Vincent Price and Robert Mitchum in His Kind of Woman (1951) dir. John Farrow
Oh god, I just aged several years in a single second, a friend of mine sent me a snippet from a fic that read someone put a VHS into a VCR and took so long getting back to it to press play that the menu screen had looped multiple times
every time I think maybe I am putting too much effort into researching the details of technological advances I lived through, something like this crosses my dash
For the young whippersnappers who don’t understand the issue, VHS tapes don’t have menu screens. That is not technologically possible on a tape.
A magnetic tape works because information has been magnetically encoded on the tape. The tape is very long, and is wound around two little spools, one at the end, one at the beginning. In the middle is a part where it is flat and there is a thing called a ‘head’ and it reads the magnetic encoding on the bit of the tape next to it and converting it into sound and/or images. When the tape plays, the little spools wind/unwind so that new sections of tape are constantly being run past the head. Every single thing a VCR can do is a function of controlling which part of the tape is next to the head.
You put the tape in the machine and press play on the machine, and it plays. You press stop and it stops. You press play again and it starts playing right where it left off, because while it’s stopped the tape is not moving past the head. You can pause it instead of stop it, which will leave the frame you paused on on the TV (in contrast to stopping, when the screen goes dark). You can fast forward, and it will wind the tape forward towards the end. You can rewind and it will wind the tape back to the beginning.
in my experience it usually played automatically on being fed a tape, and you had to pause or stop it to prevent this, which was awkward sometimes when the tv volume turned out to be set way too high
unless of course the tape hadn't been rewound before being taken out last time. then, unless auto-rewind was a feature of the VCR in question, you had to push that button first to get back to the start so the movie was watchable.
also if you wanted it to rewind quickly instead of playing the entire film backwards, silently, at maybe double speed, you pushed 'stop' first and it lifted the tape away from the reader to respool at speed.
Now that I have processed this somewhat, here's some other tidbits:
Tapes had no mandatory ads at the front. Oh, sure, there often were ads at the front, but there was no way to prevent just fast forwarding through them.
For the busy among us who wanted to watch a film while another was rewinding, separate tape rewinding devices were sold.
Tape rental places would ask you to "please be kind, rewind!" and some places charged a rewinding fee if you didn't.
Music was affected by the jump from tapes to disc, too! I remember it blowing my mind that CDs could replay a track instantly, instead of me having to memorize how long it took to rewind a tape to play back a tune.
Both VCRs and music tape players would occasionally break and "eat" the tape, which meant an unspooled, destroyed tape and having to take the player apart to free the tape from it. Sometimes the player could be fixed afterwards, and sometimes it couldn't.
Sometimes if you played the same portion of a tape over and over, it would lead to tape degradation: distorted video and audio, or even the tape snapping and having to get a new one. (I did this to at least one Disney movie - don't remember which - and one soundtrack.)
Adjusting the tracking! I don't remember how this physically works but if the video is jumping around, sometimes you would have to adjust it so the VCR reads the tape correctly. Looks like there's some how-to guides out there on the Internet on how to do this. Usually there was a button on the remote to do this.
Some VCRs were extra fancy and had digital clocks built into them. After a power outage, they would reset to 12:00 and flash. Adjusting the clock was a strange and mysterious process that a lot of folks never got the hang of, so their VCRs just had 12:00 flashing on them at all times.
I think I just aged 10,000 years from this post
Data is going to fuck shit up!!!
Data really said ‘maybe violence IS the answer’
My boy data realized that debate was not going to work and saved the lives of over 15,000 people by blowing up an aqueduct with a handheld weapon.
He was all “you see that shit? I’m just one dude and I destroyed the only source of water your colony has with a PISTOL. The fucking Sheliak are on their way and you really want to fight them? They won’t even need to send a robot down here with a phaser. They’ll just bomb you from orbit. Now do you want to stick to your ‘we’ll fight them off!’ plan or do you want to START PACKING AND GET OFF THIS ROCK BEFORE THE ANGRY ALIENS MAKE IT RAIN LASERS AND ANTIMATTER BOMBS?” and the colonists are like “well when you put it that way… Maybe we should get ready to move.”
Meanwhile Picard is playing some 4D diplomatic chess so they’ll have time to get the colonists off the planet, and he pulls it off brilliantly. The Sheliak are deadset on colonizing in 4 days and if they find any humans on that rock, they’re killing then. It’ll take weeks to evacuate them. Picard is looking through every line of the treaty, looking for loopholes, and finding nothing. The Sheliak are a race of lawyers. They don’t make mistakes. But Picard thinks outside the box.
He calls up the Sheliak. “hey, we’re having a disagreement, right? We want you to delay a few weeks, you want to colonize this planet, we can’t reach an agreement. Well the treaty says that we can get a third party to arbitrate this problem, can we do that?”
The Sheliak are like “yeah sure but they’re gonna rule in our favor, that contract is perfect.”
And Picard smiles his ass off and goes “OK GREAT for the third party I’m picking the Grizzelas.”
And the Sheliak lose their shit. The Grizzelas are a race that hibernate. They’re gonna be in hibernation for SIX MORE MONTHS. But according to the treaty, Picard gets to pick who will arbitrate the disagreement.
Picard’s like “I see you’re not happy about my choice. How about I agree to skip arbitration for a small favor? How about… Three weeks to evacuate that colony?”
And the Sheliak are like “OK FINE YOU WIN, SHINY-HEAD. YOU GET YOUR THREE DAMN WEEKS.”
I just love the episode. Data saves the day by realizing that sometimes debate isn’t enough and you need violence. Picard saves the day by rules-lawyering a race of lawyers and avoiding violence.
Ensigns of Command really is damn good on a number of levels. In addition to all the stuff stated above, we also get: -In an era of technobabble solutions to problems, Geordi was ordered to try to find a way to bypass the radiation that was preventing them from transporting the colonists up. After Picard resolves the situation, at first it implies he’s found the solution... aaand then expectations are subverted when he admits “Yeah, no, this is impossible we’re not going to tech our way out of it.” -The leader of the colony, upon admitting defeat, somberly admits to Data that he really was willing to fight and die to protect what they’d built, but Data sums up an important message that can apply to a lot of stuff in life: “This is just a thing. Things can be replaced. Lives cannot.” -First proper attempt at a Data romance. Obviously not going to go anywhere with the love interest of the week, but rather cute regardless.
I miss when everyone on my dash listened to Welcome to Night Vale so there’s be a good chance that on any ole day someone would reblog a quote that would grab me by the throat and forcibly ascend me to a higher plane where I understood myself and the universe better and with more kindness but also a little spook
“The past is gone, and cannot harm you anymore. And while the future is fast coming for you, it always flinches first and settles in as the gentle present” are you kidding me this quote has propelled me through at least three emotional crises
“The desert seems vast, even endless. And yet scientists tell us that somewhere, even now, there is snow.” That quote literally got me through grieving my brother like WTNV goes HARD
A List of Some of My Favorite Quotes From This Insane Podcast:
- "You are beautiful when you do beautiful things."
- "The present tense of regret is indecision."
- "We understand so much, but the sky behind those lights-- mostly void, partially stars-- that sky reminds us we don't understand even more."
- "Be proud of your place in the Cosmos. It is small and yet it is."
- "Believe in yourself. You are an ancient, absent god, discussed only rarely by literary scholars. So if you don't believe, no one will."
- "Death is only the end if you assume the story is about you."
- “Whisper a dangerous secret to someone you care about. Now they have the power to destroy you, but they won’t. That’s what love is.”
- "Are we living a life that is safe from harm? Of course not. We never are. But that’s not the right question. The question is are we living a life that is worth the harm?"
- "When we talk about teenagers, we adults often talk with an air of scorn, of expectation for disappointment. And this can make people who are presently teenagers feel very defensive. But what everyone should understand is that none of us are talking to the teenagers that exist now, but talking back to the teenager we ourselves once were – all stupid mistakes and lack of fear, and bodies that hadn’t yet begun to slump into a lasting nothing. Any teenager who exists now is incidental to the potent mix of nostalgia and shame with which we speak to our younger selves."
- "We are not history yet. We are happening now. How miraculous is that?"
- "Wednesday has been cancelled due to a scheduling error."
- "We have nothing to fear except ourselves. We are unholy, awful people."
- "A million dollars isn’t cool. You know what’s cool? A basilisk."
- "There's nothing under your bed. There's nothing in your closet. Nothing waits in every darkness. Nothing is the most terrifying thing of all."
- "The night sky is ten miles wide, eight miles deep, and floats three miles up. Its favourite food is grape jelly. It wants to be a drummer."
- "Look to the sky. You will not find answers there, but you will certainly see what everyone is screaming about."
- "Ignorance might not actually be bliss, but it is certainly less work."
- "And now, a special report. Crocodiles: Can they eat your children? *YES.*"
- "Lie down and look up at the ceiling and breathe with those curiously fragile lungs of yours and remind yourself: Don’t worry. Don’t worry. All is as it was meant to be. It was meant to be lonely and terrifying and unfair and fleeting. Don’t worry."
- "As long as I’m reminding myself things, I’m a good person, worthy of love – both from myself and others."
- "Guns don't kill people! It's impossible to be killed by a gun. We are all invincible to bullets and it's a miracle!"
- "Everything is exciting! Particularly existence. Existence is the most thrilling fact of all."
- "There is a monster under your bed. A monster at your window. A monster any place you imagine one. You project your monsters on the world."
- "You miss 100% of the bank robberies you don't commit."
- "I like my coffee like I like my nights. Dark, endless, and impossible to sleep through. "
- "A friendly desert community where the sun is hot, the moon is beautiful, and mysterious lights pass overhead while we all pretend to sleep. Welcome to Night Vale."
- "And now, the weather."
I discovered this podcast at the beginning of high school, and let me tell you, it rewired my synapses.
Not only was it my first experience with positive LGBT representation, it was the show I clung to when everything else went to shit. Whatever was going on in my life, I knew I had this show in my corner, making me laugh, making me cry, making me feel okay about my place in the universe.
I owe the creators of this podcast more than I could express.
"the lights over the Arby's" is such an intrinsically queer piece of writing that it hits me *hard* every time.
"We will never be the same again. But here's a little secret for you: no one is ever the same thing again after anything. You are never the same twice, and much of your unhappiness comes from trying to pretend that you are. Accept that you are different each day, and do so joyfully, recognizing it for the gift it is. Work within the desires and goals of the person you are currently, until you aren't that person anymore, and everything changes once again." (from Episode 75)
They’re making a tv show! I can’t wait for the Night Valessance
You’re all talking as if Night Vale stopped when they just released episode 212 two weeks ago. And I’m just utterly baffled that their viewership numbers plummeted so much over the last few years, especially during a pandemic when narrative podcasts blossomed in popularity again. Only a handful of episodes have broken 10,000 views the last year while 6 years ago they were regularly breaking 100,000 in views per episode. What the hell happened? I’m going to marathon the show and get caught up again, because I want to know if this is a quality thing or what.
Fun, someone said the words “prior authorizations” around me and now I’m pissed off at 730am on my day off. I go off on this rant all the time. ALL THE TIME.
Oof. This man gets it.
Every time I have to send a fax to a doctor saying “hey this med needs a PA” I get violently angry.
Hint: if your PA gets denied call your insurance and ask for the credentials of the person who made that call. Usually they will approve it instead of admitting they hired some 18-year-old with no relevant training or experience to scan for buzz-words and just deny everything
Think you'll ever review Star Wars: Dark Empire? Considering it's plot similarities to Rise of Skywalker (which we all know you and Viga completely loved) I think it'd have potential for a good episode. Bonus? It's written by the guy who did Bearded Idiot at Earth's End.
Uuuuugggggh. Yeah, probably. Aside from the adaptations of the original trilogy, though, probably the next big Star Wars thing I cover is the adaptation of the Thrawn trilogy.
Anti-revenge narrative this, anti-revenge narrative that, I personally think that Inigo Montoya had the right idea when he stabbed Count Rugen in the gut and said “I want my father back, you son of a bitch”
A lot of revenge arcs end with the hero saying “there’s nothing you can do to bring my loved one back, so me seeking revenge is pointless.” The Princess Bride’s revenge arc ends with Inigo Montoya saying “there’s nothing you can do to bring my loved one back, so there’s nothing that can save you.”
Voting for Democrats improves your life. More people than you think have problems with hearing. This is great news.
Herbert West, Doctor Moreau, and Victor Frankenstein are all resurrected by various means or saved by time machine an admirer of their work.
How badly can this end?
Inspiration here: a part of Dr.Moreau I never see mentioned.
What became of the other one?” said I, sharply,—“the other Kanaka who was killed?”
“The fact is, after I had made a number of human creatures I made a Thing—” He hesitated.
“Yes?” said I.
“It was killed.”
“I don’t understand,” said I; “do you mean to say—”
“It killed the Kanaka—yes. It killed several other things that it caught. We chased it for a couple of days. It only got loose by accident—I never meant it to get away. It wasn’t finished. It was purely an experiment. It was a limbless thing, with a horrible face, that writhed along the ground in a serpentine fashion. It was immensely strong, and in infuriating pain. It lurked in the woods for some days, until we hunted it; and then it wriggled into the northern part of the island, and we divided the party to close in upon it. Montgomery insisted upon coming with me. The man had a rifle; and when his body was found, one of the barrels was curved into the shape of an S and very nearly bitten through. Montgomery shot the thing. After that I stuck to the ideal of humanity—except for little things.”
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Is this the Universal Doctor Victor Frankenstein or Mr. Victor Frankenstein the college dropout from the book? That’s an important distinction, given that the former has a known method of resurrection (electricity) while the latter deliberately obscures the active agents of the reanimation process to avoid others repeating it.
Assuming a shared universe and the book being Victor’s canon, Herbert might have stumbled into recreating the same process Victor had developed. If so, I can picture Victor furiously making an effort to murder West with either an ax or his bare hands and destroying his research after he succeeds. Moreau is slightly more of a wild card in that, if he has enough time, he’ll get his hands on the Re-Animator formula and then it becomes a question of if Victor gets to him quickly enough to kill him before he can use it.
Hmm, I’m not sure Herbert would be anywhere close to Frankenstein’s process. Despite many people talking about reanimation with Frankenstein in adaptations, the source material was more about “animation” than than the “re”.
Its very unclear how much of Frankenstein’s monster was synthesized/cultured and how much from preexisting biological parts. He made use of animal and human parts in his experiments, but its unclear if that was used to reverse-engineer the “vital mechanisms” or actual material in construction of the monster. His experiments were more alchemical than the other two, and was almost certainly not just sewing stuff together.
I do think Herbert would have a great chuckle at Victor’s poor understanding of genetics in thinking his creatures should actually be capable of reproduction with the intended bride, though one could argue he actually more feared the monster creating more like themselves since the monster was a rapidly learning being looking over his shoulder as he worked on the bride.
Moreau would not chuckle as I’m pretty sure he has no sense of humor.
Now as for what reason their savior has to bring them all together: trying to replicate the research of Joseph Curwen‘s now-slain circle of necromancers [From the Case of Charles Dexter Ward] based on fragments.
Throw in Dracula or some other vampire’s ashes and we got a monster mash.
Think something more could be done with Wests culturing of embryonic tissue from the embryonic tissue of the eggs of an obscure reptile he cultured in a vat, which he used to patch up corpses. I wonder if he found that reptile during the travels of World War 1. The process of that might have something to do with Moreau’s experiments.
The personality clashes are gonna be interesting here. Moreau might claim moral superiority to both, despite building torture chambers in which he “civilized” his creations. Moreau once had huge ambitions it seems but over time grew into more an idle tinkerer. West however, was clearly working on ideas of a monstrous army but then one of his more intelligent thought-destroyed creations learned how to apparently form a hive mind of all the other creations and control them.
I have always wanted mad scientist mass crossover. Throw in Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde and (if you pursue the time travel angle) H.G. Wells’ time machine and invisible man (who made his own invisibility formula, remember), and you’ve got quite the potential nightmare on your hands.
Herbert might laugh at Victor thinking his hypothetical “bride” creation would be capable of breeding, but Moreau wouldn’t laugh for an entirely different reasons: his beast-men creations could and did breed. I remember reading the book and it talks about this strange rabbit/reptile creature that dwells on the island. Moreau idly mentions that it’s the byproduct of a couple of his experiments reproducing and now they apparently breed true and roam the island.
Once again pursuing the time travel method of gathering all these characters, I really can’t imagine whoever gathered them having a nice, wholesome end goal. If anything, I suspect whoever brought them all together is trying to “patch up” and profit from their various creations.
Dr. Jekyll’s formula - if that true, missing ingredient is determined - could be used to create a nearly flawless false identity for someone. Depending on how, exactly, it works it could even be used on one of Frankenstein’s creations or Dr. Moreau’s hybrids. This would be worth its weight in gold for spies and espionage, and an invisibility formula worth even more.
Moreau’s hybrids are - for the most part - rather dim-witted. They are smart enough to follow simple orders and to fear (and hate) their tormentor, but simple-minded and obedient workers are always in demand by certain types of people. There are a few occasions in the book where it is also shown that they can be frightfully strong. Assembly lines, plantations, anything else a dictator or idle rich man might desire, all available for a price.
West’s reanimation and its methods ultimately lead to his death when one of his creations was able to assert itself over the others… but if these scientists could together discover what went wrong and ensure that does not happen again, a whole new avenue of research opens up. Going back to the idea of espionage, if your torturous interrogation accidentally kills your target, simply reanimate him and try again.
Jekyll made his identity Hyde unusable because he used it to indulge in things he wanted to, but couldn’t for fear of scandal, so despite his protestations otherwise, he’s not a very good person. This leaves Victor Frankenstein as the most moral member of this group, a dubious honor at best, but if he tries to flee as he did from his own creation, it opens the idea for a proper protagonist to at least hear about what’s going on, and for the story to pick up from there.
Montgomery called my attention to certain little pink animals with long hind-legs, that went leaping through the undergrowth. He told me they were creatures made of the offspring of the Beast People, that Moreau had invented. He had fancied they might serve for meat, but a rabbit-like habit of devouring their young had defeated this intention.
Hm, they seem specifically designed by Moreau using. Earle Its stated that when something not dead is born, he takes it away to either “stamp human
Montgomery said that they actually bore offspring, but that these generally died. When they lived, Moreau took them and stamped the human form upon them. There was no evidence of the inheritance of their acquired human characteristics. The females were less numerous than the males, and liable to much furtive persecution in spite of the monogamy the Law enjoined.
so it doesn’t seem likely the leaping things bred true so much as Moreau planned to perform the same procedures on their offspring.
Or he did something VERY different and experimental to get the leaping things to breed true.
wait…I just remembered that Invisible man becomes visible on death. With reanimation the permanency isn’t necessarily a problem anymore, is it?
Yeah, see, thing is, I know exactly who would bring these jerks back from the dead. And it’s gonna sap any remaining dignity from these proceedings, but it’s absolutely, 100% a Doctor Mindbender plot.
He’s got the cloning tech. He’s not above raiding the tombs of fictional dead people for DNA, either, and he shares a passion for raising the dead with West, a passion for making manimals with Moreau, and a deeply baffling level of under-qualification for his bullshit in common with Frankenstein (Mindbender is a doctor of dentistry)
And he’s totally the type of dingus who would try and turn a Tumblr shitpost idea into an active campaign of upending the natural order. The man’s already stolen Dracula’s DNA once. He’ll do it again, just dare him.
This transition is straight out of a horror movie
Are you okay with the fact you will never read another issue of a Peter Parker centred story ? I know about the "if they fix the problem without retconing it" clause but after what they did to Nick Spencer's run (the Guy who really wanted to fix the massive mistake untilmarvel stop him) I'm sure you will wait for nothing
I can't remember - has he actually confirmed he wanted to do that? Or is it just speculation based on where the run LOOKED like it was heading?
sadako with a gun made by the dall e mini ai
“Where my fucking money for all those copies of the Ring tape out there?! YOU MADE COPIES, SO WHERE’S MY CUT?!”
