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djwiththejd · 1 year ago

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The Fall of The House of Usher (2023) Episode 2

I'm back, back in the New York Groove ~

Like I said before, I'm writing this because I need a hobby. I do feel like after sleeping on everything I typed up for with episode 1 that I can do with a reorganization of sorts. I simply cannot point out every one liner, clue, and reference to something obscure in this show without developing carpal tunnel.

So, with that, I'm going to change the layout of how I type up this episode and see if I like it better. At the moment of writing this, I have already finished Episode 2 and I'm chomping at the bit to write about it. SO without further ado, some analysis I was too tired to bring up in my first post.

Firstly, once I saw that The Murder in The Rue Morgue had its own episode title, I got the gist that each episode would be focused around the death of each sibling. I sincerely hope by now that this isn't a spoiler however, as the entire family has to die in order for the fall of the House of Usher to actually come to fruition. Luckily everyone in the family except for possible Lenore and Juno are shit people. So anyhow, the 8 episode layout where Episode 1 begins with the introduction, six episodes in the middle each center around the death of a sibling, and then the last episode will probably be reserved for the death of the twins. What's great is that you can assume that structure is what is intended and still be surprised by plot twists and modernization elements to make the story new, fun, and exciting. It's the journey, blah, blah, blah.

ALSO, I've never seen any other piece of Mike Flanagan's works, so this is my first time delving into a horror anthology. I am sure I liked Hill House things when it first came out bc people were very funny about it on here, but I was too much of a chicken to watch it.

Anyhow, now we move onto the next bit, background and plot!

So first, I have not read The Masque of the Red Death. I am literally just copy/pasting the first paragraph of the plot summary from Wikipedia, hyperlinks and all:

The story takes place at the castellated abbey of the "happy and dauntless and sagacious" Prince Prospero. Prospero and 1,000 other nobles have taken refuge in this walled abbey to escape the Red Death, a terrible plague with gruesome symptoms that has swept over the land. Victims are overcome by "sharp pains", "sudden dizziness", and "profuse bleeding at the pores", and die within half an hour. Prospero and his court are indifferent to the sufferings of the population at large; they intend to await the end of the plague in luxury and safety behind the walls of their secure refuge, having welded the doors shut to ensure no one enters or leaves.

Unfortunately, the episode does not start with our young prince Prospero. It starts with a flashback of Dupin in 1979 taking a photo of an exhumed and empty grave. At this point Dupin's plaque titles his as "Junior Fraud Investigator," and apparently isn't a police officer. The most important bit here is how Dupin pushes back against his boss and the boss asks him: "Say you win. If you could catch them all, take all of it, all the greed, the foulness, the rot in the world and sit down across from it, what would you say?" and then it immediately cuts to Dupin in that dilapidated childhood home of Roderick and Madeline Usher, and Dupin gets to ask "Was it ever going to be enough?" There's more there, but the callous way Roderick responds indicates that the mask has come up again briefly. He's defensive about Ligodone, he's defensive about his wife, he refuses to explain why there is no number of dollars in the world that will make him and Madeline feel satisfied with their success.

It was also important that in the past, Dupin tells his boss that "This world needs changing." This is the same ideal that the twins have, but the intent and the implication behind those same words these people said at approximately the same time culminates in them leading very different lives. For now, that's all I have to say on the matter.

Now, moving on. Perrie's corpse appears behind Dupin this time. This time Dupin does turn around but sees nothing, so we can assume that the corpses are just visions. The ghosts of Roderick's past coming back to haunt him, quite literally.

So when we first see Perrie in this episode, he's introduced in bed surrounded by naked bodies, sex toys, etc. I'm sure it is meant at first sight to shock the senses, but personally I couldn't stop thinking about how we are visually seeing Perrie being "boxed in" this hedonistic cage of his own making. This is Perrie's own bed, the people he chose to spend his time with, but as we see in the episode when we look at how his family interacts with him and how Verna speaks to him, Perrie has basically put himself into a box of his own deadly sin, Lust. In this vein, I wonder if I can do an analysis of each child as one of the deadly sins, omitting Pride. Pride has historically been seen as the worst sin, or the highest sin that brings forth all the other sins, so if I did do this analysis, I would immediately take Pride out of the equation only because I would ascribe it to the twins as the head of the family and as the parents of all of the other sins. I haven't watched the other episodes yet so I'm not sure if this analysis will keep up going forward but for now I have a general idea which sin I would ascribe to which child.

So moving on with the plot, Perrie wakes up and comes out to two people in his apartment and I recognized one of them! Molly Quinn, famously known for being Richard Castle's daughter and also the daughter of the other RV owning family in We're the Millers. She's a fond part of my childhood, and I'm loving her haircut. However, we see a weird, almost violent display of power when Perrie thinks his expensive eggs were eaten by his "friends" and I put friends in parentheses because I'm not entirely sure yet if Perrie does see these people as his friends, lovers, or even equals.

They discuss disappointment at Roderick vetoing supporting the Prospero club venture he had pitched, and Perrie says it might have been an overall good thing. He gets a call from Frederick, lovingly saved in his phone as Dickwad. Apparently he's supposed to be shadowing Frederick, but as soon as he walks in, his immaturity and naïveté derails the entire meeting with the Feds over Fortunato's poor environmental business practices. This enrages Freddie, and he accuses Perrie of being the mole informant. The continuous bit that Freddie struggles to differentiate between the two is actually quite funny, especially because Perrie has just shown his ass to not be the brightest bulb in the bunch, but even he can keep those two different concepts straight in his head. Freddie really says some demoralizing shit to Perrie though, you can tell he sees himself above the other children, similarly to how Tamerlane's musings about the informant likely being "one of the bastards" from the first episode. Just because Roderick says you're family doesn't necessarily show that the children saw it the same way even when paternity is established.

Perrie lays out the details for the sex and drug-fueled club event to his two lackeys, and Verna briefly pops up on the roof of the building before Perrie looks back and sees that she's gone. We cut to the Rue Morgue, and Victorine and Alessandra lose another monkey. Victorine takes it hard and Alessandra tells her the last thing they should be talking about right now is human trials. However, we see that she's lying through her ass to her father, who is fast tracking this process because he's the person who needs that surgery.

Cut to Perrie asking Leo for drugs. So many drugs. Leo has funny quip in heres, but he's important because he tells Perrie that he's "better than a dealer, smarter than a DJ," and that "this is beneath you." Leo sees potential in Perrie that I saw a glimpse of when he was crunching numbers and setting entry fees for the guests. It is a shame that Perrie doesn't choose to listen to him in the end. And yes, another funny viagra quip.

We cut to Bill T. Wilson's...workout video? So that's what BILLT nation is. I will say the half-confused, half-concerned, half-disgusted, half-almost fascinated face Camille has is priceless here. We then cut to her watching a testimony from an alleged whistleblower at the Fortunato trial. Camille's willingness to find something about this whistleblower if there isn't anything to find speaks a lot about how she is as a PR manager. Ruthless, merciless, and focused on the ends to justify the means. The informant issue is eating at her because it was a factor she could not see or control. She zeroes in on Vic's clinical trial because she thinks it stinks, and we know it does, but she's got some ulterior motive that we don't know yet. The guy was admittedly fair in asking what Vic did to her, but it was one of those things you keep inside and never voice because Camille 100% has the ability to ruin you. Her glare was iconic. I was scared but also a little excited. I was hoping for some action but we cut to Perrie again instead.

A drop of water from the ceiling drips and lands on a phone. We talk about how to access the party, Molly Quinn uses her vocal fry to whisper sing an ad-libbed version of WAP, and we see the sprinkler again while Perrie asks about the water. We move to discussing the sprinklers to "make it rain" for the party and the guy for it says the sprinklers are shut off and Perrie calls bullshit because they dripped on his phone. He has this entire bit about hooking up the sprinklers to the filtered water tanks on the roof, etc, and starts talking about "The Golden Rule." I know this rule well, and while Perrie doesn't get to finish saying it before we cut to Roderick, I can confidently say as someone without money that money can solve many, many problems. So yes, whoever has the gold, does make the rules.

Roderick tells Dupin about the comic where he read about it. Before he can also finish saying "rule" Perrie's corpse appears to stand before him, and WOW he looks horrific. The SFX team deserves major props for this work, because he looks like a human anatomy model. 100% my money is that there's acid rain in the sprinklers/in the water tanks in the roof, and I'm probably right, but once again, the beauty of good media/literature/stories isn't about guessing the plot twist or the ending of the story before you get to it, it's about enjoying the process as you go along. I'm having a great time.

Roderick switches to something called CADASIL. Cerebral autosomal dominant arteriopathy with subcortical infarcts and leukoencephalopathy. (The subtitle person for this deserves a raise.) It is apparently a hereditary form of vascular cognitive impairment. "Before it kills you, it causes symptoms very much like dementia. Affects thinking, problem solving, spatial reasoning and memory. It can even cause hallucinations."

Ah. There it is.

Roderick has this. And there's no cure. And he's refusing all the medications. AND the only hope is preventative. THE EXPERIMENTAL SMART HEART MESH HE SPENT $200 MILLION ON THAT HIS DAUGHTER IS WORKING ON?! Ah, so he is spending the gold to make sure the rules can work for him. Even if it means cutting corners and costing lives. Amazing how much money can really take away your sense of humanity though.

He brings up Rufus Griswold and that unfortunate cemetery business. What I laughed at was the dry, subtle way Roderick just calls Gris "the original gangsta." I had to rewind to make sure my eyes and the subtitles weren't playing tricks on me. So apparently all of this, as we are finding out, starts there. In Gris' office. With the Gris himself, "the original cocksucker."

Oh, it is a flashback. Young Roderick goes in to talk to Gris, but what about? Gris pours himself a drink and acerbically mocks the FDA. The "Fuck Dicks Association." Roderick is clearly not used to this kind of vibe, but he plays along poorly, not that it seems to matter much to Gris. Then again, this is a man who succeeded the helm of Fortunato. When he talks, he expects others to play along, he doesn't care how badly they do it as long as he's the one speaking and in charge. Roderick tries to make a pitch but Griswold is unhappy to hear it. He's about to kick Roderick out but decides fuck it, he's already here. Might as well just pretend to listen and kick him out. Obviously he doesn't say that, but I did debate for most of high school. Some judges walk in biased and you know you've lost before you even open your mouth. This happens with WASPy soccer moms judging their kids' debate tournament, this happens with judges on a local and federal level even though we pretend it isn't true, and it is certainly happening right now with Roderick Usher about to try to pitch something to Rufus Griswold. It is a shame Roderick doesn't know it yet.

He pitches ligodone, the same drug that dupin is in modern times currently trying to nail Fortunato and the Ushers for for falsely advertising as everything Roderick is pitching to Gris now. It is a really good pitch, very idealistic. I think Roderick may believe ligodone is the cure for everything, but I'm hooked on his line "this world...needs changing." He's as idealist as young Dupin at this time. I am so committed to seeing what goes wrong.

The pitch continues, Griswold pushes back, and Roderick suggests that Fortunato will become a miracle and Griswold will become the new Messiah. This piques my interest. We've got the ultra-religious mom, the children being allegories for the deadly sins, and a reference to the head of Fortunato with ligodone as the next Messiah. It certainly invokes a sense of hubris with inevitable downfall. But then Roderick brings it back to his mom and how much pain she was in. It really throws me for a loop because I think the humanity of it all is really at the bottom of Griswold's mind.

We cut to a new location and a crying baby. we see Madeline first and then a woman with the crying baby. We quickly figure out this is Roderick's wife Annabel (hur hur Annabel Lee) who consoles him for not winning his pitch. Madeline looks out of place, uncomfortable being there and more focused on things outside of the domestic sphere like Roderick's failed pitch. When we cut to the silent time after the baby is quiet at night, we see Roderick in the middle of these two women, with Madeline at his right hand side. When Annabel expresses remorse about the familial ties Roderick has with Fortunato, with his mother and father, Madeline seems shocked that he would have told his wife about such a detail? Like ma'am, that is your brother's wife. I just get this codependent vibe from the two of them that really gives me the ick. Annabel really does her best to bring them back to humanity by saying money isn't everything, but Madeline is not buying it. Madeline is completely jaded, turned off by men, turned off by love, basically anything where human emotion can show off even a sense of vulnerability. and she's just kind of disrespectful towards Annabel. (There's a bit here about AI writing movies and TV shows, I see that insert, I acknowledge it, I will move on.)

Madeline starts salivating at the thought of using algorithms to mimic human consciousness and ho it speaks to immortality. This is the first time I've seen her care about anything since I've seen her in this house, so I'm writing this immortality bit down as a note for later.

"Fuck that tiny little man in his big office with his tiny little ideas. WE are going to change the goddamn world, and if Fortunato won't help us get there, we will trample them on our way."

Ah. Spoken like a true capitalist, Madeline. Annabel can't fight off this insatiable, almost rabid thirst of Madeline's to move forward, and clearly since she isn't in the present with us, clearly Madeline must have won Roderick over to her side either by force or by choice. Shame, since Annabel was the paragon of virtue and humanity in this argument, and just goes to show how almost inhuman Madeline has become in this pursuit to change the world.

In the present, Madeline is talking to Lenore about answering a bunch of questions. Apparently she's making an Ai-approximation of Lenore by havingher write a journal every day for four months, answer 10,000 questions, and have it worm its way through the internet and collect all of her virtual data. This is impressive, actually. I'm doing some research on AI right now for an old law school professor so I've learned a lot about AI in the past few months and I have some background on this AI approximation that Madeline is trying to create. I might write a separate post about it altogether.

Back to Madeline. She assumes everyone wants to live on after they die, like the ancients. She had her Ancient Egypt phase, I see. This is Madeline's Roman Empire. She unboxes the mummification tools the Ancient Egyptians used to scoop out the brain, but there's a bunch of other artifacts behind her as well, propped up like trophies. She calls it her "immortality collection," so it isn't about Ancient Egypt, her hyperfixation is the concept of immortality.

Pym comes in and tells her she was right about something. Perrie's bank statements show that he's spending less. It either means he's "coming down in his old age" or that he's spending more cash. If so, he's dealing, pimping, or taking a payout in cash from the Federal government. Juno doesn't have her own accounts, she's co-signed on Roderick's. MAdeline here treats Juno with derision, calling her "the child bride" but ma'am. Once again, the common denominator here is that your brother picked these women to marry! Those are his decisions, deal with it! Either way, she's also intent on finding the informant.

Lenore walks in on Juno and Roderick being handsy in his office, but they quickly settle themselves. Juno is hilarious here, but it does highlight that Juno and Lenore are closer in age and interests than anyone else in this household. Blegh. Ok, maybe Madeline's comment about the whole child bride thing was on point. Juno is such comedic relief here, I'm not gonna lie, this actress is stellar, and I love her Irish accent. I think after all that tension and analysis, it was good to have a break. These things are too long, I need to shorten them for Episode 3.

Oh, cut to Perrie trying to drop off documents for Froderick. Dickwad. Frederick. Freddie. Morrie answers the door and tells him she's sorry about how Freddie can be. She tells Perrie she gets it, and idk, am I getting "battered wife" vibes here or is this just an act to try to get him to warm up? Perrie instead decides to be a degenerate and invite his shitty's brother WIFE to his expensive orgy. She scoffs and rebukes him, but he pulls some psycho manipulation about sex that as a demi person I can't relate to, but I appreciate her being all "How dare you!" about it. I still think if the show is going to put moving music in the background on it that she's going to end up going though, so maybe an early RIP to Morella Usher? Perrie's a whole ass freak, but Morrie is considering it, so wow.

Cut to Tamerlane. She's watching Bill set the table and then the bell rings. Off screen she invites a woman in who asks if a wig works for her? Ok, so this girl looks a bit like Chloe Fineman from SNL, but she just walks in wearing a wig and says hi to Bill like she's done this a million times before. Is this some type of roleplay? Ok, they're paying her in cash and Tamerlane is explaining her roleplay? She wants a romantic, intimate dinner? But she wants this girl to pretend to be her? Wait, she's sitting down and watching? Ok, so Tamerlane is sitting down and watching a hired girl pretend to be her, watch Bill treat her like he treats her, and Tamerlane gets off by watching it all as a third party observer? Her sexual fantasies literally start at dinner. I mean I just said Perrie's a whole ass freak, but Tamerlane kind of is one on a whole other, more voyeuristic, self-insertion level. I am confusion.

Cut to Camille watching Bill's workout video and kind of following his workout in a fascinated way? I'm also confusion. Anyway, her interns walk in and she turns it off, but then asks for updates on Vic's clinical trials and is frustrated that Toby can't get any results. She then goes into background of the testing facility "Roderick. Usher. Experimental." R.U.E. So she sets up the bit about the Rue Morgue. My favorite Poe short story. Tina goes into the paralytic nerve agent but Camille is uninterested. She looks through photographs and then..gets up to join them in bed? I had to rewind again. I didn't even realize they were undressing while debriefing her. And Camille's wearing a rope bra. And they're her interns! Besides the ethical and workplace violations from the freaking PR person for Fortunato, this whole family is FULL of sexual deviants. Wtf. I am confusion. AGAIN.

Cut to ships in a bottle. Frederick is showing Lenore how to make a ship in a bottle for Grampus Roderick. Morrie is headed out and apparently she's going to the orgy party. Great...

Everything is stuffed into lockers and masks come on. Perrie is overlooking this domain like the young Prince Prospero from the story. He gets excited when he sees and realizes his dickwad brother's hot wife showed up to his orgy. Morrie plays dumb, but Perrie tells her to try some drugs and one of the twelve bedrooms before he says he will find her later.

Cut to security cameras. Perrie points out all the famous/famous adjacent people who showed up. He reveals his plan to use the security footage form this hedonistic orgy to blackmail everyone who arrived at the party. Suddenly, inviting his dickwad's brother's hot model/actress wife makes a lot more sense, and he says it out loud. He drops a tidbit about Freddie is afraid of using elevators. Mght be useful for later. He then proceeds to give his lackeys ecstasy through mouth to mouth and they all head out to continue partying before a woman in a skull mask walks through the door. We know it is Verna, but Perrie doesn't know who she is. Verna and Morrie briefly make eye contact before Verna slips away and Perrie follows her to ask her who she is.

Verna finally removes her mask and she and Perrie somehow end up in a private bedroom. I don't know if the red lights are indicative of the seventh room in the original story, but if it is just a stylistic option, it also looks fitting. Verna tells him he can take off his mask. He asks her if she knows him, and she says she knows everyone here because this is her kind of party. She talks about the music, the lights, the beautiful flesh. She really leans into "the smells of it." And no, it isn't what you would think. "All the sweat, the perfumes, the lotions, the musk. sex, yes. But with a dash of Rome."

Verna asks him to tell her, and not lie, if this party is everything he wanted it to be. He says, "Not yet. Almost." She responds that "nearly realized is the sweetest. It is better...in the moment just before than in the moment after." She tells him he did it, and there's still time. For what? He asks. Verna responds..."To stop it."

She tells Perrie "Things like this, all things in fact, have consequences." He tells her that's not what is happening here based off of his invite (even though he KNOWS he plans to blackmail everyone in this room later.) Verna responds there are always consequences and talks about him. About choices that lead to consequences, and how his existence is a consequence. I wrote down the whole speech because those sequence of choices will likely be illuminated once the entire series is over, so I want that to reflect upon during each episode.

It is a shame, because even though Verna tells Perrie that tonight he is consequential, he doesn't even realize how serious she is. She gives him a chance to take it all back, and then the two of them could have had fun, and that she's got a weakness for bad boys. She tells Perrie "you are a pretty, pretty little thing" before she disappears into the party again. Perrie chases after her but she's gone. He takes something, puts his mask back on and returns to the party. Verna is seen whispering into the ears of the security guards, the bartender, etc before she appears behind Morrie and tells her to "Go. Now." So Morrie is given due warning. Now the decision is up to her whether to leave or stay as midnight approaches. Morrie stays, and has to deal with the consequences of her choices.

The acid rain in the sprinklers rains down and proceeds to basically liquify the entire party. Everyone looks like anatomical models, but Perrie is still moving a bit. Verna approaches his melted body and whispers "You beautiful boy" and kisses him on the lips as he dies before placing her skull mask on his face. And that's the end of the episode.

There's a lot there. I feel like I have to immediately start Episode 3 in order to recover from the whiplash of all of that, but this is going up now. I think for Episode 3 I will take it "scene by scene" as I plan to watch the entire episode in full since Rue Morgue is my favorite short story and I wanna see how it plays out with Camille. If I'm lucky I'll get Episode 3 up today but I am very much at the whim of my moods and medication.

Overall this was a good episode, we saw everyone else's freaky sex interests and I do think Perrie gives me "lust" deadly sin vibes, especially because his penchant for lust is what got him killed. Verna calling him beautiful before and after the acid rain is intriguing. She could be saying his demon-esque look is appealing because she herself is a demon. I got a google notecard/ad type of thing for an article saying that Verna is the Raven because it is an anagram, but I'm interested in seeing other explanations as to what Verna could be. She could be the literal devil that the twins made a deal with to get where they are, I'm not entirely sure. I just want to get through this series with as little spoilers as possible to see how accurate my guesses are.

#the fall of the house of usher #house of usher #tfothou #tfothou spoilers #carla gugino #molly quinn #mike flanagan #fall of the house of usher #tv series review #netflix series #netflix #seven deadly sins #prospero usher #verna #the raven #rue morgue

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theboarsbride · 2 years ago

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ok sorry in advance for bothering you, feel free to tell me to get lost, but i was wondering if you, the resident expert, have any monster romance recs that aren’t way too. nsfw i guess? maybe it’s just me but i’m having a hard time finding any. like i’m more interested in the slow burn and the romance but the genre seems to be mainly fast paced erotica and i just can’t get into it

OOh!!! No need to be sorry, I'm always happy to answer stuff like this and talk about (cleaner) monster romances!! I'm honored you'd consider me an expert, though! 🥺💛I feel like I don't actually talk about monster romances all that much!

But I agree that it can be hard to find a monster romance that isn't erotica. Not that erotica isn't good, I just like seeing slow burn romances, too!

I wish I could provide a longer list, but here's what I got so far! (and if anyone finds this and wants to add onto this list, feel free to do so in comments, tags, reblogs, etc)

I will provide links/titles to these stories, say the genre(s), provide a short synopsis in my own words, and then say why I recommend it below the cut!

Axiom's End by Lindsay Ellis | sci-fi, alternate history, conspiracy fiction, action/adventure

"An alternate history novel set in 2008 where whistleblower Nils Ortega leaks information to the public that the US government is secretly harboring extraterrestrial refugees. Cora Sabino, Nils' daughter, finds herself developing a connection with one of these aliens after inadvertently becoming the sole communication between humans and aliens."

This series is fucking great!! Admittedly, the monster/alien romance take more of a backseat to the larger plot, and mostly focuses on themes surrounding humanity, human rights, language, trauma, etc. Ellis does such a great job at writing characters that are just so... human, and deep. There is so much complexity and nuance that goes into this series, and just... it's so good! Definitely recommend if you're more into the super slow burns, alien romances, alien action movies like Michael Bay's Transformers series or Independence Day.

"The Courtship of Mr. Lyon" and "The Tiger's Bride" in The Bloody Chamber by Angela Carter | Gothic, feminist fiction, fairytale retelling, horror, anthology

"'The Courtship of Mr. Lyon' follows the romance between Beauty and Beast after Beauty's father takes one of the lion-faced Beast's white roses while taking shelter following a car accident; in 'The Tiger's Bride' a young woman is sent to live with a mysterious masked man after her father gambles her away in a game of cards."

Honestly this book, though a collection of short stories, is one of my all-time favorite books! Carter's writing style is so, so gorgeous and lyrical, and she provides such fantastic, dark, moody, gory, horrific feminist fairytales. Her story "The Bloody Chamber" is also worth checking out! Honestly, this whole book is great!

Beauty: A Retelling of Beauty and the Beast and Rose Daughter by Robin McKinley | Fantasy, romance, fairytale retelling

"Classic Beauty and the Beast retellings."

Despite both being BATB retellings by the same author, both are so, so good in their own ways! While Beauty is way more classic and straightforward in its retelling, the characters are so endearing, the fantasy world is enchanting, and the writing is so *chefs kiss*. Rose Daughter is much the same, only slightly more adult in its tone and writing style - and its ending!

The Shape of Water by Guillermo del Toro and Daniel Kraus | Romance, historical

"A mute janitor working in a high-security government facility falls in love with an amphibious creature."

Yeah, yeah, this is basically the novelized version of the movie lmao. I've not read the whole novel itself, but it's not half-bad!! It's decent enough - though I still feel like the movie to be better. Still worth checking out, I think!

Frankenstein's Monster by Susan Heyboer O'Keefe | Historical

"A sequel, of sorts, to Mary Shelley's classic novel. What becomes of Frankenstein's monster after Frankenstein dies? Where does he go, left to wander the earth?"

Not really a romance, per say, but there are SOME elements of romance! Mostly, this book follows Frankenstein's monster following the OG novel, who he all meets, and it is very much a character study on the monster! It's super fascinating, but its writing style is super similar to Mary Shelley's, so this very much reads like a classic novel. Honestly, I love how O'Keefe was able to mimic Shelley's style so well! But, again, romance is way more lowkey and this is more of a character study than anything else. Definitely reccomend if you loved the OG Shelley novel!

Beauty and the Beast by Megan Kearny | Webcomic, romance, fantasy, fairytale retelling

"A retelling of Beauty and the Beast."

Beautifully illustrated and wonderfully told, this comic is just SO GOOD!! It very much has the same vibes as Robin McKinley's novels, and is steeped in a cozy fantasy atmosphere! The characters are so loveable, the story intriguing, and just AAAUUGGGHHH SO GORGEOUS!!

Netvor: Beauty and the Beast by @rosesnwater | Fantasy, romance, fairytale retelling

"Aceline Capet swears to slay the monster Netvor that lurks in the forest surrounding her village - and ends up becoming entrenched in the world of magic and monsters and Fae."

LEGIT JUST UGH!!!!!!!! THIS NOVEL IS SO FUCKING GOOD!! Legit this is one of my all-time favorite reads from this year! If you love fantasy featuring actual, lore-accurate faeries and super intriguing slow burn romance with endearing characters, please please PLEASE check this out!!!!!!! I SWEAR YOU WONT BE DISSAPOINTED!! Definitely recommend if you love fantasy movies like Legend, Labyrinth, Thumbelina, Howl's Moving Castle, Disney's Beauty and the Beast, etc. or books like Naomi Novik's Uprooted, Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, Robin McKinley's work, etc.! It also currently being rewritten as a(n equally beautiful) webcomic that should definitely be checked out as well!

That Which We Call Beast by @raph-fangirl | Historical fiction, romance, fairytale retelling

"A young woman is seeking marriage, and comes into contact with a mysterious bachelor that hides himself from her behind a veil."

Basically if Jane Austen wrote Beauty and the Beast! Definitely a well-written slow burn! It's not completed yet, but with what's available to read it's legit so beautiful!! The prose is so well-crafted, and it legit feels as though I'm reading an Austen novel! Definitely recommend if you love films like the 2005 adaptation of Pride and Prejudice!

Then uhhhh not to toot my own horn but if you wanna read a Victorian Era Gothic romance-horror BATB retelling with a pathetic meow-meow of a monster I offer my story The Monster and the Butterfly- 🤲🥺

These are all the recs I have for now! Again, if there are any you'd like to add, whether they be published, a friend's online work, or your own work!! I hope these are helpful and satisfactory enough for ya!

Again, I love talking about monster romances, thank you so so much for this ask!!!! 🥺💛

#jojo rambles #jojo reads #monster romance #monster lover #monster romance books #monster boyfriend #monster x human #human x monster #book recs #book recommendations #bookblr

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hostess-of-horror · 7 months ago

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I'm having so many ideas and not enough energy to do or finish any of them AAAAAAAAAAAA-

Just so that I don't just wallow in my inability to get off my ass and do this shit, I'm going to type it all down!

1. The Haunted Mansion movie (done right!)

- This one is actually based on a slew of Discord convos between me and AJ (@sneklover). It was mostly just me ranting about how God awful Disney's live action remakes are getting and what I would've done if I were to make the iconic attraction a film or t.v. show.

- I have seen the original live action Haunted Mansion movie with Eddie Murphy but not the newest one, BUT MY POINT STILL STANDS! Both are literally the same thing where the story focuses more on the Foolish Mortals than the Happy Haunts and I do not like that.

- If I were to film a Haunted Mansion movie/show, I would make it an anthology horror movie. Think Tales From The Crypt or Creepshow but with Master Gracey telling the stories behind iconic characters such as the Hatbox Ghost, Constance Hatchaway, the two Dueling Ghosts in the ballroom, etc. At some point towards the end, Master Gracey would then tell his story, of how he inherited the mansion, was cursed as the Ghost Host by the mansion itself, and how he tried in vain to lift the curse.

- I remember telling my mom about my idea and, while she loved it, did say that Disney would not like it because they want to put out a more broad demographic. "They're not catering to us," she said (paraphrased). Which makes sense, I just jokingly mentioned to AJ how Disney wouldn't hire me for stuff like this lmao.

- My Haunted Mansion would be a love letter to the Gothic Horror genre and dark humor. An old Louisiana mansion that's haunted in more ways than one, its owner an unwilling slave on the brink of insanity, and all the tales of death kept within its walls. And these tales are nothing short of harrowing, as well as hilarious!

2. Vincent Price x Self-Insert Fanart

- I love this old man so fucking much I wanna kiss him I wanna dance with him I wanna cuddle with him I wanna slowly drive him into insanity so that I can see him smile lovingly at me I wanna be the harbinger of his downfall and his eternal bride aaaaaaaaaaaaaaa- 🖤🖤🖤😩🙌🥴🥴🥴

- So yeah, pretty much what it says on the tin. I was inspired by the very talented @theboarsbride for the idea and Corman's The Masque of the Red Death, starring the Handsome Devil of Horror himself Vincent Price, and wanted to make an AU.

- Masque AU where Francesca (the main character) does give in to the dark side, but of her own volition, transforming into the Red Death. The Red Death is both a Reaper and a Resurrection - a purveyor of plagues and a damsel turned demon. A Bride in Blood...

- It's basically a sort of rewrite of the original ending and now it's sorta... 🌶️spoicy🌶️ so, um.... yea. smexy monster lady x human stuffs.

- ANYWAYS...!

3. Walt Disney's The Great Mouse OC

- I've been wanting to do something with the GMD fandom for a long while now, and I think a hypothetical OC from an hypothetical sequel fanfic would be a good introduction!

- So, in a nutshell: She's a mad scientist spider who is the new secondary villain of said sequel. She has no name as of yet, but she is mute (either from an injury or is simply nonverbal), extremely passionate about her grotesque experiments, and very, very lonely. Unlike Ratigan, the Greatest Criminal Mind, she is more somewhat spontaneous, preferring the tasks of stitching her family together over anything tactic. In other words, she's the brawns while Ratigan is the brains (and brawns). Her goal in villainy is to build and destroy - to build her long lost family and to destroy all of micedom.

- While she is the one who caused the whole case, the main focus on the story is mainly the ✨tension✨ between Basil and Ratigan. In other words, opening up old wounds... by resurrecting the dead!

- Yup, Sherlock Holmes: Furry Edition is now becoming a Gothic horror story. Heavily inspired by Little Nightmares II, Jack the Ripper, and Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, the sequel is a tale of murder and madness, with a bloodcurdling case and a rivalry that won't stay dead.

- In this fanfic, I interpreted that Ratigan did die in GMD and so that he could be resurrected by my OC in the sequel! I also wanted to have Fidget resurrected but AJ doesn't like to think of her lil guy dead, so... Yeah, Ratigan is the Frankenstein's Monster and Phantom of the Opera of the plot. (POTO because I thought of the sequel's climax being set during an opera)

- Meanwhile, Basil and Dawson are having a Very Bad Time, with Basil constantly being haunted by the professor and Dawson mentally reliving his days at the regiment.

- Disney will never hire me.

#my bullshit #i just. hate being unable to DO #like just DO.#and I feel like the only thing that I can do is have lil animatics in my head and just talk about them #my mind is all over the place #the Haunted Mansion #Vincent Price #roger corman #the masque of the red death #the great mouse detective #basil x ratigan #GMD OC #oc concept

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burningexeter · 29 days ago

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Let's give this show more attention, shall we?

Here's a damn solid amount of all the different kinds of media that I like to think both can definitely fit well in and could legitimately share the same universe as what is in my opinion the best children's horror anthology series of all time and one of the best horror anthologies ever made in general, R.L. Stine's The Haunting Hour: The Series, which you can both read and see below for yourself right about here:

First off, here's what I mean by including the show, in my mind every episode of the entire series (at least most of them which we'll immediately get to) are all set in the same universe as each other since none of them over-step each other. However, not all of them will be for the fact that they don't fit and they suck hard in terms of quality and I've narrowed it down to five exceptions with the following reasons.....

- Red Eye, because it never lives up to its potential and has a cartoonishly written bad mother who never gets her comeuppance.

- The fucking cheese puff one, because the episode is all around trash and everyone hates this one even the creators/showrunners themselves.

- The G rated Critters rip-off, because like I said it's a shitty Critters rip-off and also has an abusive asshole father who never gets his comeuppance at all somehow.

- Mrs. Worthington, because even though it has a great performance from Margot Kidder, it never lives up to its great premise and again has an asshole mother who never gets her comeuppance.

- The leprechaun one, because it's just plain ass and AGAIN has an asshole adult (in this case, grandfather) that never gets his comeuppance.

Other than those shitty five, every. single. episode. are all set in the same universe. All of them are in the same twisted world — the Lilly D. trilogy, Scary Mary, Flight, Dreamcatcher, Creature Feature, Swarmin' Norman, the Pumpkinhead duology, Long Live Rock and Roll (AKA Doom Metal) and so on, so forth.

Also, I'm making a big deal out of the adult assholes that never get what's coming to them in a HORROR ANTHOLOGY SHOW is because in this universe we're talking about, everything is fair. Doesn't matter how old you are, your gender, your race, if you're a bad person than you end up getting what you deserve.

Second, now for the actual shared universe —

• Michael Dougherty's Trick r Treat & Krampus

• Mark Waters' The Spiderwick Chronicles (2008)

• Stephen Sommers' The Mummy (1999) & The Mummy Returns (2001)

• Steven Spielberg's Indiana Jones Series (1 - 4)

• Jeff Kline's Transformers Prime & Transformers Prime Beast Hunters: Predacons Rising

• Troy Wagner & Joseph DeLage's Marble Hornets

• Warner Bros.' Wizarding World Series (Harry Potter 1 - 8 & Fantastic Beasts and Where To Find Them)

• Julius Avery's Overlord (2018)

• Matt Reeves' Let Me In (2010)

• Leigh Whannell's The Invisible Man (2020)

• M.J. Bassett's Solomon Kane (2009)

• Tim Schafer's Brutal Legend

• Remedy Entertainment's Alan Wake & Control

• Andrew Stanton's John Carter (2012)

• Andrew Davis' Holes (2003)

• Gore Verbinski's Pirates Of The Caribbean Trilogy & Rango (2011)

• Jon Turteltaub's National Treasure Duology

• Joe Johnston's The Rocketeer

• John Carpenter's Big Trouble In Little China

• Brad Bird's The Incredibles

• Adam Andrewson's The Chronicles Of Narnia Duology

• David Lowery's Pete's Dragon (2016)

• Zack Snyder's Legend Of The Guardians: The Owls Of Ga'Hoole (2010)

• Travis Knight's Wildwood (2025)

• Jordan Peele's Get Out & Nope

#the haunting hour #rl stine #horror anthology #children's horror #nostalgia #october #fall #halloween

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doctorstrangereview · 2 months ago

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Strange Tales #148

Cover Date: September 1966 On-Sale Date: June 9, 1966

"The Origin of the Ancient One" is something a lot of readers were probably clamoring for (maybe.) The ancient sorcerer who has been a mainstay of series since its inception is a bigger mystery than the main character. We find that his history is intimately tied to our arc's villain, Kaluu. One would think that the origin of such an important character would include his name, but no. We will need to wait another 38 years to find that out in Epic Anthology #1. (Sneek Peek: It's Yao. Young Ancient One. Get it? Yeah, it fell flat for me, too.) The colorist was more progressive than usual for the time. The Ancient One, Kaluu and all the Kamar-Tajians have the same flesh tones as Doc. Maybe sickly yellow ink was in short supply that month.

Picking up from the end of last issue (but skipping over the mystery eyes that were peeping into the Sanctum) Doc and The Ancient One are staring at the empty lectern that held the Book of the Vishanti. Despite the fact that they are in Doc's Sanctum, the are surrounded by starts and planets. Ditko reserved the craziness for when characters travelled to different realities. Everett is just being weird.

Doc attempts to conjure an image of Kaluu. It doesn't work and Everett uses the opportunity to draw some more weirdness, this time very derivative of Ditko. Especially that snake jaw.

The Ancient One gets impatient. As I said last issue, he is out of character as written by Denny O'Neil. Ditko and Lee always wrote him as maintaining an aura of serenity and it's gone here. He keeps coming across as a jerk. He pretty much tells Doc that he's not being serious enough about the threat. This is actually unlike Doc who usually is careful take a measure of his foes before engaging them. This, combined with Everett's open and "billowy" style is a bit disconcerting. The Ancient One is like "Shut up, Doc! I guess I have to tell you how it all began as I appear to have kept my entire history secret from you even though you were my student for years and years and this is actually pretty important."

Picture it, Sicily, uh Kamar-Taj, 500 years ago from whatever year this is. Well, Marvel's history is still pretty new yet and they haven't instituted their sliding time line to keep Reed Richards and Ben Grimm from being centenarians. So this is probably contemporary with the year it was printed or close to it. Anyway, OAO (Old Ancient One, get it? Yeah, it sucks too, sorry.) tells of his people, a bunch of simpletons who were great artists and farmers. Ancient and Kaluu were different. They found a bunch of old scrolls and scream MAGIC! Ancient One is like "I'm gonna help our people so hard!" and Kaluu is like "I'm gonna conquer everything around me so hard!"

Kaluu then leaves so his farmers can train to be soldiers and be strong enough to ferry him around on a sedan chair. The Ancient One does nothing but hang around under the "keep your friends close and your enemies closer" doctrine he learned by peering into the future and watching The Godfather movies (except that last one where the biggest horror is Sophia Coppola's "acting".) The not-yet-Ancient One stands next to Kaluu and helps out his conquest.

"The people need a king," says Kaluu, "it should be you but it's gonna be me because I'm greedy and power hungry and stuff." It gives Everett the opportunity to draw some more weirdness and give the two sorcerers a giant classroom globe that, for some reason, shows the Americas even though we're in the far east.

An interlude brings us back to the present and Doc asks why Kaluu's magic is so much more powerful and the now-Ancient One says it's because Kaluu's been hanging out in the dimension of Raggador. This is a convenient excuse to switch to camera two and check out Raggador for ourselves. Present day Kaluu has exchanged the bare-chested barbarian-sorcerer look for a spiffy new outfit. He needs to impress that stolen Book of the Vishanti after all.

Back at base, the Ancient One, still sitting on his flying carpet above a magical jungle gym continues his tale.

The people of Kamar-Taj are puppets barreling through nearby villages like Sherman through Georgia. Kaluu looks in on a nearby unconquered village and thinks "I have a clever plan! If we steal all their food and crops my farmer-soldiers can spend all their time training to be nasty and evil! Oh boy, I am so smart!"

After they conquer the village, the not-yet-Ancient One finally decides to speak up. "We got enough now, man! Let it go!" Elsa gives good advice in this matter. Kaluu isn't satisfied and says he's gonna turn not-yet Ancient One into his personal slave, but instead freezes him like a statue. Kaluu gives his army spiffy new armor and goes on with conquering dragging his frozen buddy along in a cart. As the months (years?) go by, everyone else is doing the Kamar-Tajians work for them. Like those guys from Well-E, they turn into a bunch of cute, roly-poly lay abouts.

Apparently eating grapes right off the bunch is a universal sign of hedonism. While the not-yet Ancient One appears helpless, he has his own clever plan and has called down a spell/curse on Kaluu and his Kamar-Tajians. Things don't go quite as planned and suddenly a nearby serving girl is struck dead. This is soon followed by the complete collapse of Kaluu's empire in record time. Kaluu bolts, swearing vengeance, but is too polite to actually shake his fist. The not-yet Ancient one is freed from Kaluu's spell, which had the ironic effect of protecting him from his own curse.

While not explicitly stated, it appears that Kaluu is cut off from our dimension. Unfortunately, when Dormammu and Eternity blew themselves to bits, the barrier fell and badda bing, badda bang, Kaluu is here. Thus endeth the tale of the Ancient One. And endeth the tale this month. We will continue in the next installment. Lee/Ditko were much better at endings than O'Neil/Everett. The last panel is very anti-climactic.

I think this was a story many regular readers would have been interested in. When I discovered what was in this issue (published before I was even a twinkle in my daddy's eye) I sought it out and managed to snag a copy at a reasonable price. I was surprised that the serene, grand mage had such a violent past. Also, that his powers were very DIY "we found some old scrolls lying around, let's learn magic" instead of the more traditional sought out or stumbled onto a magician and become a disciple. Characterization for the regulars we have seen so far still seems off. Looking back, I think I like this less traditional origin for a beloved character and that his hands aren't as lily white as we previously suspected. Kaluu is still barely seen. He seems a one-note character so far. We'll see more next issue. When Kaluu returns in a couple of decades he is given some depth and is actually cool and somewhat likeable. Next issue awaits!

#doctor strange #doctor strange reviews #strange tales #stephen strange #ancient one #kaluu #kamar-taj

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adarkrainbow · 1 year ago

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I recently spoke of Pierre Dubois and evoked the confused and convoluted enigma that are his world-famous Encyclopedias - beautifully illustrated, a masterpiece of fae art, a Renaissance of the fair folk, a deep mine and fabulous treasure of folkloric, literary, mythological references... But also a very convoluted, invented, reinvented, unfaithful-yet-faithful work that freely uses the poetic license and the "storyteller license" to recreate a fairy world that sometimes has little to do with actual folkloric material. And that's because, as I said and as too many people seem to forget, Pierre Dubois is a storyteller and a writer before anything.

Today I want to briefly evoke his purely literary work, not his encyclopedias, or his books about ghosts or trolls, or his manual of elficology, or his anthologies of collected fairytales. His purely literary work - but still deeply inspired by folklore and fairytales. More precisely a short story collection of his called "Comptines assassines" (Murderous nursery rhymes):

This book is actually a sequel to a previous short story collection called "Contes de crime" (Crime fairytales ; a pun on "Grimm fairytales" because in French "Grimm" and "crime" sound similar). Both collections are based on the same key concept: take a fairytale, a nursery rhyme, a fairy-legend, and twist it into a dark short story - sometimes a crime, sometimes a horror novel, sometimes simply disturbing reality.

For example, in Comptines assassines, Dubois tackles twice the topic of "Let's follow the crimes and mad mind of a fairytale-inspired serial killer". Once in his "Puss in Boots" short story, where the titular cat becomes a fairytale-obsessed serial killer of the Interwar era deeply involved with the motif of the Great War mutilees ; and another in his "Bluebeard" short story, making the Bluebeard character a current day serial killer mixed with the Halewyn legend (and it is left unclear if he isn't the ACTUAL Halewyn) who picks of prostitutes and places them in the Bluebeard scenario pretending a "bizarre, excentric role-play game" when in fact he just wants them to end up like Bluebeard's victims... And there's also some really weird and bizarre stories, such as his "Croquemitaine" story (the French bogeyman), which is a Sherlock Holmes story about the titular detective ending up on the trace of a child-killer who somehow returned as a monstrous ghost thanks to a medium's ill-organized seance - and Arthur Conan Doyle actually meets Sherlock... Its typical Dubois bizarreness.

The reason I wanted to speak of this collection specifically is because, as a collection of short story, it truly allows to present the best and the worst of Dubois as an author, since some of his short stories are truly brilliant, and others sadly badly done. I say sadly because Dubois always has good and interesting ideas, and he always cleverly plays of tropes and motifs and archetypes... But the executon is very often lacking.

And this precise collection has two story that are perfect opposites. "The old woman who lived in a shoe" and "The Musicians of the town of Bremen".

"The old woman who lived in a shoe" is the longest short story of this collection, so long it is basically a novela. And the basic idea is very efficient: in an old-but-not-too-distant England, various people of the high society with apparently no relationship to each other are brutally murdered. Here's the twist however: they are murdered by nursery rhymes characters, or by "Alice in Wonderland" ones. And the police, soon driven mad by this insane investigation, ends up calling forth a "fairy detective" expert in supernatural cases (who was involved in a previous story in "Contes de crime"). This is a strong and solid basis, and it works for the most part. Take each of the murders - because the investigation is for a first part pushed on the background, onto quick recaps summaries and "what happened" aftermaths, the better to highlight the dead end and mad frustration of the investigators. The murders are all very interestingly set - each victim is fleshed out in one given scene, each one evokes various archetypes, stereotypes or just "types" of the English society and the English literature, and then the encounters with the nursery-folks are all set in a brilliantly disturbing "fantastique" way, always simple and short but very efficient. The whole thing is told with a distinct British humor, sometimes slight, sometimes very heavy, and Dubois shows here his immense love and great passion for everything British (he always keeps in his bibliographies a section for all the English books of literature or folklore he read).

But here's the problem: this thing is... too much. Too long, too flowery, too flowing, too extensive, too bloated. That's one of Dubois' main vices and one of his greatest writing flaws - he doesn't know when to stop. He writes too much, he extends everything, he describes all with so much detail. We can at least forgive him for the series of murders opening the novel because each one, with such an exorbitant and extensive style, manage to present us a full, lively, complex portrait of each character and scenes, that is always brilliantly cut short by the childishly simple and yet completely reality-breaking supernatural of the murders. We can forgive that - but when the "fairytale detective" gets on the case... By Jove it is all too much. If this had been a novel, I think it would have worked much better - there would have been time to breathe, space for the sentences to flow right, but here everything is so crammed it boils and erupts like a volcano. And while the conclusion is interesting in theory, I do think its handling was... between muddled and dubious. Not to give too much spoilers, but Dubois wanted clearly to mix together the motif of "The old woman in the shoe had many children - and these children were nursery rhymes folks" ; the idea of "The fairies are pissed off humanity are destroying their land and take revenge" ; and an exploration of Lewis Carroll's life and how his Alice work haunts England today. But the result is... let's say it is a difficult result and touchy subject, as Dubois tries to explain Carroll's obsession with little girls by the involvment of a fairy in his life, and the whole handling of this is... Well it needs some careful reading and contextual considerations, because I couldn't tell if Dubois was actually making a big blunder by handling badly the topic, or if he actually did something that could work in some very bizarre way. And I will not insist on how Dubois, in his famous habit of mixing everything, insisted on mixing together the Alice books and the nursery rhymes of England as a whole into one and same world, making it so that for someone who hasn't read Carroll they could believe you'd find in Alice books Mother Goose or Old King Cole...

So yes that's the bad - but what about the great? The great is "The musicians of the town of Bremen" and I am really sad this story wasn't translated in English for me to share with you (or maybe it was?). To give you the simple but brilliant effect of this story I will recap it, but to avoid spoilers if you want to read it I'll put it under a cut.

Contrary to what the title says, the story isn't a rewrite of "The musicians of Bremen" but actually a "mix fairytales together" tale, and Dubois shows here his immense love, passion and knowledge of fairytales in one clever and poetic story - in an effort that reminds me of his Elficology Manual.

Say hello to George Boutonnet, a 20th century man with a frankly... Not happy life. Despite being an adult with a job, he stll is under the control of his old and tyrannical mother who, for example, insists on him having regular dinners with her to which he should never be late and always bring the same food. His mother's bad influence had already started as a kid, when she forced him to listen entirely and repeatedly to "L'Enfant et les Sortilèges" (Ravel's The Child and the Spells) - which deeply traumatized him, especially the scene when the child is punished by living furniture and wild animals and can only scream "Mommy!". He spent a childhood stuck between doing all his homework correctly under the stern eye of his mother, and brief moments of carefully looking at her precous books of fairytales - but these fairytales did not allow him any escapism either, because it was the Gustave Doré's illustrations, that scared him (he preferred Félix Lorioux as a child), and all the stories of Perrault, Grimm, madame d'Aulnoy and the countess of Ségur left him even more depressed - while all those virtuous girls and brave boys and couragous knights defeated the ragons and won eternal love, he couldn't escape his harsh and stern life... And so he grew up to become a middle-class office worker, always careful, prudent and meek, tyrannized by his bosses and his mother, living alone without any romantic potential, and having an extremely strict and precise schedule where every daily activity is timed precisely.

Except one day, when his alarm clock doesn't work, he wakes up too late, and this results in him going into a frenzy panic as he tries to stich up his schedule - because today is the day he is supposed to arrive on time to eat with his mother, and bring her cake. In his chaos and panic, after finally getting the cake and crossing with his car the wood that separates his home from his mother's, he needs to stop in the forest to pee. And... this turns out to be a revelation for him, because all his life, he kept crossing in his car the wood without ever actually stepping his foot in it. His mother never took him to the woods, too "wild and dangerous" - she didn't even taught him how to recognize flower species. So when he finds himself there, surrounded by unknown flowers, bizarre insects, and all those forest scents he never felt before, he can't help it, he walks around, he explores, feeling like a kid again. And as he walks around he sees... Little Red Riding Hood. Or rather a girl dressed exactly like her. Amused, he has a talk with him where he reveals he knows everything about her - much to the girl's amazement, and when she asks him how he knows her identity, he claims to be a wizard, which the girl immediately believes. And when he keeps joking (because he believes it is all a joke) about the wolf - this time Little Red is confused as there's no wolves in this forest, and she flees the man thinking he is one of those bizarre and nasty adults that like to mess up with kids' head.

Boutonnet, confused, ends up walking down the path Little Red Riding Hood came from... And discovers a fairytale village. THE fairytale village - with castles and beautiful landscapes and cute little houses and superb towers... Boutonnet thinks it's some amusement park, some local fair - but when he meets Gepetto in his workshop who is sculpting what will become Pinocchio (in fact it is Boutonnet himself who suggests the name Pinocchio), he starts realizing... Maybe something else is up. He tries to evoke Pinocchio's future misfortunes and misadventures, but Gepetto wants to hear nothing of those weird stories - claiming Boutonnet is just like "all those other folks from behind the hill", always coming in whith disastrous warnings when the truth is, nothing bad ever happens here. What truly convinces Boutonnet's however is when Gepetto summons Puss in Boots, who promptly asks the man to become his master, and when the latter agrees the cat literaly changes by magic his 20th century clothes into a fairytale-prince outfit.

Thus convinced he is truly in the world of fairytales, Boutonnet becomes the subject of a tour with Puss in Boots as a guide, to find himself a wife among the numerous princesses, queens and fairies of the area - and he gets to enjoy a wonderful, colorful world of talking flowers and singing frogs directly out of Lorioux's drawings, seeing the Goat with her seven kids, and Polichinelle, and the baron of Münchhausen, and fairies, and Hans my Hedgehog, and Riquet with the Tuft, and the seven dwarfs, and Tom Thumb... This is where Dubois' narrative style works the best, as his over-flowering, extensive listing and complex scene descriptions fit perfectly this "wonderful panorama of fairytales" we are supposed to see - and it is an abundance of fairytales and nursery rhymes references, and tons of puns based on popular culture, and fascinating description of fairy castles, and an abundance of baked goods, candies and cakes that Boutonnet gets to stuff himself with... And Boutonnet is in Heaven because it is everything his life is not - magic everywhere, everybody looking at him with respect and kindness, as much sugary treats as he can eat, cool clothes. An especially important part is that his name (which can translate as "Small-Button" and was a source of mockery when he was a child) is here fully accepted as a typical fairytale name.

Boutonnet is also very impressed by the beauty of the fairytale princesses - notably, after one breathtaking sight of Cinderella, he gets to encounter Snow White herself, described in such passionate, positive, romantic terms you feel like you have the perfect fairytale and mythical princess in front of you. Snow White is indeed the "fiancee" Puss in Boots wants to have Boutonnet fall in love with - and it works as they go for a promenade into the fairy woods and the wonderful village, and Snow White's kindness and beauty and gentleness and purity touches Boutonnet right into his heart... Even better (or worse depending on how you see it) - Boutonnet realizes that this fairytale village is stuck into the perfect moment, into the apex of happiness. Snow-White doesn't know what Boutonnet is talking about when he talks of her wicked step-mother, Little Red Riding Hood is going into the woods with no idea of what a wood is, when Puss in Boots is asked about cemeteries he is horrified as nobody dies in this valley... He is happy at finding a world of ultimate happiness and perfection, but he is slightly worried about how things might unfold if the stories haven't truly happened yet...

Snow White invites Boutonnet to the village's grand feast at the castle - where music will be given by the titular Bremen musicians, and after this invitation (and before Puss in Boots prepares for him a new outfit), Boutonnet has a brief moment of lucidity in the euphoria. He realizes that it is all mad, that such a place cannot exist, that if he returns to the real-world his mother will be mad at him and he'll be taken for a crazy person - but this is also mixed with a deep sorrow within himself, as he is told nobody ages, nobody dies, everything is happy in the fairytale valley... The sorrow that, as it turns out there was a place where wishes came true and dream became reality, there was a wonderful place of chilhood love and eternal youth, but he got denied this place, people tricked him into believing it wasn't real and forced him into living a horrid life...

As dusk starts forming at the horizon, Boutonnet considers leaving the valley and returning to his car and fleeing the forest - but the forest now smells quite unpleasant, of damp humidity, and rotting wood, and all sort of other unpleasant smells of "reality", and he ultimately get smooth-talked again by Puss in Boots into joining the grand festivities of the night. And what grand festivities! A huge banquet with mouth-watering dishes one after another ; and a whole array of old, aristocratic dances for the ball ; and music, so much music ; and Boutonnet sits right next to Snow White and gets to enjoy a soft, discreet, blooming romance between the meal and the dances, surrounding by fantastical beauties and fabulous riches...

... But as the night advances, the guests starts looking a bit less happy, a bit more shameful, things get more quiet. Boutonnet looks around and upon seeing so much beauty can't help but ask: Where are the others? The villains, the wicked ones, with their iron teeth and blue beards and hooked noses and warts and crooked chins... He notices there is some horrible sounds seemingly coming from the palace's door - but Snow White pretends it is "Just the wind" as the Bremen musicians try to cover it up with their music... And yet it is not wind, Boutonnet hears it growing louder and louder. It is scratches, screeches, screams and howls, the sounds of beasts and madmen. Boutonnet asks for explanations, and Snow White ends up sadly telling him the truth (and Boutonnet for the first time feels her hands are as cold as snow):

Once upon a time, a long time ago, fairytales were as Boutonnet heard of them. Snow White feared that every item was poisoned, Little Red Riding Hood didn't care cross the woods because of the wolf, princesses and sheperdess kept being killed by dragons, while brave heroes a la Jack and the Little Tailor kept killing giants, trolls and other gargoyles - and overall it was a constant battle of mutilated limbs, beheaded corpses, spells thrown left and right and constant pyres to burn people. It became so bad that the two side, the heroes and the antagonists, the goods and the villains, gathered one day to sign a peace treaty because they were so exhausted of living a "life of fairytale"... And the pact was such: the good folks and the heroes could live in the valley by day peacefully, while the villains and monsters ruled over it by night. This is why today Hansel and Gretel can eat gingerbread houses without fear, and why the three little pigs build their home in whatever material they like, and why Little Red Riding Hood visits her grandma every day...

But outside? What Boutonnet is hearing at the door of the castle? Its the wild hunt of the villains: Snow White's wicked stepmother is there, and so is the Big Bad Wolf, and Baba Yaga, and the Bogeyman, and the Ogre and the Ogress, and Frau Trude, and all the others: the dragons, the witches, the wicked dwarves, the ghouls, the trolls, the cyclops, Père Fouettar and so many monsters...

Boutonnet, puzzled wonders: But... If they are all outside, unable to attack or touch the good folks and the heroes... How do they survive? What do they eat? What do they kill, harass, maim and scare? Do they turn onto each other?

And Snow-White, sorrowfully but still so charming and beautiful, confesses to him: Alas, my beloved... They feed of strangers.

And the fairytale "good folk", to preserve their peace, throw Boutonnet outside of the castle, into the claws of the monsters and witches and ogres, and he only has time to scream one thing - the same word the little child screamed in "The Child and the Spells" - Mommy!

#pierre dubois #comptines assassines #dark fairytales #fairytale horror #french media #nursery rhymes

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intertexts · 4 months ago

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HI ROS !!!!!! coming into ur inbox this lovely afternoon with a random question bc i like your taste in things. I need a new work podcast bc im caught up with most of my other ones. I've got TWO saved because of you so I thought I'd get ur opinion: which one first. hello from the hallowoods or skyjacks :] ik u like them both (and I DO plan to get thru them both eventually but I need 2 do them one at a time or else I'll explode)

OH GOD. INSANELY HARD QUESTION!!!!!!!! FUCKED UP!!!!!!! umm. ok. ok. they're both still currently ongoing, hfth has 160 episodes so far & skyjacks has something like 230. hfth has a sort of anthology structure with many different key characters and protagonists and plot threads that all get woven together through vignettes, skyjacks is just one overarching narrative. that's the quick comparison.

-hfth: good if ur still the kind of guy who gets really emotional over casual trans & queer rep in the year of our lord 2024 despite it being "everywhere now" and "not a big deal." (me LMAO) it's not like, a podcast About That, & it's kind of reductive to say that as the first thing about it, but like. it is deeply and fundamentally and lovingly a gaytrans show. it's horror, but like, the horror equivalent of spiced tea before bedtime, more strange and warped and delightful surrealism than much else. doesn't leave u with the Residue (neutral!!! feeling awful after u finish a horror thing is like frequently part of the appeal!!) that heavier horror does. anthology with overarching plot & it's really really fun to figure out the way all the pieces fit together. there are very endearing terrifying eldritch gods and gay sad little demons and ghost boys and older butches and sentient skulls inside a weird tank body. many very resonant themes and motifs. tons of really great character work, i can think of off the top of my head at least five or so characters u will love, very fun show. makes me miss living in the woods!!!!

skyjacks: okay man. you KNOW this is my favorite ttrpg show of all time. c'mon. okay. yeah despite the insane way pd has taken over my brain (& it is a REALLY good n fun show i think) & the way im constantly talking about friends at the table as a seminal actual play show that does some of The best writing in any of the space & is easily the Best, etc. skyjacks is so fucking good. james d'amato is an incredible gm, the sound design is really lovely, the worldbuilding is. my favorite. sometimes i just sit and kick my feet around giggling and smiling and thinking about spéir. its so fucking sick it feels like folklore and fairy tales and historical romances. there are huge birds u can fly on instead of horses. the sea is angry and has spit you out. the gods are dead and the stars have fallen out of the sky. pirate story, also, btw. u will fall in love with the uhuru. maybe partially why i haven't started riptide bc skyjacks is already The pirate campaign to me. i also already know Exactly which pc u will latch onto. honestly the pcs & their dynamics are also all really compelling, nobody at the table fucking misses.

anyway. TERRIBLE answer to this question ummm i would listen 2 the pilot of both of them n then choose! they're both two of my all time faves!!! enjoy!!! :3333

#augh. so excited regardless of which one u choose..... i think u will like them both....!!!!!!!!#im not caught up on EITHER of them also lmao. oops!!!#there are also reanimated corpses in both of them. so. shrug <3 #mac tag!

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rafaellaberso21 · 1 year ago

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Sweet Home series review: watch it or skip it?

The story is compelling enough to make you want to know how it ends. There are some attempts to develop the characters in order to explain their motivations.

Adapted from the same-named web-comic, Sweet Home is an action-packed struggle for survival as humanity approaches extinction. A group of eccentric apartment complex occupants are compelled to work together when people begin transforming into creatures outside. Naturally, cabin fever, anxiety, and paranoia consume our characters. This is exacerbated by the fact that a few individuals are falling prey to the infection they are attempting to eradicate.

When the creatures do make an appearance, Sweet Home delivers four consecutive episodes of frenetic action. We don't actually pause and learn more about the characters we've been following until the middle of the show. This is a metaphorical long inhalation preceding a climactic season finale that leaves the door wide open for a second season.

Several key characters are at the center of this conflict, along with a strange collection of supporting characters who are along for the chaotic, bloody journey. Reclusive and despondent The primary character is Hyun-Soo, but he is accompanied by the mysterious Sang-Wook, the musician Ji-Su, the firefighter Ji-Kyung, and the religious Korean language instructor Jae-Hun.

However, there are a great deal more characters here, and this large cast is one of the show's major flaws. Given the number of characters vying for screen time, Sweet Home has little time to distribute character development and growth evenly and must slow down in the middle to flesh out the characters further.

In a sense, this allows you to recover your breath after the relentless action, but it also feels like it should have occurred much earlier so that you could have understood who these characters are and what they're fighting for.

In fact, the show's slightly erratic pacing is one of my greatest complaints. Considering the limited number of characters to work with, Something Kingdom and Love Alarm can get away with short running periods. However, the cast here is nearly as large as one of the larger Korean drama productions, and given that those are typically 75 minutes each, the shortened running time is certainly noticeable.

Sweet Home makes up for its lack of complex characters with graphic violence and gore. This is not a display for the faint of heart, as blood literally spurts from orifices and covers features and walls. Additionally, some of these moments feature extremely close-up shots. If you are prepared for some extremely brutal violence, you should have no problems with this one.

Sweet Home may not be the next big thing like Kingdom, but it is a perfectly original slice of monster horror. If you're prepared for a dramatic finale, Sweet Home is a promising and gratifying horror anthology if you watch all ten episodes. It's not without its flaws, but this is another excellent horror that hopefully will produce bloody tendrils and be renewed for a second season!

#sweethome #kdramalovers #watchitorskipit

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roboraindrop · 1 year ago

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What? Rain writing for the first time in over a year??

Here's the first part of my fix-it fic for Virgil! I have more planned, but right now this felt like a good place to end. So, here's me getting too emotional over an obscure horror anthology character :'D

"Frank and Jesse James never planned an ice cream warehouse robbery…" Virgil muttered to himself as he waited outside for the next truck to load. He always hated waiting, especially when he knew he had something important to do that day. His brother Billy had plotted his revenge against the man who had reported him for robbery and sent him to prison two years ago, but Virgil just wasn't sure why he had to be a part of it… At least until he'd messed up a part of the plan in his recount the day before.

"We're brothers," Billy had been so quick to remind him after a swift, sharp smack to the face, "You and me are all each other got! Forget about your damn Jesse James comics, forget about the nothin' runnin' through your head all day, and think about me. Who's always lookin' out for you?"

"You are, Billy." Virgil had responded, looking down at his hands, "You're the best."

He always caved when Billy brought up their bond. Ever since they were kids, it had been the two of them. Billy was the one who got him his job at the warehouse, Billy was the one who went to jail trying to steal for the two of them to have a better life. His whole life was thanks to Billy. If his brother wanted him to do something, who was he to argue? If he got smacked around a little, called an ableist slur or two, that was just what he deserved for not being able to contribute like his brother could.

"Let's go over the plan one more time."

They had recounted again and again, and as Virgil stood outside, he mouthed his plan silently. First, he would tell Tom to go pick up a delivery from the distric supervisor. After he left he woudl wait for Cooter to take his break, then… Then…

"Excuse me…?"

Virgil looked up quickly at the sudden voice, his bright blue eyes meeting briefly with another pair. He hadn't been expecting anybody- Well, that wasn't true. He was expecting the next truck, but he had been so long in his own thoughts of the robbery that he had entirely forgotten that fact. The eye contact didn't last long as both he and the other party looked away swiftly. "U-um, hi. Can I help you?"

The person before him wore a bright yellow dress, something that greatly contrasted the overcast day. It was almost too bright to look at, like they were the sun. When they spoke, it was with a woman's voice, but the facial hair they sported was saying otherwise.

"Actually I uh, have an order. I'm here to pick up for Rain Badd."

"Oh! Oh, yeah, Miss Badd! Or u-uh… Mister…. Um…"

"Mx, actually. I use they/them pronouns."

"R-right! Mx. Badd. We've got your order, just go ahead and sign-" As Virgil pulled out the clipboard, he couldn't help but notice the comic book that Rain carried under their arm. "Ain't that a Jesse James comic?"

"Hm? Oh! Yeah. I actually just picked it up, I'm a collector! Kinda silly, someone my age reading comics, but…"

"I don't think that's silly at all, Mx. I'm a big Jesse James comics fan!" The smile Virgil felt on his face was the first genuine one he'd had in what felt like ages, and he didn't even realize it. "Would you mind if I looked at it?"

"Not at all, go ahead!" They untucked it from its safety and handed it over. Still brand-new in a sleeve to keep the dust off was a copy of Jesse James Great Train Robbery. "This is the last comic I needed to complete my collection! I mean, of Jesse James at least. I'm still starting out, but someday I'd love to have a full collection of all my favorites."

"That's incredible!" Virgil handled the comic with care as he turned it over in his hands, then looked up with wide eyes. "I guess if you collect 'em they just sorta sit there, huh? You don't read 'em or nothin'?"

"Y'know, you'd think so, wouldn't you? See, I've got this thing… I just can't keep things up! I love to read and reread them. That's what they were made for, after all."

"Wow," He breathed as he handed the comic back, "I never knew you could collect stuff and still use it! I wish I could read all the Jesse James comics- He's my hero!"

Before he had the chance to apologize fully, the heavy footsteps of Ms. Grafungar, his boss, approached. "Virgil!" She screeched, "You quit talkin' that lady's ear off and you get her truck loaded right now, or there'll be big trouble!" She hesitated just a moment, "And wipe that stupid smile off your face, this ain't a damn funfair."

"Your hero robs trains," Rain teased lightly, but smiled so genuinely at him that it was contagious, and he couldn't keep the smile off his face as well. "You mind if I go ahead and sign the slip now?"

"O-oh, yeah, right! Here you go." Virgil scratched the back of his head nervously, "I'm real sorry about that, I just get carried away--"

The smile disappeared right quick off of Virgil's face, and he nodded quickly. "Yes ma'am, but uh, Mx. Badd ain't no lady, Ms. Grafungar."

"You keep that smart shit to yourself, dammit! That's a woman if I ever saw one! Tryin' to tell me that's a man…"

Virgil frowned, his brow furrowing. He didn't understand her reaction. "I didn't say that…"

"You gonna stand there like a brainless idiot or are you gonna load the truck?" She snapped, but when she turned back to Rain, her tone was as polite as ever. "I'm sorry ma'am. He's a little slow- He's usually workin' in the back freezer and not allowed to talk to the customers." At this, Virgil shrunk in posture and shuffled his feet. It seemed as if this were a common occurance by the way he took it in stride, quickly getting to work loading the truck to avoid getting reprimanded futher.

Rain looked up to the manager and tilted their head with eyes narrow. They didn't even bother to correct her on their title; They had something more worrying on their mind. "Why not? There's nothing wrong with him- He's been a delight to talk to!"

"What- Did he talk your ear off about those damn comic books?" She spotted the one in Rain's hand and quickly crossed the gap between them, snatching it in one swift motion. Rain, taken by surprise at the audacity of the woman, allowed it to happen… For the time being. It wasn't until Ms. Grafungar stomper her way over to Virgil with it and raised it as if to strike him that they snapped out of their shocked state.

"Now what the hell did I tell you about bringing these goddamn picture books to work with you?"

The cornered stock boy flinched at the raised hand, and it was obvious to any bystander that this wasn't the first time he'd been threatened with violence- And even worse, it wasn't an empty threat.

"Now you wait one minute!" Rain hurried over, placing themself between the two. If there was going to be an impact, they were dead set that it would fall on them and not the innocent Virgil. "For starters, that comic book belongs to me, thank you very much!" They plucked the book from the raised hand of the woman, "Second, who do you think you are, talking to him like that? Don't you realize you're talking to a human being?"

"We're the only vendor in town- You'll need to drive three towns over before you find another ice cream vendor of our size! You're just starting out in this business, you need us!"

The fire in the gaze of the supervisor wet out as quickly as it was lit, and Rain's chest ached to think of the hell her employees must go through on a day-to-day basis. "Oh my, I'm so sorry! I didn't realize that literature was yours!" She quickly straightened herself up, ignoring the comment about her cruelty to her employee. "I didn't damage anything, I hope. To make up for it, how about I add an extra box of ice cream for your truck? No charge!"

Rain shook their head, "That won't be necessary, thank you. After witnessing how you treat your own employess just because they're a little different from you, I won't be placing an order with you again."

"At the prices you're offering, I think you need my business more than I need you. What I do need, ma'am, is for you to take a good, hard look at how you treat your employees. You turn it around and maybe I'll reconsider."

Fuming, Ms. Grafungar turned on her heel. "Have a good day, Miss Badd."

Virgil nodded, but still had that kicked puppy look in his eyes. "I hate her. She's always mean to me, and insultin' me and my brother…" He remembered his brother, and their plan. He started going over it once again, but another thought crossed his mind, as if he had just put it together. "You stood up for me… Nobody ever did that before…"

As soon as she turned her back, Virgil made a face at her, and Rain raised their middle finger in what was an accurate description of just where she could put her bad attitude and shitty business practices. After a moment, Rain approached Virgil.

"Are you okay?"

"Of course I did! You don't deserve to be talked to like that. You especially don't deserve to be hit." They knew it was stepping over some boundaries, but they felt a strange desire to protect Virgil, and they leaned in slightly, placing a hand on his arm, "She's done it before, hasn't she?"

Starting to get nervous, Virgil shook his head.

"N-No, she hasn't…."

"…But someone else has." Rain finished for him, and he looked at the ground.

"Just my brother Billy, but he don't mean nothin' by it. He just gets angry sometimes, that's all. See, its true, like what Ms. Grafungar said. I'm a little slow. Sometimes I deserve it. "

Rain's heart nearly shattered on the spot at this, and they frowned deeply. "I don't know you, Virgil, but I know that you don't deserve that. Nobody deserves that. I'm sorry that you've had to live with that."

"You don't gotta be sorry or nothin'," Virgil said softly, the kindness in Rain's eyes making his stomach feel all fluttery. Nobody had ever looked at him like that before. He was experiencing a lot of firsts today! "I'm used to it. Besides, it don't do no good to stand up to Billy like you did Ms. Grafunger. She backs down, but Billy don't. It'd be big trouble if you ever talked to Billy like that."

"Big trouble, huh? For me, or for you?" When his expression fell and he began to shrink into himself again, Rain spoke softly. "Hey, I know that I don't live your life, and I'm just some stranger you met at work, but… I want you to know that there is more out there for you. You don't have to take the abuse. You're worth more. Don't forget it, okay?"

Falling silent, Virgil felt a few tears prick at his eyes, which he didn't dare let fall. Billy said tears were for wussies, and the DeLuca brothers weren't wussies. "… You're really nice, Rain. You said things to me that nobody else ever has… I sure won't forget you, or what you said."

"Good." They smiled, and the warmth that spread through the quiet stockboy was more than he ever imagined from something as simple as a grin. He was so distracted by this warmth that he harly even noticed Rain taking out a small notepad and scribbling something down. "If you ever need anything, and I mean anything…" They tore out and handed him the page, their phone number scrawled across it, "Give me a call. I may not be able to do much, but, well… Everyone needs a friend now and then. Maybe we can read comics together sometime."

"I'd like that…" Virgil smiled again, feeling the paper crinkle under his clumsy fingers. "I'll give you a call, promise, I will!"

With that, the vision of the sun climbed into their ice cream truck and drove off. Now, Virgil could focus on what he was supposed to- His brother's plan.

#Rain writes things #Virgil #Selfship #I don't expect anyone to read this ksjdfnks I just wanted to separate it before it got too too long #Not that this isn't already long ksdjfnsdk #self shipping

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