thinking about how mike flanagan’s first netflix series ended with the crain family together, both in death and in life
and his last netflix series ended with the entire usher bloodline 6 feet under, buried side by side (with lenore in the same row as madeline and roderick instead of the row below with frederick and the others) but no more a family in death than they were in life
the haunting of hill house and the fall of the house of usher feel very much like two sides of the same coin - a home built with love will stand for centuries, but a house built without that foundation will crumble and leave no survivors
Don’t assume malice. Assume ignorance. Life is easier, the world is kinder, and you can educate. Actual malice is pretty rare, I find.
Always remember Hanlon’s Razor–”Never assume malice when incompetence will suffice as an explanation.”
That’s said, never forget Fred Clark’s Law, either: “Sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from malice.” There’s a certain point at which ignorance becomes malice–at which there is simply no way to become that ignorant except deliberately and maliciously.
((I have done a poll with this premise in the past, but it never hurts to do a new one, especially since the one I held has already closed, so now anybody who found out about this blog after it did has another chance!))
What he means: in Toy Story 2 Woody is treated as the rarest of the toys from Woody’s Roundup when he’s the main character of the show. That would mean he would have had a higher production number than any of his costars, and in fact probably would have been made for the longest and earliest of the toy line. Stinky Pete, by being the fan unfavorite, must have had a smaller run, and less of his toys would have survived in the 50s as kids would have needlessly damaged or destroyed him making him the rarest of the group and Woody the most common. If anything, the plot of Toy Story 2 should have revolved around Al stealing Woody’s hat as it would have been the item most sought after by collectors as it’s easily lost and not attached to an otherwise common doll. Fundamentally, Al’s apartment should have been littered with Woody dolls in various states of damage, all missing hats and maybe a handful of decent condition Woody dolls needing a hat while Stinky Pete is the rarest and most expensive as a collectors item.
@everyone saying Woody was a limited run or some shit like….. y’all telling me the character that got onto the cover of time magazine and had all this fucking merch didn’t saturate the market with Woody dolls? In the 50s at the height of capitalism and the baby boom???
real life be like:
Your error is in assuming that Woody is rare because few Woody dolls were made. Not the case: Many Woody dolls were made- and because of their popularity they were sold and played-with until they were wrecked and - this being the 50s - thrown out. That plastic Woody you’ve got there will outlast most civilizations: but our Woody? With his cloth body and its aging 1950s fabric? By the 80s most of those would be a wreck: cloth-body stuffed toys have a very short shelf-life once they’re out in the world. Store a Woody in the attic for ten years and the mice get him, or the mold, or the simple weight of time loosens the bindings and makes his limbs unravel. And the voice box? With an in-tact, still functional draw strings? Do oyou know how often those things jam?
Woody is unique because he seems to have belonged to a family that takes unusually good care of their toys, going so far as to fix them. Toy from the 50s are not in any way shape or form equivalent to modern full-plastic toys or even BEanie Babies, which were sold primarily with a view to the long-term collectors market. There is absolutely nothing weird or strange in a Woody doll surviving in such good quality to 1999 being notable: his popularity and high production rate has zero impact on the toy’s long-term survivability. (Indeed, that high production rate could have even introduced a lot more manufacturing defects into shipped Woody dolls, creating an overall decline in quality.)
Just because it saturated the market is no indication of longevity. Yes, Al sure has a lot of Woody stuff - and most of that is very rare. For a good comparison point hop over to ebay and start looking for vintage, no-package Howdy Doody dolls from the 1950s - not the 70s re-releases with 70s materials but the 50s ones. Start judging the quality: the faded fabrics, the dirt, the smudges, the dinginess, and you’ll begin to see why Al freaked out so much: he didn’t just just find a Woody with a hat, he found a Woody who was clean - with no chipping on the hand-painted face, whose hand-stitched hat hadn’t lost its stitching, whose arm break could be repaired by a master who knew what they were doing. A hundred thousand Woodys might have been made in the 50s - but the number that survived to the present day, out-of-box, out of the hands of collectors, in good enough shape to be polished-up into museum-quality condition?I
Al found the treasure of a lifetime.
[Fun fact: according to the wiki, Woody’s full name is Woody Pride.]
^ me dropping everything to learn more about the intricacies of the Toy Story universe
I noted Mike Flanagan screamed “GAY RIGHTS! BI RIGHTS” on his way out Netflix’s door, but he really did stick his head back in to say, “FUCK AI, FUCK BIG PHARMA, AND FUCK THE CAPITALISM THAT PROPS THEM UP” as well didn’t he?
Whenever I’ve heard discussion about Vincent Price’s career, it’s generally just been talk about his villain roles– however, having watched more of his stuff now I feel like that’s doing him an in injustice so here’s an overview of some of the myriad Vincent Price Types™️
Hollywood needs more loveable, hammy old spooky dudes. Not enough of those to go around. You know, your Vincent Price types. Your Gary Oldmans. Your Tim Curries. More of that, please and thank you.
I love Vincent Price cuz that dude is always doing something fucked up. “Oh, I’ve lost my sculpting abilities, let me just coat people in wax to make statues” “Oh no, my wife is trying to kill me, let me fill a pool in our basement with acid and kill her first” “I’m a scientist now? Better scare the shit out of people to find out if they have bugs in their spines” “Now that I’m aged, let’s hire a bunch of homeless people to kill off theatre critics who gave me bad reviews” He never misses. Every movie with him he’s doing some fucked up shit and I never get tired of it. Yes Vincent coat that bitch in wax
