#Walley World

[gummyartstradingcards]

[bojackson54]

Worship Might Just Be Better Than a Trip to Walley World

Worship Might Just Be Better Than a Trip to Walley World

Thankful Praise How often do you experience the thrill of true worship? In the Psalms there were references to anticipation, joy, and gratitude: “Enter into his gates with thanksgiving, and into his courts with praise: be thankful unto him, and bless his name. For the Lord is good; his mercy is everlasting; and his truth endures to all generations.” (Psalms 100:4-5 KJV) The 100th Psalm was…

[end-simultation-with-heyashasta]

Star Wars Usually Isn't My Thing, but This was Begging to be Made

So, I was drifting around ebay and saw an image that gave me inspiration.

Last night, I was looking for Star Trek Mego figures and this randomly showed up in the returns. I honestly thought they'd released a Barfing Rey Pop! They've got every other weird incarnation over there in Funko Land. Turns out I was seeing things but came away with a funny.

[monstermovieattic]

[mannytoodope]

[minisinmedia]

Deborah Walley as Delilah Dawes wearing white short shorts on It’s a Bikini World

[victorfrankensteinapologist]

some excerpts from some essays i've read about the post-partum & tokophobia readings of frankenstein to think about after reading today's chapter (please be aware, if you choose to seek these essays out in full, they contain spoilers for later parts of the book).

from “Frankenstein’s Postpartum Depression”, by Micaela Walley:

Throughout the novel, we see Dr. Frankenstein experience every single symptom of postpartum depression. In chapter four of the novel, Dr. Frankenstein begins the private rituals of creating new life. He withdraws from family, friends, and his professional work to devote his entire being into the creation of another creature. However, in chapter five, at the first glimpse of the creature, all hope and devotion that he’d previously felt is gone and replaced by the need to get away from it. The real horrific experience of the novel is not at the ghastly image of the creature, but in the idea that the creature is inescapable—always waiting, wanting, and needing something more from him.   After the creature is born, chapters five and six revolve around Dr. Frankenstein’s mental breakdown. He struggles to sleep and is bedridden for months with anxiety. He also completely isolates himself aside from his caretaker, Henry Clerval. [...] When he returns home and must face the reality of the creature’s existence, he is put right back into a negative headspace that haunts him for the rest of the novel.

from "The Madness of Motherhood", by Amber Bird:

It is important to note that although the term “postpartum depression” would not have existed for Mary Shelley, the condition most certainly would have. The pattern of having a baby and developing the symptoms of depression would be expected of women giving birth. Paired with the acceptance of Victor’s role as mother/parent in the novel, it is important to note that he manifests the feelings of anger, anxiety, guilt, hopelessness, and lack of interest that are commonly associated with postpartum depression. Regardless of the lack of medical jargon needed to talk about the effects of child birthing, postpartum depression was and is a real, debilitating, mental illness that demands attention. Noticing these connections, one can no longer push for surface-level interpretations of Victor as a bad parent. He is a sick parent. He is a mentally ill parent. And adaptations should provide space for this type of Victor to exist. The modern-day implications of this reading frames Shelley’s novel as a mandate to rise up and perceive the world differently. Frankenstein can no longer be read or adapted through the lens of simply “bad parenting.” Admittedly, Victor was a bad parent—he abandoned the creature the day it was created. But those actions, the weeping and wailing and self-absorption that make Victor a bad parent, cannot stand without a serious consideration of the symptoms of postpartum depression that are also present in the novel. More than anything, applying an understanding of postpartum depression to Victor provides room for empathy and understanding. It makes him human—a living, breathing, feeling human. [...] Re-reading the “Evil Dr. Frankenstein” as a potentially mentally-ill patient is not only supported by the text, but is necessitated by the sheer progress of our time. A Victor Frankenstein with postpartum depression is evidence that we can no longer afford to read individuals or societies on the surface. Instead of ignoring, brushing off, or vilifying behavior we do not understand, it’s time we embrace vulnerabilities with empathy and understanding.

[crooked-wasteland]

What's the point of making Ozzie a demon if he's not going to be evil, dangerous and deadly like demons are supposed to be? Vivziepop sucks at making demon characters.not only do her characters look nothing like demons and now they don't act like ones??? Hazbin Hotel is doomed,might as well make Hazbin a preschool show at this point.its also embarrassing that the king of hell (Lucifer) is just Stolas 2.0 from reading the leaked scripts.Id like to add more but im far too tired because this is getting absurdly painful.

I think there is valid criticism in this critique, but I also feel that, in a way, it is rather exaggerated outrage.

When it comes to demons behaving any specific way, that mainly comes down to poor world building. Spindlehorse has done very little to actually dictate how this world of hers works, and many times, it appears she actively contradicts values previously assumed.

Are there vastly different laws and social expectations between rings?

Loo Loo Land, and once again in Oops, Greed is shown to have an extremely lax approach to crimes of violence.

However, in Harvest Moon, having previously killed people results in Millie being banned from participating in the episode.

Stolas being in public with Blitz gets no notice or response of attention in Harvest Moon and again later in Ozzie's. But then the internal logic contradicts that same episode with Walley acting like it is actually a huge deal. And then for a third time the series presents an about face with Beelzebub dating Tex as if there is nothing special going on there.

Stolas cheats, but he is not wrong for that, which makes it not a flaw.

Then, the world building tries to reinforce the idea that this relationship would be a problem by trying to highlight a demon racial and status divide in Western Energy. Only for Queen Bee and Oops to backtrack again and make it extremely normalized with Beelzebub dating a common Hell Hound and Asmodeus' conflict not being about who he is dating, but the act of dating in the first place.

Going into the idea of "good" and "evil," I don't really think that is a good argument to make. There has to be some sense of conflict for a story to maintain interest, and if the idea of "evil" is the norm was played to a logical conclusion, it would feel more like a joke than anything else. Like in Good Omens, where Hell is dictated by doing the worst thing possible and anything that produces a moral positive is bad. It would completely isolate the audience from the values of the cast, which is why Crowley is depicted as having a personality and values more aligned to humans. As such, it doesn't feel like a good faith platform to stand on when criticizing the show.

What I will say is fair, however, is that Medrano has achieved an Olympic medal in trying to make her characters entirely flawless. There is no consistent character flaw that any of her cast maintains out of what is deemed necessary by the plot or depicted as not a flaw by context.

Asmodeus is quite literally perfect for Vivienne's standards. His whole life revolves around his partner, and he is willing to do whatever it takes for that partner, including murder. But that is good, actually.

Blitz is inconsistently too insecure in his relationships. He's insecure when it comes to FizzaRolli and Stolas, resulting in him burning down his own family home and violently rejecting Stolas after the night at Ozzie's. But he's so secure in other relationships that: (1) despite knowing Barbie doesn't want to see him, he tracks her down, (2) he is overbearing of Loona despite feeling like she hates him, (3) abuses Moxxie, despite having issues with losing people.

And I think that's what this criticism is actually addressing. A lack of understanding the stakes and values the world plays on while simultaneously being handed characters who are so volatile in their own values every time we see them that it is pretty much impossible to defer those values passively.

[twelvegate-blog]

A few things I noticed in my S3 and S4 rewatch. And I finally have a theory about what all those wagons mean!

A hidden Chicago mention in S3

I didn't remember that the kids' codename in S3 is Griswold family!

This is a reference to the 1983 movie National Lampoon's vacation. The story of a man who decides to lead his wife and their kids, a boy and a girl, on a cross-country expedition from the Chicago suburbs to the southern California amusement park Walley World.

In S3 El hears Hopper and Joyce talk about going to Illinois, and at the end of the season Joyce and the kids move to California. They are the Griswolds. I mean, we know that Hopper is El's father and Joyce is Will's mother. But since Jon is never included in these references I think it means that Will and El are Joyce and Hopper's kids, and Jon is Joyce and Lonnie's son. Also, I have thoughts about the wife in the movie, Ellen, meeting her cousin Catherine (russian variant, Katerina-> diminutive form, Katinka) who's married to a guy named Edward. But that's for another post.

The meaning of the wheelbarrows

I'm analyzing all the hints that there might've been a car crash in 1976 and that that's the event that separated Jane from her family. I don't think she was abducted when she was born, I think her life changed because of the car accident: time loop/time manipulation made her end up in the lab and it was like she was never part of the family.

But if she is connected to water- the void, the water tanks, even Stobin's sailor outfit, since they represent Willel (a car accident in a frozen lake?) Will has always been associated with fire. And we see three cars on fire in the show: the engine of Hopper's car explodes in S3, Billy's car catches fire in 3x08, and Fred has a vision of a car on fire in S4. When I rewatched Fred's vision I realized that this is connected to Will.

Before Fred sees the car, a dog barks and we see a wheelbarrow in the trailer park. A clear reference to Will's vanishing in 1x01.

A car in the middle of the street. In 1x01 Will swerves off the roard and crashes his bike in the woods. In 3x01 Billy gets possessed after he's run off the road by a creature.

In his vision, Fred also sees a coffin and the grandfather clock, which has the name Williams on it. A car on fire, the name William on a coffin, and in the same season we see the tombstone of William Hargrove.

I think the wheelbarrows represent the car in the accident in 1976 that changed everything. Maybe a station wagon?

The wheelbarrow in front of Mrs Driscoll's house, when she's already possessed by the particles, after the Castle Byers scene, in which a dog barks and Will is about to realize that the Mind Flayer is back.

And in S1 we see the other person who's involved in all this. Brenner.

EDIT: Found another wheelbarrow

This one. And we even get an "upside down" mention in this scene

And a red one at the end of S4, behind Joyce, Hopper and El, and the wooden pole points right to Joyce and El

[gatutor]

Tommy Kirk-Deborah Walley "It´s a bikini world" 1967, de Stephanie Rothman.

[filmmakerdreamst]

Lyra and Will is the best YA romance I've ever read. Not joking when I say I felt hollow for months when I read the part where they had to be separated at the end of 'The Amber Spyglass'.

Amir and Dafne did a fantastic job. I loved how they gave them more soft moments without cheapening their bond. Throughout the books, their relationship is incredibly delicate and subtly written (they're young after all) and they could have easily made it more obvious and over exaggerated for a Mainstream Audience. You'd think that wouldn't be possible but thats what Moira Walley Beckett did with Anne and Gilbert in 'Anne with an E' (that relationship basically consisted of staring at each other from a distance in that show rather than having a consistent build up)

I read an interview of Amir saying that he and Dafne never really looked at it as a romantic thing. It was more important that Will and Lyra were two friends that get along, and something might happen if it does happen. "When playing the scenes, it was never in the back of my mind" which is the way it should be approached with Lyra and Will because their relationship was not "framed as romantic" by Philip Pullman, it came naturally.

Edit: I wrote this analysis ^^ before my re-read and after re-reading the books I realised that was a bad approach to Lyra and Will's relationship. Even from the start, Lyra and Will's interactions are charged in the books and playing platonic until the finale at the end, is kind of a weird decision.

I personally always saw it as a deep bond between two teenagers, that became physical during the end because of everything they went through. It went beyond the typical romantic duality.

However, If I had to choose which version of their relationship I prefer (the book or the TV Show) I would have to choose the book. Because I felt during the last third, in the finale, that their relationship was a bit compacted like kiss -- you have to choose worlds -- separation. In the book, that part is so dragged out and emotional. Lyra and Will spend ages trying to find loopholes, find that there are none, then both of them get angry and upset. And it’s described that the angel felt their 'sorrows in the air'. In the tv show, I didn't really feel all that because everything was so 'get to the point' - when this is supposed to be a drawn out climax.

Unlike some others, I simultaneously believe that Lyra and Will are each others other half/soulmates. They are the only people in 'His Dark Materials' that can touch each others daemons without it being a violation and they will never love anyone else the way they loved each other. That's basically confirmed in 'The Secret of Commonwealth' (the spin off to 'His Dark Materials) where Lyra states that she still thinks of him every hour and that he’s the centre of her life.

And that their separation made sense.

Even though it was the most heartbreaking thing I ever read and left me hollow inside - its not realistic for them to have a solid relationship at 14 or how ever young they were at that point, especially on top of all their trauma. Also, it’s suggested in the books that everything must go back to the way that it was (closing all the windows) almost saying to the reader, you can't live in a fantasy world forever, you have to go back to the real world and live a full life. It’s like at the end of 'The Lord of the Rings' where Frodo destroys the ring, yet still dies at the end because of everything he went through.

It’s not fair. It’s not right. But thats just how life goes sometimes. Plus it made their ending a lot more memorable and iconic. I've actually gone to their real bench in Oxford and cried.

Although saying that, Philip Pullman has to let them see each other again when they're adults, in the last 'Book of Dust' - at least one last time come on now. But I have a feeling he won't reunite them until they die because he’s a cruel, cruel man.

[thestuffedalligator]

The fisherman talked. The flounder listened. The slate-dark skies glowed with rolling flashes of thunderlight, and the green sea clawed at the shoreline, fizzing with angry foam.

When the fisherman had finished and had started fiddling with the brim of his hat, the flounder gave him a long, silent, lopsided stare.

“Your wife wants to be God,” said the flounder.

“A god,” said the fisherman. “She says she’ll settle for a god.” It didn’t sound terribly placating when he said it, but he felt that it had to be said.

It was difficult to read the expression on any fish, but the flounder’s crooked face made it impossible. It looked as though it was locked in a walleyed sneer. “This is the same wife who wished last week to be the Pope.”

“Yessir,” said the fisherman.

“And the same wife who wished to be an emperor the week before.”

“Yessir.”

“And now she wants to be God.”

The fisherman licked his lips. “A god,” he said again.

Lightning forked out of the sky. Waves like black cliffs crashed into each other. The foam fizzed.

Something like thunderlight glowed in the flounder’s eyes. It said: “I like her style. Go to her.”

When the fisherman returned home, he saw his wife, huge, glorious, and gleaming, the goddess of the ambitious, the patron of the world-shakers, the chain-rattlers, those who know it is no bad thing to be discontent.

"How is it, dear?"

His wife smiled and blazed with shimmering shades of storm and starlight.

"It's pretty fucking good," she said.

[unreadablehandle]

LEAVES OF GRASS

"Tell me."

She petted his cheek, as if she wanted to distract him and forget. "Future is not set in stone, brother. You know that, right?"

He hated when she did this. "Please. It was about me, wasn't it?"

She bit her lip thoughtfully. "You don't have to know, ok?"

"But I want to!" He squeezed her wrist.

Due to wind, she finally noticed the tears and wiped them off, closing her eyes defeatedly before she looked back at Harry. "Just tell me this. If you could choose, would you rather live through something wonderful - but shortly and for it to end up bad, or have a long, happy life - only never really reaching the wonder?"

Harry made a confused face at first. But then, he said (as if he didn't even have to think about it): "The first option! Wonders are precious. They are worthy of sacrifice."

Gemma smiled sadly, reflections of flames dancing in her glassy eyes. "Hm. Why did I even ask?"

She swallowed the words about how it was not very wise to choose that possibility if one did not know about what was at stake.

OR:

Louis survived the war just to find out he's dying. He decides to focus on a task of financially securing his sisters before he leaves this world and he's really not interested in any annoying old-wives tales his fiancé tells him about the gypsies in the walley. And yet. One of them still finds him.

[monstermovieattic]

The Gentrys in "It's A Bikini World"

[a30somethingslookatpopculture]

Top 10 Movies that *Feel* Like Summer

(I only included films that I have seen or personally feel capture that summer feeling).

Stand By Me

The boys spend their summer day going on an adventure. Along the way, they connect on a deeper level. Sure, they’re on the hunt for a body, but it’s the perfect encapsulation of childhood and those summer memories with your friends. The Oregon backdrop really creates the mood; with beautiful mountain scapes, lots of sunshine, woodland areas and swamps, etc. It’s also a beautifully written (and even more beautifully acted) film. When I think of summer as a young teen, I think of this film. 

2. Friday The 13th / Sleepaway Camp (You could also put Fear Street Part 2 here as well)

I’m putting these two together since they are virtually the same thing. Both films take place at a summer camp. And of course, involve good, wholesome Slasher fun! They have beautiful lakeside views, summer camp activities, the whole shebang! We’ve all (or most of us) been to summer camp. So I think there’s something to relate to in these films, and admire. So what if a few teenagers get their comeuppance in the process. 

3. American Pie 2

The central plot of this film is a huge blowout party by the beach. The gang orchestrates a big bash to close out summer. It’s Stiffler and the gang, so of course chaos ensues. This one’s a lot of laughs! 

4. The Sandlot

  I really see this one and Stand By Me as sort of the same kind of thing. Both even share a scene where the kids have to escape a guard dog. But at their core, both are the epitome of hanging with your friends and getting into all sorts of fun during summer break. This one is just set in the summer of 1962, and with a baseball backdrop. 

5. Jaws

This one literally happens around the 4th of July weekend. It’s at the beach and is filled with holiday festivities. It’s about as summer a movie as it can get! Oh, and it has sharks, so that’s cool! 

6. Grease

“Summer lovin had me a blast”. It’s right there in the song. Danny and Sandy meet on the beach and fall in love. Neither realize that they’ll end up at the same school. The movie comes full circle when it ends at the end of the school year and it’s summer again. To cap things off, there’s a big carnival with all the summer vibes! 

7. The Parent Trap

Another summer camp movie. Gosh, there’s so many. But this is a nice family-friendly one. Twins Hallie and Annie are both sent to the same summer camp, where they discover that they were separated at birth. Of course, there's the usual summer camp stuff in this one. But there’s also some great scenes later on where the whole family goes on a camping trip, and the twins totally torture their soon to be stepmom with pranks. It’s hilarious and worth the watch for that alone! 

8. National Lampoon’s Vacation

This one is a bit of nostalgia from the days of going on family vacations during the summer. The Griswold’s take a cross-country road trip to Walley World, a California amusement park. In true Griswold family fashion, they run into a lot of mishaps along the way. These are so entertaining! This film is complete with stopping at a campground for the night, skinny dipping, a visit to the Grand Canyon, and eventually making it to the amusement park. Which is quite the misadventure in and of itself. 

9. Dirty Dancing

It’s the summer of 1963, and Baby is vacationing at an upscale resort with her family. She falls in love with dance instructor Johnny Castle. Throughout the film we see the two of them grow closer together as he teaches her a routine for the upcoming end of summer shindig. This one isn't as summer filled as some of the others on this list, but it definitely takes place during that time and has  great lakeside views as well, 

10. I Know What You Did Last Summer 

Summer is literally in the name. This is another one that takes place on (and around) July 4th. On July 4, 1996, Julie James and her friends take a drive to the beach. They hit someone on the drive and dump the body to cover it up. Fast forward a year later, Julie is back from college for the summer when she and her friends begin receiving letters saying, "I know what you did last summer!" From there, someone in a rain slicker and a hook for a hand starts stalking and killing the characters off one by one. An integral part of this film is the 4th of July celebrations in the town. A Parade. A pageant. The seaside scapes! This (and Jaws) are July 4th MUST WATCHES for me every year! 

[bereft-of-frogs]

I hope I have appeased whatever ocean spirit possessed me this summer. Here is the final list of everything I read/watched/listened to/played/etc over the last several months while my entire personality became about the ocean. (Almost - planning on watching Deep Star Six (1989) after I finish writing this post and making dinner!)

The Deep, Nick Cutter | Our Wives Under the Sea, Julia Armfield | “Fear of Depths” + “Fear of Big Things Underwater”, Jacob Geller | Into the Drowning Deep, Mira Grant | Underwater (2020) | r/thalassophobia + r/submechanophobia | The Deep House (2021) | 47 Meters Down (2017) + 47 Meters Down: Uncaged (2019) | The Toilers of the Sea, Victor Hugo (trans. James Hogarth) | Dark Water, Koji Suzuki (trans. Glynne Walley) | “Fear of the Deep”, Nexpo | Sea Fever (2019) | The Abyss (1989) | Open Water (2003) | From Below, Darcy Coates | Love, Death + Robots, “Bad Traveling” | “The Fog Horn”, Ray Bradbury + “A Descent into the Maelstrom”, Edgar Allen Poe (collected in Stories of the Sea ed. Diana Secker Tesdell) | Subnautica (2018) | Breaking Surface (2020) | They Came From the Ocean, Boris Bacic | The Cave (2005) | Sphere, Michael Crichton + its 1997 adaptation | “Thalassophobia”, Solar Sands | Whalefall, Daniel Kraus | Sanctum (2011) | The Rift (1990) | Leviathan (1989) | Sand, Salt, Blood: An Anthology of Sea Horror, ed. Elle Turpitt | 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, Jules Verne (trans. Mendor T. Brunetti) | Moby-Dick, Herman Melville

So that's 12 books (including 2 anthologies), 13 films, 4 video essays, 2 short stories, 2 subreddits, 1 game, and 1 TV episode.

Top 5 (in no particular order)

Our Wives Under the Sea, Julia Armfield -- beautiful, both in the descriptions of the deep sea and in its depictions of grief. Florence Welch blurbed it and Florence + the Machine takes 3 spots on the playlist so this definitely set the vibes of the summer.

Whalefall, Daniel Kraus -- reminded me of NOPE (2022) and that's a high compliment. It's also about grief but the kind of grief where there should have been a reckoning, and you'll never get that closure. Truly excellent, honestly I still have the library book because I'm not ready to give it back.

Sea Fever (2019) -- obviously owes a lot of its plot to the 1989 slate of ocean horror films coming out that were in imitation of Alien (1979) and attempting to preempt James Cameron's The Abyss (1989), in that it's about a creature from the deep that possesses the crew of a fishing trawler off the west coast of Ireland...but a moody atmosphere, gorgeous cinematography, and mythological inspiration just makes this a good watch.

"Fear of Depths", Jacob Geller -- honestly all the youtube videos on this list are worth it but I'm highlighting this one because I just love it when youtubers go on field trips. Like yes Jacob go stand in that cave and read your script for our entertainment and edification, yesss

The Toilers of the Sea, Victor Hugo -- ok the thing about Hugo is that his novels often carry social messaging - about poverty, class, the nature of justice, investment in cultural hegemony - and Toilers' thematic messaging is just: what the fuck are you doing in the ocean why are you going in there, don't you see how fucked up the ocean is, leave it alone- (...perhaps a more relevant text for billionaires than Les Misérables? XD) Ok, I'm mostly kidding but truly his depictions of the sea are some of my favorite bits of Hugo prose, I really think this book is underrated in the anglophone world.

Please feel free to ask me for more reviews of the other works on the list and I can give more thoughts! For now I'll just say that I had a lot of fun with the cheesy 80s/90s movies (the later ones don't quite carry the same charm but were still pretty fun even if they weren't 'good'), the books are pretty solid with the exception of They Came From the Ocean by Boris Bacic, which is my only 'do not recommend' on the list. (It wasn't well written, didn't use the setting very effectively, and got weirdly homophobic towards the end in a way that was impossible to tease out from a character decision and made me feel kind of weird?) There is also a smaller, slightly less cohesive list for the second part of this series but it gives away the thematic shift so I'll stick to ocean horror for now. This was an interesting summer. I guess I should probably...read something other than ocean horror now. XD

letterboxd film list | playlist on spotify

Bonus:

Books on (or…near in one case) the beach