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winterdaphne2 · 3 months

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Favorite Johnlock Fics (BBC Sherlock)

I went on a bit of a fic-reading spree this spring, and this list of favorites is the result! There are many other fics that I’ve enjoyed reading, but these are the ones that I’ve really loved for one reason or another.

I’ve tagged the authors whose tumblrs I could find. If that’s you, thank you so much for sharing your writing with us. If your work is on here, you wrote something that I really treasure.

1. A River Without Banks, by Chryse. E, 203,286 words. Starts right after Season 3. A mix of Sherlock’s perspective, John’s perspective, and the perspectives of other characters. Sherlock-focused for the first half.

Author’s summary: “‘You love this, being Sherlock Holmes.’ He had once. When had it all gone so wrong?”

This is my absolute favorite. The author’s characterization of Sherlock is amazingly accurate, and Sherlock’s character development over the course of the story is breathtakingly executed and moving. The plot is fantastic and takes you on a page-turning emotional roller coaster, especially for about the first half of the story. I was also continually impressed by how many details from the show and references to earlier parts of the fic the author was able to weave in throughout while still keeping the story creative and original. Most importantly, though, I love this fic for the message that it sends about Sherlock and John’s love, which is a far more positive message than the one that the actual show settled upon in the end. I’m grateful that we have this version of their love story, and, personally, I like to pretend that this was Season 4 and how the show ended.

2. Another Country, by Chryse. E, 67,414 words. Starts right after the end of TAB. Sherlock’s perspective.

Sherlock spends one month and three days under house arrest in 221B, trying to get clean from the drugs, track down the new Moriarty, and figure out what the hell is going on between him and John.

Another fantastic work by Chryse. This author really gets Sherlock’s character, and once again the characterization of Sherlock is spot-on and convincing. There are a few other elements that also make this a compelling story, including smart use of minor characters, a solid central mystery, and a complicated relationship between Sherlock and John that includes a pretty convincing post-Season-3 version of John. Excellent.

3. walk through ghosts, by @augustbird. M, 6,125 words. Written between Seasons 2 and 3. Sherlock’s perspective.

Author’s summary: “The thing is: Sherlock thought that the two of them would have forever to figure it out.”

This is the saddest fic I have ever read, and so beautifully written. The author captures Season 2 Sherlock’s character perfectly; the fact that this story feels so real is what makes it devastating. The day after I read this, I couldn’t stop thinking about it and walked around with my heart physically aching in my chest.

4. Nature and Nurture, by @earlgreytea68. M, 203,273 words. Set sometime after Season 2. Alternates between John’s and Sherlock’s perspectives, but mostly told from John’s.

The British government clones Sherlock. He and John decide to raise the baby.

A true fandom classic. The premise sounds super cracky, but somehow it really works. This fic is surprisingly serious at times, but overall it is the cutest and funniest thing I have ever read in my life. Basically 200,000+ words of Sherlock and John being adorable gay fathers together and working through some feelings, with line-by-line some of the most hilarious dialogue ever. The five accompanying ficlets that the author wrote as short follow-ups are also worth checking out; my favorites were School (T, 4,753 words) and The Radovljica Apicultural Museum (T, 4,540 words).

5. To a Friend Who Sent Me Roses, by @algyswinburne. E, 16,147 words. Set sometime after Season 4 (but ignores TFP, as we all should lol). Sherlock’s perspective.

Author’s summary: “Five times Sherlock is mistaken for John’s partner and Rosie’s father, and one time it isn’t a mistake.”

This fic is sad, sweet, and hot by turns. Absolutely lovely to read in so many ways, and with so many great details and lines. I think this story offers convincing portrayals of what Sherlock’s and John’s characters might be like after it all and how they might finally get together. This and A River Without Banks are my favorite alternate endings to the show. Beautiful!

6. for all that bitter delights will sour, by @darcylindbergh. E, 9,585 words. Set sometime after Season 3. Sherlock’s perspective.

John initiates a sexually and emotionally abusive relationship with Sherlock.

The second saddest fic I have read. I would never want what happens in this fic to happen to Sherlock and John, so I don’t exactly recommend it as a Johnlock fic. But as a short story, this is a gem, full of absolutely gorgeous and incredibly moving writing. It depicts difficult themes very deftly, in lines and paragraphs that I had to stop to read over and over. I appreciate this as an emotionally powerful and thought-provoking piece of writing inspired by Sherlock, so for that reason I think it deserves to be on this list.

7. The Ground Beneath Your Feet, by Chryse. E, 68,803 words. Set after Season 3, but as if the last two minutes of HLV never happened. “The plane went on to Eastern Europe, and this is what came after.” John’s perspective.

This fic is pretty dark; the author describes it as “a PTSD story in which John was wholly devoted to Sherlock.” I don’t love it quite as much as the other two fics by Chryse that I’ve listed here, but that’s mostly because those two are just so amazing! I still really enjoyed this one. It was wonderful to see a kind and caring version of John emerge out of Season 3, and the story had several memorable moments, including one particularly nail-biting scene. I also really liked seeing John and Mycroft become friends as they bonded over their shared concern for Sherlock.

8. The Adventures of a Single Girl in London (Plus a Consulting Detective), by @earlgreytea68. M, 32,913 words. Set soon after Season 3. Alternates between different characters’ perspectives.

Bored with life at her new cottage in Sussex, Janine returns to London and moves in with Sherlock at 221B. Hilarity, heartbreak, and eventual Johnlock ensue.

This is a Season 3 fix-it fic that features an absolutely lovely friendship between Sherlock and Janine and the best version of Janine that I’ve come across in a fic. Sherlock is vulnerable and sweet, John is an absolute idiot, Janine is perfect, and the last two chapters just make me scream. Great stuff.

And that’s it for now! If you know of any other fics that I might like based on the above, I’d be happy to hear about them, so drop me a line!

Happy reading 😊

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popculturebuffet · 11 months

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Transcontinental Hustle: Ghosts UK and US (Commission for WeirdKev27)

Hello all you spooky people and welcome back to Trans-Contiental Hustle, my occasional look at shows and their foreign remakes to see how they compare. This is our second installment and I honestly didn't INTEND for it to be almost 9 months between these but it happens. I"ll try to do more next year. Last time I took a look at That 70's Show and it's half assed British Remake, Days Like These, which replaced a talented cast and one sex criminal with a few british specific references and... nothing else. And while a few other remakes like this have happened like Mad About You (Which I now GOTTA see) or Married With Children.. for the most part when it comes to remakes we usuallyt ake from britian. Just looking at the list on wikipedia, the breakdown for us remakes of other countries shows is... pretty lopsided

Argentina, Brazil, France,Germany, Norway, Portugal : 1 Belgium, Columbia, Denmark, New Zeland, Spain: 2 Sweden: 3 Australia: 10 Japan: 18 UK: 53

I mean I knew it'd be going in but JESUS FUCK. Combining all the other countries it STILL only adds up to 38. We steal/adapt/borrow/rob from the UK a LOT. I will try to have variety, but expect this to happen a lot. I mean Gordon Ramsey alone has MULTIPLE shows on both coasts. And yes reality shows aren't off the table.

So naturally that leads to our first US adaptaiton of a UK show, Ghosts. The original Ghosts launched in 2019 on BBC One, the newest show from acting troupe Them There, who previously did the show Horrible Histories and were looking to do something adult albeit along the lines of Blackadder or the Simpsons: meant for adults but still something older kids can enjoy. After watching an episode of who do you think you are, Co-Creator Jim Howick, was fastinated by the story of a castmember of eastenders who turned out to be related to british royalty and having already had the haunted house idea, ghosts was born. Not much later in 2021, Joe Port and Joe Wiseman , longtime sitcom producers and writers, got the job by CBS adapting it for the US, though with the british cast helping advise.

So not only are both very recent as a result both are fairly similar. In fact the two episode pilot of each show .. follow the same plot, simply with some adjustments: A late 20's early 30's woman inherits a mansion from a distant relative, said mansion has ghosts and after falling out a window finds out she can see them. Hyjinks insue. So the question is what makes these two shows unique, is one better than the other and most importantly is the american version a good adaptation. Let's find out under the cut as I break down these episodes.

As I said the basic plot for both pilots is the same, so i'll be recapping them together again.

We start with a bunch of ghosts as the lady of their manor expires, with them thinking she'll join them before she aburbtly passes on. it quickly establishes this house has ghosts, ghosts can move on and who our main casts of ghosts are

As for introducing our ghosts...it's a lot as while a lot of the ghosts have counterparts between versions, the ghosts are mostly entirely unique between versions. This is one of the things I like most about Ghosts US as an adaptation: it copies the basic premise and a few characters, but still gives most of the archetypes it borrows their own feel and recognizes that you'd have diffrent ghosts in america than britan. It also just combines the two most annoying ghosts into one person and makes him far less of a buttwhiff but we'll get to that. So i'll be throwing a lot of characters at you at once, which the series does.. but still uses a scene early on in each version of the first episode to let you get used to them. INstead I have to infodump like a motherfucker so hang on.

Our UK Ghosts are...

Kitty Highham (Lolly Adefope): An excitable ditzy black aristocrat from the late 1700s. She's your standard bubbly woman with no brains, a sterotype I thought we'd buried but it's ghost lingers here. Thomas Thorne (Matthew Bayton): A tortured poet and a character I liked at first, an overly hammy young man.. but becomes annoying once Alison, the alive lead for the US series, comes into frame as he moons over her, despite having a husband, asks her to die to join him and generally is a creep.

MP Julian Fawcett (Simon Farnaby): A disgraced politican who as the papers reporting his death accuratley call him "a sex pest". He died with his pants down, and is generally egotistical and creepy. He's annoying but ballanced by the fact that researching himself only leads to his shock that

A public figure dying during a sex act. .is only going to be remembered for that. Shocker. Even Alison has at least heard of him for that and nothing else.

Lady Fanny Button (Martha Howe-Douglas): The uptight lady of the manor whose husband horribly killed her. She's also grating, calling Allison a whore multiple times, but eventually aquesing she might be a button after all. THey smartly.. toned this the hell down in the us version but we'll get to her.

Pat Butcher (Jim Howick): A doofy camp counsler who died via a fatal case of arrow to the neck in the 1980s after a scouting accident gone wrong, and whose the nicest and most friendly of the bunch and the only one to be happy Allison's here who dosen't also want to reinact that one scene from ghostbusters.

Rogh (Laurence Rickard): Their biggest swing, a caveman who lived on the grounds and the oldest ghost. He's kinda fun but I can see why he was replaced by a slightly younger ghost in the american versoin Sir Humphrey Bone (Also Rickard): A decapitated Tudor Nobleman whose constantly having to fumble with his head The Captain (Bill Wilbond): A boisterious WWI vetran and insufferable blowhard. He's also a closted gay man which explains a LOT.

Mary (Katy Wix): A victim of the witch trials, kinda friendly just wants people to renounce satan, ironically enough.

Our American Ghosts are:

Captain Isaac Higgenfoot (Brandon Scott Jones): Our Captain counterpart who was in the revolutionary war instead. He's also far less successful in pretending to be a tough military man like The Captain was.. or that he's at all straight.

Alberta Haynes (Danielle Pinnock): A prohibition Lounge Singer. She's the rough countepart of Kitty, both being black women in fancy dresses, but that's about all they have in common, with Kitty's personality transplated to another ghost. Instead Alberta is simply boisterous, loves to sing and is fun to have around without sinking into sterotypes. Top notch reinvention.

Pete Martino (Rich Moriarty): Pat's counterpart, complete with a similar death. Out of all the ghosts he's the only one not changed really at all. Only some details in his personal life I don't need to go into got changed between versions. I'm fine with this as Pat was both one of the best parts of the UK one and they change up the backstory enough to change the stories they tell with him. Plus Scouts just.. fit both coasts too well not to have him.

Trevor Lefkowitz (Asher Goodman): A buisness bro, whose a combo of julian (buisness dude from the past (If 2000's instead of 1990s) who died with his pants down) and Thomas, but with both's worst traits gone: Trevor hits on the lady of the house, but she both brushees it off and he's not nearly as creepy about it, and he isn't you know.. asking her to kill herself. And while he'll ocasinally say sex stuff, he's not nearly as gross as julian, nor pompus and it's later revealed he didn't even die mid sex act. I wont spoil how, but I bumped into it. All in all a MUCH better character than either of his basis.

Flower (Sheila Carrasco): A hippie who died trying to huge a bear while high as balls and Kitty's full counterpart, though the spaciness I buy more due to being a flower child and works better when you have more than two POC characters and two others who aren't idiots to ballance it out. Thor (Devan Chandler Long): Our Caveman replacement, instead being a viking and a LOT of fun: his talks were a LITTLE much at first but I grew to love the guy and his boisterious attitude and little comprehnsion of how much things have changed.

Hetty Woodstone (Rebecca Wisocsky): Fanny's counterpart. Basically just her but less obnoxious. So better.

Sappisis aka Sass (Román Zaragoza): a snarky lenape native american and a faviorite of mine. The one holding the braincell out of his ghosts Crash (Hudson Thames and Alex Bonello): A greaser and our counterpart to Humphrey. Far less prominent.

It's a lot I know, and even I mostly kept up with them by their perfession or personality.

Our human leads are easier to keep track of: For the UK version there's Allison Cooper (Charlotte Richie) and her husband Mike (Kiell Smith-Byone) and for the US we have Sam (IZOmbie's Rose McIver) and Jay (former rapper and almost Aaron Burr, Utkarsh Ambudkar) Arondekar.

And here's where our first big diffrence sets in as the reason for moving into the house is different: The Coopers are trying to FIND a home but having no luck as most flats they find are awful. The Arkondar's have one.. but Sam instantly sees the benefits of moving from a cramped city apartment to a luxrious mansion in the country.

The vibe between both couples is also different: Allison suggests renovating the mansion and Mike is all on board instantly, the two happily singing along to pop as they approach in one of the best gags of the pilot as it segues from them singing goofily and adorably to the outside of the car which has the standard "your going somewhere haunted" music cue you'd expect.

In contrast Jay.. is a bit more skeptical, seeing it as Sam jumping into this and not "holy fuck we got a mansion" and wanting to flip it without thinking.. maybe she wants to do this? Or that it's worth the risk? I get pointing out how much of a money pit this idea is.. but it's also hard to like him when he's often dismissive of his wife, only agreeing to the idea after she gets hurt. It made me like him more but ther'es a genuiness to mike that Jay just dosen't have in these early episodes. Mike is more of a lovable goofus and has more chemistry with his wife. I'll say this with the caveat it might get better with time and early episodes of a series can be awkward, but Mike was the clear winner of the two. Both share the doomed ambition that they can fix an ancient house that hasn't been updated in years with the power of google and some power tools, it just fits Mike more to buy him as that overconfident.

The ghosts are happy to have new owners at first... but things turn sour once both couples plan to turn it into a bnb. So in both versions the ghosts plan is to simply haunt them out with what limited powers they have. The US version does take better advantage of this as each of the ghosts has a little trick they can do: Trevor can move stuff (as can jullian) but only with IMMENSE effort, Alberta can make sound heard, passing through the captain makes you smell smoke etc. The bbc show does use the levitation and passing thorugh thing but just not nearly as much or for as much great comedy as Jay and Sam barely notice or like it. Simple gag, but one that works.

So it's here things take a turn. Now in the US versoin, Trevor's attemtps to move a vase finally work.. but all it does is get Sam to trip on it seriously injuring her and making all the ghosts regret their actions. It's a nice humanizing moment for them, to show they didn't want to KILL anyone, just have some peace.

Allison also falls out a window.. but it's less of an accident and more of an intentional. See you know how I don't like Julian? Well while part of it is him just

Unlike Trevor his harming sam is not only very intentional.. IT'S A MURDER ATTEMPT. He tries to SHOVE HER OUT A WINDOW

Yeah the rest of the ghosts think so too and all hound him over it, NONE OF THEM having wanted this and it makes it hard to really take his presence: HE TRIED MURDERING THE MAIN CHARACTER because it was easier to kill her.. forgetting she both might join them and not exactly be happy she was murdered, and that her dying dosen't solve the problem. Mike would still be around and as we find out he can't sell the place, more on that in a moment, and even if he COULD.. it'd just mean someone ELSE wanting to make it into a hotel or outright tear the building down leaving them without their nice giant fancy house and instead in an office building or a big new mansion or something. I don't question this from a plot standpoint as well.. Julian is a politican. They dont' think shit through, and we get the great scene of him trying to politc his way out of actually admitting to it and it not remotely working, so it works a little.. but it's also something the series apparently ignores till much later for understandable reasons.

At any rate both the accidental near muder and the very intentional near muder have the same result: sam returns, the ghosts are mildly relived.. and she notices the buisness douche in the room among the contractors they brought in. She can see them and both Allison and Sam end the episode screaming as the sight of their roomates.

So the next episode which MOSTLY has the same plot... but there's one exception. The british version has a subplot where Fanny has night terrors and jumps off the balcony every night, reliving her death. Julian is pissed about this.. because she keeps waking him up as the balcony is in his room

Both ladies of the house have a subplot where the husband is trying to do dyi repairs, and accidently destroys a wall, leaving them unwiling roomates with Kitty or Flower depending on the version.

So with Sam and Allison seeing ghosts their respective husbands advice to her having possible concussion ghosts? Why taking a tip from mr paul anka of course: Just don't look. If you ignore a head injury it will go away!

And this is another reason I don't like Jay so much as while both husbands give the same life threatening advice, Jay comes off a lot more condesencding. He's not full on "Oh you women and your emotoins you just need a hair cut" levels of punchable, but he's still very "Your wrong sweetie" levels of punchable. Mike on the other hand while also not a doctor and not taking his wife to one, at least seems more calm, patient and compassionate.

The episode goes about the same as the ghosts now realize they can run a war of attrition with their respective soldier ghosts leading the charge. The Captain fits this kind of thing better, and I also love how he's stopped: Allison gets the tv hooked up and he gets super horny for tanks. They do a similar gag in the us with thor and vikings, which is neat, but I like the original a smidge better. It's fucked up in a way that works.

We also get one of the ghosts researching themselves, Julian in the UK and Isaac in the us, on the husband's laptop and the husband having no idea what he's doing DIYing. We do get Mike singing to himself which is glorious.

The ghosts basically spend their time annoying Allison or Sam , my favorite from either version being Mary just saying GETOUTGETOUTGETOUTGETOUTGETOUT over and over.. probably meaning Sam will never watch get out. Thanks a lot Mary. You deprived her of a horror classic. I hope your satisfied.

Eventually Allison and Sam have enough and get their husbands to take them to the hospital. We get a great bit with Allison that I must've missed if they used it in the american version where she talks to a doctor about the ghosts.. who then reveals he's dead. It's a nice, simple way to show that no, her power is real, ghosts are real, and the actual doctor after, whose quite good accoding to ghost doc, confirms her brain is fine.

I do like the diffrent reactions and that instead of just having both ghost hosts be the same, their diffrent people. Same with the husbands though taking a functional couple and making them "we're oppsites ain't that wacky" which CAN work. I love me a good opposites attract. Exhibit "Thing I Watched Yesterday"

youtube

Those harmonies man. Also I couldn't review it this spookys eason but check back in February.

But here it's more for annoying tension than actual chemistry. Again this is with the caveat it CAN improve, the show has two full seasons, it seems like he gets the stick out of his ass as it goes, but for these two episodes it's a lot.

Anyways those reactions: Sam is excited and being peppy decides to kindly approach the ghosts and ask what they want. They.. prefer this and begrudingly accept the new status quo and getting help.

Allison.. takes a bit more of a blunt approach. She TRIES to leave.. but their hooked in for tons of debt as while he's ace in every other department.. Mike just "skimmed" the contract for their loans. Mike come on....

He's Mike. So Allison, fed up, just has him pull over, and confronts her ghosts. Mike.. think's she's having a psychotic break, poor bean, but she stops him from calling a doctor , instead asking WHAT DO YOU WANT MOTHERFUCKERS. The motherfuckers is strongly implied. The ghosts are taken aback by this.. and meekly give requests. Which are mostly reasonable: Fanny wants her husband's portrait removed from her room, The Captain wants an hour of tanks a week Pat just wants to say hello, and Julian wants his articles removed from google.. well okay from his perspective it's resonable. Allison at least can tell him ther'es nothing she can do. Thomas.. wants her to "Leave your husband for me and kill yourself" She does instantly shut that shit down, and his response of "To which part" as she just ignores him and moves on is hilaroius.

And thus both women settle in with their ghosts. I do like Allison just casually hanging with all of hers a bit better but it works. We also get both women helping with the boiler their husband was working on with the help of the mass of ghosts in the basement, with the same gag of them lying about how many there are down there.

Overall Ghosts in both versions... is excellent. The original is a bit funnier, likely due to looser censors but using most of it's adult content for jokes instead of screaming

Though it sometimes falls into it and some characters don't entirely work.

The remake's husband isn't nearly as charming and it plays it safer due to being on broadcast television, but it's ghosts are more charming in places and it still has the nice charm of the original and Rose McIver gives it her best. All in all... i'd recommend both shows. I'll probably go back to the uk one first though you'll have to find seasons 4 and 5 through.. other means in the us as none of the services you can buy the show from have them. Series 5 I get as it just aired, but Series 4? What? WhY? Why exactly?

At any rate this was fun and what I suspect will be one of the few of these where one version doesn't clobber the other. Thanks for reading and have a happy halloween

#ghosts #halloween #ghosts uk #ghosts us #Youtube

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alexjcrowley · 2 years

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Watched The Extra Man (2010) and was pretty disappointed, not going to lie. I'm more sad than bitter about it. Let me explain.

When the movie started, I thought I was in for a treat. I genuinely thought this would have been a movie ahead of its time talking self expression and gender identity, it would have been one of those things I can tell people "it was far ahead". But, for me, it didn't do.

Let's start by talking about exploring gender identity/self expression. Now, I have just one problem with this point: I wanted more.

The premise of the movie is that it's a story about this guy, Louis Ives, who has an internal conflict with his gender identity, we could say. It felt to me like at some point, while writing the script, the screenwriters got way more interested in the character of Henry Harrison and derailed the movie. The scene with Louis at the bar was great, I loved that scene so much, I wish there could have been more scenes like that! The movie went in a very different direction than what I thought also in regard of Louis's personal journey, to the point I'd be inclined to say at the end of the movie things got more confused than when they started. I am not an expert on gender identity, I couldn't comment and that's why I won't comment on the way they represented Louis's internal conflict, what I can say is that I would have preferred much more time dedicated specifically to that subject and less to...I am sorry, but unlikable side characters.

Let's discuss the side characters, at least the main ones.

Mary is at best a poor stereotype of an animal activist and your classic "pretty girl will make the loser do stuff for her while she hangs out with the cool boyfriend". She is incredibly unlikable and this unlikability brings nothing to the plot. She is just horrible to Louis and this doesn't make Louis grow or anything, she is just there to do and say what everyone who has ever watched 5 romcoms can easily predict. She turns decent 10 minutes before the movie ends, it doesn't count.

Gershon Gruer, I have just one question: did we really need him? I guess he was a comic relief, but he didn't make me laugh, so. I preferred him when he just cycled. And he had the play in the end? Felt lazy.

Lois and Meredith were fine, actually. I liked Meredith a lot, and I liked her monologue about her childhood, but since you only ever seen her in that 10 minutes of the movie, it felt out of place. Like when someone who's drunk tells you their entire life because they're drunk, even if you don't know them. Good to know, Meredith, but what is this thing about your past meant to add to the plot?

Vivian was also fine. Very basic, but not bad.

I wished I could have seen more of Miss Hart.

And now, let's come to the real beast: Henry Harrison. The point is, I know what they were trying to do with Henry Harrison. It's an archetype I personally love. From Count Oliver straight out of the Alan Ford comic books to Monsieur Gustave in Grand Budapest Hotel, the impoverished aristocrat is one of my favourite type of characters (don't @me for "Gustave wasn't an aristocrat!", the concept of this kind of character is someone who tries to keep alive/uphold an old faded lifestyle they cannot afford in the name of an ideal, Zero at the end of the movie says something like Gustave had always been a part of an era already faded long time before). Fanny Button from BBC Ghosts is also a good example of this archetype.

Usually, this character is inherently funny, something about being overly formal and quaint and old fashioned. They make for great side characters. But Henry Harrison, this guy, he is unbearable. I mean it. I am sorry if some of you love him, you won't like what I have to say and you may prefer keep scrolling, but I need to talk about this guy. Yes, the fallen nobleman is usually a funny character and they can easily get on other characters' nerves, but they shouldn't get on the audience's ones. His entire comedic persona comes from being racist, homophobic, sexist and frankly a bit disgusting a lot of the times, also an absolute asshole. And as much as "having outdated beliefs" (let's put it very kindly like that) is a staple trait of the fallen nobleman, he is just irritating! The whole joke is that he is a terrible person. I can find him peculiar in the first 10 minutes he is on screen, then he just becomes a nuisance.

And that's the second problem with him: his screen time. This guy eats up an unbelievable part of screentime. At some point you forget it's a movie about Louis's conflict with wanting to dress up as a woman and it just becomes a movie about how poor Louis has to put up with this other guy. And you know what, since the title is "The Extra Man" maybe I am the dumb once, after all Henry, not Louis, is the extra man, I shouldn't be so surprised so much of this movie is about him. But he truly is a character hard to stand.

I am not one of these people who can't get interested in a story if the characters are "evil", if they're morally corrupted. Hell, Hannibal and Succession fan here, so. But the point is, in a show/book/movie/whatever where the main guy sucks, you need to give the audience a reason to care about him. Not even to like him, but at least to care. I don't give a fuck if Henry dies the most painful death ever. The guy I care about is Louis, who fades like a shadow in comparison to Henry.

"You don't understand, it's the Gatsby-Nick Carraway metaphor" no, no, I do. The point is in The Great Gatsby is fine becausr Nick doesn't really have any interesting situation going on for him (on the contrary, Louis has this complex relationship with his gender identity) and Gatsby not only is not an ass but he's also an interesting character. You want to know what happens to him, you want to unravel his mystery. I just wanted to hit Henry in the head. "His heart was broken" is a very lazy mystery to deserve an hour and 15 minutes of waiting to be discovered. Again, like Mary, he turns decent in last 10 minutes of the movie, and now, I am no screenwriter, but I honestly don't feel like calling that character growth. Henry Harrison feels to me like a bad copy of a boring copy of the fallen nobleman archetype. He could have been written so much better.

So basically I have beef with how they wrote characters and the way they divided up screen time. The acting is not bad at all, the movie is not badly directed, but I can't say it was memorable. Same for the cinematography.

The Extra Man looks to me, in most part, a movie that it's there, extra in the sense that it's not needed. It's a movie. It's not the worst movie. But, especially because it had an interesting premise, it comes out as excruciatingly mediocre and bland.

And I am you don't even know how sorry about it. I wanted this movie to be good. I really like cinema, I have watched movies that are considered to be slower and more boring than what The Extra Man is supposed to be, but I had a hard time finishing it. Not even my love for Paul Dano could save this movie. And I liked Louis as a character, I was invested in his story.

I am writing this knowing NOTHING about how this movie was received at the time and how it's considered today. If some of you disagree with me, because maybe Tumblr and Danonation have decided this is actually a masterpiece, please, don't kill me/insult me. If someone liked this movie I am genuinely curious to know why, I'd love to hear other people's opinion.

#the extra man #louis ives #paul dano #danonation

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isfjmel-phleg · 3 years

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August 2021 Books

The Goblin Emperor by Katherine Addison

A read that requires a lot of concentration due to complicated names and titles (even with the index in the back I struggled to keep characters straight, and I wish I had read the appendix about titles/honorifics from the start), but a beautiful, heart-wrenching exploration of kingship from the perspective of a young man (elf/goblin, technically) who is deeply unprepared for this role, which he was never supposed to have. Not only is he having to navigate a confusing and unfamiliar world with almost no support, he’s dealing with his own abusive upbringing and struggling to retain his humanity despite the ruthlessness and absolute loneliness inherent to the position. The worldbuilding is kind of overcomplicated but the characters are very real.

The Wide-Awake Princess by E. D. Baker

I enjoy a good light, fluffy fairy tale retelling but this was maybe too cotton candy for my tastes.

The Girl Who Drank the Moon by Kelly Barnhill

Could have benefited from tighter pacing but had lovely prose and tied together multiple interlocking storylines well.

Green Willow by Eileen Dunlop

Unlike Dunlop’s The House on the Hill, which I read earlier this year, this one is pretty straightforwardly a ghost story. Which isn’t really my genre, but at the core it’s about difficult family relationships and seeking resolution for them, and Dunlop does it so well. The plot about restoring a neglected garden was very much in this book’s favor too.

The House on Mayferry Street by Eileen Dunlop

Written earlier than the other Dunlop books I’ve read, and it shows in the style, which here is much denser and lengthy than her books would become. While the characters and plot are interesting, it was easy to get bogged down by the pacing.

The People of Sparks by Jeanne DuPrau (reread)

I enjoyed The City of Ember on rereading it last year and picked up this one to see if I wanted to finish out the series. I don’t.

Pen Pal by Francesca Forrest

Interesting premise and worldbuilding. Not really a new favorite but strong on atmosphere.

Fly by Night by Frances Hardinge

After two books by Hardinge, I have come to the conclusion that I’m not a good fit for these. The worldbuilding is always very, very detailed, very much the centerpiece of the tale, but rather overwhelming, and the characterization and character relationships by comparison feel lacking to me.

Dogsbody by Diana Wynne Jones

Not my favorite of Jones’s but not lacking in poignancy. The bittersweet ending is atypical for her

Eight Days of Luke by Diana Wynne Jones

This is Jones’s take on Norse mythology, and it is fabulous. I had read some reviews and been spoilered on Luke’s identity (not that it’s such a huge surprise if you know these characters already), but that by no means diminished the fun.

Archer’s Goon by Diana Wynne Jones

I didn’t know what to make of this one as I was reading it, but as it all came together at the end, the verdict was that this is now one of my very favorites of Jones’s. Her characters are complex and surprising, and no matter how bizarre the plots get, the relationships are at the heart of it all--and in this case it’s sibling relationships.

There’s also a 1992 BBC adaptation (one of the very few Jones adaptations!) which is mostly very close to the book but very cheesy low-budget sci-fi and it actually works for this story somehow?

The Ordinary Princess by M. M. Kaye

Exactly the kind of light and fluffy and adorable I’m looking for. I loved it.

Silent to the Bone by E. L. Konigsburg

Quite a pageturner! But not really for young audiences due to the very mature nature of the themes. (SPOILERS It deals with a young teenage boy who is groomed and molested by a young woman whom he has a crush on, and he blames himself for what happened, and it’s a painfully realistic response and hard to read. Konigsburg treats the issue with understanding but doesn’t shy away from details of what happened.)

The Outcasts of 19 Schuyler Place by E. L. Konigsburg

I don’t have a problem with the writing or characterzation--Konigsburg always does that well--but it didn’t grab me as other books of hers have.

King Matt the First by Janusz Korczak

I liked the premise. Elements of the story didn’t age well, and the tone veered from unrealistic (the child king joins the army undercover and no one questions his age! he creates a parliament for the children of his kingdom and allows them to engage in governing!) to darkly realistic (burnout and corruption and betrayal and near-death). I’m not sure if it works, but it was intense.

Ronia the Robber’s Daughter by Astrid Lindgren

I liked this one better than I expected! Feuding families a la R&J, but with thoughtful themes and relationships and a satisfying resolution.

The Magic City by E. Nesbit

Standard Nesbit. Enjoyable.

Oswald Bastable and Others by E. Nesbit

It’s always a pleasure to catch up with my favorite of Nesbit’s ensembles of child protagonists.

Dandelion Cottage by Carrol Watson Rankin

Cute premise, thin on characterization and story.

Apparently in 1904 it was totally okay to heap all the chores on your twelve-year-old daughter and treat her like an unpaid adult maid/babysitter while allowing your sons to do the bare minimum of work because they’re boys and can’t be expected to be responsible, unlike their sister, who is expected to wait on them and take care of their neglected pets--to the point that said sister is noticeably thinner than her brothers due to the amount of work she does. No one is concerned about this. The girl cheerily accepts it as her lot.

(I know the expectations of the time were different, but I come across this pretty frequently in older children’s literature, and I’ve heard stories from my grandmother’s childhood in the 40s/50s in which she had adult expectations placed on her practically from toddlerhood, which created a lot of problems, and...it just bothers me.)

The Lost Compass by Joel Ross

Sequel to The Fog Diver. Didn’t engage me as the first one did.

There’s a Boy in the Girls’ Bathroom by Louis Sachar

First of all, this is the most mistitled book I’ve ever read. The title refers to an embarrassing incident early in the story in which a boy accidentally enters the wrong room at school. But it has nothing to do with the book’s actual themes. It’s a surprisingly poignant story about a boy with behavorial issues whose gradual friendship with an extremely patient and understanding school counselor sparks some character development.

Pippin’s House by Constance Savery

Written on a comparable level to Magic in My Shoes (aimed at somewhat younger readers than Savery’s other children’s books) and just as enjoyable, with thoughtfully developed characters. Very hard to find though! I had to resort to interlibrary loaning from the Library of Congress!

The Good Master by Kate Seredy

Dated in some ways but overall very cute! Felt something like a Hungarian version of Little House in the Big Woods with its emphasis on rural life changing with the seasons from a child’s perspective.

Freckles by Gene Stratton-Porter

Much less memorable than its sequel A Girl of the Limberlost.

The Crystal Snowstorm by Meriol Trevor

An interesting plot that I would have liked to have seen further developed, with more time to get to know the characters.

The Story Collector by Kristin O’Donnell Tubb

Cute story based on a real-life girl who grew up in the New York Public Library! I’m curious about her further life and will look into the sequel.

Breadcrumbs by Anne Ursu

A loose modern retelling of “The Snow Queen.” The modern and fantasy elements weren’t integrated as seamlessly with each other as they could have been, but the characters were well done.

Avatar: The Last Airbender: The Promise by Gene Luen Yang

I’m reading the A:TLA comics out of order. While I didn’t love all the plot developments here, it was fun to spend some time with these characters again.

#random personal stuff #a few very good things a lot of pretty good things and a few just okay things

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thepromisedbride · 4 years

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HELLO JESS. BBC GHOSTS ARTHURIAN AU GO (by which I mean the arthurian characters in the premise of BBC ghosts, not the other way around)

REY oh my god i love you for this here we go

So in Ghosts the alive characters are a married couple, right?? Wrong!! Well, not wrong, because yes that’s exactly what Mike and Alison are. But wrong for this version because though I seriously considered having one of the couples as the main characters I then thought “hey what’s more fun than a family!!” and luckily for us (me) we have a ready made family in the form of (drumroll please) The Orkneys!!

The rest is under a read more because I got what some might call “carried away” and others might call “obsessed”

What happens is this: as the Orkney brothers grow up, they rather naturally become separated, until at last Gareth is the last one, at seventeen, living with their mother. Their father (or at least, their supposed father: they all know that Mordred looked too dissimilar to Lot to really be his son, though they never said it) died a while ago, and Morgause could not find it in her to really focus on her children over her job.

The five of them seem to unspokenly care about each other, but in a way where it was clear that they were all waiting to be contacted first.

Nonetheless, when Morgause does die, with Gareth having just turned eighteen and seriously wondering why he had taken a gap year from university, they all show up, and find that they had jointly been bequeathed the old family house in the country.

Gawain has been recently promoted and is now working from home. This meant more time than he usually spent inside his flat, and he had been getting rather claustrophobic. So, after an admittedly short heart to heart with Gareth, who was looking quite nervously towards a future without parents and with no idea what to do, he packs up his brothers in a typically Gawain-like fashion and moves them all out to the manor.

Mordred has been able to see ghosts since an incident in his youth involving a large body of water, an ill-timed trip and a sudden storm. He hasn’t been in water since, but the near-death experience left his with the ability to see those spirits left when their bodies had departed. This is especially unfortunate for him, because half the time he doesn’t particularly want to be able to see living people, let alone ghosts who do not leave when he throws things at them. But he puts up with it enough: there is, beyond all logic, a particular cup he took from Morgause’s house when he left which somehow has three ghosts attached to it, and they happily provide a deterrent for any others.

(It does create a somewhat awkward car journey: he’s being driven by Agravaine, and between the boxes in the back and the only two seats in the front, there’s not much room even for a ghost. Aggs keeps looking at him weirdly when he fidgets, but it’s not his fault that the only free place left is his lap or that Galahad decided that he simply had to see the journey to the house rather than simply confining himself to the cup like Bors and Percival did.)

Anyway, this means that he arrives at the house and immediately sees a crowd of variously costumed figures and tries turning around and leaving. Unfortunately Agravaine anticipates some “young adult hormones” and quickly steers him straight inside.

It takes him a while to finally be alone with the ghosts, who seem to quickly realise he can see them. There are eleven of them in total, though a couple seem to spend most of their time in the little gatekeeper house rather than the main building. He immediately makes a note to avoid Dinadan, who looks at Mordred once and immediately makes fun of his choice in band t-shirts (and like, he’s a ghost, what does he know about bands, it’s like trying to talk to Gaheris—) and Lamorak is instantly relegated to Mordred’s extensive “least liked people” list, which is different to his “disliked people” list. Kay seems kind of mean, which is funny, and Bedivere is responsible enough to try and control the others, but they are clearly “not dating” which honestly Mordred has no time for.

He gets on best with Clarissant, probably, as she’s smart and not too grating but still sweet enough that she likes sitting with him when he wants to be quiet but doesn’t want to be alone. Owain, likewise, has shown him several spaces in the garden for birdwatching or other wildlife (which Mordred doesn’t particularly have used for, but he does appreciate the effort).

Owain is “not dating” a different ghost, Laudine, but in a different way than Kay and Bedivere are “not dating”, in a way that doesn’t get on Mordred’s nerves and lets him acknowledge that Laudine is kind of funny. Elaine doesn’t really talk to him: there’s a river and lake by the house and she seems to prefer it there, or else by the old tower. But she has great stories, and never minds when he really needs a vent, usually about his brothers.

It’s Palamedes and Brangaine who live (in the loosest sense of the word) in the gatekeeper’s cottage. This is very useful, because it means he can set up a little bedroom inside, though it’s mostly for storage now, and sleep there when he wants to pretend he has his own space. He has a strange nervousness that they might see him as a sort of pet, but he’s pretty sure that’s not the case.

Relatively sure.

Not that it matters. They have a clearly delicate history together, one Mordred is not about to ask after for fear that one or both will start crying, but they manage in a sort of sweet domesticity. He’s left the goblet in there for now, because Palamedes seems to enjoy Galahad, Bors and Percival’s company.

And it’s—

Nice.

And then, of course, there is Lancelot. He seems far too well meaning for Mordred to carry on any kind of maliciousness for long, except that for some godforsaken reason he has also decided that Gawain is an ideal muse. He spends way too much time following Gawain around, thinking up sappy poetry about Gawain, or else sighing blissfully out of a window (presumably over Gawain). Mordred thinks that if Lancelot were to ever be able to actually talk to Gawain (physically, he means. Or figuratively? Because even if Lancelot wasn’t a ghost he does not seem to have any cognitive abilities around Gawain anyway) then this image would be shattered. Gawain looks pretty, but so does this waterfall Mordred once read about that falls down into nothingness and despair, or the river stretch that looks like a lovely refreshing swim but actually is an fierce riptide with a 100% mortality rate. Something like that. But the point is that it’s difficult enough with Gawain constantly around without having his admirer hanging round all the time too. Gawain is insufferable already without Gaheris and Gaheris getting to add to their board of “Is Gawain Secretly (Or Not-So-Secretly) a Changeling” with ‘every time he puts something down it always seems to move just within reach when he goes to pick it up’

(If you’re wondering why there isn’t an Arthur, that is a subplot that I just suddenly decided on just now. I was going to have Arthur as a Captain-like ghost but then I was thinking and long story short there’s a tangent here—

It was Arthur’s house. He’s still Mordred’s dad, though here I guess he isn’t their uncle as well, and he left Morgause the house in his will. He heard she was pregnant, and there was a little but if him which knew he could never acknowledge his child but he still wanted to provide in some way. Arthur doesn’t have to be a bad parent.

Incidentally this also solves why the brothers didn’t really know about the house before rather than “Morgause wasn’t a big fan of the country”.)

(OH MY GOD also so Guin isn’t a ghost either bc I wanted her alive. So now she’s an important plot point. She moved into the outskirts of the nearby village because she liked the area but didn’t want to contest for a massive empty house. Anyway she’s smart and despite the problems her and her late husband went through, she does respect him for this. So eventually the Orkneys will have to go for a discovery on the house’s secrets aka there are ghosts and so they will find Guin and discover the Truth. It’s all coming together now lads)

They invite their neighbours over for dinner one night: the house needs some pretty desperate renovating, but it’s now moderately liveable at least and, according to Gawain, this requires a party.

So invite them over he does. The ones to the left, a couple named Tristan and Isolde, though Gaheris swears that when they were introduced in the village Isolde looked completely different, and the ones to the right, Morgan and Vivian. They pass a very pleasant evening, despite the fact that a fox manages to get on the roof.

No one is sure how.

Gaheris and Agravaine are charged with rescuing it, which is by far the stupidest decision Gawain has ever made. However, despite them all living together, the brothers are really not in a brilliant harmony yet, and so Gawain sends those two off whilst he entertains their guests.

The two of them are staring out the window at the fox for a while before Gaheris dares Agravaine to climb up. He doesn’t want to, but Gaheris is his little brother, and if he passes over a dare from him he’ll never hear the end of it. So he climbs out.

It’s a dry night. But it was not a dry day. And the leaves packed on all the footholds are wet and slippery, and Agravaine—

Falls—

And hits the ground, several stories below.

They’re all terrified, of course, regretting every moment they spent apart or arguing. Agravaine is declared legally dead for fourteen minutes, and it is the worst fourteen minutes of any of their lives. But finally— finally— the doctors emerge to tell them that their brother is resting, but is expected to make a full recovery.

Which he does! There are several more doctor’s appointments and physiotherapists scheduled, but eventually he can return to house. (Unsurprisingly, the arguing starts again quickly.)

There is, however, one major difference.

Agravaine can now also see the ghosts.

Mordred, having been able to see them all his life, had not considered this possibility, and thus does not prepare.

Agravaine discovers these new abilities when he walks into a room to find Mordred, pretending to be on a phone call, chatting away with Clarissant whilst Lamorak inexplicably floats nearby. He stares, screams, and blacks out.

When he comes to after a moment he is faced with a lengthy, surprisingly bored conversation with Mordred, and seriously considers blacking out again. Lamorak has not left the room despite his presence being an inevitable disaster, and Agravaine perhaps unsurprisingly decides that He is to be the newest mortal enemy in Agravaine’s list.

(Lamorak is silently gratified that he is on lists for both alive people who can see him, and chooses to ignore the reasoning behind the lists.)

Mordred has been dealing with ghosts for most of his life.

Agravaine has Not.

This means that, pretty quickly, Gawain, Gaheris and Gareth realise something is even more wrong with those two than normal.

And of course they have to come clean.

Gaheris is half convinced that the two have found his conspiracy journal and that this is an elaborate ruse to trick him into confessing love for Nessie or something. Gareth is mostly concerned about the logistics and privacy, though Mordred’s narrated conversations between him and Owain seem to make him much more comfortable with the whole thing. Gawain is genuinely tempted to jump out a window to see if he can join to newly discovered exclusive club of ghost watchers, but eventually decides that it’s too much a risk to his beautiful face.

(Lancelot silently agrees, though it has not escaped his attention that it would be nice if Gawain could actually see him.)

#arthuriana #rey thank u this is the best ask ever #i got so carried away i’m so sorry #the ghosts were just a game of ‘i love these characters and you can’t stop me’#but i’m not tagging them all #just #orkney clan #gawain #agravaine #gaheris #mordred #gareth #the fox is reynard #if you were wondering it is astolet elaine not corbenic elaine #in a more extended version of this her and lancelot best friends #arthurian literature #arthurian legend #bbc ghosts

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theradioghost · 5 years

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some recs for my podcast mutuals who are burnt out on horror & sad plot stuff

aka I’ve been seeing a few flavors of people exhausted by several of the most popular podcasts around here being pretty dark right now & I have attempted to put together a tasting menu of some stuff I think might help alleviate that burnout (& which also deserves some more love)

1. I'm okay with stuff that’s still on the dark or macabre side, I'd just like something that isn’t 100% characters I care about suffering horribly all the time, maybe some laughs in there

The Beef and Dairy Network: Like a seriously disturbing body horror podcast, except British satirical comedy! About cows! You kind of have to listen to it to get what’s going on tbqh it’s nearly impossible to explain but if you like horror and are just tired of being depressed about it maybe try this one. NOT for the easily nauseated.

Wooden Overcoats: black comedy sitcom about two rival funeral homes on a small island, one run by The Most Perfect Man On Earth (tm) and the other run by two misanthropic twins with a knack for disaster (and their hypercompetent assistant (and a mouse who wants to be an author)). this one is about watching the protagonist suffer horribly all the time but like, this time it’s usually a lot funnier and honestly he deserves it

Death by Dying: (so far very short) dark comedy about the resident obituary writer of idyllic Crestfall, Idaho, who sets out to tell the stories of how the town’s residents died and ends up uncovering a lot of other things, like conspiracies, and man-eating cats, and a poet’s vanishing childhood home, and what his friend the Angel of Death isn’t telling him about what’s in the dark woods. has very strong ASOUE or Pushing Daisies vibes, that sort of dark whimsy and really distinct narrative voice

Arden: “true crime” comedy-ish mystery podcast feat. two of the best bickering hosts anywhere and a whole third host called homoerotic tension, trying to solve a decade-old Hollywood mystery. secretly a shakespeare adaptation. one of the hosts is michelle agresti. an airline run by killer robots is involved, somehow. it’s a perfect storm

2. I’m good with some plot and higher stakes, but I need something more kind and hopeful right now:

Middle:Below: 10-minute episodes about a man who travels between the worlds of the living and the dead to solve the problems of restless ghosts, and the three friends he does it with -- a ghost, a cat, and a writer. their tagline is “remember: bad things will happen.” this is basically a lie, this show is extremely sweet

Alba Salix: high fantasy medical workplace comedy about hospital staff in a fairytale-ish kingdom, namely one grouchy witch, one distracted fairy, and one extremely disgruntled teenager sentenced to community service. also comes with the miniseries The Axe And Crown, which is about a gay troll bartender, his clueless landlord, and his bombastic niece, and also is one of the most heartfelt touching pieces of audio fiction I’ve ever heard?

Dark Ages: also a high fantasy workplace comedy, but in this one the dysfunctional cast work at a magical natural history museum, which thanks to recent events is now hosting the mythical Dark Lord on top of all the usual problems caused by their complete incompetency.

Solutions to Problems: a sci-fi relationship advice show feat. human host Janet and alien host Loaf. also feat. banter, illegal time travel, what to do when the AI that controls the air you breathe is your on-again-off-again girlfriend, and how to avoid your many spouses when they insist you need to come back to the homeworld and spend some time with your spawn.

Victoriocity: steampunk buddy-comedy mystery show, in which misanthropic detective Archibald Fleet (aka Tom Crowley but he’s grouchy this time) and intrepid newbie journalist Clara Entwhistle (aka an absolute ray of sunshine) uncover some Secret Plots within the government of a very different victorian london. if you like the “opposing personalities come to care deeply about one another as friends” trope this one is for you

Inn Between: not an actual play, but a show about the developing relationships of a party of RPG-esque adventurers as they rest at the inn between campaigns. you don’t see the adventures, just the crew growing closer and learning about one another in their moments of peace.

The Strange Case of Starship Iris: sci-fi adventure about a stranded biologist and a ragtag crew of smugglers who set out to resist an authoritarian government, solve a mystery, and prevent a second human-alien war. as far as I can tell their plan for accomplishing this is to be as funny, gay, and adorable as possible, and to dismantle oppressive systems via the power of found family tropes. also via the power of linguistics.

3. just give me the fluffiest, funniest, sweetest, most relaxed, lowest-stakes thing you have:

Everything is Alive: meditative, deeply touching show where Guy From Public Radio holds interviews with inanimate objects. the interviews are super genuine and beautiful and I think they’re improvised, or at least they sound very natural? for people who want to be profoundly moved by a can of generic brand cola (you may not know but you are one of those people)

Standard Docking Procedure: a self-described “hopepunk” scifi sitcom about a group of employees on a space station, dealing with the little daily misadventures of difficult tourists, traffic control disasters, nonexistent love lives, and each other. Has an explicitly stated purpose of staying happy, lighthearted, and comforting.

Love and Luck: tied for absolute most heartwarming audio drama in existence. the story of the relationship between two Australian men, told through voicemail messages, as they fall in love, start a cafe, build a supportive and loving local queer community of close-knit friends and chosen family who help one another through thick and thin, and also find out that they can do magic apparently (IMPORTANT NOTE: there are some darker events and themes tackled in the plot starting around the latter half of the first season, but the focus of the story itself is always on how people support and help one another through trauma and difficulty, and the explicitly stated core premise of the show is that every character will have a happy ending and be okay.)

Quid Pro Euro: Look Around You-esque satire of old 80s and 90s instructional tapes where Felix Trench tells you what the European Union will look like in the far-off year of 2000. I don’t know anything about the European Union but I cackle like a witch when I listen to this

The Cryptonaturalist: I know you’ve seen his tweets. well it’s that but a podcast. just a man with an extremely nice voice talking about fantastical creatures like salamanders that swim through parking lot asphalt or foxes that roam the shelves of libraries at night. in between he reads poetry and generally talks about nature in the most beautiful way you could imagine. this show feels like a peaceful walk in the woods.

The Hidden Almanac: a podcast made 90% out of gentle fantasy worldbuilding, as a somewhat grumpy man in a plague doctor mask tells you about the history of his world and distributes gardening advice. has an immense archive of four-minute long episodes. it’s best to listen in order, because there is continuity, and be aware that about the first year or so has dropped off most feeds. written and performed by much-loved fantasy writer and artist Ursula Vernon and her husband Kevin.

Startripper!!: the other forerunner for most heartwarming audio drama in existence. seriously, you cannot imagine how much joy Startripper!! will bring into your life. it’s just the travelogue of one little alien with a heart full of enthusiasm and love setting out to see the universe and making friends along the way with just about everyone he meets, including his extremely loveable spaceship AI. I really mean it. listen to this show if you listen to nothing else.

Cabin Pressure: BBC radio workplace comedy about the dysfunctional crew of the world’s smallest airline. not only utterly hilarious but will tug on your heartstrings more than you could possibly imagine (this does not look at first like a found family story but it so very much is). warning for bendytoots cucumberpatch but like, in the one and only valid role he’s ever played. you definitely cannot find this show by searching its name on the Internet Archive.

#HEY DO YOURSELVES A SELF CARE! LISTEN TO SOME THINGS THAT ARE NICE! I LOVE YOU #bobbie recommends things #my posts #podcast recs

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kpoptimeout · 4 years

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My Top 10 K-Dramas of 2020 - What’s Yours?

2020 has ended after feeling like it was never ending and K-Dramaland has once again brought us so many goodies this year. As per our blog’s tradition [For 2019 faves click here], below are my Top 10 favs of the year (my faves in alphabetical order so it might not be yours so please don’t judge). (For our blog’s 2020 music ratings, click here!)

My only specific criteria is that the show must have had started in 2020 to be considered a 2020 series but like last year, I have allowed one drama starting very late in 2019 to make the list.

Without further ado, check the list below!

Crash Landing On You (tvN/Netflix)

While it started in December 2019, “Crash Landing On You” is certainly the Rom-Com of the year that swept the world by storm. It was possibly the K-Drama most people knew about and everyone rejoiced when the leads Hyun Bin and Son Yejin admitted to being a couple on 1 January 2021.

One might say “Crash Landing On You” has generic plot - two people from vastly different worlds meeting through a crazy accident and developing feelings as a result, the choice of using North and South Korea as the two worlds provided unique social commentary and the opportunity for lots of interesting shenanigans. This is not the first series to feature a romance between a North and South Korean lead (see 2012’s “The King 2 Hearts”, which was also stellar), but it is definitely a more light-hearted take which is fun to watch. Additionally, the series is filled with fleshed out and lovable side characters.

While North Korean refugees interviewed by media outlets point out that the typical North Korean captain would not have the looks of Hyun Bin, most of them agree that the production team did their research as the everyday life of typical North Koreans were recreated quite accurately - from the types of furniture and household appliances they use, to the type of K-Dramas they watch in secret.

If you enjoy a good Rom-Com and an interesting premise, this is the K-Drama for you!

Extracurricular (Netflix)

Being a Netflix only series with no counterpart on Korean television, “Extracurricular” was able to explore the dark side of South Korean youth life which is not discussed on traditional South Korean media platforms. We are thrown into the life of a nerdy high school student played by Kim Dong Hee, who is actually effectively abandoned by his family and making ends meet secretly as an illegal prostitution ring mastermind.

The story unravels as the star student played by So Minhee discovers the schemes of Kim Dong Hee’s character and begins to blackmail him. Not to give too many spoilers, but it will prove difficult to balance his double life and the whole journey is captured superbly by the main cast’s stellar acting.

If you are a fan of dark and realistic teen dramas, this is the series for you!

Hospital Playlist (tvN/Netflix)

The team behind the “Reply” series and “Prison Playbook” returns with a few familiar faces so we all knew when the trailers dropped that we were in for a treat. As expected, the fabulous acting of the main cast, the wonderful storylines and also medically accurate procedures (according to my doctor friends), combined to make “Hospital Playlist” one of the most endearing dramas of the year.

Set in the fictional Yulje Medical Centre, we follow the lives of 5 doctors who met in college and their respective medical teams. Jo Jung-suk acts as a prankster and fun dad who is also a genius doctor. Yoo Yeon-seok plays a pediatric surgeon who is dead set on becoming a priest. Jung Kyung-ho acts as a cardiologist who seems cold-hearted (pun intended), but of course isn’t really. Kim Dae-myung plays a gynaecologist who is a mummy’s boy and has family drama galore. And finally Jeon Mi-do completes the set as a neurosurgeon who is lowkey the only adult in the friend group and who everyone wants to be when they grow up.

The drama throws us into the day to day runnings in the hospital without too much introductions and it actually made the characters all the more real because it was like we were just casually witnessing their everyday lives. The realisms of the show is furthered by the fact that even side characters like nurses and medical students have meaningful storylines of their own. We honestly cannot wait for Season 2 to air in May 2021!

Itaewon Class (JTBC/Netflix)

A remake of a popular Webtoon, “Itaewon Class” is a feel-good David and Goliath story where the male lead played by Park Seojun goes on a journey to avenge his father and chooses to do so without bending his morals at any point in time and making many friends along the way.

This series stood out by providing very diverse lead characters including a sociopath, a former convict, a trans woman, an illegitimate son and a Blasian trying to find acceptance in South Korea. All their stories highlight the different social issues and the stigmas many face navigating through life and is touching and relatable in many ways.

If you love a show with a positive social message, this is the show for you!

Sweet Home (Netflix)

Another webtoon remake by Netflix, “Sweet Home” follows a group of survivors in an apartment complex after all hell breaks loose in South Korea, as people begin to transform into monsters based on their greatest fears and regrets.

Every character has interesting backstories that are slowly revealed as they try to survive together, while battling monsters that are generated by the team behind many Marvel Cinematic Universe blockbusters. The main cast led by Song Kang, Lee Jin Wook, Lee Siyoung and Lee Dohyun also acted extremely well, with Lee Siyoung grabbing a lot of attention with her ripped superhero physique. Kim Namhee also had a breakout performance as the survivor who favours a Korean sword and hopefully would continue to get more roles following years playing minor characters.

If you enjoy apocalypse thrillers that explore human nature, you would love “Sweet Home”!

The Uncanny Counter (OCN/Netflix)

Okay, Netflix is really funding all the webtoon adaptions because “The Uncanny Counter” is yet another one. Currently the highest rated OCN drama in the cable channel’s history, this webtoon adaption follows a disabled orphaned teenage boy who gains superpowers and joins a demon-banishing team of other super-powered beings (who own a noodle shop on the side) called the Counters, while the mystery of his parents’ death plays a key role in the story.

This somewhat cliché set-up is done in a fun and enjoyable way and it is great to see the talented Jo Byung Gyu finally cast as a male lead! Kim Sejeong has also further improved in her acting and is a loveable badass in this series.

If you love a ghost/spirit busting mystery and just the superhero genre in general, you would enjoy “The Uncanny Counter”!

VIP (SBS)

“VIP” is a drama following a luxury brand’s VIP service team. While it has office drama, intrigue and power plays in almost every episode, it is arguably more of a drama about womanhood than anything else. With 4 female leads, 3 of whom are in their late 30s, the series accurately depicts the concerns women face reaching that age, whether they are married or unmarried, with children or not.

Jang Nara plays a successful business woman and a co-worker to her husband played by Lee Sang Yoon. Born in a privileged background with a seemingly loving husband, all seems well until she has suspicions of her husband having an affair. This drives her to investigate and through her findings, she instead uncovers more stories of her other female co-workers, like the rumour-tainted but very cool section chief played by Lee Chungah and the stressed and depressed mother of two played by Kwak Sunyoung.

If you want a spicy office drama that also has meaningful discussions about working women in South Korea, VIP is the best drama for that!

The World of the Married (JTBC)

Overtaking JTBC’s “Sky Castle” to be highest rated cable TV K-Drama of all time, this 2020 production also by JTBC is a remake of BBC series “Doctor Foster” but highly localised to fit the Korean narrative.

Kim Hee-ae plays a successful doctor with a film director husband and a teenage son. Her life seems picture perfect until she discovers her husband’s infidelity. But unlike in “VIP”, where the female lead actually bonds with other women along the way, Kim Hee-ae’s character would quickly learn that she was in fact betrayed by everyone around her - they all knew her husband was cheating and have been pretty supportive of this whole affair.

While highly dramatised, the suspicions of the husband’s infidelity, the discovery, the subsequent divorce and schemes for revenge are all done tastefully and is a reason why it struck a chord with the general public, especially married women watching the show.

If you love mess and chaos and seeing douchebags destroyed, “World of the Married” is the perfect drama for you!

18 Again (JTBC)

JTBC really has a knack for remakes. This remake of the movie “17 Again” starring Zac Efron is also adapted seamlessly to fit Korean culture and social issues e.g. teen pregnancy, divorce, women’s careers after being a parent and parent-child relations.

Kim Haneul and Yoon Sanghyun truly acted out the energy of a long-married couple and Lee Dohyun did extremely well in encapsulating Yoon Sanghyun’s mannerism as his de-aged counterpart. This boy is truly on a roll this year (he is also in “Sweet Home”). Also, the younger cast of this show were also very likeable and well flesh-outed and by the end of the series you are rooting for all of them to do well.

If you love a slice of life drama with a little fantastical element, you would love “18 Again”!

365: Repeat the Year (MBC)

Based on the Japanese novel “Repeat” by Kurumi Inui, “365 Days: Repeat the Year” follows this social experiment where 10 individuals are given the opportunity to travel 1 year back in time. As all 10 individuals try to remedy their mistakes and become better people, the experiment takes a sinister turn as the time-travellers begin to die one after another.

The veteran detective played by Lee Joohyuk and the mystery webtoon artist played by Nam Jihyun team up together with other time travellers to uncover the secrets behind travelling back in time and learn about the past lives of everyone chosen for the project.

If you enjoy a well-thought out time-travelling series that involves some alternate reality battle royale shenanigans, this is the series for you!

Honourable Mentions:

Kingdom (Season 2) (Netflix): The ancient zombie drama is back and still as strong as ever - one of the best zombie series on air right now.

Start-Up (tvN/Netflix): Loveable rom-com set in the start-up world in South Korea with one of the most hotly debated love triangles in this year’s K-Drama world.

Hi Bye, Mama! (tvN/Netflix): When a woman reincarnates to meet her husband and child again 5 years after her tragic death, only to find he has since remarried.

What’s your Top 10 K-Dramas of the Year? Leave your thoughts in the comments section below and may the drama sharing begin (and the road to more excuse for holiday procrastination!)

Also, if you want to check out underrated K-Pop songs of 2020, here are the lists for idol songs and artist songs.

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haich-slash-cee · 5 years

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Being Human (UK)

This is a show that I recommend to people... but I add a lot of caveats.

The recommendation: A werewolf, vampire and ghost are flatmates. This show is hilarious! So much macabre and slice of life humor! And horror and whump!? Also, the show was run by a side-channel of BBC (BBC3) and I guess they had no production money, so the actors mostly look human and they just refer to each other as being a 500-year old vampire or ghost or whatever. Which makes it even better. The werewolf is Jewish, recites a Jewish prayer at least once, and hangs out watching “The Real Hustle” with the vampire. They work in a hospital as janitors. The ghost has a habit of making everyone tea to soothe herself and the flat is cluttered with tea mugs everywhere all the time. Also, people do get fang-y or wolf-y or do weird poltergeist stuff. And gore happens.

Longish post, more below the cut.

PS, this is the 2008-2013 UK version of Being Human, which I hear had a cult following. There’s certainly stuff on Tumblr. I found the BBC version through the US remake of Being Human, but I’m much more charmed by the BBC version. (The US version has the vampire and werewolf as hospital doctors? Why?) Also I watched the show maybe 4, 5 years ago, so impressions are from that.

And the caveats: There’s a lot of sexism which was hard to watch. It’s engrained in the premise and plot and occasional gross sexist jokes. And there’s other problematic stuff in the writing. It’s like having glass shards show up the meal you are enjoying, and it’s why I’m not sure I’ll rewatch the series (or not in it’s entirety, anyway). There’s also a limited spinoff web series called Becoming Human which also had some problems for me, including some gross sexism and fatphobia. (John Boyega from Star Wars does show up as a character in that series, for anyone interested.)

Back to Being Human and overall series recommendations. So the 1st season was good. I kind of forgot what happened in the 2nd and 3rd season (I think they got depressing and slow?). The 4th season picked up again, much to my surprise, and I remember liking the 4th and 5th season a lot. Even though [spoilers] there was a complete cast change by this time. But it worked, somehow. The show did go from at least having one woman of color to having an all-white cast at the end, which was not great. And there’s other racism too.

For people who like their happily-ever-after: uhhh so I vaguely recall that a lot of characters don’t really get a happy ending. Granted, half of them are walking around dead already, so...? Overall, the ending of the 5th season is... Is that a happy ever after? Happy for now? The Bonus on the DVD kind of makes it a happy-for-now with a continued possibility? It’s an acceptable HFN?

.....And now, the notes for all the hurt/comfort people and whumpers:

Holy crap people, there is SO much h/c and whump!?

OK first -- George the werewolf. George’s transformation sequence, SUPER whumpy.

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Also, George ends up naked often, come to think. And he screams a lot during the show, for various reasons. The actor himself, in the bonus DVD interviews I think, cheerfully says something like, “People really like the way George screams, I do too.” (This is like when David Tennant cheerfully talked about how he enjoys playing a character who is unconscious and sick and gets fussed over by people.) And George is a very sympathetic, nerdy character who is easy to feel for. Who occasionally turns into a SNARLY SCARY WEREWOLF AGAINST HIS WILL. As mentioned, I think I liked season 1 George more than seasons 2 or 3.

Emotional hurt/comfort -- so Annie the Ghost provides a lot of the emotional centering, as I recall. Throughout all 5 seasons, all the characters lean on each other for support and there’s a lot of lovely warm fuzzies from that. Also, one of the later werewolf characters, Tom, is generally a sweet kid. I’m glad they didn’t do too much of the transformation horror with him, honestly. George/Russel Tovey could carry that, but I thought Tom’s strong point was looking puppy-eyed and folorn-eyebrow’d and trying to navigate the world with a mix of naivety and half-feral-ness.

Above: exhausted naps on the couch.

Below: Classic Being Human humor. A review of house rules and vampire stabbing etiquette, between Annie and Tom --

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[Spoilers from here on] Okay, so as mentioned, the cast changed over between season 4-5. And to my surprise, I think I loved the new trio as much as, or more than, the original trio. I liked how loud Alex the ghost was. And I liked both Annie and Alex.

Also, I did not expect this either, but I got so interested in Hal! Yo! First of all, Hal is a centuries-old Vampire and speaks/looks like, idk, a Regency Character. And then 19-yr old Tom puts Hal to work at a fast food shop and bosses him around, and Hal’s indignation is hilarious. So already, this is excellent.

And somehow, Hal is very, very whumpy? So: the character of a “vampire who is trying to be good and suffers” is not new, and I’ve encountered versions where I haven’t been interested. (I was lukewarm about Mitchell, the original vampire in the show.) But for whatever reason, I really dug Hal. Maybe, for me, Hal was just the right mix of very serious and earnest but also ridiculous and tragic all at once. (I read some interviews with the actor Damien Molony, who mentioned how he’d done a lot of history and addiction research in to prep for the role. The new trio actors also had a lot of chemistry and fun on sets, it sounds like. So I might be picking up all that.)

Also, Hal is actually two characters -- the ridiculous indignant serious Good Hal who is desperately trying to keep the horrible, rude, murderous, Bad Hal from taking over. But, as one of the show producers, a woman, cheerfully commented in the DVD extras: “And then Bad Hal shows up, which is great, everyone likes a bit of Bad Hal”.

Honestly, why do we even pretend to hide our fascination with the macabre and the whump, when showrunners and actors are cheerfully not hiding it all.

Here’s clips of Good Hal in Season 4:

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Oh, I forgot about this part until I rewatched the last clip -- but at the end of season 4, Hal asks his flatmates to forcibly bind him to a chair, because he’s trying to fight off Bad Hal. Based on my perusing of the whump community, pretty sure that scenario is of interest to someone.

Also notable is the episode “No Care, All Responsibility” (Series 5 ep 3). In one scene in particular, where Natasha has offered Hal a way to control his bloodlust and there’s this mix of vulnerability and power with Hal asking Natasha to put a stake against his heart, I remember thinking -- “I bet a woman wrote this ep and I bet she knew exactly what she wanted”. And I was right, that woman is Sarah Dollard, a queer woman who has also written a lot of other things (including Doctor Who). She also wrote Being Human goofy web extra eps with Alex, Hal and Tom called “Alex’s Unfinished Business” and they are so good ! (Interview).

Also... the opening 3-minute backstory in “No Care...” made me cry. You get a glimpse of the show’s baddie showing real care and emotion in rescuing this little kid (an important character). When this kind of scene is done well, it just gets me. every. time.

Anyway here’s an appearance of Bad Hal (much later), being completely awful, murdering people and turning them into vampires and singing Broadway tunes during this.

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Side note on Vampire narratives. Although Hal’s narrative arc of season 5 was interesting, and I’m aware this is show is urban fantasy, I still have qualms of the show enforcing IRL stigmas/ideas that addition is incurable and addicts are doomed. They’re not. (General overview on NIH page.) Addiction research is a growing field. From listening to NPR and reading articles, my impression is that addiction treatment will change quickly in the next few years. Related to the vampire blood addiction trope, Terry Pratchett covers vampires finding ways to be “dry” (one vampire, Maladict, swaps out blood addiction for coffee addiction) and you can find fanfics about the topic as well. (General link to Being Human Ao3 fanfics, why not.)

Side note on Hal’s dual characters -- recently, I did consider, “Is there overlap with Hal and portrayals of Dissociative Identity Disorder (MPD) folks?” IRL DID people have complained about movies with gross portrayals of people with DID. To me, Being Human’s Hal feels removed from that and closer to a fantasy.... but, I’m also not multi, so.

* Update: after having learned more about plural history, I’m even less sure now. (Note: my opinions are of someone who isn’t plural, as far as I know, so note that.) There’s a number of early problematic movies and books that hugely affected the popular narratives of plural people in the west, and still affect how therapists and non-plural people treat plural people even today. These include the movie “The Three Faces of Eve”, which has the narrative of “Good Eve, Bad Even, and later smushed together become ‘Fixed Eve’ or whatever”. There’s practically a whole lecture series on how the books/movies were made with sensationalism and formulas in mind and pretty gross things. Chris Costner Sizemore, the IRL Eve, had to fight the movie studios in court because the studios claimed they owned her life story. (There’s practically a whole lecture series on early plural history in the west, I might link more information later). Like, even today, multi people feel pressured to hide their plurality because they are afraid singlets or other people are gonna say “oh so which one of you is the ax murderer”, or that they are going to be fired from work. So.

This post turned into a “Being Human seasons 4 + 5 Appreciation Post”. I guess Season 1 and 4, 5 were my favorite. I watched the show through library DVDs, but I think there’s eps of the show on YouTube. The DVD extras are probably on this YouTube playlist?

(Also, there is a pilot episode, with different actors except George/Russel Tovey. I don’t think one needs to watch the pilot to watch the main series; I kind of recall that the main series recycled some of the pilot. There is a funny scene in the pilot where George and Mitchell meet Annie.)

Being Human: a macabre, hilarious, horror-filled, flawed, sometimes dragging, emotional, whumpy, oddball show that I still think about sometimes.

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avaantares · 5 years

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ten questions tag game

I was tagged by @mymagicalunicornlife. I think this game was intended for original fiction -- of which I have plenty! -- but I’m currently 133,000 words deep in a transformative literary work sprawling fanfic, so I’m totally going to cheat and use that one to answer rather than digging back into Blaze of Glory (my most recent original WIP). Blaze is on hiatus for a couple months because it was hurting my brain and I stalled out on rewrites, so instead of making progress on it, I’ve spent the past eight weeks wordvomiting a ridiculously long DMC fic instead. (Yes, I’m one of those writers who does both. That’s probably bad form. Not gonna stop, though.)

1. How did you come up with your WIP’s title? What does it mean in relation to the story?

Children of the Future Age is the opening line of the William Blake poem “A Little Girl Lost.” The works of William Blake served as a major inspiration for the fifth installment of this franchise (on which my story is largely based), and as a title... well, it’s relevant to the plot, but if I explained how, it would be a spoiler. Suffice it to say there are children involved.

2. Do you title your chapters? If so, what’s your favorite?

There are no published chapter titles. My working chapter titles (within this story) are organized by timeline, so they have names like “chapter 20 - Wednesday 2 wks” so I can keep track of how long it has been since [significant event] happened. (I write in Scrivener, so I can see all the chapter headings at a glance.)

3. What’s a recent line you really like?

“Well, I had just pinned him to the wall with his own sword and hurled a motorcycle at his face.” She smiled fondly. “Those were the days.”

“Right,” Nero muttered. “She’s gonna make a great babysitter.”

4. Are there any writing-related quotes you really like?

So, so many. This (along with many other variations on the same theme) is one I frequently repeat to force myself to work through uninspired or tricky points in the narrative:

“You can always edit a bad page. You can’t edit a blank page.” ― Jodi Picoult

5. Do you have an idea for cover design for your story?

This story isn’t getting a cover, because fanfic. But I usually do for my original works. Sometimes I sketch or mock them up while I’m thinking through plot issues.

6. What sort of AU can you imagine your story being?

All my stories are, in a way, already AUs. Every one of my novels grew out of some other existing media -- not fanfiction, per se, but the germ of a plot springing out of an interesting concept or “what if” scenario. My age of sail adventure trilogy was originally inspired by a 1920s crime novel. My Edwardian ghost hunter story was originally inspired by a modern-day BBC series. My epic fantasy was originally inspired by a children’s cartoon. The decopunk fairy tale I sold to an anthology last year came to me after watching an episode of a 1960s TV Western. AUs everywhere.

Since this WIP is a derivative work, it’s already an AU. But I could see it changing genres and easily turning into some kind of wacky comedy, if it had a little less angst and played the character conflicts for laughs. (The premise really could have gone either way, but I’m an angst junkie, so it became a drama. But if someone wants to rewrite it as a sitcom after it’s posted, I’d totally read it.)

7. Which OC character would be the most angry with you as the writer?

Nero. I do put the poor boy through the wringer in this one, both physically and emotionally. But it’s for his ultimate good, really!

8. If you had to tell the story from a different POV, which character would you choose?

I usually have several rotating POV characters, but for story reasons, this entire narrative is from one character’s perspective, and it’s WEIRD. I keep having to perform timeline gymnastics to get my POV character someplace he can be involved in important conversations, rather than just popping into another head for a scene elsewhere!

If I had to change POV, I’d probably have to go with Lady. She’s also at the center of a lot of what’s happening, and as the person who has known the catalyst characters the longest, she has unique insight. Also she’s got her own bucketload of backstory and angst to work through, and that’s always fun to explore.

9. What would be your OC’s character’s taste in music if they lived in our world?

Nero’s musical tastes are pretty well defined in the game, I think. Though I do have him playing guitar in my story (not strictly canon but strongly suggested by the guitar taunt, and totally plausible), so he’d probably listen to a lot of classic rock in addition to the heavier stuff he listens to in-game.

10. What’s one personal goal you want to achieve by the end of the story?

My personal goal right now is just to end the story. This stupid thing was supposed to be a relatively short one-shot (HA HA HA), and given where I am in the arc, I’m estimating that it’s going to wind up in the neighborhood of 180K words. Which is insane. Doubly so since I’ve written over 130K in just two months, a quarter of which was spent traveling out of the country. (That’s... 2.5 NaNoWriMos. O_o I need to figure out what magic juice I’ve been drinking and start stockpiling it for November.)

I also want to make sure that I loop in all those dangling story elements I seeded in the first few chapters, but that’s not so much a personal goal as a standard task to check off the list. Most of my longer stories seem to have a bunch of convoluted plot threads that need tied off. I guess that’s how they end up being longer stories.

Tagging:

@gmariam321 @iamtheshriekingguineapig @wordborne @radioinactivity and anyone who wants to play!

#tag game #writing #my writing #children of the future age #fanfiction

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dangerliesbeforeyou · 5 years

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my top 10 series of 2019~

aka i gush about shiz i watched this year for waaaaaay too long lol...

i watched a lot of stuff this yr (well... it felt like a lot? there’s a lot more i wanted to watch but i’m terrible at time management lol...) so let’ssss explore that in a ~numbered list~ lol

(spoilers - there’s a lot of gay shit here lol... what can i say, twentybiteen really pulled thru lol)

10 - Stranger Things (series 3)

i know some people didn’t like this series, but i legit thought it was really good lol... i felt it had gone back to the style of the 1st series a lil more? (whereas series 2 had felt a lil disappointing in a way??) & i loved all the new characters introduced (robin is a personal fav, obv), & the whole splitting off into the lil groups was really effective in not just feel like it’s always the same group together, and it also allowed for some interesting character moments!

visually, stranger things always looks amazing! but i thought the whole summer/july 4th vibes really made it especially stunning tbh... as most things on this list, i’ve only seen it once, so i would like to rewatch it at some point (actually wanna do a full stranger things marathon tbh i was trying to explain what had happened in the show to my friend who stopped watching it early in series 1 & it was so difficult to remember exactly what had happened in it lool... )

there were obv things about it that i wasn’t as big on, like the whole evil russian-invincible guy was v cliche and kinda silly, & some of the actions scenes were a bit awkward(?) feeling... but i’m a sucker for any 80′s style media so those things just reminded me of the goonies or some shit lol

9 - Ghosts

actually the funniest & cutest series ever tbh!!! as someone who grew up with horrible histories with the original cast, this just made me immensely happy to see the whole team together again! the humour style is v similar to horrible histories too btw, though i feel they let themselves have a lil more ‘dark humour’ than in that (since this is more a general audience, whereas hh was definitely more aimed at kids tbh... tho they still won a comedy award for it lol! actual legends lol anyway...)

only downside is that it’s only 1 series atm & it’s pretty short... but i know there’s gonna be a new series at some point so i’m v excited for that!! i feel there’s sooooo many places they can go with the concept (i.e. exploring how/when the other characters died (like kitty!!! i need to know her story lol i love her!), maybe introducing another character who can see ghosts?? like a medium/psychic or something/etc ...) but legit, please watch this if u haven’t!!!

8 - Good Omens

this pretty much took over the internet this year lbr lol & tbh i’d def say it was worthy of the praise!! ineffable husbands aside, the main story is super engaging and enjoyable, with some really awesome side characters (& some of my fav character designs in anything ever tbh!!) but definitely the biggest draw was the ‘6000 years mutual pining’ romance which they did so well lol & it was something that was genuinely so lovely to watch tbh!! i also really loved the ending message of the show! i really hope to rewatch this next year when i think it’s gonna be aired on british tv at last????

downsides would be that the plot can be a bit confusing at times? but maybe that’s just me being dumb lol... but i imagine it’s a lot easier to understand if u’ve read the book lol?? i don’t have a problem w/ aziraphale & crowley not being “explicitly” gay or whatnot (i know i’ve seen some people annoyed with this?), since the whole idea of their relationship is so much larger than just them bonking or whatevs lol? (in general i think more media should have less focus on kissing/intimacy as an indication of love/romance... which is something i’ve already talked about lol)

oh, and the title sequence is INCREDIBLE lol i seriously loved it so much!!

7 - Killing Eve (series 2)

finally finished this the other day & it was so good!!! i really love the dark comedic tone of the show tbh & i def feel there was more of it in the 2nd series then the first! i also liked the further development of villanelle & eve’s relationship, which is obv the highlight of the show tbh! there was also a nice lot of twists tbh, though i’d say it was a lil less intense than the 1st series? (overall i’d say i prefer the 1st series, but the 2nd was a fab continuation... btw i also watched the 1st series this yr lol)

negative points are that the plot wasn’t quite as interesting as the 1st series... i think cos the focus of the murders was taken off of villanelle that we lost some of that drama from the 1st? i thought the ghost was gonna be a more integral part but she was kinda weirdly pushed aside once we learnt her identity? & the creepy son dude just annoyed me lol (but i suppose that was the point lol...)... so like yh there were lil things that didn’t engage me as much as the first, but overall i still really enjoyed it lol

this is def fulfilling the hannibal-shaped hole in my heart tbh... (another series i finished this yr...)

6 - Dark Blue Kiss the series

look, it’s no surprise this is on my list lol... i was hella hyped for this series when it was announced last yr, even though my expectations were VERY LOW after kiss me again the series (which, lbr, is a massive mess lol... like it’s My Mess tho)... but for real, this series really exceeded all my expectations... & then some! like i’m legit shook at how good it was ngl! especially morksun’s storyline, which was by far my fav in the show (as much as i’m petekao trash lol...) also, i was surprised by how genuinely pretty this show is! esp in comparison to kma (like i know i keep going on about the goddamn bruise makeup but it is so ugly in kma, but they really did a great job in dbk tbh!)

ok so there’s a lot of flaws lol... like... a lot (i’m already complained a lot so i won’t bore u with that rn lol...) but for real, the thing that i love the most about this is the discussions of coming out/homophobia/general young people struggles/etc etc which is so refreshing to see in these series! like i love that despite the cheesy tropes, it still knows when to be serious & genuine...

5 - He Is Coming To Me

another thai series, i believe this has the same director as dbk? (don’t hold me to that tho...)... legit one of the best, if not the best, thai series i’ve ever seen tbh! so adorable, so well acted, so funny & heartwarming like... legit it’s so good!! i was already excited about it from the trailer, but the way it really delivered on the emotionality, whilst keeping it lighthearted, was truly wonderful tbh! the main actors did a brill job i gotta say, and all the side characters were amazing too (there really wasn’t a character i didn’t like i’d say tbh? i need to rewatch tbh... there’s a lot i’ve forgotten since this came out p early in the year lol)... also, visually it’s so pretty!! i swear the cinematography in these thai series just keeps getting better & better & it def improves the watching experience tbh!

a down point would be that the first ep is a bit slow/awkward to get in to... & i think it def could put someone off? but i’d say to stick w/ it since it just keeps getting better & better! i’d actually say there isn’t really anything else i didn’t like about it ngl? it’s just so good guys... u really need to watch it!

4 - Russian Doll

probs the only series on this list that i actually actively went to rewatch straight away lol (didn’t do a full rewatch btw)... it was SO good for real! i already loved the premise lol (it’s basically groundhog day, which is already such a great film, but they explored those ideas even more in this which i loveeeed) the leads are fantastic, and the story is generally so interesting! plus the editing & song choices are really brill tbh...

my one complaint would probs be that the series loses a lil momentum at certain points (esp later in the series), but it still keeps ur interest, and the ending is really well done too! i know there’s gonna be a 2nd series, so i’m really hoping it’ll be able to live up to this one, and also explore more of the characters/concepts/etc! i’m def hyped for it tbh!

i feel like this series is simultaneously underrated and also v well known lol?? like i know everyone sees that ‘thursday! what a concept’ meme but i feel like i didn’t see as many people talk about it as much as other series this yr???

(for my top 3, i’d say i love them all equally/for different reasons... so the order they’re in is changeable lol)

3 - Gentleman Jack

one of the greatest bbc series of the year, maybe even the decade lol! actually a masterpiece of cinematography, incredible acting, gorgeous costumes, beautiful depictions of love and intimacy, hilarious characterisation & just generally a wonderful series!! like i can’t praise it enough! it’s literally everything i could ever want from a series, and more!!!!!!! like everytime i think about it i just feel like ‘!!!!!’ constantly lol... like... what did we do to deserve such a series for real?? something that i esp loved was that i vividly remember not that long ago w/ people complaining about the bbc for having minor lgbtq characters in things, so to have a actual main lesbian couple series be on prime time bbc telly is kinda mind blowing lol... like.. i know we’ve got a long way to go, but it does make me immensely proud!!

i have no complaints lol... other than - needed to be longer (i think we’re getting a 2nd series right???? i hope so tbh!!)

2 - The Untamed

look, i don’t make 15 piece series’ for nothing lol... this show really got to me ngl... like i knew it was gonna be amazing from seeing tonnes of mutuals start watching it & praising it.. .but ohhhhhhhh boy i wasn’t reading for the angst and heartbreak and just generally how invested i’d be in all the characters lol... like genuinely there’s so much to praise about this show! it may not be as super ‘polished’ as some of the other shows on this list, but it really has so much heart and hard work and dedication put into it which really shows in the final product!

there’s obv issues with it, but i feel like it’s kinda unnecessary to go over them lol? there’s so much more of this series that has brought me genuine joy, the biggest being the fact they were still able to depict a really beautiful, loving and /romantic/ relationship despite the strict censor is truly incredible lol!! like w/ good omens, it just shows what you can do to depict love/romance without having to over-sexualise something...

i feel like i’m saying less for these top 3, but it’s just cos i’ve already gush to high heavens about how much i love them lol...

1 - HIStory 3 - Trapped

you - *pretends to be shocked that this is my number 1*

yeh... no surprises that this is in my top 3 lol... what can i say that i haven’t already screamed about for months??? this series truly surpassed any expectations i could have had for a HIStory series... the story line is complex & pretty well done (it’s not perfect... but nothing is so....), the characters are wonderful & also brilliantly acted! i think the thing that i love the most is that the director wanted to create a series that wasn’t just a cheesy gay series (don’t get me wrong, i loVE cheesy gay series’ lol... ) but also would have a more interesting, well developed & more ‘mature’ story line (i think esp in comparison to other HIStory series’ which are usually school/uni based)... it’s also one of the few lgbtq series i’ve seen that isn’t just about ‘first loves’, and doesn’t place a big emphasis on a sexuality/identity crisis... it’s just so unabashedly a mystery-romance drama, which is just so refreshing to see! & i genuinely hope we can see more series like this, where gay characters don’t need to ‘prove’ themselves in order to be in a series or to be in relationships (which it often feels like, where writers need to explain /why/ characters are gay...)...

phew... that’s a lot of text lol, just like w/ the untamed, i feel like i’ve already talked about the negative points of the series (plot holes, awkward moments, weird editing/sound choices, bad tropey plots), but the positives of this series seriously make it worthwhile, and i’m just so so SO happy this show exists lol...

all 3 of these series have a special place in my heart of inspiring lots of my own exploration of art, as well as writing, which has been really crucial in me understanding what i wanna do with my life (i know that sounds kinda weird, but at the start of the year i really didn’t know what i wanted... and i wasn’t even sure what i was good at lol... so thru these shows i was able to discover a lot more about my own style of working & thru all of them i was able to meet some wonderful new people on here which has made 2019 actually one of my most enjoyable years on tumblr!

this has been an...... interesting year lol... but definitely these shows made it just a lil bit better!!!

Happy new year to anyone who actually read thru this & let’s hope 2020 brings us even more brill shows ~~~

#personal #favourite tv shows #2019 tv shows #long ass post lol... with pics (oooooh... fancy)#i rambled a lot here lol...#if u read thru (or just skim - or even if u just look at the pics lol) let me know which series u agree with?#or what ur fav series r?#there were other things i watched & didnt finish this yr which i enjoyed but decided to just stick to the series i finished lol...#not gonna tag any of the series cos i want y'all to click 'read more' to find out lol...#tho... if ur following my blog i feel it's p obvious what i've chosen lol....#also that ~numbered list~ thing is in ref to jenny nicholson... cos i love her lol #i think this might b the first time i've done this/?? maybe??#idk...#time is an illusion am i right ladies?

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falsebooles123 · 2 years

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Dairy of a Horror Buff 8.21.22

CW: Jeremey Screamerclauz Bullshit, Police Brutality, Spreadsheats.

ugh have you ever made a spreadsheet before. Cause thats what I did I last night instead of watching a movie. I don't do it often but sometimes doing something before bed that isn't the endless consumption of media is refreshing. On that note lets get into the Endless Consumption of Media.

oh no, my porn. Also pic of said spreadsheet .

so since I was such a smart cookie and planned ahead I decided to split up all of these into categories which I think I have 11 off???

But one of those is that BBC mini-series, so lets chill and watch one of each if theres any available.

Crypt TV

youtube

Stereoscope (2017) dir. Alexandr Babaev

So since this is getting near the end of the Challenge and because I'm not gonna review all 120+ Films I've mentioned in my YT Video I thought going forward I only watch my favorite shorts from Crypt TV.

This is one of their earlier films which is why I've seen it and its peak Crypt TV. Young women gets a viewfinder in a creepy box and begins playing with it. Everytime she touches the slide she suddenly hears some invisable danger near here.

The best part of this is what it doesn't answer. Does using the viewfinder summon ghosts, does it capture them, are they even real???

Overall its just so well done its one of those films that its not supposed to make sense from a lore perspective it just gives you a really interesting idea and plays off of it.

I realized not everybody knows what a viewmaster is. Its this bitch.

ALTER

youtube

Don't Die First ALTER dir. DANIEL FOSTER

"Hello Welcome to Don't Die First, helping black people not die from scary siturations since 1929".

Ok this was literally everything I needed in life but also understand that this goes a really dark place really quickly.

The whole Premise is a hotline for black people stuck in horror movie plots. At first this is loving fun satire as a hwite myself theres something jovial about the concept that white people are always doing the most to open hell portals or summon ghosts and that puts there black and gay friends in danger.

This wouldn't have happened if Frank could have kept it in his pants.

I love the concept love the humor. Even though I've never really had a "Don't go into the basement guys" moment in horror I love people making fun of formaliac horror tropes. I am a horror buff after all.

But then they get a call from a men whose not dealing with a poltergeist or a wearwolf but a Karen. and suddenly the fantasy of horror sheds its skin. Like a werewolf!

sorry I was trying to lightened the tone but I don't think I can here.

Horror is always a response to fears in society. Vampires repressent a corrupt aristocracy, Zombies represented white fears of slave revolts, Slashers are a product of our sudden culteral knowledge of serial killers in the '70s.

Horror has and always will be the way of metaphorizing pain and suffering creating a scrapegoat that we can defeat. Horror is Grendel, is Apropas, it is Entropy.

To us a vampire or a revenent is absurd, a culteral object that is devoid of historic meaning but for those that lived through that time it had real wait to it. White People get to live in superstition, cast there fears on superbugs or human trafficking onto supernatural beings but for Black People, (and presumingly other marginilized persons), they don't have that luxercy. They have to live in a world where their monsters are considered heros.

A literal monster is real life horror. A horror movie they have to live with always.

Just some food for thought.

Independant

youtube

100% Beef dir. Mike Batecko

Ok so it looks like in 2015 a company called Four4 Competition made a "very short film competition" what does that mean exactly?? How Short are we talking about. What do you win if you have the best movie???

Honestly nobody really know a lot of the stuff I could find on the contest is pretty much useless. Dead Links, Vague Tweets I'm sure If I tried a little harder I could have found something more tasty but this is a movie watching challenge not a lost media one.

but yeah this is a very short film for a very short film competition. its lterally 34 seconds long a women looks down at her food and realizes that soylent green is people. Sorry for the spoilers.

Animation

youtube

Affection (2012) dir Jeremy ScreamerClauz

So Thres this old SMBC omic where they lampshade the fact that superman probably has a weird alien dick and this is basically the same plot.

Some dude just wants to touch a titty but oh no he just had to have a transcenedent religous experience in a crack house. Theres this type of ethos to Scremerclauz work which I can almost descirbe as self-hatred or religious guilt. This contrast between Sexual Attraction and Revulsion. I don't quite get it but theres definetly something deeper in there.

Early Cinema

youtube

Blue Beard (1901) dir. Georges Melies

Oh wow this was lovely. One thing I love about Georges Melies is that while his films tend to be a little heard to get into he really understood his craft. The story tells a pretty basic retelling of Blue Beard but theres a really fantastic upgrade to his aestetic style. His sets are more built up with actually doors and different entryways and it just sells the scenery, theres a few amazing effects here like when Bluebeard is dragging the bride down the stairs feels so lifelike. You can really see how his films are starting to sing and that suspension of disbelief is starting to melt away.

Silent Era

youtube

The Furies (1934) Dir. Slavko Vorkapich

So apparently Vorkapich is whats known as a montagist he would make opening sequences for movies that were seperate from the directors, The closest thing I can imagine in modern cinema is Eli Roth's film-within-a-film Nations Pride.

So The Furies is interesting, we see multiple shots of blood falling onto pavement followed by a furie rising from the bloodshed. The three furies flit across the new york skyline followed by three vignettes one for each sister of wrath. Basically they just break a window cause they want to see a peep show.

perverts.

Experiemental

youtube

Sissy Boy Slap Party (2004) dir. Guy Maddin

Ok but why does this feel like a Toby Ross Porno????

So we appear in yet another homoerotic landscape a tropic island were are navy boys are lying recumbent shirtless sweating.

and remember no slapping.

To be honest I don't really understand 1st. why this is considered horror and 2nd. I really don't understand what this is about.

on one hand maybe I'm supposed to understand this as like a metaphor of toxic masculinity and the slapping is the way a hegemonic society keeps men from gender expansive expression? Like there sissy boys so like its a self lothing thing?

But the more I think about this I think Guy Maddin just wanted to watch bunch of men slap each other commedically. Who knows maybe its a sex thing????

UnFiction

youtube

Internet Story dir. Adam Butcher

Ok so this apparently does have an ARG behind it through I would have to do some digging to find where to start exploring.

Essentially this is a story about a story. An arg about an Arg. Also it references the caunterbury tales which always makes me feel smart when I take that off the bookshelf.

PSA's

youtube

Catwalk (1985) dir. Unknown.

Ok so this is another one of the Dumb Animals campagain Commericials. This one features women walking down a runwear in luxerience fur coats. They proceed to spin around splashing the audience in BLOOD BLOOD OF THE FAlLEN. IT TAKES 40 DUMB ANIMALS BUT ONLY 1 OF YOU SELFISH SACKS OF SHIT TO WEAR IT.

Ok bitches I thikn thats the end of it. Thanks for playing. I think I'll skip the blogging for tomorrow but I'm gonna try to add a few more before the end of the month.

#Diary #letterboxd #Letterboxdchallenge #horror #horrormovies #horror shorts #Youtube

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almondbiscotti · 4 years

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Week 11: HELLO I AM BACK

HELLO HI HOW YA DOING.

Wow, I have not done my week in review in quite a while! And Shinee is to blame. Though, really, the boys are fucking flawless and blameless. I’m the useless one in this narrative.

But regardless, I BE BACK for my week in reviews after like a 4 week break detour to Shinee World.

Progress has been slow this week TBH. I’m slowly getting back to reading and writing. I didn’t do much of either this week but some progress is better than no progress!

Deets under the cut!

Reads This Week

A Darker Shade of Magic by V. E. Schwab (12/2021) I remembered really liking it when I first read it in 2015/2016 but I liked this a lot less this time round. I don’t know if it’s changes in my reading taste or I just... got older, but I find Schwab’s incessant emphasis on how different, special, isolated and tragic her main characters are, incredibly IRRITATING. I kept thinking all her characters are fucking millennials who need to get their shit together.

Schwab has talent in world building. Her premise is actually quite complicated but she has managed to make her worlds intriguing and mysterious but still relatable. Plot wise, it’s pretty well done too. It’s just her characters I cannot stand. Pity, it had such potential. I don’t think I’ll pick up the rest of the trilogy.

Writes This Week

I started on a prompt AG gave me but I’m struggling to flesh it out. Mainly because I’m writing on a topic I’m not very familiar with. The whole piece is very flat because I can’t draw from personal experience. I’m thinking I need to do some real research on the topic. This would be my first foray into writing research!

I also started on a piece inspired by my favourite Shinee boy. HAVE TO PUT THOSE INTENSE FEELINGS SOMEWHERE. Though... I’m a bit worried it’s starting to sound a bit fanfic-y.

Fun fact, I have actually written fanfic before. Of course it’s Shinee fanfic. Ha.ha.ha. The cringe, the horror!

Watches This Week

Vincenzo on Netflix I LOVE THIS SHOW IT’S SO AMAZING I LIVE FOR HONG CHA YONG AND VINCENZO. The more I watch it, the more I like it. It has pretty much everything I like in a show. Beautiful faces, entertaining characters, HILARIOUS CRACK, Song Joong Ki’s face, Song Joong Ki being violent in a suit, Song Joong Ki in a suit, CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT, anti-heroes that aren’t all righteous and shit and totally will fuck you up mafia style, EXCELLENT comedic timing by the cast, twists and turns like an Auntie Annie’s pretzel, but best of all, a female character that isn’t a pushover. SHE WILL FUCK YOU UP and be fucking irritating while doing it. I love. I love it so much. I highly recommend Vincenzo for it’s extremely high entertainment value. And of course, SONG JOONG KI’S BEAUTIFUL FACE. 10/10 will recommend.

Ghosts by BBC Comedy I chanced upon a Facebook ad for this show and started on it because the short clip on Facebook was so bloody funny. And it’s actually really very funny! It’s typical British humour which I like so that’s great. Premise is a couple inherits a old big ass country side home and the ghosts that come with it. And comedy ensues because the ghosts are just silly idiots who aren’t very good at haunting. It’s great, I love it. Will recommend.

Listens This Week

Still on my Shinee binge! Ah, their songs are SUCH BOPS! My favourites are:

한마디 (Beautiful Life)

Why So Serious

Dream Girl

데리러 가 (Good Evening)

Replay (누난 너무 예뻐) - THE REAL OG SHINEE SONG!!!!!

The Studio Ghibli Sleep playlist on Spotify is pretty dope relaxing music too. It’s essentially Studio Ghibli songs on Piano. It’s great. I love it.

Not a bad week. Getting back into the swing of things!! :)

#Nessa2021writes

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the-ice-sculpture · 4 years

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Books I read in February 2021

*assume all the book are aimed at an adult audience unless specified otherwise in the description

Apparently I felt like reading a lot of light-horror type stuff so here goes for the books I finished this month:

A Head Full of Ghosts by Paul Tremblay ★★★★★ (4.5*s) 📖 Horror. 286 pages. A girl grows up with a reality TV crew in her home because of her sister being ‘possessed’. She doesn’t know whether the sister is severely mentally ill, faking it, or whether there’s actually something supernatural going on. The premise had me because I’m very meh about possession, but done this way it was fascinating. Loved this one. It’s short and fast-paced and does a really good of pulling you in. I read it all in a day and I can’t remember the last time that’s happened with a book.

Ghost Stories by H G Wells: Six chilling tales from BBC Radio 4 ★★☆☆☆ 🎧 Supernatural short story collection. 1.5 hours. I just wanted to read Victorian things for a thing I was writing. It was well narrated but didn’t really install any sense of dread (it’s more about unusual ghost stories than scary ghost stories) so the title’s a bit misleading, which led to disappointment.

The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde ★★★☆☆ (2.5*s) 📖 Victorian rom-com play. 76 pages. Again, read for the Victorianness. I have a really hard time reading stuff written by actual Victorian authors (I usually struggle muddling through the density of their writing) so reading a play seemed like a good idea because it’s short and 95% dialogue. Enjoyed Oscar Wilde’s wit and the liveliness of the characters but was fairly neutral about the plot.

Alice Isn’t Dead by Joseph Fink ★★★☆☆ 🎧 Contemporary/light-horror (more about a sense of wrongness than scariness though). 336 pages. A road trip for an anxiety-ridden women to find her missing wife, Alice, in which strange beings keep turning up. I remember listening to some of the podcast for this years ago (by one of the writers of Welcome to Night Vale) and losing track of where I left off, so when the audiobook turned up in my library I gave it a go. It’s surprisingly wholesome, which is probably why I didn’t vibe well with it. It was fine, there were some interesting ideas, but I just didn’t really connect with it.

If We Were Villains by M.L.Rio ★★★★★ 📖 Contemporary/dark academia. 368 pages. One of my favourite reads in a long time. It’s about a closely knit group of drama students at a prestigious arts university where they focus solely on Shakespeare. One of the group turns up dead, and you know from the get-go that the main character is serving time in prison for a murder he may or may not have done (it isn’t really a whodunnit story though). The characters are very flawed complex people, but are also people who will quote Shakespeare at each other given any opportunity. I’m no Shakespeare fan but for some reason I didn’t find this (or the re-enactment of certain scenes from his plays) off-putting, it just oozed passion from the author and characters. It was very neat how some of the arcs mirrored ones that pop up a lot in Shakespeare plays too, and how much of a role the casting of the plays was in mirroring the real life things going on with the characters. It’s... very hard to describe what was so good about this. But it’s so much better than I’m making it sound, I promise! Very well written but also reads quickly, nice short chapters (my attention span is awful these days so this is pretty much a must), super atmospheric, tense, dark, easy to fall into, and it stays with you after reading it.

Bunny by Mona Awad ★★★★☆ (3.5*s) 📖 Contemporary/dark academia/nonsense. 307 pages. I have no idea what genre to place this as. Easily one of the strangest books I’ve ever read. A review described it as ‘if Mean Girls and Alice in Wonderland fell in love with The Craft’, but that only begins to cover it. It’s, er, about a writing student with a dark imagination and a clique of girls (the ‘bunnies’) who may or may not have the ability to do stuff that blurs the boundaries between fiction and reality. It gets progressively weirder the more it goes on. The writing style gets progressively more abstract and metaphorical the more it goes on. In short, it gets trippy. Unreliably narrated, a tiny bit meta, a few plot twists... I'm still not sure what I read or what to make of it (have a few theories though), but I enjoyed the ride.

#books #reading #reading wrap up #bookblr #book review #my posts

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psyclownsis-a-blog · 7 years

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cyberyond replied to your post

piri i need horror movie recs it's been too long since i saw a good oNE

this ended up becoming Piri’s Ultimate List Of Horror Recs (2017 Version) so i’m putting it under a cut rip

note: this list has trigger warnings but i am operating under the assumption that you are okay with the standard level of explicit sexuality, vulgarity, violence, and gore present in mainstream horror movies

horror

original nightmare on elm street series, but especially 1, 3, 4, 6, and freddy vs. jason (tw for implied pedophilia and explicit child murder, tw for rape in #6)

friday the 13th (original and remake)

honestly all the friday the 13th sequels are A Treasure but if you want The Core Canon watch 1-3

my bloody valentine (original)

psycho (original) and tbh all its sequels (tw for sort-of-kind-of incest vibes)

psycho ii and psycho iv are my favorites because (1) meg tilly is adorable in psycho ii and (2) psycho iv has a harley/norman cameo and nobody can convince me otherwise

child’s play, child’s play 2, bride of chucky, maybe some sequels after that idk i haven’t seen them yet :(

scream franchise

not the mtv scream series

i mean s1 is decent but there are definitely other horror shows that i would recommend more

1-3 are the best, 4 is worth watching if you really like the characters but as a concept the series has p much run its course by then

tw for rape mentions in scream 3

predator

peeping tom

kenneth branagh’s frankenstein (tw for a graphic depiction of death in childbirth)

james whale’s frankenstein

bride of frankenstein

the phantom of the opera (1925)

the phantom of the opera (1989) (tw for a much grosser depiction of the phantom story than the 1925 or 2004 versions; i wanna say all tws are left at implication but i haven’t seen it in a while so i’m not sure)

alien franchise

the wolfman (2010)

darling (tw for rape)

house on haunted hill (original and remake)

final destination franchise

medium raw: night of the wolf (tw for pedophilia and child murder)

the babadook

the final girls [horror comedy]

the shining (tw for implied child abuse)

the cabin in the woods

hellraiser

heathers (tw for eating disorders, suicide, everything high school kids are insensitive assholes about)

from dusk til dawn

an american werewolf in london

the guest

it follows (tw for dubious consent)

nightwatch (tw for implied necrophilia/descriptions of necrophilia, self-mutilation)

re-animator (tw for rape, pedophilia mentions)

carrie (original) (tw for child abuse, religion iconography)

the remake had some interesting like... subtext/imagery but other than that it was pretty *wet fart noise*

the awakening

the craft

the blair witch project

honestly i loved the book of shadows: blair witch 2 bc it kind of parallels the crucible but i can admit that objectively it is Terrible

elvira, mistress of the dark [spooky comedy]*

american mary (tw for rape, (consensual surgical) genital mutilation)

fright night (original and remake)

jaws

halloween franchise

1-5 are the best imo but no matter what skip #3 because it literally has nothing to do with any of the other movies

not the rob zombie remakes, those are awful

let the right one in [swedish (?) film, watch with subtitles]

rosemary’s baby (original)

night of the living dead (original)

28 days later

suspiria

silent hill (tw for child molestation)

crimson peak (tw for incest)

the lost boys

interview with the vampire

the ring

one missed call

the raven (2012)

repo! the genetic opera

teeth (tw for rape, incest, t’s??????? about a girl who has razor-sharp teeth in her vagina and how that coincides with her sexual awakening as a very straight-laced religious person???? so idk like watch it for The Wild Ride if you want but watch at your own discretion)

american psycho (tw for rape, general misogyny)

sweeney todd

speaking from experience, this is much better live, the movie sucked out all the fun and humor that wasn’t literally written into the lyrics, so i recommend watching the original broadway cast on youtube or something

there’s also a 1936 movie but i haven’t seen it so i can’t speak to its quality BUT i would recommend it on the basis of it being made before the musical was created and thus being based more directly on “the string of pearls” novel which is where the sweeney todd urban legend was originally documented

abott and costello meet [insert universal horror monster here] [spooky comedy]

little shop of horrors (original and remake) [spooky comedy]

the last man on earth (1964)

adapted from the same book i am legend (2007) was adapted from but the last man on earth stays much closer to the original book

c. h. u. d.

ghostbusters (1984 and 2016 versions) [spooky comedy]

ghost ship

sick girl (tw for bugs, pregnancy horror)

misery (tw for torture)

puppet master (tw for rape)

the haunting in connecticut

zombieland [horror comedy]**

jurassic park series

lizzie borden took an axe

*spooky comedy: a comedy movie with a spooky premise that i am categorizing with horror movies due to the genre overlap, but that lacks the intense violence, gore, etc. of a horror movie

**horror comedy: a spooky comedy that does not lower the level of violence, gore, etc. that is standard in a horror movie

thrillers

stoker (tw for incest, has a scene in which the protag’s mother verbally abuses her)

m [german film, watch with subtitles] (tw for themes of pedophilia/child molestation/child murder, but it’s worth noting that the whole point of the movie is to condemn and demonize pedophilia)

also one of if not the very first detective movies

nightcrawler (tw for rape)

the vvitch/the witch/however the fuck it’s spelled

rear window (original)

zodiac

hannibal lecter franchise (tw for cannibalism, obviously)-- the silence of the lambs, hannibal, red dragon, manhunter

manhunter is adapted from the same book red dragon is (red dragon) except manhunter was made before anthony hopkins became The Iconic Hannibal Lecter(TM) so it focuses much more on will graham and francis dolarhyde

hannibal rising is worth watching for gaspard ulliel’s performance but the book was much better

the hannibal movie adaptation changed the ending of the hannibal book while still maintaining a really good and really compelling storyline so the book and movie are definitely both highly recommended by me

gone girl

shutter island (tw for asylum horror)

pan’s labyrinth

documentaries

cropsey (documentary on child murders)

urban legends (another documentary, by the same people, talks about how real-life crime affects the american psyche and lives on as urban legends/horror tropes)

the poisoner’s handbook

h. h. holmes

nightmares in red, white, and blue

his name was jason

never sleep again: the elm street legacy

television

bates motel

ahs s1 (tw for... literally everything)

slasher

similar basic premise as ahs, but imo ahs is v exploitative and builds the plot on violence and vice, whereas slasher builds the violence and vice on the plot

supernatural (LISTEN........ LISTEN....................... conceptually it’s the bees knees okay)

penny dreadful (tw for constant explicit sexuality, religious iconography/sacrilege, asylum horror)

criminal minds

bbc broadchurch

bbc river

bbc sherlock but literally only ep. 3.4 “the abominable bride”

rosemary’s baby (2-part made-for-tv movie)

podcasts

the black tapes podcast

small town horror

alice isn’t dead

king falls am [spooky comedy]

limetown

welcome to night vale [spooky comedy]

video games

until dawn

outlast series

#outtajokes.#cyberyond #@ anyone reading this on mobile: I AM SO SORRY #piri's ultimate list of horror recs

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