offering a sympathetic ear. Some people don’t process their feelings well verbally, and the emotional labor of formulating all your grief for another person’s consumption can be nearly as traumatizing as grieving in the first place, and VERY difficult to do when you’re already feeling down.

On top of that, I think general American culture is just. Real bad at dealing with grief. Which means we don’t have many positive models to base our responses on, either as grievers or as people supporting the grieving, and if you don’t fit those models at all it just makes the process that more difficult because everyone’s stumbling around in the dark.  

“Does it always feel like this?” she asks.“Which part?” asks Carlos.“We won,” says Julie. “Methods have lived to science another day. We can do our work without interference. All we did was lie about what the name meant, but…” She taps the lab table with a pencil. Another secret violation of the law. “It still feels like we… lost something.”“We did lose something,” says Carlos. “It was just a name, but names are important.”

One of the reasons I love writing Carlos and Julie’s friendship so much is because it’s such a relationship of equals. They’re both hypercompetent, pragmatic, and a little ruthless; their skill sets don’t have much overlap (at least, not yet) and their personalities aren’t at all similar, but they get each other and it’s so sweet. When they wander out of their respective areas of expertise, or stumble across some kind of dilemma, they feel comfortable asking each other for guidance – they can admit their ignorance and drop their public facades of Having Their Shit Together because they trust each other. 

“I want—” Her mouth opens and shuts again, wordlessly. Her scowl deepens.Then she narrows her eyes and says, “Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra.”

Molly being a huge Trekkie is pretty much my favorite thing from Ghost Story (not to be confused with Ghost Stories)(although thinking about it, swapping their plots would be kind of amazing??), so of course I wanted her and Julie to interact in a way that showed off what huge nerds they are.

But yet another element I wanted to include in this story is the background detail that ~the masquerade~ must be maintained because it’s too dangerous for humanity as a whole to be fully cognizant of the supernatural – which tends to get a little lost in the sauce, because the supernatural is consistently super duper powerful and our heroes (most of them pretty supernatural themselves) generally avert disaster by the skin of their teeth. But here’s Julie, just a regular human who’s capable of producing terrifying technology, has no concern for the rules and traditions of ancient regimes unless they’re inconveniencing her, and who would be perfectly fine with upending the status quo just to see what happens. Regular humans just aren’t more flexible about change than the supernatural, they’re even curious about it sometimes – which must be terrifying to something like the Winter Court, which has been devoted to maintaining the same strict balance since forever. Regular humans can do stuff like tell a story so well it inspires the Winter Lady to subvert her magical restrictions and remind her of her own humanity.

Julie grumpily emails him a rough summary of her thoughts on Troy Walsh and her conversation with Molly and heads up to her office to pull up everything she has on both the bus garage and the man in the tan jacket.

Bullshit secretkeeping (“I can’t tell the other main character this important plot point, it’s better if they don’t know”) is one of my least favorite tropes and I avoid it at all costs. It’s such a stupid way to add tension. It can maybe work once, but after your character has inevitably watched it backfire spectacularly, you can’t repeat it ever again unless you want to imply they’re a dumbass who never learns from their own mistakes and apparently doesn’t care that it clearly puts everyone in more danger. ::looks pointedly at a certain book series::

Also, it’s almost always much more interesting to have characters try to share important information. If they don’t succeed, it coats everything in ironic horror as the outcomes one person tried to avoid happen despite their best efforts. If they do succeed, it means everyone is fully cognizant of the potential danger even as they are still prevented from acting on it properly, like because they (e.g.) get kidnapped in the middle of the street. 

King City is not in the correct dimension. The man in the tan jacket seems to know something about this, but up until a year ago he wasn’t drawing attention to it. He was busy poking his nose into everyone’s business, ingratiating himself with the powerful and the influential, dealing with them in secret…basically, the SOP of your typical Night Vale authority.Like the Night Vale Area Transit Authority, with its bus route to… King City.They had a job and they chose to keep it, Molly said.“Fuck,” says Julie. “He was working for them!”

In retrospect, it’s hilarious to me how much of this fic was powered by spite. Ghost Stories and Cold Case both really bothered me. The resolution of the Man in the Tan Jacket storyline, meanwhile, felt pretty underwhelming – not because what Finknor came up with wasn’t interesting, but because it barely engaged with the few plot points they had already established. Like, when TMITJ shows up in the podcast he interferes with the Mayor, he’s connected to the city under Lane Five, he surfaces during the Strex Corp arc, he interacts with a whole bunch of series regulars in an ominous fashion… Yeah, that probably came from Finknor dropping him in more or less at random, but the end result was that during the first several years of the show it seemed he was an active driver of whatever his plot was supposed to be. In WTNV: The Novel, though, he’s much more reactive and impotent. This wouldn’t necessarily be bad if this change was acknowledged as part of his storyline, but… it’s not… 

(And I get that it can be difficult to come up with a plot for an element you didn’t intend to be plotty at all, but like: there wasn’t THAT much material they had to account for. I should know, I had to look it all up to write THIS story.)

I think this was especially frustrating because it ends up feeling like a “have your cake and eat it too” on the part of Finknor: it’s not automatically bad when fans care more about the show’s continuity than the creators (creators have different concerns, and a lot of time that means they’re using the creative latitude to do something neat), but the novel was very much presented as “finally, a resolution to that one mystery you find cool!” which is… pretty much a direct appeal to the fans’ care about the continuity. So to then ignore or retcon so many aspects of the continuity without any story payoff for it feels like a cheat. 

(Ultimately, though, my inspiration to actually sit down and write mainly sprang from 1) all the lovely comments about how so many people loved my OFC, which as someone who started lurking in online fandom in the early 2000s was both mind-boggling and heartwarming, and 2) lol those ladies have the same name. I learned nothing.)

She gets the call at 21:27. She goes to the hospital, although there’s not much point. The human mind is the most powerful thing on the planet and it's housed in a fragile casing of meat and bone.

I’ve mentioned a few times (possibly more than a few)(probably more than a few) that I didn’t like the WTNV live ep Ghost Stories, and that’s because the ~big reveal~ is that Cecil’s story was actually about a personal family tragedy, and once he’s able to admit that, everything is hunky-dory. As I recall, it went something like this:

WTNV: hey remember that time your mom died and your family was thrown into chaos

ME: WELL NOW I DO

WTNV: and on that note, good night everyone!

Needless to say, everything was not hunky-dory. 

But on top of being emotionally compromised for the whole following week, I was also professionally annoyed. Prior to this live show, we’d had a few cryptic references to Cecil’s mom and could reasonably infer that his relationship with his sister was strained. Critically, though, neither was their own clearly-defined character (compare to the treatment of Janice or Steve Carlsberg), these were not frequently recurring elements that would suggest they weighed heavily on Cecil’s mind, and it wasn’t even obvious that their backstory WAS particularly tragic. So the emotional lynchpin of this live show was mostly new information about Cecil regarding characters the audience had no connection to.

Tragic narratives are powerful not only because they evoke intense emotions, but also because those emotions are supposed to go somewhere and do something: provide catharsis, reinforce the artist’s philosophy, make the audience ponder the meaning of life... In using a tragedy as a plot twist, your ability to give it the proper emotional arc is very limited, because you have to misdirect from its existence while building it up, and then quickly progress from upsetting emotions to those more appropriate for concluding the story. That’s not impossible, but Ghost Stories immediately throws a wrench in the works by splitting the audience’s emotional journey away from Cecil’s: he already knew about the tragedy and the people involved with it, so the plot twist acts as his emotional catharsis... but only his. When the twist itself is the first time the audience realizes there ARE emotions, and that the first 85% of the show was completely unrelated to them, there’s simply not enough time for the audience to have them, process them according to the story’s weird ramblings that kinda imply fiction based on real life is more important than genre fiction like horror (PS: that’s a WEIRD take for a fictional horror podcast), and reach their own kind of catharsis without it being horrifically rushed. Particularly when they’re having a WAY more emotional response than the character due to their own personal tragedies which they were not expecting to have to think about during a fun podcast live show about ghost stories.

As stuff like this points out, you can’t just sprinkle in character deaths and expect quality entertainment to sprout: there has to be a purpose to putting the tragedy in the story (even if that purpose is to highlight how purposeless tragedy can be in real life). I’ve always been VERY critical of the assumption that tragedy is ~more artistic~, both in historical lit and modern pop culture; sad emotions aren’t inherently more meaningful than happy ones. Merely including tragic events isn’t deep; you have to do the work and make it deep, in its context and development.

So: on to ::gestures proudly:: probably the worst thing I’ve ever written!

From an aesthetic standpoint, I leaned into the Night Vale house style in this section because I found it to be really effective at conveying the enormity of the tragedy for Julie: it’s pretty blunt, just like her, but the focus on oddly specific details, the narrative distancing, and the lurking sense of existential horror seemed a fitting demonstration of how badly the emotional gutpunch disrupted her narration/life. 

And I really wanted it to be an emotional gutpunch. (But not a surprise: even if I hadn’t warned for it specifically, Julie mentions Romero dying all the way back in Ch. 10 of Love is All You Need.) This is in part a story about grief and mourning, so the loss that caused it needed a central place. I wanted it to be powerful enough to retroactively fit in with how upset Julie is in the opening chapters and to add real tension to the devil’s bargain the feds want to make with her in the next chapter. But most importantly, I wanted it to be so significant to both Julie and the audience that the end of the story has an impact. Loss doesn’t get “cured” – but it seems to me like it’s not supposed to be. Loss is a part of life; love, in whatever form, helps give you strength as you grow and change from the experience into someone new, and this is also a story about the love in friendship.

I think a lot about the ethics of writing tragic stuff, because when you get right down to it, ultimately art boils down to poking your fingers in someone’s feelings and stirring them around. People get really invested in the stuff you are responsible for creating, and making someone feel bad for no reason isn’t being an artist, it’s being a dick. But I’m very happy with how this turned out, and hopefully didn’t traumatize anyone who didn’t want to be traumatized.

(I do feel bad for everyone who was reading as I posted that had to wait an entire year for the next chapter, though. I wanted to get something up sooner, but I had to wait until I sorted Chapter 6 and Chapter 6 was just. The worst. WORDS ARE HARD. People who read WIPs are braver than any Marine.)

hmu for more dvd commentary!

[alexanderwrites]

Tim Heidecker & Neil Hamburger @ Soho Theatre Review - 21/8/17

Tim Heidecker starts his 40 minute set in the cramped downstairs lounge of the Soho Theatre with two minutes of physical comedy - he wrestles frustratedly with the microphone and its stand, desperately trying to fit the mic into its holder and aim it at his mouth. It’s an easy task, but Heidecker makes it look like the most physically challenging action a person can undertake. It’s such an hilariously incompetent way to start a show, and it’s a bit that has some of that Story of Everest sketch from Mr Show formula in its blood - the longer it goes on, the funnier it gets. And the more painful it gets, the funnier it gets. The microphone swings wildly at the end of its cable, sometimes coming within inches of audience members, at other times crashing loudly to the wooden floor. As well as feeling dangerous and unorthodox, its a test of endurance, and like the rest of his and Turkington’s set, it dares you to keep laughing at it. It’s comedy that is so furiously funny that you have no choice but to keep laughing. Heidecker, getting progressively furious and demanding the music be turned off, is a master of playing a character that is completely losing control, as is Turkington. 

The concept of a lack of control is at the centre of the two sets. Heidecker’s routine is a terrifyingly accurate parody of those terrible, right-wing “i’m anti-PC!” comedians - his ugly leather jacket, unflattering dad jeans and sweat stained shirt make his character look like a stressed out alcoholic who is furious at his audience. “I say to people ‘I’m a comedian’, they say ‘what, like Tim Allen’, and I say “OOOOUUGGH?”, is one of his opening lines, a line that references Tim Allen’s, erm, catchphrase - a reference so dated and awful that it could’ve come from Tim Allen himself. Heidecker has such a perfectly tuned ear for how this kind of person talks, a catchphrase spouting, self-praising blowhard who spends most of his set talking about how twisted his mind is. It’s such a perfect distillation of a comic blowing their own set through anger and incompetence, and aside from being jaw-achingly funny, it actually has something to say about the hypocrisy and foolishness of a very specific brand of white male comedians who mistake their own anger for edginess, and mistake that edginess for something that people would actually want to hear.  

Early on in the set, he asks “What do you call this, London? England?”, at which point he makes direct eye contact with me. I nod, and he angrily says “you’re just nodding, which fucking one is it?”. Being the target of his frustration would be uncomfortable if it wasn’t so unbelievably funny. The audience members are hostages, and his inability to interact with them successfully keeps us at gunpoint. Because it feels so loose and purposefully sloppy, it has a feeling of anything-goes mayhem which makes it funny in such an immediate and urgent sense. At one point, he looks down at my girlfriend who has been laughing through the entire set, and for no apparent reason asks “Are you alright?”, in a kind of “What the fuck is wrong with you, why are you laughing?” voice. When she says yes, he pulls a face that’s hard to describe, and is best illustrated by using this screenshot from Heidecker’s web short Tim’s Cook Off:

Later, someone says something quietly in the audience, to which he loses his temper and insists on restarting his interminably pointless story about a movie theatre (”I went to the movies last week, we saw....uh...Superman”) that had Pepsi instead of Coke. He curses himself, and gets angrier and angrier as he routinely blows the most simple of “punchlines”, and like the microphone that he couldn’t put onto its stand, it gets funnier and funnier the more he misses. His crowd-work ranges from almost non-jokes (he walks over to me and says “Lets talk to the guy with the hair, I love it! What’s your name? Alexander? Alexander the Great! Here we go!”), to defeatist and aggressive (”Kyle? I have nothing for that name, you understand that? You’ve given me fucking nothing”), which all manages to be funnier than most comedians’ actual jokes. 

Fans of his work will know how funny he can be physically, and he puts that on display when regaling the audience with a story about his wife dragging him to the opera. His face when describing his anger is the kind of face that he does so well, the kind that has spawned endless GIFs across the internet - clenched teeth, face trembling in thunderous anger, head twitching to the side - it is such an hysterically unfitting over-reaction to the situation, and it develops this horrible character that he’s playing: someone with a whole bunch of misplaced, impotent fury. The story ends with him saying he jumped from his seat, leant towards the stage and screamed “SHUT THE FUCK UUUUPPP!!!??!” at the performers. And he claims this story received a ten-minute standing ovation at his last show, implying that we were rude not to do the same. 

The bit is a perfect distillation of who this character is: the loudest man on earth with the worst, most toxic opinions, who thinks he’s brave for saying what everyone else is supposedly “afraid to say”. Throughout Heidecker’s career, no matter how surreal and abstract his work has gotten, it shouldn’t be forgotten that what he really is is a satirist. Whether he’s making fun of late night talk shows, right-wing-targeted action TV programmes or self-important male comedians, what he really is - and what his set really demonstrates - is that he is one of the best satirists in comedy.

And so is Gregg Turkington, whose set as Neil Hamburger follows Heidecker. If Heidecker’s persona is someone desperately trying to hold on to some semblance of control, Hamburger is Heidecker in another 10 years: off script, off the road, and wallowing in chaos. There is no control whatsoever with this person. His comedy is Andy Kaufman-esque, playing with the basic form of comedy itself. Some people have described this style as “anti-humour”, which is a term i’ve never been fond of. Turkington isn’t anti-comedy: he clearly loves it, and is bending it and twisting it to his own unique style. He doesn’t subvert typical comedy by resisting it - he subverts it by taking typical comedy and channelling it through an abrasive, ugly man in the middle of a meltdown. 

It isn’t anti-comedy, because the comedy and the material is there - although in some senses, it’s not really the material that matters: it’s the performance. You can go and see Hamburger for the jokes, but what his shows are really about is a man who clearly has such a disastrous personal life that it has seeped into his work, and now his show - and his hair - all drip with booze and fear. Some bits don’t even have clearcut punchlines, because he is this joke. When he tells jokes about Gene Simmons, the thing that is funniest about it isn’t the punchline, it’s the progression towards it. He starts by calling him “Leeeegendary” and showering him with superlatives, but somehow over the course of his rambling, his descriptions of Gene Simmons have turned to “Physically disgusting, repugnant, worthless singer...”. Like the Heidecker character, the anger inside this man is turning all of his jokes into assaults, and if someone dares to boo or shout “That’s stupid”, which someone does after a bit about Ozzy Osbourne biting the head off a cooked chicken, he snarls “No it isn’t, because it’s true to life”. 

Moments of clarity in his character like that are some of the funniest, and that clarity is deftly juxtaposed with convoluted absurdity - and there is a kind of genius in how he balances both in his stories. One, for example, is about a joke Paul McCartney told while judging a contest for charity. The story about the contest rambles on with a fair amount of reasoning and believability, and this in itself is funny - the idea of this drunk, wet haired, comb-overed, phlegm-clearing old insult comic being at some sort of contest with Paul McCartney - and finding it delightful - is a deeply funny image because it places this nightmare in front of you in the real world. And then, he twists it into another absurd direction where suddenly nothing makes sense, when he nonchalantly reveals that it was a pissing contest that he was judging. For charity. And that’s not even the punchline, but it might as well be. (The punchline is that Paul McCartney, when choosing a winner - after seeing 150 contestants - said ‘Peed Best!). 

His references are largely ancient and esoteric - they’re jokes that’d require you to know specifically about the works of bands like the Grateful Dead, and whether you do or do not doesn’t matter - it’s the seeming disgust and discomfort he seems to have in his own material and his own being that is key to his work. After a more current joke about Linkin Park earns encouraged groans from the audience, it’s his disbelief that anyone could find it distasteful that is the biggest laugh. “Don’t worry, i’m sure they’ll keep making shitty music for you and your shitty friends”, he says, seeming to hate everyone in the room for not liking him, as well as hating himself for putting himself in this situation. With a lesser performer, it could be simply unpleasant, but with Turkington, it’s that unpleasantness that makes it kind of funny, and, to paraphrase Tears for Fears, kind of sad. Under all the nastiness, there is something human and tuned-in about these guys that stops them from being simple exercises in irony. There is an ugly, human truth in them that’s as tragic as it is hilarious. There’s almost a bit of sympathy in there, too. 

A very good movie came out a couple of years ago called Entertainment, a surreal road movie where Turkington plays himself and Hamburger, and the influences in that movie make it clear where he is getting his influences from: all over America. Hamburger is a great amalgam of old, dusty comedians in darkened barrooms who refuse to alter their personality despite it doing them no good, and self-sabotaging losers that live in Tom Waits songs. Hamburger’s and Heidecker’s personas come directly from these types of people, and they are worthy and potently funny portraits of these broken rejects. Moreover, the show as a whole says more about comedy than most documentaries about comedy do. They are trapped in a past that never really was, where they’re certain this material would kill. Heidecker and Turkington, in real life, do kill in Soho. They do the seemingly impossible and control the uncontrollable, masterfully managing their sets while still allowing them to feel chaotic. They put on an exciting show of two halves which compliment each other beautifully, and as well as being smart, on point, and terrific performances, they are uniquely and fiercely hilarious. 

Oh, and Tim is a really nice guy, too. 

Heidecker and Turkington (or Hamburger, if you like) are playing at the Soho Theatre in London until 2nd September, and you can and really should get tickets here. 

[journeysintowebcomics]

Scary Go Round: Epilogue

The Scary Go Round liveblog started on July 15th 2015, and ended on February 12th 2017, with one hundred fifty-six updates Almost two years! What did I say in the first post I made about this webcomic?

It’s a webcomic with supernatural elements. Nice, I thought, that could be fun. It had ALTERNATE DIMENSIONS, and yes, he said that with overexcitement. Neat, I thought. He does know what I like. There were also other few details he talked me about, but they were pretty vague and I understood the point: the series is filled with fantastic elements.

That’s how the webcomic was recommended to me. Well it wasn’t outright false, yeah. ALTERNATE DIMENSIONS, which I admit helped seal the deal, were in this for...what, two chapters? I think the importance of ALTERNATE DIMENSIONS got a bit overestimated, hahaha. Curse you for that, Alfred, you kinda lied to me on that.

Supernatural elements, though, it did have a lot of that, and for the most part Mr. Allison gave a spin to many concepts, making them original and fitting for this universe. Other chapters were more everday things, grounded into reality and based on the characters’ reactions and personalities, but most of them were rather good, the lack of fantastical elements didn’t hinder the quality of the plots. I think that speaks well of Mr. Allison’s planning skills, especially during the latter half of the webcomic.

Here’s my final opinion about the whole webcomic, in general terms: it’s worth it. It’s true that Mr. Allison’s first...nineteen chapters or so don’t have the same level of quality than the rest, but in my opinion anyone who manages to go through them will find themselves rewarded with the rest of the webcomic. And that doesn’t mean those first nineteen chapters are awful! There are a lot of good moments, and some of those chapters are of quality. This is a webcomic I’ll definitely recommend to people, although with that small caveat.

There are a few things to talk about.  The characters, the plot, the setting...so let’s go ahead with that! Let’s start with the characters themselves.

CHARACTERS:

Shelley Winters could be said to be the main character of this webcomic. She didn’t have the starring role in many of the chapters, as Mr. Allison did a good job mixing up the cast and giving many of them a chance to shine, but Shelley was a presence in almost the whole story, whether it was by being mentioned, by appearing and talking to the characters, or merely by virtue of her shenanigans influencing the situation in some way.

That’s a bit of a dangerous thing. If the character that permeates the world is one the reader loathes or would rather not to see, that can change one’s perception of the whole story. However, I can say I liked Shelley a lot and I think she’s a good character!

Shelley’s has all the necessary traits of a classic heroine: she strives for justice, she’s determined, and she has charisma, getting most people to like and accept her. And of course she has her bad traits, too. In my opinion, Shelley can be rather short-sighted regarding the consequences of her actions, and sometimes what she does can affect her friends in such negative ways she can come across as a bit callous at times. Leaving Fallon stranded in Portugal is the first incident that comes to mind. The incident with Heroditus in Atlantis is this trait carried out to the most extreme end, where she intentionally inconvenienced a friend, and that’s saying it lightly. Shelley can also come across annoying or nosy, traits that aren’t a secret to anyone. Tessa and Rachel, particularly, but I also sensed that even among her friends Shelley’s whimsical and wish to help can get a bit overbearing. Wasn’t it said so often that Shelley was insane, after all?

And she was! Well, not really. ‘Whimsical’ is the right word, as Erin called her. Shelley isn’t afraid of being in contact with her more childish side, something that allowed her be the center of many situations. I think that’s a big reason why the characters and readers like Shelley, because she’s willing to do a lot of stuff, and does it with enthusiasm and joy. You know what’s the most common comment I have seen around about Shelley, even from people that don’t know everything about the canon?

“Shelley is a treasure”

I agree with such assessment. Shelley is a treasure, and after reading everything this webcomic had to offer, I see why she’s such a likable character.

Her character didn’t change that much between her first appearance and the last chapter, in terms of personality and progression, but I’d say that she was more about affecting the people around her and the environment than about changing herself. In fact, I think that her employment changes were what changed the most about her. She started being, hm...dead, was Hamilton’s assistant for a little bit, worked as the mayor’s assistant, was a journalist, and finally worked for Hugo in the diner. Yeah. I think that worked for the better, giving her a chance to interact with different environments.

As a whole, yeah, I definitely liked Shelley.

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Tessa Davies and Rachel Dukakis-Monteforte were supposed to be the main characters of Scary Go Round, but they got punted aside for the benefit of Shelley, Ryan, Tim and Amy. These two gals were in...Chapter 1, 2, 7, 8, 14 and 34. Pretty bad deal for the two that were bound to be the main characters, if you ask me. The worst part is that during most of their stay, their bad traits kinda encompassed everything they were. Many readers may not have a good opinion from them, from those few appearances, and Rachel is mostly the one to blame for that.

Rachel was the main force in the duo, the one calling the shots, that’s the impression I had, and she was mostly motivated by two things: journalistic enthusiasm, and money. Oh, and being ordered around by the Devil in Chapter 34, but that’s out of her control. It wasn’t really the best impression the reader could have of her. Tessa...she coasted around. It isn’t to say that Tessa was a satellite character, in fact, Tessa had the guts and personality to stand for herself. I think that’s one of the reasons why I liked Tessa more than Rachel. The problem is that I always had the impression Tessa did a half-hearted effort on trying to stop Rachel from indulging in her worst traits, like she didn’t really care about it.

The most representative moment of this is when Rachel intentionally led a gang of vengeful bikers on Shelley. Tessa showed she clearly disapproved it, telling that to Rachel’s face. Yeah. Nice, Tessa, but what’re you going to do about it? Nothing, really. Once the word comes out that Rachel’s shenanigans almost made Shelley die – and how Rachel was completely unrepentant about it – Tessa willfully ignored it. Heck, William suggested calling the police, and Tessa made him forget about that by using her feminine wiles. Sigh.

Oh, yeah, there was this guy named William. He ended being a complete nonentity. I literally can’t remember a thing other that he died horribly.

So yeah. I think Tessa and Rachel could have been good enough as main characters. Rachel, in particular, had the chance for character development – and she did have some! Even if it was in the negative sense, which isn’t bad. But...yeah, their very few appearances compared to other characters hurt them more than help.

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Tim Jones is this brilliant inventor that was introduced in Chapter 2, and then was shunted aside in Chapter 32, much to my chagrin.

At first I wasn’t really convinced about Tim as a character, but by the time of the Time Teapot chapter I had warmed up to him. He has some qualities that contrasted well with Shelley’s whimsicality and Amy’s general personality, and his inventions and skills were good catalysts for a few stories. Tim as a character made a few plotlines be original and fun, and I appreciated that.

However, I liked him as a person, too. Running for mayor and his problems with such role were the best times to see Tim’s general personality. He worked especially well with Ryan as a friend, as Tim was the more responsible half of the equation. Tim’s character in the story was driven more by his inventions and skills than by his personality, but enough of the latter was shown for him to be someone the reader could grow to care about.

I wish he hadn’t been left aside. Oh well. That’s how life goes, and I’m sure Mr. Allison had his reasons to decide to pull Tim away from Tackleford. I simply wish it didn’t happen.

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Amy Chilton is what Rachel could have been and never was, kinda.

Amy was never the type to care that much about things like lawfulness and general decency towards friends and people, so to say. My assessment is that she cared more about herself than about how she affected the people around her. However, she isn’t a bad person. She can be a good friend, and she cherished Shelley, Ryan and other friends with sincere appreciation. Amy was also willing to lend a shoulder and show support, and she could do all that while still having her bad traits. Yeah, she’s what Rachel could have grown into, a person that can be kinda immoral in some way yet not be a bad person.

I like Amy. I think at the end of the day I liked more the perspective of Amy being the main character than Shelley being it. Amy’s chapters without Shelley focused more on the mundane side of the world, didn’t they? Cannibals, her antiques store...it worked very well. Amy has a more down-to-earth behavior and view of the world, and so she had to use her wits and personality in her chapters more than Shelley had to. I think that’s what makes me like Amy more as a main character.

At the beginning I don’t think she was much of a voice of reason, but soon she was the one making sense and trying to rein in Shelley’s shenanigans. Not that she was immune to letting herself be carried away by her desires! Heck, Amy decided to go to Atlantis because of the perspective of invaluable antiques and lots of cash by selling them. I thought that was funny.

Honestly, I’m going to miss reading about Shelley and Amy as often as I did during the past one year and half. Thanks, Mr. Allison.

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Ryan Beckwith, boy, I don’t think a character has gone from ‘so that character, I can take or leave him’ to ‘I like this character a lot’. During the first ten or so chapters I was pretty much ‘meh’ about him, he didn’t even have that much going about him. Not even his involvement with Shelley being a zombie made him be interested in him. My opinion of Ryan started to change with the Expecting to Fly short story, though. That’s when I started recognizing that yeah, Ryan is a pretty sweet and thoughtful young man.

He was never exactly the spitting image of a successful person, but Ryan has a lot of good qualities. He’s loyal, he cares for the people in his life, and it isn’t like he intentionally runs away from work. He embraced rather well jobs like working for the mayor! But his bad luck in life, work and romance make him not be as great in life as he could be, and it’s truly a shame. Some say good people have a lot of bad stuff happening to them, and Ryan is one of those good people.

Ryan wasn’t as involved as other characters on the supernatural side of Scary Go Round, and I have the impression he didn’t want to have anything to do with it, but he was willing to get into it and help his friends. Heck, he went to Ireland to hunt a leprechaun for Shelley. That’s not something anyone does. He was willing to put his life at risk just to see Natalie in the afterlife one more time. That’s loyalty, kinda hardheaded and imprudent, but loyalty nonetheless.

Yeah, Ryan is a very good person. A shame he wasn’t dealt a better hand. Good luck, Ryan.

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Fallon Young came, meshed well with Tim and Shelley, botched up a couple missions as a spy/mercenary, and...and well, that’s how it went for her.

I think being left behind in Portugal may have affected her for the worse in terms of liking for everyone. Heck, Shelley, hm, Shelley called her insane. Shelley Winters refused to ask for someone’s help because that someone was insane. Can you believe that? And I can’t really see why Fallon would be considered insane by anyone’s standards, though. Highly imprudent and not very good when it’s about being of help, yeah, but not insane.

She got a harsh deal with Mr. Allison, simply not appearing until she was in Hugo’s diner, and that was for like a page or two. Then she just wasn’t seen ever again. Yeah. At first I missed Fallon, but the more time passed the more I forgot about her. Guess she wasn’t that memorable of a character as I thought.

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Riley Beckwith came by and left without glory. She was mostly a satellite character towards Tim. Her main trait was her dislike towards practically the whole population of Tackleford, and then she managed to lie and do stuff so Tim was banished to Wales with her. Other than her dislike and her relationship with Tim she wasn’t exactly the most interesting character.

I think the one time she had the chance of being a character on her own right – when I thought she was going to be the star in the Abductions chapter, since she seemed to have an interest on aliens – she just...did nothing of value.

There’s just not much to say here.

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Let’s start the teenage cast judgment with Esther De Groot or as she’s widely known: Dark Esther. She’s not a goth stereotype, and that’s excellent! Thanks for your good judgment with that, Mr. Allison, well done. Esther does have many gothic traits, but they don’t define her as a person. Esther is cheerful, very loyal to her friends, willing to lend a hand, and overall it’s no surprise Esther, along with Shelley, is one of the two most cherished characters in this webcomic.

I said already how her very first appearance doesn’t fit that well with the rest of her appearances in the webcomic. I wonder what led Mr. Allison to give her such a notable role in the webcomic. Esther is a great character to follow in the adventures that happened to the teenager cast of Scary Go Round, as she showed the same determination Shelley showed, without turning into a copy of Shelley. Remember how she dragged the Boy to go to Wales and prove to Tim he was unfairly banished? Not just any person would have done that. And they did it, they got to Tim’s door! And she got laid along the way, too, but that has nothing to do with it. As a whole I think Esther was a pretty good character, and someone I really liked.

I did notice that her gothic traits and tastes seemed to have progressively vanished the longer the webcomic went. At least by the time everything about her resembled more a completely normal and everyday teenager she had achieved such status as a character in her own right the lack of ‘gothicness’ didn’t hurt her at all.

Her relationship with the Boy was very sweet, and I’m glad it endured everything that happened, all the way to the end of the webcomic. They’re a good couple. They complement each other well! Her friendship with Erin was a good one, too, Erin providing a rather sensible and grounded companionship to Esther. It’s not to say that Esther had her head on the clouds or anything, but she was different enough that being with Erin worked well, despite their similarities in personalities.

Sarah and Esther’s friendship received a lot more focus near the ending of the webcomic, right when Sarah started being a character on her own right. Although it didn’t last long in the spotlight, I think Mr. Allison did a good job in making them look like intimate friends, different to how she was with the Boy and Erin. The fanzine is the epitome of this, I think Esther wouldn’t have started it with anyone else other than Sarah.

All in all, it’s not for nothing that Esther is so liked by the general population of readers! I seriously like her. She’s awesome.

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The Boy – Eustace Boyce, as he was revealed to be named – started not very good. His crush on Amy wasn’t well handled, in my opinion, and honestly I wasn’t sure if Mr. Allison would be able to write a teenage character without making him unlikable as he had seemed he’d be.

But then when Mr. Allison started focusing on the teenage population of the Tackleford high school – chapter 25 or so – the Boy started being a good character. He wasn’t just some kid that had a crush on Amy. He was more than that! The Boy took the many shenanigans of Tackleford with the same attitude Tim and Ryan had: leave that stuff away or so help me. Too bad he was forcibly involved in all that a few times, hahaha.

He wasn’t defenseless or anything, though. It doesn’t mean he knew what to do, but he wasn’t completely helpless either. Personality-wise, the Boy is the one that received the most focus on development, in my opinion. He had to juggle his feelings for Esther, his doubts, his wish to make her happy, with everything that was happening. While a few times this relationship is what kickstarted a few of his adventures, it doesn’t mean he was exclusively defined by this relationship.

All in all, I grew from disliking the Boy to actually liking him. Good job, Mr. Allison, you write teenagers well, despite my doubts. Well done.

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Erin Winters had the bad luck of being disliked by Mr. Allison, or so I heard. That was why she was thrown out of the cast via portal to hell. I’m not completely privy of why Mr. Allison didn’t like her, but I think it’s a shame she was shunted away too.

Erin shared traits with Riley, more concretely how fed up with the antics of Tackleford they were. However, unlike Riley, Erin had a lot more stuff to do than grouching about Tackleford. Her relationship with her sister, her friendship with Esther, the pain of having a crush with the Boy and being harassed by Sarah and Big Lindsay...Erin had the makings of a good character.

To this point I’m still bummed out she was completely erased from the Scary Go Round continuity. There wasn’t even a chance of Shelley, Esther or the Boy growing as a person from Erin’s disappearance into Hell, Mr. Allison simply erased her. That’s the biggest missed chance there was in this webcomic, in my opinion: Erin Winters.

It’s a shame, really.

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Desmond Fishman is pretty much the character I liked the least. He didn’t start badly. I was interested when he appeared the first time, the second, the third...and then the infantilization started. He slowly started turning into a manchild I honestly despised. I think the point that started was when he started living with Shelley and Amy? I don’t even remember how that happened.

I don’t really know what Mr. Allison’s intentions with Des were, but whatever they were, I don’t think he intended to create a character readers could hate. I think he wouldn’t have placed him under the spotlight of some chapters if Des was meant to be unlikable.

I think Chapter 50 was his highest point? The Atlantis story. He was actually funny during that chapter, and he wasn’t some sort of insufferable bastard. It’s a glimpse of how I wish Des had been during the webcomic. If during all his appearances he had been like he was during that chapter...I think he’d have been one of my favorite ones. But nope.

So I’ll just give him an imaginary kick in the rear and say good riddance.

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Sarah Grote, Charlotte Grote, Shauna Whatshernameagain, Shelby Winner...they either started being characters too late for it to count, or they didn’t have enough appearances. I liked the little I saw of them.  Oh well.

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Everyone else who I didn’t name. Guess either they didn’t make an impression on me – Milford being the face of them all, despite his realistic teenager-ness – or there’s simply not much to say about them. Or I forgot about someone, in which case that doesn’t say much about their memorability.

SETTING:

The world of Scary Go Round is a world of infinite possibilities. Not only there are so many supernatural elements around the whole world, the people in this world can be so talented and influence the cryptid beings around. Even when they’re not involved in anything weird, they can also be interesting enough to propel plots by themselves.

Mr. Allison did a great job making this world, even if it was mostly Tackleford. That is a town that sometimes experiences so many weird things I’m sure no one bats an eye to it anymore, yet it doesn’t seem like a bad place to live in. The weird and the normal meld together and create a great breeding ground for shenanigans.

Other than that, it’s an everyday town and world, like many others. It isn’t like they live in a different planet to Earth, after all. But despite that, it has this constant sense of marvel that makes me wonder what kind of stuff happen in other places of the world. So well done, Mr. Allison!

PLOT:

Unlike some webcomics, Scary Go Round was more of an episodic webcomic with a continuity that lasted the entirety of the webcomic. I don’t think anyone reading the last few chapters would be clueless, although there indeed are hints of continuity and references to past events.

It’s hard to talk about the plots as a whole, so I think I’ll summarize the plot quality by making a ranking of sorts. The chapter I liked the least to the chapter I liked the most! And a few words about them, not that many words. So let’s see...

50 Crock O’ Gold: The less said about this chapter, the better: HELL NO.

49 Down: I don’t think this chapter had much of a plot? It seemed more like a transition between Chapter 4 and Chapter 6

48 Rock Action: This seemed to me a disjoined bunch of moments without much continuity. I don’t think there was much Rock Action, anyways. The only moment I remember was the fight between Amy and Big Lindsay, with Esther and Sarah encouraging from a side. Yeah, that moment stuck with me, hahahaha

47 The Captain Beefheart Story: It was more or less a biographic story told by Ryan about a man I don’t remember the name of. Nothing that held my interest for long.

46 The Estate: A potentially good story soured by Desmond being himself. Really, it could have been better than it actually was.

45 The Woods: I don’t think words can summarize how frustrated I felt that it was a retelling of Hansel and Gretel with characters from Scary Go Round.

44 Incoming: It went from the Boy looking for a job to...to other stuff. I don’t think even the plot about the Boy got solved at all? He got the money, and that was it.

43 Learn to Read: Thank goodness it was short. Go away, Desmond.

42 Carrots: Hmmmm...right, the chapter that saw both the start of Sarah and Esther’s fanzine, and the introduction of Carrot as a character. His mother sure ended that schoolyard fight! But yeah, nothing to write home about.

41 Science Fair: Ah, yeah, the chapter where many characters that weren’t Tessa or Rachel appeared for the first time, and Shelley got murdered for the first time. Rachel and Tessa did a decent job investigating, yeah, but other than that it wasn’t top-notch quality. There are many chapters better than this one.

40 Ballad of the Man: Natalie appeared for the first time, set the ground for a relationship with Ryan, and then was horribly killed when those awful old women made her trailer explode by making a primate do that. Hah! To be frank I’m not sure if this is the chapter where that happened, but eh.

39 Isle of Wight: Hah! The first time characters went on vacation just because they could. Also devil bears are a thing. Nothing that really stuck in my mind for long.

38 The Big Broadcast: It was a rehash of an old story Mr. Allison had stored in a shoebox somewhere deep in his closet, right? Including hand-drawn frames that I’m sure are older than the start of Scary Go Round. It had all the traits of the starting chapters of the webcomic, without many of the good traits. It wasn’t terrible, though.

37 The Gas: The very first chapter had an intriguing plot regarding the skeletons in that place, but the execution left a lot to be desired. I don’t remember my impressions once I finished reading that first chapter, but in hindsight this was a flawed chapter, with unnecessary pages and jokes that don’t really go anywhere nor are anything special. It’s good enough as an introduction for the world, though.

36 Oldbourne: Shelley went to another town to get Amy to return to Tackleford...I think. I don’t really remember the plot of this chapter? But I have the feeling it was better than the rest of the chapters in this ranking.

35 Romania: Doctor Petrescu, was it? He was a strange man that liked monkeys a lot and had a skull for a face. I think he was the main attraction of this chapter, but he wasn’t that good enough of a character for one to want him to return often. It was a nice chapter, though.

34 Robot Town Hall: Robotania, what’s up with a communist country or robots? Points for originality, Mr. Allison, nice. And Shelley was a competent enough helper in the mayor’s office, too. I don’t know how things would have gone if it hadn’t been for her.

33 Dimensionality: If I remember right, this was before Tessa and Rachel entered the other dimension. I don’t think I had any complaints about this part? But nothing too memorable either.

32 Pa: Ryan’s father is a character that was interesting enough for me to wish he had appeared more often. I wonder what happened to him.

31 Traveller: There’s something very amusing about knowing that Santa Claus lives somewhere in New Zealand. But yeah, I think the chapter lost steam the more it went, so I don’t know what to think about it. Shelby Winner was interesting, though.

30 Shaggy Dogs: A short chapter that summarizes well Shelley’s whimsical self.

29 Super Crisis Quests 1 & 2: I heard Mr. Allison didn’t want to draw caves for like a month. This led to these chapters’ plots being quickly broken apart. The sudden interruption of a few points hurt the chapter’s quality. I can’t say it’s a great couple of chapters, but it was nice to read, and that counts.

28 Winterlude: I completely understand Mr. Allison not wanting to get involved in something like American politics, even if it is in a wacky webcomic like Scary Go Round. I really liked what I saw until the sudden interruption of the chapter, though. I wish it could have continued in a different plot.

27 Beyond the Veil: Ryan risking his life to go to the afterlife for a while was a testimony to his recklessness and his loyalty to Natalie. Too bad it didn’t end well for him, and that Natalie was pretty much bones and nothing more.

26 Happy End of the World: Frankly I don’t remember what this chapter was about...besides Bob Crowley brainwashing Erin and Esther. However, I remember that Erin was trying to adjust to her new strong body, and how she was trying to cope with the Boy being with Esther. I think it was in this chapter, at least? But yeah, I had liked that.

25 Battle of the Bands: Poh and his dad’s second appearance involved trying to hypnotize men via a sinister song girls couldn’t hear. Also Milford revealed his overwhelming love for men via synth pop, or at least that was the girls’ opinion. Hah! I don’t think he ever found out the gals said that. But yeah, I liked the concept of Poh’s father’s scheme, and bands are always fun.

24 Most Haunted: Ghosts are cubes of jello, and they’re awoken when the descendant of someone they hold a grudge against waltzes into their resting place. Lesson for life: never build anything on a cemetery. Never demolish anything that was built on a cemetery. It’s never good. Luckily Esther is a resourceful young gal and was able to scare ghosts!

23 Shopgirl: I admit Mr. Allison successfully fooled me with the red herring regarding the old man who owned the department stores, and I didn’t expect the real culprits to be cannibals. I’m still not convinced of the effectivity of how they managed to defeat them, but since the alternative was death I can’t say I’m saddened about it.

22 Bad Religion: I don’t remember much about the plot, but I remember it involved Ryan being brainwashed by the awful old harpies that made Natalie’s trailer explode, and turning him into the classical religion-following boy. Also there was a human trafficker and Fallon tried to wake up Ryan from the brainwashing with the power of being attractive. Fun for the whole family!

21 Meddling: In hindsight how easy Ralph was able to do necromancy was kinda a hint he was actually the Devil, huh. That and the camaraderie between ‘The Devil’ and him. But yeah, Ryan resurrecting Shelley and trying to deal with the consequences of that along with Tim was the first great story I read in this webcomic. It was when I knew there were many gems to be found in this story.

20 Chilton Takes Charge: I find rather satisfying when a character manages fights the world and tries to succeed. The awful old harpies and the ruthless competitors in the antiques business tried their best, but Amy triumphed! And she’s turning hella rich from that. You sell that noseless bust of Captain Picard, Amy, you deserve success.

19 Bulgaria: Bulgaria is full of vampires and disguising oneself as nuns is necessary to survive. Guess that’s what happens when one gets a curse! It was one of the few chapters where one got a glimpse of what kind of madness happened in other places of the world, and Shelley and Amy were a good couple to fight it all.

18 Man O’ War: In which Shelley could have done nothing and the jellyfishes would have needed to accept their squishy wet bodies don’t fare well on land. But nope, she got too involved and decided to fight them. Hilarity ensued. It was impressive, to be honest. Not anyone decides to fight a colony of Portuguese man o’ wars.

17 Where the Dumb Things Are: It was one of those rare occasions where Mr. Allison had complete liberty of going as crazy as he could, by virtue of this being a completely different universe populated by outlandish creatures. Also there’s something cool about Amy triumphing as a poetess with her not-so-good poetry. The one great Tessa and Rachel adventure.

16 Abductions: I’m still sore this wasn’t about Riley and her apparent belief in aliens, but the plot it ended having wasn’t unappealing. The return of Petrescu and Whatshisname from Chapter 2 being evil towards Tackleford – or Tim, more specifically – and creating a zombie Shelley from her blood was a rather interesting plot I enjoyed reading. And it ended with Shelley and Fallon making a volcano explode and destroying a supervillain complex. What else can one ask?

15 The Election: Every Villain is Lemons is officially a political party, and it almost overtook Tackleford through the power of democracy. Elaine Wu was a rather underestimated villain, and she had that ruthless quality not many in this story have. Too bad she only appeared twice. Also Tim Jones as a mayor is a good idea, too bad he didn’t enjoy it.

14 Goodbye: The ending to the webcomic and the test drive of Lottie and Shauna as main characters. Rather good way to end the story, in my opinion. I said what I had to say about this chapter just one update ago, so I’m not saying much...it’d be repeating myself too soon.

13 Big Ideas: I’m convinced that propelling a bus filled with cripples to a false Lourdes would have been the epitome of strength, and Tim would have won. Too bad the Boy was too busy with his moral concerns and his hormones to be of help, and that Riley had sabotaged stuff so Tim would be banished. Elaine Wu gave Shelley a rather harsh beatdown, too, and the EVIL political party took over Tackleford. Too bad not much came out of that, but it allowed some character growth and setting up plots for future chapters.

12 Schoolin’: The first time the reader can see that the Boy, Esther and Erin were good characters for their own stories. I can’t believe the teachers were willing to condemn a whole class of students to Hell just so they could have money for coffee, but that’s up the par for Tackleford. Thank goodness there were three teenagers prepared to deal with that and try to stop them, even if ultimately they didn’t do that much at all.

11 Looking for Atlantis: In which Shelley single-handedly manages to destroy a civilization through the power of stubbornness. It was not her best moment. However, it was Desmond’s best moment. Amy was good. Atlantis is a great setting for stories, and seeing the situation grow out of control was fun to read. Mr. Allison underestimates his own work, at least about this chapter!

10 The Cove: Somehow it led from Ryan getting a job as a postman to him finding out the postmen were a bunch of smugglers who assault ships and let people die. Not what I expected! And that’s precisely something that helps make a chapter great. Also Melanie shooting people, Gibbous Moon’s last appearance showing that she wasn’t an evil intern for nothing, Ernest...um, Ernest was there.

09 Great Tackleford Show: Shelley was out of her mind what with being high from smelling jam, the mayor was being a major embarrassment to the population, Mike Savage was drunk, there had been a murder, and a giant bee flew over the Tackleford rural show. Amy gets caught in middle of all that and it’s awesome because it was one of the few times Amy gets to play damage control. She didn’t do bad at all! It may not look like that big of a chapter in the first read, but I think it has a lot of merit.

08 Your Taxes at Work: Erin and Esther freed the minotaur and it turned into a big sensation. I honestly was expecting it to go wrong in some horrible way, but thankfully it didn’t, even if to me it looked like it was going to snap at any second. Also Tim deals with the robots, now not-so-communists. It was great, mostly because Mr. Allison integrated both plots in a truly grandiose way. I didn’t think it’d end with the robot ambassador roasting the minotaur with his laser eyes, but it did. Jolly.

07 The Child: Poh managed to throw the town into complete anarchy with the power of naïve innocence and repeating ‘things are going to change’. Also Shelley was hit with a missile fired by the Queen’s Secret Service, and that’s something not many can say. Too bad her best efforts of keeping the town from not crumbling down didn’t go well because it all turned into a major disaster, but it was one of the chapters where she showed that she could be rather competent...when she isn’t getting drunk at lunchtime and getting fired for that. Also the Mayor shaves children’s heads to protect his political status.

06 Aw Hell: Rachel embraced evil with both hands and both legs, hanging onto it like a koala. I wish I knew how she and Tessa managed to climb spots in the Sisters of Belial nunnery, but that’s a story I won’t ever hear about. Rachel ended burnt alive in a reference to the Wicker Man, and Tessa walked away rather sadly, and the rest of the characters...well they found Ryan so it was a major success. What goes well ends well.

05 Giant Days: As I said, not many would have the guts to journey to Wales to try to convince Tim to return to the town and prove he was unfairly banished. Sure, Esther and the Boy didn’t succeed, but they tried and that’s what matters. Also this was the chapter where their relationship solidified, and I don’t say it because they got laid. Anything where the characters turn a rickety trailer into a ship to brave a flood is good in my books.

04 Inevitable: I honestly had thought Shelley would manage to keep at bay her zombie instincts, but she didn’t! She slowly lost her mind and started craving brains, and it ended with her biting Hamilton’s head apart. He survived, and she was hit by lightning and turned alive. The second part to the first great Scary Go Round story finished the Zombie Shelley plot masterfully, and although it had the general flaws of the early Scary Go Round chapters, it was very good and one of the stories I’d give people to read as an introduction to the Scary Go Round webcomic.

03 Count my Toes: Shelley Winters visited the afterlife and all she got was a measly t-shirt. Okay, not really, but she may as well only have gotten that because all she actually got was a stay in the hospital. At least she fought a version of herself as a zombie, and went in an adventure in the Land of the Dead with Natalie. It’s one of the rare occasions where Mr. Allison went wild with his ideas, and it was great. Seriously, kudos to you, Mr. Allison.

02 Time Teapot: No story of the same genre than Scary Go Round would be a good fantastical story without some time travel at some point. And they did so! Tim should be freaking rich, he invented a time machine with a teapot, that needs skill. And so Amy and Shelley visited the 1800 years, and antics happened. I don’t think anything got defined regarding Bob Crowley’s schemes back then, and that’s disappointing, but everything else was of such quality I’m willing to look away and pretend it all was satisfying. Sing with your squeaky voice and plagiarize all those Beatles songs all you want, Shelley, have fun.

01 The Bell: Somehow my favorite chapter is one where the Boy and a one-time character are the stars, and that’s something I didn’t really expect. Can anyone blame me, though? Mr. Allison outshone all his past efforts with this chapter. The wendigo disguising as the Easter Bunny, the Boy trying to decide if he should pursue a serious relationship with Elodie, the fact this story took place outside of Tackleford, the sheer hilarity of a flying bell with a mustache that shoots chocolate eggs like a machine gun...it all came together to craft a truly memorable plot. Seriously, I loved it. Everything that makes Scary Go Round great is in this chapter, it had excellent character development, and Elodie was a one-time character I wish could have stayed in the cast. The Bell is a chapter I’d love to show people, even if it was the first introduction they had to Scary Go Round. Excellent work, Mr. Allison, seriously.

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So, in conclusion: I’m so glad I read Scary Go Round. I had a lot of fun with it. It had its ups, it had its downs, it made me smile, it made me want to bop Mr. Allison’s head with a meat mallet for making me waste my time a couple times...

...but overall it’s something I’m going to cherish. Honestly, I’m going to miss reading it. Hey, you know what? This isn’t the last thing I’m going to read of Mr. Allison. In fact, I bought the Murder She Wrote story and the WHAT story in Comixology a few months ago. I have them stored for reading! I think it’s likely in the future I’ll read them and share my thoughts, like I did with Expecting to Fly. When, exactly? Hm, that’s something I’m not going to make a hard promise on. It’ll happen when it happens.

In the future I also plan to read Bad Machinery and Giant Days, but those’d come after Murder She Wrote and WHAT, so it’s going to be quite a while before any of the longer stories John Allison has done grace this website.

So...thank you, John Allison, for having created this fun experience. It was excellent. Thank you so much.

[jm-fraser]

X-Men Films Ranked

The X-men films have been... interesting, at least in terms of quality and continuity, which at times rather welcomely is just disregarded in favor of story. I would say that it might actually be my favorite superhero franchise at the moment, probably because it doesn't feel as calculated and bland as the MCU and has better movies than the DCEU. 

This is my rankings of the X-Men films:

10. X-Men Origins: Wolverine

This is the only one of these films I would call completely God-aweful, and rightly so I think, it isn't really good at all, its badly made, they butcher the story and some of the characters (Deadpool). Im glad Gavin Hood has managed to find stories that are more suited to his style because this was a terrible Hollywood introduction.

9. X-Men 3: The Last Stand

Personally I don't hate this movie, I mean its not good in any means, but from the original trilogy I think this has the best and most interesting concept, and they aren't afraid to go all out and kill off many of the main characters (MCU) but the issue comes in almost all other areas outside of the acting with Hugh Jackman, Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen all bringing very good performances to a bad film under probably bad direction judging from the execution of anything else.

8. The Wolverine

Its not bad its just not very good or worse memorable. I guess the main issues are the third act and the terrible villain but the first two acts are only ok, and really the only redeemable thing you can really say about them is they are competent and are not the first Wolverine.

7. X-Men

 Im just not that big a fan of the first X-Men film, maybe its because I didn't see it when it came out and by now we are so assaulted by Superhero films that the novelty of seeing the Comic Book characters on screen adapted faithfully isn't really there and apart from that the story isn't that interesting and they don't go into the larger ideas they try in the future sequels.

6. X-Men: Apocalypse

This is probably not as solid of a film as the original X-Men but I prefer it because at least something happens, characters progress and grow and there are actual consequences. But it is very bloated and quite of a mess and by far the worst of the new trilogy.

5. X-Men 2

A lot of people would call this the best of the franchise, I guess I just don't see it, I enjoy it, I think its miles better than the no. 6 spot and I find it rather incredible that the quality between the 'good' and the 'bad' films are so easily distinguishable. This is easily the best of the original trilogy and is a solid if rather simple take on one of the best X-Men stories.

4. X-Men: First Class

This is the first X-Men film I found great, for me this was the best representation of the characters, I thought it found the balance between dramatic character driven psychology and social commentary and pure entertainment that you would look for in a Comic Book blockbuster.

3. Deadpool

This film is remarkable for a couple reasons, firstly its probably going to be the start of a new era of R rated superhero movies and maybe will allow for studios to look at more risky projects in the future. Secondly the fact that the movie exists at all is fascinating: the studio were cautious of making the movie at first because they didn't think the character was well known enough by the public and they had already used Deadpool with Ryan Reynolds in X-Men Origins: Wolverine luckily the only people that knew that was Deadpool wanted a proper version of the character anyway, adding to this the movie was only greenlit after leaked test footage from someone (Reynolds) made its way online and was loved by fans who called for the film to be made to which the studio gave Tim Miller and Ryan Reynolds a low budget (for a superhero movie) and free range to make what they wanted and it was great. The film is so much fun with great comedy and action that overshadows the thin plot and with an amazing marketing campaign the film became the highest grossing R rated film of all time.

2. X-Men: Days of Future Past

For me this is the pinnacle of the classic X-Men on film, combining the casts of both the original trilogy and the First Class actors and managing to fix the seemingly impossible: fixing the timeline of the cinematic universe. I feel besides for my number one pick this is the best representation of all the characters in the franchise where the benefit of allowing the characters to be shown as both young and old, allows for interesting perspectives of how characters act and what the consequences of their decisions will be. Speaking of consequence this film understands the idea of consequence best, while it clearly defines what needs to be done without seeming convoluted or messy (unlike Apocalypse) and still feeling like there is weight to the characters actions in both the past and the future timelines. And again, its extremely entertaining.

1. Logan

It has to be number one, this is probably the best movie made based off Marvel comics not just films in the X-Men franchise. After the success of Deadpool this film was okayed to be released with an R rating, which I will say adds to the film, I don't think the character of Wolverine would feel as world worn and desolate as he would if they don't show his brutality and unhinged rage which helps us as viewers understand why he is as he is, why he can't forgive the horrible things he's done and why all he wants to do is run away and die. And by allowing him to be this un-empethetic especially towards Laura makes his change of heart at the end and all of the emotional moments hit that much harder, there hasn't been a better send of for an actor or character in a Comic Book movie before this.