#like you have to know they wrote a screenplay for the movie right? like they weren't using the novel as a script...

[wimbledon2008]

i'm beginning to suspect some of you don't actually know how movies work

[mariacallous]

“If it should be, and he came to London, with his teeming millions. … There may be a solemn duty; and if it come we must not shrink from it.”—Bram Stoker, Dracula

A vampire must avoid direct sunlight to avoid crumbling into ash, yet few folk horrors have been subject to more scrutiny than the transformative bloodsuckers who dominate the night. A new and absolutely terrific cinematic take on the myth, Robert Eggers’ Nosferatu, has hit theaters, and its most notable element, in addition to outstanding performances, dialogue, and production design, is that this new version really amps up the lusty goth quotient. (So much hallucinatory writhing and moaning!) However, its release so close to the inauguration of a U.S. president who has stoked fears of immigrants draws out xenophobic elements inherent to the text, and an inner tension with its own reactionary origin is part of the genius of this new film.

If you aren’t a subscriber to Fangoria magazine, you may not know the Nosferatu backstory. The first version, released in 1922, is a landmark of German filmmaking that plundered intellectual property as if it were the grave of a Victorian noblewoman buried with her jewels—a fate some of the characters in Dracula think has befallen poor Lucy Westenra, before it is revealed she is actually an accursed undead demon!

Unlike his most famous literary creation, though, Irish-born writer Bram Stoker does not walk the earth a century after his death. As such, the theater manager who wrote books on the side would likely be surprised at the strength of his legacy. Dracula, published in 1897, was only a modest success at the time. It was not even the first book about vampires published in English; how it became the wellspring for vampire iconography—to the point that is used to sell breakfast cereal—is perhaps due to vivid, dueling film interpretations.

In 1921, a German film producer with an interest in the occult created a new studio (Prana) with an eye toward making supernatural-themed films, and kicked things off with an adaptation of Dracula. He hired Henrik Galeen, who co-wrote the outstanding expressionist The Golem: How He Came Into the World, to write the screenplay, and F. W. Murnau—who would later make Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans, one of the undisputed masterpieces of silent cinema—to direct. But he did not pay for the rights to Bram Stoker’s book. Instead, Galeen changed the names of the characters (Count Dracula to Count Orlok) and the location (London to Wisborg, a fictional German city), and made some additional tweaks to the narrative. The title, Nosferatu, is a word used in Dracula to categorize vampires, meaning undead. (The etymology of this word remains debated, but it may have its roots in the Greek nosophoros, meaning “disease-bearing.”)

Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror was released to significant acclaim, but one person who wasn’t happily chomping on popcorn was Florence Balcombe, Bram Stoker’s widow. An anonymous informant sent her a handbill from the movie’s lavish premiere at the Marble Hall of the Berlin Zoological Gardens. The promotional material boasted that the film was “freely adapted” from Dracula. Balcombe took this to court, won her case, and bankrupted Prana, which was ordered to destroy every copy of Nosferatu. Clearly, this did not happen, as you can still watch the movie today—and, despite the iffy ethical origins, you should; it’s terrific.

But what Balcombe did next was key. Springboarding off the increased interest in the story (and to guarantee proper payment on copyrighted material), she greenlit a stage production. The show ended up being a hit in London in 1927, then moved to New York later the same year. That version starred Bela Lugosi. Four years later, Lugosi reprised the role for Tod Browning’s film version for Universal Pictures, the first talkie in the Universal Monsters series. It was a sensation, and Lugosi’s sharp-toothed Transylvanian is now an early screen icon on par with Chaplin’s Little Tramp.

Other Dracula movies were soon in the works—a Spanish-language version was actually shot concurrently with Browning’s, using the same sets—and have never stopped. Hammer Studios in Britain made several classics starring Christopher Lee; there’s the Andy Warhol-presented Blood for Dracula; the disco era’s comedy Love at First Bite; Francis Ford Coppola’s stylistic version from the 1990s; and then there’s Adam Sandler’s Hotel Transylvania cartoons. Moreover, Lugosi knew a good gig when he saw it. The actor reprised his role for comedy (Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein—and also the Count!) and special appearances (a gig on Fred Allen’s top rated Texaco Star Theater radio show is just one example), and also starred in several Dracula-esque horror titles like The Devil Bat. While Lugosi’s lines from Dracula were instantly quotable (“I never drink … wine” is certainly my favorite), behind it all was the less hokey, dreamlike silent film version of Nosferatu, sprung from illicit origins and filled with striking sinister imagery.

Shadow of the Vampire, released in 2000, imagines that the original production was cursed because actor Max Schreck, who played Count Orlok, was truly a vampire. (Willem Dafoe was nominated for an Oscar for his performance of Schreck in this behind-the-scenes comedy, which is especially amusing because he plays the part of Prof. von Frantz, a spin on Stoker’s Dr. Van Helsing, in the new film.) Shadow of the Vampire’s premise—the cover up of an unsettling (fictional) aspect of the original Nosferatu—works because, while the intentions of Murnau and company are hard to know, it is easy to see how German audiences of the 1920s could read Nosferatu as antisemitic.

The film and its source material read like a laundry list of antisemitic tropes: The Count comes from “the East,” a backwards, superstitious land. (Transylvania, while certainly a real place, means “beyond the woods.”) He has somehow amassed a fortune despite living apart from the villagers who fear and despise him. He is a non-metaphorical bloodsucker. When he gets to civilization, he immediately starts preying on women. In most versions of the story, the first woman he assaults turns into a vampire herself, then starts draining the blood of babies and children, recalling the many examples of supposed blood libel used to excuse antisemitic violence throughout the previous centuries. When the character of Mina Harker (called Ellen Hutter in Nosferatu) is finally penetrated by the count, she declares that her blood is “unclean.” The Count’s curse demands that he sleep each night in the earth of his origin, but he comes up with a sneaky loophole by packing several coffins filled with Transylvanian dirt. One way to interpret the Count’s actions is metaphorical: The immigrants are unwilling to assimilate and they taint our family lines and drag their traditions along with them from the old country. But on a much more literal level, it is quite bluntly blut und bloden, blood and soil, a Nazi rallying cry since the 1920s that, unfortunately, persists to this day.

While these symbolic plot elements exist in the 1897 novel, it was the 1922 German film that dialed them up, adding some undeniable antisemitic visual tropes. Count Orlok, compared to the Spirit Halloween-ready Count Dracula, has a hooked nose and rodent-like clutching hands, an exaggerated reinterpretation of the Count’s features compared to how they are described in Stoker’s book. (Lugosi’s Dracula from 1931 eases up on the visual stereotypes considerably, but he does wear a six-pointed star the first time we see him.)

Murnau also added a plague element to Nosferatu’s storyline. When the Count’s ship comes to Wisborg, it arrives with rats and a rapidly spreading sickness. This “verminization” goes hand-in-hand with the notion of the “dirty Jew.” It is believed that Julius Streicher, editor-in-chief of the Nazi mouthpiece Der Stürmer, was a fan of the film, and Hitler himself, in Mein Kampf, compared Jews to vampires.

So hold on a second, you are telling me that a major motion picture studio has released a work of antisemitic propaganda, and it’s in theaters right now? Do I need to send an angry letter? No, not at all. Please do not cancel Robert Eggers, one of the more brilliant directors on the scene today, whose take on Nosferatu tamps down the antisemitism. (This is his fourth film, following The Witch, The Lighthouse, and The Northman, all very sharp plays on genre storytelling, and all worth watching.). Now, Count Orlok just has a weird and striking nose, not a hook nose. He is also less of a schemer. He is compelled to come to Wisborg, as if it is part of his burdensome curse. If one were to ask, “Why make this movie again?” I’d say that, apart from the exemplary sets and performances and cinematography, Eggers emboldens the supernatural, psychosexual connection between the Count and Ellen. Yes, the town leaders of Wisborg—ostensibly the heroes—remain understandably xenophobic. But Eggers adds a top layer of tragedy, by making the subtext text: The Count and Ellen should be able to get their telepathic freak on, but the social codes of the 1830s are so stifling that even the Prince of Darkness can’t fight them. This creates a tension to the story (and its anti-immigration strain) that feels entirely new.

Considering that hardly anyone watching the new Nosferatu will be unfamiliar with vampire tropes, Eggers is well within his rights to essentially copy-paste elements from the more problematic version and build on it. The added shading, leaving the audience wondering if maybe the Count isn’t such a villain, is enough nuance to keep this from feeling like a definitive political statement. After all, the first thing you’ll likely talk about after seeing it is Ellen’s (Lily-Rose Depp) several moments of bed-ridden, prurient murmuring “he’s coming!” from a dream-like haze. For a director who has made three sharp movies dealing with the supernatural or fantastic, this story is in Eggers’ blood.

10 Vampire Streaming Recommendations

Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror (1922), dir. F.W. Murnau: The original nightmare.

Dracula (1931), dir. Tod Browning: The birth of a franchise. Warning: Though there are many classic moments, much of this movie is dull.

Dracula Has Risen from the Grave (1968), dir. Freddie Francis: The third Christopher Lee Dracula picture, and one that likely influenced the new one—as it was, for its time, a bit on the randy side.

Blacula (1972), dir. William Crain: An 18th century African prince is transformed into a vampire by Count Dracula himself, and ends up in 1970s Los Angeles. Released during the first wave of blaxploitation films, this was the first one to get supernatural.

Love at First Bite (1979), dir. Stan Dragoti: The Count comes to groovy New York and is faced with nonstop schtick. Richard Benjamin plays the famed vampire hunter Van Helsing’s grandson, a neurotic shrink named Dr. Jeffrey Rosenberg.

Nosferatu the Vampyre (1979), dir. Werner Herzog: Before Eggers, there was this German-language take focusing on Count Orlok. A slow-paced film that goes heavy on the plague storyline, featuring a substantial number of rats.

Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1992), dir. Francis Ford Coppola: Gen X Dracula, with Winona Ryder, Gary Oldman, and Keanu Reeves.

Thirst (2009), dir. Park Chan-wook: Not a Dracula film, but an unpredictable spin on the vampire myth from one of South Korea’s great filmmakers.

Only Lovers Left Alive (2013), dir. Jim Jarmusch: Cinema’s king of deadpan cool presents artists and rock musicians as vampires eternally on the fringes of society. (A documentary?)

El Conde (2023), dir. Pablo Larraín: Perhaps of particular interest to Foreign Policy readers, this Spanish-language picture, available on Netflix, suggests that Augusto Pinochet was actually a vampire, and takes it from there.

[jq37]

Who Is Allison Moore?: A Disney's Wish Mystery

OK, this is a little off the rails and random but this has been driving me crazy since I looked into it last night.

So, Disney's 100th Anniversary movie Wish is coming out soon and people have had a lot of hot takes about it so I wanted to do some digging. As part of that, I looked at the writers and two people have a "Screenplay by" credit: Jennifer Lee and Allison Moore.

Jennifer Lee, of course, wrote Frozen--their biggest princess hit in the modern era so that makes total sense to me. If you're coming out with a new princess movie for the big centennial of course you'd tap her. But I'd never heard of Allison, and when you look at her name on Wikipedia:

No blue link. So I headed to IMDB to check out her credits, figuring maybe she was some hot new talent recently promoted from within who did storyboards on some recent projects like Moana or something. But when I went to her IMDB page, this is what I found (after a brief mix-up with a Dexter's Lab actress):

Her Producer credits come up first and...huh. That's a lot of adult live action TV projects. Well, maybe her Writing credits are where this starts to make sense:

What? That can't be right, can it? The only vaguely Disney-esque thing on that credit list is Beauty and the Beast and, to be clear, that is a CW reboot of a 1987 procedural with the logline, "A beautiful detective falls in love with an ex-soldier who goes into hiding from the secret government organization that turned him into a mechanically charged beast." And she wrote two episodes on it.

And look at Disney's official page about Wish!

Everyone else on this page has credits that make sense--Frozen, Frozen 2, Raya, Encanto. And the two credits they list for Allison?

Night Sky and Manhunt.

Night Sky, an Amazon Prime show that she wrote one episode for and was cancelled after one season. And Manhunt--and show about hunting the UNABOMBER--that ran for two seasons and that she wrote two episodes for. Those are her two credits that they put up there next to Frozen and Encanto.

I have been scouring the internet trying to figure out who this woman is and how she got this job and I have come up *empty*. This is the big 100th anniversary movie! Why would they have one of the two screenplay writers be someone who seemingly has never done something like this before??? Like, I understand that not having done something before doesn't mean you can't do a good job, but it usually means you don't get the keys to the biggest most anticipated projects in the company's history!

They presumably could have gotten anyone they wanted for this and they picked this person and I have zero clue why and it's driving me crazy. If anyone has ANY information that could illuminate this at ALL--an interview, a social media post, gossip from your cousin who's a gofer at Disney--please let me know because I feel like I'm going full Pepe Silvia over this.

12/26 Edit: A SMALL UPDATE IS HERE!

[otherone12]

could you write a ray toro x film nerd! reader? i just found out that ray went to film school and i think him meeting a girl there would be so cute. thanks!

Director's Cut

Ray Toro x Film Nerd!Reader

-> Masterlist

A/N: Heyy! I'm back!! And here it is! (I was today years old when i found out he went to film school lol). So, first of all, I'm so so so so sorry for taking that long to write it (and for vanish for almost a month). Well, hope u like it! <3 (If it turned out too different from what you imagined, let me know and I'll try to fix it :) )

Summary: You were working on a horror movie side project, and you needed help to make it happen, so you finally found someone who really understands the subject and is willing to help you. Maybe this time working together has turned this partnership into something more. (this is realy cliché, 'cause i think it suits him)

- Word Count: 2.020

- Warnings: None :)

- Ps: I'll not use y/n…-

Ps2: I'm brazilian, so english is not my first language... sorry if i wrote something wrong.

___________________________________________

1st Person POV (reader)

I've finally finished writing my script. Months of hard work have resulted in the start of an even bigger project. This horror movie could open so many doors for my career, it could be the first step towards a future award for “Best Original Screenplay” or “Best Direction”. My only problem here was finding volunteers to help me develop it, I needed someone who understood it and was really willing to be part of it.

Of course, in a Film School it was supposed to be easy to find committed people, even if horror isn't the most popular genre in cinema. Unfortunately, most people around here are more fans of the classics or romantic comedies, so I wasn't surprised when I got the first five “no thanks, I'm not really into horror” or “sorry, I'm too busy with another project”. 

Even so, I was determined to find a cast and someone with a critical eye who could help me evaluate aspects of the movie. I soon found the perfect 'final girl' and killer for the movie, a couple who liked special effects, and who would also help with the fake blood and make-up. Now all I needed was someone to help me record and give me more ideas on how to improve the scenes. 

As the days went by, I stopped asking random people and started thinking about who might really want to help me, someone who might have shown some sign of liking this kind of movie. Then there was a guy with curly hair and a band T-shirt... he was sitting alone on a bench outside the building, and I immediately remembered a presentation he'd done about classic horror movies. I make my way to him. 

- Hey! Ray, right?

- Hi! Yeah… - He greeted me with a kind smile, which turned into a confused gaze - I know you?

- Not yet… - I give him a sheepish smile, introducing me to him - But I wanted to ask you if you’re interested in helping me make a horror movie…

- Me? Why? - he chuckled, placing his hand on his chest. 

- I saw you presenting a study about classic horror movies… - I nodded - Then I thought you would… y’know, like to help me?

Ray chuckled, setting his notebook down beside him. 

- I mean, I do love horror, but I’ve never really worked on a film before. Are you sure I wouldn’t mess it up?

- You wouldn’t,- I said quickly, shaking my head. - Honestly, I’m not looking for perfection... I just need someone who understands what makes a good horror movie. And from what I saw, you get it.

For a moment, he hesitated, glancing at his notebook as if considering how much time he had to spare. Then, his lips curved into an easy smile. 

- Okay, I’ll help. But only if you promise to let me nerd out about soundtracks and creepy camera angles.

- Deal.

*** Time Skip ***

Finally the day we will start working on it, I still have about an hour before people start to arrive. Well, that was what I thought. But I heard the bell ring and made my way to the door. 

Without hesitation, I opened the door, and came face to face with Ray, standing on the porch, a duffle bag slung over his shoulder. He looked excited, though there was a flicker of uncertainty in his gaze.

- Hey - he said, scratching the back of his neck. - I know I’m early, but I was just… really excited, and, uh, got carried away.

As he stepped into the house, Ray set his bag down and pulled out a small camera. 

- Well, lucky for you, I brought reinforcements. Thought we could go over some shots before everyone gets here. Maybe figure out how to make that first big scare really hit.

- You’re already earning your keep. - I couldn’t help but grin.

We tinkered with the camera for a while, testing angles and figuring out which corners of the room could create the right mix of tension and unease. Ray adjusted the tripod while I fiddled with the lights, trying to find a balance between erie and amateur-friendly.

- This would be a lot easier if we had proper equipment, - Joking, I stepped back to survey the setup.

- Yeah, but where’s the fun in that? - Ray said with a grin. He crouched down to adjust the focus, peering into the lens like it held the secrets of the universe. - Honestly, sometimes the DIY approach makes horror feel more authentic. Look at “The Blair Witch Project”... low budget, shaky cam, and it scared the hell out of everyone.

- True, - I said, nodding. - That was genius. The way they left so much up to your imagination... it’s like your own mind was the monster.

As the conversation flowed, we kept thinking about how to shoot the scenes, talking about references we could use. I don’t know, but it seems like we have known each other for years. 

Back to the script, we read and reread, looking for some way to improve everything that was needed.

- Damn, your script is really good! -His eyes moved from the paper to my eyes, locking onto them, and I blushed.

- Thanks… - Smiling, I looked down, then at him again - It needs some adjustments here and there-

- Nothing is perfect. - He cut me off, kindness in his voice - But this…. this is really close.

Nothing came to my mind to say, but the silence wasn't awkward. We looked at each other for one more second that we were supposed to, and it felt… right, i guess.

- So… Do you have a favorite director? - Ray broked the silence, shaking his head - Or are you more of a ‘just the movie’ kind of person?

 - Well… - I said finally, after a moment of hesitation, a smile tugging at my lips. - I have to say Stanley Kubrick 

- No way! Really? - Ray’s eyes lit up.

- Yeah, - I said, warming to the subject. - He was a genius. The way he built the atmosphere, the attention to detail… The Shining is one of my all-time favorites.

- Don’t even get me started on The Shining,-  Ray said, stepping closer. - That movie is a masterpiece. The symmetry, the slow zooms, the music… Everything about it is unsettling. And Jack Nicholson? Perfect casting.

- Totally,-  I said, leaning forward slightly. 

Our conversation was cut short by the sound of the door opening. The actors had arrived, and it was time to get serious.

Ray straightened up, his playful energy shifting into focus as he greeted the group. 

We guided the cast through their lines, tweaking dialogue and delivery where needed. Ray jumped in with creative ideas for blocking and movement, and his knack for detail made everything come together perfectly. By the time the read-through ended, the script felt alive, like the beginnings of something truly special. As the group packed up to leave, Ray caught my eye and smiled. 

- This was awesome… I can't wait to start to record this!  

- Me neither - I said, returning the smile, my heart swelling with a mix of pride and something I couldn’t quite name.

1st Person POV (Ray)

As we started recording, I thought it might be a bit strange to work so closely with someone I'd only just met, but she had this way of making everything seem natural, as if we'd known each other for a long time.  The way she manages to break up the seriousness of the harrowing scenes with some cheeky joke after she stops recording is just incredible, and her stern comments during the shoot, in search of perfection, mean that I can't take my eyes off her.

She was relentless in her passion for the project, which was contagious. It made me want to put my all into it, even if I had no idea what I was doing half the time.

We'd meet in her apartment or sometimes at the school, surrounded by piles of props, script drafts, and empty coffee cups. Each session started with a plan but almost always spiraled into creative chaos. We'd throw around wild ideas, argue over camera angles, or laugh too hard when something went hilariously wrong.

She was always one step ahead... determined, focused and with ideas so vivid they made my head spin. But there were also the quiet moments, the ones that caught me off guard. Like when she chewed on the end of her pen while thinking, with her eyebrows furrowed in that concentrated way she had. Or when she let out a small, triumphant laugh after finding a solution to a complicated scene.

Here we were again, getting ready to shoot the last scenes, her cheek smeared with fake blood, while the light from the set illuminated her face perfectly. Her hair was completely messed up by the wind, while she talked about the angles of the shots. Shit, she was talking to me. 

- Ray? Hello? Are you really listening? - She snapped her fingers, making a noise.

- Uh, yeah, yeah… that’s perfect. Totally important, - I said, scratching the back of my neck. Smooth, Ray. Real smooth.

- Okay, dude. What’s on your mind? - She rolled her eyes, and I felt the heat creeping on my neck. 

- N-nothing… - Yeah, nothing, just the only thing that is on my mind in the last few days. Her.

- Right. If you say so. - She narrowed her eyes at me, suspicious but amused.

She turned back to the camera, and I got lost in my mind again. It wasn’t just the way she looked... it was the way she was. Smart, funny, endlessly creative, and kind in ways that felt effortless. I realized I didn’t just admire her, I wanted to know her, every version of her, inside and out.

And it scared me.

1st Person POV (reader)

After almost a year of work, including writing, rehearsing, recording and editing, it was finally ready. So Ray, I and the lead couple arranged to see how it turned out here at home. I prepared everything, bought some popcorn and other snacks so that we could have a real movie night. I was practically jumping up and down with excitement when I heard the doorbell. It was Ray.

- Hey! - He said with a huge smile on his face - So, today is the day!

- Yeah! I’m freaking out! - I said pulling him into a hug.

- Me too… but I know it will be incredible - His arms around me felt right as always, and his gentle tone made me melt on him, even if I was bubbling with excitement - I mean, you did it, right? How can it not be?

- I couldn’t do this without your help… - I blushed, pulling back just enough to look at him - Thank you. I didn’t realize how close we were until I felt his forehead pressed against mine, and his breath on my face.

- No… Thank you. - He said softly, getting even closer.

Before I could say any more thing, I felt his lips touch mine, my hands moved to coop his face, as his hands placed on my hips. The warmth of his kiss was exactly what I expected, it was caring, soft, perfect. I could feel the way he wanted that as much as I, and when we pulled apart, both of us couldn't stop looking at each other with a goofy grin. Apparently, during this whole project we didn’t create just a movie, we created something bigger. At that moment, we knew that it was the start of something awesome.

___________________________________________

~ Sooo that's it! Lemme know if you liked!

(Also I'm going to start posting more often again! Probably at least one fic a week!)

[slushiepizza]

An ode to not giving up

One day Guy's best-selling novel would get movie rights, and he can see that the characters are there, right there on the screen. Alive and breathing, just like how he wrote them to be on napkins in-between shifts.

Maybe, one day he'd leave it behind. He no longer writes screenplays, but his name has a permanent spot on the Books and Culture section of Dahlia Times. He still writes stories, though, in a leather-bound book at a coffeeshop.

Perhaps he'd still be making pizza, still employee of the month. But the award doesn't rival the smiles on his children's faces, the toothy-grins as they said, "You make the best pizza, Dad!"

Or, he'd stay the same.

With his Honey in a small apartment in an unsavory part of town, but the daisies on the windowsill have finally bloomed a pretty yellow. Their body, on the right side of the bed because they get cold easily, is still just as warm when they tightened their hold on him, a silent plea for him to stay.

But today, he drags himself out of bed even when it feels heavy and unmoving.

When the food he shoves into his mouth is bland, and cold, and unpleasant. He brushes his teeth and lets cold water run down his skin when his every nerve told him to crawl back under the blankets.

When he feels like a husk of a person, picking up dust, lint, and cobwebs like an attic unused.

He doesn't know the warmth the future holds, that things will slowly, with great effort and even greater struggle, eventually will get better. That the window-sill plants will grow, one inch at a time.

But he sits himself at his desk, and responds to calls for meetings and writing job interviews despite the dread gnawing in his stomach.

He opens his word document and types and keeps going.

[acatwithstockings]

These are the unhinged ramblings of a hamster stuck in a cage with nothing more than a wheel to amuse themselves.

Take it or leave but I am going to talk about how the 1992 movie script might have had some influences on the final Tv-series. In this bout of questionable literary analysis I will question some fandom perceptions, slander(for a lack of a better term since it's pretty much impossible to make him look worse than he already does bc holy fuck) a certain author, point out even the slightest of parallels and no doubt make some people feel some feelings they would rather not, because that is what happens if you bring up the shit!script at family gatherings. I have been banned from many already! Then again maybe barging in on random stranger celebrating grandpappies birthday, might be the bigger problem here. And yes, this is my attempt at being humorous, I know I am not good at it. I am over analysing the shit!script, what do you honestly expect.

(THIS IS A LONG READ SO PACK SNACKS AND SNAKES, YES, PACK A SNAKE FOR EMOTIONAL SUPPORT, I AM SERIOUS)

For those not in the know, which might be some, the 1992 script is the second attempt at a first draft for the first attempt at an adaptation on our beloved story. Rumor has it the producer tried to shift the whole story over to america, Sir Terry and (lets all collectively sigh in inmesserurable contempt) that Gaiman guy said no and delivering a script that was deemed too close to the book by the studio. That script had halo fights in it, so please say "Thank you, Sir Terry" for that halo scene in S2, we might never know who exactly had the idea for it in the first place , but for my own sanity I have chosen to stay delusional. Since that script was rejected, Sir Terry did the right thing and left the project, leaving the other guy to pen the piece of infamous writing, the fandom loves to hate, all on his own. With a few stipulations from consecutive and readable exhaustion in his words he wrote something, that also got rejected by the Studio on the basis of being too different from the book. Then the studio went bankrupt, nobody got paid and in 2004, Gaiman decided to release the script into the world with a limited run under Hillhouse's author's preferred series with 500 numbered and 52 lettered copies available. And as I have learned from the Terry Prattchet wiki Lspace.org, all of them signed by the author. It was titled "A screenplay" and wrapped in blue, mimicking a legitimate scripts used on sets. Proudly taking it's place as curious oddity in the history of our beloved franchise.

Hillhouse also went defunct.

Curiously it's unleasing upon the public coincided with the growing certainty that Terry Gilliams attempt at an adaptation of Good Omens was going nowhere. Which in of itself means nothing but is a fact my brain likes to regurgitate as one of those things that might make you think about other things in highnsight. There might be a case to be made about certain very-keen-on-his-positive-public-image persons trying to hog the limelight and controlling the narrative, HOWEVER this point is not one for that case.

After it's release it got a few positive professional reviews, of which one proudly proclaimed, they had never gotten around to reading the Book since Sir Terry Prattchet's writing had a habit of boring them and so they had been deterred from giving it a try. And a second very pretentiously blows smoke up the author's ass as well. Which might tell you, what we are about to get into. And after that? Well I honestly don't really know. At one point it found its way into fandom circulation, the narrative around it got mixed with details from the Terry Gilliam adaptation that never was, and then someone brought it up to Neil Gaiman and suddenly people were very against the further sharing of the whole thing, bc the author said so.

There seems to be some legal complications around its existence. An author that changed the narrative from 'some of the aspects were changed because of the executives' to 'All of it, all of it is the way because they wanted it so'. Threats of copyright take downs for our own protection (?). Which I honestly always found a bit ironic. Omissions about its unleashing while throwing out that it might get published for charity if the author can circumvent the consequences for himself. Which makes me very much interested into getting a glimpse at the contracts that made it possible for a no longer existent Studio, that didn't pay for the work done mind you, to still have such a monumental hold on the thing. And over all even with my two semesters of mandatory copyright law I can't tell you for certain what in the double stuffed FUCK is going on with that thing in a legal sense.

So if you should be interested in reading it, you can find an archival copy here. I suggest you view it on mobile since the desktop version has a really atrocious add system. And an other version is provided by Kanna-Ophelia (idk if she would want to be tagged in my demented rabelings, so I just put the link in)

All I know is that the author is an unreliable narrator, prone to controlling the narrative in his own favor. Who was very much more concerned with his public image instead of taking accountability for his actions. Remember "It has always been a love story" is just a cope with the right amount of truth to it, so he didn't have to admit that at least for some amount of time he found it mindboggling that people had the audacity to take what was written seriously.

(NG April 08, 2002) Also no, red has not always been included with the dark hair, the costume department just made a good call. And I am pretty salty that we as a fandom still can't quite admit that we made The ineffable spouses happen instead of it always being intended. Yes authorial intent can change, BUT we made it happen. We took our shared custody, acknowledged by Sir Terry Prattchet and ran with it. That everybody else involved with the production seemed to also be very enthusiastic about it probably also helped.

By now you are probably asking: What's with all that nonsense. And well, this long preamble was to make a few things clear. First a rough history of the 1992 script and its publication, putting it in relation to what eventually lead up to the TV-series, mainly pointing towards its existence prior to the talks of a potential sequel, second I have been hyperfixating an that thing (against my will, mind you) for over a year, I just need to get the rambling out of my system, and third, that the author is a deceptive piece of manure that relies on a narrative that reasures the fans that 'it has always been intended' to put himself as an authority over a story that is not entirely his and never had been.

The point is, the 1992 script exists in a very interesting spot in the timeline, so you can neither prove nor completely rebut the possibility that at least subconsciously some parts of it influenced the TV-series. And believing the author when he says "No, I would have never" is a fools errant .

Welp, time for the main course of this long read, which won’t get a TLDR because I, to put it bluntly, can’t keep things short. You might have noticed already.

How did the shit!script (potentially) influence the TV series?

First of all the obvious.

The 1992 script is the first instance where the concept of showing us the ineffables throughout the ages is explored. We all loved the cold open. So please do excuse me if I point to the opening in the script and say, "case and point". While the Eden scene falls to the wayside in favor of it just being a painting, the script opens with a picture show, depicting Aziraphale and Crowley in various scenarios, always side by side. Of course it’s just images of them, however the idea is there. The focus is on them and their relationship instead of the novel's occasionally flavor text usually centering Crowley to make a funny remark about the absurdity of it all.

Second the concept of one coming to the other's rescue out of the blue. Sure in the shit!script it is Aziraphale who goes for a mad dash after sensing something might be wrong with Crowley. But as so many other things got switched around with the characters, it is not a far stretch to say that the concept of one sensing the other being in danger and coming to the rescue originated here as well. Granted in the show we are getting a toned down version of this concept, with Crowley appearing in the Bastile and the church (you could also count Aziraphale bringing the holy water ) and it could be argued it’s simply because the two of them have a habit of hovering in each other’s orbit, however it is still the same concept. One senses/realizes the other is in danger and comes running. Something that is arguably not in the novel.

Third the ending. Yes I am going there. In the novel the status quo in regards of our two beloved idiots doesn’t change. Heaven and hell go their merry way and go right back to ignoring what has happened. You could say it’s the whole point of them. Detached entities that think they can exert authority but in the end have to concede that their involvement is pointless and therefore go right back into just pretending. And Aziraphale and Crowley stay in their role that are essentially the same, stay the same and for them nothing has changed, they haven’t changed. In the script however, there is not just an attempt at punishing Crowley and Aziraphale, Crowley just straight up quits hell. The status quo is disrupted. They both end the story in a different situation than they had been in before. Crowley more so than Aziraphale. Essentially S2 ends with the same constellation as the script. Crowley no longer interested in working for hell while Aziraphale is still (and in the case of S2 again) employed by heaven.

I could go on about a rant how the novel ending is so beautifully Pratchian and how the TV show kinda didn’t do it for me in that regard (don’t worry I still love it I just find the og ending a bit more fitting for the overall flair of the story) but I won’t. Instead I will conjure an imaginary person that says “But the ending could have been a setup for what they had planned for a sequel, you can’t point at the shit!script and say it’s to blame”. And to that person is say “Great point, I can still point to the shit!script and blame it, because talks about a sequel were made AFTER it was written. It very well might have influenced the talks about a sequel as well!”

That’s the beauty of the creative process, influences can persist throughout multiple iterations and things like that can happen subconsciously.

Fourth the focus on Aziraphale and Crowley. Sure Crowley is casted as sort of pov protagonist in the novel as well, however even there he is more of a framing device. Its actually kinda genius how Good Omens is structured in regards of this. But that is a whole different essay. The point is Crowley and Aziraphale act as bystander and occasionally plots devices to the actual actors and in the end the driving force was humanities combined humanity all along. You could not exactly take them out of the story but in the grand scheme of things they are rather useless in the roles they occupy. It’s beautiful, it’s hilarious, it’s again so very Prattchian and it dose remind me of the wizards of the unseen university. The point is the main focus is not on them, despite how hard we as fandom got attached to them from the very beginning.

Well not in the shit!script. While even there the time is mostly occupied with other characters (mainly Adam and Anathema) Crowley and Aziraphale are a driving force here. They occupy a considerably part of the plot and drive the story. And while it is toned down in the tv adaptation it is undeniable that even there the two of them aren’t the mostly self contained Anker points for the human actors anymore. The story telling focus is skewed, no longer on humanities humanity and them as detached decoys but rather them as focal point of the narrative. You can see that in the way content got cut or added. It skews disproportionately towards the ineffables which can only partially be blamed on the general difficulties in adapting a Prattchian story. A decision had been made to actively give the plotfram more

And yes I have to concede that could also just be a quirk of trying to adapt a story that is mostly based on meta humour and clever side jabs. But it is also a thing that is very prominent in the shit!script and therefore influences might be pointed out.

As honourable mention just as little break in the middle before I go full conspiracy mode on you, Satan’s final appearance. For someone so adamant in pointing to Studio execs for wanting Satan to appear, NG was very happy to put that bloke into the TV show, wasn’t he? Him just poofing into smoke without ever having the chance to have everyone panicking paying off was certainly anticlimactic, I give you that. A bit of humor that works better on a page than the screen. But the fact that the dialogue between Satan and Adam is both found in a version intended for the screen is funny to me.

The Tv series had the advantage of a narrator, they wouldn't have needed for Adam to say the 'Not my dad' part out loud. They could also have had Satan not show up, despite all the theatrics (like in the novel) and have Adam just shrugg it of and tell us that way what had happends. But nop they had the exchange.

As an other fun fact. In the 1992 script Satan calls Aziraphale a pathetic excuse of an angel, and I wonder where we heard that .

Could it be?

(Just as a side note, I don't think it was in the novel, I certainly can't remember it being in there and I got nothing Abt it in my notes, but if it should be there I take everything back pfff)

And now to the most controversial part. Not that any of this isn’t in the realm of people rather not wanting to hear about it already, but you know. I think this part is definitely the most subjective. I am talking characterisation.

Ah, I can already hear the resounding “How could you”s. Ok listen, we are in fandom. Apart from all of us having subjective characterisations with only roughly overlapping ideas no matter what, because that is how the human experience works. We are also in a space notorious for, at some point ignoring canon and just having fun. And that’s ok. We all like to have fun and we all deserve to have fun. And overanalysing things is my sort of fun. We can definitely agree to disagree, just please stick to the smaller stones.

So let’s go.

Aziraphale’s and Crowley’s internalized struggles are partially informed by the shit!script version of them.

So hear me out. In the novel Aziraphale and Crowley are very secure persons. Their respective reluctance to engage in certain actions stems more from them trying to perform their job expectations and less from them having an internal struggle. They treat each other as co-workers from different offices in the same building. When they say ‘You are the opposition’, they mean I don’t want the paperwork. Their headquarters are interchangeable for both of them, it just so happens that the one they ended up with fits their personality more. And while Tv them is getting there, they both have more ridged internalized roles that are informed by their headquarters. They are not so much agents that just happen to work for the opposite site, their sides do indeed inform part of their identity, for Tv!Aziraphale more so than for Tv!Crowley. And in s2 it is only getting more pronounced.

You can especially see this in fandom perception. While fandom often overwrites canon in some aspects it also tends to over exaggerate it too. There is definitely a shift in characterisations present in fanfiction that has picked up on this as well. Pre series fics tended to have the both of them be more nonchalant towards their headquarters while post series (even more so post s2) fics often play more with the internalized struggle of it. This can also be ‘blamed’ on a general social shift and common sensibilities changing however canon does play a role in this as well.

The thing is, this shift also happens in the script. Mostly with Crowley. (This is probably a good point to mention that Script! Crowley takes on a few of novel!Aziraphale's actions which makes his character so muddeled, but as I already mentioned even if things get shifted between characters the concept stays) Script!Aziraphale is the more secure one of the both of them. But they both have a theme of unpacking internalized stereotypes based on their respective roles that they have to deal with. In the script Adam has a talk with them where they both realize or at least think about this internalized part of them. And it’s shown (rather clumsily) that both of them put up facades based on what they perceive as their respective role which they start to break out of in the end.

This is in fact not in the novel. Yes they do have questions and discussions about their roles in the grand scheme of things but those are held between the two of them without ever questioning them as a person. They are ridged and are discussing a system they already know as flawed. In the Tv series they are questioning the system and themselves. It especially shows in S2. Take Crowley’s anger management for example.

First of all Crowley’s anger problem is also a thing that can be put down to the shit!script. The wall slam scene could have fit in there as well. The only thing making it not shit!script worthy are the direction and acting choices. But that's besides the point right now. In the novel Crowley doesn’t need to change anything about how he expresses anger (bc he doesn’t really have a anger promblem to begin with) or his treatment of his plants, it’s part of his character that just so happens to fit with his role. In the Tv series he does. He as person is changing in a myriad of small ways because he is deconstructing himself despite the system and even more so once he is outside of it. Aziraphale on the other hand hasn’t started the process fully and is struggling with it but is also determined to get there by intending to dismantle the system from the inside first.

In the 1992 script both Crowley and Aziraphale need to overcome preconceived motions they have about the other while also overcoming their own internalized role.

The script makes a few line from the novel the whole of Crowley’s character. In the novel right before Satan 'appears' and but actually doesn’t, Aziraphale and him have a short exchange.

(Horrible citing etiquette ahead because I didn’t have a digital copy at hand and the text recognition tool didn’t want to pick up the lettering from the physical and I am too lazy to type, so I had the audiobook dictate it and was too lazy to edit it correctly)

[(somewhere around page 209)...] In the jeep Crowley was cursing. Aziraphale laid a hand on his shoulder “There are humans here,” he said.

“Yes," said Crowley "And me.”

“I mean we shouldn’t let this happen to them”

“Well, What?” Crowley began, and stopped.

“I mean, when you think about it, we’ve got them into enough trouble as it is, you and me, over the year, with one thing and another”

“We were only doing our jobs,” muttered Crowley.

“Yes, So what? lots of people in history have only done their jobs and look at the trouble they caused.

“You don't mean we should actually try to stop him?”

“What have you got to lose?”

Crowley started to argue and realised that he couldn't. There was nothing he could lose that he hadn’t lost already. They couldn’t do anything worse to him than he had coming to him already. He felt free at last. He also felt under the seat and found a tyre iron. It wouldn't be any good, but then nothing would. In fact, it would be much more terrible facing the adversary with anything like a decent weapon. That way you might have a bit of hope which would make it worse. [...]

This exchange and insight into Crowley's thought process perfectly encapsulates the whole of script!Crowley’s ark. What is easily dealt with in a few lines in the novel, since he is such a secure and ridged character in it, is made into the whole foundation of the character in the script. A grovelling coward that is afraid of what his side might do to him because he knows what they are capable of and tires to play up the big bad to keep up face.

In the novel Crowley doesn’t need to slam Aziraphale into a wall, or get angry when the angel plays up the innocence and virtuesness. There is no reason for it. They both know the bit of token protest they give when reminding the other of their side is just that, token protest, protocol, an automated response. In the script them both knowing it’s just pretend but struggle with still having internalized some of it is the whole point. And that definitely bled into the series.

There is also a parallel to be drawn between the hurtful things Aziraphale says during the final fifteen and script!Aziraphale's attitude towards Crowley's status as demon. In the script Crowley's demoness is at the same time an excuse and a dismissal of his behavior. He uses it as a tool to dimiss Crowley's distress and excuse his habit of cheating, while also putting himself above Crowley for 'having the pride and virtue from playing honest'.

Litteraly the first thing script!Aziraphale does is dismiss Crowley's concerns using his status as a demon. Doing it again, once script!Crowley is drunk and tries to tell him about his predicament.

To make one thing clear, I am NOT saying the things said in the final fifteen are directly comperable. No, Tv!Aziraphale doesn't have the same motivations as script!Aziraphale. However it is very interesting that in both the script and Tv, Aziraphale gets dialogue that insinuates/could be interpreted as him viewing heaven/being an angel as the better option. And that in both cases these stem from internalized beliefs about his roles that he ends up having to confront.

Of course none of this is a straight line from one version to the other. There are over two full decades and a ton of other people between the two after all. But to fully dismiss the possibility that the oddity that is the shit!script didn’t influence the final adaption is also a bit dishonest. Maybe those patterns that I noticed were just my over active brain spinning around in it's hamster wheel. Sure, I will absolutely admit to that. Maybe my brain is just absolute mush because I just wrote a ~4k word think piece about it, when I could have been sleeping. Maybe, nobody will even read that far, because honestly I probably wouldn’t if I were already staunchly appalled by the existence of that specific piece of writing.

In the end it’s all just a bit of fun and interesting coincidences that may or may not have been related.

At any rate, no, the shit script is still not good. It absolutely lacks that certain Prattchian touch. And yes, I didn’t write about the other parts, because there aren’t many parallels there. Point four and the more severe changes to the story saw to that I suppose.

If you managed to get through my rabelings, congratulations 👏🎉 Have a .... Ehhh ... I can offer a piece of cold homemade lasagna. I do apologize for any grammatical errors and spelling mistakes.

[eroguron0nsense]

Revisiting/Falling in love with Let The Right One In (book, 2008 film) all over again and remembering why Let Me In (2010) pisses me off so fucking much

This is mostly based on what the two properties do with the character of Håkan/The "Father" and why I personally think it's in bad taste to rewrite him the way they have. I would have liked Let Me In as a more interesting Hollywood horror movie if not for the fact that it is supposed to be an adaptation of Let the Right One In. I do not believe in just saying "foreign remake bad" and I want to give credit where it is due, although the snob in me is more into the aesthetics of the 2008 film and book because they're just... cooler.

I'm also going to use they/them pronouns for Eli.

Onto the real problems. I'm sure this has been discussed at length, lots of people know this already, but I keep reading people interpreting Håkan as the previous Oskar–especially people who watched Let Me In–and I really dislike it even though it's not "wrong" depending on which version of the story you watch. Book Håkan is not a groomed victim of Eli's, or her father. He is a pedophile. He lost his job for being a pedophile. He meets Eli at a low point as an adult, does what he does out of obsession with them, and hopes that one day they will let him touch them the way he wants to. I would argue the way the book presents his and Eli's relationship makes it very clear that they do not like being dependent on him, and hate that he wants them sexually. It feels like a relief when Håkan dies, because in spite of how dangerous their situation is without him Eli is finally free of a man who wants to hurt them.

On the other hand Eli is given much more sympathy. The book dedicates a whole section of Håkan's narration to him being wildly jealous of them playing with Oskar. He realizes that while he tried to justify his attraction to Eli as "love" for an adult in a child's body, so he doesn't have to feel guilty about lusting after children, Eli is in many ways still a child and never really got to stop being one. They play naturally with Oskar and act like a 12 year old. While Eli has been 12 for a long time, they never really felt that they were able to grow beyond it or be an "adult" in a child's body; they have a lot of knowledge but in many ways they are frozen. They come to love Oskar and find solace in him because he's not like Håkan, who they have to tempt with the possibility of intimacy to get him to help them find food and shelter–Oskar is another child who loves them and doesn't see them as a fetish object.

The 2008 film is a pretty faithful adaptation though Alfredsson cut the pedophilia plot line along with many others, which I don't mind at all, but he did give director's notes to portray Håkan as a man who "likes kids but for the wrong reasons". Obviously the lack of narration does open up the possibility of reading the film as a grooming narrative, because we don't know Håkan is a pedophile without access to his thoughts and I appreciate them not placing Lina Leandersson in sexual situations. Lindqvist himself admitted that "Eli is grooming Oskar" is a completely valid interpretation of the 2008 and 2010 film and his screenplay in and of themselves, and he wrote Let The Old Dreams Die in response because he never wanted that to be the case, he was writing a bleak love story. But Let Me In (2010, Yankeefication) pretty notoriously comes up with this plot point that Abby's caretaker, American Håkan, is revealed to have been a child like Oskar who she let grow up after grooming him. And I see a lot of people responding to the films, who think this is the only version of the story and the "truth" of the characters and some outright spreading misinformation about the book and claiming this is in the source material.

TLDR: Basically, what I hate about Let Me In in particular is reframing American Håkan/Father as a victim of Eli/Abby. I resent this choice. I think that it's okay to make changes in adaptation, that's inevitable, but to read that novel and reverse the dynamics between the pedophile and the child victim? Even if you want to reject the original story's intention and themes, to read that novel and rewrite the pedophile who wants to sexually exploit the vampire child as her victim who she groomed just seems quite nasty. It would be fine if it was a standalone movie, I would think it was quite good if it were, and I'm okay with exploring the darker aspects of Eli's character and Oskar's eventual fate (her turning him into another child vampire is kind of beautiful but also really disturbing, and I think it makes for a more nuanced story), but to read that book and decide that you would rather make Eli, still in many ways a child, who is stuck trying to negotiate with a man who wants to assault them for survival, the abuser of poor Håkan all along just rubs me the wrong way. And it's not because it's a remake of the Swedish film either–they had the rights to the book and acquired them at the same time but released Let Me In later due to production issues. I also absolutely resent them removing the complications of Eli's gender identity, however you may feel about its portrayal, and just making Abby a cis girl or robbing us of bi Oskar, but that's another essay.

I'm still quite early into the TV series and I don't think the choice to overhaul the entire story and actually give them a father daughter relationship bothers me as much. I don't like it as an adaptation, but I also love the Mike Flanagan Netflix series and none of those are faithful adaptations of their source novels either so I'm giving it a fair chance. Also I'm not too happy with Hammer "allegedly" screwing Lindqvist over with the adaptation deal (article is in Swedish and unfortunately it's behind a paywall but essentially in an interview about more recent writing he's asked about the TV show and he claims he was misled about the nature of the contract and underpaid for his IP).

[phanfictioncatalogue]

Jealousy (6) Masterlist

part one, part two, part three, part four, part five

Advent Calendar 2021 (ao3) - Phantje

Summary: Phil lives and works in a town in the North called Lylchester. Well, 'works'. He does charitable things in the name of being nice and his (adoptive) parents. Things are fine. Yeah. Fine. Meeting Dan who has strong opinions about peculiar things shakes up Phil's life and he is falling before he can help it.

Dan lives and works somewhere, or anywhere really. By fate, or call it the British Railway train running times, he ends up in Lylchester. Before he can help himself, he has made the first real best friend he has ever had - Beatrix. And suddenly, life does not seem so difficult anymore. Dan appreciates the work he can do, even if it has him interact with the rich idiot Phil more often that he would personally choose.

am i a joke to you? (ao3) - catbearbunz (bunnieovadamoon)

Summary: aka dan makes a friend with another phil and phil reacts accordingly. (poorly)

aka a silly drabble inspired by phils recent tweet i made instead of working on real phics

Borderline (ao3) - chiridotalaevis

Summary: Dan and Phil Rize Show (August 14th 2018):

D: It’s just because he’s used to having dozens of people having massive gangbangs and doing drugs, while we’re like, let’s play Mario Kart…

P: Speaking of, not gangbangs, but drugs, we went through the border into Canada on a bus…

D: Right, that’s going to be used out of context.

[…]

D: There was a guy from Canada, who was called Chan and he was our border agent.

P: Yeah, Dan loved Chan.

get to heaven in our own sweet time (ao3) - jonsaremembers

Summary: Dan and Phil choose their costume for Halloween 2024. Yeah, it breaks the internet, but they only have eyes for each other.

Daprè Ski (ao3) - duckcrab

Summary: Dan thought he’d made himself clear.

“No skiing,” he remembered saying. “Neither of us are coordinated enough and I like your neck too much just the way it is to see it get broken.”

For Your Eyes Only (ao3) - yikesola

Summary: Despite what the jealousy clawing out from his gut had him say, Phil isn’t his. Phil isn’t his so much so that someone’s flirting with him on Twitter. Someone who, for once, isn’t Dan. Or at least, that’s what Dan’s nerves have convinced him.

A fic about spirals and uncertainty.

Glitch (ao3) - Anonymous

Summary: Phil wrote a movie screenplay

Heat (ao3) - blossomsphan

Summary: Phil has eyes for a cute waiter. But Dan only has eyes for Phil.

hot boy summer (ao3) - calvinahobbes

Summary: Dan deserves to have this time just to himself, with no one around who knows him, no one he'll feel any urge to impress, no one he'll vaguely worry will recount his exploits later. Well, no one except for Phil, but of course that's different.

Jealousy, Jealousy (ao3) - thestreaklives

Summary: Phil gets a gift from a coworker and Dan is having a hard time with it.

Jigsaw Falling Into Place (ao3) - Anonymous

Summary: Dan makes him feel wanted, loved, and confident on the good days until the good days become too sparse to be known

Keep me from you (ao3) - Thedemonqueen

Summary: Even though Dan knows he can’t date anyone ever again, he can’t help but drag Phil away from a man who’s flirting with Phil.

A hurt/comfort au I wrote to reduce today’s HIV stigma<3

Knight of Wands (ao3) - dapg_otmebytheballs

Summary: Dan does not believe in fate and destiny and fortune-telling. Dan finds the idea of fortune-telling at the same time exciting and terrifying. He definitely doesn’t believe in it though. But he’s starting to have doubts.

OR

Dan watches Phil do tarot readings and learns something about fate.

Lightyear Groovin' (ao3) - Tarredion

Summary: In a galaxy far, far away, there’s an abundance of 70s clubs. On Krithoo, local party freak Dan Howell works as a waiter at an often overcrowded cantina, Virgo Volans. And maybe, just maybe, has an infatuation with the extraterrestrial dj frequenting their stage.

Like Fine Print (ao3) - totalincandescense

Summary: Every few weeks, Dan was given an unfriendly reminder of at least one of the many reasons why he never went outside.

The most frequently recurring thing on the list being the general existence of people.

But more specifically, the existence of people who flirted with Phil.

Like You Used To (ao3) - easybubbyy

Summary: The boys go out for drinks with their crew. Dan is a horny and clumsy drunk, and Phil is a goofy and flirty drunk. Smut ensues. Enjoy!

New year, New us: (ao3) - BlueFox1319, UnusPhanus

Summary: “Dan hurry we are going to be late, PJ and the others will be here any minute to pick us up! It’s already seven, we need to be at the restaurant by eight!” Phil yelled down the hall at his boyfriend. December 31st, New Year's Eve, every year the pair went out with friends and spent the first night of the new year together. For Dan and Phil, tonight would be a little different though, Phil had been planning this for months .

Only Cat You Need (ao3) - ByTheFire

Summary: Phil knows he shouldn't be jealous over Dan watching some cat videos, but he can't help himself when he sees Dan take a selfie with another cat on his lap.

scratch bark bite (oh, love me, i lied) (ao3) - Tarredion

Summary: Music & Drama teacher Dan Howell has a well-known rivalry with his coworker, English teacher Phil Lester.

An unforeseen event flips everything Dan thought he knew about Phil and himself on its head. Slowly but surely, the grudge withers, and the two of them cross the line between enemy and friend. But what will happen when their true intents and feelings get revealed? And was what they had ever really a rivalry? Was it even mutual?

Send My Love (To Your New Lover) (ao3) - phantasticworks (steddieworks)

Summary: Dan has some jealousy issues to deal with when he finds out Phil has had a run-in with someone from his past.

The Bongo Incident (ao3) - cosmic_angel_writes

Summary: Dan sees the ginger man flirting with Phil while playing the bongos. Dan can’t seem to get his jealousy under control. He snaps and then is faced with how much he wants the world to know he loves Philip Lester.

The Other Side Of The Counter (ao3) - CanDanAndPhilNot (enbycalhoun)

Summary: Dan needs to stop pining after his bartender, Phil. Maybe another Tinder date will help. Probably not, but he can hope.

Trapped in the dark, you found me (ao3) - Anonymous

Summary: Five times Dan felt lucky to have Phil

(we were in) screaming color (ao3) - calvinahobbes

Summary: Phil thinks he could be jealous. He turns the idea over in his mind, weighing it. He could be more jealous, angry for Dan’s lack of attention.

wear no disguise for me (ao3) - lesbaurinkos (pluginbaby)

Summary: It’s not exactly jealousy, Phil doesn’t think. Not– exactly. But he’s feeling petulant and selfish and maybe like he wants to be a little mean about this… not-Phil. This Phil who doesn’t know the half of what it means to be half of Dan.

(or: dan made a new friend called phil. am i a joke to you)

[satansluckycigarette]

You will never convince me that people who think Stephen King dislikes Kubrick's The Shining because it's "not faithful" are either unfamiliar with King or confusing his grievance with The Shining with his grievance with Lawnmower Man.

For those who don't know, the film Lawnmower Man was never intended to be an adaptation of King's short story of the same name. However, fearing the film's bizarre storyline (about a video game possessed by the Greek god Pan killing gamers for the crime of not going outside) wouldn't draw an audience, the marketing team placed King's name on it since the plot of the short story is similar enough if you don't think about (a satryr employed by the Greek god Pan, mows a dude's lawn, and kills him when he decides to get weird about it). King didn't care that the film existed, but he did care that his name was placed on a product without his consent and sued.

Now as far as the Shining goes: King's beef with that is something where you have to either lie about what happened or shit on Kubrick. I want to be clear: I don't care if you like The Shining. Watch it or don't, like Kubrick or don't: it affects nothing. That said, the film industry is notorious for the horrific way cast and crew are treated: if you are hearing about a director being awful, that director was *exceptionally* awful. That is just a fact. If you can't accept that, don't watch movies. Bottom line.

King disliked The Shining because Kubrick used a screenplay the author wrote to entice actors to join the film- specifically Shelley Duvall and Scatman Crothers signed on because they believed they were playing heroic characters modeled after the book's. Early interviews and marketing even implies Jack Nicolson also signed on because he believed the film's hero would be Dick Halloran, and was intrigued to be in a film where a positive black paternal figure saves a wife and child from an abusive white paternal figure.

This is not what happened. When King learned that Kubrick re-wrote the ending so that Dick is killed for no other reason than to quickly remove that character, King confronted Kubrick because it seemed exceptionally cold to King and he didn't feel right about how his draft of the script had been used. Kubrick responded by having King removed from the set and adding an "Easter egg" where a car the same make and model as King's is crushed by a logging truck- with the family of three inside (the number of people in King's family at the time) all shown as dead.

King has every right to hate the Shining. If you like the Shining, cool: good for you. If you tell people King is unreasonable for disliking it on your podcast: shut the fuck up forever, thanks.

[dalekofchaos]

Scream 4 au Roman and Jill as the killers

Imagine if instead of stupidly jumping up to get himself killed. Roman escaped and returned in Scream 4. Imagine the untapped potential of Roman and Jill as a family Ghostface duo

Sidney spent years preparing for his return. But it never happened and she moved on with her life and wrote her book.

All the while, Roman did return to Woodsboro. Mentoring and grooming Jill to be his partner.

We already know that in a early screenplay of Scream 4, Jill mentioned basically how much respect she had for Roman

I feel as though this duo had great potential.

By the way, have you noticed some of the kills in Scream 4 are too big for Jill and Charlie and would require muscle? Roman's height would help make up for the bigger kills and the heavy lifting in Scream 4. Roman is the tallest ghostface outside of Stu. He also has the best build.

Imagine this. Jill lives in her sister's shadow all her life. Her best friend got into horror movies because of Sidney, her absent father and her mother's drunkedness and questionable behavior.(see here for cut details about Jill and Kate)

Jill just needs a guide and who better than her dear cousin Roman.

Roman indoctrinates her. Telling what Maureen did to him and why he tried to kill Sidney. Then, Jill talks and talks about her trainwreck of a family and they click.

Jill would still be the star of the show and Charlie would be her scapegoat. Her true partner is Roman and Roman gets the chance to play director. While Jill becomes his Final Girl. Jill gets her fame, while Roman gets revenge.

Sidney thinks Jill and Charlie was all there was. Jill and Sidney have a fight for the knife and when Sidney seemingly overpowers Jill, the third Ghostface appears. Sidney turns around and he stabs her. Jill grabs her knife and stabs Sidney.

Roman unmasks and says "What's the matter Sidney, you look like you've seen a Ghost. Aww you missed me sis, literally and figuratively"

Get an ending where it looks like the villains won. Sidney is seemingly dead. Jill is the "survivor" Roman comes out as the hero and this eclipses his supposed "involvement" in Hollywood and blames his former actor Angelina.

Then in the original Scream 5 that Williamson had planned. The world and narrative that Jill and Roman crafted comes crashing down.

Suddenly Ghostface returns while Jill is in college. Only like in Williamson's Scream 3, no one really dies.

“In my original story for Scream 3, the killers were basically a fanclub of Woodsboro kids that had formed because of Stab 1 and Stab 2,” he tells me. “They were all doing the killings and the big surprise of the movie was when Sidney walked into the house after Ghostface had killed everyone … and they all rose up. None of them were actually dead and they’d planned the whole thing.”

So in the big finale, Roman and Jill are trapped and cornered.

Everyone who Ghostface seemingly killed throughout the movie rises up and points their fingers.

Five Ghostfaces appear. One by one they reveal themselves

Kirby Reed

Gale Weathers

Dewey Riley

Mark Kincaid

and finally Sidney Prescott

Roman quakes in fear and tries to say something and BANG

Sidney shoots him in the head. "This time I didn't miss, brother."

Jill begs for mercy from Kirby. "Please, we were best friends." "You're right, we were" Kirby stabs her and everyone takes a turn in stabbing Jill, with Sidney being the one to finish Jill off.

[fuckyeahfightlock]

Punk Rock Cool Kid Required Viewing Batch 2

DOA: A Right of Passage Breaking Glass The Decline of Western Civilization

(I'm rewatching all the "required viewing" films of my alterna-teen years) Notes on these three films below the cut.

DOA: A Right of Passage (1980 dir. Lech Kowalski)

Picking up pretty much where Don Letts's The Punk Rock Movie leaves off, DOA is a documentary about punk (in the form of the Sex Pistols, specifically) arriving in America circa 1978. Live performances from the Pistols' legendary 12 day, 7-city tour (mostly in the deep south, including Atlanta and Dallas) make up the bulk of the live performances here, and they are explosive. Sid Vicious can't play, Johnny Rotten is fed up, and America is just not ready. It's a real thing of beauty.

~*~*~ Returning to Hyperbole Corner to confirm my earlier assertion Johnny Rotten was the only real punk. Sid on stage bleeding from the nose makes him look like poseur of the millennium; John makes intimidating eye contact with the audience and sings "Anarchy for the USA, it's coming some day, maybe!" We mean it, man. ~*~*~

There's some good insight, from uppercrust Londoners giving their opinions of punk/s, into the class divides that made punk necessary. One London city council (or something) member asserts that young people need to "do their duty" rather than complaining about their lack of opportunity for upward mobility; it's a telling choice of phrase.

And of course, there's the famous interview with Sid and Nancy, where Sid is nodding out in his swastika t-shirt, dropping lit cigarettes on the mattress, while Nancy pleads with him to "please wake up!" and offers to make him "a cuppa cawfee," then forgets she's not wearing a bra when she changes her shirt on camera. Best not to talk about it.

Other live performances in the film are significantly less impressive, including X-Ray Spex, Generation X, and Dead Boys, but this one was better than I remembered and it made punk feel VERY relevant to 2025 America. I wanna be An Ar CHYYYYYY!!!!! It's the only way to be.

Breaking Glass (1980 dir. Brian Gibson)

This film is superficially a story tailor-made for me, where an uncompromising singer-songwriter forms a partnership with an ambitious but inexperienced music manager, they put together a band, which starts to get a following, but the "big break" of signing with a major label and big-name producer turns sour as the band breaks up, the singer is molded into the greyscale version of herself to maximize profits, she becomes hooked on drugs. loses her true love, and it all ends with a laser-lit stadium-stage musical number and the despair of having compromised one's soul to get what you thought you wanted. (I wrote a similar screenplay in college, of a too-fragile-for-stardom rock star lady's tragic spiral; love this trope.)

Hazel O'Connor, who wrote all the songs for the film, stars as Kate, a kooky new-wave singer with catchy, sometimes political, new wave potential-hits. The music in this film is really, really good. Pure new wave, with O'Connor's powerful yet quirky vocal style front and center. The soundtrack album is top shelf and I'm going to buy a copy.

The sad truth, though, is that this movie does a lot more telling than showing, rushing through the career and romance arcs to get to the musical numbers, which are plentiful. Every performance fits into the film, but some of them could have been shorter in order to spend more time really getting to know and like the characters. There are a lot of pretty touchy emotional situations here (a fan is murdered at one gig-turned-riot, for instance), but viewers have to be willing to just go along, as there is not much actual emotional depth to any of it. Apparently the UK original had an ending where Kate has a breakdown and ends up in a psych hospital; the US version I watched ends after the performance of "Eighth Day," but had an interesting audio-montage over the end credits that suggested a different but equally dismal scenario for Kate.

I really like that it has authentic New Wave fashion/hair/makeup because it was made in 1980--no neon-lycra interpretation of it looking back from years in the future--and it doesn't pretend to be punk. Phil Daniels (Quadrophenia) and Johnathan Pryce (too many to list, he's got Tonys, Oliviers, Oscars, and a knighthood) are notable co-stars as manager Danny and heroin-addicted saxophonist Ken. Totally worth the $4 I paid to rent this on Amazon; I'm glad I got to see it again.

.

The Decline of Western Civilization (1981 dir. Penelope Spheeris)

Penelope Spheeris is one of my personal pantheon. Her complete dedication to the people and scene she so deeply loved drove her to create not only The Decline of Western Civ and its two sequels, but also to later cast real Los Angeles punk kids in her film Suburbia because "I couldn't turn actors into punks, but I could turn punks into actors." She turned down the chance to direct This Is Spinal Tap because she didn't wish to make fun of the music scene and folks she loved so much. That's what we call integrity. And she's a woman in a male-dominated industry, staying true to her vision. She made a punk rock western starring Jon Cryer (Dudes) and directed Wayne's World. I wrote papers about her in film school; I admire her unreservedly.

So with that said, what a bunch of unremitting cockwombats the Los Angeles punks were. You want racism? How about opening the film with a live performance of Black Flag's "White Minority". . .sung by a brown kid named Ron Reyes (oh the irony!)? The number of homophobic slurs in this film cannot be counted. A series of talking head interviews reveals many punks' penchant for getting in fights with Black, Mexican, and gay people, just for the fun of it. The wall of silence that greets Alice Bag Band is clearly at least in part because Alice is a woman in a dress and heels. The most exciting, truly punk-feeling set comes at the end of the film, from FEAR, but singer Lee Ving's relentless stream of homophobic abuse, trying to get a rise out of the audience, is cringe-inducing. I hated almost everyone in this movie on a personal level; what horrible kids. On the other hand, we sure have come a long way in a generation, so that's something, I guess. It makes The Decline of Western Civilization, which I have always lauded as Must See TV for anyone who wants to call themselves a true punk, by a director I respect so very much, a film I would happily recommend everyone just take a pass on.

And let's take a minute to talk about Darby Crash of the Germs. Presented in the film alternately as the soft misunderstood baby who cooks eggs, reads books, and is gentle with his pets; and the blackout drunk/took whatever pills were around because of stage-fright, stumbling-and-slurring poet laureate of the L.A. punk scene, Darby Crash was an adolescent loser who decided he was going to be America's Sid Vicious, became a sad caricature, and play-acted his way into a lethal overdose at a very young age. Maybe Darby Crash was a sweet guy, or a smart guy, or a guy with some songwriting chops, but who could really tell, as he fell off the stage and slashed himself with broken bottles--all of this while standing next to Pat Smear, a serious musician (still alive! "only poseurs die, you asshole," as Steve-o says in SLC Punk!). Darby Crash was King Poseur, in my book, and I couldn't even feel sorry for him. He chose that. All of it.

One saving grace here is the live set from X, real punks (which is me saying a mouthful because I don't like X--I've always thought of them as country music) with real talent. I learned to tattoo myself from the scene of the band in their apartment giving each other stick-and-poke tattoos. "Beyond and Back" has one of my favourite lines of any song ever, "now it's five to twelve/shut up and smoke", "Nausea" is a bluesy, dare I say goth-ish? punk lament, and "Johnny Hit and Run Paulene" makes the most of the John/Exene dyad that's been the heart of X's music forever. "We're Desperate" is the fucking punkest performance in the film. I can see why my friend Allin married three women who look like Exene Cervenka; she was gorgeous as hell. It's kiss or kill. . .

FEAR's "Let's Have a War" is another nihilistic anthem for modern times ("there's too many of us/let's have a war/give guns to the queers/let's have a war/it can start in New Jersey/let's have a war/the enemy is within"), and "I Don't Care About You," and "I Love Livin' in the City" are undeniable. But damn, those guys hated gays and women.

There's also a stark difference in the London punks and the Los Angeles punks vis a vis violence. Even the dancing in L.A. is violent--in London they pogo'd, just jumping up and down, maybe gently bumping into each other. In L.A., they moshed, true slamdancing that was pretty much a brawl. Isn't it just like America to take righteous anger and turn it into indiscriminate rage.

[psygull]

hey! I couldn't find if you've already got this somewhere - have you got a list of movies you wish more people would go and watch? feels like you've got a real varied refined palate for movies, thanks have a good easter weekend 🥚

hello and thank you! i recently answered an ask with a list of horror and sci-fi movies i recommend (which can be found here) so here's some more that aren't either of those. also look up content warnings for these beforehand if you watch any

Brick (2005) is a neo-noir with all the trappings of the genre (femme fatales, murder, weird lingo) set in a california high school. scrappy, clever, and the directorial debut of one Rian Johnson (see also Looper (2012))

Clearcut (1991) is a thriller about logging, indigenous land rights, environmentalism, and what happens when nonviolence fails. intense and thoughtful, raises a lot of questions but leaves them up to you to answer

likewise, First Reformed (2017) is a psychological drama about a pastor of a church that's been reduced to little more than a tourist attraction having a crisis of faith and ALSO dealing with environmental crises as well. this one's BLEAK but so good. i still think about it frequently

The Proposition (2005) is a western set in the early days of australian colonization. a lawman gives an outlaw nine days to hunt down and kill his older brother, or his younger brother will be hanged. it's about colonialism, civility, and the gruesome violence underpinning all of it. and it's starting to gather flies (also nick cave wrote the screenplay and the soundtrack, so you KNOW it's good)

Moonstruck (1987), to change up the tone completely, is a wonderful romcom starring nicolas cage and cher. i dunno the best way to pitch this one, it's just really well written and fun and good. extremely new york movie

that's a few i've been thinking about recently! i could keep going but five is a good number to end on

[theroseses]

I really wish people would read stuff to the end. Or in this case, stop pulling things out of their backside.

Guy Pearce was actually wanted for the role of Ra's Al Ghul. Nolan was interested in him for the role (the anonymous 'in the know' prick contradicting Pearce in his own interview saying he was just using Guy for auditions - does this make any fucking sense to anybody? ). He and Nolan are good friends, he wasn't fucking him about, he didn't fly him out for nothing. It was the WB exec with a hateboner for Guy Pearce who stopped this, and Christopher Nolan was not the Christopher Nolan he is now. It would have career suicide to tell a top exec to fuck off.

Same with Chris's attempt to cast him in the Prestige - hateboner exec got in the way.

I wrote this because some idiotic comment senction douche claiming insider information tried to claim Nolan was just using Guy for auditions and never intended to cast him. So, Nolan, flew him all the way to London to do this? Anyone with two braincells can see that makes zero sense. I know Nolan's haters are out here trashing Nolan because trashing Nolan is....idk. I will never get it. I've spent far too much time arguing with people about this.

I mean, Nolan has never done this with any actor. Literally ever. If he wants you, you get the red and black script, and he'll wait for your answer. He did this with Cillian for Oppenheimer.

I suggest assholes read the interview where Nolan credits Guy Pearce with making Memento's ending genuinely great. He clearly thinks incredibly highly of him. He would notj waste his time like this. Again, flying Pearce over for role means he wanted him. Any other claim is just stupid.

Lastly and most importantly- these two are friends. Would you be friends with somebody who pulled that on you?

Come on now.

But I'll tell you a story about a director who did pull that on an actor. Heath Ledger auditioned for Moulin Rouge, or so he thought. Baz Luhrmann actually used him in auditions but always planned to cast Ewan McGregor. When Heath found out, he was furious.

Needless to say, Heath and Baz were not friends afterwards. Heath was looking forward to a role Baz had no fucking intention of giving him. Baz is lucky) Heath didn't grave him for this.

Strangely, no angry articles or comments 'in the know' appeared to call out Luhrman as a cunt appeared. Huh.

Nolan, as the joke goes, could literally just say "H-" before a thousand hate boner articles appeared. It's beyond parody at this point.

Why are you all getting so fucking obsessed with twisting what Chris Nolan says or just outright lying or coming out with bizarre interpretations of his films. I hope he hires Guy just to spit in the eye of commentators who probably in the know of absolutely nothing.

I don't mention this much, but I had a couple of friends who worked on The Dark Knight. They loved it, people were impressed when they saw that on their CV. Yet I claim no insider information beyond working on Nolan films can be a fantastic experience.

Things like that are why he's a ride or die for me. Although to be clear, if anything, Joss Whedon or Weinstein esque came out about him...that would be the die part. And that goes to all my ride or dies. I don't defend abuse. But also, I can never deny that Christopher Nolan's movies - especially Memento - made me want to write screenplays that hopefully deliver the same damn gutpunch as Memento or The Dark Knight. That makes us question or reality such as Inception. The heartbreaking sacrifices we would have to make to save humanity from a dying planet as in Interstellar.

I got one screenplay that was seriously discussed for broadcast but ultimately was vetoed. But that's showbiz.

I love so much of Nolan's work. They are breath taking, wonderful and challenging. I'm a believer in the Mal was Right theory of Inception. Dunkirk was not a celebration of how great the British are, it's a huge criticism of using young men in war, knowing they would be slaughtered. Just because he doesn't write the meaning of the film out in crayon across the screen doesn't mean it isn't there. But Tumblr won't listen.

Sorry, TL: DR.but I have a lot of feelings.

[oddygaul]

Porco Rosso

You know, I usually forget about Porco Rosso when thinking about my favorite Ghibli movies but it’s a banger.

After this rewatch, it’s hard for me to think of it as anything other than Miyazaki’s self-insert fanfic. Seriously, this is like his ideal world - everyone’s flying their personal planes around and parking them like they’re cars at the local diner, Porco’s this big cool guy who everyone respects and all the hot babes are into, and he gets to live alone with no one bothering him in a cool island cove. It’s even set in 40s Europe, so he has all his favorite fascist planes available*!

*oh yeah, you thought The Wind Rises was problematic? Let me introduce you to Studio Ghibli’s namesake and start unveiling the pattern here

behold - the intractable chaotic force that is two dozen kidnapped schoolgirls

Anyway, I think the strongest point in Porco Rosso’s favor is that it’s just funny as fuck. I don’t know how the Japanese audio track is, but the dub is some king shit. I get that this is a ‘when you have a hammer everything looks like a nail’ situation, but honestly it has Big Redline Energy imo.

We’ve got your classic early 2000s gravelly-voiced Steve Blum-alike too-cool protagonist, contrasted with a world surrounding him that absolutely refuses to take itself seriously with constant dumb gags and throwaway jokes. The American guy provides a lot of this (I died at the raw fuckboy energy exuded from him saying “That’s my favorite line from a screenplay I wrote”), but it’s everywhere - the fuckin Carnival Cruise liner deploying their own personal fighter jets to fight off pirates, with color commentator already on deck and raring to go, was probably my favorite. Even the dogfights, which for the most part remain somewhat grounded and above board due to Miyazaki’s plane fetish, get real goofy at points, with Porco and Curtis throwing wrenches at each other like a cartoon.

I mean, come on! ehh? right? just me?

sidenote: while grabbing these caps it was interesting to see the contrasting approaches to showing the engine's power in each of these scenes. In Porco Rosso, they focus on the characters themselves and their elastic properties, showing Porco's ears and jowls flapping wildly in the wind, which leads to some great freezeframes. Frisby doesn’t have much in the way of loose body parts, so instead they focus on his loose shirt billowing with the force - it doesn't really translate as well in a still but looks great in motion.

At the end of the day it has its issues - I’m still not convinced it’s just Porco that doesn’t take women seriously and not the movie itself - but it’s a damn good time.

[apocalypticavolition]

1,000 Greatest Films: Körkarlen

Literally "The Wagoner", but better known to English speakers as "Thy Soul Shall Bear Witness!" but better known to American audiences as "The Stroke of Midnight" but only in the 1920s. Nowadays we just call it "The Phantom Carriage". So that's a lot.

This movie is yet another novel adaptation, based on a book by Selma Lagerlöf, a Swedish author who was also the first woman to win the Nobel Prize in Literature. She was quite happy to have her books adapted to the screen and was clearly something of a boon to the local industry, with her works adapted dozens of times even into the modern era.

Victor Sjöström had, like so many in this era, gotten started in the theater but was excited to transition to the new medium. He directed some forty-two films in Sweden, many of which are now lost, and acted in many more. Naturally he did plenty with Lagerlöf, impressively he had produced films that she approved of! It was probably this more than anything that made her willing to let him attempt to adapt Körkarlen, a much more occult sort of story. Sjöström was probably drawn to it for the difficulties of this adaptation; certainly drawn to its urban, gritty feel and thus inspired wrote up a screenplay in just eight days then presented it to her in person.

She refused, and the story ends here, this film was never made.

Wait, then why am I writing about it?

*double checks my notes*

She accepted and the film was made! They worked on it for the rest of 1920 and got it out the door on New Year's Day, which is quite thematic. This was probably quite difficult at the time - the story is about ghosts and the only way to make ghosts in those days was to pull off double exposure using the camera directly. Optical printing wasn't invented yet! Oh and the cameras were still hand-cranked and apparently how fast you cranked affected the recording so if they didn't do it exactly right it still wouldn't look right. Good lord.

So: the film itself! Is it a horror story? Is it a fable? Maybe it's more a ghost story than a horror? Distributors weren't quite sure (hence the many translations), but I am fully confident in saying that its genre is the exact average of The Seventh Seal and The Shining. I will leave determining what that is to the readers but I basically spent this whole movie going "Oh, so that's where [Bergman/Kubrick] got the idea".

Naturally, that again leaves me in the awkward point of having to say that Seinfeld is unfunny because its successors did it better. Körkarlen's Death does have a bit more mystique on account of being the unseen master of the titular wagoners, and the bit where David Holm tries to axe his way to his wife and kids has a more realistic horror to it than "Here's Johnny!", but both of the later works focus on their themes to much more success than Körkarlen manages.

The main problem is that Körkarlen itself feels like an imitation of that well-loved Dickens novel A Christmas Carol. Sure, it's set on a (slightly) different holiday. Of course it's more economical with a single ghostly figure mostly showing off the past instead of all three tenses. But the point is the same: it's all a spooky dream wherein the dreamer realizes that his life has proceeded to a terrible point but that it's not quite too late to redeem himself. Melodrama gets us from point A to point B.

But let's focus on some positives. First, I strongly approve of the social messaging that the film provides on how and why to avoid the spread of tuberculosis. Recent events have made it clear to me that most people don't care about epidemiology and even more recent events give me reason to believe that TB could be about to be back in style. Coughing spreads death! Avoid coughing on people and avoid things that people have coughed on!

Far more importantly though, this film does a flashback-in-a-flashback and dammit people it knows what it's doing! Though the events of the film technically all happen over a single night, we get the full examination of David Holm's descent into wickedness over the course of many years, all alcohol's fault of course. This could be rather tiresome or confusing at a lesser movie, but this film does avoid that rather well. The recursion itself is a rather simple one, with Holm telling fellow drunks about Georges' tale of the myth of dying on New Year's Eve and having to drive Death's carriage for the year. I think the simplicity is why it works so well: the film isn't one of those that confuses confusion with tension, a rather distressing development in cinema.

Still though, as much as Bergman himself liked it (apparently he watched it once a year!), I myself don't think this is a particularly exceptional movie. A good thing to watch once, I think, with effects that still hold up pretty well to the friendly eye. As always with this project, until we get to the awkwardness of copyright law, these movies can be found for free on places like YouTube so if any do sound interesting, check them out!

[formula-ghost]

hiii I was wondering if you had any general advice for writing fanfic. unfortunately, I didn’t go through the wattpad phase and it shows 💔 I have some rough ideas for what I’d like to write but it’s hard to flesh out when I start writing scenes it doesn’t quite feel right too much imagery not enough progression you know 😭

-🍿

Hello Popcorn!

I have plenty of tips below the cut (thank you for letting me indulge my inner teacher):

- Unfortunately, everyone goes through their Wattpad phase, even if it’s not on Wattpad (or Quotev, which was my platform of choice before I became a tumblrina). The thing about writing is that there’s never really a mastery of it, it’s an artistic skill that is constantly growing, but you have to start somewhere. It’s easier if you start as a kid because you don’t realize how bad you really are, but that doesn’t mean that you can’t start later, you just have to make peace with the fact that whatever you write isn’t going to be as good as the story in your head and that’s okay. Seriously, perfection is the enemy of progress. Be okay with being a little cringe, because that’s the only way to improve over time.

- Read!! Seriously, read and try to analyze the fics you like and what specifically you like about them, and try to emulate that to the best of your ability. You can also make playlists to help you cultivate the vibes, and if you find a cool thing in a song or fic you can always incorporate it into your own work. All writers are thieves by nature :)

- I also used to struggle with too much buildup and internal feelings of characters versus action. I think the best way I’ve been able to work on this is to practice visualization, so like imagining my fic like a movie and describe how the characters are physically moving around the scene. Also, writing dialogue is great for this. Try to write a small snippet with just dialogue; no internal thoughts, just movement and speaking. Looking at screenplays/movies can help with this, and read/watch them with an eye to how they pace the story. When do they let things build, when do they cut between scenes? (Of course, genre influences this; action movies are going to be more external than psychological thrillers, for example, so study things with the general vibes of what you want your fic to be)

- With progression, having a rough outline can help. So for example my outline for the initial chapter of Wildflower, I had the three scenes as bullet points, so I knew where the story was going, but then when I actually wrote it I still had the freedom to play around with internal dialogue within the scene. You want to strike a balance between being too loose that your plot is a mess and too tight that you have no room to let naturally emerging elements grow.

- The only way to get better is to just keep writing! It helps to do exercises or random prompts so you can practice without the pressure of feeling like you have to produce something perfect for people to read. Trust me, I have dozens of cut/practice scenes that will never see the light of day 🙃

- Connect with others, but don’t let them define you. It’s always a good thing imo to talk to other writers because you can bounce ideas off each other and it can help massively with plot and character development. Fic is a uniquely social form of writing, but with that comes disappointment when people don’t connect with your work in the way you want them to. You can’t let that discourage you: you have to write because you want this story to be told, not because you want others to read it.

If you ever want to talk more in depth, my DMs are open! I tried to give more general tips but I’d be happy to talk over a particular draft as well and give you more individualized feedback. Wishing you the best of luck, I believe in you 💙