#also ignore old young vincent only new young vincent exists

[llama-head]

...interesting

[greenbriar-j]

Muscle Memory, full wip, unedited 4.7k, scroll at ur own risk; tagging some people who showed previous interest @halleiswriting @chazzawrites @pe-ersona @druidx and also @pens-swords-stuff this is what I’ve been up to lately

Saint Joseph’s Catholic Church bustles with activity. It’s peculiar, for it being a weekday. More peculiar still that the bustling is being done by young men and women who could very well be engaging in… more satisfying summer indulgences.

The Youth Group’s power couple sweeps in an hour late, ever put together even when, by all rights, they ought to be melting right out of their fancy outfits. Cheers rise from the crowd when they appear, each splitting off in their own directions to their own stations.

Y Nhi beelines for the painters, flicking her sleek ponytail to make sure it’s out of the way. The girls hand her a brush while detailing what’s left to be done. Vinny bustles for the sound technicians - who, really, are already done for the day, but are staying for the social factor.

Two things to note about St. Joseph’s power couple:

Y Nhi isn’t sure she believes in God very much anymore.

They are not a couple, but it’s easier to let everyone think so than to correct it.

“Jude,” Mary says (everyone calls her Jude because she and Vinny made a big deal of it years ago), “Are you sure you can’t help out during the week?”

Y Nhi shrugs. She’s not busy or anything, but it feels wrong to shepherd children into a religion she’s falling out of - even if Vacation Bible School had been one of her favorite summer memories for her entire life. That’s where she met Vinny, after all.

Vinny, laughing with the guys at the sound booth. To be more accurate, Vinny himself is only smirking, but that’s as close to a laugh as he gets around here. Stupid smirk. Stupid boy.

“I have work. Unfortunately,” Y Nhi mutters, dragging her brush across a cardboard cutout. “Vinny’s taking the week off, so I’m picking up his slack.”

Mary grins widely at that. “I swear it’s like you’re married.”

For whatever reason, Y Nhi’s heart clenches at that. Picturing herself and Vinny in wedding attire on the altar sickens her, but putting a faceless someone in her place makes her feel worse. But it’s not like she likes him. She’s sworn to herself that she’d become a cat lady in her old age - her army has already begun with a fluffy black kitten. It’s not looking too good for her future; Toothless likes Vinny more than her. She’s already failed as a parent.

Belatedly, Y Nhi realizes she’s supposed to be engaging in a conversation, not thinking about Vinny and their co-parenting of a cat. If it can be called that.

“Don’t hold your breath. The wedding is a long way off,” she says tightly. Like. Never. Never is a long, long way off.

“I wouldn’t be too sure.”

This time, Y Nhi lets the comment slide. She paints while singing under her breath, as she always does. A long time ago, she had no qualms about belting it out, but time has weathered away her volume, reducing it to only this. No one’s noticed the change or found it strange.

The conversation turns to something - anything - else. Degrees, internships, other boys who don’t dress in all black and aren’t named Vincent Truong. Y Nhi listens, but doesn’t contribute.

By the time the call goes out for a lunch break, Y Nhi is finishing three tasks at once. One of the other girls brings her a burger, slathered with ketchup and mayo and tomatoes. Y Nhi thanks her and continues wrapping one of the white pillars in cardboard paper to simulate a palm tree.

Not long after, someone nudges her. Eyes flickering upward, she’s met with the bored eyes of her very best friend. “Bite.”

She doesn’t, not yet.

Vinny wiggles the burger he’s holding in front of her mouth. “Only half a slice of cheese. No tomatoes. Freshest patty of the batch. Eat.”

She still doesn’t take the bait, even though he’s tailored this burger to her weirdly specific tastes.

Vinny sighs. “Jude. No one’s watching you. I promise all they can see is my back.”

“That’s not what I’m worried about.” It’s true she had a complex about eating in public for a while, for reasons she’s never told anyone including him. “Just not hungry.”

“Not very Gucci of you to lie in the house of God.”

“Not very Gucci of you to breathe.”

“Jude! The fuck, man.” But he’s grinning. Not the half-assed grin he gives everyone else, but an honest, mirthful grin reserved for Toothless and Y Nhi only (usually Toothless. Damn cat).“Just eat this, okay? I’ll eat the other one.” His whole demeanor softens as he picks up the burger she had ignored - the one that is surely cold by now.

She is hungry. After all, the reason they were late is because Vinny had to coax her to every step of getting ready this morning. He even applied her eyeliner with the even strokes of a practiced hand - so practiced that even Y Nhi admits it looks like her own work. If she had a choice, she would waste away in bed for the day, but Vinny has never been much of a fan of that plan.

According to her own plan, Y Nhi had been wasting away since before yesterday’s dinner. Famished might be a better word to describe her present state.

But today is one of those days that she feels guilty cementing the married couple narrative any more than it needs to be. They’re not getting any younger, Vinny and Y Nhi, and just because she’s sworn off marriage doesn’t mean he has. How’s he supposed to get a nice girlfriend if she keeps hanging around?

Objectively, it’s a stupid reason to risk passing out in a church of all places, but something about him just makes her stupid. Always has.

The longer she ignores his peace offering, the twitcher he gets. He finishes his own burger in ten massive bites. When Y Nhi still doesn’t eat hers, he eats that whole thing too. “We’re leaving early. Say an hour? Think about what you want to eat.”

With that, he’s gone. Y Nhi is not hyper aware of his presence as it moves through the open space. She does not miss having him next to her. Not even a little.

-

Y Nhi writes, appetite??? in her journal when she gets home. It’s the third time something of this nature has appeared on its list which isn’t titled - but if it was it would be something like “Things About Vinny T. that Don’t Make Sense.”

Even after inhaling two burgers, he took her out for pho and Thai tea, and he ate so slow that his noodles expanded in the broth. Still, he finished a medium bowl with relative ease, and Y Nhi was content after she’d finished a small.

How does someone who eats like that look like that? It has to be some sort of stupid freaky metabolism. Genetic polymorphism, she thinks, then adds that she might be incorrectly using the term she’d heard in class about two semesters ago.

She writes freeloading on the list. It’s not technically true, but he spends enough time at her place to make it feel like it. Right this minute, he’s setting up the living room to sleep in, awaiting her delivery of the overnight bag he always leaves stocked in her apartment for emergencies.

That goes on the list too. Definition of ‘emergency.’

According to recent months, an alarming amount of things fit under this category of Vinny’s mind. It might be nearing time to stage an intervention, but who’s Y Nhi to tell him to relax when she’s the one bordering on anxiety attacks all the time? Only god knows how many times he’s clutched her shaking hands until they stopped.

Y Nhi closes the journal. Snaps the band over the cover. Shoves it under her pillow. Vinny wouldn’t dare read it to begin with, but for some reason, she doesn’t even want him to know of its existence.

Quickly divesting herself of the impeccable outfit she’d worn for the day, she slips easily into one of Vinny’s large, large shirts and the shorts she affectionately calls game day shorts. Ever since high school, she’s worn them for events that require equal amounts of comfort and courage - or just for comfort, to be honest.

“Hey, loser,” she greets Vinny, emerging from her room. He’s got her guitar in hand, and is humming some tune that she recognizes but can’t place. “Your stuff is on my bed. Have you seen Toothless?”

He nods, and keeps playing. It’s in experience, being stared at with such intense eyes while trying not to stare at the other party’s stupid pretty hands playing her guitar. Fuck him, honestly, she thinks angrily.

Leaving him there, she pours each of them a glass of water in the kitchen. A shadow looms on top of the fridge, and she jumps. “Toothless, baby. Please stop napping on the fridge.”

Toothless is not napping. He stands up, shakes his tiny body and hops to the counter, then to the floor, twining around Y Nhi’s feet before scuttling off.

Vinny is singing now. It’s a new song, she supposes, and it sounds like a love song.

Slowly, Y Nhi moves around the kitchen, making as little noise as possible while doing absolutely nothing. She just wants to listen to Vinny and his new love song without him watching her reaction.

Once she gets past the lyrics about gentle touches and midnight escapades, she realizes something. Re-entering the living room, she deposits his water on the table. “Is that my melody? Why would you steal it?”

The guitar is placed awkwardly on the floor, the neck of it leaning on the couch. “Oh, is that where it’s from? Thought it was familiar,” he says with mild disinterest. “Well, I wasn’t that attached to it anyway.”

“Are you saying it sucks?” Y Nhi settles on the floor on the other side of the table, pulling her knees into her chest. Glancing through her lashes, Y Nhi watches Vinny’s expressions.

“I’m saying I’m not taking your work, you brat.” Then he hesitates. “I mean. Can I, just for one person?”

“What the fuck.”

Vinny twitches, finally. “I… Wrote the song for someone… So I’d like to sing it for her, just once.”

Something vile rises in her throat, and she wishes Toothless would notice her distress. Hugging the cat might make her feel a little better about the fact that Vinny’s written a song about a girl using her melody - and it’s not about herself and for some odd reason, that bothers her.

“Can- Can I hear it?” Y Nhi asks in a tiny voice. It’s easier than No, you cannot take my song to sing to some other girl who will take you away from me.

“Haven’t you been hearing it?”

“Vincent.” Because that’s easier than You colossal idiot, what shit are you pulling after two years?

“Jude-”

She stands suddenly, fleeing to her room. Shutting the door, locking it, she tries to breathe. Of all people, Vinny should be the last person to push her to this reaction. She doesn’t know what to think.

Vinny knows.

Vinny knows where her hard limits are. Technically, he hasn’t passed them. But he’s pretty damn close.

Y Nhi slips into the shower, leaving it on the hottest setting to boil the emotions out.

-

For the next two days, Y Nhi doesn’t emerge from her room. Her phone dies, and she lets it. Her body self-destructs in hunger and dehydration from crying, and she lets it. She stays in bed for most of it. Whether Vinny continues to sleep on the other side of the wall for those nights, she doesn’t know. Nor care.

It’s punishment for believing she might be ready to give love another chance.

-

The third day, a letter slips under her door.

She almost flushes it down the toilet without reading it. Everything is in position to do so, paper fluttering in unsteady hands above the toilet bowl. But she wants to know. What can Vinny possibly say for himself?

Jude. I wrote the song for you. I didn’t mean to steal your tune - honest to god, I didn’t. But when I found out, I thought it was fitting that we’d worked on it together. (“Together”)

Jude, the song is up to your interpretation, but it’s yours. I wrote it from my core, and it’s yours. Charge your fucking phone and check the lyrics I sent you.

Take a shower, and call me when you’re ready. You have a few days’ worth of takeout in the fridge. Please take care of your health; I know you’re not right now. I mean it in the best way.

It cuts off there. Unceremonious and blunt, and so very him. She hates it very much.

Y Nhi charges her phone while she showers. Working quickly because she’s so unsteady on her feet, she does the bare minimum before stumbling into the kitchen for food.

While she nibbles on the stir fried noodles he left, she pens her own note.

Vinny,

I will not read the lyrics. I don’t want to know, and you don’t have to pretend it’s about me.

Your joke took two years to reach completion. Congratulations. I hope I was amusing and that my downfall wall be the stunning conclusion you wanted.

She tapes it on her front door so he’ll see it the next time he comes over. Soon, probably.

Momentarily, she wonders if she’s being rash. Is it so impossible to think that he could find romantic attraction to her?

Then she remembers. Y Nhi is not built to be loved, if her history is anything to go by. Even if she’s wrong, even if Vinny loves her for real, she will resist. Losing him this way is better than the alternative: watching him dissolve to some monstrosity while loving her.

-

Nothing changes after that. Apart from Vinny’s absence from her apartment, they interact in exactly the same way.

Vinny says something borderline rude.

Y Nhi retorts with something blatantly rude.

They laugh about it and move along.

There are no gentle touches to avoid because Vinny rarely touched her to begin with - despite the way he slings his arm around everyone else, he wasn’t like that with her. No arm around her shoulder, no hugs, not even extended contact with her hair.

Y Nhi pretends not to notice when he goes through a full dinner with an arm draped over the back of his friend Justin’s chair. He leans on it, adding the tiniest space between himself and Y Nhi. He still passes her the condiments and spices she likes before she asks for them. He takes her home at the end of it.

This should be enough. Up until now, it always had been. These tiny acts were his long distance hugs. It had always been enough, but now it isn’t, and Y Nhi doesn’t know what to do.

Isn’t this what you wanted? For him to get a life away from you?

“How’s that girl?” She asks on the way home, just because the silence is killing her and perhaps because she’s a masochist. “The one you wrote the song for?”

Vinny looks at her for a brief moment, something like grief in his eyes. It’s a confusing expression. “She hasn’t really talked to me since.”

Y Nhi tries not to sit straighter at this revelation. “Oh, really? Hm. That sucks.”

“Yeah.”

Something about the word is profoundly heartbroken. She can almost feel the emotions hurtling off him in waves, but he doesn’t lash out at her. All it does is enclose each passenger of the car in a separate bubble. This is the closest they’ve been in a long time, but Y Nhi has never felt so isolated.

Her throat constricts, and her hands start to shake. “Do you… Know why?”

Vinny thinks for a moment, tapping his fingers on the wheel. “I think she doesn’t believe me. But I don’t really think it’s me, I think she thinks that love is meant for everyone except herself. She’s pretty bent on self-destruction now, as far as I can tell - No, don’t say anything yet.”

Every girl Vinny’s talked to in the last week pops up in her mind. Which of them seems most self-destructive? If she can’t keep herself by his side, he should at least have someone who can care for him. She could talk to them, probably, if she knew who it was.

“I… She thinks this is sudden, but I’ve been in love with her since I was fifteen. Or something. Like it kind of just happened over time, and I thought she knew.”

Fifteen means Vinny’s been futilely in love with someone else while she fell for the guy who ended up cheating on her.

They were happy in high school. It was college that broke them. Distance. The communications became less frequent in an inverse relationship to Y Nhi’s alcohol intake. Her grades suffered, and she convinced herself that she was too stupid for higher education. On his birthday, she drove for hours to his dorm to surprise him, only to find him making out with another girl. Sober.

Not that any level of inebriation could excuse him, but perhaps it would’ve hurt a little less.

Vinny isn’t done. “I fucking cut fruit for her every time we hung out. I did her dishes sometimes. I don’t know, I- I thought I did everything right. My mom thought I was doing everything right.”

“You tell your mom about your love life?”

Y Nhi doesn’t. Her parents don’t care enough to know anything about it beyond that she let go of a future doctor and that she’ll never find another because she’s past her prime. That’s what it feels like, anyway.

She’s literally twenty four. She has time.

“Not really. But they’ve met.” Vinny parks the car in front of her apartment, but he makes no move to get out or to let Y Nhi get out. “Jude, listen to me.”

“I’m listening,” she says. Training her eyes on her kitchen window, she thinks about the dishes she hasn’t done yet, the fruit she hasn’t cut yet, and how she hates thinking about it because it reminds her Vinny is fading.

Human adaptability is a remarkable thing. One more week, and this new normalcy will cement itself.

“The girl I love is you. Okay? I’ve walked around the topic for years, and I understand if you’re still not ready for it. But I know you’re getting the wrong idea in that head of yours. It’s you, and it’s always been you, and I’ll spend the rest of my life proving it if you let me. I’ll also bow out forever if that’s what you need from me. But I need you to talk to me. I-”

Holy shit, is he about to cry? With wild eyes, she glances at him. If she’s made him cry, he’ll return the favor five-fold. No, she backtracks. That’s not Vinny. That’s the behavior of her second ex, the one that reduced her to a stiff puppet of a girl.

“Come back to me,” he says in a small, strangled voice. “I don’t even care if you break me in the process, but please come back to me. You can do whatever you want, as long as you do it by my side.”

For the longest moment, they say nothing. Then Y Nhi opens the car door. “Can you cut my strawberries for me? They taste better when you cut them.”

-

Vinny washes her dishes and her strawberries and quarters the already small fruit for her. He deposits the snacks in front of her and watches her eat - slowly, since they’ve just come back from dinner, after all.

“So it’s me?”

“Always has been.”

“And you never said anything.”

“I did. You ignored it on purpose.”

“No, I’m just a stupid hoe.”

“You’re not stupid. Or a hoe.”

“You’re always calling me stupid.”

“Not like that, stupid.”

“You’re going to have to undo a lot of damage if we date.”

“I know. I’ve been working on it already, didn’t you notice?”

“Yeah, but it’s gonna get worse if we date.”

“Have you considered therapy?”

“Vinny, I’ll be a pariah.”

“A happy one, maybe.” Hesitantly, he reaches for one of her hands. Halfway, he flips the palm up and waits for her to complete the gesture on her own. “You don’t have to decide right away. It’s just a thought.”

She puts her hand in his a little too eagerly, then pulls back a little too harshly. It feels like touching the flame of a candle.

A defeated look momentarily crosses Vinny’s eyes, but Y Nhi barely has the time to look at it before she steels her nerves and takes hold of his hand again. The coldness of his rings grounds her somehow. “We need a list,” Y Nhi says, “of things. First, you’re going to Google touch starvation.”

Her best friend jerks in a little victorious motion, jamming his knee unceremoniously on the table leg as he does. “Fuck, that hurt.”

“What was that about?”

“I wasn’t sure if you were actually touch starved or if you didn’t like men touching you.”

“And you didn’t ask?” Y Nhi is incredulous.

“How am I supposed to ask? ‘Jude, when I touch you, does it remind you of your sleazy ex boyfriends?’ You’d say no. Like a liar. Or so I thought.” He pauses. “Anyway, this means I can hug you now, right? 24/7.”

“If you ease into it.”

“And you’ll stop wearing those gigantic shirts that literally drown you.”

“...No. What?”

“Okay, never mind, nothing. What else? What other boundaries do we have?”

Of all questions she’s been asked today, this one is probably the most confusing. Her previous relationships are no help; she hasn’t exactly had the best exposure to “healthy relationships.” She’s aware that the bare minimum counts as decadence for her, so the question has her a little frozen.

After watching her face flicker through whatever emotions it’s displaying, Vinny rubs a thumb over her knuckles. “How about this: I have a specific thing I want your help with, and when things come up, we can talk about it.”

Y Nhi nods, though they both know she won’t talk about shit. But perhaps watching Vinny sort out whatever issue he needs sorted will give her inspiration on how to approach this. “Can we-?” She starts and stops abruptly.

Vinny blinks, then feeds her a strawberry slice. “Go ahead.” It’s a tactful move. Putting food in her mouth means she has to chew, meaning she has a few more seconds to gather herself and her thoughts, or at the very least, the desire to continue speaking.

“Can we not label this?” She finishes. “Whatever is between us.”

To her surprise, Vinny nods and acts like she hasn’t asked the bitchiest question of the night. “Sure.” You can do whatever you want, he’d said, as long as you do it by my side.

“And… Get rid of Jude.”

“What?”

“Jude. You remember why I picked that name?”

“Because of some fictional fairy queen that had the same name? You thought she was a conniving boss ass bitch and-”

“Shut up. Saint Jude. Patron saint of?”

Technically speaking, he hasn’t been wrong about the fairy queen bit. Unlike the suckers who fell for Cardan Greenbriar, Y Nhi’s wimpy ass was all in for Jude Duarte, mortal queen of the fae. And it was easier to admit that than to admit the truth that was dawning on Vinny’s face in 3… 2...

“Hopeless causes,” Vinny answers easily. Then his expression sobers. “Oh.”

Y Nhi nods. “But the me with you isn’t a hopeless cause. I don’t want her to be, anyway.”

There’s a lot that goes unsaid, but she’s certain Vinny hears it. Logically, she can’t keep relying on whatever instinct says, He’ll understand because he’s Vinny, but up to this point, it should work out okay.

Gently, he says, “Y Nhi,” reacquainting himself with the syllables of her given name. “Y Nhi.”

“Yes, Vinny?” She says just as gently.

He lowers his voice to a husky whisper, “You’ve never been a hopeless cause. You were a cause for hope.”

-

Vinny’s request is this: that Y Nhi teach him to be soft again.

The request makes her question if she and Vinny exist in the same dimension because who the hell convinced him he wasn’t soft? Hardened, prickly souls don’t master winged eyeliner for the sake of their loved ones. They don’t volunteer extra hours at Vacation Bible School while working graveyard shifts at the hospital. Don’t do the dishes because as much as they hate them, their roommate hates them more.

Vinny is soft, and Y Nhi is out for blood. “I need names, Vincent. And addresses if you have them.”

“My ex,” he says.

An awkward sound emerges from Y Nhi’s throat.

He raises an eyebrow at her. “What? I dated around. Didn’t think I should be hung up on you, but nothing ever went as planned. Anyway, my one ex did a really good job making me become someone I wasn’t. I didn’t like the person she made me, but it was kind of too late to turn around.”

Again, Y Nhi is confused. The narrative is promising, though, so she lets him continue in hopes that it’ll clear something up.

“If you don’t know me, how would you describe me?”

“Vinny.” She doesn’t have an answer, she just doesn’t want to say it. It’s not all good, and they just came back from an awkward fight. Was it a fight?

They’ve slipped back into their normal existence so easily. Nothing has changed, but at the same time, everything has.

“Just- The rings and the black and the tattoos. You’d think I drove a motorcycle or something, right?”

“You drive a Lexus. It’s the same in terms of your fuck boy vibes.”

“Y Nhi!”

“BMW would’ve sealed the deal. How many Hennessys do you drink a night, again?”

A pout settles on his face. She likes this version of him. “I see you get my point. I look like a baddie.”

“Yeah. Bad at life.”

“I swear to god.”

“Don’t do that, that’s a sin. Don’t use the lord’s name in vain and all.”

“Anyway. You of all people know I am soft, actually. She didn’t like that. And so I gained a second personality and-”

It’s rude, the way Y Nhi interrupts, but Vinny doesn’t seem to mind at all. “So if you’re always soft, what’s left for me to help you with?”

“You’ll see,” he says. “Actually. No, I’m going to tell you. I get embarrassed about my relationships. So if it ever looks like I’m pushing you away… I’m just really fucking embarrassed, at least for this first stage. Do what you will with that.”

- bonus/epilogue -

They return home for Y Nhi’s mom’s birthday. They’ve always rode home together, since they are neighbors no matter where they are. No one finds it odd that they hold hands more than before, that Y Nhi is still averse to touching everyone but him.

They appear at social events hanging on each other’s arms. Commentary about their status as a “married couple” breeze over their heads, but they never confirm nor deny anything. In public, they remain aloof to each other. They show tenderness in only the smallest of gestures.

In private, they are as they ever were. Vinny still does her eyeliner on her bad days, but now she cuddles him on the couch on his bad days. Between the two of them, there are a lot of bad days, days when they almost threw in the towel.

But they didn’t. Instead, they’ve introduced all manner of pet names (Vinny’s favorites to use are love, darling, and lately, em. Y Nhi’s favorites are Vinny and anh). They write songs to each other, for each other, with each other. Every morning, they make the choice to keep loving each other the way they have since they were fifteen - and while they joke that they wasted so much time, it was a necessary time for them to spend apart to learn how to exist together and how to choose each other even when it’s the harder choice than letting go.

Even I get lonely too

It’s not hard

Every question’s got an answer

And mine is you

Where you go then I will follow

All my life

You’re the name that I will whisper to the night

[halloweendailynews]

A new Halloween movie is finally upon us, and it was well worth the nine-year wait, as director David Gordon Green and his co-writers Danny McBride and Jeff Fradley have delivered one of the best horror sequels ever made, in a timely story of unresolved trauma and the return of The Bogeyman.

I’ve watched Halloween 2018 three times as of this writing, and I enjoyed it more with each viewing, and so after a few weeks of thinking about it, it’s time to dive in to my full review. In this case, the following does contain quite a few spoilers, because, honestly, you’ve had almost a month to see the film. (If you’re reading this for my recommendation as to whether you should see the film, just know that I highly recommend you go see it right now. …And then come back here and read the following review).

Let’s start with the score, the most visceral link between this new film and director/composer John Carpenter’s 1978 original Halloween. Carpenter’s new score for the 2018 film not only brings updated versions of the classic themes we all know and love, but also channels all of the best parts of other classic Carpenter soundtracks. By the time Daniel Davies’ electric guitar first screams in the film, the hairs on the back of my neck stood up.

The first thing we hear over the studio logos is a dark, intensely foreboding intro. The revisited themes are all familiar but now have a new, relentlessly driving urgency, hurtling viewers toward an epic, inevitable climax.

My favorite track from the 2018 soundtrack, “Prison Montage” creates an atmosphere of complete dread for what’s about to happen, while on screen shots of Michael boarding the bus transporting the patients of Smith’s Grove Sanitarium are intercut with Laurie Strode seeing The Shape for presumably the first time in 40 years from a distance. And there’s the haunting voice of Dr. Loomis (voiced by Colin Mahan), not the voice of Donald Pleasence that we remember, but a more weary and hollow, distorted recording of the Loomis we once knew, absolutely resigned to the fact that “It has to die.”

From the opening credits to Laurie Strode’s eventual reunion with Michael Myers, the film does an amazing job of subverting our horror-ingrained Halloween-obsessed expectations while at the same time paying significant homage to the very tropes that the original Halloween created 40 years ago.

And how can fans not love all of the Easter eggs, so many loving references to the entire Halloween franchise?

P.J. Soles, who starred in Halloween ’78 as Lynda, has a classy off screen cameo as the voice of young Allyson Strode’s unseen high school teacher, and the devil costume worn by Oscar, played by Drew Scheid, is a callback to the she-devil costume memorably worn by Samantha, played by Tamara Glynn, in Halloween 5.

And Laurie Strode’s bedroom, where much of the finale takes place, is itself an exact recreation of the Doyle house bedroom where the first film ends.

We knew from the trailers that the Silver Shamrock masks from Halloween III would make an appearance, and it was indeed amazingly surreal to see, this being the first time that Season of the Witch has been acknowledged in any way since “Mrs. Blankenship” was featured in 1995’s The Curse of Michael Myers (Curse writer Daniel Farrands told me that “Mrs Blakenship” is “Minnie Blankenship” in this interview).

And of course Allyson’s asshole boyfriend Cameron Elam, played by Dylan Arnold, is the son of longtime Haddonfield asshole Lonnie Elam, who bullied poor Tommy Doyle in the first film and was last seen getting scared away from the Myers House by Dr. Loomis.

Those are just a few of the many shout-outs to past Halloween movies that are featured all throughout Halloween 2018, which only enhance the film’s re-watchability.

And speaking of doctors, let’s talk about Dr. Sartain, played by Haluk Bilginer, who we told you would be a new Loomis-like character following Nick Castle’s Q&A in February. I’d still say that Laurie is really the “new Loomis”, but Sartain serves as sort of an abbreviated, extreme version of what these new filmmakers see as likely happening to Dr. Loomis, at least to some level. Loomis was admittedly obsessed with Michael after just 15 years with him, and Sartain is certainly obsessed with him after (presumably) close to 40 years with him.

And while Sartain’s twist is definitely the biggest WTF moment of the film, even that in itself is a bit of an Easter egg too, isn’t it? Halloween is easily the crown jewel of all modern horror franchises, but it has a long history of WTF moments throughout the last four decades, some that have been eventually embraced over the years (Halloween III), and others not so much (The Man in Black), but Sartain’s WTF moment is not really that huge when compared to all of the others. And you have to admit, you did not see that coming. (We were all expecting Ben Tramer Version 2.0, right?)

On repeat viewings, you’ll notice more of how Sartain allows, almost urges, journalists Aaron and Dana to provoke his most notorious patient, and on the eve of his transfer to a new facility where the doctor does not want to think about Michael being. And there’s the odd coincidence that the transfer takes place on the night before Halloween. And you will rightly wonder just how much of what transpires next was part of Sartain’s plans all along.

This is my favorite portrayal of the Laurie Strode character ever put on screen. In a career-defining performance that more than anything honors the legacy of one of the greatest survivors in movie history, Jamie Lee Curtis has never been better. This is a heartbreaking portrait of a woman who has never fully developed into a whole person because of the horrific events that happened to her on Halloween night in 1978. And when it starts happening again, 40 years later, her worst fears, and at the same time a chance at rewriting her own narrative’s ending, are realized.

As Laurie’s granddaughter Allyson, Andi Matichak is very much the modern version of what Laurie was in 1978, instantly likable in her everyday manner, understandably questionable of both sides of her mother and grandmother’s strained relationship, looking beyond the today that her friends live in to try to find her place in a larger picture, very much on the verge of adulthood.

And The Shape? James Jude Courtney’s portrayal does exactly what he told me he did (read our interview here), channeling the space created by Nick Castle in 1978, inhabited by Dick Warlock in 1981 and all the other actors since, to tap into the essence of the simple, focused, violent existence, rather than humanity, of Michael Myers. It’s all there, from the head tilt to the walk, and when fused with Nick Castle’s recorded breathing and cameos behind the mask, it makes for a damn perfect portrayal of The Shape.

Michael has never been deadlier, creatively brutal enough to evoke memories of Rob Zombie-directed kills, and yet silently cunning, the trickster that creatively displayed the dead bodies of Laurie’s friends for her to find in 1978, who enjoys terrorizing his victims as much if not more than actually murdering them. And he’s back to being a random source of tragedy, the kind of tragedy that we see hitting random people every day on the nightly news in real life in 2018.

The subtle yet ever-present social commentary threaded throughout the film is another tribute to Carpenter, but also a testament to the decades old truth that horror always reflects the current fears of the audience.

The new mask, an aged update on the original, created by a team led by Christopher Nelson (read our interview here), Vincent Van Dyke, and Justin Mabry, is haunting, soulful, and creepy as hell.

Over the years, I’m sure the biggest criticism about this film will be that it is essentially a remake of Halloween H20 , which it is, though I’d say it is much more a third version of Halloween II, and in a franchise that has already done this disregarding of previous chapters, it’s yet another choose-your-own-adventure option to take following the first film. No matter where you place it in official canon, it’s undeniable that Halloween 2018 is one of the best sequels in the franchise, and I’d say one of the best sequels, period.

A totally entertaining tribute that honors 40 years of Halloween, Michael Myers is back, and Haddonfield has never felt more like home.

Halloween 2018 is currently in theaters.

[Read our interview with Rhian Rees on the fear and female power of Halloween 2018 here.]

[Read our interview with James Jude Courtney on playing Michael Myers in Halloween 2018 here.]

[Read our interview with Nick Castle on reprising Michael Myers in Halloween 2018 here.]

[Read our interview with Christopher Nelson on making Michael Myers’ mask for Halloween 2018 here.]

I think the new film will ignore everything after Part 1. Laurie is the new Loomis, claiming for 40 years He’s coming back. Then He does.

— Halloween Daily News (@HalloweenDaily) September 17, 2017

For more Halloween news, follow @HalloweenDaily.

'Halloween' 2018 Brings Michael Myers Back Home [Review] A new Halloween movie is finally upon us, and it was well worth the nine-year wait, as director David Gordon Green and his co-writers Danny McBride and Jeff Fradley have delivered one of the best horror sequels ever made, in a timely story of unresolved trauma and the return of The Bogeyman.

[aion-rsa]

Resident Evil Village’s Witch Revives Horror’s Most Underrated Villain

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It’s hardly a surprise that Resident Evil Village is capturing everyone’s attention (including our own) at the moment. Not only is it the next entry into one of gaming’s biggest franchises, but in a year that will likely feature many game delays as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, it’s a new game scheduled to be released in the near future that we can actually look forward to. Besides, how often do you get to celebrate horror in January?

Of course, Resident Evil Village is nothing if not a celebration of horror that pays special tribute to the Universal horror era of the ’30s and ’40s. We’ve already spoken about how Lady Dimitrescu’s daughters honor Dracula’s brides, but you’ve also got Dimitrescu herself who invokes elements of Carmilla and Dracula. You’ve also got a werewolf paying homage to The Wolf Man, the villagers themselves invoking images of countless helpless villagers of classic horror, and a witch that reminds us of all those witches in black and white Universal horror films gone by.

Do you know what’s funny, though? There really aren’t many prominent witches in major Universal horror films. I found that hard to believe as I could almost picture a witch sitting around a smoking cauldron while she warns a hapless hero of the curse they’ve attracted, but there are shockingly few examples of those styles of witches in the films from that era. At the very least, a witch was never prominently featured in such a film despite the fact that the character is so closely associated with other horror archetypes.

Then again, the absence of witches during the golden age of horror is a sadly fitting chapter in the history of one of the most underrated villains in horror movie history.

So, were there any witches in classic Universal monster movies? The answer depends on your interpretation of the concept. The closest we came to the classic “visual” of the witch in one of these films has to be the character Maliva from The Wolf Man. While she’s an old wise woman living in the woods with an air of mystery about her, she’s actually a gypsy and not a witch. There were also some voodoo practitioners and mystics in movies like White Zombie, but none of them really fit the billing. Witches would start popping up in the ’40s in movies like I Married a Witch, but that was more of a romantic comedy. It wasn’t until the late ’50s and early ’60s that you really started to see significant horror portrayals of witches.

The most prominent witches of the ‘1930s were actually the witch-like The Evil Queen from Snow White and, of course, the Wicked Witch of the West from The Wizard of Oz. For years, though, it was hard to find a prominent witch during even the lucrative early days of horror films.

What’s really odd is that the history of witches in horror films started out well enough. 1922’s Häxan offered a blend of documentary-style segments and dramatic recreations designed to shed light on the history of witchcraft and related superstitions. While the film is a little rough in spots (which is understandable given the year it was released), there’s something magical about the way it so boldly flew in the face of filmmaking and societal conventions. Hilariously, some early critics even panned the film over their belief that such dangerous satanic visuals and ideas shouldn’t be glorified in theaters.

Isn’t that what’s great about witches, though? From well before the 1920s into the satanic panic era of the 1980s, there was a legitimate societal fear over the influence of the devil and satanism. While vampires and other monsters somehow escaped the brunt of those fears (at least in terms of their “accepted” mass portrayals), the idea of women embracing Satan has long gotten under people’s skins. Who would have known that the idea of women seeking empowerment where it’s available to them would terrify so many?

It’s impossible to ignore the likelihood that witches weren’t prominently featured in early horror films due to a combination of satanism and sexism, but the idea of witches as rebels seeking revenge on society is one of the most fascinating uses of the characters that we typically see on film. 1960’s Black Sunday is one of the best early examples of that concept as it focuses on a witch seeking vengeance through unusually violent (at least for films of that era) means. Vincent Price’s underrated 1968 classic Witchfinder General even directly addresses the idea that we deserve the wrath of witches or perhaps even manufactured it due to the violence perpetrated against women during literal witch hunts. A generation later, The Craft would turn the idea of young women acquiring abilities from horror story to a source of empowerment for young women looking for a way to defy an unfair society.

Then you have Suspiria. Both versions of Suspiria deal with the idea that there is this isolated location run by witches that is a world unto itself. They make us feel decidedly unwelcome in this place (especially for male viewers), but we’re compelled by their visuals and twisted nature which lure us in before we understand the depths of what we’ve gotten into. It’s a hauntingly beautiful play on the classic fairy tale idea of witches luring children into a dangerous place even when their logic screams “turn back, run away.”

The matronly idea of witches is another powerful play on the archetype taken from fairy tales that is impossible to ignore. While it’s possible that the relationship between witches and children was fuelled over the years by the idea a society still struggling to escape the belief that the greatest tragedy that can befall a woman is to not be a mother, there is something undeniably powerful about the idea that witches are the primary antagonist of children.

You can’t have that conversation without talking about Rosemary’s Baby, but one of the most fascinating examples of that concept has to be 1990’s The Witches. That movie lures you in by presenting itself as a kid’s movie much as a witch lured Hansel and Gretel in with sweets. When that famous transformation scene happens, though, it proves to be even scarier than the effective visuals alone would often make it simply because we feel as though we’ve been betrayed. It not only betrays the assumption of a safe “children’s adventure” with truly terrifying visuals but it brilliantly backstabs the idea of women as inherently nurturing, protective forces who could never do harm. It defies expectations in a way that haunts us years later.

Then again, witches have evolved in horror better than many other classic creatures. Despite detours into family-friendly fairs like Bewitched and ABC’s Sabrina show, latter witch films remained truly terrifying. When Dracula, The Wolf Man, and Frankenstein were struggling to navigate the ’90s, The Blair Witch Project taught a generation to fear films again. 2015’s The Witch even used a combination of trope twists focused on the feminity of witches and genuinely terrifying visuals to craft one of the films that helped usher in the horror film renaissance that we’re currently enjoying.

Yet, despite their effectiveness over decades and centuries of horror and despite the fact that they starred in all-time great movies like Rosemary’s Baby, Suspiria, Black Sunday, The Blair Witch Project, and The Witch, the archetype of the witch often feels fundamentally underappreciated in the realm of horror. They typically don’t rank high on lists of the great horror movie monsters, and portrayals of them tend to default to the crooked nose, green skin, and pointed hat that invokes a more classic image representative of an era of horror films that witches shamefully barely got to participate in.

Much like Dracula’s brides, that’s why it warms the heart to see a witch alongside a wolf, a vampire, and so many other classic horror archetypes in Resident Evil Village. From fairy tales to film, the witch has remained effectively terrifying due to a combination of brilliant portrayals and far too prevalent societal beliefs that touch upon the very real reasons we should all probably fear witches if they did exist.

Witches may not have had time to shine during an era of filmmaking that established so many horror icons, but it’s a testament to their power that they immediately feel like they belong in the presence of such legends. Here’s hoping the game does them justice.

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[leonawriter]

I realise every so often that I tend to ignore/forget about Shelke? 

Like, I’ll refer to Deepground events and all, but when it comes to actually including her and the others in my fics, I just... brain completely overlooks the possibility.

I think there are a few reasons. 

The major one is, I don’t actually like the characters of Shelke and her sister Shalua. It’s sad, but they... never really got me invested in who they are, not really? I’ve never had any real, lasting emotional engagement in their stories. 

It doesn’t help that I’m not a big fan of their designs, either. I mean, girl who looks like she’s a nine year old who’s actually nineteen, who has no reason to look like she’s that young - look at the shaky pseudo-science behind it, it’s shakier than an old BBC sci-fi set! None of the other Tsviets are stuck in ageless bodies! - and a scientist who dresses in.... uh.... those aren’t even clothes, they’re just underwear and belts, what the HELL design team, what were you ON.

They also don’t really sell themselves well. Not to me. Shelke never really owns her new emotions and emotional connections until the, uh... last fifteen minutes, maybe? The last quarter of the gameplay featuring her? The epilogue? It’s hard to connect emotionally with someone who would like to pretend that no, none of this is actually real for them, and they’re going to insult the people who are helping them frequently!

I can understand Shalua being the way she is to a point, but also, there’s just... her design is really distracting (in a sense of ‘why, oh god why, this is entirely unnecessary’ every time I see her) and she looks completely - or almost completely - unaffected by Most Things. She has a few lines that she tends to repeat about Shelke being her ‘reason to live’, but... she doesn’t really come off as anything much more than flat to me. I know she appears more in Before Crisis, but even knowing some of the things from there, she still feels like a character who was only half cared for - especially with how she was kinda fridged in order to advance her sister’s storyline! Literally, she sacrifices herself and gets stuck in a healing tube that gets... lost? I don't even know. She’s never seen or heard from again.

The other major thing, I think, is the way that no matter how SE tries to put it, putting the mind and/or memories of some guy’s love interest in the body of Shelke, who as said before, ‘body of nine year old, mind of nineteen year old’, is incredibly skeevy and uncomfortable. Especially when it’s Vincent. 

Like... I don’t care that Shelke may or may not have some sort of longevity thing going on? I don’t know? But for one thing, Lucrecia’s still alive, dumbasses, and for another thing, you’re going to push her feelings into a kid who’s still a damn teenager no matter what, even taking her mental age into consideration, when Vincent’s either in his fifties or mentally nearly thirty? That’s just WEIRD. Even if Vincent politely says ‘no’ and backs away enough for Shelke to sort out her own feelings on this, it’s still really damn weird.

So... on the one hand I don’t feel emotional attachment or investment, so it’s hard to remember that she’s even supposed to exist at all, and for another the idea of writing a character who has that emotional baggage is just... no. 

And like, if I need to say where she is, it’d be incredibly easy to say she’s just. Somewhere else. It’s been enough time since the final events of DoC in most fic that she could have started working with the WRO, or she’s off following Vincent around, or she’s in Wutai with Yuffie, or she’s... I dunno, doing her own thing? If I feel like the plot needs her, I’d find a way for it to work. But unless she’s needed, then I as a fan writer don’t have to include her.

And I’m saying this because I recognise when people don't include characters who should by all means be in certain situations or with certain people and they aren’t there, I get annoyed; I also get annoyed when female characters are sidelined for bad reasons, or no reason at all. So, my feelings on these two here are personal, and if need be I’ll work around it, but otherwise I’ll only do what actually makes me happy.

[brokehorrorfan]

Best New Horror Movies on Netflix: Summer 2017

I know there's an overwhelming amount of horror movies to sift through on Netflix, so I've decided to take out some of the legwork by compiling a list of the season's best new genre titles on Netflix's instant streaming service.

Please feel free to leave a comment with any I may have missed and share your thoughts on any of the films you watch. You can also peruse past installments of Best New Horror Moves on Netflix for more suggestions.

1. Clown

Before Spider-Man: Homecoming swings into theaters, watch director Jon Watts' feature debut. Beginning as a faux-trailer that went viral, Clown was essentially willed into existence with the aid of genre favorite Eli Roth (Hostel, Cabin Fever) as a producer. Andy Powers (Oz) stars as a dad who comes across an old clown costume to wear to his son's birthday party, only to find that he physically cannot remove it. He then develops an insatiable hunger for children, soon learning that he must sacrifice five kids in order to remove the suit. Laura Allen (The 4400) plays his wife, while Peter Stormare (Fargo) provides the ancient, demonic history of clowns. Not your typical killer clown movie, Clown combines classic monster movie motifs, body horror elements, supernatural undertones, and gallows humor into one coulrophobic package. Read my full review of the film here.

2. Beyond the Gates

Beyond the Gates was clearly made by horror fans for fellow fans. The 80-minute romp can best be described as Jumanji meets The Beyond. Estranged brothers Gordon (Graham Skipper, Almost Human) and John (Chase Williamson, John Dies at the End), along with Gordon’s girlfriend, Margot (Brea Grant, Halloween II), find and play an old VCR game. They must obey the tape’s host (Barbara Crampton, Re-Animator) in order to solve the mystery of their father's disappearance. It's slightly hindered by a limited budget - the set-up is slow and the ending is a tad anticlimactic - but it's so spirited along the way that the faults barely register. First-time director Jackson Stewart taps into the VHS nostalgia to create a film that would feel perfectly at home on a mom-and-pop video store shelf in the late '80s. Read my full review of the film here.

3. The Eyes of My Mother

The Eyes of My Mother is too pensive for horror fans look for typical blood and scares, but those who appreciate arthouse fare are likely to get wrapped up in its unsettling tone. Writer/director Nicolas Pesce makes an impact with his debut, utilizing stark black-and-white photography to explore a character study illustrating the repercussions of murder. The story is told in three chapters, which each one showing a significant familial moment in a woman's life that shapes her into the disturbed individual she ultimately becomes. It’s a slow burn, even at a mere 76 minutess, but every moment is spent ruminating in its dark tone.

4. Backcountry

Backcountry is based on a true story of a black bear attack. The predator doesn't show up until two thirds of the way through the film; the rest of the time is spent developing the relationship between Alex (Jeff Roop) and Jenn (Missy Peregrym, Reaper), who embark on what's supposed to be a romantic and relaxing weekend hike through the woods. Tensions first rise upon the introduction of an Irish backpacker (Eric Balfour, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre), then again when the couple gets lost in the dizzying forest. It finally takes the form of a suspenseful survival thriller when the ferocious bear begins attacking their campsite. The investment in character development is worthwhile, as it causes the viewer to care about them, thereby making the final act even more harrowing. Real bears were used during production, adding to the ripe intensity.

5. Dig Two Graves

The first act of Dig Two Graves could be mistaken for a coming-of-age drama - not only thematically but also stylistically - as a young girl (Samantha Isler, Captain Fantastic) from a podunk town attempts to reconcile with her brother's death. Things really heat up when a trio of creepy men tell her they can bring him back to life... but someone else has to take his place. The story is structured in an interesting way, sprinkling in flashbacks that contextualize the actions taking place in the present. Isler delivers a brilliant performance, as does Ted Levine (The Silence of the Lambs), who plays her grandfather, the town's sheriff.

6. XX

XX is a horror anthology made up of four segments written and directed by females, each one strong and unique. “The Box” by Jovanka Vuckovic adapts a Jack Ketchum short story about a boy who's forever changed upon seeing the contents of a mysterious box. “The Birthday Party” by Annie Clark (better known as musician St. Vincent) is a darkly comic tale about a woman who finds her husband dead on the day of her daughter's birthday party. “Don’t Fall” by Roxanne Benjamin (Southbound) turns a serene hike into a blood-thirsty creature feature. “Her Only Living Son” by Karyn Kusama (The Invitation) finds a mother learning a deep, dark secret about her son. There's not much of a through line outside of them all being female-led (3/4 of which are maternal roles), though neat stop-motion animation wraps around the tales. Several familiar faces populate the cast, including Melanie Lynskey (Heavenly Creatures), Natalie Brown (The Strain), and Mike Doyle (Law & Order: Special Victims Unit). It's no secret that we need more female voices in film, and XX is a potent declaration that's impossible to ignore.

7. Stake Land II: The Stakelander

Despite a terrible title that could be mistaken for a joke, Stake Land II: The Stakelander is a sequel to Stake Land, Jim Mickle's impressive 2010 vampire film (which you should watch first; it's also on Netflix). Mickle resigns to executive producer, but his co-writer, Nick Damici, returns to pen the script. Damici also reprises his role as Mister, reuniting with Connor Paolo as Martin. The vampire slaying duo embark on a journey across a Mad Max 2-style post-apocalyptic wasteland infested with ferocious vampires, which resemble zombies more than your traditional bloodsuckers. As is often the case, it's the other humans that prove to be the real threat. Like its predecessor, the film finds a rare balance between drama and intensity. It's not as effective as the original, but fans won't be disappointed by the follow-up.

8. Tag

Tag (also known as Riaru onigokko) is not for everyone, but it's too gleefully weird not to warrant a recommendation. Written and directed by Sion Sono (Suicide Club), the Japanese film opens with a bus full of school girls getting sliced in half in one fell swoop. It only gets stranger from there as the infinite possibilities of multiple universes are explored. One girl survives each time, continually awakening in different realities after watching all her friends get killed in gory fashions - including a teacher mowing down her class with a mini-gun. I thought it might be adapted from a manga, as it has that bizarre, fantastical feel to it, but it's instead based on a novel. It's dreamlike and absurd but not without heart.

9. The Windmill

The Windmill (formerly known as The Windmill Massacre) is a slasher film from the Netherlands, although it's (mostly) in English. It follows a guided bus tour of Holland that breaks down near a mysterious windmill. One by one, the passengers are picked off by a cool-looking killer armed with a scythe. With glossy production value and a dark tone, it feels more like a throwback to late '90s slashers rather than the golden age of the '80s - but there's still some solid gore and practical effects. It doesn't reinvent the wheel, but the film offers a slightly more involved plot than the average slasher, including flawed characters and supernatural elements. It's also gleefully mean-spirited to the very end.

10. Man Vs.

As you may have guessed from the name, Man Vs. uses a survival reality show as the framing device for a creature feature. Doug (Chris Diamantopoulos, Silicon Valley) is the survival expert/host, filming himself in the Canadian wilderness - only to learn that he's not alone. It would have been cheaper to make a found footage film, but it's more effect as a traditional movie - though there are some shots from Doug's gear. The set-up is a bit slow, however you may learn some survival tips along the way. The story essentially becomes Survivorman vs. Predator in the final act. Unfortunately, the CGI creature is Syfy-level bad, preventing the big reveal from having much impact, but Diamantopoulos delivers a solid performance nonetheless.

11. Abattoir

Abattoir is directed by Darren Lynn Bousman (Saw II-IV, Repo! The Genetic Opera), based on the same named graphic novel he created. It follows a real estate journalist (Jessica Lowndes, 90210) and a detective (Joe Anderson, The Crazies) as they investigate a series of houses in which tragedies occurred having the offending rooms torn out. They end up in a Twin Peaks-esque town where a local (Lin Shaye, Insidious) tells them of Jebediah Crone (Dayton Callie, Sons of Anarchy), an enigmatic reverend attempting to build a gateway to pure evil. Although set in the present, the picture is an unabashed love letter to film noirs of the 1940s and ‘50s. While the execution of the fascinating concept is lacking, Bousman manages to create a wonderfully imaginative neo-noir universe rife with spooky atmosphere. Read my full review here.

Bonus: The Keepers

If you were among the throngs of viewers morbidly captivated by Making a Murderer, The Keepers will be your new true crime fix. The Netflix original documentary series is every bit as compelling and frustrating as Making a Murderer, but the heinous crimes are even more stomach churning. The story revolves around an unsolved murder case of 26-year-old nun in 1969 and her then-students who have teamed up decades later to try to get to the truth. There appears to be a cover up that involves sexual abuse at the hands of a priest. The show consists of seven hour-long episodes. It probably could have been shaved down to five, but it's structured in such a way that make you want to keep binge watching.

Bonus: Riverdale: Season 1

Riverdale is like Twin Peaks meets Pretty Little Liars by way of Archie Comics. It reinvents the classic Archie characters for a modern audience with an interesting murder/mystery plot. I'm admittedly beyond the key demographic for the trashy teen drama that ensues, but the first season is fun enough, albeit inconsistent, to hook me. Several of the younger actors deliver great performances, given the heavy-handed material, but it's even more fun to see the parents played by '90s stars like Luke Perry (Beverly Hills, 90210), Mädchen Amick (Twin Peaks), Robin Givens (Head of the Class), and Skeet Ulrich (Scream). If you enjoy MTV's Scream, you'll likely get a kick out of this one as well.

[there-are-wolves-in-my-head]

A bit of a long question but I really hope you will answer. Imagine we just saw the 4x12 and know nothing about the finale. If it was up to you, what ending would you have given to the characters? How would it have ended with you? How would you think the Hollow could've been taken out of Hope? I'd love to hear your pov.

Okay, so let’s see. 

I wouldn’t do any of this forced separation thing in the first place. The Mikaelsons just got together after 5 long years apart, so that separation as well as this 10 year time jump was completely our of the question. Regarding the Hollow, I kept hearing thought the season that people didn’t really understood her, or her motivations, or what she was after, and I can’t blame them. One of the main things I got from The Hollow’s backstory, and this girl Inadu, was that she was cursed with an existance she didn’t asked for. They wanted to create this poweful being that would be a symbol of prosperity, but then something went wrong (because it always does lol) and they ended up creating this very powerlful creature who only craved more power still. After realizing what they did, the saw her as an abomination and singled her out her, which I believe only made her angrier and what letthem to have her being killed by her own mother. Her story is not much different from the Mikaelsons story, more so Klaus. They were also cursed with a existence they didn’t asked for and Klaus being the one and first person to become something so different was also seen as an abomination and grew up to be a very powerful and cruel being. I think it would’ve been nice if they had adress this into the narrative, but they didn’t. Now… they could’ve done much more with Hayley as well when it comes to The Hollow. They explained why The Hollow wanted her dead, and the connection between them, but they could’ve gone much deeper into it. Regarding Hope, well, it was said that Hope could sense Inadu and there’s also a cool conection between these two, because they’re both very powerful witches, maybe the most powerful two we’ve seen (even tho I think Hope is stronger).

After The Hollow took control over Hope’s body and she ran way, I would’ve made Klaus and Hayley go after their daughter, rather than just Hayley. I would’ve made The Hollow go to a different location (like they did with Dahlia in their final confrontation) and there Klaus and Hayley would finally come face-to-face with her. They could’ve sensed Hope/The Hollow through their werewolf nature. Remember when Hayley after waking up in 1x22 went after Hope because she could feel her baby and knew where she was? Or when Klaus’ father told him he had been drawned to Hope and would wake up closer to her location each time he turned? I think that would’ve been nice. So, here they are, facing this vile creature that’s wearing the face of the most precious thing they have, their daughter. She would attack them first, but then they would beg her to let them talk and offer a different proposal (only to bait her or by some times, because there’s no other psoposal lol). Meanwhile at the compound Freya would’ve find out their location through a location spell and would let Vincent know and try to come ut with a plan with him to put the Hollow down for good. Going back to Klaus and Hayley, Klaus would tell Inadu that he knew what she felt and that he understood just how angry she was and why she was so much power thirsty. He would try to reach out to her rather than fight her, which is what he would obviously do since he could not fight something wearing he’s daughter’s face and risking hurting her. Klaus is a father of a seven year old now, and one day he’ll be a father to a girl of Inadu’s age, and it would’ve been interesting to adress this more paternal side of him towards this girl. After feeling a bit for what Klaus said, she would retaliate and then Hayley would intervain. Here we could see Hayley’s perspective as a mom coming to play. Hayley said plenty of times that she never had a good mother, and so she understands just how much that can leave a deep scar in someone who experienced it. But she would tell Inadu, that Hope now would have what she never had, a mom fighting for her and willing to do anything to save her other than kill her. While this was happening Vincent and Freya were already there, and were casting a spell to trap Inadu in a circle, just like in 4x12, but now they would make it stronger with the help of the magic objects Marcel provided them, and when Inadu was prepared to attack them again she realized she was trapped and couldn’t affect them with her magic. After that Vincent and Freya would do what they did, when they took The Hollow from Hope’s body and then would distribute her spirit into the four bones that would’ve been brought … well, here you can insert any character you’d like to see there. Being it Rebekah, Kol, Marcel, Elijah, or Davina, they would hold the bones to while vincent performed the spell.  While this was happening Hope would wake up and Klaus and Hayley would rush to hug her, of course. But, because the bones were so close, Inadu managed to fight Vincent and Freya and would emerge as her true self (like in 4x12 when she left Hope’s body) and when she was prepared to attack them, Hope would intervened and finished the spell herself, imprisioning her in the bones forever, and we would have this cool filled with magic and special effects scene.

After Inadu’s imprisonment into the bones, they would have to be kept them apart, and so one of them would go with Kol and Davina, another one would go with Rebekah and Marcel, the other would to with Elijah, and the other would go with Freya and Keelin. Keep in mind that they would all place the bones in different places and won’t be tied to them or anything like that. Now the tricky thing here, is the bones. She needed them to be reborn, and she used them, so it was the last we’ve seen of them, but when Hayley killed her in 4x11, they could’ve made her go immediately to her skeleton form since, that’s how she truly was for more than a thousand years, and they would’ve kept the bones. In 4x12 Klaus even said that he saw her body with his own eyes, and it’s unknow what they’ve done to it, so… it could’ve been arranged somehow I’m sure. It wouldn’t be worse than Originals being compelled and so may other things they’ve come up with. I’ve literally just put this together right now, so I’m sorry if there are some plotholes, because I would need  more time to make it even more logic and fitting. You know… time like the writers had lol

Now lets go the the ending I would give to each character.

Let’s start with the easiest. Kol and Davina would take off somewhere to resume their lives and be happy, without any hit watsoever of marriage because Davina is way too young unprapared for that. Freya and Keelin would also go somewhere else, and I woul’ve like to see some of Freya’s future plans. I would love if Freya would want to study and obtain a degree of something. She talked about it with Keelin in 4x06, when Keelin told her that she made her own life and pursued a career she liked and all of that. Freya never had a normal life, she neved did such things as going to shcool or something like that. Even Rebekah went to high shcool lol and there’s much more in the world to leanr than locator spells and an magical stuff. Elijah and Hayley would have a very honest conversation where he would tell her that he can never manage to change and the the person she needs him to be, and she would thank him for everything he did for her, but she would tell him that she changed, and that she’s a different person now, and wants different things, and can’t just ignore the things she saw in him. He would thank her for bringing Hope into their family and would give her a forehead kiss and it would be it. Elijah would go on his way also, and place the bone somewhere. Keep in mind that this isn’t anything like a definite separation. It’s just them giving a new course to their lives. When they thought they defeated The Hollow, they said they would leave NOLA, so it seems fitting that they would go on living their lives in a different place for a few months or say, a year. I could see Rebekah still going with Marcel for NYC, but they would make that decision together in NOLA. Marcel would go to her after the conversation he had with Klaus (yes, I would keep that with just a few changes) and would tell her that when sofya asked him to leave with her he said no, and Rebekha would say something like “of course” and Marcel would tell her that he woudn’t leave but not because of the city, but because he had to leave with someone else. Also, Marcel reunited with Davina while they were facing the Hollow, and when she was put down for good they ran into each other’s arms and shared a very tight hug. Vincent would remain in Nola, and would’ve go out with that sweet lady he met in the beginning of the season (adam’s mom) and Josh would also remain in Nola and would be in his loft chilling with his new boyfriend, which is nowhere to be found since 4x2 lol. Last but not least Klaus, Hayley and Hope would go to Mystic falls. Now I’ve said that this shcool idea isn’t the best, but I feel like they would’ve done it no matter what, so…. Klaus and Hope would share this beautiful scene in the compound where Hope would go to him while he was looking at these walls that were so important for him once and she would ask him if he was sad to leave, and he would say he wasn’t because his heart doesn’t belong to the city, but only to her. Klaus would also tell her that while Nola was her kingdom as a child and a princess, there was much more out there, and one day she would have the world at her feet as a grown woman and a queen. After this Hayley would appear and worrie about something, and Klaus would tell that he had already taken care of it, and that despite being alone for so long, now she had him and she would never have to do anything alone ever again. And Klaus would leave, happy this his little and littlest wolf by his side. The end.

[tinamorwani]

Do you owe your abusive parents anything?

What do we owe our tormentors? It’s a question that haunts those who had childhoods marked by years of neglect and deprivation, or of psychological, physical, and sexual abuse at the hands of one or both parents. Despite this terrible beginning, many people make it out successfully and go on to build satisfying lives. With a sense of guilt and dread, these adults are grappling with whether and how to care of those who didn’t care for them.

One hallmark of growing up in a frightening home is for the children to think they are the only ones in such circumstances. Even when they reach adulthood and come to understand that many others have had dire childhoods, they might not reveal the details of their abuse to anyone. “The profound isolation that’s imposed on people is a very painful and destructive thing,” says Dr. Vincent Felitti, co-principal investigator of the Adverse Childhood Experiences Study. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, about 3.3 million cases of abuse or neglect were reported to child protective service agencies in 2010. This vastly undercounts the actual number of horrific and painful childhoods, as most never make it into any official record. The CDC notes that some studies estimate that 20 percent of children will be the victims of such maltreatment. That means a lot of people are wrestling with this legacy. Loved ones and friends—sometimes even therapists—who urge reconnecting with a parent often speak as if forgiveness will be a psychic aloe vera, a balm that will heal the wounds of the past. They warn of the guilt that will dog the victim if the perpetrator dies estranged. What these people fail to take into account is the potential psychological cost of reconnecting, of dredging up painful memories and reviving destructive patterns.

Eleanor Payson, a marital and family therapist in Michigan and the author of The Wizard of Oz and Other Narcissists, sees some clients who feel it would be immoral to abandon a now-feeble parent, no matter how destructive that person was. Payson says she advises them to find ways to be caring while protecting themselves from further abuse. “One of my missions is helping people not be tyrannized by false guilt or ignore their own pain and needs,” she says. Setting limits is crucial: “You may need to keep yourself in a shark cage with no opportunity to let that person take a bite out of you.” It’s also OK for the conversation to be anodyne. “You can say something respectful, something good-faith-oriented. ‘I wish you well’; ‘I continue to work on my own forgiveness.’ ”

There is no formula for defining one’s obligations to the parents who didn’t fulfill their own. We all accept that there is an enduring bond between parent and child. Yet the loyalty of children to even the worst of parents makes perfect biological sense. From an evolutionary perspective, parents, even poor ones, are a child’s best chance for food, shelter, and survival. Maybe that is the reason we still seek for their approval, even when we've reached adulthood. Maybe that is why a part of me still has hope.

Regina Sullivan is a research professor of child and adolescent psychiatry at the NYU Langone School of Medicine who studies emotional attachment in rats. In experiments with rats raised by mothers who neglect or physically hurt their pups, Sullivan has teased out that, when in the presence of the caregiver, the infant brain’s fear and avoidance circuits are suppressed. Attachment “programs the brain,” she says. “The ability of an adult who can say to you, I had a horrible childhood, I don’t like my parents, but then do things to continue to get the parents’ approval, is an example of the strength of human attachment in early life.” One doesn’t just leave such childhoods behind, like outgrowing a fear of the dark. Study after study has found that just as an emotionally warm, intellectually stimulating childhood is typically a springboard for a happy, healthy life, an abusive one can cause a litany of problems. Abuse victims are more likely to suffer from depression, substance abuse, broken relationships, and chronic diseases.

In his New York Times essay, Richard Friedman acknowledges that some parent-child relationships are so toxic that they must be severed. But he adds, “Of course, relationships are rarely all good or bad; even the most abusive parents can sometimes be loving, which is why severing a bond should be a tough, and rare decision.” But substitute “husband” for “parents,” and surely Friedman would not advise a woman in such a relationship to carry on because her battering spouse had a few redeeming qualities.

Dr. Ronald Rohner, an emeritus professor of family studies and anthropology at the University of Connecticut, has devoted much of his career to studying parental rejection and its effects. He says there’s little research on adult role reversal—that is, what happens when the parent is vulnerable and wants support from the child. But he says the studies that do exist demonstrate that “it really truly is as you sow, so shall you reap. Those parents who raised children less than lovingly are putting their own dependent old age at risk for being well and lovingly cared for themselves.”

In a 2008 essay in the journal In Character, history professor Wilfred McClay writes that as a society we have twisted the meaning of forgiveness into a therapeutic act for the victim: “[F]orgiveness is in danger of being debased into a kind of cheap grace, a waiving of standards of justice without which such transactions have no meaning.” Jean Bethke Elshtain, a professor at the University of Chicago Divinity School writes that, “There is a watered-down but widespread form of ‘forgiveness’ best tagged preemptory or exculpatory forgiveness. That is, without any indication of regret or remorse from perpetrators of even the most heinous crimes, we are enjoined by many not to harden our hearts but rather to ‘forgive.’ ”

I agree with these more bracing views about what forgiveness should entail. Choosing not to forgive does not doom someone to being mired in the past forever. Accepting what happened and moving on is a good general principle. But it can be comforting for those being browbeaten to absolve their parents to recognize that forgiveness works best as a mutual endeavor. After all, many adult children of abusers have never heard a word of regret from their parent or parents. People who have the capacity to ruthlessly maltreat their children tend toward self-justification, not shame.

Even apologies can have their limits, as illustrated by a Dear Prudence letter from a mother who called herself “Sadder but Wiser.” She verbally humiliated her son when he was a boy, realized the damage she had done, changed her ways, and apologized. But her son, who recently became a father, has only a coolly cordial relationship with her, and she complained that she wanted more warmth and caring. I suggested that she should be glad that he did see her, stop whining for more, and tell her son she admires that he is giving his little boy the childhood he deserves and that he didn’t get.

It’s wonderful when there can be true reconciliation and healing, when all parties can feel the past has been somehow redeemed. But I don’t think we should be hammered with lectures about the benefits of—here comes that dread word—closure. Sometimes the best thing to do is just close the door.

[literarygoon]

“The misery and the hope we shared”

A review of The Plague by Kevin Chong, Arsenal Pulp Press

By Will Johnson

When Kevin Chong first sat down to write The Plague, it was absolutely unnecessary for him to invent a new epidemic for Vancouver, as the opioid crisis currently ravaging the west coast is already sending a staggering number of residents hurtling to an early grave. By the end of 2017 the city had brought the average death rate down from around 150 per month to under 100, but the epidemic has soldiered on despite aggressive interventions by the B.C. government.

And while the average headline-reader still associates these deaths with the hardcore drug addicts of the Downtown Eastside, picturing homeless derelicts slipping from this mortal coil in shadowy alleys, a closer look reveals that those passing away include teenage athletes who have been prescribed painkillers, upper middle class couples with young children and a disproportionate number of people living in First Nations communities.

In other words: this is hitting just about everyone, from all walks of life — leaving us with even less of an excuse to look the other way.

*

Chong may or may not have had the opioid crisis on his mind while penning his latest novel, but his depiction of our society’s inability to grapple with the threat of imminent death feels both prescient and immediate, a clarion call for those who have become too accustomed to other people’s suffering. Lost in narcissism and materialism, Chong’s average Vancouverite has allowed their selective empathy to negate their ability to engage with others’ personal emergencies. Their solipsism has rendered them incapable of creating the sense of common purpose required to tackle a large-scale catastrophe.

“The city was made up, as it had always been, of people who worked too much for too little … this bustle precluded self-examination,” Chong writes in the introduction. “Yes, there were activists in the city, but those people seemed unhappy and disagreeable.”

The Vancouver he conjures has never seen a war, has yet to experience the great earthquake looming in our future, and contains citizens that “came together to for summer fireworks that celebrated … fireworks”. Because of this, “it was an anatomized city, a place in which the joys and fears were contained within the spheres of self and family” and “collective traumas were experienced but barely heard by the rest of the city.”

These days Vancouverites are being bombarded with social media campaigns that not only plead with your average person to care about the drug users dying all around them, but also to consider the humanity of those being taken from us prematurely. “People who use drugs are real people” is the repeated tagline, juxtaposed beside faces identified thusly: “Cousin, Student, Drug User, Friend”.

Not addressed is why we typically fail to see this truth, why we’ve become so skilled at ignoring the marginalized in the first place.

In The Plague, the city’s residents initially greet the health emergency with faux concern, failing to understand the gravity of their situation. “On their profile photos they posted pictures of themselves wearing surgical masks. Others, hoping to look medieval, wore black cowls, but resembled nerdy sorcerers.” They flee reality by taking in apocalyptic films, “which ranged from Vincent Price’s Last Man on Earth to Edgar Wright’s Shaun of the Dead, from camp to comedy.”

It isn’t until a full-out quarantine is called that people begin to take things seriously. “Our devotion to routine was how we sought comfort in the moments after the hot flare of annoyance tapered into disquiet — when we noticed, say, a co-worker absent from a meeting. Or when we saw entire aisles in markets picked clean.”

*

Chong’s sixth book could easily be placed within the genre of disaster fiction, which makes it perfectly suited for exploring the nuances and political realities of the opioid crisis.  

While his earlier novels include a coming-of-age story and an immigrant narrative, this is his first attempt at a larger scale epic. It has parallels with Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, which plays coy about the apocalyptic destruction that occurred before the opening, instead dwelling on the existential questions raised as his characters struggle for survival in its wake.

In much the same way, readers of The Plague finish the book with very little information about the disease that drives the action, the way it’s contracted or how it’s ultimately cured — meanwhile they know all about the characters’ interior lives. Both of these books have a parabolic, vaguely Christian texture, like you’re reading a carefully crafted sermon by someone who doesn’t believe in God.

And if you’re expecting something akin to a Stephen King door-stopper, you’re going to be mightily disappointed by The Plague. In Chong’s still-operating city we don’t have Walking Dead-style system breakdown, the characters brood and chat more than they do anything else, and there’s no Dustin Hoffman telling his superior “With all due respect, fuck you, sir” like in Outbreak. There are scenes that are funny, but more in the way that makes you cringe afterwards.

Chong’s book is inspired by the work of none other than Albert Camus, whose 1947 novel La Peste documented an outbreak in Oran, Algeria decades earlier. Ten years after its publication, during his speech accepting the Nobel Prize, Camus said of his writing “it was a commitment to bear, together with all those who were living through the same history, the misery and the hope we shared”.

Put another way, by critic John Cruikshank, he was depicting “man’s metaphysical dereliction in the world.”

For Camus, writing about a killer disease was his opportunity to tackle the Third Reich. For Chong, it gives him an opportunity to explore topics wholly unrelated to the action, everything from riots and sex scandals to gentrification and the changing role of contemporary journalism. And anyone who has spent any time in the Rainy City will find plenty that’s familiar, including the nihilistic materialism of its residents — though he doesn’t mention yoga pants even once.

And in both books there’s no Higher Power coming to save us. As McCarthy says, “There is no God, and we are his prophets.”

*

Into this setting Chong plunks three main characters: Dr. Bernard Rieux (who shares a name with Camus’ protagonist), an American writer named Megan Tso, and a city hall reporter named Raymond Siddhu. These three each engage with the health crisis in different ways, illustrating both how futile and how meaningful their actions are, at first ignoring all the dead rats with blood coming out their eyes until they’re forced to watch people they love suffer slow, hideous deaths.

When all is said and done, the crisis will last four months and cost 1400 lives, but somehow this feels beside the point.

“Everyone wants to make this health issue political,” Siddhu complains to Rieux, shortly after the first cases are reported. “Infectious disease doesn’t check your party affiliation. Suffering is universal.”

Though it may be new to them, the threat of disease existed long before these characters ever stepped foot on the page. In a televised speech, Mayor Romeo Parsons calls the epidemic “our founding condition” — reminding them that the city is named after an English officer of the Royal Navy who was faced with disease upon arrival. He describes the scene of first contact in the 1890s, noting that the First Nations populace had been decimated by smallpox before the settlers even landed.

“Captain George Vancouver did not see wealth and abundance but devastation. He found abandoned villages and beaches lined with decaying bodies. He saw canoes placed in trees, which upon closer inspection, held skeletons inside them.”

And just like any catastrophe, its the weak who end up suffering most.  “You don’t need to wear a tinfoil hat to see how disease disproportionately affects our most marginalized people, the poorest, the least privileged,” he says.

Chong has put a post-modern spin on the old Stalin quote “One death is a tragedy, a million is a statistic” by showing the meaningless ways public opinion can be manipulated when it comes to matters of life and death. For instance, the mayor’s rise to popularity is triggered by a YouTube video of him making a jump shot that was “widely shared and re-posted”, making people feel “pre-acquainted with him”.  

Meanwhile Tso is the author of a book called The Meaning of Death. She reflects there was “a look that people who organized death-related events cultivated. It wasn’t so plainly ‘alt’ as a high-school goth aesthetic.” She later notes that her marketing manager told her “to tell funny stories about the mummies of the Atacama Desert to make you feel comfortable about turning cemeteries into picnic spaces and taxidermying your pets.”

People will try anything to convince themselves they don’t have to feel other people’s pain.

*

Parsons is easily Chong’s most compelling character, but it isn’t long before he’s dragged off his high horse. Siddhu ends up breaking news of a sex scandal — the mayor mistakenly fucked his own long-lost daughter — and the beleaguered politician goes into hiding.

It’s hard not to see the parallels here with Chong’s former colleague Steven Galloway, whose own scandal has become a multi-year fiasco pitting different factions of the literary community against each other. However, it’s from this unlikely avenue that he comes up with the narrative’s most hopeful storyline, as Parsons discovers a new humility and joins forces with the front-line workers.

“This infection exposed everything that we had wanted to sweep aside. It’s allowed us to see others — not just the ones who looked like us — it allowed us to see them as equals. The disease levelled us,” he says.

Putting aside his political pomposity, Parsons ends up volunteering for The Sanitation League — a service started by Rieux that helps afflicted people outside the hospital system. In the most moving scene of the novel he sits by the bedside of a young girl about to die, witnessing her final moments alongside her parents. It’s cathartic for him, as well as the reader, because it puts a human face on what is primarily an abstract menace.

“Rieux did not need to tell him that this child was not responsible for her own death,” Chong writes.

Here’s where some would draw a distinction between those suffering from Chong’s plague and the people overdosing on fentanyl — they feel one is responsible for their fate, while the other isn’t. But this moralistic worldview allows onlookers to dodge feelings of complicity while ignoring a simple fact: it’s the world itself, and the treatment people receive from their societies, that maneuver them into places of vulnerability. This idea is explored in the book Chasing the Scream: The First and Last Days of the War on Drugs by journalist Johann Hari, who has worked to humanize drug addicts and call for the legalization of all drugs.

“Our laws are built around the belief that drug addicts need to be punished to stop them. But if pain and trauma and isolation cause addiction, then inflicting more pain and trauma and isolation is not going to solve that addiction. It’s actually going to deepen it,” he writes.

“So the opposite of addiction is not sobriety. It is human connection.”

*

The most promising solution to the opioid crisis was pioneered in the Downtown Eastside of Vancouver with the creation of the country’s first safe injection site — a move vehemently opposed by Stephen Harper at the time. Recently, Ontario premier Doug Ford made headlines for saying he was “dead against” them, despite the fact that they’ve been proven to be enormously effective at saving lives and helping addicts into treatment.

“Public opinion has slowly begun to turn against prohibition, and policy-makers are finally beginning to look at addiction as a health issue as opposed to one for the criminal justice system,” journalist Travis Lupick writes in his new book Fighting for Space: How a Group of Drug Users Transformed One City's Struggle with Addiction.

For anyone who has loved someone with an addiction — as I have — safe injection sites provide an opportunity for caregivers to demonstrate to the vulnerable that they’re loved, that there are people out there willing to help. Out of crisis comes compassion. And as with The Plague’s Sanitation League, it takes people putting aside their personal comfort (and sometimes safety) to reach out to those on the brink. It’s Mayor Parsons’ willingness to personally participate that wins him Rieux’s approval.

“This is not about your personal business,” he says, shaking his hand. “It’s because I think your idea of suffering is grounded in reality.”

As the book draws to a close, Siddhu is amazed by how the Vancouver community has pulled together, telling Tso “I felt like I was in a community for the first time.”

She agrees.

“I’ve seen people risk their lives for strangers, people who would otherwise be unheroic."

*

Despite everything, inequality and injustice persist right to the end of Chong’s novel — just like in the real world. As the death toll rises, some residents barricade themselves in their homes to focus on renovations while others start new professions: “People were working as amateur massage therapists and running restaurants from their dining rooms.” Others come up with radically immoral ways of coping: “They raised online donation campaigns for friends immobilized by grief and then pocketed the proceeds.”

“I go out in the evenings more than I have in the past ten years,” Siddhu’s colleague tells him. “The city has never been livelier since the funerals started.”

Chong’s novel is bleak, it’s true, and the language purposefully keeps readers at arms’ length — at one point, there’s even a trigger warning. (“We are aware that the suffering of children can be acutely difficult and may prompt, among readers of this history, their own troubling memories.”) But in each of his main characters he’s found something of the human spirit to celebrate. At one point Siddhu is faced with his own powerlessness when a former journalism subject confronts him about how little has changed since he reported on the conditions she’s living in.

“You told me my words would make a difference, and I said you were full of shit,” she says. “It doesn’t matter anymore, I guess.”

The narrative isn’t without hope, though, and Rieux in particular stands out as an example of selfless giving. While speaking with Tso about his views on medicine, he gives a short speech on how he keeps going.

It’s the sort of thing that would work well as a personal mantra.

“I don’t have a view of life in an abstract sense,” he says. “I don’t care when it begins or how precious it is compared to a gorilla’s. I just want to help people.”

[flickdirect]

There are many people who believe there are aliens out there in the universe and some who think they live amongst us. There are also people who believe there is a secret government agency covering up the existence of aliens. Nineteen ninety-seven's comedy and subsequent sequels take a humorous look at the idea that both aliens and a government secret agency do exist. Men In Black introduced us to a group of men who silently move through our society keeping all of us blissfully ignorant that creatures from other worlds live on Earth. Sony, in their infinite wisdom, has now released all three films on 4K Blu-ray and this box set offers hours of entertainment for fans of the trilogy.

In Men in Black Jay (Will Smith; Ali), a New York City Police Officer discovers and becomes recruited by the above-mentioned agency who monitor alien life on Earth. He is partnered with veteran agent Kay (Tommy Lee Jones; The Fugitive) who shows Jay the ropes while dealing with a "Bug" (Vincent D'Onofrio; Full Metal Jacket) who has entered Earth illegally. Through the process Jay has his eyes opened to what is really "out there". In the end, they end up saving the Earth luckily.

Men in Black II has Jay and Kay's replacement once again saving the World. As they investigate the murder of a pizzeria owner, they find out Serleena (Lara Flynn Boyle; The Practice) is searching for something called the light of Zartha. As Jay investigates he realizes everything about the light of Zartha points back to his old partner Kay who was neutralized and doesn't remember anything about aliens or MiB. As they begin to unravel the mystery, they realize the light isn't a what but a who and convince her to return to her planet to save both her world and theirs.

As the Trilogy comes to a close, Men in Black 3 gets Jay to travel back in time where he meets a young Kay played by Josh Brolin (No Country for Old Men). This time an alien named Boris (Jemaine Clement; What we do in the shadows) escapes from prison on the moon to find K who captured him in the first place. Jay also discovers that back in 1969 Kay deployed "ArcNet" that is a shield protecting Earth. Boris goes back in time to kill Kay and prevent not only his imprisonment but ArcNet as well which would alter the course of history.

Of the three films, I think the best is the original with a close second being the third installment in the trilogy. Adding Brolin to the mix gave the latter an interesting feel and Brolin does a great job in Men in Black 3. Smith and Jones have an easy and chemistry which makes the whole series work in general. Supporting characters add another dimension to the movies with D'Onofrio being the best of the bunch as "the bug in an Edgar Suit".

Sony has produced an amazing transfer for this 4K UHD version of the Men in Black series. The picture is sharp but still has a little bit of a grainy quality (some was kept since it was shot on film) All of this terrific work completely maintains the look that director Barry Sonnenfeld (Get Shorty) had envisioned for the series. Colors are spot on and vibrant. Blacks are true and dark, and there is zero sign of artifacting. The Dobly Atoms soundtrack only further enhances the quality of this release. Dialogue is crisp and clear, while the special effects truly envelop the viewer. This is truly a demo quality release.

Aside from the digital code that will play on most services using Movies Anywhere, there are a plethora of special features however that are recycled from previous releases that can be found on the standard 1080p Blu-ray including in the release. Special features include deleted scenes, alternate endings, audio commentary, various featurettes, and music videos.

Besides a great cast and some good plots ( for the most part), the Men in Black Series offers an eclectic soundtrack and an easily recognizable theme song. Smith is in his wheelhouse with this series and the juxtaposition between him and the two more serious Jones and Brolin make for a terrific and fun mix. This 4K UHD release is the best possible versions of these films and for any fan of the series, this is one set you don't want to miss out on! Grade: A-

About Allison Hazlett-Rose Allison Hazlett-Rose has always had a passion for the arts and uses her organization skills to help keep FlickDirect prosperous. Mrs. Hazlett-Rose oversees and supervises the correspondents and critics that are part of the FlickDirect team. Mrs. Hazlett-Rose attended Hofstra University where she earned her bachelors degree in communications and is a member of the Florida Film Critics Circle.

Read more reviews and content by Allison Hazlett-Rose.

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[beyondforks]

Book Review! After the Game by Abbi Glines

After the Game (The Field Party #3) by Abbi Glines  Genre: Young/New Adult (Contemporary Romance) Date Published: August 23, 2016 Publisher: Simon Pulse

Two years ago, Riley Young fled from Lawton, Alabama. After accusing the oldest Lawton son, Rhett, of rape, everyone called her a liar and she had no option but to leave. Now she’s back, but she’s not at Lawton High finishing up her senior year. She’s at home raising the little girl that no one believed was Rhett’s.

Rhett is off at college living the life he was afraid he’d lose with Riley’s accusation, so Riley agrees to move back to Lawton so she and her parents could take care of her grandmother, who is suffering from Alzheimer’s. But the town still hasn’t forgotten their hate for her, and she hasn’t forgotten the way they turned on her when she needed them most.

When town golden boy Brady Higgens finds Riley and her daughter, Bryony, stranded on the side of the road in a storm, he pulls over and gives them a ride. Not because he cares about Riley, of course, but because of the kid.

But after the simple car ride, he begins to question everything he thought he knew. Could Brady believe Riley and risk losing everything?

After the Game is the Third book in the Field Party series by Abbi Glines. We know the rumors about Riley, now we get her real story. She's one strong woman. Not many would come back stronger like she did. Her character offers hope to readers who have survived her situation. She's amazing. Brady's not so bad either. These characters need each other. I was so drawn into their world, the drama, and the town. The writing flows so well that it seems like your actually watching it all unfold in your mind. And in true Abbi Glines fashion, the romance isn't as simple as we'd all hope for these guys. Well... it is in some ways, but it isn't. Does that make sense? No? Well, too bad you'll have to read the book to find out more.

After the Game I’m Some Hungwy CHAPTER 1  RILEY The crash from the kitchen jerked me out of my dreams and into reality. Something was burning and Bryony wasn’t in bed beside me. Her sweet blond curls and big blue eyes were what normally met me when I opened my eyes. Jumping up, I ran through the already open door of my bedroom and sprinted toward the kitchen. A million things ran through my mind as I went the short distance. Bryony never got out of bed without me. Another crash happened just as I turned the corner into the kitchen. My grandmamma was standing at the sink with a frantic look on her face. The pot on the floor had been full of uncooked oats and milk, which were now splattered on the tile floor. Smoke was coming from the toaster behind her, and I moved quickly to jerk the plug out of the wall before things got worse. “Momma,” Bryony’s sweet voice called out from behind me. Spinning around, needing to see her face and know she was okay, I almost slipped on the milk under my feet. The wild curls of her hair were sticking up everywhere as she stared up at me with wide eyes and a frown. “I’m some hungwy,” she said. I reached down to pick her up before she stepped into the mess on the floor and cradled her against me. Holding her was enough reassurance to calm me down. “Grandmamma was trying to fix you something, I see,” I said, looking toward my grandmother, who was now looking down at the spilled breakfast at her feet. “I don’t know,” Grandmamma said. Her voice sounded lost, like she wasn’t sure what she was saying or why she was standing there. This was normal for her. Some days were better. Others were not. Today was not going to be a good day. “I’ll put Bryony in her high chair and get her some cereal, and then I’ll clean this up. What do you want me to fix you, Grandmamma?” I asked her. She turned her gaze to mine, and the confusion there always made me sad. The woman who had taught me to make biscuits and sang me songs while playing the pots and pans like drums was no longer there. She was lost inside her head. “I don’t know,” she said, which were words I heard often. I moved over to put Bryony in her high chair before going to take my grandmamma’s arm and move her away from the slippery mess. Most mornings I woke up earlier than my grandmother. Today I had overslept. My mom normally woke me up before she left for work, but today she either had tried and failed or had forgotten. “I’m some hungwy,” Bryony said again. That was her way of telling me she wanted food, and now. If she’d woken up and found Grandmamma in the kitchen, she would have told her the same thing. For a moment, Grandmamma had known that meant she needed to feed her. But that brief memory left and she had dropped a pot. A dish was also broken on the floor with what looked like applesauce on it. Then, of course, the burned toast. “Okay,” I told her and reached for a box of cereal to place some on her tray. “Eat this and let Mommy clean up the mess.” Bryony picked up a piece of the round oat cereal and put it in her mouth. “I broke a plate.” Grandmamma’s voice was full of concern. “It’s okay. Accidents happen. I’m going to clean this up, then I’ll make you some of your favorite steel-cut oats with brown sugar and apple slices. Okay?” I assured her with a smile. She frowned. “That’s my favorite?” It was like dealing with another child. We hadn’t been back in Lawton, Alabama, long, but the time we had been back hadn’t been easy. Watching someone you love so much live lost in their own head was heartbreaking. Alzheimer’s was a terrible disease. “Gandma hungwry,” Bryony told me. I turned my attention to my daughter and smiled. “Yes, she is. It’s breakfast time.” “Sandra will be upset about her plate. She loved those plates. I’ll need to go into town and buy her a new one at Miller’s. Least I can do.” To anyone else, those words might have sounded sane. Logical. But they were anything but. For starters, Sandra was my grandmamma’s sister who had passed away from cancer when I was three years old. And Miller’s hadn’t been open for business since 1985. The only reason I knew this was because Grandmamma had sent me to fetch something at Miller’s when we first moved back and I’d started out the door when Momma stopped me and explained. Grandmamma was living in the past. Roy Miller had passed away of a heart attack in ’85, and his family had closed the store and moved out of Lawton. Instead of reminding her of all this, though, I had found just going along with it was easier. If I told her Sandra was dead or that Miller’s was closed, she’d go into a fit of hysteria. That was what she knew and remembered today. So I ignored her comment and cleaned up the floor before getting a pot of oats on the stove cooking properly, then disposed of the burned toast out the back door. “Do you know where I put Lyla’s applesauce? She needs to eat some this morning. I made it fresh yesterday from the apples I got at Miller’s.” Lyla was my mother. That was another thing that Grandmamma confused. She often thought Bryony was my mother when she was a baby. Again lost in the past. “I’ll get her some applesauce. You just sit there and relax. I’ll get you some juice. Watch the pretty birds outside. They’re eating the birdseed we put out yesterday.” That got her attention, and she began watching out the large bay window for the birds. Mom only worked until noon today at the hospital. I would be able to take Bryony out for a walk and to the park after lunch. I needed to get them fed and start the morning chores so we would have plenty of time later to go play. The sun was shining and the warm days were behind us. The cool autumn air was perfect for being outside. And Bryony loved to pick up the different-colored leaves on the ground. She called them her “cowection.”

Here's my review of the previous books in this series! Check out  more of my reviews of other books by Abbi Glines!

Abbi Glines is a #1 New York Times, USA Today, and Wall Street Journal bestselling author of the Rosemary Beach, Sea Breeze, Vincent Boys, and Existence series. She has a new YA series coming out in the fall of 2015 titled The Field Party Series . She never cooks unless baking during the Christmas holiday counts. She believes in ghosts and has a habit of asking people if their house is haunted before she goes in it. She drinks afternoon tea because she wants to be British but alas she was born in Alabama. When asked how many books she has written she has to stop and count on her fingers. When she’s not locked away writing, she is reading, shopping (major shoe and purse addiction), sneaking off to the movies alone, and listening to the drama in her teenagers lives while making mental notes on the good stuff to use later. Don’t judge. You can connect with Abbi online in several different ways. She uses social media to procrastinate. To learn more about Abbi Glines and her books, visit her website.You can also find her on Goodreads, Facebook, and Twitter.