Offscreen Shaman

Sin City A Maintenance Economy

Bodies move through shadow like inventory. The streets are instructional. A forensic reading of Sin City’s order. #FilmCriticism

open.substack.com/pub/offscree...

Avatar (2009) Upgrade, Extraction, and the God That Keeps the System Running

What if Avatar’s paradise isn’t saved, it’s just running the next version? Jake as upgrade, Neytiri as deprecated, Eywa as the god that keeps the system stable. Systems reading of Cameron’s epic: #Avatar

offscreenobservations.substack.com/p/avatar?r=a...

I move out
of the realm
in which
your actions
are forgivable,

back
on
solid ground.

My pulse
𝘣𝘶𝘳𝘯𝘴
at the thought
of you.

The heavens
have heard
my answer,
and now 𝘺𝘰𝘶
will hear
my warning.

I am not bound
by moral chains
against myself.

𝘐. 𝘈𝘮. 𝘍𝘳𝘦𝘦.

#Poetry #Poem

The Batman Fear Without a Center

Diving back into Gotham: My new essay unpacks The Batman not as hero myth, but as diagnostic symptom, fear behaving like weather, symbols losing grip. What stops working when a vigilante thinks the city’s speaking to him?

open.substack.com/pub/offscree...

Tommy Boy The Moral Economy of a Company Town

Revisited Tommy Boy as more than slapstick: a story of Sandusky's emotional economy, miscalibrated sons, and a dialect that cracks outside its borders. From Big Tom's mask to the audience as factory. #TommyBoy

offscreenobservations.substack.com/p/tommy-boy?...

Predator Badlands Creed, Mutation, and the Collapse of Apex Logic

Badlands flips the script: a Predator learns to adapt. In my essay, I break down the themes of language, creed, and evolution. #Predator

open.substack.com/pub/offscree...

HIM (2025) The Gospel of Flesh and Memory Loss

Every game begins with a coin in the air.
It’s the neatest lie we tell ourselves.
New essay.

open.substack.com/pub/offscree...

Paddington x Gump And the Inheritance of Goodness

Paddington’s paw circles the pot like breath. Forrest’s shrimp line up like soldiers.
Between them: empire’s oldest recipe, erase the hands, praise the flavor.
My new essay tastes the bitterness we pretend isn’t there.

offscreenobservations.substack.com/p/paddington...

Falling Down The Black-Pilled Nostalgia of American Collapse

Falling Down: the briefcase was empty long before the gun.
Grievance doesn’t repent. It respawns.
Walk the ruins: open.substack.com/pub/offscree...
#FallingDown #AmericanCollapse #BlackPill

Videodrome THE SIGNAL THAT EATS ITS HOST

The hum came first: a metallic whisper behind every broadcast, waiting for the ear to yield. In Videodrome, Cronenberg's signal infects through screens; today, it loops in podcasts, X rants, earbuds that never sleep.

offscreenobservations.substack.com/p/videodrome...

Terminator 2: No Fate But What We Teach Authority cloaked in a uniform. Fragility sinking in steel. What our machines inherit is never neutral.

Terminator 2: No Fate But What We Teach.

We keep telling ourselves there’s no fate but what we make. But what if fate is the system's illusion, a loop designed to make refusal look like authorship?

offscreenobservations.substack.com/p/terminator...

Sherlock Holmes: A Board of Shadows A Study in Sacrifice

Sherlock Holmes: A Board of Shadows. Exploring the chess of sacrifice, where lives are moves and myths adapt. From pawns to kings, how does the game erase its own? #FilmAnalysis

offscreenobservations.substack.com/p/sherlock-h...

Going to need a bigger boat.

I’ve been clawing at sheets,
frantic,
losing sleep.

It takes a big, big god
to fill me—

with love bold enough,
vast enough,
to fill my Queen
of Cups.

#Poetry #Poem #NSFWLines
#NSFWPoetry #Erotica #EroticPoetry

A Quiet Place Day One Her Silence, Her City: Dying at the End of the World

The film doesn't ask how we survive. It asks how we go, and who notices when we do. A Quiet Place: Day One is a study of how grief and ritual turn a city into a dying organism. It's a story that finds its rhythm in the hush.

Pirates of the Caribbean: Lost on Familiar Shores How Jack Sparrow turned empire’s grief into charm

open.substack.com/pub/offscree...

I am the brackish tumbling
that tickled your shores—
welcome, witnessed,
a change of pace.

Barren of footprints
as the season turned.

I’m pulled back
by the gravity of your darkness,
drawn deeper
into myself—

to remember
I am more
than any high tide.

#Poetry #Poem #SkyPoet
#BlueskyPoetry

A broken will at a rainy day’s dawn

Still wants to see the sunlight illuminate nature’s beauty

Unfairness at life hypocrisies

Still doesn’t change the wide open field’s almost #unbearable grace

As new days rise, their wonders at least won’t be defeated

#vss365 #poetry

T-Rex at sunset

The cultural landscape of Anthropocene

It’s hard to think “normally”

When every word that really wants to come out speaks of hidden pain

Pain hidden to make others comfortable

Or words of love too much to bare

Why interact when my feelings turn cities to ruins?

Speaking alone is bitter but better

#vss365 #poetry

Superman 2025 The Sound of Compromise, The Refusal That Remains

Superman has always been less about flight than about weight:
the lies he tells, the flags he’s forced under, the labor he’s squeezed into.

My new essay asks: what happens when even hope is branded? #Superman

open.substack.com/pub/offscree...

I make it a point to notice how often I’m asked to disarm myself with self-deprecating jokes, just to make others more comfortable with my energy.

What other people need to believe about you, and what you need to believe about you, are often different.

#ThoughtJournal

Framing Monsters: Wednesday Elegy tolls in laughter, irony, and brand

Framing Monsters: Wednesday. From 1964 black-and-white crypts to headless dolls & dragon tears, explore how the Addams Family's vigil for the strange endures.
#Wednesday #Gothic
offscreenobservations.substack.com/p/framing-mo...

Interstellar and the Inheritance of Gravity The Beginning Is the End Is the Beginning

Interstellar and the Inheritance of Gravity. From Cooper’s earthbound chase to the moon’s erased wonder, it’s a test of survival’s cost. Does gravity forgive?

offscreenobservations.substack.com/p/interstell...

Robocops: And the City That Sold Its Soul The satire, the spectacle, and the systems that survived the credits.

RoboCop's myth: man inside the machine, but consent's the real glitch. Explored the 1987 & 2014 films in my new Substack series, 'Satire Meets Predictive Policing.' What haunts you more: the body horror or the system? #RoboCop #Dystopia

offscreenobservations.substack.com/p/robocops-a...

Alien & The Thing: The Systems That Let the Monster In A dual dissection of systemic abandonment and the horror of suspicion, in space, and in the ice.

Alien: Earth arrives Aug 12, so I probed Alien & The Thing’s frozen, claustrophobic dread. This essay unveils how systems, not just creatures, haunt us. Corridors hide traps; trust burns away. Hyped for xenomorphs? #AlienEarth
offscreenobservations.substack.com/p/crew-expen...

Dune 2 and the Myth That Chose Him Power, prophecy, and the silence that shaped Paul Atreides

Been thinking about Dune 2: Stilgar’s hope, Chani’s defiance, Gurney’s memory. Prophecy shapes Paul, but who shapes the myth?

offscreenobservations.substack.com/p/dune-2-and...

Roaring stars in silent skies

All we have to do is look up

Conversations on fresh grass with three minds connected that wonder

What would it be like to escape the sass of who would decide to rule them

#vss365 #poetry

It’s not about the hero’s journey. It’s about the silence that let it happen. Paul didn’t choose the myth. The myth chose him.

Primer: The Lie Rehearsed Performance, Paradox, and the Loops That Build a Man

Just published a piece on Primer,
not about time loops, but identity loops.
About performance, curation, and the people who don’t get a retake.
offscreenobservations.substack.com/p/primer-the...