#i know (i believe?) that in the comics he doesn’t escape via his own efforts- something happens with hell as a whole and he gets yoinked out

[edwinisms]

wait yeah hold on how the hell did edwin open a door from hell to earth? like if powerful beings like the night nurse or certain demonic entities are necessary to open and close doors to other planes (especially hell where souls being trapped there is kind of the point) then what the fuck did edwin manage to pull off? did he somehow trick a demon or whatever into opening one? was one opened for one reason or another– maybe upon a demon’s return from retrieving a soul– and he timed it, booked it, and jumped in? there certainly isn’t just some constantly open ever-accessible door at the top of The Endless Staircase considering that would make hell kind of pointless. did edwin payne manage, somehow, over the span of 70 years, to figure out how to open a door from limbo/the staircase to earth by himself? am i just missing something here?

[kekeslider]

I’ve been holding on to this one for a while because of sheer laziness, because I knew it would be long as fuck, but I continue to see people saying that Shadow Weaver was redeemed at the end, via one act of good before dying, and I don’t think that’s the case at all. I believe at the end she may have escaped.

Here’s my biggest take on SW, obvious as it is: she is primarily concerned with power and control at all times. It’s consistent through every bit of her story. She recognizes power in young people, Adora and Micah specifically, and seeks to control them. She’s nice to them, affectionate, at first. In her own super messed up way she cares about them. But never more than herself, her own desires and interests.

The common belief after the finale is that Shadow Weaver’s last act before the end was an attempt by the writing to give her a miniature redemption through death. And other people have said it but one of the purposes this actually serves is to show that despite all her efforts, SW never really controlled Adora and Catra, she never turned them into the things she wanted them to be, because they anchored each other. Adora and Catra crying over SW’s death isn’t to show that she was actually not so bad, it’s to show that in spite of everything, Adora and Catra still care about the life of others intrinsically.

Shadow Weaver knew this before her sacrifice. The fact that Adora could not continue on to the Heart without Catra was proof enough that she had lost control, if you could even argue that she ever truly had it. You might view SW’s decision to stop the beast and let them go as an acceptance of this fact, or that she simply did what had to be done to save the whole universe, or that she had a genuine desire to do one good thing in her life. But I’m going to argue for two different alternatives.

1. Shadow Weaver sacrificed her life here because she realized that she had no way out after this. She no longer had sway over Adora or Catra, and throughout the season, and some specific scenes in prior ones, both characters repeatedly call attention to SW’s abuse of them. They’ve reached a point in their journey where they’re both completely aware of her manipulation, her abuse, her two-sidedness. They never believe during this season that SW is a good person now, or that she repents for what she’s done. There’s a recognition that Shadow Weaver is helping the rebellion because she’s chosen to be on the side of the winners because that’s how she’ll guarantee her survival and maintain her control over the situation. She tried in the previous season to control Glimmer like she had the others, but Glimmer was too wise to actually trust SW, potentially because she knew what real love and loyalty was and recognized that that wasn’t what Shadow Weaver offered. In a genius turn, Glimmer uses Shadow Weaver rather than the other way around.

All attempts to guarantee her position after the war have failed. She has no control over Micah, Adora, Catra, or Glimmer. She can’t get Adora to the Heart without going back for Catra, so even if they somehow pull through without it she can’t claim herself a hero for her role in it. She is at the end of the road, she’s run out of tricks, and she makes a decision. She decides that dying in one last act of manipulation over the two girls she almost destroyed is her final way to secure her place in the narrative as a Hero. It’s about the legacy, it’s why she says “You’re welcome,” so they will be forced to believe she did it for them, and that would solidify her life as meaningful. It’s her last attempt to retain some of the power she craved, fought for, and stole throughout her life.

But I don’t think the writers actually intend for her to get what she wants here. Shadow Weaver is an interesting character, she has a lot of pull over events in the story, but there’s no sense that she’s beloved. Not by characters and not by writers. I’m eternally sorry to fall back on one of the most tired comparisons in the universe, but bear with me for a moment. In thinking about all of it, I noticed certain similarities between SW’s death and that of Severus Snape. One final moment before death that they want the child(ren) they abused to see that will justify everything. But that is where the similarity ends, and why I think it’s so different on the writing side of things. Snape’s death was intended by both author and narrative to excuse and forgive him for countless misdeeds. And over the years we’ve become far more critical of that. I don’t get the sense that the writers of She-Ra want us to forgive Shadow Weaver because she was oh so complex. I don’t think there’s a future catradora kid named “Shadow Hope Prime.” I think they wanted us to see this act of desperation for what it was: a last ditch attempt to retain control by a person that can’t care about anything but herself.

2. This is where we go straight into theorizing and headcanons so I’ll try to keep it shorter. My suggestion is this: Shadow Weaver did not die in her final scene, she made a grand escape.

At this point she has no friends, no allies, no one who believes she’s anything but dangerous. She has 4 people in positions of power she has personally and extravagantly harmed. She abused Catra and Adora throughout their lives, she manipulated Micah as a child and eventually sent him to Beast Island for at least 10 years, making him miss his daughter growing up, and never to see his wife again, and while SW never had the sway over Glimmer she did the others, she still was directly responsible for taking away her father, turning her mother into a, to be harsh, cowardly and ineffective leader for years, and indirectly responsible for the strife between Adora and Catra that took the war to new extremes.

Shadow Weaver has no one, and no options, and at that point in time the most likely outcome after it’s all over is prison, and she may not be lucky enough to be treated to Brightmoon’s cushy prison again.

You may ask at this point, Catra, Hordak, all the clones all get a redemption without threat of imprisonment, why not Shadow Weaver? And the answer is simple: Shadow Weaver has not redeemed herself in the eyes of the writers, viewers, or other characters. Catra saves Glimmer in an act of selflessness and love for Adora, and then becomes an instrumental help in saving Etheria. Not to mention Adora’s personal relationship with her and the recognition that they come from the same place and lived much of the same hardships. Hordak and the clones get a second chance because it is now known that they were all effectually mind-controlled and enslaved by Horde Prime, and their lives, as individuals with free choice and no strings holding them down, is only just starting. Not to mention Hordak and Wrong Hordak both have Entrapta on their side, and she’s a princess with her own kingdom and could just grant them asylum and bet the other princesses wouldn’t do anything about it lest they risk a civil war, but that doesn’t seem like a realistic issue for this new post-Horde planet anyway. The point is, the other antagonists from the show have made meaningful connections with other characters for the sake of them, not to be self-serving. Shadow Weaver continues to be manipulative up until the very end, no one will give her another chance at this point.

And she knows this. She’s a smart lady, and there’s a great big universe out there full of people that don’t know her. If Adora saves the day and the universe is saved all she has to do is get off planet, and if Adora fails they all die anyway, so why not have a go at it? My theory is that she uses her great big show of magic as a distraction and a disguise to make her escape. The world will believe she died, they may even celebrate her for her role in saving the universe, and she’ll be free.

You think there’s a hitch in this theory right? Because we see the room after she’s gone and all that’s left of her is her mask. Obviously she was completely destroyed, right?

But this specific scene reminded me of something else

If you’ve watched Teen Titans you know that the mask-wearing Slade was one of the major antagonists throughout the series, was also quite inclined to use and abuse powerful youths, and at the end was at the mercy of one (arguably two) of the children he had hurt. She kills him, he falls into lava, and the last thing we see of Slade is his mask. The next season picks up with Robin obsessed with the search for Slade, believing that he couldn’t really be gone that easily, and driven by this single remnant of him. Only to find out later that while Slade did die, he was resurrected and was once again back to be a massive asshole.

I think Shadow Weaver’s last scene does what it is meant to at first glance. Audience and characters believe she’s dead, which makes for a tidy ending, the death is non-explicit so kids don’t get too traumatized, but the ambiguity of it also means that if they wanted to, Shadow Weaver could return for a future installment in the series, be it comics, a movie, or another season. Whether those things are likely to be produced isn’t my interest in arguing here, it’s the possibility.

There’s still a lot of potential for Shadow Weaver to be used as the primary villain, and facing her again could be used any number of ways to shake up a domestic bliss the characters end up in, to have them, older, more mature, having spent time healing from how she hurt them, no longer be affected by her in the same ways. Or the complete opposite, they may still be affected by her, seeing her again could tear open old wounds, but in the end show that while hurt remains, they still carry on.

[wonderfulworldofmichaelford]

The OTHER Members of Eve’s Coven

Me and @lilmissrantsypants couldn’t fit all the coven in as cameos in chapter 3, so here’s a rundown on the members who didn’t make an appearance. I added some of the stuff that inspired us into making the characters, My wife just went crazy with descriptions for her characters.

Aleister & Tantomile Deering: A pair of twins who were orphaned during WWII. They had to scrape by to survive, with Tantomile whoring herself out for drug money. They were turned when Aleister begged for help as his sister was overdosing. They were plagued by psychic visions as mortals, their powers awakening fully when they were turned. They are practically inseperable nowadays.

Power: Aleister and Tantomile have innate psychic abilities, activated by touching someone. Tantomile can see into a person’s past, while Aleister can see multiple outcomes the future could hold and then latch on to the most likely scenario. Their vampiric power is a twin link that allows them to experience the emotions the other one does, as well as keep them connected.

Inspiration: The psychic cat twins Tantomile and Coripocat from Cats 

My wife came up with the basic concept and we workshopped them together from there; it’s a joint effort. She does Tantomile, I do Aleister.

Bartholomew Comstock: An overly aggressive puritan who was despised by his fellow townsfolk, he was banished from his New England home and forced to start a farm on his own. He nearly perished in the winter before Eve turned him. His hatred at being a disgusting, demonic creature such as a vampire is only ameliorated by his knowledge that Eve, having once been the angel Samael, ‘confirms’ his beliefs and allows him to eternally punish those he views as sinners.

Power: He believes his power gives him great strength against sinners, allowing him to inflict pain upon those who have done foul deeds. In truth, it is actually his own sins that give him strength, though his power does weaken as he exerts himself or runs low on blood (he cannot become unstoppably powerful).

Inspiration: The dad from The VVitch

Beatrix Cullen: Beatrix Cullen was a happy woman once, a skilled seamstress in the 1950s who simply loved the act of creation. She had an adoring boyfriend, and the two were set to be married, with Beatrix making a gorgeous wedding dress for her special day. But on that day, her groom never arrived, as he had been killed in a car accident on the way. Stricken by grief, Beatrix was easily convinced by Eve to join her coven, with the promise that perhaps her power could help her bring her husband back some day...

Power: Beatrix can imbue any object such as a sculpture or statue with life, essentially making golems without a magic scroll. Her most trusted golem is her mannequin, Manny, who often tries to steal her wedding dress. Her ultimate goal is to use her natural skills and her power to bring her husband back to life, stitching a Frankenstein monster of him and pieces of sleazy men who hit on her into a perfect flesh golem.

Inspirations: The bride from the Haunted Mansion, Kill Bill, Frankenstein, that one Tumblr post about 50s housewives fighting zombies with chainsaws, La Pascualita, Pegasus from Yu-Gi-Oh

Blanche Atterton: Daughter of Lady Drusilla Atterton, she grew up wanting nothing more than her mother’s love, though her mother was often far too preoccupied with ���other things” (which she later learned was all of her plotting and planning to ensure her riches).When given the choice for vampirism, she excitedly vowed her loyalty to her mother and Eve. As she was only 15 at the time and children would not survive the turning, her mother waited until she turned 21 before turning her.Blanche does everything for her mother’s attention and love. She doesn’t hesitate to do her bidding in hopes of her mother praising her for it. She’s misguided, not evil, though her mother’s praise has given her a superiority complex and she’s a bit of a narcissist.

Power:  Blanche’s power gives her a powerful, painful scream. Those within 5 feet of her screaming will suffer from temporary deafness for 5 minutes. Whether they fall deaf or not, bleeding from the ears is very common, especially among mortals.

Inspiration: Drizella from Cinerella

Dee Comporre: Giorgio Nero’s faithful, somewhat obsessed bodyguard. She quite obviously has a crush on him due to her hatred of any woman who so much as interacts with Giorgio, though Giorgio just sees her as being a bit overprotective. She has a shaved head, and paints her face to look like a skull.

Power: She can secrete and spit a powerful corrosive acid that can melt through even metal.

Inspirations: D’Compose from InHumanoids

Dorian Ferris: A serial killer known as “The Ferryman,” who always leaves coins over his victim’s eyes. As a mortal, he had far too many close calls, and was nearly caught several times, particularly during a bout in a town back in 1999. He tends to target wicked people such as domestic abusers, rapists, crooked cops, and so on, sending them down the River Styx ahead of time to make the world a better place. He willingly joined the coven to escape punishment. More than anything, he just wishes to live a quiet, peaceful life.

Power: Has luck manipulation, which can allow him to do everything from dodge attacks by near misses or turn his surroundings into a Final Destination movie for opponents. He tends to activate a particular mode based on the whims of a coin toss. 

Inspirations: Jinx from Teen Titans, Final Destinatiin, Two-Face, Yoshikage Kira

Elizabeth Bathory:   The Blood Countess herself. After evading death in the 1600s thanks to Eve, she became a loyal follower of the demon, and was recruited into the Order of the 1800s. Dracula and Rasputin managed to defeat her and supposedly kill her, but Bathory is notoriously hard to slay. True to her infamous reputation, she tends to “Feed” by bathing in the blood of her victims. 

Power:Bathing in blood gives her an insane power boost; the longer she soaks, the stronger she gets. She can also absorb blood through her skin, though she can’t absorb the blood of supernatural beings this way.

Elvis Rey: Growing up near the border, Elvis always wanted to be like his hero, Elvis PResley. He obsessively watched the man’s performances and learned his every move. When the man died, he vowed he was going to become the greatest Elvis impersonator that ever lived. The 80s weren’t too kind to him, and drinking, gambling, and overeating left him looking like chubby later-years Elvis. With debt collectors crawling down his neck, he turned to Eve, and became a powerful vampire.

Power: He is capable of replicating any non-supernatural ability he sees. For example, if he watched a martial arts movie, he would be able to pull off those moves. Think the comic book character Taskmaster. 

Inspirations: Elvis (Presley), Elvis (God Hand)

Giorgio Nero: Giorgio Nero was a member of Cosa Nostra who attempted to retire from this life due to his wife and child. However, his past would eventually catch up with him, and his child was nearly killed, which lead to Giorgio accepting an offer he had once rejected, but now couldn’t refuse: vampirism and joining with Eve’s coven. Despite everything, he is an honorable man who dearly loved his wife and adores and accepts his child.

Power: You know Magneto? Like from X-Men? Imagine that but instead of a Holocaust survivor it’s an Italian guy. Boom.

Inspirations: Magneto, Risotto Nero from Vento Aureo, Metlar from InHumanoids

James Wilson: James was born in 1812 as a slave. When he was 8, he was gifted to the man one of his master’s daughters married, along with 13 other slaves. As his former master’s name was Wilson, he took that as his surname. He worked as a stablehand until he became a farmer at age 12. After a rather brutal beating when he accidentally dropped a bag of freshly picked potatoes at age 25, James encountered Eve. She promised to help free him. She turned him into a vampire (1837). He lived on the run until the Emancipation Proclamation was issued and went into full effect in 1863. James used to speak in thick, Gullah speech, but over time, it has lessened as he acquired modern language.

Power: James’s power gives him the ability to summon and play with water. He can use it however he wishes: to drown someone, to create a small unnatural pool to swim in, or to cool someone off with a quick sprinkle. This comes from his silent love for water, though he wasn’t ever allowed to swim or play in it.

Inspiration: Splash Mountain

Juno Nero: The child of Giorgio Nero. They tend to wear long black coats, masks, and facial bandages to hide their face and body due to extreme anxiety. They are mute as well, and communicate via sign language. They are nonbinary.

Power: They can stretch their body like rubber (think Elastigirl, Rubber Band Man, Plastic Man, you get the idea).

Inspiration: Tendril from InHumanoids

Lady Drusilla Atterton: Born in 1852 in England as Drusilla Graham to a middle-class family. She grew up idolizing the wealthy and decided she would do whatever it took to become wealthy herself.Met Josiah Kipling, a 28 year old man, when she was 22. He fell madly in love with her. She was overjoyed as he was quite wealthy. They married in 1874 and had two daughters together (Katharine [1875] and Blanche [1877]). However, after 8 years of marriage (1882), Drusilla (now age 30) fell out of love with him and secretly laced his food with rat poison, ultimately killing him. As they had personal chefs, it was deemed to be the fault of the chef, who was arrested and charged with the crime. As his widow, she inherited a share of his wealth.Over the next 10 years (1882-1892), Drusilla married 8 other wealthy men from all over the country, all who mysteriously died less than a year later in what were deemed to be unfortunate accidents.

Donald Thompson, married in 1883, died in a carriage accident.

Maurice Parker, married in 1884, died of a laudanum overdose.

Timothy Edwards, married in 1886, died by drowning

Christopher Watson, married in 1887, died by falling out of a second story window

Nathaniel Harris, married in 1888, died of apparent suicide

Bernard Carter, married in 1890, died of a hunting accident

Percy Clarke, married in 1891, died after being attacked by a burglar

Timothy Atterton, married in 1892, died in bed (cause unknown)

She met Eve in 1892 shortly after marrying Timothy Atterton. Eve had heard of her reputation as the Cursed Widow (but knew full well her husbands’ deaths were her doing). As Eve was extremely weakened, Amon turned her. With Eve’s assistance, she killed her final husband by scaring him to death by introducing him to Eve. Drusilla vowed her loyalty.With the knowledge of how to turn another from Eve (as Amon refused to tell her how), Drusilla offered the gift of vampirism to each of her daughters. Katharine ( refused and cut herself off from her mother, instead choosing to live a full and honest life. Blanche, on the other hand, being so keen to be accepted and loved by her mother vowed her own loyalty to both her mother and Eve. When she turned 21, Drusilla turned her as well (as she was informed that youth would not survive the turning).

Power: Her  power allows her to paralyze her target with a simple cold stare for a full 5 minutes.

Inspiration: Lady Tremaine from Cinderella

Lord Gordon Ruthven: A rich, aristocratic vampire who enjoyed luring in and preying on young women. He was part of the Order of the 19th century. He is currently a severed head, as his body was destroyed by the Silverwings.

Power: Can exude a charm aura that makes women more susceptible to his commands and desires, though it only works on women capable of being attracted to him (it would not work on lesbains, for instance).

Mabel Lockhart: A sickly young girl whose father made a deal with Eve to keep her from dying. Her dad is currently missing, and she is unsure if he’s even alive.

Power: She has the ability to absorb energy, such as steam energy, electrical energy, etc and gain boosts and power depending on what type she absorbs. For example, absorbing electrical energy would allow her to to shoot lightning. She can also absorb a person’s energy, but at most she can make them very lethargic and gets little else from absorbing that sort of energy.

Inspiration: Loosely based on the Pokemon Magearna

Maddox Hinton: Maddox was born in 1863 in a small town in England. He doesn’t talk much about his past, but he does boast about how he and his father were valued hypnotists in their small town. He was his father’s apprentice, learning how the art of hypnotism worked, though he wasn’t quite as successful as his father. This was what Eve used to convince him to turn to vampirism. It occurred when he was 25 and preparing to take over the family business.His power helped him convince his customers that they were actually under the effects of hypnotism. His father simply believed that taking over the business helped him tap into his true potential. 

He continued this way until Eve demanded his help. He lied to his dad, telling him he was going to travel abroad and spread their business, causing his father to take over the business once again.Maddox served Eve for a few years before she told him she didn’t need his help anymore. It was likely this that irritated him so much that he eventually became loyal to Amon while under the very convincing facade he’s loyal to Eve.

The rest of his past is unknown. All he will often tell people is he traveled all over the world, performing great feats under fake names as “world-renown hypnotists”. Maddox is a wild card. He does things for the fun of it or for his own pleasure, often without any sympathy towards others.

Power: Maddox’s power allows him to take control of another (similarly to Gabby’s). However, he can take control of up to two people at once. Instead of physically puppeteering them, he simply suggests they do something and they do it.

Inspiration: Vex from Lost Girl

Margaret Derwin: Margaret was born in New York City in 1902. She grew up with a love for music, particularly singing. She had dreams of becoming a famous singer.When she was 18, she pursued these dreams. She got a job as a dancer at a speakeasy with hopes of, eventually, being able to become one of their singers in time. It was there that she met Elizabeth, one of the other dancers. They secretly fell in love (which answered Margaret’s confusion about why she wasn’t interested in men). Eventually, they decided to run away to California together. They made plans and prepared for this, but on the day it was to happen, Elizabeth never showed up. Margaret later discovered she had changed her mind and, instead, was going to marry a man she’d met at the speakeasy.Eve found Margaret heartbroken and wandering the streets looking for a new job after quitting at the speakeasy (as it was too difficult to continue working there when Elizabeth was still there). Eve easily wooed her to her side. Though, as Margaret had good intentions, Amon had eventually been able to convince her to assist him instead as he wanted to ensure Eve would stop preying on innocent people like herself.

Power:  Margaret’s power involves her voice. Through singing, she can influence one’s emotions depending on her intentions (anger them, seduce them, calm them down, soothe them to sleep).

Nora: Nora’s memories are very faded. She knows she was born to a very poor family in Ireland. She knows she was sold as an indentured servant at age 13 in exchange for her tickets to America, board, and food. She knows she worked for that American family for 7 years. She knows she caught influenza and was promptly fired by the family for fear she’d infect them all. She knows she was near death, wandering the streets alone, when a massive black snake promised to save her. At the time, Nora believed it was just an illusion. She found out the next day, however, that it was not. She’d been saved by the gift of vampirism.Nora lived a long, long time as a homeless woman. She watched as America grew into a country of its own. She preyed on any she could find in order to survive. Eventually, she took residence in an abandoned house on a street. Over time, rumors spread that a ghost lived in the house on Blackwell Street. Her appearance and her power did much to add to this as well, as did the occasional mysterious deaths of those who wandered into the house hoping to catch a glimpse of the ghost.

Power: Nora’s power allows her to become visible or invisible on command. She can only switch from one to the other every 10 minutes. She often uses this to frighten mortals and uphold her identity as the Ghost of Blackwell Street.

Tony Sugar:  Tony Sugar is the owner, spokesman, and iconic figure of the Lost Paradise Candy Company. With the help of Amon, he became one of the first successful Black candy makers in America. He’s very flamboyant, campy, and charismatic—essentially a black Willy Wonka. He is pansexual because, in his own words, “everyone deserves a little Sugar.” He is also an avid beekeeper.

Power:  He has the power to “mellify” corpses, filling them with a honey-like substance and turning them into zombies.

Inspirations: Tony Todd’s Candyman, Ruby Rhod, the song “Sweet Bod,” the myth of the mellified man

Walter Sherman: Formerly a college professor and devoted family man from the dawn of the 20th century, Walter was a good man known for always thinking forward and being able to accept new changes in the world. However, when a freak accident claimed the life of his wife and child, he couldn’t handle it and attempted suicide before being saved by Amon. He’s mostly in the coven out of loyalty to Amon.

Power: He has the power of adaptability, allowing him to easily adapt to any situation. For example, using lightning against him would make him adapt lightning resistance.

Inspirations: The Carousel of Progress

Wayne Nicol: A formerly friendly clown who was forced to witness unspeakable horrors during WWII. He survived the horrors, but was left fundamentally disturbed by the nightmare he had lived through. He joined the coven hoping to find some sort of safety, but as it turned out, Eve had other plans.

Power: Has the power to control and manipulate a person’s fears to weaponize against them.

Inspirations: Scarecrow (Batman), Pennywise, Freddy Krueger, The Day the Clown Cried

[brokehorrorfan]

DVD Review: Shark Bait

Shark Bait collects six schlocky shark movies - Swamp Shark (2011), Ghost Shark (2013), Zombie Shark (2015), Ozark Sharks (2016), Mississippi River Sharks (2017), and Santa Jaws (2018) - along with a bonus alligator flick - Alligator Alley (2013) - for good measure. The fin-tastic DVD set is available now from Mill Creek Entertainment in celebration of Shark Week.

Although Mill Creek presents the features in no discernible order, I opted to view them in chronological order to see if there were any patterns or growth over the seven years spanned. They're all cheesy, but it's interesting to see which of the movies embrace their inherent absurdity, which makes them easier to swallow. Case in point: Sharknado became a cultural phenomenon because it went all-in on the concept.

In viewing all seven of the movies over a short span of time, the formula is apparent. A cast with a couple of celebrities past their prime and a bunch of wooden, inexperienced actors play one-dimensional characters that spout unnatural dialogue (usually with an obligatory Jaws reference) in between animal attacks accomplished with laughable CGI.

Another fascinating fact is that a mere two directors are responsible for all seven movies. Griff Furst (Lake Placid 3) was in the director's chair for Swamp Shark, Ghost Shark, and Alligator Alley, while Misty Talley helmed the other four. I imagine making these movies is good fun, although it likely becomes tedious after a few. But their work was clearly successful enough to warrant repeat hirings, so more power to them.

Swamp Shark is an example of a pre-Sharknado creature feature that takes itself far too seriously. An animal smuggler accidentally releases a rare shark with a virtually impenetrable exoskeleton into a Louisiana river. Despite the swampland being infested with the added threat of alligators, the opportunity for shark vs. gator action is sadly missed. While the shark is predominately created with crummy CGI, a couple of shots admirably utilize a good, old-fashioned rubber head.

Kristy Swanson (Buffy the Vampire Slayer) toplines the film as the person tasked with stopping the flesh-hungry shark before it wreaks havoc at the annual Gator Fest. The cast also includes Robert Davi (The Goonies), D.B. Sweeney (Spawn), and Baseball Hall of Famer Wade Boggs. After years of independent and made-for-television work, Swamp Shark cinematographer Lorenzo Senatore recently shot the new Hellboy.

Ghost Shark is a strong contender for the most entertaining movie in the set. It starts with a practical, fake great white in the prologue until it's killed, after which point it becomes the titular, translucent Ghost Shark. It can materialize in any water, and its appearances become increasingly more outrageous, from the ocean and a swimming pool to water pipes and a slip and slide. I won't give away the most ludicrous highlight, but it's a rare unforgettable moment in a Syfy movie.

Levity is key, which is why the last act becomes more tiresome when it focuses on the why and the how, although I appreciate that its mythology is taken seriously despite the silly premise. Mackenzie Rosman (7th Heaven) stars as a girl with a personal vendetta against the specter. Richard Moll (House) brings surprising nuance to the role of the alcoholic lighthouse keeper with a dark past. Thomas Francis Murphy (The Walking Dead) plays the small town’s sheriff.

Zombie Shark (also known as Shark Island) finds a shark - named Bruce, of course - escaping from the scientific facility in which it was the subject of experimentation. It proceeds to find food on the shore of a nearby, secluded island. The shark spreads its undead virus to other sharks and, eventually, to humans. There's no shortage of voracious fish action, including a first victim that caught me off guard; a rarity in these oft-predictable films.

Cassie Steele (Degrassi: The Next Generation) stars as one of four friends on the quaint island for a getaway, and Jason London (Dazed and Confused) co-stars as the facility's head of security hunting down the shark. Although not a "name" actor, Roger J. Timber provides solid comedic relief as an islander who serves as host to the guests.

Ozark Sharks follows a family's long-weekend trip to an Arkansas cabin that holds a special place in the grandmother's heart, only to find that bull sharks have invaded the nearby lake. This happens while the town is gearing up for a big firework festival. Much like Zombie Shark, the first kill is a welcome surprise, but the film culminates with an unnecessarily melodramatic finale.

Allisyn Ashley Arm (A.P. Bio) stars as the angst-ridden lead who becomes the final girl of sorts. Thomas Francis Murphy is back, this time playing the soothsaying owner of the local bait shop. He owns an arsenal of homemade weaponry that adds a dash of fun to the bland proceedings, including a giant air canon, an oar turned into a high-voltage cattle prod, a double-bladed katana, and a crossbow that shoots dear antlers.

Santa Jaws not only has the best title, but it may very well be the strongest effort in the set. Although it lacks the star power of the other movies, it offers a radical deviation from the creature feature formula; it's a coming-of-age movie. When a dorky teen boy receives a magic pen that turns its drawings into a reality, he uses it on his comic book, Santa Jaws. Soon there's a killer shark with glowing, red eyes, a candy cane horn, and a Santa hat on its dorsal fin targeting his family amidst their Christmas gathering.

The result is something like Jaws meets Krampus by way of Ruby Sparks, if it were produced by the Hallmark Channel. Shark excitement takes a backseat in this one, and there’s a whole lot of unintentional camp present, but the youth-driven approach to the material is a breath of fresh air. With no hackneyed military or science roles, the characters feel more natural and developed.

Though not quite as far a deviation as Santa Jaws, Mississippi River Sharks spices things up a clever meta element. Jason London plays a fictionalized version of himself, the star of the Shark Bite franchise. He's the celebrity guest at a podunk town's fishing competition, and his inflated ego leads him to believe that he's the most qualified person to save the day when sharks start attacking. Unlike his blase role in Zombie Shark, London lights up the screen in this supporting role.

The real hero is Cassie Steele's Tara, but it's Dean J. West (The Hunt) who shines when London is absent. In the comedic role of Tara's friend, Wyatt, he's an overzealous Shark Bite fanboy who relishes the opportunity to live out his favorite movie... even if he doesn't know what he's doing. A brief cameo from Jeremy London (Mallrats) - Jason's twin brother - furthers the meta aspect.

Alligator Alley is included as a bonus film. Thomas Francis Murphy plays another pivotal role, this time as a bayou redneck who brews chemically-enhanced moonshine. He dumps a string of bad batches into the river, mutating the local alligator population to the point where they can shoot spikes from their tails. He has a long-standing family feud with another local Cajun family, with two star-crossed lovers - one played by Jordan Hinson (Eureka) - caught in the middle, but they must band together to stop the gators.

The first half of the film is a bit dull, as you're essentially waiting for all of these annoying characters to get eaten, but the pacing picks up when concept that can only be described as weregators is introduced. The left-field plot point is so preposterous that it makes the film vastly more interesting. And maybe it's because I had just watched six shark movies and water is hard to animate, but the CGI isn't half bad considering the time and budget.

Shark Bait crams all seven films onto two discs. Compression is apparent in every movie (particularly with murky underwater footage, for whatever reason), and of course there are no special features, but it still beats watching them with Syfy's incessant commercial interruptions. Each one clocks in at under 90 minutes, so even the poorly-paced movies - of which there are several - are over before you know it.

Although far from high art, the best films in the collection - Santa Jaws, Ghost Shark, and Mississippi River Sharks - subvert expectations by mixing up the trite formula, and they don't shy away from levity. If you're lamenting the lack of a new Sharknado film this year - the franchise concluded with its sixth installment last year - fill the shark-sized gap in your heart with the Shark Bait collection.

Shark Bait is available now on DVD via Mill Creek Entertainment.

[yourprayer]

pop culture - chapter 3

Adulthood in a town like Derry is even worse than childhood. The listless, empty ramblings of days dragging on in a town that felt like one-size-too-small-shoes sat heavier on the recently graduated than the younger children. Before you were eighteen and responsible for your own lunch money, you could spend your interminable afternoons exploring the surrounding environment, friends of friends abound. Escaping to the arcade and seeing the same films six times at the same theater was an acceptable amount of nothing to do at twelve years old. But when nineteen years hit Bill Denbrough and college acceptance letters didn’t, the sudden, overwhelming, nothingness of nowhere Maine became too heavy to bear.

chapter 3 (wc: 2.5k) 

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“I still think this is a stupid idea.” Eddie’s grumble came from behind him; as Stan turned to look over his shoulder, he saw Richie help the complaint box down out of the bed of Mike’s truck.

“We know, we know, Mister Whiney.” Richie sighed, pulling Eddie out of the descending Ben and Bev’s path via headlock-disguised-as-hug. Stan waited patiently for Bill to clamber out of the passenger door, watching him carefully for signs of imbalance. Over the two days of convincing it took to get Eddie to come near Mike’s truck (you’re going to ABDUCT me and make me go back! he had insisted, the night Richie had attempted to physically haul him into the vehicle) Stan had gotten a good four meals into Bill, (which, though still not enough, had been more than expected) but had not managed to make him sleep enough. The paranoia that the incident would repeat itself was keeping Bill just on the edge of functional; though, in Stan’s opinion, the only thing truly keeping Bill from falling over into the abyss was his constant babysitting, but he wouldn’t say it.

“This whole thing is giving me a terrible feeling.” Eddie muttered, shivering obviously. Though it was the dead end of summer, the evenings were starting to bring in a chill, and Eddie was notorious for being constantly cold. Richie gave him a look as he shrugged off the comically large denim jacket he was wearing. He had purchased it at the local goodwill and then proceeded to wear it almost daily; he called it his “smoking jacket”, not because it was a fancy piece of men’s formal-wear, but because the pockets were large enough to easily hide his packs of cigarettes. It was a faded grey, (Eddie had always assumed the jacket had been black, once, but perhaps it was just a dark grey denim) the inside lining a cotton fabric printed with a small, delicate floral design. Bill and Ben had attempted to tease him relentlessly about this, but he had responded with a swift claim that “patterns were his thing” and that it made the jacket look more “punk”. To further support his thesis he mentioned the black corduroy collar, adornments of zippered pockets, and the cuffs he had rolled at the ends of the too-long sleeves. In theory, the whole concept was a bit of a mess, but on Richie it just seemed to work. The strangest part about the jacket, by far, was not the patterns or color or origin. The most inexplicable aspect was the care tag. It read as a women's small, and completely dwarfed Richie. He was tall, with a torso to match, and it managed to cover all the way from his shoulders past his ass, a feat that even some men’s larges had failed to do. (Not that Eddie had noticed, no sir.) The sleeves, before being cuffed, swallowed his large hands. The rest of the jacket hung loosely off his sides, with what appeared to be enough space to conceal most of another person. And a myriad of other things, as they had found out one night of stolen-beer-fueled tomfoolery, where a game of truth or dare had morphed into “What (or Who) Can Richie Hide In His Jacket?”. The answer? A six pack of beer (pocket), the couch pillow (behind his back), Bill’s wallet (stolen and placed in the zippered pocket by Mike, and remained there undiscovered until the next morning), four unshucked corn cobs (two in each sleeve), Eddie (for the latter, he was instructed to give Eddie a piggy-back ride, then have both of them insert their arms into the sleeves. Sadly the front was unable to button closed, but with his legs tucked around Richie’s hips, the only part of Eddie that was visible from behind was his head. They had stayed that way for the remainder of the evening, claiming to be stuck ((they weren’t)) in the jacket together.) and still the packet of cigarettes always hidden safely in the breast pocket. The jacket had become in an integral part of Richie’s personality, even if it shrunk him.

Presently, Eddie was drowning in it.

“Why did you put your jacket on me?” Eddie asked, his brow furrowed, as he held the draped cloth together at the collar.

“Because I was getting hot, so I was gonna make you carry it, but then you started shaking like the little chihuahua you are, so I figured you could just wear it. You gonna put it on?” He mused, giving Eddie a prompting look as he reached into the breast pocket and pulled out his pack.

“I am not a chihuahua.” Eddie spat, inserting his arms into the sleeves.

“Let’s see,” Richie sighed as he pulled one cigarette out of the box. “You’re small,” he started listing, sticking the cig in his mouth as he replaced the pack, fishing out the lighter that was hidden next to it. Eddie could feel his searching fingers brush lightly against his chest through the fabric. “You yell at everything,” Richie continued, as he found his prize and extracted it, flicking the end and raising it to the tip of the cigarette he was talking around. “And presently, you’re shaking.” He finished before taking a drag. “Remind me how that’s not a chihuahua, again?” He smirked, exhaling smoke through his nose.

Eddie was too distracted by the whole display to be properly angry.

“C’mon Rich, leave the poor boy alone.” Mike said as he pocketed the keys and plucked the cigarette from Richie’s hand, earning a pout as he stole a drag.

“You spoil all my fun.” Richie said, following Mike and the rest of the pack as they set off down their usual path. “Literally, all of it. Making fun of Eddie and smoking are like, the only things I care about.”

“You need to find better hobbies, man.” Mike smiled good-naturedly around another pull as Richie grabbed the thing right out of his mouth. Bev rounded Richie’s other side and stole it before he could return it to his mouth. He frowned at the surprise of an empty grip, turning blindly before being met with the sight of Bev’s smirk wrapped around the butt. Ben laced his fingers with hers with a small laugh, as she took a drag and then stuck it back in Richie’s mouth.

“Ah-hmph- fanks.” Richie mumbled as he struggled not to drop it. Eddie rolled his eyes at the fumble and fell into step next to the lanky boy, holding his arms close to his chest. Richie’s teasing hadn’t been incorrect; despite the added heat of the jacket, he was shaking. With every step they took towards their usual hang, where Richie had seen the star fall, the feeling of bone-deep fear he’d felt a few days ago when he imagined pursuit grew more and more palpable.

If he reached out to take Richie’s hand to steady himself over a particularly difficult section of the path, could he really be blamed?

And if he kept hold through the rest of their trek, would they believe him if he blamed the fear?

________________________________________________________________

“You need some water yet?” Stan nudged Bill’s shoulder lightly as they trailed behind the group. Mike had taken the lead, having a conversation with Ben about some car at their work. Bev was behind, having a moment of quiet contemplation as she smoked the second cigarette Richie had started (which she had proceeded to steal promptly). The aforementioned chimney smoker came next, Eddie’s small and trembling hand locked in his as Richie helped guide him over the terrain. Normally Eddie could take the path just fine; they hiked it on a regular basis after all. But even from a few paces behind, Stanley could see the way Eddie’s shoulders were shaking and how often his footfalls were missteps. He watched in curious silence as Richie attempted to distract Eddie with mumbled comments as they walked.

“N-no. I’m okay.” Bill responded with a small shake of his head.

“Let me know when you do.” Stan offered, shifting the water bottle he held from his right to his left hand. Bill only sighed and gave a curt nod as he hitched up the straps of his trusty backpack.

Bill had mentioned to Stan earlier that morning that all the worried looks and sideways glances were upsetting him, so Stan had been making a conscious effort to keep himself from constantly checking up on the boy beside him. Since the only thing in front of him was the nearly-six-foot-tall Wall Of Richie, he took the length of their hike to visually check up on his best friend.

What he saw perturbed him; painted on Richie’s face every time he had to tighten his grip on the smaller boys hand was the same concern and worry that had been steeping in Stan’s mind the longer hi watched Bill descend down his spiral of woes.

Two light bulbs went off simultaneously in Stan’s head.

“Whoa, you okay?” Bill caught his arm as Stan tripped.

“Yeah… yeah, I’m fine.” Stan exhaled, avoiding Bill’s concerned gaze.

Two realizations had hit him so hard he had lost his footing.

The first; Richie was hopelessly in love with Eddie.

The second; Stan himself felt the exact same way about Bill.

________________________________________________________________

“Okay, but how far to the right did we go, guys.” Eddie was protesting as Mike and Richie tried to retrace their footsteps from the fateful night from before. Ben could see from his position in the back of the group how close Eddie was to an asthma attack- no, not asthma. he corrected his thoughts.

“It doesn’t matter Eds, we have to go up to get to the plateau.” Richie sighed, coming up on the bluff they had climbed.

Eddie shook his head. “I don’t want to climb it.”

“Eddie-” Mike turned to talk some sense into his friend.

“No, Mike, I’m serious, I’m fucking climbing up there.” Eddie exhaled shakily, his body obviously trembling.

The groups momentum came to a stop as they all reached the vicinity of the wall of the bluff, Richie’s hand already poised on a rock jutting out near his forehead. Mike was next to him, back against the dirt as he stood with his arms crossed. The rest formed a tight semi-circle in front of the two boys, almost everyone’s eyes trained on Eddie as he stood there shivering.

“Jesus, Eds, are you that fucking cold?” Richie looked at him in surprised concern.

“I don’t fucking know!” Eddie screeched, surprising even himself with the outburst. He looked at his feet guiltily as everyone stayed quiet. “I don’t know.” He repeated in an even tone. “I- I can’t stop shaking and I feel kind of dizzy and- I don’t think I can make the climb. My hands are really clammy a-and my arms feel weak-”

“It’s okay,” Ben, who was closest, placed a gentle hand on Eddie’s shoulder. “I’ll stay down here with you.” Ben gave Eddie a warm smile as the small boy looked up at him sheepishly. “As long as you’re okay with that, Bill.” Ben looked over at Bill, whose heart was sinking. “We did come out here for you.”

“You sure you c-c-can’t make it up, Eds?” Bill asked, his voice small.

Eddie gave him a sympathetic look. “I promise I’m not trying to avoid helping you, Bill. I feel really sick, like for sure this time.”

“Let him stay behind, Bill, he’s not jerking you.” Richie said, giving Bill a solemn look and avoiding Eddie’s eyes.

“W-we’ll be quick.” Bill said, resigned, as he nodded to Ben. Ben gave his own curt nod in reply, before turning to Beverly.

“You cool without me up there, hun?”

“As a cucumber.” She smiled. “Want me to get you more pictures?” She offered, gesturing vaguely at the camera Ben brought that was tucked away safely in Bill’s backpack.

“Anyone ever tell you you’re perfect?” Ben sighed dreamily.

“You, every fucking day, Haystack. C’mon, let’s get this over with.” Richie grumbled as he began ascending the wall. Ben rolled his eyes before he dropped a kiss on Bev’s forehead. She returned the gesture before following Richie’s lead and climbing. Mike scaled his section quickly, Stan and Bill following him after quick glances at Eddie. He nodded them off before sitting on a nearby rock.

“You need any water or anything?” Ben asked Eddie casually after the others had all disappeared over the top of the bluff. Eddie shook his head, hugging his knees to his chest as Ben came and sat on the ground next to him. “You wanna talk at all?” He asked after a beat.

“Can’t.” Eddie said quietly, obviously out of breath.

“Need me to count you out?” Ben replied, keeping his voice calm despite his prevalent worry. Eddie nodded again. “Okay, hold up a finger when you’re ready to start.” Eddie took a few more shallow breaths before raising his index finger. “Alright. In; one, two, three. Out; one, two, three, four, five.” Ben repeated his count, stretching the seconds as they went and Eddie got his pace adjusted. When they reached eight on the exhale, Eddie composed himself.

“Thanks.”

“Anytime.”

A pause.

“Wanna tell me what’s going on?”

“I would if I could.” Eddie picked up a small twig and began fiddling with it.

“You look just as scared as you did after we watched Friday the Thirteenth last weekend.” Ben joked (partially).

“I feel it.” Eddie gave his a serious look. “I’m fucking scared, Ben. I don’t like any of this.” Ben shifted so he was leaning back, hands holding his weight as he turned towards Eddie. “But even I know this is irrational.” He gestured at his shaking body.

“Why do you think this is happening?” Ben questioned.

Eddie was silent as he used the twig to draw lines on the rock he was perched on. Ben waited patiently for his answer.

“I think… something weird is happening with me too.”

“Bill’s kind of weird?”

“Maybe closer to Bev’s.”

“Describe it to me.”

“S, I’ve been getting these, I don’t know, episodes where my whole body starts acting like I’m being chased by a fucking ax murderer. My heart races, I get clammy, shaky, the whole nine yards. The same day as everyone else’s weird thing, I-” he dropped the stick, looking up at Ben. “I was walking home from the pharmacy and- and my brain was fucking convinced that someone was chasing me, so I took off running! And there was no one fucking there!”

Ben furrowed his brow in confused consideration.

“And it’s happening again right now.” He stated cautiously, which Eddie confirmed with a nod.

“It’s-” The smaller boy froze, a strange and sickly expression growing on his face, Ben instantly alert at the change in his demeanor. He listened intently, fearing Eddie had heard something, but was only met with silence, until-

“Mike.” Eddie said, voice grave.

“What about him?” Ben stood as Eddie scrambled to his feet, worry growing in his gut.

“He’s hurt.” Eddie grew frantic as he approached the wall, searching for a way up.

“How do you know?” Ben asked incredulously, trying to halt Eddie’s mad scramble.

“I don’t know!” He protested. Suddenly it occurred to him what he just said. “I don’t know.” He looked at Ben in shock. “I just do.”

Ben sighed.

“Well, you know what, let’s fucking roll with it. Shit’s weird as it is.”

Eddie almost laughed at the response.

________________________________________________________________

authors notes: thanks for patiently awaiting an update guys! sorry this has taken forever to get out, and sorry that ive decided to cut this chapter shorter than i intended. i just dont have the energy and wherewithal to but it all up tonight. the last couple of scenes i didnt put in this will be added to chapter four. the fic is now available on ao3 so go check it out! some lil facts coming to life in this chapter: mike & ben work at an auto repair shop. love me some mechanic boys. and yes my boy mike smokes. he and rich and beverly are the only ones that do on the regular, but bill has been known to be a social smoker when he’s in a better mood. yes i based richie’s jacket on this one that i own. dont judge me im an adult i can make my own choices.

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popcultureverse posts

[slivermxgic]

{cis woman; she/her; bisexual} – harley quinn  who comes from dc has been spotted in sydney. they are twenty five years old and are a human. they have been called +intelligent, +bubbly, -crazy. it seems like their memories are missing. i’ve also heard that they are a dead ringer for margot robbie. 

“I have done everything you said. Every test, every trial, every initiation. I have proved I love you. Just accept it!“ 

ℕ𝕒𝕞𝕖: Dr. Harleen Frances Quinzel (Real Name, formally) , Harley Quinn (Better known as) 

ℕ𝕚𝕔𝕜𝕟𝕒𝕞𝕖: Harls, The Cupid Of Crime, The Maiden Of Mischief, The Mistress Of Mayhem, The Clown Princess Of Crime, The Queen of Gotham City

𝔸𝕘𝕖 : twenty five

𝕊𝕡𝕖𝕔𝕚𝕖𝕤: human 

ℍ𝕠𝕞𝕖𝕥𝕠𝕨𝕟: Gotham City

𝕆𝕔𝕔𝕦𝕡𝕒𝕥𝕚𝕠𝕟 : Psychiatrist

𝕊𝕖𝕩𝕦𝕒𝕝 𝕆𝕣𝕚𝕖𝕟𝕥𝕒𝕥𝕚𝕠𝕟 : bisexual

𝕄𝕒𝕣𝕚𝕥𝕒𝕝 𝕊𝕥𝕒𝕥𝕦𝕤: single

𝔹𝕚𝕣𝕥𝕙𝕕𝕒𝕪: July 20, 1990

𝕝𝕒𝕤𝕥 𝕡𝕠𝕚𝕟𝕥: finding bruce the hyena in chinatown 

𝕄𝕠𝕣𝕒𝕝 𝔸𝕝𝕚𝕘𝕟𝕞𝕖𝕟𝕥 : good/evil/neutral 

character life: 

movie history:  

Harleen Quinzel was born to unnamed parents on was born on July 20, 1990 in Gotham City (in the comic books and in the animated series her parents were named sharon and nick quinzel, in the  animated series sharon was her alcoholic mother and her father was a deadbeat dad who was also a  greedy gambler and con artist) in the movies her mother is i believe not mention in the movies and her father is unnamed . (also in the book books she has three younger brothers barry, frankie and ezzie, in another universe and timeline and different comic book harley has a sister named Delia Quinzel , in that same universe she has a daughter with the joker who she gives up and the joker doesn’t know she exist named lucy)

her family life was highly dysfunctional since her drunkard father constantly tried to abandon her even though she always found her way back home 

sometime during her childhood her nothing good for father sent her to the orphanage run by a nuns while there  her attitude landed her into multiple trouble to the point that Harleen smashed a nun with an oar. 

once she reach high school Harleen  became known as a model student, achieving excellent grades as well as extensive gymnastics training. Because of her efforts, she was rewarded a full scholarship to Gotham City University where she majored in psychiatry under Dr. Odin Markus (comic book : she was an  Honor Student and a Gymnast. She attended Gotham University so that much was in common with the movie however she initially went to college for Veterinary and Biological Science, but for some unknown reason she left that field to pursue Psychiatry. She excelled in her field, eventually earning a place as a psychiatrist at a prominent hospital, but her interest in criminal psychology led her to transfer to Gotham City's famed Arkham Asylum) not long after her graduation, Quinzel's theoretical thesis made a huge success that it led to her transfer into the job as a psychiatrist intern at Arkham Asylum

the joker one of Harleen patients imprisoned there by none other then Batman,because she talked to him so much at one point she took a particular interest in him, to the point now she regularly visiting and speaking with him. 

As their sessions went on, Quinzel was gradually manipulated by the psychopath to the point where she eventually fell in love with him, and the Joker got her to smuggle a machine gun into the sanitarium, leading to his escape. 

Before leaving however, the Joker subjected to Harleen shock therapy, he electrocuted and tortured her until she was completely no longer sane, to the point where she was insane this only greatly affecting her mental state even further

Harleen chased down the joker because she wanted him to take her with him, so they went to  Ace Chemicals there the joker asked Quinzel to  pledge an oath and was asked if she would die for him. She responded in the by allowed herself to fall into the vat of chemicals after she jumped into the chemicals the joker almost well he considered leaving her to die but promptly changed his mind and jumped in after her, pulling her up to the vat's surface. He then kissed her, and Quinzel awakened with the same frontotemporal dementia that her lover received via exposure to the chemicals and oxygen deprivation.there she got the name harley quinn the name was born (in the comics when she realized his intention, she had struggles against him, but he shoved her into one of the chemical vats and watched her sink to the bottom. Afterwards, he drained it and found her inside, alive, but changed. She had lost touch with reality) 

in the movies the joker giving her a red-and-black Harlequin costume (in the comics she choose the costume herself)

on October 13,2014 a fellow crime boss monster came visited a strip club owned by the Joker, greeted by the Joker himself. the joker asked for harley to come over once he noticed  the other’s male’s lustful attraction towards her pole-dancing, calling her a "bad bitch" and greatly angering the Joker.. Monster T, having become aware of the Joker's sarcasm, attempted to assure him that Harley is his girl, and that he wanted "no beef." The Joker, however, just shot Monster T in the head with no waring.

after the two left the joker’s trip club, the joker drove with harley in the passenger seat in Gotham City street. they were being chased by batman , harley decided when the batman jumped on the car hood that shooting the bat would be a good idea (not that would do anything since his suit is bullet proof) the joker tried to attempting to shake Batman off, made a sharp turn that sent his car flying off the road and straight into the water knowing full well harley would not swin, the joker abandoned both the car and harley (she was saved by none other then batman himself but before that he knocked her out because she was trying to stab him) 

after batman saved her , he put her on the hood of the batmobile, he  checks for a pulse, but does not find one. With very much reluctance, the bat proceeds to perform mouth-to-mouth resuscitation to try and revive her. A pleased Harley recovered and began to kiss him. Her advances were rejected and she was taken by him into captivity

Quinn was transferred to Belle Reve supermax

after putting several guards into into the hospital, Quinn was eventually given her own special cell to keep her locked up and to keep the guards safe. she was put was put inside a small electrified cage inside of a barbed fence to keep her in contained.

she wasn’t given any comforts or clothing; she used the bed sheets supplied for her gymnastic routines

while in prison the  sadistic guard, Hunter Griggs, usually force-fed and tortured Quinn,so he has earned her anger over the prolonged months 

one day while she was in prison she was visited by a government  official (since she was recruiting villians for task force x ) harley was meditating when argus director Amanda Waller

task force x was a group of villians that undertake high-risk, covert missions in exchange for commuted prison sentences (the task force was eventually nicknamed suicide squad by one of the members deadshot

harley during their current  mission try to escape on a helicopter with the joker (her chip has been disabled) their helicopter is hit with a missile. As  both her and Joker both attempt to make their escape, a sudden explosion throws Harley out of the helicopter and she lands on the rooftop below and watches the helicopter, with Joker still in it as it crashes into a nearby building

the suicide squad defeat Enchantress and her brother Incubus

she is back in prison but this time she is enjoying her new espresso machine, the wall outside her wall explodes, allowing The Joker's gang to break in and storm the prison. Harley's cell is forced open with a buzzsaw, allowing Joker to enter and reveal himself to Harley he is still alive. Harley embraces her once lost love and Joker tells her that they're going home

harley relationship was board line abusive he has he's beaten her, thrown her out of cars, and buildings, as well as constantly berating her and giving her the cold shoulder all while manipulating her into loving him . 

sometime after they return home , the joker grew bored of harley and broke up with her, he had one of his henchmen throwing her out into the streets.

she adopted a hyena, which names Bruce after Bruce Wayne. (she isn’t aware that he saved her and both put her in jail and that he is batman) 

for a time she never publicly said they were broke up until she drove , stealing a truck and sending it hurtling into Ace Chemicals, resulting in a massive explosion.

the few she did tell didn’t believe her so she was left largely alone and friendless 

she would soon discovered that declaring her independence came with consequences everyone who she had ever wronged deciding that it was open season on her and they all came after her 

she was couldn’t do anything in peace not even  to enjoy her favorite breakfast sandwich without being attacked.her past has finally caught up with her 

the Black Mask captured her , she wasn’t sure what she had done to anger him . she had managed to get out of the situation by offering to find his lost diamond for him , he let her go but told her to find a Cassandra Cain

she found Cassandra in Gotham City Police Department, she breaks into the police department makes her way pat the guards towards cain cell and She breaks her out, but her actions also result in the release of the other prisoners in the cell-block, resulting in a three-way fight between her, the escaped prisoners and the other mercenaries sent to try to capture Cassandra Cain

during the fight harley’s skills are tested and she wins

she has to lay low with cain for a while and bonds with her 

she and the birds of prey win the fight against the black mask 

sometime after that the birds of prey go get tacos and she and cain ditched the rest and set off in their own adventures and during that time she finds bruce her  hyena in chinatown and she takes cain under her wing 

Sydney : 

harley has no memories she had no memories of the joker or the trauma she has been through , not even memories of the birds of prey or task force x/suicide squad. cause she has no memories she isn’t aware of her real personality or that she isn’t sane . 

her personality with no memories is like her personality before she meet the joker and went crazy. she back to her kind none crazy personality. 

she back to working as a Psychiatrist however she isn’t a Psychiatrist for criminal like she was before she became harley quinn 

harley believes she lived in Sydney her whole life and that she is an only child and she had loving parents

[shanedakotamuir]

Watchmen wants us to know one thing: We’re all being used by those with power

Looking Glass seems to have a very full life. | HBO

The show delves into Looking Glass’s past — and revisits one of the most memorable moments from the comic.

After playing footsie with the original Watchmen comic for four weeks, the new TV show’s fifth episode — “Little Fear of Lightning” — dumps us straight into one of the comic’s most famous moments: the “interdimensional” squid attack on New York that kills 3 million people and does grave psychic damage to even more.

The event, as those who’ve read the comic know, is a plot cooked up by Ozymandias to avoid nuclear war and maybe bring about world peace. Known to the public as an “attack” by beings from another dimension, it manages to bring the US and USSR closer together, leading to the version of America we see in the series, where the Robert Redford administration is nearing its 30-year anniversary but where the tensions of the Cold War no longer seem relevant to the world at large.

As we learn in “Little Fear of Lightning,” it’s a deep, dark secret, held closely by a very small few, that the squid didn’t come from another dimension but was instead manifested right here on Earth. And among the people who were affected by its arrival are Steven Spielberg (who made a very Schindler’s List-esque movie about the squid) and our own Looking Glass, who narrowly escaped death at the squid’s nasty tentacles as a teen, then saw his life scarred by having been so close to such a devastating occurrence.

Just like Watchmen’s third episode, “Little Fear of Lightning” is a character showcase, following Looking Glass for nearly its entire running time. (We check in on Adrian Veidt briefly, and he does seem to be in space, spelling out a message using all of the corpses he’s been generating. This show!) But “Lightning” tells a darker and sadder story about what it means to live in a world where you survived an experience that’s roughly as rare — and even more likely to kill you — as being struck by lightning. It’s about survivor’s guilt. But it’s also about realizing that the world is built atop a lie.

To dig further into that theme, I (Vox critic at large Emily VanDerWerff) am joined by Vox associate culture editor Allegra Frank and culture writer Constance Grady to break down “Little Fear of Lightning,” from the Seventh Kavalry to James Wolk’s inherent shiftiness to squids galore.

Times Square: Now with 100 percent more squid

HBO

Looking Glass takes off his mask for a bit.

Emily: In the build-up to director Zack Snyder’s 2009 adaptation of Watchmen for the big screen, all involved agreed to change the ending of the original comic. Despite a slavish faithfulness to the comic’s images (if not exactly its themes) in the rest of the film, it was thought that a giant squid landing in Times Square would be too much for people to process. Instead, the movie suggested that Doctor Manhattan had created some sort of energy pulse that leveled much of Manhattan, thus necessitating his move to Mars.

It honestly wasn’t a bad story shift — it gave Doctor Manhattan a more easily understandable motivation to bail on Earth, at least (if you, for some reason, believe a godlike blue man would have understandable motivations, which I might quibble with). But I’m so, so happy the squid (Squidley? Squidward? Squidbert?) exists in the world of HBO’s Watchmen to destroy this fictional version of New York. True to the spirit of this project, “Little Fear of Lightning” writers Damon Lindelof and Carly Wray (another The Leftovers alum) and director Steph Green pull out resonances with the 9/11 attacks but also the ways we use pop culture to process these sorts of horrors.

What’s most notable, however, is how the opening flashback makes viewers feel the sheer gutting horror of that moment and how it would have reverberated in the decades to come. Allegra: I don’t know how spoiled you are on the comic, but how did you feel about the squid? Was it a bridge too far for you, as the movie’s creative team feared it would be for their 2009 audience? Or are you going to share a recipe for delicious calamari with me, so excited are you by the prospects of a giant cephalopod?

Allegra: I’ve become increasingly “spoiled” on the original Watchmen comic in my weeks-long quest to grasp what’s happening on the TV show. So I was aware of the squid attack — but only in the abstract. This week’s episode visualized what I interpreted as a very bizarre method of mass destruction and proved how terrifying that kind of experience could be.

The cold open rendered a young Looking Glass the equivalent of that classic horror movie trope, the Final Girl: He’s a teenage boy thrust into a situation where he could possibly lose his virginity, but the moment never comes to bear. His sexual anxiety, and the virginal purity that, in horror movies at least, establishes him as a rare moralist, ends up saving his life in the end. Looking Glass finds himself alone after a devastating, sudden, inexplicable mass casualty.

This scene helped to ease me, the sensitive viewer, into the idea of the squid attack because we saw only the aftermath and not the act of the killing itself. It’s still a shocking moment and a horrifying image to see hundreds of dead bodies lying on the ground, but I don’t think the scene veered too far into the ostentatious, as HBO has made no effort to hide how disturbed the show’s version of 2019 Tulsa is.

And on a plausibility level, that all those deaths were the effect of a squid that apparently came from another dimension doesn’t quite phase me — five episodes in, a squid attack feels normal enough for Watchmen, despite its inherent absurdity. It’s the impact of the attack that is meaningful, sculpting Looking Glass into the lonely, sexually repressed man we’ve come to know in the episode’s contemporary storyline.

On the inherent shiftiness of James Wolk

HBO

Yes, we’re aware this is technically Jeremy Irons right beneath a subhead about James Wolk.

Constance: I’m coming into this show pretty unspoiled. All of my knowledge of the comic comes from the time a friend who read it 10 years ago summarized it for me, and I came away with a vague understanding of something something giant squid, something something blue penis. But even with minimal knowledge of the comic, the squid attack still lands; it’s a moment of pure Lovecraftian horror, and I absolutely buy that it would traumatize Looking Glass forever. Which only makes it all the more heartbreaking when he realizes that this horrific event that has shaped his life forever was a lie.

The other big reveal this episode comes when we find out that James Wolk’s affable gentleman senator Joe Keane is the leader of the Seventh Kavalry, and that he apparently saw his leadership as half of a partnership with the now-dead Judd as the chief of the police. For me, that twist wasn’t exactly surprising, but it was immensely satisfying, because it’s such a good use of Wolk’s inherent shiftiness.

Maybe it’s because I’m most familiar with Wolk from his role as Mad Men’s Bob “NOT GREAT” Benson, but anytime I see him onscreen, I feel incapable of trusting him. (Well, I trust him to inspire some truly iconic gifs, but that’s it.) Or maybe it’s because he’s so handsome: it only stands to reason that anyone with a face that symmetrical has to be hiding something. (Incidentally, this is why I think Armie Hammer is going to be great as Maxim De Winter in the forthcoming Rebecca. Obviously he has something to hide, because why else would he be so tall?) Regardless, I’ve been slowly going insane watching him slither around the sidelines of every Watchmen scene with his good ol’ boy accent and his Kennedy-lite posture, so the reveal that he is the man behind the curtains of the Seventh Kavalry is fantastically gratifying.

But the reveal is also thematically compelling, because it gets at an idea that seems fundamental to the Watchmen universe: The state and the terrorists are in on everything together. They are run by the same self-interested billionaires who think of the rest of us as their pawns and turn us against each other for their own purposes. All of the systems are corrupt, and escaping them is nearly impossible. All we’re left with is individuals trying to do their best to survive in a broken world.

Allegra, how did the Seventh Kavalry reveal work for you? Do you think there’s any possibility for hope left in the Watchmen world?

Allegra: Before I answer your question, I have to say your read on James Wolk (and Armie Hammer!) has deeply wounded me. But maybe that’s because you’re right about him — I can’t help but trust a beautiful man like Wolk’s Senator Keene when he wants me to believe he’s on the side of justice. That smile! That perfectly combed hair! Those bright, twinkling eyes! I’m a superficial goon, is what I’m saying, easily manipulated by pretty boys.

As such, Keene’s connection to the Seventh Kavalry gutted me. I yelled at my screen as he and other men and women we’d thought were good guys pulled off their Rorschach masks. How is it that so many of the people we’ve gotten to know in Tulsa deceived Angela, Laurie, and Looking Glass so easily and so totally? Their involvement is evidence that Adrian Veidt’s giant squid attack was not an end-all, be-all, but instead the impetus for decades of selfish behavior on the part of uncaring rich men looking to gain control over an unsuspecting public with dwindling resources.

But I don’t think that necessarily dictates a hopeless situation going forward. For starters, tying the Seventh Kavalry reveal to Looking Glass’s storyline — he being a survivor of this sort of selfish behavior in the truest sense — offers the kind of motivation that should undoubtedly empower those who do remain on the side of good.

This mass destruction via cephalopod, whether or not it was justified in the service of preventing a nuclear war, has all kinds of ramifications — from Looking Glass walking out of that carnival hall of mirrors to find hundreds of dead bodies, to Angela learning that her closest friend and mentor was never supporting her cause in the first place. These are devastating truths, but they’re also ones that I very much expect to embolden our heroes in this otherwise nihilistic world.

What about you, Emily? Do you think Looking Glass will find he power within him to share Veidt’s secret about the squid attack with Angela and company?

Will Looking Glass even survive, tho?

HBO

Laurie and Looking Glass have a chat.

Emily: Before this episode, I wasn’t sure if Looking Glass was one of my favorite characters because he was so inherently compelling, or because Tim Blake Nelson is such a terrific actor. After this episode, I feel comfortable saying: It’s both.

The shattered quality that young Looking Glass carries out of that hall of mirrors moves forward with him into the current Tulsa timeline, and it’s the same shattered quality that is a major part of why he betrays Angela at episode’s end. To be sure, the Seventh Kavalry has revealed to him that much of his life has been based on a lie. But instead of telling his friend about this lie, he betrays her.

Before this episode aired, one of our colleagues was talking about how they didn’t want to see Looking Glass revealed as a secret racist. But what “Little Fear of Lightning” does with the character is almost sadder. Looking Glass isn’t an overt racist. He knows enough to say “woke” things like “He was a white man in Oklahoma” when Angela finds that KKK hood in Judd’s closet. But he’s also bound to something terrible by dint of who he is. In the complicated logistics of Watchmen’s plot, that terrible something is a conspiracy to keep the wool pulled over the world’s eyes.

But on a metaphorical level, the story plays as a muted horror movie about trying to do the right thing and still being roped in with the worst kinds of people because of how structural power works. Which is to say: Watchmen remains a show about whiteness, and Looking Glass is perhaps the most potent example of how you can be a truly kind and compassionate human being and still have a lot to answer for, including stuff that you maybe weren’t even aware of.

That’s what’s so provocative about the Seventh Kavalry being rooted in a truth. One of the details of the original Watchmen that makes me so uncomfortable is that Rorschach — the violent sadist and borderline fascist — is ultimately right about a lot of what he’s saying. It’s just that his methods (secrecy and paranoia) distort the narrative so much that he ceases to be someone worth emulating. He even ceases to be a reliable narrator, despite the fact that he’s often telling the truth.

But this season has revolved around twin secrets buried and kept away from those who most need to know them. The Seventh Kavalry revelation has the most immediate bearing on the plot — in that yes, other characters should probably know who was responsible for that squid attack — but the Tulsa massacre has the most immediate bearing on us in the audience, where words like “massacre” have only recently been applied to what history has often dubbed as a “race riot.” Buried secrets fester and become infected. But we can’t help but bury secrets.

At any rate, maybe Looking Glass won’t have to worry about any of the above much longer. As “Little Fear of Lightning” ends, a whole host of Seventh Kavalry gunmen are entering his house, seemingly to kill him. I hope he makes it through. After all: He’s played by Tim Blake Nelson, and it’s a delight to see him on our screens every week.

Constance: Looking Glass really is a fantastic character because he’s such a good example of how you can be both complicit in oppressive systems, and also the pawn of people with a lot more power than you have.

Looking Glass is obviously being used, and he knows it. He’s been used his whole life, arguably first by the church that sent him out into the world as a teen missionary, then by Adrian Veidt and his squid, then by Judd and the Tulsa police force, and now by Keane and the Seventh Kavalry. He’s a man whose superpower is being able to tell when someone is lying to him, but he has still spent his life being lied to and manipulated by all the people and all the systems that he trusted in.

And by extension, so have most of the other people in the Watchmen universe, including Angela and Laurie. And by further extension, so have we. So the question then becomes: What do we do when we learn that we are being used?

Looking Glass responds by deciding to let Keane and the Seventh Kavalry use him. He doubles down on his complicity. What we have yet to see is how the rest of the characters in this world will react to the idea that the people they trust are using them as pawns — and whether this world allows for the possibility of breaking free of your complicity all together.

from Vox - All https://ift.tt/2Ol79dB

[corneliusreignallen]

Watchmen wants us to know one thing: We’re all being used by those with power

Looking Glass seems to have a very full life. | HBO

The show delves into Looking Glass’s past — and revisits one of the most memorable moments from the comic.

After playing footsie with the original Watchmen comic for four weeks, the new TV show’s fifth episode — “Little Fear of Lightning” — dumps us straight into one of the comic’s most famous moments: the “interdimensional” squid attack on New York that kills 3 million people and does grave psychic damage to even more.

The event, as those who’ve read the comic know, is a plot cooked up by Ozymandias to avoid nuclear war and maybe bring about world peace. Known to the public as an “attack” by beings from another dimension, it manages to bring the US and USSR closer together, leading to the version of America we see in the series, where the Robert Redford administration is nearing its 30-year anniversary but where the tensions of the Cold War no longer seem relevant to the world at large.

As we learn in “Little Fear of Lightning,” it’s a deep, dark secret, held closely by a very small few, that the squid didn’t come from another dimension but was instead manifested right here on Earth. And among the people who were affected by its arrival are Steven Spielberg (who made a very Schindler’s List-esque movie about the squid) and our own Looking Glass, who narrowly escaped death at the squid’s nasty tentacles as a teen, then saw his life scarred by having been so close to such a devastating occurrence.

Just like Watchmen’s third episode, “Little Fear of Lightning” is a character showcase, following Looking Glass for nearly its entire running time. (We check in on Adrian Veidt briefly, and he does seem to be in space, spelling out a message using all of the corpses he’s been generating. This show!) But “Lightning” tells a darker and sadder story about what it means to live in a world where you survived an experience that’s roughly as rare — and even more likely to kill you — as being struck by lightning. It’s about survivor’s guilt. But it’s also about realizing that the world is built atop a lie.

To dig further into that theme, I (Vox critic at large Emily VanDerWerff) am joined by Vox associate culture editor Allegra Frank and culture writer Constance Grady to break down “Little Fear of Lightning,” from the Seventh Kavalry to James Wolk’s inherent shiftiness to squids galore.

Times Square: Now with 100 percent more squid

HBO

Looking Glass takes off his mask for a bit.

Emily: In the build-up to director Zack Snyder’s 2009 adaptation of Watchmen for the big screen, all involved agreed to change the ending of the original comic. Despite a slavish faithfulness to the comic’s images (if not exactly its themes) in the rest of the film, it was thought that a giant squid landing in Times Square would be too much for people to process. Instead, the movie suggested that Doctor Manhattan had created some sort of energy pulse that leveled much of Manhattan, thus necessitating his move to Mars.

It honestly wasn’t a bad story shift — it gave Doctor Manhattan a more easily understandable motivation to bail on Earth, at least (if you, for some reason, believe a godlike blue man would have understandable motivations, which I might quibble with). But I’m so, so happy the squid (Squidley? Squidward? Squidbert?) exists in the world of HBO’s Watchmen to destroy this fictional version of New York. True to the spirit of this project, “Little Fear of Lightning” writers Damon Lindelof and Carly Wray (another The Leftovers alum) and director Steph Green pull out resonances with the 9/11 attacks but also the ways we use pop culture to process these sorts of horrors.

What’s most notable, however, is how the opening flashback makes viewers feel the sheer gutting horror of that moment and how it would have reverberated in the decades to come. Allegra: I don’t know how spoiled you are on the comic, but how did you feel about the squid? Was it a bridge too far for you, as the movie’s creative team feared it would be for their 2009 audience? Or are you going to share a recipe for delicious calamari with me, so excited are you by the prospects of a giant cephalopod?

Allegra: I’ve become increasingly “spoiled” on the original Watchmen comic in my weeks-long quest to grasp what’s happening on the TV show. So I was aware of the squid attack — but only in the abstract. This week’s episode visualized what I interpreted as a very bizarre method of mass destruction and proved how terrifying that kind of experience could be.

The cold open rendered a young Looking Glass the equivalent of that classic horror movie trope, the Final Girl: He’s a teenage boy thrust into a situation where he could possibly lose his virginity, but the moment never comes to bear. His sexual anxiety, and the virginal purity that, in horror movies at least, establishes him as a rare moralist, ends up saving his life in the end. Looking Glass finds himself alone after a devastating, sudden, inexplicable mass casualty.

This scene helped to ease me, the sensitive viewer, into the idea of the squid attack because we saw only the aftermath and not the act of the killing itself. It’s still a shocking moment and a horrifying image to see hundreds of dead bodies lying on the ground, but I don’t think the scene veered too far into the ostentatious, as HBO has made no effort to hide how disturbed the show’s version of 2019 Tulsa is.

And on a plausibility level, that all those deaths were the effect of a squid that apparently came from another dimension doesn’t quite phase me — five episodes in, a squid attack feels normal enough for Watchmen, despite its inherent absurdity. It’s the impact of the attack that is meaningful, sculpting Looking Glass into the lonely, sexually repressed man we’ve come to know in the episode’s contemporary storyline.

On the inherent shiftiness of James Wolk

HBO

Yes, we’re aware this is technically Jeremy Irons right beneath a subhead about James Wolk.

Constance: I’m coming into this show pretty unspoiled. All of my knowledge of the comic comes from the time a friend who read it 10 years ago summarized it for me, and I came away with a vague understanding of something something giant squid, something something blue penis. But even with minimal knowledge of the comic, the squid attack still lands; it’s a moment of pure Lovecraftian horror, and I absolutely buy that it would traumatize Looking Glass forever. Which only makes it all the more heartbreaking when he realizes that this horrific event that has shaped his life forever was a lie.

The other big reveal this episode comes when we find out that James Wolk’s affable gentleman senator Joe Keane is the leader of the Seventh Kavalry, and that he apparently saw his leadership as half of a partnership with the now-dead Judd as the chief of the police. For me, that twist wasn’t exactly surprising, but it was immensely satisfying, because it’s such a good use of Wolk’s inherent shiftiness.

Maybe it’s because I’m most familiar with Wolk from his role as Mad Men’s Bob “NOT GREAT” Benson, but anytime I see him onscreen, I feel incapable of trusting him. (Well, I trust him to inspire some truly iconic gifs, but that’s it.) Or maybe it’s because he’s so handsome: it only stands to reason that anyone with a face that symmetrical has to be hiding something. (Incidentally, this is why I think Armie Hammer is going to be great as Maxim De Winter in the forthcoming Rebecca. Obviously he has something to hide, because why else would he be so tall?) Regardless, I’ve been slowly going insane watching him slither around the sidelines of every Watchmen scene with his good ol’ boy accent and his Kennedy-lite posture, so the reveal that he is the man behind the curtains of the Seventh Kavalry is fantastically gratifying.

But the reveal is also thematically compelling, because it gets at an idea that seems fundamental to the Watchmen universe: The state and the terrorists are in on everything together. They are run by the same self-interested billionaires who think of the rest of us as their pawns and turn us against each other for their own purposes. All of the systems are corrupt, and escaping them is nearly impossible. All we’re left with is individuals trying to do their best to survive in a broken world.

Allegra, how did the Seventh Kavalry reveal work for you? Do you think there’s any possibility for hope left in the Watchmen world?

Allegra: Before I answer your question, I have to say your read on James Wolk (and Armie Hammer!) has deeply wounded me. But maybe that’s because you’re right about him — I can’t help but trust a beautiful man like Wolk’s Senator Keene when he wants me to believe he’s on the side of justice. That smile! That perfectly combed hair! Those bright, twinkling eyes! I’m a superficial goon, is what I’m saying, easily manipulated by pretty boys.

As such, Keene’s connection to the Seventh Kavalry gutted me. I yelled at my screen as he and other men and women we’d thought were good guys pulled off their Rorschach masks. How is it that so many of the people we’ve gotten to know in Tulsa deceived Angela, Laurie, and Looking Glass so easily and so totally? Their involvement is evidence that Adrian Veidt’s giant squid attack was not an end-all, be-all, but instead the impetus for decades of selfish behavior on the part of uncaring rich men looking to gain control over an unsuspecting public with dwindling resources.

But I don’t think that necessarily dictates a hopeless situation going forward. For starters, tying the Seventh Kavalry reveal to Looking Glass’s storyline — he being a survivor of this sort of selfish behavior in the truest sense — offers the kind of motivation that should undoubtedly empower those who do remain on the side of good.

This mass destruction via cephalopod, whether or not it was justified in the service of preventing a nuclear war, has all kinds of ramifications — from Looking Glass walking out of that carnival hall of mirrors to find hundreds of dead bodies, to Angela learning that her closest friend and mentor was never supporting her cause in the first place. These are devastating truths, but they’re also ones that I very much expect to embolden our heroes in this otherwise nihilistic world.

What about you, Emily? Do you think Looking Glass will find he power within him to share Veidt’s secret about the squid attack with Angela and company?

Will Looking Glass even survive, tho?

HBO

Laurie and Looking Glass have a chat.

Emily: Before this episode, I wasn’t sure if Looking Glass was one of my favorite characters because he was so inherently compelling, or because Tim Blake Nelson is such a terrific actor. After this episode, I feel comfortable saying: It’s both.

The shattered quality that young Looking Glass carries out of that hall of mirrors moves forward with him into the current Tulsa timeline, and it’s the same shattered quality that is a major part of why he betrays Angela at episode’s end. To be sure, the Seventh Kavalry has revealed to him that much of his life has been based on a lie. But instead of telling his friend about this lie, he betrays her.

Before this episode aired, one of our colleagues was talking about how they didn’t want to see Looking Glass revealed as a secret racist. But what “Little Fear of Lightning” does with the character is almost sadder. Looking Glass isn’t an overt racist. He knows enough to say “woke” things like “He was a white man in Oklahoma” when Angela finds that KKK hood in Judd’s closet. But he’s also bound to something terrible by dint of who he is. In the complicated logistics of Watchmen’s plot, that terrible something is a conspiracy to keep the wool pulled over the world’s eyes.

But on a metaphorical level, the story plays as a muted horror movie about trying to do the right thing and still being roped in with the worst kinds of people because of how structural power works. Which is to say: Watchmen remains a show about whiteness, and Looking Glass is perhaps the most potent example of how you can be a truly kind and compassionate human being and still have a lot to answer for, including stuff that you maybe weren’t even aware of.

That’s what’s so provocative about the Seventh Kavalry being rooted in a truth. One of the details of the original Watchmen that makes me so uncomfortable is that Rorschach — the violent sadist and borderline fascist — is ultimately right about a lot of what he’s saying. It’s just that his methods (secrecy and paranoia) distort the narrative so much that he ceases to be someone worth emulating. He even ceases to be a reliable narrator, despite the fact that he’s often telling the truth.

But this season has revolved around twin secrets buried and kept away from those who most need to know them. The Seventh Kavalry revelation has the most immediate bearing on the plot — in that yes, other characters should probably know who was responsible for that squid attack — but the Tulsa massacre has the most immediate bearing on us in the audience, where words like “massacre” have only recently been applied to what history has often dubbed as a “race riot.” Buried secrets fester and become infected. But we can’t help but bury secrets.

At any rate, maybe Looking Glass won’t have to worry about any of the above much longer. As “Little Fear of Lightning” ends, a whole host of Seventh Kavalry gunmen are entering his house, seemingly to kill him. I hope he makes it through. After all: He’s played by Tim Blake Nelson, and it’s a delight to see him on our screens every week.

Constance: Looking Glass really is a fantastic character because he’s such a good example of how you can be both complicit in oppressive systems, and also the pawn of people with a lot more power than you have.

Looking Glass is obviously being used, and he knows it. He’s been used his whole life, arguably first by the church that sent him out into the world as a teen missionary, then by Adrian Veidt and his squid, then by Judd and the Tulsa police force, and now by Keane and the Seventh Kavalry. He’s a man whose superpower is being able to tell when someone is lying to him, but he has still spent his life being lied to and manipulated by all the people and all the systems that he trusted in.

And by extension, so have most of the other people in the Watchmen universe, including Angela and Laurie. And by further extension, so have we. So the question then becomes: What do we do when we learn that we are being used?

Looking Glass responds by deciding to let Keane and the Seventh Kavalry use him. He doubles down on his complicity. What we have yet to see is how the rest of the characters in this world will react to the idea that the people they trust are using them as pawns — and whether this world allows for the possibility of breaking free of your complicity all together.

from Vox - All https://ift.tt/2Ol79dB

[timalexanderdollery]

Watchmen wants us to know one thing: We’re all being used by those with power

Looking Glass seems to have a very full life. | HBO

The show delves into Looking Glass’s past — and revisits one of the most memorable moments from the comic.

After playing footsie with the original Watchmen comic for four weeks, the new TV show’s fifth episode — “Little Fear of Lightning” — dumps us straight into one of the comic’s most famous moments: the “interdimensional” squid attack on New York that kills 3 million people and does grave psychic damage to even more.

The event, as those who’ve read the comic know, is a plot cooked up by Ozymandias to avoid nuclear war and maybe bring about world peace. Known to the public as an “attack” by beings from another dimension, it manages to bring the US and USSR closer together, leading to the version of America we see in the series, where the Robert Redford administration is nearing its 30-year anniversary but where the tensions of the Cold War no longer seem relevant to the world at large.

As we learn in “Little Fear of Lightning,” it’s a deep, dark secret, held closely by a very small few, that the squid didn’t come from another dimension but was instead manifested right here on Earth. And among the people who were affected by its arrival are Steven Spielberg (who made a very Schindler’s List-esque movie about the squid) and our own Looking Glass, who narrowly escaped death at the squid’s nasty tentacles as a teen, then saw his life scarred by having been so close to such a devastating occurrence.

Just like Watchmen’s third episode, “Little Fear of Lightning” is a character showcase, following Looking Glass for nearly its entire running time. (We check in on Adrian Veidt briefly, and he does seem to be in space, spelling out a message using all of the corpses he’s been generating. This show!) But “Lightning” tells a darker and sadder story about what it means to live in a world where you survived an experience that’s roughly as rare — and even more likely to kill you — as being struck by lightning. It’s about survivor’s guilt. But it’s also about realizing that the world is built atop a lie.

To dig further into that theme, I (Vox critic at large Emily VanDerWerff) am joined by Vox associate culture editor Allegra Frank and culture writer Constance Grady to break down “Little Fear of Lightning,” from the Seventh Kavalry to James Wolk’s inherent shiftiness to squids galore.

Times Square: Now with 100 percent more squid

HBO

Looking Glass takes off his mask for a bit.

Emily: In the build-up to director Zack Snyder’s 2009 adaptation of Watchmen for the big screen, all involved agreed to change the ending of the original comic. Despite a slavish faithfulness to the comic’s images (if not exactly its themes) in the rest of the film, it was thought that a giant squid landing in Times Square would be too much for people to process. Instead, the movie suggested that Doctor Manhattan had created some sort of energy pulse that leveled much of Manhattan, thus necessitating his move to Mars.

It honestly wasn’t a bad story shift — it gave Doctor Manhattan a more easily understandable motivation to bail on Earth, at least (if you, for some reason, believe a godlike blue man would have understandable motivations, which I might quibble with). But I’m so, so happy the squid (Squidley? Squidward? Squidbert?) exists in the world of HBO’s Watchmen to destroy this fictional version of New York. True to the spirit of this project, “Little Fear of Lightning” writers Damon Lindelof and Carly Wray (another The Leftovers alum) and director Steph Green pull out resonances with the 9/11 attacks but also the ways we use pop culture to process these sorts of horrors.

What’s most notable, however, is how the opening flashback makes viewers feel the sheer gutting horror of that moment and how it would have reverberated in the decades to come. Allegra: I don’t know how spoiled you are on the comic, but how did you feel about the squid? Was it a bridge too far for you, as the movie’s creative team feared it would be for their 2009 audience? Or are you going to share a recipe for delicious calamari with me, so excited are you by the prospects of a giant cephalopod?

Allegra: I’ve become increasingly “spoiled” on the original Watchmen comic in my weeks-long quest to grasp what’s happening on the TV show. So I was aware of the squid attack — but only in the abstract. This week’s episode visualized what I interpreted as a very bizarre method of mass destruction and proved how terrifying that kind of experience could be.

The cold open rendered a young Looking Glass the equivalent of that classic horror movie trope, the Final Girl: He’s a teenage boy thrust into a situation where he could possibly lose his virginity, but the moment never comes to bear. His sexual anxiety, and the virginal purity that, in horror movies at least, establishes him as a rare moralist, ends up saving his life in the end. Looking Glass finds himself alone after a devastating, sudden, inexplicable mass casualty.

This scene helped to ease me, the sensitive viewer, into the idea of the squid attack because we saw only the aftermath and not the act of the killing itself. It’s still a shocking moment and a horrifying image to see hundreds of dead bodies lying on the ground, but I don’t think the scene veered too far into the ostentatious, as HBO has made no effort to hide how disturbed the show’s version of 2019 Tulsa is.

And on a plausibility level, that all those deaths were the effect of a squid that apparently came from another dimension doesn’t quite phase me — five episodes in, a squid attack feels normal enough for Watchmen, despite its inherent absurdity. It’s the impact of the attack that is meaningful, sculpting Looking Glass into the lonely, sexually repressed man we’ve come to know in the episode’s contemporary storyline.

On the inherent shiftiness of James Wolk

HBO

Yes, we’re aware this is technically Jeremy Irons right beneath a subhead about James Wolk.

Constance: I’m coming into this show pretty unspoiled. All of my knowledge of the comic comes from the time a friend who read it 10 years ago summarized it for me, and I came away with a vague understanding of something something giant squid, something something blue penis. But even with minimal knowledge of the comic, the squid attack still lands; it’s a moment of pure Lovecraftian horror, and I absolutely buy that it would traumatize Looking Glass forever. Which only makes it all the more heartbreaking when he realizes that this horrific event that has shaped his life forever was a lie.

The other big reveal this episode comes when we find out that James Wolk’s affable gentleman senator Joe Keane is the leader of the Seventh Kavalry, and that he apparently saw his leadership as half of a partnership with the now-dead Judd as the chief of the police. For me, that twist wasn’t exactly surprising, but it was immensely satisfying, because it’s such a good use of Wolk’s inherent shiftiness.

Maybe it’s because I’m most familiar with Wolk from his role as Mad Men’s Bob “NOT GREAT” Benson, but anytime I see him onscreen, I feel incapable of trusting him. (Well, I trust him to inspire some truly iconic gifs, but that’s it.) Or maybe it’s because he’s so handsome: it only stands to reason that anyone with a face that symmetrical has to be hiding something. (Incidentally, this is why I think Armie Hammer is going to be great as Maxim De Winter in the forthcoming Rebecca. Obviously he has something to hide, because why else would he be so tall?) Regardless, I’ve been slowly going insane watching him slither around the sidelines of every Watchmen scene with his good ol’ boy accent and his Kennedy-lite posture, so the reveal that he is the man behind the curtains of the Seventh Kavalry is fantastically gratifying.

But the reveal is also thematically compelling, because it gets at an idea that seems fundamental to the Watchmen universe: The state and the terrorists are in on everything together. They are run by the same self-interested billionaires who think of the rest of us as their pawns and turn us against each other for their own purposes. All of the systems are corrupt, and escaping them is nearly impossible. All we’re left with is individuals trying to do their best to survive in a broken world.

Allegra, how did the Seventh Kavalry reveal work for you? Do you think there’s any possibility for hope left in the Watchmen world?

Allegra: Before I answer your question, I have to say your read on James Wolk (and Armie Hammer!) has deeply wounded me. But maybe that’s because you’re right about him — I can’t help but trust a beautiful man like Wolk’s Senator Keene when he wants me to believe he’s on the side of justice. That smile! That perfectly combed hair! Those bright, twinkling eyes! I’m a superficial goon, is what I’m saying, easily manipulated by pretty boys.

As such, Keene’s connection to the Seventh Kavalry gutted me. I yelled at my screen as he and other men and women we’d thought were good guys pulled off their Rorschach masks. How is it that so many of the people we’ve gotten to know in Tulsa deceived Angela, Laurie, and Looking Glass so easily and so totally? Their involvement is evidence that Adrian Veidt’s giant squid attack was not an end-all, be-all, but instead the impetus for decades of selfish behavior on the part of uncaring rich men looking to gain control over an unsuspecting public with dwindling resources.

But I don’t think that necessarily dictates a hopeless situation going forward. For starters, tying the Seventh Kavalry reveal to Looking Glass’s storyline — he being a survivor of this sort of selfish behavior in the truest sense — offers the kind of motivation that should undoubtedly empower those who do remain on the side of good.

This mass destruction via cephalopod, whether or not it was justified in the service of preventing a nuclear war, has all kinds of ramifications — from Looking Glass walking out of that carnival hall of mirrors to find hundreds of dead bodies, to Angela learning that her closest friend and mentor was never supporting her cause in the first place. These are devastating truths, but they’re also ones that I very much expect to embolden our heroes in this otherwise nihilistic world.

What about you, Emily? Do you think Looking Glass will find he power within him to share Veidt’s secret about the squid attack with Angela and company?

Will Looking Glass even survive, tho?

HBO

Laurie and Looking Glass have a chat.

Emily: Before this episode, I wasn’t sure if Looking Glass was one of my favorite characters because he was so inherently compelling, or because Tim Blake Nelson is such a terrific actor. After this episode, I feel comfortable saying: It’s both.

The shattered quality that young Looking Glass carries out of that hall of mirrors moves forward with him into the current Tulsa timeline, and it’s the same shattered quality that is a major part of why he betrays Angela at episode’s end. To be sure, the Seventh Kavalry has revealed to him that much of his life has been based on a lie. But instead of telling his friend about this lie, he betrays her.

Before this episode aired, one of our colleagues was talking about how they didn’t want to see Looking Glass revealed as a secret racist. But what “Little Fear of Lightning” does with the character is almost sadder. Looking Glass isn’t an overt racist. He knows enough to say “woke” things like “He was a white man in Oklahoma” when Angela finds that KKK hood in Judd’s closet. But he’s also bound to something terrible by dint of who he is. In the complicated logistics of Watchmen’s plot, that terrible something is a conspiracy to keep the wool pulled over the world’s eyes.

But on a metaphorical level, the story plays as a muted horror movie about trying to do the right thing and still being roped in with the worst kinds of people because of how structural power works. Which is to say: Watchmen remains a show about whiteness, and Looking Glass is perhaps the most potent example of how you can be a truly kind and compassionate human being and still have a lot to answer for, including stuff that you maybe weren’t even aware of.

That’s what’s so provocative about the Seventh Kavalry being rooted in a truth. One of the details of the original Watchmen that makes me so uncomfortable is that Rorschach — the violent sadist and borderline fascist — is ultimately right about a lot of what he’s saying. It’s just that his methods (secrecy and paranoia) distort the narrative so much that he ceases to be someone worth emulating. He even ceases to be a reliable narrator, despite the fact that he’s often telling the truth.

But this season has revolved around twin secrets buried and kept away from those who most need to know them. The Seventh Kavalry revelation has the most immediate bearing on the plot — in that yes, other characters should probably know who was responsible for that squid attack — but the Tulsa massacre has the most immediate bearing on us in the audience, where words like “massacre” have only recently been applied to what history has often dubbed as a “race riot.” Buried secrets fester and become infected. But we can’t help but bury secrets.

At any rate, maybe Looking Glass won’t have to worry about any of the above much longer. As “Little Fear of Lightning” ends, a whole host of Seventh Kavalry gunmen are entering his house, seemingly to kill him. I hope he makes it through. After all: He’s played by Tim Blake Nelson, and it’s a delight to see him on our screens every week.

Constance: Looking Glass really is a fantastic character because he’s such a good example of how you can be both complicit in oppressive systems, and also the pawn of people with a lot more power than you have.

Looking Glass is obviously being used, and he knows it. He’s been used his whole life, arguably first by the church that sent him out into the world as a teen missionary, then by Adrian Veidt and his squid, then by Judd and the Tulsa police force, and now by Keane and the Seventh Kavalry. He’s a man whose superpower is being able to tell when someone is lying to him, but he has still spent his life being lied to and manipulated by all the people and all the systems that he trusted in.

And by extension, so have most of the other people in the Watchmen universe, including Angela and Laurie. And by further extension, so have we. So the question then becomes: What do we do when we learn that we are being used?

Looking Glass responds by deciding to let Keane and the Seventh Kavalry use him. He doubles down on his complicity. What we have yet to see is how the rest of the characters in this world will react to the idea that the people they trust are using them as pawns — and whether this world allows for the possibility of breaking free of your complicity all together.

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[gracieyvonnehunter]

Watchmen wants us to know one thing: We’re all being used by those with power

Looking Glass seems to have a very full life. | HBO

The show delves into Looking Glass’s past — and revisits one of the most memorable moments from the comic.

After playing footsie with the original Watchmen comic for four weeks, the new TV show’s fifth episode — “Little Fear of Lightning” — dumps us straight into one of the comic’s most famous moments: the “interdimensional” squid attack on New York that kills 3 million people and does grave psychic damage to even more.

The event, as those who’ve read the comic know, is a plot cooked up by Ozymandias to avoid nuclear war and maybe bring about world peace. Known to the public as an “attack” by beings from another dimension, it manages to bring the US and USSR closer together, leading to the version of America we see in the series, where the Robert Redford administration is nearing its 30-year anniversary but where the tensions of the Cold War no longer seem relevant to the world at large.

As we learn in “Little Fear of Lightning,” it’s a deep, dark secret, held closely by a very small few, that the squid didn’t come from another dimension but was instead manifested right here on Earth. And among the people who were affected by its arrival are Steven Spielberg (who made a very Schindler’s List-esque movie about the squid) and our own Looking Glass, who narrowly escaped death at the squid’s nasty tentacles as a teen, then saw his life scarred by having been so close to such a devastating occurrence.

Just like Watchmen’s third episode, “Little Fear of Lightning” is a character showcase, following Looking Glass for nearly its entire running time. (We check in on Adrian Veidt briefly, and he does seem to be in space, spelling out a message using all of the corpses he’s been generating. This show!) But “Lightning” tells a darker and sadder story about what it means to live in a world where you survived an experience that’s roughly as rare — and even more likely to kill you — as being struck by lightning. It’s about survivor’s guilt. But it’s also about realizing that the world is built atop a lie.

To dig further into that theme, I (Vox critic at large Emily VanDerWerff) am joined by Vox associate culture editor Allegra Frank and culture writer Constance Grady to break down “Little Fear of Lightning,” from the Seventh Kavalry to James Wolk’s inherent shiftiness to squids galore.

Times Square: Now with 100 percent more squid

HBO

Looking Glass takes off his mask for a bit.

Emily: In the build-up to director Zack Snyder’s 2009 adaptation of Watchmen for the big screen, all involved agreed to change the ending of the original comic. Despite a slavish faithfulness to the comic’s images (if not exactly its themes) in the rest of the film, it was thought that a giant squid landing in Times Square would be too much for people to process. Instead, the movie suggested that Doctor Manhattan had created some sort of energy pulse that leveled much of Manhattan, thus necessitating his move to Mars.

It honestly wasn’t a bad story shift — it gave Doctor Manhattan a more easily understandable motivation to bail on Earth, at least (if you, for some reason, believe a godlike blue man would have understandable motivations, which I might quibble with). But I’m so, so happy the squid (Squidley? Squidward? Squidbert?) exists in the world of HBO’s Watchmen to destroy this fictional version of New York. True to the spirit of this project, “Little Fear of Lightning” writers Damon Lindelof and Carly Wray (another The Leftovers alum) and director Steph Green pull out resonances with the 9/11 attacks but also the ways we use pop culture to process these sorts of horrors.

What’s most notable, however, is how the opening flashback makes viewers feel the sheer gutting horror of that moment and how it would have reverberated in the decades to come. Allegra: I don’t know how spoiled you are on the comic, but how did you feel about the squid? Was it a bridge too far for you, as the movie’s creative team feared it would be for their 2009 audience? Or are you going to share a recipe for delicious calamari with me, so excited are you by the prospects of a giant cephalopod?

Allegra: I’ve become increasingly “spoiled” on the original Watchmen comic in my weeks-long quest to grasp what’s happening on the TV show. So I was aware of the squid attack — but only in the abstract. This week’s episode visualized what I interpreted as a very bizarre method of mass destruction and proved how terrifying that kind of experience could be.

The cold open rendered a young Looking Glass the equivalent of that classic horror movie trope, the Final Girl: He’s a teenage boy thrust into a situation where he could possibly lose his virginity, but the moment never comes to bear. His sexual anxiety, and the virginal purity that, in horror movies at least, establishes him as a rare moralist, ends up saving his life in the end. Looking Glass finds himself alone after a devastating, sudden, inexplicable mass casualty.

This scene helped to ease me, the sensitive viewer, into the idea of the squid attack because we saw only the aftermath and not the act of the killing itself. It’s still a shocking moment and a horrifying image to see hundreds of dead bodies lying on the ground, but I don’t think the scene veered too far into the ostentatious, as HBO has made no effort to hide how disturbed the show’s version of 2019 Tulsa is.

And on a plausibility level, that all those deaths were the effect of a squid that apparently came from another dimension doesn’t quite phase me — five episodes in, a squid attack feels normal enough for Watchmen, despite its inherent absurdity. It’s the impact of the attack that is meaningful, sculpting Looking Glass into the lonely, sexually repressed man we’ve come to know in the episode’s contemporary storyline.

On the inherent shiftiness of James Wolk

HBO

Yes, we’re aware this is technically Jeremy Irons right beneath a subhead about James Wolk.

Constance: I’m coming into this show pretty unspoiled. All of my knowledge of the comic comes from the time a friend who read it 10 years ago summarized it for me, and I came away with a vague understanding of something something giant squid, something something blue penis. But even with minimal knowledge of the comic, the squid attack still lands; it’s a moment of pure Lovecraftian horror, and I absolutely buy that it would traumatize Looking Glass forever. Which only makes it all the more heartbreaking when he realizes that this horrific event that has shaped his life forever was a lie.

The other big reveal this episode comes when we find out that James Wolk’s affable gentleman senator Joe Keane is the leader of the Seventh Kavalry, and that he apparently saw his leadership as half of a partnership with the now-dead Judd as the chief of the police. For me, that twist wasn’t exactly surprising, but it was immensely satisfying, because it’s such a good use of Wolk’s inherent shiftiness.

Maybe it’s because I’m most familiar with Wolk from his role as Mad Men’s Bob “NOT GREAT” Benson, but anytime I see him onscreen, I feel incapable of trusting him. (Well, I trust him to inspire some truly iconic gifs, but that’s it.) Or maybe it’s because he’s so handsome: it only stands to reason that anyone with a face that symmetrical has to be hiding something. (Incidentally, this is why I think Armie Hammer is going to be great as Maxim De Winter in the forthcoming Rebecca. Obviously he has something to hide, because why else would he be so tall?) Regardless, I’ve been slowly going insane watching him slither around the sidelines of every Watchmen scene with his good ol’ boy accent and his Kennedy-lite posture, so the reveal that he is the man behind the curtains of the Seventh Kavalry is fantastically gratifying.

But the reveal is also thematically compelling, because it gets at an idea that seems fundamental to the Watchmen universe: The state and the terrorists are in on everything together. They are run by the same self-interested billionaires who think of the rest of us as their pawns and turn us against each other for their own purposes. All of the systems are corrupt, and escaping them is nearly impossible. All we’re left with is individuals trying to do their best to survive in a broken world.

Allegra, how did the Seventh Kavalry reveal work for you? Do you think there’s any possibility for hope left in the Watchmen world?

Allegra: Before I answer your question, I have to say your read on James Wolk (and Armie Hammer!) has deeply wounded me. But maybe that’s because you’re right about him — I can’t help but trust a beautiful man like Wolk’s Senator Keene when he wants me to believe he’s on the side of justice. That smile! That perfectly combed hair! Those bright, twinkling eyes! I’m a superficial goon, is what I’m saying, easily manipulated by pretty boys.

As such, Keene’s connection to the Seventh Kavalry gutted me. I yelled at my screen as he and other men and women we’d thought were good guys pulled off their Rorschach masks. How is it that so many of the people we’ve gotten to know in Tulsa deceived Angela, Laurie, and Looking Glass so easily and so totally? Their involvement is evidence that Adrian Veidt’s giant squid attack was not an end-all, be-all, but instead the impetus for decades of selfish behavior on the part of uncaring rich men looking to gain control over an unsuspecting public with dwindling resources.

But I don’t think that necessarily dictates a hopeless situation going forward. For starters, tying the Seventh Kavalry reveal to Looking Glass’s storyline — he being a survivor of this sort of selfish behavior in the truest sense — offers the kind of motivation that should undoubtedly empower those who do remain on the side of good.

This mass destruction via cephalopod, whether or not it was justified in the service of preventing a nuclear war, has all kinds of ramifications — from Looking Glass walking out of that carnival hall of mirrors to find hundreds of dead bodies, to Angela learning that her closest friend and mentor was never supporting her cause in the first place. These are devastating truths, but they’re also ones that I very much expect to embolden our heroes in this otherwise nihilistic world.

What about you, Emily? Do you think Looking Glass will find he power within him to share Veidt’s secret about the squid attack with Angela and company?

Will Looking Glass even survive, tho?

HBO

Laurie and Looking Glass have a chat.

Emily: Before this episode, I wasn’t sure if Looking Glass was one of my favorite characters because he was so inherently compelling, or because Tim Blake Nelson is such a terrific actor. After this episode, I feel comfortable saying: It’s both.

The shattered quality that young Looking Glass carries out of that hall of mirrors moves forward with him into the current Tulsa timeline, and it’s the same shattered quality that is a major part of why he betrays Angela at episode’s end. To be sure, the Seventh Kavalry has revealed to him that much of his life has been based on a lie. But instead of telling his friend about this lie, he betrays her.

Before this episode aired, one of our colleagues was talking about how they didn’t want to see Looking Glass revealed as a secret racist. But what “Little Fear of Lightning” does with the character is almost sadder. Looking Glass isn’t an overt racist. He knows enough to say “woke” things like “He was a white man in Oklahoma” when Angela finds that KKK hood in Judd’s closet. But he’s also bound to something terrible by dint of who he is. In the complicated logistics of Watchmen’s plot, that terrible something is a conspiracy to keep the wool pulled over the world’s eyes.

But on a metaphorical level, the story plays as a muted horror movie about trying to do the right thing and still being roped in with the worst kinds of people because of how structural power works. Which is to say: Watchmen remains a show about whiteness, and Looking Glass is perhaps the most potent example of how you can be a truly kind and compassionate human being and still have a lot to answer for, including stuff that you maybe weren’t even aware of.

That’s what’s so provocative about the Seventh Kavalry being rooted in a truth. One of the details of the original Watchmen that makes me so uncomfortable is that Rorschach — the violent sadist and borderline fascist — is ultimately right about a lot of what he’s saying. It’s just that his methods (secrecy and paranoia) distort the narrative so much that he ceases to be someone worth emulating. He even ceases to be a reliable narrator, despite the fact that he’s often telling the truth.

But this season has revolved around twin secrets buried and kept away from those who most need to know them. The Seventh Kavalry revelation has the most immediate bearing on the plot — in that yes, other characters should probably know who was responsible for that squid attack — but the Tulsa massacre has the most immediate bearing on us in the audience, where words like “massacre” have only recently been applied to what history has often dubbed as a “race riot.” Buried secrets fester and become infected. But we can’t help but bury secrets.

At any rate, maybe Looking Glass won’t have to worry about any of the above much longer. As “Little Fear of Lightning” ends, a whole host of Seventh Kavalry gunmen are entering his house, seemingly to kill him. I hope he makes it through. After all: He’s played by Tim Blake Nelson, and it’s a delight to see him on our screens every week.

Constance: Looking Glass really is a fantastic character because he’s such a good example of how you can be both complicit in oppressive systems, and also the pawn of people with a lot more power than you have.

Looking Glass is obviously being used, and he knows it. He’s been used his whole life, arguably first by the church that sent him out into the world as a teen missionary, then by Adrian Veidt and his squid, then by Judd and the Tulsa police force, and now by Keane and the Seventh Kavalry. He’s a man whose superpower is being able to tell when someone is lying to him, but he has still spent his life being lied to and manipulated by all the people and all the systems that he trusted in.

And by extension, so have most of the other people in the Watchmen universe, including Angela and Laurie. And by further extension, so have we. So the question then becomes: What do we do when we learn that we are being used?

Looking Glass responds by deciding to let Keane and the Seventh Kavalry use him. He doubles down on his complicity. What we have yet to see is how the rest of the characters in this world will react to the idea that the people they trust are using them as pawns — and whether this world allows for the possibility of breaking free of your complicity all together.

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[thegoodenoughblogger]

With our love we can save the world

Beatles fans who have never come to terms with their break-up like, by way of a parlour game, to indulge in a spot of historical revisionism. What if the Beatles hadn’t split up in 1970? What if they had carried on for another five years? What would their twelfth album have sounded like? Put aside the fact that their early solo albums were by and large essays in exorcising the group they had lost, and I like to think it would have sounded like this:

WAH-WAH (Harrison) IT DON’T COME EASY (Starr / Harrison) INSTANT KARMA! (Lennon) REMEMBER (Lennon) ANOTHER DAY (McCartney) ISOLATION (Lennon) WHAT IS LIFE (Harrison) OH WOMAN, OH WHY (McCartney) WELL WELL WELL (Lennon) MAYBE I’M AMAZED (McCartney) GOD (Lennon) AWAITING ON YOU ALL (Harrison)

When the Beatles began to break up (or break down) is the subject of considerable debate. Only their first two albums are wholly group efforts, as they reprise their live setlist in the studio while trying to keep a straight face. By the time Beatlemania hit, Lennon was clearly the leader, taking the lion’s share of writing, singing and media duties. When his body became bloated and his mind shrunken from acid excess, McCartney assumed the mantle of svengali, motivating force and (I use this word reluctantly) genius. The White Album, Abbey Road and Let it Be are solo albums in all but name. People generally agree that the end begun when Brian Epstein died, but McCartney’s and Lennon’s romances with Linda Eastman and Yoko Ono were equally liable (not to mention, after the Filipino leg of their 1966 world tour, a morbid fear that celebrity had dealt them a death wish).

That celebrity, that entrenched feeling that the Beatles are untouchable, complicates the task of listening to their records today. To do so unmediated would be ingenuous, though having Ian MacDonald’s Revolution in the head as your companion helps the jaded fan to hear with fresh ears. The only album that I can listen to and thoroughly enjoy, the only one which transcends the notoriety and mythology, is Sgt Pepper. Marcello Carlin suggests that this is because Sgt Pepper is rooted in childhood, the hallmark of English psychedelia. That is true. But Sgt Pepper is not a childlike record. Indeed, now maligned for its widescreen production and overwrought concept, it is still blamed for stripping pop of its innocence, for canonising it, turning it into Art. If this is a return to childhood, it returns with adult eyes – by affirming fantasy and retreating from reality.

Whereas Revolver and Rubber Soul had opened with homages to black American music, Sgt Pepper begins with the nostalgic sound of an English crowd (recorded by George Martin in Cambridge). Having recoiled in terror from live performance, it seems odd that the Beatles should immediately recreate the sound of an audience. But here the audience is manipulated – it laughs and cheers in the right places, it sounds conspicuously grown-up, a throwback to a bygone colonial age.

The Beatles had intended to depict the Liverpool of their childhoods (an idea that had been knocking about since “In my life”), until “Strawberry Fields Forever” and “Penny Lane” were snapped up for a single release. In the end, Sgt Pepper became a concept album in search of a concept, born from a band desperate to rise above its own constraints. “I thought it would be nice to lose our identities,” said McCartney later, “to submerge ourselves in the persona of a fake group.” This fake group would introduce a roster of acts: the affable Billy Shears; an LSD trip; three kitchen-sink dramas; a circus performance; a hymn; three short comedies; and a final, atonal, crescendous "orchestral orgasm".

But as the Sergeant’s first act comes on stage, the crowd mysteriously disappears and “With a little help from my friends” is unfurled. Over a Pet Soundsy drum and bass, Lennon and McCartney provide Starr with dreamy harmonies as they ask, “do you believe in a love at first sight?” Starr / Shears replies, all worldly-wise, that he’s certain it happens all the time. This is a wonderfully touching, fragile moment – there is a divine composition to the group (Roger McGuinn described them as having “combined minds”), as if (to quote Aquinas) their complexity is merely infinite simplicity perceived by the finite mind.

“Lucy in the sky with diamonds” is the only blemish on the record – like “Across the universe,” it is a poorly recorded dirge, a trip that goes nowhere. Its lysergic overdrive sounds (peculiarly for a psychedelic record) out of place here. The real heart of Sgt Pepper – and it is a hard heart – is to be found on the next three tracks, three of the greatest songs Paul McCartney ever wrote. “Getting better” is, in a way, typical of McCartney, all clever unorthodoxies and crotchet beats. His bass comes out of nowhere, underlying a brutal lyric which belies the typecasts of McCartney-the-blithe-formalist and Lennon-the-hardnosed-realist (though it must be added that Lennon had a hand in writing the lyrics and, in the midst of an acid trip, singing them). 

In “Fixing a hole,” we are presented with a more ambiguous second act to this drama. Beginning with a descending harpsichord, the song is a slow-march made interesting by McCartney’s bass arpeggios, Harrison’s double-tracked guitar solo and the expression of a desire to be hermetically sealed off from the distractions of reality, so that the mind is free to wander. 

Perhaps this escape is what the protagonist of “She’s leaving home” has in mind, but we are never told as much. Over strings which in anybody else’s hands might be mawkish, Lennon and McCartney tell the story of a girl running away from home from the point of view of her mother. That in itself is extraordinary – who else would have taken up this position? An extraordinarily detailed and laconic lyric (the use of the word “clutching” has been much remarked upon) stops short of moral judgment, the mother blankly accepting (via McCartney’s artless vocal) that “fun is the one thing that money can’t buy.” This is, as Ian MacDonald says, “represents, with ‘A day in the life,’ the finest work on Sgt Pepper – imperishable popular art of its time.”

The curtain closes on Act / Side One with a trip to the circus, but this is the most bilious of light reliefs. Listening to the whirls and swoops of the carnival feels something like being churned around in a washing machine. Abruptly, the music stops and we are regurgitated, hosed down but soiled from what we have just witnessed. It is therefore fitting that Act / Side Two opens with a hymn: George Harrison’s “Within you without you.” This is didactic stuff, but performed with a grace and buoyancy that is rarely found in Harrison’s songs:

We were talking about the love that's gone so cold and the people, Who gain the world and lose their soul They don't know, they can't see; are you one of them? When you've seen beyond yourself, then you may find peace of mind is waiting there. And the time will come when you see we're all one, and life flows on within you and without you.

The Beatles have redeemed us, even if the audience is too stupefied with laughter to realise it. Thus rescued from the casual violence of Act One, we are ready for a comic trilogy: “When I’m 64,” “Lovely Rita” and “Good morning good morning”. If the first is winsomely nostalgic, the second and third sound like nothing else produced in 1967. Bulging with automatic double-tracking, heavily compressed and distorted, both shimmer in spite of their hollowness, and both are remarkable for their instrumental solos. “Lovely Rita” has a piano played by George Martin which is sped up and subjected to ruthless vibrato; “Good morning good morning” features drums so high in the mix that they might as well be soloing, and a searing guitar from McCartney. Fatuous doesn’t get any more thrilling than this.

A last hurrah from Sgt Pepper’s band brings us to – well, let’s just call it the most analysed pop record of all time. You know “A day in the life” as well as you know your own mind, and I’m loathe to say anything that has been said better elsewhere. Better to quote Ian MacDonald...

Made in a total of around 34 hours, “A day in the life” represents the peak of the Beatles’ achievement. With one of their most controlled and convincing lyrics, its musical expression is breathtaking, its structure at once utterly original and completely natural. The performance is likewise outstanding. Lennon’s floating, tape-echoed vocal contrasts ideally with McCartney’s ‘dry’ briskness: Starr’s drums hold the track together, beginning in idiosyncratic dialogue with Lennon on slack-tuned tom-toms; McCartney’s contributions on piano and (particularly) bass brim with invention, colouring the music and occasionally providing the main focus. A brilliant production by Martin’s team, working under restrictions which would floor most of today’s studios, completes a piece which remains among the most penetrating and innovative artistic reflections of its era.

...and to draw your attention to two further things. First, the moment at around 2.45 when McCartney sings “somebody spoke and I went into a dream” and Lennon then apprehends his friend’s innermost thoughts and sings his dream (this, for me, is the moment that encapsulates Sgt Pepper). Second, you have not heard this song until you have heard how it was put together. It’s a rough, brutal manner in which to end a piece about this painstaking masterpiece, but what better way to finish?

[adventk-blog]

                                             — ARE YOU WHO YOU WANT TO BE, 

       introducing JUNG HOSEOK, a MUTANT— and currently a believer of CO-EXISTENCE. age ( twenty-three ) and gifted with the ability of REFLECTION MANIPULATION, they are currently working as ATTENDANT AT LOTTE WORLD.

WE ARE SO MUCH MORE THAN STORIES,

[.i]

His life had been nothing but normal, happily so, in early years. An unexpected accident at work one harsh winter lead to the death of his father before Hoseok could even remember his face, and his mother remarries when he’s five years old to a man who’s kind, playful, and completely unintimidating. Hoseok grows up playing with him as though he had a sibling instead, running around their house as his mother watched with nothing but smiles creasing her skin. It’s only natural that when it’s announced that he actually would be gaining a younger sibling that he’s an ecstatic bundle of energy, vowing to be the best big brother ever and, hey, even volunteering to share his room! His efforts, though appreciated, were not necessary nine months later ─ he has a younger sister now, and their mother insisted, with years of expertise under her belt, that their new addition would prefer her own room to grow up in.

They’re a middle class family, happy and healthy. Hoseok and his sister get along shockingly well, his grades consist of nothing but As and Bs, and he has friends that he can always count on. It’s picture perfect, he’d like to think.

He’s seventeen now, enjoying highschool life as it comes. It’s another normal day, featuring his normal routine: checking up on his sister after hanging out with his friends from school, offering to help with homework if needed. He leans against her full-sized mirror for just a brief moment, and then ─ he’s blinded by walls of pure, endless white. Panic and confusion blossom in his chest as he turns in circles, unable to figure out direction in this vast space of seemingly nothing. Moments later, as he’s attempting to run, he finds himself suddenly on the floor of his parents’ bedroom, with only the sharp pain in his backside and the shrill screaming of his sister down the hall to attest to the reality of it all. His parents aren’t sure what to think at first, dubious of it being a conjoined prank, but the collective fear in their children’s eyes is enough to convince them that something strange had happened. They remove the mirror, uncertain of what to make of it all, and, at their daughter’s sobbing requests, make a new house rule to cover the remaining mirrors while not in use. Hoseok can’t help but feel guilty despite having just as much of an idea of what happened to him as anyone else did; his sister’s developed a phobia of large mirrors, and no matter how you cut it, it’s because of him.

It takes a while for life to go back to how things usually were. He focuses in classes despite having no set direction in life, and he keeps the incident hidden from even his best friend. She’s a good listener and never presses him when he’s struggling under all his layers of positivity, even when she can clearly see something’s wrong (she tells him this one night on the couch, as his sister sleeps in her lap during movie night). He doesn’t take it for granted, never that, but he doesn’t take up her silent offer to talk about what’s been bugging him ─ and she’s fine with that. ‘Whenever you’re ready,’ she says, and they continue watching movies as if they were truly carefree.

The second incident happens one Tuesday morning ─ this time, in school. After trying to wipe stray water from the mirror in the restroom, he finds himself tossed into that eerily bright place, and only a few startled, stumbling steps later, in the girl’s restroom on the other side of the building. His mother is called to the school, the principal disbelieving of Hoseok’s story (his personality and reputation as a ‘flirt’ alone was enough already to rouse suspicion, but now he’s asked to believe that this boy teleported into the wrong restroom?!). His mother goes along with everything said just to speed the process up, having already gone through this before in her own home. She believes her son undoubtedly, but taking his side now would most likely lead to more complications than anything else. Instead of temporary suspension, she manages to bargain his labor instead, condemning him to two weeks of cleaning the bathrooms that he’s apparently decided to ‘play in’. Once they leave the office, his mother promises to look into whatever was going on, asking him to just try and go on as if nothing was wrong in the meantime. Being unable to say no, he does what she asks.

Though the punishment is his alone, Hoseok finds himself with pleasant company each day after class as he cleans; Ji wasn’t someone he relied on for nothing, after all. Her presence is enough even if she doesn’t actually help him in his duties, but she at least makes it more bearable and fun. It’s not long before she starts questioning what really happened, though, and for a while, Hoseok isn’t sure whether to explain or not.

He’s weak to puppy eyes, though ─ it’s practically impossible to deny someone giving him full blown pet adoption window puppy eyes.

It’s how he spills the info, telling her everything in as much detail as he could recall from both times it’s happened. Rather than disbelief, he’s met with awe, and it only takes two minutes of hyperactive convincing before he’s standing in front of the mirror, cleaning utensils aside, staring down his reflection in an attempt to replicate what he’s done (only this time, he’s got a bouncing cheerleader behind him).

His fingers tremble as he reaches towards his reflection, unable to even look himself in the eye as he makes contact; even though he expects it this time, he’s still startled by the place he enters, unable to make heads or tails of its vastness. Instead of moving forward as he’s done each time before, he carefully turns around, unsure of what to think. There’s nothing there that he can see, but he reaches out just as he had before, imagining the mirror that he’d just gone through.

Another blink, and he’s facing Ji again, though not in a way that he expected. Her jaw is dropped, shocked into silence as she watches him look around in confusion ─ only he’s in the mirror, rather than outside of it.

After a few minutes of hive-mind-esque panic between them, Hoseok finds that the method of releasing himself from the mirror was to simply act as though he was pressing through it; it, comically, leaves him to maneuver himself awkwardly on the sink for a few moments before he inevitably slips.

He comes home with a bloodied lip (this time, not from overprotective, insecure boyfriends) despite sporting a grin; he’s found information that’ll chase away the nightmares of that empty place, and that’s progress if nothing else. The news is immediately shared with his parents after deciding to keep it from his sister (she’s been doing well with adjusting to the mirrors again; the last thing he’d want to do is reignite her phobia now). Expectedly, they’re fairly weirded out to see it happen before their eyes, but against the odds, they don’t really freak out ─ his mom asks for a shot of hard liquor, but that’s the extent of the shock. Conversation with this newfound ‘ability’ as the main topic lasted much longer than any of them could account for before his father suggests they ask around for information in the most non-incriminating manner possible. That’s the agreement between the three of them, though neither know exactly where to begin.

In the meantime, he practices what he can and can’t do, usually with Ji there to act as assistance. It’s through this that he learns the general idea behind storing objects with this ability, though he’s only been capable of using smaller objects (he lost his sister’s mascara via experimenting once, and, in his panic, blew his own cover by buying an incorrect replacement ─ luckily, she simply took the thievery to be an interest in makeup, to which he was subjected to for far too long before he finally expressed that he was ‘only neutral’ towards it).

[.ii]

Graduation comes sooner than answers, and for a moment, the peculiarity of his being is forgotten as family and friends make plans for university. Having no personal ambitions, he simply follows Ji into a technical college, taking up a degree in interior design. Things work out for a while ─ he’s with his best friend in a good school, drowning in but doing well with assignments (and avoiding touching mirrors, just to make life less complicated than it had the potential to be). Life is good, almost great, even.

A mysterious letter comes to him at the beginning of the first semester in his last year, and he opens it to find information pertaining to that which he’d been avoiding for years: a foundation with interest in those with extraordinary capabilities. He debates the invitation and eventually declines; everything was going well thus far, and he was settled with living this way.

That summer, he loses his best friend of fourteen years in a fatal accident after a party he skipped out on. That fall, he decides to drop the remainder of college despite his parents’ pleading wishes. Later that month, he takes up the offer presented to him in spring, and moves from Seoul to Incheon, taking up room and board in Daybreak and finding a new goal in life to escape to.

[.iii]

The foundation is lost and with it, all hope of reaching that goal.  

Trauma after trauma packs itself into Hoseok’s bones, and yet he still desperately holds himself together with loose strings and weakened glue. He smiles on the outside even as he falls apart within ─ what is there to reach for if everything’s burning and crumbling into ash? What is he meant to do when his only true sense of stability is shaken and torn from the roots, toppled over and thrown into violence and an atmosphere that all but screams fear for the lives of the ones you love; fear for your own?

Hoseok doesn’t know. He’s lost in that way, wondering what it means to be a ‘hero’ and how someone would get there ─ and ever steadily doubting he could ever really be anyone’s in the first place.

THERE IS FLESH AND BLOOD BEHIND THESE TALES,

He’s the personification of sunshine, bright, warm, and seemingly full of endless optimism and love for others. In a nutshell, that’s Jung Hoseok: caring for those around him more than himself, no matter what flaws they may wear. He does his best for everyone around him, even to the point of foregoing his own well-being (he’s awful at saying ‘no’ to someone’s request ─ it may as well be impossible.). Things like that don’t bother him in the slightest, either; as far as he’s concerned, it’s the one thing he thinks he might be good at.

But the sun always seems brighter after the rain falls and the clouds disperse ─ how much can it shine if the rain never stops? His smiles are never fake but they’ve been weak since Daybreak’s fall ─ far weaker than they’ve been in the past, a little too showing of the cracks that have further deepened on the inside. Not everyone can come out of tragedy a hero, and he’s unsteadily standing proof of that; traumatic events and the loss of what was inevitably considered safety has led Hoseok to being shaken to the core, unsure of himself more than ever, and even more worn down than he’s found himself before.

But he’s trying ─ he’s always trying. He can never confront himself nor the pain he’s suffered nor can he deal with it ─ the grief, the horror, the fear ─ but he can try to be what others need. He isn’t confident enough to think of himself as a light in the dark hours of those around him but he does his best to support them, even as he’s falling apart. His meager defenses of ignoring those deep-rooted pains of his are paper thin; in the chaos of the world around him, his optimism is waning. But it has not depleted. Not yet.

There’s an up to every down, a good side to every bad. He still believes in the best in people ─ humans or otherwise ─ and he still refuses to consider that ‘evil’ truly exists. It’s safer that way, isn’t it? It’s safer to believe that maliciousness is never intentional ─ that in the times they are, a shoulder of understanding and friendship can set someone back onto the path that they’d stumbled off of. People are inherently good; they lash out in many ways in fear and pain, but it’s just a matter of extending a hand when they fall down.

(He’s just as willfully naive as he’s ever been, believing something like that, and yet it’s the only thing that seems to hold him together nowadays.)

Being alone for too long had never been something that sat well with him in any instance ─ he’s always been a people-person, extroverted to the bone, loving to be around people ─ but the thought of it now seems suffocating. He doesn’t cling (or at least he doesn’t try to), but he tends to go out of his way to ensure that he’s with someone, somewhere, for most of his waking hours. Even his dog is better than the silence of his room and the thoughts that plague his own head; she does a good job on the days when he can’t find it in him to leave his apartment, too frightened by stories on the news to risk stepping into yet another potential tragedy.

AND EVEN MONSTERS CAN LEARN TO WEEP.

REFLECTION MANIPULATION

the ability to create, shape, and manipulate reflections by controlling and/or using mirrors and/or reflecting surfaces that can be used to reflect/redirect attacks. user can turn mirrors and reflections into prisons, storage places or dimensions of their own use, and manipulate space inside reflections.

APPLICATIONS :

CATOPTRIC TELEPORTATION: the ability to teleport via mirrors or reflective surfaces upon touch. he will merge with his reflection into the mirror and appear through another mirror or surface elsewhere within a 50ft radius of his intended location. accidents are less frequent than they were starting out, though they are still possible ─ particularly in times that he’s not properly focusing.

DIMENSION STORAGE: a basic state of his imprisonment ability, he is capable of manipulating the space inside reflections and using it as storage for objects.

REFLECTION COMMUNICATION: by connecting two separate mirrors (more accurately, the reflections in the mirrors ─ were any other reflective surface just as stable, he’d be capable of using that as well), he can create a line of communication that works in a similar way to a phone call.

LIMITATIONS :

Hoseok is only capable of using his powers through mirrors (or items that provide as strong and steady of a reflective surface as a mirror) at his current level, and beyond that, still, his abilities are fairly limited, with his way of teleportation being the only thing he can ‘properly’ utilize at current ─ even then, he is incapable of choosing exactly where he ends up when he uses it, often finding himself in unintentional areas due to the similarity in which they appear. Currently, his margin of error is around 50ft ─ meaning, that if he has a location in mind set to go to, he will end up somewhere within 50ft of that location.

When using any of his abilities, he needs a solid, still surface ─ he’s not at the level of working with surfaces such as water or other material. Additionally, he requires a clear reflection of someone in order to set up communications, similar to how a phone signal works. The weaker the reflection, the lesser his grasp on it. This also goes for manipulations. He naturally favors mirrors because of this, and has yet to discover how to experiment otherwise.

Broken mirrors and mirrors that have no visible reflection are completely inaccessible to him ─ this includes anything from mirrors placed in areas with no light source to those covered by sheets. If a mirror is broken while he is using it for communication purposes, the connection is shot immediately.

If he’s occupying the mirror at the time that a mirror is broken, the breaks in the glass will reflect upon his own body in thin cuts. This, albeit painful, is rarely the cause of potentially fatal damage. On the other hand, if he were attempting to pass through the mirror and someone breaks it, he’ll be expelled back to the original entrance point and will suffer more extreme damage, as though he were forcefully pulling a limb through a bush made of glass shards.

Naturally, he’s fairly useless without a mirror or any other usable reflective surface within reach, as his ability requires him to make contact with his reflection in order to pass.

He cannot store items larger than the mirror itself inside of a reflection for storage. Even then (though he has yet to attempt even doing so), anything larger than a living room coffee table would prove to be difficult to pass. He can only store inorganic items at current ─ so no pets, and no people.

Communication connections are unstable at current, like a phone call with a bad signal, in which ‘calls’ may drop at random. Connecting reflective lines in such a way takes a generous amount of energy from him, and currently only works in a state similar to that of a two way mirror. He can see and talk to the person if he’d like, and they can speak to him, but they won’t see him in turn (maintaining a visual of his reflection across to the other person drains a vast amount of energy and also relies on mimicry to utilize properly). He can only connect himself to another person’s reflection, and not two people to each other at his current level.

THREAT LEVEL TWO.                           02+ BRWN, 02+ RSLNC, 02+ INTLCT, 00+ WLLPWR, 08+ FGHTNG, 10+ SPD