#but plot twist! the husband is actually alive and now evil

[tokyo-daaaamn-ji-gang]

that scene is from jjk (jujutsu kaisen) the panda is panda he's a cursed corpse and the girl is maki who's a cursed item user

Oh that was jjk???? I do remember something about a panda being involved! It was like a guy can't speak cause if he does he turns into it. The guys a corpse too???? Sucks to be him.

[musicfeedsmysoul12]

Okay so Dragon Age/MHA crossover 1.

Izuku is the son of Solas and Mythal who was kidnapped by the other evil mages pretending to be gods (by stealing the names of their actual gods because I fucking HATE that plot twist in canon) and sent to the MHA world because Solas was leading a rebellion and Mythal was dead and they wanted to hurt Solas. So Izuku is raised in Japan by his adopted parents who sadly never tell Izuku he’s adopted and would aggressively pretend he isn't.

Izuku though begins developing magic in his teen years much like how in Thedas they develop them as teens. Izuku is convinced he's just a late bloomer. At least until then dreams start and he begins to see things. He is kind and curious, looking up what he sees and deciding it's like the Fae. He promises nothing and gives nothing. No deals either.

Then one day he stumbles upon what's left of Mythal (actual Mythal and not the fake who played with Solas like an instrument) and learns the truth. Solas is actually a God, the belief in him ascending him. Meanwhile the actual Gods got all the power while the fakes didn't get anything. This Mythal tells Izuku everything. She begs him to find his father to speak with him. She knows if he ever awakens he may see Thedas as nothing but a world of fakes.

Izuku travels in his dreams, hunting for his father. He goes to UA and still tries to find his father. He hunts and hunts for him. Eventually he does find Solas- who woke up a year before and is actively working to take down the Veil.

It takes a while for Solas to believe Izuku, until everyone is agreeing and pointing out the truth. But he refuses to listen to Izuku talk about how his plan is stupid.

Izuku by this time is twenty having lived through a war. He's lost friends, his adoptive parents are dead and he looks around at a world that hasn't changed. Despite everything they still have the same systems in place. They still are on the same damn wheel. Bakugou (who never changed. Izuku doesn't have OFA, no he has a Quirk that lets him do so much more and Bakugou can't stop seeing it as looking down. Can't be given trust that makes him look back on his life) is rising the ranks fast and his actions are pushed aside.

Izuku, age twenty, turns to his surviving friends and their teachers. Uraraka (down an arm but still fighting), Iida (still strong even after everything), Todoroki (alive and just as furious), Yaoyorozu (Burned and broken but standing) and Shinsou (mute now but applying the parkour he was given years ago to heroics) are all he has left as friends. Aizawa (lost a leg and an eye, lost his best friend, learned another was a puppet and lost his husband), Nezu (who tried his hardest to change society after what he went through but nothing has changed even now) and Midnight (who clawed her way back after being injured. Who has scars and stopped being ‘useful’ as a hero without being sexy) are the teachers left with Eri (shaking and scared as the hero commission pushes for training for her).

He asks if they would leave with him. They say they will.

So, a week after the Chantry explosion, a group of strange people show up in Haven. Two women, a child, and five men, along with a small person who is covered in a coat. One of them calls out for his father, Solas, who is shocked but delighted.

“I will not change my mind,” the elf warns his son. “You do not know how it was once.”

“I’ll keep trying,” is what Izuku replies with.

(he doesn't tell his father the one to strike down All for One after Mirio died, taking One for All with him, was Izuku. Doesn't talk about how he’d sobbed learning who the man was.

Doesn’t talk about how Midoriya Hizashi was a facade and that Izuku had loved him still.

He's killed one father for the world. He can do it a second time if needed.)

[professor-doctor-doctor]

Smee my beloved

I want to talk about perhaps the most under appreciated character of the Peter Pan franchise—Mr. Smee. Other than Captain Hook, he is the most fleshed out pirate, and honestly does not get enough love for the brilliance of his character because he’s often dulled down to a bumbling sidekick, when he is truly much more.

In the original Peter Pan 1904 play (and 1911 novel) :

Smee is described as the only non-conformist and Irishman aboard the Jolly Roger.

Though in most adaptations he takes the role of the first mate, originally he was the boatswain, but his relationship to Hook nonetheless remained quite strong, implying that it was each other they sought companionship in rather than a relationship based purely around their stations.

Instead of wiping his sword clean of blood after a battle, he is said to clean his spectacles.

Described as oddly genial for a pirate, but make no mistake that he DOES kill people. In fact, he has a curved sword which he nicknamed ‘Johnny Corkscrew’ for the way he twists it into his enemies guts. Pretty gruesome.

Despite being described as ‘stupid’ and ‘pathetic’, he’s often the only one Hook can have intelligent conversation with. In fact, it is Smee who points out that when the clock in the crocodile runs out, Hook will no longer hear it coming and thus be at risk of death.

He sows, dances, and even sings! He also evidently collects trinkets and gives silly little names to things.

He is the only pirate other than Starkey to survive the end battle, and whereas Starkey is captured by the Natives, Smee goes on to explore the world and sell the trinkets he gathered from piracy. He even claims that he was the ‘only man Hook ever feared.’

He is the only person Hook expresses admiration for, and too is one of the few pirates who is not berated or harmed by him.

Hook sees him as the only man with legitimately good form, which is peak levels of respect from Hook.

In Hook 1991

Smee takes on a more domestic role in caring for his Captain, and evidently Dustin Hoffman and Bob Hoskins both agreed to play Hook and Smee as a married couple!

Shown to be the only pirate other than Hook capable of reading, writing, and understanding more complex language (he makes a joke to the pirates in the first scene he’s in, in which he refers to Hook as ‘unfathomable’, and when the pirates don’t react, he realizes he has to dumb down his vocabulary for them.)

Jovial and quite silly, always knows what is best for Hook, and it is evident they’ve been with each other so long that they know each ones quirks.

Reminder that SMEE is the person to suggest the plan of turning Peter’s kids against Pan by making them like Hook, meaning he is the one who came up with the evil plot, once again proving that he’s not some bumbling idiot.

Actually so sweet I love him I heart him did you see the scene where he plays baseball? Husband.

In Peter and the Starcatcher (the play by Rick Elice)

Shown to be a really good actor, good enough to fool Aster into believing he’s a legitimate navy Lieutenant.

Once again surprisingly literate, having quite a few boasting lines for Stache before the Captain comes on board. He even is shown to correct Stache every now and again when his Captain mixes up words.

Seems to speak a tiny bit of French, as he refers to Stache’s style as ‘comme il faut’, though he could also just be using the phrase itself.

Frequently comes up with the plans Stache uses in his plots, even suggests the idea that the trunks were swapped. He doubts himself on his own ideas, frequently referring to his ideas as ‘stupid’, but nonetheless Stache accepts them wholeheartedly.

Is the only character other than Stache to break the fourth wall.

Pretty much the only reason Stache is still alive.

He’s also a ukulele player and a decent singer—and apparently, like all of the pirates, a drag Queen!

I don’t have much to say on the Disney version because they really butchered his character there, but I think it’s important to note that once again, he often suggests the plots that Hook later uses for his evil schemes, such as when he mentioned the drama between Wendy and Tinkerbell. This could be just him gossiping, but it might be more interesting to imagine that he came up with the plot, but wanted to quietly suggest it to Hook in a way that would make Hook think that he himself came up with the idea, so as to save his Captain’s already tainted pride. He’s the ultimate hypeman/husband.

TLDR; Mr. Smee is awesome and I love him and media should do him better. Here’s my version of him as well. Toodle-oo!

[filmbyjy]

POSSIBLE SMAU

NOTE: the banners and synopsis may or may not change if the SMAU is confirmed. this is also just to compile possible SMAUs that I will be doing. there will also be a voting for the SMAU that may come out do look out for that! its usually like before the current SMAU is about to end.

HEESEUNG

> DARK MOON

PAIRING: heli/heeseung x selen! reader

i won’t lie sooha actually made up in the end for actually ending Dardan (spoilers)

but yeah, you are a girl boss in here so it’s going to be different here. instead of following our sooha as a high school student, you are selen!

you will be fighting off dardan and his little goons with your powers that you are still learning to use.

and yes, this means ENHYPEN in their knight suits bc i know how hot they look in it

also this doesn't exactly fully follow the actual WEBTOON. more of a modern medieval times smau + the fact that they are vampires and you have some very big powers.

medieval times do not have social media so it's modernised 👍🏼

synopsis: Back then, there were many fights involved between werewolves and vampires and even up till now. It was hard but for now, that was the least of your worries. Protecting your kingdom from the evil hands of Dardan was more important.

JAY

> MARRY MY HUSBAND

PAIRING: manager!jay x fem! reader

OML I FORGOT THIS STORY AND I READ THE WEBTOON BEFORE THIS DRAMA EVEN CAME OUT💀💀

anyways, this is a time travelling sort of kdrama so yes, you go back in time

it ain’t lovely runner but this has a cat inside. how ironic when jay is deathly allergic to cats

ehem, let’s pretend he’s not bc in this drama jihyeok really loves his dear pang (the cat)

so to give context, to make things right the way it should go and everyone being happy and stuff, the main character travels back in time to twist their story

waking up after suffering from a trauma to the head, you found yourself alive and well but what’s weird is…why were you not in a hospital gown? why weren’t you sick?

you turned to look at the clock, it’s 2013…uh oh you’ve traveled back in time without realising it

how would things plan out and how would you make a difference in your ‘new’ life

synopsis: given the chance to have a second chance, you decided to change your fate. however, it comes with a setback, you have to hand over your fate to someone else and how would you do it? you knew you couldn’t do it alone so, who to better help other than your manager(?)

JAKE

(coming soon...)

SUNGHOON

> SHOOTING STARS

PAIRING: idol! sunghoon x PR Manager! reader

everyone calm down, I can hear you guys screaming. yes, filmbyjy is back with another kdrama inspired smau! and yes, it is sunghoon again bc he just fits both kang taemoo and gong taesung

but anyways, idk if you’ve seen the plot of sh**ting stars but if you haven’t…the summary is that the main leads are enemies. so…enemies to lovers arc once again😍

so gong taesung is an idol while oh hanbyeol is a PR manager. they’ve known each other back in college and had a mutual friend.

said mutual friend in the actual story unfortunately isn’t alive anymore but in my version, he will still be alive and he will be played by…you guessed it! sim jaeyun

okay I know…secretary jake became best friend jake in this story😔 too predictable but like jake fits the mutual friend’s bubbly personality a lot. also note, nothing will happen to jake, I plan on keeping him alive tyvm🫶🏻 either ways enjoy the sypnosis

sypnosis: Sending park sunghoon to Australia along with his best friend, jake, was the biggest move you’ve made. you were thankful to not hear his annoying voice for years but it also came with a small itch at the back of your mind. you missed him and his stupid handsome face. maybe, you’d soon realise that there was a reason why you missed his stupid handsome face.

OR

> HIDDEN LOVE

MORE DRAMA INSPIRED SMAU🗣️🗣️🗣️

this is just an excuse for me to rewatch this drama (nearly was very close to rewatching it 3 times but I decided against it)

ANYWAYS

if you haven’t watched this cdrama (Chinese drama) GO WATCH IT🫵🏻

the short version and synopsis I will give you is this is a older brother’s best friend trope

you got to first know sunghoon when you were just 14, thinking your brother, jay, got plastic surgery or something

but no, it’s not your brother. it was his very good looking friend, sunghoon. Sunghoon was a sweetheart though

as years passed by, you developed feelings for him. after him coming over and celebrating things with your family. you were so in love with him to the point that you planned to get into the same university as him.

however, before you could even see him to tell him about your feelings as a 16 year old. you were heartbroken to hear that he had gotten a girlfriend. eventually, you decided to stop loving him and focused on yourself instead.

synopsis: park sunghoon was the most good looking and respectful man you’ve ever met. ignoring the fact that you had a loud and obnoxious older brother, park jongseong, as his best friend. with things going by in your life and a heartbreak, what happens when you meet up with the same man who you vowed to stop loving.

SUNOO

> LOVE LETTER

PAIRING: high school senior!sunoo x fem!reader

you had a huge crush on a boy named sunoo

however, he was a year older

how did you fall for him? simple, he was friends with your best friend, jungwon.

you just thought sunoo was adorable and really sweet so you fell for him. you wrote love letters for sunoo anonymously but never got the guts to place it in his locker.

however, one day…one of your latest letter disappeared and guess what? sunoo found it. now he wants to know who wrote him the letter.

will you be able to tell him?

synopsis: Sunoo was apple of your eye. you admired him. he was perfect, totally your type. however, you could never confess. instead, you wrote love letters to him everyday without writing your real name. only thing…you never gave the letters. what happens if the boy finds a letter randomly on the ground?

JUNGWON

> MR.BABYSITTER

PAIRING: babysitter/classmate! jungwon x fem reader

you had a little sister and well your parents were busy

as you grew older they asked you to take care of your little sister as your grandmother was not strong enough to run around for her

but overtime, you start to grow busy with school

with that your parents thought to hire a babysitter

only thing was…the babysitter was your crush and classmate, yang jungwon

synopsis: Due to the growing amounts of school activities you had, your parents decided to hire a babysitter. everything was fine but until you came home early and someone knocks on the door. when you open the door, you were faced with jungwon, your classmate and…CRUSH!! how will it go?

NI-KI

> STRIKE!

PAIRING: soccer player!riki x new manager! fem reader

hmm soccer player + smau, a cool concept I guess

now how did you end up being the new manager? well through your father of course

your dad had unfortunately some business to attend to overseas and would not be able to come home for a year or so

as such, he left you to be in charge of the whole soccer team

but you didn’t know anything about soccer!

how are you going to face all the boys and tell them that you have no clue how soccer works?

synopsis: Oh why did your dad have to leave you in charge of the soccer team? you had zero knowledge about the damn sport. oh and team’s striker, ni-ki, had also found out about it. he now hates you for it and was blaming your dad. how will this go?

possible ideas (no specific member unless specified)

– secret relationship with brother’s best friend but brother cant know! + can tie with the Hidden Love cdrama — possible main person can be sunghoon

– teacher + teacher?? idk man

– we got married but 4th gen version!!

– tellonym inspired smau (I think it’s the same as CuriousCat? idk I never had it and I only had tellonym bc that’s what us singaporeans used to do)

– ex-friends to lovers type of smau

– some wrong number type of idk plot?

– lovely runner inspired smau

more to come!

© markxdino/filmbyjy 2022

[birb-tangleblog]

What's your issue(s) with 7k? /gen

Okay so, if you scuttle around in my negativity and salt tags, you'll find a few other posts I've made on why I dislike it and my personal issues. I'm always happy to ramble on anyway, but full disclosure there's a good chance I might end up repeating myself a bit lmao. Fair warning for criticism/negativity here too!

My biggest issue is honestly that 7 K bears zero resemblance to the original source material, and feels like it wasn't made with a lot of love for it. Where are the series' locations and lore? Any of the characters? The new cast, their designs, and the setting(s) they come from don't fit the worldbuilding and aesthetic that I love.

Like there are so so many loose ends and plot threads you could choose to expand on in a sequel or spinoff, and 7 K ignores absolutely all of them. Along with being written/conceptualized before S3, it feels incredibly disconnected and dissonant to anything T T S to me.

(Like the creators literally just wanted to yoink Var and pair him off w/ an OC they ported from elsewhere- and at that point, just retool him and make the whole thing a standalone/original project? Nothing against canon/OC either... but I wouldn't exactly go and pitch my self-indulgent fanfic to actual Didney execs ykwim?)

Overexposure and saturation in tags and fandom spaces is the other biggie. It's not quite as prevalent as it was when it came out, but it's still popular and hard to ignore- ex. H/ugo is tagged in almost 500 stories (and counting) on Ao3. It’s... a lot. I really like Var himself, he has so much potential- but it’s hard to find content w/ him now that doesn’t somehow include 7 K, and it’s a bummer.

And the dynamic with H/ugo... it's really not my cup of tea, and from what I've seen, Var's characterization suffers from it? Lot of him getting pigeonholed as this sassy uwu disaster baby gay/bi (with varying degrees of angst/badboy mixed in depending on the take lmao)

And I'm just really, really over the white twink ships that are popular in fandom, man

I've heard the 'coming of age' and 'Var finds a group of peers his age' as selling points or a big part of the appeal, which makes sense, but both of these fall flat to me b/c the gang... ISN'T his age. Y/ ong is 6 years younger than him, Nu/ ru is 2- literally the only one his age is his love interest (how convenient)

Re. 7 K as a coming of age story, I feel like much of Var's arc in the show already went in the direction of learning from exp, growing up and maturing, and becoming responsible. He's undergone the development 7K's premise sets him up for, and it makes it feel extraneous or like a step backwards.

Honestly, I think there's a lot of overlap btwn 7 K fans and fans who are extremely critical of the orig, who welcome the 7 K cast b/c they believe Var's friends in the series let him down, didn't care for him, acted unforgivably, etc- and I straight up don't feel that way, so I don't feel a need for him to have a new or better friend group. It doesn't compel me.

Idt I've mentioned this, but I really dislike the handling of Var's mother in particular. She's revealed to be alive, then turns out to be evil as a cheap 'twist', and is killed off to further Var's char development. It's defrosting her from the dead mom fridge only to stuff her back in it at the end. I also have a problem with her abandoning her husband and young son and the timeline wonk of, 'why didn't she decide to follow her old dream BEFORE settling down'.

I've got more smaller gripes re. the AU itself as well as attitudes and trends in the fandom surrounding it- like, the elemental kingdoms feel generic and video-gamey, momification/supportive ‘shipper on deck’ treatment of the only female main, and children being little clones of their parents with every trait being inherited bugs me (seen in Var’s extended family and his mom being an alchemist like him)- but those are my big issues.

[heyyyharry]

Deep End - Chapter 11: Date Night

…in which Ezi’s first date gets interfered.

Word count: 2.5k

AU: famous!harry, siren!mc, adult modern retelling of the little mermaid? lol, fake dating, enemies to lovers.

WARNING: MATURE THEMES

All chapters / Synopsis / Moodboard / Playlist

Wattpad link

A/N: sorry this chapter is so short. I was emotionally unstable when I wrote this last week :D I'll try to write more for the next one.

Also, please follow my writing account on Instagram: @allie.writes :) Don't forget to leave comments on this chapter!

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“Hey, do you remember Dolores?” Dawson asked.

“How could I forget?” Ezili murmured, eyeing her sister up and down.

Of course Ezi remembered Dolores. She couldn’t if she tried. Whenever she looked at Koa, all she saw was what she could never be, what her mother wished that she was, and it only made her despise herself. When she’d first arrived here, she had felt so out of place, but at the same time, free. She still revisited her old life in her sleep, which made her wake up screaming during the night. And despite all the struggles she’d gone through, she felt appreciated. Harry wasn’t anywhere near great, but he wasn’t bad. He looked out for her even though she wasn’t his kind. And she knew if her mother knew she felt this way about a human, she would not be standing here.

But why was she thinking about Harry? He wasn’t here. She snapped out of her thoughts and looked around as the vibrant atmosphere of the night market drowned out her thoughts. Her sister came forward and pulled her into a hug. She could feel Koa’s claws leaving marks on her shoulders, but she knew it was just her imagination.

Koa withdrew with a smile and lifted those perfect human hands with short blunt nails and twisted her hair into a bun. She looked so human, so natural. Ezili wondered how Koa it, but then she caught a glimpse of the trident hanging on a chain around her neck. She’d been using magic.

Immediately, Ezili grabbed Dawson’s hand and pulled him to her side. Koa tilted her head, looking quite confused, which Ezili knew was all an act. Meanwhile, Dawson was blushing. He cleared his throat. “So...Dolores is also here for the book fair. Mind if she joins us?”

“Not at all,” Ezili said with a tight smile.

“Great!” Koa said, hands clasped against her chest.

Ezili tried to figure out what her sister’s intentions were. Was she here to kill Ezili? Was she here to kill Harry? What if she thought Dawson was Ezili’s new target and was here to kill him? Also, how many humans had she killed for her to be here, dressed, act, and talk like a real human girl?

Ezili walked beside Koa as the girl went on and on about how she’d just moved to London, and all the places she’d visited and enjoyed. She must have got all this information from the magic of the trident. She couldn’t be more human than Ezili, who’d had to learn everything by herself.

“Harry?”

Ezili’s heart gave a lurch when she spotted his face in the crowd. It started with a feeling of comfort, like finding a warm bed in the middle of the raging ocean. But then a tidal wave of anxiety crashed down upon her, and she momentarily forgot about Dawson and her sister. She rushed toward him, pushing past a group of tourists and teenagers who cursed at her.

“There you are!” Harry said, spreading his arms. “My favourite fish.”

“What are you doing here?” she hissed and tugged hard at his sleeve. “Why did you follow me here?”

“I didn’t follow you here.”

“Liar.”

“I’m not,” Harry sighed and poked the inside of his cheek with his tongue as he looked around. “Where’s Dawson anyway? Why are you standing here all by yourself?”

Ezili had no time for his questions. “Harry, go home.”

“I’m here to buy books!”

“Oh, yeah? What books?”

“This one,” he said, grabbing a random book from a display shelf they were in front of.

“The Sex Life of Pets?”

“Oh.” His smile dropped as he read the title. “I mean, it does look kinda interesting.”

“Harry, go home. I’m fine.”

“I don’t think you are. Dawson left you here all by yourself.”

“He’s taking care of something,” Ezili said anxiously as she put her arms around herself and rubbed. The air was getting cold. She hadn’t had to feel the cold when she’d been a siren. She hated how weak humans were. A slight change of the weather could get them all messed up.

She was about to tell Harry to go home right now because her sister was here, and Dawson might be in danger. Ezili’s job here was to kill one of these men, not save them every single time. But to her surprise, Harry took off his coat and put it around her shoulders. “Come home with me,” he said, gently. “If you stay here, you might get lost among all these tourists.”

“No, you go home,” she said, pushing his shoulder, but he didn’t budge. “It’s not safe here for you.”

“How?” he chuckled. “I know London like the back of my hand.”

“Doesn’t matter.”

“Ezili, you’re acting stran—” Harry was about to finish his sentence when his smile vanished. He pointed over Ezili’s shoulder. “Is that Dawson talking to your sister?”

Ezili whirled around, relieved to find Dawson still alive, but the grin her sister gave her while Dawson was talking to a seller made her uneasy.

“Harry, go home,” she snapped at Harry, shoved him hard so he stumbled back. If something happened, she could only save one of them, and she knew for a fact it would be Harry.

“I’m not going home and leaving you here—”

“And I won’t save you if my sister does something again. I’ll save Dawson, and you don’t want to die, do you?”

At first, she thought those words were all harmless, until she saw the way Harry’s smile dropped, and his shoulders slumped. He said nothing, only nodded. Koa and Dawson were heading towards them now. It was too risky to have Harry here.

“Go!” she shouted and pushed him hard. He didn���t joke about it or react, just held her gaze for a moment and walked away.

“Is that Harry? Harry!”

“He’s leaving, Dawson,” Ezili said and turned to her sister. “Could you come with me to the restroom?”

“Yeah, sure!” Koa happily said, then waved at a puzzled Dawson as she got dragged away.

“What are you trying to do?” Ezili asked in Séren when they were far enough from Dawson, but not too far; she still needed to keep an eye on him just in case.

“Nothing,” Koa answered in their mother tongue. “Although Pretty Boy over there looks quite delicious.”

“Stop it!” Ezili snapped. “You’ve been breaking so many rules around here. You’re not allowed to use the magic of the trident for personal gains.”

“Mother entrusted me with it,” Koa mused.

“I’m sure she’d be happy to know what you’d used it for,” Ezili said, disgusted.

Koa’s dark pink lips curled to the side. “You’re jealous,” she said, leaning back, arms crossed.

Ezili had no time for this. “Please go home,” she told her sister. “I have things under control here. I’ll return in a year with the heart.”

“But you don’t have a whole year,” Koa said. “One year could be a lifetime for these creatures. Humans are fickle. They can stay married for twenty years and still can’t love each other.”

Ezili scoffed, eyebrows raised. “Does the trident tell you that?”

“No, Dolores did,” Koa said, twirling a strand of hair around her finger innocently as if she weren’t talking about someone she’d murdered for no reason. “She hated her husband,” she went on. “I heard her talking on the phone with someone about how she had never loved him, and they had two grown children together. Can you believe it? These creatures made up the thing called ‘marriage’ - a lifetime commitment, which they could not keep up with themselves. And as much as your pretty head wants to see the good in these filthy creatures. They are far from good. Not only do they harm other living things, they also harm their own kind. Physically and emotionally.” Koa put her hand on Ezili’s shoulder and squeezed. “That boy you’re so attached to is no different, Ezili. He will never love you.”

Ezili bit her lip and brushed her sister’s hand off of her. “Don’t tell me about humans when I’ve been here for longer than you do.”

“And yet,” Koa said, “you’re still here.”

Ezili wanted to tell Koa she was wrong for doubting Ezili, but Koa wasn’t wrong. Recently, Ezili had been doubting herself, too. She had even considered switching her target from Harry to Dawson, but she could not feel the same connection she’d had with Harry.

“I have an offer for you, Ezili,” Koa’s voice dragged her out of her own thoughts. She blinked at her sister. “Before your birthday, which was supposed to be your coronation day, you may come back to the Queendom. You’ll tell Mother that you cannot accomplish the mission and ask her to make me Queen of the Seven Seas. Then we’ll have a new Queen as planned. Our evil aunt can’t plot against the throne. And when I’m Queen, I’ll make sure you won’t be banished. You’ll get to keep your title as a princess and stay in the castle.”

Ezili hated that she wasted a second to actually consider the offer. “No. I won’t do it,” she spat, stepping back. “If I accepted this offer, no one and nothing in the ocean world would take me seriously. I would become an outcast anyway.”

Koa rolled her eyes and laughed heartily. “At least you’ll still be protected by the army and you’ll have a family. Or would you rather join the mermaids collecting gold all day for your sad little collection? Also, I’m sure the white sharks would love an abandoned siren.”

“I’m going to be Queen,” Ezili said through clenched teeth. “I’m bringing Mother the heart no matter what. Now you go home and tell her just that. And be careful with my trident that you wore around your little breakable neck.”

Koa opened her mouth to speak, but Ezili didn’t give her a chance. She put up a hand and shouted, “Dawson, let’s go! Dolores is just about to leave.”

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.

.

Ezili didn’t know what time she arrived home. She tried not to think about her sister’s words, which had clearly been for the purpose of making her doubt herself. She still hoped Dawson had had a great time tonight. They’d bought some books after she’d got rid of Koa, then stopped at a restaurant on the way back to Harry’s mansion. She’d apologised when he’d dropped her off for not being quite herself tonight, and she hated how he’d cheerfully said, “It was nothing. No worries.” Why did humans lie about how they felt all the time? If something bothered you or made you uncomfortable, why not just say it? Why did they feel the need to complicate things? It was hard enough for her to understand human emotions, and they expected her to be able to guess?

“Hey,” Harry said when their eyes met and she froze in the doorway. She’d expected him to be sleeping right now. “You look clean. Guess your sister didn’t kill Dawson?”

Ezili narrowed her eyes at him and kicked off her shoes. “No. Nothing bad happened.”

“Oh, man. I was hoping he was dead.”

“Shut up,” she said. “Also, I don’t think my sister will ever bother us again.” That, she wasn’t sure. She just wanted to be reassured even if it was by her own words.

Harry got up, hands slipped into his pockets. “Sooo...how was your date?”

Ezili pretended she hadn’t heard that question. “Why are you still up?” she asked.

He shrugged. “Had too much coffee earlier.” Then repeated, “How was your date?”

“It was fine,” Ezili said. "Why did you show up?"

"I was just making sure you wouldn't cause any trouble? Your name is tied to mine now, in case you've forgotten."

"How can I? You literally remind me of our fake relationship every two seconds."

“Why are you so pissed off?”

“I’m not.”

“You clearly are,” he persisted.

She let out a sigh, about to just go upstairs and ignore him for the rest of the night, but this one question kept tugging at her. So she had to ask.

“Have you ever been in love?”

Harry looked confused for a second. “No. Never. I think I’ve told you about what happened with my exes.”

“But did you love them at one point?”

“Well, I thought I loved them,” he said. “But looking back now, I don’t think I know what love is. It’s just...a lot of times, I want to be alone. Just me and Chilli. If someone enters my life and stays around for too long, it makes me uncomfortable.”

“But I’m also living here. We see each other all the time.”

“It’s not like I have a choice to kick you out,” he said, then instantly looked regretful.

Ezili padded across the room and stopped in front of him. “Why would anybody want to be alone?” She knew she didn’t. She was doing all this just to be accepted by her kind, but he, who had everything from fame and wealth to a supportive family, wanted to be left alone?

“You’re not the first girl to ask me that,” he said with a grin. “I think it has a lot to do with how I was brought up. I feel like everyone has these certain expectations for me, and when I don’t meet those expectations, I disappoint them. I just want to be by myself so I can just be me. I don’t want to adjust myself to the presence of others.”

Ezili nodded then moved a bit closer.

“What are you--”

She surprised him by placing her palm on the left side of his chest. Her skin tingled with the sensation of his little unsteady heartbeats when she came near. “But there’s nothing here,” she mumbled as if it would make sense to him. “You were telling the truth.”

“What do you mean?” Harry let out a nervous laugh and reached for her hand, which she withdrew before he could touch.

“Nothing.”

Harry’s smile faded. “Did Dawson say anything about me?”

“No. We hardly talked about you.”

“What about your sister? Why is she here?” he kept asking when she brushed past him and headed for the stairs. “Does your mother want you back? Ezi, what happened tonight?”

“Nothing,” she lied. “I’m just tired. Goodnight, Harry.”

“Ezi,” he said, his voice soft and pleading as if he could love her for a moment. But how could he? How could a man, who had lived his whole life without falling in love and prided himself on his loneliness, ever fall in love with a siren? He’d said he’d wanted to kiss her again, but there he’d stood in front of her and claimed her presence in this house made him uncomfortable. Then when her hand had been on his heart, she had felt nothing.

So had he lied about it? Humans lied about how they felt all the time. If they could lie about wanting to spend the rest of their life with one person, they could lie about wanting to kiss a siren.

Maybe, just maybe, Ezili should consider her sister’s offer.

[icecreamsundayonajulyafternoon]

A/N: this is also on my ao3: homoeroticmicrowave as a part of my resident evil oneshots (I take requests) For context the reader is a part of Chris’s team and Jill is also there for the mission. Jill and the reader and Chris and the reader are platonic but you can interpret their relationships however you wish. As for the plot of this to sum it up Donna and you basically decided you loved each other and went through a whole little mission that I couldn’t be bothered to write in order to try to escape from everything that wanted to harm you both only to end up dying. I swear I’ll write happier things that aren’t angsty soon.

You lay there with Donna, shot in the snow blood easing the cold that had been so bitter to you. Donna gasped through breathless chuckles as she held your hand. Red bubbles around your teeth as you grinned shamelessly. You have her hand a little squeeze letting her know you were doing this together.

You got out. Maybe you didn’t make it far but you still got to see what it was like there together. You didn’t exchange any magnificent words worth writing in history books nor did you accomplish anything noble and noteworthy but you carved your admittedly short life together in a place that demanded you die in anger and fear without a trace of love.

You had felt remorse for all of the years you could have spent together but it wasn’t worth thinking of when you were so short on time. You would both smile as you went for you were finally together and that in itself was an accomplishment you could be proud of.

Your team surely cursed you for leaving them for a woman who you were supposed to despise and take down. But you did your job didn’t you really, she was down and so were you and while you wished that this segment of the mission had been a failure you didn’t want to soil the moment where you got to hold your hand and watch a sky that finally seemed peaceful.

You felt comfort in knowing your lover was with you as you went.

Your head turned towards her.

You should be scared.

Your visions fading.

You smiled.

‘Beautiful.’

Jill found your body and she screamed in pure rage. She was so hopelessly furious. She was angry at you for being so careless and stupid as to betray people you had known and cared for all for some woman who ultimately got you killed. Angry at the woman who you had chosen over everything and everyone else. Angry at the woman who you had abandoned the world for because she had let you. Angry because she hadn’t been able to save you. Angry at the world around her for allowing this to happen. Angry because she had left you alone in the mission and now she had lost you forever. Angry as you had left her to live.

When Chris made it back without Ethan he felt so rough as he had to tell Mia that her husband wasn’t coming back. All he wanted to do was kick off his shoes and clothes and flop onto his bed. He took a seat next to Jill who’s face held a certain melancholia that he thought his own might reflect. He asked her if she was okay but she didn’t utter a word in response. His eyes wondered round his squad but he couldn’t find your face.

Chris looked at Jill in confusion as he asked where you up were. Jill couldn’t answer him. She couldn’t handle answering him. She hadn’t even processed yet alone accepted what had happened. She didn’t want to give him an answer. She didn’t want to accept that it was true. ”Jill, where are they” a cruel thought that she must have just not heard him teased his mind.

Jill grit her teeth and tried to focus on anything but Chris. Tried to block him out of her vision. Tried to tune his voice out with aimless thoughts. But he was still there and he wasn’t going away. She had to respond. She didn’t have a choice. “They’re not coming” her words seemed vague in the part of Chris’s mind that feigned a lack of recognition as to what her words meant. He denied the obvious meaning that flared and burned his buried happiness that he had managed to scavenge despite so many tragedies until it was charred.

Jill’s eyes were wide with an intensity she hadn’t shown in so long as words that didn’t fit her spilled from her mouth “They’re dead Chris I found their body they’re dead it’s in a bag over there if you really want to see it so badly”

Chris stared blankly at Jill an immediate drop in his facial expression as he turned his head away from her. He didn’t want to listen to her. He wanted to get mad. He wanted to argue. But he was tired. He was so, so tired and he didn’t want to be tired anymore.

When given opportunity to he doused himself in alcohol, smearing it all through his liver until he was sure he would pass out or die. He wouldn’t die though. He never did.

He never visited your grave. Never payed any real respects to you. Never brought any flowers or conversed with any of his fellow grieving. Never spoke of you to anyone. He simply went on as if you had never existed. You haunted him nonetheless. When he was so close to sleep but not quite there his thoughts twisted and bent so that you could reach them. Your face convulsing into a sick scream as he preached his sorrow and repented for how he hadn’t been able to get to you. You danced with all of his other ghosts that paraded in his misfortune and woes. Your face now a picture of horror to him. Your very name brought an unspeakable agony.

He was never a crier and he didn’t cry for your death and he went on for a week without a single tear and he had no intention of spilling any.

And then his fucking pen ran out.

He had been writing out paperwork by hand because the internet crashed and he couldn’t wait for it to be fixed as he needed to get through it all quickly with an efficiency that he had been expected to achieve. But then his pen ran out midway through writing it and he should have just got up and grabbed a new one but he didn’t think and he started pressing harder and scribbling but no ink came out it just left indents in the paper and in a moment of unfiltered frustration he slashed his paper with the pen and then the fucking ink came out and now his work was ruined because he was an idiot and why did he even do that.

Then he was crying. He was curled up like a toddler on the floor crying over a fucking pen in a red, burning frustration and misery. Then did he really start mourning you. Your name now blasting across his mind as he thought of what your corpse must have looked like. How your pretty face must be ruined with rot. How he hadn’t even thought of you during the mission and had just assumed you were okay. How he had been so cold as to not even turn up to your grave at any point besides the funeral that work had required him to go to. It was always about work with him. Did he even have a personality outside of that? Was he even a person outside of that? All he was was his work and he couldn’t even do that right. He couldn’t even keep his squad alive. He truly was a waste of a person. He couldn’t keep anyone alive but himself and he wasn’t sure he wanted to even do that.

He slammed his hand down on his tiled floor and he screamed a momentous scream. He hated himself so much. He hated being alive so much. He hated everyone dying on him so much. He cradled himself as the tears just kept coming and coming and if anyone saw him like this they’d think he was a complete pussy and if not it would only be because they’d be mesmerised by the fact that he was actually capable of experiencing emotion.

He was so overcome by his deep and endless grief that he fell asleep right there on his cold floor. Nobody was left to love him. Nobody was left but him.

He dreamed of happier times with happier people and a happier him. He wanted to stay in that fantasy forever even if it was all make believe and childish. He wanted to be childish for once. Hell he wanted to be a child again. He wanted to be able to be vulnerable again and feel unconditionally loved again. He wanted to be able to take that love for granted. He wanted to be able to be young again and do stupid things that kids do. He wanted to wake up and start over with no memories of the future and brush his reality off as a silly little nightmare that could be kissed away.

He didn’t want to be hurt anymore.

[odd-triceratops702]

Idk what I'd give if someone writes this.

But I had this concept for the years about mingcheng. So like here it goes...

Anyways, so the fic goes like this: it's about 2 years after WWXs death and NMJ is SLOWLY getting affected by his qi deviation and is getting desperate in slowing down the symptoms and what not.

But then he meets up with JC (who cares where, could be a discussion conference or him visiting whtevs) and develops a HUGE crush. But JC doesn't realise it cuz he's really spread thin with leading yunmemg and raising Jin ling. So they interact a lot, with NMJ trying to support JC whilst he's still alive.

Eventually because JC is a masochist - he falls in love with NMJ and confesses, assuming that NMJ will friendzone him. Only for NMJ to admit his feelings as well. But it's bittersweet cuz NMJ is still dying from qi deviation (JGY is still a dick) so they rush their relationship. JC gets married to NMJ (this being NMJ favourite memory and JC favourite memory is NMJ interacting with JL) whilst NMJ is still stable and have many little moments together (like both of them teaching jin ling how to shoot and JC teaching NMJ how to use zidian because he trusts NMJ enough to not hurt others with zidian. )

Anyways NMJ eventually dies when Jin Ling is like 8 (and JL only has a few memories of NMJ which destroys JC) and JC & JHS grieve together. BUTTT JC didn't know the full story because NHS wanted to be the only one to get revenge for NMJs murder. So JC just thinks NMJ died because of qi deviation and slowly accepts it but never moves on because NMJ was his soulmate.

Fast forward to the plot, JGY is being confronted by WWX and the gang and JGY admits to killing NMJ and JC is destroyed. And he is Hella pissed, and tries to kill JGY buttttt doesn't because morals or whatever. LXC still kills JGY. But the twist is, that WWX doesn't know that mingcheng was a thing.

Shenanigans happen with WWX and NMJ and somehow WWX fixes him and makes him a fierce corpse... But the twist is that NMJ only remembers his life BEFORE having qi deviations. *Shock and disbelief ensures *

And since of the WWX and LWJ didn't know mingcheng happened, LXC being in seclusion and NHS feeling too guilty and bitter to be near NMJ. NMJ has no where to go and is having a lot of self-loothing because he is a fierce corpse, can't remember some of his later years and didn't figure out that JGY was killing him. But then NMJ stumbles into Lotus Pier...

NMJ meets up with JC and JC is shooketh. Buutttt then the whole memories erased thing becomes plot revelant and JC becomes insecure ..."If he everything else EXCEPT us, their relationship wasnt that important to him than it was to me...."

So JC keeps his distance from NMJ and lets him stay at lotus pier cuz he's a masochist. Only NMJ to get attach to JC and slowly fold back into JCs life. JC still loves him and this situation is slowly destroying him that JL notices. (Also NMJ knows he feels something to JC but doesn't know what it is, and is repressing it because of self-loothing)

Jin Ling has been prepping to become the Jin Sect leader whilst Lan qiren is his Regent cuz JC REFUSES for JL to lose his childhood like he did.

And Lan Qiren was bored and wanted to give WWX and LWJ some alone time idk. Anyways, JL is free and studying under Lan Qiren and JC on how to be a sect leader and one day whilst staying in lotus pier, he hears JC crying alone in his room. And gets super over-protective cuz "no one makes my favourite parent uncle cry."

And then JL bumps into NMJ and recognises him as jiujius husband from a painting or whatever. And realises that NMJ is the one making JC depressed. JL confront him, saying something on the lines of "that's yr soulmate buuuttttt you don't even recognise him because of yr self-loothing"

NMJ realises that he loves JC and those feelings he has been repressing were because of this.

That night NMJ confronts JC and emotions soarrrrrr. They realise that they are being stupid and get back together. And live out their days together.

*Some additions that isn't in the main plot,

*WWXs reaction to mingcheng like "wait JC lost his virginity BEFORE ME!! NOOO"

*Jin Ling and WWX being overprotective over JC

*JC being Lan Qirens favourite even though they're not related (pre-timeskip, they would have tea once a month because Lan Qiren used to have tea with JC's parents but not as regularly as they do. JC goes Lan Qiren for advice and Lan Qiren sees himself in JC)

*LXC reconciling with NMJ, (Im actually a fan of NMJ being a bit mad at LXC because LXC forced 3zun brotherhood) but both of them working out their issues

*NMJ and NHS interacting, NMJ understanding why NHS did it and didn't hold a grudge

BUT JC is angry with him because NHS didn't ask for help and didn't consider JCs feeling on the matter.

Eventually JC and NHS reconcile after NHS reveals his true nature to JC (like be more sly and intelligent in front of JC) and stops being the lazy headshaker. NHS is still sect leader because NMJ wants to live with JC and NHS wants to change the Niè sect. (Also NHS wants to become chief cultivator) (I just want NHS to be an evil mastermind, an ethical bastard with JCs support)

*maybe LXC and NHS romance, LXC being angry with NHS and being hostile with NHS (and then bring in the enemies to lovers trope)

*JC and WWX reconciling extremely quickly because JC now knows that time is precious and had forgiven WWX a long time ago (during when NMJ and him were first dating because he didn't want useless baggage to ruin mingcheng so he confessed EVERYTHING to NMJ and they moved past it)

*WWX being the strict uncle to JL, and JC, having more child rearing experiences, can handle a bratty teenager whilst WWX hates his past self for giving him karma

So yeah this is a prompt I've BEEN thinking about for a while and I don't want to write it sooooo

[scrimmification]

taking a self care day and was instantly hit with temptation so u know what. here’s that dhurkemara essay. but it’ll be under a cut because i’m polite like that

the following is some canon facts sprinkled in with mostly my own headcanons and opinions. but i’m right about everything. cw for mentions of trauma and aa6 spoilers.

i should actually start this by saying that i see a lot of polycule dhurke/amara/jove or dhurke/amara/datz and while it is cute i feel a bit weird about using a poly relationship as just a “oh he has two hands” solution to love triangles. not that poly relationships aren’t valid, but it’s usually just people putting characters together without thinking about how the dynamic would even function. as if a polycule is a band-aid solution.

but that’s not important because this essay is about why dhurke and amara should just be friends (post SOJ)

i do not respect capcom or its canon, but here’s a bunch of canonical soj facts that are kinda fucked up;      - when nahyuta is born, amara is 19 and dhurke is 20      - when the palace fire breaks out, amara is 21 and dhurke is 22      - there’s a gap of approximately 8 years of time where dhurke thinks amara is dead before they reunite and have rayfa (they’re each around the age of 30 at the time)      - there’s a period of time anywhere from 9 months - 1 year that they’re living together again before rayfa and amara are both kidnapped      - following this, dhurke never sees his wife ever again

because i have extreme brainrot, i sat down and feasibly considered the amount of time they would’ve been together. like, genuinely face to face together. if you only take into account the numbers the game gives you, then that means out of 25 years of marriage, they only see each other for about 3 of them. i tend to tack on an extra year or so for dating, but that’s still a really short amount of time, with almost all of it being before the palace fire ever happened. not to mention, they married incredibly young, and amara is royalty. typically royal families will push for children to be wed as soon as they come of age. 

there’s also the fact that canonically, dhurke was not wealthy to any degree. he mentions in a throw away line having a bunch of weird odd jobs including both farmer and street performer (side note, street performer dhurke is hilarious). considering amara was basically hailed as a goddess by virtue of existing, i kind of doubt they were childhood friends or anything before that. my own hcs for how they met and got married initially tend to fall into a romeo and juliet style of mushy romance. plucky lawyer steals the heart of the queen with his humble charm and promises to whisk her away kind of thing. idk i do actually think they were very in love when they were younger, and maybe like... TOO in love, but my essay and thoughts tend to skew towards characterization through how the two of them grow through their traumas. so let’s just go in order of events here;

the palace fire

i do not care what capcom tries to tell me, dhurke has burns. if amara has a giant chest mark from being in the fire for a very short amount of time, dhurke would have full body burns from literally breaking into and out of a burning building. do you know how hot fire is? it’s fucking hot. it’s also genuinely terrifying. my point is i hc dhurke has some form of pyrophobia.

the years after the palace fire and before rayfa is born aren’t given much canon information, but it is stated that amara is convinced dhurke was out to kill her and willingly lives in the palace outside of the public eye. she’s convinced that dhurke is evil and was trying to kill her for at least twice as long as they were married. that kind of skews your perception of a person, no matter how much you might have once loved them. even if you STILL love them, it’s different. feelings change with time, and i think that’s a really fun thing to explore in fiction. 

the rescue/rayfa’s birth

so here’s where i add the drama. just sprinkle it in. there’s a very sneaky line in the game that they kind of slip in during dhurke’s recounting of events around the time rayfa was born, and i have not stopped thinking about it for 2 years.

so plot wise, when apollo presses dhurke about lying about amara being dead, he talks about how he (somehow) got a tip that amara was alive and still being held in the palace. he broke in to save her and potentially run away with her, datz, and and nahyuta into safety, but they add something else in there. dhurke has a moment where he says she didn’t initially believe his innocence. and it’s kind of just played as a joke.

but because i like conflict and i do not write dhurke the same hyper-toxic-masculine way they do in canon because i think Men Should Be Allowed To Have Feelings i thought. man that must fucking suck. everyone in the entire kingdom thinks he’s the devil, and the one person he’s been doing it all for the sake of - his wife - initially doubts his innocence. of course this is obviously an understandable response. she was basically trapped and gaslit for nearly a full decade over an event that nearly cost her her own life (and would have to instead come to terms with the fact her own sister wanted her dead) but like it still. it would still suck to hear that from your spouse?

they were together for under a year, and in this time rayfa was born. this is probably my favorite window of time to explore a dhurke and amara relationship adapting because they would be such different people now. time already effects how you personally grow and adapt, but the kind of horrors they went to would drastically change them both. neither of them would be the same kids they fell in love with, and dhurke had just shipped one of his kids to america in an attempt to protect him. he’d already be down bad, but to have to deal with that, his wife not fully trusting him, nahyuta not knowing their own mother and most likely not trusting her initially, and also an entire pregnancy... that’d be an incredible amount of stress, on top of the fact they’re both living under the law. 

(sidebar; because of how weird they had to twist the timeline to make it so apollo was gone before rayfa was born so they never met, i tend to headcanon this as dhurke trying to send both his kids to america to protect them, but not being able to initially send nahyuta because of their royalty status, and it quickly becoming too late.)

something else that confused me was why the hell they’d even have another kid while they’re both trying to save themselves, and that... uh. okay maybe this is an unpopular thing to say in terms of headcanon, but i actually believe rayfa was an accidental birth. like logistically, if you see your wife for the first time in almost a decade, you’re going to do Something. and you don’t have protection in the mountains. i’m just. i’m just saying.

but all of that being said, more than anything, i think they’d still be in love during this point. or more accurately, i think they’d be trying to convince themselves they’re still in love. they wouldn’t be the same people anymore, but the only thing dhurke has left is his family. it’s the thing he’s fighting for, and amara would have just been told she can’t go back to her sister for her own safety. there’s this kind of pressure to stay together for both themselves and their kids. there’s also a part where dhurke implies that the two of them were planning on trying to escape khura’in together and cross country lines before shit hits the fan.

turnabout revolution

so if you’re a coward who actually considers canon, after rayfa and amara get kidnapped, dhurke never sees them again. sure, he gets spirit channeled by amara in the final trial, but he never sees her face to face, or gets a chance to speak with her. if you’re like me and simply refuse to believe your favorite characters die, then that means there’s a 14 year gap between the next time dhurke and amara speak to each other.

what’s the first thing amara does when they see each other again? accuse him of murder.

in fairness, she’s under threat of blackmail to do so. she’s trying to protect both her children at this point, and clearly had a role to play in inga’s murder herself that she doesn’t want to admit to. but at the same time, when apollo reveals that dhurke was actively hiding evidence because he still loved her, she seemed genuinely surprised. this revelation is the thing that gets her to actually go against ga’ran’s plot. there’s also the obvious point of her picking her children’s safety over dhurke’s entire revolution, and what he’s been working on for her sake for most of his life. and honestly I thinks she made the right and most understandable choice. the real part that makes me think they wouldn’t get back together after the events of soj (provided dhurke isn’t an epic ghost guy) is,

amara chooses her own safety over dhurke’s, while dhurke chooses her safety over his own.

dhurke’s a very hopeful character, a very jovial one. throughout all his screen time, there’s no point where he genuinely thinks nahyuta has betrayed him. there’s no point where he thinks apollo isn’t capable of handling the case without him. he clearly cares a lot about his family, and would do anything for them. this includes amara. he’s not asked to hide evidence for her sake, he just does it. at the risk of undermining his entire revolution and destroying it entirely, he tries to hide evidence that’d implicate his wife of murder.

amara’s more of a realist. she doesn’t give up information until she absolutely has to. she doesn’t even admit to loving dhurke until the last moment she’s on screen. the only lines in the game she has as herself are during the trial, and half the time she’s just telling everyone how horrible and awful and terrible her husband was. and again, i must say, this would probably suck to hear.

the aftermath

the country is kind of a little fucked after soj. sure, it ends on a positive note, kind of, but there’s both a lot of political stuff to fix. and a lot of family stuff to fix. dhurke basically has to rebuild his relationship with every single one of his family members (and in rayfa’s case, from scratch). while I do think marriage is important and stuff, I don’t think it’d be... the most important.

what i’m saying is i think they’d be friends. even if they stayed married, they’d have to relearn almost everything about each other. they haven’t seen each other in forever, and also amara just threw dhurke under the bus. that’d sting! i think he’d forgive her for that, but it’d sting. knowing your partner would have willingly let you and your entire cause go up in flames sucks. it all sucks. soj is a very downer aa game.

and also i value m/f friendship a lot. i value older adult relationships a lot. i value exploring unfortunate and uncomfortable themes in learning to grow as a person and dealing with your own trauma a lot. i think there’s a lot to explore in characters like dhurke and amara. alot of people prefer thinking about the relationships between nahyuta and apollo and rayfa as siblings, which is great! but... i don’t know. i really like fictional dads. i like thinking about him getting more time with his kids. i like thinking about amara learning to become a person instead of a revered goddess. i like them becoming real people instead of just figureheads in a political war.

also i think dhurke and datz should kiss because they raised kids together in the mountains for 20 years

[justforbooks]

The Best Spy Novels to Read While Stuck at Home

Forty, page-turning spy novels, to Keep you on the edge of your seat. Marked by an exhilarating pace, plenty of dramatic twists, and richly drawn complex protagonists, spy novels are about as riveting as it gets in the library. And while all the excitement of double agents and espionage keeps you at the edge of your seat, these books also offer insight into fascinating and troubling historical periods.

In the name of thrilling reading, no matter what time of year and to wrestle with larger philosophical questions of betrayal, human connection, and the legacy of international conflict, I rounded up 40 of the best spy novels around, to read while stuck at home. Written by former CIA and other intelligence agents and some of the most prolific literary minds of all time, get to know the best spy novels below.

Here are my picks for the best spy novels you have to read while stuck at home.

Rosalie Knecht, Who Is Vera Kelly?

1962 in New York City's Greenwich Village and Argentina. A radio show host is struggling to make ends meet and fit into the underground gay scene when she gets recruited by the CIA to wiretap a crooked congressman in Argentina, and works her way into a radical group of students planning a coup. Think coming-of-age meets historical fiction with a strong female protagonist.

Jason Matthews, Red Sparrow

Modern-day Russia. Dominika Egorova is forced into becoming a secret agent that uses her sultry beauty to seduce an American CIA officer. When she develops genuine feelings for him, her loyalties begin to shift and the plot thickens.

Gina Apostol, Gun Dealer's Daughter

1980s Marcos-era Philippines and modern-day America. Though this book doesn't follow a linear chronology, it reflects Sol's fragmented memory and trauma. As a young woman limited by the comfort of her wealth, she seeks to overthrow the Marcos regime. Spying on the American generals and Philippine elite from her own fancy dinner table, Sol's loyalties struggle between her family, homeland, and her insurgent student friends. Politically charged, lyrical, and eye-opening, this is a must-read.

Helen MacInnes, Agent in Place

New York, Washington, D.C., and the French Riviera during the Cold War. When a Russian spy who's expertly infiltrated Washington society gets his hands on a top-secret NATO memorandum, a high-profile CIA officer's cover is blown in Moscow. Now, everyone is racing against time to uncover who the Russian spy actually is.

Viet Thanh Nguyen, The Sympathizer

1975 Vietnam and Los Angeles, A half-French, half-Vietnamese double agent relocates to America after the fall of Saigon, and betrayal, both personal and political, ensues. At once a love story and a spy novel about the legacy and evils of colonialism, the Vietnam War, and ensuing refugee experience in the U.S. you won't soon forget The Sympathizer. It's satirical, sharp, suspenseful, and poignant.

Joseph Kanon, Leaving Berlin

Post-WWII Berlin, Germany. Alex Meier is a young German Jew who fled to America at the onset of WWII to escape Nazi persecution. But with the Cold War underway, it's the peak of the McCarthy era, and he's pigeon-holed into working undercover in East Berlin for the CIA. It's the only way he won't be deported. But when he gets there, he finds out that his target is the woman he loved and left behind before the war. It's a thought-provoking and action-packed love story.

Joseph Conrad, The Secret Agent

London, late 1800s. A shop-owner gets wrapped up in an anarchist scheme to bomb the Greenwich Observatory, but the plan goes wrong and throws his life into chaos. It raises philosophical questions and is a literary masterpiece, but that doesn't keep it from being a thrilling, entertaining read.

John Le Carré, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy

Post-WWII Britain. Unhappily retired after a failed mission, an aging officer sets out to catch a traitor who has worked their way into the highest ranks of British intelligence. Full of political and social commentary with a fast-paced plot, there's a reason this is such a classic.

Ian McEwan, The Innocent

Berlin, 1955. A young Englishman living in American-occupied Berlin is commissioned to install the tape recorders that that will wiretap Russians in Soviet-occupied East Berlin. He begins spying on the Americans for the Brits while helping the Americans spy on the Russians. But, he fails as a spy, and the plot becomes more complicated when he falls in love with an older German with a violent, possessive ex-husband.

Lauren Wilkinson, American Spy

Burkina Faso. In the FBI, Marie Mitchell sticks out as a young black woman. In American Spy, Marie wades through a sea of a mostly white male intelligence community, and an assignment to Burkina Faso, where she meets Thomas Sankara, revolutionary president of the landlocked, West African country.

John le Carré, The Spy Who Came in From the Cold

Cold War-era Germany. British intelligence agent Alec Leamas should be on his way back to London, but one more job—an undercover mission to topple East German intelligence, leads Leamas back into dangerous territory. In an interview with Electric Literature, author Lauren Wilkinson (author of American Spy) calls this spy novel "terrific."

Susan Hasler, Intelligence

Post-9/11 America, during an election year. Intelligence trails Maddie James, a CIA counterterrorism analyst as she pursues an al-Qaida operation with an eccentric team. Meanwhile, the Administration is more interested in maintaining the message that America is winning the war on terror. According to author Susan Hasler, a former member of the CIA, writing the novel was a way to cope with residual 9/11 period anger.

Valerie Plame, Blowback

Cyprus. Young, blonde CIA operative Vanessa Pierson assumes the identify of a financial adviser in Cyprus on a reconnaissance mission. Her target: An international arms dealer, Bhoot, who is believed to be aiding Iran to bolster its nuclear activities. With an assassin on her trail, Blowback is full of fast-paced action scenes, as well as intimate details that the Washington Post describes "might elude a male writer." Blowback is co-authored by former CIA agent Valerie Plame, and Sarah Lovett.

Stella Rimington, At Risk

Britain. British intelligence taps Liz Carlyle, a scrappy counter terror agent to stop a terrorist attack. And the person of interest is traveling under a British passport, an "invisible." Author Stella Rimington relies on her former life as a high-ranking spy to author At Risk, Rimington's debut novel.

Patricia Wentworth, Hue and Cry

London. Before Mally Lee's wedding in six months, she accepts a position as governess to a shipping magnate's young daughter. Upon entering the Peterson grounds, however, Lee will be accused of being a thief and spy. Mally flees, leaving her fiancé in emotional shambles and private investigators in hot pursuit. What has Mally stumbled into?

Irène Némirovsky, The Courilof Affair

18th century Russia. Léon M, son of Russian revolutionaries, is tasked with assassinating the ruthless Valerian Alexandrovitch Courilof, Russian Minister of Education. Fronting as Courilof's personal physician, Léon M works his way into Courilof's summer house, and as his relationship with Courilof grows, learns things are more complicated than they seem.

Stephenie Meyer, The Chemist

United States. A page-turning tale of an ex-agent on the run from her former employer (a clandestine, unnamed agency). To clear her name, she accepts one more job that will put her in an even more precarious position. But, the job goes south. What now?

Jennifer Chiaverini, The Spymistress

Civil War-era America. Elizabeth Van Lew is a Union loyalist living in the Confederacy, and she will risk it all to help build the Richmond underground, break free inmates from Confederate Libby Prison, and gather military intelligence under the pretense of humanitarian aid. In this historical novel inspired by a true story, Van Lew's contributions during the Civil War comes alive.

John Buchan, The Thirty-Nine Steps

Over a century old, and Buchan’s adventure novel still passes muster. The first of five novels featuring an all-action hero with a stiff upper lip, Richard Hannay, this is unpredictable, exciting fare – and will keep you guessing until the last page.

Graham Greene, The Quiet American

A novel depicting French colonialism being uprooted in Vietnam may not sound like the most thrilling you’ve ever heard, but in the hands of English literary giant Graham Greene, anything is possible. Featuring British journalism, undercover CIA agents, illegitimate marriage and a light smattering of car bombs, there is action balanced with considered philosophy – and the book is all the better for it.

Frederick Forsyth, The Day of the Jackal

Telling the tale of a professional assassin – tasked by a French dissident organisation to kill the President of France – Forsyth’s novel was met with praise when it was first published, and remains so to this day. Of course, the 1973 film adaptation starring the suave Edward Fox did nothing to help with the stories success...

Robert Ludlum, The Bourne Identity

We all know Matt Damon’s award-winning portrayal of Ludlum’s most famous character, but how many of us have read the novels? If not, you’ll be glad to know that these tales of amnesia, backstabbing and action are just as thrilling on the page – and that Eric Van Lustbader has added to the cannon, with an additional 11 Bourne books available to read.

Tom Clancy, The Hunt for Red October

Tom Clancy’s debut novel remains his best. Introducing Jack Ryan, the CIA analyst throw into the field, it one again tackles Soviet themes and the adventures of a group of US Navy officers taking possession of a nuclear submarine. It’s thrilling fare, and Clancy’s talent to bring the appeal of classic espionage into modern-day storytelling is impressive to say the least.

Len Deighton, The IPCRESS File

Len Deighton’s first spy novel, like Tom Clancy’s, is also his best. More famous for the Michael Caine-fronted film spun from its pages, this original novel involves Cold War brainwashing, a United State atomic weapons test and an extended sequence in Lebanon – and makes use of spy novel trope to be employed for years to come: that of the nameless protagonist.

John le Carré, The Tailor of Panama

He is Harry Pendel: Exclusive tailor to Panama’s most powerful men. Informant to British Intelligence. The perfect spy in a country rife with corruption and revolution. What his ���handlers” don’t realize is that Harry has a hidden agenda of his own. Deceiving his friends, his wife, and practically himself, he’ll weave a plot so fabulous it exceeds his own vivid imagination. But when events start to spin out of control, Harry is suddenly in over his head—thrown into a lethal maze of politics and espionage, with unthinkable consequences...

Eric Ambler, A Coffin for Dimitrios

A chance encounter with a Turkish colonel leads Charles Latimer, the author of a handful of successful mysteries, into a world of sinister political and criminal maneuvers. At first merely curious to reconstruct the career of the notorious Dimitrios, whose body has been identified in an Istanbul morgue, Latimer soon finds himself caught up in a shadowy web of assassination, espionage, drugs, and treachery that spans the Balkans.

Ken Follett, Eye of the Needle

“His code name was “The Needle.” He was a German aristocrat of extraordinary intelligence—a master spy with a legacy of violence in his blood, and the object of the most desperate manhunt in history... But his fate lay in the hands of a young and vulnerable English woman, whose loyalty, if swayed, would assure his freedom—and win the war for the Nazis...“

Olen Steinhauer, The Tourist

Milo Weaver has tried to leave his old life of secrets and lies behind by giving up his job as a “tourist” for the CIA―an undercover agent with no home, no identity. Now he’s working a desk at the agency’s New York headquarters. But when the arrest of a long-sought-after assassin sets off an investigation into a colleague, exposing new layers of intrigue in his old cases, he has no choice but to go back undercover and find out who’s been behind it all from the very beginning.

Graham Greene, Our Man in Havana

MI6’s man in Havana is Wormold, a former vacuum-cleaner salesman turned reluctant secret agent out of economic necessity. To keep his job, he files bogus reports based on Charles Lamb’s Tales from Shakespeare and dreams up military installations from vacuum-cleaner designs. Then his stories start coming disturbingly true...

Erskine Childers, The Riddle of the Sands

The classic spy novel by Erskine Childers, credited as the first work of modern espionage fiction. Set in pre-World War I Europe, two British subject, Carruthers and Davies, uncover secret German activity suggesting a prelude to war.

Tom Bradby, Secret Service

What if your next national leader was secretly a Russian spy? Kate Henderson is a high-ranking officer of England's MI6—and a recent undercover operation has revealed explosive intel. Russia has infiltrated the upper levels of UK politics by co-opting a senior politician. To make matters worse, there may be a mole moving through the halls of England's Secret Intelligence Service. With an election looming, Kate is in a race to expose the double agents and save those she holds dear. But who can be trusted? Acclaimed British author and journalist Tom Bradby excels at crafting pulse-pounding narratives set against the backdrop of true-life events. In Secret Service, the author delivers a tense and timely spy thriller where the greatest threat comes from within.

James Grady, Condor: The Short Takes

In this novella, the iconic CIA operative Condor is back in a series of new adventures. New York Times-bestselling author James Grady brings back his famous spy but in a surprising setting. Six Days of the Condor was popular during the paranoid era of the 1970s as Condor was a spy in his prime who ruthlessly and heroically deals with a conspiracy within the United States government. In Condor: The Short Takes, Grady presents an aged Condor who finds himself in a modern setting and with 21st century threats. The original framework is present but the stories are far more intimate and less straightforward. Condor finds himself involved in cyber threats and the 9/11 aftermath; perhaps an even bigger scandal than the Cold War. The master of intrigue brings you six stories that are sure to leave you on the edge of your seat; can Condor soar over the obstacles or will he falter and fall? This is perfect for any fans of the hit original series, Condor!

John Lawton, A Little White Death

A social and sexual revolution was had throughout most of the world during the 1960s, and England was no exception. John Lawton's novel implants remnants of this revolution into the third book of his Inspector Troy series. This novel follows Inspector Troy—despite many career set-backs—as he rises to the head of CID at Scotland Yard. However, before the chief detective can celebrate, he finds himself deep into a scandal reminiscent of the Profumo affair. Troy becomes entangled in a web as he attempts to battle illness, police politics, and the Establishment. He must focus on protecting those affected by the aftermath of the scandal and discover who murdered the two key players in the scandal.

Brian Freemantle, Charlie M

Charlie Muffin came into the British secret service in the early 1950s, when the desperate government was in search of more foot soldiers in the impending Cold War. They decided to look into the middle class for the first time and found what they were looking for in Charlie. Even though he is a working-class, state-educated man from Manchester, Charlie has been one of the most effective agents of the secret service. However, times are changing as Cambridge and Oxford graduates are ready to take over again. They have decided it's time to sacrifice Charlie, but he won't go down easy. This exhilarating novel of double-crossing is excellent for fans of le Carre or Deighton!

Patricia Wentworth, Dead or Alive

In this suspenseful tale by British crime author Patricia Wentworth, Meg O'Hara's husband Robin disappears on the day she plans to divorce him. A year after the presumed body of her dead husband is found, someone breaks into her apartment to leave a shocking message. Now Meg is left to uncover if her husband is dead or alive. As more cryptic messages appear, Meg is certain that someone—maybe even her husband—is trying to get to her...but no one takes her seriously. Well, except for Bill Coverdale. For years Bill has been deeply in love with Meg, so he sets out to get to the bottom of things. Together, they find themselves embroiled in blackmail, forgery, and murder all while facing an unstoppable criminal mastermind.

John Altman, A Game of Spies

In preparation of Germany's invasion of France, England needs to gather classified information on Germany...and there's only one highly skilled spy who can get the job done: Agent William Hobbs. During the bleak winter of 1940, Hobbs meets the naive Eva Bernhardt and seduces her into working for the British secret service. Smitten with Agent Hobbs and disenchanted by Hitler, Eva agrees to seek information from the Führer’s inner circle. As Hobbs and Eva plunge into the world of espionage, intrigue, and deception, Eva quickly transforms into a tough and cynical operative, using her feminine guile and manipulative skills to obtain crucial knowledge. A Game of Spies is a thrilling tale with an even more electrifying conclusion as Eva holds her future, and the future of the entire war, in her hands.

John Lawton, Then We Take Berlin

Meet Joe Wilderness, orphaned by World War II - and certain that this fact will allow him to operate outside of society's bounds and rules for the rest of his life. But when he gets recruited into MI6, he discovers a fast-paced life in Berlin that will force him to go to extremes to accomplish his missions. This stylish thriller is a beloved read, best for fans of Eric Ambler.

Helen MacInnes, The Salzburg Connection

MacInnes may be best known for her first novel, Above Suspicion, but in The Salzburg Connection, written over 20 years later, she had become an expert in espionage beyond compare. In this spy vs spy vs lawyer tale, Richard Bryant, British agent, is one of the few who knows about a secret cache of Nazi information. When he’s found dead, an American lawyer gets caught up in the quest to find the information, before it gets in the wrong hands.

Gayle Lynds, Masquerade

Lynds became popular thanks to a collaborative series with Robert Ludlum, Covert-One, but she had been honing her craft long before The Altman Code’s debut. Like Jason Bourne, Liz Sansborough wakes up one morning to discover that she no longer remembers her life as a CIA agent. Luckily, her lover, Gordon, is there to explain what she has forgotten. But can Gordon–or the world–be trusted? There’s an international assassin after Liz, and she’ll need to figure out whom she can trust quickly.

Chris Pavone, The Travelers

A more recent addition, but one worthy of the list, The Travelers by Chris Pavone sees travel writer Will Rhodes is on assignment for Travelers magazine in the wine region of Argentina when a beautiful woman makes him an offer he can’t refuse. Drawn into a tangled web of international intrigue – like so many thriller protagonists before him – this is a standout in a modern world of throwaway poolside paperbacks.

Daily inspiration. Discover more photos at http://justforbooks.tumblr.com

[giveamadeuschohisownmovie]

Now that I’ve had more time to think about Stranger Things season 3, here are my thoughts:

1) It’s obvious that the Duffer brothers wanted Joyce and Hopper to be their version of Indiana Jones/Marion Ravenwood. The thing is...they may have emphasized the characters’ bickering a bit too much. Indy and Marion did argue, and Marion even punched Indy, but there were also several moments where they got to just talk and enjoy each others’ company. It felt like there were more moments with Joyce and Hopper bickering with each other compared to the moments where they enjoy each others’ company. 

2) I lowkey hated that the Soviets kept getting called “the Russians”. Yeah, they are Russian, but the Soviet Union was more than just Russia. Also, why were they involved!? I don’t understand. They suddenly know about the Upside Down and they want to open it...because...they’re evil? The Soviets had no clear motivation behind their goal of opening the gate to the Upside Down, they were just stock 1980s non-American bad guys. 

3) It seems like the writers lost track of why people liked the show’s romances in the first place. Joyce and Hopper were reduced to a bickering duo. Mike and Eleven were treated like a normal teenage couple, which didn’t make sense with how they were written previous seasons. Jonathan and Nancy were mostly fine but it didn’t feel like they grew as a couple. Max and Lucas’s relationship was almost non-existent which was strange since they were paired up last season. 

4) Hot take: Steve Harrington became a joke this season. I actually liked his development in seasons 1 and 2, going from the asshole popular guy to more of a heroic figure. But in season 3, he was written like a doofus. I don’t mind softening the character up, making him more likable, but it felt like this change came at the cost of Steve’s previous character development. It’s like, seasons 1 and 2 took him seriously, then season 3 said fuck it, he’s our funny guy now.

5) For the rest of the Scoops Troops plotline, I will say that I didn’t mind Dustin splitting off from the other kids this season. It was cool to see him on his own. I like Robin, she was cool. Erica, though, I wasn’t too fond of. Maybe this is just me but I thought she was annoying. 

6) The Stranger Things fandom loves Will Byers so much but he’s yet to actually be written as a character. He’s more of a walking plot device, that’s his role in all three seasons. He’s the person that needs to be rescued in season 1, he spends all of season 2 being possessed by the Mind Flayer, and he’s the Mind Flayer alarm in season 3. This is the main reason why I don’t get Will’s popularity, he’s not really written as a “character”. The closest to a character arc he’s gotten was him destroying his fort, which was one scene out of 8 episodes. 

7) Suzie is awesome but I thought the transition into the Never-Ending Story duet was sloppy. I can see why people think Suzie and Dustin are responsible for Hopper’s “death”.

8) Speaking of Hopper’s “death”...yeah, no, I don’t buy it. He’s in the Upside Down. I don’t think he’s the American since that’s too obvious of a twist but I do think he’s alive. 

9) Karen Wheeler deciding to not cheat on her husband was a damn good moment and I wish people talked about it more.

10) I still hate Billy Hargrove but I’ll admit, he did go out like a boss. Still, I wish they didn’t try to redeem him. I would’ve been fine with Billy standing up to the Mind Flayer as one final “fuck you”. Yes, it’s cool that he went out protecting El, but I missed the asshole Billy from season 2. He’s a character that I love to hate.

I have more thoughts but this post will be too long if I go into them. Overall, I give this season a letter grade of B. It’s good but not great. For comparison, I gave season 1 and 2 a letter grade of A. 

[aion-rsa]

The 20 Best Horror Movies on Netflix UK – Scary Films to Watch Right Now

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Netflix is an ever-changing, constantly growing treasure trove of hidden gems and secret delights (here’s everything new on Netflix UK this month). Sometimes, a teeny bit too secret though.

Who hasn’t sat down to watch a horror movie and found themselves scrolling endlessly, either not being able to find something they’re in the mood for, or not really knowing what half the titles are, or if they’re any good?

We’ve scoured the full current catalogue available to watch in the UK now and picked out the best scary movies. It’s a mix of classic and new, and a range of slashers, horror-coms, mumblegore, monster movies and more to hopefully scratch that itch with ease.

We’ll keep this updated as and when titles drop in and out of the service.

Hereditary (2018)

If you haven’t seen this slice of trauma, the feature debut of Ari Aster, you probably should. If you have seen it, you probably won’t want to again. Toni Collette stars as a woman whose controlling mother has just passed away setting of a series of horrible events. Aster says the film was partly inspired by his own sense of his family being cursed – this a movie absolutely drenched in grief and pain with astonishing performances all round. It’s tough going, but it’s a masterpiece. Read our review.

The Platform (2019)

This existential Spanish horror made a splash at the start of lockdown with it’s tale of prisoner trapped in an enormous vertical prison with a platform at it’s centre which delivers food to the inmate floor by floor starting at the top, so that each floor only gets what the floor above has left over. It’s political, allegorical, it’s clever and it’s very violent.

The Endless (2017)

Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead’s gorgeous sci-fi horror stars the two as brother who escaped from a cult ten years ago and are drawn back in in search of answers when a strange videotape arrives. This is their third movie after Resolution and Spring and the two are only growing in strength as directors – The Endless is rammed with indelible imagery and deeply unsettling moments within a plot that is a joy to unpick.

What Keeps You Alive (2018)

Couple Jackie and Jules head to a remote woodland cabin to celebrate their first wedding anniversary but things go bad… Ok this sounds like the most generic slasher in the world but trust us it’s not. Twists hit early on (that we’d hate to spoil) and the tension ramps up fast in a very effective cat and mouse chase with a female bent. This comes from Colin Minihan who made Grave Encounters – this isn’t similar but both have a disorientating sense of place. Read our review.

Orphan (2009)

Released during the heyday of Dark Castle’s mid-budget horror splurge, Orphan is one of those genre films with an absolutely ludicrous (and therefore thoroughly enjoyable) twist, which we will not spoil for you. Peter Sarsgaard and Vera Farmiga star as a couple mourning the loss of their baby, who decided to adopt a little Russian girl called Esther from the local orphanage. Things quickly start to go very, very wrong as the pair start to suspect that wee Esther – who insists on dressing like a spooky doll – isn’t all she appears to be. Check out our review.

Insidious (2010)

The many sequels may have yielded diminishing returns but the first of this franchise, about a couple (Patrick Wilson and Rose Byrne) whose comatose son appeared to be trapped in another realm by a evil spirit, is a very effective chiller. Horror genius James Wan directs, and the first half of this movie at least is pretty much guaranteed to make you jump out of your skin.

Annihilation (2018)

An all star cast including Natalie Portman, Jennifer Jason Leigh and Tessa Thompson, plus the quality direction of Alex Garland wasn’t enough to secure this horror sci-fi based on Jeff Vandermeer’s novel a theatrical release in the UK. Nevermind, that just means you can watch it for free on Netflix. Portman joins a crew of women exploring the mysterious Area X where he husband ventured some time before and came back changed. It’s a weird, unfamiliar landscape of beautiful flora and terrifying fauna defying explanation until the strange, indelible finale (not sure what it means? Have a read of this explainer). And you can check out our review, too if you like.

Daybreakers (2009)

You’ll get a little bit of everything with this Spierig Brothers curio. It was the film that really got the directing team noticed and it’s not hard to see why. Set in a dystopian world where basically everyone has been turned into a vampire, one corporation thinks it’d be a bloody (sorry) good idea to track down all the surviving humans and…well, basically milk them. Ethan Hawke stars as a vampire haematologist who starts to think there might be another way for this story to go after he’s collared by a former vampire (Willem Dafoe), who can cure everyone. (Living) dead good. Check out our review.

The Bar (2017)

Slightly bonkers Spanish horror thriller which sees a bunch of strangers stuck in a busy Madrid cafe when snipers begin shooting anyone who tries to leave. Confusion and personality clashes abound in this economical single location chiller with a dark sense of human as the inhabitants slowly discover what’s going on, who’s responsible and try to work out if and how they will survive.

Read more

TV

Netflix UK: What’s New in April 2020?

By Kirsten Howard

TV

21 underappreciated films to watch on Netflix UK

By Paul Bradshaw and 2 others

The Cabin in the Woods (2012)

Drew Goddard and Joss Whedon’s love/hate letter to the horror genre felt like something of a game changer when it finally arrived (it was shelved for several years because of financial issue with original distributor MGM). Chris Hemsworth and Haley Bennett star in a double layer story about ordinary kids vacationing in a woodland cabin, with Bradley Whitford and Richard Jenkins as very particular kinds of bureaucrats up to something in the background. No spoilers, just watch. Here’s our review.

Cargo (2017)

Martin Freeman stars in this Netflix original developed from a short directed by Ben Howling and Yolanda Ramke. Set in the Australian outback, Freeman is a father trying to find someone to protect his child in the middle of a zombie apocalypse. More wistful and emotional than that sounds on paper, there’s a fascinating subplot about an Aboriginal girl mourning her father and the final set piece is unforgettable. Check out our review.

Lifeforce (1985)

A Cannon Films classic directed by late Texas Chain Saw legend Tobe Hooper, people are still discovering the ’80s madness that is Lifeforce. Originally entitled Space Vampires, it’s exactly what you’d expect, and so much more. Nude, energy sucking bat creatures are brought back to Earth after an interstellar mission finds a gaggle of them lying dormant in Halley’s Comet, and it all goes very badly for the planet. You can expect a scenery-chewing Patrick Stewart to pop up in between the tits and gore. Not literally! Although, sometimes literally.

Creep (2014)

No, not the one set on the tube, this ‘mumblegore’ horror is far weirder than that. Director Patrice Brice plays Aaron, a videographer hired by Mark Duplass’s Josef to make a video for his kid to watch after he’s died of a terminal illness. Or does he? Playing on the power of politeness and the awkwardness of male relationships this is a highly original, itchily uncomfortable watch. Creep 2 is also on Netflix, and also good!

Read more

TV

17 of the best TV series on Netflix UK

By Louisa Mellor

TV

Underappreciated comedy movies on Netflix UK to watch now

By Mark Harrison and 1 other

Hush (2016)

Another smart sensory-based horror, this time from Oculus and Doctor Sleep man Mike Flanagan. This home invasioner sees deaf writer Maddie (Kate Siegel) attacked in her woodland retreat by a masked stranger. He uses her inability to hear to sneak around and terrorise her, but she has tricks of her own up her sleeve. Check out our review.

The Invitation (2015)

Karyn Kusama (Jennifer’s Body, Destroyer) just keeps knocking it out of the park (and she’s recently been attached to a Dracula movie from Blumhouse Productions), and with The Invitation she continued to secure her place as one of the best directors around. Here, Will (Logan Marshall-Green) and his girlfriend go to a party held by his formerly suicidal ex-wife, and discover that she seems to be happier than she ever was, but Will starts to suspect that rather than healthily coping with her mental illness, she may well have joined a doomsday cult instead, and be planning to kill them all. Paranoia and tension are at the max in this bad boy. Here’s our review.

Little Evil (2017)

Comedy horror from Eli Craig who made the wonderful Tucker and Dale Vs Evil. This time he’s playing on creepy kid tropes, particular those from The Omen movies. Adam Scott plays a man who discovers his new wife’s (Evangeline Lilly) son might actually be the anti-christ. And because it’s Eli Craig, of course it’s funny and very good natured as well as playing with the genre.

Gerald’s Game (2017)

Another Mike Flanagan offering here – what can we say? he’s damn good! – as Jessie (a spectacular Carla Guigino) and her husband Gerald drive to a remote house to try and spice up their marriage with a bit of gentle BDSM. One problem: Jessie is not into it. At all. Two problems: Gerald carks it, leaving her tied up with only her cunning to help her free herself from her prone, handcuffed predicament. Three problems: a mythical, supernatural killer may be in the house. Stephen King, you’ve done it again. Read our review.

Ravenous (2017)

Unusual Canadian zombie movie (in French) which sees remaining stragglers after an outbreak of the infected band together in disparate groups travelling to find other survivors. Ravenous sets up its infected as worshipping a sort of new religion of found items (chairs, TVs etc.) making comment on the zombification of society. It’s also funny and quite scary, so there’s that.

Veronica (2017)

Loosely based on a true story, Veronica is set in Madrid in 1991 and follows a young woman who messes with a Ouija board who thinks she’s accidentally summoned an evil spirit. Director by Paco Plaza, one of the two directors behind [REC], the movie gained minor notoriety when it first landed on Netflix because of a few viewers finding it overly scary. It’s true there are some seriously creepy bits (but you’ll be fine!).

The Perfection (2018)

Get Out‘s Allison Williams and Dear White People‘s Logan Browning star in this twisty, trashy but nonetheless enjoyable tale of two musical prodigies hothoused at a mysterious academy. It’s lurid and lavish (and it’s got some fairly dodgy sexual politics, we’d warn you) but great lead performances and a tricksy three act structure that keeps you guessing, make this an entertaining and unusual Friday night pick. Read our review.

Want more horror? Here’s our list of 81 genuinely creepy horror movies. Here are some horror movies it’s safe to watch with your kids. And here are some underappreciated Scream-inspired horror movies of the 90s.

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[michelles-garden-of-evil]

Episode 24 Review: Top 5 Reasons Why the Holly Portrait Subplot Doesn’t Work

Welcome back to Maljardin, where the melodramatic master Jean Paul Desmond is God and the Devil is a snarky talking portrait.

Speaking of portraits, today we will be looking at the subplot about Tim’s portrait of “Erica” (or, rather, of Holly) and the main things that are wrong with it. This subplot is, in my opinion, the worst in the Maljardin arc and I’ve been holding off on writing a detailed explanation of why I feel that way until my review of this episode, which mostly centers around the damned Holly portrait.

The portrait, circa Episode 18. There aren’t any good shots of it from Episode 24, so I had to settle for this one.

To recap: After the death of Erica Desmond, her husband Jean Paul hired Tim Stanton, a young artist in debt to the mob, to paint a portrait of her. Erica being both dead and encased in a cryonics capsule which both Jean Paul and THE DEVIL JACQUES ELOI DES MONDES refuse to open, Tim must instead use young heiress Holly Marshall as his model until Erica comes back to life as Jacques promised that she would.

Sound like a reasonable plan? No? I didn’t think so, either, and now I shall explain why. Here are the top five reasons why I think this subplot is stupid:

#5: Holly neither looks like Erica, nor knows what Erica looked like.

This screencap is actually from Episode 13, but I’m including it because it’s relevant.

I sometimes wonder if this criticism is unfair, because the only viewers up to this point in the show’s broadcast history who would have seen Erica were the viewers of Episodes 1, 2 (where Tim shows Alison his sketch of her), and 4. In the first scene of Episode 4, the Cryonics Society froze her corpse in the cryonics capsule, meaning that anyone who started watching after that scene would not have seen her face before Tim got his assignment from Jean Paul. Even so, neither Erica resembled Holly, which makes it absurd for her to sit for it. Why not have Alison pose instead when she’s not working? After all, they are sisters and they share a strong family resemblance according to the original pilot script. Holly barely resembles either Erica beyond being pretty.

Tim’s sketch of Erica from Episode 2, with a screencap of Alison from Episode 17 for comparison. With its upturned nose and full lips, the sketch is clearly intended to resemble Dawn Greenhalgh (Alison) and not Sylvia Feigel (Holly).

Because Holly hardly looks a thing like her, Tim complains in Episode 13 that he “can’t use her for anything but position and play of light.” In spite of this, later episodes including Episode 24 show that he has painted a sort of semi-abstraction of Holly’s face, with features about halfway between those of Holly and those of Erica. This means that he’s only making more work for himself for when Jacques brings Erica back to life--if he brings her back to life--because he will need to paint over the semi-abstraction with Erica’s face. In short, he’s wasting his time.

Besides, it’s unclear why Holly doesn’t know what Erica looked like if Erica was a very famous actress and she and her husband were stalked by the paparazzi until they escaped to Maljardin (as previous episodes have indicated). Surely she would have seen a photo of Erica in the newspaper at some point, or her face on the poster for one of her plays, or something. I realize that’s not the same as seeing someone in real life, but it’s just odd that she doesn’t know.

  #4: Tim doesn’t have even a photo of Erica with him and so has to rely mostly on memory.

He even says so in Episode 13: “I have to depend on my memory of your wife and that sketch I made of her at the café,” he tells Jean Paul (or, rather, Jacques while he is possessing him). As we saw in that episode, opening the cryonics capsule and posing Erica’s thawed-out corpse for Tim is too devilish even for Jacques, so the starving artist is left with a dilemma. Jean Paul, being a fancy rich guy of noble descent, naturally assumes that any criticisms of his assignment is just a case of beggars trying to be choosers and ignores them; in his mind, he did him a favor by paying his debts and taking him to his island, so Tim should obey his every whim without question. But the truth is that Jean Paul has no understanding of how artists work, nor why Tim needs the real Erica to complete the painting, and he may not even understand the creative process behind painting a portrait.

This could make for interesting social commentary if the writers had had Tim take a good hard look at the situation and realize that Jean Paul is not just imprisoning him on the island but flat-out exploiting him. They could have made his subplot about class conflict, the establishment’s lack of empathy towards creative types, or both. However, they choose not to use the subplot for such commentary, instead going in a much more conventional direction.

#3: The Holly portrait is mostly used to drive a clichéd romantic subplot.

Two people meet and hate each other at first sight--or at least pretend to--although they are clearly attracted to each other. They argue, bicker, treat each other indifferently at best and abuse each other at worst, until one day they realize that they have fallen in love. When was the first time you read or saw this story? Do you even remember the first time? Most likely you don’t, because the exact same plot has been used and reused so many times since Shakespeare’s Much Ado about Nothing premiered that Western media is saturated with it. It’s not a bad plot in and of itself, but it’s been overused so much that you can usually see it coming from a mile away. When Tim and Holly first bickered over her being too young to order booze, I predicted that they were setting up a romance between them. There are many signs: Tim confesses to Vangie that he feels sorry for Holly, Elizabeth suspects that he’s hitting on her, and, while she claims to dislike them both, Holly seems slightly less irritated by Tim than by her former captor, Matt Dawson. Ian Martin was clearly setting up a romance between the heiress and the artist, who are gradually bickering less and less: a telling sign that they are getting closer to falling in love.

As creepy as it is and as much as I don’t want them to get together, I actually find the Matt/Holly subplot more interesting to watch than Tim/Holly. Danny Horn of Dark Shadows Every Day may have written about how “groovy priest attracted to the beautiful young girl that he wants to take care of” is an old soap cliché, but I’ve seen it done far less often, which I suspect has something to do with all the church scandals in the past twenty years. The Belligerent Sexual Tension plot, on the other hand, is still very popular, so it feels less fresh to me than Matt and Holly’s subplot. (That doesn’t mean that I don’t still think he should leave her alone. Personally, I ship Reverend Dawson with his right hand and I think they ought to stay together.)

#2: The use of the Holly portrait on the show doesn’t connect to the show’s use of portraits for symbolism.

This one is really nitpicky and based mostly on my personal interpretation, but bear with me. Although far more complex than the Dark Shadows ripoff that many critics reduce it to, Strange Paradise nevertheless relied on many of the same tropes and themes, including the way its writers used portraits. On Dark Shadows, the writers often used a trope that Cousin Barnabas of the Collinsport Historical Society blog calls the “Portrait as Id,” meaning the use of paintings to symbolize and illustrate the truth about whatever character they represented. We see this in Strange Paradise as well with the portrait of Jacques, who tells Jean Paul that he is “the man you are, the man you might have been,” implying that the ostensibly good Jean Paul is not so different from his evil ancestor. Later on after Robert Costello becomes producer and the show becomes more like Dark Shadows, we’ll meet another character whose portrait does not turn out as intended because of the evil in said character’s heart, which also connects to this idea of portraits reflecting hidden reality. Although the conjure doll also resembles and represents Jacques, he does not generally use it to communicate with Jean Paul the way he does with the portrait. This makes sense, given that the doll and silver pin ended his life, while the portrait was painted at some point while he was alive.

In contrast to the portraits mentioned above, Holly’s portrait does not convey any additional information about either her or Erica. Because it represents the late Mrs. Desmond in name only, the Holly portrait says nothing about Erica’s id, her personality, or the state of her soul. It doesn’t even say very much about Holly. Instead, it’s mostly just used as an excuse to force Holly and Tim to interact with each other and bicker until they can finally admit that they’re in love.

#1: It goes (almost) nowhere.

And when it does finally go somewhere, it’s only relevant for a few episodes before it’s forgotten about. Holly’s participation in the portrait sittings soon becomes completely irrelevant, much like so many of the show’s early subplots which Late Maljardin’s headwriter Cornelius Crane chose to ignore. I suspect that the Holly portrait would have eventually became more significant in the main plot had Martin not been fired around Week 9. We may never know how it would have become so, nor how significant it would have become in his original outline. Who knows? Perhaps Martin would have crafted a shocking plot twist involving Holly that justified its existence. Perhaps he would have connected the portrait and its eventual fate somehow to the nightmare she had about Tarasca, having it reveal some terrifying truth about Maljardin’s past. At the very least, he might have used it to cement the romance between Tim and Holly. But instead the subplot ends with little payoff.

Tim on his subplot.

Still, despite the focus on the Holly portrait, this episode isn’t entirely a waste. Raxl saves it with her pleas to the Serpent and her attempt to contact the Conjure Woman, in all her scenery-chewing, melodramatic glory. There’s also a scene where Holly pressures her to read the two Tarot cards--the King of Swords (whom Matt identifies as Jean Paul) and the Queen of Cups (whom he interprets as Holly)--that she dropped on the floor earlier in the scene “just for kicks,” and she refuses, shouting “No!” repeatedly. If you love Raxl like I do, you’ll enjoy her scenes. They’re not Best of Raxl material, but they’re fun.

So long until my next review, which will cover Episode 25, followed by Week 5′s long overdue Bad Subtitle Special. I know that this is a change of pace from my usual recap-style reviews, but I really wanted to go into more detail about why I don’t like Tim’s subplot. I hope you enjoyed this post and I’ll see you again soon.

Coming up next: Elizabeth continues her attempted seduction of Jean Paul as we explore inter-generational conflict on Maljardin.

{ <- Previous: Episode 23   ||   Next: Episode 25 -> }

[theparanormalperiodical]

Is Stephen King's IT Based On A True Story? The 7 Real Life Stories of Evil Clowns

With autumn just around the corner, that can only mean one thing: Halloween season is finally upon us!

But you can snort your pumpkin spices and layer your scarves all you want. There’s only one thing I am in anticipation for this autumn.

It’s the horror flicks.

Every October, a chaotic mix of horror films hit the cinemas, leaving us paranormal fanatics spoilt for choice.

But only when you cut out the rushed screen time plays that were written purely to coincide with the most wonderful time of the year, that is.

I’m not here to talk about crap, however.

I’m not here to bitch about clunky jumpscares, and the movies with more holes in a plot than in your prep school tights (“Mum, they’re fine!”).

I’m here to talk about IT Chapter 2.

The IT sequel – alongside Stephen King’s other horror hits – is set to complete one of the cinema phenomenons of this decade, and its influence on pop culture is just one echo of the incredible story the movies tell.

If you’ve been trapped in the sewers with Pennywise for the last 27 years, let alone the Clown Craze that’s followed us in and out of cinemas, here’s a quick rundown of the book/film:

A rag-tag group of misfits start noticing odd patterns in their small town. Namely, kids start to go missing. And this tends to happen roughly every 30 years, just like clockwork. Cue some freaky shenanigans evoked by an evil entity who is represented by an image of a clown/whatever you fear, and here we are.

Now, the book/films sits on this 27-years rule. It’s set between when they were young, and when they were several decades older and once again face It.

We last see It half kinda dying (but if there’s a sequel y’all know that’s BS) in the midst of the 1980s. And the new film brings us screeching back to the phenomenon that is once again haunting Derry. 

Like I said – and as you will well remember – when the last flick came out, there was a Clown Craze. There was this cultural obsession, even a criminal wave using clown masks and attire to scare the innocent bypassers. Viral videos were scored with Pennywise-esque thumbnails.

(I’m pretty sure I even went a club night that was clown themed…)

So, it got me thinking: have evil clowns ever actually existed? Has anything ever emulated the character that titled one of Stephen King’s most famous books?

Unfortunately – in more than one case – the answer is yes.

Why does the answer have to be ‘yes’.

In today’s edition of the Paranormal Periodical we are going to be discussing why we all hate clowns, the cases of actual evil clowns, and urban legends that echo these cases.

Let’s get spooky.

Why are we so afraid of clowns?

I’m pretty sure that no one in the history of ever has liked clowns. In fact, that’s actually a key part of the book.

Pennywise supposedly thinks children love clowns, and that it will entice them so he can take them away for his feeding purposes.

And believe it or not, Stephen King wasn’t the first guy to write an evil clown into literature.

Clourophobia – or the fear of clowns – is a common phobia, and has been played upon since the 19th century by the king of horror himself, Edgar Allan Poe.

And only a decade before King published It in the 1970s, several mock comic books hit the stores with ‘Evil Clown’ blaring across the cover. ‘Frenchy the Clown’ as he was known might not be the malovalent entity that is core to King’s novel, but he does echo the dark themes we pick so easily out with clowns.

Even academics have outlined our unease when it comes to these supposedly comical figures.

The University of Sheffield did a study which confirmed this universal fear of clowns today.

In particular, they deduced that children don’t like clowns as they are unknowable. The thick layers of makeup, the potential threat that could be disguised by jokes and silly clothing.

And why wouldn’t they be?

*Ok, this has nothing to do with like spooky shit but can I just air my thoughts right why and how do clowns exist now like surely we teach kids not to talk to strangers who act weird and you don’t know and that’s literally the purpose of clowns and like yall can say I’m a trigger libtard whatever but a lot of the basis to clown makeup must be based on blackface look at the lips and the hair or even trying to mock disabled people by how they act*

Even academic figures lie Wolfgang M. Zucker take this point further. Zucker claims there are strong similarities between clown figures and the cultural depiction of demons and other terrifying creatures.

Deathly white faces, the freakish features.

This is what makes Pennywise the Dancing Clown such a standout character.

And it’s also what makes the following real-life stories of evil clowns quite so distressing.

Here are the 7 cases of Evil Clowns that you have to hear about:

This might be the Paranormal Periodical, but there is nothing supernatural here. And its probably the lack of ghost-based legend that makes these evil clowns so like Stephen king’s iconic character.

And we start with probably the most horrific case: John Wayne Gacy, aka Pogo or Patches the Clown.

From 1972 to 1978, John Wayne Gacy murdered, tortured, and raped over 30 underage and young adult men. Most of the bodies were buried around his home, and some were even disposed in a nearby river.

He even made plans to fill the crawlspace in his home – where he had crammed over 20 corpses – with concrete and essentially make a new mass grave on top of it.

This twisted and depressing tale carries further into the innocent image his community impressed upon him.

Gacy frequently performed as his clown alter-egos at local parties, charity events, and at children’s hospitals. Even outside of this, he met a First Lady, was active in politics, and was even awarded the title of Precinct Captain for his services to the community.

And if all this wasn’t terrible enough, the reasoning behind his clowning days further darken his tale:

Gacy claims his clown alter-ego allowed him to regress into his childhood which was fraught with emotional and physical abused from his father.

And so, the ‘Killer Clown’ label has been bestowed upon this case.

Interested in hearing more? Check out the full story here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Wayne_Gacy

Our next evil clown doesn’t stray too far from the predatory behaviour of John Wayne Gacy.

The man behind Klutzo The Clown – A. Paul Carlock – was charged with the possession of child pornography and of child molestation back in 2007.

Like Gacy, he was a force within the community, working as a police officer and a volunteer for the Big Brothers/Big Sisters scheme. It was even noted when he was alive that he had a fondness for children.

In fact, he was categorised as a ‘Christian clown’ before the accusations were brought to light.

He was hired as a police officer in 1973, yet they only found evidence (pictures on his laptop when he returned from an overseas trip) in 2007.

Upon finding the evidence of his predatory and paedophilic behaviour, he immediately began to show signs of illness, dying 39 days after his arrest. And its for this reason that his case is seen in a different light to mine.

The disgusting details tend to be overlooked as his death brought in a lawsuit regarding whether he was neglected and mistreated after his arrest.

Following on from this, we have Martin Evanick.

His clown alter ego, Vlad, certainly expressed a killer-clown vibe synonymous with Pennywise, but it seems his intentions didn’t actually stray to far from the character he sought to emulate.

This metal-band drummer pleaded guilty in 2013 to creating child pornography. He was also found prior to this to be a child molester and rapist.

Another clown to fit the bill of evil is actually a relatively recent case.

Back in 1990, a woman opened the door to a clown who promptly handed her balloons and a floral gift.

The clown then proceeded to shoot her, leaving her for dead.

For 27 years, there was no answer for this bizarre and deadly attack.

Well, until now, that is. Sheila Keen was charged with first-degree murder. She married the husband of the victim, and the later developed DNA evidence provided the key to the case.

Unfortunately, evil clowns don’t always act alone.

And it’s these next cases that vouch for this.

Across many countries in the last few years we have witnessed random groups of people dressed as clowns or donning clown masks who chase, harass, and even attack innocent people seemingly in broad daylight.

One of the most documented cases of this is actually from France. Back in 2014, the French were apparently terrorised by a group of clowns who physically attacked anyone who just so happened to get in their way.

One of these clowns was arrested for beating a pedestrian with an iron bar whilst clad in a clown costume.

A student even had a severe cut to his hand whilst defending themselves from a clown wielding a axe, and Schoolchildren were eve chased down the street by a clown following close behind with a chainsaw.

Shit bro.

But it was only in 2016 that the phenomenon was fully realised.

The 2016 Clown Sightings – which even feature on Wikipedia, now – summarise the frequent reports of people disguised as evil clowns.

However, as this is evidently a broad case, we cannot pinpoint the extent or nature of the ‘evil’.

For some it appears a practical joke, possibly even playing on the build up to the 2017 release of IT.

But the original cases have actually been traced back to 2013, from which a creepy clown was spotted in Northhampton. It was eventually found out to have been created by filmmakers to drive up traffic and fame for their Facebook page. In fact, they used the ‘sightings’ to evoke the fame they sought.

From scary clown pranks littering Youtube, to urban legends feeding on upvotes from Reddit, it appears it has not been grouped as an ‘evil’ or ‘criminal’ set of occurrences.

Even on October 25, news outlets in the US reported on threats of a potential ‘purge-like’ event carried out by clowns on Halloween. The only attack resembling this – which I assume was merely a hoax – was an attack carried out by 20 people in clown masks on a family in Florida.

No arrests were made.

There were many cases in the UK, but these only amounted to petty crimes, threats, and scaring people passing by.

But the widespread nature of it certainly confirms it as a phenomenon. 80 percent of US states witnessed this phenomenon, and the Wikipedia page is crawling with country-by-country listings of ‘killer-clown’ cases.

Do you remember the Clown Craze?

And do you have a personal tale to share about any creepy ass clowns?

Make sure you let me know!

[chiseler]

“You Devilish Mummy!”: Mexican Horror in America, 1958-1963

Rosa Arenas

For some people, Cinqo de Mayo means a nacho party platter, a cooler full of Corona, plastic sombreros and a pinata filled with stale butterscotch discs. For a few of us, though, Cinqo de Mayo means one thing and one thing only: Aztec mummies. The sad part of it is that it might actually make much more sense than the nachos.

After Tod Browning and his crew left the set at the end of the shooting day while working on 1931’s Dracula, they were replaced by director George Melford and a Mexican cast and crew. Using the same sets, the same cameras, and a translated version of the script, they worked all night to shoot the Spanish-language version of the film. Those who have seen both tend to agree that the Spanish version is the superior of the two. The cinematography is more vibrant and less stage-bound than the Browning version, the atmosphere is richer (possibly because they were shooting at night), and most important of all, the Mexican Dracula (Carlos Villar) smolders with a sexual energy and menace Bela Lugosi, great as he is, lacks.

Prior to the mid-’50s, most American audiences would probably be surprised to learn that Mexico even had its own film industry. That’s when low-budget producers from Sam Arkoff on down recognized the economic advantages of snapping up the US distribution rights to existing foreign genre pictures. It made perfect sense. You didn’t need to hire any directors or cameramen or gaffers. There were no actor hissy fits to smooth over. All you needed to do was dub in some English dialogue that more or less made sense, fit the action on the screen, and approximately matched the actors’ lip movements. Or maybe not, whatever. Sometimes you might want to bring in an editor to try and rearrange a few scenes so the picture and dialogue’ll make more sense to the kids at the drive-in, but even that wasn’t always necessary. Come up with a snappy English title, Americanize some of the actors’ names, and you’re good to go. The important thing is these films could be picked up for a song, and minus a few minor expenses everything they brought in was gravy.

Suddenly US theaters were full of sci-fi, horror, and westerns from Italy, Japan, Spain, and yes indeed, Mexico. Low-budget distributor K. Gordon Murray quickly established himself as the king of marketing Mexican horror cheapies to American audiences, handling films like The Man and the Monster, The Brainiac, Curse of the Doll People, and a whole lotta movies with “Aztec Mummy” in the title.  It would be nice to say these films have complex and thought-provoking storylines, that the acting is strong and subtle, that the cinematography is dazzling and the special effects on a par with any major American studio at the time, but that would really be pushing it. A lot of the films were just slapdash, flat-footed remakes of popular American films but with cheaper sets. A few of them do stand out, though, in that even the dubbed and edited versions remain uniquely Mexican, even if they do seem to tell the same story over and over again. And some of them are just plain nuts.

Genre director Rafael Portillo and screenwriter Alfredo Salazar were best known for their Aztec Mummy and wrestling pictures, and in 1958 topped even Santo Meets Dracula with La momia azteca contra el robot humano, translated as The Aztec Mummy Against the Humanoid Robot or, more simply, The Robot Meets the Aztec Mummy.

As the opening narration assures us, the film is based on an “actual experiment” conducted by two scientists from “The Los Angeles University” and verified by witnesses who “signed sworn statements with a notary public” so “there is no question about this story’s authenticity.”

Please keep that in mind.

The film is told mostly in flashback and through voiceover, which is generally a sure sign you’re watching a heavy-handed bit of editorial butchery. The same sort of thing was done regularly to the US versions of Toho films, usually with a mind toward simplifying the story.

Okay, a psychiatrist (Ramón Gay) is mocked by his colleagues when he presents a paper about past life regression, so he storms home and hypnotizes his wife Flora (Rosa Arenas). We slip into a low budget flashback within a flashback as we learn Flora was once an Aztec maiden on schedule to be sacrificed when she runs off with a warrior. The village priests find them, bring them back, and bury the warrior alive after placing a curse on him. Then they fit the old Flora with a gold bracelet and breastplate inscribed with directions to the location of “the secret Aztec treasure.” Then they cut out her heart, which may say something about the effectiveness of that breastplate.

Returning to the first flashback, we learn the evil Dr. Krupp had spied on the experiment and now wants in on it. Nevertheless the good doctor decides for some reason that the best way to prove his theory is to find the bracelet and breastplate, so they all go looking. Lucky for them they find a secret passage under the pyramid that I guess is in their backyard. Moments later they find the ancient temple, the skeleton of the old Flora, and the breastplate which they take home with them. The fun doesn’t last long, though, as  the warrior’s mummy shows up at the house, grabs the breastplate, grabs Flora, returns to the temple, and prepares to cut out her heart again. At this point we’re about six minutes into the film.

Then it turns out, see, that Dr. Krupp is really a sinister underworld figure known as The Bat, and...oh screw it. Over the course of the rest of the film we get gangsters, a shootout, hypnotism, a mad scientist, a pit full of rattlesnakes, that mummy again, some Aztec rituals, a few vanishing bodies, a police investigation, a stolen corpse, a stolen brain, and a stolen “machine that uses radium,” together with lines of dialogue like, “oh, you devilish mummy!” and “continuing our search we hurried to the snake pit.” Eventually we even get a robot there near the end (though it’s more of a reanimated corpse wearing a metal suit festooned with some blinking lightbulbs),and it has a brief and slow wrestling match with the mummy.

And all of it, believe it or not, is crammed into a zippy 65 minutes. No, it’s not a particularly good film as the term is traditionally used, but it is a fascinating one. As crazy as it all gets, as big as some of the plot holes and lapses in logic may seem, the craziest thing of all is that you can’t really criticize it for any of that given that it’s, y’know, based on a true story.

Robot Meets the Aztec Mummy is a pretty extreme example of what was coming out of Mexico at the time. Other genre pictures were no less strange, maybe, but a little more sane.

Three years after Bert I. Gordon’s Attack of the Puppet People and 25 years after Tod Browning’s The Devil Doll, Benito Alazraki released his 1961 film Muñecos infernales, better known in the States  as Curse of the Doll People.

An archaeologist interested in ancient rights and such and her physician husband (Ramon Gay again) visit an art collector friend who regales them with the exciting tale of his recent trip to Haiti. While there, see, he and two friends witnessed a secret voodoo ritual that included human sacrifice. For all the crazy goings on though, the art collector couldn’t take his eyes off the idol the voodoo priests were worshipping. He thought it would make a fine addition to his collection, so the next day he went back and stole it.

(Given that the story is not told in flashback, just by some guy sitting in an easy chair, I’m tempted to think the whole Haiti angle was an invention of the screenwriter for the American version. Maybe the producer was a little tired of Aztecs by this point.)

It’s not hard to guess that stealing a revered idol from a voodoo temple is not without its repercussions, and sure enough before you know it the children of all the men on the Haiti trip start receiving new dolls in the mail. Real nice, realistic-looking ones too. None of the parents seem a bit concerned by the arrival of anonymous gifts for their children, merely handing the dolls to the tykes and sending them off to bed. After a few cuts to an oddly Mexican-looking Haitian voodoo priest, well you guessed it. the dolls start coming to life and knocking off the parents in ways that can’t easily be traced back as the work of an evil dolly.

The one surprise here is given the budget, the special effects (midgets in doll clothes on oversized sets) are really, really good. Better than Bert Gordon’s, even. It’s just too bad the story around them doesn’t have a bit more zing to it. It’s a little flabby and obvious. Still, you start to get the sense a pattern is developing.

El baron del terror (released in the States as The Brainiac in 1962), directed by Chano Urueta, marked a bit of a break from the simple revenge plot. Oh wait, no it didn’t. But it was still a break from the standard storyline.

As the film opens it’s 1661, a comet has appeared in the sky, and  an evil baron  (Abel Salazar) is being burned at the stake by Inquisitors for practicing black magic. As evil barons are so wont to do when finding themselves in circumstances like that, he places a curse on all those who condemned him, vowing he would return in 300 years when the comet reappears and kill off all their descendants. The Inquisitors, for some reason, don’t seem terribly concerned by all this and go ahead and burn him anyway.

Cut to three hundred years in the future and true to his word the comet has reappeared and so has the baron, who  starts snuffing people who didn’t even know they were related to Inquisitors. Yes, it’s a plot we’ve seen how many times already? But the Brainiac, as the title might hint, does offer a twist or two. First, before he kills his victims the Baron transforms into a kind of hideous horned demon monster (the doll special effects were better). Then during the murders he sucks out his victims’ brains, which he keeps in a big salad bowl in the kitchen. When he lures someone over to his apartment and confirms their identity, all he needs to do is excuse himself to the kitchen for a moment, have a spoonful of brains, and shazam. No more descendant and more brains for the baron.

A year later  Ueueta returned to more standard form with La cabeza viviente, aka The Living Head. Here again he opens with a long prologue in which he went to some pains to at least give the illusion of historical accuracy. When a great Aztec general dies, not only is he buried, but so are a few of his servants and a high priestess to help him on his way in the afterlife. That those others weren’t quite dead yet doesn’t seem to matter much. It’s all quite a big to-do.

Cut to 450 years in the future, as an incredibly bad archaeologist and two assistants stumble upon the tomb. First they completely destroy the mummy of the high priestess and shrug it off. Then when he finds the invaluable Ring of Death, the archaeologist immediately announces that he’s going to give it to his daughter, “who likes ugly things like that.” Then after reading aloud the very clear curse that will befall anyone who desecrates the tomb, the trio scurry’s off with the general’s mummified head and the mummy of his servant (the one still clutching the knife). Do they then deliver them to the museum where they can be properly cared for and kept in carefully climate-controlled environments? Well, almost: he brings them back to his apartment and keeps them in the living room.

Yeah, it’s not really hard to see where this is headed. The daughter starts wearing the Ring of Death and gets a little kooky in the head . Then the servant and head come to life and all three of them (the daughter carrying the head) go tracking down the desecrators in order to cut out their hearts.

“I know what you’re thinking,” a police inspector says after the first murder. “But I don’t believe in legends. Or in superstitions either. All I know is that this is a very difficult case.”

That’s the real killer in The Living Head. Even more so than most, the dubbing is miserable, with most of the lines either being non-sequiturs, or so plainly obvious and logical they come out sounding like non-sequiturs. I get the feeling sometimes that the voice actors they brought in were never given scripts, simply shown the film and told to make it up as they went along.

Ah, but this is merely a taste of what’s out there in terms of Mexican horror. We haven’t even considered the Santo pictures yet, and there are hundreds of those. I’m not sure if the likes of Robot Meets the Aztec Mummy would really enrich anyone’s  appreciation or understanding of Mexican independence, but there are doubtless lessons to be learned here. Namely, should you happen to find some neat stuff in a sacred temple next time you’re in Mexico, for godsakes just leave it there, no matter how cool it is. Those Aztecs mean business.

by Jim Knipfel

[gingersnapwolves]

Kouri watches Marvel’s Runaways Season 1

yo I heard you like liveblogs so I liveblogged a liveblog

30 minutes in and I’m already insane about what happened to Amy

“he hasn’t laid a hand on for a while now” wow what a stellar endorsement

I like Amy and Nico’s dad, why does he have to be evil

the narrative framing of the first two episodes is really interesting, showing the same day from both the parents’ and kids’ POV

Leslie is like “do we have to talk about your issues right now? I’m trying to psych myself up to murder an innocent teenager”

“personally I’ve found denial to be a great coping mechanism” that applies to like failed romances and stuff not murder

ugh Leslie’s husband. why couldn’t they sacrifice him?

ooooooh she’s not dead! fucking plot twist!

betrayed by a fallen hairclip!

Robert I hate to be the one to break this to you but your wife is kinda evil

oh yes that picture of Destiny in front of Big Ben is totally convincing

okay I get that Victor doesn’t want to admit his box malfunctioned but won’t they notice church dude is still wrinkly and shrivelly

the house calling Tina the ‘alpha user’ is just fucking weird

um, Robert. I like you. But buying a house for yourself and your mistress without clearing it with said mistress is very, very stupid.

wow, this flashback to Amy's death is super fucked up, why wouldn't her parents call 911

and it got more fucked up! okay then

Chase and Gert just aren't gonna mention the dinosaur they let free to the other kids???

"I don't want to get my parents in trouble [for their illegal dinosaur]" um Gert priorities please

oh no she ruined your school's chances at winning the lacrosse championship! ......was high school really like this? literally nobody at my high school would give a shit about that

why is she getting naked for the weird corpse?????

WHY ARE THEIR CROTCHES GLOWING

I HAVE CONCERNS

Yes, I'm sure this kidnapping in broad daylight in front of a ton of other people is going to go swimmingly

lmaoooooooooooooooo just as well as anticipated

omg if she takes off her bracelet and doesn't glow and thinks she's crazy I'mma lose my shit

oh thank God, glowing

Alex honey I love you but do you have any idea how to use that gun

FISTIGONS LMAOOOOOO

that scene with his dad would be sweet if his father wasn't an abusive cockbite

Alex is like "all this happening and I'm getting kidnapped by gangsters, that is just super"

will someone listen to Molly please!!!!

well, I foresee that this is going to go very badly for absolutely everybody

poor Alex is like "I would like very much to be excluded from this narrative, which I never asked to be part of"

holy shiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiit

Alex just sttraight up shot that guy

suddenly: iron man!

hey, a time machine concept I don't hate!

ooooh, glioblastoma, those are nasty

couldn't happen to a nicer guy

okay how is creepy shrivelled old dude actually more creepy when he's not shrivelled and old

wow, these people should have asked a LOT more questions before they put on those fucking robes

"we made a deal with the devil" wow it took all y'all way too long to figure that out

like. nobody ever asked what he was getting out of this? Not a one of you? I thought you guys were all geniuses.

this is not the place for your adultery drama, Victor!

"you're all keeping secrets from each other" yes well that's what happens when you blackmail a bunch of people into committing ritual murder together

did Satan actually not notice that what's-his-nuts just pocketed the rest of his miracle cure

also, okay. I can't believe that not a single one of these parents who got tricked into committing murder on tape didn't think "ya know what? I'm gonna go to the cops anyway and just say that I had no idea 'get in the glowing box' was going to end up in someone being dematerialized by science that as far as I knew didn't even exist yet, and since Leslie admitted on tape that she did know that, she can go to jail and I'll just go into fucking witness protection"

Rather than "guess I'll keep murdering teenagers once a year in this nifty crimson robe"

alien brain has done some weird things to Victor

Chase, stop defending your father. Just stop.

suddenly: Frank is magic!

"It's like he wanted us to examine it" how can you say that without realizing that you're 100% correct

just spill the alien DNA on yourself!

whoever heard of lab safety?!

maybe don't tell Leslie you plan on destroying everything she's spent her life working for?

I don't know why Jonah is intent on "fixing" things with the couples and everything. Like. "We need Pride to stay together" .... I don't even know why all y'all are needed, how many people does it take to shove a homeless kid in a box

Victor, don't attack the lacrosse .... wait, they kicked Chase off the team for stopping a rape in progress. Victor, attack the lacrosse coach! Hit him!

lmao I was like "ugh relationship drama" and Amanda chimes in, without even knowing what's going on or what I’m watching, "the heteros are upsetero"

go get your dinosaur, Gert! I feel like a dinosaur would improve this situation.

ah, I see Victor's personality transplant has worn off

There's literally no reason they couldn't call an ambulance for Victor, come on, it was clearly self defense

"well that was inevitable" lmao Dale pls

Why does Jonah even care about keeping Victor alive

I hope the dinosaur eats Jonah

They're all just okay with sacrificing Janet? Seriously?

What in the Christ is so special about whatever Jonah is doing that none of them have just straight up murdered him

Damn, Tina threw down and now I kinda like her

eight episodes ago you hated your dad, Chase. he's the worst.

lol Tina really did burn her hand on a frying pan

wow, Darius hasn't given up yet?

whoa, sudden teenaged smexing

Well, see, the thing is, Jonah, nobody fucking likes you

he acts so offended that the people he blackmailed into committing murder for him don't want to do everything he says

"this better not be a crackbaby" Darius' girlfriend is my new favorite character

Frank why do you suck

yes, Chase, I'm sure blowing up the control panel is the best answer

the parent-group facing off the kid-group while Alex just stands there looking stern because he doesn't have any powers is hilarious

ALL Y’ALL REALLY JUST GON STAND THERE AND WATCH JONAH BLOW YOUR KIDS UP

NOT A FUCKING ONE OF YOU IS GONNA DO ANYTHING

THERE ARE LIKE 10 OF YOU AND ONE OF HIM

I get that he glows and makes lasers but holy motherfucking shit those dumbass parents really just stood there with their dumbass thumbs up their dumbass asses

the dino in a shopping cart covered by a blanket omg

okay I do not like Karolina having the face hugger mask on

"I'm her father, not Jonah!" dude she confided in you and you ratted her out to Jonah maybe don't be so proud of yourself

are y'all seriously leaving the dinosaur behind in the hills of LA. Seriously.

how in the hell did Alex have Darius' phone number???

I swear to God if I have to see one more minute of fucking Frank, I'mma lose it

Okay if framing them for murder was Jeffrey's plan to find them before Jonah does, he is an utter dipshit

not that this really surprises me as most of the parents honestly don’t seem too bright

okay done with season 1 and it’s a good thing multiple people told me season 2 is better because otherwise…