#8 out of 10 cats does countdown best bits

[frankendykes-monster]

Countdown to Halloween 2023, Ranked

43. Swamp Thing (1982)

42. Curse of Bigfoot (1975)

41. The Haunting (1999)

40. Orca (1977)

39. Teenagers Battle The Thing (1958)

38. The Beast (1975)

37. Don't Go in The House (1979)

36. Countess Dracula (1971)

35. Hillbillys in a Haunted House (1967)

34. Beware! The Blob (1972)

33. Alien Space Avenger (1989)

32. Baby Blood (1990)

31. Shriek of The Mutilated (1974)

30. The Mutations (1974)

29. Phase IV (1974)

28. Curse of The Faceless Man (1958)

27. The Sadist (1963)

26. Jennifer (1978)

25. The Wasp Woman (1959)

24. Noroi: The Curse (2005)

23. Girls Nite Out (1982)

22. The Monster of Piedras Blancas (1959)

21. The Cat and The Canary (1927)

20. Tell Your Children (Reefer Madness, 1936)

19. The Company of Wolves (1984)

18. It's Alive (1974)

17. The Wolf House (2018)

16. Michael Jackson's Halloween (2017)

15. The Girl Who Knew Too Much (1963)

14. The Omega Man (1971)

13. Gamera: Rebirth (2023)

12. Student Bodies (1981)

11. Night Caller From Outer Space (1965)

10. Inhumanoids (episodes 1 - 5, 1986)

9. Blind Woman's Curse (1970)

8. Maniac (1980)

7. The Child (1977)

6. Zombie 3 (1988)

5. Return of The Living Dead (1985)

4. Spider Baby (1967)

3. Basket Case (1982)

2. Messiah of Evil (1973)

Godzilla (1954)

Woof. Okay. This has been a mostly disappointing viewing experience.

Critical difference between this year's countdown and the past two is that now that I have stable employment, there is far less time to be watching horror films. I normally begin the countdown in September but we started in July of this year and still barely managed to crack 40, with my original goal being a full 100 this year. Timing. As such a lot of my plans and possible viewings were cut short and compared to last year specifically we fell back on a lot of "seen it already" at least for the top of the list.

This year's batch of viewings were largely blah, but a step up from the shitshow I put myself through last year (watching nearly every Texas Chainsaw sequel does things to a person). As such it'll be difficult to conjure up words for a decent chunk of these mostly because yes, these movies exist, I watched them, I would not recommend that you yourself watch them. That is all. If I write briefly on a given film that's not necessarily an indictment of its quality as there a decent number of these that I saw and enjoyed it's just their impact might be a bit fleeting. You will know which ones I actively disliked. I mostly just want to write about the top five or so but I will play fair.

Our grand loser this year is Swamp Thing, the DC Comics adaptation by Wes Craven. I watched this pretty much entirely because I finally got the Alan Moore Swamp Thing run in paperback this year after quite some time of having it on my to-buy list. Longtime Rachael/Ray/Ratchet fans may recall me reading it in early 2019 alongside [REDACTED]. Still one of the best Moore comics, and a second volume of Swamp Thing wouldn't have been possible without the success of this film. For context I did read the early Swampies by Len Wein and Bernie Wrightson and my general reaction to those was a'ight but there was definitely material for a serviceable film adaptation there. This is not that serviceable film adaptation. I'm not hung up on details like how Abigail has no connection to Arcane now despite being his niece in the comics, but this film is just kind of painful in how relatively unambitious it is which is saying something for Swamp Thing sword fighting another human mutation at the end of this. It's just silly and stupid and not scary or awe inspiring or anything, the Swamp Thing suit sucks, the action sucks, any sense of pathos is not there or gone, it stretches for 30 minutes too long like it's a padded TV pilot, the only highlight is being able to see Adrienne Barbeau's breasts. Fuck this it's a miserable experience to sit through. My mistake for watching a Wes Craven film that doesn't have "Scream" in the title.

Our next shitter is the two-for-one abomination that is Teenagers Battle The Thing (1958) and Curse of Bigfoot (1975); these are the same movie except Curse of Bigfoot has a 25 minute opening scene framing device that is bizarre given that "The Thing" of the original film is a Native American mummy of some sort unearthed by a group of white high school students. It's the rare personal pet project movie made for fun by some locals but the only highlights are the occasional kill scene, Curse of Bigfoot ranks lower just for making me sit through it longer. Blah.

Speedrunning through a bunch of these because theyre all varying degrees of bad and I don't want to spend any longer writing about these than you probably do reading about them: The Haunting is awful and I don't even super care for the original film so adding shitty CGI monsters and a moral lesson of "it's about family!" doesn't help. Orca is a shitty Jaws cash-in that's like a reverse Moby Dick where the sea animal hunts down the human, nice finale where the orca and shitty poacher guy are fighting it out in the Arctic but otherwise avoid. Don't Go in The House is a mysoginistic torture porn movie that really doesn't sell the "seemingly normal guy is a closet nutcase" thing even though movies made before and after have done it well (see Maniac several paragraphs below). The Beast is advertised as this really scandalous porno film but most of it is French aristocrats sitting around in stuffy rooms arguing about real estate. I think I only watched Countess Dracula for its inclusion in the "if this is her vibe I would fucking cum" meme and it's barely worth bringing up at all. Hillbillys in a Haunted House has an absolutely lovely Tennessee country soundtrack that I wish I could listen to without having to watch the actual movie which is devoid of both scares and laughs. Beware! The Blob gives off the feeling of sitting at a funeral for a family member that was just distant enough for you to be aware of them but not actually be upset but it's still a funeral so it's not like you're smiling, stick with the 1988 Blob film. Alien Space Avenger has some decent gore effects but that's all I can recall from it. Shriek of The Mutilated has one of the best titles for an otherwise uninspired yeti movie that has a needless third act twist about it being a cover for a cult and blah blah blah fuck you. Baby Blood has an alien mutant whatever crawl up a woman's vagina into her womb and she has to eat people to feed it and yeah I'm actually struggling to remember what happens here. The Mutations has a scene where a guy cuts into a tree and it bleeds, I think he's played by Donald Pleasance. Yeah, it's like Freaks except it plays to the freak show straight so you get to laugh at all the outcasts of society, no thank you.

Some odds and ends that I'd say are decent-to-pretty-good: Phase IV has some footage of ants and synth music. All you need is some footage of ants and synth music. Curse of The Faceless Man employs a rarely seen archetype of the living statue monster, it's cute. The Sadist is another starring vehicle for Arch Hall Jr., who was also the star of last Halloween's Eegah! (1962), though this film is a bold trendsetter for the 1960's with Hall being a unhinged killer holding people for ransom until they can fix his car and he can make a getaway. The film lives and dies by Hall's performance and it's mostly the latter until we get to an absolutely superb final act with him hunting down his remaining victims, it makes the whole film worth seeing. Jennifer is an oddball that plays out mostly like a character drama ("It wasn't my fault Daddy it was that stupid hillbilly bitch Jennifer") that suddenly remembers that it's supposed to be a cash-in of Carrie (1976) in the last 20 minutes and cue our titular character being able to summon and control snakes to send after her tormentors. Girls Nite Out is a plodding meandering slasher that's oddly hypnotizing considering so much of it takes place in pitch-black night and the killer is wearing a bear mascot costume with serrated knives hidden under the glove, not sure what fully to make of it. The Monster of Piedras Blancas is made up of leftover parts from the Gillman, Mole People, and Metaluna Mutant, but still manages to star in a decent enough film that gives a sense of what a series of monster attacks would do to a small seaside community. The Cat and The Canary is "cute" for lack of a better term being a horror comedy before the former genre had fully crystalized. Reefer Madness is horror adjacent more than anything but a hilariously good time about how the use of "marihuana" will drive today's youth into becoming crazed fiends and get involved in organized crime.

We can do this.

The Company of Wolves has an excellent story book like setting an atmosphere that you can't get in films nowadays and it's a shame that it's mostly remembered for its transformation sequences. it's Alive is the best Larry Cohen film by default of not sucking but it's still not "great", genius however for playing the concept of mutant newborn killer baby completely seriously without any sense of humor to the proceedings. The Girl Who Knew Too Much is almost a parody of giallo films which is interesting given those hadn't fully sprang up in 1963; absolute highlight is the main character being interviewed in bed by doctors and reporters and the like that yes she did see a murder and no she doesn't drink. I've always been fascinated and haunted by I Am Legend and while The Omega Man doesn't really capture the novel to a superb degree it's so beautifully shot that it lands high in the rankings for that alone. Night Caller From Outer Space is hilarious to me because of how it shifts halfway through from a Hammer-esque mystery about a meteorite with radioactive properties to a film about an alien that lures women in through a modeling advertisement. Blind Woman's Curse I've mentally confused with Irezumi for a while now (haha all 1960's Japanese genre films where woman have large animal tattoos on their backs are the saaame), and it's one I mostly watched for being directed by Teruo Ishii, but there's enough bloody yakuza fights and cats licking up blood for me to stick around; not the strongest Meiko Kaiji vehicle compared to Female Prisoner Scorpion or Lady Snowblood. Maniac I find mostly interesting as a precursor to American Psycho (2000) but also it's probably the only serious film to successfully pull off it's ending trope (which I will not spoil here). The Child is an absolutely lovely 1970's only-a-dozen-people-made-this-and-not-much-more-watched-it horror that oozes atmosphere, I could watch stuff like this all day. Aaand Zombie 3 is far and away the best film that Lucio Fulci has been involved with that I've ever seen. I love random scenes and set pieces of ghouls just massacring people that are shit out out of luck.

Okay, now for the ones I actually want to write about.

The Wasp Woman is one that sticks in my head way more than any other random monster movie that Roger Corman directed in the latw 1950's. I've said on here and Letterboxd that it could have served as a standard pop-feminist piece about how the cosmetology industry is built on misogyny and invariably a monster is accidentally created because of that, but this most recent viewing has made me sort of "get it" because that might be what the film is going for considering Susan Cabot's performance leads me to believe that she is aware that she is becoming a homicidal wasp monster but views it as a tragic means to an end where she still has the ability to have a new advertising campaign with her as the star. Tragic. This is why you don't wear make up.

Both Noroi: The Curse and The Wolf House are ones I didn't care for whatsoever but I put them in places on the ranking that I thought were fair given that people should probably watch them regardless of my personal thoughts. Noroi's format didn't really lend itself to the escalation of tension and reveal of information that the plot demanded and I found myself thinking it meanders quite a bit. The Wolf House was an odd one where everything that was happening onscreen bounced off of me mostly because I felt intimately aware that I was watching a movie, that someone had made something and that I was now being shown it. Blah. People like these so don't let me stop you.

Our animated offerings this year...

Michael Jackson's Halloween more than anything feels like an unlicensed creation that later had an English fan dub commissioned, not something that actually aired on CBS twice. Any laughs that I found in this thing were the unintentional type as we open up with Bubbles talking and being Jackson's chauffeur; you know exactly what you're getting into. Very little of the plot is explained but I'm assuming Jackson (who has no lines given this was made posthumously) orchestrates a dark fantasy adventure to hook two...teenagers? People in their late 20's? And convince them to follow their dreams of performing instead of working a deadend dayjob. I'm not sure who the actual audience for this was given it feels like so much of it was made for children but I will say anything that has this much of Michael Jackson's music in it can't be all bad, though I'm not sure why they didn't largely stick with tracks from the album Thriller (in the contention for best album ever, I don't care).

Gamera: Rebirth is one I feel like I'm on the outside on compared to most other tokusatsu fans because I didn't really *love* to a serious degree even though, yes, Gamera is finally back. The first three episodes are mostly just kind of a slog for me with the backhalf not doing enough to retroactively make me think highly of it, though giving off End of Evangelion vibes may make me consider that a second viewing must be in order down the line. Rebirth's strongest attribute is that it feels like it takes into consideration and influence from every prior era of Gamera, no stone is left unturned, and it's a marked contrast from how every recent Godzilla property only captures a single facet of their respective character. But that also creates unique issues like how a lot of criticism of ongoing US military presence in Japan is undercut so there can be a white kid in the main cast (because white children were always present in half of the Showa series) or having the ancient civilization that genetically engineered the kaiju now being malicious and actively sacrificing children as a means of reshaping the world gives me vaguely anti-semitic tones, I don't know, Gamera is still here, I guess.

"I was just a little twerp who liked Scooby-Doo and Smurfs, now I was viewing Cthulhu mutants ruin the Earth."

Everyday that we have Inhumanoids is a gift. Inhumanoids is another Hasbro/Sunbow production like G. I. Joe, Transformers, or Jem and The Holograms, and it is truly tragic that it never got anywhere near that level of attention compared to its siblings. The fact that a 1980's action figure tie-in cartoon is named for its antagonists is only the start; the series follows a small paramilitary outfit of scientists named Earth Core that are tasked with more or less saving the world alongside the Mutores, elemental beings, when the Inhumanoids, eldritch abominations, are unleashed. The degree of world-building beyond your typical "good guys vs. bad guys" affair is astounding with villainous humans and virtuous monsters abounding, but Inhumanoids is mostly magical and remembered for saying fuck all to any type of broadcast standards. Seeing giant monsters destroy cities, undead armies, and spelunking deep into the Earth (where nightmares begin...) are just standard fair here, as are witnessing the actual Inhumanoids such as Metlar (basically the devil) or D'Compose (giant undead entity that can zombify people by touching them and uses his ribcage like a jail cell) in action. The first five episodes here are the pilot movie of sorts for the series which only lasted thirteen overall, and they get more grissly from here on out, but maybe it's best that Inhumanoids is the short lived cartoon and no the cartoon that went soft as early as its second season. I will never not love this show, to this day it's one of my favorite animated series from any decade, much less the 1980's.

Back to our regularly scheduled live-action programming...

Student Bodies is a fascinating film for a myriad of reasons the first of which is that there were somehow enough slasher films by 1981 for there to be a comedy poking fun at all the already established genre-cliches. It's essentially Scary Movie (2000) a full 20 years ahead of the curve only actually funny in spite of the subject matter frequently being as juvenile and prejudiced; but it also reminds me quite a bit of Scream (1996) with stuff like two killers working together. All I know is I was in for a decent time when the film opens with three identical shots of a house just with different framing text: "HALLOWEEN," "FRIDAY THE 13TH," "JAMIE LEE CURTIS' BIRTHDAY" and then the killer, The Breather, calls the opening kill girl doing nothing but breathing heavily, she hangs up, he calls back with "I SAID [heavy breathing]."

Return of The Living Dead is one of those films that should have destroyed the any artifically-imposed boundaries between "high" and "low" art. Every aspect of this film is brilliantly made, it just so happens to be made for stuff like Scooby-Doo music overlaid on top of thunderstorms over graveyards where one female character is stripping to the concept of dying. Media involving ghouls is incredibly oversaturated, and this was still the case in the 1980's where a film like this had to redefine the rules to make it so killing ghouls was basically a non-option. It only recently struck me on this viewing that that's the whole purpose of removing virtually all weaknesses they have, to keep the characters as the nail instead of the hammer. Compared to the Romero films, there's never a point where anyone is in control of the situation, it just escalates further and further until there is literally no way out. Taking that into consideration, there's no way this film couldn't have been a comedy that frames people getting swarmed and eaten by ghouls as hilarious.

The soundtrack and the faux-punk sensibilities lend this a daft feeling of "you shouldn't be watching this" in spite of it not being one of the MOST gory horror films of the 1980's. I still don't get how this never broke into the mainstream. I mean somehow people know that ghouls (in this film) speak and only eat brains but I can't go down to Target and get a Tarman action figure like I can one of Michael Myers. As such Return of The Living Dead remains a criminally overlooked film regardless of its subject matter. It's made me laugh and cringe and feel disgusted and revolt at the concept at dying but mostly it's made me feel a delicious sense of joy at seeing corpses rise out of the ground to the tune of "Do you wanna party? IT'S PARTY TIIIME!" Some of you need to sit in the corner and think about your life choices for making stupid shit like Re-Animator (1985) or fucking Shaun of The Dead (2004) more popular than this, fuck you.

The act of watching Spider Baby is like discovering the missing link. For as much as 1960 gave us an explosion of horror (Eyes Without a Face, The Ship of Monsters, Psycho, Jigoku, Black Sunday, etc.) and Night of The Living Dead (1968) reins as the perennial transition point of the genre, Spider Baby is the road by which we go from The Cat and The Canary and The Old Dark House to the likes of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Eraserhead, it's magical finding an essential piece of a genre you love so much. Both the former and latter points of comparison are apt as a family of now only children [and their butler] suffering from Poe-esque hereditary illness have their condemned house set upon by distant relatives and everything slowly unravels.

Lon Chaney Jr. is an actor who for the longest time I felt never got a proper chance to shine wherein the last 25 years or so of his career was spent playing as side character actor in independent films. Spider Baby is his crowning achievement. Seeing him smile through almost tears on several occasions as he has to play bridge between worlds of sanity and madness and lie to everyone that he has some sense of control over the situation is brilliant in ways I always knew he was capable of but had never seen before this point. Bravo.

I will never not love Basket Case with everything I've got. This is the epitome of 1980's horror and my clear pick for best of the decade. It has everything from being a grungy putrid grindhouse spectacle to being an intimate character drama to everything presented through a wry ironic lense where you can't tell if any "bad" performances are all done on purpose. Between this, Brain Damage (1988), and Frankenhooker (1990), there is literally absolutely no reason why Frank Henenlotter shouldn't be more popular than Stuart Gordon, Brian Yuzna, and Lloyd Kaufman *combined*. It's tragic that the world of cinema being enclosed and captured by studios again in the late 1980's prevented us from getting more from him, but realistically could we ask anymore than what we already got from Basket Case? I could watch this every day and never grow tired of it. I will never stop making more and more people watch this.

If Basket Case is the apex of 1980's horror, then Messiah of Evil is the same for 1970's horror. This is one of the most efficient horror films ever made in how not a single frame is wasted, the opening scene is literally a guy running from unseen force, seeking refuge, getting his throat slit, cue title card with synth music that then leads us to a sunburnt hallway as our narrator descends into acceptance of complete lack of control of the situation. Every night shot in this film must be 50 - 75% completely black with whatever headlight or store front there is just making the scenery look like a dollhouse that our characters are trapped inside. There's so many shots of people running away or walking down streets that make them look tiny as the camera is so far.

Every scene is an exercise in building up dread. There's no point where the film relents, something awful is not only coming, it's already here and there's nothing anyone can do. What I love particularly is that the mystery being laid out doesn't offer any answers because there's another mystery on top of what our characters find out only too late. Layers upon layers of dread that even the titular Messiah of Evil isn't the center of. The world is a cruel fucking place where this film languishes in obscurity whilst shit like The Exorcist enjoys mainstream attention. A lot of my taste amounts to "why isn't this thing I like more popular" and cases like Messiah of Evil vindicate me.

"Godzilla is the son of the atomic bomb. He is a nightmare created out of the darkness of the human soul. He is the sacred beast of the apocalypse." - Tomoyuki Tanaka

Generally a yearly trend is that a #1 pick for Halloween is self-evident to me and this year it was Basket Case for all of 30 seconds until I picked Godzilla back up.

There's something to be said how Godzilla isn't quite a horror monster? Terrifying but not necessarily creepy, but what power do things that go bump in the night have against the destruction of everything you know? Everytime I watch Godzilla is like the very first time, when flashing lights out at sea destroy fishing ships I have no idea what happened, or at least any much of a clue as anyone in film does when we're told that the entire ocean exploded.

Godzilla is a reptile, but lacks scales and its entire body is coated in keloid scars. In 1954 Godzilla must have been the largest monster every committed to film, trains are derailed from running against its ankle and bell and radio towers are throttled for being a sensory inconvenience. Godzilla's first on-screen appearance on Odo Island is obscured by a hurricane but the impression is clear; you can't fight Godzilla in the same way you can't fight a natural disaster. When Tokyo is reduced to complete ruin amidst a sea of flames, it's an onslaught of destruction never before seen in a film of this genre. Survivors being afflicted with radiation poisoning shows that Godzilla will claim victims long after being driven back to sea.

There's a sheer apocalyptic dread to all of this sensed by all the characters. Love tries to exist on the edge of annihilation. There's nothing that can be done but persevere and maybe hope tomorrow will be better. A scene that always strikes me is when Serizawa is adamant about not using the Oxygen Destroyer until forcibly confronted with the results of one night of Godzilla making landfall in Japan. The absolute pain felt by everyone in the finale starts here, things couldn't play out any differently as the "scientist of the century" can't join in and celebrate his victory.

Godzilla is a rare perfect film. I will never tire of it.

[manysmallhands]

My Favourite Songs of 2023 part 4: 10 - 1

The final countdown! (synth melody plays)

Previous entries in the series can be found here, here and here.

10. Tyla - Water

Water sounds like nothing so much as the romance novel version of the last night on a Caribbean holiday; the twitchy afrobeat rhythms feel slightly mischievous while the vibes are relaxed and extremely seductive. There’s plenty of fun to be had singing along to the group chorus but it’s the innocent charm of Tyla’s performance that really carries the song. Though Tik Tok is not really known for producing lasting careers, I’d like to hope she’ll go a long way.

9. GAYLE - Butterflies

It’s fair to say that the abcdefu star has done little of note since her moment in the limelight but Butterflies is a surprise banger and might well be the best song on the already stacked Barbie soundtrack. Yes, it piggybacks on its pilfered Crazytown interpolation but GAYLE’s rapid fire vocal and fierce pop energy carry the day and make a good case for her working more often with this harder edged approach.

8. beabadoobee - The Way Things Go

Bea’s sweet-toothed multigenre world has crept up on me more as the year's gone on but she’s never sounded better than she does on her most recent single. Her farewell to a dying relationship is given life by a delicately resigned vocal and set to an orchestral swirl so otherworldly that it entirely rubbishes her claim to be “not far from the ordinary”. There’s even a bit of a Harriet Wheeler impression on the outro to get the indieheads all teary, proving that beabadoobee is truly a renaissance woman.

7. Tate McRae - Greedy

Always better when she ditches the sadgirl songs, Tate’s swipe at sleazy old men instead rides atop a wonderfully rolling rhythm and sports the kind of sticky hook that will still randomly pop up in yr head in 20 years time. This is played about once every half an hour on the radio at the moment and yet it's never made an unwelcome appearance, in fact it’s the song that I’d rather hear there more than anything else.

6. Doja Cat - Fuck The Girls

While her hits cast a softer tone on what has become a totemic and obsessive personal crusade, Fuck the Girls was perhaps the most strident assault yet in Doja’s ongoing war with her annoying online stans. While the battle itself is probably not that compelling, Doja’s take on it is furious and funny enough to hold my interest and the rattling breaks and twitchy stand-up bass provide a hauntingly austere framework from which to launch her barbs. Truth be told, it just goes incredibly hard: what more can you ask for?

5. Charli XCX/Sam Smith - In The City

In The City feels like Charli moving away from the Crash era, focused anew on 90s club culture and with that hard edged bass synth powering everything along. But more than anything, it’s a glorious shot of light, full of yearning and surprising melodic beauty, and with a happy ending out on the dance floor that - surprisingly for Charli - does not involve a car. And Sam Smith is good! Not bad like you think! Shut up over there!

4. Poppy - The Attic

The Attic represents the cleanest example of Poppy’s pivot back to pop this year, for once ditching the goth adornments and going full on euphoric drum n bass. For someone who’s music often creeps and lurches along, The Attic is a surprising blast of musical weightlessness, full of skittering rhythmic energy and flashing piano chords. The lyrics as ever tell a different (and far more uncomfortable) story but by once more casting aside the idea of what a Poppy song ought to be, she’s made something new that blew me away completely.

3. Mitski - My Love Mine All Mine

The surprise hit of a major artist’s career has always been a tricky area to navigate: for every Walk On The Wild Side there’s tended to be an equal and opposite My Dingaling. However, Mitski has managed to luck out here, with international success neatly falling into the lap of one of her very best singles. My Love Mine All Mine sounds like a sepia tinted 50s ballad, simple and elegant, with each flourish of piano or guitar cutting eerily through the song’s low-key veneer. And Mitski herself has never sounded better, the sombre warmth of her vocal seeming to express all the ambiguity that radiates from the heart of the song.

2. U.S. Girls - Tux

Sounding for all the world like a classic era disco 12” that Meg has just happened to find down the back of the sofa, Tux also profits from an extended lyrical metaphor that’s so complicated and yet catchy that you’ll be singing along to every word before you’ve figured out what any of it means. Rare is the album cycle where U.S. Girls don’t release a top tier single or two and Tux manages to continue that very long winning streak. 

1. Olivia Rodrigo - Vampire

I can’t honestly say that Olivia Rodrigo’s theatrical disco banger stands way above everything else here (do not let anyone tell you that 2023 has been a bad year for music) but Vampire still hits hard all these months on. It’s a song that’s full of breathtaking moments: from the doof doof of the bass drum at the end of the first chorus to the surging harmonies in the second; the full-on sound assault that hits halfway thru to the rousing final step into “the way you sold me for parts” at the end; each one feels like a gut punch and yet they just keep on coming. Despite having listened to it many many times since the middle of this year, it hasn't even started to get old yet and is still perfectly capable of stopping me in my tracks. I’ve already said plenty about Vampire before so I won’t drag this on for too long, but in a year that perhaps for the first time has been more pop than rock for me, It feels fitting to have a record sat atop of it that embodies the best parts of each without ever feeling strained or clumsy, from an artist who spent 2023 truly finding her voice.

And that's it! If anyone read these posts and/or found them at all interesting, thank you for your time and i hope you liked some of the songs! Below is a Spotify playlist of the whole 40 (Kweli/Madlib aside, which is Soundcloud only), followed by a few of the songs that i might have picked had i only given things a bit more thought. And i rounded it off with Cruel Summer by Taylor Swift, which though not really eligible for a best of 2023 round up, was so inextricably bound up with the year that it feels like it should have its place somewhere. Sayonara!

[tellthemeerkatsitsfine]

Update to the list of musician deaths that have hit me really hard: Raylene Rankin (2012), Ron Hynes (2015), Leonard Cohen (2016), John Prine (2020), Ian Tyson (2022), Gordon Lightfoot (2023).

That’s not hugely different from my list of all celebrity deaths that have hit that hard; music, particularly Canadian folk music, is the big thing that’s been important to me for my entire life, so that's the main thing that’s made me care enough about people I don’t know to be upset when they die. The only two non-musical deaths I can think of that hit me particularly hard are Stuart McLean and Sean Lock. Stuart McLean was a Canadian radio broadcaster, a mainstay of CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation – think the same concept as the BBC, but strip it to an infinitesimal fraction of the budget and prestige) whose stories and reports from various bits of Canada were a mainstay of my childhood and adolescence.

Sean Lock is the only one who affected me that much despite coming in late. Raylene Rankin, Leonard Cohen, Ron Hynes, John Prine, Ian Tyson, Gordon Lightfoot, and Stuart McLean are all people I first came to love when I was a child, and that only grew as I got older. I didn’t know Sean Lock’s name before 2020. But if you watch every single episode of 8 Out of 10 Cats and 8 Out of 10 Cats Does Countdown between May and July 2020, just after the world has ended, you are going to end up feeling like you know the guy. You will feel like you know him well enough to be truly devastated when he dies.

People use the word “God” to colloquially describe human beings, but it applies to Gordon Lightfoot just because he actually was the god of Canadian folk music, in the sense that he created it. People have credited his song Early Morning Rain with being the beginning of contemporary folk music. Not even contemporary Canadian folk music, but contemporary folk music.

I’ve attended at least one folk festival for every year of my life (minus pandemic years), and three or more in most years. Want to see the lineup of the best festival I’ve ever attended? Because I can show you, it’s on the t-shirt I’ve had ever since I bought it there nearly 13 years ago:

It was the Mariposa Folk Festival in Orillia, Ontario. My dad and I had to drive quite a few hours to get there, stayed in a fairly shitty motel, but it was entirely worth the journey. Gordon Lightfoot headlined the whole thing. Ian Tyson, who died in late December 2022, played right before him. I will never forget sitting in that lawn chair next to my dad, knowing the people who shaped the entire genre were in that cold, mosquito-ridden field with me.

My dad, who introduced me to Canadian folk music before I was old enough to speak and has shared it with me ever since, has always said “Gordon Lightfoot” as his answer to the question “Who’s your favourite singer?” Which was a big deal, because music was huge for him, he loves so much of it so deeply, and choosing a single favourite is an important decision. But he never wavered. Okay, he wavered a bit, there was a little while in 2003 when he loved Emmylou Harris’ new album so much that it combined with his love for all her previous albums to make him say she might have overtaken Gordon as his favourite singer. But after the initial shine wore off, he was back to saying she’s wonderful, many other musicians are wonderful, but no one is the equal of Gordon Lightfoot.

I messaged him in at 2 AM last night, when I first saw the news. My dad, who barely admitted to experiencing one or two emotions when his own mother died, replied today to say he’s been playing Gordon’s songs all day and feeling sad.

[barcodeboyz]

My Top 10 Best ERB Verses

HM. Cleopatra (verse 2)

It feels like a crime to not include this verse because it drops one of the most brutal lines in all of ERB history. "You lost so many babies we should call you Miss Carriage" is a line that damaged Marilyn so bad she got 3 verses instead of 2. I've never seen a battle do that before. While it does not make the full list, it deserves recognition for being as brutal as it is.

HM. Joan Rivers (verse 1)

Although I agree with my placement of this verse, this is easily one of my favorite verses in the whole series. Joan is RUTHLESS, especially her disses against Bill Cosby. "My sex jokes offend, you're on the sex offender registry//Who you wearing right now? Is that state penitentiary?" is one of my favorite bar sequences in the series as well. I was first introduced to Joan Rivers after I watched her Gwar interview, and this performance of Joan is just spot on and great. I certainly think it won the battle; I just think it was stronger than Robin Williams' verse. With that being said, let's get on to the countdown!

10. The Cat in the Hat (verse 1)

What a way to start a list. I don't know about any of you, but I remember being a kid and seeing this episode for the first time and being absolutely blown away by the surprise rapping from the Cat in the Hat. Although it's arguable that Shakespeare won the battle, Cat in the Hat came through with serious punches that would have been complimented by better rap partners.

9. Walter White (verse 1)

This is the first of many entries on this list to feature a verse that could be interchanged with another verse from the same rapper. Walt had a fire line with the Shane comment, but his first verse is what cemented his intentions in the battle, which was to completely rip into Grimes' character. The Walkers line is also extremely creative to me, which puts it here.

8. Albert Einstein (verse 1)

As much as I want to place this higher, it fits in at number 7 because it starts out ruthless, then mellows out a little bit when momentum could have continued. "Take a seat Steve, oop, I see you brought your own," is a completely savage bar. The Wall-E line is also good, but I feel like they could have used Zach's energy here and shot up to 10. But it still makes this list because it is absolute savagery.

7. Babe Ruth (verse 2)

This verse encompasses what a rap battle verse should do; tear down the opponent with the truth, raise yourself and your accomplishments up, and provide absolutely ruthless (pun intended) lines in the process. Ruth does all these things, shaming Armstrong for his use of steroids, building himself up with his accomplishments in baseball, and getting one dirty punch in with the final line.

6. Mansa Musa (verse 2)

I am going to come out and say it, I was so hyped to find out Scru Face Jean was in an ERB. He is an incredibly talented rapper, and his commentary on other ERB videos is hilarious. He brought in that mix of humor and talent and dropped one of the hardest verses on this list.

5. J. Robert Oppenheimer (verse 1)

We are now at the point in the list where every verse has given me chills in one way or another. Peter absolutely nailed the Oppenheimer impression, with the very breathy rapping and educated way of attacking his opponent. From start to finish, the reason this verse placed here instead of his second verse was because of how well his introduction is made. "There is no balance" is a bone chilling portrayal of Oppenheimer from Peter, and the paired music add to the atmosphere.

4. Stan Lee (verse 1)/Walt Disney (verse 1)

I know, I know. Tying two verses from the same battle is a cop out. But I legitimately could not pick between the two. The musical accompaniment of an ERB is extremely important, and it is really shown here. The narrator hyping up the two combatants sets the tone for how the battle should be, and Stan Lee followed that tone perfectly with references galore, while also finding ways to punch at Henson. And Disney comes in here as well because it is extremely real to see; a lot of companies have been bought out by Disney, so seeing him come out as this all powerful being is fitting. This is one of the best battles they have ever made, and these verses both deserve their placement here.

3. Terminator (verse 1)

I was really stuck between this and my pick for 2nd, but ultimately chose this order because I found the next entry to have just a little more power to it. But that being said, this is one powerful verse. From the very beginning, Terminator is going to absolute war, which only gets more vicious as the verse continues. The final 4 lines of the verse ending with a reference to the movies is what sealed this placement for me, but the quick rapping, mocking Robocop's circumstances, and use of cgi really add to it.

2. Boba Fett (verse 4)

This battle was CRAZY. 8 verses in total, 4 for each combatant, with some lines that are straight up venomous from both sides. I ultimately chose this verse because of the quick rapping. I just think it works perfectly here; we've seen many examples of quick rapping throughout the ERB franchise, and I just think this is one of those examples that just shine through.

Hannibal Lecter (verse 2)

If you know me, you knew this was coming. I love Silence of the Lambs, and it was because this video introduced me to the character of Hannibal. Lloyd absolutely nails his mannerisms and speech patterns. As I said before this is one of those verses where I could have interchanged it with his first verse, but ultimately, I chose this one because it ended the battle and rebutted Jack's final verse, which was a little underwhelming in my opinion. And the lyrics here are just even better than his first verse in my opinion. "You prey on a prostitute and play with her body, I don't mind that you're naughty Jack, I hate that you're sloppy" is a bone chilling line, tearing into his combatant who spent his first verse building himself up without throwing any comments towards Hannibal. And that is just one of many lines in this verse that ultimately tear down Jack's verses.

Anyways, that's my list on the best ERB verses in my personal opinion. These are not necessarily my favorite verses, but rather the ones I felt held their own in battle and fought hard from beginning to end. I intend on putting together a list of the worst ERB verses, but I'm unsure when I plan on doing that. What do you guys think? Is there a verse you guys think should have placed?

[2wq7]

MORE Of Sean Lock's Best Bits | 8 Out Of 10 Cats Does Countdown | Chan..

MORE Of Sean Lock's Best Bits | 8 Out Of 10 Cats Does Countdown | Chan.. MORE Of Sean Lock"s Best Bits | 8 Out Of 10 Cats Does Countdown | Channel 4  Channel 4..

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[myepisodecalendar]

8 Out of 10 Cats Does Countdown Season 20 - Episode 5: Best Bits 2 AirDate: August 28th, 2020, 09:00 PM

[raisinghellonstarbug]

Stumbled Into Laughter, Stumbled Into You - A James Acaster x Reader Story

Basic plot: The year is 2019, and life has been quite dull for you since working in a job that you hate for the past two years after graduating from university. You used to do stand up comedy at uni, but you’ve been putting off pursuing it due to lack of confidence and motivation. Your best mates decide to encourage you to try a comedy mic night for the first time ever and while there you incidentally run into an old mate of yours, comedian Rhys James. That’s when your life gets turned around as you end up diving into the world of the comedy circuit and becoming close with other famous British comedians. In the midst of it all, you end up meeting a particularly distinctive red headed fellow who might end up being the very thing that brings meaning to your life again.

*

A/N: Hello Acaster fans!

So this was an idea I have had in mind for the last few months and I finally finished the first chapter of my story!

Just so you know, the first chapter does not include James, but be patient as he will appear soon (but maybe not quite as soon as you hope). I do reckon it will be worth the wait for his appearance, or at least I hope the story is still enjoyable! It is a slow burn so if you are an inpatient person, then this story might not be for you ;)

You can read this chapter below or if you prefer, there is also the link to the chapter posted on Ao3 right here: https://archiveofourown.org/works/33748507

-

Rating: M

Chapter 1 word length: 2326

Characters: James Acaster (duh), Original Female Characters(s), Original Male Character(s), Rhys James, Ed Gamble, Nish Kumar, Josh Widdicombe

Relationships: James Acaster x Reader/you, Original female character/Original Male character

Story tags: Romantic comedy, domestic fluff, slow burn, fluff and smut, British comedy, eventual relationships

Tagging: @laurabeech @rilannon @jasclearwaters @marklily @queensantiagoofthe99

Chapter 1 - Summer 2019

You were sitting at your desk at your mundane job, practically ready to blow your brains out on the usual, dull Thursday afternoon. It was really warm and stuffy inside the fifteen story office block building situated in Canary Wharf. This was a place you found yourself five days a week, doing the typical 9 to 5 hours. A usual day for a usual person.

Your job wasn’t a particularly riveting one. As an underwriter for an insurance company, some days could get especially boring. You knew how to do the job well, but it was not something you really loved. It involved all kinds of clients and claims in paperwork and it sometimes felt tedious and unfulfilling. But hey, it still paid your share of rent and bills. At least you could say you could manage in the hustle and bustle of the London lifestyle.

It was nearly hometime and you were itching to get home and relax. But before that could happen, there were those last set of insurance cover forms you had to copy to get sent to the HR department. And so you typed away on your laptop, clickety clack, clickety clack… the minutes went by like a chalk on a blackboard, scraping away at a snail’s pace.

You put your full force of concentration on the documents on the screen until it was finally done. A sense of achievement was necessary in these moments despite your lack of enthusiasm. It was in the little victories you reminded yourself. You rubbed the sweat from the July heat off your forehead.

* * *

The last 2 hours eventually passed by and it was soon the rush to get out of the door before you got held up by your colleagues. They were nice enough, but sometimes they could hold you back for half an hour chatting when you just wanted to get home, or your manager might try and get you to stay an hour overtime.

Thankfully you did get out promptly, and as you ran and dashed out of the office building saying brisk goodbyes to coworkers, you managed to make it to the tube with the train just arriving on time. But not without being moderately sweaty and hot though. Bloody stuffy platforms.

As expected it was still a busy train with plenty of 5pm finishers getting themselves situated on the half crowded carriages, but as it was only 10 past, it wasn't the worst time of day for commuting yet.

You perched yourself on one of the tube’s seats and let your shoulders drop, having held the tension in your body from sitting at a desk all day. You placed your head slightly back, balancing it on the window of the train. You looked up momentarily above you and then lifted your head back up to look at your phone and choose a song to listen to on Spotify through your wireless earphones.

The streams of sound from one of your favourite songs began to play softly in your ears and you smiled, knowing that the song gave you a little bit of wistful joy. You started mouthing the words.

Call it all for nothing, but I'd rather be nothing to you. Than be a part of something, something that I didn’t do (Best to You - Blood Orange).

The words half mean something but not necessarily anything. You began to wonder about being part of something that you’re not.

I just wish I could float away from my unexciting existence… you thought to yourself.

It sometimes occurred to you that you might have wanted something more out of life, but weren’t entirely sure what. It doesn’t make you dreadfully sad, but you know that life for you hasn’t exactly been the best it could be, and that perhaps something was missing. You wish you knew what it was.

You sighed, ignoring the feeling of sorrow wash over you momentarily and propped yourself back up in the uncomfortable seat of the train. You tried to keep yourself awake so that you wouldn’t miss your stop. The music continued through your ears.

* * *

You opened the door of the three bedroom flat that you had been residing in for the last two years with your flatmates and sighed with relief that you had finally reached home. You hurried to get your handbag off your shoulder and your shoes off, placing them on the rack next to the front door and walked through the hallway.

The minute you poked your head through to the lounge, bellowing a faint hello to whoever was around, you were suddenly greeted by one of your best friends and flatmates, Grace.

“Ahh Y/n! You’re home. Thank christ!”

She grabbed you and reached her arms around to embrace you tightly. You were perplexed by this gesture as it was so random and unusual given that Grace lived with you and saw you everyday of the week. You frowned and reluctantly placed your arms around her to return the hug.

As she then let go, she looked at you with urgency in her eyes and shrieked with excitement, “Oh Y/n guess what? It looks like I’m up for a promotion! Can you believe it?”

Now processing the reason for such an embrace, you raised your eyebrows in glee and smiled proudly, gushing back to your best mate who was obviously chuffed by the matter.

“Oh wow Grace, that's fantastic! I mean, finally. It is about bloody time!”

She smiled, “Yes I guess it is. But I mustn't get too excited. I haven’t officially got the promotion yet.”

“Ah but no. I’m not having any of that. You will get that promotion. It is a guarantee. They would be idiots to not give it to you.” Grace rolled her eyes and bit her lip. She reluctantly nodded and agreed.

The smell of food distracted you momentarily from the conversation. It was a particularly appetising smell.

Grace uttered, “Yes that smell is good isn’t it? Theo insisted on cooking us a nice meal for me as a celebration.”

You smiled knowingly, having known about how Grace and Theo had been in relationship limbo ever since you three became close friends at university. You knew they both had feelings for each other but often danced around the subject, completely oblivious to one another’s obvious attraction to the other. You reckoned they had to do something about it one day.

“Thank fuck. I wasn’t prepared to make dinner tonight. I am too tired for that.”

Grace then had her worried face on. She instantly knew, as she knew you too well, but funnily enough never picked up on Theo’s emotions despite constantly wondering about them, that something was wrong.

“Are you ok babe?” she asked with a look of pity that you scornfully resented.

You sighed, half lying, “Yes. I’m fine. Just tired is all.”

You made a beeline for the couch knowing full well that you were going to talk about it whether you liked it or not. You knew that Grace would see right through your dishonesty and insist that you told her the problem.

So you waited until Grace inevitably sat next to you and gave you that sympathy look she always gave you before coming out with the concerns that were floating around your brain.

“OK fine. I know you won’t leave me alone unless I tell you.”

“Ahh, you know me so well…”

“Yes, just as you know me. I’m just- I’m fed up. Work was slow. I don’t really feel like I’m associated with my life. I feel... disconnected, I guess.”

“Do you have any idea why?”

You shrugged and looked down at the floor and then back at Grace smiling sheepishly, “I don’t know. Maybe I’m not- not fulfilled? I just don’t thoroughly enjoy my life right now.”

Grace nodded and put a hand on your leg. You twitched your face in slight discomfort. You hated it when you were given sympathy for something that seemed so miniscule. It wasn’t like you were dying.

It was times like this when you just wanted to curl up in your bed, eat a tub of ice cream and watch your favourite comedy programmes. 8 Out of 10 Cats Does Countdown sprang to mind.

As you sat in momentary silence for a bit, Theo came waltzing through from the kitchen with his silly apron on that had a naked man’s body printed on it, and a spatula in his hand. He smiled at you.

“I thought I heard your voice. I hope meatballs for dinner are good tonight. Not mine of course,” gesturing to the apron as he said it.

You shook your head at Theo’s poor dad joke and stood up to hug him. You realised that you must be really down in the dumps to be hugging Theo. It was his turn to be confused. He looked towards Grace wide eyed.

“She’s had a particularly tough day. But mind you babe, you’ve kinda been like this for weeks now.”

You let go of Theo and turned to Grace, frowning and feeling slightly defensive. You placed a hand on your hip.

“Been like what? I’ve just been a bit fed up, that's all.”

“Yes but it’s not just a bit fed up. You said so yourself you feel disconnected. We’ve been waiting for you to say it.”

You looked to Theo and he nodded gently in agreement.

“Ok… but, nothing is really wrong exactly. My life is fine.”

“Fine, yes. But not amazing. We know it’s getting you down. And the job is the problem.”

“But I’m good at it. And it pays the bills. What else am I supposed to do?”

Grace then looked away from your eyes then, twitching her lip and looking as though she was holding something back. She then sighed and began to admit something you had not been expecting.

“OK look. We know what you can do. Theo and I have figured it out. We can manage money wise. It will be tight, but if you quit your job we should be able to help you out for a little bit.”

Your eyes grew wider than large saucepans. You were totally bewildered and your mouth slightly agape.

“What? Quit my job? Why? What work would I get instead?”

“Well, maybe you won't quit your job yet. Maybe you’re right, that's too hasty. Perhaps what I’m trying to say is-”

Theo then chimed in, “-what Grace is trying to say is…”

You smirked to yourself. How do they not realise that they’re already a couple but without the sex? They’re practically married for christ sake.

“...we reckon that you need to pursue your passion. Perhaps stop wasting your talents in an office job that you hate.”

Grace continued, “yes exactly. We have had an idea in mind. See, we want you to go to this thing… it’s no biggie but well, we’ve already booked it for you.”

Your mind was racing. You couldn’t understand anything that they were saying to you. It was all too much for you to manage.

“Booked what for me? What the hell are you both going on about?”

They both looked at each other with reluctance, pondering the moment and whether to tell you the whole truth. They both shrugged and Grace was then pulling her phone out, this whole conversation beginning to appear as though they had been trying to practice it.

Suddenly Grace’s phone screen was wavering in your face. You moved your head closer to see a photo on the screen. It was a comedy club night poster. Incidentally, it was an open mic night event happening on Saturday night. You began to then put the puzzle pieces together. You folded your arms and frowned heavily.

“What the fuck have you two done now?”

Theo softly spoke, “We… booked you a slot to do that comedy open mic event thing, on Saturday night.”

“Wait. As in to perform? You can’t be serious-”

Grace tried to reassure you and grabbed your arm.

“Look, we know it might seem daunting, but we just wanted to see you happy again. It’s been two years since we graduated and you haven’t performed since then. We thought it might be good to encourage you to perform again. You were always funny to us. And people at uni thought so too. You have the stand up talent, Y/n.”

You could not process anymore. You shook your head in disbelief and placed your head in your hands, rubbing your eyes from sudden exhaustion. You then threw your hands up in exasperation. It was not possible. You could not do that again.

Fucking no way. I can’t be on stage again! It’s too scary. University pub nights are one thing but a comedy club?

You shook your head again and placed your hands on your hips. Grace tried to speak up again seeing the frustration painted across your face. In fact it was anger that your friends chose to do this without your say so.

“Y/n…”

“No. Nope. I’m not doing it. No.”

“But Y/n, we were also going to tell you that Theo is also thinking of doing the same thing! He wants to do his music again. What harm would it be for you to rejuvenate your comedy skills? Surely you can write a quick couple of gags. Nothing strenuous. You have your old material from university, right?”

You had to get out of the room. Nothing that they were saying to you could be fully accepted at that moment.

You then gave them no choice but to let you go with your head in a flurry. They both watched you leave the room, mumbling something along the lines of I’m not really hungry anymore, I’m going to bed. Soon after, you darted across the other end of the hallway, ill-tempered and almost seething, and slammed your bedroom door shut.

[warriorbarnes]

for no ones entertainment but my own, here is a list of my top seven weirdest hyperfixations and explaining Why they’re weird

7. supernatural (2.0) now, the first time i hyperfixated on spn i was like. 14, and and just at the start of my tumblrina career. everyone was into superwholock, so it made SENSE that i was into supernatural. HOWEVER the SECOND time i got into supernatural was. weird. i watched 15 seasons (skipped maybe 6 episodes in total) in LESS than two months. then i spent like 9 or 10 months after that thinking only about supernatural. i am 24 years old. it was weird

6. commentary youtubers for WHY? the lowest form of entertainment. i literally spent like a solid month of my life watching people watch videos and make jokes about them, OR watch people listen to albums and talk about them. sometimes i hadn’t even heard the album myself! i didn’t even really LIKE the people i watched, like they were all. a few years younger than me and honestly a little bit annoying. but i kept WATCHING THEM. sooo stupid. very happy to be done with that. for context this was when i was like. 22?

5. gossip girl (only ten episodes) when i was like. 16? 17? i spent a solid two weeks thinking ONLY about gossip girl; but not the entire show. only the ten episodes in season 5 where dan and blair are together. dair for life, i never watched s6 and refuse to accept dan as gossip girl:/

4. british stand-up/panelshows i was 17. it was summer break. i spent hours upon hours upon hours watching low quality episodes of british panel shows on youtube (we’re talking 480p at BEST). never mind the buzzcocks, 8 out of 10 cats, 8 out of 10 cats does countdown, the big fat quiz of the year, etc etc etc. and then that also meant i had to watch stand up shows to get my fix. this all culminated in one of thee most awkward moments of my life when i met rob beckett on the streets of edinburgh. i don’t want to go into details.

3. one direction i don’t think one direction is that weird of a hyperfixation. like, it’s not very niche, lots of people have been obsessed with one direction. however, it ranks so high bc i got into them in 2014, when i was almost 18 years old, and up until this point i had been. very negative towards them. i was a bit of a hipster to be honest, but all of a sudden i was also a HUGE one direction fan. i blame niall horan.

2. british soap operas when i was 19 i was OBSESSED with various british soap operas. mainly emmerdale, but hollyoaks and eastenders also got a fair amount of my attention. like with the panel shows, this started out with low quality youtube clips, but it didn’t stop there! at one point following just a few storylines from the shows wasn’t enough, so i downloaded a vpn and made accounts on itv hub/channel 4 so that i could watch all of the new episodes in full. that’s a new ep EVERY DAY, AND i had to watch the ad breaks as well. today i’ll still watch some clips on youtube from time to time, it’s good fun.

1. formula 1 i don’t like cars! i have never had ANY interest in cars. it was okay when it was just drive to survive on netflix, bc that isn’t really. about the cars. but it has PROGRESSED and i now. eagerly await race weekends. i watch free practice, which honestly is POINTLESS, but i. love it. i’m 24 years old, i do NOT have a drivers license, and i am obsessed with men driving really fast cars. i blame sebastian vettel

[bluejayblueskies]

ten to one

Words: 2.8k

Fandom: The Magnus Archives

Relationship: Tim Stoker/Martin Blackwood/Jonathan Sims/Sasha James

Characters: Tim Stoker, Martin Blackwood, Jonathan Sims, Sasha James

Additional Tags: Fluff, Kissing, Alcohol, New Year’s Eve, tim is a sore loser, sasha has cats, martin hates chestnuts, jon just wishes they could drink something other than champagne

Summary:

“You’re going to be sick,” Jon comments, taking a small sip of champagne from his glass and ignoring the way Tim’s lips curl into a pout. He’d said, when Sasha had poured him a glass of champagne, that he’d thought it was meant to be drunk at midnight; she’d assured him that this bottle was one of their pre-countdown bottles.

Given the number of bottles lining her kitchen countertop, he was inclined to believe her.

----

The archival staff counts down to the new year with cupcakes, champagne, and cats.

Read on Ao3

Or read below:

10

.

That’s how many little cupcakes Tim’s eaten, by Jon’s count. When Tim grins at him, his sharp-toothed smile is stained black from the frosting.

 “You’re going to be sick,” Jon comments, taking a small sip of champagne from his glass and ignoring the way Tim’s lips curl into a pout. He’d said, when Sasha had poured him a glass of champagne, that he’d thought it was meant to be drunk at midnight; she’d assured him that this bottle was one of their pre-countdown bottles.

 Given the number of bottles lining her kitchen countertop, he was inclined to believe her.

 “I’ll have you know,” Tim says, sliding closer to Jon on the couch and snagging his glass out of his hand, “that I have a stomach of steel. It’s sick-free!”

 He takes a long sip of champagne as if to prove his point. His lips stain the rim of the glass black.

 “Tim,” Jon says flatly. “That’s disgusting.”

 Tim looks at the glass, noticing the discolouration. “Huh.” Then, a wide grin splits his mouth nearly in two, and before Jon can pull back, Tim presses a quick kiss to his lips, lingering just long enough that Jon can taste the sugar on Tim’s mouth.

 It’s nice, and for a moment, Jon’s irritation melts a bit, softened by the champagne in his stomach and the feeling of Tim’s lips on his.

 Then, Tim pulls back too-quick and squints at Jon’s mouth. “Huh,” he repeats. “Looks like black food dye really does stain everything.”

 Jon looks at the glass, still in Tim’s hand, and then at Tim’s lips, tinged ever so slightly with black. His own still taste of sugar.

 “Tim!”

.

9

.

That’s how old Martin was the last time he spent New Year’s Eve with someone. It had been the first time his parents had let him stay up until midnight, and they’d given him a champagne flute of sparkling apple juice so that when the clock hit midnight he could toast the new year just like they did. He’d barely made it, his eyes fighting a losing battle against exhaustion as the new year inched closer and closer, but he’d done it.

 That had been a long time ago, though. After a while, Martin had taken to treating New Year’s Eve like any other day. No point in forcing himself to stay up late for something that was bound to be disappointing in the end.

 Now, though, Martin’s sat on the couch at Sasha’s house with Tim’s legs across his lap and Sasha tucked into his side, a large container of cheesy popcorn balanced between the three of them. Jon’s somewhere in the kitchen, having squirmed out from underneath Tim long enough to take the chestnuts out of the oven. From the little frustrated noises Martin can hear coming from the kitchen, Jon’s struggling to extract them from their shells.

 Martin’s really not a fan of chestnuts. But he’d rather die than tell Jon that right now.

 So when Jon finally returns to the living room, a steaming bowl of shucked chestnuts in his hand, Martin accepts one with a smile. And maybe it’s something about that night or the way that Jon’s smiling at him, but when he bites into the chestnut, he doesn’t hate it.

 He doesn’t hate it at all.

.

8

.

That’s what time Jon appears at Sasha’s front door, on time to the minute. He’s a good fifteen minutes ahead of Martin, who had sent Sasha a running late! text with a string of apologetic emojis attached to it, and at least an hour ahead of Tim, who has being fashionably late down to a science. Jon seems nervous, shifting back and forth on Sasha’s threshold with a bottle of champagne in one hand and a large bag of raw chestnuts in the other.

 Sasha lets him in with a warm greeting and a smile (and, once she’s taken the bottle out of his hands so he won’t drop it, a quick kiss on his cheek). He sets the chestnuts on the counter, his eyes going to her living room couch, then the kitchen, before finding her again.

 “Am I too early?” he says, eyes wide and unsure, and Sasha wonders briefly how he’d ever managed to convince them that he was stuffy and closed-off. Particularly when he’s standing in her living room, clutching a bag of chestnuts in his arms like a lifeline.

 “Nope,” Sasha says, extracting the chestnuts from his arms with a smile. “You’re right on time.”

.

7

.

That’s how many times Sasha’s caught Tim trying to open the bottle of special midnight champagne, tucked away on the far corner of the counter and labelled with a bright blue sticky note to avoid being accidentally opened. She supposes if she’d wanted to Tim-proof it, she probably should have put it in a locked safe. Though he knows her so well, he’d probably be able to guess the passcode.

 It should be irritating. Somehow, it’s hopelessly endearing instead.

 “Tim,” Sasha says, snatching the champagne out of his hands as his thumbnail begins to pick at the gold foil covering the cork. There’s a rip in it when she extracts it from him, revealing a small strip of cork underneath. “That’s for later!” Her eyes slide to the left, where there’s a half-full, open bottle of champagne sitting on the counter next to them. “What’s wrong with that champagne?”

 Tim gives her the saddest set of puppy dog eyes he has in his arsenal. “Sasha, I have been waiting months to drink that champagne. Months! I don’t want to wait until later!”

 A weaker woman would have folded under the impressive weight of Timothy Stoker’s big brown eyes and pouting lips. Sasha just grabs the open bottle of champagne and presses it into Tim’s hands with a smile and a quick kiss on those same lips. “Later,” she repeats, before taking the bottle to hide it somewhere Tim won’t be able to find it.

 She hopes.

.

6

.

That’s how many letters are in Martin’s name, Tim thinks idly as he runs his hands through Martin’s hair, scratching his nails lightly against Martin’s scalp. Somehow, in the rearranging of the four of them on Sasha’s obscenely long couch, Tim had ended up with Martin’s head on his lap, and he certainly isn’t going to complain.

 Sasha and Jon are bickering about some small detail in the movie they’ve put on, Tim thinks, like they always do—is it pronounced this way or that way, would a wide shot or a close-up be better here, would that specific piece of clothing have been period-typical at the time (yes, if it were dyed with indigo flowers, Jon had said primly, which had then been followed by a hey as Sasha’s elbow connected with his side)—and so he’s got Martin all to himself. Which is such a lovely place to be, he thinks as he continues to massage Martin’s scalp with his fingers.

 “Tim,” Martin says, his voice pinched slightly in that way it always gets when he’s receiving affection—like he’s always surprised by it, half-expecting it to be taken away without warning. “I have to tell you something.”

 Tim hums, a soothing noise, and says, “Okay, but I should warn you—I’m currently seeing someone. Several someones, actually. In fact, I believe it would technically be three—”

 “Okay, okay,” Martin says, one hand coming up to swat at Tim’s. His mouth is curled into a small, amused smile. “No need to be so…” He waves a hand in the air vaguely.

 “Handsome?” Tim suggests with a sharp grin.

 “Cheeky.”

 Tim puts on a comically large expression of shock. “No. Me? Couldn’t be.”

 Martin laughs, a small and breathy thing, and Tim loves him for it. His expression slips into something warmer and real, and he resumes running his hands through Martin’s hair. “Fine, fine, I’m listening. Go ahead, Martin.”

 “Thank you.” Martin closes his eyes, hums gently, and says, without opening his eyes, “You have frosting on your nose.”

.

5

.

That’s how many fingers are on Jon’s left hand as it finds Martin’s on the couch, those same fingers threading through Martin’s with an ease that could be practised had it not been just a few months since working together had turned into getting lunch together had turned into pining had turned into… everything else. Martin had spent a lot of time looking at Jon’s hands, before; the way that his knuckles are wider than the rest of the finger, or the way that he drums his fingers on his desk when he’s bored, or the way that his hands look wrapped around a mug of tea, black and over-steeped just like Jon likes it.

 They’d looked soft, Martin had thought.

 He’d been right.

 The kiss Martin places over the top of Jon’s knuckles is quick and impulsive, his lips still wearing the smile from something Tim had said and his other hand clasped with Sasha’s (her grip is impressively tight, like she’s afraid she’s going to drop him). The soft, surprised smile that Jon gives him is worth the entire world.

.

4

.

That’s how many cards Tim has to draw when Martin plays the Draw 4 Uno card, giving him an apologetic smile that does nothing to alleviate the fact that Tim had one card left and was about to win, goddammit!

 “Martin,” Tim says as he draws painstaking card after painstaking card. “Dearest Martin.” He draws another card. “Lovely, kind Martin.” He draws the final card and gives Martin his best solemn expression. “This is how you ruin relationships, Martin. This, right here.”

 Martin’s face is flushed pink, but his voice is casual when he says, “I have no idea what you’re talking about, Tim. I’m just playing the game.”

 Tim points at Martin, looking back and forth between Jon and Sasha for support. “Do you hear that? Nothing but disrespect. Treachery. A fatal blow!”

 Sasha looks like she’s trying not to laugh. Jon just looks bemused. “I mean, he is just playing the game,” Jon says with a small shrug. “And I believe he’s winning.”

 Tim looks over at the single card Martin’s holding, and before his brain can process the situation fast enough to call Martin out for not declaring it, Martin says quickly, “Uno!”

 “Jon!” Tim says, kind of wishing it hadn’t come out so whiny but feeling altogether too slighted to do anything about it.

 “My turn,” Jon says, and plays a reverse card.

 “Oh, I hate you all.”

.

3

.

That’s how many glasses of champagne Martin has had, which is a lot for him since he doesn’t really make a habit of drinking, especially wine, which tends to give him a headache even if he drinks white. But Jon had assured him that champagne is essentially tannin-free, having minimal skin and oak contact, so the only thing Martin had to worry about was his own terrible alcohol tolerance.

 Well, Jon hadn’t said that last part. That was just Martin.

 Three glasses, it seems, is enough to activate Martin’s least-favourite part about drinking—the complete inability of his brain to keep every single thing that comes across his mind from spilling out into the open. He’s already told Sasha that he accidentally stole the cardigan she keeps in her desk at work and, by the time he realized a week later, was too embarrassed to give it back. (“So that’s where that went!” Sasha had said with an accusatory tone.) He interrupted Tim mid-sentence to tell him, quite abruptly, that whenever Tim wore that black-and-white patterned shirt to work—which was just a bit smaller on him than the others and which he usually wore with the top two buttons unbuttoned—he could never stop staring at it. (“Really?” Tim had said with a smirk. “I suppose I’ll have to wear it more often then.”)

 And now, when Jon shoots Tim a very impressive glare and says, in his best professional voice, “I don’t think that’s quite work-appropriate, Tim,” Martin isn’t able to keep himself from blurting out that he finds Jon’s “archivist” voice really, really hot.

 The silence that blankets the room at that is deafening. Tim looks delighted; Sasha looks amused. And the flush that spreads over Jon’s face is really quite impressive, visible even in the low light of Sasha’s living room.

 Martin really shouldn’t have had that third glass of champagne.

.

2

.

That’s how many cats Sasha has, until now shut away in her bedroom to avoid being overwhelmed by the loud noise or being stepped on. At Tim’s insistence (and Jon’s not-so-subtle glances toward her closed door), Sasha finally relents, but not before pointing a stern finger at Tim and telling him to behave.

 (“I’m sure I don’t know what you mean,” Tim says innocently, like he doesn’t always end up getting himself bitten or scratched.)

 Now, one cat—an orange-and-white shorthair named Darwin—is curled up in front of the television, currently being assaulted by Tim and Martin as they spoil him with pets and treats and the little feather on a string that he likes. The other—a midnight-black longhair named Emily with wide yellow eyes—is sprawled across Jon’s lap, her purring loud enough that Sasha can hear it from the kitchen where she’s subtly retrieving the bottle of midnight champagne from its hiding place. Sasha’s pretty sure she’s never seen Jon look at anything like that—with eyes full of love and wonder and the corners of his mouth pulled up into what looks like an involuntary smile.

 Sasha’s suddenly so very in love with him—with all of them—that she can barely breathe. It’s not an emotion she’s very comfortable with—she’s never gotten crushes easily, and the ones she’s had tended to ruin year-long friendships when they sprung up almost overnight, when her brain finally decided that it wanted more. Jon, she’s known for ages, their desks in research being directly across from one another and her persistence knowing no bounds. Martin longer still, having met him when he worked in the library and she worked in artifact storage. Tim is the most recent, technically, but god, it feels like she’s known him her whole life.

 There’s a small shriek from the living room, and when Sasha looks back, she sees Tim with his hand buried in the fur of Darwin’s stomach, Darwin’s teeth nipping at the flesh of Tim’s thumb. “Ow ow ow, sharp,” Tim says, but he’s laughing, and he continues to rub at Darwin’s belly with a smile on his face.

 Really, Sasha thinks as she turns back to the kitchen with a smile of her own, there’s nowhere she’d rather be.

.

1

.

That’s how many minutes there are until midnight. The glass of champagne in Jon’s hand looks exactly the same as all the others, but Sasha had insisted that it was better, Jon, it’ll taste heavenly, I promise, so he holds it and watches the numbers on the television screen begin to count down.

 It strikes Jon, as the seconds pass and midnight draws closer, that he’s never really felt any need to celebrate the new year. The two days—New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day—were technically indistinguishable from one other, delineated only by the human decision to make them so, and therefore what was the point really of staying up so late just to drink bad wine and stare at a clock? He’d gone to a New Year’s Eve party once with Georgie in uni, and it had been fine, but once they broke up he really didn’t see any reason to attend another. He disliked everything about New Year’s celebrations—the bad champagne, the resolutions nobody kept, the way he always wrote the date wrong for a few weeks afterwards.

 He doesn’t dislike this, though, he realizes, sitting with Tim pressed up against one side and Martin against the other and Sasha on the end of the couch next to Tim, all of them watching the countdown with rapt attention. Maybe the champagne is terrible and the resolutions are silly and having to constantly erase the last number of the year will be frustrating, but this—being together, celebrating together—really isn’t so bad at all.

 The countdown reaches ten, and Tim begins to vocalize the numbers along with it as they flash across the screen, altogether too loudly for this time of night. Sasha and Martin join in at eight, and Jon finally makes up his mind as the counter hits one, his lips shaping the word along with the rest of them.

 Glasses clink and champagne is drunk (not heavenly, Jon thinks, but more palatable than the rest) and kisses are shared as Happy New Year! flashes across the television screen. And, Jon thinks, it’s really quite lovely after all. To bring in the new year with the people you love.

.

0.

That’s how many of them wake up the next morning without mouths full of cotton and pounding headaches, the several empty bottles of champagne making themselves known.

 “Ughhhhh,” Tim groans eloquently, and falls back asleep.

[aion-rsa]

The Best Thanksgiving TV Episodes

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Halloween and Christmas are objectively the two best American holidays. One allows for us all to indulge in our gothic, spooky side, while the other comes along with family and cheer (forced or otherwise). There’s another holiday between them, however, that is at constant risk of being overlooked.

Thanksgiving doesn’t have candy like Halloween or presents like Christmas. What it does have, thankfully, is television. Just like its Halloween counterpart, Thanksgiving comes along in the fall at an important time in the TV schedule. Traditionally, the last week of November is when many network TV shows are looking for a quick boost of creative and commercial energy to get through the Christmas break. And what better way than to do so than with a Thanksgiving episode, where all characters are basically culturally required to get together?

Though Halloween and Christmas specials often get the most attention, there are many fascinating Thanksgiving-themed episodes of popular TV shows. Here are just some of our favorites. 

Bob’s Burgers

Season 3 Episode 5 – “An Indecent Thanksgiving Proposal” 

Fox’s beloved animated series has staked its claim to Thanksgiving as its holiday of choice, which makes sense given that the Belcher clan takes their food quite seriously. Of the many Bob’s Burgers Thanksgiving specials, season 3’s “An Indecent Thanksgiving Proposal” is likely the best.

This episode finds Bob reluctantly agreeing to “rent out” his family to landlord Calvin Fischoeder (voiced by Kevin Kline) to pose as his family for Thanksgiving dinner while Bob poses as the family chef. While this is a strong enough set up to begin with, the episode excels at escalation and goes to some wild places – even indulging one of the series’ favorite recurring gags of Bob losing his mind and befriending an inanimate object. Of course the inanimate object this time around is none other than a Thanksgiving turkey.

Brooklyn Nine-Nine

Season 5 Episode 7 – “Two Turkeys”

“Two Turkeys” is a prime example of what makes Thanksgiving such a creatively rich holiday for sitcoms and other serialized TV endeavors to exploit. Brooklyn Nine-Nine had already long established that both Jake (Andy Samberg) and Amy’s (Melissa Fumero) respective parents were crazy. All that was left to do was to get them in the same room together.

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That’s just what “Two Turkeys” does. The whole family, including Jake’s dad Roger (Bradley Whitford), Amy’s dad Victor (Jimmy Smits), and Amy’s mom Camila (Bertila Dama), decides to have Thanksgiving at Jake’s mom Karen’s (Katey Sagal) house. Quickly, dueling Thanksgiving turkeys are set up, competitive juices start flowing, and a thumb or two is lost. “Two Turkeys” is Brooklyn Nine-Nine’s best Thanksgiving episode but “Mr. Santiago” in which Boyle intends to behead a live turkey certainly gives it a run for its money. 

Buffy the Vampire Slayer

Season 4 Episode 8 – “Pangs”

Most TV Thanksgiving specials ignore the complicated origins of the holiday…and perhaps wisely so. For a long time, most sitcoms and network dramas lacked a real capacity to carefully discuss Thanksgiving myth-making while also addressing Native American genocide. 

Buffy the Vampire Slayer, however, had no such misgivings and dives right in. “Pangs” is technically the beginning of a Buffy/Angel two-hour Thanksgiving event. It’s got all the usual Thanksgiving episode trappings: food, friends, and family. It also has an army of Chumash Indian Warriors coming back from the grave to punish Sunnydale for its colonial sins. 

Chuck

Season 4 Episode 10 – “Chuck Versus the Leftovers”

This is cheating a bit as “Chuck Versus the Leftovers” technically takes place on the day after Thanksgiving. But Black Friday shopping and turkey leftovers are certainly a part of the Thanksgiving experience. 

This episode finds Chuck’s mom Mary (Linda Hamilton) and international arms dealer Alexei Volkoff (Timothy Dalton) coming over to Chuck’s place for a day-after-Thanksgiving leftover feast. Meanwhile Chuck’s friends at Buy More have to contend with the Black Friday shopping crowd. This is the definitive Chuck Thanksgiving episode as it highlights what the show does well. It balances the high-octane drama of Chuck’s spy life with his supposedly tranquil home life. Getting to enjoy Linda Hamilton and Timothy Dalton going head to head is just icing on the Jell-O salad. 

The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air

Season 1 Episode 12 – “Talking Turkey”

The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air features a few Thanksgiving episodes over its six season run but its first attempt remains the best. Will’s mom Viola makes one of her rare series appearances here when she joins the Banks’ household for Thanksgiving. 

After the parents see how the kids mistreat everyone’s beloved butler Geoffrey, the gang is forced to cook a Thanksgiving meal on their own. Predictably it doesn’t go well. This is a big episode for all involved but for Viola and Aunt Viv in particular. It’s fascinating to watch through a modern lens, given original Aunt Viv actress Janet Hubert’s steadfast lack of involvement in all future Fresh Prince reboots and reunions. 

Friday Night Lights

Season 4 Episode 13 – “Thanksgiving”

So many of the best moments in Friday Night Lights happen at the Taylor family dinner table. How then could the show pass up an opportunity for a good-old fashioned Thanksgiving episode?

“Thanksgiving” is an excellent episode that also serves as its respective season’s finale. This hour concludes Coach Taylor’s first year with the East Dillon Lions in truly satisfying fashion. Before that there’s still plenty of time for a heart-to-heart with QB Vince Howard and Buddy Garrity’s attempts at frying a turkey. 

Friends

Season 5 Episode 8 – “The One With All the Thanksgivings”

Perhaps no series on television took the responsibility of Thanksgiving episodes more seriously than Friends. Friends has so many Thanksgiving-themed episodes that the entire list could essentially be made up of them. And that makes sense given the show’s premise of friends as a found family in the big city.

For the purposes of this list, however, let’s go with the aptly-named “The One With All the Thanksgivings.” In this fifth season episode, Ross, Rachel, Phoebe, Monica, Joey, and Chandler flashback to all of the Thanksgivings they’ve shared together. Consider this a Canterbury Tales of Thanksgiving … that just happens to feature Monica with a turkey on her head.

Gilmore Girls

Season 3 Episode 9 – “A Deep Fried Korean Thanksgiving”

Stars Hollow, Connecticut on Gilmore Girls just looks like a town itching for a good fall holiday. The New England hamlet is the kind of place that absolutely lights up with some fallen leaves and the warm aroma of turkey in the oven. Thankfully, the show agreed and rolled out a Thanksgiving-centric episode in its third season.

“A Deep Fried Korean Thanksgiving” adopts the tried and true “accepted too many dates to the ball” trope as Lorelai and Rory are pulled among four competing Thanksgiving dinners: Lorelai’s parents, Sookie, Luke, and Lane. It’s a jam-packed (and tofurkey-packed) episode that still somehow finds the time to introduce the beloved Cat Kirk.

How I Met Your Mother

Season 3 Episode 9 – “Slapsgiving”

In many ways, How I Met Your Mother was the natural sitcom successor to Friends. Like its NBC forefather CBS’s comedy followed a group of friends living their best lives in New York City. Another area in which HIMYM picks up the Friends ball and runs with it is with its appropriately respectful treatment of Thanksgiving.

How I Met Your Mother loves itself a good Thanksgiving episode. None of them, however, are better than the season 3 installment “Slapsgiving.” This episode finds the gang gathering at Marshall and Lily’s house for their first Thanksgiving as a married couple. Meanwhile, Barney is living in mortal fear of the third slap Marshall owes him due to losing a “slap bet.” That countdown to The Slap imbues an already excellent episode with a real fun sense of urgency. 

It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia

Season 9 Episode 10 – “The Gang Squashes Their Beefs”

Dennis, Dee, Charlie, Mac, and Frank have made a lot of enemies during It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia’s very long, very creatively lucrative run. That’s why for the show’s ninth season finale, the gang decided to gather several of the folks they wronged together and get to squashing some beefs. And what better way to do so than with a nice Thanksgiving dinner?

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This installment is a one big setup to a dinner table with the gang’s rogue’s gallery at the end and it is all well worth the wait. Some dry turkey and even dryer conservation is nowhere near enough to make nice with the McPoyles, Hwang, Cricket, Gail the Snail, or Bill Ponderosa, but bless the gang for trying anyway.

Mad Men

Season 1 Episode 13 – “The Wheel”

Not many Thanksgiving episodes can lay claim to being their respective series best hours, but then again AMC’s all-time classic Mad Men isn’t just any other series. Season 1 finale “The Wheel” is certainly among the best Mad Men installments ever and it just so happens to take place during the week of Thanksgiving 1960.

The Thanksgiving timeframe serves as an elegiac backdrop and Mad Men viewers are forced to confront what kind of man Don Draper really is. Don delivers the pitch of his lifetime to Kodak executives as he urges them to imagine their latest photo wheel creation not as a sleek, dispassionate time machine, but a carousel that can bring families back home to all the most important times of their lives. Then when Don returns home for Thanksgiving, he discovers what he probably already knew – those times are gone and no carousel can bring them back.

Master of None

Season 2 Episode 8 – “Thanksgiving”

OK, we know we just said that not many Thanksgiving episodes can lay claim to being their respective series’ best but here is another contender. “Thanksgiving” is the eighth episode of Master of None’s second (and thus far, final) season and it’s a perfect example of everything the show does well.

This episode takes a break from Dev’s (Aziz Ansari) storyline in the present to delve into the past of his friend Denise (Lena Waithe). Over several Thanksgiving meals throughout the years, Denise comes to realize her attraction to women, processes it, and does her best to communicate her identity to her mom (Angela Bassett). It’s a touching saga made possible by the Thanksgiving season. It also serves as many viewers’ introduction to the storytelling dynamo that is Lena Waithe. 

This episode takes a break from Dev’s (Aziz Ansari) storyline in the present to delve into the past of his friend Denise (Lena Waithe). Over several Thanksgiving meals throughout the years, Denise comes to realize her attraction to women, processes it, and does her best to communicate her identity to her mom (Angela Bassett). It’s a touching saga made possible by the Thanksgiving season. It also serves as many viewers’ introduction to the storytelling dynamo that is Lena Waithe. 

The O.C.

Season 1 Episode 11 – “The Homecoming”

Mid-2000s teen drama The O.C. always paid proper respect to holidays. Who could forget the Cohen family’s dutiful observation of “Chrismukkah?” But the series’ first Thanksgiving installment in season 1 might just be its best holiday offering ever. 

“The Homecoming” is a wonderful example of everything that The O.C. does well. The plot splits itself in two with Ryan (Ben McKenzie) and Marissa (Mischa Barton) heading back to Ryan’s hometown of Chino to meet Ryan’s brother in prison. That sets up a ludicrous crime arc that would make even the Riggins brothers of Friday Night Lights jealous. Meanwhile, back at the Cohen household, Seth’s (Adam Brody) inelegant juggling of the two women in his life comes to a chaotic head.

Orange is the New Black

Season 1 Episode 9 – “Fucksgiving”

Orange is the New Black’s Thanksgiving episode debuted all the way back in 2013, when Netflix was just proving itself to be a spot for original content. So imagine viewers’ surprise that in the streaming world, you can include the F-word in episode titles.

As is the case in every OITNB episode, a lot happens in this hour-long installment. But with Thanksgiving as the backdrop, there’s a real festive air to the proceedings. Perhaps it helps that Taystee (Danielle Brooks) is set to be released and returned to the real world or that Pennsatucky (Taryn Manning) is praying for the rightful end of said real world. In any case, “Fucksgiving” passionate conclusion makes a convincing case that Thanksgiving is among the sexiest of holidays.

Riverdale

Season 4 Episode 7 – “The Ice Storm”

Riverdale’s Thanksgiving episode is about just as insane as one would imagine a Riverdale Thanksgiving episode would be. “The Ice Storm” (which borrows its name and concept from Rick Moody’s 1994 novel of the same name) finds Jughead and Betty stranded at Stonewall Prep due to an ice storm on Thanksgiving while Archie hosts a Thanksgiving dinner at the community center.

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Of course this episode features cartoonish levels of scheming, but it also takes the responsibility of the holiday seriously. Riverdale spends the episode’s opening once again addressing the tragic death of Luke Perry and his character, Fred Andrews. Amid all the plot twists, the show still excels at putting family first. 

Seinfeld

Season 6 Episode 8 – “The Mom and Pop Store”

Many episodes of Seinfeld feature dense plotting, but even by those standards “The Mom and Pop Store” is a very busy episode of television. These 22 minutes feature Jerry getting tricked by a mom and pop shoe store, George trying to find Jon Voight, and Kramer having some major nosebleed problems.

But the Thanksgiving portion of the episode is what stands out as Elaine gets the invite to Jerry’s dentist’s (played by none other than Bryan Cranston, beginning his fruitful arc of Seinfeld guest appearances) Thanksgiving. Jerry is unsure if he himself is invited, but when dental issues begin to pop up, he decides that a Thanksgiving dinner full of dentists might be a useful place to stop by.

Smallville

Season 6 Episode 7 – “Rage”

While it was cruel for Smallville to wait until after the Jonathan Kent era to hold its first Thanksgiving episode, it’s nice that it got around to it all the same. Granted, Thanksgiving doesn’t factor much into “Rage.” Instead much of the hour deals with Clark assisting his good friend Oliver Queen with his mysterious addiction.

But when the Thanksgiving table moment finally does arrive, it’s a real winner. In terms of pre-Arrowverse WB/CW warm and fuzzies, it’s hard to top a dinner featuring Clark Kent, Martha Kent, Lionel Luther, and Green-freaking-Arrow. And of course the presence of NXIVM’s own Allison Mack as Chloe Sullivan just adds a strange glow over all.

The Sopranos

Season 3 Episode 8 – “He Is Risen”

Many classic Sopranos scenes take place around the Sopranos family dinner table (mostly so Tony can yell at the insufferable A.J.). It’s only natural then that the show would feature a Thanksgiving episode at some point during its classic six-season run.

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That moment comes midway through the excellent season 3. Granted, Thanksgiving doesn’t play a major role in this hour, aside from Janice’s creepy elderly boyfriend muttering “he is risen” during dinner. But this episode is filled with classic Sopranos moments all the same: the introduction of Gloria Trillo, the death of Gigi Cestone on the toilet, and Ralph’s continued seasons-long efforts to dig his own grave. All of those events will factor heavily in the episodes to come, for now, however, The Sopranos is happy to just pass the gravy (actual gravy, not red sauce).

South Park

Season 15 Episode 13 – “A History Channel Thanksgiving”

Over the span of its staggering 23 seasons (plus one Pandemic Special), South Park has revealed a real affinity for holiday episodes, particularly the Christmas ones in which the show can feature longtime characters Santa Claus and Jesus Christ.

In this season 15 episode, however, South Park turns its satirical eye to Thanksgiving…or the History Channel version of it more accurately and weirdly. After the boys are assigned a paper on the history of Thanksgiving, they watch the History Channel to discover that the holiday’s origins are far more extraterrestrial than expected. Soon, Stan and company are involved in an interdimensional Thanksgiving adventure involving wormholes and Natalie Portman.

The West Wing

Season 2 Episode 8 – “Shibboleth”

A “Shibboleth” is a long-standing tradition or custom (often a phrasing or even a single word) that distinguishes one group of people from another. The best episodes of The West Wing seek to understand what the shibboleths of this strange country are…and “Shibboleth” is undoubtedly one of the series’ best episodes.

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It’s the night before Thanksgiving at the White House and the West Wing staff are all facing decisions. CJ has been tasked with choosing between two turkeys to pardon; Toby, Josh, and Sam must figure out how to watch football on Thanksgiving day; and most seriously: President Bartlett has to decide what to do with a boat of persecuted Chinese evangelical Christians seeking asylum. It’s a typically hectic day in the West’s most powerful executive office, but the show explores how one holiday can bring all the chaos to a halt. For a little bit at least.

The post The Best Thanksgiving TV Episodes appeared first on Den of Geek.

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‘stick your fucken finger in your eye.’

‘these fingers think they’re a horse.’

‘you can also hear, if you listen closely, david bowie turning in his grave.’

‘lube kits; the bigger the better.’

‘i thought i’d ruin it for her.’

[cheryllcher]

happy new (tears) year

welp the new year (and decade) is here, so i thought i write a little something, and why not a mishmash of angst (dont worry it’s barely there lol) and a big bunch of fluff it’s crazy. wanted to go for marichat but then this came to mid so yea :) anywayy hope u enjoy this lil short thing and happy new year!! :))

—-

The Dupain-Cheng household was colourful. No kidding, the house is just filled with multi-coloured fairy lights and glow sticks. New Year’s was just around the corner, and hour walk down the path of time and there it would be. And so, a party is held, to send off the current year and welcome the new one with family and friends.

A whole lot more people came then expected, humans interacting with other humans and laughing with even more humans. This didn’t deter Tom and Sabine though, they continued hosting the party with elegance. The more the merrier they always say. The table had a selection of food laid out on it, each item contributed by the different families that attended. Cider flowing, video games playing, faces smiling, the party was in full swing. A Dupain-Cheng celebration never fails to disappoint, this one included.

Marinette buzzed around the house, making sure all the guests are enjoying themselves, letting her parents relax with the other adults for a bit. Rose and Juleka were huddled by the warm fire munching on pastries, Kim and Alix were currently half-drunk from all the dares(the sober, responsible grown ups were not amused with the children with their underaged drinking *ahem* Roger *ahem*), and Nino and Alya were currently in the corner whispering among themselves suspiciously, which Marinette was sure she knew what it was about. The others were sitting on the ground cheering on a game of Mecha Strike.

Adrien-who was miraculously (pun not intended i swear) allowed to the party with Kagami (also a surprise)- was covered head to ankle with glow sticks. Seriously this guy went crazy he finished a whole box himself and that was like 50 sticks. He was currently conversing with Luka about Jagged Stone and the instruments they play. Kagami was sitting by the side clearly awkward and trying to camouflage with the wall behind her cuz ohmygod there are two hot guys in front of me. The pigtailed girl who was watching from afar deflated slightly at that due to how close her crush and one of her other friends were, wishing it was her who stood beside him instead. But she can’t. It was way too awkward and sort of tentioney to go there.

The clock sure ticks fast, as soon the long hand’s ran close to the 11 mark, indicating that it was slightly more than 5 minutes before the new decade began. (wow a new decade already. time really does fly :) ) Adrien and Kagami were left talking in a corner, seemingly getting closer by the second, Luka long since away from the conversation. Marinette’s heart couldn’t take it, her chest slowly constricting in on itself at the sight. So instead of being with everyone else for the countdown, she snuck up the stairs to her attic-turned-bedroom, before heading to the balcony. Uneasy thoughts swirled around her mind as she looked up at the barely there stars, mostly erased by light pollution from the city below.

Adrigami’s gonna be alive soon, well pretty much alive now, and Adrienette’s dead for good now. What will i do, Monsieur Stars, how will i ever move on?

Adrien and Marinette actually got together after the ‘just-a-friend-zoning’ shenanigans was over, pure sweet, gooey cheesiness around them. So their breakup came as a huge surprise to everyone, disappointing the Adrienette shippers around the city. It was mutual though, both of then clearly not ready to have a relationship in their lives. And they were still friends, hanging out with everyone together except alone with the other. But no matter how hard to tried, how long she took, she couldn’t get her ex and friend out of her head.

Tikki, who had been perched on her shoulder trying to offer comfort to her friend suddenly buzzed away, leaving Marinette conscious of her surroundings. She didn’t turn when the skylight on the floor of the balcony opened, and internally breathed out in relief. At least it’s not an akuma. She assumed it was Alya though, in her too sad to even acknowledge you fully mood, and started speaking to the presence behind her.

“Alya if you’re here to try to get me in on one of your ‘seduce Adrien and make him fall for me again’ plan, I’m not in. He’s clearly with Kagami.”

“Well, I’m not very sure I’m up for being seduced,” a chuckle followed, “but I am now very curious about this plan.”

A shriek nearly slipped out of Marinette’s lips if not for the fact that she placed her hand over her mouth, a silent scream the only thing that remained. She couldn’t speak, couldn’t blink, couldn’t move. Adrien was afraid he’d be seeing her eyeballs fall out, so he continued.

“Sorry for just coming out here, I saw you being sneaky and decided to follow.” Then he did that cure little thing were he rubbed the back of his neck with his hand. Oh god he was adorable.

“Wh-Wha...Aren’t you- gah?”

He heard the many questions in that unintelligible nonsense, understanding everything she was trying to put into words without success. He always did.

“I’m here because I want to talk to you. Yes,

I was with Kagami, and no, we aren’t a thing. I heard you talking to the stars young lady. I... don’t feel that way for her, so I had to be honest with her.” The teasing smile never left his face even if it got a touch shy and awkward.

Oh no I said my thoughts out loud.

“Yes, you did.”

Darn it!

“Anyway, I just wanted to try to confess about how I can’t move on no matter how hard I try and to get some kind of closure or something if you’ve managed to move on with life... but I see the feeling’s mutual?” Hope. Spilling out from his voice, so much.

“You’ve got a minute, hot stuff. Tell me what you wanna say before the year’s over and we’ll see where to go from there. I want to hear everything so speak.” Her confidence is somewhat there, something in her heart fighting it’s way up against the sadness from before. The young man gladly followed the demand.

“Marinette, I know we’ve parted ways thinking it’s for the best as we weren’t up for it, but I still think of you every moment, still falling deeper and deeper into your trap as each day passes. You’ve stolen my heart long ago and it’s so deep in your clutches I simply can’t get it back anymore.

“I want to treat you like the princess you deserve to be once more and make up for all the time we’ve lost. I want to hold you again, shower you with affection and gifts and love. I want to make you smile that smile that I miss so much. I want my best friend back.

“I’m ready now, and I’m not going to choose anyone else, because I can’t... So, Princess, if you are ready as well and are willing... Will you have me? Again?”

The countdown’s starting in the living room.

10! 9!

Her brain short circuited.

8! 7!

His doubts starts streaming in.

6! 5!

She nods her head quickly, tears slipping from her eyes. He laughs out his relief, tears leaking out of his eyes as well.

4! A step closer.

3! Heads tilting forward simultaneously.

2! Eyes fluttered close and breaths mingled

1! Happy New Year!

Lips pressed gently against lips as cheers erupted from downstairs, completely unaware of the sweet fluff happening upstairs. The bells of the Notre Dame rang loud and clear but were not heard by the two teenagers. It lasted for a minute, both parting in need of air.

“Happy New Year, Princess.”

“Happy New Year, my Prince.”

—-

Bonus:

“Geez, my cheese can’t cover up the sweetness here!” A cheese-loving cat kwami grumbled from a shelf in Marinette’s room.

“Well, I guess you wouldn’t want your own New Year’s kiss?” His counterpart asked slyly.

“Nonono, come here sugarcube. I need that kiss to survive the suffering until they figure out their identities.”

[panelshowsource]

Hi Sarah, I love your blog and am hoping if you can give me some random things to watch this week-end? I'm a bit sad and in need of cheering up. Thank you ♡

hello sweet anon, of course i can! why don’t you try some of these?

there was a televised special of the game of thrones podcast thronecast with sue perkins, rob beckett, jonathan ross, joel dommett and more. if you watch got then you should watch it it was fun!!

series 21 of 8 out of 10 cats just started!!

and series 21 of celebrity juice just started!! (big nsfw warnings with this one though lmaooo)

the unbelievable truth is back with s22!! here’s the first ep (all previous series are on the masterpost)

the first ep of s57 of hignfy just aired, can you watch it for me so i don’t have to this time? *is generally tired*

aaaand there’s new breaking the news, which is the tv version of the scottish radio show, much like hignfy if it was, like, funnier 0:-)

in and out of the kitchen (written and directed by miles jupp) the acclaimed radio version and the short-lived tv version are both there. it stars miles as a gay food writer with a partner and all kinds of fussy posh problems, it’s so cute!!

tv heaven, telly hell with sean lock was a really underrated show imo. i love the david mitchell episode!

if you didn’t watch joe wilkinson sculpt his own ass out of fondant in s^2c bake off you are not living

if you want to ride the wave of mildly-out-of-character joe wilkinson, comedians watching football with friends is surprisingly decent (i recommend ep5 with joe and tom davis as well as ep4 with sean lock and lee mack)

if you want to ride the wave of the wave of mildly-out-of-character joe wilkinson, his new podcast gossipmongers is fucking hilarious…they just read out submissions of local gossip and laugh about people’s insane lives and joe giggling for a solid 28 minutes is all you need to feel better

a bit of fry and laurie is always a good time :)

oh and drunk history!

charlie brooker’s video game playlist — charlie discusses his passion for video games, selecting some of his favourite game music!!

if you miss charlie as much as me then it’s never a bad idea to revisit you have been watching. s01e07 is a classic…

“stop saying ‘fuck’!!!”

this is the best episode of cats does countdown ever change my mind

and this was a really good recent episode

do you feel like watching some standup? sean lock, james acaster, joe lycett, jon richardson, sarah millican, lee mack, dara, greg davies, simon amstell, frankie? i’ve got a bunch here and there’s also this collection!

there’s new your face or mine which is uhh not for everyone, but if you need a jimmy + katherine fix and enjoy a bit of roasting then go for it!

if you’re into frankie boyle and politics, new world order is back! all women panel hell yes avoid the comments section

alex horne’s doc the games that time forgot about horseless jousting is something else

also alex horne related are new episodes of bad golf!!

have an oldie but goodie wilty for good measure :)

[tellthemeerkatsitsfine]

Thought: On 8 Out of 10 Cats Does Countdown, Joe Wilkinson and Richard Ayoade are opposites.

Joe's entire persona, on Catsdown and just in his career generally, is about being a disheveled moron who's not smart enough to know what's going on. So of course they play into that on the show, making a lot of jokes about how bad he is at the letters and numbers games because he's not the type to spelling or math well.

But the truth is he's pretty good at them. Not amazing at them, not one of the best they've ever had. But I'd say he's better at the letter and number puzzles than most comedians who play Catsdown. Probably in the top 30%. I think he's at least a bit competitive too, though he can't really show it because that would break character. Sometimes you can see him get really into solving something and really pleased when he succeeds.

But Jimmy just ignores that fact when making jokes about Joe, and Joe ignores that fact when making jokes about himself, and whenever he's on the show is full of jokes about how he's not smart enough for this.

Meanwhile, Richard Ayoade is pretty bad at the games. Not the worst they've ever had, but at least bottom half. Probably the bottom 30%. I think it's happened a lot that he's declared a 5-letter word when even I can see a bunch of obvious sixes, and I'm no good at the letters games. And he often doesn't get anywhere near in the math games, even when getting within at least ten would be fairly easy. It's not like he never gets there, but he often misses it.

But of course, he looks and sounds like Richard Ayoade and one time he played one guy on The IT Crowd and now he has to be that for the rest of his life. So all the jokes about him have to be about how he's a nerd who was born to play this game.

...It's almost like panel show autocue material is based on a series of things we've all agreed to pretend are true, like that Rob Beckett has massive horse teeth instead of a bit of an overbite. I realize that's not a new revelation or anything, it just occurred to me today that those two are affected in exactly opposite ways.

[thefitness18-blog]

- "He’s a F**king Idiot" | WEIRDEST Moments Pt. 1 | 8 Out of 10 Cats Does Countdown

New Post has been published on https://www.fitness18.com/hes-a-fking-idiot-weirdest-moments-pt-1-8-out-of-10-cats-does-countdown/

- "He’s a F**king Idiot" | WEIRDEST Moments Pt. 1 | 8 Out of 10 Cats Does Countdown

[edogawatranslations]

999: Alterna (2) - Part 7, Chapters 1-2

Table of Contents | Previous: Part 6, Chapters 6-9

Part Seven - Battle

Chapter 1

“We have very little time remaining. Let’s decide on the teams,” Ace said to begin the conversation.

Without hesitation, everyone else muttered in agreement. The suffocating anxiety in the air from before had since dissipated. It must have been because everyone understood that even if we were separated, we would eventually regroup.

However, only I felt differently. A new form of anxiety had seized my whole body. Now that I realized Santa and Seven’s chances of being Zero were high, I wanted to minimize the time I spent around them as much as possible.

What should I do?

Concealing my unease from everyone else, I put on a mask of calmness and ran through the calculations in my head.

Akane, Clover, and I had a digital root of [6]. The other four had a digital root of [1]. That meant that both teams could open a numbered door. This was the best option.

“Let’s go, June, Clover.” I grabbed the two of them by the arm and led them to the [6] door.

“Hey, what do you think you’re doin’ goin’ off on your own?” Seven spoke up.

“What’s wrong with that? The four of you can enter the [1] door,” I said, while scanning my bracelet.

“What does it matter? All of us will meet back up sooner or later anyways,” Lotus added, to my delight.

“Well, when you put it that way...” Seven hesitated.

“Then that settles it. Let’s go, you two.”

I hurried Akane and Clover, before Seven could change his mind. Sensing my urgency, Akane extended her hand to the <RED>.

“Clover, you hurry up too,” I urged.

“Wait. I’m next.”

Shoving Clover off to the side, Santa pushed his way to the <RED>. He thrust his hand onto the scanner, causing a third asterisk to light up.

“What the hell are you doing?” I yelled in anger.

“Isn’t that what I should be askin’? Don’t go actin’ on your own. Are the three of you plottin’ something?”

Santa’s outburst left me speechless.

“What’s wrong? Cat got your tongue?”

I couldn’t just accuse Santa of being Zero without any hard evidence.

“But... We can’t open the door anymore,” I hesitated.

“Yeah we can. Hey pops, get over here.” Santa beckoned to Ace.

[5] + [6] + [3] + [1] = 15 1 + 5 = [6]

With Ace, we would be able to enter through the [6] door.

“The other three will go through the [1] door,” Santa continued.

[4] + [7] + [8] = 19 1 + 9 = 10 1 + 0 = [1]

That wouldn’t present a problem either.

“I don’t care either way,” Clover muttered. “Won’t we just group back together again?”

Clover started walking away towards the [1] door.

“No, Clover,” I called out to her in a fluster.

“I’ll be fine,” Clover said, flashing a smile. “If I keep relying on others, my brother will only laugh at me. I need to get stronger.”

Seeing her smile pained my heart.

“If you’re worried about Clover, why don’t we reconsider the teams? You, Clover, and Ace can head through the [1] door, and the other four of us can go through the [6] door.”

Santa’s suggestion almost came across as a threat. There was no way I would allow Akane to form a team with Santa and Seven. I would prefer the current groupings, with the two of them split up.

“Fine. Let’s stick with this.” I nodded reluctantly.

Nobody had any objections.

“Ace, let’s go,” I said.

“Ah. Yes,” Ace responded.

He scanned his bracelet and immediately pulled the lever. With the sound of creaking gears, the thick door slowly opened its mouth.

“We oughta get goin’ too,” Seven said, standing in front of the [1] door.

An unsuspecting Clover followed his lead, extending her left hand to the <RED>.

...Is this really for the best?

I couldn’t help but feel concern for Clover. What if Seven bared his fangs and showed his true colors? If that happened, only Lotus would be there to protect her. But what could someone as powerless as her possibly do against Seven?

Watch out for Seven—before I could relay that warning to her, Santa interjected.

“Hey, quit dickin’ around.”

He grabbed ahold of my arm and dragged me to the other side of the door.

Chapter 2

The door closed shut.

Our surroundings were completely bathed in darkness. I tried to focus my eyes, but I found myself unable to see anything other than the unsettling glimmer that emanated from our bracelets.

“Jumpy, where are you?” Akane’s voice cried out from nearby.

I groped around in the darkness. The tips of my fingers grazed someone’s soft and smooth skin. It had to be Akane. Unwilling to let her be alone, I gripped her hand tightly.

“This will prove quite difficult for us,” Ace said from close by. “We won’t be able to easily locate the <DEAD> in the dark.”

“Anyone got anything that can serve as a light?” Santa asked loudly. No one responded. “Damn! What do we do?”

“Calm down, Santa. We have over a minute left. Let’s feel around for a light switch. There should be one on the walls,” Ace calmly suggested.

We didn’t have another choice. Holding onto Akane with my right hand, I touched the wall with my left.

I kept telling myself to calm down, but the flashing skull symbol on my bracelet fueled my distress. My heart beat like a drum, slowly making it harder for me to breathe.

How much time was left?

A numbing pain spread through my dry mouth. I stuck my tongue out gasping for breath, but my body still wouldn’t calm.

That was when it happened.

The sound of iron doors opening echoed out a short distance away. A beam of light shot out from somewhere, shining a pale light into the room. I turned to my right and clearly saw Akane’s body in profile.

“What’s with this place? It’s all dark,” Seven’s voice shot out.

“I don’t want to be in here for very long,” Lotus muttered.

What was going on?

“Seven!” I yelled out, without thinking.

“...Huh? Junpei, that you? Whatchu doin’ here?” Seven’s voice clearly resounded from behind Akane. “Are we... in the same room?”

The door shut with a bang, returning our surroundings to darkness. It seemed that both doors connected to the same room.

“...Why?” Seven asked, confusion audible in his voice.

“That’s not what we should be asking right now! We’re doomed if we can’t find the <DEAD>!” Lotus’s frenzied scream filled the air.

“Where is everyone? I can’t see anything like this!” Clover shouted, adding to the panic.

Our reunion didn’t invite joy this time. We were in dire straits.

I tried to alleviate the situation. “Everyone, calm down! There should be a light switch somewhere! Check the walls—”

“Hey, you think we have time for that?” Santa’s voice came from my left. I could only see the skull blinking on his bracelet. The time between flashes seemed to get shorter and shorter.

“Jumpy... We’re fated to die here, aren’t we?”

I felt Akane shaking. I squeezed her hand even tighter.

“Don’t be silly! We can’t give up here,” I shouted. If we could pass through this room, the next thing waiting for us would be the exit—the [9] door. I couldn’t let the game end here. “Don’t go spouting that crap about fate. We can change the future with our own hands, however much we want.”

I bit my lip and tightened my grip once more.

“I found it! It’s over here!” Ace’s cheerful voice echoed out.

The whole room suddenly became awash with light. While squinting my eyes to cope with the brightness, I scanned the room.

The U-shaped room had many corners. I was standing directly in its center. A long table stretched out horizontally before me, with some sort of oceanic map pasted on its surface. Various items like a compass and pencils lay scattered to the sides.

“Is this a chart room?” Akane murmured from beside me.

Beyond the table rested shelves of different heights as well as various communication devices. There were two dilapidated wooden doors. One stood on the far left, while the other stood on the far right.

“Where’s the <DEAD>?” Santa shouted. “Hurry up! We don’t have much time!”

Ace appeared from around a corner to our right. “Did you find the <DEAD>?”

“It’s here! I found it!” As if responding to Ace’s question, Lotus’s voice echoed out from our left.

The four members of our group glanced at one another before simultaneously scampering over to where her voice came from. Following the wall and turning the corner, I spotted the figures of Clover, Seven, and Lotus.

Seven motioned to put his left hand onto the scanner.

“Wait!” Shoving me aside, Santa charged forward. “We were first!”

With a shout, he suddenly threw a punch at Seven. Seven crashed against the wall, caught by the surprise attack, causing the entire room to shake. Clover’s scream reverberated across the room.

“The fuck you doin’?!” Seven quickly got up and flew at Santa with a roar.

“Seven, hold on!” I raised both of my arms and stood to block Seven. We didn’t have time for any of this.

“Junpei, what’s the matter with you?”

“We’d be the ones to explode first! So—”

While I was trying to explain the reason, Santa, Akane, and Ace all quickly went over and scanned their bracelets on the <DEAD>.

“Hey, you’re up. Hurry!”

Urged on by Santa, I slapped the scanner with my left hand and slammed the lever down. The skull symbol on our bracelets disappeared, not a moment too soon.

“...We’re saved.” As if all of the tension in her body unraveled at once, Akane backed into a wall and crumpled onto the floor.

But it was still too early to celebrate. The unsettling beeping continued.

“Hurry up!”

I pulled Clover by the arm and forced her hand onto the <DEAD>. Lotus and Seven followed. With that, all of us had successfully stopped the detonation countdown.

Rubbing my chest in relief, I slid onto the floor next to Akane. Everyone else also collapsed to the floor.

For a while, we all sat in silence, basking in the joy of knowing that we were still alive.

Next: Part 7, Chapters 3-4