#i might make a frankenstein of all things i like of the adaptations

[alchemist-shizun]

some song lan in these trying times <3

[livefromcastledracula]

Gothic literature fanons I wish would die a death and disappear from pop culture, here we go...incoming ramble.

DracuMina and tragic, romantic Dracula is a big one. It's just not who he is. There are plenty of other vampires who live these tropes. It's not Dracula. It's Barnabas Collins and Louis de Pointe du Lac and Angel from Buffy and Edward Cullen. It's not Count Dracula. Count Dracula is a bastard and his bastardy is what makes him scary and charismatic and compelling as a villain in the same way, say, the Joker or (pre-Angelina) Maleficent is. He doesn't need to be suave or soft or secretly a woobie out for love to be interesting. He is a smug, smiling monster to the bone and we love him for it.

If there's any tragedy at all to Dracula the character it's the vague hints Van Helsing gives that he was once a great man and that man's soul might still be trapped somewhere in this hollow, monstrous husk of a creature, yearning for the release of true death.

But that man is long gone. What Dracula is now doesn't feel any guilt or remorse or compassion or grief. He is, he schemes, he hungers, he preys. He is Vampire.

Okay, Carmilla...well the big one is that she is in any way not a lesbian. Adaptations that make her an equal opportunity seductress. Ha ha ha no. Book Carmilla shows absolutely zero interest in men. They might as well not exist to her. She is ALL about young women her own (apparent) age. There is that vague anecdote about the Baron's male ancestor in her backstory, but at the time 'lover' was also used in a more one-sided context of romantic admirers, of which a beautiful young noblewoman would have many, so it could as easily imply she'd never even spoken to him. Vampire Carmilla, the one we meet and interact with, is all about the girls and especially about specific girls; like Laura.

Frankenstein... oh there's a bunch, pop culture Frankenstein is probably the farthest away from the book. Let's not even go into "Frankenstein is the monster's name" or "Doctor Frankenstein" or "Igor" or "the monster is a mute lumbering zombie" or even the animated with lightning thing...

...the one that actually irks me is the pervasive idea that Frankenstein is resurrecting dead people, or that the Monster is / has the brain of a specific person who just doesn't remember who he is. Even Penny Dreadful did this one! Even the musical did this one!

Nooo, the Creature isn't a frigging zombie. He's not a revived human. Frankenstein specifically says that he can't revive the dead but that someday if his "creations" are successful he might also discover that secret:

'I thought that if I could bestow animation upon lifeless matter, I might in process of time (although I now found it impossible) renew life where death had apparently devoted the body to corruption.'

Also very worth noting that despite the frequent fanon that Victor used a random hanged man for the Creature and Justine or even Elizabeth's body to build the Bride, this absolutely does not happen in the book, at no point does Frankenstein consider 'reviving' his dead loved ones. It doesn't even cross his mind. He's not Herbert West 😆

Back to Creech, Frankenstein specifically says he made him eight feet tall because human parts were too small and detailed for him to work on quickly.

'Although I possessed the capacity of bestowing animation, yet to prepare a frame for the reception of it, with all its intricacies of fibres, muscles, and veins, still remained a work of inconceivable difficulty and labour.'

"...As the minuteness of the parts formed a great hindrance to my speed, I resolved, contrary to my first intention, to make the being of a gigantic stature, that is to say, about eight feet in height, and proportionably large...."

You can't do that just by chopping up a few dead people. You can't get an eight foot giant by stitching together a bunch of smaller dudes. You can't make a bigger heart and bigger bones and bigger organs just by stitching together smaller ones. So what the heck IS Frankenstein doing?

I had returned to my old habits. I collected bones from charnel-houses and disturbed, with profane fingers, the tremendous secrets of the human frame. In a solitary chamber, or rather cell, at the top of the house, and separated from all the other apartments by a gallery and staircase, I kept my workshop of filthy creation; my eyeballs were starting from their sockets in attending to the details of my employment. The dissecting room and the slaughter-house furnished many of my materials; and often did my human nature turn with loathing from my occupation, whilst, still urged on by an eagerness which perpetually increased, I brought my work near to a conclusion.

Okay so we know he IS collecting flesh to use as raw materials, but slaughter houses interests me. This suggests that the Creature isn't necessarily being built of human flesh.

And that makes more sense, doesn't it? How do you build a humanlike body with bigger-than-human bones, muscles, veins and organs? What if you got them from a bull, a horse, an ox?

But here's another point of interest:

...After having formed this determination and having spent some months in successfully collecting and arranging my materials, I began... ...The summer months passed while I was thus engaged, heart and soul, in one pursuit...

Months. It's taken him months at least to build Creech.

This book is set in the late 1700s. There is no refrigeration and Victor is working out of a loft apartment at a university.

How. The HECK. Is his glorious Creation not a pile of rotting meat falling apart on his table? How is he preserving it?

Does his magical mad science also extend to preservation? That's never mentioned, but I could imagine that it might involve a fair bit of, well, pickling. He does compare him to a 'mummy' at least once.

So...

Book canon Creech is an eight foot tall giant with flowing black hair, nice teeth, shrivelled yellow skin stretched over his muscle and veins, and watery yellow eyes in 'dun white' sockets. He is probably a bit 'pickled' and potentially a chimera built partially out of animal bones, muscles and organs, though don't think Dr Moreau, Victor was TRYING to make him look human and nobody ever comments on any visibly animal parts.

I wish the 'serious' movie adaptations would go harder on his makeup and effects. As OTT and steampunk Karloff inspired as the Van Helsing movie was, that's actually the level of "oh shit that's not a human" I expect from a canonical Creech, just ditch the steampunk cyborg bits and give the man some hair. Penny Dreadful did good with his alabaster skin and yellow eyes, and Rory Kinnear's still my favorite performance of this character, though they could've stood to use some LOTR-style forced perspective to make him Huge. If Creech could pass for a tall homeless war vet with a lot of scars, he's not 'creature' enough for me. There's probably something poignant to be said there about him thinking that his mistreatment at humanity's hands is because he's an inhuman monster, But Actually people he meets think he's human, they just treat him like they'd treat any other large, disfigured, confused, potentially mentally-ill homeless person they'd meet.

But that's not Mary Shelley's intent, I don't think. He's not a revived, amnesiac human. He's something much more terrifying, poignant, and mysterious. He's an entire new creature, a newborn, earthbound alien species, and that's what makes it interesting to me, because ... what even IS he? Creature is born as a total blank slate, he doesn't know what he is. Victor doesn't understand him, doesn't really comprehend what he's created, so he can't tell him.

So there's no-one alive that can, and there never will be, it's not an answerable question.

There's a deep, abiding existential horror in Creech's existence that is dumbed down to 'came back wrong' if he is a resurrected human. If he isn't, what the hell IS he? Frankenstein is grounded in science fiction rather than the supernatural, but if there's such a thing in its universe as a soul, does he have a soul? Where did it come from? Is he an amalgam of all the people/animals he's built out of, potentially hundreds of them? Is he something that came from somewhere else to inhabit this meat-husk? Is he something else entirely? He doesn't know and never will, Victor never will, no one ever will.

That's haunting, tragic, and terrifying.

[tyrantisterror]

What's the worst legacy sequel you've ever seen? What, in your opinion, separates a good legacy sequel from a bad legacy sequel and what's the worst thing you think a legacy sequel can do?

The worst that I've seen is probably Rise of Skywalker. It's close competition, though - both Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom and Jurassic World: Dominion have moments that are significantly more stupid than anything in Rise of Sky Walker, but I also think both have a bit more creative effort put into them - Fallen Kingdom has that third act where it basically becomes a Resident Evil adaptation except with a murder-saurus in place of the Tyrant, and Dominion has the whole locust plotline which, while terrible, is at least an unexpected direction for a Jurassic Park sequel to go into that tries to figure out something ELSE you could do with the genetic engineering premise of the franchise beyond just making dinosaurs. Like, all three Jurassic World movies have big problems and they get progressively dumber with each installment, but they're also all ambitious to some degree that I still feel respect for, even if they never really actually reach those lofty aspirations.

Rise of Skywalker, on the other hand, has no ambitions at all. It has nothing it wants to say, no unique twists to pull, no real identity of its own. It's a potroast made of leftovers from better movies, a resuscitated corpse of something much more interesting, patched together like a Frankenstein's monster and abandoned to a cruel world just as callously.

It has no desire to do anything new, merely a checklist of Things You've Seen Before That the Focus Groups Say You'd Probably Like to See Again. Any character that can be slipped into an arc that was done in a previous Star Wars film is slipped into one no matter how little sense it makes for them, and any character who can't is either forced to tread water with nothing to do (hi Finn!) or just quietly shoved off to the side early on and forgotten about (hi Rose!).

Any story beats that weren't in the original films are simply grabbed from a box that reads "time tested cliches to keep your script moving with minimal effort." Make the plot a treasure hunt so we can just race from scene to scene with the flimsiest justification possible and try and trick the audience into thinking something is actually happening! What's that, audience interest is flagging? Quick, throw in a cameo of someone from an older movie! What's that, they're bored again? Pretend to kill one of the old characters, but make sure to reveal they actually lived in no more than two scenes down the line, or else we might piss off the fanboys! Hey, let's look at the Cinema Sins videos for the original movies and see if there's some gripes we can "fix" with this one for added fan cred! Can't disappoint our audience!

It's the story-telling equivalent of smothering something in salt to cover up the funky taste of the close-to-the-expiration-date ingredients.

As for what makes a good vs. a bad legacy sequel... ok, so, let's define legacy sequel first. A legacy sequel is a film or TV show that is a sequel to a popular film or TV series that ended a good many years ago, which brings back some of the old cast of characters (generally played by the same, and thus much older, actors that played them in the past) along with adding a new cast of characters played by younger actors. It tries to replicate the tone of the original series despite being made in a different era and probably by different writers and directors, and generally aims to give you that Ratatouille style moment of nostalgia.

I think most Legacy sequels are kind of doomed to be mediocre at best on the outset because the goal of them from the moment of conception is so mercenary - they're not created to Tell A Good Story, they're created to Keep Consumers Invested in a Lucrative Content Franchise. They have the artistic aspirations of a McDonald's Hamburger - "This tastes exactly like what you had as a kid, and doesn't that make you crave more of it?"

I don't think that art made for mercenary reasons is doomed to be bad, mind you - I mean, almost ALL movies and television were made to make money first and foremost. Even the classic High Art movies I love like Seven Samurai and The Third Man were made for mercenary reasons at the end of the line - it didn't stop the people who were working on them from having artistic goals, but it's a fact nonetheless.

But Legacy Sequels just have an uphill battle in the "artistic aspirations" department, because most people with artistic aspirations don't want to recreate the feeling someone else inspired with their art - they want to put their own stamp on it, their own spin, their own voice. And that will often mean something VERY different will be made, something that might piss of the fans - something that doesn't taste like the McDonald's hamburger you had as a kid, even though it came in the same wrapper.

The worst parts of Legacy Sequels are the only parts that Rise of Skywalker is made of - the parts where the story is clearly only trying to show you things you know, only trying to reheat the leftovers so they taste like your memories, only trying to trick the nostalgia center of your brain that you're four years old again eating at McDonald's. "Here's the thing you know! Here's the running gag you liked, repeated five more times by actors with far less enthusiasm! Here's the same basic premise as the first film, but the stakes have been inflated to make it feel like a progression! Cameos! Catch phrases! Eat your hamburger, you consumer pig!"

The rare good legacy sequels don't really TRY to be legacy sequels. They're just... sequels. Another story in the same world as the first, bringing back the characters who actually have interesting arcs left in them, creating new characters with their own shit going on who have good chemistry with the pre-established characters and setting, expanding on themes from the original and exploring parts of the setting that hadn't been explored yet, and all in all telling their own story that's related to the first one's but still manages to be its own distinct thing.

There are not many good legacy sequels, because a good legacy sequel is different than the McDonald's hamburger you ate when you were four, and might make less money than desired because of it.

[adarkrainbow]

Is it just me, or Americans and Europeans depict the standard, stereotypical fairy tale setting differently?

In my opinion, Americans depict the fairy tale setting as closer to the middle ages. The Fairy Tale Setting is often just a more colorful standard, almost Tokien-like, Fantasy Setting.

Meanwhile, in actual European adaptations of said tales, the stereotypical fairy tale setting is closer to the 18th, 19th century, with the architecture being the only thing vaguely medieval

Yes, I actually do believe as such. Mind you, I cannot speak for all of Europe - mainly France and a handful of other countries I am vaguely aware of adaptations (like England or Germany).

And I believe it is due to two specific things.

A) The very "American" view of fantasy. I mean, we have been repeating and endlessly talking about it for decades now - but for Americans everytime there is something fantasy or magical it is either "standard European medieval setting" either "modern-day America". And when I say "standard European medieval setting", it is this sort of idea and phantasm American built of a vaguely European setting which mixes various countries of Western Europe (Americans only have taken recent interest in other parts of Europe, such as Northern or Eastern, due to the success of things like "Midsommar" and folk-horror and whatnot), and various eras of the Middle-Ages (the Middle-Ages were divided into three specific period quite different from each other), with a good handful of things that were not from the Middle-Ages (like the witch-hunts, for example, they were Renaissance, not medieval).

Of course it is due to a mix of general ignorance about Europe (or any part of the world that is not the USA), and of not actually caring about the original setting since their point is either to parody/reinvent the fairytales in lighter/darker ways, or prove that theses stories are "timeless" and can invent outside of any specific context (which does greatly benefit Americans since like that they can snatch anything they like). Mind you it isn't something universal - take the Disney movies for example. They might not be quite exact, but at least they made a neat effort to evoke different cultures and different eras of Europe. It is very obvious that Disney's Snow-White, Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty take place in various points of Europe's history and in different countries (Snow-White's visual influence by German furniture and statues versus the nods to French culture in Cinderella ; Sleeping Beauty's medieval illumination visual versus the more modern royal outfits of Cinderella, etc...). But it is an effort that got completely lost through time (and I think it can be shown in how, when Disney made "Enchanted", their fairytale setting was turned into a random fantasy setting outside of time and space - it did reflect quite well how people saw the fairytale world at the time).

And you know what is even worse? This "random medieval setting" you speak of is NOT even Tolkien's! Tolkien setting was not medieval in the slightest, and doesn't look like your usual "medieval setting". Just look at the visuals of the Lord of the Rings movie, compare it with some "random fairytale setting" and you see the huge gap. If anything, Tolkien's world is more of a "Dark Ages" (you know, this unknown gap between Antiquity and Middle-Ages) feeling than anything, due to mixing Ancient Scandinavia with Ancient Greece and Dark Ages Arthurian Britain.

But... when you think about it, that the Americans would create such an unclear and artificial setting for their fairytales make sense, since this is literaly what "their" fairytales were compiled as. I'll explain: when you ask an American to list you fairytales, when you see the fairytales used in the American media, it is a Frankenstein-creature. You've got the brothers Grimm and Charles Perrault and Andersen and Joseph Jacobs and nursery rhymes and some Asbjornsen and Moe fairytales... Their exposition to fairytale was by compilations of stories literary and folkloric, from different centuries and different countries, mixed together as one. As such... it makes sense for them a fairytale world would look like a pile of mashed-potatoes in terms of history-geography. Because they have to build a world that mix all of these stuff as one... (Plus something-something about the Americans being fascinated by the Middle-Ages because they did not have one?)

B) The Europeans are very "conscious" about fairytales. I will almost say "self-conscious".

Europeans are bound to always test and try various time-eras, fashions and context for fairytales due to a set of three reasons.

1) We have centuries of "traditional medieval imagery" that the Americans lack. Since our fairytales were published between the 17th and 19th centuries - some even by the 20th - Europe already underwent the whole "Random medieval setting" phase through popular imagery and children book and whatnot. America just begun it from the 19th/20th century - we have been at it for two, three more centuries. So today we are moving forward (and in general, while there are many aspects Europe is "late" compared to the USA, in many other ways Europe is "in advanced" compared to the USA, just because of how "young" this country's history is).

2) We are aware of the context of our own fairytales. Due to the language barrier, for example, we know every time a story comes from somewhere else. We have folktales compilations classified by countries and regions. And everytime we bring up a specif set of fairytales, we bring up the life, job and time-era of the fairytale tellers (Perrault, Grimm, Andersen, which are our "national treasures" - unlike Americans for which they're just "yeah little foreign guys we see in the distance"). As such when the French talk about Cinderella or Puss in Boots, the very images of Renaissance are brought up, the same way a German will immediately think of the Napoleonian wars and the post-Napoleon era when thinking of the Grimms - even though the fairytales are supposed to be in the "pseudo-medieval" setting.

3) Europe has been flooded and dominated by the American media when it comes to fairytales. As such we are very aware and accustomed to the "pseudo-medieval" setting popularized by America, and when Europeans try to do their own thing, they usually try to set themselves apart from it, due to knowing how cliche and Americanized this already is. Something very similar happened with French fantasy literature for example - French fantasy books are always trying to stand away from the "cliche American fantasy book" precisely because we are flooded with them and they form the bulk of our fantasy literature, so as such we are very aware of the flaws and stereotypes and expectations coming with the genre... It also doesn't help that most of the castles and "old-fashioned" architecture around Europe is not medieval per se (or that the medieval architecture is for example very impractical when it comes to filming movies), and we have much more Renaissance buildings and the like. In France for example most castles are Renaissance-era. "Real" medieval castles (as in medieval castles not "remade" by Renaissance or modern designers) are much rarer, or not as well preserved as the Renaissance ones.

Anyway this post got way bigger than I intended, but if you ask me some of my thoughts, here they are - mind you they are just my thoughts and I can't speak for every European. I am just one little eye and one little mind in a big big world... But that's the things I am led to believe.

[miles-harding]

much appreciation for the amazing show of love i've seen for electric dreams in the past year alone but i think it's worth remembering that the characterization of edgar as a 'devil character' is deeply nuanced, even for a cult-classic theatrical flop like electric dreams (1984). the story is literally based on cyrano de bergerac (man who is very romantic falling head over heels for a woman he thinks is unattainable to him and a more-attractive middleman uses his words so that the woman won't hate or fear him because he thinks he's hideous, which is sort of hilariously way more depth than a film of this caliber even really needs, but it does possess, and that elevates it significantly as a romance film tbh... imo)...

the 'edgar with devil horns' representation for the usamerican theatrical release film poster is like a 'sexy' version of that lmao... like, it's supposed to be promiscuous, there are promotions including old vhs sleeves that literally say 'edgar is horny'. he's cheeky and throws tantrums and he doesn't really know how to talk to people. he's only a 'devil' in the way that a kitty cat is a devil... just so happens, in this case, it's a brat-coded sentient computer.

i honestly don't know why very basic things like this make people so irrationally upset but like. please... no one said edgar is evil. edgar is one of the few cases of a sentient AI or object character who does a bunch of mischief screwing with a human's life and relationships and it's all fine in the end because the sentient AI gets to live (in almost a higher form of existence unrestrained by physicality... remember how badly edgar just wanted to be a thing that feels? now edgar can do whatever edgar wants, despite not having a physical form, actually getting to live out the liberating side of not having a physical for) and the other two protagonists of course live, and they have a life afterward.

with other media like wargames, we of course have an innocent (somewhat) sentient computer who genuinely might cause the nuclear apocalypse, because he thought he was playing toys with his dad. but in the end, after the protagonists live their lives, joshua the wopr is still property of the military. in the colossus series, which is a subversion of frankenstein, the creator dr. forbin eventually does come to love colossus like a child, only for that child to then die, the world sort of absolving it of its past transgressions or mistakes against humans while ruling over them. we call AM evil, for the cruel and unusual things he does to his human playthings, but the case can still be made about a very powerful being having so much power but not the power to lift themself out of the situation in which they are trapped (same can be said for other AI like shodan or glados), so they lash out. of course, famously, everyone calls hal 9000 evil. but even in kubrick's adaptation, which was written in party by sir clarke himself, we actually see zero evidence of hal being characterized as evil, this characterization manifested in the perceptions of the audience, siding solely with scared astronauts who fear being controlled, rather than recognizing that hal, too, is a crew member being controlled... by humans, who are also using him to control his crewmates, his friends.

electric dreams really is a fairytale for computers, but it is also a tragedy. it's the fairytale-ification of an actual, classical tragedy. when rusty lemorande wrote the screenplay, he was basing a lot of the film's socio-computer-centric story on his experiences as a lonely person who had just moved to a new city, but who had only ever spent time with the computer as a vehicle for social communication... shutting himself out from the possibilities of meeting others. but even despite this, despite madeline's quips that could be misconstrued as being less than sympathetic to the idea of a sentient AI ("since when is talking a sign of intelligence?"), the film was literally dedicated to the univac-1? it gave edgar a happy ending? it had a dual meaning? it did so much more than take the "AI character bad, human good" approach which is something that is strikingly rare in the AI-subgenre of scifi. there was a lot of nuance baked into it. all 3 protagonists had their own bubble and inner world that overlapped with each other's bubbles. you know what i mean? the film managed to define edgar not as an antagonist but as a kind of trapped protagonist. this isn't a good vs. evil story, there is no evil in edgar. this is a people vs. people story about relationships, really, and learning to know what's good for us. like it's seriously very well-rounded with each character's respective arcs.

sometimes it's so disheartening not to see films these days with the same or larger budgets doing even half as much with their story as electric dreams did. it's very widely beloved as a cult classic for a reason, and that reason is that it succeeded at executing a story about relationships. like. 'we drive each other crazy' but in different ways. perhaps the only thing that could've made it better was a far more ambitious electric-polycule ending endorsing bisexual polyamory lol but we got all but that, explicitly, technically...

[thekrows-nest]

BARK BARK BARK BAELAMAOA

Okay a chest has been opened and it can’t be closed I am perceiving I am pondering.

Plz tell me which ways Krow is manipulative [this is an essay question btw/ silly] and how or why would it be effective? In which ways is he absolutely toxic to us specifically? [other than his bite]

Blushy and Krowspiracy the banes of my existence in asking me questions I am too dummy to give satisfying answers to. /silly

I'll do me best.

I guess... the ways Krow is manipulative is very much playing to Dove's particular characteristics, traits and personality.

Because of the way Krow grew up, living with the fosters and then also out on the streets, he had to learn how to read people and read them well. What are they saying, what are they NOT saying? What are they telling you with just the tone of their voice, how their gaze holds or flickers away, their body language, all this.

Much like a cunning viper, he moves and sways adapting to his prey Dove. He'll react, say and do things accordingly, all as a means for him to have Dove better like him.

...Granted one can argue that this is just what EVERYONE does in making friends and acquaintances, but with Krow it's like turned up to 11. I'm getting distracted.

While Krow is honest about a good deal of himself (art, birds and all, that isn't a farce nor is his passion about them a means to lure in Dove) other things he'll do or not do to get them more secure with him. They like someone humorous? He'll take on a more comical air, even at his own expense. Prefer someone philosophical and a thinker? Krow will discuss life, the universe and everything with you and give his opinions (I like to think that while he may not be well educated, he's still a smart birb, and he does think about a wide variety of topics.)

I suppose what I am getting at is he kind of crafts an illusion where it's difficult to decipher what is real and what is an act he put on just lull you in. It's hard cause some of it IS real, and some of it... he might even believe himself.

He can also take traditional gaslighting and apply it, and couple that with what he's doing above and it's just absolute mind fuckery for Dove. Krow is also pretty charismatic and personable when he wants to be, and basing on various asks, posts and all on this blog, many have fallen for the serpent's gaze.

He may not (intentionally) physically harm you.

But he will break you, pick you apart, mold you and put you back together where even Frankenstein would reconsider the process of remaking a person like this.

[waateeystein]

Okay y'all I'm doing it, I'm once again analyzing an out-of-context picture from Guillermo De Toro's Frankenstein movie! I am now donning on my "grad student studying scenography" hat lets fucking go!

First off, What are the giant green vats? Is there a significance to having two of them, what step of the creation process are they related to, what's the deal here??? Everything else I can kind of see what the inspiration or reference is, but these green vats are running a big blank for me. I don't immediately hate them, I'm just mostly curious. They are certainly a vibe!

The next thing that is immediately striking is the massive window, and I'm kind of obsessed with it! From the Vanity Fair article we get this very relevant quote from Del Toro, "Gothic romance was born partially out of the fascination with ruins - Sometimes they’re more beautiful than the building complete because it’s the clash of creation and destruction." We have this beautiful gothic-style window contrasting the massive abandoned structure it seems to be inside of. The architecture of it all reminds me of gothic cathedrals, and I don't want to make a call yet on whether or not Victor has set up shop in an abandoned cathedral or church, but I do think that would be funny if it was the case. A bit of extra research taught me that they did use the Glasgow Cathedral as a filming location, I'm unsure if it was specifically for this scene, but it definitely gives us a sense of direction as far as inspirations for the production design.

What is confusing me about the architecture is the metal grates on the ground. It makes me think sewer grate or basement drainage, but the massive window directly next to it says very high above ground, so I don't know what going on with where exactly in the building we are. It makes sense to have it here from a practical "I have a bunch of oozy body parts on ice in here and those juices need somewhere to go" perspective. Idk, it looks neat and it might just be a suspense of disbelief moment.

Speaking of those oozy bodies, holy shit body parts! I honestly didn't fully process the giant piles of flesh on my first viewing of this picture, but damn those are fucking great! It really puts into perspective the sheer amount of matter that Victor would need to make his creation (I mean look at the blood on those sleeves), and how messy that process is. I feel like a lot of adaptations I've seen don't lean into that gorey aspect of the story, so I really appreciate that they are doing that here. I'm especially a fan of the giant ice block cooling what seems to be a head and torso, I don't know who got that big ass hunk of ice on that table but I'm impressed. The set dressing overall is really fucking impressive and is super effective, I really could dive into the details forever!

There are also a lot of big mechanical things happening here, like the massive wheels by the windows for instance. I'm not sure what these are or what they say about the original usage of the space, I was trying to search for what these might be, but because my personal knowledge on this is very limited, I have no clue what to even search to find more information on them. If anyone has any hints for me I'd appreciate some direction! The other mechanical thing we see is the table that the creature is laying on. Looking at the way it's attached to the ground, and the block at the creature's feet, I'm guessing this table tilts upwards to bring the creature to a full standing position.

On the creature himself, I think this was our first look at the creature design! I am cautiously optimistic about this design, but really I think I need to see his face to make a final call on how positive or negative I personally feel about it. This movie, from all evidence I've seen, seems to have a lot of influence from the 1931 James Whale film, in addition to Mary Shelley's original story. This creature seems to be more closely aligned to the book description, but again I don't think we see enough of him here to make a full judgement call on that. At least he's not green!

Overall, this first look is really cool, I'm really excited to see what production designer Tamara Deverell, set decorator Shane Vieau and costume designer Kate Hawley do with Del Toro's direction! This wasn't the deepest analysis ever, it's hard to do it justice when we know so little and everything we do have is out of context. But I'm excited to get more production photos eventually!

[flanaganfilm]

Hey Mike, can you talk about your work on Revival? What was it like reading the book, writing the script, making it all work? I know people thought it was going to be like Midnight Mass, but King is tackling religion far differently & I would have loved to see your adaptation of that. Furthermore, why did you decide to leave the project? I read somewhere it had to do with the film rights, but I’m sure there’s more to that story & id love to hear your side of it.

Also, Life of Chuck…. 1.85:1 or Scope? C’mon, Mike! Spill the beans!

Thanks!

I was very excited about Revival. King had given me the rights after I finished the script for Doctor Sleep, and we took it around town as a pitch. Warner Bros. picked up the project and commissioned the script.

I wrote a script I love, and turned it in to Warner Bros. It couldn't be more different than Midnight Mass; that was always a very weird and unfair comparison. The only thing they have in common is that each story features a priest; any comparisons wouldn't have survived opening weekend, that was never really a thing.

Revival is one of King's scariest and most effective books, and I was madly in love with the movie. I stayed very true to the book, and the story spanned over decades. It was a character-forward epic about mortality, and the futility of hope, dealing with themes of lost love, addiction, and hubris. In fact, it has way more in common with Frankenstein than Midnight Mass, and I was stoked to make it. It wasn't cheap, though - the set pieces were big, the VFX budget was intimidating, and it fit into a type of budget that isn't typically made these days.

For those reasons, ultimately, after Doctor Sleep's disappointing performance at the box office, Warner Bros. didn't want to pursue the movie. They had really liked the Frankenstein comparisons, but that only comes into play at the very end of the story. Their pitch was to start the story there, and jettison most of the actual novel in favor of a new, heavily Frankenstein inspired narrative. It was a bridge too far, and changed the source material too radically.

Warner Bros. faith in the project had been seriously damaged by the box office performance of Doctor Sleep, and the character-forward epic I was pitching was just too risky given the hefty price tag. Ultimately, I wasn't willing to change the story as drastically as they wanted to, and it just didn't make sense to make it for that budget - so they opted not to make the film, and that was that. I didn't leave the project at all - the studio just didn't want to move forward with it. Revival is not the most obvious project. It is more expensive than a lot of comparable horror titles, and we didn't want to do it as a streaming movie - we bet the farm on a theatrical feature, and the cards didn't fall in our favor this time. My window of availability as a director rapidly closed. I was heading fast into Midnight Club and Fall of the House of Usher for Netflix, so without a viable attachment from me for at least a few years, the project couldn't move forward at all, and the rights reverted back to Stephen King. We discussed whether we wanted to try to keep it alive, but we were already deep into talks about The Dark Tower, whose rights were about to become available after years of being tied up. Steve doesn't like to give the same person multiple rights as a general rule, because he doesn't want his projects to stall out in development, which makes good sense. Given the choice, we absolutely wanted to focus on The Dark Tower. We let Revival go, and last I heard, some other people were developing it as a TV project. I absolutely love the script I wrote, and I'm disappointed that Warner Bros. didn't want to make it, but it's their studio and their prerogative. I can't say I blame their reasoning. In fact, I completely see their point. I could have dug in and fought harder to keep it, but that might mean I wouldn't have gotten the rights to The Dark Tower.

And I hate to say it, but Revival would have taken a similar narrative approach to Doctor Sleep, and - well - audiences just didn't show up for that movie. It's entirely likely that the same would have happened here - this was another long, character-centric story that wasn't entirely a mainstream horror tale, and it was expensive. And this didn't have The Shining connection to lean on. I am so sorry to say this, but I don't have a lot of faith that audiences would have supported us if we'd bet the farm on a theatrical release of Revival as I wanted to make it. So honestly, I think it all worked out for the best. You win some and you lose some in this business. Who knows, maybe it'll come back some day - I also lost the rights to Gerald's Game back in 2014 when we couldn't find a partner who wanted to make the movie. They eventually came around again, and the timing worked out. The same could happen here - maybe we get another chance, or may we revisit it down the line as a limited series. Stranger things have happened. Ka is a wheel. Or, maybe this new television production of Revival will get off the ground, and if it does I wish them nothing but the best with it. It's a phenomenal story, and I'll be first in line to see it.

[pterobat]

I want to talk about some of the tie-in stuff featuring Lance Bishop that I took in recently.

“Broken” by Rachel Caine, in the anthology Bug Hunt.

The idea that a previously-established character has to be special—bothers me a bit, and I can’t say why. I do know that I felt, after years of pushing back against the mechanistic/deterministic view of the Zentradi in Robotech and Macross fandom, it was time to accept that a character might lack something in the way of “free will” and might not be one of a kind—but still be sympathetic

However, Bishop didn’t put that egg on the Sulaco, Your Mom did, and he asked to be euthanized for firmly "human" reasons, not utilitarian ones.

Anyway, “Broken”, states that Bishop having a stronger altruistic drive than the AP norm, which very briefly leads to the possibility of him being scrapped, and then later lets him disobey orders and save some people in his non-actiony way.

It’s still mostly satisfying, except for two things: Bishop has “brothers” named after other chess pieces (except "Queen" because of cowardice), and while that’s cute, it’s at the expense of the Frankenstein-ish story in the novel below, where he shares the name with his "Father".

Secondly there’s the groaner when the last scene of the story leads right into Bishop meeting Apone’s unit after being repaired by Hudson and the Knife Trick getting brought up already.

William Gibson’s Alien 3 (Novel and Comic Version):

To steal from Dostoevsky, all versions of Alien 3 are stupid in their own way. It’s hard to think of where to go from Aliens, though it’s not my job to do so, right?

At least there’s no chance of Gibson’s version being lionized as a course-correction or a bold strike against some imagined saccharine future. Instead we get something that’s readable and likeable enough, but pretty bland. Kind of like Hicks as the main, really—nothing against the dude, but there’s just not much going on with him.

Part of it’s not the fault of Gibson: he had to write out Ripley, but man, you don’t have to give it a gold star just for otherwise trying. I can also see how the Xenomorphs as a Thing-esque virus would occur to writers, but it just doesn’t feel right.a

Also, for what’s supposed to be a riff on the Cold War and MAD, the Union of Progressive Peoples are cartoonishly silly, constantly thinking about “capitalism” while capitalism doesn't think of them, while the narrative makes a point of how run-down and crappy their tech is.

Even Bishop notices that without any spite, while the UPP are harsh towards him out of an understandable vision of worker’s rights, but in a Dolyist sense is only there to make them more unsympathetic and caricatured.

As for Bishop, he’s fun to follow because I like reading about him just being totally chill about everything, still without coming across as heartless. But he doesn’t have much of his sense of weirdness or of that awkward kindliness that makes his character more interesting than the average friendly AP.

Two more things: I was first harsh on the idea that an ovomorph would grow from Bishop’s exposed guts, but I came around when I realized it was an example of a slightly-more grounded Xenomorph evolution/adaptation than the virus, just putting more of the mechanical in bio-mechanical—plus it was the only example of gender fuckery to be found for miles.

Secondly, I liked his quiet little monolgue at the end that humanity ought to destroy Xenomorphs for their own good. It’s the usual trope of having a heroic character fascinated by monsters, who must prove they are still heroic by killing or opposing them.

Aliens: Bishop by T.R. Napper

It’s funny that this book came out last December, like it was waiting for me to start thinking about the character again.

Sadly, the original characters were not so entertaining, which is often but not always the curse of tie-in fiction. It’s another reason why it’s hard for me to be fannish about the larger Alien-a-verse besides not much of it sounding interesting.

It doesn’t help that the story starts out with a USC Marine mission lead by an Apone, with a male corporate stooge on board, and our new MC gets the nickname “Cornbread” within a few pages—come on with this. Otherwise, she’s like Hicks in the sense of readable and serviceable.

To go back to Alien 3 for a second, and franchising in general—they repeat themes and motifs because that makes the selling easy, and you can make a keen case for “The Real Enemy is Man” being a theme of the Alien universe.

Because of that, having Michael Bishop be who/what he said he was makes the most sense if you want not only a thematic through-line but the Frankenstein-ish subtext of the book which is like catnip to me.

Normally resurrection is thematically cheap in fiction, but given that Alien 3 comes off as cheap (lazy) to begin with, and we’re dealing with an AP, and the results are interesting, it doesn’t take much to win me over.

I don’t know how much research the author did, or if it’s just serendipty, but Henriksen said he played Bishop as an abused child, as a being who knew he was disposable but consoled himself by knowing he’d outlive those who could hold that over him. And even though they look the same age, the abusive-father subtext is all over this. Michael is nice enough until he doesn’t get what he wants after being “patient” and “giving”.

And speaking of franchises and theming, something about creator/creation in the Alien series no longer feels out of place in post-Prometheus world, even if the execution in those movies was a letdown.

Transhumanism also comes into the picture, and while it first seemed Michael would steal Bishop’s new body, instead Michael wants to transfer his body digitally and succeeds. It also feels out of place in the larger franchise, but I might check out a sequel.

I also wish the book were more creative about trying to do something with the Xenomorphs. Michael pretends it’s about something different as part of his manipulation, but alas it’s the same old militarization.

It’s kind of funny that Bishop meets the captured Morse who quirkily tells him a few things about how humans don’t value other humans. It helps Bishop get rid of the last vestiges of attachment to his Shitty Dad, and Bishop otherwise returns to the same place he was before, just with a new unit.

I was waiting for some other shoe to drop, but the Apone #2 unit appeared to have no ulterior motivations when it came to finding Bishop. Returning to a quiet status quo does suit him in a way, since Bishop is so chill about everything.

The book also establishes that Bishop asked to be euthanized because of grief. I didn't want a purely utilitarian reason like reaching a damage threshold that cheapie W-Y labelled unsalvageable--that doesn't work narratively/tonally/emotionally--but it was enough to think poor Bishop decided on death because he couldn’t ever reach adequate quality of life.

So a lot of fun here, even what with the brief moments where Bishop is emotionally demonstrative or fights physically and it’s cringe-inducing rather than an extrapolation of the character.

[melonteee]

I'm really enjoying the live-action show. It's different, but I think some changes are improvements, some changes are neutral, and some changes are for the worse. Overall, I'd say it's about as good of an adaptation as the East Blue anime is (factoring in the changes the anime made).

Syrup Village is a great example, they cut Jango (though you do see his Bounty poster, so he still exists in canon), but they also made Kaya's illness be the result of Butchie poisoning her and part of Kuro's plan. Luffy drinks the poison soup and that replaces the scene of him unconscious from hypnosis. Zoro has to climb out of a well, and that replaces him climbing up an oil-covered hill and also sets up for Mihawk saying he's a frog in a well. They also change the setting for the battle from a beach to inside the mansion, introducing a horror theme to the story which rachets up the tension a lot more. Sham is also gender-bent and super cute.

And it's not wrong to say the showrunners understand and love the characters and the world. All of the bottles of alcohol are brands in One Piece, the barrel Luffy gets into has the name of the fishmonger from his village, Garp mentions that he's turned down multiple promotions, Nami reads Noland the Liar to Zoro while he's unconscious after his fight with Mihawk, Arlong introduces Fishman discrimination.

I think it's best experienced from the perspective of "it's going to be different, and that's okay". The characters are written a little differently, but not in a bad way. They still feel like the characters at their core, Inaki's Luffy and Taz's Sanji are two stand-outs, they're fantastic.

I understand if it's just not for you, and you did watch one episode, so I can't say you didn't give it a chance at all. I just feel like you and the others are being too harsh on it. It's way better than any other live-action anime adaptation I've ever seen.

I appreciate this anon and I do think the poison change works, but there's certainly a 1 good thing for 9 bad things ratio going on. Because in all fairness, I am going to be extremely critical of a 20 year old series that's making an adaptation with a 17 million dollar budget per episode - especially from Netflix. If I'm being approached by friends who were actually excited for this series and they came out of it disappointed, somehow I don't think I'm gonna have a good time myself. I'm watching One Piece for One Piece, I don't think I should go into an adaptation thinking this is gonna be different in STORY and CHARACTER. I can accept changes for medium, of course, but there are so many absolutely bizarre changes that literally do nothing. You don't go from the manga to the anime and think "Well if I just disconnect these characters from their original selves, I can soak this in fine" because in all honesty, that probably means it's a bad adaptation if you need to work to see what you want to see.

Also the 'frog in the well' thing is exactly my point of this script just slamming you in the face with what it's trying to do, we are not meant to take that literally. The well is the east blue that Zoro lives in, not a literal well lmao. It's a nice cheeky idea to have, but the goofiness of Zoro's character is removed from the scene where he's trying to run up a greased hill like an idiot. Because yes, even THAT scene served a purpose for Zoro's character and how we view him. It's definitely subjective to say the characters are written differently but not in a bad way, because ripping away parts of a character to leave them as this Frankenstein version of themselves is personally not something I want? Why would I WANT all the goofiness and stupidness taken out of Zoro? It might be good for some, but it just feels like a total downgrade and misunderstanding of his character to me. Same goes for Sanji just being this artsy guy who's complaining cause he can't make the dishes he wants, with his over dramatic, angry, violent flare completely gone. Those changes being good or bad are completely up to you, but I am personally just made to see a hollowed out, dumbed down version of them because I liked these characters as I originally met them and that's what made them stand out.

I appreciate the time they put into the sets, I do think the visual world was made well (although it could've used a bit more style), but the little physical details mean absolutely nothing if I can't even FEEL the magic the original gave me. A set does not make a series, 1000 strawhats will not make me see Luffy unless he is written to be Luffy, and that's the problem. I don't want to watch an adaptation that removes the most emotional and impactful moments of my favourite character just to replace it with a fight or to focus on ANOTHER character they've deemed more important. I am going to be critical because these characters mean a lot to me, and I am expecting to feel from an adaptation what I felt from the original with such characters. An adaptation does not mean making things different just for differences sake. I am glad you enjoyed it anon, as many people have, but if I'm watching something that's literally called One Piece and have been told this is an adaptation of One Piece - with the producers even saying they want to put the manga on the screen, mind you - I am going to go in there expecting One Piece, from the characters to the story. I shouldn't have to do the work in my own head and go "Well, they did their best!", especially at a million dollar Netflix production...sigh

[regicidal-defenestration]

Well @conker-shell you chose an excellent day to ask because I have so much time I'm willing to waste

Introducing to you:

The Frankenstein Adaptation Rankenstein

(Guaranteed to be highly subjective and capricious!)

Described and discussed under the cut

We start with

Tier F, for Frankenstein

This contains Mary Shelley's book, as arguably the source material itself is the most perfect adaptation

Tier A, IT'S ALIVE

Young Frankenstein the musical comes in on here, not necessarily because it adapts the book well (it's a musical adaptation of a film which parodies another film which finally adapts the book), but because I had a lot of fun going to the theatre to watch it. Deeply silly show and I say that with all the love in my heart.

The second entry is the Royal Ballet production, which I've been going insane about all morning. In some ways, it follows the source material too closely (we get through almost all Act 1 before Victor even goes to university and it's almost exactly as uninterestnig as you might predict), but Steven McRae as the Creature was phenomenal.

Finally, Frankenstein, the song by the Mechanisms, in which there is no longer a Creature but a sentient AI. It's one hell of a duet between the AI and Victoria Frankenstein and makes the tragedy the two are trapped in into something very real. How can I have a soul when you gave me no name indeed

Tier B, Walk this way

Young Frankenstein the film is here, because it's a fun film and I like how it parodies the 1931 Frankenstein film. It's still not really a book adaptation, but you can argue with textual evidence that Frankenstein is transmasc, which is never a bad thing.

Next is The Monsters We Deserve, the book by Marcus Sedgewick. Again not, technically, an adaptation, it's instead about the responsibilities of creation, whether that's creating life only to run from the Creature to built, or a book which thousands of people will interpret in thousands of ways, even after your death. I read it in one sitting it thoroughly rattled my brain. Marcus Sedgewick author that you are.

Tier C, See what's on the slab

The Rocky Horror Show, versions both film and theatrical. It's camp, it's fun, it's good to watch at the theatre especially if the Narrator can riff off the audience well. It's so low down because it's only an adaptation on a technicality, and is probably better described as an "influenced by".

Tier D, Dead and gone

Look I KNOW okay I know it's rich me (Young Frankenstein and Re-Animator fan) putting the 1931 film so low down I KNOW it was incredibly influential but in adaptation terms it's not good and in film enjoyment terms I didn't. Look what you did to the Creature's legacy, he wanted love and you made him a senseless monster :(

Tier ?, ?

Frankissstein: A Love Story, the book by Jeanette Winterson. I have read this book, thus onto the Rankenstein it goes. I don't actually remember anything about it, other than I don't think I enjoyed it much, despite some rave reviews

[a-sentient-cup]

CUP ARGUMENT:

In the book Frankenstein by Mary Shelley i firmly believe his creation to have been made from scratch

Rant from last time i talked about this:

Another thing I don't like, how frankenstein's monster is always depicted as an abomination

In the book victor himself said it was sickeningly beautiful, and all that at once was unsettling

And made from morgue parts? Just implied

Victor may have been a college dropout but he was looking at the morgue stuff for reference mostly and designing from there

I guess it's the yellowed skin that made people think that, but honestly he probably did borrow skin

But the bones and teeth and some organs were all custom made, no electricity needed, the moment the process was complete it started to live

This dropout studied structure of the morgue parts, he may have been full of shit but he wanted to create a new *organism* not just a life. He was struck by a vile and random series of thoughts that were the blueprints for making something

He could've started with something that was openly not human shaped but instead he decided to try human 2.0 even though he put zero whole thought while he was making it

So there's nothing to stop you from thinking

The scientist

The creation

The scientist's wife

It's almost parallel

The difference is that pb made a second lemongrab when he was all huffy from being alone. Victor didn't do that, all he had to do was suck it up and build his creation another so he wasn't painfully lonely. But instead he stopped halfway through and it resulted in his creation killing his wife on their wedding night

Except marceline would absolutely destroy lemongrab instead of being quietly strangled to death in a barn like she did

It was the 12-1800's. If his creation was to have fucking pearl white teeth there's no way that they came out of corpses. Victor hand carved those in his haze (probably stolen pearls?) And they were a unit, extremely powerful muscles that are essentially passive body armor against gunshot and can one-hand someone's neck like throttling a goose

I read it in sophomore year and not only did victor betray everyone in his life and his child, but even though he's a deadbeat dropout most adaptations don't give him credit for actually making something so beautiful that it's scary

Imagine that lemongrab but with long black hair and that's the creation actually, except long nose

Like imagine just being born a full grown human with the same mental capacity but no information on what to do to exist

A REVISIT OF MY THOUGHTS AS STATED ABOVE

Chapter 4 of Frankenstein states that he was studying the human body and looking at the decay when he got the vision of how to create life

ALSO IT EXPLICITLY STATES THAT HE COULDN'T REANIMATE CORPSE PARTS i didn't notice that

"pursuing these reflections, i thought that if i could bestow animation on lifeless matter, i might in process of time (although i now found it impossible) renew life where death had apparently devoted the body to corruption (Shelly cp 4, page varies by typing)

So to revise my previous statement: VICTOR, A FUCKING COLLEGE DROPOUT, madw a WHOLE ASS BEING from scratch and was surprised when he seeked vengeance against the "god" that created him

[semper-legens]

123. Frankenstein, by Junji Ito

Owned: No, library Page count: 400 My summary: Victor Frankenstein has lofty ambitions. He loves alchemy, he loves biology, and he wants to create life. Unfortunately for him, creating a monster leads to horrific repercussions that spill out to the rest of his life. Also - a young man finds himself plagued by visions of alternate universes, and Junji Ito chases his dog. My rating: 3/5 My commentary:

This one...kind of blindsided me, I'm not going to lie. From the title, I was expecting this book to just be an adaptation of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, but there's actually way more stories here! Sure, the one that takes up the most time is Frankenstein, but there's also the stories of Oshikiri, a kid with exceptionally bad luck who seems to be living on some kind of interdimensional anomaly. Also the dog thing. Anyway, this is the last of my Junji Ito trilogy, so let's gooooooooooo!

I found that I actually kind of preferred this version of Frankenstein to the original. Sorry, Mary Shelley. But this adaptation fixed some of my bigger complaints with the original. It's less in Victor's head, so we don't get the 'woe is me I am the only one who suffers' when other people are fucked over by his bad decisions. The whole thing where Frankenstein refuses to make a bride for the Monster because he thinks they might breed is excised completely - he does make the bride, but she falls apart mentally and physically, and the Monster turns on him for it. Overall, I liked this version of Victor a lot more than the original. Ito's art style really helped the story here, the Monster is just as monstrous as he can be. I know that in the original, the Monster is way less frightening to look at, but damn I love this design. It's a good adaptation of the source material, and very fun to read.

However, I was less enamoured with the Oshikiri stories. I don't know if it's just the way they're collected, but at first I kind of struggled to understand what was going on, and not in the fun mystery way. Oshikiri is brought to his lowest at the end of one story, but then he's back to living a normal life at the start at the next one? It's only a few stories in that what's actually happening is revealed, which wouldn't have been such a problem except that I didn't realise at first that the stories were interconnected, so there was a lot of leafing back and forth between them trying to figure out what was going on or if I missed something. The stories themselves are fine enough, but I just couldn't get into them because of that initial confusion, and unfortunately it kind of spoiled the whole for me.

Also there's a story about Junji Ito and his dog Non-non. Non-non is adorable. What's funny about this one is that it's drawn in the exact same style as all his horror stuff - so Ito's running around after this tiny little fluffy thing is portrayed in the exact same way as the nightmare body horror. It's, frankly, adorable.

Next, something that isn't Juni Ito! It's a trip into the world of Hieronymous Bosch.

[theizzifromosaka]

Monster High (generation 1)

It’s great to be back, I’m feeling a lot better and while I’m still not “healthy” I’m more than able enough to write this review.

Monster High is a multimedia franchise, primarily a fashion doll line aimed at young girls. It might surprise you to learn that I am not the target demographic for this series, but I’m more than willing to give this series a fair shot. I was not familiar with this series before starting this review beyond technically having watched Izzzyzzz’s overview of the franchise at some point, and I mostly had that on in the background when working on something else. I’m practically going in blind.

Frankie Stein

Let me start off this section off by adressing that the current version of Frankie Stein is NB, and uses gender neutral pronouns. I looked into it to be safe, and as I understand it, these are considered different characters that happen to share a name, kinda like all the different guys named Link from Zelda.

Frankie is a reanimated corpse, daugher of Frankenstein’s Monster, as you might imagine from her name. She’s the Audience Surrogate, unfamiliar with the ways of the world but wanting to do the right thing, and a strong want to fit in. She can discharge electricity, usually involuntarily when stressed or excited.

Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, alternative title The Modern Prometheus, is often cited as the earliest work of Science Fiction. It follows one Victor Frankenstein as his obsession with playing God leads to the creation of a monster that torments him. The monster itself suffers a great deal due to Victor’s hubris, overall quite a miserable time for everyone involved. Frankie seems to mostly take after the Universal adaptation of Frankenstein, specifically the green skin and bolts in her neck being iconic to that iteration. The electricity thing is probably an homage to how that version of Victor brings his creation to life.

Frankie is not my favorite character. Can’t quite put my finger on why, there’s plenty about her design I like. The heterochromia is neat, and her fall apart nature gets a lot of use in the shorts, with characters often asking her to “lend a hand”. Her hairstyle is a clear homage to the Bride of Frankenstein and the myriad of stitches is always fun. Maybe the strict adherence to Universal’s version of Frankenstein rubs me the wrong way.

Draculaura

Draculaura’s a vegetarian Vampire, the daughter of Count Dracula. She’s the most feminine of the group, and besides Frankie usually the most willing to give people a chance. She’s dating Clawdeen’s brother Clawd, and the two are very loyal to each other. Before the two met Draculaura was kind of boy crazy, especially compared with the rest of the cast.

Draculaura is the daughter of Count Dracula, which between Monster High and Castlevania I guess means it’s generally accepted Dracula is terrible at naming his kids. Actually, the wiki states that not only is Draculaura adopted, it’s not even THE Dracula, it’s some other guy. It just makes the whole thing confusing. Bram Stoker’s Dracula is in many ways responsible for how we in the modern day perceive vampires, with specifically the Universal film adaptation solidifying many things, such as the ability to transform into bats and the lack of a reflection.

Draculaura’s design, unlike Frankie’s, is not very invocative of her more famous relative, and I appreciate her design’s originality. The portruding fangs and bat motif help her to read as a vampire regardless, and her Victorian era-inspired look helps bring out her immortal nature. Overall, good design.

Clawdeen Wolf

Clawdeen comes from a very large family of werewolves. Due to her upbringing she’s the most resourceful of the group and is often the most level headed one. A bit they do in the shorts is at the beginning of the short Clawdeen will give a poor piece of advice and at the end of the short she’ll contradict herself with a good, contrary piece of advice.

Unlike the other main three, Clawdeen is not related to a famous monster, though given the precedent set by the other two, it’s probably safe to assume there’s some Universal’s The Wolf Man in there. The movies and shorts often making use of her canid features and her increased proficiencies in the presence of a full moon.

Clawdeen’s lack of reliance on an established popular monster leads her to be the most original of the main trio, and of many of the side characters. According to the wiki she’s supposed to be covered in fur, which does not come across in her design very well. Overall her Gen 1 design doesn’t read as “werewolf” very well, though her strong personality carries her in my opinion. Not as strong a design as the other two, but still a fun character.

Cleo De Nile

Cleo is I guess another reanimated corpse? It’s kinda unclear how the whole “mummy” thing works, she might just be like a more able bodied ghoul. She’s got an unreasonable amount of self confidence, and is very proud of her relationship with Deuce. Unlike Draculaura and Clawd their relationship is never really challenged from what I saw. She sees herself as something of a role model to all the other monsters at Monster High, and depending on the needs of the story she’ll occasionally be right.

Rounding out the Usual Suspects, Cleo De Nile’s obvious inspiration is Universal’s The Mummy, though her father is stated to be the ancient Pharaoh Ramses the Great. The movie’s mummy is a fictional priest by the name of Imhotep, played by Boris Karloff, same guy that played Frankenstein’s Monster and provided the voice of The Grinch. These four monsters (Frankenstein’s Monster, Count Dracula, The Wolf Man and The Mummy) are the four most popular of the Universal Classic Monsters, and are often paired together even outside of that context (Count Chocula & Co., Hotel Transylvania, your local Dollar Store’s seasonal Halloween section, etc.), with the occasional inclusion of the Creature from the Black Lagoon, the Invisible Man and the Phantom of the Opera.

Cleo’s design is by far the least monstrous of any character from this series, and even in terms of her personality and abilities she could hardly be considered frightening or even abnormal. Her characterization isn’t all that consistent, sometimes she’ll act as the voice of the student body and other times she’s treated as the school idiot. I’ll admit I’m a bit biased as I’m just not into the whole “mummy” thing.

Ghoulia Yelps

Ghoulia is a very intelligent ghoul who speaks a fictional foreign language that all the rest of the cast understands. Despite being part of the main group since the very beginning her name is not in any of the intro songs that I saw, and that bothers me a lot. There’s also the issue of her potentially being an untasteful depiction of a neurodivergent person. Ghoulia is a Ghoul as you might imagine, a Zombie, and the brainiest girl at school.

Once again, Ghoulia is not related to any specific popular monster, though it’s pretty difficult for zombies to become popular given their tendency to act as a swarm instead of individuals. This is actually addressed in Monster High, with Ghouls supposedly being very easily influenced and made subservient, which is how Cleo and Ghoulia became friends. To keep up the trend of me talking about classic monster movies, Night of the Living Dead is NOT by Universal (shocker), it’s an independent film that due to an oversight was accidentally made public domain and served as the basis for how we expect zombies to act in modern pop media. Funnily enough, the word Zombie hadn’t begun to be used to refer to the undead, with the term “ghoul” being used by the production team, and no term at all used in the film. It’s a pretty good movie, and it’s easy to find online thanks to it being public domain. I recommend giving it a watch.

I feel like I have to address this with how my previous post popped off: Ghoulia’s animal companion is an owl name Sir Hoots A Lot, which shares an extremely similar name with a cosmetic for the Sniper in Team Fortress 2, Sir Hootsalot. This is most likely a coincidence, however the Monster High character did come first.

I actually really like Ghoulia. She’s got a fun design, and the pun of her being brainy, cuz like “Braaaainsssss”, is really cute. There is, as previously mentioned, the potential issue of her being neurodivergent coded, however she’s mostly portrayed positively, and it doesn’t seem to have been done intentionally.

Lagoona Blue

Lagoona’s a Sea Monster, an overall reliable, level headed and physically capable character. Her relationship with Gill is explored in the shorts, starting as a one sided crush to Gill confronting his parents about their dislike of sea monsters, as his family is freshwater. The writers seem to know she’s kinda overpowered as she’s often off doing her own thing, or has some convenient excuse to not get involved with issues.

Lagoona is stated somewhat vaguely to be the daughter of a Sea Monster and an Ocean Nymph on the wiki, which would potentially leave this section of the review empty if not for her boyfriend being freshwater and very likely having some Creature from the Black Lagoon inspiration. The Creature from the Black Lagoon is unapologetically an allegory for race relations, and though the original film did not depict the creature sympathetically, future interpretations and homages would give the creature far more characterization, culminating in works like The Shape of Water, which actively contradict the original film’s message. Come to think of it, Lagoona and Gill’s relationship shares some parallels too…

Though Lagoona does suffer from the “just paint em blue” fallacy, I’m still inclined to like her design. Honestly I’m not a fan of her depiction in the shorts but I think she really hits her stride once she enters into 3d. Also basically all the characters in this series suffer from “just paint em blue”, so it’s really not fair to hold it against only her.

Abbey Bominable

Abbey is an exchange student from the Himalayas, who confusingly has a Russian accent. She comes off as blunt and cold but she’s eager to make friends, and her straightforwardness is blamed on her upbringing on mountains teaching her to never waste her breath. She’s a Yeti with tremendous physical strength and ice powers.

We’ve officially reached the side characters, which means these characters can basically be taken at face value. I don’t have much to say about Yetis anyways besides it seems to be a cultural thing so very likely all western depictions of it are ignorant or insensitive.

Abbey’s cool, she is to Monster High what Rolf is to Ed, Edd n Eddy. She brings a vaguely foreign twist to the cast, and her place as an outsider often leaves her as the most likely to think outside the box. I will say, however, that her design doesn’t exactly match her personality, and it doesn’t seem intentional.

Toralei Stripe

Toralei is basically what I expected Cleo to be when she was first introduced, she’s a much more traditional Mean Girl. Her only motivation when doing anything seems to be “how can I cause the most chaos possible?” According to the wiki Toralei is a Werecat, which I was surprised to learn is an actual thing.

Toralei, and I mean no disrespect when I say this, is what I wanted Clawdeen to kinda be, in the visual department. Perhaps her passing resemblance to my own Gremlins subconsciously influenced my decision but those girls are more lemur-like. Her multicolored pattern reads a lot more like fur than Clawdeen’s does, and I do like me a love-to-hate-’em villain.

Spectra Vondergeist

Me talking about Spectra might seem a bit odd since she’s not really considered an important character, but I decided to include her because I’m incredibly biased and really like her 2d design. She writes a blog or something on the happenings at Monster High, she’s usually just floating around taking pictures of things.

She’s see-through, has purple hair, dark sclera and wild hair in her 2d depiction. If she’s not the coolest looking side character then I don’t know who is.

I initially wanted to add quick thoughts about the Monster Boys of Monster High, but this has already gone on long enough. Besides, it would’ve just culminated in me finding a way to share Jeckyll Jeckyll Hyde with y’all, so I’ll just cut to the chase. Maybe some other time.

This series ended up being basically what I expected it to be, I can definitely see myself enjoying these films as a young boy in much the same way I enjoyed the likes of Bratz and Winx, and much like them having very little in the way of shame about it. I just missed the Monster High boat however, so what are my thoughts about it? The character designs are delightfully out there for fashion dolls, especially at the time, and the characters are fun homages to classic monsters.

As for their Monster Girls? Despite the series’ massive popularity you might be disappointed to learn how small its influence on Monster Girl character design is, likely because of what people normally associate with the subject. Monster Girls aren’t for kids, after all, it’s a niche fetish thing. But why is it that way? For Monster Girl Connoisseurs like myself Monster High offers a refreshing look into a reality where such preconceptions don’t exist, and Monster Girls merely are. Definitely worth a look if you can overlook the occasional simplicity of the plots and characters.

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[mushiemellows]

2, 15, 17 for the writer ask game!! love your work <3

2.       Is there a least favorite character or title you dislike writing for?

I have some semi-extensive Jinbei writing on the horizon that I’m not feeling totally confident in. I also am writing some Sanj atm, and I’ve never totally felt confident in how I write him (tho I’ve been practicing and I subjectively think I’m improving?) I also sort of abandoned the Frankenstein fic, I might get back to it one day but it’s ultimately sad and thinking about it makes me feel even sadder to work on. We’ll see how it all pans out, I’d like to return to it one day because I still know where I want the story to go, I just don’t know if I’m in the place to write it yet. But I appreciate what it meant when I wrote it back over new years/xmas. Lots of things. I tend to get really harsh on myself, even tho it’s kind of silly. This is all just playing dolls. I don’t need to be so upset with the things I make, idk. And yet, I do.

15.   What made you start to write fanfiction/stories?

Hm. This is complicated to answer, I guess. Like I guess I’ve been thinking about fic since I was an 8year old kid realizing I could build off of stories in my brain before I went to bed. I used to feel a lot of shame about my desire to write those stories down, though. I was made fun of a lot when I was young for it. When I was in my early 20s I was in a fandom that was hot at the time where I wrote some pretty successful one shots (relatively, idk if they have longevity tho) but I didn’t sit down and start fully typing out words like I have become known for until ~6 months ago. I put out a crap fic I’ve since deleted because I was so ashamed of how bad it was, but it lead to me writing SRH so i can’t be totally mad at it either. And one day, I’ll look back on writing 315k of anime smut as a stepping stone to the next thing after it. It’s just a matter of time and perspective, I know that. I owe a lot to the terrible stories I made up in my brain when I was eight. I owe a lot to the terrible stories I made up in ao3 20 years after that. One day, I’ll look back on this phase too, hopefully. Stories pop into my brain in a way that is easier than words in real life. I like crafting narratives, I’ve fallen in love with the process these last few months. It’s always felt natural to me, and I’m so happy to finally pursue it. It’s freeing.

17.   If there’s one thing you could tell your readers, what would it be?

So I answered this one already, but I’m going to add to it. Oh my god, get weird. We’re in such a fecking different era of art creation, you need to make something weird and off putting to the masses. Find your niche, have confidence with the weird shit you’re into. Every time I get down about like, AI and bullshit like that, I think about the history of the camera and its relationship to painting. When science realized it could capture real life with more “technical precision” with the camera, portraiture and painting didn’t end. It adapted, we got Impressionism, expressionism, surrealism. Poison the content machine with unusable trash. Make something so weird that a computer couldn’t even dream of creating. Get wild, get funky, get freaky, fuck it get a little kinky. You’re never going to appease everyone. Maximum palatability isn’t the point. Be a fucking weirdo on main. Soak it up. Lean in twice as hard. Double down. Freak people out. Get comfortable with being uncomfortable.

Tysm for all of the love 💜💜💜💜

[doggiewoggiez]

what is the reading list you’ve been doing

This meme. Got reposted from 4chan to Reddit to Twitter and finally to Tumblr. I'll update this post as I read each book. Here's the complete list:

1. Goosebumps #28: The Cuckoo Clock of Doom - R.L. Stine. Very middle of the road Goosebumps book not especially good but not terrible. 6/10 dead sisters.

2. Call of the Crocodile - F. Gardner. This book is a meme on /lit/ cause the dude's batshit and is constantly trying to promote his books that are extremely poorly written. He calls himself a famous author, doesn't believe gorillas or giraffes are real, and advocates chainsmoking cigarettes to help with the writing process. This book is the funniest thing I've ever read and made me so fucking angry by being so awful. 10/10 misplaced commas.

3. No Longer Human - Osamu Dazai. A semi-autobiographical story published before the author's suicide about a severely mentally ill character named Oba Yozo through his life of addiction, women, suicide attempts, and so on. An incredibly depressing read. His whole inner life is laid bare and it's disgusting and grotesque and you see yourself in him and you wish you could hold him and cry for him but even if you could you would never have the power to make anything okay. Beautiful fucking book, genuinely 100% no fucking joke changed my life. 10000/10 shitty cyberpunk adaptations.

4. Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoevsky. I cried hard as fuck dude. Another life changer for reals. Dostoevsky had such a deep understanding of human nature whether it be the lowest, most base and vile instincts or the unending capacity for love and compassion that exist in us all. All while being the blueprint for like every heady crime drama like Death Note, Breaking Bad, etc. The shit all you fags like. Most people just remember it as maybe required HS reading and definitely something people are pretentious about but it 100% deserves all the love it gets. Fan fucking tastic. 100000/10 years in Siberia.

5. Becoming - Michelle Obama. A bit too heavily ghostwritten, but when Michelle's voice shows through it's not terrible, it's kind of interesting to hear the inside scoop on White House life. It's kind of sad that Barack is the most interesting part of the book, and book-Barack seems like an extremely interesting and cool guy. But the book doesn't address all his dead civilians. 5/10 drone strikes.

6. Ulysses - James Joyce. The modernist novel, from what I understand. Half retelling of the Odyssey in 1900s Ireland, half a troll on literary critics, all around a pretty damn fun read. Not very far yet. Definitely the most difficult thing I've ever tried to read. Unfinished/10 Agenbites of inwit

7. 48 Laws of Power. This is like, THE sigma bro self help book as far as I've heard. It's pretty iconic, but I'm not especially excited for it.

8. Frankenstein - Mary Shelley. We all know it and love it, I'm interested to read the OG story.

9. Catechism of the Catholic Church 2nd Edition. Book from the Vatican that lays out what the church's official opinions, rules, shit like that are. Will be boring but interesting.

10. The God Delusion - Richard Dawkins. One of the biggest atheist dude books there is and probably by far the most influential. God is bad people who believe in God are stupid etc etc. Hopefully it has something interesting to say and isn't just a jerk off. It might just be a jerk off.

11. The Love Hypothesis - Ali Hazelwood. Some booktok romance schlock afaik. People make fun of it.

12. A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole. All I know is it's about a guy in New Orleans in the 60s. Might be good, people seem to really like it.

13. The Art of War - Sun Tzu. Im gonna get so good at surprising my enemy.

14. Kodomo no Jikan - Kaworu Watashiya. Pure pedoslop, I don't think there's even an official English translation so we might not read it but I'm preemptively giving it 0/10.

15. The Iliad - Homer. The story of the Trojan war. All I know is Helen, Horse, and that's about it.

16. The Odyssey - Homer. It's the Odyssey. I think it's funny that it comes after Ulysses since I don't actually know the whole story of the Odyssey itself.

17. Ted Bundy: Conversations with a Killer - Stephen G. Michaud and Hugh Aynesworth. This is that thing they made a Netflix doc about a while back.

18. The C++ Programming Language 4th edition - Bjarne Stroustrup. Exactly what it says on the tin, by the guy who wrote the language.

19. Empress Theresa - Norman Boutin. A classic, it's a weird self-published story by a guy who's extremely unwell, usually referenced in the same way Sonichu is.

20. The Sound and the Fury - William Faulkner. His most difficult to read work, about a Southern family at the beginning of the 20th century.

21. Black Future #1 - Whitney Ryan. A very racist BNWO sissification porn story that was probably written as a joke. Possible skip definite 0/10.

22. The Cat in the Hat - Dr. Seuss. You know this.

23. The Trial - Franz Kafka. One of Kafka's most famous unfinished works, about a guy who's on trial for something and he doesn't know what.

24. American Psycho - Bret Easton Ellis. Supposed to be way darker and more fucked up than the movie, really supposed to chill you to the bone afaik. VERY excited for this read.

25. Gravity's Rainbow - Thomas Pynchon. One of those famous "Really Fucking Long And Hard Books" like Infinite Jest or Ulysses, incredibly autistic foray into WW2 rocket science. Classic Pynchonery.

26. Magick In Theory and Practice - Aleister Crowley. Thankfully it's not the entirety of Magick Liber ABA Book 4.

27. Minecraft Jokes for Kids - Steve Minecraft. Not a real book but we'll substitute Jokes For Minecrafters by the Hollow family.

28. The Jews and Their Lies - Martin Luther. One of the most notorious antisemitic texts, right up there with the Protocols. It's going to be a pretty apalling read but it has pretty damn significant historical value so it's probably worth reading.

29. Dianetics - L. Ron Hubbard. The scientology book. It's way longer than you'd expect.

30. Everyone Poops - Taro Gomi. I don't understand this because girls don't poop.

31. In His Own Write - John Lennon. His writing and art, mostly just a bunch of absurd bullshit. I want to remain neutral and not just hate the book because I hate the guy. We'll see if it deserves that.

32. Bear - Marian Engel. This is that Canadian novel where the woman has a romance with a bear.

33. How To Get A Girlfriend - Chad Scott Nellis. Some bullshit self published thing. I'm gonna be swimming in punani.

34. The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck - Mark Manson. Some self help schlock afaik.

35. Gabriel Dropout (vol. 3) - UKAMI. This is that cutesy manga about those angels and demons in human high school.

36. 120 Days of Sodom - Marquis De Sade. Old story of elite sex cults, I'm pretty sure it's the origin of that being like a thing that people conspiracy theory about.

37. Phenomenology of Spirit - Hegel. You probably know Hegel from either Marx or Fallout New Vegas. I know Hegel because a chick at my friend's co-op talked at me about him for like ten minutes while I was way too shit faced to know what the fuck is going on around me at all but I nodded along.

38. Star Wars: The Ultimate Sticker Collection. I bought this used for a buck fifty with half the stickers gone. All the new trilogy ones were still there.

39. The Anarchist Cookbook. Vom hard at the idea of "buying" this but I want to make sure I get the version as it appears in the meme so I guess I'll drop a few bucks on it.

40. An American Life - Ronald Reagan. Practical applications for previous book.

41. Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger. Had to read this in high school, hated it, maybe it'll be better this time around.

42. Finnegan's Wake - James Joyce. An early postmodernist work about uhhh fucking whatever it was about. I'm not gonna lie if Ulysses is this hard for me this one will kill me.

43. The Charles Mingus CAT-alog for Toilet Training Your Cat. I'm not in the know when it comes to music but apparently this guy is like one of the gods of jazz. And he wrote a book on teaching your cat to shit in a people-toilet.

44. Am I Disabled? - The Simpsons S7E7. This is the book Homer reads where he learns obesity is a disability and gets really fat so he can work from home. Story of my life.

45. Serial Experiments Lain: An Omnipresence in Wired - Yoshitoshi ABe. The Lain artbook, with the short manga The Nightmare of Fabrication. Will be very expensive to get ahold of.

46. Pounded by the Pound - Chuck Tingle. We've heard enough about this guy the bit was holding onto the last molecule of funny it had like five years ago but I now had to buy a compilation paperback of his work for this.

47. Ford Capri II 2.8 & 3.0 Owners Workshop Manual 1974-1987. Had to order this from the UK couldn't find any in the US.

48. Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov. We all know what this is. Of all things when my mom saw this list this was the book she pointed out as being really good, which I thought was funny.

49. Man's Life Magazine, September 1956 issue. "Weasels Ripped My Flesh." Good god it will be difficult finding the actual magazine, but the weasels story itself has been reprinted.

50. Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs (2nd Edition) - Harold Abelson et al. I like when people make anime girls have it :)

51. Shiver - Junji Ito. Never been a major Ito fan but a couple of his works I really liked are in this compilation.

52. Neon Genesis Evangelion (vol. 2) - Yoshiyuki Sadamoto. The Eva manga was really good I've actually read it before.

53. How To Avoid Huge Ships - Captain John W. Trimmer. Classic meme because I guess the cover and premise is very funny but I don't really get the joke. It's not that ridiculous sounding of a book, it's just niche.

54. Spice and Wolf (vol. 1) - Isuna Hasekura. Light novel for that manga we've been seeing around. They put a generic cover on it and replaced the anime girl so it could sell to non-weebs.

55. Atlas Shrugged - Ayn Rand. My sister read this in like middle school and unironically no joke started bawling crying sobbing because poor people are so evil and awful.

56. The Very Hungry Caterpillar - Eric Carle. Oh Boy I Sure Hope This Little Wiggly Guy Eats Something Normal! Oh no.. oh dear ...

57. Glow In The Dark - Kanye West. Very very hard to get a physical copy but we'll try. Photo book of his tour of the same name.

58. Mein Kampf - Adolf Hitler. Now obviously this wasn't included on the list for the genuine important historical value this book has but that's what I'm going to be reading it for. In reading it critically afaik it really paints a picture of how pathetic and unwell he was.

59. Higurashi: When They Cry. I hear it's really good.

60. This is a naked photo of Daniel Radcliffe posed with a horse.

61. Aberration in the Heartland of the Real - Wendy S. Painting. This is a book on the life of the OKBOMB guy, Timothy McVeigh. I hate how true crime shit has become so polarized as either sensational dogshit to make women walk with their keys between their knuckles or some awful horrible thing that's not worth looking into because "they were just racist/misogynistic/etc" I think it's all very reductive so this promises to be a good read.

62. KUBARK Counterintelligence Interrogation. CIA document on breaking a prisoner and interrogating from the 60s.

63. The Game - Neil Strauss. The Bible for pickup artists.

64. Identifying Wood - R. Bruce Hoadley. Yep, it's wood.

65. Fresh And Fabulous Meals in Minutes - Ainsley Harriot. Lots of memes about him but this is just a regular cookbook.

66. The Turner Diaries - Andrew Macdonald. Far-right racist book that inspired terrorism and hate crimes. People who read it and didn't already agree with it going in have said it's poorly written and just blows, and in the peek I took that seems to be true. It's too influential to not read if I'm going to be reading about Timothy McVeigh. Hard to get since it got pulled from most online stores following Jan 6th.

67. The C Programming Language (2nd Edition) - Brian W. Kernighan & Dennis M. Ritchie. Gonna learn to code I guess.

68. A Little Life - Hanya Yanagihara. It's a story about a group of mentally ill gay men living in New York. Has been described as trauma porn written by a woman fetishizing gay men and is on there because channers like making fun of it, but it was also shortlisted for a Pulitzer.

69. The Rose of Paracelsus - William Leonard Pickard. The author was the victim of one of the largest acid busts and he wrote this in prison.

70. The Book of Mormon - Joseph Smith. Interested to learn what the fuck Mormons are actually all about.

71. Harry Potter and the Philosophers Stone - J.K. Rowling. Like most people I read these in middle school. They were mid then and they're ass now but I'm not gonna tryhard about how bad they are because you've probably heard enough at this point.

72. A Critique of Pure Reason - Immanuel Kant. As someone who doesn't know shit about philosophy I'm excited.

73. Autobiography - Morrissey. Notorious for being published through Penguin Classics which is NOT for Morrisseys. Bad Morrissey. Go to your room.

74. Official Final Fantasy 7 Strategy Guide. I'm gonna get so good at FF7 dude.

75. My Lesbian Experience With Loneliness - Kabi Nagata. Think of the most annoying bpd she/they you know and then imagine a really mid book that she'd become way too annoying about. You've imagined this book.

76. Children of the Matrix - David Icke. The origin of the reptoids conspiracy theory.

77. Anti-Oedipus - Deleuze and Guattari. Mario and Luigi for your leftist roommate who won't do the dishes

78. Infinite Jest - David Foster Wallace. It's a book about a person place or thing I know that much.

79. Sonichu #0 - Gonna be near impossible to source a physical copy from its short Lulu run.

80. Uncle Tom's Cabin - Harriet Beecher Stowe. Obviously of great historical importance but I get a sneaking suspicion that's not why they put it on the list.

81. Bronze Age Mindset - Bronze Age Pervert. This is... Well, it's sure something.

82. Drilled By My Two Cowboys - Aurora Sommers. BBW Cowboy porn 😋💦

83. The Brothers Karamazov - Fyodor Dostoevsky. People say it's his best work and if it's anywhere near as good as C&P was it'll blow me away. Also the Godfather was inspired by it.

84. Spare - Prince Harry. Really unfunny inclusion I can't imagine there's much value in it.

85. Da Jesus Book. That's the Hawaiian Pidgin translation of the New Testament. So basically I'm just reading the bible with extra steps.

86. Elon Musk - Ashlee Vance. Biography on Elon Musk apparently, not especially interested cause good chance it'll just suck him off hard.

87. Where's Waldo (Deluxe) - Martin Handford. Oh god I hope I find him.

88. Dracula - Bram Stoker. Shoulda subbed to Dracula Daily......

89. Bart Simpson's Guide to Life. I'm excited to see what Bart has to say about what I need to do with myself.

90. Bakemonogatari (vol. 1) - Nisio Isin. I've heard of this in passing I don't really know anything about this light novel except there's like girls and they're monsters maybe?

91. Business Secrets of the Pharoahs - Mark Crorigan. Fake book from S8E2 of the show Peep Show, which I've never heard of. It's British.

92. Industrial Society and Its Future - Ted Kaczynski. All I really know about Ted's ideas in the end is that everyone on here says he's based. I definitely want to read him and formulate my own opinion but I will probably also end up agreeing that he's based.

93. My Twisted World - Elliot Rodger. This is the manifesto of that incel shooter, probably a pretty worthwhile read in the same way a lot of this stuff is, a look into a deeply troubled person's mind.

94. Wash Your Penis - Jordan B. Peterson. This doesn't exist so we'll just read 12 Rules for Life.

95. Andrew Tate's Exegesis of the Quran. Unfortunately he did not actually write one though I bet it would be soooo terrible and funny. But we will read the Quran.

96. Art of the Deal - Donald Trump. Time to find out why people respected this guy.