#what does hoffman have. what does strahm have. nothing. and no i don't think they have much in the way of homoeroticism either.

[skrunksthatwunk]

i just finished saw v and i don't have high hopes for the rest of the franchise (based on what ive heard) but im in too deep to stop now

#no i haven't enjoyed the last two no i don't expect to get much out of the next five or so movies. but i need to know. #i guess saw v mightve suffered bc i watched it basically immediately after iv #something i didnt do with any of the others #but i was told v was one of the good ones so i was looking forward to it. i dont think it was burnout yknow #but uh. i didn't like it. i think i liked iv more honestly. strahm and hoffman do absolutely nothing for me #i liked the traps. that was it though #it felt so pointless and empty. it was the first one where i genuinely wondered why they made it. why did they decide to keep going with #this. i think ii and iv both function more/better as setup for their following films but like. at least iii was pretty good yknow #like both amanda and hoffman's accomplicing feels kinda retconned in but at least amanda's an interesting character #what does hoffman have. what does strahm have. nothing. and no i don't think they have much in the way of homoeroticism either. #i don't tend to be so negative and im sorry if someone goes in the saw tags and feels bad about me talking shit about something they like #because i know that doesn't feel good. honestly i'd love to hear why people like v. maybe it'll change my opinion of it if i look at it a #different way yknow? but for now im just annoyed by it. iv was engaging in the moment but very forgettable #i liked riggs well enough but we barely learned a thing about him. he wasn't a deep character at all and i think that's a shame #but v was just a paperwork-based cat and mouse chase. 90 minutes and it still felt like they were wasting my time #why did strahm go to the old trap locations? i don't think he found anything out there. likr it was just a framing device for the flashback #but he didn't actually have a reason to go there. waste of my time #not an original critique im sure but saw ii on seems to be more focused on scale and layers of shit (i.e. having two games going at once) #than using the traps to examine the characters. i mean you go from two guys in a bathroom for a couple hours #learning about who they are gradually at a slow pace vs like 8 people in a house plus cop stuff plus 90 second traps of dubious fairness #hoffman has no real relationship with kramer (unlike amanda) and basically everyone who'd been following jigsaw is dead and so are jigsaw #and (presumably) amanda. what am i supposed to be here for? the vague outline of a saw trap? the type of torture happening? #im not even opposed to that per se but frankly the more they focus on the cops surrounding this shit the less fun it is #why are you making all the traps like 15 seconds long and tied to characters who aren't the primary focus. it's saw #ughh i miss adam. i miss amanda. hell i miss kramer and he was pretty present in this one (flashbackwise) #whateverrr. anyway that poll comparing chainshippng shotgunnshippng and coffinshippng where shotgun was last? lesbophobic. #im only half joking about that. im sure ppl have their reasons for coffin but i also think it's the tendency fandom bias for “two white guy #ships. but hey maybe vi and onwards will add more context to that that'll make me reconsider. i mean i wouldn't have liked the amanda #accomplice thing That much if i'd only seen ii. i think iii really makes it mesh better and it leads to fun character stuff #(though i still think i would've liked it more bc like. amanda was always grateful to jigsaw right? again hoffman comes outta nowhere)

[tibby]

hey tibby, i got two questions about saw for you. firstly, when do you think the saw movies take place? like what specific year/s? i know theres a few writing errors when it comes to years in the franchise (the tag on jigsaw’s foot at the autopsy, for example) so i’m just trying to see what would make sense despite these errors.

also. what would the spiral killers role be in Jigsaw the family sitcom (more important than the other question)

i am a firm "saw the first movie takes place in 2004" believer. yeah yeah the idea of it happening the day before 9/11 is funny but it doesn't work with the few established dates we do have (gideon night takes place in late october of 2006, hoffman's sister is murdered in 1997 and baxter is released from prison after five years which makes hoffman's revenge kill and recruitment from john in 2002 at the EARLIEST, trying to include a coherent timeline of events by including jigsaw is impossible but fwiw logan was in the iraq war. i think. i don't remember the movie). also the idea that amanda and john manually set up the phone to that date just to fuck with them is also very funny to me. and my research suggests that the motorola used was released in q4 of 2001, which means it came out in october at the earliest. but nothing is conclusive and i respect all walks of life etc etc.

generally though from the time amanda is recruited (april 2004, because i do believe bathroom trap takes place in september regardless of the year and lawrence mentions being interviewed by police five months prior) through to the end of the final chapter (late 2006) it's like a 2.5 year time frame. nerve gas house takes place at least a year after bathroom trap, gideon night is six months after nerve gas house, and the events of v/vi/vii shortly follow. again, no canon confirmation, but given strahm's throat is still bandaged in v we can assume his tracheotomy wasn't that long ago and he dies like the day after being discharged from the hospital. and then hoffman's vi/vii clownery is like two nights back to back. so that's that. early to mid 2000s over a three year time period.

unfortunately the spiral killers don't really play a big role in jigsaw the sitcom simply because it takes place like 15-20 years later. which is a tragedy because i think jigsaw fanboy william emmerson/schenk having the worst "don't meet your heroes" experience of all time only to not learn from it is hilarious to me. i did vaguely conceptualise an episode where he starts his silly little copycat killings and they have to come out of retirement to trap his ass because oh now we gotta be responsible for this clown. and william really does think it's an honour that a bunch of middle aged retired murderers have reunited just to torture him.

my beloved dizzy did write a fic about this concept (not sitcom nonsense but adam/amanda/hoffman live and william loves team maim and kill). unfortunately my concept of retired-but-still-completely-off-their-rockers hoffstrahm (they're NOT dating and they're absolutely NOT married and strahm is still trying to prove hoffman is guilty and hoffman still plans on killing him one day but they do live together and have weird gay sex and are trying to figure out how to get married for tax benefits without actually getting married) having a honey where IS my supersuit moment from the incredibles about the glass coffin didn't make the cut. but we can imagine it <3

they also all try to impart "queer elder wisdom" (see: absolutely horrendous dating tips) onto william to help him with zeke. unfortunately he takes their word as gospel. hence the whole "torturing you and sending you body parts" stage of the flirting process. it's dawning on me that this message is completely incomprehensible i'm sorry. missed saying absolute nonsense about these movies to a public audience.

#sawposting #jigsquad #ask #anonymous #also i have like eight billion asks im sorry. they will happen. somehow. eventually.

[eyes-inthe-skies]

can u rank all the saw movies? or at least the ones u saw (pun intended)?

Thanks for my first asked and for being my #1 fan of all time!!

Luckily I actually just had a conversation with my friend Abt this that sees me prepared for this task I'm about to overcomplicate.

(Post Script: God I went on for a while strap in gang)n

1: Saw X (possibly the objectively Greatest Saw movie. Tobin Bell is fascinating to watch bring humanity to this murderer, Shawnee Smith is so beloved and I LOVE the kills in this one. Top teir)

2: Saw 2004 (Classic, what's to be said that hasn't already been said. Carey Elwes does a rly bad American accent, Shawnee Smith makes Amanda the single most iconic woman in fiction just by sitting there. This movie caused me a lot of distress as a child and that fascinated me so thoroughly that I think it may have been a defining moment of my horror fanatasism despite not watching the full film till a decade later. I could go on.)

3: Saw 6 (I don't know if this is controversial or not, but Saw 6 is genuinely a high point of the series to me. I love watching William Eastons trap plot, which is not something I can say for most other Saw films. And that fucking ending man! Saw 6 is very personal to me in that I too would love to stab the man who killed my father with hydrochloric acid filled needles and watch him melt from the outside. Very fun scenes with John, Hoffman getting his mouth ripped open is hot, etc etc)

4: Saw 3 ( only reason this isn't 3 Is because Jeff makes me chew through pencils I hate this guy. People are NOT JOKING ABOUT THE YURI. ITS ACTUALLY REAL. I love love lOVED Amanda in this movie, I don't think I blinked the entire time, I love seeing everything crash down around her and John until there's nothing left but blood and bones and flesh, and not a single soul went to heaven that night, etc etc.)

5: Saw 4 (I don't know why but I love saw 4 actually, I think Hoffman, strahm, Perez and Rigg were all rly fun to watch. I love the spy x spy ass soap opera plot. I LOVED seeing Eric Matthews head get exploded between two ice blocks. FUCK YES. Again this trap plot I actually really dig which helps with the watchability of the thing, plus Hoffman hot who said that)

6: Saw 2 (I know this is insane I know I wish I liked this movie more but the only good thing is setting up Amanda as jigsaws successor, some nice time with John kramer being a cunty old man, and also establishing I hate Donnie whalbergs stupid fucking face. Don't at me.)

7: Saw 5 (I literally don't remember what happened in saw v. I had to look it up. It's honestly not the worst, Hoffman and Strahm are pretty enjoyable once again, but it's completely unremarkable, I don't have anything to say Abt this movie.)

8: Jigsaw (Trap plot makes me want to rip my own eyes out. "Plot twist" is dumb and falls apart. Fucking. Jigsaws Nephew. Whatever man.)

9: Saw 3d (Probably one of the worst actual movies I've seen. I love Larry coming back don't get me wrong, he's very cunty, you know. But they literally barely use him till the end, which is a mistake. The fucking Bobby Dagan plot could've been interesting but it wasn't due to him being not at all helpful and the end is genuinely maddening. Also I HATE THE HOME DEPOT TRAP GRRR GRR DO YOU JESR ME GRRGRE)

Spiral- I have not seen spiral.

#saw #i want to rewatch 4-6 bc those movies blur together for me quite a lot tbh #anyways heres what a condensed version of my thoughts on the saw franchise ::) what.

[doomednarrative]

I just saw your tags on the post about Hoffman’s sister and I am so so so curious about more of your meta for him. Is there anything that you haven’t shared that’s driving you up a wall?

Not something thats driving me up a wall per say, but there is something I'm thinking about recently again especially with Jigsquad stuff

@romanromulus brought this up first when we were discussing stuff about his fic "Strahm Dies," and I'll put the comment here so you can see it too:

Something I think about a lot is how in the movies, with the exception of Amanda because of the rivalry John purposefully put between the two of them, Mark is...usually the one to be seen reaching out to people to find connection after Angie's death. He does it with both Rigg and with Peter, and in both cases is met with either failure to be trusted or with violent pushback. And like Adam says up there, after Peter's refusal to meet him with understanding or a middle ground, Mark noticably gets Worse. He gets really sure of himself even though he does horribly under pressure when forced to think on his feet, and he fucks up where he has obvious blind spots. He basically loses what little feelings he might have been able to recover after John's manipulation, and he just gives into the violence and destruction more readily, which is why its so easy for him to snap after Jill puts the bear trap on him. He's got nothing left to lose at that point and it's what lands him in the bathroom in the end of 3D.

In Jigsquad however, it's been really interesting to write a narrative where we kinda subvert what happens there with Mark. Tibby and I often make the comment that Adam is the heart and lynchpin figure of the whole au, because it's his presences in everyones lives while they're working with John that drastically changes the narrative, and that's Especially true with Mark. For once, he's got Someone Else reaching back to him to try and meet him in the middle. It starts with comments about how fucked up it is the way that John treats him/how he talks to him, and just keeps being more consistant there, until it comes to a point where Mark realizes that he's not actually Alone anymore. Somewhere along the line he gained a new family to care about, and it doesnt fix everything, because nothing can really fix losing Angie or killing Seth and what those things did to him. But it does change his path, and he doesnt ever completely lose himself like he does in canon.

Canon Mark is a very good case study in tragedy where he definitely had a hand in his own downfall and it could have been prevented had he never gone after Seth, but in some way, killing Seth had to happen for the kind of person that he is. There's no other way that could have gone. But somewhere along the way, if someone had just took his offered hand back for once, things could have gone so much differently. But they don't, and so he loses himself in the end and orchestrates his own ending. (Even if arguably he still wouldnt have been that bad without John's manipulation, but that's a point for another post.)

Jigsquad Mark gets his chance to have that tragedy subverted by having people directly care Back for him for once and not leaving him to his own devices. He has reasons to hold back, to actually try and be better, and it's just a whole different situation when you give Mark people who actually step into his life and stay by his side and let him care for them and they care for him in return. He gets to be the big brother again, and it Does make a huge difference.

I love both narratives really, I wouldn't be here if I didn't like Saw's actual canon honestly. But it's still fun to explore other avenues to subvert the tragedy of canon too, and this has been one of my favorites to examine really.

#saw #jigsquad #saw meta #kief rambles about saw #ask #answered #once again thanks adam for giving me infinite things to chew on with your writing lmao

[angeltrapz]

do you have any ideas for fics that you’ve thought about but haven’t written yet? love your blog also :)

I do actually!! (+ thank you for the compliment <3)

One I've been messing with lately is the actual written fic of my Adam & Lawrence Adopt Corbett AU? That one I actually did start to write, but scrapped it due to it needing some reworking. I definitely plan to write for it someday, I just don't know when that day will be,,

Another idea, which actually will (hopefully) be a set of fics, is an expansion on the Laura Survives + Ends Up With Amanda AU (intersected w an Adam Also Lives AU) I mentioned in my fic abt them! I kinda just wanna elaborate on their lives after their tests and how they cope with it in the long run, with themes set around found family + realizing vulnerability isn't weakness, which is smth that I feel Amanda struggles w heavily. Mean besties/siblings Adam and Mandy + their partners who are very fondly exasperated!!

Something that I hope to write soon but I'm not sure when I will is a Diana sickfic where she needs to be picked up from school, but Lawrence & Alison are both at work and are unable to, so Adam does as he and Lawrence have been together a year at this point and he's picked her up at the end of the day before. He worries he's not going to be of much help but his experience (his siblings, himself, + his mother constantly being sick in childhood) and Diana's comfort in his presence basically mean he's worried for nothing. Lawrence comes home to them in a pillow fort, Diana in Adam's lap, a book somewhere beside them, both of them asleep and his heart just melts (he definitely thinks of them as the two loves of his life),, I love Chainshipping + Diana family fics and I haven't written a lot of 'em so!!

One that's been on the backburner for what feels like Forever though is an AU based on the idea that was in the original SAW III script: basically Strahm was going to find Adam in the bathroom and kinda do what Amanda did (mercy kill), but instead this AU centers around the idea of it being Rigg instead, who saves him - and this detour actually ends up saving Eric, as he doesn't open the door and the ice blocks aren't activated (Hoffman is DEFINITELY pissed bc he didn't anticipate it, but what can he do?). The endgame is Adam/Rigg/Eric but I haven't Super expanded upon that lol,, I daydream abt it a bit but that's it!! One of these days I'll write down key elements. (I'm not certain whether Lawrence is a disciple or not in this AU, so maybe Lawrence will be added too? and I don't rlly wanna leave Art out either,,)

This one's much less detailed but I wanna write a fic abt Mallick!!! I think abt the Fatal Five SO MUCH and I wish they got more characterization/that we at least got to know more abt them. It strikes me as odd that we haven't heard more abt Mallick in particular bc he's one of the few survivors of a game to actually appear in a following movie? I just think it's weird that if he's that significant in canon (he's obviously Very significant in my heart), why don't we know more abt him?? I also want Brit to be there bc personally I got the impression that she didn't survive, but a. that hurts me to think abt in regards to Mal and b. I believe it was said in a commentary track that she actually Did survive, just wasn't present at Bobby's meeting. (fun fact I find interesting: Brent Abbott from VI & Daniel Matthews were meant to be in that scene too!)

SPEAKING OF DANIEL I want to write. Just smth abt him. I love Daniel a lot & have ever since I first watched II. I feel this way abt Diana and Corbett too, but I've always wondered what happened to him after everything. Like yeah he was older than the former two I mentioned, but he was still a child, only 15-17 at the oldest, and I just. I don't know! I wish we knew more!!

And then lastly, I want to write a fic where Ashley Kazon (the first to die of the Fatal Five in SAW V via. the razor thing.) survives and ends up w Brit lmao!! I have no idea why or how that ship occurred to me but I kinda just wanna flesh it out a bit, see what happens, ESP since ashley is such a minor character who. Instantly is gone. (I also want to have Adam there bc I KNOW he and Brit wld get along. Mean gay/bi solidarity!! so basically maybe it'd be Brit/Mallick/Ashley, as in she's dating the other two who are not dating each other, and then also Adam/Mallick!)

There's probably a bunch more but they've not received nearly as much thought - save for my Alison/Tracy ideas, which I think abt often but haven't been able to construct a solid fic out of yet,, but this was fun to think abt so thank you!!

#asks #I have SO many ideas up in my head tht never get mentioned #also uh hey just a reminder: I do like eric matthews so if that bothers anyone maybe don't. interact w my blog! #(I haven't like... gotten any messages as of late but I have in the past so. covering my bases is all. y'all have been very nice tho)

[tibby]

it's actually so wild saw to me is like this rare subterranean, conceptual, uber genre-specific horror franchise that i feel like any political meaning/relevance to it goes over my head but boy DO THEY KILL A LOT OF DAMN COPS IN THOSE MOVIES lol (which is also why i'm lenient on the cops being heroes in spiral)

the politics in saw are all over the place and i think with the exception of saw vi, it's hard to say that any of the films in the original 7 take a hard stance on any issue. i think it's interesting that people think saw 2004 is some like, post 9/11 america commentary, because james and leigh are australian and that's certainly not what they set out to do. does saw perhaps have underlying political themes/interpretations? sure, just like all art. but iirc that was never james and leigh's original intention.

i think saw ii in particular is VERY interesting because in my take, eric matthews is at no point the good guy. is he one of the protagonists? sure. but i don't think we're ever meant to root for him. we're introduced to him as a shitty father and over the course of the movie we find out that he's got a history of police brutality and framed multiple people over the course of his career. amanda's problems can be directly linked to eric framing her for a crime she didn't commit. i also think it's very...interesting and unfortunately realistic that most of the officers don't really care about eric's past/current behaviour. even kerry, the only one that's genuinely horrified to find out that he framed people and tries to stop him when he goes to attack john, was involved with him in the past.

one of the points of the franchise to me is that the mpd is never able to stop the varying jigsaws in part because most of them are crooked. it's even one of the things that john uses to manipulate hoffman into becoming an apprentice - the justice system fails those who actually need it.

(it's also perhaps worth nothing that the targets of the games become a lot more...deserving when hoffman takes over. john targeted people like addicts and the mentally ill and lawrence and adam. hoffman targets abusers and nazis. just...interesting that even when he's become a remorseless criminal, he's still doing more to take down those who deserve to be punished than the law has ever done in this universe).

even strahm, who is probably the greatest adversary within the hoffman tetralogy, isn't like. a good guy. and i don't think we're meant to see him as one, even if he's the ~hero~ of saw v. he threatens jill with a gun during an interrogation and given how like, relaxed perez was about him unloading it beforehand, suggests he'd done it before. he was also incredibly trigger happy when it came to jeff denlon, and perez remarks that he's always had a bit of a temper. strahm is able to recognise that the mpd is crooked, sure, but he's certainly not playing by the rules.

honestly i wouldn't even say the cops are painted as the heroes in spiral...william believes that zeke is a hero and we get that annoying "only the bad cops" line but like. the movie is also pretty firmly about the inherent issues within the system. zeke is ostracised and harassed by his colleagues for over a decade for turning in a dirty cop (which has added connotations given that zeke is a black man and the cop he turned in was white), william exclusively tests cops who got away with crimes unpunished, and it does bring up the issue of the "shoot first, ask questions later" mentality. obviously the movie still has a lot of issues wrt law enforcement (as does the whole franchise really), but with the exception of zeke, i wouldn't say it portrays cops in a good light at all, let alone as heroes.

anyway sorry didn't mean to go on a whole rant lmao. saw's politics aren't really like...coherent at any given point in time outside of "healthcare for all" so. who knows what their intentions were. all i know is that to me the heroes of the franchise are not, and have never been, the mpd.

#also why i have mixed feelings about rigg bcus i do think he's a very good character to follow in iv #and i think it. could have REALLY hammered home the point of like. #justice isn't being achieved in the way we're led to believe it should so murder traps it is #but his lenience with eric in ii is uh. always on my mind. #which i suppose is probably an issue of the franchise never meaning to go past iii #ask #anonymous

[tibby]

LOVED THE MINISERIES CONCEPT ART (i'm the 'puzzle guy anon' lol) Dude i'm a logan apologist like his character (esp. at the climax/twist of jigsaw) was badly written but the actor was good and i feel like he could have slayed in a diff movie. he's annoyingly straight laced, hypocritical, refuses to apologize, and blandly unattractive, what's not to love!?! his deadpan energy would be a great foil to adam or someone manic like that

hello!!! hope you're doing okay <3 anyway THANK YOU i'm glad you enjoyed my silly little edit because the idea of an apprentice sitcom series is endlessly endearing to me. i can't say i agree with your logan apologism and he is so bland to me that i constantly forget he exists in the context of the apprentice universe (which is very fitting for him i guess) and he's kind of like the jerry parks and rec of JIGSAW the hit tv show. like amanda and lawrence already decided that the "insufferable guy we kinda hate but still hang out with" is hoffman because at least he's entertaining and makes a good chicken alfredo. if it wasn't for john they'd probably kill logan but gotta respect peepaw's wishes :/ HOWEVER. i am nothing but dedicated to the cause so here are some of the few thoughts i have. just for you:

none of the others know if logan is his first name or his last name. they're not even being mean about it they just have no idea and at this point it would be awkward to ask. hoffman of thinking his own first name was detective fame just thinks that logan is his first AND last name.

he's the only one that strahm and perez don't think is involved in the jigsaw killings because the others have their weird little found family thing going on and logan is just the guy at the morgue. he DOES gloat about this and it IS part of the reason they don't invite him to movie night.

another reason is the fact he doesn't get hangovers and they're all petty bitches about it.

logan does NOT like adam. adam is annoying and whiny and doesn't really do anything and john hated him and he kinda just hangs around. he's barely an apprentice but he gets to do whatever because larry loves him and he's amanda's best friend. meanwhile logan, longest standing apprentice, is not even considered to be a member of their murder gang. this greasy twink just gets to do whatever and nobody cares but HE gets left behind at home depot every week? of course he hates him.

(adam, however, does not have any strong feelings on logan either way).

sorry i really just never think about this guy. peace and love on planet earth.

#logan is just sort of. there. #sawposting #jigsquad #ask #anonymous