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slytheringlambert91 · 1 month

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Doomed by the Narrative

Jason messed up on a mission, and like his usual dramatic self, blows it a little out of proportion and panics.

AKA 2800 words of Jason spiraling

TW: panic attack, dissociation, mild suicidal thoughts? (There’s a bit where he thinks he’s better off dead)

If there’s something else let me know

Fic below the cut, and here’s the link on ao3:

The wind sweeps through Jason’s hair, his helmet behind him on the roof. Gotham has an over abundance of gargoyles, some which are still stable enough to hold his weight. The ledge he’s in is small—more suited to teenaged him, but this was his favorite roof.

It’s tall, positioned where you can see most of the city.

He breathes deeply, head braced against the gargoyle behind him—looking at where stars /should/ be—arms resting on his knees.

He’d fucked up tonight.

He’d fucked up massively.

Dick almost died because of him.

/Damian/ almost died because of him

/Tick

Tick

The sound echoes in Jason’s head, his bones, his very being.

Why tonight, why this mission?

He should move, do something. Maybe warn the others?

He’s supposed to be clearing the warehouse with Dick and Damian, he should warn them, get them out. But he can’t move, he’s frozen, his mouth won’t form the warning.

Tick

Something slams into him, right before heat sears through him.

Dick’s groaning on top of him, taking most of the heat of the fire.

How did he let this happen?

He’ll never be allowed back now.

The bomb was far enough away to not kill them, but it still sucked ass.

He drags Dick up, tosses him at Bruce, and runs./

He can’t help but draw similarities to his favorite tragedies.

Running away, never looking back like Orpheus saving his wife.

There’s more, Jason’s mind is racing between the self deprecating thoughts and the analogies.

But the height of his perch, the way the gentle breeze brushes through his hair, brings him out of his spiral briefly. He can almost pretend it’s Bruce, running his fingers through Jason’s hair, soothing him after a nightmare.

That’s his Achilles Heel, his weakness: the way he craves the comfort of a family he drove away.

Gotham’s air could never be considered fresh, too smoggy, too polluted, but it’s home.

It’s /his/ home.

His home, which he may have to say goodbye to.

Everything he’s been working towards with the Bats, gone.

Gone in a single instant.

All because Jason froze.

It was a damn warehouse, they were locked in, and there was the ticking of a bomb.

A sick parody of his death.

Except

This time he wasn’t alone.

There’s no way they’ll invite him back now.

He’d tried.

He’d tried /so hard/

And it wasn’t enough.

Bruce doesn’t want him, won’t want him, /can’t/ want him.

He’s a danger, why would any father want him around their kids? Even his own father shouldn’t want that..

Jason can’t even keep his head in the field. All the work he’s done to reclaim his trauma, to prove he’s /better/ than that, failed.

Looks like he’s a long way from Prometheus, he’s never been able to reclaim his fire.

He’s still fucked up, still useless.

All it took was a ticking noise and a warehouse.

The circumstances were vastly different.

There were no chains, no joker, no /crowbar/—barring the one strapped to his back, now laying next to his helmet. Hell, he even had company! He wasn’t facing it alone, and yet he still froze.

Boots thump against the ground—clearly intentional, it’s the Bat after all—accompanied by the quiet swish of a long cape.

Of course, there are other bats with capes: Red Robin and Robin, Spoiler and Black Bat, pretty much everyone but him and Dick.

But with the weight behind the drop, and the fact that Batman’s cape has a distinctive sound—if you know what to listen for—all leads to it being the big Bat.

Exactly the person who’s arrival he was dreading.

He knew it was inevitable. Hell, he wasn’t even hiding, or running. He just wished it wasn’t the case. He’d wondered if Bruce would give him a day or two, wanting to be with his real children, to reassure himself they survived despite Jason’s fuck-up.

“Hood.” Bruce growls. His voice is low and dark, only spelling out the anger hiding beneath.

“I know. I fucked up, it was dangerous and reckless and I endangered everyone. If I say I’m sorry,” he’s not really, is he? Can you be sorry if it’s something you can’t control? “Will you spare me the lecture?”

He knows the lecture is coming, almost nothing is a big enough excuse to get out of the lectures. He may be resigned to it, but he’d like to at least pretend he’s not used to it.

It’s all he gets now.

/“Jason, you’re being reckless”

“You’re dangerous”

“You lack control”/

And on and on and on

He’s /sick/ of it. Yet he can’t yell, or fight, and god knows he can’t /leave/.

He can’t force himself to give this up, he can’t leave his family. Even if they don’t want him. Even if he’ll never be a true member again.

But was he ever?

He was never truly accepted. Not by Dick, not by society. Who knows if Bruce actually wanted him there or was pitying him.

He’s just the /poor, starving street rat.

“Are you ok?” Bruce’s low voice shocks him out of his thoughts again.

“I…am uninjured.”

Is he ok?

He’s not totally present, he wouldn’t know.

Or rather, he’s /too present/, and yet disconnected from his feelings.

His mind’s spinning, it’s racing and it won’t stop.

But there’s no emotion tied to the thoughts.

How can there be?

He’s been waiting for this moment since he started reintegrating back into the family. The moment where they kick him to the curb, tell him he’s not worth it and he never was.

He could still leave, he has his grapple. He could jump off, run away /again/.

He could stand and fight. Turn around, close the distance, and scream at Bruce until he’s hoarse, or it escalates to something physical.

His heart stutters at the thought.

He may love fighting, he relishes in seeing that vein pop out in Bruce’s forehead, the way his lips purse in displeasure, but he can’t do it tonight.

He can’t—

“—ood!” Apparently Bruce has been talking for a while. Interesting. “Jason!” That really startles Jason. Bruce has rarely ever broken his “no names in the field rule”.

Whatever it is must be important.

“Jaylad, I need you to answer me, son, I need you to breathe.”

Wait. That was him, wasn’t it? Bruce was calling to him? He was calling him son, breaking one of his most important rules, for /Jason/?

He turns his head, making eye contact with Bruce. He must’ve retracted the white lenses at some point.

“There you are lad,” Bruce’s voice is soft, he must’ve turned the voice modulator off at some point. “Can you come over here? I can’t get to you on that ledge.”

Bruce is crouching on the edge of the roof, arm outstretched to him.

“You with me, bud? I just need you to grab my hand.”

Jason can do that, right? That seems easy.

Bruce isn’t asking a lot.

Seems hard though. His limbs aren’t obeying him, he can’t raise his arm, can’t force himself to stand up.

He manages to shake his head ever so slightly, eyes pleading with Bruce to understand, to get what he’s saying without having to say anything.

“No? No what, Jay? Can’t move?”

Jason nods at that, trying again to force his arm to work.

“Ok, ok we can sit here a bit longer. How about you try taking some deep breaths for me? I’ll lead, just try and follow.”

Jason acknowledges Bruce the best he can, and his father starts the familiar breathing sequence.

Jason begins to feel his body again, he didn’t even realize when he stopped.

On his last exhale, he’s able to shift, bracing his hands against his knees and pushing up.

“There we go, chum. Take it slow, alright?”

Jason stands, keeping a hand braced on the gargoyle. For the first time in a very long time, his vision swims when he takes in the height.

“D’d?” His tongue feels heavy, mouth not quite cooperating enough to form all the sounds.

There’s a sharp inhale from the figure across from him. The swirling black against the—mostly—gray sky.

“I’m here, Jaylad, I’m here. You can do it, just come to me.”

His limbs are still sluggish, but he can do it, right? It’s just 2 steps. Two steps and he’ll be near Bruce, he’ll be with his dad.

But…

Does his father really want him there?

His thoughts keep coming back to that.

The endless circle of self doubt.

Everything about this situation points to Bruce caring about him. Wanting him back.

But does he actually?

Is this a ploy?

“Deep breaths, Jay, you can do it, I believe in you.”

Oh, his breathing sped up again, didn’t it?

Jason just needs to get to Bruce, take the two steps off the ledge and back into the roof.

He starts forward, breathing fast, heart pounding in his chest.

One step,

Just one more,

He stumbles and—

He falls.

Distantly, he can hear Bruce yell, see the black shape dive after him.

They say Icarus laughed as he fell.

Overcome with joy, with freedom, he laughed.

Jason…didn’t quite laugh, but how else can he explain the sense of calm, of peace settling over him.

This was always his favorite part of flying through Gotham, this falling.

The swoop of his stomach before he shot the grapple line.

He knows he should be grabbing the grapple, it should be instinctual.

It always has been. Until now.

What if this is how it’s meant to be?

Surely his family is better without him.

They made it through his death once, surely they could do it again.

He’s always been a Greek tragedy, doomed by the narrative, right there with Achilles, Patroclus, and all the other Greek heroes of old.

At least they were worth something, they were /good/ (mostly).

A force slams into him, knocking out whatever air was left in his lungs.

Bruce had caught him, Bruce knew what to do.

He was twisting them in the air, firing the grapple line in the same move.

The line pulls taut, yanking them upwards /hard/. He hears Bruce grunt at the impact on his shoulder.

It still wasn’t enough, they slam into the ground, with just enough momentum taken out if it so that the fall doesn’t seriously injure them.

Bruce takes the brunt of it, covering Jason with his body, his free arm covering Jason’s head.

Bruce groans, body twisting under Jason.

This is Jason’s fault.

Bruce is hurting because of him.

First Dick and Damian, now Bruce. Jason hurts everything and everyone around him.

He needs to leave. /Now/.

He shoves himself up, forcing heavy limbs to work, and stumbles off of Bruce.

He can hear the alarmed shout and Bruce scrambling to get up, but he doesn’t stop.

He /can’t/ stop.

He doesn’t make it far, his legs give out and he collapses back to the pavement. He can’t help the way he curls up, trying to force himself back to his feet and ultimately failing.

Heavy arms encircle him, propping him upright against a broad chest.

Bruce’s fingers find his hair, stroking through it soothingly. Jason’s muscles are tense, he sits rigidly in Bruce’s arms.

It shouldn’t be comfortable, and yet it is. It’s the most comfortable Jason’s felt in a /long/ time.

“I got you, you’re safe now. Everything we’ll be ok, we’re going to go home.”

Home.

Does he have a home? It sounds nice. He finds himself relaxing, slowly intending his muscles, breathing finally evening out.

An indeterminate amount of time later, Jason is bundled into the Batmobile. Bruce never lets him go, setting the autopilot and then holding him tight the whole way back.

He’s starting to come back to himself when they pull into the cave. He can’t bring himself to worry about what that means, what his punishment will be for screwing the mission up and almost costing Dick and Damian’s lives.

Aforementioned brothers are pacing the cave when Bruce pulls him out of the car. Well, Damian is pacing and it looks like Dick is following him and trying to herd him upstairs.

“—just wait upstairs! B will bring Jason up eventually!”

Damian is ignoring Dick, and is the first to notice their arrival. The kid has one arm in a sling, and a couple visible cuts and bruises, but otherwise appears fine.

Dick is outwardly limping, his posture slumped as if compensating for broken ribs.

Jason can’t see the burns, but he knows they’re there. Because of him.

“You /both/ should be resting upstairs. It’s been a tough night.” Bruce cuts in from his position next to Jason. He’d been guiding Jason towards the med bay, keeping him close.

“C’mon, B, did you really think we’d listen? The only reason the others aren’t down here is because Alfred put his foot down.”

Bruce settles Jason on the cot, and Jason slumps forward to rest his head on Bruce’s chest. Now that the adrenaline has bled out of him, he’s just /tired/.

“Hey, Jaylad, just a little longer, ok? I need to get your armor off.” Jason grumbles his assent, but makes no move to help. Bruce finds the latches on his chest piece, jacket ditched a while ago—maybe in the car? Jason’s not quite sure—and slips it off. It’s followed by his guns, which are unloaded and put safely into his locker.

Bruce feels along his ribs and chest, asking Jason to take a couple breaths as he does so.

Jason follows all the orders mindlessly, anything to get him closer to sleeping.

Eventually, Bruce finishes his check up and hesitates, “I need to go change, lad, will you be alright here?”

“Mmph.”

There’s a sigh from above him, and Bruce’s fingers return to his hair.

“It won’t take long, I promise.”

Hands—Damian’s one good hand, both of Dick’s, he guesses—and towards the wall. He’s dimly aware of Bruce stepping away, and one of them helps him change out of his uniform pants and into sweats, leaving. When that’s done, Damian and Dick slip into place on the table next to him, holding him tight.

“Akhi?”

Jason hums his acknowledgment, but can’t bring himself to actually speak. He knows he should be embarrassed at showing this much weakness to his baby brother, but he can’t help it. He’s barely in control of his body, and he feels like Atlas, weighed down by an impossible burden.

Or maybe Sisyphus is the better analogy.

He’s been working nonstop to redeem himself, prove himself worthy, until his body gave out, like Sisyphus pushing the rock uphill for eternity, always a battle, a struggle, he can never win.

But maybe it’ll be different for Jason? Maybe this can change. Maybe he can accept help, maybe his family /does/ want him.

Dick’s fingers slide through his hair, Damian’s hand is at his back, rubbing soothing circles. One of them is humming, and he doesn’t know which.

Eventually—Jason’s unsure how much time has passed—Bruce shows back up in front of them, dressed in loose sweatpants and a soft t-shirt.

“Come on, Akhi, come with us.” Damian’s voice is soft and coaxing, he and Dick guide Jason off the table and towards the elevator. Bruce is close at their backs, and Jason leans heavily on Dick.

Jason is only dimly aware of being led through the manor, pausing briefly at the heavy oak door leading to Bruce’s room.

The rest of his siblings are all there, Tim, Steph, Cass, all curled up in the bed. Cass sits up and blinks owlishly, tilting her head as she takes in Jason’s body language. He fidgets under the scrutiny, and Damian still tugs him forward.

Cass’ face softens at whatever she sees, and reaches out her hand. He takes it, and they all climb in the bed.

After some maneuvering, and careful jostling of Tim and Steph, Jason is situated in the middle of the pile, with Bruce at his back holding him securely. Damian fits himself between Jason and Tim, and Dick between Damian and Tim.

This is even better than being held earlier, now there’s no hard armor digging into him.

He can hear soft murmuring, but surely it’s not important. Not when he’s so tired, and wholly safe for the first time in years.

Nothing is quite fixed, yet it feels like it might be able to be fixed.

Whatever happens later, right now Jason is safe.

Without anything else stopping him, Jason finally lets Morpheus pull him under, dropping into the comforting darkness.

#batman #jason todd #bruce wayne #batfam #my fics #Jason is a drama queen #he just wants to be loved #and accepted by his family

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thefingerfuckingfemalefury · 2 years

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However blatant a Batman parody you’re thinking this character is, believe me it’s far more blatant than you could ever guess :D

And I need her to be in She-Hulk: Attorney at Law season two as Jen’s new ally

And maybe also her love interest >.>

#Marvel #Comics #Sfw

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beevean · 8 months

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(1/2)yo, uh, hi. i've never actually interacted with you before but i think you have pretty cool sonic takes in general and are a cool individual in general. i wanted to say smth about an ask response you made a bit back about how sonic's game foils are stoic and serious while his western media foils are loudmouthed braggarts and like. jet the hawk exists. the babylon rogues are an in-universe parody of team sonic where jet is a braggart jackass, wave is snooty and prideful, and storm is stupid.

(2/2) just because a character intended as a foil to another, takes an unsavory trait of them and exaggerates it, doesn't mean they're always an accurate reflection of who they're foiling is. batman has joker and riddler as foils, completely different characters taking certain aspects of batman and shifting them to contrast him. chaos sonic takes sonic's taunts and verbal jabs and turns into a parody of what sonic is, and that's kind of like, his point. he's not sonic he's how the C.C view sonic

Lmao! My bad, I did forget about Jet 😂 the way you described them is precisely why I don't like the Babylon Rogues - sick designs and cute interactions with each other, but I don't like them as foils to the main trio.

Even then, Jet is one of many characters that work as foils to Sonic: he's his cockiness turned up to eleven, he's Sonic if he cared about winning more than anything else. But then you have Knuckles, who is the mountain to Sonic's wind: brash, aggressive, anchored to a place. Then you have Shadow: artificial, shackled to his past until his own game, introverted, cordial but aloof, more ruthless. Then you have Blaze, the fire to Sonic's wind: also introverted, straight up refusing to open up to others, burdened by responsibilities. And Metal, who is in short Sonic's power in Eggman's hands, completely chained to him.

I see more variety to explore Sonic's characters and give him different rivalries, and he has different relationships with all of these characters, from being genuine friends to being friendly rivals. On the other hand, Scourge and Surge are more or less the same archetype of "obnoxious edgy violent braggart" - Surge has a fairly interesting Shadow-esque backstory, but so far the story hasn't taken advantage of it, putting more focus on how "cool" she supposedly is (can't speak about Scourge in detail because I refuse to read Archie lol). And Chaos Sonic, well...

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First of all, the problem with characters who are meant to be annoying is that they still are annoying lol. So uhhh good job I suppose? But I don't know how much I can praise you for getting on my nerves lol.

Second, Sonic here keeps making the same joke - "oh wow am I this annoying? stop talking!". He's the one who puts the focus on Chaos Sonic's singular trait: being unable to shut up. And, well... kind of? This Sonic is way more energetic and childish than Game Sonic. The joke falls flat for me because Chaos Sonic is not that exaggerated, he's just meaner.

Funnily enough, one can also see Surge and Kit as incarnations of how Starline saw Sonic and Tails: the former as a stupid (according to her) arrogant braggart, and the latter as a mindless sycopant. Get it, because he was all about being meta, blah blah blah sonic cycle :P in that case, I can accuse the writing at attempting to seem deeper than it actually was. Ah, don't let me start on the absolute mess that are S&K and how they came to be...

Anyway. The root of the problem is that generally speaking Western Sonic, from SatAM to Prime, has differed from game Sonic in having his cockiness amped up for cool points. That's his appeal here. Now, don't get me wrong, Sonic is cool in general, but he's more... effortlessly cool, I say. He's natural in his coolness, he doesn't try, he just is. That trait of his got flanderized in the '90s because of cultural differences, and writers nowadays are still playing under this misconception, from Flynn who writes a supremely arrogant Sonic (not even talking about his preaching attempts, even small things like basking in the praise of the crowd, or using his fame status to intimidate a waiter in Archie), to Prime Sonic being pitched as having to learn not to take his friends for granted, implying that he was too egotistical to care before.

And I see this reflected in the kind of rivals they create for Western media, which can be boiled down as "Sonic but meaner and all taunts, with zero redeeming qualities".

But hey, this is my opinion. Thank you for your nice words ^^

#sonic the hedgehog

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vidreview · 8 days

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VIDEO ESSAY ROUNDUP #3

[originally posted december 21st 2023]

here we are again! i've had most of this roundup queued for a while and just haven't had time to finish it, so the entries here aren't necessarily super recent. but they're still quite worth your time! so let's just jump right in.

"The Gaming Industry, Gambling, and Addiction" by GC Vasquez.

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in the previous roundup i highlighted Jimmy McGee's series on the video game industry's ties to gambling. GC Vasquez has made what i think is an excellent spiritual companion to those videos, in that it approaches the same material from a decidedly personal place. the fact that the primary expected model for turning a consistent profit in the games industry (at least as far as companies like Unity are concerned, with the c-suite insisting that you'd be "fucking idiots" for doing anything else) involves pushing microtransaction gacha mechanics into every nook and cranny really cannot be criticized enough. but i think, even more pressingly, GC Vasquez points out that games have always included fictional gambling in the form of slot machines, poker tables, roulette wheels, etc, and that this demonstrably conditions kids to develop gambling addictions. on a lighter note, his video about why replay value in games doesn't matter as much as we think it does is one of those "finally someone put it into words" type essays.

"The Lost Majora's Mask Notebook | New Zelda Info" by The Hyrule Journals.

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there are plenty of folks out there doing Zelda lore and history videos, but no one's got the stuff quite like The Hyrule Journals. Their documentary Line By Line, tracing the history of Majora's Mask's English translation by talking extensively to the guy who did the translation, is an excellent work of games journalism that revealed a lot of information previously unknown to me. The Lost Majora's Mask Notebook is a followup to that doc, sharing insights gained from the translator's own notebook kept during the translation process. it's cool! i would not call this A Great Video Essay necessarily but it's a good excuse to recommend an underrated channel.

"SEND IN THE CLOWN: a people's joker review" by let's talk about stuff.

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oh this is a pretty cheeky inclusion, huh? one of my own videos? that's right, you got me: the whole VIDREV operation was just a shell game to goose my viewership numbers all along. the video is exactly what it says on the tin: a review of Vera Drew's incredible trans coming of age story / Batman parody film The People's Joker. i talk a fair amount in the back half about the novel ways this film got me questioning the cultural purpose of copyright and IP law, which is itself a strand of thought that began in my TUNIC review. if it seems like i'm always plugging my TUNIC review it's because i'm really proud of my TUNIC review and i would like for more people to watch it ("it" being my TUNIC review). anyway, The People's Joker is relevant now with the recent news that the film will be seeing wider distribution in the states come April 2024! so look forward to that, and to me undoubtedly plugging my People's Joker review yet again.

THE "DOESN'T NEED THE HELP" ZONE is kind of silly this time around since most of what i have to recommend is from channels that are doing relatively alright. my criteria for the distinction between does/doesn't need the help mostly comes down to vibes and subscriber count. if a channel has more than 100k subs, that to my mind means they don't need the help. this is not to insinuate that 100k+ creators are rich! youtube is a fickle mistress and everyone's revenue model looks different. i try to give precedence to folks below the 30k range, because that's where my channel's at and, coincidentally, where i tend to find the most interesting underrated creators. is it totally corrupt to put my own work in the implicitly-needs-the-help zone? call me out in the comments if you think this is a gross abuse of power.

"Playing Minecraft and Losing My Apartment" by Leadhead.

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Leadhead has some great stuff, but this one hit me where it hurts. it's a video about escaping into the artificial goals of a video game at a time when personal disruption and chaos wrenches all sense of control over your own life away. i went through a pretty traumatic eviction myself back in 2021, and found myself totally incapable of making art about it. really nice to see someone else picking up that slack!

"Transition Regret & the Fascism of Endings" by Lily Alexandre.

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another in a long line of bangers from Lily Alexandre, about how complicated it is to have mixed feelings on your own transition at a time when anyone expressing such emotions has their story weaponized against the rights of trans people everywhere. a lot of trans women in my life started HRT around 2017-18, and i've noticed a trend of folks in that cohort (myself included) trying to reclaim aspects of their masculinity from a safe distance by playing more with pronouns and presentation. i expect we'll be seeing a lot more videos about this in the years to come, and i can't wait! also: Lily Alexandre has some of the prettiest compositions in the whole video essay game. seriously, her color coordination and framing choices (and use of nonstandard aspect ratios!!!) are subtly artful in a way you really don't see very often on youtube.

"Should We Get Rid of Sex Scenes? (Part I)" by Broey Deschanel.

uh-oh, this one's a Nebula exclusive!!! i haven't really talked about Nebula on here yet, but suffice it to say it's an extremely important development in the business of online video. especially in this case, a video about sex scenes in Hollywood that quite literally could not exist on youtube under its current content guidelines! Broey Deschanel is a lot of fun to watch and makes some really great observations here. if you've got Nebula, it's well worth your time!

"Stop using Fandom" by mossbag.

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if you have spent any amount of time in fandom (lowercase-f) spaces, you'll no doubt be well acquainted with how terrible Fandom (uppercase-f) is as a company and a product. this video digs deep into how scummy they are about filling wikis with intrusive ads, making alterations at the behest of private companies without consulting the people who manage said wikis, and their refusal to remove the wikis of any property whose community decides to migrate to another platform. one gripe i have with Fandom that didn't get mentioned is their outright ban on outbound links, which functionally murders any genuine archival usefulness a wiki might otherwise have. everything has to be in-fiction, which is just such a backwards and pointless way of doing things. they are systematically opposed to preserving community history and have no interest in fandom except as a money hungry middle-man between fans and IP owners. i highly recommend installing Indie Wiki Buddy on your browser so that you can avoid Fandom wikis like the plague they are.

"Journey to EPCOT Center: A Symphonic History" by Defunctland.

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hey, did Kevin Perjurer just reinvent video essays? well… no, not really. but what he and his collaborators have accomplished here is a fascinating, impressive, and deeply odd intervention on the format which mixes archival footage, live recreations, and a "read along at home" written component to create an essay totally unlike anything i've seen before. honestly i really hope more essayists include supplemental written material in the future, especially with longer works where maybe not everything needs to be on screen! anyway, Journey to EPCOT is such a wild ambitious swing, and while i'm not totally convinced that it completely works i still have to applaud the audacity of the attempt. definitely requires a level of active participation that is well above average for youtube, not something you put on in the background if you actually want to learn anything from it, but definitely worth the effort.

"I kissed nuclear waste to prove a point" by Kyle Hill.

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Kyle Hill is an educator on nuclear energy, and while i find a lot of his sillier videos a bit grating, i have nothing but praise for his work on historic nuclear disasters and the present day state of nuclear energy. it really can't be overstated how directly our general distrust of nuclear energy was kickstarted by fossil fuel companies, or how unambiguously illiterate the wider public is when it comes to the management of nuclear power plants and the disposal of nuclear waste. Kyle Hill here does a great job explaining just how unbelievably safe the whole operation is when it's well-funded and well-regulated, and stresses the inarguable fact that there's no source of green energy safer, more plentiful, or more efficient than nuclear. windmills and solar panels have their uses, but they will never be sufficient in reducing our reliance on fossil fuels if they're the only energy infrastructure we invest in at scale. and electric vehicles? oh man. the EV push as it stands is set up to be a grand historic embarrassment of catastrophic proportions. let's be good capitalists and set aside the rampant human rights violations and immense environmental impacts of rare-earth mining. the emissions from having to put down fresh asphalt more frequently due to the increased average weight of electric vehicles wearing roads down faster alone will outweigh virtually every gain from an electrified vehicle fleet, if electrifying the fleet is the only transportation infrastructure we invest in at scale.

there is simply no path forward to liberating the world from its reliance on fossil fuels that does not involve massive investment into building nuclear power plants and reducing our reliance on individual vehicles by exponentially expanding the reach of mass public transit. anything less than that is a laughable half measure whose most prominent boosters are, without a doubt, paid by fossil fuel companies to always be boosting. this is why i find Kyle Hill's work so impressive and refreshing. he talks quite a lot about nuclear disasters, but goes to great lengths to highlight that the fault lies in lack of funding, lax security protocols, and greedy parties preventing proper management, and that even with these horror stories at hand, fewer people have died from accidental nuclear exposure in history than get exposed to carcinogenic discharges from fossil fuel products every day and OOPS SORRY I'M SOAPBOXING it's a good video you should watch it

"What Happened To Spoof Movies?" by Eddache.

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bit of a mood shift from that last entry, thank goodness. this here is an exceedingly thorough history of the spoof movie genre that does a great job explaining why some parodies work and others really, really do not. i had no idea how much of the recent history of spoof movies comes down to failson nepotism! a good chill video to watch if you want something relatively harmless to wile away an afternoon with.

and that's it. good luck in these final weeks of 2023, be sure to mask up, get vaxxed, and make sure your friends and family get PCR tests before any big gatherings, what with covid levels being as high as they were in 2020 in many places! i'm serious, deaths have been above 1000 a week since the end of August! so take care of yourselves out there

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ALSO: VIDREV's askbox is open! please feel free to forward any video essays that you think might be worth talking about (even if you're the one who made it!). this includes new stuff, old stuff, professional stuff, amateur stuff, anything that can be reasonably described as a video essay. no promises that i will cover anything that gets sent to me, but i will try to give everything an honest chance when i've got the time. if you have specific questions you'd like answered, please send those over to my main account as i don't intend to answer any questions here. okay, thanks!!

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#vidrev #video essay #video essay review #video recommendation #gc vasquez #hyrule journals #broey deschanel #leadhead #lily alexandre #sarah zedig #kyle hill #defunctland #mossbag #eddache #Youtube

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zeroducks-2 · 1 year

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“Judging by how the sales of comicbooks dropped from post reboot onwards” does this refer to N52 or Rebirth or the former but keeps declining even with the latter? I’m curious bcs 👀 like, well, it should be obvious the reason why but ig it’s true that many execs/marketing team in that huge kind of company do not have the biggest brain 🤷🏽‍♂️

I don't actually have official sources on hand, sorry about that! I remember reading an interview with Dan DiDio saying that in the past 10 years or so "they lost an entire generation of readers", which leads me to assume there has been a consistent drop in comicbook sales after Flash Point Paradox -ish. Not sure if precisely with Rebirth of N52. Which doesn't surprise me given that they butchered entire decades of worldbuilding, character building and established dynamics for a half assed parody of what they had before.

To expand a little on that. When the reboot happened, despite being hella pissed, lots of fans (me included) thought it was a way to set in stone some key events of what we can call the "main comicbook continuity" because a lot of things concerning New Earth (which is the "main continuity" going from the early '80s to 2010ish) made absolutely no sense, temporally and logically and what have you. For example, when exactly Dick had worn the Batman mantle. Or, that bullshit with Joker being ambassador of Iran. Or the ages of the characters, when they started wearing their mantles etc. Nothing of this happened. Instead they got rid of a number of characters that they didn't really want in their stories anymore (like Cass and Steph who literally disappeared despite having had successful and beloved runs as Batgirls), and they cherrypicked what to keep as canon (Joker shot Barbara and rendered her paralyzed BUT she can walk thanks to an implant, so she's Batgirl now and also she looks and acts as if she was 20 despite she should be in her late 30s. It's unclear if everything she did as Oracle and with the Birds of Prey happened or not).

As you can imagine, that didn't sit well with a lot of pre-existing fans, but also made it extremely confusing for new fans. Things make even less sense than before and it's even more intimidating to approach the comics since to understand a shred of what's happening you should read 30+ volumes of the New Earth continuity AND ALSO everything that happened post reboot and probably you still would have zero idea tf is going on. I don't most of the time to be honest.

This is also why people tend to be weirdly attached to stuff that happened in one single comic even if it was never brought up again, imo. For example Dick, Cass, Jason and Tim having been legally adopted by Bruce. I don't believe there is one single mention of that in any comic except the one comic where it happens - kinda like the writer who wrote it wanted it to be like this, but then the one who came after them pretended it never happened, and nobody brought it up again. So is that canon? It surely was at some point but how about now, is Dick "legally a Wayne"? As far as I know the answer is no, but again, nothing makes sense so people keep on cherrypicking what they like about canon.

Sorry I went on a tangent but yeah they made a mess. Toss in the mix the fact that many of the writers that handled these characters post reboot really hated them (and to this day I cannot understand for the love of me WHY they gave them to writers that hated them. Just see what happened with the whole disgrace that was the Ric Grayson situation), and you have barely readable storylines that contradict previous canon, make no sense and are boring and uninspired as fuck, trying to bank on cheap tricks like "let's pretend these people love each other and are a big happy family because that's what the public wants to read, right?? The Batfamily sells!". That's the extent of their effort to make a story good.

#I'm pretty sure that interview with DiDio is quite easy to find but somehow I'm not managing #but I might be totally wrong about this so take the whole 'sales dropped' with a pinch of salt unless you actually see a source #my asks #DC comics

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thealexanderfiles · 10 months

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lol I’m sure you’re getting a lot of these, but as a once-MCU-only fan turned Marvel-and-DC comics fan, I think I can offer some guidance.

I’m going to answer some of your questions first, then give you some starting point recs.

There are 6 kids that officially have lived in Wayne Manor with Bruce as their parent, Dick, Jason, Tim, Cass, Damian, Duke.

Duke is the only one I’m not sure the status on adoption or not, definitely foster at a point, but his parents are technically alive as far as I know, so not sure the adoption legalities there.

Duke is also the ONLY META in the batfamily.

There are 5 robins, you got that and the order right. But, Jason was actually adopted before Dick was, Dick was adopted as an adult- he was legally Bruce’s ward when he lived in the manor, but lbr they were already father and son then.

Minor qualm but yes, Jason did take a dip in magic water (the Lazarus pit) but technically what brought him back to life was an angry fanboy literally punching the universe to the point where it shattered and Messed Things Up (happy to explain more if you want).

Tim Drake did not begin as an orphan, that is correct, but how he became Robin is actually super fun. He as an 8-year-old discovered the identities of Batman and Robin (he recognized Dick Grayson’s Robin do a move only the Flying Graysons were able to do, and put the pieces together from there). He then saw Batman was Not Doing Well mentally after Jason died (aka becoming more aggressive, caring less about his personal safety, etc.) and decided that “Batman needs a Robin” and volunteered himself.

https://thedirect.com/article/batman-dc-studios-brave-and-bold-movie-heroes

^that could help if you want more in-depth backstories on each member of the family otherwise.

Tim ran WE for some time when Bruce was believed dead, I believe he then became majority shareholder.

Tim, Dick and Jason do not in canon become airheads, and unfortunately Brucie Wayne is more of a fanon thing than a canon thing in the way you are describing it (aka The Superior Way it Should Be in canon). Comic writers treat Brucie Wayne more like an MCU-Tony-Stark-esque playboy.

Cass is the second Batgirl (third if you count Bette but most people don’t), between Barbara and Stephanie. See that link above for more details. She was Black Bat for a time after, and now is Orphan.

The JL actually don’t think Batman works alone! That’s just a fun fanon trope that is not canon compliant.

Yes, any Green Lantern is essentially allergic to the color yellow.

You are so right about the crossovers and You Should Say It.

Tim is Bi!! Iconic and amazing and wonderful of him. Everybody say “thank you, Meghan Fitzmartin.”

The internet is divided because canon is divided. Most will choose to simply ignore bad Batdad, others will argue it’s important to the characters. Personal preference there.

If I’m not mistaken, #OnlyInGotham is a fanon thing.

Sure, I like Australian NYC, but I much prefer New Jersey if it went off the deep end (because Gotham is widely considered to be in New Jersey)

Hit the nail right on the head with Riddler, 10/10.

Batcest can just go away for ever please and thank you.

There’s actually a fascinating history about Deadpool here. Deadpool was created by Marvel in part as a very obvious parody to DC’s Deathstroke. Deadpool is Wade Wilson, Deathstroke is Slade Wilson. I can’t make this up. Comics are awesome.

In the comics, Dick Grayson is primarily associated with Teen Titans, and Tim Drake is primarily associated with Young Justice. Both shows’ original Robins are Dick Grayson, though. (YJ does eventually incorporate the next two Robins as Dick becomes Nightwing).

Batburger is real and canon.

Now for recs:

The most fanon-y way to start is Wayne Family Adventures on Webtoon. That’s how I got started.

To get a more full sense of the DC Universe, watch Young Justice. It deviates a lot from the comics in many respects, but is incredibly comics-accurate in others.

Super Sons is a great comic. It’s about Damian and his best friend Jon Kent, Superboy.

Tom Taylor’s Nightwing is a personal favorite, but wait to start that until you have at least read WFA.

Hope this helps!!

Oh my god please do I have so many questions

And yes this helped a lot. Do you know where I can watch any of the shows? Bc I know Disney is where u go for marvel, but I've asked around and none of my friends (primarily mcu fans, accept for one singular dc fan who's number I've forgotten) have a clue.

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popculturebuffet · 2 years

Text

Hatchetfield Retrospective: The Guy Who Didn't Like Musicals: I Mean What The Fuck?

SPOILER WARNING FOR ALL HATCHEFIELD PRODUCTIONS PRE-NERDY PRUDES MUST DIE

CONTENT WARNING: MENTIONS OF SUICIDE

Hello all you happy people and tonight we're gonna chronicle a story so astronomical, though thankfully not the last remaining story to tell as I celebrate spooky season by kicking off a look at one of the best new horror franchises to pop up. While I took a brief look at this series back in 2020 with the first episode of nightmare time, I think it's time I booked an extended stay in the tiny town of Hatchetfield for a full on retrospective. So get your cups of roasted coffee, pre-order that Tickle Me Wiggly, book your tickets to Watcher World and roll a fatty bowl of Perky's Buds as I take a look at this weird, wonderful world of horror, comedy, showstopping numbers and telling Clivesdale to rightly go fuck itself with the first stop on our tour, the musical that started it all by ironically being about a guy who doesn't much care for them. A Brief History of Starkid and Hatchetifield

So before we get to the horrifying tale of life becoming a musical, we need to look at the weirdos behind the curtain of this wonderful series of plays, zoomcasts and I assume tales Nick Lang shouts to his brother over zoom at 3 in the morning we might see someday, Starkid Productions Aka Team StarKid aka "Aren't those the guys who made that weird harry potter musical?". Most of you are well aware of who they are and their rough history, most of you also likely better than I but since I like to keep these reviews accessible and since some of my audience read whatever I put out regardless of if they gave one pigfart about it going in

It all began at the University of Michigan, GO BLUE! I don't have a connection to it myself but after watching about 80 hours of dead meat you start doing that on reflex. It was here while reading Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire a nerd by the name of Nick Lang wondered "hey woudln't it be funny if Draco bullied hermione because he liked her" This lead to this group writing the song granger danger, and deciding "Hey this could make a fun musical". Hence a Very Potter Musical was born. Nick asked his buddy Darren Criss to use some of his songs (One from a previous project Little White Lie), which snowballed into Darren both doing a lot of the music and playing Harry Freaking Potter himself.

What was supposed to be a fun goofy side project by a bunch of dedicated nerds became an internet sensation and thus Team StarKid was born, deciding they could keep this going: staging musicals at school then throwing them up online for other nerds. Naturally another Harry Potter musical followed and finding out abotu these and devouring the soundtracks, a twelve years younger and less sad but far more unteitonally creepy towards women me found thees musicals, laughed his ass off and was a fan from that day forward. While I wouldn't watch the next few shows I would listen to the soundtracks and followed starkid for a bit.

While the team would face the setback of Darren moving on to Glee, which I was watched at the time so at least I got to hang on to him even as he hung ont o a show slowly falling off the earth and into it's molten core where the lava men tore ita part piece by piece, it still held firm, moving on to musicals about Sentient Genitals, space bugs wanting to break the status quo, the goddamn batman wanting to be somebody's buddy, Achmed the tiger fucking man, an interquel for star wars that's also an inspiring 80's movie, waking up with mud on your dick and not wanting to do the work today. All were anchored by goofy alternate takes on the characters they were parodying, suprising amoutns of heart, a talented if sometimes shifting crew, and of course Nick Lang, who along with his rarely seen because he shy and now he in kanas brother matt, wrote the musicals and Nick directed a few himself.

So naturally when Nick decided to relocate to LA, in part because some of the troupe like longtime member and certified Chad Joey Richter were already there and likely to shake things up, half the troupe went with him and the other stayed behind, amicably parting ways and with Merdith Stephin, who'd been a big part of things returning with their partner for VHS Christmas Carol later and the upcoming Jangle Ball tour. Sadly they soon lost another member as long time Starkid and sex machine Joe Walker retired from acting. So in a tight spot with half the troupe gone, Nick decided to swing for the fences and thus decided to shift genres slightly: from goofy parody comedy's with heart (and the occasional original), to an intrictatley built shared horror comedy multiverse. After spitballing a lot of ideas for the setting, Hatchetfield was born and three ideas for musicals came out of it mostly formed: Nerdy Prudes Must Die, Black Friday.. and this very one. Despite coming third in ideas, TGWDLM was decided to be the first of the series, to test to see if audiences would take to it with it's accessible premise.

The result.. was a massive hit, ushering in a new era of starkid, fresh fans, and a return to prominence after it dimmed somewhat. Hatchetfield gave the group new life, and over time they've picked up even more members and came out swinging stronger than ever, having done Black Friday the year after, spun the franchise off into the webcast series nightmare time during the height of the pandemic, and now going into it's third musical next year with Nerdy Prudes Must Die. As I write this it's kickstarter is still going and has reached it's goal, but to help the Lang Shang A Langs reach their stretch goal i'm offering you a deal: For every three of you starkids who sends me a screenshot of you either pledging or upping your pledge (I myself can't go over 5) I promise to review another starkid musical at some point beyond the Hatchetfield Series, starting at the back with A Very Potter Musical and going up, and to sweeten the pot if you hit them all i'll also cover the tin can bros productions too. So if you want a lot of nostalgia, cringing and jokes at a Transphobes expense while supporting a work that is very much everything she isn't, my ask box is open.

Hatchetfield means a lot to me: I ran into it in 2020 just as my love of horror was really ramping up, having really loved the trailer for Black Friday and watching TGWDLM first in case I needed to see it. Which you can watch either on their own, their both standalone works but it works better in order given the crowd pops any time something from TGWDLM gets referenced. It got me back into starkid and while I still need to crawl through the massive backlog of shows i've missed, what i've found is wonderful and i've found these wonderful PEIPS have kept going and kept an honest to god comradery and love for one another that's commendable. And it was thanks to that I got to feel that love again. See how these people had grown and gotten even awesome with time as we talk about the man whose name is in the title whose destined to go viral and the waking nightmare he finds himself in. A Story So Astronomical

Before we can open this musical's tummy and get into it's blue guts, we have to get down to brass tacks nad break down what exactly happened here.

TGWDLM is the story of Paul Matthews, an average man living an average life as an office drone in Hatchetfield. He spends his days with Bill, his struggling single dad best friend whose desperate to reconnect with his daughter, Ted, the office walking erection who dosen't seem to get Paul wants nothing to do with him , and Charlotte, a meek and saddeningly frazzled woman whose in a loveless failing marriage to her cop husband , having an affair with Ted to try the fill the void. Working hard for the mildly obnoxious Bill Lumberg impersonator Mr. Davidson, Pauls' only real refuge is Beanies, a local cafe that makes a nice carmel frappe and more importantly to Paul, employs his crush Emma, a cynical barista who hates the place's musical gimmick understandably as while unlike Paul I LOVEEEEEEEEEEE musicals, minimum wage food service jobs are already draining and obnoxious, adding being forced to sing to it no matter how tired you are or obnoxious the customer sounds like my own personal hell.

Also around are a green piece girl who in trying to brush her off Paul pisses off instead, a man in a hurry, and Peter who badly needs his hot chocolate for his low blood sugar. I can relate to peter. Can't wait to properly meet him when I get around to watching Abstinance Camp. Yes folks I'm that behind on Nightmare Time Season 2, you may boo. Soundtrack's dope though.

Things quickly change though when a meteor crash lands on the starlight theater, and the next day in excellent horror fashion Paul slowly notices something… just isn't right, starting with a whole ass group musical number. We'll get to the songs in their own sectoin much like Starkids closest spirtual cousin the muppets, and it soon esclates to being forced to sit there while his boss grins like ti's the ending credits of pearl and tells Paul how he wants his wife to choke him out at night while Paul slowly dies inside in real time.

Paul starts to grasp the implications of everything having turned into a musical and infected everyone, but it takes Emma a moment… till she finds her boss and coworker, now also part of the extradimensional hive mind, poisoning their customers mid-musical number and planning to infect her too. Our heroes barely escape through some human shaped bushes and Emma finally grasps the implications.

They thankfully find other survivors in Bill, Ted and Charlotte, though that's all the good news they have: Downtown's been swarmed and when Charlotte calls her husband for help.. and instead gets a musical number about how their cops and they make sense

Our heroes, like most citzens barely survive their encounter with the cops, scarring them off after Ted brains Sam's brains out of his head with a trash can lid. Needing help and with the hospital being downtown at the heart of the swarm, our heroes instead go to Emma's kooky college instructor Professor Hidgens, the star of the show and a survivalist fringe scientist who foresaw this exact sort of apocalypse and thus built up his estate on the edge of town to be ready for it, including booze. I mean what's an apocalypse if you can't get hammered right? I don't drink but I feel the apocalypse is one of those "code red" situation where even if you don't, you need to get blazed anyway. Liked if Keith David dies. I'm still convinced he's immortal but in a year that's been constantly punching me in the dick via Warner Bros Discovery, i've learned not to take anything for granted.

So Paul and Emma get closer and get all snuglay, Bill threatens to kick Ted in the head, and soon Charlotte makes things far worse after Sam singing the only bad song in the musical at her somehow dosen't make her run screaming but gets her to free him. We then get one of the best as the Hive gets fed up with the soft touch and just plans to murder them all, but in horror rock paper scissors "guy with the gun" beats monster anytime, and Hidgens saves them. Our party ends up having to split as stupid as that sounds as Bill finds out Alice is still in town and in downtown, so he and Paul go to save her, Emma stays behind at Hidge's instince to disect the corpses and Ted stays because wellll

Though he DOES point out there likely isn't an Alice left and this is a suicide mission

And I do mean sad as they find Alice already infected and proceding to sing a whole song about how her dad sucks dirty ass in thunderstorms, how it's his fault she ended up here, and pressing every parental parent button and insecurity bill has. The poor guy reaches for a gun as a result and luckily, Paul, in an incredibly heartbreaking scene, talks his friend out of such.

Unfortunately neither of them in the state they were in thought to WATCH said gun so Bill dies seconds later and it's only the military showing up that prevents Paul from sharing the same fate. While Paul gets a gun butt to the head, Emma gets some MMMMM Drugs and wakes up tied to a chair, with Ted likewise. I mean he's into it but he's gotta be asked first. It's just common courtsey. Turns out Hidgens is on the creatures side.. he's not hived but the idea of a musical seeming utopia where everyone is happy, ther'es no traffic accidents, the trains run on time , is wonderful and plans to lure the aliens here. How he does it is with one of the best piecs in musical theater. We'll again get to that later, but thankfully our heroes manage to escape while the hive is distracted with Hidgens and opens his tummy.

Paul might have a way out though as the Miltary Man he meets is the gruff but loveable and resonable John Macnamara, who works for PEIP, your standard issue extranormal government organization that covers weird shit like this. HIs orders are to murder anyone he sees and let god sort out the corpses, but

And gives Paul an out, especailly after hearing how sweet he is on emma: he has a few hours to grab her, GET TO THE CHOPPA, and escape before they nuke the place as god intented. Well the Judeo-Christian god. The god with a thumb in this pie wants a musical apocalypse.

Paul gets back to the others with the news and allows Ted to come. This goes as badly as you'd expect as Ted tries betraying them and taking the chopper himself

Naturally given this is a horror work, this gets Ted killed by the hive who already have McNamara and a few of his PEIPS by the time he gets there. They sing a very unsbtle and unsettling song while our heroes barely escape.. only to get further proof that Pokey isn't the only god who hates Paul as it turns out the pilot is Hive!Zoey who crashes, leaving Paul as the only thing that MIGHT be able to stop this: Hidge , as reinfieldy as he was, theroized the meteor, the source of the Blue Shit and thus the hive, must be the hive queen. Blowing it up real good might be a good shot

What follows is more soul destruction… seriously when I first watched this only being familiar with the earlier starkid works, I had no idea the emotoinal punch in the scrotum I was in for, as Paul gets infected and has to fight his inner depressiona nd the hive and seemingly wins, blowing up the theater and seemingly the hive.

Emma survives, and is reunited with Paul and is happy.. for about 5 seconds. In a tragic and horrifying twist ending Paul survived, everyone else apparently did too… and Emma is left to scream futilely in horror for help as her fate is left uncertain and the world… is left to be united by a singular voice, who in a deep void far away laughs musically having finally gotten his leading man.

Scary If You Think of the Implications

So you might of noticed with the synopsis the tone of the musical: Nick was very clever here as he likely knew both people coming in from other starkid works and people who came in fresh, like my friend @jess-the-vampire who I got to join the hive here and at least interested in checking out more of Hatchetfield and starkid, Twisted in particular since we're both big into disney and the idea there was an entire number about the guy who showed up all of once to have a tiger bite his ass made her laugh, would expect this to be way goofier than it was. Even I despite spoiling myself on how it ended before I watched it, wasn't prepared.

TGWDLM is still a comedy to it's bones, with both great jokes I remembered vividly from the first time like the ENTIRETY of what do you want paul (I struggled not to loose my damn shit the first time I heard Davidson say he wanted his wife to choke him while he jerked off while Paul prayed for death but death won't come in the background), "Kick your head" (With Corey and Joey absolutely killing me, especially Joey as Ted hams it up to high heaven),Ted's love of workin boys, Working Boys itself, "I'm professor hidgens!' and more, as well as a few I forgot like "I don't want to die in your filthy presbeterian church", Jon's impecable background acting, and "He didn't want to go like this. He wanted to do what he loved: getting choked by his wife while he masturbates!". It's also delightfully meta with every song being some form of standard brand of Musical song, something i'll break down more when we get to the songs themselves.

It strikes a good tone for a horror comedy: the situation is rediculous enough to generate tons of laughs, but also still GENUINELY horrifying and heartwrenching. It dosen't forget it's either. It's not the depth either as character depth is something that dates back to Very Potter which somehow turned Voldermort from pure unrelnting horrifying evil to a guy whose still evil but also struggles with his sexuality and missing his partner. No what catches you off guard, is the horror. With Horror Comedy you can vary a lot. Take the Chucky Franchise for instance. 2 is a horror comedy, but still leans heavier on the horror aspect, with Chucky still taken dead seriously despite now cracking one liners, Bride leans more into the camp and gore, and Seed just went full on insanity and camp with no real horror to be found apart from Chucky's treatment of his own family. You can vary in just how much you have. TGWDLM strikes me as where the franchise is now: it takes itself seriously, but isn't afraid to still throw jokes in there for contrast or just for fun, being dead serious when it needs to be and hilarious when it doesn't, and sometimes mixing the two.

The premise on paper sounds goofy but like Paul says it's when you think of the implications it gets bad and the show does a great job of doing this: When the Hive first shows up in "La Dee Da Day", it's goofy and played for laughs: it' is mildy creepy everyone's acting like it's a musical, but it's mostly funny for Paul's utter confusion, the homeless man talking about how he "used to want to kill them all while high on bath salt zombie drugs snacking on a dead mans face" and even as dark as THAT gets Paul's horrified flat what brings it right back around.

It's only when Charlotte gives a monologue about how sam not sounding like himself in the shower really underved her that it starts to get serious, but the next scene shifts back to comedy.. while uppping the discomfort. Now the Hive is directly trying to convert paul, and while it's done in the most hilarious manner possible, the grin splattered on Davidsons face, the fact he can't remember what he wanted once he stops singing, and the clear instiance of him joining them are unsettling And then.. we get the coffee shop scene. This is why I say it' sby design: the langs knew audience expectations.. .probably figured the horror part woudln't be a true factor here.

Instead what starts being only mildly unsettling (Emma unknowingly singing with what the audeince can tell are hive infected co workers).. only for it to slowly ramp up: they perform complicated manuvers she wasn't ready for and when she tries to quit.. they tel lher she can't.. and then in a cheery monotone explain they POISONED everyone else and gladly sing while several people die aorund them are are reborn with a singular voice. The terror on Emma's face combined with the various patrons going from choking to death to slowly JOINING IN one by one on the how do you do.. it's truly impressive and not being a sfamiliar with the fandom if we haven't talked about how great this scene is before we damn well should.

We get one last respite with show me your hands but from then on the comedy almost never comes from the hive again, something that didn't hit me till just now: the rest of the comedy comes from Sensei Bill, show stopping numbers and other things with only the "All your friends are here" bit in the climax being a hive involved joke. It shows the Hive's slow evolution horrifically as it goes from bumblingly comedic if still horrifying, From here on it WEAPONZIES our heroes despairs hopes and needs: it prays on Charlotte's desperate desire both for her husband to live and for him to actually love her again, turning her. It prays on Bill's love of his daughter to lure him and his difficulties as a parent to utterly destroy him, it uses PEIP and the helicopter to nearly kill emma, uses Paul's last ditch plan to infect him.. and uses him to twist the knife one last time fo rour ending. Every time our heroes have hope the Hive uses it against them, which gets more ingenious when you think about how most horror works, including a lot of the other hatchetfield stories, go: Even if our heroes may loose eventually the ones who survive or at least make it to the end don't give up, keeping going, and use hope, determination and grit to survive. Here the Hive uses that AGAINST them. It's again where the balance is effective: when you stop to think about it, this work is ENTIRELY bleak, but thanks to the comedy you don't. It only hits you later when you have no escape from it, just as our heroes have no escape from The Hive, Pokey.. or themselves.

Production wise TGWDLM is stripped down, and by design: with a new tone, new cast members and a new venue, the StarKids had a lot to work out with this one, so the costumes are the simple kinds they could rent or make cheapley, the effects are minimal, the blue shit very clearly being homeade slime, sam's brain apparently falling out repdatedly during one performance and most other things being pantomimed, and the set is even more so, simply some colored lights on cube.

It works perfectly though: the lack of props in places like typewriters in the helicopter and elsewhere is played ENTIRELY for laughs, and the lack of detail in places like the cups of poisoned coffee or hidgens getting his stomach torn to pieces leaves it to the audeince to imagine just how horrific those things are. Sometimes what you can make a persons mind do can surpass what your budget can, a staple of horror. It's no shock one of Hatchetfields primary influences is the similarly cheap for it's first two instalments evil dead franchise, with Rami's tenants of horror not only guiding the stories here but ending up as part of the cannon later. While StarKid is FAR from strangers of stretching a budget, TGWDLM is easily the second most impressive example of that with only nightmare time, operating on nothing for it's first season as far as I could tell surpassing it. That leaves us with the acting and music, which naturally given Starkid is both a very actorcentric group and a very musical one, need their own sections. The Stars of the Show

Starting with the man whose name is in the title whose destined to go viral , we have Paul Matthews, played by Starkid Newcomer Jon Mattenson. While a fresh face to the StarKid verse Jon to my lack of surprise was a long time stage actor before this, doing a series of one man shows including one I hope someone has video of Shark Tank: The Musical. Given he was performing in Chicago at the time it didn't take long for him to meet future fellow starkids Lauren and Jeff, with Jeff even doing the music for Jon's one man show, which i'm also adding to the "stuff I will do if you help up those backer numbers." So naturally when Starkid needed new members, he was a perfect fit.

Jon instantly feels like he belongs too: it takes a LOT to come into an experienced group and play lead on your first show, even more when your in a musical but do not get to sing until the final act. But by god Jon not only pulls it off but easily commands the entire play. And it's not that everyone else is bad. Far from it, as usual the rest of the StarKids bring it and we'll get to their performances. But as Paul, Jon utterly brings it: Paul is a layered guy being entirely boring and sedate in the office and while a tad awkward with Emma he also manages to be utterly charming, with Jon and Lauren having wonderful chemistry. You get why despite his very thin excuse for coming here and her seeing right through it she likes the guy who doesn't like musicals, and why Paul has friends and quickly becomes the group's surrogate leader: while he's an utterly normal guy, he's a likeable one, one who clearly cares for his friends.. and Ted because he kinda has to. He can be awkward but usually only when really freaked out. It's remarkable just HOW layered this character came off on second watch: first time around I liked Paul but second I fucking loved this guy.

A big part of this is background acting. While it's a common and valuable skill, especially in a comedy, Jon takes it to another level: As Jess pointed out to me every scene with him, every background movement is paul and whether hte's terrified of what's going on around him and worried for his crush's safety or DEEPLY uncomfortable because his boss is talking about jerking off, there's something to dissect and pull from. Jon is just that terrific and actor and I feel despite how talented this troupe is NO ONE else could've played paul like Jon. This is one of those performances only the actor who gave it could give.

And of course his peak is with Let It Out, where Jon effortlessly bounces between the real paul, terrified of both what he's becoming and what it's awakening, and his smiley nightmarish body invader. The effortless switching between the two in face is just mesmerising: you can't look away even if you badly want to as Paul struggles desperatley to defeat himself.. and is loosing. You have to wait the whole musical to hear Jon sing but once he does it's clear he wasn't cast as paul because he wasn't a great singer.. but because he was such a great actor.

Paul as a character is surprisingly deep: as part of the musicals meta commentary on musicals themselves Paul seems to be your typical lead stuck in a dead end situation he needs to dream his way out of. The probelm for the hive and paul himself is he really DOSEN'T know what he wants ,Paul. What he wants to actually DO with his life beyond work in an office job he dosen't seem especially happy at and maybe marry someone. IT's also realistic as Paul as most people struggle with what they really want and most who end up in an office drone job like Paul simply needed a job. And while he seems content working the job and hating musicals, as seen by the fact he still works it in every other relality after this with the only change being actually getting to connect with Emma before the apocalypse hits, one line in "Let It Out" makes it PAINFULLY clear:

"I've Never Been Happy, Wouldn't That Be Nice?

It's easy to see Paul trying to use having a steady job or finding a partner as a patch for the fact he feels deeply unhappy and alone and needs something to help him along. Yet a partner can't fix that for you ,as i've had to learn and said job isn't exactly plesant. Sometimes having depression, and in my case (and possibly pauls as there are signs), autisim, means you try to stave off the encroaching darkness with something, anything to make it better. It dosen't mean Paul CAN'T find enjoyment in his job, he met his best friend and niece there, is clearly on great terms with charlotte and Ted… well okay he has to deal with the constant smells of axe bodyspray and jizz coming from his office but 2/3 ain't bad. And he and Emma do have genuine chemistry. There's a reason their together in the next timeline and all. These aren't bad things and in fact probably hlep, but their a patch to a larger problem. It's telling a planned nightmare time story for him had him fantasies via dream machine that he was an 8 foot antrophormic squirrel living out howard the duck because the only person everyone loved without any strings attached was Peanuts the Hatchetfield Pocket Squirrel

It shows someone with depression can function but that paul probably needs counseling. It also does show his grit though: despite his depression and anxiety, he keeps going, keeps trying and despite hating the genre dosen't stop actually watching Musicals if you look closely. He knows the lyrics to "There You Are" as seen when hidgens makes everyone sing it and has seen Mamma Mia. It's something you fine folks pointed otu and Jon clearly agrees with: while he may not like musicals he dosen't stop trying. Paul is a wonderful character and I hope he gets a happy ending eventually.. or at least that if Nightmare Time ever returns he gets a happy ending for a change.

Next up is EMMMMA! Emma is played by Lauren Lopez, one of the three longtime starkids and has been in every play except one, and that one's a technicality I throw out of her flawless record as Starkid experimented with doing two smaller shows at once, and even as amazingtastic as Lauren is.. she can't clone herself. YET. While she's spent the bulk of Starkid history playing either crossdressing rolls or just plain weird ones, from best boy Draco Malfoy, to a verison of Apu from aladdin that needs to be put down due to clearly having contracted the Motiva virus, to Comissioner Gordon, she had quite the career with her roll in Starship being the only acception I can think of once the shows got started proper.

This would change after Firebringer, her first starring role in a starkid show and since sh'es played usually adult or teenage women. Why?

Maybe Nick and Matt wanted to let her stretch creatively, maybe they just got tired of that bit and wanted to let Lauren try different things. Maybe there's no real reason to it and it's just a thing that happened. I dunno. Maybe i'll be lucky enough to get to ask Lauren herself someday, i'd be honored to interview any starkid past or present.

Point is the transition didn't loosen her timing nor her talent one iota. While I can't speak on her role in firebringer as I haven't seen it yet, I can say Emma is one of her best rolls and they only reason I can't say for certain it's the best is that she somehow equaled herself with the next play and I have no idea wether Emma or Linda is better.

Emma is a complex character at first seemingly like just a jaded minimum wage worker who only seems to like exactly two people in the world: Paul because he's likely the only person she serves all day that seems to treat her like a human being, and Hidgens because he's charming, nice and probably is a fantastic guy to get high with. Like seriously, I bet Hidgens let's her test growing weed in the back of his fancy ass bunker mansion. HFPD is'nt going to come up there, their stretched as is covering Sam's midlife crisis.

She's guarded as hell but yet charming: anyone whose worked minimum wage can tell you it blows and the Langs amazingly perfectly captured what it's like to work that kind of job in your late 20's, working for those who don't respect you and those way younger than you. Throw in your depressoin, anxiety and autisim all swirling to make the frantic pace of food service near impossible and forcing me to get disablity, and it'd basically me be just without spitting in the food or slacking off.

Emma's mostly there to get them to hidgens, have wonderful chemistry with paul and make one liners, but she's still utterly endearing, with Lauren having tons of great deliveries and it being clear this situation is a LOT to pack in, that sure it's funny to watch.. but the sheer stress of it would break anyone.

And while her goal of leaving this town isn't exactly new, her REASON for it and wantin ga weed farm (since it'll be local nation wide soon as she put it and with Biden outright saying he's going after criminal charges for it recently, likely readying to do just that, she fucking called it), are heartbreaking: She was always cynical and not wanting to be caught in her older more succesful family minded sister Jane's shadow, she left… and then refused to come back. And kept doing so…. till FLASH, BANG, Jane…. was in a box and emma came back to mourn her. It sums up death painfully well: that you think you have all the time with a person in the world but sometimes.. it just… it comes up short. Thankfully of the two people i've lost neither were estranged from me but it still hurts not getting to say goodbye and it's clear emma carries a LOT of guilt and thus decided to make something of her life before it was gone.

Jane's death is also a masterful example of stealth setup. It's what i'm now calling when something is setup for later in a franchise or series, but it's not obvious at the time. It's something you likely want expanded but don't realize the creators not only plan to but always did. When watching this even KNOWING Black Friday was a coming I just didn't think that Emma's brother in law would end up not only being a main character but someone who'd help really solidify hatchetfield as a setting. Nor that he'd be played by Dumbledore but that was just pure luck. Nor that he'd end up fucking his wife's ghost possessing a car via the cupholders.

Strange times. Emma is perfectly played, being snarky and standofish as usual at times, utterly sweet with paul, and naturally terrified with any. And while Jon is clearly the background acting mvp here, Lauren deserves props for Emma's combination of horror and "what the fuck am i watching" during Workin boys"

Next up we have Ted.

Ted is played by my boy Joey Richter, another Starkid long timer and while he's missed a few more shows than his fiance, he's still one of their MVP's, starting as a headbanded Ron Weasley broing it out with harry and becoming over time a starship ranger, a kid who talks to his sentient penis, and of course his finest hour, about TWENTY diffrent rolls in the Trail To Oregon. That's not hyperbole: due to the play's stripped down cast, there were only 6 actors (The others being Lauren, Merdeith stephin whose not in this play nor a full time member of the group, though they did come back for A VHS Christmas Carol, Jeff Blim,Jamie Lynn Beatty and Corey Dorris in his best roll to date), and the other 5 were all mains with Jamie having a very small second part and Corey having a sizeable one. In contrast Joey had to play EVERY. OTHER. PART. Which included one song, independence, that was him taking on about 15 diffrent rolls, and had a rapid fire bit, and the role of main villian mcdoon, getting one of his best songs in Wagon on Fire as Result. The man is a fucking god and I hope he and Lauren are very happy together, having been together for years but only gone public with it two years ago to announce their engagment. Given the fandom had been shipping them, not their characters THEM, since AVPM the squee could be heard from the red planet mars.

So i'ts no shock Joey kills it as the office's walking erection, wearing his now trademark mustache, something he's worn in most roles since to the point many assumed he wouldn't be taking over as Peter in NPMD apparently.. forgetting you know.. shaving's a thing. Jeff Blim's shaved and that likely took 80 razors and the will of mighty thor himself to get done.

Joey just has the perfect smarmy accent for ted, one I can't place but juts fits him so well and while being the standard "survivior who no one really likes and is waiting for to die" Joey's charm and charisma make him tolerable and enjoyable. It helps he's not USELESS. While he does betray our heroes for his own selfish needs later, bastard and all, he doe smake some good if dickish points, trying to get Charlotte to see that her husband is well and truly gone (even if it's to sleep with her) and pointing out that Alice is likely already dead and saving her is a suicide mission, which it sadly was. His putting it in the most dickish way possible means it never really takes, but it's nice to show that as much of a bastard as he is, ted isn't entirley useless. His utter glee when watching Workin Boys is also one of the funniest things i've seen in a StarKid production or really in general. He's as into it as we are.

Next up is poor Charlotte, played by Jamie Lynn Beatty. Jamie has played a nice variety of rolls for the team, as shown with her rolls after this playing a basement dweller and the oliva newton john style Ghost of Christmas Past, but has a niche at times playing sad eyed woobies. Jamie's utterly expressive eyes really help. Charlotte is a throughly sad, throughly tragic character, a woman whose clearly still only with her hubsand due to a combination of badly trying to make it work when it's clear Sam, whose cheating on her with Zoey and god knows who else, has long since checked out and stays married to her because

And because she's throughly religious, being presbetarian, and thus refuses a divorce despite cheating on Sam to fill the void, said void only being filled by bastards like Ted. It's part of why I badly want a nightmare time focusing on Charlotte, as the poor woman needs a hug, not to have her zombie husband gaslight her into letting him go then make her one of them. That said the Hive charlotte is fucking awesome, and the high note Jamie hits on "Join Us and Die" is one for the ages. It was hard seeing Charlotte's pain again and knowing it does not nor it never will end well for her.

That said there is an elephant in the room with Jamie and i'm jsut going to adress it now: she's weirdly NEVER gotten a lead roll in any of the hatchefield musicals, and her only nightmare time focusing on her was as the villians. Given how the rest of the main cast of TGDWLM has all gotten an episode a piece (most within season one no less), and that even Melissa recently got one in a fundraising livestream (that I haven't seen but is apparently bonkers), it feels weird though I don't doubt that they've TRIED to do a charlotte story, even announcing one was planned for season 2. It just might not have worked out yet. Hopefully in the future we'll get to see Jamie in the front.

Next up to bat Corey Dorris, my guy. Corey isn't from the very FIRST starkid show, but he's still a UM graduate, GO BLUE!, see I told you it was automatic and showed up as early as Me and My Dick, which again I have to reassure some of you does in fact exist. Fun Fact: it was written about Joey's friendship wth Darren Criss. So yes had we gotten luckier on of Darren Criss' earliest credits would've been a walking talking penis. Your welcome for now knowing that. Point is Corey has been there a long time and the hatchetfield era has seen a thankful up in his promience, going from primarly playing side roles iwth the exception of his great run as Grandpa in trail to oregon even if he had to wake up with blood on his dick and he didn't even know where it came from, to getting either main cast rolls or outright starring turns, as seen with Nightmare Time's "Watcher World" and "Daddy". He's also the troupes longest standing black member, and this era has seen the Langs try to diversify more, with longtime Coregrapher James Tolbert getting bumped up to the cast and hiring Bryce Charles as for Nightmare Time 2, as well as adding the Bisexual Mariah Rose Faith with this musical, the gay Tolbert, and the non-binary Jae Hughes in their respective works. Not a fact I really needed to go out of my way for but I appricate even a small operation like this taking steps to actually open up.

Corey is unsuprsingly fantastic as bill, playing a hilaroiusly awkward dopey dad, but a realistic one: he's not say homer simpson…

He genuinely clearly loves Alice, tries to look out for her and is supportive of her sexuality, which I know is a low bar to clear but I do think it's nice that Alice's sexuality is just a casual thing rather than a source of drama both here and in a spirtual sequel to the duo's plotline here in Watcher World. The issue is a combination of Bill's currently unamed and unseen ex coming off like this (Gem homer)

When it comes to her budget for trying to win their daughters love, and Bill not knowing how to handle Alice clearly putting some distance between them. The fact Bill really dosen't like Alice's girlfriend Deb and thought it was REMOTELY a good idea to admit it and try to prop up Grace Chastity, another great bit of setup for later musicals, as the ideal instead. One of the few weaknesses of these two is that we don't really get to dive into who they are or why their like this or see Alice as more than just a mildly rebelious teen before she's infected. We get SOME insight with Not Your Seed but it's left deliberately ambiguous what's a lie to get bill to break and what's a painful truth. For the record I think her wanting to live with him and the why does it hurt to love you monologues have some kernel of truth, with the latter being amplified to really harm bill, while "Your right about deb she's a hardcore stoner" is a very obvious lie. IT's part of how brilliant the number and the hives tactics there are: you don't know what it's making up to feed on bill's pain and insecurity, and what's actually true feelings alice had simply amped up to do the screen. Bill gets plenty, but we only see their conflict with each other from his side.

While it is mildly weak though.. I do think it dosen't harm the show as it feels intentional: we only see bill's side.. and that makes Not Your Seed more troubling as we genuinely DIDN'T know till watcher world how the conflict actually worked and never get to thanks to Alice being taken by the hive. We don't know how much Bill blaming himself for the fight that lead to Alice not going back to clivesdale and seeing Deb instead was or if Deb really did do more drugs despite stopping Alice from getting in with the smoke club, aka Joey and Lauren miming three cigarettes at once because their the best. We don't know what's true and what's not or if they coudl've fixed things and thanks to this tragedy we never will. All we know is Bill feels guitly for letting the divorcce happen, for letting his wife take her and for failing to be the dad he wants to be, and that's all the hive needs to seal his doom. It's the point I made: bill can be a dumbass, but any parent can fuck up or simply have problems with thir kid that aren't their fault and the tragedy here is what woul dbe an easily reconcilable fight turned into the death of two people who deserved a happier ending. Thankfully the Langs clearly saw the potetial in the two and thus we get Watcher World with nightmare time. So it's hard to be mad at this for not fleshing them out when it happened later and even in context it's kind of the point.

Finally for our core characters we have Professor Hidgens. Hidgens is played by Robert Manion, aka the elephant in the room. Robert joined starkid breifly for twisted but fully joined and was embraced by the community with this show and it's easy to see why. I will have plenty of praise for his performances here and in Black Friday and Nightmare Time Season 1. It can't be avoided. But neither can the truth: Robert was suspended from the group a year ago, as he'd harassed a member of the band via text and to the langs credit once again, they took it dead seriously, not only bringing in an HR Rep to have an outside perspective and a professoinal to handle this, but suspended Robert… with only WEEKS till Nightmare Time 2, forcing Nick to play Professor Hidgens, and Peter aka Hot Chocolate Boy, while Joey took over as ethan and will be taking over as Peter for Nerdy Prudes Must die. Nick has said he will be allowed to come back both after a resonable time period and taking proper undisclosed steps and so far that period has stretched over a year and into next given the NPMD recasting. If he'll return I do not know and the most I can give RObert for his jackassery.. is that he genuinely apologized, didn't get defensive and is taking his fully deserved supsension with grace and humility instead of whining like a baby that his actions have consequences. Again VERY low bar to clear but given how most harassers and abusers seen in media refuse to admit they did anything wrong or pull a louis ck and do do that but then show up not a year later and act like they still deserve a career. I'll take that.

So very ugly actions aside.. Robert is phenomial as hidgens, giving hi ma rex harrison voice, and somehow making you feel he's an old man depsite being the youngest of the team at the time. He's hammy, hilarious and goofy, being every old man who saw this coming cliche rolled into one turtleneck and neat coat and he's already a faviorite from the start from "Nice try but i'm professor hidgens" to his attempt to get laughs at his charoltte-tan pun, to "You bet your ass we got booze'

But of course where Hidgens/Manion really shines.. is Show Stoppin Number. Good god. I'll gush about the number later but the reveal that Hidgens is actually on the hive's side, a fan of musicals and has his own terrible musical about his 6 boyfriends , Workin Boys: A New Musical that turns out is a transparent parody of a failed broadway musical with basically the same premise from a guy the langs went to school with at UM, Go Blue. Again gotta save this for the music portion as much as it hurts, but god he's brilliant in that moment. The only real flaw is that Hidge's heel turn comes out of goddamn nowhere with no foreshadowing and even then like with Bill, it's pivoted by the fact that it coming out of nowhere makes it more funny and suprising. It's no wonder the fandom took to robert.. and I sincerly hope he's GENUINE in taking the steps to atone for his actions.

Before we can get to our final two cast members, both playing multiple parts, we have to talk about our antagonist: the Hive. The Hive has no main host, thus no actor to break down, being played by EVERYONE in the company at at least one ponit. Even Lauren, who plays the only speaking character who never gets infected, still has a role in the background of la de da day as one of the infected.

The Hive is a masterful antagonist and thankfully unlike some horror villians like Micheal Meyers, finding out more about it later via Nightmare Time 2 didn't diminish it much. It works on it's own as this mysterious force that slowly but surely infects people and goes through a clear evolution in tactics and method. It's first phase of attempts don't exactly come off forceful, but still have some logic: singing as a group in La Dee Da Day is to attempt to get people to follow along, which clearly worked for a lot of people, while they manage to take all but three of CCRP's employees simply by having Davidson work on them one at a time with ONLY paul resisting. They lack finesse, as seen by the fact neither works on paul and their as subtle as Mr. Davidson's need for his wife to choke him out at night, but they clearly worked on a LOT of people.

The next step is force, but even then they don't go full on slasher YET, instead simply using cunning, poisoning a few cups of coffee, then spreading to the police. THey don't know HOW to use this autority, it's hilarious in hindsight knowing that a centuries old entity REALLY dosen't know how cops work at all, but it's clear their starting to learn. It's almost as if this is the first time Pokey has done this, or that the distance between this reality and the black and white mean that he has to relearn stuff he knows. or he's just such a self obessed diva that he forgets this kind of stuff out of habit, with his scheme in "Yellow Jacket" only being so streamlined because he had one target in mind and someone so important to hatchtefield as a whole that he CAN'T forget them no matter how self absorbed he is.

As for who Pokey is for the untiated as i've put it off long enough, Pokey IS the hive. He is Pokotho, The Singular Voice, one of the lords of the black and white, five eldrich abominations each represented by a cuddly toy and cutsey nickname, likely inspired by what seems to be their leader, Wiggly. The Lords are the cause of the weirdness in hatchefield and thus each timeline, and often the world's end, either directly via their machenations and various servants, or indirectly as it's implied there presence is why the local witchwood is so bizzare and why the various bits of messed up shit that happen in each timeline happen. They largely operate on their own and have their own goals, but can be invoked as a group as part of various bargins with some in hatchetfield.

As you can probably gather this all comes from later in the timeline: The Black and White gets introduced next play as does the first Lord we meet face to face, Wiggly, and Nightmare Time would introduce the rest, all 5 getting a cameo in the final story, and each brother getting a story to themselves with Blinky and Tinky getting introduced in season 1, Nibbly in season 2 and Pokey getting properly reintroduced and fully confirmed as the Hive in the same seasons finale.

From what I can tell Pokey isn't all that diffrent between incarnations, and uses the Meteor as a medium, having it crash here and scientest extracting the blue shit from it in "yellow jacket" leading to him getting an avatar they created there. It also offers some insight that isn't suprising as we're told by a figure I won't introduce JUST yet for those juts tuning in that "he hates every voice but his own. And you can tell: while he tries to be nice to Pokey ANYTHING but his voice , his version of a person is anthemea. It explains why he's so ungodly cruel when he really gets going, gleefully using Charlotte's dead husband and bill's dead daughter to manipulate them and instead of just jumping emma as soon as he got the chance since he clearly had a number of hosts ready, teasing her with the idea Paul's alive. To him defying his will, his voice is worse: the only happiness is in the hive, wtih him. He'll give you what you want sure.. but at the cost of who you are because to him that's all that matters. It's likely why his medium's more limited than his brothers, who seem to have an easier time reaching otu: it's likely none of them want to give him the faintest chance of enough power to take them on and given he's the only lord to have outright taken a world, their fear isn't unujustified.

It's what makes Pokey so terrifying: They seem to want what's best for humanity.. but see a complete lack of will from anything but itself as best. Nothing will stop it, there's no depths it won't sink to torture you, and you WILL be part of the hive. I've always felt the best horror villians are one with a bit of personality and Pokey hits that itch like a bullseye. He's operatic, selfish and nightmarish, being a primadonna director with the goey face of an elder god who you can't bargin with. Just give up your choice. He dosen't feel overpowered becfause while abbsurdly powerful, the horror comes from the fact that they MIGHT have been able to stop him at a few hosts.. but by the time they realize it he's won and the rest of the musical comes off as him just playing with his food. A clever unstoppable meance that chills you to the bone and is remarkably well written given half a dozen people play him, yet all play him consitent, with the same chilling instance on being the singular voice. One being, dozens of bodies, no escape.

So speaking of dozens of bodies we're on to our other ingenue, our newest addition and one who like the other remaning cast members plays a bunch of extra rolls, Mariah Rose Faith Castiles, just the first three at the time of this as she's since married. She's a wonderful, kind person and a clear talent that fit right in. She's also like Jon heavily tied to this franchise having only missed one show, Black Friday due to getting a part in Mean Girls, something that was sad but also good for her. The Pandemic meant she was avaliable for Nightmare Time and after quitting the tour due to her anxiety she's back for NPD and we're glad to have her.

Mariah plays four roles in this one: Melissa, CCRP's receptionist who has a crush on Paul and dosen't show up much, Zoey, Emma's bratty coworker whose having an affair with sam, Alice, Bill's Daughter and Greenpeace girl, a GP volunteer who paul pisses off by trying to brush off. Since 3/4 of these characters show up hived on screen she spends most of her screentime as the Hive and does a terrific job, being jolly yet clearly off in La Dee Da Day, creepily monotone in cup of poison coffee nad finally heartbreakingly nightmarish as Alice, as she uses every insecurity bill has to tear the poor guy apart. She gets a truly great scene as Hive!Zoey to oas our heroes almost escape only to reveal nope, hive's flying the plane. It's no wonder Nick wanted her to play the lead as Lex next time, and she got her chance with Nerdy Prudes Must Die as Stephanie… and as fate would have it Grace Chasity , her co-lead is played by Angela Giratina, her replacement as Lex and as has become clear via streams and the Yellow Jacket music vidoew, a now good friend in real life which I find as strange as I do sweet.

Finally for cast introductions we have Jeff Motherfucking Blim, my boy. who with this muiscla finally got to use his now iconic unshaven coked out jesus look on screen. This is how I met Jeff but he'd been around a while: When Joey coudln't do Holy Musical Batman!, Jeff stepped in as Sweet Tooth, and hammed it up so hard he earned a permeannt spot with the group, going on to play the best version of ALaddin. What would lead to his rise here though was the Trail To Oregon, an orgen trail spoff he wrote and wrote the music for. So with former music makers Talk Fine moving on to do their own stuff, Jeff was the natural choice to step in as Starkid's prime music meister, with Talk Fine head Clark Backstresser only stepping back in for a VHS chrismtas Carol. Hatchetfield feels almost as much Jeff's baby as it does Nick and Matt's, and he really gets to flex his musical muscles with this franchise getting even better with each production.

We'll talk more about his music in a moment but as an actor, Jeff is fucking hinged, having a great habbit for ham, hilarity and looking abosltuely nuts in the best way possible. Case in point while he does a good Bill Lundberg as Mr. Davidson before he gets infected, post infectoin Davidson is one of the best things i've ever seen, a perpetual creepy yet hilarious smile, an inablity to show a woman's curves without having 8 of them, and jolliy telling Paul to stay whlie he tells his wife he wants her to choke him while he jerks off. The musical plays to his strengths, with Sam being likewise unhinged if not as smily , getting to ham it up with terrible love song you tied up my heart, and while he's more calm as Col John Mcnamar of PEIP, a secret orignation against the parnormal, he's still hammy, gladly throwing jon's phone before iconicallyt elling him to wear a watch instead of just… you know.. not destroying his property and only means of calling his friends. I get something as important as time deserves it's own device but still man. He's had a hell of a day. He also does a chilling job with the very heavy "America is Great Again", proving the guy can be chilling when needed.. something we'll see all too well when we get to Nightmare Time.

So with that we're down to the various other roles played by the rest of the cast. Manion's other major roll is Hot Chcolate Boy, aka Peter. He's a delight, Emma's Boss, she's really fogerattble other than, since the Langs likely realized "Shit charlotte is dead", the "All your best friends are here" gag in the starlight showdown, A Homeless man who will be vastly important, utterly steals la de da day, and freaks paul out expertly and of course future star of Hatchetfield Man in a Hurry. He was written to just say "i'm in a hurry" in the script but Jeff eventually just kept brushing past so much that he was brought back for black friday and flanderized from just some uncaring jackass with a scarf and a trench coat who keeps showing up places you REALLY shoudln't go to when your in a hurry. We are truly blessed for that. So that leads us to one of the most important and vital parts of Starkid and this show, the Music. Show Stoppin Numbers

The soundtrack for TGWDLM is postively packed. As i've made clear there's only one song I really DON'T like on the whole soundtrack and we'll get to it. The gimmick of it all being the hive gives things a unique vibe with the music not being our heroes inner yearnings but a sign shits about to get bad. While this isn't Jeff's first kickass starkid score it's the one that really showed what he can do, trapsing all around genres and theater standard types of songs to make this catchy earwormy soundtrack.

The Guy Who Didn't Like Musicals is our title track and gets us going out of the gate. It's omnious as it goes on much like the musical, with the Hive going from talking up how great musicals are and how great.. to asking "should we kill him? Should we kill him?" for paul not wanting to sing and dance with them all, and calling him a bitch, an ass and a cuck (not a cock like I thoguht for some time), for not joining in their singing season. The part where paul dosen't show up on queue is also fucking gold. Music wise it's lively a true all timer of an opening number Faviorite Part: Joey's "But tonight we're gonna chroncile a story so astronomical!" just the way he says it is so perfectly hammy.

La Dee Da Day is a great parody of those big showy crowd numbers musicals have, being a great one in it's own right…j while parodying the usual cheerfulness of that sort of thing with how unnerving it comes off for poor paul and of course the homeless man… who "used to want to kill them all while high on bathsalt zombie drugs snacking on a dead mans face", with small horrible implicatoins hidden from the GPG throwing "my old skin away" to how "a song takes all the pain away" for the old homeless man meaning evne if the hive puppets can FEEL the pain it uses them anyway. ti's nicely done Best Part: Gave a clue but as you can probably guess the Homeless Man's horrifying yet hilarous rant. The only downgrade for the soundtrack version is Paul's confused "What" is missing, which I fell really completes the joke. as does Joey getting entirely up in his face as he gets more intense.

THen of course we get one of my faviorite numbers and performances: What Do You Want Paul? This is where I fell in love with Jeff Blim folks, as his giant horrifying smile during the whole thing is one of the funniest goddamn things mankind has ever created. Making an I want song into a song about how someone wants the main protagnist to want like an I want song is fucking brilliant and is every bit as hilaroius as it sounds. Pauls utter confusion and horror the whole time, especially once we get to "I want you to choke me out at night" is hilarious. Speaking of which that is one of the funniest things Team StarKid has EVER done. I mean it. The sudden pivot to that, Jon's perfectly timed discomfort and just how beautifully and straightlaced Jeff holds it, as well as his offhand "if you leave your fired" to paul… i'm tearing up laughing NOW just thinking about it. It's one of only two songs that I went back to. Best Part: "I want you to choke me while I jerk off", both for Paul's reaction of who is this for and just for being one of the most excellent comedic swerves starkid has ever done.

Cup of Roasted/Poison Coffee is fine. It's mildly annoying but it feels like the point, that it's SUPPOSED to be the annoying half assed kind of jingle Beanies would have.. and makes it that much more horrifying when we get the Poisoned version, and the hey mr buisness how do you do as the newley hived corpses join in. Chilling. Best Part: Again the hey mr buisness part after all those people what get murdered.

Show Me Your Hands is another comedic goldmine. It not only feels like subtle commentary on the police ("WE make sense") but is packed with great ham from jeff, great deadpan from mariah and robert frigging breakdancing. It comes off like a bunch of 12 year olds playing cops in the bodies of actual cops.. which might be a good nightmare time story down the line Langs. You can have it for free. Best Part: "Your cat is dead". Just the delivery alone is enough. Thank you so much Mariah.

You Tied Up My heart

Yeah as i've made no secret of I hate this fucking thing. In concept it's not bad, a cheesy love ballad that's the hive tricking charlotte and look, Jeff's music and vocals are fine. But with the both obvious solution, the seriousness of what he's doing, and just the sheer length this thing wears on you. What should be horrifying, the hive gaslighting charlotte becomes an endurance test. It's also baffling as Jeff did an absolute banger of a ballad "When the World's At Stake" for Trail to Oregon so I don't know what happened here. I'm more baffled because he can do better. It's not even god awful, it's just.. not good. Best Part: That shriek of "Charlotte!". It's the one thing about the song I can compliment

Join Us and Die is thankfully 800 times better, giving Jamie a chance to fucking belt it and being an acting ending powerhouse. Like the songs before that thing that happened, ti's comedy packed, the last bit about beating up Ted styled like "Bop It" is fucking magical. A truly electric villian song Best Part: "it is time to dieeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee" I love that woman, how she did that I don't know but holy shit.

Not Your Seed is fucking incredible. While Mariah got to sing before and got a bit of a showcase with La De Da Day, here she REALLY gets to show how impressive her voice and acting are. Not Your Seed is just 2 and a half brilliant minutes of Mariah absolutely killing it on the stage, and utterly shredding poor bill to pieces. The slow pacing only drags out the pain for bill and feels delebrate, like Pokey WANTED this to fucking hurt him for as long as possible for surviving this long, to make Paul WATCH for his defiance as Pokey broke his best friend. Especially "you let me out of your sight for one second" just the rapid delivery of that and "didn't you know I wanted to live with you" hit like a fucking truck. She's the top. Look What Happens Nightmare Time would also give us the series definitive cords and the title for it's anthology show. Nicely done Best Part: Very fucking hard. Mariah does not make this easy. But Why Does It Hurt To Love you gets me as it's this sudden, painful, and probably HONEST, taking Alice's real emotions break that REALLY guts you and sadly poor bill. Thankfully not literally. As tragic as that headshot was at least it was quick.

Show Stopping Number has the thankfless task of following up one of the shows best numbers.. so naturally it's also one of the shows best and what's become it's signature piece. Robert fucking owns the stage as hidgens, first with the slower tunes leading in..a nd then with the falsetto switch when he decides to intro Workin Boys. Just the shift from the old man voice which is still BEAUTIFULLY sung in a crooner bing crosbyish style to Robert's more natural register… how are this man's lungs human? I shoudlnt' have to tell you returning starkids that Workin Boys is one of the best jokes ever crafted, from being a clear pisstake on Glory Days (something I didn't know but somehow makes it funnier once you do, as Glory Days is every bit as prentious, stupid and nostalgia baity as WOrkin Boys from the looks of it), to Roberts great dance moves (coregraphed by lauren) to the great hook of "five o clock can't come soon enough". IT's fucking magic. i may have.. complicated feeligns about robert I already talked about at lenght, btu I can't deny workin boys is great nor that i'm excited for the short film, which I hope gets released publicly in some form. The first song already has me hyped. And yes there's a short film: MANY people wanted Workin Boys to be a full musical which while understandable wasn't something that would really work given it was deisgnd to be a parody, hence instead compromising with a short ABOUT Hidgens actually getting to make it as part of Black Friday's backer goals. Best Part: BUISNESS CALLS I'M UP TO MY ASS IN SHIT, WHAT IS THIS BUISNESS. I mean that entire part, including the phone call desreves it but i'm calling out the sudden shift and hte hilaroity of that first line itself. I'm not entirley convinced that this was salvaged from them TRYING to make a full on parody of glory days at some point.

America is Great Again gets a bad wrap as i've seen it shockingly low on several hatchetfield ranking lists on youtube and along with John's other song, which we'll get to I feel is underrated. It's a chilling song and while it's politics are welded to it's sleeves, given the Langs had a friend outright quit to become a lawyer over the election , it's clear it REALLY hit them hard. And frankly as MANY bros tend to forget, Poltics and political satire are baked into horror. So while it's in your face about it's critques of trumpisim (The loud has become the strong).. it's not exactly wrong. The you can't run and easily disposed parts espcially given the kind of legslation put on women's bodies and LBGTQ+ peoples lately and general hostility to anyone diffrent period. The fact this hasn't gone away with the election really just makes this song hold up that much more. Best Part: The Final Solution onward. Just how horrifying it is mixed with Jeff's ham.. perfect.

So we've come to my faviorite song, Let It Out. This song is pure brilliance as is the staging, with the hive all on the fringes urging paul to let it out because they know their victory isn't not a matter of how but a matter of when. Of course the man treat and the thing tha tbrings this is Jon Mattensons' performance, effortlessly switching between paul and the hive, going from pained horror to having a smile painted on his soul like it was nothing. It shows in the voice, with paul's panicked speech constrated with the hvie's plastic singing and when Paul does sing he's barely there. it's one of the best horror freakouts i've ever seen, and trust me that threeshold is vast and expansive. The ending shout of "I don't like musicals' is badass.. and sadly futile as his fate

Is "Ineveitble", our final soong and a nice cruel twist on big splashy finales. Most musical finales , those that end happy anyway are about lifting you up, really reving you up as you get out of the theater and giving you hope for tommorow. Even pretty grim works like "Spring Awakening" can end on a nope of hope. This one? Nah. This one takes your heart and smashes to bit, forcing you, much like emma to watch as a puppeteered paul sings several even more warped version osf the score at her while trying to convince her that the horrible monster she's been fighting is a good thing and that the world became "peaceful and just". It's truly haunting and sadly catchy as hell so we're pretty much fucked i'd say. Watching emma run around desperate to escape as it's clear ther eisn't, i'ts at ruly chilling way to end a truly excellent musical.

So thus we close a curtain on one Hatchetfield. If all goes well I'll be covering Black Friday next month , then possibly taking a break for december before getting into nightmare time next year. This could change as when push comes to shove to feed the hive that is my bank account I HAVE to proritze the reviews I do on comission, but i intend to try my damdenst to get the review out around the actual black friday. I hope you all enjoyed this as it was a LOT to get done, but it was a true labor of love. This is one of my faviorite musicals and I was glad to dig through it with a fine toothed comb and I can only hope a few years after it's release my analysis isn't too played out. Stick around if you enjoyed this for more reviews, don't be afraid to reblog it or join my patreon to help keep this blog going, and thank you once again so much for reading. I'll see you in line for a Tickle Me Wiggly.

#team starkid #hatchetfield #tgwdlm #paul matthews #emma perkins #henry hidgens #ted spankoffski #bill woodward #alice woodward #charlotte sweetly #sam sweetly #zoe chambers #man in a hurry #peter spankoffski #joey richter #lauren lopez #jon matteson #corey dorris

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super-hero-confessions · 1 year

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find it a little weird that people seem to have a bit of a skewed and nerfed view of homelander's strength.

not even to say that he's the strongest of the superman archetypes, far from it, i think it's pretty clear he's not. but he's not 'weak' or a 'little bitch' in comparison either and it's just... strange that people think that i guess?

in the comics, setting aside minor narrative inconsistencies, they make it pretty clear that the only thing that can go toe to toe or have a chance at destroying him:

is his identical clone.

but this would literally be true for most if not all of the superman characters so it doesn't really imply he'd be much weaker than them in any sense

if we just look at the show. nearly every other supe is deathly afraid of him and with very few exceptions, it is pretty much impossible to hurt him. there isn't really anyone who rivals him in a fair fight and this version is implied to be stronger than his comics self.

and that's just the thing, i think he is undoubtedly incredibly strong, well past the point of giving any of the superman type characters quite a handful of serious trouble or even actually doing many of the heroic feats we see superman handle with ease (we know an entire train brought down by a telekinetic didn't scratch him so he likely *could* have saved flight 37 and just chose not to). but i think people are measuring him from all the wrong angles.

and i don't mean it as just a measure of strength within his own world, i would argue many of the supes created by compound V are implied to be very very strong with a few drawbacks.

part of the disconnect i think comes with how 'weak' the general humans seem to be, or how easily they get killed. but it feels like people forget the show is meant to be gory and outrageous to a point in a way that almost none of the other medias are. part of the parody is how easily these people would die around recklessly strong characters, and it's desensitizing in a way.

so this would translate to all other stories, not stay confined to the boys universe as if the people were somehow more fragile there.

another element to consider would be his ego and emotion. yes, that's a factor two ways. i know the people guilty of this wouldn't admit it, but homelander's emotional instability, insecurity, and constant need for reassurance that he is the TOP of the food chain is definitely making people *want* to think he's much weaker than he really is. simultaneously, it is one of his *weaknesses*, but it still doesn't actually make him 'weak' overall

apart from this, the only real thing that disparages him from his counterparts would be his recovery ability. from what we can gather, that seems a bit slower which can significantly limit him in a fight with someone who can deal good damage against him, but if we're truly fair about it, he could hurt them back and he wouldn't be one to hold back or avoid any chances for cheap shots or killing blows.

and some of the others were just as slow if not slower than him when it came to healing--once they were injured. and we already know not much can injure them--homelander *included*.

hell, this might be controversial, but omni-man literally got hurt by things that would have barely if even phased homelander in the first episode of invincible and then took his sweet ass time to heal.

it's pretty much just superman who can bask in sunlight and instaheal... the motherfucker...

but what homelander is *actually* a big baby about... is the fact that he can get hurt--at all. but overall, his weaknesses are few and far between, and we know he would fight very *very* dirty and he isn't above fleeing if he feels outmatched or outnumbered or needs to recuperate.

this would be the reason billy butcher has so much trouble offing the fucker, regardless of what guys like lex luthor or batman would have people believe about the actual strongest of the archetype (fucking reality altering punches my ass).

and billy's much more ruthless than either of them (so is homelander).

#confession #the boys #homelander

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mouseratz · 5 months

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excuse me. time for a comic nerd post.

"do you think space ghost could work as an unironic superhero" anything is possible. I'd say dynamite's current attempt isn't looking fantastic from the previews/summaries, but I also would say superheroes, as a genre, have been known to do a lot more with a lot less than what this series has. "it's stupid" isn't enough of a roadblock to actually be a problem. the way I see it, the two major problems have very little to do with Coast to Coast & it's legacy (the biggest superheroes have been parodied successfully many, many times over and yet still managed to Do Both, so to speak- Lego Batman is beloved by fans and didn't keep The Batman 2022 from coming out, y'know, although our friend is far from Batman, superheroes as a genre have long had to exist alongside parody and done just fine is my point):

1. in an effort to escape coast to coast, I imagine all creatives will be tempted by the horrible spectre that infects all superhero stories at one time or another in a post-TDKR world: the need for gritty dark angsty troubled superheroes. this will not help anything, and will not appeal to many fans; it will off-put people coming from sgc2c AND fail to stand out from a sea of pre-existing angsty sci-fi superhero stories, but many will be convinced it's the only possible way for anyone to take the series remotely seriously.

2. space ghost, as a series, seems like it was pretty memorable to its original childhood audience. however, the reason parody has overshadowed it, is that the main character.....doesn't appear to have a lot of character to speak of. can you tell me a single character trait? he's just a guy in space doing 'good' things. ('good' in quotation marks, but that was just kind of par for the course for this era. they had heroes doing any damn thing.) the things, to me, that appear to be cherished is that distinctive 60s sci-fi flavor that permeated the world & villains, since I don't think plot seems to be discussed too widely.

....and y'know I do kind of get that. I really love 60s fantastic four & the 1966 batman show (although the latter already emerged with some purposeful comedic elements and stylization, itself referencing the Very Old Batman stories and becoming more popular than what came before).

my point being, space ghost himself from his core roots is kind of serving a nothingburger. this could be changed with someone with a very strong vision, but I imagine we won't get that. see point 1- we will be getting Generic Troubled Superhero Guy (In Space), which we already have a million of. that's why it's gonna suck. not bc it's not trying to be "funny" or it's impossible to coexist with parody versions, but because it's just another grab at nostalgia from the 60s era of superheroes that probably won't try to be any fun. are they gonna put the saucer crab in the Dynamite comic? that's the real question.

#space ghost #these r just predictions im not even an expert or longtime fan i just know some patterns around comic revivals #maybe im like crazy wrong. idk

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realityhelixcreates · 1 year

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Some days ago you wrote a post saying that you were writing something using elder scrolls lore? I think? What's that about? Are you writing some au? I'm a bit lost on your most recent fanfics (I'm waiting until I have some free time so I can give nexus a try, I'm just a bit intimidated cause I know next to nothing about DC) but I love reading about your ideas and characters, they all sound so genuinely interesting and we'll writen.

Ohhhh yes, okay so!

Wayyyyyyyy back in the day, there were a bunch of Riddler ask/art/rp blogs, that all portrayed their respective Riddler in very different ways. Some were based on official material (YJ is from the 2011 Young Justice animated series, Arkham from the Arkham City video game, Detective was originally based off the 1992 Batman: the Animated Series, but became highly altered as their storyline continued) some, like Narci, Puzzles, and Nash, were original takes on the character. Swag stared out as a parody that became a solid character as time passed. All of these interacted with each other, and developed into a found family.

Helix (My OC) came along a little later, and began interacting with them. None of us really expected how inextricably involved she was going to become, since she's much more of a high fantasy character, than a DC character, but it all happened pretty organically, and was a lot of fun.

Back then, I started a bunch of creative projects I wanted to share with the writers of these blogs, but I had just ended my relationship with my ex-fiancee, moved back in with my parents, and was working in a pretty toxic environment, and it just slaughtered my creative output. If I were to point you to my old blog, which I shan't, you would see that I drew maybe five or six things in as many years, when previously, I had drawn almost every day.

All of those blogs eventually went silent, the last interaction being between Helix and Narci. Since then, some of them have even been deleted entirely. I forgot about the things I was going to do, and they lay ignored for years. Then I stumbled across my old harddrive, where all these ideas still existed, barely sketched out, partially begun, and it all flooded back. Yeah, those blogs are done, some of the writers have disappeared, it's all over. But those stories are still there, and so am I.

I am in a much better place than I was. I have some writing practice under my belt, and, most importantly, I have inspiration again. I can make the art I always wanted to. I can write the stories I always wanted to. I can finish what I wanted to start.

That all being said, One of the things I started a long time ago, was an elder scrolls crossover. I had also started playing Skyrim at around that time, and it was an idle idea that I thought would be fun. When I found that harddrive, the first chapter had been partially written out, and I ended up taking the ideas there, and going in a different direction with them. I now have an over thirty chapter, ongoing story involving Helix and Swag stumbling their way through Cyrodiil, told entirely through Swag's POV. I've been posting it on my main/RP blog rather than here, because I felt that Helix and Swag's relationship hadn't been well enough expressed in the Nexusverse yet. Almost all of the Nexus stories so far take place in 2011-2013, and this crossover story takes place in 2020, so there's a lot in between that I haven't gone into yet, you know?

But considering that I've been posting some of the later Nexus stories out of chronological order, I might just start posting it anyway. I think it's kinda obvious by now how some of Helix's relationships pan out, so it might be okay. What do you think?

Also, you are very sweet, and I'm glad I've been able to express some of my ideas in a way that others can enjoy them with me. I will warn you, the stories that are from Helix's POV can be a bit challenging to follow; she doesn't experience reality in the same way as most people, which I've expressed with synesthesia and the repetition of consonants, syllables, and vowel sounds in a freeform poem/prose manner. If you do start the Nexus stories at their beginning, you'll see why.

Don't be too intimidated though; most Nexus stories are only 1-2000 words, with the exception of Orbital Unresonanace, which is, admittedly, a chonker. But you've been reading Lasa, so I know you can handle unreasonably large stories.

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maxwell-grant · 2 years

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So @artbyblastweave made a post recently talking about how deeply, almost monstrously self-referential the superhero genre is, and even has to be by design, in response to an ask about elements ubiquitous to the genre and/or stories, and whether these elements are requirements. They gave me a shout-out saying I could provide a more informed perspective on how the pulp heroes hang around in superhero universes “as objects of tribute and parody”. That got me thinking, thinking about how many works do employ this kind of thing, who use that idea of “there used to be weird not-quite-superheroes up until the 30s, that eventually gave way to the real thing” for worldbuilding.

Thinking about how, everywhere you look in superheroes and superhero universes, you see remnants big and small of that pulp fiction bedrock they were raised from and above, mixed with so many hundreds other things that shouldn’t even be called “pulp fiction” but still gets to share the name because there’s nothing else to call them, because they have just enough in common, because most of it is all in the past, and the past is an amorphous shadow hanging over our heads made of everything that isn’t What-Is-Now and What-Will-Be-Then, growing larger and more stuffed with every tick, as What-Was-Before encompasses every second so far.

You see it in comics, you see it in movies and cartoons adapting the comics. You see it in the Justice Society and Black Adam, you see it in the Black Panther mythos, you see it in Batman and Superman and Namor and Watchmen and Invincible and Black Hammer and every Sherlock Holmes reboot and every James Bond reboot and everywhere if you know where to look, if you know some of the names and inspirations behind the wires and strings that put these tapestries together. Maybe it isn’t there, maybe it is. Maybe it never was, maybe it never stopped being.

In that post about The Question, I argued about Archetypes and Ectypes and how they relate to one way to define The Superhero, and the post linked above argues more in-length the idea that what ultimately defines the superhero is the proximity to other superheroes and the “superhero genre”, it’s the context by which they exist propped up by the massive defining Archetypes of Batman and Spider-Man and Superman as the biggest of all. But still: If that’s what defines The Superhero, what defines The Pulp Hero?

(Pictured left-to-right: Six-Gun Gorilla by Jeff Stokely, Imaro by Mshindo Kuumba, Olga Mesmer by DevinQuigleyArt, and Lobster Johnson by Mike Mignola)

Nowadays, I don’t think it really has that much to do with the character’s proximity to “pulp fiction”, as I once argued in delineating differences between pulp heroes and superheroes. Once you get past the literal fiction printed in wood pulp paper or similarly cheap paper, most of which just doesn’t exist anymore especially outside of America, “pulp” nowadays exists as a term akin to something like “dark academia” and things whose name ends with -core, in that it only functionally exists to point to a “vibe” that broadly overlaps with a lot of other things. Not wholly useless, but not concrete enough either for what we’re looking for.

Is it by proximity to the origin of the “pulp hero” concept as is with superheroes and Superman? Well, in theory, but that implies “pulp hero” is a term with history and definition and tangibility, and it just doesn’t have that in the same way. There is no tangible “first pulp hero” akin to the way we point to Superman as a breakthrough. Closest the term has to an origin is as a bizarro offshoot of “hero pulps”, which is a term coined to describe pulp magazines that were about the exploits of a larger-than-life hero, constitute a really, really small margin of the broader landscape of what pulp fiction comprised and entailed, and it exists largely to describe characters with a specific “vibe” that can invite comparison to said hero pulps. “Hero pulp” defines something that plainly doesn’t exist anymore and is, in itself, dubious as a term to begin with when you bring in other factors like dime novel heroes and feuilleton heroes and etc that all used the exact same format and even printing paper, but it’s a definition still.

What does “pulp hero” define to begin with?

That term defines and groups characters who, for several reasons, fit in that “vibe” one way or another. It groups a lot of characters who didn’t really appear or attain fame in pulp magazines like The Green Hornet, The Spirit and Flash Gordon, but who are still seen as “pulp heroes” because they have that “pulp vibe” to them. That amorphous shadow hanging over them that makes them Of The Past, When The Dinosaurs Pulps Ruled America. Calling a character a “pulp hero” separates it from the superheroes but still implies that they work by similar rules, that they fit under a comprehensive umbrella, that they all belong under the same medium or term or even vibe and they just, didn’t, it didn’t work that way, except it does now.

Because Pulp Hero is a term that derives meaning and definition from it’s proximity to The Superhero. By that term which establishes that, characters from an irreconcilably vast range of genres, aesthetics, sensibilities, mediums and contexts can all be remixed together forever and ever and still all fall together under the same definition, so long as you combine the Hero prefix with a signifier and origin they all have in common (Super-/Superman or works defined by Superman and/or superheroes existing).

Superheroes exist and propagate through context, through contact and proximity, viral meme conquerors who’ve entered the 21st century in a mission to obfuscate and destroy and incorporate everything standing in their way through non-stop self-reinvention and transformation, and what happens to some dozens and hundreds of characters whose biggest or only claim to fame nowadays is their proximity to superheroes? Well, the obvious: They become, in a way, superheroes as well.

Within the period where these pulp characters were actually around (which still includes today even), it didn’t make sense to group them together as if they were the same thing or operating in the same spaces when they very, very clearly weren’t. The term didn’t exist because it didn’t have to exist. It would be like grouping every protagonist in Netflix’s film and series catalogue a “Flix Hero” just because they are all film-based, and even that would make more sense considering how many of these countless 1890s-1950s characters aren’t even sharing the same mediums to begin with.

But when those characters all do start to be joined together by virtue of existing in the same space within the cultural imagination, within the same mediums, existing together at all to begin with, in the context through which everyone first discovers them now? Then it makes sense that inevitably, someone would have to coin a name to call them under one thing. To call them as they see it, The Not-Superheroes Of Old. As precursors to the superheroes, as backstory fodder, as characters you’re aware exist and that’s it, as Those of The Past, The Retro Serial Guys, The Granddaddies That Don’t Show Up Anymore, The Only Ones We Still Kinda Remember Existing To Begin With, Runaways and Prisoners Alike From What-Was-Before. It isn’t what I think of, or want, them to be, but it is undeniably what we’ve all been calling them the last years.

Whether they predate them or not, whether they were made to exist in their worlds or not, that term still defines them first and foremost by their proximity to the superheroes. Only brought together because of ways they are retroactively forced into being seen or becoming more like superheroes, even in the ways they are not. After all, superheroes can be everything, they’ve become everything now. The pulp heroes simply came first as the direct forerunners. Transmutated by proximity to the viral meme, into becoming a part of it.

When superhero universes gesture at them through tribute or parody or both, that’s, in a nutshell, what the superhero genre has done on a larger scale: reach through time and make it so that the pulp characters are now recontextualized into missing links and stepping stones, encubators and trial runs for what would replace everything else as The Biggest Thing Ever. Whether dignified precursors or embarassing prototypes, whether this adds meaning to the pulp heroes or strips it away from them, whether it embellishes or diminishes them, whether this is what saved these characters or doomed them, or all at once, it’s all the same.

To be more conclusive: It’s not that I think all of these characters, pulp characters, were or are superheroes. But it seems that, if we are to assign them as “pulp heroes”, if they are to be seen as feature parts of a tapestry under which they can all exist and be studied and portrayed as “pulp heroes”, that is, in a way, binding them irrevocably to the superheroes that they are defined in opposition of. It is the thought exemplified by what these superhero works do, when they depict analog Shadows and Docs and Tarzans as only nominally-important parts of a superhero universe, usually stripped of most of everything that defined these characters as they were, and not as what they are under the superhero. The end result of these characters having the mark of historical fossils stamped on their foreheads, for better or worse.

I’m not even arguing this as an inherently bad thing for all of them, a lot of the pulp characters actually do stand to benefit a great deal from becoming superheroes, reshaped or influenced by superhero sensibilities. What I am saying though, is that it might have been a lost cause to try to argue so much, as I have, that The Pulp Hero isn’t defined so extensively by their relationship with the past and their current standing as precursors to the superheroes, when the very name we use to call them already comes inextricably bound to both of these things.

We call these characters Pulp Heroes only because there isn’t anything else to call them, but for many, it isn’t, and shouldn’t be, the sum of what they are. In fact, when you do see modern characters who borrow so strongly from those pulp heroes that they would unmistakeably be labeled as such in the past, you see that they only stand to gain from rejecting said label and that pulp/superhero paradigm.

(Pictured: Nam Han-Joon from Café Minamdang, Lunga from Bacurau (2018) and Joker from Persona 5, all of which borrow from and correlate heavily with, respectively: Sherlock Holmes and modernizations of the Great Detective pulp archetype, the Cangaceiro as a popular figure of cordel literature and Brazilian equivalent to the cowboys and gangsters of American folk lore, and Arsene Lupin and the social struggles and rebellion that made him such a game-changer for the Gentleman Thief as a literary icon)

There is a great usefulness to the Pulp Hero label for categorizing, understanding and conveying characters that could not exist outside of that space, who do need to belong under that umbrella and exist neighboring that superhero paradigm. It is very much a case-by-case basis, is what I’m saying. However, it also seems that many of these characters would benefit more from breaking away from that pre-established term and paradigm. Maybe it’s useful to keep in mind that setting out to create a “pulp hero” who purposefully has nothing to do with superheroes is, kind of a losing game when you assign the term “pulp hero” to begin with. A term created by superhero context, created to exist within superhero rules, a separate room within the same house.

It doesn’t have to be a bad thing, but it also doesn’t have to be the only way. That’s the thing about labels in general, they are like boxes. They either fit, or don’t. Boxes can be great, boxes can be really useful, lots of beings really like to be in boxes, everyone wants to find a box that fits you or your things most neatly. But when a box doesn’t fit, or gets imposed onto you by others, or turns into a prison? That’s your cue to leave and go get a new one. I don’t think “pulp hero” is a bad box to put so many of these characters in, but it is a box nonetheless, and one with more limits that I’d previously realized or wanted to admit so, yes, I do think we should find some other ones.

#pulp fiction #pulp heroes #feels weird using that tag but again #what else am I gonna call them #black hammer #six-gun gorilla #this post is kind of why I've never really liked calling The Shadow a pulp hero #or an articulation of why doing that always came with some discomfort #yes it is what he is but #it's frustratingly limited a way to describe him I think #literature #pulp magazines #superheroes

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unforeseen-idiot · 11 months

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Shovelwarewolf Season 2 Review

Shovelwarewolf Season 2 Electric boogaloo, or the season where stuff finally goes down. I love that the story and production value jump in quality with each other in this season.

Sonic 06: Great episode to open with, we meet Susan (who definitely knows more than they're letting on), a cool season theme, acknowledgement (however brief) of the whole arm thing, and an Escape From the City parody, what's not to love.

Goldeneye: Solid episode, I think it has some of SWW's best one liners (Hell's Angels, The Mafia, GAMESTOP!). I learned to never insult Judy Dench, and that I should probably watch a James Bond movie.

Mortal Kombat Mythologies: Another fine episode, Ivan mimicking the glitch was pretty funny. I don't have a whole lot to say about this episode so I'll just write here that Ivan and Susan have a great banter, and that Susan was just a great addition to begin with, but I'll get to that later. Oh and Test Your Patience was a good capper on the episode.

Duke Nukem: Just getting this out of the way, this game is pure trash but SWW's reactions are too funny. I also like the character development at the beginning with Ivan and Susan, she really was just the only one who was nice to him. Also I don't know why this occurs to me, but the company described the next game as, "A console with a Zelda game" I just remembered that the Switch came out with Breath of the Wild in the same year as this season, I don't know how that's relevant, I just thought it was cool.

Legend of Zelda Wand of Gamelon: Oho what an episode, great gameplay, great story, and great one liners. Susan got to be really cool in this episode, which leads me to believe that she definitely planned this in advance and the therapist bit was an act (she went from running from the room during a transformation to bursting in and rescuing Ivan/SWW without batting an eye in the same day, no way that just happened). I also just love this game's stupid clips and the SWW one liners to go with them: "(Recorder noise) THANKS, (same recorder noise) THANKS...FOR NOTHING" "You've killed me, GOOD. Dang, that's savage, who knew Zelda was such an OG" and "Link gave them to me. GASP! YOU KNOW LINK, LIKE OMG" such good writing. and The Shovelwarewolf's a Running is amazing.

Home Alone: Finally we've reached the finale, pretty great all things considered. First I just want to acknowledge this little scene from Death's narration, "With the help of his therapist" while panning on cool bada** Susan, just funny to me. I'd also like to acknowledge Ivan's TV playing AJ and Nate's weird Spider-Man and Batman Save Christmas Movie, wish they'd finish that someday it looked cool. I love the Home Alone parody for the cool ways it adapts the theme, like the Gamecube trap. Santa just having 180 in terms of character and going on a full fledged villain arc is so hilarious. The game itself is weirdly a cool take on a Home Alone game, like most licensed games at the time would take tons of liberties with the source material but this one was pretty accurate, even if it still sucked. Susan got to be cool again, but at the cost of a very forlorn scene. Oh boy now we get to meet our dude Biffalo Bub, simultaneously RE's most stupid but also most realistically scary villain. That silent clip montage at the end still unsettles me.

Music Rating:

Season 2 Opening: One of the best, that opening bass riff is still so mesmerizing. And the violins, and the soft piano, and the synth, oh so good. This opening feels a lot like a triumphant return for the character.

Season 2 Transformation: Conversely this variation of the transformation doesn't really do it for me. I like the way it closes I guess, but I just don't love it. It also has this weird repeating note that just bores into my skull.

SHOVELWAREWOLF! (Test Your Patience): Pretty good parody, I love the recap of the games he's played so far (except Goldeneye for some reason).

Shovelwarewolf's a-Runnin': Great parody, it introduced me to the Werewolves of London. I love it's use in the show and the vocals.

This is My Safehouse: Great composition for the Home Alone episode. Seriously AJ really flexed his composing powers here. The synth is really great, I love the little incorporation of the transformation theme.

Sleigh-Riding Sleazebag: Not much to say on the song other than the title, and it's use of random Christmas carols, but evil.

Couch Gag: I love this gag, Ivan dubbing over game footage is so funny. Like the last one it makes me think of him being so bored he just does stuff like this to pass the time. This time I'm happy he didn't have one for Wand of Gamelon, I feel like the dialogue in that game stand on its own.

The season is so good. It gave us a great SWW mask, a great character in the form of Susan, and excellent story development. And it only gets better from here. In addition, while others have described it better than me, this season has interesting symbolism in obsession and trauma.

#shovelwarewolf #howlaween #So funny how the episode reviews were longer this time #almost like the story got better #Nate has really gotten good at screams of agony #Like seriously I really believe it when he's transforming

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the-panmixxia · 1 year

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Pound of Prevention (and an ounce of cure) Chapter 5

Two figures wandered through narrow alleys, closely following a magical, purple thread as it flickered in and out of existence. Janus huffed in frustration as it completely disappeared, lowering his hands and rubbing them to ease the cramping.

"This isn't working." Janus mumbled, rather grumpy. Remus grinned, quite happy to trot next to the frustrated warlock.

"I still say we should hijack a sound system and blast Paramore until the little emo scuttles out of a crevice!"

Janus simply rolled his eyes, fiddling with the lapels of his peacoat before reengaging his spiritual bonds. A neon green thread lead straight to Remus, an orange thread trailing far east to his brother a few states away. And one, faint purple thread, barely there and leading them dead ahead. A tether to Virgil.

A tether that flickered once more, and disappeared into nothingness.

"Don't fret, Janny! It was going a bit to the left. That's a direction to get waking in, huh?"

The two kept walking, Janus eyeing the sky critically. It was going to rain soon, and in no less than an hour Virgil would be transforming back into a kitten. The guilt threatened to eat him alive at any moment, though it was rather difficult to wallow in past mistakes when a devilish imp was hanging off your arm, singing crude parodies to pop songs under their breath.

"Hmm. Maybe Virgil is in there?" Remus says with a smirk, nodding towards a building across the street. Music could be heard from inside, and neon signs in the window depicting silhouettes of girls in bikinis, it was rather apparent what the place was. "I think we ought to check it out, just in case."

"Something tells me that our socially anxious, asexual friend is not going to be in a bloody strip club!"

Remus simply grinned, shrugging his shoulders. "I dunno, maybe spook will surprise you. I bet Virgie is getting a lap dance right now. Oh, can you imagine?"

Janus scoffed, cuffing the horny imp round the ear. "Give the Gods a break Remus, we find Virgil this week I'll give you a lap dance myself. Let's get moving."

With the vague promise of a lap dance from his favorite, uptight warlock, Remus seemed a lot more motivated to find the third roommate. That's not to say Remus wasn't worried about Virgil, or that he didn't want spook back. It was just that…well, Virgil was a human equivalent of an adult, and technically within spooks right to disappear into the night like a much less intimidating Batman.

The pessimism was pissed out of his bloodstream the second Janus was able to clench his ass and get the magic up and running once more. This time, the thread traveled a few feet ahead before curving upwards to a tall apartment complex. It disappeared before it could hit a particular floor, but unless Virgil was hovering behind the building with a new found flying ability, then spook was almost definitely in that apartment building. Spooks house, most likely. At least that curbed one concern, that Virgil's intense hatred of social interaction lead to a lack of job and housing. Before all this drama Virgil was working at an extremely quiet leather shop, usually spending spooks whole day listening to some variant of a "this generation doesn't know good leather when they see it" rant. Virgil insisted it was better than dealing with customers.

"Oh, fuck yeah. Imma be having that lap dance before sunrise!"

Janus flushed a gentle pink on the left of his face, tugging his gloves with a huff.

"Oh, shut up. We've got at least a hundred apartments to search, and before that we've got to find a way in without looking like criminals."

"Pshh. No building is gonna keep my slippery dick in or out."

"Bitch. BITCH! NU-UH, I'm liking none of this."

"Remy, we've been brainstorming all week. I'm telling you, Patton had zero interest in eating me. I think fae just fosters cats? Like, for fun?"

"Latte didn't need fostering, she had an extremely loving owner!"

"I mean, you never really got her chipped or put any identification on her. Besides those stupid crochet hats you'd wrestle on to her."

Remy let out a primal hiss that would've had any caregiving vampire going feral, though only served to raise Virgil's brow in an unamused manner - spook had heard the whole spectrum of nestling noises from Remy, not much have Virgil pause anymore.

"Sorry, Remy. Those hats were dumb. And I need to get fostered by this big ass werewolf so I can bite a big ass chunk of fur out to act as a pelt."

"And then I'm gonna bust you out by knocking on the door and insisting that's my kitty?"

"Yeah. You should have finished at the library by nine am, come back with your librarian venom and once I've poofed back we should be golden to go through this reversal!"

"This is gonna suck. You're making me deal with two of the biggest bitches ever, like I actually don't know who's worse, the nerdy librarian or the cat-napping dog -"

Virgil huffed, smacking Remy's arm to stop them mid rant. "Are you doing it or not, Remy?"

The two paused, staring at each other, Virgil trying to control spooks anxious breathing and Remy - well, they technically didn't have to breathe, but he sighed and huffed plenty.

"Of course, Vee. We've got each other's back, we're cov-... Uh, a couple of pals. Besties. Roommates for life."

Spook huffed a laugh, it was always amusing how awkward Remy got at any form of affection despite his usual sass and confidence. Still, Virgil probably shouldn't mock it.

"Thank you. Let's get this sorted. I'm gonna turn into a cat anytime now. Drop me on floor twelve and I'll try and be caught by -"

Ah. Cat mode activated, apparently, as Virgil suddenly got very close to Remy's boots. The vampire shuffled back, cooing softly before scooping Virgil up.

"We need to get a proper cat after this, babes. I miss Latte's baby phase, she was such a scruffy little kitten! But not as scruffy as you, babes, don't worry."

That was plain rude. Virgil bit his thumb in retaliation, but diligently plopped into a loaf position on Remy's palm. The other thumb rubbed a gentle circle on the back of spooks ears, mm, nice. That deserves a purr.

"Heh, cute little bitch. If this werewolf does end up eating you, I'm totally having your bedroom. You actually have a view, I'm stuck staring at another building's air con units."

Ah, Remy, the eternal drama queen. The two ride the elevator, doors opening to an empty hallway. Remy steps out just enough to peek round the corner, foot in the doorway to keep it open. The coast was clear, so they leant down to whisper to the kitten.

"Right, this is your stop, yeah? You know which door it is?"

It was quite hard to communicate in this tiny body, so Virgil tilted spooks head all the way back to really emphasize the nodding yes. The vampire smiled, reaching into his bag to grab something before rubbing a greasy substance into Virgil's body. Gross.

"All done, babes. You look extra wet and pathetic. See you later."

With that, Virgil was left in the hallway, Remy's disgusting hair gel settling into spooks fur, stinking of chemicals and shea butter. Yuck. Virgil wandered up the hallway, not needing to count the numbers as Patton's door was the only one not swamp green, but still wondering how to get the werewolf's attention.

"With my luck," Virgil thought "Patton isn't even in faer house tonight. In fact, it would be just my luck if Patton has moved out and I'll never get that stupid pelt."

Maybe crying would help? Did spook have the shamelessness to literally cry for attention for a complete stranger? Considering the alternatives were either staying as a cat for half of spooks life or hitting Janus up to beg for a cure, then maybe so.

" Meow. Me-eeeeooowww!" Virgil cried, trying hard to project spooks tiny voice, pacing around the halls. Hopefully Patton's wolf-like hearing extends to faer human form, but Virgil had never actually talked to a were long enough to know very much at all other than etiquette and social rules for different species, which all children learn.

The elevator hummed as it rose to this floor, opening up to let someone out. Virgil flicked an ear, glancing at the doors to see a pair of crisp, white trainers step out. The bright red laces had shiny beads and Disney-themed charms adorning them. When spook actually looked at the person, the pathetic little mewls died out. It was the same fae that Virgil had, rather creepily, stolen the blood of. As weird of a move as that was, Virgil will gladly take the bad karma that arises from that decision at a later date. After the curse has been reversed, please.

"Oh Padre, look! I think it may be the long-lost soot sprite, returned at last!"

Seemed like this fae was adamant on talking like Prince Charming (the Shrek version, and Virgil did intend that insultingly) and spook was quite sure they'd been talking to a father of some sort. The last thing Virgil needed was to be closely examined by an elder fae. This one seemed oblivious to the curse, and their mild fae-features (freckled, where most elder fae had impossibly unblemished skin. Ears pointing a little, instead of ears tall and pointy enough to pierce the lobe thirty times over) meant that they didn't possess the ability to interact with others curses.

An elder, on the other hand, would sniff spooks true form in an instant. Maybe turn spook into something worse, for funsies. Spook didn't feel like interacting with that scenario, so rather literally turned tail to try and hide behind the dying ficus a few doors down.

That plan also didn't last long, as the assumed 'padre' gasped and made a soft, dog-like whimper.

Wolf like, even.

"Oh, kiddo, there you are." a familiar voice crooned.

The mission had, once again changed, and Virgil piloted the tiny body to turn round and stare the Were down. Patton was reaching out, crouching with a few bags round his arms, clearly uncertain if pursuing the 'animal' would be wise or not.

Fuck that.

Virgil meowed a battle cry before charging the wolf, who 'woof-ed' something pleased, ditching the bags to scoop the tiny body up. Yes, wonderful.

"I see you still have that Patton-ted touch with the baby animals, padre." The fae hummed, Patton laughing softly at the dumb pun.

"Oh, Roman, I'm so happy! We gotta get this kiddo checked up, though. Who knows what's happened in the two weeks they've been missing."

Yes, yes, yes. This was all going according to plan. Virgil purred at the Were, lowering his guard so spook may take the winning bite before skedaddling.

Though, the thought did make Virgil a little guilty. Spook was practically using Patton, playing with the Were's kindness of animals to steal his magical fur-

"Could you heat some water, Roman? I'm gonna weigh the kiddo, take their temperature then try and get some food into the poor thing."

Take their temperature.

Even Virgil knew you couldn't stick a thermometer in a cat's mouth and tell it to stay still.

Fuck this. It seems that bad karma has returned once more.

"That was my spot and you know it, you blood-sucking asshole!"

A fossil-looking ass pensioner shouted at Remy, over the sound of their own car's honking. It wasn't Remy's fault the old dude took so long to make a single maneuver. They honestly hadn't noticed the tiny, two seat smart car was moving. The car had kept perfectly still as Remy whipped round into the free spot, and only then did the man decide to take offense.

If Virgil was here, the wet little emo would insist Remy apologize and find another spot. Sucks for this old dude that Remy really wasn't in the mood. The vampire grabbed their satchel before standing proudly in front of the other car to flip a hearty bird.

"Shut up, you old turd! Go park literally anywhere else and get off my dick!"

The pensioner's face turned a lovely shade of red, fumbling with his door while mumbling angry nonsense.

"Why, you disrespectful, oversized mosquito. I ought to-"

"Excuse me." A new voice chimed in, firm and authoritative. Remy turned their head slightly to see the library vampire - Logan? Yeah he was called Logan. Def. - standing a few paces behind the two, looking rather unimpressed.

"The only designated parking at this facility is the disabled spots marked in blue. You can not own a parking space and so arguing about which spot is yours is moot."

The old guy scowled even more so, trembling in anger and revving the engine of his car, clearly trying to insinuate he'd ram into Remy. They merely grinned.

Logan did not find it as amusing, and in a blink was in front of Remy, one hand firmly on the hood of the car with a warning grumble that Remy had only ever heard his sire make, when he was a fresh enough turn to keep her attention.

"Your options are, in order of my personal preference; you leave now and find an alternative way to spend your night, you find another place to park - of which there are plenty - and come into the library when you are sufficiently calm, or you can continue to be irate and I can call security to remove you from the premises."

After a tense few minutes the old guy drove off with an angry huff, and while Remy fully intended to give a sarcastic salute, a cold hand encircled his wrist.

"It is not necessary to provoke the situation I have already sorted."

Ugh, boring.

"Fine, babes. Thanks for all the jazz, I'm actually here to see you in particular so, like, I'm glad you're here."

Logan dropped Remy's wrist, gesturing the two to return to the library. "Oh? And why might that be? Do you have more text you need to translate?"

"Not tonight, gurl, I'm here to talk vampire - to - vampire about things vampire."

"I… see." Logan said after a little hesitance, readjusting his tie. "Is there a particular reason that 'vampire' things can not be discussed with your sire, or your coven?"

"Uh, I'm asking the questions, babes. So, uh, tell me. This venom that the spell asked for, yeah? It's from a vampire, but I'm a vampire, and there's no venom coming from me. Is it like a period thing, do I only venom once a month? What's the deal with that?"

Logan blinked, first trying to digest the lingo, and then another long blink as he processed the question.

"...No. A vampire's venom is not akin to a menstrual cycle. An adult vampire on a consistent diet is capable of creating venom regularly, though may temporarily stop production while siring as their body prioritizes producing a feeding blood higher in density and nutrients to assist their nestling's growth. I imagine your inability to produce to venom is that you are, essentially, a vampire's developmental equivalent to a young child, and like children, you are not able to yet produce your own 'offspring' in the form of siring"

"First off, rude, I'm not a kid. Second of all, how the heckin heck am I gonna get the venom Virge needs if my dumbass body hasn't started making it?"

"Well donating a small dose is rather simple and noninvasive, surely you could ask your sire or other coven members to help assist your human friend?"

Remy groaned rather loudly, smacking a palm onto the reception desk. "You obtuse fuck, can't you read a room? Sire and coven are out of the bloody question, stop asking me about it."

He felt kinda bad about snapping, when Logan's face fell slightly, a similar look as to when the librarian briefly thought the two were mocking him. Ugh.

"Sorry, sorry. Not sure why I'm being such a bitch tonight."

"It is alright." Logan responded simply, the look leaving his features as he readjusted his glasses. Remy mirrored the action, pushing their sunglasses back up their nose. "You acting like 'a bitch' is most likely a reflection of a nestling's instinct to avoid abduction."

"Abduction?"

"Yes. Well, nowadays there are paper trails for each individual turning, and proper legal protection for the sire but it wasn't always like that. A lot of elder vampires are, so to speak, a little nestling orientated? They'd love nothing more than to sweep a newly-turned from their sire, and claim them as their own. The process of claiming, though, it's long, stressful, painful, and poses risks to the nestling in question. To combat this, nestlings are hard wired to face new vampires outside of the coven with a disagreeable personality and non-compliance, trying to project the sentiment of 'I am too much trouble to steal' "

"Oh. Ew, that sucks. Anyway, it doesn't help me or Virge get this vamp juice. Any ideas?"

Just offer, just offer your nerdy little venom so I can grab a coffee and a muffin before I have to go rescue the emo-

"Wait. I'm under the assumption 'Virge' is the person with the shape-shifting curse. Was that the person you were here with the other week?"

"Not sure I like how weird your eyes are going, babes. But, yeah, the lil goth kid I had with me."

Logan leant forward, half tense and half excited. He did love piecing a mystery together. Part of the reason he loved planning out his Sherlock fanfictions, honestly.

"What animal does Virge unwillingly shift to?"

"...a cat."

"Is it this cat, in particular?"

A phone was slid towards Remy, and after carefully picking it up hew examined the imagine. A young looking man, standing tall and proud, quaffed hair and a charming smile. Honestly, the dude was hot. The charm and sparkly aura meant this was probably a fae. This fae in particular was holding a very disheveled kitten, wrapped up in a fluffy blue towel and glaring straight at the camera. It was Virgil, undoubtedly, and Remy damn near doubled over in laughter. As they tried to recover, they slid the phone back over, nodding in a silent answer to the question.

"Oh, spook looks pissed! I love it." Then a brief thought. "Shit. Spook isn't meant to be with that guy. Wait, how did you figure out Virgil was this cat?"

"When you last came into the library, I recognised Virgil's scent as the unknown human scent that was left in my shared apartment, from when my roommate had found an assumedly stray kitten to cater to. It was a mystery, one that admittedly poked my territorial nature, and I felt rather indignant when you two entered the first time. However, with no solid evidence and the fact that the offense did not repeat - I opted to not bring it up during our first interaction."

Wait. Logan's roommate had scooped Virgil up as a kitten, and then Virgil had obviously left the apartment, leaving a trail of spook's anxious musk?

"Oh, fuck. You're roommates with the werewolf, aren't you?"

"If by the werewolf you are referring to my roommate, Patton, then yes. Fae is a close friend and I consider fae coven."

Remy simply blinked at the older vampire, cheeks puffed in a blatant 'well shit' expression.

"Welp. At least Virgil got kit-napped by the right person."

"What do you mean? Why would your friend need to be in the care of Patton? Barring the fact that, logically speaking, that's the best place to stay if a small and vulnerable feline."

Remy glanced behind Logan, seeing a coffee vending machine pushed right into the corner by a conference room. It was a shitty brand with no additional flavors, but this matter clearly required some caffeine. So he decided to grab a cup while relaying Virgil's grand scheme to get some wolf hair for their magical uno reverse spell. It might have been rude to walk away while conversing, but the two vampires could hear each other perfectly fine while still speaking in a low tone, and Remy was able up successfully curb the instinctual need to hiss, bite this other vampire, and book it right out of there.

After pushing through that urge, Logan proved quite a good chat-buddy, Remy simply forgot about the sample. Or the rescue mission.

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