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autumnblogs · 4 years ago

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Day 18: Engineering our own misfortune

https://homestuck.com/story/2939

It never occurred to me until now that being betrayed by Jack Noir, the first person to accept him for who he is in a sense, is probably a signifcant part of the reason why Karkat is so angry. It’s probably ironic that the Blood Player’s relationships all have a tendency to disintegrate. Poor guy.

All but one of Karkat’s coplayers will either die, betray him, abandon him, or break up with him before the adventure is over.

More after the break. CW: This one has some suicide mentions in it.

https://homestuck.com/story/2950

WV and the other Carapacians may have some instinctive level of awareness of the players’ classes and aspects - while their legend is ensconced in Carapacian Lore, WV instantly senses the narrative presence of the Thief of Light.

https://homestuck.com/story/2960

Now here is something interesting. I just picked up on it, even though it has actually been present all throughout - when the Narrative addresses WV, it addresses him with information he almost certainly could not know - in a call and response fashion! While he’s jumping from one thought to another in terms of John’s different correspondents, the way that he phrases his dialogue suggests that he is aware of what the Narrative is addressing him.

https://homestuck.com/story/2962

And by all accounts, what he is viewing here is not the literal material events as they unfold, he’s literally looking at the same panels we are.

https://homestuck.com/story/2974

Vriska’s gloating here has always given me chills. It’s in moments like these that she really shines as not just a bully but an authentic diabolical mastermind who is, at least at this point in the story, utterly indifferent to the lives of other people.

https://homestuck.com/story/2975

Vriska’s external locus of control excuses her of feeling guilty about creating Bec Noir. While she is 100% responsible for it, that doesn’t mean, in her mind, that she should suffer any consequences for it (although she’s perfectly happy to take the credit for creating him, it seems.)

https://homestuck.com/story/2992

I’ve always thought that the Dream Bubbles were an extremely cool plot contrivance - semantically linking memories together with dreams and death is a really cool bit of linking.

https://homestuck.com/story/3008

Just as Jade has had effectively no parent to help her find her way in life, she will now have to suffer a sprite who cannot give her advice either. She remains alone.

https://homestuck.com/story/3010

Bec, to a greater degree than perhaps even the Seers, is directly cognizant of interruptions by Command Prompts.

https://homestuck.com/story/3017

I’m starting to be able to actually pick up the themes of the whole Exile plotline.

It seems, in general, to be a parable on power and authority, with each of the Exiles representing one kind or another. You’ve got WV who aspires to be first among equals, democratically elected, a community leader and organizer.

You’ve got the White Queen, who fits classical tropes related to the Good Monarch, a symbolic authority.

You’ve got the Peregrine Mendicant, whose take on governmental duty is more that of a functionary - her self-concept is as someone who does what is needed.

And then you’ve got the Aimless Renegade, who, as a Mad Max Type wasteland cop, could be read as either a playful parody of eighties and nineties copaganda, or as a criticism of copaganda, or both - government as the State, an enforcer of constructed order.

Of all of them, it’s clear that WV and PM’s takes on power are the most useful. The White King and Queen are quickly slaughtered once Jack arrives, because without their magical mcguffins, they remain little more than walking talking symbols.

AR is an interesting case though, because his defining character moment is that he hesitates to follow his orders, and while it could be argued that everything that ensues is his fault for not being stone cold enough to do what needs to be done, I’d argue that his hesitation is admirable - Jack escapes to live another day, and the Mayor survives. The Mayor’s infectious compassion ultimately saves his own life through the AR’s refusal to let him die by destroying the command stations in Cascade, because AR is not willing to trade lives.

https://homestuck.com/story/3040

I’ve never been entirely clear on whether the Dark Gods should be considered evil or simply incomprehensible, morally uncategorizable - in any case, the unique nature of the Kids’ session seems to preclude an ordinary relationship with them. By all accounts they also seem perfectly happy to help Rose create the Green Sun as well, sowing the seeds that will grow into Lord English, their own murderer.

Whatever they’re up to is extremely unclear, and they mostly seem to be a wildcard. I’ll have to see if any of my Homestuck chums have thoughts about the Horrorterrors. With the exception of the Dream Bubbles and their ability to facilitate interaction between the living and the Dead, talking to the Horrorterrors seems to be at best an exercise in facilitating inevitable misfortune - they seem to be all but completely useless.

I suppose learning how to navigate the furthest ring comes in handy exactly once, since it enables the kids to fly to the Alpha’s universe.

https://homestuck.com/story/3043

Rose’s pessimistic dissatisfaction manifests in two ways during this conversation - the first is her contemplation of self-destruction. Along with her suicide mission, one of the very first things she mentions about Doc Scratch is that he wants to die - which clearly fascinates her. The other thing is that, suspicious of the version of truth that Skaia presents, and lacking an anchor, she is very easily swayed by characters who offer her an alternative truth.

https://homestuck.com/story/3045

It has just occurred to me that while Rose doesn’t do anything directly to harm her co-players the way that Vriska does, the main actual thing that they have in common, that I was having a hard time putting my finger on, is actually another parallel between the two of them and Aradia - by allowing themselves to be manipulated by forces of evil beyond human comprehension - Doc Scratch in particular - Rose and Vriska both make manifest all sorts of misfortune. In Aradia’s case, it’s her continuous manipulation by the voices of the dead.

Both of them create nearly all of their own problems, and while they’re at it, create immense amounts of suffering from other people who happen to be in the vicinity. And, according to the rules of the Alpha Timeline, both of them therefore give their assent to their misfortune. The Alpha Timeline is, of course, the same as the Glub Glub trap - if you refuse to participate, you are destroyed, but participation is horrible.

https://homestuck.com/story/3055

Couple things.

The first and most obvious is;

Monkey see, Monkey do.

We’re starting to see the fallout of Vriska’s attempts to acculturate Tavros - she’s tried to force a square peg into a round hole, and has had no luck. Tavros doesn’t fit her vision of an ideal troll, and he never will; that’s not the kind of person that he is.

The use of the word hero is what’s important here. Notice especially the way that he draws a line from physical fitness and personal worth - the ability to do important things that you want to do has become Tavros’ idea of how to self-actualize. He has internalized Vriska’s toxic ideas.

The other thing is that while Grandpa may not have literally committed suicide, but he is clearly emotionally checked out of life - playing Indiana Jones when he’s away from home, and interacting with fantasy women at his tea party, instead of engaging with his real life granddaughter.

Suicide’s a touchy subject, one which Homestuck touches on. As I’ve already said, I’m not going to touch on the Epilogues or HS^2, both of which also touch on the subject. It’s not a central theme, I don’t think, although either killing themselves or waiting around to die recur multiple times as possibilities in the minds of different characters, particularly the Lalondes and Striders. I’ll have more to say about each individual instance, but in both the insincere threat of suicide Rose uses in her early strife, and here in Act 5, the act of self-destruction is not motivated by despair, but by spite - for Rose, self-destruction would be an act to spite someone else who wants her to exist.

Grandpa Harley’s complete emotional absence from the life of his loved ones might be called a bit of emotional suicide. Checked out of personal reality completely to pursue a life of fantasy (and to facilitate Sburb), Grandpa Harley may as well have been dead from Jade’s perspective, even before he died.

https://homestuck.com/story/3056

The link between being a Hero Coolguy and Romantic (Reproductive) Success is drawn very neatly by Tavros, but because the premise is false, the conclusion is also false.

https://homestuck.com/story/3059

Vriska immediately calls attention to the way Tavros is parroting her behavior because of her influence - without all of the chest-beating and saber-rattling that Vriska does, the skillfully executed showmanship of being aloof and confident, there’s not that much difference between what Tavros tried to pull just now, and what Vriska has always done - even repeating her romantic faux-pas.

https://homestuck.com/story/3078

And we’ll pause here, before I get to another walkaround, which I will do tomorrow.

Not a lot that inspired me to talk in the 150 or so pages I got today. Lots of action in Act 5, but less emotional meat to dig into.

For now, it’s Cam signing off, alive but not alone.

#liveblogging #commentary

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sweetfierceimagines · 5 years ago

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If tear drops could be bottled

Request by @shadow-hunter-lover , thank you so much for it !

/ Soft Billy x reader in which the reader struggles with depression and he helps her through it. First time I write about this kind of topic so I hope you’ll like it ! English is not my mother tongue so sorry for the possible mistakes, I don’t mind at all if some of you want to tell me were I screwed up ahah, I'll correct it !

Warnings / None, I was requested “so much fluff that people get nosebleeds, so you’ll tell me about that ;) Extra long, hope you don’t mind ! I was asked for fluff and one shot, but I'd be down to write a second part ! Tell me if you’re interested !!

Y/N’s POV :

It was one of these days.

Everything seemed fine, Y/N had nothing to really complain about in her life. She had friends, she had loving parents, she had a house, food, education, future, yet nothing seemed to function harmoniously. She would pretend everything’s ok, she would smile and laugh with her people, she would eat a bit not to raise attention, she would wait until she’s alone to break down, and make sure no one can hear her cry.

On these days, she was sad about everything, but mostly, she was mad at herself for not being able to be happy with what she had. So her rule number one was to always keep her head up and let no one worry about her. It was working well right?

Or maybe not.

Most people saw nothing. Yes, her friends from Hawkins high told her she should come more often to their parties, some were wondering silently why she was rushing home after class, but no one came at her place to make sure she was ok. Her parents though she was just being a teenager/early adult struggling with whatever a normal person struggles with at this age, and thought she would come and talk to them if she had something going on, smart.

This rule made her feel safe in her pain, but it was putting her in a never ending circle. She felt like no one cared about her well being, that no one wanted her to be really, truly happy. That if she left this place tomorrow, they would barely notice.

So every night she would come back home, rush to her room, lock it and despair, lying on her bed. Sometime she would cry, other times she would just lay here feeling numb, like a darkness was swallowing her a bit more each time. And she felt like she wasn’t strong enough to fight it.

BILLY’s POV :

Smoking, driving fast, lifting weight, flirting, repeat. Gosh that loop sure felt good, when half Hawkins wanted to sleep with him, and the other half somehow hated-admired him. He was feeling like the strongest man on hearth as soon as he was leaving this house where he was just the shadow of himself. And once again, he arrived in the parking lot of Hawkins high way too fast, almost smashed the Camaro in a tree, and got out of the car with that James Dean look he knew was scoring each time. Walking his way to the entrance, he noticed the usual little gathering that was annoying him each time : Steve f*cking Harrington, Nancy and Jonathan were talking with the kids, including Max. This parody of a sister he had kept on reminding him how poorly he was loved, but still he cared for her. He just couldn’t admit it. He went closer to the group and made sure he was noticed by throwing his cigarette on the ground, almost burning Nancy’s feet. He was about to yell at Max for hanging out with them when he just noticed someone else. She was surely with them, part of that circle, yet she didn’t look like she was into it at all. She was looking around, her Y/E/C eyes scanning the whereabouts with a sad expression. It was almost impossible to see, as she was keeping on a straight face and a smile, but he knew that look very well. He knew it was the look of loneliness and of self doubt. A look he was keeping away by playing the bad kid, yet a look that always went right to his heart. He didn’t realize he was staring, silent, until Steve taped on his shoulder.

- Hey. Billy. If you’re here to play the dick go on, we’re used to it. But make it quick, we have a basketball match in twenty minutes you remember that?

He didn’t even answer, throwing a dark look to Steve. He was about to leave when Y/N turned her attention to the group, and he made sure this eye contact happened. She furrowed her eyebrows, not so sure of why he was being so insistant and, frankly, awkward as hell, but she didn’t move. Eventually Billy left, almost running to the basketball court, his heart pounding like crazy.

Y/N’s POV :

It was not really an important game, but since Steve and Billy started to play against each other there was always more people coming, and you could feel a constant tension going on. As Steve’s friend, you came to the games when you could, even though sports really didn’t make you go wild. You were sitting on a bench, joking around with Steve to help his anxiety, when Billy entered the room. He was shirtless, for once didn’t smoke, and looked like he literally put oil on his body. You furrowed your eyebrows, laughing silently at how cliché that boy was, but unconsciously bit your bottom lips, scanning his body.

- Oh my god Y/N, not YOU !

Steve yelled a bit too loud. Billy turned his attention to you, and winked. You just stared for a bit and then shook your head. The match began and you just sat down looking absently at the game. You were not feeling very well, sort of empty and in the same time quite heavy. At some point you felt tears come to your eyes for no reason, and just waved goodbye at Steve. He could honestly not care less, as he was focusing on how to no get completely fucked up by Billy.

BILLY’S POV :

But Billy noticed. He stopped for a second, looking at you leaving and all of a sudden, he pushed past Steve and left the court. Everyone was shouting at him, some were booing him and calling him names, but he just nicely raised his middle finger to the crowd and went directly to his bag. He grabbed it, and walked fast to the parking lot while trying to put on his shirt. Halfway through it he yelled at Y/N.

- Hey ! Hey ! Stop will you?

Y/N turned to face him, wondering what the hell made him leave a game he was clearly enjoying winning, to run half shirtless to her.

- Huum.. Can I help you?

- Yes. Get in the car.

- What? I don’t know what you think is happening but there’s no way I get..

- Get in the car, I'm serious.

As Y/N just looked at him, not understanding what happened, he took a deep breath and a few seconds to think about saying the right things. The right things. What were these? It had been so long since he didn’t really think about what to say to someone. He took a few steps, standing right in front of Y/N and looking down at her. Strangely, his usual angry eyes were replaced by a sweet look, and Y/N could not lie to herself about how it made her melt down on the spot.

- Listen, we don’t know each other, and I know I'm probably a messed up problematic nonsense dude to you, and I'm probably.

The sudden sincerity of the conversation completely shocked her, and frankly, shocked him too. She relaxed, daring to look in her eyes a bit more intensely and laid her back on the car, raising slightly her eyebrows to encourage him to carry on.

- But I know how to recognize a girl hurting. Or a boy hurting. I mean, anyone really. Not anyone.. aaah what the fuck !

- Are you going to offer me some psychology sessions Hargrove? Y/N said with a smile, trying to introduce some fun in that way too heavy atmosphere. Billy laughed a bit and found back his courage, putting a hand next to Y/N’s head, resting on the car.

- Well, I would gladly offer you any kind of “sessions”, if you know what I mean, but I guess what I really want to say is.. it’s not easy, it’s not ok, but you can get better. And honestly I think you deserve a lot to get better.

Y/N looked at her feet, feeling tears build up. Nobody told her that. Ever. Nobody showed that they cared about her well being in that way. And even though she barely knew Billy, and his reputation was frankly awful, she knew she could trust him enough to get that vulnerable with him. As she was lost in her thoughts, he gently took his chin with his fingers with his free hand, and made him look in his eyes.

- Hey.. you don’t have to feel bad alone. What do you say? Will you show a little faith and let me show you the wonders of the Hargrove therapy program?

As he said this he took a step back and his hands away, leaving some space between them for her to think a bit. He went to the driving seat, sat down and extended his harm to open the passenger door from inside.

Y/N looked around, searching for a sign to help her make her decision. In one hand, this dude was nothing to be trusted, in the other, she really felt like he could help her, while no one else could. She whispered to herself a “what the hell” and sat down next to Billy, offering her a smile as a confirmation of her choice. He smiled a bit, with that famous corner smile with his tongue slightly liking his bottom lip. He then started to drive, taking the usual road toward his house.

Y/N’s POV :

Billy parked the car in front of a small house and got out. She followed, crossing her harms against her chest, as she was always doing when she was anxious. She went into the house and looked around, noticing the workout equipment in the living room, the clearly abusing use of cigarettes, and the lack of affection in all that basic decoration. She looked at him, smiling a bit.

- You’re anxious.

He said, just looking at her for long seconds.

- Sit down, or look around, nothing is really private here. I’ll get you something and we can talk a bit if you feel like it.

She nodded, going for a little walk in the house. She quickly left Max’s room, not wanting to cross some sort of limit. She looked briefly in the bathroom, noticing some body oil and hair spray proudly standing in front of the mirror. She laughed, thinking that maybe he wasn’t so different from Steve. That hair obsession, damn, what was happening with these Hawkins guys? She then went to Billy’s room. Posters of women in bikini, records, a bit of a mess, that was a typical dude’s room. She sat on the bed, and then laid down, thinking about how he would feel once he was getting sleepy. That was the worst moment for her, when she was getting back home and laid on her bed, ceiling being the reflect of her own emptiness. She heard footsteps and tried to sit down quickly, but failed when she saw Billy coming in the room, holding hot chocolate and snacks in his hands.

- Already making yourself confortable love? Oh don’t bother, we can stay here if you don’t mind.

- Yeah, yeah I totally don’t mind. Thanks for the drink, that’s nice.

Taking the first sip, Y/N smiled a bit. She sat on the bed, her back on the wall, and her legs crossed. Billy gave her a moment, not daring to start the conversation already and lose her trust. He took a few marshmallows, eating while looking at her with a small smile. Why. On. Earth. Was he so nervous?

- You’re ok?

- Yes, thank you. That sure feels good, but I'm not sure it’s as nice for you though, I’m not exactly.. great company these days.

- Don’t be silly, do you see me talking for hours with any of these high schoolers? Na. I don’t care about “great company”.

He took a little pause, and put a gentle hand on Y/N’s wrist, his large hand covering a great surface, fingers brushing together.

- And what about these days, hm? What’s going on exactly?

Y/N took a deep breath, looking at the wall in front of her while thinking about what was indeed going on these days.

- Truth is, I don’t know.. nothing happened, nothing wrong really happened. My parents are nice to me, they give me the space I need, they trust me.. I have friends, they’re always with me, they throw parties and ask me to hang out.. I'm healthy, I have good grades, I.. I fucking don’t know! And that’s wrong right? How the hell can’t I know? I have everything to be happy with, and I'm still that stupid girl who cries when she comes back home and didn’t genuinely smiled for months.

Y/N paused, for once feeling more mad than sad.

- Honestly, I feel like I'm being swallowed by a dark hole, that’s I'm disappearing in it and I'm not even willing to fight it, because who will care hm? Nobody asked me to cut the bullshit, sit down and talk heart to heart. They’re like me. They pretend it’s alright because it’s more confortable for everyone. But if it swallowed me completely tomorrow, they would barely notice.

Feeling on edge, ready to explode, Y/N stood up and started to walk toward the living room to leave. She still had the cup, half empty now, and felt a thousand emotions crash in her heart at this very moment. She was about to reach the front door when the same strong hand grabbed her wrist and made her stop. She then felt big arms around her tiny self, and she put the glass down on the counter. He didn’t say a thing, yet the little circles he was drawing on her waist and the feeling of his hot breath on her neck was strangely calming.

For the first time in a very, very long time, she allowed herself to be visibly vulnerable. She abandoned that inner fight she was giving every minute to look ok when she was not, she accepted an outer presence which until now felt dangerous, and she started to cry, silently, and then a bit more. When she felt sobs climbing her throat, she turned to bury herself in his large, warm body, and he tightened his grip, now drawing circles in her back and whispering “it’s ok” to her ear. After what seemed to be ages, she pulled back a little and looked at him.

- You cried too?

Y/N said, noticing his glowing eyes and trails of tears on his face as she gently whipped it off with her thumb.

- Yeah, I did. Guess despite of feeling numb you’re great at making other feel things..

- Sorry about that, I didn’t..

- Don’t. I told you it’s ok didn’t I? You don’t have to feel sorry, and it’s not a single hug that will confort you fully, even in such exceptional arms.

He said winking, trying to make her laugh a bit. Y/N smiled and played back.

- Well, when I talked about the darkness swallowing me I didn’t mean to disappear in these neither!

She said pointing his arms and winking back. He laughed and took her back in the said arms but quickly this time. He just held her tight for a few seconds and kissed her forehead before pushing back a bit.

- It’s getting late, I should probably drive you home or people will be concerned. But you can come back anytime hm? And I never minded skipping classes to sit down somewhere and do whatever a lady feels up to !

As they were both back in the car, Y/N smiled to herself. Even though it would indeed not “cure her”, he was making this moment a bit easier to understand and go through, and that was better than I had ever been. And as he was ransacking his glove box in search of tissues, nervously putting back a pack of condoms trying to hide them quickly, but failing dramatically, she left out a real laugh, so unusual that a new tear fell down her cheek, for his greater pleasure.

Part 2?

I’ve never written fluff, hope it was good enough ! Tell me what you through about it, and thank you again for the support and requests !! Still opened ;)

#Billy Hargrove x reader #Billy Hargrove imagine #billy hargrove #stranger things #stranger things imagine #stranger things x reader #dacre montgomery #dacre montgomery imagine #dacre montgomery x reader #fluff #sweet #@shadow_hunter_lover

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aion-rsa · 3 years ago

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Archer Producers Discuss Season 12’s Kingsman-esque Opener

https://ift.tt/eA8V8J

This article contains spoilers for Archer season 12 episode 1.

After eleven seasons, over 100 episodes, and four radical reinventions, Archer has become one of the most ambitious and respected animated series of its generation. The show has elevated itself to something greater than a (hilarious) parody of the spy genre and has slowly allowed both itself and its characters to evolve in fascinating ways. Around these massive changes, Archer has never lost sight of itself. Its core sensibility and acerbic characters never falter.

Twelve seasons in, Archer has returned to a relative place of normalcy. Season 11 brought Sterling Archer back to reality from his coma, but season 12 is where the harsh ways of the world really begin to set back in. Archer himself may have his groove back, but his team is still in a highly unstable place and this season presents a version of them that are more vulnerable than ever before. Archer’s executive producer Casey Willis and producer Pierre Cerrato get candid about season twelve’s direction, the new enemies that The Agency face, the glorious return of the Tacti-Cane, and more.

Note: Casey Willis and Pierre Cerrato jointly provided answers under their production tag “Floyd County Productions.”

Archer Season 12 Episode 1 – “Identity Crisis”

Written by Shane Kosakowski “Archer and the gang just saved the world from a nuclear catastrophe and their reward is five nights in a rat-infested Moldovan hotel.”

DEN OF GEEK: This premiere picks up right after season 11’s finale and really functions as the continuation of that story. Was it always the decision to immediately continue from the events of the finale or was there consideration to give more of a breather and push the clock forward with this premiere?

FLOYD COUNTY PRODUCTIONS: We really wanted to explore the ramifications of Archer and the gang saving the world. How could they capitalize on this achievement? That’s why we set the events just a few weeks after the end of the season 11 finale. That’s also why we brought in the Cloudbeam folks as “Malory” is getting desperate and needs to make some money. Additionally, we knew we still wanted Archer to have the Tacti-cane, so having this season start only a couple weeks after the events in #1108 felt natural.

Was this season approached any differently than previous seasons or was any kind of mission statement that you guys wanted to make with this premiere?

This season we approached the story in a similar way to season 11. We had story goals and character goals and we plotted out the season and tried to show growth in the characters along the way.

To talk about the creation of the show for a bit, the first thing on our mind this season was the safety of our cast and crew. This is the first season that we started and will complete in a work-from-home scenario. To facilitate that, we had to make a lot of adjustments to our workflow. We have such amazing cast members, writers, artists, animators and production staff, and everyone really stepped up to not only make one of the funniest and best looking seasons of Archer, but to do it safely. We are so proud of everyone and can’t wait for you all to see this incredible season.

Last season was the first year that had Adam Reed in a reduced capacity and no longer steering the ship. What was his level of involvement this season?

We worked with Adam in a similar way to season 11. Casey Willis and Adam worked together to create a framework and some episode ideas. Then Casey, Matt Thompson, and Mark Ganek fleshed out the season even further and we assigned writers to individual episodes. It’s really the best of both worlds because we get to work on a thousand-foot view of the season with Adam, and then get to hear new and exciting voices from our writers. We are very proud of the writers who came onboard this season and we look forward to working with them again in the future.

Is Fabian Kingsworth, the head of the International Intelligence Agency supposed to be a riff on the Kingsman movies? There are definitely parallels going on there.

It wasn’t intentionally Kingsman specific; it was more about the whole concept of the gentleman spy. We felt it would be a great foil for Archer and something that might remind him of his pre-coma physical prowess. When we got Kayvan Novak (What We Do in the Shadows) in the booth, he had a lot of great ideas and affectations that gave life to Fabian.

Why did the IIA feel like the right sort of antagonist to be Archer and company’s major source of frustration this season?

We wanted to play with the idea of small business versus a giant company. The Agency is the boutique mom-and-absent-pop spy shop, while IIA is the big-box retailer of the spy world. We wanted Archer to have a villain to play against this season in Fabian, but he represents something larger that the whole gang can get behind and try to fight. It also is a bit of a throwback to earlier seasons of Archer when our characters were concerned with the difficulties in running a small business. Now those concerns are amplified with the threat of a giant corporation like IIA taking all the business.

There are some excellent action setpieces at the end of the episode that involve a helicopter, truck, and eventually a fist fight between Archer and Fabian. Talk a little of the construction of those sequences and if they’re inspired by any movies or anything in particular?

We’d like to praise our Art Director, Justin Wagner, and our Associate Art Director, Chi Duong Sato, for bringing that sequence to life. They worked with the storyboard team to create all the action and we worked with our editor, Ted Murphy, to put it all together. Unfortunately, there was a lot we had to cut for time including a mini-gun shredding another vehicle!

Initially we drew some inspiration from Mad Max: Fury Road, but it’s nothing compared to a San Diego Comic-Con piece we did in 2015. In that piece, we had Pam dressed as “Immortan Joe” and Krieger as the “Doof Warrior!” Pretty sure you can still see it online!

In this premiere there’s great use of a helicopter, which at a point may have seemed grand for the show, as well as some really effective 3D CG stuff. Talk a little on some of those more exaggerated elements and how work on the other seasons, like Danger Island, helped prepare for larger setpieces and the growing sophistication of animation.

We feel the show evolves every season as we learn new techniques and refine others. If you look back to the episode “Jeu Monegasque” in season two, you can see some of our first attempts are integrating 3D animation. It may have also been the first 3D helicopter on the show. From that point to now, we feel we have had an incredible evolution. In season nine, for example, Cyril’s mech suit was a combination of all of our departments working together to make the suit look incredible and move in an imposing way. Archer owes a lot to the teams that keep improving the look of the show year after year.

This premiere forces The Agency to work outside of their comfort zones a little because they don’t have any money, but this largely gets resolved by the end of the episode. Was there ever a version of the season where The Agency was destitute for longer?

Malory is a master of misdirection, so things might not be as stable as they seem. You are just going to have to keep watching.

This premiere teases that the IIA could poach certain Agency employees. Was that ever under deliberation, even if it just went on for a temporary period during this season?

Again, you need to keep watching because it may be more than just a tease!

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Our writers’ room walkthrough for Archer’s 12th season will continue with this season’s fifth episode. Previous writers’ room walkthroughs that break down Archer’s earlier seasons can be be found here

The post Archer Producers Discuss Season 12’s Kingsman-esque Opener appeared first on Den of Geek.

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ethicallysourcedhumanmeat · 8 years ago

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Practically Impractical

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Part 5

Jumin isn’t sure what he’s gotten himself into. And a part of him hopes that when his alarm goes off in the morning that none of it happened. Inappropriate dreams were certainly one thing, but he can’t seem to rationalize that he made the decision to involve himself in this. Yesterday morning he would have said it was impossible, that he was above such base interactions, and yet now, thumbing through the gallery on his phone Jumin didn’t have an excuse.

He was in the elevator when the second text came through, replaying the events of the evening, trying to come up with a good reason for kissing Amelia, to explain the text from Saeyoung in some way that made sense. He’d called Assisstant Kang twice and hung up before it started to ring and when his phone vibrated, ringer now off, he looked instinctively expecting something curt from her not, this.

Not Luciel’s down turned face, not Amelia’s flushed chest and certainly not the way their hands pushed past the boundaries of the other’s clothes. He’d quickly turned off the screen of his phone despite being the only person in the elevator.

Once home it nagged at him. He was sure this was some kind of game, a joke. He hung up his coat, folded his jacked and was unbuttoning his vest when his phone buzzed again. He told himself he wasn’t going to answer but he could not abide the flashing light. He would simple close the notification and be done with it.

In case you don’t know how sharing works, how about some show and tell. His thumb hovers over the notification but he can’t seem to make himself move, that’s when the second message comes through and he’s left with simply 2 unread messages.

He’s unbuttoning his shirt when it gets the best of him, would the second message explain what was happening, or simply continue whatever madness had taken Amelia and Luciel. He exhales through his nose and snatches up his phone.

We’ve shown, now you tell.

He sits down heavy on the edge of his bed. This is exactly what wasn’t supposed to happen. Amelia was charming, she could keep up with the clients and their partners, she was able to appear attached to him without inciting anymore gossip than that which surrounded his assistant. He wouldn’t lie to himself that he hadn’t considered, briefly, what it would be like have her as his own, but she had chosen Saeyoung and that had been supposed to be his safety net.

He missed V. V would see what he’s missing. V would talk him out of doing exactly what he was doing.

Now, hours later, after a fitful sleep he has to ask himself what he’s doing. He forces himself to close the photos, dial the phone.

Jaehee’s voice is groggy when she answers and Jumin glances at the clock. Odd, he thinks, that Assistant Kang would still be sleeping when she was to be at work in two hours

“Please contact Saeyoung and Amelia and arrange a breakfast meeting.”

“Can’t you?” Jumin waits a moment. “I mean of course, Mr. Han. It just seems like, is this business, I’m sorry what should I tell them you’re meeting about.”

Jumin can feel his ears get hot. “They’ll know.” He hangs up the phone.

“Listen.”

“List—“

“Listen!”

Saeyoung watches his little family dissolve into laugher. Even Saeren has joined in teasing Max this morning, smiling and laughing over cereal and coffee.

“Mom, listen,” Max starts again when they stop laughing. “I’m serious.”

“I know you are.”

“Mr. Han kept you out very late last night.”

Saeren’s eyes narrow at him over his giant coffee cup. He’d still been awake playing games with Yoosung when they’d stumbled in from the garage tangled in each other’s clothing.

“And it was very nice of Saeren and Saeyoung to keep you company until bed time.”

“Mom.”

“Maxine.”

He could see the 8 year old mirror of Callie rolling her eyes behind her orange juice.

“You know those dinners are part of my job and Jumin is not in control of how late either of us have to stay.”

“Dad thinks,” she trails off as everyone turns to look at her.

Callie shoots a warning look at each of the twins in turn before she looks at Max. “Sweetheart I’m sure your Dad thinks a lot of things.”

“It’s just,” she sighs. “He says there’s a lot of pictures of you and Mr. Han.” She glances towards Saeyoung and he smiles at her.

“Max, your Dad could ask me if he’s concerned about anything in our life. Are you concerned about me and Jumin?”

“No, but I looked and there are pictures.”

“A lot of pictures,” Callie agrees, “of Jumin and I eating lunch and getting out of cars.”

“I know but—”

“Remember when we moved in with Oma and Opa and you started at the school there.”

“You mean the rumors.”

“Yeah, those people talking about the pictures are making up rumors about Jumin and I. Jumin is very private and one of the reasons I accompany Jumin so often is because the rumors don’t bother me, and if they’re busy trying to figure out who I am to him they’re not harassing Jaehee, or the other women who work directly for Jumin.”

“Dad said you like the attention.”

Saeren snorts.

“Well, he’s got me there,” Callie smiles and shakes her head. “The attention is free press, if people are talking about me they look up my show and maybe they end up liking it.”

“So you pretend to be his girlfriend?”

“Not exactly, he always introduces me as his close friend, but we let people think I’m his girlfriend if that’s what they want to think.”

“You were still supposed to be home in time to tuck me in.”

“And you were supposed to have your bag packed for school so we aren’t late this morning, it seems we’re both disappointed.”

Max shrugs, “I guess I won’t ground you this time.”

“I’d appreciate it.”

The three of them manage to get Max to the bus just in time, with Saeren packing her lunch and Saeyoung packing her bag while Callie got her dressed and bargained with her to brush her hair. Callie doesn’t have time to change out of her pajama’s but Saeyoung suspects she never intended to. He snaps a picture of them from the doorway and Callie manages to flip him off behind her back.

Callies phone vibrates on the counter as he opens the RFA app on his own, he considers running it out to her but decides the world won’t end in the ten minutes she’ll be gone. He puts the picture up in the chatroom and waits.

Are those Ninja turtles? Yoosung responds immediately.

You let her go out in her pajama’s Seven? Zen isn’t far behind.

I don’t let Callie do anything, he responds. How did telling her what to do work out for you Zen? He’s contemplating emojis when Jaehee enters the chat.

I don’t know what either of you did to Mr. Han but please ask Callie to answer her phone.

He decides on the confused emoji

He called me twice late last night and hung up before I answered, then again this morning at 6am insisted I set a breakfast meeting with you and Callie and chastised me for over sleeping, her angry emoji. I was up until 2am running numbers on cat food for his newest project. Please tell me where I should make arrangements.

He hears the door open and close. Callie has entered the chatroom. Callie has left the chatroom. Jaehee Kang has left the chatroom.

Saeyoung glances up from his phone and watches Callie tuck her hair behind her ear.

“No I swear this isn’t...God Jaehee really? He’s really upset you think?” She worries her bottom lip for a minute. “No, no I do know what it’s about...don’t worry I swear...not cats no,” she laughs. “No, no. Don’t do that... No, ask him to meet us here...I’m sure it isn’t...I’ll take all the blame...Tell him I insisted...Thanks Babe.”

“Babe?” he laughs when she sets the phone down.

“Apparently we broke Jumin.”

It wasn’t long before the man himself walked through the door. Saeren had left with a backpack over his shoulder and they’d relaxed into their usual morning, Saeyoung was pretzeled into his desk chair working his current freelance gig while Callie lay on the couch, feet over the back, head dangling off the cushions while she compiled playlists for her broadcast. She doesn’t look at him when the door opens.

“What the fuck even are these songs Zen sent me,” she calls across the house. Saeyoung inclines his head towards her. “I’ve never even heard most of them, and at least three are fan parody’s about him. I can’t put this in my show.”

Saeyoung laughs and spins his chair around, feet hitting the floor when he sees Jumin standing by the door.

“He’s been there for three whole minutes,” Callie shrugs sitting up.

“You’re so Vain,” Jumin says softly as he removes his coat.

“What?”

“Carly Simon, You’re so Vain, for your broadcast with Zen.”

Saeyoung laughs.

“Holy shit,” she whispers. “Why didn’t I think of that?”

Jumin watches her add the song and slide her laptop onto the coffee table before swinging herself upright on the couch.

“Did you want a coffee?” She asks, standing and stretching. “I assume you didn’t actually want to eat but I could probably make you something if you really wanted.”

He shakes his head. “No thank you, Amelia. I would take a cup of tea if you don’t mind.”

She smiles and he watches her move through the small kitchen. “Sorry, I promised myself I would stay in my pajama’s all day today so as much as breakfast on C&R sounded lovely, it couldn’t compete with not having to put on real pants.”

He doesn’t exactly understand the sentiment but he nods and looks away when she reaches for a mug and her shirt rises up exposing a few inches of her back including the top of her underwear.

Saeyoung reaches into the cupboard around her and tosses a container of what appears to be homemade cookies on the table and then pulls an energy drink out of the refrigerator. Saeyoung’s house was cleaner than Jumin ever remembered it. Though there still was a chaotic quality with clutter covering most surfaces, there didn’t seem to be candy wrappers and dirty dishes lying around.

“So you want to talk about last night?” She smiles handing him a mug and sitting next to Saeyoung.

It’s unsettling standing in the little kitchen with their bright eyes trained on him. “Yes, I’m sorry, I should not have involved myself in your personal life like that.”

“Is that what you think happened?” She asks him.

“I think that we maybe we had too much to drink at a dinner with very small portions.”

“Did I embarrass you, Jumin? I thought I was pretty damn charming last night.”

“Yes, well, perhaps too Charming, Amelia, considering.”

“I will admit,” she smiles and sips her coffee, “last night did go a lot farther than I had intended.”

“We,” Saeyoung corrects her, “We intended.”

She nods. “I saw an opportunity and exploited it instead of,” she stumbles for a moment and makes a moving on motion with her hand. “I should have spoken to you. That had been my intent. But then I saw the chance to both gauge your interest and cater to Luciel’s. So I kissed you and if that has made you uncomfortable I apologize.”

Jumin sits heavy across from them. “You’re speaking as if it was you who kissed me.”

“It may as well have been,” Saeyoung says.

“I spend a lot of time with you, and you always compliment my ability to read people. You’re not as complicated as you think you are.” She smiles at him, that wide open smile she has when she’s truly happy with herself.

He’s quiet for a while. He drinks his tea watching them, the way that they communicate with looks and little touches. Smiling and bumping shoulders between drinks. Saeyoung grabs a cookie from the container he’d tossed on the table and dunks it in Amelia’s coffee. She rolls her eyes, exaggerating the motion with her entire head. He wonders if he spent enough time with them would he understand their subtle language.

“So,” he puts the empty mug on the table. “If we were to have the conversation you’d intended to have in the parking garage, what would you have said?”

Two sets of bright eyes turn on him, and he’s more than a little satisfied that he seems to have caught them off guard.

“Well,” she draws the word out and glances towards Saeyoung. “I didn’t really have a script, which is why just kissing you seemed like a better way to ask.”

“It’s just that I spent a lot of time watching people on CCTV,” Saeyoung starts.

“And I’m not exactly opposed to being watched,” she chimes in.

“Except I can’t really, you know, spy on her if she’s with me.”

“And we both agree that we’ve, you know, gone there, with the current arrangement.”

“I don’t know,” Jumin frowns. “Gone where?”

“You know,” she sighs exasperated. “We’ve both thought about you and I doing what that kiss was leading to last night.”

His eyebrows rise. “You mean you have both fantasized about sex with me?”

A look passes between them. “About Callie and you,” Seven offers with a shrug. “Not that I’m opposed if that’s a thing you’re into.”

“A thing, I’m into,” Jumin repeats.

The quiet that falls now does not lend itself to joivial poking. No one looks at anyone else until finally Jumin clears his throat.

“I woke this morning, worried I broken boundaries, concerned that perhaps I’d taken advantage of a weak moment in your relationship.”

“Oh fuck, no,” She laughs but Jumin puts up a hand.

“What you’re telling me is that you have both, through open discussion decided to invite me into your relationship, through the convenience of our working relationship?”

“I mean, I guess,” Saeyoung shrugs.

“It’s not as sordid as you’re making it sound.” She pushes her coffee cup away and frowns at him. “Yes our working relationship, as you put it, did lend itself to the fantasies that encouraged our encounter, but we didn’t chose to extend you this offer without really considering it.”

“Truely?”

“If at any moment last night you had not seemed receptive I would not have moved forward. Not to mention we did discuss other options. Yoosung is cute but he’s a baby, Zen doesn’t know when to stop talking and honestly I think he would be horribly scandalized by the offer. We did seriously discuss Jaehee, she’s wound so tightly and doesn’t have time for a proper relationship—”

“Please move on.” Jumin is blushing.

“But we both like you, and if you are uncomfortable with any kind of arrangement, then that’s ok. We’ll probably abandon it.”

“It seems strange to make such an arrangement within the RFA,” Jumin says thoughtfully.

“Who else can we really trust?” Saeyoung asks.

“I mean we could look elsewhere but Saeyoung is right. There’s no question of trust and the three of us leaving a dinner or a party together invites much less speculation.”

Silence falls again.

“Jumin, you’re human. For a minute stop weighing pros and cons,” Saeyoung says. “If you enjoyed yourself last night I think you owe it to yourself to at least consider it.”

“What is your offer then?” Jumin asks.

“We can start with whatever you’re comfortable with,” she says softly.

“And Saeyoung requires access to CCTVs where he can see us.”

Seven nods and swallows. Jumin stands and runs a hand through his hair. “I will consider this,” he says and leaves.

#practically impractical #Callie Miller #custom mc #mystic messenger

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allofbeercom · 6 years ago

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5 Insane Subcultures That Might Become The Next Hipster

Guys, we’ve gone and done it: We broke hipsters. We’ve made fun of their $200 “vintage” shirts and fixies and craft-beer-spewing proboscises for so long that the very term has malfunctioned. “Hipster” is now a meaningless go-to insult for anyone who looks different from you, which is everyone. The hipster is gone. Beards can finally be un-ironic again.

However, as much as it pains me to say this, the death of the hipster is a problem. There must always be a dominant subculture — the one people love to hate until it occupies so much mind space that it actually hits the mainstream. A few of them actually die; strong ones such as punk come cackling back in the shadows before long, while others such as hippies gain public semi-acceptance and go on doing their thing. Even fucking emos have Hot Topic to remember them by. But, not hipsters — hipsters are going out like an IPA-tainted diarrhea fart. The mark they leave is distinct, but easily washable. They’ve been an unsustainable fad — the Kris Kross jeans of subcultures. So, now that they’re on the out, there’s a power vacuum, and attempts to fill it with more of the same (see “lumbersexuals” and “yuccies“) don’t seem to be gaining too much traction.

The balance of the universe is at stake. What we need is the next hipster: a fresh new stereotype to joke about/lust after (depending on your alignment) for the next few years. Seeing as I’m currently locked in the writing barrel, and the other columnists refuse to let me out until I find one, here goes:

#5. Raggare

I’ve never been a greaser myself because, frankly, I can only handle so much Buddy Holly, but I have a long-standing affinity toward 1950s aesthetics. That’s why it’s always pissed me off a little that, apart from a few fashion revivals and Stray Cats in the 1980s, the culture has been firmly sidelined from the mainstream for decades. Still, just because it’s not front and center doesn’t mean that it’s not evolving. In Sweden, strange things are happening:

It’s like Mad Max had a drinking competition with Grease, and everyone lost.

Raggare have been around since the 1950s, but they truly kicked into gear during the 1970s oil crisis: When America found it didn’t have money to drive its giant-ass cars, many Swedes said, “Fuck yes, American stuff for cheap,” and bought themselves a bunch of Buicks, Dodges, and suchlike in prime condition. The rock ‘n’ roll attitude arrived with the cars, and they’ve never stopped since. These days, raggare are a culture old enough to have subcultures of its own: the relatively mellow old-timers who tinker with their machines and arrange garage parties and drives, and the younger generation, who are feistier and, if the pictures are any indication, possess a very different attitude about their cars’ appearance.

Feber “I’m telling you, man, thatched car roofs are the next big thing.”

Hipster Pros:

Raggare have a look. They have a very specific thing that they do. Most importantly, they’re not just a phase you grow out of. Guys from the 1970s are still in the scene and have no intention of stopping. These guys could have actual lasting power.

Hipster Cons:

They’re seasonal. The raggare lifestyle is all about old cars, suede shoes, and painstakingly pomade-sculptured hair, all of which go right out of the window when mother nature decides to make your region eat a faceful of winter. For the colder portion of the year, many raggare tend to go around in modern cars and season-appropriate clothes and generally give more of an upstanding citizen vibe. Today’s Twitter-filled world is a hectic ol’ thing, and a subculture that goes into hibernation for a few months every year might not be able to survive even a single media cycle.

I am, of course, proposing that they should mod their cars into all-weather, all-terrain attack vehicles, M.A.S.K. style.

#4. Seapunk

Seapunk is a logical successor to the dominant subculture throne, in that it ticks all the right boxes: They have their own weird, house/hip-hop music, a distinct identity, and a look that sets them apart from everyone else. Also important: Said look is annoying as hell.

Aquaman’s emo years were no one’s proudest moment.

Even seapunk’s origin story is organic, reflects our times, and (most importantly) is easily stupid enough to warrant a torrent of jokes. Someone saw a dream about a leather jacket with barnacles instead of studs and tweeted it, shit went viral — and boom! Online joke becomes a meme, and meme becomes a subculture, complete with aesthetics that look like a tornado picked up the entire Burning Man festival and dropped it in the cartoon ocean part of Oz.

Hipster Pros:

They’re a fucking meme come to life! Plus, no one seems to be certain about whether this is an elaborate joke or an actual thing that exists. Suck on those irony levels, veterans of the hipster scene.

My money would be on the joke, but I think I actually have a shirt like that somewhere.

Hipster Cons:

It might be too late. We live in a time where most cool new things are almost immediately appropriated by the mainstream. So, barely a year into its short life, pop stars from Rihanna to Azealia Banks were already flirting with the seapunk aesthetic, stripping it of what little underground value it had. By most accounts, the movement largely fizzled out of existence by the end of 2012, meaning that the Mayan people were right about at least one small, sad apocalypse.

Even if there is a strong seapunk scene bubbling under the streets and just waiting to explode upon us in all its aquamarine glory, there’s the fact that apart from the 0.01 percent of seapunks with the looks, time, money, and eye for visuals to regularly look like a naval-themed wedding cake, pretty much every aficionado of the movement would end up looking as out of place as the left shark in Katy Perry’s Superbowl performance.

FUCK YEAH LEFT SHARK, YOU SHOW THEM!

This would, of course, be totally awesome and thus severely undermine the subculture’s ability to function as a hate sink.

#3. Gopniki

Weird Russia

There are plenty of working class cultures around the world that wear track suits and designer gear — British chavs, Polish dresy, Australian bogans, and gangsta rappers, for instance. However, those are not what we’re going to talk about today. Today, we’re all about the gopniki. They’re the Russian variation of the ghetto gangster theme and therefore, by default, 125 percent rougher around the edges and in possession of precisely none of all the fucks. If you see a weird YouTube clip about a 20-something in a cheap track suit doing an activity that makes you instantly nod and think: “Yep, Russia,” chances are it’s one of these guys.

Case in point.

Hipster Pros:

Every once in a while, society needs its dominant subculture to be more than just a remora sticking to pop culture’s underbelly. Sometimes, we need it to give us a good, hard slap on the balls and make us look in the mirror. It’s been a while since we had one of those, and none of the current ones fit the old “my son/daughter is not going to go out with one of those people” bill better than the gopniki.

Also, I’m completely on board with a rerun of the Slav squat meme.

Hipster Cons:

Gopniki are not known for their open-mindedness, but extremely so for their tendency to drunkenly fight anything that moves. Unless you’re a terrible person, they’re not going to agree with your political views too much and, on occasion, might be inclined to do their disagreeing with the soles of their Adidas instead of angry blogging.

So, while a gopnik might be a very good target for a casual “ugh, can you believe what I saw one of those fucking gopniki do today at Starbucks?” said offensive activity might involve a lot less pretentious screenplay writing with an actual typewriter and a lot more high-impact slurs and poor impulse control.

Also, I really, really don’t want that goddamned slicked-forward inverted mullet hairstyle half of them seem to sport to catch on. I still haven’t recovered from topknots.

Actually, yeah, let’s pass these fucking guys. Besides, I have a much better candidate just around the corner …

#2. Haul People

Back in the murky depths of 2011, Cracked’s resident trend expert Daniel O’Brien became baffled by a phenomenon known as haul videos. They’re seemingly random YouTube clips where girls fawned over their shopping “hauls” on-camera and, for some inexplicable reason, raked in five- to six-figure views.

I remember this well. Back then, it seemed like just another weird kink of the Internet, a video version of a meme. Surely, people have long since grown bored of watching a bunch of creepy kids wave their purchases at the camera and wandered away to watch more cat videos or someth-

… ing.

6.7 million views? Actual production values? What the shit?

Sure, they’re still not particularly widely known, but they’ve been moving and shaking in the marginal like no one’s business. The people who make haul videos used to be called haul girls, but now that guys are in on the action, too, I don’t think the community really has a name yet — haulers? Haulsters? I’m just going to go ahead and call them “haul people” and hope it’ll stick until the Mole Man mishears the name and attempts to enslave them all. Many of the more successful ones have PR agents and deals with fashion and cosmetic companies. They have been featured on Good Morning America. They have a distinct identity, albeit that of vapid fucks yammering about consumer products to unseen audiences. There are even people who make haul parodies. If that level of sadness doesn’t ruin your day, I don’t know what will.

Hipster Pros:

Easier to hate than a shit-smeared street performer singing Nickelback, yet inexplicably popular enough to have some semblance of legitimacy. Those are the main definitions of, well, every fucking successful subculture in history, and haul people pass them with flying flags.

Flags that they shape out of giant shopping bags.

Hipster Cons:

They’re not ready just yet.

Although they have vast potential as a highly visible subculture that everyone will do their level best to forget in five years’ time, haul people currently lack direction. They’re basically low-key corporate shills, buying/getting junk and peddling it for us. However, the extreme popularity of fringe haul genres such as unboxing videos shows promise for something much, much grander and more stupid. Give it a year or two; I have hope that the community will find certain defining themes and Flanderize itself into something we can truly be baffled by on an ironic-mustache level.

#1. These Fucking Guys

For the love of G’huul the Great Eater, keep the sound on.

Hipster Pros:

All of them.

Hipster Cons:

None. We’re done here. I don’t care who these people really are. I don’t care what they’re supposed to be doing. All I know is that they look like an explosion at the My Little Pony factory’s neon paint subsidiary, and someone edited the Thomas The Tank Engine theme to sync with their goofy-looking space outfit flailing. That is the level of bafflement we need right now, friends, and I now want these guys to explode all over our pop culture fucking yesterday — preferably, while contractually obligated to carry a boom box that blasts out the Thomas theme 24/7.

Pauli Poisuo is a Cracked weekly columnist and freelance editor. Here he is on Facebook and Twitter.

from All Of Beer http://allofbeer.com/5-insane-subcultures-that-might-become-the-next-hipster/

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sillyfudgemonkeys · 7 years ago

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Oh! I wanna hear your hyper critical opinions towards p3 (and p4 if youre up to it). I am genuinely curious as to what it is!

pDSOAPFADFJIOA;FJIA;JF;DA Ahhhhhhh if only I wrote down everything I said (I did this over a year ago). under the cut cause long:

It was easier cause I was ripping it as we played and I had some nitpicks in the dialogue (more so with like “WAIT THAT MAKES NO SENSE!” or “WHY ARE YOU JUMPING TO THAT CONCLUSION?!” kinda thing rather than a translation error). But I can’t really specify what it was cause it was so long ago. The only one that comes to mind is when they’re jerks to Naoto, it must be how she’s talking in Japan cause like.......they’re really, REALLY rude to her. Like, they do realize she has a right to be suspicious of them right? Like, don’t get me wrong, I loooooooove the animosity in some way (great foe-yay/rival shipping yay fodder for me to ship her with the MC ahuhuhu 8U) but dang I wish they made more tension (and made it even). That’s actually the one thing I thought the P4 anime did right (and trust me I don’t think that anime did a lot of things right, esp concerning Naoto...ironically XD), they really built the tension between her and the group very well. Anyway I want to go into more detail some other time, maybe when I replay the two games, but for now I’ll give you a general overview).

Ok so all and all I think P3 and P4 are fine the way they are. They did a good job with them. P3 for being Hashino’s first hoorah into the series (also didn’t have enough time or money to include everything and had to cut stuff, LIKE THE FEMC! ;W;), and P4 for.....having such....a small.....budget....and....not a lot of time....and.....the company was struggling.....Like dang man I’m surprised we got P4. So like, compared to P5, I’m a lot easier on these two cause in one case Hashino was trying to find his style, and the other he was struggling with working with almost nothing (P5, however, didn’t have any of these issues).

Ok so like.....My biggest issue with P3 is mostly it’s characters and character relationships. P4.....I wish we could’ve hung out with Naoto earlier (even before she joined the team, that would’ve been interesting if the MC and her met up and attempted to draw more info out of each other about the case), and I wouldn’t have minded if they added more to the murder plot.

P3....ngl the first act until Aigis show’s up is.....so....slow.....and boring....and no one is really likeable imo. I hated Yukari, I hated Junpei. Mitsuru seemed interesting but she wouldn’t hang out. Akihiko....didn’t really care for him, but I couldn’t hang out with him. I couldn’t hang out with Yukari or Junpei if I wanted to (Yukari won’t hang out till around Aigis joins anyway, I remember from my last playthrough we tried, it was an NG+ and she snubbed us). Kenji is a moron (don’t hate him, feel bad for him, but god so boring), Kaz is a moron, didn’t do Yuko the first time (should’ve I did like her, hate I only got the first rank the first time I ever played through P3), I didn’t like Chihiro (she started off fine but was kinda creepy later on), can’t hang with Fuuka unless you have maxed courage cause eff me (not like I can ever remember her gd link anyways that’s how forgettable it is, I don’t even like Yukari but at least I remember her’s). Basically......the SL sucked balls. Major balls (I liked Maiko, the Star dude, the old couple, the Hermit, and the Devil......I guess the Tower too he was ok, and....that’s it....for outside teammate links aka Aigis and Mitsuru). Silly was not a happy camper when she popped P3 in after having fun with P4 (and esp after being told P3 was a GAZZILLION TIMES BETTER!!!!1!), tbh I took like a 4 month break from P3 and replayed P4 before I picked P3 back up (after Aigis showed up I def enjoyed it a heck of a lot more after that). Now, P3′s plot is really good and very solid, it’s P3′s strong point. My issue is that.....everything P3 does is for the sake of the plot. It does it well, don’t get me wrong, but everything about the characters is only happening cause “plot demands it.” They never felt super fleshed out, and it’s probably why they feel a little odd (maybe even flat-ish) in the spinoff games (even more so than the P4 team), cause the spinoff games aren’t relying on their (P3′s) plot. I also don’t buy a lot of their friendships (esp the males teammates with the Male MC), Yukari and Mitsuru’s is....ok (I don’t like how the game makes it feel like “oh you have a dead dad? me too! let’s be friends” as a thing, I know she’s just trying to relate and sympathize but.....I’ve seen that as a complaint come up by a lot of people, for someone so popular Yukari isn’t much of a people person in this regard, from how the game frames it that is). Also the fact you can’t friend girls. There’s not a lot of bonding moments in the game, there’s more than P5, but I still don’t feel as close to the team as I should even by the end. And gawd, Ryoji? Wut I’m friends with him now? How? When? I like the guy but I don’t think he likes me. You’d think he’d want to hang out with me cause.....PHAROS! ;W;

There’s more but I don’t want to leave you hanging, but anyway it’s just....I have a lot of issues with how the characters are handled. They’re good characters, I wish there just....more to them. But the thing is.....THIS IS AN EASY FIX! You’ve probably heard me say about the P5 manga/anime “a change in medium can do wonders” or something like that. That’s cause I have P3 to look at. The manga and movies do wonders for P3 my problems with P3. There’s more bonding, character relationships are improved yadda yadda. Yes there are issues within the manga and movies themselves...... but they do a lot of good things too. One of the things the movies did was actually......influenced by it’s P3P remake (aka establish a relationship with Ryoji, yay!). Oh man, P3P/the FeMC fixed sooooooooooooo many problems (it also added some even more awesome duality to a game that already had a lot of duality going on with it), I can talk to Yukari and Junpei from the get go (and they treat me different, and more pleasantly than when I played as the dude), I can actually hang out with the guys (and I DON’T automatically have to date them, in fact I have to work to date them, every single one), the stats for character requirements are laid out more fairly like in P4 so by the time someone is available I can probably talk to them (without having to kill myself trying to manage my social stats).But man, the first act just flows so much better when you’re able to bond with your teammates (also Rio and Saori are great SLs!). Even tho they don’t change the female SLs pretty much at all (making it veeeery gay XD), it does feel like it is at least a friendship by the end (even tho I’m literally dating everyone and you can’t tell me otherwise! 8U). I also love her personality comes across more clearing (and varied) than the males, there’s a more clear progression of her psyche than her male counterpart (it’s still there, just not as obvious, and I love how they’re inverted to each other~! :D). It’s just, with P3, the really minor changes go a LOOOOOOOOOOONG way. The only thing I would change with P3 is the minor stuff. Just add more scenes (that don’t take up time) to the game, on both sides. Gameplay wise add more SLs, alternative SLs even. Heck, if they remade the game, I think being able to go to new places would be cool (and it’d be where you’d meet your new SLs) cause man you’re in a city, you deserve to do more stuff! It’s just the little things man, the little things can make a big impact! It says something that probably my fav Persona fanfic and fav Strain42 Persona parody comicis the P3(P) ones, even tho P4 is my fav game. You change a few things around, even the medium, and it makes a difference.

Ok onto P4. Now P4 is the opposite of P3, with P4 it’s strong point is it’s characters. The characters drive P4. P4 is character based, P3 is plot based. P4 the plot takes a back seat. This is fine, it works in P4′s favor, like how the plot worked in P3′s favor. P4′s plot is ok, it does a great job with supporting the characters. Sadly I understand if you wanted more murder mystery (or just mystery) in a murder mystery game. And in P4′s defense, again, it had a barebones budget and not a lot of time and the company was doing pretty bad and P4 still came out pretty great (was the most popular before P5 came out, lord knows if it may even come out on top again if it gets an updated graphics/gameplay remake). And it’s also really hard to keep a murder mystery going for about 70-100ish hours (and only finally solving it in the last 1/5 of the game). Also P4, like P3 (forgot to mention that above), sticks to it’s theme really well. Even making it solving it/obtaining the good ending routes semi-difficult. Sure you can deduce Adachi, but tbh it’s also difficult. They do a pretty decent job building the guy up as a friend (even more so in P4G due to the SL). Izanami is also well hidden. The game makes you work and it rewards you.

Now if I were to change stuff.....it’d range from minor to major depending on what we’re talking about. Minor would be adding more scenes of Naoto bonding (she needs it cause the late game doesn’t do her justice), and like I mentioned above, I think have a deduction off would be interesting (Naoto’s SL was one of my favs cause of how we solved a gd mystery, god I’m so mad that never made it into the anime, even as an ova, it could’ve been a great team-building filler one too). Another thing I’d add would maybe be.....something similar to quests, but instead you have to solve a mystery (which means talking to people, and investigating areas), it can range from finding a cat in a tree or finding a bully or whatever. Just something minor that can give the mystery lovers something fun to do. I’d also have Izanami/gas station attendant be an SL (she originally was the Empress before giving that to Margret). Oh I’d also like to take Margret out on “dates” (c’mon gimme dem fun shenanigans). And.....now this can be minor or major (depending on what they do, but it’s probably more major), add another red herring. I don’t care how.....but....it would help draw attention away from Adachi. Maybe they’re added from some of the mini mysteries you solved, maybe they squeeze an extra dungeon into the game some how-some way (doubt it for the later, that’d be a major change), but another red herring would be good.

For a Major change it’d be restructuring the plot a looooooot, adding more dungeons for more red herrings. I would actually make Dojima a red herring. He originally was suppose to be the killer (but they thought that was too dark, understandable), with Adachi as the red herring instead. Other than that I’m not exactly sure how they’d overhaul that. I mean, if they made a P4 game based off of P3P’s route (aka different route/game, different killer), I’d like to see their prototype stuff play out. Short-haired ice queen Yukiko, delinquent/bully Rise, Pretty boy Naoto (actual boy this time, also make him dateable.....what? I like Naoto 8U), 1st year MC, Female Teddie, Adult(?) Kanji, Dojima as the killer, Adachi as the red herring (Chie and Yosuke are actually pretty much the same). I’d really like to see that.

But tbh, I don’t really know where to start in giving P4 a major overhaul (except to go with the prototype set up), possibly cause it’d mean introducing/creating new characters. But P5? I do, oh man I know where I would start (P5 is where I’d make my major changes left and right, no minor changes here...except maybe dungeon 1), I’d make soooooo many changes to P5. But that’s for another time (not now, it’d take too long). 8U

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aion-rsa · 4 years ago

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Best Horror Movies Streaming on HBO Max

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Editor’s Note: This post is updated monthly. Bookmark this page and come back every month to see the new horror movies on HBO Max.

Updated for October 2020

What ever would we do without horror?

So much of our daily life is built around logic and known, verifiable facts, and for some, the rest of the time must be supplemented with comforting reassurances that everything is going to be alright. Well if the last year has taught us anything… that’s not the case. Perhaps this is why horror hounds know the best way to face abstract fears is to confront them head on… and preferably with a screen in the way.

So, with Halloween around the corner, we figured it’s time to get in touch with our illogical, terrified animal brain. That’s where horror and horror movies in particular come in. Gathered here are the best horror movies on HBO Max for your scaring needs.

Alien

“In space, no one can hear you scream,” the tagline for Ridley Scott’s 1979 sci-fi/horror epic promised. Well maybe they should have screened this thing in space because I’m sure all that audiences in theaters did was scream.

Alien has since evolved into a heady, science fiction franchise that has stretched out for decades. The original film, however, is a small-scale, terrifyingly claustrophobic thriller.

Altered States

What if you could tap into the vast swaths of the brain you never use? What if you did and didn’t like what we found? And what if it was an absolute psychedelic rush of a cinematic experience?

All three questions are answered in their own way during Ken Russell’s Altered States, a wild sci-fi thriller. In the film, William Hurt stars as a psychologist who begins experimenting with taking hallucinatory drugs while in a sensory depravation tank.

Yes, he manages to expand his consciousness; he also begins to expand his physical body as it transforms beneath his skin. Or does it? Well that’s yet another good question…

An American Werewolf in London

Arguably the definitive werewolf movie, John Landis’ 1981 horror masterpiece has the single greatest on-screen lycanthropic transformation in movie history… and that’s only one of its appeals.

Peppered with loving references to the werewolf movies that came before it and a few legitimate laughs to go along with the scares, An American Werewolf in London is remarkably knowing and self-aware, without ever flirting with parody.

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Not enough can be said about Rick Baker’s practical effects, which extend beyond the aforementioned on-screen transformation and into one of the most gruesome depictions of a werewolf attack aftermath you’re ever likely to see. A classic of the era, it still can get under the skin whenever Griffin Dunne’s mutilated corpse rises from the grave to warn his friend to “beware the moon.”

The Brood

I bet you never thought placenta could look so tasty, but when Samantha Eggar’s Nola Carveth licks her newborn clean you’ll be craving seconds within the hour. She brings feline intuition to female troubles. We get it. Having a new baby can be scary. Having a brood is terrifying. Feminine power is the most horrifying of all for male directors used to being in control.

David Cronenberg takes couples therapy one step too far in his 1979 psychological body-horror film, The Brood. When it came out critics called it reprehensible trash, but it is the writer-director’s most traditional horror story. Oliver Reed plays with mental illness like Bill Sikes played with the kids as Hal Raglan, the psychotherapist treating the ex-wife of Frank Carveth (Art Hindle). The film starts slow, unfolding its drama through cuts and bruises.

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Cronenberg unintentionally modifies the body of the Kramer vs. Kramer story in The Brood, but the murderous munchkins at the external womb of the film want a little more than undercooked French toast.

Carnival of Souls

Carnival of Souls may be the most unlikely of chillers to appear in the Criterion Collection. Hailing from the great state of Kansas and helmed by commercial director Herk Harvey, who was looking for his big break in features, there is something hand-crafted about the whole affair. There’s also something unmistakably eerie.

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The story is fairly basic campfire boilerplate, following a woman (Candace Hilligoss) who survives a car crash but is then haunted by the sound of music and visions of the ghoulish dead��beckoning her toward a decrepit carnival abandoned some years earlier–and the acting can leave something to be desired. But the dreadful dreamlike atmosphere is irresistible.

With a strong sense of fatalism and inescapable doom, the film takes an almost melodic and disinterested gait as it stalks its heroine to her inevitable end, presenting images of the walking dead that linger in the mind long after the credits roll.

The Curse of Frankenstein

Hammer is probably best remembered now for its series of Christopher Lee-starring Dracula movies. Yet its oddball Frankenstein franchise deserves recognition too. While Hammer’s efforts certainly pale in comparison to the Frankenstein movies produced by Universal Pictures in the 1930s and ’40s, the Hammer ones remain distinctly unique. Whereas the Creature was the star of the earlier films, so much so the studio kept changing the actor beneath the Jack Pierce makeup after Boris Karloff got fed up three movies in, the not-so-good doctor leads the Hammer alternatives.

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Indeed, between bouts of playing the almost sickeningly pious Abraham Van Helsing, Peter Cushing portrayed a perverse and dastardly Victor Frankenstein at Hammer, and it all begins with The Curse of Frankenstein. It isn’t necessarily the best movie in the series, but it introduces us to Cushing’s cruel scientist, played here as less mad than malevolent.

It also features Christopher Lee in wonderfully grotesque monster makeup. This is the film where Hammer began forming an identity that would become infamous in the realm of horror.

The Conjuring 2

Making an effective, truly spooky mainstream horror film is hard enough. But The Conjuring franchise really nailed things out of the gate with a sequel that is every bit as fun and terrifying as the original.

Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga return as paranormal investigators Ed and Lorraine Warren in The Conjuring 2. This time the Warrens head to Great Britain to attend to the Hodgson family, dealing with some poltergeist problems in their Enfield home. The source of the Enfield haunting’s activity contains some of the most disturbing and terrifying visuals in the entire Conjuring franchise and helped to set up a (sadly pretty bad) spinoff sequel in The Nun.

Doctor Sleep

Let’s be up front about this: Doctor Sleep is not The Shining. For some that fact will make this sequel’s existence unforgivable. Yet there is a stoic beauty and creepy despair just waiting to be experienced by those willing to accept Doctor Sleep on its own terms.

Directed by one of the genre’s modern masters, Mike Flanagan, the movie had the unenviable task of combining one of King’s most disappointing texts with the opposing sensibilities of Stanley Kubrick’s singular The Shining adaptation.

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And yet, the result is an effective thriller about lifelong regrets and trauma personified by the ghostly specters of the Overlook Hotel. But they’re far from the only horrors here. Rebecca Ferguson is absolutely chilling as the smiling villain Rose the Hat, and the scene where she and other literal energy vampires descend upon young Jacob Tremblay is the stuff of nightmares. Genuinely, it’s a scene you won’t forget, for better or worse….

Dracula Has Risen from the Grave

Hammer Films’ fourth Dracula movie, and third to star the ever reluctant Christopher Lee, is by some fans’ account the most entertaining one. While it lacks the polish and ultimate respectability of Lee’s first outing as the vampire, Horror of Dracula (which you can read more about below), just as it is missing the invaluable Peter Cushing, Dracula Has Risen from the Grave arrived in 1968 at the crossroads of Hammer’s pulpy aesthetic. Their films had not yet devolved into exploitative shlock as they would a few years later, but the censors seemingly were throwing up their hands and allowing for the studio’s vampires to be meaner, bloodier, and sexier.

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In this particular romp, Dracula has indeed risen from the grave (yes, again!) because of the good intentions of one German monsignor (Rupert Davies). The religious leader is in central Europe to save souls, but the local denizens of a village won’t go to a church caught in the shadow of Castle Dracula. So the priest exorcises the structure, oblivious that his sidekick is also accidentally dripping blood into the mouth of Dracula’s corpse down the river. Boom he’s back!

And yet, our fair Count can’t enter his home anymore. So for revenge, Dracula follows the monsignor to his house and lays eyes on the patriarch’s comely young niece (Veronica Carlson). You can probably figure out the rest.

Eraserhead

“In Heaven, everything is fine,” sings the Lady in the Radiator in Eraserhead. “You’ve got your good things, and I’ve got mine.”

You may get something short of paradise, but the insular world David Lynch created for his 1977 experimental existential horror film is a land of mundane wonders, commonplace mysteries, and extremely awkward dinner conversations. Lynch’s first feature film is surrealistic, expressionistic, and musically comic. The minor key score and jarring black and white images bring half-lives to the industrial backdrop and exquisite squalor. At its heart though, Eraserhead is poignant, sad, and ultimately relatable on a universal level.

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Jack Nance’s Henry Spencer is the spiky-haired everyman. He works hard at his job, cares deeply for his deformed, mutant child, and is desperate to please his extended family. Lynch lays a comedy of manners in a rude, crude city. The film is an assault on the senses, and it might take a little while for the viewer’s brains to adjust to the images on the screen; it is a different reality, and not an entirely inviting one, but stick with it. Once you’re in with the in-laws, you’re home free. When you make it to the end, you can tell your friends you watched all of Eraserhead. When they ask you what it’s about, you can tell them you saw it.

Eyes Without a Face

“I’ve done so much wrong to perform this miracle,” Doctor Génessier (Pierre Brasseur) confesses in the 1960 horror film Eyes Without a Face. But he says it in French, making it all so much more poignant, allowing it to underscore everything director and co-writer Georges Franju did right. We feel for the respectable plastic surgeon forced to do monstrous things. But the monster behind the title character is his young daughter Christiane (Édith Scob). She spends the majority of the film behind a mask, even more featureless than the unpainted plastic Captain Kirk kid’s costume Michael Myers wore in Halloween. The first time we see her face though, the shock wears off quickly and we are more moved than terrified.

Like Val Lewton films, the horror comes from the desolate black-and-white atmosphere, shrouding the claustrophobic suspense in German Expressionism. Maurice Jarre’s score evokes a Gothic carnival as much as a mad scientist’s laboratory. After his daughter’s face is hideously disfigured in an accident, Dr. Génessier becomes obsessed with trying to restore it. We aren’t shown much, until we’re shown too much. We see his heterograft surgical procedure in real time. A woman’s face is slowly flayed from the muscle. The graphic scenes pack more of a visceral shock after all the encroaching dread.

Godzilla

As the original and by far still the best Godzilla movie ever produced, this 1954 classic (originally titled Gojira), is one of the many great Showa Era classics that the Criterion Collection and HBO Max are making readily available to American audiences. And if you want to watch one that is actually scary, look no further.

In this original uncut Japanese form, the movie’s genuine dread of nuclear devastation, as well as nightly air raids, less than 10 years since World War II ended in several mushroom clouds, is overwhelming. Tapping into the real cultural anxiety of a nation left marred by the memory of its dead, as well as the recent incident of a fishing crew being contaminated by unannounced hydrogen bomb testing at Bikini Atoll, Godzilla encapsulates terror for the atomic age in a giant lizard.

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And unlike the sequels there is nothing cuddly or amusing about this original Kaiju with its scarred body and legion of tumors. This is the one Godzilla movie to play it straight, and it still plays today.

Horror of Dracula

Replacing Bela Lugosi as Dracula was not easily done in 1958. It’s still not easily done now. Which makes the fact that Christopher Lee turned Bram Stoker’s vampire into his own screen legend in Horror of Dracula all the more remarkable. Filmed in vivid color by director Terence Fisher, Horror of Dracula brought gushing bright red to the movie vampire, which up until then had been mostly relegated to black and white shadows.

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With its penchant for gore and heaving bosoms, Horror of Dracula set the template for what became Hammer Film Productions’ singular brand of horror iconography, but it’s also done rather tastefully the first time out here, not least of all because of Lee bring this aggressively cold-blooded version of Stoker’s monster to life. It’s all business with this guy.

Conversely, Abraham Van Helsing was never more dashing than when played by Peter Cushing in this movie. The film turned both into genre stars, and paved the way for a career of doing this dance time and again.

The Invisible Man

After years of false starts and failed attempts at resurrecting the classic Universal Monsters, Universal Pictures finally figured out how to make it work: They called Blumhouse Productions.

Yep, Jason Blum’s home for micro-budgeted modern horror worked wonders alongside writer-director Leigh Whannell in updating the classic 1933 James Whale movie, and the H.G. Wells novel on which it is based, for the 21st century.

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Turning the story of a man who masters invisibility into a horrific experience told from the vantage of the woman trying to escape his toxic violence, The Invisible Man becomes a disquieting allegory for the #MeToo era. It also is a devastating showcase for Elisabeth Moss who is compelling as Cecilia, the abused and gaslighted woman that barely found the will to escape, yet will now have to discover more strength since everyone around her shrugs off the idea of her dead ex coming back as an invisible man…

Lifeforce

Most assuredly a horror movie for a very acquired taste, there are few who would call Tobe Hooper’s career-destroying Lifeforce a good movie. There probably aren’t even many who would call it a fun movie. But for those with a singular taste for batshit pulp run amok, Lifeforce needs to be seen to be believed: Naked French vampire girls from outer space! Hordes of extras as zombies marauding through downtown London! Lush Henry Mancini music over special effects way outside of Cannon Films’ budget!!! Patrick Stewart as an authority figure possessed by said naked French space vampire, trying to seduce an astronaut via makeout sessions?!

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… What is this movie? Why does it exist? We don’t know, but we’re probably more glad it does than the people who made it.

Magic

As much a psychological case study as as a traditional horror movie, for those who like their terror rooted in humanity, Magic may be the creepiest iteration of the “killer doll” subgenre since this is about the man who thinks his dummy is alive. Starring Anthony Hopkins before he was Hannibal, or had a “Sir” in front of his name, Magic is the brain child of William Goldman, who adapted his own novel into this movie before he’d go on to do the same for The Princess Bride (as well as adapt Stephen King’s Misery), but after he’d already written Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and Marathon Man.

In the film, Hopkins stars as Corky, a down on his luck ventriloquist who tries to get his life together by tracking down his high school sweetheart (Ann-Margret). She’ll soon probably wish he didn’t bother once she realizes Corky believes his ventriloquist dummy Fats really is magic… and is determined to get him to act on the most heinous of impulses.

The Most Dangerous Game

Before King Kong, Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack released The Most Dangerous Game, one of the all-time great pulp movies, based on a short story by Richard Connell. This classic has influenced everything from Predator to The Running Man, The Hunger Games to Ready or Not.

It’s the story of a big game hunter who shipwrecks on a remote island with an eccentric Russian Count who escaped the Bolshevik Revolution (Leslie Banks). The wayward noble now drinks, studies, and charms his apparently frequent array of unannounced guests, including two other survivors from a previous (suspicious) wreck. The film quickly boils down to a mad rich man determined to hunt his guests as prey across the island for the ultimate thrill.

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Man hunting man, man lusting after woman in a queasy pre-Code fashion, this is a primal throwback to adventure yarns of the 19th century, which were still relatively recent in 1932. Shot simultaneously with King Kong, this is 63 brisk minutes of excitement, dread, and delicious overacting. Let the games begin.

Night of the Living Dead

“They’re coming to get you, Barbara!”

The zombie movie that more or less invented our modern understanding of what a zombie movie is, there is little new that can be said about George A. Romero’s original guts and brains classic, Night of the Living Dead. Shot in black and white and on almost no budget, the film reimagined zombies as a horde of ravenous flesh-eaters, as opposed to a lowly servant of the damned and enchanted.

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Still visually striking in black and white, perhaps the key reason to go back to the zombie movie that started it all is due to how tragically potent its central conflict from 1968 remains: When strangers are forced to join forces and barricade in a farmhouse to survive a zombie invasion, the wealthy white businessman is constantly at odds with the young Black man in the group, to the point of drawing weapons…

Ready or Not

The surprise horror joy of 2019, Ready or Not was a wicked breath of fresh air from the creative team Radio Silence. With a star-making lead turn by Samara Weaving, the movie is essentially a reworking of The Most Dangerous Game where a bride is being hunted by her groom’s entire wedding party on the night of their nuptials.

It’s a nutty premise that has a delicious (and broad) satirical subtext about the indulgences and eccentricities of the rich, as the would-be extended family of Grace (Weaving) is only pursuing her because they’re convinced a grandfather made a deal with the Devil for their wealth–and to keep it they must step on those beneath them every generation. Well step, shoot, stab, and ritualistically sacrifice in this cruelest game of hide and seek ever. Come for the gonzo high-concept and stay for the supremely satisfying ending.

Sisters

One of the scariest things about the 1972 psychological thriller Sisters is the subliminal sounds of bones creaking and muscles readjusting during the slasher scenes. Margot Kidder plays both title characters: conjoined twins, French Canadian model Danielle Breton and asylum-committed Dominique Blanchion, who had been surgically separated. Director Brian De Palma puts the movie together like a feature-long presentation of the shower scene in Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho. The camera lingers over bodies, bloodied or pristine, mobile or prone, with fetishistic glee before instilling the crime scenes in the mind’s eye. He allows longtime Hitchcock composer Bernard Herrmann to assault the ear.

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Best Horror Movies on Amazon Prime Right Now

By Alec Bojalad and 3 others

De Palma was inspired by a photograph of Masha and Dasha Krivoshlyapova, Russian conjoined twins with seemingly polarized temperaments. There may be no deeper bond than blood, which the film has plenty of, but the real alter ego comes from splitscreen compositions and an outside intruder. The voyeuristic delight culminates in a surgical dream sequence with freaks, geeks, a giant, and dwarves. Nothing is as it seems and an out-of-order telephone is a triggering reminder.

Jordan Peele’s debut feature Get Out was a near instant horror classic so anticipation was high for his follow-up. Thanks to an excellent script, Peele’s deep appreciation of pop culture, and some stellar performances, Us mostly lived up to the hype.

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The film tells the story of the Wilson family from Santa Cruz. After a seemingly normal trip to a summer home and the beach, Adelaide (Lupita Nyong’o), Gabe (Winston Duke) and their two kids are confronted by their own doppelgangers, are weird, barely verbal, and wearing red. But then Adelaide is not terribly surprised given her own personal childhood traumas. And that’s only the beginning of the horror at play. Fittingly, Us feels like a feature length Twilight Zone concept done right.

Vampyr

A nigh silent picture, Vampyr came at a point of transition for its director Carl Th. Dreyer. The Danish filmmaker, who often worked in Germany and France at this time, was making only his second “talkie” when he mounted this vampire opus. That might be why the movie is largely absent of dialogue. The plot, which focuses on a young man journeying to a village that is under the thrall of a vampire, owes much to Bram Stoker’s Dracula as well as F.W. Murnau’s Nosferatu from some years earlier.

Yet there horror fans should seek Vampyr out, if for no other reason than the stunning visuals and cinematography. Alternating between German Expressionist influences in its use to shadows to unsettling images crafted in naturalistic light, such as a boatman carrying an ominous scythe, this a a classic of mood and atmosphere. Better still is when they combine, such as when the scythe comes back to bedevil a woman sleeping, trapping us all in her nightmare. Even if its narrative has been told better, before and after, there’s a reason this movie’s iconography lingers nearly a century later.

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aion-rsa · 4 years ago

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Best Horror Movies Streaming on HBO Max

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Editor’s Note: This post is updated monthly. Bookmark this page and come back every month to see the new horror movies on HBO Max.

What ever would we do without horror?

So much of our day to day life is built around logic and known, verifiable facts, and for some, the rest of the time must be supplemented with comforting reassurances that everything is going to be alright. Well if the last year has taught us anything… that’s not the case. Perhaps this is why horror hounds know the best way to face abstract fears is to confront them head on… and preferably with a screen in the way.

Alien

Alien has since evolved into a heady, science fiction franchise that has stretched out for decades. The original film, however, is a small-scale, terrifyingly claustrophobic thriller.

Altered States

What if you could tap into the vast swaths of the brain you never use? What if you did and didn’t like what we found? And what if it was an absolute psychedelic rush of a cinematic experience?

Yes, he manages to expand his consciousness; he also begins to expand his physical body as it transforms beneath his skin. Or does it? Well that’s yet another good question…

An American Werewolf in London

Arguably the definitive werewolf movie, John Landis’ 1981 horror masterpiece has the single greatest on-screen lycanthropic transformation in movie history… and that’s only one of its appeals.

New Line Cinema

Blade II

Perhaps Guillermo del Toro‘s schlockiest movie, there’s still great fun to be had by all in Blade II. As a sequel to the 1998 vampire actioner that starred Wesley Snipes as the titular “daywalker,” Blade II builds on the lore of the first film and its secret underground society of bloodsuckers who Blade must do battle with.

However, del Toro heightens both the Gothic lunacy of it all, as well as the horror quotient. Truly there are few sights as gross in vampire lore as Luke Goss’ Nomak, a new type of monster whose face opens like a flower, revealing a gaping hole of fangs and tongue…

The Brood

I bet you never thought placenta could look so tasty, but when Samantha Eggar’s Nola Carveth licks her newborn clean you’ll be craving sloppy seconds within the hour. She brings feline intuition to female troubles. We get it. Having a new baby can be scary. Having a brood is terrifying. Feminine power is the most horrifying of all for male directors used to being in control.

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Carnival of Souls

The story is fairly basic campfire boilerplate, following a woman (Candace Hilligoss) who survives a car crash but is then haunted by the sound of music and visions of the ghoulish dead–beckoning her toward a decrepit carnival abandoned some years earlier–and the acting can leave something to be desired. But the dreadful dreamlike atmosphere is irresistible.

The Conjuring 2

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Doctor Sleep

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Eraserhead

“In Heaven, everything is fine,” sings the Lady in the Radiator in Eraserhead. “You’ve got your good things, and I’ve got mine.”

Eyes Without a Face

From Dusk Till Dawn

Some movies have such a gonzo left turn between acts that audiences will either go with it or throw their popcorn at the screen in disgust. For most viewers, including us, Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino’s From Dusk Till Dawn is happily the former. An absolutely wild mash-up of the gangster genre that both filmmakers were redefining in the 1990s and the type of schlocky grindhouse thrills they worshipped at 1970s drive-ins, From Dusk Till Dawn is one of the strangest and most satisfying vampire movies ever made.

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With a story that improbably pairs Tarantino and George Clooney as on screen brothers, the flick recounts how the duo’s notorious Gecko Brothers kidnap a nice Christian family ruled by a doubting pastor (Harvey Keitel) in order to sneak across the Mexican border. But once there, the strip club they choose to spend the night in has the unfortunate gimmick of being run by ancient vampires, including Salma Hayek as the Queen of the Undead. It’s batshit good fun, and a far better tribute to grindhouse cinema than the Grindhouse double-feature the same filmmakers would partner on a decade later.

Godzilla

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The Invisible Man

After years of false starts and failed attempts at resurrecting the classic Universal Monsters, Universal Pictures finally figured out how to make it work: They called Blumhouse Productions.

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Lifeforce

But for those with a singular taste for batshit pulp run amok, Lifeforce needs to be seen to be believed: Naked French vampire girls from outer space! Hordes of extras as zombies marauding through downtown London! Lush Henry Mancini music over special effects way outside of Cannon Films’ budget!!! Patrick Stewart as an authority figure possessed by said naked French space vampire, trying to seduce an astronaut via makeout sessions?!

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… What is this movie? Why does it exist? We don’t know, but we’re probably more glad it does than the people who made it.

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The Most Dangerous Game

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Night of the Living Dead

“They’re coming to get you, Barbara!”

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The Others

Alejandro Amenabar (Open Your Eyes) wrote and directed this elegant ghost story. Nicole Kidman is superb as Grace, who relocates herself and her two small children to a remote country estate in the aftermath of World War II. Their highly structured life — the children are sensitive to sunlight and must stay in darkened rooms — is shattered by mysterious presences in the house.

Amenabar relies on mood, atmosphere and a few well-placed scares to make this an excellent modern-day companion to classics like The Haunting and The Innocents.

Ready or Not

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Sisters

Vampyr

Wes Craven’s New Nightmare

Some do not count Wes Craven’s New Nightmare, the seventh film in the Nightmare on Elm Street saga, as actually part of the series. As a gleefully meta exercise in self-awareness and self-critique, the film shirks off continuing the narrative from the last batch of Freddy Krueger movies, the last of which had the title Freddy’s Dead. Rather writer-director Wes Craven, returning to the series for the first time as director since the original, attempts to wrestle the horror icon back from pop culture. When Craven and actor Robert Englund created Freddy in 1984’s A Nightmare on Elm Street, the fiend was a menacing, demonic child murderer. By 1994, he’d turn into a kid-friendly pop culture personality and huckster.

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With Englund on board, as well as the original film’s star in Heather Langenkamp, New Nightmare has the knotty concept of being about Langenkamp playing a version of herself: an actress who did a slasher movie 10 years ago and is still in some ways haunted by it. In real life she faced a stalker calling her at all hours of the night; in the movie, it’s Freddy. Or a Demon who’s taken the shape of Freddy… it’s complicated. The movie’s reach may exceed its grasp in terms of artistry, but at the very least Freddy was scary again for one last time. And the film’s ambition in crafting a waking nightmare of movies bleeding into our reality is still impressive.

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