thebohemianandthespyglass

[thebohemianandthespyglass]

I found out from the production designer's website and an interview he did that the basement kitchen is actually the 'kid's lounge', a space the siblings created for themselves.

And I've been obsessed with it ever since because I feel it gives us more of an idea about what the umbrellas childhoods were like.

Because, okay there's the slightly extravagant things like the pool table and foozball table, but most of it is very simple. A hifi system and a collection of cassettes and CDs (I bet Luther was only allowed have a record collection as part of his special treatment as Number One), what looks like board games and some toys in what used to be the butcher shops fridges and there's another toy next to the hifi system that looks similar to some of the ones we see in Five's room.

And in the scene where Allison and Diego fight Cha Cha we see art supplies as well.

These are just basic things most kids would grow up with but the umbrellas had to create a secret place, away from their father, to have them. It's just desperately sad.

But I also find it kind of beautiful that they worked together to make a place for themselves and I like to imagine the process of it coming together. Them scavenging furniture from the unused academy rooms. One of them finds the table in storage room, or the attic maybe, and then over the next few weeks they manage to take chairs from different rooms until they can all sit at the table together. Coming home from Griddy's one night (sneaking out became a lot easier once they had a separate entrance that their dad didn't know about) they spot an armchair and a sofa left out on the sidewalk and they don't look in too bad a condition so Five jumps back with the armchair while the others carry the sofa home (Five was still getting the hang of jumping with objects, the sofa was still a bit too big for him to manage). Grace catches them stealing food to take downstairs one day and she mentions it to Pogo (who knows about the room since it's right next to his own room, but he chooses to turn a blind eye) and suddenly there's a fridge in the room and Grace makes sure it and the cupboards are always fully stocked, even after the kids are gone (we see Five make a sandwich here when he comes back from the apocalypse). Hargreeves never interacts with Grace much and doesn't pay much attention to the food orders she makes as long as she stays in budget so some extra loaves of bread or jars of peanut butter won't catch his attention.

And Hargreeves never found out about the room because There's no reason for him to go to the basement, the only things in the basement are Pogo's room (so telling that there are 42 bedrooms in the academy but Pogo is relegated to the basement) and a utilitiy room. Viktor's cell is also in the basement but it's accessed by a separate elevator so Hargreeves wouldn't pass the kid's lounge to get to it.

You can tell how important the space was to the siblings as well because of how they use it in adulthood.

It's where they all go when Five returns and where they hangout when in the academy (we see them in the living room too but mostly for family meetings).

When Viktor comes to invite the others to his concert he comes through the butcher shop entrance.

It's where Klaus gathers his brothers when he tells them that he spoke to Reginald the night before.

And, even when he was the only one left living in the academy, Luther ate breakfast there.

It's the only part of the academy they feel is truly theirs and theirs alone. It's their safe place.

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'Wild Woman Riding a Unicorn', by Master from the Amsterdam Cabinet, 1475

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Unhinged Sybelle and Benji tangent (cw references to abuse csa trauma etc)

yeah so Marius’s turning of Benji and Sybelle isn’t about whether or not that was the right decision to make and isn’t made better by their contentment living as vampires in late canon. Benji and Sybelle’s relatively happy lives as vampires are irrelevant to me. The cruelty of how he did it is made worse by the hypocritical nature of turning a kid into a vampire after so firmly insisting that turning children is morally abhorrent and smth he should’ve never done, yeah, but that’s only a small part of it.

It was so awful and upsetting to me bcus of the deliberate stripping of Armand’s agency. See, we have a whole book where Armand tells the story of how throughout his entire life and childhood he was forced into the role of submissiveness and/or dependency. whether that be his childhood religious devotion that would eventually lead to his being buried alive for God or being sold into sexual slavery or Marius’s mentorship of him that ultimately intended to teach him to stay loyal and dependent on Marius’s authority to Marius’s relationship with him sexual and otherwise to the cult indoctrination, up until Lestat comes along and tilts his own view of submission and devotion as his only way to survive and function in the world onto its head.

He gives him a theater and then he gives him Louis. Armand floats around, tries to find purpose without devotion through using Louis and Daniel as tools to understanding the modern age. The modern age to Armand is possibility and independence, things he’s never had so much access to and doesn’t know exactly how to apply to himself until the devils minion chapter when he’s like ah ok I get it, life without devotion is something I’ve always been familiar with—it’s what Marius taught me! I Am The Master now with my excessive indulgence and my Boy and my sea side paradise.

But Armand is a Void™️ with no concept of self besides a collection of concepts and experiences and people he’s been exposed to throughout his existence, so rlly he’s kind of a fraud. Internally he’s still a saint who yearns for a God to follow, he’s no Marius, and this all comes to a head in Memnoch the devil when he throws himself into the sun for Jesus etc. and so TVA Armand is mixed the fuck up, he’s lost everything he’s been building for himself, he’s like an open wound, like red and gold sand art shaken around until it’s sludges of brown.

Armand believes himself to have no coherent narrative of a life, no coherent and consistent sense of self, just a collection of unrelated sequences that he draws from to occasionally preform personhood, and at the beginning of TVA he is very much just that. No thoughts only colors and pain. But he’s trying to rebuild himself as best he can, he has these young humans who he’s caring for, and through caring Armand finds meaning.

These humans are very much reflections of himself, or who he used to be, and seeing a personhood reflected back at him through these two gives him insight into his own value as an individual, as someone who is inherently worthy of having a life. So with Benji and Sybelle he tries to rebuild his own sense of personhood by giving them what he would want in there place. The conclusion he reaches at the end of his story to David is that after everything ultimately he is learning and rebuilding, gaining fulfillment and individuality he’s never had before through his empathy and care for these two people in his life. Benji and Sybelle are representative of Armand’s healing process!!! They mirror him bcus they are him!! He’s literally nurturing his inner child!! And with that there comes self care and self love etc etc. but then the book doesn’t end!!

Then after all that trauma and all that healing everything that Armand was tenderly attempting to build for his new life is stripped away ! When Marius turns Benji and Sybelle it doesn’t matttttter that they like being vampires. What matters is that when Armand finally gained agency and individuality Marius decided to take that from him! Marius decided that he actually knew better then Armand, and if Armand would just allow him to do what’s best for him then everything would be so much better and so much easier. And when Armand starts sobbing and screaming and fighting him that’s just justification to Marius that Armand isn’t capable of independence or self sufficiency, that he’s a child throwing a tantrum who can’t make his own decisions, that he should just be dependent on Marius like he used to be and trust that other people know what’s best for him.

That’s why it’s so tragic! That’s why it’s so frustrating and so sad. Armand was on the road to healing but then Marius stormed in like the symbolic representation of his past telling him that no matter what he does or the progress he makes he’s still Armand in the catacombs, Amadeo on the red sheets, Andrei waiting to be buried alive. So I don’t really give af if ultimately Benji and Sybelle are fine! It’s great that despite being a child vampire Benji is able to function independently and contently as an adult with minimal body dysmorphia and existential dread, but you know who’s not able to do that? Armand 😭😭

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canon things we know about the umbrella academy

luther used to marry viktor’s action figures at the age of eight

reginald used to watch the kids sleep and monitor their brainwaves

at some point, grace became ‘mom’ instead of ‘grace, the new nanny’ to all of the children

five was thirteen years old when he found his siblings’ bodies

klaus is the only umbrella native to the usa, coming from an amish community in pennsylvania; luther is from sweden, diego from mexico, allison from south africa, five from ireland, ben from south korea and viktor from russia

viktor cried when his siblings stepped on ants when they were children

the same kid hated oatmeal so much he killed minimum three nannies at the age of four

klaus broke his jaw when they were twelve after falling down the stairs wearing grace’s heels, and had to have it wired shut for eight weeks

grace helped the children pick out their own names

viktor realised he was trans after falling in love with sissy in the sixties

diego boxes under his comic book superhero name, the kraken, and in claire’s bedtime stories, allison calls luther his, spaceboy

diego’s preferred form of conflict resolution is a dance battle

hargreeves considered ben ‘easily manipulated’

both klaus and luther got kidnapped without any other members of their family noticing

after ben died, his family remembered him as the best of them who could do no wrong; klaus, who spent everyday with him, more accurately described him as a ‘loveable asshole’. all of them remember him as loving his family fiercely, and being the glue that kept them together

allison starred in a movie with sandra bullock

with viktor speaking russian, diego speaking spanish and ben speaking korean, it’s highly likely that hargreeves made a point to have them learn the languages their birth mothers spoke

reginald forced all the kids to read shakespeare, the odyssey in ancient greek and insisted on ballroom dancing lessons

sometime between season 1 and season 2, klaus learned how to drive

allison speaks seven languages, and five knows both ancient greek and italian

grace helped diego with his stutter

before he travelled back in time and met dave, klaus’ longest relationship was two-weeks long and primarily because he was tired of sleeping rough

ben and diego made allison’s teddy say ‘luther smells dad’s underwear’ as kids

diego told klaus that licking a battery would give him pubes when they were eight, and klaus believed him

klaus’ special training in the mausoleum was meant to make him too afraid of the ghosts to function, so reginald could control him better; reginald also killed him there at age thirteen, and possibly earlier

viktor’s violin once belonged to reginald’s late wife

diego’s ‘vigilante shit’ was a trauma response

allison was the first of the umbrellas to become a parent, and diego will be the second

ben almost certainly knew that klaus was dying and reanimating, as they spent sixteen years together after his death, and apparently never mentioned it

ben died at sixteen, and stuck around as a ghost for a further sixteen years before going into the light

it was a rule that nobody could speak at mealtimes, and they had to listen to various lectures on the radio

the children got half an hour on sundays for fun and games

the kids used to sneak out of the academy to go and get donuts at griddy’s

five used to get five stars in all of his performance reviews, although luther, hargreeves’ apparent favourite, did not

diego considered viktor’s book unforgiveable, but forgave him for ending the world in 1963 after he apologised

klaus has died fifty-six times by the age of thirty-two

ben died in something called ‘the jennifer incident’, although we still don’t know what it was or exactly how he died

luther spent four years alone on the moon; solitary confinement is considered torture by the united nations after fifteen days

luther wrote poetry on the moon, and self-harmed

diego has a fear of needles

klaus is now physically the oldest sibling, whilst five is mentally the oldest

allison rumoured either luther or patrick to love her

reginald told the kids at ben’s funeral that it was their fault he was dead

diego and klaus used to huff paint as teenagers

five spent somewhere between forty and forty-four years in the apocalypse; his contract with the commission was for five years, and we know he broke it before it was complete

as an old man, five had a moustache

luther, five and klaus all have problems with substance abuse

five and viktor were best friends growing up, as were allison and luther

luther got allison a locket with ‘A + L’ engraved on it when they were teenagers

allison rumoured herself onto a soccer team at one point, despite being homeschooled

luther wanted to go to summer camp, but reginald told him he would never go

none of his siblings know that diego shut grace down in season 1

five singlehandedly invented the formula for time travel

luther fell for the nigerian prince scam

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gosh, wow, actually. i know it's so obvious because clearly that's one of the big reasons diego was so furious at viktor for publishing extra ordinary but how INSANE would it be to know that anyone--friends, coworkers, exes, partners, strangers--literally anyone in then entire world with the right access could pick up a book and read several hundred pages detailing everything about you and your family.

diego is such a private person. he has a really high eq, all things considered, but when it comes to being vulnerable, he struggles because he has to be tough, he has to protect, he has to be a hero... and now there's this book where anyone and their mother can read about his trauma? his severe childhood stutter? his petty squabbles with luther? his anger issues? the inhumane experiments performed on him by their own father?

never mind that the book undoubtedly also talks about ben's death, which was the catalyst for diego leaving home in the first place. that's wildly personal and not something that i think diego would want anyone to know, maybe even less than his childhood tantrums or bed wetting or whatever other embarrassing thing viktor could possibly tell the world.

i'm sure there's some nice things in there about all of the siblings, but none of that would matter. the damage was done the second viktor decided to tell all their secrets without consulting them.

the exposé must have felt like ripping open an old wound for diego. i can totally see why he'd be so furious with v. i would be too lol.

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Idk why, but Claudia Henderson is like so fun to make headcanons for. Maybe it's because she's a single mom who is sooooo not in the plot? Maybe it's because she had a Mondale sign on her lawn unlike every other Reagan voting douche in Hawkins? Like all I can wonder is "what does she do all day?" Any ways, this is the dumping ground for thoughts on her:

Claudia writes bodice rippers and romance stories under the pen name Abigail Wethersby. She got into writing them in the mid 70s when she needed a way to pass the time at all of Dustin’s doctor/dentist appointments. It started out as little snippets just to make the ladies at book club squeal over wine, but one of them reaches out to a cousin and gets Claudia into a meeting at a publishing house in Chicago. Since 1978 she’s been writing three books a year and finding enough success to stay afloat when her husband Greg walks out.

Over the last three years, Steve Harrington has served as the inspiration for five of her last nine books. Not like she wants to fuck him (that's her son's mentor. Ew.), but he brings new concepts into her life directly and via Dustin's stories. These include-

- First son of the local lord has been bested in competitive combat by the town's assistant printmaker, losing his betrothed AND status. Now sent away to mitigate the family's embarrassment, the honourable Stevenson of Camden must learn what it is to build his own legacy. Along the way he falls for the fierce farmer's daughter.

- Bermuda Xanos is all that is left of the Xanos Detective Agency legacy. After her mother walked out and her father drank himself to the grave to numb the shame of his ruined professional reputation from believing in conspiracy theories, Bermuda is looking to revitalize her family's business. The first case from her father's old friend looks to derail the whole mission, bringing her into the fold of a side she's never seen of Chicago. She also meets and teams up with Stanley Frank, the exceedingly patient muscle who's entered the same underground culture in the hopes of finding his little brother-- Darren.

-- This has been Claudia's most successful work to date and her publisher/editor want to craft it into a supernatural detectives series, but sexy. I see this being the kind of book getting optioned in the late 90s to be a cable network series, like on Sci-Fi Channel, in response to the X Files craze.

-Rockstar Cassandra "Cass" Anderson has to come back to her hometown to deal with her late mother's estate. Having left 8 years prior after her high school graduation, with plans to never return, Cass is surprised at how much has changed in her hometown. The biggest surprise is Gareth, her once high school nemesis now video rental store employee living wildly below his potential. With a wild plot to marry for a legal loophole, will Cass and Gareth be able to part ways in the end and return to their normal, or will this be the ultimate shakeup they both needed?

I just love the idea of Claudia as a happy, successful single mom who isn't particularly looking to find another husband or feel shame (which has a lot to do with class but I digress) about her situation. She, like Dustin, is passionate about what she like and knows she is not interested in fitting a mold that so many other mothers in Hawkins do.

That says, she would flirt with Murray for her own amusement if ever in the same room. Like shaking a bug in a jar or putting a mirror in front of a beta fish; she just wants to know what he does when riled up because so far... with no stimulants... it has only been wild shit coming out of his mouth. If there is a karate knowing Russian diplomat/spy in her next 19th century bodice ripper then that's her business. (Murray totally knows about it and gets Claudia to sign his copy).

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I love when ancient poets talk about how doomed & hubristic seafaring is. like yess lets surpass our natural limitations and travel to unknown places. let's test the boundaries between life and death with our human ambition. let's shipwreck ourselves and bring nothing but grief and tragedy to human history with our overstep. this is so sexy

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Magical Realism in Adult Fiction

She Would Be King by Wayétu Moore

A novel of exhilarating range, magical realism, and history—a dazzling retelling of Liberia’s formation. Wayétu Moore’s powerful debut novel, She Would Be King, reimagines the dramatic story of Liberia’s early years through three unforgettable characters who share an uncommon bond. Gbessa, exiled from the West African village of Lai, is starved, bitten by a viper, and left for dead, but still she survives. June Dey, raised on a plantation in Virginia, hides his unusual strength until a confrontation with the overseer forces him to flee. Norman Aragon, the child of a white British colonizer and a Maroon slave from Jamaica, can fade from sight when the earth calls him. When the three meet in the settlement of Monrovia, their gifts help them salvage the tense relationship between the African American settlers and the indigenous tribes, as a new nation forms around them. Moore’s intermingling of history and magical realism finds voice not just in these three characters but also in the fleeting spirit of the wind, who embodies an ancient wisdom. “If she was not a woman,” the wind says of Gbessa, “she would be king.” In this vibrant story of the African diaspora, Moore, a talented storyteller and a daring writer, illuminates with radiant and exacting prose the tumultuous roots of a country inextricably bound to the United States. She Would Be King is a novel of profound depth set against a vast canvas and a transcendent debut from a major new author.

Indelible by Adelia Saunders

Magdalena has an unsettling gift. She sees writing on the body of everyone she meets - names, dates, details both banal and profound - and her only relief from the onslaught of information is to take off her glasses and let the world recede. Mercifully, her own skin is blank. When she meets Neil, she is intrigued to see her name on his cheek. He’s in Paris for the summer, studying a medieval pilgrimage to the rocky coast of Spain, where the body of Saint Jacques was said to have washed ashore, covered in scallop shells. Desperate to make things right after her best friend dies - a loss she might have prevented - Magdalena embarks on her own pilgrimage, but not before Neil falls for her, captivated by her pale eyes, charming Eastern European accent, and aura of heartbreak. Neil’s father, Richard, is also in Paris, searching for the truth about his late mother, a famous expatriate American novelist who abandoned him at birth. All his life Richard has clung to a single striking memory - his mother’s red shoes, which her biographers agree he never could have seen. Despite misunderstandings and miscommunications, these unforgettable characters converge, by chance or perhaps by fate, and Magdalena’s uncanny ability may prove to be the key to their happiness. Indelible pulses with humanity and breathes life into unexpected fragments of history, illustrating our urgent need to connect with others and the past.

Once Upon a River by Diane Setterfield

On a dark midwinter’s night in an ancient inn on the river Thames, an extraordinary event takes place. The regulars are telling stories to while away the dark hours, when the door bursts open on a grievously wounded stranger. In his arms is the lifeless body of a small child. Hours later, the girl stirs, takes a breath and returns to life. Is it a miracle? Is it magic? Or can science provide an explanation? These questions have many answers, some of them quite dark indeed. Those who dwell on the river bank apply all their ingenuity to solving the puzzle of the girl who died and lived again, yet as the days pass the mystery only deepens. The child herself is mute and unable to answer the essential questions: Who is she? Where did she come from? And to whom does she belong? But answers proliferate nonetheless. Three families are keen to claim her. A wealthy young mother knows the girl is her kidnapped daughter, missing for two years. A farming family reeling from the discovery of their son’s secret liaison, stand ready to welcome their granddaughter. The parson’s housekeeper, humble and isolated, sees in the child the image of her younger sister. But the return of a lost child is not without complications and no matter how heartbreaking the past losses, no matter how precious the child herself, this girl cannot be everyone’s. Each family has mysteries of its own, and many secrets must be revealed before the girl’s identity can be known. Once Upon a River is a glorious tapestry of a book that combines folklore and science, magic and myth. Suspenseful, romantic, and richly atmospheric, the beginning of this novel will sweep you away on a powerful current of storytelling, transporting you through worlds both real and imagined, to the triumphant conclusion whose depths will continue to give up their treasures long after the last page is turned.

The Rules of Magic (Practical Magic #0.2) by Alice Hoffman

Find your magic For the Owens family, love is a curse that began in 1620, when Maria Owens was charged with witchery for loving the wrong man. Hundreds of years later, in New York City at the cusp of the sixties, when the whole world is about to change, Susanna Owens knows that her three children are dangerously unique. Difficult Franny, with skin as pale as milk and blood red hair, shy and beautiful Jet, who can read other people’s thoughts, and charismatic Vincent, who began looking for trouble on the day he could walk. From the start Susanna sets down rules for her children: No walking in the moonlight, no red shoes, no wearing black, no cats, no crows, no candles, no books about magic. And most importantly, never, ever, fall in love. But when her children visit their Aunt Isabelle, in the small Massachusetts town where the Owens family has been blamed for everything that has ever gone wrong, they uncover family secrets and begin to understand the truth of who they are. Back in New York City each begins a risky journey as they try to escape the family curse. The Owens children cannot escape love even if they try, just as they cannot escape the pains of the human heart. The two beautiful sisters will grow up to be the revered, and sometimes feared, aunts in Practical Magic, while Vincent, their beloved brother, will leave an unexpected legacy.

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on another note, watched The Mummy (1999) the other day and I couldn’t help  feel like the O’Connells and the Addams (Addams Family Values (1993) would get on really well ya know? The O’Connells are basically the pastel adventure version of the Addams, surely they would just be vibin’ over tea and crumpets in an extremely haunted mansion having a ball of a time

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I will now list the characters on Penny Dreadful who deserved better:

Vanessa Ives

SEMBENE

Brona/Lily

Angelique

Gladys Murray

Proteus

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I’ve been thinking about Alqualondë.

The First Kinslaying is often thought if as a battle between two armies, but it really isn’t. The Teleri are all civilians. In the many thousands of years since they came to Valinor, they’ve had no thought of all of war, of combat, or defence, of any kind of violence at all. The reason the Noldor are armed, armoured, and have trained in combat is because Melkor incited them to make and train with weapons of war when he was setting them against each other. The Teleri were completely outside of that. Their bows would be hunting bows, for rabbit or deer (one can’t eat fish all the time), not in any way suited to fighting armoured warriors.

So what we have is really an army (one that hasn’t actually seen combat, but judging from Dagor-nuin-Giliath is nonetheless very proficient) attacking a larger group of scarcely-armed civilians who have had no experience of violence for many thousands of years. The Teleri are fighting a last-ditch effort to preserve the central artistic work of their entire culture, but combat is completely foreign to them, and they lose badly, and the Noldor kill a large part (a third? a quarter?) of their people.

This is another thing I think that is often overlooked. The Darkening of Valinor stands out as one of the most tragic moments in the history of Middle-earth, the destruction of a light that will never be restored, but in the course of the Darkening, Morgoth kills one person. (Three people, if you’re Yavanna.) The Noldor kill thousands. The Kinslaying and the destruction of their ships, not the Darkening, is the most traumatic and devastating thing the Teleri have ever experienced; they suffer far more from Fëanor and his following, and from Fingon’s forces, than they do from Morgoth.

And the ships stand out because they are not, like Silmarils, the artistic creation of one person who passionately values them, but the artistic creation of an entire people, an entire culture. And they aren’t locked away in a hoard in Formenos; they are a daily and continual part of all the people’s lives, building and repairing and mending, sailing, fishing, exploring; for work and for pleasure. A lot of the Noldor have probably rarely or never even seen the Silmarils, or only glimpsed them at a distance. The Teleri’s swan-ships are a focal point of all of their lives, and something that many of them have taken part in making.

For the Teleri - and probably for most of the people in Valinor - the Kinslaying hits harder and leaves a deeper mark, is more destructive to their lives and homes and daily experiences, than the Darkening is, and all the more so because it’s at the hands of people whom they are used to regarding as their friends.

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The woman with the candle (detail) by Cornelis Visscher II, c. 1643-1658.

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Snapdragons at the crossroads.

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Why Liz Danes sucks: a closer look

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“Fiona had always been shot as a waif – tendrils of hair blowing (dressed in lingerie), out in some sort of lily field. She told me she wanted to chuck that scene and be a warrior woman in a suit of armor.”

– Joe McNally, The Moment It Clicks

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My Favourite Movies and Series!

So I decided to make a list of all my favourite movies and series of all time. I’m including the IMDb pitch for each one. 

1. The Secret Garden: Living in India, Mary Lennox (Kate Maberly), a young, privileged girl, is left orphaned when her parents are killed in an earthquake. She is sent back to England where she goes to live on her Uncle Lord Archibald Craven’s (John Lynch’s) estate. It is a fairly isolated existence and she has to find things to keep herself occupied. She finds sickly young Colin Craven (Heydon Prowse), and a secret garden.

2. Picnic At Hanging Rock (series): Picnic at Hanging Rock will plunge viewers into the mysterious disappearances of three schoolgirls and one teacher on Valentine’s Day 1900, taking the audience on a new journey into the revered Australian novel. The complex, interwoven narrative follows the subsequent investigation and the event’s far-reaching impact on the students, families and staff of Appleyard College, and on the nearby township.

3. The Beguiled: Three years into the American Civil War, in 1864, the dilapidated mansion of Miss Martha Farnsworth’s Seminary for Young Ladies is still running, occupied by the matriarch, a teacher and five students in Spanish moss-draped Virginia. However, when a young student stumbles upon Corporal John McBurney, a wounded Union deserter on the verge of death, the already frail balance of things will be disrupted, as the hesitant headmistress decides to take him in to heal from his injury. Little by little, as the unwelcome guest arouses an uneasy sexual excitation among the women of the secluded boarding school, it is not before long that they will find themselves competing for the alluring man’s favour. Undoubtedly, this handsome devil is a manipulator, nevertheless, will the ladies stay forever beguiled by his charm?

Pan’s Labyrinth: In 1944 Falangist Spain, a girl, fascinated with fairy-tales, is sent along with her pregnant mother to live with her new stepfather, a ruthless captain of the Spanish army. During the night, she meets a fairy who takes her to an old faun in the center of the labyrinth. He tells her she’s a princess, but must prove her royalty by surviving three gruesome tasks. If she fails, she will never prove herself to be the true princess and will never see her real father, the king, again.

The Nightingale: THE NIGHTINGALE is a meditation on the horrors of Australian colonization, set at the turn of the 19th century. The film follows Clare, a 21-year-old native Irish wife and mother held captive beyond her 7-year sentence, desperate to be free of her obsessed master, British lieutenant Hawkins. Clare’s husband Aidan intervenes with devastating consequences for all. When British authorities fail to deliver justice, Clare pursues Hawkins, who leaves his post suddenly to secure a captaincy up north. Unfamiliar with the Tasmanian wilderness she enlists the help of an orphaned Aboriginal tracker Billy. Marked by their traumas, the two fight to overcome their distrust and prejudices against the backdrop of Australia’s infamous ‘Black War’.

Penny Dreadful (original series): Explorer Sir Malcolm Murray, American gunslinger Ethan Chandler, scientist Victor Frankenstein and medium Vanessa Ives unite to combat supernatural threats in Victorian London.

The Woods: In 1965, after provoking a fire in a forest, the rebel teenager Heather Fasulo is sent to the boarding school Falburn Academy in the middle of the woods by her estranged mother Alice Fasulo and her neglected father Joe Fasulo. The dean Ms. Traverse accepts Heather in spite of the bad financial condition of her father. The displaced Heather becomes close friend of he weird Marcy Turner, while they are maltreated by the abusive mate Samantha Wise. During the nights, Heather has nightmares and listens to voices from the woods, and along the days she believes that the school is a coven of witches. When some students, including Marcy, simply vanish, Heather believes she will be the next one.

Suspiria (2018): Susie Bannion is a young American ballerina who travels to Berlin to study dancing at the Markos Tanz Company, one of the world’s most renowned schools under Madame Blanc’s management. On her very first day, one of the students who had been recently expelled from the school is murdered. As this appalling happening does not seem to be an isolated occurrence, the brilliant new student soon begins to suspect that the school might be involved in the homicide. Her mistrust heightens when Sarah, one of the girls at the school, tells her that Pat, before being killed, confided to her that she knew and guarded a terrifying dark secret.