#came out of hiatus to post portal of course

[tazaryoot]

My human Wheatley design 🫶

[c0smiccom3t]

AND NOW.... FOR A SPECIAL 3RD ANNIVERSARY UPDATE. (6/1/2024)

Hello friends, hello mutuals, hello dimension dyfenders fans and hello people who like indie cartoon/comic stuff in general! Comet here. Once Again. and this time i've got something ig this year. This was supposed to release on May 29th, but due to Ren not coming back for a long time because they needed to prioritize irl stuff, of course, we had to delay it.

But, but, BUT! thankfully I had a few things ready after all, however as for some other things else, we'll get to it much later, when the moment calls. Now, let's get off with the first one.

(warning, in case this update gets too long, i'll make a part two where i'll be able to link it through here.)

You Kinda... Look Different.

You may have noticed that Dislexo looks a bit different than usual (darker skin, a bit of shorter hair, etc.), in case you're wondering why... Yeah, you're about to find out.

So, while I was thinking and drawing up some D.D related stuff, I was brainstorming a little by my lonesome. All of the sudden, as I was making a new render for a character, I was like... "Wait a minute... What if I give Dislexo a new look which is a mix between a secretary and a butler but keep it's elements from what made their design unique?" and So, the new and improved Dislexo was born!

Honestly i'm proud of what they look like now. I just hope i won't (or will) get to redesign ALL of the cast again so suddenly lol! Anyways, thats just a small change I made, nothing too big. Now, let's get on something else... which is...

Pocket Adventures' current status + how's minisode 1 coming along

You might be asking inside your minds, "i wonder when more of minisode 1 will drop", "where are the new parts?"- Well, i got the answer. It'll only come only when im completely finished. However i havent been working much on it aside from making a few pages a few months ago, but hopefully this summer i may get back to it and finish it all up if i can. The final script is 73% percent complete, as for the comic itself, let's just say its 58%. I promise you i'm taking my time with delivering everything i can for this minisode. However i might republish the minisode with the series' current artstyle if it ever comes out physically (or either when I'll have the time or energy to do it.) So, now, you may be wondering: "But Comet, what do we do while we wait." Well you're not gonna believe this.

No, it's not an extremely late april fools post! We got new stuff coming soon, recently i've been brainstorming some ideas for brand new content, and you know what? It came to me, HERE'S WHAT'S COMING!

MORE TOONIES COMING YOUR WAY!

THAT'S RIGHT, after months of hiatus, Toonies is coming back with more strips! This time, since summer's coming around, i'll try to post and make more of them and even schedule the finished ones! We got even more covers for it coming, but for now, here's one of them!

More comics are not only gonna explore more of the Dyfenders' and the Dajo Crew's everyday lives in-and-out of their superhero/Villain occupations, we are also going to focus on much more on other characters (at least some of them), and some will last for a few more pages longer! No arcs though, sorry. But hey, you're getting more wackiness as a treat! Now, i know i said this year is not gonna be big like the other two years we had, but...

NEW SPECIAL CURRENTLY IN DEVELOPMENT!

THAT'S RIGHT! We're working on a new special to commemorate our three years! Thought it'd be a nice adiction to this year, we may not reveal the logo and it's title yet, but we can tell you what the sypnosis is about!

You're all invited to the biggest night in the Omniverse, right across it's stars, cosmos, galaxies and portals! Both the Dimension Dyfenders and the Dajo-Crew are crossing the red (or should we say, blue) carpet in this brand new 3-part special! Prince Dajo-Voo has a new plan on how to take over the gala, all while he tries to self-control himself from doing the same explosive incident he did back then. The Dyfenders may be having a great time at the gala, but rest assured, they'll be sure to keep a close eye on him. Here's to a Rift-errific and (hopefully) trouble-free gala!

As a bonus, when the production on all three parts are done, we'll be posting Toonies comics related to the special, which may feature a new character who will debut later on in Pocket Adventures! We don't know when it'll exactly be out, my guesses would be either summer, september or next May 2025. But rest assured, we'll be working on it, but we won't rush it out.

So... What's next?

Honestly, i can't really tell. But I can assure you i still have so may plans for this series, plans that will be put in action in the far-off future. What i really hope to do is to make animated shorts as well, not just Toonies strips, pocket adventures minisodes and comic dubs of it. Maybe if we'll ever make a backerkit or a kickstarter for it and get a budget, it might happen (along with more VAs joining in.) Speaking of VAs, in case you're a VA and you haven't auditioned yet, anytime is the right time! (this is still a test leap, but if it succeeds it may go further.)

but for now, we're sticking to comics, and then, if possible we'll get to comic dubs and so on.

That's all for now! I hope you're all looking forward to what's coming for this series. I'm sorry that it wasnt as big as the last years, but we promise that things will arrive when they can.

Happy (LATE) third anniversary, everybody!! Thanks for reading!

By the way, HAPPY PRIDE MONTH!!

[lucifer-is-a-bag-of-dicks]

fuck I still haven't done the rewrite of the Mutant Town AU that I specifically came off hiatus to write, like the Plant Witch Sam and Pharaoh Tucker posts were written to prep this au and I just got wildly distracted so uhhhh

yeah the concept is in the link but the gist is that the people and town becoming mutated by constant ectoplasmic contamination, we all know and love this concept right but I'm gonna expand on it

this is a direct result of the portal being opened, but they aren't getting infected from the portal, the issue is that creating a permanent opening into the ghost zone has weakened the veil between their worlds and Amity Park and the Ghost Zone sort of slip in and out of each other constantly

and because ectoplasm responds strongly to emotions (poltergeists being made from atmospheric emotions for example) it all tends to converge very heavily at the school full of hormonal teenagers

so Casper High becomes its own god damn cryptid, the teachers get so jaded about opening the door to a classroom and finding just a whole ass ghost zone on the other side that they just put a sign on the door telling kids to go to a different room, lockers swap contents with other lockers so kids have started putting their names on the inside so they know who's stuff they've just found

this also means the kids get super affected, like super affected, literally, they all get ghost powers, some are just physical mutations, some are just super abilities, or a general increase in natural ability, like a member of the track team getting super speed

it takes a while for Danny and co. to figure this out, Sam and Tucker should have been warning signs as they've spent the most time around ghosts and the ghost zone, but that's why the Witch Sam and Pharaoh Tucker posts are important

they have powers, but they thought they came exclusively from outside sources, they had no idea that their abilities were also strengthened and influenced by being highly contaminated by ectoplasm, which is why when one day Mikey sneezes and green acid shoots out of his nose and melts his desk, everyone is a little bit startled

the teachers have long since started using ghost detectors after the time Paulina spent a whole week overshadowed by Kitty, so Mikey gets a check over and other than the usual atmospheric reading Lancer gets nothing especially strong from him

there have been concerns about the gradually increasing ectoplasmic content in the air messing with ghost detector results, the devices have to be recalibrated constantly, so Lancer asks the one and only son of the local ghost hunters in the room if he has some other way to check

Danny's parents make him keep a few protective items in his schoolbag, so he tries some gear on him to see if anything comes flying out, but nothing does, Danny isn't too surprised seeing as he couldn't sense a ghost in the room anyway, but it definitely makes things a little concerning

even if it were a repeat of the Spectra incident and he wasn't being overshadowed, the Fenton's tech would have still gotten rid of whatever was causing this if it were an external influence

Mikey is sent home for the day and his parents are told to keep an eye on him

and then the next week, Star drops a pen off her desk and a strand of her hair whips out to grab it, she's also checked for ghost influence and sent home

a few weeks after that it happens again, a kid on the basketball team makes a leap to the net and stays in the air, they have to call in the cheerleaders to climb on top of each other to reach him and pull him down

Danny has been trying to figure out what's happening from the first moment with Mikey, and his parents have also been getting calls from worried parents who want to know if they can fix whatever's happening to their kids

over the next couple of months, every kid in the school has some kind of ability or mutation, Dash heals whoever he touches, which he discovers after punching Nathan in the face and curing his acne, Paulina turns invisible, which freaks her out at first until she realises it's great for eavesdropping, Wes can conjure fire (because I desperately needed him to have a polarising ability to Danny), Kwan becomes empathic and can feel and influence people's emotions

Valerie also had an early mutation that she didn't know about, when Technus gave her a new suit, her body pretty much just absorbed it as a part of her, Technus had not intended this to happen, and was pretty peeved about it, Valerie found out that she had stolen control over the suit when Technus had a big rant about it during a fight, and she put the pieces together once other kids started developing abilities

this whole thing causes a ton of chaos as kids are struggling to control what they can do, so Danny has to step in and help them out, he often has to run off to change into Phantom in order to protect everyone from an ability that's gone haywire, he ends up pretty much running ghost power training courses after school to help them control themselves

he's also gotten stuck in situations where he's had to step in and help someone without having the time to change forms, meaning he has to make up a cover story about having developed his own powers way before everyone else since he's been living on top of a portal for years, he only tells people about his ice powers

Jazz has always had a tendency to be able to reign in her emotions and keep a cool head, (the only ones who can really push her buttons are Danny and sometimes her parents, at school around other kids who look up to her she's often very in control) meaning she doesn't draw ectoplasm to herself all that much, and though Danny uses the excuse of having lived on top of a ghost portal to explain why he's already so familiar with using his power, it's actually not even remotely true, because the Fentons use specialised air purifiers to keep the atmospheric ectoplasm at a manageable level, the Fenton house ironically has the least atmospheric contamination compared to the rest of the town, that's how Maddie and Jack have had limited mutation to themselves (though they aren't wholly free, they've mostly just gotten physically stronger and tougher)

so even though Jazz develops her power a little earlier than everyone else's, it's not that far ahead, and she actually doesn't even realise she already has one until half the school has developed theirs

Jazz has the power to slow time in a little bubble around herself, she'd been using it without realising while studying, having gotten through hours of work in half that time, she always thought it was just her losing track of time or she was just getting faster at reading, she also spends a lot of time counselling other students and trying to help them sort out their problems, and they'd often comment that they felt like they'd been talking for so much longer than they had, again she just chalked it up to losing track of time

a lot of students had wondered why Danny developed a power early and Jazz hadn't, until someone walked in on Jazz helping a girl through a panic attack in the bathroom, and found them both talking extremely fast, a lot of her friends realised in hindsight that she'd been doing that unwittingly for quite a while, nobody had noticed because she always talked to people privately, so nobody outside her little time bubble had seen it happen

Sam and Tucker come clean about their abilities too, but they also don't give the full rundown, still keeping some things close to the chest to avoid standing out from everyone else

then there's the teachers

adults typically have a better time regulating emotions than teenagers, meaning much like Jazz they aren't drawing as much ectoplasm toward themselves, but this doesn't exempt them from developing something after a while, especially with the heightened stress of managing a school full of volatile super kids

Mr Lancer discovers that he can create shields, after an incident where he jumps in front of some students to protect them from another power gone awry

Tetslaff ends up with a sonic ability, able to project her voice like a megaphone (yes this is a Coach Boomer from Sky High reference don't @ me), Principal Ishiyama develops a physical mutation, growing to twice her size, she likes that she can tower over the students while delivering speeches, but she doesn't like having to stoop through doors all the time, she has the one to her office resized, along with her chair and desk

so as you can imagine, the town ends up erupting into chaos, a lot of kids very much misuse their abilities, Danny does his best as Phantom to teach people to be responsible, but sometimes he has to resort to literally kicking their asses to get them to straighten up

but for the most part, a ton of kids were already looking up to him, and are generally pretty happy to follow his example, especially the more popular kids, it's generally considered not very cool to get your ass kicked by Phantom, so weirdly enough a lot of kids get peer pressured into not causing any real damage or injury with their powers

this doesn't mean they don't absolutely misuse them, they're just more subtle about it

until a ghost shows up, a lot of the kids are more than happy to let loose to protect themselves and their friends, and Phantom for the most part is happy to let them, with some supervision of course, he still has to make sure nobody gets too hurt (including the ghosts)

the entire debacle makes Danny's life simultaneously a whole lot easier AND so much more fucking stressful

[silverdragon-imagines-blog]

A Glitched Death - Chapter 9 - The Concern

Read it on AO3 here

Okay, and here’s a similar note to what was on Chapter 7: I'm not putting this story on a hiatus, but I can't guarantee that the next chapter will be out on time. I don’t have any chapters finished/queued up for posting, and I’m still very much deep in the Linked Universe fandom (which I highly recommend to anyone who loves Legend of Zelda). I still want to finish this fic, but I don't have a ton of ideas for what should happen before it gets to the end, so catch me on Tumblr asking for prompts or ideas at some point. I also refuse to force myself to write this fic or any fic for that matter, so I won't try to stick to deadlines and risk writing something terrible. I hope you guys understand and thanks for sticking with me despite all this. ^u^

TLDR: Story still isn’t on hiatus, but I can’t promise any deadlines. I’m (sort of) running out of ideas for where this should go, and I’m still deep into my other fandom. Thanks for reading my story, I love and appreciate all of you. ^u^

Reaper was woken up by the insistent buzzing of the cell phone in his pocket, which frankly, wasn’t a new development anymore. He sat up on the guest bed he had been allowed to use during his stay in the Doodle Sphere, and for once, he picked up his phone and answered the call.

“Hell-“

“Do you know how fucking long I’ve been trying to reach you?!” Geno screeched, “You haven’t had any contact with me for weeks , Reaper! You better have a good fucking explanation once you get here! And that’s not when you get here, because you better be here. Today.”

Rather abruptly, the dial tone started up, Reaper sighing as he flopped back onto the bed. He understood Geno’s worry, he really did, but how could he explain all of the shit he’d been through as of late? And to do it in a way that wouldn’t make him even more worried? Practically impossible.

Knowing that he couldn’t lay there pathetically forever, he turned, stretching as he got up from the bed. Donning his usual black robe, he left the room, catching the conversation happening below.

“And you’re sure that’s what you saw?”

A pause, Reaper peered down the stairs and to the kitchen, where he could see Dream pacing as he talked on the phone.

“No no, I believe you. I just want to be absolutely sure,” Dream rubbed at his browbone, “Just-- please don’t do anything stupid? We can’t risk anything bad happening on your end, alright? … Okay, Ink, and I will try to meet up with you when we can. Goodbye.”

Dream only looked at Reaper for a moment, acknowledging the god with a nod before slumping into a chair at the table, hands propping his skull up by his forehead.

“Rough talk?” Reaper asked, getting a strained chuckle out of the other.

“I should be asking you that, correct?” Dream spoke, peering at the god as he made his way to the coffee pot, brewed specifically for him considering no one else drank the bitter-tasting drink.

“You mean Geno?”

“Who else besides Respite would call you on your phone?” Dream laughed, sitting up from his position, “You should probably go see him soon, you know.”

Reaper said nothing as he gathered up his mug, sitting opposite Dream. They sat in silence for a moment, the only sounds being the gentle ticking of a clock and the god indulging in his caffeine fix.

“You know you can’t avoid talking about the past forever, you know. I have a feeling Geno already suspects something is different.”

“The whole point of me seeking him out in the first place was so I didn’t have to talk about it.”

Reaper huffed as Dream shook his head, an unsettling mix of emotions clawing at the god’s SOUL.

“I can read emotions, Death, and yours tell a different story than what you speak,” Dream smiled softly, “It’s okay to talk to others about how you feel, and I’m sure your brother and Geno would be happy to listen, along with myself of course.”

The god didn’t respond, harshly putting his mug on the table causing the guardian to flinch. He stood, summoning his scythe and heading for the door, hand resting on the knob only to be stopped by a hand on his shoulder. He turned sharply, scythe poised to strike, only to pause at the sight of Ink looking at him worriedly.

“I may not’ve been here for all of that conversation, but, Reaper, you need to at least explain what happened last time you were there, right?” Ink questioned, Reaper staring at him from under his hood, “From what I heard from Geno last time I visited, you shook him up really bad. He explained what happened and was nearly in tears, too. You scared the poor guy when you came to, brushed him off, and just left.”

A pit opened up in his SOUL at that, the fact that he caused that had guilt clawing at him. A small whine left him, sharply turning back to the door with more hurried movements to get it open and himself out than before. He wasted no time opening a portal to the Timeline Geno came from, getting into the void quickly, nearly falling on top of the small skeleton when he entered.

He squawked at the feeling of arms wrapping around him, sudden and yet, it was far from unwelcome.

“Reaper,” the small form breathed out, burying his face in the other’s cloak.

It took only a moment for the god to wrap his arms around the other, but he couldn’t find the words to speak, chest heavy with unshed tears and a growing voice echoing in his mind, chanting my fault. My fault. My fault. My f--

“You’re an idiot,” Geno spoke, muffled slightly by the heavy fabric.

Reaper laughed, strained, and not quite as strong as it once was. The small skeleton looked up at him, tears collecting in his sockets despite the glare he was trying to give.

“I’m sorry for making you worry about me,” Reaper warbled, tears starting to make their descent down his face, Geno’s joining soon after.

“It’s what friends do, right? I just--” Geno huffed, dragging the god over to the ugly beige couch, sitting them both down, “I couldn’t get your expression out of my head, how sad and simultaneously scared you looked. I assumed you were going to leave and never come back…”

“I would never do that to you,” Reaper gripped the other tighter, thoughts going back to before, tears beginning to fall faster, “I d-don’t want anyone to go th-through that.”

Geno ran his hand up and down the god’s back, an attempt to soothe the worries and stop the tears. Reaper tried to control himself, stop his sudden need to cling to the small skeleton next to him. After a few minutes, it faded, and he returned to control.

“Are you going to tell me what happened?”

Reaper sighed, letting go of the other and moving out of his space, hand rubbing away the lingering tears.

“I… I know I should,” he faltered, looking up at the ‘sky’ of the void, “But I can’t… not yet anyway.”

“But Reaper--”

“I’ll tell you this much,” he interrupted, looking the small skeleton in the eyes as he spoke, “Before I met you… there was another skeleton. One that looked just like you that I was close with…”

Geno tilted his head to the side, frown settled onto his face. Reaper fought to control his thoughts from comparing them again, sighing and looking away.

“I still have questions, but…” Geno took a deep breath, grasping Reaper’s hand and squeezing it slightly, “I’ll wait until you’re ready to answer them.”

Reaper smiled at that, returning the squeeze.

“I appreciate it… I really do.”

They sat in silence for a while, trading squeezes back and forth until Geno let go to stand up, stretching his arms above his head. He turned, the smile on his face quirked up at the side.

“I do still need to yell at you over how worried you made me.”

Reaper laughed, a much more genuine and real laugh, sockets wrinkling at the sides. He could hear Geno giggling as well, and as he recovered, he found that he was happier now, that he wasn’t as sad. Though Geno did, in fact, yell out his frustrations, their smiles never wavered.

‘Things might just turn out okay after all.’

[megamanxfanfics]

The Hiatus

I’ve been dreading the idea of writing this, but the fact that I am at all means that I’m coming out of my funk and am looking onward towards moving ahead, and hopefully forward, once again with this project in the future.  I’m afraid I’ve got a lot of explaining to do.  Wouldn’t you know it?  Life got in the way again.

It seems that every new Writing Season, something always happens to me to shift things around and make it near-impossible towards writing Mega Man X.  I’ve been mulling over how to talk about all of this without getting too personal on an MMX blog.  But the fact is that what happened to me is very personal.  And very complicated.  So I’m gonna just go for it, while keeping it in simplest terms.

I broke up with my girlfriend last month.  Which means I had to move out...

I can say that with dry eyes now, and without a heavy heart.  It was a smooth break.  Very mutual.  We both knew it needed to happen, because we weren’t happy at all. (Always doing our own thing, making separate plans... etc. etc. etc.)

But back to this.

I recall back in November I had posted a Writing Exercise - What X Remembers, in an attempt to kick-start my motivation for this project.  Needless to say, it didn’t work.  I can tell you right now that I wasn’t exactly busy.  I was burnt out.

Yes, I’ve been wanting and wanting to start this thing, but in the planning phases, I’ve also been afraid of it.  Because I don’t want to mess this up. Or it’s too confusing, or disjointed.  And I know how I get.  I harp and harp on things until it’s perfect, or feels good enough to present.  And... frankly, I was in a position where things were so bad at home, that I just wanted to spend time with her to keep everyone happy.

I would also take advantage of ‘Me-Time Monday’ as I used to call it when she’d be out doing her own thing.  Except my creative outlet for those days would be working on music, which is my first passion.  I’ve taken on a massive project of adding vocals to a lot of old music I had written, and even now I’m maybe half-way through that.  And there were definitely certain Mondays that I wasn’t even in the mood for music...  I certainly wasn’t in the mood for X.

I was depressed...  She was depressed...  But why?

Well... this blog, isn’t exactly about that.  But what I can tell you is that we were just going through this mundane routine every day.  Even our weekends became routine.  And neither of us were fun to be around any more.  Even upon realizing it and trying to do different things.  ‘Go out on a date, Dummy!’  That’s what I would tell myself.  But even nice events didn’t work.  She’d complain about being tired, or full or we wouldn’t talk at all.  That... was the extent of our interactions.  Outside of that, we’d just watch our shows, which would entertain us, and make us laugh.  We’d hold hands and stuff, sometimes.  But even then... it didn’t really feel romantic.  As one friend put it best, “It sounds like a friendship...”

And we both realized that last month.

So you could say that from November-February, I had slowly been working at getting my motivation toward this project back up.  Despite my daily toils, I was driven to bring myself to do the things that make me happy.  I had even reread most of the Writing Diaries, all the way up to Season V again, which took me down a nice bit of Nostalgia Road.  Reading about the Process of this Project is just as fun as reading the actual episodes for me.  It’s the Journey, not the Destination, after all.

But like I said, then February happened and we just imploded.  Everything immediately broke down.  My living space, my comfort zone.. where I was going to be!!  I didn’t know what to do.

In week 1 I took out the time to hang out with all of my closest friends.  I told everyone who needed to know first.

In week 2, I started seriously looking for places.  And that was equally exciting as it was exhausting.  However, I did find one thing that wouldn’t be ready for the next 2 months!  And that also freaked me out.  Now I had a pseudo-time table on my hands, but it was a little too long.

In week 3, I cracked.  We absolutely got into a fight in our shared space.  Things were so smooth as friends and roommates.  We had still shared our King Size Bed, and kept it completely civil, since nothing romantic was happening in the bedroom anyway...  But, at some point, some Social Media Drama occurred and I actually started acting like an Ex.  It was becoming very clear to me that living together any longer was going to destroy my Mental Health.  So I made the choice to get out of there, sooner than anticipated.  That Friday, I put a bag together and stayed at my parent’s house.

The original plan was to ride this out as long as possible and move into the 2nd Bedroom while I start to leisurely pack, as I keep looking for places.  But instead, all this drama accelerated my schedule and forced me out of that house.  That weekend, I came back to grab the rest of my clothes and relocate my TV back to my Parent’s house... Which takes me to week 4.  

In week 4, I focused on helping my brother with an After-school play.  I changed my work hours for him and everything, but on top of that, I had an unexpected interview which could’ve changed everything!!!  You see, I’ve been looking for better jobs at the same time as looking for new places.  And that’s what made this so stressful.  That’s even partially what caused all this drama, because one night I tried complaining about it to her, and she didn’t really seem to care much.  We were acting like exes to each other, and I really couldn’t handle it.  So once we got into a fight, that was the wake up call.  We’re not together anymore.  We can’t do this any more! Literally.  It was time to get out of there and move on.   Well, the job interview wasn’t in the cards... but it’s for the best, because it would’ve made this new place that I’ve been hoping for, not make sense any more.   That weekend, I got together all of my books/movies/games/comics, electronics, pictures, etc. etc. while she had put together boxes of the kitchenware I get to take.  By Sunday Night, basically all of my stuff was out of there. I couldn’t believe it.  It was very therapeutic and bittersweet.

This takes us to Week 5 - last week.  The commotion has slowed down to an abrupt halt.  I’ve been very tired.  Technically I have all the time in the world for MMX now, but I’m just not there yet.  And I probably won’t be for another month.  And I say that now, because I’m literally in between places.  All of my stuff is in boxes at my Parent’s house, but this other place that I saw is in the process of coming through.  Their time table accelerated a little bit.  I got news yesterday that the place has been painted, and that new carpets will be installed on 3/23.  As I am basically move-in ready, but also really want this to be the place, I worked with my new Landlord and asked him if I can start to leave boxes this weekend.

And that’s what I did today.  Today I left the first installation of boxes into that house’s basement.  It will be the new location I call my home, and the best part about it is that it’s only 5 minutes from Work.  That’s HUGE.  [But that too is temporary, as I still need a better job.]. One day at a time though, right?

This is primarily the reason why I’m writing today.  I feel that the brunt of this Transition Period has reached it’s Apex, and from here, it’s gonna be pretty smooth sailing into the next place, as I become acquainted with my New Normal of 2020.

I’m also writing, because admittedly, I have been thinking about MMX6 again, and rather than catch up with the rest of the diaries, I just read the last one.  Where I actually regressed into plot points again and still couldn’t answer certain questions, like what those stupid teleport portals are.  I mean, how much of an explanation do I really need?  It’s Mega Science!

I’ll be honest.  I could start tomorrow, and I’d probably feel pretty good about it, until I hit my first slump.  Which will most likely be the Central Museum stage.  And then I won’t want to do anything.

No, my heart’s just not in it yet.  I don’t want to start MMX6 on my laptop.  I want to be fully set up and Comfortable in my New Place when I start Season VI properly.  The silver lining is that I have all the time in the world for this and my music, now.  And I’ll have to feel out that situation too, because I desperately want to do both.  And that’s part of the conflict too.  Both projects literally interfere with each other, because I only have enough time and energy for one or the other on any given night.

Keep in mind, once I have my own place, everything’s on me.  That’s cooking, dishes, laundry and of course self-care, right?  So that involves the necessary shower, and of course entertaining yourself.  And that means yes, actually pulling myself away from my hobbies that I tend to wrap myself in so much.

I’m not blaming this project for losing my girl, or my music.  Hell, I’m not even blaming myself.  We just weren’t a good fit for each other, but we sure tried to be.  For 5 Years!  There was a lot of good in those 5 years too.  But she changed a lot.  Me too.  But her, more...  In a less fun way.  Very easy for me to say, of course.

These things happen.  People change.  And we truly made the healthiest choice to end it when we did.  It was really just a logical conversation about what isn’t working, and both of us literally agreeing that this doesn’t make sense any more.  My friend last night put it best.  “I think your relationship just ran its course.  You both saw it through to a complete end, and it was really good that you chose to end it when you did, because neither of you were happy any more...”

And there it is.  I suppose I’m ending this on that note.  One day I’ll be ready for MMX6 again.  But today is not that day.  And instead, I’ll be playing the MMZ/ZX Legacy Collection in the meantime.  =P.   And no.  Don’t get any ideas.  I have NO intention of writing an MMZ Anime.

[drunklander]

Drunj!Der Yells About Outlander

Thoughts on Ep. 401

Oh hey, y’all. We’re back for another season of that show we keep watching in hopes it’ll get back to its season one glory Outlander! Since I’m incapable of keeping my Opinions to myself and have no filter after a few drinks, I’m gonna do drunk recaps that no one asked for or wants again this year. Because why not. So buckle up, randos, because under the cut you will find nothing of substance, zero insights and absolutely no analysis!

Before I dive into the stream of consciousness, quasi-incoherent beat-by-beat nonsense, I just want to say that I overall liked this episode. I definitely enjoyed it more from the comfort of my own couch than in the theater with thousands of screaming sycophants at NYCC. It definitely had me singing along to the Federalist Papers part of Non Stop all day though. A series of scenes, tangentially related, introducing the Colonies to the public. Some are obviously just there to just set up the plot of the season or like check a residual box from last season. But some are solid world-building and character moments. And, because it’s Outlander, some are like *side eye*.

But I’m for real excited for the first half of this season! The second half of Drums is a dumpster fire (fucking Rogergate...) and it seems like the show is going to stick pretty close to the book, so I’m going to try my hardest to not let preemptive feelings about that nonsense cloud potential enjoyment of the first bit. Because dammit, I love me some domestic!Frasers. So yeah, happy end of hiatus, y’all!

Ok I don’t want to start off on a downer note, but jfc. I get what they were going for with the 2000 B.C. stone circle stuff, but omg no. I don’t care if certain indigenous peoples really did make stone circles and dance around them as the sun rose. I know they’re trying to show the universality of circles and these time portal thingies or whatever, but by making the parallel with the druids at Craigh na Dun, it’s basically being like “Oh hey! These Native American folks from *checks notes* North America are just like the white folks we’ve been hanging with for the last three seasons!” It came off to me like erasing the unique cultures of the diverse peoples of North America in favor of framing them as a generic group of “natives” who do the white people stone dance. And in a season that’s going to deal heavily with multiple tribes, this really isn’t giving me much confidence in how they’re going to handle the rest of the Native American characters.

I’m really hoping someone else will articulate that better than I did. Because I feel like I’m not communicating well what my actual issue with the sequence was.

Petition to make Jamie wear a hat at all times to hide his horrible bangs.

Gavin Hayes has to be being hanged for literally the dumbest crime ever. But he seems pretty chill about it so...

Ok I never liked book!Bonnet as a character (like obvi he’s a terrible person so I was never going to like him as a person, but I was always annoyed that he was still around rather than appreciating him as a villain), but even from that presumptuous “yeah can I snag some rum too, bruh” in the jail, I’m like solidly on board with show!Bonnet.

Jamie tried to save Hayes, but you see Hayes straight up killed a guy. Sure it was in self-defense, but, y’know, ye olde times and he did kill the dude. Sooo...

I want to feel for Lesley, I really do, but I’ve never actually given a shit or been given a good reason to give a shit about Rupert and Angus 3.0 so, sorry for your loss?

Unpopular opinion alert (should be the standard disclaimer on all of my #hottakes) but I really don’t care for the new theme music. Every time they change it, I find myself wanting the OG season one music back with just the images updated.

The bald eagle for the title card just gives me such mixed feelings that have nothing to do with the show. Like here’s a symbol of my country and it *should* invoke good feelings, but *gestures at the current political climate* every national symbol at the moment feels tainted by the growing white nationalist movement that’s being spurred on by the current administration.

Time for some post hanging brewskis. We are here to mourn Gavin Hayes. Who died only so the new villain could be introduced. Let us bow our heads.

Marsali and Fergus win the prize for least subtle “can we be excused to go bang” ever. Rock on, Fersali.

I fucking LOVE that they changed the tavern scene so everyone sings with them like they know what’s going on rather than how in the book it was like them making fun of the red coats as part of Gavin’s song and then Fergus passed around a hat for coins. But by having everyone in the tavern in on what’s going down and earnestly participating, it establishes that 20+ years after the failed Rising, after the Clearances, after everything the Scots went through at the hands of the English, they were not truly defeated. They may have moved across an ocean, but they are still Scottish and they still practice their traditions and dammit I’m having feelings about those resilient motherfuckers.

The scene with Jamie and Ian is very well done and I’m SO glad they included it because they did in fact include his rape last year, but fuck the show for including that rape in the first place. A very similar version of this scene could have been done without the rape, there’s enough trauma involved in being kidnapped, taken across the ocean, held hostage by a batshit lady and knowing that everyone else she kidnapped ended up dead for one 16 year old kid. With Jamie’s rape we got two episodes of trauma and four of recovery. With Mary, Fergus and Ian, we get three child rapes that could have all been avoided (especially Ian’s, but the plot points that come from Mary’s and Fergus’ could have definitely come about without them actually being raped), and they all just got one brief scene to express their trauma and then everything’s hunky dory again. (We know they’re going to include Bree’s rape, also fuck them very much for that, it’s completely unnecessary, and I’m guessing we’ll spend some time with her on her recovery. But that’s a rant for when we get there...)

For real though, Jamie parroting Claire as he comforts Ian is super sweet, but it makes me skeptically nervous for how he’ll react to Bree’s. Since in the book, it’s...not great.

Stephen Bonnet is so delightfully smarmy. Also, how fucking naive is our main squad now all of a sudden that they don’t realize from the jump what a sociopath he is? C’mon, y’all. Like I know Jamie came close to being hanged or whatever, but literally everything about this dude screams that he’s bad news. He is not subtle in his I’m a straight up unapologetic and charismatic good guy criminal. And like, he’s a friend of Gavin? Come the fuck on, squad. HOW DO YOU NOT SEE THAT HE IS FULL OF SHIT. *gets Det. JJ Bittenbinder on the horn*

For real though, dodgy accent aside, I fucking love Ed Speleers in this role. Why the fuck do they have to include the rape. Can’t he just be a bastard without being a rapist? Why must you make me rage, show. I just want to enjoy a decent villain.

Jamie and Claire are doing their best Jean Ralphio and Mona Lisa Saperstein trying to talk their way through this checkpoint.

“You’ve never parted with the ring from the first?” Yeah, I don’t get it either, Bonnet my dude. I don’t get it either. #FuckFrank

Bonnet talking about circles fascinating him makes me think he’d do well in a group of stoners having what they think are philosophical conversations at 3:00 a.m. “But like guys, have you ever like thought about...the rhombus?”

For real though, him being real with Claire about this drowning stuff makes him an infinitely more interesting villain than Black Jack ever was. Black Jack was kind of a crap villain tbh. He was horrible and did horrible things, yes, but like that was it. He was just horrible. Bonnet’s like oh I’ll charm you, be real with you and then fuck you up in the course of one episode and not give any of it a second thought because I have not a single fuck to give about anyone but me. I’m just out here living my best life, sorry not sorry. *puts on shades, drops mic, walks away*

For real though, his “be wary of thieves and outlaws” line might as well have been “it’s me, I’m talking about me.” And these dorks don’t even pick up on it. GUYS YOU ARE KILLING ME, YOU DIDN’T USED TO BE THIS SHITTY AT JUDGING SOMEONE’S CHARACTER.

I’m guessing this is the official christening-their-new-continent-bang because it’s too cold to do River Sex™ in Scotland. But I’m looking forward to getting the rest of Ch. 16 once they get to the Ridge. (We all saw those strawberries in the promo...)

The book lines still feel shoehorned in rather than organic to the show, but not as much as 95% of A. Malcolm felt. So I guess I need to just accept that the writers are going to keep doing this and I just need to stop expecting them to actually do their jobs and adapt for the adaptation...

For real though, I know Spotify doesn’t exist yet but jfc Jamie and Claire’s secksi time playlist literally just has this one song and guys, there’s a whole world of songs for smushing out there. My man Doug Judy would be glad to broaden your horizons.

Claire’s I just had sex smile as she looks out over the valley made me literalol.

Cool that we get woke!Jamie saying that the American Dream is a nightmare for the Native Americans after Claire’s Americana 101 speech, but this is a woman who lived in wicked racist 1960s Boston. She knows that things aren’t nice and rosy in America in the 18th *or* 20th centuries. Her speech makes me hate S3 a little more for focusing on Frank’s manpain instead of Claire and her and Joe’s time in the hospital, where the show could have explored gender and race in the 20th century to set up a contrast for how things will be this season in the 18th. Claire went through enough shit last time she was in the past, and so far this time, to know that the past isn’t idyllic. She knows enough about US history and 20th century America to know this mythical origin story she’s spouting is nothing but a fairy tale. I get why she might cling to that ideal, this is the first time in her life she might get to settle down and build a home with the person she actually wants to build a home with, but her whitewashing history like this strikes me as a way too naive for her.

The green screen as they stare out at that very much not actually there valley is killinggg me.

Ok for real though, this cut from them in the Uncanny Valley to the room getting ready for dinner is the most jarring of the episode. Like, I’ve come to terms with the fact that this is just a series of independent scenes rather than an actual, cohesive whole, but jfc. Who actually is Lillington, how do you know him? Nope? No info? Not important? Just need to get it out there that you have jewels so the last scene in the episode can happen so the ring can be taken so the rape can occur? Cool. Cool cool cool.

Ok so show!Claire makes me sad with being insecure/self-depreciating about her appearance. Like with saying brown is a dull color when Jamie calls her mo nighean donn the first time and when she asks Joe if she’s sexually attractive and when she dyes her hair before going back through the stones and now with the mutton dressed as lamb thing. (Claire, girl, how are you that up on Colonial fashion that you know what’s “age appropriate” already? Wouldn’t think there was much fashion gossip along the road from Georgia to North Carolina, but whatevs.) I know three of these four things are straight from the book, but in the show it hits me differently. Book!Claire is kind of a bitch when it comes to looks. Her parting words in her letter to Bree were “try not to get fat.” She like judged the crap out of that rando lady in Edinburgh before she went to the print shop just to make sure she didn’t look too old. So when she has these aforementioned moments, they land differently. Now I’m not saying I want show!Claire to be like book!Claire, quite the opposite. I’m glad they cut that other stuff. But now whenever show!Claire has a moment of self-consciousness, all I want to do is be like woman, you are a fucking smokeshow. Fuck the patriarchy for making you feel like you aren’t stunning exactly as you are. #LadyBonerForBeauchamp

Oh Governor Exposition. How nice of you to join our merry band of randos for dinner!

Man, I’d love to be so rich that I can pull a Baron and casually just happen to have 100 pounds on hand to buy a giant ruby at a random dinner party.

John Grey, who was shunted from shit post to shit post, totes is special enough to get Scotland’s Valjean to England’s Javert cleared. I mean, obvi.

Oh hey, Jamie remembers he has a daughter! Showed more emotion in that scene about how America would become her country than in the scene with the photos. Fuck Sam et al. for the disaster of a performance choice in ep. 306, don’t @ me.

OH HAI ROLLO I LOVE YOU YOU ARE SUCH A GOOD DOGGO I WANT TO SNUGGLE YOU WHO’S A GOOD BOY YOU ARE

“I dinna ken. But she’ll be saying it in Scotland, won’t she?” I do love Young Ian a lot. I know that’s in the book. But dammit I love John Bell in this part a crapton.

Casually lol’ing that they crossed the ocean because Ian was taken and now that they have him, they’re just going to send him alone off to sea again.

The first time I saw the episode, when Lesley gave his “my place is at your side” speech I was like crap, we’re going to be stuck with this guy aren’t we. BUT WE’RE NOT! (I am a terrible person.)

Fergus and Marsali are totes going to be the new Jenny and Ian, aren’t they? The characters who just show up once or twice a season when the core squad needs something and that’s it? Because they get tossed aside in the books like that. That makes me super sad (and I hope I’m wrong) because of how they changed show!Fergus and show!Claire’s relationship from the book that we won’t get to see more of them together. Le sigh. I hope they at least let Bree have a scene where she meets Fergus and learns she has a brother. Especially if she’s not going to go to Lallybroch to meet the Murray squad because Jenny isn’t in this season. Part of what I loved about the Lallybroch part in the book was Bree realizing that she wasn’t just gaining a father but a whole extended family. I hope they kind of transfer that over to her meeting Fergus and Young Ian in the place of [insert Murray kids who let’s be honest we really don’t care about here].

Hey remember that time Jamie was wicked opposed to Fergus and Marsali getting married for literally no reason? That was fun. But yay for Germain!

Holy motherfucking green screen, Batman. Please can we get to the woods soon? Or some other location where it’s not this fucking jarring?

Claire America-is-the-land-of-milk-and-honey Fraser suddenly is overly-on-the-nose indignant about slavery. Cool. Cool cool cool. Again, you know what would have been cool? Seeing her with her best and only friend in the 1960s more last season because he was a Black man. If they had let Joe be a fully formed character, navigating racist af Boston as a doctor, rather than just being Claire’s sounding board and martini maker, we could have seen how Claire being exposed to his reality shaped her views on race in America. But nope, that would have taken air time away from Frank’s manpain. (Seriously, my recent re-watch only highlighted just how much they screwed over Claire’s character last season.)

I’ve always loved that Jamie gives Claire the medical box. It’s just such a simple way to demonstrate that he *gets* Claire. (*side-eyes a certain other husband who patently did not*)

Jamie’s bangs are an affront to anyone with hair. Someone please give that man his hat back!

“This ring is all I need.” Aaand that’s when we all knew that Jamie’s ring would be the one stolen.

“Not for a single day.” Uh, *casually points at the episode in season three when she retcons her entire life in Boston to be not as bad as it was because Jamie’s been such an asshat to her*.

Ok. Holy shit this final scene. I love everything about this final scene. Except the song. This show is not subtle. It’s never been subtle. But holy shit, playing the iconic Ray Charles version of America the Beautiful at the end of an episode called America the Beautiful to be like welcome to ‘Murrica, fuckos, is like even less subtle than they usually go. I 1000% LOVE the choice to cut the audio from the end of the fight scene and just have the visuals, it just would have worked much better if they’d scored with with a regular instrumental piece.

Gah, Bonnet is such a smarmy motherfucker! The nose wipe before he coldcocks Jamie is just perf.

Claire’s face in this entire scene, holy fucking shit. *throws all the awards at Balfe*

And then Lesley dies and I’m a terrible person because I’m happy we don’t need to be stuck with him all season. But holy shit Bonnet when he pauses right before he cuts his throat and then kills him, I love show!Bonnet so much more than I ever gave a shit about book!Bonnet.

And honestly, Claire’s face when he’s killed right in front of her. *throws more awards at Balfe*

GUYS I FEEL MORE EMOTION ABOUT CLAIRE TAKING OFF JAMIE’S RING THAN I DID ABOUT CLAIRE LEAVING BREE BEHIND TO GO BACK THROUGH THE STONES HOW IS BALFE SO GOOD AT MAKING ME FEEL FEELINGS

I’m so fucking glad they changed which ring gets taken. There was an interview where they were like “oh we did it because it has to be visually distinct so Bree can get raped!” and I’m like a) fuck you for including that and b) right decision, wrong reason. This is the right reason for the change.

But even as I say that they made the right call in which ring to have stolen, it’s still a fact that they fucking chose to have one stolen at all. The writers and production team decided that Brianna needed to be raped so a ring must be stolen. Because Diana never wrote a character she didn’t want raped and the Outlander producers never read a rape scene they didn’t want to include. Fuck them all very much for that.

Fuck Them Very Much for That, the title of my memoir.

Oh god her face right at the end when she sees that it’s fucking Fred’s ring she’s left with and not Jamie’s fucking murders me.

*THROWS AN ENTIRE TROPHY STORE AT BALFE*

[italeteller]

The Voltron finale makes me think about that post on How I Met Your Mother's end, and how it completely vanished once it was done. I think Voltron's gonna go down a similar path. Once the shippers stop whining, I imagine it won't take long for the fandom to disappear.

That end was pretty much a betrayal of everything the show had stood for.

Voltron always had a generous amount of bullshit, but it was a good, shonen-type of bullshit, where the heroes can always find an eleventh hour power to conquer the evil they face.

Villain too strong? Boom, new weapon. Villain can absorb energy? Boom, power of friendship recharges your batteries. Adrift in space? Boom, the lions can find you on their own. Universe is collapsing? Boom, the castle of lions can revert that. Can't bring the Atlas thru the reality portal? Boom, it fuses with Voltron. Etcetera. It was an endearing kind of bullshit, the one you can get behind because the rules of the universe had always been kind of lax so why not.

And then we reach the final episode, and the only way out is for Allura to kill herself. And nobody tries to stop her. Oh, of course they cry and say it cannot be and there must be a way out. And nobody moves a finger to find one.

Pidge, with the god-like intellect able to science the shit out of any situation. Lance, who's been after the girl for the entirety of the show. Shiro, the original leader who died and came back and wants to keep everybody safe. Keith, who went from a kamikaze idiot to a great leader who values his teammates. Hunk, the heart of the team. Coran, who wasn't even in the fucking scene. They all let her go. And there was no rush, no ticking clock signaling the end of everything so Allura had to die RIGHT NOW. They could have taken their sweet time figuring something out.

Five minutes before the final fight they were all saying how their bond makes them stronger and helps them power up beyond their capabilities, and then Allura says she has to die and apparently the bond has run out of batteries.

And it gets so much worse when you consider all Allura went through as a character. This is a girl who woke up one day to find out her family, her friends, her planet, everybody she ever knew was dead and had been dead for ten thousand years, and her father's best friend had gone mad and conquered the universe with an iron fist. And her losses didn't stop there.

She had to kill her father's hologram, had to give up the castle of lions, had to find out the person she fell in love with was a mad scientist using her race as test subjects for atrocities. And through it all, she persisted. She found the highest altean magic, became a paladin of Voltron, found family and love and even new members of her race which she thought extinct.

And then she died. She who saw the war begin does not get to see it end. She who saw the destruction of Daibazaal and Altea does not get to see them restored. She who lost more than anybody has to lose yet one more time.

It's bullshit, and not the good kind.

Season 8 was awesome. All throughout it I kept looking forward to the gifsets and meta and everything that would come. I kept thinking I could rewatch the whole series after a while to see how it holds up without hiatus. But after this finale, I don't want to see Voltron anymore. I don't want to talk about it, I don't want anything to do with it.

I'm hurt, I'm angry, I'm disappointed.

I am done.

Good bye Voltron. You had some genuinely good moments. I really wish your finale hadn't soured them all for me.

[aion-rsa]

Best Horror TV Shows on Netflix

https://ift.tt/37wD6uz

So you want to be terrifed. Well, you’ve come to the right place, my friend. Everybody already knows that Netflix is a splendid place for viewers coming in search of all their bingeworthy content. But less appreciated is how satisfyingly scary some of their horror offerings are.

From originals like The Haunting of Hill House to foreign classics like The Returned, Netflix can be a go-to spot for the scariest horror TV shows available to stream. Here is a sampling of the kinds of series that horror thrill-seekers may appreciate.

Editor’s Note: This post is updated monthly. Bookmark this page to see what the best horror shows on Netflix are at your convenience.

The Haunting of Hill House

Shirley Jackson’s novel The Haunting of Hill House is considered one of the most important texts in the horror literature canon. It’s only fitting then that it’s Hill House that Netflix turned to when the time came to make its first big original horror series. It’s also fitting that they turned to Hush director Mike Flanagan to make it happen.

Flanagan’s version of The Haunting of Hill House is quite different from the novel from which it takes its name. This Haunting is a modern story that follows the Crain family as they try to recover from the trauma they sustained as kids living in the terrifying Hill House. Of course, Hill House is still out there just dying to call them all back home. Netflix is going to keep “The Haunting” going with The Haunting of Bly Manor and presumably more to come after that.

The Haunting of Bly Manor

The consensus is that The Haunting of Bly Manor is significantly less scary than Mike Flanagan’s original Netflix series The Haunting of Hill House…and that consensus is correct. But there are still plenty of scares to be had in this worthy followup.

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The Haunting of Bly Manor Timeline Explained

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Why The Haunting of Bly Manor Needed a British Script Editor

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Bly Manor borrows elements from the works of Henry James, including The Turn of the Screw, to craft another affecting ghost story. Hill House‘s Victoria Pedretti returns as Dani, a young American woman who takes on a job as a governess to two young children at the titular Bly Manor. Soon Dani and all involved will come to find that Bly Manor holds some serious (weirdly romantic) secrets.

The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina

After the Archie comic universe got a gritty reboot in The CW’s Riverdale, it was only a matter of time before Archie cousin comic Sabrina the Teenage Witch got her turn. Thankfully Netflix stepped up to the plate with the Kiernan Shipka starring Chilling Adventures of Sabrina and even more thankfully…it’s gritty as all hell.

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Chilling Adventures of Sabrina Season 3: Ending Explained

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Chilling Adventures of Sabrina Season 3: Archie-Verse Easter Eggs and Reference Guide

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The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina brings witchcraft back to its absolutely metal satanic origins. Sabrina Spellman (Shipka) is like any teenager at Baxter High. She’s concerned about her grades, her social status, and her impending 16th birthday in which she must undergo a dark ritual in which she’ll have to grant her loyalty to the Dark Lord Satan. Such is life for a half-mortal/half-witch.

Ash vs Evil Dead

Sam Raimi’s Evil Dead series (consisting of Evil Dead, Evil Dead II, and Army of Darkness) are some of the most deliriously bloody and fun slasher films ever committed to celluloid. Surely, however, a TV series made decades later couldn’t possibly bring the same level of thrill, could it?

Wrong! Starz’s Ash vs Evil Dead is another installment of fantastic comedy horror. Bruce Campbell returns as Evil Dead hero Ash Williams, who has done seemingly little with his life since battling the forces of evil (and dead) 30 years ago. That all changes when the dead walk once again and Ash, and some new friends must pick up the chainsaw once again.

Black Summer

In a zombie television landscape largely dominated by AMC’s The Walking Dead, Syfy’s Z Nation found a nice with a more playful, tongue-in-cheek presentation of the zombie apocalypse. In this spinoff, Black Summer, things get a touch darker.

Jamie King stars as Rose, a mother who is separated from her daughter during the height of a zombie apocalypse. Rose sets out on a mission to recover her and in the process builds a group of like-minded individuals looking for something they’ve lost.

Stranger Things

It seems so obvious now but in hindsight there was little buzz about this nostalgic tweenage horror project on Netflix from the relatively unknown Duffer Brothers. Little did we know that the Stev(ph)ens Spielberg and King inspired Stranger Things would be one of Netflix’s biggest hits.

Stranger Things takes place in the fictional Hawkins, Indiana in the mid-’80s. Hawkins is your typical smal ltown American city. The kids like to ride bikes, play Dungeons and Dragons, and tease one another. Little does everyone know that the mysterious government building on the outskirts of town may have opened a portal to another world – a portal that will usher in multiple seasons worth of monster fighting mayhem.

Castlevania

Netflix has beefed up its anime offerings in recent years and one of the first IPs they mined to do so was atmospheric Konami videogame series Castlevania. Originally planned as a film, Castlevania makes good use of its serialized format to pick up the horror story from where it begins with 1989 game Castlevania III: Dracula’s Curse

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Best Horror Movies on Netflix: Scariest Films to Stream

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Best Horror Movies on Amazon Prime Right Now

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And what a story it is. Wallachian lord (and vampire, obvs.) Vlad Dracula Tepes (Graham McTavish) falls into a mighty rage after his wife is wrongly accused of witchcraft and burned at the stake. Vlad summons an army of the dead to declare war on the living of Wallachia. The only people who stand in his path are a ragged band of heroes led by Trevor Belmont (Richard Armitage).

Haunted

Haunted is a bit of an odd duck among Netflix’s horror offerings. It was introduced for the 2018 Halloween season, just a week before the juggernaut Haunting of Hill House. As such, it got lost in the spooky shuffle. Still, this is a surprisingly effective take on your classic “tell a scary story” style TV series.

In Haunted, people tell their real life scary stories. That’s it. This is well-trodden ground on long running cable series like Ghost Stories and Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark. Where Haunted differentiates itself is in its shockingly high production values, as witnessed in the ethereal screengrab above. Also, these stories are like…really scary.

Chambers

Chambers only survived one season at Netflix, proving once again that it’s tough out there for horror television shows. But the one season legacy the show leaves behind is a decently spooky one.

Chambers tells a story that contains a pretty familiar, yet effective horror trope. Sasha Yazzie (Sivan Alyra Rose) receives a much-needed heart transplant from a girl named Becky Lafevre. Soon, Sasha begins to experience troubling visions and begins to unravel a conspiracy that brings her into contact with Becky’s parents (Uma Thurman and Tony Goldwyn).

Devilman Crybaby

Anime has always been ahead of the game when it comes to horror and there’s no better evidence of this than Devilman Crybaby. This Netflix anime is based on a manga Devilman and creates a lushly realized gothic world. 

In Devilman Crybaby, an ancient race of demons has returned to take back the world from humanity. Akira Fudo, a sensitive young lad, decides to save the world the only way he knows how: by fusing with a demon. The resulting freakshow, called Devilman, possesses the powers of a demon but the soul of a human. Now hopefully that’s enough to defeat the forces of evil.

American Horror Story

Ryan Murphy’s American Horror Story is revolutionary in quite a few ways. Not only did it help usher in a renewed era of anthology storytelling on television, it also was arguably the first successful network television horror show since The X-Files.

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Best Horror Movies on Hulu

By Alec Bojalad and 1 other

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Best Horror Movies Streaming on HBO Max

By David Crow and 2 others

Like all anthologies, American Horror Story has its better seasons (season 1 a.k.a. Murder House, season 2 a.k.a. Asylum, season 6 a.k.a. Roanoke) and its worse (season 3 a.k.a. Coven and season 8 a.k.a. Apocalypse). Still, for nine years and counting, American Horror Story has been one of the go-to options for TV horror fans.

Scare Tactics

Scare Tactics is what happens when someone looks at the prank camera show format and thinks “What if this but also dangerous and terrifying?” The concept of Scare Tactics is simple: take normal people, put them in elaborate horror movie situations, and film what happens. Awful? Yes. Entertaining? Absolutley!

Shannen Doherty hosted the first incarnation of the show that premiered on Syfy in 2003. Stephen Baldwin took her place in the middle of the show’s second season. Then after a three-year hiatus, Scare Tactics returned with Tracy Morgan at the helm and lasted three more seasons of hilariously cruel pranking.

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Unsolved Mysteries

Any reboot of continuation of the classic ’80s/’90s true crime series Unsolved Mysteries just needs one element to be considered authentic: that music. Thankfully, this modern iteration on Netflix maintains a version of the original’s haunting theme. Beyond that crucial aspect, Unsolved Mysteries honors the original by continuing the formula to great success.

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TV

Unsolved Mysteries Review (Spoiler-Free): True Crime With More Questions Than Answers

By Tony Sokol

TV

Unsolved Mysteries Volume 2 Review: Reboot Fits a Flatfoot More Than a Bigfoot

By Tony Sokol

Unsolved Mysteries remains largely a true crime enterprise. The show covers unexplained disappearances, murders, and crimes. But it also spends plenty of time with the truly unexplained: the paranormal. This reboot has covered UFOs and some tsunami ghosts. That, combined with the atmospheric music, makes this a suitably spooky watch.

The post Best Horror TV Shows on Netflix appeared first on Den of Geek.

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[singingwordwright]

#Shadowhunters recap - s2ep20 “Beside Still Water”

SHADOWHUNTERS Recaps Intro and Masterlist

These recaps may contain spoilers from the books (that may or may not happen in the show.) Proceed at your own risk.

Well, here it is. My last recap of the season. Let’s do this so I can get around to watching all the reaction videos I don’t let myself watch until I’m done reacting myself!

 Recap and meta under the cut.

Raise your hand if you didn’t know that not retrieving Sebastian’s body was going to come back and bite our boys and girls in the ass? Anyone? Anyone?

Even without reading the books, you just had to know that wasn’t the end of Sebastian. Still I’m thrilled in a way because Will Tudor is amazeballs and I can’t wait to see what he’s going to do with the character from here on out.

Also, I gotta say, this whole thing with Sebastian’s blood being able to open up passage between our realm and Edom is really quite cool, and I wonder how it came about? Like, did Valentine already know that about Jonathan and is that how he created the pentagram/conducted the ritual that enabled him to banish Jonathan to Edom in the first place? Is it some sort of gift or ability that was granted to Sebastian by Lilith? How did that happen? I want the story behind it.

This was it. This was the moment when Magnus exhausted my forbearance.

Like, I’ve pretty much been completely behind him this whole time, even knowing he’s acting rashly and being misguided, because I totally get his motivations. And I still do.

But in this moment we saw him cross the line from “I’m possibly putting my trust in a bad place because I’m hurt and scared and have a very limited array of bad options for protecting my people” to “I’m staying a bad course because I don’t want to acknowledge that I might have been wrong.”

Desperation is one thing. Being willfully obtuse in order to save face is another thing entirely.

Thank God Maia apparently knows better than to eat in Faerie. I was worried there for a moment. Also I love her trying to make a run for it, however futile, rather than just waiting to be rescued. And can we talk about those boots Maia was wearing? We only get a glimpse of them but it was enough to inspire a serious case of shoe-envy.

The Seelie Queen has made the list of people who need to come down with a case of dead. Alas, I doubt we’ll see it happen. IIRC she survives the books.

These past couple episodes have fed me so well with regard to our squad fighting together. Clary and Izzy/Jace and Alec/Izzy and Jace in s2ep19 and now all four of them plus Magnus in various combinations in this episode? *squee*

I’m a happy, happy girl and truly, if you’d listened in on the conversations @roseglass and I had over Facetime during the hiatus leading up to season 2B, this was #1 with a bullet on our list of things we needed, since we really didn’t get much of it in 2A.

Also, there’s my not-so-lowkey archery kink. That’s been fed pretty well in 2B also.

Sarah Hyland really is teeny-tiny, isn’t she? It’s interesting also that the seem to have found a lot of extras who are of similarly short stature to fill out the Seelie court. So apparently it’s canon here that the Seelies are on the small side? Is Meliorn an exception because he’s half-human? What about Kaelie? Was she not entirely Seelie either?

So, Luke calls Clary…from the Seelie realm? They have cell towers in Faerie? Really?

Clary’s portal rune being powerful enough to pierce the warlock wards—just like her other rune managed to burn through the wards on Magnus’s apartment in s2ep12—annoys me because we have no explanation for why that would be the case. It’s total deus ex machina, and did no one really even try to bring up the notion that she and Jace might be fucking vaporized if she ends up being wrong about this?

I really hope next season the writing won’t lean so heavily on Clary’s unreasonably amped-up powers (who am I kidding? Of course it will.)

Jace and Alec’s “be careful”/“when am I ever not careful” exchange was of course funny until…well, until.

I really love this shot of mundanes just arguing over mundane thing, completely unaware of the fact that there are fucking DRAGONS swarming over their heads.

Oh, Izzy. You always do this. You are ruthless when it comes to nudging Alec in the direction of happiness. You play him like a fiddle every time. It further convinces me that the only reason she chose Magnus as her advocate in s1ep11 was to force Alec to go see him.

I think Magnus’s salt with Alec at this point is mostly self-protection. The only good defense is a strong offense. Or something. Some of it may also be injured pride, too, I imagine. He’s got to be stinging right about now, having found out that the Queen has betrayed them all. He probably feels very foolish, and yet he doesn’t feel like he can trust Alec with an admission of his own foolishness.

Jace introduces himself like he didn’t just see Malachi a few days previously when Valentine escaped. Weird.

Also, did neither of them notice a circle rune until the guy turned his head? Seriously? I mean, sure, the camera angle was cleverly chosen to hide it for the big reveal, but I refuse to believe neither Jace or Clary didn’t have a chance to catch a glimpse of it. Those runes aren’t subtle. Surely they would have seen some trace?

And here we see Todd and Darren once again leaning heavily on the plot-convenient incompetence trope. You seriously expect me to believe that Jace and Clary were grabbed like that without putting up even the littlest bit of a struggle, aside from a few twitches and grunts? They never even went for their weapons. Jace just kept his hands clasped behind his back while the guy grabbed his jacket. They just go along and let themselves be shackled.

UGH. Sloppy, sloppy writing/directing.

They’re doing the same thing with Meliorn that they’ve done a number of times with Raphael. His actions are so inconsistent that it’s impossible to get a handle on his motivations. I know book!Meliorn was just loyal to the Queen, full stop, but show!Meliorn hasn’t been portrayed that way. So what’s he doing here? I’d say he’s following orders because he has no choice, except that he seems too smug and complacent about it.

IDK

Also, as fierce as Seelie knights are supposed to be, Luke fucking disarmed them both right quick.

I like this glimpse at Clave (well, sort of) operations in Idris. Until now I don’t think we’ve had much of a look at thing as a purely military organization.

I know plenty of people have already meta’ed about this, but Malachi’s whole speech about there not being any such thing as Downworlders when Raziel created the first Shadowhunters is utter bullshit.

1) The Fair Folk were definitely already around. Shadowhunters have been in existence for ~1000 years (IIRC Jonathan Shadowhunter was a Crusader?) Faeries have been around much longer than that.

2) Jonathan Shadowhunter raised Raziel with the help of a warlock (I don’t remember if that’s in the books or in the supplementary material/wiki.) Which just makes sense. How else would he have acquired the tools and knowledge to summon an angel? And why would demons only have started procreating with humans in the last millennia when they have been around and able to get to our realm for much longer than that?

3) I’m not as certain about vampires and werewolves. But why would the Soul Sword have been created with the ability to wipe them out if they weren’t already in existence?

So I guess we can interpret Malachi’s diatribe in one of two ways. Either the writers are retconning the history of the world, or this is a deliberate choice illustrating how racists rewrite history to erase marginalized people from the narrative.

If it’s the former, they’re going to piss off myself and a lot of other people with even a modicum of common sense and understanding about the lore. If it’s the latter, they really need to make that a little more explicitly clear at some point, lest viewers who don’t have a clearer idea of the lore imagine that what Malachi said is actually canon.

*sigh* I don’t really have any commentary here, I just love them all working together. There are people meta’ing about the fact that apparently Magnus and Izzy were filmed calling the demons “asmodei” and apparently it was dubbed over as “edomei” (but the subtitles on the international Netflix release still say “asmodei”.) That change could mean anything or nothing. It could be as simple as they didn’t want to confuse things when we’re already familiar with Edom but not the fact that Asmodeus rules it. Or it could mean they are holding that concept of Asmodeus in reserve as a major Magnus-related plot point down the line.

Anyone else, familiar with how unstable sand can be, get a little nervous when they approached that big hole? Just me?

As I remarked in the comments on another post, I’m torn about how to interpret Alec’s sudden inability to draw another arrow and shoot it.

After the demon dodged his first arrow, he had plenty of time to draw, take aim, and shoot. We saw him earlier stand steady in the face of a demon bearing straight down on them until he had a point-blank shot. He totally could have done it, and my first thought for why he decided instead to turn and run screaming for Magnus’s help was more of Darren and Todd’s heavy reliance on convenient incompetence.

However. If he had waited until the demon was right on top of them to try for another shot, and the demon had dodged again, it would have been too late for him to reach Magnus and warn and protect him. So there’s a chance that his charging down the beach wasn’t him screaming for help, but yelling to warn Magnus that the demon was coming right toward his back.

I honestly don’t know which it is. Either is possible.

I know I’ll probably get some flack for this, but I’m quite disappointed that this was the extent of Magnus and Alec fighting “together” that we saw.

Todd’s remarks at SDCC gave a completely different impression. First of all, they gave the impression (talking about a “true blending of their abilities” or something to that effect) that we’d see the Alliance rune, which clearly we did not get in this episode. Second, they weren’t really fighting together here. It was one demon, and it was barely a fight. It came at them, Magnus blasted it, fight over.

I was expecting some sort of epic battle sequence but um, no. Not that I mind them taking down a dragon together, but seriously, Todd built this scene up to be something it wasn’t even close to being, and I’m a little irritated by that.

“I’m the High Warlock of Brooklyn.” Yes Magnus, yes you are.

One thing I’m NOT disappointed in is that Magnus remembered that. And reminded Alec of that.

Since s2ep12, we’ve seen Magnus in this very powerless place. He’s rendered powerless by being stuck in Valentine’s body. He’s powerless to defend himself against the Clave’s racial profiling. He’s powerless to escape the tragic memories that were forced back into the forefront of his consciousness by the Clave’s tortures. He’s made powerless to defend himself and his people against Valentine and the Soul Sword by Alec and the Clave’s lies. Then he’s made powerless again by the Seelie Queen’s betrayal.

What we’re seeing here is him reclaiming his power, remembering—and reminding others—that he is strong. He’s immensely, almost incomprehensibly powerful. And that’s important.

Yeah, this was the moment I started muttering “oh shit this is not good.” Simon Simon Simon…

I do like that the show seems to remember that Idris is on the other side of the world from New York city, and we see day/night differences accordingly.

I’ve meta’ed else where about Consul Malachi and the fact that his being a Circle member means precisely jack shit to any show watcher. In the books, we didn’t have a very clear picture of him, but we at least got to know him well enough that when it turned out he was working with Valentine, it mattered. On the show, it means exactly nothing. He’s Random Bad Guy #3407. We feel nothing about his betrayal, and nothing about his death, other than to hope that maybe the Clave will now come under new and better management. It was a lazily executed subplot, frankly.

However, we do have an interesting situation that wasn’t present in the books.

In the books, Imogen Herondale died long before this point. In fact, she died before Jace ever found out he was a Herondale. A man named Aldertree (who was described quite differently from the Victor Aldertree who was Head of the Institute in season 2A, so I don’t know if he was meant to be the same character) was Inquisitor at this point in the books. Aldertree was killed by Valentine, and then Malachi turned out to be a traitor and died. At the same time, in order to get the cooperation of the Downworld against Valentine’s forces, Luke (and Jocelyn, who was still alive in the books) got the Clave to agree to give Downworlders voting seats on the Council.

So now, on the show, we have Imogen Herondale still alive. Aldertree (assuming it’s meant to be the same character) possibly still alive but supposedly disgraced. Jocelyn is dead, however, and there was no epic battle between the Clave and an army of demons Valentine summoned and controlled with the Mortal Cup, so the need for the Clave and the Downworld to work together to fight him never came about.

What I’m getting at here is…what is the political landscape going to look like in Season 3 for the show?

In the books, Robert Lightwood becomes Inquisitor. Is it possible he might become Inquisitor while Imogen Herondale steps up to Consul? Maybe, but I sincerely hope not. I would much rather see Maryse become the political mover and shaker, and I’d like to see her take a page out of Alec’s book and introduce the idea of restructuring the Council to give Downworld representatives a vote. But what would compel the Clave to agree to that, without the Downworld having to strongarm them into it with the threat of letting the Clave be annihilated unless they agreed?

This could be the issue that puts the final nail in the coffin of Robert and Maryse’s marriage and paves the way for a romance between Luke and Maryse as well.

Okay. Okay. Hold up.

Are you telling me that Sebastian, who was impaled (supposedly through the heart) on a massive sword, somehow survived hours in the cold, polluted water and managed to drag himself ashore, but Jace goes down for the count after a few seconds from a little poke with a pocket knife?

The same Jace who just the night before took a sword to the lung and is apparently now hunky-dory?

Seriously?

SERIOUSLY???

This isn’t exactly the plot-convenient incompetence thing that Darren and Todd keep pulling, but it’s a near relation. And I hate it. It insults our intelligence.

With all that’s happened it’s hard to believe we’re only halfway through the episode at this point. I’m seriously amazed by how much they pack into these episodes.

That said, my fondest wish for Season 3 is that they’ll slow things down and work for it a bit more, lay more groundwork instead of speeding through everything. I doubt I’ll get that wish, though.

I remember an interview with Dominic Sherwood—or was it Alan Van Sprang?—where he spoke of Jace and Valentine having this really powerful moment of connection in the finale, and since I knew the books and had a pretty good idea what was coming, I suspected it would be something like this. In the books, Valentine actually weeps when he kills Jace. I like that, even as utterly corrupt and vile as Valentine is, he still at least deludes himself that he knows what love is enough to mourn the child he destroyed.

The editing of this entire sequence is a little frustrating for me, because they show Alec reacting in pain and shock, but just when we’re about to see Alec start really emoting about what’s happening, they cut away to Clary. And I have to give Kat full props, she plays this beautifully. Her grief here is so much more convincing and compelling than it was in s2ep04/s2ep05. (Maybe that’s because she had another actor whom she obviously feels close to to play the scene off of? It’s probably easier to get in the moment when your friend is lying there “dead” in front of you.) But Alec’s reaction is important here, too, and I feel like we don’t really get enough of it to feel what he’s feeling. The next time we see him, he’s in soldier mode and it just feels very disconnected.

I’m a little annoyed also that Clary didn’t even try to go for Jace’s iratze rune but instead just sat there crying. Despite that, their moment got me. A lot of that is totally on Dom and his improvised “I love you” because I’m a sucker for stuff like that, the sheer pathos of making that monumental admission of love at the last moment when it carries no promise of hope or a future. Good stuff, there.

Gotta admit, it’s kinda hard to comment on this whole sequence because I just get caught up in watching it.

Alec’s immediate concern for Magnus’s safety is amazing, as is Magnus’s utter disregard for it. He’s just remembered his own strength; he’s not going to run for shelter when everyone is in danger.

I really wish Raziel had read Valentine the riot act the way he did in the books, raking Valentine over the coals for his arrogance and the fact that every thought he’d ever had that he was fulfilling Heaven’s mandate was pure egotism.

If Valentine hadn’t decided to do the palm-slitting thing in dramatically slow motion, Clary wouldn’t have been able to stop him. Alas, all his carefully laid schemes were undone by his need to posture.

The fight scene was brutal and perfect.

Clary going Princess Stabbity (yes, I have co-opted that name from Dragon Age; it belongs to Clary now) all over Valentine’s ass is a thing of beauty. Especially after the way she did the same thing to Sebastian in s2ep18. Apparently her fighting style is just to keep poking things until they fall down or run away. I like it.

I especially like that she kills Valentine with the same knife he used to murder Jace. Much more satisfying than Raziel smiting Valentine like he did in the books.

“And be wise.” Wise? Really? This is Clary we’re talking about, Raziel.

I know there have been people (none that I follow) who have scoffed about Clary bring back Jace instead of her mother. I don’t have a problem with it. No, it doesn’t mean she loves only Jace and doesn’t love her mother. It means her grief from her mother’s death has had time to heal more, to become something she can live with, and in that moment, the same could not be said for the grief from Jace’s death. It was much more recent and much more raw and it wasn’t a decision she had time to mull over or be philosophical about.

*sigh* Sometimes people just expect too damn much from characters.

(and yes, grammar check, I know “rawer” is actually the proper word, but I hate it so…no.)

I like that Jace points out the consequences of bringing people back from the dead. It brings the events following Jocelyn’s death full circle and turns them into foreshadowing, giving her death purpose in the context of the story instead of just something they did to flaunt the fact that they could deviate from the books at will.

I want to go on a rant about the way Jace and Clary’s kisses are filmed versus the way Magnus and Alec’s kisses are filmed, but this probably isn’t the place for it. Let’s just suffice to say that Malec’s kisses remain oddly chaste and passionless, with the exception of s1ep12 and the bedroom scene in s2ep18. Someone commented on one of my meta posts a few weeks ago that Magnus and Alec kiss like they’ve been married for 40 years, and it’s true. They don’t kiss like people who have only been a couple for just over a month.

I don’t know if it’s the actors or the directors, but I’m getting really tired of it, because kisses between Jace and Clary are filmed entirely differently.

Alec saying “it’s over” just kills me because of course we know that it’s not. They think Sebastian is dead, and Valentine is dead, and of course they’re wrong on the first count. I feel so bad for them because this has been two months of just non-stop nightmare for them and I wish they could have that respite for real.

I love Magnus hugging Izzy here.

Please give me 20 more episodes of drunk Luke. Even if he is a cop forgetting that Clary is a minor.

I’m wondering at the presence of Seelies at this party. It would seem after the Queen’s betrayal and assisting Valentine that they would personae non gratae at a celebration of Valentine’s defeat. But whatevs.

And can we talk about this scene between Clary and Izzy? I know the Clizzy shippers are mourning the sister thing, but we’re getting REAL CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT from Clary here!

s2ep12 was all about Sebastian getting in Clary’s head and telling her how isolated she is, how she has no family left. Because, of course, he wanted to supplant her those connections with himself as her miraculously-returned brother. And she bought into that. She basically spent the rest of season 2B angsting over the fact that Jonathan was the last of her family, etc, etc.

So to see her here, acknowledging and valuing her found-family is pretty important and honestly not the sort of character growth we tend to get for Clary, so I’m in favor.

There’s been a lot of meta done already about the dual levels that Clary’s conversation with Simon is happening on. She’s saying “welcome back” while he’s saying “goodbye” and ow, my heart. I find Clary adorable when she’s playing Simon’s wingman, and as much as I bought into Climon 1000X more than I ever expected it to, this feels absolutely right for them and I’m so glad their interactions will never again carry this omnipresent undertone of Simon pining for her.

Once again, Alberto is just killing it all through Simon’s scene here. He’s so charming and funny and yet those moments when you get a glimpse at him letting down the mask are amazing. How is he just so incredibly GOOD? He continues to be the best actor in the whole cast, which is saying something because there are a few really good actors on this show.

I like Jace and Maia’s little moment, for no other reason than to wrap up loose ends and demonstrate that there’s really nothing there between them. Which is sad because they really do have crazy chemistry, book canon be damned.

I both loved and had issues with Magnus and Alec’s resolution here. Alec’s heart-eyes when he looks at Magnus, his heavy breathing as he amps himself up for their talk in the alley… It’s all amazing.

There’s something about the way Alec says “I don’t think I can live without you” that just grips me. He says it very baldly and simply, but that’s par for the course for Alec. I’m still trying to parse what’s different about this declaration.

The “I love you” in s2ep10 was something that Alec was very nervous to admit. I mean, yes, he was still dealing with residual fear from his concern over Magnus’s safety, so part of his anxiety in that moment might have been due to that, but it was just very clear from his breathing and his body language that it was something he had to amp himself up for.

And there have been other, very purposeful declarations Alec has made throughout the season as well, and those have a different tone entirely. He goes marching into them like the soldier he is, standing stalwart in the face of these blunt truths, refusing to flinch from them.

This admission here…it’s almost the exact opposite of any of those occasions. He goes from anxious to calm. He’s not anxiously powering through it, and he’s not staunchly resolute.

He just…surrenders to it. That’s the only word I can use to describe it. There’s a sort of helplessness in that look he gives Magnus, the little shake of his head. The simplicity of the statement. No dramatics. “You hold my entire hope for happiness in the palm of your hand, and I’m giving in to that fact. There’s nothing I can do here to affect the outcome, it’s entirely on you and it’s just going to be what it is.”

It’s wonderfully nuanced acting on Matt’s part.

So, that’s why I loved the scene. On one hand, I would have absolutely lost my fucking mind if they’d carried the break-up over through the hiatus.

However…On the other hand, there’s still so much that needs to be said and I need to especially know that Alec gets it.

What went wrong between them wasn’t just about the Soul Sword and his failure to disclose what he knew about it. What went wrong is that he still thinks too much like a Shadowhunter who believes his job is to manage and control the Downworld and make decisions for them instead of working with them as an ally. And I’m not sure Alec gets that and he needs to. And it’s okay for Alec not to be there yet, as long as he knows this is something he has to learn to do. It’s not as simple as saying “I won’t do that again.” He needs to reprogram his entire way of thinking, his entire concept of his world and the role he plays in it, and it’s going to take time.

I do love that Magnus is open to giving him that chance, I just wish we’d seen an understanding of the true nature of the conflict acknowledged.

Don’t get me started on the kiss again. Why are they not permitted to really just snog each other and make out the way other couples on the show do? It bothers me and it’s going to continue to bother me.

You can’t tell me Isaiah didn’t have the time of his life playing this scene. He probably had the entire rest of the cast in stitches. I’m gonna need ALL the footage of stuff that ended up on the cutting room floor.

Ollie really couldn’t have chosen a worse moment to show up. I am looking forward to finding out what her deal is in season 3.

Though, honestly? I was hoping that season 3 would start with the characters enjoying at least a few weeks of respite to let the dust settle, but clearly that isn’t going to be the case, because with Jace screaming in agony clearly there won’t be the slow build-up to the Lilith-related plotline that was in City of Fallen Angels.

Also, there’s no way anyone is going more than a day or two without noticing that Simon is missing.

…unless Simon ISN’T missing. We have no idea what the nature of the deal he struck with the Seelie Queen is. Is she going to keep him with her in her realm permanently? If she does that, she has to know people will start looking for him. Or will she let him carry on his life with the requirement that he spend a certain amount of his time with her also?

In the books, Simon and Maia’s relationship ends because he’s two-timing her with Izzy. Clearly show!Simon would never do that in the way it happened in the books, but if he’s in this position where he has no choice but to carry on these two relationships because he’s trying to protect Maia…maybe?

I don’t know. There’s some people who think that Simon’s use of the words “for better or for worse” means that he’s being made to marry the Seelie Queen. Which would also be an interesting twist.

I’ve commented before on the fact that the choice of a child to play the Seelie Queen initially was probably a nod toward Maureen as she existed in the books. There, she was 13/14 year old girl who was Simon’s self-appointed groupie. Obviously show!Maureen went someplace entirely, so she wouldn’t really work here.

In the books, however, Maureen ended up becoming a vampire, taking over Raphael’s clan and appointing herself “queen”, and forcing Simon to be her “king.” So what we could be seeing here with this Seelie Queen plotline is some variation of that thread in the books, perhaps?

I love how there are all these people around and no one notices the guy screaming on the ground.

I have to admit, the notion that all those demons we actually pieces of Lilith that would eventually coalesce into her manifestation was not something that I saw coming, and a really cool concept. Especially since we’ve already seen a foreshadowing of that ability, in the fact that Azazel could transform into a swarm of locusts. These Edomei demons are, of course, much more massive than locusts, which sort of gives a comparative notion of just how hugely powerful Lilith is.

I remarked in my liveblog at the time that it would be really cool if Lilith were played by Maxim Roy, but I doubt that will happen. IMDB has her in the credits as Tara Westwood (at least, a character just called “Woman” whom I assume is Lilith.) Whether that’s who is going to play Lilith in season 3 or not, I couldn’t say.

And there we have it. I wonder if Will Tudor is going to have to spend season 3A the same way Maxim Roy spent season 1, just sort of lying there unresponsive all the time. If they stick to the books, the answer is yes, but God, what a waste of Will’s talents that would be.

See you next season!

[mikeyd1986]

MIKEY’S PERSONAL BLOG 116, August 2018

Last Saturday afternoon, I decided to spend my day off work by visiting the Mornington Peninsula Regional Gallery for the National Works on Paper 2018 exhibition. It’s not very often that I have a day to myself to not worry about the many commitments in my life. Being on open area at Dunns Road Reserve, there was absolutely no protection from the strong gusty winds blowing over the peninsula. As it turns out, today they had some artist talks on that afternoon and I figured that I might as well stick around for at least one of them.

The first talk was by Cameron Robbins who produces “wind drawings” using a wind machine which features many turbines, pulleys, wires, a rotating drawing board, a weather vane and a black fineline pen. Along with the MPRG curator Danny Lacy, Cameron discussed how variables such as the wind speed, wind direction, rain and sunlight impacts on what the drawing produced will look like. He also brought up concepts like Chaos Theory and Fractal Design as inspirations for his work as an artist.

The artist talks drew quite a large crowd today of around 50-60 members which was very unexpected. I had a brief wander around the exhibition and was very impressed by the high quality of the artwork. Lots of hours and so much detail went into these pieces which covers everything from paintings and drawings to sculptures, collages and mixed media works. Whilst I’ve pretty much gone on hiatus as an artist myself, I will always have a huge appreciation for art and fellow artists in the community. https://mprg.mornpen.vic.gov.au/Exhibitions/Current-exhibitions/2018-National-Works-on-Paper

On Monday night, I had my second session with the Men of Doveton health and fitness program at Doveton College. This week we started the session downstairs in the gym where we did some footy training lead by Mitch from the Casey Demons. It’s actually been about 16 years since I last did anything football related and re-learning the sport tonight brought up some emotional issues in me from high school. Part of it is that fact that I’m not the biggest fan of footy and never really got into it. http://www.melbournefc.com.au/casey-demons

Playing any kind of team sport during my P.E. classes was something that I really didn’t enjoy whatsoever. I had fears around being hit in the face by the ball, being tackled by other students, doing something dumb if I was in possession of the ball and been made fun off because I was really terrible at footy. It was a huge weakness of mine both ball-handling skills and getting involved during a game.

Thankfully tonight, all of those hurts from the past have been laid to rest. All the guys in the Men of Doveton program are starting at ground zero and this is very much a supportive and encouraging environment. The aim is to basically just have a go and participate as much as possible. We started by doing some hand balling at a distance of 5 meters then doing some kick-to-kick at 10 and 15 meters.

Of course the footballs were flying in all directions but it was honestly fine. It was all about having fun and not taking things too seriously. I did well to not let that 16 year old version of Michael Dixon out. He would have been off the footy field trying everything possible to avoid the ball. Next we did a few games and drills, learning how to bounce the ball properly, aiming and kicking at goals and avoid being tagged by other players.

Lastly, we got divided into two teams: the plains and the whites and played a game of basic footy with just hand balling and no contact. This was another thing I used to struggle with back in high school is that nobody ever passed the ball to me because they knew I was a weak player and would end up making the team lose. But again that stuff was a long time ago and I did my best to get involved by passing the ball around and being distracting to the opposite team. It actually felt good participating in a sport I haven’t played in a very long time.

The second half of the session focused on mental health issues. After catching our breaths (Seriously so not used to running up and down a basketball court), we returned to the theatre and Mo gave everyone a journal for us to keep and write down any positive thoughts, things that we’re grateful for, reflections etc in. Writing is a huge part of me and probably the area I have the least amount of difficulty in. However, I do sometimes get forgetful and need to remember to actually do it.

Lastly we had a guest speaker named Greg from Beyond Blue talking about his personal experiences with Bipolar disorder. Being an Irishman, we was very animated and funny but also understandably nervous about sharing his story. I could very much relate to his degree of denial and assuming that “I’m fine” after one or two counselling sessions. There are always underlying issues to be found and back when I was originally diagnosed with depression and anxiety over 10 years ago, I wasn’t ready to open up or unpack my baggage. https://www.beyondblue.org.au/get-support/get-immediate-support

The most important things I learned from Greg’s talk is the importance of finding the right counsellor or therapist for you, having lots of support and people you can trust in, not being afraid to speak up about mental health issues, accepting that it’s okay to not be okay as well as express normal human emotions. I really didn’t feel comfortable enough to speak up about my own issues in this large group setting but it’s something that I’m working towards. https://www.caseystadium.ymca.org.au/whats-on/upcoming-events/event/men-of-doveton-free-health-program-2

On Tuesday night, I attended the first of four NDIS workshops hosted by AMAZE (Formerly Autism Victoria) at Bunjil Place in Narre Warren. I haven’t fully processed the fact that my access request was successful and that I’m now officially an NDIS participant so now I have a reason to attend these workshops beyond just gaining knowledge and information. A lady named Pamela Gatos, who presented at the info night a few months back, has returned to run this workshops designed to better prepare NDIS participants for the journey ahead. http://www.amaze.org.au/2018/04/amaze-announces-ndis-information-sessions-and-workshops-sign-up-now/

There were about 20 other parents, carers and people with autism in the same meeting room as I was. The silence was very uncomfortable for me but I was 100% determined to push through it. I did find that Pam could come across as blunt, intimidating and snarky at times, often making very sarcastic comments about the NDIS and all the negative stories she’s heard about it.

To be fair, her opinions can be justified as I myself has found the NDIS to be a very daunting, overwhelming and confusing system to wrap my head around. She also has a lot of experience working with current participants and families with autistic kids and adults so she knows what she’s talking about.

Tonight’s workshop focused on the topics of: The 3 types of management for the funding of supports (Self Management, Plan Management and Agency Management), the NDIS Pricing Guide July 2018, how to access the NDIS portal via the mygov website, the 3 types of Supports (Core, Capital and Capacity Building) and the 15 support categories. https://www.ndis.gov.au/participants/reasonable-and-necessary-supports

It was a lot of information to process but it did get me thinking about which supports I should be asking for in my plan. The ones I could identify for myself include: Improved living Arrangements, Increased Social and Community Participation, Finding and Keeping a Job, Improved Health and Wellbeing, Improved Life Choices and Improved Daily Living Skills. https://abilityoptions.org.au/ndis/ndis-supports-categories

The challenge now is to find arguments to justify why these supports are reasonable and necessary. It’s probably the most difficult part of the whole process as it’s an important part of the planning meeting and developing my first plan. It’s going to take many baby steps but I know I’ll get there. Still I really wasn’t a fan of Pamela’s attitude and personality. She came off as a judgemental bitch and wasn’t very constructive.

Being the odd-one-out (an adult diagnosed with Autistic Spectrum Disorder rather than a child), I didn’t feel supported or accepted in that meeting room. I walked out of this first workshop feeling very conflicted and confused as I really didn’t like Pamela’s views or approach to NDIS preparation. So I think that I’m going to look elsewhere. https://www.ndis.gov.au/operational-guideline/planning/participant-statement-goals

On Friday afternoon, I saw my counsellor Ruth at Piece Together Counselling in Narre Warren. The high velocity winds outside and poor quality of sleep have really impacted on my moods and emotions this week. I’ve found myself taking a lot of things personally including my opinions about the UNIFY 2019 lineup and my decision not to go next year, the pressures placed upon me by others including customers and members of the general public. It all got a bit much for me this week and now I’m feeling drained and exhausted.

Ruth reminded me of the importance of using Cognitive Behavoural Therapy and not allowing myself to fall into the trap of maladaptive thinking. It’s the reason why I often take things so personally. To essentially consider alternative explanations for the way other people react to situations and not believe that I’m the sole cause of it. She also pointed out that using my journal more regularly is vital to focus more on the positive aspects in my life. https://www.succeedsocially.com/challengethoughts

On Friday night, I went to my Strength and Circuit small group training session at CinFull Fitness. I was honestly feeling like shit after some posts on social media was dragging me down inside plus I was mentally drained from how busy my week has been. Tonight I was training with a couple of other clients. We did some warm-up drills with the dead balls doing overhead squats and ball slams plus walking lunges with dumb bells, kettle bell swings and push-ups.

Next we did a series of exercises to work and tone the biceps and triceps including rows, kick-backs and curls, tricep push-ups and lifts. Lastly we did some core training using the med balls including overhead situps, pull ups with leg extensions and Russian twists. It was very difficult for me to keep up as I was fatiguing and feeling out of breath a lot quicker than the others and Cinamon noticed straight away. Plus lots of sweat but that’s nothing new for me.

I guess I want to do the best that I can but also have to be aware and mindful about my physical limitations. I have to keep reminding myself that there’s no shame in needing to stop and rest, that nobody is going to judge me for not being as physically fit as they are. Doing strenuous exercise is still a struggle for me but I’m determined to keep plugging away at it, no matter how long it takes me. I want to continue to lose weight and improve my fitness as I need to make classes like these a regular part of my routine. https://www.facebook.com/CinFullFitness/

“I watched them go 'round and 'round. My blouse wrapping itself in your trousers. Oh the waves are going out. My skirt floating up around my waist. As I wade out into the surf. Oh and the waves are coming in. Oh and the waves are going out. Washing Machine.” Kate Bush - Mrs. Bartolozzi (2005)

“There were hundreds of people living here. Sails at the windows. And the planes came crashing down. And many a pilot drowned. And the speed boats flying above. Put your hand over the side of the boat. And what do you feel?”  Kate Bush - A Coral Room (2005)