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[fieldghoul]

Chapter 21: Is Someone Feeling Psalty?

Look at th-the mic shit he's doing! The uh-hu-wuh-hu-woo! That's my stuff!

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I finally got my answer, thanks to the Skeletour VIP website!

It is actually… old Papa Nihil.

It is deeply inexplicable why Papa Nihil would be on the label for a bootleg from 2014, but I respect the nonsense of it all.

One easter-egg prop I can't fully figure out...

There are a custom-made props that actually get close-ups, like the various VHS tapes, but while everyone else was thirsting over Papa kicking his legs I was laser-focused on a small cluster of pixels on-screen for ~5 seconds.

Screenshotting + rotating + tracing the letters I can see in green, it looks like a book that says "AUSTRALIAN TOUR" (the rest of the word "Tour" is kind of visible actually watching the video, but doesn't screenshot well).

Correcting the perspective somewhat... are those pixelated blobs young Papa Nihil?

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Well, look at that! Papa IV's Rite Here, Rite Now vanity is part of the Skeletour Veneration of Relics, and an official photo has been uploaded to the website.

So now I have clear photos of all of the stuff I'd already IDed from blurry screenshots in past posts -- Kevin's book, the Cup O' Crazy candy and diecast car from Sister's desk, Papa IV's teacup, miscellaneous dollar store cosmetics (and the balloon weight is peeking out in the bottom right corner)!

So it turns out I could have saved myself a lot of time googling if I'd just waited 9 months for clear pictures -- but I am excessively pleased with the confirmation that I did correctly ID the tea tree oil from the back of the bottle.

Newly visible are two eyeshadow palettes from L.A. Colors (available at Dollar Tree), for those desperate to emulate Papa's look. The Black/Silver/White could by the "Lily" or "Moonflower" palettes, hard to say. The 12-color palette is "Trendy".

Though partly obscured by the beauty blender jar in this photo, I cross-referenced some fan photos and it would appear that Frater's preferred Tic Tac flavor is Strawberry & Cream.

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Ministry Office Tech Roundup

Oh boy! Oh boy!! New filming location means new set dressing and new technology to identify!! All of the following is from Chapter 20: Arrival of a Secret Agent.

For starters, the phones on the desk are the NEC DT330 in the 32-button layout option, sold c. 2010

(I cannot find photos of the 32 button DT330 in woodgrain but they sold it! Trust me! I found the 2010 BTB sales catalogue!)

Our dedicated clergy member has her papers stacked on top of an HP Pavilion DV7-6163CL, sold c. 2012

Judith's desk has a Casio Memory B-1 calculator, produced c. 1978

Frater's absurd battlestation consists of:

NEC Cromaclear P500 Monitor, c. 1996

Perix Perimice-209 Mouse, c. 2017

Generic RGB Gaming Keyboard, c. 2020

(I think it gets rebadged under multiple brand names -- the reference photo is from "KUIYN" and the the keyboard has used different keycaps over the years.)

Of course a monitor is useless without a computer, so everything is powered by a laptop under the table. It appears to be an HP laptop, something along the lines of a 14inch HP Stream c. 2020 onwards.

[fieldghoul]

Chapter 20: Arrival of a Secret Agent

Chapter 20 was filmed in London at the Rococo Manor, a commercial filming locale used for a number of other productions.

I was hoping to get a better look at the weird portraits on the wall in the stairwell (not for lore reasons or anything, they just seemed stylistically intriguing with the rest of the house), but those were apparently added after the listing photos were taken.

(an edit to add a reddit user found another listing for the location, where one of the weird paintings is visible, partly satisfying my curiosity)

[fieldghoul]

Chapter 20: Arrival of a Secret Agent

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Chapter 19: What Video?

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Papa IV is a Dollar Tree diva:

Many of the items on Papa's dressing room vanity appear be Dollar Tree purchases.

On the left:

Skin Nutrition Botanicals Tea Tree Oil & Salicylic Acid Balancing Face Wash

Wet Line Super Look Extreme Hold Styling Gel

Softee Coconut Oil Hair & Scalp Conditioner

The pink-tipped white makeup brush is some Wet N Wild brush.

On the right:

Sassy+Chic Plastic Dispensers with Pumps

B.Pure Moisturizing lotion (the back of the bottle is facing the camera)

Multicolored Balloon Weights

The moisturizer is what tipped me off -- that's Dollar Tree store brand.

[fieldghoul]

Chapter 18: What a Fiasco!

[fieldghoul]

Chapter 18: What a Fiasco!

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Rite Here Rite Now, Mummy Dust

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Rite Here Rite Now, If You Have Ghosts

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Rite Here Rite Now, Year Zero

Since fate of man is equal To the fate of lice

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Rite Here Rite Now, Faith

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Rite Here Rite Now, Year Zero, Watcher in the Sky -> If You Have Ghosts interlude

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I happened to read this interview where Alex Ross Perry (co-director of Rite Here Rite Now) was talking about his Videoheaven and Pavements projects, and this quote jumped out at me:

Cinema Scope: There’s a line that keeps popping up in Videoheaven: “The movies talk about themselves.” I like this a lot, and it’s interesting that a filmmaker like Brian De Palma was ahead of the curve in assessing the symbolic or semiotic potency of the video-store space, whereas later on it served mostly as a backdrop for romantic comedies. It was a way to hint that the characters had inner lives, and taste, but rarely to the point where they genuinely talk about movies. It’s like a weird uncanny-valley thing: I remember always wondering what the characters on Friends would say about La Dolce Vita (1961), the poster for which is hanging in Monica’s apartment, or if the version of Die Hard (1988) they rented had actual profanity in it…  Alex Ross Perry: Well, this is something that only people like us would ever think about. If they rent Die Hard on Friends, but then Bruce Willis appears in a later season as Ross’ girlfriend’s father, in this world, is there simply a guy who looks like Willis and has his mannerisms, and so on? And has he ever seen Die Hard? This question is of course made text in Last Action Hero (1993), with the Stallone Terminator 2 (1991) gag. To say nothing of the now well-known and HD-enhanced fact that on Seinfeld, Jerry owns Child’s Play 2 (1991) and Arachnophobia (1990) on VHS, along with Pretty Woman (1990), which stars Jason Alexander…I’m reading too much into all this, but so would a De Palma character. 

(For some broader context -- Videoheaven is an as-yet unreleased documentary about video stores, particularly as they're featured in film.)

But it made me think, it's funny, isn't it -- the VHS tapes in Rite Here Rite Now.

Some of them are vague -- for the two box sets next to the TV, the top one has a logo that was used for Prequelle Exalted version, and the bottom is the logo for either Impera (possibly Phantomime, it's hard to tell which with the color grading in the movie). I don't think anybody has definitively figured out what Ghost In the Trees means, but Haze Over North America Tour 2013 was a real tour that happened, but no audio or video of it was ever released (at least, not in our universe).

On the table, we have one more box set with the If You Have Ghosts logo and art, and we see tapes of the Chapters videos. New Blood, Tax Season and Meanwhile in Dublin, are shown up close, plus Nap Time is on the desk in front of Sister Imperator.

The fact that the Chapters exist on VHS is what's so weird. There's really no way to reconcile the existence of these tapes in the Ghost universe with the way most people would have understood the Chapters up until now. I think the default interpretation of a piece of fiction is that it is true in its own reality -- i.e. in the universe where Cardinal Copia is himself, and not Tobias Forge in a mask, the Chapters are something that actually happened. It's much weirder to see it it as some kind of meta-fiction, where it's a scripted production put together and released by these fictional characters. But Rite Here Rite Now is a movie about Copia and Sister Imperator and Papa Nihil and not the actors that play them - how could the chapters possibly co-exist with the characters in-universe?

I always think that's a fun part of Ghost -- the veil between the universe of Ghost's lore and reality is often so thin. They come out to play in our world in the form of concerts, and it's not quite like meeting Mickey Mouse in Disney World where the costumed character's experiences have no bearing on the canon. The real life shows Ghost performs add to the counter Papa Nihil is keeping for Copia. The accolades that they allude to in the Chapters - the Grammy, the gold certification for Mary On A Cross, TikTok virality - all happen in real life.

For the record, I don't think we're meant to explain the tapes in RHRN, for the record -- my interpretation it is just a nod to what Alex Ross Perry mentioned in the interview. It is impossible to have a fictional storyline that takes place in the real world without running up against paradoxes you create.

Also, allow me to plug my own post, from earlier: besides the VHS I already mentioned, there are two others on the table that are partially obscured and unidentifiable - the one in the GIF above, with the Union Jack on it, and one other in an orange case that appears to say "Australian Tour" (the "tour" part is cut off in this screen cap, but is somewhat visible in the video). I can't tell if there's other text on the VHS cover, or if it's just graphics.

I can't figure out if it's young Nihil on the cover or a stylized version of Papa III -- but either way, Papa Nihil of course never went on an Australian tour in our reality (or, theoretically, in theirs - since, per Metal Myths, Nihil's version of Ghost "immediately disbanded" - not that Ghost is unwilling to retcon things) but neither did Papa III. There were plans for an Australian tour during Meliora era, but they fell through when Soundwave was cancelled in 2016. But I guess it's another point where their reality diverges from ours :-)

[fieldghoul]

Rite Here Rite Now, If You Have Ghosts -> Twenties interlude