#silent hill is probably one of my most favorite horror game when i was a child

[kinghijinx22]

Why Silent Hill 3 is my big favorite- a terrifying horror game about woman's experiences and the fears that come from existing as a woman in a patriarchal society

Silent Hill 3 is probably my favorite Silent Hill game and one of my favorite games of all time, and it has a story and themes that I've always really vibed with. It tells a remarkably progressive story for it's time that handles some intense themes that are still relevant even today, about experiences that a lot of woman go through and the fears that come from existing as a woman in a patriarchal society, what it's like having your own agency and bodily autonomy taken away from you, forced pregnancy and sexual assault, how harmful patriarchal societies are and this game really getting into the religious flavor of patriarchy in particular.

It's an incredibly scary game that uses a feminine sort of horror to great effect, with the design of the other world being as bloody as it is and the monster designs being representative of this. I mean there is a type of creature that are literally supposed to look like fetuses that start getting bigger throughout the game as the birth of God draws near and the giant worm boss for lack of a better way of putting, literally being a giant penis. I think the main complaint that I hear from people about this game is how slow the story is in the first half of the game, but I think the whole getting home late at night as a young woman contributes a lot to what this game is saying. And I absolutely love how this game ends with Heather literally aborting God and fighting it as the final boss, symbolizing her fully taking control of her life and rejecting all of the harmful expectations that were forced onto her. Main antagonist Claudia is such a tragic character though, someone who was so brainwashed by town's religion into think that someone HAS to give birth to God so hard that she did it herself and she suffered for it.

Also while not as intentional considering when it was written and they probably couldn't even write about this stuff if they wanted to, something that I think is worth noting is that I've heard from a lot of trans people who relate to this game as well and I can really see it. Considering it's about people who Heather knows from a past life, coming back to remind her of that past life and forcing it onto her, and Claudia referring to Heather as Alessa could be interpreted as deadnaming Heather. But yeah I've always really loved and connected with this game for how well it handles it's themes about woman's experiences and I think it's really cool how many trans people have been able to relate to it with those specific experiences as well.

Another of my favorite things about Silent Hill 3 is the main character Heather, because she really is one of the coolest characters that I've always really related to. Her struggles are incredibly relatable, but she's also inspiring in how she overcomes them and is always so confident. In fact I appreciate how her and her father subvert societal gender roles in opposite directions, with Heather being as confident and extroverted as she is, probably more then any other Silent Hill protagonist and willing to stand up to all of the men in the story like Douglas in the beginning, Vincent and Leonard, along with all of the monsters she has to fight. And Harry being a single parent who is as gentle and caring as he is, with his one track mind of looking as his daughter, he's kind of both a father and a mother in that way, and also being as physically weak as he is and the opposite of a action hero. She also easily has the most personality of any Silent Hill protagonist, like this girl is overflowing with charisma and is even a little jokey. In fact another detail that I like is how much personality comes through in her examine dialogue, where you actually get to hear her thoughts on everything instead of just basic observation "this is a thing" that the other games in the series do. Heather has opinions on everything, but how she's feeling throughout the game is also conveyed. The dialogue of her observations in the first half of the game has a much more playful and hopeful tone to it, but after Harry dies she becomes much more pessimistic, can only see the negatives in everything and just doesn't seem to care anymore.

Heather is an incredibly well written and nuanced character, and I'll be honest that this is the game I least want to see be remade because I know that they would find a way to fuck up the writing of her character and handling of the themes of this game. Even after the Silent Hill 2 remake being as good as it is, one of Blooperteams biggest flaws is being incapable of handling anything to do with woman's experiences or perspective. SH2 used to be my fav, but I came to realize that it was mostly just because it was the popular one and that I vibe a lot more with SH3 and 4. Especially because SH2 tells a story about misogyny but makes it all about the perpetrator rather then the victim, unlike Silent Hill 3 which does actually tell the story of someone on the receiving end of that type of violence and objectification. SH3 and 4 are my personal favorites, 3 because Heather is best protagonist and I really appreciate it's themes which are handled perfectly, and SH4 because it has a really cool narrative and horror concepts. I know opinions on SH4 are really split, and while I think there are some gameplay things that are jank, I love it's story and premise so much.

[teecupangel]

I was wondering if you’d ever thought about a crossover between Silent Hill and Assassin’s Creed. Like, what if there is some Isu tech under the town, something that the people are somewhat aware of and have an idea of how to use which leads to them making Alessa.

She’s like Desmond, high percentage Isu DNA without being sage level. The monsters and warping of the perception of reality is a side effect of what the machine was supposed to do, which is a failed experiment to essentially rebirth the Isu after the flare. Alessa can use it, that’s how she becomes Cheryl and then Heather.

Like, I don’t know what you could really do with it. Maybe have whatever they were trying to summon be an Isu that was going to overwrite Alessa in a similar way to how being a sage would work. Or maybe they just don’t know what it’s doing and keep accidentally bothering the Reader who told Alessa how and when to escape.

Mostly I just thought it might be funny to play around with considering some of the silly endings in the Silent Hill series.

So we’ll focus on the Silent Hill aspect for this idea and, of course, we’ll be making use of the lore lightly for this one.

How about instead of some kind of an Isu tech, a temple is actually underneath Silent Hill?

We’ll place the temple underneath what would later be known as Old Silent Hill district/area with the Balkan Church being the actual center of the temple underneath.

That’s why the Order (no, not the Templars, the cult in Silent Hill) pay close attention to Midwich Elementary School. That school is part of Old Silent Hill and so the Order believes that it is part of the ‘center’ of the house of their god.

The temple itself is in ruins and the Isu tech that had been placed there for experimentation had been damaged.

Slowly but surely seeping through everything, the soil, the air… the water…

The device was one of the failed projects to save the Isus from destruction. To be ‘reborn’ in a new body if they die.

There were two problems with this though:

1) The materials necessary for the new body would not be enough for number of Isus expected to die when the Solar Flare hits

2) The only way for the device to revive someone with all their memories intact (because what use was it to be given new life when they don’t have any memories of their previous life?), the device had to always record every single memory and thought of every Isus.

1 was a major problem that led to the shelving of the project. 2, on the other hand, was being tested in a smaller scale.

An area of which the device would record every single thing.

However, when the device was damaged during the Solar Flare and subsequent destruction of the temple/facility, the device began to record everything with Isu DNA.

And humans, on an average, have 0.0002% to 0.0005% of Isu DNA. It should be inconsequential but not to the device.

It still counted.

And that device didn’t just stop at recording memories and thoughts, it continued to record even dreams.

… and nightmares.

.

Now, here’s where we decide what route we go for:

Route 1: All the monsters and nightmares are real in Silent Hill

In this route, we’ll set up the device to have a learning AI that has been trying to fix major problem 1. But because it was damaged, the AI decided that ‘transforming’ the living beings in Silent Hill to bodies that can withstand the Solar Flare would be a better alternative. Of course, it has to make sure the memories are there but that only ends up mutating the bodies even further because it can no longer distinguish between memories and nightmares/dreams.

Route 2: The monsters and nightmares are all inside their heads

In this route, the device is the one making the nightmares feel too real for everyone. This is not the intended purpose and is actually because the device has been damaged too much at this point that it is ‘changing’ the brain chemistry and neurons of those who stay in Silent Hill.

Regardless of which route we take, the AI governing the device is the god the cult worships, Alessa was created with enough Isu genes that she was seen as an 'admin' by some kind (but trying to telepathically connect with her caused her to break), and Desmond has been reincarnated as Mira.

[metal-caregiver]

Tips for caregivers of punk/scene littles

This is probably my longest winded post..and the most self indulgent lol.. Here's just some of my personal snip-bits on being an alternative regressor. I hope this can help someone out or at least be entertaining for those who are alt regressors too ^^

Find stim toys that are otherwise "unconventional" or aren't labeled as stim toys ! - This might be a stretch,, and can honestly work for anyone looking for something to stim with. I love my chain necklace and I wear it everywhere I go! Its got a ring and 2 chains that I like to play with,, the texture of the metal is also nice in my hands and has a good weight around my neck. Sensory pressure is my favorite stim ! Skull necklace Moon phases Pride flags O-Ring necklace (mine!) Playing with piercings can also be a stim but ! be careful that jewelry is cleaned and fresh piercings are healed ! Its ok to allow your little to wear corsets, fishnets and tight clothing! It can be a great way to provide pressure therapy, or a stim in public or on the go~ Never force your regressor to stop watching shows/movies or listening to certain music while they're regressed. Sometimes horror movies, and loud noises can be comforting! * Talk with your little while they're big about this! There may be certain horror topics to avoid when they're regressed ! ... Some resources / things that I find helpful as an alt cg!

Movies & TV Shows 🎥 Stranger Things Over The Garden Wall Gravity Falls The Owl House Amphibia The Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy Invader ZIM Courage the Cowardly Dog Dead End Park Scooby Doo Ruby Gloom Danny Phantom The Adams Family The Munsters Daria Corpse Bride The Nightmare Before Christmas Coraline James and the Giant Peach ParaNorman Edward Scissorhands Dark Shadows BeetleJuice SOME OF THESE MOVIES CONTAIN 18+ SCENES ** (but are generally sfw / are all PG-13) Nicknames ✏️ Petal, Dewdrop, Baby Bat, Prince(ss/et) of darkness, Moon-child, Beastie, Cub/Little Cub, Beetle, Vamp(y), Little monster, Little terror, Rockstar, Bizkit (like..limp bizkit its a personal one ok😭?!) Games and other Media 🎮 Night in the woods FNAF Silent Hill Animal Crossing Zelda Danganronpa Pokemon Kingdom Hearts Fran Bow Little Nightmares Little Miss Fortune Stanley Parable Half Life Omori Skyrim Devil May Cry Roblox Minecraft Shoots and Ladders - Korn Clown - Korn Bring Me To Life - Evanescence Juggalo Juice - ICP Hokus Pokus - ICP Rainbows & Stuff - ICP Youre So Creepy - Ghost Town Sugar we're going down - Fall out Boy I Write Sins Not Tragedies - PAN!C Teenagers - MCR Welcome to the Black Parade - MCR SOME OF THESE MEDIAS CONTAIN 18+ CONTENT & LANGUAGE ** (or are generally unsuitable for regressors but...we're embracing unconventional regressors with this list) Misc items Rainbow Drip bat plushie (etsy) Rearz "Rebel" collection (also in pink) - dips / nappys ( pocket nappy ) ( training pants ) - changing pad - onesie Bat sippy cup ( - Bitten CURRENTLY SOLD OUT) Skeleanimals bat hoodie ( - hot topic CURRENTLY SOLD OUT) Mushroom sippy cup (etsy) "Spoiled Bat" Tumblr cup (etsy) "Ghost W/The Most" Sippy (etsy) Personally I have used Rearz and aside from medial brands you find at the stores,, these have been my favorite ! They fit comfortably and Im not consciously aware of wearing them (after a bit) despite being also K!nk affiliated (like Little4Big ^^") They're one of my favorite adult nappy brands..and highly recommend them if you're looking for more "edgy" designs ! They also have "Rebel" in pink ~ Disclaimer: I am not affiliated with any shops,,these have been recommended by friends, or through personal purchases

[bucketinyourwalls]

2!Postal Dude Headcanons <3

Summary:

With this version of 2!Postal Dude consists of a mix of my own projections, random stuff I thought of whenever bored, and just how I generally see him. Based on my first run with him, and a mix of the wiki. Anyone that wants to add these to their own lists feel free! :D

General:

Goofy as hell. Still just as insane as the others, but takes it all less seriously.

Either has a list or small journal he carries on him all the time just filled with one-liners, also carries a pen so he can write down any new ones he thinks of.

Fucking dumbass.

Not the smartest guy around, but also not the dumbest. Decent knowledge with some things.

Sometimes pretends to be a full on moron just to annoy the person, or piss them off depending on if it's someone he likes or hates.

Knowledgeable in some subjects, but only if it’s something he has a genuine interest in.

Random hyperfixation on things. Tries to keep himself focused on one or two things at a time and tries to balance everything out, but always fails.

Favorite aesthetics consist of cyberpunk, post-apocalyptic, feralcore, bastardcore, and post-punk.

Feral bastard.

Bites people. Started out as a joke but was slowly integrated into his life.

Humor’s all over the damn place. Mix of whatever he can find on Tumblr and shows like South Park and Beavis and Butthead.

Has a Tumblr and Twitter account. Both just so he can watch everything unfold and doesn’t bother to post anything.

Following list for Twitter mostly consists of gimmick accounts, some of it wholesome, and others being shit he just decided was funny.

Personality built around others' perception of him, whether people he actually knows or just those on the internet. 

Personality changes often, but keeps certain aspects for each one.

Bit of a people pleaser.

Mood is always randomized for each day. One day he could be the most calm and patient man in Paradise, and the next he could go on a massacre.

Mood really depends on his morning. Slight inconveniences do have the potential to fuck it all up if there was a major one before, but not on their own.

Very patient with people when younger, but that patience has slowly degraded over the years.

Would never snap at anyone when younger, maybe a few passive aggressive comments.

But now with the degraded patience, much more prone to snapping at people.

Animal lover. Always making sure Champ gets pets and food before he goes off to do his errands and will do his best to take care of strays.

After the beginning cutscene near the start of the game with him kicking Champ for pissing in front of him felt a fuck ton of guilt for the rest of the day. After he got home made sure to do his best to make it up to Champ through whatever means necessary.

Type of video games that he plays is a healthy mix of horror such as Silent Hill and Resident Evil, indie games like Cult of the Lamb and Hollow Knight, and of course shooter games like DOOM and the Call of Duty series.

For Cult of the Lamb he definitely named the cult after himself. Once tried to mod the game himself to add in or replace the decorations to better fit himself but that never ended up happening.

Just about grew up with horror. During highschool he had a fake ID so he could see the Rated R movies without having to bring an adult with him, or would just sneak in (and get caught).

Holds the DOOM series close to his crack-filled heart, with his favorite being the 1993 DOOM as a mix of nostalgia and everything that could be done. Always discovering new secrets on every playthrough.

Probably plays Call of Duty a bit less than the others, and mostly consists of him playing online and just insulting everyone since it’s fun to see their reactions. Barely pays attention to any of the campaigns.

Bisexual and Pangender <3

Age being 27 during the events of Postal 2 (no clue if he has a canon age so for the time being I’m sticking to that).

Music:

Mostly metal and rock.

Korn, Avenged Sevenfold, Rob Zombie, Dope, Limp Bizkit, Skillet, Seether, Slayer, etc.

Favorite songs with them consisting of: “Y’all Want a Single?” by Korn, “Rollin (Air Raid Vehicle” by Limp Bizkit, and “6 Gun Quota” by Seether.

Also has a few other songs in there that seem much out of place, either because he thought it’d be funny or just from him genuinely enjoying them.

Few examples being the “Bisexual Anthem” by Domo Wilson, “Material Girl” by Saucy Santana, “Masquerade” by siouxxie sixxta, ect.

Sings in the shower, most of the time keeps it quiet but will sing loudly as hell just to drive people crazy.

Cannot be trusted with the aux cord.

God help you if you’re on a road trip and he gets a hold of the cord.

Credits:

Credit for both dividers go to @kawaii-lau, after a bit of scrolling finding some dividers saw that they had some cool stuff, so check them out! <3

[8bitsupervillain]

Higurashi When They Cry Hou Ch. 6 Tsumihoroboshi pt. 18

I don’t have a big block of screenshots for you this time, I promise. Nine is less than twenty-six.

This is quite possibly my second favorite part in this entire chapter. Ignoring the last two lines between Keiichi and Mion, this entire little segment just amused me greatly. Rena and the Okinomiya police department all think the Sonozakis are looking for her for sinister motives, when really it’s just a big old misunderstanding. It’s really funny, and shows that Ryukishi07 has some decent comedy writing skills. It was some much needed levity in a progressively more grim story. Also Kasai just strikes me as a character that if he was in more scenes would definitely be the comically serious foil to more direct goofs. His scene where he was asking that cafe owner if he had that dessert from way earlier on was a good example. Also I do hope you don’t find my randomly flitting between art styles irritating, it will happen again. I just like remake art Shion better than console art or original art. I like her sweater better than the tank top and jean skirt. If I could I would totally have the art styles clash by having some characters only be in remake style and others in console style.

Keiichi and Mion then have a lengthy talk about why the cops are suddenly after Rena. Keiichi theorizes that perhaps the police want to question Rena about the bodies of Teppei and Rina, but Mion assures him that’s not the case. After all she had some of her guys move the bodies shortly after they buried them. But just in case Mion tells Keiichi to try to send Rena her way if he hears from her because the Sonozakis can lawyer her up good, and protect her from the police come hell or high water. To which Keiichi agrees, completely forgetting that because of the scrapbooks she got from Takano Rena is certain the Sonozaki family are behind a certain amount of bioterrorism.

What you find to be the most embarrassing moment of your life, and what I think is the most embarrassing are going to be so wildly different Keiichi it’s not even funny. Mion ends their conversation by saying she’s going to mislead the police to the town of Gogura, in an effort to help her friend avoid the law. Keiichi then leaves his home to try to search for where he thinks Rena might be.

So this is clearly a hallucination right? It’s little moments like these that makes me think that perhaps Ryukishi07 could do a halfway decent job with a Silent Hill game. Of course that’ll more rely on actual visuals to convey the scares, but I think he could probably do pretty well with a more straightforward horror story.

Rena runs back to her hideaway positive she gave the creature the slip, however she has new troubles as shortly after getting back a couple of members from the Sonozaki group arrive to look for her. They split up to search the dump more efficiently putting the fear of god into Rena. Unfortunately for her, her body has chosen that time to become incredibly itchy, and for her stomach to start growling in hunger. Her paranoia starts getting the better of her, positive that these two Sonozaki goons are merciless killers she starts to prepare for the worst. When one of the two gets a call on their radio. Atsushi is informed that Rena has been spotted in Gogura, to which the other Sonozaki grunt complains because they’ll never find her there. Atsushi says they have to find her no matter what, after all Rena has Takano’s scrapbooks “and he wants them.” But since they’re still in Hinamizawa they’re on their way back to HQ, unaware they were perilously close to finding their quarry.

Part of me wonders if parts of this radio call Rena overheard are simply part of her delusions. Not the part about her being seen in Gogura, but the “he wants the scrapbooks” part, after all who is “he?” If the Sonozaki family is leading the manhunt for Rena then surely it would be Oryou calling the shots, and last time she showed up in the narrative she was a woman. Still Rena thinks about how the Sonozakis are trying to hunt her down for the scrapbooks, and how they’re keeping her house under surveillance. But the most peculiar part to her is the notion that she was seen in Gogura despite still being in Hinamizawa.

Rena having a paranoid fit about how the mysterious “them” is controlling events and having a duplicate Rena running around she notices the sounds of someone approaching her hideout. It stands right outside the door of the car she’s in and knocks on it to get her attention.

We, as a society need more bow tie Rika.

[x-nephophile-x]

15 Get to Know Questions

I saw @fereldanwench do this and wanted to fill it out for fun! 1. Are you named after anyone?  My mom named me after a baby she used to babysit; my name is not Cas of course, its a pseudonym I use for social media.

2. When was the last time you cried? Like full-blown unhappy tears? Uh, last week. My one family dog passed.

3. Do you have kids? No, and I don’t want any, but as I’m getting older, I’m considering it.

4. Do you use sarcasm a lot?  So much. I use text tone notes though if I’m writing, or say I’m being sarcastic to people like my mom who doesnt get it lol.

5. What’s the first thing you notice about people?  Usually physical traits, like colored hair, eyes, and brows. I’m very hyperaware so I’ll notice the way they sit or if they feel left out in a conversation. I feel like I’m very aware of people’s moods as I can usually spot if people are less happy than usual or something is bothering them.

6. What’s your eye colour?  Green.

7. Scary movies or happy endings?  I really enjoy happy endings! I like scary movies but not gore fests. Psychological thrillers screw with me too much anxiety wise. But slashers are fun and so are paranormal films. My favorite horror film is the 2006 Silent Hill or They/Them. 

8. Any special talents? I can do that one yoga pose where you throw your legs over your shoulders and balance on your hands and have been able to do it since I was 5. I’m also double jointed in most of my body, most notably my hands.

9. Where were you born?  Pittsburgh.

10. What are your hobbies?  Projecting onto fictional characters, liking morally gray or bad fictional men, being a raging bisexual. I write fanfic and play the same twenty games.

11. Have you any pets?  4 dogs now that one passed. Two small, two big, all are elders except for the one big who is 3.

12. What sports do you play/have played? 

I was never much of a sports person. I like watching hockey occasionally during the play offs mostly but other than that, never played anything outside of gym. I did do color guard and dance for several years though.

13. How tall are you?  4′11 /  149.86 cm

14. Favourite subject in school?  I always enjoyed English, Reading and History. I’m in college taking several history electives for fun. I love learning new things and I always found reading assignments fun as it encouraged me to explore new stories.

15. Dream job? Youtube, actually. I want to start doing it but I have no ideas for content. Like I said, I play the same twenty games, Bioware and Bethesda titles mostly, so I have no real ideas since I’m not a horror fan nor do i play most triple A title games aside from the occasional like A Plague Tale (Did that count as a Triple A game?? The second one did for sure right?) And RDR2. I would probably love to do some Sims content and Bethesda game challenges though! No pressure tags! <3 @travelbystarlight @the-delicate-disaster @thebookwormgal and @themechaneer

[6racc6oon6]

hi im Szop/Creep or whoever you wanna call me im new and i used Tumblr maybe only once but i cant use it no matter what 😭 i will probably post arts maybe some random things idk

i love horror movies and bloody shit. im a big fan of creepypasta for like 10 years now. despite horror movies i also like psychological and "about teen" movies. some titles i love and are not horrors: requiem for a dream, good will hunting, eternal sunshine of the spotless mind, kings of the summer, what's eating Gilbert grape, dead poet society, Se7en, speak, slc punk, gia, kids, mysterious skin, the craft, Jennifer body, lilya 4 ever, girl interrupted, thirteen, skins, shameless, the Truman show, basketball diares and a lot more. from horrors i also prefer psychological ones like silence of the lambs, American psycho, black swan, hannibal. i love classic 80s-90s slashers and body horror. i also love found footage and teen horrors. its hard to disturb me, ive watched almost everything from "the most disturbing movies iceberg".

despite movies i also love books. mostly horror and classic ones. i love Stephen king books. from classics i like Dostoyevski, franz kafka, Albert Camus and a lot more. i also love gothic ones, bram stoker, merry shelly, jane Austen, robert louis stevenson, Oscar Wilde, Charlotte Brontë.

i play a lot of video games, resident evil, silent hill, cod, alan wake, the last of us, fnaf, sally face, fran bow. my personal favorite is Cry of fear. im Simon Henriksson in real life. i also really love resident evil and i need to draw Leon more same as a pyramid head so as soon I'll get my iPad there will be probably a lot of them. i also play a lot of visual novels, such as Boyfriends to death, frost bite, broken colors, john doe, my dear hatchet man.

i rarely draw something digitally but im saving to buy an iPad so when i do i will definitely post more and maybe I'll finally start doing animations like i always wanted to

tw my art may contains:

- topics like mental problem and trauma

- blood, gore and guts

- s-word and sh

- meat and rarely the animals one

- suggestive content

- abuse, dead bodies, murder, kidnapping amd other of sick shit

in one word NSFW

After the things i like and the warnings i letf here you can probably guessed that if you sensitive my content would not be perfect for you cause the tw will probably become bigger and bigger :3

[hospitalterrorizer]

diary45

10/22-23/2023

sunday - monday

saw fwwm in a theater, already a favorite but i loved seeing it on a huge screen. i cried a lot.

it's hard to come up with a lot to say. or there's a lot to say about the movie, all i can really say about why it affects me so totally is i think there's a lot there that i just don't think i've seen much else approach so well. the dinner scene, for instance, i don't think much else really communicated that sort of experience of being talked down to by someone and being paralyzed/incapable of speaking, and demeaned continually, until all you can do is go to the bathroom and cry. this movie really makes the moments where you are out of something awful weigh on you, i guess because when you're given time to breathe/think all there is, is the weight of everything else that happened, so you are stuck ruminating/recovering, never long enough.

obviously there will be like, spoilers, but it's so old like, go watch the show and this movie (i rec the fancut which adds all the missing pieces in, great stuff imo).

i shouldn't articulate too much about how i feel here, i have other writing for that. i do think it's interesting how people will watch this movie and think about leland as an equal victim to laura, but he really is obviously evil, totally. it's really awful.

maybe more interesting than people not getting twin peaks how most of the men in the show, are wrong. the only ones who aren't on some level wrong, by the end, are albert, chet, and the guy played by kiefer sutherland. it makes the redemption of certain characters in the return, and the failure of others, more touching i think that they all begin here/in this way.

i really love twin peaks, #basic of me i guess but it's hard to put into words, it's weird how it basically haunted me my whole life in other things i loved but i never really got to it until covid basically, and it only made all those other things i loved click (maybe i'm mostly just thinking of silent hill, and maybe some other stuff, it's all over a lot of japanese games, it feels tangentially related to yn even i guess). i guess anything that is essentially about the impossibility of normalcy/the intolerable charade of the regular and whatever, how there's always these frayed edges, the abject and the rapturous just kind of always there, touching on us and feeding us into some kind of extremity we're either going to attempt to ignore or embrace (embracing it totally is impossible, this is the tension bataille is so intent on tracing/observing).

it's interesting to see stuff that acts like it embraces those things, the transcendent and abject, when really all it does is absorb either and defuse them. i think the first screenshot i posted is really illustrative, the image is in tension w/ what happened to laura prior, she was brutally murdered, and instead of that image being redeemed with beauty, it's only an equal response, it doesn't feel like it does away with what happened to her, she is smiling and crying because it's all at least over now, there's peace in that, so dragged through broken glass and in shambles there is at least the freedom of not being right there, but knowing right there intimately. i guess, strangely i think of something like saw as what works in opposite, with all its efforts at morals and its extreme gore it doesn't really upset or move as deeply or provoke anything beyond the horror that this is now regular fantasy. maybe this is all too near together to be easy to read or something but i think i'm making sense, fwwm gets at the exact feeling, and the extreme states you might end up in emotionally, the images and sensations that travel in those places and it all together. i think there are probably workable critiques of the movie, i know a friend of mine would hate it, i also don't think he would sit and relate to laura like i do, which is good i think.

also i think the show is obv more complex/interesting than just having a lot to say about how men treat women (or maybe more broadly (definitely situated here i think more so) the feminine (as many quotes around that as you want)) but it keeps sticking to me, it feels like an in for the broader things the show wants to approach, i guess more or less the sense of something intolerable, all those secret lives uprooted, and in season 2 the mass psychosis of the town because their secret lives are in open air, and everyone is incapable of stopping anything awful from happening/everyone fed into it, and the return spreading this sense to everywhere in america, even back in history.

but whatever, or not whatever, but you know, i don't need to sit here and babble on, not articulating myself perfectly. i think there's a lot to say abt tp i just don't know if i can right now.

one thing, it's interesting how in the return dougie is like a literal sweetheart saint who makes me cry because he is so kind, and dale is only briefly the man we remember from the original run. he is largely colder, more afraid, focused and still failing. the tragedy of that really fucks me up.

the darkness of the night laura screams into, and the chalfont/treemont house, that part really fucks me up, the sense it gives you of things being forced to happen. it doesn't seem like fate, it's not like pessimistic that way i think, it's this thing where there's a wrongness so far back you can't prevent things from going wrong, the horror is always there, or something.

n e wayzzzzzzz, unrelated to tp, i didn't do a lot else. i did work on some sounds, i wrote some riffs, i think i have something like the start of a song here, but i dunno, i wanna mess around on guitar soon like actually and try to do some stuff that way, and tomorrow i am for sure going to have to just listen to every song i've got, see what i need to do, and re-export some songs with vocals on them that i have not done yet. but that should maybe be exciting seeing how much is done and what else i'll need to do. it might be like, a pleasant surprise. who knowzzz.

anyways i am sleeepyyyyyy

so

byebye!!!!

[2stregafangirl]

Kimiko answers some questions

Please Tell us your name

Kimiko Arisato

When is your birthday

June 2

Your blood type

A negative baby!

Would you please tell us about your three sizes

23-24 Iori-san loves this rack

Would you tell us about your family composition?

Well currently it’s me Yuri Hamuko and Minato I’m glad Hamu and Mina survived the crash because they are the best older siblings one could ask for, Yuri is my bestest sibling and friend even if he’s a major perfectionist, the other S.E.E.S members also act as a surrogate family for me.

What’s your occupation?

None currently but I want to be a rock idol!

Your favorite food

Yakisoba

Favorite animal?

Cats!

Favorite subject

PE

Subject you dislike

Writing

Is there a boy you’ve been thinking about?

Junpei is just so fucking hot.. I would like to kiss him passionately! If only Chidori wasn’t in the way..

Do you enjoy school

Mostly..

are you in any school clubs?

Actually yeah I am, the hard music club

What’s your motto?

“ Live life to the fullest! And get out of that depressive box!”

Your Special skills

Being able to run very fast my combat skills with my cleaver being able to sing very loud! ( Gigaku revolution!) being able to play the guitar and hiding my secret playboy and playgirl magazine stashes in my room without getting caught!

Would tell us about something you treasure?

The cute gloomy kitty hoodie Junpei bought for me! bless his heart!

Would you describe yourself in a single kanji?

逆説的な ( Gyakusetsu-tekina: paradoxical unusual unnatural strange anomaly enigma

What are your best qualities

Welllll~ not to brag or anything but I’m quite athletic talented and sociable!

What are your shortcomings?

… Not being there to protect my parents during the car crash incident, not being there to protect Junpei when Strega kidnapped him.

Would you tell us about a place you remember?

Paulownia mall! I have so many fond memories there of shopping and having fun with my friends! Especially the dates me and Junpei had here!

What is your favorite drink?

Any kind of soda rules! Except Tea only prim and proper people like Yuri and Mitsuru could enjoy that bitter shit

How well can you swim?

Better then Yuri bro be acting like he’s drowning

Your timing in a 50 meter race?

Heh easy, I’ll probably come in first place! Tokyo Olympics Nobel prize here I come!

Your current obsession

Not to be creepy but definitely Junpei! oh and horror games like Silent Hill ( 3 is best game because Heather is just like me) Corpse Party and Gregory Horror Show

Are there any foods you dislike

Pasta and most vegetables unless their grilled

Anything you want currently?

For Junpei to stop covering his chest up! he knows I’ll still grab it anyways!~

Are you afraid of heights?

Ha! only babies are afraid of those! So no!

Do you dislike thunder?

Thunder is epic! Like a tiger roaring!

Rain or Shine?

Rain! I love feeling raindrops on my clothes!

Do you use a regular pencil or a mechanical one?

Mechanical

What do you eat for breakfast

Pancakes’

Do you still believe in ghosts?

Only if their hot like Ghostfreak

Can you play any musical instruments?

I can play the guitar or sing via a microphone stand, it kicks ass!

Are you an outside or indoor type

Outside! It’s much better!

Do you ever quarrel with your mother?

My mother died in a car crash, I barely argue with Hamuko or Mitsuru if you count motherly figures.

Do you have a cell phone

Fuck yeah I do! what kid doesn’t have a fliphone nowadays?

How long is your commute to school

Very fucking far, I have to get on the train everyday.

Do you have more friends then average?

Yep! Everyone loves me! Except for some people.. fucking Hidetoshi.

Your favorite sports

Baseball! Mainly because bashing people’s faces in with a bat is very fun.

How well can you cook?

Not very good.. Yuri is usually the one to cook.

Favorite colors

Jade green and black!

Anything you could never forgive?

Hurting any of my love ones! Especially My siblings and Junpei!

How tall are you?

Pretty tall I imagine!

Shoe size?

The average female shoe height I guess!

Your dreams?

I said it before but I want to be a idol! Specifically a rock idol like the American rock band Kiss!

Do you have any marriage desires?

My partner must help me fill out any paperwork I’ll have to do and always speak and talk with me and also because I’m going to be a rock idol I’ll need them to come to all of my performances!

Do you dislike hot drinks

Very much so!

Do you like Bitter Coffee

No! and I hate coffee!

When’s Bedtime?

Whenever I feel like it and not stay up all night.

When do you wake up?

Usually at night or mid-day

Are you a bed person or a futon person?

Futon all the fucking way man!

Are you confident in your ability to concentrate?

I mean when I put my mind to it I can do it, just not as easy as Yuri can.

Do you have any weight loss tips?

I don’t know..

Between warm and chilled soba, which one do you like more?

What’s soba???

Tell us about something lucky that’s happened recently?

I fused a really powerful persona!

Tell us about something unlucky that’s happened recently

Junpei hanging out with that Chidori broad instead of me!!

What’s the name of your school uniform?

The Gekkoukan high uniform!

What’s your favorite flower?

The Strongylodon Macrobotrys

What’s your favorite saying?

“ Cat got your tongue?”

What’s your favorite four kanji phrase?

猫が箱から出てきたが不明のまま ( Neko ga hako kara detekita ga fumei no mama: cat getting out of the box but remaining unknown)

What comes to mind when thinning about spring?

Orchids since their kinda almost the same color as my hair!

And summer?

Arcade rooms!

And fall?

Definitely Halloween

And winter?

Freezing my freaking ass off

If you had a time machine where would you go?

Go back in time and save my parents from the car crash, I don’t know how but I’ll try, but that’ll probably create a time paradox.

Do you like reading manga or watching anime?

Watching anime! Who even reads manga besides Yuri?!!

What’s your allowance?

Whatever big bro and big sis lends me

Tell us your weight

Probably medium

What do you wear when you go to sleep

Just my bra and some panties, the good old fashioned way

What are your thoughts on the Q&A?

To many questions relating to my future, bro I’m still in high school and I am 16 years old.

[pinkkittysaw]

FOR REAL!!!! tatum deserved to be a final girl as well <\3 she was so coooool and had such cute outfits. plus when she said “no, please don’t kill me mr. ghostface. i want to be in the sequel” ICONIC! i’ll have to add the second film on my list of movies to watch 😋

i forgot to add this to my previous response but i think good atmosphere is what gets me the most. if there’s a lot of tension then i get really spooked. jump scares are scary but i think the best horror films (in terms of being fear inducing) are the ones that keep you on the edge. there’s a game called fire watch that actually made me really anxious when watching gameplay of it.

i’d be happy to watch the saw movies with you if you’re down 👀 the acting in some of them is honestly funny as well 😭

you’re so sweet pete <3 glad to know i have someone there if things get scary

i think you described the acting perfectly! it seems like they’re trying too hard if that makes sense? it’s too much but also not enough at the same time dkdkdkd

i’ve also watched the first nightmare on elm street movie! the part where the mom gets sucked through the door at the end 😭 the sfx were definitely interesting back then as well, to say the least.

another thing i forgot to mention, i also really like the 1990’s IT movies <3

until dawn can be classified as horror for sure, it is scary after all. have you watched gameplay of the other games from that company? they’re pretty good for some scares! my second favorite would have to be the quarry (though that’s mostly for the characters and not the story)

i admittedly don’t play a lot of horror games myself ;-; but i have seen quite a bit of gameplay for indie horror games. did you know that they made games for the saw movies? The Mortuary Assistant is a pretty good one! it’s of the paranormal genre and has some good jumpscares. good tension building as well i’d say.

one game that really sticks out to me is Corpse Party. it’s a jrpg survival horror game that is also of the paranormal genre. i watched gameplay of it when i was quite young (which i probably shouldn’t have) but it’s definitely a good scare as well (from what i remember) it has quite a bit of gore though. there’s a few games in that franchise but i’ve only watched gameplay of two of them.

it’s kinda funny looking back at how much paranormal stuff I’ve watched despite it freaking me out the most 😭

another jrpg survival horror game that i watched gameplay of when i was younger is Mad Father. I honestly don’t remember much from this game but it definitely gave me the creeps as a kid.

one of my favorite “horror” franchises is actually Resident Evil! you mentioned knowing lady d so i’m assuming you already know about it. was village the only game you’ve seen gameplay of or have you watched others? i’ve played quite a bit of those games myself. i’d say the “scariest” games from that series are definitely the ones before resident evil 4 (besides biohazard and village). resident evil 4 is my favorite game though, my second favorite being resident evil 0.

THE SPIN OFF GAMES ARE THE BANE OF MY EXISTENCE 😭 (to actually play at least the storylines were okay) the controls for the version of code veronica i was playing were BACKWARDS and the sensitivity for the first revelations game was wayyy too high and so much of the plot felt like a giant fetch quest 😭 the only good thing about that game was jill tbh.

my absolute favorite characters are leon, ada and jill but i also adore jake, sherry, piers, sheva, billy and helena.

another favorite series of mine is also The Last of Us! it’s one of my favorite game series in general actually! it’s honesty a lot more survival horror/action than actual “horror” if that makes sense, especially the second game. i do get jumpscared by the enemies sometimes though.

a series that i’ve been wanting to get into is Silent Hill but the beginning of the first game seems so boring 😭😭

what other types of games have you played besides horror?

do you like scary movies, peter?

i do like scary movies! my favorites are scream 1+2, the conjuring series, and insidious!

i recently went to see smile and i didn’t really care for it, do you like scary movies?

[the-fifteen]

I know nothing about portal but please do tell me about it 👀

Ah so you want to know about Valve's two absolute masterpieces known as Portal and Portal 2 and the myriad reasons you should play them. Allow me to serenade you with an absolute essay that I'm probably gonna hide in a read more because holy fucking

Shit

Do i have things to say about these games

Let's go

So let's begin about how both these games gameplay is FLAWLESS. It's as simple as it can get, and it showcases not only how the Source Engine physics work, but also an incredible level design and a very intelligent use of space and the rules we've learned, even subverting them a couple of times, like with the "impossible test".

Then there's the story. "But Fifteen" I hear you ask, "is there really story in Portal 1? There's not much going on."

Well, Portal 1 tells you a story in a very subtle way. You have to piece out through GLaDOS lines and little secrets here and there what happened in the facility, and it's very gradual how this game makes you go from "okay maybe i just can get away from here after I complete the tests" to "oh fuck I'm going to die".

Portal 1 are the foundations you need to understand Aperture Science and its tragic backstory so in Portal 2 you get punched in nuts by an even more tragic story.

Plus, there's the theories. I don't want to spoil much stuff about the games in case you play them (please do they are so good I promise), but it's confirmed that Half-Life and Portal happen in the same universe, there is connection between the events of the games. Valve used to make games so so so good, man.

Then we come to my favorite part: the sound design and the music. "Music?" You ask, confused and surprised. "But most of the game is silent, right?"

Portal 1 can be really barren, but that's kinda the point of it. You are a lab rat trapped in a giant facility at the mercy of an omnipresent killer robot. Most of the music reflect on this fact and on the secrets you find on the game.

Portal 2 tho has a SUPERB soundtrack. The music goes from "Hell fucking yeah let's do science" to "Oh wow this is the saddest thing I've ever seen in my life". Plus both games have INCREDIBLE songs at the end. I'd tell you to go listen to them, but no, play the games and then listen to them in-game. The experience is incredible.

Now sound design. Valve has one very strong thing going on them when they made game more consistently: their sound design is INSUPERABLE. Period. I'm gonna stand on my high hill here and say that no other game is more iconic about their sounds. The entirety of Valve games feature sounds of guns, hits, health points, death, etc that are just SO GOOD you can remember all of them. Even the ones you don't really think about.

Think about a sound of a character regaining health. Or when you hit the ground to hard from a high place. Or a portal opening up.

(hell yeah that was such a good segway)

The portal gun is probably the coolest sounding gun in the history of gaming (except the Graviton Lance from Destiny 2. That thing fucks every time it's shot), and the fuckers at Valve had their brains so expanded they made a sound for each portal, so in the portions of Portal 1 when you have just one portal at your disposal, you understand clearly they are two different portals but they function as one, cohesive mechanic.

Then there's also all the little sounds and intricacies around Aperture Science. The doors sliding open and close, the lasers, the beams, the grids, objects colliding... Everything sounds SO GOOD and make an incredible experience.

I played Portal 1 when i was between 7 and 10 years old and the game nailed so much its atmosphere it felt like a horror game to me. I broke that game open to find all the little secrets. I tried strange strategies. I tried other ways of finishing the tests. I even used the cheat console to give me god mode and fly around the facility just to explore it, to find the little secrets hidden here and there.

When i played Portal 2, i felt shivers down my spine in certain events (that I'm not gonna spoil because it would be a crime) because they were just that good, stuff that will stay with me until the end of my fucking days, stuff that will always have Portal at the top of my fav games ever. Not even Outer Wilds, a game with an ending so beautiful and overwhelming it made me burst into tears just because of its sheer magnitude, managed to topple down Portal.

Because Portal was really the first game that made me stay up at night looking for fan art, songs and other ways to keep enjoying it. It was the game a friend and I completely beat in the co-op mode, really pushing our brains to get the right solution. It was the first game that when i put down, i immediately started playing a game

It was the first game that really made me go "wow, games are art."

[lady-byleth]

Do you have headcanons for what kinds of video games the Blue Lions would like to play in a modern AU?

Okay full disclosure, I just spent the last like 2 hours scrolling through all my three houses asks trying to find the one where I did answer this question before and now my eyes hurt xD

Anyway, Dimitri would love calm things like Animal Crossing or Stardew Valley. Low pressure, relaxing things that just let him shut down for a bit

Dedue likes gardening and cooking so maybe some simulation games along those lines would be up his alley, though I don't see him as being big on games in a modern au

Felix would be a fighting game and hack and slash crack with the occasional fps thrown in for good measure.

Mercedes canonically loves horror stories so I can see her enjoying shit like Amnesia or Silent Hill and be absolutely unfazed by everything

Sylvain would probably only play dating sims when people are watching but he's actually big on thinking and puzzle games

Annette probably plays the Sims all day long and comes up with the most elaborate stories in it. She enjoys karaoke games too tho

Ashe and Ingrid strike me as both loving fantasy role playing games and they exchange recommendations a lot. It's not uncommon for them to play whatever game the other just finished and then gush about their favorite parts

[wrathfulmercy]

🎃 pumpkin, apparition, jack-o-lantern, thrill, pinecone, rainy 🎃

Autumn and Halloween themed asks from here @moonbcings

pumpkin— how do you feel about horror movies? do you like psychological thrillers more or jump-scare oriented movies?

Horror movies always used to be my favorite genre with fantasy following on second spot. So I always watched all kinds of them no matter if splatter, slasher, paranormal, exorcism or psychological thrillers. None of it ever scared me so most of them are pretty boring and more amusing to me (especially when they focus more on the effects the story often is shallow and makes me laugh) but I really enjoy the psychological ones the most. Like identity, shutter island, Hannibal… things like that. But my first favorite was blairwitch project cause that’s what I grew up with. And the ring was a favorite for a long time :)

apparition— do you believe in ghosts? why or why not?

Hmmm it depends. I don’t believe in ghosts in the way they are portrayed in some movies but I do believe in souls that don’t leave a certain place. I’m kinda superstitious in some things and since I’m into all kind of esoteric things like tarot or palm reading etc I do believe in some sort of higher power we don’t understand.

jack-o-lantern— do you get scared easily? why or why not?

No absolutely not. I mean yes I have a generalized anxiety disorder but that results from my CPTSD so my nervous system is just always on high alert cause of that. But movies etc never scare me. I’m too distant to fiction, real life scares me way more. But I don’t like if someone like jumps on me to scare me, then I immediately collapse. I had that with people just wanting to prank or tease me but when I lost consciousness they soon learnt it’s not a good idea 🤣

thrill—if you were in a horror movie, would you be the first to die, the comic relief, the skeptic, the smart one, the last one standing, or the killer?

It would be between killer and last one standing I guess 🤣 I mean I would never harm a single soul but regarding to my illnesses it’s a stigma that people like me turn into killers at some point 🤣 but since death or being killed or pain doesn’t scare me at all, I would probably kick their asses. They would run from me in the end.

pinecone— what's the scariest horror game you've ever played?

I know that Silent Hill 3 was a game I had to stop at some point but I was very young when it released. I played it years later and didn’t mind it in any way. But I think silent hill 2 is the best just because of all the mind fucking moments but it’s not necessarily super scary. But nothing did scare me so it’s hard to say from my perspective.

rainy— what's your favorite scary book or movie? why?

As a child I used to read a lot of Hohlbein and King there were some that probably could be considered scary even if they weren’t for me. My favorite movies though are ones I just loved or had an impact on me, not because they scared me. So my favorites: Martyrs (all time favorite but only the original), identity, silence of the lambs, shutter island, the ward (yeah that b*tch sadly is in it), modus Anomali, confessions (a Japanese one), the ring (original and American), The grudge (American), the orphan, blairwitch project (the original), Frontiers (French Horror movies are in my opinion the best), the tall man, the descent, High tension, maniac, saw (but only the first 3), compliance, cherry tree lane, sleep tight, 5150 elms way, hard candy, Eden lake, silent hill (only first one), room 1408, hide & seek and the classics scream, I know what you did last summer and Texas chainsaw massacre (the original). Sorry these were a lot but I have a reputation to lose as the one always recommending horror movies and testing them 🤣🤣🤣

[haunthouse]

welcome to a meta that, in retrospect, seems glaringly obvious, but that has hit me like a freight train this morning. we’re talking about the lonely as a ghost story.

ghosts as an entity are inherently about disconnect. but kaylee, i hear you say, ghosts are dead people, wouldn’t that make them in the end’s domain? but when it comes down to it, death is a good framing device for ghosts (and yeah, it’s necessary to make ghosts), but people don’t tell ghost stories just because they’re afraid of death. ghost stories are told because ghosts are irrevocably disconnected from the living in a way that terrifies us — sometimes they’re intentionally scary, knocking shit around or yelling boo!, but a lot of the time they’re just... there. and that’s the terrifying part. something that’s there and shouldn’t be; something that can’t interact with the world around it and is completely, utterly, terrifyingly alone.

ghost stories are about isolation, about being a person without any of the framework that being a person requires, without society or connection or love. being unseen and unheard and unknown to all around you — and trying so hard to reverse all those un-words, to be seen, heard, known. that’s exactly the domain of the lonely!

and onto the meat of this meta: all nine lonely-centric statements (and the journey of one martin blackwood) through the lens of ghost stories.

(spoilers for mag170 at the end, but each episode section is clearly marked, so feel free to skip it if you haven’t gotten that far yet!)

MAG013: ALONE

the first lonely statement we get (and also the first in-person statement! which is such a good inversion of the lonely being about lack of connection! jon doesn’t do a great job of comforting naomi, but he does stay with her as she gives the statement when she asks!! that’s beside the point but it is something i really love), and right off the bat, the ghost vibes are off the charts.

truly i am feeling absolutely idiotic for not really thinking about the ghosts-lonely connection before now because this statement? peak ghost story.

naomi’s fiance dies. naomi has several near-death experiences (crashes her car, then is hit by another car and winds up in the hospital), which is also a staple in a lot of ghost stories; nearly dying is set up as a way to get the living closer to the realm of ghosts, able to interact with them more clearly. it was a dark and foggy night in a graveyard, and standing at evan’s (open, empty) grave, naomi hears his disembodied voice leading her home.

when ghost stories are told from a distance, they’re about the horror of it — disembodied howling, faces in the window that keep you up at night. but when they’re told by someone close to the now-ghost, they’re love stories. it’s my grandmother hearing her father’s breathing one last time after his death, giving her a chance to say goodbye. it’s a familiar and loving presence, comforting you. that’s what naomi’s story is — the ghost of evan showing his love for her one final time.

MAG033: BOATSWAIN’S CALL

so, ships are meant to be places of community, right? ron @gerrydelano​ has a really good post about this regarding shanties. but ghost ships are an established trope of ghost stories: the inversion of what a ship should be, lacking all life and community, silently traversing the waters on its own.

the tundra is a ghost ship. it’s quiet (”very quiet... it was like they were doing everything in their power not to think about each other”) — the people there move around one another as if none of them are there, all so taken by the lonely. their cargo containers are empty. all they’re transporting on that ship is the ghosts of those aboard.

this episode falls into the trope of ghosts want the living to join them — though there’s still a mourning atmosphere when sean kelly is taken fully by the lonely, that final bit of life on the ship extinguished. (”no one said a word, but i could have sworn a few of my shipmates were crying.”)

MAG048: LOST IN THE CROWD

this one’s one of my favorites! andrea nunis’ statement deals with different kinds of loneliness — she begins it with explaining that she prefers to travel alone, but later, that loneliness is something terrifying. she’s in a crowd of unrecognizable people, unable to fit herself into the world she’s seeing — she’s completely separate from the rest of the world. she’s a ghost. 

“it wasn’t italian being spoken ... or any other language i recognized. the more i listened, the more i realized it wasn’t a language. there were no words, it was just noise.” “their faces were a blur, each and every one of them.” and, the crowning point: “i tried to talk to them or to shout, to scream at them, but there was no reaction.”

by being taken in by the lonely, andrea’s been turned into a ghost. she cannot interact with or even recognize her environment, and that’s the real horror — it isn’t just being alone, it’s being surrounded by something that should be familiar; a crowd is something she’s been in a thousand times, as someone who travels a lot, and people are the most familiar thing in the world, like looking in a mirror! but it isn’t. everything is strange and she is outside of it all and that’s what a ghost is.

and her connection to her mother is what pulls her out. people have talked at length about how love is the antidote to the lonely so i won’t go on too long about that, but the connection between that & ghosts’ relationships to the living often being what keeps them around is sure something.

also, after getting out of the lonely andrea says “i made sure i was always in sight of at least one other person” — and there’s something to be said there about needing to be seen to be real. 

chiara @red-reys​ brought up this feuerbach quote which fits very well: “that which i alone perceive i doubt; only that which the other also perceives is certain.” being the only one to perceive something (for example, a ghost), or the only one who is utterly unperceived, is a very lonely thing — it isolates you entirely from those who do not perceive it. being perceived, or having someone else see what you see, can give you an anchor.

wow i’m sure that won’t come back later!

also, far be it from me to talk about this statement without mentioning gerry keay. because it means something that he’s the one to give andrea the tools she needs to pull herself out of the lonely. gerry is someone completely lacking in human connection, who is literally haunted by the ghost of his mother and later is seen as a ghost himself. gerry doesn’t have friends; he tells jon “i always wanted my friends to call me gerry,” but in a tone that makes it clear he didn’t have anyone who could’ve. and of course he didn’t. a life so entwined with the entities and cut so short, a life so ruled by the cruelty of others that he certainly did not want to rope anyone else into. 

though gerry’s never directly stated to be affected by the lonely, he’s certainly lowercase-L lonely at the very least, and he’s certainly got enough experience with ghosts to understand the lonely. 

gerry is the trope of the helpful spirit. he’s the ghost who’ll give you directions on a deserted road and disappear when you turn around. he gives jon the information he needs to understand the entities, he gives andrea the information she needs to not become a ghost.

MAG057: PERSONAL SPACE

alright so this one is, admittedly, more cosmic horror than anything else, but if y’all’ve seen any of my comics you probably know i’m very passionate about space ghosts & haunted spaceships. and as such, i’m extremely interested in how the daedalus mission echoes ghost stories.

carter chilcott’s story pretty directly acts as a ghost story — unable to communicate with the others on the ship even when he tries, unable to interact with the world to the point of looking out the window at one point to find the world entirely missing. this is all stuff i’ve said already about the other statements, so i’m glossing past it, because what interests me more is the daedalus as malicious architecture.

because the daedalus was created specifically for this union between vast, lonely, and dark (all of which i think have significant ghostly tie-ins). everything about how the ship itself and the mission came to be is a mystery, even to those involved — manuela says “i don’t know how he convinced the lukases and fairchilds to help finance the project,” “i don’t know if they were working on rituals of their own,” “exactly how the launch was arranged, i couldn’t tell you.” 

a piece of the traditional haunted house is a sort of timelessness, and mystery inherent in its building. hill house in shirley jackson’s haunting of hill house “seemed somehow to have formed itself, flying together into its own powerful pattern under the hands of its builders... it was a house without kindness, never meant to be lived in, not a place fit for people or for love or for hope.” the oldest house in the game control is malicious architecture at its finest, and it’s called the oldest house. it predates people. it exists as a giant piece of brutalist architecture smack dab in the middle of new york, but no one knows why or how it came to be. as a real-world example: the winchester mystery house is wrapped up in mythos about its creation. was sarah winchester just a lonely old woman with a hobby for architectural design, or did she create endlessly spiraling staircases and doorways with a steep drop into the yard to keep ghosts away? who knows! we sure do like to speculate, though.

yes, i’ve talked about this in tma metas before. highly recommend jacob geller’s control, anatomy, and the legacy of the haunted house for more of this content.

even manuela dominguez, the only person on the daedalus mission who actually knew what she was doing and wasn’t just there to be a victim of entities they did not understand, does not know how the mission came to be. 

and the entire purpose of this spacecraft is to be malicious to its inhabitants! the very architecture is meant to make the people within into perfect snacks for their respective entities! the station is cramped (”so cramped that i could only fully stretch out in the section used to exercise,” says jan kilbride), but when the vast takes hold it’s suddenly endless — “a hollow pretense of a shell that did nothing to separate me from the void.” (cue me shouting about how much trust we put in the places we live, and whether or not that trust is warranted, how easily it can be turned against us!)

a few other bits of this statement that really echo ghost stories: “twice i was woken up by the sound of the door opening, only to find it as tight as it had ever been. throughout the daytime i would occasionally hear footsteps, which shouldn’t even have been possible in zero gravity.” and then the empty, ghostly spacesuit that floats past chilcott’s window — there are so many stories about disembodied wedding dresses or mourningwear walking the halls silently, so why not a spacesuit?

i started this section saying this statement was more cosmic horror than ghost story but i’m finishing it by saying this is actually one of the clearest representations of haunted architecture in the whole podcast. (other examples off the top of my head include upon the stair & a cosy cabin, the latter of which i actually already wrote a meta about.)

MAG092: NOTHING BESIDE REMAINS

the moment i started thinking about the lonely-ghosts connection i remembered this episode, because it’s so clear. complete disconnect, existing entirely alone in a shadow of the world you once knew, unable to interact with the living in any way.

very small bit but. “as the cab pulled away, it seemed to have no driver that i could discern” vs the theme of ghost carriages in older ghost stories. i am looking directly at it.

barnabas bennett can “almost think i hear the mocking joy of my friends, but there is nobody here.” he can see evidence that life continues around him, unseen — “i know that what is done by those i cannot see might be felt here — i have found glasses broken and pages torn that were not so the night before.” just as a ghost is unseen to the living, the reverse is true: bennett can see others having an impact on the world in small ways, and his letter is found by jonah, but he can’t really affect the world in any real way.

MAG108: MONOLOGUE

this one is so exciting to me because theater ghosts are a huge trope in ghost stories! theater people are some of the most superstitious people you’ll ever meet! especially regarding ghosts having an impact on their shows — there’s the superstition regarding The Scottish Play™, the tradition of leaving a ghost light on onstage to appease the spirits. there’s that time all the kids in my production of brigadoon when i was in middle school circled around the makeup mirrors to play bloody mary and got thoroughly chewed out by the adults in the cast. theater’s full’a ghosts!

(i think it’s something about the intense amounts of history behind it — and how, in playing a part that a thousand people have played before, you’re echoing their exact words, becoming a repetition of those long gone. and on a stage, blinding lights in your face washing out any view of the audience — you could, technically, leave the stage and interact with the people down there, but it seems pretty entirely impossible when you’re up there. you’re being perceived but can’t see in return. you’re essentially a ghost putting on a show for the living on a loop.)

the statement-giver for this one, adonis biros, echoes a lot of those sentiments, actually. “your words heard by no one — and in that no one, an entire universe.” “have you ever had stage lights in your eyes? ...you can look out into the audience and see nothing at all. just you.”

i said before that “when ghost stories are told from a distance, they’re about the horror of it — disembodied howling, faces in the window that keep you up at night.” the disconnect between the anonymous audience and the singular actor onstage makes the distance here extreme — so this is the sort of ghost story that’s unquestionably a horror story, focusing on the most chilling aspects of ghosts. their inhumanity, their anonymity. the theater masks adonis sees in the audience are “empty. it was a hollow shape of a man that had no life, no presence to it.” even adonis himself says he “had no doubt that what i had seen was some sort of specter or omen.”

he sees a “masked mockery of a human figure” in a window while walking at night. ghosts looking through windows is enough of a trope that once, when i went on a ghost tour in williamsburg, at least half the stories were about people seeing ghostly faces in windows, and i completely freaked out when i saw someone moving around in one of the houses before realizing, oh, some of them are still actually occupied.

this one’s undoubtably a collaboration between stranger and lonely, but i think that intersection’s one of the best for ghost stories — something not-quite-human-anymore, if it ever was, haunting you.

MAG150: CUL-DE-SAC

a lot of the bare bones of this statement are things i’ve already covered, so i’m not gonna go too in-depth on it. herman gorgoli’s statement is about disconnect (from alberto, and then from the rest of humanity), about isolation, about houses-gone-wrong (his and alberto’s house in cheadle, which he views by the end as a place imprisoning him, and the titular cul-de-sac).

we’ve seen the malicious architecture trope in the form of the daedalus already, but this time it’s on earth. it’s something that should, by all rights, be familiar. the houses in the suburbs are all the same, but it’s at least a sameness you know. but they’re all bereft of any irregularities, ghostly echoes of what a house should be.”there were no lights on in any of the houses.” he even finds a dead body in one of the houses — but the woman who’s body he finds is not the one haunting them.

it’s herman haunting the neighborhood, until his love for alberto brings him out. herman making his way through houses he cannot interact with in any meaningful way, whos details he cannot interpret. “how many corpses lay waiting behind the placid facade of this endless false suburbia?” he wonders, and i have to imagine he’s also wondering if he’s already joined their ranks, if he’s the haunting in a haunted house.

and connection brings him back and the houses are no longer empty, no longer waiting for a ghost to take resident in their hallways.

MAG159: THE LAST   (& martin’s journey in season four, generally)

we’ve all analyzed 159 within an inch of its life but i’m here to do it again, with the context of martin’s whole journey into the lonely. because the lonely turns people into ghosts. the lonely takes away humanity and life and leaves a hollow echo in its wake.

literally the powers lonely avatars have involve turning invisible. what else is often associated with invisibility? ghosts. checkmate. i’m running out of steam a bit but i swear these are good points i’m making. trust me.

what makes ghost stories so good is that even if the narrator is not a ghost themselves, just experiencing a ghost puts them at a fundamental disconnect from society. it’s something disbelieved by so many people. (there’s parallels to be made with mental illness here, but i... don’t really feel like making them right now. they’re definitely there, as is the very potent lonely-depression connection that made ep170 hit so hard for so many of us.) in hill house, the more eleanor is wrapped up in the goings-on of the house, the less she’s able to relate to the other people there. the closer martin becomes to the lonely, the less he’s able to talk to the people around him — he’s told not to talk to them by lukas, but he’s also just... unable to relate. their experiences are different than his, at this point.

nicole @brunetteauthorette99​ said something really good in our conversation about this, about ghosts “being stuck in... spaces that have moved on without them, reenacting their defining moments in life over and over again without the possibility of change.”

martin is stuck in the institute. he probably has an apartment, but we don’t see it, and i can’t imagine he as he is by season four has put much effort into decorating it or making it feel like a home. every place is impersonal — somewhere he exists without really living.

and the institute moves on without him. jon goes into the coffin and martin doesn’t know until he’s already in there. and martin can impact his environment only in small ways — leaving tape recorders on the coffin in an attempt to anchor jon home, leaving the tape of jon’s victim for melanie, basira, and daisy to find. he will not or cannot speak to or touch other living beings, just move objects around in a desperate attempt to get a message across, a ouija board of tapes and post-it notes. his moment of rejecting the lonely’s plans in 158 is dropping the knife peter has given him — another expression more through his interactions with his environment than any human connection.

martin says the lonely always had him, and with how much his story revolves around people who may as well be ghosts, that’s true. his father disappeared and left only the image martin had of him in his mind, only the echo he himself provided in the mirror, the ghost of someone who hurt him overlaid on his own reflection. his mother was only present so far as she could be malicious, disapproving; a vengeful ghost, taking out the revenging instinct she had for martin’s father on martin. and then everyone else martin cares about dies — sasha’s gone and not!sasha acts as her malicious echo for a while; tim dies; jon dies. and yeah, he comes back — but he’s different. a ghost of sorts. martin’s already pretty ghostly by then, too.

so martin is, essentially, a ghost throughout season four, and probably beforehand, as well. jon literally! asks martin! if he is a ghost! in season one! which brings us to 159: “are you real?” martin asks the first living person he’s really talked to in who-knows-how-long. because martin doesn’t feel real, so how could anyone else be? “nothing hurts here” may be a contradiction of the literal experience of ghosts we see in tma (gerry saying “it hurts, being like this”), but is a very real perception of ghosts in ghost mythology as beings beyond pain, beyond the suffering of being alive. sometimes they exist to cause others that suffering they can no longer feel, but a lot of the time, they’re just melancholy, having forgotten what it’s like to be a person or hanging on just enough to yearn to return to that feeling of life.

“i’m the reason he... i did this to him as much as you,” jon says. in ghost terms: martin died for him. of course his connection to jon, then, would be the only thing able to bring him back.

mag159 is an orpheus/eurydice story — people have made posts about that before, i’m sure, and i have too, how jon and martin invert the orpheus archetype by being saved rather than damned by the act of sight. and it feels obvious to state it, but for clarity: eurydice dies. orpheus, alive, tries to save eurydice from the underworld, where she is a spirit, a ghost, an echo of herself.

MAG170: RECOLLECTION   —   (SPOILER WARNING!)

this episode is the reason i’m making this post, but i may as well copy-and-paste the entire transcript for this section, because there is truly not a single part of it that doesn’t resonate as a ghost story. 

the lonely house as a malicious location. the chairs are all uncomfortable, the house is large enough that just by wandering it (as a ghost might) martin grows tired enough to sit in them regardless. the decorations are wrong — all the rooms are the same and martin doesn’t like it, said he doesn’t know “why i’d decorate my house like this.”

it isn’t a small house. there’s a reason a lot of ghost stories take place in twisting mansions where you can never quite find your way back to where you started. ghost stories thrive on that isolation, that loneliness — if you see a ghost while you’re alone, are you sure you’ll be believed? doesn’t that just isolate you further? architecture can twist around those within it until they’re trapped, doomed to haunt it themselves. “it's such a - such a big house, my house, there must be other people!” martin says. 

but the only others in the house are ghosts like martin. 

“hundreds, thousands of lost souls, wandering the halls. hollow memories, with eyes full of tears. i’ve seen them. they’re all trying to remember.” 

“i found someone else, wandering around. they were all thin and gray. faded. like they’d been here for ages.”

the ghosts cannot remember their names, why they are there, whether or not it is their house they exist in. they’ve become near-inseparable from the fog around them and the architecture that holds them hostage.

and the house itself, it takes all of that, and its quirks — the size, the chairs, the decorations, all of which martin openly does not like — are all made from the people haunting it. the house is wrong because the people within it can no longer change it. martin’s comment on the decorations sticks with me because it’s such a simple example of this: presumably, he could affect the house in some way in the past, but he no longer can, and he’s stuck with the results of his past mistakes, echoing over and over from room to room. the impacts remain even when the people have faded so far as to be practically nonexistent.

and once again: love is what makes him remember, over and over. he remembers jon, and then the lonely steals that memory — but the remembering is what’s important, because the act of loving anchors martin, and it helps him remember who he is, repeating his name over and over.

ghosts lack identity. whether it’s because they’ve been forgotten by all who knew them in life, whether it’s because it’s too painful to hold onto that when they can no longer do anything with it — we assign names to ghost stories, connect them to the living, but there’s always a disconnect there.

and that’s what helps jon find him, helps martin keep himself from fading out again. and even jon says “you were faint” upon finding martin. martin was a ghost haunting that house.

but not anymore.

the lonely is a ghost story. the lonely is about people who’ve become unmoored from human connection and their own identities, who haunt places, or who’ve been lured into places that are hauntings in and of themselves and have no choice but to take up residence as ghosts within those walls.

and ghost stories, often, are love stories. love keeps us tethered to life, and love is what saves people from the lonely, over and over again.

[legionofpotatoes]

we decided to watch all story cutscenes from the new resident evil village videogame on a whim, since it’s not really our cup of tea gameplay-wise but seems to be this massive zeitgeist moment that made us morbidly curious. And I know how much everyone cares about my thoughts on things I know very little about, so. let’s get into it huh gamers. and yeah spoilers?

for context, I’ve only played resident evil 4 and a small portion of 5. I also read the wikipedia entry for 7’s plot recently. all this to say I was only vaguely aware of how tonally wacky the series was going in

I also completely gave up following the plot of the mutagens’ soap opera, so that paid off in spades here as you might imagine

anyway so that baby in the intro. that baby’s head is just massive. humongous toddlerdome. when ethan finds the baby’s head in a jar later on. there is no way that head would fit into that jar. bad game design. no not even game design. basic stuff. one hundred years in prison for jar modeler

if I see a single functional hetero marriage in video games I will cry tears of joy. I understand their misery is kind of The Point irt them badly working through the hillbilly romp trauma but like. sheesh. at least set that up as an emotional story goal the plot will help resolve. but nope they start off miserable and it goes nowhere

I know I know the mia thing has a huge wrinkle in it but like. not really in terms of dramatic function?? set up a happy end to the re7 nightmare (miranda can keep up appearances for all she cares) and then take that all away from angry griffin mcelroy for manpain. it will still absolutely work to set up the dramatic forward momentum. why throw in this cliche Hollywood Tension in their marriage if you’re not going to address it oh maybe because it’s normalized as automatically interesting because nuclear families are a self-propagating pit of a very narrow chance at emotional happiness relying on social stigma to preserve their empty function oops my baggage slipped in yikes abort mission

I called him griffin mcelroy because I saw his face on twitter and. yeah. I will continue to do this occasionally. my house my rules

... fuck the reason I’m hung up on this is specifically because the rest of the game is so tonally dexterous (which is a shining point to me! more on that later!), and yet they felt weirdly compelled to create the aesthetic trapping of a family-at-odds trope without following it through too well. a sign of both the good and the bad stuff to come

but listen the real reason why I wanted to talk about any of this is to nitpick the fascinating backwards-engineered nucleus of the entire thing; in that this game essentially creates a melting pot of just SO many disparate horror tropes and then makes a no-holds-barred unhinged effort at weaving thick lore to piece them all together. it is truly a sight to behold. like straight up you got your backwoods fright night situation, your gothic castle vampires, your rural-industrial werewolves, and don’t forget your bloated swamp monsters over there, with then a hard left turn into robotic body horror, and the entire ass subgenre of Creepy Doll writ large, and the bloodborne tentacle monsters, and a hellboy angel bossfight, which rides on the coattails of a mech-on-mech pacific rim bonanza, and just jesus henry christ slow down

almost all of these are textural hijack jobs that don’t really get into the metaphor plain of any of those settings but the game sort-of makes an argument that the texture IS the point and revels in it. It is kind of admirable almost. The same reason why the intro felt boxed in and unmotivated is also why the rest of the game just blasts off of its hinges to the point of complete and self-indulgent tonal abandon. I kinda loved that about it. lady dimitrescu made sure to hold her hat down as she bent forward in mahogany doorways and then suddenly she’s a giant gore dragon and you settle in your temp role as dark souls man with Gun to take her ass down. Excellent??

this rhino rampage impulse to gobble up every horror aesthetic known to man comes to head when the game wrestles with its FPS trappings in what is the most hilarious solution in creating visceral player damage moments. Since most cinematics and the entire game is in first person, that leaves precious little real estate for the devs to work with if they really want to sell griffin’s physical crucible. To wit. This dude’s forearms. Specifically just the forearms. They are MASSACRED throughout the story. The poor man lives out the silent hill dimension of a hand model. by the end cutscene he looks like a neatly dressed desk clerk who had decided to stick both his grabbers into garbage disposal grinders just a few hours prior. like in addition to everything else it manages to rope in that tinge of slapstick violence into its general grievous genre collection except this time it IS for a lack of trying! truly incredible

but wait his miracle clawbacks from everything his poor paws go through are retroactively explained away, yes, but far too vaguely and far too late to console me as I sat and watched everyone’s favorite baby brother reattach an entirely severed hand to his wrist stump by just. placing it on there. and giving it a lil twist ‘n pop terminator-style. and then willing his fingers back into motion right in front of my bulging eyes. this game just does not care. it does not give a shit. and boy howdy will it work to make that into one of its strongest suits

cause generally speaking resident evil was THE premiere vanilla zombie content destinaysh for like a decade, right? and as the rest of the world and mainstream media started encroaching and bloodying its blue ocean it went and just exploded in every single conceivable horror trope direction like a smilodon on catnip. truly, genuinely fascinating franchise moves

yeah the big vampire milf is hot. other news; grass... green. although I do love the implication that her closet is just identical white dresses on a rack. cartoon network-level queen shit

apropos of nothing I’ve said there’s also this hobo dante-devimaycry-magneto man, and I can’t believe this sentence makes sense. anyway he made that “boulder-punching asshole” joke referring to chris redfield and it was probably the only easter egg that really landed for me and boy did it land hard. I have not seen him punch the boulder in re5, mind. I had only heard about how funny it is from friends. and here this dude was, probably in the same exact mindset as me, trying to grapple with that insane mental image. with you on that ian mckellen, loud and clear

I advocate vehemently against the shallow pursuit of hyper photorealism in art direction but I gotta admit it works really in favor of immersive horror like this. the european village shacks especially gave me super unchill flashbacks to my rural countryside retreat in western georgia. I could smell the linoleum dude. not cool

faces are weird in this game. can’t place it. nice textures, good animation, but the modeling template is... uuh strange? and the hair. it has that clustered-flat-clumpy look that harkens to something very specific and unpleasant but I just don’t know what. sue me

griffin’s mental aptitude to take all this shit in stride and end every seemingly traumatizing bossfight involving some fucking eldritch being yet unseen through mortal eyes by essentially throwing out an MCU quip is just. What the fuck dude? I mean that was funny how you casually yelled the f-word at a god damn werewolf that you considered a fairy tale an hour ago but are you like, all right?? it was swinging a sledgehammer the size of a bus at you, ethan

oh oh the vampires are afraid of cold and your last name is winters. I get it haha

Pro Gamer Nitpick: boss fights seemed a bit unnecessarily long?? idk why the youtuber we picked decided the ENTIRE propeller man fight counted towards the vital story scenes he was stitching together, but man mr big daddy lite there really had some get up and go huh??

why are they saying dimitrescu.. like that. is it really how you say that word or is the english language relapsing into its fetish for ending every single word with a consonant at all costs

I’m not saying it’s a dramatic miss of a twist in context of all that’s going on, but the “you died in the last game actually and have been DC’s clayface ever since” revelation is low-key. it’s. it’s just funny to me, I dont know what to say. century-old god-witch fails her evil plan after she mistakenly removes heart from what was definitely NOT just some white guy with eight fingers after all

chris realizing he’s about to become the player character and immediately swapping out his tsundere trenchcoat for the muscletight sex haver sweater

the little bluetooth speaker-sized pipe bomb he taped to his knife was nuclear?? really??? I must have missed something because that is just too good. I buy it though I totally buy it. chris just got them fun-sized nukes in his car trunk for, you guessed it, Situations

anyway this is all for now just wanted to briefly touch on how unexpectedly funny and tonally irreverent this seemingly serious game turned out to be. did not articulate any cathartic story beats whatsoever but my god it had fun connecting those plot points. he just fucking put his severed hand back on his stump and it Just Worked todd howard get in here

[sanchoyo]

danny phantom, season 3 episodes 3-6 thoughts!

see prev episode thoughts in this tag <3

-johnny was actually pretty civil with danny and left when he asked! thats nice. also, SKULKER?? HAD A FRAMED PICTURE OF EMBER?? oooo fuck wait had they established they were a Thing Before?? I dont think so. thats weird. its like that country boy/goth girl meme lmfao. I think i am going to choose to ignore this new info and pretend I didnt hear it. 100% unrelated to the jazz/ember fanart I already drew and posted....😳

-LADIES NIGHT EPISODE THIS IS WHAT ITS ALL ABOUT. wish it didnt really center around the guys or them being pissed at them, but. willing to bet this was written by men lol

-THEY ERASED ALL THE MEN??? meanwhile, jack and danny are fishing at. silent hill or something. im glad jack is trying to read a parenting book and making an Attempt. (theyre at lake erie, but, they made it actually eerie...thats fun)

-the girls alt outfits...cute. EMBER MADE A NEW SONG TOO!!! kinda. jazz being one of the backup singers and being AWFUL. NOOOO

-'how are we going to get kitty to blow a kiss?' 'she'll have to think there are still some males in town!' ...i dont know how to break it to you, but I dont know that a 100% het girl would wish for all men to Begone. I think. I mean im not a het or a girl so I dont really know for sure. she Is probably Bi tho. esp having the other ladies in town chanting NO MEN!!! excitedly............(then again, the kiss is to get Rid of men, so, she probably would have blown it at the ladies only if they were actively trying to attack/stop them, so...I MEAN. THE DRESSING LIKE DANNY BIT WAS SO EXTRA)

-I feel like an all female cast ep couldve been way way way way cooler than that was. like. why was it still somehow all about Men. ...anyway. (where was valerie...)

-next ep opens with the observants, and, way way more of them than I expected...existed? I mean I guess them being a council/jury of some kind is what I expected from their first appearance (bc at that time they were basically TELLING clockwork to kill danny, not asking,, so I figured they had SOME kind of authority) but. there were so many. anyway, here goes vlad! letting his own hubris go brrrr. releasing a weather ghost for political gain! #justvladthings

-okay say what you will about him (he IS an asshole) but having an umbrella with his own face on it and more prepared to share is SUPER FUNNY. and him being fanned by huge wads of money by his bodyguards. SO ineffective but so Dramatic. He UNDERSTANDS that if youre rich you need to be. you know. obnoxious and kinda eccentric about it! fuckign hate when rich people are boring about it. I would trust vlad with nothing except to not be a boring rich asshole who wears...fucking khaki or some shit. man knows his Presentation Skills. and that 'V' chair in his mayoral office. is that fucking embroidered?

-maddie get your MAN PLEEEEASSSE. IM SO EMBARRASSED FOR HER. the way jack stays simping for this man. in FRONT OF HIS WIFE!!!! ...my god its like a love triangle. jack clearly loves vlad, who loves maddie, who loves jack. jack fenton is at the very least bi, right................. this is an OBSESSION . 'THE V MAN COMETH'???? i...my god. (also, on a serious note, to have a friend THIS SUPPORTIVE...and still be SUCH A DICK TO HIM (TRYING TO KILL HIM AND STEAL HIS WIFE??) NOT COOL VLAD. JACK IS YOUR 1 AND /ONLY/ HYPE MAN. if someone loved and supported me THIS HARD...LIKE. CMON DUDE.

-STOMP the fucking GAS, JACK

-this would make a great shirt design, looks like a metal band design! we love The Maelstrom

-oh, so vlad did in fact get a mansion in amity park. and its purple! good color choice! not as flashy as a CASTLE or MURDER CABIN, but still pretty eccentric, which I appreciate.

-...vlad knows the difference between picasso and da vinci? in the ep last post where we were watching him fail at conquering every historical time ever he didnt seem to know history well enough to like. be effective...was vlad taking art history at college?? (was he an art MAJOR??? we never DID KNOW WHAT HE WENT TO SCHOOL FOR. I kinda assumed business because in the masters of time ep he was still rich without ghost powers so he had to have..known something about business or something, right...but also, art and or theater FITS HIS PERSONALITY. possibly also something science-y, I guess, but I always felt like he got roped into that, esp how pessimistic he was about the ghost portal in the flashbacks to college, like, i felt like he was just there for maddie and was uninterested/un-invested at the time...)

-THIS GHOST JUST ELECTROCUTED MADDIE (THE CAT) BITCH!! THATS MY FAVORITE MADDIE!!! vlad going after vortex and being ~shocked~ .....WHEN. WHEN WILL YOU LEARN. THAT YOUR ACTIONS. HAVE CONSEQUENCES!!!

-the way this random man with a camera sees the mayor laying in an alley covered in TRASH AND DECIDES TO TAKE A PICTURE HAHAH

*snap* this ones going in my cringe compilation!

-vlad 'if we're going to defeat vortex, we're going to have to do it together!' *immediately dips after dropping danny off in front of vortex* JKASDFHKJHJKN

-DANNY CAN DUPLICATE!!! ...he couldnt even attack with it, but he DID IT!!! INTO (4) OF HIMSELF!!! SO PROUD!!!!!!!!!!

-'THE ROLLER COASTER EMOTIONS OF A TEENAGER THREATEN MY PLANS!' ...0 self awareness of his own dramatic moodiness. incredible, how dumb this man is. its very close to circling around to endearing, if he was less of an asshole. at least its very very funny to see danny shooting him with tiny lightning bolts anytime he's even slightly irritated! vlad you should be nice to danny anyway. this is what you GET

-...making sandwiches and ice cream and playing video games with your nephew is a totally normal thing. WHY is vlad acting like this is the end of the world. if you were a GOOD UNCLE YOU WOULD ALREADY BE DOING THESE THINGS!!! bitch I make my nephew food all the time and dont forget what he does and doesnt like. if u didnt know danny didnt want tomatoes, thats on u. if u, a grown adult, are gonna piss of the 14 yr old by not letting him win, u deserve to have to pay for the arcade machines he ruins because he now has uncontrollable storm powers because YOU THREW HIM INTO A FIGHT WITH THE STORM GHOST. fuck u vlad. paypal me $400,000 while ur at it tho. (also, gamer vlad confirmed)

-VLAD CAN COOK THOUGH???! I assumed he had...people working for him that did that. I mean. billionaires usually dont do that. then again, we've only seen those vultures working for him (and I guess the dairy king was AT his old mansion, but it was never really clarified if he worked there...I think he probably just Hung Out and they Enjoyed Cheeses Together. thats what I think, I dont think a KING would be working for anyone and also the dairy king was nice <3) but then again he would be a private person and we cant have anyone accidentally finding Ghostly Things, so...still, that's hilarious. pour one out for that really cute banana split that got ruined 2 seconds later

-vlad just fucking picking danny up and THROWING HIM AT VORTEX TWICE WITHIN LIKE A MINUTE. JUST ABSOLUTELY LAUNCHING HIM. BITCH THATS MY SON BE CAREFUL!!! HES GOT ORGANS AND THINGS!!!!

-danny seeing those animal commercials and feeling sad is the biggest 2000s throwback so far. i legitimately had to change the channel or walk out of the room when those came on bc id CRY AND BE SAD ABOUT THEM FOR DAYS AFTER. fuck those commercials and fuck that IN THE ARMMMS OF AN ANGELLLL song 😭

-'vlads ego almost got the town destroyed!' yes danny thats the entire episode. the entire series anytime vlad shows up honestly. this episode was just him being really embarrassing the entire time, and, me laughing about it. 10/10 would laugh at him again

-NEXT EP WE HAVE A SHAPESHIFTING GHOST?? I've said it before but shapeshifting is the power I would want when asked those 'what superpower do you want' questions...its the Best power! this guy looks like a homestuck character. ive never read homestuck but thats the vibe

-I love every time we see tuckers family, they are by far the most functional family. and dash has a lil chihuahua!!! named pookie!!! i am crying (I've had 3 chihuahuas, so I am very biased, but...) AND HE WATCHES THE ROMANCE CHANNEL WITH POOKIE. POOKIE I WILL DIE FOR YOU YOU SWEET LITTLE BABY.

-danny can lift a bus! I shouldn't be surprised, but i am proud of my son. hes got lil kid fans. i am going to cry about this

-JAZZ KEEPS A SCRAPBOOK WITH DANNY'S LIL HEROICS AND NEWSPAPER CLIPPINGS!!! we've actually seen it on her floor before, but I didnt realize it was a scrapbook!! thats sooo cute.

-...and danny has to stand there listening to his parents saying danny phantom sucks and is a 'filthy ghost' and calling him egotistical...i am once again stealing their kids!

-THIS GHOST RIPPING JAZZ'S SCRAPBOOK!!! ILL KILL YOU. SHE WORKED HARD ON THAT!!! BITCH

-yes, maddie, the one with red eyes is For Sure Actually Your Son. ignore the, red eyes... (CLEARLY she hasnt watched the other 2 eps where danny has been evil, she doesnt know red eyes= evil!!!)

-'billy fenton'.......................

-danny being stuck as phantom in his own house, no way out is a fucking NIGHTMARE. his parents pointing giant weapons against him and SHOOTING AT HIM. THIS IS A HORROR MOVIE.

-NINE INCH NAILS POSTER.

-this is the most screenshot of all time

-amorpho turning into mr. lancer because hes 'someone no one will want to be around' BUT HES WRONG, I WOULD BEFRIEND AND HANG OUT WITH MR LANCER SO FAST.

-tucker dressing as danny, now I have the full Tucker set of him being sam and also being danny. also saying 'the ghost...uh...RIPPED MY FACE OFF.' and then running. SMOOTH. NOT AT ALL CONCERNING TO ANY PARENTS.

-sam accepts the toast from jack. and then 2 seconds later is like 'why am i eating this.' THIS SHOWS HUMOR IS SO UNEXPECTED SOMETIMES ITS REALLY GOOD. and then the scene after, mr lancer running into his ghost doppelganger and being like 'YOURE GORGOUS' THEN FAINTING. I AM CRYING. AND DASH FAINTING TOO.

-sam disguising herself as danny again to help tucker run from the fentons. but leaving him shirtless in the streets. incredible. 'plEASE DOnt NOTice MY FACELessNESS I MUST LIVE IN EXILE' this episode is destroying me the humor in this show is exactly my brand of corny and cheesy

-the impromtu story made up by danny and amorpho to explain stuff to the fentons. my god they are both such bad liars. but amorpho is a good egg. wish danny wouldnt have said he didnt wanna see him in town again!! I want him to be reoccurring. not that thats gonna matter since I'm almost done with the series, but the idea of this being the Only Time We See him is :(

-NEXT EP SAYS STARRING MARK HAMILL??????!!! hello ! mr . joker....mr. star wars.... I feel like I should be. idk. taking off a hat im not wearing in respect. I shouldnt be surprised tho bc hes in a lot of cartoons as a very good voice actor, and dp has already had a lot of talented ones so I've been looking out for ones I might know, but....mr. hamill....

-sam has her own greenhouse, names all the plants, and says thank you to them (in the languages from where the plants are from) whenever she harvests from them. thats SO cute. and her lil gothy lunch box...

-and danny's lil red fuzzy lined jacket!!! ive said it before but every time the characters get alt outfits im like :D

-danny has ice powers now!!! THATS WHAT FROSTBITE MEANT. HE KNEW SOMEHOW WAY BACK THEN

-THIS SHOW NEVER LETS YOU FORGET VLAD IS A BILLIONAIRE, HUH.

-danny's lil 'holy hibiscus!' first off the 50s batman swearing is hilarious. 2nd. my username is from the flower sanchoyo hibiscus, so, shoutout to ME this ep. hi :)

-EURGH UNDERGROWTH MAKING EVERYONE PLANT ZOMBIES. HIVEMIND PLOTS SCARE THE SHIT OUT OF ME. and this dude made the city SO overtaken so quickly like how long was danny asleep?? oh god

-evil fucked up sam! now the whole trio has gone evil at some point! the voice actress did a really, really good job with making her sound like a zombie...

-frostbite's paws are so so so big compared to danny. oh my god. i want to hug the snow dog...

-the far frozen has an advanced medical stuff!!! very cool. very smart snow dogs

-im so glad danny has a friendly ghost snow dad to explain this new power and teach him!!! this is so sweet. DANNY'S GHOST SENSE WAS A PART OF HIS ICE POWER?? OOOH. COOL. we love a training montage!!!

-danny saying if he cant defeat overgrowth, that he'd want to stay with frostbite...oh my god...do you think this is the first real supportive adult figure in his life (I am NOT counting his parents because they threaten him on the daily even if they dont realize it.) I mean mr lancer is a Teacher, but he was also nice but this is different, but this is a GHOST WHO IS WILLING TO HELP HIM with his powers and also will help him when hes injured and is so so nice and comparatively so much more mature than 90% of the adults in this show!!!! god. dad frostbite is my everything.

-the framing and lighting this episode, and all the angles...they went all OUT and it looks really really good. this is my nightmare scenario, tho. like, FUCK zombies and dead city zones and hivemind shit. and using the humans as 'nutrients for the children' i am going to THROW UP.

-MALEFICENT VIBES WITH THE HORNS AND GREEN EYES! this costume kicks so much ass. sam is now mark hamills daughter, I guess.

-danny's ice powers making his eyes blue!!! thats neat. and him going for the roots underground was SO SMART. i will not stand for danny ever thinking hes stupid, hes SO smart.

almost done with the show... :"( thats a sad thought!!!