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Arthur Keller- Illustration of Ichabod Crane fleeing the Headless Horseman, 1906.
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Spooky Fun fact for you:
Did you know that In Disney's "Legend of Sleepy Hollow" there are TWO headless horsemen? Brom Bones, obviously, and the real one.
Don't believe me? Check this out!
So when animating all the characters in Legend of Sleepy Hollow, the Disney team made sure to animate each individual character as either Right or Left handed specifically.
Ichabod is consistently Right handed throughout the entire picture.
While Katrina van Tassel is Consistently Left Handed.
There's only one point where Katrina is drawn Right Handed, when she is writing, but seeing as we are watching her hands as she does this, it's clear the animators chose to show her writing in a way so that it wouldn't obscure the words.
Everyone else is either right or left handed specifically.
All, that is, except Brom Bones, who is specifically drawn to be Ambidextrous.
From his first appearance he is punching open things with his left hand, and maneuvering things with his right. He tosses things with both arms, and handles knives with both hands.
In the Headless Horseman song he repeatedly switches arms in his demonstrations. He even switches pointing arms from the beginning of the song to the end.
Now let's look over at old HH.
The first time Ichabod encounters him is in the cemetery, and we get this excellent pan up and dramatic shot.
Note, the sword is in his right hand.
Also that is not a pumpkin.
Ichabod runs, and the Headless Horseman gives chase, the entire time his sword arm remains on his Right.
Part way through Ichabod loses the Horseman for a hot minute by falling down a short cliff.
He eventually gets back on the road, spots the bridge, only to get jump-scared by the Horseman lunging out of the woods in front of him.
Ichabod, of course, turns and runs again, and the Horseman gives chase again, but this time he's changing sword arms every other shot.
And once Ichabod reaches the bridge he lobs his Jack-o'-lantern using his left arm.
That is not at all what he was holding earlier.
Also, if I was attempting to throw something, and I intended it to hit, I would definitely use my dominant arm for that. You know, the one you also use as your sword arm?
Unless you're ambidextrous.
Just saying.
So with that all laid out, I want to throw out a couple more things that support this.
1) Ichabod is shown to be completely alone in the graveyard moments before the First Horseman shows up. He even looks at the entire thing multiple times before having a laughing fit with his horse. Additionally, it's so quiet that Ichabod's laughter is echoing off everything. The sound design actively changes so there's nothing but the echoing sound of his laughter. No music, nothing. You don't hear the Horseman until he laughs too, and by then he's right behind Ichabod.
2) The way they draw the object the Horseman is holding in his first appearance vs. At the bridge is completely different. I mentioned this above, but the first object is dark, barely lit, and almost Smaller than the Horseman's hand. That is a skull. The one at the bridge is a jack-o'-lantern, well lit, not even the same shape, massive, and spitting flames. Both are pretty intimidating, but why bother drawing two different ones? It can't be something only Ichabod sees either, because he definitely sees the pumpkin at the end, and again, it's shooting flames. Imagine it's a skull all you want, I doubt he'd downplay the supposed hellfire spewing out.
3) Ichabod falls down two cliff faces in the first part of the chase. The first one he goes down and the Horseman jumps the entire cliff to go after him, not even breaking his gallop. The second cliff however, the horseman doesn't even attempt to follow Ichabod, instead letting him get away for a good amount of time. The horseman was literally right next to Ichabod and chose not to follow him. Why? If there was only one horsemen (Brom) and you were Ok jumping a cliff to keep up the chase once, why break off the second time? Why bother possibly losing Ichabod to go the long way around just so you can jump-scare him in front of the bridge?
A flesh and blood horseman would have followed, but an actual spectre? No. Why?
Because the Bottom of that cliff crashes straight into running water.
Folklore of the time stated that things such as Spirits and the Unholy couldn't cross running water (hence why crossing the bridge meant safe haven). So an actual ghostly horseman would be physically incapable of following Ichabod down the second cliff (metaphysically speaking).
In Conclusion, Disney's "Legend of Sleepy Hollow" is a lot spookier than you probably thought, and the animators really did an excellent job.
Thank you for coming to my T.E.D. talk.
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funny how much both count dracula and van helsing got so drastically mischaracterized in pop culture. no, van helsing isnt some big macho who hunts monsters as a full time job, he is an old doctor who was asked for help by his favorite ex student with a puppy crush bc a woman he loves is dying. no, the count isnt a handsome mystical love interest with a sad backstory about some lost love, he is a bisexual disaster who gets no bitches and crawls on the walls while trying to buy real estate in london.
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i think what i really like about today’s dracula entry is van helsing going “btw mina your husband isn’t insane, there’s an actual, literal vampire out there. and obviously that’s not great but his mental health is fine”
and idk, as someone who is being negatively impacted by The Horrors, i found that comforting. of course you feel bad. there’s a vampire.
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You know, it's kinda wild that Jojo's Bizarre Adventure is a better Dracula adaptation than many intentional Dracula adaptations. I mean, Jonathan is a terminal wife lover. And we love that for him. There's not a cowboy, but there is Speedwagon, which is kind of the same thing.
And one part that I really appreciate is the part where Dio—Dracula—sexually assaults Erina—Mina—and in response, she cleans out her mouth where he kissed her with with dirty water from a mud puddle on the ground. Which absolutely shatters his ego. And that scene alone is already so much better than so many Dracula adaptations I've seen
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While pinball-like games – i.e., glass-fronted inclined tables with bells, bumpers, and spring-loaded ball launchers – were developed in France as early as the mid 1700s, these examples were games of chance, lacking any mechanism for the player to manipulate the ball once it was in play. Initial experiments in introducing an element of player skill by adding flippers proved unsatisfactory, as even the most efficient mechanical flippers were too weak to propel the ball all the way up the table. Pinball would not realise its modern form until the 1940s, with the introduction of power-assisted flippers driven by small electric motors; this final step could in theory have taken place much earlier, the first commercially viable small electric motors having been developed in the 1880s, but economic factors made it impractical.
At this point, one may note that Bram Stoker's famous novel Dracula takes place around 1897.
Thus, permitting only slight anachronism, it is just barely historically possible for Count Dracula to have owned a pinball machine.
Eartha Kitt's career is just so iconic because there's no way you don't know her even if you don't know you know her. You like Christmas music ok well she's Santa Baby. You like Disney animated movie ok well she's Yzma. You like Disney Channel original movie ok well she's Madame Zeroni. You like comic book ok well she is Cat Woman. She won.
You like making the racist wife of a war mongering president cry on national television? She did that
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Pin Lee is such an awesome character because it takes a specific kind of insane person to grow up in a relatively utopic communal society where you can do any or no job and still have your basic needs met, and still decide that what you really want to specialize in is evil corporation law and winning legal battles against said evil corporations. What's her problem <3
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The thing that I think really sets Murderbot apart from a lot of other robot media (particularly mainstream entries like the I, Robot movie) is that bots and constructs aren't a uniquely oppressed class, and humans aren't a uniquely privileged one. A lot of robot media rings a bit hollow because it portrays humans as all living a lavish, comfortable lifestyle, free from the burden of physical labor or control by their corporate overlords, and it's like. I think if the rise of generative AI has proven anything, it's that corporations and billionaires have absolutely no interest in making life easier for anybody, but will gleefully use new technology to make life infinitely worse if it means an extra buck in their pocket.
We are shown over and over again throughout the Murderbot Diaries that humans are mistreated just as badly as (or sometimes, in MB's own opinion, even worse than) bots and constructs. We see humans stripped of their rights, reduced to corporate assets to be bought and sold, sent into suicidal situations, abandoned and discarded as things. We see humans trapped in multigenerational labor contracts -- people born into an indentured servitude that requires them to pay back their food and lodging to the same company that will not let them leave.
None of these are hypothetical scenarios. These are all things that happen to real people in our world today.
And that is a huge part of why it resonates so much. The overarching theme of "capitalism is hell" actually means something because it isn't only applied to the fictional dynamic of bots vs humans. The theme is constantly reiterated through the humans themselves.
And that's also why it's so important that MB demonstrates empathy for and solidarity with humans who are themselves victims of the system. Because ultimately, that's one of the main things the series is about. It's about what it's like to be simultaneously a product, and victim, of a corporate hellscape.
That theme simply can't work if the humans aren't also forced to navigate that issue. If the story can't acknowledge that right now, in our own world, there are humans facing these same problems, and that these human rights matter quite a bit.