#mod notes: i read the comic the year it came out but my memory of the plot is so fuzzy since it's been quite some time

[movienotesbyzawmer]

Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker

May 4: Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker

(previous notes: Star Wars: The Last Jedi)

Source: UK 3D Blu-ray

I saw this at pretty much the very first available showing, and haven't watched it since. But since I had the other Disney-era ones in 3D, and I still have the capability to watch 3D movies at home, I decided to complete my Blu-ray collection by ordering the British 3D Blu-ray, like I'd done with The Last Jedi. So now I'm going to see it at home for the first time, in 3D for the first time, and take notes like I've been doing.

My reaction when I saw this on opening night was that it was a lot of fun. I didn't think it was as good as The Last Jedi. Overall it feels like a trilogy where the first priority was to avoid the mistakes of the prequels, and the second priority was to have them be fun movies. Mission accomplished, but the actual story of this trilogy is only marginally satisfying. But I left that opening night screening excited about all the neat things I'd witnessed. And now I shall press play and do some re-witnessing…

Emperor Palpatine, the opening crawl tells us. He wasn't someone we were expecting to be part of the plot of this movie, was it?

First scene after the opening shot is a slow-mo land battle, visually different from Star Wars movies in general. Dude kills 100% of everyone then plucks a mysterious relic from a mysterious relic. He's on a Tomb-raider-y treasure hunt.

It takes him to a Tomb Raider-y lair… and there are creatures in green liquid ahhh!

"…some consider to be… UNNATURAL", that line from Episode III. Very love it. Good reference.

The image of all those Star Destroyers is super super super cool.

And now after a calculated bit of lightness in the Millennium Falcon, the good guys arrive at a super neat looking planet thing. Not even ten minutes in and we've seen three inventive new planet environments.

And now a chase, "lightspeed skipping", and each skip is a cool space place, all different, one of them has a big monster! They are tuned into what's good about Star Wars movies, these Rise of Skywalker makers.

Also, Finn and Poe seem to have settled into their roles as funny supporting-character buddies. The first movie really seemed to be beginning a more dramatic arc for Finn, but it doesn't feel like that's happening any more.

0:15:36 - Rose Tico sighting! Her arc blunted as well. Be nice if she joined them on this mission they're about to leave on.

Really kind of surprising how much footage there is of Carrie Fisher, who died years before this came out.

Okay now we're back with Kylo Ren on this planet that's the equivalent of that orc-factory in Lord of the Rings. What's he doing? Collaborating with some ukky beings. Fixing his helmet. Hm.

Bit of humor in the conference room scene, again calculated.

Back to our heroes and they're on another neat new planet with color clouds & celebratory visuals, pleasant.

0:23:40 - Very cinematic Rey-Kylo cross-galaxy conversation, cool.

Lando saves them from stormtroopers, and is therefore given the honor of the "I've got a bad feeling about this" line.

0:28:00 Speeder chase in the desert, and the stormtrooper speeders launch them up and they fly! Cool!

Hah, there's a gag where Rey fires up her light saber and Poe tries to do that too but his is just a flashlight, cute.

Okay, here's this scene I like where there's a serpent monster in their Tomb Raider cave, and Ray figures out that the monster just needs to be force healed so she does it and it helps them. Sounds corny but I like it.

0:36:00 - we see the Ren gang on a plateau and here a new music theme. I'm not much noticing the new music themes in the Star Wars movies of the 2010s, but there's one.

This scene. The Kylo/Rey meeting in the desert. It was heavily teased in the trailer and it would have been more effective if we hadn't seen so much of it in the trailer. Also there's a who-can-magic-harder duel that ends up killing Chewy, except that we don't have to believe that very very long.

"Let's do that!" about wiping C-3POs memory, John Boyega's exceptional comic timing on display again.

0:45:40 - We're on this new planet now, which is so Poe can find the person that can do a memory wipe of 3-3PO, right? It's fast-paced, this movie.

"We sent out a call for help at the battle of Krait, nobody came" says Poe. Am I forgetting that drama from The Last Jedi? I know he's talking about that final battle from that movie, but I didn't remember a despairing "no one is coming", at least not like it was a huge, shocking letdown.

I like the little Babu creature but we don't get much of it, do we

Poe is all "did she do that to us" when he sees her Force-hypnotize the stormtroopers, haha

0:58:10 - Pretty unique shot, dollying backwards facing Poe & Finn shooting stormtroopers we can't see until they fall in front of the camera

"Your parents were no one… they CHOSE to be" here's where it starts to seem like this movie doesn't like where the last movie was going & made it be different. If this were an improv class the teacher would be like, "remember the principle of 'yes AND…'"

Okay, this bit coming up where General Hux saves them & says he's the spy. It's… funny? And dumb? Maybe? Sort of a tawdry end to this character in the trilogy maybe?

"You.. Are a Palpatine." Dun dun dunnnnnnn. Okay sure I guess. This isn't what I'm into Star Wars movies for; I wouldn't have had it be about this.

They get to the new planet and Rey figures out how to use the knife tool to find where to go, it's so like a Tomb Raider game that I feel like I'm reading a cheat guide on GameSpot

Now Finn is bonding with the girl on the planet who is also a stormtrooper deserter, makes that whole Finn subplot make more sense.

Rey swiped a cool watercraft to go to the wreck of the Death Star and I just want to point out once again that I like the vehicle design in Star Wars movies.

1:13:10 - overhead shot of said vehicle is the first notable example of something that looks good in 3D in this movie. I'm inclined to say you really shouldn't feel like you're missing out if you're seeing this in 2D.

She's in a vision cave on the wrecked Death Star. She fights HER OWN SELF for a second, and bad-Rey rawrs at her in a way that reminds me of when Bilbo does that in the first Lord of the Rings movie. I liked it there and I like it here.

1:18:05 - First bit of my beloved "Han Solo and the Princess" theme, so lovely

Now Rey and Kylo are saber dueling all over this wreck with waves everywhere and it reminds me of the big climactic duel in Episode III where it seems like the duelers are going out of their way to duel in a cool looking place.

Everything gets all dramatic in a way that doesn't really get explained - Leia very deliberately says "Ben", then dies, but it affects Kylo allowing Rey to kill him, but then she un-kills him with Force magic because "I did want to take your hand" and then bounces. And it's not over with this kind of thing, because Kylo has a not-really-real conversation with his played-by-OMG-Harrison-Ford father, and he symbolically hurls his awesome saber away. So where are we now? We're in some drama, that's where. I miss cool vehicles and inventive creature design!

1:27:45 - Modded-up Star Destroyer emerges from lightspeed and it's another cool 3D effect.

And then it blows up the planet where Poe's ex-girlfriend was and it looks cool, but we could have used her to be around more. Wait, does she not-be-dead later or something? Probably.

Okay, very corny sequence happening now, it's the pep talk between Rey and ghost-Luke, it ends with a smirking Luke raising up an X-wing like he couldn't do in Empire Strikes Back, so I guess that plot point is tidied up.

Okay, we got past that drama and now there's a very simple Saint-Crispin's-Day speech riling up the troops so they can go to that mystery planet for the final battle, and interest level has picked up.

1:41:28 - Hey a shot of Rey going through a wall gap is a reference to the earlier cool-in-3D shot of the watercraft & the Death Star wreck.

And here's something that internet assholes picked on - they ride horse-things on the Star Destroyers. Lighten up comrades, maybe this just isn't your kind of space adventure movie.

Rey gets in the mystery-edifice and holy hell it's creepy! There's an audience of thousands of cultists in black stone bleacher seats, chanting in perfect unison! It's downright Kubrick-y!

They really had fun with the lighting in the Palpatine room. Also, there are red stormtroopers on the Star Destroyers and aren't they pretty.

Palpatine is trying to convince Rey that she should embrace hatred and hill him and rule the galaxy in ritual hatred with a chanting congregation of hooded dipshits. Will it work? He does have a very compelling speaking voice. But here comes Kylo! He has had a change of heart or something!

"The life force in your bond," he narrates, and then bad-magics them super hard!  We never could have anticipated that evil force spells could thwart their plans.

1:54:20 - very satisfying shot of a giant fleet of good guys coming to save the day. They hit us with the idea of no one coming to save them, and just like when Han Solo swooped in in the first movie, it feels good that this time someone else did show up. And yes it includes Poe's girlfriend and that charismatic little varmint!

Super cool to see Star Destroyers get blown up.

Also cool when Palpatine super-zaps lots of good guy spaceships. Sound is neat on that also. This intense visual/aural experience is what I was thinking about for a while after first seeing this movie.

Rey beats Palpatine by having that surprise second light saber. Whatever, this is a super cool looking scene with all the bad guys in that chamber getting wasted.

Other cool battle climax imagery happens up in the sky, even though it's kind of hard to see what exactly physically happened to save Finn and those guys on the crashing Star Destroyer.

Kylo… what??? Didn't die when he just disappeared into a crevasse??? Quel surprise! He's super-reformed now and heals Rey up with his tender love for her. They kiss, their carnal desires overtaking them, they are high on the most ethical lust the galaxy has ever known! And he dies and disappears, but is visibly satisfied. I feel okay mocking this because I suspect no one likes it. And then it moves on to really cool aftermath visuals that are crazy fun to watch. They are experiencing the great victory in other planets from the other movies, and to the tune of John Williams themes from movies past.

Maz presents Chewy with a special medal, am I supposed to know what that's about? They're giving it major gravity.

So the movie, the trilogy, and the Skywalker Saga ends with a scene of Rey returning to Tatooine to bury the two important light sabers, but also whip out another one she had, and then tell a townie that she's named Rey SKYWALKER, and the final moment is of her gazing at the two suns with the Binary Sunset theme playing us out. What I like about that is that it sends the message that that moment from the original Star Wars, elevated to greatness largely by John Williams stirring theme, is the pinnacle of cinematic experiences that were brought to us by this series.

I like this movie less than any of the Disney-era movies for sure, and I think after watching it a second time, it lacks some specialness that could have allowed it to hold up better against the best Star Wars movies. But I wouldn't say it's bad, and I certainly wouldn't advise against seeing it.

#star wars rise of skywalker

[chiseler]

An Interview With Screenwriter Louisa Rose

In 1973, Brian De Palma released Sisters, his Siamese twin mystery thriller starring Margot Kidder and Charles Durning. After a string of social satires which, to be honest, haven’t aged very well, Sisters was De Palma’s breakthrough film, the one that would cement the form and style for which he’d come to be known. A year later he released the horror/comedy/glam rock opera Phantom of the Paradise starring the great Paul Williams. Hitting theaters more than a year before Rocky Horror, Phantom combined elements from Faust, Phantom of the Opera and about a dozen other sources into a bright, fast, wicked comic book satire of the music business. The film went on to become a cult favorite.

Both films were written by screenwriter Louisa Rose, though she is rarely credited for her work on Phantom. After some reputed and proverbial creative differences, De Palma removed her name from the film and rewrote the script, taking sole screenwriting credit. Although Rose disagrees with me, I think it can be argued it was her work on these two scripts, particularly Sisters, that drew attention to De Palma as a director.

After spending the first 20 years of her adult life in New York City, she and her husband relocated first to Spokane and then to Seattle about a decade back. Not long ago, I spoke with her via phone about her career as a playwright and Hollywood screenwriter.

Jim Knipfel: How did you get started in screenwriting?

Louisa Rose: {Laughs} By accident. I was one of those kids who wrote poetry in high school. I went to college thinking I wanted to be an actress. Theater was my primary interest. I found that I really enjoyed the rehearsal process, but really did not enjoy acting for an audience. That was not a recommendation for a career on stage, so part of my theater concentration (we called our majors “concentrations” at Sarah Lawrence) was writing for the theater. And that’s what I really loved. Brian De Palma was at Columbia, and though they had extra-curricular student theater, they did not have the intensive program as part of the curriculum that SLC did, and does.

At any rate, Brian and another Columbia student came to Sarah Lawrence to do theater and some film projects, because the head of the theater department, Wilford Leach, was interested in film as well. He was a mentor for Brian. The first film project, I believe, was a short piece called The Wedding Party. I don’t know if you’ve heard of that.

JK: Oh, yes, I’ve seen it.

LR: After that Brian made Murder a la Mod and Dionysus, I think it was.

JK: You mean Dionysus in ’69?

LR:  Yes, Dionysus in ’69 started out as a theater piece. Scared the shit out of me when I went to see it. It was created by an interesting experimental director, Richard Schechner, as a mass quasi-orgy experience. The venue, The Performing Garage, had stadium seating, actually more like large long shelves almost to the ceiling – and you had to climb ladders to reach them. Then the actors would climb up and invite you to “join the dance.” And I saw one coming toward me… “No, I am not joining the dance. I am an observer” {laughs}.      

Brian did his Masters at Sarah Lawrence, and one of his projects was to direct my senior play. That’s how I got to know him. I then went on to get my MFA in theater. So he knew me and he was looking for someone to write a script for Sisters. He felt his idea for the film would be marketable, but he needed a script. It sounded like fun, and actually became my Master’s thesis.

JK: Really?

LR: Yeah, so that’s how I got to work on Sisters.

JK: So he came to you with the story?

LR: He had kind of an outline. He had this idea that it would be twins, one evil and one good sister…You know, it’s just so long ago it’s hard for me to remember. There were certain points, certain visual things he wanted. We worked together on the story, and then I wrote the script.  

As for Phantom of the Fillmore …

JK: Um, you mean Phantom of the Paradise?

LR: That’s it, Phantom of the Fillmore. It became Paradise.

{Note: After catching wind of the film’s original title, the owners of The Fillmore filed a lawsuit, forcing the change. Another lawsuit, this one filed by Led Zeppelin, forced the name of the films central record company, Swan Song, be changed to Death Records.}

LR: I took time off from working in NYC to go to LA and write scripts for Sisters and Phantom. At that point, I was a single mother, and my daughter Alissa was two and a half. I brought her with me and had her in day care.  I had a contract for a total of $80,000 for the two scripts.  But when it came to getting paid, Brian delayed and delayed, told me it was not a good time and that I needed to wait.   As usual, actors, director, camera persons, etc. were paid. I needed the money, had to sue to be paid, and only received a quarter of the contract money.  Brian had been a friend, and it felt like a betrayal.  

But back to the movie, what is your take on Sisters? What are the things you notice about it?

JK: I went back just a couple days ago and watched it again. Just in terms of De Palma’s career, it was a big turning point for him. Discounting Murder A La Mod, he’d been doing all those goofy satires like Greetings and Hi Mom! And Get to Know your Rabbit. Sisters was the first of his thrillers and the first of his Hitchcock homages, the things he’d come to be known for.

LR: Right.

JK: Ignoring the Psycho model at play, one of the things that always struck me about Sisters was that in lesser hands the big Siamese twins reveal would have been saved until the last ten or fifteen pages of the script, but here we get it about forty minutes in. Even before that, they gave it away in the poster; they gave it away in the tagline. There was no secret the killer—or killers—were Siamese twins. But then of course there’s the later twist, which brings us back to Psycho.

LR: Mm-hmm.

JK: What really sticks with me, though, is the whole final sequence from Jennifer Salt’s hypnotism to that final shot of Charles Durning staring through the binoculars at the couch. It’s so good. I love that ending so much. Also, having come to know of her only later, I was amazed to see what a good actress Margot Kidder was.

LR: I thought she was very appealing and a really good choice for the part.

JK: In the end Sisters, more so than the thrillers that would follow—Dressed to Kill, Body Double, Blow Out—is the one I always go back to, because even the Hitchcock stuff is still fairly understated at that point. So I’m wondering, how much of that final script, what made it to the screen, was yours?

LR I think I have a copy of my original script here, if I could find it. It was much longer and needed to be cut. I really don’t know. It was a long time ago and I’d need to re-read it.  

There is a Blu-Ray copy of Sisters put out by Arrow that has interviews of some people who worked on the film.

I’ve got it somewhere.]

My husband keeps saying I should show it to our teenage grandchildren, but it might destroy their image of me as nice old grandma. On the other hand, some years ago, our two nephews watched it as young teenagers and looked at me with new respect—or was it fear?

Now, what is funny is that Sisters is kind of a cult film, and so is Phantom. About ten years ago, shortly after we moved to Seattle, I got a call from a young woman originally from Winnipeg.

JK: The one city where Phantom was a big hit when it came out.

LR: Yes, it was a cult film there, with a festival and now possibly a documentary about the festival. We had a visit, and she mailed me – I believe it was a production copy of the script for Sisters.

JK: So what was it like for you, a young woman writing films in the Seventies?

LR: There are things funny and not funny that happened…Nothing about the movie business appealed to me, based on my very limited experience. The people were kind of awful. I have memories of someone from the studio, a married accountant. He said, “Oh, I have to go to San Francisco to scout locations, and you could come with me.” The whole approach was making me nervous, and I said, “Well, I have a two-year-old daughter with me, so, uh, no I can’t do that.” And he said, “Well, we could bring your daughter and get baby-sitting for her, and then we could have a Really Good Time.” I thought, oh, just leave me alone—I’m not a gorgeous actress, I’m a writer.

JK: Not that long ago I interviewed an actress from the late Fifties who up and left the movie business for twenty years because she wouldn’t put up with that.

LR: Women were treated horribly in Hollywood as elsewhere. When I went to look for a job in New York after college, there were separate job listings for men and women. Men could apply for management-track jobs and women could be a “Gal Fri” or a “Secy.”  

I was very taken by a piece in Ms. Magazine about a woman who worked in a factory that made plutonium pellets and who became a whistle-blower. I thought it would make a good movie.

JK: You mean Karen Silkwood?

LR: That’s it. So I met a woman who worked at New Line Cinema, who got me an interview with a producer there. I came in and I was supposed to pitch my idea. It was almost like a parody of a scene in a Hollywood movie about a Hollywood movie. The guy is sitting there with his feet up on the desk and he has these three or four male cronies sitting around, and he’s cracking jokes and they’re all laughing heartily at his jokes. Eventually he said, “So you want to write a script,” and I said “Yeah.” I started telling him about it, and he kept interrupting me. He was horrified to learn that Karen Silkwood, a single mother, had left her children with their grandparents so she could take a well-paying job at the plant.  “No one would ever go to see a movie about a woman who leaves her children,” he announced.  Basically, the interview was over at that point.  He looked at me and asked if I knew how to type.  When I said yes, he said,

“Well, you could come and be a typist here.”

JK: My god.

LR: At that point, I said, “I think you’ve really got too much going on here to pay attention, so I think this isn’t working too well.” He sprang up from his desk and stalked off, bright red, furious. He came back and said, “I have never been so insulted in my life.” That was the end of that. {Laughs.}

{Note: For what it’s worth, Rose’s instincts were good. Director Mike Nichols’ take on the Silkwood story, starring Meryl Streep and written by Nora Ephron, was released in 1983.}

LR: Then, because I’d written a horror movie, I was offered other projects. One was to be a murder film involving Debbie Harry, the lead singer with Blondie, the rock group.  The only requirement as far as the potential director was concerned was that it needed to have seven or eight murders. The rest was up to me. I met Debbie Harry and talked to her to get a sense of what she could do. You just get a sense of what people can do. She had no acting background.

JK: Would this have been her first picture?

LR: It would have been, I think, but it was never made. At one point, she said “Well, I just want to play the part of a housewife in the movie.” And I thought she’d be more believable as the person she actually was.  So I made it about a rock group beset by a number of murders. I think it had seven murders. Then I came back for the next meeting. She’d read the script and said, “I can’t do this movie; it’s the story of my life.” And I thought, WHAT? {Laughs.}. I mean, WHAT? So that one didn’t happen.

JK: So that was, what, around 1980?

LR: I think so, late Seventies or early Eighties. Something like that.

JK: So that was after Monique was made?

LR; {pause} So you know about that.

JK: Yes.

LR: How did you find out about that?

JK: Well, it’s listed on your filmography online, and I’ve seen it.

LR: {Sighs heavily and laughs} It has very little to do with me. Believe me, I’ve seen it also. That’s the thing about screenwriting. Who knows? You sit at home and do your writing, but who knows what will emerge?

I was hired by a French would-be feature film director who had done film work for a famous French fashion house.   He wanted a story about a woman who becomes psychotic when she learns her husband is gay and proceeds to murder a bunch of gay men.

I don’t recognize the script part of it and wish I didn’t have a credit on it. It’s one of the worst things I’ve ever seen, and I think you can agree with me.

JK: I was going to hold my tongue.

LR: Well, don’t.

JK: It was pretty bad. But I will tell you, it is extremely hard to find nowadays.

LR: Good.

And then there was the time an agent called and said she had a project for me, and that I didn’t have to do my best writing; I could do my second best writing.

JK: That sounds promising.

LR: Well as a writer if someone called and said they had a project but that you’d only have to do your second-best writing, what would you say?

JK: I think I’d ask how much it paid.

LR: But what would be you’re “second-best writing”? It’s like we have it in categories. It’s like, do I want Double A grade eggs? Should they be certified, “humanely raised”? Or do you just want ordinary eggs? How do you apply that to writing? Sure. I can write bad scenes, but I don’t have a special price category for them.

There was another project that I thought was extremely funny. Somebody, God, I can’t even remember who it was anymore; a producer had bought the rights to The Sensuous Woman. Have you heard of that one?

JK: Oh, sure, yes. It was a huge bestseller back then.

LR: It was written by someone only identified as “J” at the time and was supposed to be an advice book. I think one of the funniest suggestions was supposedly made by a woman who found she could have an orgasm by leaning against the dryer when it was running—or maybe it was the washing machine during the final spin cycle.  {laughs}. My job was to take the book and think of some way to dramatize it and turn it into a movie.  The producer, it turned out, had a history of hiring writers and refusing to pay them by claiming that they had not given him a satisfactory script.  The previous writer had been a well-known playwright.

JK: So it was around that point you decided to walk away from films?

LR: I didn’t walk away in the sense that I said, “I’m not doing film-script writing anymore.”  But, I wanted to do theater, and I was also trying to bring up a daughter. The head of my college theater department, Wil Leach, had gone to work as artistic director at Joe Papp’s Shakespeare Festival.  Wil decided to do an all-black version of Mother Courage. It was to be set in America at the time of the Indian Wars. Post-Civil War. Everything was recast, and he didn’t use the Brecht score. He had a composer to do a new score, and he had a black lyricist, who said, “I’m not doing this, it doesn’t pay enough.” Will knew that I had done lyrics for a couple of theatre pieces I worked on in college. So he asked if I would like to do it. It was a really interesting project, taking the Brecht lyrics in German and finding an equivalent way to do them for this production. I don’t know German, so they gave me a German professor from Wesleyan, and we went over the lyrics word by word. We talked a lot about the connotations of the words. I had a Black English dictionary, and I had all kinds of materials. I just loved doing that.

JK: Now when was this, roughly?

LR: In 1980. Before that I also did a couple of plays at La MaMa, one of which went to Off Broadway. It seems when I look back at the things I’ve done, so many of them involve really painful experiences. I think I’m not well suited to keeping my eye on the ball. I keep getting sidetracked, thinking I don’t want to lose friends, don’t want to make anybody miserable and don’t want anyone to make me miserable. Some people have been able to somehow find a home, a theatrical home. I did not.  My last production was in Seattle.  

JK: What was the play?

LR: It was a play about Catherine the Great. I wanted to write a reflective two-character play based on Catherine’s own writing about her life before she became an Empress. She was a teenager when she went to Russia to marry the heir to the throne, an alcoholic teenage boy from Sweden. Somehow it morphed into a much bigger deal, a costume extravaganza.  I had a wonderful director, Elizabeth Huddle, who was Intiman’s Artistic Director.  But, I had horrible reviews in the Seattle papers, and so that was when I gave up.  

I’ve written three non-fiction books with my husband, who is a physician.

JK: What were they?

LR: The first one was for consumers about how to use healthcare, how to talk to doctors, what to do when a hospital admission was necessary. The second book was called The Too-Precious Child, and it was about parents who become so involved with their own wishes and fears about their child that they are unable to experience his or her needs. They might be very loving or not but they are unable to take the child’s actual self into account. The book was published in 1989, and the problem we discussed seems to have gotten massively worse.

We wrote the third book for Consumer Reports to help people understand the basic types of health insurance, how to choose the best plan for one’s circumstance, and how to get the most out of its coverage. My husband was CEO of a health plan and understood the issues, but I could identify with consumers who were trying to figure out how things worked. It took me two weeks and tears of frustration to understand how a family benefit works. Insurance terminology was painful, but I figured if I could be made to understand it, I could explain it to people. Maybe I could turn that into a movie {laughs}. I’ll go pitch that one.  

by Jim Knipfel

[rollinbishop]

Slow Leak

In 2013, five years ago yesterday, I received the final edits from editors Lana Polansky and Brendan Keogh on a short story that would eventually be included in a small anthology called Ghosts in the Machine. The anthology was to feature fiction specifically revolving around video game glitches.

That story -- titled “Slow Leak” -- is presented in full below for the first time online, with permission. I have left it entirely as it was when it went off to the printers, though I’d likely fidget over certain choices and words if I were to take a figurative red pen to it now.

---------------------

“Slow Leak” by Rollin Bishop

But when he knew he heard

Odysseus’s voice nearby, he did his best

to wag his tail, nose down, with flattened ears,

having no strength to move nearer his master.

—Homer, The Odyssey (1049–1052)

Of everything, the sky is what I find hurts the most. The people, the places, the various thoroughfares...Those are the kinds of things that come and go on a fairly regular basis. Folks leave; buildings are torn down; streets are renamed or diverted. The sky, though. Well. The sky is a thing of beauty that shifts in color but never really leaves. That’s what I might have said before. Then it left.

Not all at once. If it’d gone that quickly, we’d have noticed. The stars were snuffed out one by one, then by the handful, and finally even the moon was gone. It was only as the last few twinkling lights were burning out that the bits and pieces came together to form a cohesive whole.

The days were full of questions. Folks congregated en masse at city hall only to have their concerns rephrased and repeated back to them. The best they could do was tell us that we should just stay inside and wait it—whatever it was—out. The mayor said she’d already been in contact with mayors from neighboring towns and would let us know as soon as she’d heard back from them. She finished her speech by telling us we worried too much.

Then people started to disappear.

***

Our town never had been a populous place. It was really just an extension of the two towns to our north and west. As folks moved south from the one, and east from the other, the two dozen or so of us decided it was about time we had a mayor of our own. We all just referred to our little patch of real estate as Southeast, as something of a glib reminder of our origins.

That two dozen soon became three dozen. Small businesses began to sprout on every corner. A drugstore here, a comic shop there. And the kids. The kids were probably the best thing about it. There’s always something joyous about watching children make discoveries of their own. Though I never did have any of my own (not for lack of trying, mind) the gaggle of pint-sized monsters kept me busy when I volunteered to watch them. It was enough, for a while.

Then times got hard. Folks left, stopped calling on each other. Our happy little town became a place of doldrums, filled with nothing but memories of better times. When I asked the mayor what’d happened to cause such a rift, she shrugged at me and said, “Hard to get people to stay when there’s always somewhere to go.” I reckon she was right.

So it came to be that there were only a grand total of eight, counting the mayor, when the stars went dark. The stores had been all boarded up for a long time, and we mostly kept to ourselves. I would ask the mayor what she’d received back from the other towns, but she always said that there’d been no word. After a week, I got worried. After three, so did she. We’d both failed to notice at the time that three of our meager group had joined the stars, wherever they were.

Eight had become five. Then the power went out.

***

After the power went, and didn’t come back, I hesitantly asked the mayor what we’d do when all the food was gone. She gave me an incredulous look, raised a brow and told me, “What makes you think you need it?” I stopped eating after that.

The nights weren’t dark so much as they were absent. Without the stars, moon, or power, it was like the world ended each time the sun went down. Each morning, those of us left would congregate at the hall. There were only three of us when the buildings started to go. First it was all those rundown shops that hadn’t seen use in ages. Then, one by one, the abandoned houses were gone.

I quietly came to terms with the fact that I’d probably be one of the next to go. Fear seemed like a curious thing more than a fact of life. Why be afraid of something when you’re certain it’s going to happen? When I stopped eating it didn’t stop the hunger. I apparently didn’t need the food, but I certainly wanted it. The cold nothingness would be a welcome reprieve from the endless gnawing sensation in the pit of my stomach.

Somewhere during that feverish time the last of the townsfolk slipped out of existence.

Then it was just the mayor and me, left to wait.

***

When the sun finally didn’t bother to even come up, the mayor and I bunkered down in the candlelit portions of city hall, both for the sake of our sanity and because my house finally drifted off to join the others. The darkness encroached upon the doors but went no further. The candles and lanterns the mayor lit stayed that way. I would have asked how but, to be honest, I was a little afraid of the answer. Instead, I quietly suffered my hunger and let her do as she pleased.

Her office quickly became a pile of pages, full of calculations and strange words. She’d taken to mumbling about “servers” and “admins” while doodling equations and maps at all hours. The constant hunger finally subsided into one long, hollow feeling, and her behavior became more overtly erratic. When I did eventually try to intervene, she shrugged me off. Then, as if something had suddenly struck her, she straightened and stared me down, taking my measure.

“I’m going to make you a mod,” she said. I told her that was fine and dandy, but it didn’t mean a thing to me. She chuckled before returning to her work. I curled up in the corner, ultimately too tired to fight her turn to whimsy, and fell asleep. When I awoke, I wasn’t hungry anymore, but the mayor was gone.

She’d left a note on her desk. “Off to find other admins,” it read. “No hope of bringing the servers back up without them. Hold the office till I return. I’m sorry to put this on you but there was no other choice. I’ll be back as soon as I can. Promise.” I folded the note up and stuffed it in my pocket.

She’d be back. She promised. I just had to wait.

***

So here I am. Present, I guess. Time’s fuzzy without the sun or moon cycling through the void that used to be the sky. Don’t rightly know how long it’s been since she left. Just know I want her to come back. Don’t feel hungry, or tired, just… sad. I cry when I feel up to it, quietly, and then stop when I can’t any longer. Sit in the chair watching the door. Nothing happens. It’s been too long. She isn’t coming. Perhaps someone, anyone at all, will find this among the mayor’s unintelligible doodles.

Just want it to be over. Want it to end. Nobody here anymore. Not even me. Just an empty room. Empty room and a door. Just close my eyes, maybe. Maybe see what everyone else is seeing. What’s the point? Point stopped existing a long time ago. Time to stop. Time to end this. Sounds good. Sounds so good.

I imagine her opening the door. Put a smile on my face one last time. Bliss. “I waited for you,” I’d say. “I waited.”

#fiction #video games

[sweet-peridork]

TPoH commentary of the week: The wonderful yet sad world of Make-Believe. (This is wordy, so read at your risk):

(My thoughts may be slightly scattered in this talk, but please go with it. Thank you)Okay, so we know that in the world of TPoH, the world of make-believe is a place where things are made real and are eventually sent into their own worlds(earth, story books, etc.) to exist. Either that, or they run out of inspiration and simply cease to be. Some of these characters come to that world under weird conditions: the many we’ve seen so far have been heroes, taken there by a monster of that world. Others, like that infamous self-proclaimed worst monster, RGB, came to that world under circumstances we don’t know(doesn’t seem like someone brought him there, rather simply death). Another important factor we all know is that once a character leaves, they are stripped of all memory of being in the world of make-believe. Now it seems RGB is an exception, seeing as he finds ways into the real world and still remembers. The point of this commentary though is to compare two different stories that I feel relate to this story. Now no one knows(except modmad herself) the fate of this new hero, the 6-8 year old Indian child whom everyone adores. We can all assume/hope that she goes home by the end of this story. Will she remember the adventure she had in the world of Make-Believe though? First story- The Fairly Odd Parents movie, Channel Chasers. After Timmy gets his magic remote, Wanda explains to him the purpose of fairy god parents while showing him a slide-show of a child with fairies. She explained that fairies are given to children who live unhappy childhoods as well as the fact that they are young enough to still believe in fairies. She also explained that after a certain time, once a child gets old enough, they don’t need their fairies anymore. They move beyond their original trouble. At the same time, the whimsy of childhood fades. The clip ends with the child, now a teenager, going for a ride with her boyfriend. After that her fairies leave and are replaced by new pets that look the same as the old ones. They have become the fixture that has always been there but have not been noticed for a while. Another story- Fosters Home for Imaginary Friends. That whole show was about children making friends to play with, as well as placing them in an adoption home when they “outgrow” them. The whole point of an imaginary friend is to be a playmate for a child when they don’t have a lot of people to play with. As a person grows though, they outgrow the need for that type of friend. Occasionally they may look back and have a laugh, but the friend isn’t needed. In the first movie, Mac’s mother was telling him that he needed to get rid of Bloo. Mac’s mother pointed out that, “you’re eight years old, and you still have an imaginary friend.” Mac then countered that she had one when she was little, to which she replied, “yes, when I was little. But by the time I was your age I didn’t need my imaginary friend anymore.” Now at this point, the question arises about what I’m getting at. Well, the two theories that I’m talking about are that either Hero will return home with no memory at all about RGB and the world of Make-Believe, or that the whole place was supposedly a dream. A dream that Hero will remember as clear as day, or it will be so vague that she’ll lose it. Hero is the center-point as to why I called those two shows to attention. She is either a six or eight year old child. She is still young and still has much to learn of the world around her. She is still young enough to trust and believe in the impossible(fairly odd parents). She is still young enough(although Mac’s mom would disagree) to have an imaginary friend, that friend possibly being RGB. Adding to this, let’s look back at the first few pages of the comic. What was hanging on the wall in Hero’s room? Drawings and a picture. Looking closely, it can be noted that Hero has drawn Madras’ house, as well as herself riding an animal, possibly the idea. It has been confirmed by modmad herself(I read the posts, but can’t find them at present) that these were exactly what they were. Something she imagined could very well appear in her dreams. It can be assumed that she has seen them before in dreams and decided to draw them, to preserve the memory of them. Now hanging above the drawings is a framed picture of flowers. Doesn’t really mean anything right? Well, what do these flowers look like exactly? Something familiar? They look exactly like the flowers that appear whenever negative RGB is on the scene. Last piece of evidence for now is when Hero was walking on the cloud stairway with RGB. Now we all know that jeebs is a huge fan of Mary Poppins, but Hero had commented that she had seen that from a movie once. Dreams come from the accounts of the day. Our brain’s way of organizing information while we sleep. The stairway from the movie could easily be inserted into Hero’s dreams. Now the imaginary friend aspect. RGB is a very well thought out character. But Hero could have easily made him. She could have pulled the image of an old tv actor on the television, and with the telly as his face. . .poof! RGB himself. All the info. he gives her could very easily be things she has heard before, and it’s just her brain telling it to her. Now dream logic never makes sense, but in a wolrd of concepts, sense isn’t exactly needed. It seems to be plainly obvious that there is a distinct gap between a child and an adult. A child looks through life with untainted eyes of childlike wonder. An adult looks through life with eyes of experience. An adult has learned about life to a certain point where they use logic before childlike experimentation. An adult simply can’t look at things a child can. . .not all the time at least. There are people who were born with creativity and will always have it, or there are people who develop creativity. After all, the amazing mod created the cowardly man with a television for a head and terrifying alter-ego. Bottom line of this though, is that these are points to take into consideration when thinking about what this story really is. And while I wonder what the outcome is, I hope that Hero gets to go home, and that she’ll be able to remember RGB and the great people she met. If anyone has read this far, please leave your comments and theories about what I’ve just said. I’m curious on your take.   

#TPoH commentary #The Property of Hate #Hero #RGB #The World of Make Believe #sorry if its rambling #This is late at night for me #i'm tired #tpoh theories #I'm so curious for the ending #but I'm fine with waiting #. . . might delete later

[dirtyhaikyuuconfessions]

1st Anniversary Special Q&A!

 I came up with some fun questions for me and Mod Kuroo to answer since no one will ask us themselves! Take a look to learn more about us!

~Mod Bokuto

Mod Kuroo

What are your top 5 favorite edits you’ve done for the blog so far?

Oh man, I’ve made so many random shitposts. In chronological order below!

1) This one because I love Obama memes and Engeki Haikyuu!! Also I’d never used the perspective tool before when editing, so this edit was a great learning experience for me. (I should really make an updated version of this with our new setters.)

2) I’m getting flashbacks from the war. Oh my god, this one took forever to make. I saw a Lazytown version of this meme, and I found it so hilarious that I had to make one for the Haikyuu!! opening!

3) I love Deadchi so much, and I was ecstatic when I saw how much love my series received.

4) I remember seeing the original post that this was inspired by and knew I had to make a Hinata version. There are still some problems I have with it, but I feel like it looks fairly realistic (minus the fact that Hinata’s animated).

5) A funny one I made when we first got the announcement of a Haikyuu!! dub. I don’t know, I just sort of like how simple it is.

I basically just chose edits I had a lot of fun making! I have a pretty selective memory, so I don’t exactly remember which edits helped me develop my skills like Mod Bokuto’s picks are. WHOOPS.

What are your top 5 favorite Mod Bokuto edits on this blog so far?

Only five?! There are so many to choose from!

A recent one, but definitely an iconic one. (It looks so real?!?!?)

This one because 1) I am a slut for anything Engeki Haikyuu!! related, and 2) this was so well edited you can barely even tell that Will Smith’s not supposed to be there.

This is all the Farmer!Ushijima content you need in one post.

Editing. Is. On. Point.

I’m breaking the five-limit rule because THIS IS GENIUS AND I DIED LAUGHING WHEN MOD BOKUTO FIRST MADE THIS.

There are just. so. many. good. ones.

All time favorite HQ!! character(s)?

Kageyama and Tsukishima! I identify with them the most.

All time favorite HQ!! ship(s)?

Kagehina mostly! I do get Iwaoi and Kuroken cravings from time to time, but I’m also open to most Haikyuu!! ships!

How did you learn about Haikyuu?

I started watching Haikyuu!! after I finished Free! I wasn’t ready to escape the sports anime genre yet, so I thought that Haikyuu!! would be fun to watch.

I also heard about it from Dan and Phil, lol.

How long have you been an Haikyuu fan?

Since April 2016! It feels like forever ago.

Share your favorite content creators for the HQ!! Fandom!

@kuroostetsurou, @engekihaikyuu, @craziiwolf, @askbokuaka, and @incorrect-haikyuu to name a few!

What’s your favorite anime(s)? (Besides HQ!! of course)

I really love Shigatsu wa Kimi no Uso / Your Lie in April! It’s what made me get into anime.

What’s your favorite meme(s) from this year?

There have been so many memes!! The roll safe and mocking Spongebob memes are two of my many favorites. I’ve also reenacted the salt bae meme myself, haha.

What do you hope to accomplish with this blog in the next year?

More memes, more laughs, more fun!!

Mod Bokuto

What were your top 5 favorite edits you’ve done for the blog so far?

in chronological order:

1) this one isn’t as good because it’s an old edit, but it’s important because making this edit really helped me learn how to effectively use my editing program. the skills i learned from making this edit essentially made the rest of these edits on the list. plus oipepe is bae

2) this was really my first very ambitious edit, and although i see a lot of flaws with it now i think it’s pretty impressive considering the skills i had back then. 

3) oh this edit sure was a doozy. it took me a super long time but i was really satisfied with how it turned out. once again, this edit helped me learn more tricks and tips in making better edits.

4) this edit wasn’t super hard and didn’t really help me learn anything it was just super fun to make lmaooo

5) and, of course, this edit. i think it may be my best one yet. it’s a culmination of all the skills i’ve learned over the past year. also some people in the notes thought it was real so that must mean it’s super good, right? 

i mostly chose edits that were lengthy and required a lot of skill. there’s a lot that didn’t make onto the list that i chose because i thought it was clever lol

What are your top 5 favorite Mod Kuroo edits on this blog so far?

mod kuroo makes so many good edits so this is hard ><

amazing

brilliant

showstopping

wonderful

inspiring

i feel this truly showcases Mod Kuroo’s many talents

All time favorite HQ!! character(s)?

oh boy 

Oikawa, Hinata, Kageyama, Nishinoya, Kuroo, and Bokuto! 

All time favorite HQ!! ship(s)?

Kagehina and Iwaoi are the kings of my heart! I love many other pairings but you won’t get much variety from me because im a main pairing bitch

How did you learn about Haikyuu?

I actually heard about it from Viria, who made tons of wonderful fanart for it! It looked really good so I decided to give it a try. I don’t regret it :)

How long have you been an Haikyuu fan?

Since January 2014, so that’s been... almost 4 years! It’s been a long time and my lazy ass still hasn’t read the manga *shot*

Share your favorite content creators for the HQ!! Fandom!

ahh im too shy to @ them mod kuroo i admire your bravery

the aforementioned viria (talented artist, one of my longtime favs!)

kuroostetsurou (hilarious memes and leader of the Kuroo Fan Club!)

volleygifs (amazing gifs and ardent love for Bokuto!)

mookie000 (one of my favorite artists! love how they draw Kenma!) 

koiietseal (lighthearted comics that never fail to make me laugh out loud!)

crazyanime3 (their haikyuu!! cracks are the best out there!)

haikyuupaintings (their edits are so creative and good!)

simple-symphonia (love their funny comics and bizarre sense of humor!)

kidinko (hilarious video edits!) 

What’s your favorite anime(s)? (Besides HQ!! of course)

Haikyuu!! is my number one anime but here are my close seconds:

-Hunter x Hunter (which i haven’t finished yet rip)

-Ouran Highschool Host Club

-Boku no Hero Acadamia

What’s your favorite meme(s) from this year?

hewwo, expanding brain, roll safe, and whoppy machine broke are fucking hilarious!

What do you hope to accomplish with this blog in the next year?

I hope to get better at editing and bring you guys even more amazing memes!

#Q&A #mod posts #mod bokuto #mod kuroo #1st anniversary special