#this man is literally a corpse puppeted by Bill

[the-crow-cryptids-domain]

So yeah, Silas Birchtree, amirite?

[askgravityfallsed]

THE YEAR IS 2019… WELCOME TO GRAVITY FALLS: ETERNAL DEVOTION AU Return To The Falls RP Edition

Related accounts set in 2012: @formerquestionmarkmp, @dippers-guide-to-the-strange, @pocketsfullofglitter, @queenplatinumpaz2012.

CHARACTER INFORMATION:

Mason “Dipper” Marth Pines:

Age: 19 years old

Pronouns: He/They

Identity: Bisexual, Non-Binary

Fiancé: Paz Southeast

Online College Student

Stoner

Well known ghost hunter in the area

Mabel David Pines:

Age: 19 years old

Pronouns: She/It/Pink/Meow/Oink

Identity: Cis, Aroace

Shroom addict (Don’t tell mom!)

Sells knitted sweaters and scarves, as well as Kandy bracelets, on Etsy

Pastel Goth/Scene mixture… I don't know either man.

Stanley Caryn McGucket-Pines:

Age: 67 years old

Pronouns: He/Him

Identity: Cis Bisexual

Husband: Fiddleford McGucket-Pines

Usually out sailing with Ford and Fidds

Kept his mullet in honor of his nieces old nickname

Owns five “#1 Dad” Mugs. Four from Soos, one from his niece.

Stanford Filbrick Pines:

Age: 67 years old

Pronouns: He/It (Only uses it due to Bills effect on him)

Identity: Cis Gay

Space Divorced TM both Fidds and Bill on separate occasions

Formerly brainwashed by Bill- barely resisting getting back together with him

Can not handle The Lust TM

Paz Elliot Southeast:

Age: 19 years old

Pronouns: He/Him

Identity: Bisexual Transgender

Fiancé: Mason Pines

Only recently found out he was trans- binds and cut his hair, but that’s about it

Steals Dippers clothes a lot. They’re his now actually.

Will never, ever admit to being the bottom of the relationship even if they’ve been together six years and it’s obvious as fuck.

Working for Greasys Diner

Jesus “Soos” Ramírez:

Age: 29 years old

Pronouns: He/Him

Identity: Cishet

Wife: Melody Ramírez

Stan is his dad figure, duh

Melody and him have a son named Diego

Cried like a baby the first time the twins referred to him as their uncle

Wendy Blerble Corduroy:

Age: 22 years old

Pronouns: She/He

Identity: Cis Bisexual Lesbian

Dippers weed dealer. Why are you shocked

Barely looks any different than she looked at age fifteen… except she ties her shirt into a crop top to show off her stomach tattoo of an axe.

Hottest lesbo on the block, according to nobody but her friend group

Robert “Robbie” Stacy Valentino:

Age: 23 years old

Age During Death: 15 years old

Pronouns: He/Him

Identity: Cis, Bi-curious (will not admit this)

Somehow befriended Paz. Neither know how nor want to admit it, but they have movie nights where they do each others nails and makeup and cry to metal music.

Zombie. Walking corpse even. Yep, we’re leaning into THAT old theory.

Still beefing with Dipper for literally no reason. Even Dipper doesn’t hate him at this point he just likes annoying him. They’re like brothers honestly.

Gideon Charles Gleeful:

Age: 17 years old

Pronouns: She/Her

Identity: Trans lesbian

Ex-Ciphertology child cultist

Despite this she still cries over the fact that Bill finds her annoying

She can’t really find anything to do with herself anymore since weirdmaggedon and highschool so she’s really fucking bitter.

Fiddleford Hadron McGucket-Pines:

Age: 69 years old (haha funny number)

Pronouns: He/Him

Identity: Cis Gay

Husband: Stanley McGucket Pines

Him and Emma May were actually beards- still occasionally in contact.

Was forced into a polyamorous marriage with Bill and Ford- eventually divorced them for MANY reasons

Seriously this guys got some BAD C-PTSD to be honest

Martha Winona Pines:

Age: 38 years old

Pronouns: She/Her

Identity: Cis Aromantic Bisexual

Ex-Husband: David Patterson

Has even WORSE C-PTSD from being Bills former puppet for like seven ish years

Literally so fucking grumpy about his return but NOBODY will let her murder him so she’s decided on verbal assault

Loves her kids soooooo so much

Calls Stan “Uncle Mullet”

William “Bill” Lu Cipher:

Age: ??????????????????? centuries old.

Pronouns: He/They/It- anything masculine or gender neutral

Identity: What a boring concept

Former triangle, now human for redemption- can only reincarnate if fully reformed, though he will never fully be forgiven for what he’s done, so he’s stuck this way til this body dies.

Can’t use his powers anymore- not even floating, which he hates a LOT

Misses Ford soooooo much…. Fucking loser.

BOUNDARIES:

13+ interactions only

Currently Gideon is still a minor, and I’m only a teenager, so please keep the NSFW to a minimum. Suggestive is fine, though.

DNI inc3st/p3do proshippers, p3do/m4p, transph0bic, hom0phobic, or r4cist people. You are not welcome here.

Please be respectful to me, the mod. You can be mean to characters, not to me. I do not appreciate hostility

Here and Here are the Casting Call links for the Eternal Devotion podcasts, please consider helping out with voice acting or even writing!

[tortoisesshells]

I would love to hear your thoughts at length on Jeremiah sometime! where he fits in the gap between the family myth and icon over the fireplace — and the story that gets told to us in 1795? or whatever else you have to say about your special guy.

!!! Would I like to talk about Jeremiah? I always want to talk about Jeremiah. Or Jeremiahs. There's, at minimum, two versions of the guy - possibly three, if we count his remarkably ambulatory ghost/corpse/revenant as a separate version. Which - I think we should? Therefore, we've got three Jeremiah Collinses: Jeremiah, the Ur-Ancestral Collins, who's in no small way responsible for all of this; Jeremiah, Literally Just A Guy, who gets run over much the same way Collinses tend to run non-Collinses over; Jeremiah, the Ill Omen, who's broken free of life and death, but can't escape getting meat-puppeted by his own morals or the narrative, whichever is stronger. At the end of the day, whether he was a tyrant or not, Jeremiah's positioned as committing one of the original sins that haunt the Collinses down to the present - either, as he's first introduced, he enclosed the land that Collinwood was built on and ensured the family would be haunted by the ghosts of those they had wronged, or he married Josette (because of a love spell) when she was to have married Barnabas, and things ... got out of hand from there, leading to the present Collinses being haunted by a very different kind of undead.

I do know that this is a result of the writers either not caring about continuity, or simply not being aware of what was established in episode twelve after three hundred - or six hundred - episodes. But whether or not they intended it - here we are! trying to square the circle of continuity in a show that's allergic to it.

Jeremiah has two ghosts, in a way: the first is the legacy of the portrait over the mantle at Collinwood, who haunts the present Collinses as a man they'll never live up to (and perhaps don't want to live up to, which is a separate kettle of shame) - he was the founder of the Collins dynasty, the builder of Collinwood, whose marriage to Josette la Freniere du Pres Collins ended in the latter's suicidal leap from Widows' Hill. Liz names him as an ancestor whose example they must follow; Carolyn more cynically notes that he was a drunk and a bully; Roger, in the first recitation of the history of Collinwood, implies it was Jeremiah's eviction of the public from Widows' Hill that became some kind of original sin of the Collins line - all the misery Jeremiah had caused the town by the building of the Collins fortune, compounded by one last theft of the place the women of town had gone to watch for the return of the ships. If the Widows' Hill widows are unseen ghosts, present only in the crying of the wind - Jeremiah's ghost is Collinwood and Collinsport themselves, in a way? A more metaphorical ghost than the actual, literal ones we eventually get - Josette herself, starting in episode 70, or Bill Malloy, from 85, or the Widows, from 126.

Conversely, Jeremiah Collins in 1795 is quite literally just a guy. He may be the sanest and stablest Collins we've ever met (I haven't gotten to parallel time or the 1840s yet, so I could be wrong) - he tolerates Joshua arranging his life for him (though he refuses to entertain marrying Millicent, who he doesn't respect in the slightest - still, I suppose we know Jeremiah's a Collins because marrying his close blood relatives is just ... par for the course.), thinks that witchcraft is bunkum in the modern age of the 1790s, and generally tries to do the right thing. This is, of course, no defense against getting roped into Angelique's foolproof plan to dispose of Josette and marry Barnabas herself, and he gets shot in the face for his troubles. He's not the domineering tyrant of the Collins family history; as a living person he's - sort of a non-entity? An afterthought to virtually everyone - useful as a lieutenant/marriage pawn to Joshua, a marriage pawn of a different sort to Angelique, the dead albatross around Josette's neck.

(Then again! Jeremiah'd had a life before 1795, which included marrying Laura and being made a widower by it. There's always room to believe that changed him significantly.)

Jeremiah's literal ghost/revenant (and the second ghost) maybe goes partway to squaring the circle of Jeremiah the Empire Builder and the far more reasonable Jeremiah of the 1795 time travel trip - like most other ghosts (perhaps save that of his estranged wife?) he's out for revenge and to cause problems, though his ghost does appear in Vicki's dreams in the present to warn her that she's in danger from Barnabas. Maybe if he'd been up to those antics through the years that could shape the family's memory of him? A much better explanation is that Joshua simply did what he said he intended to do: edit the family history to be in line with the book that Vicki had brought back into the past with her, to cover up the enormity of what went wrong in 1795 (and, specifically, his failures and the conduct of his only son). Jeremiah gets rewritten as a tyrant because he has always been a tyrant: a neat little continuous loop in time? He gets the worst parts of his family - Naomi's alcoholism, Joshua's tyranny, Barnabas's driving Josette to suicide - as memorials, and the rest of them fade into the obscurity of the past by the 1960s.

By way of continuing to try to square the circle of continuity, and come up with a Grand Unifying Theory Of Who Was Jeremiah Collins, Jeremiah's also got his mirror in the present day like nearly everyone else in 1795: Burke. If we assume that people in the present are some kind of inversion of the people they resemble most in 1795 (stern, active Liz and dominated, conflict-averse Naomi; down on his luck Sam and the aristocratic Andre du Pres, etc.) Burke - something of a tyrannical, vengeful empire builder himself - fits the pattern for a more reasonable, even-tempered Jeremiah. Then again, they've both slept with Laura, and they're both at least a little weird about Vicki, so I suppose we could say they've got similar taste in women, at least?

Then again. Considering Jeremiah is the only past Collins to recognize Vicki in any way, it does beg the question of whether Burke and Jeremiah are entirely separate. I'm not sure that's a useful observation, but I do think about it a lot for a one-off line of dialogue in a 50 year old soap opera.

[deathnumber382]

HATCHETFIELD IDEA

I literally just mentioned this in a comment section of AO3 and now it's going here.

◇◇◇◇◇◇◇◇◆◇◇◇

I had a dream where Hatchetfield was kinda at war with each other. See, the Lords in Black were bickering. And by the Lords, I mean Wiggly and Pokey.

Ha, ha! Please. You got blown up by a bombie-wom. Twice!

Really? It was once, when I was in a human form. The other time, all it did was kill the leading man. And you can't talk, either! Your puppet got shot in the head and all of a sudden you don't have power!

Oh, yes, I need power over all the fucking corpses of Hatchetfield. At least I killed Hannah.

Fuck off—

You get the gist.

Anyways, the fight escalates, 'till Pokey says something about having better humans. And Wiggly sees an opportunity to play a little game. He gathers his other brothers, and declares a game.

They take a timeline. One they haven't quite stained yet. Not in a big way, anyways. And they make their teams. In all of Hatchetfield, different people are connected to different Lords, whether they know it or not. Those people are apart of their God's team. They get to choose two captains, a base and a 'Heart' of the base.

The captains are two because if one goes down, there is another to continue it on. Two captains also allows them to split their people into groups of two. They are the leaders of the troop and the mouthpieces of their Lords. Although, they can also be 'false suns,' as dream me called them. Basically, they can pretend to speak for their God, but be doing something for their own interests.

The bases are their camp. Their home, their rest place, whatever. It's where they rest and where their 'Heart' is. The Heart had an item of their God hidden there. If that item is captured by the other team, they (and their Lord!) loses and joins the capturer's team. It goes until there's one left standing.

What's the prize, though?

Bragging rights and you can do anything to one of the losers' timlines.

That got everyone's attention. Everyone's!

A competition? Without me?

Everyone's.

Webby overheard and couldn't pass up the opportunity to help. If she beats her brothers, that means she can change the course of 5 timelines! 5!

Bickering ensued, but in the end, they allowed Webby to play. On one condition added by Blinky.

If you lose, we get a free 'Kill Hannah Free' card for any timeline of our choosing.

Reluctanlty, Webby agreed.

So the games began. They chose their captains, their bases, and their hearts. No-one knew anyone's choices.

Here's how it went down;

Ex: (CAPONE & CAPTWO • Base/Heart • Lord)

Paul Matthews & Henry Hidgens • The Starlight Theater/Center Stage • Pokotho

Bill Woodward & The Barker (initials B.L) • Watcher World/The EyeStrain • Bliklotep

Theodore Spankoffski & Barry Swift • CCRP Building/Ted's Office • T'noy Karakis

Roman Monroe & Grace Chasity • PorkChop/The Kitchen • Nibblenephim

Wilbur Cross & Linda Monroe • Lakeside Mall/ Toy Zone • Wiggog Y'Wrath

Hannah Foster & Rosary Remington • Pamela Foster's Home/ Hannah's Room • Webb?¿?¿?

◆��◆◆◇◆◆◆◆◆◆◆

Dudes.

[shnowbilicat]

I've thought a lot about the ghost kids that roam my FNAF AU and thougt about writing down some of the concepts I'm pretty set on owo

Like that the ghost kids actually age because why the fuck wouldn't they? And also how adult ghost work n stuff, cuz Rick, Keith and also pretty much my two Purple's exist as adult ghosts, living corpses idk X'D

And I would also want to make a small masterpost about all my current ghosts/haunted creatures and what the names of the kids are and who they are haunted by and stuff! owo

FNAF 1:

Standard ghosts that don't have any unique features or powers. Just a bunch o' haunted robot furries ewe But I liked giving them names similar to their animatronic so yeah :'33

Freddy Fazbear - Frederick/Freddy Bonnie - Bill/Billy Chica - Charlie Foxy - Felix

Golden Freddy - ???; unique case, has A LOT of powers, like doing ghost stuff with a material body, etc. probably due to being the bite of '87 victim

FNAF 2:

Also mostly normal haunted robots, except for a few …

Mangle - Maggy, a single soul split into two personalities between the main and the second head, though it's still one consistent soul

The Puppet - Jack; the VERY FIRST victim and the only soul that hung onto the mortal plain for such a long time that his soul expanded until the Puppet found him, making him one of the most powerful ghosts, next to Goldie. AND he's soul bonded with Alex, giving Alex some pretty neat magic and supernatural powers of his own owo

FNAF 3:

SpringTrap - WAS haunted by the Purple Man, but once Vincent managed to split himself off, the remnants of his soul woke Springy up to be his own thing

Phantoms - Literally every Phantom is basically an alternative, split off part of the kids' soul … just being in a perpetuate teenage stage of being rowdy, know-it-all, drunk and … you get the picture X'D

FNAF 4:

All Nightmare Animatronics are actual animatronic monsters and not nightmares. Their living being exists because of Keith sharing his blood/soul parts with them, similar to Vincent and Springy, and are loyal to Keith that way

Nightmarionne/Marion - Claims to be the cumulative desire of all the victims to bring Vincent to justice, even if most kids don't have that desire anymore

Nightmare BB and Nightmare Mangle - Not loyal to Keith as they do not share his blood/soul bond and were made after Marion ordered him to create them. Marion might've shared some of the desire to kill with them to bring them to life

FNAF SL:

Every Animatronic has shards of different souls clinging onto them, giving them the desire to kill. As time went by these shards fused into one soul in each bot, while the programming of them kept these souls to go completely haywire.

Ennard - Is a whole seperate entity and a mess of MANY broken soul. Curiously, without any clear programming to this mess of an endoskeleton/s, Ennard is the calmest of them all

Misc:

Vincent the Purple Man - Pratically got forced to haunt his own corpse and SpringTrap, maikng his actually ghost powers limited on how long he can use them and hold that form, but he's still really powerful regardless

Rick the Shadow Man - Quite literally haunted the darkness around him, and due to his deep hurt and pain of being betrayed by his best friend he's REALLY powerful as well

Keith the Nightmare Man - Fell into a deep coma after dying; while having the potential to be powerful, Keith would need to go under very hard training to 'awaken' that side of his ghost form powers

PG - Similar to Vincent, got forced to haunt his SpringTrap and corpse, but was taken away and 'saved', only to be tortured the heck outta him, making his form and powers limited as well, but also some aspects are 'glitched'.

Alex Winter - NOT haunted, but has pretty much a 'pact'/soul bond with Jack, sharing his powers of the undead and supernatural and basically unlocking his own soul/ghost powers while being alive. All of it is party, restaurant and/or animatronic themed pff

All former guards like Mike, Jeremy, Fritz and the Phone Guy/Scott have the potential to be vengeful adult ghosts.

And Animatronics of PizzaSim and SB are not listed here cuz either OMG TOO MANY CHARACTERS or saved for future projects oWo

Also I blame a friend on DA for making me wanna put some concepts down for my own AU after pretty much a decade of having it owo

[queersatanic]

never do a single thing for your job they are not paying you to do

if the place is on fire and they're not specifically paying you to put it out, leave and let that motherfucker burn to the ground

literally.

because they would literally rather your corpse grow cold on the floor than lose an hour of profit

ID: post by Katelyn Treiger

You wana know what still just doesn’t sit right with me? A man who worked in the kitchen for over 10 years at Cracker Barrel in Jensen Beach Florida died DURRING his shift. Right in the back of the restaurant. And the business didn’t close their doors. Didn’t even blink. Families were still seated, eating their dinner while a man was dying in the back. Wait staff and the kitchen were still forced to work while THEIR FRIEND was dying in the back. AND THEN, get this, when his memorial came around, management had the AUDACITY to put the invite to his funeral in the back with a note that said WE CAN NOT ACCEPT REQUEST OFF FOR THIS DAY.

You think these corporations care about you? You think if you you put in extra work and don’t call out when your sick and be their little puppet that it will get you anywhere in life? Stop giving yourself a stress condition for these companies that will quite literally walk over your dead body to hire your replacement. Stop compromising important times with your family, or even simply your happiness for buisnesses that only care about profit. Life is to important to spend it working and paying bills. Remember at the end of the day you work for YOURSELF. If a company isn’t doing anything for you, then you shouldn’t be doing anything for the company. Period.

**edit to add** Cracker Barrel has a policy where employees are not allowed to post anything negative about the company on social media. But I no longer work for Cracker Barrel so I made this sharable !📷

Because my friend JC deserved better! And so did my friends and coworkers who are suffering from PTSD from this Incident📷

[adobe-outdesign]

Showdown Bandit Liveblog - Chapter 1

Checking out DAGame’s video. Spoilers!

I wonder if there’s some correlation between the shadows on the loading screens and the product being featured. though IDK what edward scissorhands has to do with cream puffs

I would never hide from Miss Undertaker what are you talking about

“it must be what he wants” for some reason some people seem to have thought the Puppeteer was a woman? this seems to disprove that right off the bat

oh man, the way the scenes transition is really fucking cool

hold up, just let me rob this corpse

that was not the voice I expected to come from the Banker

oh I love him

wait are you telling me this timid motherfucker is the one with the fucking dynamite

I thought he was already mutilated because he doesn’t have any eyes, but he’s on your side so maybe not? granted though he doesn’t have facepaint

“the stringless” might be the mutilated puppets? sometimes mime face does have strings and sometimes he doesn’t, it hasn’t been consistent so far

this is the worst fucking theme song I’ve ever heard

“happy mine” no one’s happier than those dying of black lung

god I hope there’s hot pink heels in here somewhere

I’m sorry but there’s something kind of funny about poor mime face limping after you at like 5 mph

A S C E N D

he is the healer, fucking called it

also god his voice is creepy

Alice Angel I know that’s you (JK it’s probs Penny)

“faceless bandit” bitch have you fucking seen the Banker

also I wonder if that’s the dude with the scythe

oh fuck, scythe guy causes the filter from BATIM to spawn, what a tragedy

these scenes would be more intense if they could walk faster than like 2 mph

“bookcase out in the wild” is just a funny statement

that is a very tiny box of cereal

I like how the Banker is somehow not even questioning the fact that everyone is dead

this has nothing to do with the game but I was not expecting DAGames to do Grant’s voice again adjfa

site note: this gives me hope that Grant can still appear at some point in BATDR

ALL THE LIVELONG DAAAAAY

“I’m not letting it out to harm anyone” Bandit: OKAY TIME TO LET IT OUT TO HARM EVERYONE

wot mate

it’s like a that thing from Tin Toy but if it was made in hell

maybe some type of ventriloquist dummy? or something that would justify it being that freaking big

B̨͢Á̧̀͘N̛͏D̷̷̡͜Į̶̸́̀T҉͡҉͠

oh RIP Penny she fucking died before we even met her (well okay not literally but can these puppets even die to begin with)

I like how there are just bear traps scattered around this children’s show

WE GOT THE SPARKBLASTER BABEY

he’s probably talking about the blank puppets but the idea of Mime Face breaking into his farm and stealing his turnips is really funny

the renderings in this game really are nice. they just straight-up ripped them for the trailer and it’s not even noticeable

Bandit’s just walking up to Undertaker with an expression that says “I haven’t slept in 5 weeks and it’s going great”

errand boy

okay, so there is a sheriff. was wondering about that

“araknits” I’m honestly really upset I didn’t think of that pun earlier

can we get an F in the chat for Banjo Bill

“king bubu” was wondering what that poster said, turns out I couldn’t read it because it was complete gibberish anyway

curious about the fill-size clown shoes. would feel weird to have a regular-size human clown amount normal-sized puppets? (clarabel from howdy doody was human, but those were ventriloquist dummies so it was much less weird)

weirdly enough i think the Banker’s becoming one of my favs. so kind, so gentle

“lookout” mint.... eyes?

also, first mention of Lorlei, this time presented as “miss” (and the puppets only seem to talk about themselves, so it’s unlikely it was her puppeteer). something to do with it being her real name might be on the right track after all

edit: she called herself lorlei earlier I couldn’t hear it because WIll was talking over her

super not comfortable with the implication that araknits fuck

oh, those were the... kids, maybe? because it looks like the stage and the kids cheering like was described in the steam description. the hand looks fucking huge though, like it’s supposed to be puppeteer. also the puppeteer was wearing that red robe in front of a (human-sized) TV? let me chew on that one a bit

really missing BATIM’s subtitles, I swear I only catch like every other line of dialogue

Overall, the graphics are beautiful and the gameplay seems really unique, especially in the setup. I kind of wish there was more lore though - there’s like, snatches of it, but it doesn’t feel like we learned very much? then again BATIM’s first chapter didn’t have much either and I might be biased because I know a bunch from the teasers already. Either way, this is promising.

[mortalgabby]

The Best Monsters

Monsters are a key part of storytelling particularly in films, games and books. Here are my personal favourite monsters that I've seen (excluding games).

1.Hyde

Hyde is from the novel ‘The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll & Mr Hyde’ and is an alternate side of Jekyll which is created using a potion that was created to separate man’s two sides into good and evil. The potion however does not work as expected and instead Hyde is contained within the same body as Jekyll and is described as ‘pure evil’ unlike Jekyll who still contains both qualities.

Hyde is one of my favourite monsters for many reasons - for one his appearance in the novella is somewhat ambiguous which leaves it up to your imagination as Stevenson writes ‘I never saw a man I so disliked, and yet I scarce know why’ and ‘there is something wrong with his appearance; something displeasing’. Throughout the book the only real description of his face is that it is horrible but for unknown reasons, which I think is really effective as it forces the reader to imagine him in a way which would make them feel scared. 

I also like how Hyde is part of Jekyll and is also somewhat relatable as he is a personification of all the things humans can’t do because of the societal impact or fear of being caught. We can sympathise with Jekyll’s reason for creating him.

However, his control over Jekyll’s body grows more throughout the story like a parasite slowly destroying its host - which is tragic as we know there is nothing he can do as they’re one being. He starts off as being simply Jekyll’s mind with a different body, but as it progresses, he morphs into his own being, causing Jekyll a lot of grief as he has to try and undo the actions which he both is and isn’t responsible for. Overall,I really like the concept of the villain sharing the same body as the human as it makes the story a lot more interesting - the monster can never truly be defeated without a great sacrifice - killing them both.

2.Venom

Venom is another monster I really like for a variety of reasons. The main one being that he’s not truly evil unlike his appearance would suggest - his goal isn’t set in stone and he just does what he wants - whether it benefits the rest of his race or not. This quality is very relatable and almost human of him which I think is cool.

I really like his black and white design as I think the contrast makes him a lot more eye-catching - and especially the way his limbs behave (for example when he helps Eddie knock out the villains and keeps him on the motorcycle). Another aspect of his visual appearance I really like is how he looks intimidating - due to his height, almost hulk like stature, and extremely large number of teeth.

On top of this, I like how Venom has a sense of humour- especially one which contrasts his monster-like voice as it instantly makes him more likeable. 

Venom’s partnership with Eddie is also another reason he’s such an appealing monster - he starts off using Eddie as a host in order to take over the planet but as he befriends him, he realises that he would rather stay with Eddie instead of helping his planet to take over - even saving the world by killing the symbiote leader. His impulsive behaviour and sudden change of heart is not what you’d expect from his character. I also like how he only kills bad people towards the end of the movie- rather than just killing for fun. It’s a nice surprise to like the character who you’d typically expect to be an unstoppable killing machine.

3.Bill Cipher

Bill Cipher is the main antagonist from the animated TV series Gravity Falls. He is definitely one of my favourite monster characters - for one his appearance is very unconventional for a ‘villain’ character. upon a first glance he doesn’t look threatening and could easily be mistaken for a sidekick of the hero or magical creature - but also kind of resembles the common iconography for the Illuminati, which I think is interesting. His shape-shifting abilities also add to this - he takes many different forms throughout the show, including this one during the finale:

His character in the show is very cryptic and mysterious - he is foreshadowed in the title sequence, talks backwards, and even foreshadows events that haven’t happened in the show yet by showing them on his face (for example Stanford’s existence which only comes into the show many episodes after). 

His personality is also very enjoyable to watch as he’s very immature and crazy - but at the same time makes very serious threats (ones that would be unexpected from a children’s cartoon). His strange and creative actions can only be described as ‘weird’ for example when he removes all the teeth from a deer’s mouth to give to Gideon, which is unusually creepy - and another reason he’s such an amusing character. However, while his actions are somewhat funny, he also threatens the kids, saying he’ll ‘make them into corpses’ and disassemble their molecules. He also stabs forks into his arms and exclaims that ‘pain is hilarious’ during points in the show- thus displaying the more non serious and childlike side of his personality. His voice is also really unique and high pitched- but also changes to a much deeper and villainous voice when he’s angry which is a really nice detail in my opinion. 

Unlike Venom, Bill has no morals or care for anything but himself- using people and animals as his literal puppets.

His entrances in the show are also really cool - during one scene the moon is revealed to actually be his eye, which his triangular body then forms around. He also appears from a variety of triangle shaped objects such as Dipper’s window.

Why do we need monsters culturally?

Monsters are present in all kinds of media including films, games and books, and are often an embodiment of our fears in some way shape or form. Hyde, for example is a monster who is the embodiment of the Victorian anxiety that people had a hidden side to them. I think there are many different reasons why we like having monsters in our literature and stories.

One of the reasons that monsters are created is so that people feel they have ‘an explanation’ for the things that happen to them- since we feel the need to know why things happen - and when we don’t know, we start to theorise. Furthering this, we want something that we can hate - so creating a monster is the perfect way to achieve this as it collectively unites humans. 

I think that people create monsters also as they want to believe that there are more things in the world that are yet to be discovered. It makes the world a lot more interesting if you believe in conspiracy theories about Moth-man or Bigfoot. 

Also, we like being scared - we like reading about monsters because they terrify but also really intrigue us, and are a lot more interesting than anything else going on in our lives. Reading about a monster in a book horrifies you but in a fascinating way- in that you don’t want to put the book down and instead want to know the grim fate of Dracula’s victim, for example. 

Monsters also make stories a lot more interesting- without them there is no challenge or goal, or quest for the hero to defeat.

[supercultshow]

Howdy all you Supercultists out there on the interwebz! I’m Bad Movie Professor Cameron Coker (BS in “Bat Nipples” with a minor in “Ice Puns”) and I’ll be posting my hype-tacular speeches every week along with some long lost speeches from past Supercult Shows!

This week winter has come at last to Supercult in the form of one of the greatest cinematic blunders in all of history: Batman and Robin!

Batman and Robin are back in the fourth film in the Batman superhero series and the second film in the series directed by Joel Schumacher. George Clooney stars as Bruce Wayne/Batman while Chris O’Donnell and Michael Gough return as Dick Grayson/Robin and Alfred Pennyworth, respectively. The dynamic duo are back to protect Gotham City from villainy, but when the cold-hearted Mr. Freeze and the enticingly toxic Poison Ivy attack tensions rise between the two heroes. Can the Dark Knight and the Boy Wonder resolve their differences and save the city from certain destruction? Strength Now. Courage Always. Family, Above All. Batman & Robin!

As of 2019, this is the first and only appearance of Batgirl in a live-action Batman feature film.

According to a makeup artist, Arnold had potentially deadly costume effects. The battery for the LED lights in his mouth would start to dissolve in his saliva and leak battery acid into his mouth.

“Curses!” -an actual line from this already silly film.

Michael Gough: one of the only person to survive all 4 original Batman films (the other being Pat Hingle who played Commissioner Gordon). What a bad ass.

Someone please tell me how all these diamonds somehow combine into a fuel source for a freeze laser.

George Clooney and his stunt doubles went through 50 rubber Batsuits.

After the film’s negative reception, plans for Tim Burton’s “Superman Lives” have been shut down. The movie would’ve been a first attempt to have a shared universe between Batman and Superman, with George Clooney reprising his role as Batman, and with Nicolas Cage as Superman.

Is this a miniature? Is this an overly indulgent set? Does the audience care?? Do the ACTORS??

You want to have plants take over the earth and I want to freeze the planet. Sounds like we should work together!

Two Words: Bat Nips.

This gang is apparently called the Golums, but we all know they’re really called the ‘We Love Neon and Blacklight Club’.

The Batman costume was a 50 lbs. (22.6 kg.) rubber body suit with a 40 lb. rubber cape attached to the headpiece. Batgirl’s and Robin’s costumes weighed 50 lbs each. Mr. Freeze’s weighed 75 lbs.

Oh Bane…it would take 15 years before films did you justice.

I mean, yeah, this movie is bad. But Arnold looks pretty snazzy in his polar bear slippers.

Did we mention that Coolio is in this film? Well…he is. It doesn’t make the film any better or worse. It’s just…a thing that is.

From the opening frames of this film you know it’s going to be a treat. The foam latex laden suit-up scene seems to linger just a bit too long on expertly modeled bird buttocks, bat nipples, and caped crusader cod pieces. The opening would fit just as well in a high-budget Batman burlesque show. Oh, how optimistic the 90s were. The original Batman directed by Tim Burton seemed like such a long shot and paid off spectacularly. Burton discarded the camp of the 1960s Adam West TV series and adapted the atmospheric gothic noir of the 1940s…which is apparently an era when Batman couldn’t turn his head and has no problem with just straight up murdering people. Tim Burton’s version of batman was so iconic that it defined the tone, color, music, and even dialogue choices for the entire character for the next 2 decades. The next three sequels, Batman Returns and Batman Forever, stuck to the formula of the 1989 original for the most part. In each the level of camp was slowly cranked up:

Batman Returns: Let’s take up half the Warner Brothers lot with expansive water-filled Gotham City sets! Let’s focus even more on the villains and really hammer home the tragedy and the childhood pain festering into megalomania! Not only that, let’s have TWO villains instead of just one! Let’s get a combination of real penguins, actors in fiberglass penguin suits, and puppets for the villain’s evil missile-toting penguin army! DID I MENTION THE PENGUIN ARMY??

Batman Forever: They liked the two-villain thing, so let’s do that again. We’ll get another two actors at the top of their game to play ridiculous, over-the-top, gothic cartoon characters! Let’s go with Tommy Lee Jones, still riding off the high of his starring role in the Fugitive, and then Jim Carrey at his comedic height just a year after the release of not one but three of his most iconic films: Ace Ventura: Pet Detective, The Mask, and Dumb and Dumber! Oh yeah and let’s swap out the director, the lead, the love interest, and paint the whole film in neon. These things aren’t meant to be dark, gritty, adult films! They’re comic book films for god’s sakes! We gotta sell toys to kids!

But here’s the thing Supercultists: If you’re going to be this campy you have to be either funny or endearing. Carrey carried Batman Forever and killed it as a genuinely funny and threatening adaptation of the Riddler. Danny DeVito, in his own gruesome way, made us feel for a Batman villain in a way that the batman animated series later sought to emulate with their reimagining of Mr. Freeze and the creation of Harley Quinn.

So, what happened? Was it overindulgence? Sure, scenes are campier and there are now not 2 but 3 villains: Mr. Freeze, Poison Ivy, and a neutered version of Bane who serves as a glorified mook for Ivy. Perhaps the concept of pushing the art style even further strained the bounds of reality? Sure, Gotham was larger than life in 19889, but the 1997 version has gigantic futurist statues holding up the buildings as if Gotham was constructed on the corpses of a race of colossi. Perhaps the film lost some of the comedic charm of its predecessors. At last count Mr. Freeze utters something like 27 ice puns throughout the film and at times it can be difficult to discern whether or not the film is being ridiculous on purpose. The opening fight scene looks like Batman on Ice with the heroes literally clicking their heels together to activate ice skate boots.

Perhaps the problem is higher up than that… Was it the studio pressure to make the film more “toyetic”? The film’s design seems catered to the toy market with every character having a wacky light-up vehicle, set piece, or gadget that could function as an action figure. Batman’s new car features a transparent hood so that audiences can see the colorful spinning bat-engine as if hypnotizing children and adults alike into emptying their wallets at the nearest department store this Christmas. For crying out loud Poison Ivy even has a line “I’m a lover, not a fighter That’s why every Poison Ivy action figure comes complete with him!” *points to Bane* Perhaps it was simply cost? In their bid to get even more top-billed Hollywood names for the latest and greatest (read: only, unless you count things like Spawn) comic book film, Arnold Schwarzenegger was reputed to have earned $25 million for his approximate 25 minute on-screen role as Mr. Freeze, basically a million a minute. Not to mention Uma Thurman, the poster girl for Pulp Fiction, and the, at the time, up and coming George Clooney.

The whole film cost an estimated $125 million and was a modest commercial success but was a spectacular critical flop. With a 3.7 on IMDB and an 11% on Rotten Tomatoes, it’s no surprise that the film killed the batman film series and nearly killed the entire superhero film genre. The film was voted #1 in Empire magazine’s “50 Worst Movies Ever”, #5 in Entertainment Weekly’s Top 25 Worst Sequels Ever Made, and won a Razzie Award for Worst Supporting Actress for Alicia Silverstone as Batgirl (as well as 10 other Razzie nominations for everything from Worst Picture and Worst Director to Worst Screen Couple and Worst Original Song). Not Joel Schumacher or George Clooney defend the film anymore. When filming was over, George Clooney reportedly quipped, “I think we just killed the series.” He’s even been known to refund people who saw the film and has called the film a “waste of money” in spite of his admittance that it was the biggest break he ever had as a then TV star making the jump to Hollywood.

But we here at Supercult know it’s not the worst film (we’ve seen A LOT worse). At the very least it’s entertaining at times, hilarious at others, and always a feast for the eyes. Even now we can see the 90s superhero film influence on modern pop culture. The next few superhero films such as Sam Rami’s Spider-Man series still attempted to recreate the earnest wackiness of Tim Burton’s series while attempting to avoid the cautionary tale of Batman and Robin. Grittier remakes of batman still pay homage to Tim Burton’s Batman in their aesthetics, their music, and their tone.

Batman and Robin may be the worst batman film ever, but that makes it the best Supercult Batman film ever, bat nipples and all.

This is why Superman works alone! The Supercult show is proud to present Batman and Robin!

    Batman & Robin Howdy all you Supercultists out there on the interwebz! I’m Bad Movie Professor Cameron Coker (BS in “Bat Nipples” with a minor in “Ice Puns”) and I’ll be posting my hype-tacular speeches every week along with some long lost speeches from past Supercult Shows!

[fablemantra-blog]

Dust and Candle, Fear and Sin

The ideas behind the story sequence and concept, “Bizarre Fables.”

There is a long European tradition in story-telling for the linked ‘circumstance sequence’, and through such a sequence human nature, and in particular the timeless elements of human nature, are put under the spotlight. Typically, and traditionally, there will be morality tales alongside fabliau: the apparently sacred competing for attention with the apparently profane.

Whether or not ‘circumstance sequences’ are old or more contemporary, including in the present day, it is my contention that they tend to arise whenever there is a perceived shift in the foundations of society: as if the swopping of stories is a means of emphasising timeless human nature in the face of change.

Individual tales in such a collection of stories may be uplifting or elevating, or they may merely make the reader or listener smile. A good example of the circumstance sequence would be Chaucer’s “Canterbury Tales”, (1) of the fourteenth century, and also Boccaccio’s “Decameron” (2), also from the fourteenth century.

Famously, the circumstance of the Chaucer sequence is a pilgrimage to Canterbury. The structure is a literary conceit, because while it may reflect the make-up of Chaucerian society, across the many and varied classes of the late medieval period, the work may not entirely reflect an entirely probable social arrangement. The people riding along the road to Canterbury may well have kept themselves to themselves. Social distinctions and barriers were likely to have been observed, in actual life.

This case is made well by the scholar F.N. Robinson, in his introduction to his own edition of the Tales (3) (Robinson, 1979). He wrote: “Whatever the reason for its adoption, the device of the pilgrimage is one of the happiest ever employed in a collection of stories. It afforded Chaucer an opportunity to bring together a representative group of various classes of society, united by a common religious purpose, yet not so dominated by that purpose as to be unable to give themselves over to enjoyment.”

But Robinson adds: “Whether such a company would ever have mingled as Chaucer’s pilgrims do, or would have entered upon such a round of story-telling, it is idle to discuss, and as idle as to question whether or not the speakers could have been heard from horseback on the road. Literal truth of fact the Canterbury Tales obviously do not represent.”

The circumstance of a linked story sequence, then, has only to be convincing enough to generate acceptance among the reader or the listener. It must not seem so improbable as to raise objections. This can also be seen with Boccaccio’s Decameron ( circa 1348  to 1352), a collection of one hundred stories, told by young ten Italian nobles, who are escaping the ravages of The Black Death. We do not have to accept that Boccaccio had any contemporaries in mind and, in any case, real-life plaque survivors would probably have more on their minds that swopping stories. However, the literary conceit is not really questioned, and it is effective.

The Black Death also adds an eschatological note to The Canterbury Tales, – the threat of plaque was a fact of fact of life for both Chaucer and Boccaccio.  

Eschatology is defined by the online Merriam-Webster Dictionary (4) as “a branch of theology concerned with the final events in the history of the world or of humankind, or a belief concerning death, the end of the world, or the ultimate destiny of humankind; specifically :  any of various Christian doctrines concerning the Second Coming, the resurrection of the dead, or the Last Judgment”.

It is originally, then, a Christian world view with a global application: namely that the “last days” are near and the world will end. The order of society will break down and, perhaps, high and low will even speak to each other and swop tales on the road to Canterbury. The element of eschatology in The Canterbury Tales has not been missed by scholars of Chaucer.

Ronald B. Herzman and Richard Kenneth Emmerson in their study, “The Canterbury Tales in Eschatological Perspective” (5) (1988) say of the Pardoner’s Tale: “The rioters are representative of moral decline often associated by chroniclers with the plaque and destruction.”

The three rioters set out to kill Death under a tree but find only gold, which is death in disguise. Through their own individual bad faith, all three will die.

And what about Death when he is not in disguise? Chaucer portrays him as an old man who directs the rioters to the tree and so deceives them.

The old man is a very old man indeed; he’s almost decomposing before the rioters’ eyes:

“Lo, how I vanish – flesh, and blood, and skin…

Alas, whan shall my bones been at reste?” (6)

 Earlier, however, when Death is described in the tavern, the link between him and plague is made, unmistakably –

 He hath a thousand slain this pestilence….” (7)

Elsewhere in art, there is a strong, unflinching focus on death in the fourteenth century, following the Black Death. This focus is evident in the emergence of so-called cadaver monuments, where the human body is shown in states of decay, bringing to mind again Chaucer’s description of the old man, in the Pardoner’s Tale.

Robert S. Gottfried in his 2010 work, “The Black Death” (8) writes: “Funerary monuments were comparatively scarce before the Black Death. After the plaque…their themes changed. Many brasses showed shrouded, macabre corpses or skeletons with snakes and serpents surrounding and protruding from their bones; on their faces were grisly toothy smiles.”

There is a stone cadaver monument in Tewkesbury Abbey, and it was erected by Abbot Wakeman for himself. It is rather late for a cadaver monument, dating to 1539, but it remains a powerful if chilling commentary on the vanity of human hopes and ambition. This particular monument inspired the Peterloo poet, Gary Bills, to write “A Medieval Monk Has Doubts” for his 2001 collection, “The Echo and the Breath”(9).

Bills in this poem emphasises the loss of faith that must inspire such a monument; it is a loss of faith in the value of material human existence, when the body must come to such a state; and the image of decay must, invariably, raise doubt that personality can survive physical death  .

Bills writes:

“You see how well one mason caught decay?

Fat vermin, on thin limbs, appear to sway

Aggressively, or cower at our tread.

I feel the lobworm slide across my skin,

The viper on my brow. No godly spell

Can raise a man so broken; and the smell

Is breathed, of dust and candle, fear and sin….”

 And with a nod to material human existence, Bills goes on to praise:

 “…Those pleasures we adore, and never too much:

Communal food and wine; the sudden mirth

That makes the best of us…”

 That phrase, “the sudden mirth/That makes the best of us…” could serve as a timely reminder that Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, however eschatological some of them may be, are also replete with amusing anecdotes, for that the journey to Canterbury is hardy a sojourn through a vale of tears.

My project concerns another story sequence, “Bizarre Fables”, of which I was the co-plotter and illustrator. My husband, Gary Bills, wrote those stories.

At present, although there is a general medieval or Renaissance atmosphere to the tales, there is no linking theme – no one circumstance to explain why the stories should run together. In this sense, the sequence is incomplete.

There are currently nine tales but there could be more. That is down to Gary Bills. Part of my involvement at this stage, however, is to search for the credible circumstance that will turn a collection of stories into a viable circumstance sequence. Chaucer had the pilgrimage and Boccaccio had the Black Death in Florence. I recognise that the link between our stories needs to be more contemporary, and I will use, to some extent, Millennium consciousness to form that link.

Many of the stories were created just prior to the turn of the Millennium, when the mood, at least to judge from some books and media reports, was certainly eschatological.

The so-called - and heavily prophesied- Millennium Bug was talked about in near-apocalyptic terms.

The author Michael S. Hyatt in “The Millennium Bug: How to Survive the Coming Chaos” (10)  wrote: “The Millennium Bug is a sort of digital time tomb. When the clock strikes midnight on January 1, computer systems all over the world will begin spewing out bad date – or stop working altogether. The result is going to be a billion times worse than the worst computer crash you have ever experienced.”  

Then there was a Nostradamus prophecy to worry about, that:

“In the year 1999, in the seventh month, from the sky will come the great King of Terror….” (11)

While most rational people were surely not expecting the end of the world, the chance to see a full solar eclipse in August 1999 seemed to add to an end of Millennium feeling that this was indeed a time of great change.

I saw that full eclipse with my husband, in Romania, and the strangeness of the experience fed into the first of the Bizarre Fables, “The Blanket of the Moon”, which is the story of a lasting eclipse which allows the selfish dead to rise again. They are walking cadaver monuments, draining hope from the living, in a topsy-turvy world where dark is light.

I propose, however, that the linked sequence will begin and end with the figure of “Grandma”. She too was inspired by our experience of Romania in that she represents traditional folk values. She tells fortunes, she inspires music, she heals with herbs and she is wise. She is the antithesis of the mechanised and digital world, and that is why, for my promotional material to generate publishing and production interest in the Bizarre Fables, I plan to represent her in puppet form, including shadow puppetry, which will be photographed. She will be an illustrated figure, including on the front cover, which I am designing.

Grandma lives in a scary, invaded world where soldiers can arrive out of the blue and kill. Therefore, I see her as a contemporary figure, and she is a challenged figure. She possesses a natural sensibility in a world where, more and more, human existence seems to be unnatural; when dogma and doctrine often replace compassion.

Post 9/11, the world has certainly changed, with a sense, perhaps, that the old order and its securities are slowly falling away. In such as challenged world, Grandma’s voice deserves to be heard. It is my task to make that happen.

Heather Bills-Geddes.

   References: numbered in the order they appear.

1.       Robinson, F.N. (1979). The Complete Works of Geoffrey Chaucer. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

2.       McWilliam, G.H. (editor) (2003). The Decameron by Giovanni Boccaccio.London: Penguin Classics.

3.       Robinson, F.N. (editor) (1979). The Complete Works of Geoffrey Chaucer. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Page 2, preface.

4.       Merriam-Webster Dictionary (2016) - http://www.merriam-webster.com/

5.       Ronald B. Herzman, Ronald B and Emmerson, Richard Kenneth (1988). The Canterbury Tales in Eschatological Perspective. Leuven: Leuven University Press. Page 402.

6.       Chaucer, G. (1996). The Canterbury Tales. London: Penguin Popular Classics. Page 325. Line 404.

7.       Chaucer, G. (1996). The Canterbury Tales. London: Penguin Popular Classics. Page 323. Line 351.

8.       Robert S. Gottfried, Robert S. (2010). The Black Death. London: Simon and Schuster. Page 90.

9.       Bills, G. (2001). The Echo and the Breath. Calstock: Peterloo Poets. Page 65.

10.    Hyatt, Michael S. (1998). The Millennium Bug: How to Survive the Coming Chaos. Washington: Regnery Publishing. Page 1. Preface,

11. The Nostradamus Society of America – online translation, Quatrain 10-72 - -

http://www.nostradamususa.com/911prophecy.html–