#this is the weirdest thing i have ever written and it somehow makes complete logical sense

[mleemwyvern]

Following a discussion on the discord... have this silly little Hermitopia AU fic! au by @hermitcraftheadcanons.

[delirious-and-slightly-murderous]

Oh friend you've so many exciting WIPs but please tell me about The Color of Corn and The Nightmare Before Christmas!! 💕✨

♥️♥️♥️♥️♥️♥️♥️♥️♥️♥️

Wow okay so, first The Nightmare before Christmas. This one is kinda a 2x1. As it happens with some of my WIPs when I have 2 stories from the same idea I just put them in the same file. And whichever picks my interest most wins and gets written. (If I do write it that is😅). So first is a pretty standar TNBC AU because well, Jack Skellington Andrés, that's why. Here's the snippet:

The wind howled as it collided with the cold stone of the tower.

Martín shivered despite not being cold. He felt queasy and anxious, he hoped he had calculated the dose of deadly nightshade right, he didn't want a repeat of last time.

He took his bag and balanced himself on the edge of the window, looking down at the darkness below. He wouldn't die, he couldn't but the doctor had been nice enough to make him capable of feeling pain. And it hurt, it hurt like nothing else did. 

He clutched his basket tighter and took a deep breath, thinking of a crooked smile and the moon reflecting on pearly white teeth. He needed to go out, to be free for at least a while. And seeing Andrés was worth the couple minutes of debilitating pain.

He closed his eyes and let go.

The impact with the ground was hard and painful. His mind whited out, scrambling his thoughts. All he was capable of was an incoherent tidal wave of 'hurts, hurts, HURTS, holly Satan's undies, it hurtsssss!'

Slowly, after an eternity of fire that stretched into the space of a minute, he became increasingly aware of himself. Everything burned and he felt all over the place. He opened his eyes to confirm and yes it was going to take a while. 

Thankfully one of his arms has stayed attached, which would make it all easier. He put his other arm back in place, and started the long and tedious process of retightening his seams and putting everything back in place.

By the time he was done, the pain had subsided into a dull all encompassing ache that he could push to the back of his consciousness. He checked his limbs one last time and started walking towards the town center. His body heavy and aching but his heart light and fit to burst.

He didn't notice his nose and left nipple lying half visible at the bottom of the tower.

(So yes that's part of it, it's a work in very slow progress🥴)

And then the other idea is basically a cracky Christmas fic. 

So the premise is that it's post mint (and maybe post bank too, idk), and the banda plus Martín are all living in the monastery or something. It's the day before Christmas and Martín's longing for Andrés gets so bad while watching him ignoring Martín and flirting with the women that he wishes he could have a life without Andrés and those pesky feelings of his and proceeds to get black out drunk. 

So next morning he wakes up and at first everything is normal and then bam! Andrés is nowhere to be seen, he is apparently married to SERGIO and they have KIDS! While all the rest is pretty much the same, he's still a criminal mastermind. 

So he's trying to figure out what the hell's going on and how to wake up from this nightmare when Christmas day comes around. And his husband's estranged brother shows up. His raging libertine and homosexual diva of a brother shows up. A brother Martín apparently HATES with all his heart. 

Oh and said brother, Andrés by the way if you had any doubts, not only shows up in the most mind boggling and gayest outfit, he doesn't come alone. He's accompanied by his two (2) boyfriends! A tall, tall and stoic man who goes by Marsella and a twink named Aníbal (who by the way one of his and Sergio's 'kids' can't stop flirting with). 

This is Martín's worst nightmare. He wants to wake up right now. Or possibly die, he's not picky.

Here's the snippet:

Martín was going crazy. That was the only possible explanation. He had finally drank too much wine and he was currently lying in some hospital bed in an ethylic coma. No other way around it.

Waking after getting so drunk to find himself in bed with Sergio was not at all what Martín had expected. And while he started silently panicking and trying to remember at which point of last night's drunken debauchery he had decided to pay Sergio a visit, the other man had woken up and smiled at him. 

Martín's brain had short circuited when Sergio, SERGIO, Andrés' nerdy librarian of a brother had kissed him. He had kissed him and pushed his very impressive morning wood (and who the fuck knew Sergio was so well endowed, Martín would be horny if it wasn't you know, Sergio) against him while simultaneously slipping a hand into the back of his pants and between his ass cheeks. 

Martín had become so impossibly rigid it felt like he would snap like a guitar string. When he was once again capable of movement, he had Sergio's tongue halfway down his throat and an insistent pointer finger pushing against his clamped up asshole. 

He had scrambled out of bed so hastily that he had almost cracked his skull open on the bedposts. Not saying anything before running to the bathroom like a soul out of hell. 

Hours later after the weirdest breakfast of his life where he finds out he and Sergio are apparently married and Andrés is nowhere in the picture, here he is. He went to sleep in the hopes of just actually waking up.

But apparently the universe is laughing at his misery. 

Because an undeterminded amount of time later, something wakes him and he immediately knows he's still trapped in this nightmare. He stays relaxed and doesn't open his eyes, hoping whatever it was that woke him will just go away.

"¡Papi!" 

Martín's breath dies inside his chest. Now there are a number of things wrong with what he just heard. First 'Papi' is not a word he often hears. If he does hear it, it normally comes from his own mouth in a much breathier tone while in the middle of much more interesting activities. And secondly if for whatever reason he somehow changed his preferences and it's his current partner calling him that, well it sure as hell wouldn't be in a female voice. 

His hysteric internal monologue is interrupted by another, this time distinctly male voice.

"Papi, wake up." 

That's when he notices that he knows those voices, they are familiar. He wonders what he did to deserve ending up in a hell like this. He would greatly prefer the stereotypical flames and eternal torture over this any day. He feels sick and holds back his nausea.

Finally he opens his eyes to come face to face with Tokio and Denver looking down at him.

"Hola papi, what a grumpy face, sorry for waking you. Papá said not to do it, but aren't you going to say hi to your kids?"

This time Martín doesn't hold back anything.

As he is expelling what feels like his whole stomach, he's distantly glad that he managed to be spectacularly sick all over Tokio's ugly shirt. 

(I've really got no excuse for this😅)

And finally the Color of Corn is a thingy I talked about here.

But you can have another snippet, this one goes immediately after the other one:

The sun is burning and ruthless. The air is wet and heavy, oppressing. The dense sheen of sweat covering his skin doesn't help with the stifling atmosphere, making him feel sticky and disgusting. Finally when his uncle decides to make a pause and rest, they've worked about half of the field. Martín feels ready to throw himself into a lake of freezing water, letting it consume him, dragging him down to the bottom like a dead carcass. He lost his shirt a while ago. He couldn't take the uncomfortable feeling of cloth rubbing against drenched skin anymore. He goes to sit at the back of the tractor, wincing at the touch of the scorching metal. Relaxing slightly as he eats soggy jam sandwiches and warm beer.

"You know you can go right?" His uncle asks, sitting beside him and looking at the horizon with dead and glassy eyes. "There is nothing stopping you from taking your things and fucking off. You aren't a kid anymore."

Martín stares at him thoughtfully, then he directs his glance to the faraway line where the sky meets the earth. There is nothing to see, just miles and miles of golden corn as far as the eyes can reach. Truth is Martín doesn't know how to answer. Logically he knows this, he is aware of it and has thought of leaving more than once. He's thought exactly that, taking his things and leaving. But he also knows he is never going to do it. He is utterly incapable of it. He doesn't know what he would do. His whole life all he's known is his little town in the middle of nowhere Argentina, and the golden shine of corn. And, even if he doesn't like to admit it, if he ever left he would be completely lost. As far as he can remember corn has always been present. His constant omnipresent companion. Want it or not, it's his life and always will be.

"Yes I know,'' comes his absentminded answer.

His uncle stares at him for a minute. His tired eyes seemingly looking for something.

"What happened to that friend of yours, Andrés was it?"

"What with him?" He says sharply, his tongue cutting, mimicking the exact feeling that name evoques.

"You two used to be attached at the hip and now it's been a while since I last saw him."

Martín has been trying to forget all about that. If he's being honest, he's not doing a great job of it. But Martín has never been terribly honest, not even with himself, and he's not going to start now, so he enjoys telling himself he is forgetting.

"That's because he's going back to Spain. Haven't seen him since he told me."

"Well, he's been calling you, did you know?" His uncle scratches at his beard. "You should call him back."

"I don't want to talk about this." That's not a lie, Martín really does not want to talk about Andrés, especially not with his uncle.

"You are aware both phones are connected right?"

Martín becomes rigid. "He's getting married."

"I can respect limits, but don't fool yourself like that." The older man shrugs and gets up to keep working.

Martín feels angry. His uncle doesn't understand. Couldn't possibly understand. Life is easy for a man like him. He wants to tell him to go to hell.

When finally his anger dies down, choked and overwhelmed by the infernal heat, Martín almost laughs at the recognition of his anger towards his uncle for what it truly is. The anger and spite of an immature kid when confronted with the ugly truth.

Martín knows that he's lying to himself. He just doesn't know about what.

When night falls, they go back to the farmhouse. His uncle goes straight to bed but Martín cannot fall asleep. He's bored of himself and his own mind. He goes out and lies down in one of the cornfields, feeling gravity press down on his chest. He falls asleep imagining the sea of corn rocking him gently.

Everything is dark, there isn't a single noise, not even from insects. The corn is still, not moving one bit, consumed by the darkness.

(I'm really proud of this one😊.)

So that's it. Wow this got long. Hope you liked it and thank you for asking friend.

🥰

(P.S: Did my ask reach you? I'm severely traumatised now😑)

[hudsontfreeman]

Noticing (or a Case for Seinfeld Living)

It’s really impossible to know definitively, but I’d say I’m about halfway through the fourth or fifth season of the second reboot of my life’s tv show.

This is more of an estimate - I’m not really sure how I’ve been dividing up the seasons. Obviously, the first season was the 3-4 years at the beginning where nobody really knew what was going on and the protagonist was kind of just there. He was arguably, more of a blank canvas for the audience to see themselves through, as the real protagonists (his mom and dad) did all the expository heavy lifting. To be fair, this was just an introduction to the series and audiences were at least impressed enough for it to be renewed.

The formula found its bearings in the second season, as most successful shows tend to do, and stayed more or less on track for ten seasons till adolescence prompted a hard reboot. I can’t stress enough how much the show changed: episodes varied widely week to week, multiple characters were booted, the previously so-called co-protagonists of the show (those rascally parents) occasionally became outright antagonists, etc… It was quite frankly, not that great of a show, and in many ways traded the lack of conflict of its predecessor, with an abundance of conflict rarely resolved. It was not a show anyone was enjoying and the second college reboot was a welcome return to form.

This latest season is not half bad. We’ve got a lot of good series-wide story arcs going. There is a fair amount of midseason conflict, reoccurring characters that are staying relatively fresh (with the exception of Trevor), a decent theme song (it’s currently some experimental jazz from hell), and I’m really feeling like the protagonist is “starting to figure out what his deal is”, so to speak.

It is important to note that the protagonist has “started to figure out what his deal is” many times before this season, so I wouldn’t necessarily trust his judgement, but the confidence is remarkable.

He, at the very least, seems to finally be able to admit that he is not a cool person, which is certainly progress. Naively, though; he is convinced that this admission might very well be the first step to eventually becoming cool.

Most engaged viewers know this is a misstep.

~

“Life’s not like a movie” might be as useless of a phrase as it is pervasive. The assumption of the phrase implies that everyone is going around living their lives like the main character in a blockbuster comedy - cartoonishly pursuing their dreams, accidentally falling in love, and somehow, repeatedly being surprised when things don’t work out the way they think things should.

This is clearly false. No one thinks like this.

No one thinks everything will work out. No one thinks they’ll get everything they want. No one thinks their life is simple. No one thinks they’ll find the complete answer to the question they’ve been asking all along.

No one is nearly as naive about their existence as we seem to think they are. And I don’t think people watch movies and TV shows because they want these things either.

Sure, maybe there is someone out there who says they want life to be this uncomplicated, straightforward thing, but no one actually believes them. Nearly every person I’ve ever met genuinely believes that they are the true pragmatist. Has anyone ever actually met a consciously sincere idealist? Who wants to be the sucker?

Perhaps I’m generalizing, but I don’t think people watch television or movies, read books, and tell stories because they are innocently convinced of the simplicity of their narrative structure or because they want to vicariously live through that simplicity either. People are not starry-eyed, gullible children, nor do they wish they could be. People reflect their lives through story, not because they make life seem simple, but because these stories make life seem meaningful. I would go as far as to say - they don’t just make life seem meaningful, they remind them that it already is.

~

My friend Trevor and I believe genuinely, that we are this latest generation’s reincarnation of the 90’s sitcom, Seinfeld. He is George and I am Jerry, respectively. We’ve drawn out many of the parallels over the course of our friendship and I will list them here now:

- Trevor is short and stocky (George), while I am tall(er) and lanky (Jerry).

- My friend, Sam (Kramer) often walks into my house unannounced, hair lopsided, looking to “borrow” things from my kitchen.

- We routinely complain about our lives at various diners/coffee shops loudly and with little sympathy for the people around us. (The plot of the show)

- We improvise neurotic standup routines about the absurdity of mundane life and our own selfishness. (Much like George and Jerry, these routines are more sad than they are funny)

The only thing we’ve failed to find a direct parallel for is Elaine, as perhaps the most unrealistic aspect of the show, was the fantasy of anyone staying good friends with their ex.

All of these specific comparisons aside, I think what Trevor and I really like about this joke, is the idea that the only difference between our lives “in the real world” and our lives as tv characters, is the perspective that comes with observing rather than experiencing. What I mean by that is to say, there is something inherently and beautifully constructive about observing years as seasons, days as episodes, and people as characters. They become features of the life we are actively noticing, not just necessities of the existence we are passively being forced to endure.

As many sad, 90s-sitcom-obsessives like myself know, the significance of the creation of the Seinfeld rested in the catchphrase Larry David and Jerry Seinfeld sold the show on - it’s “a show about nothing.” The idea of it was, if you take a comedian like Seinfeld and put him in a variety of mundane settings, the jokes will come, not from heightening his experiences, but by letting him endlessly interpose his observations on the absurdity of the mundane itself. But I don’t think that’s significant in the way people may think it is.

Yes, George/Jerry/Elaine/Kramer are funny, goofy people with above average neurotic tendencies. Yes, it is a situational comedy written by professional comedy writers, building narratives out of the ways standups get their material. Yes, it broke many mainstream television conventions and historically broke the formula of the sitcom. But I think the most brilliant thing Seinfeld did, is definitively inspire the tacit belief that everything is worth paying attention to. Maybe, it’s worth noticing because its infuriating, or ridiculous, or hilarious, or disturbing, etc… But absolutely everything demands to be noticed.

In the fourth season of Seinfeld (arguably the best and most influential season), George and Jerry begin developing a TV show in much the same way Seinfeld and Larry David did four years prior. Throughout episode after episode, they go back and forth trying to come up with some fresh idea to wow NBC executives. This goes on with some degree of expected laziness and hijinks till George finally has it. Ever the meta-self-referential goldmine, George decides it should be “a show about nothing.” NBC executives are neither wowed nor thrilled, but the pilot get’s made, and all the characters in Seinfeld get remade in the show-within-the-show - “Jerry”. This was genius for two reasons.

It justified itself as a show by explaining its own concept directly to the audience through the show itself. (Perhaps the reason why this season skyrocketed the shows viewership)

It explained how television works, and more importantly, it explained how stories work.

The characters of Seinfeld, much like the characters of any story where the writer takes the time to describe them, are just bizarre people living in our bizarre world. Brought to their logical conclusions, television characters are human beings incapable of not observing the particularities of their existence. They go to the same coffee shops, they hang out with the exact same people, and they can’t stop scrutinizing the smallest detail of, or change, to that reality. Television shows remind us that the details of our existence are interesting.

The characters we surround ourselves with can be the funniest people in the world when we notice why they do what they do. The job we spend thirty to seventy hours a week at can be the weirdest thing in the world when we notice how ridiculous it is. This year can be a not-so great season. Tomorrow can be a particularly great episode. The television show we’re participating in can be surprising and disappointing and funny and sad and predictable and strange, but its a show we choose whether or not to watch - just watch it!

~

Sometimes, when I have a bad day, I go home, I go to bed, and I narrate out loud, “Hudson was not having a good day.” It almost always helps. Not because it reminds me that I am an insane person and that’s funny, but because it reminds me that I am a character in a movie I am watching, not just playing a role in. I am the protagonist of my own movie, playing a character in other people’s movies, learning how to notice why we’re in a movie at all. Any moment that we don’t realize that, that the story is meaningful, whatever it is, is a moment lost to ourselves.

"Life’s not like a movie” is a pointless phrase that doesn’t mean anything about anyone. We know life is not simple, but we want life to be consequential. Stories tell us it is. So we remind ourselves by telling the stories and listening to the stories and vice versa and on and on till we're dead and death is always a pretty good story too. (Almost always a great tv show or movie)

Life may not be painless or easy, but it is certainly interesting. Movies, television, novels, myths, comics, plays, etc… Those things are at their best when they remind us that the only difference between letting living pass us by and actively choosing to experience existence, is the amount of attention we pay to it. The latest season of the tv show that is my being is sometimes pretty rough, especially when I’m arguing with Trevor about who the main character is, but it is not boring. I can’t ask for much else.

[blackcatmanor]

RWBY V7 Episode 12 Photo Review (Spoilers)

..................WUT

I mean….I can’t really process what happened

 So let’s get this part out of the way:

The Good: 

Penny and Winter are the true BFFs

Penny becoming more human is endearing to see, and it’s been interesting to see her struggle with understanding emotions against Winter, who also struggles to understand them, in a way. Penny challenging Winter but never abandoning her to join RWBY is nice, and their light conflict is very well done because it shows Penny’s growing humanity struggle against Winter’s much chillier perspective.  I really like the dynamic between these two and hope they continue on in the next volume (If Winter dies too this volume I’ll ragequit RWBY), and to be honest it’s become more of a cute bond than Ruby and Penny this volume. Don’t @ me 

The fights

Although a lot of the “fights” in this volume were done off screen, when there is fighting this volume it has been extremely good. The camera moves around a lot less so we get a better sense of what is going on, and the moves feel more deliberate to whoever is doing the fighting, such as Ruby and Harriet who dart around a lot, delivering only occasional blows (and Ruby taking more of the blows because she’s not as good as Harriet in hand-to-hand), while Yang and Elm go all-out lady brawl (and it’s nice to see Yang’s semblance again)

Exception: Weiss. 

Weiss’ over-reliance on Summoning is making her boring to watch in fights. Seeing the 300 different ways the animators show her spinning around and waving her sword like a magic wand is getting OLD. If you’re going to have her summon all the time, fine, but stop focusing the camera on her. Just show her very distantly in the background waving her sword/wand and focus on how people fight whatever she summons.

 The meh:

RWBY vs Ace Ops- welp… I didn’t think the Ace Ops were gonna lose, I thought RWBY would flee and barely get away because the Ace Ops were supposed to be the best of the best. I guess I’m glad they didn’t just go down like total chumps (except Vine- sorry dude), but apparently if you train with the Ace Ops for 6 weeks, you’re as good as them. *Shrug* Who knew? It’s like Fitness Bootcamp- Train with a soldier on an obstacle course once and you’re basically ready to become a member of Seal Team 6, right?

 I wish they would have explained this a little more- maybe looping back to the discussion they had in Episode 4 about being friends vs teammates. Maybe RWBY’s personal bond gives them more incentive to win, while the Ace Ops are just going through the motions because it’s just a job to them. Plus I think Elm and Marrow’s inner conflict also maybe helped tipped the sales towards RWBY, perhaps they weren’t trying their hardest, but I wish this was a little more clear

 JNPR vs Neo

It’s kind of weird that Neo didn’t incapacitate Oscar, if she was planning to try trapping JNR as well… Or maybe Oscar barely managed to get away? Regardless, Neo had the lamp, so why stick around and wait for more people to show up? The plan was for her to get the lamp FROM Oscar, not necessarily grab Oscar as well. Maybe Neo has her own agenda, which would be cool, but from this episode it looks like she completed her objective but then waited around to fight some more. Maybe getting the lamp was too easy and she likes a challenge...? Who knows (I am saying that a lot for this episode, huh?)

 Cinder vs Winter and Penny

This is obviously meh because not much happened, and it’s just set up for the big final fight. With the Ace Ops incap’ed, hopefully RWBY can come in as well to finally fight Cinder directly after dancing around her in V5. I think most of this will go down probably in the Relic room because a grand fight in a cramped hospital room is hard, so I think Cinder will be able to Grimm-snatch the Winter Maiden powers and go down to the relic room, or she will incapacitate whoever does get the powers and drag them there, only to be stopped by RWBY for a big battle. However I don’t think it’ll be Winter Schnee getting the powers since it’ll take too long for the transfer device and they are out of time. I KINDA think now it might be Penny- a girl with an aura/soul- somehow she’ll receive them and it’ll be part of her becoming a real girl (like Pinocchio).  Who knows? At this point who gets them is totally up in the air.

  The Ugly:

 I guess I was right about Tyrian escaping custody again, but it wasn’t because of Salem intervening with Grimm like I thought. It was because Robyn is a terrible person!

Robyn- Please kindly f- off:

 I officially HATE Robyn the most. After teetering on a “meh-leaning-towards-general-dislike” feeling, I loathe her now and I hope she gets killed off quickly. She’s a one-dimensional generic hothead character with no personality that is purposely stuck in to create conflict. She is the good guy’s Tyrian- but Tyrian has a reason to be chaotic: He’s an insane zealot. Robyn is just a poorly written idiot. 

Robyn just does stupid things that get in everyone’s way all of the time, and actively works to undermine the hero’s at each turn. She prevented the launch of Amity by stealing all the supplies, and now she is going to try and fight in the middle of a cramped ship, risking Tyrian’s escape rather than waiting 5 minutes to duke it out with Clover once Tyrian is safely in jail. The entire time they were squaring off on the ship I kept thinking “Uhm Tyrian’s right there….Tyrian is RIGHT THERE! He’s gonna get out!” Robyn is a liar. She doesn’t care about the people of Mantle, because she’s doing things that could (and did) lead to a serial killer who killed Mantle Citizens escaping.

Not to mention she could have taken Qrow’s advice and talk to Ironwood first! Literally 2 episodes ago you were saying the General had your support and now you’re like “I’LL FIGHT ANYONE, ANYWHERE. Forget talking to people to get the full details and actually following through upon that trust I claimed I had in Ironwood two episodes ago, I’m gonna risk everyone’s lives to fight this out RIGHT here!” She’s the worst! 

  Confrontation with Qrow and Clover- 

This falls under the Ugly because, despite some good dialogue between Clover and Qrow, with Qrow expressing that he feels manipulated while Clover tries to explain his own point of view, every decision made from here on Qrow’s part is inexcusable and totally irrational. 

Tyrian joins the fray and inexplicably Qrow agrees to team up with him to take down Clover because THAT can’t possibly fail spectacularly. 

Tyrian suggests “putting the kid to bed” but the entire time I knew Tyrian would betray Qrow and go too far with attacking Clover because OF COURSE HE WOULD. But I thought he would sting Clover as a chance to get away, because Qrow would have to focus on getting Clover help. However, what we got was…much, much worse. 

Qrow’s questionable decision making

Hey DUMMY- Why not team up with Clover first to neutralize Tyrian again, and then you and Clover can duke it out. Or you and Clover can go talk to James like you wanted to 10 minutes ago!

Oh right…because “You got a score to settle” with Tyrian because this is now a cheesy western where your ego is more important than logic.

I think his bad luck semblance is really just an idiot semblance- like occasionally his semblance makes him do stupid things, leading to horrible outcomes but he mistakenly chalks it up to “bad luck.” It’s also frustrating because this volume they were setting Qrow up to grow into a good character- someone with a lot of anger from the past who learns to cope with it, and learns to accept friendship from others. I guess that’s all over. 

So, sadly, Tyrian then murders Clover. It was shocking I will say that...I actually GASPED, and it led to this really cool shot: 

But the shock was partly for the wrong reason. Like I said before, I thought Qrow being a dumb-dumb would lead to Clover being injured, sure, but KILLED? Yikes! Qrow’s idiocy leading to Clover being injured would be frustrating, but not unforgivable narratively and he could learn from it. He would learn to not treat his friends as transactional, and automatically write them off when one hint of struggle happens. Qrow’s idiocy in teaming up with a serial killer and getting Clover killed kinda makes Qrow unforgivable in my book. Does CRWBY want me to hate Qrow? I guess so, especially because Clover’s dying scene didn’t exactly stick the landing and alleviate my anger towards Qrow either.... 

So poor dying Clover is lying there, and a visibly shaken Qrow kneels next to him. So the thought is Qrow is going to realize his horrible mistake, and dive down a pool of self-loathing: tearfully blaming himself, blaming his bad luck,  APOLOGIZING, upset about how it’s all his fault, etc. Instead, he delivers (with a straight face) the weirdest line ever about James taking the fall. UHHH- WUT? You teaming up with Tyrian led to this. WHAT IS HAPPENING?!

  This sucks. On several levels. Clover’s death was just plain poorly done and a good character was wasted. I really liked Clover. I thought Qrow was going to actually get a break from being shit on this entire series and finally get, at a minimum, a friend that would continue to help him grow and develop as a character, pushing Qrow to see the best in himself and stop continually hating himself. With that cut short, I of course felt super sad and emotional about Clover’s death, even to the point of almost crying.

However, I can’t pretend like a significant part of that isn’t pure frustration anger about how this episode played out. Not only did Clover’s death came about in the dumbest way, but his final words with Qrow were wasted by the weird “James will take the fall” bit. 

Qrow should have blamed himself and his semblance (I mean...it actually kinda is his fault, not gonna lie), and Clover could have maybe been the ultimate friend to him, telling Qrow that it happened because Qrow was fighting for what he thought was right, and even though the outcome was horrible he shouldn’t stop fighting for what he believes in…? I dunno….ANYTHING other than “GRRR James will pay”

 I can’t help but remember a mere few minutes ago.....

This episode.....woof. 

 In a long series, you want your hero’s to sometimes lose just to keep it interesting, and to give them something to have to crawl back from. However, what’s interesting is seeing the characters try their best, make reasonable and decent decisions and still suffer a loss, because it makes us want to continue to cheer them on and watch as they make a triumphant comeback. Seeing hero’s simply choke and fail because they make the dumbest, irrational decisions with no logical reason is just frustrating and excruciating to watch, and seeing those moments lead to other characters suffering makes your “hero’s” unlikable. 

This argument was made for the V6 climax- that RWBY made a dumb decision and others suffered the consequences, making them “evil” to some hateboner watchers, but I thought this assessment was over dramatic. You have to take things in context, and literally nothing came of RWBY’s decision to steal an airship: the universe was the same as it was before with some filler in the middle. No one was injured or killed, and even the damage to the city was minimal (one roof). Clover, though, is full-on dead and that is entirely Qrow’s fault. I just can’t believe the writers put this down on paper, re-read it, and though- “yea....Someone who totally make the decision to team up with a murderer to subdue their good friend....this is gonna be GREAT.”

But who cares about the story- NEW MERCH DROPPING SOON AMIRITE?! 

Ok that was a low blow, but the writing and characters inexplicably took a logical nose dive this episode, after having a lot of thought put into last episode. The characters (especially Qrow, but also Robyn and to a lesser extent Clover) could have made some reasonable and logical decisions and Clover still could have died, which would have had way more impact and made the situation seem way more hopeless. Instead we got Robyn kicking off the shitshow by being just the worst, and Qrow taking the shitshow torch and cranking it up to 11, effectively un-doing all of the development we’ve seen from him this season. 

Lastly, even if you are going to have the characters completely fail at making decisions and it leads to a horrible outcome, at least stick the landing and don’t have them go off on some odd tangent about how this is someone else’s fault. *facepalm* 

Overall I’d give this episode a very generous 2/10.

The 2 points is because of the decent fight animation and occasionally decent dialogue.

I’m tired... 

[mst3kproject]

SHORT: Undersea Kingdom

My previous experiences with serials on this blog have not been good. If I watch them all in one sitting they’re boring, and if I watch them one installment at a time I forget what happened.  I was therefore kind of dreading Undersea Kingdom, and I decided that if this was my last chance to watch the edited-down ‘movie’ version, I was going to take it.  Well, guess what?  I can’t find the edited-down ‘movie’ version! So here I am, tackling the whole twelve-part series.  Again.

An opening montage introduces us to Ray ‘Crash’ Corrigan, the finest specimen of white manhood ever to enlist in the US Navy.  He is invited to join an expedition let by Professor Norton in his extremely roomy bubble-powered Rocket Submarine, to make contact with the lost city of Atlantis.  Also along for the ride are Norton’s son Billy, Briny and Salty the obnoxious comic-relief sailors, Diana the reporter, and Sinbad the parrot.  They arrive to find that all is not well at the bottom of the sea.  Sharad, who is like the Pope of Atlantis or something, is engaged in an ongoing war with the tyrant Unga Khan, who wants to take over the city and then destroy the upper world with earthquakes so he can rule that, too!  You can tell the difference between the two sides because Sharad’s guys wear white capes and Unga Khan’s wear black ones and are assisted by their old allies, the Neptune Men.

I mean, obviously a city at the bottom of the ocean has ties with the Neptune Men.  Right? Right?

So after all the time I spent dreading this short, how much of an ordeal was it?  Well… I watched it over the course of two days, and honestly?  I kind of enjoyed it.  Undersea Kingdom is pure low-budget cheese, but it somehow feels like low-budget cheese people cared about.  Somebody was truly excited to tell this story, rather than just slotting themed setpieces into a formula.  The ending lost me, but the rest really wasn’t awful.

Literally everything that happens in Undersea Kingdom is ridiculous.  As Joel and the bots pointed out, the costumes are truly epic.  Sharad wears a cross between a crown and a chef’s hat, with big fake plastic jewels on it.  Unga Khan’s troops wear miniskirts and lightning bolts on their heads – his chief honcho, Hakkor, is played by Lon Chaney Jr, unusually sober and unsure what the hell he’s doing here.  Unga Khan himself wears Genghis' pajamas, and Billy goes around in his little sailor suits with a shirt that keeps changing colour from scene to scene.

The Most Ridiculous Costume Award, however, has to go to Crash Corrigan himself.  After saving Sharad’s life he is rewarded with command of the Whitecape army, and spends the rest of the serial in a scaly golden diaper, gladiator sandals, and a helmet that looks like it belonged to a Spartan who dressed as a chicken for Hallowe’en.  I love it.

The plot, as is usual for a serial like this, is a nigh-endless series of narrow escapes, breathless chases, near-disasters, and Corrigan doing the one wrestling move he knows, which is picking a guy up over his shoulders and throwing him into a few other guys.  People keep saying things like “that’s the end of Crash Corrigan!” and “there’s no chance anyone survived that explosion!” when they really ought to know better.  In Radar Men from the Moon and The Phantom Creeps this stuff was pretty tiresome, as it felt like the plot was just wandering around without ever really escalating.  In Undersea Kingdom, however, stuff actually happens and even has long-term consequences!

There’s an early scene where it looks as if we’re just going to get more of the repetitive shit, as Crash arrives in the nick of time to save Professor Norton from Unga Khan’s brainwashing machine – in the very next episode, Norton is recaptured and brainwashed anyway.  This made me groan, because I was expecting it to go on like The Phantom Creeps’ endless game of Capture the Meteor.  Instead, though, it actually moves the plot forward – the rest of the story ended up being about trying to rescue Norton, who didn’t want to be rescued because he’d been brainwashed!  Although it did make me wonder why Unga Khan didn’t just put Corrigan in the brainwashing chamber… he had several oppotunities to do so.

While Radar Men from the Moon and The Phantom Creeps made liberal use of stock footage from both newsreels and previous serials, I think almost everything that appears in Undersea Kingdom was actually shot for it.  The only notable exceptions are some of the sports sequences in the first episode and the sea battle in the last.  Even better, it completely lacks the boring recap episode both of those felt they had to shove in before the climax!  Some of the footage, like the shots of dozens of horsemen riding forth from Unga Khan’s underground fortress, is used repeatedly, but you probably wouldn’t notice that if you were watching it week-by-week.  Oddly, the horses are the only animals we ever see in Atlantis.  I wonder what the people there eat.

I was not looking forward to the episodes being peppered with the ‘hilarious’ ‘antics’ of Briny, Salty, and Sinbad, but to my surprise, they were barely in it.  They get captured in the second episode and are completely forgotten about until something like the sixth, where we find them working in an Atlantean boulder mine and ‘comedically’ trying to escape.  They must have managed it somehow because they reappear on the submarine at the end, but I think I missed how they did it.   Maybe they were so annoying and unfunny that the majority of their scenes were cut.

None of this, of course, is to say that the serial is in any way really good.  The costumes are ridiculous, the plot is dumb, and the whole thing is full of gaping holes in the logic, especially where the Atlantean technology is concerned. Unga Khan is able to spy on both Sharad and the Upper World through some kind of Atlantean CCTV, but it only shows him what the plot requires.  The Neptune Men have ray guns but can’t hit anything.  Unga Khan has a dirigible thing that would have been really useful during the siege scenes but never appears in them.  And this applies to the low technology as much as the high kind – all the Atlanteans carry swords and nobody ever stabs anyone.

The weirdest moment is the bit where Corrigan just straight up becomes Hercules and bends prison bars to get through.  He even bends them back afterwards, and his pursuers are astonished to find themselves unable to replicate the feat.  Why is he able to do that?  Does knowing one wrestling move and being able to walk a tightrope (which he does twice to get into or out of a place) grant superhuman strength?

Having been made in the 1930’s, the whole thing is kinda racist and deeply sexist.  The racism is pretty mild as these things go – everybody’s white but Unga Khan is made up to look kind of Fu-Manchu-ish because he’s the Bad Guy.  The sexism, on the other hand, is pervasive and sometimes puzzling.  Everybody refers to Diana, played by twenty-nine-year-old Lois Wilde, as a ‘girl’, even the title cards, but at least she does get to do one useful thing by telling Sharad that Unga Khan is plotting to invade the surface world. Thing is, Diana is the only female character.  In the whole serial I think I saw one Atlantean woman and she never spoke.  How do you survive in isolation for six thousand years with no women?

I guess it doesn’t matter, since Atlantis wasn’t fated to last any longer.  In the second-last episode, Unga Khan’s tower blasts off for the surface, piercing the roof of Atlantis and letting the ocean in.  Our heroes escape to the submarine in time to avoid being drowned, but what about, like, everybody else?  I think we’re meant to believe that a substantial number of the remaining Atlanteans were killed when Unga Khan bombed the rebel stronghold, but that can’t have been the whole population, can it?  Somebody’s gotta be providing food for everybody… there must be farmers and ranchers around, even if we never met them.  What happened to them?  An entire civilization was just destroyed, and nobody seems to care except me!

The most annoying thing about this is that I think the reason it was written that way was so Crash Corrigan could have a happy ending!  When Sharad made him commander, he made Corrigan responsible for the safety of the Atlantean people.  If Atlantis hadn’t been flooded, or if anyone had survived, Corrigan would have had to stay and help them.  In particular there’s Corrigan’s Atlantean BFF Molock, who owes him a life debt and pledges to follow him until he’s repaid it.  If he lived Corrigan would be stuck with him. With the whole place destroyed, our hero is free to return to his naval career with no hitches.

Well, there’s one hitch. At the end Corrigan and Diana get married – despite having spent almost no time together over the course of the story. I guess they live happily ever after or something.  I mostly enjoyed Undersea Kingdom, but the way it offhandedly killed all the Atlanteans so there wouldn’t be any consequences pissed me off enough that I refuse to recommend it.

[the-desolated-quill]

The Riddle Of The Sphinx - Inside No. 9 blog

(SPOILER WARNING: The following is an in-depth critical analysis. If you haven’t seen this episode yet, you may want to before reading this review)

When dealing with writers and comedians that dedicate themselves to very dark subject matters, the question often arises of where you draw the line. How far is too far? Are there some tropes and topics that are simply out of bounds? Often this comes down to personal taste. In the case of Steve Pemberton and Reece Shearsmith, there have been a few occasions where they went dangerously close to overstepping the mark before reeling themselves back in just in time. The Riddle Of The Sphinx, for me anyway, is the very rare occasion where I think they went WAY too far.

This is purely a subjective opinion of course. If you enjoyed the episode, then good for you. Clearly you’ve got a stronger stomach than I have. Personally, I thought this episode was just plain disgusting. Now yes, Pemberton and Shearsmith have done disgusting stuff before (Dr. Chinnery in the League Of Gentlemen for instance), but it was often over the top and tongue in cheek. This was just so disgusting to the point where I felt like it wasn’t entertaining any longer. It was just gross and made me feel very uncomfortable. You could argue that was the point and... yeah, fair enough. But even so, I wish to explain why I feel this was a step too far.

Things start off well enough. A woman (played by Alexandra Roach) visits a university professor (played by Steve Pemberton) to learn about cryptic crosswords in order to impress her boyfriend. Then, in a twist you can see coming from space, she reveals herself as being super clever and has poisoned the professor as revenge for what happened to her brother (I’ll come to that later). Then in another twist it turns out that the professor has swapped cups, meaning that the woman is poisoned instead and is now paralysed while Reece Shearsmith’s character threatens and emotionally tortures him for... very bizarre reasons, which I’ve delve into later.

Just to be clear, it’s not the cannibalism I object to as such (although that did make me feel very physically sick. Also If you haven’t seen the episode yet and you chose to ignore my spoiler warning, I imagine reading that I don’t object to cannibalism must be the weirdest out-of-context sentence you’ve ever come across). Rather it’s the context within which the cannibalism occurs. It’s the blatant misogyny of it I have a problem. What we’re basically watching is a young woman being stripped of any power, independence or dignity while two middle aged men objectify her. It’s incredibly uncomfortable and sickening to watch, and I suppose you could argue that’s the intention, but surely there was something else they could have written that was just as uncomfortable whilst still engaging. For instance, did we really need the scene where the professor tries to touch her up while she’s paralysed? Or Shearsmith’s character asking the professor if he’d prefer a bit of breast or leg, before settling for ‘the rump’. It also commits the cardinal sin of focusing on the male character’s trauma while the woman is being tortured as opposed to the woman’s. Maybe if they just kept as a two hander, with the professor being in control for the first half and the woman in control for the second, I would have been okay with it. I don’t know.

But like I said, you can argue that it’s just personal taste. I was just thinking and feeling the stuff the writers wanted me to feel and I just couldn’t handle it. Fair enough. I won’t argue with that. But my problems with The Riddle Of The Sphinx go beyond the ick factor of it. I also really don’t like the way Pemberton and Shearsmith chose to go about writing this. Inside No. 9 of course takes a lot of influence from other anthology series like Tales Of The Unexpected and The Twilight Zone, which usually have a twist in the narrative that alters your perception of the story. The Riddle Of The Sphinx however seems to consist of nothing but twists, to the point where the narrative becomes hard to follow and where I just simply stopped caring. My perception of what was going on was being altered so much that I just switched off. I didn’t understand what was happening and, frankly, I don’t really want to. Why should I?

While Pemberton and Shearsmith are desperately trying to pull the rug out from under us, they completely forget two important things. Cohesion and emotional investment. The reason the twists worked in previous stories was because they were, for the most part, simple and were happening to characters we grew to like and care about over the course of the episode. I didn’t care about any of the characters in this episode. Because you’re bing bombarded with twists and the course of the narrative was being changed constantly, it’s damn near impossible to get a good read on them. One minute the professor is a kindly teacher, then he’s a cold hearted despot, then he’s a rapist and finally a weeping victim. How am I supposed to feel about this guy? Should I be rooting for him or not? I don’t know and I don’t think the writers know either.

It doesn’t help that the plot is borderline incomprehensible. As best as I can understand it, the woman’s brother killed himself because the professor cheated at a crossword competition (maybe if they actually took the time to delve deeper into that, maybe the brother’s motivation for killing himself wouldn’t come across as so idiotic. I mean really?! You killed yourself over a fucking crossword?!) and so the sister decides to poison the professor (because that's the most logical response, right? Clearly stupidity and irrationality is a family trait), only for the tables to be turned on her and she ends getting poisoned. Reece Shearsmith pops up, says he’s her dad and promptly carves a piece of her for the professor to eat in exchange for the antidote and to be cleared of the attempted frame up via crossword (yeah and that’s another thing. The professor came up with the clues to the crossword, right? So how did the clues oh so conveniently point to things that would happen that night. Did I miss a line of dialogue? Did Shearsmith help? If that’s the case, it’s the same bullshit logic as The Bill. There’s no way Shearsmith could have known that far in advance what would happen and with such precision. Loads of things could have gone wrong). And then Shearsmith reveals that his wife had an affair with the professor, which means the woman is in fact the professor’s child and now he should totes kill himself with a prop gun that somehow magically turns into a real gun the minute you put a bullet in it. Okay, bye.

It does just come across like they were just making this up as they went along. There’s no effort to really delve into how the characters feel about these various, ludicrous and utterly pointless twists. How, for instance, does Shearsmith’s character feel about knowing he’s not the father of his kids and that a colleague he once respected betrayed his trust? And how can he so cooly sacrifice his not-daughter so willingly in his convoluted revenge plot? Surely there’d still be an emotional bond there. Well maybe if the episode didn’t consist almost entirely of expository dialogue explaining the overly complex backstory as well as how the fucking crossword works, we could actually have explored those questions.

Let’s face it. The only thing The Riddle Of The Sphinx has going for it is shock value. Maybe all of this crap makes some kind of sense on a second viewing (I doubt it, but maybe). Normally I watch each episode twice before writing one of these blogs, but I don’t really want to in this case. Call me a stick in the mud, but I don’t think watching a woman being sexually victimised, carved and eaten is very entertaining. That’s not really how I wish to spend my Tuesday evenings.

[sending-the-message]

Not All Psychics Are Frauds by JasperDeWitt

Last year, I went to see a psychic for the first and last time. It might have been the worst way to spend my money I’ve ever encountered.

Now, I know exactly what you’re thinking. “Psychics are frauds! They just tell you what you want to hear and then bleed you for money! What did you expect?” You probably think I got some bullshit cold reading disguised as the whisperings of fate, only to be told that my aura was irrevocably unclean and that for just one small payment of $1000, it could be completely cured. After all, that’s what con artists do, right?

Well, that’s just the thing. This wasn’t a waste of money because the psychic was a fraud. This was a waste of money because…well, just listen and you’ll understand.

The whole thing started when I was walking back from the subway after work. Due to a rather unpleasant financial necessity, my apartment building is about two miles’ walk from that station, and I don’t have a car, so walking home takes between 40 minutes and an hour most of the time. To me, this is usually an annoyance because it takes away time that I could be curled up in my apartment with a good book and a glass of wine, but on the bright side, my neighborhood is actually very pretty and quaint, so at least the walk is nice to look at. All the same, normally, I don’t pay much attention to shops or restaurants on the way. They just sort of blend into the scenery.

But that day was…different. Because that day, I noticed the rundown old psychic shop with a cheap neon light shaped like an eye over its door for maybe the first time ever, and I’m sorry to say, I decided to go in. What’s doubly infuriating is that I’m really not sure why I noticed the place at all, let alone entered it. Maybe it was because it had been an unusually slow day at work, so my mind didn’t have as much to be preoccupied about, or maybe it was because the weather was so nice. Or, more likely, it was just the fact that the shop’s owner had decided to put out a big fat sign advertising 50 percent off Palm and Tarot readings. Whatever the reason, I made one of the worst decisions of my life and stepped over the threshold.

The shop’s bell dinged in a dull, tuneless way as soon as I was inside, and even though the shop was up a flight of stairs, the rank smell of incense mixed with old fast food was still strong enough to hit my nose. I very nearly turned around and walked out right then. However, as I was in the act of leaving, a squat, sour looking, middle-aged woman of indecipherable ethnicity came waddling down the raggedy carpeted stairs. As soon as she saw me, her face split into a poor attempt at a welcoming smile whose insincerity was only compounded by the multiple gold teeth that dotted it.

“Hello, sweetie!” she cooed in a faux-soothing voice that made my eyes nearly roll out of my skull. “Can I help you?”

“Um…” I began as I mentally winced from how awkward this whole thing was. “Um, I saw the sign outside…?”

“Oh, yes!” said the woman, bustling over to me and taking me by the hand. “And what sort of reading were you looking for today? Palm is $10 and Tarot is $25.”

“Oh, I don’t think…um…that is…thank you, but I’d better go.”

“Nonsense!” she said, seizing my hand in a surprisingly strong grip. “Something in the energies brought you into my shop today. I can feel it. I’ll tell you what, dear, why don’t I just give you both readings for a round $30? I don’t do that for just anyone, but you seem like someone really special.”

It was one of the more hamfisted sales pitches I’d ever encountered. But, I’ll admit, I’ve always been a sucker for new experiences, and shelling out $30 just meant I’d have to skip one drunken happy hour that week. So I said yes. The woman beamed, or rather, her mouth split wider, since I’m not sure her face was really built for the whole “smiling” thing.

“Excellent, come on up with me!” she said cheerily.

And with that, I found myself being hurried up the stairs into the foul-smelling shop. However, I didn’t get much of a chance to look at the dust collecting manuals on Reiki Healing, or the giant charts showing different Chakras, or the multiple plastic vats of different colored crystals contained therein because the woman had hastily shepherded me into a side room where the smell of incense was so overpowering that it completely drowned out everything else. There, I was unceremoniously dumped into a moth-eaten floral armchair next to a small, rickety wooden table. The woman took a seat across from me and reached out her hand.

“Now, first of all, what is your name?” she asked.

“Emily.”

“Hello Emily, my name is Josie,” she said. “Now, may I see your palm?”

Admittedly, I have no room for comparison, but I’m pretty sure that what followed was substandard even for hoax palm readings. A fortune cookie would have been more informative about the future, and a self-help book written by a homeless person probably would’ve offered more useful advice. But the sheer uselessness of the information gleaned from the reading isn’t the only reason I pass over it. I pass over it because the really relevant stuff only happened when Josie pulled out her worn Tarot deck.

If the palm reading had been laughably un-specific, then the Tarot reading was bewilderingly specific, albeit mostly in unverifiable ways. For instance, I was told to watch for a man five years my senior whose name began with M, because he could very well end up as my soulmate. Further, I was told that the month of November would be a period of great turmoil for me, though in retrospect, given this happened during 2016, this was actually a pretty solid prediction for me and millions of others.

And then there was the weirdest prediction of all, which emerged when Josie flipped over the Ten of Swords midway through the reading, and from which this whole story begins. When the card appeared, Josie grabbed my arm and stared deeply into my eyes.

“Beware the man in the red brick house with the blue door on Winston Drive,” she intoned solemnly.

I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t a little creeped out by this sudden change in her aspect, not least of all because she held my gaze for a good ten seconds after she said it without blinking. Then, as if nothing had happened, she flipped up more cards and kept going with her mix of vague mumbo-jumbo and oddly specific yet still unfalsifiable predictions.

Once she’d finished with an all-too-convenient assurance that my life would have many great changes in just a short time, I expected her to try to upsell me on something else. After all, I’d heard stories from friends who’d seen psychics about how they would use things like palm and tarot readings as an excuse to try to sell you even more pointless bullshit. But, to my surprise, nothing like that happened.

Instead, Josie simply stood up and asked if I’d be paying by cash or credit card. I said credit card, and she asked if she could have my driver’s license along with the card because it was store policy to check IDs whenever credit purchases were made. I dutifully handed over both my card and my license, and after checking over both, she swiped my card, handed me my receipt and thanked me for coming in, adding that of course I should feel free to contact her and return anytime I liked. To be honest, I’d be lying if I didn’t say I found the whole thing disappointing.

Now, you’re probably wondering at this point why this awkward but otherwise completely forgettable experience is something I regret so much. I admit, it doesn’t sound like much. But just wait.

So just over two weeks after my encounter with the psychic whose powers I thought were an obvious hoax, I ended up bar hopping with some friends from work on the weekend. And as it happens, all of us lived around the same suburb so, logically, we started there. Given how much we drank, and how little of that was water, it’s probably surprising that I remember the evening at all. But some things even a totally drunken mind apparently can’t forget.

Anyway, around 4 AM, we finally decided to go home. And because the last bar we’d visited was about a half hours’ walking distance from my building, I decided to just make the trek rather than spring for an Uber or a Lyft. In retrospect, this was a horrible idea, but given that I was very drunk, that my neighborhood had a reputation for safety, and that the night was at just that perfect temperature you get midway between Summer and Fall, I like to think it was at least understandable. And perhaps I’d have got out of it unscathed had it not been for the particular route that Google Maps told me to take when getting home.

You can probably guess where that route went, and you’re right. Ten minutes or so after I’d started walking, I was instructed by my phone in the chipper Uncanny Valley-esque tones of my GPS to “turn right on Winston Drive.” Now, as I’ve said, the experience with Josie the Shitty Psychic was entirely forgettable, so normally, I would’ve done just that: forgotten it. But somehow, in that oppressive pre-dawn darkness, with a cool pre-autumn breeze blowing around my ankles, the eerie remembrance of her staring into my eyes and telling me to beware the man in the red brick house with the blue door on Winston Drive came flooding back.

If I’d been even slightly soberer, that memory would’ve spooked me. But, with Vodka/Red Bull number umpteen rushing through my veins, I just thought it was hilarious. The bitch had bilked me out of $30, after all. Fuck her! Here I was on the very street she had mentioned, and dammit, I was going to prove conclusively that one of her “predictions” had been a joke. And then I’d leave a Yelp review to prove it. Ha. Ha. Ha!

God, drunk me is stupid. Nevertheless, in that moment, it seemed like the best idea ever. All I had to do was find a red brick house with a blue door and survive the encounter, and the proof would be right there, plain as ink. So, with all the purpose that a drunk white girl can muster, I turned down Winston Drive and started walking straight down it. Or at least, it felt straight. I’m pretty sure in retrospect it was sinusoidal.

Anyway, I know you’re probably thinking that even given that I’d found Winston Drive, Josie’s clue wasn’t particularly helpful. After all, red brick houses with blue doors aren’t exactly rare architectural wonders. And you’d be right, except that somehow, when it came to this section of Winston Drive, they actually were. Oh, sure, most of the houses were red brick, but I guess most of the inhabitants of Winston Drive must’ve been too aware of how the colors would clash to paint their doors blue. White? Sure. Black? You bet. Grey? No doubt. But blue was nowhere to be seen.

That is, until I got within just a few blocks of where Google Maps was telling me to turn again, and there it was: a quaint looking little two story red brick house with a door painted a color that, even in the dim light of the street lamps, I could tell was a vivid shade of blue.

By this point, the alcohol had started to wear off slightly, so I’m glad to say I didn’t waltz up and ring the doorbell like an idiot, as I’d considered doing a few blocks and about two hundred weaving steps back. And no, I didn’t avoid this out of some sense of consideration for sleeping residents, because – and this should’ve been my first sign that something was wrong – the lights in the house were still on despite its being past 4 in the morning. In fact, even still being about 80% more drunk than I should’ve been, the sight of those lights still winking out of the windows in an entire blacked out street, combined with the now much more urgent seeming warning from Josie the Bad Psychic, suddenly made me very wary. In fact, while the wind had picked up and the night had begun to turn more chilly than pleasant as a result, I’m pretty sure the shudder that ran down my spine looking up at that house had nothing to do with the weather.

I was about to turn away and walk much more quickly away from the place when a sudden flurry of movement in one of the basement windows caught my eye. It was only a shadow, but to my eyes it had looked – somehow – like someone’s hand clawing at the glass from the inside. Now both genuinely creeped out and transfixed, I stared at the house for a good ten seconds, waiting to see if something else would happen.

It only took eight for the Thing to happen. With an audible smack, the unmistakable outline of a woman’s body emerged from behind the wall at the left side of the window, and began clawing at it, trying desperately to get it to move. The light was behind the woman, and I was standing a good 20 or so feet away, but what I could make out of her features at that distance was bone chilling. The most horrible, pleading expression of raw animal terror had twisted her face, and her eyes bulged like a deer when it’s trapped in the jaws of a wolf. For just a few seconds, she kept scratching and clawing at the window, trying to tear it upwards with effort that I sensed was probably breaking her fingernails.

Then, she saw me. And when she saw me, she screamed. Not that I could hear it, but the shape her mouth made forbade any other interpretation. And as she screamed, my brain, now suddenly feeling as stone cold sober as if I’d drunk an entire tank of coffee, registered that she was mouthing a word: “Help.” But she wasn’t able to get out many repetitions of the word before a huge, muscled hand appeared from the other side of the window and yanked her backwards from it by the hair.

At that moment, I made perhaps the worst decision of that night: I screamed, too. It was reflexive, and I clapped my hands over my mouth almost immediately after it happened, but the sound was so high and keening that anyone could’ve heard it. And someone did, because a fraction of a second later, the hulking outline of a man appeared at the window. He must’ve seen me, because he vanished only a moment later. I was still frozen in shock, and didn’t quite know what to do. Until I heard the sound of that blue door scraping outward, and saw the huge, beefy hand pushing it.

That snapped me out of my stupor immediately, and I ran. I ran desperately, like a hunted animal, not pausing to look back or listen. Worse than this was that I didn’t need to look back or listen. Within just a few seconds of my sprint, I heard the ragged, angry, grunting sounds of breath being drawn behind me, and the heavy footfalls of someone unimaginably bigger, stronger, and more malevolent than I could ever be implacably catching up. I quickened my pace and ran down any street I could, but it seemed to do no good. Slowly but surely, those feet seemed to only get desperately closer.

Then, a sweaty, grasping paw of a hand swiped my hair and I panicked. I screamed like a banshee, with a volume and pitch so high that it should’ve broken every window in every house around me. And even if that sound may or may not have reached the ears of the residents of those houses in time, it reached an audience far more attentive and in the moment, far more helpful. All at once, the silence of the entire neighborhood around me was shattered by the barking and howling of dogs, and with it, the blessed sight of lights in windows popping into life like Christmas lights draped across the sky. I heard the sound of swearing from a deep, oily, rasping voice, and suddenly the oppressive sense of proximity from the creature behind me, and the dreadful pursuing footfalls stopped. But I didn’t. I ran all the way home, and as soon as I’d slammed my apartment door shut and locked the door every way I could, I called the cops and told them what had happened and what I’d seen and experienced. To their credit, despite the early hour, they responded immediately.

I suppose you can guess at what they found in the red brick house with the blue door on Winston Drive: clothes, jewelry, and the bodies of numerous unfortunate women, as well as one terribly frightened, and horribly physically abused live woman. She told them that the man in the house had kept her captive and, between raping her, had branded her every night with an iron shaped like a sword. There were three such scars on her when they found her, but on each of the corpses, there was one consistent number: ten. Just like the card Josie had seen when she warned me about the man. And no, by the way, they haven’t found him yet, which is a fact that gives me nightmares more than anything else that has ever happened to me.

Now, you might think that this experience convinced me that Josie had a genuine gift, despite her apparent inability in most areas as a psychic. But it hasn’t, and it hasn’t because of a very simple fact.

You see, the driver’s license I’d shown Josie when I paid her with my credit card, while it was still current, had been issued a few years back. In fact, it had been issued when I lived in the same city, but at a different address. I mention this only because when the police called me in for questioning and I told them about what had happened with Josie, they asked to see my driver’s license as well. At first, I didn’t understand when the officer’s face went the color of stale oatmeal upon seeing it. But then, he told me the other thing that haunts me to this day: my address was the exact one that the girl they’d rescued was living at before she was kidnapped.

They haven’t found Josie yet either. But they raided her shop the next day, and found an entire ledger of stolen credit cards, driver’s licenses and social security numbers stashed in the very backroom where she’d done my readings. All were eventually traced to the victims discovered in the red brick house with the blue door on Winston Drive.

So now you understand why, despite what seems like clear evidence of a genuine psychic, I’m never going back to see any of the breed again. Because it’s true that not all psychics are frauds. But some are something much, much worse.