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dibberdipper · 4 years ago

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Where to go next (Part 2 of cheap frat party beer)

Pairing: Poppy x MC (Bea Hughes)

Warnings: Comfort, implied past sex, language

Word count: 2,000

Summary: When kickoff day is over and everyone’s going home, two girls walk around in the street enjoying each other’s company until they have to fight at school again tomorrow.

Authors note at the end

Bea watched the blonde-haired girl angrily stomp away. She’s recognized the kind of person she is-

She’s a spoiled rich brat who just minutes prior threw a tantrum just because Belvoire’s newest farm girl won over the student body. Bea was undeniably attracted to Poppy, it’s been known at this point. But she wanted nothing more than to take her down. What goes without saying, she wanted the top spot. What made things complicated was she also wanted the girl in the top spot.

They never talked about that shared night in the dorm room, how even after they did the deed they stayed to cuddle. The school’s top rivals were cuddling. Poppy got back with Carter, and Bea felt like there was nothing she could say or do about it. So maybe there was just a little hint of spite involved.

She was on her way back to her and Zoey’s shared place but hesitated to keep going. A certain moment in the day kept plaguing her mind. Poppy just broke up with Carter today. For her reputation, this was the perfect chance to date the school’s football team captain. Carter was attractive, he was sweet… but her mind kept lingering to his ex-girlfriend. She knew it was evil, but she hoped she’d actually stay his ex-girlfriend this time.

She already knew she could surpass Poppy in a week tops, why not try to get in deeper with Poppy now? Worst case scenario, Poppy could embarrass and expose her. But even then, Bea just didn’t really care. She could probably get more momentum in some way and try to make the whole ‘Farmgirl simps for the queen of the school”. On the other hand, best-case scenario, Carter may be out of a girlfriend while she just got one.

As she took her phone out of her pocket, she walked away from her dorm. She could already hear Zoey’s lecture later onto why she left alone without any backup. She went to Poppy’s Instagram page and slid right into her DMs.

“wanna meet later”

She didn’t even wait a second for her reply, it was immediate.

“excuse me???? hell no”

“why not :(”

“have u met me? no”

Bea thought about what to say next when her phone came up with another notification.

“ok how do I know you won’t show up without your bootleg media manager”

Bea rolled her eyes as she kept typing. Okay, she’s crossing her fingers that Poppy does have a secret soft spot somewhere under her blunt rudeness. She couldn’t expect Zoey to support her and Poppy if Poppy couldn’t even treat Zoey with bare minimum respect.

But then again, who says there’s even a relationship.

“how do I know you won’t show up without any of your minions? oh wait they left :(“

She could already see Poppy’s fingers angrily tapping her phone.

Bea came up with an idea that’ll hopefully make things more fun for the both of them that won’t lead to screaming over DMs.

“here, i’ll drop my number so we can FaceTime each other on our way to McDonald’s. foolproof”

“🤢🤢🤢 barf, no”

“Who would expect Poppy Min-Sinclair at a McDonald’s?”

She didn’t get anything back until she got an unknown number trying to FaceTime her. She smiled to herself as she took out her earphones and answered.

“Hey gorgeous-“

“Who do you think you are?! Asking me to meet up after humiliating me?!”

She only saw her neck up, a deep red wool scarf covering up the lower side of her face. She was also adorned in an ugly mud brown hat.

“Poppy I-“

“To think I actually slept with yo-“

“Poppy sweetie, you should be a little quieter on the streets in NYC. Just a little tip.” Bea said laughing, as Poppy flushed. Bea obviously had a view of the buildings behind Poppy.

Poppy huffed. “I might as well not even talk to you on the phone, you’re being such a bitc-“

Poppy heard footsteps behind her and slowly turned around her.

“Then you don’t have to!”

Poppy was so startled she almost fell, and her hat fell off. She put a hand over her heart and took a deep breath.

“Bea! You scared me!”

Bea picked the hat up from off the ground and placed it back on her head.

“Whoops. Sorry.”

Bea looked Poppy over, and now she got to see along with the hat and scarf, she was wearing a tan dress coat with dark brown boots. She looked like a stereotypical cartoon character in a disguise minus the glasses with a mustache attached, plus the tacky hat. There was something charming about her attempt to look less suspicious.

Poppy glared at her but slowly her expression softened.

“Here, I brought these.”

She handed her matching sunglasses, they had some sort of brand name that Bea couldn’t recognize on them.

“Awww babe you brought us matching sunglasses?”

“Don’t think you can just call me babe, I’m pissed at you.”

Poppy crossed her arms after slipping her sunglasses, looking away in annoyance. Bea could’ve apologized or whatever, but the way she said it as if she did nothing riled her up.

“You shouldn’t have tried to sabotage me, sweetie.” Bea said as she slipped her matching pair of sunglasses on.

Poppy wrinkled her nose in anger.

“Then you shouldn’t have tried to upstage me.”

“Here how about this Poppy, we’ll say sorry on three?”

“Okay.” Poppy said uncrossing her arms. Bea felt her eyes on her through the sunglasses.

“One…two…three…”

They waited for one of them to say sorry, but none of them did. They left each other hanging.

They kept eye contact and started laughing. Almost as if they were moving on their own, still laughing, they interlocked fingers and started walking. Poppy laid her head on Bea’s shoulder.

“Ugh, do we still have to go to McDonald's? “

“I guess not. Where do you want to go then?

“I don’t mind just walking.”

They walked, enjoying their shared silence as if they were just two girls holding hands because they liked each other. They both individually loved their reputations, socializing, but at the end of the day, it’s probably the only thing keeping them apart. The school is watching for a catfight, not a love story.

“Bea, why did you really call me here?”

“I just wanted to talk.” Bea replied.

Poppy lifted her head away.

“Ask me ten questions, and I’ll ask you ten questions after.” She remarked.

“Poppy, are you really trying to get to know me through a trivial game?” Bea said.

“You do know that’s one question down, right?” Poppy smirked.

“Oh come one, you’re not going to seriously count that as a question.” Bea said in annoyance.

“Ah, that’s two.” Bea scoffed at her statement, but Poppy giggled in reply. Time seemed to stop every time Poppy genuinely laughed, almost as if the world knew that was the only time she looked truly innocent.

“Okay I’ll stop teasing you, you can ask. But you only have eight questions left.”

Bea squeezed her hand, as she looked around trying to think of one.

“Cats or dogs?”

“That’s seriously what you’re asking?”

“Sue me, but you can tell a lot about a person by which one they prefer.”

Poppy was silent for a moment.

“I wanted a cat when I was younger, but my mom’s allergic.”

“Ah okay. Next question I guess. Look I know we’ve done things, and you dated Carter, but I don’t want to assume anything. Are you bi?”

Poppy winked at her. “Let’s just say I listen to girl in red.”

Bea rolled her eyes but laughed.

“Okay, five more questions I guess. Coke or Pepsi.”

Poppy didn’t miss a beat. “White wine. Why drink those when you have a wine cooler?”

Bea punched her arm playfully. “Hey, your ‘too cool for soda’ rich kid is showing.”

They both laughed among each other.

“I mean I don’t have any more questions except one I guess.”

“Please do ask.” Poppy said, moving her hands upwards to clutch onto her arm.

“Have you even tried McDonald’s?”

“I’ve dated Carter, I went with him and I’ve come to the conclusion that almost none of their food looks like their advertising.” Poppy said.

“Well do you have a favorite fast food place? Or are you simply too fancy?”

Poppy looked around for a moment.

“You tell anyone and I swear to whatever God is out there Bea Hughes, I’ll make you pay.”

Bea started laughing, covering her hand over her mouth this time trying not to annoy other passers among them, previous people shooting them glares for being so damn loud.

“Okay, you have to tell me now.” Bea said finally calming her giggles.

She noticed Poppy’s face glow with a red tint as she buried herself in her scarf.

“After my first break up in high school, I ate at Wendy’s. It’s now my guilty pleasure.”

“I’ve actually never had Wendy’s.” Poppy gaped at Bea in surprise.

“Why? How could you not!”

“In my hometown, I mainly had food from mom and pop type diners and restaurants, you know?”

Poppy felt herself burn inside. On her first day of school, she relentlessly went at her for where she came from. Poppy let go of her arm and took a deep breath. As much as she could’ve never said this, the over-attachment she’s already grown so much to this girl couldn’t let her brush it off.

“Poppy are you oka-“ Before Bea could finish, Poppy interrupted her.

“I’m sorry for being such a piece of shit to you. Hell, I’m kind of a piece of shit to everyone.” Poppy tried to hold it in, but a tear or two slipped past and left streaks on her cheeks.

“Poppy…” Bea sighed.

“I’m not going to pretend and tell you you’re forgiven or that you haven’t been a real bitch to everyone. But I mean, who am I to judge? I’m not any better than you.”

Poppy looked up at her through her glasses, she didn’t even feel like being defensive. She knew she was right.

“One part of me wants to believe you have some sort of secret soft side, but I know that’d be me making up some other version of you. I want to get to know you, know every deep secret you have, I want to know all the little quirks that make you…you. But another part of me wants to be that power couple I’ve always selfishly wanted.”

Poppy felt the tears being unleashed. Carter was always sweet to her, pampered her even, he’s an amazing guy. But for some reason, this very moment meant so much to her than anything else.

“Would you… want to date me one day?” Poppy slipped the words out as she wiped the tears from her face with her sleeve.

Bea thought to herself for a few minutes, making Poppy shrink in paranoia as to what her response might be.

“We both need to grow first. I want to get better for you, and I want you to be satisfied enough in your life to not seek validation within some college ranking system.” As much as the words stung, Poppy nodded.

Bea looked down at Poppy and she stopped in her steps. She pulled her away from the sidewalk and closer to the wall of whatever building was next to them. She held her hands in hers.

“Instead of asking me ten questions, you know what you could do for me?”

Poppy looked at her puzzlingly.

“You know… you could kiss me.” Poppy giggles uncharacteristically in reply.

“Close your eyes.” Bea’s eyelids fluttered down. Poppy stood on her tippy toes and placed her lips on hers. It was different from that first night. Instead of sexual tension and passion, it was soft. As fun as that night was, she could say she preferred this one in a heartbeat. She pulled away as she something vibrate in her back pocket.

“Bea where are you??? Not to be a mom, but weren’t you supposed to get here a while ago?”

“Oh shit.” Bea accidentally said aloud”

“What is it?” Poppy said suddenly looking at her phone to see what she was looking at.

“I forgot to tell Zoey I was going out.”

“You forgot?!” Bea felt so stupid, as she went on her Uber app.

“I’ll get us both an Uber and I’ll walk you to your floor so you’ll be safe okay?”

Poppy sighed dejectedly. “Okay.”

“You do know you could keep your lips on mine in the Uber, right?”

Poppy smiled at her.

“I’ll keep that in mind.”

________________________________________________________

okay I just wanted to say 😳😳

i have another Poppy x MC WIP but as soon as i read chapter 4 of Queen B I just h a d to write this

because first of all, it was intended to be a one-shot but a couple of people asked and I had no idea how to start it but chapter 4 gave me life so here we are

thanks for reading 🥰

Tagging (Message if you want to be added or removed please!!)

Thank you for reading! Tagging: @lolimugly @origmansello @everythingchoices @lonewolf751 @lavenderrtown @save-me-the-last-dance @priestess-of-light @otakufangirl-12 @vampiregirlsblog @princessstellaris @somewillwin @grapecaseschoices @mvalentine @greatestflirt-hero @sugarplumpnhoneybun @ognenniyvolk @coldbatfriendroad @that-one-choices-person @drethanramslay @queensayeed @kawaiibanditmoneytaco @rotten-teddy-bear @aguywiththreepairsofglasses @elijahmessenger @ritafarrr @erza-elcy-crimson @poshbiscuit @generaldameronss @adrianadmirer @everythingchoices @imturasgirl @noesapphic

(psa if you weren’t tagged but you wanted to be please message, i have bad WiFi so I might not see some people asking until later on)

#playchoices #Queen B #poppy min sinclair #poppy x mc

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sepublic · 4 years ago

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Halloween Special: The Shut-In!

So, this episode is SUPPOSED to be canon, I believe? Or the idea is that within the episode itself, the events take place after the Plantars return to Wartwood, but otherwise it isn’t canon? I’m not sure, I’ll have to go check. Either way…

This was a REALLY fun, and surprisingly freaky episode, especially towards the end! I love the darker, pragmatic take on Halloween for Amphibia, and how the holiday is interpreted in this world as more of a doomsday preparation sort of thing, this show’s worldbuilding is always so fun. Let me tell you, I lost my mind when I saw human Sprig, Polly, Maddie, and Toadie! Is the implication that Toadie is actually, like, around the kids’ ages this entire time? That makes people shipping him and Mayor Toadstool, uh… VERY, er… But at the same time, I can see why everyone thought he was an adult- So an honest mistake and thus no harm done! And come to think of it, Polly seems to be about the same age as Sprig here. So, the ages may not necessarily match… But then come to think of it, it IS weird that the writers/animators chose to give Toadie a humansona, and not say, Ivy! Actually, Toadie is rather minor and feels oddly specific considering who else was excluded, so I have to wonder if there was some particular reason for this, of if the writers just felt like it?

Anyhow, the humanized versions of our frog friends are adorable, Sprig and Polly are gingers, no surprise there, and the bucket over Polly’s foot is so cute! I love how Anne didn’t even TRY to change who she was, she legit just tied up her hair and that’s it. Her story was a fun premise, and I expected the video to actually be a jumpscare that pulls in its victims at the last moment. And I mean, sort of? It definitely takes a while for that Video Cat demon thing to arrive… But I loved Anne in this bit, how she’s so smug and proud of herself and really doesn’t want to care what others say about her skills, you go girl! You go write dialogue! And I just realized, but this is possibly the closest look we have to Anne’s actual home and bedroom, assuming things haven’t been changed up all that much in the ‘bootleg’ translation… So F-Annes, analyze!

That Video Cat being unable to take criticism and literally dying to it is a mood. Also, either its eggs ARE boba, and/or they just taste like it… Either way, keep in mind that Molly legit took a huge bite out of one. Then again, more feral things have happened in Amphibia and ESPECIALLY with Polly, so I guess I’m not too shocked- Look at Anne, she wanted to eat that monster crab that almost killed Sylvia way back when! Are those cats invincible because they’re bound to no videos, or are they subject to regular criticism in general… Can they also be physically killed as well?

WHY am I even asking, when we know this isn’t canon whatsoever and is never going to come up again!? Anne insists that this happened to her phone specifically, so I guess the gag is that the phone had a previous owner named Anna, etc…. Still, while it’s funny how Anne just gets away with completely making up a story, I do have to wonder if it’s like. Allegorical to a real-life experience. Probably not, given the presence of humanized Sprig, Polly, Maddie, and Toadie… Unless Anne is recounting something that happened in Amphibia, but then Sprig and Polly would’ve recognized what Anne is alluding to, given how they remembered those other past adventures (which was a hilarious gag that I felt nostalgic to recognize). I’m probably just overthinking it.

Then, we’ve got Hop Pop’s story! He had LUSCIOUS locks, and he met the Grim Reaper- Again, allegedly. Not gonna lie I assumed that dude was Frog Lucifer or something, but this is kind of better? Either way that was pretty dark, and I love the implication that the Grim Reaper legit went out of his way to steal some rando’s hair. Poor Hop Pop, he never got his hair back! Are we going to call this canon? Does this confirm the presence of a Frog Grim Reaper?

(Side-note, I feel bad for Wally! Imagine being born on a day where everyone has to be holed up lest they turn into Were-Amphibians! That must’ve been quite the scandal for the Ribbiton family, I have to wonder if this influenced his decision to go out and live his own life with how lonely Wally was…)

Then we have Sprig’s story! I’m so happy to see Ivy again, I never realized how much I missed her and her adorable design, and her hair is so cute! Kind of reminds me of Anne with how wild it is, I want to see a one-shot of Anne bonding with Ivy over their messy hair now. I really appreciate that gag of Sprig realizing what Ivy’s about to say, about how everyone has knitting needles, and Ivy breaking down that door without remorse. This story was my favorite, not just for the comedy, but also…

DANG, that was legitimately terrifying?!When I saw those slimy frog skins, knowing those were actual people, with Hop Pop even suggesting one of them could’ve been Gary… and YIKES, what happens to the flayed bodies?!? Legit I freaked out when I saw the Seamstress, this was straight-up Leather Face, the show wasn’t even trying to be subtleor dodge around it, those were actual people skins! This was some Wartwood Chainsaw Massacre…! Seeing all of those hanging skins and faces gave me the heebie-jeebies, I didn’t expect the show to go THIS far, and while I’m impressed and glad it managed to freak me out, still! That build up to the reveal of Ivy literally ripping off that ‘face’, us seeing a glimpse of the Seamstress before her skins fall off, and it looks like she lacks any skin entirely, and that’s why she wears others’!

Only, she DOES have skin, it’s just clear- Fun fact, I watched this with my brother and he immediately recognized the Seamstress as a Glass Frog, by name, before Sprig did! I think it was a neat gag how for Sprig, he immediately calms down because for Amphibians, Glass Frogs are a somewhat normal and non-supernatural facet of life, relatively speaking. For us humans, well, it reminds me of this one myth about a woman whose head can rise from her body, unveiling her organs…

I THOUGHT the episode was going to go the sweet route, even as I joked that the Seamstress still, y’know, KILLED people. And like Apothecary Gary, the show remembered this and we legit had the Seamstress burn to death in a classic horror movie finale, and I yelled when she made one last stand to grab Ivy by the leg and bite her! I get that there’s meant to be an allegory between Ivy not appreciating her own hair, and the Seamstress not appreciating her own skin, body positivity and all that- But mostly I was too freaked out to appreciate it. Ivy waddling around blindly in present-time was adorable, though.

And, Polly! I LOVE the sort of lesson, the realization that her being gone was scarier than ANY story they’d heard that night (probably because this was real, at least I assume the other stories were fake but regardless). We get our twist of Polly turning into a Were-Tadpole, and then anticlimactically reacting while the others lose their minds as noises of ruckus are heard, implying that Polly immediately went feral afterwards, or the others just made a mess as they freaked out! Also, love the twist on the ending credits, that’s delightfully morbid…

All in all, this was a great episode! Surprisingly scary, and definitely hilarious- It’s a much-needed break from this Amphibia hiatus, especially now that I’m also dealing with the hiatus for The Owl House and Infinity Train (the latter of whom may be permanent PLEASE watch the show on HBO Max), and Kipo’s ending. I do have Carmen Sandiego’s third season to watch, though. I wonder if there’s any speculation to be gleaned from the Blue Moon turning people into monsters, and how that can connect to Blue Energy for the Calamity Box relating to the virtue of Heart. Does the Blue Moon turn people into a monstrous form that reflects the darker sides/fears of their heart? I’m probably overthinking it. Either way, I’m really glad we got a classic Holiday Episode for this show- I always love those, ESPECIALLY Halloween ones!

#amphibia #halloween #amphibia anne #anne boonchuy #amphibia hop pop #hopediah plantar #amphibia sprig #sprig plantar #amphibia polly #polly plantar #amphibia ivy

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princess-of-the-corner · 4 years ago

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Fate Liveblog episode 1! Let's watch this trainwreck!

Seeing "in association with Rainbow" over this dark ass opening is sending me.

Feckin sheep. Ah fun. Mutilated sheep body. Insert Silence of the Lambs joke here.

Oh we just jump to bootleg Hogwarts right after the sheep.

Okay I'm 99% sure knife boy is Riven.

Wtf who is British McBitch? Please tell me that's not Sky.

Mansplain??? That's not... That's not mansplaining. He's saying "you look lost as fuck so if you need help ask me".

Wait is Riven British too wtf? Also boy from what I've heard you have no right to call anyone out on "perving on the forst years". Though Riven and the guy I'm assuming is Sky already have more chemistry in ten seconds than Sky and Bloom did in three minutes.

Oh god everyone's British.

Ah. Stella's a bitch now. Seriously add some more passion and her condecending remarks could fit with the original Trix. At least they kept her having a magic ring?

"We've had wings in the past but as we evolved our effects budget has been lost".

Okay. I know WoW had a Peter Pan based story, so Fate acknowledgign Tinkerbell shouldn't throw me off guard but still.

Also I can already tell they're trying to Avatar this by seperatinf the Elements instrad of just. People have Magic affiliations of all kinds.

I know the original Faragonda was already kinda bootleg Dumbledore but bootleg Faragonda is looping back into that so hard.

"Lady of the flies sweetie don't be sexist!". Honestly the corection is more sexist. Women can be lords if they want to fuck you.

Well Aisha is helpful and so far the best character but god the bar is low and I don't expect more.

"There's a fairy in my family tree. Like a long dormant magical bloodline". Or you know. You're adopted.

Wait. The "Otherworld" has Harry Potter?

Ah there's the "flora is my cousin" thing. Kinda hate how I'm identifying with Terra as the fat girl who is awkwardly rambling.

Okay Musa is also kind of s bitch. Like girl just tell Terra "hey I'm not up to talking rn".

Okay. I know they're talking about doing it with girls but goddamn do these two have some homoerotic tension. Or maybe it's just the swordfighting.

Ah yes. Riven gets high. Great.

Oh. Exposition while Riven goes off to get high. This won't end well. Wait. The Otherworld has shotguns? The teacher mentions a shotgun. Also "Burned Ones" sound like a fancy name for zombies.

Riven how did you not notice that body when you sat down. Do you have no peripheral vision??

"Let's get this cleaned before the gossip starts". Cuts immediatly to the gossip.

Aisha's bingo decapitation joke was funny. But will we learn something other than how she likes to swim?

Beatrix is dropping in all the swears. She's also giving vreepy stalker vibes.

Okay. Flashback to Bloom fighting with her mom. And you know what? For all the "I'm not like other girls" vibes, I kinda get it if your mom is calling you a weird loner to your face.

God mansplaining again. No.

Oh. Okay. The Stella and Sky thing is giving me heavy cheating and abuse vibes. Yikes.

Has Bloom... Not heard the rumors about the mutilated dead body outside the barrier? Because if so she's dumb af.

Oh. She's dumb af anyway for going to the middle of a forest to test out fire powers instead of waiting for class tomorrow where she'll have an actual teavh in case, oh I don't know, something goes wrong?

Oh hey guess what happened. Luckily your new friend is a water fairy. And she calls her out on that dumb idea!

Flashback again. Why is her mom such a bitch oh my god? Damn she kinda deserves to be punched. Maybe not set on fire but decked for real.

Oh Aisha's asking if she's adopted.

Oh no they're doing a changling plot? Really? Fuck.

Secret tunnel! Not sketch at all!

Okay Riven's being a little agressive in the flirting but honestly dude seems a little into it. Terra's kind of butting in so he's kinda right in being like "hey fuck iff" but the fat joke is a little uncalled for.

Terra fuckint snapped. Not sure he deserved to be stramgled just yet. Also the "don't be a dick to fat people" thing is a little hamfisted.

Ah. Stella's getting the "my mom is a bitch who puts expectations on me so I'm also a bitch" thing ain't she?

Ugh. Mind fairy. Why.

"i remember what happened to the last person who was talking to Sky". Dude. Did Stella kill someone? Considering what she did sending Bloom out there she might've holy shit.

Wow. They're trying to make Bloom's parents sound decent after the whole. "Weird loner" and stealijg her door thing. Wtf.

"I always knew your path wouldn't be like everyone elses". Is that why you punished her for not being head cheerleader or whatever?also can't they see her in the shadows outside the house?

This abandoned warehouse has elevtricity?

Oops. Lost the ring. Luckily everyone showed up right then.

Oh. Stella and Sky are going to be the "on again pff again but should really stay off" couple. Ugh.

"I can't sleep in a room where everyone hates me". Well maybe don't try to get a girl killed because your ex dares to talk to her.

"You're better than you think you are Stella". Are you sure about that?

Snorting the midnight adderall???

Terra's trying. Like. I still hate thst she's replacing Flora but I kinda relate man.

I like how they're having the emotional speech about the headmistress wanting to protevt her students while Dane is going through Riven's instagram and accidently liking hot pics. Also fucking "crymeariven".

Ah. Mysterious hooded fucker in the woods. Is it Beatrix? Yep. Why the fuck.

Okay that's episode one done. Took fucking forever.

I think my feelings so far is what I expected:

As an adaptation, it sucks. The characters are nothing like their original versions. The aesthetic is completely gone. So on and so forth.

But treating it as its own thing.... It's still a bit of a hot mess but the kind of hot mess I'd be all guilty pleasure about.

They seriously should've just made this it's own thing. Give the characters new names and you wouldn't be able to tell it was related to Winx Club.

#fate liveblog #winx club

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glutko · 5 years ago

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FNaF Bootleg Merch VII: Come Back to Me(xico)

View the previous six parts here.

After a year of inactivity, this series has returned. eBay has finally listed enough bootleg FNaF toys for me to do a new, extra-long entry. And let me tell you, they’re particularly rancid this time. I wasn’t trying to aim for that, but here we are.

In addition, there may or may not be non-FNaF figures that are only here because they popped up when I searched FNaF on eBay. So look forward to those!

So, without any further delays, let us dive into this rabbit hole once again...

Where do we begin? I know! Let’s talk about the current line of Mexican FNaF bootlegs known as “Five Nights at Freddy Twisted The Twisted Ones”. Why is the name so weird? Well, that’s because it comes from the official label, as seen below:

First off, what the hell is up with the Funtime Freddy/Bonnie figures? They’re Funtime, obviously, but also Nightmares? Or Twisted, due to how bad the figures look? And why are they holding puppets of themselves? Bonnie in particular looks like he tore off Bon-Bon and is holding it in the air like a display of victory.

Nightmare Funtime Foxy’s paint scheme is so bad that I thought his chest cavity was smashed open and his guts were falling out. Only Ennard looks presentable. Good lord. But it doesn’t stop there, friends: there are two more bags in this series. Let’s get some Twisted animatronics up in here!

...On second thought, maybe not.

From left to right, we’ve got a confused Twisted Foxy with a broken jaw that’s made out of scabs, Stealth Mode Twisted Wolf that wears an ill-fitting tie whilst reciting Hamlet, an easily-impressed Twisted Bonnie who’s trying to copy Wolf, and a Phantom Twisted Freddy who looks absolutely putrid, and not in the way that Scott Cawthon intended. Looks like he was made out of a rotting avocado. Disgusting.

We’re not done yet, though. Let’s take a look at the third and final bag in the Twisted series. And it’s a beauty.

Where do we even begin? The Twisted Puppet with an orange squeezer in its chest that’s clearly a ripped-off fan design? The mutant Springtrap that looks like a cross of Scraptrap and that Salvage fandesign? The 12 oz. Mouse reject Stanley made out of sacks? Or the Twisted Nightmare Chica with peeling paint and a torn bib that says “LETS”? Here’s the answer - none of these, as I don’t want to look at this image anymore.

Here’s a bag of translucent Bendy and the Ink Machine figures that popped up because I searched FNaF on eBay. Yep. Don’t give them to a child, they’ll eat it and die from toxic paint or something.

I know I showed these filthy figures in a previous part, but man, seeing them in a proper display and under normal lighting is so fucked up. Look at Chica, man! That shit is utterly horrifying, and I know it’ll kill me in my dreams tonight. The Bonnie and Puppet aren’t much better, either. Also, why does Foxy have huge shoulder pads? Are they trying to make him look like that buff anime version of him and failing miserably?

Hey... you ever heard the term “half-assed”? Where someone does a lackluster job at something?

This isn’t even quarter-assing it. Did the person who make this have a vague description of Ballora to go off of? “Yeah, there’s this robot girl who looks like a half-naked ballerina. Her face splits into four halves. Also, she wears all-pink, except for her tutu, which is purple and looks like it’s made out of one of those paper ruffs you’d find in a birthday decoration. Get to work.”

Ugh. I need something to take the taste of crap Ballora out of my mouth. I know! Let’s go visit our lovely Rockstar animatronics! I bet they’re doing well this time of year!

Hm. I made fun of figures similar to these in the last part... but these are lower in quality, implying that the bootleggers are ripping off bootleg toys again. That’s right - it’s another case of bootleg Inception!

Speaking of, here are the original figures for you to compare them to, because I am too lazy to come up with my own content. Or maybe these are the bootlegs, I don’t really know.

I will say this, though - Scrap Baby looks absolutely terrible. On both of them. The face rivals paper Ballora in terms of sheer crapness.

Yaoi Hands Toy Bonnie. Yes. I have no idea what fan design this figure is supposed to be ripping off. I don’t think any FNaF character has a design quite like this. Is this a repaint over an existing non-FNaF figure? Please let me know.

Edit: It’s a figure of Drawkill Toy Bonnie. Huh.

Let’s take a small break from these crap FNaF figures and look at a set that was recommended to me by eBay. Y’all ever heard of Miraculous Ladybug?

The bootleggers have, and dear GOD what the hell is wrong with their EYES. They are wired, man! They’ve taken some bad drugs, and now they’re suffering and paying the price. Also, what’s up with those short chibi things? Are they supposed to be that big and freakish?

Can we please stop looking at this image?

Ah, yes, there we go! For our final bootleg set, we have these... figures of the plushies? I don’t really know.

Why are there two Mangles, one of which appears to be absolutely plastered with blood? What’s wrong with Toy Bonnie’s face - did he have some of the drugs as well? Why does the Puppet look like it’s fallen into a vat of paint stripper? Why does Foxy look like he’s got a vest made of turkey on, as well as fake fingernails for ears? Why are there two Freddys? Why is one of them hiding behind Foxy? Is he shy?

Is... is that Loss on Chica’s bib?

And that’s all I have for now. I must say, I do hope that the bootleggers find out about Help Wanted and Security Breach. Then we’ll have quality Vanny, Glitchtrap, and Glamrock figures to point and laugh at.

#not corruption #five nights at freddy's #fnaf #long post #bootleg

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aion-rsa · 4 years ago

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Marvel’s WandaVision Episode 8: MCU Easter Eggs and Reference Guide

https://ift.tt/eA8V8J

This article contains WandaVision episode 8 spoilers and potential spoilers for the wider MCU.

“You didn’t think you were the only magical girl in town, did you?”

Agatha Harkness makes good on that line from last week’s episode in WandaVision episode 8, which functions as a trip through Wanda Maximoff’s entire MCU history. Not only does it reveal previously hidden (and crucially necessary) depths to her character and her relationship with Vision, but it successfully adds new elements to her established origin story. These new wrinkles pull from Wanda’s entire Marvel history, and have massive implications for magic users and even mutants in the MCU going forward.

Here’s what we found…

Sitcom Influences

Among the bootleg DVDs Wanda’s father is selling we can see Bewitched, Malcolm in the Middle, I Love Lucy, Who’s the Boss?, I Dream of Jeannie, and The Addams Family, all of which have been major touchstones for WandaVision throughout its run. But Wanda’s favorite? That would be The Dick Van Dyke Show.

The Dick Van Dyke Show episode that the Maximoffs watch is season 2 episode 21 “It May Look Like A Walnut”, or as Wanda’s dad calls it “the walnut episode!” This installment finds Rob Petrie (Van Dyke) staying up late to watch a spooky sci-fi movie on TV, while his wife Laura (Mary Tyler Moore) tries to ignore it because it freaks her out. In the movie, aliens from the planet Twilo come to Earth in disguise to slow down humanity’s development by feeding us walnuts that contain the chemical element “absorbitron.” The walnuts take away our creativity and our thumbs – the two things that get us into outer space to challenge their Twiloian supremacy. The next day, walnuts seem to be the only food that Rob can find. He comes to believe that Laura is either playing a trick on him, or that the Twiloites have really invaded.

Why would WandaVision go out of its way to mention this episode in particular? Well, Wanda can certainly empathize with a protagonist who comes to believe his world is fabricated. And Marvel Phase 4 does seem destined to spend quite a bit more time in space.

The scene of Malcolm in the Middle that Vision watches but doesn’t quite understand has Hal build a deck, only for it to collapse on him. In the third WandaVision episode intro, Vision builds a swingset, only for it to suddenly collapse in front of him.

Wanda’s father sold DVDs as a trade and even had a Malcolm in the Middle box set in there. That’s pretty damn impressive, since he was killed by that bomb in 1999 and the show didn’t start airing until early 2000. That’s some Spaceballs VHS technology right there!

While at the HYDRA facility, Wanda watches The Brady Bunch. The episode appears to be season 1’s “Kitty Karry-All Is Missing.” When Cindy Brady’s beloved Kitty Karry-All goes missing, she thinks her brother Bobby stole her. The Bradys have a trial and everything! But it turns out the Bradys’ dog Tiger actually took Kitty Karry-All. Perhaps that’s why Agatha needed Sparky out of the way – dogs are unpredictable.

Wanda’s assurance that “He’s not really injured. It’s not that kind of show” is as much a commentary on superhero storytelling in both comics and in movies as it is about sitcoms.

Agatha Harkness

Kicking things off with an Agatha Harkness origin story is an inspired move…

Placing Agatha’s origin in witch-trial era Salem in 1693 ends up being a little piece of misdirection. She’s not on trial for being a witch, but rather by her own coven for seeking too much power.

We get a sense of Agatha’s family here, with Agatha’s mother leading the coven against her while Agatha is still just a young witch. This doesn’t match her comics origin, where she was already centuries old by the time the Salem Witch Trials rolled around – she is old enough to remember Atlantis being above water. In the comics, she was a leader of the Salem community when the trials began.

Agatha’s mother’s name is Evanora Harkness. She doesn’t appear to have a counterpart in the comics.

The Latin chant that the witches are repeating appears to be “mors monstru naturale” which would translate to “natural death is a monster,” which…given Agatha’s seemingly immortal nature, tracks pretty well.

The magical “crown” of energy that appears on Agatha’s mother’s head very faintly resembles the headgear that Wanda wears in the comics as the Scarlet Witch. Granted, it’s blue here.

Agatha’s use of “purple energy” may be the most damning sign of her intentions yet. In comics, purple is often coded as the color of villains.

We also learn the origin of the brooch Agatha has been wearing all through this series, with Agatha having taken it off her mother’s corpse.

In the final scene with Agatha and the twins, she floats above them and holds them at will like marionettes. This is probably a reference to Master Pandemonium, whose reveal made the children look like hand puppets…except they were his actual hands.

Because comics!

Let’s dig into some of the spells Agatha says…is one of them “crystallum possession”. I also definitely heard an Imperio something in there, which calls to mind the Imperius curse from TERF High Harry Potter. The Imperius curse allowed the witch or wizard to control the victim’s body like a puppet.

The Scarlet Witch

Hoo-boy, we get a LOT of Wanda’s comics lore introduced in this episode…

This episode makes it pretty clear that Wanda was born with her abilities and that Strucker’s experiments merely amplified them. Should we officially welcome mutants to the MCU? If her powers were latent, then perhaps so were Pietro’s. The fact that Strucker’s experiments killed all the subjects except for Wanda and Pietro could be seen as further evidence of their mutant heritage.

We get some very different explanations of Wanda’s magical powers than we’ve had in the past, all via Agatha, and all of them referencing various ways Wanda’s powers have been explained in the comics in the past.

Why didn’t that Stark Industries bomb explode and kill Wanda and Pietro? She may have unknowingly cast a “probability hex” on it. For many years Wanda’s “magical” powers were explained as a mutant ability to alter the probability of outcomes, no matter how unlikely.

Later, it was revealed that she was a master of “chaos magic,” another term introduced here. Furthermore, now it seems that being able to wield chaos magic gives Wanda a specific magical title, that of “Scarlet Witch.” We…do not have to tell you where that comes from.

The vision (sorry) that the Mind Stone gives Wanda would appear to be one of her future, fully Scarlet Witch-ified self. This particular costume, which evokes a long jacket and crown, is very similar to the one she’s worn in the most recent Marvel Comics.

When Agatha finally discovers that Wanda is the Scarlet Witch, she says that the Scarlet Witch was supposed to be “a myth.” Big Buffy the Vampire Slayer vibes in this exchange! Buffy often faced off against foes who once thought she was just a fairytale created to spook demons and nothing more.

Agatha’s “That accent really comes and goes, doesn’t it?” is a terrific joke at the MCU’s expense. As well as her “so many costumes and hairstyles” also feels like a nod to Wanda’s changing looks in the comics just as much as it is about the chameleon-like nature of the WandaVision universe.

Vision

The scene of Wanda coming across the disassembled remnants of Vision’s body in the SWORD lab is taken from West Coast Avengers #43 into #44. Instead of dying heroically, Vision was taken out of commission by the world’s governments for trying to take over all of the world’s computers. He was reduced to nothing but metal and circuitry in order for writer John Byrne to drive home Vision’s lack of human biology.

That disturbing scene of Vision being “dissected” with his body stretched out across multiple tables is a direct nod to a panel from those comics.

It also reminds us a little of how Thanos had Nebula pulled apart in Avengers: Endgame. At least Vision is offline!

Vision was then resurrected in the white form that we see here in the mid-credits scene, and brought back without his emotions or any connection to his past life as Wanda’s husband or Billy and Tommy’s father. This was one of the catalysts for Byrne sending Wanda into her Dark Scarlet Witch phase that abruptly ended when Byrne stormed off of West Coast Avengers for the cardinal sin of “being edited.” For more on this, type “Why did John Byrne” into Google and let autocomplete take you on a fun ride.

We’ll have more on White Vision in just a moment.

The Stark Bomb

The toaster commercial from the first episode was always supposed to be a reference to the Stark Industries bomb that tore apart the Maximoff household. That commercial also had the blinking red light of the toaster show up despite everything else being in black and white. We now see that the bomb itself had a very similar blinking red light and sound.

The popular running theory was that the commercials tracked to the different stones, and while that may still be applicable, do they also/instead track to Wanda’s memories or key parts of her life?

We saw the toaster match up with the blinking light on the bomb.

We know the watch had the Hydra face on it. Could this match if future Wanda floating in through the stone was actually a paradox and not just a vision?

The paper towel commercial mentioned Lagos too prominently to not pair with that moment of trauma.

Does the fruit snack commercial match up with her conversation with Vision in the Avengers compound?

The anti-depressant commercial does track fairly well with Wanda’s visit to SWORD.

It feels like the only one that doesn’t have an obvious pair is the tesseract bubble bath. Give us a shout in the comments if you can figure out what that matches to.

Westview

When Wanda drives through Westview for the first time, she passes by the normal versions of Herb (John Collins), Mrs. Hart (Sharon Davis), and Phil (Harold Proctor). Notably, Harold is putting up an ad for piano lessons when in the second episode, playing the piano was his talent. It’s also when Wanda magically turned his grandmother’s piano into an illusion.

As Wanda transforms Westview, we see a billboard for “Super” paper towels become “Lagos” brand paper towels (ala the commercial from earlier this season), which “makes cleanup a snap!”

When the Coronet theater marquee transforms, it’s showing two Walt Disney Productions films of the appropriate WandaVision episode 1 era, Kidnapped and Big Red. But before that it’s showing Tannhauser Gate. Roy Batty, call your agent, please.

Fake Pietro

It’s revealed that “Pietro Maximoff” was indeed a complete fake. A “Fietro” as Agatha calls him. He became her “eyes and ears” and she refers to his manifestation as “a crystalline possession.” We sense there will be more revealed about this in the finale, as Evan Peters has been M.I.A. since his appearance in last week’s post-credits scene.

The Post-Credits Scene and White Vision

In West Coast Avengers #45, Vision’s personality was wiped completely, so by the time he was reassembled, he appeared as “White Vision”. He completely lacked emotion and didn’t even understand why Wanda was hugging him upon entering the room. This became the status quo version of Vision for a while until his old personality, look, and feelings for Wanda were eventually brought back. But hey, this version got to be a playable character in the 1991 arcade hit Captain America and the Avengers!

cnx.cmd.push(function() { cnx({ playerId: "106e33c0-3911-473c-b599-b1426db57530", }).render("0270c398a82f44f49c23c16122516796"); });

What are the chances that White Vision will have James Spader’s voice?

We wrote more about that post-credits scene here.

Spot anything we missed? Let us know in the comments!

The post Marvel’s WandaVision Episode 8: MCU Easter Eggs and Reference Guide appeared first on Den of Geek.

from Den of Geek https://ift.tt/2Pb5kUp

#aion-rsa #Den of Geek

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nepalsaysrawr · 5 years ago

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More Childhood Flash Game Shenanigans: Part 1

Note: the picture with enoby was just the first one. here’s the rest. oh btw, they’re much more better than the shitty bootlegs we have nowadays. and if you happened to play these games, please acknowledge me.

first of all we have the myscene room maker -- er -- makeover. i used to fantasize about having rooms like the ones made in this game, since i grew up watching the cartoons :P

you can design bedrooms or party rooms. if you design bedrooms in this game, you’ll get a surprise waiting for you, with a girl holding it up for you

then you have the barbie superstar makeovers maker. it also comes with a printable zine and cover after playing and a lot of color choices you can tweak and play with

then you have one of the classic girl-oriented nail painting games, much more better than our modern foot doctor games, cause painting ladies’ nails had never been this kickass, till the bootlegs came. like the barbie makeover game, it came with printable nails

we also have a bratz-themed MASH game, a popular slumber party game that they all used to play. i filled mine with the names of the marx brothers in this. nowadays it’s just netflix and chill.

before tangled was even a thing, i used to play this barbie as rapunzel game and similar games like this. they were cool to me. btw this version is a bit more faithful to the original story though

the myscene shopping spree dress up game is simple: pick a theme, pick two girls, dress them up, then done! there are two versions of it here

And lastly, we have the snip ‘n style salon, where you could make your own custom cuts and dos for barbie long before the days of toca hair salon!

Honorable mention: I didn’t play this game as a kid (dunno), but I’m giving it an honorable mention for now! this little game’s name is called My Scene Fashion Passion, where you can create your own girl! it’s a got a few choices but it’s fun ^_^

See you on part 2!

another note: speaking of the buster keaton dress up game, i’ll work on it soon, don’t worry. BTW the FLASHAPOCALYPSE IS UPON US THIS YEAR WE’RE DOOMED SOMEONE PUT THEM UP FOR DOWNLOAD QUICK!!!!!1111

#throwback #nostalgia #old stuff #myscene #barbie #my scene #bratz #childhood games #dress up game #flash games

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rpgmgames · 5 years ago

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September’s Featured Game: Turovero: The Celestial Tower

DEVELOPER(S): Queenie ENGINE: RPG Maker VX Ace GENRE: RPG, Adventure, Psychological, Dark Fantasy WARNINGS: Violence, Light Horror Elements, Sensitive Themes SUMMARY: Turovero: The Celestial Tower is a freeware, dark fantasy role-playing game created with RPG Maker VX Ace. Players take on the role of four young adventurers - Sigurd, a brave and kind-hearted knight, Leilia, a gentle and motherly cleric, Edric, a gifted yet sharp-tongued mage, and Ruby, a cheeky, fun-loving thief - who have no recollection of their lives prior to meeting one another. Determined to free their world from the influence of an ancient evil, the Dark One, the group sets forth on their most perilous journey yet as they climb the mysterious divine tower, Turovero. However, as the heroes ascend the Celestial Tower, they begin to realize that not everything is as it seems. Just what is the Dark One that plagues their world so, and what truly happened to the Four Gods of legend? The answers to these questions lie in wait for them at the top of the tower… but do they truly want to discover them?

Play the game here! Our Interview With The Dev Team Below The Cut!

Introduce yourself! I'm Queenie and this is my second game that I've developed, written, and composed for (my first game was Prom Dreams: A High School Love Story, a horror / dating sim game available whever you can download Turovero from). I've been making games in earnest for about 4 years now, but I did use to muck around in the old bootleg version of RPG Maker 2000 when I was a kid I guess. Because one of the main complaints about my first game was the artwork, and because I, er, can't draw very well, I also enlisted the help of @genkaiko, @caffeineandcarpaltunnel, @pleasedrawmore, and @meakersneakers to draw the character artwork, title and ending artwork, enemy artwork, and cutscene artwork respectively. Check them out too if you've got the chance!

What is your project about? What inspired you to create this game initially? *Queenie: I've always enjoyed horror games and games that started out normal / cute / cliched but slowly turned into something darker as they went on. I also really love RPGs and adventure games. So, naturally, I figured I'd combine the two at some point, and thus the initial concept for Turovero was born!

How long have you been working on your project? *Queenie: Total development time was around 2.5 years.

Did any other games or media influence aspects of your project? *Queenie: Considering every games I've made so far is essentially cobbling together various ideas from games and anime I love, you bet your ass it did LOL. Gameplay involves a mix of classic Final Fantasy-esque battles and Zelda-style field puzzles, whereas the story and atmosphere takes inspiration from other RPG Horror games and anime such as Madoka Magica and Higurashi. Essentially, dark psychological drama wrapped up in a nice little JRPG shell. Or something like that.

Have you come across any challenges during development? How have you overcome or worked around them? *Queenie: Besides my complete and utter lack of art skills (which I thankfully had my team to help me with!), I also really struggled with the field skills due to RPG Maker's admittedly shoddy collision detection. I was eventually able to make the mechanic work around 90% of the time (and if it doesn't, protip: push up against the object before activating the field skill), so it's thankfully playable, but it sure was a pain to work with :T

Have any aspects of your project changed over time? How does your current project differ from your initial concept? *Queenie: I actually try to fully create a solid outline of my games and then stick to it, for the most part, so that I don't lose track during development. So, to be honest, not a whole lot changed besides some minor details, such as names, battle skills, and combat balance adjustments. Although, I did originally envision the theme and look of the final "dungeon" a bit differently (which I obviously won't go into details about), and only went with the current design because I couldn't get the sprites to cooperate with me and I was like "well, eh, this is the next best thing I guess". :P

What was your team like at the beginning? How did people join the team? If you don’t have a team, do you wish you had one or do you prefer working alone? *Queenie: I did about 80% of the game myself, but I did have an interview/portfolio submission process for artists. I knew many of them previously, and the title artist I'd already had a working relationship and internet friendship with, so that made things easier as well. It also helped that I could share my ideas (and memes. lots of memes.) during the development process so I didn't have to keep the game 100% secret, haha.

What is the best part of developing a game? *Queenie: The music!! I freakin' love composing okay. I also love writing emotional or comedic scenes, then see other people's reactions to them as they play. Speaking of which, my jar of Player Tears seems to be running a little empty lately... :3c

Do you find yourself playing other RPG Maker games to see what you can do with the engine, or do you prefer to do your own thing? *Queenie: I usually just go with the kind of gameplay my story needs and that my developer's skills will allow; sometimes I see another game and go "oh, that's possible?", and might keep that knowledge in handy, but I don't actively seek out gameplay inspiration or anything.

Which character in your game do you relate to the most and why? (Alternatively: Who is your favorite character and why?) *Queenie: My boy Edric and his grumpy yet adorable tsundere ways LOL. I have a thing for characters with love problems okay ;;

Looking back now, is there anything that regret/wish you had done differently? *Queenie: I do kind of wish the game had a way to do something like unison attacks from the Tales series, since it'd be thematically consistent with the game's ideas of friendship and unity, but at the time I wasn't willing to fudge around with the battle engine too much, so I shelved the idea.

Do you plan to explore the game’s universe and characters further in subsequent projects, or leave it as-is? *Queenie: I have ideas for some prequel stories (in an e-book or even a visual novel format) that expand upon the characters and world a bit, but I'm waiting to gauge interest in them.

What do you most look forward to upon/after the release of a project? *Queenie: Player reactions and Let's Plays, definitely. I feed off of player reactions. I crave them like a zombie craves brains. If you play my games please tell me how much you suffered - er, enjoyed it, it really makes my day!

Is there something you’re afraid of concerning the development or the release of your game? *Queenie: Honestly, only that it'd attract the wrong kind of fan - you know, the ones who harass people over fictional characters and over a work not being 100% to their particular standards. Thankfully that hasn't seemed to happen yet, and most people who've played my games are super chill and awesome.

Do you have any advice for upcoming devs? *Queenie: Use outlines and try not to shovel features into your game just because you can! Figure out what kind of game you want and then focus your energy on making it the best version of that image that you can. Sure, my games may not take advantage of everything RPG Maker can do, but I don't think they need to - I only needs the elements that will help me tell my story the way I want to.

Question from last month's featured dev @Teal Crown: If you're working on a team, how do you manage to keep organized? (Otherwise: If you could meet your favourite dev, the one that inspires you the most, what would you ask them?) *Queenie: My artists and I kept up via Tumblr messenger and Discord mostly. I also made a beta testing server when the game reached the testing phase, which was very helpful and also loads of fun. :)

We mods would like to thank Queenie for agreeing to our interview! We believe that featuring the developer and their creative process is just as important as featuring the final product. Hopefully this Q&A segment has been an entertaining and insightful experience for everyone involved!

Remember to check out Turovero: The Celestial Tower if you haven’t already! See you next month!

- Mods Gold & Platinum

#turovero: the celestial tower #turovero #game of the month #gotm #rpgmaker #rpg maker #rpgmaker games #indie games #rpg games #gotm september #september #gotm 2019 #2019

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letterboxd · 5 years ago

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Locked In.

The director of new documentary Spaceship Earth on snark, queer cinema, the survival of our species, and the ten films he’d take into a biosphere.

In 1991, eight people entered a vivarium to conduct a two-year experiment on whether humans could become fully self-sufficient inside a closed system on this—or any other—planet. Calling themselves the Synergists, the small collective, led by a charismatic chap named John Allen, had backgrounds in theater, art, science and business, and they became media superstars for a short period of time.

With much of the world sheltering in place in cramped apartments, many of us can only dream of being locked-down inside a human-scale terrarium complete with lush gardens, creative friends and a cook as inventive as Biospherian Sally Silverstone. Biosphere 2, which still stands on a ranch in Arizona, looks really inviting right now.

But there are complexities, tensions and controversies in an experiment like this, as documentarian Matt Wolf explores in his new film Spaceship Earth, which blends fantastic archive footage and present-day interviews to bring those two years to light.

Biospherians (left to right): Bernd Zabel, Taber MacMullen (top) Mark Van Thillo, Jane Poynter, Linda Leigh, Roy Walford (middle), Abigail Alling and Sally Silverstone (bottom) posing inside Biosphere 2 in 1990. / Photo courtesy of NEON

Wolf talks with Letterboxd’s editor-in-chief Gemma Gracewood about the lessons we can learn from the Biospherians amidst the Covid-19 pandemic, the ten films he’d take into a biosphere with him, and the dangers of ignoring young people.

How (and where) are you during this pandemic? Matt Wolf: I’m doing well. I’m in my living room in the Lower East Side of New York, where I am every day, and I’m doing okay because I'm throwing myself into this film release. It’s been a real relief to have something to do instead of just reading the news and being trapped at home. The timing is uncanny, but I’m seizing the moment. I’m very happy to be participating and doing lots of virtual events and promoting the film so that people will watch it, because I hope that it will give some perspective for what we’re going through.

That’s the next obvious question: how did your work on Spaceship Earth prepare you for this extraordinary moment, and what advice do you have for those of us sheltering in our own tiny biospheres? It’s funny. My producer Stacey Reiss says the Biospherians were in their world for two years; we were in our filmmaking bubble for two years, too. And so, we could relate in that way but we never thought we would relate so vividly to that experience. And I think, you know, talking to the Biospherians, something that they relayed was that it really was a transformative experience, because they were responsible for creating their own atmosphere, for producing the food they needed to eat, and they really couldn’t take anything for granted—even a breath of fresh air. So when they came out they felt a renewed connection to the larger world, and a different sense of responsibility and consequence for their actions.

I hope that in some ways we all feel transformed by this experience, and it allows us to engage with the world in a different way, because we’re going to have to think and act differently now that we really understand in a visual sense how fragile the world really is.

The exterior of Biosphere 2. / Photo courtesy of NEON

Yes, it feels like the Earth is breathing. It’s such an interesting time. Yeah. I think we need to make a connection between climate change and what’s happening now. If we don’t change how we behave, the threat of long-term catastrophe is inevitable. Not to take this to a dark place, but it’s true.

From a filmmaking perspective, we’re living in a time where, with social media and smartphones, we are creating our own content every second of every day. One thing that’s endlessly fascinating about archive-based films like yours, is how lucky we are to have had people—who were not necessarily filmmakers themselves—document these extraordinary experiences. What was it like when you first started diving into that footage? I’m actually always on the lookout for stories that have a strong basis in archival material that can help activate them and bring them into the present. I was certainly determined to tell this story; it was extraordinary and I knew there was a great deal of media coverage. But when I went to meet the Synergists at their ranch, I was brought into this temperature-controlled room that had hundreds of 16mm film canisters, analog video cassettes, thousands of images; it was astonishing that they had had the foresight to not only document what they were doing but also to preserve it in such a meticulous way.

To me it was an indication that they recognized that what they were doing was history, but also kind of poignant because nobody had taken an interest in that archive and tapped into it, so it felt like an incredible opportunity, but also a responsibility as well. It would have been a much less potent film had we not had that material as well as the video diaries that Biospherian Roy Walford shot inside.

For me, it is unprecedented to be able to tell a story—particularly a story with so many narrative twists and turns—that has archival footage that covers literally every beat of the story. I don’t expect that to happen often in my filmmaking career! This was an extraordinary situation.

Biospherian Linda Leigh and tourists. / Photo courtesy of NEON

Okay Matt, you’re heading into the Biosphere, with no internet, and you can only take ten films with you. What are the films that you’d pack to take? To help you choose, we’ll give you some guidelines. What’s the movie you’ve watched the most? I would say the movie I’ve watched the most, ever, is Todd Haynes’ movie Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story. It was a movie made with Barbie dolls about Karen Carpenter’s life. I have just watched that movie over and over and over again, and it’s a bootleg movie because the Carpenter estate suppressed it. It’s one of those things made of lore, in which people exchanged low-quality file transfers, and I got my hands on a high-quality restoration recently. I love showing it to people who haven’t seen it, and it’s a total joy to watch that movie. That is the movie that I would definitely need to have access to if I could never see anything again.

Can you name a favorite documentary; one that has meaning for you? Every once in a while I watch this documentary that really is in some ways my favorite. To me it’s like taking a bath to watch this film, a bath for my brain. It’s called A Skin Too Few: The Days of Nick Drake. I’ve only been able to find it on YouTube; it’s not in distribution. I’m a fan, but the film is just made in such a delicate and visually precise way. It represents the type of filmmaking that I really love. It’s seemingly straightforward as a documentary, but I think in its subtlety it is really just a soothing and absorbing film.

What’s the film you’d take to entertain your fellow Biospherians on a Friday night? One of my favorites from when i was a kid that I think would be fun to watch on a Friday night is Troop Beverly Hills. If you want just like cotton candy, that would be my version of that.

Shelley Long and her Wilderness Girls in ‘Troop Beverly Hills’ (1989).

A film for the inevitable long, lonely, insomniac nights? If I was feeling depressed and lonely, and like really leaning into those feelings of isolation, maybe like Fassbinder’s Ali: Fear Eats the Soul. I remember that as being a film that was at once devastating but also comforting. Just about human connection and human alienation. I just think it’s so deep and true.

What about a film that you like to impress people with because of the way it looks, or makes you feel? One of my favorite movies that I just love to show to people because it’s so amazing—well, there’s two that fit into that category, movies that are fun to show people because they are unbelievable and true. One is Hail the New Puritan by the artist Charlie Atlas. It’s a documentary about Michael Clark, a kind of punk ballet dancer from London in the 80s, who collaborated with Leigh Bowery and The Fall. Charlie, the filmmaker, made it in the model of A Hard Day’s Night, the Beatles vehicle, and it follows this gay punk ballet dancer on his nightlife and pseudo-celebrity adventures through 80s punk London.

And then my other film that is too good to be true is A Bigger Splash [the 1973 Jack Hazen documentary, not the 2015 Luca Guadagnino feature], which is a similarly constructed documentary about David Hockney that feels like a fiction film staged with all the characters from his orbit during the height of his popularity in swinging London. It’s such a great depiction of an artist’s life and it’s completely baffling how the filmmaker was able to generate such access and to construct a film that feels so dramatized.

What film has had the biggest impact on you, whether for its meaning or for its execution? One of the films that had a big effect on me and that I really think the communal experience is central to, is Derek Jarman’s film Blue. He made it when he was dying of AIDS and it’s a lush soundscape with a kind of like non-linear stream of thoughts coming from Derek Jarman, and a beautiful soundscape, with material from Brian Eno. It’s a feature-length film where the screen is just blue. Every time that film screens in the cinema, I take the opportunity to go because it’s almost a religious experience. A cinematic religious experience. I feel really moved by it but it also is something to share with other people, in an unusual way.

And a film that’s stuck with you since you were young? American Family—the documentary series that gave birth to reality TV. In the 1970s Alan and Susan Raymond made this epic PBS cinema-vérité series that followed this upper-middle-class San Diego, Californian family. In one episode, their son Lance Loud moves to New York and is living at the Chelsea Hotel and his mum comes to visit and he comes out of the closet. It is a unique, different world, many of the Andy Warhol superstars are there. It [felt like] the first time a gay person had appeared on television and the drama unfolds over many episodes.

It was this huge controversy, people thought they were disgusting and perverse for putting their lives on television like this, but it also is kind of mundane and boring, just like a lot of the early cinema vérité, but it really laid the groundwork for what would become reality television, except it’s not constructed for the camera in the way that we expect these shows to be. I like watching serialized family stories like that, and this is the foundation of it.

What’s a recent queer film you’d take in with you? There’s this movie I was obsessed with. I just thought of it the other day: Saint Laurent, by Bertrand Bonello. It came out a few years ago and it’s a completely narcotic, kaleidoscopic biopic, and I think it’s so rare that biopics actually inhabit the psyches of their famous protagonist and that the actors don’t just feel like they’re doing pantomime. This film really captures not only the disintegrating psychology of Yves Saint Laurent, but also the context of the gay subcultures of Paris in 1970s and the 80s. It’s this super-vivid depiction of subculture, but through a very narcotic lens. I just was obsessed with that film. It’s not really considered ‘queer film’, I think it’s more considered a biopic, but to me it’s one of the more interesting depictions of queer culture in recent years.

Gaspard Ulliel as Yves Saint Laurent in Bertrand Bonello’s ‘Saint Laurent’ (2014).

And finally, a fond, family-viewing memory? I always loved Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory. I mean, I wouldn’t say it’s one of my favorite films but every time I see it, it’s like, “Oh, I get why I was obsessed with that as a kid”. I love the visual world and Gene Wilder is so bizarre and a little creepy. If you look at it as an adult there’s something kind of perverse about it, but I love a kind of analog fantasy world! So that film is, you might say, delicious.

You could say Spaceship Earth is a kind of analog fantasy world—the Biosphere itself is a living fantasy. I’m interested to know what you’d say to younger film lovers of today about what they might get out of seeing these avant-garde theater-makers-turned-Biospherians of yesterday? This film is more targeted towards younger people. I feel like there is a certain cynicism amongst adults that completely discounts young people and their ability to reimagine the world in creative ways. This is something I really dealt with in my film Teenage, the history of the invention of teenagers: adults always try to control young people. They corral the inventiveness of young people and the languages that they speak and invent. Young people all fight back, trying to define the world on their own terms, and this is really a film about a group of people who came together in their 20s and decided to reimagine and redefine, literally, a new world. There are all sorts of forces of establishment that tried to stop them and question and discount them.

We live in a world that’s pretty cynical and brings a lot of skepticism to people who try to do things differently, and I think as a 20-year-old you might see yourself in the idealism of these unusual people. Don’t you think that’s true? That, like, 20-year-olds aren’t as snarky and cynical? I feel like 20-year-olds are earnest and sincere and idealistic. Maybe I’m out of touch, but that was my experience and part of what I’ve observed in other young people.

I just feel like that ‘snarkiness’ that is often represented in the media is the cynicism that comes with the bitterness of life experience. And when you’re young and don’t have hardships and disappointments that have maybe hardened you with a certain kind of cynicism, it is possible to think more expansively and more optimistically about the world. We really need to tap into that energy. It’s not really helpful at this moment to, I don’t know, to shoot down anyone who’s trying something new. I hadn’t thought about that, but I'd be really curious what young people think of the film.

That’s a useful perspective, and makes me think of how, over the last couple of years, we have seen so much grassroots activism from young people, and now with the global lockdown there’s been a quieting of the youth climate movement, at least out there on the streets. You’re totally right. It was this big loud wave of activity and now with the pandemic it has really been washed over. But what they're talking about is long-term consequences, and if we don’t address the underlying issues that have related to the collapse of our society as a result of uncontrollable environmental factors, the survival of our species is threatened.

Related content

Matt Wolf’s 10 Films for Quarantine on Letterboxd

20 Films for Earth Day 2020

10 Great Space Science Films

‘Spaceship Earth’ is available for virtual screenings and on streaming services now. Our thanks to NEON.

#matt wolf #spaceship earth #biosphere ii #biospherians #john allen #documentary #queer film #queer filmmaker #letterboxd #NEON #virtual screening

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lajulie24 · 6 years ago

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The end

You didn’t think I was going to let the last official Scoundress Saturday go without any fic, did you? This turned out a bit silly, but I thought we could have a little fun with post-ROTJ Han and Leia. Also, to be clear, I still have plans for many other Han and Leia fics in the works (some of which were started or continued thanks to Scoundress Saturday), so this is far from the end of writing or posting. Thanks, all, for the wonderful support that has made writing these things each week so much fun.

Leia strode into the apartment, a bit later than her estimate, but well within the time Han had figured into his calculations for dinner.

“Would’ve been earlier,” she said, after kissing him and accepting a glass of Corellian red, “but I had to lose some old friends.”

Old friends used to mean Imperials or bounty hunters; now it meant the paparazzi, who had evidently decided that Leia and Han were much more interesting than they actually were. No less relentless, but at least they were slightly less likely to try to kill you. Unless it would make a good story, Han thought wryly.

“’S okay,” Han said. “Almost ready. How’s your day?” He finished cutting a selection of cured meats and cheeses, offering the plate to Leia.

“Fine,” Leia said, tearing off a hunk of bread and adding a slice of cheese to it. “Met with the Bothan delegation. Your good and close friend Borsk was not there,” she noted at Han’s raised eyebrow.

“Ah, so actually had a prayer of gettin’ something done,” Han said. Borsk Fey’yla, though a valuable asset to the Rebellion, was proving to be something of a perpetual stumbling block as the New Republic worked to move the galaxy from war to governance.

Leia laughed, taking another sip of wine. “A prayer, yes. Actually, it wasn’t that bad. How about you?”

Just then, the timer for the meat rang, and Han went to take it out of the oven. “Oh, y’know. The usual. Oh, yeah,” he said, placing the pan on the counter and then turning to her with a deadly serious look, “almost forgot. It’s over. We’re splitting up.”

“Again?” Leia asked mildly. “Too bad. What’d you do this time?”

“Oh, no, this time I’m leaving you,” he said smugly.

Leia sighed and took another sip of wine. “Well, I guess I can’t hide my baby bump from you forever. You have one really good Crathulian meal—” She shook her head. “Whose love child am I having now?”

“Wedge’s,” Han said. “Apparently I am real pissed off.”

“I can’t imagine Luke is very happy about it either,” she said. “Do you think that will make dinner awkward? Where the hells are they, anyway?”

“Eh,” Han shrugged as he tested the temperature of the meat. “You know the kid. He’s on Jedi time. Just Force-comm him.”

Leia made a face. “He hates it when I do that to remind him he’s late,” she reminded Han. “And then he gets all bitchy with me in my head.”

Luke and Wedge showed up without a reminder just after the meat had finished resting, and after a lively dinner—including ample banter about Leia’s and Wedge’s paparazzi-imagined affair—they settled down in the living room for what promised to be some intriguing after-dinner entertainment.

One of Leia’s secret pleasures was watching the collection of holofilm biopics and television series purporting to portray her friends in the Rebellion—The Courtship of Princess Leia, The Life Day Special, Jedi Ewok Princess, the Last Jedi—and she’d recently converted not only Han but also Wedge and, begrudgingly, Luke to this particular pastime. Their latest viewing party had been a rewatch of Jedi Ewok Princess, which had some of the worst production values they had ever seen (“I think they just bought a few houseplants and called it Endor,” Wedge had noted incredulously) as well as some entertaining dialogue.

Tonight’s selection was a rare feature, a bootleg copy of which was obtained not by the former smuggler in the group, but by Luke. Well, technically, by R2D2, but with Luke’s help.

“You owe me,” Luke said gravely as he handed over the disc. “Big time. Do you even know how many porn versions of your relationship are out there?”

Leia turned to Han. “Eight? Nine?”

“Nine,” Han said with confidence.

“Thirteen,” Luke corrected. “And Artoo downloaded them all when he was looking for this show.” He shuddered slightly.

“Huh, some new ones,” Han said. “Maybe they got a new guy to play me. That other guy was way too short.”

“Don’t think that was the dimension they were casting for,” Leia said dryly.

Wedge, who had started laughing quietly at this exchange a few minutes ago, fell over on the couch, no longer able to hold it in. “Just start it,” he said. “I wanna see how bad it is.”

The new show was called Days of our Rebellion, and it was a limited holoseries purporting to tell “the true stories of the lives and loves of the heroes of the Rebel Alliance.” It was supposed to have come out six months ago already, but apparently the network airing it was still skittish about releasing something that could cast the current political leadership in an unfavorable light, likely based on the memory of Palpatine’s frequent crackdowns on such things. But never estimate the power of an astromech droid to help them snag their very own copy of the series.

“Okay, this looks promising,” Wedge said as the opening credits began. “Obviously not a houseplants in Endor production situation here.”

The Luke was an up-and-coming actor who had recently been cast in a superhero movie, and he actually sort of looked like Luke. “Or Luke’s younger brother,” Han joked, as Luke elbowed him in the ribs.

“Aw, my baby daddy made the credits,” Leia said, as the actor playing Wedge showed up on screen. Wedge had gotten written out of The Courtship of Princess Leia with the exception of some generic fight scenes, and wasn’t even named in some of the other holos.

Leia’s double was an actress who had played a Padmé Amidala-like senator in another miniseries. “Oh, she’s good,” said Wedge.

They kept showing the Han actor in wide-angle shots, and when they finally showed him in a close-up both Leia and Luke gasped.

“That’s not—“ Han said.

“Go back and freeze-frame,” Leia directed, and when Han did, Luke was the one who collapsed with laughter this time.

“Oh my goddess that’s Porn Han. They cast Porn Han!” Leia exclaimed.

“Naw, they wouldn’t—“ Han began to insist.

“They did,” Leia said again.

“You’re right, he is way too short. He doesn’t really look like you, except that he’s wearing your outfit,” Wedge pointed out. “And there’s a Wookiee with him. Did they get real Wookiee actors?”

“Yeah,” Han confirmed. “Wouldn’t give ‘em the rights if they didn’t.”

The first episode opened on Yavin, but spent all of five minutes there before moving to a familiar-looking winter landscape.

“We’re going to Hoth already?” Luke asked.

The designers had managed to make a pretty convincing set that really did remind Han of Hoth, He shivered a little to think of it.

Porn Han and Not-Senator-Amidala were having an argument in the hallway, as personnel squeezed past them on their way somewhere else.

“Ha, look at all those people just walking by while we argue,” Han said, laughing.

“I know,” Leia said. “Right in the hallway! ‘Don’t mind us, we’re just going to have incredible amounts of sexual tension while you try to go about your daily lives,’” she continued.

Luke and Wedge exchanged a look. Oblivious to the end, these two.

“Releasing tension, huh. I think that’s what Porn Han is for,“ Wedge quipped.

#scoundressaturdays #han x leia #hanleia #star wars #myfic #han solo #leia organa #luke skywalker #wedge antilles #luke x wedge #the gffa paparazzi

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chiseler · 5 years ago

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The Chiseler Interviews Tim Lucas

Born in 1956, film historian, novelist and screenwriter Tim Lucas is the author of several books, including the award-winning Mario Bava: All the Colors of the Dark, The Book of Renfield: A Gospel of Dracula, and Throat Sprockets. He launched Video Watchdog magazine in 1990, and his screenplay, The Man With Kaleidoscope Eyes, has been optioned by Joe Dante. He lives in Cincinnati with his wife Donna.

The following interview was conducted via email.

THE CHISELER: You're known for your longstanding love affair with horror films. Could you perhaps explain this allure they hold for you?

Tim Lucas: I suppose they’ve meant different things to me at different times of my life. When I was very young (and I started going to movies at my local theater alone, when I was about six), I was attracted to them as something fun but also as a means of overcoming my fears - I would sometimes go to see the same movie again until I could stop hiding my eyes, and I would often find out they showed me a good deal less than I saw behind my hands, so I learned that when I was hiding my eyes my own imagination took over. This encouraged me to look, but also to impose my own imagination on what I was seeing. Similarly, I remember flinching at pictures of various monsters in FAMOUS MONSTERS OF FILMLAND magazine, then realizing that, as I became able to stop flinching, to look more deeply into the pictures, I began to feel compassion for Karloff’s Frankenstein Monster and admiration for Jack Pierce’s makeup. You could say that I learned some valuable life lessons from this: not to make snap judgements, not to hate or fear someone else because they looked different. I should also point out that beauty had the same intense effect on me as ugliness, in those early days at the movies. I was as frightened by the glowing light promising another appearance by the Blue Fairy in PINOCCHIO as I was by Stromboli or Monstro the Whale. I also covered my eyes when things, even colors, became too beautiful to bear.

As I got older, I found out that horror, science fiction, and fantasy films often told the unpleasant truths about our world, our government, our politics, and other people, before such things could be openly confronted in straightforward drama. So I’m not one of those people who are drawn to horror by gore or some other superficial incentive; I have always responded to them because they made me aware of unpopular truths, because they made me a more empathic person, and because they sometimes encompass a very unusual form of beauty that you can’t find in reality or in any other kind of film.

THE CHISELER: I'm fascinated by what you term "a very specific hybrid of beauty that you can’t find in reality or in any other kind of film.” Please develop that point.

Tim Lucas: For example, the aesthetic put forward by the films of David Lynch... or Tim Burton... or Mario Bava... or Roger Corman... or Val Lewton... or James Whale... or F.W. Murnau. It's incredibly varied, really; too varied to be summarized by a single name, but it's dark and baroque with a broader, deeper spectrum of color. I’ll give you an example: there is a Sax Rohmer novel called YELLOW SHADOWS - and only in a horror film can you see truly yellow shadows. Or green shadows. Or a fleck of red light on a vine somewhere out of doors. It’s a painterly version of reality, akin to what people see in film noir but even more psychological. It might be described as a visible confirmation of how the past survives in everything - we can see new artists quoting from a past master, making their essence their own.

THE CHISELER: Your definition of horror, to me, goes straight to the heart of cinema as an almost metaphysical phenomenon. My friend and frequent co-writer, Jennifer Matsui, once wrote: "Celluloid preserves the dead better than any embalming fluid. Like amber preserved holograms, they flit in and out of its parameters, reciting their own epitaphs in pantomime; revenant moths trapped in perpetual motion." Do Italian directors have what I guess you can call special epiphanies to offer? If so, does this help explain your Bava book?

Tim Lucas: The epiphanies of Italian horror all arise from the culture that was inculcated into those filmmakers as young people - the awareness of architecture, painting, writing, myth, legend, music, sculpture that they all grow up with. It's so much richer than any films that can be made by people with no foundation in the other art forms, people who makes movies just because they've seen a few - and maybe cannot even be bothered to watch any in black and white. I imagine many people go into the film business for reasons having to do with sex or power rather than having something deep down they need to express. The most stupid Italian and French directors have infinitely more in their artistic arsenals than directors from the USA, because they are brought up with an awareness of the importance of the Arts. No one gets this in America, where we slash arts and education budgets and many parents just sit their children in front of a television. Without supervision, without a sense of context, they will inevitably be drawn to whatever is loudest or most colorful or whatever has the most edits per minute. And those kids are now making blockbusters. They make money, so why screw with the formula? When I was a kid, it was still possible to find important, nurturing material on TV - fortunately!

Does it explain my Bava book? I don't know, but Bava's films somehow encouraged and sustained the passion that saw me through the researching and writing of that book, which took 32 years. When my book first came out, some people took me to task for its presumed excess - on the grounds that “our great directors” like John Ford and Orson Welles, for all their greatness, had never inspired a book of such size or magnitude. I could only answer that my love for my subject must be greater. But the thing about the Bava book, really, was that - at that time - the playing field was pretty much virgin territory in English, and Bava as a worker in the Italian film industry touched just about everything that industry had encompassed. All of those relationships needed charting. It would have been an insult to merely pigeonhole him as a horror director.

THE CHISELER: I discovered your publication, Video Watchdog, back in 2000 when Kim's Video was something of an underground institution here in NYC. I mean, they openly hawked bootlegs. There was a real sense of finding the unexpected which gave the place a genuine mystique. Now that you've had some time to reflect on its heyday, what are your thoughts, generally, on VW?

Tim Lucas: It's hard to explain to someone who just caught on in 2000, when things were already very different and more incorporated. VIDEO WATCHDOG began in 1990 as a magazine, but before that it was a feature in other magazines of different sorts that began in 1986. At that time, I was reviewing VHS releases for a Chicago-based magazine called VIDEO MOVIES, which then had a title change to VIDEO TIMES. I pointed out to my editor that his writers were reviewing the films and not saying anything about their presentation on video, and urged him to make more of a mandate about discussing aspect ratios, missing scenes (or added scenes) and such. I proposed that I write a column that would start collecting such information and that column was called "The Video Watchdog.”

In 2000, VW's origins in Beta and VHS and LaserDisc had evolved to DVD and Blu-ray was on the point of being introduced, so by then most of the battles we identified and fought had already been won and assimilated into the way movies were being presented on video. But in our early days, my fellow writers and I - were making our readers aware of filmmakers like Bava, Argento, Avati, Franco, Rollin, Ptushko, Zuławski - and the conversation we started led to people seeking out these films through non-official channels, even forming those non-official channels, until the larger companies began to realize there was an exploitable market there. Our coverage was never limited to horror - horror was sort of the hub of our interest, which radiated out into the works of any filmmaker whose work seemed in some way paranormal - everyone from Powell and Pressburger to Ishiro Honda to Krzystof Kiesłowski.

Now that the magazine is behind me, I can see more easily that we were part of a process, perhaps an integral part, of identifying and disseminating some very arcane information and, by sharing our own processes of discovery, raising the general consciousness about innumerable marginal and maverick filmmakers. A lot of our readers went on to become filmmakers (some already were) and many also went on to form home video companies or work in the business.

I'm proud of what we were able to achieve, and that what were written as timely reports have endured as still useful, still relevant criticism. Magazines tend to be snapshots of the present, and our back issues have that aspect, but our readers still tell me that the work is holding up, it’s not getting old.

When I say "we," I mean numerous writers who shared my pretentious ethic and were able to push genre criticism beyond the dismissive critical writing about genre film that was standard in 1990. I mentioned this state of things in my first editorial, that the gore approach wasn’t encouraging anyone to take horror as a genre more seriously, and I do think horror became more respectable over the years we were publishing.

THE CHISELER: My own personal touchstone, Raymond Durgnat, drilled deep into genre — particularly horror films — while pushing back instinctively against the Auteur Theory. No critic will ever write with more infatuated precision about Barbara Steele, whose image graces the cover of your Bava tome. Do you have any personal favorites in that regard; any individual author or works that acted as a kind of Virgil for you?

Tim Lucas: I haven't read Durgnat extensively, but when I discovered him in the 1970s his books FRANJU and A MIRROR FOR ENGLAND were gospel to me. Tom Milne's genre reviews for MONTHLY FILM BULLETIN were always intelligent and well-informed. Ivan Butler’s HORROR IN THE CINEMA was the first real book I read on the subject, along with HITCHCOCK/TRUFFAUT - and I remember focusing on Butler’s chapter on REPULSION, an entire fascinating chapter on a single film, which I hadn’t actually seen. It showed me the film and also how to watch it, so that when it finally came to my local television station, I was ready to meet it head on. David Pirie’s books A HERITAGE OF HORROR and THE VAMPIRE CINEMA I read to pieces. But it was Joe Dante's sometimes uncredited writing in CASTLE OF FRANKENSTEIN magazine that first hooked my interest in this direction - followed by the earliest issues of CINEFANTASTIQUE, which I discovered with their third issue and for which I became a regular reviewer and correspondent in 1972. I continued to write for them for the next 11 years.

THE CHISELER: I was wondering how you responded to these periodic shifts in taste and sexual politics, especially as they address horror movies — or even something like feminist critiques of the promiscuity of rage against women evident all throughout Giallo; the fear of female agency and power which is never too far from the surface. Are sexism, and even homophobia, simply inherent to the genre?

Tim Lucas: None of that really matters very much to me. I've been around so long now, I can see these recurring waves of people trying to catch their own wave of time, to make an imprint on it in some way. For some reason, I find myself annoyed by newish labels like "folk horror" and "J-horror" because such films have been with us forever; they didn't need such identification before and they have only been invented to get us more quickly to a point, and sometimes these au courant labels simply rebrand work without bringing anything substantially new to the discussion. Every time I read an article about the giallo film, I have to suffer through another explanation of what it is - and this is a genre whose busiest time frame was half a century ago. Sexism and homophobia are things people generally only understand in terms of the now, and I don’t know how fair it is to apply such concepts to films made so long ago. Think of Maria’s torrid dance in METROPOLIS and all those ravenous young men in tuxedos eating her with their eyes. Sexist, yes - but that’s not the point Lang was making.

I don’t particularly see myself as normal, but I suppose I am centrist in most ways. I don’t bring an agenda to the films I write about, other than wanting them to be as complete and beautifully restored as possible. That said, I am interested in, say, feminist takes on giallo films or homosexual readings of Herman Cohen films because - after all - we all bring ourselves to the movies, and if there’s more to be learned about a film I admire, from outside my own experience, that can be precious information. I want to know it and see if I can agree with it, or even if it causes me to feel something new and unfamiliar about it.

My only real concern is that genre criticism tends to be either academic or conversational (even colloquial), and we’re now at a point where the points made by articles published 20 or more years ago are coming back presented as new information, without any idea (or concern) that these things have already been said. As magazines are going by the wayside, taking their place is talk on social media, which is not really disciplined or constructive, nor indeed easily retrievable for reference. There are also audio commentaries on DVD and Blu-ray discs. Fortunately, there are a number of good and serious people doing these, but even when you get very intelligent or intellectual commentators, they often work best with the movie image turned off, because it’s a distraction from what’s being said. Is that true commentary? I'm not an academic; I’m an autodidact, so I don't have the educational background to qualify as a true intellectual, and I feel left out by a lot of academic writing. I do read a good deal and have familiarity with a fair range of topics, so I tend to frame myself somewhere between the vox populist and academia. That's the area we pursued in VW.

THE CHISELER: David Cairns and I once published a critical appreciation of Giallo, using fundamentally Roman Catholic misogyny — and, to a lesser extent, fear of gay men — as an intriguing lens. For example, lesbians are invariably sinister figures in these movies, while straight women ultimately function as nothing more than cinematographic objects: very fetishized, very well-lit corpses, you might say.

Tim Lucas: See, I admire a lot of giallo films but it would never occur to me to see them through a lens. I do, of course, because personal experience is a lens, but my lens is who I am and I’ve never had to fight for or defend my right to be who I am. I have no particular flag to wave in these matters; I approach everything from the stance of a film historian or as a humanist.

There is a lot of crossdressing and such in giallo, but these are tropes going back to French fin de siècle thrillers of the early 1900s, they don't really have anything to do with homophobia as we perceive it in our time. In the Fantomas novels, Souvestre and Allain (the authors) used to continually deceive their readers by having their characters - the good and the evil ones - change disguises, and sometimes apparently change sexes.

I remember Dario Argento saying that he used homosexual characters in his films because he was interested in their problems. He seldom actually explored their problems, and their portrayal in his earliest films is… quaint, to be kind about it… but it was a positive change as time played out. I think the fact that Argento’s flamboyant style attracted gay fans brought them more into his orbit and the vaguely sinister gay characters of his early films become more three dimensional and sympathetic later on, so in that regard his attention to such characters charts his own gradual embracing of them. So in a sense they chart his own widening embrace of the world, which is surprising considering what a misanthropic view of the world he presents.

THE CHISELER: But Giallo is roughly contemporaneous to the rise of Second Wave Feminism. Like the Michael & Roberta Findlay 'roughies', this is not a fossilized species of extinct male anger we're talking about here. Women's bodies are the energy of pictorial composition; splayed specifically for the delectation of some very confused and pissed off men in the audience. I know of no exceptions. To me it makes perfect sense to recognize the ritualized stabbings, stranglings, the BDSM hijinks in Giallo as rather obvious symptoms of somebody's not-so-latent fear and hatred.

Tim Lucas: I think that’s a modernist attitude that was not all that present at the time. Once the MPAA ratings system was introduced in late 1968, all genres of films got stronger in terms of graphic violence and language, and suspense thrillers were no exception. At the time, women and gay people were feeling freer, freer to be themselves, and were not looking for new ways to be taken out of films, however they might be represented. Neither base really had that power anyway at that time, but at any rate it wasn’t a time for them to appear more conservative. That would come at a later period when they felt more assured and confident in their equality. Throughout the 1960s, even in 1969 films like THE WRECKING CREW and BEYOND THE VALLEY OF THE DOLLS, you can see that women are still playthings of a sort in films; there are starting to be more honest portrayals of women in films like HUD, but the prevailing emphasis of them is still decorative, so it makes sense that they would be no different in a thriller setting. There’s no arguing, I don’t think, that the murder scenes become more thrilling when the victim is a beautiful, voluptuous woman. It’s nothing to do with misogyny but rather about wanting to induce excitement from the viewer. If you look back to Janet Leigh’s character arc in PSYCHO, the exact same thing happens to her, but because she’s a well-developed character and time is given to explore that character and her goals and motivations, there is no question that it is a role women would want to play, even now. However, the same simply isn’t true of most giallo victims, which should not be seen as one of their rules but as one of their faults. In BLOOD AND BLACK LACE, I think Mario Bava shows us just enough of the women characters for us to have some investment in their fates - but when the giallo films are in the hands of sausage makers, you’re going to feel a sense of misogyny. It may be real but it may also be misanthropy or a more commercial mandate to pack more into a film and to sex it up. I should add that, because I’m not a woman or gay, I don’t bring personal sensitivities to these things, so I see them as something that just comes with the territory, like shoot-outs in Westerns. If you were to expunge anything that was objectionable from a giallo film, wouldn’t it be just another cop show or Agatha Christie episode? You watch a giallo film because, on some level, you want to see something with the hope of some emotional or aesthetic involvement, or with the hope of being outraged and offended. There is no end of mystery entertainment without giallo tropes, so it’s there if you demand that. Giallo films aren’t really about who done it, only figuratively; they are lessons in how to stage murder scenes and probably would not exist without the master painting of PSYCHO’s shower scene, which they all seek to emulate.

THE CHISELER: You mentioned Val Lewton earlier. Personally, I've never encountered anything like the overall tone of his films. There's always something startling to see and hear. Would you shed a little light on his importance?

Tim Lucas: He's an almost unique figure in film in that he was a producer yet he projected an auteur-like imprint on all his works. The horror films for which he's best known are not quite like any other films of their kind; I remember Telotte's book DREAMS OF DARKNESS using the word "vesperal" to describe the Lewton films' specific atmosphere - a word pertaining to the mood of evening prayer services, which isn't a bad way of putting it. I've always loved them for their delicacy, their poetical sense, their literary quality, and their indirectness - which sometimes co-exists with sources of florid garishness, like the woman with the maracas in THE LEOPARD MAN. In THE SEVENTH VICTIM, one shy character characterizes the heroine's visit to his apartment as her "advent into his world," and when I first saw it, I was struck by the almost spiritual tenderness and vulnerability of that description. Lewton was remarkable because he seems to have worked in horror because it was below the general studio radar, which allowed him to make extremely personal films. As long as they checked the necessary boxes, he could make the films he wanted - and I think Mario Bava learned that exact lesson from him.

THE CHISELER: I've always been fascinated by a question which is probably unanswerable: Why do you think it is that movies based on Edgar Allan Poe stories — even those films that only just pretend to sink roots in Poe, offering glib riffs on his prose at best — invariably bear fruit?

Tim Lucas: Poe's writings predate the study of human psychology and, to an extent, chart it - so he can be credited with founding a wing of science much like Jules Verne's writings were the foundation of science fiction and, later, science fact. Also, from the little we know of Poe's personal life, his writing was extremely personal and autobiographical, which makes it all the more compelling and resonant. It's also remarkably flexible in the way it lends itself to adaptation - there is straight Poe, comic Poe, arty Poe, even Poeless Poe. It helps too that a lot of people familiar with him haven't read him extensively, at least not since school, or think they have read him because they've seen so many Poe movies. The sheer range of approaches taken to his adaptation makes him that much more universal.

It also occurs to me that people are probably much more alike internally than they are externally, so the identification with an internal or first person narrator may be more immediate. But it's true that his work has inspired a fascinating variety of interpretation. You can see this at work in a single film: SPIRITS OF THE DEAD (1968), which I’ve written an entire book about. It’s three stories done by Roger Vadim, Louis Malle, and Federico Fellini - all vastly different, all terribly personal expressions of the men who made them.

THE CHISELER: Speaking of Poe adaptations, I've long thought it's time to confront Roger Corman's legacy; as an artist, a producer, an industrial muse, everything. Sometimes I think he's the single most important figure in cinema history. And if that's a wild overstatement, I could stand my ground somewhat and point out that no one person ever supported independent filmmakers with such profound results. It's as though he used his position at a mainstream Hollywood studio to open a kind of Underground Railroad for two generations of film artists. He gave so many artists a leg up in a business where those kinds of opportunities were never exactly abundant that it's hard to keep track. Entering the subject from any angle you like, what are your thoughts on Corman's overall contribution to cinema?

Tim Lucas: I can think of more important filmmakers than Corman, but there has never been a more important producer or mogul or facilitator of films. I said this while introducing him on the first of our two-night interview at the St. Louis Film Festival’s Vincentennial in 2011. He was largely responsible for every trend in American cinema during its most decisive quarter century - 1955 through 1980, and to some extent a further decade still, which bore an enormous influx of talent he discovered and nurtured. People talk about Irving Thalberg, Darryl F. Zanuck, Steven Spielberg, etc. - but their productions don’t begin to show the sheer diversity of interests that you get from Corman’s output. He has no real counterpart. I’ve spent a lot of the past 20 years musing on him, first as the protagonist of a comedy script I wrote with Charlie Largent called THE MAN WITH KALEIDOSCOPE EYES, which Joe Dante has optioned. A few years ago, I decided to turn the script into a novel, which is with my agent now. It’s about the time period before, during, and after the making of THE TRIP (1966). It's a comedy but one with a serious, even philosophical side.

You know, Mario Bava once described himself to someone as “the Italian Roger Corman.” It’s incredible to me that Bava would have said that, not because it’s wrong or even because he was a total filmmaker before Corman made his first picture, but because Bava has been dead for so long! He’s been gone now almost 40 years and Roger is still making movies. And he’s been making movies for the DTV market longer than anybody, so he sort of predicted the current exodus of new movies away from theaters to streaming formats.

THE CHISELER: Are there any other producers/distributors you'd care to acknowledge, anyone that you think has followed in what you might call Corman’s Tradition of Generosity?

Tim Lucas: No, I really think he is incomparable in that respect. I do think it’s important to note, however, that I doubt Roger was ever purely motivated by generosity of spirit. I don’t think he would put money or his trust in anyone merely as a favor. He’s a businessman to his core and his gambles have always been based on projects that are likely to improve on his investment, even if moderately. I have a feeling that the first dollar he ever made is still in circulation, floating around out there bringing something new into being. I also don’t think he would give anyone their big break unless they had earned that break already in some respect. And when he does extend that opportunity, he’s got to know that, when these people graduate from his company, he’ll be sacrificing their talent, their camaraderie, maybe even in some cases their gratitude. So yes, there is some generosity in that aspect - but he also knows from experience that there are always new top students looking to extend their educations on the job. I wish more people in the film business had his selflessness, his ability to recognize and encourage talent. It may be his greatest legacy.

THE CHISELER: You introduced me, many years ago, to Mill of the Stone Women — I'll end on a personal note by thanking you and asking: Would you share an insight or two about this remarkable gem, particularly for readers who may not have seen it?

Tim Lucas: MILL OF THE STONE WOMEN was probably my first exposure to Italian horror; I saw it as a child, more than once, on local television and there were things about it that haunted and disturbed me, though I didn't understand it. Perhaps that's why it haunted and disturbed me, but the image of Helfy's hands clutching the red velvet curtains stayed with me for decades (a black and white memory) until I got to see it on VHS - I paid $59.95 for the privilege because my video store told me they would not be stocking it. It's a very peculiar film because Giorgio Ferroni wasn't a director who favored horror; the "Flemish Tales" that it's supposedly based on is non-existent, a Lovecraftian meta-invention, and it's the only Italian horror filmed in that particular region in the Netherlands. It looks more Germanic than Italian. I’m tempted to believe Bava may have had a hand in doing the special effects shot, which look like his work, but they might also have been done by his father Eugenio, as he was also a wax figure sculptor so would have been good to have on hand. He seldom took screen credit. So it's a film that has stayed with me because it's elusive; it's hard to find the slot where it belongs. It's like an adult fairy tale, or something out of E.T.A. Hoffmann. I can’t tell you how many hours I’ve wasted, trying to find another movie with the unique spell cast by that one.

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confessionsofanoperaghost · 6 years ago

Note

🎭 for the PotO meme

1. Does the name “Erik” get your attention, no matter where or in what context you hear it? ,,,,,,,,,,actually yes.

2. Would you travel or have you traveled to certain places only because they were PotO-related? Which ones? I certainly would! And I have a long long list of places that are from my headcanon as well! But sadly they are in Europe, Asia and the Middle East. Cost is a factor.

3. Would you see the musical by yourself because your friends or family weren’t in the mood to go with you? Have you done so already? I haven’t and I might. It really depends on how my relationship to the musical changes over the next 20-60 years. I’m not keen on most of ALW’s recent touch on the franchise and I’m worried about more and more or Maria Bjornson’s work getting dropped from the tour (and rumors say maybe from the Broadway and WE productions as well in time??). So, we’ll see. I will be happy to outlive ALW and bear witness to the various ways the The Really Useful Group shoots itself in the foot. But its so expensive to watch something that’s only going to break your heart--and not in the ways you want it to. So it REALLY depends.

4. How often have you seen the musical? I have seen it exactly once. It came to my hometown in 1999 (I was 15) and I spent every penny I could scrape together to get an orchestra-level ticket. And frankly I was unimpressed. I never went back. I feel bad for saying it. It might have been better for me if I had grown up with bootlegs, but I had only read the book and listened to the OLC. I literally didn’t know what to expect from the tour. I’m not sure.

5. How much PotO stuff do you own? I should just say “a lot of stuff I dunno, lol” but I suddenly want to think about this.

My original deMattos paperback

A David Coward paperback

A Wolfe paperback (its at a friend’s house at the moment)

The “milestone collection” two DVD disc set with all the extras of the 1925 Poto with Lon Chaney Sr (my babe!!!)

The Cherik miniseries (as a bootleg copy on DVD...i paid good money for it tho, lol)

the 2004 movie cuz it was cheap as hell

Original London Cast recording of the ALW musical on CD

This BRILLIANT book about the making of the 1925 silent film

An actual first run copy of The Phantom of Manhattan by Fredrick Forsythe (purchased for me on clearance as a joke.)

A cheap copy of Susan Kay’s book that a friend picked up for me. I’ve been asked to do a seething read-along. I figured I should probably own the book before I literally rip it a brand new shiny asshole on YouTube...

a weird, like, 14 pages long, full color, SUPER condensed version of the book with Greg Hildebrant’s drawings. This was the present our teacher purchased for the acting class that produced a weird 1970′s straight-play version of the story that no one seems to remember now (its not particularly good so don’t worry)

the “Barnes and Noble” deMattos hardcover edition that --because it started to fall apart right away--I have been using for art projects and pop-culture-based spells

A large locket with Lon Chaney’s Erik (and his Quasimodo)

one of Muirin007′s gorgeous prints

An adorable necklace made by MegLouiseGiry that’s got a slice from the book in it and a heart-shaped crystal (Poto Secret Santa 2017)

A Lon Chaney 1925 POTO T Shirt. And it glows in the dark! (I got his Quasi on a shirt too but sadly it does not glow in the dark)

a 17,000+ word Google document: a sticky rough draft of my Erik-life-story Phic that I may or may not have been working on for 2 decades.

similarly, a red and gold notebook stuffed with tangled notes and headcanons and bad phan poetry from the 1990s

A bunch of other books that look unrelated to the untrained eye (for research)

a 6 inch figure of Lon Chaney’s POTO dangling from a plastic chandelier that happens to be about to scale

a thousand other items that may not look like references to Poto to the untrained eye... like: a red scarf and round-framed spectacles and an antique violin case and a choking kink and a skull mask and a dramatic red and gold cape and daddy issues and a balcony overlooking the sea and a black mask that covers the whole face and an attraction to the most beautiful hands........

6. Have you had dreams about the Phantom or other characters? Do you remember any in particular? I’ve only had dreams about Erik. Usually I am myself or Christine or some slurry of the two. Here’s the best one:

Saturday, November 19, 2016. True Beauty.

There was the theatre. The wings and the lifts. Backstage lights. Curtains.

Joseph Bouquet spots the fiend in the catwalks and is--fast as lightning--slaughtered by the quickest of lassos. Other stagehands and security ascend to the tops, chasing a shadow they can barely see. Someone thinks they’ve captured his cloak only to find their fists full of nothing.They chase this shadow to the roof and find nothing but stars as the phantom killer slips away...down into the dark.

Carved structure. The dark is black and warm. He feels near. Yes, Erik has come for you. A lucid dream, I am both player and played.

I am playing you.

You feel a dance. You cannot find your way out of all that warm darkness. Though she cannot see, she feels her maestro all around. Unable to retreat, unable to find light; she turns but I am already there... darkness and a warm, red, deep glow. She twists in anxiety and frustration--away! away! away!-- breathing as though she is counting her final breaths. Twisting and trying to find some cool air or a bit of sunlight.

Erik shows her that there is no escape from Erik. He is is every corner of her.

She succumbs.

7. How many times have you read the book? Literally more than I can count. At 15 I had MOST of Chapter 13, Apollo’s Lyre, memorized (deMattos translation). Iv’e only read it in English and I have yet to read some of the less-recommended translations.

8. How many songs from the musical could you recite from memory? (Or just sing along to?) So I have almost the whole thing more-or-less memorized EXCEPT that its ONLY the version as sung in the Original London Cast recording. So every single line that has been changed since then (or god forbid an unedited soundtrack where all the choruses of Hannibal are included, lol) I get wrong. But yeah i listened to that nightly for like 2 years of my adolescence and I can hardly listen to any of it now. I burned places in my synapses.

9. Do you randomly quote lines from the book or musical in real life? Don’t you? Honestly, the most fun I have is calling up fun lines and needle them into my vocabulary throughout a regular day. Unless you do an obvious one your average person isn’t going to know.

10. Have you ever met up with another phan? Yes but by the time I’ve me up with them its definitely about something more relevant than the Phandom that brought us together.

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kookiesbadhabits · 7 years ago

Text

My Firsts [M] no. 1

gif credit

Part 1 / Part 2 / Part 3 / Part 4 / Part 5 / Part 6?

SUMMARY: three hot boys. one girl. college!au.

PAIRING : vminkook x reader

WORD COUNT: 3.1k

GENRE: fluff, introduction

Part 2 (real plot) coming 5.21.18-5.23.18

Description

A love... square? I love me some maknae line okay?

So this might be the ONLY story I have ever made a draft for with an ONGOING series in mind, instead of just a smutty oneshot. Don't get me wrong, there's going to be a whole lot of sin, but expect minimal porn logic, but real plot. These boys' characters are based on my life, but in not wanting it to hit too close to home, I'm adding a bit of a twist.

Based on a true story: that is my mess of a love life (like seriously my life can seem very fanfiction with the level of drama with these three boys. also minus the smut in my life of course, i wish my sex life were this exciting, but maybe in a world with almost no risk of contracting STDs or a world with effortless straight As in university courses) The characters are inspired by some past loves in my life, so this should be a fun little ongoing series I want to try out.

Also, for context, all three boys plus reader are the same age.

Opening/Prologue?:

*READER POV*

Boys in general sure are dangerous, but god, these three in particular are on a whole other level. How did I earn such luck to find myself with our paths all intersecting at once?

THE BOYS:

Kim Taehyung was my first everything. Well, every "first" a clueless 8-year-old could comprehend. The first crush, the first boy to push me on the swing, the first guy best friend, the pure-and-filled-with-curiosity-and-confusion first kiss, the first boy I asked to be my boyfriend after all my classmates started asking each other out. He was the first to make me laugh the hardest I ever thought I could; the first to make me cry the hardest I ever could. The first boy to break my heart: my first "almost love". That was who he was to me from elementary to junior high.

Can you blame me for taking the emotions so seriously? I was just a young, ignorant tween with all my hormones out of whack. None of that should matter anymore, it was a small piece of my past, a small milestone in life, it should have been completely irrelevant to who I became and where would bring me, or us. I guess I was a fool to think it would be entirely irrelevant, we are attracted to what we're familiar with after all.

Nevertheless, Taehyung was such a blurred fragment of my past, I was already a completely different person by the time we ran into each other for the first time in six years, right there on our university's orientation day. So why did bumping into him and slowly recognizing him feel like a truck against my chest? Seeing him shouldn't have struck such a heavy chord with me, so why?!

The least of my worries should be none other than Park Jimin, I know this for sure. He was my high school sweetheart, my first real boyfriend, first real kiss . . . first to be intimate with. Two years of growth well spent, back when neither of us had developed a sliver of personality. Our relationship had its fair share of cataclysmic moments, but it was worth it in knowing how well we existed together in that snippet in time.

We fought frequently due to the difference in our values and passions, and our clashing personalities in general. He was my exact opposite, aloof, childish, an improviser, clueless, innocent and hopeful. I was reserved, serious, ambitious, a careful planner, too mindful for my own good; a realist. I was aware that our relationship had slim chances of keeping its strength after graduation, with him not enrolling to the same post-secondary school. Not to mention, our relationship had been kept a secret from my family for its entirety due to my parents and their rules to keep me focused on my studies.

As I predicted, after high school graduation we had grown stagnant in our relationship, no longer growing as people. He was a safe anchor, a source of unconditional love, so unconditional that neither of us worked to help improve the other anymore. I loved him but I outgrew him, so naturally I broke up with him on the worst possible day: the day after our 23rd month together, the same day as his father's first death anniversary. I knew it would paint me as the worst person in his eyes, but maybe that's just how I wanted it.

Finally, there is the most dangerous of all, in that I cannot deduce why I feel such a strong pull towards him. He is exactly not my type and it doesn’t add up. I was introduced to him as I was being absorbed into a friend group by my first uni friend, he instantly became the first man in uni to have an energy that effortlessly drew me towards him. This man is Jeon Jungkook, a cheeky flirt clearly hiding behind the mask of a self-fulfilled prophecy as an asshole.

In the first instances we had met, Jungkook spent two hours pining for my attention, like a child scrambling towards a shiny new toy. Killing time in the library, our "study" group played a bootleg version of Cards Against Humanity. I had read him enough to know what would make him laugh, and he proved so in his verbal praise on my anonymous answers. The whole while we felt connected, we met after all. In just meeting, I knew the universe had already shifted for us. He spent the whole rest of the day finding excuses to continue to spending time with me, actually the whole rest of the term.

Sadly, I knew he spelled nothing but trouble. Fortunately, it was the kind of trouble I was longing for.

Anyways, enough blathering on about these three boys with such vague air to it, why don't I start from the beginning? I'm ________, 18 years old, in the middle of my first year of university, and had no idea what I was about to get into.

Chapter 1 - Chance Meetings

“CHILDHOOD FRIEND: THE FIRST CRUSH”

"Hey ______," an unfamiliar and rather deep voice calls out to me as I brushed past a small huddle of friends in the crowded university centre.

I instinctively replied hey back, only to stop in my tracks in realizing I didn't recognize the voice. Stunned, and a little confused, I glance over only to lock eyes with a complete stranger with a small friendly smile walking away in the opposite direction.

With a perplexed look plastered on my face, the stranger brushes past his group of friends towards me. My curiosity compelled me to stay put. My eyes, and head naturally tilted up slightly to keep eye contact. He was tall. His sweater was from some high school other than mine, so he couldn't be an old classmate. He just kept smiling at me, beaming like he had met an old friend.

"I'm sorry, do I know you?" I finally asked politely.

He chuckled, "You don't remember me?" gesturing towards himself, pausing as if waiting for his appearance to sink in with my memories. I was still stumped no matter how long the pause, and honestly it was getting too awkward to bear for someone like myself, who doesn't usually voluntarily make small talk with people, much less with strangers.

"I'm sorry, I don't think I do?" I replied, furrowing my brows trying to will some kind of familiarity still looking up at him and his big boxy smile.

"You look great though!" He continued, practically disregarding my current confusion. "You here for orientation too? This little scavenger hunt is pretty lame, don't you think?"

Not wanting to be rude, I put on my best socializing voice. "Aww, thank you!" I replied, matching his friendly energy. "I'm actually not. My sister brought me to give me the tour herself, she told me how boring orientation would be."

As we carried on, I kept thinking about who the heck this mans could possibly be? We ended up talking about high schools, he went to XX high, and I mentioned I went to YY high. I noticed his hoodie was not just any school sweater, he was in vocal jazz.

"So he sings," I thought as I pondered who I knew as a friend that was a good singer.

Finally, his goofy smile sinks in, and my eyes grew wide and lips pursed into a small 'o'

"Oh my god, Taehyung?!" I exclaimed, he only laughed at my reaction, though pleased I finally recognized him.

"Most people call me V now but hearing you call me that is so nostalgic," he smiled softly.

I blushed a little recalling that he had said I looked great, what with the onrush of memories hitting me like a truck. Holy shit, he looked good, grew his hair, parted down the middle, but somehow he was making it work.

We had talked a little more, asking for bits and pieces on the last couple of years we had been out of each other's loop. That's right, he moved after 7th grade, it had really been nearly 6 years, he had no social media, and our social circles never overlapped.

We could only talk a moment more before realizing he was keeping his group waiting, and I, my sister.

Before he could end up out of my life again, I impulsively asked, "What's your number? We should keep in touch!"

"Wow, _______ since when did your introverted ass have the balls to utter such words?" I thought to myself, mentally biting my tongue, but what's done was done.

He smiled warmly but with some slyness in his eyes, "I already follow you on Instagram, no worries."

I was stunned once again, "His name had never shown up on my follower list?" I thought. Before I could say anything, he had jogged to catch up to his group and so I turned to my sister.

“HIGH SCHOOL SWEETHEART: THE FIRST BOYFRIEND”

As usual, my last bus home from campus had to be unbelievably delayed due to the heavy rain. I was on the phone with my ex-boyfriend, now awkward best friend.

"Are you sure about it? I can really just wait for another bus," I spoke into my phone as I huddled in the roofed shelter of the bus stop, the chilly night air starting to bite through my jacket.

It had gotten pretty dark, despite it only being six in the evening. However, the shadiness of downtown undoubtedly had me on alert.

"It's really no problem, I'm already finished my classes today," Park Jimin replied on the other end. "I don't like the idea of you being alone this late, downtown of all places."

I could hear in his voice that he was already getting up from bed to pick up his keys and head for his car. He already had his mind set and there was little I could do to stop him. He could tell from the pause in my voice I was unsure about the whole thing. The breakup may have been amicable, but it still hurt a little to be with him not being able to instinctively reach for his hand for comfort. In fact, I had been careful not to give him opportunities to come and see me. Yet, here we are.

A drunkard was already beginning to babble out in the streets, with people doing good to veer past him. I watched him warily, slouching to lessen the prominence of my chest, tucking my hair in the folds of my jacket to lessen chances of easily being pulled by the strands.

"I guess that would be best," I admitted. "Please drive safely."

"Keep the call on, okay?" Jimin requested with the usual soft concern. "I need to know you're safe there, too."

I smiled, "We couldn't be together anymore, but I'm really happy this is where our relationship led up to," I thought.

In less than twenty minutes, I could see a familiar car approaching towards my stop.

"Get in quickly, _______." he said, also alert by his surroundings now full of potential threats.

I scurried over to his car, and got in quickly, greeted by his familiar welcoming smile. I kept my hand from doing its conditioned action of opening to await his fingers to interlock with mine. He kept his hand on his gear-shift, despite never doing that before and with his car not being manual.

"This is a decent compromise," I thought and smiled to myself, letting my lids bat lightly, the day's events catching up with me.

Slowly, I let myself fall asleep as usual in our drives, and he woke me gently upon nearing my complex. My roommate, Jean, waited patiently for me to get home safely, leaving a light on.

Jimin and I exchanged a brief hug at the door, and I thanked him again for his kindness. I watched him walk away as I slowly closed the door. As I thought, there's still a bit of melancholic air in his smile when we see each other.

"I'm sorry, Jimin." I whispered under my breath with him too already too far away to hear. Not that he hadn't already heard that enough times before.

“THE STRONG PULL/NOT-MY-TYPE TYPE: THE FIRST MAN ”

"Oh yeah, since I'm practically absorbing you into my friend group, you've met Jin already but this is Jungkook," Kim started as I sat next across from her in our usual study spot in the library.

I looked to him, establishing eye contact to give him a sup nod with a smile, he laxly raised a hand and raised his brows to acknowledge the greeting.

I had met all Kim's guy friends from high school, but none of them piqued your interest in this way. Before even sitting down, I had already spotted him after my eyes found Kim. He was an unfamiliar and attractive individual, emanating energy with a distinct warning written all over it: "TROUBLE".

Nonetheless, I couldn't resist initiating the game that started the moment the universe decided to shift in tune with our meeting.

In spending no more than half an hour with them, I found Jungkook persistently trying to shift my attention towards him whether it be to tell a witty remark or to try and make me laugh with poorly constructed jokes I had already read off the internet over five years ago. The cool air had to be a facade, all I could see was a dorky squish, spoiled for some attention.

I giggled none the less, to humour him (literally) and to end up one-upping him in the comedy department when we decided to play an app that was practically a bootleg of Cards Against Humanity.

The phrase was "The worst thing to scream at my grandma's funeral" and my answer had been a blank where I typed, "RIP girl may your bingo wings flap your soul to heaven."

Jungkook, being the judge, burst into laughter mid-way into reading my answer out loud.

"Whoever put that, good one," he said as he banged a hand against the table with his nose still crinkled in amusement.

I raised a hand laxly, and he blinked at me, his eyes twinkled with a glint of further intrigue and curiosity.

Jin ended up winning all the games, and when time came for Kim and I's class, Jungkook quickly got up with us.

Growing tired of the library scene, Kim and I moved to go to the university centre to get some food. Jin and Jungkook naturally tagged along behind us. I don't know how they did it, but Jin and Kim disappeared for god knows what counselor, leaving me alone with Jungkook.

We sat with no more and an inch separating us and he looked to me with the same curiosity and intense gaze. I had voiced my discomfort about being left alone.

"Why are you scared to be alone with me?" Jungkook asked bluntly. "I don't bite."

"Ah, I'm not afraid of you, I'm afraid of being alone with people I just met," I corrected him. "Don't flatter yourself."

By this time, we had easily established some playful banter between us, with him every now and then joking about not being able to handle too much of gaze. Before I knew it, he was telling me a bunch of stories about parties and trips to Paris I didn't ask about.

"Yeah, I woke up with just some girl's bare ass bouncing on my jeans." He continued, trying too hard to show how admired he was by the ladies.

"We get it, hun, you're hot," I thought through a split-second of lidded eyes before raising my brows again to politely portray my interest in his stories.

As he was finishing up a story about a flock of French girls crowding him during his class trip to Paris, I sighed in relief to see Kim and Jin approaching. Jungkook was cute, but he was still a boy in my eyes, needy and arrogant. I was fascinated by his character nonetheless, I had never met someone who could sound so full of himself, yet still seem like just some dorky squish.

Kim and I got up to start walking towards our class building.

"Aw man, it's probably rush hour so I can't drive home even if I wanted to," he spoke to himself aloud. "What class do you guys have?"

"Psych," Kim replied as he pulled the other strap over his shoulder.

"I might as well sit in your class," Jungkook spoke casually, as if not to sound like he actually wanted to spend more time with us.

"You do you," Kim nodded as she gestured for me to follow her.

It was only 2:15 pm. I looked over my shoulder to Jungkook, we locked eyes again, I swear I could see his pupils dilate in those big brown eyes. I gave him a small smile before following ahead.

He ended up sitting in our class, beside me the whole time trying to jokingly distract me every now and then. Many times, he showed signs of wanting to leave, leaning over into my ear to whisper.

"When does this class end?" His voice was low and hushed and too close to my ear.

I refused to give him any reaction for satisfaction though and simply whispered back, "Not for another 45 minutes."

He ended up pulling out a book, piquing my interest even more, "A boy into reading on his spare time?!" I screamed in my head. I, _______, had never in my life seen a boy reading a book for pleasure.

We carried on with class this way, and I just smiled thinking to myself, "Silly Jungkook, everyone knows rush hour isn't until 4pm, you're not fooling anyone you squish."

~ END OF CHAPTER 1 ~

A/N: Ho man 2/3 of these stories are 100% true tbh I may as well have said their real names. It's 2:30 AM now that i've finished this. Worth it. I am so inspired by the comeback and have been craving to start writing again. So I can't wait to get to putting my ideas for this series into ink.

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tumblunni · 6 years ago

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Hhhh bunni legs pain accomplishment day

I HAVE FINISHED THE SHOPPING OF HELL

Tfw u only get paid 4 days before christmas and have to rush everything aaaa

It was bad enough today so i'm so glad i got it done before it got even more busy!

Misc boring essentials i bought for myself: new phone charger cos broken, new trousers cos i spilt hair bleach on my only two pairs, new shoes cos my left shoe literally snapped in half down the middle like wtf even happened there, cheap pink hair dye from a discount store cos i wanna try different colours but in a thrifty way

Now for EXCITING CHRISTMAS PRESENT TIME!!!!

First off SO MANY pc and xbox 360 games from Every Charity Shop In Cardiff, St Mellons, Rumney and Llanrumney. My sis has been trying to find some games to play but was like 'dont worry about it i can just wait til the charity shop gets something good'. So i thought i'd get some stocking stuffers via all the charity shops on my side of town. By our powers combined we will blitz the entire vale of glamorgan's discount gaming scene!!! I found SO MANY good stuff for £1/£2/£3 like holy shit i love when charity shops dont know the proper price for shit XD

speaking of which i also found a WEBCAM for £2! If its that cheap it probanly isnt great but itd still be fun to play around with! :D and the same store also had an old vintage G1 My Little Pony coffee mug in excellent condition. Oh god the nostalgia! My support worker gave me a lift to llanrumney so i had to awkwardly explain why i had an armful of weird 80s mugs and big teary eyes!

Speaking of vintage, i found this new vintage toys and games shop in cardiff called Galactic Attic! The name hooked me in and then they actually DID have pokemon inside! As well as all sorts of stuff ranging from 40s to 90s, wow! There was even a lil pile of old 90s gaming magazines in the corner, covered up by a bunch of boxes. I'm glad i noticed them! I got the announcemt issues for pokemon diamond pearl and platinum in a weird old pokemon fan magazine that i loved as a kid. Im kinda sad that nowadays we just have one official magazine fpr each console and not the wild madness of amateaur journalists failing horribly to get news from japan. Shame they didnt have Beckett Pokemon cos that one was infamous fot drawing its own terrible interpretations of pokemon sprites to avoid copyright. And speaking of terrible, they even had bootleg pokemon!! I talked to the cashier and he was like "you know those are fake right" and i was like "yeah its so nostalgic thats why i want em" and he was like "lol yeah they actually sell pretty well so i'm not mad my supplier ripped me off". It was a pretty good and awesomely terrible fake at the same time? There was this exact replica of some japanese display stand for the product and then the actual pokeball toys looked perfect BUT the mini pokemon inside were.. Really not. I am so damn happy with the surprise inside my one, surprise inside has never been more accurate! I can't take a picture now cos my phone is charging but REGICHEETO. Just..just imagine that, and whatever you're imagining it is probably worse. I love it so fuckin much. Also less hilariously there were some bootleg mini pika plushies with actually (as far as i can tell) their own unique design? They have cute lil winter scarves and an art style that reminds me of the Magical Pokemon Adventure manga. A really cute and good bootleg that i would have loved to see as a real product! The only way you can even tell its a bootleg is because there's no marking on the tail. I dunno, maybe if i still have some brown fabric in the cupboard i could fix it? Or maybe its unique tail makes it even more special! I mean there's Cosplay Pikachu with its double tail marking so maybe this is her cousin Accessory Pikachu with no markings? He just likes wearing scarfs and hats and stuff. OMG HE'S THE POKEMON GO EVENT PIKACHU!!!!!!

Along the miscness of finding a few things for myself, i also found: cute lil pokemon pencilcase, kingdom hearts blind bag, cheap copy of Fruits Basket volume 1 cos the new remake is coming out soon and i wanna Get Hype! The KH blind bag was really weird cos i didnt know they now have an entirely different set as well as the keychains i bought before. Its kind of a shame the art style doesnt match cos vexen is only in the keychains, alas! But i do really love these ones! Theyre apparantly made by funko pop but dont have the art style AT ALL, they just look like really accurate versions of the characters in mini form. Its kinda like the 'distance animation' style in steven universe? (Incidentally they also do SU ones but they missed the opportunitu to actually use the distance style, lol) I got a Sora in his kh2 outfit and i'm decently happy with that, its not one i really wanted but its not a bad one either. But i think now i've tried the fun of surprise once i'll just buy the actual ones i want off ebay later. They have roxas in his organization outfit! With a happy smile!!!

Oh oh and then EVEN MORE XBOX GAMES OF THE WILD THRIFT STORE VOID! i managed to find the whole fable series, two assassins creeds, saints row, gta, some misc shooter games and racers that she wanted but i dont know much about, mass effect 2 and ff13. I think maybe one or two others cos i cant fully remember right now. Theyre all in separate bags strewn across the room and my shoulders feel like death so i'll sort through them later.

Aaaand i wrote up like 14 paragraphs more but tumblr didnt save my draft fpr some fuckin reason and now im way too tired to do it again

Briefer summary:

* had a huge horrible panic attack getting stuck in a skyscraper shopping centre clothes place full of screaming and every perfume smell and WHY DO I HAVE TO NAVIGATE THIS HELL MAZE TO FIND THE ESCALATOR and seriously i was my most primal animalistic self and i went full fight or flight on this bitch

* had a lovely time visiting Cool Shop Grandma and rambled the story of how i met her and how we became friends but hhh too tired to rewrite. But anyway today i gave her a christmas pikachu plush as thanks for everything and cos her shop is moving on to its next location soon. She got really teary and gave me a big hug! She's gonna be at a comic con in march so i hope i'm able to go to that and see her again.

* went on a wild goose chase looking for harry potter merchandise and eventually found a gold plated replica of the movie prop version of the time turner and HELL YES my sis will love it!

* rambled about several market stalls that were cool but i can make a separate post about that in the morning when i find their contact details to advertise them

* got a plushie delibird and decided to take selfies with it everywhere to try and fight my social anxiety somehow. We went to a neat lil restaurant and had cheesy fries and a coke float!

* asked for a refund on an item for the first time ever and im proud of myself

* went off on a mystery bus trip to buy a preowned 3ds and pokemon games from a lady in an online preowned stuff facebook group and it didnt go horribly and i am glad! She was really nice and i witnessed A Good And Smart Parenting Moment and man it healed my heart and i wish i'd been raised that way. Again i'll probably ramble about the details later when im less tired, it really touched my heart seriously! And now i have MANY GIFTS FOR SIS!

* in total i was out present shopping from 9am to 8pm and i clicked my shoulder out of its socket for a split second from.all the heavy bags. Now im in a lot of aches and i need a sleeps

The End

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metalandmagi · 6 years ago

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August Media Madness

Well, August may have sucked for me personally, but that doesn’t mean I didn’t keep track of all the media I consumed this month! And spoiler alert, I watched a lot of movies involving adorable talking bears. Although, I have a feeling that as soon as the fall television premieres start, I’ll be watching a lot less movies.

July’s media

Movies!

Dear Evan Hansen

Thank you bootlegs. This isn’t a movie, but I didn’t want to make a separate category for plays when I’ve only seen one this month. Anyway, if you haven’t heard of it, Dear Evan Hansen involves an incredibly anxious teenage boy who is tasked by his therapist to write motivational letters to himself. Unfortunately, Connor Murphy, an angsty boy who goes to Evan’s school sees one of the letters, takes it, and promptly decides to kill himself, with the letter still on his person. Everyone ends up thinking he and Evan were friends and that this letter was a suicide note that Connor wrote to Evan...and a beautiful fake gay relationship friendship was born. Call me basic as hell, but I’ve watched this show twice now, and listened to the soundtrack more times than I can count, and it’s turning into my favorite musical. There are so many important messages in it, and it takes you on a roller coaster of emotions. Every character does good and bad things, and no one is blameless or innocent...except maybe Zoe Murphy. If anything just listen to the soundtrack. 10/10

Night on the Galactic Railroad

Cats...on a mystical train...This seems like the kind of movie they would show you in film school. Very dull plot and characters with the themes being the main takeaway. What even is the plot of this movie? Darker, grittier, furry version of the Polar Express? Incredibly boring slightly more religious version of Over the Garden Wall? I just kept watching it because the main character looks like a cat version of Kagayama Tobio in middle school...cat-gayama. 4/10

Paddington

An adorable bear from South America travels to London and gets into all sorts of trouble with an English family. It’s very charming and sweet, and the aesthetic in this movie is on point, like Wes Anderson directed a children’s movie. This is one of those movies you hear about where everyone loves it, and you think it can’t possibly be that good, but then you watch it and you were wrong! So wrong! 10/10

Paddington 2

Naturally. This time an adorable South American bear goes to prison, and his family tries to clear his name. Again, A+ aesthetic and imagery, but I think I preferred the plot of the first movie a little more because everyone was all together. 9/10

Christopher Robin

Do you like Winnie the Pooh? Do you like jaded adults finding happiness in their lives again? Do you think the movie Hook had a good premise but was extremely long and kinda boring and could have been a better movie with a little tweaking? Well this is the movie for you! Christopher Robin has grown into an overworked adult, and his old friend Winnie the Pooh inadvertently helps him reconnect with his wife and daughter (and also his inner child) just by being the sweet, clumsy, dry humored bear we all know and love. I was so skeptical of this movie at first, and I was absolutely blown away by how funny and meaningful it was. 100/10

The Road to El Dorado

Two lovable Spanish con men named Miguel and Tulio are accidentally swept away on a journey to the fabled city of El Dorado, where everything is made of gold. Once they reach the city, the locals believe they’re gods due to an (un)fortunate series of coincidences, and the con men try to keep up the charade with the help of the best character in the movie, Chel (who I’m pretty sure caused an entire generation of lesbians’ sexual awakening). This is one of my favorite animated movies of all time and one of the reasons I wish Dreamworks would go back to their 2D animation days, where the visuals and music were just as stunning as 3D movies are now. This movie is a classic, and I desperately want a sequel! 10/10

To All The Boys I’ve Loved Before

When Lara Jean thinks it’s a good idea to write 5 secret love letters to 5 boys that she’s had crushes on over the years, everything is fine until her little sister mails the letters to all the boys (because even a 6th grader knows Lara Jean is lonely and emotionally stunted as fuck). This is a Netflix original movie that was adapted from the book by Jenny Han...which I haven’t read, but now I really want to. Overall, this was super cute, but I wasn’t really crazy about the boys. They weren’t horrible people or anything, and they never pressured Lara Jean or made fun of her for being “innocent”, but they were just kind of bland. I’m much more interested in the other boys we didn’t see in the movie! But the family relationships were so heartfelt, Lara Jean’s fashion sense is AMAZING, and the acting/casting was awesome. 8/10

Summer Wars

I...don’t even know how to describe the plot of this one. A teenage boy named Kenji goes on a country holiday and pretends to date an acquaintance of his in order to impress her enormous family...but it’s really about an AI that becomes sentient and wants to mess up the world through this universal internet program called OZ that’s kind of like a mashup of Facebook and Second Life...but actually no it’s about family sticking together and using a Japanese card game to save the world…but apparently it’s got the same plot as the Digimon movie because they’re both directed by Mamoru Hosoda. Yeah...

Guys, I have a confession to make...this has always been my favorite Mamoru Hosoda movie. Everyone falls all over themselves saying Wolf Children is the best Mamoru Hosoda movie, and that’s great for them but it doesn’t even come in second for me. Summer Wars means a lot more to me personally because I come from a big extended family, and when I first saw this movie, I was blown away by how accurate the family dynamic was. There are so many characters, but everyone has their own personality. Not to mention the music makes the summer atmosphere so on point. And I’m not going to lie...I bawled like a fucking baby the first time I saw this movie. So anyway, I like Summer Wars more than Wolf Children, thanks for coming to my TED talk. 10/10

Atlantis: The Lost Empire

Unappreciated researcher Milo Thatch goes on an expedition to find the lost city of Atlantis.

Okay, there are two kinds of Disney fans in this world: Treasure Planet fans, and Atlantis fans. And I will support Treasure Planet as the best underrated vaguely steampunk inspired Disney movie until you can pry my 15 year old dvd copy away from my cold dead hands. But Atlantis is pretty good too. I could write essays comparing the two and why both of them should be successful but weren’t. My main problem with it is that the characters are great, but I feel like we don’t see enough of them, and as a kid a lot of the humor went by so fast that I completely missed it. Also the glowing eyes and spirits taking over the Atlantian princess’s body freaked me the fuck out as a child. NEVERTHELESS! This really is a great movie, with extremely well developed lore and well designed characters that chills me to this day. 8/10

Deadpool 2

The merc with a mouth is back, and man there’s so much going on in this movie I won’t even try to explain the plot. I literally had to go back and add this in because I was so into this movie when I was watching it that I forgot to write it down! Even though I really liked this sequel, I think I liked the first one better, just based on how much I laughed. There was so much going on plot wise, but it really seemed to work for this movie. There were also a lot of great new characters (Domino is my favorite character of the franchise now), but since there was so much stuff going on, a lot of jokes and plot lines were sort of hit and miss. Anyway, I’m sure everyone’s seen this one by now but just in case, I highly recommend it. 9/10

Books!

The Adventure Zone Graphic Novel: Here There be Gerblins by Clint McElroy (technically all the McElboys) and Carey Pietsch

Yeah yeah, for anyone who doesn’t know I’m Adventure Zone trash okay. TAZ is a DnD podcast where 3 brothers and their father create one of the most famous campaigns in history involving three idiot adventurers going on a quest to find a missing person and getting sucked into a much larger grand plan to protect the world. This graphic novel is a visualization of the first arc. I don’t even really like Here There be Gerblins all that much, and yet here I am. Oh well, the art was amazing, and of course I already knew the story. But it was kind of hilarious to see the name changes they had to make to some of the characters and places. I was a little disappointed that the ending was so rushed, and we don’t really spend time around the moon base before The Director is in our face changing the Lunar Interlude parts but whatever. 10 dead gerblins/10

The Darkest Minds by Alexandra Bracken

When a disease that only affects children kills off nearly all the kids on the planet, the survivors are left with supernatural powers and are taken away to concentration camps in order to “protect” the public. I’ve been wanting to read this for a long time, and since the movie just came out I thought it was the perfect time. This is one of those books that some people adore and some people hate. I thought it was just okay. For everything that I didn’t like, there was something to make up for it. Personally, I felt that Bracken focused on the wrong part of the story. Everything takes place years after this disease has come, and I think it would have been more interesting to see everything from the children’s points of view when this disease was first starting. I would focus on each different character as a child and how they wound up in their respective camps. Oh well, there’s way too many pros and cons that I could delve into, but you like the YA dystopian genre then I say go for it. I didn’t like it enough to read the other two books (not yet anyway). 7/10

TV Shows!

Camp Camp

You know how there are summer camps that specialize in science, or acting, or space, or whatever? Yeah Camp Camp is about a summer camp that throws literally everything you can think of into one summer camp. If you don’t believe me, just listen to the theme song. Seriously though this is one of the best shows I’ve watched all year, but boy howdy this is not one for young children. It’s like Gravity Falls and Rick and Morty had a baby! Anyway, the characters are both surprising and hilarious. David the camp counselor (voiced by Miles Luna) is genuinely likable when you think he’d be the most annoying person on the planet, and the kids are so accurate it’s scary. Also Yuri Lowenthal is in it. And Griffin McElroy has a recurring role where he plays A GHOST! I’ve never been into Rooster Teeth stuff, but they have a winner with this one. 10/10

The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel

After her husband leaves her, Midge Maisel gets super drunk, goes on stage, and gives a hilarious rant about her relationship at a small comedy/talent club and somehow gets sucked into becoming a rising comedian as a woman in the 1950s. It’s good. Great acting pretty funny, but Midge and her agent/manager Susie are the only likable characters. Everyone else just kind of...sucks 8/10

Voltron Season 7 (spoilers)

Okay, I know everyone had mixed feelings about this season, but I did come out liking a lot of it. It had a lot of flaws (I really thought it would be Shiro’s season, and man was I wrong), but this is the sort of thing we can’t really judge until the last episode of the series is finished. I like to think of the positives: the action was amazing as usual, HUNK IS GETTING MORE AND MORE DEVELOPMENT EVERY SEASON, I refuse to believe the team introduced Adam just to have him killed off immediately so he’s still alive in my mind, we get to see everyone’s reunions with their families, the lost in space episode was cool, and say what you want about the game show episode, but I loved it! There were a lot of good things so it was easier for me to look past the...not so great aspects of the season. 7/10

Galavant

A musical comedy mini series involving a renowned medieval hero named Galavant on a quest to rescue his ex girlfriend from her “evil” husband King Richard. But maybe she doesn’t want to be rescued. Well, that’s just the first season. It’s best to go in knowing as little as possible. I remember liking it when it first came out, and it’s still pretty cute...but sometimes I feel like it’s trying too hard. A lot of the music isn’t really...memorable, but the characters are likable so it’s still worth the watch. 8/10

Disenchantment

Speaking of medieval comedies...Princess Bean doesn’t want to get married, mystical elf Elfo doesn’t want to live in an enchanted forest where everyone is happy all the time, and Bean’s personal demon Luci just wants to watch people suffer. Honestly, I wasn’t very into this show at first, but something compelled me to just keep watching, and by the end I was totally into it! This is one of those shows where you think there isn’t going to be a plot, but then the last few episodes come up and smack you in the face! 7.5/10

Round Planet

A documentary parody...mockumentary...satire...That’s really not a great way to describe it. It’s a nature documentary with funny commentary. I like nature shots and animals so I liked it, but there’s a lot of tangents and running jokes and British references that sometimes don’t land. Oh well, if you like unconventional documentaries, just watch it. 8/10

Honorable Mentions

DnDnD: I don’t think I’ve ever talked about this podcast before, but there’s a DnD podcast made by Practical Folks (aka the Drunk Disney youtube channel). It’s pretty good! I want an Adventure Zone crossover now!

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild: Every time I think I’m out, it pulls me back in. I finally got the DLC and spent most of this month playing this freaking game AGAIN!

The Heathers soundtrack: I finally listened to the Heathers musical soundtrack...and I didn’t love it. There are some good songs in it, but overall I’m unimpressed. And I never could really get into the plot, I’ve always thought it was really weird and over dramatic.

Legendary by Stephanie Garber: I’m about halfway through this book, which is the second in the Caraval series. And it’s pretty good! More on that next month.

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rainydawgradioblog · 4 years ago

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Our Shitty Taste

Hey everyone! Unfortunately, we’re back again. Below is another disappointing and long un-awaited list of song recommendations from Helen and Thomas! Here, we focused on some great tracks off live album recordings. Hopefully this helps you feel like you’re at the concert of your dreams while stuck within your own personal cyclical quarantine hell!

Thomas’s Recs

Bob Dylan: “But I’ll know my song well before I start singin’”

Also Bob Dylan: “Does anybody know the first verse of this song?”

Of all the albums in the Bob Dylan Bootleg series, volume 6 (Live at Philharmonic Hall) gets less attention than the phenomenal volumes 5 (The Rolling Thunder Revue) and 4 (The infamous “Judas” concert). However, it still deserves praise as it’s a wonderful peek into Dylan’s folk era, complete with funny banter with the audience (such as at the end of It’s Alright Ma where he forgets the opening verse of the next song and has to ask the audience what the opening lines are). The versions of Mr. Tamborine Man and If You Gotta Go, Go Now are also exquisite here, and he also duets with Joan Baez at the end!!! What more could a Bob Dylan fan ask for?!?!?!

Famous for the lack of any studio recordings, Les Rallizes Dénudés are a Japanese band that make music for fever dreams. One of my favorite tracks by them, White Waking, is probably one of their more pleasant and accessible fever dreams, as it’s comparably calmer and less static-y than their other output. A perfect soundtrack for wandering around in a desert while dehydrated and about to die (if anyone wants to do this with me hmu).

Phil Elverum of The Microphones has a knack of writing serene, beautiful songs, and the opening track of Live in Japan, Great Ghosts, is no exception. This album seems to be recorded in a small, intimate setting, which provides a sense of warmth in the atmosphere of these songs. Later on in the album, Elverum also sings Silent Night very erotically. If, like me, you fantasize about Phil Elverum, this album is a must listen.

As a Magnetic Fields fan, I prefer Stephin Merritt’s voice over Susan Anway’s, the vocalist behind their first two albums. I also prefer my sad songs not to be interrupted by obnoxious bells and xylophones. This makes it most unfortunate that the only recordings of Merritt singing their masterpiece, 100,000 Fireflies, xylophone-free only exist on Youtube where the entire audience can be heard, loudly reacting to each line. However, this doesn’t take away the beautiful imagery and depressingly poignant insight that the song offers, made even more poignant here due to the sparser instrumentation. Such insights that Merritt provides include the fact that playing a mandolin makes you want to kill yourself, and that whispering is the best form of communication.

Do you like electric guitars? Do you like twenty minute songs? Do you hate Spanish Conquistador Hernán Cortés? If you said yes to all of these things, then Built to Spill’s cover of Cortez the Killer is meant for you! This remains one of my favorite Neil Young songs, and this cover captures what makes the original so excellent. With fifteen minutes worth of hypnotic guitar jams, Built to Spill expands on the Neil Young classic in terms of length and composition, giving everyone what they wanted - more of something amazing.

Helen’s Recs

This Sam Cooke live medley is a mix of his songs “You Send Me”, “Try a Little Tenderness”, and “For Sentimental Reasons”. Cooke starts this medley by playfully walking the listeners through his decision on what to sing, joking that men tend to “neglect the ladies”, before delving into some love ballads. Sam Cooke is a great romantic crooner with strong and expressive vocals that immerse you in his performance, so it’s no surprise that his live performances add a particular edge to his original compositions. This is a fun album, and this track in particular is extremely sweet!

Choosing one song off of Donna Summer’s “Live and More” album is tough because this is an incredible album that showcases Summer’s incredible presence as a performer, while still shedding new light on old compositions. However, her vocal talents are really exemplified in her cover of “The Way We Were”. As a song in general, “The Way We Were” gives ample room for a singer to demonstrate their talent, and Summer does just that. Summer conveys a romantic melancholy of an unrealized future with the one she loves and is therefore able to capture the song’s heart, and our ears.

Jeff Buckley’s cover of Bob Dylan’s “If You See Her Say Hello” does my favorite thing a cover can do, it completely shifts the way a song can be sung and interpreted. Buckley slows it way down, zeroing in on vocals as a means of interpreting and expressing the song’s central disappointment, i.e. love lost. Though it has a slow start, this song is really worth listening to in its entirety. It’s a great interpretation of Dylan and representation of Buckley’s musical focus.

Tom Waits’s “Better Off Without a Wife” takes a more cynical approach to romance than the above songs about yearning and longing. Waits rejects romance completely, illustrating the benefits of his predicament by naming situations where his life is improved by being single and loveless. If you ever wanted to simulate the feeling of being a two-time loser sullenly getting drunk at a bar in the comfort of your own home, this song (and album) are for you!

Ms. Lauryn Hill’s “Mr. Intentional”, from her MTV unplugged session, represents an alternative side to Hill. We get to hear a more folksy version of her, and the bare-bones acoustic sounds work in her favor. Though obviously a great singer, what stands out about this song is the stripped down performance and powerful lyrics. Hill explains the devious forces money, ambition, ego, and irresponsibility can play in an individual’s life. She claims that there is something greater out there to guide herself--or the listener-- and it is from someone “unprofessional”. She herself can best give something that is “not material”. Hill seems to be alluding to a more spiritual form of life and understanding. This is an interesting and emotive song about dealing with vice. It’s a great live performance and release from someone with an already impressive song catalogue.

So yeah, those are our recommendations for this week! If you have limited self-respect, then listening to all of these songs is a MUST. See you all soon for our next takes for our Shitty Taste!

(Image is from a wild and crazy Phil Elverum concert. Gnarly stuff!) (Link to our first post)

#thomas #helen #our shitty taste

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