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timeagainreviews · 9 days

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Bursting Your Bubble

Liam Lynch once said- “The internet is a glimpse into how rude people will be in the future.” At the time it felt like just another funny little line from his song “Internet Killed the Video Star,” (not to be confused with the Limousines’ song of the same name) but nowadays it feels prophetic. Just this morning I made the mistake of reading the comments section and it’s thrown my day off considerably. From the comforts of our keyboards, we can write horrendous things. Treat strangers with contempt. It’s sometimes easy to forget there are actual people on the other end of our glowing screens. Insularity breeds contempt for the different. We live in our little bubbles.

It would be easy to blame the posters, the content creators, the influencers. A few bad apples spoil the bunch. But as psychologist Philip Zimbardo would say- don’t blame the apples, don’t blame the barrel, blame the barrel makers. The people who put the apples into the barrel in the first place. Despite everything Russell T Davies’ “Dot and Bubble,” is trying to say, one question hangs over it and the rest of this season- who is the barrel maker? Things in Finetime are anything but fine, but by whose design? One might assume it’s Susan Twist’s character, but who is she? This is the overarching question of season one, but is the question beginning to feel a bit drawn out?

From the outset, “Dot and Bubble,” acts as a sort of Black Mirror version of “Blink.” We’re given a young blonde woman who finds herself in a dangerous situation that requires her to look at something she would usually ignore. All the while, the Doctor and his companion are forced to talk to the young woman through a screen. The difference here is that while Sally Sparrow had gumption, Lindy Pepper-Bean is about as useful as a wicker toilet. She lives in “Finetime,” an actual bubbled world. Her “Dot,” device then creates yet another bubble around her head. It’s bubble inception. The bubble tells her when to wake up, how to walk, and even when to pee. (Shout out to my boy Dr Pee!) Because of this, Lindy lives an unobserved life where hard questions need not bother her.

Everything about Finetime is a hyper-realistic nightmare of overstimulation. It’s like “A Clockwork Orange,” meets “The Stepford Wives.” Lindy can ignore her problems when there’s always a new Ricky September video on the horizon. As Frank from Brad Neely’s “The Professor Brothers” said- “We danced like those people in the hyper-tight light of fried chicken commercials.” Lindy and her “friends,” can completely ignore the fact that their friends have slowly begun disappearing. They don’t even seem to notice when they’re the only ones in the room, how would they notice gigantic slugs eating each other?

With Ncuti Gatwa away filming season four of “Sex Education,” the show had to do a couple Doctor-lite episodes. These are usually hit-or-miss among fans, but as “Blink,” proved back in 2007, they can become fan favourites. The Doctor and Ruby’s roles are reduced, but this episode does a good job of making them feel like a recurring part of the story. Even though they spend the bulk of the episode in what looks like the intro to “The Brady Bunch,” it never feels like we’re being underserved.

Lindy’s friends float around her like talking heads in her holographic bubble. But she keeps getting interrupted by the Doctor and his bad vibes. Even though Ruby is also invading her privacy despite not being on her friend list, Lindy is willing to hear her out. We’re not told why up front, but there is a reason Lindy can believe Ruby might feasibly be tech support, but the Doctor could not. Due to Lindy’s impatience, Ruby is forced to talk to Lindy as if she were a child, but not so much that she catches on. Anyone who stops Lindy from either working or playing is a massive drag to her. She really just wants Ruby and the Doctor to go away. How do they not know how society works? Why are they asking such stupid questions when the answers have been drilled into everyone since they were children?

We learn that Lindy’s mother is Penny Pepper-Bean, but she’s actually another Susan Twist cameo, so she could be anyone. Thankfully, both the Doctor and Ruby recognise her this time, and it’s not in an aborted timeline. I saw someone mention on Facebook today that they felt the Doctor recognising her felt rushed, and I couldn’t disagree more. It was high time we got something from this storyline. While it has been nice to genuinely be curious about Doctor Who’s mysteries again, this one has felt like a lot of the same. With the Doctor and Ruby now clued in, we have somewhere else to go in the future. Maybe now Susan Twist will come out from behind the mask and we can learn something more about her. Maybe now the Doctor will start looking into her involvement.

I’m usually not interested in fan theories as they’re often filler content when YouTubers and bloggers don’t have anything else to talk about. But here I believe we’ve been given quite a lot to work with to formulate a theory or two. I know I said “It’s probably not the Rani because it’s never the Rani,” but at this point, if she’s not the Rani, they’ve wasted their biggest opportunity to reintroduce audiences to her that the show has ever had. At this point, it would be weird if she wasn’t the Rani. The things she’s been involved with have all of her usual hallmarks. We have genetic manipulation in “Space Babies,” humans are being treated like lab rats in “Dot and Bubble,” and then there’s the whole disguising yourself in plain sight aspect. At this point, the bigger question isn’t whether or not she’s the Rani. The bigger question is why wouldn’t she be? Why would the show come so close to revealing her and then pull back?

Ruby finally convinces Lindy to look beyond her bubble where she witnesses her co-worker being eaten by one of the Man-Traps. Usually Lindy could just ask her Dot to guide her to safety, but for some reason, it feels more than ready to direct her right into the open mouth of a Man-Trap. Lindy must walk without the aid of her Dot, and man does she suck at it. She quite literally cannot walk talk and chew bubblegum at the same time. Part of me was worried the episode was going to spend all of its time making fun of young people and their phones. It’s cliched and honestly, I’m tired of it. But within the context of the episode, Davies isn’t attempting a technophobic condescension toward the youth of today. Instead, the episode endeavours to highlight the danger of relinquishing your thoughts and actions to outside entities. If we let others tell us what to like, who to like, or how to live, you may as well become worm food.

Having narrowly escaped death by slug, Lindy is forced to bumble about outside while the Doctor and Ruby direct her like the most exasperated form of Google Maps ever. An interesting aspect of this scene that I’ve not heard anyone talk about is the greenish-blue blood seen from a body being dragged away. You may not know what I’m talking about, but I’ll post a picture below. You may look at that and say “That’s not blood, that’s slug goo.” But where else in the episode do we actually see the Man-Traps leave behind any kind of snail trail? I’m going to go out on a limb and say I think the people of Finetime are blue-blooded, and considering what we learn about them, it makes sense. Blue blood is often a symbol for aristocracy, but it can also be used as a way to imply an inbred nature. In this case, we could infer that the citizens have blue blood because they don’t “dilute,” it with the blood of non-white people. Oh did I not mention the Finetimers are racists? More on that in a bit.

Throughout most of this episode, only one of Lindy’s friends seems to be concerned with the fact that people are going missing, and that’s Gothic Paul. Gothic Paul was a nice little addition to the episode because a trans man plays him and they didn’t make a big deal about it. He wasn’t even killed for being trans. He was killed for being delicious and too dumb to notice. A diversity win! Compare this to Chibnall’s gay representation where a character says “By the way, I’m gay,” and then spiders eat her face. LGBTQ+ people are allowed to exist in such a manner that it doesn’t feel like “kill your gays,” when they kill our gays. Representation has been so good that it’s not even problematic that a drag queen made a child disappear. You know, the thing all of those conservatives are worried about with drag story hour? That’s just the Maestro’s schtick.

After the battery in Lindy’s Dot goes dead, she’s basically a sitting duck. That is until she hears a familiar voice call out. A voice belonging to none other than the dreamy Ricky September. Maybe it’s the insular nature of being a pop star, but Ricky isn’t bogged down by his Dot. Instead, he’s learned to appreciate existing offline. Because of this, Ricky reads things about their people’s history. And even luckier for Lindy, Ricky can actually walk and move about in the world. After a bit of starstruck awe, Lindy takes his hand as he leads her away from danger. It’s almost sweet if you don’t suspect what’s coming.

Ricky leads Lindy to Plaza 55 where a door leading to the river flowing beneath the bubble can lead them out into the Wild Woods. Knowing a bit about coding, Ricky simply needs to type in two digits every five seconds and the door will come open eventually. With no Man-Traps about, Lindy needs only to sit tight and let Ricky work his magic. While she waits, Lindy is able to charge her Dot which enables the Doctor and Ruby to contact her again. The Doctor infers that the Dots can see the Man-Traps, but willfully encourage people to walk directly into their mouths. As it turns out, the Dot hates Lindy and her friends about as much as the audience does. The AI has gone rogue and it’s taking these airheads with it. Sadly, this is also when the episode starts to get bogged down by the season's overarching plot.

The Doctor deduces that the Man-Traps are eating the people in alphabetical order. This leads him to believe that the AI must have created the Man-Traps, otherwise they would eat whoever, whenever. The reason I feel this feels bogged down by the overarching plot is that I can’t imagine these golfball-sized Dots being capable of growing creatures in a laboratory. The most they can do against Ricky and Lindy is act as a projectile. They don’t even have thumbs. Because of this, it’s logical to imagine that there is a third party involved. It’s not hard to imagine who that third party is, considering Susan Twist’s cameo. But in the meantime, we as an audience are left in a state of limbo where this is either part of some greater plan, or an unsatisfying plothole. Albeit, not an incredibly episode-breaking one. After all, the Daleks manage quite a bit with only a plunger.

With Lindy’s Dot trying to bash their brains in and Lindy being next in line, alphabetically speaking, we are finally introduced to who Lindy actually is as person. Using her mega fan knowledge about Ricky September, she informs the Dot that Ricky’s name is a stage name and his real name is Coombes. Ricky can barely believe the betrayal from the woman he’s tried so very hard to save. But her gamble pays off as the Dot refocuses its attention on Ricky, giving Lindy enough time to escape to the river while the Dot strikes down poor Ricky. As face turns go, this is one of the worst in Doctor Who history. However, it’s not entirely without warning. Certain lines of dialogue have clued us in to Lindy’s true nature throughout the episode.

Before we leave him behind like Lindy so callously does, I’d like to take a moment to talk about Ricky September, as I don’t think we’ve seen the last of him. It was hard to tell what the Dot does to Ricky because the camera looks away, but he could have survived. Why I think this is because they spend a lot of time building Ricky up as a character. Both the Doctor and Ruby have shown a romantic interest in him. There have even been rumours that there would be a sort of love triangle between the Doctor, Ruby, and Ruby’s boyfriend. On top of that, we’ve got another blonde-haired blue-eyed person with RS for initials. Even further, the S in both names indicates a point in time- September and Sunday. And just because Ricky comes from a community of racists doesn’t mean he is one. Like he said, he does a lot of reading. Perhaps he’s learned better. Or I’m wrong and he has a Dot-sized hole in his head.

Finally, we get to see the Doctor and Ruby in the flesh. Even more finally, we get to see them both in the costumes they wore in their first costume reveal! Lindy gives the Doctor and Ruby some shitty excuse about Ricky turning back to save more people. She even gives a begrudging thank you to them, but ultimately can’t bring herself to let the Doctor help her or her friends. Lindy and her fellow survivors can’t bring themselves to interact with the Doctor because he’s black. It’s as heartbreaking for the Doctor as it is infuriating to Ruby who can only stand there and watch her friend experience this ugliness. But the Doctor is still the Doctor and he’s a bigger man than their small minds. He continues holding out a lifeline to some of the most undeserving group of spoiled narcissists to ever grace the screen of Doctor Who.

I’ve seen people complain that the Doctor does this. That it doesn’t mesh with the same character who once punched a man who was racist toward Bill. But that was the Doctor drawing a line and defending his friend’s honour. The Doctor’s compassion is so great that he’s willing to forego his sense of self-respect to save lives. This is the same man who tries to reason with racist genocidal aliens, he doesn’t stop just because they look human. I know I would have let them die, but the Doctor is a better person than me. That’s not to say any of this is easy for him. It very clearly cuts him to his core. Ncuti Gatwa gives an earth-shattering performance here, and when you consider this is the first scene he filmed after the Giggle, it’s fucking astounding. This is the exact type of range I was hoping they would bring to his character.

As a white member of the audience, I am left with a lot of uncomfortable realisations. Like, I barely batted an eye at the fact that Lindy’s friends were all white. I’m also left wondering how many people the Doctor has saved in the past who might have also treated a black Doctor differently. But I also feel like this ending took me by surprise for a different reason than my own ignorance. I simply never expected Doctor Who to go there. The topic of racism is not new to Doctor Who. Martha experiences quite a bit of it, especially in “Human Nature.” But even their more recent attempt with “Rosa,” fell short by implying that in 3000 years, no other black person would stand up for their rights. It was an oversimplification of the civil rights movement that left me wondering if Doctor Who was capable of tackling such heavy issues. I never felt like the show properly addressed the Doctor being a woman, so believe me when I say how much I appreciate them addressing the Doctor’s race. Even further, I loved that it ultimately isn’t the Doctor who will suffer from their racism. Their prejudice has doomed them without anyone else’s help.

It’s weird to look at this episode on the TARDIS wiki and see the Dots and Man-Traps listed as the main enemy. Because really, it’s Lindy who is the real monster. It’s Hoochy Pie and her wack-ass trumpet. Also, can we not come up with a better name than Man-Trap? What about Erascists? They erase e-racists. Just some good little sluggy bois taking out the trash. I stan a king. The Dots hate those evil trust fund dickweeds, and honestly, same. Evidently, the name Man-Trap was introduced in Doctor Who Unleashed, which for the 4th week in a row, I’ve forgotten to watch. One of the side-effects of Doctor Who’s screwy release schedule is that now I completely forget Doctor Who Unleashed even exists. One benefit, however, is that I often get to rewatch the episodes the next day with my partners who didn’t want to stay up late. The benefit is that I’ll notice things I missed the first time. It also allows me to experience the stories for what they are, as opposed to what I expected them to be.

Being able to watch “Dot and Bubble,” with hindsight has given me an even greater appreciation for this story. Over time, I feel people will eventually regard it as one of Davies’ best. Its tone and themes remind me of something you would find in the Seventh Doctor era, which is high praise coming from me. Ricky feels like the promise of a character like Pex from “Paradise Towers,” properly realised. Hopefully, like the graffiti says- “Pex lives.” Dylan Holmes Williams does a fabulous job directing as the episode wastes nothing. It’s a Doctor-lite episode that manages not to waste a moment of screen time with the Doctor. In less than five minutes, Gatwa manages to be the command performance in an episode of solid performances. But much like “The Fugitive of the Judoon,” this strong episode remains feeling unresolved due to the plotline still hanging over its head. Once we have the hindsight of knowing how it fits into the greater storyline, it could appreciate in value. One can only hope.

#doctor who #Dot and Bubble #Ncuti Gatwa #Fifteenth Doctor #Millie Gibson #Ruby Sunday #Susan Twist #Callie Cooke #Lindy Pepper-Bean #Tom Rhys Harries #Ricky September #Man-Traps #Finetime #TARDIS #Dylan Holmes Williams #Russell T Davies #Gothic Paul #timeagainreviews

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just-a-creep-babe · 1 year

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Dunno if youve done this already, but would you be willing to do some general headcanons for some of the creeps? Maybe ben or jeff? 👀👉👈

(Does this count as a request??)

I’m not sure how many of these headcanons I may have mentioned before, so excuse my repeating them if I have 😌👌🌸

Requests are closed but commissions are open!

Check out my patreon if you’d like to support me!

Masterlist: x

Jeff the Killer

Honestly, he was pretty scrawny (and dare I even say twink-like) when he first started killing

He thought he was invincible when he lost his mind, and combined with his lack of experience with independence, it led to him making a lot of very unhealthy choices

He neglected his hygiene, ignored the pangs of hunger & pain from overexertion, and he didn’t even bother sanitizing the cuts & scraps he got from fighting

For one reason or another, his mental break did result in superior health & stamina, but that doesn’t mean he’s invulnerable

Contrary to what he may have thought at one point, he is, in fact, not a god

It was only multiple near-death experiences later that he started learning how to take better care of himself

And then he also realized that eating right & working out made him even faster & stronger

So he’s since bulked up quite a bit, and he’s become obsessed with his health, fitness & nutrition

It also comes as no surprise to anyone that he’s, well, kind of an asshole

He actively tried to start shit when he first joined the mansion

He was restless & aggravated, and felt like he had something to prove

So he acted like a massive dickhead to everyone & looked for trouble wherever he went

He’s gotten quite the reputation because of that, and even though he’s chilled out since then, a good amount of creeps are either still wary of him or want to shred his guts to pieces

But don’t feel bad for him, he still kinda deserves it, even nowadays :”)

His relationship with Slender is definitely precarious because of what he’s done in the past

Because before he joined the safe-house, this idiot guy literally challenged the eldritch being to fights

Which, obviously, resulted in him getting his ass beat, but that didn’t stop him from trying again next time

The only reason Slender keeps him around is because he’s good at what he does

And he also doesn’t want an opposing force to claim him

Besides, Jeff is useful to pin chores on

Cause if he refuses, Slender just might get sick of him & kick him out—and Jeff is fully aware of this

It’s all those accumulated debts from before

But!! He’s not entirely without friends at the mansion

He’s besties with BEN, and otherwise gets along really well with Clockwork and Toby

He doesn’t spend too much time with Toby since the proxy’s always busy with work, but when they do hang out, they almost always have a really chaotic great time together

He honestly considers Smile Dog his ✨bestest bestie✨ so BEN does sometimes have to compete with a dog for Jeff’s attention

Which is, objectively, very funny

Romance-wise, though he’d never admit it, he is kind of lonely

He’d like to develop a bond with someone he can trust & become ride-or-dies, kind of like Bonnie & Clyde-esque

But he also has major trust issues, and it would take a Lot for that bond to develop

Sometimes, the loneliness & burden of his lifestyle haunts him when he least expects it

So he is prone to unhealthy coping mechanisms

He’ll find comfort at the bottom of a bottle, or he’ll pick at his open wounds & hurt himself various ways to deal with the darkness in his mind

But luckily, he’s learned how to repress it better over time, especially since he’s learned how to take better care of himself

So those lonely nights, while they still do creep up on him occasionally, have become fewer & farther between

Anyways, overall, this man is kind of wreck, but he’s gotten better over time, so that’s something at least, innit?

BEN Drowned

Unlike Jeff, who’s gone through some kind of change over time, BEN… has not

It might just be because he’s dead and physically/mentally/spiritually/emotionally stuck in his old ways

Or it might just be because he’s incredibly lazy

Who can tell for sure?

Either way, his laziness borders on depression

He just doesn’t feel like doing anything—because why would he?

He’s basically immortal, he doesn’t need to get a job or pay rent or eat or sleep or, well, do anything, really

It gets to the point where he thinks “what’s the point?”

And that results in him playing video games for 2 weeks straight without leaving his room or showering or doing any basic self-care

He has to hold onto the things he likes because otherwise, he kind of just… wouldn’t have anything to exist for

So he’ll often indulge in gaming, hacking, sex and murder

Messing with people’s minds and driving them insane is a very entertaining hobby for him

It makes him feel powerful, like he can still exert his influence onto the living despite being dead

Sometimes, he won’t even kill his victims—he’ll just play with them for a few weeks or months before leaving them alone

He just loves knowing the thought of him will haunt them for the rest of their lives

He gets to live in their minds rent free without even trying—how wonderful is that?~

Tbh, he generally enjoys anything that strokes his ego

So he’ll often scour the inter-webs for stories about himself; whether they be from fans, victims or potentially even ghost hunters

It’s very flattering to him, knowing people actively spend their time thinking, talking & theorizing about him

He’ll sometimes even make fake accounts to join in on the fun~

He‘s kind of a narcissist, what can I say?

Homeboy feels very deeply connected to The Legend of Zelda, so he’ll follow all the latest news on the franchise

It’s also one of those things that give him some kind of a purpose

When his mental health dips, sometimes he’ll escape reality by just kind of… floating off into cyberspace

Existing can be hard, and sometimes you just wanna reside in a blank slate of information, ya know?

And then also, because he doesn’t need to eat to sustain himself, his diet is a mess

Which particularly stresses EJ out, so if he’s feeling like a lil shit, BEN will just eat the wildest kind of junk food to bother the med student

He once went nearly two whole months just eating condiments alone

And while EJ knows he doesn’t need good nutritional habits as a ghost, it just does Not sit right with him

Speaking of EJ and such, the other residents contribute a lot to helping BEN’s mental health

Mostly unintentionally, too

They just always keep things fun & fresh for him, like coaxing him out of his room, bargaining favors from him, getting him to do pranks—that sort of thing

He’s good friends with Jeff (as mentioned), Toby (they’re prank buddies), and he’s got a good amount of respect for Hoodie (even though they’re not super close, for similar reasons Jeff isn’t super close to Toby)

BEN’s also got a love-hate relationship with Dark Link, to the point where he’d probably consider him his nemesis

The two have a complicated relationship, but ultimately, his life would be missing something without Dark Link to constantly compete against

But other than that, he’s pretty neutral with a lot of the residents, simply by virtue of staying holed up in his room a lot of the time

With little to no purpose, our manses is really honestly just here to boyboss, gaslight, manipulate and be cringe

So things really aren’t too bad for him

At the end of the day, it’s hard to say whether he should be pitied or envied :”)

#creepypasta #Ben drowned #Jeff the killer #crp #creepypasta headcanon

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seasurfacefullofclouds1 · 2 years

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I've heard a lot about celebrity social media teams posing as fans and update accounts to spread narratives to their thousands of followers, who then spread it on and so on. I noticed that many of the large update accounts have a lot of fake followers (empty profiles). You can buy followers in bulk from many websites. Then regular people follow the account because if they see a lot of followers they deem the account important, so it's just a mixture of fake accounts and real accounts. Have heard of fans being 'hired' too to spread narratives. Have seen so much weird stuff on twitter, IG, tumblr like big accounts suddenly being closed down or changing narratives. Like how hsdaily used to be the biggest Larry account on twitter and then suddenly switched to Harry after 1D, and is really anti Louis. That account was taken over by a pr intern, not a fan. Their entire tone changed. They even admit to having contact with Jeff, and Ben follows it lol. Some of the biggest Harry UAs are anti Louis and I don't think they're all regular people, many are planted. I think pr teams lurk on social media a lot more than people realize, and it's on all platforms. So many people use social media. It's the best way for spreading narratives or getting publicity. They bully and silence people. There is definitely a hatchet job done on Louis. A lot of verified accounts, radio, music accounts all talk trash about him for no reason. They set him up, knowing he is going to be dragged. I see it with Justin Bieber too. As problematic as he is, I see verified accounts setting him up all the time. Zayn, and Taylor. Republican political figures are always trash talking her and I don't see them doing it with other celebrities, it is mostly her. It's definitely to put those celebrities 'in their place' and to discourage others from speaking up out of fear of getting backlash. I think that's why the industry targets Taylor so much, to put people off from following in her footsteps. I've studied celebrity pr a lot because I find it really fascinating, and the average person would be surprised by all that goes on. A lot of manipulation done by the media and publicity teams. Sometimes by the celebrities themselves, or other times their publicity teams do all the work for them. Once you learn the ins and outs of it you begin to see patterns, things that happen like clockwork. It all goes by the same rulebook.

It’s funny that one of the biggest media outlets in the United States is very pro big pop artists — Kanye, Biebs, Adele, Lil Nas, Gaga, Ariana, Olivia Rodrigo— they’re a left-leaning media company, but tacitly anti-Taylor (they never talk about Louis except in the context of 1D. they like Harry.) which I find 🤔. I’m not going to name them but I just find it curious.

I bet there are tons of burner accounts everywhere, and big accounts change hands all the time. Even Louis’ accounts— esp. accounts he “follows.”

#social media #burner accounts #trust issues!!

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rhymingteelookatme · 3 years

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The Dolls of New Albion 2014 review

Production details: Clockwork Hart Productions, presented at Corpus Christi Auditorium, Corpus Christi College, University of Oxford.

~First of all, I know a low-budget production when I see one; I’ve been in a fair few myself. I have all the sympathies. I do feel they made the most of what they had vis-à-vis set pieces, lighting, etc.

~I loved the costume design, by and large, with only one exception: the opening ensemble outfits. The actors appeared to be cosplaying as Annabel’s notes. It was mean of me to laugh, I know; thank god they couldn’t hear me.

~Deeply appreciate the visual signal of actors portraying dolls by putting a line of buttons straight down the center of each of their costumes.

~Give it up for our own Ben Below on the drums and accordion!

~The Narrator is engaging without being ostentatious. And, oddly, she is also barefoot. They must keep that stage very well swept indeed.

~Act-by-act notes under the cut.

Act I

~Annabel had the acting down, if not always the singing. She was charming and I enjoyed her portrayal so very much. That’s a face to win hearts on sight.

~The dual portrayal of Jasper in Act I- the dancer as his soul, the singer as him in the doll- excellent choice, excellent. Doesn’t hurt that dancer!Jasper is so skilled. Those legs! For days I tell you! And then we hear the singer hit the perfect reedy timbre to portray the doll’s radio “voice”, and I was completely sold.

~Jasper’s makeup design: also excellent. Really hits the center of the Venn diagram between ventriloquist dummy, the emcee from Cabaret and the Somnambulist from The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. Eerie and sympathetic and compelling. Those little bee-sting lips! Love that! Not to mention that neat triangle design beside his left eye, which also manages to look like a skewed capital A. Annabel bby you wanted him to be your angel so much, I’m so sorry.

~The dancers during “Annabel Has A Doll” are the perfect expression of Annabel’s mood during the bulk of that number.

~It was certainly a choice to depict the destruction of Jasper’s initial doll body via the ensemble-as-notes snapping his neck.

Act II

~What’s it time for? That’s right, it’s time for OUR OWN TIM LEDSAM AS EDGAR, WHAT WHAAAT!

~He looks so good. So good! Again, I’m sure they’re glad I wasn’t there, as I would have been barely able to contain my squees the instant he came onstage at the top of the show. Now here he is with his goggles and his hair all neatly braided back and his snazzy pinstripe SUIT, oh my GOD-

~Of course I took pictures. I’ll be posting those separately. They’re kinda fuzzy screencaps but I will Take what I can Get!

~Ah yes, the restaurant song, for which my note reads “TIM MY BOY WE DINE AT CHEZ REHEARSAL BOX.” Again, I fully recognize the limited budget here, but something about that damn rehearsal box wrapped in black tablecloth is just so funny and I’m so sorry.

~Very good choice of Fay; she acts the part well, and as a bonus her voice sounds v. nice with our Tim’s.

~His face, his face, I know he’s merely portraying his heartbreak in stellar fashion but it breaks our hearts to watch.

~Oh look, it’s the return of dancer!Jasper, along with what seems to be dancer!Annabel, during “The Old Trunk in the Attic.” I like that choice a whole lot! It works well with the ghostly melody.

~Tim finds a fur-collared coat in the said trunk, not only Annabel’s notes. Yes! Add that bulk to your shoulders, that’ll show you’re a Snappy Entrepreneur.

~”Edgar Builds A Business” is so well staged: Tim standing on the rehearsal box that was our erstwhile restaurant table, whilst three dancers perform as dolls around him. He has an excellent air throughout of that false self-deprecation that can so greatly aid salesmanship.

~Then of course we come to the deeply skeevy coercion of Fay, for which the box becomes a table once again. Loooove the way Tim/Edgar arranges the bottle, glasses and chairs just so.

~Dang, Fay, slugging right from the bottle. She’s got the fire.

Act III

~Three words: Byron’s leather pants.

~we LOVE those leather pants, they are sending me beyond space and time

~I spy those stripy Sally-esque socks on Amelia. I see what you’re doing there, costumer. And then they even have her do the left-hand-clutching-right-forearm pose during “The Movement 2.” Oh yes, I see what we’re doing here.

~Byron really has the spirit, well done that man. The foolish grandstanding in his speeches, the barely-contained inner torment over his hopeless love for our unfortunate doll.

~Don’t think you can hide our Tim from me, I see him in the ensemble. Got a shot or two of him here as well.

~The general look of the Voodoopunk costumes is, again, a Choice. I will say that the silvery circle pendants indicating membership in the cult sometimes sit confusingly with the buttons on the dolls. I also wonder whether the cast members were given some free reign to choose their own costumes for this act. Visually they do all mostly hang together.

~Did we mention dancer!Jasper’s unhinged shoulders? He has those. It’s incredible.

~”Elysium” staging was a beautiful thing: doll!Jasper gets to move freely as the rest of the cast remain frozen, staring at the spot from whence he begins and ends the song. Note how he pays attention particularly to Amelia. Also, at some point he’s acquired gold eyeshadow, and it really accentuates those soulful eyes.

~What’s this? Why it’s a lightning fast appearance of Tim as Amelia’s horrible father during her last number. An unexpected bonus for we Mech fans.

~Said final number ends with Amelia up on the infamous rehearsal box, one arm raised, falling backwards into the arms of a select few ensemble members. Unclear whether this is meant to depict hanging or a deliberate casting herself out the window.

~Slightly underwhelmed by “Bonfire of the Dolls” and Byron’s performance therein. However, I do like the dance in the red spotlight to cover the rest of the cast as they flee offstage to change costumes for the final act.

Interlude

~Oh, I know, I know, this could have been a perfect Jonny song.

~The Narrator has been shedding costume elements throughout the show; she now appears in the core of her costume—that is, her pants, white shirt, necklace, and omnipresent off-center head goggles.

~Love to watch those dancers whirl round and round to the accordion refrain. Although I do question having them keep it up for the duration of the number, considering that the Gambler (hi, Fay’s actress) and Monk are sat on the floor. Could we not have moved the rehearsal boxes further downstage? Let them sit on those?

Act IV

~Priscilla is very sweet in a desaturated green floral dress. Then she opens her mouth and she sings just as sweetly as she looks. A feat, considering that she and Jasper are also on the ground with their own eternal card game. It’s not the easiest position to sing in, let’s put it that way.

~The soldiers’ white full-face masks are extremely creepy; a fantastic design choice. However, it is odd that only Soldier 7285 gets a snappy hat to go with his costume. I suppose hats wouldn’t stay on with the masks.

~There is a tendency, and I fully recognize this in my own attempts at casting, to assume that it’s not important if Soldier 7285 isn’t the strongest or most in-tune singer. This could not be further from the truth. He gets the final emotional punch of the show; he needs to be every bit as good as our other named characters.

~Dancer!Jasper returns, this time with a dancer!Priscilla, during the actual P & J’s first duet. This is some good stuff, but I did find it a bit distracting, despite the clear intent to have the choreography reflect the content of the lyrics. It would perhaps have been better to have them accompany “Priscilla Contemplates.”

~Instead, a few ensemble members come on to gesture rhythmically to our final heroine’s solo. However, Tim is among them, so I am pleased to watch him.

~The soldiers are miming their weapons, which I suspect was deliberate rather than a mere lack of funds.

~Oh, it’s the return of the neck snap to send our poor Jasper finally back to the afterlife. And he has an excellent death pose. Priscilla, meanwhile, gets gunned down in a hail of invisible bullets. This is realistically excessive.

~Again, I feel terrible for laughing, but the way the other soldiers leave the stage one by one so that 7285 can have his big solo moment strikes me funny.

--And then it’s bows time, and I cheered wildly for our Tim and Ben, and I had a marvelous time overall!

#The Dolls of New Albion #long post #suicide mention #Tim Ledsam #Ben Below #The Mechanisms #reviews #uh-oh Theater Kid Rhymingtee is out in full force #i revel in minutiae

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twiststreet · 5 years

Text

Progresso Report -- ??? 2018

It’s been a long time since I did one of these (August?)-- things in 2018 got messy.

This is an ongoing series of charts that I keep to track my slow but inevitable ascendance to a higher and more eternal plane of existence than you, a frail normal person bereft of the life force that courses through me. As I believe Paul Atreides once explained to a Reverend Mother of the Bene Gessit order, the First Law of the Mentat is that “A process cannot be understood by stopping it. Understanding must move with the flow of the process, must join it and flow with it.” Or as I believe Tommy Lee once said, in The Dirt: Confessions of the World’s Most Notorious Rock Band, “We partied like clockwork, bro. You could check the clock in whatever time zone we were in and figure out exactly what kind of shit we were into.”

I started new charts in September that I’m happier with, but then everything fell apart in that last half of 2018. Work/regular-life exhaustion-- things just got especially tiring over here; people dying-- this year had a little bodycount there for me; a lot of chart confusion this year; my New Years plans falling apart; people getting sick, me with this cold; dental stuff; housing stress (I’m trying to find a new place) which has meant a resurgence in budgeting stress.

I guess it’s been a long year. But I don’t want to be one of those “oohhhhh 2018 how dare you” people much either, because (a) it’s the same assholes who are like “look how busy I am” on the internet, give it a rest, and (b) they say that every single year, and it’s not like Bowie and Prince died this year.

I stopped cooking sometime in November, so I’m going to skip the numbers. Which means no number analysis for 2018 trends. But things just ... yeah, things fell apart. Except for writing, weirdly, where I’ve filled about two notebooks, since August (which is an unusual amount for me-- I’m usually pretty slow). I think that’s been a lot of it-- when I get in a good place writing, it’s hard to not tune out everything else, but.

So 2019 is going to be a dust it off and start over kinda year as it turns out.

The Weekly Section:

Cooking: I was cooking up until November and then stopped cold around Thanksgiving-- travel always discombobulates. Recipe-wise, though, I fell off on trying new recipes. Chicken oyakodon one night in August or September, which didn’t turn out too good. A lot of messing around with hot pot recipes and a veggie stew, in November-- I was kinda into the hot pot, and want to circle back to that, when I get cooking again. I have Thai Chicken written down for October, but no idea what that means, and I circled back to that Udon-Shrimp recipe again.

Got a little better with tacos, but not fully great there yet. Kept trying to make my own pickled onion, but never got it right.

Project Work: If I added up all the numbers here, this would be the bulk of my time during this span. A lot of writing-- almost every day. Mostly on a comic project, so one of those things that might become nothing (and maybe should be nothing-- it stinky), but. And a lot of reading for that, old comics mostly, the classics, revisiting stuff-- it all kinda devolved into me rereading Uncanny X-Men #260 a lot, though I couldn’t tell you why.

Trying to remember what makes something good. That’s a bit I never figure out how to deal with-- I have a thing when I’m in the middle of a creative thing, where I just kind of throw my hands in the air and go, “I have no idea what makes something good anymore.” Like, what do you want out of a thing?? What makes a fictional thing good? I don’t even know when I’m in the middle of all this.

Or I don’t know what’s good for right now-- what feels hokey or what feels hip and modern; like, you don’t want to be the guy doing ... remember when some Iron Man guys came back with a new comic in the 00′s with like ... an 80′s Iron Man comic except trying to sell that exact sound in 2005 or whatever, and were like “Hey kids”? I think about that all the time.

Looked at a lot of the big hip popular (non-DC) books -- but just from a vulture-y place, so nothing I’d feel comfortable talking about. I don’t know-- I don’t ... I’m a little lost at the moment, I guess! Or I know that I’m not making something good, because I’m not that guy, so wheeee.

I did like a Image book I saw, called the Outer Darkness. I thought that was kinda funny-- kinda cute. I’m really into LOEG: The Tempest-- I think that’s really fucking good. I scribbled down on a sheet that I liked some old John Porcellino comic where he plays football or something with his kids. I finally read the ending of Sin Titulo, which it turns out I didn’t have to do.

Gym: This has been a huge improvement for this year. Except for the last couple weeks while I’ve had a cold, I’ve managed to escalate the gym more. (A) Spending more money on it, (B) involving a trainer for a period of time, and (c) having the gym walking distance from my job so I could make it part of my “At work” time in my head and not my “me doing me” time, those all I think turned out to be the trick for me-- I was angrier about not going, when money got involved, especially. These would have good numbers...

The Monthly Section:

New Restaurants:

I had Okonomiyaki for the first time. (These are mostly not my photos-- I had photos but just changed phones so most of my photos got lost). I didn’t really feel strongly about it, though-- it felt like good hangover food and I don’t drink like that much anymore, so.

A lot of time got invested in Korean fried chicken and chicken wings. There’s a place in Koreatown that I got a little obsessed with (namely, the vaue meals over at Kyochon). Tried some Japanese fried chicken, that place on Sawtelle for comparison-- no question, the Koreans won that battle. (Though, Honey Kettle over the Koreans, but-- it’s a different flavor profile, is all, so).

New places around where I live and work. A new taco place. A new “Asian small dish” place. A vegan Thai place that ... I can’t say I recommend. A westside Korean place, so. In November/December, I’ve gotten really interested in the Indonesian food in my neighborhood so I’ve been eating a lot of that-- it’s like Thai but different ingredients, so a fun little adventure there. Some crappy 3rd street Asian restaurant I didn’t even write down the name of.

Finally went over to Guerilla Tacos. (That’s my photo). I really enjoyed those tacos-- Jonathan Gold had talked that place up for years when it was a truck, but I’m lazy and hadn’t gotten around to it. (I’m not really a truck fan!). Boy, those tacos, though... That’s the (a) Pocho Taco (ground wild boar, pine nuts, raw tomatilo chile, chipotle crema, aged cheddar & pico de gallo in a crunchy shell) and the (b) Albondigas Taco (chicken meatballs, stewd tomato salsa, castelvetrano olives, and parsley).

LA Stuff or Travel: Travel for Thanksgiving.

A Harlan Ellison memorial at the Egyptian theater. They played his Outer Limits and Twilight Zone episodes, and specially cut together videos of him talking or his TV work (his Gidget episode or his Burke’s Law episodes or what have you). LQ Jones talked about making the Boy and His Dog movie; Josh Olsen talked about co-writing that Twilight Zone episode; Leonard Maltin talked about seeing The Terminator for the very first time with Harlan in the audience yelling at the screen. It was nice, getting to be there.

I had car problems so I took some hour-or-two long walks on nights when I was relying on Lyft, just seeing what walking in LA’s like. (It’s fine! I mean, it’s not ideal, but it’s fine). It’s nice knowing that’s an option at the end of the day, at least.

One time at lunch, I walked by Mel Brooks having lunch with friends. I heard him say “I love that we’re doing this” but didn’t stand there and gawk or eavesdrop like I wanted to. But I don’t know-- I was really really excited about that. Mel Brooks!

I went to a comedy thing for the first time in too long-- Superego and Wild Horses did a team-up improv night, where they improvised a play about middle-aged white people, getting together at a house by a lake. I need to see more comedy-- I know that I find that very calming and I don’t know why I haven’t been, but.

Went to another Indiecade, the indie game festival-- two highlights there. One was Flight Simulator-- a game where instead of simulating being a pilot, you simulate being a passenger on a trans-Atlantic flight, in real time. So it’s just a simulator where you sit in a seat and wait for a flight to be over...? That made me laugh-- I really quite enjoyed the creativity of that, and getting to speak with the guy who was making it. (I asked a bunch of questions-- yes, your character will have a book he or she can read-- but not “Why” since that seemed extremely gauche to ask).

youtube

The other thing was as I was walking by a room, a guy was like “hey, want to hear a guy talk about making music for the Star Wars games.” And I was like, “Fuck it, I don’t give a shit about that, but I want to sit down and I got no place better to be, so let’s do it. I GOT NOWHERE ELSE TO GO.”

But it actually turned out to be a really fucking interesting discussion because... because the guy had a job that coincided exactly with where my head’s been at with the stuff I’m working on, with just thinking about comics, old comics, balancing wanting to invoke old shit while still doing new shit, and how that job of writing for comics exists for so many people, especially people not working on their own shit, who are working with pre-existing properties with expectations around what those properties and that kinda experience should deliver.

Which is-- they hire you to be you, but they’re also hiring you to do Star Wars, to do a thing that sounds like Star Wars.

So he talked about having to break down all the different ways that he could approach that problem-- with one way just being imitating the melodies that came before you. But he talked about the better route being how ... He put it in terms of like language-- like the music of Star Wars has a language to it (horns, woodwinds used against bloop blarps, whatever) and it’s about figuring out how to talk in that language, but that doesn’t mean you have to say the same thing once you speak the language. I don’t know.

I’m not doing it justice-- I found it very interesting, and weirdly on point to what I wanted to think about, way more than I expected.

Documentaries: I think I mentioned them all on here. That He-Man one. F is For Fake. (I saw the Lego and GI Joe episodes of the Toys That Made Us). Fighting in the Age of Loneliness, which I was really, really into-- I thought that was really cool. City of Gold. Some Netflix movie I’m forgetting. That last Star Wars video by the Red Letter Media guys, if that counts.

Oh, and ... one night I had a Twitch stream on for noise, because that’s what I do now I guess (???), and the people on the Twitch stream themselves put on a documentary about Logan Paul. It was the Shane Dawson docu-expose of Logan Paul or Aaron Paul or whoever those assholes are. I only saw the first one of those, via Twitch stream, but holy shit, that was... whatever the fuuuuuuck that was. I want to watch the rest of those. Just a window into a completely other dimension of humanity. But the window itself had a history of blackface...? Like, you lookup the host of the documentary, the guy DOING the expose, and it’s like online people going “why he do blackface?” What???????? What the hell is going on with Youtube???

I definitely want to go back to those. I want to see the Darkness That’s Coming.

Movies: I don’t know-- I saw a bunch of movies.

Let me see: Personal Shopper (terrific movie!), Support the Girls, Crazy Rich Asians, Buster Scruggs, that El Royale piece of shit, that Spiderman cartoon, Sometimes a Night Is For Us All (?), rewatched the original Suspiria, a shitty Netflix horror movie called Beyond the Gates, the Other Guys again, a Simple Favor, The Predator, Destination Wedding, Mayhem, half of Rampage. Saw a lot of movies with my nephews (rewatched Knight & Day and MI: Fallout, the Tooth Fairy, Jumanji 2, Castle of Cogliostro, rewatched Ant Man 2-- I know people aren’t into it but I like the wannabe-Elmore-Leonard plotting, Jackie Chan’s Skiptrace, Daddy’s Home 2 (no!), School of Rock).

I rewatched Buckaroo Banzai over Thanksgiving after people went to sleep and I didn’t have anything to do. I fucking hated that movie as a kid-- almost got thrown out of a screening of it because I was yelling stupid shit at my friends during it and whatever. But I always wanted to revisit since so it’s a touchstone for so many nerds -- it improved as an adult knowing what they were up to, at least, understanding better what they were trying to do, but I wouldn’t say that I was wrong as a kid either, not exactly... I’d put it down as “interesting” at the moment. It’s helpful knowing the reason it looks like shit is they hired the cinematographer of Blade Runner, but then the producers made them fire that guy after only two or three scenes...

I think I’m missing some stuff on this list, but...

(Saw a few episodes of that Jack Ryan show with my family, too, since that’s their kind of thing, apropos of nothing-- it was not great! Like, some guy’s in Vegas getting beat up because he wants pervy sex and then Jim From the Office frowns-- or I don’t know how to describe it, but ... not great).

Highlighter Videos: I did a bunch. I should do a separate video wrap-up for the year though, like people do. That might be nice to have done.

Goals:

Three Scripts for the Project: Technically I wrote way more than 3 but most of them got ripped up along the way. But yeah, goal met.

Flowchart for Game: Still in progress on the flowchart-- kind of feeling inspired again to tackle all that, after Bandersnatch though. The game within the game, not the show itself. I love the fake games people imagine when they make shit like that, how vivid they always seem as compared to the real thing. There’s a game that gets described in a Kelly Link short story that I think about more than I think about games I’ve spent 90000 hours on.

I didn’t do a favorite games of the year list, but this year was all about discovering the Yakuza series for me. And just... the way those games are all about excavating the same exact, relatively-understandable space, Kamarucho, year after year, game after game. I think that’s really ... I don’t know what the right word to describe that is. I just find that architectural obsessiveness really curious. They’re curious games. I could go on and on about them but instead, no.

2019 Plan: My goal for this year was to create a good plan for 2019-- making a list of movies I want to watch, types of recipes to try, that kind of thing. I think that’s what I’m going to do over the next couple days while I’m sick and have time off work.

Finish Books: I didn’t finish one! Got too consumed by reading ... some comics I will never admit to having read. Hoo-boy. I have gone all the way down the rabbithole.

Cooking Class: Nope.

Major Tidy: Nope. Smaller tidiness, yes, but I need to get rid of a lot of clutter. But like I said, I think I’m going to have to move (and I’m thinking to a smaller place-- I think I have more space than I need right now) so that’s going to happen whether I like it or not.

Finish Best-Of Assembly: I’ve been preparing a best-of this blog in case / when tumblr invariably goes down. But in the course of that, a lot of things have to be slightly rewritten or edited down-- a lot of weird raving pared off things, so.

Overall: There was more that probably I was too lazy to scribble down on the charts. Things got lazy. Things got derailed. Things have to get put back on track. I’m not back at square one-- I feel good about having written as much as I have at least (even if I have a lot of work left before any of that’s... anything??). But. I’m glad a new year is coming-- it’s my favorite holiday; it’s the only holiday that promises anything really valuable. A fresh start beats candy anyways, after you’re old enough to eat candy all the time because no one’s around to stop you. A fresh start sounds nice...

#what gets measured gets managed

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dreadhaus-literature · 5 years

Text

{Story} “I Love You.”

9:30PM I love you.

You glanced at the message on your lockscreen, sighed, and set your phone down, bringing that same hand up to rub at your forehead.

You were well aware and you were also not in the mood.

The office building around you was dark, quiet, and empty, which didn’t make the message any easier to come to terms with. You hoped he didn’t know you were alone but you also weren’t naive enough to think he hadn’t planned this. After all, this was the eighth I love you text message in a row, with the messages arriving every half hour like clockwork since the last of your coworkers had left for the day. That couldn’t be a coincidence, nothing with him ever was.

You turned back to the stack of papers illuminated by the dual computer screens on your glass top desk, determined to go back to work and put this personal life problem out of your head. You were desperately behind at work, hence the late hour that kept you at your cluttered desk, and the reason? The reason was the man behind the I love you text messages, behind the flowers in the trashcan by your office door, and behind the monthly need to change your locks and upgrade your home security system. You had a monster in your life and he didn’t stay in your closet, or under your bed, or even in your nightmares--he followed you around in the daylight hours, from place to place, darkening doorways until you were afraid whether the sun was shining or the moon was full. You woke up to the scent of him in your sheets and had the horrifying realization that he’d slept in bed with you the night before, and other days you came back from lunch with your coworkers to find your favorite dessert sitting on your office desk and knew he’d been there, too. He was everywhere you were and that was exactly how he liked it. It didn’t seem to matter much what you liked because he often told you, either via text or against the shell of your ear--

“You’ll grow to love me, too.”

It came out sounding like a threat, every single time he said it to you, and at times like this it made your blood turn to ice in your veins. Love him? Love him? It seemed a ridiculous idea, so far-fetched it’d be funny if you didn’t think one day he might snap and kidnap you...or worse. He was certainly big enough to make off with you without breaking a sweat--and you weren’t even sure how this happened to begin to undo it. It was almost as if one day, he was just...there. You opened your front door and there he was, a twisted smile on his face, a bouquet of flowers in hand as if he’d been waiting hours for you to get up and come outside to leave for work. You’d stood, transfixed and stunned, while he held them out for you in a hand large enough to curl around your throat and have the tips of his fingers nearly touch at the nape of your neck. Could a human being be this big? It would have been unbelievable if you weren’t craning your neck up at him, trying and failing not to memorize the curve of that devastating grin. He’d said your name, imploringly, with his good morning greeting, and told you the flowers reminded him of you--because they were your favorites. How did a giant of a man you’d never seen before know your favorite flower? When you didn’t take them, frozen in fear, his smile had only deepened. He’d then offered to come inside and put them in the vase in the hallway; you’d been so stunned initially at the forward offer that you’d taken the flowers and not really registered that he inexplicably knew you had an empty vase in your upstairs hallway.

To a logical mind, it might seem taking the flowers was a simple gesture of reluctant gratitude. You didn’t know the man, even after he introduced himself; you’d remember a name like Henrik. It’s not one you hear every day. But it seemed to swing open a door that was already partially open, unbeknownst to you. You’d taken the flowers, mumbled out an audibly confused, “Thank you...Henrik,” but you’ll never, as long as you live, forget the way he smiled at you when you said his name. Thanking him had been more than enough but you seemed to add the proverbial cherry on top by addressing him so personally.

His heart was in his eyes at the way you said his name.

That had been several months ago, and now, now there was no going back. There was no shutting the door. It was wide open, and Henrik was coming in, whether you wanted him to or not.

10:00PM I love you so much.

It didn’t matter, whether you responded or not. It didn’t matter if you deleted the messages, more replaced them. And it wasn’t always the same, Henrik text you all sorts of things. The I love you’s were the most prevalent, sure, almost as if he was desperate to keep you from forgetting you were his heart and everything in it--this, you knew, because he’d told you to your face.

Outsiders would ask, why haven’t you changed your number? Blocked his? Moved? Some things were easier than others. Changing your number three times hadn’t stopped him from getting ahold of it, and no matter how many numbers of his you blocked, he simply changed his number and then text you from the new one, chastising you, almost playfully, that you couldn’t get rid of him!

Lovers don’t treat each other that way, sweetheart.

Moving was out of the question. Money doesn’t grow on trees and packing up and moving town was a pipe dream at best--and who was to say he wouldn’t follow? He did follow you, already, everywhere you went, every day. It might be paranoia to assume this man had nothing else to do with his time than follow you around, but you never fully felt alone. You couldn’t remember the last time you did, and an almost hysterical laugh escaped you in a rush, filling your office with the sound of Stockholm Syndrome. He was wearing you down, whether you wanted to admit it to yourself or not. No matter what you said, what you did, no matter how many times you called the police, filed restraining or protective orders--he kept coming, relentless in his pursuit of you and maybe it was sweet. Maybe he really did love you; he sure as hell behaved like he did, like you were the air in his lungs and if he was too far away, he began to suffocate under the weight of needing you. He didn’t want you, no, he’d made it expressly clear it was need he felt. You’d never experienced love the way he did, as if it was all-consuming and it couldn’t be healthy but then he didn’t seem to mind. The number of times you’d woken up to find him lying in bed with you, curved around you as if to shield you from the world while he stroked your hair and simply watched you sleep...it could almost be sweet, how much he loved you, needed you.

You shook your head quickly, letting out an exasperated noise. It wasn’t sweet, it was sick, like an addict who did nothing to curb their addiction. Henrik fed his, by stalking you, breaking into your home, stealing your things, touching you, wanting to possess you--this wasn’t how people love! Your nails scratched at the roots of your hair as you heard his deep voice in your head.

“This is how I love, little one. It’s the only love for you. Don’t you get it, yet? Don’t you see? If it isn’t this, if it isn’t me...then there’s nothing and no one else out there for you.”

A shiver danced it’s way down your spine. It was a deadly promise wrapped in silk, as if he was offering you his hand but the alternative was a hole six feet under. Henrik had never expressly threatened you...though he had threatened others who strayed too close. You still weren’t sure what happened to your intern, Robby. You refused to look into the police investigation and you weren’t going to ask Henrik because you didn’t know what you’d do with the answer he gave you. But something told you, if you allowed yourself to dwell on it, that you knew. Henrik was a monster of a man who young, college student Robby wouldn’t have stood a chance against...and Henrik had warned you.

“Stop talking to that boy so much.” “Don’t wear that outfit around that boy. I don’t like the way he looks at you in it.” “That boy better be careful. I know he texts you.” “You talk to that boy more than you talk to me. I don’t like that, sweetheart.”

Sometimes it was text messages, sometimes it was growled against your ear when you came home to find Henrik in your house, waiting for you. He’d press you against his chest, his lips against your ear, those iron bands he called arms around your middle to keep you still so he could tell you all the horrible ways he’d make sure you never talked to anyone else again because he was all you needed.

No, Henrik had never expressly threatened you but he made damn sure you knew no one else would ever have you.

10:15PM Come home. I miss you.

You knew what this meant. The time between messages was now halved, and Henrik was getting impatient. Your eyes remained on your phone until the screen went dark, your fingers in your tousled hair.

You might have loved Henrik, if he’d approached you differently--or maybe not, maybe you told yourself that now because you thought it might change the outcome of what your life was. It wasn’t that he was unattractive, he wasn’t. He was a giant of a man, the kind that needed to duck slightly to clear most doorways, with a body that dwarfed yours and not just because of his long legs. You had no idea what he did but he had the body to make anyone do anything he wanted, chock full of muscle and bulk. His dark hair was unkempt, most of the time pulled messily back into a low ponytail, left in waves that often sprung free to frame a square face with full lips, sharp cheekbones, and eyes that scarcely blinked--so you could see they were brown with just a kiss of green near the center. Henrik carried himself well; he didn’t lumber or amble, but walked with purpose, nearly a glide to his long legs and while that bulk should have made him clumsy, it didn’t. His fingers never bumped or mishandled you, and anything that was moved in your home was done so because he’d meant to, not because he’d knocked into it. Henrik was a man who clearly did everything with purpose--even his unkempt hair suited him, as if he’d tried to tame it when he was younger and found it easier to let it go.

There were...times, nights, when you’d given up trying to kick him out of your bed, when he was resting his head on your chest, listening to your heart--something he did quite often--when you’d shakily run your fingers through his hair. It was soft, what you’d imagined clouds might feel like, and he always smiled against you when you did this, always told you how soft your fingers were and how good it felt to feel you loving him.

“And I love you too, baby.”

When asked why he loved you, Henrik nearly always had the same reaction. He’d blink at you, tilting his head almost cutely, and ask--how could he not?

“You’re...everything. You’ve always been everything, from the moment I saw you. I knew you were what I needed. And I was right.”

Trying to convince Henrik he was obsessed with you had the opposite effect.

“Of course I am. You’re my woman. Why wouldn’t I be obsessed with you?”

Trying to convince Henrik he didn’t actually love you was futile.

“You don’t feel what I feel when I look at you. No, no. Love doesn’t even begin to cover it.”

Telling Henrik you weren’t going to be with him was something he was never in the mood to hear.

“I don’t want to have to force you, honey. But I will.”

10:30PM Baby...

Some might think it was a plea, but you knew better. It was a warning. Henrik would absolutely come get you at the office if you didn’t...”come home”.

You knew he was in your house, the security company had text you the alert that your security system had been deactivated a little while ago. You didn’t bother calling the police, he was never there when they arrived.

10:32PM I’m waiting for you.

10:33PM I need you, I need you to come home and be with me.

10:34PM I love you, baby.

10:35PM I’m lying in our bed. The sheets still smell like you.

10:36PM Please, baby. I love you. I love you so much. Come home.

10:37PM Do you need me to come get you? I will. I’ll come to you, sweetheart.

10:38PM Tell me you love me. Tell me you love me and you’re coming home.

10:40PM I’m coming.

The last text message made you snatch up your phone, unlocking it with shaking fingers to respond that you were coming! You were coming home, he didn’t need to come here.

10:41PM Promise?

You promised.

10:42PM You’re so good to me. I love you so, so much. I can’t wait to see you.

A bittersweet, broken smile tugged at your soon to be kiss-bruised lips.

You couldn’t wait, either.

#{story} : i love you #{character} : henrik shaw #{ this was pointless but another plot bunny }#{ i just wanted a story with repeated 'i love you's }#{ trying to be better about just writing out my urges }

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thesffcorner · 6 years

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Dishonored Retrospective Part 7: Sequel Changes and Strengths

Part 6 was the end of our look at the first game, finishing with the second of the the two expansions, the Brigmore Witches. In this part we will look at the changes the sequel brought to the world-building, characters, game-play and overall story.

Dishonored 2 came out fall 2017 and it’s hands down the most beautiful game I’ve played. While I go back and forth of whether I like Death of the Outsider more, this is still a fantastic sequel that improves on nearly everything (except maybe the frame rate) of its predecessor and it feels like the developers finally hit their stride both in terms of story and mechanics.

When the game came out a lot of the popular jokes and comments online were that it’s just a gender swapped repeat of the first game. While I do find the joke funny and can see where people get this idea from, the only real repeated element from the first game is Emily losing the throne and fighting to get it back. Story-wise, the game has a lot more in common with the DLC, than anything that happened in the first game.

For starters, the main villain is Delilah, the villain from the DLC and her role and character get greatly expanded upon. Second, while Daud isn’t present in the game, the fallout of his actions influence the proceedings here much more than anything Corvo does in the first game.

And finally the story itself is again, more of a mystery than a revenge plot. Yes Emily does want to rescue Corvo and defeat Delilah, but the bulk of the game focuses on uncovering who and what Delilah is and how she got in a position to take over Dunwall.

Story and Gameplay Changes:

Dishonored 2 is again, a first person action-stealth game and this time you have the choice between playing as Corvo or Emily. Based on who you chose to play as, you get a different move-set and some different dialogue and cut-scenes. I played as Emily twice and will be subscribing to the developers’ statements that they intended for the story to be from Emily’s POV.

It’s been 15 years since Jessamine’s assassination and in her honor, Emily is launching a new ship. At the ceremony, Duke Luka Abelle of Serkonos arrives with an army of Clockwork soldiers and a gift; Delilah herself. She easily dispatches of the guards and Corvo himself and declares herself Empress as the second daughter to the old Kaldwin Emperor. Emily is trapped in her study by one of Delilah’s helpers, Ramsey and the game starts.

The first thing to note is that unlike the first game, there is no tutorial level like Coldrige. Once the game starts, it starts for real, and everything you do, affects your chaos level and the rest of the plot. This really threw me for a loop, especially since at this point, Emily doesn’t have her powers yet. Because of this, the first level A Long Day In Dunwall is probably one of the most difficult ones in the whole game.

Another change that definitely informs the way you play is that in this game you can refuse the Outsider’s gifts, which is essentially an expansion on a challenge run you could do in the original game, where Corvo only used the Blink and Void Gaze abilities.

From a gameplay standpoint I really like this change; it’s quite the challenge to beat the game without powers and the fact that now the developers have to account for people choosing to play this way, meaning the developers made a conscious choice to make the levels traversable for non-powered players, and to compensate for this the core gameplay is much more difficult.

From a story standpoint, this decision makes no sense though, especially if you play as Emily. At least Corvo knows who the Outsider is and what those powers mean, but Emily has no idea. Why would she refuse something that would make it easier for her to beat Delilah?

On a side note I feel like both Corvo and Emily’s reaction upon meeting the Outsider is a bit too mellow. Personally if a demigod yanked me into the abyss and showed me a very staged rendition of all the horrible events of my life that lead me to this point and then told me I was special I would smack him. Bless Billie for at least reacting appropriately.

In the first game, avoiding guards was a joke. You could easily escape if they were alerted, you could slam things, open doors, or break windows, and they wouldn’t react. Here if you open a door or if you take out a guard who was talking to someone, the others will notice and will investigate. What’s more is they will investigate the most obvious hiding place which is a real trip if you are used to the first game’s gameplay where the guard could be looking right at you and not notice you were there.

Likewise, their patrolling routes are better designed, and there are more groups where it’s not so easy to split them apart or take them out one by one without the others noticing.

Another thing that makes the game more difficult and immensely more entertaining is the number of civilians. Dunwall in the first game and DLC felt like a real city but because of the plague and curfew (and let’s be real the technical limitations of the engine Arkane used) there are near to no people on the streets that aren’t hostiles. The only level in the base game that has them at all is Lady Boyle’s Last Party, save for a small group in the Golden Cat and the Flooded District Sewers.

Here, Karnaca is brimming with life. There are civilians everywhere; you can interact with them, hit them, rob them, or simply observe them. They will panic and alert guards if you are hostile to them or someone else in front of them or if you trespass into their apartments and shops..

Even the two levels in Dunwall feel so much better when you can find people on the streets who comment on the proceedings or just simply exist without you. I genuinely can’t describe to you how much I love this change, and it’s something I sorely missed even in the DLC.

Worldbuilding:

Dishonored 2 is set both in Dunwall and a completely new location: Karnaca, the capital of the southern Isle of Serkonos. It’s a city inspired by Havana and the Spanish coast, with lots of plants, flat roofs and sunlight. Where Dunwall was dower and mostly explored at night, you get to see Karnaca during the day or at golden hour, a change I welcome wholeheartedly. You also get to explore a lot more of Karnaca; there are no repeat levels in the city and the only repetition is actually the first and final level in Dunwall.

Karnaca is a beautiful city. A lot of things that felt underdeveloped or missing in Dunwall are present here; other than civilians on the streets there are shops and apartments which have owners and residents and actual lootable objects. The posters, advertisements, labels and newspapers are also better; with the newspaper it actually replaces the loudspeaker system from the first game and it will report on your previous missions. I absolutely love the Serkonian traveling band and their music, the audio-graphs that play music or announcements, the conversations on the street you can overhear and the sound of the sea.

I loved Dunwall but the only time I ever felt truly connected and invested in saving the city was in the DLC and the Flooded District level. The color pallet alone does wonders to make me more invested, because the grays and browns are changed for bright oranges, yellows and pinks and the amount of interaction you get with the city while still not playing an open world game is genuinely impressive.

A lot of this is due to the technical and graphic improvements of the game. Character animations are greatly improved; people make faces when they talk, they move their arms and head, and NPCs have a lot more idle animations like smoking, drinking, gambling, etc.

The changes to the dialogue system also allow for a lot of improvement: Dishonored doesn’t have cut-scenes, but it does have scripted dialogue moments. In the first game, this was done via letterbox effect with the character stopping in the middle of the screen, looking at the player completely straight on and delivering the lines.

In the sequel characters move around the room, lean in or just move their heads and arms. This is the most noticeable with the Outsider: in the original, he would talk to you straight on, with his hands crossed Angela Merkel style; here, he walks around, kneels, squats, leans into the frame, touches Emily way more often, and just generally acts like the chaotic man-child that he is.

Character models are also greatly improved. I love the design and stylized look of the first game, but it pales in comparison to the sequel. In the original and the DLC, characters are blocky and square, and there are only like 3 different models for the City Watch and Officers and 2 for random NPCs. Everyone looks the same, especially male characters and characters that are supposed to be young were indistinguishable from older characters.

Dishonored 2 is still stylized but I like the stylization way better and there is an actual variety of bodies and faces. Like the DLC, Dishonored 2 has female enemies, and they have a lot more personality, with tattoos, scars, and generally look like they mean business.

Enemies and Combat:

Like I said, there have been great improvements in the enemies, not just in how they look and act, but also their variety and abilities. While in Dunwall you fight more or less what you fought in the first game and DLC: Hatters, Witches, City Watch and Overseers. Since Granny Rags (with your help) decimated the Bottlestreet Gang, the Hatters and Witches have replaced them as the supreme street level enemies and once again, I love the addition of female Hatters.

In Karnaca we have City Watch, Officers, Witches and Overseers but we also have a few new enemy types. The guards in Karnaca are a lot more brutal than the ones in Dishonored, but they are also way more interesting. Some of their lines just sound a lot better and the first few times they really hit me. I distinctly remember going out of my way to keep this one guard alive just because he talked about being distracted by a kiss, and choosing not to kill another sleeping guard because he talked about missing his kids in his sleep.

The new additions include Duke Abelle’s elite guards, and the Howler gang ran by Paolo and Mindy Blanchard; and Kirin Jindosh’s crazy invention, the Clockwork soldiers.

The Howlers are a good enemy that I liked fighting. They usually set up traps that are sometimes pretty easy to stumble into, and communicate via howling like wolves. Paolo is amazing in his own right, but we’ll talk about him when we do the level breakdowns.

As for the Clockwork Soldiers, I hated them. They are a really hard enemy, this game’s version of tallboys, but infinitely more frustrating to fight. To start, you don’t fight them in large open areas, but often in small, isolated corridors and rooms. They are huge, can see from the front and the back, and pretty much kill you in one shot. Destroying them is an ordeal on par with pulling teeth; the most effective way I found is throwing a sticky grenade at one, that damages it enough so that it goes haywire and destroys it’s pal. I genuinely hated fighting these enemies and I will own up that it’s entirely because I’m bad at it and not because they are badly designed.

For another thing I hate, let’s talk about this game’s version of the Wheepers. Karnaca is both a port and a mining town; Serkonos is home to the silver mines which is how Abelle is both so rich and powerful. Because of the mines the town and a lot of the people are afflicted with blood fever, a disease transmitted by the bite of a bloodfly.

Bloodflies are creepy on their own; they attack in swarms, have really disgusting red nests that make noises when you destroy them and lay eggs in dead bodies. But the best part? Nest Keepers.

Nest Keepers are people afflicted with blood fever who have gone mad. Like Wheepers they are near decomposing and completely mindless, but unlike Wheepers they get aggressive when they notice you and scream loudly which alerts the entire swarm and they attack you. The worst part is that Nest Keepers are always in the worst places and surprise you, and I remember a particularly horrifying moment where I passed by a window and a Nestkeeper saw me and screamed and banged on it, scaring the shit out of me.

Gameplay:

The gameplay in Dishonored 2 is similar to the first game. If you play as Corvo you get all the same powers you did in the first game, but if you play as Emily you get similar abilities and a couple of unique ones. We have Far Reach which functions similarly to Blink but works by pulling Emily to objects, meaning you can also use it to pull objects and enemies to you. There is also Dark Vision which allows you to see enemies and security systems, Shadow Walk which turns you into a shadowy monster that’s less visible and can sneak around enemies and Domino which allows you to link the consciousness of different targets and knock them out all at once.

She also gets a few added abilities like Doppelganger which allows you to create a copy of yourself that can be used as a distraction and to even the odds; Mesmerize which can summon a Void spirit to enthrall humans and hounds; Blood thirst which fills up a frenzy type meter while fighting; and Shadow Kill which turns unaware enemies into ash when they are killed.

As for the weapons we get a much greater variety this time. We have the standard sword, crossbow and sleep dart, but we also get a fire bolt, explosive bolt, howler bolt and stinging bolt. We also get sticky grenades, stun mines, regular grenades and rewire tools. Unlike Corvo who had Piero as his regular salesman, Emily has to use a new mechanic which are the Black Markets.

Black Markets are a feature I really like and are basically an expansion of the favors from the DLC. There is a Black Market in almost every level you play, and you can always rob it. These places are also good for getting information, upgrading gear and weapons and they also serve as part of the story.

Lets go over the characters real quick. We have the returning cast of Corvo, Emily, Delilah, the Outsider, Billie Lurk, and Sokolov, and then a host of new characters. We have: Luka Abelle, Briana Ashwood, Kirin Jindosh, Aramis Stilton, Dr Hypatia, Paolo, Mindy Blanchard, High Overseer Burn and Luca Pastor.

So now that we’ve covered the basic overall changes, it’s time to talk about how they actually affect the game. Join me in part 8 where we will look at the first 4 levels and talk about them in more detail.

part 6 < > part 8

#dishonored #dishonored retrospective #dishonored 2 #moni talks

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