#reanimator meta

[eldritch-bf]

It’s a good thing Herbert isn’t explicitly gay and attracted to Daniel because otherwise that would be some of the most homophobic shit ever. Like as I’ve been reading Monsters in the Closet: Homosexuality and the Horror Film it’s literally always the fucking weird well-dressed intelligent small male antagonist trying to destroy/seduce the ostensibly straight and normal hero out of heteronormativity and into whatever depraved shit he’s doing (queer-coded mad scientist looking for an attractive hetero male assistant trope to help him play god), even if he’s forced to displace that urge as violence/hatred directed towards the female love interest.

And any sort of potential intimacy between the protagonist and the antagonist is replaced by violence. They verbally and or physically torture each other to death. They can’t stand each other but they can’t be apart. They can’t have sex because of censors (old Hollywood production codes) or the broad attitudes of the audience so they have to fight each other.

If they both die then they get to be together, clutching each other in their final moments. Queerness leads to suffering and death after all, and it’s inherently violent, of course. That’s what they have to remind people, even if they don’t want to, storytelling conventions of the era require it.

Like if Herbert was explicitly gay and interested in Daniel and the movie still played out the way it did? Especially if Daniel showed the faintest hint of tender feelings back? Literally the message would be “straying from heterosexuality even for a minute will leave a wake of destruction in your path”. Which is the message of those horror films with the queer coded antagonist.

Even worse that Meg doesn’t survive. Normally the hetero couple survives their encounter with the villainous queer but Meg gets killed mostly to cause Daniel more suffering. Meg’s death would have been Daniel’s punishment for his brief entanglement with the villainous queer man.

[pyramidofmice]

Tags by @unidentifiedprimate

When Herbert goes from my work/re-agent to Our work/re-agent>>>>>

[nothingenoughao3]

So y'all know how Jeff Combs was doing a theater production which someone involved with Re-Animator saw him in, and how he's suggested that the character he played there influenced how he played Herbert West.

I relayed this to @andalusiapunk and they were like "Oh! That explains it! He's theater-acting!"

I am not an expert by any means, but I did misspend my teenage years in a magnet school as a theater student. I understood immediately what they meant by theater-acting and I'm mad I didn't come up with it.

A lot of this has to do with Herbert's overall physicality. We all love talking about how he's hyper-dramatic, right? How he moves in a particular way that is extremely precise and sharp and, to be on point, theatrical. How he spins the tape recorder in his hand; how he offers Meg's heart in BRIDE; how he fumbles or manipulates syringes in various scenes.

None of that's in the script and it's not necessarily justified by what's happening... unless you're trying to make sure the audience in the backass end of the theater can see you're holding something small, like a tape recorder or a syringe or a human heart. As I observed elsewhere, you can trick the audience into 'seeing' or 'hearing' things that aren't present onstage or screen if your body language insists on its reality.

And, not to get into super-nerdy film history, but: originally theater-acting and movie-acting were one and the same. Early films are blocked like plays, they have extended sequences without constant cutting between shots (like an audience watching a play), and the extremely clear, over-enunciation of a play-actor trying to make sure those poor bastards in the back can hear what they're saying. And like a play, all acting was heavily rehearsed and expected to hit the same points and produce the same results every time.

What changed this was Marlon Brando introducing the idea of improvisation into movie-acting, a choice which also led to a greater flexibility in movie-acting... including delivery of lines. A more "natural", verisimilitudinous delivery became acceptable for films. This doesn't make either style bad, to be clear: each serves its purpose.

Bruce Abbott (to name the most obvious example) is doing movie-acting. He's got some Protagonist Accent going for him, but he has a clear variety of tone and a great deal of subtlety with his facial expressions and delivery. The same goes for the rest of the cast, although David Gale kind of straddles the line between these two styles.

Herbert's delivery is pure theater-acting. When he and Dan invade the morgue, Dan is whispering--but Herbert is stage whispering, which is why he hisses so much. I've made jokes on here before about how Herbert was born on Skid Row in Little Shop of Horrors-verse, and he thinks he's supposed to be in a musical... and, you know, LSOH is a film based on a play, only in that movie, EVERYBODY is theater-acting.

Anyhow, lotta words to find a different way to compliment Combs and the rest of the REANI cast on their acting, because I live for sorcery enjoying these damn movies.

[doubledeadstudio]

If Vincenzo's backstory feels kind of wild and elaborate, it kind of is. I have no intentions of having Vincenzo info-dump on the events of his history (since I don't want RH to just focus on events past), but they will be referenced vaguely and they're still canon to him.

Vincenzo and Black are actually the main characters of two stories I wanted to release publicly. Vincenzo's was going to be a series of novellas/novels that subverted the concept of a "hero's journey", where he followed traditional tropes and twisted them into a sick, horrific nightmare. Black's was going to be a webcomic. Crux was a prominent side character in both, a Merlin-esque figure that guided them deeper into their journeys. I'm not sure I'll ever make these (maybe Vin's?), but basically, Vincenzo was plucked out of Book 3, and Black was plucked out of Chapter 1 of his story, when they both met Crux. The video game, Reanimated Heart, is what I view as "Crux's story", hence why he's the "face" of the game.

Obviously this commentary is inconsequential to anything but! If you were wondering why he's the face of the game without the other LIs, that's why. It's not that the others are less important than him, but Evergreen Hollow is supposed to be "his" home territory, if that makes sense. Actually, as someone who enjoys being the "side" character, the "mains" of other stories being in his home turf is pretty important to him, including MC.

It's kinda funny that two of my plans to release stories in public fell through, and the ones about the side character that does NOT want to be the main became my "main" game HAHAHA. If he knows I'm using his face for advertisement, he'd haaaaaaate it.

[thanatika]

fun history fact: body snatchers, the people who would steal corpses from graves and illegally sell them to be used in medical research and anatomical study, were commonly referred to as "resurrectionists" or "resurrection men".

anyway...

[pyramidofmice]

Tags via @from-beyond

Bro why in the fuck is he putting the sock over the tag... Like I know he had to move fast but... Bestie...

[purble-gaymer]

i am not a buffoon! i don’t even know what a buffoon is! seriously, what is it? some type of monkey? (new chapter!)

[maggacammara]

9, 23, 24!

thank you! low-res Rauva approves.

9. Is your Tav from Baldur’s Gate? Why are they traveling there?

Nope! Rauva is from Menzoberranzan. She moved to Baldur’s Gate in her early 200s to escape the soap opera level drama of her birth family, became a Vengeance Paladin, and has lived in the city ever since. She’s in her late 400s at this point (actual birth year still TBD).

23. What do they do after the Absolute crisis?

This is such a good question, and I am earmarking it to give a good answer once I’ve finished Rauva’s playthrough! I’m still not sure about all the choices she’s going to make and how things will pan out, so I’ll come back to this in… well, I’m a slow player, so it may be months. But I will come back to it! You know I’m already planning her epilogue fic.

24. Does your character believe in the afterlife?

She would prefer not to. The concept of an afterlife instills a sense of dread in her, as she would like to believe that once she dies, she will return to the earth and her soul (whatever that may be, materially) will cease to exist. Any evidence to the contrary makes her skin crawl, so she tries to simply not think about it.

[nothingenoughao3]

Why we wanna transition to Mad Scientist (or, revulsion and queerness in horror)

(Hi, @ash-eats-film! This is the thing I mentioned!)

Horror has a few baseline emotions it tries to inflict on the audience. This has been written about for decades, most famously by Stephen King, but the baseline elements most writers agree on are as follows.

Dread: Anxiety over what is about to happen

Terror: The fear of what is occurring right this second

Revulsion: Being forced to interact directly with what's happening right now

Black comedy: Being tricked into laughing at either the terror or the revulsion

Horror: The trauma response to what just happened

A great example of this can be seen in The Evil Dead II (YT link that doesn't include the full context, but does have the, uh, money shot). There's the dread of realizing there's something in the root cellar; the terror of when the Deadite pops up in the trapdoor; the combined revulsion and black comedy of Ash jumping on the Deadite's skull/the door, popping out its eyeball which shoots into Bobby Joe's mouth, and then the horror of what just went down rolling over Ash and his current companions.

Often, revulsion and black comedy go hand in hand. That's because they're tension relievers. The revolting thing becomes ridiculous, and you laugh at how ridiculous it is. This lets you settle down in the midst of the gore and death, just slightly, just enough to get through it... so the horror can fully set in for you, too, once it's over.

You also, often, question your own stability if you laugh in the middle of a gross-out horror scene: "Am I sick? Is there something wrong with me for laughing at X?" This is even worse if the villain starts laughing--now you're questioning whether you're IDing with the monster. Are you okay? Is something wrong with you?

Revulsion is often framed as the slutty member of the good, proper, morally-upright brigade of horror. We have a name for folks who seek out gross-out horror--they're gore-hounds, a term that is virtually always pejorative when applied to other people. We call certain types of horror "torture porn" or "gore porn", as though it is inherently sleazy and sexual to rely on this specific emotional reaction. (Note that we don't have "black comedy-porn", or "dread hounds", even though a dread hound sounds really fucking cool.)

Not to go off on a huge tangent, but I think the issue with media that overly relies on revulsion is that it's unbalanced, not that it's bad. A movie that's nothing but dread never has any emotional payoff. A movie that's nothing but terror never lets the audience relax back into their seats and, paradoxically, will become boring (imagine two hours of jumpscares).

So forth and so on: all aspects of horror rely on each other to survive. That includes scenes that make you go "Awww, sick" while nervously cackling.

Here's the thing: in previous generations, revulsion was similarly understood to be an essential part of horror, but what led to a revolted reaction was very different.

Lovecraft (boo this man! BOOOOO) understood the power of revulsion, which was the source of a lot of his strangest and most vivid descriptions. It was also the source of some of his most bigoted ideas working into his stories. The undercurrent of "non-WASPs are evil because they are repulsive" is as pervasive in his work as "the universe is incomprehensibly vast". You kind of can't get around that.

But there's another thing Lovecraft did to generate revulsion. He wrote a number of stories where an unhealthy focus on corpses, graveyards, graverobbing, and the like is, indirectly or directly, associated with sexual perversion. 

How many, you may ask? Off the top of my head, there's "The Loved Dead", "In the Vault", "The Disinterment", "Pickman's Model", The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath, "The Hound" and "Herbert West: Re-Animator". All of these tales share certain themes, which don't repeat beat-for-beat in each tale but do overlap:

Male character becomes obsessed with dead bodies--whether that's stealing them, having sex with them, desecrating them, or resurrecting them.

He is comfortable around death and the dead to a degree that is unusual, sometimes explicitly stating that he prefers the smells/sights of death to those of life.

Terms like "fiendish", "hellish", "abnormal" and "perverse" are used to describe him; his gaze towards dead bodies or to experiments may be framed as "leering" or "speculative".

He is frequently a twink; often described as being frail, if not noticeably beautiful; he may recall being mocked for being "bookish" or "weak" as a child.

He is superficially charming in a way that gets him by in polite society, but not long-term nor in-depth.

He often ensnares an otherwise "normal" man to share his obsessions, effectively recruiting him as an assistant... until the "normal" guy realizes he's about to go on the chopping block (or, in at least one story, already was on the chopping block).

Their crimes involve a lot of sneaking around late at night, locked doors, whispering so they don't get caught (or they'll be killed), secretiveness, glee at getting away with it, and frequently, sharing the same living space.

The Unrepentant Evil Dude is often killed at the end of his tale in a way that implies vigilante/mob justice is at hand. 

The other may be allowed to live if he's very sorry and frames the whole story as being the fault of the other guy, or he may die too while affirming his horrible demise as just, even if it terrifies him.

(One could make an argument that Wilbur Whateley fits into some of these tropes. It's me I'm one)

If this all sounds very gay, Lovecraft probably would have agreed. He had as dim a view of homosexuality as he did on most other things that were Outside The Norm. In other words, we were supposed to see Richard Upton Pickman with his ghouls and think, "Ah, yes, this is a metaphor for queerness", only we were supposed to be revolted by that revelation.

This same attempt at revulsion can be easily read into Victor Frankenstein, and probably more Mad Scientists than I can name offhand (but feel free to in reblogs). Frankenstein's "crimes against nature" were connected to dead bodies as well, and likewise involved a lot of sneaking around, locked doors, and worry about what would happen were he caught with this naked man-thing he's keeping in his dorm. His crime, as with his parody character Herbert West, is creating life outside the bounds of heterosexual cisgender sex. This was meant to revolt readers' sensibilities as much as the whole cutting-up-corpses-and-stitching-them-back-together thing would.

This is why, if we're being honest, "Re-Animator" and "Bride of Re-Animator" are not necessarily gay… they're homophobic. This might be controversial, but stick with me.

I feel like Gordon and Yuzna were tapping into that old-fashioned Revulsion Handbook, including from the source material, which thematically linked Herbert West with queerness. (I'm using "queer" a lot here, but I would personally include trans-friendly readings under that rubric; I'm using "queer" in the analytical sense and not solely in the identity sense.) This means that, ironically, a lot of what we could point to as queer subtext is actually homophobic text.

This is reinforced by the novelization of the first film, written by a homophobe who got Trumpist brainworms later in life. He wanted to make West repulsive to the reader, and therefore, he tried to make West more gay. And IT WORKED. 

To be clear, I'm not accusing anybody, other than the novelist, of being a homophobe. There's a difference between possessing internalized bigoted beliefs which express themselves in writing, versus utilizing tropes originating in bigotry because That's What's Done Around Here. (I can understand why others might not perceive a meaningful difference.) Like the Cuzco lizards, this queerness-as-villainy is definitely a stupid thing ported in from the source material.

I do think that this is why everybody but Our Queen Barbara Crampton seems embarrassed or nonplussed by all the transfags pestering them about fellatio tapes. It's because they don't get why this thing appeals so much to us. It shouldn't. If anything, they should be canceled for having yet another queer-coded villain, along with a number of other plot choices of questionable taste (I'm looking at you, The Head Scene, and I don't like what I see).

Only, uh, it didn't work out that way long-term, did it?

I thank Cronenberg and venereal horror for this, in part. Brutally queer despite not being explicitly gay, venereal horror is what happens when the characters should be revolted, but aren't. 

This kind of thing is horrifying for crossing the line twice: first by being disgusting, then by having characters respond as though it is exciting, or sexually stimulating, or if nothing else, normal. They are perverse. They leer at the dead and the subjects of their experiments. And the disgusting monsters at the center of these narratives are celebrated. Their twisted sexualities are explored with the same brave frankness other filmmakers give to milquetoast cishet missionary nonsense. Their political views are given life and air, and usually, they're right. Their deaths, if they come at all, are framed as tragedies brought on by society's sick rejection of the flesh their brave experimentation.

Cronenberg's the dude who unironically thinks that Shivers (trigger warning for literally everything) has a happy ending. My man David's got subscriptions where others have issues.

Venereal horror has given us a new metaframework for looking at the repulsive, the monstrous, and the problematic and responding to it… differently.

Now here's another thing: Lovecraft likewise provided a structure for embracing the grotesque and the queer.

Pickman, the Decadent artist, paints photorealistic, enormous portraits of ghouls. Literal flesh-eaters. He is fascinated by them, comfortable with them. "Model" heavily implies that Pickman is a ghoul changeling--switched at birth with a human child. This leans into Lovecraft's ideas about heritability being a major source of horror, of course, and seems run of the mill until you get to The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath.

In there, Pickman appears again, but this time as a ghoul. He has cast off his human social shackles and joined the beings he loves, beings who understand him and support him. Kadath is notable in that the ghouls are actually... like... reliable, loyal, and morally good? Carter's opinion pretty much is, "They do eat human corpses and they smell awful, but they're all very nice and want to help me on my quest, so maybe they're not so bad (if not as good as the cat army)".

This feels like Lovecraft acknowledging that his entire approach of linking queerness, death, and revulsion is fundamentally flawed. Once you become familiar with the repulsive, it becomes not-really-that-repulsive-at-all. You can find beauty in it, and amusement, and love. Pickman embracing his ghoulish nature isn't all that different from Seth Brundle's overall lack of revulsion at his body's transformation. And it's not that different from what a lot of transmasculine folks go through, either.

It's not that transmascs, trans men, and/or transfags don't see what West does as crimes against nature. It's that we're all very fucking tired of being accused of crimes against nature. We're tired of not being able to look at socmed without finding accusations that we're disgusting perverts who sneak around behind closed doors to corrupt innocent, promising people to be our lackeys and partners in crime.

Hell, I refer to my wife as "my partner in crime" not because it's a cute way of acknowledging how well and how much we work together both in life and creativity. It's also because we could have been arrested for our relationship when we got together.

We were illegal.

There was a lot of sneaking around and whispering and trying not to get caught and "what if they call the cops on us if we're clocked". Can I tell my friends about this? Will they reject me or rat me out? Where am I safe? Nowhere. Best to lock the door and then check it again to be sure. Best to be very quiet.

Best to act like a graverobber trying to get their grisly wares back home before good, decent, Christian folk see them.

So when I hear "Blasphemy? Before what God?!", I read it as (whether he's ace or aro, gay or achillean, trans man or transmasc or genderfucked) a queer slogan of defiance, instead of a defense of graverobbing, corpse desecration, and non-consensual resurrection.

We're told we and our bodies are repulsive, so being told that Herbert is also repulsive makes him more relatable. Instead of wondering what the hell's wrong with him for shooting up reagent, we all theorize that it's actually T or has similar effects--because we're all told that T is a toxin that will horribly change and disfigure our bodies. He dresses in a three-piece suit for school, and instead of reading him as a stiff and overly-formal little freak, we assume he's layering up because he hasn't found a hoodie he likes yet. 

He cackles at his horrific creations, and instead of saying "What a fucking freak (anguished)", we say "What a fucking freak (affectionate)" and laugh along with him. Who among us hasn't taken apart our Barbies and tried to combine their parts with the Kens? What is a doll, or a human, but a collection of parts to be rearranged? Haven't we also been told we're freaks for rearranging our own parts?

We've already been told by society at large that we are Herbert West. We're just embracing it, in the proud tradition of venereal horror fans who are not revolted when they ought to be, and I think that's delightful.

[friendcrumbs]

this is a rough draft of the thoughts but re-animator depicts death as primarily a biological/medical phenomenon, as opposed to a religious/spiritual, cultral, or even legal one. there is no talk of mourning or grief. meg could be seen as the exception but I would argue that she's not, not in any meaningful way. the rest under the cut because even though this is heavily abridged, it still got away from me (wordcount: 1.1k ish)

the straight-forward reason is it's because re-animator is a horror movie that relies mostly on gore and violence over psychological horror -- the reanimates are mostly anonymous and violent, pure monster and not person-turned-monster. even if we know more about them, like in the case of the cop's wife in bride, the backstory/cause of death is not used to evoke pity or tragedy. meg's reanimation was cut, leaving only the implications -- she gets to remain fully human in our memory and in the narrative. (the other exceptions are dr hill and dean halsey, but dr hill doesn't necessitate mourning -- making him sympathetic would be pretty impossible and not useful to the narrative -- and meg doesn't get time to mourn her father). a lack of emphasis on the other aspects of death makes sense due to time+narrative constraints; the franchise is about doctor-scientists, taking place in a lab/hospital, experimenting primarily on bodies which are forgotten/unclaimed or seen as disposable to avoid detection. a heavy focus on grief, cultural rituals of mourning, etc. would make them into entirely different movies.

however, the perspective also aligns with herbert's point of view. i'm not going to go through the science of it because i'm ill-equipped to do it, but regardless of the 'actual' way the science works, herbert is not proven wrong, narratively. while the reagent is flawed and likely missing components, and his methods are abhorrent, the basic theory behind his experiments is right. death is brain death, diagnosed by a medical authority, and it is a reversible process. the dead are medical objects to be studied, understood, diagnosed with no agency/question about their wishes in life. they become equalized through the same irreverence with which they're treated by herbert (and dan too, for the most part, but this part isn't about him) -- no matter if they're a mentor, an enemy, an unclaimed body, or a cat. their status is determined by their viability as an experiment, something purely instrumental.

they are not entirely fungible, though. consciousness is in every part of the body, but the body parts do not work in the same way -- in the construction of the bride, herbert chooses the parts most representative of the donor (feet of a dancer, legs that 'walked the streets'). even the more ephemeral/spiritual qualities are knowable/quantifiable within the narrative: the 'soul' is proven by a scientific method of weighing the body before/after death -- an experiment dating back to the early 1900s -- and while it is not entirely interchangeable across people/species, neither is herbert totally off-base on the theory of transferrance. death, ultimately, is quantifiable, knowable, explainable, and thus, amenable to technoscientific/medical intervention and reversal. in herbert's view, there is no need for grief or mourning -- if you work hard enough, the process is entirely reversible.

this is where the narrative diverges from his way of thinking, in my opinion. while we only get glimpses of dan mourning meg, mostly through his projection on gloria, it's not something he shares with herbert, as he clearly disapproves unless he can exploit it. in bride, dan presents himself as Fine on the surface -- he works at an intense pace, he's moved on romantically, doesn't sit and wallow. there's no mention of how he grieved for meg, no talk of funeral, just a focus on pushing forward. he's repressed the feelings, and they only come out at moments when he's directly confronted with meg's death: during the argument with herbert/meg's heart reveal, gloria's death, and the bride's completion. he's clearly not Fine, even if he needs to be to function adequately at his job/in the lab/in his relationships.

to shorten this point exteremly, in the wider context, grief and mourning is often socially rejected for these very reasons, with the additional layer of repressing vulnerability in men. dan's got many stressors at the micro- and macro levels that make him repress. but, as in any gothic-related tale, complete repression is impossible. whatever is rejected will come back, creep in through the cracks to haunt you.

dan projects meg onto gloria, even though we really don't have any reason to think they're similar besides being blonde. if anything, francesca would serve as a better site of projection -- despite francesca being severely underdeveloped, she could be characterized as headstrong, caring, and inquisitive, qualities that she shares with meg. however, meg and gloria share the same status of 'medical subject' due to their death/illness. it highlights the tension between the human instinct to mourn and the simplified narrrative of death that dan avoids. instead of negotiating a way to mourn while continuing to work on the 'permament' solution to death, reconciling the cultural and the scientific, gloria's status's as dan's patient instead allows him to instead recreate the scenario of meg dying, but this time letting him 'fix it' using the medical/scientific means that failed him the first time around. of course, he fails again, but gets a third go around, with the bride. the repetition/return of the repressed/haunting -- whichever term you want to use -- does not evoke the same emotional reaction. it exposes dan's instability, morbid interests, dubious ethics, etc -- it taints his professional ethic at the hospital and gets in the way of his relationship with francesca. even in the 'succesful' attempt -- the creation of the bride, who is alive, 'loves' him, and is perhaps the most stable and nonviolent of the reanimates, at least initially -- the result is unsettling. it's not a real relationship. francesca finds his initial reaction repulsive, and he comes to reject the bride, equally disgusted. the uncanny recreation is unsustainable.

a similar principle is at work with meg's heart. the heart, like the other parts has a personality inscribed by the behaviors/functions it performed in life. whether herbert does actually subscribe to the idea that the heart would store the emotions in accordance with its metaphorical use or if he's hoping that the residual consciousness would be enough is arguable, but the heart nonetheless functions as the essence of meg. however, this literalization taints the memory and the 'real' meg of the previous movie. she's reduced to an object, something to be experimented on, something dead, and her relationship/feelings for dan. she becomes stripped of all the qualities that made dan fall in love with her/want to bring her back. a return to a time before the trauma is impossible -- whether through rejecting/repressing or recreating the scenario. In fact, trying to do so only entrenches it further.

tldr: they are so fucking doomed

anyways. if you made it to the end, thanks for reading. if you have any thoughts, let me know.

herbert's biologization of death and humanity (including objectification of the human body) results in a repression of grief and the cultural around death. this, in turn, spurs on dan's projection of meg onto gloria/the bride in a return of the repressed, but the result is uncanny/unheimlich – like the familiar but permeated with trauma, made weird and exposed (like in the case of meg's literalized heart). in this essay, i will

[doubledeadstudio]

Reanimated heart has become my biggest hyperfixation lately and I HAVE QUESTIONS HAUNTING ME, how old exactly was Vincenzo when he got held captive by the military general, how long did he stay captive? Why did Vincenzo go there in the first place? How in the world was he able to get overpowered when that eldritch arm is a death machine? Is the mutie that he took still alive? Will we ever be able to pet it? What is everyone's favourite colour to see Mc in? If Mc saved Black's name in their phone as Daddy and Crux's as the green onion how would they react when they find out? And also why di-

*Gets put down like a rabid dog*

HAHAHA. I'm glad you you're hyperfixated on the game, anon!

I keep this information relatively blurry, but I think it'd be around 3 years ago before present day, around 9-11 months?

He didn't want to be. He gets transported by his Eldritch "companion" every few years to a new dimension against his will.

It was a high fantasy setting. The General was a great and powerful hero. Vincenzo is a glass cannon, but the General was a tanky man, like Black. (And you know who wins in a fight there.) Vincenzo's arm is all-powerful, but it is attached to a human body, meaning if, for example, it was twisted in a particular way, Vincenzo wouldn't be able to use it.

Yes. And for the petting question, no. I have specific plans for the mutie. (Note that everything I say on the tumblr references my vague drafts. If the draft changes and you can pet it in the future, I probably changed my plans with it.)

Vin - Purple. Black - black (lol). Crux - no preference? Whatever suits MC.

HAHAHA. Black would be like "I think you named me wrong." Crux would find it very funny.

*hides my shotgun*

[jinjeriffic]

DCxDP Prophecy Universe Part 6

Part 5

Most of the time, being the son of Batman was a point of pride for Damian. Today, it was an exercise in frustration. Not only had Father deemed him too emotionally compromised to participate in the investigation of his so-called brother. Not only was he benched from patrol until Batman returned from abroad. He also had to continue attending school as if nothing had happened! He could probably teach most of the classes better than the adults! Oh, but ‘socializing with his peers’ was deemed too important to miss out on.

No wonder Damian was in a foul mood when he returned home. It had been the last school day before fall break, and a week ago he had been looking forward to the opportunity to patrol without having to worry about getting up early in the morning. Then that damned apparition had dropped the bombshell that had upended all of Damian’s carefully laid plans. Now half of the family was off chasing leads and he was stuck at home cooling his heels. It wasn’t fair!

After doing his customary check on his pets, he had changed into training gear as soon as possible and was now in the process of running through the latest combat program Father had designed. The flow of dodge-weave-counter-strike was helping him vent his frustration and clear his head. And if the training bots ended up more damaged than usual, well that just served Father right. He wasn’t some hapless child to be grounded!

Spin. Strike. Jump. Slash. He was moving on instinct, letting his training take over. A symphony of violence the background track to his churning thoughts, the questions that had been plaguing him all week.

Brother of blood. What did that mean? A full brother? A half brother? The result of some ill-advised dalliance of his Father? Unlikely. The letter had been addressed to Damian Al Ghul, not Damian Wayne. A deliberate choice of words, most likely. A child of his Mother then. He couldn’t imagine Mother would sully herself with another man’s touch. Even after everything, she still loved Father in her own twisted way. Unless Grandfather had ordered her… Stop it!

Stab. Crouch. Roll. Slice.

Never buried but already mourned. Not a lab grown creation then, to be discarded casually. Mourning meant caring. Love. Did Father know something? The haunted look that had appeared in his eyes spoke of old grief. The same grief that still plagued him when memories of Todd or Damian’s death were close to the surface. But he had never spoken of another child. Would he even bother to tell them?

Strike. Throw. Close distance. Disarm.

Lightning and ice. Defibrillation? Some horror movie style reanimation? Cryofreeze? The entity had meta abilities, could it harness lightning and ice as well? A better son, a more powerful Demon’s Heir… No!

Side-step. Kick. Twist. Leg-sweep.

Strike down the Demon’s Head. Did that mean Grandfather? Or Damian himself if the old man died first? It would be just like Grandfather to arrange for Damian to be killed and replaced by a brother. To get revenge for Damian choosing Batman’s legacy over the League’s while hurting their family in the most intimate way possible. Killed by a brother he should have loved, who should have loved him… Fool!

Damian stopped as the gong sounded to mark the end of the program. Around him, the training bots returned to their starting positions, now significantly worse for wear. A few of them were disabled to the point of uselessness.

Damian sheathed his weapons and forced his breathing to slow as he started his cool down stretches. It wouldn’t do to be careless because of some emotional episode. He was more disciplined than that.

What could Death earn anyway? Death brought nothing but nightmares and pain and torment.

Damian shivered. He didn’t like thinking about his Death.

Shoving the memories firmly aside, he returned his training weapons to their respective places before heading over to the Batcomputer. He needed a distraction. Maybe he should call up Jon and see if he had any plans for fall break. Since Damian was benched he would need something constructive to do with his time. Surely with the two of them working together they would find some kind of criminal enterprise to topple in a Kansas cornfield.

Damian compiled the search strings for any unusual activity in the area and set it to run. Now it was a waiting game to see if anything of note turned up. Leaning back, he idly kicked the console, sending his chair into a lazy spin. If nothing turned up in Kansas, maybe he would widen his search to the surrounding states. If they flew Air Superboy, distance would hardly be an issue. Hell, if Jon was busy maybe he could go visit Richard. Bludhaven was never lacking in crime, and Father wouldn’t be able to complain about a lack of appropriate supervision during patrol. With Drake and Todd having left on a ‘roadtrip’ for at least a day…

Damian stopped his spinning and frowned. Now that he thought about it, it was highly unusual for his two older brothers to have left Gotham together and in their civilian identities. Especially with the Bats already shorthanded due to Father’s absence and Robin’s benching. He had been too distracted by the upcoming school day to make the connection when his brothers had mentioned their plans at breakfast that morning. And Drake had been investigating League activity… Damian’s fingers flew across the keyboard, bypassing Drake’s security protocols with ease. If his brother had uncovered a League connection he had a right to know!

What he found among Drake’s recent search history was not what he expected. Some crackpot scientists from Illinois? That’s what had drawn his attention? Certainly, the older Robin had flagged some suspicious transactions and marked the Fentons as potential threats based on their inventions, but there were heroes closer to Amity Park that they could have foisted the investigation off on.

Damian drummed his fingers against his armrest. Something wasn’t adding up here. Pulling up everything he could find about the Fenton parents, he started looking through medical records, school records, articles… Suddenly, Damian’s heart slammed against his ribs. There, on the cover of a two year old magazine, was the face that had haunted him all week. With trembling fingers, he zoomed in on the image. It only took a few minutes to alter the hair and eye colour. It was unmistakably him. The boy who bore an uncanny resemblance to Damian himself, if slightly older and paler.

Swallowing hard, Damian scrolled through the magazine’s online archive to find the article mentioned on the title page. An almost extinct gorilla species. A chance discovery by then fourteen year old Daniel Fenton.

“Daniel,” Damian rolled the name around his mouth. A fairly common Western name. “Daniel. Danyal?” If he was Talia’s son, surely she would have used the Arabic version… no! He was jumping to conclusions!

Now having a name to go on, Damian dug deeper than Drake had bothered to. The birth certificate named a small town in Utah, but there were no records of a hospital admission. A home birth? There were no records of the Fentons having a residence in that state. No medical records of prenatal care either, though there were for the birth of the older sibling. Had the pregnancy gone unnoticed? Possible, if unlikely. There had been a vehicle registration for a motorhome during that time period though. Had the Fentons been living on the road when their son was born? Or had they acquired the child some other way? If he was an Al Ghul who would have spirited him away to the USA?

The Fentons had settled down in Amity Park about six months after Daniel’s birth, purchasing the residence they apparently used to this day. From there, his records were fairly standard and unremarkable, though there were a higher than average number of doctor’s visits for minor household accidents. Not enough to get flagged by CPS, but certainly worrying if potential mad science was involved. Daniel’s school records showed average grades, with higher scores in Maths and Science. At age fourteen however, his academic performance took a sharp dip, with an uneven performance on tests and numerous unexcused absences. His teachers noted frequent inattentiveness in class or Daniel outright falling asleep. Someone had submitted reports of bullying and suspicious bruises, but the case was dropped and never followed up on. His grades had evened out since then, but the unexcused absences persisted.

Damian knew enough about the trials and tribulations of teenage superheroics to recognize a pattern. And it certainly looked like Daniel fit the bill. If he had acquired meta abilities two years ago it probably took some time to get a handle on them and find a balance between his legal and illegal activities.

Damian steepled his fingers together. There was only so much his digital investigation could reveal. It was time for some fieldwork.

Part 7

[janearts]

Roisia Lydgate: Character Overview

This is really more of a background introduction to her character, but I'm trying to put as much information in one place for future reference or for anyone who wants to get a better idea of her character. Details underneath the cut!

Meta-Knowledge

Roisia is my Source Hunter from Divinity: Original Sin, but I recreated her in Baldur’s Gate 3 as a way to continue her story albeit in a completely different universe. The story and events of DOS have since become part of her backstory, and tweaked to fit the world of Faerûn.

Name Pronunciation

I’m honestly none too fussed about pronunciation. Her name is an 11th century mediaeval name that would later become “Rose” in Middle English. Roisia is probably meant to be pronounced something like /ɹɔɪːsiːɑ/ (Roy-see-ah) based on other name variants found around the same time. Her nicknames, as given to her by her parents, include: Rose, Rosie, petal, pet, rosebud, bud, so on and so forth.

Personality

Roisia is charming, adventurous, with a voracious curiosity, and a deeply analytical mind. She believes that taking care of the dead and providing a voice for the dead is her life’s calling. She was formerly raised to be a Cleric of Kelemvor, but believes that her god has disowned her since she reanimated her father. She now believes herself to be deemed among the Faithless. She’s compassionate to those in need and is willing to break rules (and the law) to help others. While she is generally a law-abiding citizen, she is dogged in pursuing the whims of her curiosity and will likewise do whatever it takes to solve a puzzle, a mystery, or a murder… or simply answer a question that has occurred to her. She is sociable, prefers when everyone gets along, and will try to talk her way into and out of most situations. This includes charming, reasoning, intimidating, and/or deceiving others to get her desired outcome. Ultimately, she finds solace and comfort in the company of animals, the dead, and books. Her favourite animal is the noble spider, and she breeds and raises some species in her spare time.

Spells and Such

I tried as best I could to replicate Roisia’s DOS character. In DOS, she was classed as a Witch. Witchcraft spells in DOS are a mixture of Necromancy spells and Enchantment spells, and I chose my spells in BG3 to imitate the ones that you get in DOS. As a witch in DOS, Roisia also had the ability to talk to animals and summon a spider. (I cheesed this in BG3 with the Find Familiar spell—technically a Conjuration spell—and having her drink a potion after every long rest.) To be more in keeping with her backstory, I gave her a Guild Artisan background and invested skill points in skills like Medicine.

Backstory

Roisia grew up in Eastway of Baldur’s Gate. Her father worked in the Gray Harbor shipyard as a shipwright and her mother was a Mortarch, running the Eastway Cemetery & Lydgate Funeral Service. She was raised to follow in her mother’s footsteps as a Cleric of Kelemvor, and specifically as a Mortarch, from an early age. She assisted her mother in managing the burial customs and rites for the Lower City’s diverse community (from embalming to ritualistic cannibalism to poisonings), comforting grieving family members of the deceased, and tending to the dead buried in the cemetery.

Her life took an unexpected turn when her father drowned during a sea trial. Grieving for her father, Roisia made her first attempt at Necromancy. She unwittingly used a wish spell in the process and reanimated him as a skeleton. Because it was the wish spell, not her first attempt at a necromantic ritual, that bound the soul of her father to his bones, Roisia is determined to master the School of Necromancy and truly resurrect her father.

She is interrupted in her early studies by the appearance of Eustace, who recruited her into the Source Hunters, an organisation dedicated to eradicating dangerous magic users (like… Necromancers). “We need you,” he said. “… and you need us.” Roisia & Eustace (or Roy & Stacey as they became known to each other) investigated the mysterious murder of a town counsellor and uncovered a Necromantic cult in the process. As they adventured together, Roisia began to develop feelings for Eustace, but as their adventure concluded and they returned to the Source Hunter Academy, Eustace did not return those feelings. Dejected, Roisia left the Source Hunters and returned to her home in Baldur’s Gate.

To “cure” herself of her heartbreak, Roisia drew up a list of lifelong goals for herself. They are:

1. A cemetery or plot of land of her own to oversee. 2. “Tenants”/”Residents” (aka The Deceased) to house and tend to on this land. 3. To master Necromancy such that she can extend indefinitely her own life and the lives of her loved ones. 4. One (1) Spouse (*not of the squeamish variety) 5. Children (*ideally 3-5)

Refocused aggressively on her list, Roisia returned to her duties during the day and her studies during the night. She was abducted by the nautiloid one night while she was off to dig up a new test subject.

Playlist

[pyramidofmice]

tags via @unidentifiedprimate

Herbert West (Re-animator 1985)

[purple-goo-writes]

Punk Hazard pt 2

Part 1

"Clocky...what's wrong with me? What did they do to me?" It hurt so much, so much. Something was wrong! Wrong Wrong Wrong WRong! "I do not know Daniel...but you can not stay here any longer."

Danny, now Punk Hazard, was not expecting to be sitting in a safe house, what looked to be a refurbished warehouse, and to be fussed over by various of the older members of the Rogues as Captain Cold called them upon introducing them to Punk. Yet, here he was sitting on the couch as James, who was apparently the Former Trickster, fussed over him while Captain Cold, or Leonard Snart as he was told to call him, bustled around the kitchen with Heatwave. Killer Frost had dipped after they escaped the heroes and Mr. Snart talked about introducing him to the Rogues. Maybe he should have done the same. But, Mr. Snart had promised him non-reanimated food.

Though he had looked rather concerned when Punk asked if it was going to try and eat him. Apparently food didn't do that here. Good to know.

James seemed content to know that his scars while glowing an eerie green/blue weren't hurting him and that he had no injuries after his tussle with the Flashes. Glider was amused when Punk commented that James was rather motherly for a former villain, "Yeah, he's just like that. Think fussing over us keeps him from relapsing at times."

"Definitely not used to an adult caring for me...Usually, they want to rip me apart molecule by molecule." Punk commented only to blink in confusion as the warehouse went silent, even the kitchen was silent as Heatwave and Leonard stopped to stare at him. "Guessing that's not normal?"

James made a strangled noise while Glider pats his shoulder to calm the man down, "No?!? Who does that to a kid?!" "I think you need to start from the beginning, kid," Captain Cold sighed as he handed the mixing bowl to Mick. He probably shouldn't be holding anything for this.

Twenty minutes later, Leonard wondered if Barry would forgive him if he froze a few government facilities solid. Probably, the guy was just as soft-hearted as he was when it came to kids. "Okay, let me get this straight...see if I have all the facts.." "...Pretty sure chair arms aren't supposed to bend that way."

"Your parents were mad scientists and worked with an evil government agency-"

"Not necessarily mad-"

"Found out you were a meta-"

"Technically I wasn't-"

"And decided to work with said government agency to rip you apart and find out how you tick-"

"Viviscected is the correct term for it."

"Along with other experiments which fucked with your biology and powers even more. And now you are on the run after ransacking their labs."

"Yeah pretty much.."

"Right you are one of ours now-"

"I'm not sure that's how adoption works-"

"Do you need a new name? I think you need a new name. Not just your rogue tag."

"He's not listening is he?"

[ash-eats-film]

I will never get over the fact that I stared Bruce Abbott and Jeffrey Combs in the eye and held a short conversation with them. And then when asked about their relationship at a Q&A during the making of ReAnimator, they moved like they were going to make out on stage and the audience (I’m sure FULL of Danbert fans) SCREAMED.

These are two grown men in their 70s and they KNOW.

They know about the ship guys SHUT IT DOWN IT’S GETTING META

Also Jeff swears like a sailor and I love it. Oh and when I got my copy of bride signed, I hadn’t noticed Bruce’s signature had smudged, but JEFF DID when he signed it. He literally walked over to the booth next to him where Bruce was and said “look what you fucked up, fix this for him”

I literally almost cried the way he SMACKED him with it and Bruce just said “I BET IT WAS YOUR FAULT FUCKER”

And then he fixed it and talked with me for a few more minutes about how he loves that they kept in touch after they finished making the movie and would literally go to baseball games together and hang out when they still lived close by THEY’RE TOO MUCH