My goal here was to not be mean. On the 22nd of June, 2026, Ryn West posted this on BluSky:
Hopeful and optimistic storytelling where good people win, bad people can change and everyone lives is just as brave as “brutal, bleak, and edgy” storytelling because it can take courage to find selflessness, meaning and comradery in adversity rather than just pain and suffering.
I’ll get to the content on this later in the essay; what’s more important right now is that readers immediately and correctly interpreted this as a stealth advertisement for West’s own YA-aimed work, because that concept is so ludicrously common on social media as to be, somehow, universally true; amateur authors have got it in their heads that the best way to advertise their work is to attack, if not specific popular works, then the general concepts in opposition to their own creative instincts (in our subject’s defense, at least they didn’t loudly declare studying the classics a waste of time compared to YA material).
(Also, they’ve deleted it since then)
Admittedly, this isn’t a completely incorrect instinct. Creating any work initially means asking “what will I not do?” as much as “what will I do?”, and having specific examples in your head of the kind of thing you want to avoid is useful. It’s even not a terrible idea to make this clear to the audience; the original Watchmen and The Dark Knight Returns comics made the idea of not being ya daddy’s superhero comics work, as did Ron Moore’s Battlestar Galactica for Star Trek. The problem here is antagonizing one’s audience; for one thing, West’s original statement is trite in its truth and trite in its untruth. More importantly, you’re shutting out people who might be swayed to your goals from a neutral or even neutral-to-suspicious angle. The number of like-minded people drawn to you will be dwarfed by the antagonized.
Granted, I’m not more than an amateur at marketing.
But, of course, this is where my ears pricked up, because I enjoy a challenge, particularly one in criticism. If they wanted to draw attention to their work, why not read it through my typical critical lens, with the same intensity that I bring to everything else? I became more enthusiastic about this when I learned West created a free webcomic called Neon Pantheon, meaning I wouldn’t have to pay for it, then less when I discovered they were a professional illustrator based in San Francisco with the connections to have a shout-out from the guy who made Monster High (I was most interested when I thought they were an enthusiastic amateur basically on the same level as myself).
What I want to do here is genuinely engage with Neon Pantheon as a work – trying to understand where it’s coming from, even if I disagree with its artistic choices and goals. This is what it’s saying, this is what it’s doing, and trying to be fair to it despite it not necessarily being what I would want from it. It’s not just about whether or not I like it, it’s about how it fits into the tradition of storytelling as a whole; and in fact, it being a bit alien to my understanding of the concept can only enrich that understanding.
Unfortunately, I can’t really say what Neon Pantheon is about because it’s still setting up the premise, which is especially frustrating because it’s about 146 pages in. For context, at time of writing I’m rereading The Dark Knight Returns by Frank Miller, which comes in at about 200 pages; granted, this is a bit of an apples and oranges comparison given TDKR is intended as a complete story in four chapters and NP seems to be going for a long-form serial, but still – by this point in the story (SPOILERS FOR TDKR INCOMING), Bruce has returned to being Batman, taken down Two-Face, recruited a new Robin, defeated the mutant leader, witnessed Superman team up with the government, and is in the middle of fighting the Joker (SPOILERS END).
Meanwhile, at this point in NP, the protagonists have reunited after some time apart, accidentally recruited a girl from Earth when the twin brother of one tried to kill her and the future version of one of them saved her, and met the antagonist/sibling of one of them, and are only just settling into a new routine together as they discover the mystery of their meeting. I’m underselling some of the positive qualities of the comic here, but plot isn’t one of them; as you can see, there’s a strange mixture of too many details and too little action.
Neon Pantheon appears to have spawned out of the fandom side of the internet. For those locked out of the loop: creatively speaking, this subculture encourages the creation of ‘OCs’, or ‘Original Characters’, with peculiar and individual designs and a list of relevant facts (as opposed to stories, which are series of events). Indeed, any new character (and occasionally concept) introduced is given a factsheet you would see on blogs. Again, this isn’t necessarily a negative; I’m a big Tarantino fan, and he famously drowns his stories in lore, coming up with detailed backstories for just about every character who wanders onscreen.
The difference between a Tarantino movie and NP, though, is that where Tarantino has a very clear idea of the story he’s trying to tell and the discipline (usually) to have those details be a compelling mystery, NP becomes bogged down in them enough for them to obfuscate the story. There is a compelling emotional core; the main character is Cass, a neurotic demigod, and it actually is a savvy move to make this character a demigod; aside from tying their impulsive, neurotic, and frequently violently irresponsible behaviour into Ancient Greek or Hindu myths, it gives a plot justification for why they get away with it a la Bender from Futurama.
The reason we want to follow this person is that they’re deeply in love with a mortal man named Eli. The best parts of the comic are when the two of them are simply telling each other that they love each other; West accesses an intense and palpable sense of love that spills off the screen and into the world, with even the art managing to kick up a notch. Oh yeah, the art – I should talk about this, because it’s the most viscerally and intentionally off-putting part of the whole thing. West lives up to the Neon part of Neon Pantheon in that everything is this absurd, turned-up set of colours.
I actually deeply respect this as an artistic choice; abrasive creative choices are, indeed, brave, and in fact simultaneously much braver and more sensible than abrasive marketing. It clearly comes from a place of deep effort and love, and I’ll always respect creatives who choose overall storytelling strategies that are personally meaningful but could potentially be offputting to a mass audience over a boring four-quadrant ‘let’s please everybody’ aesthetic (unless you fully commit). The problem here is that, much like the lore, the colours reach the point of interfering with my ability to, ya know, read the damn comic.
But: one of the things about webcomics that they share with television (particularly when made by first-timers) is that they can rapidly improve on their basic choices. This is something I’ve been thinking about; people used to talk about shows you have to give a chance – most famously, it’s widely agreed that Star Trek: The Next Generation only really gets good at season three, which is about fifty episodes of television. I think this is what drove American television to start taking a kind of ‘miniseries’ approach, with shorter seasons that could be more strongly worked out.
The pendulum is starting to swing the other way there, where audiences are starting to demand longer seasons that will, inevitably, demand more patience on their part; audiences traded one kind of instant gratification (one episode immediately, but dripped out over six months) for another (every episode is exactly as good); arguably, they’re going the other way around now, demanding TV that’s at least a consistent goodness if not brilliantly perfect every time. Seeing this happen has made me reconsider my TV habits; with TV comedies, at least, I’ll give them more of a chance to amuse me. For example, I wasn’t the biggest fan of Strip Law, but I intend to give season two a go to see if they fix my issues with it. I know as a quasi-professional pop culture critic, it’s my self-appointed job to Talk About Pop Culture, which means I have a practical application for watching stuff, but I also feel it’s healthy for me to engage with ideas and approaches I might not agree with and try to learn from them.
West’s original post fascinates me; less because I agree with it or even consider it worth contemplating, but because it’s a statement of intent. Neon Pantheon is – the post is indirectly saying – demonstrating the kind of world they would like to live in; that is to say, an escapist work. One thing that made me compelled to read it was discovering our author has bipolar disorder; aside from it being in the same ballpark as borderline personality disorder – which my partner has, inclining me towards sympathy no matter how I feel about their work – this meant I could see the comic as looking through the eyes of someone with that condition.
At the time of writing, my partner is showing me Bob’s Burgers, which is one of their favourite shows, and I enjoy the show while also finding it incredibly predictable (I can usually guess where an episode is going in about two minutes), but I can also see why that might specifically be pleasurable to someone with BPD. There’s implied limits to the behaviour you’re going to see – our own Cap’n Nath observed you’ll always circle back to the status quo – and predictability is what an anxious mind would be looking for. To be clear, this isn’t some big magical diagnosis or anything, just a moment of reasoned empathy.
It made me consider my own preferences in ‘escapist fiction’, where I have depressive tendencies and am generally drawn to assholes being assholes; Always Sunny, Futurama, Blackadder, and The Simpsons are all shows I throw on when I have to do something I don’t particularly want to that doesn’t require my whole brain. I want to escape to a place where people are being pricks to each other. I’m not saying I’m a bad person and I’m not even in the vicinity of saying I’m going to stop watching them; what I’m saying is that the spiritual pleasure I get from these shows may also have a chemical component to them. The reason we respond so strongly to certain works is because we identify with them on some level; apparently music in particular is very much tied into individual personality – people who like country and folk music tend to be extraverted, people who like classical tend to be conscientious, and people who like rock tend to be introverted and neurotic (with the loud, stimulating music giving the mind a boost).
For me, I feel confident saying the musical rhythm of both the relatively complex dialogue and relatively dense plotting of these shows is stimulating dopamine in a mind that feels starved of it. My partner also had the interesting point that my taste isn’t just for mean comedy, but for the mean character to immediately get their comeuppance, even if it’s in the form of jokes recognizing that they’re assholes or pathetic – which could be a reflection of justice-oriented autism.
From this, I can be at least sympathetic to West’s artistic compulsions. The fascinating thing – and this is something I absolutely do not want to tie to their bipolar disorder, because that seems very silly – is that they have a very keen eye for the subtlety of human expression; once the colours calm the fuck down a bit, this can really shine through in smaller moments (though the drama is still blunt enough that they default to Wacky Anime Faces too much). Perhaps there’s even some kind of chemical explanation for Too Much Fucking Lore – certainly, that’s something they’re far from alone from experiencing. I realized that the pleasure nerds get from simply knowing lore is something I get from reading history, including seeing crossovers.
The intense emotion is diffused, I think, by being stretched over so many pages; there’s a soap-opera like deconstruction of off-screen events and history, which the art and sincere love between the characters can’t fully bridge. One thing that goes with the abrasive advertising and abrasive style is a further unwillingness to call-in an audience outside of the true believers who buy in lock, stock, and barrel; I suspect that with time, West will shape and edit the storytelling as much as they have the art, but within limits. I’m not willing to follow them that far.
About the writer
Tristan J. Nankervis
Tristan J Nankervis (aka Drunk Napoleon) has been a writer, pop culture critic, dishwasher, standup comedian, waiter, potato cake factory worker, gamer, TV worker, and various other things. You can find him in Hobart, Tasmania.
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"Obi-Wan never told you about your father."
"I love you." / "I know."
"I'm terribly sorry - no no, please don't get up--"
"I don't believe it." / "That is why you fail."
Department of
Conversation
What did we watch?
Dragnet Girl
My first full Ozu – I saw bits and pieces of Tokyo Story about a decade ago – and man. This has an almost generic crime plot and set of themes, but the way it’s expressed is gorgeous; not just in the long lingering looks and emotions of the characters, but the elegant and warm framing and lighting; Tokyo Story looks like a movie from an alternate dimension, but outside the lack of sound, this was a movie from the future (at the time), and it feels shockingly modern now.
Happy Endings, Season One, Episode Six, “Why Can’t You Read Me?”
“Look at Brad, being my pimp.”
“House rule. You don’t unpack, it becomes my furniture.”
“You, friend, are a gaycist.”
“Just because we didn’t get along doesn’t mean we didn’t have raging sex in a bus terminal.”
“You serious?”
“NO! Playdate suspended!”
One thing I’m thinking about here is how many sitcoms have most of the conflict between the main characters. Community makes that work from a dramatic sense, Always Sunny is the master of that from a comedic perspective. This show is still straddling a line where everyone likes each other and is funny, so it only half-works.
“Once we have him, we’ll release him in the park where a homeless man will roast him on a stick.”
“Okay, you’re literally talking like a stereotypical black person, and I’m the gaycist.”
“I can’t believe you still haven’t caught this mouse yet!”
“I know. He’s my bin Laden. Jessica bin Laden, super hot Arab girl I went to college with. She was the one that got away.”
“Franklin’s so boring when I’m tired, I count Franklins. … You know, coz he’s boring.”
“Penny. You will have a sparsely attended memorial service.”
“Where you going? I’m gonna put boogers in all your candles!”
“And I had to take off my pants because the mouse could hear my… jeans.”
“I bought a new people-killing game for the X-station. Did I mention I’m a video gamester?”
“So funny when people are different.”
The acting feels like it’s really relaxed at this point.
“You know you can just buy soap?!”
“I’M DEFLECTING BULLETS!”
Tremors 4: The Legend Begins – One hundred years before Kevin Bacon and Fred Ward squared off against the Graboids, the city slicker ancestor of Burt Gummer and the last holdouts of Rejection, Nevada (the name of course changes at the end of the movie) faced four of the beasties. I can’t make any argument that the world needed a prequel western with Michael Gross playing the polar opposite of his usual character, or with Billy Drago as an ill fated gunslinger hired to save the day. But I am happy this exists, since it was just the right sort of fun, silly, relatively low stakes movie my day called for. Even before Drago shows up, this has a pleasantly Brisco County feel to it. Three things to note: the original writers are still with the franchise, which is somewhat unusual for this kind of thing; after using CGI in the third movie, the critters are back to being practical effects, which is at once still cheesy and just right for the series; the cast is quite diverse, as someone for once remembered that the Old West had plenty of Latinos, Native Americans, and Chinese immigrants.
Frasier, “The Doctor Is Out” – Frasier chases someone into a gay bar for Reasons, and get incorrectly outed by a caller. And then gets wined and dined by the director of the Seattle Opera. Some of the gags are a bit homophobic (which is a bit surprising given the show’s overall track record and that this was written by the openly gay Joe Keenan), and I sort of wish this had engaged more with the possibility that Frasier might be bi. But it’s really hard to argue against something that ends up being so funny and so well done. Patrick Stewart is perfect as Frasier’s would be suitor (he just never did enough comedy), and Kelsey Grammer has a level of comic timing that we have not seen from him in a while.
Elementary, “Ancient History” – Bored between cases, Sherlock goes to the morgue and finds a body that leads him into a murder investigation. This is one of those plots where the events don’t flow organically in the least, and the resolution kind of feels out of the blue. Meanwhile, a friend of Joan’s asks her to track down a guy she had a one night stand with a year ago, only it turns out to have been Sherlock? Well, they can’t all be winners.
NBA Playoffs on Prime, season finale – From here on out, the playoffs are on Peacock and NBC or on ESPN (and just barely ABC). Which is a loss for me since I can’t really see any more games, but also a loss for fans because they did a pretty good job and have some really good broadcasters. It was also a loss for Detroit, but that is a different story.
Practical graboids? Billy Drago? I need to get on this.
“Kelsey Grammer has a level of comic timing that we have not seen from him in a while. ”
One of the best ways to get an actor to level up quick is to put them opposite someone better, and Stewart in comedy mode is not something you can ignore.
Hacks, “The Cube”
JIMMY. Downright heartbreaking times for our boy here, as Paul W. Downs turns in some especially open, achingly vulnerable goodness as Jimmy talks to Kayla about consciously prioritizing his clients–the people who make the art he can’t–over his own pride and then has to live that out in the most demoralizing way yet. It’s who Jimmy’s been all along, but in beautiful, painful capsule summary: there’s something powerful about a character knowing and choosing who they are. But I’ve rarely needed someone to have an endgame win so badly.
The “is this your card?” punchline is so, so good. And anytime the mayor shows up, I’m having a good time.
Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice
For Movie Club. Warm, generous, funny, and well-observed. There’s a lot of good real-life texture here, from Gould brushing his teeth before a prospective foursome to Culp putting his son to bed; it’s a film that’s dealing with sexual and emotional fantasy, offering that to the audience and seeing how its characters experience it, and it may not always be 100% honest in the latter regard (there was a lot of discussion in the group about Natalie Wood’s curious, aroused, unbothered response to Culp’s affair), but any weakness on that front is bolstered by the sweet ordinariness of the characters. It’s a movie about people whose lives open up somewhat, and only part of that is sexual.
This does remind me that I once read a book where the only note on it I made afterwards was, “I thought this would have a threesome, and it didn’t.”
Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker
Rewatching this may be the worst thing I’ve ever done for the sake of the We Hate Movies schedule. At least it was with a friend, so we got to groan in hateful despair together. Absolute soulless dreck that’s dead-on-arrival and seemingly free of any genuine creative choices whatsoever. The only choice here was “appease,” so you have to spend two and a half hours watching a movie cringing in terror from its own audience.
“A movie cringing in terror from its own audience” nails it. I’ve watched a lot of garbage but nothing that was so despicably pathetic, so desperate for approval that hate and contempt are the only possible responses.
I remain somewhat baffled that I kinda loved Rise of Skywalker but equally unwilling to ever watch it again to check in on all the flaws that were clearly apparent but simply didn’t bother me on first viewing for reasons unknown.
Never even bothered with Rise of Skywalker and I’m not alone in this evidently from talking to other people. This might be the ultimate “makes a billion and no one cares” movie, even more than the Disney live-actioners.
For a film that seems rather breezy at the start, Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice has surprising staying power. Not only is the film ambivalent throughout about the relationships between Bob & Carol/Ted & Alice; there is a dark side, as you pointed out, to how Ted (Culp) changes his mind about when you should tell your wife about having (had) an affair.
And I’m still thinking about what Carol (Natalie Wood) says at the beginning of the film. Maybe what goes on at the Institute stays at the Institute?
God tier monologue from Mayor Jo.
The fact that the magician was Australian and had the accent just got funnier and funnier as the episode went on. I almost spat my drink out at “Pick a card, ranga!”
Chime and The Serpent’s Path — Kiyoshi Kurosawa double feature at the theater! The Serpent’s Path is from 1998 (although Kurosawa remade it in France a few years ago, I need to track that down) and was never theatrically released here and Chime was originally released as an NFT two years ago and apparently won’t ever be physically released. Path follows a low-level mob guy seeking vengeance against his fellow crooks for the death of his daughter, he is assisted in this by a math teacher with unclear motivations and they quickly run up against every guy they kidnap and torture fingering someone else and escalating the situation. This is very darkly comic at points and points toward Cloud in certain particulars — the dynamic duo pushing things forward, a big shootout in a desolate factory — and in the very ending, this was written by Hiroshi Takahashi and has more clarity in its conclusion than Kurosawa often does, but the sick bleakness is the same. Not so much scary as unsettling, so klassic Kurosawa.
And Chime is distilled — the standard read is that this is Cure part two (and a specific moment is as clear a tie as anything), but as a 40-minute movie this is able to let things exist with fewer throughlines, it is a short story and those are nearly always more effective vehicles for horror. A chef teaching a cooking class has to deal with a student who says he hears a chime that is overtaking his brain, something bad happens and then the chef starts hearing things. Infection that has social implications (the chef’s home life is clearly distant and his wife and kid seem off, as per usual the urban area they live in is largely denuded of inhabitants) but that is also expressed in horrible violence and off-screen terror — the former is something that Kurosawa shoots so bluntly that for a moment I didn’t think I was seeing it, didn’t want to think I was seeing it, and that is also meaningful I think. This builds to a moment of skin-crawling sensory overload, the sound work here is brutal, and then to a decision that is not shown but clearly made and this is also Kurosawa fucking heavily with the audience, because it does not seem like a capitulation but it is sure not good. Anyway, the biggest comparison to Cure is that like that movie, Chime is its own infection, good luck getting it out of your brain. Not to be missed if it comes through your town.
The Sheep Detectives — and now for something completely different! Movie with the nephews, who largely enjoyed this and why not, it’s a decent mystery with some fun sheep shenanigans. The book this is adapted from apparently does more with the sheep as collective narrative voice and the film unsurprisingly pulls back from this, it does retain the device of sheep choosing to forget things that upset them and this of course needs to be checked if you’re going to solve a murder. A good enough time, this is an Amazon film and it has a certain warmth and coziness but a buffet platter under a heat lamp has warmth and coziness too, this is made to fit on a TV.
Definitely keeping an eye out for Chime.
Punch-Drunk Love – rewatch as I go through the PTAs with my girlfriend, she hadn’t seen this one before but it’s one of the ones I’ve seen the most times. It’s still one of my favourites and a wonderful left turn from the sprawl of Magnolia. It’s so fascinating to me how well it blends the “guy makes one bad decision and it immediately escalates out of his control” and “indie romcom” subgenres, I find everything with Emily Watson so sweet even though the film is consistently odd and often abrasive. Still in contention for my PTA top spot, looking forward to the next two as I’ve only seen each of those one time before.
Don’t Say a Word – further adventures in comfort food thrillers from the mid-90s to early 00s, a fine era for such things. Michael Douglas is so good as a sleazy bastard antihero but I enjoyed seeing him as a genuinely good guy here, stuck in a shitty situation where he has to get to the bottom of Brittany Murphy’s mental health issues AGAINST THE CLOCK to SAVE HIS DAUGHTER from… SEAN BEAN! Excellently ridiculous premise and the execution is solid, with a strong supporting cast (Famke Janssen, stuck in a full leg cast for the whole film, Oliver Platt, a little role for Lance Reddick etc) and some memorable touches. This must rank as one of Sean Bean’s most memorable deaths too, against stiff* competition.
* pun somewhat intended
Seinfeld – end of season 7, and wow, I did NOT expect them to go that dark. Great run of episodes, the second half of this season was excellent after some wobbles early on.
Twin Peaks – the big reveal episodes in season 2. Brutal stuff, Ray Wise is incredible here. But also the stuff with Ben in prison and Pete and Catherine messing with him is hilarious and I love it. “Something IS happening, isn’t it Margaret?” remains one of my favourite lines in the show.
Punch-Drunk Love really does hit, and the oddness and abrasiveness are such a strong part of that: “I don’t know if there is anything wrong because I don’t know how other people are.” I have a hard time choosing between intimate and sprawling PTA, though.
Yeah it’s tough to compare. I’m curious as to whether this run of rewatches changes anything in my ranking, I’ve had PDL and Inherent Vice installed as my favourites in those two categories for a while now but Phantom Thread is always lurking!
Hahahaha, as you’ve been going through Seinfeld I was getting the impression you did not know how this season ended so I’ve been waiting for this. I think as time goes on (and “Golden Age” and “Peak” TV and their more open embrace of darker material gain ground) that Susan’s exit is overlooked as a truly wild conceit — it’s a sitcom, obviously the change she represents can’t happen, but this is a hell of a way to stop it. I think the show (and I believe this is Larry David’s last writing credit until the finale) does an incredible job keeping things PG, including the fairly wacky depiction of her flopping over on the envelopes, so the reveal is a shock. And Alexander’s reaction — freed but immediately knowing how bad it is he feels this way and that he cannot express it — is remarkable (although Louis-Dreyfus’ “I’m so … sorry?” is nearly as good). Amazing stuff.
I half-expected it to be some kind of belated revenge plot from Susan to make George think his stinginess had caused her death and then she’d walk out of the hospital room and call him out. But nope, they really went all-in. Wonderful stuff, that must have made some heads explode at the time!
Sitcoms did occasionally go dark (but not actually funny) throughout the 70s and 80s, but the only examples of black humor I can think of is the death of Chuckles the Clown on Mary Tyler Moore and Bob Newhart nearly falling to his death in an elevator shaft. So it wasn’t unheard of before Susan, but rare and never quite as shocking.
Yeah, David left the show after this season. I feel like you can tell – we caught a few episodes at the end of season 8 in the hotel yesterday, and while they’re still funny, the premises are a lot broader and more removed from realistic situations. (That said, of course one of the broadest – Kramer’s Peterman Reality Tour bus – is based in reality.)
Wanna go to Monk’s?
Hokum – Disappointed me compared to Oddity’s stripped-down sense of fun and similar themes without the trite emotions and “it’s about trauma” arc; McCarthy is clearly a really talented filmmaker, and several images scared the hell out of me. He might need a different screenwriter next time though.
Fargo – Meanwhile this is a perfect screenplay in it’s plot and observations of people; not only how sharp Margie is but also how her genuine kindness and diplomacy contrast the greed and stupidity of the criminals. (“I’m not 100 percent with ya on your policework there, Lou” followed by the joke is a great way of arguing with Lou without putting him down or making him feel too small.) There’s a whole story here of a woman married, in the family way, feeling out another life she could have had – and being glad she didn’t – and staring another life in the face as well, blank and without comprehension of good. “Don’t ya know that?”
I’ve heard good things about Hokum and really liked Oddity, boooooo to this trauma crap though. There seems to be a real deficit of lean mean screenwriters, we talk about the Corman school for directors but guys like Sayles and Dante also knew how to put a story together.
Yeah, I’m tempted to use Margie as a counter to the charge that the Coen bros. lack a sense of compassion. Because Margie shows that you have to be, at least, a little empathetic to question people’s bad, well, in this case, really bad, life decisions, without coming off as a self-righteous scold.
McDormand is crucial to not appearing self-righteous here. She’s genuinely asking with “Don’t you know that?”
I think that you get at something about FARGO that is overlooked, namely, that Marge’s inherent sof the values that make society work leaves her at a loss to comprehend that violence is also a part of the making of civilization.
In A Violent Nature – In the Friday the 13th films Jason is on screen for ten minutes, slashes then disappears for chunks of the movie and we’re stuck with camp counselors. What is Jason doing the other eighty minutes of the film? This movie attempts to answer that. It’s original in this regard: we follow the killer’s pov rather than his victims with subjective camera sequences that put us directly in his shoes. It’s a hangout with the killer instead of horny and dumb camp counselors. Director Chris Nash undercuts typical slasher cinematography, editing and jump scare musical stings with the idea. The night scenes in the woods are up there with The Blair Witch. The sound design of the woods is oppressive and other times downright terrible. For someone who directs one of the most inventive and disgusting kills in the genre his blocking at other times is not very good. Still, it has an arty dreamy quality to it that becomes hypnotic as we follow the killer through the woods stumbling upon his next victim. Not really slow cinema but I could see this trying the patience of some while others groove on it. It has a wicked sense of humor. How the killer gets his mask and weapon of choice is hilarious.
I liked this a lot, and I thought it was very funny how this is actually portraying a sequel (the ranger dude is a survivor from the “first” movie, as much good that does him). I know it’s divisive but the mix of slow trudging and gory deaths really worked for me, but what was most impressive is how the ending shifts into another gear. The insight that “slow” cinema and slasher kills are basically the same once you focus on the killer is smart and it emphasizes the similarity of those rhythms, but the end forgoes that into something very tense and suggestive and it worked really well on me.
Hit Man (2023)
First time. Very fun and clever.
What did we play?
Strange Horticulture – solidly entertaining game about running a plant shop and fulfilling the increasingly sinister needs of the town. The puzzles here are pretty basic (they do go beyond the initial level of “I need a blue plant with big leaves” etc but not THAT far) but I liked the way it balances a growing sense of dread with the general cozy vibes. Didn’t feel like I needed to see any endings other than the one I stumbled into but it was an enjoyable world to spend time in.
Thank Goodness You’re Here – ridiculous comic cartoon game where you play a very small man tasked with solving various odd problems in a small Yorkshire town, with consistently funny writing and voice acting (Matt Berry is the one familiar voice but the other lesser-known talents all do great work). The humour is very British and amusingly risqué and surreal. Another fun small game, if nothing else this annoyingly long-winded cough / cold is helping me get through my games backlog.
Oh, yeah, I liked Strange Horticulture, although I also haven’t replayed it to see the other endings. I picked up the sequel/spinoff Strange Antiquities and need to play that too.
Strange Horticulture has a very lovely cat.
Will probably grab the sequel at some point when it’s on sale! And it seems like there are plenty of other games in the “lightly brain-teasing retail establishment” subgenre, a friend has recently been singing the praises of a record store one called Wax Heads. I did like the cat very much, inevitably! Looks like Strange Antiquities promises further feline content.
Mario Kart 8 Deluxe on Nintendo Switch
Played a cup against our visiting neighbors’ daughter this weekend. Funny how Mario Kart has turned into a universal, all-ages, family game, even tough little kids not only play like shit, but often forget just plain forget how to control the game from one moment to the next. Even with the assist modes turned on.
Heh, think I posted this bit in Ruck’s discord so I guess I’m the secondary source for this essay. Annoyed the hell out of me and Nick Mullen’s “I think this is for babies” joke is the meanest/funniest possible retort to it.
I can think of one, maybe two webcomics that started out with good art — it is hilarious to go back and look at how bad some stuff is, but the enthusiasm carries it. And I think this is something that a lot of comic strips have, Bill Watterson is obviously one of the greats but if you look at the first few months of Calvin and Hobbes the expressions and line are not where he would soon get them. People learn as they go. And if they can they try and discard things, to use Watterson again RIP Uncle Max. So having the time to both develop craft and to feel out character and story is often beneficial, and part of having that time is not having the pressure/exposure of lots of people watching this happen — going back to early webcomics, there was a huge scene explosion but it was fairly contained, right? No social media to pass stuff around on and potentially break containment. So our dweeb here has a fair number of things stacked against them but still, no one told them to write a dumb manifesto.
I am also going to guess the diffused storytelling comes not just from OC fandom but also general comic book style, which stretches lore and story into forms that should be shorter. Saga has a lot to answer for here.