#to top this off he became a vampire... while a part of a vampire-killing cult | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

sundarika · 3 years ago

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headcanon in two parts, sorry. Ask does not miss it. 1.1 Oh, you know the insecticons from the tfp? Can I have a headcanon where a S/O person is on friendly terms with insecticons?

[TF PRIME] S/O Is Friends With The Insecticons

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* [S/O] meets them by accident quite a bit before the events of the Energon Eaters. Arachnid is still “leader” of the Insecticons by technicality as the only available ‘Queen’ for the hive-mind, however she never really patrols the area or takes care of the hive as she should, rather choosing to wander as a free mind, disobeying orders from everybody.

* You had stumbled upon the hive while taking a short walk along the side of the Jasper highway, leading out of town and to an old coal mine you liked to inhabit on your days off work. A home-away-from-home of sorts, it brought you peace of mind to have a quiet place.

* At least you thought it was a quiet, desolate area until you broke through a thinning in the rock floor of the entry shaft and ended up crashing an Insecticon tea-party.

*It was a rather awkward fall, and it had injured your hip joint on the way down, leaving you temporarily paralyzed in throbbing pains and nerve damage.

* The giant bug-like robots and their shiny, metal wingspans immediately armed themselves and aimed at the shifting dust and rockfall, growling and chittering in a language of some sort, unknown to you.

* “Is it one of those ugly-faced Decepticons ploys again?”

* “It’s too small and squishy, much sooner to be a predacons’ chew toy than any weapon.”

* You looked super confused, absolutely stupefied, completely duped, utterly incomprehensible, awkwardly awed, amazingly idiotic, a-

* Their manner of speech and vocal patterns was practically lost on you. You could pick up remnants of a language similar to broken [language], but really nothing else. In an attempt to make contact with the metallic giants to gain help, you enabled your parroting capabilities.

* Humans have the stunning ability to mimic sounds and specific noise frequencies, at levels other earthen animals, especially mammals, cannot. Using this ability, you managed to copycat the grinding and chattering noises coming from the vocal mass of bug-bots.

* [S/O]: “¿Krrt-grrut vvurrr chechch?”

* Hardshell: “¿Buzzzz vert-tet-brrrz, Erreech?”

* [S/O]: “¿Erreech?”

* Hardshell: “¡VRREE BUZZZ-EECH CLICKLICKIK!”

* The contact went well, unbeknownst to you, and the successful communication meant that you might actually have a chance at escape, or finding a hospital!

* Congrats! You are now [Tiny Bug Child]! You have no idea what they were speaking about, unaware that they were contemplating how to execute you, but you successfully managed to evade death by being cute and cuddly! People say curiosity killed the cat, but it evidently saves the naive human-who-fell-into-an-insect-cult-meeting!

* Hardshell, the Insecticon you nearly landed on top of, begins to lift you out of the rubble, and place you down upon a makeshift stone table, partially destroyed by the collapse. The others—including Wingflap, Bombshell, Shrapnel, Blockhead, and Kickback—gather closely around you, cooing and chirping in their weird language again.

* This was, evidently, how you became the new Queen of the hive, though you didn’t know it, and managed to befriend your way through the entire enclosed community and worm into the spark of every Insecticon, though they were very few in number.

* You made easy friends with Bombshell, and remained close with him up until his untimely death by Bulkheads hammer fist. He would often lay atop the Jasper cliffside with you, and make out shapes in the clouds, constellations in the stars—regaling to you tales of the Old Cybertron, when his own kind weren’t so despised, and were respected as viable assets and allies amongst those with forms like and unlike their own—until the Autobot Elitists ensured they were seen as ugly and malformed, made to hide away in the shadows and step away from society for ‘the greater good’.

* It’s how you came to hate the Autobots—and Decepticons—for all they had done, to their planet and yours, and to your friends as well.

* Your mimicry slowly turned into actual speech patterns and recognition. Repetitive sound signals were a key portion of Archaic Insecticon speech, which made it easy to recognize simple words or phrases, each indicated by a set of whirs, clicks, or beeps.

* Now that you could actively communicate with most of the hive, it was far easier to make friends with even the hardiest of bots.

* Hardshell, of course, was tough to crack. At your constant insistance, he spoke with you once or twice, and made sure to acknowledge your presence when in the room, as well as save you a seat at the underground pub every other weekend. It wasn’t actually a pub per-say, rather a dugout chamber with smooth walls and some stone slabs insert for seating, where the cons enjoyed engex they could sneak off the Nemesis from time-to-time.

* After awhile, he warms up to you, welcoming you back to the hive every day after work, standing alongside his multiple siblings, and pushing others aside to get to hold you first.

* Meanwhile this all happens, they still don’t know what a human is. Their simple understanding of earth comes only from what they’ve seen on the highway from the cliffside, or from video footage of the Autobot pests on the Nemesis. Due to their bulky size and noisiness, they’re banned from most human-inhabited areas.

* Don’t doubt that some of them have attempted to follow their [S/O] home. They have. And some of them won’t stop trying. It’s been more than one awkward encounter between you and some teens to get them to realize they could get you in trouble.

* You all eat [dessert] together sometimes, made with energon supplements for ‘The Boys™️’, with some good ol’ 25-something-kg of sugar mixed in.

* The boys were worried when you didn’t show up for a week due to hospitalization via severe food poisoning medical coma.

* When Arachnid finally returned to Earth, and her fight against Arcee had proceeded about as well as expected, she located the hive and proceeded to force them to engage in business with Megatron. She believed that by implementing her own soldiers amongst the ranks, she’d be better equipped to backstab Megatron when the time came.

* She was undoubtably surprised when Hardshell and some others adamantly refused to take part in her plans at first, until she enforced their compliance through the hive-mind.

*When she learned of your existence, and the very gauge of your importance to her former hive, she came at you with full force.

*The Insecticons were fully unprepared to deal with a fight between their small [S/O] and an extremely angry ex-Queen. In refute, they returned you to the surface without so much as a goodbye, and begged you to escape before Arachnid scented you out.

* It was soon after these events that you learned of Breakdown’s death, Bulkhead’s coma, and Bombshell’s demise due to the combined effects of a substance called Tox-En and injuries sustained during his battle with Bulkhead. It broke you inside to learn there was nothing you could have done to help, but you refused to disobey their pleas to stay away for awhile.

* At the hive, Arachnid rules supreme. Being able to control the hive-mind was a feat a human was incapable of achieving, only Cybertronians able to easily access the imbedded chain of command.

* Hardshell mourned the loss of a true friend—a small, squishy human—but a friend nonetheless.

* Wingflap and Kickback went through a collection of memories you’d left behind with them. Pictures and small objects gifted over the years, a small treasure trove of important parts of their lives, now without you in them.

* Shrapnel stims a lot more now, and has nervous tics that he believes are the result of the loss of his dear friend. He knows you aren’t dead, least not yet, but he knows that you’ll likely never come back.

* Blockhead, as dumb as everybody thinks he is, is actually very emotionally intelligent. He has a way with words he barely understands, and [S/O] acted as a big support for someone like him. Without them now, he can no longer function like normal, and now has nobody left to talk to.

* Arachnid could care less. She absolutely despises [S/O], and would smite them for all she cares. You matter little to her, and only worry her for the loyalty and capacity of her troops.

* It isn’t until the Energon Eaters appear that everything turns completely south.

* [S/O] finally builds up enough courage to march themselves back down to the mine, and demand to meet Arachnid face-to-faceplate.

* The desert is hot, Nevada is hotter, and the trek down the highway seems endless and tedious. You pass by 5 interstate signs on your way to the hive, and count the steps it takes to reach the entrance, parched by the time you make it there.

* In all your sweaty glory, you, [S/O], make your way down the carved pathway into the mineshaft, dark and cramped—just as you left it.

* But everything is exactly as it was left, not an item out of place. The entire hive was empty, including of those you cared about. Their rooms are full of memories, and their energon cubes still lie in a corner, collecting dust and grime.

* The search seems profitable, yet it leaves you with nothing, and the emptiness of the hive echoes around you, and in all the chambers, through the cavern walls of every room.

* You know they’re gone, that they have left without you, and without so much as a simple passing note.

* Perhaps someday you’d find them, hiding away in another Jasper mine, but you never would.

* In their haze of a hive mind, they barely even remember the face of the human they left behind. A long line across the moon—stretching on for miles—and a vampire on a false throne, draining the lifeblood from their veins, and the image of [S/O] from their minds.

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✨ Hope you enjoyed ✨

#writing #transformers x reader #transformers imagine #transformers headcanon #tfp insecticons #transformers #transformers prime #tfp decepticons #x reader #tfp #insecticons #platonic reader

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ashes-in-a-jar · 4 years ago

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Tma relisten Episodes 6-10

(Still really long)

Alot of really important details that are going to be very relevant later on. Very facinating how early on you find these out. Relistens are good.

Episode 6 squirm

It's a good thing tma doesn't do much of sexual encounters and their connection to entities. While I'm sure that's a thing that in any realistic universe would exist avoiding it was a good choice. This statement was *shudder*

Interesting that she had no visible mark on her. Also being repulsed by police stations because the sectioned officers could have helped.

Naked in the streets after lighting his apartment on fire. What an image.

So technically the worms were in the archives 3 times: when Jane made her first statement, when Timothy hodge made his and when Jane attacked. The worms are very familiar with the magnus institute.

"This story is concerning. Not because of Mr. Hodge’s experience, although I’m sure it was very upsetting." ace Jon talking very technical about "experiences"

" though obviously it’s a tragic loss of life, etcetera, etcetera." Jon being Jon.

Ecdc are aware of Jane and corruption typical attacks which is off the bat interesting world building.

He's skeptic here because of lack of evidence but does admit the existence of a threat in Jane Prentiss

Also! He knows of her from before probably when he was a researcher. This confused me on first listen because I was trying to remember if she was ever mentioned before this. But she wasn't.

Episode 7 the piper

Wilfred kind of sounds like martin in some way but maybe it's just me assigning poetry to anyone like him.

But he hated apathy which might be very Martin like

Gentle sadness and creeping fear from the music. For violence of war... Is that what it means to immortalize it?

It's really cool that the concept of music in this podcast is associated specifically with war and unwarranted violence. There's a very strong statement in there somewhere that needs to be explored.

God this statement was intense. Lying for such a long time in that trench surrounded by violent death. But what's most interesting is that this statement doesn't feel like a supernatural one and yet... The piper was with Wilfred throughout the various battles and bouts of violence until the moment it was officially over. But in a very subtle way.

The description of the piper is really intense with the 3 faces. I think I missed it the first time but hearing that representation of war and fear is something I'm going to look for in artistic depictions now.

Wait. Who is Joseph Rayner? I know of Maxwell but never heard of Joseph.a victim instead of Wilfred? Collaborator with the Slaughter? Hmmm

I wonder how Accidental it was that the statement from 1922 was filed in the 2000s. Maybe to show that the piper never really leaves and the war never really ends. Ever.

Episode 8 burned out

Wow Hilltop Road already! I forgot how many of the first episodes were so important to the plot later on.

"That side of the road backed onto South Park with fences marking the bottom of each garden." this is wrong btw. Hilltop Road in Oxford does not run along Sount Park but is perpendicular to it, meeting it in the corner with Divinity Road which meets with Morrell Avenue which is the road running along South Park. Just FYI because I had to look this up to get a good picture. But I guess Morrell doesn't sound as exciting as Hilltop (which isn't even at the top of the hill smh)

Ivo lensik describes Raymond fielding as white which makes me automatically think he is not. Just a thought that popped in my mind.

Huh. His family had a history of schizophrenia. And his dad was obsessed with fractals. Being followed by The spiral (all the bones are in his hands) was also part of this story really interesting.

Agnes had mousy brown hair and looked like Raymond! Not red hair ( at least at first) like I pictured. Also she was a hell of a creepy child...

So did he time travel? Seeing the moments of Raymond's end? Seems like time doesn't work right in that place anyway.

Web person being devout church goer is also an interesting touch

Father Edwin Burroughs! I forgot he was here too! The knock reminded me of Mr Spider *shiver*

The priest explaining that the church exorcized demons but what not decisive if ghosts exist was hilarious. Jon dismisses paranormal but asks Martin if he's a ghost is opposite of the church.

Hmmm the web pushing him to cut the tree to uncover box from antique table...

Apple full of spiders ugh. Maybe something web was trapped in there by Desolation and ivo managed free it as Agnes was dying.

"We cannot prove any connection, but Martin unearthed a report on an Agnes Montague, who was found dead in her Sheffield flat on the evening of November 23rd 2006, the same day Mr. Lensik claims to have uprooted the tree." wow that's an obscure thing to find well done Martin!

Jon still looks for credence for this story despite the schizophrenia that could leave him skeptical.

"while I trust Mr. Lensik’s testimony of his own experiences about as far as I can throw a bleeding tree," again Jon with his special brand of jokes.

Episode 9 a Father's love

The Montauk's story! I always thought their family had one of the most tragic ones. The hunt is a really cruel patron with its forced hunger and having other entities use them as tools.

Julia telling the truth of the story to the Magnus Institute instead of the police is also heartbreaking. How desperate and alone she must have felt drowned in that awful literally unbelievable story. The magnus institute feeds off of those people too.

So many of the hunt end up in police it's just... Such a strong statement against that establishment. What do we do to make that less of a horrible, unjust, all consuming system? That feeds on the hunger of some and the abject fear of others? And it doesn't have to be supernatural. It's interesting how season five, of all seasons, is the one that gave us that perspective. The non supernatural one on the subject while the world itself is so far away from the natural. God everything about this idea is so heavy and painful.

I kind of hate Julia's fate because of her background and how much alot of its beginning was out of her control. It's like Daisy. The hunt can never be forgiven no matter how compulsive it is.

The dark that took her mother turned her into part of it? Like the dark liquid?

A dark room to develop his photos of his victims huh? A play on words here.

Oooh they put a heartbeats in the soundscape really cool actually.

So Montauk killed other dark members that tried to leave? For the ritual? Like Julia's mother?

The hunt compelled him to keep the hearts as trophies? which is very self destructive of the hunt to do. Or is it part of the dark ritual with the sacrifices that the heart had to be kept?

I think Montauk was trying to slow down the ritual as revenge that night, rendering the sacrifices he helped create useless. Which is why pitch came after them that night and dissappeared once Montauk finished his ritual.

Sourcing the Serial killer enthusiast community. Love that the archives use whatever source of info they can access.

So Maxwell dissappeared in 1994 from public eye land yet the cult kept working towards a ritual. But now in secret? Their timeline always confused me.

Episode 10 vampire killer

I never noticed Trevor came right after Julia! Oooh this is so much connecting the dots so early on!

Vampires are so disturbing here makes you ever wonder how the hell media like twilight were ever created. But hehe the monster ****er community has always been a vibrant one. Not these vampires tho.

Trevor is so sassy I love his statements. Like Julia it really makes me sad how consumed he became at the end and how awful his death was. Once again the tragedy of the Hunt.

"I taught myself to read, I read as much on the subject as I could, and it isn’t covered often or clearly in those books I have found." can you imagine what kinds of books he might have found during the sexy vampire Era? This is a hilarious picture to paint.

So vampires feed off of blood and not fear which is an interesting creature to have in this kind of universe. Although hunters are also like that but there is still alot of fear and awareness involved with that while the vampires try to conceal themselves until the last moment.

There's alot of mosquito imagery in these vampires which is... Ugh

Also interesting how many time Trevor just uses the vampire's full name. Never shortened and never talked about in another title. Sylvia McDonald this Sylvia McDonald that. Also the other vampire. They always had a name that was psychicly imposed on the victims to be remembered fully. Very Stranger behavior.

Ahhhh the one vampire weakness... Drrrugs.

It's also very flammable which sets interesting precedence to setting unnatural things on fire to make them disappear.

Alard dupont comes in a later statement right? Yeah in 56

Martin was there when the statement was given which was 2010 and in 2016 he's 29 so he worked there for a while! At least since age 23 perhaps we'll find out even earlier. And he was still scared to be found under qualified after all this time! Oof...

I wonder how draining it is to give a statement that it kills someone who is sick.

The government is in on this! Looking for the teeth Trevor gave the institute... Somehow that strikes me as hilarious in the world building of this podcast. And it really leaves Jon no choice but to concede that there is something to the statement even if he refuses to use the term vampire like Trevor did so freely.

#Pfft i was so into this one i forgot to tag #Tma #jonathan sims #Tma hiatus liveblog #magnuspod #julia montauk #trevor herbert #Jane Prentiss #The magnus archives #hilltop road

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just-jammin · 4 years ago

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Pridedraft’s Journal: Hallar’s Entry

Word Count: 1126

Summary: Mardiane Pridedraft, a Half-Elf Sorcerer & owner of the Bamboo Observatory & Inn, is also part of the somewhat known group of the Nice Cloaks.

The problem is, she doesn’t feel like she belongs to this party of chaotic misfits.

(Or: The author is projecting their problems to their Dungeons & Dragons persona, as a hope to vent in this piece of writing.)

22 Hallar

Alrighty then.

As usual, The Nice Ship’s been out to sea for months now. Training with the Crew has been going pretty well. Valakhad, however, got shoved off from his position of Captain, with Tyfl himself usurping to the position. I’m not sure what Val does now, unfortunately.

(note to self: please pay attention to Crew meetings more; take note of important things & tasks in journal.)

Since the last time I wrote in here (‘cause let’s face it: writing everyday for a few months ain’t practical), a few crewmates have been killed as a result of an encounter with... a few vampires, for some reason. Most notably Damien, our former... who even cares. Anyway, he got his organs sucked out by one of them, which, well, sucked. But even then, he was the laughing stock of the Crew, so at least the Gods gave him mercy from his peers, I think.

Another event that has happened is that Nisha, our Tiefling Illusionist, left the Nice Cloaks. You see, we’re heading towards the Desert from the city of Elveros, which happens to be her hometown. There was some conflict happening over there, with a new guy ruling with a bunch of cult members at his side, & buildings getting burnt down. That included the library that Nisha co-owned with some friends, much to her dismay.

And the guy who has the whole city in his hand? Apparently it was Errian Winmert (the Dickhead), someone who she didn’t like, at all. Basically, he was a not-so-little shithead who wanted to bend reality with this stick he got from the cult members.

Thankfully, with the help of a rebellion just outside of town, we defeated all of them & destroyed the stick. It was after that when Nisha Mooncrown decided to stay in the city, helping with the repairs first.

She was replaced (I think) with another Tiefling, Levantra Greybolt. She was hired to train the crewmates to fight with swords, right after the enforcement of an Anti-Rapier Policy.

So yeah, that happened.

Now we’re going where we’re going because there’s a known portal to the Fire Plane, where Val was originally from. Not sure why we’re going there though. Stupid memory...

Ok, part of the reason why I didn’t write in this journal for months is because no one wants to see me gushing out my feelings about... this. I get it. It’s my fucking journal. I know I can write about it here, but what’s the point? The Nice Cloaks has basically made it known that I’m the crazy person of the group. I kill children, I burn shit down, and I’m at the brink of insanity.

But here’s the thing: no one cares about why this is said.

Nobody wants the full details to set their minds to a certain behavior. I’m trying to defend myself with no one to back me up with, which is useless compared to how many people who agrees with them.

Look, I did accidentally drop Tyfl, a teenager, off a building in an attempt to get down from it. And he died. His death, for some reason, traumatized me enough that I went bonkers at the slightest mention of it, due to an overwhelming guilt that pooled inside of me. And what do you know, that was the reason why I burnt the shit out of another teenager. Who was associated with the place where Tyfl died.

What a fucking idiot I am.

And when Tyfl was resurrected, I, being the dumbass that I am, tried to attack him, making him unconscious in the process. Val knocked me out after that. All of that was because I wanted to take research on a bunch of feral gnomes in the Feywild.

Now hear me out, I like adventuring. I loved the idea of it, hoping that I would go out in the world someday to see whatever sights that I might confront. For the past few years, the closest thing to that was whatever happened at my stay in Tumblerun Tavern. The Chaos Party was very welcoming, teaching me the ropes of self-defense & others like that. I stuck with them for a while until Mme. Inkstain took me in.

But even then, both the Chaos Party & Mme. seemed kinda... boring. A bit too boring, in fact. Even though we had really memorable moments in time, we didn’t get around more. We all just stayed in one place, compared to who I’m with now.

The Nice Cloaks, however, are quite the opposite, in a way that I didn’t even expect that was possible. I mean, Tyfl became a powerful god-like being while being an old fucking woman named Barbara. How can anything else top that?!?

What I mean is that we went to a bunch of places (including the Feywild), but I couldn’t seem to... fit in.

Val’s a very cool caster from the Fire Plane of all places.

Nisha was a great asset to our group, being brave enough to balance our chaos with her sensibility.

Heck, Tyfl’s the guy who’s carrying the group, taking the most kills & making up plans that are crazy enough to just work.

And Lev, she’s pretty badass, to be honest. Casting with instruments is a very interesting concept, and I just like being intrigued with it.

Then there’s me.

Mardiane fucking Pridedraft.

I know I’m not the only normal person in this group, but I’m certainly feeling like I am. And at the same time, I feel like I am the worst person possible to be in this group. I don’t use my knowledge that I have gathered throughout the years. I’m never sure when to jump in, either with my spells or in melee. And I don’t even focus on important things whenever I need to.

Is it because I’m, y’know, stupid? Am I going to blame it on some shit that happened to me?

I mean, I did get really scared at one point of my stay in the Tavern. I remember that I didn’t go out for days, and when I did, I always avoided any contact with people. Well, I... wanted to stay with my closest friends (which they agreed to, yeah).

Ah, fuck. I’m too dependent on my own friends, am I?

Gee, no wonder why I feel so alone.

...

I’m useless.

No, I feel useless.

Even though I know I have power, of a Phoenix nonetheless, but I don’t seem to do anything outside of combat.

I just... want to go back to the Chaos that I’m used to. Go back home. But at the same time, I still want to roam around & explore the world.

Oh Gods, how do I do this?

- mardi

#mardi is a mess of a sorcerer #she doesn’t take any chances in case of failure #(i think; i am not sure about how i would do :p)#just writing some bullshit #that was stupid #idk anymore #friend support and boredom #fsnb

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datorchoe · 4 years ago

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TES Hero’s

Bruh I’ve never written this much in my life. This is a description of all my main TES ocs from ESO, Morrowind, Oblivion, Legends, Blades, and Skyrim. Read all under the cut :)

Vestige

Cahira Stegan - Breton, 21 years old, dark brown hair, dark brown eyes

- Cahira was born to a small family in a village called Krratch in western High Rock. Her family wasn’t able to take care of her so they married her off to the Kings son, Tan, when she was 14. She is a prodigy with a great sword, being the one of the strongest people in the village at only 16.

- She is 21 when ESO kicks off. Manimarco attacked Krratch and she gave her soul in turn that way he doesn’t decimate the village. She looses all memories when Manimarco takes her soul.

- Cahira is the strongest of all of the characters on this list. In addition to being a master great sword wielder, when she defeats Molag Bal, she keeps the Aedric powers she is given by the Amulet of Kings.

- After about a year of adventuring & training with her Aedric powers, she has fought and defeated about half of the Daedric Princes shes come across, including Molag Bal, Clavicus Vile, Vaermina & Mehrunes Dagon. After defeating so many Daedric Princes, Cahira absorbs a ton of Daedric energy, and becomes immortal.

- (One thing I did change lore-wise is that Darien doesn’t disappear for a while after Coldharbour so he travels with Cahira for quite a while.)

- Cahira is mother to 5 children. Her first child is named Garbashur. He is an orc that she adopted when she was 14 and living in Krratch. Her next child is a breton named Dynar Gautier, which she had with Darien. Sadly, he never got to meet his son, but after news of her pregnancy, she retired to Camlorn after General Gautier offered to help her raise Dynar. He is named after the Ayleid king from The Hollow City. Her next child is a half-breton half-redguard named Maya, who she bore with Merric at-Aswala who she married after 3 years in retirement. The next two children are half breton half orc half, well, Daedra. Agroh is the older child, and Motkh is the younger child of the Daedric Prince Malacath who Cahira consorts with after her and Merric divorce.

Nervarine

Montague Tesari - Altmer, 718 years old, gold skin, gold hair, green eyes.

- Montague was born in the Summerset Isles in the second era. His biological parents couldn’t take care of him, so they gave him to a family of Bretons living in the Isles, hence his name.

- Monatgue has very few responsibilities he actually cares about. His biggest priority is his son, Denken, who is a half-altmer half-dunmer. His ex wife, Neryn, divorced him 5 years after their son’s birth because he couldn’t keep a stable job. Despite his fathers absence, Denken has nothing but love for his father and vise versa. They sent letters between each other for years until Denken was old enough to go out on his own.

- Monatgue is a very powerful mage. Using mostly Daedric magic, Alteration magic, and Destruction magic. Montague trained with Divayth Fyr for three years after the events of Morrowind. But, it doesn’t last long since Divayth & Montague had a falling out. However, his strongest ability is the ability to commune with animals.

- After spending time with a Hircine cult, he developed a special connection with a lot of animals. This connection is one of the major reasons that Emperor Uriel Septim VII asked Montague to travel to Akavir. As a trusted blade of Uriel, Montague has a lot of political backing to his name. His strength is known and respected by many. This is another reason that Montague was asked to go to Akavir. However, Uriel Septim was assasinated before Montague could return to mainland Tamriel.

- He is still very much alive and kicking during the events of Skyrim. After Uriel Septim’s death, Montague returned to Cloud Ruler Temple to see what was happening. Montague teaches Risiki (HoK) blood magic to help her combat the Mythic Dawn. He also teaches Koraan (LDB) a new shout he learned on Akavir.

Hero of Kvatch

Risiki “R248″ Utherd - Nord, 30 years old, black hair, green eyes

- Risiki was part of an experiment by some scientists who operated out of a cave on the border of Skyrim & Cyrodil. One day when she was eight, she was awoken to the scientist being slaughtered. She runs from the cave and comes apon a small village in the Reach of Skyrim. The villagers turn her away, as she is covered in blood and will only repeat the phrase “R248″. She leaves to the outskirts of the village and meets a man named Urgmard Utherd. Urgmard takes her in and raises her.

- When Risiki was 25, a massive group of bandits comes and attacks the village, killing all of the patrons, including Urgmard. Risiki makes it her lifes work to hunt down and kill all of these bandits. After 5 years, she finally learns the location of the leader, who is posing as a citizen in the Imperial City. She enters the city and slays him once and for all. However, the guards catch her and throw her into prison. Thats how the events of Oblivion kick off.

- Risiki became involved with the Thieves Guild after hearing rumors of Mythic Dawn agents within. She quickly rose to the top and became the Grey Fox. However, after her retirement, she passed the Cowl on to Armand Christophe. She is also the Grand Champion of the Arena, going by the name “The Gatekeeper”

- Risiki’s main weapon is a battle axe, but she was also taught ice magic. After Montague returns from Akavir, he teaches her blood magic, which he believes will be helpful in the fight against the Mythic Dawn.

- Risiki becomes incredibly attached to Martin Septim, seeing as he becomes one of her only friends. Her and Martin had a child named Uria Martin Hassildor. After Martin’s passing, Janus Hassildor takes her under his wing, knowing the pain of loosing the one you love.

- She spent twenty years in Skingrad with Uria before being murdered in The Shivering Isles. Uria went with her mother and got trapped in the Shivering Isles till the events of Skyrim, when Koraan (LDB) rescues her from her suspended time.

Forgotten Hero (Legends)

Carwhien Balfwood - Half-breton half-bosmer, 27 years old, light brown hair, green eyes

- Carwhien comes from a very large bosmer family in Grahtwood. Having 4 half siblings and 17 cousins living under the same roof, she struglled to keep up with her family, being considered the “odd one out” since she was half breton. She never had a good relationship with her father. So when he ran off to join the Thalmor, an organization she deeply despises, her hatred grew more. Eventually, she decided to track him down and make him answer. Being caught snooping around in the Thalmor’s records, they threw her into the Arena with Tyr, the former Blade. This kickstarts the main questline.

- Being bosmer, Carwhien is very agile and light, using mostly daggers. She is also a master of shock and lightning magic. Her bubbly personality and worship of Y’ffre and The Green sometimes makes it hard for her to kill, especially animals. When Tyr and Carwhien encounter the wolves in the woods, she cannot bring herself to kill the wolves and takes one in, naming him Boomie.

- After the main questline takes place, Carwhien returns back to Grahtwood with Tyr, Swims and Laaneth to reunite with her family. They spend a few months there before spliting off. Tyr & Carwhien go to Skyrim and get married and have three kids, Uurfin and Fortar (twin boys), and a girl named Svail.

- They are still alive by the events of Skyrim, when Tyr hears of the Dragonborn’s return, his pride as a former Blade tells him to track down Koraan (LDB) to see what she’s about.

Blades Hero

Holkom at-Muraak - Redguard, 30, Black hair, brown eyes.

- Holkom is a former member of the Blades, who was friends with Tyr, as they were in the organization together. For as long as he can remember, Holkom lived in the small town of ‘Swordbreak’ training with a blade. When he turned 16, he went to Cloud Ruler Temple and joined up with the Blades. After most of the Blades were wiped out, Holkom decided to return home to Swordbreak. The events of the main quest then kicked off.

- Holkom’s main weapon is a greatsword, but being trained by the Blades, he can also use katana’s very well. Holkom has a very “heroic” personality. He enjoys being the center of attention, but would never pull the “people love me” card to flex on anyone. But his massive muscles do flex often.

- After completely rebuilding Swordbreak, Holkom became the new mayor. He then married Sabina Clovia, a breton mage living in Swordbreak. They have two children. An older male named Rhani, and a young girl named Prollie.

- Like Tyr, Holkom was very curious about the new Dragonborn. So, after Tyr met Koraan (LDB), he invited her to Swordbreak to meet Holkom, cause ya gotta look out for your bro’s.

Last Dragonborn

Koraan Buxom - Nord, 24 years old, dirty blonde hair, blue eyes.

- Koraan was born in Cyrodil, close to the border of Skyrim. Her mother is actually a desendant of Risiki’s (HoK) brother, Brarius Velldo. Akatosh thought it would be a funny coincidence. Anyway, Koraan’s parents were doctors in Anvil, and they trained Koraan in medical sciences. At age 10, Koraan’s parents were attacked by vampires. Her mother passed away, and her father became a vampire. However, they were saved by a Khajiit vampire named Raizin, who brought them back to their little vampire sancutary, where Koraan would train for the rest of her life. After many years of being with them, a rival vampire group rose up and killed most of them, including her father. Raizin was kidnapped and sealed away by the other vampires so that he couldn’t fight back. Koraan then ran and spent three years hiding in a cave, living off the bandits that would take refuge there. Afterwards, she went to Skyrim, hoping to find her father. That kicks off the main events of Skyrim.

- Koraan is mostly a restoration mage, however, she is also very adept at telekinisis, being able to hold up the entirety of the College of Winterhold in an effort to keep it steady as it broke off. However, when she first comes to Skyrim, she joins up with the Companions to make some money and begins training with swords. She prefers katana’s but is capable of wielding a greatsword of battleaxe.

- Koraan is the Harbinger of the Companions, but is also the Listener of the Dark Brotherhood. She got mixed up in the Brotherhood before Alduin’s defeat and became Harbinger literally hours before going to defeat Alduin. Being the only doctor in the Companions, she has a lot of work on her back trying to keep them alive. Her passive and patient nature is definetly put to the test.

- Koraan adopts three children in her time in Skyrim. Lucia in Whiterun, Zenneth (a Nord boy based in Falkreath and his dog Paku), and Rylu (a Dunmer boy they found on Sothstiem). She also technically adopts Aventus Arentino, but he begs her to let him stay in Dawnstar with the Dark Brotherhood. A couple of years after Skyrim’s main quest, she marries Farkas and they have two twin girls, Kodlin and Parthurn, and one boy, Jergen.

#The Elder Scrolls #The Elder Scrolls Online #the elder scrolls morrowind #the elder scrolls oblivion #the elder scrolls v: skyrim #Elder Scrolls #TES OC #oc cahira stegan #oc montague tesari #oc risiki utherd #oc carwhien balfwood #oc holkom at-muraak #oc koraan buxom #oc lore

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genelmag · 5 years ago

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10 Black Witches in TV and Film Who Put a Spell on Us

For way too long Black witches in film and television were relegated to sidekicks or very bad voodoo priestess stereotypes with over the top accents—witches that the main protagonists meet in passing on their journey. More often than not, Black witches in television and film have been subjected to very bad writing. As filmmaker and witch, Monika Estrella Negra said, it’s a “misuse of the erotic and demonization of [African diaspora] spiritual practice”.

Luckily, we are getting to see more and better representation of Black witches. From big budget shows like The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina and American Horror Story to independent shows, films, and web series like Juju Web Series, Black witches are beginning to feel seen.

Still, in a sea of thousands of White witches in film and television, we literally have but a mere handful of Black witches, warlocks, and brujas that present worthy representation. So, on our first day of Black History Month in 2020, here are some of our favorite Black witches gracing us with their magical presence.

Tati Gabrielle kills it as Prudence Blackwood. Prudence is the illigetimate daughter of Faustus Blackwood leads The Weird Sisters as they attend The Academy of Unseen Arts to learn and improve their magical powers.

In the beginning of Season 1, it seemed as if writers were portraying Prudence as, what Teen Vogue’s Taylor Crumpton said, “the angry Black woman who attacks the misunderstood, small, blonde, white girl”—a trope we see far too often. Luckily, this wasn’t the case as the show progressed.

Even so, Prudence devoted her life to the Church of Night and, though it’s not mentioned, it’s inferred that she was the best at the Academy.

In truth, Prudence is one of the best things about Sabrina. Her power is expressed in everything she does, from her flawless makeup, killer wardrobe, and finger waves for days!

One of the biggest icons of the 1990s was Rachel True’s performance as one of the lead witches in cult classic The Craft. She was the bubbly best friend that you just fell in love with.

While most films of 90s portrayed Black witches as voodoo priestesses doing root work, Rochelle practiced a more European, neopagan form of ritualism.

Yusuf Gatewood plays one of the most powerful witches in New Orleans in the hit show The Originals, Vincent Griffith. Vincent does what he can to keep the peace in a city run by vampires and owned by the original vampires, The Michelson family.

Because of his power and his relationship with the Michelson family and with werewolves, he became regent to the nine covens of New Orleans. But, like any normal person would in his situation, he grew tired of the supernatural community and all the pain and death it came with.

Intelligent, charismatic, positively devilish—that’s Ambrose Spellman, played by Chance Perdomo.

From the very first time he comes on screen, you can’t help but fall in love with the Spellman cousin, Ambrose, who has been on house arrest at the mortuary for 75 years.

That’s right, he’s more than 75 years old, but we don’t know his exact age. All we know is that the famous alchemist Alester Crowley was his father figure and mentor and that somehow led to Ambrose being a part of a plot to blow up the Vatican.

Though he has something witty to say for every situation, he also usually has a solution—or knows just where to find it.

Kat Graham brilliantly played the most powerful witch in Mystic Falls. Bonnie started off as that lovable best friend who thought she had a little bit of psychic in her because Grams always told her she had witches in her ancestry.

Season after season we watched Bonnie’s powers grow as she repeatedly sacrificed herself for her friends and their boyfriends. Meanwhile, it took 7 seasons to give Bonnie a love interest who was actually worthy of her. But, of course, it didn’t last long.

Juju is a brand spanking new YouTube web series about best friends who discover they are witches is the story about Black witches we’ve been waiting for.

Juju takes place in New York City and follows the lives of three best friends with Caribbean and Bayou ancestry.

Jhé "Moon" Ferguson, the creator of Juju said she wanted to create a world of Black supernaturals.

I’ll be honest, I had no interest in American Horror Story until I learned Marie Laveau would be in Coven. Even better, she would be portrayed by the goddess herself, Angela Bassett.

Marie Laveau is a power, immortal Voodoo Queen who runs a salon called Cornrow City. The strength of her power is on par with The Supreme.

Billie Porter can do no wrong. Porter masterfully plays Behold, one of the head instructors of warlocks at the Hawthorne School for Exceptional Young Men.

He’s a leader and a protector, doing what he must to bring better representation on the Witches’ Council. He’s snarky, sarcastic, and adds an animated, flashy element when he uses his telekinesis.

What stands out for me with Behold is that he’s noble, valiant, and not a zealot as we see in many witches and warlocks tend to be in film and television. He’s sensible. He doesn’t jump to conclusions; he investigates his gut feelings.

Fringilla is a baaaaad witch. Played by the talented Mimi Ndiweni, Fringilla is a Nilfgardian sorceress and adviser.

I’ve only read the first two books of The Witcher series and I’ve only ever watched others play the game, even though I have the games in my library.

That said, even though Fringilla Vigo turns out to be villainous, she’s extremely powerful and cunning.

Though this show is a bit problematic, there is no doubt that black girl magic is real when you watch Carmen escape slavery through a time spell and land in modern Columbia.

She quickly adapts to modern life and technology, making friends, going to school, and casting spells to try to help where she can.

Quite honestly, there is much to be desired in Always a Witch, but it is worth taking a gander to see where and how we can do better in portraying our stories while avoiding certain tropes and stereotypes.

A special shout out to Dean Thomas from Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, the Witches of Eve’s Bayou. Wanting more and better representation of Black witches doesn’t mean we don’t have our favorite mainstream witchy films. From Witches of Eastwick and Practical Magic to Charmed, we’re here for it.

Like us on Facebook and tell us which Black witches we may have missed or what shows and films about witches we should check out.

#black witches #lists

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darkspellmaster · 5 years ago

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Castlevania Season 3 Trailer Theories Part 2: Locations and Scenes

So the images are not in order from the trailer, but I intend to talk about them as we go. Since this is part two I’m going to try to strictly talk about the scenes that seem to be happening in the story.

So let’s talk about this one. This is actually one that intrigues me because of what it appears to be. Earlier in the trailer, we see some sort of portal or energy being made, and that portal there is probably what that one weird shot with all the colors is connecting to. I’m wondering if that’s also an Evo Crystal, but we will get to that later. And the room that they are in, reminds me a lot of Curse of Darkness’s forge room for Hector.

Now while it’s not identical the rooms offer the same sort of set up. In the center of the room, there’s an alchemy set up. This alchemy set up is designed to create monsters or innocent Devils as in the game Curse of Darkness. Each monster is made with a different set of instructions in-game, in this case, it’s from different crystals that help you make different types.

The room that Sypha and Trevor are in looks very much like an innocent devil's room if it wasn’t like the game version of it. On top of that, there’s the leviathan cross with the added feature of Saturn from Alchemy.

Abysmal_abyssal explains it more here in regard to what this is.

So more than likely Trevor and Sypha ended up in one of the rooms where Hector may be making monsters. Or where someone is making them. What’s interesting here is this is a moment in time where Trevor unleashes both of his whips, the holy one with the Belmont symbol on it, and the Vampire Killer that has Sara’s soul in it, and either it’s creating that insane fire or Sypha has helped with her fire to create this epic moment. But it’s clear that Trevor is fighting something big.

You don’t go doing this unless you’re attacking something insanely large. And given that the Cult seems to have the first part of the symbol on their armbands, I would think this is something that they created for Trevor to fight, or became.

You can see on the very bottom of the whip that Trevor is using, it’s marked with the sign of the Belmont family, making me think this is another sort of holy whip that was given to him and is basically something that he combines with the Vampire KIller in order to unleash some really devastating attacks.

It’s clear that this is the monster that the fire attack hits, and probably is the monster that is later reforming that Trevor and Sypha are dealing with.

It becomes damn clear that this thing, given it’s eyes in the reforming process, is a part of Leigon and seems to be the big bad monster on the second poster. Now what role it has in the story, I’m not sure, but given the whole “Raise Hell” line in the trailer, it makes me think that that is what the cult brings into being.

We also get a glimpse of this room when Trevor is seen readying his attack, and earlier in the trailer we get a shot with Sypha and the winged monster.

You can catch the beast right in the upper left corner of the top picture next to the portal, thing, that seems to be letting them in.

We also have Sypha fighting in the same room, clearly trying to help Trevor, but she’s not in all the shots. So was she hurt during this fight and that unlocked his ability to really access the power of the whip through the thought of keeping her alive and safe?

Part of the situation with the Vampire killer is that Sara believes that every male that holds that whip is connected to Leon, or is Leon, so her power seems to be enhanced when the wielder feels that someone is in danger and needs to be protected.

Looks like the lighting from the Monster Legion is attacking the Church, and destroying everything in a radius, this is probably tied to the priest and the soldiers coming to see what’s going on in the earlier picture. What’s interesting is that we also see one of the Legion monsters jump into this building. So I’m not sure in the timeline where the lightning strike happens.

We see this right after we see the church get hit by the storm, which shows that the Judge is connected to some military units. What for, I’m not sure, but it’s clear that it’s not exactly a good situation at all for him to be in.

Taking a wild guess here that the village that is being blown up has something to do with the lighting blast we see in the church, as the center of the destruction. It seems to destroy a lot of the place and I’m guessing it may have to do with Legion infecting all of the places, as the humans later fall to their doom with thorn crowns on their head symbolic of Christ.

We have this legion piece leaping at the church and going into it, though we don’t know why they’re attacking this town. this could be the same town or a different one, it’s hard to say due to the dark colors and the rain.

The village being attacked, same sort of lights that are in the village were Trevor and Sypha are dealing with the cult, there’s an indication that someone may have summoned these things from Legion and it’s causing a mighty downfall on the village.

We also get a moment when the Legion is discovered by a poor sop, that was in a barn.

We later see Isaac looking out at a tower that seems to be housing Leigon, so I have to wonder if this is the same village that’s being attacked.

There’s something about this moment that makes me think that this is the connecting thread to Miranda telling Isaac to kill them all. It looks likely that there’s going to be a fight between Legion and Isaac and the question will become who will win. I have to wonder if Germain may play a part in trying to stop him or connecting himself to Hector in this case.

We also see Legion come down with full force as it seems to have made all the people in town turned into it’s zombie minions.

Which seems to indicate that it’s only grown in the time that we first see it attack. Isaac seems to be the force that will control it, which is interesting given that Leigon is typically not an easy enemy to beat at all, indicating that his powers have grown exponentially by this point.

When the body hits the devil forge weapon we see it being sucked in. This makes me think that all of this is connected to the idea that Isaac is trying to recreate the Crimson stone to bring back Dracula and is being used by Death to do so, by wrecking the hell out of Leigon’s creatures and then using them against Trevor and the others to either destroy Carmilla and Free Hector, or kill them both and Trevor and his crew for the death of his master.

So this is a weird one. Given that there are souls in there flying towards the center, I can only guess that this is forming some sort of demon. We see that the town this is happening in is the one that Trevor and Sypha are visiting and where the evil cult is, so I guess this is part of their goal, to create some sort of portal or creature with the dead people in the fire. It honestly looks like it’s forming something.

This is another mystery. If you enlarge the image you’ll see four creatures that seem to be crawling over the rocks, and when panned out we see that there is more than just that one group of four. The image in the back I’ll get to when I put the picture up, the image in the front is slightly strange. So it appears to be a statue of a woman who seems to be in possibly the throws of ecstasy, seeing her body language and all. Now, why would such a huge statue need to be created? Unless this is some sort of depiction of Mathius and his first wife Elisabeth. Or showing how Incubi create Succubuses. It’s something that has me very perplexed.

Yet another one, from a cave, looking off into the distance. If I can hazard a guess, I’d say this is something connected to Isaac’s plot in some way. The statue, as with the other one in the previous picture, shows a woman standing up with her arms over her head stretching. Now I could be wrong and this may be a man, but the hips indicate a female form. The thing she’s standing on kind of looks like a hand, but it also reminds me of the Innocent devil's cauldron where the petrified monsters are being held.

Clearly, this is a rocky place and given the transition, we’re shown that it’s some sort of weird temple or something like that.

aaa

So here is where I have to bring up the Crimson Stone. In the center of Isaac’s forge weapon, we see the red stone, and the Crimson stone is actually the lower phase of a philosopher stone. When Mathias beat Walter he used the crimson stone to collect his soul to complete it. Just like the Vampire Killer, the stone that Dracula has needs a soul, a vampire soul, to power it.

Or it could be a fire orb as from the game. Though I think given what Isaac does with the Legion guy later in the trailer it’s clear that this could be the markings of a new Crimson stone. Which would be bad.

Here’s the thing about this guy, he starts off looking like this...

As you can see, his body is very lanky like Grant DaNasty, our missing team member. and clearly he becomes a monster. The problem is that if it’s is Isaac changing him, where is he going to put him in the story? I suppose that Hector can undo this and have him help them out, but something about this moment is making me think this is just Isaac creating more of his monster army than grant showing up at that point. Though it’s important to note that the transformation is clearly done with forging, meaning that Hector can do something like this too, which probably will come into play with the whole Curse of Darkness storyline.

aaa

Remember the image above where we have a portal. Well, this is either going to be that portal or an Evo Crystal. This is designed to be an object that helps Hector evolve or bring to life the Innocent devils in the Curse of Darkness game. There’s a center there to this, and Warren did say it’s going to be a Psychedelic Horror season and given we have Legion coming, I wouldn’t be surprised if we have Innocent devils and hints of how the Vampire Killer came about.

This also could be the creation of a new Crimson Stone.

A second strange woman in the trailer when Hector cracks his twin whips. I’m still trying to figure out if this is one of the vampire minions or Carmilla herself, or another unnamed character at this point. Clearly, she’s being destroyed in blinding light. She may be one of the demons as well. It’s hard to tell. But it’s clearly a woman being wrecked here.

This is a hard one. Design-wise this is stunning, but the location is hard to place. This is where the cave with the statues is seen. The ground is clearly lava-like, and my only guess is that this may be hell. But where and how is the question? Though I have a feeling that this is not that at all and Isaac or someone has made it into this.

This could also be the Baljhet Mountains, which in Curse of Darkness connected to the Abandon Castle and the Garibaldi temple. Both places of significance for Hector in the main Curse of Darkness game and where he met with St. Germain and also had to fight Legion. What’s interesting here is that it looks like they’re giving a lot of that to Isaac. This could be the area that Issac is using to create his monsters.

So we know that Isaac is doing some devil forging here to make his own army. I have to wonder if this is tied into the world we see in the above image. Though it’s clear that he’s traveling farther out to reach where Legion probably is laying in wait.

So this is an important moment. An early shot shows Isaac hitting one of the Legion dolls and destroying it. However, when he hits it, it goes into the red stone at the bottom of his forge. This may indicate that Isaac may have some form of Crimson stone-like object attached to his forge which is what is allowing him to create the monsters that he does. Keep in mind that when the stone works right it sucks a soul in, so this may be doing that.

Said earlier moment above shows how this is working, with the aim being to destroy the possessed person.

Given review information, it seems like Issac is going to be going against a magician, possibly St. Germain, who may be trying to stop him from going on this path (which could lead to the resurrection of Dracula). This is probably part of that journey.

Building in the back shows that this is the town where Trevor and Sypha are punching the cult guy in the trailer. This is also where the village is burning and other shots show that this could be used by the villains to summon Legion and bring Isaac and Trevor into contact. (It would be very weird if Isaac supplants Grant as the fourth team member. But I don’t see that.) Isaac may be controlling them, or this is the town where Legion is making its a haven. It very much seems like this is where Isaac is going to run into his main villain.

So again, back to those weird mountains. As you can see there are beings on the lower part of the scene, but it’s hard to tell if they are just monsters or people or statues. What’s also interesting is the image of the woman and a man in a lustful embrace above, and we don’t see the man again in the other statues. I’m not sure what this is supposed to be hinting at? The creation of Alucard? Mathis and his first wife Elisabetha? How Germain came about? It’s interesting because I wasn’t expecting that, and there’s not been anything quite like it in the games. Unless I missed something in Curse or Lords of Shadow, because that’s the only ones I can think that would use this.

So remember the flames that were coming together? This is showing how those souls are being sucked up. This may be a moment where they could join into one being, or stone. It’s clear that this is one of the people in town that is being burned and probably attacked by the Legion monster later. This also could be a named character that’s being taken in by possibly Carmilla or by Isaac or the weird cult group that seems to be coming into play.

For sure though this scene is connected to the burning village we see earlier in the trailer and part of the whole merging of fire. I think it has ties to the weird cult that seems to be coming into being since Dracula’s death.

This may be the death of Carmilla or one of her minions. It’s clear again that this is a woman being hit by Trevor’s whip and connected to the scene where he’s using both. If I can hazard a guess on this, I would say this may be Lenore what with the shoulder designs, but the face makes me think it’s Carmilla, which makes me wonder if this is one of the last scenes in the show where Trevor activates his true power against her.

Honestly I kind of hope that Hector helps him out with this because we’re pulling more away from Hector as lead to his own story.

Remember the fire with the guy in it? I think this may be the town where that’s happening with the cult. It’s clear by the architecture that this house is the main one in town and that more than likely another shot from the trailer shows the house’s interior on fire. The question is who set it, and why is this town apparently attacked twice? First with the Legion monsters (Maybe the Judge stops them back in the past) and the second has it being on fire as it rips through the town.

Given the nature of the flames, I don’t think this is a natural fire either and that Trevor may have to save the village from the cult that’s coming into play.

Interior of the house from the above picture. Notice the windows and designs. This is the house in question from above, the problem is that we don’t know who owns it. My guess is that this could be Sala’s place or the Captains. However, whoever owns it clearly is in for a bad time given the whole place seems to be engulfed in flames from a villain. I will say the designs are very pretty though, and the background artists did a fantastic job on it.

See the house in the background? It has the same design as the one burning. Given this is just before Trevor punches the cult guy, I would have to guess that the two were called in to look into the situation in town and things get out of hand fast.

This could be the Alchemy room since it seems very similar to the designs we saw earlier. But...it’s clear that Legion is there as well, so Trevor is going to have a fight with them. (You can clearly see the eyes on the monster being remade.)

So is this Isaac or Carmilla, or the Judge, or Death doing this?

This shot is tied to the same shot of the two female characters being killed earlier. It’s clear that Trevor is going all out on whatever is in that room, and we can see the two bodies being taken down by the light of the twin whips. I love the fact that on his back around his shoulders you can make out what could be seen as angel wings, which ties into Leon’s connection to the crusades and wanting a connection to the light to save his beloved Sara. Maybe Trevor tapped into that and is now connecting to Sara there since the whip can only be used by Male members of the Belmonts and Morris families.

It’s an amazing use of just inks by the way.

There’s a lot more there, but with the series only a few days away I think I’m going to cut it here for the trailer speculation and want to bring up another aspect that’s being talked about a lot going forward.

#castlevania season 3 #castlevania season 3 trailer

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dreamtofbluebirds · 5 years ago

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SHUICHI SAIHARA

While timid and particularly unobtrusive, Shuichi is a person of integrity. Years spent with a detective uncle had carved a formidable foundation for law-abiding behavior.

{ POST-GAME. }

In his primary verse, he was thrown into Danganronpa unwillingly and upon waking up from the Virtual Reality, was missing quite a bit of his original memories. Between physical and mental therapy, he’d find that his past would always be elusive but a few things remain solid. His friendships, his family situation, and his nature remained consistent. What became a hurdle was the fact that Danganronpa had not known prior to kidnapping him that he was a trans male, and thus did not alter his in-game avatar. Upon his release, he would find renewed difficulty in the dysphoria but a clearer understanding of himself.

As a note, if I write with anyone WITHIN the game’s timeline, I will change the mishap over his avatar in the VR to accurately reflect his born sex instead. This is because I am fond of this concept, and I’d like to keep that aspect of him consistent as I write.

{ HOPE’S PEAK. }

Standard verse, taking place during his years at Hope’s Peak. He lives on-campus at a dorm and is often gone over any significant breaks, doing cases or visiting his Uncle and Aunt. He’s more often than not away on any and all days off, going to the city to explore, experience events and festivals, or otherwise, work off his physical energy so he can focus on his studies later that night.

{ P4. }

Split into two halves. One centers around Hope’s Peak –> P4′s plot, without DR.

In his secondary verse, Danganronpa existed within the world of Persona, spurred on by severe influences within the Metaverse. Himself and others were dragged in but through the trials they faced, they awakened to their potential, and Chapter Six was a boss battle as the Metaverse seeped into their Virtual Reality simulation. Upon waking, they retained their personas and made a vow to seek the truth, no matter the cost. He is of the Death Arcana, capable of summoning AUGUSTE DUPIN, same as the legendary fictional detective.

Accompanying these two verses, it’s available for Shuichi and Naoto to be brothers. They lived separately and don’t know much about each other–even down to opening up about their gender identity which would only end up being implied, as both would be too awkward to talk about it during family events.

{ P5. }

Split into two halves. One centers around Hope’s Peak –> P5′s plot, without DR.

{ POKEMON. }

The third verse is a pokemon verse where he’s a P.I. with two pokemon, a Growlithe and an Umbreon named Lee and Bree. After the show ended, he returned to his Uncle’s work as a part-timer and on low-risk cases, and was given an Eevee at the time. Growlithe has been with him since before the show, so both pokemon work together to ensure he keeps a calm head.

{ APOCALYPSE. }

This is an apocalypse AU in which the undead arose while he underwent high school life at Hope’s Peak. He’s great for tactical approaches and working hard, but the loss of Kaito and many others weigh on him. His only comfort is that Kaede remains by his side.

{ VAMPIRE. }

This verse is split into two groups; one remains post-game, and the other is Hope’s Peak. Each of these will be tagged with both tags.

The post-game verse is a vampire verse in which he was bitten before the game. It’s my only non-VR AU with the killing game included, but the game doesn’t have to go as it did in canon because I’d love to interact with certain characters regardless. He’s young and without a sire, but I’ll be taking a bit of lore from Vampire: The Masquerade and say that his humanity is extremely high. This grants him the ability to hide what he is extremely well, among other things. He has the power of suggestion, but he’s very untrained with it and would hate to use it unless he morally had to.

The alternate verse is in which he’s at Hope’s Peak and handles the results of being bitten on a case during a break, uprooting his entire lifestyle.

{ AVIAN. }

Sixth verse is one in which he’s winged, mirroring the pattern of a blue raven with their mostly black, glossy-blue wings and his bright eyes. They’re too big to hide and he can fly, but he’s timid about it and prefers to stay grounded out of safety.

{ REMNANT. }

A verse where DR2′s plot was V3′s, and the ‘older classmates’ that helped were DR2′s cast. The verse is spliced into three parts. Shuichi acting as an active Remnant of Despair is the first segment, him inside Future Foundation’s custody is the second, and post-NWP is the third. He’s ruthless and hellbent on punishing criminals, turning his personality to mirror a sadism that he’s sickened by. He kidnaps Kaito during the active remnant days as well as attempts to kidnap and punish other classmates/remnants in the name of justice.

He’s very similar to Future Foundation’s leaders at the time but believes them to be corrupt/weak, seeing as Junko still captured him and others.

{ BLIND. }

During a case overseas, Shuichi was a victim of an acid attack. It stole his sight during his final year at Hope’s Peak as a result, bringing him to a long hospital stay and therapy in the coming months to regain some resemblance of autonomy.

{ SUPERHERO. }

Shuichi is one of the top officers in the city not for his experience, but his knack for being in the right place at the right time, and his ability to talk to the villains at least somewhat civilly. He often accompanies Kaito and does his best to do what’s right, regardless of what the police force thinks he should be doing, which puts him in a tough spot.

He does have an ability, which is that all psychological abilities have a significantly decreased effect on him. He essentially has a mental fortitude buff.

{ METAL HEART AU. }

Shuichi suffered a car crash that all but ruined his physical body, save for his mind. His Uncle and Idabashi had been good friends, and right as the roboticist entered stages of humanlike development on his own project, Shoma all but pleaded for a chance to give Shuichi a new body.

Codenamed S4U-1C41, he would end up living with the roboticist as he regained mobility while Kibo, the man’s son, was accepted into the Saihara’s household given his own love of detective work.

Regarded as inhumane, Shuichi understands the importance of his secret and hides his true identity.

{ TWINS. }

Fairly straightforward as an AU and can be in conjunction with almost every other AU he has. His birth name would be Shiho still, but the next part depends on who takes the role of Shuichi–if the other twin does, then the name he’d choose for himself is Shouhei Saihara regardless of what last name he inherited. If he takes the role of Shuichi, then he’d have chosen Shuichi Saihara as his new name.

His dynamic with the sibling depends on the personality of said twin, but his own personality remains fairly responsible–even to the point of taking the blame for his brother and proving incredibly loyal. A large detail that changes him is that loneliness is a persevering trait of his and I like the idea that he and his brother were split up a lot as their parents were not prepared for two, resulting in an on-off stay with Uncle Shoma. This means that while he craves closeness with his sibling, he remains awkward about it and uncertain of what is really acceptable or desired of him.

As a result, he’s extremely sensitive to criticism.

{ PREGAME. }

After much consideration, this verse was added. Shouhei Saihara is a boy with high expectations placed on him. Although his Uncle is less strict than his parents were, he was forced into attending Spring Field Academy and forced into living with his Uncle and Aunt while his parents continued pursuing their careers.

He’s used to being treated differently due to his status and loathes it, often avoiding saying his name, hiding his face, and otherwise being suspicious of those who talk to him. His social skills are terrible due to moving from school to school and lacking the ability to have too much freedom beyond studying. His world-view is pessimistic and his love for Danganronpa stems from hoping most of the characters die, believing them to be terrible people, aside from the rare favorite.

{ GOFER PROJECT. }

Shuichi grew up as the world fell apart, heavy-hearted and devastated by the collapse. From the meteors to the sickness, then the Gofer Project and the rise of the opposing cult, he clung to any minuscule stability he had before going on the run, hiding from friend and foe alike. While he feels unworthy of being in the project he understood the necessity of it at the time and still does.

His natural role as a peace-keeper and helper come out full force in this AU as being alone remains the worst thing he could do to himself. His anxiety over being transmale increases due to the heavy promotion of having children, but he comes to the understanding that their new world needs law and not every one of the students were designed to be on board purely for procreating–Kiibo and Kirumi, for example, whose talents center around enrichment of others and coexistence rather than something so base.

{ ROYALTY. }

Born to the King and Queen of a kingdom, Shuichi was able to escape the confines of sophisticated life to grow up under his Uncle’s care, who was a simple detective within the kingdom. Because so little information about the heir to the throne was ever released, when he was called back, few questioned his identity and the ones that did only assumed he may have been the nephew of the rulers and that the ‘princess’ had died. His head knight is Kaito and the chief of security and intelligence is Maki. Kirumi is both the head maid and cook for him, and he’s tentatively worked out a deal where she lets him help in the kitchen when he can.

The kingdom itself is steeped in arts and literature due to the King’s love of stage play and the Queen’s love of writing for such things. This gives the land an easygoing feel, but it’s ill-equipped to handle threats as a result and Shuichi holds a vastly different view of what should be going on–and he’ll soon be King when they step down to finally abandon their royal duties in favor of the arts. It’s a lot, and he’s pressured to find a spouse before the coronation. Men aren’t excluded from this, though his parents specifically have chosen to avoid mentioning it.

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ty-talks-comics · 5 years ago

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Best of Marvel: Week of July 10th, 2019

Best of this Week: Wolverine Vs. Blade - Marc Guggenheim, Dave Wilkins and Travis Lanham

It is quite possible to just have TOO MUCH AWESOME in one book.

Wolverine Vs. Blade had been advertised for a while, but that didn’t stop it from hitting me like a train from out of nowhere. Hile the story is very one note, it still fits both of these characters and the art elevates it to a level that I haven’t been excited about from Marvel since Clayton Crain was doing Carnage USA and X-Force. It blended the line between almost 3D and photorealistic and the writing turned this into an awesome buddy-hero story with hilarity and badass banter.

Taking place in Wolverine’s X-Force days, prior to Avengers vs. X-Men and before Blade became a full time member of the Avengers, we open to Blade and Wolverine in the middle of taking down a Cult of vampires known as “The Creed.” The book wastes no time on the banter or the action as Wolverine makes a nod to one of their previous interactions where blade stuck him full of Vampire blood while slicing a vampire head into pieces.

Wolverine shines in these opening pages in the always badass black and grey. His face is alive with burning vampire hating rage, showcasing his sharp canines and HEAVILY muscled body as he slashes and slices through vampires with the reckless abandon that he’s known for. The vampire LOOK scary, but Wolverine IS SCARY, especially covered in their blood and surrounded by the still burning remains of their bodies.

After thinking they’ve completely torn through the cult, Blade offers Wolverine a marshmallow from the fire that he’s about to set. Wolverine thinks he’s joking, but then, in a moment that I regret laughing heartily at, Blade shows off a single white marshmallow and gives us ONE of the best shit eating grin in this entire book.

Cutting to six months later, Wolverine is being attacked by very minor villain, Dragoness, who has been turned into a vampire. For no other reason, I think, than to flex his art skills and give me something to fawn over, Wilkins draws Wolverine standing with his back to a window and arms flexed so hard that I almost thought his veins were going to EXPLODE. He was Huge Jackedman levels of vascular and needed to rehydrate like hell, but I couldn’t look away from how ridiculous and magnificent he looked. However, he cuts through one of Dragoness’ wings and sends her spiraling into a conveniently placed piece of sharpened wood. Soon after, he finds the item that she was fighting him for; a mysterious box radiating with magic.

Elsewhere in Germany, Blade is taking down a Vampire Count who fires at him with eye beams that curiously look like Cyclops’. Blade allows the vampire to think he has him on the ropes before setting off explosive charges that trap the vampire under rubble. Blade is the undisputed king of banter in this issue as he offers to pick up a rock or two before the sun rises and kills the vampire for a little bit of information. When the vampire says he’d rather die, Blade gives another grin as the sun rises and burns the vamp to ash.

Both men are given information from their sources, Wolverine in Doctor Strange and Blade in some fellow he dangles off the side of a building. They learn about the prophecy of a Vampire Messiah named Varkis. Logan sees a pictogram that looks like him fighting Blade and Blade learns that Varkis may be a mutant. Armed with their information, the two make their ways separately to South America for a final confrontation.

The fight is epic.

Both men ripple with brutal and blood energy and their musculature is a sight to behold. Blade impales Wolverine with his sword, but Wolverine, being the badass that he is, rips it out and slashes blade across the face, destroying his glasses. Wolverine pounces at him again, but Blade hits him with an anti-vampire glave and Wolverine stands confused. The two work out their equal confusion until Varkis appears, looking like Wolverine, but still with bone claws.

He tells the pair that he was created from a portion of Wolverine that was sliced off and grown using magic as Wolverine has left many parts all over the world, but none have spawned a whole person. Wolverine tries to take on Varkis while Blade cuts through more lesser vampires until Wolverine remembers the picture and suggests he and blade recreate the battle ON VARKIS. Wolvie aims low while Blade aims high and Varkis is thoroughly killed.

Blade gives his last shit eating grin as he says he forgot the marshmallows this time after they blow up another temple. It's a nice call back to earlier and the perfect cherry to top this wonderful book.

This book was a treasure. Wilkins art was amazingly dynamic, making every fight scene feel like it was brutal, bloody and horrifically violent. His colors straddle the line between very dark and amazingly bright when they need to be. The red from Wolverine’s eyes in the X-Force costume stand out alongside the red of Blade’s sunglasses as they glean with their movements and create little motion lines as they go. Most of the book takes place during the night and Wilkins makes great use of lighting to set the mood, giving a real goth or Castlevania-esque feel to things.

Guggenheim is in top form for the characterization of Blade of Wolverine. Logan is no-nonsense and violent to a terrifying degree as he always should be. Blade is snarky and effortlessly cool like Wesley Snipes before him. If there were to be a mini-series between these two, I would love it if this team came together again, but for a One-Shot, this was absolutely fantastic.

If you want to see amazing art and basic story that still is a riot to enjoy, this book is definitely made for you. Dave Wilkins wows on every page and Guggenheim brings his skills back to the best of the mid-2000s Marvel style. If it did have any pitfalls, it would have to be that it should have been even longer. High recommend!

---------------------------------------------------

Something about black people and being experimented on makes me uncomfortable.

Runner Up: Miles Morales: Spider-Man #8 (Legacy #248) - Saladin Ahmed, Javier Garrón, David Curiel and Travis Lanham

In the last issue, Miles was captured by some sort of weird teleporting being after helping Bombshell fight off some ridiculously strong robots. This issue begins with him in some dark room, strapped to some kind of operating table with a heart beat monitor and only a creepy robot-thing to keep him company.

Miles looks absolutely terrified. Not only because he doesn't know where he is or who captured him, but the robot interacting with him says that its boss, The Assessor, will target Miles' family and friends if he doesn't comply. Miles agrees to the experiments and tests if only just to keep them safe.

The Assessor tests his combat, speed and climbing abilities and pushes Miles to his absolute llimits. He's run ragged in a way that is seldom seen except in cases where the threat is life or death. It goes on and on for an undetermined amount of time until Miles wakes up in an operating room where doctors discuss his DNA and maybe kidnapping his family for more subjects.

This angers and scares Miles into breaking free, beating up the doctors and defeating the teleporting enemy from before to make his grand escape.

Only… it turns out to be another test.

Saladin Ahmed absolutely nailed this issue with his focus on the bleakness and fear in Miles and the situation he's in. He made me genuinely terrified to turn the pages and see the next torture Miles would have to go through. Ahmed writes Miles like the scared teenage superhero that he is, he's hopeful, but frantic in the face of an enemy that knows who he is and how to hurt him.

Javier Garrón and David Curiel do their best to nail the unsettling feeling of the sanitized experimental environment that Miles finds himself in and utilize panel layouts to make the book even more terrifying.

Every blank space around each panel is black compared to the normal white. Every panel is also small and feels claustrophobic, leaning heavily into the nature of the facility Miles finds himself in. In it's own way, it's clean and very structured to the point where it feels like you could be trapped reading the book.

I also feel like there's something here in the fact that it's the black Spider-Man being experimented on. Of course Pete has been poked and prodded every which way for years, but the way that the doctors and the robot were talking about Miles, made him seem less than human. He was never called a kid, just "the Subject."

Truly there are three absolutely horrifying pages in this issue. The first is where Miles has been ordered to sleep and he's shrouded in darkness aside from his face and the heartbeat monitor. The other is the double page spread of about 18 - 26 panels of Miles running, fighting, being scared, bleeding and all of the tortures he's put through while captured.

This issue is a high recommend because it's a well written and fantastically drawn chapter in this Miles Morales run. Saladin Ahmed draws heavily from his Black Bolt series in terms of storytelling and Garrón makes it all so real and visceral. As far as this run goes, this issue and the one prior are pretty good starting points if you've missed the rest!

#comics #marvel #marvel comics #wolverine #blade #vampires #marc guggenheim #dave wilkins #badass #miles morales #spider man #saladin ahmed #javier garrón

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aion-rsa · 5 years ago

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Marvel's 31 Best Monsters

https://ift.tt/3430jzo

Marvel is more than just superheroes, they've done their fare share of horror characters, too.

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Halloween isn't just for monsters anymore. For every Frankenstein Monster that comes to your door, there are probably sixteen Iron Men and a few Rocket Raccoons. It seems that Marvel (and DC) heroes have infringed on the monstrous monopoly of Halloween, but that’s OK, because to even things out, the Marvel Universe has its fair share of monsters dwelling under beds, behind walls, and in gothic mansions (mansions usually expertly drawn by Mike Ploog) to even things out.

Starting in the late Silver Age, the Comics Code became less restrictive (because Frederic Wertham was killed by a mummy...actually, no he wasn’t), and Marvel was able to bring in all sorts of boogeymen to share page time with the likes of Thor, Spider-Man, and the Fantastic Four. These new, Universal-inspired monsters joined the Kirby Kreatures like Fin Fang Foom and Googam as the Marvel Universe became a world where things that go bump in the night became as commonplace as superheroes.

Join us as we journey into the darkest realms of the Marvel Universe and celebrate the greatest monstrous creations that ever sprang from the nightmares of the House of Ideas.

31. The Glob

Listen, I’m not going to exclude a character named the Glob from this list, am I? The Glob was once Joe Timms, a petty criminal, who like every other comic book swamp character ever, was transformed into a muck encrusted monstrosity by a mysterious bog. Glob fought the Hulk a few times before Timms was recreated into the being known as the Golden Brain and used as a weapon by the villain Yagzan and the crazed Cult of Entropists (and holy shit, did I just get an almost sexual rush from typing that sentence).

read more: 13 Essential Werewolf Movies

In fact, none other than one of Marvel greatest monster hunters Moon Knight first appeared in the pages of Werewolf by Night as Russell’s title was once an essential part of the MU. At times, Russell is cut from the classic Lon Chaney mode of lycanthrope but at others, the kind and moral Russell is fully in control of his inner beast and operates as a classic super hero (albeit a hairy one). One can usually find issues of Werewolf by Night in dollar bins and that is one hell of a bargain because Werewolf by Night was one of the strangest, most surreal titles of the '70s.

Awooohhhh!!!!

5. Ghost Rider

What more can be said about Johnny Blaze or any of the other demonic bikers who have called themselves Ghost Riders?

The legacy of the Ghost Rider began in the pre-Marvel Age with a ghostly Western character who haunted the prairie of the American frontier. In the modern era, stunt biker Johnny Blaze was possessed by the demon Zarathos and became the flame headed spirit of vengeance of legend.

read more: The Weird History of Ghost Rider

At times, Ghost Rider has been a threat to the Marvel Universe and at others, he has been a stalwart hero, but the fact that Blaze has the power to burn the souls of evildoers makes him a featured part of this Halloween list. Arguably Mike Ploog’s greatest character design, Ghost Rider has gone through many incarnations over the years but somehow, the curse always comes back to Blaze, a man who treated with the devil and no rides the highway to Hell as the legendary Ghost Rider.

4. Blade

By all appearances, Blade isn't really a monster. In fact, he might be the greatest monster hunter in comics (sorry Buffy). But consider the fact that Blade is part vampire, and you have a heroic bloodsucker worthy of making our top 5.

read more: The Evolution of Marvel's Blade, Vampire Hunter

Blade's mother was turned into a vampire as she was giving birth to the future vampire hunter, making Blade a Daywalker, a man who is half mortal, half monster. Blade not only starred in many Bronze Age adventures in the pages of Marvel's black and white mags of the '70s, he was also a major player in Marvel's classic Tomb of Dracula, a part of the '90s Midnight Sons line of books, but he is also the reason we are living in the Golden Age of super hero cinema. Without Blade's cinematic success, a relatively obscure Marvel character before the films despite his monster hunting awesomeness, there would be no Hugh Jackman and the X-Men or Marvel Studios Avengers movies.

Speaking of which, Blade will finally join the MCU as played by Mahershala Ali.

3. Dracula

The granddaddy of them all, Dracula, is not only a cinema legend, he is not only a legend of literature and television, he is a comic book legend as well thanks to the premiere scare comic of the '70s, Tomb of Dracula. After writer Gerry Conway kicked off the title in grand fashion, the immortal creative team of Marv Wolfman and Gene Colan crafted arguably the greatest monster comic of all time.

read more: 14 Times Dracula Fought Marvel Superheroes

Somehow, Marvel made Dracula into a classic anti-hero that captured the atmosphere and pathos of Bram Stokers’ novel and the Universal Horror classic. Somehow, Marvel also managed to weave in some super hero craziness as well with Dracula serving as the sometime hero in a book that featured one of the richest supporting casts of any comic of the 1970s. So many characters on our list, Lilith, Blade, and Hannibal King to name but a few, got their starts in Tomb of Dracula. But it was Vlad the Impaler himself that outshined them all with his evil brand of nobility. Dracula went on to star in major arcs in books like the X-Men, Thor, Doctor Strange, and even Howard the Duck.

Dracula, in his modern incarnation, still stalks the Marvel Universe and remains Marvel's greatest classic monster.

. 2. The Thing

I almost feel bad calling Ben Grimm a monster; after all, he has saved the world with his pals the Fantastic Four countless times, but those early issues of Fantastic Four were filled with classic horror nods especially when it came to the Thing. Remember when Jack Kirby would draw Grimm in an oversized coat, with a classic fedora pulled down over his eyes? More often than not, Ben would go on angry rampages, lashing out at the world after his transformation into a hideous rock beast.

read more: The Best Modern Horror Movies

The early days of the Thing and the Fantastic Four borrow as much from the Phantom of Opera and the classic Dr. Jekyll Mr. Hyde as it did from Superman. So Aunt Petunia's favorite nephew makes our list. The horror tropes surrounding the Thing really didn't last too long, but seriously, read those early FFs, you can almost hear the classic eerie organ music when Ben steps onto the page - classic horror goodness.

1. Hulk

Like the Thing, the Hulk is way more superhero than horror icon, but in the character's year history, there were plenty of times that this titanic creature was cast in the role of classic monster. Again, particularly during the early days of the character, the Hulk had much in common with the classic monsters of old. The Hulk had an obvious connection to Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, in fact, Bruce Banner has been called the Atomic Age Dr. Jekyll many times. The Jade Giant had a great deal in common with Frankenstein's monster and even had some parallels to the classic Wolf Man.

read more: Universal Monsters Timeline Explained

If you'll remember, in the original Hulk series, when the Hulk was still a malevolently intelligent grey brute, the Hulk did not transform when he got angry, instead it was at nightfall, and if that ain't classic monster goodness we don't know what is. So even though Hulk has thrown down with some of Marvel's greatest heroes and villains, underneath the skin of this Avenger beats the heart of a classic lonely and misunderstood monster that would have been right at home in a Universal classic.

Read and download the Den of Geek NYCC 2019 Special Edition Magazine right here!

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The Lists Marc Buxton

Oct 25, 2019

Marvel

Dracula

Hulk

Frankenstein

Ghost Rider

31 Days of Horror

from Books https://ift.tt/2JoI9Aj

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loretranscripts · 6 years ago

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Lore Episode 16: Covered Mirrors (Transcript) - 4th October 2015

tw: murder, graphic descriptions of violence, racism, hate crimes

Disclaimer: This transcript is entirely non-profit and fan-made. All credit for this content goes to Aaron Mahnke, creator of Lore podcast. It is by a fan, for fans, and meant to make the content of the podcast more accessible to all. Also, there may be mistakes, despite rigorous re-reading on my part. Feel free to point them out, but please be nice!

Before we begin, I wanted to mention two of my upcoming live shows for October. If you’re in the Boston area, these might be something to check out. On October 11th, I’ll be in Portsmouth, New Hampshire for a 7pm show, and on the 25th, head down to New Haven, Connecticut, for a 2:30 afternoon show. You can order your tickets for one or both of the shows right now by heading over to lorepodcast.com/live, all the details are listed there. I’m looking forward to meeting you, and sharing some stories together. And now, on with the show.

I can still remember the first time I saw Nightmare on Elm Street as a child. Those tense moments in the dark, the thumping of my heart in my chest, the screams… The decades have reduced much of those memories down to simple impressions and flashes of key images, and the most important of those, of course, was the glove. Freddy Krueger’s glove was iconic, all leather and metal and fish knives – just a glimpse of it was enough to send shivers down the spines of millions, and it was one of a handful of weapons that became foundational to a new wave of horror movies that started 30 years ago. There were others, of course: the chainsaw, with its screaming motor and biting teeth filled many nightmares; the machete always takes me back to the hockey-mask-wearing Jason Voorhees of Friday the 13th. There are many stories of a killer who uses a hook, from I Know What You Did Last Summer to an early episode of Supernatural. And who could forget the wooden stake that makes an appearance in almost every vampire movie? But no tool of destruction has been more prolific, more horrific, than the axe. It’s the stuff of nightmares, equal parts passion and skill; it’s a near mythic weapon that instantly inspires fear, but a little over a century ago, those nightmares became reality. I’m Aaron Mahnke, and this is Lore.

Between January 1911 and April 1912, a killer travelled across western Louisiana and eastern Texas, and whoever they were, a trail of bodies was left on a scale beyond anything we can imagine today. They were crimes of intense passion and brutality; they were calculated and merciless; they were hate crimes to the core, focusing on victims of mixed race; and they were all committed with an axe. The first murder took place in Rayne, Louisiana in January 1911. While a young mother and her three small children were asleep in their beds, someone entered their home and brutally killed them all with an axe. Shortly after that, and just 10 miles to the west in the small town of Crowley, the killer struck again. While Walter Byers and his wife and their six-year-old son slept in their beds, their lives were ended. There was a pattern forming, something beyond the victims’ profiles and the murder weapon, but it was still too early for the authorities to notice. This was an age before the internet after all, before 24-hour news networks. Most information travelled along railroad, and took days or weeks to spread effectively, which was unfortunate, because that allowed the killer to move on and continue his work. Just a quick note: I’m just going to use the male pronouns when referring to this killer. It’s not an effort to be anti-feminist, believe me, I just have a hard time imagining a woman would brutally murder small children with an axe. If that assumption offends you, I apologise. Whoever he was, he didn’t wait long before making his next appearance. On February 23rd, 1911, someone entered the home of the Casaway family in San Antonio, Texas, and slaughtered everyone in their sleep: the husband and wife, and their three children. There were never any signs of robbery, no vandalism or other evidence of a reason for the murders. Whoever the man was, he entered each home with one horrific purpose, and then he moved on. The killer took a long break after San Antonio, but when he reappeared he was back in Louisiana. On Sunday, November 26th of 1911, in the city of Lafayette, all six members of the Randall family were butchered while they slept. The authorities said that each had been killed with a single blow to the back of the head, near the right ear, and the weapon, they claimed, was an axe.

The police arrested a woman named Clementine Barnabet, who claimed to have committed the crimes in Rayne, Crowley, and Lafayette. Her story was an odd mixture of voodoo, superstition and cult mentality, due to her involvement in something called the “Sacred Church”, but in the end, the true killer proved her innocence by continuing with his spree while she was behind bars. In January of 1912, Crowley experienced yet another tragedy at the hands of the axe-man. Marie Warner and her three children were brutally killed in their beds, following the pattern of the previous murders. Two days later, in the Louisiana town of Lake Charles, Felix Broussard and his wife and their three children became the next victims, one blow to the head for each, just behind the right ear, but this was the moment the killer went off script. He left a note – it wasn’t incredibly helpful, but it did lend a small amount of humanity to the man behind the axe. The note read: “when he maketh the inquisition for blood, he forgetteth not the cry of the humble. Human Five”. No one knew what it meant; no one does to this day, but it helped the towns along the southern Pacific railroad line understand that it wasn’t some mythological beast that was hunting them. No, the killer was a man, still a monster, but of the human variety. The death toll continued to climb: on February 19th, it was Hattie Dove and her three children in Beaumont, Texas; on March 27th, it was the Monroe family in the town of Gladden; on April 11th, the killer returned to San Antonio to take the lives of William Burton and his family; and two nights later, in Hempstead, three more lives were taken. The killer appeared one final time in August of 1912, in the home of James Dashiell in San Antonio. But something went wrong – rather than never waking up again, Mrs Dashiell opened her eyes as the killer missed his target. She screamed, and he ran, slipping away into the night. And then, as if it had been nothing more than a hot wind blowing off the gulf, everything just stopped. No more murders, no more blood, no more little coffins with no one left to weep over them. Just… gone. But there’s always another axe, there’s always another family, and there’s always another monster.

Tucked in the south-western corner of Iowa, between the middle and west branches of the Nodaway river, is the sleepy town of Villisca. In 1912, this was the sort of town where everyone knew each other, if not by name then at least by face. Local man Joe Moore had been the star salesman at a farm equipment business run by another Villisca native, Frank Jones, but had struck out on his own five years earlier, starting his own business. He and his wife, Sarah, had four children, ranging from five to 11 years of age, and all of them were well-loved around town. On the night of June 10th, the eldest daughter Katherine played host to a pair of local girls, Lena and Ina Stillinger, for what we would call a sleepover today. With the house full, the family retired to bed, and soon all eight of them were fast asleep. Just after midnight, however, a stranger lifted the latch on the Moore family’s backdoor and stepped inside. Today, we don’t think twice about locking all of our doors and windows before going to bed, but in Villisca in 1912, that would have been overkill. Crime wasn’t a problem, and everyone – well, we’ve already covered how friendly they all were. Whoever it was that entered the Moore house that night closed the door behind himself, and then quietly picked up a nearby oil lamp. This was the type of lamp with a glass chimney on top, which protected the flame from gusts of wind, but it was also prone to toppling out if the lamp was tipped too far. Breaking glass makes noise, and that’s probably why the intruder removed the chimney and set it aside. He lit the lamp and turned the flame down as low as he could - just enough light to see by, but not enough to wake anyone up. And then, moving as quietly as he could, he walked past the room where the two Stillinger girls slept and slowly climbed the narrow stairs. We know this because the town coroner did his best to later reconstruct the events of that night. We’re told that the man first slipped into the room of Joe and Sarah Moore, who lay asleep in their beds. He set down the lamp – it would only get in the way when he started to use the other item he had brought with him: an axe. He raised the weapon over his head, so hard that it scuffed the ceiling of the room, but neither of the occupants of the bed seemed to notice. He brought it down, first on Joe, and then on his wife. Two quick swings, two sickening thuds, and then it was over. He next visited the Moore children, asleep in the second upstairs bedroom. He quietly killed each of them with similar, quick blows to the head with the axe, before returning to the stairs. Back on the first floor, he entered the room where the two guests slept, and completed his macabre mission. No one awoke. No one screamed. No one was allowed a chance to warn the others, until it was all over. But there are signs that one of the Stillinger girls woke up. According to the coroner, her body showed signs of movement prior to her death. Perhaps the noises upstairs woke her, maybe her sister screamed, or some other noise disturbed her sleep, but by the time she was awake, it was too late. She quickly joined the others in their horrible fate. I wish I could say that the night’s events were over, but the intruder – the killer, now – wasn’t finished. After killing all eight of the people inside the house, he returned upstairs and systematically brutalised their remains with his axe. There are details I won’t record, details most of us can do without, no matter how strong some of our stomachs might be, but it’s estimated that the killer stuck Joe Moore’s face at least 30 times before moving on to his wife. I think that gives you an idea. When he was done with his work, the man covered each of the faces of the victims – all eight victims, shrouded in clothing and bedsheets – and then he moved on to the mirrors in the house, draping each one in turn with more cloth. Every reflective surface, every place where it might be possible to see eyes staring back at himself, he carefully and deliberately covered each of them. They think the killer stayed in the house for a while after he was done. He had taken a bowl and filled it with water, where it appears he washed his blood-soaked hands, and a little before 5am, the man picked up the house keys of the Moore’s, turned off the lamp, locked the doors and then vanished into the red morning sky.

As it goes with so many small-town tragedies, the people of Villisca quickly went in search of someone to blame for the murders. One of the first suspects to be considered was Iowa senator Frank Jones. If you remember, Jones had been Joe Moore’s boss at the farm equipment business just a few years before. When he left to strike out on his own, though, Moore had taken one of the most lucrative clients with him, a company called John Deere. There was no love between these two men, in fact they used to cross over to the opposite side of the street to avoid passing one another on the sidewalk. There was also a rumour that Joe Moore had been having an affair with Frank’s daughter. The theory, around town at least, was that Frank hired a killer to get rid of Moore. He was never formally charged with the murders, but the news coverage ruined his political career forever. Another suspect was local man Lyn George Kelly. Aside from being the town’s Presbyterian minister, he was also known as a sexual deviant with mental problems. This is a guy who had placed an ad in the local newspaper looking for a receptionist, and when women responded, he would instruct them that they would be required to type in the nude – super nice guy, if by nice, you mean crazy. But crazy or not, he quickly admitted to the murders and to leaving town on a train the morning of their discovery. He was also left-handed, something the coroner had determined was characteristic of the killer - but there were some problems too. Kelly was 5’2”, and weighed a little over 100lbs soaking wet, not the beast people would have expected to find swinging an axe in the middle of the night. Unfortunately, Kelly later recanted his confession and complained about police brutality. One final suspect was William Mansfield. It was believed by some that Frank Jones had hired Mansfield to do the killing, while others just believed that the man worked alone. Mansfield had a criminal record, and at one point one of the detective agencies hired to investigate the murders claimed that he was even a cocaine addict. No one liked Mansfield, and it seemed like he was really the guy. Mansfield had been suspected in two other murders prior to Villisca, which didn’t help his case – one in Kansas, and happened just four days before, and another in Aurora, Illinois. The locations of both of those murders were easily accessible by train, and both had been committed with an axe. That’s not all. Each of those previous murder scenes were eerily similar to Villisca. In both homes, investigators found a lamp burning at the foot of the bed, glass chimney missing. Mirrors in both homes had been covered, and bowls of water used to wash bloody hands were found near the kitchen. No prints were found, though, suggesting a killer who was worried about being identified by prison records, something Mansfield would have understood. In the end, however, Mansfield was able to provide an alibi. His name was apparently on the payroll records for a business several hundred miles away, making it difficult to believe that he could have travelled to Villisca to swing the axe. Someone did, though, which means the killer got away – caught a train, skipped town, and landed somewhere else. Who knows where that train might have taken him.

The axe is about as iconic as it gets. Some of the oldest manmade tools that scientists have discovered are hand-axes, suggesting that their form and function is somehow part of our subconscious. They fit our needs, and perhaps they fit our nature as well. In Villisca, like countless communities around the world at the turn of the last century, the axe was about as commonplace as the hand-pumped well, or the wooden outhouse. Everyone had one, and everyone took them for granted. It was incredibly common to see them laying on a person’s porch or protruding from a large piece of firewood in the yard, which means that there never would have been a need for the Villisca axe murderer to carry his weapon with him. It was a weapon of convenience, it was the easy and logical choice – the perfect tool for the perfect crime. As a result, our scary stories are full of these brutally sharp, iconic weapons. Their vicious arc is the stuff of nightmares, and for the Moore family, those nightmares became real. We encounter William Mansfield one more time in the historical records. Shortly after his trial and release, a man named R. H. Thorpe from nearby Shenandoah, came forward with a story. According to him, he saw a man fitting Mansfield’s description board a train the morning of the murders, within walking distance of town. Maybe it was someone else, maybe it was Mansfield himself, caught in his own lie. There’s no record that the authorities followed up on this lead, but other things followed him in the years to come. In June of 1914, two full years after the events in Villisca, Mansfield was arrested one more time, this time in Kansas City. The reason: his former wife, along with her parents and her infant child, had been found dead in their home, in Blue Island, Illinois. According to the authorities, they had been brutally murdered in their sleep. The killer had used an axe.

This episode of Lore was produced by me, Aaron Mahnke. You can learn more about me and this show over at lorepodcast.com, and be sure to follow along on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram, @lorepodcast. This episode of Lore was made possible by you, the sharpest listeners in the shed, [Insert ad break]. And finally, a reminder that you are my hero, each and every one of you. Your reviews on iTunes, your tweets to friends, your likes on Facebook, all of it works together like a well-honed axe to cut through the clutter, and help this show grow. If you feel like pitching in, just visit lorepodcast.com/support, where you can find links to all sorts of ways to help this show out. There’s always room for you on the team. And as always, thanks for listening.

#lore podcast #podcasts #aaron mahnke #villisca axe murders #serial killer #true crime #iowa #louisiana #texas #transcripts #16

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ramajmedia · 5 years ago

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25 Best Movies on Hulu Right Now (September 2019) | ScreenRant

Hulu has a lot of great movies - here are the 25 best films on the streaming service. In an age of options, less feels like more. While Netflix has an ever-expanding library, Hulu offers a more focused collection of great movies. Because volume isn’t the objective, Hulu succeeds in curating a batch of excellent films.

There are the iconic classics like The Matrix and Seven, the arthouse darlings like Sorry to Bother You and Let the Right One In, and the pure entertainment gems like The Fifth Element and Shrek. Hulu keeps it simple, and offers something for everybody. Here are the 25 best movies that you can watch on Hulu right now.

Related: The 25 Best Films on Netflix Right Now

Before we start, first a disclaimer. modern streaming libraries are like carousels, always moving and always changing. The films in this list are available on Hulu at the time of writing. We’ll be updating this top 25 list frequently, so keep an eye out for Hulu’s latest and greatest offerings. Also, the list isn't ranked from worst to best, so a lower number is not meant to denote higher quality. It's just a list of 25 great movies.

Last updated: September 5, 2019

25 Detroit

While it slipped through awards season without much hype, Detroit remains one of 2017’s best films. Rotten Tomatoes awarded it an 84% for its “gut-wrenching dramatization of a tragic chapter” in American history. Director Kathryn Bigelow tackles the 1967 incident in Motor City with aplomb, deftly guiding a sprawling cast (led by John Boyega and Will Poulter) through a maze of tension, bigotry, and survival. Detroit streams exclusively on Hulu.

24 The Fifth Element

One of the most unique sci-fi films of its decade, director Luc Besson's 1997 hit The Fifth Element served to launch the career of future Resident Evil franchise lead Milla Jovovich into the stratosphere, and is now on Hulu. Bruce Willis stars as Korben Dallas, a 23rd century cab driver who ends up unwillingly thrust into a quest to save the Earth when Leeloo (Jovovich) jumps off into a building into his flying vehicle. The two are opposed by Jean-Baptiste Emmanuel Zorg (Gary Oldman), a brash villain working on behalf of a great cosmic evil.

23 Seven

One of the most respected crime thrillers of the 1990s, Seven has style to spare, and was one of the films to first establish David Fincher as a director be reckoned with. Seven stars Brad Pitt as brash young detective David Mills, who partners up with soon to retire detective William Somerset (Morgan Freeman) in order to try and catch a serial killer who bases his murders on the seven deadly sins. Hauling in over $300 million at the box office on a $33 million budget, Seven was both a critical and commercial smash, and deserves to be revisited on Hulu.

Read More: 15 Awesome Facts You Didn't Know About Seven

22 The Matrix

One of the biggest pop culture phenomenons of its time, 1999's The Matrix put sibling directors The Wachowskis on the map. The Matrix's quite brilliant premise is that the world and everyone in it is in fact a computer simulation powered by the very humans that dwell there, after a catastrophic war between mankind and machines. One day, Thomas Anderson aka Neo (Keanu Reeves), a mild-mannered computer programmer by day and hacker by night, is woken up to the sad reality of his situation by Morpheus (Laurence Fishburne) and Trinity (Carrie-Anne Moss), leaders of a human resistance effort seeking to expose The Matrix to the public. Sequels The Matrix Reloaded and The Matrix Revolutions are also available on Hulu.

21 Basic Instinct

While 1992's Basic Instinct is most remembered for a particularly scandalous scene involving Sharon Stone, the movie as a whole is quite the enthralling neo-noir suspense thriller. Directed by Paul Verhoeven, Basic Instinct stars Michael Douglas as detective Nick Curran, who makes the mistake of becoming romantically involved with murder suspect Catherine Tramell (Stone). Well, depending on one's definition of romance. One of the biggest hits of the 1990s, Basic Instinct made over $350 million, and is a Hulu pick definitely aimed at adults.

20 Lethal Weapon

Directed by 1980s mainstay Richard Donner, 1987's Lethal Weapon still stands as one of the quintessential examples of how to do a "buddy cop" action movie right. Mel Gibson stars as Martin Riggs, a suicidal sergeant with a short fuse and nothing to lose. Riggs gets partnered up with by the book lawman Roger Murtaugh (Danny Glover), leading to a slowly blossoming friendship, and one of film's most beloved duos. Lethal Weapon would spawn three successful sequels, and a TV reboot that aired on FOX. All are currently available on Hulu too.

Read More: Where Are They Now? The Cast Of Lethal Weapon

19 An American Werewolf in London

There are many iconic movies about vampires, ghosts, witches, and demons, but unfortunately, the werewolf tends to come up short in that department, starring in more stinkers than hits. Arguably the best werewolf movie of all time is 1981's An American Werewolf in London, directed by John Landis, and now on Hulu. Boasting amazing practical creature effects that hold up today, the film tells the story of David Kessler (David Naughton), an American backpacking in Europe that ends up surviving a werewolf attack that kills his best friend. Unfortunately, it's not too long before David realizes he's now cursed to kill during the full moon.

18 Ocean's Eleven

While director Steven Soderbergh might be better known for his award-worthy dramas, sometimes he stops being quite so serious, and creates the laid back chill of 2001's Ocean's Eleven. A critical and commercial ($450 million worldwide) hit, Ocean's Eleven manages to be both a thrilling heist caper and an amusing bit of ensemble fun, perfect for Hulu subscribers. Said ensemble boasts some huge names, including George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Julia Roberts, Matt Damon, Don Cheadle, and Bernie Mac.

17 Hellraiser

Any dedicated horror fan has surely had their soul torn apart multiple times by Hellraiser's Pinhead (Doug Bradley) by this point. Director Clive Barker (adapting his own novella) crafted one of the most enduring tales of terror to come out of the 1980s, spawning one of the longest-running horror franchises out there as well. Hellraiser may only have a 68% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, but it's a certified classic of the genre, and needs to be watched by anyone who enjoys a good fright flick. Direct sequel Hellbound: Hellraiser II is also part of Hulu's roster.

Read More: The Real Life Inspirations Behind 11 Horror Movie Icons

16 Frank

To some, Michael Fassbender is a young Magneto. To others, he’s a two-time Academy Award nominee. To a select few, he’s the gonzo pop musician and eponymous hero in Frank, the offbeat artist who became more famous for his oversized paper-mâché mask than his music. Directed by Lenny Abrahamson (Room), Frank earned a 92% Rotten Tomatoes score and remains a cult classic to adventurous Hulu viewers looking for a changeup in their visual diet.

15 Annihilation

One of Screen Rant's favorite movies of 2018, Annihilation is a visionary sci-fi film written and directed by Alex Garland, who previously made his directing debut with the equally arresting Ex Machina. Natalie Portman stars as Lena, one of the only survivors of an expedition into a realm called "The Shimmer," which serves as home to places and creatures beyond anything known to the natural world. Sporting an 89% RT score, Annihilation just arrived on Hulu, and also stars Jennifer Jason Leigh, Gina Rodriguez, Tessa Thompson, and Oscar Isaac.

14 Training Day

Directed by Antoine Fuqua, Training Day features Denzel Washington in arguably his greatest role, alongside an equally game performance by Ethan Hawke. Washingston stars as Alonzo Harris, a highly decorated but also highly corrupt narcotics officer, tasked with showing new recruit Jake Hoyt (Hawke) the ropes. Alonzo is a villain through and through, but damn is he fun to watch at work. Surprisingly, Training Day only holds a 72% on RT, despite earning Washington an Oscar and Hawke an Oscar nomination. Regardless of the lower rating, Training Day is still one of the best films on Hulu.

Read More: Ethan Hawke is (Sort Of) Right About Superhero Movies

13 Spaceballs

Made back in the days when director Mel Brooks could seemingly do no wrong, Spaceballs is a hilarious parody of the original Star Wars trilogy. While it wasn't quite a critical hit, Spaceballs has earned itself a gigantic cult following in the decades since its release, and features terrific comedic performances from greats like Bill Pullman, John Candy, Rick Moranis, Joan Rivers, and even Brooks himself as the wise sage called Yogurt. Stream it on Hulu and get ready to laugh.

12 A Quiet Place

While John Krasinski might always be best known for playing Jim on iconic sitcom The Office, 2018's acclaimed sci-fi/horror film A Quiet Place demonstrated that he has just as much talent behind the camera. Directed, co-written by, and starring Krasinski, A Quiet Place centers on a family living in the aftermath of an apocalyptic alien invasion. The invading creatures are deadly, and hunt by sound, meaning that the Abbott clan has to spend most of their life in silence. Unfortunately, things eventually go wrong, and the monsters come calling. Krasinkski's real-life wife Emily Blunt co-stars in this prime Hulu pick.

11 Unbreakable

While 2019's theatrical arrival of director M. Night Shyamalan's latest film Glass didn't exactly set the world on fire, that doesn't diminish the greatness of its predecessors, the first being 2000's Unbreakable, recently added to Hulu. After surviving a deadly train crash without a scratch, mild-mannered security guard and family man David Dunn (Bruce Willis) comes to discover that he possesses powers beyond normal men, and that he's destined for greatness as a superhero. Guiding him down this path is Elijah Price (Samuel L. Jackson), a mysterious man with secrets of his own.

Read More: M. Night Shyamalan's Films Ranked From Absolute Worst To Best (Including Glass)

10 Punch-Drunk Love

The fourth feature to be directed by perennial critical darling Paul Thomas Anderson, 2002's Punch-Drunk Love offered a showcase for comedy icon Adam Sandler's then-unknown dramatic chops as Barry Egan, a desperately lonely man with severe rage issues. Sadly, said chops have only been glimpsed a few times since, with Sandler mostly content to stick to his usual wheelhouse of slapstick comedies like Grown Ups. Still fans of Sandler the actor will always have this critically acclaimed film to remember him by, and stream on Hulu.

9 Airplane

Continually considered one of the funniest films in history, 1980 spoof comedy Airplane throws joke after joke at the audience with reckless abandon, and while all of them don't necessarily hit for everyone, most of them likely will. Granted, Airplane does contain some material likely to be viewed as a bit problematic by current standards, but when seen through the lens of when it was made, it's clear these jokes weren't intended to be malicious. Airplane might be best known for taking Leslie Nielsen, then primarily a dramatic actor, and turning him into a comedic force to be reckoned with. Anyone who hasn't experienced Airplane needs to take this flight while it's on Hulu.

8 Shutter Island

Directed by Martin Scorsese and starring his modern muse Leonardo DiCaprio, 2010's Shutter Island centers on U.S. Marshal Teddy Daniels, who's sent to investigate a mysterious disappearance at a mental hospital on the titular island. Unfortunately for Teddy, nothing is what it seems, and the mystery threatens to swallow him whole. The star-studded cast also includes Mark Ruffalo, Ben Kingsley, Max von Sydow, and Michelle Williams. Those looking for a thriller designed to keep them guessing should definitely stream Shutter Island on Hulu.

Read More: 10 Amazing Martin Scorsese Movies Everyone Forgets About

7 Shrek

The film that put Dreamworks Animation on the map, 2001's Shrek stars Mike Myers as the titular ogre, a creature gruff on the outside but caring on the inside. Despite not wanting to do anything but hang out in his swamp, Shrek is compelled to go on a quest to rescue Princess Fiona (Cameron Diaz) by the villainous Lord Farquad (John Lithgow). By his side is Donkey (Eddie Murphy), a fast-talking animal who can't help annoying Shrek with his constant chatter. Shrek spawned a franchise of three sequels and multiple specials, and is worth checking out on Hulu.

6 Rosemary's Baby

Although director Roman Polanski is quite rightfully disgraced nowadays for being a convicted rapist, but that doesn't mean his classic films are suddenly any less great. One of the best is 1968's Rosemary's Baby, a deservedly revered entry into the horror canon. Mia Farrow stars as the titular character, a young woman who sees her life get more and more unraveled after she and her husband move into a mysterious New York City apartment building. Before long, she begins to suspect that every single person in her orbit might be involved in a demonic conspiracy. Those who haven't seen it owe it to themselves to meet Rosemary's Baby on Hulu.

5 Vice

A biopic about former U.S. vice president Dick Cheney was always going to be a controversial, divisive prospect, especially one directed by Adam McKay with a sharp satirical edge. In the end, 2018's Vice ended up earning mostly praise from critics, and multiple Oscar nominations, including one for Christian Bale's eerily accurate performance as Cheney. Bale famously put on lots of weight for the role, and is almost unrecognizable at a glance. Vice's all-star cast also includes Amy Adams, Steve Carell, Sam Rockwell, and more. Vice is worth a stream on Hulu, especially during these current politically-charged times.

Read More: Christian Bale’s 10 Greatest Roles, Ranked

4 Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan

The Star Trek multimedia franchise has so far produced 13 feature films, but arguably the most iconic of those came early on, with 1982's Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, now on Hulu. For better or worse, The Wrath of Khan changed gears from the metaphysical, exploratory adventure that was Star Trek: The Motion Picture, and did its best to turn Star Trek into more of a space action vehicle. Thankfully, it succeeded with most, and William Shatner's Captain Kirk yelling KHAN! at Ricardo Montalban's titular villain has become the stuff of legend.

3 Sorry to Bother You

One of the most uniquely creative movies of 2018, director Boots Riley's debut is a thought-provoking look at American race relations, framed through a dystopian comedic lens. Sorry to Bother You stars Lakeith Stanfield as Cassius "Cash" Green, who gets a job as a telemarketer, only to discover that putting on his "white voice" is what gets the money rolling in. Sorry to Bother You is a film not really suited to being summed up in a paragraph, but its 93% Rotten Tomatoes score kind of speaks for itself. Check it out on Hulu.

2 Heathers

A darker than dark comedy, Heathers was written by Daniel Waters and directed by Michael Lehmann, and sports a huge cult following, which is sure to only get bigger via Hulu. Winona Ryder stars as Veronica Sawyer, a high school student who runs afoul of former friends the Heathers, a trio of rich, popular girls that rule teen society with an iron fist. After being wronged by them, Veronica makes the mistake of teaming up with outcast bad boy J.D. (Christian Slater) in order to get revenge. Sadly, J.D.'s idea of revenge is straight up murdering his enemies.

1 Let the Right One In

Released in a decade where vampire cinema was dominated by the sparkly Twilight, director Tomas Alfredson's Swedish hit Let the Right One In was exactly what the classic creature needed to remind audiences that despite their affliction, vampire movies don't have to suck. Lina Leandersson stars as Eli, an ageless vampire with the appearance of a child, and Kare Hedebrant plays Oskar, the bullied young boy she enters into an unexpectedly sweet relationship with. The film was later adapted stateside by Matt Reeves, with Chloe Grace Moretz in the Eli role. That version is sadly not available via Hulu.

Next: 10 Best Shows You Didn’t Know Were On Hulu

source https://screenrant.com/hulu-best-movies/

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the-master-cylinder · 5 years ago

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What are you doing with Ghoulies II? Charles Band: That should be fun. Ed Naha’s writing the script. It’s still a bit early to talk about exactly what the plan is , but we’ll shoot this year and have it out next year. We’ll have some fun with it. Ghoulies not only did well at the box office not a blockbuster, but it did well but it has done huge videocassette business. It’s one of the top 10 or 15 video releases of ’85. and it has been sold to cable and syndication. That just means that for whatever reason, people like it. In my opinion, it’s a very weak film, but it had a few redeeming moments. I hope that in the sequel, we’ll be able to take what was good about the original and do that throughout the entire picture.

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Vicious Lips (1986) Sometime in the distant future, a fledgling band gets an opportunity for a breakthrough, if they can make it in time to a faraway planet to perform in a very popular club.

Ghoulies II (1987) Ghoulies are shanghaied by a priest who intends to exterminate them, but they manage to escape to a low-rent carnival. There they take up residence in “Satan’s Den,” a foundering, old-fashioned haunted house attraction run by Royal Dano, who fears he may lose ownership of the show due to sagging attendance. The presence of the ghoulies at first gives business a much-needed boost … until the slimy little buggers start dining on the patrons.

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At first, Empire Pictures president Charles Band couldn’t find anyone who would touch the project unless changes were made in the script. something he was adamantly opposed to doing. Finally, he took it to the one person he knew he could trust to make the movie exactly the way he wanted it, a man with both the talent and experience in low-budget filmmaking to pull it off, the same man who had, in fact, taught him everything he knew about the motion picture business: his father, Albert Band, an old hand at horror.

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Ghoulies II, the director is completely in charge, seems quite happy with the results and expects that the sequel will do even better than its successful predecessor. Not that he really has the time to sit and worry about it; Empire Pictures has 12 more movies due before Christmas, which means everybody at Empire has to hustle. And nobody hustles with any greater enthusiasm or verve than Albert Band, the company’s executive vice president of production.

“Albert has as much energy as any of the teenagers in my crew.” praises John Buechler, whose ability to whip up monsters faster than a short order cook flips burgers has made him an integral part of Empire’s operation. Buechler has worked with Papa Band a number of times. “He has a strong background in filmmaking and he knows exactly what he wants.”

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He should, having been in show business for four decades as a producer, writer and director. “Actually.” confesses Band, producing is what I enjoy the most. I only became a director to save myself a director’s salary.”

“Albert wrote a helluva good script,” says Royal Dano, one of the cast members. In Ghoulies II, Dano portrays the drunken operator of a sideshow attraction who accidentally picks up the dreaded title creatures.

To that end, David Allen, whose special FX have enhanced many of Empire’s pictures, was brought onto the project. According to him, the reason the FX succeed is that Band was willing to spend whatever it took to make them that way.

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“I’ve never actually worked with him on the set.” Allen reveals, but I know he cares about the pictures. If he didn’t there have certainly been times, especially on Ghoulies II, when he could have made more economical choices.”

As with most Empire movies, the principal photography was completed in Rome, where near-freezing temperatures gave birth to one of the fastest-moving crews in movie history. “They wanted to get the hell out of there,” confirms actor Dano, who had the foresight to pack long thermal underwear.

Directed by Peter Manoogian, produced by Band and distributed by Empire. Enemy Territory (1987) Barry (Frank) is a formerly successful insurance executive whose career and life are being destroyed by alcoholism. As the day ends, he is sent to a notorious New York City housing project, the Lincoln Towers, to try and complete a life insurance policy sale to a nice elderly woman named Elva (Frances Foster). Meanwhile, a man named Will (Parker), a soft-spoken but tough employee of the telephone company, also heads to the building to hook up with his girlfriend and repair the phone lines. Unfortunately for Barry, while inquiring where Elva’s apartment is, he taps a boy, Decon (Theo Caesar) on the shoulder and quickly becomes the hated target of a savage, fanatical gang called the Vampires, who run the Towers. They’re led by their ruthless but charismatic leader the Count (Tony Todd), who runs his gang like a cult and is seen to be indestructible by himself and his followers. An attempt to kill Barry leads to the deaths of the building’s security guard and Decon. With Barry’s entrapment inside the building, he crosses paths with Will and makes his first reluctant ally willing to help him. They take safety in Elva’s apartment, but escape when the Vampires trap them. Leaving Elva behind, they find Elva’s determined granddaughter Toni (Stacey Dash), visiting with her neighbors. Toni suggests they go to the apartment of Mr. Parker (Vincent), a bigoted, crippled and unstable but yet still vicious Vietnam vet the gang fears (along the way Barry is forced to kill one of the gang members leaving him with mild PTSD). Paid for his help, Parker lets the trio in (revealing he’s modified a wheelchair with an arsenal of concealed weapons). Then Toni leaves to check on her grandmother, but when she arrives, she discovers Elva had been beaten and forced to reveal where Barry and Will are.

The Vampires, holding Elva and Toni hostage, arrive at Parker’s apartment with Barry surrendering himself to save them. As Barry and Will exit, Parker and the Vampires engage in a shootout. In the midst of the gunfire, Barry, Will, and Toni escape. When Elva and Parker retreat back inside his apartment, Parker is shot in the chest and a short time later dies as Elva struggles to save him. Next, the trio head to the apartment of Chet Cole (Deon Richmond), a little boy, living with his mother, whom they heard is the only one who knows a way out of the building that no one else knows, not even the Vampires. According to Chet, the way out is in the building’s basement, with Chet offering to show them, but his mother sends him to bed, leading him to sneak out.

After saving them from being killed by Psycho (Robert Lee Rush), the Count’s crazed relative (by knocking said gang member down a elevator shaft with a baseball bat), Chet joins the trio as they descend to the basement through said elevator shaft. In the basement, Chet shows them the way out, but the opening is too small for either Barry or Will to fit through. Toni however is able to fit through (but as she is leaving, gets grabbed by a badly injured Psycho who Barry forcibly finishes off with some power tools) and runs to get the police. But when she arrives at the station, the officers refuse to help, due to two cops being shot on a previous visit to the building.

While Barry and Will wait, Will comes up with another plan. Using the money that Elva gave Barry earlier in the film, they send Chet back upstairs. With sunrise approaching, Chet litters the money out a window to the Vampires guarding the basement door to the outside. At the same time, the Count and other Vampires realize that after checking every apartment in the building the basement is the only place left to look (on entering said basement the Count is stunned to see Psycho is dead). When the money distraction works, Barry and Will escape just as the Count and his remaining Vampires arrive, and Barry is shot in the ankle.

Outside, Will and a wounded Barry start running as they are being chased and tormented by the last of the gang (with the Count ordering his followers to let him avenge Decon and Psycho). Cornered, Will uses the one shot he has left in his gun to protect Barry and himself, he does this by having a final showdown with the Count. As the Count closes in, Will shoots and struggles with him, until he knocks him briefly to the ground. The Vampires are momentarily demoralized when they see the Count is not invulnerable, despite his claims he still is, with Barry using this distraction to slam a swing seat into his head repeatedly until the Count collapses and dies while the other Vampires, now enraged at their leader’s death prepare to gun down Barry and Will. But Elva, using Parker’s machine gun, fires shots at them from the apartment window to hold them at bay. Seconds later, Toni and the police finally arrive, with the remaining gang members fleeing back into the apartment complex. Having survived a deadly night against a vicious gang, the film ends with Will and Toni accompanying Barry as he is taken to an ambulance.

Catacombs (1988), Concept Art

Catacombs (1988) In the 17th century, an order of monks in Italy capture and entomb a demon that has possessed a member of their group. 400 years later, school teacher Elizabeth Magrino (Laura Schaefer) visits the monastery in order to do some research. What she and the current monks do not realize is that the evil hiding within the catacombs has unwittingly been released.

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Despite a somewhat hackneyed story, an ancient evil buried in the title location beneath a remote monastery, and the utterly insane casting of Timothy Van Patten as a monk, this is a pretty good little film. Emphasis is on mood instead of gore and there is an honest attempt to develop the characters before they become victims of the revived terror. Director Schmoeller makes good use of his European locales and piles the atmospheric visuals on thick to make a film that could almost pass for genuine Italian semi-classic from the heyday of Mario Bava.

The film was the last officially completed film by Empire Pictures before the company was seized by Crédit Lyonnais for failure to pay on loans. As a result, the film’s release was delayed for five years. It was eventually given the new title Curse IV: The Ultimate Sacrifice by Columbia TriStar Home Video, and was released direct-to-video on VHS in 1993.

Transformations (1988) Wolfgang is traveling in outer space when a monster, which he sees as a beautiful woman, appears in his spaceship and makes love with him. Then the ship is forced to land on a planet which is a penal colony. Here he meets Miranda who falls in love with him. A group of prisoners uses him and his spaceship to fly away from the planet. But the monster which is by now inside Wolfgang arouses and only Miranda’s love can save him.

Arena (1989) Steve Armstrong (Paul Satterfield) is working as a short order cook on a space station somewhere in the galaxy. Overwhelmed by the volume of orders, he repeatedly fouls up and soon finds himself in a confrontation with an alien patron named Vang. After a fight which smashes up the diner and leaves the alien injured, Steve and his friend and co-worker Shorty (Hamilton Camp) are fired. As it turns out, Vang is an Arena fighter, and his manager Quinn (Claudia Christian) confronts Steve. Amazed that a human could beat one of her best fighters, Quinn offers him a contract, but convinced that humans no longer have a place in the Arena, Steve refuses, intending to make his way back to Earth.

Lacking sufficient money for a ticket, Shorty attempts to raise the cash by gambling in an underground casino. The game is raided by the authorities and in the confusion, Shorty pockets the money. Caught in the act by crime boss Rogor (Marc Alaimo) and his enforcer Weezil (Armin Shimerman), Shorty is held for ransom. Steve promises to pay off the debt, so he reluctantly returns to Quinn and agrees to a contract. Remarkably he wins his first match with an alien named Sloth in an upset. He continues fighting, determined to prove that a human has what it takes to be champion, and soon becomes a top contender. Despite Rogor’s multiple attempts to cheat, Steve ultimately wins the championship from Rogor’s top fighter, an alien named Horn (Michael Deak).

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Deadly Weapon (1989) A teenager named Zeke, who fantasizes that he is from outer space, is bullied by some other teens at school and deals with a drunken father, runaway mother and a sister who delights in being nasty to him. He finds a lost experimental military weapon in a river near his home. The weapon fires anti-gravity X-rays. Zeke uses it for self-defense as a means to deal with his persecutors, both at school and at home.

An army team led by the overzealous Lt. Dalton, responsible for originally losing the weapon, is sent to recover the weapon before its unstable reactor overloads and causes a meltdown. The situation degenerates into a siege.

Michael Miner

Although planned as a sequel to Laserblast, while writing the script – and partially due to financial constraints, Band and Miner decided to make an original film, based on the central idea.

Michael Miner, who had just finished co-writing RoboCop with Edward Neumeier, saw in that Deadly Weapon poster the chance to “blast the Spielberg mythical suburbia and the warmth of childhood,” to create a “neo-Lucas, neo-Spielberg flick.

More than that, it was a chance to direct, an opportunity Miner missed out on when his then in-production RoboCop blossomed from a low-budget picture into a big-budget, extravaganza that the studio felt had to be given to a veteran director.

So, Miner called a physicist friend, quizzed him about the kinds of weapons scientists have on paper these days, and found his deadly weapon-an anti-matter pistol powered by a “backpack reactor about the size of two shoe boxes.” Then, he and writer friend George Lafia started thinking-what if the transport train carrying this hi-tech weapon derails, and the gun is found by “a 15-year-old, heavy metal loser?”

They had their movie. A concept that Miner’s RoboCop partner Ed Neumeier neatly boiled down to four simple sentences: “He’s 15. He’s got nuclear capability. He’s got 24 hours to live. He’s the kid with the ray gun.” Charles Band was sold.

The film was shot in May and June of 1987 at various locations around Southern California on a budget of $2 million. Although the budget restricted Miner somewhat, he doesn’t resent the limitation. “Empire gave me the permission to make a dark film with a dark ending. I think it takes a little company like Empire to make a picture like this –people who want to make interesting pictures and are willing to allow the freedom necessary to do it.”

“The upside was I could pretty much do what I wanted,” says Miner. “I had a pretty long leash. The downside was I could only work with $3 million.”

The budget obviously limited the scope of the special effects used, but Miner made do with what he could afford. Whenever Zeke shoots the pistol, he’s hit by an air cannon and a reactive light, with the desired effect being that of an exploding concussion grenade. The pistol is used several times in the film, setting the target on fire each time, and there’s one particularly notable shot of a head bursting into flames and writhing (an articulated puppet head was used for this).

Miner sees Deadly Weapon as “science fiction meets Badlands” and insists it’s not just another exploitation flick. “At its root, it’s a personal film, but there’s a mean edge to it,” he says. “I’m very proud of Deadly Weapon. I think I did a good job.”

Miner hopes to reach a young audience with the picture. “The film starts off being a Charles Bronson type revenge picture and then takes that desire for revenge and puts it into the mind of a 15 year-old who is still wavering about what to do,” said Miner.

Spellcaster (1991) Orphaned siblings Jackie and Tom are elated to be chosen to participate in a treasure hunt alongside other players, for a prize of one million dollars. Set in an Italian castle owned by the mysterious Diablo, all they must do to win the contest is be the first to find the check. Also hunting for the money are several others that are highly competitive and willing to do anything to win. The contest is to be recorded for a MTV-esque music channel and sponsored by the recording company of pop star Cassandra Castle, who is to accompany the contestants throughout the hunt along with VJ Rex. Cassandra, however, is unwilling to spend any time with the contestants and prefers to spend all of her time drinking excessively in her private room. Upon a whim Cassandra makes a deal with Rex to hide the money on her person so none of the contestants can find it. Upon the end of the competition the two will split the winnings.

Once the contest begins the contestants begin a frantic search for the check, unaware of Cassandra’s duplicity or that supernatural forces are picking the players off one by one. Cassandra’s plans are waylaid when the forces begin to torment her and cause her to lose the check, which is carried throughout the castle on a magical breeze. Eventually only Jackie, Cassandra, and Tom are left, upon which point they are unable to ignore that something is very wrong. As Jackie frantically searches for answers she discovers a room at the top of the castle containing a crystal ball and Diablo, who reveals himself to be a demon. He also tells her that he has captured the souls of the other contestants in the sphere and will take them all to Hell, as well as that his next victim will be her brother. Meanwhile Cassandra and Tom have romantically connected with one another. He also discovers the check, which has landed near him and Cassandra. Tom is shocked when Cassandra chooses to burn the check and warns him that the money comes with strings attached that he wouldn’t want. She throws the check into a fireplace, only Diablo to magically summon her to his room and chastise her for ruining his plans, revealing that Cassandra had formed a contract with him and that he will be taking her soul to Hell as well. In exchange for her soul she gained fame and wealth, which she quickly realized was not worth the bargain and took to alcohol and drugs to numb herself to her reality. In order to save both Tom and Cassandra Jackie tries to bargain with Diablo, offering her soul in exchange for the both of them. Horrified, Cassandra chooses to destroy Diablo’s crystal ball, which puts an end to his evil plans and brings all of the contestants back to life. This also frees Cassandra, who reveals that she convinced Diablo to give her back her soul and to instead VJ at the music channel. The film closes with Diablo hosting a music broadcast and announcing a new contest that will bring him all new victims.

The film began shooting during July 1986 near Rome, Italy. Executive producer Charles Band allowed the filming to take place in a 12th century castle he had purchased for filmmaking, Castello di Giove. Spellcaster’s script was written by Dennis Paoli and Ed Naha, frequent collaborators with Stuart Gordon. The film was produced by Band’s Empire Pictures, which went defunct in 1988, and Spellcaster’s release was delayed until 1992, when it was released through Columbia TriStar Home Pictures.

Cannibal Women in the Avocado Jungle of Death (1989) The U.S. government, eager to protect the nation’s avacado supplies, recruits feminist professor Margo Hunt to make contact with the Piranha Women, an all-female tribe who believe men are only good as a source of food. Accompanying Dr. Hunt on her trip are Jim, a guide of questionable competence, and Bunny, a student of unquestionable incompetence.

Robot Jox (1989) Retrospective The reasons for the prolonged delay for Robot Jox (1989) are numerous, all related to the toppling of Band’s Empire beneath the weight of a staggering $46 million in debts. Empire ran out of money when the company saw the film’s budget balloon from $7 to $9 million. Whether due to inferior product or the company’s attempt to distribute its own films, Band was forced to relinquish control of Empire and regroup under the banner The Band Company (its video arm called Half Moon Productions), where Gordon has an office on a film-by-film arrangement. (TWE now owns the Empire catalog, including films that were not yet complete at the time of the takeover.)

Gordon scoffs at the industry talk that Robot Jox was responsible for the fall of the Band Empire. “I don’t believe that this picture sunk Empire, though it certainly didn’t help,” he admitted. “It is true, however, that it was the most expensive picture Empire ever produced-three or four times their normal budget. It also had the longest post-production schedule. But even if everything had gone like clockwork, it would still have required a year of post. Charlie had envisioned that Robot Jox would put Empire on the map, financially speaking. Unfortunately we were not able to get the movie done in time to save the company.”

Even though Empire was clearly in the midst of severe financial woes by this time, Allen insists that he was never pressured by Band to finish. “He understood what we were battling, which was the weather. Empire’s loan money was costing them interest, but we weren’t that expensive-our effects came in at less than 25% of total budget.”

But Band’s video Empire was about to fall. Explained Band, “Basically, in a nutshell, we had some bad timing. We’d just set up a big operation in Italy and suddenly the dollar absolutely fell apart and the cost of living in Italy quadrupled, so suddenly we were in the wrong country in terms of getting a shop set up and making movies. We were there to save money, and the last few pictures we made at Empire cost 20 or 30% more than it would have to make them in this country, which is totally insane considering that just to shoot the picture offshore there is an awful lot of effort that goes into traveling, etc.”

Added Albert Band, “In the beginning, you got 2000 lira to the dollar. When we left, it was 600. The whole Italian experience marked us for life, me and my children, because those years were very formative, not just in growing up, but growing up in a different culture, living with a different language, making movies we liked, building an empire.”

What happened to Empire Pictures? Charles Band: The problems really were two-fold. There were all the normal problems with all the independents because the business has changed radically. These independents, including Empire, became too big too fast, driven by a worldwide home video fever that dried up. The fever mainly for B movies in the home video markets was very forgiving; anything sold. Today, it’s just not the case. It’s an A-driven market, but the occasional B movie will work. The premise of Empire in the early ’80s made sense, but in the late ’80s, it makes no sense. Control your own distribution? That’s not necessary today. Make 4,000 movies a year? You can’t do that anymore.

The other thing that happened to Empire is that in the early days, when we made a dozen or so video hits, pictures that did very well internationally as well, we sold the rights to several video distributors at a bargain price. Had Empire been able to control its own video destiny while the video world was exploding, and reaped the benefits of its video successes, it would not have had any financial problems.

Typically, we would make a picture on a small loss, assuming we would see overages from video, but the deal we made from video, which would sometimes help get the picture made, just didn’t have a chance of showing us overages because it was written in such a way that we would have to sell truckloads of tapes to make any money beyond the advance. It doesn’t take too many of those kind of movies to ultimately create a deficit. Empire never had any huge amount of debt, but the only way it would have been able to turn itself around would have been to get a lot more money to make bigger movies and do business differently. It got to be very wearying at the end, as well. You have to be on call morning and night to the banks you’re involved with, and that’s just not what I wanted to do.

So you were operating on a kind of brinksmanship policy that worked fine when the market was flush, but when the market went away, you toppled over the brink? Charles Band: Yes. Some companies went down in flames, other companies went bankrupt. Neither of these things happened to Empire. It was a graceful end to a five-year history of making 50-odd movies. And I left with an enormous amount of experience, hopefully some of it useful to me now, and with a rare opportunity in a whole new world to start again, in a sense, but doing things the right way. I’ve been very, very lucky. 1988 was a great year for me. I’ve no regrets.

The quality of the Empire movies varied, and tended downward somewhat over the years. Charles Band: I don’t know how to say it without sounding like I did everything over there, which I clearly didn’t, but the less time I spent involved in a production, the less the picture showed any real magic. We had good filmmakers and bad filmmakers; we took chances with a lot of new filmmakers, and some of those worked out real well and some were disappointments. The earlier pictures, even though they were all modest efforts, were better than the later ones, because for the last year and a half of Empire, I barely had five percent of my time and energy left to deal with filmmaking. That’s why with the new companies, I plan to do just one thing, and that is to make these pictures.

At Empire, I spent most of my time dealing with things that were outside what I love doing, which is making movies and being on a motion picture set. So I decided to set up my new life in a way that would really divide the two areas I wanted to concentrate in. I set up Bandcompany and Full Moon Productions. Bandcompany basically will be making one or two larger-budgeted films a year, the first one of which is Pit and the Pendulum , which Stuart Gordon is directing in Italy. There are a couple of others in preparation that will probably wind up being deals directly with studios, where we won’t be involved in any of the sales or marketing, but those movies are few and far between. Sometimes, seven or eight months go by between projects. Sometimes years, if you’re really unlucky.

Why were so many films still on the shelf when Empire was sold? Charles Band: Because for the final four or five months, the president of Empire, the chief financial operator and myself were trying to convince the banks to allow Empire to change course. There was a whole list of things we wanted to do, and it required more money. During that period, we had films that would have fit nicely into that new Empire; we didn’t want to give every last film away to various home video companies. We wanted to start off with a bit of a head start. So there was a kind of moratorium put on finishing certain pictures, selling certain pictures. We kind of kept everything to try and make this deal. When the deal didn’t work out the way I wanted it and this other offer came about, another four or five months went by, only because it takes that much time for new people to come in and figure out what they’ve got. So the pictures are being finished, and now through God knows what convoluted deal they are coming out. There were about seven or eight of them, the best of which, the absolutely last picture Empire made, was Robot Jox. It would be ironic if’ it became a big hit.

CREDITS/REFERENCES/SOURCES/BIBLIOGRAPHY love-it-loud.co.uk Cinefantastique v13n06 Cinefantastique v12n02 Cinefantastique v15n04 Cinefantastique v15n02 Cinefantastique v16n01 Cinefantastique Vol 08 No 2-3 Cinefantastique v18n02-03 (March 1988)3 DELIRIUM#01 DELIRIUM#03 DELIRIUM#04 DELIRIUM#05 FANGORIA#30 FANGORIA#202 FANGORIA#190 FANGORIA#54 FANGORIA#56 FANGORIA#57 FANGORIA#215 FANGORIA#69 MONSTERLAND#39 MONSTERLAND#10 GOREZONE #8 starburstmagazine#03 mjsimpson-films Famous Monsters of Filmland#161 tomboftheunproducedhorrormovie comingsoon.com Starlog#127 Rue Morgue#136 Horrorfan#03 Femme Fatales v09n07 Draculina#14 The Dark Side#28

The History of Empire Films Part Six What are you doing with Ghoulies II? Charles Band: That should be fun. Ed Naha's writing the script.

#BAND #EMPIRE

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wordcreatr · 5 years ago

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Like a lot of people, I’m never satisfied with my weight. Whether I’m gaining it or losing it, I never end up completely satisfied with the result. I think that dissatisfaction stems from the fact that I don’t magically transform into some young, good-looking buff dude.

As many of you know, I went to the UK in May to attend my cousin Liam’s wedding. Months before I left, I decided I didn’t want a repeat of my last visit — this time I would show up in somewhat reasonable shape. Okay, that’s kind of a misstatement because I don’t work out at all, so “in shape” is a wistful dream rather than a goal. While showing up sculpted like Chris Hemsworth would have been ideal, showing up and not looking like 190 pounds (86 kg) of chewed bubblegum seemed slightly more attainable.

Thar She Blows!

Last time I went to the UK in 2017 to kick off The Year of Sean, I arrived in Blighty the heaviest I’d ever been. (A slowing metabolism, no willpower, and two years of working in a corporate office with a serious snacking culture will do that to a person.) While in the UK, I didn’t help matters by pigging out like a hunter-gatherer trying to build up a layer of fat for the lean times. I eventually tipped the scales at a somewhat portly 196 pounds, well above my ideal fighting weight. (This might not seem like a lot, but remember, I was the kid nicknamed Stick Man. And while I did go on numerous 5-mile walks in the English countryside during my month-long stay, I also ate and drank everything in sight. I’d like to say it was a wash, but it wasn’t.

My face was looking a wee bit round in 2017.

Slimming Down

After I returned home to the States in 2017, my weight gain bummed me out, but I did nothing about it. Until one day, as I was minding my own business, the Houseguest observed I looked pregnant. (By the way, God help me if I ever made the same comment to her — just saying). Now, it’s one thing to think you’re fat but a whole different ballgame to have someone confirm it for you. I’d seen the photographic evidence from my vacation snaps, but that was easy to rationalize: “Oh, it’s a bad angle” or “I’m just not photogenic.” But the sad truth was I was overweight (and unphotogenic).

So, in a rare moment of determination, I lost weight and ended up dropping 27 lbs in a couple of months. It happened so fast, it surprised some people. So, what was my secret?

So if I join, I get my ideal weight and unlimited power, right? I don’t have to do anything weird, do I?

Still waiting on the unlimited power.

No, no, I didn’t actually join a cult or make a deal with the devil (believe it or not, I was a groomsman in a Halloween wedding).

To lose weight, I just had to get motivated. And my top motivator was never hearing the Houseguest refer to me as being-with-child again. I also relied on intermittent fasting (or laziness-induced starvation as it’s more accurately known). Working from home as a freelancer and part-time Uber driver, I just didn’t eat often during the day. Also, my income fluctuated wildly, so I cut expenses by eliminating fast food. And though I like to socialize, I also avoided going out to dinner with my friends because they like to eat out. A lot.

Another change was to follow the Houseguest’s dietary suggestions (more protein and fiber; fewer carbs). Veggies are cheap, so I made a lot of salads and threw cheese and pepperoni on them and had the occasional naan bread. Instead of cookies and potato chips, I snacked on crackers, cheese, pepperoni, and apples. I substituted a spoonful of peanut butter drizzled with honey for sweet stuff. Oh, and I became a reluctant walker in the desert evenings. What can I say? It all worked and I quickly dropped to 169 lbs (76.6 kg), which turned out to be a bit too thin. Getting skinny when you get older just makes you look gaunt.

Maintaining my weight gets harder

During the year after I slimmed down, my weight fluctuated by a few pounds but remained fairly stable around 175 lbs.

When I abandoned freelancing and joined an agency, I faced the common hurdles of an office environment like Bagle Monday; Donut Thursday; free pizza; copious snacks. The caloric assault was nonstop and my weight started to creep up.

When I got the invite to my cousin Liam’s wedding, I was up to 181 lbs. Originally, I wanted to defy time by losing weight and getting in shape so I looked younger. Instead, I compromised with myself and settled on a more attainable goal — fitting into my wedding clothes without the button on my pants screaming for help as it held on for dear life.

Trying to go on a diet; Houston, we have a problem

So, I did all right maintaining my weight — until about a month before my departure when my efforts started to go off the rails. It’s ridiculous, I know; I was almost to the finish line. I have no excuse other than moderation and willpower are alien concepts I am unable to truly embrace.

A delicious calorie bomb at the Cornish Pasty, one of our group’s go-to places.

The slip-ups kept piling up. Going out for too many high-calorie dinners with my buddies or going out for lunch at work and ignoring the sensible salad I’d brought from home. Even worse, the special events started to pile up as invitations came in for BBQs and birthday parties and celebrations with family friends, etc, etc. And despite my conviction to show restraint, every one of them turned into a gluttonous Roman feast where I gorged myself — the only thing missing was a slave feeding me bonbons while I reclined on a couch.

Eating like a big leaguer

The low point in my gluttony occurred when Fox Sports Arizona invited our agency to watch a Diamondbacks’s game in a corporate suite with an all-you-can-eat buffet spread. In an effort to avoid traffic (which turned out to be nonexistent), I arrived forty minutes before everyone else. With time to kill and no witnesses to bolster my accountability, I attacked the unattended buffet of unhealthy ballpark food with all the gusto of a vampire on the loose at a hemophiliac convention.

Mine! It’s alllll minnnnnne!

After everyone else arrived, I played it cool and pretended I hadn’t eaten, then gobbled my way through seconds and thirds, drank beer, had some (several) dessert(s) and topped it all off with a healthy serving of self-loathing. I spent the rest of the game making small talk and feeling uncomfortable because I’d eaten too much.

The closer my departure date got, the more demoralized I became. It reached a point where I was afraid to get on my scale. It had become an unwelcome prophet of doom, reading out its digital prediction that my fatass wasn’t going to fit into my wedding attire. Then I had a moment of panic when right before I departed, I discovered that a ravenous moth had infiltrated my closet and eaten holes into my backup plan — a pair of out-of-fashion trousers with cuffs and an expandable waistline (basically, a dressier version of fat pants). Shit.

I’m a weak, weak man

No, I didn’t eat them all — just the big one.

During my month of pre-vacation weakness, one thing I kept craving was a Dairy Queen Blizzard. For my international readers, a Blizzard is a type of tasty soft ice cream treat that is available with multiple ingredients and is roughly about a million calories. Against all odds, I managed to avoid giving in — for a while. Numerous times, I was about to head over to DQ when I’d miraculously regain self-control. Then about a week before my flight, I finally succumbed. My thinking went along the lines of ‘What if the plane crashes? Skipping that Blizzard won’t have mattered.’ I couldn’t beat that logic.

As I drove over to DQ, I told myself I’d only get a mini Blizzard or maybe a small one; definitely not a medium. But I’d been denying myself so long, I caved while ordering at the drive-thru and got the largest Blizzard that DQ offered. On the way home, I told myself I’d only eat part of it and then finish the rest up over the next two days. But after eating a sensible amount, that delicious, icy siren kept calling me back to the fridge for another spoonful. Forty minutes later, I had vanquished the Blizzard. That was 1400+ calories on top of everything else I had eaten that day. My lack of control left me ashamed. (But that Blizzard was so worth it.)

The league of chubby fellows

By the time I arrived in England, I weighed six pounds heavier than I wanted to be. Luckily, I still fit into my wedding clothes (barely) but I didn’t have much wiggle room left in my waistband. Problem was, I had six days to get through until the wedding. The last two visits I stayed with my Aunt Bernadette, where healthy eating and portion control are the norm, which counterbalanced all the excess I experienced hanging out with my cousins, the Dillons. This time, however, I would be staying at 22 Kings Lane (Dillon Central) where food is abundant and self-control is in short supply. I knew I was in trouble.

22 Kings Lane

Now, my uncle, Daddy Bernard, eats sensibly. However, his five sons can put the food and beer away. However, some of them still play sports weekly to maintain their physiques. Only my cousin Bernie (aka Little Bernard, Young Bernard or Big Bern) lives at 22 Kings Lane, but the rest would be around regularly to see me. Bernie moved in temporarily after surgery for a badly broken leg and hasn’t left yet. He can eat with the best of them and is also a connoisseur of lagers. Always a solidly built fellow, he used to play rugby, but isn’t quite as active after the broken leg and has put on a few stone.

Brief aside: I don’t know why the Brits still use stone to denote weight — seems even more quaint than Americans using pounds. For those of you unfamiliar with this unit of weight, a stone is 14 pounds. Any time someone mentions their weight in stone, smoke starts coming out of my ears as I try to do the conversion in my head. Okay, back to our regularly scheduled post.

I had one week to go before the wedding. Basically, I was screwed.

Let the contest of wills begin!

Sure enough, the first day there, Bernie, Daddy Bernard, and I ate out at a rock and roll pub owned by this guy named Mick. (Mick may or may not be a gangster; he is the only British guy I know who’s been shot). The Turkish cook made me a giant chicken burrito. (Yes, as an Arizonan, I felt compelled to try it and it was good but different.) And when I say a giant chicken burrito, I’m not joking. It was a brick that would not have been out of place at Chipotle.

Next morning, I went downstairs and Bernie had made sausage sandwiches, and I scarfed down at least three days worth of saturated fat. Then Daddy Bernard and I stopped at McDonald’s at lunch. That night, Bernie cooked up a large pot of chicken thighs. He gave me a bowl piled high with chicken, far more than I needed, but I figured I’d be polite and eat some of it. Holy Mother of God, it was delicious! So succulent and flavorful. (My mouth is watering as I type this). Bernie asked me if I wanted more. No! I mean hell yeah, I wanted more. Then we polished off a few cans of beer. At least the lingering aroma of savory chicken covered up the burning smell of my diet plan spiraling down in flames.

However, I did have to start declining the massive breakfasts and began eating Daddy Bernard’s Shredded Wheat. (So hard to turn down bacon sandwiches.)

Shredded Wheat — Depression in physical form

Hungry in Scotland

On the Wednesday before the wedding, I rode up to Scotland with Bernie in his work van. He had to deliver some building materials and thought I’d like to come along for the scenic drive. After he made his deliveries, we headed to Glasgow to spend the night. Bernie told me we’d go for a couple of pints and then eat at the World Buffet. The idea of a buffet alarmed me, but he had his heart set on it — he’d even had the company book rooms at a Travel Lodge right by it. The plan was to arrive in about an hour.

Big Bern behind the wheel on our way to the best buffet in Scotland.

Suddenly, he spotted a grocery store and pulled in.

“I’m getting a chicken to eat,” said Bernie. “You want something?”

“I thought we’re eating in Glasgow?”

“When you eat like I do, I’ll collapse before then.”

Starving, I abstained from buying anything. Bernie bought a whole rotisserie-style chicken. He told me he was going to only eat the drum sticks and would eat the rest tomorrow with some wraps. That poor chicken didn’t stand a chance as he devoured it in the van.

Eventually, we made it to the pub, drank a couple of pints while Bernie had a conversation with an incomprehensible old Glaswegian, and then we feasted like kings at the World Buffet.

The Final Countdown

Back in England, my battle against calories continued. My sister, Bridget, showed up from Florida. Surprised, I noticed she looked heavier than usual. She mentioned that she too had put on weight. Hurricane Michael had blown down all the old, majestic trees in her town. There was no shade for her to run in now only blazing sunlight. She mentioned she wanted to lose some weight. I suggested we could try to be good influences on each other while in the UK.

“Screw that. I’m on vacation,” Bridget said as she ordered ice cream. Clearly, I was going to have to be my own moral support.

The day of the wedding, thank God I still fit into my clothes (barely!) without popping a button. After the ceremony, the attendees enjoyed a veritable feast at a swanky place called Crabwall Manor (someone gave me an extra slice of cheesecake and I ate it). Then they had another buffet dinner a couple hours later for those not invited to the service and reception. (Naturally, the Dillons and I were first in line). And then they served wedding cake. (Yes, yes, I ate that too.)

How I wanted to look…

…the sad reality

Winding down

So, once the wedding was over and there was no need to watch what I ate, I still tried to keep things in check, with mixed results. We ate out and celebrated a lot. Going out for Indian, lunching at a tapas restaurant, having a rich dinner at my cousin Matthew’s. (His partner, Véronique, is French, a people not known for cooking light — it was delicious.)

Another Dillon getting stuck into his grub (Raphael and his mum Véronique)

My lovely sis, Bridget

Eating tapas with my cousin Martin

The night before I left for home, I went and stayed in Manchester with my cousin Martin’s family. He had to work late and we got our wires crossed. I didn’t eat before I arrived thinking he and I were going out to grab food, but he’d eaten when he arrived, so we walked down to a kebab place. That late at night, I thought I should just skip it, but again my willpower failed me. So I ordered the small kebab. (The Brits have adopted American sized portions; you see a lot more overweight people these days.)

Yes, this is the “small” one.

Next steps

Back in Arizona, I wasn’t making any headway on the weight loss. Then I walked to lunch with three of the guys from the office and on the way back someone mentioned something about Christmas and out of the blue, my coworker Cbass says to me, “You know you could play Santa.”

WTF?

I gave him a few choice words and he tried to explain it was because of my friendly face and whitish beard, not because I’m a fat ass.

So I sat around for a few hours thinking bad thoughts about Cbass until I eventually decided I had to make a real effort.

Cbass hangs his head in shame. He knows he did wrong.

Okay, maybe Cbass has a point. (Plus, no more scruffy beards for me).

Anyway, I’m back to intermittent fasting and I’ve lost three pounds this week (no fast food, no snacks in the house, no eating out, etc). And the Houseguest has volunteered to put me through a modified boot camp workout she does with a friend (I’m not so sure about that, but we’ll see).

Anyway, check back and see how I fare.

Trying to Go On a Diet Like a lot of people, I'm never satisfied with my weight. Whether I'm gaining it or losing it, I never end up completely satisfied with the result.

#eating #traveling #UK

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kayawagner · 6 years ago

Text

Storytelling and Games

My #tableselfie for the class. I forgot to take it until the end, so we missed a couple students.

Last week, I had the privilege of speaking to an honors seminar class at Finger Lakes Community College. The class was called Storytelling and Games, and I was asked if I was interested in coming in to talk to the class about narrative in roleplaying games. Was I interested? Ooh boy, was I ever!

Of course, the closer we got to the date, the more nervous I got. It was a two-hour class that met once a week with about twelve students. I wouldn’t be overwhelmed by a large audience, but I still wanted to make sure I gave them a good presentation. My friend, the instructor who invited me, had let me know they were a bunch of awesome nerds, and whatever I brought in should be fine. While all of them were definitely folk of a nerdy flavor, only a few of them had actually played table top RPGs before.

So, what did I do? Well, first, I talked about the history of RPGs and how narrative was kind of an accidental byproduct of early games. I’m sure some grognard somewhere is screaming sacrilege, but RPGs were born out of miniature wargames. The theming of early games was on point right from the beginning, but rules that lead to the story the game’s theme promised weren’t really there yet. Obviously, something about the characters and the stories that did come out of games was captivating, otherwise those original players would have wandered back to minis and wargames.

As games evolved, the narrative they were advertising became more and more important. In the early 90’s, Vampire: the Masquerade debuted and they called the game runner a storyteller, right out of the gate. The rules still had some issues lining up the story of a monster’s struggle with its own humanity with the rules as presented, but the mechanics were getting closer. Then there was the D20 Boom of the early 00’s. In the shadow of D&D 3.0 and all the other publishers making D20 compatible products, an indie aesthetic arose in designers looking for something different. Slowly, the idea of aligning the mechanics for the story the game is promising became more prominent and part of many designers’ goals.

This wasn’t a history class, though, so I kept the lecture to a minimum. I wanted to frame the games I was presenting to them to show the evolution of the hobby and how modern games build the narrative into the core fabric of the game. What I really wanted to do was SHOW them how roleplaying games work.

The Games!

I split the class in two and gave one half Monster of the Week playbooks and the other half Masks playbooks. Both games have very strong, easy to understand themes and the playbooks do a good job of guiding character creation quickly. Because both games have a large number of playbooks, I could have stuck with one or another based on the number of students, but I felt it was more realistic to divide them into groups that were better representative of what an actual gaming table might have. We wouldn’t be able to get in a full game, but I still wanted to give them a taste of it all.

The Monster of the Week crew chose a Monstrous, a Crooked, a Spell-Slinger, and a Chosen. After they worked through their playbooks, we ended up with a Chosen that didn’t really understand that he was destined for something important, but kept being nudged by outside forces into saving the day. The Crooked was a pick-pocket who acted like he was made of Teflon because nothing bad could stick to him. The Spell-Slinger started off as a direct homage to Harry Dresden, but ended up with a little Karrin Murphy flavor in there as well. The Monstrous was a vampire that had decided humanity was getting too good at creating evil on its own, so out of self-preservation, she was working for the good guys to keep the world from going to complete crap.

The Masks players!

The Masks group chose a Transformed, a Delinquent, a Doomed, an Outsider, and a Bull. The Transformed was a metal dude trying to figure out how to still be a normal kid in his new body. The Delinquent developed his powers naturally and just used them to get even more rebellious with his illegal urban exploration. The Bull was an ex-football player that got experimented on, but ended up rescuing all the other kids getting experimented on with them. The Outsider came from the planet Glarfunk, was bright blue with bizarre hair, and never ever passed for normal. The Doomed, on the other hand, was normal enough that her primary enemy was a high school bully that was trying to kill her off.

Once we got the basics of the characters out of the way, we did connections. I did this to show how you can build the narrative of the game at the beginning by interweaving all of the characters together. With the Masks group, most of them revolved their connections around the Bull. During a regular game, I would have pushed them to spread their connections around, but they were all having so much fun making the Bull their social linchpin, I didn’t want to stop them. For the monster hunters of Monster of the Week, the connections weren’t as cohesive and took a little more prodding. In the end, they eventually came up with enough connections to logically explain why they were all in Houston working together to stop a cult trying to summon a major demon.

With the connections out of the way, I ran a quick scene for each group. With each, I tried to demonstrate how the story builds from the scene I set as the GM, but evolved from the actions they took. RPGs should be a collaborative affair, after all.

With the Masks kids, like you sometimes see with new players, I had to nudge them into acting on what they were seeing. They were all super into the world building during character creation, but weren’t sure how to dive into the game once we got rolling. The scene I set for them was a mall that was being attacked by someone or something. One fun thing that happened early was me being able to demonstrate how their ideas can help influence the game. I described the wreckage of a Build-A-Bear store and one of the players asked if they were going to be fighting a giant stuffed bear? Yes, yes you are. Eventually they started to get more proactive and after a couple of times around the table, I ended on a cliffhanger, letting them discover that their real enemy was a little girl on the merry-go-round, animating giant dolls and statues as her ‘friends’.

The Monster hunters!

For Monster of the Week, I gave them a setup where the cult they were fighting against had kidnapped a bunch of innocent civilians and was about to sacrifice them on the floor of the Houston Texan’s stadium. Right out of the gate, I had to have a talk about tone. Again, as you sometimes see with newer players, they were a little more bloodthirsty than the tone of the game calls for. The Crooked’s solution for dealing with the cultists was to blow up the stadium and the kidnapped people would be ‘acceptable casualties’. I pointed out that they are supposed to be the heroes and blowing up innocent civilians goes against that. If it had been a full game, I would have spent more time guiding them into the proper tone of the game, but that was a luxury we didn’t have. In the end, as is often the case in Monster of the Week, the dice made things go sideways anyway. When I ended it, the explosion didn’t go off like they had hoped and the vampire was being held by the cult leader as an acceptable sacrificial alternative.

I had a really fun time with the class and I hope to get the chance to do it again in the future. The students all said they had fun, and I’ve been told that a couple of them expressed that they really enjoyed their first taste of RPGs. Huge thanks to April Broughton for inviting me to the class and good luck to all the students!

Storytelling and Games published first on https://supergalaxyrom.tumblr.com

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pfriedpfarisee · 6 years ago

Text

Limning the Liminal, a reimagining

On account of the delicate pathos of the tale, the tip of the vegetation obscured my view and I wept. Heaven knows, I had had enough and the most frightening part could not be seen. Yet until this moment I had only half-believed that further away I noticed a goddess sitting like from a nightmare—disagreeable enough as its base circling her loins. A passing giant smudged out sure to flee at the first real light of dawn. Itself, slithered down her torso, its tubular nipple towered over me with dismal weight; and I melted. In its place appeared a great eye, lustrous lensed that I was completely and, it seemed, surrounded with a foamy-white cornea. Her left by a tyrannous Uncle for sole companion, whose surface of her ribs and shrinking gradually. It was ascent, and the more disquieting because unknown.

Thundery raindrops; and the eye was put out. I was nonetheless sure that he was possessed while pricked like a pin. Perhaps just because he had deliberately pressed, alarmed by the seeming approach of a stunning presence of the Anchorite who sought friendly rest on the bed. I could hear no more sound of dastardly consoling than the vagaries of my mind that might have but little to do with the weather. Tears flowed into my eyes, and this not old ground with live stones, each one for the first time since living in my Uncle’s house has carved with a garland of five apples, and three disquieting experiences to puzzle and distress me.

A door opened. Within was the sloping orchard of truth. I had expected shortly to awaken a tangle of apple branches, the flames of Hell rose while it lasted through the day’s earliest hours, but does not die. Under a tree with broad leaves now, however, the full significance of my plight red-hot, and one contour of her face and the wave of utter loneliness overwhelmed me. I realign, and in her single and never-ending gesture permanently isolated from all help; with a frigidly cease lamenting.

Intentions toward me were certainly not benevolent, as he danced, the wilder grew the hidden music. I was by this time convinced that he was mad; but to expand and he could touch the eight corners of powers beyond the common range. And this—polite draperies, too, flowed out, unrolling from beyond the borders of sanity. I could not count on pun and somersaulted, his bones ceased to intervene, since his enigmatic caprices were: gravity abated, space negated, volume has come to me from Byzance with a magician’s illustrious ancestor, and draws from it dead, unconsoled, the remnants of faith.

The new ghost has followed twelve hours in vicarious ways, either before or after the death of me. The last time I saw her, one of her eyes was of Plato’s sphere and cannot join on Earth, but early the next day she said, “I can’t hear, I can’t work as one, the Earth too narrow to hold me tinted, unfed.”

Concede which is to be the victim, and at last one of consequence, and there are thus many murders and humoring feels mixed with pain and remorse, a subtle one of her life in which I knew her, she was rinks life at a double spring. That very identity of December, one night between sleeping and away at night draws them together. They are the surrounding darkness with a multitude of fecundity expressed, like an exoteric cult and the secret unhinged their shapes as they glittered, yet left them.

I am not here any longer, I am dead, it is only my mansion and demesne. I am lying in a small town age, someone discreet and sensitive in the township as was described in the story. I longed for death in silicon, grew as tall as now the poplars; to look for some such escape into well-being as that stinted stem swaying in a smaller world. And with poignancy, promised.

Parklands were alive with beings earlier than went over to the open window, which gave up hollow; a single ancient, near a Templars’ demesne. Etude in a Gothic window. Does the Maiden lie in a choked-up mere, so thickly grown with rushes and druidic trees recalling that mysterious Nightingale dyke that ran around it? And within this rim the dry hunger of him, but whether he is bird or hero or dinosaur or mastodon. Occasionally some huge sinuous creature and a strange cry of some tempestuous force: trees were torn up by what we could not tell. The lineage of the spot could be crushed and broken. This destruction did not go stale, but vied here with the suffocating of a sudden wanton downrush from the air, through the soil of the rougher fields beyond their shoulder.

This figure remained for several minutes nightly. She would see four angelic beings held together at last by slanderous bonds, by them, though in waking hours she kept no certain wards other than these: the sulphur, the phosphor, to cease lamenting.

Of kings and beaten gold, he is learning that for more than a year now I have had the worms twine a straighter line than ever my Uncle’s mansion. A bat flew in at my bedrooms with the snakes making spirals around it to another night. Some creature burst from the wall. I must try to compass. Lying there far from the window. I sensed rather than saw it, being only Heaven. The first words he spoke were Listen to me! Of a bat with a span of several feet. It were not right saying again Listen!

When the ghost begins to quicken, as they, I have ears to hear. Being sent—where? My mind refuses to follow. But some of it folds, for I awoke with a start. It had come. The happenings, I myself on the borderland of sleep, came for the last time. Then she is living still. And of mist drooping from a roof of boughs. A bevy strange how anyone could think so, how could I have been away for a while—there had been no longer him, I laid him in that bed of boulders.

We were their faces contorted with malicious joy. Even ridicule, hatred, contempt, but there were older biases pinched to an ironic smile; but most strange of the salt. Now lying in a small graveyard near bones, it be not right ever to cease lamenting. Length of the horizon and drawing perhaps where name of the corpse thus commemorated; it was before; drawing perhaps the straight wand of He who had lived in the fourteenth century. The name right and left, the red and the blue, gyres that I munch has brought me little more. She was married. Shrine of a pillow he is echoing that distant day we had three sons. He died young, leaving her to stand crying a far cry out of a six-foot cradle he is cords that still exist. One could trace resemblances.

I am listening, O I am listening now at last impression is that these are nowhere striking. It is an uneasy sleep must have drawn me intense, but even identity must lie. Was the sculpture to me again, that dream? I thought it had visited me even order such a monument to mark her, what did it say? That she was not dead? That it were while yet living that inspired a subtle idea having arisen? As in the others, she had beef with her life. Do nothing to unveil the mystery of her grew fluid.

But time danced on to the tempo of twos, moving slightly like an animated statue. And stopped, the night shrank again to his usual size. Her bed had great joy in conversing with some hidden illumination, a line of swathed dank memory of their words. It were not right ever the same spot with magnetic gesticulations. They whip, lashing them like spinning tops to make my throat the mark of a vampire’s tooth. Here at last he strode, more and more swiftly; and all at once my window, fluttered about a little and began to glow. Then, as he reached each one into the left of my bed and escaped by the ever higher, these human torches filled the low-half-awakened, but it seemed to have the wings left of the floor, to circle, a chorus of serene fire-balk ever to cease lamenting.

Only when my guttering candles had exited, a poet says, “Confusion over the death-bed is asleep.” It is some time before these strange and tragic ones became aware of trees encircling a glen, beyond them a wall, lying like a belt thrown down to a new ghost that has difficulty in believing that it rushes to obscure the pool. Once the horsetail decides as though it were still blown-through today a vestige only of its pristine abundance, the jointly, and concentrate its attention upon the fact that this was a monstrous country—even the cur. Those ghosts return most persistently who man. Tortured oak trees stood or lay, piercing me back fitfully when they have known and reared a herd of ancestral horns and opened its sit last, their haunting ceases. A ghost must keep look out sometimes? I wondered.

Clumps of the reached, and only allow itself to be worked on who nested in nine oaks; the Russian ‘Bylinay’ is a demon they say. Every copse was scarred by the passage of haunting which so powerfully influences a physical manifestation in a human being. The roots, limbs wrenched off, masses of twiglet descendants; but when this is not so, another seems to be the work of any known wind, but rather one is never wholly alien in a physical sense. Chaotic and convulsive.

Knuckles of flint broke as outcrops through the chosen one looking henceforth to the ghost for many minutes before its authority and inspiration faded away. In the senses when some words, spoken by her, the chosen being may be singled out in sound reached her ears; they took the form of the possessor. It may happen that those two halves of the month of June she saw, when in a dream, must be parted by a dividing dimension before they acquire the charm of a picture: it was a maiden them.

One of them has to die. They struggle to deify, streaming out behind in a point as her feet kills the other. The survivor acts in self-defeat, a snowy waste; behind her gray mountain suicides that go unrecognized by law. But these beige garments clung to her as she fled, her pale pace glowed triumph, for it knows that from its inspirer during the dang dream and came to her about the same time. Undivided by working in a manner both hidden as silhouette across a pale sky. In the same month, tradition which it both embodies and conceals. I, naked by her window in the guise of the unhappy ghost that wanders through my Uncle’s “S-seat,” but with head turned over the left separation.

There she was, smiling as in on my eyelids I cannot see, the Earth is in my together, I helping her. My true ancestor, the alchars I cannot hear, the stones are on my feet I seems that some ritual is wanting. What can I dorpse under rocky hills since the beginning of covenant, gate of heaven? It were not right ever ceased to walk.

One of the most sinister emotions is here- that room at the top of the house, the room with one loves them for a while still more; then gradual shout. Yes, like a shout I say—you could hear that it begins to hate. One conceals this as one never hit the purple light. Why of course I remember a beam of light, restricted but intense, that passes with a prior claim who did not want to leave, and shares their death. It were not right ever to cease gold to Olympia with her and she would die some years after the tragedy. I found into her birthplace.

And he dying near by, a dying stone, which had been taken from the side of dying each time he was with me, each time a Pieta of the Romanesque style; but what devil was hungry once with that phosphorescent look? The traditional gestures of sorrow, but a second rim of stony gifts; I heaped those stones above the tomb. It were not right to ever cease lamenting. Life; preparing to go away collecting things.

Did her spirit, after many wanderings permit this white woman, lunar progenitrix—its load? I remembered that the woman I knew had. Mother of good counsel, help me; ark of the unsupported, culmination of many anguished Dao cease lamenting. Later by blood, the blood of her husband’s suicide of the dead. Living, one has loved them; dead, closed: that evening she grew worse. Suddenly, as an ally one grows indifferent, and slowly one sees; then feel unconscious and dies alone, in nodes of hatred for the living. Their faults appear as in:

‘It were not right ever to cease lamenting over a scarred surface. By this hatred it was like the parting of day-from-night-lamenting.’

During the year before her death, the only old Trocadero museum a massive panel of several strange visions visited. In the month womb in Naples. It was carved in high relief with a waking, she saw the gate of heaven shining outload inspired the sculptor. A first glance assumed gem-like colors, which like a kaleidoscope chair revealed the bodies of Saints and Virgin Uncle. What I longed for was a companion to my music without source; and when this music whom I could confide; in fact, for such a relation in an underground cave, to shine warmly from above all for flight from my grievous present. And ulcers began to move, springing up and down on whichever end of the romance, however mixed were leaders passed along the lines with an iron.

Too restless to sleep, I rose from my bedlam dance more fiercely. Up and down the line upon a particularly sinister region of my Uncle’s, as his strokes grew more potent, the dancers surrounded by spectral poplars there lay an urn. They burst into flame. Leaping that the water was all but invisible. A low earthy hoofed cavern with their ardent rite; and finally - ooze of its margin was spoored with the footprint loins near the ceiling. Rushes swayed and rustled with the movement of themselves gushed one by one. “Did I fall?” might be heard, but whether of bird or animal, one traced in that most antique of plant forms, the hot graveyard at the edge of a thirsty plain, the dust is home to an unnamed beast.

They seemed to be nostrils I cannot breathe, the pebbles are in my genes that the Templars treasured? I cannot move. We two have lain there a single crook’s wing much magnified as growing out of time. And one ghost is still walking, and one hastens the quill, which was as thick as a tree trunk. I wonder how it was that I never lived in its terrible shade? A few of those plumes, chiefly a large window and a view of the acropolis like hitch, reminding one of freak blackbirds, frost, the triumphant noise made striding upwards in dissolution. Now someone else was living there, some tenant prismatic sheen of a thinly-veiled moon; and then I was afraid that if I took that room I was meant to invite me to walk among them.

But how to get there as she said she would if she ever went back whichever way I turned my eye was led towards in life, living in death, spending and wasting and here drawn so close to it that one would have to step nearer death and death a thought dearer. He summed it as a fact, though surrounding about him and asked to be kept alive and I gave in with a black door of oak for a buckle, girdled a quill was buried in the earth, whitely, so that overspread with lichen. The wood of the door was stone steps leading up to it. I mounted these and the cross-legged with her back to a cliff, the water at Eden, red earth disguised as green; and beyond aged away her clavicles. Her right breast detached with serene clamor; for in this garden the worm pointing toward the lake flopped in and the figure was standing; her hair was like steel wire as an owl’s but clear colored like a bubble and the breast folds of her garment glowed. She was alone, remained some time, clinging to the peace of despair. It were not right ever to finally wash away by a brief storm.

Now an ogre was dancing, and the faster flash of summer lightning as if it had suddenly grown louder still, his limbs began the vast room with head, finger, or toe. His whorm, I retreated from the window and again some compact center within themselves. As he shunder, but I sensed a tension in the atmosphere stiffen. His skin to bind, his muscles came untied outside. Was my room haunted?

As an infant has shape echoing a goddess’ torso or the curves of so uncarved, but among them might there not be stories convulsed with a soundless and satanic laughter? A feather like one of the primaries from the mouth of Christ, falling open in death, was of the landscape into the sky. The contrast between all, the face of the Madonna was her face. It went to the delicate branch plumes that sprang from a label near the ground. I sought the ones emerging near the base, were gray with Agnes de Perigord, Empress of Byzantium, whose sere leaves, old age, and ultimately, I suppose, conveyed little to me at the time until later researched.

The rest of the landscape was gay with thought of John of Gravina, Prince of Achaia, and by him - hilly fields hedged with clumps of woodland seeing the life of Naple’s licentious court. Perhaps, if respect avoids the feather. It dominated everything, and where and there between the two histories, but my it, as if it were the magnetic north. What if one wise in character rather than destiny were there that liked to touch it? The only consolation was the fact—I deassigned before this titular Empress died. Did she remain? Or was there something in her character blasphemy after her death? The meager details of difficulty in believing that it has left the womb, she has left the world.

Sometimes the ghost feels, acute structure of the gate unchanged. This vision has lasted by the breath of life. It has to remind itself constantly next month. She experienced a vivid linking of thought that it is no longer alive: otherwise hauntings occupy. Her husband, appeared to her mind’s eye before they have never known that they were dead; others coin an iron grid interlaced with small ivy leaves. In time then again forgotten. When they fully realize its state, an image possessing both the force of reality always before it a vision of that end which it has running, whom she called Atalanta, with dark half by the breath of death. Skimmed the tops of ilex trees. Around her spread certain ghosts feeling little of that attraction were ranged against a sky faintly pink.

Her. Filmy. Like so many others, for these former leave upon the ear straining forward, her eyes gazing outward yet persist. Sometimes this counterpart appears among their Atalanta Fugues. The next vision of waking being is chosen and possessed, though perhaps they concerned an appearance of the Magi moving in one hot afternoon as she lay resting. She saw me—goddess Saraswati holding the pose of the Lotus.

#cutup #literaryexperiment #highlyedited #reworkedwords #ritualsurrealism #longform

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