#there has rarely been a less black and white cast of characters in terms of ethics and morality

[saturdaynightghostclub]

This is so half-baked and I’m sorry to be mean but I fear we’re becoming a very literal-minded people and that worries me. It’s like there can be no subtlety or ambiguity whatsoever in a piece of media or people start to get scared, what’s up with that

[ultfreakme]

So.

I finished She-ra.

I wanted to watch it because I realized I rarely watched anything with a female-centric cast and I especially didn't interact with sapphic content despite being sapphic. Abundance of cishet male-specific stories and a love for action-adventure led me to not exploring the latter in stories centering women because I had my own biases. I didn't think there were nearly enough action-adventure stories centering women out there in comparison to men. I just gave into convenience. Also I'll be real, internalized misogyny.

She-ra was so breathtaking and impactful because close to a decade after watching Legend of Korra and the beginning of Korrasami, I got to watch a fully-explored lesbian relationship on-screen with all the action and adventure I wanted.

I saw too much of myself in all the characters. In Glimmer & Angella's mother-daughter bickering, in Catra's insecurities, in Mermista's distance and aversion to people but still wanting companionship. I saw me in bits and pieces across all these girls and women.

It's a rare moment for a POC queer woman like me to truly see myself anywhere. My identity is often considered rare enough to be mythic (although queer POC are fucking everywhere lbr).

I remember being an eight-year old, and watching The Little Mermaid for the first time. I was mesmerized, I sung "Part of Your World" and re-enacted in my tiny apartment with only enough space for a bed and a cupboard and nothing else where my entire family were. I'd sing it on top of my lungs and then I'd look in the mirror and see brown skin and black hair and the spell of being a mermaid underwater would break.

Then fast-forward to 2024, I see She-Ra and her magical princess friends say they need to recruit a powerful Sea Princess to their war efforts. I am excited only because my fascination for mermaids has never really gone away. Then our main crew arrive and what do I see?

A brown woman, a woman with my skin tone and my eyes and my wavy kind of hair. She's stand-offish and a little emo, and she controls the ocean. She can switch her legs for fins and swim!! Suddenly I'm eight again.

I also remember watching The Swan Princess for the first time and feeling strange butterflies every time I saw Odette in her beautiful white gown. I didn't know then that girls could like girls, all I had was this feeling. A buttery, soft feeling where I wanted to sit beside her and see her smile. As I grew up I understood it was me being attracted to her and thinking "there's no love story showing the way I love".

Enter Catra and Adora. I felt a silly kind of nostalgia seeing Catra in love with a magical girl in gold and white.

I could go ON AND ON with all these little details where bits of me were in the show. It made me a little less lonely, and made me a lot more hopeful. Seeing yourself in media is important. Obviously you don't need it to empathize with a character or understand them but seeing parts of your own experience on-screen is a different kind of high. Like, like woah I can be a protagonist like that? I don't need to erase myself?

A story which treated parts of me- all the good and the bad parts- with kindness and gave it all a happy ending. I am so used to reading tragedy, expecting cruelty from even fantasy that I truly treasure stories with hope.

This show gave me that. I have been doing pretty bad in terms of mental health for months, maybe over a year actually. This was a nice reprieve and I hope the message of the story sticks with me, and that I start 2025 stronger and braver.

[chevelleneech]

I hope non-Black and non-Asian fans who might also ship Reylo quickly come to understand that while Reylo did get a lot of push back for both valid and bullshit reasons… Oshamir shippers do in fact get to celebrate some of the hypocritical arguments working on our favor, because Black/bi-racial femme presenting and Asian male actors are almost never the leads in popular television and film.

They are either paired off with a white partner or they themselves are the sidekick to a white lead, and usually only date people within their ethnicity. The latter of which is neither bad nor wrong, but adds to the misguided belief that Black women and femmes and Asian men are not bankable or attractive outside their own demographic.

So I’m sorry to say, but if you are a Reylo shipper who feels slighted or even frustrated, that’s fine. Feel how you feel, I’m not saying you can’t or shouldn’t make posts about it, but white people being in corruption arc romances or etl is not a rare occasion. Meaning, when yet another one exhibits traits that are toxic or not so great, it is fine for people to not like it. It’s fine for people to call it annoying or repetitive, because it is. When it comes to non-white characters who either match ethnicities or are in an interracial relationship without a white partner, it automatically becomes something new.

Why? Because we do not often see it play out that way on screen. And no, Osha won’t be dealing with anti-Blackness or misogynoir on screen nor will Qimir deal with Asian stereotyping, because race and ethnicity aren’t played the same in Star Wars as far as I know, but that doesn’t mean their casting matters less in reality. At the end of the day, it’s all fiction, but that doesn’t change the fact that Black people and Asian (Filipino men to be exact) people shouldn’t be allowed this opportunity to seem ourselves reflected back on screen in the same genre based shows white people get.

Star Wars, science fiction, and fantasy in general is so overwhelmingly white and creatured/alien, that people don’t even realize how uncommon the tropes and cliches they’re tired of seeing, really are. Osha and Qimir would kikeky still work yet not be as thrilling if either one of them were white, because a white woman being corrupted by the evil man of color has very racist connotations, and a woman of color being corrupted by a misunderstood white man is very common on screen. And if they’re both white… then it’s just a Reylo do over, isn’t it?

So like I said, I understand people will be frustrated and want to know how Oshamir is different regarding the character journeys themselves, but it’s not always just about what’s on the written page. The Acolyte needs fine tuning in terms of the writing, but it’s not the worst show on tv by far. And the fact that Oshamir is interracial and non-white in the classic sense, is a huge part of why they work and why people are more interested than what may have been for Reylo.

[seriousfic]

Have watched Twisted Metal, the loose adaptation of Sony's perennial car combat franchise. It's more in the Deadpool Lite cottage industry than (I assume) anything to do with the video games. I've never played them, so I can't speak to accuracy except in a Wikipedia sense (you know, that thing MCU writers look at before they adapt years of storytelling), only I know they're car combat games and this Twisted Metal looks to any excuse to get the characters out of the cars so they can get into fistfights, shoot-em-ups, or just gab. Mainly gab.

Nothing against Anthony Mackie--he's far more convincing as a wisecracking scoundrel here than as a brooding antihero or inspirational patriot in other projects--but the straight-to-video Death Race movies featured big names Luke Goss and Tanit Phoenix and managed some actual death races.

And in the seventies, shows like The A-Team and Dukes of Hazzard managed a few car chases every episode. Twisted Metal looks like a fanfilm in comparison. It's painfully obvious there's no actual pyrotechnics going off, just CGI muzzle flashes and the odd shattered window. The cars look to have not been modified at all and rarely take a scratch, much less any of the hundreds of bullets that are fired at them.

The writing, as you'd expect from Deadpool Lite, is fitfully amusing banter and 'emotional' scenes swiped from other, fairly recent media. There's a character who seems mute until she bursts out into verbiage, like Laura in Logan. There's one episode that pauses the narrative to focus on a gay romance, like in The Last Of Us.

Weirdly, Mackie himself plays a fast-talking rogue--sort of like Eddie Murphy in Beverly Hills Cop and 48 Hours--but he never actually manages to fast-talk anyone. According to the show, he's such a good 'milkman' (is that such a widely known term in 2002 that it'd become future slang after an apocalypse? I guess they can't spend eight episodes calling a black man "Pizzaboy.") that he's recruited for an important mission, but his attempts to actually con people either fail--in which case his obligatory modern-day Hypercompetent Sidekick Who Is The Real Badass actually does the conning--or he tries to con someone who maybe half-buys it and Hypercompetent Sidekick ruins his persuasion check by going aggro. He also can't tell when he's being flim-flammed by Neve Campbell. Dude, you're a conman and you're getting conned? What are you, the bad guy in an episode of Leverage?

Why is this guy our protagonist if his specialty is talking people into doing things and he's no good at it? Yeah, Fast-Talker and Real Badass is a time-tested buddy-movie dynamic... look at Rush Hour or Shanghai Noon... but the Fast-Talker has to be good at fast-talk and the Real Badass has to be a Real Badass. What they do here is have him and his sidekick Stephanie Beatriz both be kinda okay at fast-talking and kinda okay at fighting.

So they don't really have different strengths and weaknesses, they're just banter delivery vehicles and stuff happens and they make quips. It's weak writing, basically.

On the bright side, it keeps its episodes to thirty-odd minutes instead of straining to be an hour-long, which is a relief in this day and age. The Twisted Metal games have been rebooted so many times that every character has multiple iterations, so I'll cut it some slack on the 'adaptation,' although it feels a lot like the modern IP sin of coming up with a bunch of characters, then thinking up canon characters they vaguely fit to and giving them that name. Agent Stone, for instance, goes from a heroic black man trying to undo an accidental shooting to white mall cop who becomes a fascist warlord. Okay...? I guess they're both law enforcement themed so... great adaptation, guys.

I'd give them more credit if this iteration of the cast didn't align so neatly with "white men bad, browns and women good."

And it Surf Draculas hard.

Points for the "crazed religious faction" being a bunch of hedonistic atheists who have used the Apocalypse as an excuse to chimp out. That's novel, at least. We should encourage post-apocalyptic media to go beyond the usual neo-Nazi, biker gang, radfem factions.

[bellybiologist]

The current situation is indeed a "some of column A, some of column B" situation (with there being many columns). When discussing this situation, there are things that absolutely need to be considered (including, but not limited to): -The fact whiteness is favored by society at large -The fact that everyone's preferences and kinks are influenced by what they see in media and what they grow up around. -The fact that BIPOC representation in media is rarer, and even when present, isn't always the main character, in the main cast, or done very well. -The fact that BIPOC people are rarer in kink spaces both because of the aforementioned reasons, AND because it's notably less safe for them to exist in those kink spaces. AI is trained off of (stolen) content it scrapes, but because white guys and other specific depictions oversaturate media, both in terms of content of real people and of fictional characters, it's going to be HORRIBLY biased, whether the user is aware of it or not. (and unfortunately, after doing what I do for over a decade now, i do not trust the average kink enjoyer to be self aware enough to know that they are only fapping to white guys!) It's ALWAYS more difficult to find characters of any other ethnicity in both canon and fanon... especially since "whiteness" is so favored by creators and fans alike, regardless of whether or not they are aware of it. (Heck, a lot of people are VERY MUCH attracted to things like, blonde hair, very specifically, which is found predominately on white dudes and is very rare or requires alteration to be found on anyone else. (and people just throwing blonde/white hair onto brown people causes other Discourse that I won't go into atm!)) Very early into my work years (around ~2017), I used to say flippantly on streams and discord that "Haha, everyone mostly pays me to draw basic anime boys and scruffy white dudes". It was hardly a lie, and that has always been, and still is, the case! Now, I don't blame people for being into the White Boy of the Month, or the Blonde Anime Blorbo from their Shows, because we can't help what we're attracted to! However, people need to be VERY aware of the things stated at the beginning of this post, because we CAN help how we go about expressing it. My work catalogue VERY MUCH demonstrates and, I would admit, even exacerbates the problem, but I put a LOT of conscious effort via my OCs and character design choices to try to counteract that. But a bitch needs to eat, so I gotta cater to what people like while I pour out my black and POC OCs and fandom interests (when they do happen to appear, and when i have the scant free time to do so.)

In terms of gainer content, like youtube videos and twitter gainers, you are very much going to have to work harder to find content of BIPOC people. They exist, yes, but they are fewer because it's less safe for us to present ourselves openly (sexually especially), and also because it is THAT much harder for us to gain traction amongst kink spaces people because most people prefer traits found in white people. It's very much a reason a lot of non-white gainers find it frustrating trying to get traction in their spaces, and they WILL notice that the new white twink on the block who gained their first 15 lbs will often get popular VERY quickly. (granted, that encompasses another problem, but I also wont go into that in this post either! THERE ARE SO MANY COLUMNS!) like, if you're on grommr, it's so fucking easy to see using the search that you get 31k hits on white/caucasian people, and if you click EVERY OTHER CATEGORY, you get only 12k!!! thats a HUGE difference!!!

so YEAH, people who talk to me personally know that im all about paying fucking attention to these things. Because like??? the people who DONT are the ones who end up hurting me or other BIPOC with their "brain empty, fap only" approach to kink circles. I need people to be at least a LITTLE aware!

People SURE are just AI creating a bunch of white men.

idk why people feel the need to do that. Fat white men are 99% of what you can find! and without the stealing of art/images!

[duchezss]

Buckle in folks cause I’m about to put more effort into this than an english assignment Presenting Why Jurassic World Camp Cretaceous is actually an amazing show

Now what defines the term amazing you might ask? I’m talking about a show that goes above and beyond in plot, characters, storytelling, and overall experience. Nowadays most adult shows don’t meet my standards much less a kids show so if that gives you an idea how good this show is stop right now and go watch it if you haven’t. Spoilers ahead ofc but as an aspiring film major I will be diving into just about everything I love and this is gonna get long. 

For your convince I will start with a simple bullet point list and then extend on them below, so if you only wanna see the big points and not my thoughts behind them this first parts for you. 

Black mc 

Diverse main cast (4/6 are poc) 

Actual plot lines and a lot of suspense 

Very dark for a kids show 

Complex characters that develop 

Fits in with the main Jurassic World series beautifully 

Body language and facial expressions are top tier 

Have genuine relationships (platonically and/or romantically) between all of the main 6

Phenomenal camera angles and use of special effects 

Great with details 

Amazing VA’s 

Continuity 

So the nose dives begins 

Black mc: To some people this might not matter that much but holy cow this is so important and such a big step. The people complaining are just weird middle aged white people, like do you know how big of an impact a black mc can have on young black children. It’s so important and it makes them feel happy because someone actually looks like them. Clear evidence of this was Into The Spider Verse (which is also an amazing movie oml). Come to think of it the only black mc I think I’ve ever seen in an animated kids show is probably Static Shock (also an amazing show ily). Somehow representation has got swept under the rug in this day and age which is ironic really, but this show does an amazing job with tackling that and I love it. 

Diverse main cast: I can’t think of any recent kids movies/tv shows, live action or animated, that have this much representation. In animation is also very easy for the show runners to make a character poc and then have a white VA, but jwcc is quite the opposite. Honestly the characters look so much like their VA’s that something tells me the animation team based the characters off them and not the other way around. Not only that but their names actually match with their ethnicities. So for reference or just anyone that doesn’t know, Ben and Brooklynn are white, Sammy is hispanic, Darius is black, Kenji is asian, and Yazmina is middle eastern. Sammy’s last name is Gutierrez, Yazmina’s is Fadoula, Kenji’s is Kon and Darius’s Bowman. Gutierrez is a common last name in Mexico and Latin America in general. Fadoula is found throughout upper Africa and the Middle East, Kon is rare name of Japense origin, and Bowman is a common last name among black folks in the US. So not only do they have a poc cast, voiced by poc people, but all the characters have realistic names. Not to mention they are very good on skin tone in the show, personally I think Yaz should’ve been just a bit darker but hey I’ll take it and run. 

Actual plot lines: This seem like stating the obvious but work with me here. Most kids and even adult shows have a very episodic format, there’s nothing wrong with that per say but having a plot and conflict build up and having little things matter is much more satisfying in my opinion. Most kids shows have some conflict but its very PG which is also fine that’s what it’s meant for. But every once in a while you’ll find a show that had plot wise beyond it’s years and those are the golden ones. Easily and rightfully the most famous is Avatar the Last Airbender or ATLA. This show to this day is still one my favorites and truly nothing will ever top it, but in my years of watching kids shows after it jwcc might just be second. We can argue all day about what’s the best and it’s truly a matter of opinion, but to me atla and jwcc just achieve such a level of complexity that 99% of kids and even adult shows don’t reach. 

Very dark: While this might not be exactly the best for kids it’s great for an olderish audience. Honestly it having a much darker element makes the show enjoyable for all ages while still keeping it chill enough so that children may watch. But come to think of it it’s hard not to make a show about dinosaurs dark, the show runners do a wonderful job at keeping it intense and exciting, but still kid friendly, and to me thats incredibly impressive. Not to mention since the show isn’t afraid to go dark they can do more (such as ben’s “death”, the hunters etc) which makes it go from good to great. Reminds me a lot of atla and I know I keep mentioning atla but know that is the biggest compliment ever. atla is easily the best animated/kids show of all time so the fact that a bring it up so much is huge. There have been shows in the past that have tried to replicate what atla (such as voltron..) and it just hasn’t worked. I think this show nails the boundary between too dark and not dark enough. 

Complex characters: Oh yes. If there’s one thing I love more than an ensemble cast it’s a cast that grows and develops as the series progresses. Sure the main 6 might start off as typical character tropes (Darius the super fan, Yaz the loner, Sammy the extrovert, Ben the underdog, Kenji the arrogant, and Brooklynn the influencer.) but they become so much more than that. I’d say at least half of them are completely different people between the 1st episode and the latest one. An easy example being Ben and Kenji. Ben started off as a naive, timid, and terrified person and has become confident, independent, and brave. Kenji started off as arrogant, selfish, and apathetic person and became compassionate, driven, and concerned. All of them have had some sort of change even if it’s not super dramatic and that’s important. It makes the storytelling better because they grow as they go. 

Fits in with JP/JW beautifully: In terms of shows connecting to movies this has gotta be some clone wars level s-tier stuff. Personally I have never watched clone wars but my sister has and she always raves about how well this show connects to the movies, and from what I’ve seen I completely agree. A youtube channel by the name of Silverscreen Edits actually put together the scenes from every time they overlap, mainly in S1 but also the cold open from Fallen Kingdom. I’d advise you to watch it because it’s just incredible. The show runners nail ever detail of these scenes and it truly feels like you’re watching the same scene from a different perspective. The set up is beautiful and I cannot rave enough about how amazing it is, my favorite easily being the dome scene because of all the small details. Not to mention this show actually connect JW and FK because it shows us that the cold open was 6 months later while the rest was 3 years later. Quite honestly I had no idea these two scenes were that far apart from each other, I thought the opening was from a years or two later not 6 months, so this show really connected the dots between these two movies and made them flow together much nicer. And I love all the countless references too old and new JP/JW movies. Overall this show is a great addition to the franchise. 

Body language and facial expressions: You might be thinking to yourself, hmph that is a really odd point to make, let me tell you it’s not and I’ll explain why. When analyzing films I usually tend to stick to live action because one of my favorite parts of films is how characters react to things, and we animation we really don’t get that. Most of the time even if shows get this complex they won’t use both the way jwcc. What impressed me so much was how amazing they are at this, the animation team seriously needs more praise. Jwcc is great at facial expressions which I will say other animated shows know how to do as well, but they are also so amazing at body language which is rare rare when it comes to animation. It’s because it’s so hard and often times it just doesn’t fit, but they do an amazing job with this and it makes the characters feel so life-like. When a character is sad or closed off their shoulders hunch, when they feel scared they stiffen up and cover their ears (which is another detail I love so much, I never realized till this show that hardly anyone ever covers their ears and it makes a lot of sense because these dinos are very loud) and when they feel hopeless their shoulder sag and their head drops, do you see what I mean? You can quite literally tell what these kids are feeling and thinking without them saying anything that is so impressive and it makes the show that much better. It makes it easy to analyze and if it wasn’t clear around I love to do so. 

Genuine relationships between all of main cast: I will not budge at this point at all, gonna say it right now if you disagree argue with the wall. I might have some bias on this but one, if not my favorite, part of any media is an ensemble cast. It’s something I actively seek out, and when I say ensemble cast I don’t mean a trio, I mean a full cast, my favorite being 6 but 4 or 5 will do. So when I found out this show had 6 main characters I was immediately interested. Not only because I love ensemble casts but I also wanted to see how they handled it. Ensemble cast are so rare because they are extremely hard to do and do well. I will even criticize atla on this. At one point they had 6 main characters and they never elaborated on more than a handful of the duos and just focused on the group as whole. But this is typical and easiest to do without giving up individual character development so I get that. But jesus christ jwcc does a phenomenal job with this, and I mean phenomenal. Out of the 15 different duos you can get between 6 characters then have elaborated on 11 of them, and it could easily be more this is just from memory. I might make a post elaborating on this specifically because it’s just amazing. This time they take to flesh out these relationships truly makes them feel like a unit and a family, instead of just a group of people all working towards the same goal. This is easily the most impressive and rewarding of any of the points on this list in my opinion. (coming from #1 squad lover right here)

Camera angles and special effects: This shows downfall for some was that it had strange animation, honestly it never bothered me and since I’ve watched dragon prince and rwby, it’s clear that bad animation never stops me from watching a show. But I think people just won’t give it a chance, because when you do you’ll see it’s actually very good. To me the coolest part of the animation is the dinos. They look incredible and so so similar to the cgi used in JW. That’s hard to do so more claps for the animation team I love y’all. They also have to work around the PG side of this show and do a great job at implying what happens but never actually showing what happens. This is all angles, not to mention they do a great job at showcasing the park and the scenery so that magic from the movies really translates to the show. Finally my favorite scene of the show from an avid slow mo lover has got to me when Ben falls of the monorail (idk why it is cause he’s literally my fav and I was so upset) The scene is just beautiful and the set up before hand makes it that much more heart breaking. The use of slow mo is amazing I literally cannot rave about this scene enough. It builds so much suspense and they used just the right amount, to much and the scene would move to slow, and to little the scene would be to fast. I need more great scenes like this in S4 (idk if I want the angst that comes with it too I’ll get back to you)

Details: To me details, in any show in general, is what makes it go from great to fantastic. An example of this is Harry Potter, something that hooked me into this franchise was how much small details mattered and it’s the same with jwcc. There are so many throw away lines that end up coming back and all us are hitting ourselves for missing it. Such as Ben saying early on he knows where the tracker beam is and when he “dies” and the crew can’t find it it shows how important he was. Those are details I love to see. Or the three dinos, one of which Sammy released, coming back all season. Of course toro as well and he always kept his burns. Not to mention the animation team always kept Ben’s scar in and I think that’s an important detail because he shaped who he is. Keep up the good work animation and writing team because I love what you’re doing with this (also I’m 90% sure the compass is another one of these details I’m calling it rn) 

Amazing VA’s: Honestly VA’s in general do not get enough credit and they really should. But these 6 are pretty amazing let me tell you. If I’m not mistaken Ryan Potter (Kenji’s VA) is the only one with a notable history of voice acting as he played the title character in Big Hero 6. (fun fact I had no idea and when I found this out I quite literally screamed). But the others have also done things as well, most of it being live action though, and voice acting is much different. Honestly I just need to make a post about the various roles they’ve had cause looking into this has been an experience. Anyway all of them do such an incredible job with this ahh. I think the times where you can really tell how different they all are is when they lash out. This happens quite often and honestly it’s expected, I mean they’re 6 teenagers in a stressful environment of course they’ll last out. But all of them have such a different way of doing it, Darius is hopeless, Kenji is nervous, Yaz is emotional, Ben is harsh, Brooklynn is stern, and Sammy is level headed. Usually everyone lashes out the same way so the fact that they’re so different in just one aspect shows you how good they are. Each character is so individual and all of them have different goals and morals which is not only realistic but it makes way for conflict which is always interesting. 

Continuity: Now this could arguable go with details but it’s slightly different so I’m making this a separate point. Continuity to put it simple it basically not have the show be episodic. Honestly that completely what I expected from this show because that how most kids shows are. In this show the plot not only progress each episode but so do the characters and their trauma. Most of the time the plot will progress but anything bad that has happened to the characters will not show and is hardly talked about (COUGH VOLTRON). To me it’s something that has to be addressed because if the characters don’t grow what was the point of it. And they’ve shown that characters grow based on the events that happen and I love that. Another thing about continuity is when show runners stick a pin in something and actually go back to it (COUGH RWBY). Jwcc is amazing at this and make a point to bring back just about everything that gets sidelined in the first place. It’s so impressive and make the show that much more enjoyable. There have been countless times where I get so caught up with the pins that shows just leave there and it makes me so mad, but jwcc is good at for the most part because of course some things will slip through. But they always get back to the important things. 

The conclusion: Overall this show is phenomenal and if my essay hasn’t convinced you I’m not sure what will. The show is amazing at storytelling and plot and the lovable main cast makes it that much better. It is so much better than a good chunk of kids shows and honestly part of me wishes it was rated PG-13 cause I really wanna see that. But they do an amazing job and keep it kid friendly enough while still discussing mature topics. It’s the next atla to me and something that many kids shows now days try to be and fail. It’s impressive and complex and truly one of the best shows I’ve ever watched. Film major mara out, and if you actually read all of this ily mwah. 

[popculturebuffet]

Static Shock: Shock to the System and Aftershock Review

“You know what? 13 years ago, me and some friends sat in a restaurant all night and daydreamed about the kinds of stories we would tell if we had the chance. We wanted to expand the concept of superhero to include characters that kind of looked like us, who had some of the same background, experiences and dreams as we did. We wanted to create something fun that a new generation would respond to the same way we responded to our childhood heroes -and damn if we didn't succeed beyond my wildest dreams. Today, Static Shock is a household name with millions of fans of all ages (Is there stuff I'd do differently? Yeah, almost all of season four but why nitpick?) Static is the most successful thing I've ever helped create and I'm both proud and gratified that people have taken it into their hearts. “ 

Dwayne McDuffie, Co-Creator of Static and Writer for Static Shock

This review is dedicated to Dwayne McDuffie and Robert L. Washington III.                                                        Rest In Power Static Shock is awesome. I grew up with the show watching it both first run on the WB and second run on Cartoon Network and loved it as much as I did other large parts of my childhood courtsey of DC like Batman the Animated Series, Teen Titans and both Justice League Shows. What makes this unique among the DC Properties is that Static wasn’t really a big name when he got a show. He wasn’t even part of the DC Universe. 

See as I had no idea for probably a good decade, Static actually came from Milestone Comics, a company ran by and focused on african americans. The goal was understandable: While black heroes existed at the time, and there were some fantastic ones like Storm, Jim Rhodes and Steel... these guys weren’t the center of their universes. The big faces of the big  companies, Spider-Man, Wolverine, Hulk, Iron Man, Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, The Flash.. were white. So milestone was a shakeup of that with the main teams and heroes all being black, from Icon, an alien who’d lived among man but rather than end up in kansas like say superman ended up imprinting on a slave woman centuries ago and has been with us since, who was encouraged by an energetic teenager named Rocket to put on a costume and do something with his powers and his community, Hardware, a tech genius who had his work stolen by a white asshole and wanted to fight back and BLood Syndicate, a group of gang members all caught in the “The Big Bang”, a huge fight between all of Dakota, the midwest city where the comics take place, that ended when the police released a bunch of experimental gas that gave them all super powers. 

As most of you who have watched the show already know, this is where Static comes from. Static was the company making their own Spider-Man, i.e. a nerdy teenager who suddenly gets super powers, in this case Virgil Hawkins who at the prodding of a friend took a gun to The Big Bang to get revenge on a bully. .but ultimately couldn’t go through with it, decided it wasn’t him and got rid of the gun and ran.. and still ended up in it, becoming Static, a young hero dedicated to using his powers to fight other “Bang Babies”.. a term that dosen’t really sound that great and they really should’ve thought through. But Phrasing aside the character was great and I look forward to reading more and only haven’t because I have to buy the issues gradually, but DC is currently re-releasing the individual issues of Static, Icon, and Hardware weekly in anticipation of a reboot of Milestone Coming in May digitally on Comixology at only 2 bucks a pop, and rereleased the original print collections that were long out of print for 10 bucks each, though i’m getting static on it’s own since i’ts really not that much less expensive as it only collects four issues while Icon and Hardware both collect 8, so I can wait a bit there on Hardware and already own Icon: A Hero’s Welcome.. and really need to review it at some point. 

While Milestone’s output was good, at least from the two books i’ve read, with Robert Washinton III, who sadly not only ahs also passed but was fucking homeless for a while  in the 2000′s.. what the actual hell, writing Static alongside Dwayne McDuffie, whose later moved onto animation writing tons of Static episodes all of them classics including the school shooting episode, the first three rubberbandman episodes and both Anasazi episodes. Point is it had good writers and artists and even had a distrbution deal with DC, so they had a leg up on the glut of other comic book companies.. but happened to start at the start of the comic book crash, a huge downturn in sales in the 90′s as the speculator boom, i.e. a bunch of people assuming every number one would be worth golden and silver age money, forgetting a character has to BUILD INTREST and this stuff takes time, and whose attempts to sell fast flooded the market with comics no one wanted,, caused the roof to cave in and with a bunch of assholes pegging milestone as a “Company for black people” rather than you know, a company trying to add fucking diversity and represntation to the comics industry, and that simply wanted a unvierse that was centered around people of color instead of white guys. The company eventually had to shut down, and was left to lisencing.  This is where the show comes in. Producers HAD been trying to make shows based on Milestone for a while, as far back as the mid-90s and the company was was all for it but the closest it got was an x-men style team series using various characters whose first draft was terrible and whose second draft by Alan Burnett, a producer on various DC Animated shows who’d go on to produce Static Shock, that McDuffie and others really liked but sadly did not get picked up. eventually though with presistance Static ended up getting a series and as I said McDuffie went on to write for it though he did not develop it. Some changes went into place naturally to make it work for an early 2000′s kids show and while i’ll probably miss so since again, only read one issue as we go. But due to Milestone coming back my intrest was peaking, hence finally reading the copy of Icon I had to buy from the library years ago due to keeping it overdue but am now EXTREMLEY glad I own as i’ts incredibly rare and really damn good, and wanting to read static, doing so lately since it’s finally on digtiial and again not too expensive. So join me as I give you a shock to the system and revisit this hell of a series to see if it holds up.. which just to cut that short it does and i’m only holding off binging MORE because I want the first two eps to be fresh enough in my head to review properly.. and also go over the various voice actors because that’s a thing with me now and charcter co-creator dwayne mcduffie because he’s awesome. 

As I like to do when covering a series first episodes, let’s run down the voice cast. 

First up is an UTTER LEGEND, and I use the term voice acting legend a lot, and mean it every time and have good reason to use it when I say it, and Phil LaMarr is a GOD in the buisness, having done a metric ton of voice acting roles, and being easily the most proflific black voice actor in animation. He’s also done some acting work, mostly in pulp fiction which I have not seen, but his true staying power and talent is in animation so here’s just the roles I feel are most notable or may not be very notable but i’m bringing up anyway because it’s my list. 

His roles besides Virgil include Lester Payton the Texas Ranger who showed up for one very good episode of king of the hill to be badass and show up the hickish, stupid and very punchable local Sheriff, Gearld’s obnoxious older brother Jamie O on Hey Arnold, Hermes Conrad from futurama, Carver from the Weekenders (PUT IT ON PLUS DISNEY), Axel Foley for exactly one bit in Clerks the Animated Series, but anyone whose seen it will know exactly which one, Micheal on the Proud Family, Black Vulcan on Harvey Birdman (In His Pants), Hector Con Carne and Dracula on Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy and Evil Con Carne, Jack on Samurai Jack something I didn’t know for decades (and I didn’t know about the carver thing till today though i’ts obvious in hindsight), John Motherfucking Stewart on Justice League and later Steel and Adult Static in the Unlimited seasons, Osmosis Jones on Ozzy and Drix, Bolbi Strogofski on Jimmy Neutron (And yes i’m just as shocked as you are.), Wilt on Foster’s Home for Imaginary Friends, Marcus on Life and Times of Juniper Lee, Bull Sharkowski on My Gym Partner is A Monkey and Also a Sociopath Please Help God My Life is a waking nightmare..... okay the rest of that title is implied but we all watched the same show, we all know in our hearts that was the title

Moving on, he was also, and yes there’s MORE: Maxie Zeus on The Batman, Philly Phil on Class of 3000, Both Robertsons AND Fancy Dan on the Spectacular Spider-Man, Jazz on Transformers Animated, Kit Fisto and Bail Organa on Star Wars the Clone Wars, Gambit and Bolivar Trask on Wolverine and the X-Men, Aquaman I, L-Ron and Green Beetle on Young Justice, J.A.R.V.I.S. and Wonder Man (Simon Williams) In Avengers: Earth’s Mightiest Heroes, Gabe and Carny on Kaijudo: Rise of the Duel Masters (Really miss that game and have been snapping up what cards I can get lately), Baxter Stockman in the 2012 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (And there’s also an awesome photo of him with 2003 Baxter... the two best together in one place. I got chills), Dormammu (I’ve come to bargin) in various Marvel Shows, Noville in Mighty Magiswords, Zach’s dad Marcus in Milo Muprhy’s Law, Craig’s Douchey Brother Benard on Craig of the Creek, showing he’s clearly come full circle, And Mr. Scully on the Casagrndes. And given It took about two paragraphs to cover all of this, yeah, I MEANT legend. 

Next we have Kevin Micheal Richardson as Virgil’s Dad Robert, and it’s the first time since I started introducing Voice Actors on a show that i’ve overlapped. I already covered him during the second episode of legend of the three caballeros, but for the short version he’s also very acomplished, very damn good and I somehow missed he played the old blind guy in hey arnold> Needless to say the dude is awesome. 

Virgil’s Sister Sharon is played by Michele Morgan who was in the rap group BWP and did some smaller roles outside of this the one exception being Juicy on the PJ’s, which I have not watched much of but REALLY do not like, though i’ll at least give it credit for being a decently long lasted black claymation sitcom at at time when there were, and hoenstly still aren’t, many black animated shows. 

Back to long casting sheets, next up is Jason Marsden, who is one of my faviorites as i’ve realized recently as Ritchie. As I also found out only recently he started on the Sitcom Step By Step and while that show is .. ehhhhhhhhh, he is great in it because he’s great in everything. He also apparently has his own internet variety show which I have to watch now. His roles include Max Goof, ironically given I was just talking about that role a few days ago, Haku in the english dub of Spirted Away, Micheal, the kid being yelled at by a bunch of 80′s cartoons characters not to take drugs in Cartoon All-Stars to the Rescue!, Nermal in the DTV Garfield movies and The Garfield Show, Tino on the Weekenders (SERIOUSLY DISNEY), Snapper Carr on Justice League, Rikochet on Mucha Lucha! for the last season (Why I do not knkow and while I love the guy he was not the right choice), Felix on Kim Possible, Chase Young on Xiaolin Showdown (WHich I did not realize was him and now I do easily his best role and I REALLY should’ve), Red Star and Billy Numerous on Teen Titans, Speedy on Batman Brave and the Bold, Impulse/Kid Flash II on Young Justice, and Fingers on Kaijudo. He hasn’t done as much lately which is a shame but hopefully i’tll pick up again. 

Next up is Hotstreak, Virgil’s brutal bully turned unhinted pyromancer played by DANIEL COOKSY, another actor i’m happy to talk about and another faviorite I haven’t seen much of lately. Daniel was an actor from childhood, playing Budnick on Salute Your Shorts, but he quickly gained a long and storied catalogue of VA Work: His first big roll was as Montana Max on Tiny Toon Adventures and if there is a god he’ll be back for the reboot, Stoop Kid on Hey Arnold, the incomprable Jack Spicer on Xiaolin Showdown, far and away his best role and part of why Chronicles sucked so bad was he was he didn’t get to reprise the role, The titular Dave the Barbarian, Django of the Dead on El Tigre (Had no idea), Kicks utterly insufferable big Brother Brad on Kick Buttowski and apparently he’s back at it again after laying low for a bit as he’s voicing Snag in Long Gone Gultch.. which I already really needed to watch but hot damn, I missed him. Sign me up. 

Frieda, Virgil’s crush and close friend who in the comics was his main confidante and love intrest but here is eventually pushed aside, is voiced by Danica Mckeller whose work didn’t seem all that familiar.. until I found out she was Ms. Martian on Young Justice. Hello, Megan. Very talented and she did get a major role in a dc show eventually so good for her. Can’t wait for season 4. 

So with our major players out of the way,  let’s talk about Dwayne. McDuffie is an AWESOME man and my respect has grown for him more and more with time. A writer and editor at Marvel, McDuffie has a decent resume doing smaller but awesome books, which I got most of for free last year when Marvel was giving out free digital collections due to the lock down, like Damage Control, a sitcom set in the marvel universe about the company that picks up after superhero battles and the logistics and antics that insue and Dethlok, about a pacfist trapped inside a cyborg zombie. He was as mentioned one of Milestone’s founders, and wrote Icon, Hardware and co-wrote the first few issues of Static. He’d go on to a pretty stacked career in animation, writing on this show and Justice League before becoming  story editor and show runner for Unlimited , even making a return to comics as a result writing the Marvel miniseries beyond and an arc of Fantastic Four in which Black Panther and Storm filled in for Reed and Sue while the two of them worked on their marriage after Reed did.. pretty much everything he did in Civil War. He also became head writer and show runner for Ben 10: Alien Force and Ultimate Alien, revamping the franchise a bit, and Alien Force, at least the first two seasons are awesome and I feel people overreacted on the changes. Ultimate Alien is okay, but has it’s problems but the finale was awesome and left the man’s legacy on a high note.. as he sadly passed in 2011 due to heart complications. He is truly missed and produced some utterly amazing stuff whlie he was alive. So on that melacholy note let’s see what happens when his creation hits the tv screen shall we?

Shock to the System:

This episode is written by Christopher Simmons, who is apparently a huge art designer guy.. but i’m not sure that’s the same chirsptoher simmons. Much more notable is the writer of the episode after this Stan Berkowitz, who was showrunner for season 1 and has done a LOT of DCAU work and is suprising talent, having written a lot of awesome Justice League episodes including Secret Society and The Royal Flush One. Point is we’re in first class hands.  Before the episode itself I want to talk about the intro and how it’s unique among DCAU shows. Like most Western Animation the intros for DCAU shows didn’t change much over the seasons with the most I can see is JLU changing up the footage to preview the current episode and later adding Hawkgirl to the intro after her return to the team. I THINK superman the animated series changed some of it’s footage too, but I can’t confrim it and may of just been imagining it. As i’ve talked about on my blog it’s normally a pet peeve of mine, mostly because shows you know, change after season 1, characters get added some one shot characters used for the intro never return, and after a while it can feel dated especially in more recent shows where the status quo is not at all set in stone and things change quite a bit. But sometimes it can be good enough that either the dated elements don’t matter or general enough that you don’t need to change it and i’ts just that good.. and given Batman the Animated Series has both in spades, you can see why i’ts probably my golden standard for intros and after superman the animated series DC mostly followed suit. But being part of the teen superhero boom of the 2000′s Static is unique in that it splits the diffrence: It’s intro gets the character across perfectly like a good intro should starting with Virgil getting out of bed and running a comb across his head before showing off to his sister to bug her and literally running into his dad who hand shim his bag and smiles, silently showing off his family. He then runs to school and runs into some trouble.. and said trouble changes for each intro, with Rubberband Man for season 1, Kanga (Whose name I only know because I happened to run across it) for season 2 and your guess is as good as mine for seasons 3 and 4, though Hotstreak is a constant. They still save some money for seasons 1 and 2 by recycling some animation.. but that’s alright with mea s it was good animation, and the improtant thing is cycling out old villians for new ones, while Season 3 is the only out and out redo to show off Richie taking on the Gear identity, adding about 10 seconds of intro to let him show off.  Seriously it’s an utterly great intro and like the other DCAU intros outside of superman, stuck in my brain. 

The other change that’s ENTIRELY diffrent from the rest of htem is that the music changes each time. The first two have the same formula just with a difrent vocalist and backing track: a superhero theme but with some hip hop beat boxing over it. The first intro is fine enough, not specattcular but stilll god. The second song.. is eh. Not really great and feels like a marked downgrade from season 1 and just dosen’t blend an ocrehstiral superhero theme with the beatbox elements NEARLY as well. The third song though is my faviorite.. even if I HATED Little Romeo as a  kid because I really did not like his nick show, it’s more a straight up rap song, but it has a faster beat that fits the intro better, and Romeo’s bragging fits Virgil’s character and penchant for Spidey quips perfectly. I also find it ironic that the theme that blends in with the dcau the most, the first season’s, is the one from BEFORE they decided to put it in the same universe. Still this season’s intro slaps, I just like the LIttle Romeo one a bit more.  The opening scene is picture perfect. Some masked crooks looting a warehouse are loading some stolen TV’s into a van when suddenly the lights come on one by one above one of the crooks before his tv switches to various channels before going haywire. Cue our heroes’ entrance. Let’s tak ea good look at him

Static’s Costume is awesome. While I prefer the season 3 redesign, and clearly DC agrees as the redeisgn was used for both pre and post new-52 when they used him, and while he’s getting a fresh design for the reboot, said design takes a lot of cures from said outfit. As for how the outfit differs from the comics itself  this is the design he had in the comics

It didn’t change much from the first issue, with the exception of his now iconic big puffy jacket which was added pretty early into the character’s history but I was unaware of that and just assumed he had the bodysuit the whole time. The more you know. But as you can see outside of the cool puffy jacket over a costume the two couldn’t be more diffrent. While the Dakotaverse outfit is more a standard superhero outfit, with some regular clothes touches on top the first cartoon outfit comes off more realistic, looking fantastic, but still coming off as something two teenagers could realistically have thrown together with what clothes they could buy, while still looking awesomely superheroy. IN short it’s perfect and only topped by the season 3 onward look...

But the slicker look, with an even cooler jakcet and the new colors all fitting the lighting ascetic better, but fits: not only has Virgil come along farther since he started, but with Richie now having a genius brain as Gear, he can provide a far slicker, far more professional superhero outfit on the budget the two have.  This show is just great  at costume design. 

So getting back to the episode at hand, Static puts up a huge sign in elecrticy saying “Bad guys here”, PFFFT, and then hides away and narrates that a few days ago he’d be the last person anyone would’ve expected to be a hero. Cue Flashback. 

We meet Virgil Hawkins on an average day: rapping into his razor, getting into a petty argument with his older sister Sharon, as a younger brother myself I relate to this, and talking to his dad who tries to get them to cut that out. We find out his mom has passed via his sister making really terrible eggs and saying that’s how mom made them. Exposition! Though we do get a great bit through this as when his sister gets distracted by her boyfriend calling, he uses the opportunity of her leaving the room to dump the eggs.. after having earlier jokingly prayed to his mom for a way out of breakfast. “Thanks for looking out for me mom” That’s both very sweet and very hilarious. 

This is a change from the comics it turns out as I was utterly flored to find Virgil’s mom alive and well when reading the first issue of Static. Turns out this was a change made during development and one Dwane McDuffie admitted in the interview I got the tribute quote from to not liking as he had a good reason for having Virgil have a nuclear family, as most black families in media at the time were just one single parent and a kid or two with the other having either left or died. He wasn’t too bothered by it as while he preferred what he came up with in the first place, the show DID get some really good stories out of her being gone and didn’t just have her be absent because shut up. Virgil is still working over her death and the way HOW she died ends up playing an important role in this episode and gives Virgil a dislike of guns, as she died to gang violence. So the change wasn’t for stupid or racist reasons, but likely both to keep the character count down while giving them something to work with for storylines. Or it could’ve been for stupid reasons and the writers simpily made lemonade out of that very dumb lemon, either way it ended up working.  Virgil also plans to ask his friend Frieda out. Frieda was a bigger deal in the comics, being Virgil’s friend and confidante as well as his ocasional love intrest, but here while she was inteded to at least be his love intrest here, that sorta fizzled out. As for the best friend role we meet her replacement in Richie, which McDuffie conceded was the kind of change a studio would make swapping out a female character for a male one. That being said the crew made the best of it and Richie is awesome, a bit of an overcompensating dipstick at times, but a good sounding board and pal for virgil and funny as hell too. He was also gay, something only revealed post series by McDuffie.. but unlike say Dumbledore, it’s a bit easier to swallow here: The early 2000′s were an even worse time for gay characters in tv let alone cartoons, and if they couldn’t kiss or have sex scenes on regular tv, there was no way we were getting any representation in a children’s show. So it was largely just hinted at by Richie overcompensating in how “into girls” he was and i’m once again fine with this being word of god as it was literally the best they could do and his counterpart in the comics was also gay, if not as relevant.  Ritch encourages Virgil to work on his opening to ask her out as it’s awkward as heck, hits a bit close to home.. but I do appricate the show just .. having him try and ask her out from the first episode. They likely would’ve drug thigns out a bit granted had they used Frieda more, i’m not blind to the convetions of the time. .but as someone who got the very wrong idea from tv that just waiting around meant a girl would like you eventually, when no you need to actually try even if rejection happens, I honestly wish we had more of this in media than the other garbage morals at the time. 

So he prepares to , not helped by her mentioning guy after guy is asking her out.... but before he can F-Stop, the future hotstreak, shows up.  F-STOP

That being said...... it’s not as bad as the original gangster name for the comic’s version, Biz Money B. Yes BIZ MONEY B

So yeah while F-Stop is no more intimidating, it at least means I can stop laughing. Francis, because I can’t type F-Stop without laughing and this review is already behind, shoves Virgil out of the way and agressively hits on Frieda, even saying “you smell good”, the international sign your a douchebag and also to call the police. Virgil steps up to the guy and gets PAINFULLY slammed into the lockers, something I give the animation team a lot of credit for, as you can FEEL how fucking painful that was. Virgil is saved by Wade, another local gangbanger who in the comics was a close friend of Virgils but here saves him seemingly just because.. seemingly. 

On the way home though Virg’s problems don’t end as naturally, the giant sized asshole with nothing better to do has his goons corner virgil before VIOLENTLY beating him.. off screen but the noises, and the clear brusies including a black eye, on virgil afterwords.. just holy damn i’m suprsied they got away with this but it shows just how horrifing it was and that this is a step above regular bullying, which make no mistake is absoluttley terrible and the series would later do an episode on it and school shootings, into straight up gang violence. Wade shows up again and gets the bastards to flee.. but also makes it clear he can’t keep doing this.. and forces Virgil to meet him at his base under the bridge. And it’s a tense sequence, with Virgil KNOWING this is a bad idea but having no real choice and Wade making it abundantly clear that he wants Virgil to join his crew, and makes a chilling point: while Virgils dad RIGHTFULLY dosen’t want his son to join a gang as Virgil points out.. he can’t be there for him all the time and eventually one of those times, Francis will be around. And he may not surivive that. Virgil nods noncomittaly.  At home it gets even more grim as he dosen’t open up to his family, understandably as his dad would jsut say to call the police and well.. we’ve seen how the police treat black people. At best they’d just try and use Virgil as an informant and that likely wouldn’t end fucking well for Virgil. Ritchie points out he can’t join a gang, virgil’s mom died that way.. see told you it’d be important to the plot.. but I like how the story dosen’t offer an easy answer.. well okay he gets electric powers soon enough but without the fantastic element this is just an innocent kid caught between either joining the very thing his mom hated or hoping a system not built to protect him will keep him alive. It’s utterly saddening and chilling and holy shit is it amazing a cartoon in the early 2000′s was able to get away with.. ANY OF THIS, and they handle it great, paired down a bit from the comics but even then it’s still incredibly balsy they got THIS much in. 

Naturally Wade calls in his favor and our hero is forced to come running.. and soon finds out Wade’s brought him in for a massive gang war. Welcome to the big bang, baby. He hands Virgil a gun as things get started and Virgil.. drops the thing and tries to escape, in a harrowing sequence.. and runs into Francis because god apparently REALLY hates this kid today. As if to prove that the police show up and while that prevents a beating, they demand they disassemble. then release untested gas on them because of course they do. 

As a result the big bang truly begins, with the various gang members getting mutated.. and naturally so does virgil. Though he wakes up the next day seemingly fine. How’d he get home? Does his dad know where he was?

I don’t know and we’re not getting any answers, but Virgil soon finds weird stuff happening like his clock shorting out, change being attracted to him and his razor going wild. It’s only once he get sback to his room he gets an inkling of what’s going on and calls Ritchie to meet him at the Junk yard.. though it is a bit of a dick move as he dosen’t you know, tell him anything about Wade or Francis right away. He does at the yard though.. and that he has powers, having finally figured out how to use them to a point. And the series does provide a decent justification later as to why he’d get this so quickly: Virgil is a smart kid, gets great grades at school and apparnetly there’s even an episode later where he gets a scholarship to a fancy genius school. So him getting how elctromagntisim works or being a quick study on it makes perfect sense. 

Richie suggest the obvious.. to become a superhero. And the thought.. hadn’t occured to Virgil. It’s honestly a nice twist on the old trope. That he hadn’t thought of it, not because he’s selfish or any of that or needs to learn a hard lesson, those have been done.. simply because the rush of getting his powers, and implicitly of having a way out of his current predciament, a way to keep Francis off his back and keep Wade from pulling him in further. His own path. But once i’ts brought up.. he jumps on it. Part of it is being a nerd like you or I, of course he wants to.. and being a good intetioned one, he knows this is the right thing to do. It’s waht makes a superhero a hero: Anyone can get powers in a universe like this, esepcailly the dcau, but it takes true courage and heart to use them selflessly and knowing you’ll be in danger. It’s why I love surperheroes: they often didn’t ask for this but they do it anyway because somebody’s gotta. We also get an intresting wrinkle is superman is, at least I think in this episode I could’ve missed it or misremembered things, mentioned as a fictional character. That’s because originally like the comics this wasn’t part of the DCAU.. but eventually the crew decided it shared staff from it, shared a network, both first run and on reruns, why not just make it part of the DCAU proper. I fully support this decisionf: While i’m midly annoyed unlimited never really used anything from static shock outside of Static himself in the time travel episode, despite you know Static and Gear having BEEN to the tower and not being much younger than Kara and defintely older than Courtney, I chalk it up to weird rights issues or something like that. But having Batman, Batman Beyond, Superman, Green Lantern and the Justice League itself all guest star was a good idea, and expanded both static’s universe and gave the DCAU something differnt as most heroes in it were older and more experinced in contrast to the up and coming virgil. Again really would’ve been nice if he and gear could’ve been a part of the expanded league but production might of just been too far ahead or, given he had his own series, they might just have wanted to stick to toher characters. Also begs the question why Icon or Hardware wasn’t adapted for the expanded League but hey, questions for later and the tricky logisitics of the milestone rights might’ve been the issue. I don’t know I wasn’t in the room. 

So we get a costume montage, including Black Vulcan from Superfriends, who again ironically would be voiced by Lamarr not too long after this, though weirdly they DON’T use his outfit from the comics for this montage. I mean why not? It fits the gag and would’ve been a good second to last choice.But what could’ve been aside we get our winner and cut back to present day...

Thanks boys. Static finds out one of the things in the warehouse is a shipment of computers for the school and can’t help but show off, showing up to the school, where Frieda and Richie are setting up for the dance, and dropping off the computers, and even saying his catchphrase for the first time “I’ll put a shock to your system” (Which Richie chimes in with awesome line and I agree, great catcphrase), before helping set up and flirting with frieda. 

Though as Richtie says he’s a natural. He’s not wrong as he can work a crowd. .but back it up too as his first run out had him easily taking out the crooks, and as many teen superheros and fans of heroes of hte type, myself included will tell you, getting it right in one is not easy. Not even Miles MOrales was immune. All Static needs now is a villian. 

And the end of the episode provides one as we see, in horrifc and once again damn suprising detail most of hte new metas aren’t doing so good and are melting and other stuff and we catch up with Francis whose burning up.. and naturally given that hair, though given he named himself F-Stop it’s the least of his problems, he’s got fire powers and escapes to “Have me some fun”

So with that we end episode 1. And it’s excellent, a great way to introduce the hero and while the warehouse opening is a bit superflous, it is a decent addition, showing our heroes first outing in costume and giving us a bit of an action scene to get us through the very heavy rest of the episode. But the rest of the episode is no less grippping, telling the tale of a teen caught in an unwinnable scenario who suddenly finds a way out. And speaking of which waht of Wade? Will we see him again? Is he perhaps Ebon, the series big bad as I thought when I was a kid? What comes of the man who directly caused static’s origin?

Yeahhh that’s the one mistep I think the pilot makes. Frieda is understandable as that was likely a simple change in creative direction. This though? Why build this guy up if your not going to bring him back. I mean where he went was probably the grave, as he probably did due to his mutation, but it’s still VERY weird to spend a whole episode focusing on this guy, building him up as a big personal threat to our hero.. and NOT have him become the series big bad. And maybe he WAS supposed to be ebon and they just changed their mind. I don’t know but it bothers me it bothers me a lot. Otherwise though flawless. ONe more to go. 

Aftershock: We open outside an electronics store, as our heroes watch the news reacap what happened in the first episode, with the media dubbing it the Big Bang and revealing their could be hundreds of “Metahumans”, as Virgil dubs after deciding the media’s term “Mutant” dosen’t fit, a nice wink to the fact that that’s the term used in dc comics and I believe milestone but could be wrong there. Me I like the term, has a nice ring to it. 

At the store while Richie mulls over waht this means Static finds out he’s a human CD player.... this was before mp3 players and streaming on your phone made them horribly obsolete mind you and if you don’t know what one is congradualtions you live in some sort of bubble and you made me feel really old junior. 

Frieda happens to be there and Virgil quips “What’s the matter they run out of britney cds”. Dude she’s not bad. Also be careful what you wish for man. Nickeback returned the year after this. You have not truly suffered through bad music yet my young friend. They spot a kid looking feverish, and he soon turns into a purple werewolf, as you do. It’s a bang baby.. those are richie’s exact word and you may not want to start a panic there bud. Just saying your best friend is one. THeir not all like this. Our heroes book it only to run into Francis who naturally refuses to let them leave and only doesn’t try to beat up Virgil because Virgil points otu the werewolf and nonplussed, he goes to fight it, scarring it off by revealing his own powers. He’s now dubbed himself Hotstreak which points for getting an actually good name kid. No points for what happens next as unsuprisingly getting powers did NOT mak ehim a better person and he attacks Virgil who blocks with a garbage can lid and thankfully is blasted into an ally. Richie tries to guard frieda for damn obvious reasons but gets hsi shirt burnt up because shut up Thankfully Static shows up, and we get our firsdt full on superhuman fight as both fight each other with aplomb, and it’s a damn good fight.. and one that goes pear shaped for Virg as he’s caught off guard when he finds out Hotstreak can use his powers to fly, and tackles him and his previous trauma causes him to freeze up. Thankfully , as Frieda put in a call earlier, the fire department arrive and HOt streak has to retreat, though Virgil is bummed that he “Choked”. And I love this as it not only shows Virgil’s inepxerince, as this is his first time fighting a bad guy but that just because he HAS power now dosen’t mean trauma and his previous fear of Hotstreak goes away or you won’t freeze up from time to time. It dosen’t make him weak or anything like some assholes would call it .. it makes him human. Humans make mistakes, and it makes him all the more relatable that he’s not pefect and that he did freeze up as I know I certainly would at last once in the circumstances. 

Things don’t get better at dinner as Sharon and Pops argue over the bang babies with Pops calling them a meance and Sharon pointing out Static exists so they can’t all be bad. See assuming a group of superhumans are bad because a handful of them ar edick sis why the x-men had to get their own island nation. You can only save an ungreatful populous so many times before you say “fuck it i’m getting my own island, pay me for life saving drugs, save your damn selves and stop doing genocides on us. Kay thanks”. But he does bring up a valid point that rattles his son: We don’t know anything about the Bang Babies or their biological structures and it’s likely they might further mutate into monsters, Static included. 

Virgil, understandably, wants to check this and thus he and richie compare blood samples in science, to no real conclusion. She he checks out with his doctor who assumes he’s sexually active in a great getting crap past the radar bit and a bit of realisim, but he agrees to the test though if something came up he would have to tell Virgil’s dsad and is up front about this. Nice dose of realisim.

That night City Council has a meeting and the Mayor TRIES to deflect Papa Hawkins questions about the bang babies which again, while being a judgmental ass as not every person hit was a gang member (Virgil, and as we discover later some others), and not every gang member is there by choice, some by circumstnace some, like virgil almost was, because they HAD no other option. Again years of reading x-men may of just made me a bit touchy on assholes admitely assuming superpower people bad. But it’s clear the public is upset and while she says an investigation is underway... Virgil and Richie are not only not convinced, but figure she’s actively covering it up. And unlike everyone else there who probably suspects the same, they can do something about it and tail her.  It’s during this, and cleverly as I didn’t realie till writing this using similar skills to his human cd player act, Virgil listens in and discovers whose behind it: Edwin Alva, whose apparently richer than bill gates and a beloved phinarophist Alva, as it turns out, was actually the arch enemy of Hardware in the comics, taking advantage of the guy in his civiliian idtentiy and thus casuing him to launch a war on the asshole. He does transition into this series well though, being the one behind the gas that caused it and with the mayor agreeing to back off, planning to simply dump the info about the big bang on a disc then destroy everything for now till the heat dies down. Yup sounds like a corprate douchebag. 

Static tails him, finds the lab and infiltrates it, stealing the disc.. but getting caught by Alva’s goon, and trapped in a glass prison, forced to use ALL his power to escape and barely getting out alive, but not before bouncing off alva’s car. Still he now has the proof.. and meanwhile Hotstreak, who I was wrong did get captured, is forced to take pill sbut spits them out once the orderly is gone. Dude.. WHY DIDN’T YOU WATCH HIM. Make sure he swallows that shit especially since, as he has no powers right now and can’t harm you. 

Hotstreak escapes off screen and our heroes discuss the disc before he shows up, and we get a REALLY fucking amazing scene: Virgil ducks into an Alleway and ritchie is worried.. and Virgil disarms him with just one word responses Ritchie: Virg you can’t take him.  Virgil: Gotta. Ritchie: Well at least wait for the fire department Virgil: Can’t.  It’s simpile but it gets the point across: This is his fight, he can’t wait for help, and people need him. And this is what makes a true hero: It’s easy to be a hero when everythings going well.. but it’s the true ones who stick it out against the odds and fight anyway. And he’s going to.  So we get one hell of a fight, though naturally Hotstreak burns up the disc. And I do like this as it dosen’t feel contrived.. yes Static could’ve left it with ritchie.. but he wasn’t thinking in the moment and dind’t really have time to think abotu the disc, only that people were being hurt and he was all they had between them and Hotstreak. It was no choice at all. Still that pisses Virgil off that the last night’s work is now worthless, and he fully charges up and curbstomps francis who retreats into a clearing. Hostreak brags when static follows, as even he’s figured out Static needs to be around metal, as he’s usually on his disc or the street, and in the park there suppodsidly isn’t any. But he’s not THAT smart as Virgil points out two things: one, he hoped to do this on PURPOSE so they wouldn’t be around people and no on e would get hurt and 2).. this is a city, there’s metal everywhere.. and he awesomely and cleverly proves it by unlodging a sewage pipe with his powers and dousing his foe, winning and proving his stuff. I love this solution, it’s a clever spider-man type way to disarm him, using smarts and the einvroment instead of just brute forcing it. Though the sewage part wasn’t intetional our hero still won and gets praise from the people dumb enough to follow the fight. 

However at home Virgil points out it was  Pyrrhic Victory and shows off his smarts by telling the tale behind it, which I didn’t know,because tv tropes didn’t exist yet: king pyrhus fought the romans and WON.. but had so little armies left that he still lost overall. That’s what this feels like to Virgil: he beat hotstreak but any chance at a cure for Bang Babies and Alva going to jail for causing them is gone. His mood does get a boost though as the doctor calls and reveals he’s fine, he just has a bit too much elctrolytes and just needs to lay off teh salt. He celebrates, we get a quick gag and the episode ends

Aftershock is another stellar episoe, giving us Virgil’s first super foe and a personal one at that, while showing some growth. As richie tells him he’s not virgil anymore he’s static and he can’t let his past get to him.. and he does’nt going from cowering in fear to easily beating his foe with simple logic. It’s a good followup that answers questions you may have from the first ep, like what does this do to virgil’s body, who supplied the gas, and why has no one done anything about this, and sets up another villian for Static in Alva. Great stuff. I highly recommend these episodes and the show as a whole: it’s fast paced, grounded and enjoyable, having just enough levity to not be too dour but just enough tension and stakes to be intresting. A throughly fantastic superhero show and one that i’d certainly love to revisit on this blog If you have an episode of static or the dcau in general you’d want me to cover, my comissions are open and details are on a tab on my blog or can be gotten simply by asking me via ask or dm. Tommorow we’re going deeper underground, there’s too much damage in this town as the Lena Retrospective continues. So expect gay ducks, straight ducks and some terrfirmains. See you next rainbow. 

[imagine-darksiders]

Homesick

Chapter 1 - A forgotten arrangement. 

Summary: It’s been two years since you and the Horseman ended your journey together by resurrecting the souls of your fellow humans. Since then, you’ve returned to Earth to build a new life from the ashes of a broken, old house in the city. Death has been to see you there many times, but today is the first day that one of your newer, but no less dear friend, Azrael is accompanying the Horseman for a visit. Together, the two of them arrive at your front door... They aren’t at all prepared for what they find. 

Warning: Assault, bruising, religion, whump, 

Tags: Azrael, Death, Reader, hurt/comfort, angst, parental Azrael, parental Death, protective characters, angels learning about human culture

---

“Death! Over here!”

No sooner has the Horseman stepped out of his swirling portal and emerged onto a busy, city street than he immediately hears a familiar voice calling his name.

Humans of every shape and size skirt around him as they make their way to and fro along the concrete path, some eyeing him suspiciously while others stop and openly gawk. He ignores them all, instead scanning the waves of people breaking around him until finds his quarry.

Azrael, a tall and stately Archangel and Guardian to the Well of Souls, sticks out like a sore thumb amongst the throng of humans, not least because he towers impressively over the heads of every one that passes him by. Feathery wings of blinding white gleam under the midday sun and sway like sail boats on a gentle sea, the tips of his primary feathers sweeping just millimetres above the ground. He lifts one hand to beckon the Horseman over and a long sleeve of teal silk falls down and gathers around his elbow.

Exhaling softly, Death makes his way towards the angel and tries his best not to notice the humans that scurry out of his way as if he'll strike them down should they venture too close. He notes that none of them shy away from Azrael in the same manner. Then again, he can't be too surprised. Azrael is, after all, everything that Death is not.

Charming. Amicable. Incessantly polite... Not to mention his distinct lack of a terrifying bone mask.

It's a wonder he and Death are even on speaking terms, given their differences.

Still, though the Horseman is still loathe to admit it, at least they have a few things in common – one of whom is their reason for meeting here, in the centre of a human city that had once been overrun with demons.

He finally reaches the archangel, who nods in greeting, a smile pushing at his pale cheeks. “There you are, old friend.”

“Azrael.” Death returns the gesture of mutual respect, dipping his head low. The angel may be among the only beings in Creation who'd be privy to such a cordial greeting from the eldest Nephilim. Death tends to be extremely miserly with his respect.

Sweeping a lock of long, white hair over his shoulder, Azrael chuckles and says, “ I was beginning to worry that I'd have to make the journey without you.”

“Have you missed my company that much?” Death teases.

And Azrael - all too accustomed to the Horseman's nature through millennia of practice – replies with a soft, “But of course.”

'...Oh...' Death blinks, taken aback for a moment until he notices the sly grin twitching at Azrael's lips. 'Oh, damn you.'

Even now, after so many years, the archangel knows that he'll always flounder under the same ruse. Hit him with a dose of heartfelt sincerity and the Horseman's tongue sticks straight to the roof of his mouth, every time. It's one of Azrael's favoured ways of throwing him off balance.

Letting out a rough grunt, Death points himself east and begins to march down the street, trusting that the angel will be close on his heels. Naturally, it's only a few seconds before he hears the telltale swish of Azrael's vast wings and a flash of teal sneaks into the corner of his eye.

“You know, I hate it when you do that,” Death grumbles, though he does appreciate that the angel elects to walk, rather than fly. It reminds him of a day, thousands of years ago, when he'd been in the White City on official, Charred Council business. Azrael was the only angel who had lowered himself to the ground, choosing to walk beside Death as an equal. The small yet simple action spoke volumes.

“Oh, I'm well aware,” the archangel hums casually as he follows his companion down a narrow side street that's still quite obviously in the midst of reparations. It may have been almost two years since humanity's resurrection, but there are still little pockets of the city that haven't yet been reached by construction efforts.

The fact that you're living in one such, dilapidated area doesn't sit well with the Horseman.

You were the human who stayed by his side all the way through his journey to clear War's name and bring humanity back from extinction. Hell, you were a large part of the reason why Death had even made it to the Well of Souls in the first place. And you were the one who reconciled him with Azrael,  one of his oldest frie-... allies.

You deserved a better home than the ramshackle, old house you'd settled down in. Although oddly enough, it had been your choice, for reasons unbeknownst to the Horseman. Oh, he tried to convince you to stay somewhere less... built up. Somewhere in the countryside, perhaps. Alya and Valus would have been more than happy to build you a house - all you had to do was ask...

But, you didn't ask.

And now, whenever Death visits you on Earth – an occurrence that seems to be happening more and more frequently of late – he has to pretend not to notice the gaping holes in the walls of your home, the locked door that sits ominously at the end of the first floor landing, the one you never open, no matter how often he came around for a visit. So, he doesn't bring it up, and you don't mentioned it. That's just the way it is.

Across the road, an enormous Phantom Guard perches awkwardly on a too-small bench, chatting away with a human as if the two were old friends. It takes everything in the Horseman to refrain from lurching over there and impaling the demon on Harvester's hungry blade.

Gritting his teeth, Death forces his hand up and off the weapon's handle.  

On his other side, Azrael is graciously trying to wave at every human that passes him by. To their credit, most of them flash him a quick grin in return before continuing on their way, casting backwards glances over a shoulder as if to make certain their eyes aren't deceiving them. While it is commonplace nowadays to see angels amongst the crowds of Earth, it's still exceptionally rare to see one accompanied by a fabled Horseman.

Death can't blame them for staring.

“You know, I must confess,” Azrael pipes up, smiling kindly down at an awestruck child who totters past and gapes up at him whilst her mother drags her along, “The humans have made impressive headway these past few years. Even I was not certain they'd bounce back so well, and in such a short space of time. This metropolis is unrecognisable!”

“It isn't as though they didn't have help,” Death puts and nods pointedly across the street where a woman in a yellow hardhat sits upon the shoulder of her young, maker companion. The odd couple appear to be debating the necessity of adding cement flaunching to a chimney.

“True enough,” Azrael replies, “However, you know as well as I do that their adaptability is unparalleled.”

The Horseman's lips purse and he raises his dark eyebrows, silently concurring with the angel.

He's seen firsthand how swiftly you'd acclimatised to the various realms. Any other species would take at least a century to learn how to live on a different world.

Humans have almost entirely reclaimed their broken, little planet in just two years.

But then, they don't have the luxury of time.

Death quickly shakes his head to clear it and picks up his pace.

Each time he ponders the mortality of humans, he starts to think about you and how you don't even have a century left. Admittedly, he... doesn't like to muse on that.

The Nephilim leads Azrael further down the now barren street until they come to a wall of crumbling brick, stretched around the perimeter of a building and broken up by a small, wooden gate.

“Well, I must admit, Azrael, you're right about their adaptability,” he mutters, drawing to a halt and staring up at the house that lays beyond the barrier, “Some humans will learn to live just about anywhere, if they have to.”

The angel drifts up next to him and follows his gaze, eyes growing large. “Is this-?”

“-Y/n's home.”

Azrael hesitates for several, long seconds whilst he inspects the place. Then, he utters a small, soft, “Oh.”

“Disappointed?”

“No, no. Not in the least. It's just...” Azrael trails off.

Snorting, Death risks a pat on the angel's silken sleeve. “It isn't what you expected.”

“...No. It isn't.”

Pulling his lips into a thin line, the Horseman allows his hand to slide off Azrael's arm and murmurs, “Join the club.”

Ahead of them sits an old, two storey house in a sorry state of disrepair. Shingles on the roof have come loose and fallen down into the overgrown lawn. An entire section of wall is missing from the upper floor and a large, blue tarp has been nailed haphazardly to the rafters and stretched down so that it covers up the hole. The white, exterior paint is stained nearly black with soot and a pair of window shutters creak ominously in the gentle breeze.

All in all, the whole place is utterly wretched, even by Death's standards.

He pushes at the garden gate and it swings open with a hideous screech as the hinges protest against years of rust.

“Y/n told me that'd be fixed the next time I came around,” he grumbles to himself, slinking through and stalking towards your door whilst Azrael glides slowly up the path behind him.

“Horseman?” he calls in a hushed tone as Death reaches the front steps, “You're quite certain this is the right house?”

“Given that I've found our young friend lurking within each time I've visited in the past,” the old Nephilim snaps, “Yes, I'm quite certain this is the right house.”  

Azrael's jaw clenches but he doesn't admonish Death for the decidedly curt response. “Apologies. I would never think to judge your sense of direction, old friend,” he says instead and notices that the Horseman's shoulders relax a fraction, “This just isn't what I had pictured.”

'Of course it isn't,' Death wants to scoff.

Like Azrael, he'd been picturing something different as well upon his first arrival to your home.

---

Tiny, spring flowers grow stubbornly through cracks in the pavement and refuse to wilt even as Death's shadow passes over them. He stalks up to the wooden gate, certain that he's got it wrong, that you've given him false directions on purpose as a practical joke. You can't live here - in this  old house without windows that remind him of a dead thing that's had it's eyes pecked out, with foundations only held upright by a lifetime of memories that refuse to let it collapse into ruin.

Despite everything the Universe threw your way, you - a feeble, fragile human with no real talent for survival - managed to wade through it all and come out the other side to save your species and help Death clear his brother's name.

You are a hero, deserving of a kinder, prettier ending than this.

He half turns, ready to stride back through the gate and out in search of your real home.

Then, a voice calls his name from the shoddy, white door that opens inwards to reveal a familiar face.

You're smiling down at him through red-tinted eyes. “Welcome to my humble abode!” you chirp.

Death doesn't smile back.

---

The Horseman's shaggy, black hair falls over his eyes as he lowers his head, frowning at the memory and avoiding his companion's curious gaze. If even he thinks your home is tragic, then he can only guess as to what the archangel must think. Azrael, while not at all ostentatious like many of his fellow angels, is at least used to a certain degree of grandeur.

Twisting his neck around to level a strict glare at the Old One again, Death says, “The human has been looking forward to your visit ever since arranging it last month. So, try not to let your disdain show, hmm?”

At that, the angel actually bristles and Death is satisfied to see that he can still get under Azrael's skin. “I'll have you know that I too have eagerly awaited seeing my young friend again,” he says coolly, “And I would never look upon anything of Y/n's with contempt.”

The insinuation that he would ever cause you insult or injury is an abhorrent idea to him. It had been you who stood before your own people and spoke in the archangel's defense after he was tried by the Council of Angels, who reasoned that his fate ought to be decided by the human race. They were, after all, the wounded party thanks to his involvement with the Destroyer. Death had never seen your tongue shine as silver as it had in that moment. 'Compulsory community service,' you said was an apt punishment. Even War was on board. Azrael was to help rebuild that which Abaddon had torn asunder.

The Council of Angels agreed, albeit begrudgingly, and humanity took a vote.

Thanks to you, the archangel was spared from Oblivion and Death was spared the grim duty of dragging him there himself.

Azrael has been besotted with you ever since.

Behind his mask, the Horseman's sharp, golden eyes soften around their edges. “I'm glad to hear it,” he murmurs, voice low and quiet.

Azrael is taken aback, realising that the grim and ornery Nephilim is apparently even trying to protect you from hurt feelings. Slowly, his eyebrows lift and his lips give an enigmatic quirk.

Seeing the angel's expression turn smug, Death's eyes snap back to their prior ferocity and he grumbles under his breath, earning a bright laugh from his angelic ally.

Deciding that they've wasted enough time dawdling on your front step, the Horseman reaches out and touches a few of his finger tips to the brass doorknob.

“Hold on. Aren't you going to knock first?”

Death pauses with his fist halfway closed around the knob and glances sideways at Azrael, a brow quirked underneath his bone mask. In as deadpan a tone as he can muster, he asks, “What?”

A moment later, he finds himself wishing he'd ignored his companion and just strolled on into your home.

Now, Azrael has that look on his face. The look that always serves as a prelude to some kind of lecture, or lesson. “Oh, here we go,” the Horseman mutters to himself.

“If I am not mistaken,” Azrael begins, “It is customary among humans that, before one crosses the threshold of a home, one must first announce one's arrival by knocking... or ringing, as I heard it.”

Death's eyes roll up towards the sky and he expels a rough breath. “It's Y/n,” he says deliberately, as if Azrael is missing a vital point, “We can just... go in.”

“But...” The archangel's frosty eyebrows draw together and Death just knows he's perturbed at the very idea of disrespecting you by failing to follow an 'Earth custom.' It's yet another quirk of the angel's that Death has never quite understood, but always admired - that unparalleled need to be polite.

Letting out a resigned sigh, the Horseman steps away from your door and gestures towards it with a flippant wave of his hand. “Fine. Would one care to do the honours?”

If Azrael notices he's being mocked, he doesn't show it. In an instant, the angel perks up, his pale eyes shining and the feathers on his wings lifting slightly off the bone. Death suddenly has the sneaking suspicion he'd been waiting for that question since they arrived.

“Oh, may I?”

Despite himself, the Horseman's lips try to quirk up at the corners.

Ever since his pardoning, Azrael's avid fascination with humans and their culture had flourished. After it was decreed that other species would be allowed to interact with them, the archangel had begun to inhale information at a frankly alarming rate. There wasn't a human alive who was safe from his persistent questions.

'Reading about them is one thing,' he told the Horseman once, 'But first hand experience is quite another!'

It has been.... a long time since Death last saw Azrael so happy.

With an amused shake of his head, the Horseman juts his chin at your door and Heaven's greatest scholar wastes no time moving in and lifting a slender finger towards the button you've helpfully labelled 'bell.'

For a few seconds, he merely stands there, cocking his head at the doorbell as if he were trying to work out an intricate puzzle before eventually, he glances back at the Horseman and asks, “How long do you suppose I should press it for?”

Death's face falls flat. “Azrael-”

“I've heard about these, of course. But I've never actually... What if I break it?”

“I'm sure it'll be fine,” the Nephilim huffs noisily, “However, if you hesitate much longer, Y/n will think we aren't coming at all.”

At the mention of tardiness, Azrael blinks widely and presses his fingertip to the bell at once, jolting backwards when a long, tuneful chime rings out from somewhere beyond the door.

“What a remarkable contraption!” he exclaims, casting his eyes over to check whether Death is as impressed as he is.

Death is not.

Just then, the pair of them lift their heads up at the sound of hurried footsteps approaching from the other side of your home's entrance and a muffled “Sorry, sorry! I'll be right there!”

As soon as he hears your familiar voice, Death subconsciously unclenches his jaw and some of the rigidity drains out of his shoulders. Hardly any time at all has passed since he last saw you and yet, much to his own surprise and frustration, he finds he's actually missed you.  

Saving the Earth and Humanity presented an outcome that he'd fully expected, but in the end, had never really wanted. You… left. You returned to the Earth to help your people, and although Death knew it had to happen eventually, he couldn't seem to shake away the melancholy fog that draped itself over his shoulders once you were gone. He should have felt relief, really. The ordeal was over. His brother was safe and the Charred Council destroyed.

Yet at the furthest corner of his mind, a gentle grief existed, bearing your name.

The Horseman hadn't ever missed anyone before you, and thus the feeling was as foreign as it was unsettling. He even thought he must have surely come down with some, strange affliction and ended up taking the matter to Azrael, not least for the fact that he trusted the archangel enough to keep tight-lipped about it. What he hadn't expected, however, was for the angel to let out an uncharacteristically sharp bark of laughter, spend a moment composing himself before finally smiling down at Death and informing him, 'It's not an affliction that can be cured. You simply miss your friend.'

Evidently so, given that he'd actually – dare he say – looked forward to this visit ever since you arranged it over a month ago.

'Creator,' he smirks wryly to himself as your door handle begins to turn, 'I'm far too old to be getting so soft...'

Beside him, Azrael watches the door with a smile blooming across his angular features. Unlike his grim companion, the angel isn't sheepish about his eagerness to see you again.

The door begins to swing open and for just a second, they're treated to a brief glimpse of you, half cloaked in the shadow cast by your door.

Then, without warning, your eyes bulge from their sockets and you let out a yelp of alarm, slamming the door shut once again before either of them can open their mouths and offer you a greeting. Several, long instances trickle by in which Death and the archangel merely blink at the entrance, neither entirely sure how they ought to proceed.

After wallowing in silence for a while more, the Horseman asks, “Did you read anything about human customs that might have mentioned that?”

When he garners no response, he tips his head up to peer at Azrael. Something in his stomach twists when he catches the angel's expression.

“Horseman,” he mutters carefully, turning an uneasy look onto Death, “Did you see Y/n's face?”

A shadow falls over the Nephilim's eyes but before he can reply, a tiny voice slips underneath the threshold.

“Shit! I didn't realise it was you! I wouldn't have opened -... What are you guys doing here!?”

Now, Death's timekeeping skills may not be anything to brag about. However, he's fairly certain that Azrael's are impeccably reliable. The angel wouldn't – couldn't! - have gotten the day wrong.

“Perhaps it's my old age,” Death hums sardonically, “But I could have sworn you were the one who asked us here.”

“...Was... that today?” There's a pause. Then, they hear a muffled, “Dammit...”

Azrael can't help himself. He moves closer to the door and places his palm delicately against the wood. “Y/n?” he calls, “Please, I must insist you let us in.”

Death doesn't possess a working pulse, but there's something under his skin that starts to throb with agitation at the worry in Azrael's tone.

“What's wrong?” he hisses at the angel.

Your stammered, 'N-nothing's wrong!” is lost beneath Azrael's urgent reply.

“I think Y/n's been hurt.”

Be it by intuition or sheer luck, you at least had the wit to back away from your front door, because not a second after you heard Azrael's frustratingly on point assumption, the entire thing buckles and explodes inwards with an almighty crash. It ricochets off the wall and would have probably swung shut again if Death hadn't suddenly come storming through it with Azrael keeping close to his heels.

You stand shocked in your cramped little hallway, feet glued to the carpet as the Horseman turns a raging glare on you.

The moment he sees you however, he freezes in his tracks.

Quick as a flash, one of your hands flies up to cover the left side of your face in a last ditch attempt to hide what Death has, unfortunately, already seen.

Even beneath your trembling fingers, it's hard to miss the vivid, purpling bruise that sits like an incriminating badge upon your eye. The delicate skin around it is swollen and puffed up, sealing your eyelids almost all the way shut, though a tiny sliver of iris still manages to poke stubbornly through the mess. And it really is a mess. The very edges of your bruise have begun to turn green, though the area directly over your eye remains an angry red, akin to the colour of War's cape.

You must have realised that trying to cover the damage is pointless because you defeatedly lower your hands and wring them nervously into your shirt, just to give them something to do.

The two, immortal beings in front of you remain still as statues, one with his mouth hanging open slightly, aghast, whereas the other's face is hidden by a mask of bone. You can still see his eyes though – see the storm swirling inside that golden and orange glare.

Nervously wetting your lips, you manage to draw in a breath and shakily release it. “H-Hello, Death. Azrael.”

The sound of your voice snaps the angel from his stupor first and he takes a glance at the expression on your face, rather than the bruise.

Round eyes – eye. Mouth hanging ajar and moving around words that refuse to come. Fingers twisting knots into your clothes.

You look absolutely terrified.

Covering his mouth with a hand, Azrael shakes his head slowly from side to side, looking concernedly like he's seconds away from throwing up, were that even possible given his species. The Horseman shares his companion's mounting horror, a horror that is fast turning into burning, boiling rage.

Death can't blink, he can barely even speak.

The swiftly-building, cold wave of anger crashes into his chest, yet it battles valiantly with another emotion for total dominion and Death isn't so dim that he doesn't recognise fear when he feels it so suddenly, and with no time to try and suppress it.

Not a sound betrays his movements as he steps towards you, hand outstretched and a heavy weight settling like lead in his chest because, Creator, that's – that's Y/n! That's his human, that's his friend!

He must have moved too quickly, for your good eye zeroes in on his approaching hand and you gulp loudly enough to be heard over the gentle swishing of Azrael's wings on the carpet. You don't mean to – it isn't Death you're really afraid of – but you still flinch, and that little motion hits the Horseman harder than any physical blow you could have dealt him. He doesn't stop though, instead he chases you backwards until he's near enough to slide his fingers around your wrist, preventing you from backing up even further. With no other choice, you stop and peer up at the Horseman through damp, glistening eyelashes.

Azrael is at your side a second later, although he at least isn't remaining eerily silent like Death, who exudes the same, ominous energy as the calm before a thunderstorm.

“Y/n! What in Heaven's name happened to you!?” he demands, his composure slipping away to reveal the frantic angel underneath, “Does it hurt!? Are you in pain !?”

His questions come far too rapidly and you flounder for a few seconds, opening and closing your mouth in the world's best impression of a helpless goldfish before Death abruptly hisses out a single word. Only one, but it's icy and sinister enough to silence Azrael and send a shudder through your soul.

“Who?”

All around you, the house seems to tremble with the tumultuous power behind his voice.

The grip on your wrist remains gentle yet sturdy and you know him well enough by now to understand that you won't be released until he gets an answer.

Resigned to your fate, you breath out a long, tired sigh and let your wrist go floppy in his grasp.

“It's.... a long story. Come on, I'll... I guess I'll fill you in while I get an ice pack.”

It's clear that Death's ire isn't going to recede, even with your acquiescence, but Azrael rests a gentle hand on his shoulder and after glaring at your black eye for a moment longer, the Horseman reluctantly peels his fingers away from your wrist.

Heaving a second, wearier sigh, you turn around and beckon for them to follow you down the hallway and into your kitchen.

It's a strange feeling, to have both a Nephilim and an archangel at your back, the two of them far too large to get through your doorways without having to turn slightly to one side, or fold vast, white wings nearly in half. You'd grown used to walking at Death's side, and even later, at Azrael's, following him around the White City like a starstruck toddler as he showed you all the things your species had never been privy to before.

You've never had both of them in your home, not together.

The kitchen is small and nondescript, the walls a simple, faded yellow with a small window sitting above the sink and an island dominating the centre of the room. In one corner stands a cream-coloured fridge, and it, unlike the rest of the room, has been plastered from top to bottom with polaroids and photographs, each placed with a degree of care that indicates their sentimental value. Ambling over to the fridge, you flap a hand and the stools that have been placed haphazardly around your granite island. “Have a seat,” you offer, hardly surprised when you don't hear a scrape of metal on the stone floor. Glancing back over a shoulder, you find they're both standing rigidly behind you, neither removing their gazes from the bruise on your eye.

It's a shame.

You know how badly Azrael had been looking forward to getting a real, hands-on tour of a human home. But now it seems he can't look at anything if it isn't you. The guilt sits heavy in your chest and with it, an ounce of embarrassment, not only for being caught by your two, otherworldly friends in this condition, but also for the state of your home.

You can't believe you'd forgotten they were coming today. If you'd only remembered, you could have snuck out the back door and hidden in the garden and you certainly wouldn't have a pair of slightly overdramatic immortals hovering in your kitchen right now like tightly-coiled springs, impatient to hear the tale of your injury.

As if on cue, Death, always the more restless of the duo, clears his throat rather sharply, causing you to snap out of your thoughts. Rolling your eyes, you grab the fridge door and yank it open, bending to dig around in the freezer space for a bag of peas.

“Okay,” you say at last, standing to bump the door closed with a hip before slapping the cold vegetables against your bad eye, “First of all – this isn't as bad as it looks, all right?”

It surprises you that Azrael beats Death to a skeptical snort, though the Horseman's is soon to follow.

Ignoring their doubt, you shuffle over to the island and use your free hand to drag a stool out, hopping up onto it and draping yourself heavily over the cool granite, giving a little sigh when the bag of peas finally begins to numb the pain of your black eye. “Secondly,” you add, shooting a look at the Horseman, “I don't know the people who did this and probably couldn't even recognise them now, so don't bother.” You don't even need to elaborate on what he shouldn't bother with. You know full well why the only word he's said to you so far has been 'who?'

Meanwhile, Azrael's slender fingers have curled into fists on top of the island, bone showing clear through the thinner skin of his knuckles. Aggression doesn't suit him, you note.

“Might you be able to tell us why this happened to you, then?” he implores.

From the corner of your good eye, you see Death stand a little straighter.

Exhaling softly, you lower your gaze to study the grey surface of the island, incapable of meeting their stares.

“So, you know how some humans are... let's say, more religious than others?”

The angel nods and you continue, “Well, some people didn't like the idea that what they believed in was being challenged by... you know, the truth. Anyway, a couple of zealots must have recognised me outside that park up near Tenth Street and came over, started shouting. They seemed to think the Apocalypse was 'God's plan,' and in helping Death bring humanity back from the Well of Souls, I essentially cheated them out of an eternity in Heaven.”

“But-” Azrael looks appalled. “- But surely they understand it doesn't work like that? They must have seen the... the...” Pausing, he places a finger on his chin, frowning thoughtfully. “Oh dear. What did you call it again?”

“Broadcast,” you can't help but smile.

Watching Azrael and Jamaerah try to fathom the intricacies of live television was a day you won't soon forget. Azrael kept getting far too close to the camera to try and see the 'audience' inside it and Jamaerah couldn't grasp how every single human on Earth could possibly hear the same message at the same time. The poor news producer had her work cut out for her that day. Still, the message had eventually gotten out, and those who didn't yet have a working television heard it quickly through word of mouth.

Soon, the whole world knew the story of the End War, of the Horsemen, of Heaven and Hell and the realms in between. And, they learned of you and your involvement. The news had, of course, sparked some vicious debate amongst the masses. But in the end, everyone came to accept the truth. It was hard not to, with undeniable evidence of Heaven's existence speaking directly to them. Everyone remembered too, the initial awakening, when the world gasped for breath at the exact same time as soul and body fused back together and people were wracked for just a moment by the phantom memory of unimaginable pain.

The world descended into chaos all over again. It had taken the better part of a year to reestablish global communications and get word out, helped along by Earth's new neighbours.

However, there were still those who would not – or perhaps could not – accept the truth of what had happened. Some such people are the very reason you're sitting at your kitchen island with a frozen bag of vegetables pressed over one eye.

Grimacing, you remove the peas, setting them down in front of you and glancing up to find that Azrael's pale eyes are still regarding you expectantly.

“Everybody got the message,” you shrug, “but then, some people believe in their ideas so strongly, not even solid proof will change their minds.”

“So. What. Happened?” The question comes from Death, his voice is pulled taut and strained as if he's deliberately trying to fight the urge to shout.

Snorting, you reply, “What? It isn't obvious? I tried to walk away, one of them grabbed me from behind and the other one took a swing.”

From across the island, Azrael's wings seem to double in size as the stark, white feathers rustle and distend outwards, giving him a dishevelled appearance not at all in keeping with his neat and tidy demeanour. Similarly, Death spits something in Nephilim that you don't need a translation for. Something tells you it isn't polite. Sucking in a calming breath, he bites out, “And.. When did this happen, exactly?”

“Um... earlier today. They only got the one hit in before they were chased off,” you assure him before leaning forwards and resting an elbow on the island, sending the Horseman a secretive smirk. “And you'll never guess who by.”

That, at least, distracts them both from their seething.

“Y/n,” Death sneers, “I am in no mood for guessing games. Who do I have to thank for saving the majority of my charge's face?”

“I'm not your charge anymore, Death,” you remind him, though you can't deny the warm feeling settling in your stomach at the thought that he still sees you as such, “and you're probably not gonna like who you have to thank.” You pause for nothing more than dramatic effect and you can practically see the vein in Death's neck bulge. He hates it when you do that.

Still, you suppose you've garnered enough intrigue, so you sit back, reapply the frozen peas to your face and simply tell them, “Vulgrim.”

A sudden chill sweeps down the back of your neck as Death's hands clench into tight fists at his sides. “Vulgrim,” he growls, “What is that little wretch doing so close to your home?”

“The awful merchant?” Azrael asks, a hand flying to his chest.

“The very same.”

You lift your shoulders in a shrug, arguing, “He's not so bad.”

“Y/n,” the Horseman replies, deadpan, “He's one of the most insidious, conniving little snakes in all Nine Circles of Hell. He's never known to do anyone a favour.” He spits the word like it's dirty.

It isn't as if you don't already know of Vulgrim's unsavoury practices. Which is why you find it odd that you're even bothering to defend him at all, but the fact remains, he did help you.

“Well, he certainly just did me a favour,” you declare, “Came shooting out of one of his serpent holes and threatened to eat those people's souls. They didn't stick around for long after that.”

Both angel and Horseman exchange a look.

Rolling your eyes, you add, “Look, I'm not denying it was weird. I almost thought he was a completely different demon at first. But don't worry, I'm totally fine.”

No response.

You can tell there's some kind of unspoken conversation going on between the pair of them and that you aren't really being listened to at all.

Huh. Vexing.

At last, Azrael's eyes flicker over to you and he spots the furrow of your brows. Clearing his throat, he puts on one of those gentle smiles that, in your humble opinion, fits him far better than the worried expression he's been wearing since his arrival. “With all due respect, my dear,” he says, “I'm not sure that 'fine' is how I'd put it. But, the important thing is that you're safe now.”

“Yes,” Death hums softly, “Now.”

You instantly catch the emphasis he puts on the word and let out a groan. “Oh, don't start using that tone.”

“What tone?”

“That tone!” You flap a hand at the Horseman's mask. “You had the same one when I said I was going back to Earth the first time! Listen, I'm – Azrael, don't give me that look, I just said not to worry.”

The angel jerks his gaze to the side again.

Turning back to Death, you press your lips together and inhale deeply through your nose. “I'm going to be fine. This was just one of those things. Besides, I went through way worse when I travelled with you!”

The Horseman's insides twist up at the reminder. You certainly have been through worse than a black eye, that much is true. Somehow though, that doesn't make him feel any less perturbed by this new attack on his youngest friend.

All three of you lapse into silence then,

“Sorry, Azrael,” you sigh, peering up through your lashes at the tall archangel, “This isn't how I hoped your first visit to my home would go...”

“It isn't your home that I was most eager to see,” he murmurs in that Azrael sort of way that makes your stomach buzz with warmth, “I came here to see you, Y/n.”

Biting back an 'aaw,' you hide your smile behind a hand and groan exaggeratedly, “Oh wow, has he always been this cheesy, Death?”

“For the sake of his pride, I'm going to tell you 'no.'”

Bewildered, the angel glances between the two of you, aware that he's being made fun of, but uncertain as to how. “I'm afraid I don't understand,” he says above your snickering, “How can one share the attributes of a human food item?”

His confusion only makes you laugh harder until the cheek beneath your black eye begins to throb and you're forced to quiet down. “Wow, I still have so much to teach you about humans.”

“Well,” he beams, eyes shining, “I am very keen to learn.”

As the amusement fades and your chuckles taper off into silence once more, you breathe a long sigh, smile gradually diminishing when you realise they're both staring at you again. Azrael's lips may be tilted in the corners, yet palpable concern still manages to shine through the facade. You can't bear having them look at you like that. Death is subtler, but you can tell from the way his fingernails dig cruelly into the palms of his hands that the Horseman is just barely staving off his temper. You need a distraction, and you need it now.

“In that case...” You slide off the stool and let your peas fall back down onto the island with a wet 'smack!' “What are we waiting for? I haven't lost a leg, have I? I can still show you around.”

“Are you sure you're up to that?” the angel asks, furrowing his snowy brows even further, “I believe it would be better if you rested.”

“What? Because of this?” You point at your black eye and try to grin up at him reassuringly despite how it makes the left side of your face throb, “Eh, it's just superficial damage. Now, come on! I promised you a tour, and I'm gonna give you one! I tidied my room and everything!”

The angel is about to protest, about to insist that you sit quietly and keep your head still. Then, you're smiling up at him with a face full of hope and youthful excitement and suddenly, he can't find it in him to say no.

“Very well,” he concedes with a delicate bow of his head and extends his arm, sweeping it out towards you, “Lead on, my friend.”

He doesn't expect you to reach out and grab a hold of his hand with your own and tug him out of the kitchen, chirping, “Let's go! I have like, a million things to show you! Death's already seen the whole house but I've got some more stuff done since he came here last....”

Back in the kitchen, Death's arms lay folded across his chest and he gazes after you and Azrael with a smile on his lips that threatens to turn fond if he doesn't keep it in check. He knows the angel well and if he could hazard a guess, he'd say Azrael is still getting used to human mannerisms. Other angels don't typically go around grabbing hands, after all. But judging by the delighted smile the archangel tosses at him over a shoulder, Death imagines he doesn't mind a single bit.

He still remembers the first time you'd taken his hand.

You'd been so afraid, deep in the bowels of the Psychameron, faced by an all-consuming darkness and Basileus's monstrous pet, Achidna. The darkness wasn't an old friend to you, as it was to Death. Your tiny hand had slipped into his and you wrapped it as far as you could around the length of his palm and fingers, never minding the chill that swept through your bones as it did every time you came into contact with him. There is some truth to the rumours of Death's pernicious touch, after all. Contrarily, your fingers against his skin were warm and small and he twisted his head around to look at you. Your complexion had been turned a pasty green in the light cast by the souls residing upon his chest.

Creator, you had looked so much like a frightened child.

Then, you had given Death's hand a squeeze and sent him toppling over a precipice.

For so long, he'd walked a delicate line between showing that he cares and keeping you at arms length. It, may not have been the first time he cared for another, but there in Achidna's dark cave was the first time the eldest Nephilim wasn't afraid of caring.

He wondered briefly is that was the reason humans were so feared by the Charred Council and by a lot of Creation. If a single human could humble even the most depraved being in existence with the tender warmth of friendship, then what chance did the rest of Creation have?

If Death knows Azrael half as well as he thinks he does, the angel is probably being hit by a similar tenderness right now.

As your voice retreats further down the hallway, Death shoves himself up and off the island with a grunt and traipses lazily after you. Each step he takes, he battles the urge to storm out into the city beyond and reap vengeance from every last human who's hands are still slick with your blood.

[letterboxd]

How I Letterboxd #12: Joe Lynch.

Self-described cinedork and Mayhem filmmaker Joe Lynch tells Horrorville’s Brett Petersel about cinematic sausage, getting to direct Creepshow episodes and being a three-star starter on Letterboxd.

“Even when I watch what I would think is a real stinker, I also consider that there were many people involved in that film who didn’t walk on set going ‘okay people, let’s screw this up today!’” —Joe Lynch

It is always a pleasure to find film directors lurking on Letterboxd. Joe Lynch is a bona fide, OG member, having racked up more than 1,500 diary entries, giving half-star reviews to his own work, and creating lists of the movies that have influenced the making of his films.

There are the films that were in Lynch’s subconscious when he made Mayhem, a workplace splatter led by Steven Yeun and Samara Weaving. There are the movies he watched while researching the Salma Hayek-starring Everly. And this just in: films that influenced The Right Snuff, one of Lynch’s two episodes for the new Creepshow series—based on the 1982 horror-comedy classic and its sequels—which premieres on Shudder April 15.

Like so many of us, Lynch took time during the pandemic to catch up on films he had neglected to watch in spite of a previous career as a video-store clerk (a Criterion Channel subscription helped him get on top of the backlog). In this edition of ‘How I Letterboxd’, Lynch discusses how those classics have informed his craft, who his Letterboxd faves are, and why the horror genre is the future of the industry.

Steven Yeun and Samara Weaving in Joe Lynch’s ‘Mayhem’ (2017).

How long have you been on Letterboxd? Joe Lynch: I remember when Letterboxd was in its beta phase way back in good ol’ 2012 and I couldn’t wait to sign up, breathlessly waiting for an invite to the party. At the time, I had a digital database where I would log movies I’ve seen, but it was always subject to whatever laptop or device I had handy and would just be a mess of titles with no rhyme or reason.

When a member follows you, what should they expect? I put it right up top in my description: “I am not a critic”, just a lover of cinema. At first I didn’t want to write “reviews” in the description, especially since I first started using the service whilst in the throes of a horrible experience making a film that I thought would bury me and I’d never work again. I was like, and I still feel this way, “who am I to rip on a movie when someone can throw it right back at me? Like ‘dude, you directed Knights of Badassdom, sit down’.”

I’ve always had the highest regard for filmmakers who can get anything made. So even when I watch what I would think is a real stinker, I also consider that there were many people involved in that film who didn’t walk on set going “okay people, let’s screw this up today!” but instead were trying their best and circumstances just got in the way, which always happens. Having made a few films and TV now, I’m fully aware of the trials and tribulations that go into making a movie and have all the respect in the world for anyone who can steer that ship to completion. It’s hard making movies and even harder making one that is your original vision [and] that is widely embraced by an audience.

I have very weird tastes so don’t be shocked if you glance at my recent activity and you see Casablanca, The Silence of the Lambs or Bigger Than Life right next to The Legend of Billie Jean, Con Air or Candyman 3. I’m usually bouncing all over the place in terms of what kinds of movies I’m screening. From films recommended to me, to films that I may be watching for research, or even just how I’m feeling that day and maybe need a good laugh or a good cry or to be scared stiff. I like that kind of variety. There’s something out there for everyone and every emotion. If anything, I’d say expect the unexpected when it comes to my viewing habits.

What’s your favorite feature to use and why? One of the residual effects of working at video stores as a kid was my desire to siphon people’s tastes in movies and possibly recommend films to others as well, so my favorite feature is the ease of use in logging films and being able to quickly recall those films as well in the event someone asks me “what’s something I should watch?”. Getting older, the “employee’s picks” in my head is getting a little harder to cross-reference than usual so to have the ability to whip out my phone and say “oh man, I just watched Possession and it was awesome!” is exponentially helpful to a cinedork like myself.

‘Big Trouble in Little China’ (1986)—a five-star film says Joe Lynch.

How do you rate the films you watch? For example, what type of film is worthy of a five-star review? Funny, I always start out on three-stars mainly because I’m so proud of the filmmakers actually getting it completed! I’ve been there! I’m somewhat biased in my reflections because I’m always rooting for the artists and from there, it’s usually gauged on both an emotional level and a technical level. I always get made fun of while watching movies because I can point out hidden cuts or when a shot is reversed but [I’m] not trying to point out flaws, it's just how my brain is wired at this point. When you pull the curtain back enough to see how the cinematic sausage is made, it's harder and harder to objectively watch a movie without trying to dissect how it was done. I try so hard to shut that part of my brain off to just passively enjoy a movie but it’s tough. I usually skew towards the positive.

The films I’ve given five-stars are movies that have continually affected me over the years and have inspired me as a person and a filmmaker, which is everything from The Empire Strikes Back, Dawn of the Dead and When Harry Met Sally... to Big Trouble in Little China, The Blob, The Last of the Mohicans. I looked back at my five-stars and it’s mostly movies that made a significant impression on me from an early age and continue to do so, maybe even more so as I get older and I view these movies in a different light.

The anthology show Creepshow returns to Shudder this month. Tell us about the two episodes you directed for the series, ‘Pipe Screams’ and ‘The Right Snuff’. Both Creepshow and Creepshow 2 were important films in my youth and even today, they were some of the first movies I remember where I wasn’t quite sure if I was supposed to be scared or laugh. These films proclaimed we could do both! As a disciple of George A. Romero, Stephen King and Tom Savini, Creepshow really shaped how I watched movies and how I made them—consider the anthology I did a few years back, Chillerama, as a prime example. So when Shudder announced the show, I had to do everything on my part to convince them I could take the baton from these masters of the macabre and do them and the many fans proud.

To come to the table and say “I want ‘The Right Snuff’ to feel like 2001: A Space Odyssey crashed into The Andromeda Strain, and ‘Pipe Screams’ is my homage to The Blob and Delicatessen”—and then everyone just immediately getting it—was a dream. Between the casts I was lucky enough to work with and the amazing crew, especially the FX geniuses at KNB, it really was one of those dream jobs I’ll never forget. I hope audiences dig the madness we conjured up on those!

Season 2 of the Shudder series ‘Creepshow’ returns to the horror streamer this month. A third season has been ordered.

If you were to expand the Mayhem universe, what would it look like? We tried! I pitched the producers the idea of the ID-7 virus in other locations and situations because in essence the idea of being uninhibited by mental and emotional constraints is so ripe. My favorite was the idea that it would get loose in a Wal-Mart or a mall on Black Friday when consumers swarm to these department stores for the best deals. You’ve seen the videos, it’s just mass hysteria. The footage already out there would have been perfect to use already and those people aren’t even infected!

Sadly it didn’t come to pass, mainly because they asked “how do we get Steven and Samara back?” and I didn’t want to force those characters into that scenario, Die Hard 2 style. Plus they’re both huge stars now and likely unavailable for the next twelve years. But the ideas people have thrown out to me show that it was impactful enough to warrant variant scenarios in a “what if?” way that’s really exciting. Who knows, maybe the ID-7 virus could find its way onto the set of a movie production…

What excites you about the future of filmmaking, especially in horror films? The world is embracing new faces and voices more than ever and it means we’re getting stories that may not have ever had the chance to flourish and be seen and heard before. For the longest time the system was much more rigid because executives and producers thought that the audience was much less accepting of a wider world view in cinema and I think the last ten years has proven them wrong. There shouldn’t be any more “token” character or “strong [insert non-white-male] character” descriptions in development meetings. I hear it less and less, which is great because that’s not our world and since cinema—especially horror—is and always should be a reflection of our culture and times, it should reflect these evolutions as well.

When I made Wrong Turn 2: Dead End, the discussions over how one of the characters—a Black character played by Texas Battle—survived at the end was not in the original script but I pushed for it mainly because it was rare for the Black character to do so in a horror film. That shouldn’t be an anomaly! Why can’t there be a ‘final guy’ or have the survivors be LGBT+ or a POC and not the usual stereotypes?

I think now it’s more commonplace to see this and it excites me for the future of the genre that artists are being more welcome to express themselves without it feeling like it’s a gimmick or a twist on the norm.

I think generations of kids growing up with horror now are gonna see these strides in the storytelling—and who’s telling the stories—and push it even further. Places like Netflix and Shudder are willing to take chances with new voices more than the studio system, now more than ever, and that’s only going to produce some great stories now and in the future.

Erica Leehrsen and Texas Battle in a scene from ‘Wrong Turn 2: Dead End’ (2007).

How has the pandemic affected your creativity and influenced your work moving forward? Aside from losing a bunch of gigs due to the shutdown and being delayed on shooting Creepshow—which was a blessing in disguise considering the time we took to further develop the scripts and design of each episode—one of the main effects of the pandemic was how it gave many of us the time to catch up on a lot of films, mainly older ones. As you’d see from my diary entries on this very site, my viewing habits changed from a lot of modern films in that rat-race of catching up with the latest release, to mainly watching films I loved in the past and a lot of ’40s to ’70s films that I never got around to.

We have the tendency as film lovers to keep a mental list of films we’ll eventually get around to as if we have all the time in the world, but with the threat of the apocalypse and no real new content coming our way at the usual rapid clip, it was so gratifying to buy an annual subscription to Criterion Channel and start watching films like The Old Dark House, The Crimson Kimono, Contempt and many others.

All of these films impacted how I view film now and have bled into future projects I’m working on—especially on the technical side, when the world wasn’t influenced vicariously through MTV coverage and letting scenes play out in masters or longer takes, relishing in the performance or the mise-en-scéne. So, silver linings!

Before we go, who are some of your favorite follows on Letterboxd? I’m a big fan of Sean Baker, who I’ve known for almost 20 years now! We worked together in NYC and I was already a big Greg the Bunny fan but our mutual appreciation for fringe and exploitation films, especially international horror and genre films, seems to have bonded us for life. I love when he posts what he’s watching. Even if he’s just saying he screened something on Blu or streaming, his thoughts on cinema are always enjoyable and engaging.

In the same breath, filmmaker Jim Cummings has the best perspective on modern filmmaking and he’s clearly a big fan of using Letterboxd, so whenever I see peers like them using the app it makes me feel less like an obsessive movie dork myself, who should be getting back to work.

Some of the other follows I really enjoy are cineastes like Elric Kane and Brian Saur, who are the hosts of the New Beverly podcast Pure Cinema. Writers Anya Stanley, David Chen, Walter Chaw and Lindsay Blair Goeldner, musician and filmmaker Brendon Small, writer and critic Brian Tallerico, author Glenn Kenny, filmmaker Rodman Flender—just to name a few people who clearly love film and love sharing their thoughts on films in a very thoughtful way.

More times than not, I’m getting some great advice for what to watch next in my “new from friends” section! Because, like being at the video store, it’s casual conversations like the ones on Letterboxd that I love and always steering me to new films or revisiting old ones with a new perspective.

Related content

Joe’s film influences for ‘The Right Snuff’ Creepshow episode

The Video Store: Hollie Horror’s list of horror films with memorable scenes in video stores

Office Workplace Horror: J Cara’s list of office horror and workplace thrillers

Follow Brett on Letterboxd

Follow Horrorville—the home for horror on Letterboxd

[but-first--tea]

LFRP: Omori Kaya

THE BASICS

Full name: Omori Kaya

Pronunciation: Oh-Moh-Ree   Kay-Uh  (Omori is her surname, Kaya is her given name)

Nicknames: n/a

Height:  5'6" (quite tall for a midlander hyur)

Age:  “A lady never reveals her age.” (adult)

Nameday: 32nd Sun of the 3rd Astral Moon

Languages: Doman, Common

Occupation: Not getting caught.

Current Residence: "Traveling abroad.“ (Basically living a tourist’s life in Eorzea, hoping to never be called out as the fraud she is. She’ll spend time as someone’s guest here, staying in a hotel elsewhere the next month, etc…)

Relationship Status: While she has never actually been married, the identity of the woman she pretends to be is a young widow and heiress. (Single)

PHYSICAL CHARACTERISTICS

Hair color: Black

Eye color: Pale, silvery grey

Skin tone: Fair

Body type: Slender, athletic but not in an obvious way.

Scars: none

Accent: Doman

Posture

Poised, athletic– though she’s no master shinobi, she is her mother’s daughter. Her training began at the age of four, and it’s still evident in the way she moves, observes, and behaves. Others who have trained would likely notice it easily. She carries herself with quiet dignity, and moves (or refuses to) deliberately, as if she expects each action to be read for significance, and takes great care not to reveal too much unintentionally. Though, in the very rare instances when she lets down her guard, this facade can fade away, revealing that she’s still a girl who can be amused, and charmed, and is easily mesmerized by beautiful places and things.  

Accessories

She’s almost never seen without jewelry, though all of it is merely decorative– the trappings of the life she’s stepped into. None of it is personal, or carries meaning beyond appearing as she’s expected to.

Apparel

Her taste ranges from the classically dramatic to the outright exotic- not out of a sense of vanity, but in an appreciation of what is more or less wearable art.  She most frequently wears black and white, though she also favors blue and occasionally red. In keeping with her heritage, she tends toward modesty in her dress. Of course, most of these clothes once belonged to a woman whose identity she has stolen, and she’s begun to add Eorzean fashions to her wardrobe to stand out less.  The more she blends in, the fewer questions about her past she needs to dodge...

CHILDHOOD

Place of Birth: Doma

Siblings: none she knows of

Parents: The samurai Masanari and an Imperial Shadow named Harue, though Kaya has never known her biological father, as she was still less than a year old when he disappeared.

Upbringing: Raised initially by her mother, and later trained by grandmother once her affinity for magic became apparent. (More details can be found in her character history.)

PERSONAL

Personality

Outwardly, she is polite and mysterious, with a demeanor ranging from businesslike toward strangers, to an unexpected sort of mischievous and rebellious streak around the rare soul she’s begun to feel comfortable around. She’s evasive and distant. She rarely connects with others easily, which leads to most people assuming she’s either very shy, or rather snobbish, at first impression. She doesn’t trust easily, isn’t prone to showing any emotion in public if she can avoid it, and is often the one who, from an outward appearance, seems to be just another quiet wallflower enjoying the view.

Beneath the surface, however, she feels everything perhaps far too much, watches everyone with the wariness of someone who knows all too well what people are capable of, and deeply craves the connections to others she doesn’t seem to be able to form easily. She’s always searching for the few who can see the world the way she does- as something equally beautiful as it is deadly, meant to be lived in, not just endured. She’s a powder keg of passions always kept under a tight lid, hidden away for safe keeping.

Still, she is difficult to anger, and it’s a cold anger when it happens. She knows that engaging in violence and revealing her training would likely break character entirely, and being discovered as a fraud wouldn’t end well for her. As a result, she’ll try to think her way out of any situation, instead.

Motivations/Goals

If asked what she wants more than anything else in the world, she’d probably say to be able to do what she wanted, not what she was told, or allowed, or expected to. She craves freedom in all its definitions, but nearly always denies it to herself out of fear or pragmatism. While playing the role of a young, noble heiress she feels the restraints of her gilded cage all too keenly. She must behave in the way one raised to the role would be expected to. As a result, she finds small ways to rebel that aren’t likely to be noticed. Her fierce and defiant nature, thus repressed, will see her doing seemingly pointless things like rearranging the furniture in hotel rooms, stealing small items she could easily afford, or finding ways to secretly get even with those who have behaved poorly.

Financial Status

Ostensibly wealthy, though not one gil of it was ever truly hers. Still, she feels no guilt in obtaining the Omori family’s accounts considering they would have otherwise been seized by the Garlean government following Lord Omori’s assassination.

She has been quietly seeking a way to invest ‘her’ money in a way that would  divorce it from her stolen inheritance, make it more truly hers, and greatly reduce the risk of losing everything should her false identity be uncovered.

Weapons

While she was raised to the blade and bow for most of her childhood, she hides her training and doesn’t carry a weapon openly, if at all. If cornered and forced to defend herself, she’d mostly likely attempt to disarm an opponent and steal theirs, or improvise.

Vices

Seemingly none, as she has striven to present herself as a woman of proper graces. However, she is prone to self-indulgence and spending far too much gil merely because she can, which she considers a vice in herself and tries to resist.

Likes

People who are intelligent, interesting, vibrantly passionate and alive. Watching people do things that require specialized skill, especially combat training or constructing something.

Constructive debate and interesting challenge. Trying/learning new things.

Music, dancing. She’s often wished she could play an instrument, but has never learned to.

Nature, gardens, fireflies, birds, waterfalls, the ocean/seaside. Traveling to anywhere with a spectacular view or vibrant culture. Learning about said cultures.

Exotic spiced foods or just about anything she hasn’t tasted before that doesn’t look absolutely disgusting. Tea. Fruits, chocolate, and spiced cider or tea. Have I mentioned tea?

Unusual crystals and/or gemstones. While she’s generally unfazed by wealth or status, she appears to be positively mesmerized by sparklies.

Dislikes

Politics, rumor mongering, cattiness, insults, and general poor behavior.

People who think getting drunk is the best kind of fun to be had.

Addictive drugs, and those who sell them.

Being forced to do anything, feeling not in control over her own life.

Overly objectifying unwanted attention, awkward social situations/obligations/expectations.

Being cold, biting insects.

Hobbies

Reading, especially the arcane.

Learning the history of different places and cultures.

Collecting small, easily transportable items (generally clothing or jewelry) in local styles from each new place she visits.

Pets: None, currently.  She once had a magpie as a pet when she was younger, and maintains a fondness for birds of all kinds.

RP HOOKS

She’s looking (quietly) for a way to launder, er... invest her money to gradually eliminate the need to rely on her stolen identity and foreign contacts for access to funds. Have an opportunity?

A trusted lady’s maid, retainer, or guard type to help her maintain appearances. 

It’s possible that someone from her past in Doma might recognize her, or perhaps have known the real Omori Kaya.

The woman she is impersonating is an ill-fit for her. She is fierce, independent, and rebellious... the exact opposite of the demure and soft character her stolen identity demands. But, her mother risked everything to secure her new identity, and she won’t cast it off unless forced to. Still, she isn’t perfect. Someone could catch her in a mistake, and become curious...

The Lady Omori Kaya appears elegant, mysterious, ...and wealthy. Potential suitors aren’t unlikely. (Romance is an option, though she’ll be hard to pin down at first, for obvious reasons.)

She has a (stolen) soulstone in her possession, and has been working to unlock its secrets. 

Open to brainstorming other connections, past associations, or jumping into -your- existing plot!

OOC

I make my own schedule. I can be available pretty much any time from 8 am to 9pm CST. Sadly, I can rarely do late nights because I need to do that sleeping thing.

OOC communication is a priority for me.

I have been RPing for 20+ years. I am comfortable with both in game or Discord RP, and anything from short, quick posts to multi para. I do this because I enjoy writing!

I am not interested in random ERP outside of a long-term character interaction. I do love writing ships as long as there's strong chemistry between the characters, and both the character and the writer of said character are mature adults. However,I will not consider ships with alt or AU characters, as this is my one and only RP character. (No multi-shipping.)

I prefer a RP style that works with what is plausible within the scope of the lore. I'm open to creativity, as long as it makes sense. I prefer to stay away from void-heavy, AU, inserts from other universes, and anything involving cross-breeding with non-playable races/beings. (These are only my personal preferences, and everyone else is free to do whatever they like!)

Absolutely no: rape, harm to children, or graphic torture.

I do enjoy game content as well, and prefer company over doing so alone! I am currently sitting in my own personal FC house, but would consider joining a real FC if it makes sense for my character. 

Confession: I probably spend way too much time decorating virtual houses. 

[inventors-fair]

New Year’s Resolutions: Group commentary

Welcome to the group commentary! As I said in the winner’s post, there were a lot of white cards in the inbox, and that’s an obvious sign that white needs a small rework to keep up with its buffed up brothers.

@misterstingyjack​ White does lover its planeswalkers and tying card draw with a powerful card type could be reasonable since card draw is white’s main weakness. However I would like it more if this loyalty extension was offered by a creature, so at least you can keep the game rolling.

@askkrenko​ MaRo has mentioned the “elemental” supertype quite a few times in podcasts etc, but its really too late to add this element to the game. But we’re here to dream and create, and Strike Twice would be a sick card, if not a staple, in that parallel universe. Also this is the most badass a Pichu has ever been XD

@ignorantturtlegaming​ There were no additional notes other than this crazy card in the inbox, so I can only guess that the creator wants more group-hug effects in red. I want to say Fires of Renewal is on the expensive side, but the effects it offers unconditionally are all very impactful. The Melvin in me appreciates all the instances of “2″ in the card!

@wolkemesser​ gave life to an ancient mtg character from the Shattered Chains book and boy, she’s a truly solid card. Ordando has decent stats and gives some additional staying power to monowhite decks. I like the whole flavor that is so tough that she can protect others and come back again, but the execution feels a little off to me, as discard and mill decks can abuse her in non white ways. Since we’re going for the flavor win, I would like it more if in order to protect something she exiled herself with a promise counter (which in turn allows her to be cast from exile.)

@i-am-the-one-who-wololoes​ A disgustingly evil win more card? Sign me up! The philosophy of the card plays very nicely in black, especially with low cost high stated creatures that ask for their tribute every upkeep! Counterspells in black are a big stretch in my opinion, but no one can’t deny this card is a big flavor win!

@col-seaker-of-the-memiest-legion Speaking of counterspells, here’s another suggestion for them being in white. Many protective cards can be treated as counterspells, so we could find a loophole and treat this as a very wide protective spell. I think we could have cards like this in the future, but it’s still treacherous terrain because they must be so efficient that might replace blue’s role in the game.

@naban-dean-of-irritation​ I have mixed feelings about Korair. Flavor text matches with the card’s name quite nicely but it doesn’t connect with the actual gameplay. Also venturing into the unexplored “emblems matter territory” is surely exciting, but I don’t like the fact that is creates emblems by itself, and with that ease to boot!

@mardu-lesbian​ Hindsight is pitched as the blue/red shared keyword ability. I view it in a positive light, meaning I think it’s both flavorful and makes sense for those two colors, but it’s a bit unexciting that it matters only once in the creature’s life on the battlefield, while other shared keywords are combat related and have a greater impact in the game.

@deafeningsandwichpeach​ Hexproof for player is a rare sight, usually preserved for white and green, but there’s also Leyline of Sanctity and Witchbane Orb and this changes things to the point I would even tell this card is overcosted. Cost aside, I really like Seal into Darkness!

@snugz​ I would really love blue getting a combat ability that’s not straight evasion, but going full throttle to lure all creatures is a bit much, given that existing cards are usually uncommon. It could be like old fashioned provoke ( forcing a one on one fight) or even a numbered mechanic, like lure 1 or 3 etc, forcing 1 or 3 creatures to block.

@hypexion​ ​  Lapse of Certainty is definitely  a card, but there’s a reason why it was not repeated. Here, Mean’s to Delay, like Unexpectedly Absent, is an X spell where usually the correct way to ply it is for X=0, turning it into a slightly better counterspell. Not against counterspells in white, but be cautious.

@deg99 With this Angrath design, deg wanted to build more on the Rakdos color combination, through caring about stolen creatures and you know accidentally sacrificing them before returning them to their rightful owners. The power level is quite high, but it’s so enticing that I would gladly playtest this card to enjoy the crazy ride!

@hiygamer​ Sooner or later, we will see this card printed, I’m sure! When that time comes, I hope it costs a little less, and also that it has an equally inspiring flavor text! Really nice design!

@thedirtside Our friendly snailbear wanted magic to be a little more weird, and what’s weirder than a procrastinating Eldrazi, looming over the battlefield, doing it’s own things. Given, its practically impossible to interact with it and this takes away a lot of points per say, but I love suspend and bizarre triggers that feel like a disturbance in the Force. But we must cling to simpler things to make it happen.

@stormtide-leviathan​ The proposal of this design is sponsored by “Horse United” inc and pushes WOTC to pass an errata to merge all Pegasi, Unicorn and Horses into one race XD On the actual design, Swifting Steed is a real treat for limited!

@teaxch​ here tacling on the big issues of mtg, the shared keyword for blue and black! Feint is surely flavorful and it would make combats really interesting, but the main requirement for a shared keyword is to be able to mix with the other established keywords of the color pair. Blue and black have a lot of evasive abilities so an ability that matters when you’re blocked might not get the green light. That said, I definitely want to see this ability here and there in sets. A little guile spices things up! Also, neat flavor text XD!

@dimestoretajic​ With a quick read I was quite thrilled, but then I realized that you had collective care about itself. That leads into being a bit clunky, and also it goes from 0 to 100 in 1 sec because it’s either you have not 3 collective so no draw for you, or you got 3 , which means 3 triggers and thus 3 cards!! With a small tweak, this brave insect could be holding the fair’s coveted trophy!

@corporalotherbear

​ It’s true that there are some dryads that care about multicolored shenanigans, and I really like Manatwist Dryad playing into this space and establishing this trend. Because if green can’t care about multicolors, who can?

@fractured-infinity​ Edit: I forgot the commentary for this entry last night. My sincere apologies! A new card type is always an exciting gift for our inbox! Strongholds can die from damage like planeswalker do. They make sense in white and I could see them secondary in blue as large structures are products of community and science.

Watcher’s tower has two passive abilities, the vigilance granting requires 0 effort, while the buff requires you to “man” the stronghold with the garrison activated ability. I wish phasing was still relevant so the creatures would phase out instead of exiling themselves, because things can quickly get out of hand with blink shenanigans.

The +2/+2 buff might be a bit much because it isn’t that hard to get it online on turn 3. But all in all, Watcher’s Tower is very interesting and I hope Wizards will explore this space in the future.

@partlycloudy-partlyfuckoff Sometimes you see a mechanic and it’s not in the color it deserves to be. Mentor in Green seems like a perfect fit, and the non human clause gives this Leonin a greater sense of camaraderie. All in all a good design and future proposal.

@gollumni​ I saw this card in a very positive light with the first read. I like investigate after all, and I had good memories of it pulling its weight in Shadows over Innistrad, giving White a taste of the forbidden fruit that is card draw. But with the second read, I feel the card is too efficient, taping two creatures and two lands for an instant speed draw is quite good, and adding the overrun option felt a bit too much. But other than power level concerns, I really dig this design.

@corillion​ This might seem like an everyday card without context, but the change suggested involves first strike and double strike being relevant in fights. I’m all for it, but I got a feeling that the closer we will get to this is like a first strike lord that allows only first strikers deal damage in fights.

@kytheon4-4 said let there be hatebears, but we got hatebirbs instead XD but instead of harassing your opponent, this feathered boi plainly protects your side of the board so you get to play uninterrupted, but only on your turn. Fair and square.

@reaperfromtheabyss​ Ending the same way we started, with planeswalker support, this time in Red, as it is proposed to be the secondary planeswalker matters color. I can get behind this idea, as red has a sense of wanderlust thematically, and in terms of game, it cares about noncreature spells so planeswalkers are game too. On the card itself, the etb trigger is quite nice, even dealing two damage is fine. About the alternative loyalty ability, a mere ping is something that you would encounter on a weaker planeswalker, so it could at least be a + 2 loyalty ability, to ensure the survival of your planeswalker, as red isn’t really good at defending.

[hidethenotes]

Why I’m Deeply Concerned about Denis Villeneuve’s Dune and You Should Be Too

Let me Preface this by acknowledging Dune has yet to be released so it may very well be that many if not all of my concerns and frustrations will prove unfounded. Furthermore Dune was a novel published in 1965 by an extremely homophobic*, cis-gendered and heterosexual white man so I am by no means arguing deviations shouldn’t be made from the original text. They absolutely should especially because the series themes about human complexity and questioning authority seem depressingly timeless and deserve repeating. 

However- in the original novel the Fremen were explicitly based on the Bedouin cultures of North Africa and MENA inspired elements permeate all aspects of the culture in Dune, both Fremen and Outsider. Yet despite two adaptions (three if you count SyFy’s adaptions of Dune Messiah and Children of Dune) none have cast MENA performers or tapped anyone of MENA origin to work behind the scenes (Denis Villeneuve’s adaption included). 

This current adaption has instead chosen to cast almost exclusively Black actors as the Fremen. I say ‘almost’ because Stilgar, one of the Fremen leaders in the book is played by the white Javier Bardem.

While there is some potential narrative justification for the Fremen being Black as it’s mentioned in the book the Fremen are descended from a slave race and the term Fremen is actually derived from ‘Free men’ after several of these former slaves escaped into the desert. 

Fremen tradition says they were slaves. . . for nine generations. -Terminology of the Imperium, Dune

Though that potential justification is weakened since Javier Bardem is again white. It also doesn’t help that Paul Atreides (played by the equally white Timothée Chalamet)  is poised to also take on a leadership role both secular and religious amongst the Fremen as a long awaited warrior prophet and messiah.

MENA actors make up less than one percent of current television roles and have equally small presense on the big screen. When they are shown they usually only given stereotypical roles and rarely make any kind of headway in genre films like science fiction and fantasy. It’s a depressing lack of inclusion of people who are quite literally the inspiration for the novel. 

Which brings me to the character of Liet-Kynes who’s casting I am most disturbed by. (Spoiler Warning for the 55 year old book from here on out). In the book Liet-Kynes is a half-Fremen man who acts as not only a leader amongst the Fremen but is also able to pass largely undetected in non-Fremen society because of his mixed heritage. Something he uses to protect his people from a largely hostile ruling class but as a man of science remains deeply skeptical of his peoples’ prophesies surrounding Paul Atreides’ messianic potential. (With good reason it turns out as those ‘prophecies’ were largely planted by the outsider Bene Gesserit Sisterhood for their own ends) While he’s initially won over by Paul and his father Duke Leto’s charisma he later comes to regret giving them his allegiances realizing as he dies the danger a messiah like Paul poses to the Fremen culture’s integrity. 

No more terrible disaster could befall your people than to fall into the hands of a Hero. . . Dune, Chapter 22

Frank Herbert even has Liet’s body circled by hawks who are the traditional emblem of the Atreides to hammer the point home that the Atreides will be feasting themselves on the vulnerable Fremen. 

To put it bluntly Liet’s narrative purpose is to die leaving no room for the Fremen or the larger Dune universe the chance to escape the chaos Paul’s messianic destiny will bring. And Denis Villeneuve has chosen to cast Sharon Duncan-Brewster a Black woman in this role. Assuming Liet-Kynes’ character follows a similar narrative arc as presented in the original novel we are going to be presented with a Black woman who comes to believe a white boy is her long awaited messiah and then be disposed of.

We are in something of a long needed cultural reckoning. Where we have been forced to acknowledge how constantly we have treated not only Black people but Black women as disposable. So in addition to the deliberate lack of MENA cast in any roles let alone Fremen I find this particular change not only tone-deaf but down right despicable. Even worse the film will be including the characters Jamis and Harah. Jamis is a man who Paul kills early into his introduction to Fremen society and who’s widowed wife Harah then tries to seduce to secure her own life but that of her two orphaned children. Which smacks of a multitude of racial stereotypes. 

As a queer fan of the books who frequently enjoys dragging Frank Herbert for his authorial inconsistencies and eccentricities (he had a recurring obcession with athletically built red heads with oval shaped faces and wide generous mouths) I am all for radically altering the books’ text. But I am not seeing that with this adaption. Instead it feels like a poorly thought out attempt at diversity as conceived by three white, cis-het white men and I for one will not be watching. 

Foot Notes and Sources Cited

* Bruce's homosexuality was had never been accepted by my father, and they had never reached full rapprochement. Still, when my brother came to Seatle he broke into tears while riding in the backseat of my car. Penny and Jan consoled him. My brother told me later that he didn't cry from love, because he didn't feel he loved the man. He said he cried from what he had never experienced in the relationship between his father. I missed almost everything," Bruce said. "I never saw the good side he showed you. He wasn't there fore me." He went on to say that he couldn't watch movies or television programs having to do with father-son relationships, because they upset him so much. I told him that Dad loved him, that he spoke of him often and fondly, and that he just didn't know how to show it. I reminded Bruce of all the ways he emulated our father, and of the many interests they shared . . . electronics, computers, science fiction, photography, flamenco guitar . . . and I asked if that could possible mean that he loved Dad after all. My brother fell silent.  -Brian Herbert, Dreamer of Dune

Ramos, Dino-Ray. “Study Shows Bleak Middle Eastern & North African Representation, Reinforced Stereotypes On Primetime TV.” Deadline, Deadline, 10 Sept. 2018, deadline.com/2018/09/middle-eastern-north-african-representation-primetime-tv-mena-quantico-blacklist-tyrant-diversity-1202458101/.

Ramos, Dino-Ray. “'Dune' Trailer: Denis Villeneuve & Cast Talk How Adaptation Of Sci-Fi Classic Will Engulf Audiences On An Epic Scale.” Deadline, 9 Sept. 2020, deadline.com/video/dune-trailer-denis-villeneuve-timothee-chalamet-rebecca-ferguson-oscar-isaac-warner-brothers-sci-fi/. 

Coleman, Itané O. Http://Www.ncurproceedings.org/Ojs/Index.php/NCUR2017/Index, 2017, www.ncurproceedings.org/ojs/index.php/NCUR2017/article/view/2246. 

HERBERT, FRANK. DUNE. ACE Books, 1965. 

Herbert, Brian. Dreamer of Dune: the Biography of Frank Herbert. Tor, 2004. 

Please Donate to Black Lives Matter

[beyondthecourts]

WGST 320: Week 7 Discussion Post

#1. Was there a point when you consciously realized how prevalent “white invisibility” is in our culture?

The term “white invisibility” is described along with “white privilege” in Race and Social Media by Theresa Senft and Safiya Umoja Noble. Essentially, whiteness is the standard in the United States; so, as long as you are white, race is never really an issue (racial profiling, employment discrimination, etc. are not things that impact white people negatively). I wanted to address this question because I remember a specific moment in which I realized the extent of this white standard: I was sitting in the movie theater watching “Black Panther” when it first came out. About 30 minutes into the movie, I realized something was very different about this film; it took me a while to realize that it was because there was only one non-black actor in the entire film. This is virtually NEVER the case, as minorities are usually hailed as the “token” character in most franchises, catered to very narrowly drawn stereotypes. However, as a non-black minority myself, the representations of my gender and race are more “invisible” than they would be if I was a black woman. While my identity is not commonly represented, I am able to identify with white characters in movies and television shows (an example of “honorary” or “approximate whiteness,” as Nakamura puts it). In other words, when I grew up, I was able to relate to a lot of portrayals on the screen, whereas the unique struggles that target the black and brown communities are rarely seen in popular media. It wasn’t until I watched a blockbuster movie that homed in on the racial politics of entertainment, that I consciously thought about the covert forms of the white standard in media.

#2. Has the emergence of social media created a new forum to respond to mainstream depictions of race?

Yes! The “Shit White Girls Say to Black Girls” video on YouTube is a great example of the positive discourse that has materialized out of some of the problematic, yet mainstream ideas of race. In my previous anecdote about the “Black Panther” movie, I wanted to touch on the fact that Hollywood finally invited its audience to identify with the gaze of a black filmmaker, and the portrayals of a black cast. By the same token, the popularity surrounding content on “black Twitter,” or the SWGSBG video, shows that the diversity in viewpoints and storytelling is growing.  

#3. How did the Pew Research Center create “Asian Americans?”

Senft and Noble reference a few Pew Reports that coined Asian Americans as the “most wired” people in the United States, or the most “educated” and “successful” minority group. In the process of determining this, the Pew Center was accused of cherry-picking certain races (Chinese, Filipino, Indian, Vietnamese, Korean, or Japanese), and ignoring the one million undocumented Asian immigrants that arrived with less privileged circumstances and access to resources. By omitting certain pieces of information and publishing misleading findings like these, institutions are helping to actualize the “model minority” stereotype. This is harmful for non-Asian minorities attempting to enter the United States, because immigration policies are back by misguided “research” that makes it legal to select which immigrants are worthy of being allowed in, and which ones are not. In a way, this situation is similar to the fact that “science” in the 1700’s supported white superiority and colonization during the days of chattel slavery.

#4. How has racial diversity (& the countering sentiment of white superiority) become a tool for economic gains in recent years?

R. Benjamin points out that Netflix and other important platforms have caught wind of the fact that audiences in America are a bit sick of seeing casts that resemble “Seinfeld” in every movie and show. While it doesn’t come as a shock, big companies take advantage of what viewers want to see for the monetary gain at stake. While it is nice to only see advertisements that mirror your exact political views or reflect your values, Benjamin argues that this is a double-edged sword. Those who support making America white again, for example, are probably only seeing all lives matter rhetoric on their timelines. We cannot forget that while “black Twitter” has had its moment, white Nationalists have also been utilizing the digital world to their advantage. In a capitalist world, Netflix and Facebook don’t care about being on the morally correct side of history; they are buying into whatever it is that will maximize their profit margins: and that simply means giving people what they want to see.

Benjamin, R. (2019). Race After Technology: Abolitionist Tools for the New Jim Code. Cambridge: Polity, 41-88.

Senft, T., Noble, U. N. (2014). Race and Social Media. The Social Media Handbook, 107-125.

[ryanmeft]

Ryan’s Favorite Films of 2019

A stuttering detective,

A top hat-wearing vamp

A forced-perspective war,

A bit of Blaxploitation camp

Prisoners on a space ship

Having sex with bears

A writer goes remembering

Whenever his pain flares

  A prancing, dancing Hitler

A gambler high on strife

Here will go cavorting with

A mom who becomes a wife

A family plot with many threads

Three men against their own

A stuntman and his actor

A mobster now quite alone

Doubles under the earth

Two men in a tall house

Are here to watch a woman who

Is battling with her spouse

A family’s plans for their strong son

Go awry one night

A man rejects his country

Which is spoiling for a fight

 A house built by his grandpa

(Maybe; we’re not sure)

Looks out upon three prisoners

Whose passions are a lure

  All these are on my list this year

It’s longer than before

Because picking only ten this time

Was too great of a chore

  What are limits anyway?

They’re just things we invented

I don’t really find them useful

So, this year, I’ve dissented

  You may have noticed this time out

That numbers, I did grant

Promise they’ll stay in this order, though?

Now that, I just can’t

  I’m always changing my mind

Because, after all, you see

Good film is about the heart

And mine’s rather finicky

  There are a lot more I could name

(And I’ll change my mind at any time)

For now, though, consider these

The ones I found sublime

 20. Motherless Brooklyn

I’ve got a (hard-boiled) soft spot for 90’s neo-noirs like L.A. Confidential, Red Rock West and Seven, and Edward Norton’s ‘50’s take on Jonathan Lethem’s 90’s -set novel can stand firmly in that company.

19. Doctor Sleep

There’s something about Stephen King’s best writing that transcends mere popularity; his work may not be fine literature, but it is immune to the fads of the moment. So, too, are the best movies based on that work. This one, an engaging adventure-horror, deserved better than it got from audiences.

18. Jojo Rabbit

There was a time when the anything-goes satire of Mel Brooks could produce a major box office hit.  Disney’s prudish refusal to market the film coupled with the dominance of franchises means that’s no longer the case. If you bothered to give Jojo a shot, though, you got the strange-but-rewarding experience of guffawing one moment and being horrified the next.

17. By The Grace of God

I’d venture this is the least-seen film on my list; even among us brie-eating, wine-sniffing art house snobs, I rarely hear it mentioned. Focusing on the perspectives of three men dealing with a particularly heinous and unrepentant abusive priest and the hierarchy that protects him, it’s every bit as disquieting and infuriating as 2015’s Oscar-winning Spotlight.

16. Waves

You think Trey Edward Shultz’s Waves will be one thing---a domestic drama about an affluent African-American family (and that in and of itself is a rarity). Then it becomes something else entirely. It addresses something movies often avoid: that as life goes on, the person telling the story will always change.

15. Transit

You’re better off not questioning exactly where and when the film is set (it is based on a book about Nazi Germany but has been changed to be a more generalized Fascist state). The central theme here is identity, as three people change theirs back and forth based on need and desire.

14. American Woman

Movies about regular, working class, small-town American usually focus on men. This one is about a much-too-young mother and grandmother, played brilliantly by Sierra Miller, dealing with unexpected loss and the attendant responsibilities she isn’t ready for. 

13. Marriage Story

There is an argument between a married couple in here that is as true a human moment as ever was on screen---free of trumped-up screenplay drama and accurate to how angry people really argue. The entire movie strives to be about the kind of realistic divorce you don’t see on-screen. It is oddly refreshing.

12. Once Upon a Time in Hollywood

Quentin Tarantino’s love letter to 70’s Tinseltown is essentially a question: What if the murder that changed the industry forever had gone down differently? Along the way, it also manages to be a clever and insightful study of fame and fulfillment, or lack thereof.

11. High Life

Claire Denis is damned determined not to be boring. Your reaction to her latest film will probably depend on how receptive you are to that as the driving force of a film. Myself, I’m very receptive. I want to see the personal struggles of convicts unwittingly shipped into space, told without Action-Adventure tropes, in a movie that sometimes misfires but is never dull.

 10. Dolemite Is My Name

And fuckin’ up motherfuckers is my game! Look, if you don’t like naughty words, you probably shouldn’t be reading my columns---and you definitely shouldn’t be watching this movie. Eddie Murphy plays Rudy Ray Moore, the ambitious, irrepressible and endlessly optimistic creator of Blaxpoitation character Dolemite. Have you seen the 1975 film? It’s either terrible and wonderful, or wonderful and terrible, and the jury’s still out. Either way, Moore in the film is a self-made comic who establishes himself by talking in a unique rhyming style that speaks to black Americans at a time when black pop culture (and not just the white rendition of it) was finally beginning to pierce the American consciousness. What The Disaster Artist did for The Room, this movie does for Dolemite---with the difference being I felt like I learned something I didn’t know here.

 9. 1917

Breathless, nerve-wracking and somehow intensely personal even though it almost never takes time to slow down, it is fair to call Sam Mendes’s film a thrill ride---but it’s one that enlightens us on a fading historical time, rather than simply being empty calories. Filmed in such a way as to make it seem like one continuous, two-hour take, for which some critics dismissed it as a gimmick, the technique is used to lock us in with the soldiers whose mission it is to save an entire division from disaster. We are given no information or perspective that the two central soldiers---merely two, in a countless multitude---do not have, and so we are with them at every moment, deprived of the relief of omniscience. I freely admit I tend to give anything about World War I the benefit of the doubt, but there’s no doubt that the movie earns my trust.

8. Ash Is Purest White

Known by the much less cool-sounding name Sons and Daughters of Jianghu in China, here is a story that starts off ostensibly about crime---a young woman and her boyfriend are powerful in the small-potatoes mob scene of a dying industrial town---but after the surprising first act becomes a meditation on life, perseverance and exactly how much power is worth, anyway, when it is so fleeting and so easily lost. What do you do when everything that defined you is gone? You go on living. This is my first exposure to writer-director Jia Zhangke, an oversight I must strive hard to correct in future.

7. Knives Out

The whodunit is a lost art, a standard genre belonging to a time when mass audiences could appreciate a picture even if someone didn’t run, yell or explode while running and yelling every ten minutes. Rian Johnson and an all-star cast rescued it from the brink of cinematic extinction and gave it just enough of a modern injection to keep it relevant. Every second of the film is engaging; Johnson even manages to have a character whose central trait is throwing up when asked to lie, and he makes it seem sympathetic rather than juvenile. The fantastic cast of characters is backed up with all the qualities of “true” cinema: perfect camerawork, an effective score, mesmerizing production design. As someone who didn’t much care for Johnson’s Star Wars outing, I’m honestly put out this didn’t do better at the box office than it did.

6. A Hidden Life

After a few questionable efforts and completely losing the thread with the execrable vanity project Song to Song, Terence Malick returns to his bread and butter: meditative dramas on the nature of faith, family, and being on the outside looking in, which encompass a healthy dose of nature, philosophy and people talking without moving their lips. That last is a little dig, but it’s true: Malick does Malick, and if you don’t like his thing, this true story about a German dissenter in World War II will not change your mind. For me, what Malick has done is that rarest of things: he had made a movie about faith, and about a character who is faithful, without proselytizing. That the closeness and repressiveness of the Nazi regime is characterized against Malick’s typical soaring backdrops is a masterstroke, and the best-ever use of his visual style.

5. The Lighthouse

Robert Eggers is a different kind of horror filmmaker. After redefining what was possible with traditional horror monsters in The Witch, he returned with something that couldn’t be more different: an exploration of madness more in the vein of European film than American. Robert Pattinson and Willem Dafoe are two men stranded in a lighthouse together slowly losing their minds, or what is left of them. The haunting score and stark, black-and-white photography evoke a nightmare caught on tape, something we’re not supposed to be seeing. It’s not satisfying in a traditional way, but for those craving something more cerebral from horror, Eggers has it covered.

4. Us

I have become slightly notorious in my own little circle for not thinking Get Out was the greatest film ever made, and now I’ve become rather known for thinking Us just might be. Ok, so that’s definite hyperbole: “greatest” is a tall claim for almost any horror movie. Yet here Jordan Peele shows that he can command an audience’s attention even when not benefiting from a popular cultural zeitgeist in terms of subject matter. It’s a movie with no easy or clear message, one that specializes in simply unsettling us with the idea that the world is fundamentally Not Right. I firmly believe that if Peele becomes a force in the genre, 50 years from now when he and all of us are gone, his first film will be remembered as a competent start, while this will be remembered as the beginning of his greatness.

3. The Last Black Man in San Francisco

Ostensibly about urban gentrification, this story of a young black man trying to save his ancestral home from the grasping reach of white encroachment is a flower with many petals to reveal. Don’t let my political-sounding description turn you off: the movie is not a polemic in the slightest, but rather a wry, sensitive look at people, their personalities and how those personalities are intertwined with the places they call home. Though the movie is the directorial debut of Joe Talbot, it is based loosely on the memories and feelings of his friend Jimmie Falls, who also plays one of the two central characters. If you’ve ever watched a place you love fall to the ravages of time and change, this movie may strike quite a chord with you.

2. Uncut Gems

When asked why this movie is great, I usually say that it was unbelievably stressful and caused me great anxiety. This description is not usually successful in selling it. The Safdie Brothers have essentially filmed chaos: a man self-destructing in slow-motion, if you can call it slow. Howard Ratner has probably been gradually exploding all his life; he strikes you as someone who came out of the womb throwing punches. He’s an addictive gambler who loves the risk much more than the reward, and can’t gain anything good in life without risking it on a proverbial roll of the dice. His behavior is destructive. His attitude is toxic. Why do we root for him? Perhaps because, as played by Adam Sandler, he never has any doubt as to who he is---something few of us can say. He’s an asshole, but he’s a genuine asshole, and somehow that’s appealing even when you’re in his line of fire.

1. Pain and Glory

When I realized I would, for the first time, have the chance to see a Pedro Almodovar film on the screen, I was overjoyed. His movies aren’t always great, but that was of little concern: he’s one of the handful of directors on the planet who can fairly call back to the avant-garde traditions of Bergman or Truffaut, making the movies he wants to make about the things he want to make them about, and I’d never seen one of his films when it was new and fresh, only months or years later on DVD.

It seems I picked right, as his latest has been almost universally hailed as one of the best of his long career. An aging, aching filmmaker spends his days in his apartment, ignoring the fans of his original hit film and most of his own acquaintances, alive or dead---he tries hard to put his memories away. Throughout the course of the movie, he re-engages with most of them in one way or another, coming to terms with who he is and where he’s been, though not in a Hallmark-movie-of-the-week way. Antonio Banderas plays him in the role that was always denied him by his stud status in Hollywood. It isn’t simply him, though: every person we meet is engaging and, we sense, has their own story outside of how they intersect with his. Most engaging is that of his deceased mother, who in her youth was played vivaciously by a sun-toughened Penelope Cruz. Perhaps Almodovar will tell us some of their stories some day. Perhaps not. I would read an entire book of short fiction all about them. This is the year’s best film.

[writtenbyhappynerds]

Fanfiction 102- Writing Superpowers

          Another week, another lecture. Like supervillains, writing superpowers came up during Fanfiction 101. We see a lot of characters with superpowers, and we have written many many characters with superpowers. Superpowers or gifts or quirks, whatever you call them, can be poorly executed much like characterization; they become vague, mary sue-esque, and they don’t let me as the reader know what’s going on with said character. Defining superpowers is a lot like defining the Rules of the Universe (as discussed in Unit 1 of Fanfiction 101) where defining and setting parameters for superpowers will protect the canon of your characters as well as their validity.

          The most important thing you need to do when writing superpowers is to figure out what those superpowers are and what they can and can’t do. I’m very over vague Elsa ice powers that started with being able to freeze things and ended with visions of the past. Magic is the most difficult superpower to write because it is the most freeform, but you have to define limitations, costs and put a cap on those capabilities that don’t involve the OC collapsing from overuse because that’s such a cliche. A great example is The Fairly Odd Parents. Cosmo and Wanda can’t make money, can’t make true love, and can’t kill or bring someone back from the dead. Their time and agency to cast magic on behalf of someone are limited, and they can’t cast whatever magic they want; it has to be limited to what the child they serve wants. Writing setbacks to magic is a lot like writing character flaws. You need to take the time to give limitations. By giving magic limitations you have an easier time creating plot and adversaries for your characters because it’ll be easier to create a character that would really challenge your OC.

          A common exception to writing flaws in superpowers is DC or Marvel Comics. I have seen many many times the scene where, “an OC’s file gets passed around and we the audience get to read a laundry list of superpowers including but not limited to fire, ice, air, metal, lightning, etc.” I understand that superheroes in DC Comics have an abundance of superpowers. Look at Wonder Woman or Superman. Do not fall down that rabbit hole. You will struggle to write conflict for your character if you give them that many abilities. Hell, Superman’s own writers struggle to write conflict for him. It’s why he’s the most iconic but ultimately most boring character. On top of that, the “passing around a file” scene is another very overused cliche. I understand that it’s an easy way for the audience to see what the OC can do, but I think we as writers can challenge ourselves to be better than that. In addition, don’t take away the choice to share from the OC. If we’ve learned anything from X-Men, it’s that superpowers aren’t always taken well and some would rather die than be seen as a mutant or a freak. We know that these unnatural abilities are strange and confusing and that the people who have them need time to grow. They don’t need their supervisors outing them to God and everyone. Let your characters share their powers on their own terms. Let them have a special moment with the cast where they get to feel wonderful and special and magical. You’ll reveal more about the OC’s personality and develop a deeper relationship with the cast. Here’s an example.

          Let’s say we’re writing Avengers fanfic. Let’s say we give our OC control over light. Here are two scenes that are revealing the same information to Captain America. One is done on the terms of the OC, who we’ll call Astrid, the other is done by Nick Fury.

*****

          Astrid led him back to her room. It was like his own, the same size, and the same basic tidings- bed, dresser, desk, chair. While his had been dark gray, as had the rest of the team’s, Astrid’s was bright white. Steve noticed heavy black curtains tucked back from her window. The black stood out against the white of the rest of her room. She had a smile on her face. Her eyes were alight with excitement, and she pointed up at the ceiling.

          Covering the ceiling of Astrid’s bedroom were over a hundred hanging crystals. They had different shapes, sizes, and lengths and all swung from the ceiling on thin clear strings. Astrid turned off the lights. She pulled the black curtains out and covered her window which plunged them both into darkness.

          “I had to beg Nick for these. I told him it would be good practice.”

          “Practice for what?” A light turned on. It took Steve a moment to realize the light was coming from Astrid’s own hand.

          “No one’s really told you what I can do yet. I wanted to show you myself.” Carefully, she pulled one of the crystals down and let it rest in the palm of her hand.

          Rainbows bounced off the walls. Tiny refractory lights bounced around the room, off each crystal that was a brilliant gem in the darkness. Off the metal of Steve’s shield. Off the brass buckles of Astrid’s shoes. She grinned merrily, a beautiful cascade coming around the both of them.

          “It takes me forever to fall asleep. I never want to stop looking at them.” Steve smiled, studying the way the light danced on her walls.

          “Yeah.” He breathed. “I get it.”

*****

And the other, done by Nick Fury.

*****

          Steve sat at a roundtable with the rest of the team. At least, he thought he did. Looking around, he could see one person missing from the group.

          “Where’s Astrid?” Fury and Coulson exchanged a look. Coulson handed over a file and strode out of the room.

          “Agent Dawes is currently occupied. We thought it best to tell you without her.” Fury slid the file across the table. “Along with being an Agent of SHIELD, Agent Dawes joined up because of her… condition.”

          Steve opened the file. He could see a picture of a much younger Astrid looking back at him. Her date of birth, her parents, everything was laid out before him. When he flipped the page he found page after page of notes.

          “She can do what?”

          “We don’t have a real name for it yet. Just light manipulation.” Steve kept reading. The reports dated back years prior, with medic referral forms, personal statements, and even more photographs of Astrid.

          “Is Astrid a potential threat too, Director?”

          “We all are. Agent Dawes recognized her own risk ahead of time.” Fury took the file back. “She’s been training for years. She has it under control. Stark and Banner already know about her-”

          “I’m the last to know?” Steve said angrily. He looked at Tony and Bruce.

          “Hey, not my fault you got here late.” Tony turned back to his phone.

*****

          Do you see the difference? See how much more personal the first one is? Not only do we get to see Astrid actually use her powers, but we get a moment of bonding and trust between her and Steve, whereas in the second one her personal information is being divulged on her behalf. Not by her. It’s beneficial to make these superpowers personal, in the sense that the OC should be able to tell people on their own. Let them establish that trust with their team, and don’t shove it off to Nick Fury or Coulson or even Batman. It’s their gift, they need to share it on their terms.

          Superpowers and The Rules of the Universe go hand in hand in many ways. What I mean is the Rules of the Universe apply to superpowers as much as they do to timelines and cast desires and canon. When you write superpowers, they have to make sense with the world they live in, and not every OC needs superpowers. If you look at Twilight, you’d most likely have an OC with more subtle, less combat-oriented abilities (see Edward’s mind-reading or Alice’s seer talents). If you give an OC something heavy combat-oriented in this universe it feels a little clunky, and a little more like the Avengers but vampires instead of vampires with talents. On top of that, not every vampire needs to have a talent. It’s totally okay to have a vampire who can’t do anything special. I’m more compelled to read stories with those characters because they seem more realistic. It’s okay to have a character less important to the Volturi than Edward or Alice, or less gifted than Jasper. You can explore their individuality without tying them or limiting what makes them special to “they are a vampire and they have a gift.” Another example is Harry Potter. In that universe, the only extraordinary gifts we know of are Olcummency and Parseltongue. One is something you’re born with, the other takes patience and practice. It would be unrealistic to give a Harry Potter OC additional gifts. It would be rare to give them either of the aforementioned gifts because if something is described as rare in the canon, it shouldn’t include your OC. Your OC is not an exception to something’s scarcity.

          Let’s talk about powers themselves. I have several gripes with superpowers, and we are going to discuss all of them. First and foremost, something that kind of shows your own ass as a writer is using the -kinesis phrase of a superpower beyond the common ones people know (telekinesis, psychokinetic, etc.). It looks like you just googled, ‘list of superpowers’, and found atmokinesis and put it in because you liked the description. Who talks like that? No one knows what those -kinesis phrases actually mean we just use them because we think they sound cool. Don’t tell me that the character has atmokinesis, just tell me they can control the weather. You don’t need to use big words to make your gift sound impressive. It’s what they do with the gift that makes it impressive. Going off of this, not every superpower needs to be combat-oriented. You don’t need to give people super-strength, invulnerability, or fire powers for them to matter or be useful. It’s actually more creative and more unique if you take a superpower that isn’t combat-oriented and find a way to make it mean something. The best example is the Tumblr post that will be linked below, where the OC’s main ability was helping. It was helping out wherever they could and trying to make a difference and making the lives of their friends, who had some of the “strongest” superpowers in the universe, better. It is beautifully written, an incredible short story, and shows the value of being there for others versus trying to save the day. If you are writing a character with superpowers, I would absolutely recommend reading it.

          Finally, make it make sense. With superpowers, it’s kind of like the old saying, “if you describe a hammer hanging on the wall you better use the hammer before the end of the story.” Don’t describe something that you won’t use. So things like controlling taste, smell, temperature, those are things we never see used in the narrative, so there’s no need for the character to have control over them. If you’re struggling to come up with superpowers, the Editor and I have a few methods we’ve developed over the years to get off of and stay off of the superpower list websites:

I like to have my superpowers mirror the character’s backstory. I have a character who was kicked out of their home at 16 and therefore became a “hearth” where they could bind one location to appear at many, and with the turn of a knob bring the group from New York to Seattle to London. I did this to represent the character making their own home once they were exiled. Another example is a character who was almost killed in a tsunami. They can breathe underwater, and swim impossibly fast. You can give characters with a passion for drawing the ability to bring inanimate objects to life, characters who went to Antarctica as a researcher who came back with ice powers, characters who lost their twin that can multiply themselves, or characters who suffered amnesia that can now modify the memories of others. It’s fun to tie the gift to the story, and to me personally, it feels more cohesive when I do that. However, this isn’t for everyone. When you do this, the character’s superpowers shouldn’t become their whole personality. That should never happen in the first place, but especially here.

Another method we’ve used and we like is contrasting superpowers. If your character is blind, give them telekinesis (Scott 2015). If your character is afraid of heights, give them the ability to fly. If they’re afraid of dogs, make them talk to animals. Learning to get over their fears and weaknesses in the grand journey of mastering one’s powers shows growth, and shows character development, and we should never shy away from an opportunity for character development.

A final method that we’ve recently adopted is genetics. Something you see in Avengers fanfics is that the OC was inexplicably kidnapped and experimented on by HYDRA despite them having no shortage of volunteers as we see in Avengers: Age of Ultron, therefore, the existence of these OCs who are usually kidnapped doesn’t make sense. That is only mildly my business. What is my business is these test subjects having powers that don’t really make sense or that we don’t understand how they got them. It would make sense realistically, that a character who HYDRA experimented on would have powers that affect their vulnerability and less “shoots fire out of their hands.” This is because we can only assume that if they’re not using an Infinity Stone, they’re splicing and combining genes from animals to make a perfect soldier. If that’s your cup of tea, using a genetic connection to explain someone’s powers, go for it. The Editor and I have been using recently is the idea of gifts passing through generations. Let’s return to our new hero Astrid. Instead of being experimented on by HYDRA, having a backstory where she was maybe mugged or is afraid of the dark, or a backstory where she loves creepy-crawly dark spaces, we can say the following:

**

          “Wait… How many people can do what you can?” Tony looked up from his phone to Astrid, who had become engrossed in her newest prism. “Hey! Glow-stick!”

          “Mmm?” Tony tossed her his phone. “Oh… you don’t have to friend him.”

          “Why isn’t he here?” Astrid stood up and walked back to Tony, handing him his phone.

          “Why isn’t who here?” asked Steve.

          “My brother Jeremy. He’s like me.” She shrugged her shoulders. “He didn’t want to go. I texted him when Director Fury reached out, and he didn’t want to give up on his Northern Lights project. My cousins said no too.”

          “What do you mean, your cousins?”

          “Didn’t you know? I thought you knew everything Stark. My gift’s genetic. It’s been in my family for generations. I have my brother, and like, 3 other cousins who can do what I can. I’m the only one who responded to Director Fury’s text.” Astrid sighed. “If my cousin Dixie were here, she’d tell me that means I’m the idiot of the group. C’est la vie.”

****

          You can totally make superpowers genetic. It’s something that isn’t done often and is very fun because you can get into subtle mutations or variations of the same power. With Astrid, since we know she controls light, maybe the gene mutates with one of her cousins who can bend light in a way that they appear invisible. Maybe one of Astrid’s children can make the light into solid objects. Try making your superpowers a recessive gene. It could be a fun way to showcase the OC’s support network and give an explanation for their gifts that’s uncommon.

Our final note is that if you are writing a character with superpowers, we want to see the character learn to use those powers. It is so boring to have a character come out of the gate with gifts that they’ve mastered perfectly, OR, have a character initially struggle, but learn and master their gifts in 1 training session. That’s so boring to the reader, because there’s no development, and there’s no struggle. If a character earns their powers and is experiencing the new and wonderful, we want to see that struggle. That way at the end of the story when they have near-perfect control the ending is so much more satisfying because we know what went into that. Look at Avatar: The Last Airbender. The final fight with Ozai and Zuko’s final fight with Azula is the ultimate show of growth and mastery. You clearly see that neither of these boys are the same kids from the beginning of the series. The same is true for Percy Jackson, where all the Olympians have moments where they have powers, but don’t know or can’t use them. Let us see the struggle. It makes the journey more worthwhile. And, speaking of Avatar, no more “can control the four elements.” We’ve all seen the show. We all know the source material. It’s not original and your OC is not the Avatar.

          Next week is a big one! We’re talking about diversity. Not only diversity in race but diversity in LGBT, in experience, and how to capture and make your stories diverse, and where it makes sense to have a story that’s diverse.

Xoxo, Gossip Girl

References:

The Ables. https://www.goodreads.com/work/best_book/41929531-the-ables. Accessed 26 July 2020.

https://idontknowartdump.tumblr.com/post/169046958039/inkskinned-writing-prompt-s-at-18-everyone

[sonofkhaz]

Musing: Pathologic 2

Pathologic 2 is what you get when Russian game developers down an entire bottle of Flintstone Vitamins with some Vodka while listening to Hardbass after being awake for 72 hours straight. It’s probably one of the best games I’ve played in terms of story-telling and themes. 

It’s a great game, despite some mechanical issues. A few years ago, I got the original game off of GOG and only got about halfway through before giving up out of frustration and a little bit of boredom. The sequel fixed a lot of the problems the first game had. For starters, there’s a lot less walking back and forth; rather than having to literally walk around the whole town to check up on your patients to see how they’re doing, it now tells you at the end of each day if they’re okay, in danger of infection, or infected. It’s easier to track your character’s thoughts, the map now has markers, and you can sprint instead of walking (sprinting is now a feature, yes). You can use a ferry system to fast-travel around town at the cost of a coin called a Fingernail, and you can hold down CTRL to highlight points of interest and characters you can speak to.

Despite being praised in Russia and having very positive reviews (91% at the time of writing this) on Steam, the game didn’t get much traction upon its release in the west, with “game journalists”, a term I still don’t fully understand, comparing its difficulty to Dark Souls (yeah, some people still use Dark Souls as the litmus test for game difficulty) and claiming that it has Skyrim-inspired RPG elements. It’s as if “game journalists” have never played anything outside of Bioware games, Skyrim, Dark Souls and Pokemon.

Yeah...despite the fact that comparing a game like Pathologic 2 to something like Dark Souls or Skyrim is completely obtuse and ignorant, I think I understand where the frustration comes from, which I’ll get to later.

The game takes place in Town-On-Gorkhon, an isolated town in the steppes built upon contradictions. From a glance, the town might just look like your average early 20th century Russian town, but it’s inhabited by two groups of people: the Townsfolk, who are just becoming industrialized, and the Kinfolk, a group of Steppe nomads who hold veneration for bulls because they believe that the town rests on the back of a giant auroch, Mother Boddha. In addition, the latter group has a species of humanoids called Worms who water the ground with blood to grow plants, women called Herb Brides who dance in the steppes to make the twyre bloom, and other practices. Despite the contrasts, the two are not at complete odds at each other; rather, both cultures have meshed together.

In the first game, there were 3 different playable characters, but for now you’re only able to play as Artemy Burakh, the Haruspex. His father was a Kin doctor and his mother was a Townsfolk. After six years of medical school, Artemy is called back home by an urgent letter from his father, only to find out that he’s been murdered. See, a haruspex was someone in history who could divine the future from entrails; since Artemy is technically a surgeon who just returned to a town where cutting arteries, attacking someone with a knife, and digging holes in the ground are all considered taboo, he’s the primary suspect, so everyone hates his guts. People will initially refuse to trade with you, shopkeepers won’t sell their goods, and some people will try to attack you in the street. In the wake of this, a mysterious plague referred to only as the Sand Pest hits the town.

Pathologic 2 is like an adventure game and a “horror survival” tied into one. The imagery of the game goes from uncanny valley to flat out dark, with red pustules and moss-like substances growing on the buildings and streets of infected districts, infected townsfolk shuffling towards you to try and infect you, and plague clouds that manifest and chase you down the street. If you’re unfortunate to get infected with the plague, you hear voices in your head telling you, gently, to lay down and die so your suffering can cease. While you’re trying to find a cure and trying to save NPCs from the plague, you yourself are trying to survive.

Your overall survival is dependent on more than just your health bar. Sergei tries to shank you for your track suit and Semechki seeds, yeah, your health will go down if he manages to hit you. But then you have to factor in your hunger, exhaustion, immunity, and stamina/thirst. You’re hungry, so you eat some toast, but now your thirst meter is going up; while it’s not immediately detrimental, it affects the duration you’re able to sprint and fight. Your exhaustion meter is full, so you lay down to sleep for a few hours, but now your hunger is going back up and you’ve just spent precious hours that could have potentially have been used doing something else. Uh oh, you just got hit with a plague cloud and your immunity is dropping - do you use the immunity boosters/tinctures you were saving for patients to bring it back up, or are you going to take the risk and wait for it to slowly climb back to where it was?

Any time you die, your screen blacks out and you speak to Mark Immortell the Theatre Director, who gives you a tut-tut-tutting on dying and sends you back to your last save file with a penalty. Your maximum health/exhaustion meters are reduced, you get hungrier and more tired as time progresses, so on and so forth. These all stack, and they’re all permanent across all save files, so there’s no going back to scum save to prevent the penalties. If you die enough, you get visited by a friend who will offer to remove your current and future penalties forever...for a cost that you may not learn of until it’s too late to change your mind.

This ties back to my previous statement about how people were criticizing this game. A lot of survival games in modern gaming tend to be generous towards the player in terms of, well, survival - you have a meter that’s running low, or a supply that’s dwindling, so you stop whatever you’re doing to rectify the situation. Should you fail there’s usually an “out” by returning to a previous save. You can’t do this in Pathologic; one reason being mentioned in the previous paragraph. Another is the fact that time is always working against you - really, the only moment where time tends to stop moving is if you’re in a dream sequence or if you physically pause the game. The clock is always ticking so you need to frequently assess the efficiency of what you’re doing and if it will pay off in the long run. The game has a lot of choices, and not in Peter Molyneux’s Fable or Black and White perspectives of “choice”. The decisions can vary greatly. Let’s say that one of your friends needs a water barrel because they want to get water for the poor and impoverished in their district. Well meaning, but what if it infects the neighbors? The hospital needs the tinctures you need to boost the immunity of nameless patients; everyone will like you more if you carry the task out, and you’ll get paid the next day, but what if tomorrow means that half a dozen cast characters get infected and you don’t have the time to make more tinctures? 

Critics of Pathologic 2 have bemoaned the fact that you can’t just walk around, immune to virtually anything and everything, and talk to the NPCs while freely exploring the town to learn more about the Sand Pest and the overall story. The desire to know more about the story is a fair point, but here’s where I see the problem: There’s a genre of story-driven adventure style games, usually referred to as “Walking Simulators”, that are typically praised and lauded by the “video games are art” crowd. Games like Dear Esther, Firewatch, What Remains of Edith Finch, and Gone Home are usually put in this category.

The difference between Pathologic 2 and those games is that the latter group takes a more “hands-off” approach in their storytelling. You don’t have a lot of interactivity or mechanics that directly tie into the games. The named NPCs you speak with in Pathologic 2 are fleshed out; it’s personal because Artemy Burakh has history with them, and the decisions that you make, or don’t make, will ultimately decide their survival. Many of them have multiple outcomes; you speak with them, see their angles, see what information they may be willing to give out or abstain from initially giving, so on and so forth. The game pushes you towards investing them emotionally. Not only are you trying to save them from the plague, but you’re trying to save yourself. You’re also trying not to starve, you’re also trying not to get infected. Rather than watching a sinking ship, you’re part of the crew trying to bail the water out and plug the hole. 

Not all the mechanics are perfect. Guns and their ammo, while being extremely rare/expensive to find, have a tendency to jam up way too much and hitboxes can be choosy. Hand-to-hand combat can feel clunky, and the inventory can be a colossal pain in the ass to manage since the game does not auto-sort individual stacks and uses Diablo-style inventory management. However, I have very rarely seen things like these critiqued by the “video games are art” crowd; rather, they complain about the meter management. The problems of the town seem real because you’re in it as well. Without having to manage your meters, making sacrifices and decisions, it takes away the conditions that make moments in the game memorable.

Remember: Failure is a very real, understandable and relatable aspect of human life and society. There are times in life where you fail repeatedly before you see the light at the end of the tunnel and triumph. One of the marketing pitches of this game was, “You can’t save everybody”. For example, I spent three consecutive days treating Andrey Stamatin after he was afflicted with the Sand Pest, and it ultimately came to naught because he died anyway. Some of the game's most memorable moments and interesting dialogue come when you are unsuccessful, because the game knows that you’re going to fail at some points even when you try your best.

Overall, would I recommend Pathologic 2? Absolutely. Would I recommend it to someone who cares about story-driven games? Totally. Would I recommend it to people who have low frustration walls? No.