#looks like a vampire from those early 2000’s vampire movies

[nateezfics]

he looks so vampy in these photos;; i’m so in love

[youandmedead]

𝕽𝖊𝖚𝖓𝖎𝖙𝖊𝖉 𝕬𝖙 𝕷𝖆𝖘𝖙 -𝕷𝖊𝖘𝖙𝖆𝖙 𝖝 𝕽𝖊𝖆𝖉𝖊𝖗

Warnings: Swearing, blood, angst, basic vampire shit, rushed ending, Potentially ooc (been a while since I’ve watched QOTD)

Synopsis: (Y/n) finally reunites with their creator after so many years of deep slumber.

Notes: (!GN READER!) This'll be based off of Movie Queen of the Damned Lestat.

Some could claim that this Oneshot is a massive cliché…they would be right by that but I had an idea and rolled with it 🤷

The darkness that the night brought engulfed the sky making it bleak and misery induced. However despite the time, the streets of the vast city were still bustling and the kaleidoscopic street lights shun down to the Earth below and illuminated everything that was within a close proximity of them.

As (y/n) sat upon one of the tallest billboards and watched all of those wretched souls below, they couldn’t help but ponder over the idea about what life would have been like if they had not met him…if they had not been turned to the creature that they were today. (Y/n) drew their knees up to their chest and let out a deep sigh, they were always so conflicted over the emotions that they held for the now not so mysterious stranger that yearned so much for companionship.

At first Lestat had scared them, at that time it was either become a vampire and be his companion for years to come or die right on the spot and as fear coiled around their very being and held them in its vice like grip (y/n) panicked and accepted the vampire’s offer. Throughout those few couple of years, fear was the only drive in the relationship between the two…(Y/n)'s constant worry over displeasing their creator grew and grew as he became more powerful. However, not so long after that their views changed, he asked (y/n) about their life before he turned them and soon in turn, he opened up about his life both before he met you and before he also became a vampire....he became more thoughtful and a strange sense of twisted sweetness seemed to have possessed him. Love and fondness was beginning to bloom in their chest….perhaps they were crazy and perhaps they were not. They had constantly yearned for him, until one day the emotions that (y/n) held for Lestat were strangely reciprocated. They spent their days hunting, playing music together, and exploring the world.

Yet soon after Lestat disappeared and entered his great slumber the vampire (y/n) grew lonesome and eventually they too took to rest for many, many years up until the early 2000s.

~

Now it has been 3 years since they have awoken and they still have not seen the man who they held conflicted emotions for, in person. Whenever they had explored the ‘new’ world since their awaken (y/n) has saw his face along with a group of others plastered upon every biggest city’s billboards, much like the very one they were sitting on (one of which held a platform that ran against it).

They adjusted themselves and lay down with an arm propping up their head and an arm covering their eyes all whilst humming a song that had became increasingly popular since their great slumber came to an end. They felt themselves drift off into thought about the old days until they heard a startling creak and a vast rock of the ledge, which balanced on the billboard.

"Well, well, well…it seems that it was far less difficult to track you down. How are you…my little (Y/n)?”

(Y/n) bolted up and looked in the direction where that oh so familiar voice came from. Their eyes were blurry due to the adjustment but they knew almost automatically that it was him.

Lestat.

“Holy shit…” (Y/n) hauled themselves up and rubbed their eyes once again to get rid of the blur, “Is it really you?”

A slight chuckled escapes his lips, “Why of course…who else could it possibly be? You don’t see many who have as charming looks as I.”

They smirk and shrug, “Meh, you could be some poser.”

They walk towards Lestat’s towering figure and look up gazing into his eyes, “I think I may need some evidence that it is really the man you claim to be.”

Lestat gives a deep chuckled and hooks a finger underneath (Y/n)’s chin, it seemed as if he was staring straight into their soul…looking for something in particular.

“You gonna do something or not?” (Y/n) whispers, anticipation coursing through them.

He teasingly leans in further, his breath tickling their skin.

“Patience little one,” he replies.

He pulls them in further until both their lips are just barely touching, believing he would make the move (Y/n) closed their eyes and waited patiently, until he backed off suddenly. After they opened their eyes they were met with a sly smirk by Lestat.

They rolled their eyes tutting and whispered, “Asshole.”

There relief was almost instantly replaced by a sense of rage leaking venomously from the cavern, in which they tried to lock these thoughts and emotions away.

“Now, now…is that any way to greet me after so many years?”

Rage coursed through their being and they pushed Lestat out of the way, “It is considering you abandoned me…and then as soon as you awoke you replaced me,” (Y/n) then maliciously grinned and raised their hands up mockingly, “But then again that is on me, I should have knew that would’ve happened considering the way you went on back then.”

Lestat stayed quiet for a moment his smirk now faded away.

“Despite you complaining about betrayal and abandonment from those you loved and cared you still did it to the person who stuck by your side the longest….fucking rat bastard, after everything I’ve done for you?!”

(Y/n) paced closer towards him, fangs now being bared and a hand prepared to strike. Their right hand was prepared to slash his face until he caught it almost instantly, his grip growing tighter by the second.

They growled, “Fuck you, Lestat…”

They sighed and eventually the male vampire loosened his grip on their wrist, “The thing that pisses me off the most is that I can’t bring myself to hate you, even after all of the shit you’ve pulled.”

He placed a finger under (Y/n)’s chin again and forced them to look him in the eyes, “I am so sorry Mon Cher,” he rested his forehead upon the other vampire’s, “It was wrong of me to have just left you there.”

“Damn right it was,” they whispered, emotion overwhelming them.

Lestat leaned in and kissed them, an exchange of emotion flowing between the two. Lestat did not feel regret, that feeling was no longer as much of a role in his newly found and attained nature, however he must admit that he felt some form relief when he came across (y/n) after so many years. In addition to this (Y/n) felt a range of emotions coursing through them also; ones of which they knew would cause harm and they craved to act upon them however they also craved companionship once again…they knew that the man that stood before them and kissed them with such passion had them wrapped around his finger.

One of the main things that Lestat was talented at, was reeling his play things back in when he felt was necessary and on his own accord.

(Y/n) quickly reeled themselves back and gripped onto the collar of Lestat’s leather trench coat and looked down, “I just…”

Lestat took (Y/n)’s chin in his index finger and thumb and tilted their head up, making sure they looked him directly in the eyes, “I know it’s been a long time and I’m prepared to make up for all of that lost time mon Cher…nothing can excuse what I have done to you, I don’t expect you to forgive me right away…” he broke eye contact and look at the floor for a moment, “But if you do eventually find it within your heart, I will be eternally grateful and vow to never leave your side again.”

(Y/n) rested their forehead upon Lestat’s chest and they sighed in defeat. “I’m pissed you know? You randomly show up after all these years, famous and all the arm candy you could yearn for…” they slowly raise their head up a grit their teeth, “But what hurts even more is that you awoke much earlier than I thought and never bothered to come look for me! You didn’t even care if I was alive or not…you just never fucking cared in general.” Ripping their hands away from the man that had abandoned them so long ago, (y/n) took a step back and ran a hand through their hair, taking a deep breath they tried their utmost best to remain composed. Unfortunately, tears were brimming in their eyes and the sensation of weakness began to settle in - they hated it. Being vulnerable in front of someone was not in their nature, however within these circumstances their carefully crafted mask began to slip.

Lestat levitated towards (Y/n) and spoke quietly into their ear, “It’s okay to let your mask slip you know?”

(Y/n) whipped around and glared at him, "Are you also aware of that?"

He stays silent for a moment, “I know that you hold conflicted opinions mon Cher,” they grew closer and closer to them and tilted their chin up once more using his index finger, “Just please…”

They looked into his eyes and sighed heavily, “It’ll take time,”

Lestat’s eyes widened slightly at that statement.

“But don’t you dare be taking this lightly Lestat,” Y/n warned, “The things you’ve done would be irreparable to some, so be lucky that I’m giving you this opportunity to earn my forgiveness.”

They gave Lestat a stern glare, “Understand?”

The male vampire nods and takes one of their hands in his, he brushed the back of it with his thumb and speaks, “

[frodothefair]

Paris, Je T'Aime - Quartier de la Madeleine

Starring Elijah Wood, who falls in love and turns into a vampire.

I remember this was in the mid-2000′s when Twilight was in its heyday. I think someone decided Frodo + Fangs = profit.

Some of the faces he makes as he sees the vampire-lady are also very Frodo-esque. A lot of people seem to hate this segment of the movie, but I loved the campiness of it. I think it’s supposed to look like one of those slightly over-the-top silent films from the early 20th century, shot in black and white.

[angstyaches]

charlie and shayne dressing up as those vampires from the terrible early 2000s movies and teasing the fuck out of eli and fee lmaooo🍄

Shayne and Charlie’s Halloween 2022, event 2/2

Okay, Charlie would be way too terrified and I'm not sure if it counts as teasing the fuck, but I'm quite happy with how this came out, even if it is a bit dialogue-heavy.

CW: vampires, banter, alcohol mention.

___

“I don’t get why you’re mad,” Shayne was grumbling as they came downstairs, loosely holding hands. “You thaid ‘vampire’.” 

“This is not what I meant, and you know it,” Charlie hissed, glancing down into the empty hallway. So far, the coast was clear, but it didn’t do much to calm his frazzled nerves. “I cannot believe you sometimes.” 

“’Cannot’?” Shayne repeated. “Fuck, I’ve really pithed you off, haven’t I?”  

“Sshh,” Charlie whispered. 

Shayne’s eyes softened, his lips turned down in a sulk. With the extra bulk of the fake fangs, he looked comically adorable. Charlie would have kissed him, if he didn’t know how horrible those plastic things tasted. He’d decided against wearing his own fangs after having them in his mouth for about two minutes.

He’d suggested Shayne do the same, but Shayne had been adamant that they completed his look. A look he never should have been trusted to assemble by himself in the first place.

A small shiver ran down Charlie’s back as they reached the downstairs hallway of the Aldridge townhouse. It was close to the city, and only a fifteen minute walk to the bar Rin had asked them to meet her at, so getting ready here had made sense at first.

Now, Charlie felt like he was about to faint.

Okay. The front door was within reach. They’d almost made it – 

“Oh, hey!” Felix exclaimed from the sitting room as they passed the door. 

Charlie cursed quietly to himself. He’d very much hoped to slip out of the house undetected, by Elliott and Felix in particular. He briefly considered making a run for it and pretending he hadn’t heard Felix call out, but Ingrid Waters had raised a boy who was hardwired to stop and say hi. 

He pulled Shayne by the shoulders, out of view of the sitting room, and tugged his cape further forward, so that it covered most of his clothes. It’d have to do. He gave him a pleading look, a silent Please behave, but the vodka had already watered-down Shayne’s limited ability to take a hint. 

He forced a smile and returned to the doorway. “Hi, guys.” 

___ 

"Oh, gosh. You both look so cool.” Felix gazed at Charlie and Shayne with the smallest twinge of jealousy. His and Elliott’s social calendar was quite a depressing sight to behold these days. He was sure he must have looked like a sleepy little kid waiting for a bedtime story, but he didn't care. “So, where are you going tonight, again?” 

“Rin invited us to go out with a few of her friends in the city.” Charlie shuffled his feet back and forth. He seemed even shiftier than he usually did in the townhouse. He and Shayne were just barely holding hands, with their pinky and ring fingers joined, but it looked like Charlie was trying to keep Shayne shoved out of view. 

“Wait, what are you... dressed as?” Elliott’s voice was a little weak as it came out. He leaned forward on the sofa. 

Felix frowned and looked up at his partner with a twinge of concern. It was quite clear that Shayne and Charlie were both dressed as –  

“We’re just vampires.” Charlie blurted it out with all the energy of a guilty person on trial who’d lost their nerve at the last second.  

He was wearing some dark blue – not quite black – bootcut jeans and a white t-shirt that he’d seemed to have shredded along the bottom with some scissors, so that it was slightly cropped. He’d gelled up the front of his hair and wrapped a strip of fabric around the crown of his head. His jacket looked suspiciously like it might have been bought by a younger Charlie who’d been going through a My Chemical Romance phase.  

“Lost Boys, Charlie...?” Felix ventured to ask. 

“Yeah! Exactly.” Charlie glanced at Shayne. He reached over with one hand to adjust the cape that sat over Shayne’s shoulders, pulling it a little further forward. Shayne grunted and pulled back, momentarily revealing a mouthful of bright-white plastic.

"Fake fangs?" Elliott scoffed, and Felix resisted the urge to nudge him with his elbow. There was no need to ruin their fun.

"Uh, yeah," Charlie smiled guiltily. “I – I was wearing them, too. We went to that tacky little Halloween shop in town. Don’t you think it’s so... so weird that it only appears there for a few weeks every year?” 

“Yes!” Felix exclaimed and sat forward on the sofa, clasping his hands together. Finally. Most people just got a glazed look in their eyes whenever Felix brought up any of his pet peeves, and this was definitely one of them. “It is extremely weird, Charlie. I feel as though I never notice an empty lot in its place, either. Do you think it’s run by witches?” 

“I don’t know, but...” Charlie glanced, again, at Shayne, who was stretching his jaw and fidgeting with the plastic teeth. “Anyway, the fangs are super uncomfortable.” 

“Oh,” Felix smiled. “Well, that sucks.” 

Charlie let out a nervous laugh, as though he felt he were obliged to. 

Shayne winked lazily with one eye and pointed at Felix in silent approval of the pun. It was quite clear from that point that he and Charlie had already started drinking.  

He was in his usual black jeans, but he’d tucked the ends of them inside a pair of long, white socks that had a thin rainbow pattern near the top (probably borrowed from Charlie). There was a long black costume cape tied around his shoulders, and he had it pulled almost completely around himself at the front, but the edge of a lacy, frilly collar was sticking out. He must have gotten himself a new shirt, because... 

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen you wear purple before,” Elliott said, stealing the words right out of Felix’s mouth. 

“So?” Through the set of janky plastic fangs, it sounded like Shayne had said, “Thlo?” 

Felix swallowed as he sensed the tension that was starting to build in the air. He hoped this wasn't about to turn into a territorial fight over a colour.

Over the frilly purple shirt, he was wearing what looked like a velour waistcoat. For some reason, it made Felix tilt his head. Maybe he had seen it somewhere before? 

Charlie jabbed Shayne in the side, without looking at him. 

Shayne adjusted and pulled his cape further around himself, this time with a scowl and a little bit of a flourish. The cape billowed outwards in the process, so that Felix got another look at what he was wearing underneath. 

A choked sound came from Charlie’s mouth, before the blonde promptly folded his arms and lowered his head. The heel of his hand cradled his forehead. 

“Uh, Shayne...?” Elliott sat forward again; any further and he’d have slipped right off the sofa.

“Yeah, man?” Shayne’s tone was innocent, but his dark eyes held a dark, knowing glint. 

“He - he wanted to do a What We Do in the Shadows, or, um, Interview with the Vampire kind of thing,” Charlie said. He was looking at Shayne as though he wanted to strangle him. 

“I don’t think the vampires in either of those movies wore a cape,” Felix blurted out shamelessly. It wasn’t very often that he got to whip out his knowledge of vampire movies; this was the time of year when he felt he was allowed to be pedantic. 

“I’m juth... you know.” Shayne shrugged, still struggling not to slur his words around the fake fangs. “An old-timey vampire. Old-school. Old-thtyle.” 

___ 

Charlie was dressed up as a member of the undead, but he felt like he was actually dying each time Shayne emphasised the word ‘old’.

Maybe Charlie was biased because of his frosty, complicated relationship with Jonathan, but he didn’t understand why Shayne was doing this. He knew Shayne and his cousin had an ongoing banter, but stealing a sixty-year-old vampire’s clothing for a Halloween costume seemed like taking things too far. 

Especially considering the fact that said vampire was Elliott Aldridge, the temper-wielding, super strong, bat-transforming, terrifying –  

“Hmm,” was all Elliott said to Shayne’s terrible explanation. 

“Anyway.” Sensing the lull and taking it as an opportunity, Charlie pinched a bit of the fabric of Shayne’s cape and tugged. “Time to go, right?” 

But Shayne was frozen in place and staring right at Elliott. 

Charlie’s gut tightened. 

Felix’s mouth opened into a silent gasp as he came to the same realisation that had already dawned on his partner. That the frilly shirt and the waistcoat Shayne was so clearly wearing under his cape looked awfully familiar because they – 

Felix sucked in a breath. “Oh...” 

“Come on,” Charlie whispered. He lightly placed his hands on Shayne’s shoulders and directed him towards the front door. Shayne still had himself covered up completely with the cape, like someone who’d just been pulled from a lake and wrapped in a blanket in a movie.  

He could sense that the vamps were following them to the door. 

___ 

“Shayne?’ Elliott’s fists were clenched by his sides. “Are you supposed to be me?” 

Felix grimaced and squeezed his hands together as they all waited for the answer. 

It was Charlie’s sigh that came first – a deep, husky one that seemed to say, Damn it, we almost made it. He’d stopped right by the front door, hand on the doorknob and everything. 

“Look, I didn’t know!” Charlie exclaimed as he turned around. He spread his arms wide. “I didn’t know what he was planning until it was too late to make him change.” 

Shayne turned around next, and swept his arms down under his cape. When he lifted them again and threw the cape outwards in all directions, Felix recognised the clothing instantly; it wasn’t a shirt and waistcoat that Elliott wore very often, but Felix could recall at least two events he’d worn them to. They were entirely too big for Shayne’s frame, and he hadn’t even bothered to button up the waistcoat. 

Shayne bared his plastic fangs and let out a hiss.  

“Ah,” he said in a deep voice. “Pour me a whithky, kid. Then I’m going to turn into a bunch of tiny fucking bats and go kill thomething.” 

Felix clamped a hand over his mouth.

Looking pale in the face, Charlie opened the front door and left without looking back again. Shayne took a few backwards steps and then followed him, looking very satisfied with himself, not bothering to pull his cape around his outfit anymore. 

For a few seconds, Elliott didn’t move, or even breathe. Felix looked up at him, and was about to try to say something, when he unfroze. 

“Hey, you little fuck, I don’t sound like that!” Elliott followed Shayne to the doorstep, grabbing hold of the door before it could close. “And I only wore a cape for a brief amount of time in the nineties!” 

“Oh, Elli,” Felix whispered, joining his partner and putting a hand up on his shoulder. As smart as he was in certain situations, his poor darling Elliott had a bad habit of choosing the wrong hill to die on. 

Elliott’s breath hitched as he glared down the driveway. “And I told you that in confidence, Shayne!” 

Shayne waved a hand over his head as he walked. “’Night, old man.” 

Elliott growled quietly. He was still gripping the wood of the door in his hand. Felix reckoned it was time to pry him free and bring him back inside. He looked crestfallen, and Felix couldn’t exactly blame him.  

They say imitation is the highest form of flattery, and Felix could see the logic and sentiment behind that, but being told your fashion sense fell in line with the stereotypical vampire tropes from decades gone by must have felt a little rough. 

Felix was still squeezing his hands together as he followed his partner back through to the kitchen. 

Elliott went straight to the liquor cabinet and poured himself a whisky. 

Jeez, he doesn’t help himself. Felix waited for him to take his first swig before approaching, laying a hand gently on his arm. “Hey. It’s alright.” 

“He stole my clothes, Fee,” Elliott growled. He placed his glass on the countertop and glared at it, as though it were the embodiment of his humiliation. “I can’t even exact vengeance because nothing he owns would ever fit me.” 

Felix pressed his lips together. Apparently, the implication that his clothes were outdated or caricatural wasn’t the problem.  

“Oh,” Felix said. “Yeah... I know, darling, I know. It’ll be alright.” 

___ 

“Are you happy with yourself?” Charlie demanded as they made their way down the driveway. 

Shayne shrugged. “Exthremely.” 

“Oh, my god.” Charlie’s voice trembled with impatience. “The fangs, take them out, take them out!” 

[petty-crush]

Notes on the New Bev Horror a thon 2023

I love this event. This is my Halloween jam.

This was extra special this year because new important friends in my life got to join me for the first time. It raised the electricity in the room.

There was some good natured grumbling that, yes, the event isn’t an all nighter anymore. It’s from late afternoon to after midnight, not deep evening to early morning. I really don’t care, a celebration is a celebration, no matter what time of day.

-/—/-/—

The films, such as they rolled,

1-The New Kids (Sean Cunningham, 1985)

2-Return of the Vampire (Lew Landers, 1943)

3-Komodo (Michael Lantieri, 1999)

4-The Severed Arm (Thomas S. Alderman, 1973)

5-Scarecrows (William Wesley, 1988)

6-Wrong Turn (Rob Schmidt, 2003)

-//-//////—-

This was the first time since I’ve been going that there wasn’t a Italian or Spanish horror film in the line up (I have missed a few years though), an odd beat in the rhythm.

-//-

More grumbling from the veterans; the first film really wasn’t a horror film. I can somewhat disagree, as there was elements of a siege near the end.

But, clearly, this was a shout-out to the Friday the 13th crew doing a left turn. It was fun, which was important. I probably wouldn’t have made it the first film however.

-///-

This was a marathon that was back end heavy, for my tastes. The Severed Arm and especially Scarecrows powered up this showing.

-///—-

Early to mid 2000s horror is one of my least favorite eras. The look and leftover 90s teen cast of Wrong Turn wasn’t my ideal way to end the night, though it was solid on its own merits.

-////-/—-

Here is something I really wasn’t expecting, the monster movie was my least favorite of the night. Usually it’s in the top three, but this year it rests comfortably at the bottom. It was still quite fun, and seeing it with this audience made it a delightful go of things.

-/-////—-

I fucking love Bela Lugosi. He’s just delightful. His personality is other worldly strong.

Before Return, there was this hysterical winking interview with him from 1938. His hamming it up as if he was a real ghoul plastered a stupid grin on my face. This dude rocks.

-/—-/

More on The New Kids;

The opening set piece with Tom Atkins, training the kids to run, in slow motion, had the entire audience rolling. He didn’t come back after that but it’s almost worth the movie just for that section.

James Spader is magnificent as the bully leader. I’m still mystified that he didn’t knock it out of the park as Ultron in Avengers 2.

I suspect that was the strings being pulled away from him behind the scenes. Also maybe Jim Shooter’s version of Ultron is best, and it wasn’t that.

As mentioned, I think putting this movie 3 or so would have been better. Severed Arm would have been a great opener. Not a dealbreaker however.

-/-/—

Arm is truly one of those raw bruised exploitation films that has such a seedy view of the world. Its griminess is palpable, but never a dirge.

There is one scene that drags (the guy in the mechanic shop) but that’s actually pretty good by the standards of this weight class. You have to accept that these kinds of films are not the best paced, little rough around the edges.

Gawd help me, I laughed so hard at the scene of the group pressuring the guy to cut off his arm to feed them (they are trapped in a mine) and the rescuers coming barely thirty seconds later. This poor schmuck.

Of the films that were new to me that night (hold that thought) this one easily won. Highly recommended.

There is also one guy doing an substitute teacher version of Woody Allen Schlick that is right up my alley.

-//-/—////——/—

Scarecrows was the film of night to my eyes, even though it was the only one I had seen before.

This was an astute lesson in how a film plays totally different with an audience. Like how a song from an album comes truly alive in concert. The communal experience transforms it.

When I saw it at home, I thought it was ok, if a bit slight. With a dark room, an attentive crowd, it murdered. All the jokes were funnier, the surreal touches more vivid, the despair more claustrophobic.

I love horror films that don’t explain shit, and this was that plus surprising. A winning combo.

-/-/////-//—

Thinking back again, I think making the kid in Komodo a boy just felt really dry to me. A girl fighting big lizards is just funnier.

That said, seeing him pull a home alone/Rambo trap on the Komodo had my cheeks red.

-////-/—/

In Wrong Turn’s favor, it had the most appealing gal of the night, Eliza Dushku. Her alternative boobies soothed all the backwoods brutality.

This is definitely a film basking in the post 9/11 bitterness. The anger and visceral violence. What a strange time.

Films from this era were also extra dirty, textures wise. And yet it feels a bit too pristine at the same time.

-/-/-/—

By golly, did I love the wolf man growing a spine and in near death besting the vampire. As bombs are falling down. Those last fifteen minutes in Return are wonderful.

-/-/—-

The gift this year was a jacket patch with a gnarly pumpkin on it. Neat.

-/-/////—-

Solid year. Every film played well, with most being ones I would return to again.

My favorite is, so far, still the marathon of (deep breath) race with the devil/horror party beach/rawhide rex/twitch of the death nerve/slaughter high /ticks. But this one was quite spiffy as well.

Halloween, like life, is all about variety and surprises. This year delivered. My only regret is waiting a whole year till next time. But it’s worth the sweet leisure.

[panlight]

Do you think that Carlisle ever uses actual Old English from his birth time? As a vampire he has perfect recall so he would remember how folks spoke then. Do you think that his thoughts are in Old English and Edward had a hard time understanding them at first?

Carlisle would have likely spoken Early Modern English, as it transitioned into Modern English. Obviously these shifts don’t happen overnight, but most scholars say the shift was mostly complete by the middle to late 17th century, and Carlisle was born in the 1640s, so he’s right about in the early part of that range. 

This is the era where ‘thou’ and ‘ye’ sort of stopped being a thing. (Contrary to popular belief, ‘thou’ was actually the informal ‘you.’ Today it seems fancy so I think most people assume it was the formal, polite version, with which one might address a superior, but nope! It was the informal one you’d use for friends and family, and ‘you’ was in fact the formal). Spelling was unstable and they still used some letters or forms of letters that we don’t anymore (u and v were basically different forms of the same letter; s had two different forms, etc). 

And it really didn’t sound like what people think “English” accents sound like. Now Shakespeare is a bit earlier than Carlisle’s time, but looking up “original pronunciation” on YouTube is probably going to get you closer to what Carlisle might have sounded like. With this pronunciation things in in Shakespeare that don’t rhyme in modern accents do end up rhyming. It’s pretty cool. 

But not at all the genteel aristocratic English accent you might be hearing in your head for Carlisle!

As to whether he ‘thinks’ in this language/or accent, I’d imagine that the shift has been so subtle over the centuries that not really? That is, it’s not like he was dropped from 1660s London into 2000s Forks; he has been around for all the shifts in accents and speech patterns in English, so he probably hasn’t noticed his own speech changing with it. I’d imagine if he spoke to someone in the present day in French or Italian or whatever the “old fashioned” flavor might be more pronounced because he’s not using it daily like English. 

But I knew a guy in high school who was an exchange student who spoke FLAWLESS American English, like just the perfect accent you’d never know he wasn’t born here . . . until he got excited or upset and then another accent would slip out. I could imagine that most of the time Carlisle sounds like everyone else but if he’s worked up about something . . . then yeah, maybe the rhythm of his speech sounds a little different, or the vowel sound is slightly ‘off’ but no modern American would hear it as stereotypically English. 

I do think he probably uses words that no one else uses anymore sometimes, and that he could ‘turn on’ the old accent if he wanted because like you said, perfect recall, he would remember exactly what it sounded like. He might be able to use it to throw off Edward if he wanted to! (”The way you are thinking those vowels is hurting my brain, I’m out”) 

But in terms of movies, this might be a case of ‘truth is stranger than fiction.’ Like if you tried to have a flashback or something with the Early Modern English pronunciation your average moviegoer would find it weird and distracting; I’d bet lots of cash money that they’d just tell actors to use a stereotypical modern English accent or received pronunciation. 

[blind-rats]

The Rise & Fall of Joss Whedon; the Myth of the Hollywood Feminist Hero

By Kelly Faircloth

“I hate ‘feminist.’ Is this a good time to bring that up?” Joss Whedon asked. He paused knowingly, waiting for the laughs he knew would come at the creator of Buffy the Vampire Slayer making such a statement.

It was 2013, and Whedon was onstage at a fundraiser for Equality Now, a human rights organization dedicated to legal equality for women. Though Buffy had been off the air for more than a decade, its legacy still loomed large; Whedon was widely respected as a man with a predilection for making science fiction with strong women for protagonists. Whedon went on to outline why, precisely, he hated the term: “You can’t be born an ‘ist,’” he argued, therefore, “‘feminist’ includes the idea that believing men and women to be equal, believing all people to be people, is not a natural state, that we don’t emerge assuming that everybody in the human race is a human, that the idea of equality is just an idea that’s imposed on us.”

The speech was widely praised and helped cement his pop-cultural reputation as a feminist, in an era that was very keen on celebrity feminists. But it was also, in retrospect, perhaps the high water mark for Whedon’s ability to claim the title, and now, almost a decade later, that reputation is finally in tatters, prompting a reevaluation of not just Whedon’s work, but the narrative he sold about himself. 

In July 2020, actor Ray Fisher accused Whedon of being “gross, abusive, unprofessional, and completely unacceptable” on the Justice League set when Whedon took over for Zach Synder as director to finish the project. Charisma Carpenter then described her own experiences with Whedon in a long post to Twitter, hashtagged #IStandWithRayFisher.

On Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel, Carpenter played Cordelia, a popular character who morphed from snob to hero—one of those strong female characters that made Whedon’s feminist reputation—before being unceremoniously written off the show in a plot that saw her thrust into a coma after getting pregnant with a demon. For years, fans have suspected that her disappearance was related to her real-life pregnancy. In her statement, Carpenter appeared to confirm the rumors. “Joss Whedon abused his power on numerous occasions while working on the sets of ‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer’ and ‘Angel,’” she wrote, describing Fisher’s firing as the last straw that inspired her to go public.

Buffy was a landmark of late 1990s popular culture, beloved by many a burgeoning feminist, grad student, gender studies professor, and television critic for the heroine at the heart of the show, the beautiful blonde girl who balanced monster-killing with high school homework alongside ancillary characters like the shy, geeky Willow. Buffy was very nearly one of a kind, an icon of her era who spawned a generation of leather-pants-wearing urban fantasy badasses and women action heroes.

Buffy was so beloved, in fact, that she earned Whedon a similarly privileged place in fans’ hearts and a broader reputation as a man who championed empowered women characters. In the desert of late ’90s and early 2000s popular culture, Whedon was heralded as that rarest of birds—the feminist Hollywood man. For many, he was an example of what more equitable storytelling might look like, a model for how to create compelling women protagonists who were also very, very fun to watch. But Carpenter’s accusations appear to have finally imploded that particular bit of branding, revealing a different reality behind the scenes and prompting a reevaluation of the entire arc of Whedon’s career: who he was and what he was selling all along.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer premiered March 1997, midseason, on The WB, a two-year-old network targeting teens with shows like 7th Heaven. Its beginnings were not necessarily auspicious; it was a reboot of a not-particularly-blockbuster 1992 movie written by third-generation screenwriter Joss Whedon. (His grandfather wrote for The Donna Reed Show; his father wrote for Golden Girls.) The show followed the trials of a stereotypical teenage California girl who moved to a new town and a new school after her parents’ divorce—only, in a deliberate inversion of horror tropes, the entire town sat on top of the entrance to Hell and hence was overrun with demons. Buffy was a slayer, a young woman with the power and immense responsibility to fight them. After the movie turned out very differently than Whedon had originally envisioned, the show was a chance for a do-over, more of a Valley girl comedy than serious horror.

It was layered, it was campy, it was ironic and self-aware. It looked like it belonged on the WB rather than one of the bigger broadcast networks, unlike the slickly produced prestige TV that would follow a few years later. Buffy didn’t fixate on the gory glory of killing vampires—really, the monsters were metaphors for the entire experience of adolescence, in all its complicated misery. Almost immediately, a broad cross-section of viewers responded enthusiastically. Critics loved it, and it would be hugely influential on Whedon’s colleagues in television; many argue that it broke ground in terms of what you could do with a television show in terms of serialized storytelling, setting the stage for the modern TV era. Academics took it up, with the show attracting a tremendous amount of attention and discussion.

In 2002, the New York Times covered the first academic conference dedicated to the show. The organizer called Buffy “a tremendously rich text,” hence the flood of papers with titles like “Pain as Bright as Steel: The Monomyth and Light in ‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer,’” which only gathered speed as the years passed. And while it was never the highest-rated show on television, it attracted an ardent core of fans.

But what stood out the most was the show’s protagonist: a young woman who stereotypically would have been a monster movie victim, with the script flipped: instead of screaming and swooning, she staked the vampires. This was deliberate, the core conceit of the concept, as Whedon said in many, many interviews. The helpless horror movie girl killed in the dark alley instead walks out victorious. He told Time in 1997 that the concept was born from the thought, “I would love to see a movie in which a blond wanders into a dark alley, takes care of herself and deploys her powers.” In Whedon’s framing, it was particularly important that it was a woman who walked out of that alley. He told another publication in 2002 that “the very first mission statement of the show” was “the joy of female power: having it, using it, sharing it.”

In 2021, when seemingly every new streaming property with a woman as its central character makes some half-baked claim to feminism, it’s easy to forget just how much Buffy stood out among its against its contemporaries. Action movies—with exceptions like Alien’s Ripley and Terminator 2's Sarah Conner—were ruled by hulking tough guys with macho swagger. When women appeared on screen opposite vampires, their primary job was to expose long, lovely, vulnerable necks. Stories and characters that bucked these larger currents inspired intense devotion, from Angela Chase of My So-Called Life to Dana Scully of The X-Files.

The broader landscape, too, was dismal. It was the conflicted era of girl power, a concept that sprang up in the wake of the successes of the second-wave feminist movement and the backlash that followed. Young women were constantly exposed to you-can-do-it messaging that juxtaposed uneasily with the reality of the world around them. This was the era of shitty, sexist jokes about every woman who came into Bill Clinton’s orbit and the leering response to the arrival of Britney Spears; Rush Limbaugh was a fairly mainstream figure.

At one point, Buffy competed against Ally McBeal, a show that dedicated an entire episode to a dancing computer-generated baby following around its lawyer main character, her biological clock made zanily literal. Consider this line from a New York Times review of the Buffy’s 1997 premiere: “Given to hot pants and boots that should guarantee the close attention of Humbert Humberts all over America, Buffy is just your average teen-ager, poutily obsessed with clothes and boys.”

Against that background, Buffy was a landmark. Besides the simple fact of its woman protagonist, there were unique plots, like the coming-out story for her friend Willow. An ambivalent 1999 piece in Bitch magazine, even as it explored the show’s tank-top heavy marketing, ultimately concluded, “In the end, it’s precisely this contextual conflict that sets Buffy apart from the rest and makes her an appealing icon. Frustrating as her contradictions may be, annoying as her babe quotient may be, Buffy still offers up a prime-time heroine like no other.”

A 2016 Atlantic piece, adapted from a book excerpt, makes the case that Buffy is perhaps best understood as an icon of third-wave feminism: “In its examination of individual and collective empowerment, its ambiguous politics of racial representation and its willing embrace of contradiction, Buffy is a quintessentially third-wave cultural production.” The show was vested with all the era’s longing for something better than what was available, something different, a champion for a conflicted “post-feminist” era—even if she was an imperfect or somewhat incongruous vessel. It wasn’t just Sunnydale that needed a chosen Slayer, it was an entire generation of women. That fact became intricately intertwined with Whedon himself.

Seemingly every interview involved a discussion of his fondness for stories about strong women. “I’ve always found strong women interesting, because they are not overly represented in the cinema,” he told New York for a 1997 piece that notes he studied both film and “gender and feminist issues” at Wesleyan; “I seem to be the guy for strong action women,’’ he told the New York Times in 1997 with an aw-shucks sort of shrug. ‘’A lot of writers are just terrible when it comes to writing female characters. They forget that they are people.’’ He often cited the influence of his strong, “hardcore feminist” mother, and even suggested that his protagonists served feminist ends in and of themselves: “If I can make teenage boys comfortable with a girl who takes charge of a situation without their knowing that’s what’s happening, it’s better than sitting down and selling them on feminism,” he told Time in 1997.

When he was honored by the organization Equality Now in 2006 for his “outstanding contribution to equality in film and television,” Whedon made his speech an extended riff on the fact that people just kept asking him about it, concluding with the ultimate answer: “Because you’re still asking me that question.” He presented strong women as a simple no-brainer, and he was seemingly always happy to say so, at a time when the entertainment business still seemed ruled by unapologetic misogynists. The internet of the mid-2010s only intensified Whedon’s anointment as a prototypical Hollywood ally, with reporters asking him things like how men could best support the feminist movement. 

Whedon’s response: “A guy who goes around saying ‘I’m a feminist’ usually has an agenda that is not feminist. A guy who behaves like one, who actually becomes involved in the movement, generally speaking, you can trust that. And it doesn’t just apply to the action that is activist. It applies to the way they treat the women they work with and they live with and they see on the street.” This remark takes on a great deal of irony in light of Carpenter’s statement.

In recent years, Whedon’s reputation as an ally began to wane. Partly, it was because of the work itself, which revealed more and more cracks as Buffy receded in the rearview mirror. Maybe it all started to sour with Dollhouse, a TV show that imagined Eliza Dushku as a young woman rented out to the rich and powerful, her mind wiped after every assignment, a concept that sat poorly with fans. (Though Whedon, while he was publicly unhappy with how the show had turned out after much push-and-pull with the corporate bosses at Fox, still argued the conceit was “the most pure feminist and empowering statement I’d ever made—somebody building themselves from nothing,” in a 2012 interview with Wired.)

After years of loud disappointment with the TV bosses at Fox on Firefly and Dollhouse, Whedon moved into big-budget Hollywood blockbusters. He helped birth the Marvel-dominated era of movies with his work as director of The Avengers. But his second Avengers movie, Age of Ultron, was heavily criticized for a moment in which Black Widow laid out her personal reproductive history for the Hulk, suggesting her sterilization somehow made her a “monster.” In June 2017, his un-filmed script for a Wonder Woman adaptation leaked, to widespread mockery. The script’s introduction of Diana was almost leering: “To say she is beautiful is almost to miss the point. She is elemental, as natural and wild as the luminous flora surrounding. Her dark hair waterfalls to her shoulders in soft arcs and curls. Her body is curvaceous, but taut as a drawn bow.”

But Whedon’s real fall from grace began in 2017, right before MeToo spurred a cultural reckoning. His ex-wife, Kai Cole, published a piece in The Wrap accusing him of cheating off and on throughout their relationship and calling him a hypocrite:

“Despite understanding, on some level, that what he was doing was wrong, he never conceded the hypocrisy of being out in the world preaching feminist ideals, while at the same time, taking away my right to make choices for my life and my body based on the truth. He deceived me for 15 years, so he could have everything he wanted. I believed, everyone believed, that he was one of the good guys, committed to fighting for women’s rights, committed to our marriage, and to the women he worked with. But I now see how he used his relationship with me as a shield, both during and after our marriage, so no one would question his relationships with other women or scrutinize his writing as anything other than feminist.”

But his reputation was just too strong; the accusation that he didn’t practice what he preached didn’t quite stick. A spokesperson for Whedon told the Wrap: “While this account includes inaccuracies and misrepresentations which can be harmful to their family, Joss is not commenting, out of concern for his children and out of respect for his ex-wife. Many minimized the essay on the basis that adultery doesn’t necessarily make you a bad feminist or erase a legacy. Whedon similarly seemed to shrug off Ray Fisher’s accusations of creating a toxic workplace; instead, Warner Media fired Fisher.

But Carpenter’s statement—which struck right at the heart of his Buffy-based legacy for progressivism—may finally change things. Even at the time, the plotline in which Charisma Carpenter was written off Angel—carrying a demon child that turned her into “Evil Cordelia,” ending the season in a coma, and quite simply never reappearing—was unpopular. Asked about what had happened in a 2009 panel at DragonCon, she said that “my relationship with Joss became strained,” continuing: “We all go through our stuff in general [behind the scenes], and I was going through my stuff, and then I became pregnant. And I guess in his mind, he had a different way of seeing the season go… in the fourth season.”

“I think Joss was, honestly, mad. I think he was mad at me and I say that in a loving way, which is—it’s a very complicated dynamic working for somebody for so many years, and expectations, and also being on a show for eight years, you gotta live your life. And sometimes living your life gets in the way of maybe the creator’s vision for the future. And that becomes conflict, and that was my experience.”

In her statement on Twitter, Carpenter alleged that after Whedon was informed of her pregnancy, he called her into a closed-door meeting and “asked me if I was ‘going to keep it,’ and manipulatively weaponized my womanhood and faith against me.” She added that “he proceeded to attack my character, mock my religious beliefs, accuse me of sabotaging the show, and then unceremoniously fired me following the season once I gave birth.” Carpenter said that he called her fat while she was four months pregnant and scheduled her to work at 1 a.m. while six months pregnant after her doctor had recommended shortening her hours, a move she describes as retaliatory. What Carpenter describes, in other words, is an absolutely textbook case of pregnancy discrimination in the workplace, the type of bullshit the feminist movement exists to fight—at the hands of the man who was for years lauded as a Hollywood feminist for his work on Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel.

Many of Carpenter’s colleagues from Buffy and Angel spoke out in support, including Buffy herself, Sarah Michelle Gellar. “While I am proud to have my name associated with Buffy Summers, I don’t want to be forever associated with the name Joss Whedon,” she said in a statement. Just shy of a decade after that 2013 speech, many of the cast members on the show that put him on that stage are cutting ties.

Whedon garnered a reputation as pop culture’s ultimate feminist man because Buffy did stand out so much, an oasis in a wasteland. But in 2021, the idea of a lone man being responsible for creating women’s stories—one who told the New York Times, “I seem to be the guy for strong action women”—seems like a relic. It’s depressing to consider how many years Hollywood’s first instinct for “strong action women” wasn’t a woman, and to think about what other people could have done with those resources. When Wonder Woman finally reached the screen, to great acclaim, it was with a woman as director.

Besides, Whedon didn’t make Buffy all by himself—many, many women contributed, from the actresses to the writers to the stunt workers, and his reputation grew so large it eclipsed their part in the show’s creation. Even as he preached feminism, Whedon benefitted from one of the oldest, most sexist stereotypes: the man who’s a benevolent, creative genius. And Buffy, too, overshadowed all the other contributors who redefined who could be a hero on television and in speculative fiction, from individual actors like Gillian Anderson to the determined, creative women who wrote science fiction and fantasy over the last several decades to—perhaps most of all—the fans who craved different, better stories. Buffy helped change what you could put on TV, but it didn’t create the desire to see a character like her. It was that desire, as much as Whedon himself, that gave Buffy the Vampire Slayer her power.

[blazehedgehog]

As an Internet veteran and draw-person, I really need to ask: what anime influenced you and many online artists circa 2000s? There's a specific style from those early 2000s webcomics and fanart I'm looking for and trying to replicate, and your old art fit in that "style", in my opinion. Thank you!

It’s hard to narrow it down, but it’s also not that hard to narrow it down. Anime was a much, much smaller industry back then. The “boom” was just beginning thanks to efforts by the Scifi Channel and Cartoon Network to bring anime to television in timeslots that people would actually watch.

So here’s your crash course in casual anime history, I guess, from someone who definitely isn’t like... obsessed with anime. Or isn’t anymore, but was back then.

For me, it all kind of started with, like... Dragon Ball, and this was a show that struggled to gain any traction at first. Where I lived, it aired at 5am on Sunday mornings. If you knew a kid that watched Dragon Ball, there was a solidarity there like, “Yup, you get it.”

Then DiC got the license to Sailor Moon and started airing it in the weekday morning slot I would typically describe as “right before you catch the bus.” You’d wake up around 6am, maybe 6:15, and watch whatever was on at 6:30 while you ate breakfast. As the credits were rolling, you’d head out to catch the school bus. Sailor Moon was what I remember doing that with the most. That combined with Dragon Ball formed my foundational interest in anime.

Around this time (1995, 1996) you were starting to see anime start to seep in to the mainstream elsewhere. There was a commercial I remember for, like, an anthology of anime classics like Akira...

And, y’know, when you’re like, 14 or 15 and you see a commercial like this -- cartoons! With blood! And nudity! It’s like, holy crap. Most of the classics we know today (Akira, Ghost in the Shell) were only really available via mail order like this back then.

More shows started getting localized for TV, too, like Ronin Warriors was one a lot of my friends got in to. It was considered “The Manly Sailor Moon.” And then there was, of course, Samurai Pizza Cats. Eventually Saban stopped dubbing Dragon Ball altogether and moved straight over to Dragon Ball Z, and that gained enough popularity that I think it eventually shook it out of its Sunday Morning time slot to somewhere a little more visible by general audiences.

Coming in to 1997 and 1998, anime was really starting to gain some momentum. The Scifi Channel had begin doing their “Saturday Anime” show, which aired at 3am every Friday Night/Saturday Morning. They probably figured it was one of the only ways they could get away with showing violent cartoons.

For me, this was where I got my first “real” taste of anime. They had a stable of about 5 or 10 movies and OVAs they’d run. Venus Wars, Vampire Hunter D, Project A-KO, Robot Carnival, Tenchi Muyo In Love (my favorite), Project L.I.L.Y. Cat, Beautiful Dreamer, Galaxy Express 999, Fatal Fury The Motion Picture, Record of Lodoss War, Dominion Tank Police, Roujin-Z, Demon City Shinjiku, Gall Force...

That felt like the bandaid got ripped off. Suddenly we were all buzzing about anime. Hey, have you heard about this movie called Ninja Scroll? There’s hardcore sex in it! No American movie, live action or not, could ever match the body horror of Akira! Hey, does anyone remember Robotech from the 80′s? That was actually anime, too! Wow!

Cartoon Network was smart enough to take notice and snatched up the rights to air Sailor Moon and Dragon Ball Z at reasonable, non-morning hours, and they dug out Voltron and put together a simple block of anime. I don’t even think it necessarily had a name, it was just an hour or maybe 90 minutes of anime a day, and it exploded. Right place, right time. So Cartoon Network expanded.

They added more classic anime, and some shows that were similar in tone, and called it Toonami. Robotech, Ronin Warriors, The Real Adventures of Johnny Quest, Reboot, Thundercats...

And this became the place to watch anime. Which is when we enter the era you’re asking about, the early 2000′s. This is where it starts to feel like a little too much to cover, because it came hot, heavy, and fast. There was a thirst for anime that was hard to quench because production companies were small and choosy about what they’d dub, but at the same time, a sort of gold rush was starting.

When I think of peak, classic-era Toonami, the stuff that really influenced me artistically, it was shows like Outlaw Star, Ruroni Kenshi, and Gundam Wing. I’m sure I’d also have friends speak highly of Big-O, G-Gundam, and Yu Yu Hakusho, three shows I never really got in to.

Eventually, Cartoon Network (and Williams Street, then called Ghost Planet Industries) began to realize that there was a growing library of anime they couldn’t show in the afternoon because it was too intense for the kids. There was also an undoubtedly vocal contingent of anime fans who were frustrated when their favorite shows had to be edited for broadcast. This gave birth to Toonami: The Midnight Run, the precursor to what would eventually become Adult Swim. The Midnight Run became home to uncut (or simply less-cut) episodes of afternoon shows that restored blood, alcoholic references, and the few cases of more extreme violence.

Midnight Run started getting exclusive shows, too. When I think about what Midnight Run (and later Adult Swim) was known for, it was shows like Cowboy Bebop, FLCL, and again, though it wasn’t really something I saw a ton of, Paranoia Agent.

Other networks did try to cash in on the anime craze. I think Tech TV/G4 tried to get in on things with Serial Experiments Lain and a few other shows, but to be honest, it never hit as hard as Toonami did. Then there was obviously the work of guys like 4KIDS, with the Pokemon, Yu-Gi-Oh and Digimon shows on Saturday Morning, but those felt noticeably different in vibe and in tone (something that only got more pronounced when Kids WB started a Saturday Morning Toonami block that was even more aggressively sanitized than what could be shown on Cartoon Network).

Beyond broadcast TV, the stuff I remember being popular among my circle of friends were things like Tenchi Universe, Ranma 1/2, Slayers, Saber Marionette, and.... like, Di Gi Charat and Chobits? This was probably right around the era of Azumanga Daioh, too.

Unfortunately, much past 2003 or 2004 is where I started falling off of anime. The feeling of it being “new” and “special” was starting to wear off, and there was enough coming out that the standard of quality was beginning to drop. Whereas small studios like ADV and Manga Corps. could only afford to bring out the best of the best, we were starting to get junk like Duel Masters, Rozen Maiden and Tenchi Muyo GXP.

I remember friends speaking highly of shows like Bleach (heh), .hack, Full Metal Panic, Midori Days, Tenjo Tenge, Yakitate Japan, Eureka Seven, and Air Gear, but I can’t tell you anything about them, personally.

Either way, I’m sure I’ve given you more than enough to chew on.

[nagia-pronounced-neijia]

scream (until you’re satisfied)

It's a quiet night for once: peaceful, even.  The sun sits low on the horizon, casting gloam over the usual summer mist; insects buzz in the trees, loud and soft and loud again.  Ligiea smiles out her open kitchen window at the little copse that has taken over the edge of the complex parking lot, then slides her thumb over her phone for the last time before she starts on her dishes.

On the windowsill, a bluetooth speaker -- designed to look like an antique radio; it had delighted Nate for about four seconds before he realized he couldn't actually tune it -- begins to croon a soft jazz cover of an early 90's grunge song.  She smiles, humming along, and gets to work rinsing tzatziki and chili sauce from her plates.

Something rustles in the copse.  She doesn't hear it; she sees birds suddenly burst from the green, wings beating, out of the corner of her eye.  She sets the pan she'd fried her flatbread in back down in the sink, watching with instincts sharpened by too much shit having tried to kill her.

She hasn't made it back to the dishes when the scream cuts through the night.  It lasts so long and comes so deep from within someone's throat that she hears it gurgle for a beat before it pitches back up.  When the voice finally gives out, there's only enough time for a sharp intake of breath before it starts again.

Ligeia ignores the chills that roll down her spine, the hot-cold rush of adrenaline through her veins.  She picks up her holster and pepper spray, the Agency-issue Volt, and  tucks her badge into her pocket.  Detective Attano steps out the door, pacing in the direction of the scream.

##

First fun fact of the night: the scream didn't come from the damn woods.  That would have made sense.

Second fun fact of the night: Bobby's standing at the entrance to the laundromat.  This makes Ligeia instantly suspicious, and he apparently knows it.  The red ambulance lights flash onto his face and then off again, lighting him up before they leave him in shadow, and it makes what he clearly wishes were a fetching smile look demented.

"Miss me, angel?"

Ligeia bites down on her first reply, because she can't think of their college years -- or make a crack about her annual fucking chlamydia infection when she'd dated him -- without wanting to hit something.  She smiles like she doesn't want to punch her ex and says, instead, "What do I do with myself when I'm not watching your career circle the drain?"

That one hits the mark.  He flinches and takes a reflexive step back, like she'd slapped him.  And then he pours on the greasy smile, but there's an angry edge, a tightness, to his smile.  "I see dinner didn't go down so well all alone."

She's not allowed to say, 'shut up and get out of my way,' but she can say, "This is a crime scene, Bobby.  Just because the caution tape's not up doesn't mean you get to lurk."  She makes a shooing motion with her fingers.

He's not dumb enough not to move, but she hears his feet on the concrete as he tries to peer through the windows into the darkened building.

Third fun fact: when the ambulance is sitting in the parking lot with its lights on, and the paramedics are sitting uselessly in the open back of the bus, there's no good news.  Ligeia nods at Jeri and Ryan, and mouths three letters.

Ryan just nods dejectedly.  Beside him, Jeri winces, shrugs, and mouths them back: DOA.

Ligeia doesn't let herself sigh, much though she wants to, and jerks the door open.  She ignores the words "Spin Cycle 365" printed in white on the glass, focused as she is on finding the lightswitch.  It takes a few useless, obnoxious moments of groping in the dark before her fingers touch plastic.  She flips three switches in a row and the lights return with a click and a buzz.

She sees exactly how Jeri and Ryan had come to the conclusion of 'DOA.'  It's rather hard not to, given that the poor girl had fallen onto the floor, eyes wide and staring, mouth still open in a scream.  But there's no sound coming out of her throat anymore.  No breath in those apparently very powerful lungs.  Pale white marks dot the very corners of her mouth and jaw.

Ligeia kneels down next to the girl, considering, and pulls a pair of latex gloves from her blazer pocket.  She skips looking for any kind of trauma -- there would be blood, probably -- and instead picks up the girl's hands.  The victim's fingers are cool and soft, still flaccid rather than in rigor mortis, and it is the worst kind of intimacy.

She can't imagine how Verda does this every day.  Maybe she just likes people and all their intricacies too much.

Not a single defensive wound.  Not even a sign she'd thrown her arms out to catch herself as she fell. That's a reflex; she must have been unconscious or dead before she started to fall.

There's no new sound, but she feels something like a shift in the barometric pressure of the room.  Adam and Morgan both have a quality to them, an intensity that seems to suck up all the air and interest, even when nobody's looking at them.

Ligeia straightens.  "Looks like a heart attack, but I'll know more after Verda or the Agency pathologists take a look," she says.  She doesn't need to look back to know they're watching.  "Will we let Doctor Turner and Verda take the lead on this, or is the Agency going to take custody of her just in case?"

The words come out professional.  Not cheery, certainly, but smooth, practiced.  Like her heart isn't beating hard inside her chest, like she's not thinking about Murphy.  Like there's something going on in her head other than an endless litany of a prayer she keeps hoping she'll get to stop praying: no more deaths, please, not in my town.

"This is a known phenomenon to the Agency," her mother's voice says.  The tone is endlessly gentle.  "We'll take custody."

It takes her a few more moments to look away from the girl and the blue puddle of laundry soap.  It smells like fake tropical flowers and banana; it's probably called something like 'Bahama Breeze.'

#

Ligeia drives back to the warehouse, stopping only for fuel and a cup of petrol station coffee.  It's thick and tarry as the stuff she puts in her car, smells about as astringent, but it wakes her up.  Unit Bravo beat her back by at least fifteen minutes.  That doesn't surprise her, given her slow car and pit stop.

What does surprise her is that Adam is waiting for her by the entry.  He had been standing stiffly by the wall, like particularly handsome statuary, and as she passes him, he unbends.

"So what was I looking at in there?"

"A fae victim," is Adam's reply.  He stops moving when she does.

Ligeia starts putting together 'fae,' 'screaming,' 'laundry,' and 'death,' and what she comes up with makes her groan.  "You're kidding, right?"  But this is Adam, and he wouldn't joke about this.  Not even Farah would.

"They aren't what the folktales make of them," is his reply, steady and a little snide, like usual.  He sounds a little softer when he adds, "So few of us are."

They've had the talk about his disapproval of humans romanticizing vampires.  She even understood it, to an extent.  She felt the same way about the slew of torture porn and serial killer movies that came out in the early 2000's.  She still feels that way about the Purge movies and the way they glamorize surviving violence, the way they assume everyone's first thought is murder.

Point is, Ligeia sees where he's coming from.  She doesn't push.  She stays right where she is, just a little too close to him to be professional.

"I guess I should go inside and find out what they're really like," she says.

Adam holds the door for her.  She turns her head just enough to look over her shoulder at him as she goes through.  She offers him a smile and watches his jaw relax by a fraction.

Nate smiles up at her from where he's found an armchair -- she could swear he's always making himself smaller, and he's so big that the back of her neck thanks him, but she hates it, too.  There's a haunted edge to the way half his jaw has tensed, and when the smile slips, she can see that his focus on her has wisped away.  He's the same Nate as always, but he's somewhere else right now.  Somewhen else.

Morgan's the one who says the word.  She breathes it out around grey smoke, her tone heavy and dark not only from the cigarette but from her own closely guarded feelings.  "Banshees," she says, and near her, Farah actually sighs.

[tlbodine]

The History & Evolution of Home Invasion Horror

Here’s my prediction: In the next couple of years, we’re going to be seeing a sudden surge of home invasion movies hit the market. For many of us, 2020 has been a year of extreme stress compounded by social isolation; venturing outside means being exposed to a deadly plague, after all. 

And while many people have already predicted that we’ll see an influx of pandemic and virus horrors (see my post on those: https://ko-fi.com/post/Pandemic-and-Pandemonium-Sickness-in-Horror-T6T21I201), I actually think a lot of us are going to be processing a different type of fear -- anxiety about what happens when your home, which is supposed to be a literal safe space, gets invaded. Because if you’re not safe in your own house...you’re not safe anywhere. 

Home invasion movies have been around a long time -- arguably as long as film, with 1909′s The Lonely Villa setting down the formula -- and they share many of the same roots as slasher films in the 1970s. But somewhere along the way, they separated off and became their own distinct subgenre with specific tropes, and it’s that separation and the stories that followed it that I want to focus on. 

The Origins of the Home Invasion Movie 

In order to really qualify as a home invasion movie, a film has to meet a few requirements:

The action must be contained entirely (or almost entirely) to a single location, usually a private residence (ie, the home) 

The perpetrator(s) must be humans, not supernatural entities (no ghosts, zombies, or vampires -- that’s a different set of tropes!) 

In most cases, the horror builds during a long siege between the invader and the home-dweller, including scenes of torture, capture, escape, traps, and so forth. 

To an extent, home invasion movies are truth in television. Although home invasions are relatively rare, and most break-ins occur when a family is away (the usual goal being to steal things, not torture and kill people), criminals do sometimes break into people’s homes, and homeowners are sometimes killed by them. 

In the 1960s and 70s, this certainly would have been at the forefront of people’s minds. Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood detailed one such crime in lavish detail, and the account was soon turned into a film. Serial killers like the Boston Strangler, BTK Killer and the “Vampire of Sacramento” Richard Chase also made headlines for their murders, which often occurred inside the victim’s home. (Chase, famously, considered unlocked doors to be an invitation, which is one great reason to lock your doors). 

By the 1960s and 70s, too, people were more and more often beginning to live in cities and larger neighborhoods where they did not know their neighbors. Anxieties about being surrounded by strangers (and, let’s face it, racial anxieties rooted in newly-mixed, de-segregated neighborhoods) undoubtedly fueled fears about home invasion. 

Early Roots of the Home Invasion Genre

Home invasion plays a part in several crime thrillers and horror films in the 1950s and 60s, including Alfred Hitchcock’s Dial M for Murder in 1954, but it’s more of a plot point than a genre. In these films, home invasion is a means to an end rather than a goal unto itself. 

We see some early hints of the home invasion formula show up in Wes Craven’s Last House on the Left in 1972. The film depicts a group of murderous thugs who, after torturing and killing two girls, seek refuge in the victim’s home and plot the deaths of the rest of the family. In 1974, the formula is refined with Bob Clark’s Black Christmas, which shows the one-by-one murder of members of a sorority house and chilling phone calls that come from inside the home. 

Even closer still is I Spit on Your Grave, directed by Meir Zarchi in 1978. Although it’s generally (and rightly) classified as a rape-revenge film, the first half of the movie -- where an author goes to a remote cabin and is targeted and brutally assaulted by a group of men -- hits all the same story beats as the modern home invasion story: isolation, mundane evil, acts of random violence, and protracted torture. 

Slumber Party Massacre, directed by Amy Holden Jones in 1982, also hits on both home invasion and slasher tropes. Although it is primarily a straightforward slasher featuring an escaped killer systematically killing teenagers (with a decidedly phallic weapon), the film also shows its victims teaming up and fighting back -- weaponizing their home against the killer. This becomes an important part of the genre in later years! 

In 1997, Funny Games, directed by Michael Haneke, provides a brutal but self-aware look at the genre. Created primarily as a condemnation of violent media, the film nevertheless succeeds as an unironic addition to the home invasion canon -- from its vulnerable, suffering family to the excruciating tension of its plot to the nihilistic, motive-free criminality of its villains, it may actually be the purest example of the home invasion movie. 

Home Invasions Gone Wrong 

Where things start to get interesting for the home invasion genre is 1991′s The People Under the Stairs, another Wes Craven film. Here the script is flipped: The hero is the would-be robber, breaking and entering into the home of some greedy rich landlords. But this plan swiftly goes sideways when the homeowners turn out to be even worse people than they’d first let on. 

This is, as far as I can tell, the origin of the home-invasion-gone-wrong subgenre, which has gained immense popularity recently -- due, perhaps, to a growing awareness of systemic issues, a differing view of poverty, and a viewership sympathetic to the plight of down-on-their-luck criminals discovering that rich homeowners are, indeed, very bad people. 

Home Invasion Film Explosion of the 2000s 

The home invasion genre really hit the ground running in the 2000s, due perhaps to post-911 anxieties about being attacked on our home turf (and increasing economic uneasiness in a recession-afflicted economy and a growing awareness of the Occupy movement and wealth inequality). We see a whole slew of these films crop up, each bringing a slightly different twist to the formula.

*  It’s also worth noting that the 2000s saw remakes of many well-known films in the genre, including Funny Games and Last House on the Left.  

In 2008, Bryan Bertino directed The Strangers, a straightforward home invasion involving one traumatized couple and three masked villains. By this point, we’re wholly removed from the early crime movie roots; these are not people breaking in for financial gain. Like the killers in Funny Games, the masked strangers lack motive and even identity; they are simply a force of evil, chaotic and senseless. 

The themes of “violence as a senseless, awful thing” are driven further home by Martyrs, another 2008 release, this one from French director Pascal Laugier. A revenge story turned into a home-invasion-gone-wrong, the film is noteworthy for its brutality and blunt nihilism. 

2009′s The Collector, directed by Marcus Dunstan, is another home-invasion-gone-wrong movie. Like Martyrs, it dovetails with the torture porn genre (another popular staple of the 2000s), but it has a lot more fun with it. The film follows a down-on-his-luck thief who breaks into a house only to encounter another home invader set on murdering the family that lives there. The cat-and-mouse games between the two -- which involve numerous traps and convoluted schemes -- are fun to watch (if you like blood and guts). 

In a similar vein, we see You’re Next in 2013, which starts off as a standard home invasion movie but takes a sharp twist when it’s revealed that one of the victims isn’t nearly as helpless as she appears. Director Adam Wingard helps to redefine the concept of “final girl” in this move in a way that has carried forward right into the next decade with no sign of stopping. 

2013 of course also introduced us to The Purge, a horror franchise created by James DeMonaco. If there was ever any doubt as to the economic anxieties at the root of the genre, they should be alleviated now -- The Purge is such a well-known franchise at this point that the term has entered our pop culture lexicon as a shorthand for revolution. 

Don’t Breathe, directed be Fede Alvarez in 2016, is one of the creepiest modern entries into the “failed home invasion” category, and one that (ha ha) breathed some new life into the genre. Much like The People Under the Stairs, it tells the story of some down-on-their-luck criminals getting in over their heads when they target the wrong man. However, there is not the same overt criticism of wealth inequality in this film; it’s a movie more interested in examining and inverting genre tropes than treading new thematic ground. The same is true of Hush that same year. Directed by Mike Flanagan, the film is most noteworthy for its deaf protagonist. 

But lest you start to think the home invasion genre had lost its thematic relevance, 2019 arrived with two hard-hitting, thoughtful films that dip their toes in these tropes: Jordan Peele’s Us and Bong Joon-ho’s Parasite, which both tackle themes of privilege in light of home invasion (albeit a nontraditional structure in Parasite -- its inclusion here is admittedly a bit of a stretch, but I think it falls so closely in the tradition of The People Under the Stairs that it deserves a spot on this list). 

What Does the Future Hold? 

I’m no oracle, so I can’t say for certain where the future of the home invasion genre might lead. But I do think we’re going to start seeing more of them in the next few years as a bunch of creative folks start working through our collective trauma. 

Income inequality, racial inequality, political unrest and systemic issues are all at the forefront of our minds (not to mention a deadly virus), and those themes are ripe for the picking in horror. 

I know that Paul Tremblay’s novel The Cabin at the End of the World has been optioned for film, so we might be seeing that soon -- and if so, it might just usher in a fresh wave of apocalypse-flavored home invasion stories. 

Like my content? You can support more of it by dropping me some money in my tip jar: https://www.ko-fi.com/post/Home-Invasion-Stories-A-History-R6R72RV7Y

[cursednymph]

Lucas David’s Art

Lucas David is an artist that gained fame through posting his unique dark sketches/art on Instagram. When I first saw his art I was fascinated by it and it seemed like he gets me, he had the same point of view of art as me and the same perspective that is constructed from finding beauty in dark and creepy stuff. His style and theme that he applies to his art never changed but lately, I’ve noticed that his lines and techniques changed a little bit.

First I would like to comment on his earlier drawings. He drew many celebrities and icons that are associated with the punk rock, alternative, and grunge culture. He’s focused more on the 90’s and early 2000’s cult movies, music, and celebrities which I also very much enjoy. He had me with his Kurt Cobain drawing, I could get the Kurt Cobain’s vibe through those drawings. Lucas David has a style that illustrates people as pale, almost sick looking but at the same time, he makes it look aesthetically pleasing. In the end, they all look like creepy porcelain dolls or vampires that look dead but not scary-looking dead. His art looks otherworldly and draws people in, if I were to describe his art through other artists and arts from other mediums I would say he is a mixture of Tim Burton, Mean Girls, Sex Pistols, Gustav Klimt, and Buffy the Vampire Slayer. He gained many followers and even got noticed by Taylor Momsen the lead singer of Pretty Reckless which he has drawn many times. The band hired him to combine all the illustrations of Taylor Momsen that he made and animated them. For me the music video turned out to be the coolest thing in the 21st century ever, it suited the band’s tone of the music and their grungy reckless vibe. Also, Taylor Momsen in real life looks like a pretty but at the same time creepy porcelain doll so he is basically a walking/breathing Lucas David art.

Now, he has been doing more digital art rather than rough sketches or hand-drawn pieces. Recently he made an illustration of Megan Fox as Jennifer in Jennifer’s body. He illustrated one of the iconic scenes that Megan Fox turning into a monster/devil. It’s great to see that his art is becoming 3D and animated because as a fan I would like to be surrounded by those creepy-looking people and creepy-looking creatures. I would like to see a world that was created with his aesthetic and art it would be so interesting if he made a fantasy gothic world created by his art. Maybe in the future he would get more noticed and appreciated therefore the production companies would provide him everything he needs to create a world like that just like how he got noticed by Taylor Momsen and made an MV for them.

[yue-muffin]

Time Raiders (2016)

Part 1 || Part 2 || Part 3

In my quest to consume the entirety of the DMBJ franchise available in English, I have decided to start with the non-canon movie because at least this one has an ending, unlike the train wreck that is Reboot/Chongqi’s pacing. I will probably be bitter about that for all eternity, but I digress. I heard good things about the movie from the bird app, and as I am a Pingxie shipper at heart, I decided to finally watch this one.

P A R T O N E

The cut-in animation to the title was gorgeous, I do so love the qilin in every adaptation. It’s particularly striking here with the gold outline and geometric, maze-like lines. It looks like the cards at the very beginning were being arranged in the image of this qilin.

My first reaction upon seeing white people in a dmbj adaptation is: oh no, the English, but I was pleasantly surprised to hear perfect English that matches the actor’s lips! What a miracle, haha. I remember The Lost Tomb 2 being the worst for how many lines had to be in English, sob.

These look so cool. I see we start off with a good old “seeking immortality” antagonist, and an obsessed collector who has dedicated his whole life to this apparently. As usual, he is a scumbag threatening the locals.

The old guy’s accented English is also better than TLT2, ha. The breathy/nasal quality is not at all uncommon. I don’t know what language the locals speak though.

Me, immediately: Zhang Qiling already??

I know he appears in rather early in TLT1, TLT2, and Reboot/Chongqi, but he’s so often mysteriously absent or stuck behind a gate (or in Reboot’s case, put on a bus) that I got excited, ok.

My favorite Zhang Qilings are the cold-looking pretty boy types in terms of my mental image of the character, but this one is also very easy on the eyes and as usual, unfazed in the face of danger coming at him with a knife. This is the only series in which I’m not bothered by the constant cast change between adaptations (unlike Ever Night), I suppose since it’s been this way from the start.

I’m interested in seeing how the backstories differ from canon. It’s actually rather interesting that this is pretty much an official AU, like that’s kind of wild as a concept. I’m used to the late 1990s/early 2000s anime adding new characters and changing plot points and endings everywhere, but Time Raiders takes it a step further.

Zhang Qiling being an ultra-competent badass who doesn’t even need a weapon to take the bad guys down never changes, no matter the universe. He steamrolls everyone, no questions asked.

Did he- he break the blade with his bare hands hahaha. Oh, yup, and a Zhang Qiling with a weapon is even more dangerous. I see those severed fingers. Such a good fight scene and we’re not even 5 minutes into the movie.

I love how he could have simply fired the arrow while he was still on the statue, then jumped down, but he had to be Extra and fire while he was jumping off haha.

It- the divine piece was right there?? By “beneath the statue” I would have thought it would at least be under it, not in a convenient little slot on the side of the altar area haha. So Zhang Qiling’s mission is to destroy the divine piece(s)? To, um, save the world apparently.

WHO ARE YOU? What an excellent question to ask a Zhang Qiling (and that staring into the mirror shot, too.)… I wonder if this one even knows - it’s possible he doesn’t have his signature amnesia here.

Wait- a gate? I think it’s in a cave or something in the novels, but gates have significance in DMBJ. The cinematography is really nice in these mountain shots. I know nothing about film, but I like the shots in the snowy mountains.

This Zhang Qiling knows and practices martial arts on screen! You would think he’d pull some moves normally, but in the drama-adaptations he tends to just beat people up as efficiently as possible. Sometimes with his sword. Other times he just fights ‘em. I have to admit Jing Boran looks excellent going through some forms. He nailed the force and power underlying every movement, then exploding outward with a strike. I do like the impression it leaves.

I, on the other hand, am an absolute noodle and look ridiculous when I do martial arts.

What in the world is happening in this flashback scene with the weird CGI qilin. Ah, it’s when he received his tattoo. That was super dramatic.

Wushanju is looking real edgy with the heavy iron gate on the interior, haha.

He is puzzling (ha!) over those cards so intensely you’d think it was a thousand piece puzzle instead haha. You’re almost there! Just a few more to finish the qilin!

Aw, is this our Wu Xie? Haha his facial hair is- hm. But I love his voice it’s so soft. Really fits that “Mr. Naive” vibe.

Is that. Is that the author of the series. I found out that he makes cameos in almost all (if not all of) the adaptations!

NO. ONLY I CAN FINISH THE PUZZLE. HANDS OFF BUDDY.

Why are there so many pigeons in here. Who let them inside.

A writer, who came to hear his story and turn it into a novel- HA yup it’s the author.

“This should be a story about me and him.”

Ahh I’m loving it already. DMBJ is the ultimate bromance story. Fair warning, I do ship Pingxie so my shipper goggles will be on throughout the movie. But even without shipping, you do have to admit the series is a bromance underneath all the mystery – between the Iron Triangle, between Wu Xie and Xiaoge.

This Wu Xie is a photographer and that is sort of adorable. Already there’s a theme emerging of needing to record events and telling stories. Interesting that he wants to turn his memories into a novel to record his experiences, because otherwise he’s afraid those memories might turn into a mere story in his own head. Wu Xie, that’s a worrying mindset.

Those ancient mask things always make me crack up, I don’t know why.

Ooh, background about Wu Xie’s birth into the Wu family. I’ve never read up to the part in the books where they go into his place in the family in detail. To be fair, his grandfather had three sons and only one of them had any kids – and Wu Xie is his parents’ only child. So, he becomes the only one who can really carry on the family legacy. Aw, I really like seeing his extended family present though! In the dramas we only ever get either his Second or Third Uncle, and he rarely ever mentions his parents even though they’re alive.

And there’s his namesake! The origin of his nickname, and the irony once the story gets into the Sha Hai timeline.

Wu Xie was a bit of a rascal as a kid, haha. To be fair he has a pretty sharp tongue in the novels and is mostly a pure cinnamon roll in the early dramas.

Little Wu Xie in a suit is so adorable. Nooo kid don’t go into locked up abandoned places. He’s already so adventurous haha. Seems that it’s not actually abandoned judging by all the lights on, but.

UH. MASKED MAN BEHIND YOU. I think he wants that item back. This is why you don’t go into abandoned places, kid. He definitely does not learn his lesson though. Also why are you still holding onto that thing, just drop it, I think he wants it back.

Haha he kept one of the coins.

WOAH. Every month someone in your family dies?? That’s uh- sort of traumatic. Also that would be a really good first line for a novel…Just saying. I do love the singing though.

Oh, the Nine Families exist in this universe too! They even give a quick explanation about the ranking system.

Oh yeah, I love how Wu Xie is such a nerd for all this knowledge of ancient texts and tombs. And YES HE FINALLY DOCUMENTS STUFF FOR ONCE.

Uncle Three looked dead for a moment there, scared the shit out of me too.

VAMPIRE MOTHS? Oh I hate bugs I would not be okay lol. WHOOPS. You guys are really good at reading ancient texts on the fly lol.

That’s the mask he has in the beginning of the film, isn’t it. NO DON’T TOUCH THINGS IN TOMBS. AHHH. So you just put it on your face?? Well that was a stupidly simple way to open the door. I’m guessing the creator didn’t care if anyone opened it.

This guy just severed his own arm, ok…and how many years later is his hand still clinging to it? UH. THIS IS WHY YOU DON’T TOUCH THINGS IN TOMBS. Then he proceeds to steal the box thing.

Ah the white dude again. I am so happy there is GOOD ENGLISH though haha.

Oh, hi Zhang Qiling. Just hanging out on a rooftop I see.

He looks so melancholy. Someone give him a hug! This adaptation makes him more human, less stoic robotic superhuman, I noticed. You rarely see him eat or drink anything in the other adaptations, but here he’s just chilling on a rooftop having some drinks haha. It’s ok. I love all the Zhang Qilings.

WHAT THE HELL, LIGHTNING? What the hell is this high tech machinery haha. Eight days? Coincidentally eight days after sitting in a tomb for how many years.

That is a very Extra bookcase to hold a book that apparently has ALL the secrets.

WOW that is a fancy notebook. It looks so beat up in the other versions haha. In this one, it even gets its own hidden shelf in a giant portable bookshelf!

The props for this franchise are so cool and detailed. I always wish they would show more of the creative process in the BTS, I’m such a nerd for that stuff. The Longest Day in Chang’an was pretty good at that, which is half of my enjoyment of that show haha!

I’m also still pleasantly surprised they bothered to incorporate other languages. I’m not sure what the Snake Lady and the old man in the beginning were speaking, but at least the English is good.

I can’t believe they worked in a steampunk chastity belt this movie went all out, huh. Also with these weirdly high tech structures and lightning and moving tomb structures.

And all the pieces start coming together! So that’s why it’s believed they hold the secret to immortality. What a steampunk-looking key.

Is that a writing desk??

Oh, they’re getting a team together to go tomb raiding! Ha, forget money! You may or may not end up dying on this adventure, so who cares about money, right.

He’s so cute standing there with his camera. Look at the little smile as he watches everything going on!

It’s a desk and a storage container?? Oh, there are ~qualifications~ to going on tomb raiding. Makes sense. That is the oddest looking sword.

Must appreciate Zhang Qiling’s fingers in every adaptation. They look very strong and steady here. Let’s not talk about the slooow trailing across the handle.

Wow did you really just throw sand in his face. Have we not learned not to mess with Zhang Qiling after he trounced that first guy who attacked him. I love the fight scenes so much after the bore-fest that was Reboot/Chongqi’s second half of Season 1.

Super pretty, but why did it cause him to stop and stare in the middle of the fight?

This is like a Final Fantasy sword haha. Also I think you should stop while you’re ahead, why did you think a table would stop this dude. (Hey, it’s Da Kui! He was in the novel but not TLT1.).

It’s HERE. Their first meeting. How did he know the coin was on that cord? It wasn’t visible, I don’t think. But uh. That was a hilarious move on his part, he is so Extra?? He just casually flicks the necklace off with his big-ass sword and it drops into his hand. Then casually goes “oh, here, you dropped this” as if he wasn’t the one responsible for it coming off in the first place!!

HERE IT COMES. The unnecessarily long eye contact. Pingxie in every adaptation needs a Staring Into Your Eyes scene.

Real smooth.

Ahh this Wu Xie is such a cutie. He’s like a puppy.

WHAT. Third Uncle, I can’t believe you let him tag along so easily haha. In the beginning he was scolding Wu Xie to never get involved in tomb business, then what happens? They’re going tomb raiding!!

Next Up: to the tomb we go! This can’t end badly or anything what are you talking about.

[qsdblogging]

Why It Makes Sense: The Whedonverse Theory

When people say Joss Whedon, my first thought has always been Buffy the Vampire Slayer (followed by Angel, obviously), Firefly (and Serenity), and The Cabin in the Woods. After those, it’s up in the air if I remember his input as director of the 2012 film, The Avengers. But, that one isn’t included in this theory.

Growing up on Whedon’s creations (courtesy of my dad), I got invested in the stories he told.

Now, this theory (for me, at least) surfaced in 2015 and I liked the idea of it. It’s summarized in a format through pictures, the year, and what happen during that year to follow the timeline of this theory.

If you aren’t aware of it, continue on reading, or if you are and just want to see if a fresh pair of eyes has anything new to offer in regards to a fan-favored theory, continue on.

But, fair warning, this is going to include spoilers if you haven’t watched any of the listed shows and movies.

This theory essentially starts off with Whedon’s works: Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel, as it is it’s spin-off series. As it takes places the earliest amongst the bunch, in the late 1990’s and early 2000's.

Buffy’s lore is the main focus of the thoery as the biggest point of all refers to active Slayers (and the Potentials, before they were activated for the most part). In the last season of Buffy, they round up any Potentials and in the final fight, get their Slayer abilities activated to turn the tide of the fight in their favor.

It broke the tradition (AKA, the magic behind it all) that the Slayer line followed. One died, a new emerged with the powers and got thrust into a world they didn’t, most likely, know about with a giant burden to bare.

Buffy, having died twice and come back both times, kept her abilities and instead of one Slayer, there were two. First, Kendra, who later got killed after meeting Buffy. When Kendra died, as she was the current activated Slayer, Faith emerged. So, when Buffy died the second time around while still being a Slayer, it didn’t cause another to emerge as she wasn’t the latest activated. Make sense?

But a while later, after all the Slayers were activated, Angel ran into his own amount of issues that had been piling up in Los Angeles.

During Angel’s final season, which is just around a year later after Buffy’s show came to a close, Wolf Ram and Heart defeated and destroyed the Circle of the Black Thorn. This causes a lot of destruction in the process and Angel’s series finale ends with those left standing ready to die fighting whatever is coming their way (including a dragon, apparently).

According to the theory, this event esstentially kickstarts the awakening of the Senior Partners. Hoping to appease them and prevent an apocalypse, The Initiative, a group Buffy deals with during her fourth season, began to give sacrifices.

That leads us to the events of The Cabin in the Woods, which takes place in 2012, barely even a decade after the events of Buffy and Angel.

A ragtag group of misfits who think they’re just taking a small trip to Curt’s cousin’s (who may or may not exist) cabin in the woods. Once there, find a few odd things and a lot of weird and strange items littering the basement of the cabin.

It’s a suspenseful scene to watch, as you get the feeling it’s what is going to make things go sideways for the group and eventually, as everyone is playing with their own chosen objects, Dana reads from a notebook and doesn’t realize the consequences the group will face from doing so.

The Buckner family, an undead redneck family, attacks the group later on in the night.

In the Initiative, who is watching everything go down on the cameras, is hoping it’ll work out for the best as they are the last chance of appeasing the Senior Partners. All of their other locations have failed in their tasks for the year of sacrificing a group.

The group members who are left, in efforts to save themselves, try leaving and run into a wall. Literally. As the movie goes on, you learn that this branch of the organization follows the five person sacrifice that most horror and thriller films seem to follow.

The Whore dies first, followed by the Jock, then the Brains. The Fool is assumed dead this time around, but we learn that this movie’s fool isn’t quite dead. The last death, the Virgin, is optional as long as she (or he) is the last to go.

Dana, the coined Virgin, is saved by Marty, the presumed dead fool. He brings her to what he found to be an elevator that the Buckner Family had crawled out of. They find themselves amongst many other elevator cages, filled with monsters and creatures alike.

It’s Dana that realizes they picked their own fate down in the basement.

Eventually those in the Initiative find the cage the two are in and try to bring them around to kill them (but, Marty has to go first). However, the two are a force to be reckoned with as they take advantage of the severed arm of a Buckner member attacking the guard and find their way into the control station for the cages.

They press a button that releases all of the creatures and monsters in their cages on the security team sent after the two remaining sacrifices. After a while of bloodshed, the two make their way around the base in hopes of finding a way out.

Along their way, they find themselves in the sacrifice room, where the Director at the time, meets them. A lot of arguing and explanations, followed by a betrayal here and there, ultimately ends with Dana and Marty saying screw it all and refusing to finish the sacrifice as the Director planned.

With sacrifices unfinished, the movie ends with the Senior Partners being unleased on the world.

But of course, that didn’t mean there was no way the Initiative ever planned for something like this, right?

Well, the Initiative planned for something like this to possibily happen because you always need to plan for the worst.

Some of humanity manages to escape the destruction on Earth that was and formed the Alliance (with heavy influences from the Initiative, we should assume).

Which brings us to the events of Firefly and Serenity.

Hundreds of years have passed before a child is born. You wouldn’t think anything of it, children are born all the time. However, the remaining remnants of the Initiative inside of the Alliance recognize her for what she is.

A Slayer. Or, at least, a Potential.

River Tam is lured into a school that is meant to challenge her intellect, but according to the theory, the experiments they held on River were attempts to trigger her Slayer abilities.

After her brother, Simon, manages to get her out after a letter in code telling him they were hurting her, the two find themselves on Serenity, a Firefly class spaceship run by essentially, space cowboys. Now, a string of events in the first episode lead to the crew deciding to go on the run and reluctantly keeping Simon and River on board.

But, as the two siblings stay on for longer then Mal had planned and originally wanted them on for, attachments are formed and the need to do the right thing takes over.

The first, and only, season of Firefly gets cut short (and aired out of order, but that’s a whole other thing) and there’s a lot of loose ends that didn’t get tied up.

With one last chance to tie things up, Whedon puts out Serenity, the movie surrounding the crew’s adventure on figuring out what exactly River knew that the Alliance didn’t want her to know.

Originally, River and Simon were meant to leave the crew in the beginning of the film, but some things lead to another and a few extra details are revealed. The crew was made well aware of River’s uncanny ability to shoot a gun without even looking at her targets, but watching her fight and take down multiple people bigger than her was a strange occurence, I’m sure.

It’s the first moment you see her supposed Slayer abilities.

By the end of the movie, things are revealed, some deaths happen to beloved characters, River has finally tapped into her Potential and is an active Slayer, and you get an explanation of who and what exactly Reavers are.

But, for this theory, it’s been mentioned that maybe the Reavers are simply Vampires who managed to get aboard the escape from Earth after the rise of the Senior Partners, and driven to extremes in order to survive in space themselves.

A Slayer had been born again, restarting the Slayer cycle, and there was a chance that things could go back to how they used to be.

Not sure how it would happen, but the basics of the theory make sense. Obviously there are specifics that are harder to include and most likely make sense of in regards to all of this, but in the grand gist of it all, it makes sense.

It’s a fun little theory that can connect multiple works made by one person.

Now, obviously this wasn’t a shortened version of the theory. And there have been some portions of the theory put into question, especially in regards to some of Whedon’s other works.

Dollhouse, Fray as a character in the comics, and The Avengers.

Personally, I don’t include the Avengers in this. It’s Marvel and Whedon was the director of the film for it, but I don’t see it fitting in with this particular theory in any way. People have included it (mostly S.H.I.E.L.D being with the Initiative became, but it just doesn’t make any sense to me given Marvel as it’s own identity), but I prefer not to.

As for Dollhouse, I never actually watched the show. My dad did, but I was too young at the time to be allowed to watch it and I was just never interested in it. Maybe one day I’ll get around to it, but this meant I had to do a little bit of digging to understand this a bit more.

For most of the takes on this theory that have mention the show, mention it may just take place in the parallel universe. They, as in parallel universes, were confirmed to exist in Buffy, Angel, and the comics that continue after them, it’s a plausible theory.

This also means that this theory could follow a majority of the canon information from the shows, films, and comics mentioned, before dividing into it’s own events. It simply means that some things that were difficult to explain in specifics may just be different in this theory’s parallel universe.

So, Dollhouse could take place in the same universe, but events could have differed greatly by universe. We don’t know for sure.

That, in all, also explains the comic series by Whedon surrounding Melaka Fray, a Slayer from a future timeline where things are a little post-apocalyptic on Earth. Monsters run amock and eventually, Fray emerges. Now, it could mean there’s a parallel world where the Avengers and Buffy take place in the same world, but I still don’t like that idea, so I ignore it.

Parallel universes are just a lot of fun to imagine, and in worlds like these, could mean a lot in the grand scheme of it all.

[vitosscaletta]

>:) Personality + Background for Helena, Basics + Appearance for Erin

YES thank u... vampire time

Helena

PERSONALITY

What’s their alignment?

Probably neutral good ehehehe

What are their hobbies and interests? Do they have any particular “favorites” (food, books, and so on)?

Her number one passion is acting, it’s not really a hobby since she does it professionally (or is trying to lol).. She enjoys learning history though, especially the mid-18th century :^) Also music, corny movies, she’s also a huge sims fan >:)

As for her favorites uhhh her favorite band is My Chemical Romance DUH, fav movies are Shakespeare in Love, Valley of The Dolls (yeah ik it sucks),... Shark Tale.... aaaaand her favorite food is fries. Or it was, she can’t eat it anymore :(

What are they bad at?

Within the game’s mechanics and all that.. she’s not much good in a fight (thank u faelike background). She’s still significantly stronger than the average human of course, but very fragile for vampire standarts :/ Noodle arms bitch

Do they have any vices/addictions/mental illnesses?

None that I can think of

What are their goals and motivations?

Before her embrace it was to become a famous actress.. which isn’t possible anymore, she’s still craving that kind of lifestyle though. She grew up not being very well off and not being very popular either, so it’s kinda... wanting to be someone important? Like that Will Smith fish from shark tale :)

What are their manners like? Any habits?

She’s rather well-mannered, not exactly posh but she doesn’t do anything weird in public either.. usually.

What are they most afraid of?

irrelevance... something like that :/

BACKGROUND

Where were they born? What was their childhood like?

She’s originally from San Francisco, grew up with a single mom and her younger sister. They weren’t very well off so her mom had to work a lot, it was pretty much just her and her sister :/ She wasn’t very popular either so she made only few friends in school, it was lonely :(

What’s their family like?

Her mom Jenny is a nice lady, very goal-oriented.. she was very popular in high school, which is how she met Helena’s dad. He’s originally from germany and comes from a long line of vampire hunters and religious zealots (Society of Leopold hoes..), doesn’t really know anything about it though. His family are just a bunch of weird catholics. They had two children, miss Helena & her little Sister, Elizabeth before he divorced his wife and fucked off 👋. He cut off all contact and doesn’t pay child support bc he’s a freak. Also Elizabeth is currently studying law somewhere, their mother insisted they make something of themselves >:(

What factions or organizations are they a part of? What ranks and titles do they hold?

She’s with the camarilla, mostly due to the fact that Christian is in it too. She came to them all starry-eyed because the other members were all sexy, powerful and rich vampires which is pretty much what she wants to be like lmao.. She works directly for Lacroix, kinda like the fledgling except with better pay, slightly less shitty jobs and a tiny bit more respect (only a tiny bit everyone still thinks she’s dumb af). She just has to run small errants lol. There’s no official rank or title though lol.

She’s not really loyal to them or anything and quickly becomes disillusioned by it all. Vampire society is fucked up... she kinda starts spending more time with the Hollywood anarchs because toreador solidarity, doesn’t join their cause though. The anarchs can’t stand her lmao. She’s really mostly independent...

How do they fit into their “story”?

She’s just your good ol’ regular La Croy foundations employee, she was initially my fledgling but I don’t want Christian (her sire) to die, I suppose she’s just like.. there.. idk its kind of a wip

Where do they currently live? What’s their place like?

She has that little apartment in downtown LA during the events of bloodlines :^) It’s a nice place, modern interior and all that... she does miss her old apartment with the victorian furniture though :(( Post bloodlines she probably leaves LA after the whole thing with Lacrosse lol... she’s friends with Ash now they can go on a road trip or something

How do they eventually die?

she doesn’t... shes a vampire >:)

Erin

BASICS

What’s their full name?

Cassandra Erin Winters :~)

What does their name mean? Why were they named that?

Cassandra (from greek “to excel, to shine “) is a little nod to the seer Cassandra, who appears somewhere in her bloodline :^) In-universe it’s one of those names that appear throughout her family.. there are a bunch of important great-grandmothers, aunts and other relatives so her parents named her that to make it look like they’re an important dynasty or something. Rich people bs. Erin is an english derivative of the irish word for.. Ireland lmao. It was just one of those names that were popular in the early 80′s and her mother liked it, there’s no real reason behind it!

Do they have any nicknames?

jhdfjhfd Cammy by Damsel even though she helped them out 😒 also “Newbie” by her bf sdkjskjdf romance ❤

How old are they?

22 in 2004, I suppose she’s 37 in 2020 aka during the events of bloodlines 2

When’s their birthday?

December 13th, 1982

What’s their zodiac sign/element/birthstone/etc.? Do they believe that holds any significance?

I had to take a whole quiz for this but she’s a Sagittarius 😌 I’d say it definitely does lol... she reads her horoscope almost daily

What’s their species/subspecies? Do they have any special/magical abilities?

Vampire lol... specifically of clan Malkavikan. As for magical abilities yknow, typical vampire stuff, plus the voices & Malkavian insight and all that. Her abilities are Auspex and Obfuscate :^)

What “class” do they belong to (for fantasy characters)? If none, what weapon do they favor?

No class but her favorite weapon was the axe she found in the haunted hotel

APPEARANCE

What do they look like?

goddd.... small, pretty blonde, pale skin bc she’s dead, yellow-ish eyes (used to be blue)... big eyes, sliightly overplucked eyebrows bc it’s 2004 :( she’s still cute though

Do they have a face claim?

Mostly Bella Heathcote and Christina Ricci in one image I found on pinterest lol.. I never have faceclaims that are 100% what they look like :(

What’s their style like? Clothes, hair, makeup?

goddd jt was pretty much regular late 90s/early 2000s popular girl before her embrace.. short skirts, juicy tracksuits, tube tops, those awful tinted glasses, coats with fake fur. Her hair was often in those late 90′s updos with a few streaks hanging loose in the front... makeup is just regular looks from the time, lipgloss, frosty eyeshadow and all that 🤢 she’s a big fan of turtleneck sweaters though 😌

It’s still the same but a bit more fucked up post-embrace because she’s just like go crazy aaahh go stupid aaahhh and digs out some of her weirder clothes because half of these vampire bitches wear dumber clothes than her anyway... an old white lace dress that looks like it’s from the early 1900s or something like that... her standard outfits are still low-rise jeans with tank tops and those giant early 2000s shoes though, she just adds in a few weird looking clothes for fun sometimes

How do they carry themselves? What’s their default expression?

Honestly she looks like this emoji 😳 most of the time, Malkavian voices, weird doomsday visions and all that... She had a very cheerful attitude before her embrace and it still shows sometimes, most of the time it’s kinda weird though :(

Do they have any physical ailments or disabilities?

nope!

[aion-rsa]

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

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

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

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

Here’s what we found…

Sitcom Influences

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Agatha Harkness

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Because comics!

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

The Scarlet Witch

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Vision

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

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

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

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

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

The Stark Bomb

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Westview

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

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

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

Fake Pietro

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

The Post-Credits Scene and White Vision

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

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

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

We wrote more about that post-credits scene here.

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

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

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[popculture-etc]

Kenny Rogers, Adam Schlesinger,...coping with 2020

Worst year ever although there were some good.

It’s too early yet for me to do a quick look back on what 2020 is like here as we’re only going to be in the first of December tomorrow (it’s Nov 30 here) but I just have to as two losses this year broke me. Kind of, well, especially the second one.

You see, before East Asian pop, Jpop and Kpop, Western pop culture was my thing. It still is and this pandemic has made me go back to that recently starting with...the Beach Boys (their westcoast sound caught me, hook, line, and sinker and I wasn’t very fond of the Beatles to begin with...to be completely honest) I’m currently chillin’ to right now, as I write this post. I’m really weak to the westcoast sound. Beach sound/s in general, rather. I’m a big fan of the beach where nature goes, for one. Since some time, a few years ago, deep chill and tropical house music has been my go-to when I want to chill or calm myself down after an outburst of sorts and I put them on when I just feel meh, especially on Fridays. When I dream of being by the sea, the beach or in some island on my own. I live in a country with a lot of beaches and the Visayas here is basically island region Philippines, lol. Like most people, I listen to music according to mood just like the way I dress according to mood. And...it’s no wonder, really that I’m so into the Beach Boys now. RIP the Beatles. My dad played some songs of theirs on the guitar or so but the hold they have on me waned later on and I just think now how overrated they were back then. They did have good songs but when talking of good music, as in really good that it retains the same sound style or so, it’s the Beach Boys for me. Brian Wilson is the man despite his issues and personal struggles.

Anyway, we’re going quickly off tangent. I’ll save the Beach Boys fangirling for another day. lol.

I grew up with western pop culture rife all around me thanks to my American, cowboy country and folk music listening dad, my Carpenters-loving mom and then, college-aged aunts who’d made me see the Titanic film more than my fingers could count---the third is clearly an exaggeration but well...some of it is true and they were why I got into American films like Pretty Woman (we have this in good ol’ VHS in our family home, my grandparents’ in Jasaan), Mannequin, Ghost etc. in the late 80s, coming into the early 90s. So, tired of all the kdrama and uninteresting kvariety shows on tvn and the rebranded local channel, Kapamilya (long story for what we formerly know as ABS-CBN, the nation’s a mess right now and our gov’t’s just...ick!), I’d retreated to my cave and got into old tv shows I’d watched as a kid instead like Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Charmed and it’s been, well, moving on from there. I’m checking out Twin Peaks later. I’ve been watching old Hollywood films too. Some revisits on this include: Casablanca, Gone With The Wind, and especially A Streetcar Named Desire will always and forever be my favorite. Very young and cute and good looking Marlon Brando, ugh. I have some others in the stash which include Bonnie and Clyde I’ll be getting into much, much later, maybe over the weekends and holidays. In sum, I have a long history with western pop culture, especially America’s, more than I have with Japan’s and South Korea’s. The latter being very, very recent so it doesn’t really compare as much.

Let’s get right down to it...

So 2020 had us lose Kenny Rogers to natural causes on March 20 in a hospice and after, Adam Schlesinger to COVID 19 complications on April 1. I know the latter as the songwriter of The Wonders’ That Thing You Do from the film sharing the same song title. I know Kenny Rogers well because my dad listens to him over and over in the car. In pretty much the same way, I know the words to Islands in the Stream by heart and I accept and revere it as one of the best, if not THE BEST country-pop duet songs of all time between Kenny and Dolly Parton...as far as country and pop music in the US of A’re concerned, of course. Miley and Shawn Mendez’s cover of it I’d seen recently was alright but nothing still beats the OG one, as always. With music, it’s just, really always the case.

Kenny departing from us March this year was alright. He was well cared for in a hospice and at the right age too, to leave us and this mess of a world behind for the afterlife. Sounds grim but not really. Heh. He died of natural causes so we know he was at peace and accepted then that his time has come. Fans and long-time listeners of his should also be at peace with this knowledge. I don’t consider myself a fan but since he’s been around so much because my dad plays his songs in the car often, I’m the same. I’ve accepted his passing away early this year. He’s lived his life well and given us good music to listen to should we like to remember him and his works and celebrate his life and legacy doing so.

Schlesinger’s case was way worse because, well, COVID 19. And it’s well...I guess we all saw it coming, me included, that I’d just learned, watching the one of many national English news on ANC that ‘pandemic’ is the word of the year according to Merriam-Webster. Timely, huh? Yep. Predictable, really. Sarcasm noted here.

So if someone ever asks what 2020 was about, we only have to say that according to Merriam-Webster, it’s the global (COVID 19) pandemic. Short, not-so-sweet, succinct, and grim. Yep.

This one, Schlesinger’s case, is something I still find difficult to accept. He was only 52 years old! He was at the prime of his life and had some projects still he was working on at the time of his passing so WHY?! I suppose that’s all of us who followed him and his extensive work on tv, film, the stage and his own band, Fountains of Wayne when we heard news he’s passed away due to COVID 19 complications. It’s definitely me now though I learned of it late. Heh.

To cope with the sadness of losing Schlesinger, gone too soon at 52 years old and with an impressive Hollywood tv, stage, film resume to his name since and his own band’s, Fountains of Wayne (FoW) really good discography, by the way, I’ve been listening to FoW’s Welcome Interstate Managers---all of the contents of said album/record---and That Thing You Do’s OST with the Beach Boys’ Sounds of Summer Best of in between. My favorite song on Welcome Interstate Managers is the sarcastic take on real life as an everyday worker in sales, Bright Future in Sales. As much as I like chill sounds where music goes, I like me some music with lyrics jolting us back to grim reality in much the same way I like films (indies, mostly, or lesser known short and full-length ones) that tackle social issues not frequently discussed in public or so but we are aware are there, still plaguing much of today’s society. I live for cynical, satirical, ironic, and even hyperbolic stuff about real life actually. It may be why I’m so entrenched and attached to the era where we all hated ourselves---the 90s. Although one would say much of that sentiment or feeling did carry itself to the 2000s, though. I don’t know about you, but until now, I still hate or have heavy dislike for myself and everything else around me, especially our gov’t or current admin here in the Philippines, and people in general so I don’t think it ever really goes away. And going off tangent again for the nth time today.

Anyway, my 1996 was That Thing You Do on HBO in our household...on and off along with other 90s films like The Craft, Clueless, Jawbreakers (I think this still plays in Cinemax from time to time) so of course losing Schlesinger also was...rather, is hard. He’s done so much and he was supposed to be working on more and he’s left such a deep mark here for us, avid fans of American pop culture...I suppose, even the casual ones. Aside from his That Thing You Do, I’d also seen Josie and the Pussycats at some point. I don’t remember when, where...though I did watch some episodes of the cartoon on Cartoon Network (CN) so of course, I’m pretty sure I’ve seen the film of it as well. He worked on a track or some tracks there, too. 

2020 sucks. COVID 19 sucks. This global pandemic sucks. But at least there’re films, tv shows, music, stage musical plays turned movies (Jonathan Larson’s Tick, Tick...Boom! is coming to us soon with Andrew Garfield in the lead---I’m wary of Garfield being a forgettable actor since The Amazing Spider Man because Dane Dehaan was what made that for me, to be quite honest so I’m not so sure of him being Jon here and as a self-respecting Larson fan since Rent, I’d rather they casted Neil Patrick Harris/NPH since he was in the London stage for this way back anyway...) to keep us entertained and fine until then. What would it take for ‘rona, and I’m not talking about the American Corona beer here that’s really popular in the west coast, to go away? I, like the rest of you in self isolation or quarantine, tend to think so but I don’t think we’ll have any answer to that until the vaccines are well underway by spring next year. Or at least, that’s what health authorities and scientists tell us anyway. I get reminded of it often in the news and I only tune in to that once in a while now because even that, following that daily, breaks my mental faculties down due to stress and pressure and all and I can’t have that when I still have so much, at the back of my mind, to do.

But anyway, time to conclude this one with one of my favorite The Wonders songs, All My Only Dreams just to end on a good note, better than the last paragraph’s ending at least and to remember Schlesinger as well that we’d lost this year along with plenty others we’d met in passing who’ve also left this world especially due to COVID 19 complications. I know we know a lot of those. For me, it’s a distant relative or family member I’d known since young but don’t have particular fluffy bunny feelings for because of some things that happened between the guy and me growing up in the NCR/Caloocan City to be exact. There’s also my good friend and former co-worker’s only remaining parent, her dad and a few more, I’m sure. So I hope 2021 would be better but I doubt it...very much. It’s still looking pretty dim, grim and bleak from here, where I’m currently standing in 2020.

Before we really end though, COVID 19 is definitely not a hoax. It hasn’t been since the first cases started in Wuhan, China. It’s just, only been getting worse and still continue to claim lives and spread to more people even those at home. So as someone who comes from a household of mostly medical workers or health care workers here, we should really be very careful about and around it. Let’s take the necessary health protocols seriously like wearing a mask out and maybe the face shield too and always keeping the sanitizers, alcohols in our bags among others---hygiene and sanitation, disinfection. It may come off really anal of me and I am not anal (I don’t like people with Type A personalities in the first place, lol...I’m just a very cautious Virgo, really, and a Type X---mix of Type C and D personalities) but seriously, SERIOUSLY, I can’t stress this enough, COVID 19, the virus SARS-COV2, that causes it is real. Very real and once it’s in your system, it can go the fatal, deadly way or just the mild and you’ll recover later anyway way. It’s not picking which people should die next and which should not, really. It’s really just there making a mess of things that are already messy since the beginning. My point being, it’s just better if we don’t spread it or are careful enough not to contract it with following health protocols set by health experts, scientists to help us get by this...pandemic. 

Well here’s to 2020 being over soon and 2021 creeping in on us soon enough. 

P.S.

Billie Armstrong of Greenday upped a cover of That Thing You Do as a tribute to Adam and the youtube live of the Wonders coming together again to pay tribute to and celebrate Adam’s life may still be up on the ‘tube. I have yet to see the latter but enjoyed the former. They are just so...sweet and precious. Ugh. Adam Schlesinger, gone too soon indeed. :(

PPS

Another songwriter/contributor in the TTYD OST passed away last year, too. Rick Elias. Cause of death is brain cancer. I had a friend from college, young and so full of life and dreams, who passed away due to the same thing so I’m kind of aware how this goes. Ugh. Cancer sucks. All of these are just so...sad. Depressing, actually.