Still on my Crypt TV kick, and I have to gush for a moment, because Crypt Fables was actually my ultimate favorite series despite being disconnected from the Monster Universe, so I have to just spell out for a minute why it’s so great and needs more attention alongside the Look-See and company
-Mermaid is the ur-example of a tragic monster
-I will hike through those woods myself to carry Mermaid back to safety and the ocean. I am not strong enough to lift her but I am determined
-The ending of The Little Mermaid actually REALLY calls back to the original fairy tale, and it took me a few minutes to even put it together, but it puts Mermaid in the position of choosing between a doomed romance and damnation to her existence, which is how the original ended
-Mermaid’s design. (Though there is no work of fiction that cannot be made better with fish people in my opinion)
-Rapunzel/Luke is relationship goals
-Seriously watching them kiss gave me so many feelings
-When do I get a murder zombie boyfriend that will accompany me in my house arrest and kill the people who wronged me
-(Note: I do not actually wish death upon everyone; it’s all hypothetical if I say I do)
-The way Mira says her own name
-That part where Mira shushes Sandra
-Sandra technically didn’t even do anything wrong. She was vain, but not in a way that would actually do harm to anyone. And I think that actually makes the story better. I have a doctrine that “horror isn’t scary when it happens to bad people” (which, yeah, means Mermaid didn’t really “scare” me because I was just like “you go girl”), so the idea that Sandra could slip up so little and still be “punished” for it really makes the audience rethink how safe they are from their own mirrors - there’s no way to say “Well, I’m not like HER”
-The Pied Piper of Hamelin was already a horror story in and of itself and I’m glad someone just took advantage of that
-Kinderfänger’s design, which has the exact opposite energy from Mermaid’s
-JORDAN IS BABEY. PROTECT HER.
-The ending of Kinderfänger. Just...yeah.
-The ending of Geppetto and all the implications that come with it
-The way Geppetto makes you think you’re watching one kind of horror story and then it turns out to be a completely different type of horror story
-DR. CHESHIRE MOTHERFUCKING BROACH
-Really, he has all the trappings of the suave, deceptive manipulator with a dash of supernatural power that really has long-reaching implications if you think about it (what would happen if he took on someone who felt bullied by their classmates or threatened by a politician, huh?)
-I know this is all headcanon and conjecture but I have so many thoughts about how his true villainy isn’t his “insanity” but rather that his stay in the asylum hurt him so badly that what he’s doing now is vengeance upon the system and making others suffer what he suffered while he lives like a king
-He’s also a lovely blend of the “monster” and “villain” archetypes
-And there’s no way they could one-up Mermaid or Kinderfänger but the design of “evil anthro cat demon” is the exact aesthetic they needed to complete the triad
-Let’s face it: we all want to do something like what his patient did deep down (HYPOTHETICALLY)
-DNI if your response is “stop glorifying serial killers.” I’m a big girl and I know the cat therapy man is fictional and I just feel a good horror story requires a good monster
-Though really, the rest of the series offers a lot of wiggle room for headcanons and analysis as well. The last shot of Mermaid thinking about what she did. When you know she has regrets in more ways than one. And we’re left to fill in the details of her heartbreak.
-I thought Knave was the weakest of the series, as 1. they’d already knocked the Alice imagery out of the park with Cheshire and 2. I wasn’t altogether comfortable with how they played the whole “gay best friend” thing, but I did see comments in that vid from people who thought he was cool and empowering, and I’m sitting here like “I like the mentally ill one because he kinda reminds me of my time spent in a mental ward and I can imagine how that would make some people snap into full villainy!”, so really, it’s all subjective and some people really did like the Knave so I’m not gonna cry Problematic - this exact series also gave us a heroine in the form of a deaf girl who said “fuck you” to a sound-based monster
-Just in general the idea of twisted fairy tales is something that horror has been doing for decades and not always been the greatest at, but the Crypt TV series really felt like fresh new takes on all of these ideas and utilizing the symbolism from each tale to create a whole new bite-sized horror story, and it’s really cool looking over each narrative and picking out the little details from each source story (like when you realize the Pied Piper rhyme ended with one child unable to follow the Piper because they were disabled and then you see Jordan, or the idea that Rapunzel being under house arrest is her version of being locked in a tower away from the world)
Okay, the Crypt Fables gush hour is over; please resume your daily activities