#like it's super scary & has a good Spiral narrative but also

[spacemancharisma]

"every time we started to cut into her, she stopped us... what is it she doesn't want us to find?"

SHE WANTED YOU TO STOP HURTING HER. SHE WANTED YOU TO LISTEN. SHE JUST DIDNT WANT TO BE HURT ANYMORE.

[queendumpling]

a list of horror media that i've consumed over the past few months with a bit of my thoughts on them, in no particular order under the cut.

but my tldr recs, even if horror is not your thing: the haunting of hill house, nbc hannibal, my house walkthrough, crimson peak

the conjuring (movie):

it was fine. my first movie that centers around an exorcism but ultimately wasn't super compelling of a watch for me. there's a really funny scene where there's a floating gun that ends up shooting at people and it was so absurd that me and my friends all ended up bursting out laughing

the grudge (original jp ver. movie):

genuinely very spooky. had some trouble sleeping at night and taking showers for awhile (if you know, you know). but when I finished watching it I was just really sad by the end because of the bleak note it ends on and the nature of the cycle of revenge as something all consuming and destructive, sparing no one. pretty straightforward and easy to follow, especially compared to the next one -

kairo (or pulse, original jp ver. movie):

also genuinely very spooky. had trouble sleeping at night for a bit because there are some incredibly eerie and unnerving scenes that give me chills just thinking about them. but was also pretty sad by the end of it because of the bleak note it ends on and the inherent loneliness of people/impossibility of human connection. so it was in a very similar vein of flavor as the grudge, but tbh kairo is probably the movie that has stuck with me more because I have ruminated over it so many times. it's a very weird movie in the sense that a lot of the things that happen don't actually make a lot of sense, even within the irrational nature of horror. but its tone and theme comes across very strongly regardless.

her body and other stories (short story collection):

the thing about this short story collection was that I wanted to like it so badly, but in the end a lot of the stories were very much either hits or misses. it's an interesting collection that's centered around the horror of femininity and the female experience and bodies. the husband stitch is the first story and is still probably my favorite, followed by real women have bodies. especially heinous also stands out to me (imagine an AU of law and order SVU that takes all the episode titles and uses them to construct a very weird narrative with ghosts and doppelgangers)

talk to me (movie)

a really neat concept (teenagers in possession of a plaster hand that you can use to allow a ghost to inhabit your body, briefly, and used as a party game, which quickly goes wrong) that serves as an exploration into grief and how it spirals so out of control in the search of connection, finding stability and sensibility even when your world is falling apart so quickly, all because your bad decisions have snowballed so out of control. more gorey and gruesome than I expected but honestly a really good film, even if it also does end on a really depressing note

crimson peak (movie)

as weird as it may sound, I think this might be a new comfort movie to me? gothic horror romance movie where the setting is immaculate. story might be predictable but it executes it well. it's not terribly scary, imo (a jump scare or two, yes there are ghosts) but the characters, the overall mood, how you can see the way love persists and can protect and also twist. it's *chef's kiss*. also I did not notice the R rating on the movie so got really surprised at the sex scene, lol. tom hiddleston is also in this movie but I only know him for his MCU stuff, so it was pretty interesting to see him as the male lead in this movie (but he did great!)

my house walkthrough (jp short film, available on youtube)

PEAK HORROR, highly recommend. no jumpscares but is a phenomenal piece of work that is everything that I want in horror that creates an unsettling atmosphere focused around a particular setting and the sentiments left behind there. it was also made by like 1 guy and there's a great behind the scenes/making of video that is SO cool to see just how it got made. it's scary and I was definitely so tense and scared while I watched it but it was genuinely so perfect

gretel and hansel (movie)

less perfect movie. confusing in terms of what the actual point of it was supposed to be (I get that they're attempting some kind of "feminist" re-telling of the hansel and gretel fairy tale, but it's executed very poorly. can you tell that it's 'feminist' because gretel's name is first!!!!???!?) and not particularly scary either. there is a hot goth witch though and another very cool witch design that I liked!!

saw (movie):

tbh? a good movie. wouldn't really call it horror as it's more of a thriller imo, but it has such an interesting mystery and is tinged with an escape room plot that made it really fun to watch. idk how the other movies are, but I like the contained story in this movie and the twists in it

american horror story, delicate (tv series)

I'm actually 1 episode away from catching up with part 1, but so far it's been okay. like I enjoy the show enough to keep watching, but it's not exactly the most compelling thing I've watched this fall either. but fun bonus is that kim k is actually very good in her role! the opening sequence has some very cool stylistic visuals

nbc hannibal (tv series)

still have to finish s3, just wanted to take a break because I breezed through s1 and s2 in like.. less than a week I feel. also oddly another one of those comfort media kind of shows. like I felt insane watching it but it's also so compelling and emotional. so so SO good, happy to say that it holds up even after all these years

the haunting of hill house (tv series)

I just watched it in like 2 days and it's gotta be one of the best things I've seen and does absolutely everything right (except maybe landing the last 2 episodes but the gripes are minor). like ok probably obvious by now that I love a horror that revolves around a particular setting and the sentiments surrounding that. but this show is like the perfect haunted house story in which the house is not haunted by a monster per se, but the horror and the haunt is the house itself. the house itself is the monster that is hungry and needs to be fed and the way it feeds on the family is exactly what I wanted to see. the cinematography is amazing and the storytelling is masterful and the way the series eventually becomes less like horror and more like a family drama with horror elements where the story all builds towards understanding the events surrounding one very tragic and traumatizing night. the buildup, the aftermath, the resolution. the way it's about love and family and trauma and recovery. it's absolutely beautiful and honestly recommend it even if horror is not your thing :')

[gerrydelano]

i’m SO glad this is being talked about, actually!

the distortion is terrifying and has done so much damage and that needs to be accepted/portrayed honestly just as much as the humour and the uncomfortable monster tenderness (which may be potentially genuine, which makes it even scarier.) the sheer number of different facets to this Being are precisely what make it so scary! there are Multiple Angles to approach the distortion with, just like ordinary people. which is the point of the podcast.

TW: abuse, gaslighting (please don’t jump the gun, it’s the spiral.)

yeah it’s gonna sound “too much” to make this allegory/statement but at this point i don’t care, i post for privileged readers™ who know what i’m talking about.

the spiral IS associated with gaslighting for a reason. and a lot of what makes abuse so scary and confusing in real life IS the presence of occasional (or even frequent) expressions of love, tenderness, care, concern, and laughter. actual abusers aren’t just full-time supervillains 24/7 like... they will eat dinner with you and ask about your day and take you somewhere nice and you will have genuine fun with them, you will be thankful for things they do and enjoy their company and want their approval and want to spend time with them.

and that is the stuff that makes YOU wonder if the bad things they’ve done to you matter. if they’re even real at all because you have those good associations and memories, so clearly, oh, no. it couldn’t be this other way. could it?

i know that it must be Super weird and jarring for me to just throw out something to the effect of like comparing michael dis door shun to Abusers™ but ... the spiral as a whole does play off of those things (narratively speaking to highlight the actual terror in gaslighting and manipulation like it’s to SAY “hey this is HORRIFIC!” because it IS! gestures LOUDLY to MAG 177!) 

and what the FUCK do you think its decades long campaigns of stalking/hunting/torturing people is? it’s not fun and games it’s the actual brutal pursuit of someone’s mental breaking point and that is one of the cruelest things that can be done to a person! it makes you unsafe in the ONE place that you should be safest: your own fucking mind.

even helen — also part of the distortion — doesn’t do that! actively expresses distaste for the tactic. it’s a fucked up extra mile!

and NO before ANYONE says it, this is not me popping out of nowhere to say ooh waaaah michael is problematic and if you like him you’re a bad person aaargrgrgrh roaaar.

SOMEONE should point out the Actual Canon Deeds done by this character and the Purposeful Themes woven into the Fear Entity that it serves as an agent of (Which All Represent Real World Topical Issues). this is a show where if you have a favourite character, 9 times out of 10 they’ve pulled some SHIT, just because that’s the kind of show it is. 

but you have to at least Acknowledge the shit that whatever character you like has done, when the lowest anyone can be on the morality scale is like a 5. it’s not that you can only like characters who are “morally pure,” you just have to acknowledge All of them.

TMA isn’t just a fun little escapism fantasyland podcast and never has been. it’s LOADED with and founded on deliberate commentary and Directly pointing out that some things that people do to each other are outrageously cruel. this is one of those things and it SHOULD NOT be completely defanged.

or made sexy. but that’s none of My business. i think plenty of people have talked about fanon michael’s blond twink disorder so i don’t have to do that here. it just bothers me that so many people took a seriously good, rich, complex character and blunted him This Badly almost purely because he’s canonly blond. like. really? really. 

long story short i’m a Canon Michael Truther as in fanon michael get OUT of my HOUSE. 

and on a personal note, no one’s ready for what i’m about to do with him in the next chapter of PBR alone, like. what ren said in their response is very relevant and there’s going to be a lot more going on here than just oh ha ha he’s like a bratty housecat that knocks things off the table but we love him anyway<3 like no, Literally No.

i wrote the very end of TSP featuring an attempted act of genuine tenderness from michael and gerry talking about the blurred line between the Horror of the entities and the small little things you have to scrounge to find beauty and joy in when you look at the world knowing it’s burning. you have to try to do that, yes, and they DO exist, but no, they do NOT diminish the abject horror that is still going on in the background. you have to focus on the good things to survive that, sometimes.

for example, he agrees that the fact that he can find genuine beauty in the vast is exactly what makes it so terrifying. there’s a similar vibe going on for the spiral! and ANY of them, really. being able to sink into it and accept it IS the horror. being able to let yourself become amenable to the things these forces are capable of and privy towards IS the horror.

michael shelley might’ve been a fantastic dude and some of that ABSOLUTELY shines through in some of michael distortion’s gestures and inclinations, and nowhere in what i said above is there a statement that THAT GUY was An Abuser, Rarrrrgh! i’m not insulting your fave, or insulting you.

that’s not what this says when i bring up the fact that the Creature that he became when his OWN HISTORY WITH BEING GASLIT TO HELL AND BACK, FOR YEARS UPON YEARS, and his presumed betrayal and anger about having to live with that, was mixed in with a Being that FEEDS ON that Exact form of suffering, created a unique sort of monster.

(and no this does not equate to me saying “abuse victims become abusers” do NOT try that with me. i am a survivor of more than i need to share here to justify this conversation, and i’m the first person to dispute that shitty stereotype.)

the distortion before michael shelley was poured into it had to have represented these things already. his history and his pain and his trauma just gave it some fresh ideas.

michael is different from AVATARS who made CHOICES because michael shelley was forced into this and twisted by it and by the people who DID ALL OF THESE THINGS TO HIM.

but just because michael shelley was fused with it and we feel for HIM, doesn’t mean that the damage caused by the distortion is somehow softened or acceptable or anything less than just as fucking nauseating as what was done to him by ordinary people.

he was MADE into this. and now he’s inseparable from it, and THAT is tragic.

and it’s a little bit like system responsibility. if one alter in a system does something bad, you can’t just say “oh my alter did it, it wasn’t me so it’s fine” because it’s STILL a part of the Whole. at the end of the day, the whole is accountable for what its pieces do. the same goes for just being a dick because of your trauma/mental illness in general! you cannot just blame those things and shirk the responsibility, you still have to work to be better and people are STILL allowed to form their own feelings based on your actions.

you’re allowed to feel for him, and you should! you should also feel for everyone that has been hurt through what he became a part of, and Does have a hand in, regardless of whether he would have done any of it before he became. he’s still a huge influence on the tactics that get used when it hunts.

the entire nature of the distortion IS conflicting coexistence! that’s the whole point of it and exactly why one of its trademarks is endlessness. you can never stop walking, you can never reach the end of the hall, you will never be able to sleep again, you will never stop hearing that sound.

TL;DR - don’t declaw the distortion or the spiral as a whole just because you feel bad for michael shelley.

[mooglesorts]

man. it's weird, because there's a lot of things about me that are Very Badger Primary, to the point where i would probably pick it with a strong bird model over anything else at this point... except that i hate dehumanization. i saw primaries described recently as 'things you wouldn't be you anymore if you went against,' and more than just about anything else that's it. even when i think people are monsters, i can't see them as not human; i'd be hard put to define exactly what i consider a 'monster,' but it's more about like. good faith than personhood, i suppose?

it's not necessarily a permanent status to be one--people can change--but my deeply held instinct is that once you have done something monstrous you will always be a person who has been a monster by your own choices, and that it's your duty to learn how to accept that while still living your life, and act accordingly from thereon out. you have to reconcile that you are a person with the fact that some doors are closed to you now, and it's up to you to decide what you do from there.

just. like. even when i hate someone and as far as i'm concerned they can go fuck themself, even in the multiple Heavily Badger social environments i've been in over the course of my life--church, progressive circles, the way the structure of the internet kind of just affects you in general--even on occasions where i've gotten swept away and given in to the pressure to dehumanize (or perform it) for a minute, there's always, always been a voice in the back of my head saying this is a person. this is a person. this is a person. this isn't right.

unintentional dehumanization sets off my '...should we really be doing this? we are getting into not good territory here, it's time to pull up and start questioning' alarms. explicit, intentional, purposeful dehumanization sets off the whole ass tornado sirens. if people on my side are doing it it's enough to throw me into a system-destabilizing crisis, because NO NO NO I WANT TO GET OFF THIS RIDE, I WANT NO PART OF THESE PEOPLE'S MORAL SYSTEM, I FEEL UNCLEAN. it's a good way to make sure i will never, ever, ever trust someone again.

things that are Really Really Badger, off the top of my head (after the cut because Long and trauma talk):

[[MORE]]

---

-i've always loved playing adoptable games, pet simulators, etc? any game with randomly generated characters that are Yours Now and a Community, in a deeply badgery way. including games where they can die (the satisfying part is making sure they don't). except that, no matter how much fun the gameplay is, if it gets to the point where they start feeling disposable, and the only way to really keep playing is to stop humanizing them, i lose interest. it's super fucking depressing. it feels like part of me dying inside a little. i don't like it at all.

-i've always been drawn to fandoms and roleplaying communities. i was fiercely loyal to, and proud of, my first rp community on dragoncave as a 13-year-old. when my abusive mom found out about it and completely isolated me for half a year, the promise of being able to make it back to them--just sneakier this time--kept me going; when i finally got back and the group had drifted apart in my absence, it.... was absolutely devastating. i never really recovered from it. even then, i spent years trying to get the group back together every now and then, until i finally gave up.

-i am always keenly, painfully aware of the life cycle of a community. every time i hear the sentiment 'you guys are all great and i love this group' my stomach drops, because i know it's only a matter of time before things go sour or the group dissolves. rp groups, skype chats/discord servers, fandoms, you name it, i am always bracing myself or staying away entirely to avoid the inevitable and it hurts. and it hurts to see people taking part in a community i don't dare be part of, which makes lurking in fandoms... really rough. frankly, it takes me a lot of courage every time i express my appreciation for the shc community because i've been burned so many times.

-on that note: i went through some really traumatic stuff at the end of 2020 that completely turned my life upside down, and i was doing bad until i stumbled across the shc community. the moment i started engaging, it was a huge boost to my mental health, and my ability to cope with circumstances under which i was about to break down spectacularly. and it has been ever since! contributing to The Group Project and seeing other folks being friendly with each other gives me the happy feelings.

-i used to go out of my way to build and run spaces, mainly fandom and rp spaces, and took a lot of pride in engineering them so that they Functioned Well. unfortunately it wore me the hell down over the years for Burnt Badger Reasons, and now i'm too jaded, bitter, and exhausted to give a shit about being a mod/community leader anymore because of it lmao

-among those burnt badger things i relate HARD to the Red Ledger narrative. hoo boy.

-i wish i could find it again, but there was an mlp comic i saw once which went into luna's observations of what each element of harmony Means. with the element of friendship, she says that twilight has a massive amount of love to give; right now it's all focused on celestia, but when she learns to expand it outward she'll have grown into her full potential as a person, and she'll change the world. that struck a chord with how i used to feel, hard, and it's really stuck with me ever since. (hello, unhealthy snake model)

-emphasis on 'used to feel,' lmao

-got super invested in a really toxic '''mental health''' community at a low point in my life; exploded HARD trying to help everyone i could; got into vicious, protracted fights with the shitty mods for years about the harmful way they ran their community until i finally managed to go 'fuck this it's not getting better' and leave.

-had to numb myself emotionally to the people around me for a long time once i really started learning about mental health and trauma stuff, because now i was seeing signs of their pain and baggage everywhere i looked, and i couldn't handle not being able to help.

-the imagery with which i think about my bird primary is overwhelmingly negative. whether it's my actual primary or a model, i uh. i feel like a healthy relationship to one's primary doesn't involve associating it with gore.

-i saw a conversation recently about how birds think of morality in terms of 'if you can, you should,' and how that's scary for badgers because their definition of 'can' involves destroying yourself for the sake of that 'should,' and... yeah, that's a mood. that's a BIG mood. thinking about bird primary stuff is hard--and i had to pick up my lion model to deal with it--because it's so easy for me to spiral into a self-shredding spiral of other people are counting on you to do the right thing, how dare you pull back for your own health and sanity. how dare you turn your back for even a minute. how dare you rest. the work is never done.

which is... a very exploded badger approach to exploded bird morality. whoops.

-fix-it and time travel fiction in which Everything Went Right This Time and It's Going to Be Okay are one of my very favorite self-indulgent fantasies. i will enjoy putting characters through the wringer in all kinds of creatively horrific ways which may or may not end on a downer note, certainly, i love that shit, but i will also 90% of the time have a backup version of the arc or dynamic that's softer and lighter and Actually Healthy This Time. it's the dichotomy there that really gets me tbh, a story where Everything Ends Happily by default will mmmaybe pull me in? but stories where there's the constant shadow of this could end horribly, it's supposed to end horribly, and we got a happy fucking ending anyway are just... that shit will make me cry, man.

it's also why i kind of really hate stable time loop stories where it initially looks like this is going to be The Good Timeline this time around, but OOPSIE everything went to shit anyway! we're right back where we started, just like it was meant to be all along! it's a tired cliche by this point and an unsatisfying one for me, and it makes me roll my eyes every time.

-this is relevant to the bird vs. badger because like... my gut instinct is to prioritize people over systems. when shit hits the fan, when someone's fallen into the machinery and is about to get hurt, i don't feel right about it if i just let it happen. i'll break the machinery if i have to to keep it away from them; i won't feel great about that, and it might cause problems, but fuck it, we'll figure it out later. throwing people into the gears of a system when i'm convinced it's the only option makes me feel Awful.

-related to the above, another trope that really speaks to me in fiction is when a character defies the rules of reality through sheer force of will. no, this is not happening, i don't give a shit what the limits are supposed to be. i refuse to let this be the way things are. (there's that lion model.)

-i've just kind of... always wanted to be an Everyone Badger. it makes me sad how much of that i've lost over the years as i've gotten more cynical, but it's what i wish i could be.

---

doubtless i'll think of more the moment i hit send, and there are just as many things about me that are Super Bird Primary, but like... mamma mia that's some spicy badger. the main thing stopping me is the Can't and Refuse to Dehumanize bit. i also... hm. i think i can function okay without a community? they just help a lot, and it sucks when i'm confronted with one i don't have a (stable) place in. any thoughts? is it possible for a bird system's foundation to run so deep that eventually it overrides the bird?

[ziracona]

I am both kind of glad she didn't like. Spiral into thoughts or more realization of what exactly she's done to these people. But also not, because I love angst. So. Questions. Will she ever meet the other survivors? What will their interactions be like? Who do you think she gets along with most? Will she meet any other killers? (probs introduced by other survivors??) And also. A painful one but. Does the entity realize she's lying? Do you think you'll continue this story in anyway?

Haha, I feel that. Adiris certainly will hit that horror realization more completely than she did during her breakdown in the archives room. I think because of her realizations of both what she’s done and just how much danger she and they and everybody upstairs depending on her is in suddenly because of the truth, happening at the same, she had a whole lot of fear and anger in play (I was used and hurt and manipulated and lied to and made to suffer, whatever you[Not Nergal/Entity] are, you have been doing horrible stuff to innocent people for no good reason, my people have also been manipulated and lied to and forced to suffer, oh Gods what happens to us if he knows I know? What can I do to save my people and myself and these foreigners? Can I do anything?) and I think the immediacy of the parts of that she had to act on hit so hard it was her core focus, but next time she either is in a trial and has to method act through hunting down people she now knows are not murderers and infidels, or the first time she’s in a safer and more calm setting with the survivors and one of them mentions something, that will all uhhh, it’ll hit home. I’m sure. God, this poor woman.

Okay! For the questions.

“Will she ever meet the other survivors?”

Yes. Definitely, and all of them.

“What will those interactions be like?”

It’s hard to say since I haven’t written that yet, but probably exceedingly awkward. I think there’s a lot of inherent fear from them towards her, and like, how would you feel talking with someone you used to murder a lot because you thought they were the enemy? Nnnmnnnnn probably not great! TuT which is how she gon be feeling. I think she is very aware she’s coming from a place of power, and is also still super used to thinking of herself as a priestess/holy/kind of removed, so she’ll try to approach it like that. Reassuring, and thoughtful/careful to not be scary or threatening, but also in control and a little aloof. And probably after a little time with the survivors, who will all go from “Scary. D:” to “A curiosity but in a good way. Weird. Neat. Still kinda spooky.” to “I like her : )” and thinking of her the way they would any normal human (the normal version of the fkn speedrun Quentin & Dwight went through), she’ll have to adjust to being treated like a normal person, and the way 21st century humans act when they’re being casual and friendly—which honestly, not too different from being friendly throughout history, but sadly either way not something this girl is used to. I think it’ll be weird and she’ll be nervous to try shifting identities from one of the only two things she’s ever known how to be, and into normal human and friend, but that it’ll also be really welcome. Because she has literally never gotten to have a family or a normal life or a friend or any single goddamn healthy or even decent relationship with another living human being. And like, god, humans need that. On a DNA level—We die in isolation. And she hasn’t been “isolated,” but she’s been mostly isolated her whole life, and she sure as hell has never ever gotten to belong or have any kind of certainty or permanence in her relationship, even her spiritual ones. She needs that. She just needs someone to look at her, go: “There’s a human being right there, and I see who she is, and I think she’s very worthwhile. I would like to keep her in my life.” God, she needs that so, so badly. I don’t think she knows it, but she really, really, desperately does.

And she deserves it, too. None of the abandonments or alienations or failures in her life are things she did wrong. But when that kind of thing keeps happening to a person, it sure as hell makes them feel like it. So, haha, sorry, got carried away (the name of my memoir probably >.>). But I think she’d be awkward, and confused, and then nervous, because she’d be invited into something she has literally never had, doesn’t know how to do right, but also desperately wants without fully understanding, which is a terrifying combination to work with socially. But then deeply impacted and happy and moved. Also afraid—I mean, girl smiled without doing it on purpose one time and flipped out emotionally with no idea why, because every time she has felt attachment or sought belonging or thought she had it her whole life, she’s been routinely betrayed and abandoned. She’s a lot more than once burned. But after the initial fear, she would be a mixture of happy and very awkward, and then eventually hopefully just exceedingly happy and also proud of herself and confident. I listened to I’m Still Here from Treasure Planet a lot while writing Adiris. Like, a lot.

“Who do you think she gets along with most?”

Hmmm, well, Dwight and Quentin I think will always be special to her after the day in the temple. Claudette is a sweetie who will definitely try to help alleviate sickness symptoms and be maybe the single least afraid to touch her of all the survivors, and that can’t help but be meaningful. Meg & she have a lot of complimentary similar personality traits, Jeff is super kind & also a great artist so he’ll probably be group interpreter & she’ll be around him a lot, and since Tapp is 2 and 0 so far on drawing bullet barrel in friend luck Russian roulette and keeps befriending women with absentee fathers, I can only assume that means she will end up close with Tapp as well. It’s too funny for him not to be 3 & 0. The world itself demands it. Beyond that, I’d have to write interactions and see how they fall. 👈👈😎 (Also a large part of how she feels about Meg & maybe also Ace, possibly Nea too, maybe even Feng, will come down to how she feels about being flirted with shamelessly. F in the chat for my poor confused ancient Mesopotamian. 😔)

“Will she meet any other killers?”

Yes, definitely. And it will be very interesting to me to see that.

“Does the Entity’s realize she’s lying?”

No. It absolutely does not. Queen method acted hard enough to give herself trauma—the first person experience thoughts and narrative are what she lived, and luckily the Entity is an emotion sponge, not a mind reader. It may or may not have been aware Quentin & Dwight were in the room (legit just depends on if it decided to/thought to look, which I don’t know, because I didn’t need to to write the scene & it be like that sometimes, but regardless of if it did, the outcome is basically unchanged. Either it didn’t look because Adiris clearly wasn’t lying, from its POV, as she felt nothing but what she exhibited outwardly as well. Or it did look for them, saw they were under there, and thought nothing of it because it lined up with her story. She said they ran off. Wouldn’t be weird for them to go to the Archives to try to steal information, or hide, or even just get lost. And it had no reason to expose them if it did see, because if it had dragged them out, it would have had to do something Adiris would understand to them, and it’s really just easier to give itself time to figure out in what way to do its “Nergal the God” aftermath, than to do it right in the room on the spot. TLDR: No, it has no clue. She method acted the fuck out of that situation, and there was nothing weird to sense, so it didn’t. Queen out-bullshitted the Entity.

“Will you continue the story in any way?”

Harder question. Probably? Likely? Maybe? Hard to say. I would love to, but I also have four, five other stories right now? Ever since I made a dumb Fate joke about having four multipath AUs, my brain has been trying to convince me to adapt New Dawn Fades, From the Earth of No Return, and some fourth, as yet unchosen story, into full length monsters. But I might die. Like, y’all, ILM is a hunk of book. If I recall correctly from back when I saw my word count, got nervous, and looked stuff up, if I published a physical single volume copy of ILM, it would become the longest single volume book ever published in a physical single book form. Which I both kinda want to do now just for the knowledge of it, but also!!! That’s SO much, like, I don’t even know how that happened. Like I am immensely proud, but also kinda like wtf? Did I drug me?? And also mostly just because rip @ me that the longest work I have written is a fic I /can’t/ ever publish or include in a resume or reel or anything. :’-](Also, @ the speed readers who did ILM in under two weeks, HOW? And please teach me your absolutely terrifying powers). I don’t plan, even if I do full length stuff again, to make another ILM length one or something. But even then, full length is big! (Also I live in fear of saying this to myself, trying to write, and becoming:

Like u have no idea rip lol.) It takes a whole bunch of time to do books, and like, I do fic books because I love it! Like SO much. It has and does bring me great joy. But, it can get a liiiittle daunting too. It eats up most of my free time to all my free time, if I get super into it.

So yes, I would really like to adapt it further. I have the barest of bones for an outline, I even have two possible endings already envisioned and several major events more fleshed out! : D But if I do write more long-form full novels for DbD, even in more manageable sizes than their forebearer, I’d try to do them in the order I began. Which means Signifying Nothing—the prequel to ILM about Philip’s time with Vigo, Alex, & Benedict (which is a will do, not if), then New Dawn Fades (the ongoing fic I have on AO3 centered around Joey & Quentin’s relationship), then From the Earth of No Return. Which for the record, my soul very much wants to adapt. Every time I hear Brave Shine now, I see cool TV show opens for it in my head. TuT But I guess the best I can say is, “We’ll see”? Since fics aren’t like my paying job or smth, it depends largely on my personal & work life & how much time I have to devote to for-passion writing. So, I guess the short answer is I’d love to, and I hope to, I’d even say I think I intend to sometime, but I’m not completely certain I’ll be able.

[guerilla935]

Review: Iron Man 3 (Spoilers)

Iron Man 3 is the grounding story that the MCU needed after the crazy story of the first Avengers film. The Iron Man films have always been very close to a modern day setting and are always centered around current events to further enrich itself in this setting. The third installment in this series is very much the culmination of what happens when you combine our real world with that of the rest of the Marvel Universe. Tony is having an existential crisis after living through an alien battle that he fought alongside a gamma monster, two assassins, a World War 2 vet, and a Norse God. He tries to process this all while spiraling into making weapons again to combat a future threat and handling a complicated relationship with Pepper and deal with a terrorist threat.

The movie revolves around its villain character Aldrich Killian (Guy Pearce) who basically drives all conflict in the movie. He goes on to become a head of A.I.M. which never really goes anywhere and if you are familiar with the comics then you know that it’s a shame that A.I.M. never saw a story after this movie. Aldrich is definitely evil but there is nothing super spectacular about his character in the ways that there was a coolness to Whiplash, Iron Monger, or even Hammer. His main gimmick is that he has basically a limitless healing ability with a side effect of breathing fire. This makes him a threat and scary but definitely doesn’t make him in any way a good character. Don Cheadle is back as War Machine (later Iron Patriot) and is still acting as a soldier for the United States using the suit that he stole from Tony and had decked out by Hammer. Pepper is still running the business side of things but much colder than her past roles, justifiably seeing as Tony is a nervous mess. Basically every character that you remember being good before is still good and all the new characters, besides Ty Simpkins playing Harley, are not awesome.

The plot really doesn’t begin until Tony incites a violent attack on his home from an unknown terrorist organization. Before that is all set up for how he made enemies with Killian and the state of his anxieties with the battle of New York. It’s both a moment of stress and release because we are now flung into conflict with the mandarin but also in amends between Tony and Peppers relationship. This is followed by a really cool section of the movie where Tony meets Harley and kind of overcomes his battle with the PTSD from the wormhole (which I’m glad they brought up because technically there should have been no way that he could have returned from the wormhole because space is a vacuum). Tony’s relationship with Harley is very special because it never jeopardizes Tony’s character and allows him to feel compassion for this kid in his own way. The fight scenes in this part are also super cool because Tony doesn’t have his suit and we get a lot of time just seeing Tony react in a gunfight.

The next part of the movie is kind of so-so, it involves Tony and Rhodey flying around to locations trying to find the Mandarin and rescue the president. This happens I think a bit faster than the writer had intended (at least that’s how it feels) but creates dramatic moments including awesome scenes like one where Tony is infiltrating the house where the Mandarin is and does it using all these home made spy gear, another where his suit flies to him and he fights guys while gradually getting pieces of his suit, and a scene where he saves the crew of air force one by getting them to do the sky diving thing. This all feels like the culmination of the Iron Man 3 plot line after having solved the issues created by previous installments. And this brings in Rhodey to be in the film much more than in previous entries which is really cool to see. I’m sad that we don’t get as cool of a fight scene with Rhodey as we got in Iron Man 2 but they definitely did his character right.

So there is a Mandarin twist that basically shows Ben Kingsley as the “face” of the Mandarin but reveals that the mastermind of the Mandarin attacks is Aldrich Killian. I know that many people were upset about this twist but I think that in the context of 2013 and the iron man universe to have the real villain be a corporate head is more appropriate. I also don’t think that the mandarin was all that great to begin with so another part of it is that I just don’t care as much who or what the mandarin is as a viewer. The film has this side narrative about this tech Tony created where he implants chips in his arms that allow him to signal a remote Iron Man suit onto himself or others that is used time and time again very smartly until the audience could probably start to associate it as one of the main gimmicks of the suit. This is done really smartly from him using it to protect pepper to him using it to detonate Killian in one of the coolest one liner execution lines in a super hero movie. 

I think that the movie ended off in a way that allowed for a lot of cool things to be done in the future, a Tony that has abandoned the idea of having an army of automated Iron Man suits and Pepper having new regenerative powers ready to finally take up the Rescue suit. This is such a powerful story about the absurdity of the MCU overlapping into our reality and the affect it has on the psyche. We get so many scenes of our characters outside of their suits doing action scenes that aren’t CGI which is awesome. This movie is a good send off for solo Iron Man that allows them to catapult him into a full time Avenger. While there are plenty of Marvel movies that are more worth your time, this one is still a very good movie filled with the type of story and action that blends together the world of comics and reality into something both surrounded in mysticism and grounded in reality.

[bladekindeyewear]

Boots reads Homestuck Epilogue(s) Part 5 - Meat Page 7

==>

Okay, time for Rose and Dirk to talk delicious politics or something.

Heh, customary show-end riots.

Rose, stop causing all of us undue alarm.

Ascending? Is she going to fade out into a concept or something???

Oh shit, Dirk’s doing something similar.  Some sort of inevitability once God-Tier is reached or some such.

Dirk has a solution to the problem in the works.  That’s... well, Rose already cautioned that that could be ominous.  I hope it doesn’t involve decapitation.  Or robot bodies, or turning her into an omniscient cueball or something.

==>

Okay, stage play time.  I can see a weird-seeming text color choice for Caliborn down below, hm.  Time to read down to there...

Ah, the classic finale-callback thumbs down.  Nice.

...yeah, reinforcing the point he was trying to make a little less explicitly with his earlier finale of Homestuck that Lord English had really just, sort of, trapped them in this narrative that their ultimate reward would be to escape, realizing it never really mattered too much compared to their own long lives and happiness or something.

==>

Epilogue TWO??????  D:

Okay now it’s, like, Andrew commenting isn’t it.

Oh shit, it DOES suck them up and trap them? Huh. That explains how Jade was dealt with, I’d forgotten. Also because it was one of the huge goddamn unanswered fucking hugepoints that made it seem like a slap in the face when we were told it didn’t matter and-- yeah okay let me just keep reading.

Huh, broken glasses.

And, phew; the ages it takes is from an OUTSIDE perspective.  Let’s see what it is from an inside perspective...

==>

Jaaaane!!! :D

Okay let’s read about Janey.

Mhmm, that’s not that surprising... Dirk knew that Karkat was going to run against Jane, but Jane didn’t, even though Dirk was ostensibly “working” for her.  There’s definitely a plan here.  Maybe it involves Jane and Karkat smooching publicly at the end.  ...No, that’s just my wishful imagination talking, isn’t it.

Oh my god she’s screaming into a pillow at hearing she has competition.  That’s adorable.

YES, JANE.  UNDERESTIMATE KARKAT.  YOU WILL FALL IN LOVE WITH HIM LIKE EVERYONE ELSE (though probably platonically).  It does upset me that they’ve taken this long to really get acquainted, though; I’ve argued for years that their personalities are naturally compatible as the straight men for all their friends’ bullshit.

In fact, Jane is pretty sure that Karkat Vantas would probably literally burst into flame if too many people happened to look at him at the same time, like a vampire walking out into the sun.

Yes, but he’d get over it.  And be a flaming president or something.

In fact, Jane cannot remember a single conversation she’s ever had with him that wasn’t about the economy. She thinks back to one time at John’s eighteenth birthday when Dave engaged her in a rigorous and rather one-sided debate about deregulation and the failure of “neoliberal austerity measures” until Karkat had to come over and put his hands over his roommate’s mouth to make him stop talking.

Oh my FUCKING god, it’s true.  Dave’s appropriately liberal in the modern, Krugman-esque, statistically grounded way.  Karkat has my vote already.

She’d be happy to accept a graceful, temporary defeat and let Karkat play president for a couple of years. After all, unlike her, he was not immortal.

Hey fuck you.  Also, why the FUCK haven’t they used one of the myriad likely ways to extend Karkat’s lifespan basically indefinitely yet???  Heck, JANE could probably do it with Life powers if she crawled back out of her own butt!  We already know the Condesce could extend other trolls’ lifespans with weird troll powers so Life powers are almost certainly enough to suffice.  >:(

Ohhh, so maybe Jane is just, like... slightly traumatized by trolls? And thus a little tiny bit predisposed against trusting them cause of the Condesce? :(

Interesting how she views her past reliance on / pursuance of Jake as something that made her “weak” specifically.

Okay, I’m getting a slightly uncomfortable vibe that Jane is willing to almost play at seduction with Jake falsely to get his endorsement on--

And she’s willing to do more than that, too.

Okay FUCK, JANE.  GET YOURSELF UNDER CONTROL.  I’m starting to believe the shittalking the others have given about you!  You’d better shape up by the end of this epilogue or what have you.

==>

Okay, trapped John can hear the other three through the walls of their prison or something.

Conversation and musings, conversation and musings.....

Wait, Jade LIVES with Dave and Karkat in that SAME HOUSE and they didn’t even mention it??!??  What is even up with their thing.

Heh, John’s thinking he really could have used a nice kismesis riling him up to better himself.  That’s what they’re for, really.

There there, John.

==>

Oh my fucking GOD, Jane rolls with supply side economics???  TAKE.  HER.  DOWN.

And Jade is just... here?  Huh.

Yeah they DEFS weren’t listening.

JADE: especially when JADE: there are much better things we could all be doing with our mouths.....

HOLY SHIT.  HOLY SHIT.  JADE IS SO INTO EITHER OF THEM THAT THEY CAN’T TAKE IT, CAN THEY.  THAT’S FUCKING AMAZING OH MY GOD

Her tail swishes from side to side

SINCE WHEN DOES SHE HAVE A FUCKING TAIL HOW IS THAT SUDDENLY CANON

I’M NOT MAD IM JUST SURPRISED

Wasn’t that something that the ask-responses from Andrew said she canonically DIDN’T have or what the fuck

Since I guess it wasn’t confirmed IN CANON he just decided he liked it enough to offer it here or???? I DON’T KNOW????

Wow why am I all worked up by this all of a sudden.  It’s just transferring from her earlier line isn’t it.

three of her bras

Okay no nevermind Andrew’s just fucking with us.

...Even though this can probably still be considered canon.  Which only makes how he’s fucking with us work even better, really.  I mean, why WOULDN’T he lob this at us on the ten year anniversary and watch us squirm, really.  There’s no incentive not to.

--oh wait wait never mind reading further these are just bras from different days she threw over the couch.  PHEW.  I thought for a second that we were dealing with dog anatomy stuff that would REQUIRE multiple bras on her.  Jesus.  I wonder if Andrew intentionally phrased things so some people would think that for a minute.

JADE: also you know trolls dont actually have two dicks dave thats an offensive stereotype

Pffffff

Wait, is it that Dave and Karkat’s relationship isn’t quite full-hearts sexual and Jade is incessantly shipping them?? :O

because that’d be hilarious too??  --*reads*

YESSSS JADE BEING SUPER STAT WHIZ WITH HER SUPER PARTOMNIDOG SPACE BRAIN YES

The thing about Jade Harley is that she’s not as good at personal things as she is at other things. Like science, or mastering fraymotifs, or kissing, the last of which she has definitely put a lot of levels into over the past few years because, well, what else are you supposed to do with immortal godhood once you hit the age where the dog hormones start kicking into overdrive? 

f uck

dog hormones

i’m wheezing

Alright, Jade’s springing a thorough relationship talk on them.  That’s cool.  Also she’s throwing statistics in there and I LOVE that now that Jade is older we’re reinforcing just how scary science smart she is, I can’t wait to see other people roleplaying her properly because of it too.

...Yeah Jade would definitely date a chess couple

Jade sighs and crawls closer. She takes one of Karkat’s hands in hers.

JADE: i think wed all work good together

AAAAAAAA :D :D :D

JADE: and i think weve been dancing around that for years now JADE: i wanna try dating for real KARKAT: HAVE YOU EVER CONSIDERED KARKAT: SORRY IF WHAT I’M ABOUT TO SAY TOTALLY BLOWS YOUR MIND KARKAT: DATING A SINGLE PERSON, FOR MORE THAN HALF A SWEEP, FOR REASONS OTHER THAN INITIATING THE CONCUPISCENT EXCHANGE OF FLUIDS?

PFFFFFFFFFFFFF OH MY FUCKING GOD THIS IS PERFECT

Jade being

literally the thirstiest person in this ENTIRE CAST OF CHARACTERS

to the point that everyone’s calling her out on it

in something that’s virtually goddamn canon

holy fucking shit I love everything.  I love life.  Living in a universe where this hilarious shit happens is fun.

....pFFFF JADE DIDN’T KNOW OBAMA WAS REAL THIS IS AMAZING

Ooh, dueling god-tier powers for petty reasons.

OH NO DICK DRAWINGS ARE LIKELY IMMINENT

THAT OR A CHART

OR BOTH

...yeah her hair would get everywhere, wouldn’t it.

yes make fun of ship names some more

What Jade leaves in her wake is not quite the emotional scorched-earth situation that she was going for, but a few of her needles have definitely gotten under some skin. Dave and Karkat both stare after her, silently caught in their own private rationalization spirals.

So this whole time Jade’s been all “JUST KISS ALREADY” and they’ve been all “what no” and now she’s just laid it all out in the open and left them to it.  Yeah that sounds about like what would’ve happened.

Aaaand of course, since this is Dave and Karkat, they just choose to stall some more and play video games.  Jade really DOES complete this relationship with her pushing them to accept reality and stop downplaying their own feelings and self-esteem and all.  But that’s what I thought would happen BEFORE I even read any epilogue stuff so I’m biased.

==>

Pff, Vriska time.

You’ve now got two bitches of either gender at your side

Vriska, shame!  Don’t use that kind of language!!

Yep, this version of her didn’t learn her lesson and is still pretty much completely delusional.

Alright, Real Terezi™ is still flying out in the abyss trying to scoop Vriska out of this jam, cool, cool.

Flailing and spinning, screaming, not being able to see the final event or whatever-- someone save her already we know it’s gonna happen!

JOHN: Emerge from the juju.

Oh.  Well, that’s uncomfortably in line with earlier presumably-discredited theories.  About John saving Vriska from the black hole the Green Sun left in its wake and all.  :|

Yawns too wide and snaps in half?  The moment he was dreaming about?

==>

Oh hai Jake.  This really IS the perfect time to get to see some attempted-exploitative discomfort between Jane and you.  I mean that!  The narrative timing is pretty hilarious.

The sunset has turned the head offices of Crockercorp into a shimmering glass monolith—a beacon, if you will, of the future, visible for miles in every direction.

Jane probably likes to think about it that way at least.

Wow, Jane REALLY sounds like she needs to be knocked down a peg or seven.

The whole place is candlelit, and Jane is reclining on her desk, sprawled out like a lounge singer on a grand piano.

OH MY FUCKING GOD JANE STOP BEING A SLIMEBAG!!!! D: D: D:

Thank you, Jake, for coming through and tanking this.

This is not really the kind of conversation you initiate if you’re looking to extract a sexual deal out of someone. It is, however, the kind of conversation that you might have with a childhood friend who has become somewhat emotionally estranged from you.

THANK FUCKING GOD.  Jane has been saved from herself for the moment.

Okay I see a whole bunch of paragraphs of black text down below just as these two are likely coming together for a kiss.  Uh oh.

...Yep, kiss there.  And, uh...

Okay whew, most of it is Jake privately soliloquy-ing to the narrative about the circumstances leading up to this. I can deal with that.

...Oh my god he keeps thinking of Dirk while getting in close to Jane.  This is gonna blow up in his face isn’t it.

Reading on....

--Ah, yeah, he just realizes he’s more into Dirk I guess.  Ouch.  Ouch, Jane.

DIRK: Were you nice to him? JANE: Well, I... DIRK: I told you, you can’t be nice to Jake. JANE: ...

PPFffffffffff

DIRK: Why don’t you leave Jake to me?

Now ain’t that telling?

Ooh, getting down to plot business with Rose.

==>

Back to John.  I see a bit that says “Listen” there, is he going to hear Vriska screaming? Or is Terezi going to pick her up? Since, like, I mean she has the jetpack and has been searching for her longer and stuff.

Yep, big ol’ LE tantrum.  Though alt!Calliope seems at least as much at fault for the end of the universe as him, if not moreso.

Ah, right, Andrew wanted us to THINK he’d hear Vriska screaming just so he could troll us like that.  Makes more sense, anyway.

Huh, the Juju just pops away.

OW.  Down a spare Rose, just like that, huh?  Probably part of why main Rose knew what the plan was supposed to be for all this.

Ah right, can’t use your Green Sun powers here, Jade.

OW.  Another quasi-doomed side-character death.

Yep, you have to make a tough, leaderly decision and let go.  :C  --Oh crap, you saved her body.  Are you gonna put the ring there or what, I’m not sure where that’s going plotways.

Pff, the whole fight going south just due to John losing his glasses... that’s pretty funny from a perspective.

Oh huh, real ghost Tavros gets nuked.

Oh shit, Meenah’s going in!  Don’t die, I actually care about this version of you!!

--Ah, thrown out and fate unclear, that’s a bit better than clear death.

Hm, Davepeta vs English round two?  I wonder what the purpose of all of this really is, anyway, beyond just a sense that some only implied-wrapped-up things are being actually wrapped up?  This whole Meat arc?  Is Candy going to be ultimately more important to everyone, as was part of the point, or?  Huhhm.

Final Round!!

Hammer buffet!

Slight obligatory feelings allusion via hammer!

Oh no! VORE!!! D:

DAVEPETASPRITE^2: B33 < wrow you almost got vored to death

Phew, avoided

Ow, another decapitation.  There’s a killing blow and being trapped forever in a black hole for LE to look forward to, though.  Weren’t there theories about him being trapped forever at the center of that black hole or whatever?  Huh.  I mean there WAS the garbage disposal that his metaphorical Jigsaw-head gets stuck in early in the comic after all.

Alright, Davepeta sticks him in there?  Cool.

Yeah, you just had to remind us that he’s going to be plunging into his dead sister’s gaping hole, didn’t you? >:|

Davepeta. How they were so unfettered and brave. How they sacrificed themselves by flying right into the black hole like...

Like a fucking piece of garbage, you can almost hear Dave saying. May God rest his soul.

Yup.  Closing another callback.  Why is it silent, though?  Did the black hole stop sucking now that it’s gotten almost everything but John, or is it just his blackout?  I mean, is the end of everything just a thing that “happens” (which is still pretty fine, Paradox Space had a pretty good run), or did it just stop, or is it yet to be resolved or re-John-creates-Paradox-Space’s-beginning-because-hes-the-only-thing-left-constituted if he inexplicably doesn’t die from his heroic wounds or?  And Terezi definitely didn’t go flying around Paradox Space’s dying remains just to get sucked in too, right?  I definitely haven’t seen the whole picture yet I guess.

==>

Alright, back to Rose... actually this post’s getting long so I’ll cut here and keep going in another post.

[hypexion]

crimes of grindelwald: the thought post

Truly the greatest summary of this film is “Queenie shows up at Newt’s house unannounced, and things spiral out of control from there.“

Spoilers below the cut as I ramble about Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald.

(i’m aware it’s been a... while since the film happened but i write slow and this spiralled out of control into a bit of a mess)

So, The Crimes of Grindelwald. In a sense, it’s hard to say more than what’s already been said. The narrative is too busy, the characterization is confused, the plot twists are overdone, and there aren’t even that many Fantastic Beasts. It has some good scenes also but they’re sort of floating in the rest of it. It’s hard to find a starting point, but perhaps it’s best to start with the start.

Crimes of Grindelwald does not begin in a way I would described as ‘clean‘. While the opening scene is fairly good, the plot begins to contort itself as soon as Newt Scamander appears. Newt wants to travel internationally, but the Ministry of Magic will only let him if he goes to Paris to hunt down Credence. Newt says “no“ because he isn’t an Auror. Albus Dumbledore then shows up to bother Newt, and also wants him to go to Paris. Newt, not wanting to go to Paris, says he won’t go. Then Queenie and Jacob show up, and Newt finds a postcard from Tina. She’s in Paris! Newt proceeds to do a 180 on the whole ‘go to Paris‘ thing, and sets off.

The whole Paris dance really seems like it could be streamlined. The whole thing is obviously set up to get Queenie and Jacob into the plot, but there’s no reason for them not to start in Paris and meet Newt there. Sure, it’s a coincidence, but it’s not like the Wizarding World is big. The British magical community seems to consist mostly of three places, including the sprawling urban location of an alleyway in London. This extra complexity is ultimately a portend of things to come, since Crimes of Grindelwald gets rather busy.

Probably my second largest criticism of Crimes of Grindelwald is that there’s too much going on. There are several characters, and they all have several goals that only end up driving the conflict because everyone crashes into each other. Newt and Jacob are looking for Tina and Queenie, while Tina is looking for Credence. Yusef Kama is also looking for Credence, but for murder reasons. Meanwhile, Credence wants to find his true identity, along with Nagini who I assume is searching for why she’s in this film. Leta wants to absolve her crushing guilt probably, and Theseus would like to catch Grindelwald. Grindelwald himself is just waiting around for Credence to attend his rally, and doesn’t really do much despite allegedly being the antagonist of this whole thing. Ultimately, everyone’s goal becomes “Get Credence“ but probably it should have started that way. Then we’d have more time for some Fantastic Beasts!

Crimes of Grindelwald is at it’s best when it’s actually being Fantastic Beasts 2. Whenever Newt is doing his magical zoology things, or unleashing the beasts, things are okay. Even Tina gets in on the actions, moving from ‘gotta kill the beasts‘ to ‘hey let’s do the Newt thing to stop the beast‘. There’s even a perfectly good beast related reason for Newt to go to Paris - a magical circus that could have easily been dragging around some seriously scary magical beasts that Newt would need to deal with. Sadly, Crimes of Grindelwald ultimately care more about the big conspiracy than it does about magical creatures, so mostly we get a few set pieces with them, and that’s kind of it.

Speaking of the big conspiracy, that’s a rather tangled mess. We have one Credence Barebone, who wants to find his true identity. There’s a big thing made of how he’s suddenly the last member of a dying family (or something) and everybody knows it. Except Credence. Eventually, Yusef Kama explains everything - Credence is actually Corvus Lestrange number five, and NOW HE HAS TO DIE. Except no - he isn’t! Leta swapped Corvus with a random baby, and then a boat sank, so Credence is just some random baby. An unsatisfying reveal for all. This is literally the main plot thread of the film, and it ends with what is effectively a non-answer.

But then the film doubles (triples?) down on the madness, and reveals that Credence is actually Aurelius Dumbledore, the never before mentioned fourth Dumbledore sibling. Except this is clearly a deception since the timeline makes no sense otherwise, and this information is provided by Notorious Magic Crime Person Gellert Grindelwald. This whole thing just feels like a twist for the sake of having a twist, which is not really that good of a writing thing.

On the topic of Notorious Magic Crime Person Gellert Grindelwald, he doesn’t really do that much, even though the film is called Crimes of Grindelwald. He certainly crimes, performing murders and break-ins, he conspires to pervert the course of justices and holds a proto-fascist rally in a graveyard. He also tries to destroy Paris, which sort of undermines his point in his proto-fascist rally. I think that, minus World War Skull Vape, Grindelwald’s big speech is actually a pretty good scene. Rather than going for a stereotypical rant, Grindelwald wraps his words in plausible deniability. Muggles aren’t inferior, they simple have a ‘different purpose‘. He shifts the narrative, making his audience into the victims of a world that forces them to hide. And, despite its delivery, the grim warning of another war is enough to shake many who oppose Grindelwald.

Of course, Grindelwald is ultimately a lying liar who lies. In private, he’s already mentioned how he’s going to liquidize most of the Can’t-Spells, and keep the rest as slaves. Yet he still manages to coat his genocidal ideals in veneer of respectability, and it seems likely than many people already thinking “maybe this Gellert chap is speaking sense“ would be pushed into his camp. But if you already think that Grindelwald is a jerk, you’ll probably not be convinced. Especially if you can, I don’t know, read minds.

Which brings us to the true crime of Crimes of Grindelwald: The Character Assassination of Queenie Goldstein by the Coward JK Rowling. It’s tempting to suggest Queenie joins the baddies in order to demonstrate the toxic allure of Grindelwald, except her character starts the film derailed. Nothing in Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them suggests that Queenie would resort to straight-up mind control in order to solve a relationship problem. The closest she gets to unethical use of magic in the first film is a bit of minor blackmail in pursuit of saving her sister’s life. Queenie doesn’t even spend that much time around Grindelwald, so it doesn’t really feel earned when she turns. Ultimately, I just can’t get over how Jacob and Queenie are reintroduced to the plot. While the narrative doesn’t entirely avoid the problem with the enchantment, it never really faces it head on. It’s a jarring shift in characterization, and it’s justified by a few mentions of things that happened entirely off-screen.

Speaking of off-screen changes, it’s Tina Time. Here’s a meta-spoiler for you: Tina and Newt are going to end up married. Yay! I know this because the original Fantastic Beasts book says so. Which makes the entire relationship regression basically pointless. Really, it’s one of those weird plot complications the film could do without. Then we could have more Tina the cool Auror who is going to GET CREDENCE for actual reasons, unlike everyone else trying to get him. Tina gets the lion’s share of the character development, which is too say her character actually develops in a way we could expect - she uses the same magic Newt uses to calm down a beast, and that’s pretty good. Tina also immediately understands the magic of Salamander Eyes which is cute goofy stuff that works even though the relationship was put through a mangler for drama that doesn’t even materialize. Really, Tina is the best character in Crimes of Grindelwald since she has a motivation that is both consistent and comprehensible, unlike other characters. I’m not quite sure that Tina really has a character arc in this film, but she at least follows some sort of line, so it’s okayish.

Which brings us to the character with the actual character arc: Leta Lestrange. Leta is mentioned in Fantastic Beasts and Where To Find Them as Newt’s mysterious person from the past. Crimes of Grindelwald builds up her character on a scaffold of what’s come before - Leta is a non-evil Slytherin, and is part of the same family as Magic Murder Woman Bellatrix Lestrange. People expect her to go along with Grindelwald’s Wizard Fascism thing because she’s from the mystic and circular Lestrange family. But she doesn’t, because Leta is her own person with her own functioning sense of morality. She even has a vaguely sensible connection to GET CREDENCE - she knows he’s not who people think he is, because she was involved in Corvus Five sinking to the bottom of the ocean. Leta is a character with a lot of room for interesting depth and complexity, especially given that she’s got a connection to Newt’s expulsion from Hogwarts. So it’s pretty messed up that she gets killed off to provide emotional damage for the male lead.

What’s terrible about Leta’s death is that it’s utterly pointless. Newt doesn’t need that kind of motivation to choose a side. What Grindelwald is doing is wrong, and as a character who sees the value in the life of beasts and monster where others don’t, Newt should be opposed to Grindelwald on principle. It’s not like Leta is clogging up the narrative either. Her existence actually has a point to it, unlike some characters. Leta had the potential to be more than a tragic backstory and a tragic end, and writing about it makes me super ticked off at the wasted potential.

(Leta is also involved in those weird first person scenes. I found them kind of uncomfortable but if they worked for you I guess it’s cool.)

Now, if Leta is the deepest character in Crimes of Grindelwald, Nagini is the anti-Leta. In a sense, Nagini is not a character in Crimes of Grindelwald, since she barely has a character to begin with. Sure, she doesn’t like being a circus attraction, and is upset by Credence joining up with Notorious Magic Crime Person Grindelwald, but that’s basically it. Mostly, Nagini is just kind of around when Credence is around. Crimes of Grindelwald is simply to busy to include Nagini, yet she’s here anyway. The annoying part is that like Leta, there’s actually some potentially interesting stuff surrounding Nagini, but it is never explored. Nagini is a ‘Maledictus’, a woman cursed to eventually turn into a big snake. This is kind of neat. Not for Nagini, of course. It’s probably very upsetting, but we never find that out since she bearly has any presence in the film. In a sense, Nagini is becoming a Fantastic Beast, which means she has reasons to interact with Newt. Reasons like “hey can you stop me from becoming a big snake, Mr. Magic Beasts Expert”. But everyone is too busying GETTING CREDENCE, so Nagini doesn’t get time to exist. In theory, she could be giving Credence off-screen pep talks, but maybe we could have had something along those lines on-screen instead. On a second viewing, it soon becomes apparent that Nagini averages roughly one line per scene she’s in. Also I think her name is only spoken once? Ultimately, Nagini isn’t a well-written character, simple because she’s not really a written character.

Nagini also has the additional problem of being everything wrong with Expanded Universes. According to J.K. Rowling, Nagini the Maledictus is one and the same as Nagini, Horcrux of Voldemort. Really. JK Rowling claims that she’s known this for twenty years, which is how I know that JK Rowling is a liar. There is absolutely no value, literary or otherwise, for Nagini the Snake to have once been human. More than inane, this detail is just bizarre. Why would we need a backstory for Voldemort’s snake? It makes sense for him to have a big snake, given that his previous big snake died in a tragic sword accident. It also means that Nagini the woman is doomed to become an evil snake. Which is pre-emptive bad story, because I refuse to believe that Good Hufflepuff Newt Scamander would leave a woman to the fate of permanent snakification. Newt even knows Dumbledore, a genius Transfiguration Master. If anyone can stop Nagini from becoming a big snake forever, it’s Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore. (In before Nagini the woman is magically split from Nagini the snake, with the snake part slithering off to team up with Voldemort.)

It is, of course, impossible to forget that Albus Dumbledore is in Crimes of Grindelwald. He is one of the many characters who fails to really do much. Okay, he gives Newt a ticket to meet Flamel, but does meeting Flamel do anything for the story? No. Dumbledore spends most of his screen time in a castle, being harassed by Aurors. At the end of the film, Newt gives him a MacGuffin. The end.

Oh, and Dumbledore looks in a mirror. The Mirror of Erised, to be precise. In the magic mirror, he sees his forbidden past: he was definitely, undoubtedly, the subtext is just text, in love with Grindelwald. The presentation of this fact is as subtle as a passing train belting out heaving metal at the highest possible volume. Yet somehow, the film never quite gets around to stating this out loud. While Dumbledore’s relationship with Grindelwald was an interesting footnote in the Harry Potter novels, it is the entire reason why Crimes of Grindelwald is about Newt Scamander and not Albus Dumbledore. It’s like a kind of literary cowardice not to say that Dumbledore is gay, in a film where Dumbledore being gay is actually directly related to why the story happens the way it does. Unlike most of my issues with Crimes of Grindelwald, this doesn‘t fall back to the film being too busy. Actually stating the relationship between Dumbledore and Grindelwald would take a single line, but instead we get a drawn out, yet painfully obvious pile of subtext that dances around the issue. It’s almost as if JK Rowling isn’t as inclusive as she’d like us to believe.

But enough about that!

There are other characters in Crimes of Grindelwald, but at this point they don’t have much going for them. Theseus Scamander is probably one of the only side characters who actually makes sense to be in the story. He’s trying to help out Newt, catch Grindelwald, and get married, but things go wrong for him and it’s kind of sad. Jacob is back, along with his memories of magic, because he was in the first film, and just having him to not be exposed to the Obliviation Rain would be too simple. Yusef Kama is almost a Nagini-tier character, but he does occationally propel the plot forward. He does save Nagini when Grindelwald decides that it’s murder time, which counts as some level of characterisation, but overall he’s squeezed out by other things.

There’s a bunch of minor characters as well, but the likes of Newt’s Assistant Bunty, Bucket Man, Beast Killer Evil Dude and Guy Grindelwald Kills only exist within the scenes they are in. They perform a necessary function of filling out the world, and I suppose they do it well enough.

Having finally, finally slogged through all the characters of note, it’s time to mention the setpieces. They’re pretty good! Magic Circuses, the Black Sheet of Grindelwald, The Big Speech, Grindelwald’s Carriage Adventure and Save Paris are all neat. It’s good to see magical stuff in this film that’s set in a magical world. Otherwise, the colour-scheme is a bit washed out, you know? Fight scenes also feel a little drab, with everyone embracing the “wand is gun“ sort of thing. Except Grindelwald, who does occasionally do fancy magics. Really, this point could apply to the original Fantastic Beasts and Where To Find Them as well. There’s magic aplenty, but it doesn’t always seem, well, magical, for lack of a better term.

In fact, the whimsical eccentricity of the magic world seems diminished. We’ve gone from “Muggles“ to “No-maj“, “Non-magic“ and “Can’t Spells“. Muggle is a word you can imagine being said in many ways, from serious to slur. No-maj is just awkward. It all feels a little paint-by-numbers, with details being filled out for the sake of details, an attempt to create additional depth. Muggle, I feel, has a sort of depth to it, as a word. It doesn’t quite connect to the concept it describes, yet it seems to fit. No-maj, meanwhile, is incredibly direct, deriving directly from “No magic“. But it sounds wrong. The same applies to “Can’t Spells“. We live in a wonderful world of slang, and this is really the best people can come up with? I suppose this is ultimately picking at a minor detail, which is worth overlooking, since the real problems with Crimes of Grindelwald are the major details.

The ultimate problem with Crimes of Grindelwald is simply that things don’t fit. The individual parts don’t fit together properly, and the side plots don’t quite meet up with the main plot. And all the characters don’t fit into the film, with several would-be major characters ending up as side characters, as everyone tries to Get Credence. At points, the film effectively interrupts itself, as it tries to fit in all the required backstories and character interactions. There are places where Crimes of Grindelwald could be streamlined, certainly, but without extending the runtime, it doesn’t feel like everything the film wants to do can be done.

The final criticism I have for Crimes of Grindelwald must be saved for the end, as it is about the end. Except, Crimes of Grindelwald does not have an ending. Instead, it’s one of those works that simply stops. While Crimes of Grindelwald is obviously setting up for Fantastic Beasts 3 and beyond, it fails as a self-contained work. I can’t help but think of A Dance with Dragons, a book so packed with events that two of the major end events got pushed out of the book and (presumably) into The Winds of Winter. Again, this is a problem that can really only be solved with more film.

So, thankfully, the end is here. I have spent far too many words on Crimes of Grindelwald, and perhaps too much time as well. This “essay“, if you will, is sprawling, vaguely focused and probably not entirely coherent. Which in some sense makes it the perfect review of Crimes of Grindelwald. Both would surely benefit from additional editing passes. Or any editing at all, one might argue. But as a not-so-humble internet blogger, I look up my work and realise something. The time to stop has come. I doubt I’ll write this much about Fantastic Beasts 3. Or possibly anything. Eesh. Now that’s slightly terrifying.

In the end, less can be more, and more can be less. Ultimately, Crimes of Grindelwald misses the mark, and suffers for it, in both plot and in character.

[lucky-clover-gazette]

season 4 first watch impressions

under the cut are my thoughts and my new overall series episode ranking (spoilers)

ep1 - uss callister

- by far my favorite of the season

- a perfect blend of comedy and tragedy 

- i would have loved this as a full movie

- honestly nanette is amazing, like she owns her smarts and sexuality and never gives up i love her

- male coder: “it won’t work, i’ve already tried”

nanette: “well i haven’t” HELL YEAH

- i honestly loved all the ‘crew’ characters, even the gym rat boss

- i especially enjoyed the speech from the boss to robert, where he’s like ‘i acknowledge that i was an ass, but dude, YOU PUSHED MY SON OUT AN AIRLOCK’

- also the fuckin casual dialogue between the monster and bad guy and the crew

- OHHH BOY AND THE FACT THAT ROBERT’S GONNA ROT TO DEATH IN HIS APARTMENT BECAUSE HE PUT ‘DO NOT DISTURB’ ON HIS APARTMENT DOOR, HELL YEAH

- ‘oh my fuck’ 

- 10/10, watch it now

ep2 - arkangel

- preface: the kid playing young owen teague and his family were actually really close with my family when he and my little sister were kids. it was goddamn surreal to see that lil guy talking about porn when i remember him being, like, eight. but nice going nick, keep kicking ass lil dude

- okay so this episode was... conflicting 

- the opener made sense, but in some ways i thought it was TOO obvious and indicative of the episode’s message and tone. i can’t help but wonder if it would have been better just starting like five minutes in

- her father looked like counselor healy from orange is the new black, so that was distracting

- okay jesus christ lady, i get that losing your kid is scary, but implanting her with ‘optional’ optic spying and censoring software is such a massive violation of her privacy. like, it’s one thing when she’s tiny, but how the hell are you going to feel okay with yourself as a parent when she’s an adolescent? 

- the blocking especially pissed me off. that’s so fucking dangerous. either this woman is just very stupid, or very desperate

- at least the narrative established that it kind of was the latter. when her father gets sick, the mother has to care both for both her father and her child. that’s a lot. but still not an excuse for such mental violation of a quickly-growing human being

- young edgelord and sara are fucking adorable

- sara’s self-harm and rage issues are not, however,, and i’m glad that her mother took her head out of her ass and ditched the tablet

- is it just me or is fifteen-year-old sara kind of an idiot? like i get it she’s grunge and artsy, and i loved her giving a treat to the dog, but she seems to be almost hanging out with owen teague because he deals, and not despite it. like i get that i’m supposed to buy that their romance has kind of a subtext of him ‘teaching’ her about things, but like the underage sex and coke are kinda yikes. i feel like he definitely should have had more restraint, and although what the mother does is royally fucked, he and sara are also both to blame

- all right, so the smoothie motif. what a great narrative tool. the miscarriage pill was the most clever part of the episode. sara’s reaction was very well-acted, and the standoff between her and her mother was intense as hell

- i liked that sara’s rage issues remained into adolescence. i was glad that the tablet got wreckt, but i can’t help but wonder if it would have been more effective to have her rage-smash it prior to her mother coming come, leaving the pieces for her to find. the actual beating up of the mother with the tablet seemed to literal, too much sinking in the message. there were moments in crocodile and hang the dj that were the same way. 

- the ending, with sara hitchhiking in some stranger’s truck, was very smart. the ambiguity of a young girl, on her own, hopping in some stranger’s vehicle, is powerful without much explanation. any parent would be horrified by this; that’s what i don’t think we actually needed to see the mother screaming sara’s name and bleeding to understand the horror of losing a child to the unknown

- this one definitely gives me the most complicated feelings of the season; on one hand, it had a lot of great devices going for it. on the other hand, it was over-written and at times trying too hard to be ‘black mirror.’ the grey morality and ambiguous ending reminded me of a literary short story, which i love in my TV.

- 7/10, watch it if you liked most black mirror episodes that weren’t san junipero

ep3 - crocodile

- ah yes, the ‘i watch black mirror to be fuckin ashamed of humanity’ episode

- idk man, i liked it. it was bleak, and fucked up, but i’m all about that downward spiral. i liked that the story kind of began in three different places and then tied together. just as i had with ‘hated in the nation,’ i love police procedural stuff

- also damn, it was freaky as hell to see the straight-laced white blonde soccer-mom type being a despicable murdering sociopath!!! like, gotta go kill an entire family of POC, including a goddamn INFANT, and then see my kid’s show, that’s great. i was so happy when she got what she deserved. 

- all right, so i had one MAJOR PROBLEM with this episode: why the fuck did they make the son blind? the guinea pig twist was so GOOD, and mia fuckin killed a BABY, they didn’t need to further modify that!!! this is another example of black mirror doing just a tad more than it needs to make the audience feel horrible. 

- okay black mirror, we get it, that song is your thing, but can you maybe slide it in as a less glaring easter egg? 

- 8/10, but only if you’re into dark shit and bad endings

ep4 - hang the dj

- not nearly gay enough

- seriously, the entire episode i was unable to focus on the main characters because i kept looking around this Tinder-esque 20′s dating paradise and saw ZERO GAY OR LESBIAN COUPLES. i’m so surprised by this, especially after ‘san junipero.’ at first i was like, maybe this is like society’s way of encouraging procreation because of population decline, but that wasn’t the twist at all. no reason for nearly everyone to be hetero

- THAT BEING SAID, i see you. bi amy. even before the girl partner, i was aware that she used ‘they/them’ pronouns when referring to hypothetical partners. i just wish we could have seen more gay couples in the background (for example, at the choosing ceremony thing, it coulda been two dudes of something)

- uh okay, so everyone loved this episode, and it was okay. some of the banter and jokes were funny and relatable, but honestly, this wasn’t *that* good. the plot wasn’t super original (reminded me a lot of ep1 of hulu’s ‘dimension 404′) and the execution was kind of suuuuuuper basic. like, black suited Enforcers with tasers? a massive matrix wall? the whole thing seemed so predictable and just... basic as hell. 

- but shit man, amy was cool. loved that character in a vacuum. 

- honestly if someone could explain the reasons for loving this episode, i’d like to hear them. because i just don’t get it, man. maybe it’s because i’m gay, or young, or single, or unexperienced... but i just wasn’t very impressed

- 6/10, not even fuckin close to ‘san junipero’ lmao 

ep5 - metalhead

- black and white seemed sort of pretentious, not gonna lie. i think i would have preferred the dirty palette of ‘white bear’ post-apocalypse

- i am all for these female protagonists this season. hell yeah

- soo those corpses in the bed were heavy, but i actually kind of wish we got to see more of that? like, the remains of humanity after the dogs attacked? also, more small explanations for the dogs’ attack would have been interesting

- loved the chase and fight scenes. i can see how they’d be boring, but the moments of conflict between man v. machine were fucking awesome

- K N I F E  D O G

- anyone else get serious farenheit 451 vibes?

- the teddy bear thing was dumb. i don’t think we needed to see what was inside the warehouse. yet another time black mirror threw in just a little more than we needed

- okay so belle keeps alluding to the fact that she has safe family members out there somewhere, so am i to believe that there is some place where humans are safe from dogs? if so, why the actual fuck did she leave? i can’t believe it was just because of fuckin teddy bears

- alllllll the david lynch vibes

- 7/10, but you gotta actually pay attention to the visual details to get the best parts

ep6 - black museum

- BOOOOYYYYYYY! this entire episode i waited for the fuckin shoe to drop and then SHE! DID! THAT!

- the amount of callbacks to previous episodes was,, nice,, but also it was kind of annoying??? and unnecessary? 

- the museum owner was reaaaaaalllly annoying, which is think was intentional. what a fuckin sleaze. in comparison, i thought that jon hamm in ‘white christmas’ was still a somewhat charismatic narrator, but this dude was just yikes

- so, the first story was... kind of a lazy reach? idk, it just felt kinda like a parody of black mirror itself. i get the entire ‘mad science’ vibe they were trying to evoke, but as opposed to the next story, this one had very little to say about human nature. black mirror works its best when it tells stories that use technology as a way to analyze humanity; this one really didn’t (we all already know we’ve got weird kinks)

- the second story was better, but, like, SUPER heartbreaking. poor carrie. i don’t think her husband should have done The Thing at all, honestly, I don’t believe that he couldn’t have seen what happened next coming. it’s like the arkangel mom again; either these characters are just SUPER present-oriented, or just fuckin dumb

- the most tragic moment in this season was ‘monkey needs a hug.’ i felt nauseous 

- okay, now for THE TWIST! the accent drop was a great touch, and i loved that she was poisoning him the entire time. also fuck white men and supremacists, and fuck the museum dude for enabling them. 

- the ending was great. i liked that her mom was chillin with her. the building blowing up was very tarantino. loved her a lot

- 8.5/10, boring in the beginning but the end is worth it 

and now.. 

BLACK MIRROR EPISODES RANKED (AS OF SEASON 4)

1. U.S.S. Callister

2. Nosedive

3. Hated in the Nation

4. San Junipero

5. Fifteen Million Merits

6. Be Right Back

7. White Bear

8. White Christmas

9. Black Museum

10. Crocodile

11. Arkangel

12. Metalhead

13. Hang the DJ

14. Playtest

15. The Entire History of You

16. Men Against Fire

17. Shut Up and Dance

18. The National Anthem

19. The Waldo Moment

[aion-rsa]

Spiral: From the Book of Saw Review – Chris Rock Caught in Same Old Traps

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The good news about Spiral: From the Book of Saw—the ninth entry in the infamous horror series and the second reboot—is that you really don’t have to be invested in the convoluted, borderline nonsensical mythology of the previous eight films to know what’s going on. There are no recurring characters, and even series super-villain Jigsaw himself (who returned again and again from seeming death in the form of Tobin Bell) only appears as a photo.

The not-so-good news is that Spiral almost goes too far in the other direction: It’s not particularly scary, it’s extremely simplistic to the point of repetition, and due to its repetitive structure, the viewer is able to figure out pretty quickly who is behind the string of murders that are being done in the style of Jigsaw. Well almost like Jigsaw, since the victims this time are exclusively plainclothes detectives.

For fans of the series, there are the required “torture trap” killings in which each victim is given the means to choose whether they live or die—although they all end up dying anyway, of course. The traps are suitably macabre and grisly, and the gore plentiful, although we found ourselves wondering, and not for the first time while watching a Saw movie, how the killer finds the time and resources to build these elaborate and deadly puzzles. Director Darren Lynn Bousman, returning to the series for the first time after directing Saw II, III, and IV, also maintains the visual consistency.

The film opens with a detective named Boswick (Dan Petronijevic), who is dispatched in a nasty subway trap. Down in the tunnels, Bos is required to rip out his own tongue as a train barrels down. His friend, Det. Zeke Banks (Chris Rock), takes the lead on the case and it soon becomes apparent that the killer is utilizing the methods of Jigsaw to target dirty cops. Banks has his own baggage too. Not only is he the son of an esteemed, now retired, police chief (Samuel L. Jackson), but Zeke turned in a bad cop 12 years ago and has been ostracized by his colleagues ever since.

Saddled with a new, fresh-out-of-the-academy partner (Max Minghella) and pressured by the current chief (Marisol Nichols), and warned by his father of grave consequences should the murderer indeed be a Jigsaw copycat, Zeke begins receiving recorded messages and grisly mementos in the mail from the killer—further cementing the fact that a new acolyte of Jigsaw is on the loose and that this psychopath is passing moral judgment on the entire police force.

It’s worth recalling that the original Saw, which was directed by James Wan in 2004, was more of a mystery than an outright horror film, with two men waking up chained inside a room with a corpse between them. The pair try to figure out how they all got there and what to do next. It was only with Saw II that the emphasis shifted to the villain himself, Jigsaw, and his increasingly complex and gruesome traps, making the series one of the leading lights of the so-called (and thankfully short-lived) “torture porn” subgenre.

Spiral not only brings the series back to its mystery roots in some ways—even if it’s relatively easy to solve—but molds its story in the shape of a police procedural. But since the movie shows its hand relatively early, there’s no real forward motion to the narrative. And while the fact that the killer is targeting corrupt cops is an attempt at up-to-the-minute relevance, it’s handled in such a heavy-handed manner that the film risks being overbearing in that regard.

Still, there’s a certain morbid fascination in watching the story unfold and seeing just how inventive the script (penned by returning Jigsaw writers Josh Stolberg and Pete Goldfinger) can get with the traps. But there’s also a workmanlike feel to the entire production and much of the acting (the latter a longtime sore spot with this franchise), which adds to an exhausted vibe that is hardly surprising nine films into a franchise.

As for Chris Rock, he remains a charismatic presence onscreen, but he’s ill-equipped to handle the more somber, haunted aspects of his character. He seems unsure of just how seriously to take his performance, and often falls back on a ready supply of quips—some of which do give the film momentary respites of humor while others just dangle awkwardly in the scene. Samuel L. Jackson is only in the film for a handful of scenes, adding his special sauce whenever he shows up but also clearly just there to collect a quick paycheck.

Of course Spiral leaves the door open for more mayhem to come, depending on whether the box office receipts justify it. On a creative level, however, Spiral doesn’t really offer any new pieces to the jigsaw puzzle.

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Spiral plays only in theaters beginning on Friday, May 14.

The post Spiral: From the Book of Saw Review – Chris Rock Caught in Same Old Traps appeared first on Den of Geek.

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[geekmedium]

Amazing Spider-Man #243 is never gonna be in anyone’s top 10 issues/stories. It won’t even be in anyone’s top 50. Even if you do a best Roger Stern’s Spider-Man list, this won’t come close to the top. But this is without a doubt my favorite Spider-Man issue of all time.

Not that I think it’s the most action packed, or most emotional, or even all that impressive on an objective level. It’s essentially a day in the life of Spider-Man issue, without any big villains or fights, and a twist at the end I’ll get too. But in this story was everything I love about the webslinger as well as a personal connection I wasn’t expecting.

We start it off with Peter dealing with relationship troubles as Mary Jane re-enters his life at the wrong moment. As always, Peter tries his best, and even helps out a rival get his relationship sorted out. But as a result of his kindness, his own relationships become more complicated.

Amy completely disappears from the narrative after this, as far as I remember, but MJ is here to stay and keep Peter on his toes. In an interview with Roger Stern, he said he never wanted Peter and MJ to hook up, and just saw her as someone to come in and occasionally pull the rug out from under Peter. While I’m glad that didn’t come to pass, I think I can sort of see where he was going with that.

Mary Jane could provide a constant feeling of things being off balance or messy. She shows up in just one scene and she already makes a fairy complicated situation spiral out of control. And their history together combined with a genuine friendship would have been a case of having your cake and eating it too; Stern could keep Peter a free bachelor while also giving him someone who, depending on the story, either be a trusted friend he could confess too, or someone that shakes things up for drama. Again, I prefer Spider-Marriage, but I could see the appeal of this dynamic.

So with Peter’s personal life on the downturn he decides, like usual, to blow off steam by web-slinging. First making a quick stop to get help with a minor villain problem from last issue (that goes nowhere) from Curt Connors. While there, Spidey’s professor comes in and he is able to sneak a peak at his grades because he’s been having academic trouble, and is surprised to find that he passed the exam with an A. Elated, he bounces around the city in dynamic panels I wish we saw more of in his comics.

I’ll talk about this more down below, but I think so many people get obsessed with a miserable Peter, the plaything of misfortune, that they forget he gets win, on a fairly consistent basis. Of course sometimes people over-correct and make him a clown, but again I’ll talk about that later. 

Anyway all good things must end, and he ends up going to stop a somewhat mundane crime (it was a terrorist attack on the church). With little effort, he saves the day, and even gets thanked for his help, which is a welcome change of pace from the constant slander. Again, small victories. He develops picks for the Bugle, and with prospective money in hand, he visits Black Cat and contemplates his future both with her, and his general financial future. 

Other people have commented on this better than me, but Spidey’s sense of responsibility and duty doesn’t just come down to fighting villains. He feels responsible for those closes to him, and the next few panels where he debates his options are a nice encapsulation of that. John Romita Jr. has a nice trick where he uses several clocks around the city to show Peter contemplate for literally hours as he swings around. He isn’t just about to randomly do things, even if it’s to help others. He thinks it through until he’s almost neurotic from over thinking.

His mind made up, he goes to his college to make a request and the issue ends on this:

Here is everything I want from a Spider-Man issue/arc/run. Complicated relationships, love drama, interesting side characters with their own stories, action, a sense of fun and energy, and hard decisions. And that last one is most important of all, because that is what I think was essential to me ‘getting’ Spider-Man.

I liked Spider-Man, and thought he was a fun character, but I had never made a big connection with him. I bought into a lot of fandom opinion that Spidey is just a woe-is-me, kind hearted, light character. Someone to enjoy in a small bursts, but not on the level of other great characters I loved like Daredevil and, especially, Superman. But #243 changed that and I think it comes from the fact I was in the same headspace as Peter when I first read this.

I won’t go super personal, but I was coming to what I thought was the end of my college career, and to say I was anxious was an understatement. I felt I had no future, no prospects, and no choices. I was depressed. But when I read this issue, I was stunned. Peter was making a decision similar to mine, and grappling with the same problems and fears as me. And he made his choice and what’s more, he lived with it. The choice had ramifications for more than just an arc, or even Roger Stern’s run, it affected him for, both in-universe and out, years of time. But you know what, despite the problems it dealt him, he made the most of it. More still, that choice opened opportunities he probably wouldn’t have had if he made a different one. This was so different from other characters, comic or otherwise, that I read. It was more real. More relatable.

And it was at that point that I think I ‘got’ Spider-Man. He isn’t relatable in the sense he is exactly like you. Or in the sense he is always suffering, either comically or tragically. He’s relatable because he, like us, makes deeply human choices. 

All good characters are forced to makes choices of course, but his aren’t often on fate of the world stuff like the FF or Avengers. His choices are often things like who to trust and forgive or career and relationships decisions. And these choices can be tough and complicated in a way that other characters don’t have to grapple with. There aren’t usually any easy answers, and sometimes the consequences are genuinely horrible and unlucky. But like us, Peter has to deal with them the best he can and move on. 

And I think I love this more than any other aspect of Spider-Man. There is no real set status quo; he grows and changes and enters new areas of life. And sometimes it’s scary and unpredictable, but Spider-Man helped me realize you can keep moving forward. He made that decision in college, and he made a lot more after it. Decisions to get married, or where to live, or dealing with new people in his life, good and bad. And because he lived with those decisions to even middle-age (because I consider Spider-Girl semi-canon) I know I can too.

[mermaidsirennikita]

October 2017 Book Roundup

As much as I tried to stick with ~spooky~ books, I found that a lot of the horror novels I looked at (especially those written by men, to be honest) seemed incredibly cliche or just... grimdark.  You have to have a good story, you know?  So I drifted into more familiar territory with fantasy quite often--though I did read one really good horror novel at the end of the month--and threw in a thriller.  But my favorite book of the month was An Enchantment of Ravens by Margaret Rogerson, a darkly whimsical, romantic fairy tale.  Another YA fantasy standout, if you’re looking for diverse reads written by Own Voices authors was Forest of a Thousand Lanterns by Julie C. Dao, the origin story of Snow White’s evil queen with a dose of East Asian mythology.  But all in all, it was a good month, especially after a couple months with rather meh ratings.

An Enchantment of Ravens by Margaret Rogerson.  5/5.  Isobel has built a reputation as a portrait painter of the fair folk.  Fairies from far and wide come to the town of Whimsy to have their portraits done by her, and so it’s no surprise that Rook, the autumn prince, wants the same.  But after Isobel paints mortal sorrow in Rook’s eyes, his authority is questioned and he spirits her away to stand trial for the crime--but their journey is treacherous, and even their attraction toward each other presents a challenge.  For if a fairy and a mortal fall in love, they break the Good Law--and are condemned to death.  Okay, so this is definitely a whimsical “girl gets whisked off to fairy land by hot fairy, romance ensues” story but a) what the fuck is wrong with that and b) I???  Loved???  It???  This is no Sarah J. Maas bullshit.  Rook is not only a bit scary but hilariously inhuman, making him a totally lovable character, not all rapey and weird like most hot dude fairies in recent YA.  His feelings for Isobel seem completely real, and aren’t presented in an over the top way.  The book maintains the sense of a fairy tale, but it’s also funny and Isobel has a sense of practicality that’s juxtaposed to the world she lives in.  If you want to get swept away, this is a book for you.

Hex by Thomas Olde Heuvelt.  1/5.  A small town is haunted by an actual witch (not the ghost of the witch, or at least not from what I could tell) who, after being unjustly executed centuries before, wanders about with her arms bound to her sides and her eyes and mouth sewn shut.  In order to keep everyone safe, the townspeople--who are unable to leave after moving there and encountering the witch--use surveillance systems to monitor the Black Rock Witch.  But, unable to abide by the strict regulations, teenagers make her presence go viral, causing a downward spiral in their society.  Basically, I wanted to read more horror this month and going onward, and this sounded cool...  It isn’t.  It’s basically a rundown of the various ways in which the Black Rock Witch and the other women of the town are lesser than the men, caricatures of themselves, or punching bags.  When teen boys started talking shit about the witch getting “wet” for them, I was... kind of getting over the book.  By the end, I was rolling my eyes.  And it is incredibly slow, so be warned--cool concept, shittiest of executions.

From Here to Eternity by Caitlin Doughty.  4/5.  Progressive mortician and proponent of erasing the fear of death Caitlin Doughty traveled the world “in search of the good death”, observing various rituals surrounding death and grieving.  This is basically her memoir of that time, divided from place to place.  Caitlin also hosts the web series “Ask a Mortician” and wrote the great “Smoke Gets In Your Eyes” about her time as a crematorium employee, and honestly... she seems like a super cool person, and it shows through her writing.  She’s frank without being unsympathetic, and even when she disagrees with people (she doesn’t only discuss cultures of whose practices she approves, which I appreciated) there’s a ton of respect and understanding on her end.  But she also expects respect in return, and is very frank regarding her own views.  The book is part death, part travel, and it’s also incredibly interesting and human.  The only critique I can make is that I wish Caitlin had been able to go to other countries just to cover even more, but I understand the limitations there.

I Let You Go by Clare Mackintosh.  3/5.  Following the hit and run killing of five year old Jacob, Jenna Gray runs off a small Welsh town to hide from the death of her child and everything that preceded it.  As her story unfolds, the parallel narrative of the cops struggling to figure out what happened during that hit and run is detailed.  I was promised Gone Girl fuckery, but while this was a good and entertaining thriller, it wasn’t anywhere near as subversive as Gone Girl.  It’s not paint by numbers either, and is definitely interesting.  But don’t expect something out there.

Uprooted by Naomi Novik.  4/5.  In Agnieszka’s small village home, a girl is chosen every ten years by the Dragon, their wizard protector in the cursed Wood.  Agnieszka is sure that her best friend, the beautiful Kasia, will be the next girl chosen--so imagine her shock when the Dragon selects her.  This is one of those stories that feels very classically fairy tale-ish, with lovely writing and tons of magic.  It gets points for focusing on the friendship between Kasia and Agnieszka and going places I didn’t expect--but I do wish more page-time had been given to the romance.  It didn’t have to be central, but what we got was good and I wanted more.

Forest of A Thousand Lanterns by Julie C. Dao.  4/5.  The beautiful and poor Xifeng lives in a small village, constantly tormented by her controlling aunt Guma while stealing away to meet her lover Wei in secret.  Guma has great plans for Xifeng, seeing the throne of Feng Lu in her future.  But there will also be a price to pay for that throne.  Running away with Wei, Xifeng arrives at the palace, only to find a caring empress--who she believes that she’s destined to replace--and enemies on every side.  This is a reimagining of Snow White’s Evil Queen, drawing from Chinese mythology.  It takes a while to get going, but once it grabbed my attention--specifically, when Xifeng arrived at the palace--I was gripped.  Xifeng is a compelling and ruthless protagonist, who I’d hesitate to call a heroine.  The book doesn’t have a lot of black and white good and evil.  A few characters fell somewhat flat, but as the book went along it became stronger and stronger, and by the end I was dying for the sequel.

Wild Beauty by Anna-Marie McLemore.  3/5.  For generations, the Nomeolvides women have been the caretakers of La Pradera, a famous garden estate.  But they have a secret: if a Nomeolvides woman falls in love, her lover will disappear.  Five girls of the current generation--cousins--are in love with the same girl, and terrified of her disappearing.  But suddenly a boy appears, rather than disappearing, and the girls are thrown into disarray, questioning his origins and what it means for their family.  McLemore is a beautiful writer; I’m so jealous of her ability to craft sentences.  This is a true magical realism book, which makes sense as McLemore is Latina, and the genre was crafted by Latinx writers (and thanks to a certain hugely popular white writer dabbling in magical realism lately, it’s been a hot topic).  I will say that for all that the book was beautifully written, I didn’t connect to the characters as I have with past books, and the plot was a little hard to grasp at times.  But it was still lovely.

The Last Days of Jack Sparks by Jason Arnopp.  4/5.  The book is set up as the final manuscript of Jack Sparks, annoying atheist and shock-value journalist.  The book was meant to be Sparks’s attempt to take down the supernatural, following his previous publishing success/personal disaster, in which he tried “every drug” and ended up with a cocaine addiction.  Sparks’s journey takes on exorcisms and combat magicians, and--as we know from the foreword by his brother--ends in his death.  But as for what happens between then and the beginning--that’s where things get interesting.  The book is creepy; actually, the creepiest parts are that Jack’s an unreliable narrator, and you’re never sure what is real, what his his intentional embellishment, and what is something he literally forgot due to the supernatural events occurring.  Jack is a dick, which is kind of good because the shit that happens to him happening to a good person would be hard to read.  But he’s a good character, and certainly grows and unveils his true self throughout the book.  It’s a super entertaining, sometimes spooky ride through a man’s descent into the paranormal, and maybe madness too.