#And now I’m using twilight zone frames as references

[eat-applez]

A lot of times when people say “I’ve memorised an intro!!” They mean they’ve memorised the song in it or something, not me though, no no no, I can recite the ATLA and Twilight Zone intros without breaking a sweat.

[antigonewinchester]

15x20

And we come to it... The End of Supernatural.

But we’ve got a double feature this time: because I watched 1x20 too. With 15x20 calling back to that ep so specifically, I thought I’d see what the finale looked like in its context.

There’s a lot of talk of how the early vs. later seasons differ visually in terms of lighting, cinematography, etc., but I was also struck in their difference in tone. There’s a sincerity to 1x20, not just in what’s happening but in how the writing takes itself & the situation seriously, while 15x20 is much lighter and humorous, verging into bathos at points. It’s exactly the same as the contemporary MCU/Disney blockbuster humor: never letting the tension build for too long and breaking it was jokes. Maybe I’m just a bit too earnest but this kind of humor rings really hollow to me. It often feels self-defensive, like the writer(s) are hyper aware of their audience & its reaction and so they make fun of themselves before the audience can make fun of them.

I’d forgotten The Twilight Zone reference early in 1x20; love that. All of the John - Sam - Dean family drama is so compelling -- Sam still hotheaded & angry, John caring but not willing to give up his authority, Dean the peacemaker in the middle of it all. (The rest under a cut because it got long.)

DEAN: What happens if you die? Dad, what happens if you die, and we coulda done something about it? You know I been thinking. I ...think maybe Sammy's right about this one. We should do this together. [SAM nods.] DEAN: We're stronger as a family, Dad. We just are. You know it. JOHN: We're running out of time. You do your job and you get out of the area. That's an order.

Kripke’s idea of ‘family as everything’ is the foundation of this ep. It’s also obviously about healing the original family estrangement in Sam leaving and John rejecting him for it--John has to relearn how to “believe” in family again, which first starts to happen when Sam & Dean rush into save him, and then he saves Sam, using a bullet from the Colt to kill Luther holding Sam hostage, even though it means one less chance to get the YED. If, as SW analyzed, Dean takes on John’s narrative role in S4/5 with Sam, then Dean is in this narrative position thru the entire rest of the show. For ex, in Dabb’s seasons, so much of the writing focuses on Dean not “believing” in or resenting/rejecting family, which drives almost all the emotional conflict. And then cue Dean’s heartfelt deathbed speech in 15x20 about how much he loves Sam & thinks Sam is such an amazing guy, right? The ultimate “I believe in family & love you so much” speech. Dean’s speech even parallels what Sam’s son tell him as he’s dying, so framing Dean in a parental role to the end: (”SAM No. / DEAN (softly pleading): Look at me. Look at me. I need... I need... I need you to tell me that it's okay. I need you to tell me... Tell me it's okay. / SAM (through tears) Dean... it's okay. You can go now.” versus “DEAN II: Dad. It's okay. You can go now.”)

With the Colt, what stood out on this watch was how even though it’s a weapon that can “kill anything,” it’s not divine or blessed or anything like that; it was just a gun made by Samuel Colt for ordinary human hunters. Given how fantastical the show gets by the end, the Colt is grounded in a satisfying way. In order to fight creatures stronger than they are, people will make a tool that’ll allow them to overcome all that, just through sheer human ingenuity & stubbornness.

Jenny is the obvious throughline between these two eps, but there’s also John being integral to both (returning in 1x20, Sam & Dean figuring out the case thru his journal in 15x20) and both eps dealing with vampires. In 15x20, the situation is clearly meant to be a mirror reflection of Sam and Dean’s family tragedy: vampires invade a house, kill the father instead of the mother (but leaving her traumatized and unable to speak, literally & metaphorically) and steal the 2 kids away, but ending more happily with Sam & Dean saving the kids. There’s also again shades of sexual violence against children, in the vampires not just killing the kids but keeping them alive for years, both to feed and feed on them. If it’s more alluded to in 15x20, then it’s literal in 1x20, with vampires intertwined with sexual violence all over the ep: Kate & Luther making out / getting ready to have sex while Jenny watches, with Kate then turning Jenny by assaulting her with a kiss (complete w/ incestuous undertones in Luther then saying “Welcome home”); John looming over Kate and Luther like a creepy stalker when they all invade the vampires’s nest; Dean playing bait and drawing the vamps out, with Kate assaulting Dean very similarly to how she did Jenny. The ‘Dean playing bait’ scene was also interesting in that Dean is very much vulnerable (what if Kate had just gone for his neck?) while the masculine violence of the Winchesters is highlighted as well... John & Sam shooting Kate and the other vamp, John coming in with “sweetheart” to Kate when he confronts her, Dean taking Kate off in a bridal carry, a parody of the real thing. They’re both the hunted and hunters.

SAM (crying) Then don't leave me. Don't leave me. I can't do this alone. DEAN Yes, you can. SAM Well, I don't want to. DEAN Hey. I'm not leaving you. I'm gonna be with you... [DEAN is crying as he places his fist over SAM’S heart.] Right here... every day. ... DEAN Goodbye, Sam. Goodbye.

Telling that it was Jackles and Jarpad who added in those callbacks to Sam & Dean’s dialogue in the pilot, not Dabb. Good for them, tho.

I’m surprised I’ve never seen a comparison made between Dean’s death and Jack’s departure in 15x19! If Jack is a Christ figure, then Dean is a messiah figure, and those figures very often die; both Dean and Jack gave up a chance at a normal life to save the world & protect the people they love, Dean as a hunter & Jack as God; they both do the “I’ll still be with you, in your heart” gesture; it ends with both Jack and Dean saying goodbye, and they both then go onto to ascend to Heaven or a heavenly place. People talk about how Jack’s ending is messed up because he’s just a kid with too much responsibility put on his head, but the show idealizes / does the same thing with Dean, in how much it valorizes Dean’s protection of Sam. I think back to Jarpad’s quote talking about the finale that got people in a huff (“It was a success story — it was Dean’s success story,” Padalecki reflects on the “Supernatural” series finale. “This guy gave his life for years and years and years and ultimately gave his life to have his No. 1 on the planet live as normal a life as possible.”) but like? Doesn’t this attitude seem exactly how the show viewed Sam & Dean at this point?

I’ve also seen people talk pretty cynically about Dean’s death and as much as I’m not a fan of Dean dying I also just cannot read it as cynically as some people do. Dean didn’t die because he “couldn’t live a normal life,” he died because the show set up the “Dean = chooses the hunting life, Sam = wants a normal life” framing back in S12, Dabb’s first season, which culminates here in Dabb’s last, with Dean dying on a hunt after saving 2 kids from something horrible, and Sam going on to live without Dean and having a ‘normal’ life, wife, a son, even if he deep down he longs to be with Dean again. If Dean most represents “the family” in the narrative, then of course he couldn’t get a wife and kid like Sam could; that would be Dean choosing to have another family over Sam, and that wouldn’t work with Dean’s narrative role. In S15 too, Dean’s death also fits thematically with the emphasis within the last season on making sacrifices and dying for what you love and the people you saved living on after that sacrifice. Ketch, Rowena, Cas, Jack (sort of), Dean, to name some major ones. There’s also that Sam dying & Dean living on would be a repeat of Swan Song, so I can see why they would’ve wanted to avoid that plot beat because they’d already done it once. If anything, I’d say Dean’s death echoes his one in 3x16: telling Sam to carry on without him, Sam being unable to prevent his death, but this time instead of going to Hell, Dean ends up in Heaven. And Dean gets narratively rewarded with the perfect, best Heaven ever! The one that is stated he deserves!! I just don’t see how that translates into the writers seeing Dean as not normal or having something wrong with him?

OKAY last few things: I actually like the regular “Carry On Wayward Son” and then the cover version, what can I say. Despite ppl saying Dean spent however many odd decades in Heaven waiting for Sam, it’s clearly implied he only waited a short time in Bobby saying “Time up here, it's... it's different,” which is calling back to Hell’s time dilation, Dean’s 40′s years, and his now only spending a few minutes separate from Sam in comparison. And while I 100% understand not liking the finale, it’s kind of fascinating to me that the finale basically framed it as a final, fantastic Happy Ending for Sam & Dean, they are at peace for all eternity, isn’t that so nice, and parts of the fandom somehow read it as a tragic or unhappy ending. It’s just... so clearly not. It is if you wanted to the story to end another way, but c’mon, the story wasn’t going to end another way. It ended as it started, the Epic Love Story of Sam & Dean.

[deralpi]

It seems as though we have to make our own content for a while. Here is my contribution to easing the pain of the hiatus: A Beaujester conversation, but the angst is turned up to eleven.

Hold me close, then let me go [1570 words]

The early dawn sun slanted through the single window. In its rays, dust particles floated in the air, puffed up by life slowly stirring awake. Because of the room’s angular layout, the light illuminated barely half of it; the other half depicted a still dark corner, in which stood an ordinary bed. And on its overused mattress, tucked under layers of blankets, lay one blue tiefling, still deep in slumber.

One would think that the wealth of the Might Nein would ensure them only upper-class lodging for the rest of their days, but once in awhile stakes were too high and discretion was judicious. 

And discretion you paid for with dignity, not coin. 

Three ramshackle rooms for two people each, while one had the pleasure of sleeping alone. In and of itself no unpleasant circumstances, if anything it prompted Beau to reminisce about their earlier beginnings. The debasing part was the creepy innkeeper, whose leer Beau would’ve already wiped off his face if they weren’t trying to stay low. She still almost did it just to quench her mounting agitation.

Beau would call herself a fundamentally angry person. With it came the responsibility to control herself, so innocent bystanders didn’t become first-hand witnesses to her wraith. Beau would wager — though she wasn’t too sure — that that anger had been her primal incentive which had pushed her into martial arts. The excruciating pain of a harsh work-out was an outlet, a way to inflict pain on herself so it wouldn’t be directed at others. Such daily exercises had proven sufficient in containing herself.

At least usually, that was.

For days now Beau has felt frustration churning inside her, putting her on edge. And with each consecutive dream filled with loss, she awoke angrier. 

With her legs folded under her, Beau desperately sought the comfort of deep meditation. All with no success. The harder she tried to calm herself the angrier she became. Suddenly, without her control — as she had feared — her fist crashed into the wall beside her, the wood crackling as it gave way. Beau held the pose, shock suddenly settling in. What is wrong with me? Her body began to shiver despite herself.

“Is everything alright?”

Beau didn’t look at her. Carefully, she withdrew her hand and let it drop into her lap; with the other she began to rub her eyes as if she had just woken up as well, cloaking her unshed tears. “Yes. Go back to sleep. It is still early.” Even to herself, her voice sounded mechanical.

A pregnant pause settled between them. Then, Beau heard the shuffling of the bedding and the tapping of soft footfalls until a pair of blue feet entered her peripheral. Beau didn’t have to see her to know that she was studying the impact beside her, a large dent of shattered wood and tiny splinters with red tips where they had bitten her skin. 

Jester plopped down on her knees in front of her, took Beau’s wounded hand in hers and uttered a few indistinct words. Soothing energy like a soft caress flowed through her skin and expunged her pain. 

Only then did Beau allow herself to look at her for the first time. Jester was a surprisingly restless sleeper, the result of which was a persistent mop of hair after waking that could only be tamed by a long bath. Beau had gone out of her way to poke fun at it, to fashion a plausible reason that would explain her uncontrollable, affectionate grin at the sight of it.

“What is going on, Beau?” Beau hated how much softness she put into her name.

“I don’t know. Nothing and everything, I guess.” It was the truth, though Jester would undoubtedly interpret it as another deflection.

Jester folded her legs, situating herself in front of Beau like a prettier mirror. Her eyes were devoid of any residual drowsiness. Intensity and focus shining within them. It meant that she wouldn’t let this one fly. Jester was naive in many regards, but she was also clever; frustratingly so. Though she had blatantly no clue as to why Beau behaved awkwardly around her, she noticed it and knew how to use it to her advantage. She knew that she only had to sit there and say nothing; the arising uneasiness would tickle a response out of Beau.

It worked like a charm.

“I can’t lose any of you.” Especially not you, Beau was about to add, but she couldn’t. Because it was neither true nor wrong. Every single one of them had accepted her and helped her become the woman she was today and she loved them dearly for it; but losing Jester would be the thing that would truly break her. “I simply can’t.”

“You won’t.”

“But that is a lie, isn’t it?” Beau zoned in on her. “Do you remember what you have said to me? On the boat? That I can become a pirate captain when this is all over?” She paused. “When. Not if.”

Jester’s face convulsed as if recognition had slapped her across the face.

“It’s fine. Don’t beat yourself up over it. I’m not dumb. I’m not deluding myself into believing that this-” Beau swung her arms wide, indicating the space around her “will last forever. One day we will scatter in all directions, visiting each other only occasionally. Time runs its course and that’s how it ought to be. I just—” Beau fell silent.

“You what?” Jester asked, stretching to lay a hand on her knee. 

Beau lifted herself to her feet abruptly and began to pace the room, kicking up dust. She heard Jester harrumph behind her.

“Listen, Beau,” she said. “Eventually we are going to part ways, yes. I’m also not kidding myself. But neither you nor I know when this separation will knock on our door. For all we know we could be hitting the road together five years from now. Please, don’t allow your fear of the moment where we part to ruin the time we are still together.”

Beau stopped in her tracks. It was self-evident that Jester meant the entire group, but Beau suddenly realized what her issue was; at least part of it. Why does there have to be a timer on our relationship? Why do I have to end up alone, if all I want is to be by her side forever?

“A part of me can not let you go.” Beau looked over at Jester. The rising sun touched her frame. She looked lovely. “The other part thinks I have to.”

A brief quizzical look passed over Jester’s face before anger began to mold it. She jumped to her feet and stamped on the ground for emphasis. “Don’t you dare act dramatic right now. Not ever again. I will not have it!” Beau knew immediately what she was referring to. The Hag’s deal.

Somebody behind Beau knocked on their door. A second later, Fjord’s muffled voice filtered through the wood. “Everything alright?”

Beau flinched. She hated that question. “Everything’s fine. Order breakfast without us; we’re following suit once we’re ready. If I find no bacon on my plate I have to kick somebody’s face in.”

The sound of shuffling boots clanged down the corridor until there was complete silence. With her face half turned towards the door, Beau let her head drop. “We’ll talk later, okay?” She waited a moment for a response, but when no came, she loosened the door latch. 

“What is wrong, Bea—?” Jester cried, a sob choking her out before she could finish saying her name.

Beau was stopped in her tracks once more. Admit it and she will break your heart. Walk away and you will break hers. 

Suddenly, the choice became very easy.

Beau stayed faced towards the door, unable to look at her teary-eyed face while she said it. “I love you, Jester.”

“I love you, to—”

“No, Jester,” Beau interrupted, her heart hammering against her ribcage. “I love you.” 

 A gasp escaped Jester’s mouth. Then, the room went quiet. Beau stood still, wringing her hands nervously. I should’ve had something prepared. The accrued anger and frustration suddenly turned on her. The three most powerful words a person can utter, and out of my mouth, they sound pathetically weak. I should’ve confessed with a heartfelt speech after a grandiose dinner in our most stunning attire with a bouquet of disgustingly beautiful flowers in my hand under the golden sunlight at twilight. 

Not here. Not ever.

Beau glimpsed over her shoulder. Jester’s eyes were wide open, her mouth aghast, her posture stiff. An exemplary image of unbridled shock. Beau never would’ve thought that she would be the one who would manage to strike Jester speechless. In any other situation, she would’ve grinned. In this one, she opened the door. 

“I’m sorry,” she said on her way out.

Did Beau really want to hear what Jester would say? Wasn’t it better to keep up the illusion that nothing had happened, that she didn’t just ruin their friendship? Just a few more hours where her heart would stay intact; was that too much to ask for? 

Twice you have saved me from going down a dark path. What will happen now when such a situation occurs for the third time? Will you still be there to keep me in check?

Or has separation just knocked on our door?

[eddycurrents]

The Bride of Hell & Others: “Double Feature of Evil”

Words: Mike Mignola | Art: Richard Corben | Colours: Dave Stewart | Letters: Clem Robins

Originally published by Dark Horse in Hellboy: Double Feature of Evil | November 2010

Collected in Hellboy - Volume 11: The Bride of Hell & Others | Hellboy Library Edition - Volume 6 | Hellboy: Complete Short Stories - Volume 1

Plot Summary:

Through the framing sequence of the dead watching these stories as movies within a derelict theatre, we get a pair of tales set in 1960. First in Kansas, “Sullivan’s Reward” features a man who has contacted the BPRD about a house that is forcing to kill, Hellboy goes to investigate with spooky results. Then in Massachusetts, “The House of Sebek” sees a crazed gift shop guy think his a priest of Horus and try to murder his co-worker who turned him down, with spooky results.

Reading Notes:

(Note: Pagination is solely in reference to the story itself and is not indicative of anything found within the issues or collections.)

pg. 1 - This opening is gorgeous work from Richard Corben and Dave Stewart. The desolate empty streets, abandoned vehicles, derelict buildings, and overall atmosphere of decay. Coupled with Clem Robins’ sound effects that are creepier in the absence of people.

pg. 2 - Love all of the old movie posters.

pg. 2-3 - The transition from black and white screen featuring “Bill’s Diner” through to the colour opening of the “Sullivan’s Reward” story is a nice effect.

pg. 3 - It’s certainly not every day that someone admits to being a serial killer...

pg. 4 - ...and then blaming it on a house.

pg. 5 - I think it’s interesting here that Mignola offers up no explanation for the arrival of this attorney and the transfer of ownership of the house. It just happens. It makes you wonder about previous owners and whether or not Sullivan was targeted as a down and out alcoholic, if someone (or the house) thought he’d be easily susceptible to it.

pg. 6 - I love Corben’s art here for the house, mixing a bit of his take on The House on the Borderland with some of the Haunting on Hill House interior vibes. Particularly the Hugh Crane statuary and friezes in the Liam Neeson-led The Haunting.

pg. 7 - The house paying for victims is weird. Really weird.

pg. 9 - Sullivan’s an alcoholic. Speaking as someone who has an addictive personality, I know that it’s very easy to trade one addiction for another. I’d suspect that Sullivan has traded his alcoholism for gold, or perhaps the thrill of being the accessory to murder.

pg. 12 - Yeah...I think we all should have seen that coming. I love that Hellboy didn’t either. Even now, I’d think he’d tend to believe what someone is telling him, giving them the benefit of the doubt just out of his good nature.

pg. 13 - Of course it’s some sort of creepy ritual with that dud in the painting.

pg. 14 - Greed. I love the change in lighting and shadows as Sullivan’s madness and greed becomes apparent.

pg. 15 - My gods this is hilarious. It’s also funnier because you see the end coming across time and he doesn’t move out of the way.

pg. 16 - Still hilarious.

pg. 18 - This just got weirder, but at least Hellboy now has a physical target.

pg. 21 - That there’s still enough of his jacket that his cigarette and matches are fine is just the icing on the cake for this story.

pg. 22 - The break, with a resumption of the same type of opening as the first story is a very nice touch.

pg. 23 - Like the very start of the story, Corben and Stewart nicely ease us in to “The House of Sebek” with these establishing shots. The details on the statuary and relics is very nice.

pg. 24 - Thesh is apparently actually an old pharaoh of Egypt. Whether or not he actually exists is apparently in question, but he’s listed as one of the pre-dynastic kings of Egypt on the Palermo Stone.

pg. 25 - Fellas, never be this dude. Please. Don’t be Donald from the gift shop.

pg. 27 - Corben’s depiction of Sebek is amazing.

pg. 28 - How do you explain that one to the other curators?

Final Thoughts:

This one-shot takes the format of one of my favourites, the horror anthology. Complete with framing sequence, making it feel like a take on Creepshow or any of the ‘80s big screen adaptations of The Twilight Zone or Tales from the Darkside. I know the idea here is more inspired by a take on the old black and white horror double features, but I still love the extended idea from it. I’m a sucker for it in comics too, absolutely loving the old Joe Orlando curated DC horror anthologies like House of Secrets and House of Mystery and the EC Comics stuff.

As per Mignola’s introduction, I can definitely see the Lovecraft influence in parts of “Sullivan’s Reward”, there’s also a story that I think was from Robert E Howard that my memory says it reminds me of but doesn’t want to be more specific on, and both stories actually have a bit of a Joe Lansdale feel about them. Probably due to the framing sequence and the play on classic horror ideas as the man eating house and the mummy.

d. emerson eddy should really get off his duff and start doing some horror shorts again.

[dulma]

On the circle jerk of the art world

Tom Wolfe, author & journalist, is good at being scathing. Case in point: The Painted Word a brief diatribe against what he perceives to be the falseness and pretension of an elitist art world in a capitalist society.

I don’t know enough about art or the art world to agree or disagree with what Mr. Wolfe claims, but I do care deeply about art and its role in civilization. How it can help us, fix us, express us, or how it can’t. 

His ideas, though, strike me as useful departures for my own future research, especially w/r/t Abstract Expressionism, my new obsession. Also—God knows I love a good contrarian, so here are some key points I’ve synthesized from his spirited lambast. For my own reference, mostly. Thanks, Tom.

Art must have its theory, i.e. the dictum du jour. “modern art has become completely literary” 

Realistic 19th century painting dubbed “literary” thereby spawning its rebellious successor movements, i.e. l’art pour l’art

Braque: aim of art is not to reconstitute but constitute “a pictorial fact” 

Artists left the royal courts & salons and by 1900 aimed to shock and subvert the bourgeois 

Now the artists had to be boho & avant garde (sincerely) but also in le monde

“Public? The public plays no part in the process whatsoever. The public is not invited” 

(This question is of importance to me. Art as public artifact vs. art as private commodity/investment—note to self: explore the ethics and utility of these roles, and whether they are conflicting or mutually generative)

The art world is a mere 10,000 souls 

“a mere hamlet!” restricted to les beaux mondes of eight cities 

Modern art enjoyed a huge boom in the States in the 1920s because that’s when the cultured bourgeoisie began to love it 

Imported from Europe to the US not in a bohemian rebellious spirit but institutionalized by the Rockefellers via the establishment of the MoMA in late 1920s 

Art theory used to be something that enriched conversation 100 years prior but now it was “ an essential hormone in the mating ritual” 

(Touché, Tom Wolfe.)

The bourgeois art world needed theory to understand the direction of modern art 

Why did theory blow up? 

1. the art world is tiny

2. le monde always looks to the bohemian artists for the next thing

3. the artists are made up of “cénacles” where if one dominates art and has one core theory, that theory comes to dominate all of the art world during that period 

This is what happened post WWII during Abstract Expressionism & when NY replaced Paris as center of the art world 

Greenberg’s theory of flatness and Rosenberg’s Action Painting became big theories picked up by le monde. Peggy Guggenheim then discovered Pollock, beloved of Greenberg, and gave him a place and money and set him off 

“First you do everything possible to make sure your world is antibourgeois, that it defies bourgeois tastes, that it mystifies the mob, the public, that it outdistances the insensible middle-class multitudes by light-years of subtlety and intellect — and then, having succeeded admirably, you ask with a sense of see-what-I-mean outrage: “Look, they don’t even buy our products!””

Pop Art was then a reaction against Abstract Exp. 

It was even flatter. Jasper Johns chose flat real life objects and made them look super flat. Like the flag. 

“Wasn’t there something just the least bit incestuous about this tendency of contemporary art to use previous styles of art as its points of reference?” 

(What else would you use? All major art forms are institutionalized in some way—literature, film, etc.—and draw upon its predecessors, are in conversation with lineage and history. I don’t see this as inherently “incestuous” but in practice in the art world perhaps it’s extreme or problematic... explore further)

Pop Art succeeded not because it rejected Abst. Exp’s premises of moving away from realism, but because it did AE one better: even higher level of not realism. Somewhere that was not abstract nor realistic but based on signs 

Abstract Expressionists were too grim and antibourgeois, too bohemian. The Pop artists were right at home in the cultured world of the bourgeois 

Steinberg: Modern art always “'projects itself into a twilight zone where no values are fixed'” and “'it is always born in anxiety'” and its function is to “'transmit this anxiety to the spectator'” to provoke “'genuine existential predicament'” 

“If you hated it — it was probably great." 

Pop Art was full of cultural and literary ironic commentary and allusions. Op Art, which came after, was also very literary in that it was heavily grounded in theory. Theory was taking idea of painting as real object and turning it into object of pure perception 

Greenberg made a comeback with a new theory/style: against the brushstroke. 

All of these movements were a movement towards reduction, stripping away - first of 19th century realism, then representational objects, then the third dimension towards flatness, then brushstrokes. 

Is that enough? Hardly. 

Minimalists came and stripped away the “sentimental” colors and used gritty or ugly ones 

Got rid of the frame, the hanging up of pictures, the square canvas 

Rosenberg & Greenberg (though sort of rivals) and others were against this - new style was “‘too much a feat of ideation.. something deduced instead of felt and discovered.’” 

Then we got rid of the very idea of wall. 

Moved into installations. Then museums (Earth Art). 

What about idea of a permanent or even visible work of art? so next came Conceptual Art where they said it wasn’t about permanence and materials but the process 

And then they took away idea of visual imagination altogether - piece called Vacant by David R Smith 

My thoughts on this (provisional):

Art movements destroy to create. This is also true in literature, in everything. I find this a natural human impulse. We are meaning-making animals, and art is our way of exploring/expressing this process, and meaning is made inevitably by a destructive-creative process. Learning—and thus growth—is by necessity an act that displaces the dictums of yesterday to make room for the new. So I question Wolfe’s implicit resistance to the deconstruction of every assumption inherent to “art,” but I’m willing to challenge the “destroy for destruction’s sake” imperative, insofar as it is what drives the movements of art today. It sure seems that way, but I assume there’s more there, and the “more” is perhaps as varied as the people who further it.

To ask a naive question that probably Real Art has long since abandoned or mocked until it breathed its last, what about beauty???? As a layperson who wants to believe that art has a public role and some inherent value where beholding it can do something good, even by disturbing us, I often find myself lamenting the un-beauty of contemporary art. That this is probably because I don’t “get it” only further entrenches my sense of alienation from this world of art. Is there respite to be sought in, for example, outsider art? 

Perhaps the answer is as simple as a simple comparison: take music. There is no possibility of defining “beautiful” music; we like what we like, and different people like different things. There are ways to get into a piece and understand what it’s trying to be and to judge it on that basis (also like a book) but no absolute criteria are possible because of the infinite variety of creative possibility. But even so, music and literature seem to me more accessible, somehow, than art. Less conceptual in the way art can be, more inclusive in terms of the gap between what the gatekeepers would deem worth canonizing and what we would claim to enjoy as outsiders.

To what extent do artists themselves (as if it’s a homogeny) want the “public” to “get” or “like” their art? A lot rides on this question I guess.

The beauty of the disturbing and the disturbing of beauty. Would this summarize where we find ourselves today?

(I suppose you could say beauty is taken out of the equation, but you could also reframe that as the expansion of the territory of the beautiful to encompass all, exclude nothing. Ironically. The murder of beauty and the expansion of it to include everything is the same thing, conceptually speaking.)

What I wish existed and whose absence consumes me to no end every time I enter a museum: a summary (impossible) of the timeline of the canon and what/who gets included and what/who gets excluded and why. Note that I’m not issuing the ignorant layperson’s tired old challenge of “My 5-year-old could do that.” I don’t mistake technical skill involved or duration of labor for the Good, but I do want the implicit curatorial values to be made legible, because I’m in a capitalist system that more often than not exacts a price from us to view or own art but I am then paying to engage with something whose value I don’t understand and am expected to receive fully by merely looking at something without the language or conceptual framework to understand its value, all while contributing to that value, reinforcing it. That seems like a scam to me (forgivable) but also like intellectual hypocrisy (unforgivable).

All of this is a rambling record of first impressions re: the art world and my access to an understanding of its values & criteria. Obviously a way to answer my own questions is to examine the world itself, anthropologically, and dissect its political/cultural/social/financial underpinnings. To learn the common answers, debates addressing these small questions of mine. Which I intend to.

But that these are the questions begged when one confronts the whole system as an ignorant layperson is worth noting in itself, I think, because it draws out some assumptions that are contradictory. Assumptions that imply that art is good and we should look at it and pay to look at it. Assumptions that also imply that beauty is not art and skill is not art and accessibility is not art. 

So then what is art? And who gets to decide? We spend our lives taking for granted the fact of a museum, of an art history curriculum, of a canon of famous men and (sometimes) women who have made what we consider “Great Art” without ever being satisfied with a good explanation of why, how come, who says? Especially today?

[stone-man-warrior]

December 8, 2020: 4:10 pm:

I survived the COVID Testing Center, the trip to the COVID Testing terror take-out, the stop at the Dairy Queen, and the ride home, but not without being shot at, at least once to my knowledge.

There was a lot to observe, and a much can be said, so, some highlights is what I have for now.

First thing is that email from Hollywood Vatican Choir HQ, Denmark Chapter.

https://www.carlmartin.com

The way the knobs are set on that PlexiRanger, is part of the Sturgeon hit orders from the Bergoglio Pope Francis.

The two on the top, are at 10 and 2. That’s me driving down the road.

The two oposing knobs on the bottom are Sandy Monroe, and a bearded assistant that was with her as I left. The knobs are minutes apart, not much time for them to do what they were supposed to do as I was leaving, and that is to make a phone call. Sandy got on a phone call as I was leaving, I could see her as I left in my car. She almost never is seen talking on a phone, so I could see that the inclusion of the bearded assistant and the phone call was some kind of bullshit I needed to know about.

The two center knobs on the Carl Martin Plexi Ranger from Denmark are associated to the phone call, to Rogue Regional Transport. You could say that the two center knobs are in disagreement, and are in a head-on, conflicting physical arrangement, one that included there are two sets of Flying V Knob Triangular shape of three knobs each, on a collision coarse.

And, that is what happened.

Rogue Regional Transportation, a big 20 foot box truck, one I don’t recall having seen before, came down Jackpine just as I began to leave my house at about 1:30 pm. There was a Head-On moment on Jackpine, I had to pull to the side to let the truck pass by on the narrow gravel road that Jackpine is. There I waited as the RRT truck approached. I rolled up my windows, and waited, then as the RRT truck was beside my car, they stopped. I rolled my window down and lit my lighter as the driver of the RRT truck was rolling their window down. It was tense for a moment, but I got on my way, without looking back to see what was going to happen next.

You may find that is far fetched, but this is not my first rodeo, and that truck was here to kill, and to cart away valuables from my home

===

On my way, there were a number of Gauntlet style obstacles to clear on the drive to Medford. Most notably was that I was escorted by a Pacific Power Truck most of the way, a white Dodge, flat bed, with approximately 36 inch tall wood gate sides and tail gate. A “Easter Basket Flat Bed” Pac-Pow truck.

The other notable obstacle was a big rig at the crest of the Medford Drop In where you come down the hill into Medford. The truck was a forty foot trailer hauling saw dust, another Basket Truck because of the screen-like container that the trailer is made of for hauling saw dust wood chips. That truck was going no more than 25 miles per hour on the freeway, with no caution lights blinking as traffic was moving at about 70 MPH around the saw dust Easter Basket. One car ahead of me avoided collision with the ass end of that saw dust rig by only a few inches as the car quickly and suddenly had to swerve after seeing the hazard it presented without caution lights moving so slowly.

Other hazards also.

There was a “Homeless Encampment” at the Crater Lake Blvd Medford exit south bound, and about 15 people hanging around at all of the corners there at and near that exit, all were people from the encampment. I could demonstrate how Boris Johnson called that to happen with photo Tweets he made recently and perhaps along with Trump saying that things are “tense” lately. also with use of Twitter. The Boris elements include some coded reference to “Bottom Dwellers”. With interview, I could elaborate.

I was able to anticipate almost exactly what the conditions were going to be at one particular corner at Biddle Road, as I called it like a little league umpire before it happened, as the terror soldier spies there began to enact their sequence of prearranged activity, having seen the exact same set of scenario rolled out there so many times in the past.

There is a man that rides a motorcycle along the route I take on Biddle. He wears a outfit that is an illusion, he looks as if he has a child passenger on the back of the motorcycle, but when you get closer, that illusion passenger appears to be a two dimensional, flat, person on the back of the motorcycle. You have to rub your eyes to see what the heck is going on with that. Then, look to the left, and in the lane is a flat cat in the road, squished flat as paper. That same man, same illusion, same flat cat, at the same intersection is present much of the times I go to Medford. They plan that I will see the flat passenger, and the flat cat in the road at the same place when I go to Medford. The whole fucking world knows that I will be going there, and they do whatever they can do to make me crash my car, with obstacles and illusion, pressure from Pac-Pow escort, and the same homeless camp that pops up on occasion there, with the same people riding the same bicycles in the same places and walking the same dog across the same street at the time I arrive at that corner, as happens the previous times I have gone to Medford.

It’s all very “Twilight Zone” weird freaky to see the same shit happen on a different day months apart with the same people all involved. Terror is a nine to five job on a stage in the world, wherever I go.

(more later, I need to stop for now.)

5:11 pm.

===

Ok, more: 5:27 pm:

Once to the Pain Specialists of Southern Oregon, I could see the familiar fat lady spy at the Bennet Arms Apartments as I approach the corner, she sits in a chair in the parking there, and is a scout for that part of the neighborhood. There is always a piece of discarded furniture right there on the curb that serves as communication about neighbor hood conditions there, usually is a discarded reclining chair, today was a discarded sofa-bed, broken, bent bed frame sticking out partially unfolded on the curbside. That lady has access to the blue-tooth transmitter in that is in my jaw, so, when I arrive there, I sort of talk to the spy lady, tell her that I know she is a terror spy, and that I know she can hear what I say, so, today’s response from the fat lady spy at Bennett Arms Apartments was that she pulled a black hoody completely over her head as I was saying that I know she is a spy, from in my car, whispering, about 300 feet away from where she is stationed on look-out duty there.

There were more cars at the Crater Lake Surgery Center than I have seen before. The place is usually empty of cars, only three maybe, but today the parking was full, maybe twenty cars there, it’s part of the Pain Center, is next door, is new this year, and is very small, maybe 3,000 square feet of small surgery center.

The Doctor appointment today was weird. I am not going there for a COVID test, it’s just a regular doctor appointment I need to do, at a fake doctor office, where I have killed most of the people who were there five years ago, in defense as they attack every time I go there. The Doctor I was scheduled to see has been dead for more than three months, but they are pretending he is alive and seeing patients. Today there was no Easy-Up canopy, so that was good. But there is a lot of special signage about the dangers of COVID, and some pointing out that the way the office is doing business with video and phone only appointments is all because of Kate Brown said so, with information on the door that points out Oregon government mandates and Kate Brown specifically.

Today, was telephone appointment, I don’t have the mandated Smart Phone that they demand I have, in order to have Video appointment. So, I check-in, use the hand sanitizer at the front door, see that I have to knock on the door as the sign says to do, then wait there. So I checked in that way. I was told the (dead) doctor would call my phone at the appointment time in a few minutes. So I waited around and explained a lot of terror communications that are going on visibly there to no one but me, wishing that the fat lady at the Bennett Arms Apartments was not the only person that can listen to that Blue-Tooth transmitter in my jaw.

The call from the fake doctor came to the phone. He asks how my pain level is, I tell him it hurts and what I do to make things feel a bit better.

He says: “You have arthritis” on the phone call appointment as I am wondering around in the parking lot. I have been going there for five years, and they still don‘t know that I have a spinal cord injury. When I was transferred there from Medford Medical Clinic, I insisted that a new MRI was done, and survived that at “Asante MRI & Front End Suspension & Steering” at the hospital. The doctor at the Pain Specialists, who ordered the MRI per my request five years ago, has still not looked at the MRI to see the spinal cord injury or the post surgical reasons for my needs to see a doctor, the reason I go there is to manage post surgical spinal injury.

He says I have arthritis on a phone call appointment as I stand in a parking lot at my doctor office.

So, that happened.

I was told only video appointments with Smart Phone are allowed, but since I don‘t have a smart phone, he called, as other people were going in, and coming out of the doctors office, where I was told that no one can go in there.

So that also happened. People going in and coming out, but I have to stay in the parking to wait for a phone call.

More later. I have to move around.

I’m a Wig-Wam.

I’m a Tee-Pee.

I’M TWO TENTS!

6:10 pm.

===

Ok, more: 6:26 pm:

While I was at the parking lot phone call doctor appointment with the dead doctor on the phone pretending to be Paul Leppert, I observed all of the standardized terror elements of a lot people in their cars all monitoring their Smart Phones for correct blue-tooth signal handshake information of all of the other people who come near within Blue-Tooth range, there are many of those kinds of terror scouts, hundreds of them on every city block, most are older women who do that work, to alert others when strangers come near who don‘t have the approved terror code presented in the Blue-Tooth handshake as they monitor and scout with Smart Phones.

So I left there alive, is more than I expected today. I even poured out the whole bag of cat food for my cats and left the toilet seat up for them when I left today, just in case I don‘t come home from the COVID Corona Slaughter.

I was hungry, decided to take some chances to get something to eat. The Mexican Restaurant I wanted to go to had a COVID Easy-Up Canopy out front, so I skipped that and went to Dairy Queen.

It’s been about four years since I was there last, so, I went there, on Biddel Road. There, was the same conditions as last times I have been to the DQ. A green Harley Davidson parked, a BMW that follows me in, the same Chevrolet Crew Cab with orange power cords rolled up and hanging from a rack who drives by after I park, takes a good look at me when I step out of the car, then he pulls over to the next parking aisle to stop and look some more, and check for proper Blue-Tooth settings that I don‘t have. Then, I go inside and see that the same man is still working behind the counter as last time, about 50 years old man, way over qualified for the DQ front counter, and wearing Carhardt carpenter pants while serving hamburgers there.

I ordered some food, he gave me a free soda, Enormous Jumbo Size. So I filled that cup he gave me at the fountain, that is when the fake doctor called me again, this time to set my next appointment time. I wrote down the time and day of the appointment for next time, it’s going to be with someone by the name of Denise, next month, who I am told, will be calling for another phone appointment with the fake doctors there at Pain Specialists of Southern Oregon.

Just as I was talking with the appointment schedualer while at the Dairy Queen, that is when a large size woman came into the DQ, stood right there, and took a shot at me with a .25 caliber gun. The bullet bounced off my coat, is the kind of custom .25 that has no barrel, uses the brass of the bullet as the barrel of the gun, so, they are not very powerful, only make a small wound that looks worse than it is... it bounced off my leather coat as I was talking to the appointment scheduler for Pain Specialists of Southern Oregon.

That lady turned around and left in a big hurry after taking the shot at me with the .25 custom made gun that has no barrel and uses bullet brass as the barrel.

Those guns are very small, about the size of a large car key, holds two bullets.

So, my food was ready, there was some commotion, I don‘t know exactly what, I just wanted to leave safely with something to eat, so that’s what happened.

On the way home, I was just glad to still be alive, and did not pay so much attention to more than I needed to. I did notice that a familiar group of pedestrians were walking on the shoulder of the northbound freeway, four people, with one baby stroller on the freeway walking, they show up there at the exit 55 sometimes when I drive by there.

That, and one Amazon Prime truck was with that Pac-Pow truck that was escorting me along the way. And, when I returned to Three Pines, there was a white pick-up at the 800 block waiting to do some kind of bullshit there, so, I shouted “You fucking pirates...leave me alone”... I could hear the sound of my own voice come from that truck as I passed by shouting, with just a short echo delay.

Stevie Bell’s truck came out of nowhere and was suddenly right on my bumper behind me as I approached Jackpine, so I pulled over, he went by, and I got behind him instead. There was a pedestrian female on Jackpine who waved to Stevie Bell as he passed by her, then she waved at me as I passed by her. It’s the woman I said looks like Hillary Clinton, is a Fran Taylor look-a-like also. That pedestrian woman is new, a replacement terror soldier at one of the addresses here on Jackpine, I don‘t know which one yet, I suspect she is trying to be Francis Taylor of 600 Jackpine but could be at Myers 560. Almost all of the residents have changed on Jackpine recently, but the cars and houses have not changed hands.

End COVID Terror Hit Survival Report.

Tomorrow, is another day... stay tuned, please send help.

7:18 pm.

---

7:25 additional, is worthy of mention that the fake doctor on the parking lot COVID Hit Phone appointment told me that the assassin that came into my house last night while I was in the shower and was hiding in the laundry room and hit me with a baseball bat, was Terry Sparacino, who apearantly was killed in the attack, acording to the fake doctor on COVID Parking Lot doctor appointment for post surgical spinal cord injury treatment.

======================

9:20 pm: I’ll wager dollars to doughnuts, that there were federal officers assigned to have a look around here, at my home, and around it today as I went to the fake terror doctor SAGClubMed terror cell today. I say, those guys were entertained somehow by Sandy Monroe, and her bearded new young friend over there. I say that the fools were fooled as per usual by local authorities, and whatever may have happened here on Jackpine as I was at the terror doctor, included that those fools witnessed that  terror doctor, standing in my front yard, as he was talking to me on the phone call, and I was at his terror doctor office, however, since that man was a fake, and was not Paul Leppart, he could have been anyone, anywhere, will convincing me that he was inside the doctor office, and, also convincing others that he was me, standing in front of my house, as fools observed, and listened with a Stingray, while the settings on the Stingray were reversed, to flip-flop the two phone numbers involved with the call, mine, and the Pain Specialists. I have seen the reversed calls happen time and time again with other kinds of calls, and when Richard Chartrand was still alive and active as a terror soldier, he was highly skilled at vocal deception, able to hold three conversations at once, in three languages, while one of the four people involved in the conversation is a mark, and the other two are terror assistance of Chartrand. He could work secretly with two other people, while having a face to face conversation with the mark, who thinks there is only Chartrand present. So, some federal officers are likely to have observed someone in my front yard today while talking on a cellular phone, as I was in Medford at the terror doctor, and the Stingray was not only reversed, but also duplicated at least one additional iteration of the same phone call, maybe more duplication done with external surplus Stingray devices, and/or KingFish hand held verity surveillance units. The federal agents don’t understand that there are hundreds of Stingray surveillance units in the hands of terror cells just in Josephine County. Many thousands of them throughout the state of Oregon, all used and operated by terror cells who work under protection of State Police. That, in addition to other, Huawei brand Hong Kong Stingray Knock-Off units that have far more functionality than the name brand Stingray does. The terror is British terror, the electronics that US consumers use, are made in Hong Kong, and Hong Kong has been ruled by Britain since the first Opium War, about 200 years ago. By the way, Britain brought the opium to Hong Kong, not the other way around. They brought it, enough to control all of the people there with it. That is the opium war, bring opium, control people. That’s it.

If you are federal officer assigned to Grants Pass, you are in great danger just by default of that circumstance. You are no longer going to be able to simply clock out at the end of the work day anymore, that is not available once you are here. Personal survival is going to be a 24 hour job, and national security is not going to be possible with a few agents, it’s not possible with all 4,000 field agents I am aware that work at FBI. Even if all 4000 FBI field agents came to Josephine county, they would be outnumbered by about 10:1 just in Josephine county. If you add protection of Jackson County, that increases of an additional triple of the amount to about 40:1.

Let’s see:

50,000 + 75,000 rough estimate of terror soldiers of the two counties all ready to kill, armed, well connected with lots of electronic gadgets, and are supported by the White House and Congress.

125,000 terror soldiers

4,000 FBI, lets make it five thousand for easy math

125:5

25:1 outnumbered if there are 5000 FBI.

That’s only two out of 36 counties.

50:1 Two stroke mix for a chain saw.

They have a lot of chainsaws per FBI Officer when you look at the bigger picture of the fractal terror zoom.

Go get US Military now.

What federal officers need to do, must do, is find a way, enough evidence, to show that the WH and Congress is already hijacked. Take that to some Generals of US Military, find some Admirals of US navy, make absolutely certain that those people are not SAG Actors playing army at the bases. Show that there is not much time, and your own estimates of how outnumbered you are, but don’t underestimate the number of hard core Christian Crusade warriors there are. That is how many terror soldiers there are. Many millions of them. Add SAG, and that is another million or so people who are traitors.

[podcake]

Podcast Teatime: The Case of the Questioning Cheesecake

Hello and a happy August day to everyone. Welcome to a new Q&A to cap off the summer, starring the masterminds behind the adventures we’ve grown to love in The Penumbra Podcast.

As a loyal patron of the arts, I took it upon myself to do some of my own detective work for a change and see what’s going on in the heads of creators Kevin Vibert and Sophie Kaner .

(The following is a direct copy-and-paste from the email)

Question One: Let’s get the most pressing question out of the way first, at least for me: Is there any reason why you chose a hotel as a framing device for your stories? Was it always something you had planned?

Kevin: To start, Sophie and I were thinking that the Penumbra would be an anthology show, along the lines of The Twilight Zone or old radio drama anthologies like Suspense. The idea that the narrator would be a spooky, semi-omnipotent character voiced by the lead writer (hi) was Sophie’s, and is a very, very direct reference to Rod Serling’s narrator on The Twilight Zone. (“Shaken,” which is the one episode that remains mostly intact from this first view of the show, is full of Twilight Zone references — Louise’s surname “Serling” is not a nod to Rod Serling so much as a head-shake-so-hard-you-can-hear-our-necks-crack.)

As for the hotel itself: I have a real love of weird horror and descriptions of impossible places. House of Leaves, which is about ten billion things but one of them is a house that’s slightly bigger on the inside than the outside, was definitely bouncing around in my head as we were pitching ideas for the frame. So was The Shining, which is one of my favorite horror novels of all time, as well as Invisible Cities, which is a really bizarre collection of stories in which Marco Polo describes a bunch of cities that couldn’t possibly exist to Kublai Khan, saying they all lie somewhere in his empire. The description of the infinite hotel is definitely connected to that the most.

For season two we changed the game a bit, but I think even that has connections to this weird thing about places that are horrifying and impossible and kind of mundane — hotels and trolleys and things you see every day. I don’t know why I like making normal places scary. It is either a little bit of cruelty or a complete terror of everything around me, or both. Yeah, both.

Question Two: You have quite the talented cast to work with for your show. Did you have to look far and wide or was it a simple casting call? Or are these just close friends who happen to know how to act?

Sophie: Aren’t they great? It’s important to remember that the Penumbra Podcast was never intended to be a podcast in the first place; it was just going to be one radio play written for fun, except that one turned into two and then three and then we really let the whole thing get out of control. In any case, the first few people we brought on board (notably, the three actors at the core of the Juniverse: Joshua, Noah, and Kate) are old friends of mine from college, though I know them from a theater group, so it’s most accurate to say that I know them because they know how to act. We are always adding new actors, though! 

I perform a lot myself, so I ask a lot of the talented people I’ve worked with in the past to join the show, and I’ve also solicited auditions from friends of friends. (I don’t hold open auditions: we are still too small a production for me to feel safe doing that.) One exception: last year I went to see a play with a friend, and the lead actor was so incredible that I said “THAT. That’s who I need on my show.” So I found him on Facebook and asked him if he would be interested in joining the production, and luckily he had not only heard of the show but was totally on board! (If you’re wondering, the actor was Matthew Zahnzinger, who now plays Ramses O'Flaherty in the Juniverse and Sir Damien in Second Citadel.)

Question Three: What is it that inspired Juno Steel’s adventures? Do you ever see yourself paying homage to Sherlock Holmes and the like or are you more interested in other media to act as a muse?

Kevin: This answer will be relevant in, like, two seconds. I promise.

Sophie has a theory regarding directing actors towards new voices that I really love: she likes to get people to do impressions of people they sound nothing like and then shape the voice from there. Leslie Drescher, who plays Sir Caroline, Valles Vicky, Cassandra, and Cecil, has thus far gotten the brunt of this: for Vicky Sophie sent her videos of Robert DeNiro and Jabba the Hutt, and they shaped a character from there. Cassandra was Joan Jett, Cecil was a French aristocrat and Scott Disick, and so on.

Anyway: the reason this works for voice acting is that you’re relying on the natural chemistry of getting someone to do something they can’t actually do perfectly. When Leslie imitates Robert DeNiro, she does not sound like Robert DeNiro. But she can use that approximation as a starting place to figure out how to sound like a tough, brusque crime lord, and that’s what we needed Vicky to be. And better yet: the voice she does it not one Robert DeNiro could do, and it’s probably not one any of us would have thought she should do until we asked her to do something way outside what she was used to.

We treat inspiration and genre in our stories similarly. In the Juno stories, noir and scifi are always what we go back to… but usually we start by looking at another genre or story that doesn’t quite fit, but that we really love. Juno Steel and the Train From Nowhere happened because we really wanted to write a Bond movie, and then we decided it would be interesting and new if Juno was the “Bond girl” instead. The framing device in Angel of Brahma exists entirely the way it does because I’m obsessed with the first section of the novel Dracula, in which Jonathan Harker is simultaneously a guest and a hostage in Dracula’s house.

It’s worth noting that neither of these episodes are very much like the source material, and that’s where the shaky line between “homage” and “inspiration” comes in. Very often we start with a story convention we love because we love it, and then over the course of outlining and drafting and editing naturally branch off in a new direction.

When I was younger I would get really self-conscious about having “original ideas,” and of course I still do — but it’s really important to remember that “original” is not the same as “immaculate conception.” Just because you can trace where an idea came from doesn’t mean you stole it. If I rewrote It or The Shining and changed the title to Juno Steel and the Day That Wouldn’t Die and tweaked a few names, that’d be plagiarism. 

But if we read It and go, “Damn, I really wish I wrote this,” and then we examine what it is we like about the story, what we wish we wrote about it, what parts we don’t like and we’d take out, and what other influences we want to incorporate… suddenly we’ve made something brand new, even if the first thought was, “I really wish I wrote this story that already exists.”

Question Four: The Penumbra spans genres from mystery to fantasy and science fiction. Does it ever become a struggle to juggle so many different themes?

Kevin: For genre and theme, not really. The more difficult thing is bouncing between all these different characters.

Sophie and I talk incessantly about stories, and our interests dovetail really nicely for writing genre stories. I really like pulling apart plot structure and she’s obsessed with tropes; I like figuring out how a joke works and she likes figuring out how to make people cry. 

So entering a new genre is never terribly difficult for us because chances are we’ve already had forty conversations about that genre anyway: that’s why when we wrote The Coyote of the Painted Plains, but we knew we didn’t actually like Westerns very much, we gave it all the structure and tropes of a swashbuckler instead, like Ivanhoe or The Three Musketeersand so on. 

By the same token when I need to explain the Second Citadel stories to people, my shorthand is usually, “So there’s this fantasy world with knights and stuff, only the knights are kind of like superhero beat cops and the Queen is their chief, so it’s kind of a police procedural with a monster-of-the-week spin, and…”

So genre doesn’t tend to be an issue for us. But making new characters? That’s really, really hard.

Part of the reason we honed down to two main series in season two was because making new characters and getting an audience invested in them in half an hour was a good challenge, but completely exhausting.

 I can’t tell you how many half-finished outlines we have for season one one-shots, just because we realized we’d never be able to get people invested in these characters quickly enough and also have time to complete an actual plot. We also just really fell in love with the process of diving deep into a few characters over a long period of time, honing in on the ones with conflicts unresolved and seeing where they go next.

Question Five: Would The Penumbra still be The Penumbra if it wasn’t audio? If it could be recreated in any other format, which would you pick and would it still feel the same? (By the way, I would totally read a novelization of Juno Steel mysteries.)

Sophie: Oh god, if we could make the Penumbra in another format, it would be a TV show–well, two TV shows, probably, one for Juno Steel and one for Second Citadel. And if we had the resources, we’d create an animated series with Penumbra artist Mikaela Buckley! But that being said, the Penumbra would definitely lose something in the transition from audio to visual. Many of the plot points were written explicitly with an audio format in mind (the abilities Juno gains from the Martian Pill, the Ruby 7 car chase, the action scenes in the Head of the Janus Beast), and other setpiece moments were designed in post-production without even being a part of the original script (Annie Wire’s death, the music at Ingrid Lake’s party, Sir Damien’s storytelling). Which is all to say that the Penumbra would be an extremely different show if it hadn’t been created as a podcast.

Question Six: How long does it usually take to make an episode? Including voice acting, sound editing, and of course writing, is it especially time consuming or is it something that can be knocked out in a day?

Sophie: This is a tough question to answer because the first part of the process–the dreaming up of the stories–is the part that can vary the most. Sometimes Kevin and I agonize over characters and plot points for months, but on some very special occasions, when we’ve been in a really great groove, we’ve been able to outline an entire episode in one day. 

Once we have an outline, Kevin writes a draft, which can take anywhere from three days to three months (though both ends of the spectrum are very unusual). After that, we spend two to three weeks editing on our own and then with a few other people, and once the script is complete we can move onto rehearsal and recording.

This part is a ton of fun! Scheduling (handled by Noah Simes, our production manager) is a bit of a nightmare because the actors are all extremely busy, but we always do our best to have at least one rehearsal for everybody, and then 1-3 recording sessions. Those are usually long days, but we all love each other a lot, so it’s worth it. The final piece of the process is the sound design, which I usually spend about two full weeks on. I almost never think I’m going to get the whole thing done in time for episode release day, but so far I’ve always managed it!

BONUS: What are some future plans you have in mind? Without going into spoilers, can we can anticipate some new characters, exciting cases, and big reveals to come up?

Kevin: It is very much the Penumbra Brand to make sure all new information only raises forty new questions and makes everyone terribly upset, and so in that time-honored tradition I bring you this fun exclusive:

The structure of this Juno season — number of cases, number of episodes, plot structure, etc. — is so different from season one that we can’t even post a release calendar or tell you how many more you have left to expect, because it would spoil some major reveals coming up in… a few weeks? A few months? I don’t know. You’ll have to wait and see.

Thank you to Sophie and Kevin to taking time to answer my questions. If you haven’t already, check out The Penumbra Podcast yourself to get the scoop on Juno Steel and The Second Citadel as well as enjoying all the beautiful art provided by the talented @disasterscenario.

Another tea pot emptied and another case solved.

[ponticle]

Alistair in July (Day 10: ‘5 Months Apart’ Anderstair Challenge)

[Masterpost]

[Read it on Ao3]

Chapter Summary:  Alistair is faced with some information he'd rather not know, but comes out of it with an epiphany. Rated T: nothing racy... but my language is deplorable

Alistair in July

Dear Anders,

I'm going to be giving a lecture at a spinal stability symposium early next year. I was just asked—it’s a pretty big opportunity for me. I keep thinking there's a chance I could see you there. Ever since I found out that you’re interested in what I do… I keep imagining the whole thing...

I'd look up and you'd be standing right next to me.

“Is this seat taken?” you'd ask.

I'd shake my head and blush—boyish and anything-but-brave.

But you'd be the strong one. You'd be the one who takes chances. You know why? Because that's who you've always been, Andy… twenty times braver than I am.

[a couple scribbles and some crossed out words.]

Alistair's phone buzzes noisily on the desk. He looks up from his letter and sighs. He keeps promising himself he'll stop writing to Anders… but he hasn't stopped yet.

“Hi, Dorian,” he answers.

“Hey… are we still on for tonight?” asks Dorian.

“Yeah, definitely.”

They've planned a get-together to commemorate the fact that they're all growing up. Cullen and Dorian will have a baby soon and they won't be able to go out as much. ...and Alistair is getting married, of course. Not that that means much—Icis is the life of any party.

“Okay, great…” Dorian pauses. “There's just one item I wanted to discuss with you.”

“Yeah?”

“Renee is in town,” says Dorian.

“Okay…”

“And he wants to tell us some stuff… apparently he just had a breakup…” continues Dorian. “So I was wondering if he could come out with us tonight…”

Alistair wants to argue, but he knows he'll sound like an asshole if he does.

“Yeah. That's fine,” he agrees.

“Good,” laughs Dorian, “because Cullen already invited him… so I guess it will be the four of us.”

“Great,” says Alistair.

They agree on the time and hang up. Alistair tries not to ruminate. There's no reason to think that Renee’s breakup has anything to do with Anders. They were just at one event together—they weren't really dating. As he argues with himself, he lets the tip of his pen wander back to the page… before he knows it, he's drawing absent circles across his words.

Over the last six months he's almost filled a notebook with letters like this one. It's sad—and more than that, it's despicable. Icis deserves better.

He resigns himself to being nice to Renee. He hopes he’s broken up with someone named Dave who drives a motorcycle and has perfect black hair and piercing blue eyes—someone completely unlike Anders.

“Hey,” says Cullen at the door to a noisy bar downtown. He claps Alistair on the back and ushers him inside.

“Where's Dorian?” asks Alistair. He wants to ask where Renee is too, but he doesn't.        “He'll be here soon,” says Cullen.

They find a u-shaped booth in the back and order a round of drinks while they wait. Something about it feels awkward, actually. If Alistair thinks about it too much, he knows he'll start to sweat. There was a time when they spent all their days like this—a time when Alistair knew everything about Cullen: his gestures, the subtle way his mouth curves around a joke. Now, they seem only vaguely connected by shared history and shared people. Dorian is their bridge.

“It's really weird how different things are now, huh?” says Cullen. He sounds nonchalant, but his eyebrow lifts in a way Alistair remembers: he feels weird too.

“Yeah…” Alistair smiles and leans into the table. “To be honest, I never would have predicted an outcome like this one…”

They both smile.

“I never thought we'd be friends…” Alistair adds.

Cullen laughs, “What do you mean? We've known each other for over a decade!”

Alistair purses his lips, “We were never really friends, though…”

They nod to each other—a fog of understanding settles in the air between them.

Cullen sips his drink and looks toward the door. Alistair knows that means he wishes Dorian would appear and save them from this conversation—it's painful.

“Well, I'm glad we worked it out…” adds Cullen finally.

“Yeah,” Alistair smiles. “Me too.” He wants to say something meaningful—something brave. “I'm really happy for you, you know,” he blurts.

Cullen blushes—his left dimple is deeper than the right.  “Thanks, Al… I'm happy for you too… I can't wait for your wedding.”

Alistair thinks about it. He's sure the whole thing is going to go off without a hitch, but he's not sure how he'll feel. His vows have been in a state of flux for the last several months. Before he ran into Anders they were basically done, but now they don't sound right. The whole thing feels like a lie.

Before either of them can get any deeper into the melancholy that seems to have taken hold, Dorian appears.

“Hello, Love,” he kisses Cullen's cheek and slides into the booth next to him. Cullen pushes over and bumps into Alistair’s shoulder. Despite the gravity of their conversation, neither of them bristles at the contact.

Renee slides in on Alistair’s left. They haven't seen each other in ages.

“Hi, Al,” he smiles. “It's great to see you.”

“You too.” Alistair isn't lying—he really likes Renee. He's just afraid… that they have something new in common—someone.

“So, Renee,” says Dorian, once they've ordered. “What happened? Tell me all the details.”

Renee looks at Dorian strangely—anxiety behind his smile. He’s young enough that he hasn’t learned to hide that sort of thing. Or maybe he’s just good—Alistair wonders if he was like that once too.

“Maybe we shouldn't get into it now…” mumbles Renee.

Alistair's heart sinks. It's easy enough to see where this is going.

“It's okay,” says Alistair. “We're here for you.” To someone who didn't really know Alistair, it would seem like he was being the bigger person—like he'd moved on and didn't care what happened to Anders. But really, he just wanted to hear Anders’ name. He wanted to hear about his life—even if it hurt.

Renee smiles gently, “Okay.”

The four of them lean into the table in unison.

“It just wasn't going to work out…” begins Renee. “Anders wasn't ready for a relationship.”

Dorian nods understandingly.

Cullen has an arm around Dorian’s back, which strikes Alistair as especially poignant. Cullen was never ready for a relationship—not until he got with the right person.

“So what happened?” asks Cullen.

“Nothing, really,” sighs Renee. “It just became clear that we were never going to be much of anything…”

While Renee explains the details of Anders’ behavior, Alistair is struck by how foreign this Anders seems. The Anders he knows is kind and thoughtful and gentle. This Anders is different—someone else entirely. A narcissistic patch of Alistair's brain insists that Anders needs him—to bring out the best in him.

“Besides,” Renee laughs, which brings Alistair's attention back to the table, “he's completely married to his work… just like all you doctors…”

Dorian and Cullen smirk at each other. Alistair feels himself flushing—Anders is almost a doctor; they’re almost the same.

“Well, I'm glad you're doing all right, Renee,” says Dorian. “It sounds like you made the right decision.”

“I think so too… even though it hurts,” agrees Renee. “I was falling in love with him…”

Alistair's mouth feels dry. He was tolerating everything up until this point just fine, but that word feels like a dagger. Love. It occurs to him all at once—something deep in his guts that makes him want to vomit: when he thinks about love, he thinks about Anders. When he imagines what love feels like, Anders is his frame of reference.

As soon as it feels appropriate, he stands and excuses himself to the restroom. He pulls out his phone and types a new note:

Dear Anders,

I've gotten myself into an extremely weird situation. I'm sitting in a booth with Dorian, Cullen, and Renee. Renee is telling us about breaking up with you. You kind of broke his heart… but not as badly as you broke mine. Not as badly as we broke it together.

This whole night is like the twilight zone, because I'm out there pretending that I don't care—pretending that I'm fine with you moving on. But I do care. This night is a lie; my whole life is a lie.

So now it's time for the truth… even if you'll never see this… I miss you. And I love you. And I don't know what I'm doing. And I would give anything to talk to you—because you're the person who helps me figure stuff out. But since that's not an option, I have to stick to the facts. Right now, I only know one thing: I can't marry Icis.

Thank you all so much for reading this challenge. The next chapter of the main story, Coffee Shop, will be published on Monday, so stay tuned!

[whogoesthere-cleveland-blog]

John’s Diner

The Place: John’s Diner Location: Lakewood, Ohio

Susan: John’s Diner - Where even your lowest expectations are already too high.

Shannon: Blessed are those who expect nothing, for they will finally be disappointed.

Overview of John’s Diner

Shannon: There is so much potential here. A great location, ample parking, and historic roots. Unfortunately John’s Diner doesn’t capitalize on any of this. In fact, their overt reluctance to give this joint the facelift it so badly deserves and turn it into that quaint nod to yesteryear should be an obvious indication of their all-around slapdash attitude. They aren’t really concerned with you, the patron, nor are they interested in helping continue to revitalize a city that’s recently been named one of the top ten most exciting suburbs in the nation by real estate blog, Movoto. The owners of John’s Diner are in business to serve, alright, but unfortunately all they seem to serve are their own interests.  Anchored at the corner of Detroit Avenue and Park Row in Lakewood, Ohio, it seems that John’s Diner has become a beacon for the downtrodden. I used to visit this place as a kid and recall many a happy Saturday mornings liberally applying packet after packet of grape jelly to my white toast or pouring stainless steel carafes of warm syrup all over my pancakes - griddle cakes in greasy spoon parlance. I even learned my first lesson in commerce at John’s Diner when I was tasked with a responsibility well beyond my years: ’Go on up to the counter and pay the check’ my mom would instruct as she handed me a well-worn collection of one dollar bills from her embroidered wallet and continued to smoke and jaw-jack with the other adults. But times have changed, and where there once existed home cooking served “piping hot as you like it” there is now only propaganda and neglect.

Susan: I’ve never been here before. My only reference to John’s Diner is when a friend of mine said the cook was smoking a cigarette while preparing food on the grill. Granted, this was back when one could still smoke in restaurants, but still, that had to be a health code violation even in the 90s. I’m supposed to add a description of the interior, but I don’t think mere words could do it justice. Authentic 50s diner front with a perhaps 60s addition. There’s an organ in the foyer that doesn’t work. The interior décor was both confusing and filthy, and if that’s a design aesthetic, they nailed it. Oddly framed prints or articles cut out of the newspaper hung askew on the walls. Some were sports related (but not necessarily Cleveland sports), but others were just random, faded “art”. I don’t know. Half of the ceiling fans were painted bright red and royal blue, though this did not match any color scheme in the restaurant or the other crud colored ceiling fans. The booths were crimson and Duct tape. It was strangely silent in there, except if one sits at the counter, then you can almost hear a radio playing Richard Marx.

After being seated, we both started off with coffee.

Susan: The coffee can best be described as mothball flavored hot water, but with an acrid, bitter aftertaste. I mean, I’m not really a coffee snob. I’ll drink diner coffee with the best of ‘em, but this was just a completely different animal. Like they really went out of their way to make it taste bad in a manner that no other diner coffee is bad. In this area, John’s Diner excelled.

Shannon: My guess is that maybe they were storing the mothballs too close to the industrial sized drum of Folgers crystal flakes - a coffee that may have fooled upscale coke heads at Tavern on the Green in the 80s, but wasn’t fooling us in the here and now. Coffee is a staple in diners across the land. Plus we live in an age where private roasteries are busting out all over and yet John’s Diner somehow manages to turn a blind eye to each and every local purveyor of quality beans, and instead goes with whatever generic blend they’ve been brewing since time immemorial. Coffee could be an easy and inexpensive fix that would immediately boost the dining experience and make patrons a little more forgiving about the rest of the troubling menu.

We both ordered simple meals:

Susan: I got the grilled cheese and fries. Uh, it was of a lower quality Denny’s variety. Very, very generic, however, I felt it was least likely to induce dysentery and therefore, my best choice. I ate it. It was unremarkable. I did not get sick. The bar was set low for John’s Diner. Shannon - I got a pretty generic breakfast. Scrambled eggs and pancakes.  I don’t want to brag, but I can make this stuff at home so I was kind of hoping a place specializing in breakfast might be able to create this dish with a little more elan than what I’m capable of. Not so. The scrambled eggs seemed to be hemorrhaging water, and the pancakes - Susan, you pointed out that they looked like McDonald’s hotcakes - also pretty much tasted like them.  Something I learned pretty quickly was that you need a backup plan for breakfast once you leave John’s Diner. I went to Starbucks immediately after and got the Gouda sandwich. Susan- Your breakfast was deemed “room temperature flavored”. Mmmm….Just like Gramma used to make!

We both worried about the elderly waitstaff:

Shannon: Maybe these waitresses (and let’s face it, they are waitresses; the word server somehow passed this generation by) are just looking for a way to make a little money during retirement or maybe John’s Diner is located in the Twilight Zone; either way, I worried they might be a little too old to be on their feet for that many hours per day; and quite possibly lacked the mental acuity to keep track of the myriad requests from each table. Then again, this job could be a punishment for a crime they committed in a past life and slinging hash at John’s Diner is their own brand of purgatory until they have atoned for their sins. I’m not really sure, I just know I felt uncomfortable being served by someone who already seemed to have outlasted their expiration date - although outlasting an expiration date seems to be a popular theme at John’s Diner. Susan: Yeah, a veteran wait staff, for sure. Ha! Your hypothesis was that these ladies were part of an octogenarian work re-entry program hosted by the Department of Aging. This would make me feel better if this were true. Otherwise, it’s kind of a bummer. But I will say, our waitress was very attentive and pretty nice. We did not want for anything (except for wanting to not be there). I would have felt bad if I had to ask for anything additional. Oh! Maybe that’s why the coffee is so God awful! These Golden Girls aren’t trying to run back and forth for refills all damned day long! OK, now it makes sense.

Who Goes There? Susan: Aging sea captains (primarily Greek), elderly men who live in boarding houses, a few regular people, a few regulars, and those that have lived a life of regret.

Shannon: People who never learn from their mistakes.

What philosophical school of thought would be most comfortable at John’s Diner?

Shannon: Nihilists and the hopeless.

Susan: No frills pragmatists with declining taste buds.

If John’s Diner were a TV show hangout, who would be a regular?

Susan: Maybe Archie Bunker...

Shannon: I could see Ralph Kramden stopping by every morning to shoot the breeze and fill his thermos with some of that signature hot mothball water.

Susan: In other words, curmudgeons with no more fucks to give.

Additional thoughts:

Shannon: I was pleased to see the smoking section had been relocated from the kitchen to a space out back with one plastic lawn chair. The last time I was there - which was easily a decade ago - the cook was standing over the grill with a cigarette hanging from his mouth and six inches of ash ready to drop and get scrambled out of existence. Another thing, it might not hurt to hire a professional cleaning crew. The waitstaff probably can’t really operate heavy water-soaked vintage mops anymore what with all those hip replacements and bad knees, so maybe once a week the owner could spring for a legitimate cleaning crew to swing by with a little bleach just to help ensure that the E. coli has less options for breeding.

Susan: Yeah, speaking of which, when I told a mutual acquaintance we went there she immediately said, “OH! Did you get sick? My friend just went there and she swears it made her sick!” What could I say other than, “Probably”?

Would you go back?

Shannon: Maybe. Like if the car broke down in front of the place right in the middle of a snow blizzard.

Susan: No. Not even then. I really can’t think of any circumstance that would compel me to return to John’s Diner. Oh, maybe on a dare. I would go on a dare if the stakes were high enough.

Is it a good place to bring Neal in a Baby Bjorn? Susan: I think yes, because the cleanliness standards are already so low. Why would they care if you brought a cat in there? What’s going to happen? He’s going to somehow “mess it up”? Bah hahahaha!  That’s absurd. At the very least, he would improve the overall experience for diners.

Shannon: Yes. Somebody has to catch the mice.

Hours of Operation and Payment Options: John’s Diner only accepts cash (and probably sobriety tokens and gold doubloons); and is open Monday through Saturday, 7 am - 8 pm and Sunday, 7 am - 3 pm