#flatliners revisited

[lavoixhumaine]

Before anything else—I don’t know if you will see this but I want to thank everyone who left the kindest and most supportive messages and replies. Thank you sincerely from the bottom of my heart.

To @rainedamodred and @bestbuddybobby — I wouldn’t have made it through without you both.

Now…

I’ve been contemplating what to write here for the last twelve hours.

When I say the past two weeks have been the most difficult in my entire life, that is not an exaggeration. It’s been…hell, honestly.

My husband was diagnosed with an arrhythmia over two years ago. Didn’t sound good but it wasn’t uncommon, but he was a special case, as we were told because on top of being unnaturally tall for our people, he apparently also had an unnaturally large heart…literally. We were presented with options that we were told we could delay due to the pandemic and our concerns regarding safety in authorizing a rather complicated operation during what felt like a perilous time…

The pandemic didn’t really end but it eased. We went in for a checkup. They said it was okay so far as long as he wasn’t feeling any different. He said he was fine. I believed him.

So we thought we had time. We thought this year we could get back on track after the hellacious last couple of years. Get back to what passed for normal, start traveling again, see old friends, revisit our favorite places, hit up our old haunts…

We scheduled him for surgery the beginning of next year…but I suppose fate had other plans.

My husband flatlined twice in the last couple of weeks. He was brought back both times but not without cost. They tried different medications. There were heavy discussions on what options were available. The idea of a heart transplant was offered but waiting for a new heart meant…well, you have some idea, yes? There was no way he could travel for treatment. His heart was going insane…hitting over 200 beats per minute, erratically bouncing from 90 to 145 in a blink…it was a mess.

I coped by not coping…I ended up breaking so many things in our home…a table, a glass wall and whatever I could get my hands on. The floors looked like they were littered with glittering diamonds by the time I was through…so much glass everywhere. It was the only way I could pull myself back together and return to the hospital without falling apart and screaming at someone.

And the goddamn crying…it came and went and I kept waiting to run out of tears but I never did.

I had my mothers and aunts calling from all over in different timezones and at first, I answered but then I would cry more because they cared and they kept offering…kindness and comfort. They wanted to come and be there but I couldn’t imagine keeping up a facade to yet another group of people when I’m busy trying not to fall apart and be The Wife.

And listening to them trying to give me comfort…somehow that was enough to trigger disgusting crying jags that helped nobody and just made a mess out of me. I stopped taking calls. I couldn’t keep my shit together when I kept falling apart at the sound of a caring voice.

For the first time in almost ten years, I was alone. In all the time I’ve been with my husband, I have never been alone…that broke something inside me.

He’s the calm voice, he’s the adult in the room, he makes the decisions, he is the one person that can talk me down from whatever insane cliff I’ve driven myself to…and suddenly, there was just silence.

It reached a point where I was the only one left to make decisions because he couldn’t anymore…his doctors all agreed the best option was to perform a cardiac ablation and implant a device that would be connected to his heart—a defibrillator with a pacemaker backing.

At that point, I was too exhausted mentally, emotionally and psychologically…I said yes to whatever they felt was best. They let me pick and choose off a menu which piece of technology to put next to his heart like I was in an Apple launch event. It was all so…fucking surreal.

Wasn’t it only a few days ago we were celebrating his birthday? He’s only fucking forty-one.

Between the harsh reality that I might lose my husband and the unrelenting conflicts that kept intruding upon an already terrible situation by way of his family…I was barely keeping myself together. I couldn’t even go home anymore and break things…I was that close to breaking things in the hospital but then how would that look if word got out?

I was too scared to go home…too scared I’ll leave and he would slip away.

It’s just the kind of thing he would do…leave without telling because he thinks that would hurt me less. Fuck, sometimes he’s also a dumbass but he is my dumbass, okay?

After I was able to make a decision that would alter his life while hopefully saving it…within twenty-four hours, the device was flown in as well as the specialist that would perform the surgery. Almost two weeks of agony and suddenly, an OR was booked, the doctors were lining up and introducing themselves, discussing their roles in the operation, explaining how it was all going to go down, the technician was making a presentation on how the device would save him on a daily basis while I was too punch drunk to process the information, the anesthesiologist was talking about how they expected things to go, critical care was throwing in his two cents, the cardiologist was trying to reassure me that he would be okay within twenty-four hours after the procedure and he will be able to go home just like that…

It happened so fast, it left my head spinning.

He’s home now. It’s not a fun experience and recovery will take time, but he’s alive and that’s really all that fucking matters.

Right now, I’m dealing with residual bullshit with his family…his sister who is a neurotic passive aggressive piece of work and his mother who seems to have no problem showing him how much she hates him right now…his father continues to be the kindest of them.

I loved and adored these people last month.

One of my aunts said I should not stew in my anger and hold resentment in my heart…that I should give all my negative feelings to God and ask Him to help me continue to love and honor them as I have been doing from the beginning. Ask God to help me keep my love for them so I will not be clouded and remember they are my family…

I told her to call me again next week and try again.

Right now, I just want to get my house back in order and help my husband with his recovery. Get our lives back to where it should be. Find some kind of normal that works for this new us.

I’m trying to channel my rage into more useful outlets outside of that and do something good because that seems like a much better idea than giving in to the urge to commit arson. I am trying so hard not to acknowledge the rage that I am not quite ready to let go of…

I stopped breaking things—I think I’m on the right track.

I keep reminding myself…

He’s alive. He’s not dead. He’s here. He’s breathing. He’s alive. He’s speaking. He’s right here. He’s alive. He’s here. He’s right here.

He’s alive.

And the silence has gone.

[okamirayne]

Karibi

Revisiting the series 💔 Got hit with the BtB OC feels. Karibi (sans her many piercings, as this zombie-brained muppet added the wrong / unfinished pic to video — insomnia = not firing on all cylinders 🤦🏻‍♀️)

Song: Not Gonna Die 😭

Artist: Skillet 🤘🏼

POV: Karibi’s words to Team Yokai…and definitely her POV after she feels/senses/believes Naoki ‘dies’ (KIA) after his faked death…💔

Lyrics/Chorus:

The last thing I heard was you whispering goodbye

And then I heard you flatline…

No, not gonna die tonight

We're gonna stand and fight forever

(Don't close your eyes)

No, not gonna die tonight

We're gonna fight for us together

No, we're not gonna die tonight

Don't you give up on me

You're everything I need

This is how it feels when you take your life back

This is how it feels when you fight back

No, not gonna die tonight

We're gonna stand and fight forever

(Don't close your eyes)

No, not gonna die tonight

We're gonna fight for us together

No, we're not gonna die tonight

No, we're not gonna die tonight

Not gonna die

(Not gonna die)

Not gonna die

(Not gonna die)

Not gonna die tonight.

[eldritchships]

ShockLine and Innermost Energon

(A post I keep meaning to and then forget to make)

Basic context: Innermost Energon is a percentage of a Transformer's fuel that resides very close to their "spark" (the equivalent of both a human heart and soul). It is seen as a significant act of devotion to bottle part of your IE and give it to another person/Transformer.

I don't think it took Flatline long to offer his IE to Shockwave, really. He knows who he wants to spend the rest of his existence with, he knows who he's been head-over-rotors for since he first laid eyes on the big purple lug. Even though Shockwave likely tries to (as politely as he's capable of being) decline, Flatline stashes it somewhere on Shockwave's workstation, so that it's there and he kind of has to accept it.

This also would be far far before the cortical psychic patch ever comes up in conversation (another brief explanation: the patch is basically a machine that lets a Transformer read/enter the memories of another, usually stated to be invented by Shockwave, and seen as a rather invasive process). Flatline is extremely, almost weirdly adverse to the psychic patch, he's not usually a guy who seems uncomfortable but this is one of those things that he always walks on eggshells around. The reason for this is because he has a lot of unpleasant memories and experiences that he doesn't wish to revisit, and especially not let someone else root around in his head and see for themselves. By being willing to offer his IE so much earlier, it reveals something about Flatline: he would rather carve out pieces of his own body than be emotionally vulnerable with another being.

Shockwave on the other hand took far longer to consider reciprocating with his own IE. Flatline really had to work for that relationship (and their biggest fight did cause Flatline to semi-deliberately almost kill him, so that was a bit of a speed bump). Shockwave seemingly does understand social conventions, even if he doesn't personally partake, so I doubt he'd be confused about them. He might even prefer the IE thing, since it's a gesture that requires little talking and/or explaining the meaning behind it, because pretty much every Cybertronian knows what it means. And Flatline would be delighted to receive such a gesture, which is what's most important to Shockwave anyway as far as acts of attachment go.

[msaw]

i remember being super into game and watch a few years back, decided to revisit after being recommended grayfruit’s flatline series on youtube :]

[ialwaysknewyouwerepunk]

i was tagged by @stephron to list the first ten songs to come up when i shuffle my on repeat playlist! ty for tagging me <33

if only - rachel chinouriri

together - avril lavigne

grace - idles

flatlining - holly humberstone

adore you - harry styles

lights up - harry styles

through the dark - 1d

the view between villages - noah kahan

fireproof - 1d

holding on to heartache - louis tomlinson

it's a weird mix but it's very accurately me. i listen to nrs 5-7 (and 9) every day so there's no surprise. i've been revisiting avril bc i'm seeing her live this summer (?????!!).

tagging anyone who feels like doing it!!

[queencordite]

Cybertober day 26 (I am behind on Cybertober aaaagh): Flatline

Once again revisiting this guy. I've missed him and should maybe resurrect some of the stuff I wrote about him in like 2015 or whenever it was.

Bonus cybertobers from earlier this month also starring ol' Flattie

Thanks @gillyvor for the prompts

[phierecycled]

So Whizzer actually collapses at the end of Jason’s Bar Mitzvah! Jason holds out his hand for Whizzer because he wants them to stand together; and Whizzer collapses while reaching for Jason. Trina has to drag him away screaming while Mendel, Marvin and Charlotte all pick Whizzer up and get him back in the bed. In the closing night audio, you can hear marvin breaking down and saying “you’re okay, you’re okay, please be okay”

At the end of What Would I Do though, Whizzer is panicking and crying and calling for Marvin, and Marvin just tells him that it’s okay and kisses him and that’s how Whizzer dies, being held by Marvin and surrounded by all of the others.

That’s actually so sad what. Do you have any boots/audios cause I would love to revisit it! Also I remember the flatline at the end of WWID which was also excruciating

[crimson-mayhem-archive]

🖌 scenario delivery! (+ flustered caria) 🏃💨 🖌

Caria and Virek didn't hang out at school all the time but when they did she had fun. They talked, mostly Caria, and studied.

However as Caria had her nose in a textbook, Virek seemed to be sitting in a shameless position or that's how she saw it at least.

It took a while for her to notice but when she did, she stood up immediately.

She supposed it might be a habit for him to sit like that but that didn't mean she couldn't teach him what's right and wrong.

❝ Vivi. ❞

The girl called out to him, walking towards where he was seated, and immediately sat on his lap with a barely noticeable pout on her face. Her arms folded over one another as she stared into his eyes. When she realized what she had just done, her face reddened as she finally averted her eyes and twisted her body to figure out how to get up without making it awkward.

❝ Ah... uh... ❞

It was rare for her to be this flustered and she couldn't believe she allowed herself to be this bold.

🥀 Vivi: “nah nah nah say what you were about to say 🤨”🥀

Virek certainly didn’t mind hanging out at school, after hours. It isn’t as if he had much to do at home… And the seclusion the campus provided was another bonus. So, when Caria would offer him to stay after with her, who was he to refuse?

Though it isn’t as if he did much studying while he was here, unlike the person who invited him. Why would he? These lessons were practically hammered into his head since he was a small child, so he felt no need to revisit the same material over and over. Though on occasion he had brought an extra book to school with him, so it isn’t totally a waste of time… This was not one of those occasions though.

Thus, led him to his current position.

Feet upon his desk, and his chair balancing on its back legs, the boy leaned his head against the wall. His hood was up, as he stared at the ceiling, eyes occasionally shifting over to where Caria sat, engrossed in her textbook.

However his full attention was hers, the moment she suddenly positioned herself on his lap like that, chair slamming to the ground from it’s tilted position. The boy’s arms falling from their crossed position to hang leisurely by his sides. Virek would have been intrigued, by how assertive she was, until she allowed herself to get so flustered.

Tilting his head to the side, scarlet eyes remained on her, glistening in the moonlight behind his glasses lenses— As if he was challenging her to stay there.

❝ Well now… You’ll let me here what you were going to say, right?..❞

Virek’s voice never faltered from its monotonous state as he spoke, though that didn’t stop him from pushing her to speak. The uniform flatline his speech decided to take didn’t hinder him at all, as he poked at her with his voice.

❝ It was important enough for you to mount me like this, so don’t get all flustered now... ❞

❝ Say it. ❞

[ledenews]

Albertini Recalls An Empty, Silent, Shuttered Hospital

Some lights flickered, a few of the floor tiles were crackled far more than he remembered, and the hospital’s hallways smelled stale instead of, well, like “hospital clean.” Not even in the distance were there beeps of life or flatlines of dismissal, but Bernie Albertini could hear memorable echoes of Martins Ferry’s medical facility in full operation when he walked back in after two years away in Arizona. East Ohio Regional Hospital was suddenly shuttered in October 2019, and there he was, six months later, calculating a resurrection. After a little more than 20 years with EORH and the Ohio Valley Medical Center, Albertini accepted a position at the Canyon Vista Medical Center in Sierra Vista, Arizona soon after Alecto Healthcare took over ownership of both hospitals. “I've told a story to a lot of people about the first day Alecto took over and I'm sitting with (the executives) and they're talking about this emergency box and I don't know what they’re talking about. Is it a crash cart? And they said, ‘No, it's the emergency box,’” Albertini said. “I asked them what was in the box, and they said a hammer, a whistle, a glow stick? I told them that we had never had emergency boxes, and they said they would move on with their review, but they told me to get them on every floor. Dr. John Johnson purchased the Martins Ferry facility closed to six months after it was closed down. “About an hour later, it hit me,” he said. “That’s when I went back to those Alecto inspectors, and I asked if we could revisit the conversation. I asked them if these emergency boxes were needed for earthquakes, and they said yes. Talk about a red flag. I knew we were in trouble, so …” He got out. That’s what he did. Albertini went West. “It was an opportunity for something completely new and different, so we went for it after so many years here with all of the challenges that come with operating a non-profit hospital. That’s not easy. Not at all,” the chief operating officer explained. “And it was. It was completely different, but we did miss the valley and the people. And then the phone rang.” At the end of the line was Dr. John Johnson, a psychiatrist by trade and an entrepreneur at heart. The people in the Wheeling area heard his name, though, involved the 12-story former headquarters for the bankrupt Wheeling-Pittsburgh Steel Corporation. Once the final liquidator, RG Steel, was finished selling off the last scraps of the once-world-famous steel producer, the structure fell silent for the first time since opening in 1907. Although Wheeling Mayor Glenn Elliott announced more than five years ago a project that would transform the city’s tallest building into loft apartments, very little progress has been made by the contractor, Coon Restoration and Sealant from the Canton, Ohio area. Johnson then purchased the shuttered hospital in early 2020. “When I first spoke with Dr. (John) Johnson and he told me he wanted to reopen the hospital with the Covid pandemic taking place, I didn’t know how to react,” Albertini recalled. “I didn’t know the shape of the building either because I was in Arizona for a little more than two years. The hospital is not a new building and there are a million different things that can go wrong. “But I came home and, yeah, there were challenges. There were a lot of challenges, actually,” he said. “But a lot of great people stepped up to make it happen, and the City of Martins Ferry really stepped up for us, too. It’s hard to believe it will be three years in just a couple of months. That’s hard to believe.” Albertini always thanks his owner and his staff members for helping to make community care return to Martins Ferry. Small Town Care The third anniversary of the reopening is in early February, but Albertini doesn’t need birthdays to remind him of the lofty list of goals Johnson tossed into his lap. Managing an operating hospital is one thing, but transforming a used, neglected property into an updated, state-of-the-art medical facility that checks all the local boxes has been, let’s say, difficult and demanding. Now, Albertini began in OVMC’s pharmacy, and from there he accepted supervisory roles in food service, building maintenance, institutional development, and highest-level management, so he went into the EORH project will experience in all areas. “I would say in some ways we’re where I thought we’d be at this point, but in other ways, no, not yet. As far as the business is concerned, I believe we’re ahead of where I thought we’d be right now, and I think it’s because of how popular our emergency room has been,” he said. “Our ER was open for about six minutes and we had our first call into service, so, yeah, the demand was there for sure. Albertini has always been very hands-on during his career in healthcare. “I think Dr. Johnson is very happy because his whole vision was to bring back local healthcare, and I think he’s been successful with doing that so far. And I think he was successful in doing that,” he said. “He'll tell you his goal is for a small community hospital to not only survive, but also thrive, and I believe we’re on our way to fulfilling that goal.” The emergency room was first, and a fully staff, fully operational medical facility followed. “The ER is the front door for every hospital,” Albertini said. “It had to be Goal No. 1, but once we got our ER squared away, everything else would have to fall into place. We all knew that once that ER opened, we had to be ready for everything inside our hospital, and they were 100 percent ready and deserve all the credit. It was a very good day when our hospital opened. “It was a very good thing for the entire area, really, because we lost two hospitals all of a sudden right before a pandemic. When Alecto closed both OVMC and East Ohio, there was a crush on the local health care system and it wasn’t easy on anyone,” he explained. “So, it was a great thing to get this community hospital back up and running.” Read the full article

[tastypizzaandchips]

9/1/2023

1h advance pole class

Revisited deville split! I didn't manage to do it in the class but got a great tip I wanna try, its apparently from a hip hold and you never let your upper body drop back past horizontal hmmm it reminds me almost of ticktock or flatline pole move maybe even allegra, i guess those kind of moves with an inside leg hang grip? O.o It's interesting cuz its "no hands jade" but actually those other moves are completely different feeling to me hmm

Also playing FF7CCR reminded me of that pole kip I was working on a few years back, except the protagonist takes it into a squat to stand, wanna try it next session lmao

[rewiringwithpsilocybin]

Microdosing Psylocibin – Introduction

Everyone has heard this Einstein statement . . .

“The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”

Couple of things about it though: 

Einstein never actually said or wrote it. 

The statement applies to me. 

And here’s why . . . 

Over the past 30 years or so, I have undertaken at least 15 self-help attempts including meditation, self-hypnosis, NLP, numerous exercise programs, diets, magic guitar practice regimes, and . . .  

They’ve always ended in failure. 

Some of you may recognize a depressingly familiar cycle: initial enthusiasm followed by encouraging results, but then the dreaded flatline resulting in regression to one’s default behavioral setting.

I’ve repeated this cycle so many times while expecting a different result, that it clearly qualifies as insanity on my part. 

This time, I’ve decided to try something drastically different based on several reports and articles that have caught my attention in recent years. 

Some time ago, I read about the potential of the psychedelic psylocibin mushroom to combat Alzheimer’s Disease in the future by increasing the brain's neuroplasticity which refers to its "ability to modify, change, and adapt both structure and function throughout life and in response to experience."

About the same time, I heard about the phenomenon of microdosing: executives in Silicon Valley were ingesting small amounts of psylocibin and LSD – not enough to get high – to enhance creativity and productivity. Encouraging results were being reported. 

These prompted me to check out the work of researcher James Fadiman, who developed a microdosing protocol and was overwhelmed by the quantity of positive experiences from those who had followed it. 

Anecdotal benefits included alleviation of depression, reduction of negative repetitive behaviour, general mood improvements, as well enhanced creativity and energy. 

Since then, several controlled scientific studies on microdosing have been carried out, also with intriguing results.

More recently, I came across the controversial 1990s theory by ethnobotanist Terrance McKenna, which proposed that consumption of psilocybin-containing mushrooms by our ancestors on the savannah may have had an expanding effect on the evolution of the human brain.

Essentially impossible to prove one way or another, the debunked theory is being revisited again.

For me self-sabotaging behaviour (a tendency to over-eat, smoking, procrastination and a suspicious compulsion to examine my smart phone every five minutes) are all areas that need urgent attention.

As a lecturer, writer, guitarist and voiceover artist, any increase in creativity and energy would be a juicy bonus. And protection against Alzheimer's? Yes please. Descriptions of how the victim is slowly reduced to living in a world of strangers and loneliness terrify me.

So, with its potential capacity to rewire the brain to circumvent established self-destructive pathways, I have decided to try microdosing with psilocybin and publish my day-to-day observations about its effects.

Right now, it's the summer break and I don't have a lot of other work on so the timing is ideal.

Will microdosing help me in any significant way? No idea. But I have to try something. I’m 60 years old and my life has become flat, repetitive, and complacent.  

The dangers? Studies are still being conducted but there have been reports of increased anxiety and migraines while just this year, a study was published stating that psychedelics such as LSD and psilocybin “could potentially cause VHD heart disease when ‘microdosed’ for many months to years.” 

A doctor recently examined my heart and surprisingly pronounced it one of a sportsperson so my intention is to follow the Fadiman Protocol for six weeks, take a break and assess. 

Meantime, I also stumbled across a study published in The Economist in 2019 which classified, in terms of danger, 20 of the most commonly used drugs. The criteria were divided into two categories: harm to the user and harm to others. These were then broken down into six further sections. 

Most dangerous: Alcohol. At number 20: Mushrooms. This makes sense to me as around 95% of all my bad decisions have been concocted on alcohol. However, I suspect that its legal status and availability has had a significant influence on the figures.

Where to find the mushrooms though, which are illegal to consume in my country?

Predictably a company in The Netherlands offered just what I was seeking: pre- and vacuum-packed 1 gram doses as well as instructions based on Fadiman’s popular regime. A gram is around 10-20% of what you would take to trigger hallucinogenic effects. 

The instructions advise the user to take one dose every three days for a month to eight weeks and then take a break. Doses should be taken in the morning, after breakfast in plain water. 

Here goes . . . 

[nightmareonfilmstreet]

Let's Revisit 1990's FLATLINERS, Shall We?

New Post has been published on https://nofspodcast.com/lets-revisit-1990s-flatliners-shall/

Let's Revisit 1990's FLATLINERS, Shall We?

The upcoming sequel/reboot to Flatliners is due in theatres any day now. Despite not being a huge sequel buff, we’ll likely be front-and-center opening weekend; covering the film for an upcoming episode of our podcast; Nightmare on Film Street.

Before we dive headfirst into reboot territory, I always try to re-visit the original film beforehand. This time around, I figured I’d invite you all to join me. So, while we wait for Ellen Page to give us her best Julia Roberts impression, let’s head back to 1990, with Flatliners OG!

  Meet Cute

Flatliners is a hybrid of sub-genres. It sits nestled between psychological Horror and Science Fiction. The film is directed by Joel Schumacher (The Lost Boys, Phonebooth, The Number 23), and written by Peter Filardi (The Craft).  The film boasts a pretty all-star cast by the 90’s standards, including many up-and-comers on their way to becoming household names. Kiefer Sutherland, Julia Roberts, William Baldwin, Oliver Platt, and Kevin Bacon make up the core death-defying team.

The film was shot in Chicago in 1989 and released theatrically on August 10, 1990, by Columbia Pictures. It received one Academy Award nomination for Best Sound Editing in 1990 (Charles L. Campbell and Richard C. Franklin). The film currently holds a 49% Not-So-Fresh on Rotten Tomatoes.

Synopsis:

An edgy, eerie supernatural thriller about medical students using their skills to try crossing over to the “other side.” After they’re revived, the students are haunted and consumed by what they’ve seen, as their fears, guilt and old memories take root in the physical world. This star-studded film may be remembered more for the tabloid frenzy, upon the film’s release, surrounding actors Julia Roberts and ditched beau Kiefer Sutherland.

  Assembling the Team

Flatliners opens with Nelson Wright (portrayed by a mostly post-mulleted Kiefer Sutherland a la Lost Boys) bellowing the haunting first word of the film;

Today is a good day to die.

Hello trailer soundbite. Oozing a kind-of-threatening cool, Nelson convinces his team of fellow medical students to try some Frankenstein worthy experiments; causing medically induced brain death and reviving the lifeless candidate. For some reason, Joe Hurley (William Baldwin), David Labraccio (Kevin Bacon), Randall ‘Randy’ Steckle (Oliver Platt), and Rachel Manus (Julia Roberts) are all on board after some mild protesting.

These grave experiments intend to prove one thing; the existence of life after death. With Randy as their comedic videographer, they intend to replicate first-hand accounts of auditory and visual hallucinations of those that experienced a more naturally induced temporary state of death.

We as the audience are asked to suspend our disbelief a bit. We can either disregard the fact that an official scientific study requires thousands upon thousands of case studies and examples to even be remotely considered worthy of publishing as verifiable evidence.. Or, the film may intend us to be completely aware what they are doing is only under the guise of a ‘science experiment’. An experiment that serves as an umbrella for which they may hide the death-defying stroking of several young egos. I’m in the camp of the latter.

  Flatiners Flatline

One after another, our smart-enough-to-induce-death but dumb-enough-to-try heroes all invoke a taste of the afterlife. Each experience something unique and personal to their characters. Nelson sees the vision of a boy he bullied as a child, Billy Mahoney. Joe experiences a more erotic afterlife. David sees Winnie Hicks, who he also bullied when younger. Each time they flatline, our team of medical students get more brazen. They increase the time before they attempt revival. The thrill of the task becomes almost an addiction. The more they defy death, the less they care of the consequences; increased chances for brain damage, expulsion from school, and oh yeah – DEATH.

New candidates hit the gurney. All the while, the previously flatlined begin experiencing very real paranormal encounters. Still a impossibly a child, Billy Mahoney taunts Nelson; finding him in street corners, appearing in his car. He grows more and more real each encounter, able to physically assault and attack him. Joe has an affinity for sexually assaulting women by videotaping them without their consent. His punishment is those very women from his past appearing in impossible places, taunting him while his Fiance remains unawares.

The men opt to keep these strange after-effects to themselves, and Rachel decides to go next. Because they’ve decided to set up shop in what is practically an abandoned warehouse; the power surges. They are unable to revive Rachel with the defibrillators. Time ticks by, and she heads dangerously close towards definitive brain damage. At the last moment they are able to bring back a heartbeat and Rachel survives.  Her near-death experience is the most intimately personal. She experiences a vague re-enactment of witnessing her father’s suicide. These visions continue to haunt her even after she leaves the table.

  Confront Your Demons

David decides to confront his demons in an effort to put an end to the hallucinations. He tracks down a grown Winnie Hicks and musters up a long overdue apology. David is freed from the taunting visions, a weight lifted. Joe is forced to come clean about his perversions to his fiance Anne, after she comes across his disgusting stash of videotapes. After Anne leaves him, Joe too is freed from his macabre visions. Rachel, consumed by visions of her father’s death, discovers he was addicted to heroin. She is then also freed in learning she wasn’t at fault in some way.

We learn Billy Mahone died as a child. It was directly a result of Nelson’s bullying; he and his chums chased Billy up a tree, where he accidentally fell to his death. In order to make his amends, Nelson flatlines for a second time. He has to apologize to Billy Mahone in the afterlife, for there is no other way to contact him. Alone, Nelson flatlines for 9 minutes as the team race to revive him. In one final attempt, David shocks Nelson – and the machines beep to life. Nelson’s eyes flutter, and he utters “Today wasn’t a good day to die.”

  Thoughts on the Film

Flatliners is enjoyable in the nostalgic sense. We don’t get movies like quite like this anymore. (disregard the sequel, people.) The gritty, silly genre-warping films of the 1990’s soon made way for Action Adventure epics like Superhero films and ..are Transformers superheroes? Can they just be lumped into that category? Whatever, point made. Moving on.

Though a successfully executed story from beginning to end, the film has never been among my favorites. It straddles too close to the line of teasing something dark, and being lighthearted and funny. The tone is muddled. And because of that, this film never rose to cult status. It was as if after seeing David Cronenburg’s The Fly, the studio threw The Lost Boys into Telepod 3. Flatliners is the Brundlefly that came out.

Still, after not seeing this film for twenty years, the re-watch was enjoyable. All of the budding actors are climbing to the top of their game, and it’s a role unlike any other Julia Roberts has ever portrayed. Kevin Bacon is also surprisingly not an asshole in it? Which is a nice change after growing up with the weird and slightly-rapey Hollow Man.

  A New Generation of Death Defy-ers

In just a few days, a new team will hit the cold slab of death. They will be joined by Kiefer Sutherland, lucidly reprising his role as a doctor – probably providing the young medical students with some ominous (and unheaded) warnings about playing with death. He may even utter an iconic phrase, should the franchise want to retain its iconic level of cheese.

The official synopsis reads:

In Flatliners, five medical students, obsessed by the mystery of what lies beyond the confines of life, embark on a daring and dangerous experiment: by stopping their hearts for short periods of time, each triggers a near-death experience — giving them a firsthand account of the afterlife. But as their experiments become increasingly dangerous, they are each haunted by the sins of their pasts, brought on by the paranormal consequences of trespassing to the other side.

Does that synopsis sound like it could be for the 1990 film to you? It sure does to me. I’ll be interested to see what more they bring to the operating table this go around. They’re going to need to pull something original out of that magician’s cap if this film is going to survive long enough to hit DVD shelves. Without seeing the film, it’s currently sitting on my 2nd most unwarranted film of 2017 list (behind The Mummy, of course). It’ll have to pull some major stunts to top my not-so-negative charts.

But, I wouldn’t hold my breath. (I seriously hope you’re getting all of the Flatline puns in this article.) My best guess is this film is designed with a younger generation in mind. They’re aiming to fill the seats with an audience that has heard of the original, but never watched it. It is likely the studios will throw those of us ‘Loyalists’ a bone with updated CGI effects during the lucid afterlife and the creepy, paranormal spooks afterwards. At it’s core though, I’m expecting the plot to repeat beat for beat. Lets all plan for a bit of a snoozer.

Flatliners, the sequel/reboot stars Ellen Page, Diego Luna, Nina Dobrev, James Norton, Kiersey Clemons . It opens wide in theaters on September 29th.

[the-antiapocalyptic-man]

New Sketchpage Update: Damian’s associates, enemies, frenemies, and friend(s)

Respawn and Flatline are both fairly new, so only Nika has a canon first name. I’m toying with “Tallant Wilson” for Respawn, but if Shadow War gives him a name, we’ll just use that. Maya Ducard and Colin Wilkes have both are big arcs in the past and just kinda...faded into obscurity, though Colin was in the right spot that he’s fairly prevalent in bigger AU fan universes. I kinda want to call him something other than “Abuse” but I know the E-27 guys made him like, Ten of the Royal Flash Gang? Which...not what my first instinct would be, but Phil and Roy do their own thing, whatever. I am inclined to tie him into the Monster Men (Monster Man?) along with Claire Clover aka Gotham Girl, whose monster form was actually super fucking cool. Claire was still “Robin” in some capacity, but I doubt the headverse is going to do a straight adaptation of City of Bane, so instead of Flashpoint!Thomas, her Batman was probably [redacted].

Last is a portrait of Damian in the corner there. Nothing to add. He’s already the Outsider, so everyone’s ages are adjusted, but Colin’s probably still a kid compared to the others.

Since it never got followed up and probably never will unless King gets yet another Batman mini after Killing TIme I’m kind of inclined to ignore Claire’s projected future marriage to Duke. That said, since Duke eventually becomes a Monitor anyway...it could be fun to explore? Like I said, a lot of these characters are newer and their roles aren’t as clearly defined as say, Emiko’s, so anyone here could get reworked down the line, but regardless they’ll all get revisited eventually

[pheedraws]

1, 4, 16, 30, 31, 38 for lovely Vic!! 💕

E and H about Vic and Ilona 👀

1. What’s the maximum amount of time your character can sit still with nothing to do?

It entirely depends on how exhausted she’s feeling. If she’s tired enough, she’ll have no complaints about staying in one spot for the whole evening. If her brain is still in the work-zone, though, she’ll find absolutely anything to do to keep herself busy. 

4. How easy is it to earn their trust?

Answered here! 

16. What makes their stomach turn?

Answered here!

30. Who do they most regret meeting?

I spoke about this here, but for a time Vic also regretted letting her father back in her life after her mom’s death. The man was the reason she winded up stuck at Arasaka in the first place, and it takes her a lot of time (and sleuthing) to move past that anger and accept that he was in a desperate place, too. 

31. Who are they the most glad to have met?

Aside from Jackie who I mentioned here, she would also say Goro. They had an incredibly rocky start, but for a time they were the only hope the other had at regaining some semblance of equilibrium, and V deeply appreciated having him by her side while they muddled through the ins and outs of Night City. 

38. What memory do they revisit the most often?

Unfortunately, bad memories are the ones Vic tends to revisit the most. Obvious Johnny problems aside, the heist sticks with her long after the dust has settled, Vic often agonising over what she could have done differently to keep Jackie and Bug safe. She frequently has nightmares about Dex flatlining her and waking up in the landfill, lost and alone with Jackie’s blood on her hands. Those nights are the toughest, and she’ll forgo sleep for as long as she can afterwards to stave off any more bad memories resurfacing. 

E. Are they someone you would get along with? Would they get along with you?

I’d be far too intimidated by Vic to even approach her lmao, but she gets along well with most people who aren’t standoffish or hostile. I’d likely get along better with Ilona though, since I’d be fascinated by her work and cottage and could listen to her talk all day. 

H. What trait do you admire most?

I admire Vic’s determination and her drive to push on no matter what. Without going Too Deep, exploring her background has helped me sift through some things I’ve been pushing to one side for a couple of years now, and while it obviously isn’t going to magically solve any problems, it has been somewhat therapeutic to explore. As for Ilona, I admire her ability to maintain the softness of her heart, even when the world around her is cruel and harsh. 

[butchsophiewalten]

I emerge from the swamp bearing gifts from our 99% rating obscurity and dreamlike tastes, albums more than individual songs because I'm a weird sort of way

-Lake Radio's Dream House

-Δaimon's Flatliner

-Balam Acab's See Birds

hmm... so i listened to more than half of all of these albums and just couldn't really get into them. i think i like a more grounded sound. I think i liked dream house the best though. plastic angels was nice and max headroom really grew on me for some reason. might revisit these albums when im feeling a little less particular abt music...

[aion-rsa]

How Final Destination Went From Real-Life Premonition to Horror Phenomenon

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The year 2000 was a scary one for horror films and not always in a good way.  

While American Psycho and The Cell offered up visually striking nihilistic thrills to genre fans, the majority of horror movies released at the dawn of the new millennium were at best forgettable and, at worst, lamentable – yes, we’re looking at you, Leprechaun in the Hood.  

This was the year of duff sequels like Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2, Urban Legends: Final Cut and, though it is painful to admit, Scream 3. Horror fans were screaming out for something different, something exciting. They found it with Final Destination.  

Discarding the stalk-and-slash thrills that had enjoyed a revival in the years following the release of Scream, Final Destination centered on a group of high schoolers who end up avoiding a fatal plane crash thanks to a premonition, only to discover there is no escaping death’s plan as one by one they are offed in a variety of brilliantly inventive “accidents”.  

Released in March of that year, Final Destination was a sleeper hit with word-of-mouth helping the film to clean up at the box office, earning $112 million off a $23 million budget with more than half of that coming internationally.  

To date, it has spawned four sequels as well as a variety of novelisations and comic book spin-offs while a franchise reboot is also on the horizon.  

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Jeffrey Reddick has worked on several films during his career to date but he’s probably best known as the creator of Final Destination. It’s something he has come to terms with.  

“It’s probably going to end up on my gravestone, it’s such an ironic title,” he tells Den of Geek.  

“Sometimes I’ll be out and I will hear someone say ‘you just had a Final Destination moment’ and it will make me smile. The whole thing just took on a life of its own.”  

Nightmarish Origins  

A screenwriter and director, Reddick recalls how his neighbors in rural Jackson, Kentucky, would laugh when his six-year-old self would tell them about his plans to work in the movie business.   

An avid writer and reader of Greek and Roman mythology, he recalls spending his formative years watching horror movies with his friends. His mother was only too happy to indulge his burgeoning interest too, knowing it kept him out of trouble elsewhere.  

Reddick’s life began to change after he saw A Nightmare on Elm Street.   

“That film cemented my love of horror. I was this 14-year-old hillbilly from Kentucky but I decided I was going to write a prequel. I went home, banged it out on my typewriter and sent it to Bob Shaye.”  

The legendary head of New Line Cinema initially dismissed Reddick’s draft out of hand, returning it with a note explaining the studio did not “accept unsolicited material.”  

Undaunted, Reddick sent the script back with a note telling him “Look mister, I spent three dollars on your movie and I think you could take five minutes on my story.”  

Shaye was impressed and struck up a bond with the youngster that saw him sending everything from scripts to posters to Reddick during his teenage years.  

When Reddick moved to New York to study acting, age 19, he was offered an internship with New Line, which would become a full-time role despite acting being his “main passion.”  

“Diversity in casting was not a thing at that time,” he recalls.  

“My agent was like ‘I don’t know what to do with you as an actor. We can’t put you up for gangsters or pimps and you don’t rap and you don’t play basketball.”  

“So  I figured, screw it, I will just write stuff and put myself in it.”  

Reddick was present at New Line during their company’s early 90s creative heyday and credits the experience with helping him get Final Destination off the ground.  

“I learned a lot about how to get a movie made. I knew that to make a movie that connected with an audience you had to tap into something that was universal. Death is the ultimate fear.”  

As luck would have it, the idea actually came to Reddick while on a flight back to Kentucky.  

“I read about a woman who was on vacation and her mother told her not to take the flight she was planning to take home as she had a bad feeling about it. The woman changed it and the plane she was supposed to be on crashed.”  

At that point however the idea wasn’t Final Destination. It wasn’t a film either. It was an episode of The X Files.  

The Truth Is Out There  

“I was trying to get a TV agent at the time and they recommended I write a spec script for something already on the air. I was a huge fan of The X Files and thought about a scene where somebody has a premonition and gets off the plane and then it crashes and used that as the plot.”  

“It was going to be Scully’s brother Charles who had the premonition. He gets off the plane with a few other people but they start dying and Charles blacks out every time there is a murder so people suspect he is doing it.   

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“The twist at the end was that the sheriff who had been investigating alongside Mulder and Scully the whole time had actually been shot and flatlined at the same time as the plane crash.  Death brought him back to kill off all the survivors, including Charles.”  

It would have made for a great episode except it was never submitted to The X Files. Reddick showed his spec script to some friends at New Line who were so impressed, they told him to develop it into a treatment for a feature, which was eventually purchased by the studio.  

Producers Craig Perry and Warren Zide were brought onboard to develop the story and set about tweaking his idea.  

“Originally the cast of survivors were adults because I wanted to explore more adult themes but Scream had come out and teenagers were hot again so New Line got me to change it”  

In a twist of fate, two established writers from The X Files, James Wong and Glen Morgan, were brought onboard to rejig Reddick’s script.   

“My version was definitely darker and more like A Nightmare on Elm Street,” he says.  

“In my script, death would torment the kids about some kind of past sin they felt guilty about. They would then die in these accidents that ended up looking like suicides.”  

For example, Todd’s death saw him chased into the family garage by an unseen specter where he accidentally ended up rigged in a noose triggered when his dad opens the automatic garage door.   

Death is all around us  

Ultimately that death scene and several others were ultimately scrapped in favour of what would prove to be the franchise’s calling card.  

Reddick credits Wong and Morgan with coming up with the idea of having the film’s key death scenes kicked off by a Rube Goldberg machine-like chain-reaction that would see everyday things colliding to create a lethal scenario. It was nothing short of a masterstroke.   

“It created this notion that death is all around us,” Reddick says.  

“Death would use everyday things around us. It made it more universal and allowed us to set the deaths in places where people go all the time. The payoff would be fun but it was the build-up that had you on the edge of your seat.”  

There was one major sticking point for the studio though: the presence of death, or rather the lack of.  

“I fought really hard to make sure we never showed death because for me, if you didn’t show it, it could be something someone, no matter their belief system, could project onto our villain. That was a tough sell for the studio. They would be like ‘this doesn’t make any sense, you can’t see it and you can’t fight it’ but that’s the point, it’s death.”  

“Luckily both James Wong and Glen Morgan were very insistent we never show it and tie it in to a specific belief system.”  

Reddick credits the move with helping Final Destination become “an international phenomenon”.  

“It struck a chord with people around the world. It broke out beyond the horror audience.”  

Casting dreams   

When it came to casting, Reddick had a clear idea of who he wanted in the lead roles, even if the studio’s opinion differed drastically.  

“I had a wish list with Tobey Maguire and Kirsten Dunst as my two leads but New Line was like ‘well…’”  

He might not have got his first pick but Final Destination boasted an impressive cast of up-and-comers who had already made waves among teen audiences.   

Devon Sawa had starred in Idle Hands, while Ali Larter was known for Varsity Blues and Kerr Smith was a regular on Dawson’s Creek. There was even room for Seann William Scott, fresh from his breakout turn in American Pie who was drafted in on the recommendation of producer Craig Perry, who told Reddick “you’ve got to get this kid, he’s going to be huge.”  

Even so, Reddick was left a little unhappy.  

“One of the conversations we had early on was like ‘Just remember this is set in New York, which is one of the most diverse cities in the world so let’s make sure we have some diversity in the cast’ and they were like ‘oh we will’ and then there wasn’t anyone who wasn’t white in it.”  

New Line chief Bob Shaye did find a way to make amends on some level at least, casting Candyman horror icon Tony Todd in a cameo role as a mysteriously foreboding mortician.  

“He called me up and said they had got Tony Todd and I flipped out. He is an icon. Such a talented, serious actor.”  

As well as co-write the film, Wong took on directorial duties while each of the film’s death sequences would require careful planning, his first aim was to have the film start with a bang by creating as terrifyingly realistic a plane crash as possible.  

“We want to do for planes and air travel what Jaws did for sharks and swimming,” he declared in one interview.  

Yet the film would later garner criticism for its eerie similarities to the explosion and crash of TWA Flight 800 off East Moriches, Long Island, New York in 1996 where 16 students and five adults died.  

“There was some criticism that the movie was written to exploit this real-life crash,” Reddick recalls.  

“I even realised later they used footage from one real-life crash which I wasn’t particularly happy about.”  

Indeed, much of the news footage shown in the film actually came from the 1996 crash.  

That didn’t stop the film becoming a major hit and spawning a sequel within three years.   

Final Destination meets Game of Thrones  

Reddick returned to write the treatment for Final Destination 2, determined to move the franchise away from its teen Scream origins.   

“We had tapped into that zeitgeist and didn’t have to do that again. I wanted to expand the universe and subvert it, so I had it open by following a bunch of teens who are then killed off.”  

Once again, divine intervention led to divine inspiration for the opening set piece.  

“Originally, I was going to have it open with some kids going to spring break and they stop off at this hotel and there is a fire but the producers were not sure. Writers always say you should go out and live life – life informs you and a lot of inspiration comes out when I go out for a walk.  

“I was driving back to Kentucky to see my family and I got stuck behind a log truck and the idea just came to me. I pulled off the highway and called Craig and was flipping out with this idea for a log truck on a freeway.”  

The resulting freeway pile-up that leads to multiple deaths is one Reddick ranks as his “favourite scene in the entire franchise.”  

“The second film is my favourite. I wanted to create a sequel that didn’t feel like a remake of the first. It went in a more fun direction – but it’s still scary.”  

That first sequel also represented the last of which Reddick was formally involved in, though he remained very much in the loop as the Godfather of the franchise, revealing that producers had been “looking at scripts before Covid hit.” 

He also revealed that, at one point, things looked to be heading in an altogether different and thoroughly fascinating direction.  

“There was talk about setting a Final Destination back in Medieval times. Like Game of Thrones in Final Destination. Craig Perry worked with a writer and they talked about the idea and put a teaser trailer together [which has leaked online].   

“I would go and see that movie in a heartbeat but the studio said that the reason Final Destination was so popular was that element of deaths in normal, everyday situations.”  

Future Destinations  

Reddick hasn’t given up on a return to the franchise though, hinting at a “unique” idea he has for a new film that is simply too good to reveal yet.   

In the meantime, he has been busy writing and directing Don’t Look Back, a film that shares some surface similarities with Final Destination and is painfully relevant to society today.  

“It’s a mystery thriller about a group of people who witness someone getting fatally assaulted in a park and don’t help the person and somebody films them and puts it online. The public turns on the witnesses and someone or something is coming after them.”  

Eager to make more horror films and celebrate diversity in his work, Reddick remains immensely proud of Final Destination and the impact it has had on audiences.  

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“It’s cool. To have one movie that is going to be talked about after you die is a life goal. If that’s what I leave behind as a legacy that’s enough – but I still want more.” 

Don’t Look Back is available on DVD & Digital from 14th June

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