#haven't rambled about nancy feelings in a minute here you go <3

[fastcardotmp3]

ronance, immortal!Nancy, werewolf!Robin part 2

hmm thinking about how well a story about the tragedy of immortality would fit Nancy Wheeler...

There's something about losing someone you love so young that locks part of you in time to begin with, but to have repeated death and tragedy seemingly flock to your little pocket of the universe time after time? How does a girl even begin to escape that?

Nancy Wheeler, the teller of stories, doesn't get to die, is cursed to keep living surrounded by violence in canon, sure, but what if she's actually cursed? What if she were destined to outlive everyone she loves? What if the day she decided to take on the responsibility of sharing Barb's story and getting some meager modicum of justice for her memory was also the day Nancy shackled herself to that life, her life, forever?

What if Nancy lives to see the friends she made as a teenager die, her family, her little brother aging long past her into an old man while Nancy remains young and unchanging?

What if she lives for a hundred years and then two? What if by the time 1986 rolls around she's learned how to isolate herself, learned how to move through the shadows and tell the stories that need telling without ever letting the subjects get too close to her?

(It's a difficult thing, to tell a story when you're not a participant, but it's the only way to protect her heart and it's the only way to make sure that when people die it doesn't ache the way the rest of them do.)

It's 1986 and she lives in the woods on the outskirts of a small town buzzing with supernatural energy. It's the kind of thing that dragged Nancy into this trap to begin with, the thing which killed Barb and stole all the parts of humanity Nancy wanted while leaving her with guilt and grief.

It's 1986 and Hawkins, Indiana is buzzing, but when Nancy starts to discover just how teeming with the other this area she's settled in for the time being is, her usual instinct to run gets overruled by something stronger.

She has a nice smile, the girl with the shaggy hair and scuffed-up shoes.

She's persistent to an annoying degree and has a nose for the other if the fact that she found Nancy at all means anything.

She's rambunctious and unapologetic and knows things that someone who looks as old as she looks shouldn't know. Things that Nancy knows, only because she's been around long enough to learn.

But, I'm not like you, Nancy tells her all the same, because what this girl has is a gift and a built-in community and what Nancy has is the curse of isolation.

What Nancy has is herself, first and foremost, but still she doesn't leave and doesn't waver.

Robin, she says her name is. You're not like me, sure, but you're closer to me than them.

Hawkins, Indiana is buzzing with energy, teeming with residents who aren't quite human, but know how to play the part. Robin tells her about it, perched on the porch swing outside Nancy's kitchen window and going on and on about kids with psychic abilities and her metalhead pal who drinks human blood; she tells Nancy about witches and warlocks and shapeshifters alike and--

Werewolves.

Nancy's more like that than she is anything else. Nancy tries to pull away time and again, just as she has for centuries, but Robin reminds her I've got all the time in the world, you know, with a grin and a skip down the steps back out into the brush, and it feels big.

Bigger than the empty space Nancy has surrounded herself with all these years.

Bigger even than Nancy's own unbleeding heart.

Immortality has been Nancy's curse. She's loved so much in her overextended life because she can't help but to do just that when people are-- they're just so lovable.

And she's hated herself for it. She's reprimanded herself and she's tried to find solutions and she's wished for her time to unfreeze too many times to count, but.

The first time that Nancy tracks down Robin instead of the other way around is also the first time that she really acknowledges that time isn't frozen, just because she's been treating it that way.

Time keeps moving and people come and go and that would have been the case had her mortality remained intact, because it hurts, these things. The repercussions of the good.

She finds Robin sometime at the beginning of 1987, sitting on a hand-built fence surrounding a cabin not unlike Nancy's own, only bigger, filled to the brim with life and people.

Robin sips from a glass bottle of Coke, smirking around it knowingly as Nancy comes to a stop at the edge of the clearing, as if she'd known this would happen, as if she'd seen it happen before and knew she would again.

Nancy swallows thickly around the sounds of laughter beyond the open windows to the cabin, curtains billowing in a summer breeze and allowing glimpses of people who have no inclination to hide, and she hurts.

She hurts because to live is to hurt, and she aches, because the part of her which froze the day Barb died is humming at the prospect of being set free once more.

Ready? Robin asks her, hopping down to the other side of the fence and holding out a hand as if to help Nancy climb over it.

She's not like them, these people with superpowers and miraculous talents, but they're a little bit like her.

Nancy steps forward.

Takes the offered hand, warm and dry and with a life line digging through her palm which lines up to Nancy's near-perfectly.

Introduce me? Nancy asks.

With the lift of Robin's grin, it's easy to climb the fence.

part 2

[kevinsreviewcatalogue]

Review: FredHeads: The Documentary (2022)

FredHeads: The Documentary (2022)

Not rated

Score: 3 out of 5

<Originally posted at https://kevinsreviewcatalogue.blogspot.com/2023/01/review-fredheads-documentary-2022.html>

FredHeads: The Documentary is precisely that: a documentary about the Nightmare on Elm Street movies, and more specifically their fans, and how they credit the series with changing their lives. It is an extremely scattershot documentary that, in my honest opinion, ran about thirty minutes too long, as though its directors Paige Troxell and Kim Gunzinger wanted to cram as many of the fan-submitted videos they solicited into the movie as possible even if it meant a runtime of over two hours. The result is a movie that very much feels like it was made for fans, by fans, for better and for worse. While watching so many people discussing their love of the series was interesting as somebody who also loves the Nightmare series, eventually it just started to feel like the movie was rambling, like a group of friends shooting the shit at one guy's place where you're having fun but eventually you wanna do something different. There were some segments that I would've easily kept, like the guy who does a highly detailed Freddy Krueger cosplay for conventions, or the father who said that he'd rather show his young daughter horror movies where the final girl triumphs over the villain through her own grit and gumption versus Disney movies where Prince Charming does the hard work of saving her. Others, however, got repetitive, and there was one particularly weird one featuring a young lady who was frankly obsessed with Nancy Thompson in ways that gave me Annie Wilkes vibes.

It's when the film is narrowing its focus to Troxell and Gunzinger themselves, as well as their friends Anthony Brownlee, Jeremy Todd Moorehead, and Diandra Lazor, as they sit down for just that -- a roundtable discussion of the series and what it means to them -- that the film actually starts to pick up, especially towards the back half where they became the main focus. They all have interesting, and sometimes dark, stories to tell about the movies, whether they were sneaking off to watch violent horror movies that their mothers desperately tried to keep them away from (but their fathers weren't so concerned!), using the movies as an escape from bullying, or deciding not to go through with a suicide attempt because that's not what her hero, the all-time GOAT final girl Nancy Thompson, would have done. It's these stories that stuck with me, stories about how horror fandom, despite being built around movies that haven't gotten much respect until very recently, can have an uplifting effect on people going through rough spots in their lives. The movie that had that impact on me wasn't Nightmare but Carrie, the one piece of media that convinced me to cave and buy a damn Funko Pop! figurine (hey, when you're being mercilessly bullied in middle school, it's hard not to connect with a girl who uses freaky mind powers to get revenge on her bullies), but I still saw a lot of myself in the people profiled in this movie. When it got rolling towards the end, I was reminded why I love horror movies and why I'm proud to do so.

The Bottom Line

If you're not much of a horror fan already, there's probably not a lot in this movie that will hold your attention. That said, if you are, then there's a lot here that you'll enjoy. It's not really about Nightmare so much as it is about horror fandom in general, and there's a lot of material that I think would've been better saved for special features on the DVD, but overall, this film, while unwieldy, has its charms.

[pop-punklouis]

here to talk about stranger things

i'm a sucker for cinematography and some shots were really well done. specifically the one where the kids are biking and it takes you to the upside down where the adults are biking too!

i'm so glad they're focusing on eleven's traumas because phew she has been through a lot. my mind's absolutely blown because of the parallels between how manipulative dr brenner is as a guardian figure vs how joyce (and hopper) emit this kindness and consent. i've talked about it a bit here.

i'm so mad because they did will SO dirty like my poor boy didn't go through so much shit for him to be brushed aside like that, especially when he's like head canonically queer.

also absolutely hate how one dimensional they've made jonathan.

also, eleven deserves someone better than mike. free her from him pls.

i really don't want the nancy/steve thing to happen again. if anything, in honour of pride month let nancy/robin be a thing instead

also wtf is up with suzie's family oh my god??

as always, steve gets 💋💋 one of the best character developments i've seen tbh

in relation to you talking about how will+jonathon+mike got so little screen time, i feel like the new characters, like the baseball captain dude the one who was dating chrissy got more screen time than the trio 😂

anyways this got long im sorry 🙈

SONIIII please hello. yes! there are always certain scenes when a new ST season drops that cause me drool with how much I love its cinematography. I was kinda let down by the CGI this season though. It was *yawn* how much of it they used instead of utilizing the hybrid of physical/digital effects. Like some scenes had great CGI while just five minutes later it is horrid. so weird to me because it takes me out of the immersion rip

i do like how they actually gave eleven a proper backstory! i found those scenes to be more interesting this season as the pacing felt off to me, and it dragged a bit in parts. so getting a more developed background was refreshing for her. and oooo i haven't had time to properly analyze parallels, but that was a great catch regarding the difference between Brenner and Joyce/Hop as guardian figures to El 👀

they've continuously pushed Will to the backburner since season 3 and I'm! sick of! it! i want to see more of him and he deserves better tbh (much better than mike but i digress lmao) pretty homophobic if you ask me 🔪😵‍💫

did jonathan even.... exist this season. he was so unmemorable it is hard to tell. what even was the point of will+mike+jonathan's C plot besides the duffer brothers having absolutely nothing going for their storyline so just. didn't really do anything with it lmao and YEAH?? honestly fuck mike he annoys me. both el and will deserve better 💅🏼

the hamfisted nancy/steve rekindling drives me NUTS. it is such lazy writing and is only building to steve getting his hopes up and having them crushed again when jonathan tumbles back into the actual plot and "gets the girl" again its so boring and expected. please give steve something else to focus on. give him MORE than being the mopey ex boyfriend. let him be happy please. nancy/robin??? i'd LOVE to see it actually 💕

Suzie's family is mormon!! that like. explains practically everything about that household's dynamics lol they just amplified the Mormon stereotype but its hilarious djrjrktk

steve continues to be one of the only characters to carry this show on his back for another season like thank you king as always 🌹💋

(and don’t be sorry!! i could ramble about stranger things all day 🫣)