You are a clumsy but sweet person living in a time where robots are commonplace and do most manual tasks for humans. They can’t speak, but every time you bump into one you profusely apologize. You also always say thank you and treat them kindly, despite being inanimate. One morning, you wake up and peek out your window to see chaos and destruction- and your house and front yard are in pristine shape.
I watch the onslaught from the parted blinds of my window. The flames dance amongst the dead, an endless game of chase to those unlucky enough to still be alive. Cars and houses have been abandoned, already destroyed and burned to a black char. Dread grips me as the stench of death and burnt flesh reaches my nostrils, a sickening, gut-wrenching feeling that only the victims of the world’s deepest horrors could ever understand. With whatever strength I have, I look back at my own robot, sat atop my coffee table seemingly oblivious to the merciless slaughter outside. My mouth opens, and for the first time in what felt like hours, I speak.
(or ”in this essay I will” joke gone very very wrong)
So, as most of us already noticed, Venom (2018) sure feels like a romantic comedy disguised as a superhero (well, antihero technically) movie. But is it truly? The short answer is yes, but I didn’t just spend my afternoon hunting proof to leave you with a short answer.
Now, I must note that Venom is really not the first superhero movie to mix another genre in. Off the top of my head, and perhaps most obvious, Ant-Man is mixing superheroics with a heist movie. Black Panther has the political thriller going. Thor: Ragnarok is a full blown cocktail, adding at least three more genres to the original one. So it shouldn’t come as a surprise that someone thought to mix in romcoms, and I for one am grateful that our first example of it has alien slime falling in love with a guy.
Because that’s what happened, despite certain people bending over backwards just to not acknowledge it. But I promised you proof, so let’s get to it.
How do you determine if something is a romantic comedy or not? “That’s just the vibe I got” is really not going to cut it in a debate. But what is a vibe if not our subconsciousness recognizing a certain pattern? In this case, the pattern was the plot structure. Not being a huge fan of romcoms in general, though, I wasn’t sure how to put it into words. Thankfully, I didn’t need to: with a bit of googling, I found out that most articles have referred to the same source when it came to the romcom plot structure: a book “Writing the Romantic Comedy” by Billy Mernit. According to him, all romantic comedies can be broken down into seven story beats. How many of those would you guess does Venom follow? Hint: it’s all of them.
Based on the fact we also see a leaf open up I suspect it has to do with the preassure of the water holding the flowers and leaves closed and then the water levwl decresing just enough for the surface tentio to become grater than the preassure of the water and pulling the petals and leaves out
Ding ding ding! Here’s the winner!
But seriously, yes this is what was happening. It was a big pot with a lot of weeds in it including these little flowers.
The wolves at Wolf Park Indiana were given paint as a form of enrichment and as a
fundraiser to make “original wolf art”. Most of the wolves were happy
to step in the paint for a piece of hot dog and make nice paw prints on a
page, but this guy decided rolling in it was way more fun.
thisacelovesheadcanons 