#one-time scenes locked to two women and nobody else and their dialogue after is generic. there’s no real romance arc

[vounoura]

I love DD2 so much but I am surprised at how little was changed mechanically from DD1

[mst3kproject]

The Incredible Petrified World

When choosing episodes that never were, it is always tempting to just pick crap movies I enjoy watching, like Lady Frankenstein or The Giant Claw, and ignore the unwatchable bilge – but this blog is about films that were or should have been on MST3K, and they riffed their way through quite a bit of unwatchable bilge over the years, from The Robot vs the Aztec Mummy to dreary dubbed Hamlet. I would therefore be sadly remiss if I neglected truly wretched movies entirely, and so we come to The Incredible Petrified World.  It’s a Jerry Warren movie that serves very well to emphasize that Teenage Zombies might be his best work, and it stars John Carradine from The Unearthly and Phyllis Coates from Invasion USA.  It’s also one of the most difficult movies I’ve ever had to sit through, right up there with Invasion of the Neptune Men, so brace yourselves because this is gonna hurt.

A Dr. Wyman (evidently this is before the Blood Beast ate his brain) has invented a special deep-diving bell, and it’s time for its first test in the Caribbean. The expedition consists of three scientists and a reporter – the former are two identical-faced men and a brunette, and the latter is a blonde.  Don’t expect me to remember their names.  Halfway down, the cable snaps and they plummet to the seafloor… but when they come to, they realize there’s light in the windows.  They’ve somehow entered a series of underwater caverns, which are inexplicably full of air and light!  After wandering around eating up time I could have spent watching a better movie, they encounter a man in a fake beard who says he’s been down there for fourteen years. For some reason this guy decides to kill them all, but at the last minute a volcano erupts, squashing him so everybody else can be rescued.

Interspersed with all this are scenes of Wyman’s brother and his collaborators, helping in the search for the missing scientists and building their own diving bell for a follow-up mission.  These parts seemed weirdly disconnected from the rest of the movie, and I wondered if they were shot and added later because somebody thought the movie was going to be too short.  But then at the end, all these characters appear together on the rescue boat.  I guess the writing just sucked.

Oh, man, fuck this movie.  It really is the dumbest, dullest thing imaginable.  The whole thing is just a bunch of scenes that wander across the screen but never amount to much, so in that spirit I’m going to make a bunch of observations and not worry about whether they add up to a review.  Here goes.

The actual beginning of the movie is some footage of an octopus fighting a shark, while a narrator tells us that the sea is the wildest and most hostile place on earth… although his words aren’t nearly so poetic.  In fact, the narrator sounds like he’s reading the script aloud for the first time, while wondering if he remembered to lock his car.  He drones on and on about the things that lurk in the depths while we see dull footage of fish swimming around for nearly four minutes.  I already want to turn this off and go do something fun, like sweep the floor. Even worse, none of this has a crumb to do with the rest of the movie, which is set not at the seafloor, but in a cave, where there are no sharks or octopodes.

The diving bell looks about as solid as a beach ball and is significantly bigger on the inside than the outside.  Everything in it is controlled by two switches on the wall and an oscilloscope. The dialogue is at pains to note that the second bell, the one built by Wyman’s brother, is identical to the first. This means they can use the same set.

All these undersea caverns have nice level floors for the characters to walk on, which is good because the women wore heels for their descent into the murky abyss.  At one point they encounter an Australian perentie lizard, which is only seen in a cutaway because it’s stock footage from the other side of the world.  I don’t know how long they’re supposed to have spent wandering around in the caves but since the search was eventually called off it must have been a couple of weeks at least.  Despite this, nobody’s clothes get dirty.  The women’s hair and makeup always look perfect, and the men never need to shave.  Come to think of it, how does Beard Guy know he’s been down there for fourteen years? He’s in a fucking cave.  There’s no day or night to pass the time, and he doesn’t wear a watch.

Beard Guy apparently tells the characters that he and Mysterious Skeleton were sailors on a ship that sank, and that’s how they ended up in here. The two men suspect that he isn’t telling the truth.  It turns out Beard Guy is the one who killed Mysterious Skeleton, although it never tells us why – maybe he’s just crazy, or maybe he got really hungry one day. If there’s a dark truth to how he ended up in this place, however, the audience never learns what it is.

Much of what we see is just filling time.  One of the guys says they can make fishing spears out of some of the equipment they had in the diving bell, and then we have to watch them do it. There’s a bit where a guy back on land is driving somewhere, and we hear a news broadcast on the search, which is fine, but then we also have to listen to the weather report as well. Characters wander through rocks, and then wander back through the same rocks shot from a slightly different angle.

There is an attempt at subplots.  The blonde woman is the bitchy one and the brunette is the nice one.  The former has just broken up with her boyfriend and threw his engagement ring into the ocean.  One of the men confesses his love to the latter.  Both of these ideas come out of nowhere, are given three or four lines, and vanish into the mist, never to be heard from again.  Beard Guy, whose ‘beard’ looks more like a stuffed animal glued to his face, tries to rape the blonde while the men are gone.  Since the movie was made in the fifties he doesn’t get very far before he is buried by falling rocks.  If this had happened so the men could heroically save her, it would have annoyed me, but the utter pointlessness of the scene we did get is worse.

The erupting volcano is exactly like the erupting volcano in The Land that Time Forgot, in that the volcano only exists to end the movie at an arbitrary point.  At least it’s not here to steal the happy ending this time.  Footage of the actual eruption is upside-down for some reason, maybe because we’re under the ground.  What sense does that make?  Did the writer think the earth is hollow and volcanoes on its inner surface point down instead?

The dialogue is unsalvageable.  There’s an entire conversation between John Carradine and some other guy about why the cable broke on the first diving bell, and not only is everything they say nonsense, they can’t even make it sound like anything but.  Characters on Star Trek talk complete bullshit all the time, but at least they mostly sound like they believe in it.  John Carradine and his co-star have absolutely no idea what they’re saying, and don’t care enough to try.  Something about making the diving bell too strong.

It pretty much goes without saying that The Incredible Petrified World doesn’t have anything to say.  The entire story, insofar as it goes, is completely without point or plot.  It barely even has a premise.  Various characters take turns moaning and wailing about how they’re gonna be down here for the rest of their lives, but then they recover and get on with things after all.  The men discuss survival strategies and the women complain.  Nothing develops.  The blonde supposedly has an arc, in that at the end she says “my life will be changed from here on out”, but this is the most told and least shown character development of any movie ever.

It’s a complete mystery to me why anyone bothered making this movie.  Most movies have something going on: they want to tell a story, to examine an idea, to showcase an actor, to sell soundtrack albums, to leech money from nostalgic fans of an old cartoon… sometimes these ambitions are cynical but they’re still there.  Even really, really, legendarily bad movies have goals. Foodfight wants you to buy name-brand instead of generic.  Manos: the Hands of Fate wants to prove it’s not as difficult or expensive to make a movie as Hollywood would have you believe.  The Hottie and the Nottie wants to convince you that Paris Hilton can act.  All these movies are miserable fucking failures but you can tell what they were going for.

The Incredible Petrified World isn’t even going for anything.  It just takes some bad actors, stands them in front of the camera for a few minutes, and then lets them go home.  There is literally nothing beneath the surface, and the surface is so insubstantial it barely counts. It’s movie dark matter, adding to the mass of the universe but otherwise completely fucking inert.

[filmhell]

I'm gonna go on a long rant about Stanley Kubrick.

Stanley Kubrick was kind of always a manipulative abusive person tbh. And the one time he did a decent job at accommodating an actor, the next time they worked together he tormented him relentlessly.

Honestly? A director tries to get the best performance out of their actors. A director ensures that all these moving parts that are the cast and crew are working cohesively and harmoniously. That's what a good director does.

Listen I know we all love The Shining and Dr. Strangelove is one of my favorite movies but Stanley Kubrick is a bad director.

Let's take a look at Robert Altman. For those of you unfamiliar with him, he did a bunch of films like M.A.S.H., Nashville, Brewster McCloud, and Three Women (which is an excellent psychological drama starring Shelley Duvall and Sissy Spacek) all of which are excellent but there's something different about them. The acting is much more naturalistic. You can tell a lot of care went into these movies. You can tell that the people who worked on them had fun doing it. Altman discovered Shelley Duvall, and he wanted to bring out the best in her and show the world her range. He cast her in a HUGE variety of well-written parts.

But Altman was nurturing. He encouraged actors to improvise around an outline so the dialogue and reactions would be authentic. People crack up mid-sentence, they laugh at each others jokes, they stutter, they talk over eachother, and it's all so natural. He had the actors write their own songs for Nashville. He trusted his actors to make choices and overall was generally a really great guy to work with. He wasn't Hitchcock or Kubrick. He didn't thinj of actors as "talking props." This is a good director (my favorite actually but nonetheless).

You don't need to ruin the personal lives of actors in order to make them give an 'authentic' performance. I think we're all familiar with what he did to Shelley Duvall. If not, long story short, he forbid anyone on set from talking to her or sympathizing with her, and he made her do takes over and over and over to the point where she was so stressed that her hair was falling out and she actually suffered from dehydration from crying so much all the time. She had to do that scene where she's swinging the bat while slowly backing away on the staircase over 100 times if I correctly recall. Nobody needs that. Nobody deserves it (except maybe Kubrick who's probably in hell now but anyway).

Like. If you watch her in Three Women, you KNOW she was more than talented enough to do what The Shining required. Kubrick just liked to abuse people.

Case in point, he made Nicole Kidman do nude scenes on an open set, and made her do nude scenes that weren't even in the script or in the final cut of the film. He forbade her and Tom Cruise, who were married at the time, from talking about any of the filming they did seperately because he wanted the 'suspicion' to be 'genuine' when like. Actors.... Can act. It's what they're there for. Christ.

You weren't even safe if you were a guy either. He made George C. Scott do more than twice the work he needed to in Dr. Strangelove because Scott wanted to play the part seriously, and Kubrick wanted him to be over the top. So he said "why don't you do it over the top the first time to warm up and then we do it your way." Scott had to film all of his scenes multiple times and only the 'practice' ones were used.

When filming Lolita, Kubrick realized Peter Sellers was a one-take wonder and his first was always his best. So he had the other actors rehearse a scene without him, then brought him in. Sellers would improvise, and the reactions of those around him were authentic, and usually on the third take he'd run out of steam so Kubrick had three cameras on him at all times to get as much usable footage as he could. And it was great. He's in the movie for all of 20 minutes but even the first ten are Oscar worthy.

In Dr. Strangelove, Sellers was set to play four roles. He wasn't comfortable playing Major Kong because he didn't think he could do the accent right (the role later went to Slim Pickens). He was filming some scenes in the B-52 which was suspended some 15 feet in the air with the bomb doors open and at one point he and Kubrick got in this argument and he ended up slipping out of the plane and surprisingly only broke his ankle. Accounts differ as to whether this happened toward the beginning or end of filming, but there are a lot of scenes where hes having to stand around and is visibly in pain (it doesn't help that he broke his ankle twice).

You'd think Kubrick would use the same technique with him that he did in Lolita. Sure it's a little harder with 20 people, but it can be done. Wrong. He overworked Peter Sellers like he did everybody else when the guy really wasn't at his best when doing multiple takes in a row. He gives an amazing performance despite Stanley Kubrick. Not because of him (and that goes triple for Shelley Duvall). He's visibly exhausted by the end of the film. He had three roles, he's carrying most of the film, and the last role he filmed was Dr. Strangelove himself. Which. Kubrick had a vague concept of the character but Sellers brought him to life and added all of these details. And he looks rough. He looks like a melting candle and he's actively trying not to fade and he was so out of it that he forgot his character was supposed to be in a wheelchair. He ran on an average of four hours of sleep and it shows. But that's not the worst of it.

Peter Sellers had him and some of the crew over for dinner at one point because he thought they had gotten off to a rough start (this would be the last time Sellers ever tried to 'talk it out' with a director). Kubrick had wormed his way into this guy's psyche and just sat there picking on his every insecurity until Peter Sellers locked himself in the bathroom and tried to kill himself while Kubrick laughed. Peter Sellers never trusted a director again and he almost died of an overdose (he had thirteen heart attacks in two hours and was dead for two minutes) shortly after the film was released (and he lost the oscar to the guy from My Fair Lady. Why, I don't know. Last time I checked the guy from My Fair Lady didnt have to stand on broken bones or play three characters who are all completely unrecognizable and basically created the third one all while an abuser is breathing down his neck but whatever).

Now like. What Kubrick did to Shelley Duvall was definitely worse but someone who drowns in 7 feet of water is just as dead as someone who drowns in 20 feet but what Kubrick did to the leads of Dr. Strangelove and what he did to Nicole Kidman rarely gets talked about.

Tl;dr: Stanley Kubrick is a bad director and ravaged Shelley Duvall physically and mentally, manipulated Nicole Kidman sexually, and drove a mentally ill man to suicide and laughed about it.

[captainfawful]

 With the year coming to a close, that means it’s time for me to do my “Nobody Cares Awards” thing I like to do! Check under the cut for some hot takes I may or may not have!

Hello, hello! It’s me again! Third year in a row I decided to jot my thoughts down on the years various game. I decided to change things up more from last year, kind of eliminating most of the categories in favor of writing more about the games I enjoyed. I tried to write at least something about every game in the Top 10 this time, even if it’s the bare minimum. Let’s see how it goes!

BEST MUSIC

This entire thing was first created because I wanted to write about how good Death Road To Canada’s soundtrack was. So no matter what changes with my format on this, there will always be a Best Music category. I’ll be honest though, there weren’t a whole lot of games this year with amazing soundtracks. The only real contender for most of the year was Celeste, which OST is very good, and fits perfectly with the games tone and style, but it’s not... The Best music. They aren’t songs I’ll put on loop and listen to multiple times throughout the day. They’re not the hard hitting tracks I would typically put at the top of this category, despite how great the music is. That’s how I felt until about August, when The Messenger came out. Messenger is not a game that will be in my Top 10 by any means, but it’s a pretty good game nonetheless with a couple of really weird twists. But the OST is phenomenal. Easily my number 1 favorite of this year. Just about every track in the game is a total banger. But don’t take it from me, take a listen yourself! A little later in the year I played through Just Shapes & Beats. I have a personal stigma against saying a thing with licensed music should qualify for Best Music, which is why JS&B did not make it into my top 3, but rest assured that it is sitting comfortably in the 4th place spot. Almost immediately after I played JS&B, Deltarune suddenly came out. I don’t think I have to tell you why that’s on here, right? Toby Fox cannot make bad music.

SPECIAL MENTIONS

THE MISSING:J.J. Macfield and the Island of Memories

It’s hard for me to talk about what makes The Missing so special without diving deep into spoilers. There’s a reason it’s in the special mentions, and not the Top 10: And that reason is because the gameplay isn’t great. The Missing is a side-scrolling puzzle game, in the same vein as Limbo or Inside. Unlike those two, however, the puzzles you have to solve are not that hard, and most of the difficulty around it revolves around how slowly and janky the movement is. However, the overall story and twist is what makes this game great. There’s not a whole lot for me to say about the themes this game presents, so if you want to play The Missing, play it. If you don’t want to play it, then maybe take a look at some writings from actual queer women who could talk about its subject matter in a way I never possibly could.

The Quiet Man

The Quiet Man is a terrible game. When I first saw the trailer during Suare Enix's E3 presentation, I was super interested. I've always wanted a game that transitions from FMV to gameplay with as few seams as possible, and The Quiet Man promised that. Not only that, it promised a compelling story told from the perspective of its' deaf protagonist. The way I saw it, this game would either accomplish what it set out to do, or fail miserably. Either way, it was a win/win scenario for me! Little did I know just HOW miserably it would fail.... Oooooh, how miserably it failed... The gameplay is absolute trash, the graphics leave much to be desired which makes the "seamless" transitions from FMV look unconvincing and bad, the story is needlessly complicated despite how generic it is, the acting ranges from decent to awful, and it requires you to play it twice in order to actually understand what's happening. And all of those problems are the LEAST offensive parts of the game. It's racist, misogynistic, somehow ableist against more than just deaf people, semi-incestual, and also kind of pro-abuse??? I mean, it doesn't take a stance to be anti-abuse, and certainly doesn't condemn abuse, so does that make it pro? Maybe? Probably? I have a headache. I've watched this entire 2-4 hour game be played 10 or 11 times, and I still don't understand how this exists. Square-Enix published this. They dropped Hitman and IO Interactive not even one year ago, yet threw money at this horrible abomination of a video game! Oh by the way, you might be wondering why I said you have to play it twice to understand, and that's because the first playthrough doesn't give you any sound. Yup, aside from the intro cutscene and the credits song, the entire games' audio is just muffled ambiance. This includes all of it's cutscenes, of which there are MANY, and they are LONG. Entire MINUTES of dialogue happening at a time that the game just doesn't want you to hear or have subtitles for. The only way to get audio is to beat the game once and replay it. Not only that, but the New Game + with sound and subtitles didn't even get patched in until a week after it's release!!! Who does that!!!!! And the version with audio has some ATROCIOUS writing. Just about every scene has at least one line of dialogue that makes no sense, almost as if the writers were only told about how humans speak, but never actually heard one themselves. I’ve heard a lot of people saying it’s The Room of video games, and I sort of agree. Much like The Room, it’s not the absolute worst of it’s form of media, the game is playable start-to-finish, extremely straight forward so you can’t get lost, no bizarre puzzles to figure out, the FMV cutscenes are at decently produced. Hell, I wouldn’t even say The Quiet Man is the worst game to come out THIS YEAR. Crying Is Not Enough released in June, and boy oh boy is that game a trash fire. But it’s just BAFFLING that this game exists. That’s the perfect word to summarize my feelings on The Quiet Man. Every single thing about it is just, baffling. I need to stop writing about this game. This whole paragraph is probably going to be longer than anything from my Top 10, which feature a few games I ADORE, but no. All my writing energy is going to how terrible this fucking video game is. Don't play The Quiet Man. Or do, fuck if I care. Maybe watch someone else play it, I don't know. I don't know anything anymore.

Ori and the Blind Forest

Back on the topic of good games, I finally got around to playing Ori and the Blind Forest! I played it for a little while after it originally came out around 2015, but it just didn’t stick with me at the time. There wasn’t any real reason why it didn’t stick, I just got bored and stopped playing, which isn’t that uncommon for me to do. But for whatever reason I decided to go back to it super late last year. It may have been the excitement for all the cool looking Metroidvanias slated to release throughout the year, I don’t know. But I played through it, and it’s fantastic! Most Metroidvanias tend to go with around a 60-40 split between platforming and combat. Different games have different splits, sure, but most of them tend to keep those somewhat even. Ori is like an 85-15, greatly favoring tight platforming over fighting enemies. Your main attack automatically locks on to nearest enemies, and boss fights are replaced with autoscrolling or stealth segments. The traversal is also super smooth and fun, making that 85-15 split much more favorable than others in its’ genre. Great controls combined with some amazing visuals and music, Ori is definitely a game I regret not playing earlier.

2019′S COMING IN HOT

Spelunky 2, Wargroove, Indivisible, Hypnospace Outlaw, Ooblets, UFO 50, Kingdom Hearts 3, Overland, Sea of Solitude, Ori and the Will of the Wisps, and  Get in the Car, Loser!. These are all great looking games that are supposed to be coming out in 2019. I remember last December when I last did this, I couldn't think of THAT many games I was really excited for, and despite that I ended up with a pretty damn good list of games for 2018. So who knows what next year will be like?!

And now... The Top 10!

#10: Spider-Man

It’s been a great year for Spider-Man. His best buddy Venom had a pretty good movie, his new video game is good, and he has a new movie that’s fantastic! Yep, it’s been such a good year for Spider-Man in which nothing bad has happened to him or the people who created him.

#9: Megaman 11

2 > 4 > 3 > 8 > 11 > 7 > 5 > 6 > 9 > 10 > 1. Don’t @ me.

#8: Iconoclasts

Iconoclasts has been in development for a very long time. Officially, development for it began in around 2010, but there is a seemingly earlier game by Konjak that shares many similarities. Basically, Iconoclasts began development at least 8 years ago, and it shows, for better or worse. On one hand, the game is gorgeous. Grade A sprite work all around. The characters are interesting and well written with their own morales and arcs, and the story is surprisingly deep and compelling considering the type of game it is. On the other hand, the gameplay feels very outdated now. The combat is super simplistic, the puzzles aren't terribly challenging or rewarding, and the weapon/ability upgrades are very limited. The traversal can be sluggish and boring, which is a red flag for a game where you have to backtrack a decent amount. If Iconoclasts came out 4 or 5 years ago, I feel like it would've been at least a cult classic. But in 2018, it's a decent Metroidvania in a year of great Metroidvanias. Overall, I'm glad Iconoclasts finally came out. I just wish it either came out sooner, or got more updated for modern game design.

#7: Slay the Spire

For all intents and purposes, I shouldn't like Slay the Spire. I always hated card-based RPGs, and always hated RPGs with only one party member. And for the most part, the issues I have with both of those are still very much present in Spire. So why have I sunk 50 hours into it so far? Beats me! If I had to guess, I’d say it’s the similarities it shares to Darkest Dungeon, one of my favorite games, that ultimately drives me to it. Now, you might be asking why Slay the Spire, a game that came out in 2017, and won’t be in 1.0 until probably 2019, is in my top 10 for this year, but Ori & the Blind Forest isn’t? Well, I started Ori last year, and didn’t start Spire until the middle of this year! Also, they’re my awards, and I can do whatever I want!

#6: Just Shapes & Beats

Just Shapes & Beats’ concept is simple: A rhythm bullet hell. Certainly not the first of it’s kind, and not even the first one to use simplistic shapes as the obstacles/characters. But there’s a bit more to it than that. JS&B has some good personality to go with it. It has some fun characters, all of the levels are demonstrative of the areas you’re in on the world map, it even has a couple lightly emotional moments! It’s much more than you’d expect from a game about Just Shapes & Beats. When I was younger and had vague dreams to make games, I always imagined making one that was basically “What if a Windows Visualizer was trying to kill you?” and also be themed around a world and a story, and JS&B is basically that.

#5: Pipe Push Paradise

What happens when you take Pipe Dream, an iconic puzzler which has given inspiration to countless others, and mix it with Stephen's Sausage Roll, arguably one of the greatest puzzle games of all time? You get Pipe Push Paradise, of course! That’s all I really have to say, and all I NEED to say.

#4: Dead Cells

Go play Dead Cells. Really, it’s the closest thing to a perfect Rogue-like (that isn’t Spelunky) out there right now. It’s a game so good, Filip Miucin couldn’t look away from it long enough to write his own review!

#3: Subnautica

If I had the opportunity to become a Fishman and live underwater, I’d probably take it. As long as you take out the jellyfish that can kill you .0001 seconds after stinging you, I have no qualms with open water. In fact, the isolated feeling from it is really relaxing to me. That’s what initially drew me to Subnautica. Survival games are usually hit or miss for me, but the ones I like I really dive deep into (Heh heh), and Subnautica is one of those. Also, I was rewatching the Super Mario Bros. Super Show on Netflix as I played this, so now I’ll have those two permanently linked in my mind from now on.

#2: Into The Breach

I love tactics games, especially Advance Wars. While I do still love others in the genre like Fire Emblem or X-COM, there are some intricacies of the AW series that most of the others don't have. When I first heard about Into The Breach, I thought it would be exactly what I wanted, a true successor to the series I'd been waiting for. And it was not! But it's still pretty damn good. It's not so much a tactics game as it is a puzzle game, described by Waypoint's own Austin Walker as a "tactical dance". You know at the start of each turn where each enemy is going to attack, and it's your job to navigate and attack with your 3 mech units in the exact right way to minimize or even straight up prevent any damage that would befall you or the cities you're protecting. You aren't trying to advance a map during combat, or conquer any enemy bases. You are merely trying to avoid damage for a certain amount of turns and move on to the next level. And it's all super fun! I've let the game sit for 10, 20 minutes while I try and figure out every possible option I have after being backed into a corner, and coming up with the absolute perfect solution and getting through to the other side is super satisfying. The biggest gripe I have with Into The Breach is the same one I had for FTL, the developer's last game, which is I don't think the unlockable mechs/mech teams are as fun as the default ones. I played most of them once or twice and went "Yeah, that's a thing" and migrate back to the first mech team. All in all, Into The Breach is a fantastic game, it just doesn't scratch that Advance Wars itch I've been feeling. Oh well, at least there's still Wargroove!

#1: Celeste

Celeste is a game I got 100% completion in. For those of you who might not know me well enough to know how I play games, that’s something that never happens. I think the last time I purposely got 100% on a game was in Uncharted 2, and even that was only to get a skin for multiplayer. Despite that, it’s been really difficult for me to write up a whole thing about why I love Celeste so much. It’s just a compilation of everything. I love the look of it, both the sprite work and the character portraits. The music, as mentioned before, is fantastic and perfectly fitting for all of the levels themes which deal in different forms of anxiety or self-doubt. The levels are hard, but not too hard. The secrets hidden throughout the game are so satisfying to figure out and find, very reminiscent of Braid. I feel confident in saying that Celeste has cemented itself as one of my favorite games of all time.

Well, that’s all I can handle writing for this year. Thanks to the few of you who skimmed through all this, and extra thanks to the fewer of you who read all of it! I’m not 100% sure if I’ll do this whole shpeel next year or not; maybe if 2019 turns out to be an incredible year for games, and definitely not if I have to move to Twitter in the off-chance Tumblr dies out completely. Hope you all had a fun holiday season, and have a great 2019! 

[awed-frog]

The Memory Remains/Carthago Delenda

On the whole, I think I really liked this episode? It certainly felt very old school, in the best possible sense. There were a couple of moments I was actually worried, and considering that I know perfectly well both Sam and Dean will always be fine, that’s quite something. 

I sort of liked the mythology, and I liked the class thing, and as for Dean hooking up with a waitress - look, first - this is the writer who practically wrote Dean as bi in Beyond the Mat, his only other Supernatural episode. I know they didn’t quite go there, but by paralleling a young Sam jerking off to some picture of Rio (sorry to be coarse, but that’s exactly what it was and it was confirmed both by dialogue and by Sam’s embarrassed stammering) with Dean’s obsession for Gunnar, well, kudos for the effort. And Jensen, of course, went with it, like he always does, and made the whole thing very obvious. So there’s that, and second - this is what Dean does. He’s a kisser and a hugger and all about touching and be touched, and sex with strangers was the only thing that, growing up, gave him that physical intimacy he craved and nobody else was capable to share with him. We know Mary was dead, of course, and John was not the hugging type, and Sam - my headcanon (which I use liberally in my fics, and sue me) is that he was an expansive child and Dean secretly loved it, but at some point John told both of them to just cut it out already, ‘cause you’re too old for this shit now. So that was that, and from then on, touch that actually matters has been in short supply for Dean - and, unlike Sam, whom I read as more reserved, Dean craves to be touched and held. It’s just who he is. So, whatever - he’s worried sick about Cas, and that’s not going anywhere anytime soon, and there’s a million other things going through his head and now that stupid sheriff’s brought half of them up again by talking about a kid who grew up with an abusive father as though that’s nothing and what can you do (I actually went back and looked three times at that scene, at how the sheriff says, “Guess who gets to take care of him?” because something was bugging me and yeah, there it was - Sam visibly makes an effort to react to the conversation because it’s what’s expected from him, but Dean just looks up - up and to the left, that is, which is what happens when you remember past experiences; and I don’t want this person who reads a lot into every detail, but these are basic biology things an actor would do without even realizing, and also it’s beyond canon, by this point, that Dean took care of John more than once, because that’s what happens when you’ve got an alcoholic parent) - and, sorry, here’s the end of the sentence - it looks perfectly reasonable to me that Dean would want some comfort, and I do believe he slept with that woman and that it was great and that it cheered him up a bit in some bittersweet way and what can you do?

Honestly, all that I’m upset about is that the straight stuff is always out in the open and for the queer one you need to stop your video and squint at the scene and the paintings and the colours and yeah, that BS smack on Dean and the waitress could be nothing -

(Also, that girl is not his type at all. She was just there, and she liked him, and, as he’s told us himself, he likes waitresses because they smell like food and it’s not easy to get them - if that doesn’t sound like comfort and a need for validation to you, I don’t know what does.)

Moving away from Destiel-related content, I really liked how seamlessly the different parts of the episode moved into one another. From that woman reading the text of the Fourth Amendment on the radio at the very beginning (the one which makes it illegal to search a house without a warrant or probable cause, that is), to Ketch and his men walking around in Sam and Dean’s lives as they themselves are in the outside world, living them - that was very well done.

Also well done: the whole social commentary on class and money. 

Industrial benefactors are sometimes seen as a good thing, because they normally provide houses for their workers and schools for their workers’ kids and therefore create and enrich a whole community, but personally I’ve always hated the concept (which is not as outdated as one would expect, and ew) and I was happy to see our writer didn’t give them an inch. Yes, sure, the town did prosper, but that factory was creepy and unpleasant in itself (even if you eat meat, you gotta admit that the meat industry and meat factories are about as bleak and morally ambiguous as you can get) and, more importantly, it was only held together by human sacrifice. The idea that it could, in fact, be considered acceptable to lose a kid every year so that the rest of the village can get by was never even suggested, and thank God. Instead, the whole episode read like some old-fashioned Quaker or Socialist leaflet: money corrupts (look at our first victim, lured to his death by a backpack full of dollar bills), creates division and resentment (the tale of the two brothers may have read like a bad Dynasty episode, but these things happen every day), generally comes from blood (the entire god story and the sacrifices) and it’s always better to be honest and poor than rich and tainted (I really liked the sheriff, poor guy).

As for the lore itself - I’m slightly less happy with it, mostly because I would expect both Sam and Dean to know perfectly well what a satyr is (and no, they don’t eat human flesh - those were the women who danced with Dionysos, totally different stuff) and because Moloch has been maligned plenty enough, but I did appreciate the casual horror of it all - a starved and tortured god locked in your cellar, people dressing as animals to capture an unwilling sacrifice - very gothic and compelling.

Since we’re now talking about pagan stuff, maybe Sam and Dean’s discussion about their legacy and mortality made sense, but it was still hard to watch. What happened to the wary hope of S11? To the idea it’s not too late to find a partner, perhaps even to have kids? With that mournful discussion and by carving their initials in the Bunker’s table, Sam and Dean have somehow closed the circle. Their story, this is what they seem to think, is not going anywhere, is not leaving any memory behind. The thing was so sweet and sad, I’m actually comforted by the fact this is not the last season, because there it was - the perfect foundation to end this story in a burst of flames. The reminder to their childhood, the belated acknowledgement that it wasn’t, in the end, as bad as it could have been (“Next time you hear me say that our family is messed up, remind me that we could be psycho goat people,” Dean says, and man, now I can’t wait for that confrontation with Mary we know is coming), the quiet acceptance about their importance in history (non-existent), in people’s lives (often significant) and in their own consciences (“We left the world better than we found it, you know.”) - the knowledge that one day they’ll both die, and they’ll be forgotten, and someone else will live in the Bunker, fight on - it was heartbreaking, but also - also, after all these years of anger and torment and hurt, it looks like Sam and Dean are very close to being okay with everything - their family, their jobs, their place in the world, and even each other - and that’s -

- yeah.

We'll eventually fade away, too.

Just in case someone is wondering: Moloch was the god of Carthage, a city which used to be roughly where Tunis is now. At one point, it was Rome’s main rival - mostly because Carthaginians were better educated and smarter and had a longer and richer civilisation behind them - so Rome started a brutal campaign against them which included a few wars and also liberal amounts of bullshit propaganda. What Moloch is generally associated with is child sacrifice, which ties in nicely with our two victims in The Memory Remains, and I’m not saying that never happened at all, but still - it’s very likely it didn’t happen with the alarming frequency described by some of the more vitriolic Roman politicians. Plus, you know - human sacrifice is a thing in every culture, and it makes perfect sense. A human life, and especially a child’s life, is the most precious thing a community has to offer, right up there with other very precious things, like a good stallion or a fertile bull, so when things start to go really bad, you have up up the ante a bit. Gods are not stupid, and no god is going to show up and save your stupid city in exchange for a loaf of bread and two rabbits. That’s just the way it goes, and everyone knows it. Even the Romans used to perform human sacrifices in times of trouble, so they can just shut it (as you can see, since I’m an archaeologist I’m approaching history in a calm, academic fashion, without taking sides, because that would be both unprofessional and pointless).

Oh, and this is a statue of Moloch which was created for some movie and ended up in someone’s garden in New Jersey, because why not.

Random thoughts: 

I so wish this was on HBO, because Jesus, stoned!Dean must be quite something and that’s clearly something he does, or used to do, a lot and uuugh, where’s my spinoff on those four years he spent without Sam?

Ketch is definitely coded as bisexual - what kind of man notices another man’s hair or clothes? - but at the moment I’m more interested in him stealing Mary’s picture and what he thinks about it.

Which Stark was Sam supposed to be? Who would appeal to him the most? Since Dean was Oberyn, I’m guessing we’re not looking for Tony, but for a random member of the Stark family - Ned, perhaps? Or Bran?

As for Dean picking Oberyn, lol. Bisexual guy who gets into fights to protect his family and is in love with an unpredictable ‘I’m as strong as you and can look after myself, thank you very much’ partner - it’s okay, sweetie, we’ve got you.

If this isn’t going anywhere, Wanek needs to take a chill pill - look at the ships and the puppies and the trench coats and oh my God, that BS sign - what the hell, man?

[miss-m-calling]

Rare Pairs 2017 letter

Dear writer,

Thank you for writing for me! I hope my prompts inspire you, I am very eager to read whatever you write.

My AO3 page

Pairs I’m requesting:

-Charlotte Wells/Thomas Haxby (Harlots)

-Niobe/Titus Pullo/Lucius Vorenus (Rome)

-Oliver Baumer/Eric Love (Starred Up)

On to the ships (likes and DNWs are at the bottom of the letter)!!

Harlots

Thomas Haxby/Charlotte Wells

I fell in love with this show in a way I hadn’t with any show in a while: the gritty period detail, the rich characters and relationships, the unsentimental view of money and sex (nobody has an epiphany thanks to a shag, despite Charlotte/Marney flirting with it), all the stuff about gender and sexuality and class in Georgian London. And then, cherry on top: I got a surprise new ship between the harlot with a crisis of identity/conscience and the judgmental yet not-so-above-it-all servant of her “keeper.” I just loved their sniping, constantly-competing, wearing-masks-yet-also-letting-slip-real-vulnerabilities, oddly-similar-in-precarious-situation, no-we-will-not-admit-any-sympathy-for-each-other, actual class-transgressing hatesex-y dynamic. They’re both difficult, sometimes unsympathetic, and on occasion treat each other so cruelly, and yet, and yet - it’s the dysfunction and the potential that thrills me. I was super disappointed in how it all comes to nothing much in episodes 6-8, so the prompts I’m including are mostly pre-canon, missing scene, or canon-divergent. Just give me more of Charlotte and Haxby being THEM. Any and all other canon characters are welcome, though I’d appreciate it if you didn’t try to soften Sir George’s (mostly hilarious) awfulness.

Pre-canon: their interactions during the first day, night and/or morning after Charlotte spent in Sir George’s House -- or same on the day George moved her in permanently -- how they suss each other out and establish their constant struggle for position within the household.

Missing scene: just anything with them interacting on an average day, especially if it includes Charlotte taking Haxby out of his comfort zone, as she did in episode 2. I have a headcanon about Charlotte’s love of fruit that might inspire you - see my tagged posts here for some general rambling about this ship.

Canon divergence: oh man, so much potential! So many ways this could have played out! What if Haxby does end up having to help cover up Sir George’s murder? Either he showed up at the Wells house (Sir George did ask for him while he lay dying) and had his arm twisted into helping, and if Charlotte needs to fuck him into temporary compliance -- though ha we know that didn’t work the first time -- then Ma Wells is fine with that and will provide a room, whether it actually happens or not. Or Charlotte was the one to stab George when he tried-but-didn’t-live-long-enough to rape her -- she ate a lot of fruit, there was bound to be a knife lying around. What if Lady Caroline moved to London for the season, forcing George to install Charlotte in a separate residence -- and then he “gives” her Haxby to act as butler, purse-string-holder, and of course spy? Or George starts sleeping away a lot, leaving Charlotte and Haxby basically alone in his house night after night (there are other servants, but we barely see them and they never speak) -- with those two left alone, pretty much anything could happen. What if they both managed to catch a clue either before or after hallway sex and realized that they’d be much better off as allies than as enemies, since they’re both vulnerable to George’s whim (I have some thoughts on this too in my tagged posts)? What if the season ended still with Haxby getting turfed out by Lady Caroline, but he somehow gets hired (as a servant, bootblack, porter, etc.) by Lydia or Margaret, and Charlotte does indeed have him to command now, even if at first she may not want to deal with him or may only want to humiliate and berate, but then eventually she (or he -- remember the hallway) gets ideas?

Didn’t know where else to put this: can a bit of dialogue serve as a prompt? Just throwing this out there, either one could say either line: “What have you done to me?/I hate you for what you’ve done to me.” “I assure you it is entirely mutual.”

Rome

Niobe/Titus Pullo/Lucius Vorenus

This is the threesome of my heart, in one of the forever-shows-of-my-heart. Basically: ignore Niobe dying (Vorenus can still grumble about her infidelity on occasion) and Vorenus supposedly dying, and give me these three being domestic, in Rome or in rural Italy. Vorenus still being a principled grump who can be tough to be around, Pullo still being happy-go-lucky and not the brightest yet deeply loyal, Niobe being equal parts tactful and willful, interested in the good life and able to make the best of imperfect situations.

If you feel like writing some threesome smut, I would adore a fic with any/all of the following: Niobe/Pullo happening in front of Vorenus, with his knowledge, and seeing his reactions (jealous in spite of agreeing to it, aroused, ashamed of his arousal) before he’s enticed into joining in; Vorenus being Vorenus while letting Pullo fuck him with Niobe’s help and participation; the POV shifting between the three of them (Niobe maybe initially worried then delighted since she’s the one who balances things out, Pullo always delighted but also aware that fucking his bloody-minded best friend and best friend’s lovely wife is complicated as well as pleasant, Vorenus having to be difficult and angry about everything - including Pullo probably letting Vorenus fuck him long before they switch because Vorenus wants to but Real Roman Men Don’t - before he can enjoy it and allow it to happen); Pullo says something Pullo-like to almost ruin the mood while being very emotional whether he wants to be or not; Niobe taking charge because the men need to get over themselves but can’t manage it without her gentle help; Niobe and Vorenus sharing a tender moment during the three-way.

If you prefer not to write smut, tell me how these three make it work at home or in relationships with other people (does Lyde or someone else figure it out?) How would they navigate the period of Roman history covered by S2 or its aftermath? Or what if they moved to another part of the empire (I would love a fic which includes some period-appropriate detail)? Some more specific prompts: one or both of the men get drunk/in trouble at a tavern, Niobe and the sober(er) of the men to the rescue (yes, humor would be great too, in this prompt probably with some bloodshed). They celebrate a ritual or make a sacrifice, usually performed by one person or a couple, as a threesome, and how do the three of them think the gods will respond, or will they? The men brag and probably get into an argument telling war stories, then Niobe “shows off her battle scars” and tells some of her adventures as a single mom in the big bad city. Given their temperaments, how does it work when these three want to kiss or hug, or if any two of the three do and the third witnesses it and wants in?

Bit of dialogue as a possible prompt or bit of “business” in the fic: “Juno’s cunt/Jupiter’s cock [whatever fits the situation]” “That’s blasphemy! [or other Roman equivalent of ‘Language!’]”

If you want to mention the kids, with or without Cesarion, that’s fine, just please don’t make this a pure kidfic.

Starred Up

Oliver Baumer/Eric Love

I maintain that this movie’s only major flaw is getting Oliver out of the action before the story’s climax (not like that!). Yes, the final denouement with Love father and Love son was great, as was the hint at the end that Eric learned something in anger-management classes and has a support network that will help him a lot, but I would have wanted to see more of the intriguing dynamic between Eric and Oliver, the intelligent, semi-feral, yet not-incorrigible criminal and the educated, dedicated, kind yet aware of his own potential for violence counselor. The confrontation and oddly flirtatious way Eric quickly gets a rise out of Oliver when Oliver comes to pick him up from his cell, the way Oliver immediately jumps to Eric’s defense when they meet under such adverse circumstances, how Eric barely puts on a front before he lets Oliver and the men in the group influence him -- it all made me want more. I would love to see Oliver return to holding his group in prison, so the two of them can interact more, either in the movie’s immediate aftermath or years down the line (it was hinted that Eric will be serving a very long sentence).

Some prompts -- if you’d prefer to keep it smut-free and relatively sublimated, I’d love more scenes from anger management or the free-flowing conversations in group, either with the other men present or in a one-on-one session between Oliver and Eric, as they deal with their personal histories and experiences (what did Eric do to land in jail and get starred up? Was his story about child abuse bullshit to provoke Oliver, or the tip of a shitty iceberg that was Eric’s life? What about Oliver - why does he, by his own admission, NEED to be there, volunteering in a prison? Did/do his own violent impulses spill over despite his acute awareness of them?)

If you want to write smut, the logistics may be tricky, but I suspect an emergency in the prison might require a lock-down, and Oliver gets temporarily stuck in Eric’s cell or another room with only Eric for company. Or Eric is eventually released and crashes with Oliver while he adjusts (with difficulty) to the outside world, and there’s awkwardness, probably some male chest-thumping, and eventually fucking with the realization that they’ll never be complete equals in terms of the power dynamic between them. If it happens in prison, it could be a few months after the movie, or it could be after Eric has had some time to become a fully mature adult -- and has spent enough time in prison to accept the truth of his father’s taunt about the appeal of a tight, hairy asshole. Also, is Eric really a virgin as Neville suggested (not that Neville would know!), or has he had women/men/both before prison? Eric might seem like the logical initiator and/or dominant partner, but then Oliver might (or might not!) surprise him and is definitely the one more in touch with himself. Is it ha-ha-we’re-locked-in/stuck-together-as-housemates, I-dare-you-to-pass-the-time-and/or-help-my-emotional-stability-with-a-fuck -- or is it hell-shit-fuck-something-has-been-percolating-between-us-and-now-we’re-locked-in-together, possibly with a side of cry-me-a-river-you-want-to-know-how-long-it’s-been-for-me-well-I’m-not-telling? There would definitely be some verbal taunting/flirting about who wants/is eager to do what or is good at doing something. There may be some sniping comments about logistics and (lack of) condoms and barebacking and what men get up to in prison. There probably wouldn’t be deep discussions about sexual identity. Again, a possible line of dialogue for inspiration: “Be a man and face the truth. [You want/are enjoying this.]”

LIKES:

I love pre-canon, canon, post-canon, canon-divergent, and “missing scene from canon” stories. I love character-driven and plot-driven stories equally, and I love fics which mix humor and angst/serious business when appropriate for the canon.

I love irony, snark, 5+1 stories, bittersweet endings, hopeful endings, happy endings, unhappy-but-stoic (in terms of where characters end up) endings, ambiguous or and-the-adventure-continues endings, canon-fitting humor, characters who are their own worst enemies as well as those who learn to get over themselves, characters with conflicting values which may or may not be reconciled/resolved in a believable and IC way, characters who treat each other with respect and as equals even if they hate/annoy/can’t stand/love to dislike each other.

In terms of ship dynamics, I love (where it fits the characters) banter, competitiveness or antagonism shading into attraction (this tension need not be resolved), bickering yet loving couples, faithfulness, characters who are serious about their romantic interests, characters who think they are much better at flirtation than they actually are, characters forced to work together only to prove much more compatible than they initially assumed, fics which mix an exploration of characters’ professional and everyday lives with shipping.

I don’t have any very specific likes for smut, other than smut fitting the characters -- show me how their canon dynamics spill over into the bedroom (or other place of congress). I also like sexual scenarios that subvert expectations a little and surprise the characters themselves (e.g., the person who’s usually quiet or more passive taking charge, the more aggressive person goes with it possibly snarking or commenting on it as long as they can). And I like sexual scenarios that contain an element of competition, antagonism, oh-god-this-is-a-bad-idea-but-we’re-going-for-it, not wanting to admit feelings or show vulnerability except oops it happens anyway, whether the characters acknowledge it or not, or just people getting way more into it or being more affected by it than they thought they would. Also situations in which people have been acting competitive or fine-fine-shut-up-already and then jump into the sex with great enthusiasm even if still snarking. Oral, vaginal, anal, manual (ifyouknowwhatImean) -- it’s all good. You can go as veiled or as explicit as you like, but please avoid excessive medical jargon -- I can see “penes” fitting the Rome canon, but I don’t find a lot of mention of “penis” and “clit” sexy in more modern contexts.

DNWs:

Hard kinks, MPREG, A/B/O, knotting, D/s, incest, genderswap and genderbent characters, non-con, dub-con, torture and abuse, dwelling on bodily fluids (mentions of gore and come are fine where appropriate), toilet humor, character bashing, soulmates and soul marks, major character death (unless it’s canon), pregnancy and children as the lynchpin of the story, characters agonizing over/analyzing/dwelling on their or others’ sexuality as if it’s the sum total of their existence, secondary characters acting like shipping the main pair is their be all and end all, teeth-rotting fluff and schmoop, issuefic, fic written in the first or second person, holiday setting or theme (including Valentine’s), fics which revolve around weddings and birthdays, AUs which have nothing to do with canon (cop characters working in a coffee shop, high-school janitor characters in space, etc.)