#while house is the protagonist of his own movie as usual

[brotherdusk]

bud was ready to throttle house with his mind by the end of that meeting

[slasher-dasher]

Hi hi!

Are you able to write headcanons for Bo Sinclair, Billy Lenz, Billy Loomis, Pyramid Head, with a fail girl or a Girlfailure s/o? Or something like that?

In the movies/games they’re in, the protagonist is usually innocent, resourceful, and morally good. So how would they be with a person who has committed some terrible action (killing a person close to them by accident or selfish reason), is kind of a loser, pathetic-ish, etc. They’re good with weapons, and survive literally anything though. They try to compensate for what they did often, and feels like helping them or doing what the slashers say does that.

Very grateful of their love, and the type to say “I would die for you!” Instead of “I love you” like a normal person. I was thinking of James Sunderland and Michael Afton, and my mind came to this, haha.

Slashers w/a Girlfailure S/O

︶꒦꒷꒦꒷꒦꒷꒦꒷꒦꒷꒦꒷♡꒷꒦꒷꒦꒷꒦꒷꒦꒷꒦꒷꒦︶

Bo Sinclair:

Bo has led a bunch of people to their waxy deaths, and he was intent on doing the same to you

How you were able to avoid literally every trap set around town baffled him to the point where he took matters into his own hands

He was even more surprised to see that you had done the same to one of the statues that had gotten a little courageous and tried to escape with you

"Darlin' you are so goddamn pathetic" "You mean it? 🥺" You've been his ever since. Bo rarely lets you out of his sight because he likes to watch you fumble with all the tasks/chores he gives you

He does put your knowledge of weapons to good use when the victims escape. He sends you "on the hunt", as he likes to call it, and often stays back to watch you work

Billy Lenz:

You're the first to figure out that he's up in the attic purely by wandering up there to grab stuff out of storage (he immediately tackled you). You surprised him by actually being able to fight him off!

Sometimes he likes to call just to see what he can get you to ramble about (or confess); he was very caught off guard when you started using his own tactics on him and promptly hung up the first time. You didn't hear from him for a few hours--

Billy is almost always on your heels; there have been many close-calls with the other members in the house and his hiding places get more creative every day

The difference between you two is that Billy is very reactive when he feels his guilt, where you internalize it; Billy kills to defend/on impulse and you kill to protect/by choice.

I think it's very clear that you and Billy harbor a similar guilt- Killing does distress and upset him and although it's subtle, he sees the same in you too. He appreciates when you try to help him, and he tries to help you too! But neither of you end up feeling any relief

Billy Loomis:

He picks on you often, sometimes to get a reaction (affectionate) and sometimes to be an asshole (derogatory)

Billy likes to toy with your guilt by making you help him with his calls, specifically by being on-scene and waiting to strike. He would never admit it, but he was a little jealous that you were better at chases than he was

"But Billy you told me to cha-" "I didn't tell you to almost get killed!! You might be good with a knife but I won't help you if you get caught."

Loves to admire you after a chase. He knows the look in your eyes because it's the same one in his, patches up any scrapes or stabs while calling you an idiot for almost getting caught, admires and even compliments your strategy, it's when he's the most honest.

Billy doesn't expect you to atone for anything. Just follow his plan and don't get caught. He's making you into a perfect partner in crime~

Pyramid Head:

Silent Hill is known to have visitors who are looking for a way to compensate for their sins, so he's not surprised when you come looking for the same thing

What Silent Hill is not known for is having visitors who can fight back. Most try to grab a pipe to defend themselves but you, you were either very lucky or very resourceful.

Every time he thought you were done for he'd be pleasantly surprised with the improvised weapon you grabbed appeared seemingly out of thin air in front of you

He liked to watch you fight off a group of monsters before intervening, it wasn't much fun when you got overwhelmed

Often carries you back to safety. Many of the monsters and residents learn that Pyramid Head is not far when you are nearby so they eventually learn to steer clear of you

(James Sunderland is v girlfail-core so I absolutely get it)

[all-souls-matinee]

BONUS Halloween in August/September Review: Alien: Romulus (2024)

[Eschewing my usual format of 1-2 sentence summary + 1-2 paragraphs of thoughts, this one will be a combination to include several spoilers. It also assumes some prior knowledge of the Alien franchise]

Going into Romulus I was leery of how video game-y the trailer felt and the choice of a director best known for 'subverted expectations' home invasion horror, but those were the two aspects of it I ended up really liking. The premise is that a group of 20-somethings are stuck in an intergalactic mining town where the amount of missions they must fly hours they must work to gain an emigration permit is raised by a few years each time they reach their goal. Our protagonist, Rain, is told by a friend that he and his crew have discovered the wreck of the Nostromo floating above them and plan to break in and steal its cryochambers; the last thing they need for their own ship to make an escape into deep space. The crew welcomes her, but admit that what they really need is her adoptive brother Andy, an ill-liked synthetic who can access the Nostromo's controls. So far so good, I love this premise! It's a little YA dystopia, we've got a ragtag group of mining orphans that look like TikTok influencers and don't have personalities, but that's okay- acceptable and even expected for an Alien movie. I'm also not here to clutch pearls over the sanctity of the original; everything that follows plot-wise is good stuff! Reminiscent of video games, yes, but that means lots of clever little item pickups and interactions, and the tension-building is excellent. An early example: while collecting cryofuel half the team is trapped in a room full of slowly thawing, unseen facehuggers. The other half must retrieve a master-key computer chip from Ash's body (left over from the original mission) to pass to Andy, who is then stuck in reboot mode and unable to help until a critical moment, and this all filmed brilliantly with great effects. There are several standout scenes like it; the movie feels connected to the rest of franchise while contributing new ideas- playing with gravity and temperature and electricity as both weapons and stumbling blocks. It looks good, I like individual plot beats (including the contentious climax), I love the multiple dead rat puppets that are here for some reason, but this is also the only movie I've considered walking out of.

No one barring David Jonsson (Andy) can act, and chemistry is nonexistent. We're told that the crew is composed of friends, siblings, cousins, and love interests, but never actually see it, and no matter how good the plot and pacing are on paper that really makes things drag in places. I like the aliens and love the androids in these movies, but at the end of the day I've always ended up rooting for the humans because of the empathy on display. Many of the Aliens are objectively worse than Romulus from a filmmaking perspective, but this is the first one where I wanted the bad guys to win.

The main villain of this movie isn't the aliens, it's Ash. I was spoiled on CGI Deepfaked* Ian Holm going in, so when they boarded the Nostromo and saw his body I rolled my eyes and braced myself for a scene where he comes to life like a haunted house prop and then they kill him or whatever, but no, he sticks around and drives the entire plot. It's awful; I don't even hate this one from a writing perspective it just feels insanely disrespectful (and is distractingly bad to look at.)

3. The Green Mile is one of my most hated movies of all time. I revisited it early this year when the podcast Just King Things discussed the book within the context of Stephen King's larger body of work, which stresses the character of John Coffey not as an aberration but a trope King keeps coming back to: a black or disabled person who is a holy innocent. Physical prowess and/or magic powers are coupled with the disposition of a character like Of Mice and Men's Lennie or Flowers for Algernon's Charlie to create someone who looks scary but is actually worthy of love because, hey guys, he's nice and sympathetic in a way that appeals to an imagined white American audience. Months after listening to that episode I accidentally walked into an even broader literary context, discovering the character of Jean in E.E. Cummings's The Enormous Room (a nearly 1:1 blueprint for Coffey), and Pip in Moby-Dick, a child traumatized to a point of babbling incoherence that allows him to act as a holy conduit, a prophet, and a comfort to his captain. These characters aren't meant to be racist but rather to teach about antiblack racism, which makes for interesting reading, but a terrible Alien movie.

Andy is the only black character in this film. Andy is referred to as Rain's brother at most twice, then revealed to be her servant (literally programmed by her father to do two things- protect her and make dad jokes.) Andy is cognitively and physically disabled from being rebooted so many times over the years, and faces extra abuse and discrimination because of this. I cannot begin to describe how it felt to have spent the year bumping into saintly black characters in media who are dehumanized in order to teach some vague platitude about humanity, only to run into it again here. It gets worse and more muddled when Andy is rebooted using Ash's chip, which makes him "normal," which makes him evil. Ash uses him to further the interests of Weyland rather than his sister/master Rain and it makes him start saying scary inhuman stuff like 'the solution to the trolley problem is to kill as few people as possible.' (Again, go bad guys.)

I know the movie doesn't see itself as racist. Andy is by far the most interesting character and has a lot of complexity to him; Rain's whole arc is learning that no one should have seen him as expendable or treated him as an inferior, and tells him his new prime directive is to live for himself (as well as her. Can't leave that on the table.) Alverez clearly had the best of intentions, but the movie can't get away from the fact that Andy being cognitively impaired and using his strength and powers to the benefit of some random white girl, choosing family over work but also the individual over the collective, was actually what made him human.

Okay rant over. I liked the part where they threw a flair and the facehuggers scurried after it like a pack of dogs because they hunt by body heat and movement instead of by smell and vision. Yay :-)

*Holm was deepfaked 'respectfully' with the consent of his family using a combination of animatronic and a new actor... and the company literally responsible for deepfakes (https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-features/alien-romulus-ian-holm-rook-ash-ai-1235982350.) I cannot stress enough how bad this is to look at for almost 2 hours like i needed to talk about Andy but jesus christ.

[mixtape-racha]

it's a scream, baby | hyunlix

chapter twelve: what do you want?

words: 1.67k // warnings: graphic character death, cursing, blood

OFFICIAL GHOSTFACE KILL COUNT: 009

it only took jisung a split second to grab (y/n)’s hand and start dragging her across the house running, so fast that they had no time to register if changbin and hyunjin had done the same. luckily, changbin’s house was large enough that - as long as they all went at least two separate ways - they should be able to lose the intruder in the maze of corridors and doorways.

there was no hesitation in either of their limbs as they began slamming all the doors open and closed that they could, praying a distraction would give them their few crucial minutes to get out of the house and away. (y/n)’s heart sunk when they got separated, only praying jisung would run towards the nearest exit instead of up the stairs, like the protagonists in movies usually do.

the back door was right in her sight, so close she could almost taste it. the proximity made her slow down unconsciously, but the second she saw a whip of black in her peripheral vision, she forced her limbs to move as fast as they would carry her - out of the door and towards the trees lining the woods next to changbin’s house.

she knew if she just pushed herself a little bit further, her limbs carried her a little further forward, she’d find the den. the den, in fact, wasn’t a den at all. it was changbin’s childhood hideout - a glorified shed that changed decor as he grew and his personality changed with age. it used to be full of comics and hotwheels cars, then video games and alcohol he’d snuck from his parents liquor cabinet, to what it was now. music equipment, a sofa that pulled out into a bed in case he couldn’t pull himself away from his work.

deep down, she knew it was cowardly. she was running - not even waiting for her remaining friends. but was it a bad thing to be selfish? this was literally a life or death situation, and no one could blame her for prioritizing her own safety. the second her legs crossed the threshold, she bolted the door closed, pulling all the curtains across and keeping the den as dark and quiet as she possibly could.

her phone, which she was surprised hadn’t fallen out of her pocket, was nearly dead. only 3% - there was no way she could call for help or check on the boys without her phone dying on her. she figured if she waited in the den until sunset, the killer might have given up. they might - just maybe - think she’d run away far enough and either gone looking for her away from the house, or run away in fear that the police had been alerted. she had no idea where hyunjin, changbin or jisung were, and the anxiety she felt was almost sickening.

when the skies began to darken, and the sun started to set, (y/n) lifted herself up from the ball she’d tucked herself into and forced herself to venture towards the exit of the den. the world was quiet - too quiet - and she knew that things could all go south very quickly and she could be claimed as the killer’s newest victim if she wasn’t careful.

all the lights in changbin’s home seemed to be off as she approached, and based on the lack of reaction when the back door squeaked open she assumed she was alone. she wasn’t sure whether she really did want to be alone or not though - while on one hand being alone meant she was safe, not having anyone by her side to comfort her was making her anxiety spike to new extremes.

while she was locking all the doors and windows, she found changbin’s father's gun hidden in a desk drawers in the entryway hall. while she had never actually shot a real gun - only paintball guns or bb guns - she quickly realized it would be smart to keep it on her person, just in case. holding it close to her chest, she peeked out the front window and noticed changbin’s car was nowhere in sight, assuming he had managed to get away before the intruder attacked. she just hoped he had taken hyunjin with him, and found jisung somewhere along the way.

she was fast to plug her phone into the first charger she saw, knowing not that she was alone she’d need her phone available to call the authorities at the first opportunity. the house was deadly silent, and she couldn’t bring herself to think about eating as she poured herself a glass of water from the kitchen. she was restless, worried about her friends, mapping out changbin’s house in her head to figure out the best escape plan when she needed one.

it was only when she heard a thud near the front door that she was shaken out of her trance, gun grasped firmly in her hand as she headed towards the noise to investigate. her phone had turned on now, flashing with notifications signaling how many calls and messages she had missed while holed up in the den all day.

there was another thud by the door, and she jumped at the noise. a gasp escaped her throat as she peered out the peephole and saw hyunjin on the other side - and honestly, she looked a mess. bruises and cuts spread across his gorgeous skin, like he’d fallen in the woods or been dragged through a bush. there was drying blood on his cheeks, and he kept looking over his shoulder and muttering as if he was worried about being followed.

“fuck! fuck, why is this fucking door locked… shit. shit, where does he keep his spare key?” he cried, wiggling the handle with suck force that (y/n) jumped away from the door in shock. taking a deep breath in, she reached for the lock and turned it, in her fear, debating whether to let him in or not.

before she opened the door, she cleared her throat and called out.

“hyunjin? hyun, is that you?”

the boy suddenly went silent the other side of the door, before letting out what sounded like a relieved laugh.

“oh my god, (y/n)! thank fuck, i was so worried about you!” she could hear the smile in his voice as he spoke back to her through the door. “open up, i’m not sure how far off i lost the killer. i– i can’t lose you too, and i don’t want you to watch me die.”

despite all her instincts, there was something in (y/n)’s gut that told her not to open the door - probably the fear of her friends, especially when no one except them knew they were headed to changbin’s house a few days prior.

“did he follow you? please, hyun, i can’t risk letting him in, too…” she asked carefully, not wanting hyunjin to get defensive if he thought she was accusing him.

a pound of the door rung out, causing (y/n) to jump in fright again.

“god, (y/n), i swear, please let me in! please, i don’t want to die, i don’t–” hyunjin’s words were cut off by another thud against the door, followed by a guttural moan and a choked out call of her name.

without another thought, she swung the door open and gasped in horror. hyunjin was being dragged away from the door by his legs, hands grabbing into anything within reach that might give him a hope. there was a pool of blood on his forehead, beginning to drip, matching a splat of blood on the front door.

a choked sob left (y/n)’s throat, but her legs felt like they were glued to the floor with the way she couldn’t force herself to move and chase after hyunjin. he looked up at her with such despair and worry in his eyes, that she couldn’t stop the tears from falling from her eyes.

“no!” she cried as the masked killer pulled hyunjin up onto his knees by his hair, her eyes zeroing in on the knife in the masked figure's hand. “no, please! please, kill me! kill me instead, please, not him!”

the figure tiled its head as it stared at her, and she could feel the way whoever was under the mask smirked at her crisis. im fact, he didn’t look away from her once as he pulled hyunjin’s head back, his throat on display and raised the knife.

in one swift movement, the figure slid the knife across hyunjin’s throat, and (y/n) watched in horror as blood began pouring down the font of his white shirt. bile rose in her throat as the figure threw hyunjin’s torso back towards the ground, the boy hitting the gravel with a thud that made her stomach turn.

she didn’t even allow the figure the chance to move towards her, suddenly remembering the gun in her hand and shooting at the figure with no aim and no qualms in killing a man to save her own life. unfortunately, given her overwhelming emotions and lack of experience with guns, she didn;t cause enough damage to stop the rampage of killings, but was close enough to watch the figure fall to the ground clutching their shoulder in pain.

she sprinted towards the garage next to the house, knowing changbin’s had a motorbike in there, which always had its keys kept on the seat. she’d ridden his bike before, and knew as long as she was fast enough she could get to the police station without the figure intervening.

wiping her tears away, she couldn’t even bring herself to look at hyunjin’s body as she rode past, an overwhelming guilt settling within her as she forced herself to get the bike to a speed that was most definitely illegal. the police would help, she knew it. she could get there in 10 minutes if she was lucky.

she just prayed no one else would die before she did.

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[thesynthesist]

Foiled: How Do We React to Fate? Sophie vs Howl

So I just got around to reading the book Howl's Moving Castle, which I've meant to do for quite a while now and I have thoughts! This will have nothing to do with the movie so here's your warning to get off now if that's what you're looking for.

So our protagonist is Sophie, an Eldest Child, who worst than generally being the eldest, is also the eldest in a land that runs on fairy tale rules, where the eldest is often a failure in a quest, especially when you have two younger same gender siblings, as Sophie does.

One of the first things we learn about Sophie is that she has resigned herself to this and her life of labour and unimportance. We also learn that Sophie is kind and empathetic almost to the point of her own detriment - it appears part of the reason she has resigned herself to this fate is on behalf of her sisters whom she genuinely cares for. She doesn't begin to show any bitterness about her position until she is essentially the family hat shop's sole overworked employee who is not receiving a salary.

Once she confronts her step mother about this and truly doesn't receive an answer is one of the first times we see Sophie really experience a lasting negative emotion directed at another person but this doesn't really come to anything besides Sophie getting a bit rude with customers who are rude first. Sophie does not think of leaving the shop, in fact we don't even get any clear indication that she intends to bring the wage conversation back up with her step mother any time soon. In fact, when Sophie runs into her step mother again later in the book, she reacts with her usual empathy rather than feeling upset that being left alone in the shop was ultimately what got her cursed in the first place.

It's only once the Witch of the Wastes curses her that Sophie decides she's had all about the resignation she can manage and sets out of her own. While her change in form is both reflective of how Sophie sees herself - a person without a life before it's even begun - it also gives her an excuse within how she believes fate to work to go off. After all, once you've been cursed by a witch to be elderly when you've maybe lived the better part of two decades, how much more failing can you really do? Even as Sophie sets off to 'find her fortune' as she puts it, she's in part only doing so because now she believes fate will allow it. She has stepped out of the eldest sister role at the start of the story and into a completely different role entirely. This may also be why Howl remarks he decided Sophie 'liked being disguised'. If Sophie returns to her youth, to herself, even if that may have physical benefits and add 60 years back onto her life, in her mind she returns to being trapped by fate, destined to be lonely and overlooked. Even when she's doing magic and actively improving the lives around her, she internally laments how her efforts are not enough and doomed to failure because of her position as first born.

Then there's Howl.

Howl is immediately painted as someone on the run from everything. He doesn't like to answer questions directly and will ignore them or change the subject, he's only in love with women until they love him back and then he no longer cares. He reacts to responsibility and day to day concerns such as cleaning, with an air of flippancy and seems to put his appearance above all else.

In fact, he wants to be seen as so unreliable that he has rumours spread about himself so people will think he's evil and not bother coming around. Howl himself admits that he doesn't like to be pinned down and we find out later that he is both physically and metaphorically on the run from a curse.

Even as he treats his apprentice well and goes out of his way for Sophie, and returns to visit his family on a regular basis, he persistently puts on an air of irresponsibility. His sister despairs that he'll never clean up his act when he shows up at her house in a rugby jacket, but we see moments before that Howl magically changes the clothes that they're wearing. He could have presented himself to his sister with as much flair and vanity as he does in the world Sophie is from but he makes the consistent choice to show up to his sister's house as a bit of a shlub.

Despite appearing to be polar opposites Howl and Sophie have one very important thing in common, they have both accepted fate as a force that moves the world that they will be subject to. And even with the character growth they both experience, which appears to be largely switching perspectives on fate and responsibility with Howl stepping up to take responsibility for things that need doing even if that leaves him fated to ruination, while Sophie rages against the unfairness of it all and seeks a way out, even if it isn't for herself.

This shared view drastically shapes both Sophie and Howl's characters and how they interact with the world around them, even though this belief is not grounded in reality. The book presents Sophie's sisters and to some extent Howl's apprentice as examples of how this world despite its magic is not so much beholden to fate as it is to other people's expectations.

Sophie's sisters, instead of accepting their lots which Sophie feels are appropriate for their birth order and likely fated roles because of it, simply switch places and get along quite famously. To top it off, instead of the youngest falling in love with or even seeking to marry royalty she falls in love quite happily with Howl's orphaned apprentice, while the middle sister handily side steps her 'fate' of falling desperately in love with the disreputable wizard Howl.

Even with these examples right in front of them, Sophie and Howl cannot shake their internalized perceptions of what they should be.

Sophie, while visiting her sister's witchcraft tutor, is asked if she's where her sister gets magic from as it runs in families. Despite being told almost directly to her face that she has magical powers, it's not until chapters later after being told again that she accepts it, and even longer for her to fully claim it and begin actively working with the power she possesses.

Whereas Howl refuses to pay attention long enough to his curse or the Witch of the Waste to really do anything about it. He knew Sophie had magical powers and knew that his own were quite formidable, and his gallivanting about - in part to keep up the appearances that he was a good for nothing self indulgent irresponsible man - and in part to actually be self indulgent most likely worsened how bad the fight was as it gave the Witch of the Waste more time to prepare and gave the curse enough time catch up with him.

Yet this paradigm is also what allows Sophie and Howl help each other. While they might not understand why the other reacts like they do, on some level they recognize what they're reacting to is the same. While Sophie doesn't understand her magic enough to suggest anything direct, she does take the curse seriously because the way the story goes it will be a problem that needs dealing with. She might not be able to do magic but she can deal with problems head on, that's what being the eldest and responsible is about. Howl might not be able to understand why Sophie wants to look like an old woman but he understands why disguises are important and is willing to give her a place where she can escape the fate that she thinks is following her.

So while Howl and Sophie are incapable of seeing themselves and what they are truly capable of clearly, they are perhaps the only two people in the narrative who are capable of fully seeing each other.

[tsuchinokoroyale]

I’d love to hear more about your thoughts on JJK. Admittedly, I’m not well versed in shonen, so I never even considered that it was trying to subvert the genre.

P.S. Thank you for the consistently thoughtful takes and hot ass 😘

Ooooo boy I hope you’re ready for a whole ass essay 😎😎😎

Shonen as a genre has changed over time as any art form does, but it is still mired in tropes that can be traced back to the classics. The shonen genre is thus named bc its target demographic is boys to young men, for our discussion we’ll say teenage boys. While it obviously has big appeal for other demographics, it is mainly designed to both appeal AND communicate life lessons to that crowd of impressionable kids.

Because of this dual function you get this really odd genre full of super powerful special boys who love their friends but have no qualms about slaughtering their enemies. They typically espouse lessons about the merits of hard work, sticking to your beliefs ((so long as your beliefs are beneficial to society at large)), of goodness and friendship triumphing over evil. Look no further than DBZ and Naruto which can broadly be divided into Battle Arcs and Training Arcs, upping the ante for our special boy main protagonists until we literally have them fighting gods as the logical extreme of continuous escalation.

The Standard™ Shonen formula has a boy main protagonist who’s got some sort of motivation that is so ideologically pure that he’s basically impossible to defeat. Goku loves to fight, Naruto wants to be hokage, Tanjiro wants to cure his sister and slayer all the demons, etc. He forms/joins a band of merry outcasts with their own tragic backstories and sets out to defeat whatever villain appears for that arc. If they win, arc is over move onto training arc, if they lose, they train, fight and win, then train some more. The fun of the genre comes from the colorful side characters, and the little twists that come with each battle system, which brings us to Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure.

At the time JJBA was being published, the big influence on manga was big beefy male led 80s action movies and Fist of the North Star, a manga about a beefy martial artist named Kenshiro going around beating baddies in a post apocalyptic world. Battle systems in Shonen were usually incredibly soft, most tied to physical combat enhanced by some poorly defined life force energy that could be called upon to even out fights and give big climactic finishes, like Ki from dragon ball and their iconic kamehamehas. Even JJBA starts off this way, with our beefy boys learning Hamon/Ripple and duking it out with vampires, til my man Hirohiko Araki was like “mmmm this is kind of limiting. Time to Change Everything~” and he came up with the concept of Stands, incredibly limited psychic/magic abilities that manifest as furries or sexy robots or a Lego version of the White House (?). You can see this idea really grow and expand within the part it’s introduced, going from “fire furry” and “robot knight with sword” to “guy whose stand turns into a ball that immediately erases anything it runs into but he can’t really see what he’s attacking since he has to be inside his stand in order for it to work also his name is Vanilla Ice and he’s a vampire in a thong.”

You can FEEL the impact this had even to this day. Stands became Jutsus in Naruto, quirks in MHA, Nen in HxH, Cursed Techniques in JJK. And part of what made it fun was that it added strategy to the mix! Str8 physical fights are hard to strategize bc it’s basically just a numbers game, right? Like bc his power level is over 9000, it’s going to be a tough time until some plot contrivance and/or training occurs to drive *my* power level over 9000. But now there is an additional layer of *how* these powers interact.

My ability is to blow bubbles and his ability is to turn a single person who comes into contact with bodily fluids into a mindless zombie? Create bubble shields so they can’t splash blood on you. My ability is to fold anything into origami and if you touch the origami you begin to see one object as something else and his ability is an automatic tracking stand that hunts me down by creating face shredding tornados when I breathe? Make a city bus look like my dad ((part 8 is fucking nuts)).

As you can tell, JJBA really burst open the dam on creativity, but as per the examples I’ve given they can often feel very… silly and contrived. The Serious Anime Fan™ will complain and say those fights are full of asspulls, which they are, but that’s very much part of the fun of the series. BUT because diversity is the spice of life, you also get artists who are less interested in adhering to the Rule of Cool and more interested in making things explicitly “logical” which is how we get Hunter x Hunter.

While JJBA dabbles in using stands for characterization, HxH goes HARD into it. Nen abilities are ((usually)) manifestation of their user’s idea of power, creating a direct link between who that person is and what they can do as a result. This is balanced by people having innate Nen types which means the kinds of abilities they can use are limited, though there are rules restrictions and exceptions to this as well. We know all of this bc mangaka Togashi literally gives a college level lecture on Nen in the story, describing how it manifests, how it works, what it can and can’t do, and how individual rules can supersede the basic set of rules and the rules for doing that. I call this style Erudite Shonen, bc bitches be TALKING. In erudite Shonen, powers usually fall on the complex side, even Bungee Gum, which has the properties of both rubber and gum, can be used in insane ways like ricocheting bullets, gluing minors together, and/or cheesing a game of dodgeball and it’s all both shown AND told.

Now where does JJK fall into all this? Listifying the common Shonen tropes we have A Special Boy main protagonist with a pure motive, a crew, goodness triumphing over evil, prioritizing bonds and community over selfish gain, and the winning power of hard work.

Early JJK fits the mold pretty well. Yuji Itadori starts off the series special, with superhuman fitness before he ingests sukuna’s finger at which point he becomes a Naruto analog, where he is strong because he has a powerful spirit trapped inside him. He has the rather off kilter but still acceptable goal of “dying a proper death”. His squad of mentor Gojo, Fushiguro, and Kugisaki is established by episode 3. The villains are cursed spirits who want to eradicate humanity, the good guys are the jujutsu sorcerers who say “no u” to that. Yuji wants to gain power to protect others instead of just becoming powerful himself. And there’s a training arc! Sure, it happens after Yuji gets his heart ripped out, but he’s not even dead that long. Even the powers in early JJK present themselves as pretty simple, Fushiguro does shadow summoning, Kugisaki does hammer and nail resonance, panda, Inumaki does cursed speech.

It wears its darkness on its sleeve however, presenting Junpei as a potential future team member only to shockingly kill him. The whole star plasma vessel incident casts an unflattering light on Jujutsu society. But none of that COMPARES to the shitshow that happens in Shibuya, where JJK finally shows its real hand.

Over the course of the Shibuya arc, we watch our protagonist mount an offense against the villains that have been building themselves up over the course of the show, sacrificing so so much just to ultimately… lose. The Shibuya arc subverts not just idiosyncratic plot beats but story telling traditions as well. “The strongest” loses, multiple fan favorite characters are either taken out of commission or outright killed, the story progression slams the fast forward button as Yuji goes from having ingested 4 out of 20 fingers to 15/20 resulting in mass civilian casualties because his version of the 9 tailed fox is an actual monster, and ((meta-narratively)) worst of all, Yuji doesn’t even get to defeat his arch-rival, Mahito. Instead Mahito is unceremoniously absorbed by other big bad Geto/Kenjaku. It’s supremely unsatisfying and the weight of the tragedy is so immense you wonder how our heroes are gonna come back from this.

And thus begins the “deconstruction” phase of JJK. Cuz they just… don’t. As dark as Shibuya got, a standard Shonen would then go on to give the heroes a big fat W, some sort of come back after all that. But not JJK! Bc JJK is subversive 😏 this means the fact that the story is super unsatisfying is like, the point mannnn. This isn’t the worst thing that can happen. Chainsawman is also a story of major L’s and minor W’s and it’s my #1 favorite modern manga series. The difference is in intent, however. Chainsawman works as well as it does bc at its core, it loves Denji. He REALLY goes through the ringer, but it’s all in service of understanding what life is like for someone trapped on the hedonic treadmill and how one can ((attempt anyways)) to break out of it.

And then there’s JJK. It truly feels like the manga is designed to tear Yuji’s self sacrificial mindset to shreds for the sake of making him suffer and for the reader to feel bad for ever feeling like good has to triumph over evil. The real problem is, it feels as if the series is bending over backwards to make this shit happen.

Part of the change over is what was a previously simple-ish battle system goes full Erudite Shonen. There were hints that cursed energy could get more complicated, what with domain completion competition and guaranteed hits and simple domains and that one guys FPS ability I can’t explain. But we go FULL HxH level afterwards. All of a sudden oxygen delivery to the brain becomes important to cursed technique, there’s domain range and boundary fidelity and incomplete domain properties, disruption of somatic components becomes a factor, and… it honestly feels like utter nonsense at times.

Complexity isn’t bad, like I mentioned I LOVE HxH and could probably explain the chrollo-hisoka fight if you gave me a few hours to study, but I could not tell you all the new rules for cursed energy that seem just kind of invented on the spot in random chapters during this back half of JJK. Bc they involve concepts never really mentioned before, it feels like an asspull, like this was something made up to force the situation at hand. Thing is, more of those situations only benefit the villains. You get shit like a character winning a battle at the end of one chapter and then starting the next one to find they were killed off screen moments later, actually. It’s just like yeah it’s subversive, but the reason stories aren’t told like this is bc this shit sucks lmao. I think out of all the plans the heroes make like only a handful of them are actually successful, and even then they get so unwound by the next step in the plan that they may as well have not happened. It doesn’t help that the abilities are so complicated now you’ll get a chapter dedicated to explaining what one guy can do just to have him wiped off the face of the earth the next one.

So the crew is gone, our special boy is actually the most disempowered guy ever except for the fact that he can’t be killed for some reason, the good guys are NOT doing a great job standing up to evil since like 86% of their plans fail or have bad results, a gag character wins one of the most important fights in the story and it’s unironically the best thing JJK has done in a while, and it’s all just a very confusing slog to read. This is the danger of writing subversion for the sake of subversion with intent for contempt, kids 😮‍💨

Granted we aren’t at the end of the story yet so maybe I’ll be wrong and there’ll be like a reset button that fixes everything (( which would also suck )), but yeah. JJK wants what HxH did in the chimera ant arc but forgot that that story was possible bc it was fundamentally about humanity and love, not just the parts about how people suck and goodness can fail.

If you made it this far congratulations you’re entitled to one big kissy on ur forehead from me and barnaby 😚😚😚

[myloveismineallmine]

Just watched It's a Wonderful Life and I have so many thoughts... it's so interesting to compare it to the modern christmas movies we see. Many are those lifetime romances about a business woman who visits her hometown for christmas and gives up her job in new york/seattle/chicago/LA/ insert some other metropolitan city here so she can marry a more "traditional" hometown man and stay in that community. I've seen some people point out how it feels very traditionalist and almost anti-feminist and I'm inclined to agree.

I think they tried to elicit the themes from IWL but got completely lost in the sauce. The protagonist is a man who had always dreamed of traveling the world and getting out of his shitty small town. But multiple times he is given the opportunity to escape to bigger cities, and each time he choses to stay behind. Not because he personally wants to, he craves a life bigger than he has. And not for anything like romance, either. He stays because the community needs him to stand up to corporate greed and be a leader for them. After his brother comes back from school, he is once again offered an opportunity to escape via putting his brother in his position to run the family business. But he lets his brother move away because he sees that his brother has already started a life elsewhere and is very happy. This selfless action is rewarded for the protagonist when his brother later saves hundreds of lives during WW2 and becomes a national hero. The protagonist sacrifices his own honeymoon money so that the community will have enough money to get by when the bank goes under. He is rewarded by getting a brief ego boost when the villain of the film fails to shut down his company. Even when the villain offers the main protagonist a job with high pay to support his struggling family, the protagonist stands his ground and continues to live a poor life while also being able to help people in his community build houses and businesses. The main protagonist is offered many "outs" to live a better life, and yet he chooses to not take them because he is selfless and knows his community needs him.

This is one of the main differences, I think. Hallmark/Lifetime movies think romance is a justifiable means of sacrificing a "better" life. And maybe it is, though I think the actors should have chemistry if they want that to be true. But despite having romance, IWL is not about sacrificing your dreams to get married in a small town. It's about sacrificing your dreams to help build a community and fight against corporate greed. Which is why IWL feels less like a Christian traditionalist propaganda, despite having religious themes. The protagonist does throw away his lofty aspirations, but it's not just for one person, it's to bring a whole community together and to stand up against an actual evil (monopolistic capitalism.) They even show you how shitty things are when there's no one there to do that!

In short. Modern christmas movies usually miss the mark because they want to sell us a very white traditionalist heterosexual romance celebrating America's most consumerist holiday. Any actual critique on the problems within our society= too much of a risk. Too hard to thinky about. Brain hurty from actual deep topics and not just "love good, small towns good, urbanism BAD!!!"

[agentmarymargaretskitz]

Mustache

A little Tech and Phee (Phech?) fic with a heaping side of Bad Batch family feels

AO3

               Tech stared at his reflection in the mirror, razor inches from the shaving foam on the lower portion of his face. Usually, he would have completed the job of shaving without a second thought. Since he’d been able to grow facial hair, Tech habitually remained clean-shaven. Hunter never had anything more than a few days scruff and being the leader and eldest brother, Tech just followed his lead. Vanity served no purpose during a war.

               Yet now, he recollected a holofilm that the community on Pabu had shown primarily for the children down on the beach. Some adults had also attended, including himself and Phee. Tech remembered how her eyes had shown with desire at one protagonist, a long-lost love turned pirate who sported a handsome mustache. He did not recollect most of the movie due to participation in an appropriate public display of affection with his companion, but that look in Phee’s eyes…

What might she think if he adapted a similar look?

               Finally, the clone brought the razor to his face and began the process of shaving the bristles from his cheeks and chin. He could recall the style of the mustache enough to replicate it beneath his nose. Once he washed the remnants of foam from his face, Tech took a moment to examine his handiwork. It would take a while to grow in further and groom, but it was at the very least identifiable. He appreciated the way he looked for a moment before putting the razor away.

               Finishing the final steps to his morning routine, Tech opened the door to the fresher in time to dodge Wrecker’s fist swinging down. His brother managed to look sheepish before frowning at Tech. No doubt he had noticed the alteration made to his features. Tech sidestepped out into the hall, waiting for the reaction of his brother.

Wrecker cleared his throat, pointing to his own face. “You, uh, missed a spot.”

“I did not,” Tech told him. “I’ve decided to try something.”

“Oh,” Wrecker squinted at it. “Not too bad.”

Praise was praise, but it was not Wrecker’s opinion that would be the deciding factor in the retention of facial hair. “Thank you, Wrecker.”

/`\

               Hunter was in the kitchen, frowning over a datapad when Tech came down the steps. Following the events of the sea surge, the squad had acquired a house in Lower Pabu during its reconstruction. They’d managed to split sleeping quarters with Omega, Wrecker, and Tech in two rooms upstairs and Hunter down below. After Echo returned and Crosshair soon after, assignments shifted so Tech roomed with his twin upstairs, Wrecker moved down with Hunter, and Echo took over the couch. It was cozy living quarters, yet it sparked the reconnection and conversations necessary to move forward.

“I don’t think it’s supposed to be this thick,” Hunter grumbled as Tech approached the counter where a bowl of batter rested with a spoon sticking upright.

“What are you attempting to make?” Tech questioned, pushing the spoon through the extremely viscous matter.

“Panna cakes,” Hunter mumbled, still focused on the batter. “Shep gave me the recipe.”

Tech reached across to snag the datapad, scanning through the instructions. “Did you pack the flour into the measuring cup?”

Hunter said nothing, a confirmation that he had indeed done so.

“You will need to thin it out in order to scoop it onto the griddle,” Tech instructed, setting the datapad down. “Wrecker is in the fresher. Where are the others?”

“Omega went to go study outside, Crosshair went for a walk, and Echo went to pick up some fruit,” Hunter listed off, finally lifting his head up and doing a double take. “What’s on your face?”

“It is called a mustache.”

“I know what a mustache is, Tech,” Hunter muttered, adding some water and giving the batter some firm stirs. “Why do you have one?”

The question stung somewhat, but Tech knew Hunter meant no harm. “I’m trying something.”

“Huh,” Hunter gave an approving nod. “Suits you.”

/`\

“So…why the mustache?”

               Tech closed the cabinet where he’d just stacked the washed plates and looked over at Echo. His older brother was busy packing up some leftover fruit and panna cakes (which had tasted decent after Hunter salvaged the recipe) into a container for Crosshair. Tech’s twin had elected not join them for breakfast to continue his exploration of the island. Hunter was going to take off later to go in search of him with the food. Crosshair did this often since he’d returned, and while it was less frequent than his first days, he still went off on his own without leaving a message until the last minute. Tech wished his brother would let them in, but they would only be allowed when Crosshair was ready.

“Tech,” Echo said a little more loudly.

He adjusted his goggles slightly. “I decided I would like to try something new with my appearance.”

“Uh huh,” his brother nodded, propping his arms on the counter. “And this is a decision you’re making for you?”

“Yes.”

“Nothing to do with impressing a certain liberator of ancient wonders?”

Tech reached for the cutlery in the drying rack by the sink. “…no.”

“Tech,” Echo’s big brother voice came out. “You don’t need to change anything about yourself to impress Phee. You shouldn’t have to change yourself for someone’s love.”

“I am well aware.”

Echo wasn’t done yet. “Anyways, she already cares about you, no matter what you look like.”

His face flushed a little. Tech was aware of Phee’s affections for him, but the reminder gave him that lovely little buoyant feeling in his chest. He never tired of the sensation or how the thought of her brought a smile to his face now. She’d left a few days ago on search of another artifact for a family of refuges from Desix. Hopefully, she would be back in the next day or so.

“I am confident in my relationship with her, regardless of my appearance,” Tech told Echo as he sorted the cutlery. “But from an aesthetic perspective, I must ask you a question.”

“You mean you mustache me a question?”

Tech waited for Echo to stop chuckling over his little joke. “Does it appear aesthetically pleasing?”

His brother studied him for a moment. “I’m not one for facial hair personally. Reg manuals were always so strict about what was good to go and what wasn’t. It doesn’t really suit me anyways.”

Tech braced himself.

“But it looks good on you, Tech.”

/`\

For all the compliments and support he’d gotten from his brothers, Tech did worry about Omega’s uncharacteristic silence during his tutoring of her. Granted, she usually did listen and rarely interrupted during the lessons he gave. Now, his sister would not look up at his face, remaining more focused on the novel recommended to them by a Twi’lek couple down the street from their home as being appropriate for Omega’s age. It was like she couldn’t bring herself to really look at him.

It had been a long time since insecurities about his appearance truly bothered Tech. As a cadet, all of Clone Force 99 experienced their share of bullying for how they looked from other clones. It fell within typical growing pains all life forms experienced during their growth and development. Tech learned quicker than the rest of his brothers to value his intelligence over his looks. But Omega’s reaction was starting to bring old feelings back.

“Does my mustache make you uncomfortable?” he asked suddenly.

The young clone glanced up halfway and shook her head.

Despite what Echo had told him in the morning about how he shouldn’t change for others, Tech felt a guilty pang. “Omega, you can tell me the truth. I will not be offended.”

She mumbled something indecipherable.

“I beg your pardon?”

“I’m not used to it,” Omega repeated, making the effort to look up at him now. “You look different.”

Tech mulled her words over. “I suppose I do. It was a spur of the moment decision.”

“Like Hunter’s tattoo?”

“Do not tell him I told you about that,” Tech told her, getting a little giggle from her. “It is not my intention to unsettle you, Omega. I am sorry for doing so.”

“It’s okay. We have to adapt to change, right?”

“Yes, but-”

“You like it,” Omega gave him an earnest smile. “You seem happy with it. I’ll learn to like it.”

He relaxed at that. “Thank you, Omega.”

“And I think Phee will like it too,” she added, winking at him.

Oh, little sisters.

/`\

               By the afternoon, Tech had meandered down to the docks. Lyanna’s boat had been experiencing engine trouble for a few days, so he had offered his services to the Hazards to fix it. Shep agreed and told him he could take it out for a spin too. Despite growing up on an ocean planet, Tech had never driven a boat before. The opportunity to learn was so appealing that he couldn’t resist.

Finding Crosshair down there was just an added bonus.

“Care to give me a hand with some repairs?” he asked when he approached his twin brother.

Crosshair seemed surprised to see him but gave a silent nod of agreement and followed him to the boat. Tech did the brunt of the work while the sniper passed him the tools he needed without a word. His brother’s enhancement might have been in his eyes, but he was smart enough to know which Tech required next. Wrecker had commented once how creepy it was how they could always work together so quietly and know what the other needed, but it never felt that way to Tech.

Once the engine functioned properly once more, Tech looked over at his brother to see if he would be leaving or staying. Crosshair made no move aside from a simple shrug, so Tech started the boat and steered them out into open water. It reminded him of flying the Marauder, except he had to pay more attention to the waves as they glided away from the island.

When they were far enough out, Tech killed the engine and took a seat near Crosshair, leaving a decent gap between them. He had missed his twin so much since that night on Kamino when they left Crosshair behind. While he still could not agree with Crosshair’s decision to stay with the Empire months ago, Tech pondered often if he would have gone with their brothers had he been the one left behind and none of them returned for him. Fortune favored him to never go through that experience though, whereas Crosshair had not been so lucky.

“I really missed you,” Tech spoke at last, turning his gaze away from Pabu to look at his brother.

Crosshair turned towards him. In the weeks since his brother come back, he already looked better than the emaciated husk they’d rescued from Mount Tantiss. Getting him to eat, sleep, and just be human again had been an uphill battle. Now, the sniper was less bony, and his hair was starting to grow back, save for where he’d been burned. Some life had returned to Crosshair’s eyes, although there were days when they looked even more hollow than Echo’s had been after Skako Minor.

“I missed you too,” Crosshair’s voice was only just audible over the waves slapping the boat. “I missed everyone.”

This wasn’t the first time they’d said those words to each other, and Tech had a feeling it would not be the last.

“I want to be family again, but I don’t know how…”

“Crosshair, you never stopped being family.”

A tear fell from the sniper’s cheek onto his pants. Tech reached over to place a hand on his brother’s shoulder, waiting to see if it would be shrugged off or accepted. When Crosshair didn’t bat it away, Tech slid over and wrapped his arms around his twin brother. The gesture was returned quickly, and Tech pushed his goggles up so his tears wouldn’t get caught in the frames.

Once they finally let go, Crosshair cleared his throat. “The mustache is new.”

“I’m trying something new,” Tech admitted. “And…I think Phee might like it. I want to surprise her.”

A little smirk tugged at Crosshair’s lips. “You’re gone for her.”

“I have…a very strong affection for her.”

His twin chuckled. “I’m happy for you two. And it’s a good look.”

“I appreciate the compliment.”

“And it means I can grow a beard now without Hunter saying anything if you keep the lip hair.”

Tech gave him a light punch. “Thank you, Crosshair.”

In the sky above, a ship emerged from the clouds, heading right for Upper Pabu.

He already knew who it was.

/`\

               The sun had begun to set by the time the twins made it back to the docks of Lower Pabu. They paid for a few fish that Crosshair promised to take right home without going for another wander. Tech planned to join him to help with the meal preparation. Unfortunately, Crosshair commed Wrecker so he could get more sway to convince Tech to go show Phee his new look first. Echo and Hunter had then gotten in, urging him to go visit and invite her to dinner.

               Once they finally persuaded him, Tech walked off in the direction of the path along the wall leading to Upper Pabu. He wondered what Phee would think of the mustache. Over the course of the day, hearing the approval from his brothers and the acceptance from Omega made him realize that he liked himself with a mustache. However, Tech now wondered what it was going to feel like on a mission under his helmet. Would he still look like a soldier with this facial hair?

This was why he didn’t do vanity.

               Halfway up the hill, Tech caught sight of someone walking down. The closer he got, the more details he could identify. The blue band tied around her hair. The floral pattern on her shirt. A smile spreading across her face as she picked up the pace to meet him. The buoyant feeling filled him again as he quickened his own steps.

“Hey there, Brown Eyes,” Phee greeted when they reached each other.

“Phee,” Tech held out his elbow to her. “I missed you.”

“You couldn’t wait until I came down to find you?” she teased, linking her arm through his.

Tech shook his head as they started back down to Lower Pabu. “I was planning to comm you later, but my brothers insisted I go and meet you. Echo also said I should invite you to dinner.”

“That’s polite of him.”

               He asked her a few questions about her journey to Desix. It did relieve him to see her in one piece, especially with what Crosshair had told them about the Imperial occupation there. While Tech wasn’t sure that he was a “goner” for Phee, he did want her to be safe in the same way he wanted his brothers and sister to stay safe. She was more than capable of taking care of herself, but Tech still had his worries.

At the base of the mountain, Tech stopped to watch the last moments of sunset with Phee and the lights illuminate in the lower part of the island. It never ceased to be a breathtaking sight, no matter how many times he saw it. While he still considered himself a soldier, Tech felt like an ordinary civilian whenever he took time to enjoy the simple pleasures of the galaxy. To feel normal after growing up in what many considered abnormal always felt so novel. He couldn’t get tired of it.

When he turned to look back at Phee, her hand reached up to cup his cheek, thumb brushing over the hairs of his mustache.

“That’s new,” she murmured thoughtfully.

“Do you like it?” Tech asked quickly.

Phee raised an eyebrow. “Do you like it?”

“My brothers have given their approvals.”

“That wasn’t what I asked, Tech.”

Tech rubbed the back of his neck. “I…noticed you admiring the actor’s mustache in the holofilm the other night. When I needed to shave again, I decided to try and emulate it.”

“And?” Phee prompted.

“I think I like it, although I don’t know how it will feel when I wear my helmet for missions…”

Phee put a finger to his lips. “But you like it?”

“Yes,” Tech nodded. “I do. And not just because I wanted to surprise you.”

A smile bloomed across the pirate’s face as she leaned up to give him a brief peck on the lips. “Good. And it looks great on you.”

“I can always shave it off if you don’t like it.”

“Tech,” Phee lowered her hand to grasp his. “You do whatever you want to do with this ‘stache. There’s no rules. You’re not tied to an army anymore. Pabu is a clean slate. You can grow a mustache, a goatee, scruff or a full beard. Whatever you want.”

He already knew all this, but he loved hearing it again. “I’d like to kiss you again.”

“You can always steal a kiss from me, Brown Eyes.”

               Tech took her up on that, leaning down to give her a proper kiss. Her hand migrated down from his face to his bicep as he intertwined their fingers with the other hand. A laugh escaped Phee midway through the kiss. Confused, Tech pulled back a little.

“It tickles more than I thought it would,” explained Phee. “A good tickle.”

Tech straightened in interest at the new information. “Oh?”

“Oh yeah,” she nodded. “And there’s more places you can tickle when you’re ready.”

Tech was very much a goner for her. “That is something we could test.”

[mysteriouslybluepirate]

Bedrooms and Hallways(1998)-Watching Con O'Neill's old stuff cause it's fun. Day #?

Bedrooms and Hallways

Here we are!

Once again, consuming media I would have otherwise never watched for one guy. As always thoughts at the end.

Warnings: I can't find any official ones but- any genitals are covered by a blanket, knee, or just blurred in the background. Referenced masturbation. Post-coital/foreplay activities. Fighting. Two men making out, generally just friends encouraging their friend to get laid. Don't watch in front of the family. 90s-era comedy, biphobia might be an issue, but that might just depend on the viewer.

Life Update: Just turned 21 yesterday, didn't do anything fun (I've never drank and don't really want to), but rewatched OFMD yesterday for the first time in months with the brother. I just had a good day. This movie has a guy leaving his 'fun' twenties to live his more serious adult life. Accidentally fitting :)

As always I'd love to thank everyone who reads this. The usual suspects, those who've given me notes, and the blogs I love to see who have posted about this movie<3 Y'all make my year just that bit brighter. If you haven't seen this movie, I've also got Con photos here from the movie. So there's that. :)

@mossiestpiglet @thedowneyheart @harryduboisfathog @downinthehull @dianetastesmetal @ivegotnonameidea @gydima @treesofgreen @jaysfandomcorner @joestrummen

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

30? Lovely. Celebrate a bit!

"THE BOYS COME BACK" Yey! 

Oh I love this. CON!!! 

Give that man a surprise party, he's literally asking for one. 

God, Love that our protagonist has a support system. 

God where the fuck are they at, this is a giant apartment. 

I know a few recognizable faces are in this, but I will need to IMDB everyone 

Protagonist being awkward around everyone at his own suprise party is very sweet.

Yeah, they threw a party just to throw a party, but still. Try to have fun.  

Well, I'd love to see more of Con's guy. 

Bro's working on coming out a bit? Good for him. 

IS THAT HUGO WEAVING? ELROND? V? What the fuck??!?! Oh, I'm in for a good time.

Hell yeah, a suit kink is standard. OH HE FUCKS PEOPLE IN HOUSES THAT ARN'T SOLD YET?!?!? That feels illegal in a way. 

Okay, if your going to do something like this, check the upstairs before you fuck.

I'm into the editing, fun and snappy. 

Ha! The way Leo(protagonist) gossips to everyone. 

(talking to coworker)Bro, just communicate in a relationship, seriously. Why do straight men in media just assume relationships are getting complemented every once in a while.

I need straight friends like this. 

I'm concerned with the phrase men's group. 

I've gotten a few chuckles out already. 

I think they're a fun older straight couple. (Men's group.)

Oh, was the first few minutes a jump forward? Lovely. 

CON! TERRY!

God, I want his wardrobe. 

"You sat in a room with straight men and talked about your feelings?" True, I'd be surprised as well. 

Your friend is more Fem presenting and has probably been harassed most of his life. He's found a nice inner circle, don't bash him.

Does this man with a rough voice that washes over you happen to be named Terry? It's not, but what if. 

(Realtor showing a house) Babe, it's housing, it's never really positive. 

"Don't stop now I was just getting moist!" Haaahhaa

(Cut to the men's group) THE HONESTY STONE! I NEED TO DO THIS IN A FIC.

What the fuck is going on here?

"Support his head in a loving way"? 

(guy clearly lying on the ground pretending to be having an exorcism)Me too guy, this is a lot.

I….I want to be in the lady's room. I know why this character is doing this. If he makes a big show of it, he doesn't need to actually genuinely open up.

CON COVERING HIS MOUTH SO HE DOESNT LAUGH

Love that they sat for hours letting this guy go off. 

Leo's turn. "I find a member of the group attractive." (That member being Brenden) WOAH. Babe, bold. This just feels like an easy way to get beat up.

Terry, I have questions. Mainly, how are you swinging babe? I love that he's supportive of Leo coming out almost immediately, if hesitant. 

"He's alright." TERRY YOU BITCH

Call me a prude, I don't think I'd fuck in a pool. 

I love that we see how much these houses cost. 

I also love how supportive his friend is here with this crush. 

I swear if someone dies I'm going to lose my shit. 

SAUNA

OH GOOD LORD! Gender? Envy.

(Then we move on into the women's club's room for a usual meeting. The men all wearing white robes. Terry opens the scene by saying he has a big announcement.)

HELL YEAH TERRY!

IS HE ALSO QUEER?

THE HARPOON?

(Terry, hesitantly, admitting that he jacked off to a magazine filled with men) HELL YEAH TERRY!

GOOD FOR YOU TERRY! (IM ASSUMING) BISEXUAL ICON!

FUCKING YEAH! GOOD ON YOU MAN. 

As someone who also found out about themselves after someone close came out to them. Awww. It's just very sweet. 

God I love terry talking to the women's group leader "cause we've made a mess of it, us men, haven't we." ICON

The drama. Oh, Brenden is a closet case. And Terry, THE GUY WHO JUST HAD THE BALLS TO COME OUT is hitting on HIS man. 

Imagine making a men's support group that turns into a dating agency

Don't be mean to Terry, Brenden. Terry is mean enough to himself. Have you looked at him?

OHHH GET IT TERRY! MAKE BRENDEN JEALOUS! 

HAHAHAHAH HE READ JANE AUSTEN! Rude, but yeah, that shit can be a slog to read.

JESUS FUCKING CHRIST…wait…oh my god. Darren fucking Mr. Collins. That's how I recognize him! OH MY GOD. That was years after this!!!! WTF!?!?!?

OH MY LORD SHORT SHORTS TERRY YOU FIEND. I see the fifth-dimensional chess going on here.

You won't be hunting shit. It's a public forest in England. Order takeout.

How the fuck did they actually catch a rabbit.

Oh, Terry you pathetic little guy. Trapped in a bush.

Terry. 0. Bush 1. Awww he had to change outfits :(.

Yeah, there you go babes. Order food like men. 

Don't dance that close to the fire, also, taking his shirt off is a good move. 10/10.

Brenden, why are you like this. Crawling into his tent, I see you. 

Seriously? Terry walks into camp and thinks he sees the shadows of the two of them(Leo and Brenden) fucking? Just like Ed&Stede with the sword incident. Making Terry jealous and defensive? Great. Love it. 

God Terry's outfits are all looks, sassy bitch, I love it 

Ohh shit. Terry's jealous. 

OHH SHIT! GET HIM TERRY! GET HIS ASS.

(In the car, driving home) AWWWW Terry says he's not ready for hugs yet but in the opening, we saw him hug Leo. :) That's so fucking GOOD. AHH

Oh, we've all had that straight crush we wished was gay. 

So did they actually fuck? Or... 

Terry's fucking side-eye. He's probably happy he gets to flip the script a bit here on Leo with the whole sexuality exploration. 

This isn't going to go well for Leo. 

Obviously respect where people are at, don't force gay people to prove that they aren't just faking it but still. Weird. 

(The roommate trying to 'test' if he likes women) HAHAHHAHAA I love them. This is weird but he doesn't seem too uncomfortable with it. 

(Skipped a few scenes, but Leo and Brenden definately fuck)

Awww Leo's chasing after him to make sure you get his number is cute. AWWWW. 

They're flirting is so fun. Love banter=flirting

Oh does she think she's cheating on him with another woman?

OH HE'S TOTALLY CHEATING THAT'S FUCKED UP. 

Oh God, they know each other. Brenden is dead. Murdered. 

The way that Darren ran over to hear the gossip! HOLY SHIT!

OH SHIT, THE WAY HE'S TRYING TO COVER FOR HIM, DAMN

Okay, he's not cheating, he's actually broken up here. Good. 

No, that's totally a relationship on pause. Good on him for trying to clarify where Brenden is at before pushing it further.

Good on the married couple that runs the groups. "I love being a woman, not because of you, because of me."

Terry do you want to fuck Brennan. That's definitely a look you're giving him. 

Awww! Baby Queers unite!  "Does it hurt?" "You get used to it after a while..." Terry squeezes the pillow tighter "Excellent." Ahh! Love it. 

"*Gong* I've Got something but it's not homosexual so I don't know If you'll be interested" hmm….we'll see John. You're on a tight rope.

I love this therapist guy. Damn. If John's going to be like that, he can just leave.

Leo. Babe, bisexual. The word we're looking for is Bisexual. 

"You are a strawberry blonde. You can't go out with an ash blonde." Me looking at my blond x brunette ship list.

Handcuffs= they're going to get caught. 

(Darren gets caught getting fucked in the girlfriends house, then needs to tell Leo, cause YEAH) "If I'd done something really, really, really, bad…"Ahahahahha Callback

God, I hope everyone pairs up with someone. Especially Terry-

"Why am I always the one waiting for everyone to sort themselves out?" Me too babe

CONFRONT HIM AT WORK. GREAT IDEA. 

THROUPLE, I vote throuple. 2 people have issues communicating, but it could work. 

SHE KNEW, AND DOESN'T WANT HIM BACK. GOOD ON HER

Darren, please put down the knife. You are going to hurt yourself. 

Cut to the party back at the beginning. 

OH GOOD FUCKING GOD. Go hang out with your friends, babe. 

Terry stay away from Brenden. He's has a bad vibe. Also, Glowup! The white coat, the shirt! God. I want his gender.  

Three is a throuple and 2 members here are too irresponsible to manage it. 

Good on her for setting boundaries though. 

The whole kissing friends thing is so weird. 

HA! THE WHOLE WOMENS GROUP IS ALSO SHADES OF QUEER! AHHHH! The older straight couple just loves the gossip. 

Oh, Elrond wants to fuck. Well, at least you tried mate. Good on Darren for trying to stand up for himself, the guy wants a bit of romance. 

OHHHH SHIT! TERRY'S CHEWING HIM OUT!!!!

GET HIM TERRY! CHEW BRENDEN OUT! YOU ARE GOING TO LOSE THIS FIGHT! BUT I WANT IT! 

Oh they absolutely need to fuck, the sheer hatred emanating off of them alone. LOOK AT IT

The two Blondes unaware two idiots about to fight in the backyard. 

God, i actually like/care for all of these couples, it's sweet

1 PUNCH IS ALL IT TOOK. The nose is his weak spot. 

ONCE AGAIN HE'S SAD BLOODY AND PATHETIC

OH MY GOD. Brenden is actually using his pickup line on Terry? OH GOD. 

HAHAHA HIS LOOK TO THE HEAVENS AND QUIET 'YES!' Hopefully they can make it work. But with Brenden back to living with her, who knows. 

Well, another year. Everyone paired off. Leo is letting himself find joy where ever he can find it. Both roommates are getting laid. Good, happy, movie. 

Yeah, that 'hope it's just a phase' joke isn't great.

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

Bisexuality: This film goes into the whole 'are you truly a gay', thing. Overall it ends up with three characters who thought they were one way, realizing they were more fluid than they thought(Leo, Darren, and Terry). Just kind of a fun character exploration film. I'm looking at it in a modern sense. Darren(gay roomate) clings to his identity to find a community whereas Leo feels no need to define it. Both aren't inherently wrong, just different ways of living a life. Personally defining a label wasn't for me, so eh, I get both sides. It was the 90s when this came out and for the time, idk. Sexual fluidity feels revolutionary. I think the point of the movie is, to explore and live your life? I'd love to know how any bisexuals who read this feel about it.

Con: 10/10 God I fucking loved Terry. 

Seeing someone essentially having my same life experience coming out was funny (exploring the idea of being queer after a friend comes out, realizing you have a crush on that friend, but oh shit, crush has already shacked up with a friend in the group). He's such a fucking sweet asshole. Asking for genuine advice, smiling, standing up for a friend. Sure, he wanted to fuck Leo, but he's still someone Leo can trust. I want to rank all of the Con characters based on how alike they are to Izzy. Cause Terry is up there. He's so pathetic, in such a fun way. 

AND GOD HIS OUTFIT CHANGES!

I noticed it in the movie but didn't want to just briefly bring it up to a point, but god it's so good!

The way he naturally relaxes into clothing that just fits his fun personality more. THE SHORTS! After the man comes out, he realizes he wants to fuck Leo, then shows off his legs in shorts! Genius Idea. Beautiful. Then his outfit gets ruined in bushes. GOD. By the end of the movie he settles into a good mix of relaxed and macho. He wears what he's comfortable with and isn't as closed off. It's sweet. 

I am not over Con playing the jealous 3rd in a 2 person relationship. I literally rewatched OFMD yesterday for my birthday. These are very similar people. I love it so much guys. I did this thinking this would help me write Izzy, which it has, but god. I'm just so glad I did to see more queer media.

Everyone else 8/10: Darren grew on me like a leach. His version of Queerness opening up to romance, and legit trying to manage that was sweet. Branden was a 50/50 for me, I had bad vibes with him in the beginning and he never really grew on me. I actually hated Daren's main squeeze, too off putting seeing him here. Loved his other roomie, and the therapist/leader the men's group.  

Story 6-7/10: I liked the ending. This weird year wrapped up and Leo ready to look into his future. With a new, wider, weirder support system filled with more people expressing their Queerness in different ways. I liked it ignoring the 90s comedy beats, weird editing, music. This was just a fun story that ignored the real world for a bit.

Overall: 7-8/10. Personally, I recommend it with caveats. Weird 'we need to separate hetero and homo' stuff, and weird humor definitely from the 90s. I did like 90% of the characters though, and this was a long movie that kept me engaged the whole time. Which is something I can't say about some of Con's other stuff. Again, I'm heavily leaning to one side of the Kinsey scale. I can't imagine how insulting this movie could be if I was more center-leaning. Love to hear yall's thoughts down below <3 I love chatting with yall.

(Also, if I didn't recognize anyone else famous, please yell at me)

(Ranking based on Character/Performance, not on project itself)

I've decided that I will add his mini projects/tv appearances eventually. Pie in the Sky needs to get on there For Sure. Next up, I am actually watching the first half of Real Women, S2 eps1-4.

(Fun aside. I put all of Con's characters into the Hunger games generator, including the characters I hadn't seen yet. Terry came out victorious! Killing off Angel and Mogh personally. This set expectations high, and I'm glad he met them.)

Have an amazing week yall!

[adamwatchesmovies]

Encanto (2021)

Encanto is an instant favorite. You watch it once, you’re blown away, you look up its songs and listen to them on repeat. Filled with memorable characters, breathtaking visuals and complicated emotions, there’s something here for everyone.

At the heart of the isolated community of Encanto is Casita, a sentient house that grants magic gifts to the members of the Madrigal family on their 5th birthday. For two generations, the Madrigals have used their abilities to serve their neighbors, except for Mirabel (voiced by Stephanie Beatriz) who mysteriously received no gift. Now 15, Mirabel notices Casita acting strangely and begins investigating. All signs point towards her uncle Bruno (John Leguizamo) - who vanished ten years ago - being tied to an incoming disaster.

Writing my summary of the plot, made me realize how complicated this story is. When animated films were drawn by hand, you usually had one to three central characters and their journey was about their own physical, internal or emotional changes. Once the era of computer-generated imagery began, plots began to shift towards characters who change/explore the world around them. Encanto takes this to a new level. While Mirabel is the protagonist, every member of her extended family & her home is given enough screen time to be called an important character and the story is ultimately about so many topics it’s a wonder they’re all squeezed into the 102-minute running time - keep in mind that includes the credits.

How does “Encanto” do it? By utilizing all the tools at its disposal with peak efficiency. The film begins with a song that lays out the groundwork for everything we need to know about Encanto, Casita and the Madrigal family. The beat and lyrics are so catchy you don’t even realize it’s a deluge of exposition. From there, we’re on a fantastical journey with plenty of real-world equivalents. Maribel’s oldest sister is Isabela (Diane Guerrero) who can make flowers bloom everywhere and can seemingly do no wrong. She always looks perfect and is constantly showered with compliments. Maribel’s second older sister is Luisa (Jessica Darrow). Her superhuman strength allows her to move buildings and everyone knows they can count on her whenever there’s an emergency. Take away the fancy superpowers, look at the family dynamics and who is Maribel? The youngest sister who will never be as good as her other siblings, no matter how hard she tries. It only takes a song and a few lines of interaction for us to “see” all the years these people have had together. Encanto is ultimately a mystery. It’s about Mirabel trying to discover why her uncle disappeared all those years ago. Beneath that, it’s about our responsibilities towards each member of our family and how we want to separate ourselves from them while also remaining connected.

As Maribel investigates her uncle Bruno and his sinister ability to see the future, we learn more about the family. The knowledge we gather often comes in the form of catchy tunes - the best Disney has produced since Moana. They’re accompanied by stunning visuals, the kind that makes you pause and wonder “How did they do that?” You know they didn’t need to get actors and animals to learn any kind of choreography but it’s so well done and there is so much detail packed in every frame you forget you’re watching computer-generated graphics. This is the kind of movie you could watch over and over and always discover something new. Either in the backgrounds, the character designs, the lyrics, the dialogue or the emotions. 

If I had to find a flaw in Encanto it’s that there are a lot of big emotions here that are resolved quickly. Familial and generational trauma, sibling rivalries, resentment because of the expectations (or lack of) placed on you and more. Love sweeps them all away so fast. That’s me looking for something. I can see many people thinking the resolutions make perfect sense and feel genuine because for the large part, they are. The way the film solves the mystery at its core and deals with all of the matters of the heart is exemplary.

Everyone who sees Encanto will find something about it to call their own. This is a beautiful, memorable, emotionally complex film with great characters and top-notch writing. You should see it if only so you can be part of the conversation because once you get going about this 2021 Disney release, you won’t want to stop talking about it. (November 5, 2022)

[aquaburst3]

I rewatched Snow White a few times over the past several months as research for my fics. Something I notice more and more I watch that movie is that Vil is like if Snow White was a well written protagonist.

Vil shares a lot of the same qualities as her. They both value hard work. They are both stern and able to stand their ground. They're both kind and considerate (most of the time for Snow White), wanting to help out others become better versions of themselves. Where they differ is their intelligence and negative qualities.

Snow White has almost zero major flaws. Everyone minus her stepmother either automatically adores her or are won over by the end. Snow White's negative qualities are her nativity and overly trusting nature, which only get her in trouble at the very end and that might be only for plot reasons. She reminds me of YA heroines from the 2000s/ early 2010s like Bella Swan, whose flaws often consisted of something cutesy like clumsiness and are devoid of any true flaws. In the creators of Snow White's defence, this is probably thanks to this being one of the first animated movies ever, so they probably didn't know how to write compelling characters let alone female ones at the time. However, that's still not an excuse. (This criticism also applies to Cinderella and Aurora as well.)

Vil's, on the other hand, make him more human and compelling. One of his biggest character flaws is his domineering and overly critical attitude. Despite having the best intentions and wanting to help others become their best selves, he is often so blunt that he comes off as an asshole, which gets him into trouble plenty of times. He also takes things way too far and is often times inconsiderate of others' feelings like with how he treats Epel. (I think that could've been hammered home even more in his arc where the team talks smack behind him behind his back and called him out a ton more when he did fucked up shit like paralysing people with his UM. But that's another story.) He's also impulsive, judgmental, in his own head, stubborn and even has a quick fuse at times. These negative traits make some characters in the game and sometimes people in the audience not very fond of him, but that's okay. Not everyone is gonna love us, and sometimes that's thanks to our flaws or things out of our control. The same applies to well written fictional characters.

Snow White is a bit of an idiot. She lets in the Evil Queen and eats the poisoned apple without second guessing anything, ignoring the dwarves warning her not to open the door for anyone she doesn't know. While I know she was barely a teenager in her movie, come on! She should've suspected something was off considering peddlers usually frequent CITIES so people can buy their products, not the forest. That's like if a serial killer, who was pretending to be a door-to-door salesman, came to some farm in the middle of nowhere and claimed they were selling shit. I think most people would think something was off. Why even do that, especially when someone is out to kill her? Being wary of her should've been her first instinct. She also randomly cleans the dwarves cottage, because she figures children live there. Like...what? Whose first instinct when coming to someone else's home is to break in and start cleaning it? I know she wanted to do it to potentially have somewhere to stay, but that still doesn't excuse her breaking into someone's house like that. (Personally, if I wrote that part, I would have them already there and question her presence. Then, she can explain her situation, and then she offers to clean their house, which they allow. That way she's not breaking and entering someone's home.)

Vil is a lot smarter. He's a potion master and well read. (Which makes the ending of Chapter/Book 6 super fucking annoying and out of character for him. But I hate that arc, so I want to pretend like it never happened.) Like anyone, he has his limits and isn't all knowing. Him avoiding a lot of those more obvious pitfalls makes him much more fun to watch and write than her.

I hope Snow White is more like Vil in the upcoming live action movie. Not that I want her to be a carbon copy of him, far from it, but that she is written as more human while still retaining those core qualities from the original. Her good qualities are fine as is and are a part of her charm. While I find a lot of the live action Disney movies to be meh to downright terrible (*cough* Mulan and The Lion King *cough*), sometimes they update stories for modern audiences in a compelling way while containing the heart of the original like in Cinderella or The Jungle Book, which is something Snow White is in desperate need of.

[elemiller]

⚠️ explicit content ⚠️ (16+)

Another movie that inspired me for another Wattpad story of mine: It’s The green Mile

Below I decided to leave you my favorite scene from the story. (created by me, and not copied from film). I think you already know the plot, but for those who don't know it, I'll summarize it from the point of view of my story.

Jessica Graves (the protagonist) is in charge of E Block - a penitentiary - when John Coffey, a big black man is arrested for the murder and rape of the Deterik twins, so until he waits his turn to die on the old spaky (as the electric chair was called).

In all this the other characters are the same, while Dean (Berry) is the boyfriend of Jessica, our protagonist. But for this part of the story I'll make you the protagonist 😉.

That said, happy reading

After the incident with Wharton, you go home to Dean - he had returned earlier given the assault suffered by Wharton -. When you park the car in the courtyard, you notice that the kitchen light was still on, even though it was dark outside. You get out of the car and walk towards the entrance of the house, you slowly enter thinking that Dean was sleeping, but when you pass the kitchen door you see him from behind washing the dishes.

«What are you still doing up, Dean?» you ask leaning on the sole of the door. He immediately turns to you, and as soon as he understands who you are, his face lights up with a beautiful smile. «Hello honey» his soft voice penetrates your ears. «I thought I'd help you with the housework, but…» he turned to you, leaned against the sink and started drying his hands with a rag that he kept by his side. «But, I'm not good at housework» he put down the rag he used to dry his hands with and pulled another clean one out of his pocket, and brought it around his neck where he began to wipe away the sweat.

As he passed the white handkerchief over his neck, you immediately noticed the red line that ran along his throat like a necklace, that was still the clearly visible sign of the Wharton chains that had tried to strangle him. You felt guilty seeing him in that state, it almost reminded you of the fear you had when Wharton had turned away from you so as to offer you the face of the person you loved while he was being killed. But fortunately you had the moves ready to jump on him as soon as he was distracted, so as to save Dean.

Dean immediately noticed your sad face, so he placed the handkerchief on a table placed nearby and approached you. As soon as he was in front of you he placed his thin hands on your waist to bring you closer to him, so that he could lean back against the sink while holding you in front of him. «I know it scared you, I was scared too. But you saved me y/n, if it hadn't been for you, I would have died» this last sentence he said whispering next to your cheek to leave you a kiss afterwards. You smile, his kisses were something wonderful, they relaxed you and made you feel protected.

You keep smiling as Dean's kisses begin to approach your mouth. When his lips are on yours you gladly return the kiss. "His lips are like cotton," you think as you feel them play on yours. You let them play together for a while, then you pull away and look at him. You were chest to chest, he leaned against the sink while you leaned on him. He was looking at you carefully with his usual lover's eyes, you return his gaze as you let your hands go on their own, they take over your body and move towards Dean's blond hair, your fingers pass through them caressing his head, was one of the gestures that drove him crazy, and you knew it well, that's why you kept going.

You stroke his hair while leaving small kisses almost all over his face; one on the nose, the other on the cheek, then on the forehead, and finally on the chin. The latter takes him by surprise, he didn't expect that kiss from you, Dean knows that when you kiss his chin it's because you want to start something strong. so he looks back at you. «What do you want to do (your last name)?» he asked in a warm voice. you answer with a mischievous smile «according to you Stanton…»

so you lower your eyes to his lips and kiss them again gently, he reciprocates by starting to pass his hands on your back. you continue, and leaving his lips you descend towards his chin leaving kisses in the descent. Dean closes his eyes and lets you continue without a word tilting his head back to facilitate your kisses, your lips don't stop at his chin and descend even further down towards his throat, your kisses continue as they leave a moist trails all over his neck. you keep going like this until your arms decide to go down towards the waistband of Dean's pants, so they start to untie it. Dean looks at you again and smiles at you while he kisses you again, after which he picks you up while you start to unbutton his shirt, so you go upstairs, to your bedroom, where you finish the job…

[all-souls-matinee]

Quick-bite reviews: V/H/S/Beyond (2024) dir. Jay Cheel, Jordan Downey, Virat Patel, Justin Martinez, Christian & Justin Long, Kate Seigel

I finally decided to stop covering this franchise (last year's '/85' remains unwatched) when '/Beyond' had to go ahead and be pitched as an alien-centric V/H/S with a segment written by my horror enemy Mike Flanagan. I've seen a fair chunk of alien horror movies and never have much to say about them because... they're bad... but I'm always rooting for a good one to come into existence. They're like my now-horrible home baseball team; I KNOW the storytelling optics aren't there, it wouldn't be a problem if we could assemble the perfect cast and crew and have infinite time and infinite money. The original V/H/S actually had a memorable piece of alien horror so that's encouraging? It wasn't good but it was memorable! It was there! My feelings on Flanagan only made for extra incentive; if I couldn't have a good alien horror movie at least I could have another alien horror movie to be performatively mad at.

Mike Flanagan has been forgiven; alien horror has made it to first base.

Beyond is still very much a V/H/S movie so was never going to be my thing, but I think it's successful(!) because every segment understands that the job of a V/H/S movie is to feel like a theme park haunted house. The usual buckets of gore and barf and what have you are coordinated this time around, showman-like. The frame story, notoriously the worst part of even the best anthology horror, re-grounds the aliens when segments stray and is a great example of how to lovingly and effectively mock cable-cum-YouTube documentaries. The creature design and bad acting of the first segment are fun enough, while the second segment is a commentary on Mumbai's Film City that feels like homage to and improvement upon the original V/H/S. The third segment goes crazy; UFO attack on a skydiving plane?? and then aliens with interesting designs chase everyone in broad daylight and rip them apart into Halloween decorations??? That's what we've been waiting for! The momentum is building! Then there's Justin Long's abysmal segment. Most unfunny comedy torture-horror I've ever seen, made me think I was going to have to rate this even lower than past panned V/H/Ses, Saw 18 directed by Doug Walker, etc., etc., until, finally, we lose the haunted house angle and Flanagan takes center stage.

His alien story is so good I didn't want to believe it was him writing it, and so painfully UNBEARABLY Stephen King I knew it couldn't be anyone else. Clever sci-fi concept that does my favorite thing in the world by focusing on the UFO itself, eye-rollingly maudlin over American family values, intentionally funny in places, and scary!!! I said 'no way' out loud when I realized how it was going to end; timed just right, not too early but still well before the protagonist. I'm giving Flanagan so much credit because it's the kind of short story I would've been completely enraptured by as a kid, but on film its function is really thanks to director Kate Seigel and near-solo actress Alanah Pearce. They use their medium (infrared camera!) and place in the framework to full advantage, which is why I'm glad it's a little treat within a schlocky horror anthology instead of a short film in its own right.

Buy a ticket? With these V/H/S reviews I always say 'no it's bad don't watch it unless you already like the franchise,' and THIS time... still no lmao. It isn't quite good enough to merit a recommendation, but that's on high highs and low lows rather than the kind of mediocre stickiness of past entries. If you're interested in going through a haunted house (these things continue to hit right at my limit for gore and body horror) to include one gnarly alien story and one interesting one? You could do worse. Not a home run, but first base. They hit the ball <3

[azsdiary]

I’d like to be proposed to under cherry blossoms.

Ever since I was a child I’ve always been captivated by boys & cherry blossoms - but I don’t know why. I guess it’d make sense to involve that in my proposal then, wouldn’t it.

A movie made me cry today. My Happy Marriage. I know God sent it to me.

It showed me that the after affects of abuse still show up on me. Things people point out. I know one day they’ll be a distant memory and for now I must try to continue on. Random comedic break but I loveeeee a good nose on a man I think it’s a weakness uhhhh…

At 22yo, I realised all the movies on my movie wall that I’d lived processing my romantic life through, had floral imagery - usually cherry blossoms. I picked these pictures for my wall without realising.

[my happy marriage]

[the great gatsby]

[the princess and the frog]

So many have tried to steal love from me, harden and darken my heart. Until I found myself incapable of being attracted to a man/desiring to be by his side. But nevertheless, I persisted. By His grace. God restored my heart slowly until one day I woke up and I could feel again.

She got the love she deserved even though everything was done to keep it from her. He maintained their relationship despite his own fears and duties - and refused to see Loving her as a weakness or distraction to his duty. In the words of the movie:

“It is easy to gain confidence when you are loved”

(My Happy Marriage - The protagonists stepsister, her fiancée and the stepsister’s fiancée)

A while ago a man told me that it looked like I saw marriage as an escape. The Bible describes that you wear your home with you when you leave and that is why God, who is Love, should be our home.

On earth we should dwell in homes of love too. Marriage is moving from that home to another, or if you are not with your family - moving from your home in God by yourself to one with another.

When you move houses you can call it an escape, but that is the good kind of escape. It is not desperate and cowardly as that man made it seem - to want to partner up, rely on and give to another. Not for me, anyhow.

[raitrolling]

The Craving

[Easy reading version on Toyhou.se]

Celise glanced out the train window, watching the scenery pass by. Ordinarily they would have been much more interested in watching the other passengers, examining their small habits, surreptitiously taking notes on their behaviour, trying to deduce what kind of person they must be by witnessing this tiny slice of their life.

But, it was hard to concentrate on the living when one so desperately craves consuming them.

The last time they left town to visit Tuuya they were accompanied by Vallis and his disturbingly-familiar pet, the cuspblood having trapped them against the window to prevent them from escaping and feasting on the irresistible meat bags that were aboard the carriage without trying to climb over him first.

Meat bags, they grimaced, they didn’t know if it was better or worse to de-personify what they hunger for the most. 

Without the cephalopod troll to distract them, they felt antsy, famished. They hadn’t wanted to see him again, but he did function as a decent roadblock when required. They drummed their fingers against their thighs as an attempted distraction, ears twitching at the sound of their slightly-sticky fingers hitting the papers on their lap. 

It was a copy of their latest screenplay, one they had emailed to their boss Aysnir for a review. As always, he loved it and thought it was brilliant. And as always, he wanted to meet with them in person to discuss it.

It was Celise’s usual psychological horror fare written into an approximately one hundred minute film, but for once they had incorporated something a lot more personal into it.

Something the zombie-loving indigoblood might actually approve of without edits.

Obskur Productions was a modest-sized studio, its movie budgets funded primarily through the owner’s seemingly-endless riches. Props were made in-house, and when Celise passed the workshop they spotted two of their co-workers constructing fake sci-fi technology by sticking hivehold objects to cardboard boxes and spraypainting them chrome. They were too engrossed in their work to notice the screenplay writer pass by, but Celise never cared to speak with their colleagues anyway.

They walked onto the only sound stage within the building, in which one of the sets was in the middle of being constructed. Befitting the props of the previous room, the scene around them was supposed to resemble a Fleetship interior, every square inch covered in futuristic chrome and blinding white lights. The brighter the stage, the more the special effects would stand out, the director had declared.

Celise remembered what this film was supposed to be. They wrote a scene about a spacefarer on a solo trip, but the ship loses power and they end up drifting aimlessly through space. The isolation would slowly drive the protagonist mad, oxygen levels and food rations would deplete over the course of the movie, and they would be convinced they were hearing something aboard the ship with them…

Aysnir wanted aliens. Giant insectoid aliens that crawl through the vents, with needle teeth and Xenomorph-style second jaws, and an ovipositor tail that’ll implant its eggs into unsuspecting trolls until they hatch and its young will explode out of their victim’s stomach.

It was such a stupid idea. The frog troll clenched their teeth, glaring straight ahead. This set design was meant to be clinical, sanitised, alien, familiar yet wholly unwelcoming and hostile. Not the stage for even more pointless blood splatters and weird bodily explosions.

While they were occupied by their own raging thoughts, they heard footsteps approach them - albeit dulled, thanks to how their senses had altered as a result of their undeath. What was more apparent to them was the smell, the expensive citrus and sandalwood cologne belonging to Aysnir Obskur could not hide that irresistible scent of healthy highblood flesh. 

“Hey, hey, hey, Celise! How’s my brilliant little writer going?” 

Celise was brought back to reality and tensed as the director approached them from behind, giving them a hearty slap on the back and a winning grin.

“It’s… It’s okay,” they murmured, quickly averting their eyes once their gazes met.

“I am loving the make-up, by the way, verrry spooky! Getting all geared up for Fright Night? Or wanting to become a double threat and get up on our stage?” the indigoblood laughed, and patted Celise’s cheek… Then made a small grimace and wiped his hand on his pants, feeling the slimy residue on their face.

Celise grumbled in response, which sounded vaguely like a croak. Their undead state seemed to have altered the vocal cords along all the other physical changes, making them much more froglike in nature. 

“You, um… You wanted to speak to me about my latest script?” They attempted to re-rail the conversation. 

“Yes! Of course! Come with me to my office, we have much to discuss!” Aysnir switched gears, patting the screenplay writer on the shoulder and then giving them a light push in the direction of his office.

Celise never liked how touchy he was. They bit their lip in annoyance, but obediently followed after.

The halls leading to Aysnir’s office were lined with posters of all his favourite movies: The Rainbowdrinker Beach Babes series, Zombie Apocalypse Gorefest 5000, Night of the Killer Zombie Boyfriends, Hurricane Piranha 8D, The Night Flesh-Eating Tapeworm Shifters Ate My Lusus… Celise remembered all their original screenplays for each film, before they were gutted, defiled, perverted. Stripped away of all nuance and artistic integrity, and turned into vapid and lowbrow schlock to suit the director’s own tastes.

‘He will always kill the heart of them and bring them back wrongly,’ Tuuya had told them.

They clutched their latest screenplay close to their chest. But what if this time…?  

Celise had seen the interior of Aysnir’s office so many times the eclectic mix of decorations hardly phased them anymore. Most of them were props from previous films, but there were also the very imposing mannequins wearing costume replicas of Freddy Krueger and Jason Voorhees positioned behind the director’s desk. On the centre of the wall was a signed photograph of Aysnir shaking hands with the director of Sharknado, apparently one of his proudest moments.

They politely sat down on the chair closest to them, and placed their screenplay neatly in front of them. Aysnir did not take his seat at his desk, instead opting to casually lean against it next to them. He always liked to pretend that formalities were below him, he was a cool boss.

Celise was the first to speak.

“So, um… What- What did you think…?” 

“Oh, it’s great! Brilliant as always!” Aysnir replied immediately, and seemingly without any thought. “You added a zombie in it without me needing to ask! Very enthusiastic, love it, love it a lot.”

Celise smiled a little. They knew it, their script about a freshly-turned zombie struggling with their new cravings is finally a hit with him. Quite possibly the sole good thing about their new condition is that it gave them the inspiration to pour all their feelings into a new movie, and ways people can understand their struggles without knowing exactly how real it is-

“Buuut…” The director smiled sheepishly, and looked apologetic at the cuspblood. But not in a way that’s genuinely apologetic, as the jovial tone easily betrayed any notion of empathy. He was clearly going through the motions to let them down gently.

As he always did. 

Celise stayed quiet, and prepared for the worst.

“It’s, well…” Aysnir waved his hand, “You’re doing the thing you always do, Celise. The horror part is always implied!”

He clears his throat, and picks up the screenplay on the desk and flicks through to the offending segment. It’s never a good sign when the director knows exactly where it is.

“‘A series of rapid cuts. Chisma’s bloodstained hands. A brief flash of the half-eaten corpse. An eyeball between teeth. An abstract spray of blood and the squelch of viscera. Scenes too quick for the audience to properly comprehend, but feel all the same.’ Like, this imagery is amazing - brilliant, even - but, the audience wants to see the gore and viscera! And no one likes confusing, dreamlike stories anymore, they want to be told exactly what’s happening on the screen so they don’t have to read an article about a confusing ending afterwards.”

The indigoblood shrugged, then flashed his usual blindingly bright grin. One that he thinks is reassuring, but instead feels patronising.

“So, whaddaya say we scrap all that scene, and then go real hard on the special effects to show the zombie eating his friend in as hi-res detail as possible? The audience? Will love it, it’ll make them squirm, make them scream, make them wanna recommend it to their friends as the most horrifying film they’ve ever watched!”

Celise bit their lip and clenched their fists in their lap. It- It’s still not good enough?

“But, that’s… I thought you would…” They look away, unsure how to convince their boss how to keep his hands off their script once more.

“Like it?” Aysnir completed their sentence, slightly incredulous. Then he laughs. “Of course I like it! Love it, even. You know how talented you are, and I am oh-so-lucky to have you! But we’re not just a movie production company, we’re a business. We gotta give the audience what they want, and I know what that is. We’re the perfect team! You come up with your brilliant little ideas-” He points at Celise, “and I make them marketable.” He points back at himself.

Of course. It’s about marketability. As if movies are a product, not an art. A means to get people in cinema seats paying full price tickets to see something mediocre, but the quality of the work doesn’t matter as long as the funds go back into Aysnir’s pockets.

It was sickening. Celise felt their stomach growl. 

“But, um, I don’t- I don’t want them to be marketable,” they said, softly, uncertain. 

Aysnir made a shocked face. “Huh? You don’t want to be a star? You don’t want trolls of all demographics flooding into theatres all over to witness your brilliant works?” 

“I, um- I do, but-”

“Fantastic! I always knew you were a go-getter!” The indigoblood pointed two fingerguns at Celise. “Buuut, that means we gotta ix-nay the ubtleties-say, y’know what I’m saying? Trust me, I want you to succeed, buddy. That’s why we have these meetings! To figure out how to put a bit of extra elbow grease in, and fine tune that baby until she purrs!”

Celise felt the bile rise in their throat. Saliva bubbled up in their mouth, and they had to stop themselves from growling. The more he talked, the more frustrated they felt. And that just made them hungry. 

‘Do not be Sisyphus, Celise,’ Tuuya’s warning popped into their mind once more, ‘He will always change things because he cannot appreciate them as they are.’ 

They shook their head, and stood up, looking Aysnir dead in the eye.

“No, you don’t understand. I- I don’t want to write something appealing, I want to write something I want. I want to write something special! If people don’t get it, then that’s- That’s their problem!”

Aysnir looked shocked at this outburst for a moment, but then laughed. He put both his hands on Celise’s shoulders.

“Celise, buddy, let’s stay cool, alright?” He grinned.

Celise did not calm down one bit, instead they just felt patronised. They chewed on their lip, and if blood were still pumping through their veins, they would certainly be feeling it start to boil.

“I get it, you want to write your snazzy little horror flick, but in this industry, niche doesn’t work. We’re not arthouse, none of our audience is here for things that make them want to think. I’ve been telling you this over and over again, but I guess you’re just a stubborn little frog, aren’t you?” His tone was light, as if he were speaking to a child, and he continued to pat their shoulders as he spoke. 

A low gravely croak rumbled through Celise’s throat. That feeling of hunger was becoming too much to bear. 

“No, you’re- You’re the one who isn’t listening!” They snapped.

Aysnir, true to how he always acted, was unfazed. In fact, he seemed to find it a bit amusing. 

“Woah, there! How about we take that tone down just a couple notches? I’m listening, I’m always listening, that’s why I always have so many ideas about how to make your ideas better! So, how about we take a breather, relax for a few minutes, and then we’ll hit rewind and go back to the talk about making the zombie scarier?” He took his hands off Celise so he could twirl a finger in a circular motion, gesturing for them to circle back to their previous discussion - or imply that he thinks they’re losing their marbles.

‘He can never bend or break, he can only be tossed aside.’

Celise couldn’t take it any more. Their breaths were heavy and ragged with rage, saliva was pouring out of their mouth, their stomach and jaws screamed at them for some release from this hunger.

Aysnir had noticed this shift in their behaviour, and finally stopped talking, realising that his screenplay writer’s outburst was not funny in the slightest. In fact, he seemed quite afraid of them.

But it was too late. Before their mind could keep up with their movements, they attacked in a starved daze.

The first thing they remember in that moment was their hands grabbing his neck, squeezing tighter and tighter, and their tongue wrapping around his face to muffle any screams, and before he could react the sound of a snap- 

The second thing they remember was a flurry of indigo staining their hands and mouth, the overwhelming smell of fresh meat, a half-chewed mass of flesh in a shredded polo shirt, something no longer beating in their hand, and the squish of an eyeball between their teeth.

[ash-and-books]

Rating: 1/5

Book Blurb: A young woman tries to heal a rift in her elderly pen pal’s family in time for Christmas, all while falling in love—and maybe even reuniting with her own family—in this dazzling romance from the author of Always, in December and One Last Gift

Sometimes it takes a stranger to bring you back to yourself.

Ever since a car accident tore her family apart, Holly has been part of a lonely-hearts holiday letter–writing club. Each December, she writes to a stranger who is also spending Christmas alone, and receives a letter from another lonely person in return. 

Usually, the letters go unanswered. That’s the point—the letters are anonymous, and the senders write whatever is in their heart. But this year, the letter Holly receives is different; not only is the letter full of a grief she knows all too well, but its writer, Emma, mentions a place that Holly has visited. When she realizes that she might actually be able to find the letter’s author, Holly becomes determined to reunite Emma with the estranged grandson, Jack, with whom Emma is desperate to reconnect.

When Holly finally tracks him down, she remembers that she’s met Jack once before . . . and the connection was electric. The spark between the two of them is still there—until a misunderstanding risks their burgeoning romance and his strained relationship with Emma, too. But Holly is determined; if she can fix Emma’s family, she might also be able to fix her own. Though as it turns out, Holly might have less time to put things right than she thought.

Review:

A young woman goes on a healing journey when she tracks down an elderly pen pal to help reunite her with her estranged grandson as she herself tries to fix the relationship with her sister after a devastating car crash. When Holly and her pregnant sister Lily make a quick pitstop at a coffee shop things go awry quickly. Holly spills coffee on a hot stranger who gives her his phone number and as they are leaving the cafe Holly and her sister get into a car crash that causes Lily to lose her baby. Ever since then Lily has never forgiven Holly, especially since she can't have kids anymore, and now Holly is estranged and wracked with guilt over the incident. Three years after the crash Holly decides to visit the pen pal (despite said pen pal was assuming it was anonymous) to help them whether they want it or not. Holly shows up at her elderly pen pal Emma's house saying she'll help reunite Emma with her estranged grandson Jack... who just happens to be the hot stranger she met three years ago at the cafe. When Holly tracks down Jack and they start spending time together, Holly's secret about why she actually tracked down Jack might ruin the sparking romance between them... can Holly fix all the relationships in both her and Emma's life before Emma's cancer takes her? Unfortunately this was a miss for me, it gave me Letters to Juliet (movie) vibes but with less romance, a more insufferable protagonist, and less charm. Sadly I really just could not stand Holly, she really just tracked down to people, deflected her own relationship issues with her family onto to them and decided to make herself a part of it. I understand it was meant to come off as sweet and caring that she was doing it, but honestly it came off as weird. i just didn't really enjoy this novel and it didn't give off a cute Christmas or emotional Christmas romance read at all for me. So while this one didn't work for me, maybe if you are looking for a Christmas read with emotional stakes then give this one a go!

*Thanks Netgalley and Random House Publishing Group - Ballantine, Dell for sending me an arc in exchange for an honest review*