actually no bioware SHOULD make a Jade Empire animated show, but it's set during the Long Drought/leading up to the Siege of Dirge. I wanna see crazy insane ASOIAF-level political bullshit except turned up to 11 bc the setting is based on Imperial China
Just started reading Sherlock Holmes and all the adaptations are wrong. This man is a delight. He gets excited about hemoglobin and is ecstatic at the thought of Watson as a roommate. He purposefully forgets how the solar system works so he has more room in his brain for crime. He shows Watson the dirt stains on his trousers and he can tell what part of London they come from based on color and consistency. (As far as i can tell Watson didn't ask, Sherlock just gets back from walks and tells Watson about the stains unprompted.) The text specifically says "Holmes was certainly not a difficult man to live with." Why does every adaptation make him unpleasant and rude, he's literally just eccentric. He's such a goober, I love him.
Did an Instagram Q&A recently and got asked our biggest Holmes opinion and it was this—“HE’S A NICE MAN!” I yell for yet another day, banging my fists on the table in righteousness. He is just a weird little dude! He loves effusively and laughs a lot and gives science related high fives and it is the coolest part of him! Let Sherlock Holmes be on Mythbusters he would LOVE IT!!!!
Some day I want to see a show that does the “no filler episodes” thing from the opposite direction. Just a whole season worth of low-stakes character pieces that seem to move the overall story absolutely nowhere, then episode 26 pulls all the triggers at once and this massive Rube Goldberg machine of a plot the show’s been quietly setting up in the background the whole time hits you like a truck.
Incredible one-liners as always
Every new post in the Ashley Williams tag is always a surprise. Will it be Mass Effect, The Evil Dead, fashion, or a hallmark movie?
When will someone finally combine them; a hot space marine takes a chainsaw, wears a nice dress, and connects with her hometown sweetheart.
I want to thank the Barbie movie, because not only it's going to be a masterpiece that will change my life, but it also made me realise that Ryan Gosling and Ryan Reynolds are in fact two different actors
we'd all watch Deadpool vs Ken let's not even act like we wouldn't
Deadpool & Ken's Summer Roadtrip
Deadpool & Ken's Motorcycle Fun Time
Deadpool & Ken's Surf Rock DJ Hour
Deadpool & Ken's Chimichanga Recipe
lmao god, english upper class people... I was reading Mathilda, and there's all these monologues about the protagonist going insane from loneliness and not knowing how to act when she finally strikes up a friendship again; she has retired to a cottage in the woods and is essentially in hiding. All this time we're given the impression that she is utterly alone in that cottage. Much woe about the completeness of her loneliness. and then.
what do you mean your servant ...? in your cottage in the woods where you were so utterly alone? that one?
pt 2, this time Frankenstein by the same. Said Frankenstein is greatly relieved when he returns and the 'apartment was empty' because this means his monster has fled. but then
...did that servant materialise out of thin air to bring him food in his room. The place not actually empty, just empty of people of his own class. he just left the servant and his monster with each other while he was out.
Eventually the monster was like "well this is awkward. I'm out." and the servant presumably just filed the encounter under "weird shit upper class people do" and went on with his life.
I remember taking this college elective on film adaptations and we talked about the controversy caused by the PBS adaptation of Emma, which made a point of putting servants in every. single. scene, confronting the audience with the reality that the main characters are surrounded by servants constantly and are choosing not to acknowledge their presence. Emma is consoling her "poor" friend Harriet over her misfortune and the entire time a servant is standing there silently brushing Emma's hair or some shit. Virtually every other adaptation of Emma does a very good job of invisiblizing the constant presence of the working class labor force that allowed these people to live the way they did.
If anyone is interested the murder mystery Gosford Park specifically explored this phenomenon. Roger Ebert did a review of it here.
chapter one of Carmilla, Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
One day, a complete gothic horror novel where the story is actually gentry acting nuts from the pov of the servants (who want to unionize)
reasons why I should never be allowed to direct a production of Hamlet
Rereading All Systems Red, I noticed the part at the end when Mensah is talking about Preservation, she brings up educational opportunities as something it can do. And I'm just like, was she planning on sending Murderbot to COLLEGE?
So I immediately amused myself by imagining an crack AU where it didn't leave, and ended up going to college, but like, in a stereotypical non-futurey, sitcom-like "college experience" kind of way. With a roommate and everything. And the image was so amusing to me that I had to share.
Like,
MB's roommate: yeah, my roommate is kind of weird. It doesn't eat and just watches TV all night. (Cut to the roommate waking up in the middle of the night and getting something out of the mini fridge, they turn around and jump, because Murderbot is just sitting up on its bed, eyes open and staring at nothing as it watches media.) But it's great because it makes going to parties feel much safer. (Cut to Murderbot, going full Threat Assessment at a stereotypical frat party. A guy is harassing one of its friends and it throws him out the window.) Although, I thought when I got someone with that much processing power as a roommate, they might be able to tutor me, but it turns out it's the other way around. (Cut to Roommate and Murderbot studying at their desks. "What do you mean you deleted the recording you made of the lecture?" "There was a new serial I wanted to watch!")
Additionally: the professor taking roll call, reaches "SecUnit" on the page, frowns as he scans the class and yells out. "Mx SecUnit, how many times do I have to tell you? If you just send your drone to class, you will be marked absent. You need to actually come to class so you can participate in class discussions!"
I find this very dumb and amusing. It is up to you to imagine if it is in full armor or not.
Six seasons and a movie, please.
The urban fantasy show I actually want to see is a hospital drama with a dedicated wing for supernatural illnesses.
Vampirism. Lycanthropy. Cheap spells gone wrong. A woman brought in for her prenatal has to be told her baby is a lindworm. Someone is literally being followed by the anthropomorphic personification of the Black Death.
Someone somewhere out there is having their perception of the world irreparably shattered by the knowledge that magic is real, and at the other side is a team of doctors who have to roll their eyes and pull out Grimm’s Complete Fairy Tales because some high school kid tried to go Carrie with a cheap spellbook and turn all the kids at prom into frogs, and the doctors have to wrangle a couple dozen teenagers into admitting if they have a true love who can break the spell.
I want the hospital director to be some dark entity that feeds on human misery but figured out that if you successfully treat the source of the misery then instead of hunting you down as an abomination the humans start bringing more miserable people to your house en masse and things kinda got out of hand from there.
Grimm's Anatomy
Thinking about how I would write an adult Scooby-Doo series, because I think it can be done.
The first thing I’d do is make the characters actually be adults. Still young, but adults, in the mid to late 20s range. Mystery Inc. is a private detective type business that they run together. In this universe, the supernatural/ghosts/etc are real, but not necessarily common, so when they take on a case, the culprit might be a person disguised as a monster, or it might actually be a real ghost. The stakes can be higher; sometimes a bad guy is legitimately trying to kill them. Sometimes the mystery they’re trying to solve is a murder. Sometimes they actually get hurt on their cases.
Fred: the core of Fred’s character should be that he’s incredibly kind. Like, give a stranger the shirt off his back kind. The “Fred can’t talk to potential clients because he might take a case for free and we need to eat” kind. He’s an honest and good person and sometimes gets himself into trouble because he assumes other people are too. While he’s not very good at reading people or noticing ulterior motives, he’s brilliant when it comes to mechanical or engineering type stuff, so he’s the one who keeps the mystery machine running, builds their gadgets, and of course, designs the traps.
Daphne: she comes from old money, and her parents absolutely despise her life choices, to the point where they haven’t officially disowned her, but they have basically cut her off, so she doesn’t actually have access to any family money. Growing up wealthy has granted her a variety of skills, including speaking multiple languages, horseback riding, and fencing. She’s very into fashion and jewelry (even if she can’t afford it anymore) and has extensive knowledge of both that can occasionally provide a vital clue in a case. And even though her parents have cut her off, Daphne still has a wide network of contacts she can ask for favors sometimes, because she’s personable, and people tend to like her. Daphne is also very emotionally intelligent, and is usually the one who can spot when someone is lying to them.
Side note - I ship Fred and Daphne, so I think I would start them off as an established couple for this universe. Dating, engaged, married, I don’t care. They are stupidly in love, ride or die for each other. There’s no will they, won’t they, no worries about cheating. They are in a healthy, happy, loving relationship, and no one (not even Daphne’s disapproving parents) are going to mess that up for them.
Velma: she is the forensics nerd who sometimes gets super excited about the wrong thing at the wrong time (”He was mummified in seconds? That’s so cool!” “Velma! His wife is standing right there!” “Oh. Sorry.”). She’s not purposely insensitive, she just gets laser focused on her work and forgets to filter herself sometimes. She’s also the one who can get so fixated on solving whatever mystery they’re working on, she’s willing to bend or maybe break laws. Is breaking and entering really so bad? Not if it gets them answers.
Shaggy: he is still the comic relief, but he’s the comic relief by being the only person in the group that actually has common sense. He manages the business’s finances, he’s the only one who knows how to cook, and the others tease him for being a coward sometimes, but Shaggy maintains that if a ghost with an axe is coming for you, running is the only sensible option. He should also have a range of random knowledge that sounds useless, but sometimes saves the day (ex ventriloquism, origami, the history of spoons, etc).
Scooby: as this is a universe where supernatural creatures exist, Scooby is an ancient eldritch type being that took a shine to Shaggy when he was a kid, and took the form of a talking dog to befriend and hang out with him. Aside from the talking dog bit and not aging, he never uses his powers in a way that anyone notices. The audience is not told upfront that Scooby is an ancient eldritch being; it should slowly be hinted at throughout the series so the audience put it together, but the characters never realize it. Scooby genuinely considers Shaggy to be his best friend, and cares about the rest of the gang too.
All of the comparisons with Poirot etc. are valid, especially considering the Agatha Christie influences on both Knives Out and (especially) Glass Onion, but actually the Golden Age detective Benoit Blanc most reminds me of is Lord Peter Wimsey. Especially with the epic obfuscating chattiness/stupidity. Blanc turns up his Southern Hokeyness to eleven when he wants people to underestimate him; Wimsey turns up his Upper-Class Twit, for the same reasons and in the same way. (And in both cases it’s a play on their own real mannerisms and accent, but they deploy it as a shield and a weapon.) Both are epically courteous, polite, and friendly, but you Do Not Want To Piss Them Off by being horrifying.
Also if anyone wants to write a backstory for Benoit/Philip in which Benoit saves Philip from a false accusation of murder and Philip spends years unsure whether he wants to get together with this man who saved him because gratitude is a terrifying burden, etc… omg I would read the fuck out of that. :D
Holy fuck you just had to add that last part and explode my whole entire brain didn’t you
fun fact: in the 70s, Sesame Street parodied Goncharov as "Gotcha-Clock", in a segment designed to teach telling time
2022 goncharov remake but it's set in naples florida instead and it's about the mafia that is the local condo association
two things i want:
“i open the basket and i see tomatoes, and i’m immediately thinking ‘oh fuck i dont even like tomatoes god shittign damn”
A chopped-style cooking where where neither the judges nor the competitors have any cooking experience, but both groups are told that the other group does, and they try to convince each other that they do too with nonsense words and unnecessarily complicated dishes.
“Whose Kitchen Is It, Anyway?”
Yesterday I overheard someone talking about how he was taking classes at the University of Maryland because they offer free tuition if you’re over 60.
My brain IMMEDIATELY began scripting a screwball comedy in which a broke millennial who desperately want to finish his long-abandoned degree but is drowning in student debt pretends to be a senior citizen in order to attend college for free.
I’m picturing someone Channing Tatumesque, applying age makeup every morning before he heads off to class. It’s sort of a cross between 21 Jump Street and Mrs. Doubtfire. He keeps forgetting which hip is supposed to be his bad one. His classmates laugh every time he uses slang. There’s definitely a scene where he attends a college party and busts it up on the dance floor.
He catches the eye of a fellow returning student, a woman in her 50s, but she thinks he’s like 70 and she’s already buried one husband, you know? She’s not interested in doing that again. When his charade unravels (hilariously) at the end of the movie, though, she finds out he’s actually like 30 and has abs you could bounce a quarter off. And he’s still super into her. And really, maybe it’s time she gave May-December romance a chance.
Okay so to refine this concept a little:
Our Hero is stuck in a job where he keep seeing people get promoted past him because they have a 4-year degree and he doesn’t. He can’t afford to go back to school until he finishes paying off his student loans for the degree he’s one semester from completing. If he got the promotion he wants he could pay them off a lot quicker. But he can’t get the promotion without the degree.
Along comes a clerical error in his almost-alma mater’s records which lists his birth year as 1948 instead of 1984. He gets a call from them about their “free tuition for seniors” program. “Wow, that sounds amazing!” he says. “I’ll be sure to tell my, uh, grandpa, as soon as he gets home.”
It’s one semester. If he can keep up the charade, he’ll have the degree, get the promotion, pay off the student loans. Hell, if they figure it out after the fact and come after him for the tuition, he’ll be able to afford it by then. He just needs to pass as a 70-year-old until graduation. How hard could it be?
(also, someone in the notes suggested “Senior Year” for a title, which is PERFECT.)
Holy shitballs.
