This is a side blog for my new account since I was informed by one of my friends that people miss the chaos of my old blog @nationmckinleyscorset
This is mostly going to be for reviewing movies/TV shows/plays/musicals, posting recommendations, making/reposting my old memes
I particularly love reviewing old cult classic movie musicals, horrors which not everyone is willing to watch so I can save them the trouble and queer [supernatural] media
If you enjoy my content on here you can check out my main blog which is for fanart (mostly what we do in the shadows but I'm hoping to expand to include other fandoms) @whatwedoodleintheshadows
If you would like to see my slightly more serious blog where I'm working on a sapphic vampire novel written in a gothic Victorian style you can head over to @doinglinesakawriting
Looking forward to making new mooties and potentially locating old ones <3
Final destination fans stepping on Lego: I just lit a candle. The ivy hanging above the candle is hanging lower than normal because the heat from the candle has melted the sticky parts in the sellotape holding it up. If there are wooden plaques hanging from the ivy, those are a risk. I need to sticky tape the ivy back up. (Returning from getting the sticky tape, steps on Lego) Shit. Oh my god. Death put that there so I would step on it. The Lego is there because if I step on that, I lift my leg, throwing me off balance. When off balance, I will reach out to grab that ivy, pulling it down because the sticky tape is insecure. When the ivy comes down, that lights. When the ivy comes down, so do the wooden plaques which will add kindling. The ivy is attached to a wooden shelf. I'm living in a future FD movie! (Candle gets blown out)
Just finished watching The Guy Who Didn't Like Musicals, What a Masterpiece
I don't often say that about musicals, because I want expecting this one to go so hard.
The video that made me want to watch it was, rather hilariously, a clip from What Do You Want, Paul? Where Ken is singing "I want you to choke me". I was expecting a bit of a raunchy comedy where the main guy is made to sing when he really doesn't want to. What I was not expecting was an apocalyptic drama with strong political messaging, a compelling - but not in-your-face - love story and a genuinely scary ending.
If you'd like to watch it too:
here
I have a few notes, as always. Read more if you're interested in my rambling. It is currently quarter past 1 in the morning so my thoughts aren't very cohesive, I may or may not revisit this.
Warning for spoilers.
Comedy Best Moments
I am going to start out by saying that I really really enjoyed this musical. During the first act, I felt a bit lost, but from the mad professor onwards I was hooked. In these notes I am referring to the 2025 rerecording of the show.
Some of the strongest musical comedy I have seen on stage was executed in this show. My top three moments were:
The keyboard moment
The kiss
What do you want, Paul?
Will Branner is so captivating to watch. I think the greatest moment of his is when he was setting up to play that keyboard. The pause between him playing introductory notes and launching into song, the two other characters on stage leaning in towards him while he lowered his finger, the looming threat of the music drawing in creatures from outside? Absolute gold.
Of all the things I was expecting from a stage kiss, coughing up blood was not one of them. With it being such a funny show, I thought either it was going to be like a really frigid or really messy kiss, and it kind of was. I find it so funny that after the blood, instead of having the usual stage/film reaction of "I love you, I don't care how gross you are" Paul looked completely disgusted and brushed her off. Deviating from tropes is something show does really well, and this moment did that while maintaining the comedy and the love story.
We have to talk about What Do You Want, Paul? Brian Holden's face throughout that ONE part is classic. He knows what he wants, he wants HR. He wants out of that room. He wants to tell his boss to jack off on his own time. The song overall is both hilarious and terrifying - if my boss were to turn around and start singing with a smile so wide that his face looked stitched open, I would also be shaking in my boots.
Technical ingenuity
Looking at the show from a backstage perspective, it was so fucking clever. The first scene with the office was so well done. Everything was kept close at hand, but well concealed to preserve the element of surprise. Let's be honest, none of us expected Charlotte to pull a phone out of one side of her chair and a flask out of the other, she doesn't seem the type. The characters verbally asking if they should take chairs with them when they leave scenes? Classic.
There were so many quick changes I could hardly keep up. I did notice one slight mishap but I won't say what it was because that's not fair to the dressers. I was playing a fun game throughout guessing which actors had played which other characters and seeing how long that had to get changed in between scenes. The most impressive to me was probably Emma's change between Not Your Seed and the scene after in the lab.
As well as the quick changing, the costumes were so perfect for type casting characters. You have deb, the emo girlfriend who's a bit of an outcast, Emma who is constantly wearing a work uniform for a job she can't stand, Paul, the man who's suit is always perfect because his life is his job, Sam, the copy who's a bit of a rogue. Sure, he'll wear the uniform, but he'll be damned if he can't wear leather too.
My favourite costume was Charlotte's. Her jumper really reminds me of Carol Pilbasian (she is one of my favourite TV show characters) which makes sense because she takes on a similar role - the devoted wife who craves intimacy, but intimacy is really just cuddling. She's a bit ditsy, a bit distracted, but always kind. I love the theming of characters like that always having a jumper with some sort of animal on it, and hers was particularly frilly. She's sweet, she's innocent, she wouldn't hurt a fly. Unless the fly was a person, in which case she would rip out their insides quite happily.
I also quite like the headband she wears. I reminded me of those "We Can Do it" posters from around WWII with the woman flexing. It feels very indicative of that time when women were seen as lesser than, and I think that is reflected in her role until her transformation.
America Is Great Again - how the times have changed
A few commenters underneath the version of the musical that I watched noted that the line "America is great again" got some laughs and groans in the 2018 recording. This time, silence.
The song itself is very topical right now.
America Is seeming more and more like a factory where people are built to fit a mould. There is less justice, less trial before action is taken. When Ted was shot for seemingly no reason, even when he was expressing his devotion to America, it hit home. Whether or not the aliens had taken over the military by this point, it felt very reflective of world events. No matter where you stand politically, you aren't exempt from the consequences of voting dangerous political leaders.
The strong itself had really weirdly moving lyrics for a musical about zombie theatre kids.
Overall, the song had a very eerie feeling. It has taken on such a dark meaning since Trump was re-elected. The phrase "America is Great Again" no longer inspires laughter, it sends chills up your spine.
Not Your Seed
This scene oddly felt like a recall to "Seventeen" and "Let The Monster Rise" from Repo! The Genetic Opera. It could be the age that Alice is, or the fact that she's criticising her father, either way it felt in the same vein.
This scene genuinely made me tear up for whatever reason.
The truth is, we'll never know if Alice genuinely felt that her dad was never around and despised him for it, because we don't know how much access the aliens had to their victim's thoughts. Either way, dying and making your last statement that you want to be completely removed from your dad, going as far as to say you're not his seed... Damn. I can honestly understand why Bill wanted to end it all after that. It was actually really devastating That the last action Alice took around her dad, was solidifying her argument by becoming his killer. She was so far removed from him that she felt nothing for him at the end. That's so fucking dark for a musical.
Alice represented more, though. In my opinion, she was the symbol of everyone the characters had lost. The argument between Ted and Bill wasn't fuelled by concern for Bill. Ted knew wouldn't even try to reach his family, if he had one, his friends, the people he knew. If Bill tried and he didn't, he would be seen as a coward. It was easier to believe that their deaths were inevitable, than to accept that he could have intervened if he was less afraid.
The final scene
The final scene was genuinely mortifying. People really don't think about the implications of a world where everyone is singing, but the idea is really uncanny. Also, even though the apocalypse in this was expressed through song, the characters who are possessed by aliens are still completely dead. In that final scene, the song is upbeat while Emma is finding out that a man she saw every day for the whole time Paul worked at his job, who she came to be really close to and want to start a life with, was dead. He was dead and his reanimated corpse was telling her that it was inevitable. If that doesn't chill you to your core when you really think about it, I'm a bit worried.
Emma was the sole survivor. That has enough guilt attached. Then everyone moved on, even her. She had to. She was assigned a new identity. She would have had to have dealt with survivors guilt and not been able to talk about the tragedy because she was under government instruction to not reveal her old identity, because it's easier to cover up a scene than it is to explain it.
Not only all of that, she was then surrounded by the possessed bodies of everyone she grew close with at what she believed was the end of the world and ripped apart by them.
Lauren Lopez's screams are genuinely haunting . What a way to end a musical, I mean even the bows didn't provide relief in the plot because Emma was being actively hunted during them. Just amazing.
Conclusion
Big fan. The premise was scarier than literal horror movie musicals I have seen before. Not at all what I expected but it surpassed my expectations. The acting was incredible throughout, the backstage team did some fanatic work. Overall, a really enjoyable watch. Highly recommend
Fantastic time of year for the air in this country to feel like a sweaty ballsack. Even better when I physically have to sleep under a duvet or I sleepwalk.
My options tonight are essentially shag the devil or fall down the stairs.
I'm watching drag race UK for the first time and it is honestly so heartbreaking listening The Vivienne talking about her addiction. She says on the show that she's two years clean, that she was told she'd be dead by 30 and she wants to inspire other people to stop using. Looking back on that now, in 2026, knowing she died of an overdose after relapsing is so fucking awful.
The intro music for The Last Man on Earth has been my alarm clock for so long that I just put the TV show on to watch and spent a few minutes trying to turn my alarm off.
Insane crappy piece of irony is Google AI using Devil Wears Prada 2 to advertise using AI to design outfits and other fashion related ideas
WHEN THE FILM HAS ANTI AI COMMENTARY EMBEDDED IN IT!
I went to go see it yesterday and was wary because of the Google AI ads and was pleasantly surprised to hear Andy ranting about people sucking the soul out of everything creative (what AI does) and see that the villain is a man who doesn't care about fashion and just wants to capitalise until fashion design is eventually overrun by AI.
The film is Inherently woke and anti AI after if it isn't explicit.
The idea that the film has this narrative yet Google AI is using them to advertise is genuinely insane and I find it so fucking frustrating.
I noticed something in the costuming of The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes that's really making me question
Are Dill and Reaper related?
On Reaper's shirt there are 2 panels in blue with orange and black floral details, in Dill's (kind of spoiler alert) death scene she is wearing a brown jacket with cuffs and patches made from the same material.
Sharing fabrics could mean 1 of 3 things:
They're siblings/related in some way - further substantiated by Reaper being so protective of Dill and saying "you stick with me" instead of leaving her in the arena and how much Reaper mourned her (though I don't remember this being mentioned in the book, there are no surnames for the tributes, only forenames since they aren't "important" like the mentors).
The district is poor so a single seamstress is used by the whole district - highly believable and very high attention to detail in the costume department.
They knew each other before the arena and helped each other to fix/make their clothes/their families did.
Any way you interpret it it's a very tragic detail
Empathy is a twisted thing because what do you mean I cried harder over the killing of the pig in Lord of The Flies than the cannibalising of Jackie in Yellowjackets
Russel T Davies once again owes me a fragment of my soul back because what the fuck. This man has made me cry so much in my lifetime that he might as well be an onion.
Just finished The War Between The Land and The Sea and MY. GOD.
I don't care if he's controversial, "too political", under fire for some of his stances, he knows how to write in a way that makes you feel sick with emotion.
I have never felt so consumed by rage as when I was watching TWBTLATS, never felt as hopeful and hopeless simultaneously as when I was watching years and years. Doctor Who has made me feel such a spectrum of things that I can't even begin to describe it, the episode waters of mars in particular instilling such a deep rooted fear in me that I still feel nervous about other planets three years later. Torchwood truly is something else, that was my first experience of loving such complex characters and being so devastated by the deaths of people who are messed up to their very core.
These shows are the reason I have a TV license at this point.
