(had to reference Rick Grimes after last night's The Walking Dead mid-season premiere)
So things I still need to do:
- Write about Buffy - my re-watch is currently at 'Graduation Day' which might be a good time to discuss some "stuff and things" once I've got these last two episodes out of the way.
- Haven't got much further with Vampire Knight which is annoying but February has hit me like January (aka I was super productive in January and now I feel like a squirrel trapped in a nut-less tree trunk in the middle of an Alaskan winter). I WILL FINISH THIS SEASON BEFORE THE END OF FEBRUARY.
- Finally, I need to process what on earth happened in The Walking Dead - it got good again (at last) albeit some gaping continuity errors but I was prepared to let that all slide for the security of knowing that the group was good, the people were rallying and baby Judith was safe (lets go even go there about how she ended up safe....again, letting it slide) BUT I can't push away this niggling feeling it's all about to go very, very wrong and I'm not yet ready to address the horrors that lie ahead of us.
On the plus side I painted some new Peggy Dreadful's:
https://www.etsy.com/shop/peggydreadful
I hope to collect my thoughts more and power through now I have *almost* finished my PhD proposal *EEEEEEEEEK*
I decided very early with in this series to focus on the surface. Did it loose it's way with the many lovers of the Countess-maybe (but I enjoyed the flashbacks it afforded us). Was John a loathsome character right up until he realised he was a sadistic killer? Of course, and it made me feel slightly shameful that he had to artistically spray a man's insides across a wall for me to tolerate him but this series really was all about the LOOK.
I didn't really care what they were doing, or more who they were doing, I just wanted to get lost in a sea of historical costumes, glitzy make up and killer (literally) accessories. The finale made me realise this is okay.
Never before has Ryan Murphy, the show's creator done anything more PopGoth than to give Hypodermic Sally a release through the internet. I LOVED IT. I loved how accurate a reflection of contemporary society the ghost was, shouting out words to anyone and no-one , leaving footprints in a mass of void and noise, and yet we are all unnatural online (and the irony of me sat here writing this blog is not lost on me).
Donovan's beyond the grave revelation that his heaven consists of an eternal childhood Saturday morning with pancakes was tender not because he was reaching out to the Mother he scorned for a lifetime. His 'happiness' was a memory. It seems the truth of Gothic to remind us that although we look continually to the future with planners, diaries and holiday countdowns (both of which I have), it is the assured passage of time and the fact that everything becomes, past, that haunts and revives us.
I don't really want to end on such a sombre musing, so I want to thank Murphy for his 'revamping' theme, bringing together vampiric creatures, fashion, rebirth, trauma and death has resulted in the American Horror Story I've been waiting for.
It truly was my fondest creation of his.
Started watching a new anime after hearing such great things about it; Vampire Knight. I will update further once I've enjoyed a few more episodes!
The sympathetic vampire as a character will be interesting to explore through the character of Zero, who lost his parents in a vampire attack four years previous to the start of the series. Zero's resentment of the "beasts" is understandable, and yet very early on we are given hints that there is more of the beast in Zero than he would care to reveal...
His 'sister', Yuki, (both child victims taken in by Vampire Hunter/Headmaster Kaien after being attacked by vampires) has an entirely different view of vampires. Yuki's was saved by the vampire, Kaname, so her loyalty to him is immediately demonstrated however, she also spends much of her time 'crushing' on him.
The vampires are already alluring; their eyes glow red when about to feed, however this feels more like it recalls the Romantic vampire's hypnotic powers than signalling a terrifying monstrous attack. The night school students are also in almost identical uniforms to the day students, except theirs are white, and in a pleasantly quirky contrast it is the human day students dressed in black. I quite like this move away from the black-clad vamp - even in The Vampire Diaries and Supernatural it is common place to dress the vampire in black leather or a brooding amount of metal chains. Understandably this styling aligns them (or tries to) with an appropriation of 'goth' culture and indicate their 'dark' character but I am quite refreshed by Vampire Knight's preppy vampire denied to us in Twilight. Much like Pam's Walmart sweatsuit, the vampire is as threatening in mundane clothing because their clothing gives nothing away about their identity. It is comical to imagine a vampire (ala Dracula) in a school uniform but maybe that's how modern vampires want us to react, to laugh when really we should run...
Countess Couture
*SPOILER* (sort of) Just a quick musing on the 'death' (again) of The Countess.
She rarely looked her age on this show, and thats not to insinuate any judgment on Lady Gaga's cosmetic appearance, but rather that the Countess, in the 'present' that is our contemporary time, rarely dressed in the styles of this current period. In flashbacks of course she embodied the twenties, the eighties and even nineties grunge, but in our time she was often in their costumes. So over the top, so styled in history - why, is our time, the present, the time at which fashion becomes past? Even Alex when newly turned initially releases herself of her Levi jeans and Gap t-shirts and swoons the hallways as a 'true' Nanny, a tightly bound, high seamed Victoriana Governess.
It's a true Gothic pun that the vampire (yes, I know we aren't supposed to call her that...) is always out of time, and time is evidently all they have. Even when dressing in there garb of the eighties, her natural body likely should never have seen those clothes, let alone adorned itself within them.
With a final episode to go I am excited to see what fashions the 'true' death have in store for The Countess.
