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ariainstars · 4 years

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Star Wars, the Last 20 Years or Can We Please Try to Stop the Blame Train?

I would like to touch a subject that’s starting to grate on my nerves a little.

Anyone here knows that I disliked The Rise of Skywalker heartily. And I’m not the only person here or elsewhere who tore it to shreds. But I am reading (again) over and over why and how JJ Abrams, Chris Terrio, Kathleen Kennedy and Co. made this mess. Instead of searching for culprits, this time I would like to point out a few things.

I. Star Wars Prequels

Jake Lloyd, Ahmed Best and Hayden Christensen had to endure awful harassment in their time: the audience largely vented their frustration on them because when the prequels hit theatres, they did not get the Star Wars they had wanted. Politics are a dry subject, and young Anakin and the Jedi Council were all too human to be liked by fans who expect coolness in a hero more than everything else; which is probably why Darth Maul is a huge favorite although we hardly learn anything about him and he says almost nothing. Ditto Obi-Wan although he is clearly not suited to train Anakin and it’s him who maims him and leaves him to burn in the lava. (Until I saw the film, I had always assumed Palpatine had tortured Anakin to push him to the Dark Side.)

The prequels’ messages in general were not liked: the Jedi were not perfectly wise and cool wizards, the Old Republic was stagnant, Anakin was a hot-headed, frustrated young man desperate to save his wife and unborn children. The films do not want to excuse what he did; however they portray him not as a monster but as a human being who was under an almost unendurable pressure for years and years until he finally snapped.

These messages may not be “cool”, but they were realistic and most of all, humane. Portraying the Jedi as well as Anakin as powerful, flawless heroes and the old Republic as a just, prosperous and balanced place would have meant undermining a central theme of the original trilogy: the former generation could not have been all that powerful and wise, else the collapse of their world and the failure of their convictions would not have happened in the first place. It is a sore point, but still twenty years later Obi-Wan and Yoda denied that Vader was human and expected Luke to commit patricide.

All of this goes to show that the Jedi’s moral standard was flawed and their attitude not rooted in compassion and pacifism the way they claimed. In the end, what they cared about was winning, no matter the cost. In this, they were no better than the Sith.

~~~more under the cut~~~

II. Star Wars Sequels

J.J. Abrams, Kathleen Kennedy, Bob Iger and company were the ones who introduced the Star Wars sequel trilogy and with it its themes, characters, setting etc. to us in the first place: I think we should give them credit where it’s due. Rian Johnson made a very beautiful second chapter with The Last Jedi, but he did pick up where the others had left.

Kelly Marie Tran made experiences similar to Jake Lloyds or Hayden Christensen’s when The Last Jedi was hit theatres. She was disliked for not being “Star-Wars-y” enough, chubby and lively instead of wiry and spitfire, and also taking a lot of screen time while many fans were impatiently waiting for some grand scenes from Luke and / or Leia.

That Episode VIII, the central and most important one, was called “The Last Jedi” cannot be overstated. Luke was literally alone with the heavy task of rebuilding a religious order that was gone and destroyed long before he even learned about it, and at the same time he had to patch together his own family and atone for his father’s sins. This is a crushing burden for anyone to carry. It was important both for Rey and for the audience to meet Luke to see that he was a good man, but still just a man.

When Luke spoke openly to Rey about the failure of the Jedi Order, it was the first time he ever spoke about it that we know of; this wisdom he obviously acquired only after his nephew’s fall to the Dark Side. Luke has understood that the ways of the Jedi were wrong; but he does not know a better alternative. Force users are still born all over the galaxy, and they have to learn to use their powers - only how? Again, Luke is not to blame. How is he to know, when the Jedi of the Old Republic had lost sight of Balance in the Force for so long that they didn’t know what it actually meant anymore?

Same goes for Leia, the princess without a realm, who tried to rebuild the Republic after the galaxy had been terrorized by the Empire and devastated by war for many years. She assuredly did her best, but she was only human. That she failed her son is of course shocking, but after the horror she had to endure at the hands of her own father it is not surprising that she would be terrified of her son possibly going the same way. Ben, like Anakin, was crushed under a legacy and responsibility that was by far too heavy for him. The tragedy of his life and the disruption - and in the end, obliteration - of his family was another proof for the failure of the ways of the Jedi.

All of these lessons until now were not learned from. But let’s be honest: how many of us come from dysfunctional families? If we do, was getting away from them enough to heal the wounds of the past? Did we find out what to give our children on their way in life, or did we fail them because we had not elaborated the past enough to make way for a better future? Such problems are very common, and to heal them is complicated and takes time. A “happy ending” e.g. in form of finding a new family is not enough, on the contrary, it can lead to wanting to leave the past behind, leaving wounds unhealed that will fester their way through our lives again, sooner or later. Star Wars always was an allegory of the human mind, even if deeply cloaked in symbolism. The saga also abundantly takes inspiration from the Bible, and I think it’s not coincidentally said there that the sins of the fathers are visited upon the children.

As fans, we would have wanted to see films that cemented the Jedi as guardians of the galaxy, with the Skywalker family right at the center. Which in itself is impossible because Jedi are supposed to remain unattached, making the mere idea of a Jedi having a family absurd. If the prequels told us that the Jedi were flawed, the sequels tore down the myth of the Skywalker family. And both trilogies showed that you can’t be a Skywalker and / or a Jedi / Force user and have attachments and a happy family of your own at the same time. At least, not until now.

III. Film production

Many fans of old complained because the sequel trilogy implied that the “happy ending” of the original trilogy’s heroes had not been so happy after all and that after having made peace for the galaxy, they had failed to keep it that way. Other viewers however liked the new trilogy and new characters right away and began to root for them. But they, too, jumped on the blame train when the trilogy had ended: expectations were not met, and now director, producers, script writers, cutters etc. are faulted all over again.

The first person coming up with the idea of Han’s and Leia’s only child turning to the Dark Side was Lucas himself. It always was a main theme of the saga that war separates people who actually belong together, like family, couples or close friends; that is not played for mere drama, but because it emphasizes the absurdity of war.

We as the audience do not know how production went - it is very possible that Lucas approved the general storyline, and there is always a whole team on board. It is not easy to purchase such a large and immensely popular franchise; it was to be expected that if things went not the way the audience expected, the Disney studios would be blamed harshly for having “ruined Star Wars”. With the prequels, at least Lucas was still at the helm; it was conceded that maybe he had lost his magic touch with storytelling, but certainly not that he was trying deliberately to ruin his own creation. And the fans who could not praise the Disney studios enough after The Last Jedi came out, now blame them over and over.

The Disney studios have long-term politics to consider and contracts to observe, and we don’t know their contents. We have every right to be disappointed, but I think it’s not fair to blame one or a particular group of persons who are trying their best to satisfy as many viewers as possible. If they simply wanted to satisfy the average dudebro who sees nothing but clichés, two-dimensional characters and Good against Evil - then why did they allow The Last Jedi to be produced in the first place? The studios obviously are aware that there are fans out there who are ready to look deeper in the saga’s themes, who wish to see the Force coming to Balance, who value family, friendship and love over “victory at any cost”, and who do not place the Jedi on some kind of pedestal.

In a sense, The Rise of Skywalker seems like a bow before The Last Jedi: the weakest chapter of the saga followed one of its strongest. Maybe the authors were aware that equaling or even topping what Rian Johnson had created would be next to impossible, so they patched up the open threads of The Force Awakens together with some fan service hoping to be out of the business as quickly as possible.

In retrospect, the infamous podcast with Charles Soule might also be tell-tale: Soule obviously is not elbows-deep in the saga and largely ignores its subtext. Since his The Rise of Kylo Ren comics are quite well-made, I assume that the general storyline did not stem from his own creativity and that he only carried out what he had been advised to do. The production of the whole sequel trilogy may have happened in a similar way. I am not excusing the poor choices of The Rise of Skywalker; merely considering that one or a few persons cannot be blamed in a studio that has thousands of creative minds on board.

I am still hoping for the next trilogy to finally bring Balance to the galaxy, and also into the fandom. Rian Johnson had negotiated the rights for the next trilogy along with The Last Jedi; I assume it is very possible that there was a clause about intellectual property saying that only he would continue Episode VIII’s topics, nobody else. This would at least be an explanation, given the embarrassing, jumbled mess that Episode IX was.

The overall title of the saga assuredly never wanted to inspire the audience to start online wars attacking the studios or the actors or other fans out of the conviction of being entitled to blame someone else’s worldview. The saga’s message is compassion. Both George Lucas and the Disney studios are telling us their story; the idea and the rights do not belong to us. Harping on “whose fault” it allegedly is won’t bring us anywhere; what we can do is make the studios understand that we’re not too stupid not to understand the subtext, the symbolism and metaphysics of the saga beyond the action story. If they listened to the Last Jedi haters, in all fairness they are bound to listen to us, too. 😊

IV. Will Ben’s story continue?

My husband already warned me years ago that Ben most probably wouldn’t survive, or at least not get a happy ending. As Kylo Ren he had already been the head of a criminal organization for six years at the start of The Force Awakens, but all of that perhaps could still have been condoned within the scope of war. It was the very personal and intentional act of patricide, the killing of an unarmed, forgiving man, who turned him into a damned person. And after the deed, Ben was aware of it. He knew there was no way out for him, he had gone too far.

Many members of the audience did not understand that Kylo / Ben is not an out-and-out villain and that this narrative ultimately was about his redemption. Bringing him back to the Resistance after the Exegol battle alive and by Rey’s side would not have been accepted; how was Rey to explain everything when she hardly understood it herself? How would the audience have reacted to the former head of a criminal organization, a patricide, suddenly standing out as a hero? Remember how in Return of the Jedi Luke asked Vader to come away with him. Now suppose Vader had complied? It would have seemed (and been) sheer madness. Nobody would have believed neither father nor son that the terror of the galaxy had had a sudden turn of heart. Nobody knew that he was Luke’s father; Luke himself did not know Anakin’s backstory; nobody knew what had transpired between Luke and Vader so far. Yes, Ben was young and healthy, but he still had terrorized the galaxy for years and killed his own father. He knew himself that he was damned and could not go back to normality, as Vader did.

Rey was coded as the heroine: narratively, the sequel trilogy was her story. Ben couldn’t become the hero, with or without her, at the very last moment. She usurped power like her grandfather in his time, the Skywalker family was obliterated the way the Jedi were, she takes over another mantle (Skywalker) the way Palpatine did (becoming the Emperor). Balance in the Force never was truly in the cards, it was only vaguely hinted at in The Last Jedi by the Force mosaic in the Ahch-To temple. Balance is a complex and difficult subject; it would have been extremely difficult to develop it in the sequel trilogy together with introducing the new characters and giving the old ones closure.

However: if Ben is brought back in the next trilogy, his sacrifice for Rey will have been his atonement. If his role this time is not that of the villain but of the hero, it would reverse Anakin’s path and make clear that he no longer is the same man. Vader was redeemed, not rehabilitated. His grandson might still have the chance to go that way.

- Luke had promised Rey a third lesson, and it happened. He also had promised Ben to “see him around”, which has not taken place yet.

- On Tatooine, Rey watches the twin suns setting, same as Luke before he met the other half of his soul (his twin sister) again.

- The studios had said that the sequels would be “very much like the prequels”; the prequels were a tragedy where the Dark Side (Palpatine) won that was followed by a fairy tale where the Light Side won.

- The Skywalker saga is closed, so if Ben comes back it would be justified by his being a Solo, i.e. the story of his own family and not his grandfather’s.

- Given the parallels with Beauty and the Beast, the Beast died before the broken spell brought him back, making him a wholly new person - his past identity, purged and redeemed.

- George Lucas repeatedly said that the prequels and the classics belong together as one narrative, with Anakin Skywalker at its center. First news of the next trilogy came up with The Last Jedi. Since there are strong parallels between Ben and his grandfather, we may assume that this six-chapter instalment will be his; Anakin also was left for dead but came back with a wholly different role and name.

- When Anakin was reborn as Darth Vader, he “rose” slowly from the ground, clad in his black armor. Ben fell to the ground abruptly and shed his black clothes, disappearing. This could be another clue. (It was also already speculated that Leia’s body dissolved exactly in this moment because she gave her life-force to her son for him to have another chance to live. Both Han and Luke had done what they could to atone for their remorse towards Ben; this might be her turn.)

- Much as I love Luke Skywalker, I can understand that Lucas did not see him as the saga’s protagonist. The overall arch is not so much about Luke’s heroism than about Anakin’s redemption and atonement. It is unusual because we expect the story’s “hero” to be the one who kills the Bad Guy; and indeed Anakin is, because he kills Palpatine in the end, the twist being that technically he is also a villain though not the archvillain.

- Ben had promised Anakin he would finish what he started. Anakin had been meant to bring Balance to the Force, and he had started a family. Until now, Ben did neither.

- If Ben and Rey are a dyad, i.e. one soul in two bodies, then Rey is in urgent need of her soulmate for her future tasks. She has her friends of course, but none of them gets her the way he did.

So, I still see reason to hope for a continuation, and, hopefully, satisfying conclusion of The Last Jedi’s themes.

Film production: on a side note…

In the Nineties, Kirk Wise and Gary Trousdale were the directors both of Beauty and the Beast and Atlantis: two more different stories are hardly imaginable with regard to everything - drawing style, setting, characters, development, music etc. This outcome can’t have been only due to the director’s choices, there must have been a wholly different idea behind both films right from the beginning. Just saying.

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47pictures · 3 years

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“All-Star”

Link to original r/nosleep post:

https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/mv9j9a/for_my_blog_i_toured_a_movie_studio_to_find_the/

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I finally made it to Hollywood… at least, I suppose that’s what I’d say if I were trying to make it big. That wasn’t exactly the case, though. On the contrary, my old hometown friend was the one who I’d say ‘made it big,' and she was the only reason I managed to get there. No way in hell I could just stroll through these Hollywood gates without some sort of reputation associated with my name.

I’m currently pursuing a degree in journalism, and right now I’ve got a pretty successful status as a blogger, and hopefully podcaster in the near future. My topics typically cover things involving entertainment, specifically movies, television, some celebrity gossip here-and-there, the ins and outs of the film and occasionally music industry, nerd topics about comic books or comic book movies, and I could go on. Essentially, all the things you’d expect from an entertainment blogger.

I don’t have a secret or special tip for how I grew a mass following. It just sort of happened. I did it since I was in high school - sophomore year, to be exact, and it started mainly as a hobby. Most people are surprised to hear that I was such a good writer and articulate for my age when they look back on the articles I’d put up during that time, speaking on topics such as the ‘downfall of blockbuster films,’ and the ‘toxicity of media's body standards on the youth.’ Truthfully, I didn’t know all of what I was saying half the time. Writing was sort of just my natural gift that I honed to where I could essentially bullshit anything well enough to make a great story. However, being ethical always remained my moral code.

The topic I was covering now involved my own personal ‘investigation’ of a famous movie studio known as Gemini Films. They’ve put out several flicks now that have garnered what most would consider moderate success (they're no Warner Bros. or Paramount, that's for sure). They deal mostly in the thriller/horror genre, sort of like Blumhouse. I’m a bit more in the sci-fi, comedy realm when it comes to my tastes, but really, I’m a bit of a pussy when it comes to scary stuff.

So why am I 'investigating' them? Well, as it turns out, it's their amazing use of special effects. Yep, that’s it. Special effects, that thing we fell for as children we called ‘movie magic,' and growing up learned that some of it were all the crafty work of well-put CGI. Though that’s usually the case, this time, something about Gemini Films seemed different. They’ve always been praised for their ‘hyperrealistic’ visual effects and pulling off stunts that would otherwise seem impossible. I was watching one of their action/horror films titled Last Thorn, and in a particular scene, a character’s on-screen death is, well, very lightly put, gruesome. I’ve seen my share of on-screen gore and played plenty of Mortal Kombat growing up, but I gotta say, I found the scene hard to watch. To clarify, it involved a character literally exploding before the camera, and from the way it was shot and the lack of cuts and edits typically required to create the illusion of a scene, it seemed quite real. A little too real…

They’ve done other things aside from their special effects department that some people on internet discussion forums found a bit too impressive. Take the actors, for instance. In their dramatic scenes, especially the horror flicks, I’m almost always convinced that the actors are actually going to die on screen. I’m surprised all of them haven’t been given Oscars yet, ‘cause goddamn, you’d think the director was holding them at gunpoint. We all saw just how amazing the acting was in films like Hereditary and The Babadook were, but I gotta say, after watching these films, they make those two look like child’s play (no pun intended to the Chucky series). I was so impressed with the actors that I had to look them up and see what other work they’d done, but from what I did find, their resumes didn’t seem that much greater than the work they’d done for GF. It was almost as if that was the peak of their careers unless they decided to further their contracts to star in any more of their movies. Anything else they did pale in comparison that showcased their acting chops.

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Jamie Douglas.

It had somewhat of household name potential, I thought. She was the next rising star. She’d just won a Golden Globe for her leading role in a TV series I’m sure no one had high hopes for in the beginning, and her name was now attached to an Academy Award-winning film for Best Original Screenplay, all at the age of 22. Her acting was stellar, always had been even growing up back in high school when we did theater together. I was never for the acting side of things; I always preferred the technical realm and behind-the-scenes work. She, however, had the ‘it’ factor. I never once doubted that she’d be famous. It was destined for her.

The taxi driver dropped me off in front of a luxurious one-story home in the Beverly Hills neighborhood, surrounded by other similar houses with a property value larger than what I’d probably make in my lifetime if I was being honest. From the outside, her home reminded me of that gilded, golden age of Hollywood back in the 60s, with a slanted roof and art deco-styled exaggerated features. It was nice and simple. But that’s how Jamie was. Nice and simple.

I could see her peeking through the curtains of her window before she came running out the door to meet me in the front yard. That big beautiful smile and those joyous eyes came rushing at me with open arms.

“Christian!” she screamed my name with excitement, as she gave me a big, suffocating hug.

I hugged her back with my free arm, as my other one was still carrying my trolley bag and she had that one pinned in her grip.

“I’m so glad you made it,” she exclaimed.

“Yeah, I made it to Hollywood, right?” I dryly humored.

Jamie giggled as she began to pull back from her hug and put both her hands on my shoulders.

“Yes we did,” she said with a big smile, flashing her perfectly straight, white teeth. “We sure did.”

She led me inside the house and gave me a tour. Compared to the outside, the inside was the complete opposite in regards to the decorative era. Whereas the exterior was ‘groovy’, the inside was a bit more with the times. Wide-open spaces, tan or beige-colored furniture and walls, a wide sliding door for the backyard where you can see the pool. Jamie recently moved into the house, so I figured there wouldn’t be a lot of things to fill it up with just yet.

“Someone said Bette Davis used to live in this house, which I knew was bullshit, otherwise the value on this home woulda been way outta my league,” Jamie commented.

I chuckled. “Oh, I think you’re well on your way, trust me,” I reassured.

I was going to be staying with her for a week while I did my journaling/blogging. We did tons of catching up. She gave me all the inside scoop of what goes on in Hollywood - or ‘Hollyweird’ as I liked to call it - and even some of her other famous neighbors you might recognize living double lives on the down-low. She said she’d been to a couple of big mansion parties as well, where you’ll see all sorts of celebs from different categories of entertainment. Actors, athletes, musicians, models, influencers, you name it. But Jamie insists that she doesn’t attend those very often, if hardly at all. She prefers to be a homebody when she’s not seeking work through her agent, and her extraversion mostly comes to play when it involves networking.

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________

The rest of the night we stayed up watching TV and YouTube videos. One that fascinated both of us was a video explaining how scientists managed to find a way to make a perfectly cooked steak from a cow, but without actually harming or slaughtering it. Instead, they extracted a small sample of the cow’s cells and took it to a lab where the cells would essentially grow into muscle for it to be cooked later.

“I’d consider that over going vegan,” Jamie said.

But I grimaced at the thought. “I don’t know, it just doesn’t seem right,” I remarked.

"What, are you vegan?"

"No, not that. Just the thought of cloning animals, ya know?"

“I mean, it’s not like they’re killing the cow or anything. They said it’s perfectly unharmed.”

“I know, but still…”

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The next morning was day one for me. Jamie had the right connections to get me an on-set tour of the studio lots associated with Gemini Films. I was greeted and led by the third assistant director (or AD as they’re commonly referred to).

“Hi, I’m Tiffany, nice to meet you,” she said, with a rather forced smile and handshake.

She carried a clipboard in her other arm, as well as a hand-held radio clipped to the pocket of her jeans, and I saw that she also had an earpiece nestled in her right ear. I could tell she was about her business and probably didn’t have time to be overly nice or talk too much.

I got a sneak peek of their most current production under the production title *"*Cold Silence", which required me to sign an NDA beforehand, of course. That wasn't actually their final name for the movie, but it's a common thing for them to do when shooting a film when either they haven't decided on a name yet or to keep the nature of the project a secret. It sort of took me back to my theater tech days with all the set designs and props lying around, except these were much more detailed and intricate thanks to their higher budget than what my high school had at the time. Here, there was limitless potential. Tiffany also introduced me to the other ADs, PAs, boom operators, cameramen, make-up artists, and then last but certainly not least, the director.

“Jeffrey?” Tiffany called to the man sitting in the director’s chair. The man turned to face her and then me. “This is Christian Watkins. He’s the man we’re giving a behind-the-scenes scoop for his… blog?” She looked to me for confirmation, to which I nodded. “Yeah, for his blog.”

The man in the big chair stood up with a cool smile and classy charm and extended his hand for me to shake.

“Christian, nice to meet you,” the man spoke in a tenor pitch. “Jeffrey Bachmann,” he introduced himself.

I didn’t take too much time last night trying to read up on his bio, but from what I could tell at first glance I knew that he was about in his mid to late fifties, as his hair was greying and skin was starting to wrinkle, and I could see that he had a surprisingly calm and laid-back demeanor. Surprising to me, at least. I always thought directing was a high-paced, chaotic mess that never ceased to present a myriad of complications onset that’d make any man want to pull their hair out. But Jeffrey seemed calm, collected, and very personable.

“Hi, thank you for having me,” I replied. “Seriously, this is like a really cool opportunity for me and my blog.”

“Hey man, it’s my pleasure,” Jeffrey said. “I heard you got a big following behind your name. Props to you. I respect the work ethic, especially giving your readers what they really want to see, ya know?”

I shrugged modestly. “Well thank you, but this time was mostly in my own interest to seek out this idea for my current blog,” I said.

“Ah, an interest in GF, huh?” Jeffrey replied. “Well, what would you like to know? We’ve got nothing but time today. In fact, we’re just getting ready to shoot the mangle scene for today and then we’ll wrap it up before we review the dailies.”

“Mangle scene?”

“Oh yeah, if you’ve got a weak stomach or aren’t into gore you don’t have to watch.”

At least he gave me discretion. “Hmm, I think I’ll tough this one out,” I said. “For the blog.”

Jeffrey gave me a sincere but slightly unsettling grin. “That’s what I’m talkin’ ‘bout.”

He was a nice guy so far, but you know how you just meet certain people that for whatever reason, out of their control, their aura seems off? Maybe it was my preconceived notion and warranted cynicism I had of people working in Hollywood. Just a bunch of sharks in a pool with hungry eyes for desperate young talents eager to take a dive in the spotlight. But as I’d imagine with any field, there had to be a decent share of lambs among the many wolves.

Suddenly, one of the makeup artists scampered over to us, their attention directly at Jeffrey.

“Hey,” they said to him with a noticeably fake inflection.

“Hey, what's up?” Jeffrey returned.

“Savannah? She’s losing it back there. Said she wants to talk to you and only you.”

Jeffrey nodded. “Don’t worry, I got it,” he said, as he patted his hand on the MUAs shoulder. He then gave me an apologetic look. “Sorry, Christian, duty calls, but hey, Tiffany?” he looked to the stern AD. “Make sure he gets a front-row view for the martini shot.”

“Yes sir,” Tiffany replied.

Jeffrey and the MUA stepped off to handle whatever business needed handling regarding one of the actresses backstage in the dressing room.

“Martini shot?” I asked.

“Last shot for the day,” Tiffany explained. “For me, that’s a term I like to take literally.”

She seemed so serious all this time that I found the joke almost funny.

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There was now quiet on the set. Shooting was about to start shortly. At this point in the movie, the main character has a stand-off that turns into a big fight scene with the main bad guy at a warehouse factory building. At first, there’s a gunfight, then eventually they both run out of ammo and it comes down to a fistfight before finally having a standstill on top of a rail just over a giant industrial shredder.

Right now, the actor playing the bad guy, Will, is hanging on for his life over the rail above the shredder, while Thomas, the main good guy, is standing over him victoriously. My question was, is the shredder real? ‘Cause it sure as hell looks like it. It wasn’t turned on yet, but just from a glance it seemed legit enough that if I dropped something as sturdy as a microwave in there, it’d come out jelly on the other end.

For the blog, I told myself. For the blog…

Suddenly, my suspicions were confirmed once Jeffrey called to have the shredder turned on. The machine roared to life, the inverting sharp metal gears rotating past each other being a black hole eating everything that passes through it with no escape. Holy shit. It was actually fucking real.

Jeffrey gave the nod to the 1st AD, and the AD returned the same.

“Action!” the AD called.

Based on what Jeffrey showed me from the script, Thomas is supposed to stomp on Will’s hand that’s gripping onto the edge of the rail, causing him to fall to his death into the shredder. The camera was now rolling, yet, I didn’t see Thomas do the deed. Was he pausing for dramatic effect? Was he acting for the camera? I wasn’t quite sure why he was hesitating.

I peaked over to notice that Jeffrey, the once calm and collected man I met backstage earlier, was now beginning to seem noticeably impatient and about to snap at any moment. There was now that dark edge I noticed about him from before but couldn’t quite put a finger on that I could see now coming to light.

Hesitation filled Thomas’ veins, about to raise his foot, then not, dragging on the scene longer than intended. From this distance, I tried to see Will’s own expression, and I regret ever doing so. Surely he was acting, but I’ll be damned, it was too good. Whatever fear he portrayed transmuted itself into me now. It was the kind of fear that I didn’t think could be replicated on command. Jeffrey stood up from his seat, but just before he could say anything or call ‘cut’, Thomas stomped his foot down on Will’s hand, and we all watched as his fingers slip from the railing. Will sent out a bloodcurdling scream as he plummeted to his ‘death’. What followed will haunt me forever.

Do you know what it sounds like to have a person’s body mangled to death? Have you bitten into the bone of any sort of meat? Heard and felt the crunch? Or maybe even the crunch of celery? I myself have never broken a single bone in my body, but imagining what it might sound like other than what I’d heard in movies or video games all seemed elementary now. At first, I had to look away, but what forced me out of my seat to leave was Will’s horrifying screams. He’d fallen feet first into the shredder, so his lower body had to suffer first before reaching his upper body and finally silencing him at the head.

I ran to find the nearest trashcan and hurled. I guess I really didn’t have the stomach for gore, at least, not to this degree. Will’s screams kept looping in my head. It was a new primal sound that evoked a dread within me that I wish I never discovered. The sound of torment. One thing was for sure, Will was one fucking hell of an actor - if this was acting. But the shredder…

It seemed so real. And there was no greenscreen besides the ones to be used for the background later in post-production. I saw him fall right into the damn thing. With my own eyes. In living color. There were no edits, no crazy tricks, no lighting effects. There couldn’t be. It just wasn’t possible.

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I was sitting down trying to recuperate, as everyone else around me was wrapping up set for the day. Tiffany came over and handed me a bottle of water.

“Thanks,” I said, taking it.

“You feelin’ better?” she asked.

“Hmm,” I answered with a scoff, raising both my eyebrows and taking a sip from the bottle.

“I’m surprised you stuck around if you had such a weak stomach. I mean, he at least warned you.”

“I usually don’t. But that?” I shook my head. “How do you guys do it? It looked so real.”

“I’m just pulling your leg. I almost vomited too my first time. Nothing to be embarrassed about.”

If it was a shame to flinch at something so vile, I don’t wanna know what goes on in Jeffrey’s mind to even come up with such a scene. Speaking of which, I still didn’t get a one-on-one interview with him as I’d hoped. All I had was the end result of his ‘movie magic’, but not how he did it. At this point, I'm not sure I really wanna know.

I went to go get my belongings, which were left in one of the dressing rooms, and was stopped by the sound sniffling from the one a couple doors ahead of mine. I looked on the door to read whose room it belonged to. It read: SAVANNAH YOUNG. She was one of the lead actresses in the movie, or rather I should say the only actress in the whole film. With the makeup artist and Jeffrey thing that happened earlier, it was evident to me that something sour had gone on behind the scenes I didn’t know about.

The door was cracked open and I couldn’t see her face entirely from my view, but I knew she was sobbing. She looked to be sitting in front of her mirror. I was about to just ignore it and go on about my business.

I lightly knocked on the door. “You okay in there?” I asked.

She stopped and I could hear her get up and approach the door. She pulled it back just enough to where I could see her whole face. She was beautiful, just like Jamie, even if she had been crying.

“Yeah, I’m fine,” Savannah said. “Thank you.”

There was a brief awkward moment of silence between us. Clearly, she wasn’t fine, but I didn’t wish to pry any further than that.

“Are you one of the new PAs?” she asked. I arched a brow. “Production assistant?” she clarified.

“Oh, no, I’m just a visitor,” I assured. ��Writing for my blog. I was supposed to be writing about behind-the-scenes things and how it all works around here, but I bitched out from the ‘mangling scene’.”

Savannah gave a short nod. “I see,” she said. “Well… I don’t blame you.”

I wasn’t sure if it was the way she said it or just from the state that I was in, but her words gave me chills.

“I should get going,” I told her. “Nice meeting you.”

“Likewise,” she replied, and then shut the door.

I got my stuff from the dressing room and got ready to head out. I wonder what could’ve made Savannah so down to where the director had to get involved and set her straight. Jeffrey seemed pleasant to work with at first glance, but who knows, maybe he had a mean streak to him after all, especially the way he looked during the shooting of the scene. God, I just wanted to forget about it. I can’t unhear the sounds. The bones crunching, the blood splattering, and the screaming. The fucking screaming…

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________

As I was leaving the studio lot, I noticed the cleaning crew of two men dump a large amount of black bags in the dumpster. From the way they swung the bags over into the bin, the shit didn’t seem light. The bags were in several different sizes, some small, some big, some disproportionate. I stood there and watched as the two men finished disposing of the junk and walked away to go about their other duties.

Regular, common sense me would’ve just picked up the phone, called Jamie to let her know I’m ready to get picked up, and go about my day. But the nosy blogger me kept itching…

I made sure the coast was clear and made my way over to the bin. I can’t believe I was actually dumpster diving, and for what? What did I really expect to find? In my head, I knew the answer, but was avoiding it, either out of how ridiculous it may sound or, God forbid, I was right.

The trash wasn’t stacked high enough from the bottom for me to simply reach, so I had to literally get in there myself. I climbed over on the other end, raised the lid, and jumped down on the piles of plastic bags, holding the lid up with my arm and my breath so I didn’t get a huge whiff of the smell. Though, if I did need to puke again, I supposed this would be the place to do it.

I immediately noticed the bags the men threw away, but in order for me to check what was inside, I’d have to crouch down and let the lid close on me. Fine. That’s what the flashlight on my phone was for. Surrounded in darkness and garbage now, I turned the flash on, illuminating the four dirty walls around me and I pulled back one of the bags. I felt around to try and see what sort of contents might be inside. Mush. It felt all mushy with chunks of solid and a little bit of liquid.

This was stupid, I thought. I realized how stupid I probably looked right then and there, sitting in a bin full of filth looking for clues like some sort of private detective. My followers have no idea how far I’d go, but this was ridiculous. Oh well, I’m too deep in it now, no pun intended.

I held my phone in my mouth as I used my hands to rip open the plastic. My heart began pounding as I slowly pried the bag open. Once I got a peek inside, shame and embarrassment came over me.

Food.

I should’ve just called Jamie to come get me. Had I really become that desperate? I threw the bag over and out of my way. Then I noticed the bag underneath had trickles of fluid. Curious, I shined the light down on it. They were red trickles. Considering how I’d just overreacted only to find a bag full of thrown out lunch, I wasn’t about to get all up in arms about finding red drops behind a Hollywood studio lot. I didn’t know the full recipe for fake blood, but if I recall correctly, Alfred Hitchcock used chocolate when they filmed the shower scene from Psycho.

I tried to follow the small trail and see if it led to another bag. I slowly pointed the light further up and it led me to the bag just behind the one I tossed to the side. Looks like it had a small bust that caused it to leak. When I pulled this one over, a very noticeable smell filled my nostrils and erased any other scent of the trash that surrounded me. It was a metallic, rusty sort of odor, like copper from a penny. However, that smell also belonged to something else…

I ripped open the bag, and with the shine of my light beaming down, I was welcomed to a bright crimson sight of mashed blood and guts. It had to be fake, I thought. It had to… but the way I recoiled from the putrid metallic fresh scent of carnage, my primal instincts told me that wasn’t the case. I innately knew that it was real. I was staring at Will’s mangled body.

Frozen from fear, I sat there for who-knows-how-long. What the fuck was I supposed to do? I’d call the cops first, of course, but they would need evidence, and even then they’d probably dismiss me after I told them I dove into the dumpster of a movie set where fake blood is a common prop. I’d tell Jamie the same, but she’d look at me crazy, too.

I unlocked my phone and started snapping pictures. As much as I could. I even opened some other bags and did the same. I tried to snap every bit of remains that was left of Will and saved them into my phone. It felt like a sick test to see how long I could hold my breath so I wouldn’t gag, and I think I broke a new record that day.

I snapped probably about 47 pictures on my phone before I finally shot up and threw open the bin. The wave of fresh air hit me like a truck, and enjoyed it for only a brief second before turning to see Jeffrey, Tiffany, and the other AD standing by his side. My soul left my body right then and there.

“Christian?” Jeffrey said, sounding concerned.

Fucking say something, I told myself. I did my best not to stutter and look stupid.

“Hey, Jeff,” I said, raising the inflection of my voice, probably sounding dumb.

“Going for a swim there?” Jeffrey joked.

I fake laughed, then put on my best acting skills. “I cannot for the life of me find my ring.”

“Your ring?”

“Yeah, my mom’s ring?”

Then, with the slick subtle motion, I hid my hands to where they couldn’t see them behind the walls of the bin, and with careful coordination used my fingers on my right hand to pull the ring I already had on and flicked it down onto the trash below. I shuffled my feet over the bags I stood on to make noise so they wouldn’t hear the ring drop. Please God, don’t let the ring hit the hard bottom floor or one of the rusty walls, I thought. To my relief, it didn’t.

“Oh man, I’m sorry, Christian, I haven’t seen it,” Jeffrey said, as he looked at the other two as they also shook their heads. “But we can definitely look around again and let you know if we find anything.”

“Uh, yeah, sure,” I said, trying not to make my voice tremble with anxiety.

“Now, c’mon, let’s get you outta there,” Jeffrey said, waving his hand over.

I nodded and shot a quick timid smile. I climbed out of the bin and faced the three before me, wiping myself down.

“Hands a little messy there,” Jeffrey said.

Anxiety raced through me again, but adrenaline had my back to make sure I didn’t fuck up by saying anything dumb.

“Oh, the fake blood?” I chortled. “Yeah, you guys lots of that shit in there. Smells like a chocolate factory.”

Jeffrey fell for it, and laughed. Good. But he could just as easily be playing me right now.

“Given how you ran off earlier back there I’m surprised you can stand to look at it, better yet, touch it,” he remarked.

“I’m sorry about that,” I stammered but stayed on track. “It’s just… I now see for myself, no one does it like GF.”

“Haha, you don’t have to flatter me to get back my respect. Don’t sweat it. I totally understand.”

Is that so? I thought.

“You could use that martini shot right about now, huh?” Tiffany joked.

Definitely not with her any time soon. Or any of them, for that matter.

“Well we’re just heading out for the day, you got a ride?” said Jeffrey.

“Yeah, I should probably call Jamie now and let her know I’m done,” I replied.

“It’s no problem, man, I can give you a lift. I can drop you off wherever you need me to.”

“No, it’s fine.”

“Seriously, I insist-”

“Jamie and I got a spa appointment to catch in a bit. Otherwise I appreciate the offer.”

Jeffrey had a brief look in his eyes, a glint of what I could only compare to a wolf’s gaze hiding behind that sheep’s clothing he carried himself around as, and then smiled and nodded.

“Okay, Christian,” he said. “Once again, nice to meet you and I hoped you enjoyed the tour, and hopefully make some good content for your blog.”

“Absolutely,” I said. “Thank you so much again. Seriously, I can’t thank you enough.”

“It’s nothing, Chris,” Jeffrey said, throwing me off a bit. “Can I call you, Chris?’

I shrugged. “Sure. I mean, I called you Jeff by accident,” I said.

“It’s fine. Chris and Jeff it is.”

I needed to get away from here. Now and as fast as possible. But I still needed to do one more thing.

“Any chance I can wash these off inside?” I said, raising my bloodied hands.

“Oh of course,” Jeff said.

“I can lead him back,” Tiffany said, ready to go with, but Jeffrey stopped her.

“Ah, he knows his way in, right?” Jeff looked to me for reassurance.

“Yeah,” I answered confidently.

“Good, well hopefully I’ll see you around, Chris, and you enjoy the rest of your day.”

“Thank you, Jeff. And you all do the same.”

As I walked past them and towards the studio lot, I couldn’t help but wonder if I was being set up. Why hadn’t he let Tiffany escort me back inside? I’d think that would be customary for them to do for visitors entering and exiting the building. But I felt that they were watching me from behind, and with every step, I grew more and more anxious.

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________

I’d made it inside and the lot was now nearly empty and quieter. I didn’t see a single person in sight, and only a few lights remained on, making it mostly dark. I hurried the fuck up and did what I came to do, as I didn’t wanna be here any longer and didn’t feel safe.

Down the hall where the dressing rooms were, I rushed over to Savannah’s door, and saw that it was closed. I tried opening it only to see it was locked. Looking down, there was no light shining through the cracks either, meaning there was no one inside. She wasn’t there. Shit.

I washed my hands in the bathroom, scrubbing the dried blood off as thoroughly as possible, getting under nails and all, cringing at the thought of it being Will’s. Suddenly, I heard a noise from outside the hall leading to the bathroom. Petrified, my heart sank into my chest, and I froze. I shut the water off, and carefully approached the door. I listened for any other sounds as I placed my ear closer. After a few moments, I heard the noise again, but then realized that it seemed to be coming from one of the dressing rooms just outside in the hall.

Since I carry a notebook around most of the time for jotting down notes, I certainly always carry a pen. What most people don’t know is that I carry a military tactical pen for a variety of uses, and in times like these, it can be used as a subtle but effective weapon. I switched the tip from an ink ball to a small slick blade.

I opened the bathroom door and crept through the hall over to the dressing room door that made the noise, holding the pen underneath the breast pocket of my sweater. On the outside of the door, it read, “WILL BANKS.”

Confused, I wasn’t sure what to make of it. Common sense me once again kept barking in my brain telling me to GTFO, but I had to be sure. I gave three shy knocks and waited. There was definitely someone in there because whatever noise I thought I heard from behind came to an utter halt. I could hear faint whispers of someone’s voice, and then another. There was more than one. My hand trembled as it tightly gripped the pen underneath with sweat as I heard whoever it was on the other end of the door approach.

It swung open, and there stood Will Banks, the man whose blood was just on my hands moments ago, alive and well, in the flesh. It couldn’t be, I thought to myself.

“Can I help you?” he said.

I just stood there, baffled, without answering. Behind him, I saw Savannah, who instantly recognized me and came over.

“Hi,” she said. “I thought everyone left.” She looked to Will. “He was visiting the set today for his vlog, or I’m sorry, blog.”

Will nodded, understanding now. “Oh. Sorry, I didn’t get to meet you. Will Banks,” he said, pointing at his name on the door. “As you can see.” Savannah chuckled, and Will extended his hand for me to shake.

“Christian, or Chris,” I said, releasing the pen from inside my sweater and reaching my own hand out to take his. "Whichever you please."

He had a firm shake, and it felt uncanny considering what I’d just witnessed. I was touching him, feeling his skin and bone underneath, the warmth of his body temperature through the flesh. He was real. He was alive and breathing. That couldn’t be faked. That couldn’t be a visual effect. This was real. After we let go, suddenly my hand went cold. Everything about this seemed off and downright strange.

“Did you stick around for the shoot?” Will asked.

“I did, as a matter of fact.”

“Well, what’d you think?”

I wanted to say so many things right then and there, he had no idea.

“Um... y’all are some damn good actors,” I said.

Will laughed a bit, accepting my sham form of flattery, but Savannah, not so much. She gave one of those forced gestures as to not make it feel awkward, though, I noticed it right away.

“How do you do it?” I asked.

“I would give you some artistic bullshit answer like ‘study your craft’ or ‘years of training,' things like that, but honestly… it just kinda clicks, ya know?”

I fake chuckled. “No, I don’t. It looked kinda real from my end. Too real, I might add. Care to go into detail how you guys pulled it off?”

“Well, uh-”

Savannah interrupted. “Wait, you know what Jeffrey would say,” she whispered to him.

“I know, but it’s for his blog,” Will argued.

“But still.”

“I mean, Jeffrey’s not here, right?” I chimed in.

They both looked at me, then at each other. There seemed to be some sort of nonverbal understanding between them, and Will looked back at me.

“All right, for the sake of your blog, I’ll give you what I can to the best of my wording, that sound good?” Will proposed.

I took the pen back out from inside, switching it to the ink ball with a short click, and whipped out my small notebook. “Hit me,” I said.

“Get ready for this one. Basically, we’ve been using a new thing in the biz lately sort of like mocap but it’s not exactly. It’s also kinda like hologram sort of tech?”

“Really?” I said, eyes widened with interest as I wrote words down.

“Yep. That’s how we did it. What you saw, was as real as the hologram thingamajig allowed you to.”

“Hmm.”

“The shredder, too.”

“What?”

“The shredder. That was a hologram also.”

“Really? Okay…”

I finished writing on my notepad then turned it so that Will could read it.

BITE ME, I wrote with a big circle around it.

He laughed. Savannah did, too, but, again, in a strange nervous and restrained demeanor.

“That’s a nice story,” I said. “So if you’re ready to quit bullshitting with me, and tell the truth, I’m ready,” I spoke in a playful yet no-nonsense tone. “How’d you do it?”

“You’re good, man,” Will said with a smile, pointing his finger at me. “Like a true journalist.”

Any other day I’d be pleased to hear that, but I was serious. I needed to know, so much that I’d forgotten how long I’d actually been here. I told myself I was gonna leave as soon as I could, but now, for some reason after talking with Will and seeing how personable and genuine he came off, he put me a bit at ease. Maybe I was blowing this out of proportion. But then the screams echoed in my head again, and the smell...

“You’re not gonna tell me, are you?” I said.

“Look, I wish I could, honestly, but if I did, Jeffrey may not be too happy with either of us,” Will responded sincerely. That much was true, I could tell.

“All right, I think I tortured you enough,” I said, then immediately regretted my choice of words.

“No worries, man. Nice meetin’ ya. Good luck with the blog.”

“Thanks.”

I looked at Savannah one last time, and she looked back with a serious and almost scary gaze as though she needed to tell me something very bad. That’s who I came back for anyways. But that opportunity was a lost cause now, as I left with nothing and still no understanding of how Gemini Films did their visual effects? And I lost my mother’s ring. Fuck, I didn’t have time to go get it right now. I didn’t wanna risk being seen again. Hopefully, Jeffrey keeps his word and they somehow manage to give it back. That being said, I'd be fine with not having to see him ever again.

Whose blood was that? Whose body was that in the dumpster? Was it real? Was it actually just that well made to where the average person could be fooled into thinking it was actual flesh? Who’d go through the trouble of all that?

The screams of losing your life inch by inch, the sounds that would haunt me forever. And the smell of what was inside that bag. That instinctual gut feeling… how was it not real?

#writing #story #horror #nosleep #horror stories

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im-the-king-of-the-ocean · 4 years

Text

Rose Puppetry Ch5: Caught in the Web of Mr. Spider

Summary:

A century ago or so, Atlas set out to conquer the world. Penny was built to be a spy, an infiltrator meant to find weaknesses in Vale’s defenses before the invasion.

She did. Then she fell in love. And rebelled against the kingdom that had created her.

Ch1. Ch2. Ch3. Ch4.

Chapter Content Notes: graphic imagery of spiders, violence, character death, attempted murder, stabbing, references to actual character murder, mind control/possession, comas

I would like to take a moment and remind everyone that this fic is roughly inspired by the Mechanism’s album Once Upon A Time (In Space) and that that narrative’s climax is rather gruesome. Additionally, this chapter especially was influenced by the Magnus Archives, which is a horror podcast.

Please take those facts into consideration prior to reading.

I would also like to remind you all that there is one more chapter after this one, and thus the fic does not conclude here.

“Ruby?”

Penny speaks her beloved’s name over and over again. Her voice, a cracking repetition of a broken, almost hopeless recording caught on a looping tape. The mechanical girl who had come and fought so hard can do nothing but stare. She hopes the sight before her isn’t real, that she’s mistaken, that this isn’t how their story ends.

Some history books will say it is. They will narrate the story of a miserable failure of a military project. One who rebelled against her creators, her masters, and cost not only herself, but the one she loved her life. These history books will be produced in the harsh, cold printing presses that remain loyal to the faltering Atlesian throne. A desperate attempt to rewrite history in their favor, but not much more than that really.

Other books, ones with a bit more accuracy, will know better. For even if there is a ‘happily ever after’ or a ‘the end’ to a story, there’s always a moment after that. Something that happens next. Right up until the final end of death comes for the characters.

And neither Penny nor Ruby are quite dead yet.

So it really would be a sad, sorry tale that reaches its conclusion here, wouldn’t it?

The rebels infiltrate the menacing fortress to save the innocent girl and are felled by her hand, now corrupted by the darkness that had ensnared her. No hope of a happy tomorrow. Simply a brutal, violent end and a laboratory awash in blood.

For that’s what happens when you wander into a spider’s web. You tend to get caught by the spider. And, you know, eaten.

The thing, the crucial detail, that must be taken into account about this tale, though. The one thing those Atlesian history books will try to wipe away and conceal and keep the public from knowing. The little detail that keeps this ending from being the true ending of the story.

It’s simply that Ruby Rose is not the spider.

Of course, she is something, and historians (and, after them, archivists) will have quite a wondrous time debating amongst themselves what exactly she is. But, what she is not, is the spider. The hungry arachnid who waits so long for its prey to come, who binds its meal tightly in silky thread for later consumption.

Some, and they will have fairly strong evidence for their cause, will argue Ruby was simply the first caught in the spider’s web. Those ones have a valid, if not entirely understanding of the circumstances as a whole, point.

A spider’s web is a sticky, tricky thing. When you’re all alone in it, you may see little hope of escape, of anything but the spider’s looming, menacing legs, its snapping jaws, or its eight dark, beady eyes. But that’s only if and when the spider chooses to focus on you. They are, after all, creatures that can be distracted. Ones that can decide to eat something—someone—else. So, maybe Ruby was the spider’s first chosen meal, but she was one left unfinished due to the arrival of an enticing, delectable follow up.

A spider’s web also happens to be a delicate thing and, if put under too much weight, may potentially collapse.

Let us now return to the scene and become observers, ceaseless watchers, to what happens when this particular web takes on quite a bit of weight.

Are you scared yet? You’re probably wondering if you should be. It’s natural, of course. Debating whether or not you should trust the words you read. Should you stop here? What if it gets worse? But, it’s pretty bad here. Do you really want this ending to be the ending?

What happens when you don’t stop, though? When you continue reading the words, bringing them into the reality of being Known? Didn’t expect to be trapped reading a tale without recourse on how to know if the true end is horrible or not without going along with it until it reaches it’s natural conclusion, did you?

Have you considered that, perhaps, it is you who is trapped in the spider’s web?

So, tell me, how much do you really want to know? You’re curious, aren’t you? Driven. Eager to witness all that happens here. Why would you remain otherwise?

Let’s see how it goes, shall we?

Our story, our statement, resumes.

Ever so slowly, Ruby turns her head and looks at Penny. There is no recognition, no emotion of any kind on her face. Ruby blinks, or, rather, she closes her eyelids and opens them again in a movement that could be perceived as a blink. A movement that makes her a stranger to Penny.

“Ruby,” Penny repeats, as if the simple utterance of the name will break the spell. No such enchantment that can be so easily undone exists. Not here. Not now.

“Remarkable, isn’t it?”

New footsteps echo through the laboratory. Penny spins around. Dr. Watts makes his way over from the door. Each step he takes is measured and calculated. His past projects, those horrible menaces whispered about in fear, file into the room behind him.

Cinder looks at the scene laid out before her and smirks. Tyrian laughs. Hazel blocks the doorway with his bulk.

“For a super weapon, I expected you to be smarter than to simply walk into what was so obvious a trap.” Dr. Watts chuckles at Penny. “Foolish of me to underestimate the weakness of love, I suppose.”

“Let. Ruby. Go.” Penny clenches her fists. She raises her daggers. She doesn’t have the advantage here, but that won’t stop her.

“If you insist.” Watts waves a dismissive hand. With his other, he takes a remote out from his pocket and clicks a button on it. The clasps around Ruby’s wrists and ankles snap open. He turns to walk away, but pauses before he exits the laboratory. “Do try to leave at least some of them intact,” he tells Cinder, Tyrian, and Hazel. “It would be a pity for so many good bodies to go to waste.” He exits.

Penny turns to Ruby one last time. “Ruby…” This time it’s a begging sob that escapes her lips. “Please, no.”

Ruby stands. She reaches around herself, to the sheath attached to her belt. Her fingers wrap around the hilt of the blade there. Ruby withdraws the weapon. There’s no sign she recognizes the desperate plea in Penny’s eyes.

The sword slashes through the air.

Penny dodges. She retreats away from Ruby’s attack. Her daggers hover around her. She can’t bring herself to command them to retaliate.

“Ruby, please, it’s me, it’s Penny! You have to recognize me!”

Ruby draws back. For a brief, hopeful second, Penny thinks she’s gotten through to her love. A small smile appears on Penny’s lips. It almost immediately falls away.

Ruby lifts her hand not holding the sword. Around it, thick, black sludge forms. It branches out into a limb all of its own. Bleached white claws emerge at its tips, like grotesque fingers. There’s a second where the Grimm arm moves and shifts, as if adjusting to its own weight. A twisted smirk appears on Ruby’s face. She looks between her new appendage and Penny.

Penny’s daggers come to bear a defensive position in front of her without her telling them to. The Grimm arm tries to dart around them, but the daggers cut through it like butter. It disintegrates into dust. Ruby screams. Her voice is loud, hoarse, and pained. Penny hesitates, doesn’t take the opening. She can’t… she doesn’t…she needs to…but it’s Ruby! RUBY!

She can’t just kill her. Penny glances behind her, at where she knows her team is, but there is no aid to be found there. Cinder, Tyrian, and Hazel are on the attack. The less said about that carnage, the better. Penny is on her own. She turns back to Ruby and, with every fiber of her being protesting, she prepares to fight.

I’ll make it quick, Penny tells Ruby in her head. You don’t deserve this suffering. I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry.

Penny ducks Ruby’s sword, and feigns to the left.

I’m sorry that this is how it ends.

Penny commands her daggers to cut through the Grimm limbs Ruby keeps painfully forming and sending at her. She refuses to allow herself to wince at the agonizing screams.

I’m sorry you didn’t get to live a long and happy life.

Penny sees her opening. Ruby has faltered. Penny allows herself a second to take a breath, and then she lunges. Her daggers all are pointed forward, ready to complete the death blow.

I’m sorry you ever had the misfortune of knowing me.

Penny’s killing blow doesn’t make its target. Ruby faked her out. Midway into Penny’s attack, she dodges. Penny has no time to change course. Her eyes widen. Ruby’s Grimm limbs surround Penny, grab her, hold her.

Horror takes over Penny’s face. She knows what’s going to happen right before the final Grimm arm makes the plunge into her chest. Her mind goes blank with the pain. Whether or not she’s screaming, Penny has no idea.

Ruby’s darkness, her corruption, seeps into Penny, worming its way to the mechanical girl’s heart, her core. For Penny can only be destroyed if it is. The Annihilation reaches its target. It circles its prey, completely surrounding it. It surges in for the kill.

In that dreadful moment, Death doesn’t come. It was never going to. It has, shall we say, a feel, for these things. It knew, all throughout this battle, how it would end. Death knew it would not be necessary to send its Reaper here.

The Silver Eye, which had protecting Ruby’s soul and had waited and waited and watched for its opportunity finally found its chance. When the Grimm entombing it reached out to destroy the one its guardian loved, the Silver Eye, for the first time in its existence, felt something.

Remember, the Eye, on its own, had never been a whole. It was forged, by the King of Vale, out of the remaining half of the Staff of Creation. Though it could exist on its own, it never truly stopped longing to find its missing, stolen part. And, when its prison made that final, almost deadly attack, through those dark tendrils ensnaring it, the Silver Eye finally felt that echo, that reverberation, that it had ached for for so very long.

In that moment, it wakes up and reaches.

Blinding silver light shines out through the laboratory. Every vestige of Annihilation’s power, every bit of Grimm, inside a person or out, is disintegrated. For those who have long since opened their arms to Destruction and allowed its influence into themselves, this means Death finally comes for its dues. For Ruby, who the Silver Eye loves and cherishes, this means purification from her corruption. For Penny, this means her life is spared and, from within her, the Silver Eye is answered.

Once upon a time, the General King of Atlas found the blueprints for an old inventor’s creation. He saw it as a grand opportunity to build a great weapon for the glory of his kingdom. To fuel it, he saw no better resource than his kingdom’s relic itself. He split the Staff of Creation in half, stored one part away for later use and fashioned the other into a core for the new automaton.

Unbeknownst to him, in doing this, the General King created a mirror to the Silver Eye; the Winter Soul. A new entity all of its own, it was. One curious, fascinated about the world around it, and ever so willing to learn.

Is it such a shock then, that was built to be a weapon of immeasurable power turned its back to this objective and instead chose to attempt to understand and love the world it found itself in? Is it such a shock that it came to love one who would be later chosen to preserve life itself?

Much has been written and recorded about the Fall of Atlas. There are numerous accounts of the sudden surge of blinding light that shone across the kingdom. Many theorize, but they do not know the truth of its source. What they do know is that it wiped out the city’s mainframe and, for the first time in history, Atlas was left vulnerable. It didn’t take long for the Rebellion’s ships to rise from Mantle and begin that final, gruesome attack after that.

Later, the Rebellion’s charge into Atlas Academy, of their slaughter of the robotic forces of the Atlesian Military, will be dramatized into something far more glorious and far less bloody than it was. The retellings will focus on the storming of the throne room, of the General King being forced to his knees in surrender, the capture of the notorious Dr. Watts. They will applaud the victories of the day, and blatantly ignore the executions of the weeks to follow.

And so, Atlas’s web of power collapses, crumpling into a thousand twisting, tangled threads. The spider, the warmonger, who sat at its center, weaving and warping the world into something that suited him and only him, and growing fat off the results, is squashed.

Those two who were responsible, who gave the world the chance it needed to rid itself of the boot pressing down upon its throat, they were never known.

For Ruby, now saved from the Grimm but forever scarred by it, looks down upon the sleeping form of her fallen beloved, sees the full extent of Penny’s injuries, gathers her up in her arms, and steals her away to where she can be repaired.

In peace.

#rwby #nuts and dolts #ruby rose #penny polendina #grimm!ruby #rose puppetry #whirls writing #if you're thinking the title is a reference #you'd be right #😏#im gonna regret posting this in the middle of the night #but it also feels like the right time too #so here we are

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hartsgold · 4 years

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𝐀𝐮𝐝𝐢𝐨. 𝐕𝐢𝐠𝐢𝐥𝐨. 𝐎𝐩𝐩𝐞𝐫𝐢𝐨𝐫.

𝚖𝚢 𝚗𝚊𝚖𝚎 𝚒𝚜 𝚌𝚕𝚊𝚞𝚍𝚎 𝚟𝚘𝚗 𝚛𝚒𝚎𝚐𝚊𝚗. 𝚒 𝚠𝚘𝚛𝚔 𝚏𝚘𝚛 𝚝𝚑𝚎 𝚜𝚎𝚒𝚛𝚘𝚜 𝚒𝚗𝚜𝚝𝚒𝚝𝚞𝚝𝚎, 𝚏𝚘𝚍𝚕𝚊𝚗, 𝚊𝚗 𝚘𝚛𝚐𝚊𝚗𝚒𝚣𝚊𝚝𝚒𝚘𝚗 𝚍𝚎𝚍𝚒𝚌𝚊𝚝𝚎𝚍 𝚝𝚘 𝚊𝚌𝚊𝚍𝚎𝚖𝚒𝚌 𝚛𝚎𝚜𝚎𝚊𝚛𝚌𝚑 𝚒𝚗𝚝𝚘 𝚝𝚑𝚎 𝚎𝚜𝚘𝚝𝚎𝚛𝚒𝚌 𝚊𝚗𝚍 𝚝𝚑𝚎 𝚙𝚊𝚛𝚊𝚗𝚘𝚛𝚖𝚊𝚕. 𝚝𝚑𝚎 𝚑𝚎𝚊𝚍 𝚘𝚏 𝚝𝚑𝚎 𝚒𝚗𝚜𝚝𝚒𝚝𝚞𝚝𝚎, 𝚛𝚑𝚎𝚊, 𝚑𝚊𝚜 𝚎𝚖𝚙𝚕𝚘𝚢𝚎𝚍 𝚖𝚎 𝚝𝚘 𝚛𝚎𝚙𝚕𝚊𝚌𝚎 𝚝𝚑𝚎 𝚙𝚛𝚎𝚟𝚒𝚘𝚞𝚜 𝚑𝚎𝚊𝚍 𝚊𝚛𝚌𝚑𝚒𝚟𝚒𝚜𝚝, 𝚠𝚑𝚘 𝚑𝚊𝚜 𝚛𝚎𝚌𝚎𝚗𝚝𝚕𝚢 𝚙𝚊𝚜𝚜𝚎𝚍 𝚊𝚠𝚊𝚢.

i’ve been working as a researcher at the institute for four years now, and am familiar with most of our significant contracts and projects. most reach dead ends, predictably enough, as incidents of the supernatural, such as they are - and i always emphasize there are very few genuine cases - tend to resist easy conclusions. when an investigation has gone as far as it can, it is transferred to the archives.

now, the institute was founded in 1818, which means that the archive contains almost 200 years of case files at this point. combine that with the fact that most of the institute prefers the ivory tower of pure academia to the complicated work of dealing with statements or recent experiences and you have the recipe for an impeccably organized library and an absolute mess of an archive. this isn’t necessarily a problem - modern filing and indexing systems are a real wonder, and all it would need is a half-decent archivist to keep it in order. my predecessor was apparently not that archivist.

from where I am sitting, i can see thousands of files. many spread loosely around the place, others crushed into unmarked boxes. a few have dates on them or helpful labels such as 86-91 G/H. not only that, but most of these appear to be handwritten or produced on a typewriter with no accompanying digital or audio versions of any sort. in fact, i believe the first computer to ever enter this room is the laptop that i brought in today. more importantly, it seems as though little of the actual investigations have been stored in the archives, so the only thing in most of the files are the statements themselves.

it is going to take me a long, long time to organize this mess. i’ve managed to secure the services of several researchers to assist me. I plan to digitize the files as much as possible and record audio versions, though some will have to be on tape recorder, as my attempts to get them on my laptop have met with… significant audio distortions.

that’s probably enough time spent making my excuses for the state of this place, and i suppose we have to begin somewhere.

𝚊𝚞𝚍𝚒𝚘 𝚛𝚎𝚌𝚘𝚛𝚍𝚒𝚗𝚐 𝚋𝚢 𝚌𝚕𝚊𝚞𝚍𝚎 𝚟𝚘𝚗 𝚛𝚒𝚎𝚐𝚊𝚗, 𝚑𝚎𝚊𝚍 𝚊𝚛𝚌𝚑𝚒𝚟𝚒𝚜𝚝 𝚘𝚏 𝚝𝚑𝚎 𝚜𝚎𝚒𝚛𝚘𝚜 𝚒𝚗𝚜𝚝𝚒𝚝𝚞𝚝𝚎, 𝚏𝚘𝚍𝚕𝚊𝚗.

𝙘𝙧𝙚𝙙𝙞𝙩𝙨: photography / texture art / tma s01e01 blurb & transcription.

Hello! If you’re reading this, welcome to the hell that is The Seiros Archives. I’m hoping to make this as comprehensive a series translation as possible without integrating too many spoilers/telling the stories of characters that aren’t mine (save Sothis and Rhea, who seemed lore-mandatory additions). For example, I don’t have a character to fulfill [Gertrude/the past Archivist’s] position, simply because I can’t think of one and would prefer not to kill anyone off that might want to use this as an AU base. (Feel free to, btw! Just let me know/tag me in your verse thoughts, I’m so excited to read ‘em!)

Spoilers below. Additionally: please peruse the Wiki pages with caution. There’s a trigger list for TMA episodes/general content warnings located here.

Essentially:

The Seiros Archives is an institution that’s existed for two centuries, currently under the jurisdiction of one Rhea, who claims to have come into control of it within the last decade or so. Obviously, this is not true. Rhea’s been alive since the founding of this institute, as she had it built order to resurrect Sothis/The Beginning/The Beholding, [her mother].

Sothis is both a God and not. In TMA, Gods are also known as ‘The Entities’, or The Fears. They are described, on the wiki, as such:

The Entities are various aspects of an amorphous force of fear that exists next to reality. Their influence upon reality manifests as supernatural happenings - all supernatural phenomena in the world are simply extensions of them. These phenomena can take various forms such as people, animals, monsters, books, objects, or places.These entities do not simply feed off of our fear, rather they are our fears made manifest. “These things... these forces, they are our fear. Deep fears. Primordial. Always looking for ways to grow and spread.” Not all their actions inspire fear, they are simply a part of the process, a means to an end. (cont. This link includes a list of the Fears and should be read with caution, as there is some horror imagery, etc.)

In this verse, I’m going to conflate Sothis with The Eye, or The Ceaseless Watcher. She is an Entity of Fear manifested specifically as “being watched, exposed, followed, of having secrets known, but also the drive to know and understand, even if your discoveries might destroy you. Fear that you’re suffering for the sake of something watching.” I think her relationship with being able to control the flow of time and know results of the past and future translate well here. It’s terrifying to consider someone who Knows what might happen in the far future can directly alter it as well.

Let’s say that Sothis’ “death” in this verse was a failed “Ritual” of The Eye. Centuries ago, Rhea attempted to bring her mother’s Entity to full power above all the others.

Rituals are ceremonies held in order to empower The Entities. “Most entities have their own ‘ritual’, a symbolic act that, if completed, will allow the entity to merge with reality, changing the fabric of the world as it exert its will and nature upon reality. These rituals have the potential to bring other closely-tied entities along with it. It requires centuries for each Entity to build up the power needed for its ritual, and if it is stopped, it cannot try again until it rebuilds that power base. No ritual has ever succeeded” (x).

When Rhea’s Ritual for The Eye was thwarted, the Entity lost a great sum of its garnered power. I imagine she was an Avatar of the fear, and her connection with her mother was severed to an extent. As a result, she began to construct the Seiros Institute as a means of rebuilding power for the sake of The Eye.

Avatars are essentially vessels for spreading the influence of The Entities. “Some humans can become attached to an Entity and become empowered by it, gaining supernatural abilities related to their patron, but losing some or all of their humanity in the process. Most people fall to the powers through love or fear, though it can happen for other reasons such as debt. Avatars and agents of a power retain their agency but can become physically dependent on it, suffering withdrawal effects, including death, if they go too long without feeding the entity that empowers them” (x).

People influenced by, or who encounter Avatars are often Marked by them, and other Entities alongside their Avatars can sense this fact.

In building The Seiros Institute, Rhea hopes to give Sothis enough power through a ritual to “merge with reality”/live again/to be able to communicate with her once more.

The former hired Archivist stopped countless Rituals of The Entities, and was eventually killed as a result of attempting to quell Rhea’s efforts.

There are tunnels underneath the institute in canon, which I’m going to say is the equivalent of the Holy Tomb.

Characters, once employed by The Institute, are unable to quit/be fired. Literally. This is a canon mechanic, where they can’t even say the words.

TL;DR: This is set in a modern Fódlan. I imagine it as something of a large city interconnected with several other neighboring states, such as Almyra, Brigid, Dagda, etc.

Are there tense relations between these places? Of course! Is The Empire probably allied with a different Entity and is aggravated that Rhea is doing what she’s doing? Very likely! Are Those Who Slither In The Dark likely allied with one as well, or are experimenting on people in the attempt to complete a Ritual? Why Not!

The Entities create very viciously real manifestations of their respective fears, so people have supernatural encounters of all kinds. Vampires––weird lore, but yes. People being replaced by doppelgängers––Oh, Yeah. Circus people who steal voice boxes and dance around with mannequin limbs? Uh huh. Worms? Don’t forget the worms. As weird as you can think of it!

So this modern Fódlan is rife with the eccentric and the supernatural. At the moment, The Seiros Institute is simply an academic place set on recording and understanding those supernatural occurrences!

I’m setting Khalid as the current archivist because he seems the appropriate “linchpin” figure that Jon is in the main series, having been marked by several Entities. As the most knowledge and balance-hungry of the Three Lords, he fits the part. Obviously there’s something to be said of Byleth’s potential role as an Archivist, but the Archivist does a lot of talking, much like Khalid. He also interacts with everyone giving statements to the Archive, and I think Khalid’s canonical tendency to disarm others in exchange for secrets and stories is par for this course.

Nonetheless, if you do want to use this AU as a base for your Byleth or any other character, please don’t feel restricted by anything!

Whether your characters are employed by the Archive, is an Avatar for a Fear, or is simply terrified by whatever the fuck is going on here, please feel free to get in on this! Write it with me! Ask me any questions you might have and I’ll do my best to spoil myself on this wonderful podcast further so I can answer you to the best of my ability! [I’m about 75 episodes in right now, but am content to spoil myself, truly...] So please hit me up anytime. I’m really excited about this and would love to plot things out with you!

#❛ ・ﾟ the watcher’s crown and king — tma. ✧#feel free to reblog!#what have i done.

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curious-minx · 4 years

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Bob’s Burgers most reliable holiday provides another lowkey enjoyable, but messy episode. Whereas the latest Simpsons strikes a really sore vocal node.

The second holiday episode of Bob’s Burgers’ 11th season, much like the previous Halloween episode, this one also fails to live up to the series’ even higher Thanksgiving standard

That’s not to say “Diarrhea of a Poopy Kid” is not a good episode, but it does fall into the category of Bob’s Burgers episode I typically respond to the least: Character-based storytelling vignettes. The writing on these segment driven episodes tend to be looser and playful bending the show’s reality, but much like every time the other Fox family leaves the Springfield plane of reality into a pastiche styled playground for the writers to plug the characters into.

The overall animation and visual-based gags on this episode offers some of the best moments of the season and series in general. Having the Belcher stories revolve around action movie pastiches of 90’s action movie schlock like Air Force Once, Armageddon, and late 80’s Predator are extremely punny and really grasping hard for satire. The walk to Louise’s Breadator is succinct and makes total sense for Louise’s character to tell this kind of story, whereas Tina drawing inspiration from Air Force One for her story sags the episode down. This episode also has the gall to bring in Gayle, a character that usually elevates all of her episodes nothing much to do until the third and best segment told by Bob. Teddie is also frustratingly nowhere to be seen and Teddie is one of those characters that really only needs a small scene explaining away his absence like in the episode “Gayle Makin’ Bob Sled,” which Variety and I consider to be among the best of Bob’s Thanksgiving episodes.

Nitpicks and reminiscing on past glories aside, what’s most impressive about an episode as conceptual and overstuffed as this one, an episode that’s also poopy and gross-out from the very beginning, still manages to pack undeniable heart. Seeing a character as relatable and sad sack-y as Bob Belcher be passionate about his one favorite holiday reminds me of the everlasting and evergreen Ray Bradbury remark about how everyone is capable of writing poetry as long as you ask them to talk about something they are truly passionate about. Seeing how this episode climax revolves around Gene and Bob’s love of food and proves a powerful sentimental moment. Bob’s Burgers sentimentality works because the show’s core is silly absurdism, light and fluffy gross out gags and quirky twee-ness. Introducing the action movie element feels like the series trying to branch out its audience and try to catch some eyeballs of viewers looking for something more like Archer, American Dad, Rick and Morty, or even Treehouse of Horror style genre exercises. Bob’s Burgers and action comedy feels like putting garlic pesto on cinnamon toast, but Ryan Reynolds doesn’t think so.

Yes, that’s right. The biggest news out of the Bob’s Burgers camp…probably ever…is that the Molyneux sisters, the writers of this very action packed episode, have been hand selected by Mr. Detective “VanWilder” Pickachu himself to be head writers on the upcoming third Deadpool movie. Seeing that we live in a post Russo brothers world and how Dan Harmon was conscripted to punch up Doctor Strange scripts none of this should really surprise me, but I am still very much surprised by this development. The Deadpool 3 creative team and Reynolds is still promising to deliver an R-Rated Comedy, a rating and promise that is very much why Deadpool is the sensation that it is.

In the current media landscape the only way a big budget R-Rated comedy can get made is if it’s attached to something like a mega superhero sized brand. At this point in time Deadpool is the closest thing kids have to a Mel or Al Brooks and it is what it is. If anything Ryan Reynolds personally choosing the Molyneux sisters for a project like this makes me like Ryan Reynolds a little bit more. And he’s a man I previously had no real feelings or opinions about. The only other thing about Deadpool I know about is that the franchise has developed a particularly shitty reputation in terms of its treatment of main female characters and literally freezing them out of the plot. The future of comedy is being driven by the significant increase of women gaining these kind of writing gigs and it’s a beautiful thing to finally see witness. Especially when a company like Netflix has been really shitty to both of its own female driven comedies: Glow and Tucca and Bertie.

Sigh. I am thankful for all the sad little boys and girls wearing too much or maybe the right amount of eye shadow that will inherit this flaming Earth.

Three and half pear shaped pals out of an Oedipus Rex Complex.

////

Nerds! Nothing but a lousy rotten sniveling dweeb! You dorkus-rex! You body pillow huffing geek get over here and let the Simpsons set some things straight for you: A Comic Book Guy driven episode of the Simpsons is often where the show goes off the rails. The Comic Book Guy marriage episode is was one of those late day Simpsons that feel like a bad piece of dreamed up fan fiction that you found on the cutting room floor. Is the show interested at all with the fact that comics and being nerdy have become as mainstream as the Bible? No? They’re still treating geek culture as some sort of low hanging piñata fruit lousy with cheap references in place of actual jokes? Good! I don’t know why I would ever allow myself to think for a second that the Simpsons would challenge its own status quo 32 seasons in, but I keep coming back.

What I should really do is back up. The title of this episode is “Three Dreams Denied.” Ah, Dream Denial! That’s exactly what anyone watching an animated sitcom hopes for: dreams being crushed. This isn’t some kiddy Davy and Goliath feel good wholesome fable, this is the Simpsons where characters are given dreams, and those dreams get denied. The next part of the title I want to break down is the fact that there are specifically three dreams that being denied. Three! That’s a comedy number! As long as you have three of anything you’re doing comedy. Plain and simple.

During the Robert Zemeicks arc of the Blank Check podcast Griffin Newman, co-host and comedian extraordinaire and someone I generally admire a lot, has been bringing up the fact that he’s been spending a lot of his Quarantine rewatching the entirety of the Simpsons. By the episode of Used Cars Newman has already gotten past the Movie era and is in the 20th seasons. One observation he made about later day Simpsons is that these episodes have a tendency to end abruptly on a pile of unusable and reality bending plots still in the process of tying themselves up. And there’s no better/worse example of this than this episode.

Comic Book Guy goes to a comic book convention. Bart becomes a voice actor after befriending the comic book guy’s temporary replacement. Lisa feuds over her saxophone chair in the school orchestra with a new pretty boy voiced by the underwhelming Ben Platt. One of these plots is not like the other. This used to be the signature of a quality Simpsons episode that managed to tweak and divert expectations from the typical A & B sitcom storylines. This episode fundamentally fails to deliver on any of the three storylines and what makes it worse is that it’s an intentional choice.

Now I know I have spent this review harping on Comic Book Guy, but he’s not even why this episode for me is such an abomination. And it’s not because the cutesy, flimsy Lisa subplot either (although I do find it noxiously amusing that a week after an Yeardely Smith took issue with the Queer Interpretation of Lisa would feature her going moony eyed over a boy voiced by a defiantly queer actor), no, what tips this episode into the territory of the truly terrible for me is the Bart becomes a voice actor subplot.

The only defining quality of season 32 that I can discern is that the flagrant trolling on behalf of the writers. Can you believe we had three vignette driven episodes of the Simpsons in a row? Can you believe we would have meta reality breaking voice actor related moments back to back? When Lisa Simpson’s voice actor Yeardley Smith voiced the real world character of herself in the previous Podcast based episode it was clumsy and awkward as hell. Having Bart become a voice actor that ends up voicing a character of the opposite gender is the sort of kind of a funny thing that resembles a joke that the latter day Simpsons revel in. The characterization of voice acting work in this episode is downright insulting and explains exactly why this show suffers.

The character of Phil that serves as the Comic Book Guy’s replacement is a working voice actor. He let’s Bart know this by doing a series of completely basic, broad and unremarkable impersonations that Bart is seemingly impressed by. All you have to do to become a successful voice actor is do a silly voice and you’re golden. Maybe from the perspective of a series as lazy and indulgent as the Simpsons is when it comes to voice acting. The complete denial of Julie Kavner’s deteriorating voice that at this point sounds like gentle elder abuse. There are times when Kavner is downright incomprehensible at times. The other oldest member of the Simpsons voice talent, Harry Shearer was wrongheadedly trying to defend his right to voice Characters of Colors because in his words, “the job of the voice actor is to play someone who they’re not.” Obviously these words were not spoken by someone that thinks very highly of acting either. There is no one job an actor has to do, because the job of an actor is always changing from job to job. The character of Phil is not even attributed to anyone! I have spent over thirty minutes getting testy with IMDB search engines and reading another website’s recap and no one can tell me who did the voice of the Voice Acting Character on Simpsons. Lovely.

Much like the Comic Book Guy the Simpsons heart is in bad shape. This is a show whose entire existence seems to be made out of spite. Or to garner enough funds for Matt Groening to prevent him from ever having to serve any prison time for his exploits on the Lolita express. Great, see I’m bringing up the Lolita Express at the end of a Simpsons review. This episode really left me in a bad mood, but thankfully that’s what Bob’s Burgers is for.

SKIP. The only people that should watch this are people teaching a screenwriting class that need examples of what happens when you break your episode by haphazardly shoving three plots into one episode. If you can’t tie up one story in a satisfying manner then you really shouldn’t be telling a story at all. There’s also one really magnificent visual joke involving Homer and beer tea that is absolutely wasted on this episode.

#Bob's Burgers #Deadpool #MCU #2021 #TV series #TV review #TV #The Simpsons #voice artist #voice acting #rant

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emuftw · 5 years

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Dreamboy theory part 2 -Dane, Critch and Luke

So I know I am officially late to the party with putting out part 2 of my dream boy theory after the final episode has been realised, however, as its only been out for a few hours I wanted to get it out before I had a chance to proper listen to the episode. I haven’t listened to the last episode yet so this is what I THINK is going on. As always, there’s some reference to abuse (quite heavy in Luke’s section) so TW if applies. This is also a fan theory and will be probably wrong at the point of posting so ya know, don’t take too seriously!

In my last post we identified some of the key features of what I suspect is going to take place in the finale, with the main idea being that actually there is nothing supernatural going on and rather Dreamboy is actually a highlight of how some of life’s creepiest horrors are that which comes from everyday life. I’m hoping in this part to talk more on where this is highlighted and normal mundane stuff can, with the correct use of tone can make everyday life seem so much bigger than it is.

An example of how this can be proven is Cora Dela Roach and her “death Dreams”. At first, this idea of someone having dreams about people dying can be seen a very jarring and supernatural. However, at the start of the episode we are told that she is older than we think, and as someone who works with a lot of older people, the convocation of death comes up quite regularly. That talk of mortality as ones gets older comes with age, be it in day or night. I know that one of my mum friends who fit the bracket of her age regularly thinks and dreams about her death. In the same episode, we can tell that she has a general fondness for Luke, which means she’s probably is concerned for his safety which could link in with why she is dreaming of the worse.

The idea of “stress dreams” can also be seen with Dane and his dreams. Dane, has reoccurring dreams of the “Giant freaky fish” has seemed pretty abstract however there are ways that these dreams are not as “freaky” as they seem. (Please note: I use the term “stress dream” as that is what I call my dreams, if there is a more formal name then apologies) Firstly, it should be noted that Dane admits in the first episode he has weird dreams, with either his mom in it or being fucked at a meat counter being watched by old ladies, so in actual fact a giant freaky fish dream isn’t too far of a stretch here. Often its very common for someone who see’s something that they encounter in the day to then dream about said thing at night. With Dane working near “the lost ocean” it wouldn’t be unusual for that to carry over to his dreams, with floating in an ocean and giant sea animal being there. We can also add that the dreams start to take a more sinister turn after the death of Esmarelda, where we can assume that Dane fell asleep shortly after. It’s only after then Dane begins to start thinking about fish in a more morbid fashion.

But wait! I hear you ask, “What does this have to do with Luke and Dane sharing dreams? And the fact that Danes dreams are reoccurring?” Whilst I do have a theory of this, I will talk about this in more details in Luke’s section. With regards to the reoccurring dream, I would like to think that Dane is currently having some known as a Stress Dream because of where he is in life

Definition break! Stress Dream is not a formal term or medical definititon, but it’s a term I coined when I talk about my own dreams which are reoccurring! A “Stress Dream” is a dream which comes about at high points of stress and can have a reoccurring theme, however not exclusively linked. For me, when I am under moments of high stress of work, my stress dreams are of me being killed/ put in danger in a variety of ways. There not pleasant, but there are also a sense of weird over tone to them, such as my stress dreams having a very “Home Alone” feel to them but always end with me dying.

The first time I listened to Dreamboy all the way through, I couldn’t help but feel like I resonated with Dane as he was having Stress Dreams like I do, but I couldn’t figure out quite why? It was only after the second listen I realised that it’s to do in what he said in episode 1, and that he’s TIRED. Tried can link into many things in life, with being busy with work, to emotionally tired with life and I can imagine being in New York of all places makes it doubly so. With Dane being tired it would mean that he is pretty sure going to be taking these Tired thoughts with him to sleep, as you can see in episode when he starts off his dream about the presidential waltz and ends back in the water.

Speaking of Tired people, I also Believe Critch is also someone who is not actually the “Bad Guy” of the series but rather someone who is VERY misunderstood and we are being lead to think one way. Critch’s theory is interesting as whilst in the podcast itself there hasn’t been much talk about him as a character, Creator Dane and the Dreamboy team actually mention him quite a lot on social media and bonus episode.

Critch is portrayed as someone who we should not trust, from the way he smiles and talks to having negative interactions with nearly everyone he speaks to. However, I don’t actually thing he’s “up to something” but rather just a guy down on his luck. In the show, we find out he pushed for the Zoo and the Jupiter moons ride as his big way to make a mark on the stonewall fortune, only to have it flop and put the Zoo into more Debt. Being down on his luck, He’s just seems to be trying to find ways to have the Zoo stay open and live up to a long family name. I mentioned in my previous post that with Zoe already being dead, he is just trying to prolong the inevitable loss of his main attraction; however, there are a few notes from outside the show that can lead to him also being a Very tired guy down to his last ties of luck.

On Twitter a few weeks back, someone tweeted the Dreamboy team with their own fan theory that Critch wasn’t all out bad. Whilst a couple of members of Dreamboy did like the post, Patrick (WHO I AM SO SORRY FOR THIS NEXT BIT) actually ended up commenting on the post with the shifty eyes. Unfortunatly, I’m not sure how Patrick fits in with the Dreamboy team however I can tell he works with them closely and often the team comment on twitter when something is a particularly stand out to them. Also In the most recent bonus episode, Ellie and Creator Dane talks about in the original off Broadway production of Dreamboy, Critch actually originally had a solo song, in which in it he reflects how back in the old days things were so much easier and could just sign things away at a flick of his finger. I suspect in episode 8 we will find out more of this side of his past and the pressure he has felt from his family to succeed as well as how it will tie the entire story together.

With these two out of the way, I did want to have a section on the original Stonewall and his PTSD with the stone ring however as I am in a rush to type I will post this after the finale, as I want to talk to our poor tortured Boi himself: Luke.

Luke is probably one of the more complicate and mysterious people in the show, but again, there’s not a lot of evidence to show he has link to anything super natural other than he “shares the same dream” with Dane, Which I think is a lie. I DON’T think Luke and Dane are sharing the same dream, but rather it’s a cry for help from someone who has been abused/grew up in a cold home. Whilst I did bounce some Ideas around with if it was just a loveless home or abusive, I couldn’t really find any key correlation, however, for the sake of this theory we will go with an abusive house hold growing up, which why he A) doesn’t live there now and is camping on the floor in the abandoned house rather than communiting B) seems embarrassed by Dane when he mentions that his nickname as a kid was panda by his nan as he probably lied to her about his home situation and C) the burse on his neck when Dane touched made him react so negatively when touched as he didn’t get it from sex. Its also the reason why he at times seems older as he is, as its shown in common research that children from child abuse often have a sense of maturity to them that is abnormal in their age group. Whilst Luke is 19, he can still count as a legal child as he counts as a vulnerable adult with the age bracket for these guys being 20 in the UK.

We can assume the when he moved at 13 this may have got worse due to his nervousness around the subject when Dane talks about it in episode 4 , however this is up to interpretation. It’s also why the logical of knowing where the pain is coming from, as this was a mentality I adapted back when I looked for reasons to be self-destructive back when I was his age.

This in turn all Links into why Luke is so keen in saving Zoe. In episode 7 for the first time we hear Luke Properly talk about his family, with that he and his mum use to come to the zoo lots as a kid to see zoe, which would explain why he is so emotionally attached to the place. It is one of the few places where Luke actually has nice memories growing up, and not of that of abuse or harm from his family. Trying to protect this one last memory from time is a why he broke down when he found out Zoe is dead.

“But wait!” I hear you say “you still haven’t explained the dream thing!”

The reason I think Luke isn’t having the same dream as Dane is due to his upbringing and him lying. I should say off the bat I don’t think Luke is being evil here and manipulating Dane to stay with him lying. But rather, the odd white lies to make a guy who Luke genially seems to get along with to stick around a bit more.

When Luke first finds out about Dane’s dream, he seems confused, as anyone would if someone at a bar just told you he has a dream of a weird freaky fish. This doesn’t seem that odd or supernatural but by the time Luke tells Dane he too is having a dream, he introduces the idea that the fish is called “Dreamboy”, which was mentioned in the song that was sung by the drag queen just before they go outside to make out. It seems like an odd coincidence that a key part of the song is now what he happened to call the fish?

Also, prior to this, back at the abandoned house, Dane literally came rushing in as soon as he seems Luke being hit. He also seems to not be aware of who Luke is, which both of these together seem to be a big change in Luke’s world of sex and abuse. We can assume that they spoke a little more in the club and to the walk to the zoo in episode two meaning by this point, Luke will have probably made a clear idea of if he wants to see Dane again and the best way how? Tell him you’re seeing the same dream as him. This is why Luke is so calm about the whole situation and why he doesn’t seem phased by the whole thing.

It’s also why he didn’t text him back when Dane says he had another dream? Case how could he when he isn’t having the same dream. It’s also why he’s so off when we see him at the rally case now he’s gotten to know Dane with every other episode, both the good and the bad, and actually realises he properly needs to come clean about the dream thing. Only he’s cant as he’s worried it will then make Dane angry which will make him leave, which is the last thing he wants.

So this is a much shorter version of my final theory (I know crazy right?) with what I think is going on with the main characters in Dreamboy. Like I said, I know the final episode is now out but I just wanted to voice into the void of what I think is going on! There might be a part 3 at someone once I listened to the finale to talk about what I think will happen in season 2 as well as the “magic disk” theory as well, but that will be at a later date when I’m not already 10 minutes late for work!

Stay Groovy!

#dreamboy #dream boy #dreamkittens #dreamboy podcast #Dreamboy pod #podcast #WTNV #night vale presents #Luke #Dane #dane terry #LGBT #fandom #fan theory #gay #tw: abuse

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patheticphallacy · 5 years

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This is going to be a really difficult introduction to my wrap up.

Unfortunately, on September 18th my dad passed away. He was only 50 years old. I won’t go into details because of how personal it is, but he was in hospital a majority of the month before he passed. I’ve taken a year suspension from University for the time being.

It has been a really difficult time for myself and my family. I’ve turned a lot to books and blogging to offer a way to occupy my mind which is why so many things still seem to be coming out, but I cannot say that this will hold up after the funeral.

As I schedule so many posts, a lot of what came out this month has been written since around mid August and I did not find the time to stop the University posts before they were released. I won’t be deleting them.

I hope you’ll all understand.

THINGS I’VE READ

An Inspector Calls by J.B. Priestley– My sister gave me her copy she used for her GCSE’s. Such a great play with revelation after revelation, left me on the edge of my seat. While I knew the core plot twist, I didn’t predict that ending.

Mob Psycho 100 Volume 1 by One– This was kind of meh. It’s one of my best friend’s favourites, so I’ll carry it on eventually, but I don’t really feel the urge to pick volume two up just yet. I will say I like how the anime tackles the same events in a different order to save major revelations for backstory– that was really interesting to pick up on.

I Call Upon Thee by Ania Ahlborn– I really didn’t like this! Lacklustre and very cliched, feel like it doesn’t really offer anything other than annoying ending and characters who go through absolutely no development at all.

Kissing Tolstoy by Penny Reid– An OK romance that actually has discussions surrounding reading and books that don’t feel forced. I found this easy to read even though I’ve never read any Russian Lit, and I actually want to read it more now. Like that it discusses age gaps and issues of the power dynamic too.

Seven Tears at High Tide by C.B. Lee– Finally finished this one, and it only took me 3 months. A very cute and heartwarming story about a boy who makes a wish and falls in love with a Selkie. Does get ridiculous at the end, I must say, but I was happy with the payoff.

The Tea Dragon Society by Katie O’Neill– Katie O’Neill creates such amazing narratives that have wonderful messages about society and being true to yourself and your wishes, pursuing something that you love and encouraging others to do the same.

Rosemary’s Baby by Ira Levin– How can I ever trust a single man or old person after this book? Tell me.

Please Undo This Hurt by Seth Dickinson– Don’t really rate this short story. It bored me and I hated the main characters, not even in a good way. Just perpetuates the ‘I can save you from your mental illness’ narrative that is dull and overdone by this point.

My Hero Academia Volume 20 by Kohei Horikoshi– Gentle Criminal and La Brava was so boring, the School Festival arc was fabulous, and Endeavor finally got his ass kicked! Yay!

Aphrodite Made Me Do It by Trista Mateer– I have a review of this coming out soon for National Poetry Day in the UK, but if you don’t want to wait, I have a review here!

The Quiet Boy by Nick Antosca– I read this after watching the trailer for Antlers, and I thought it was pretty neat! Very thrilling, although I’m bothered by changes being made in the film that I feel could detract from having Julia as one of the main characters in the film.

I Am Not Your Final Girl by Claire C. Holland– A collection of poetry centring around fictional women from horror films, exploring their empowerment and agency in a genre and a wider culture and society that seems willing to beat them down until they break.

Alice Isn’t Dead by Joseph Fink– I have a review of this linked later this post! Full of body horror and emotional trauma, this is a really solid read great for fans of the podcast and Welcome to Night Vale.

In the Shadow of Spindrift House by Mira Grant– I love this terrible cover! Keep an eye out for my review of this, it’s coming out soon.

The World’s Greatest First Love Volume 1 by Shungiku Nakamura– The publishing elements and the main character were GREAT, but there is prevalent sexual assault in this that is never addressed and is incredibly insensitive in its treatment, so I don’t recommend this manga.

Dead Voices by Katherine Arden– I didn’t enjoy this one as much as Small Spaces, but it’s still really freaky and a great middle grade read. I love that Coco gets her own POV in this, too, and that it doesn’t take stereotypical routes with some of its plotlines.

No One Is Too Small To Make a Difference by Greta Thunberg– This is a collection of speeches Greta Thunberg has made addressing climate change, as well as her own position as an advocate for the cause. Moving and a must read, in my opinion. It’s only £3 in Waterstones at the moment for anyone who wants to pick it up!

Zen in the Art of Writing by Ray Bradbury– A fascinating collection of essays written by Bradbury about his writing process and some of the more popular works he’s published. I honestly felt really inspired and motivated after reading this, I highly recommend it especially for creative writers, but just be warned it is very oriented around the white male experience.

Heartstopper Volume 2 by Alice Oseman– I adore Heartstopper and I love this second volume. Great progression in the relationship between Nick and Charlie, and we’re getting to see more outside of their relationship and into their friendships and family dynamics, too. I still love Tori Spring!

The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle– Finally got a hold of the MASSIVE audiobook where Stephen Fry narrates all the Holmes stories, and it honestly made the experience so much more enjoyable. I think Doyle’s skill lies more in shorter fiction than longer fiction, I think there’s less opportunity for… not useless, per se, just unneeded waffling.

Giant Days Volume 9 and 10 by John Allison– These two volumes take place around the tailend of the girl’s second years and follows their accommodation location, the progression (and breakdown) of relationships, and them finally making it to third year intact. I honestly can’t believe there’s only three or four volumes left in this series, its been a constant companion for me since 2016 when I first started and I really don’t want to let it go.

No Touching At All and Even So, I Will Love You Tenderly by Kou Yoneda– Of the ‘older’ manga I’ve read that focus on the relationships between two men, these two are definitely in the ‘recommend’ pile. Other than the beautiful names for the volumes and the artwork being really pretty, I really enjoyed the developing relationships and the conversations had about workplace homophobia and ostracization in Japan, although that wasn’t the main focus. They do include some questionable attitudes towards identification of sexuality– two characters in both volumes are probably bisexual or on that spectrum, but are referred to as straight more than once for liking women and only the man they enter the relationship with. It’s complicated, but nothing in either volumes ever feels targeted or hateful, just lacking education on the nuances of sexuality.

Articles

I found this article about Friends great as it breaks down issues I’ve had with the show for years. I don’t have a lot of attachment to it, honestly, I mostly just put it on in the background, but I think I’ll stop now. I’ve always found the handling of gender and sexuality damaging in Friends, as well as the overwhelming fatphobia.

I really enjoyed looking through this list The Guardian did of the 100 best books of the 21st century. I don’t know why, I’m just a big fan of lists!

Before reading this article, I can honestly tell you I knew nothing about Susan Sontag beyond her name. It’s deconstructing her queerness and how her aversion to accepting her own sexuality ultimately ruled a lot of the work she produced in her life.

God, this article was fascinating. I can’t even tell you what it’s about, really, other than that it’s an interview with Christeene, a punk drag artist who is just really cool, honestly. There are some buttholes for anyone who… wants to avoid butts? Or reading this at work?

There was a massive conversation in August that carried into September regarding the rise in men adopting pseudonyms to get their thriller novels published. This Atlantic article particularly captured the issues I have with men who do this, who are almost trying to fool an audience of women who trust women writers to not approach the suffering of women through a misogynistic lens, as is so common in modern society.

An older article by The New Inquiry, Coming out of the Coffin offers an insight into the fraught relationship between Bram Stoker and Oscar Wilde. A really interesting read, I’m just sad I discovered it 7 years after its release!

THINGS I WATCHED

I don’t do music sections on these wrap ups anymore, so I’ll put this here: the GRAACE cover of ‘Complicated’ by Avril Lavigne completely transforms the song and adds such an amazing depth to it

I decided to binge watch Fleabag and it’s most definitely the best decision I’ve made all year. Fleabag follows the titular woman as she navigates her life as a thirty year old woman whose entire life is in flux, and has been since the death of her mother. There’s a lot I could say about this show, honestly. What really stood out to me was how much I could relate specifically to the emotions Fleabag and her older sister Claire feel in relation to each other, and their grief. Seeing them still come back together even after such a significant loss, their dependency, really gives me strength to get through what I’m experiencing at the moment, so Fleabag has been something I can relate to and look at as hope for a future where I can begin to wrap my head around the terrible things going on around me.

THINGS I POSTED

August Wrap Up

TTT: Books Outside My Comfort Zone

50 Bookish Questions Tag

Music I Enjoyed This Summer

Connie’s Personal 101 Guide For Personal Survival of University

Bookshelf Tour Part 3: TBR & More Manga/Comics

Book Review: I Call Upon Thee by Ania Ahlborn

TTT: Books on my Fall TBR

Book Review: Alice Isn’t Dead by Joseph Fink

Bookshelf Tour Part 4: CDs&DVDs

If you liked this post, consider buying me a coffee? Ko-Fi.

Goodreads|Twitter|Instagram|Letterboxd

September Wrap Up This is going to be a really difficult introduction to my wrap up. Unfortunately, on September 18th my dad passed away.

#2019 #articles #book review #film #music #reading wrap up #tv

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theinquisitivej · 6 years

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SteamHeart Episodes 9 & 10 Reactions

It’s been a while, but we’re here – this is SteamHeart.

Whether you’re a newcomer or a long-time fan of the alternate history fictional series New Century, there’s a lot to be excited about when it comes to this new entry. SteamHeart is a grand road trip narrative that follows a group of charming and capable characters embarking on a mission of utmost importance. It’s set in the late 19th Century in the Reunified States of America, a country that has just barely come back from the brink of total disintegration after being confronted with the Wendigo, a devastating and savage new species of uncertain origin.

That’s the set-up, and while there’s a few extra details from the preceding New Century stories that will doubtless come up in SteamHeart as it progresses, that’s all anyone really needs to know before jumping into this new story. It may be the instalment that closes out the first phase of this overarching narrative, but SteamHeart is very considerate towards newcomers. Relistening to the first eight chapters of the audiobook through the podcast, I found that everything you need to know about the setup of this world and the pasts of all the key characters is given to you in a way you can easily digest if it’s all new. Not too much is thrown at you all at once, and the personality of the different characters narrating all of this always comes across, meaning that you not only know who they are straight away, but you also have a compelling way to find out all this information. You will not be at a disadvantage if you’ve never heard of New Century and start listening to SteamHeart.

But, if you are curious to know more about what this story is, and what the first eight episodes are about, then I have a list of writeups you can check out if you want to take a deep dive into one of the best alternate history fantasy series out there. If appealing characters, the steampunk aesthetic, Westerns, huge anthropomorphic badass purple tigers, nail-biting human drama, survival horror/action against savage and fascinating beasts, or decent writing in general is up your alley, start listening to SteamHeart here, and then read the following articles to get you all caught up on where we were when we last left off on this story.

Since these chapters were originally published in a slightly different order before the definitive edition of Secret Rooms was a thing, the titles of these articles may not reflect how they are currently ordered or titled in SteamHeart.

‘Chapter One: The Fall’, ‘Chapter Two: Sharpshooters’, and ‘Chapter Three: Last Survivor’

‘Chapter Four: The Subtle Engineer’, ‘Chapter Five: The Starlit Eyes’, and ‘Chapter Six: The Shadow in the South’

‘Chapter Seven: Return of the Hunter’ and ‘Chapter Eight: Armor’

So, after finishing Let Them Go, reexperiencing Secret Rooms in its best form, we have returned to SteamHeart. We’re back in – Let’s ride.

Chapter Nine: Eight Dresses

You can listen to the episode here.

Preparations are underway for the ball that will introduce Team Steam, the new name for the group going on this expedition, to the general public. We get a brief discussion on the stifling world of formal women’s fashion of the time period. Despite the Reunified States being an even harsher place to live than the America of our world in the 19th Century, keeping up appearances is evidently still a necessary duty for anyone dealing in politics or public engagement. There may only be one dress maker left in Washington, but their services are nevertheless still required, so society hasn’t entirely moved past unnecessary decadence. The whole thing seems ridiculous and uncomfortable to Abigail. She reflects on the excessive and dangerous lengths people go to in order to put together a finished ballroom dress, and when she’s pushed into the pink monstrosity and the suffocatingly tight orange dress, this insane world of fashion and Abigail seem incompatible with one another. It’s cathartic to see her rip the orange dress and talk about buying and burning the shop down once she returns from the mission a rich and famous hero. Still, Abigail is aware that the mood has changed after she vents her frustrations, noting that whatever playful levity had been there had been sapped away by her behaviour. There’s no dramatic altercation, but the development of the scene does echo those moments in life where spirits flare up and all of a sudden the easy-going atmosphere of the situation has dissipated without our meaning it to.

We move on to a scene with some really solid characterisation of Annie and a wonderful moment shared between her and her husband Frank Butler. Annie is still turning over in her head the weight of responsibility that has been put on her by Director Arlington. She has been given a direct order to execute her charge if the situation calls for it, and the possibility of that scenario coming to pass is messing her sense of surety in her own judgement. She has no idea what tiny decision might set off a chain of events that means she has to make that call, and that much anxiety would make anyone susceptible to indecision. It could explain why Annie seemed particularly upset in the previous scene when Abigail was being deliberately difficult with Truth; Annie doesn’t want Abigail to be butting heads, because one day that could reach a point where the two of them will fall out to such an extent that Annie will either not be able to make a clearly thought out decision, not be able to properly protect Abigail, or even be forced to follow her orders and execute her. Annie made a promise to Katherine Holloway to look after James and Abigail, and she must be feeling torn up inside to know that she may one day have to break her promise in the worst possible way.

But bless Frank, he lifts the situation up in just the right way. Giving Annie the dress and the means for her to make all the changes she actually wants for her very own dress shows just how well he knows her. Frank knows that Annie can sew, he knows what kind of dress she would want, and he knows that having something she can work on and control right now will do her the world of good when so many things feel out of control. The performances of Laureta Sela and Spencer Leeb do hit just the right tone of tenderness and genuine joy that their respective characters feel when they’re in each other’s company. Seeing this perfect moment that these two people who love each other get to enjoy is profoundly touching. Don’t you dare harm them Alex, I know you’re thinking about it. AH- DON’T.

We transition to another tender moment of a husband and wife enjoying a secluded minute to themselves as Sarah and Thomas Arlington get ready for the ball. Sarah recalls the effort that she, Truth, and Harry had gone through to reconvince Thomas that it makes the most sense for Harry to go on the mission with the others, even if his paternal protectiveness and general wariness of danger on all sides makes this a difficult decision for him. We see Thomas exhibit his characteristic mistrust of the world when he lays Sarah’s bullet proof jacket on the bed, asking her to wear it as a precaution and a favour to him. If Thomas had it his way, he would enclose himself and the people that matter to him in the most airtight, perfect suit of armour he could find. The events of Arlington make it easy to see why he feels this way.

But Sarah isn’t Thomas, and his gesture presents her with a dilemma that she has to seriously consider. Wearing the armour is a statement, and even if its disguise as a civilian jacket means that very few people will realise she’s making it, she has to decide if she’s comfortable knowing that she chose to make that statement. Sarah wants to trust people – it’s an elemental part of who she is, as represented by Sarah’s remark after her mind goes to the many outfits in her wardrobe, as she says “not all of which went with this jacket of mine”. This jacket is a part of her wardrobe, but it’s not compatible with every outfit she would normally wear, and I would argue it’s not entirely compatible with who she wants to be. This time, she resigns herself to wearing the armour, but she resolves with a strong determination that she will step outside without armour another day. It’s a small decision that provokes an introspective moment that explores meaningful questions of trust and our unspoken interactions with the rest of the world. And yes, it does have a profound resonance for those who have a strong attachment to Arlington.

The epilogue of this episode tells us that Truth fantasised as a child that she would grow up to be Queen of America. It’s a cute fact about Truth’s childhood that provides a small glimpse into a more playful side of her character. It also provides context as to why she has such a head for politics and public engagement. She’s played with the idea of leading a nation her whole life, and the fact that the childhood version of her wanted to be Queen of a monarch-less country is indicative of a romanticised vision of what a leader could and should be. It’s a surprising thing to learn about the pragmatic, more calculating version of her that we know.

Chapter Ten: The April Ball

You can listen to the episode here.

I love those episodes or chapters of ongoing fiction where we get to see the main characters go to a party. Cutting between different individuals or pairings to see how the different personalities are handling themselves in an environment we don’t usually get to see them in can be a source of memorable humour and especially enjoyable character moments. It can also lead to some meaningful moments of introspection that can come out in a unique way; sometimes there are those strange, lucid moments that sneak up on you when you’re at a party where you suddenly become very reflective or melancholy. It doesn’t always have to be a party either. ‘The Ember Island Players’ is one of my favourite episodes of Avatar: The Last Airbender because it’s a respite for the main group right before things are going to get more intense than they ever have before, so it’s a chance for both the characters and the writers of the show to have a little bit of fun before they close out their journey. I bring this up because I get a little bit of a sense of that with ‘Chapter Ten: The April Ball’, especially due to its name which suggests the ball is a spring-time event, a season of vitality and optimism when things are on the up and up. Team Steam is going to be heading out on a grand journey that will be full of perils, so it makes sense both within the context of the story and from a structural point of view to have this ball where we get to see our characters at a party.

Having said that, it’s not a fun filled jubilant occasion for everyone. Raven’s opening narration catches new readers up on the current state of class divisions in the Reunified States, going over how, when the Wendigo was at the doors of the people of America, high social standings didn’t do much to help you out, and they certainly didn’t give you a lot of skills to fall back on when you were part of little pockets of survivors and had to find a way to contribute to the group. A large percentage of the upper class didn’t make it. Even so, this ball has brought out the last remnants of that world, along with those who have risen up and established themselves at the top of the ladder in this new society. The atmosphere is hardly convivial, and several members of the main cast don’t appear to be at ease in this setting. Abigail feels out of place and sees James, who looks completely right for the occasion, as her lifeline, but is denied this when they’re separated. Harry finds that there’s a little too much information to take in, managing to stay afloat when James, sympathetic to her feelings in this situation, walks her through the steps (both for the dance and how to get by when surrounded by this many people). Most heart-breaking of all, Jeremy and Donald have been partnered with other people and, for all-intents-and-purposes, have been forbidden by Truth to dance together or show any signs that they’re a couple. It’s painful to hear about Jeremy putting on a smile while barely keeping back his tears. The injustice of society working against people being with who they love if it doesn’t fit their standards is eloquently summarised by Harry’s remark “it’s such a shame they won’t let us dance with who we really want to”. A perfect summation of denied love. Even Truth, who has an eye for navigating her way through these parties, addresses the fact that this is not a place for our characters to relax. She briefs the other female members of the group on their approach, telling them that they’re here to make connections and work on making the best impression of the group and the mission they can – “There’s a time for fun and games, and it’s not at parties”. The mood of this episode is playful at times, and there are moments where you’re happy for this chance to rest before things get dangerous. But it also shows why these settings can be a source of anxiety, and why putting on a show for the world can be soul crushing.

One of the most intense scenes at the ball is when Abigail dances with Arlington. Hearing her thoughts as she struggles to get a read on him shows how striking the effect he has on people is. He has a quiet fire that is frightening and magnetic all at once. Abigail even confesses that she sees many of the qualities in him that attracts her to James. The two men do share a calculating disposition that values logic which seems cold at first, but it hides a passionate resolve that flares to the surface when it counts. Arlington moves with a stoic surety that compels Abigail to follow his steps as they dance, which acts as a poetic metaphor of his approach to politics and his efforts to lead this country. For the time being, Arlington is leading this dance, and the country, in a way which seems correct and will likely get them through to the end of all this. But he and Abigail talk of the desire to deliberately put a foot wrong, just to see what will happen. Arlington is conducting himself exactly as he knows he should, but there is a part of him that wants so badly to kick the table over and meet the people he sees as enemies on his terms. When Abigail asks how long they can continue this dance, he answers “as long as we can” with sad, tired resignation. I find Arlington to be one of the most fascinating characters in all of New Century.

There are so many pieces of great writing and enjoyable character moments peppered throughout this chapter, so to finish off I’ll quickly go through some of my favourite bits. Abigail noticing Thomas and Sarah Arlington’s armoured jackets and wondering what they expect to happen and feeling worried is a decent payoff to the end of the previous episode when Sarah deliberated over whether to wear the jacket or not, showing us that she was right to think about the message such an action conveys. The footman announcing each of the main characters and his occasional embarrassment and frustration at being interrupted is a fun to watch, and Abigail’s commentary on how each person is received and how they conduct themselves speaks volumes of their different characters. When James and Abigail share a mischievous laugh together afterwards, it’s absolutely adorable. I ship it. Later, Abigail meets the blusterous buffoon Dutch Van Tassel, and she describes him as having “a great big bushy beard”. Now, this might just be a result of having watched this film a dozen or so too many times, but hearing that statement makes me wonder if that’s intended to be a reference to Hot Fuzz. Abigail gets bailed out from her conversation with Dutch by- oh sweet, it’s Li! She was a cool addition to the cast in Arlington, and I’m definitely glad to have her quiet, steely temperament back. Annie and Frank have the good fortune to be able to dance with the person they love and openly display that connection to the world, but they’re also compassionate enough to help those who aren’t having as great a time. I’m glad that Annie helps Jeremy get close to Donald, and when Frank speculates that Harry has feelings for James it did make sense, as I had similar suspicions. I continue to enjoy Frank and Harry’s relationship, as he’s a good friend to her and knows just how to word things. I’m pleased that Abigail gets to meet Nathanial Curtis and that she gets along with him. He’s an accomplished and immensely respectable man who nevertheless has the humble nobility of an old friendly soldier, so it’s no wonder that Abigail likes him immediately, especially with her father being a soldier as well. The episode and the party conclude with Abigail stepping outside for some air and meeting Raven, and his honesty is refreshing, even if his attitude means he isn’t the smoothest conversationalist. The instruments finish playing their music, and the applause signals the end of the episode.

I do love a party.

Chapter Ten’s epilogue tells us that Thomas and Sarah have twelve days left, referring to the closing events of Arlington. But I have to wonder whether the wording means that the significance of the statement is that they each have twelve days left, or that they have twelve days left of being together. Either way, it’s an immensely sad thought.

#The Inquisitive J #review #critic #narrative #narrative analysis #fiction #audiobook #audio drama #fictional podcast #books #alternate universe #alternate history #alternate history fiction #new century #new century multiverse #the new century multiverse #steamheart #the inquisitive j reviews

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podcake · 7 years

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Podcasts & Genre: Noir

When one thinks of the noir genre, the most common association is film noir, a style of film making sparking in popularity many, meany years ago but still carries some relevance today. Though no one really makes genuine noir films anymore, unless you count a few with noir inspired elements, noir mostly lives on strictly as short parodies while mystery stories stay as mystery stories without the usual aesthetic qualities you’d identify a noir film with.

Noir brings up ideas of stylishly produced, sexual, and cynical stories sparking during the 1940′s that normally focus on a detective that one might describe as hardboiled, a femme fatale or two, and some type of mystery plot to tackle, often involving murder.

One of the core reasons noir is mostly treated with a certain level of parody in modern work is due to how dramatic these productions could be. The whole vibe of theatrics that came from these productions could be perceived as laughable nowadays. Though much like Broadway musicals could be given a massive reboot through the success of Wicked and later the phenomena of Hamilton, the same could be said for noir that will occasionally slip its way into more modern interpretations while still maintaining an authentic narrative.

While this is fairly evident in film, we all know that things with more than one picture attached to it isn’t really my specialty. You’re here to hear things and then read about the things you heard. How can sound effectively get an idea across when we only have our imaginations and common sense to tell things apart?

As a whole, this article will be delving into the complexity of translating genre through sound with noir being the main focal point due to its rarity and presence in a different medium of entertainment.

This might just be a theory though I believe that noir managed to flow pretty well into the audio drama realm mostly because one of the most vital parts of these films is a consistent narration. This aspect alone is oddly enough the real driving force behind noir getting a second life.

And yet I do realize that noir is a kind of genre that is very selectively put to use. It’s relatively rare for a new noir show to pop up, only ever making common occurrences around early to late 2016. Rex Rivetter: Private Eye and Neon Nights: The Arcane Files both debuted the same year with only a few months difference between their publications.

The same could be said for The Penumbra that came out in March. If this is merely a coincidence or not is on the table as all of the shows came from different producers and are essentially different products in their entirety.

These shows are not the only podcast noir shows in existence, though it’s hard to ignore just how few their are in comparison to the abundance of horror and sci-fi shows that come out every few months.

Among these, The Penumbra and it’s tales of private eye Juno Steel are the most openly successful. The Penumbra takes a creative approach to both the noir genre, with a helpful touch of sci fi, and the fantasy-adventure genre in their Second Citadel series. But if we are to focus on Juno Steel stories in particular, it’s not hard to see why it’s gotten such positive press.

Normally taking place over the course of two part episodes, Juno Steel delivers some strongly written individual mysteries that work their way up to being a whole story with recurring characters and an intriguing central plot. We get some colorful one shot villains, a likable though also dysfunctional lead, and a touch of romance that works to reveal the character’s personal insecurities.

The Penumbra’s specialty is to remix and retell classic story genres with a touch of modern edge and originality that lets them stand as great individual stories and joins The Bright Sessions and Wolf 359 as some of the most well known modern fiction podcasts.

A little while later came Neon Nights and Rex Rivetter that I combed through back to back to form a proper opinion on. Though they’ll most definitely be the topics of some future reviews, I do enjoy the air of the occult with Neon Nights which gives it a sort of Dresden Files vibe and Rex Rivetter that’s a touch more old fashioned through presentation which gives it a certain air of glamour that is sometimes delightfully camp.

The newest contender for the noir genre is What’s The Frequency? which has already made quite the splash in this mostly independent art community with a strong first episode that left a lot to the imagination. Though I’ve always liked the level of absurdity that the noir genre can dig up while still maintaining an air of mystery, What’s The Frequency? is one of the most downright bizarre products to come out in recent memory that’s equal parts eerie and engaging.

What’s The Frequency? truly commits to the style with its innovative use of static and the inclusion of voice work that invokes just the right vibe of psychedelic 1940′s it’s aiming for. It truly does feel old unlike the usual crisp and clean audio we get from the previously mentioned work.

Something that has fascinated me is that when you take the film out of film noir you still get a genuine experience. Even without the gray scale, even without the crafty use of silhouettes and dramatic framework, noir has managed to ooze itself into the crevices of fictional podcasts from a purely audio based perspective.

This I perceive as interesting as noir is noteworthy for its creative cinematography-Dutch angles, night-for-night shots, and silhouettes being the most common. Not to mention clothing like the iconic trench coat and hat approach, women with lipstick we could all assume was red, and people in formal dress for the sake of making every second look as classy as the last.

With podcasts, we only have so much time to get a visual across to listeners without loading them up with pointless filler, most of the run time consisting of dialogue meant to push the story forward to a conclusion. Though audio drama certainly isn’t limited to a purely linear story structure, it does have to pull through a bit more in certain aspects such as writing, sound editing, and acting to hold someone’s attention.

While film gives us more visual shorthand and generally does the settings and characters for us, audio drama leans heavily on getting its story out first and letting the listener fill in the blanks. In audio, visuals are an afterthought but imagery is still roughly where half of the writing effort goes into. It is much easier to look pretty than to sound pretty and this is why podcasts tend to be more ambitious since they can do more with less.

All of these individual shows have some sort of unique quality that gives it its rightful spot as separate stories, and yet you’d be hard pressed not to describe them as noir. Noir is so grounded in film that the idea of translating it to a purely audio based format almost seems to go against what noir is supposed to be, and yet we never run into these complications when we stumble upon them.

We can still identify a horror show without visual blood splatters and can still consider a sci-fi a sci-fi even if we never actually see the interior of a space ship we’re inside of. For example, Wolf 359 is very much science fiction with some strong comedy writing, though it’s also an entirely different beast than Hadron Gospel Hour that may be in the same boat but clearly going up a different stream.

Audio Diary of a Superhero and The Bright Sessions both tackle ideas of disability outweighed by extraordinary power, and yet it’d be near impossible to get the two mixed up. Presentation and packaging can really make or break a show and how one plans to get these ideas across is the real definitive element at hand.

While, let’s say for now, horror and science fiction don’t have any definitive visuals, only some recurring ones, noir is different in that it’s almost entirely built on a very specific list of cliches for it to be truly considered part of that group. You kind of need murder, you kind of need a detective, you kind of need a morally ambiguous seductress-so in that vain, noir can very much exist without the usual attributes as long as the audio can get these ideas across.

But let’s say, hypothetically, that these tropes aren’t being put to use. How exactly does one gain the right to consider their story a noir? Well from my understanding, these shows have leaned on a few common trends: a deep voiced protagonist with a definitive, world weary perspective, a jazz score, and taking place in a stylish but troubled city where all the conflict boils.

It’s truly here that the idea of style and substance, narrative and aesthetic, play into one another for the better.

Since this article is one part history lesson and another part describing things that are barley a year old, I do feel the need to dig up some facts. A detail many tend to forget is that audio drama was a vital form of entertainment years ago, it getting its start on nighttime radio broadcasts that were tuned into the same way we would watch prime time TV.

Though this type of entertainment hasn’t entirely died, the radio part of radio drama has leaned more towards desktop computer drama or smartphone drama if we’re going to be taking about technology specifically.

The thing is that podcasts got a hard reboot when Welcome to Night Vale reminded people how cool that was and everyone followed Joseph Fink and Jeffery Cranor’s breadcrumbs to make their own stories that were slightly less time consuming than writing a book and less expensive than making a movie.

The strive for authenticity is strong in any artistic medium and podcasts are no exception. We may have our trends and sometimes repetitive structures and dynamics surfacing every few years, though the final product is what really gives anything its identity. What we consider truly authentic for anything or anyone can be boiled down to aesthetic value, narrative value, or something else entirely depending on your perspective.

The same could be said for me as the whole purpose of Podcasts& is essentially to cover topics with a little more complexity than I’m normally able to. Reviews are restricted to whatever podcasts I managed to finish and pair up on slim similarities, Teatimes have the creators do most of the talking, and Palettes, one of the main support beams of the PodCake empire, are the equivalent of a “best of” reel-a first impressions, if you will. All the while I keep things interesting with flower emoticons and some cute girls over a pink backdrop. These are certainly accessories to my persona, though not the entirety of my work.

With Podcasts&, we’re given just a little more time to look back and breathe in just what audio drama is capable of. If there’s anything about this medium that has fascinated me it’s the way it can transcend the typical confides of storytelling to still give a satisfying and unique experience. Many audio dramas exist in the same subgroups but I’m hard pressed to find any that are near identical to one another.

Be it The Penumbra or Neon Nights-they may be fruit bared from the same garden, but their taste and textures are clearly being grown from different kinds of people. What makes each one interesting is that while noir is normally considered an exercise in creatively crafted footage, audio still manages to capture its identity and mood nonetheless. Noir audio dramas have to flex a little more muscle to really get their aesthetic qualities to matter since that is what defines their genre in the fist place.

Interesting how these articles tend to tie into one another.

As I get to the conclusion of this editorial, I realize I have opened up a whole new can of worms when dealing with genre construction that is such a broad topic that I’ll need more than one text document to talk about it. Maybe some other day in some other month when all the Palettes and reviews are done and I can work up something proper worthy of being the first article of the new year.

We can discuss comedy and horror and science fiction and surrealism. We can talk about all that has come of it and how there is no one way to tell a tale or represent a genre.

So consider this little piece a...prelude for what is to come. Let’s talk about history, let’s talk about audio entertainment in its entirety, let’s bookmark Wikipedia articles, because the topic of genre is barely even at its peak when it comes to noir, though the fact that it exists at all says something about what just a few sounds are capable of.

#podcast #audio drama #audio play #radio play #what's the frequency #the penumbra podcast #neon nights the arcane files of jack tracer #rex rivetter private eye #wolf 359 #audio diary of superhero #hadron gospel hour #welcome to night vale #podcasts and #genre parlor

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nightmareonfilmstreet · 6 years

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[Recap] CASTLE ROCK Episodes 1-3; The Beginning

What would you do if you managed to capture the devil? Would you notify the police? The church? Would you tie it to a chair and pray for its redemption, or would you release it to continue its work harvesting the souls of the unsaved? In the end, after all of our pre-capture religious grandstanding, we would probably do exactly what the Warden of the Shawshank Penitentiary in Castle Rock, Maine, did:

When Dale Lacey found the devil, he locked it away in the dark bowels of the prison, hoping that it would never again see the light of day.

So goes the central mystery surrounding the first three episodes of Hulu’s new Stephen King-inspired series, Castle Rock. Created by Sam Shaw and Dustin Thomason, the series is set up to be the Stephen King Extended Universe that all horror fans have been begging for since we first picked up one of his books. King is listed as an Executive Producer on this series, but it’s not his influence that shines through the brightest during these early episodes. For, even though the opening credits give us King Easter eggs from It, The Shining, and Cujo, and characters randomly drop hints of a shared universe, I could not watch this show without thinking about another Executive Producer’s previous work.

Castle Rock’s first three episodes could not be more similar in tone and feel to J.J. Abrams’ Lost, and I am 100% here for it.

Let’s start from the beginning. Castle Rock tells the story of a town that seems to be rotting from the inside. Like a cancer that eats away at its host, there is something gnawing at the soul of this small town in Maine. We meet Henry Deaver (Moonlight’s André Holland), who is a death row attorney in Texas, as he receives a call from a rogue guard at Shawshank. Apparently, a young man (Bill Skarsgård from last year’s It) was found deep in the lower levels of the prison. He wasn’t in a cell like the other inmates, however. He was kept in a tiger cage in a locked hole in an abandoned part of the prison.

Nearby cigarette butts reveal his jailor to be the ex-warden, Dale Lacey (Lost’s Terry O’Quinn), who had recently ended his own life in brutal fashion. The rogue guard knows that the new warden, T. Porter (Ann Cusack), is concerned only with PR and dollar signs, and will cover up this young man’s existence by any means possible. So he places a call to the one name the young man uttered during questioning, Henry Matthew Deaver.

Deaver is not a welcome sight back in Castle Rock, however. As a child, he was adopted by the preacher’s family and looks to be the only black person in a town that doesn’t seem to care much for folks that are different. In 1991, Henry went missing for 11 days, only to return unharmed and unable to remember anything about his life. Not only that, but his father, the reverend, was found nearby broken and nearly frozen to death. The man died in his home, and the entire town believed that Henry is the one that pushed him off a cliff.

As he returns home to see what is going on at the prison and to see why he was called by the mysterious young man, Henry is called “killer” on the street, kicked out of Lacey’s home by his widow and generally rebuffed at every step. He is stared at, joked about and lied to the whole time he is there. His old neighbor and oldest friend, an empath named Molly (Melanie Lynskey) turns him away because being near him causes her psychic abilities to drown out the rest of her life. She pops pills to cope, but even those cannot dull the cacophony of voices she hears whenever Henry is nearby. By the end of the third episode, they have joined forces to try to try to get Henry in touch with the young man in Shawshank, propelling the story forward towards a supernatural conflict.

“He always thought the devil was a metaphor, but now he knew. The devil was a boy, and he caught him and locked him in a box.”- Sheriff Pangborn

It’s not just the appearance of John Locke that makes Castle Rock feel like Lost 2.0. We have the central, unanswered mystery of Henry’s disappearance in 1991. Couple that with the discovery of the young man in the cage and the flashbacks showing Warden Lacey’s reasoning behind his imprisonment, and you have a classic Lost-like Good v.s. Evil story line. You are presented with the ultimate evil (Caged Young Man/Man in Black) and the ultimate hero (Henry/Jacob/Jack), who are brought together by fate to a mysterious place.

Like in Lost, this is represented by the stark differences between black and white game pieces (chess in Castle Rock, backgammon in Lost). Whichever piece you decide to grab, there must be balance. For there to be good in the world, you must have evil. Although many of King’s works (like The Stand) feature this Good v.s. Evil storyline, the first three episodes of Castle Rock do not feel like a King story at all.

Which is exactly why I love the show, so far! You could remove the references to King’s work, call the prison the “Babadook Correctional Facility” and it would still be a creepy, atmospheric mystery show with hints of the supernatural. There were moments where I wished that this was just a stand-alone show and was not attached to the King name, simply because I feel like there is a ton of potential in the story and the characters that have absolutely nothing to do with King’s universe. This is a testament to Shaw and Thomason, who wrote the first two episodes of the series. They created a world that feels so much like our own and filled it with kinetic characters that keep you wanting more. More stories, more history, and more explorations of the darkness.

It’s because of this incredible world building that the scariest aspects of the show are the ones rooted in real-life and not the supernatural. As Henry was walking the streets of his hometown, he was called “killer” by a passerby. It was said with the same disdain and contempt that the bigoted use a different word to describe a person of color like Henry. In one word, we learned all that we need to know about how the people of Castle Rock view people that aren’t like them. We see this everyday in the news as talking heads rant on about immigrants, people of color, members of the LGBTQ community and others who are deemed “outsiders” We see this town that is crumbling beneath economic hardships. Warehouses are empty. Mills have stopped running. Windows are busted out of once-great downtown shops. Inns are boarded up and cemeteries have been paved over, and it reminds us of American cities very similar to our own.

“Never again let him see the light of day… That’s what God told me” – Warden Lacey

The prison is the only employment in town, and even that is a curse. Shawshank has brought with it whole neighborhoods filled with the incarcerated’s families. Wives and Mothers who are stuck in cycles of depression and anger, sons and daughters who are so obsessed with the justice system that they hold mock trials in terrifying masks. These “games” are stark representations of what the justice system has done to them and their families. The only person in the “courtroom” not wearing a mask is the defendant, the others all false and anonymous. Secret men and women who get to destroy your life and then remove their mask and continue living their own.

Shawshank itself has transitioned into a privatized prisoner-mill, like many of our institutions here in the United States. This forces the new Warden to attempt to have the caged young man killed by another prisoner instead of revealing his existence to the authorities. The only things that matter to these people are capacity and profits, and anything that threatens the bottom line must be dealt with swiftly and brutally.

It’s these racial, economic, and societal horrors that make Castle Rock feel so real and so utterly terrifying. There are hundreds of small towns in America right now that can see a lot of similarities between their lives and the ones depicted in this series. I drive through three or four of them on a weekly basis here in Central Illinois, and it’s this real-world grounding that makes any supernatural aspect the future holds very intriguing. What will happen in the coming weeks? Will we begin to understand Henry’s disappearance in 1991? Is the young man in the prison actually the devil? Can he really do what the rogue guard saw him do on the CCTV? What role does Molly’s empathy and psychic abilities play in the upcoming confrontation, and why was she driven to do what she did so many years ago? It’s questions like these that will draw you to Castle Rock, but it’s the real-life horrors eating away at its soul that will make you stay.

You can catch the first three episodes of Castle Rock on Hulu, with more episodes dropping every Wednesday. I will be hanging out with you every week to discuss the show, so be sure to bookmark our homepage at Nightmare on Film Street so you don’t miss a single one! While you’re at it, head on over to Facebook and join our Fiend Club, where all the cool cats hang out. We’d love to hear what you think about Castle Rock, so let us know!

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spellmynamewithabang · 7 years

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(above: new easy girl. new . .. life)

preamble

My name is RJ, (everyone says “Hi, RJ” in unison here) and I do everything. For years (my entire life, maybe?) “I do everything” has been sort of my modus, full stop. I used to have a business card that said “Robert J! Lake: Professional Everything” and after that I had one that listed “Music, Design, Writing, Animation, and Illustration” with “Basically Everything” underneath it. It’s a part of me. And it’s ran me for as long as I’ve been able to think.

It’s more than just a pull towards productivity, towards a workaholism. It’s more selfish than that. I’m addicted to it, which is weird. I’m not really addicted to things, in general (even if people say I have an “addictive personality”), but this gives me a thrill like nothing else.

Part of it is that I think I can do everything, and part of that is that history’s generally held that up, because no arrogance here but I’m pretty good at juggling a lot of things at once. What’s unhealthy, like really unhealthy, though, is the perpetual dissatisfaction with not doing enough. I’ve got one hell of a Superman complex and I always feel like I’m not good enough if I’m not exerting myself to the point where I’m nothing.

I can’t do that anymore, though. I’ve been stretched thin for what feels like an eternity and I need to regroup if I want to get anything done for real, because what ends up happening is a lot of crashing and burning over and over and over and over. So I’m done.

That doesn’t mean I’m going to stop juggling projects in the air, because that will never be something I’ll even be able to let myself do. That also doesn’t mean I won’t keep adding projects to my list. But I’m going to do it productively, and I’m going to build myself. A lot less secret projects with years going by before anything happens, I think, is probably better for both me and people who like what I do.

Okay sure but why is this something I should care about my good dude?

Ironically it’s because that means I’ll be able to do more on here (and in general, with my B r a n d and such). So I have some announcements of some stuff below the cut.

PATREON HAS BEEN AN UTTER FAILURE AND I’M FIXING THAT IMMEDIATELY

I’m really upset with myself because I was gung-ho about making a better effort towards Patreon and then...nothing. And there are a lot of things to blame for that, mostly my own doing, including (and especially) the eternal horror of a workweek, of needing a job, of The Fear. If I don’t hit a certain money threshold (about 2000-2500 dollars a month) I am in a panic that ends up all-consuming because that allows me no room for error. No savings, nothing much really. Every month is a struggle and every month is consumed by that fear. But nothing gets better if I don’t try something different to break that cycle.

So here we are. Patron is going to be my new home. Most work I’ve posted has been on Soundcloud and Twitter and (well not much lately) here because I haven’t felt brave enough to devote time to something that people won’t see, but of course people don’t want to see it because it isn’t there. So I have to value myself enough to make that leap.

Starting ASAP, Patreon is going to be my first post outlet both publicly and for patrons. I’ll be massively overhauling my patron tiers (1,2,3,4, and maybe probably 5 is the new spread) and my new focus is on direct responses to people who help my patreon; one of the first effects of this will be patron-only polls, helping direct me to figure out what part of the everything I do you most want at any given moment. I am my own person but I wouldn’t be here without you and although I’m confident in my ability to tackle almost anything it’s exhausting sometimes because I have no earthly idea where my time is best spent sometimes.

WEEKLY STREAMS ARE GONNA BE A THING AGAIN

I stopped doing the weekly stream thing partially as a result of needing a workweek and that workweek basically killed me but to be honest I miss it, and if the past few days are any indication you guys are really there for me hard if I actually push for it, and I haven’t been doing that because I’ve been basically mired in semi-secret projects that I haven’t allowed myself to show much stuff from because I have a thing about it but it should be obvious from Stuckhome Syndrome’s existence that I have a tendency to make a shitload of things and show people 1% of them until they pile up at once. So I’m cutting that shit out and I’m going to try (try) to be more public about my process and my work. Ideally without giving everything away; striking that balance is kind of the thing I have to figure out, right?

I’m going to start that soon. Tuesday? Thursday? I’m free those days this week. Getting a consistent schedule is the biggest challenge with my day job basically running me into the ground.

ON THAT NOTE, HOLY HELL HERE’S WHAT I’M WORKING ON RIGHT NOW

MY ACTIVE PROJECTS:

Oblivion Genesis: The big thing right now. An RPG (of a sort) I’m directing, art directing, doing animation for, doing all the music and sfx, designing, and writing based on original concepts by Jack Casteel (who’s also programming it and doing most of the spell design + metagame balance work and i guess...executive producing? co-directing? it’s only 3 people on the team everyone is doing a lot and we haven’t hammered out these terms yet). He came up with the base premise for the game and most of the characters, and I took that and am writing and rewriting and creating an entirely new and very elaborate gameplay structure for the overworld and the battles themselves, plus doing a lot of the art etc etc. I can’t wait to show you much, much more. Also this game features character art by the wonderful Rachel Lundin so obviously this is going to be the best video game ever made. You can hear some of the music right here right now.

Group Hug: A webcomic. I’ll talk about this more on my Patreon soon.

ACTIVE PROJECTS I’M ATTACHED TO (In other words, projects I’m doing stuff for that aren’t necessarily mine):

HALT: A video game about shootmanning in the future. I’m doing the music. Here’s the first trailer.

Muddledash!: Octopus racing. I’m doing the music. Here’s a trailer.

BULLETIN: An RPG about finding your dad. I’m doing the music and potentially other stuff too. Here’s some early gameplay tests featuring my music.

PROBABLY GONNA TRY LAUNCHING A PODCAST SOON TOO

It’ll be called Little RJ Things. We’ll see how that goes.

THAT’S ALL FOR NOW?

That’s it I think. Uh, if you can, definitely check out my patreon and bandcamp and/or commission me. It really helps. I’ll be making some announcements soon about all of that too. THANK YOU. MORE VERY SOON

#a lot #announcements #a lot of things #homestuck music #life #patreon

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thimblings · 8 years

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AHHH!! YES!! um. prepare your eyes, this is gonna be a long, rambly post because apparently i have A LOT OF FEELINGS and i can’t just list things like a normal person. and i also kept remembering podcasts and the list JUST KEPT GETTING LONGER. so. GIANT TEXT POST, i am so so so sorry. also, there are actually a few on this list that i’m not caught up with (some i’m like REALLY behind on) but i’m still gonna rec them...

Welcome to Night Vale is the one i’m sure most ppl know of (although! if you have not read the novel, i’d HIGHLY recommend getting the audio book version. Cecil Baldwin does a great job of reading, and the “Voice of Night Vale” sections actually feature guest stars. i really want Cecil to do more audio book recordings omg). but!! along that same theme (radio show in a strange town w/ supernatural themes), King Falls AM is spectacular (ben and sammy are just! a freakin delight i love them). IMO it starts off feeling like it’s trying to be like WTNV, but within a few episodes it finds itself and becomes something unique (i say this bc i was initially put off by the first episode for that reason, and later came back and gave it another shot and enjoyed it immensely). it’s funny, it made me cry a few times, and i reaallyyy really really need to catch up with it. sammy stevens also has….just….a really nice voice hahaaaa The Truth is a great one. it’s mostly one-off short stories, but they’re generally really high quality and the plot of most of the episodes is really thought-provoking or just interesting in general (there’s one ep about aliens who find the Voyager craft with its recording that’s just really charming to me). the tagline “movies for your ears” is really apt. a lot of the stories veer on the side of unsettling/creepy, and it’s great if you like horror stories. i’d also recommend The Black Tapes and its sister podcast, Tanis. i love horror and unsettling mysteries, so these are right up my alley (Tanis is definitely more in the sci-fi/horror genre, but i like how it also digs into real unsolved cases and events). these are relatively well known, at least in that my friends who don’t listen to podcasts have listened to TBT at least. but they’re still great to check out if you haven’t. Limetown is really good, but ends on a cliffhanger and as far as i know there’s no immediate plans for a season 2? (i remember reading something about them in talks for a TV show? which would be cool, but i’d miss the audio format of it). the first season is worth listening to, because it is really interesting and the audio production is pretty top notch - just be aware that a second season may or may not happen. what i’ve listened to of Hadron Gospel Hour so far is SUPER enjoyable, but i’ve only listened to the first few episodes. arsPARADOXICA is FANTASTIC (at least the first season and a half that i’ve listened to). sally grissom is a great character and a brilliant and scientist and i’m just really in love with her. this is a nice podcast because it has very capable women in it and the concept overall is really fascinating and handled really well. The Cleansed, set in a post-apocalyptic US, is well written and overall well produced (there’s one ep that still sits with me, because of a scene that truly unnerved me, just in the music and the atmosphere and the dialogue just ahh) and i’ve been meaning to pick it up again. In that same vein there’s We’re Alive, which is of the zombie variety. i’ve only juuuuust dipped into that one, but i’ve enjoyed what i’ve heard so far. this one has been around for a long time, like WTNV, so there’s a lot of episodes and a lot of content available. THE BRIGHT SESSIONS! i’m really really fond of this one and i just really love it, please listen. it’s about a psychologist who works with people who have “special” abilities, and all of the patients she helps are just so! precious!! i just love them a lot. Wooden Overcoats is a GREAT podcast that is pretty much the audio version of all my favorite British comedies that i watched growing up (think Fawlty Towers, Are You Being Served?, etc). it’s a comedy podcast about two competing funeral parlors (one of which is owned by the Funn’s). it’s exactly my kind of humor, and everyone involved just seems really great and kind. Antigone Funn has great lines and HONESTLY i’m surprised i haven’t seen more people quoting her and this podcast because it’s just! really great. and i don’t THINK this is a sister podcast to WO, but i always associate the two because they have some of the same people working on them but - Hector vs The Future is great. again, i haven’t listened to many episodes, but i’d still recommend it. it’s slightly different than other podcasts on this list because it’s actually filmed/recorded in front of a live audience. Homecoming is a short podcast (only 6 eps and the eps are pretty short) that i THINK is meant to be part of a larger, written universe (which i want to check out). it’s about soldiers with PTSD. this one actually has some well-known people involved - both Oscar Isaac and David Schwimmer voice characters and do a great job. The Darkest Night is another one with big names involved - Lee Pace is the narrator, which alone makes it worth checking out. overall, i’ve enjoyed it, but some episodes veer into areas i was kind of uncomfortable with (Tic-Tac-Toe is the one i’m stuck on and why i haven’t finished it yet ahh). AND OK i really really really like space and space stories and space adventures, so my favs all have that in common hahaha Wolf359 is kind of like. okay, it’s about three people and an AI on a space station, light years away from earth - and the communications officer records his reports by pretending he’s doing a radio show. it starts off fun and humorous and things are great and then before you know it, you are going to be driving from Wichita Falls to Dallas and have to pull off on the side of the road because you’ve started sobbing while listening to it in your car. this podcast is fantastic, with a great cast of characters and strong women and DOUG EIFFEL and just. it’s very good. (i am ashamed to admit that i’m actually SUPER behind on this one. p much, i’m at the point where kepler and crew are on board but i’m only a few eps into this storyline). THIS is actually the podcast that really got me on board with the whole audio drama scene and just like….SCOURING the internet for more that would captivate me in the same way. This one is actually ending with this last season, which i think is a good thing? it’s very plot and character focused and i’m glad that they’re telling a complete story and HONESTLY! i’m just really excited to see where everyone involved goes from here. EOS_10!!!!! similar to Wolf359, it’s about a space station. there are a LOT more people there though (it’s more like an intergalactic hub). it’s about a doctor, his recovering alcoholic doctor-boss who he’s trying to help, a nurse who is spunky and maybe a bit psychotic, a hypochondriac alien-former-prince, and a “alleged” “terrorist” living in the cargo bay. idk this podcast just makes me incredibly happy. the writing is witty and fun, the characters are lovable and flawed, and i’ve listened to the whole two seasons at least 3 times because it just fills me with joy (my favorite dynamic always: assholes who are friends and they love each other but they also just….insult each other constantly. and somehow they save the world? but they’re still assholes). the universe of this show is really interesting without ever feeling like an info dump, and the unfolding mystery is very intriguing. WARNING: this show has been on hiatus for awhile, so there are only two seasons right now. but honestly??? it’s completely worth it. (obvi i’m hoping a third season will eventually come, but i enjoyed the first two enough that i love it regardless haha). and, finally, my current obsession. The Penumbra Podcast. it’s pretty much everything i’ve ever wanted in a series ever - detective film noir, but in space (on Mars), and literally everyone is queer. there’s a main story line (”Juno Steel and the [blank]”) and then one shots between each Juno story. the one shots are fantastic and really show the strength of the writers - sometimes being creepy, other times just being entertaining. The Juno Steel stories are the main running plot, done in the style of old detective radio shows - but also kind of twisting and upgrading the genre to be more inclusive and diverse. Juno Steel is a canonically non-binary and bisexual private eye (also canonically grumpy, sad most of the time, and a huge nerd who laughs at his own awful jokes in HIS OWN MONOLOGUES), and is the type of character you want to punch for being frustrating but who you also want to just…be…happy and protect from the universe. the writing in this is fantastic and beautiful and all of the characters are captivating. even one-off characters have a ton of personality and just add to the diversity/representation of the show. the voice work is top-notch and just!!! it’s so good!!!!! i have so many feelings!!!! (Juno hits close to home for me, with his self-esteem issues and depression and just…yeah, so i gushed about him there. i have a lot of feelings about the other characters but i’ve seriously rambled so much already so I WILL REFRAIN. also? gushing TOO much about a certain someone spoils the enjoyment of getting to know them at the same time Juno does) i REALLY enjoy audio drama-type podcasts so that’s mostly what i listen to. i’m also really into true crime and weird theories and occult stuff, but i’m particular about the podcasts i listen to for that. basically, i get attached to a specific host(s) and it’s hard for me to listen to anyone else talk about similar things haha. so as far as that goes, i love The Last Podcast on the Left (haha i get a bit nervous rec’ing this one because it’s really offensive, mostly in the early eps, and is def not for everyone but honestly!! i just love these boys a lot, and they discuss p much everything i’d ever be interested in ever). this one also led me to listen to Page Seven, which is celebrity gossip but honestly just really enjoyable to me. Two of the hosts from that show (Marcus is a LPOTL host as well) also do another show called Sex and Other Human Activities, which i’ve listened to a bit and enjoyed and deals with a lot of different issues - like sex, but also delving into depression and different things the hosts and their friends have gone through. but as far as non-fiction podcasts go, that’s pretty much it? i’m still planning on checking out Radio Dispatch, but that’s honestly mostly because it’s Molly (from Page Seven) and her brother and like i said, i have a problem. other podcasts i know of and have been meaning to check out: Hello From the Magic Tavern, The Adventure Zone, Pleasuretown, Lesser Gods, Tales of THATTOWN..... and ok, probably others but this has gotten excessive i am so sorry friends (some of the links may accidentally be wrong and i am very sorry)

#thimble talk #text post #long post #anon #ask #podcast rec #if i had just straight up listed them this would have been much shorter but i feel like it's necessary to let everyone know #how much i love audio drama and express my love for the creators

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birdlord · 8 years

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What I Watched in 2016

Here are the movies and TV series I watched in 2016, some with commentary and some without. The number after the movies is the date of release, my faves are bolded, and rewatches are marked with as asterisk. Last year’s list!

01 Do I Sound Gay (14)

02 We are The Best! (13)

03 Hateful Eight (15)

04 Welcome to Me (14)

05 For Your Eyes Only (81) - I listened to a lot of back episodes of the James Bonding podcast early this year, which of course led to watching a bunch of Bond movies. Not all, and not in order, certainly.

06 She’s the One (96)

07 * Diamonds are Forever (71)

08 It’s Complicated (09) - I think it was an article about the kitchen design in this movie that led me to watch it?

09 The Natural (84)

10 * Anna Karenina (12) - Never having read the book I can’t REALLY speak to this movie but haha I kinda love its commitment to artifice.

11 About Time (13)

12 What We Do in the Shadows (14) - I did enjoy this, but wasn’t as taken by it as I thought I might be. Found the werewolves the funniest by far, so I wish they’d turned up more often.

13 The Abominable Bride (15) - counting this as a movie, it was the Sherlock xmas special and I recall exactly zero about it, so…..must have been amazing, right?

14 Wake in Fright (71) - Never Go To Australia

15 Hail Caesar (16) - I think I’d have to see it again to determine if the whole thing actually holds together, but at the time, it felt of a piece with the Coen’s cheerier output.

16 In the Heart of the Sea (15)

17 The Night of the Comet (84)

18 Laggies (14)

19 * Bowling for Columbine (02)

20 A Gentleman’s Agreement (47) - confessional, experiential journalism, but done by Cary Grant in the 40s. Ahead of his time/gender?

21 Barefoot in the Park (67)

22 Suddenly Last Summer (59)

23 Tangerine (15)

24 * His Girl Friday (40)

25 That Touch of Mink (62)

26 * Charlie’s Angels (00)

27 9-5 (80) - Holy shit, somehow I thought this movie was just a rah-rah, girl power story about a bunch of secretaries getting together and overthrowing their boss and yeah, that’s SORT OF it but it gets way way weirder in the final third.

28 * Who Framed Roger Rabbit (88)

29 * The Addams Family (91)

30 * Addams Family Values (93)

31 Frida (02)

32 Bridge of Spies (15) - A E I O U and sometimes SPIES :O

33 Swimming With Sharks (94)

34 Sleeping With the Enemy (91)

35 Fatal Attraction (87) - Watched this movie and the previous one as part of an 80s/90s thriller weekend. These two are an interesting contrast to one another, being as the first is about an abusive husband and the second focuses on the most notable example of the “crazy ex-girlfriend”.

36 1 Cloverfield Lane (16)

37 The Man Who Never Was (56)

38 * To Die For (95) - This was a super fave of Teen Emily, who definitely identified with the Lydia character. Watching this time was a huge reminder than Illeana Douglas is a goddamn national treasure.

39 Trouble In Paradise (32)

40 Eraser (96)

41 * Flashdance (83)

42 * Notting Hill (99)

43 Gone to Earth (50) - Not the best Powell and Pressburger out there, but one takes what one can get, right?

44 Holiday Camp (47)

45 Never Sleep Again (10) - This is a four-hour doc about the entire Nightmare on Elm St series, and is the reason I watched Freddy’s Revenge a couple of movies down the list. It’s not a series that I have a particular attachment to, so I learned a ton.

46 Clouds of Sils Maria (15)

47 Mommie Dearest (81) - I’m not sure that I have enough appreciation for high camp to really get into this. There were some moments, but overall it’s a fine example of the kind of thing that is Not For Me.

48 Nightmare on Elm St: Freddy’s Revenge (85)

49 Inside Man (06)

50 Trainwreck (15)

51 White God (14)

52 * Sleepwalk With Me (12)

53 Amy (15)

54 * Meatballs (79)

55 Everybody Wants Some!! (16) - I found this a huge disappointment, and I’ve been a bit mystified by its positive reviews and inclusion on critics’ end of year lists. While D&C definitely has a “main character”, and we do follow him and his friends, other people and subsets of the high school are given serious time and consideration. Ultimately, I don’t think following this one dude tripping through a bunch of different college subsets was as illuminating. Plus, weak jokes.

56 * Dazed & Confused (93) - had to cleanse the mind-palate by watching the original!

57 Summertime (55)

58 The Money Pit (86)

59 Zombeavers (14)

60 Mistress America (15) - I am finding Greta Gerwig more and more charming, the more I see of her. Greta, let’s be friends!

61 While We’re Young (14)

62 The Invitation (16) - quite effective, very upper-middle-class bohemian LA horror film. I’ve heard some complaints about the final scene, but I thought it was an effective & clever way to show an expanding scope without an extra expense or sets.

63 End of Days (99)

64 Escape From New York (81)

65 Escape from L.A. (96) - Watched these two together, on the same night. They definitely should NOT be watched that way, given how identical the plots are. Unbelievably terrible ’96-era CGI in the second one, hard to believe that Jurassic Park was three years previous?? Gotta get that Spielberg money, am I right?

66 High Rise (16) - my only real disappointment in this movie was not being around to see the decline of the civilization - we jump straight from things being fine (if weird) and everything gone to heck. My favourite part is the decline, give me decline!

67 The Great Outdoors (88)

68 * Catch Me If You Can (02)

69 Little Darlings (80) - just your classic losing-virginity-at-camp story, but…wait for it….with GIRLS.

70 * Good Will Hunting (97)

71 Popstar (16) - diminishing returns, but some funny bits (mostly in the songs, not surprisingly).

72 Tarzan (16) - watched this with friends and relatives, at a drive-in theatre a couple of days after my wedding! It’s NOT a good movie, but it was a fun time.

73 Love & Friendship (16) - got completely obsessed with Tom Bennett based on his 100% rate of scene-stealing in this film. Sevigny feels utterly out of place - am I capable of seeing her in a period piece set before, say, 1975 without feeling weird about it?

74 The Night Before (15)

75 Ghostbusters (16) - So I know I was supposed to be charmed by Kate McKinnon, but her schtick just doesn’t work on me, for whatever reason. I was also really frustrated by the final fight scene of this movie - it had obviously been hacked up in editing, and wtf is up with punching ghosts instead of containing them? I’m glad this movie happened, and certainly a great deal of the criticism it came in for was deeply unfair, but it was distinctly disappointing to find that this movie just wasn’t that great.

76 Brooklyn (15)

77 Poltergeist (82)

78 * Before Sunrise (95)

79 Love & Basketball (00) - Effusive praise for this movie somehow came to my attention from all over the place this year, so I finally had to watch it.

80 The Man Who Knew Too Much (56)

81 * Road House (89)

82 Carol (15) - watching this FINALLY allowed me to fully participate in Today’s Meme Culture

83 * Out of Sight (98)

84 Happy Texas (99)

85 Red Rock West (93)

86 Weiner Dog (15)

87 The Trouble With Harry (55)

88 * When Harry Met Sally (89)

89 Jungle Fever (91)

90 Ocean’s 11 (01)

91 Star Trek Beyond (16)

92 Two For the Road (67)

93 * Seven Year Itch (55)

94 Maggie’s Plan (15) - like I said earlier about Greta Gerwig? I liked this one even more than Mistress.

95 The Dish (00)

96 Splash (84)

97 Desk Set (57) - watching this and the next were inspired by stumbling across a blog about depictions of librarians on film. I particularly hit on this one because I’ve always wanted to see a Hepburne/Tracy film, and never had (to my memory, anyhow).

98 Party Girl (95) - one of those movies I’d always noticed on the shelves at the video store, and never actually watched it.

99 * Young Frankenstein (74) - saw this in the theatre, Gene Wilder notwithstanding I…..don’t think it’s good. It’s only extremely intermittently funny, you guys! Plus, the Putting’ on the Ritz bit makes me uncomfortable (especially in audio-only form, which I heard TOO many times after Wilder died).

100 The House of the Devil (09)

101* The Witches of Eastwick (87)

102 The Borning (81)

103 * Shaun of the Dead (04)

104 Dolores Claiborne (95)

105 The Conjuring 2 (13)

106 In a Valley of Violence (16) - definitely watched this because I happened across an article about the movie’s dog star.

107 The Witch (16) - very effective in getting across the supernatural, natural, and social dangers of early puritan America, and Black Philip has entered my idiolect for any creepy animal/person/twitter feed.

108 * Wayne’s World (92)

109 What if (13) - riffs on When Harry Met Sally’s fundamental question of women and men being friends, and basically comes to the same conclusion. yawn.

110 The Martian (15) - I read the book as part of a book club last year, and finally got around to watching the film. Since I found the worst of the writing in the book to be those passages dealing with description, the movie was a lot less annoying to experience.

111 Sleepless in Seattle (93)

112 * Thelma & Louise (91)

113 Casino (95)

114 Other People (16) - wept several times. GOSH I love Jesse Plemons, he’s so hugely sympathetic. Would watch in virtually anything.

115 The Life & Death of Colonel Blimp (43)

116 Primary Colors (98)

117 Edge of Seventeen (16)

118 *Die Hard (88) - loaded up the laptop with this and the next four xmas-set movies, for watching on planes and in airports, while we were on the road at christmastime.

119 *Batman Returns (92)

120 *Scrooged (88)

121 * The Apartment (60)

Theatre - 5

Drive-in - 1

All the rest at home or at friends’ homes!

TV SERIES

*The Office US S2-3

War & Peace (2016) - you bet your BOOTS I started the book after watching this. Did I finish it? Not even close.

Love (2016)

Better Call Saul S2 - this is a show I enjoy while I’m watching it, but I don’t particularly find it memorable. Why? Who knows. It’s still something I look forward to, but not a show that sticks with me.

Great British Bake off *S1, *S2, S7 + Xmas Specials - a eulogy for Bake-Off as it was. Pour one (pint of double cream, that is) out for what once was.

Broad City S5

Travel Man S1, S2 - I find Richard Ayoade so desperately charming, but ever time I’ve watched one of the movies he’s directed, I’ve ended up disappointed. This show is a bit hit or miss, depending on the guests he brings along, and the episodes definitely have a sameness to them, but if you find this guy even a sliver as entertaining as I do, it’ll pull you along anyhow.

The Night Manager - so looking forward to Hugh Laurie’s upcoming career phase as Bond Villain.

Cooked

Newsradio S1-S3 - I’d seen an episode or two of this over the years but never sat down to fully appreciate it. It’s making me miss Phil Hartman all over again, a fresh devastation, plus haha did u know Tone Loc plays a security guard on this show? It’s all true.

Lady Dynamite

OJ Made In America - I’ll count this as a series, since I didn’t watch it in the theatre. Still haven’t seen the other big OJ series of 2016, but I loved loved LOVED this. What impressed me the most is that, in spite of its 7 hour+ running time there were still aspects of this story that could have been expanded upon.

Silicon Valley S3

* Veep S1, S2

Catastrophe S2

Pulling - went back in time to get more Sharon Horgan in my life, since Catastrophe seasons are terribly short and far-between. I’d been aware of this show for a long time, and somehow wasn’t expecting it to be as near-devastating as it ended up being. What, did I forget what a British show was like?

Another Period S2

Difficult People S1, S2 - Another late discovery, but a great one. A fine example of just giving some funny people a show, and letting them just do their thing on it every week.

Fleabag - yes, I’m in for this, obviously. And if I wasn’t, the show designed itself to put me off, from the first moments. A wise move!

One Mississippi

Very British Problems S1, S2

Atlanta - I’ve got a bad feeling that this show’s deserved success will lead to surreal elements being deployed, but much less deftly than they were here.

Please Like Me S1-S4 - Tore through this entire series greedily, am now suffering until they make another season. Balances some very harrowing elements with comedy and an ensemble cast of loveable/terrible humans.

Divorce - Sharon Horgan’s writing minus her acting is a hollow empty shell, but hey, I’ll take what I can get, when I can get it.

The Fall S3 - I’d decided last year after S2 that I was done with this show, and yet, here we are, I was drawn back in.

The Crown

Insecure

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