#in conclusion: special interests are great but FUCK are they isolating

[deepdeanvsweston]

Repeating the words Murder Most Unladylike out loud like I'm casting a spell to remedy the debilitating shame I feel for admitting I like it and want to talk about irl

[bookwyrminspiration]

from an elven perspective, which species do you think is the most fuckable

mhmm mhmm great question I think we need to go this species by species to create a pros and cons list (obviously nsft discussion to follow, heads up)

Goblins: strong interspecies bonds, a safe choice. you will be taken care of, no doubt there. squeaky voice could kill the mood depending on personal preference. rigidity of goblin life could limit creativity in the bedroom. strong stamina given their training, and their stature ensures there's a lot of them to work with. many frequently don't wear shirts, allowing imaginations to wander--especially with so many in the lost cities. easily accessible

Ogres: intensity, open to more ideas--including dangerous ones. your safety is not guaranteed but a learning experience is. not for the faint of heart. i'm thinking this is a more specialized interest--and not just because of the tension between the species and their lumpy appearance. however, for those drawn to it, their dress ensures ample skin to appreciate. i imagine their microbiology prowess could be used to certain advantages in the bedroom, as could the growling and other sounds common in their language

Trolls: extreme versatility in options given how they age, will appeal to more tastes. rather disconnected from elves, so less cultural understanding and access. given what we know of their reproduction, this could either hinder or really indulge one's fantasies depending on what they are--hit or miss. safety and creativity in pleasure may be dependent on stage of life (options)--sheen on some may indicate additional ease of intercourse without friction or pain from skin texture

Dwarves: sensitivity to light limits locations available--if one enjoys the dark and sensory deprivation, this could be wonderful. hairy--again, connotation depends on preferences. extremely small population in isolated location makes access difficult. small stature may only appeal to a select group. species doesn't appear to be very social, including with other dwarves, may increase difficulty of acquiring a dwarven fuck partner. magisidian affinity could potentially create some interesting bedroom apparatuses

Gnomes: incredibly caring and attentive, hardly need sleep--incredible stamina. however, more plant than mammal and therefore physical compatibility could pose a challenge. their bark-like skin could prove incredibly painful even with utmost care, so it may take a special someone with certain interests. also entirely possible the vast majority of gnomes simply would not care enough to fuck you when they have gardens to tend

Humans: incredible physical compatibility--but perhaps to a fault. too similar to elves to be of any real interest. there's also the ethical dilemma of the fact humans are no longer classified as intelligent species. raises question of whether, from the elven perspective, humans can actually consent to sexual activities with them or not. there's elf-twitter drama out the ass on this one.

Conclusion: alright I think after a quick review I'm voting goblins (practically) and trolls (ideally) as the most fuckable species to elves. Goblins in practicality because of the easy access, their state of undress, and the dedication to their partnership allows for common fantasies. it's basic but solid. trolls flexibility and variety within their species would allow them to satisfy a much wider range of fantasies and interests than any other one species could--however, their disconnect from the elven world means they haven't been able to realize this potential.

hope this helps!

[ponett]

i was finally able to see the bad star war that everyone said was bad. as it turns out, it was bad. here’s a read more post with my thoughts on it so that i don’t spam my twitter with spoiler tweets

for a baseline: i like the original trilogy, but i don’t think any of those movies are perfect. i think the prequels had some good ideas but i were mostly terrible. i love the clone wars (both versions) and rebels. while i admit that tfa was extremely similar to a new hope, i thought it was executed great and had a wonderful new cast that showed a ton of promise. i liked rogue one, although i found its first act really sloppy. and i have some quibbles about tlj, but it had an incredibly strong vision and actual themes, and i’d consider it my favorite in the series

i’m exactly the kind of person who was always going to hate the rise of skywalker, because it’s basically a bad fanfic written by someone who didn’t like tlj and wanted to “fix” the story. like that bizarre story treatment jenny nicholson read for this movie. the bad one. it was like that

it wasn’t all bad i guess. here are the small things i liked:

some of the new environments were cool. there was cool imagery and practical effects work

i appreciated that the moon of endor where the death star wreckage was wasn’t just the one with the ewoks, and thought the vibe there was cool

zorii bliss’s armor was really cool

the image of the fleet of star destroyers all lined up was striking

i liked that the ghost showed up for the final battle

i liked that ahsoka was one of the jedi voices rey heard, even though that kind of implies that ahsoka is, uh... dead?

while extremely fucking trite and dumb, i’ll admit the closing scene on tatooine got me. yeah, rey has no real connection to this place and it’s just a nostalgic throwback, but i’m a sucker for full circle endings like that

uh. that’s about it

this movie kicks off in the middle of an action scene and just kind of keeps jumping to new setpieces nonstop until it’s over. new characters and locations get introduced and then moved past in the blink of an eye. there’s no time to let any of it sink in. it feels like abrams crammed two movies worth of shit into this one to make up for the the fact that some people didn’t like tlj, and as a result none of it resonates. i just felt so empty throughout most of the film. events were happening on screen and none of it mattered

thoughts about individual elements:

LEIA

putting the scenes with the recycled footage of carrie fisher at the beginning of the film completely took me out of it. it was so obvious that she wasn’t really responding to what was being said, and the conversations had just been built around the limited leia lines they could use

the dialogue scenes with leia felt like a space ghost interview

C-3PO

was in this movie a lot for some reason? i guess abrams wanted to make up for how little c-3po there was in the last two movies. they tried to have that emotional moment where his memory is wiped, but then they just turned his memory loss into a big joke?? and then he got most of his memories back anyway

in general, the movie is afraid to let the audience be uncomfortable for long. 3po’s memory loss. the supposed deaths of chewbacca and babu frik, that sort of thing. you’re not allowed to be sad. after tlj so effectively built tension throughout the film and really pushed the heroes to the brink, this is a disappointment

LANDO

is here because he needed to show up, and because it’s a throwback to have him pilot the falcon again. he’s just kind of there with little to do and no arc

FINN, POE, AND ROSE

before the movie came out, i had low expectations. all i really wanted was to get one last fun adventure with the new characters. when i started to hear about the spoilers, my expectations sank even lower. but maybe i would still get this

nah! rose gets like two minutes of screentime because redditors hated her, and finn and poe are barely even characters. they don’t have arcs in this film, they’re just sidekicks on rey’s journey

finn really hurts. prior to tfa’s release, finn was framed as the new star. this was, of course, a bait and switch, as rey was really the new jedi. (finn apparently IS force sensitive according to this one, but hey! we can only have one big jedi hero, so like leia before him, i guess we’ve gotta wait for some EU novel to give finn a lightsaber)

but finn was still a central character in the last two films, and he had so much potential. he was a stormtrooper who defected! that’s something new! that’s interesting! it complicates the black and white morality of the series. but no. that’s been all but abandoned at this point

many have complained about how tfa establishes that basically all the stormtroopers are people who were kidnapped as children and brainwashed by the first order... but then they still have no qualms about gleefully killing them. in the first two movies i was like “yeah, it sucks that they have to kill those guys, but if it’s to prevent genocide, it’s understandable. that’s just war. maybe they’ll touch on it in the last movie.” so in this one, they kept reminding the audience that the stormtroopers were enslaved as children. jannah is even introduced as another stormtrooper who defected like finn. but then... it goes nowhere. finn doesn’t get any first order troops to defect. they don’t care about the other stormtroopers. how many hundreds of thousands of enslaved soldiers did they kill when they blew up those star destroyers

it was nice to see finn and poe take the charge as leaders in the end, but it also feels like they didn’t take the lessons from tlj to heart. the whole point of that story was that one-in-a-million shot heroic suicide missions aren’t worth it, and that they’re more useful to the resistance alive than they are as martyrs. but then in the climax of this film they take like 30 ships to go fight a fleet of a hundred fucking star destroyers

on the subject of that final battle: i thought that the ending of tlj was so powerful. the resistance was decimated, but they still had hope, because they knew there were others out there who could help. people like rey, or the broom boy, who came from nothing but had good hearts. in this one, though, they say that apparently nobody responded to the leia’s call for help in the entire year since the last film. everyone only shows up during the climax after lando’s like “no, but for real guys, we need help”

and i did think that that sequence was cool. and i did like seeing the ghost among the ships. it was fun. the message that fascists like the first order rule by making people feel isolated, and that they’re defeated by realizing that good people are never alone? that was good. i thought that was a strong message. but it’s such a minor footnote on a movie that’s so bad in so many other ways

oh and they made the latino dude a drug dealer. okay. thanks for that

KYLO REN

i hate that they redeemed kylo and i hate the way they did it

yes, him being coerced to turn to the dark side by snoke (who was apparently just a puppet controlled by palpatine all along (UGH)) as a kid was tragic. but that doesn’t excuse his actions. kylo was given infinite second chances throughout the trilogy, and every time he responded with violence. he killed so many people himself, and willingly took part in a fascist regime that killed billions. yes, his story is sad, but he’s not some poor little boy, he’s thirty fucking years old and he vents his trauma by slaughtering innocent people

literally the entire main trio of the original trilogy died because of this asshole. han tried to talk to him in the first movie, and got stabbed and dropped into a pit. luke died astral projecting to face him in tlj. and now leia just kind of arbitrarily died to flip the switch in his brain from bad to good from across the galaxy. it’s literally as simple as that. he doesn’t have a personal journey here. he just stops being evil because his mom made him through the force

like, again. all those enslaved stormtrooper grunts who had been brainwashed since they were kids? gunned down. but giving kylo endless second chances is the most important thing in the world

and then they end the movie by having this creepy abusive stalker genocidal asshole sadboy kiss rey, retroactively framing their dynamic as a romantic one. just, gross as hell. even in this one, for most of the film, all he does is threaten rey and boss her around

i dunno. i thought the first order were interesting as antagonists. yeah, they were just the empire 2.0. but i thought it was appropriate! the idea was that just because palpatine was dead and gone didn’t mean that fascism was gone. there were still hateful people who wanted to rule the galaxy via genocide. like how we still have nazis in the 21st century. except, oops! palpatine was actually alive and pulling the strings the entire time, so now that theme’s out the window. we just have to kill him again FOR REAL this time and now the galaxy will actually be safe

people wondered where the first order would go after snoke died in tlj. but it was so obvious to me? kylo was in charge. kylo was always the most interesting bad guy. just let him call the shots and be the final adversary. but no. that wasn’t good enough. we had to bring back palpatine as the jrpg final boss to have an epic conclusion

REY

oh, poor rey. youtube critics got mad that a girl could be a strong jedi without being related to some other powerful force user from the old movies, so now she’s stuck being a palpatine forever

i will admit, the protagonist of the new movies being related to palpatine but still being a good person in spite of her heritage... that could have been something. but it’s so clearly not what they had in mind from the start, and it spits in the face of the last movie’s themes. it turns out greatness CAN’T come from anywhere. it has to come from one of these select few Special Bloodlines

oh! and this ALSO reframes rey’s parents abandoning her and selling her into slavery as an act of kindness, because they had to hide her from her spooky evil grandpa. so THAT’S fun. (edit: OH! and luke and leia knew about rey the whole time!!! and didn’t go out and look for her!!!!)

it’s just. it’s so bad what they did to rey. i don’t know if i even have much to elaborate on there, everyone’s already said how stupid it is

---

overall, i still wouldn’t say it’s the WORST star wars movie. it’s more watchable than the phantom menace, that’s for damn sure. the actors put in effort. the sets and practical effects are nice. it’s just so... empty

tros possibly feels the closest to how i imagined the new trilogy would be when it was first announced, but in a bad way. a movie built entirely on established ideas of What Star Wars Is with nothing new to bring to the table. it’s like a bad eu novel. just recycled imagery, cameos from characters we already know, palpatine coming back from the dead, that sort of thing. it’s a movie made by committee to appease reddit. it’s nothing

now i gotta use that free trial of disney plus to watch the mandalorian and wash the taste out of my mouth i guess

[terramythos]

TerraMythos 2021 Reading Challenge - Book 1 of 26

Title: Annihilation (The Southern Reach #1) (2014) - REREAD

Author: Jeff VanderMeer

Genre/Tags: Horror, Science Fiction, Ecological Horror, Cosmic Horror, Weird, First-Person, Unreliable Narrator, Female Protagonist

Rating: 10/10

Date Began: 1/01/2021

Date Finished: 1/05/2021

Along an isolated stretch of coast lies Area X, a pristine wilderness which appeared decades ago and decimated all human civilization within its borders. The only people to enter since have been official expeditions overseen by the mysterious Southern Reach. Annihilation follows the twelfth expedition, an all-female party of four including a psychologist, an anthropologist, a surveyor, and a biologist.

The biologist has a secret; her husband was a member of the doomed eleventh expedition. He returned a shell of his former self before being quarantined and suddenly dying of systemic cancer. She seeks answers for what happened to him. But after the party discovers a strange underground staircase with a manic sermon written along the wall, she soon finds herself infected by Area X itself.

I am walking forever on the path from the border to base camp. It is taking a long time, and I know it will take even longer to get back. There is no one with me. I am all by myself. The trees are not trees the birds are not birds and I am not me but just something that has been walking for a very long time... 

Full review, some spoilers, and content warning(s) under the cut.

Content warnings for the book: graphic violence and gore. Lots (LOTS) of body horror. Some non graphic sexual content. Mind control/hypnotic suggestion is a plot point, but there's an implication it goes beyond that. There's a pervasive sense of unreality. 

Part of me wishes I could read this book, and series, for the first time again. Annihilation is a short read with a weird, disturbing horror story at its core. Area X feels vibrant and alive in creepy ways, and the mental effect it has on the few human characters is profound. It's basically a peaceful nature preserve, but there's something deeply unsettling about the state of decay, oddly aware creatures, pervasive sense of being watched, and how it twists the minds of the characters. The biologist's asocial view of the world colors how she interacts with the setting and the conclusions she draws about Area X, The Southern Reach, the Tower, the lighthouse, and everything in between. The result is an eerie story with a scientific, almost clinical narrator experiencing something beyond human understanding.

But only parts of the overall mystery surrounding Area X are solved in Annihilation; there is an explanation, there are enough hints to figure it out, but good fucking luck. You learn there's some kind of conspiracy and shady shit going on, and the biologist gets some things right... but also some things wrong. This is either infuriating or enough of a tease to encourage one to read the rest of the series (back in 2015, I was the latter). While Annihilation is self-contained, it leaves more questions than answers.

On a reread, everything is different. One thing I admire about VanderMeer is how he integrates hints and foreshadowing without making them too obvious; something I noticed with his Ambergris series as well. In Annihilation, some of this is thematic stuff that doesn't pay off until later books ("desolation tries to colonize you"). Sometimes the biologist draws the right conclusion for the wrong reasons (everything about the psychologist and how she seems burdened). Or some things are way more horrifying with later information (why the moaning creature is Like That even though the dolphins and other animals are almost normal).

Probably my favorite example, though, is eight pages in, the biologist mentions a weird vision she had. It's a throwaway line; just one of a dozen examples on how Area X affects the mind. With later knowledge, though, it's literally foreshadowing the biologist's fate in the final book, Acceptance. You can piece together later bits within Annihilation to see how significant this moment is, but I don't think most will. And there's just tons of stuff like that that doesn't come off as important, but is a little treat for anyone rereading the story.

I guess what I'm saying here is that as much as I like the base story of Annihilation, it's better in many ways on a reread. I wish I could remember my original impressions, because now they're inextricably affected by my knowledge of what happens later in the series. I know that the mystery of it all enthralled me, but I also know lots of people drop the first book due to a lack of concrete answers. If I were to read it again for the first time, who would I be?

Besides that, something I like about this book is the gradual dissemination of information. We start in the thick of Area X and the doomed twelfth expedition, but there are several sequences where the biologist will reflect on her past and her relationship to her husband, which add context to everything else. It's just a structural choice, but one I personally like; it makes her backstory relevant without detracting from the horror or killing the pacing. I like the glimpses of her “ordinary” life and how it juxtaposes/complements the bizarre nature of Area X. 

And the horror factor is just on point. VanderMeer really shines when writing horror because everything just feels... off. Something terrible is happening, but a lot of it is psychological or just out of reach. And when the creepiness is more overt (i.e meeting The Crawler), it's great, jarring cosmic horror.  Lighthouses are a special interest of mine, so I love seeing a horror story with one as a focal point (so to speak). I dig how Area X feels like a character in the story; the mark of a good setting, especially in horror.   

To me Annihilation is a comfort read despite being a disturbing horror story. I like seeing all the moving parts and knowing how it works, and it's a very short novel compared to Authority and Acceptance. I highly recommend this series if you're looking for a creepy, cerebral story which uses nature as the backbone for cosmic horror. For those who have seen the movie, it's a much different story with a similar tone, so if you wanted more... good news! Read the books! But they're also pretty weird and sometimes dense reads, so not for everyone.

I'll be rereading Authority next, which I remember is longer with slower pacing. Let's see how it goes!   

[rosaguard]

summer’s power hour of love(tm): kas edition.

    i feel like this post has probably been a long time coming. i don’t generally like digging into my feelings - whether positive or negative because...well i’m weird lmao. but tonight, i’m digging into the trashcan that is my feelings(tm) to show appreciate to someone who deserves it.

intro.

 i generally don’t like being redundant so i won’t go into how our friendship started but i will reaffirm something you said before which is that i appreciate that our friendship felt natural. it wasn’t forced, we didn’t instantly become ‘friends’ - if anything it was the opposite. we were in some of the same circles and had a mutual respect for each other before we really started writing together in like late 2018/ early 2019. i probably don’t say it off enough but it makes me so happy that we’re friends now. like, really, really happy. i appreciate you lot even if i don’t talk to you constantly. so much so that internally, i keep a specific list of relationships that i’m very determined not to fuck up(tm) and my friendship with you is one of them. ( and no, i’m joking/memeing for once. i’m dead serious ). i won’t get too deep into main but there have been rare times where i’ve gotten more...personal(tm) i guess about my struggles, self-isolation being one of the biggest, so it’s nice to know i have a friend i can just...share stupid stuff with or whatever whenever i’m feeling lonely.

writing.

     for starters, you’re...probably the best writing partner i’ve ever had? i don’t really throw out compliments to people easily so this isn’t something i say lightly. in your words we just ‘vibe’. like i probably could talk constantly about our muses, dynamics, plot more, etc. but i do partially hold myself back because i don’t want to come off annoying ( which i know is dumb!!! b/c you’ve said it wouldn’t be annoying but!!! i’m an insecure lil shit man. it’s hard. i’m working on it lol ). anyway, the point is that i enjoy writing that builds towards something and i feel like every one of our dynamics is like that. i know you’ve gone into your feelings about being slow and it’s like...whatever to me lol. life > roleplay. plus, i’m cool with waiting because i know the payoff for whatever you write will be worth it. also you constantly indulge me in my bullshit. exhibit a and b:

HEHE

but seriously you’re great. whenever i come up to you with ‘i want to write this dynamic/ship/whatever’, you’re always open to and ready to give 100% no matter what. again, it’s something i appreciate and don’t take for granted at all. writing with you has pushed me to be a better writer, to challenge myself, and to get out of my comfort zone. i’ve been writing on tumblr since 2013 and didn’t actually start writing ships until 2018. i don’t really have experience with it like a lot of other people do but it’s never really been hard because there’s no pressure to be writing with each other all the time and whatnot. also anyone who can get me to actually write smut is well...they’re worth keeping around because i hate it!!! but also found it weirdly fun too lmao.  

me, first writing smut for kas:

me, writing more smut later.

    we call that growth kids. anyway, you’re also an extremely talented writer. you always put so much thought into your blogs, nothing feels half-assed and i commend you for that. there is always a passion for whatever character you choose to write - and it makes me even more interested even if i’m completely unfamiliar with who they are / what series they come from ( ex. gene ). you’ve also influenced my blogs  - both directly and indirectly. for instance, guess who encouraged me to make aeri.s brown when i was on the fence? you! you’ve always been so supportive of me and i feel like i wouldn’t be the same writer i am know without having had the opportunity to write with you.

friendship.

   i’ve already told you’re a good person - probably too good for a lot of people on this site - and i mean that. truly. you do so much for a lot of people here - whether it’s making blogs for your friends or offering to make themes for free ( and honestly, the price of your commissions should be appreciated because the amount of effort and work put into this is realistically worth more ). i can’t speak for anyone but myself but i just want to say that it’s a noticed and appreciated. always. you care and you give a shit about your friends wholeheartedly and it’s great? you’re fucking great kas. ( god, i hate getting sappy but i’ve come this far so i can’t stop now i guess ). but like seriously, you’re a special person who deserves the world.i can’t believe i’m admitting this shit but i really almost cried a bit today when i thought about how you actually listened to songs / playlists i send you for our ships. in the grand scheme of things, this is not a big deal at all but it is important to me in a way i can’t properly articulate(tm). 

    i feel like...i’ve always been ignored / easily replaceable by friends so someone just...giving a shit for once, no matter how small, is nice. i’ve always gotten that sense of ‘i care’ from you. you’ve always made an effort to reach out when you didn’t have to, do nice things for me which you didn’t have, and matched my energy - whether it’s writing, venting, or just casually talking - which again, i appreciate more than you know.

conclusion.

anyway, i feel like this post still doesn’t fully cover exactly what i want to say but that’s probably just because i’m bad at expressing myself lol. but just know that i do really love writing with you and cherish all of our ships so much!!!  our friendship means a lot to me and i’m grateful that i got to meet you on here. love you 3000 @castershot​.  ❤

[devilboyblues]

tw for cocsa, bullying, violence

all of this happened within a few years. i’ve kinda underestimated how much this stuff could affect me. maybe i need to deal with it. been only focusing on what the adults did to me, not my peers

i went on some sort of retreat with people my age. it was a long hiking journey and supposed to be a coming of age thing. i was the youngest there. this girl was immediately friendly. i noticed that she and her friends (who i thought were my friends) kept doing this uh... sign on their forehead. i asked about it, was told it was nothing. the girl (C) said that this other girl uh M hated me. M was fat, and slow. we were both the slowest. she was a target of ridicule, and since i was told she hated me, i joined in. 

there was some other BS but C says she wants to do something for me. she tells me to close my eyes. i feel something weird.. .down there. had no idea what it was, but it was in front of the others and i felt humilated because i knew enough that it was bad. shortly after that she mocks M for eating ice cream and i defend her. it all clicks into place. i talk to M and yep, C was pitting us against each other. she had turned the others against me, and M was one of the few that supported me. the sign i had been noticing? was a special signal among her in group about how much of a loser i was. 

a bit of an upside? when this came together, me, M, and an older girl (the oldest one there, and the only other POC) banded together and called her out on this. C had been trying to pit me and the older girl against each other too. we joined together at the end as buddies. 

but still. once i got older and figured out what she did to me (that... thing) in front of others i’ve felt ashamed

~

i was being heavily bullied at a new school i went to. yeah i was weird and depressed and one of the few poc so i was an easy target. it was also like really obvious i was gay and trans or at least gnc. (i never was good at hiding that stuff, partially because i didnt know you were supposed to for a long time). there was a group of boys that would harass me every time i passed by. usually targetting my looks, my sexuality (learned some new terms for being gay), or my mixed race. i fuicking lost it one time they said disgusting things about my parents 

anyway this group was part of my gym class, and i beg to get out of it because it was constant humiliation. so! i get a job working in the school office instead. it was pretty great, taught me some skills that have helped me professionally. except one part. every day i would have to deliver the absent/tardy slips to classrooms. one of them was shop class and an older boy from there liked trapping me against the wall. talking about what he would do to me. it was a terrifying mix of sexual and violent. i cant remember specific words which might be a blessing. he would say he was joking. i never reported him because i was terrified of what he would do to me if he found out i told. one time he said he would r*pe me and i stress vomited and found a way to have someone else take the attendance slips 

a good conclusion? well i told on the group of boys that was bullying me, and i retaliated against the guys in one class who were being racist and didnt get in trouble. that one guy? well. i told JUST enough to have someone else take the slip but no more. kinda wish i said more now but im not sure it would have gone well. 

~

i was at a camp. character building! i, stupidly, had a crush on a guy and let people know. im not sure if i told people or if i was just really bad at hiding things. i am notoriously bad at being subtle. anyway! this cute guy has just one hiccup. his friend is creepy as hell. oh right and i am a laughinstock of the entire camp. but before i knew this i would do whatever the friend told me to, to have a better chance with my crush. he would pull me into secluded areas, including one time a place explicitly called the makeout shack. he wanted me to tell him in explicit detail how i would fck his friend. he fixated on parts of my body. had a ... weirdly clinical view of how this fucking was supposed to go down, which i was too young to understand at the time. he was seriously weird in talking about body parts. he talked like that “fava beans and a nice chianti” guy. so even if i was too young to get what he was going at i was seriously creeped out. 

i asked the guy out, it went over like a fart. his “friend” keeps pushing me to do more. maybe demonstrate to him what i’d want to do to him. a actual friend stepped in and told him he was being massively creepy. he shut up, but it was the end anyway so? but thank you K, you are a real hero 

~ 

i had a best friend for years. this girl joins our school and decides im now her new best friend. not that unusual i guess except that she laid her claim to me by like hurting me and isolating me from my friends. wanted to do a blood ritual to bond us forever? shit was fucked. we also shared a racial heritage (not sure how to put) so i put up with this partially to have someone like me and she also said she would teach me about our culture. she forced me to do everything she asked like give her piggyback rides even tho i was much smaller. she degraded me in front of my friends. i am lucky i didnt lose my best friend. 

she invites me to her house. she keeps hounding me for a kiss. i have zero interest in this and keep dodging her. we are downstairs? and doing something with laundry idk and she slams me against the pool table. i remember my head cracking the pool table. i didnt think that could happen. she gets on top of me and ??? 

then later we are in her bedroom and i am rejecting her. she pulls out a knife and threatens to kill us both. i try to calm her down but tbh cuz of the stuff before i am seriously freaking out and i think i scream. something happens that her mom comes in the room and intervenes, calling my parents. i dont see her again after that

[mst3kproject]

1204: The Day Time Ended

Remember Charles Band and David Allen, who respectively directed and did the stop motion for Laserblast!?  Remember I mentioned they made more movies together?  Here’s one.  I actually had about a third of an Episode that Never Was written up for The Day Time Ended when the trailer came out, and I debated what to do with that. I could have used it on the 23rd, like I posted the review of Reptilicus just before Season 11 debuted, but I decided it was more in the spirit of Season 12 to do the episodes in order one after the other.

A family, consisting of Mom, Dad, daughter Jenny, teenage Uncle Steve, Grandma, and Grandpa, have just moved into their new solar-powered ultra-modern-for-the-70’s house in the middle of the desert.  There’s nothing like living a hundred miles from anywhere, alone under the skies without road noise or partying neighbours… until, of course, you’re besieged by aliens in the middle of the night.  I will bet you cash money there are people who claim this actually happened to them, except they would probably say they just got probed and dropped back into bed, instead of their whole house being transported to another planet.  What are the family going to do?  Is there anything they can do, or will they be killed by the monsters and aliens lurking outside, or even by the space/time warp itself?

There are quite a few honestly cool things in The Day Time Ended.  The tiny aliens that run around the house are cute, although not as charming or communicative as the ones from Laserblast!  The two monsters who fight outside the barn at one point are similarly well-animated and have a bit of personality of their own.  They look like something you might see in the original Star Wars trilogy.  Most of the UFOs are merely lights zipping around in the sky but the one that invades the house is fun, with several moving parts and an overall design that looks, as Jonah and the bots observed, something like a Betamax Roomba.  The final matte painting of the alien city is nothing special but the one that represents a sort of interstellar junkyard is detailed and blends well with the action.

The acting isn’t great, but it’s not terrible – most of these people were in something approximating a real movie once, and they do their best with what they’re given.  The innate hostility of the desert landscapes underscore the isolation and danger the family are in.  Aesthetically, The Day Time Ended works well and a lot of very good decisions were made.

It’s still a terrible movie, though.  I bet you’re wondering what MST3K cut from this film to make it fit the time slot.  I bet you’re thinking there must have been a scene like the one in Lords of the Deep where Chadwick tells McDowell about the aliens, or like the one at the end of Time of the Apes where EUCOM explains everything.  Something in which somebody speaks to Mom, Dad, and Jenny and tells them exactly what the fuck is going on and why they don’t need to be afraid of it.  Well, in the long and by now firm tradition of stuff MST3K didn’t cut… there isn’t.  Never once do we have even the slightest idea of why all this is happening.

Being as The Gauntlet is the first time I’ve watched an entire sequence of the movies in a row before I’d seen the episodes, I’m beginning to notice patterns, and one rather prominent one is how little I miss the stuff that didn’t make the cut.  It never interrupts the flow of the story.  It’s only afterwards that I find myself thinking “hey, wasn’t there a bit in the car where they talk about Eric’s teddy having new microchips or something?”  And there was, but it didn’t matter and it certainly wouldn’t have added anything to the experience if they kept it.  The only time MST3K ever seems to have cut a scene that would have been worth keeping was the bit where Vadinho tells Tony he’s the worst Pumaman ever.

Unfortunately, this leaves The Day Time Ended without anything that might remotely be considered a plot. This story has a beginning, in which strange events plague the ranch, and an end, in which they reach a place of safety, but there’s no middle to speak of.  The weird stuff going on escalates from lights to monsters to finally the entire house drifting through time and space, but it never even comes close to making sense.  Nobody in the family is ever able to come to any conclusions about these events or to really try to take any action, and none of the characters have an opportunity to grow.  We don’t even know if the little aliens caused the warp (perhaps to rescue the family from something even worse) or if they’re merely reacting to it.  I guess it’s supposed to have been triggered by the ‘trinary supernova’ they mentioned on the radio, but by halfway through the movie I’d forgotten all about that.

It’s not entirely true that none of the characters know what’s going on.  None of the characters we follow do.  We stay at the house with Grandma, Grandpa, and Uncle Steve while Mom, Dad, and Jenny are all consumed by the vortex, and later we meet up again with the Mom who tells everybody else that there was nothing to fear.  Within the movie this is just frustrating, because she never actually explains, but it is a little interesting when we’ve watched it, as I did, immediately on the tail of Lords of the Deep.  In that movie, we were following Claire McDowell as she learned the truth about the glitter goo.  In The Day Time Ended, we are in the shoes of her colleagues, dealing with a nightmare and having only her gut feeling to tell them there’s no danger.

This could have been kind of a cool take on the ‘chosen messenger of the aliens’ trope, if only it had been used for that.  Jenny does, a couple of times, talk about the little aliens being her friends and seems quite unworried by the goings-on, but she’s five, and the adults have no reason to actually engage her in conversation about this.  The Mom could have filled this messenger role, but she communicates with the creatures too late to affect the story. She’s merely a sort of deus ex machina by proxy, swooping back in at the end to reassure us that everything’s okay.

Is this movie trying to tell us anything?  Possibly… Laserblast was supposed to be about how you can only push somebody so far before they start pushing back.  That was fairly obvious in the narrative, but I’m not as sure about The Day Time Ended.  I think it might be about how nobody can truly be self-sufficient.  The family in the movie believes they have everything they need to cut themselves off from the rest of humanity, but this only leaves them vulnerable when the universe throws them a curve.

The introduction makes a big deal out of the house’s self-sufficiency.  They have their own water supply, and with solar power they have their own electricity. They are therefore able to live far away from the noise, crowding, and lights of a city with minimal inconvenience to themselves, and they rejoice in this isolation.  Then the vortex, wherever it came from, moves in, and their isolation becomes their worst enemy – they are unable to call for help, and help, in the form of the Dad, is unable to get to them.  It seems like all will be lost until their unseen benefactors bring them all back together and guide them to exactly what they sought to abandon: a city.

Lucky them. The rest of us are stuck here on Earth while the ants enter Phase IV.

The thing that really makes me want to see dependence on society as an intentional motif is the bit where the Dad needs gas for his car and the man at the gas station goes out of his way to make sure he obtains it, despite the considerable obstacles presented by the weather and the power outage. He gets no reward for this help, he does it simply because it’s the right thing to do, and without his assistance the Dad would probably have never seen his family again.  Our fellow human beings are not enemies we need to escape from – they are allies who can save us when we are in need.

And yet I’m still not sure.  The house’s self-sufficiency may just be an explanation for why they can still turn the lights on when they’re trapped in the vortex.  The isolation may just be to avoid having to pay for a bigger cast or more sets.  The issue of where they get their food from is never addressed, and remains as their most obvious connection to the outside world. The family doesn’t really seem to be rejecting society, they just want to live a little closer to nature – the Dad even still has a perfectly normal office job.  When danger surrounds them, they don’t try hard enough to leave or to call for help, or even to think about how this situation would resolve differently in a city.

The total lack of plot and character development, with only the ghost of a possible theme, leaves us with a movie in which it feels like nothing happens even thought a lot of stuff actually does, because none of what happens is meaningful.  The strange events at the ranch have nothing to tie them together into a proper story, and as a result I find I can’t really remember them or what order they happened in.  The only part of the film in which it feels like something was accomplished was the father’s struggle to get home, which started with a goal and a reason for the character to pursue it, and ended in success.  The rest is just a muddle.  It’s a visually impressive muddle at times, but a muddle nonetheless.

In summary, I think Leonard Maltin would have to give this one only two stars.

[sunshine-and-waffles]

2018 Bookend Review

I did better this year. I didn’t meet my goal of 12 physical books, but considering the amount of chaos and disorder this year brought, I’m proud of my accomplishment. (last year I read 6 physical books and listened to 7 audiobooks). 

2018 books:

The City of Brass: Fantastic, rich, and full of novel concepts. It’s a mixture of alternative historical fiction and fantasy, set in a muslim country. The story deals with a fictional cast system, sexism, and has a female protagonist. Can’t wait for the sequel this January! 

Uprooted: Lovely fantasy novel. Witchy woman comes into her own power, pursues her career/calling (instead of pursuing a romantic relationship), and finds a romance which values equality (all in a fictional, magical, old-timey land). Yeah, I would strongly recommend this book to any of my female friends who grew up on/enjoy princess-y stuff, but are also strong feminist women. You really get the best of both worlds here. 

Spinning Silver: Written by the same author as Uprooted. I really just enjoyed the fuck out of this book. It has a female, orthodox jewish protagonist set in an alternative past Russia where elves are real (and evil?). I was really impressed by the skillful manner in which  the author wove the historical prejudice and challenges experienced by jewish people through a full on fantasy book. 

The Hazel Wood: Full on fantasy with a female protagonist; Begs the question what is good and evil in relation to intention, while still being an easy read. Will be giving this to my future children. 

The Bear and The Nightingale: A spin on classic Russian fairytales, again with a female protagonist. This story was rich and satisfying; It truly felt like it nourished me. 

The Girl In The Tower: The sequel to The Bear and The Nightingale, this story deals more with castle intrigue and less with forest creatures, but again it was rich and satisfying. It takes the premiss and protagonist from The Bear and The Nightingale and demonstrates the authors ability to carry those elements into an entirely new setting. 

The Crow Girls: A book of short stories about my favorite fictional characters. This is a book I have wanted to be written since I could ask my mother to read to me. However, I don’t think it would be all that interesting to someone who has not read his other books. 

Norse Mythology by Neil Gaiman: I honestly could take it or leave it. I guess I expected an interesting spin on the stories because of the author, but they’re pretty straight forward. 

Any Man: OOOOh lord. This got very uncomfortable. I don’t know why, but this is the book I chose to read on my family vacation. Anyways, it’s about the experience of being raped from a variety of male perspectives. All the rapes being perpetrated by a fictional serial rapist named “Maude”. It’s very well written. 

A New American Best Friend: Nuanced, cruelly honest, and shining. Reading these poems are like touching an exposed nerve; It’s exquisite in how much pain and pleasure can be derived from it’s reliability. 

2018 Audio Books:

Her Body and Other Parties:  I listened to this in February of last year and it was good enough that as I’m thinking back I can recall several individual short stories and my reactions to them. I think the stories are well written and poignant, but they’re also uncomfortable and a bit painful at times. Beautiful literature, but I probably won’t read them again. 

Fahrenheit 451: I finally read/listened to this! I started it when I was in 4th grade, and have always felt vaguely guilty that I didn’t finish. It’s a classic so I don’t feel like I need to describe it in anyway. 

Cinder: Stupid teen fiction/sci-fi, but great for driving to work in the morning. The protagonist is treated poorly by her step-mom, but she’s actually oh so very special, and a prince falls in love with her. I do have to say that it was nice that it was set in an asian society. 

A Simple Favor: Good mystery set in contemporary times. Deals with social isolation and social media, as well as a good amount of trashy, titillating, scandalous, sex. I enjoyed it, but it didn’t really make me think of anything particularly deep. Definitely a good audiobook listen. 

In conclusion, I almost exclusively read female centered books this year, and I feel really good about that. Now in 2019 I’m going to actually really read 12 physical books! I can do it!

[centaurianthropology]

The Magnus Archives ‘A Matter of Perspective’ (S03E26) Analysis

Melanie takes the reins for this outing, and we get a statement that has been hinted at since early season 3.  After that, there are particularly fun revelations, then … well, then.  The good times just can’t last on this show, can they?

Come on in to hear what I thought about ‘A Matter of Perspective.’

It’s interesting to contrast Melanie’s presentation style from Jon and Martin’s.  She very much still has an entertainer’s training and instincts.  She’s the only one who cues herself and gives a clap like she expects cutting and editing after.  And yet she seems as gripped by the personality of the statement as they are. It’s hard to tell where her instinct for entertainment ends and the Archivist begins, but suffice to say she’s blurring the line.  She’s not as deep into it as Martin and Jon, but she feels it.

The statement itself is a different perspective on the Daedalus Station, this time from the elusive Jan Kilbride, who has been referenced several times this season.  He’s clearly someone touched by the Vast, and was picked for the mission quite specifically by ‘Mr Fairchild’, likely Simon Fairchild.  So we’ve had the person picked by the Lukases (totally isolated, saw the Earth vanish), and the Fairchilds (got sent so far out from the Earth he perceived the Vast). That probably means that Manuela was chosen by the People’s Church of the Divine Host.  One wonders what sort of experiment they requested of her.

I love that we got to see Simon Fairchild again, even if only for a moment.  Of all the potential human monsters, I have a soft spot for this guy, who seems to me to be the horrific TMA version of a wacky wizard.  He seems to focus on people who were already drawn to the Vast, and then he gives them far more of it than he could ever want. He’s always struck me as the sort of character who knows perfectly well that most people he throws at the Vast end up dead, but he can’t see why that should be a bad thing.  He’s giving them what they want.  It might not come in a palatable form, but they still did want it, at least at the beginning.  Of all the parties in TMA, he often seems the most jovial in his perspective.

We know that he’s trying to find the Vast, and has been collecting pieces of it, experiences of its various facets.  I have to wonder, then, if Kilbride wasn’t his greatest success.  What Kilbride perceived between the stars, far out beyond our own solar system, seems as close as we’ve come to the whole of one of the great old ones. Something so vast his mind couldn’t even comprehend it, couldn’t pick out its edges or define it in any way besides its Vastness.  Was this merely another aspect of the Vast, or did he touch the being itself?  Could he touch the being itself?  

I feel like he hit the nail on the head when he stated that we cannot truly perceive the great old ones, and they can’t really perceive us on any meaningful level.  Their aspects interact with us, but more like we’d interact with ants or other very small insects we notice.  We crush them or brush them aside or sometimes just move them away.  Some of them we take a liking to for a brief moment, and we’re gentle with them, but we forget them soon.  That’s the best analogy to the great old ones I can think of.  The Vast is, in many ways, that enormous incomprehensibility made manifest.  

Once the statement was done, it was also interesting to hear Melanie’s reaction to it.  She seems startled that it’s done, but less so because she seems to be waking up from the sort of out-of-body experience that Jon and Martin go through.  If anything, she seems more like season 1 Jon (and I think there’s a reason those two clash so often, as they are remarkably similar in some ways), wanting to dismiss Kilbride’s experiences, particularly as he didn’t describe ever returning to the Daedalus.  She acknowledges the reality of the supernatural, yes, but without good evidence she has a hard time believing the statement.

Then Basira arrives, and their snarky chats are things I need a lot more of in my life.  The two actresses have great chemistry, and through them we got some wonderful little revelations about the other characters and how they’re perceived by Melanie and Basira.

The first thing that happened was the confirmation that Martin’s little crush on Jon is not only canon, but has probably been noticed by everyone except Jon.  Basira and Melanie both agree that Martin got rather hostile when he found out Jon was confiding in them rather than him, which is fantastic.  I’ve read that sort of thing into so many shows, only to have them deny it later. To have it outright confirmed by the other characters that Martin has it bad for Jon, and that his crush explains a lot of his actions?  Yeah, that’s awesome.  

And the awesome kept coming with the following revelation, second-hand from Georgie, that Jon is asexual. Apparently not aromantic, as he and Georgie did date for a time, but asexual.  It’s fantastic to see representations of various sexualities so seamlessly integrated into the show, and for each of them to fit the characters so well.  As soon as they got confirmed, it felt like an ‘of course’ moment.  Of course Tim is bisexual.  Of course Martin is in love with Jon.  Of course Jon is asexual.  It just works.

I don’t know if they planned on dropping these revelations during Pride, but it’s really fun nonetheless. I feel like this is the best way to do LGBT representation: by simply integrating it when it seems appropriate to the character and the situation.  By not making it some ‘very special episode’.  We got confirmation about Martin and found out more about Jon just through some office gossip.  It makes my heart happy (and, yes, the Dinghy shipper in me more than a bit pleased too). Like, seriously.  Fucking solid job, TMA.

And then.  

And then, Elias.

Fuck me, I wasn’t anticipating that poor Melanie’s dad was at Ivy Meadows, the nursing home taken over by John Amhurst and torn apart by the plague of insects and disease that accompanied him in ‘Taken Ill’.  That remains one of the nastier episodes of TMA ever, and to know that Melanie lost a relative to that, and didn’t even know is horrible.  Even more horrible was how she found out how her grandfather died, by Elias inflicting the information and possibly even some of the feelings he went through upon her.  

His desire to maintain control over those around him, to maintain a true stranglehold on the Institute, is horrifying in its scope and ruthlessness.  And we now know he can take information and plant it into the memories of those who weren’t there.  Turning the truth into a weapon continues to be his cruelest trick, and I hate to think what he might do to Tim or to Martin if they tried to turn on him.  

One thing’s for certain, I don’t think this is going to work out the way he wants it to.  He thinks that this will break Melanie, but she has a core of rage that I think will only get stoked by this.  She may well act cowed, but her mind is still her own. Elias can hear words and see actions, but so far as we can tell, he isn’t a mind-reader.  So Melanie’s can and will still plan.  She might not be able to directly research now, but that doesn’t stop her from plotting.  If he wanted to convince her that he didn’t deserve to die, this sure as hell wasn’t the way.  I think it’s fairly certain that Melanie will kill Elias, but the repercussions of that action … yeah, I worry.

Because Elias does use the truth as a weapon, so I have a tendency to believe him.  He obfuscates, but he rarely outright lies to people. He gets too much satisfaction out of hurting them with the truth as he sees it.  Do I think everyone will drop dead if he dies?  No.  But do I worry that whatever it is that is piggy-backing on Elias like the Archivist piggy-backs on Jon will jump to Melanie when she does it?  Yes.  And then Melanie would become Elias.  Maybe not instantly, but slowly the woman we know would fade, and Miss King would take her place.

Conclusions

An interesting statement (it’s always fascinating when this series really leans into the cosmic part of cosmic horror) from someone I feel like will hold significance in the future. You don’t bring up a character several times and then drop him after a single statement.  

But really, the real meat of this episode came after.  We got confirmation that every single male character in the series is a flavor of queer, that Basira and Melanie’s friendship is excellent and good, and that Elias is 100% the scariest thing on this podcast right now.  Hell of an ending to a good episode all around. This third season is of ridiculous quality, seriously.

And while so much horror is happening, and Elias is absolutely the worst, I am so very pleased with the level of queer representation we just got.  It fits with all the characters, it came out when it felt appropriate for it to come out, and it made my Pride Month feel just a bit more awesome.  Rock on, my very queer podcast.  Rock the fuck on.

[geek-patient-zero]

Part 1, Chapter 7

Or: Lameth the Suburbanite Schlub

Blood War: Masquerade of the Red Death Trilogy Volume 1

St. Louis—March 11, 1994

When we last left Dire McCann, he had three problems: the mystery of the Red Death and what connection he could have with the rising Nictuku, Flavia figuring out that he’s secretly an ancient and powerful Methuselah possessing a human body, and Rachel Young, the singer from The Club Diabolique and suspected assassin of Tyrus Benedict, stealing his mail from his office while he was out. Now he’s leaving his office and going home to have a drink, think about those problems a little more, and hit the hay.

For the first two pages, the narrative further establishes how the World of Darkness is a Harsher, Crueler Version of Our World, and how cautious, suspicious, and prepared McCann is as a result. He waits ten minutes and spends more money for a security guard to get his car out of a city-run underground parking lot.

Despite security cameras and motorcycle patrols, muggings, rapes, and murders were common occurrences in these parking garages. Rumors had it that the security patrols were the ones responsible for many of the crimes. No one knew for sure, as dead men told no tales.

Evil rent-a-cops aren’t the only plague on the city.

McCann didn’t mind spending the extra money if it avoided unnecessary confrontation. The city was a dangerous place. Urban America was increasingly becoming a jungle in which only the strongest and smartest survived. More people died these days from gunshot wounds than from any disease.

But don’t worry. Our government’s hard at work making sure preventable illnesses come in at a close second.

The government claimed that crime was under control. But nobody believed the politicians. The truth was on the streets.

Survival depended more on recognizing the perils that haunted daily life and adjusting to them than on superior firepower. A fact of life in the nightmarish world of modern society was that someone else always possessed superior weaponry.

Good to know in the Stark, Desolate Landscape of the World of Darkness, with all it’s vampires, werewolves, and wraiths, gun violence is still the bigger problem. ‘Murika!

McCann lives in the suburbs, instantly losing some cool points. I bet you thought, after all that talk about Urban America being a jungle where only the strong survive, he’d live in a shitty apartment in the city where you need to have street smarts to survive just getting to your floor. Nope. Suburbs. It makes all the stuff about how dangerous the city is sound like a sheltered suburbanite repeating something Tom and Susan told them in hushed tones at the Nelsons’ yard sale.

But McCann doesn’t want to live just anywhere. He wants somewhere private and secure.

McCann lived in a small brick home in a new development a few blocks off Highway 80. Located on a wide lot at the end of a quiet street, it was surrounded by a wrought-iron security fence, isolating the building from the rest of the block. Which was exactly what the detective desired. He wanted to be left alone. In these troubled times, no one considered his security measures the least bit unusual.

One of those homeowners, huh? There’s at least one house on the block that has security cameras or a pack of doberman guard dogs or something, even in the safest neighborhood. Who knows, there could be an “urban” person a few blocks closer to the highway just waiting to case your home.

He had bought the house for cash less than a year before, when he first decided to settle in the St. Louis area. He knew none of his neighbors and had no interest in meeting them. He worked at night and slept during the day. The few times he had seen anyone he had raised a hand in greeting, but said nothing. McCann considered his home a safe place to rest and relax. His office served as his base of operations. He socialized in neither of them.

Someone’s never watched The ‘Burbs. Buying a house with cash, surrounded by a wrought-iron leave-me-the-fuck-alone security fence, working and sleeping at odd hours, and never speaking to anyone? All while living near people often stereotyped as gossipy rumormongers who never mind their own business and spy on anyone “unusual”? A private person like McCann should never be able to rest and relax. He’d live in fear that somehow, someday, Tom Hanks would break into his house and discover all his World of Darkness secrets.

Alright, enough talking about suburbs like I don’t comfortably live in one. McCann parks his car in the garage but before he enters his house, he checks on his real security system by placing his hand on the wall.

Certain arcane rituals from the dawn of civilization imbued a home with the personality of its owner.

McCann’s house is also a smug secretive jerk who thinks it’s the greatest and wisest schemer ever. Aww, look, he’s comforting the sexy white house across the street whose neighbor burned down. Oh no, it accidentally gave away its biggest secret!

A master magician, and McCann was among the greatest ever to walk the Earth, could immediately sense any disturbance in their dwelling.

I know I said McCann only knew simple parlor tricks to barely pass as a mage, but I might’ve downplayed the true extent of his powers. A bit.

There was none. McCann was safe. At least for the moment, neither the Red Death nor the mysterious Ms. Young had discovered his hideaway.

Shame. It would’ve been funny if he went inside and scary ol’ Red Death was casually relaxing on his couch like Darkseid.

Later, McCann’s sitting in his sofa, drink in hand, listening to Billie Holliday on the stereo. We get a description of the room, and it’s nothing special. Sofa, coffee table, no TV. McCann believes in “simple comforts” but the real point is that he doesn’t have many valuable possessions because he moves around a lot, never staying in one place for long. Reminds me of a friend of mine. He said he had wanderlust, but I suspect he just didn’t know what he wanted to do in life, chasing one passion before getting distracted by another. Lost track of him somewhere down in Florida. McCann moves around for a very different reason, though. His wandering was necessary for his “complex scheme.”

But as he relaxes, he wonders if all his moving around and plotting is even worth it anymore.

At times, he wondered why he still bothered playing the game. So many of his kind no longer struggled. Some had plunged into the great unknown from which there was no return, while others had retreated from cruel reality into a dreamworld of their own creation. He was among a handful who continued fighting. In truth, the prize hardly seemed important any longer. It was the diversion that kept him amused.

The detective shook his head and finished his nightcap. He had engaged in this mental exercise a thousand times and never arrived at a satisfactory conclusion. He was like Ol’ Man River, ‘tired of living, but scared of dying.’ For those like himself, there were no easy answers. Just more questions.

McCann finishes his introspective episode and thinks about the group he learned the Red Death was part of thanks to his bullshit telepathy power; The Children of Dreadful Night. He’s never heard of them before, but the “Dreadful Night” part makes him suspect they’re a Gehenna cult. They’re typically groups of vampires who either want to prevent Gehenna or find a way to save themselves from the Antediluvians when it begins. Then there are the ones who want to help bring it about, but the narrative is focusing on the ones who fear Gehenna for one reason or other. Technically the Sabbat is one huge Gehenna cult, but they’re much more powerful and influential than the smaller groups the term usually refers to. More cults have been springing up lately.

As it did many mortals, the approaching end of the millennium frightened them.

Oh right, the Y2K bug. I doubt that’s calming the Kindred down either.

McCann used to think the cultists were just a bunch of fringe crazies, but now, with the Red Death...

Speaking of, remember when McCann used his brain probe on the Red Death and learned that he both recognized him and had a pretty awesome counter for his psychic powers? He’s worried about that too. It means that Red D. knows his true identity somehow. He’d kept a low profile the past few decades, presumably while separating his Dire McCann identity from whatever one he was using just before that, and preferred “to forward his schemes through unsuspecting agents.” Whatever those agents were doing, no one should have suspected McCann was involved.

He felt certain no evidence existed associating the human detective, Dire McCann, and Lameth, the Dark Messiah of the Kindred.

Wow, okay, so that’s one of the floweriest wannabe impressive not impressive fucking 90′s Image Comics titles you can give a shmuck like McCann. Not to mention redundant. We already had ~*~The Dark Angels~*~, did we also need ~*~The Dark Messiah~*~ too?

The funny thing is, I think Weinberg knew that title was over-the-top. Back when McCann was thinking about the Children of Dreadful Night, there’s a line about how “Kindred possessed a bizarre fondness for nicknames.” Like he thought that if he didn’t show at least a hint of irony, every nerd, geek, or corporate suit that worked on nerd and geek franchises would rise as one, like a perma-virgin hivemind, and institute a cross-genre ban on “The Dark” as part of a character’s title, rank, or nickname. And then where would vampire fiction be?

Shaking his head, McCann wondered if Anis was behind the attack. She was one of the few Kindred who knew many of his secrets. And, like him, she continued to plot, undaunted by the centuries.

Hold up. I know what you’re all thinking. Anis is a perfectly legit Arabic name. Quit giggling.

McCann considers the other weird things that happened last night. Ms. Young was genuinely terrified of the Red Death, convincing McCann that they weren’t working together, but he still believes she killed Tyrus Benedict, stole the Baba Yaga photos, and later stole his mail from his office. And there was that phone call he got, the one warning him of the attack before it happened, made from an out of service phone booth, whose information was erased from McCann’s recording devices the moment it ended. Or, as the narrative puts it:

Reality had twisted immediately after he received the warning, which hinted that an extremely potent mage was at work.

Oh great. Actual mages.

Then there’re the assassins. We already know that Makish hired them on the Red Death’s orders, but McCann doesn’t yet. 

He still has the billfold he pocketed from one of the assassins.

Except for the money he had removed earlier, it was absolutely empty. However, that didn’t mean that it couldn’t reveal secrets.

The detective rested the leather billfold on the coffee table. Placing both hands on it, he let loose the full power of his mighty will. The air wavered with titanic energies. Squeezing his eyes shut, McCann concentrated on a solitary word. Find.

Despite that whole thing about the air wavering with titanic energies, what he’s doing is most likely The Spirit’s Touch, a power from the third tier of the Auspex discipline, which let’s you use an object’s “resonance” to learn things about it and its owner. Pretty basic, and you don’t have to be a Dark Messiah from the dawn of time to use it, but handy for detective work like this.

This is also the second time that a Kindred discipline being used is described as someone using their “mighty will.” I know some powers were namedropped earlier, like Fires of the Inferno and Body of Fire, but it makes me wonder how many listed disciplines actually have names in-universe. If a player has their character activate Awe, in-universe does the character think “I’m using Awe, the first tier Presence power”? Or “I will extend my mighty will to get everyone’s attention”? Like how Superman’s laser vision is just called laser vision and not “Burning Gaze of Rao.” 

Not that Weinberg should’ve used the discipline name every time. “The detective used Auspex” would be much duller writing.

The detective learns that the billfold’s from Washington, D.C.  It was stolen from a government file clerk by the assassin, just so he’d have somewhere to keep the money McCann found in it. We learn about the Kindred’s political situation in Washington. The part of it that doesn’t involve the spreading gang wars.

The nation’s capital had long been a source of friction between the Camarilla and the Sabbat. Though the Camarilla controlled the city, both organizations had agents in the suburbs.

Must be like a cross between Desperate Housewives and Cannibal Holocaust out there. A bit of Weeds, too.

The constantly shifting population also brought in new Kindred. Each sect controlled politicians and lobbyists.

I always had my suspicions about the Long Pig Lobby.

However, the frequent changes in government officials thwarted their ambitions for absolute domination of the government.

That darned democracy, making life in Washington for the vampires inconvenient. Someone should do something abou- Actually, no, that joke doesn’t work. Certain officials come and go in the capital even faster nowadays.

The city was a potential battleground between the cults. The Camarilla held it, but Sabbat forces surrounded it. Sooner or later, warfare between the two groups was bound to explode.

McCann had carefully avoided the city. He disliked being too visible anyplace where the balance of power was in flux. He worked best when in the shadows. However, this assassination attempt hinted that perhaps he had made a mistake by ignoring the metropolis.

After much time spent thinking and thinking, the detective’s all thunk out and decides to go to bed. He mentally checks his magic defenses on the way to his bedroom. And one other thing.

With a wan smile, he rested one hand on a small, detailed sculpture resting on the end table in his bedroom. Carved from sandstone, it depicted a man’s face remarkably similar to his own. Not particularly large or impressive, the statue originally came from Egypt and was over four thousand years old. It had been with McCann for a very long time.

Did you get that Dire McCann is super old? Need it hammered in a little more? You dumb bastards?

If you got rid of that last sentence, this could be a nice little moment for McCann’s character. Him looking at the statue, briefly allowing himself to feel nostalgia for an age and people gone by. A moment where he drops the master schemer act and let’s the old man out. A little heartwarming. A little sad. But the last sentence turns it into another reminder of something we already know.

Eh, maybe I’m being too nitpicky. Looking too hard for flaws.

The detective grinned, remembering Flavia’s tale of Masqueraders. It was an entertaining fable. He wondered how she would react to the truth. Maybe, someday, he would tell her.

No, fuck it, this one I have something to say about.

Back when Flavia was explaining her “tale of Masqueraders,” this was how McCann reacted:

McCann laughed, trying to appear amused. “What utter nonsense.”

and

McCann forced himself to remain quiet. He had said too much already.

And when he’s back in his office, reflecting on his conversation with Flavia:

McCann, sitting behind his desk in his office an hour later, sighed heavily. The detective folded his arms across his chest. For all her grief, the Dark Angel had not stayed in mourning very long. He trusted Flavia not to reveal her suspicions to the Prince for as long as it suited her purposes, and not a second more. If not handled properly, the Dark Angel could prove to be as dangerous to him as the Red Death

Those aren’t the actions and thoughts of a guy who a few hours later would be thinking “Silly bitch, what an amusing fable. Maybe one day I’ll tell her what I really am.” That’s someone whose intimidated by what she knows, and wary of what she’ll tell her fifth-generation vampire boss.

Flavia said that Masqueraders are Methuselahs who possess mortal bodies while in torpor in order to experience life like a mortal again, while giving them some Kindred powers to protect them. McCann is secretly a Methuselah named Lameth, over four thousand years old and notable enough to earn a title like “The Dark Messiah.” We’re also told that his current body is mortal, aside from a few Kindred powers. A detail we’ll learn in a few chapters may complicate things, but for now the similarities are spot on, and back in Chapter Five McCann knew that.

Flavia may be the very definition of what feminist media critics call a Strong Female Character (i.e. a character whose presented as a well-written woman because she’s physically strong and capable of *gasp* holding her own against a man, but in the overall narrative is a satellite character revolving around a male character, often used as fanservice, a love interest, or a prize to be won despite her “strength”) and maybe it’s a leap of logic to get “secret ancient vampire” from a human who can stop one of her attacks, but she more or less figured McCann out, and he knows it. The detective shouldn’t get all haughty or dismissive now because she might not know every detail. Or because she doesn’t know he’s actually ~*~Lameth, the Dark Messiah of the Kindred~*~ and not Sven, the Socially Awkward Apostle of the Kindred. She got your number, dick.

Anyway, the smug bastard goes to sleep and the chapter ends.

[eatbrainsfordinner]

Welcome.

This post is going to be a place of learning. It is going to focus around thyroid  cancer, radioactive iodine, and the low iodine diet. Hopefully it will help explain my current, or soon to be current, or past situation depending on when you’re reading this. 

Disclaimer: I am not a doctor. I am just a 25 year old woman who has been dealing with this since I was 17. 

What is a thyroid?

A quick google search tells us that: The thyroid gland is a butterfly-shaped organ located in the base of your neck. It releases hormones that control metabolism—the way your body uses energy. Its correct functioning depends on having a good supply of iodine from the diet. Thyroid cells suck up iodine in order to make thyroid hormone. (That last bit is important for this particular discussion.)  Here’s a picture of our little friend:

There’s quite a handful of things that can go wrong a person’s thyroid throughout their life but for this situation we will be focusing on papillary thyroid cancer. 

A Brief Bit About Thyroid Cancer

Thyroid cancer is an unusual type of caner. Like many cancers, it can be treated with surgery to remove as much tumor as possible. However, there are frequently tiny bits of tumors that are too small to be seen by the surgeon or to remove by hand. Sometimes those little stragglers spread to other parts of the body beyond the neck region. 

(In my case, it has since spread into my lungs. I would also like to point out that cancer being in my lungs does not make it lung cancer. It is just thyroid cancer that is in my lungs. Not cancer of the lungs. Two very different things.) 

Many types of cancer can be treated with chemotherapy to attempt to kill off any potential tumors left in the body. That’s what makes thyroid cancer a bit unusual. Chemotherapy generally has no effect of the caner cells and therefore renders that form of treatment unproductive. So, you must turn to another option...which brings us to...

Radiation/Radioactive Iodine

If healthy thyroid cells can suck up iodine than so can thyroid cancer cells. While the bits of tumor left may not show up on a scan, if a doctor can highlight those areas than they are able to be seen. That’s what small doses of radioactive iodine do. It is sucked up the remaining cancer cells and cause them to “glow” so they can show up on the scanning machines. If it shows that there is still cancer chilling in there than they will often give the patient a much higher dose of the radioactive iodine which should help kill off the cells. 

How does the iodine get into the thyroid cancer cells? 

That question is the main reason why I’m writing this post. There’s a lot of anatomy/science-y stuff about how thyroids work but that’s boring and you can look that up on your own if you really want. The quick bullet points to this are:

I had a complete thyroidectomy (entire thyroid removed)

I take pills which replace the functions of that organ 

aka pills = fake thyroid = thyroid stimulating hormone (TSH) 

TSH stimulates thyroid tissue (both normal and cancerous) to make it suck up iodine 

stop taking pills, TSH rises 

The higher the TSH the more thirsty it is for iodine

deplete body of all iodine and no medicine for a 2-3 weeks 

body freaks out wondering where all the iodine has disappeared to

feels like you’re going to die for a few weeks

surprise! 

take a radioactive iodine pill 

body rejoices because it’s been gone for so long 

iodine get slurrped right up into those thirsty girls 

thirsty girls light up like a christmas tree on the scans 

boom

find exactly where the cancer is hiding

How do we deplete our body of all iodine though?!

I’ll fucking tell you. Hold on. Jesus.

You get iodine from your diet. That’s it (I think. I’m not a doctor. I mentioned that.). Take it out of your diet. Body is eventually depleted of it. 

But what foods are considered to have iodine in them??

All of them. It’s the worst most miserable three weeks of your life. Okay, I’m being dramatic (I’m not.) there are starving kids and people dying and blah blah blah the low iodine diet sucks worse than all of those things! There are special cook books designed especially for cancer patients who have to have radiation treatment. This is the table of contents out of the one I have:

“The most interesting meals...” That sounds fun. It all looks normal with their pizzas and pasta dishes and pancakes and crepes but don’t let that fool you. It’s all a lie. It’s not pizza. Pizza is good. This is a rubbery cardboard topped with red looking water. I see right through their lies pretending that everything is great and nothing is wrong. Rude.

Conclusion

Basically the point of this entire post is that I am currently going through through, or soon to be going through, this procedure for the third time. Anytime someone asks me why I can’t eat or why I’m extra bitchy it’s just too hard to explain right then and there. Now I can direct them to this post as a way of getting out of a conversation. “Yeah just, like, check my tumblr or whatever...” Going off my medication along with shitty tasting food that no sane person wants to put in their face hole leaves me with some fun side effects.

My past experiences is that I first start to get horrible mood swings. I mean, like, laughing one second then literally full out sobbing the next. Once I cried because I had to go a party and there were cookies there and I couldn’t eat the cookies and then I was sobbing in the bathroom as if someone had died. Over a slightly burned chocolate chip cookie. After the mood swing stage, I get insanely tired. I pretty much sleep all day/night and the rare times that I am awake I’m lying in my bed, curled in a ball, staring blankly at the wall. 

Those weeks are just so I can get the scan to see if there is any cancer. If there is, then I have to continue the fun journey for another few weeks. Except this time I get to take high doses of radiation to add to the fun. So it’s basically all the same symptoms except now I’m super nauseous and vomiting and my jaw swells up and it hurts to swallow and the thought of grilled chicken makes me instantly gag and I have to flush the toilet twice because my pee is radioactive and I’m isolated from all humans for days...and I’m crying over a cookie. The end. 

[thewolfmancometh]

…And From the Ashes Rises “Wolfman: The Hater”

For those of you who have frequented this blog over the last eight years, you may have realized that 1) You are dumber because of it and 2) I used to get real excited for comic book movies. Not only would I review new films that were coming out, but I’d revisit old ones to see if they held up! I even wrote speculative articles as responses to goddamn TRAILERS because I got so fired up about them. During a recent revisit of Captain America: The Winter Soldier, partially due to having gone to see Black Panther and partially because I saw Chris Evans’ sweet-ass beard in the Avengers: Infinity War trailer, and I came to a conclusion: I am a now certified hater. The things that bring others joy, which used to bring me joy, I can’t bring myself to even feign interest in. What the hell happened, Wolfman?! Well, I think I may have cracked the case, so please join me on this journey of hatred.

The early months of 2014 were action-packed: I was reviewing things fairly regularly, I had gone to Sundance and SXSW, and I was kicking total ass. The weekend that Winter Soldier came out was life-changing, which I don’t actually think I’m exaggerating about. One of the fateful events of the weekend was seeing the latest Captain America, a character who had become my favorite in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, which I walked out of feeling like my experience was the dreaded “pretty good;” I neither loved nor hated the film, despite having been looking forward to it for months. The other event was that wheels were set in motion that would result in me working for Marvel and moving to L.A. See?! That’s a big change! I wasn’t blowing shit out of proportion!

The job proved to be a double-edged sword because, on the one hand, I had access to all things Marvel, an opportunity I had only ever dreamed of having. On the other hand, I grew detached from the thing I had once loved because now I could see how the sausage was made. Guardians of the Galaxy, a film I wasn’t particularly excited for, was the first film I had promoted online and also attended its world premiere. Months later, I was able to watch Marvel’s Daredevil long before it ever aired, even though it didn’t have finished special effects. Can you believe it?! Little old Wolfman! Being a big deal! Sadly, this is was the beginning of the descent into becoming a hater.

The longer I was with the company, the less I connected with its TV shows and films, and the more I witnessed fans losing their goddamn minds with excitement and genuine passion. Who the fuck were these people?! Don’t you see these things for their flaws?! Well, apparently not. Making matters worse, DC’s terrible universe of films were just complete dogshit, so I frowned upon all superhero shenanigans. That’s right, me! The guy who would post about TRAILERS! We already covered this! I was no longer the person who would go to see Captain America: The First Avenger on opening day, I was the guy seeing Ant-Man in the middle of the afternoon while at work, and I COMPLAINED ABOUT IT. It was truly a dark time, my friends, the likes of which I hadn’t entirely escaped.

After leaving Marvel, the first MCU film I saw was Doctor Strange, a film which I wasn’t entirely excited for, but was thrilled to be far enough detached from to enjoy as a fan and not as someone who could only ever say positive things about Marvel anywhere on the internet. I walked out of the movie thinking, “That was fine.” And it was! A solid C+. Then I checked the reviews…people loved it! What’s wrong with people!? You know what else people loved? Marvel’s Luke Cage! There’s literally a scene where Luke is submerged in acid to remove a bullet, and a science man is instructed that the acid MUST BE BOILING. Yet, somehow, it became one of Marvel’s best-reviewed shows.

Thinking this was a fluke, I was excited for Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 and, ya know what? It was…fine. Months later, I saw Thor: Ragnarok, and guess what? Fine. It was fine. It was this experience, however, that made me reach my breaking point. Ragnarok, was preceded by a trailer for Justice League and a trailer for Black Panther, resulting in having seen two-and-a-half-hours of CGI shit smashing into other CGI shit. It was all a big fat, “Who cares?!” Sadly, these feelings continued with Justice League (doi) and Black Panther, despite seeing my peers having deep connections and profound revelations over something I viewed as merely, “That was fine.”

So what the hell does Winter Soldier have to do with any of this? Well, a few months ago, Wolfgirl and I stayed in a cabin and only had access to a small TV with cable, which was airing The Winter Soldier. While watching it, I was reminded of a time when I was excited for this movie and, when comparing this movie to a variety of other MCU films I had seen prior to this one, I thought about how much more I preferred it. Not only did I find subjectively stronger elements in it than other films, but I remembered that feeling of excitement and anticipation for an escape from the real world, just to believe for two hours that there really are heroes out there.

It’s okay to want nothing more from a movie than to two hours of escapism. I’m not some pretentious douchebag who thinks superhero films lowers the artform of “cinema,” yet I can’t help but feel remorseful about that excitement and enthusiasm that has disappeared. While I should be as excited as anyone for Infinity War, the “culmination of all 82 MCU movies,” all I can musters is, “Who cares?”

I can’t help but wonder if I’m bringing this all on myself in a way to create an outsider mentality. Comic books haven’t always been looked at in as positive a light as they are now, so being a fan of comics created a connection to everyone else who pursued the hobby. Now that there is nothing bigger than superhero movies, could I be subconsciously rejecting these films as a way of feeling cooler than other people because I go against the grain? I don’t think so, because, in this case, my lack of interest is sparking feelings of isolation as opposed to the pride of being a fan of something even if no one else shares that interest.

Heightening that isolation is the sheer volume of narcissism that has dominated all forms of social media, making the human experience all the more awful. I can’t help but get on the ‘net, see folks championing a film that made me feel nothing, and have that emptiness amplified because I just didn’t get it.

I should also point out that these opinions aren’t specifically linked to superhero movies, as I’ve had similar reactions to the horror world, which I also love a lot! But people keep saying some movies are great and I think they are dogshit!

Alright, this post is already about a thousand words too long and I don’t think I ever meant to have a point, other than wanting to explain that if you follow me on Twitter (@TheWolfman) and see me being a cantankerous asshole, you’re not crazy: I have become a certified hater.

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[dontletthishappentoyou]

11 Reasons Jesus was Probably Gay. #6 Will FUCK YOU UP!?

After having watched Bill Wurtz’s post-history of the world videos, SNL’s Papyrus, and the entirety of 07/27/1978, I feel inspired to find patterns. The motivation to appreciate or create art is a strange thing from an evolutionary perspective. With music, dance, and some other visual arts people theorize that prosody and body-language isolated from other forms of expression while some arts are cheesecakes, inducing artificial flow, or it exploits and exaggerates empathy, letting people experience a historically impossible level of imagining another person’s experience with the assistance of teams of animators, musicians, and stories with massive creation time to consumption time ratios. There is much to be known about the psychology of art, but it’s possible we can understand ourselves by understanding what art we focus on by examining patterns in choices and critiques of creations. As children, a genuine and satisfying human connection depended on such a small amount of conditions, arguably solely proximity. Meeting other children as a child involves a very small amount of variety. When you meet somebody, they will have most of their traits in common with yours, and every difference found dramatically increases your understanding of what human’s are capable of. We talk about favorite colors and foods because our experiences are simple, and rely on sensory experiences, all of which are new. Understanding that others see the same colors, or taste the same food, and express a different preference can be mind-blowing. It proves indisputably that there are other things as complicated as yourself, experiencing similar but unique things.  As individuals grow more complex, establishing more almost essential properties, having divergent experiences, this same connection gets more difficult. The balance between relating and maintaining uniquity becomes harder to find. The increasing divergence motivates us to specifically seek out people we have things in common with, or construct common ground. The ideal friendship might be with somebody who has a very different background, religion, education, social status, family, or personal history, but still has similar experiences. These people prove to us that in spite of the divergence, there is a thread of commonality.  At this age, consciousness itself grows. We are still able to detect ourselves, but like experiencing a color you can’t imagine, new emotions show up at around puberty. The tools you built through childhood no longer work in explaining and understanding yourself and your motivations. People who developed an emotion=motivation based tool set as children may react to the new emotions the way they would have if they had had those emotions as children, seeking different kinds of attention, reacting impulsively to jealousy or threats to social status. When an individual has similar experiences but reacts differently, relatability is especially difficult. People who attempted to acknowledge the parts of themselves they understand the worst would likely feel threatened by people who remain almost perfectly predictable.  From this age on, simplicity of individuals, from the perspective of a person who defines consciousness, consciously or not, by complexity, will feel threatened by individuals who exhibit little to no complexity. If a human can behave in a simple and predictable way, it is exceptionally difficult to empathize. If human-worth depends on consciousness, and some of the people in one’s life exhibit less of that, should those people deserve less compassion and attention than others? If one treats these people as if they do deserve it, cognitive dissonance is achieved.  This is where art, that which portrays complicated characters can be useful. This is where shifting in preference from Donkey Kong and Skies of Arcadia style games with straightforward problem and solution oriented plots to character driven stories like Tales of Symphonia and Final Fantasy VII. J. K. Rowling quite intelligently adjusted plots of her books to fit this change in preference among her audience. If complex characters can be portrayed, than your experiences are relatable, even if there aren’t people actively relating to them. If everyone is a philosophical zombie, the world is quite a lonely place.  I wish there were more to say about how people relate to each other, but things seem to stop here. After this point of human development, we get a little more complex, but not by as much. The best we can do is find specializations. We don’t get better at learning to specialize, but we have had a lot of time to do it now, and that’s the only difference between 18 year olds and 28 year olds in these regards. If you specializing in making yourself vaguely more complex, and understanding more and more complex people, you’ll end up finding it hard to find people who aren’t predictable, which makes it hard to find a human connection that actually feels satisfying.

When we discover a new potential specialization, it can be supported and increase our sense of connection to others, updating scratch or garageband projects regularly and relating to others as they do the same, or we can try helplessly to learn concepts, walking farther and farther down an empty tunnel leading only to isolation. Classmates in college passively interested in your major will provide empty friendships, like predictable people from high school, while people with actual common interests will keep you walking down the tunnel to somewhere actually good. 

We are faced with the unfortunate truth that even a strong motivation to get to the end of a long tunnel can’t motivate the first thousand hours of the trip into the tunnel. The motivation to take the next step must to some extent be directly related to where that next step ends up. Spartans, Visionarium, Garage Band, Marching Band, prolonged vlogging, and Scratch are all artistic and creative accomplishments that require a lot of effort to make any headway with. However, practicing them in a context that provides human connection, while not a new idea, may be the most important common denominator. At this point, complexity in art is proof that an individual has walked far down a tunnel. This is necessary when you perceive your ability to walk down a tunnel to be deficient in motivation, to some extent, because there is no visible human connection at the end of the tunnel. The increase in motivation can feel good and the artist’s expression of relateable of emotions automatically induces a feeling of connection, not supplied by nearby people.  The absence of obvious reason is important because it makes very few promises. While relating to individuals who face various forms of nihilism, allowing for common ground between artist and appreciator to be found, the unpredictability is also important because it requires an exceptionally complex view of another conscious being in order to understand the motivation behind the creation.

While songs like “Outside” follow standard musical forms, thus remaining predictable, in spite of surprise alien pregnancies, videos like “Soap Tips” and “Hi, I’m Steve” lack any precedent. While the verse-chorus form is a common meme, we can assume that the creator of a verse-chorus song didn’t come up with the idea. The producer of a meme is surely more interesting than one of thousands of hosts. Bill Wurtz created very powerful memes by any definition, and through “Hi, I’m Steve” proves capable of using standard artistic standards like the rule of threes and using them to create things that aren’t quite supposed to be songs, musicals, or anything in particular. They balance predictability and unpredictability virtuostically.

07/27/1978 is another amazing example of this balance, taking art analysis to an extreme. Vulture and SNL have intelligent perspectives of pop culture, and with minimal skepticism I assume that a video called “Adorkable Mysogiony” has also received recent views, where simple, mindless entertainment is taken seriously, critiqued as serious art, and then appears more or less meaningful than before. 07/27/1978 is by far the most extreme example. It is proof that there is an interesting person. Since it is not only a great art critique, but also arguably great art, it is satisfying on several levels. Nobody but an interesting person would ever do such a thing. What fuck happened that lead to this, I may never know. However, this video provides tremendous insight into that person, while letting that person remain quite unpredictable. There is more to get to know, and there is clearly complex consciousness behind it, warranting a uniquely large amount of empathy.

So in conclusion, I’d like to find a garage band. Maybe something more ambiguously artistic though. I don’t know though. I would like to make videos, but not ones that require being at the end of tunnels already, but rather ones with little to no focus on anything. I feel personally qualified to make “Hi I’m Steve” type videos. Should I do Unity? Tumblr could become a bit of a short story sharing site. I don’t know. Something though. Maybe this should have been a video instead of a Tumblr post.

[agrandquiet]

It Comes at Night Review

We'll start with the obvious. It Comes at Night is a poor title for a film in which nothing actually comes during the night. Sure, that title probably gestures at a more ethereal, experiential horror. Like, it is at night that fear takes hold, or maybe paranoia, perhaps if we're taking the most literal path it could be the nightmares that our protagonist Travis (Kelvin Harrison Jr.) is unable to escape from. But, you know, to be as reductive as possible, there ain't no It which is coming. At least if anyone ever decides to make a porn-parody they don't got to spend much time workshopping that title.

Once you've got over that though, you realise ain't nothing going to come at night that already in the air during the day, and can come to accept the movie on its own terms it reveals itself to be a tight little pearl of a movie. Instead of some monster flick it's a cabin fever joint. Some mysterious disease appears to have struck America, the cities are unsafe and this country family accepts a young couple and their child into their home but despite everyone's best intentions they can't never be sure how far to extend that hand of trust.

Film opens with them euthanizing grandpa. The disease seems easily communicable, seems real like to fuck you up. Pretty obvious too, all over your eyes face and skin. Like all these slow-apocalypse movies we see the threat has extended to humans too. Desperate people roving the land ready enough to kill in order to ensure their safety. Trey Edward Schults seems to have a poor view of humans, but he also seems to be in love with them.

It's a tender a good approach to his material. He refrains from casting judgement on his marauders, there's this bit where they attack outta nowhere. In his construction of this setpiece Schultz chooses to deliberately decontextualize the actions of the fighting parties. In keeping the point of view squarely locked into Joel Egerton's character the action is divorced from a traditional moral framework. When these two dudes killed they appear in no way different from those who killed them. They're dragged into the forest to rot, the film refrains from commenting.

It's the same with the stuff inside the house. As the fear starts to set in he is content to afford his characters time. The film takes its time for the most part, allows us to hang in these moments of contentment and uncertainty and dread. There a lot of dread, whenever the film turns to night, he chooses to light the world with flashlights and the blazing glow of the magnificent electric lantern. He makes the shadows long and the narrow hallways of the house with its mirrors and the glossy paint on that super production designy red door become super expressionistic.

He also does the thing which he does in Krisha, his first (and at this point only other) feature, of screwing around with the shape of the frame in order to try suggest the feel of the piece. It's honestly one of the least interesting things he do with the picture. I mean, I suppose it was working until I started noticing it, but unlike Krisha the frame ain't dictating the content of the piece, it's just trying to dictate the audience and it feel like a crutch the dude leaning on.

Would be bad if that was all that the flick were doing, but what he and cinematographer Drew Daniels do with the camera is great and totally don't need undermining with all that shit. He got this commitment to shooting a claustrophobia piece all wide angles. He for the most part eschews close-ups and isolating his characters in a frame. He make all these editing choices with the direct intent of bringing these characters together rather than distancing them.

There bits where he teases us too, this whole suggestion that two characters are going to make a spectacularly stupid unwise decision is averted. Then different characters make a spectacularly stupid wise decision. There's something to be said here about togetherness and separation. How the construction serves to isolate our leads from the world. Even when out in the wild they wearing these heavy gasmasks, literally erecting a barrier between them and the others. They live in a house all boarded up. When people are able to connect the world be going right, when they find themselves unable to is when everything get shit right up.

That a good message, a nice one, even for a film that finds its conclusion in the darkness that this one do. For all the time and care it takes in the slow build, it certainly gets where it need to. The ending had me thrown back stunned. Matthew Hannam, who joins Schults at the editing desk really takes the construction of this nightmare imagery they create in the dream sequences and throws it into a conclusion that becomes a waking horror. The structure and logic of time falling away as the interior world of our characters dissolves.

Joel Edgerton is a great pull for this movie, I mean he got an exec producer credit here so you get a sense he went pretty all in. He's just the right guy to be bringing this patriarch onto the stage he got the right face for it. It ain't a star vehicle though Christopher Abbott, Carmen Ejogo, Riley Keough, and relative newcomer Kelvin Harrison Jr. who should by all rights blow up after this one bring their A game to the project too. It's a cheap movie and the best special effect you can get is a face believably stricken with terror, and these folks sell it perfectly.

Which I think is like Shults secret strength. In his first film he rang workable performances outta nonprofessional actors, now he be getting these great performances from established ones. He's great at this character work and has the stylistic chops to ground it in a recognisable political framework. Let's hope he gets a few more in before Disney snatches him for a Marvel.

It Comes at Night is currently screening in UK cinemas