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lsobelevans · 4 years ago

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Horror tropes? In my Roswell, New mexico? It’s more likely than you think!

In this essay I will...

...be mentioning a few horror/thriller movies and while nothing explicitly gory or scary will be shown in this post, those movies definitely contain scenes and themes that can be disturbing/scary/triggering, do your researches if you’ve got doubts!

...be focusing on the Maria and Alex road-trip, from the moment the car breaks down to the last scene with Travis’ twin. I’m probably going to be led to briefly mention the other scenes that are intertwined with this arc (the echo date and the Planet 7 Kyle and Isobel scene, as well as the marlex car drive when I feel like it is relevant).

...be approaching specific themes that are used in the scenes that compose this little arc and also more general ones like sound, editing, cinematography and color.

... be reaching a lot. I do not think everything I will be mentioning is 100% thought-out and voluntary (although you never know). But I’m a firm believer that in filmmaking, yes even inside a CW show, the symbolism comes through subconsciously. So like, maybe they didn’t mean to use corn field as a mark for transition, but it doesn’t take away from the fact that this symbolism works with the story they’re telling and for the journey the characters are in that moment. Additionally, lighting, decor and costumes are always a choice, just like the camera doesn’t position itself randomly, someone’s behind and thinking of the composition of shots that, even if it’s in a basic way, has meaning.

... be starting chronologically but I’ll also make jumps backward and forward, grasping on themes when they come up. Ok, then, let’s dive in!

This episode references and uses a lot of the iconic mechanisms of the horror movie genre. Alex and Maria’s comfortable road trip atmosphere, open hearted conversation in the car, breaks at the same time as the car itself breaks. The camera, steady so far, the shots following a well known pattern of shot/counter-shot, becomes more unpredictable and shakier and suddenly we’re out of the car, and bam, large shot.

From the moment they’re out of the car, you won’t be able to see the horizon. Maria and Alex are stuck in a corn field, and they’re stuck in the frame.

Then poof, Travis appears out of nowhere, accompanied with a pang of music, frightening us and them. Well, more exactly, it cuts on a shot that we’ve seen before without Travis, now with Travis, which gives us the appearing out of nowhere effect.

Alex says it best.

Well now they’re stuck with a strange guy with an axe, and in a corn field 😬

Hey, have you seen he’s got an axe??? or do you need a close-up???

Okay, this scene ends there. So, let’s take a break and talk about cornfields. There’s many examples of horror movies making use of a field of corn as a location, famously Children of the Corn (1984), Dark Night of the Scarecrow (1995) Signs (2002), that last one also involving, you guessed it, aliens.

Screenshots from the Signs trailer.

Corn fields are strongly associated with rurality, especially rural America. More largely, they can represent renewal, fertility or abundance. In the contrary, they can be seen as a very ominous location due to their immensity, a labyrinth in which you can’t see very far away and from which you’ll have trouble coming out.

Although I’m pretty sure Maria’s chase in the cornfield is more of a reference to The Shining (1980) it reminded me of one of my favorite scenes from one of my favorite movies Tom à la ferme (2013), in which Tom is basically held hostage in rural Canada. The corn field chase is a turning point, the last of Tom's attempts to escape.

Cornfields apparently also often imply scarecrows, which are inherently scary in my opinion but we’ll talk about it more later.

The next scene takes place inside of Travis' cabin.

The lighting here is pretty low, the light coming from a few small sources, creating a lot of shadows. The main color is a greenish/yellow which can be associated with nature and earth, rurality, dirty, suffocating. If we look at it, the color scheme of the entire road trip is very much following this pattern of browns/yellows/greens because of the cornfield and the color of the characters costumes (the exception being Maria’s truck which is a bright red). In opposition, the scenes that are intertwined are either blue and orange for Max and Liz or a lot of pink/blues/purples for Isobel and Kyle in planet 7 (bi bi bi).

The cabin is messy, supposedly reflecting the state of the owner’s mind. We get a nice close-up on meat + a knife and all of the creepy skins on the walls. Also, it’s noticeable that from this moment on, the camera is shakier, we experience different angles too.

We are given many visual clues that something is wrong.

I’m gonna pass on the sound of the sound of the cow parodying a werewolf + the vampire diaries inside joke.

Btw, if the fact that Travis names his cows -- that he skins for a living -- like human women isn’t enough for you to think mmmm. we are in danger. Well, don’t worry. The cw spells it out for you!!

We know Alex! We got contextual clues!

Right after this, Alex and Maria make another direct reference to being in a horror movie situation.

ALEX: This is why I don’t like horror films. The gay guy always dies first.

MARIA: ????

ALEX: Or... second. Okay, that’s fair. That look, that’s fair.

I think this bit is interesting, because not only does it denounce an horror movie cliché (the black person of the cast dies first, the queer person is second) but also in this situation I believe it can be see as kind of a callout on the fandom’s behavior that i’m not gonna spell out for you but yeah. Fellow queer people, don’t forget you’re not the only one who is sometimes badly/unfairly represented.

Moving on. In the next scene, Alex is searching the cabin for clues, and we are also given some about Travis.

Either he has a twin brother or he’s got a framed picture of himself on his wall. Oh, and he’s military.

Then Travis startles Alex and plays a little bit of banjo, which is a good excuse to stop and talk about music. The show uses a lot of diegetic music aka music that is present in the universe of the story, that the characters can also hear. It justify the use of said music and it ties the audio with the picture.

The banjo already is heard at the very beginning of the arc during a cut from the planet 7 scene to the road trip scene. We get a few notes that indicate a change of scenery and that helps smooth up the transition, and I’m pretty sure it was also supposed to be diegetic music coming from Maria’s radio. The banjo, like the corn field, is super linked with rurality and rural America (again!)

Another reference of the banjo in horror/thriller would be Deliverance (1972).

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I can’t not think of this movie when I hear banjo unfortunately.

The way Travis plays, aggressively bad, and while singing I Think We’re Alone Now, is supposed to make you think about that scene in The Umbrella Academy be quite unsettling, another point for isolation horror.

So sweet of Travis to attack Alex with a guitar, and then a smol knife, and not with the axe <3.

Then we’ve got a traveling zoom-in (or equivalent I’m not sure it isn’t a steady-cam here but the effect is the same) on Maria. This kind of effect can feel a little bit over-the-top and dramatic, in a old genre movie kind of way. It is usually used to bring the audience in, make it feel like you’re evolving in the same universe as the characters (here you’re walking toward Maria). In a scene where you should feel scared, it can be a mean to make you feel more engaged, as well as underlining Maria’s expression, her fear. In my opinion, this is also a way to tell you that from now on, Maria is the main character of this arc, the one that you will be following after the commercial break (that occurs right after) and making it more suspenseful.

The scene after the break is the start of the corn-field chase. Travis steps out of the cabin, the cuts are faster, many close-shots, some even out of focus, that accelerate the rhythm, and a long fade-in of a new song: a modern, electronic song (Kim Petra’s Close You Eyes) completely in opposition with the acoustic banjo and with the atmosphere of the scene, which makes it strange and makes you think oh, what a weird choice! (at least it did for me lol). The lyrics, however, go very well with the scene.

I feel it coming on You've got nowhere to run There's no way you'll make it out alive

Yep.

We find out right after that the music is in fact diegetic but for Isobel and Kyle, it’s another use of music to ease a transition between 2 scenes that are different in every possible way.

Now, the corn-field chase. As I mentioned before, I believe it’s a direct reference to The Shining’s ending chase scene where Jack Torrance chases his son Danny through a vegetal labyrinth with an axe.

From the shots to the lighting (from behind or on the side, making the characters look like silhouettes) both scenes are very similar. Also, Travis is styled like Jack Nicholson ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Oh look, Michael’s here to save the day!

Oh well, guess not.

Yeah, in this scene, and like we’ve been shown before, Maria is going to be the one that saves everyone. The racist cliché of the black character dying first in a horror movie is reversed, Maria is the last one standing. The scarecrow (that looked conveniently a lot like Maria) is supposed to play in favor of the bad guy, it’s a scary element, creating confusion and unease, but here the character decides to basically take it into her own hands and bend the rules. This character says i’m not that archetype, and she’s going to be using the horror movie tools against itself.

Lastly, the final horror movie recurring theme that I’m going to talk about is the twin/the double.

Yes, twins is a spooky tool used in horror movie because their similarities make them unsettling, uncanny.

There’s also the idea that if one were to replace the other, you wouldn’t be able to tell. The impostor is a very scary concept that Roswell has also dealt with before.

I can’t be the only one that has been traumatized by that halloween special of the Simpsons where Bart has an evil twin...

It’s the last twist of the arc, there is a bad!Travis and a good!Travis. The bad one kept the other locked-up somewhere and had taken his place.

It’s particularly interesting for Roswell that has a history with twins/doppelgänger, and that since the original show. It is a clear instance of in-world foreshadowing here! (howdy)

My conclusion about all this is that the people who worked on 2x06 had a great time building the episode and it shows, while also making it enjoyable to watch and yeah, we love to see it!

#roswellmarchformeta2021 #rnmmarchformeta2021 #meta #or whatever this is ahah #tw violence #i'm so sorry i'm late for this ;___;#mine*

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imaginariumpod · 4 years ago

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A Tapestry of Lace and Silk : the visual aesthetic and costume design of Crimson Peak (2015)

In the dark corners of an ancient mansion, you hear the rustle of a long dress on the floor, there behind a closed door, lies some ghosts and secrets that should never be unearthed.

A woman walks in the silence.

Crimson Peak (2015) is a movie directed by Guillermo Del Toro, and is one of the most obvious mainstream examples of the gothic romance in cinema in the recent years. With a story full of ghosts, a secret, a haunted house and of visuals directly inspired by the mid-century gothic romance book covers. This movie is visually highly stylized and immersive in a way I think a lot of filmmakers and studios tend to shy away from.

While Guillermo Del Toro’s movies tend to always be very stylized and visually cohesive, Crimson Peak is truly the one, in my opinion, where the production design was at its most compelling and beautiful. To me, it’s obvious how much care and attention has been given to even the slightest of details, to create the perfect visual identity for this film. I have read once that the gothic was very decorative, as a genre. From the dark mansions, and the flowing nightgowns to the flickering lights of the candles and the creaking floors. The ~aesthetic~ is something that is very important to a gothic romance story. It’s all in the atmosphere, as well as some important elements of the story in itself, that make a gothic romance. Gothic Romance is a genre that you have to lean into, and Guillermo Del Toro perfectly understood it when it came to Crimson Peak.

Before we go more into it, i just want to warn you all that there’s probably going to be spoilers in this article. I will try my best to avoid being overly blatant about what happens in the story in itself, because that is not my focus. My focus during this article will be on the production design of the movie, the way this movie looks and has been designed, especially when it comes to the costumes and the outfits the characters wear throughout the movie. I mostly want to go deep into the visual aesthetic of this film, from the decors and visual themes to the dresses and outfits that were created for this story. I want to talk about the visual aspect of the movie and how it translates within the genre of gothic and the medium of filmmaking.

Guillermo Del Toro : the cineast

Guilerrmo del Toro is a mexican director mostly known for having a very distinct style of dark fantastical movies often featuring monsters, myths, the folklore and fairytales. His movies alternate between being made in spanish or english. His stories and movies often explore the dark side of the fantastical, of fairy tales and stories told after the dark. and yet. they have a hopeful side to them .

While a lot of his movies were successful, I do think it’s El Laberinto del fauno (2006) (Pan’s Labyrinth) that really established him as a thriving filmmaker, despite how niche a lot of his movies and stories are. Which, by the way, as a quick aside, Pan’s Labyrinth is a very formative movie to me, I watched the year it came out, when I was 11 years old, my dad brought the DVD home, thinking it was a movie for children. And well. It was not. I ended up being TERRIFIED and yet mesmerized and this was my first contact with Guillermo Del Toro as a filmmaker but it certainly wouldn’t be the last. His movies are crystallized in my memory, and they awakened in me a love of this more gothic and fairy-tale inspired horror. He's definitely a movie director that brings his unique touch to whichever work he’s doing.

The Gothic is a very prominent part of Del Toro’s work, which he calls Gothick (and is indeed a word that represents the genre that got started by Horace Walpole’s book The Castle of Otranto in 1764) and he describes the relationship he has with this genre as “a way to discover beauty in the monstrous” The protagonists of Del Toro movies often embrace the darkness that exists around them and within themselves. For Del Toro, the gothic is the “only genre that teaches [us] to understand otherness.” You can see it in the narrative of so many of his movies, which culminates in The Shape of The Water, where the monster ends up being the victim of society, and the real monster is the character of Michael Shannon, who represents the pressure of society, the norms and accepted and what can happen if you deviate from what is accepted.

The narratives of Del Toro’s movies reject authorianism in any shape or form, whether the societal authorianism or the narrative ones, and this makes for a way of storytelling that often turns around all expected tropes.His movies are, at their core, anti-fascist and, in my very humble opinion, very relevant during our current political climate on an global level. I really do not feel like I am the right person to dive deep into this subject in a small article on the visual aesthetic of one of Del Toro’s movies, but I want to recommend the thesis The Dark Fantastic of Guillermo Del Toro : Myth, Fascism, and theopolitical Imagination in Cronos, The Devil’s Backbone, and Pan’s Labyrinth by Morgaan Sinclair. That thesis is widely informative and interesting to read and will probably dive deeper in those themes that are always somewhat present in every Del Toro movie.

He loves using “typical” genre stories and making them his own. From folk tales, fairy tales, vampire stories, legends, he uses these narrative motifs as a template for his stories, but he always subverts them in one way or another, exploring the darkness within. And this is what he also did with Crimson Peak, but now with the gothic romance genre as his template. Gothic Romance is one of those genres that is very formulaic in some ways, it has very common tropes and themes that are often used. For example, the way he explores the gothic house and its entire symbolism in his early movie The Devil’s Backbone (2001).

[These old-Gothic notions insinuate themselves in the Gothick terrain of del Toro’s films. The Devil’s Backbone, a ghost story set in a remote orphanage during the Spanish Civil War, seems at first glance to be a classic Gothick romance, which, as del Toro reminds us in his commentary, focuses on the house, the domicile, as an emblem and warped container of the human self. This symbolically charged structure, he says, always conceals a “dark secret,” linked to a treasure and deep passions, “that is buried in the past and affects the people living in it.” At the center of the darkness stands “a very pure hero—a new set of eyes to explore the secret and through the purity of his heart unravel the mystery.”]

When it comes to his films, Del Toro tends to often use archetypes as a way to effectively communicate certain concepts, but more often than not, he will turn these archetypes upside down. Del Toro tends to also use a lot of symbols in his movies, weaving a tapestry of overarching themes and meaning. He gives depth to his stories by a use of various artistic and literary references, historical references. building a story that contains layers upon layers. This depth also translates to the visual aspect of his movies, as Del Toro movies tend to be carefully and precisely crafted. The aesthetic is, as one might say, on point. From the somber and fantastical creativity of Pan’s Labyrinth to the epic and vibrants colors of Pacific Rim. Crimson Peak is, to me, one of the most visually beautiful and compelling movies of Del Toro, and this is what we’re going to get into a bit later.

A ghost story:

This story starts at the end. This is a narrative device Del Toro also used with Pan’s Labyrinth, the movie starts with the final scene, and we know that something terrible is going to happen, and it just keeps the tension and stakes high during the entirety of the movie, as we keep wondering when things will take a turn for the worse.

We can see Edith Cushing (Mia Wasikowska ) wearing her white nightgown, in a scene of fog and piercing white. Her blond hair is flowing down on her shoulders, her face is pale, and her hands.

Her hands are drenched in blood.

The first sentence of the movie is then spoken : “Ghosts are real. This much I know.” This immediately sets the tone for the rest of the movie.

And then. It goes back to the beginning, when she was just a young child, at the moment her mother died, when the ghost of her mother, veiled in black lace, came to warn her, to beware of Crimson Peak…

Edith Cushing is a young woman living with her father and who dreams of becoming a writer. She keeps trying to publish her story, not a ghost story, but moreso a story with a ghost in it. “The ghost is a metaphor” she says. A metaphor for the past and for regrets and violence that still permeates a place. She then meets Thomas Sharpe (Tom Hiddleston), an english baronet without fortune, and his sister Lucille (Jessica Chastain). After the sudden (and suspicious) death of her father, she marries Thomas and follows him and his sister back to England, in their strange mansion that stands isolated in the midst of english hills, atop a source of red clay. The Sharpes are an aristocratic family with no fortune and a decrepit mansion where strange things happen, where ghosts roam.

There’s also a social commentary here on the changing social norms and social classes. While the Sharpes are an aristocratic family, owning land and a title, they are not rich. Their clothes are good quality, made from good materials and hand crafted, but they are also old and not of the current fashion. They are in a very strange place socially, being higher up on the social class and yet, being broke and trying to figure out how to get money to take care of their crumbling estate.

Ghosts are real, we need to remember, and are a reminder of what has been forgotten and what has died. The past is still lingering on in the present, and violence of the past will not go unpunished. The ghosts of Crimson Peak are terrifying. I do not want to say much about them, because it would reveal too much about the plot and the story, but I want to talk about them in terms of visual design. The ghosts of Crimson Peak are terrifying, they are skeleton-like, and red. Vibrant red. They are nothing like I have ever seen before in terms of ghosts, and this is yet another way Crimson Peak sets itself apart from other movies.

Lucille says something at the end of the movie, and I will not say anything about the plot, so fear not for spoilers, she says “but the horror… the horror was for love” and I do think it says so much about the movie and about the genre. Gothic romance is not really a love story, but it’s not strictly a horror story either. It’s a blend of love and horror. And sometimes… the horror, the horror will be for the sake of love.

The building of a haunted house

Production design, when it comes to movies, relates to everything that has to do with the visual identity of the movie. The look and the stylistic choices that are made to make the movie look the way it does. From the costumes, to the sets, to the decor, and all the small details, production design is one of the most important parts of constructing a movie. It’s those elements that make out how the movie will look and what it will communicate to its audience.

The production designer works on all the aspects that pertains to the visuals of the movies, along with the director of photography. They manage everything from the costume, the sets and the decor. And they work closely with the director to craft the visual identity of the movie. Guillermo Del Toro always draws from a very vast range of thematic and visual inspirations when it comes to his movies : from gothic architecture, symbolist art, the surrealists, but also more popular inspirations such as comic books and even video games. So many of these elements are brought and matched to visually create a layered look to the film.

The visual storytelling, the ambiance, the atmosphere, all of these elements are a huge part of what makes Crimson Peak truly interesting. The visuals of the movies were not an afterthought to the script, but were an integral part of how the movie was constructed. Under the directives of Guilermo Del Toro, Thomas E. Sanders [Dracula (1992) ; Braveheart (1995)] constructed an intricate and vibrant appearance for Crimson Peak, which I think is one of the most memorable components of the film.

This movie takes the canons of gothic horror and gothic romance and embraces them, whether it is narratively speaking or visually speaking. I always love a story that leans heavily into its genre and its tropes and convention, only to make use of them in a different and new way. I can mention The Man From U.N.C.L.E. (2015) as another movie who embraces its genre, here the corny 1960s inspired spy movie, and just GOES WITH IT. I do so much appreciate when any type of storyteller and artist fully work within the genre and then try to expand the boundaries of that specific genre, all the while trying to create a work that is definitely recognizable as a certain genre.

As I said, the visuals are obviously very much inspired by the canons of gothic romance, whether it's the illustrations that were in the book of the 19th century, as well as all the historical inspirations from the late 19th century in which the movie is set. There’s also the obvious references to the book covers of the gothic paperbacks of the mid 20th century, with their jewel tones, and their heroines escaping a dark and looming manor behind them. Or sometimes, she is exploring the dark winding corridors, with only the help of a few candles lighting her way.

There’s this dichotomy that sometimes occurs when it comes to movies, of style over substance or vice versa. Which to me is a moot and useless point, because style is a form of storytelling as well. The way you construct the visuals of the movies, the decors and the costumes, and the way the film is shot, all of this is a way of telling a story and is as essential to a good movie. Even a movie that doesn’t put the emphasis on “style” also makes a visual choice. Not focusing on the visual elements such as the costumes, or the decor, is also a stylistic choice in itself. Even if the choice is to make the movie devoid of any outlandish visual assets. Taking these decisions are what ultimately make the movie be the way it is visually. A film is a visual form of storytelling,

When it comes to the sets, the movie is set mostly in two diametrically opposed houses, the airy and light house of the Cushings in Buffalo, homey and comfortable, and the cold gothic estate of the Sharpes : Allerdale Hall. Where the house in Bufallo was full of light and a warm color palette, Allerdale Hall is the opposite. That house is the typical gothic mansion, and one of the most important elements of any good gothic romance. Imposing, dark, with twisting corridors and actually decaying above them. Visually, it’s also distinctive with the colder colors that are used when filming there. It’s the ideal setting for the gothic romance story to happen. Sanders says that the only reference that he was given by Del Toro for the design of this house was the painting House by the Railroad (1925) by Edward Hopper. This painting was the beginning of a very long and arduous process as Sanders tried to create this perfect haunted house.

The house of the Sharpes, is atop a source of red clay, hence its name. It’s decrepit, falling apart, cold. “colder inside than out” says Edith when she first enters it. The house is slowly but surely sinking in the red clay that once used to be the source of the Sharpes’ fortune. Visually, it looks as if the house was bleeding, as if the house was alive. As Sanders says during an interview with Slate :

“We felt that the clay is the blood of the earth, and it’s also the blood of the house, and that the house was a living thing that embodied the family over all those years.”

Within the genre of gothic horror and gothic romance, the house plays a very peculiar part. Whether it is haunted or not, the house is very much often an important character of the gothic story, on the same level as the heroine or the antagonist or the ghost. The spaces of Allerdale Hale are tight and menacing, the house is full of dangerous sharp angles. This is not a warm house. Del Toro said that he repeated the wooden pattern on the columns three or four times, so that it looks slightly out of focus, like something is wrong, but you cannot pinpoint what it is, exactly.

Allerdale Hall is thus the perfect setting for this gothic romance to unfold, through the sharp and twisting corridors, with the gaping hole in the ceiling through which the snow falls and covers the red crimson blood of the house.

A nightgown to explore strange corridors at night:

The main costume designer for this film was Costume Designer Kate Hawley, assisted by Cori Burchell. Even though they hadn’t worked specifically on period movies and historical movies or more fantastical movies prior to their job on Crimson Peak, I cannot help but think that they did a marvelous job when it came to the costume design for this particular movie. Hawley had previously worked on Pacific Rim with Del Toro, so she was familiar with the way he worked and envisioned things. Together, they truly created a wardrobe that was absolutely wonderful for the movie of Crimson Peak. Highly stylized. Imbued with the fashion and artistic trends of the era, without being exactly Literal to the clothing of the time. She used costume design as a vehicle to communicate ideas and moods that were intrinsical to the characters of the story.

Hawley worked closely with Del Toro to create the costumes that would be perfect to convey the personality of the characters and would help build the depth of the movie. In her interview with digital magazine JEZEBEL, she says that she definitely considers Crimson Peak to feel like an opera, a piece of music in which there’s two distinct acts, and so the costuming had to also follow those two distinct acts and those two distinct worlds that the characters inhabit. From the color scheme and mood, to the details of the historical period. But most importantly, especially for a Guillermo Del Toro movie, it was vital for Hawley to look at it thematically first. Del Toro movies are always chock full of references to art, folklore and literature, and there is no surprise that the costume design should follow the same direction.

The costumes are an important narrative device as well, the clothing a character wears reflects their personality as well as their narrative journey. It can inform on the status of the character, their place in society, it’s an effective tool of storytelling. A good costume designer will use the wardrobe of each character to say something about the character in themselves but also create a cohesive visual look for the ensemble. From the colors to the chosen fashion style and to the accessories, fashion is a silent mode of communication that we all inherently understand, even if not on a conscious level. The wardrobe of each different character is thought and designed, to fit the character but the movie as a whole.

As our queen and icon, legendary costume designer and winner of eight separate academy awards for costume design, Edith Head says : “Fashion is not the primary thing, the primary effort in motion pictures is to tell a story”. And clothing do tell a story, whether or not you think they do. This is comes back to what I was saying earlier, that sometimes, people tend to not put any sort of importance on the clothing, considering it shallow and superficial, but I would argue that it’s a very subtle way of storytelling that says more about the character in a single outfit than a whole scene of exposition ever could.

Edith’s clothes are all very modern and current to the era the movie is set in (ie. 1901) The silhouette of all the clothes she wears are very much within the fashionable silhouette of the era, with the gigantic sleeves, and the cinched waist and slightly flare-y skirt. All of the dresses she wears throughout the movie have the leg-of-mutton sleeves that were so fashionable during the late 1890s and early 1900s. The color palette of Edith’s clothes is very much within a very soft and warm-toned palette, with a lot of soft yellows, ivories, creams, mustards and golds. this very much visually set her apart from the Sharpes. Hawley says she imagined Edith as a canary in a coal mine, her vibrant yellows and gold outfits in the dark and somber walls of Allerdale Hall. Hawley and Del Toro also used a pre-raphaelite portrait of Helen of Troy by Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1863) as a visual basis to work on Edith’s aesthetic.

She’s a down to earth woman who is ready to make efforts and her dresses reflect this aspect of her personality, they are comfortable and practical, while still having that air of whimsy to them. From the gigantic buttons on her honey colored dress or the beautifully eccentric belt in the shape of hands. Kate Hawley, the movie’s costume designer, says that this belt is just an upscaled version of the small mourning jewelry in which a lock of hair of a loved one who passed away can be found in. “I took these little earrings, these little ivory hands, and we scaled them up so it was almost like a mother's hands clasped around her waist”. (I so desperately want a belt like that btw, it is creepy but i still want it, if any of you happen to find one, please do contact me, thank you so very much.) She matches her hat and gloves with her ensemble, and generally, Edith, is just very visually cohesive and coherent within her own style.

During a very romantically and sensually charged scene, she wears a beautiful evening gown in ivory satin and ornamented with pearls. She enters the room dressed in this lovely dress and a long satin cape of the same color and a pleated collar, her hair delicately swept up. This is Edith’s very own dramatic moment, where she gets to dance with her romantic lead and wears an outfit that is a bit fancier than her usual fare. This dress is still within the very soft and pale color palette that represents Edith. This particular dress is visibly inspired by a painting of the italian artist Giovanni Boldini : The Black Sash (1905), which furthers the fact that this movie’s visual aesthetic is deeper than what first meets the eye. From the delicate color and stark black ribbon down her back.

Edith, though, is our ingenue heroine of the gothic romance. One of the main archetypes in the gothic romance is the innocent heroine, a young woman thrown into a situation that’s claustrophobic, scary and dangerous. In every gothic romance, there comes a moment where the heroine leaves her bed in her nightgown, it’s a very striking visual that is the mark of the way we visualize gothic romance. She holds a candle, wearing only the lightest of clothing, and goes to explore the darkness within the walls she inhabits. Her nightgown ends up being the most significant outfit of the whole movie, it truly marks her as a gothic romance heroine, while she roams the corridors at night.

«I’ve never done so many nighties and nightgowns! It’s all about running around in night dresses through long corridors. That also blended to the fabric. When Guillermo said to me, “It’s about a house that breathes,” that’s why we chose the lightest fabric, just a little thing to try and help the storytelling with the idea of the house.»

Edith’s nightgown is striking, the movement of the heavily pleated garment fills the whole screen whenever she moves, it gives her a certain elegance and follows the cohesive silhouette and color palette that was established for her thus far, with its gigantic sleeves and the soft warm and earthy colors of the dressing gown she wears over her nightgown, as she goes down the dark stairs of Allerdale Hall.

Where Edith is the innocent ingenue, Lucille is the woman hardened by life and misfortunes. She is all sharp angles and contrasts, where Edith is soft and kind, with a seamless color palette. Lucille’s outfits are stuck twenty years in the past and this is very much a narrative device and tool that’s used through the usage of dress and costume design. By showing her in these lavish but old-fashioned dresses. it serves both the purpose of showing how rich and noble the family of the Sharpes is but also, it effectively communicates how they do not have the means to actually follow the current fashionable trends. It shows that Lucille is not one to want to have something of lower quality or cheaper than she thinks her standing deserves. Lucille is a woman that is stuck in the past and is not truly living in the current times. I think that even though these details often necessitate a basic knowledge of the dress silhouettes of the late 19th century and early 20th century, this tactic still visually works because it sets Lucille apart from the rest of the world. It expresses visually how she and her brother are distanced from the world outside.

Her dresses and outfits are dramatic and striking, with the sharp silhouette of the 1880s, with the bustles. The colors of her dresses are always in deep tones, like reds, blues or black. The colors are very rich and vivid. The first dress that we see Lucille wearing is the beautiful red dress during the scene where she plays piano. A silhouette typical of the 1880s with the bustles and the very extravagant detailing. That one dress is a striking red, with a skirt that has a long train. The one very important design detailing is the back of the dress, replicating a spine of sorts in the middle of her back. Those sharp angles forebode a sense of danger that is conveyed strictly through the construction of the dress, and the arrangement of the textiles, the various shades of red fabric intertwined to create this gorgeous pattern that goes down the skirt. Her hair is swept upward and decorated with fine red jewels, and the pale complexion of Jessica Chastain only make the whole ensemble more striking.

Compared to the two other components of the main trio, Thomas Sharpe’s outfits seem much more muted and sober. His clothes, same as his sister’s, are also too old to be fashionable, but made of high quality materials. The color palettes of his clothes are very dark and deep, with touches of deep blues and greens. When you transpose him into Allerdale Hall, he fits seamlessly within the decor, meanwhile he seemed out of space and out of time in the sunny and modern decor of Buffalo.

A desire for accuracy :

Historical accuracy is always a point of contention when it comes to movies set in a particular historical setting, in this case in the early years of the 1900s. And before we go any further, is historical accuracy even That important when it comes to an effective costume design ? I honestly think historically accurate costumes are very important when it comes to setting your movie. The visual immersion and world building when your story is set in a specific time and place, like for example, in this movie, set in Buffalo, United-States, and England, during the year of 1901, depends on these important elements, such as the costume design and the decor. Especially when a movie is not tending toward the fantastical. For this reason, I really do think that having period accurate costuming, design and makeup is incredibly important when it comes to immersion and creating a visually cohesive world.

Nonetheless, to me, this part of the costume design is less important than what the costume design says about the story and the characters. As I said earlier, costume design is a very subtle but powerful narrative and visual tool to use in filmmaking. And for this reason, I personally think it’s more important for a costume to be efficient when it comes to storytelling than to try to achieve perfect accuracy. Simply put, a costume designer is not someone whose aim is to recreate historical garments perfectly (if this is your jam, I follow a bunch of creators on youtube who actually do that, using historical sewing techniques as well). Their aim is to use the clothing for a storytelling purpose.

There is this thread by fashion historian and curator Hilary Davidson on the subject of ahistorical costume design and this is what she has to say about Crimson Peak:

“Kate Hawley's designs for Crimson Peak (2015) are immersed in artistic trends of the fin-de-siecle, making costumes that embody the period's aesthetic spirit without being completely literal”

When it comes to Crimson Peak, are the costumes historically accurate. For the case of Crimson Peak, the answer is yes and no, at the same time. More than creating historically accurate costumes, Hawley wanted to create an atmosphere, with dreamy costumes that would serve a narrative purpose, and use historical sources as a guideline and inspiration Liberties will often need to be taken to complement the story and to serve the purpose of storytelling nonetheless, I do think that the more researched and accurate the costuming is, the more complex and interesting it can be . and I do think it ended up being SO SO INTERESTING.

Costume design is more than simply making historically accurate costumes, a costume designer needs to know fashion history and fashion trends, but ultimately, their job is not to recreate exact replicas of the clothing of a certain historical period. What a good costume designer has to do, is to create a wardrobe that fits the story that is being told, and fits within the general universe it's set in and gives you information on the character. What Hawley did was to respect the silhouette of the period, from the foundation garments to the outer garments, and then, when it came to the actual costumes, she could play around with the details to convey a certain mood and narrative. The underpinnings always do define the general structure and shape of a garment, and it’s one of the most important elements when someone wants to construct a historically accurate costume. Even if, like Hawley, liberties are then taken when it comes to the actual clothing, the “spirit” of the clothes is respected. From the corsets and to the petticoats and all the subsequent layers, it was important for Hawley to have all of these elements in a historical accurate way, because it would change the posture and the demeanors of the actors. It shapes the way they stand and the way they move through the different spaces.

Visually, Crimson Peak is a masterpiece of a gothic romance. From the sweeping nightgowns to the imposing and sharp gothic mansions, and the scary ghosts behind the door, Del Toro and his team have created a movie that takes everything that is wonderful about gothic romance to the highest theatrical level, and I, for one, always enjoy this visual and cinematic experience.

#crimson peak #guillermo del toro #costume design #gothic #gothic romance #haunted house

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pianosmasher · 4 years ago

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I find it... interesting that Resident Evil 8, subtitled Village, is the first to introduce vampires and werewolves to the series. Up until that point, the series had always been about biological weapons, mainly of the viral kind. As a Dracula fan, I immediately pledged myself to catch all the way up on the series in anticipation for VIII after seeing the announcement trailer in June 2020. I basically didn’t know anything about the series, as I was too young for M-rated games during its heyday (at least by my parents’ standards) and had no older cousins or siblings who’d introduce me. I didn’t even make the pandemic connection at first. All I was thinking of was how my new PS4, bought with the money I’d originally saved to go see my mom in Tennessee one last time, was slowly becoming my new favorite thing. It’d gotten my roommate through April with The Last of Us Remastered and it got me through May with Horizon: Zero Dawn. If I’m gonna make the switch from Nintendo to Sony, I may as well get to know Resident Evil starting in June.

The pandemic parallels came in much later. I’m playing them in release order, and it’s not until the second game that the characters have the time and awareness to consider synthesizing a vaccine. The characters in the first game have to figure out what’s going on as it’s happening to them, and it’s important to remember that zombies came back into popularity due to the efforts of that first game, meaning the exact nature of the threat would have come off more ambiguous at the time. The game’s Japanese title, Biohazard, holds the clue: we’ve scarred an ecosystem, and the human damage may be beyond repair. All you can do is try to save all the people who don’t deserve to be there as it happens.

Starting in the second game, I'd hear the characters talk about vaccines. I myself will reach full vaccination status tomorrow afternoon, and here I am playing games with characters who’ve killed just to get close to making one. The difference between our viruses in theirs is that we actually have some hope of curing ours, as in the world of Resident Evil, everything seems unstoppable. Momentum never seems to end once it’s been picked up - not for the virus, not for the destruction, and certainly not for human greed. The player is supposed to survive and nothing more, not live and thrive but to continuously struggle, lose, and sacrifice as they make their way through an environment that is either mastered or deadly to the touch. “Don’t get too close,” the special operatives say to their fellow agents. Resident Evil offers the power fantasy of knowing how to handle something impossible through trial and error. The horror is overcome by learning to live with it.

At least that’s how the first three games work. Starting with the fourth, all the atmosphere, pacing, and level design keep their levels of quality, but instead serve a much more direct fantasy of power in the form of a dread thriller with a pint of action thrown in for good measure. It’s clear that our relationship with the environment had changed by the time it was released. RE4 became the blueprint for third-person shooters, but funnily enough, going back to it reveals that it’s everything around the shooter that allows the main mechanic to shine that deep into the spotlight. The characters, for instance: Leon, now a professional, is infected with the game’s new virus himself early on, and he begins to have nightmares about what it might be doing to his body. If you’ve just come off playing through Leon’s first day as a cop in RE2, this is terrifying. He is practically a special agent at this point, meaning he’s accomplished quite a lot since the last game, so his plot armor can’t exactly be thick. Are we gonna see a character in Resident Evil, a game requiring a lot of death at first, actually die in canon?

More importantly: what does he do now that he has the virus? Is he gonna be okay? Am I hitting myself too close to home? Or is this the only piece of media that feels relevant to me anymore?

Resident Evil 5 takes place in Africa, and despite semiplausible claims of racism actually ends up being a staunchly anti-colonial parable about overcoming a world of fear. Chris Redfield finally lets go of fear when he looks over at Jill Valentine and Sheva Alomar, the two women who have now saved his life too many times to count. RE5 was built for co-op play, and its story is based around the vulnerability and necessity of partnership. It’s not defeating the big bad in a giant volcano that helps Chris live uninhibited. It’s his support network, however small it may be. (There’s even a woman of color in it). The characters of RE have always been at the forefront of the experience, but 5 at least tries to make it clear that there really are people worth fighting for out there, and ten times out of ten, you can spot them as the ones who’re fighting right there with you.

RE6 picks up on this theme of connection, gets high on nostalgia, and plays fast and loose with tone in a sort of victory lap. I’m not finished with it but it isn’t great so far. I also haven’t touched RE7, Code: Veronica, or Zero, as I want to finish those last two spinoffs before I move on to another phase of the mainline titles. And all the while, all my gaming channels are covering RE:Village without really covering it at all. I know that Capcom is bound to have some scientific explanation as to why vampires and werewolves made their debut in the series with this game, as it’d been in development for three years prior to its announcement, an echo of the past finally heard. But still, even if we’re grading on a curve, context is context. How wild is it that a year and change after the pandemic began, a game series known for its bio-weapons turns a gothic corner and drops its original moniker? Indeed, RE:Village is also the first not to have “biohazard” on any release title anywhere, regardless of region. In truth, I can’t quite blame the publications - I wouldn’t have noticed if I didn’t sit down to write this tonight.

Would I have boarded that hype train in June if the game had kept its chemical warfare? The Last of Us: Part II, another franchise brought to me by Sony, also had its virus and pandemic in the foreground, and that’s a top ten game for me now given my specific experience with it. But then, Resident Evil is special. The beautifully detailed graphics, endearing character moments, atmospheric pacing, motivated sound design, and confrontational control schemes have all made it stand apart to me as a series. I really have no comparison for how these games have challenged me and made me feel during this time. I’ve watched Chris become a soldier, Claire become a mother, Leon become a hero, and Jill come back from the brink, all while underneath the heavy horrors of a natural environment turned unstoppably hostile. One way or another, I’m glad I met them.

This was the year everything in my life took off in directions that I could no longer follow or keep up with. I can’t describe to you how much I feel like I’ve lost, despite all the incredibly important personal work I have done behind the scenes. I realize now that there are some changes that simply can’t be stopped or unchanged, only survived, endured, and adapted to. It’s taught me that we hardly ever seek change - it seeks us, and we are offered the task to accept it or defend against it. There’s something that feels right about playing these games at this time, of that I’m sure. I find it interesting that, by the time I get to RE:Village, the franchise itself will have changed into something quite different. But with each new game I’ve crossed off my list, RE has earned more and more of my trust as a series that knows all too well how changes come and go. Hopefully I will change right along with it.

#Ross writes things #resident evil #a crooked line of growth is still proof that you're growing #isn't that what Darwin tried to say?

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mst3kproject · 5 years ago

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Blood of Dracula’s Castle

This is another film by Al Adamson of Carnival Magic, starring John Carradine of The Unearthly and the weirdly rectangular Alexander D’Arcy of Horrors of Spider Island. If that weren’t enough, the first thing you see when you start the movie is an opening sequence of badly-shot driving set to an incongruously cheerful theme song, looking like something that should have credits over it, but doesn’t. Because obviously the perfect way to begin your movie is by giving everybody flashbacks to Manos: the Hands of Fate. Oh, boy.

Glen Cannon has just inherited a castle, so he takes his girlfriend Liz out to see the place and to meet the longtime tenants, Mr. and Mrs. Townsend. Unfortunately for Glen, Liz, and a number of short-skirted passers-by, the Townsends are actually vampires! They live in the castle with a menagerie of servants that include George the butler, Johnny the homicidal maniac (not the Johnny the Homicidal Maniac, just a guy named Johnny who happens to be a homicidal maniac), and a hunchback named Mango. Not keen on the idea of moving, the undead try to persuade the young couple to either extend their lease or sell them the property outright. And if that fails, well, George does need victims to sacrifice to the moon god…

(Pictured above, three hundred percent more captive women than in Hercules and the Captive Women.)

You’d think a movie called Blood of Dracula’s Castle would be set in some ancient and spooky part of eastern Europe, wouldn’t you? And you’d be wrong, because the castle in this story is in the middle of the Arizona desert. Why is there a castle in the Arizona desert? The movie never explains, but I’m guessing the backstory is similar to that of Shea Castle in California, where much of the movie was shot – some rich asshole just decided he wanted to live in a castle. What I really want to know is why this specific castle has vampires in it. Deserts just don’t seem like good vampire habitat, you know?

Blood of Dracula’s Castle is particularly ridiculous about this, because like Attack of the The Eye Creatures or Mole Men Against the Son of Hercules, it features sun-hating baddies in a movie that is clearly shot in the daytime with a dark filter! And like those other movies, the sunshine is so intense that the filters do just about nothing. Also, why is there a beach nearby? Arizona is not exactly famous for those.

The Townsends are some seriously weaksauce vampires. A lot of movies have vampires with superhuman strength, telepathy, or the power of flight. These two are afraid of being shot, and can’t even escape from being tied up with silk sashes. I would say it undermines their threat, but they never seemed that threatening to begin with. Alexander D’Arcy and Paula Raymond play the characters very low-key and matter-of-fact, and their servants come across as far more dangerous than the masters. I suppose this is why the vampires turn to dust in an anticlimax, while the real movie-ending battle is with Mango the hunchback. He takes a bullet to the gut, an axe to the back, is set on fire, and finally topples over a cliff before he goes down! Even George the aged butler puts up a pretty good fight with a morningstar before breaking his neck in a fall down the stairs.

Johnny, meanwhile, is a very confusing inclusion. He’s been in a mental institution for murdering some unspecified number of people, and he blames his killing spree on the full moon. The movie harps on this at some length, with Johnny himself, the Townsends, and George all referring to it, so by the time the climax approaches we’re pretty sure we’re gonna get a werewolf scene. When George sets out to sacrifice a captive woman to the moon god, I was eagerly hoping this would take the form of wolfman Johnny showing up to tear her apart. But Johnny is present to watch, remains fully human throughout, and does nothing, while George simply sets the woman on fire! Why spend all that time setting it up? Is the point supposed to be that Johnny uses lycanthropy as an excuse for his killings when the truth is he’s just a murderer? If so, the movie misses by a mile.

Glen and Liz are technically the main characters, but they’re very much the type who are only present so this movie will have somebody to happen to. The writers, director, and even the actors are far more interested in their assortment of baddies. Neither of the couple has anything that might be considered a character trait. They are introduced in a montage of Glen taking pictures of Liz at Sea World, which establishes nothing but the fact that she’s hot and he’s recently asked her to marry him. There’s also a really weird bit where they make out under the watchful eyes of a voyeuristic walrus, which sure is a sentence I just wrote.

There are a couple of moments when it looks like Glen’s profession of photography might just be plot relevant. He tries to take a picture of Johnny, but Johnny doesn’t want him to, which could have been a precursor to one of them recognizing the escaped murderer. It goes nowhere. I also wondered if the film might make use of the idea that vampires don’t show up any better in photographs than they do in mirrors, but the idea is completely ignored.

About the only thing in Blood of Dracula’s Castle that works is one joke. Glen and Liz are snooping around the castle basement, where they discover the Townsends sleeping in their coffins. Liz starts to freak out, and Glen tries to reassure her by telling her that there’s a perfectly logical explanation. She demands to know what that is… and rather than offer some ‘rational’ bullshit Glen just straight up says, “they’re vampires, obviously!” The sheer surprise of seeing a trope subverted like that in this stupid movie made me laugh out loud.

Is there anything halfway interesting in this movie? Meh, not really. The closest it comes is when it suggests the Townsends’ distaste for ‘traditional’ vampirism. They don’t go around biting necks and leaving bodies behind – instead they drain blood from a vein and sip it out of genteel wine glasses. Killing Glen and Liz is not Plan A, it is what they’re forced to turn to when all else fails. Lady Townsend even contemplates the idea that someday somebody might invent synthetic blood, allowing vampires to become law-abiding citizens!

This could have been neat, but it fails to go anywhere because the Townsends seem entirely cheerful and blasé about the crimes they do commit. They have no problem keeping young women chained up in their dungeon, draining them of blood and then turning them over to Mango to be raped and murdered. They show no reluctance to sacrifice victims to the moon god. In fact, their performance has almost a Stepford Wives sort of feel, in which they are polite and pleasant about literally everything. Even in private, when they worry about possibly having to kill their guests, they sound cheerful. The fake smile plastered across D’Arcy’s face is downright terrifying, though not for the reasons it ought to be. He looks like being in this movie is causing him physical pain.

Another thread seems to be some commentary, probably unintentional, about the nature of relationships. Glen and Liz argue quite a bit, and I think most of it’s intended to be in fun but Gene O’Shane and Barbara Bishop are not good actors and it sometimes comes across quite bitter. Their disagreements contrast with the behaviour of the Townsends, who are perfectly in harmony in everything they do. Perhaps this is because the Townsends have simply known each other longer, having been married for some three centuries while Glen and Liz have only been together a year or so. The impression one gets, however, is an Addams Family sort of vibe, in which embracing the darkness within seems to lead to better relationships.

Now that I think of it… with the charming, well-dressed, and loving couple, and their cadaverous butler, there is definitely an Addams Family thing going on here. The comics had been around since 1938 and the TV series started in 1964, so it was out there for other creators to draw on.

In comparison to the other Al Adamson movies I’ve seen, Blood of Dracula’s Castle actually strikes me as more similar to Carnival Magic than to Psycho-A-Go-Go. The latter film was very upfront about its dark themes, while the former buries them under a cheerful carnival front. Blood of Dracula’s Castle also looks rather harmless on the surface, as the Addams Family comparison makes clear: the Townsends are very cheerful and friendly vampires, their castle more whimsical than foreboding. They and their strange servants could be characters in a comedy, were the movie not so explicit about their murders.

Blood of Dracula’s Castle is pretty dull. You won’t be missing anything if you skip it. If you do want to watch it, I’d better warn you: the opening sequence is set to an upbeat song called Last Train Out, and once it’s in your brain, it’s not going anywhere for a while.

#mst3k #reviews #episodes that never were #blood of dracula's castle #poor john carradine #tw: rape #60s

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toneofdarkness · 5 years ago

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Character Development Outline

Origins and Family

Name: Rei Sakuma Nickname: Vampire Bastard // Rei Sakuma of the Three/Five Oddballs // Anija // Useless/Annoying Bug // the Demon King // various honorifics attached to his name or surname Reason for name: His name literally means ‘zero’, 'nothing’ Birthday: 2nd November Age: 18-19; he’s the oldest student in the idol course at present time Gender: Male Place of birth: Japan, probably Places lived since: Japan, an unnamed country in the Arabian Peninsula, England, Italy, Transylvania...Rei travels a lot.

Parents’ names, backgrounds, and occupations

Parents: They haven’t been revealed yet, so I made up their names. Number of siblings: 1 (Ritsu) Relationship with family: Distant; Rei used to be close with his younger brother only, but even they drifted far apart. Happiest memory: The times he used to spend together with Ritsu as children // being with [UNDEAD] Childhood trauma: Being treated like he’s the advent of some holy angel or dark deity. Children of their own: None. Relationship?: Depends on the verse.

Physical

Height: 5′10″ / 179 cm. Weight: 134 lbs. / 61 kg. Build: Slender, a bit of noticeable muscles Nationality: Japanese Disabilities: Lethargic during the day, especially when the sun is out; Rei fares better if it’s really cloudy. Complexion: Pale; it’s like he’s dead. Face shape: Round, a bit angular at the jawline. Distinguishing facial features: Red eyes, noticeable fangs. Hair color: Raven black Eye color: Dark red/almost brownish, blood red (depending on the light sources) Glasses/contacts: None, but he really needs a pair. Style of dress: Proper, though Rei dresses up like a dad... Health: Awful; Rei’s really careless about his own health, and needs someone to look after him. Grooming: He tries to regularly maintain his appearance, if his daytime lethargy permits it. Jewelry, tattoos, piercings: Pierced ears; Rei wears a pair of stud earrings with an eye-catching red color that contrasts sharply with his black hair. Accent: Fluent, if he's in 'business mode'. Otherwise, expect some gratuitous Engrish. Physical habits:

Sleeps during the day, even if he tries to keep himself awake. He has no qualms about where he sleeps, however.

He gives plenty of headpats.

Other than that, he tries to physically keep his distance from others, except for a few notable people.

Intellect

Level of education: Still in high school, but Rei’s a genius who could accelerate if he wanted. Level of self esteem: Very high; Rei would have to be if he could keep up his ‘old man’ act despite negative reactions, dismissing them with an amused laugh. Talents: superstar-level stage performance // magic spells/curses // higher-than-human strength, speed and agility // genius-level intellect // persuasion and charm // energy drain // paralyzing glare *these are more effective at night; daylight weakens him, but not to the point of total ineptness Shortcomings: Genius as he is, Rei has difficulty understanding human social norms, leading him to do seemingly mean-spirited things when he really means well or to say things that aren’t appropriate. He comes off as 'eccentric'. Style of speech: Archaic and obsolete. Most of the time, Rei talks like your typical doting, all-knowing grandfather, and it pisses the hell out of everybody. Artistic/mathematical: Artistic. Makes decisions on emotion or logic: Logic. Which tends to make him seem like some unfeeling monster. Life philosophy: “If I can help, then I will. Or die trying in the process. Worry not; I’m already dead~” Someone, snap him out of that mindset. Religious stance:�� Rei’s not so religious, despite quoting religious references from time to time. Cautious/daring: It’s a mix of both; Rei can come up with the most outrageous, but effective plans, but he won’t execute them if the people involved would be greatly hurt by it. Otherwise, if it’s just himself getting hurt, then he’s all in on his plans. The kicker is, people will know of his plans and intentions only when it’s too late. Extrovert/introvert: Extrovert; Rei lives on other people’s attention. Unfortunately, his genetic condition forces him to become nocturnal, a time when most people are asleep.

Relationships

Relationship status: Verse dependent. Rei’s canonically single though. Sexual orientation: Verse dependent. Rei does take notice of those who catch his interest, however. Past relationships: Depends on the verse. Although it's hinted that Rei was close to Keito Hasumi. Primary reason for being broken up with: Rei’s too much of a wild card; he refuses to be tied down to anyone. Primary reason for breaking up with people: They’ve disappointed him, usually in matters that are really very important to him. Level of sexual experience: Rei’s knowledgeable enough. Story of first kiss: Disappointing. Story of loss of virginity: No. Most comfortable around who: His fellow Oddballs. Rei does consider them to be his equals. Oldest friend: Keito Hasumi. They’ve known each other since childhood. Although they did have some years apart due to Keito distancing himself from Rei, and then they met again in high school at Yumenosaki. How do they think others perceive them: A Vampire-wannabe. A frightening monster. A stupid old man...Rei doesn’t care though; in fact, it works in his favor. How do others actually perceive them: Contrary to what Rei believes, the others do see him as a very dependable senior, and a sad, tired, lonely person who deserves only the best in the world. Rei never believes it whenever he’s told that, and would insist that he’s a horrible monster who deserves nothing but hell.

Vocation

Profession: high school student, idol, depends on verse. Past / current occupation(s): Idol belonging to the unit [UNDEAD], world-famous superstar performer, depends on verse. Passions: singing and dancing, tomatoes and ham Attitude towards current job: Rei takes it seriously, for his unitmates’ sake, and for the future of young idols. Attitude towards current coworkers/bosses/employees: Rei considers them to be his children/grandchildren. Yes, he'd dote on even those older than him. Salary: Rei would rather not disclose the amount. But, to get an idea, he can afford a 60,000 Yen belt, and can wear Prada as his regular clothes, and can just give away an electric guitar that’s probably worth a fortune, along with its bag that costs 25,000 Yen...

Secrets

( Every character should have secrets )

Life Goals: Rei’s aiming to have the human population to be more accepting of his kind, and vice versa. He’s like a mediator between the two ‘races’. Greatest fears: Failing others yet again. Most ashamed of: His inability to do everything, and anything despite his talents and skills. If only he could be at several places at once...But, alas, Rei’s only one person. Compulsions: The thought of the futures of his friends and colleagues being crushed unjustly, that’s a big no-no. Rei will fight whatever that tries to cause that. Obsessions: Tomatoes. Secret hobbies: Keeping in touch with his contacts, ready to crush scandals before they come to light. Touching up on subjects he’s not knowledgeable enough so he can continue being ‘omniscient’. Secret skills: Rei has formed a very extensive network that may not be completely relevant to his occupation. That doesn’t seem too much of a secret, but he can still surprise one or two people with his revelations. He can also walk/crawl on walls and ceilings. Crimes committed: ...Do breaking promises, and consequently hearts count…? What do they most want to change about their physical appearance: None; Rei’s content with what he has.

Details

Daily routine: Sleeps all day unless he has the energy to attend class to fill the minimum required days of attendance so he could finally graduate. Gets woken up in the afternoon so he could eat, catches up on the day’s activities with the people concerned, catch up on practice, see the others off as they go home, do homework and work, wander around the school like some ghost...Or Rei could go home, if he’s feeling it... Night owl or early bird: Absolutely a night owl; Rei is utterly miserable during the day. Favorite food: Dry-cured ham, and tomatoes. Least favorite food: Garlic. Super spicy food. Least favorite movie: Horror movies; Rei believes that the monsters are being portrayed unfairly. But, he falls asleep within fifteen minutes after the movie started anyway. Favorite music: Rock, Jazz, Classical. Least favorite music: Those funky robot-sounding genres. Coffee or tea: Tea. Crunchy or smooth peanut butter: Crunchy. There's simply something about those peanut pieces that imparts a salty touch to the peanut butter, and Rei likes that. Lefty or righty: Righty. Favorite color: Purple. Cusser: He used to...But, Rei sometimes slips up on rare occasions. Smoker/drinker/drug user: Absolutely not. Biggest regret: Not being there when and where he's needed. It's really eating at him from within. Pets: Does Wanko count…?

#lazy tomato #as rei #(( this was a lot to write but fun

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quality-street-rat · 5 years ago

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The Clown!

How Clowns Have Become Scary

Matthew Burgess

Part One

Clowns, jesters, fools, and other such figures have existed since the days of ancient Egypt. Rome had figures known as Stupidus, and fifth-dynasty Egypt had pygmy clowns. Through the centuries, all clowns had and have one powerful connection; that of misrule, excess, and the unpredictable. They mimic and ridicule, they riddle and tease. They perform over-the-top, crazy antics. They cause mayhem and enjoy it, usurping law and order with unhinged slapstick. However, clowns are just one historical monster that can bring terror to people. Studying monsters brings understanding of the past and the present and shows a great deal of human nature.

Part Two

The word monster has roots in Latin, and the root words mean to warn. Stone Age humans had monsters of their own, and massive biblical monsters haunted other early humans. The idea of the Devil breaks off into other concepts such as demonic possession, witches, and the Antichrist. Jeffery Jerome Cohen posits that “The Monster Always Escapes.” What he means by this is that no monster is ever really killed or gotten rid of. The death or disappearance of one monster either makes room for a new one or provides an opportunity for the original monster to return with a new face. However, every time the monster returns, its meaning will change based on what is happening in society at that time. No monster ever really dies.

A monster might be new to some people. For example, if Pennywise the Clown only appears every twenty-seven years, then he is new to the people who are children when he comes back. If an urban legend is forgotten because it is no longer relevant, then when the situation is the same in the future, the urban legend will re-surface. As Poole says in Monsters in America, (page 22) “History is horror.” This also refers to the situation out of which a monster is born. Before the Salem Witch Trials, people were less concerned with piety. Some social switch flipped, and suddenly everyone was obsessed with finding the evil and unworthy in their society.

There are several other theories that help understand monsters through history and are key concepts that aid in studying them. A few that stand out are integral to monster culture. The monster is never just what it appears to be. It is a representation of some fear or desire that people experience. The monster defies classification, which also means that they clash with the concept of binaries and logic. Monsters in general are made of things that are distinctly “other,” or outliers to the idea of “normal.” They invite the removal of moral dimensions and make excuses for eradication of the “other.” Monsters are warnings, are representations of both fear and desire, are harbingers of the transitional future. These all tell the story of history and, more specifically, American history. Poole says “The American past...is a haunted house. Ghosts rattle their chains throughout its corridors, under its furniture, and in its small attic places. The historian must resurrect monsters in order to pull history’s victims out of...’the mud of oblivion.’ The historian’s task is necromancy, and it gives us nightmares.” (Monsters in America, Page 24)

Part 3

When my mother was eleven years old, her parents sat her down to watch the original IT movie. She tells me that she had nightmares and trouble sleeping for at least a month afterwards. When I was growing up, clowns were not mentioned. My siblings and I knew that clowns existed because there was a friendly clown named Pooky that we saw once a year at my father’s annual work party. Until I was twelve or thirteen Pooky was the only reference for the word “clown” that I had. After that, I started learning world history and learned about clowns in the context of circuses. To me they were silly people who wore polka dots and colorful wigs, and who painted their faces with the intention to entertain. The concept of the scary clown wasn’t even a shred of an idea to me until later.

When I was fifteen I started going to school for the first time. I suddenly had access to the internet and began absorbing every piece of pop culture that I could possibly handle. The trailers for the new IT movie were just starting to come out, and people were reporting scary clown sightings all over the country. I personally was not then and am not now scared of clowns. However, I could see that people were terrified of them and that fascinated me. I was more interested in the intentions of the people behind the masks than the unexpected presence of them. Fast forward to 2018, and I started watching American Horror Story. Seasons four and six heavily featured clowns as something scary. There was Twisty the Clown with his terrifying blown off mouth and tendency to kidnap children and attempt to entertain them, and there was the cult who wore clown masks and intimidated Sarah Paulson’s character. The cult was more effective than not because of the character’s coulrophobia, or fear of clowns. 1 Around the same time I watched the movie Suicide Squad, and became similarly fascinated with the character of the Joker. I started doing research and found that Jared Leto’s Joker was not the first one. There was a theory that proposed that there were three different Jokers, regardless of actor or illustrator. One, the thief and killer. Two, the silly one who had no real reason to perform any of his evil deeds, known as the “Clown Prince of Crime.” Third, the homicidal maniac.

As I’ve said, I am not afraid of clowns. But the reason why people are afraid of them enthrall me. Firstly, clowns are allowed to say things that the rest of us can’t. They dress up their words as jokes, but they can say the most shocking and inappropriate things. They can challenge those in power with no consequences. Second, humans inherit fear. Studies done in Georgia and Canada show that fear of a thing can be passed down through a family line. For example, if a parent was mauled by a tiger, and then had a child and disappeared, the child would be frightened if they saw a tiger. Also, the face paint of a clown elicits the same response as the uncanny valley. Clowns were first thought to be scary in the late 1940’s and 1950’s. Clowns worked very closely with children. Adults began to get paranoid about these clowns, grown men, abusing their children. Maybe some were, but the majority merely wanted to make the children laugh and smile. The adults started to tell their children to avoid the clowns. Later in the 80’s, slasher films were on the rise. Moviemakers were making anything into killers. Audrey the plant, cute little gremlins, worms, blobs, and clowns. Stephen King’s IT was written and released during this time. Since then, many scary clowns have existed. The Joker, Harley Quinn the Harlequin, Pennywise, Twisty, the Jigsaw puppet, the Terrifier. These all serve as a cultural lens to help explain social changes.

Part 4

The monster of the clown resonates with me because the idea of the scary clown is so wide-spread and can now be passed off as an “everyone knows that” statement. The why fascinates me. Clowns represent the both the fear of truth and the fear of lies. Clowns can say the unsayable and topple those in power with the truth. On the other hand, their fixed grins and otherwise blank faces are the embodiment of a lie, because you can’t tell who they are behind the mask.

From the earliest days of human history, there was some form of a clown. The clowns always had something to represent, and they always came back. To look at another point of view, most clowns were simple entertainers turned into frighteners by people who wanted to dispose of them. However, the clowns that were actually scary (Pennywise, Jigsaw, etc.) were warnings of what might happen if you mess with the truth. Pennywise changes form; he is the embodiment of lies. Jigsaw is transparent about his intentions; he is the cold, hard, bitter truth.

The sometimes-maudlin behavior of clowns invites sympathy. It suggests that maybe they are simply misunderstood, that maybe they deserve to be loved. However, they always snap back with something unexpected. It is a general consensus in the monster-f**ker community that clown-f**kers are the lowest of the low. However, if I may loosely quote one of my online followers on the subject: “...Sir Pennywise is a shnack.” Unfortunately, the spelling is a direct quote. I cannot pretend to know why people are attracted to clowns, Pennywise especially, but they are and there’s unfortunately nothing to be done about it.

Putting aside peoples’ attraction to clowns, to close this thought I’d like to quote Derek Kilmer in saying “the stories we tell say something about us.” Clowns may not be everyone’s fear. However, the culture we as people created also created clowns and the fear of them.

Part 5

Studying monsters can be a useful endeavor. History of America is the history of monsters. Therefore, if you study monsters, you study America. From the dehumanization of Native Americans by the Pilgrims to the fascination with aliens today, monsters have shaped America and been shaped by American society. This theory is called Reciprocal Determination. Instead of one thing causing another, two things cause each other. America’s society has been shaped by witches, by vampires, by zombies, by clowns. And society has, in return, created the monsters it claims to hate so much. People care about monsters. We created them, as they create us.

Clowns represent America’s relationship with truth. Depending on the kind of clown and when it appears, we can determine how Americans deal with lies. Early in the century, clowns were more jovial and friendly. People were complacent with letting bad things get swept under the rug. Harsh truths and cruel facts were ignored and glossed over. Abused spouses and homosexual relationships along with literal genocide and corrupt leadership had people looking the other way, because they were more concerned with image than anything else. But as time went on, people became less concerned with image and more concerned with truth. There are of course those who still value image over truth, but they are the minority. Corrupt leaders cannot hide anymore. LGBT+ folk can finally openly live their truth. Abuse is not tolerated. But at the same time, the clowns are getting scarier. Some people might say that this is simply correlation and not causation, and that is also a valid view, but I believe that it is, without a doubt, causation.

Monsters teach us not only our history, but who we are. They tell us the truth behind our lies. They challenge the master narrative and demonstrate impermanent borders between morality, truth, fear, and desire.

Footnotes

1 This phobia was also featured in the long-running show Supernatural, however in that show it’s played for humor.

#clowns #essay #monster paper #history

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undeadimpulsereviews · 6 years ago

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The Problem with the Horror Genre (Editorial)

Warning: There will be spoilers for many different things throughout this. I will be supplying as much as I can find to get my point across so if you don’t want to be spoiled then I’d steer clear.

Before we jump into things I want to state something about this and the future stuff to come regarding these pieces. Everything I’m writing, especially with this piece, is pretty much all opinion based. I’ll try to pull as much facts as I can to back up anything I feel needs clarification. Though, ultimately, this is just something I wish to talk about. My views may be extreme to some but, they are just that, they are my views. Agree or disagree, I just want to get the ideas out there.With that said let us begin.

When I look at genres and sub-genres there is always at least one that sticks out like a sore thumb. Thanks to studios like Disney and Marvel, Superheroes have risen in popularity. For video games, the platformer and first person shooter still holds a place in peoples hearts; and both anime and manga have the Shounen style story down to a fine line. Though for each of these mediums and more there is one genre that struggles year after year.

Horror is the elephant in the room; if each genre of visual and written media was a type of music genre, then Horror is coming close to being the Disco among them all. When I look at horror, all I see is an entity that is slowly dying; yet, it tries to stay relevant for as long as it possibly can. Though over the years, horror just doesn’t hit home. Now I’ve said before that I am not a fan of the horror genre, and there are many reasons for this. These reasons are why I think the genre ultimately fails in the end. Though I can’t clump together every piece of horror media. For every five failures, the genre does manage to provide some spine chilling content. However, the spread is too great.

Lets look back to Marvel for a moment. Not everyone is going to like every hero film they provide, but even if you don’t care for the Marvel film there is a level of praise those movies deserve. They have the formula down and it shows. This is not the same for Horror; after years of making films or games under this genre, the formula just becomes more psychotic. It’s harder to follow and ultimately ends in something boring. However, this is different for each type of medium. In my opinion I think that Movies have the best chance of providing a horrifying experience. Past this though, it starts to get difficult. Video Games used to be one of the best mediums for conveying horror, but now it’s fallen far. Sitting at the bottom of the spectrum is Anime and Manga. Anime does horror a little better than manga, but each have their short comings. So why is it that Horror is such a hard concept to grasp? Lets start from the basics.

Horror: An intense feeling of fear, shock, or disgust. Something that inspires feelings of dread or dismay.

This is one definition I pulled on what horror is. Though everyone has their own special interpretation. For me the best definition is something or someone that brings about a feeling of fear. When I go to the movies to see the newest Halloween, or re-play a game like Until Dawn; One of the main things I’m looking for is a series of good well placed and thought out scares. However, this is one definition among a society of many. Each person has their own take on horror, but should we really call it horror? Take anime and manga for example; a good amount of stuff, that falls within the realm of horror, latches on to two key words in the basic definition. Shock and disgust.

Take, for instance, Ajin. For those who don’t know, briefly speaking, Ajin is a horror manga series that was adapted into an anime a little later in it’s life. It’s about an entity of demi-humans, or Ajin, that have special abilities from normal human beings. Thes beings live among normal humans and believe they themselves are in fact normal humans.

There are many moments in the manga where the Ajin are experimented on by the Japanese government. While not showing everything, they show and elude to enough in an attempt to produce shock value. Yet, the rest of the manga just feels average. The monsters aren’t frightening and the events that take place feel out of place in terms of it’s genre. This is one of the biggest problems when it comes to horror for both Anime and Manga. While video games and movies have a level of disgusting or shocking scenes; there is still an attempt made to frighten the viewer.

One of the biggest growing contenders of this is any series involving Magical Girls. Japan has been fascinated with making more mature stories involving magical girls. One of the best example of this comes from the series Madoka Magica.

This series is one where you would never want to judge the book by it’s cover. It may seem like the cutesy little girls tale, but there is a lot the show is hiding. I myself have never watch Madoka, but I know it’s grown into quite the craze over the years. So much so that many mangaka and studio would want to try their hands at this. However, each one of these starts to lose the flair that Madoka presented. One of the things that made Madoka work was it’s art. The mature themes are never shown to the audience unless they watch the show or read the story. It works, much like how Gakkou Gurashi could make a Zombie story interesting with it’s first chapter.

The idea can work, but it should be done sparingly. Though Japan doesn’t follow that logic. There are more manga under this sub-genre than ever before, and each one goes to far in what it’s trying to do. They throw the horror in the viewers face from the beginning; as if they’re screaming “Hey, this is a horror story involving schoolgirls/magical girls! It’s a dark story that you don’t see every day!” Though at this point it’s become old news.

What happened? What did magical girls do to come to this? The cover alone already doesn’t make me want to read this and it’s among a massive amount of manga that follow this trend. Though if I said this I’d be judging this solely on one image. So I looked into things regarding some of these series and just like Ajin it’s filled with disgusting scenes. Though I wouldn’t call it disgusting to the point that it’s horrifying. Instead, for me, I was so disgusted at what was present that I lost all interest to ever read anything that involves horror and magical girls. The girl is bullied by pretty much everybody at school and then goes home to an abusive family member. There is needless rape, and violence that goes beyond the definition of bullying. Then the main character gets magic powers out of pity from a character that looks like it belongs in Mob Psycho (nothing against Mob Psycho).

What is that? It’s looks so disconnected from everything else I’ve seen in the series. I haven’t even seen the first episode and yet there is nothing that makes me want to start. Long story short, this “girl” gives the main character a magic gun that she can use to make people disappear; or actually teleport to a place where they will die outright. That was so much to take in and now I wish I never did. What is appealing about this? Why do series like this go silently, but then you have an anime about a man who kills goblins as one of the biggest controversies currently for anime.

Ranting aside, The point I’m trying to get across is that I don’t see how anime can show shocking or disgusting scenes and have it considered as horror. I look at these like I look at videos of surgical procedures. It’s not frightening or horrifying; it’s just gross. So why consider it horror, and this is a serious question for people who genuinely enjoy these stories. What makes Ajin, Magical Girl Site or Franken Fran horror? At their core most of the attempts of horror comes from the disgusting and I just can’t understand what makes them fall under the genre. Enough about that however, there is still a lot to cover.

The Bleeding Line Between Horror and Thriller

Keeping in the trend of anime and manga, another big problem stems off of understanding just what is horror. When I see horror or thriller with anime I tend to see that there isn’t a clear divide among them. Take for instance the Hellsing series.

For me I’d say that Hellsing is a Thriller; it has dark themes, but that doesn’t make it an instant horror. Though, for those who don’t know what Hellsing is, the story is all about the Vampire Alucard and the Hellsing organization. They must take down monsters, and ultimately fight a a Nazi regime. There is a level of outlandish and over the top content that I wonder, how could anyone consider this Horror? The only truly dark scene is later in the series when it’s implied that Alucard was raped in his childhood; maybe even countless times. Past this it’s just a lot of over the top violence that would prove to much for a shounen series. Another series that falls victim to this is the Parasyte series.

You could probably make a better argument as to why Parasyte is horror, but from what I’ve seen of the series I would at the least also put this as a thriller. This view goes both ways and it sometimes effects anime more than manga. The manga for Parasyte and Tokyo Ghoul look like horror manga at face value, but the anime, to me, don’t share that feeling. There are moments in many anime that can truly be horrifying, but the big picture doesn’t convey this. Movies struggle from this sometimes but, again, I mainly see it in anime. Though, this isn’t a dig at the anime or manga industry. What does the other side have to answer for?

How much is too much?

Video games and movies aren’t safe yet. One of the biggest problems with modern horror is how much and how varied it all is. What do I mean by this? Well the easiest examples I can use are the Saw movie series, and the Five Nights at Freddies game series.

Saw is one of the most well known horror movies among films like Friday the 13th and Nightmare on Elm Street. When the first film came out it was pretty different from other horror films. Instead of an ax murderer chasing someone through the woods, or a masked man hunting down people in a little town on Halloween night; Saw is a movie about a man who killed people he saw as “evil.” People who he believed deserved to be punished, no matter how psychotic that may have sounded. The first movie released back in 2004; since then there have been a total of seven more films. The catch being that each film is pretty much the same thing with a different cast. A man kidnaps people, he talks to them through a puppet and puts them through traps and trials as a sort of test. Even horror films that are regarded as classics have way to many movies in their franchise. Hollywood is running out of ideas and instead they decide to use any semblance of life in the current existing ideas rather than look for new life. Friday the 13th went to Space, but ultimately it’s still a slasher film about Jason Voorhees

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Both movies and video games take the skeleton of what was previously established and just slightly alter it’s shape and design. Movies do it a lot more than video games; however, games have started this trend recently not just for horror, but for all genres. Though, that’s another story for another time. The biggest offender of this with Video games, in the horror genre, is the Five Nights at Freddy’s Series.

When the first Five Nights came out I wasn’t interested in playing the game myself, but I could sit here and say that the game has potential as a horror title. It had a nice atmosphere and ideas that aren’t normally explored. Out of all the things that can produce fear, animatronics at a knock off Chuckie Cheese was not something that really came to mind but that was an interesting aspect. After the first game however, the rest of the series started to take a terrible downward spiral. Each game is pretty much the exact same as the last, save for a few that tried to take a slightly different spin on things. Sit in a chair and watch cameras to make sure the animatronics don’t come to kill you. Your capabilities are limited and you need to survive for a certain amount of time. Second game is the same but there are new machines with new tricks, the third game is the same but only one machine really matters, the fourth game is the same ideas but instead you’re a child who needs to peek out doors and in the closet. This cycle goes on for a total of six games in the main line. The only game that changed the formula was a spin-off, turn based RPG. Though that game doesn’t matter in the grand scheme of things. The gameplay has minor alterations, the characters change appearance and new animatronics are introduced over the course of the games, and the story just starts to feel like background material. It’s all just jump scares that try to scare through appearance instead of gameplay and atmosphere.

Nothing about Five Nights is scary anymore. We’ve been through it six times and it’s common knowledge that these machines will jump at us when we fail. Not to mention that, when the player fails, in some cases there is a long pause between the failure and the jump scare. Don’t make me wait, I lost. Making the player wait destroys the atmosphere. Gameplay aside, it’s the visuals that really start to destroy this game. How do you top unsettling machines with a mind of their own? Add more teeth, add more heads randomly placed around the body, make them look broken and demonic. That will put the fear in the player; except it won’t, I don’t look at the picture of Freddy above and think this is the thing of nightmares. I see someones head canon fan art that I could find on Deviantart or Pixiv. It’s like the people who make gross creepy fan art for Sonic the Hedgehog found new anthropomorphic animals to do whatever they want with. The whole thing that made the idea of animatronics frightening was the movements and the lifelessness. Plus, the skin of the characters makes for a scarier experience. I don’t want to see the frame of the machine. Seeing this...

Isn’t frightening, it’s the equivalent of Freddie Kruger chasing you through the dreamscape if Freddie was an average man in a mo-cap suit. The reason Five Nights is the worst offender of the recycling idea is because the creator said countless times that “this one will be the last game,” “After this no more Five Nights at Freddy’s.” Each time a big fat lie. There’s a movie in the making for crying out loud. The Slender movie was a flop so how will this fair?

I get it; Hollywood and game designers alike are running out of ideas. Disney is remaking all their films and Capcom can’t seem to find a way to stop porting Resident Evil 4 on every platform. However, the saying is if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it; these things have been in pieces for years now. The warranty may be up, it’s time to “FIX THIS!” Now, I’ve said a lot on the subject and there is still a ton of things I could talk about on the horror genre, but not enough to dedicate a segment on them. So I have one more reason I believe horror has fallen over the years and it all stems from the atmosphere.

There’s a build up, but no pay off.

So for some mediums, getting a certain level of atmosphere is hard. Manga I believe has the hardest time. It’s always been simpler to build tension in the visual format than the written. Though even anime, movies, and video games have struggled to reach an understanding of the levels of atmosphere. How much is to much and when should the build up reach the cap. If I had to rank them, omitting manga, I’d say that video games are still at the top barely, while anime struggles with this idea the most. Now this is all opinion of course; fear effects everyone differently but, in my experience, not many anime can reach a good level of tension. There was one that managed to produce a very horrifying atmosphere for me, but we’ll get to that a little later. First, why is it that anime can’t grasp the aspect of tension building and atmosphere. I believe it’s because the horror genre, especially for anime, is too predictable. A long while back, when I was experimenting with what to watch when it came to anime; I tried my hand at the show Another.

I didn’t get far into Another; the build up wasn’t that great out the gate, but I wanted to give it a chance. My viewing of the show ended at the episode with the first death. Throughout the anime every person is telling the main character to steer clear of the girl with the eye-patch. She’s bad news and only misfortune will follow. However, the boy didn’t listen of course. Scene after scene past with nothing happening, until a girl from the boys school is leaving and her attitude changes after she catches a glimpse of the other girl. At this point I knew, I sat there tired and done. I watched as this girl ran down the hall and all I had to say was one sentence. “She’s gonna die,” I sat there repeating these words over and over; until she fell down the stair and was impaled on an umbrella.

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I couldn’t continue the show after this; when nothing happens the camera tries to focus on things that seem unsettling, like dolls in a dark antique store. Then when things “pick up” the scene takes to long to get to the payoff. You’ve tried to build up the tension; don’t hold the final product in front of my face. Teasing the audience with the end product only proves to destroy all progress made to get to this point. It’s not that hard of a concept in my opinion; it should be just like building to the climax. Though, instead of reaching one huge climax, it’s more like carefully structured peaks that don’t keep the viewer waiting to long.

For me, the best example of this doesn’t even stem from a horror series. Around the same time as mentioned before I also tried to watch an anime named Kino’s Journey, or Kino no Tabi. In one episode the main character finds there self in a town with a few mysteries surrounding it. At the center of the town there is a huge tower that is being built by the civilians that live there. This tower has been worked on for over two hundred years. When the main character asks them why they build the tower they don’t know themselves.

As the episode goes on, and more interactions are had between the cast, tension begins to grow and it feels like the people of the town aren’t as hospitable as they once seemed. There is so much unknown about the situation that is presented that the viewer feels that something could happen at any moment. Though, the episode reaches it’s end with the tower cracking and falling to the ground. The people of the town resolve to build the tower again and the journey continues. While the tension never truly reaches a huge climax, it still manages to feel unsettling. Kino’s Journey is not a horror series, but I’ve felt more tension in it’s atmosphere then I’ve every felt in a horror series I’ve watched or read.

Though, anime has always had a tricky experience with Horror, and I know that anime and manga isn’t always made with everyone in mind. It’s Japanese in origin and I can understand that something scary to me may not be scary to a Japanese viewer, or vice versa. However, games and movies don’t always have that cultural luxury. Movies also can be extremely predictable, especially the classics. Yet, movies don’t just suffer from being predictable; movies, surprisingly, struggle with realism.

Now I know that realism shouldn’t be a factor is horror movies, but that all depends on the movie. If we’re talking about a movie like the exorcist, then realism needs the be there to a point. It can be loose because we’re dealing with the supernatural, but facts still need to be present to some degree. Movies that don’t have anything supernatural to them, however, need a lot more if they want to succeed. The best example of this is the Purge series.

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When this movie first came out I would have said that the idea of a president creating a day for everyone to do as they please without laws was overly far-fetched. Now I can’t really say much with the current society we live in; however, I will say that the idea that people would just go out and murder their neighbors for no good reason is the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard. Why do all these people have the weapons to go around killing? How did this seem like a good idea? What are everyone’s motives in all of this? The story of this series is so shaky and full of holes that it's popularity baffles me.

As far as predictable goes; there are many horror movies, from terrible to the classics, that have their predictable moments. There was one, and I’m sorry the name escapes me, where a girl is being haunted by someone in her family that died by unknown means at the moment in the film. Most of the movie is filled with terribly place jump scares, but the worst of them all was one where it was a bright day and the main female character was walking along until she comes to an opening in the woods. Instead of walking on, she is pulled into the woods for whatever reason. There is nothing really calling to her and she sees nothing from what I remember, but she’s drawn to one spot in the opening where she finds and unborn fetus in the ground. The fetus is perfectly in tact and the scene just kind of hangs in this back and forth until the fetus opens it’s still developing eye and a huge piano note rings in the background. I sat there knowing the jump scare was coming. I still jumped, because of the loud startling sound, but it was clear as day something was coming.

Where is the tension? I can’t feel frightened when the atmosphere either makes no sense, even in the context provided, or when the movie paints out every scare on a giant canvas for all to see. Horror is meant to make me scream, jump and even, for the most extreme, cry in fear. It’s no longer like that, horror has become one of the most sad and boring genres alive. When you find the one game, movie, etc, that breaks the mold and truly embodies what we know as horror; it deserves to be placed on a pedestal. I believe that video games has the best chance of doing this but even good horror games are scarce.

Predictability and realism aren’t the big issue when it comes to games. Instead, it all bubbles down to the payoff. Games have an easier time of building tension and atmosphere than most mediums in my opinion. It’s the payoff that it fails to grasp. This has become more of an issue in recent years with indie horror games. Games like Agony, We Happy Few, Call of Cthulhu. Do they hit the mark? What is the payoff and how long did it take to reach that goal. Was the build up paced in such a fashion that the game didn’t drag on? This is what games struggle with the most in the horror genre and the best example of this is Layers of Fear.

The game has it’s moment where tension can build, but there is never any pay off. The game focuses to much on trying to build a compelling story about an artist who slowly, and I mean SLOWLY, spirals into a state where he pushes his loved ones away and hurts his family in an attempt to reach his goals. Most of the game is the player walking around the characters estate while they interact with the things around them. Every so often the player will find something that progresses the story and gives some insight into what exactly has happened or what is currently unfolding. That’s all this game is, it doesn’t even attempt to jump scare the player. It attempts to horrify the player through the atmosphere alone. The only problem being that it never delivers. This style of game has become a frequent trend, known as the walking simulator. The whole game is walking from point a, to point b, to point c, and so on. Never reaching any payoff that feels satisfying. The most tense scenes, if you can call them that, are scenes that play on where you are facing. Say for instance you look at a painting; the next moment you look away to an empty wall. Look back and the painting is now disgusting and decaying. So frightening, I need a moment to collect myself. This is boring, I didn’t buy a game to literally watch paint dry; but, with Layers of Fear, I can do just that. Plus, can someone tell me why every indie horror game feels the need to take assets from the public access art gallery?

Scooby-Doo had more realistic art pieces in their haunted houses. Why does every indie horror game need to have some form of “horrific” art hanging in every room five inches from the other. These are humans we’re talking about, not Hannibal Lecter. Sure maybe the main character in Layers of Fear painted the pictures but no one in their right mind would ever say “yea lets hang these demonic painting in our living room; that sounds very welcoming. Nothing says family like a father eating his child”.

If I wanted to experience a poorly delivered and paced story about a painter who is currently undergoing his mid-life crisis. To the point that he possibly abused and neglected his family and may or may not have killed the family dog in a drunken rage. Then sure I might play Layers of Fear, or I might just go on Garry’s Mod and download some hastily made horror map that does the same exact thing for free. I don’t want my horror games to be some attempt at an artistic and complex story on human flaws. I want to be scared.

This shouldn’t be difficult and in fact, many games still can manage to bring fear into their games. Take for instance Friday the 13th and Dead by Daylight.

Now I’ve said my piece on both of these games a while back, but if there is one thing I need to give both of these games credit for is the ability to scare. In both games it’s one versus the group. One killer is controlled by a player and this adds a level of unknown danger. They are powerful and can appear when you least expect it. Over time when you’ve play the games enough the fear factor will probably die down, but the initial tension hits hard because it’s instant. Both games waste no time putting the player in a terrible situation. You’re placed in a random location and it’s as if the game is telling the player, “Alright, someone is hunting you; good luck, and try not to die.” Sure both games have their problems through bugs or other factors but, when you look at the games from a design stand point, they work really well.

Another two games that really know how to build tension and produce payoffs are Until Dawn and Dead Space 2.

One of the most memorable moments for me with Dead Space 2 was near the beginning of the game. You’re going down a dark corridor and you’ve already been presented with the enemies that are hunting you down. You may be armed, but there is no guarantee that you can survive even with your weapons. You keep moving and yet nothing jumps at you. At any moment a necromorph could come and try to kill you. You enter a room with the only light source being a flickering T.V. The music starts to ramp up and as it reaches the it’s height... a balloon pops. While the payoff may not seem amazing, the timing and pacing was done really well in my opinion that, even with your guard up, there is a level of unexpectedness that hangs in the air. You know there are enemies out there, but the space station is their oyster. You are almost always at a disadvantage, even with some of the more advanced weaponry. It’s a jump scare, sure, but even jump scares can pay off to provide breaks in tension without them being terrible immersion breaking game overs.

Until Dawn was a more recent example of how to build tension and deliver upon the atmosphere. The game was a play on the old classic horror films we all know. Though the player is the camper, or the unsuspecting victim. Though instead of presenting the player with a villain from the start, the game never truly reveals what the greater evil is. Also, the game plays heavily on player choice and the idea that each thing you do may end up being the death of a character really hits hard. You’re not just afraid of what may attack you, but also afraid of how your choices may spiral into terrible outcome after terrible outcome. Plus, even when the player succeeds or fails the payoff is still rewarding. The tension isn’t just tossed to the side if the problem was avoided. It’s used and then we start again. Tension rises and a new dilemma is presented. If you want a horror game that can truly capture the genre then Until Dawn is definitely one of the best contenders.

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eddycurrents · 6 years ago

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Border Town #1 & 2 “Número Uno: Bienvenidos a Hell” & “Número Dos: Máscaras”

Writer: Eric M. Esquivel | Artist: Ramon Villalobos | Colourist: Tamra Bonvillain | Letterer: Deron Bennett

Published by DC Comics / DC Vertigo | 5.9.2018 & 3.10.2018 | $3.99

The Sandman Universe titles notwithstanding, Border Town was heralded as the flagship of the new DC Vertigo relaunch and refocus. When you look at the content, it’s easy to see why, even outside of the obvious quality of the story being told.

Border Town encapsulates a lot of the verve and substance of the early Vertigo breakout projects, incorporating bits of the supernatural, mythology, humour, and the human experience in a mature and thought-provoking way.

Thematically, it’s also a series about that lurker at the threshold, the unknown just behind that liminal boundary, so it makes sense that it would serve as the doorway into the new DC Vertigo.

The first issue introduces us to one of our main point of view characters, Frank, as he and his family move to the town of Devil’s Fork, Arizona. He’s a fairly typical teenager, looking to more or less fit in, rebel against his parents, and punch white supremacists in the face. Complicating this is a bizarre little chupacabra, who is appearing as things that people fear, and eating people around town.

The second issue expands more or the mythological and folklore-based creatures residing in Mictlan, as we find out that the chupacabra from the first issue is a bit of a misfit of its own. It also gives a hint as to what’s happening to Blake since getting bit, and reforming a bit of a new Scooby Gang of Frank, Julietta, Aimi, and Quinteh even after they claimed to have gone their separate ways.

Frank is an interesting protagonist, if flawed.

Through his point of view, we get a fresh look at Devil’s Fork, a quick run down of the numerous flaws of Arizona as a state, and that fish out of water quality of moving to a new town. You get a sense from him that he is fairly progressive, but there’s a violent streak in there. Kind of conflicting natures between someone looking to conform and someone looking to rebel. In essence, a teenager trying to find his place in the world.

I find how Eric M. Esquivel is developing Quinteh more interesting. In the first issue he’s somewhat the silent, misunderstood brute archetype, with it even being pointed out, but not necessarily confirmed, that he may be developmentally disabled. The second issue makes you wonder more if it’s just anxiety, as there’s a very nice story from his mom to help him overcome stress in social situations, and no particular irregularities in his speech patterns. I also quite like the parallel between his luchador mask and the ritual headdresses from Aztec culture.

Blake, a straight edge Nazi skinhead--which seems like a bizarre combination--, is set up as the early antagonist. He’s about what you’d expect from a racist playing at being a tough guy. That when it comes down to it, he’s a coward. He is changing, though, as hinted at in the second issue and it should be interesting to see what kind of monster he becomes.

The other characters are interesting, but still need some fleshing out. They feel like real people with interesting quirks. I particularly like Frank’s mom’s boyfriend, Nick. He’s obviously set up as a foil for Frank, and someone to rebel against, to blame for Frank’s current predicament, but he’s not particularly a “bad guy” for what little he appears so far. He’s kind of obnoxious, and holds some questionable views, but he comes across as someone at least trying to support his family.

I wonder about those creatures of myth and legend in Mictlan, though. We’ve only got the main characters interacting with the chupacabra so far, it’ll be interesting to see what develops further. With Frank and the kids ducking into La Curandera’s shop, and her hinting at something bigger, I wonder if this is going to take on more of a Buffy the Vampire Slayer approach in the future. I certainly wouldn’t mind seeing further issues and arcs centring around these other beasties. La Llorona and La Lechuza have some fairly well-known transitions into English storytelling, but I’d love to see all of them developed.

The art in Border Town is incredible. Ramon Villalobos and Tamra Bonvillain are creating a unique and impressive visual array with this series, ranging from the ordinary kids to the weird supernatural creatures.

I really like Villalobos’ artwork. His style is in roughly the same school as Frank Quitely, Chris Burnham, and Martín Morazzo; highly stylized, but with an impressive range of character expression and design. The human characters are appealing and unique, especially when it comes to Quinteh and his luchador mask, but where he really shines is the supernatural aspect. The designs for the chupacabra, Mictlāntēcutli, and the other residents of Mictlan are very impressive. The variety and detail that go into the reflections of fears embodied by the chupacabra’s appearance is both humorous and interesting. I especially got a kick out of the “urban teenager” and Bane panels in the first issue.

Though using fairly normal, grounded hues for the human characters, there’s also a somewhat otherworldly glow that Bonvillain is applying to the world. The skies are often purple for night scenes and there are some very interesting choices for pinks, greens, and blues in backgrounds and in the characters that make it feel just slightly unnatural. It manages to enhance the overall feel of the story, making you feel something’s just a little bit off. This effect becomes even more pronounced in Mictlan when even stranger colours come to the fore.

Deron Bennett’s lettering is also quite nice. Particularly what I’d call the “Halloween font” for Mictlāntēcutli’s dialogue. It’s hilariously over the top and perfectly fits the grandstanding for the character.

There are a couple of problems, however, that arise in the book.

The first is the use of language. In the first issue, Quinteh is referred to with a slur used against the developmentally disabled. On Twitter, Esquivel has responded that it’s uttered by the “bad guy”, and that it is meant to portray Quinteh’s regular experience, which in itself is valid, but it still normalizes the ablest insult. It doesn’t matter if it’s being uttered by an antagonist or villain, it still uses the term in a negative and derogatory fashion.

Similarly, in both first and second issues, “pussy” is used to mean coward. In both cases, they’re spoken by a protagonist, so it can’t even be relegated to a bad act by a “bad guy”. This one is a bit more nebulous than the first since etymologically “pussy” in this regard isn’t problematic, however, most people don’t know the diminution of pusillanimous. Instead, they conflate it with a euphemism for female genitalia. Despite not logically making any sense to call a coward a vagina, it’s still perpetuates that meaning to many.

Which ties into the second potential problem of an undercurrent of toxic masculinity bleeding into the work. It’s very clear that some of the worst of it is an exhibited trait from the various antagonists in the series, like Blake, Frank’s mom’s boyfriend (though I don’t necessarily think of him as a “bad guy”, just not necessarily the brightest bulb and in the beginning a foil for Frank’s social unrest), the MAGA idiots at the beginning of the first issue, but it’s also exhibited by Frank himself.

Like with the use of “pussy” as an insult, Frank glorifies violence, and follows through with an assault on Blake. While this could certainly be considered justifiable given Blake’s attitude, and could be interpreted as a pleasing thing to the audience seeing it as a racist’s comeuppance, it’s undermined a bit by Frank’s further insult of Blake’s group being “White Powerpuff Girls”. While it is a clever pun, it further reinforces that idea of women or girls being an insult.

Given the care that Esquivel takes in the first issue to delineate how one should take pride in all of their ethnic heritage in their speech, not breaking it down by percentages like a “Half-Mexican”, it seems weird that this kind of machismo would be present. Maybe it’s intentional. Maybe it’s as is alluded to in the second issue another “mask”, another tough guy act that will be addressed, but all of this can be off-putting to some. I’d give Esquivel the benefit of the doubt for this being something to be addressed further in to the story.

Overall, I quite like this.

The story so far is a nice mix of relevant social issues and supernatural adventures that reminds me a bit of an updated Buffy, but with a more irreverent sense of humour and pulling some of the kids’ problems to the forefront. It’s less about the supernatural right now, more about the coming-of-age aspect, though I feel like that’s going to slightly change. I do wonder how I’d feel about Frank being a “chosen one”.

And the art is fantastic. The storytelling from Villalobos and Bonvillain just makes the book come together. The characters, designs, and action elevate the book incredibly.

I’d recommend this to people who like a bit of humour with their horror, like Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Wynonna Earp, or even something like Jim Butcher’s The Dresden Files. Lapsed early Vertigo readers should also find something to like in Esquivel and Villalobos’ use of mythology and folklore to help explore the human condition.

Extra: There is a nice panel with a number of Easter eggs that ties together some Vertigo and DC mainstays. The most obvious being Dream’s mask, Doctor Occult’s talisman, a variation on Doctor Fate’s helmet, a poster of Constantine and Zatanna, Wonder Woman as a Virgin Mary stature, a Black Mercy plant, and more if you want to point out some of the other things on display. It’s a nice homage to what’s come before and places Border Town in the wider context of the DC/Vertigo history.

d. emerson eddy has a copy of the Lurker at the Threshold. It doesn’t have anything to do with this, but just wanted to mention HP Lovecraft. Who, despite being problematic in his racism and misogyny, still wrote some pretty great horror. Even if that one apparently is mostly August Derleth.

#Fear in a Handful of Dust #Border Town #Eric M Esquivel #Ramon Villalobos #DC Vertigo

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gffa · 7 years ago

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FANDOM WAS REALLY GOOD TO US THIS WEEK, COME CRY OVER STAR WARS FIC WITH ME AGAIN. Because sometimes you just gotta cry over how wonderful these authors are to share such fantastic pieces with us, how reading (and I love that fandom is so invested in reading, when it feels like a dying art some days!) fic makes me fall in love with these characters and this galaxy all over again. We are so lucky that there are all these people wanting to share with us and here’s some of the really good stuff (SO MUCH GOOD STUFF) that I loved! STAR WARS FIC RECS: ✦ drink up, dreamers (you’re running dry) by 31_rabbits, han/leia & luke & ben, 2.6k She’d expected her tears to be cold, too. But they are hot, and they are bitter. Salt from a vaporized sea. ✦ Equinox by lilyconrad, obi-wan/anakin, NSFW, sith!obi-wan, some d/s, 72.7k wip During the Clone Wars, Obi-Wan and Anakin crash on a remote planet and take shelter in the ruins of a grand estate only to find they are not alone. ✦ Anakin Skywalker and the Stray Droid by protos_metazu_ison (larkspyt), obi-wan/anakin & anakin/padme & cast, 28.4k Anakin adopts a stray droid, much to Obi-Wan’s displeasure, which is fine because Rusty doesn’t like Obi-Wan all that much either. ✦ Death Becomes Her by stonefreeak, anakin/padme & palpatine, body horror, 1.6k Padmé finds herself waking up after she died. Apparently, her husband couldn’t bear to let her go. She’s not grateful. At all. ✦ Armored Oasis by Spectersticks, obi-wan & anakin & cody & ahsoka & cast, 19.9k wip The Council sends Obi-Wan Kenobi with Anakin Skywalker and Ahsoka Tano to uncover the reason behind these consistent attacks, while defending the outpost from the Nikto clan’s ranged assaults. ✦ tell me what it is you want by sunflashes, obi-wan/anakin & padme/ahsoka, NSFW, modern au, 14.4k wip Anakin is done as fuck. His philosophy professor and academic advisor, Dr. Kenobi, has been working him to the point of breaking, and he just wants to get really, really drunk. ✦ Things Freely Given by ilcuoreardendo, obi-wan/anakin, vampire!obi-wan, ~1k “You shouldn’t have come.” Obi-Wan’s voice is strange. ✦ untitled by likealeafonthewind, obi-wan/anakin(/padme) & sidious, 1.5k So perhaps one way this can go is that Obi-Wan is just sitting in the Temple security room, broken and lost in the turbulence in the Force from all the violence and death that happened there (I imagine it must have created some kind of vortex of negative energy or perhaps fed into the darkside nexus under the Temple). ✦ Carrying the Stone by Makalaure, obi-wan & anakin, 4.3k “I wish Master Qui-Gon was here instead of you.” ✦ The Virgin Duchess and Other Stories by ambiguously, obi-wan/anakin/padme/satine, ~1k There were a number of stories about the rule of Duchess Satine Kryze. Some of them were even true. ✦ Saber’s Hilt by lovelykenobi, obi-wan/anakin, NSFW, d/s, dirty talk, 2.3k wip Anakin’s a boy with a mouth and a sassy attitude. Obi-Wan reacts accordingly. ✦ Alternative by Glare, obi-wan/anakin, NSFW, modern au, dark themes, 2k PROMPT: In the Negotiation-verse what would it be like if instead of the whole drugging and kidnapping business, they ended up sorting out the kiss and dating. Anakin has no idea his boyfriend is a serial killer. ✦ Your Face Is Like A Melody by Darlings (FromDreamstoEmpires), obi-wan/anakin, NSFW, modern au, ~1k writegowrite asked: #3 for the sexy prompt, please? ✦ Brothers (working title) by Charity_Angel, obi-wan & anakin & qui-gon & padme & shmi & yoda & cast, 17.3k wip In which Qui-Gon has a very near miss on Naboo, Obi-Wan is very stubborn, and they end up breaking a lot of rules accidentally as a result. All because of that kid they picked up on Tatooine. full details + recs under the cut!

STAR WARS FIC RECS: ✦ drink up, dreamers (you’re running dry) by 31_rabbits, han/leia & luke & ben, 2.6k She’d expected her tears to be cold, too. But they are hot, and they are bitter. Salt from a vaporized sea. I’m always a sucker for Leia stories, especially ones that look at the scope of her life, give her room to really react to everything that happens, even in small moments, even when a lot of it is cut short because she picks herself up and keeps soldiering on forwards. And this is set across the span of years that really show just how epic everything is with her story, the joys and the sorrows both, and there’s just something so intense about her here that really fits with her character. A lovely read. ✦ Equinox by lilyconrad, obi-wan/anakin, NSFW, sith!obi-wan, some d/s, 72.7k wip During the Clone Wars, Obi-Wan and Anakin crash on a remote planet and take shelter in the ruins of a grand estate only to find they are not alone. Chapter 15: This is an update rec and will focus on this chapter, rather than the fic as a whole. As always, I sort of want to explode over how much I love this fic and how satisfying it is, especially in regards to how much I love this version of (sort of) Sith!Anakin who is doing exactly what I had hoped for when I prompted Lily for this fic–the contrast of him against Jedi!Anakin highlights so many things about his character. It’s not just that, of course, it’s also how this is an Anakin that is more settled in who he is, because he’s entrusted himself to his Master, has chosen to give everything of himself over to this person that he loves and who loves him in return, how that clears away so much of his anger and instead allows Anakin’s charm and charisma to be at the forefront of Isten’s character. He’s just so beautiful to look at and watch, there’s something almost wild and fey about him, but also bright as the sun and so, so easy to fall in love with. And he’s still very much Anakin Skywalker, that’s what makes his scenes with actual!Anakin so fascinating, because they’re not the same person, Isten is more than just Anakin, as Anakin is more than Isten is, but Anakin is still the source and what Isten has figured out about himself has relevance to Anakin. This makes any interaction they have a delight–just watching them strip down the ship for any parts they might be able to use, because Anakin is having a sulking fit, reminds me that they’re both mechanical geniuses and I’d have enjoyed it just for that. But the purpose of that scene is greater, it’s about Anakin having breathing room after the reveals from the previous chapter, and calming down and having the space to ask about Isten’s relationship with Veris, to show us that Anakin has all these prickly defenses about what he sees as his twin being like a slave to Obi-Wan’s twin. That it gives Anakin the breathing room to really listen to what Isten says and why it’s not what he thinks, to show us whyAnakin is still thinking about this and gravitating towards what he sees with them. That it’s not about the dark, but instead about something that settles them, something good, something that makes them both feel secure, something that Isten wants, that words are frustrating for him, but a firm hand on his back cuts through all that noise in his head and stays there. That it’s about being paid attention to, about being cherished and cared for. And you understand why Anakin keeps coming back to what he knows is between them, the something underneath the surface that we can feel in him, that cannot leave it alone. And one of the great things that I love so much about this fic is that it doesn’t bring something up just to solve it immediately. There’s discussion of it here, it’s clear that Anakin feels a pull towards all of this, but he’s not there yet, it’s not such an easy, direct path for him. Things come up and get in the way, of course, but it’s more than that, it’s that he’s not fully ready yet and that makes the excitement over future chapters all the greater, because there was progress, there was satisfying forward movement, but there’s still more journey to go! And, oh, I am so curious about where it’s all going, especially when they finally make contact with their men and I’m dying to know plot stuff, but also Isten being kind of bratty about soon being parted from Veris, that it’s so easy to really sink into thoughts about Isten’s affections, that we’ve seen him be really fond of Obi-Wan, to turn to him and press against him when wanting shelter, to see his affection around Anakin, for the source of himself, how he seems to likehimself in a lot of ways, to how everything is so much deeper when it comes to Veris. That Isten is cut to the core when he’ll be parted from Veris, even just for awhile, and shows it by sulking. That he’s jealous when Veris pays attention to Anakin, even with good reason. That it’s a reflection of Anakin’s desire to be sullen about things he doesn’t like, a freedom to be petulant about it that Anakin doesn’t allow himself, even while it stirs up everyone’s lack of desire to be parted from the one they love. But EVEN MORE THAN THAT there’s another plot twist that makes perfect sense and yet I DID NOT SEE IT COMING and makes me wonder about where all of this is going, with such a remote planet that nobody is really allowed to go to, if someone should end up staying there, it’s not like there would be anyone to know they were there, and Ugly is still in the house and, oh, I’m not sure if they’ll make it off planet before the end, if Obi-Wan and Isten will spend more time together, if Veris and Anakin will spend more time together, or if Ugly will rear up before they can leave, OR WHAT. And it’s really, really exciting to be so invested in both the relationship progress and the plot progress! As you can see by how I cannot stop talking about it!! ✦ Anakin Skywalker and the Stray Droid by protos_metazu_ison (larkspyt), obi-wan/anakin & anakin/padme & cast, 28.4k Anakin adopts a stray droid, much to Obi-Wan’s displeasure, which is fine because Rusty doesn’t like Obi-Wan all that much either. All chapters: I’ve recommended this fic at several points along the way, but now that it’s finished I wanted to write a rec that’s for the overall story, because this was one of the most satisfying reads I’ve had in awhile! There’s something so incredibly solid and good about this fic, there’s a weight and sharpness to the characterizations that I really, really loved–I noticed it especially with Obi-Wan, who is this really great balance between stern and kind, that he’s both these things in a way that Obi-Wan Kenobi always should be. That there’s a warmth to his character, that he’s considered and kind, but that he’s also sharp when necessary, that there’s a heaviness to his character that makes him feel unmovable. I also love Anakin, who is this really brilliant, bright character, but who is also kind of a mess who only halfway knows what he wants–he knows that he feels all these things, but he doesn’t necessarily know how to fully untangle them–this is why the ending worked so well for me, because he just did not feel at all settled in his own skin, even when he knew what path he had to walk, which contrasted against Obi-Wan, who does have to wade through a lot to get where he is, but he knows himself and there’s a surety to him once he’s decided on something, that is spot on here. I loved this fic for the characterization, that Obi-Wan and Anakin and Padme all felt like they were given depth and weight, but I also loved it for the plot! The OC droid character fit so well into the universe here, like this could very easily have taken place in the GFFA and was so incredibly engaging, I genuinely likedRusty the droid and would have read so much more from his point of view. The balance between what the droid himself brought to the story, his own backstory and motivations, was balanced against seeing Obi-Wan and Anakin through his eyes, seeing things with a fresh gaze that could comment on them and nudge them in a different direction, worked so, so well! And I really loved the ending, the way everything rolled towards the final events of it, and I just felt satisfiedafter reading it. “Obikin through the eyes of a droid” sounds like it could go a lot of different ways, but I thought the author absolutely did justice to it here, that it lived up to the concept and made something really engaging and true to the characters. I’m so glad to have gotten the chance to read this one and I think it’s a great read for when you want something that’s not precisely fluffy, but is definitely good for the heart! ✦ Death Becomes Her by stonefreeak, anakin/padme & palpatine, body horror, 1.6k Padmé finds herself waking up after she died. Apparently, her husband couldn’t bear to let her go. She’s not grateful. At all. I’m biased because this was based on one of my posts, but it’s legitimately a fantastic piece, it captures the horror of Padme being stuck in this reanimate body, the slow stealing away of her sanity, that none of this is good and, oh, Anakin, he is so far gone and doesn’t understand what he’s done to her. It’s horrifying and yet it doesn’t overplay its hand, instead there’s something almost delirious and unhinged about it in a way that makes me feel so, so much for Padme and it’s just everything I wanted from Anakin finding a way to forcePadme to stay alive! ALSO IT’S JUST REALLY AWESOME. ✦ Armored Oasis by Spectersticks, obi-wan & anakin & cody & ahsoka & cast, 19.9k wip The Council sends Obi-Wan Kenobi with Anakin Skywalker and Ahsoka Tano to uncover the reason behind these consistent attacks, while defending the outpost from the Nikto clan’s ranged assaults. I picked this one up pretty much because I wanted some action fic (tower defense fic is a great way to describe it!) and I very much got a fun action plot that was satisfying, but I didn’t expect to get character feelings to go along with it, yet, boy, did I ever! The beginning chapters are a really solid (though, it could stand to break up the paragraphs a bit more imo) action sequences, with some really, really quality Obi-Wan whump where he is a goddamned tank, especially when you see him through the eyes of the clones, they’re just in awe of the larger-than-life presence of their general! But eventually he hits his limit and Anakin kind of loses his goddamned mind over it in a perfectly Anakin way and freaks out over Obi-Wan getting hurt and overreactions in a really fascinating way–both what he’s capable of when he’s freaking out and because the fic shows just how much Obi-Wan means to him, that there’s such love between these characters shown in the way they interact with each other. It hit so many of my iddy buttons, with Anakin going on a rampage because he thinks Obi-Wan might be dead and he flips out, you can knock Obi-Wan down but I’m not actually sure anything can really stop that guy from getting back up again, that Obi-Wan yells at Anakin in a legitimately heavy way, he’s justified in it, and yet it comes from a place of obvious love, and, oh, it’s this great digging into the thorny issues between them in a way that makes me love them both so very much, because Anakin is in a slippery fall here, but it comes from a place of such care. All of it is so satisfying, getting to see Obi-Wan and Anakain and Ahsoka all have their moments of total badassery, all on top of a solidly interesting and engaging mission fic! I couldn’t ask for more! ✦ tell me what it is you want by sunflashes, obi-wan/anakin & padme/ahsoka, NSFW, modern au, 14.4k wip Anakin is done as fuck. His philosophy professor and academic advisor, Dr. Kenobi, has been working him to the point of breaking, and he just wants to get really, really drunk. I think I’d started this fic before, but I recently picked it up again and started from the beginning, and just got really sucked into it. It was the perfect length for me to read now and had enough resolution that I’m not left pining, but instead I’m satisfied with how it was this really fun, cute college AU fic! There was just the right amount of pining-to-getting-together for my tastes, enough to make me enjoy the build-up to it, while Anakin especially just absolutely pined and was totally in love, to when that all finally came to a head and they fell into bed together. And that was wonderful as well, how there was some nice foreplay until Anakin just could not stand it anymore and he was so, so ready, please just fuck him already, grinding down onto Obi-Wan’s fingers and pleading for more, until Obi-Wan finally pushes into him. It didn’t have to be long, but it came at just the right time after the lead up to it, so that in addition to being very nicely satisfying sex (I am always here for Anakin being greedy and wanting more of Obi-Wan in him!) it made for this overall really fun, light-hearted experience in reading this fic! It had that affect on me where I felt energized afterwards again, like I could read another dozen stories just like this one, because I enjoyed this fandom and these characters so much! ✦ Things Freely Given by ilcuoreardendo, obi-wan/anakin, vampire!obi-wan, ~1k “You shouldn’t have come.” Obi-Wan’s voice is strange. This was a short but lovely piece of pretty much exactly what it says on the tin! There’s a very nice dramatic intimacy to the story, that there are events that happen around this, obviously before and after it, but it’s about the feelings and connection between these characters more than anything. It’s about how desperate Anakin is, how he’ll give anything (even of himself) to get them through this, to not be pushed away, and that Obi-Wan is hungry for Anakin in this really heavy, rolling way that makes for some very lovely imagery, as he pushes Anakin down onto the bed, his control frayed at the edges, and Anakin’s thoughts pushed out of his head in that way that I love for him. A very lovely read! ✦ untitled by likealeafonthewind, obi-wan/anakin(/padme) & sidious, 1.5k So perhaps one way this can go is that Obi-Wan is just sitting in the Temple security room, broken and lost in the turbulence in the Force from all the violence and death that happened there (I imagine it must have created some kind of vortex of negative energy or perhaps fed into the darkside nexus under the Temple). This is a description of a story more than a story itself, but it satisfied me in the same way that fic satisfies me when I read it, so onto a recs list it goes! And I really enjoyed this, it’s a ROTS fix-it piece that balances between how everything is always about Anakin at the heart of things, but that also Obi-Wan is a favored child of the Force, how things might have been nudged in a slightly different direction and then snowballed, if just a couple of little things had been changed. And it’s a super fun, pleasing read and I love the whole point of the fic, that the highlight of it is this moment: Sidious might be the Sith Lord hovering nearby waiting to take it over but Obi-Wan is one of its children, he’s grown up over its heart and called it home and family. Like, yes, GIVE ME ALL THE FORCE LOVES ITS CHILDREN FIC. ✦ Carrying the Stone by Makalaure, obi-wan & anakin, 4.3k “I wish Master Qui-Gon was here instead of you.” I was curious about this fic as soon as I saw it because I’ve liked the author’s Tolkien writing, so I was hopeful about getting a good Star Wars story–and, oh, I definitely did. This is a heavier fic in a lot of ways than I expected, there’s such a raw anger to bb!Anakin here, who is upset and hurt in a way that is entirely understandable and makes me ache for both him and Obi-Wan, for how hard this is to struggle through. It’s sharp and he says hurtful words (but he’s a child and the narrative understands that, even as his words hurt, they’re coming from a place of upset themselves and from someone who’s not old enough to control themselves yet, that Obi-Wan too understands this) and it’s not an easy start. But it’s still good and there’s still hope, this isn’t a fic that made me feel worse afterwards, but instead one that I felt really did justice to the way these two were thrown together, neither of them precisely chose this, and yet there’s something there already, something epic in the making. That’s a difficult balance to achieve sometimes, but this one did it beautifully. And, oh, that last line is absolutely perfect, I still grin just thinking about it. ✦ The Virgin Duchess and Other Stories by ambiguously, obi-wan/anakin/padme/satine, ~1k There were a number of stories about the rule of Duchess Satine Kryze. Some of them were even true. This worked well for me because it’s not really necessarily a true story, but instead about what’s said about these four characters and their relationship and what happened with them, how they came together. It’s sort of a children’s fairy tale story and I’m always a sucker for these four together, so I enjoyed this! ✦ Saber’s Hilt by lovelykenobi, obi-wan/anakin, NSFW, d/s, dirty talk, 2.3k wip Anakin’s a boy with a mouth and a sassy attitude. Obi-Wan reacts accordingly. My caveat before I move further on is that this fic has some slur play that briefly gave me pause (though, that may be a personal thing more than anything!) that I think a heads up on would help beforehand, but I really did enjoy this fic a lot! It’s pretty well designed to appeal to my iddy wants, it’s cheerfully filthy and embraces the tropes it uses and is clearly having a greattime doing so, which is always infectious! It’s very much about the d/s relationship, how it gives Anakin structure for when he can’t help backtalking and being a real brat, how you can feel how much more wrung out of all that restless energy he is afterwards. It’s a fic meant to appeal to these elements and I enjoyed it for just cheerfully being happy dirty sex! ✦ Alternative by Glare, obi-wan/anakin, NSFW, modern au, dark themes, 2k PROMPT: In the Negotiation-verse what would it be like if instead of the whole drugging and kidnapping business, they ended up sorting out the kiss and dating. Anakin has no idea his boyfriend is a serial killer. Oh, I really loved this so much, it’s this great mix of something fluff and yet also really creepy, knowing what we do about this serial killer!Obi-Wan. I mean, I gladly would have picked it up just for cute domestic-esque interaction where they talk over Anakin’s casework, then Obi-Wan fucks him over the desk in really sweet, satisfying sex, but to have that undercurrent of something much darker and fucked up? Ahhh, I really missed that blend from Negotation! But also really I super appreciated just how happy the sex made me, how it was cute and charming, that of course Obi-Wan had some lube on hand and Anakin was just as ready to be fucked over his desk, that there was this curl of something in him as Obi-Wan opened him up, spread him wide, and pushed into him, that it said something about Anakin that he liked what this did to him. It’s just a really, really fun, super delicious piece to read! ✦ Your Face Is Like A Melody by Darlings (FromDreamstoEmpires), obi-wan/anakin, NSFW, modern au, ~1k writegowrite asked: #3 for the sexy prompt, please? Oh, this was lovely and another fic that came along when I needed it, just a pwp but with the undercurrents of just the right amount of a d/s dynamic, that it’s super hot sex while also giving structure to Anakin, keeping him within bounds and focused, and how much Anakin responds to that, how much he enjoys that attention, that feeling of being caught and guided and held. But also just really nicely done sex, which I appreciated so very much. ✦ Brothers (working title) by Charity_Angel, obi-wan & anakin & qui-gon & padme & shmi & yoda & cast, 17.3k wip In which Qui-Gon has a very near miss on Naboo, Obi-Wan is very stubborn, and they end up breaking a lot of rules accidentally as a result. All because of that kid they picked up on Tatooine. Often times when I read fic that uses Legends and canon together in a fic, which are incompatible with each other, I find myself wanting to argue and yet I was just fine with it here–and it dawned on me anew that it was because this fic is clearly coming from such a great, warm, caring place with it, that it’s clearly just having fun doing its thing and loving everyone and everything, that I got swept up in that wamrth and wanted to read another 50k of it immediately. It’s such a wonderful fic where everything goes right–Qui-Gon lives after Naboo, but is injured so Obi-Wan temporarily takes over the beginning of Anakin’s training. This allows everyone breathing room, this means Obi-Wan now knows what happened on Tatooine instead of being in the dark about it, this means that he can talk to Qui-Gon about what to do with Anakin and isn’t weighed down by grief, this means that there’s breathing room for everyone, this means that things are able to be nudged in a better direction, so that Shmi can be freed and brought to Naboo, so that Anakin can be more settled, that Obi-Wan has more breathing room, and eveyrone is just really wonderful and happy. It’s not without struggle, they still have a lot of shit to wade through, Palpatine is still out there, but it gives the Jedi breathing room and lets them have the space to take stock and deal with things more slowly. And, oh, all the worldbuilding bits! The classes that Anakin gets enrolled in! The going to get lightsaber crystals! And the characterization is wonderful, there’s such developing affection between Obi-Wan and Anakin, Qui-Gon is healing and is able to better talk to Obi-Wan here, Yoda cackling about hilarious shit that happens, Jedi friends being there to help and/or laughing at silly things! And Obi-Wan especially, my love, is gorgeously written here and we see him becoming the really great teacher that we know he’s meant to be. The way he deals with Anakin, the way he deals with other Padawans, when not weighed down by grief, is so true to his character and so warm-hearted. And Anakin is goddamned precious and Padme is kind-hearted and sparkling–and, really, everything in this fic sparkles! The writing and characterizations are so sharp and just left me with a smile on my face the entire way. It might be a fix-it fic but that doesn’t mean it’s any less engaging or wonderful to read!

#obi wan kenobi #anakin skywalker #padme amidala #obikin #anidala #ahsoka tano #qui gon jinn #fic recs #star wars fic recs

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