#plot twist: i have asthma and i die though

[motheatenscarf]

Apparently I'm the protagonist of a stoner comedy where we make peace by teaching the aliens about humanity's innate goodness through the good shit on 4/20

You've been randomly selected by the government to fight space aliens. Spin this wheel twice to see the two weird/niche superpowers assigned to you!

Interpret your results any way you like!

Inspiration from @miggylol

[b-grademoviemonsters]

The Velocipastor

Premise according to IMDB: After losing his parents, a priest travels to China, where he inherits a mysterious ability that allows him to turn into a dinosaur. At first horrified by this new power, a hooker convinces him to use it to fight crime. And ninjas.

Premise according to us: Every so often, in an otherwise ordinary life, a movie comes along that is so visionary, so transformative and so ahead of its time that your life is never quite the same afterwards. It probably goes without saying that this is not that film. But damned if we didn’t enjoy the heck out of it anyway.

Wow, that’s high praise there. Honestly, coming across this gem after some of the dross we’ve sat through of late was like going to sleep beside the Trumpster (you nestled in your comfy bed, him prostate and unblinking in his cryovac chamber) and waking up to see a shirtless Justin Trudeau standing over you holding a breakfast tray piled high with croissants and a huge bowl of Nutella.

Mmmm, Nutella. That’s so good smeared across croissants! Right... yes... croissants. Because that would definitely not be the only place we would be smearing Nutella in this scenario. But moving right along…

Ah yes, back to The Velocipastor. Now, where were we? Well, I was about to share my general rule of thumb about this kind of movie. Which is that if the words ‘WTF’ come out of my mouth within the first five minutes, followed by vigorous thrashing of the rewind button, then we’re onto a winner. And these guys managed it with the below shot. *cue supermassive spoiler alert*

You see, during the film’s first few minutes or so, a horrific car bomb kills the family of the film’s hero priest right before his very eyes. But instead of a glorious explosion of sound, violence, body parts and middle aged parental polyester across the big screen, the director merely added a descriptive tile in a font I think came standard with Windows Office 98. I mean, have you ever seen a more excellent manifestation of having no budget than this?

Wait, so there was no explosion, no body parts and no gore...  and that’s a good thing? YES! A very good thing. Because it shows they get the essence of B-grade monster movie making, which is that the budget may be small, but the tongue-in-cheek ideas don’t have to be. Talk about happy days!

Still, exploding parents is a pretty awful thing to happen to someone so young, right? Totally. But luckily our hero priest Fr Doug has the wise words of mentor Fr Stuart to ponder as he mourns his loss while sipping - nay sculling - the blood of Jesus Christ in a way we’re fairly certain the Vatican would not be keen on. “Your parents died Doug. That’s what parents do. They die on you.” Dibs putting that on a commemorative T-shirt.

So how exactly does a shattered soul such as Doug then rebuild from there? Well it’s simple. You go to the place where, in the words of Fr Stu, “you think God will not follow.” In this case, China*. And we know it’s China because, despite its resemblance to an everyday tract of north American wilderness, we are offered a few subtle clues. Namely the word ‘China’ appearing on screen in massive type and the sudden arrival of a warrior chick in a white martial arts suit and a vaguely racist bamboo peasant hat. Mind you, we don’t get too much of a look at her since she’s busy copping an arrow straight through the chest from a random ninja in the forest. Then comes the indignity of spending her final moments with our hero priest, who takes one look at the gushing bloody wound and arrowhead embedded prominently in her torso and reaches for the obvious question only a man anyone would ask in the circumstances: “Are you hurt?” Honestly, in her shoes, we would have passed him the cursed dinosaur tooth of the Dragon Warrior too.  *note this film predates the arrival of the coronavirus.

By the way, just rewinding matters for a second, I couldn’t help but notice that Doug somehow managed to drive to China ... from the US: Yes, we clocked that too. But rather than get bogged down in logical exploration, let’s just assume Sarah Palin was the film’s geography consultant and move on.

OK, done. Next minute, we’re suddenly back in the US, where Doug is having some bad dreams and feeling hungry* and a prostitute called Carol is being roughed up by her pimp Frankie Mermaid, whose subtle moniker refers to the fact he’s “swimming in bitches”. Frankie old mate, you are so going to die. But not, apparently, before sending Carol out into a dark forest to drum up some business. *if you get what we mean

Wait, is that really where hookers hang out these days? #askingforafriend Well not if they want to make any money, no. But hey, no sacrifice is too great in the pursuit of #plotdevelopment. And just as we type that here it comes, in the form of an armed offender keen to separate Carol from her cash. If only there was someone, anyone, who could just randomly stumble into the forest and rescue our damsel in distress. Oh wait. Is that Fr Doug? Boy, he looks kind of hungry* *if you get what we mean

Next minute: It’s the next morning and a surprisingly buff Fr Doug is in the hooker’s bed. But not like *that*. Because she just wants to chat. Or at least to engage in some very unsophisticated single entendres about how “last night was amazing” even though “it all happened so quickly”. Fortunately her blow by blow* account sets Doug’s mind at ease, except for the bit where he turned into a dinosaur and ate someone. Which he does not believe. Because, and say it with me here religious zealots, “Dinosaurs never existed.” * Wash your mind out with soap - this is a common expression, not a sexual euphenism... yet.

Of course they didn’t. Well I assume she eventually convinces him he’s part velociraptor and that they should use his powers to rid the world of evil. But we don’t want to give away the rest of the movie do we? No, we most certainly do not want to spoil the sure-to-be-hugely-unexpected plot twists of a movie called The Velocipastor. And honestly, half the fun is in the surprises. So instead, let’s just share a few of the queries we asked each other along the way: * Did that guy really just say he’s going to survive the Vietnam War without taking a single hit? I mean, has he ever seen a war movie? * Really? You bought nunchakus to a fight with ninjas? Really? * Wait, does that exorcist have goblin ears?  * Are they honestly going to boink for the first time under a chenille duvet?  * No, I mean seriously, under a chenille duvet????

Wait, if our hero is a priest, then who is the prostitute boinking? Sorry, can’t answer that. But *cough* The Thorn Birds *cough*.

Well at least tell us Frankie Mermaid bites it bad: Again, mum’s the word. But let’s just say confession isn’t always good for the soul, especially when you may or may not be confessing to a certain earlier car bomb murder.

Intriguing. Well to something you can tell us, did the film get good reviews? To answer this let’s turn to our beloved critics over at the IMDB: “This movie cured my cancer and my acne, my asthma is gone and I don't need my glasses anymore.” Nuff said. Final verdict? Yep! And that’s without even mentioning the best ninjas versus dinosaur fight scene EVER committed to film. EVER. Which I really wanted to film and post here but #respectforcopyright.

Vanilla vodkas needed to sit through it (out of 10): None. And that would be true even if we hadn’t just drunk our own body weight in sugar-free soft drink.

[thatbitchydonutcollector]

Favorite book/series outside of SJM

I’ve never known a harder question. So I am THAT person who can’t pick and am going to explain three. 

They Both Die at the End by Adam Silvera

This book made me sob, and not the pretty kind. The kind where you can’t breathe (true, both because I have asthma and because I was emotional) and you’re falling over with tears streaming down your face. That’s this book.

They Both Die at the End follows two boys name Rufus and Mateo. In modern 2040 US, an organization calls people to inform them of their impending death at 12:00 am each morning. Rufus and Mateo, who both get the call that morning, contact each other through an app where full of people who about to die. So, with their last 24 hours on the planet, they decide to spend it together. They have an epic death day, and they fall in love (do you know me? I’m a walking gaydar and my books are usually super gay). It’s a story about heartbreak, first (and last) love, and coming out.

I picked it up for two reasons. One, I love Adam Silvera. His book History is all you Left Me was amazing. Two, the title! That title is so creative and unconventional that I fell in love with it.

I don’t usually read stand alone books, but this was an exception. I was so satisfied with this book. I bought it and finished it in the same day. As previously mentioned, I cried like a child. 10/10. It was amazing.

Nevernight by Jay Kristoff

I picked up this book after seeing beautiful fanart. It’s an adult novel which means lots of sex and slashed throats. My kind of book.

Godsgrave, the city made of fallen Gods’s bones (literally), is where we set our scene. Nevernight follows Mia Corverre, the daughter of a politician who was wrongfully executed in front of her very eyes. Ever since Mia’s father was killed and her mother and baby brother were sent to rot in the Philosopher’s stone (an eternal the prison), she has attracted a dark companion whom she named Mister Kindly. Mister Kindly is made of shadows, bits of darkness, and nothing. He is her faithful partner and helps her though her time on becoming an assassin known as Blades. This book is about Mia and Mister Kindly on her quest to become a Blade and kill the people responsible for her family’s destruction.

This book took me a month to read which is very unlike me. It’s one of those expertly written books that has you contemplating if there really are things lurking in the shadows behind you. I had to put it down on multiple occasions just because it is so heavy. Taking on topics like rape, kidnapping, prostitution, and slavery, Nevernight was something I had trouble getting through in one sitting. It’s also 175,000 words of the slaughter of characters you’ve come to love, and plain old suffering. I would read it again in a heartbeat which tells you a little about me.

The sequel, Godsgrave, I read in three days. The third and final series is slated to come out in 2019 (it was pushed back… rip).

The Cruel Prince by Holly Black

When I met Leigh Bardugo (author of the Grisha and Six of Crows series) last year, she was asked what she was reading. She answered that her friend Holly was writing a book that she just fell in love with. Of course, she had an ARC so I had to wait until January 1st for it to come out. It absolutely lived up to expectations.

The Cruel Prince follows Jude Duarte and her sisters as she is ripped from the human world and taken in by her sister’s fae father. In the land of faerie, all she wants to become is a knight (woohoo, badass woman knight!) and fight for her court. Fae are not particularly nice to mortals, and she struggles to find her place in their world. She meets Prince Cardan (there’s the prince part), who is a ruthless asshole (there’s the cruel part). He’s beautiful, immortal, and she must defy him to get what she wants.

Reaction to this book is: HOLY MOTHER OF PLOT TWISTS. Gods, that ending.

Very, very well written. Kept me turning the page after hours sitting reading. Great world building and elements of fantasy mashed into classic fae courts. A great new take on high fantasy. It is the first of a trilogy, and the next book comes out in 2019… I’m salty.

ehhem. I may have gone a bit overboard.

Ask me questions while I’m sick! ☕️