Sixteen Further Screams For Halloween: Day 3 (The Craft)

As above, so below.

In contrast to what we've covered so far, this is something I've seen already. I've lost count of how many times I've mentioned, but I was not a horror fan in the 1990s. I was scared shitless of the genre after encounters with Stephen King and the like. That being said, at some point I do remember The Craft. I couldn't tell you if I'd watched it within the last 25 years, and yet portions of it were seared into my memory. That was long ago, and now here I am a little older and wiser, and a little more attuned to the magical side of things. Also I have witchy friends, so there's that. I'm more an alchemist, in some respects, but I also respect the actual craft. As it turns out, I respect the motion picture The Craft a lot too. Let's see what sort of magic is in store with it.

Sixteen Further Screams For Halloween: Day 2 (Weapons)

Mood, Josh Brolin (but affectionately)

This one has been a long time coming. Ever since I saw the first trailers for Weapons, I knew it was a must-watch for this particular scary season. It was brilliant marketing, revealing just enough to intrigue and entice but not so much that it gave any of the game away. A movie you just go into and try to understand as it unravels before you. For a bit near the beginning I worried that this would be a more run of the mill thriller, and that I would have to cook a bit with some metaphor for horror. I could do that, but I don't have to. Weapons firmly belongs in the horror camp, and it is a staggering masterpiece of recent cinema in that camp. That's a fucking accomplishment considering some of the other horror films that have come out recently, but by fuck does Weapons accomplish it.

Sixteen Further Screams For Halloween: Day 1 (Gnome Cave)

 ooooOOOOoooo!!! Here we are, once again, on the dawn of another October! Spooky season is upon us! The last embers of summer have burned away, there's a chill in the air, I need a sweater and a blanket, and so it is time to once again begin with our spooky marathon. When building the lineup this year, it was quite interesting. There were a few shoo-ins, a few recommendations, and then just a few choices which kind of fell into my lap. Like this getting announced a short while ago; the debut horror novel of one James Rolfe. I trust that the man needs no introduction, but let's just say his reputation precedes him. That's complimentary, by the way. I know that reviews of this book came out from the usual Youtubers orbiting Rolfe, but I did not pay them any heed. It's difficult to trust the Internet on him when he has, for lack of a better term, a cult of haters. Not every critic of his is acting in bad faith, but holy fuck are the ones who are fucking organized. In a mad way, that becomes sort of relevant for what this book is doing.

Coming Soon: Sixteen Further Screams For Halloween

(Stream screenshot from dot_lvl )

Hello! It's been a little bit, and my summer didn't end up as productive as I hoped for on the blog. C'est la vie, but perhaps someday I will get the spoons to talk about the things I experienced this summer. In the meantime I've been keeping busy with other things, like twice-weekly streams and joining an amateur fighting game league playing Super Street Fighter II Turbo. It's been very fun and there's likely an image on the side of me beating something with a super move. That was the match of my fucking life, but I've rambled about that elsewhere. Nah, we should probably get down to the usual business. It's the middle of September, and the summer is all but faded. We are in fall's full grasp, things are getting colder, the leaves are just starting to turn, and the Spooky Season once again approaches. Which means, of course, the end of year super busy season for me. December brings my stream marathon. November my foray into Non-Specific November Writing Month. But October? You know what that brings... and if you don't, I'm about to say it.

Sixteen Further Screams For Halloween are coming to your Blogspot dot com soon. My annual Halloween marathon wherein I will discuss something spooky every other day. It used to be every day, but goddamn doing 31 of these would kill me now. I'm middle-aged, what do you want from me? 16 is enough. I have some plans, as there are definitely a few pieces of spooky media on my radar that I've been saving especially for this... but I do not have 16 planned yet. That's where YOU come in! That's right, you get to sound off in the comments and suggest some spooky media that you think I'd like, or that you like and want me to take a crack at, and I'll likely do one or more. I only ask a few things of you, and they are as follows:

-I think at this point I know my way around the Internet and can get my hands on most cinematic material, but for obscure edge cases keep that in mind. If we know each other I may ask for your help in tracking such things down.

-My only real trigger/phobia, beyond a very specific case, is wrist or throat slashing. If such scenes are signposted in the movie such that it's obvious they're going to happen, I can avert my eyes in time. If there's only one or two such scenes in the movie, it's fine with a warning. If it's something where such things are the main method of murder, that's a hard pass.

-I am open to other media, like brief forays into TV shows or comics or what have you, but it's not my main area of expertise and I'll need a relatively affordable or even cost-free way of access to cover it. This part I may be able to handle on my own, but it's a case-by-case basis and depends on context.

-Keep your suggestion to something that I can experience within a few hours: the runtime of a motion picture, or a short read that's about double that. This isn't a precise science, but don't drop a heavy tome on me that will take ages for me to experience and digest. I've got 15 more of these little shits to do on top of your choice, after all.

I think that does it. I look forward to your suggestions, and HAPPY SPOOKY SEASON WELCOME TO FALL MOTHERFUCKERS. Now, if you'll excuse me, I need to bully gently persuade Rain into letting me practice my Chun-Li on him.

Doctor Who Capsule Reviews: Season 18

(UPDATE: In terribly sad news, some hours after I published this post the news came out that Christopher Bidmead, script editor for Season 18 of Doctor Who, has passed away. Consider the following a tribute to him. Rest easy, sir: you had one hell of a vision.)

It certainly is shaping up to be a summer of interesting views for me, with plenty of things for me to talk to you about, because they moved me. Naturally, instead of doing that I'm here talking about Doctor Who again. But in like, a fun way that's got a lot of me just being totally extra. Let me introduce you to a fun summer ritual I came up with last year. Even though I'm up here in Canada, it still gets what I would call hot in the summer. Temps past 20 degrees Celsius with lots of humidity. It's not fun, and so I like to think of ways to cool off. A good way of doing that tends to be retreating down into my basement where things are a lot cooler since it's all underground and stuff. That's nice and all, but I need something to do down there. 

Enter, then, a mainstay of my absolutely going extra nonsense. A Playstation 3 using the AV cables of a Playstation 2 to plug into my VCR and display content on a boxy old CRT from about the turn of the millennium. I use this to record either Blu-Rays or digital media files onto VHS in an increasing chase of aesthetic, but as it turns out you can just watch the Blu-Rays on that thing. So that's what I did last summer, and what I chose to go through was my classic Doctor Who Blu-Rays. I'd pick a set, and watch a story a night from that season, splitting six-parters up over two nights. This led to some interesting results and whatnot, particularly my viewing of Season 15 with Tom Baker; I fell asleep during Underworld and nearly went fucking mad with how off the rails the last two parts of The Invasion Of Time went. Amidst that, though, I also rewatched what is not just my favorite season of Tom's, but perhaps my favorite of Classic Who as a whole: Season 18.

It being warm again, I have restarted this tradition. Having just finished Season 8 with Jon Pertwee (it was fine), I get to pick another... and I'm feeling my old favorite again. Then an idea struck me. Why don't I talk about it for the blog? So, here it is then. Over the next week or so, I will be watching a serial a night from Season 18 and writing about it in this little document the next day. When it's all done, you get my retrospective on why I think this season rules. As a special challenge to myself and an attempt at brevity, I'm imposing a limit on myself: 500 words per serial. That may not sound like a lot, but there's seven of the things. Pair that with the intro I just done, and the overall summation, and that's easily 4 to 5k in words. Not bad. Well, let's get on with it. I'll set the scene for you. It's half past eight on a weekday, the sun is just about to set over the hills to the westward, directly facing me, and I am down here cooling off. I have my drink, my snacks, and on this old console hooked up to a slightly older TV, we're going to watch the finale to the most popular of the Doctor Whos before that David Tennant chap came along. 

Welcome, dear friends, to a chill summer evening. Welcome... to Season 18.

A Patriotic Celebration Of Obscure 90s Canadian Nostalgia (Street Cents)

Hey, kids! Happy Canada Day! Assuming I got this right and banged out all these words on time, it should be the start of July and thus the celebration of my funny little maple leaf country. 158 years of Canadian sovereignty, yay! Have some maple syrup, a donair, a poutine, a Nanaimo bar, whatever! We are going to celebrate here, in my own way. It's a party at this coffee shop we call a blog, and you are invited. So, let me set the scene. As of last weekend, I finished a work of media that has absolutely shifted my internal landscape in new and exciting ways, a work with such pure power and symbolism as to rival Twin Peaks and the work of David Lynch. It's gonna be a whopper to untangle in my mind, but I will do it and write about it.

This is not that post. We're not ready for that yet. Instead, I want to talk about something I watched in tandem with this work. I watched that thing in the mornings, but in the evenings? I was playing about with pure Canadiana nostalgia... and it being so close to Canada Day, I decided, what the hell? Let's talk about it. That's what we're gonna do here today, then. We're going to talk about a show I watched up here in Canada in the 1990s. It is a show that has slipped through the cracks, so to speak, but I remember it and am here to discuss it on this auspicious day. Start blasting your Rush or Shania Twain or whatever, and let's get Canadian.

New Doctor Who Season 2 First Impressions: Episode 8 (The Reality War)

Goodness, we have a lot to talk about here, don't we? Well, let's roll up our sleeves and fucking get in there.

The Reality War is not just the end of New Doctor Who Season 2, but the end of Ncuti Gatwa's time as Doctor Who. It could even be The Last Doctor Who Episode Ever. I do not usually engage in such doomposting, and baseless speculation on any potential mess behind the scenes is not my jam. I'm here to give you the vibes, to tell you how the episode made me feel, and whether or not it succeeded. It must be said, however, that the end result of an episode here feels messy. You can feel a sense of a production fraying at the edges, one that has 66 minutes to do its thing but still feels like it's rushing. A production juggling about its Ruby Sunday, its Belinda Chandra, and its huge UNIT supporting cast with wildly disparate results. A production where it feels like our Doctor Who could have gone on for longer, but has burned out like a star twice as bright and is now replaced with... Well, whatever's going on with that regeneration. It's a messy finale. Here's the thing, though: I can appreciate a messy Doctor Who finale. I did so with the Empire Of Death last year. I did so in 2011 with The Wedding Of River Song. I do this here, with The Reality War. I enjoyed this episode. Many did not, and we can try and bring up how they feel as we go, but I had a lot of fun. Let's give the 15th Doctor Who a sendoff that he no doubt would love. For our last go round with Ncuti Gatwa, let's have a fucking jam.

Let us begin with the big shit that RTD chucks in the bin after the first half: the Ranis and Omega. The Rani's scheme is at last revealed here, and it's a Time Lord superiority complex. Also we're doing some absolutely wild shit with Time Lord sterilization that recontextualizes the Dhawan Master's destruction of the Time Lords again as this thing that comes dangerously close to being Looms lore again. RTD's vibe is that of a cackling madman, flying close to the sun with his alchemy and threatening to lorebomb us all. He might bring Susan back! He might use Poppy to explain it! He might canonize the looms or finally explain UNIT dating or bring back Omega as Peter Davison like in Arc Of Infinity! It's daring, it's dangerous, it pisses more than a few people off, and I find it fascinating. The reveal of Omega as a decayed and corrupt myth given sentience, just this massive piece of sentient LORE that wants to consume all? It could be a powerful salve of anti-nostalgia, a lesson to be learned to not hang all of your hopes on sci-fi baddies from the 1970s. A sentiment to touch grass and to focus on the human drama of the back half, and not the idea of lore bombs exploding into canonized confetti all around us. I do not know if I entirely buy this reading, given the extremely nostalgic read of Gatwa's successor... But lord is it a more interesting explanation than just "Old man's brain is broken and stuck on obscure 70's villains". So Omega is a big skull boy, one Rani gets eaten and the other escapes to get you next time, Gadget, next tiiiime. Least interesting part of the episode for me. Let's jam with other shit.

Ruby Sunday fascinates me in this. I have continued to threaten to do a Ruby Sunday Arc Post, in line with my passionate defense of why the Silence Arc from Matt Smith's time is brilliant. I don't want to give too much away for that, and I can't really since I only have the broad strokes of what I want to say in my head. Plus I've not rewatched New Doctor Who Season 1 yet for it, I was waiting for this to finish first. Good thing I did. Anyway, Ruby and Conrad. For all that Ruby would be well within her rights to punch this doofus in the back of the head (and for how satisfying it would be), I like that in the end she takes pity on him. Pity is not the same as forgiveness, mind. Conrad, this Conrad, is nasty. Consider the horrific fact that what I said about Wish World and the trans people was proven right this episode, when Rose Noble appeared back into existence. (To give a fair bit of critique, I do wish Yasmin Finney was actually in the episode past the halfway point, in a bigger role.) As cathartic as it would be for him to become an Omega snack... I am okay with this. Our Ruby Sunday makes better things possible with a wish, a wish for a boy she did kind of love. A complex figure who contained equal parts sweetness and malice in his heart, given another shot at life. Freedom from the hate in his heart. Ruby does that in this episode, and it's sweet. Then she does it again.

The sheer gobsmacked horror of Ruby realizing that the Doctor's efforts failed, that baby Poppy has ceased to be and everyone's laughing and joking and having a good time as if this horrible thing hasn't happened, hit like a ton of bricks. That, along with everyone insisting that no, Ruby, all is well and right with the world, what are you on about? is a culmination point for her. Ruby, the forgotten foundling who herself ceased to be for a moment there. Ruby, the girl touched by fae and cursed to have her deepest fears of abandonment made manifest for the rest of her days, in a timeline that once was. Ruby, betrayed by the man she loved and forced to live in a world of his making. This is her line in the sand, her Doctorish moment. No more. If the price paid for this world is the abandonment of baby Poppy, then this world must be broken. Because she was real. Everything about not just Ruby Sunday, but the metafictional concepts being played with for all this era, coalesce into this one moment of drama. She was a construct of that other world, yes, but Conrad's narrow thinking should not condemn her to nonexistence. Ruby Sunday, in her last moments on this show, stands up for the baby who is much like her. She stands up for the lost forgotten child, and in those moments becomes almost Doctorish in her defiance of the status quo. Like an impossible girl before her, Ruby Sunday stands up to Doctor Who, and Doctor Who blinks.

There's a satisfying sense of emotional throughline here for the Doctor as well. All season he has been mirrored by shitty toxic men: Alan, Conrad, the Barber, Kid. There has been a foreboding sense, wondering if our party Doctor has a meaner streak to him. Here we see that challenged and refuted. This Doctor gives his life because a child no longer exists, despite their efforts to try and save her. It is a selfless act, one without hope or witness or reward, other than the satisfaction of having done the right thing before giving up this face for good. Better things are possible, and redemptions can come from anywhere... as demonstrated when Jodie Whitaker wanders back onto the show for a moment. You know how the Chibnall era wounded me. This era wounded many just as badly, if not worse. Not me, though. That mad alchemy of healing and redemption does one hell of a magic trick here. It almost heals the wound of Thasmin. It has the 13th Doctor admit she never said that to Yaz, but she should have. Better things are possible, and while Yaz deserved more... This is nice. It's genuinely nice to have that track for a companion who was... shall we say, underappreciated by the writing.

Which brings us to Belinda, the big sore point of this episode. I understand her motherly instinct here towards Poppy, I really do, but the companion being locked in a box while the grand finale happens is... a bit much, shall we say. We can go full Pepe Silvia and compare to Ruby, who gets to confront Conrad in tandem with the Doctor confronting Omega. We can weave a web of conspiracy around Millie Gibson leaving last year, and whether or not Varada Sethu was a Hasty Replacement, and all this other stuff. I don't want to do that. The biggest debate against this episode is Belinda and the new timeline where she becomes a single mother raising a human Poppy. There has been all sorts of critique in front of my eyes over this. Is it validating the traditional family values the Wish World was built upon, those which we decried last time? Is it giving the independent and prickly Belinda a smoothing-over at the expense of her agency? I don't know. It helps, for me, that Belinda wants to save Poppy and recognizes her realness even after Wish World is done away with. It helps that we had Poppy appear in The Story And The Engine, a vision which suggests that the new timeline is the original and that what we saw all season was a fractured one. More of the focus is on the Doctor's sadness, over him not being able to have a family and be a parent in the traditional way. A lot could be said about focusing on how sad the man is while the woman is just left aside to play mommy. Look, I don't have a valuable take on it. I'm not appalled, nor am I in love with it. If it's a dealbreaker for you, I get it.

The end of Gatwa, then, and the rise of... who's next. I do love the callback to Joy (furthered by Anita showing up to bail the Doctor out of the cliffhanger... even if her job thereafter is holding open a door.) and this Doctor's last words being about joy. That's what he was, in the end. A joyous soul set loose from the frazzled veteran 14th, to allow that man to retire and find his own joy in quiet therapy. A joyous, imperiously queer Doctor who rocked a skirt, who kissed men, who saved the world with an infectious energy and used his last breaths to ensure the happiness of one child. He was a fun Doctor, his era was just plain fun, and I will miss him. Cut, then, to who's next. Billie Piper is... the 16th Doctor Who? Okay, look. Billie Piper is not credited as The Doctor at the end, which suggests that shenanigans could potentially occur in a followup and we have yet to see the true 16th Doctor. I don't know any of that for sure, so until it happens I'm just going to call her the 16th Doctor? Okay. Okay. So, the 16th Doctor is an actress who played a past companion. Wild. I would have killed for Jenna Coleman in this role, but Billie. I'll take it. Is there a nostalgic cynicism behind this stunt casting, a desperation to remind people of the olden days when the show was good (and a sentiment which cuts against that Omega reading from earlier)? Maybe. The funny thing is, I didn't feel it this time. Somehow, I had killed that reflexive cringe in my mind without knowing. Have I gone soft in my middle age? Would I give the likes of Ready Player One or Enterprise Season 4 a pass now if I were coming to them for the first time today?

Probably not. Let's not say things we can't take back here, Frez. I don't know! I'm excited for a Girl Doctor Who, okay? Just like I was last time in 2017 when they cast Jodie Whitaker! This time they might even have better writing, and I'm excited for that too! There'll probably be an explanation in-universe for why it's Rose's face as 16, but if Capaldi can do it so can she! We could have a cool and good Girl Doctor Who! I don't give a shit if it's trying to make me remember 2006 when the show was good, if it makes the show good in 2026 then fuck it! Give it to me! There are a lot of exclamation points in this paragraph, but I am excited for this. I really hope she is Sweet 16 proper and not just some placeholder cooked up for a year of specials to be going away at the end. Time will tell. It always does. Time also leaves this, the Gatwa era, behind. Thanks for everything, Ncuti. You were indeed a great Doctor Whomst. May you go on to better and brighter things in your future. May there be a bright and shining future ahead for this dumb phone box show I love, now with a cool blonde girl as our mysterious physician. 

As for me, I know where I'm going next. You'll see. Probably.