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twinhood-2dot0 · 2 years

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A Shallow Dive Into: Leitmotifs

Good morning Alex. Another music quirk, yep. According to Wikipedia: A leitmotif or leitmotiv[1] (/ˌlaɪtmoʊˈtiːf/) is a "short, recurring musical phrase"[2] associated with a particular person, place, or idea. It’s German for “guiding motif”. Leitmotifs are prevalent in video games and movies alike. As you may know, I’m a huge fan of sound design and scoring and such of any piece of media, so today we’re gonna be dissecting leitmotifs.

Richard Wagner

The earliest usage of the leitmotif is attributed to this man, Richard Wagner. A song we’ve all probably heard, Rise of The Valkyries, from Der Ring des Nibeldungen is a leitmotif, as I found out while researching for this post. Der Ring des Nibeldungen contains hundreds of leitmotifs, apparently. I’m way too young for 1800s stuff like this so let’s move on to the modern age.

Undertale

I was introduced to the concept of leitmotifs by my favorite game of all time, Undertale. Undertale is famous for its tracks. Toby Fox is a musical genius, and I’m not the only one who thinks so probably since he was also asked to make the soundtrack for the latest entries in one of the biggest franchises ever, Pokemon. I could sing praises of Toby Fox, but we’d be here forever, so let’s look into the music itself.

Undertale has a soundtrack of 101 songs, and a slew of characters.Every major character has a leitmotif that can be found in every track they’re related to. There’s an excellent video that I’m going to reference but won’t link to since I ***need*** you to play Undertale without the slightest hint of spoilage. (also i didnt know that was a word i just typed it and expected it to red underline but apparently it exists 💀). Thank you to Circlejourney on YouTube and the Undertale Fandom Wikia for compiling the songs so I won’t have to listen to the soundtrack for hours to find every single one. I am going to however compile a playlist with all the main songs and related songs featuring the leitmotif. The songs in the brackets are the songs denoting the starting of the tracks containing the leitmotif.

Undertale (First song: Once Upon A Time): This is the main leitmotif that appears in the Menu, intro, and main plot points. The title theme, Undertale is one of my favourite songs. I also included a Nora Van Elken cover of Undertale because it’s awesome :P

Flowey (Your Best Friend, Your Best Nightmare): This leitmotif is for an important character, Flowey, who appears throughout the game intermittently.

Toriel (Fallen Down, Heartache): Another character specific theme. Heartache is a track that also appears in ASGORE because goat.

Underground (Ruins): This leitmotif appears in several areas in the underground, the main setting for the game, and also, curiously, for another character.

Monsters (Anticipation): This appears first in Anticipation and Enemy Approaching, but is also used in non-battle themes, so I’m just going to name this category Monsters.

Ghost (Ghost Fight): This is the leitmotif for a few related characters. I didn’t know they were related until I found out they were leitmotifs. Undertale has a ton of awesome tiny details.

Sans (sans.): Leitmotif used in the tracks where Sans appears. Also, he talks in comic sans >:)

Papyrus (Nyeh Heh Heh!): Leitmotif for Papyrus. He talks in, you guessed it, Papyrus >:)

Snowdin (Snowy, Snowdin Town): Double leitmotif, the second appearance of Snowdin Town is the starting of the second leitmotif. This is the leitmotif for an area of the Underground named Snowdin Town.

Undyne (Undyne): The leitmotif for Undyne, my favourite character in the game. Can’t wait for you to meet her.

Hotland (Waterfall): Theme for the Hotland area of the game. Also appears in Mettaton’s themes, a character encountered here. (also, a funni note, the track CORE is marked explicit in Amazon Music. This song has no lyrics, and it’s marked explicit. It’s not the only one, but it’s the one I noticed first.)

Alphys (Alphys): Alphys’s theme.

Mettaton (It’s Showtime!, Hotel, Metal Crusher): Theme for Mettaton, the hottest (and possibly trans) character. The bassline for It’s Showtime! also appears in Hotel.

Asgore (Determination, Bergentrückung): Theme for Asgore

Asriel (Memory): Themes for Asriel.

Note: You’ll find Bring It In, Guys! contains like literally every leitmotif, that’s because it’s the credits song.

Some tracks contain leitmotifs sped up, reversed, slowed down, like every modification possible done to them, but they’re there. There are also many easter eggs concerning a character you may never meet and has been mentioned, like once, and he’s become a creepypasta in the community in the audio files.

John Williams

The legend himself, he’s used a lot of leitmotifs in movies he’s scored. Music is a very important part of Star Wars. In fact, the inspiration for this post was the flute leitmotif for the Mandalorian that plays when Mando makes an entrance in The Book Of Boba Fett.

The most famous track in Star Wars, The Imperial March, is the leitmotif that plays anytime Darth Vader is referenced or is in the scene, and also appears in the fight themes. I’m watching videos of how music is used in Star Wars and god, is John William a master. I’ve never seen scoring so masterfully used to tell a story. I’d share videos but you haven’t watched the movies yet :(. There’s also the Force theme, which is really important to signify the use of the Force in the movies. (Granted, I’ve only mostly watched superhero stuff BUT STILL) The main theme is also a leitmotif, used for triumphant and heroic and Luke stuff.

I could talk about Harry Potter but now it just makes me sad, however, I will link this excellent video:

youtube

Man, why does everything I hold close to my heart get sullied? Anyways sorry, back to topic.

From Wikipedia:

In the Jaws franchise, the main "shark" theme, composed by John Williams in 1975, stands out as a suspenseful motif that is a simple alternating pattern of two notes, E and F.

I haven’t watched Jaws, and probably never will, but I watched the video, and according to it, the shark is not seen very much, so viewers are only alerted to the presence of the Shark by the music.

DC (this section was titled Batman but I wanna talk about Wonder Woman too and I’m too lazy to update the text below so I’m just gonna tell you this :P)

Batman has a lot, like exponentially more than any other superhero, so he has a lot of scoring that goes with it. One thing I’d like to mention is that repeated string melodies have inextricably linked to Batman music (Also, yes, everything I do has to do with Batman. Now, shut up and listen). Take a look at this:

According to Wikipedia, this is the track that possibly linked Batman to sweeping strings in the 1989 Batman movie:

Yes I haven;t watched it, yeah, I know, what kinda of batman fan am I if I haven’t even watched the Michael Keaton Batman movies I’m sorry 😭. Although, I just might have to, since The Flash movie 👀.

This is the theme for Wonder Woman composed by Junkie XL, Hans Zimmer and Tina Guo for Batman v Superman: Dawn Of Justice which became her leitmotif for every movie she appeared in since:

In Zack Snyder’s Justice League, however, the theme is almost the same, except with a different intro, which the subtitles call [ancient lamentation music] and I call OooooooOaaaaAAaaaAAaaaa. This change was heavily memed upon since it’s used so much and so frequently. So while BvS (even if she appeared for just one scene.) and Justice League used it as pretty much a leitmotif, in ZSJL it was relegated to a fight theme. (As for Wonder Woman, the movie, the theme was also used as a fight theme, the reasoning being in BvS she’s a pre-developed character, and WW is about her growing into the role.) Take this scene in Justice League for example:

youtube

And the same scene in ZSJL:

youtube

Except for the ZSJL one being almost painfully longer, the music is also different.

In the same scene at 1:42 we hear the music again, and its transition to the BvS theme when she starts fighting the henchmen, and in the 2017 movie, we hear it after she’s yeeted the bomb away and returns to stop the suicide bomber at 2:42. (Also, I checked, the 2017 movie checked out at 2:13, and ZSJL 4:57. Yeah. Zack Snyder looooooves slow-motion). Also, I guess this should be an Amazonian leitmotif, since it also plays in a scene where Amazonians are present, *sans* WW, but *sans* epic cello.

Funny comment in a compilation of every time OooooooOaaaaAAaaaAAaaaa plays.

Also, I have something special for you:

This is apparently the leitmotif for Uma Thurman’s anger.

Signing off,

Alia

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licncourt · 2 years

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can you link your post on abstract expressionism?

Oh, it was actually a scene in a fic of mine, The Act of Leaving. It's Louis' POV, his thoughts while he's at an art gallery in the late 60s. Definitely my own opinions though. I'll paste the excerpt here (the most relevant part is bolded):

It was a shame, Louis thought, how quickly the Beats had come and gone, capturing the public consciousness in an atmospheric rise and burning out as quickly as a Russian spacecraft. Whatever carcass (for it had been dead on arrival) of Village intellectual mores Burroughs and company had managed to drag like a street cat from New York to California had gotten rather mangled along the way, so maybe, all things considered, it was a mercy for everyone involved.

Still, when he had stopped cutting his hair and followed the arts, philosophies, and Lucien Carr west a few years on, it had been a disappointment. (At least the whispered promises of young men with painted-on denim and bare arms who wouldn’t mind if he looked hadn’t been).

They called it the San Francisco Renaissance, though whether the title was an insult to the past or simply the sympathetic desperation of being post Louis hadn’t decided. He himself came into adulthood in a world of neos and revivals, he should be more understanding. Then again, he’d never had a taste for the Neoclassical. Or for post-Columbian Ginsberg and his semen-scattering, fake-smiling Turkish bath mourners or angelheaded hipsters or obscenity trial poetry collections of not-performance-art.

Louis flipped to the next page of On the Road, the thin crowds that passed nearby interested enough in the galleries to leave him be. He hadn’t come to an art museum to read of course, on the contrary; however, the letdown of the exhibit had been offensive enough that he’d refused to continue in engagement. He’d paid for a two hour ticket. This would be his own small protest as an adieu to a decade so fond of them.

There was a de Kooning to his right, a Pollock across from him. A pair of post-figurative, post-war, postmodern nightmares of mangrove color jumbles for the pseudo-intellectual neo-consumer at the twilight of the Age of Aquarius. They were all soon to be post in a post-post-war prefix world devoid of mid-century originality, himself no more immune than the surrounding mortals. Maybe less.

Louis hadn’t cried in years (decades maybe), a fact that made the wasted exhibit all the more of a personal affront. Not that to weep was desirable to him (it used to be, to a more foolish and younger self), but the lack thereof was another disappointment of the promised extravagant revolution. He’d entered the museum skeptical (it was important to be skeptical) but with stories of spectators reduced to tears before Rothko’s Blue, Orange, Red fresh in his mind. Perhaps, he’d thought, underwhelmed by book prints, it must be witnessed in person, like the Grand Canyon or a sublime sunset to evoke such emotion.

This had not been the case. The colors became even more garish against the industrial simplicity of slate-gray walls and scuffed cement floors and Bach symphonies. Was this how the Renaissance masters felt gazing upon acidic Mannerist distortions of a pre-Baroque Limbo? It seemed every transition between great eras of artistic inspiration was filled with growing pains and the agony of birth. Still, he didn’t wish to gaze on smears of amniotic fluid and chunks of placenta on overblown and self-important canvases.

There was no revelation to be found here in the cracks of artistic progress, this one preened and made presentable with the name abstract expressionism. All that trouble for the simple reactionary antithesis of…socialist realism, he believed he’d heard it called. Whatever difference its political origin made.

If any of this was art, he decided, so was his own act of defiance here, no? The, well, expression of baser human emotion, the emphasis on action (or in his case, inaction) over form, the subversion of established expectations.

What he was doing wasn’t art. Neither were the oil paint tantrums on the walls decrying the evils of totalitarianism with all the finesse of a screeching toddler. If something was going to make him cry, it wouldn’t be a Rothko.

Maybe he ought to like it more. The Partisan Review called abstract expressionism a representation of that which is essential about art, a return to the purest form of something that had been bent and twisted and over-curated into an unnatural shape, longing to return to its genetic building blocks.

To Louis, this looked more like nuclear decay, something on the wrong side of its half-life rather than a grand return to fundamental nature. Pollocks may be “the records of an event”, but what intrinsic value does motion have? Mindless rebellion for rebellion’s sake, novelty as a gimmick to sell paintings and gallery tickets while carrying on about ‘sticking it to the man’.

It really had been a relief to keep his hair long the past decade. He wouldn’t mind if that particular fashion remained without any such bombastic innovation. (Lestat would’ve liked it, walking about with the young artists and their loose manes of hair around the shoulders. Would’ve liked the impropriety and vanity of it all at least). Louis lazed his eyes over the words before him, cacophonies of color digging at his eyeteeth in periphery.

They danced down the streets like dingledodies, and I shambled after as I've been doing all my life after people who interest me, because the only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones that never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn....

He scanned the room above his book. The Kandinsky in the corner didn’t offend him. It didn’t make up for its fellows either.

#answered #flora.txt

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imsorryithurts · 2 years

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im torn between writing essays on what the symbolism on disco elysium means to me and writing fics in which i shake the shit out of those middle aged men in a jar until they threw up. i can not choose both im swamped with work and other junk 😭

anyway, glad to see another DE whump enjoyers, if you had any fic recs please please please tell me (esp if its kim centric, i really like the caretaking reversal trope)

I FEEL YOU. DE is such a deep and beautiful game but also. I want Kim's picture framed on my wall like that one person in the news.

I remember thinking "I'm not going to fandom-fy this. I will enjoy this like a normal adult person". Which is pretty good, but then you have the writers posting stuff like "yeah, I think Jean and Harry fucked", and fan artists posting the characters as c.alico critters, and fanfiction writers writing literal novels as fan sequels, how can I resist??

But then someone comes and does a deep analysis of themes, characters and motifs and I'm like "damn. should I be poor meow meowing these men?"

Anyway, I guess the conclusion I came to was:

DE is such an amazing game and it leaves space for both brain rot and intellectual reading. It's not often I get this involved with media that tackles complex and real issues and criticisms, with characters that are not really great people but they are so incredibly charismatic you forget, and at the same time makes silly jokes, has an idle animation of them cracking each other's backs and makes you want to pet these greasy/balding middle aged men. So I'm managing to balance both Fandom Brain and Enjoyer of the Actual Game and it's Brilliance Brain so far. I guess what I'm trying to say is that most fandoms I'm in I don't take the media so seriously, but I absolutely would submerge myself in a pool of DE source material and be serious about it.

I don't know. I'm not rusty with words. All I know is DE good, and I want to see them hurt.

I'll rec some fics under the cut so this doesn't get too long!

So, you might have already filtered AO3 by "whump" and "hurt/comfort" and found these. But here are some I really enjoyed and have saved:

Tenth of a Second by SupposedtobeWriting

AU where Kim gets shot after the tribunal and Harry is the one that takes care of him. One of the first fics I came across when I first searched the fandom tag. One of my favorites, I remember having to pace myself while reading it to make it last longer!

Small Light in a Dark City by SupposedToBeWriting

Kim has a nightmare after the case. More psychological whump.

An Impression of Smoke by nicpic

I'm just going to copy the tags: kim is sick, jean is soft, That's it, that's the fic

Also really like this one :) The Day After comes before in the series, and it's also fun, just short and lighter on the whump.

nicpic also has Blood on Snow, it's a bit more heavy on the hurt, and Jean is the hurt one. Plus, they seem to have some really cool fics I havent gotten around to reading yet.

In sync by DistressPlop

Tribunal aftermath, Harry whump, with some Kim psychological whump. I remember reading this, but I must have read it in bed before sleeping because I don't remember much about it lol. Guess I'll get to enjoy it fresh one more time.

sans sommeil by narramin

Kim, who was undercover until then, shows up hurt at Jean's door. Now that I think about it, this one might have been one of the first fics I read. I was finishing up this list and my brain went "wait what about that undercover Kim one?" and I had to search for it, because I read it before making my ao3 account. I don't remember much about it, except that I really liked the whump in it.

Ace's (All-Time) Low by new_career_in_business

Kim shows up hurt at Harry's door. TW for homophobia

I believe Ace's (All-Time) Low was the last one I read before deciding to not pick up new ones because I really need to focus on studying for the admittance test of the master's program I want to get in. So now I only have a bunch marked for later, both whump and non-whump. Maybe I'll do an updated list in the future, I'd like to have a neat little list so I can revisit them easily :).

Happy reading, and feel free to rec back! Here's to more DE whump in our lives! *raises glass*

#de #I might reblog this later to tag it properly. I don't want this showing up in the tags lmao #ask

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whenimgoodandready · 1 year

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To represent something is to show how you convey its importance to others. Marinette and Max represented their school for a video game tournament (“Gamer”), Scarabella represented Ladybug when she temporarily took her place (“Hack-San”) and Adrien represented the celebration for the 💯th collection of his fathers brand (“Ephemeral”). Also, for the whole show in general, the dynamic duo represent the hope and light for Paris. That’s how it is, to stand in for something and take this seriously. Whaddigya you expect? They put on a show!?😳Oh wait, that is what they did. You guys wanna see that? Here it is:

*Representation-Oh happy day! It’s the End-of-the-Year party for Françoise Dupont like it was foreshadowed! Everyone is singing, dancing, laughing and just havin’ a ball! Why wouldn’t they!? The biggest b*tch in Paris is gone! (though there’s sympathy for her), a beloved teacher might have a chance at being the new mayor and the dynamic duo have leveled up to use their powers limitlessly! Boo-yeah! Who would be upset about this joyous occasion!?

Oh! Right, Marinette Dupain-Cheng. (hisses through grind teeth😬) I didn’t mention this, buuuut you see, after the de-evilizing of Chloe, Gabe and Tomoe took their kids with ‘em to London like how it was also foreshadowed. Those aristocratic a**holes are still trying to present Adrigami as a ship when at this point it’s a “ghost ship”! It was heartbreaking for Adrienette to face and what lead to our long waited (and so long overdo😒) BIG F*CKING KISS! Now they are separated and there’s nothing they can do😔. F*CK THAT! Adrien decides to go back to Paris, as Astrocat, and finally tell Marinette he’s Cat Noir! Say! Is that him over there!? Marinette! Run after him!

Oh f*ck! No, it’s not him. That’s just Felix. Ugh! The ol’ switcheroo again! :P. What does he want now!? Wait! Kagami is there too!? WTF is all this about!? Guess we’ll find out in “story time!?” Uhhh, okay:

╔═*.·:·.✧ ✦✧.·:·.*═╗

Once upon a time (and I don’t mean the sentibeing), in the far away land of England, there was a “king and queen” who were expecting a child. To their surprise, “the queen” gave birth to “identical princesses”. The “eldest princess” was carefree and loved being out-and-about, the “youngest princess” was submissive and sheltered. When the “eldest princess” came of age, her parents sent her out into the world to experience life and in the city of love, she fell in love with a “humble tailor”. The “king and queen” weren’t accepting of their daughter’s decision to marry a commoner, so the “eldest princess” cut ties with them, gave up her birthright and settled comfortably with the “humble tailor”. The “youngest princess”, not wanting to disappoint her parents, allowed them to put her through an arranged marriage with a cruel “lord of war”. However, with both “identical princesses” married, they-

╚═*.·:·.✧✦✧.·:·.*═╝

(record scratch)

I would like to interrupt this presentation for a very quick intermission here. You see, while this whole drama club thing was goin’ on, we have an akumatized villain out on the loose. Gabe and Tomoe found out their kids ran away, so Gabe/Monarch became the Nightormentor (yeah, he akumatized himself again). A villain, with the Horse Miraculous Power, who can induce nightmares onto people. His second akumatized form and it’s basically a “glow-in-the-dark” version of the Collector! Lame! :P. I loved the Collector best! My Season 2 fav and I prefer that over this unoriginal glow stick look! Bleh!🤮Cat had to deal with him alone and continuously called him out on what a horrible, despicable, vile, no-good, rotten f*cking father he was! You go Kitty!👏👏👏

We now return to our regularly scheduled “backyard production” (Ahem)

╔═*.·:·.✧ ✦✧.·:·.*═╗

However, with both “identical princesses” married, they realized they were both baron and thus could not produce heirs. Desperate for a family, the “eldest princess” and the “humble tailor” returned to her parents seeking remedies for fertility just as her sister was getting. Alas, there were still no results. Then “a miracle” happened. The “eldest princess” was expecting. The “lord of war” was jealous of their soon-to-be family and demanded from the “humble tailor” on how they did it. The “eldest princess” felt sorry for her sister and allowed her husband to give the “lord of war” the secret to their success, in exchange for his best “knight” for their son. It was through “the amulet” that it happened. Though skeptical, the “lord of war” accepted. As it was, the “youngest princess” was expecting a child, but w/ the magic of “the amulet” damaged, the “lord of war” fell ill and blamed it on his son, “the child”, whom he called a “monster” and destroyed everything “the child” loved. “The child” didn’t understand why his father hated him or why he obeyed his every command no matter how unfair. It wasn’t until the “lord of wars” passing that “the child” realized it was his fathers “ring” that controlled him and took it from him finally setting “the child” free. “The child” then set out to get “the amulet” from the “humble tailor”, who now became a “powerful prince”, and make sure all lives that came from “the amulet” would be secure and not in the wrong hands. The rest is ancient history *cough*ShadowMoth’sFinalAttackPart2:StrikeBack*cough*

The End(?)

╚═*.·:·.✧✦✧.·:·.*═╝

….Okay, sooooooo let’s give a hand to Feligami for their (distracting Marinette/Ladybug from her heroic duties and time) representation of The Graham de Vanily Sisters? (confused applause). So now we know more about why Felix did what he had to do. Though it was anti-villainous, his intentions were for the good of him and his cousin, Adrien. There was still no apology for what Felix did giving Monarch immense power, but we’re to assume he realized his actions proved extremely consequential and thus through this presentation he apologized for it? I guess if Marinette is willing to forgive him and now understands his backstory, it’s cool that we do too? I guess? (shrugs). Hell! She didn’t even mind when she found out Kagami told Felix who she was! Somebody grab a pen cuz we’re adding Felix to the book of “Who Knows Ladybugs Identity” now. (whispers) Kagami knew from all the way back in “Perfection”. Clever as our heroine can be, she’s no match for child prodigy couple Feligami. Interesting, just from that ep Kagami found out and got akumatized, along with the other time (“Protection”), she kept her cool and Monarch never sensed she knew Ladybugs identity! Probably cuz she knew if she resisted he’d find out like how Luka almost got busted for (“Migration”). Damn! She is a genius! As nice as that gesture was, it sadly kept Marinette/Ladybug from battling/noticing Nightormentor and leaving it to Cat Noir (and the Resistance) to fight him. Despite the copyrighted look, Nightormentor was a literal nightmare when he affected not only our sappho couple, Julerose, but Cat as well with his worst nightmare! Think “Cat Blanc” only 10xs worse! It was through this that Adrien couldn’t tell Marinette his secret identity and went back to London. Adrienette and Feligami are still left separated with Feligami only hoping Ladybug can save everything. Next ones the Season 5 finale and it’s the bad guys Operation Perfect Alliance! Don! Don! Don! I’m spoiled, but you’ll hear my thoughts eventually.

#miraculous ladybug #representation #miraculous representation

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five-rivers · 3 years

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Oh God, imagine the social media reaction to tinyMight, the feral adorable badass. Imagine his bullies and unfortunate small-time villains from 40+ years ago finding out who they tried to beat up. Imagine those few who have seen Yagi but don't know he's All Might wondering if skeleton man is All Might's twin or something. Imagine the shenanigans if the de-aging takes longer to undo. Interactions with Gran, Izuku, the other teachers.

Sequel to this.

Toshinori felt his smile grow progressively more fixed the longer the detective stared at him with that haunted expression. Was he in some kind of trouble? It sounded as if the villain had swapped him for another rookie hero, one named All Might (cool name!), but that shouldn't be Toshinori's responsibility. Maybe the quirk also linked them, somehow? That would explain why the villains had been trying to kill him, and why the banana hero- Present Mic didn't want him to leave. On the other hand...

Oh, he should just ask. That would be easier.

He opened his mouth to do just that when the detective spoke instead.

"This is going to be so much paperwork," he said.

"I'm sorry?" said Toshinori.

"Yagi," continued the detective, "I love you like a brother, but ever since I met you, my paperwork load has tripled. Tripled."

"I've only just met you?"

If possible, the detective looked even more haunted.

Luckily, at this point, Present Mic opened the door to the car and slid into the seat next to the detective. "Thanks for coming, Detective Tsukauchi," he said. "Anyway, we have confirmation on the quirk that did this to you, and, well. It isn't time travel."

"Thank god," said Detective Tsukauchi.

"Um. I thought it was teleportation...?"

"You've been de-aged by about forty years," said Present Mic, all in a rush.

What. What?

The car started up in the silence.

"Are you telling me that I'm in the future? Oh my gosh, that's an amazing quirk."

"No, no, you're in the present. You're not-- It isn't going to send you back to the past when it wears off. You'll just, you know, go back to your normal age."

"Wow. That's still a really cool quirk. Does it have to be forty years, or can he adjust the amount of time? Like, he could use it on people with degenerative mental diseases, give their families one last time with them. Or, or for witness statements! It would be pretty good for a hero, too, you could de-age villains into kids and then they couldn't fight anymore... but maybe it'd be a little unethical... Hmm..."

"You don't seem very, uh, alarmed?" said Present Mic.

"What would I be alarmed about?"

"All of your friends and family being forty years older?" suggested Present Mic.

"Haha, I don't have any of those," said Toshinori, smiling as large as he could and giving the hero two thumbs up.

Present Mic and Detective Tsukauchi just stared at him.

Then Tsukauch turned to Present Mic. "You said it'll wear off? When?"

"Uh. The quirk registry wasn't entirely clear about that. But it does wear off."

"The press is going to be a nightmare," said Tsukauchi, rubbing his face.

"Why?" asked Toshinori.

The hero and detective exchanged another glance. Toshinori could practically hear them mentally screaming you tell him, no, you tell him at each other.

Tsukauchi coughed into his fist. "Well, Toshi- excuse me, Yagi-kun, you're... You've realized those two were trying to kill you?"

"It was... sort of hard not to, honestly," said Toshinori. "Is it because I'm a hero or something?"

"How did you-?"

Toshinori silently pinched the fabric of the overlarge jumpsuit leg between his fingers and raised an eyebrow.

"Right. Well. You're the Number One hero."

"Wow," said Toshinori. It seemed to be something he kept saying, today. "How did I do that without a quirk?"

"What?"

"He's a late bloomer," said Tsukauchi, quickly. "A late bloomer. You're a late bloomer."

"Uh. Okay?"

"UA is so cool," said Toshinori, shielding his eyes against the sun as he looked up at the building.

"Haha, yeah," said Tsukauchi.

"Did I really go to school here?"

"You teach here, too!" said Present Mic.

"That's so cool," said Toshinori. "I can't believe I'm going to be a hero for over thirty years. That's like, the longest any hero has ever served."

"There are a couple who've served for longer, now, actually," said Present Mic. "Like Yoroi Musha, Recovery Girl, and Gran Torino."

"Yoroi Musha is still a hero?" asked Toshnori. "Like, actively? That's so long."

The gate behind them beeped, and Toshinori turned around just in time to take the bottom of a boot straight to the face. Needless to say, he fell over.

"Gran Torino!"

"Holy crap! I thought he'd dodge! Toshinori, you idiot, are you alright?"

"Ow," said Toshinori, trying and failing to recognize the voice that was referring to him so familiarly.

"Gran Torino, you really can't go around kicking people like that."

"Yagi-kun? Are you okay? Should we get Recovery Girl?"

Toshinori raised a shaking hand, thumb up. "I think I have a concussion."

When they got to the infirmary, it was already occupied by a couple students and... a strange homeless-looking man, but that didn't make sense. Maybe an undercover hero was stopping here for some reason? But why?

The students, one small and green, other with a mix of red and white hair, stared at him openly.

"Oops, sorry," said Present Mic. "Didn't think that anyone would be here before noon."

The homeless man sighed deeply. "Neither did I," he said, "and yet..." He fixed a baleful glare on the two students.

"I-I'm sorry, Aizawa-sensei," squeaked the green one. "I tried to get out of the way of the door, but I didn't want to run into Todoroki-kun, and-"

"It isn't your fault, problem child," said Aizawa with a sigh heavy enough to crush an elephant, who... was a teacher, evidently. Man. Standards for teachers' dress had really fallen in forty years, hadn't they? "The first year support class shouldn't have been doing anything with explosives of that caliber. Anyway, who's-"

"Are you Midoriya-kun's secret brother?" asked the red and white student.

"Who?" asked Toshinori.

"Todoroki-kun! You can't just ask people that!"

"You have to admit, he looks just like your father-"

"All Might is not my father."

"Riiiiiight," said Present Mic, guiding Toshinori to a bed with a hand on his back. "Now, why don't you just relax here while I go get Recovery Girl?"

"Coward," whispered Tsukauchi.

Present Mic shrugged and disappeared.

"So," said Aizawa, exhibiting a well-practiced air of boredom. "Are you related to All Might?"

"Eraserhead-san," said Tsukauchi, through clenched teeth, "may I introduce you to Yagi Toshinori? Yagi-kun, this is Aizawa-san. He's in charge of class 1-A."

Aizawa went pale. "Please tell me it isn't time travel."

"If it was time travel, we would be in an underground bunker or something," said Tsukauchi. "No, it was an age-regression quirk."

The green student inhaled sharply, then let off a small, "Oh."

"Wait," said the red and white student- Todoroki?- narrowing his eyes.

"Don't say it," urged the green haired boy.

"What do you think about quirks, Yagi-san?"

"Quirks are great!" said Toshinori. "I sure wish I-"

"Had a note book to write about them in!" interrupted Tsukauchi, loudly.

Toshinori frowned up at him, confused. What did he say?

Todoroki rubbed his chin with a finger. "To... analyze the quirks in?" he asked.

"Um," said Toshinori. "Yes?"

"See, Midoriya-kun?" said Todoroki, turning to the other boy. "He's just like you. You're the same." He touched his pointer fingers together.

Midoriya, for his part, looked extremely flustered.

"The same," repeated Todoroki. He looked back at Toshinori. "Do you happen to have a brother? A twin, perhaps?"

"Uh, I don't think so? But, then, I was a doorstop baby, so..."

Todoroki nodded sagely. "So you must have reunited with your long lost brother, the skeleton man, later in life-"

"Stop calling him that!" hissed Midoriya, yanking on his friend's uniform jacket.

"I wouldn't have to, if you'd just tell me your uncle's name-"

"He isn't my uncle."

Both Aizawa and Tsukauchi looked like they wanted to die. Or at least be somewhere else.

"Uh," said Toshinori, wanting to change the subject even with his concussion. "What are your quirks, anyway?"

"My quirk is called Half-Hot, Half-Cold," said Todoroki. He raised his hands. "It allows me to make fire from my left side, and ice from my right."

"Oh, neat," said Toshinori. "There must be so many applications like that! I mean, combat is obvious, but it might be even better for rescue work- Lots of casualties in natural disasters are because of exposure, you'd be ideal to counteract that in any weather. Or if a victim is going into shock! Plus, it'd be useful to have in everyday life, if they ever change the public quirk usage law- Did they change that?"

"No," said Aizawa.

"Actually, yes," said Tsukauchi, "but probably not in the way you're thinking..."

"Don't use your quirk in public," said Aizawa.

"You don't have to worry about that, because-"

"Don't use your quirk in public," said Tsukauchi, interrupting again. "Please."

"He does have a hero license, though, so technically-"

"Problem child."

"Sorry."

"Oh, oh, and what's your quirk?"

"Please do not fall out of the bed, To- Yagi-kun," said Tsukauchi.

"I'm not going to," said Toshinori.

"Well," said Midoriya, who had a very complicated expression on his face, "my quirk is, uh, a strength enhancer..."

"Just like yours," said Todoroki, as if he had just made an irrefutable point.

Oh, yeah. Toshinori's older self had a quirk. Maybe that's what Tsukauchi was trying to keep him from talking about? He wished they had told him beforehand if it was some kind of secret.

Also: was Todoroki implying that Midoriya was Toshinori's son? That'd be, like... Wow. If this was forty years in the future, and Midoriya was about the same age as him, that meant he'd had Midoriya when he was forty? Hm. He wasn't sure how to feel about that...

Luckily, before he could start in on a spiral about whether the idea of himself at forty or the idea that he had kids was the thought that was bothering him, Present Mic came back with a little old woman who was, apparently, Recovery Girl.

Wow. Yeah. That was sure a change in... everything. Yep. Really driving home the whole 'forty years in the future' thing. It sure was.

Recovery Girl sighed deeply. "What did you get yourself into this time, Toshinori?"

"Gran Torino kicked him in the head," said Tsukauchi.

"I'm going to skin that man alive one of these days," said Recovery Girl. "But I was talking about the other thing. Although, I suppose that's rather obvious. Do you mind if I heal you, dear? It will probably knock you out for a little bit."

"Sure," said Toshinori, who was beginning to strongly desire an escape from the increasingly awkward conversations around him. "Knock me out. Please."

"Alright, then."

And then she did.

#boku no hero academia #fic #prompt fill #ask #answer #bnha #this prompt has been marinating for #uh #a while #oops

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goldenrose443 · 3 years

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Name: Patch

Like: the silence, stay with Dream and help him.

Dislike: Having Horror close by, the crowds, the glitchs of Error.

Gender: Male

Height: 1,70cm - 5,577(?)

Age: 17

Birthday: December 12

Weapons: Axe (stole it from Horror) and shield (of energy).

Powers: Teleportation, bones, blue bones, gaster blasters, feel feelings of others.

Reason of birth: Nightmare sent Horror to gather information about Dream, but instead of obeying, he decides to gain the dreamer's trust and take advantage of his inocence.

Personality: he is calm and quiet, quite cold with people exeot for his mother and Swap Sans, whom he admires for being part of the Star Sanses. He is direct to say things, without reaching limits and maintaining respect if the person deserves it or should be given respect.

♤He hates Horror since Nightmare told him what Horror did to Dream.

♤Admire Nightmare for how simple and brilliant it is and how powerful it is.

♤He like card games, but him are not a gambler, only make low bets sometimes and just out of boredom.

♤He wants to become a guardian just like his mother.

♤His energy is positive, but unlike his mother, he can go to worlds of suffering thanks to who his father is.

♤Laughs easily at jokes. His mood is very broken, so the worse the joke the easier it will be for him to laugh.

♤The ribs are him weak point for tickling.

♤He does not call Dream "mother" because he sees him as a female figure, or weak, or because he is sweeter. He does not see it from the point of view of "how a mother should be", but rather that he sees Dream as with whom he had the strongest bond that a child can have, which is with the mother who sees him being born and takes care of giving him affection and protection. For him the word mother means who is with you from the moment you are born and for whom you want to strive to make him proud and thank him for the love he gave you.

♤The skull pieces are kept in place since their energy is what attracts them, although depending on how he feel they can move further away from him head when they are positive things or closer if him feel negative things such as sadness.

♤His skull was shattered when Ink dropped it as a child while the painter was carrying it.

♤Ink blamed Error when Dream came back.

Si eres de habla hispana, aquí está la wiki en español ♡

#Patch info #Patch #horror x dream #Horror sans #Dream Sans #Fanchild #horror x dream fanchild #fanchild Patch #Patch HorrorxDream #info #fan character #my character #undertale #undertale au #dreamtale #horrortale

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ultravioletqueen · 3 years

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Nombre completo:valentino Miguel pepper

Alias:val

Edad:17

Tipo de sangre:-A

Ocupación:estudiante de preparatoria

Ocupación actual:mesero en pepper paradiso y niñero

Fecha de nacimiento:14 de febrero(acuario)

Shows/juegos favoritos:romance,aventura(undertale, shera y salior moon)

Comida favorita:chocolate blanco

Instrumento:arpa

Animal favorito:gatos

Altura:1,65(5,5)

Familia:mr pepper(padre) Mrs pepper(madre) belle(hermana menor) cayenne(hermana menor) paprika(hermana menor) lewis(hermano adoptivo)

Arma:ninguna

Habilidades:visión espectral,detector de espíritus, ver a través de los disfrazes humanos de otros fantasmas, gran cocinero,telekinesis.

Personalidad:val es un adolescente muy asustadizo y fácil de hacer llorar, debido al bullying que sufrió de parte de sus compañeros por su "poca masculinidad" val tiene una muy mala imagen de si mismo considerandose alguien raro. Val es muy amigable y muy paciente con sus cercanos, val es poco sociable y no se relaciona mucho con la gente, pero cuando se siente cómodo puede incluso llegar a ser muy risueño.

Val es trabajador y siempre da su parte del trabajo, es muy dedicado a su trabajo como mesero y niñero. Val es sumamente sensible y muy empatico, siendo capaz de meterse en los zapatos de otros y entender sus situaciones. Val es un fiel creyente de lo sobrenatural y es de mente abierta,respeta las creencias de los demás y es respetuoso.

Apariencia:val es un adolescente de 17 años de estatura promedio, tiene el pelo rubio con mechas rosa pastel y ojos del mismo color, en apariencia es casi idéntico al señor pepper. Val se le puede ver usando una camisa a rayas blancas y grises debajo de una chaqueta fina de color magenta, lleva también un gorro y converse fucsia y su atuendo se completa con un collar con un pimiento rojo. Val también posee orejas perforadas y lleva aretes negros.

También tiene una prenda alternativa, que consta de un hoddie sin mangas de color blanco con dos rayas rosas, pantalones grises y sandalias rosas.

Historia:val nació poco después de la llegada de lewis, siendo el único hijo biológico varón de los pepper, val era constantemente acosado por sus compañeros debido a que "era poco masculino" al gustarle cocinar y el color rosa, sin embargo lewis siempre lo defendió y cuido de sus matones, por lo que val admiraba mucho a lewis ya que veía en el lo que quería ser:un hombre que inspire respeto que no tiene miedo de ser el mismo.val en más de una ocasión tuvo algún encuentro con lo supernatural debido a extrañas visiones de fantasmas o sueños locos. Tras la desaparición de lewis, val llegaría a padecer trastornos de la alimentación y empezó a tener más encuentros supernaturales, cuando se dio cuenta de que algo estaba mal fue cuando reencontró con su hermano, no podía ver su disfraz humano, veía su forma fantasma, val en ese momento fue junto a lewis con frigg para ver que era lo que tenía, resultaba que val era un vedoiro, una persona capaz de ver espíritus y la muerte.

Trivia:

*el diseño de val esta basado en mangle de fnafhs y de nathaniel kurtzberg de mlb.

*val sueña con el mundo de los muertos.

*val padeció de bulimia, sin embargo ahora está tratado y parcialmente recuperado.

*val es amigo de chloe, quien considera su mejor amiga.

*val y sus poderes estan inspirados en audrey verdancy de @reptilian-angel.

*el prefiere lo dulce más que lo picante.

*su voz headcanon sería Carlos Hernández en español y michael sinternikklas en inglés.

*nació el día de San Valentín(14 de febrero).

* val también es un usuario involuntario de telekinesis, ya que cuando duerme los objetos a su alrededor se mueven, si se mueven alrededor de él es un sueño normal pero si empiezan a moverse de forma alocada es una pesadilla, esto hace que no sea capaz de ir a pijamadas.

Full name:valentino Miguel pepper

Alias:val

Age:17

Blood type:-A

ocupation:high school student

"actual" ocupation:waiter in pepper paradiso and babysitter

D.O.B:February 14(acuario)

favorite show/game:adventure,romance(undertale, shera and salior moon)

Favorite food:white chocolate

Instrument:harp

Favorite animal:cats

Height:1,65(5,5)

Family: Mr Pepper (Father) Mrs Pepper (Mother) Belle (Younger Sister) Cayenne (Younger Sister) Paprika (Younger Sister) Lewis (Adoptive Brother)

Weapon:none

Skills: spectral vision, spirit detector, seeing through the human disguises of other ghosts, great Cook,telekinesis.

Personality: val is a very scary teenager and easy to make cry, due to the bullying he suffered from his peers for his "little masculinity" Val has a very bad image of himself considering himself strange. Val is very friendly and very patient with those close to him, Val is not very sociable and does not interact much with people, but when he feels comfortable he can even be very smiling.

Val is a hard worker and always gives his share of the work, he is very dedicated to his work as a waiter and babysitter. Val is extremely sensitive and very empathetic, being able to step into the shoes of others and understand their situations. Val is a faithful believer in the supernatural and is open-minded, respects the beliefs of others, and is respectful.

Appearance: Val is a 17-year-old teenager of average height, has blonde hair with pastel pink highlights and eyes of the same color, in appearance he is almost identical to Mr. Pepper. Val can be seen wearing a white and gray striped shirt underneath a thin magenta jacket, he also wears a fuchsia hat and converse and his outfit is completed with a red pepper necklace. Val also has pierced ears and wears black earrings.

He also has an alternative garment, consisting of a sleeveless white hoddie with two pink stripes, gray pants, and pink sandals.

History: Val was born shortly after the arrival of Lewis, being the only biological male child of the Pepper, Val was constantly harassed by his companions because "he was not very masculine" when he liked to cook and the color pink, however Lewis always loved it. He defended and took care of his thugs, so Val greatly admired Lewis as he saw in him what he wanted to be: a man who inspires respect who is not afraid of being the same. Val on more than one occasion had an encounter with him. supernatural due to strange ghost visions or crazy dreams. After the disappearance of Lewis, Val would suffer from eating disorders and began to have more supernatural encounters, when he realized that something was wrong was when he reunited with his brother, he could not see his human disguise, he saw his ghost form, Val at that moment went to Lewis with frigg to see what he had, it turned out that Val was a vedoiro, a person capable of seeing spirits and death.

Trivia:

* Val's design is based on mangle from fnafhs and nathaniel kurtzberg from mlb.

* val dreams of the world of the dead.

* val suffered from bulimia, however he is now treated and partially recovered.

* val is friends with chloe, whom he considers his best friend.

* val and his powers are inspired by @reptilian-angel audrey verdancy.

* He prefers sweet over spicy.

* His headcanon voice would be Carlos Hernández in Spanish and Michael Sinternikklas in English.

* was born on Valentine's Day (February 14).

* Val is also an involuntary user of telekinesis, since when he sleeps the objects around him move, if they move around him it is a normal dream but if they start to move in a crazy way it is a nightmare, this makes him not capable going to sleepovers.

#oc #msa #mystery skulls oc #Val pepper #Lewis pepper #cayenne pepper #Paprika pepper #Belle pepper #Mr pepper #Mrs pepper #profile character #Profile

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thedicklee · 4 years

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𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐌𝐈𝐒𝐒𝐈𝐍𝐆 𝐏𝐈𝐄𝐂𝐄𝐒: 𝘚𝘐𝘕𝘎𝘓𝘌𝘚 & 𝘌𝘟𝘛𝘙𝘈 𝘙𝘌𝘓𝘌𝘈𝘚𝘌𝘚

𝙉𝙀𝙒 𝙋𝙀𝙍𝙎𝙋𝙀𝘾𝙏𝙄𝙑𝙀, 𝙄𝙎 𝙀𝙑𝙀𝙍𝙔𝘽𝙊𝘿𝙔 𝙂𝙊𝙄𝙉𝙂 𝘾𝙍𝘼𝙕𝙔? e 𝘼𝙁𝙏𝙀𝙍𝙂𝙇𝙊𝙒 foram os primeiros releases oficiais da banda como GO:OD AM que antecedeu o EP de lançamento deles, foi um tira gosto para os fãs que o trio já acumulava em suas redes sociais graças a todo o suspense e dicas obscuras sobre o futuro da banda.

cada música tem seu próprio vídeo e cores distintas, new perspective sendo bastante simbólica por marcar o início de tudo, seu vídeo é bastante simples e conta apenas com dick no que fãs especulam ser um vídeo de introspecção sobre o caminho que o músico já havia dito que foi escolhido para ele graças a sua família e a divergência do caminho que ele escolheu para si próprio, já que no começo do vídeo ele se encontra em roupas formais em takes preto e branco que vão adquirindo cores conforme ele vai se ‘desmontando’, trocando seus trajes por roupas informais. is everybody going crazy? não fez a seleção final do EP por não conversar musicalmente com o restante das canções e até então não seria lançada, porém alguém vazou o arquivo da música com uma qualidade duvidosa e feriou o orgulho dos integrantes quando as pessoas realmente acreditaram que aquele era o produto final, por isso acabaram a lançando algumas semanas depois, o vídeo mais simples graças a decisão apressada, mas ao menos daquela vez contava com os três integrantes em sets parecidos, agindo como se caíssem em loucura conforme o avanço da música. afterglow foi outro rejeito do EP, porém essa foi lançada como um presente aos fãs, o vídeo com uma vibe mais caseira, mostrando os últimos momentos de preparação para o lançamento que se aproximava e o comportamento geralmente caótico do trio enquanto abrigados no estúdio de dick.

𝘾𝙀𝙈𝙀𝙏𝙀𝙍𝙔, 𝙒𝙊𝙇𝙁 𝙄𝙉 𝙎𝙃𝙀𝙀𝙋'𝙎 𝘾𝙇𝙊𝙏𝙃𝙄𝙉𝙂 e 𝙇𝙊𝙑𝙀 𝙈𝙀 𝙇𝙄𝙆𝙀 𝘼 𝙁𝙍𝙄𝙀𝙉𝘿 foram lançados esporadicamente durante o período de hiatus que atrapalhou o lançamento do primeiro álbum de estúdio deles como uma estratégia de mantê-los no horizonte e evitasse que caíssem tão cedo no esquecimento.

felizmente, cemetery acabou sendo um release bastante memorável, inclusive entre o nicho bastante específico das rich kids com seus problemas de afeto e pais negligentes com seus trabalhos mais importantes do que seus filhos. acabou virando um hino entre os alunos das escolas privadas de san diego quando lançada e é provavelmente a música deles com mais streams. o vídeo gira em torno das figuras apáticas dos três integrantes em meio a um funeral enquanto o restante das pessoas parecem de fato enlutadas, no final é revelado que dentro do caixão estavam maços e mais maços de dinheiro. wolf in sheep’s clothing foi mais um desabafo raivoso dos integrantes sobre aqueles que tentaram sabotar a carreira deles antes mesmo dela ter propriamente decolado, fãs teorizam que a música expõe não só como a mídia sempre tentava acabar com a reputação deles e os colocavam em uma posição de favorecidos graças ao status da mãe de dick, mas também a falta de apoio de alguns dos familiares dos integrantes da banda. o release foi acompanhado por uma performance de alta produção no lugar de um videoclipe. love me like a friend foi uma breve introdução ao que estava por vir com o lançamento do álbum, um buffer que ilustrou perfeitamente a transição que eles procuraram fazer de um lançamento para o outro. o vídeo tem dick contracenando com uma atriz para ilustrarem um relacionamento por baixo dos panos onde todos acreditam que são apenas amigos quando o personagem de dick se mostra querendo algo mais e a garota bastante satisfeita com o arranjo de amigos com benefícios.

𝙉𝙄𝙂𝙃𝙏𝙈𝘼𝙍𝙀, 𝙈𝙄𝘿𝘿𝙇𝙀 𝙊𝙁 𝙎𝙊𝙈𝙀𝙒𝙃𝙀𝙍𝙀 e 𝙋𝙇𝘼𝙔 𝙒𝙄𝙏𝙃 𝙁𝙄𝙍𝙀 são lançamentos extras e mais recentes, os três contam com visualizers curtos no lugar de vídeos completos.

nightmare faz parte da trilha sonora de um filme de terror psicológico independente, centrado em pesadelos, dick se viu atraído pelo projeto graças as suas próprias experiências com terrores noturnos, algo que não é de conhecimento público, o que acabou lhe dando mais segurança na hora de ceder a sua produção. o visualizer conta com o garoto tentando acordar de um pesadelo e sendo segurado contra a cama pelas mãos de seus parceiros de banda. middle of somewhere foi composta para a trilha sonora de uma minissérie de coming of age sobre as dificuldades do fim da adolescência e os desafios de não se encaixar na vida adulta. eles admitiram também que a letra tratava um pouco da relação deles com a fama crescente da banda, como não importa o que eles façam, parece que estão sempre estagnados no meio entre perseguir a própria fama e as insinuações de que eles vivem em uma sombra. o visualizer é uma recriação de uma das cenas da minissérie onde os protagonistas estão sentados sobre um carro em um campo em reminiscência. porque aparentemente não podiam fugir do inevitável, play with fire é a tão aguardada colaboração com vega lee e toda a aspicio astra fez parte do processo criativo da música que foi usada como tema para um vídeo game de ação.

#au: rockstar #rockstar au — musings #rockstar au — GO:OD AM #edits.

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mattbrothersscriptwriter · 5 years

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My Top 20 Films of 2019 - Part Two

I don’t think I’ve had a year where my top ten jostled and shifted as much as this one did - these really are the best of the best and my personal favourites of 2019.

10. Toy Story 4

I think we can all agree that Toy Story 3 was a pretty much perfect conclusion to a perfect trilogy right? About as close as is likely to get, I’m sure. I shared the same trepidation when part four was announced, especially after some underwhelming sequels like Finding Dory and Cars 3 (though I do have a lot of time for Monsters University and Incredibles 2). So maybe it’s because the odds were so stacked against this being good but I thought it was wonderful. A truly existential nightmare of an epilogue that does away with Andy (and mostly kids altogether) to focus on the dreams and desires of the toys themselves - separate from their ‘duties’ as playthings to biological Gods. What is their purpose in life without an owner? Can they be their own person and carve their own path? In the case of breakout new character Forky (Tony Hale), what IS life? Big big questions for a cash grab kids films huh?

The animation is somehow yet another huge leap forward (that opening rainstorm!), Bo Peep’s return is excellently pitched and the series tradition of being unnervingly horrifying is back as well thanks to those creepy ventriloquist dolls! Keanu Reeves continues his ‘Keanuassaince‘ as the hilarious Duke Caboom and this time, hopefully, the ending at least feels finite. This series means so much to me: I think the first movie is possibly the tightest, most perfect script ever written, the third is one of my favourites of the decade and growing up with the franchise (I was 9 when the first came out, 13 for part two, 24 for part three and now 32 for this one), these characters are like old friends so of course it was great to see them again. All this film had to do was be good enough to justify its existence and while there are certainly those out there that don’t believe this one managed it, I think the fact that it went as far as it did showed that Pixar are still capable of pushing boundaries and exploring infinity and beyond when they really put their minds to it.

9. The Nightingale

Hoo boy. Already controversial with talk of mass walkouts (I witnessed a few when this screened at Sundance London), it’s not hard to see why but easy to understand. Jennifer Kent (The Babadook) is a truly fearless filmmaker following up her acclaimed suburban horror movie come grief allegory with a period revenge tale set in the Tasmanian wilderness during British colonial rule in the early 1800s. It’s rare to see the British depicted with the monstrous brutality for which they were known in the distant colonies and this unflinching drama sorely needed an Australian voice behind the camera to do it justice.

The film is front loaded with some genuinely upsetting, nasty scenes of cruel violence but its uncensored brutality and the almost casual nature of its depiction is entirely the point - this was normalised behaviour over there and by treating it so matter of factly, it doesn’t slip into gratuitous ‘movie violence’. It is what it is. And what it is is hard to watch. If anything, as Kent has often stated, it’s still toned down from the actual atrocities that occurred so it’s a delicate balance that I think Kent more than understands. Quoting from an excellent Vanity Fair interview she did about how she directs, Kent said “I think audiences have become very anaesthetised to violence on screen and it’s something I find disturbing... People say ‘these scenes are so shocking and disturbing’. Of course they are. We need to feel that. When we become so removed from violence on screen, this is a very irresponsible thing. So I wanted to put us right within the frame with that person experiencing the loss of everything they hold dear”.

Aisling Franciosi is next level here as a woman who has her whole life torn from her, leaving her as nothing but a raging husk out for vengeance. It would be so easy to fall into odd couple tropes once she teams up with reluctant native tracker Billy (an equally impressive newcomer, Baykali Ganambarr) but the film continues to stay true to the harsh racism of the era, unafraid to depict our heroine - our point of sympathy - as horrendously racist towards her own ally. Their partnership is not easily solidified but that makes it all the stronger when they star to trust each other. Sam Claflin is also career best here, weaponizing his usual charm into dangerous menace and even after cementing himself as the year’s most evil villain, he can still draw out the humanity in such a broken and corrupt man.

Gorgeously shot in the Academy ratio, the forest landscape here is oppressive and claustrophobic. Kent also steps back into her horror roots with some mesmerising, skin crawling dream scenes that amplify the woozy nightmarish tone and overbearing sense of dread. Once seen, never forgotten, this is not going to be everyone’s cup of tea (and that’s fine) but when cinema can affect you on such a visceral level and be this powerful, reflective and honest about our own past, it’s hard to ignore. Stunning.

8. The Irishman

Aka Martin Scorsese’s magnum opus, I did manage to see this one in a cinema before the Netflix drop and absolutely loved it. I’ve watched 85 minute long movies that felt longer than this - Marty’s mastery of pace, energy and knowing when to let things play out in agonising detail is second to none. This epic tale of the life of Frank Sheeran (Robert De Niro) really is the cinematic equivalent of having your cake and eating it too, allowing Scorsese to run through a greatest hits victory lap of mobster set pieces, alpha male arguments, a decades spanning life story and one (last?) truly great Joe Pesci performance before simply letting the story... continue... to a natural, depressing and tragic ending, reflecting the emptiness of a life built on violence and crime.

For a film this long, it’s impressive how much the smallest details make the biggest impacts. A stammering phone call from a man emotionally incapable of offering any sort of condolence. The cold refusal of forgiveness from a once loving daughter. A simple mirroring of a bowl of cereal or a door left slightly ajar. These are the parts of life that haunt us all and it’s what we notice the most in a deliberately lengthy biopic that shows how much these things matter when everything else is said and done. The violence explodes in sudden, sharp bursts, often capping off unbearably tense sequences filled with the everyday (a car ride, a conversation about fish, ice cream...) and this contrast between the whizz bang of classic Scorsese and the contemplative nature of Silence era Scorsese is what makes this film feel like such an accomplishment. De Niro is FINALLY back but it’s the memorably against type role for Pesci and an invigorated Al Pacino who steals this one, along with a roll call of fantastic cameos, with perhaps the most screentime given to the wonderfully petty Stephen Graham as Tony Pro, not to mention Anna Paquin’s near silent performance which says more than possibly anyone else.

Yes, the CG de-aging is misguided at best, distracting at worst (I never really knew how old anyone was meant to be at any given time... which is kinda a problem) but like how you get used to it really quickly when it’s used well, here I kinda got past it being bad in an equally fast amount of time and just went with it. Would it have been a different beast had they cast younger actors to play them in the past? Undoubtedly. But if this gives us over three hours of Hollywood’s finest giving it their all for the last real time together, then that’s a compromise I can live with.

7. The Last Black Man in San Francisco

Wow. I was in love with this film from the moving first trailer but then the film itself surpassed all expectations. This is a true indie film success story, with lead actor Jimmie Fails developing the idea with director Joe Talbot for years before Kickstarting a proof of concept and eventually getting into Sundance with short film American Paradise, which led to the backing of this debut feature through Plan B and A24. The deeply personal and poetic drama follows a fictionalised version of Jimmie, trying to buy back an old Victorian town house he claims was built by his grandfather, in an act of rebellion against the increasingly gentrified San Francisco that both he and director Talbot call home.

The film is many things - a story of male friendship, of solidarity within our community, of how our cities can change right from underneath us - it moves to the beat of it’s own drum, with painterly cinematography full of gorgeous autumnal colours and my favourite score of the year from Emile Mosseri. The performances, mostly by newcomers or locals outside of brilliant turns from Jonathan Majors, Danny Glover and Thora Birch, are wonderful and the whole thing is such a beautiful love letter to the city that it makes you ache for a strong sense of place in your own home, even if your relationship with it is fractured or strained. As Jimmie says, “you’re not allowed to hate it unless you love it”.

For me, last year’s Blindspotting (my favourite film of the year) tackled gentrification within California more succinctly but this much more lyrical piece of work ebbs and flows through a number of themes like identity, family, memory and time. It’s a big film living inside a small, personal one and it is not to be overlooked.

6. Little Women

I had neither read the book nor seen any prior adaptation of Louisa May Alcott’s 1868 novel so to me, this is by default the definitive telling of this story. If from what I hear, the non linear structure is Greta Gerwig’s addition, then it’s a total slam dunk. It works so well in breaking up the narrative and by jumping from past to present, her screenplay highlights certain moments and decisions with a palpable sense of irony, emotional weight or knowing wink. Getting to see a statement made with sincere conviction and then paid off within seconds, can be both a joy and a surefire recipe for tears. Whether it’s the devastating contrast between scenes centred around Beth’s illness or the juxtaposition of character’s attitudes to one another, it’s a massive triumph. Watching Amy angrily tell Laurie how she’s been in love with him all her life and then cutting back to her childishly making a plaster cast of her foot for him (’to remind him how small her feet are’) is so funny.

Gerwig and her impeccable cast bring an electric energy to the period setting, capturing the big, messy realities of family life with a mix of overwhelming cross-chatter and the smallest of intimate gestures. It’s a testament to the film that every sister feels fully serviced and represented, from Beth’s quiet strength to Amy’s unforgivable sibling rivalry. Chris Cooper’s turn as a stoic man suffering almost imperceptible grief is a personal heartbreaking favourite.

The book’s (I’m assuming) most sweeping romantic statements are wonderfully delivered, full of urgent passion and relatable heartache, from Marmie’s (Laura Dern) “I’m angry nearly every day of my life” moment to Jo’s (Saoirse Ronan) painful defiance of feminine attributes not being enough to cure her loneliness. The sheer amount of heart and warmth in this is just remarkable and I can easily see it being a film I return to again and again.

5. Booksmart

2019 has been a banner year for female directors, making their exclusion from some of the early awards conversations all the more damning. From this list alone, we have Lulu Wang, Jennifer Kent and Greta Gerwig. Not to mention Lorene Scafaria (Hustlers), Melina Matsoukas (Queen & Slim), Jocelyn DeBoer & Dawn Luebbe (Greener Grass), Sophie Hyde (Animals) and Rose Glass (Saint Maud - watch out for THIS one in 2020, it’s brilliant). Perhaps the most natural transition from in front of to behind the camera has been made by Olivia Wilde, who has created a borderline perfect teen comedy that can make you laugh till you cry, cry till you laugh and everything in-between.

Subverting the (usually male focused) ‘one last party before college’ tropes that fuel the likes of Superbad and it’s many inferior imitators, Booksmart follows two overachievers who, rather than go on a coming of age journey to get some booze or get laid, simply want to indulge in an insane night of teenage freedom after realising that all of the ‘cool kids’ who they assumed were dropouts, also managed to get a place in all of the big universities. It’s a subtly clever remix of an old favourite from the get go but the committed performances from Kaitlyn Dever and Beanie Feldstein put you firmly in their shoes for the whole ride.

It’s a genuine blast, with big laughs and a bigger heart, portraying a supportive female friendship that doesn’t rely on hokey contrivances to tear them apart, meaning that when certain repressed feelings do come to the surface, the fallout is heartbreaking. As I stated in a twitter rave after first seeing it back in May, every single character, no matter how much they might appear to be simply representing a stock role or genre trope, gets their moment to be humanised. This is an impeccably cast ensemble of young unknowns who constantly surprise and the script is a marvel - a watertight structure without a beat out of place, callbacks and payoffs to throwaway gags circle back to be hugely important and most of all, the approach taken to sexuality and representation feels so natural. I really think it is destined to be looked back on and represent 2019 the way Heathers does ‘88, Clueless ‘95 or Easy A 2010. A new high benchmark for crowd pleasing, indie comedy - teen or otherwise.

4. Ad Astra

Brad Pitt is one of my favourite actors and one who, despite still being a huge A-lister even after 30 years in the game, never seems to get enough credit for the choices he makes, the movies he stars in and also the range of stories he helps produce through his company, Plan B. 2019 was something of a comeback year for Pitt as an actor with the insanely measured and controlled lead performance seen here in Ad Astra and the more charismatic and chaotic supporting role in Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood.

I love space movies, especially those that are more about broken people blasting themselves into the unknown to search for answers within themselves... which manages to sum up a lot of recent output in this weirdly specific sub-genre. First Man was a devastating look at grief characterised by a man who would rather go to a desolate rock than have to confront what he lost, all while being packaged as a heroic biopic with a stunning score. Gravity and The Martian both find their protagonists forced to rely on their own cunning and ingenuity to survive and Interstellar looked at the lengths we go to for those we love left behind. Smaller, arty character studies like High Life or Moon are also astounding. All of this is to say that Ad Astra takes these concepts and runs with them, challenging Pitt to cross the solar system to talk some sense into his long thought dead father (Tommy Lee Jones). But within all the ‘sad dad’ stuff, there’s another film in here just daring you to try and second guess it - one that kicks things off with a terrifying free fall from space, gives us a Mad Max style buggy chase on the moon and sidesteps into horror for one particular set-piece involving a rabid baboon in zero G! It manages to feel so completely nuts, so episodic in structure, that I understand why a lot of people were turned off - feeling that the overall film was too scattershot to land the drama or too pondering to have any fun with. I get the criticisms but for me, both elements worked in tandem, propelling Pitt on this (assumed) one way journey at a crazy pace whilst sitting back and languishing in the ‘bigger themes’ more associated with a Malik or Kubrick film. Something that Pitt can sell me on in his sleep by this point.

I loved the visuals from cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema (Interstellar), loved the imagination and flair of the script from director James Gray and Ethan Gross and loved the score by Max Richter (with Lorne Balfe and Nils Frahm) but most of all, loved Pitt, proving that sometimes a lot less, is a lot more. The sting of hearing the one thing he surely knew (but hoped he wouldn’t) be destined to hear from his absent father, acted almost entirely in his eyes during a third act confrontation, summed up the movie’s brilliance for me - so much so that I can forgive some of the more outlandish ‘Mr Hyde’ moments of this thing’s alter ego... like, say, riding a piece of damaged hull like a surfboard through a meteor debris field!

3. Avengers: Endgame

It’s no secret that I think Marvel, the MCU in particular, have been going from strength to strength in recent years, slowly but surely taking bigger risks with filmmakers (the bonkers Taika Waititi, the indie darlings of Ryan Coogler, Cate Shortland and Chloe Zhao) whilst also carefully crafting an entertaining, interconnected universe of characters and stories. But what is the point of building up any movie ‘universe’ if you’re not going to pay it off and Endgame is perhaps the strongest conclusion to eleven years of movie sequels that fans could have possibly hoped for.

Going into this thing, the hype was off the charts (and for good reason, with it now being the highest grossing film of all time) but I remember souring on the first entry of this two-parter, Infinity War, during the time between initial release and Endgame’s premiere. That film had a game-changing climax, killing off half the heroes (and indeed the universe’s population) and letting the credits role on the villain having achieved his ultimate goal. It was daring, especially for a mammoth summer blockbuster but obviously, we all knew the deaths would never be permanent, especially with so many already-announced sequels for now ‘dusted’ characters. However, it wasn’t just the feeling that everything would inevitably be alright in the end. For me, the characters themselves felt hugely under-serviced, with arguably the franchise’s main goody two shoes Captain America being little more than a beardy bloke who showed up to fight a little bit. Basically what I’m getting at is that I felt Endgame, perhaps emboldened by the giant runtime, managed to not only address these character slights but ALSO managed to deliver the most action packed, comic booky, ‘bashing your toys together’ final fight as well.

It’s a film of three parts, each pretty much broken up into one hour sections. There’s the genuinely new and interesting initial section following our heroes dealing with the fact that they lost... and it stuck. Thor angrily kills Thanos within the first fifteen minutes but it’s a meaningless action by this point - empty revenge. Cutting to five years later, we get to see how defeat has affected them, for better or worse, trying to come to terms with grief and acceptance. Cap tries to help the everyman, Black Widow is out leading an intergalactic mop up squad and Thor is wallowing in a depressive black hole. It’s a shocking and vibrantly compelling deconstruction of the whole superhero thing and it gives the actors some real meat to chew on, especially Robert Downy Jr here who goes from being utterly broken to fighting within himself to do the right thing despite now having a daughter he doesn’t want to lose too. Part two is the trip down memory lane, fan service-y time heist which is possibly the most fun section of any of these movies, paying tribute to the franchise’s past whilst teetering on a knife’s edge trying to pull off a genuine ‘mission impossible’. And then it explodes into the extended finale which pays everyone off, demonstrates some brilliantly imaginative action and sticks the landing better than it had any right to. In a year which saw the ending of a handful of massive geek properties, from Game of Thrones to Star Wars, it’s a miracle even one of them got it right at all. That Endgame managed to get it SO right is an extraordinary accomplishment and if anything, I think Marvel may have shot themselves in the foot as it’s hard to imagine anything they can give us in the future having the intense emotional weight and momentum of this huge finale.

2. Knives Out

Rian Johnson has been having a ball leaping into genre sandpits and stirring shit up, from his teen spin on noir in Brick to his quirky con man caper with The Brothers Bloom, his time travel thriller Looper and even his approach to the Star Wars mythos in The Last Jedi. Turning his attention to the relatively dead ‘whodunnit’ genre, Knives Out is a perfect example of how to celebrate everything that excites you about a genre whilst weaponizing it’s tropes against your audience’s baggage and preconceptions.

An impeccable cast have the time of their lives here, revelling in playing self obsessed narcissists who scramble to punt the blame around when the family’s patriarch, a successful crime novelist (Christopher Plummer), winds up dead. Of course there’s something fishy going on so Daniel Craig’s brilliantly dry southern detective Benoit Blanc is called in to investigate.There are plenty of standouts here, from Don Johnson’s ignorant alpha wannabe Richard to Michael Shannon’s ferocious eldest son Walt to Chris Evan’s sweater wearing jock Ransom, full of unchecked, white privilege swagger. But the surprise was the wholly sympathetic, meek, vomit prone Marta, played brilliantly by Ana de Armas, cast against her usual type of sultry bombshell (Knock Knock, Blade Runner 2049), to spearhead the biggest shake up of the genre conventions. To go into more detail would begin to tread into spoiler territory but by flipping the audience’s engagement with the detective, we’re suddenly on the receiving end of the scrutiny and the tension derived from this switcheroo is genius and opens up the second act of the story immensely.

The whole thing is so lovingly crafted and the script is one of the tightest I’ve seen in years. The amount of setup and payoff here is staggering and never not hugely satisfying, especially as it heads into it’s final stretch. It really gives you some hope that you could have such a dense, plotty, character driven idea for a story and that it could survive the transition from page to screen intact and for the finished product to work as well as it does. I really hope Johnson returns to tell another Benoit Blanc mystery and judging by the roaring box office success (currently over $200 million worldwide for a non IP original), I certainly believe he will.

1. Eighth Grade

My film of the year is another example of the power of cinema to put us in other people’s shoes and to discover the traits, fears, joys and insecurities that we all share irregardless. It may shock you to learn this but I have never been a 13 year old teenage girl trying to get by in the modern world of social media peer pressure and ‘influencer’ culture whilst crippled with personal anxiety. My school days almost literally could not have looked more different than this (less Instagram, more POGs) and yet, this is a film about struggling with oneself, with loneliness, with wanting more but not knowing how to get it without changing yourself and the careless way we treat those with our best interests at heart in our selfish attempt to impress peers and fit in. That is understandable. That is universal. And as I’m sure I’ve said a bunch of times in this list, movies that present the most specific worldview whilst tapping into universal themes are the ones that inevitably resonate the most.

Youtuber and comedian Bo Burnham has crafted an impeccable debut feature, somehow portraying a generation of teens at least a couple of generations below his own, with such laser focused insight and intimate detail. It’s no accident that this film has often been called a sort of social-horror, with cringe levels off the charts and recognisable trappings of anxiety and depression in every frame. The film’s style services this feeling at every turn, from it’s long takes and nauseous handheld camerawork to the sensory overload in it’s score (take a bow Anna Meredith) and the naturalistic performances from all involved. Burnham struck gold when he found Elsie Fisher, delivering the most painful and effortlessly real portrayal of a tweenager in crisis as Kayla. The way she glances around skittishly, the way she is completely lost in her phone, the way she talks, even the way she breathes all feeds into the illusion - the film is oftentimes less a studio style teen comedy and more a fly on the wall documentary.

This is a film that could have coasted on being a distant, social media based cousin to more standard fare like Sex Drive or Superbad or even Easy A but it goes much deeper, unafraid to let you lower your guard and suddenly hit you with the most terrifying scene of casually attempted sexual aggression or let you watch this pure, kindhearted girl falter and question herself in ways she shouldn’t even have to worry about. And at it’s core, there is another beautiful father/daughter relationship, with Josh Hamilton stuck on the outside looking in, desperate to help Kayla with every fibre of his being but knowing there are certain things she has to figure out for herself. It absolutely had me and their scene around a backyard campfire is one of the year��s most touching.

This is a truly remarkable film that I think everyone should seek out but I’m especially excited for all the actual teenage girls who will get to watch this and feel seen. This isn’t about the popular kid, it isn’t about the dork who hangs out with his or her own band of misfits. This is about the true loner, that person trying everything to get noticed and still ending up invisible, that person trying to connect through the most disconnected means there is - the internet - and everything that comes with it. Learning that the version of yourself you ‘portray’ on a Youtube channel may act like they have all the answers but if you’re kidding yourself then how do you grow?

When I saw this in the cinema, I watched a mother take her seat with her two daughters, aged probably at around nine and twelve. Possibly a touch young for this, I thought, and I admit I cringed a bit on their behalf during some very adult trailers but in the end, I’m glad their mum decided they were mature enough to see this because a) they had a total blast and b) life simply IS R rated for the most part, especially during our school years, and those girls being able to see someone like Kayla have her story told on the big screen felt like a huge win. I honestly can’t wait to see what Burnham or Fisher decide to do next. 2019 has absolutely been their year... and it’s been a hell of a year.

#top 20 #films of the year #films of 2019 #10-1 #toy story 4 #the nightingale #the irishman #the last black man in san francisco #little women #booksmart #ad astra #avengers endgame #knives out #eighth grade

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michelles-garden-of-evil · 4 years

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Shadow Over Seventh Heaven Review, Part I: Last Night I Dreamt I Went to Maljardin Again

Once, April Tennant had been the greatest screen star of all. Even now that this stunning creature was gone, the victim of a hideous accident, her name still cast a magic glow. And nowhere was her haunting spell more alive than within her great walled estate of San Rafael.

It was here that April had lived in her storybook marriage with famed actor Richard Morgan. It was here that her memory was worshipped still. And it was here that lovely young Jenny Summers came as Richard Morgan's new bride--to discover the terror behind the tinsel in this place transformed from a paradise of the living to a hell of the undead.... (inside front cover)

Welcome, fellow Strangers and all others who happen upon this post. This week, I have decided to begin a new series exploring the Gothic novels written by co-creator and first headwriter of Strange Paradise, Ian Martin, under the pen name Joen Arliss. Mostly, the purpose of this series will be to compare the plot and characters of Strange Paradise and those of his novels and what that may indicate about his original intentions for the overarching story of the soap opera.

I got the idea to start this series while writing my review of Episode 26, after the contents of an article referenced in one of the scenes reminded me of the events in this book. On his now-defunct website Maljardin.com, Curt Ladnier covered some of the similarities between “Here Goes the Bride,” the CBS Radio Mystery Theater drama from which this book was adapted, and Strange Paradise, but I wanted to dive deeper and do one of my characteristic overanalyses. So fly with me to the grand southwestern estate of San Rafael and together let’s explore Shadow Over Seventh Heaven--and let me warn you, there will be spoilers for the entire Maljardin arc of SP.

As noted above, Shadow Over Seventh Heaven is an adaptation of a radio drama that Martin wrote for CBS Radio Mystery Theater. CBSRMT is, perhaps unquestionably, Ian Martin’s most famous work. Created by Himan Brown in 1974 and running for 1,399 nightly episodes, Martin wrote a total of 243 (including many adaptations of literary classics) and acted in 255, typically in supporting roles. He continued writing and acting on the series all the way until his death in 1981 at the age of 69. Given my tendency to procrastinate, which sometimes makes it difficult to write just one episode review a week even when I’m not busy, I envy him for being such a prolific writer. I suspect that all the soap scripts he wrote got him into the habit, and he just couldn’t break it.

Even more extraordinary is that he wrote and published five novels during the same period that he worked on CBSRMT. His first was Nightmare’s Nest (1979), an adaptation of the CBSRMT play “The Deathly White Man” (and not the other drama, also by him, of the same name), which is his answer to Jane Eyre and which also has some interesting connections with SP which I plan to explore in another review series. Next came this novel, and then Beloved Victim (1981), adapted from “A Lady Never Loses Her Head,” which I don’t recall having anything noteworthy in common with SP, but I may need to re-read it to make sure. He also wrote two mystery novels, The Shark Bait Affair and The Ladykiller Affair, for the Zebra Mystery Puzzler series, but those are both very rare now and I haven’t yet read either, so I can’t say anything about them. The book Mystery Women: An Encyclopedia of Leading Women Characters in Mystery Fiction does, however, provide some information on their protagonist, Kate Graham, along with short plot summaries. As someone with two trunk novels from the last decade and about fifty pages of a third--which I mostly stopped working on after I started this blog--I also envy him for this. How on Earth did he find the time?

But I digress. Like that of “Here Goes the Bride,” the plot of Shadow Over Seventh Heaven draws heavy inspiration from Daphne du Maurier’s famous Gothic romance Rebecca, but with some major differences in plot and characterization. The novel fleshes out the radio drama some more, adding additional details and plot twists that aren’t present in the original play, which arguably make it more interesting. One gets the impression that he had a lot of story in mind while he penned the original drama, but knew he could only squeeze so much into a 45-minute radio play and so had to leave many of the most interesting details out.

But that’s enough background information. Let’s begin our analysis and see what Ian Martin’s later work can tell us about his original intentions for Strange Paradise.

Introduction

The face is lovely, matchless....

Opening like some gigantic and exotic flower as the camera zooms in...

It fills the screen, flawless, enticing....

The lower lip glistens, pulled away from those perfect teeth, trembling ever so slightly, promising undreamed-of delights for the man brave enough to taste its forbidden fruit....

The skin glows with an inner light....

The eyes beyond the thick fringe of dark eyelashes shimmer with the deep violet of a tropical night....

The pitiless exposé of the camera is defeated, no matter how close it probes in close-up....

This is beauty without blemish....

This is everyman's dream woman--sex symbol of the nation, and most of the world....

This is April Tennant!

Strange to think of her dead, for on the screen she is captured forever in all her vibrancy and stunning beauty....

Impossible to think of her lying, mangled and bleeding on the rocks, while the hungry sea licks out as if to possess her.

Incredible to think of her cold and in the grave. Which she has been for twelve months--or this story never would have begun (p. 5).

The first page of the novel introduces us to April Tennant, this novel’s Rebecca and also its Erica Desmond. Like Rebecca, she is the first wife of the protagonist’s love interest, whose tragic death will cast a shadow over her former estate. Like Erica, she was a famous actress--probably more so than Erica ever was--but the cause of her death is not the same as the alleged cause of Erica’s. In Episode 5 of Strange Paradise, Erica’s grieving husband Jean Paul claims that she died of eclampsia while pregnant with their son, although evidence uncovered by other characters in later episodes leads them to contest that claim. Instead, April’s death resembles that of Huaco, the wife of Jean Paul’s ancestor Jacques Eloi des Mondes who died when she fell from a cliff on Maljardin, Jacques’ island estate.

In this introduction, we also see what will become a theme of the novel: gaze. Not just the male gaze--the obvious POV of the introduction--but, more generally, the viewing of April Tennant almost exclusively through the eyes of other characters, both male and female. We never learn much about her inner life, even as we learn those of Jenny (our protagonist), Richard, and others. April is largely a mystery, a larger-than-life figure of ideal beauty who, in the eyes of the public, is more a legend than she is flesh and blood. It’s the same mystique that surrounds celebrities in real life that often makes other people forget that they, too, are human--if, indeed, that’s what April was. Or is there more to it? I guess we’ll have to find it.

Chapter 1

The first chapter begins with a detailed description of San Rafael--and by detailed, I mean that Ian Martin spends one and a half pages describing its wall, followed by two on the mansion itself. I won’t type out too many passages from this book for copyright reasons--for, unlike Strange Paradise, this book is still under copyright--but I will include some highlights. The wall surrounding the castle “was thick enough at the bottom to withstand any tremor of the California earth...topped by a corona of jagged broken glass and it ran for a mile and three-quarters in a great semicircle away from the rocky Pacific coast and back to it again” (p. 6). On its gate,

The ironwork swept and swirled in great balanced curlicues, and the frame was heavy and studded. The studs held great sheets of blackened steel, heavy enough to withstand a battering ram, blocking any vision of the grounds the wall concealed. And the vertical members of the scrollwork reared high above the frame of the door and the top of the wall in a bristling array of spikes, sharp as swords, arched forward to further discourage any hardy trespasser who might try to climb their height (pp. 6-7).

In case you haven’t already figured it out, Martin loved his purple prose. If you don’t like Byzantine descriptions of architecture, ironwork, clothing, or anything else, you probably shouldn’t read this book or any of Martin’s other novels. (Nightmare’s Nest is far purpler, however, than this one. There’s an entire chapter in there devoted to describing the protagonist’s lush Edwardian finery.) Fortunately for me, I love this kind of thing and will gladly devour description after description of gates covered in iron curlicues. My literary tastes tend toward “more is more” and I’m not ashamed to admit it.

We learn that San Rafael is a reconstruction of an old Spanish mission, commissioned by April and built in part by Richard himself, “who personally took charge of putting in all the glass that fronted on the sea.” The gardens that surround it give it “a riot of color--bougainvillea, hibiscus, passionflowers, trumpet vines--all enhanced and set off against the majesty of rows of carefully spaced Italian cedar, or Lombardy poplar” (pp. 7-8).

Despite all this radiant beauty--and as one might expect for reconstructed ruins from the era of Spanish colonialism--the estate is believed to be cursed, at least by “the superstitious peons who built the walls” (p. 9). (That’s what the book uncharitably describes the Mexican builders--some parts of this book haven’t aged well, as you will see.) Two men died while rebuilding it, followed by April herself around a decade later.

Surprisingly, we learn at the end of this chapter that Richard Morgan’s background differs from that of Jean Paul Desmond. An actor himself, he “was king of the theater, and of East Coast entertainment. Their marriage was a royal one, and it vaulted both of them to new and undreamed-of heights of popularity” (pp. 9-10). It was this popularity that drove them to wall themselves in at San Rafael and use the police and guard dogs to keep rabid fans and paparazzi away--which, ultimately, didn’t work and only led to “a new wave of interest and snooping” (p. 10).

Chapter 2

Here we meet Richard’s sister Lisa, who is...well...quite an interesting character. She’s a beautiful woman with short hair, a deep voice, and--most importantly--an unusual, creepy level of attachment to her brother.

Cersei Lannister Lisa Morgan.

Lisa has just received a phone call from the Philippines where her brother is. The call has left her “literally stunned” (p. 11), which means that the modern slang meaning of “literally” dates back 30+ years longer than I thought. Surprisingly, she isn’t drinking wine to calm her nerves like Cersei above, but that’s her loss.

As she gazes at the ocean to the west, her housekeeper, Conchita Aguilar, enters. Chita (as she is usually called) has not just worked as April’s housekeeper for most of her life, but also "she and her husband, Juan, had quite literally brought up April” (p. 13); as a result, she is fiercely loyal to the family of her deceased mistress. Here is a portrait of her:

Looking at the tiny woman with her bright button eyes, the black Indian hair swept stiffly away from her face, parted in the middle and tidily put away in a tight bun low on the back of her neck, Lisa was surprised at the sudden urge to go and take this familiar person in her arms--or better still have Chita take her in hers.[...]Chita might be tiny, but she was all steel and whipcord (p. 13).

Sound familiar?

Yes, Chita bears a resemblance to our beloved Raxl. They even have a similar background, for Raxl, too, comes from a people indigenous to Mexico, according to Episode 23. Like Raxl, Chita is very old and has a mysterious magnetism that draws some people to her (which, in Raxl’s case, includes me). There are some minor differences--Chita doesn’t worship the Great Serpent, she uses gratuitous Spanish instead of gratuitous French, she has a living husband and grandson--but they are, in most ways, the same character. It’s clear that Ian Martin didn’t want to part with Raxl, and I don’t blame him one bit.

Also, for whatever reason, he was oddly insistent on both of them having a specific hairstyle. If you read the original script for the show’s pilot, you will see that he was almost as specific about Raxl’s hairstyle, mentioning “her hair tightly drawn over her ears to a small bun,” but less detailed about those of the other characters. Just an odd detail that probably bears little significance, but that I noticed.

Lisa tells Chita that Richard is on his way home with a new wife, a young, very wealthy orphan named Jenny Summers whom he met in the Philippines. This angers the ancient housekeeper, who argues that Jenny can never come to San Rafael

Because there is no place for her here--en la casa de La Señora! Everything here is hers--she still lives here, and will always live here. Her perfume is in every room, her pictures are everywhere, every ornament and ashtray and book I keep just the way she last touched it. There is no room for any other wife here! Oh, she will feel it, she will know it, because La Señora would never permit another woman to take her place (p. 16)!

Lisa insists that, despite the risk that Jenny won’t want to live on the estate and despite her equal displeasure about the situation, Chita keep an open mind regarding her and try not to be such a Mrs. Danvers about the situation. (OK, so she doesn’t actually say the last part; that’s just my paraphrase.) She also tries to pressure Chita into helping her take down the mementos of April at Richard’s orders, which she objects to, both for sentimental reasons and because they don’t have time to have the enormous fresco of April that adorns the former chapel. (Symbolism!)

“It was a breathless and yet terrible beauty. For any woman who stood next to it had to be eclipsed” (p. 20).

Yes, you read that right: they rededicated the mission’s former chapel to the silver screen sex goddess April Tennant. After their wedding, Richard had a giant fresco of her painted there in place of its former altar. This is a clear indication that one or more of the people in this household worship April, whether literally or figuratively. More than that, the portrait glows like that of THE DEVIL JACQUES ELOI DES MONDES, and seems, like Jacques’ portrait, to be alive, the living essence of a dead person. “Most haunting of all was the feeling that this was the woman--that she could not have died, that any moment she would step off the wall, and her silver laughter would fill the house again (p. 20).”

I’m sorry, Jacques. ;)

Coming up next: Jenny arrives at San Rafael and tries to adjust to living on an estate where almost everyone but Richard acts like they hate her.

{ Next: Part II -> }

#gothic fiction #cbs radio mystery theater #ian martin #joen arliss #shadow over seventh heaven #cbsrmt #strange paradise #related media #review #other reviews #ian martin's novels #analysis #gaze #rebecca #speculation on ian martin's original story #symbolism

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