#the title made me think it would be much… creepier?

[umactuallycallie]

Been watching Peep Show recently, and it really is one fourth wall break away from being the Truman Show. Or TMA. I actually love it as a sitcom, it makes me think a bit more than most.

[zahri-melitor]

New(ish) Comics:

Birds of Prey #13: That was a clever use of Cass to finish the storyline. Kelly Thompson's generated enough good will from me at this point that yeah, I'd consider her as one of the strongest Birds of Prey writers since Dixon and Simone, though Sean McKeever probably still edges her out (McKeever had a stronger lead in though to work from, and so many people barely distinguish his work from Simone's).

I'm interested to see where Thompson takes them from here. I certainly still have quibbles (I would love to see a commitment to using Barbara as Oracle only appear on page; I do think Thompson is having way too much fun trying to play with ALL the characters and needs to focus a bit more on the ones she has already), but I'm never disappointed by the title? I enjoy myself.

Batman #152: I've got to say, as someone who has also played around with Darkseid powers, I enjoyed that Bruce acknowledged on page that Omega Beams do weird shit on occasion, revolving around what Darkseid wants, and that Bruce would in fact be cautious of them in ways other people are not. I'm not sure as a story it accomplishes a lot as an an Absolute Power tie-in (mostly I think it's just keeping Bruce out of the way while other characters get focus in the main titles), but I did appreciate the use of the Batman #79 callback to the Beach Holiday Of Explicitly Taking Time For Ourselves While The Children Are Dealing With Drama, because Bruce and Selina and holidays at the beach and on cruises is a long running theme together and I never hate seeing it pop up.

Putting the Birds of Prey Absolute Power set up into the back of this made sense in terms of comics pricing and keeping the number of event comics contained, but also probably needed to be better signalled. Read this AFTER BOP #13.

The Boy Wonder #5: and Juni Ba caps his story off.

This was sweet! In the spectrum of non-canonical or dubiously-canonical retellings of origin stories, I think this straddled the line pretty well, particularly in how it was explicitly pitched as a story someone was telling. Some of the resolution in the final issue was a bit pat for me (in terms of we all moved forward and solved things), but the focus stayed where it needed to be (on Damian and Damian's connections), and plenty of the implications were significantly creepier than Smol Damian here realised.

This would sit happily beside the Demon Trilogy as a quasi-canonical Al Ghul story. I think Dennis O'Neil would have appreciated it.

DC's I Know What You Did Last Crisis #1:

Honestly my opening thought on this was 'why did anyone offer Dan DiDio a writing slot'? Because, I've read a bunch of DiDio's work, and part of the situation with him at DC has always been that he's a mediocre writer that wouldn't rate a title if he hadn't already been working in editorial/management. His credits don't actually contain any stories and titles that people are big fans of, and a lot of his work was done collaboratively with stronger writers (if you're writing with Keith Giffen, I suspect Giffen is handling a lot of the actual plotting work and charm).

Okay rant out of the way:

Batgirl-COIE story: I don't mind this, but I feel like if I were going to pitch a Barbara story at this point I'd want it more in communication with Barbara Randall Kesel's work. I'd have Barbara acknowledge the Krypto stuffed dog and maybe bond with the kid over "I had a teddy called Supergirl". Also, this is...very early for 'Waylon likes kids'. Like, decades too early. Croc's characterisation feels far later than when this story is set.

Dr Light-Millennium: It's not bad as a horror piece, but as a few other people have noted, I feel it wastes the aspect of 'the Manhunters are hidden among us' inherent in their portrayal in the event. Nice moment spent with a few characters who don't get much page time though.

Birds of Prey-Final Night: this very much feels like a missing tie in! Which we didn't get, because BOP had the Manhunt mini instead during that period. Ashley Allen has a good grasp on the time frame and events going on for this. My one quibble is having Dinah working in Gotham here, as Barbara still was focusing on world-roaming problems at this point over local ones, but otherwise, it slotted in very nicely.

JSA-Zero Hour: This is fine. I will say the quip about "the number of Bat-people" for Zero Hour feels a bit thin. You mean, Batman, Nightwing, Robin, ... Huntress and Spoiler? Steph has barely had her second ever storyline, the only person in Gotham who trusts Helena is Tim, JPV is busy dealing with having been insane, and Dick's been home for five minutes. They literally just finished a multi-year event about how Bruce didn't have the support he needed.

Nightwing-Infinite Crisis: it's just sad and pathetic that Dan DiDio remains so mad that his staff rebelled and wouldn't let him kill Dick Grayson. It was almost two decades ago. Why are you still having a tantrum about this publicly? It's not even worth addressing the characterisation, as it's just an attempted take-that that makes him look worse.

Scarecrow-Blackest Night: ...if you're going to set something at the Monarch Theatre maybe take 5 seconds to check the wiki about what was happening with the location around the time of the story. It was not a functioning movie theatre, folks, and we're just prior to The Carpenter's Tale. I dunno. This one felt like a waste of the setting.

Lex Luthor-Final Crisis: look I don't enjoy Final Crisis, but this is incredibly set during Final Crisis. This feels like pretty solid Lex characterisation and introspection, and I'm sure he hates that he's hallucinating a Superman to talk down to.

Midnighter-Flashpoint: I dunno, the characterisation feels off for both Pyg and Midnighter. It's fine, but I would have preferred another story that really felt like a missing backup from an event.

My general overarching opinion? Most of the writers could have used a bit closer attention to context for their stories, if you're playing "this is set during". That's something people can check.

The Warlord #66: I just checked and we are so close to halfway through volume 1 of the Warlord! They simply do not commission 133 issue runs plus annuals of random conspiracy titles anymore. Anyway this week in Skartaris Mongo Ironhand remains the worst. Also Mariah and Mikola finally get to talk to each other and Mariah tells her lost werewolf fencing instructor lover that she's actually now got the hots for an ex-gladiator with a spiked mace for a fist. (Oh, Skartaris)

There is tragically very little discussion of communism. Get back to preaching about the benefits of communism, Mariah!

Also we fight a demon (who transformed from the Gollum creature like...30 issues earlier), Mariah tricks him into stabbing himself in the eyesocket with a trick sword, Jennifer defeats him with magic, they throw the magic book the demon was using into a volcano vent to destroy it, and the men are largely all useless.

Thank you, that has been our back in pre-history LOTR rip off of the week.

[stitching-in-time]

Voyager rewatch s5 ep5: Once Upon a Time

Alternate title: Neelix, Naomi & the Importance of Trigger Warnings. Okay, not really, but that's my biggest takeaway from this ep, tbh.

While I like giving characters with kids scenes with their kids, I'm not a fan of having whole episodes that revolve around kids in Star Trek. Especially with Voyager having so many regular characters, it feels like wasting time we could have spent developing them instead.

Naomi Wildman is certainly cute, and Scarlett Pomers is a good actress, but it is a bit odd to have Naomi aged so much when she's technically only 3 years old at this point, and Scarlett is obviously like, 8-ish. Since Naomi's half Ktarian, it's possible they mature faster than humans, which would explain why she's so grown up when she was born only 3 years ago. But it would have been nice to have a line of dialogue with some character talking about how fast Ktarians mature or something to give it a canon explanation, rather than just seeming like poor continuity.

I think maybe if they gave Naomi a better holodeck program to play in, I might have liked this episode more- Treevis and Flotter both have very creepy makeups that are more uncanny and terrifying than cute and likeable. Whatever happened to like, Winnie the Pooh?? I know, Star Trek couldn't afford the rights to a real beloved children's series, but I can't suspend my disbelief enough to accept that those characters would ever become a beloved children's franchise. And that Flotter doll that Neelix has Harry replicate for Naomi is even creepier! Giving her that thing would give her anxiety rather than comforting her. But tbh I'm surprised she can sleep at all with that creepy red Anubis jackal rocking horse thing in her bedroom- what the heck is that?? The only thing this episode convinced me of is that no one working on Star Trek had any idea what children actually like at all.

Mostly the episode was about Neelix projecting his trauma onto Naomi when they lose contact with the Delta Flyer on an away mission that Ensign Wildman is part of. He doesn't want to tell her her mom might be dead, even though she starts figuring out something is wrong, because he lost his entire family and he's freaking out at the prospect of Naomi going through the same thing. Captain Janeway is sympathetic to him when she realizes that's why he won't tell Naomi what's going on, and has a rather sweet scene where she comforts and reassures him, like the awesome space mom she is. Of course Naomi sneaks onto the bridge and finds out in the worst way, and Neelix has to apologize for not telling her himself and trusting her to handle it. At least Neelix has learned to apologize to people since he dated Kes. Naomi finds a way to revive the fantasy forest in her holostory after a scene where the forest is burned to the ground, which gives Neelix flashbacks to his home planet being destroyed, (and illustrates why stories should always have trigger warnings, which everyone would know in the future, but such are the limitations of a show made in the 90s) and they eventually find and recover the Delta Flyer, with everyone still alive. (I think the scene where Ensign Wildman reunites with Naomi in sickbay at the end of this ep is the only time they were ever in a scene together. I think Naomi ended up being in more episodes than her mom, and it feels like they just don't think mothers are an important part of a small child's life, which is weird and stupid.)

The scenes of the Delta Flyer trapped under the moon surface were frankly more interesting than the Neelix babysitting Naomi stuff- Tuvok has an absolutely wonderful speech where he reassures the injured Ensign Wildman that Naomi will be okay no matter what happens. It's a touching moment from one parent to another, when he tells her he has faith in the people around his children to care for and support them, and that he knows he taught them well enough to be okay in his absence, and that he knows Sam is a good mom who raised Naomi well, and that the Voyager crew will always take care of her if anything happens to Sam. Good space dad Tuvok moments just get to me!! You can say Vulcans aren't emotional, but that man loves his family and his Voyager crewmates so, so much!!!

Scenes where they think they're going to die are always wrenching, and watching them run out of oxygen in the Flyer before they're rescued was certainly tense, but I feel like it didn't really build to a point where they actually seemed like they were going to die before they were rescued, and it lost what could have been a more dramatic moment.

I was also annoyed by the lack of thought put into Tom's farewell letter to B'Elanna during the scene where they literally think they're recording they're final goodbyes to their loved ones. It should have been emotionally devastating, but they just have him be like, 'well, this kinda sucks, but at least I won't be around to annoy you, huh? lol!' I mean, what was that?! He should at least be like, sad! But they gave him nothing in that dialogue for Robbie to even work with to make it more heartfelt. (Saying goodbye to your one true love should be heartbreaking, fyi!) What he thinks are his last words to her are just 'so long'?! Aside from the nonchalance of it, who even talks like that anymore?? Even in the 90s, nobody talked like that, it sounds like a line from a 1950s movie. Sure, Tom loves old timey stuff, but life and death situations aren't the place for that. And he should also have said 'I love you'!!! I never noticed it when I originally watched the show, but now that I'm binge watching them all in succession, I'm truly baffled and pissed off that Tom's not being allowed to say 'I love you' on screen. Why??? He obviously does, and she got to say it. One of my hugest pet in writing in general, but in sci-fi shows especially, is when they won't let male characters say 'I love you' to anyone. It's this weird toxic masculinity thing that so many (usually male) writers have, where they think that it somehow takes away from the heroicness of men to say it, or something. And it's insane because the stories themselves show clearly that they do love people, but there's just some taboo about actuallly saying it. Modern Doctor Who is especially guilty of this, and it drives me up the wall there, and now the same thing is happening here, and it makes me just as crazy. And it's completely nonsensical, given that both Doctor Who and Star Trek are shows specifically about how love is the answer and antidote to all the bad things in the universe, but men still aren't allowed to express that in words??? Writers who do this, you are on my shit list!!!

Tl;dr: An okay episode that had some nice elements, but the B plot was more compelling than the A plot, which kind of suffered for trying to posit what beloved children's literature would look like in the future, while not managing to make it seem like something that would appeal to children at all.

[xjustonemoremiraclex]

Ok, final thoughts on Junji Ito Maniac

It was... fine. Better than the Junji Ito Collection, for sure, though I'd argue the creepy scenes looked... well, creepier there lol Let's be honest, I think it's clear by now it's impossible to recreate Ito's artstyle, it just works a lot better on paper.

The one thing that annoyed me though is how they just... decided to stop some of the stories short? Like, I get some changes need to be made, but it almost seems like they looked at some of the stories and went 'pff who needs these last couple of pages? just throw them out'. So weird.

Anyway, some general (relatively spoiler-free) thoughts on each episode that no one cares about:

‘The Strange Hikizuri Siblings’: love how they started with some dark humor (for some definition of the word humor) to lead you into a false sense of security.

‘The Story of the Mysterious Tunnel’: meh, the original was better

‘Ice Cream Bus’: The ending fucked me up <3

‘Hanging Balloon’: a fascinating mixture of "this is so dumb" and "wait why is this also terrifying 😭", love the non-linear storytelling

‘Four x Four Walls’: another one that's more darkly humorous, it made me feel so claustrophobic jfc

‘The Sandman’s Lair’: oh look, another one that fucked me up <3

‘Intruder’: I find this one weirdly fascinating, kinda would love to know more about wtf actually happened

‘Long Hair in the Attic’: the one that made me regret watching this show, I am officially traumatized <3

‘Mold’: you could not pay me to stay in that fucking house, goodBYE sir

‘Library Vision’: again, not a super fan of the changes, but it's still pretty good. And creepy.

‘Tomb Town’: I really like this one for some reason, but the animation in that scene at the well was... questionable. And the original ending is MUCH better (imo)

‘Layers of Terror’: Oh, my mistake. NOW I'm traumatized for life <3 fuck this show why did I start watching this 😭

‘The Thing that Drifted Ashore’: my least favourite, by far. And I'm sorry, but it looked... bad. Like, really bad 😕

‘Tomie – Photo’: also titled 'the girl who can't stop making terrible decisions' jeez

‘Unendurable Labyrinth’: meh

‘The Bully’: I also really like this one and it's also disturbing as all hell <3

‘Alley’: karma is a bitch huh

‘Headless Statue’: girl for the love of god why tf would you follow his shady ass and why would you not jump out of the nearest window when given the chance 😭

‘Whispering Woman’: another one I really like, and I find it weirdly nice in a super disturbing way lol

‘Soichi’s Beloved Pet’: we stan a guy who's super passionate about animals, we don't stan a guy who fucks up a perfectly good kitty 😭

[eriexplosion]

Okay I've put off the finale enough. Time for Return to Kamino.

You can tell it's awkward between Crosshair and Hunter right now because after his dramatic entrance Crosshair just. Slipped back out to wait up front rather than risk having to actually talk to Hunter about anything.

This first interaction though god there's so much there. "And so will your squad." "They'll still come for you." Just godddd the pain is so deep here and it's no one's FAULT it's the Empire's but you can't have interpersonal family dynamics with the Empire. It's only this painful because of how much everyone cares about each other.

POOR PANICKY OMEGA she's so scared and wants to go get Hunter RIGHT NOW IMMEDIATELY.

When do we get the Gregor in Cid's bar chaos cut?

Rampart has acknowledged Hunter's name but never Crosshair's, which is wild to me.

The fact that his subordinates still call him 'the clone' okay. The thing with Crosshair is he might have gotten the title but he never got an OUNCE of respect and god does it show. The fact that he willingly went back to this is a sign of how little self respect he has left frankly. He doesn't care that they treat him like shit because whatever he probably deserves to be treated like shit.

Echo getting down to ask Omega if she's alright is such a good moment for them, just a lovely example of how good they are at relating to her. (Her saying it doesn't matter they just need to save Hunter though sdoifjsf, I cannot wait to see her stubborn streak in season 3)

"Not the ones that matter" baby boy, my beloved delusional bitch, NONE of you matter and you NEVER WILL to the Empire.

"They don't leave their own behind. Most of the time."

Listen I love that his hurt is treated like it matters but I love that Hunter doesn't instantly give in when he hears it too. They did what they could with the information they had - which wasn't much - and it meant that they couldn't take Crosshair with them. Either they would have died or Crosshair would have been killed. There's no solution where they just grab Crosshair and take him with them and it all works out perfectly, and both of their sides are absolutely valid in the emotions they have and it's DELICIOUSLY COMPLICATED BETWEEN THEM.

"We didn't have a choice." "Hm. And I did?" - Okay though I love this exchange because it is. The singular time I think where we hear Crosshair admit that he didn't have a choice. He usually tries to pretend he's picked this path, that he's made his own decisions. And after a point he did, but those decisions will never not be influenced by something that was completely out of his control, and when he lets himself be a little raw he admits that, before he piles on all his stubbornness again.

GODDD HUNTER IS TRYING SO HARD STILL TO GET THROUGH TO HIM AND HE DOESN'T KNOW THAT CROSSHAIR ISN'T CHIPPED ANYMORE AND AGHHHHHHH. I know I'm focusing on this over the others in the lab but god there's just so much here I can't stop chewing on it. Hunter's sad sigh, the gentleness he uses to try to get through to him, Crosshair's face when Hunter mentions the chip because he knows it's not there and he isn't sure he fully believes that it was That Big A Deal anyway. I'm so. Emotional. About this.

Empty Kamino is still one of the creepier settings tbh

So funny how they fall for the 'oh we'll go where they're not expecting!' trick twice in a row because Crosshair is just that familiar with how they think.

"And here we all are, together again!" Brat.

HUNTER'S LITTLE NOD TELLING THEM TO DROP THEIR WEAPONS

"You think we'd bring her here? We're smarter than that." NO YOU ABSOLUTELY ARE NOT GO FIND THE KID RIGHT NOW

"You betrayed everything we stood for" babe you are the one being weird about what you stood for not the rest of the batch.

"You weren't loyal to me." LINES THAT STRIKE AT THE HEART EVERY TIME. THE MUSIC IS SO FUCKING GOOD ON THIS BIT. AND "I'm going to give you what youo never gave me. A chance." WHY THE DIALOGUE GOTTA GO SO DAMNED HARD.

The way that he tries to get Omega off world is another good signal that the chip is out, it's so different from aim for the kid it might as well be coming from a different person. Because it is. The chipped version was not Crosshair, not really, this is. Just. A very very damaged Crosshair.

Glad he drops the 'we're superior' bullshit in season two pretty much, guess 32 rotations starving on a platform will put some things back in perspective.

Tech spotting the mirrors and bringing Wrecker's attention to them right before Crosshair shoots everyone and pulls his helmet off it's just so much happening all at once and I adore the Emotion in this whole sequence.

YOU ARE ALL MEANT FOR MORE THAN JUST RUNNING. LIKE BEING THE LACKEY OF A GUY THAT FUNDAMENTALLY DISRESPECTS YOU.

"Don't become my enemy" "Crosshair, we never were" BABIES

And then the droid incident happens right when it seems like MAYBE they could get through and it's back to wrestling around on the ground like idiots.

This is not a fight this is Hunter managing a fucking tantrum while trying not to let Crosshair get shot in the meantime. Like it is clear they are not on equal footing in this lol. Crosshair manages to get the upper hand for exactly .5 seconds.

THE THEME KICKING IN WHEN HE JOINS UP AGAINST THE DROIDS MY GOD.

We need Tech alive it's the only way to get the theme back properly in season 3 if they play it without him it will feel EMPTY.

The DESPERATION ON HUNTER'S FACE AS HE TRIES ONE LAST TIME TO INSIST IT'S THE INHIBITOR CHIP. And I am still not over how.... the thing that Crosshair says 'Wrong' about isn't 'it's your inhibitor chip' but rather 'we can help you.'

This is just the face of a man that fundamentally thinks he can't be saved.

Like he doesn't look happy about this at ALL he looks exhausted and hurt, he's not proud when he says This is who I am.

Anyway he snapped his rifle up to try and commit suicide by Hunter I think, probably didn't occur to him that Hunter would have it on the stun setting.

Hunter's HEARTBREAKING EXPRESSION is a lot to take in but you also can see Tech's eyes widen and then narrow as he tries to process the new information and just. UGH. MY HEART AND SOUL IS WOUNDED.

And through it all, Hunter still checks for a scar trying to figure out what is going on. He still wants so bad for it not to be true that this is Crosshair in his right mind.

Which, well, he's not, just not because he's actively chipped.

U G H THE SHOTS OF EMPTY KAMINO JUST BEFORE THE BOMBING STARTS.

[marypsue]

@amethystunarmed asked: 2) any bits you want of "look for something left in the world" (I could not narrow it down)

[from this meme]

look for something left in this world

The title of this fic comes from Billy Idol's 'White Wedding', which has always made me think of The Lost Boys. You may think this is because of Billy Idol being the blueprint for all the bleach-blond punk vampires (two) who would come after him, or because of the repeated 'little sister' in the lyric. And you would not be entirely wrong.

But you would also be missing the crucial piece that when I was seventeen-ish years old I watched the video for Lou Gramm's 'Lost in the Shadows', imprinted hard on the background dancer in the white dress, and then when I first encountered 'White Wedding' (through a karaoke video game where the music video played while you sang along and had to hit notes for points), drew not only the first two associations but also linked up the white wedding dress to the white dress from the 'Lost in the Shadows' video. I've never been able to hear 'White Wedding' without thinking about TLB since.

(I did also hunt down and obtain a full-length white tiered circle skirt because of those videos and also misremembering what Star's outfits looked like, a quest which took me most of a summer. Yes, I have always been Like This.)

Chapter One

One of my favourite things about writing inhuman characters is imagining what it must be like to experience the world from inside their physical reality. What it must feel like to be inside their skin. Also, thinking about what details to include in a description of a sensory experience, whichever sense that ends up being, is a really good way to flesh out a setting and also make sure that you're not relying on clichés or leaving your characters as talking heads in space. And also can help build atmosphere!

I wanted it to be a little unclear, at the beginning, whether Sam's at the comic book shop to see Edgar and Alan, or to kill them. The way I saw his stringing them along at the beginning was as him trying to test them out, to see how much they actually knew about vampires. See whether they'd actually be any help to him and his family. After all, telling the wrong people that you're a vampire can be hazardous to your health.

“Would you ftop fhat?”

I think it's hilarious when fangs give vampires a speech impediment, and does not happen nearly often enough.

“The fearless vampire killers,” he mutters, to their passed-out probably-parents, under his breath.

I still haven't seen The Fearless Vampire Killers, or: Pardon Me, But Your Teeth Are In My Neck, but it continues to have the best title of any vampire movie I've ever heard of.

... Sam’s gonna get grief for not having made his first kill yet and what does he get up to all day while everyone else is sleeping and how disappointed his mother is that he hasn’t tried to help make Max and his boys feel like part of their family.

I tried very hard to capture the sitcom energy of Max and Lucy and the way it's juxtaposed against the (can I call it Gothic? I think it's borderline Gothic) horror of the vampire plot. What if your boring, annoying stepdad was an evil master vampire but it didn't make him any less boring or annoying.

Like they’re the bloodsucking Brady Bunch or something. Cheaper By The – wait, no, no. Creepier By The Dozen. Married…With Hellhounds. Fang-ily Ties. All In The –

It was so much fun coming up with these puns and I would have kept going except that I ran out of good ideas.

Michael. With that stupid earring that doesn’t suit him glinting in the glittering lights. A feather and a couple beads in his hair, tucked behind his ear. Somebody’s painted something new on the sleeve of his no longer quite so dorkily pristine leather jacket, covering up the skid mark from the night he still won’t tell Sam where he and the boys had gone.

There's a lot going on in this bit and I am absolutely salivating to unpack it.

Firstly, I've talked at some length about the costuming in this movie and the heavy lifting it's doing for character and theme. The boys are unified, visually, by a DIY-punk magpie sensibility - they're all glittering with patches and pins and bits of mismatched jewellery and junk, even though each of their individual looks are quite distinctive. In contrast, Michael's canon looks are all quite simple and plain, with the earring serving as the main real visual link between him and the boys. I gave his costume a little redesign, a few embellishments, trying to imagine how he might pick up more of the boys' magpie style while developing his own distinctive look that builds naturally on what we already see him wearing, to signal visually that he's truly become part of their group now. And because it was fun and I like costume design.

Second, there's the way Mike's interacting - or not - with Sam. He's not just giving Sam the cold shoulder, he doesn't seem to be aware of Sam at all. In canon, the relationship between the two brothers ends up leading to defeating the vampires and salvaging Mike's humanity. Here, it's too late for that, and that relationship seems to be completely severed. The ultimate nail in that coffin (hah) seems to be the fact that Mike was responsible for Sam getting turned, an inversion on how in canon Sam was at least partially responsible for Mike getting turned back. Is that cause, or effect? Yes.

(And also, third, that relationship seems to be completely severed. But if you're paying close attention, there's also that bit about the night he still won’t tell Sam where he and the boys had gone. This could probably be read in a few ways, but the one I had in mind was that there were still things Mike wanted to protect Sam from or didn't want Sam knowing he'd done, that he still cares about what Sam thinks of him even if he doesn't care enough to actually not eat people about it. Which also then calls into question: does he actually not notice Sam at all, or is he deliberately not calling attention to Sam? Just how much of the brother Sam's been mourning is actually still left?)

I had a lot of fun with metaphorical language trickery with describing the beach and the ocean in this last scene. Star, the girl who caught Michael's eye on the boardwalk and lured him to the vampires, setting all of this off and ultimately getting Sam half-turned, is "marching [Sam] towards" the "flat, infinite darkness" of the ocean. Sam's "having trouble keeping his footing in the shifting sand, already starting to lean toward Star" as he argues his case that they should just give up and kill already, what's the point trying to resist.

But then, once Star pushes him into the water, shocking him out of his misery spiral, "[a]ll Sam has to do to get his head back above water is sit up". Star's "got her feet just in the edge of the surf where it laps relentlessly and eternally against the sand, eroding the shoreline away little by little". Sam "can keep sitting here, cold and wet, with the surf slapping into him over and over and over again, and keep on hating Star for getting them into this mess until the sun comes up" - he can keep hating and blaming Star, and let the darkness that keeps battering at him erode them both away little by little. Or he can make a small effort, which is not actually as hard as it feels in the moment, and save himself.

And Star goes to help Sam up out of the water that she pushed him into in the first place, "the glittering hem of her skirt dragging in the lapping water as she reaches out a hand to Sam." Star's responsible for Sam ending up in the water, and for Sam ending up half a vampire. But she's in the same position, and she's also trying to help him back out, even willing to risk her own humanity (and her own dry clothes) to do so.

And if they don't work together, they're both going to be lost. It's a metaphor, Hazel Grace. (Do the Kids These Days still get that joke. Better question, do I care.)

Sam tries to wring the water out of his heavy, sodden vest as they crunch back up the beach toward the boardwalk. When he tries to extract the soggy remains of Vampires Everywhere!, though, the pages come apart in clumps in his hands.

Which, then, makes this foreshadowing.

(Which is pretty damn impressive, given that, at the time I wrote this, I genuinely thought this first chapter was going to be a standalone oneshot. This may be a pattern.)

Star interrupts him by slinging an arm across his shoulders, the same motion Sam had seen David do to Michael earlier ...

Also, there's this little parallel. I'm not sure I can explain what I was going for here, or why I went back and added that second clause (because I did go back and add it after the sentence was written). She just needed to be in there.

And then I bookended it with describing the scents of the beach and the Boardwalk! Yeah that was on purpose. I don't remember if that was on purpose so it was totally on purpose.

Chapter Two

This is another great example of the precept that 'the story starts later than you think' and also 'you can just write the bits you're interested in writing'. There is so much leadup to the moment when this chapter starts and I had zero interest in writing any of it and so none of it's there. You all saw the movie. You read the first chapter. You knew where this was going. The fun part is the part where things start happening that you, the reader, don't expect, so that's where we're starting.

...I may have to try applying this precept in the middles of some other projects when I start getting bored and they start feeling like a slog. Especially original ones.

I love how deeply, deeply boring and normal Max is. I love his whole spiel in the movie about how Sam's just upset that someone's trying to replace his dad. I especially love applying that to contexts where it's absolutely inappropriate. Max is the only person in the world who would send his stepson to bed without dinner or ground him from the TV for the weekend because he didn't kill some random stranger and drink their blood, and it's fantastic. I love it when the horrors are uncomfortably normal. There is something about this juxtaposition that I cannot accurately explain, I just gotta write it and show you.

Sam meets Edgar’s eye, the one that isn’t pressed against the hardwood floor, wide and frightened under a flop of sweat-drenched hair, and does his best not to breathe.

Come with me, we're about to go on a bit of a journey.

In general, I think Takes that are like 'it's unrealistic that the Boys all got killed, they should have wiped the floor with the human characters!' are disingenuous and really more about the person writing them having a power fantasy of being unafraid and unashamed and also able to murder and eat anybody who tries to get in their way, and get away with it. Which I can't actually fault anybody for. But I do get annoyed when people don't seem to recognise that, and insist that they're just speaking from an objective standpoint and objectively the vampires should have won. It just feels mean-spirited to me, and I have reasons:

a) Even though there is a lot of very heavy symbolism and metaphor and coding taking place here, at the end of the day, the things that act as symbols are, as that one post about Dracula said, themselves first and symbols of other things second. And the Boys very much are vampires who kill and eat people pretty indiscriminately and will continue to do so. I'm not pressed about them getting made dead by people who do not want their friends and family (and even total strangers) to be food. There are arguments to be made about the whole X-Men 'oppressed class with superpowers allegory bad' thing, but in this case they're not even trying to argue that the vampires are oppressed. I think it is okay to kill vampires who are trying to kill you, no matter how many layers of metaphor and symbolism they are also operating on.

b) The movie's pretty good about establishing its own rules and then playing by them. 'why couldn't David hang onto Sam in the caves' listen, if you were dead asleep in your own warm little bed in your own cozy little house and then at 3am out of nowhere you were abruptly woken up from that dead sleep by your little brother screaming bloody murder right in your ear because he's being stabbed to death by some random fucking stranger you've never seen before in your life who just barged on into your house like he lives there and you have to take in this whole situation and react appropriately in a handful of seconds despite it being 3am and also you literally just woke up, and oh, also, by the way, if you go outside you're going to spontaneously combust? Would you be at your best?

'the Boys hunt in a pack why would they split up to get picked off one by one at the Emerson house' the Boys hunt in a pack, they're good at this, the humans only managed to take one of their number out when they were all together, they extremely efficiently split the humans up at the Emerson house and are clearly trying to pick them off one by one! It doesn't work, of course, but it's a reasonably intelligent strategy! Also the Boys are ambush predators as we see from every attack in the movie, and each of them starts their attack at the house by popping up out of an unexpected place! It's once they're in the open and engaging directly that things start going south! I don't feel my suspension of disbelief was ever broken by the vampires' competency level varying wildly for plot reasons.

c) I don't feel like it's any fun at all if you operate on the precept that there's simply no way for a 'weaker' opponent to ever win over a 'stronger' one. There are different kinds of strengths and different kinds of weaknesses, and the movie was pretty good about showing how the humans exploited the latter. And what a miserable little world it would be if people who aren't special or superhuman never even have a chance of succeeding - or even surviving.

And finally d) it's never going to be realistic, because vampires aren't real. (Well, human-shaped ones, anyway.)

Anyway. All this to say that, in general, it kind of annoys me when fics are like 'and then the vampires effortlessly demolished any and all resistance the humans put up'. But. Listen. It was important here.

“Let him go, David,” Max says, like he’s talking to Thorn.

There are a couple times throughout this chapter that I describe the way Max interacts with David as comparable to the way he interacts with Thorn. I hope this helps lend some credibility to the bit at the end of the chapter where David turns on Max. If all you've ever been to someone is an attack dog...

“You’re going to feed him his friends?” Mike’s voice, of all people, pipes up out of nowhere. 

It was a lot of fun trying to work out where the new lines would be for Full Vampire Michael Emerson, what it would take to make him take Sam's side. I always figured there'd be a version of his loyalty to and love for his brother still in him, but what form it would take and what he'd see as beyond the pale in terms of Max's behaviour toward Sam, when he doesn't see anything wrong anymore with being a vampire or eating people, was a fun knot to untangle.

He can’t actually tell whether Max is impressed or disappointed when he says, “Sam?”

A little of both, I figured - Max's whole Deal says to me, loudly, that he's the kind of man who'd be deeply disappointed in sons who didn't stand up for themselves and stand by their principles and show that they've got good, strong backbones - but also doesn't think that should mean they should stand up to him.

“David,” Max says, looking over Sam’s shoulder, and Sam braces himself to get his nose rubbed in Edgar’s bleeding body again, like a puppy who’s messed on the carpet. But Michael, behind Max, is staring over Sam’s shoulder, too. And instead of a leather-gloved grip on the back of his neck, Sam just hears a voice from behind him. David’s hateful sarcastic drawl. “No, I think I’d like to see him face these ‘consequences’, too. Max.”

The way I pictured the development of this chapter was that nobody was willing to openly rebel against Max (with good reason, the dog comparisons and 'grounding' weren't just for show) until Michael attacked him, nobody was willing to be the one to risk their neck openly defying him, but also? Nobody was willing to stick their neck out for him, either. And also that it kind of had to be one of the new kids on the block who made the first move, because they hadn't tried it and been harshly put in their place yet, and because David would cheerfully murder anyone who so much as suggested it but he would do things for Michael that he wouldn't do for anyone else, and Michael has that loyalty driving him to protect his family. Sam's the spark in the powder keg and him resisting here sets the whole thing off.

And the foot-long, sharpened piece of lumber jammed right through him that made the hole.

I think this is the second time I've non-fatally staked a vampiric main character for Plot and also Drama. Maybe the third. What can I say? It's just fun to impale (imaginary) people.

“Of course I’m not going to kill you, Sam,” Max says, like he’s hurt that Sam would even think it. “I did promise your mother.”

Yes that is actually the only reason why not.

“No, no – with an, a penetrating wound, it’s best to leave the object inside, so they don’t bleed out,” Sam’s mom babbles at Star, who nods her head once. “If the wounded person’s human, yes.”

I try not to say anything too dangerously misleading/suspension-of-disbelief-breaking in my fic. That said. I am not a medical professional. Also I hope none of you are taking medical advice from fanfiction.

Sam wonders, vaguely, where David and Dwayne went. Whether they’re up there somewhere, joining in the vampire fight, and if so, on whose side. Or if maybe they’ve just found a quiet spot out of the way to hole up and wait to see who comes out on top.

(Fun fact: it's that last thing.)

When he can think straight again, his mouth is full of somebody else’s blood.

I really hope I faked at least one of you out for a second thinking that Sam had actually bitten Edgar.

...the night Sam and his mom and even his dog were forced to drink vampire blood...

This is my theory of what a hellhound is in TLB-verse. Nobody correct me if any of the supplemental materials say otherwise.

Like, for example, the vampire who used to be Sam’s brother. Mike’s gripping the doorframe above his head with both hands. 

...

The thing clinging to that doorframe for his unlife isn’t Sam’s brother anymore. 

...

...Mike’s committing suicide by head vampire just because Max literally tore Sam a new one. And this is the worst possible timing for Sam to discover that there might be more of his brother left in the monster wearing Michael’s face than he’d realised.

We're watching in real time as Sam reconsiders everything he thought he knew about vampires (at least, vampire!Michael), and the way he refers to Michael in his head, the back-and-forth between calling him 'Mike' and 'that thing that looks like Michael but isn't' is supposed to draw attention to that.

“I think you could use some time to cool off. Have a good hard think about your choices,” he says. “Shall we say a week in the coffin?”

I was idly considering ways that you could effectively, non-lethally, physically discipline immortal vampires, and this struck me like a lightning bolt. I'm still particularly proud of it.

Between one blink and the next, Max’s face is back to his human mask, an expression of mild surprise crossing it. Sam will never make the mistake again of thinking this makes him any less dangerous. 

C:

Okay, so I also compare the way Max treats Mike and Sam to the way dogs get treated. That's just a running thread.

“I’m not gonna just leave Mike like this! He’s my brother!” Star’s quiet voice is grim. “Not any more.”

Sam's starting to see more of Michael left in the vampire, but Star isn't. She's been living with vampires longer, and probably has more experience of how human they can be towards the people they like - and then, how inhuman they can still be, at the same time. I'm not making an ultimate call on whether one or the other of them are right. But if Sam had listened to Star here, if they'd stayed on the same page and in each other's corners, it'd all have ended very differently.

“Lucy, darling,” he says, sounding disappointed, and turns to face – Sam’s mom, standing behind him, breathing hard, tears glistening on her cheeks along with the weirdly glittery blood that had clearly sprayed her when the stake went in. “And here I thought you really knew the way to a man’s heart.” Sam’s mom just stares back, her jaw set, her eyes ferocious. “It’s a little more to the left,” Max says, giving the stake in his hand a toss before raising it –

I think Lucy Emerson deserves the chance to stab Max, at least once. Is it in-character? Well, I think the reveal in the next chapter justifies it in this case. Also I thought of this stupid joke and was so pleased with myself that I absolutely had to put it in.

His heart is hammering, Sam realises, with a terrifying lurch of hope. Not crawling. Not sluggishly pulsing along like it’d rather he just gave up so it could quit. He can feel the blood rushing into his face when he tries and fails to cough up the dust that’s coating the inside of his lungs with every breath. Can hear his own heartbeat thudding in his eardrums.

I love imagining and then describing sensory experiences that no one is ever going to have. Turning human again after having been partially a vampire for long enough to start to get used to it deserved a little loving dwelling-upon.

When Mike glances over toward Star, she breaks her stillness and his gaze, turning and hurrying up the staircase.

[Katy Perry voice] In another life/I would be your girl...

“Everybody alive in here?” Grandpa calls out, scanning the living room. Mike snorts a half-laugh as he heaves a fencepost off their mom’s legs.

:3 :3 :3

I can never remember if the line is "I never could stand" or "I never could stomach". (Spoiler alert: it's the second one.)

Chapter Three

I had this one planned from about halfway through Chapter Two. I considered going back and sprinkling more foreshadowing for what would be the big twist in Chapter Three, and then I decided against it because I thought it would pull focus from the important bit of Chapter Two, which was Sam's idea of His Family versus Vampires getting troubled and those lines blurring, and also I didn't know where or how to put it in.

Their cover story does mean the Frogs end up having to take a full course of rabies vaccine. Which uses some big, big needles. Sam’s not entirely sure what the tiny twist of smile that flickers across his mom’s face when she finds out is all about. And she doesn’t tell him.

Rabies vaccine isn't fun, but then, neither is getting impaled by a comic book geek with a Rambo headband and a bad attitude. Somebody could've really gotten hurt.

Thankfully he doesn’t still have a huge, gaping hole punched right through his middle, but it definitely didn’t heal enough while he still had supernaturally fast healing for him to just pretend like nothing happened.

I'll be honest, I was just going to heal Sam up like nothing happened, and pretend it was fine because he was still half-vampire when it happened. But then somebody in the comments mentioned being excited to see how it would affect him, and I remembered how much I appreciate it when a serious injury lingers to affect a character throughout the narrative, and went for it.

Also, there's not enough love in fiction for people who have fucked-up lower guts and the associated agonies thereof. And sometimes misery just loves company.

...Nanook, who Sam’s hoping is as back to ordinary now as he is...

Look. I know I never specify in this fic. But dogs have a lot fewer qualms about killing things than humans. Nanook is definitely hellhounded for unlife. Sorry, Sam. At least now your dog's immortal?

Something about the way Mike looks at the curtain leading back toward the waiting room makes Sam add, “Mike? Don’t eat our grandpa. Mom’ll kill you.” “Wasn’t gonna,” Mike says, but just a little too lightly. “Liar.”

This whole passage - and especially this quoted bit - just worked. I could see and hear this bit as though it were the actors doing it on film so clearly in my mind's eye. I'm particularly proud of it.

The idea of Head Vampire Lucy Emerson lives in my mind rent-free. I love it so much. Especially the idea of her as this mild-mannered, sweet, friendly lady, willing to extend a helping hand, a few dollars or a hot meal or a room for the night, to anyone who needs it - and when somebody drifts into Santa Carla, lured by the warm nights, transient population, and the rumours that it's run by two little old ladies, and starts making trouble, here she turns up to give them a Very Disapproving Look and a Good Talking-To - with five grinning teenage toughs stepping out of the shadows at her back.

Lucy abhors violence. She's grateful to have plenty of people who're more than happy to do it for her.

Anyway. Tangent.

Sam can’t quite tell what his grandpa’s thinking, whether that hard stare is supposed to be a warning – or an encouragement. “That’s what you’d do if you wanted everything with fangs to know you plan on taking his place.”

Grandpa knows how to play vampire politics. He's been doing it for years.

Okay, so the rest of his family are vampires. But they’re still his family. 

This is very much not the tune Sam was singing at the beginning of this fic, and very much the central problem of this fic. It feels like a happy ending! It's an extraordinarily sinister and melancholy one! It's awful and I love it. Am I making sense anymore? Oh, who cares.

She gathers Laddie up in one last long big hug, before they leave. And doesn’t turn back when he calls after her, sounding lost.

I understand why people tend to write Laddie out of post-canon fic. I also am going to deliberately make use of this expectation. Eventually. Someday.

Lucy Emerson, Head Vampire is just such a compelling concept to me, and the idea of her actually trying to mom the Boys is an endless font of potential hilarity. One of these days I'm going to cave and write some Bloodsucking Brady Bunch slice-of-life indulgence. Just as soon as I figure out a scaffolding of scenes to hang it on.

Star volunteers to haul loads of garbage to the dump, apparently just to avoid the vampires. David volunteers to go with her, apparently just to see her squirm.

This is 100% a big part of why Star left Santa Carla.

"... Grandpa’s an old man. He’s not going to live forever.”

I do hope everybody kept this exchange in mind post-timeskip, when Sam and the Frogs are talking about how a sudden death with no cause given in Santa Carla means vampire attack.

“Do you have family waiting for you?” Sam’s mom asks, and Star’s face twists. “Somewhere.” She doesn’t elaborate. And she doesn’t actually say she’s going back to them. But Sam’s mom still stops trying to persuade her to stay.

Not sure how clear it is that I've tried to shift Lucy' overriding motivation, in absence of human morality, to family, and that she considers Star a part of hers. She's letting Star go here because she thinks Star is going back to a mother who misses her. There's a reason that, after the timeskip, Sam's reluctant to tell his mom and Michael that he knows approximately where Star is and that she'll likely be visiting him soon.

“Sam…listen. Just because someone’s family, doesn’t mean they’re good. Or good for you. Even if they love you. Sometimes especially if they love you.”

I love that the movie never tells you anything about where the vampire characters come from, what their history is, what their stories are. I love that it leaves that all so open-ended. I love that it lets you draw your own conclusions. I don't want to know too much about Star (or Laddie, or David, or Dwayne, or Paul, or Marko, or Max...) and I don't want to tell you too much that'll close off possibilities for them, either.

But also. I'm always most interested in families that are complicated and manage to fuck you up completely without malice, with genuine love, and with the best of intentions.

...she looks every bit as strangely young-old as she did that night on the beach when she pushed Sam into the surf. 

Calling back to Star trying to save Sam from what he wants while she's warning him about his mom and brother? Hmm, I wonder what that could possibly be about.

Mike’s jeans are blown out at the knees. He’s added a threadbare flannel under the leather jacket, which is now sporting an elaborate painting of the Arizona desert taking up the entire centre back panel. His hair curls just an inch or two longer under his jaw. But otherwise, he hasn’t changed.

cough cough

Also, as mentioned above: the embellishments signify that Michael's actually one of the Boys now. Increasing the number and elaborateness of his embellishments post-timeskip was very much on purpose.

The morbid thought crosses Sam’s mind to wonder whether it’s what they would have buried Michael in, if he’d ever gotten a funeral.

Sam's having real trouble reconciling 'everybody in my family is vampires which means they're still around and okay and we won and we got a happy ending' and 'everybody in my family is vampires which means we lost and I lost them'.

I love that we have collectively decided, to the point of it becoming secondary canon (from what I've heard, twice?) that the Widow Johnson is a vampire. I just think that this should not preclude her from also being an eccentric old lady. (Her first name here is an anagram of 'Carmilla', a rather weak alias that I believe the titular vampire uses in le Fanu's novel. I still haven't read it. I really need to.)

Sam’s mom looks at him like he’s just asked her why it’s okay to throw used paper towels in the garbage, but not priceless jewels. “My boys don’t live in Luna Bay or Sunnydale or Woodsboro.”

A little more evidence for 'Lucy's primary motivation in the absence of human morality is family', a little more conflict for Sam, and also, I had fun namedropping fictional California cities of horror.

“There’s no age where you become magically immune to vampire attacks,” Edgar says.

I love writing dialogue for the Frog brothers.

“There are at least four bloodsuckers in that room there right now,” Edgar says, flatly, as an answer.

I haven't decided who the fourth vampire at the post-funeral reception is (or if Edgar and Alan are just wrong, which also happens frequently). I'd love to hear any theories or ideas if you've got them, though.

Also, I do think it makes a lot of sense if it was somehow Grandpa who clued the Frogs in about the undead underworld in Santa Carla. But mostly that's here because I realised I hadn't explained at all how Grandpa would have known to show up at exactly the right moment with a truckful of stakes.

“Yeah. We did. And he told us it was his last wish to be staked before he got tucked in for his dirt nap. Didn’t want to wake back up with a set of fang dentures.”

I love writing dialogue for the Frog brothers.

I had a lot of fun combining hippie chic with 90s Laura Ashley country-home trends for Lucy's extreme home makeover. Was I just basing this off of what I remember from a very fashionable friend's parents' house from my youth? Mmmmmaybe. Also, I think if she did get fully vampired, she might get over killing people, but Lucy would still seriously miss the sun.

“I’m nearly finished with school,” Sam reminds them both. The weight of the liquid in the glass he’s holding shifts unpredictably in his grasp. He doesn’t look at it. “One more semester.”

I loooooooove writing scenes where there's an unspoken thing that nobody is going to acknowledge, including the narration. And in this case, I didn't want it to be clear whether that unspoken thing was Sam's fears about what his mom and his brother might be capable of, or whether that unspoken thing was what they all knew was in Sam's wineglass.

Sam also definitely keeps reminding them of how little time he's got left in school in place of reminding them that he doesn't want to be a vampire, even though he's deliberately trying not to sound like he's accusing them of something he doesn't want to believe they're capable of. And even if he does understand that trying to tell his mom he wants to let himself get old and die as a human is never going to go over well, for him to say 'not yet, wait a little longer' and for her to respect that means that she still cares about him more than what she wants, which in turn means that she's still somebody he can recognise as his mother. Same way as Mike attacking Max for Sam proved that he still cared. This is a test for Lucy as much as it is a leap of faith for Sam, and if she doesn't pass it, he might just find himself capable of what it takes to become human again.

“You’re the one who literally had a boyfriend last year.” “Yeah, and that was way less weird than whatever’s going on between you two.”

Listen, I just think that you cannot meaningfully collapse the tension between Michael and David down into a conventional, exclusively-monogamous romantic relationship, and that you lose something important and interesting if you try. Not least because there are three other guys and a girl involved in their whole situationship.

I've talked about this in a couple of comments, and I think I finally figured out how to put it into words without having to tell a whole story to do so: the ultimate question of this story is whether Sam can trust his family, or himself. He can't have both.

In the end, Sam chooses his family, which I think he would have done from the moment he opened the window for Michael in canon. I didn't want to make an ultimate call on whether that was the 'right' choice. And I also didn't want to have to make a final call on whether Lucy would pass the test and prove she was still enough the mother Sam loved and trusted. So this story ends where it does, with a lot of questions and possibilities up in the air.

Just like the movie. :D

[tellthemeerkatsitsfine]

Thoughts while watching Taskmaster s15e07:

- So does Greg saying there will be no points for toasters mean they’ve all brought in toasters, like the jelly situation from season 11?

- I would genuinely play Taskmaster Wac-A-Mole. I would love to. Can they add that to their purchasable merchandise? Will they have to pay Ivo royalties for the idea?

- I love how hard Ivo defends his prizes tasks. Usually with some watertight explanation that you can see he planned beforehand. Fair enough, it is popular worldwide and has Greg’s face on it now.

-

This will be exactly how I will sound when explaining what I think about Mae Martin, if they ever start using he/him pronouns. Fair enough, though. Prof. Brian Cox on a Pop-Tart has to be worth something.

- We’ve seen a lot of unusual sides to Frankie Boyle so far this season, his “doing a Prof. Brian Cox” side turns out to be much creepier than I’d have anticipated, if anyone had asked me what I’d expected from Frankie Boyle’s Brian Cox impression.

- I wrote the above point before seeing Greg point out the same thing:

I shall try not to screenshot the entire episode again. I’ll slow it down from here on out.

- Oh, Jenny’s was genuinely good. Like, an actual thing rather than weird novelty, and an actually cool-looking thing. And I’m not even mentioning how attractive it is when Mae tries to argue with it while managing to appear both self-conscious and indignant. Look at me not even mentioning that.

Something about the way they argue for points. I have no idea how Greg ever resists it. It’s fine, I’m doing fine.

- Surely there’s an outtake where someone makes a dick joke after Kiell says “The most brilliant thing that pops up is obviously oneself,” right?

- Pogo stick’s not bad, but space hoppers are better. Kiell’s joke about Greg being a teacher was pretty good, though.

- Again, Frankie Boyle has brought in a piece of art that has nothing to do with the prize task category. It’s such a weirdly specific idea to be Frankie’s “thing” throughout this season, and yet, very on brand.

- Sorry, I wrote the above point before the points were given out. I can now say that the real trend is Frankie Boyle bringing in prizes that are pieces of art, have nothing to do with the category, and get over-scored. Which would be a problem if he actually won the season on it, but he won’t, so it’s fine. I’d still love to see him take an episode, though.

- More eggs. I think this season’s been pretty egg-heavy, even for Taskmaster.

- I’d just like to say that I don’t know what a pulper is either, Kiell.

- Ooh, title drop from Frankie.

I still don’t know what a pulper is.

- I mean, obviously if you could remove the egg from the pulper that would be a good thing. I don’t know what it is, but I think I’d at least try walking about it to see if there’s an obvious way to open it up.

- I swear I wrote the above point before seeing this:

So... is that it? They can extract the egg if they literally just walk to the other side of it, and Frankie and Kiell haven’t bothered?

- I have finished watching Frankie and Kiell do this task and I still have no idea what’s going on. But I’m almost sure that Frankie was wrong about lack of speed being the problem, and may still have lucked into doing well by happening to stop at the right time.

- Okay, I still don’t understand.

Does he mean it’s just the first time Frankie and Kiell saw the interior? They were blind because they chose not to go look? Or did none of the others look either? And why not? Would it not have been visible to them if they’d walked around it? Because from the shots we saw, it looked like it was wide open? What is happening?

- Jenny and Mae up next, so Ivo is once again being saved for last. He’s going to have a breakdown, isn’t he?

- 

Jenny Eclair hearing cymbals crash loudly, freaking the fuck out, and then assuming an egg made the noise: top-notch comedy, this is what the fans have paid to see.

- Right, I’m an idiot. I’ve just remembered that the task said they can’t move from their spot, so that’s why they don’t walk around the machine. I should really go back and delete the stuff I wrote above about that, so I look like less of an idiot, but I can’t really be bothered. I see now why they are blind. And I now have greater appreciation for the inherent comedy in making them just stand there spinning a wheel and listening to crashing with no idea what’s happening and no way to find out.

Having said that, any chance they can say the red dot they’re standing on is the spot, and move it? It’s a bit of a risk because Greg could decide that’s not allowed and disqualify them, but there has been precedent in previous seasons for arguing that the red thing is the spot and you’re still on the spot as long as you stay on it. And this task would be so easy to win if you could just move a bit, though they wouldn’t know that from where they are. As far as they know, trying to hop around on a red dot might just waste a lot of time and lead to nothing.

- Solid energy from Jenny Eclair here.

- 

God, the genuine distress on their face when they heard a noise that might be an egg getting pulped. I’m not even talking about sexual attractiveness anymore (I mean, okay, I am a bit). It’s just what's so much fun to watch on this show. That’s not comedy distress, that’s just actually being very concerned that they lost focus for a moment and misjudged the pulp wheel. What more can we ask for out of a Taskmaster contestant?

- All right, I’ve watched Jenny fly too close to the sun and pulp the egg, which means Mae probably does the same since they were grouped together. But I am still getting invested in the tension as they carefully push closer to it. Come on, Mae. I believe in you. Magically sense the position of an egg.

- I might have started saying “No no no no no stop stop stop stop stop” out loud at this point:

- Ah shit. On the bright side, maybe this episode gets to be Frankie’s?

- Ivo! They didn’t save him for last because he had a breakdown! They saved him for last because he is a clever little boy who has seen previous Taskmaster seasons and knows about moving spots. Good job.

- It is a lot of fun to watch Ivo spin the wheel with abandon, and then occasionally stop and look around like he’s convinced he’s missed something. No, it’s okay, little buddy! You’ve got this!

Something about watching Ivo Graham makes me feel like a gym teacher encouraging an eight-year-old to climb a rope.

- What a smart boy. He knows how to hop around a carry eggs and spin wheels and everything. Someday he might even learn how to open his eyes.

- Fantastic. A team task and the periodic table of elements. That’s all I want out of Taskmaster.

Will anyone be surprised if I mention at this point that when I was 13, we had to memorize the names and symbols of the twenty elements that our teacher assigned us for a science test, and I chose instead to memorize the name and symbol of every element on the whole table? I haven’t done it years, but I bet could still write out a periodic table with the names and their symbols correctly placed. I can still list the original 151 Pokemon in order, that one I have checked recently. It’s important to retain all the useless information you memorized in childhood for no reason, because otherwise, how will you know who you are?

- 

I tried to think about something to say about this screenshot so I’d have a legitimate excuse for adding to this post, instead of just including it as a way to say “look how hot Mae Martin is”, but I’ve got nothing.

- I mean, as far as “weird screenshots that you’d never expect to exist but there they are on Taskmaster” go, Frankie Boyle and Ivo Graham being handcuffed together is up there:

- So it’s basically an escape room, then? I’ve been informed by Ed Gamble that Mae Martin and Ivo Graham both like this sort of thing, unsurprisingly.

- I’m going to guess that stellar performance from the team of three was edited to look even more efficient than it really was, as a contrast to whatever we’re about to get out of Team Big IF. But still, that was impressive. Mae Martin like four steps ahead of everyone else, explaining that one of those things on the wall is going to relate to the other thing and we have to eat the candies and just get on with it. I’ve just realized how great it’ll be if Mae wins this season, specifically because I want to see them take on Sarah Kendall in Champion of Champions. Battle of the ruthlessly efficient.

- Kiell admitting that a task in which he looked bad was edited to make him look better than he really was is pretty funny. And again, this means that whatever Team Big IF do is such a mess that the editors decided it’s funnier than Kiell being upset about candies by enough to cut the latter for more of the former.

- Oh, excellent. It’s always good when a team breaks down so badly that you see them wincing in the studio just because they know their task is about to be shown. This may not, in fact, be Frankie’s episode to win.

- Ivo Graham correcting Frankie Boyle’s pronunciation of “cumin” is pretty much everything I expected to come from this team.

- Why is Frankie adding up the numbers?

- I believe Ivo is asking himself the same question I just wrote down, but does not have the guts to actually it out loud to Frankie Boyle’s face:

- My apologies to Ivo Graham, obviously it turns out he has no fear at all of confronting Frankie Boyle about his flawed system:

No fear at all. He’s doing absolutely fine.

- Okay, I see this is the moment they realize they still have handcuffs on, but does that really explain everything about why this hug is so weird? Was Frankie going for lifting him into the air?

- Taskmaster sometimes just feels like an experiment where they throw shit at the wall and find out which bits of it are funny. Things that just wouldn’t happen unless Taskmaster manufactured it, so without this show, we’d have no way of knowing whether those things are funny or not. Turns out that two comedians of wildly contrasting personalities frantically searching a room with plastic sheeting on the walls while handcuffed = funny.

- 

I feel like it summarizes Ivo’s persona that he can come out of a task that went horribly wrong due to Frankie’s incompetence, and Ivo saved it by being significantly less incompetent in that particular area, and still, in the debrief, Frankie can comfortably take the high status. Love seeing Frankie have the guts to come out of that terrible a performance, and his primary comment on what happened is to call Ivo a coward.

- Jesus Christ. How hard would we have to petition the people who run Taskmaster to get them to release the unedited footage, that does exist somewhere, of Frankie Boyle and Ivo Graham being handcuffed together in a small room for 42 minutes straight?

Surely someone’s gotten on this, fanfiction-wise, right?

- Kiell regaling us with a story of stealing his classmate’s pen in school. Greg’s right, we are getting a solid picture of his childhood here.

- Oh, I like these. The tasks where they have to pick something without knowing why they’re picking it, so they have to guess what the task will be. I just imagine how I would absolutely lose my mind as I tried to consider every variable in guessing, knowing I’d be mad at myself later if I messed it up for myself, and then it’s just nice to watch people go through that and know I don’t have to.

- I thought off the bat that Frankie’s pick for the number would be the one I respect the most - I’d probably go with 50 if I were picking between 0 and 100, in case going really high or really low fucks you over horribly. But then Ivo went 42 with a Hitchhiker’s Guide reference, and okay, it’s a bit trite, a bit “thing my friends and I all recited to each other in high school to prove how cool we were for being able to reference this”, but I like it anyway. You go, Ivo. Make your Douglas Adams reference.

- I mean, I think I’d at least guess that the ingredients, noun, and adjective have something to do with each other. I haven’t seen part 2 yet, but I’m saying if I were doing part 1, I’d try to pick words that could be at least somewhat related and ingredients that could relate to them.

- Yep. Turns out I made a good call. Not sure the contestants did.

- I mean that’s what you want out of Taskmaster, isn’t it? Comedians dumping a load of food ingredients onto a plastic duck while panicking about a timer running down? That’s why they commissioned this show.

- Jenny’s grabbed a gold shoe from somewhere else, I guess she knew it was there because they must have filmed this not long after the golden shoes + bowling ball task. At first I thought it was quite a coincidence that she picked “gold” and “shoe” when she’d used that in another task, but then I realized they must have filmed this one shortly after that one and she was thinking of it when she picked her words, like how Mae and Ivo were both thinking of ducks becuase they’re all over the house.

- Well, I’ll be honest, I got to halfway through the third pre-recorded task and then I got a call from my boss about some actual work I have to do, and I really wanted to just finish the episode so I’ve watched the rest without stopping to write stuff down. It was, once again, not Frankie’s day. Nice to get Kiell on the board, though, every constant who isn’t good enough to have a shot at winning the whole season should at least have the goal of staying off the relatively short list of contestants who’ve never won an episode. Ivo repeateldy endeared himself to me throughout this episode, and may have thrown it away at the end by believing that a Canadian accent sounds like an American with a particularly high-pitched voice. Why doesn’t every single episode have a part where the contestants have to do impressions of each other? They could get lots out of that. Okay I have to go do actual things now, but this was fun, can’t believe there are already only three left.

[anxiouspotatorants]

It is time. It is finally time for the new Suicide Squad rant (and spoilers will be plentiful):

As someone who was into DC Comics and comics in the mid to late 2010s and had so much hype for the first Suicide Squad movie only to be let down, I was so nervous for this one. I knew it was going to be a roller coaster, but whether I would come out happy or disappointed was up in the air. Having just seen it I will say this: I have no idea if this was a good movie-movie. It was insane. The comedy. The violence. The high emotion. I’m still trying to take it all in. But one thing I do know is that this is an amazing Suicide Squad movie. Gunn and co took the best parts of the comic concept and went batshit with it and that is how this property should be handled (in my opinion). Screw edgelordisms, we need full on insanity free of aiming for shock-value or sexy brutality we want chaos baby.

Starting the whole movie as they did, with Savant as the POV for a mission (or part of the mission) that just goes to hell immediately and kills off so many before the title arrives is the perfect way to start this movie. Like the second I realized this was how they were doing it I was just smiling from ear to ear, this is the spirit of the property.

Part of me wishes we got more Amanda Waller, but what we had was impeccable. Then again, this is Viola Davis we’re talking about, and if she was born to play any character in a superhero story, it is Amanda Waller.

And points to her tech team, introducing them with the death bets was just a lovely way to show how regular this is and how awful everyone is in this movie.

I’m not going to pretend like Deadshot and Bloodsport didn’t have the exact same character- and plot premises… but I will say that Bloodsport felt better executed.

I love that they kept some of the past members and not just Harley. Rick Flag got to have a full personality and interactions with his team members and to be a true leader and it made me so happy for someone who initially did not give a single shit about his character. The Harley friendship? The Dubois friendship? The friendship with that guerilla leader? Amazing. The one American soldier in fictional media I genuinely like. You go Mr Flag.

The new members were… they were insane in the best way. Gone are the shitty stereotypes and present are some of the wackiest creations to ever grace the mainstream movie-sphere (aka the slightly less normal comic creations): A man who has to shoot out polka dots two times a day so as not to die from a space virus. A giant child murdering weasel. A guy who detaches his limbs and slaps people with said detached limbs. King Shark. The second person to command rats with a fancy gadget. They are all crazy and all weird and all more or less morally repulsive people and I love them.

The amount of times I did a double take over the soundtrack I swear. Jessie Reyez? The Pixies? It was so much fun to pick up on once I did.

Was the depiction of a vague Latin American country stereotypical? Yes. Was the secret American involvement predictable and felt mildly patronizing from a non-American, part Latina point of view? Yep. But damn it if I didn’t have a good time with those stereotypes and laugh my ass off at how well executed some were. I don’t know if it was meant as parody, but that one secretary has me thinking so — and if so I am pleased.

Speaking of Latino dictators Harley’s one day romance with one of the villains was something I never knew I needed. Like it was so perfect for Harley that when it happened I almost hit myself for not realizing that this kind of plot should be a normal thing for Harley. And the end of it? Perfect not only in this standalone movie, but also in conjunction with the first and with BoP.

The Taika Waititi cameo??? Oh my god??? I did not expect that and I love it?? Sir, What We Do in the Shadows is impeccable.

Rick Flag’s death actually surprised me. It shouldn’t as this is Suicide Squad, but I kind of expected him to be on Harley’s level of unkillable (because let’s face it, no one kills Harley). What I will say is that his death was good and his final words and actions made me love him all the more. I hope this spawns more Rick Flag content, or at least inspires me to look at what already exists, if he already is as this movie made him (it’s been ages since I read one of the Suicide Squad reboot comics okay).

Starro. How can a villain be so wacky and so terrifying at the same time? I did not expect a literal alien starfish to have more terrifying powers and a more tragic plot execution than Enchantress. But here we are. And that damn star just wanted to be floating in space, and instead it was stuck getting revenge by killing and puppeteering human corpses. Wow that thing was creepier the more you think about it.

I don’t know what I think about Polka Dot Man. I loved watching him on screen but also damn those mommy-issues were on a new level. Not just in his backstory but how he literally sees her in every person around him that was insane. Very funny but like also the kind that makes you laugh just because you’re uncomfortable and don’t know how else to releive the tension.

When Waller got knocked out by a staff member I immediately thought «oh my god Amanda Waller is going to kill half the staff for this», so I’m mildly surprised and disappointed that I didn’t get to see that happen. But also I should maybe expect something like this in a potential future Suicide Squad movie. We can’t have everything in a movie as packed as this.

Peacemaker was very horrible and worked really well. Don’t really have much to say about him, not because I didn’t enjoy him but because I already feel like the film itself has said it for me. But the planting and payoff for his death? Chef’s. Kiss.

Harley’s wardrobe was beautiful. Ratcatcher 2’s combat outfit felt like a steampunk plague dream. Bloodsport’s mask was supercool. Rick Flag’s t-shirt was amazing. But the best little outfit was the Mafalda-keychain and her red dress, hands down. Oh and King Shark’s fake moustache finger moment.

King Shark is shaped like a friend I don’t care how many people he ate alive on screen he looks so huggable. It feels like wanting to pet a bear. You know it will kill you but damn it look at those paws and those cute eyes!

I really need to give it to not just James Gunn but the entire production team for this movie. The aesthetic was perfect. The story was the right blend of whimsical and violent. The finished product was a literal rollercoaster and I mean that in a good way. If superhero movies have to be like amusement parks, I hope they’re more like this one and BoP.

I’ll finish on the note that while I think this movie was great and hopefully a step in the right direction for the DCU/DCEU (as in stop trying to play Marvel’s game and just do your own thing/ let your creative teams run wild and free), it is not the first step. Cathy Yan, Birds of Prey and the production team for it took a step first, and they deserve due credit and attention. If you loved this Suicide Squad movie and haven’t watched BoP yet, do so. Because they really are in the same ballpark while doing things in slightly different ways. And any good DCEU movie deserves more attention so the studios know that creativity and risks should be rewarded. I want more DC movies like this, not necessarily in genre but in creative risks. I want a Black Canary rock movie. I want Alfred in a reverse heist movie alone in the batcave against Gotham villains. I want Gotham Academy on screen play by play from the comics. I want a fully animated psychedelic-like Khalid Nassour as Dr. Fate movie. I want elevated horror movie Constantine. I want weird ass Lois Lane journalist movies with a heavy side of Superman. And I want DC movies I didn’t even know I wanted.

Support creativity in mainstream comic movies. Help me become a DC fan and happy about it again.

[the-girl-with-the-glass-heart]

Trying to find the lost sanders sides fan fic

I read this sanders sides fan fiction around three years ago back when can lying be good came out and it was really disturbing and I can’t find it anywhere.

I was looking around Deviantart for some weird fan fics because I was super bored but ended up finding this one fic that gave me nightmares.

It was about Virgil, Patton, Roman and Logan all being in a bathroom with no windows or doors, they had been there for god knows how long and had started to argue.

I think it was unexplained how they got into it and the story just instantly started off with them freaking out.

As time went on they all gradually killed themselves because they couldn’t take it anymore.

Either Roman or Logan bashed their head on the sink until they died, the reason I can’t remember is because while Logan was definitely losing it more than others I distinctly remember Roman dying first.

It had very few comments and the title was something really non sensical and trying to be deep.

Something like “They waste their time: a sanders sides fan fic”.

I could be remembering it wrong and the title isn’t anything like that, keep in mind I was fairly new to the fandom at the time and was trying to read as many fics as possible so it got buried under my reading list.

Maybe it was deleted? I guess that’s always possible but I don’t know what kinda weirdo would post that and then delete it.

I’m pretty sure that what drew me into it was it said it had prinxiety in it but when I read it the prinxiety was really weirdly written.

Virgil was a bit of a desperate creepy stalker and Roman seemed too traumatized about what was going on to really focus on it, surprisingly despite how gory this fic was they didn’t go fully nsfw and kept most of their romance PG.

There’s not much else I remember about the story besides that, however I remember I checked out that Deviant’s page to see if they made any other weird fics and while I couldn’t find any, they did draw some fanart from their story.

I’ll recreate it and post it if you need me to, not to be mean or anything but it wasn’t really well drawn, looked very beginner which actually just made the gory fan art creepier.

I don’t know why anybody would wanna write this, it’s repulsive and gross but it sure did exist.

Does anybody else remember this? I swear to god it existed but I feel like I’m going crazy.

[smilesthroughfandoms]

Every single episode of Ducktales (2017) Summarized in Roughly in One Sentence or Less!

Thank you Frank and team so much for introducing this family to a new generation of kids while remaining faithful to your source material. I hope you all enjoy my attempts at humor!

Woo-oo!: We don’t really know what’s going on yet but let’s do this!

Escape To/From Atlantis!: “Well I’m wearing a kilt McDuck! A kiiiilt!”

Daytrip of Doom!: They’re all siblings now and I love them all.

The Great Dime Chase!: “Shut up, everyone! I’ve done something brilliant!” (Also: Guess’s who my favorite character is?)

The Beagle Birthday Breakout!: Lena and Webby are best girls, fight me on this

Terror of the Terra-firmians!: This is the Spoopiest episode and also the most heartwarming.

The House of the Lucky Gander!: He’s an asshole but I love him.

The Infernal Internship of Mark Beaks!: He’s an even bigger asshole but I love him.

The Living Mummies of Toth-Ra!: I too would do anything for a good burrito.

The Impossible Summit of Mt. Neverrest!: “If I had a nickel for every person who cursed me with their dying breath, I’d be twice as rich as I already am.”

The Spear of Selene!: Of course Scrooge showed up freaking Zeus.

Beware the B.U.D.D.Y System!: The fusion of Iron Man and Sailor Moon I never knew I always wanted.

The Missing Links of Moorshire!: I always knew My Little Pony had a deadly fandom but this is ridiculous…

Mystery at McDuck Manor!: Took you long enough, Duckworth, welcome back.

Jaw$!: In this house, we love and respect Tiffany. (Also: Whoever came up with this episode title is the coolest person ever)

The Golden Lagoon of White Agony Plains!: Scrooge and Glomgold are in love with Allison Janney, and honestly, same.

Day of the Only Child!: Doofus is even creepier than Lil’ Gideon, and that is saying something.

From the Confidential Casefiles of Agent 22!: *hums James Bond theme intensely to myself*

Who is Gizmoduck?!: He’s not throwing away his shot! (I’m sorry, I had to)

The Other Bin of Scrooge McDuck!: I love Louie in this episode, he’s such a mood.

Sky Pirates… in the Sky!: The Pirates of the Caribbean meets High School Music crossover starring evil Panchito I never knew I needed.

The Secret(s) of Castle McDuck!: We’re all Webby in this episode.

The Last Crash of the Sunchaser!: *ugly sobbing*

The Shadow War, Part 1: Night of De Spell!: Donald finally gets the love he deserves.

The Shadow War Part 2: Day of the Ducks!: *spoiler warning* How is she still alive?!?!?!

The Most Dangerous Game… Night!: David screaming “GAME NIGHT!” is the best damn thing I’ve ever seen.

The Depths of Cousin Fethry!: I love Cousin Spongebob!

The Ballad of Duke Baloney!: Dammit, Frank.

The Town Where Everyone Was Nice!: They’re boyfriends mates, sorry I don’t make the rules.

Storkules in Duckburg!: Storkules is the ultimate Donald Duck fan, we cannot comepete.

Last Christmas!: Somehow the Ghost of Christmas McBrayer is the least surprising thing I’ve ever seen in this show.

Whatever Happened to Della Duck?!: Oh, so that’s how she survived.

Treasure of the Found Lamp!: Dijin is the best character.

The Outlaw Scrooge McDuck!: Yee–and I cannot stress this enough–haw.

The 87 Cent Solution!: *wheezing* Dammit, Frank…

The Golden Spear!: Oh my god, they were roommates!

Nothing Can Stop Della Duck!: Dammit, Frank!

Raiders of the Doomsday Vault!: “So stand out, above the crowd! Even if I gotta shout it out loud!”

Friendship Hates Magic!: Webby gets two friends for the price of one seance!

The Dangerous Chemistry of Gandra Dee!: BEAKS SMASH… THAT LIKE BUTTON! (I’m so sorry)

The Duck Knight Returns!: *spoilers* The single best superhero, origin story-based episode ever! 

Whatever Happened To Donald Duck?!: *sobbing* He’s a good dad!

Happy Birthday, Doofus Drake!: This entire episode is creepier than most indie horror games.

A Nightmare on Killmotor Hill!: All the kids’ dreams are moods… except Huey’s, his dream can go jump off a microwave.

The Golden Army of Cornelius Coot!: Della is just pulling a Donald and adopting any and all kids within arms reach at this point.

Timephoon!: “I’m on it!” *gets struck by lightning* “I’ve immediately failed you!”

Glomtales!: I don’t know what’s more surprising, the fact that Louie won the bet or that they used Glomgold’s theme song takeover as the intro.

The Richest Duck in the World!: Drag them, Owlson. Drag them all…

Moonvasion! Part 1: *deep inhale* D A M M I T F R A N K!

Moonvasion! Part 2: Glomgold is my new favorite villain character.

Challenge of the Senior Junior Woodchuck!: Huey and Violet fight for the right to be crowned the squarest of squares.

Quack Pack!: Radical dude! *insert cheesy 90s riff here*

Double-O Duck in You Only Crash Twice!: We were all simping SO HARD this episode don’t think I forgot!!!

The Lost Harp of Mervana!: Scrooge fails a vibe check.

Louie’s Eleven!:  Is it really a heist movie if something doesn’t go completely wrong?

Astro B.O.Y.D.!: So much ANIME!!!!!!

The Rumble for Ragnarok!: Eh, the MCU did it better

The Phantom and the Sorceress!: Seeing Gladstone suffer brings me an odd amount of joy

They Put a Moonlander on Earth!: They’re lesbians, Harold!

The Trickening!: Did… did no one really tell Launchpad how Halloween works?

The Forbidden Fountain of the Foreverglades!: If I had a nickel for every time a cartoon version of Ponce de Leon died a gruesome death on screen, I’d have two nickels, which isn’t a lot but it’s weird that it happened twice, right?

Let’s Get Dangerous!: *spoilers* THEY ARE A SUPERHERO FAMILY!!!!

Escape from the ImpossiBin!: Scrooge and Beakley are a little too excited to traumatize their family because of their trauma.

The Split Sword of Swanstantine!: Dewey and Webby literally walk in blind, Violet spices things up, and Huey unleashes the Rage™

New Gods on the Block!: The most accurate representation of Zeus ever.

The First Adventure!: Young Donald is one heck of a mood.

The Fight for Castle McDuck!: The sibling culture episode.

How Santa Stole Christmas!: Charles Dickens would approve, probably.

Beaks in the Shell!: Huey ships Fendra and Gyro needs to stop hiding in the closet.

The Lost Cargo of Kit Cloudkicker!: The Battle of Theatre Kids... in the Sky!

The Life and Crimes of Scrooge McDuck!: All the emotional weight was nearly overshadowed by One (1) attractive goth twink.

The Last Adventure Part 1; A Tale of Three Webbys!: They’re so cute! I love them!

The Last Adventure Part 2; The Lost Library of Isabella Finch!: Letting the kids on the plane is the single smartest decision Scrooge has ever made in his life.

The Last Adventure Part 3; Tale’s End!: *ugly, happy, heartbreaking sobbing* Woo-oo!

[wheres-sam]

I binge-watched the spn anime because of the brain rot

It’s bad except for the parts that are good, and it’s pretty to look at. Here’s a comprehensive list of pros and cons. Spoilers ahead!

Pros:

- more psychic kid backstories: Max (Nightmare), Lily (Darkness Calling), Jake (Loser)

- more psychic Sam

- more Azazel

- basically if you want more about the psychic/demon kids, watch the anime

- more young Winchesters

- the monsters, the superhuman abilities, the fight scenes, it all looks really cool animated. (But PSA it’s violent. It doesn’t shy away from blood and gore.)

- Sam and Jessica backstory

- more of the brothers being cute and funny together

- Missouri isn’t forgotten

- includes some Japanese legends/mythology

- the impala looks great in every scene. They did Baby good

- the “Supernatural” intro title

- the outro sketches of the boys hanging out with Baby

- Episodes adapted from the original show are different, but I like some of the changes? It’d be boring if it was an exact retelling and the visual medium wasn’t utilized. (I know I said spoilers before, but this is when they get detailed. If you wanna skip over, I’ll tell you where they STOP.)

Nightmare goes more into the abuse Max has suffered. Instead of locking Sam in a closet, Max sends Sam through the floor and covers the hole by breaking his bed in half, and it’s extremely sexy how Sam shoves the 2 halves apart with his mind. Later on Dean puts bandaids on Sam and they talk about demons loudly in front of a fast food intercom.

In My Time of Dying highlights the guilt Sam feels over Dean. In both the og and the anime John verbally blames Sam for not shooting Azazel, but where in the og Sam goes right on arguing, in the anime he reels back for a moment like he was slapped. Dean’s spirit touches Sam’s shoulder, and Sam knows immediately that it’s Dean. He doesn’t even question it. Instead of “Are you here?” it’s “I know you’re with me. I can feel it.” And I love that. Dean figures out right away he’s dealing with a reaper, and the reaper takes on the appearance of Mary to convince Dean to move on to the afterlife. Instead of a Ouija board, Sam uses a laptop to talk to Dean, and the first word Dean types is “Sammy!” Dean is so fond of his little brother and Sam is so baby.

Rising Son is an anime only episode, but it draws inspiration from John’s journal. Dean has a proper breakdown over his dad’s death and the possibility of having to kill Sam. Ms. Lyle, Sam’s favorite teacher who turns out to be possessed, is explored. John takes Dean hunting, and in the journal Dean hesitates to shoot a buck, and little Sam shoots it thinking it was endangering Dean. In the anime, Dean’s cornered by a moose and Sam makes it explode with his mind and it’s so !!! How little Sam’s first words are, “I’m glad you’re okay. It didn’t hurt you?” The boys are covered in blood and guts and Dean’s like 👁👄👁 “Why are you here? Did you do this?” And then Sam starts freaking out a little, the shock sets in. “I don’t know. I don’t know, honest.” And he’s staring at his hands, and I am a big fan of Sam showing superhuman signs as a kid. Like in the journal, Ms. Lyle tries to take Sam. She gives Sam the illusion of a choice to come with her or stay with Dean, and Sam chooses Dean. This ep is pretty much when John figures out Sam has demon blood. He kills another hunter that wants to kill Sam.

Crossroad is based on Crossroad Blues, and I love how the crossroads demon shows up. It’s hard to describe, but it’s so neat, like she’s walking underneath Dean in this mirror world, and then the mirror world takes over the regular world, so you really get this sense of otherworldly seclusion, existing outside of time.

What Is and Should Never Be shows Dean is a firefighter in his ‘Mary never died’ world, and Sam got to play soccer growing up like he wanted. The brothers hold each other after Dean is saved from the Djinn.

AHBL part 1. When Azazel shows Sam that he fed Sam his blood, Sam gags and slaps a hand over his mouth, and I like that reaction more than the live action. The psychic kids get to go more anime with their powers, and that’s a lot of fun. They don’t need weapons. Ava slams Sam into the brick side of a building and cuts him without touching him. Jake snaps Ava’s neck with one hand and then catches Sam in his arms. When Jake attacks Sam, there’s no gun or knife. He’s relying on his super strength, his fists. Sam throws his arms up to protect himself, and (accidentally?) pushes Jake back with his mind, and the collision creates a crater in the ground. Jake puts his fist through Sam’s chest to kill him. It’s brutal and it’s rad as fuck. These kids are terrifyingly powerful.

The Sam and Dean reunion before Sam is killed is not as emotional as the live action imo, but what the anime does intrigues me. Hurts in a different way. Because Sam is stunned after he uses telekinesis again, on Jake, and when he hears Dean behind him Sam freezes. He doesn’t look relieved to see Dean, but wary and weary. It’s Dean taking steps towards him, not the other way around, and it has to be because Sam doesn’t know if Dean saw him push Jake back. Sam doesn’t know how Dean’s going to respond to all this, to him, having powers that come from a demon, the demon, Azazel. Sam hasn’t had a chance to process anything. He’s scared. He’s tired. And the way the anime focuses on Sam’s eyes here. Gah. “Dean. Dean, I’m...” I’m sorry. I’m all right. I’m glad you’re okay. I’m a monster. There’s also this one shot between Sam and Azazel that sends me because of how anime it is.

AHBL part 2. I love how Sam brought back to life is animated, with all the color returning to his face and a light wind rustling his hair and his lips parting to indicate his soul returning to his body. Jake attacks Dean, and, a lot like how Sam activates telekinesis to save Dean from Max in Nightmare, Sam gets a burst of superhuman strength. He rips Jake’s arm off and tackles him to the ground and beats him to death, punches holes into his body, and it’s so savage and bloody and scary, and I love it. The Devil’s Gate opening looks so cool animated. Same goes for Dean shooting Azazel with the Colt.

Not to turn this into a meta post, but I also noticed how the last couple times Sam uses his powers they’re colored green-yellow, the same colors as Mary’s ghost when she reveals herself in the anime’s Home, and I don’t know if that’s intentional, but it’s neat how it draws a connection to Sam’s biological family instead of Azazel’s blood.

The Spirit of Vegas is like Bad Day at Black Rock, but Dean has all the bad luck instead, and it shows off the silly cartoony physics that make animation fun. The boys sleep outside and split a chunk of bread for dinner. Also this lil bit of Dean’s hair tied in a bow.

- (STOP) the brothers are pretty. I am not immune to animated Sam and Dean Winchester.

Cons:

- Jensen doesn’t voice Dean until the last 2 episodes

- The English dialogue is really bad sometimes. I wish I could’ve watched the sub, but I couldn’t figure out how to change the language

- Some character designs are really different from the live action, and maybe that’s petty, but if you’re gonna change the characters diversify them? Don’t just make them unrecognizable white people

- Missouri’s design as a stereotypical witch doctor is racist

- Gordon is replaced by some British guy named Jason?? Why

- There’s an LGBT character who is not accepted by her family and, while that bigotry is always shown to be negative and she dies the hero of the episode, she still dies ://

- In the English dub Lily’s gf is made into her roommate instead. Idk about the sub

- Bobby’s pretty much a totally different character

- Sam and Dean are OOC sometimes

- Dean’s hair usually looks darker than Sam’s and it drives me crazy

- The storytelling is, overall, not nearly as good as the live action

- The non-Japanese lore in some episodes makes no sense. Sometimes it’s just plain ridiculous?? Like there’s a giant robot made of cars and scrap metal controlled by a demon? ? I wish I was making this up

- Meg’s role is severely reduced

- No Harvelles or Roadhouse

- Shadows are overused, but maybe that’s because the og show is so dark?

- I don’t mind the art style. I like the aesthetic, but I wish it was a little more expressive. It doesn’t do Sam’s puppy eyes justice.

- AZAZEL’S SHADOW?? PROPORTIONS?? PEA SIZED HEAD

- Idk why they mashed season 1 and 2 together? The story feels rushed

- there’s not as much chemistry between Sam and Dean, but that’s a given without J2 on screen

- Nobody tells you!! That there’s scenes after the credits!! And some of them are important! Why are important scenes after the credits??

The anime would not be good on its own, without the heart and depth the live action brings, but it works as supplementary material you can cherry pick from. I would watch more if there were more episodes.

It hasn’t turned me off from wanting an spn anime. I’d like to see it continued or redone, with updated animation and better scripts. There’s a lot of potential in exploring more about the psychic kids and Sam’s powers, storylines that were cut short in the og show. Animation is a great medium for showing off the supernatural, getting creative and creepier with the designs, dramatic with the fight scenes, without having to worry about bad CGI. I don’t want a live action reboot, but I think a redone animated series could be a lot of fun! (As long as it’s not an excuse to make any romantic ships take over. SPN is a platonic love story, and I like it that way.)

If you made it to the end here and are interested in watching the spn anime, you can watch it for free on the CW Seed app! You can probably stream it elsewhere, but idk where!

[something-very-special]

Call Her Back

Probably already a post with this title from the Let’s Play but it’s appropriate.

Thoughts on Replicant up to Ending A (and change):

This game is pretty. I guess it didn’t really hit me because I’ve always thought that the original NIER was pretty, but this game can be very pretty.

This in particular just kind of struck me as I was going across the Northern Plains. It had been dominantly gray, overcast skies up to that point because Part II of the game is meant to be. You know. Bleak. But I walked out onto a bright, sunny day with an expanse of blues skies, the mountains in the backgrounds, the ivy a burst of green growing up the rusted sides of the train tracks and it just kind of hit me that the game can be very pretty.

(Then I got punched out by a Shade.)

It’s definitely not a matter of massive graphical overhaul. The models look much better (getting a good look at the Twins during the finale, they really are beautiful) and I’m sure the environmental poly count is much higher and just overall smoother, and there are little touches here and there and just the capacity for better atmospheric lighting... I mean it all helps. But NIER is a game that’s always had fantastic art direction, making the most out of its budget through atmospheric tuning. There’s something uniquely beautiful about its muted palette and the way it uses its spaces that elevates it beyond the its actual technical limitations. It doesn’t look like an end-of-generation PS4 game, but that’s not an insult; it looks very much like itself from ten years ago, with its solid art direction, but touched up where it matters.

Does the sidequest grind seem... better...? I haven’t really dug into the BEST part of the game (spending 30 hours grinding out weapon upgrades) but I mentioned before my theory about how the sidequest grind is supposed to be carried out across multiple playthroughs and that’s why it sucks. To my surprise I finished Ending A missing only one sidequest (your friend and mine, Life in the Sands), with all of the other ones being more or less... pretty natural? The only thing I really needed to go out of my way for was Memory Alloy but all the other components didn’t really give me the kind of grief I remember from my playthroughs of the original. ‘Grief’ of course being relative to getting the platinum trophy, but my first time through the game I gave up finishing a few outstanding sidequests (specifically, fixing the lighthouse broke me-- I could not find 10 Mysterious Switches!)

Maybe I just got lucky, especially with the Machine Oils. Maybe some weird muscle memory kicked in. I feel like there were a few purchasing options that weren’t open originally, too, to ameliorate some of the grind, but it might also be a case of those options being cost-prohibitive so I just didn’t really acknowledge them... whatever the case the sidequest grind felt overall pretty painless. I dunno!

I really need to know how to manipulate events. For literally seven playthroughs straight of the latter half of the game I always did the keystone quest as Junk Heap (start) - Forest of Myth - Junk Heap (end) - Facade - Aerie. It wasn’t until I did a run with my college roommates and Popola gave me the Aerie letter before the Facade in invite that I realized the Aerie wasn’t actually programmed to be the last event.

Absolutely blew my mind, and ever since I became aware of it, it feels like the game goes out of its way to make sure the Aerie always comes before Facade. When I did my Let’s Play of NIER I kept a save file from the start of the kystone collection so I could re-do the events in case they went ‘out of order’ (according to my headcanon)... which they did. I replayed the latter half of the game again in order to get things the way I wanted them to be, same order, and fortunately it cooperated the second time, but I still don’t understand what the trigger is, if there’s a way to manipulate it, or when the determination is even made.

And then they throw the Little Mermaid into the mix, which I wasn’t expecting (that is, I knew it was added, but I’ve been mostly avoiding spoilers -- and happily, the changes have largely been a delight, I’m so excited for the subsequent playthroughs -- but the way it was posted about made it seem like it would happen after and apart from the keystone quest. Not so, my friends).

The reason for this is just the emotional escalation of each factor of the quest. The Forest of Myth is weird and little else (at this juncture, of course). The Junk Heap is a personal tragedy, but the actual tragedy has already occurred and you’re just experiencing the fallout. Facade is a powerful and personal tragedy that deserves to be experienced later on. The Aerie is a terrible place and nobody misses it it’s an enormous loss and profoundly traumatic for the party, and it feels like the appropriate apex to basically force them to go to the Castle and finish the fight, having already lost far too much.

Also it’s just super weird to me that they see that devastation, they literally wipe an entire settlement off the map, and then the next day everybody’s super excited to go to a wedding.

It also becomes even weirder that you go to Popola post-Aerie and nobody mentions ‘yeah that didn’t go so well’ but coming out of Seafront they have a legitimate conversation about the loss of the ferryman and the people they’re never getting back. I guess that guy had a personality but I still think maybe somebody should mention the smoking crater where people used to be.

Then again it’s legitimately funny to me how basically everybody is just agreed the world is better off without it.

This might also just be an issue of familiarity. Maybe if I’d always ended on Facade, or actually known that they could be swapped out as they are, it wouldn’t feel so weird. I definitely got used to the pacing with the Aerie at the end and I feel like I got into a debate with somebody about how it’s more appropriate for Facade to come last so this might just be a personal thing. But it’s still a personal thing and I’m still vaguely irritated I can’t figure out how it works.

Anyway I blew up the Aerie So that’s that problem taken care of.

I feel like the ambiance surrounding Wendy was a little creepier this time. I swear I heard that good stock creepy child laughter in the background.

Then the ferryman left This was a nice bit of foreshadowing; following the Aerie events I wanted to hop over to Seafront to take care of an extant sidequest only to find the ferry dock in the Northern Plains empty. I thought that maybe this was just a weird way of railroading you to make sure you went through the Village first, even though there were no scenes that would trigger just by being in the Village.

Alas.

Not gonna lie, when the couple was first introduced I thought for SURE it was going to be the wife who wound up dead. I guess it’s because the guy had a purpose as an NPC so yeah, I was tricked. Good design decision; the ferryman is talkative and bright and definitely difficult to forget and even though he was kinda obnoxious there’s a definite void where his dialogue was. It’s clever too that you’re forced to use the ferry at least once so you can’t escape the dialogue that you’re presented with, meaning that even if you don’t really make use of the ferry you’ll always have that contrast between him at the start of Part II and the other guy (his brother, maybe?) taking over the job and just not really talking to you afterward.

Episode Mermaid First of all, to be clear, I’ve not done the Route B playthrough yet. All I know about the Little Mermaid is what’s presented on the surface, what can be gleaned from there, what I remember reading in the Grimoire NieR short story. This is very much just an impression and reaction to the first encounter and it’s pretty cool.

I like that they managed to go into yet another genre style aping a point-and-click adventure.

I like the atmosphere of the wrecked ship. It really brought me back to the ‘ghost ship’ level archetype with its little hints of spookiness.

I appreciate that it ties subtly in to the Haunted Manor (technically the Part I Seafront dungeon) with Weiss’ utterly irrational fear of ghosts.

I love every excuse they find to get Kaine and Emil (and especially Kaine) out of a situation. It’s almost a running gag that Kaine keeps getting knocked out of dungeons and boss fights. None of them are quite as great as her getting Rules Lawyer’d in the Barren Temple, but there’s something delightful about “Let’s get you some fresh air, we’ll be right outside, be careful!” and then bookending it with Kaine and Emil just chilling at the end like “Well yeah there are a lot of holes in the hull we just popped in.”

(I forgot to go backward to see what happens if you try to take them into Seafront proper, gotta remember that next time.)

Interesting thing when you find some of the dropped apples is that Nier and Weiss talk about the dinner they had with the couple. This was actually a really sweet and oddly emotional conclusion to the added sidequest between the bickering couple-- entirely missable. I would assume the dialogue just doesn’t trigger if you didn’t do the quest but it was a nice touch.

I appreciate the use of dead bodies in the hold.

(That’s a sentence.)

But for the game’s focus on violence and excess of blood it’s very selective in how it uses actual corpses. Any time you see a dead body it really emphasizes the seriousness of the situation. The corpses in the hold and the blood spatter -- especially compared to how bright and clean Seafront as a whole is -- was surprisingly effective. Again, just good atmospheric buildup.

Bit of an anticlimax as a boss, though. It is a really cool boss, between the environmental buildup to the fight and then actually unveiling her, but for how big and scary she is the fight itself went by fairly quick, and the actual finale (the postman whacking her hand telling her to go away she’s groooooss) felt a bit weird in comparison to the way the boss fights in the rest of the game usually play out. Of course, I don’t have context of her dialogue (I can take my guesses, her holding out her hand to Hans as he freaks out and attacks her is already a palpable tragedy) and by the way the scene was framed I suspect the Route B reveal is where the most important part of the scenario lies.

And the seals came back! It’s the little things.

“I wish I was Fyra.” So in the original Replicant the conversation between Emil and Nier before Sech’s wedding was apparently an implication that Emil had a crush on Nier and wanted to marry him. It was ambiguous enough that people had to ask for clarification and some players interpreted it as a weird, childish expression of looking up to and respecting Brother Nier. It was clarified in the Grimoire NieR that Emil is gay and crushing hard on Brother Nier, and this line of dialogue here seems to have been... not made explicit, but changed even between RepliCant and ver. 1.22 to make the implication a little clearer, at least insofar as he isn’t interested in girls. (It winds up missing the implication that he’s into Nier specifically, though.)

...which is funny, because it colors his introduction to the King of Facade somewhat differently. These two meeting is honestly really sweet on a few levels (Sechs recognizing him from Nier’s descriptions, which implies that Nier’s been visiting Sechs regularly and so proud of his interactions with Emil he told the king of another nation all about him, and the King is legit excited to meet him) but then a couple of minutes later Emil is all ‘I’m so jealous of Fyra’. He isn’t crushing on Nier, but he is totally crushing on Sechs.

Endgame At this point in the game the distinction between Brother and Father has become mostly lost and the final charge is pretty much the same as

wait what’s up with the music in the Lost Shrine? This is Snow in Summer.

Or an arrangement thereof. That particular track level from Snow in Summer winds up getting used in a few new places and it has this kind of weird, vague sense of dread that makes it work pretty well. Utterly threw me off in the Lost Shrine, though (I think it’s appropriate given its connection to the Shadowlord/Gestalt Nier so slowly re-introducing it in the climb is pretty cool). It also builds insanely as you climb, which is a very cool effect but, um, I’m just here to pick up some sidequest items right now this feels like a little much.

There isn’t much to say regarding any impact or differences in the large part of this area of the game. It’s a good final dungeon, it carries good momentum, it works as well as it ever did (that is to say, rather well). The emotional beats are great and translate equally well between the protagonists, although I have to give the nod to Papa Nier during a lot of this just for the imagery of such a big, powerful man becoming so broken the further he goes in (and Kaine being strong enough to toss him around like a rag doll anyway).

The final flashback with Nier and Yonah also feels better with Papa Nier. I always read it as, of course, Papa Nier having his moment with Yonah, giving her the flower, and as he lays back down Yonah does the same big sigh like she’s trying to emulate her dad and it’s really sweet. This is another one of those moments where it’s not something that feels wrong in Replicant, but just having that comparison in the back of my head is something that I just can’t help.

Is Papa Nier still Best Neir? Yes.

But there’s room in my heart for Brother. I’m glad the bizarre marketing decision happened and both of these characters can exist.

...and then we reload the save. Okay, okay, so-- so here’s the thing-- I figured that’s a good place to conclude a session, right? Get to the ending, prepare for the next run. But I also know that Route B starts with Kaine’s unskippable novel segments. I’ve read them, of course, so I figure I’ll just reload into Route B so I can make a save after the novel sections, really get into the meat of Route B when I’m fresh.

So skim through those--

Beat up the Knave--

Skim through the rest--

Educated Warrior... didn’t pop...?--

Wait what’s this camera angle--

Why am I outs--

oh my god

oh my god

KAINE AND EMIL HAVING GIGGLY GIRL TALK AROUND THE CAMPFIRE OH MY GOD WHAT IS HAPPENING

THERE’S MORE.

THERE’S. MORE.

I legit short-circuited. Going in I knew they added the Little Mermaid. I knew they added Ending E. Those were things I suspected would be added and went out to specifically confirm; beyond that I’ve been keeping myself completely spoiler free.

I had no idea there was more. I had no idea this was happening.

I’m so excited.

And a goofy thought for the road

“I polished you with a special cloth, I poured warm water on you--”

“Wait, you poured water on me?”

/imagines Emil running blindfolded eight hours across the Southern Plains with an 8oz plastic water cup, getting to the library, splashing it on Kaine, waiting expectantly

/nothing happens

/walks dejectedly eight hours all the way back to the Manor

[tornrose24]

Thoughts on Cinema Sins ‘Everything wrong with Phantom of the Opera’ video.

Well at least ONE of the movies I was hoping Cinema Sins would cover happened. Some sins were expected, but I wasn’t expecting that the CS guy apparently saw the musical and has some knowledge about the history of PotO in general.

-”Several people died.” No not really unless not everyone got out of the burning opera house.

-Knew he’d make a Minions joke the second ‘illumination’ was mentioned.

-Aww, no sins off for the use of the Overture music? And its from the 80’s so of course it would sound the way it does.

-Ok, I admit showing the seats losing their dust and becoming brand new again as a ‘what if’ for movie theaters when quarantine was over was amusing.

-There’s a difference between good opera singing and annoying opera singing, which is why the ladies didn’t care for Carlotta’s singing.

-I wonder what a Silence of the Lambs opera would be like, speaking of CS getting his Hannibals mixed up.

-Raoul and Christine are supposed to be around the same age, so the fact that Patrick Wilson was like 13 years older than Emmy does make the ‘childhood sweethearts’ thing strange.

-Oh great, now CS made 2004!Raoul and Christine’s age gap as problematic as with her and Erik’s by pointing that out.

-Minnie Driver is a great Carlotta AND was a memorable part of this film.

-Oh Christ, 200,000 francs equals almost a million bucks in today’s world? Isn’t that a little too much to demand, Erik?

-Yeah Emmy doesn’t exactly HAVE the right voice for Christine when you compare her to other stage Christines (but at least she doesn’t have a weird vibrato like a certain someone).

-Christine doesn’t strike me as a super social person, and her father was a supporter of her musical talents so it makes sense that she wouldn’t be amongst her new fans and pay a visit to the chapel.

-I wonder if Ramin (aka one of the best Phantoms) found out that he was compared to Harry Styles in this video.

-Christine was supposed to keep her lessons a secret, so it makes sense that she’d confide in Meg after that.

-CS points out the unfortunate implications of Christine being a child when she was approached by Erik in this adaptation and I’m pretty sure CS is going to utterly destroy Webber for this someday.

-Actually yeah-where the hell did everyone go when there was so many people outside Christine’s dressing room a few moments ago?

-I do appreciate CS calling out Giry for just letting the Phantom stalk Christine and not stopping it sooner. (And it does feel strange that she’d let the girl she considers a surrogate daughter go through this).

-”Psychedelically laced smoke.” Every fan thinks that too.

-Also, the mirror is a trick mirror. Kind of obvious later.

-Also he needed her to think he was a divine tutor and didn’t show up until Raoul came into the picture (and because he wanted to move on to actually facing her like a real person).

-Well the horse WAS in the book, but him being part of Christine’s ‘possible hallucination’ makes sense too. Also the idea of her ridding the Phantom is amusing.

-No that WASN’T the sewers they were going through–the opera house literally had an underground lake and there’s a history behind it since the opera house this story is based on is real. 

-Erik building the statues makes more sense to me since the guy is meant to be hyper talented.Also note that this is where you can especially tell CS had experience with die hard fans of the book since he refers to the Phantom by his actual name for this sin in addition to saying WHAT they told him specifically.

-Actually CS has a good point about how the final note of the title song is shown off. They should draw more attention to Christine singing that note since its not only a display of her talent but a show of just how much influence/power Erik has over that. Instead we don’t see Emmy singing (and as anyone will tell you, she sang it as an E flat and not an actual E note).

-Yeah that scarf mask is weird.

-The smoke eye has been a mystery for AGES CS and no one can answer why.

-Love the description of singing “Music of the night” as to treat it like going to a glorious destination.

-Thanks for reminding me why the casting choices and changed up backstory makes 2004!Erik worse than he needs to be (God... what the hell were you thinking ALW and JS?!)

-If CS is familiar with the musical, I wonder if he’s aware that 2004!Erik was many a teenage girls’ crush with that in mind.

-Ah the return of the original ‘creepy doll that looks like a character’ that I almost forgot about. Except CS makes it more creepier by pointing out something about it that makes 2004!Erik more creepier than he needs to.

-CS keeps referring to actors by whatever they were in/a character they also played. And I’m just reminded how strange it was to see Emmy in Shameless (and she’s not enough to make me want to watch that show).

-CS forgot that the managers were supposed to be ass-kissing when he wondered why they were in the dressing room.

-If I remember correctly, a company performs one opera production at night and then practices/rehearses for the next one during the day. The one they perform happens for a certain amount of time before its time to switch out. But yeah, the film makes it look like this is all happening in 24 hours which shouldn’t be possible.

-Nothing for that guy mooning Carlotta? Ok then, moving on I suppose.

-I’ve seen this movie hundreds of times and I NEVER saw the boat in the woman’s wig until it was pointed out.

-Was he not paying attention? Erik kills Bouquet because the guy was trying to go after him. The original reason why he died in the book was for the same reason.

-I’m glad that CS has sympathy for Christine for all she went though in a supposed 24 hours. I’d crack under all that too.

-Surprised he didn’t sin the snot shot on the roof. (You know what I’m talking about).

-Yeah, so much for a secret engagement if you got the ring exposed.

-Not sure why CS finds the gold guys funny other than they are ‘just there.’

-I would love to see the party-goers go after Erik since they DO outnumber him as an alternate scene during that moment after ‘Masquerade.’

-No ‘This is Sparta’ jokes? Ok then, moving on I suppose.

-Christine’s dad is implied to be famous in this movie (explaining the mausoleum, but in the book he was poor so he shouldn’t have one). But that does raise questions as to why Christine seemingly has little money to her name in this version.

-Dude, seeing the gave fight scene as Nite Owl vs. Leonidas was something I couldn’t unsee for more than 10 years. But I bet the Snyder fans loved that joke. (Speaking of CS and superhero films WHEN WILL YOU STOP TEASING ME WITH ‘ANIMATED SUPERHERO FILMS’ THAT ARE JUST ANIMATED DC FILMS AND SHOW ME THE ONE I ACTUALLY WANT TO SEE?!)

-I would love to see a Home Alone version of PotO since CS pointed it out.

-Actually I would love to see the au where CS is a critic in the PotO world and just not give a shit if Erik threatened him.

-Yeah, Raoul making Christine the bait and endangering her IS messed up. As much of a dolt he is, novel!Raoul would NEVER have done that to her.

-Erik’s hair looks nice because its a wig, CS.

-Oh boy, the reveal of the bad make up. No surprise it got a sin. I loved that CS showed Lon Chaney’s version (and hopefully will get people to watch the original silent PotO) and was more impressed by it over what this movie had. I also love how blunt CS is in summing up the deformity.

-There wasn’t a fire when the mob went after the Phantom in the musical. But as history can prove, some mobs care more about their goals than their own safety.

-I think they wanted to squeeze in one more trap before the final confrontation and Raoul WAS trapped in a room that became filled with water in the book and silent film. Though I’m amazed CS didn’t notice the reverse direction the bubbles were going during that scene.

-I don’t know how to answer why Christine was just standing around and doing jack shit to help Raoul during the final confrontation.

-A recreation of one of the most famous kiss scenes in musical history and CS just sums it up as ‘yeah your first kiss always sucks.’

-I love the contrast of Super Mario music with shots of PotO for the bonus round.

-Holy crap, that WAS a lot of candles.

-Some of the alternate audios for the last bit were unfamiliar but that Bug’s Life scene for when Christine is heading towards the mirror is perfection.

-And of COURSE CS would use that one Mission Impossible scene.

Final verdict: Predictable at times, but pretty amusing for a PotO fan like myself. I do hope the next movie musical CS covers is ‘Little Shop of Horrors.’

[irondad-not-ironsad]

WandaVision Episode 1 Reaction

Spoilers below!!

I enjoy the music over the marvel logo

But also a 43 second logo feels kinda long for a 29 minute episode- is it just for the premier or is this gonna happen before each ep?

Also I’m pretty sure I’ve heard that there is a title sequence, which will probably be similar in length. Combine that with the lengthy credits people have been complaining about, it seems that the percentage of the thirty minutes that is actually the story is lower than it should be

not that I don’t love a good title sequence! But I’ll take a well fleshed out episode over fancy logos, title sequences and credits any day

now that I’ve got that of my chest, on to the actual show

I like how they have the frame shaped like that of an old timey tv, combined with the black and white it really adds to the old timey sit come vibe

I like these bells

Ok I know I complained about to much time being wasted with logos and such, but i LOVE how cheesy this theme song is and I love them showing vision and Wanda driving tp there house in wedding attire

“A regular husband and wife” 2 seconds late *vision disappears into a cloud of sparkles*.... 1 minute 8 seconds in and I love this 

Even there acting is reminiscent of an old timey sit com this is amazing

feel like I should note he title sequence ends at the 1.36 mark approximately, which may not seem like a lot but again the show is less than thirty minutes so it adds up

Wanda talks with a fifties accent: I already love this show

Also I wish I had magic I could use to clean, I’m moving back into my dorm right now and Wanda’s powers would be SO helpful

Also I LOVE the laugh track

Also Wanda’s short curly hair is so cute

I love how neither of them knows what the heart means so they play it off by being like “yeah of course I know what it means, how could I forget? Do YOU remember what it means

Also Vision is literally part computer shouldn’t he have a photographic memory? 

Also how old is Wanda? I could have sworn someone said she was 19 in civil war, which would make her like 21 here? I think?? Idk tho, as a 19 year old I don’t think she has ever looked 19 in the movies, even back in Ultron she looked at least in her mid twenties

The face Vision makes when he makes himself human is so funny

Also Vision blowing Wanda a kiss and her reaching back to grab it is the perfect amount of corny that makes it still cute

Also I wonder what vision’s job is

The backing music is so funny

I can already tell Agnes is going to be some great comic relief in a show that’s already hilarious

“I assure you, I’m married. To a man. A HUMAN one!” I know I’ve said before that I was never the biggest fan of Wanda or Vision but I love Wanda in this show

Obv there is something clearly off here, but I feel like I need to mention that it’s clear this is some warped reality. If I had never seen any of the MCU before, I may believe it was just  witch and her robot husband living in the fifties, but the little details really make it clear to the audience (the majority of whom I am sure are familiar with the mcu) that something is off. This scene is one of those, where Wanda cannot seem to recall how long her and Vision have been together and plays it off by saying “It feels like we always have been together”

Is Agnes giving Wanda advice for the bedroom? is this really what I’m watching? Or have I wildly misinterpreted this?

Love the old timey lingo

Vision working a desk job is so funny

Love that vision doesn’t even know what they do at his job, I know it’s part of the false reality thing but also lowkey relatable

“you’re like a walking computer” “I most certainly am not! I’m a regular carbon-based employee made entirely of organic matter”

I started this like twenty minutes ago and have only gotten 7 minutes in because I keep stopping to type my reactions. I am going to try to shut up and watch, and stop screaming about every little detail for a bit 😂

Real quick though does Vision just go by Vision at work?

Ope apparently he does. 

I wonder if Vision took Wanda’s last name

Or is he Vision Stark-Banner since it was Tony and Bruce who made him??

He probably isn’t called that but I think it would be funny if he was

Love that instead of writing “dinner with boss” or “Dinner w/ Harts” or even just “Harts” he drew a freaking heart like im dying

if my lack of emojis seems weird I’m typing this on a computer which I never normally do and I’m to lazy to pull up the emoji keyboard, so basically imagine there’s a cry laughing emoji after everything funny

“No skeletons in the closet?’ “I don’t have a skeleton sir.”

Yup I was right, Agnes is giving her sexy time advice

“you should stumble when you walk in a room so he can catch you. It’s romantic!” that is the only way I will be flirting from now on

Also I got to say, I'm guessing it’s a fifties thing but those pointy bras don’t look comfortable

So she answers the phone “Vision Residence” Is Vision also their last name now? Does he go by Vision Vision??

They make the best facial expressions

This phone conversation where Wanda think they’re having a date night whereas Vision is talking about his boss coming for dinner is comedy GOLD

also I love the fact that they’re giving us stereotypical sitcom drama while keeping it clear that there are bigger problems than dinner with the boss

Fake commercial break is at 9.56 (these time stamps are for myself I want to calculate how much of the episode is actually the story)

I do love the fake commercials tho! And I suppose in a way they ARE part of the show

They missed the chance to make it the toastmate three thousand and make every ironman fan cry

The beeping toaster sounds like a ticking bomb..... also the little red light is the only color we’ve seen this episode I think

Commercial ends at 10.46

Also love that it was an SI toaster, still wish they had made it 3000 instead of 2000

How did Wanda confuse Mr. Hart with her husband? Not that I’m complaining, her coming out in a robe and covering Vis’ Boss’ eyes is HILARIOUS

“This is the traditional Sokovian greeting? Didn’t I tell you my wife is from Europe?” “How exotic!” “We don’t break bread with Bolsheviks”

Visions pants are SO high waisted

“It’s our anniversary!” “Our anniversary of WHAT?” “WELL IF YOU DON”T KNOW I”M NOT GONNA TELL YOU”

Poor Vision is trying to figure out what kind of company he works for this is sooo funny

Agnes coming in clutch with a full meal

So Wanda needs the ingredients in order to magic a meal she can’t just make one appear

Vision breaking into song was amazing

How did one chicken turn into like 30 eggs

Vision is singing old McDonald with his bosses wife this is great

“Diane!” “That must be my wife summoning me!” “She calls you Diane?” “Yes... it’s her pet name for me” “I’m coming... Fred”

So many clichés in this show but it’s done in such a purposeful way that it’s still funny

Also we have only seen three rooms: the kitchen, the living room and Vision’s workplace

“Well I think tonight’s going SWIMMINGLY”

Mrs. Hart is SO NOSY

But I love that they don’t know the answers

Wanda looks SO disturbed when Mr. Hart is demanding her and visions story, you can tell her mind is fighting itself and it’s so sad

Mr. Hart is choking, is it bad that I think he deserves it?

Mrs. Hart keeps cheerily repeating stop it, and gone is the stereotypical sitcom camera angles and and the backing music is switched for something eery

This is lowkey scary, Mr. Hart Dying while his wife keeps cheerily saying Stop It and it just feels creepier the more she repeats

Wanda looks distressed and vision is just looking to her for what to do, her old timey accent is gone and she sounds nearly robotic as she tells Vision to help

Poor Wanda, she is so clearly going through it mentally right now

Laugh track is back, and just like that the Harts are leaving, despite only having one bite of food

And somehow Mr. Hart is impressed? Was Wanda rewriting reality to make them so?

I know that this is clearly some alternate reality and nothing is right, but wanda and vision deciding to choose that day as there anniversary and this little convo here is soooooo cute

Aw her making them rings and them both saying I do is soooo cute

And vision saying “and they lived happily ever after’ is so sweet but also so sad in context

What is that little remote vision is holding meant to be?

And love the hexagon closing in on them with the cute music playing to end the episode

Are the people in these credits real? Because it lists the start as Wanda Maximoff and Vision but are the rest actual people?

So there is some sketchy dude watching the maybe fake credits so there's something going on there

The actual credits start with 7.13 left and I’ve been told there's no mid or post credits scene. I’ll let them play while I finish this up anyways

8 minutes and 49 seconds of this show is the logo, title sequence and credits. Out of 29.36 total this means only 20 minutes and 47 seconds is the show, which I suppose is standard for a sitcom but I think I felt deceived by it showing as 29 minutes

Also 50 seconds of “commercial takes the show time down to 19.57 if anyone was wondering

I swear tho I’m not all that bothered by the length, just did the math in case anyone was curious like I am. 

I thought I was going to really enjoy this going it, but it still really surpassed my expectations and I can’t wait for episode 2!

This is my raw reactions, but I’m sure that as I mull it over more I’ll be posting more about the show

This is somehow a perfect combo of lighthearted comedy and mild horror

I wanna let this episode stew for a while, so I prob won’t watch episode 2 for at least a day

Also what are your guys’ thoughts on this format of reaction? Did I write to much?

Also what did y’all think of this episode? Feel free to let me know what you think of my reaction, and whether you agree or disagree. I’d love to hear your thoughts!

[nobody-wants-ice-cream]

Everything Wrong With The Umbrella Academy. Episode 5, Number Five.

We Only See Each Other at Weddings and Funerals

Run Boy Run

Extra Ordinary

Man on the Moon

Disclaimer: This is all in good fun! I wanted to do a really nitpicky re-watch of the series and found some really cool and interesting things I didn’t notice before. This is meant to have a Cinema Sins-esque tone. However, I did take off a lot more sins than Cinema Sins would have because I do genuinely like the series and the people that made it possible. So all of the good things got one sin off and all the bad things got one sin added. This is a really long post, so grab some popcorn. If there’s anything that I missed, feel free to add it!

I would also like to add that normally you wouldn’t watch a show this way. I am purposefully looking for mistakes, easter eggs, and other things that we’re not supposed to notice. I am watching not with the goal of entertainment, but for analysis. So most of the things that I sin, I am seeing for the first time. 

Number Five

The apocalypse looks incredible. Well done special effects team! I know I already shouted them out, but they deserve another one. Or two. -2

Five shades Dolores with an umbrella. What a considerate dude. -1

Heat of the Moment is an awesome song. -1

Five’s survival gear. Well done costume department. -2

Also, the progression of skill and age is really well done. -1

Dolores’s little santa hat. -1

And her sunglasses. -1

“Do you remember that little mansion just outside city limits where we-- yeah” Noodle incident. However, the way Five says this implies that I really, really don’t wanna know. +1

Argyle Public Library. Suddenly the reason why Five went there makes sense. -1

How did Five get all the way up there on the library walls? Did he use a ladder? If so, that was begging for him to fall and break his name. +1

Sean Sullivan (who plays Old Man Five) does an excellent job imitating Aidan Gallagher’s vocal patterns and movements. -1

The Handler is the first person Five sees after 45 years of isolation. +1

Title screen lunch box! -1

Also, Five kept a lunch box to remind him of his family. He had Vanya’s book but nothing else with their images on it. I’m sad now, but glad that Five at least had something. -1

Five is so hungover. +1

Luther looks like he’s about to cry when Five tells him about finding their dead bodies. My boy! +1

Tom Hopper is an excellent actor. -1

Five also looks like he’s about to cry. +1

Aidan Gallagher is an excellent actor. -1

Luther lifts up Diego and holds him like Diego is an angry toddler. This amuses me. -1

See! I told you. Diego figured out that Five was involved with the shootings at Griddys and Gimbel Brothers on Patch’s doorstep! -1

“They work for my former employer. A woman called The Handler.” No one in this show is allowed to have a reasonable name. +1

Underneath how callous Five is about Patch’s death, he shows genuine concern for Diego. -1

Diego has not slept at all. And he is planning to go after Hazel and Cha Cha. Good luck with that, buddy. +1

Luther finally gets tired of Five vagueing everybody. Good job, I’m curious too. Er, I was when this was my first time watching it. -1

The Handler decides to wear three inch red pumps to the apocalypse. +1

The Handler is as vague as a Multi Level Marketing schemer would be.+1

The Commission decides to wait 45 years to recruit Five instead of a more reasonable number. Like zero years. Honestly, if I was the Handler, I would have picked up Five as a young, impressionable thirteen year old. Then he would feel indebted to the Commission and wouldn’t have had time to come up with the equations to escape. The Commission has no logical reasoning skill. +1

“You’re saying that I could actually leave here? Go...go back?” Heartbreaking. Sean Sullivan gets another sin off. -1

“All of this, was supposed to happen”. Kate Walsh is a kick ass actress. -1

The Commission is composed of dicks. +1

Five asks Dolores for permission before running off to join The Commission. -1

Five’s mustache. +1

I would watch a spin off of Five’s time in the Commission. Hopefully season 2 explores this more. Dallas plot, here we come? Sin until we get some answers. +1

You can see Five’s epiphany in his eyes. His expression says “I’ve got it! I’ve got it!” -1

The words on Vanya’s book look real. The props department did not have to go that hard. -2

However, whatever notes Five wrote are indecipherable. And for good reason if he was attempting to fool an entire time commission. -1

The fire extinguisher Klaus throws confirms for Five that the portal works. -1

Also, Five is clutching Vanya’s book. It’s like he’s nervous to see them again after so much time. -1

The fall from the portal to the ground doesn’t break, scratch, or hurt Five at all. +1

Also, Dallas plot foreshadowing? Remains a sin until we have answers. +1

I hope that they show Five picking up his hat, radio, gun, and possibly the fire extinguisher and that is why we never found any of those in a grassy knoll. Season 2 better resolve this. +1

“But that’s murder”. Luther, you threw people out of buildings when you were twelve years old. That is also murder. +1

Aidan Gallagher kills the delivery in this scene. Well done. -1

Klaus still has Dave’s blood on his hands. Also, putting Klaus through even more trauma. +1

Robert Sheehan and the heartbroken thousand yard stare. -1

The music choice really works. -1

That emotional, awful scream. -1

The briefcase exploding may foreshadow Klaus’s comic powers. Sin until we get answers. +1

Hazel and Cha Cha casually murdered Claudia. +1

“Unauthorized round trip travel to 1968”. This is how we found out where Klaus went. It requires a bit more brain power to figure out the Vietnam war from here, however, I think that this was a clever way to do it. It brings us back to the reason Klaus ended up there. -1

Honestly, Hazel was right to not carry the briefcase on him. If Five had seen it at Gimbel Brothers then he would have taken it because he knows what it is. It would be an insurance policy or could be used as leverage. Either way, Hazel and Cha Cha were going to lose their briefcase. +1

Allison, you were there when Vanya made breakfast plans with Leonard. Is the coffee and bombolini your way of trying to distract Vanya? Because based on the makeup and the nice scarf, it isn’t likely that you will be successful. +1

Vanya has a framed piece of sheet music. Either that’s some really valuable manuscript or its something kitschy. Either way, it’s a sin. +1

“What are you concerned about?” Vanya, the red flags are everywhere. +1

“Like a woman who’s based her whole life on rumors.” Ouch. Allison is trying to give you genuine advice, Vanya. This was uncalled for.  +1

Leonard is getting progressively creepier. +1

“Can you imagine sharing your birthday with six world-famous assholes who all know they’re better than you?” Choke on that irony. +1

Leonard doesn’t stop her by saying, “Wait, that’s salt!” he waits until she already put salt in it.  Dick. +1

“What happened to the other girl?” Harold, you know damn well. +1

Good use of Beethoven. -1

Klaus is back in the bath. Bookends to his tourture. +1

Klaus is haunted by memories of Vietnam this time instead of just ghosts in general. Trauma. +1

I made eye contact with Aidan Gallagher again. +1

Klaus doesn’t want to talk about Vietnam with Five because the last time he tried to connect, Five jumped away. +1

Five looks really excited to connect about time travel with somebody in his family. -1

Five doesn’t care that Klaus was tortured by Hazel and Cha Cha. +1

Five, Klaus has been tortured and then was in some war (Five wouldn’t know yet) for almost a year. This proves that Five’s decision making is impared. Presumably by his hangover. +1

Diego takes out his dagger from episode 1’s bank robbery. This is significant because of something Patch said. That Diego runs around as a vigilante to prove that what he did with the Umbrella Academy had meaning. Now that that has gotten Patch killed indirectly, he feels upset and confused. The dagger that he used as a child is now a symbol of what he did to Patch. -1

The fridging of Detective Patch. Yes, I’m still pissed about it and will continue to be pissed about it. +2

At this point, Klaus doesn’t know about Mom’s “death”. And I don’t think Five does either. The Umbrella Academy of Not Talking To Each Other should be the school’s full name. +1

Allison and Cha Cha don’t see each other when getting into or out of the chairs right across from one another. +1

Allison is doing the equivalent of social media stalking her sister’s boyfriend. Smart. -1

Extra Ordinary bites everyone in the ass. Thanks, Vanya. +1

Five and Allison have the same slow, blocky handwriting. Did Reggie teach them to write as slowly and as large as possible? +1

Hazel and Agnes’s flirting. It’s cute? -1

Klaus ran down the stairs wearing Grace’s heels and broke his jaw when they were twelve. Trauma. +1

Diego can’t park for shit either. Diego and Five need to learn how to park vehicles. +1

Klaus’s little “Hey, Dave” when he sees Dave’s picture. -1

The show fakes out the vet confronting Klaus. Clever. -1

Diego is genuinely concerned for Klaus. -1

The vet is itching for a fight. Asking a drunk person to apologize? Dumbass. +1

“I’d like to apologize...that you are depriving some village of their IDIOT!” -1

Klaus and Diego get into a bar fight in less than five minutes. Checks out. -1

Agnes sees the birds the way Hazel sees normal people. I like the analogy. -1

Agnes does not own Griddys. Who does? Is she the manager or something? +1

Hazel and Agnes theme. -1

Diego’s face when Klaus says he lost the only person he ever loved more than himself. He’s thinking, “Klaus lost his Eudora”. -1

No way in hell Five would have been able to get up as high as the chalk goes. +1

Five is still using Vanya’s book as a notebook. Checks out. -1

The rifle Five pulls out looks a lot like the one he points at the Handler. It doesn’t look like the one he pointed at Kennedy. Why would Five lie about this? +1

Luther, you murdered people when you were twelve. +1

Luther dangles Dolores out the window by her neck. Logical, yeah. Fucked, also yeah. +1

The level of concern Five has for Dolores. -1

Also, well done creating tension, show. My heart was beating like crazy. -1

The Gigue from Partita No. 2 in D Minor by Bach is one of my favorite pieces.  -1

No one stops playing like that. +1

Allison takes her not-stalking info to Vanya and presents it really accusingly. At this point, Vanya is sick of your shit, Allison. +1

“You’re trying to dig up dirt on a guy that I like, who does that?” Everyone with an internet connection does this for the people they care about. What Allison did was hella extra though. +1

Vanya is getting more assertive. -1

Vanya is a dick to Allison. +1

“They’re a real frickin’ mess”. Understatement of the century. +1

Cha Cha wouldn’t know about the moon mission because Vanya’s book came out before it. Also, Vanya wouldn’t know that Five could time travel. +1

Diego you haven’t slept at all, as soon as you drop you’re gonna sleep like a baby. +1

The motel clerk doesn’t notice Cha Cha’s pistol, which was directly in his line of sight. +1

Diego doesn’t notice Klaus’s footsteps. +1

“Yeah but you also told me that licking a nine-volt battery would give me pubes” “We were eight”. Sibling culture. -1

Klaus saves Diego from gunfire the best he can. Even though Diego still gets shot, sin off for Klaus’s heroics. -1

“Was this all part of your master plan” “Shut up”. Sibling culture. -1

Audition panels are always dicks. +1

If you start an audition the way Vanya just did with the shaky bow contact, you’re fucked. +1

Imogen is a great violinist. Ellen Page is not. It’s really easy to see when they switch out. +1

Allison goes to Leonard’s place with no backup. Come on, even Diego has backup! +1

Allison doesn’t tell Five and Diego about how she got into Leonard’s house when they were breaking in again later. The window would have been much better than breaking the door. +1

Vanya’s powers are distorting her music. It sounds like her intonation is gone. Yet the conductor looks impressed. +1

Allison almost finds Helen Cho’s body. +1

The camera cuts to the attic entrance to show that it will be significant later on. -1

The Hargreeves car has HERMES on its licence plate. A.) nice comics reference. B.) Hermes is the God of Travelers. C.) Of course Reggie has a vanity licence plate. -3

Five and Luther connecting over their forced isolation. -1

Also, Aidan Gallagher and Tom Hopper play off each other really well. -1

“I’ve lived a long life, but you’re still a young man. You got your whole life ahead of you. Don’t waste it.” Luther’s face amuses me. -1

Five threatening while Hazel and Cha Cha doesn’t look ridiculous. I genuinely belive it. Props to Aidan Gallagher. -1

Five and Luther look so confused by Klaus and Diego arriving in an ice cream truck. This is such an underrated scene. -3

Ride of the Valkyries -1

Klaus’s little wave. -1

“Whee” I love Ben. -2

I want to know how they shot this. The behind the scenes after the Handler showed up and stopped time must have been strange to look at. -1

Luther protects Five with his whole body without question. -1

Five puts his hands in his pockets but then they’re behind his back in the next shot with no motion to explain it. +1

The Handler is a creep. She’s into Five. +5

Where and When did Five get that pistol? +1

So many memes come from this scene. -2

Five doesn’t have his finger anywhere near the trigger in some shots, but in others it’s two seconds from shooting the Handler. What’s up with that? +1

The Handler is so, so creepy. The hand caressing Five’s cheek? Eww. That all but confirms that she wants to be his Mrs. Robinson. +5

Kate Walsh plays an excellent villain. -1

Five made a deal with the devil because it was his only option. -1

[Gerard Way and Ray Toro’s “Happy Together” playing.] -1

Cha Cha was planning to abandon Hazel. Otherwise why else would she open the briefcase? +1

Ben gets shotgun. -1

Klaus finally gets to flip off Hazel and Cha Cha. -3

“SHIIT” Cha Cha, you got played. I love my smart boys. -5

Vanya did well at her audition! I’m proud of her! -1

Leonard knows the exact words Reggie would have used to describe Vanya’s powers. And he uses them here. +1

“I got first chair!” Congratulations, Vanya! -2

“No one’s ever believed in me like this.” Fuck you, Reggie. +1

Having sex with Leonard/Harold desereves a couple sins. +2

Helen Cho and Reggie’s book reveal. Leonard is a creep confirmed. +2

Dr. Pogo? More like Dr. Complicit in Reggie’s Bullshit. +1

Overall Review: 

In case you couldn’t tell, this is one of my favorite episodes. Finally, all of our characters are invested in the apocalypse plot, even indirectly. Vanya’s powers emerge, the Handler and the Commission enter the chat, and Leonard is revealed to be a murderer and to have Reggie’s diary. Things are really heating up in this episode. 

I had a really hard time finding anything wrong that wasn’t character flaw is character flaw and villain character is a villain. This is a fun episode. If I wanted to show someone an episode of The Umbrella Academy to get them hooked onto the show, I would show them this episode. It moves at a perfect pace and has enough mystery to keep everyone on their toes. When I first watched this episode, I decided to stay up all night and binge the rest of them. Before I was watching one every couple of days. Episode five is what really hooked me. Props to everyone that worked on it!  

I want to give a special shout out to Sean Sullivan. He did really well playing Five! I hope we see him in season 2 for that one scene. If you’ve read the comics then you know the one. 

Sins: 4

Sentence: Watching Klaus’s breakdown after Vietnam was more than punishment enough.

[senadimell]

DW: The Monster in the Closet

I realized while looking at a Girl in the Fireplace analysis that when Moffat involves a child in an episode, he chooses a particular set of tropes. It’s no secret he has favorite types of stories; this one I’ll call “The Monster in the Closet.” Moffat came onto Doctor Who writing Monster in the Closet stories; in fact, take a look at his first 6 stories: The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances, the Girl in the Fireplace, Blink, Silence in the Library/Forest of the Dead, The Eleventh Hour, and The Beast Below. With the exception of Blink, they all fall into this category. Why? More on that below, after we look at what the episodes share.

I’m including Night Terrors in this analysis because it’s so fitting: it’s literally about a monster and a closet. It’s actually written by Gatiss, but copies many of the same tropes and subverts the ending. I’m not including Listen, because I honestly don’t remember it well enough to analyze and don’t care for a re-watch just yet. Plus, I think Moffat was trying to branch out by that point.

Here’s what’s in a standard Moffat Monster in the Closet episode. 

The Child

Fake Faces

Repetition is Creepy

The Doctor’s Reputation

The Bad Guy isn’t evil, just fulfilling its nature

The child (or perceived child) is isolated from the adults in their life who should protect them but don’t realize the monsters are real. The Doctor steps in to validate them and solve figure out how to tackle their monster, who is real.

The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances: Nancy (Jamie and the kids Nancy looks after are also contestants here.)

The Girl in the Fireplace: Reinette

Silence in the Library/Forest of the Dead: Cal

The Eleventh Hour: Amelia Pond

The Beast Below: Mandy (Timmy is also a contestant)

Night Terrors: George

Fake faces indicate something uncanny is occurring. The two-faced nature of the monsters suggests that the monster is not what we think it is.

The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances

The Girl in the Fireplace

Silence in the Library/Forest of the Dead

The Beast Below: (Liz 10 also has a mask and initially comes off as sinister, and is revealed to be part of the problem by choosing ignorance)

This is a bit of a stretch, but here’s the face-changing Prisoner Zero from the Eleventh Hour: 

It’s worth noting that the Doctor had his own face change in this episode, so we’re waiting to see if he’s the genuine article or if he’s more like the monsters. 

Night Terrors. Doesn’t get creepier than this.

Repetition is creepy. This doesn’t really serve a narrative purpose beyond being creepy, other than perhaps to indicate the monster has a goal that we do not understand. When we do, we can solve the problem. This kind of reminds me of when a kid is trying to get their parent’s attention, but they’re on the phone and don’t really hear.  I find that just like fake faces, the more often this is used, the more banal I find it. 

The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances: Creepiest thing ever

The Girl in the Fireplace: What is that mysterious ticking noise?

Silence in the Library/Forest of the Dead: (so much repetition here that any episode after it that uses repetition feels like overkill to me)

The Eleventh Hour:

The Beast Below does something a little different. It goes for a creepy nursery rhyme instead: 

GIRL: A horse and a man, above, below. One has a plan, but both must go. Mile after mile, above, beneath. One has a smile, and one has teeth. GIRL: Though the man above might say hello, expect no love from the beast below.

Night Terrors:

DOCTOR: George! George, what's going on? Are you doing it? ALEX: What's happening? GEORGE: Please save me from the monsters. Please save me from the monsters. Please save me from the monsters. Please save me from the monsters. DOCTOR: George, no! GEORGE: Please save me from the monsters. Please save me from the monsters. Please save me from the monsters. ALEX: Help me, Doctor! GEORGE: Please save me from the monsters. DOCTOR: George, no! (The Doctor is dragged back into the cupboard.) GEORGE: Please save me from the monsters. Please save me from the monsters. Please save me from the monsters. (Alex is dragged into the cupboard.) ALEX: No! (And the door slams shut. Peace reigns again.)

Line about Doctor’s reputation scaring off the bad guys: The Doctor acts as a parental figure, but instead of dismissing the childish fear of the monsters, he validates and vanquishes. He fulfills a parental role, though, and just as parents scare away monsters by virtue of being an adult, the Doctor scares away monsters just by being the Doctor. 

*The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances: Saving this one for last. 

The Girl in the Fireplace: 

DOCTOR: Even monsters from under the bed have nightmares, don't you, monster? YOUNG REINETTE: What do monsters have nightmares about? DOCTOR: Me!

Silence in the Library/Forest of the Dead:

VASTA NERADA: These are our forests. They are our meat. DOCTOR: Don't play games with me. You just killed someone I liked. That is not a safe place to stand. I'm the Doctor, and you're in the biggest library in the universe. Look me up. (The Vasta Nerada desists and gives him a day to evacuate the library)

The Eleventh Hour:

DOCTOR: Okay. One more. Just one. Is this world protected? Because you're not the first lot to come here. Oh, there have been so many. (The projection shows the Daleks et al.) DOCTOR: And what you've got to ask is, what happened to them? (A run through of all the previous Doctors, then this Doctor steps through the projection with a jacket and bow tie.) DOCTOR: Hello. I'm the Doctor. Basically, run. 

The Beast Below: 

This one breaks the mold a bit: It’s Liz 10 who does all of the “fear my reputation lines” and pulls almost the same line as the Doctor in 11th hour (I'm the bloody Queen, mate. Basically, I rule). What ties this to other Monster in the Closet episodes is that problem’s solution comes from realizing how amazing the Doctor is, and applying that logic to our misunderstood Starwhale. Since it doesn’t need to be scared away like our past few monsters, we get this instead: 

AMY: The Star Whale didn't come like a miracle all those years ago. It volunteered. You didn't have to trap it or torture it. That was all just you. It came because it couldn't stand to watch your children cry. What if you were really old, and really kind and alone? Your whole race dead. No future. What couldn't you do then? If you were that old, and that kind, and the very last of your kind, you couldn't just stand there and watch children cry.

AMY: Amazing though, don't you think? The Star Whale. All that pain and misery and loneliness, and it just made it kind. DOCTOR: But you couldn't have known how it would react. AMY: You couldn't. But I've seen it before. Very old and very kind, and the very, very last. Sound a bit familiar? 

Night Terrors: 

Again, the formula’s changing. Here, the Doctor’s title declaration triggers the monster and makes the scary stuff happen rather than the other way ‘round because the resolution is reconciliation between parent and child. If the Doctor were to be the substitute parental figure, he would interfere with that reconciliation.

GEORGE [memory]: Who are you? DOCTOR [memory]: I'm the Doctor. GEORGE [memory]: A doctor? Have you come to take me away? Away. Away. Away. DOCTOR: That's what did it. That's what the trigger was. He thought you were rejecting him. He thought he wasn't wanted, that someone was going to come and take him away. 

(It should be noted that there’s still a title declaration where the Doctor assumes that people should know and respect his title, even though they have no logical reason to: 

DOCTOR: I'm not just a professional. I'm the Doctor. ALEX: What's that supposed to mean? DOCTOR: It means I've come a long way to get here, Alex. A very long way. George sent a message. A distress call, if you like. Whatever's inside that cupboard is so terrible, so powerful, that it amplified the fears of an ordinary little boy across all the barriers of time and space. )

So that brings me back to The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances. One of my huge Doctor Who pet peeves is the Doctor’s growing hubris. I could manage it in seasons 2-4 because everybody and their dog was calling the Doctor out when he went too far, but it just kind of stopped in season 5 and the Doctor threw out more and more lines about how great or scary he was.

What I love about Nine is that he’s humble. What? you ask. The man who told us “I am so impressive!” is the most humble? Yes. Despite his “devil may care” blustering, Nine carries a huge burden of guilt and he constantly questions whether or not he has the authority to make big decisions when lives are at stake. It’s no coincidence that Harriet Jones pulls the “I’m the only elected official” card in World War Three to tell the Doctor to save the world even if she and Rose might die, or that when the Doctor acts unilaterally to let the Gelth posses corpses in The Unquiet Dead, he’s wrong, or that his actions to free the human race from the brainwashing news just leads to societal collapse and allows the Daleks a place to lie in wait, or that he’s spared from deciding Blon’s fate in Boomtown by the TARDIS. It all leads to his decision in front of the Daleks: Coward or killer? Do I have the right to decide who lives and dies? His answer is no, I don’t (then Rose saves the day). 

In keeping with his personality, it would be totally out of character for him to boast of his reputation to scare away the monsters. Instead, we get this beautiful inversion of the Monster in the Closet Doctor/Parent figure scaring away the monsters by virtue of title: 

DOCTOR: Amazing.

NANCY: What is?

DOCTOR: 1941. Right now, not very far from here, the German war machine is rolling up the map of Europe. Country after country, falling like dominoes. Nothing can stop it. Nothing. Until one, tiny, damp little island says no. No. Not here. A mouse in front of a lion. You're amazing, the lot of you. Don't know what you do to Hitler, but you frighten the hell out of me. Off you go then do what you've got to do. Save the world.

Instead of an “I’m the Doctor! Monsters are scared of me!” line, we get the Doctor saying ‘the monsters are scared of you.’ Then, he says he himself is frightened of humans. That’s an odd thing to say, since Nine doesn’t act frightened of humans and seems to just love them, until you consider the thematic implications. Who’s scared of the humans? The monsters. 

The Doctor from ‘Dalek’ is calling.

The Doctor considers himself to be one of the monsters, even if he’s trying to atone for his past. He’s desperately avoiding whatever reputation’s left after the Time War and doesn’t pull that card until he’s facing a Dalek army. I am so so so grateful we got this line, instead of a line about how great the Doctor is.

The bad guy is not actually malicious, just following its nature: The monster is always something real here, but it’s never properly evil. I do like a good “the aliens just have different needs than humans” plot. That said, it can get predictable when you know there’s going to be a twist coming. I like the twists less and less as the episodes go on.

The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances: The monster is the child! Sort of: the good-at-healing but bad-at-AI nanogenes made Jamie and everyone else a monster since they didn’t know what they were going for as they repaired the humans. 

The Girl in the Fireplace: Arguably the most sinister on this list, the droids aren’t malicious, just trying to repair their ship with re-purposed body parts because they broke down. Not evil, just following incomplete AI instructions like our Nanogenes. This was the only thing I liked in this episode. At least the monsters had a reason they were obsessed with Reinette, unlike the stalker-y actions the Doctor took that were supposed to be 100% okay, even though he criticized the Robots for doing that? 

Silence in the Library/Forest of the Dead: The Vasta Nerada are creepy and eat people, but it’s just because their forest was pulped and they came here in the books! They just want to be left in peace to hunt like normal predators. 

The Eleventh Hour: This one doesn’t fit quite so neatly. However, it should be noted that the primary danger in the episode doesn’t come from the bad guy, Prisoner Zero, but the cops looking for him who are willing to boil the earth. They’re not evil, just callous and need to be reminded of proper boundaries.

The Beast Below: The weird scorpion stingers are just the Starwhale! It loves children. It doesn’t even care about being tortured for centuries and will keep driving everyone through space. 

Night Terrors: George is monster! That is, he’s the one causing the creepy stuff to happen because he’s an alien who stressed out about the parents he brainwashed abandoning him. I guess that’s sci fi for you?

With the exception of Blink, all of the monsters are shown as innocent, if dangerous. They just need to put their energy in a different direction. It’s not until Victory of the Daleks that Moffat breaks the mold. Why? The punchline of “Monster in the Closet” stories is that the monsters are real and scary, but not evil, just following their nature. Daleks fall into the “these are actual bad guys” category, not the misunderstood monster. (Which is kinda funny, because it’s been established that Daleks are genetically engineered to kill and hate. They may be a Nazi analogue, but Nazis were people who chose evil. The Daleks are bred to hate and exterminate--note what happens to the “impure” dalek in Dalek and Evolution of the Daleks: they don’t kill people, and then they die.) 

My biggest beef with these episodes that they’re all relatively close together, so it’s easy to notice the overlap. When Moffat uses almost the exact same line in one episode as in the previous episode, I notice. When he uses the same mask design, I notice. When he has a constantly repeated line and does it again, I notice. Even before I waded into anti Moffat stuff, I noticed a shift at the end of season 4. I attributed it to a new cast since I just couldn’t click with anything. Then, I learned there was a new writer, and found out he had also written my least favorite episode of New Who (The Girl in the Fireplace). 

After writing this, I can’t help but parrot what I’ve heard elsewhere: Moffat’s trying to write a fairytale. A lot of the people and dangers feel more like archetypes than people, and the dialogue is witty but often unnatural--nobody goes around bantering like that all the time. The villains are identified by their form just as much as what they intend to do. There’s also this weird idolization of childhood and the innocent child. I don’t like it much. I’m more of the Coraline, Witches of Worm, Egyptian Game, and Wrinkle in Time mold, where the kids are just as realized and human as their adult counterparts and can lack empathy and be as creepy as adults. Alternatively, I’ll take Shannon Hale’s fairy-tale retellings where the bad guys are people and the solution involves personal courage and collaborative effort. (Moffat can keep his Day of the Doctor maypole children, and I will keep Chloe the scribbler, even if her episode was a little off).

My rating for these episodes, from least to most favorite: 

The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances: Love Christopher Eccleston’s performance and was very creeped out by the child monsters. The solution to the problem was implied but not obvious so I didn’t get it until I was supposed to. I didn’t enjoy the introduction of a love triangle or the constant innuendo, but at least it was gone in an episode. Also, I will never not fangirl over “Everybody Lives!” and its significance to Nine. 

Silence in the Library/Forest of the Dead: Thoroughly enjoyed these episodes, though I do have things to quibble with (wish Lee was black like Donna’s other romantic interests--she’s got a type and it’s not “gorgeous and can’t speak a word,” among other critical things). Overall,  a great episode

The Eleventh Hour, which I enjoyed, but makes me feel weirder and weirder the more I watch it between child/adult Amy, handcuffs and porn references, and the annoying “prisoner zero has escaped” mantra, plus “I’m the doctor! The earth is protected! I also didn’t like the repeat of comatose people sitting up and saying things. It was good the first time, not so much the second. Funny, but also uncomfortably awkward and creepy, and not in the “are you my mummy” way. 

The Beast Below, which felt like it was recycled from earlier tropes to me. Maybe if Liz 10 wouldn’t have had the GitF porcelain mask, I wouldn’t be as tempted to compare it to other Monster in the Closet episodes. Overall, just meh.

The Girl in the Fireplace, which rubs me wrong in every way, except for the droids cannibalizing crew to save the ship--what does that say about me and the episode? I will not rewatch this episode willingly.