Hell Reviews - Repo! The Genetic Opera.

Synopsis: Opulently blood-spattered sci-fi gothic rock opera. In the near future, humankind is suffering a worldwide epidemic of organ failures. In the midst of the crisis, a multinational biotech corporation called GeneCo launches a finance programme for organ transplants. But there's a catch: those who miss their monthly payments are hunted down and 'repossessed' by the dreaded Repo Men, who are out to retrieve their property as quickly - and as painfully - as they can. Alexa Vega stars as Shilo Wallace, an over-protected young girl seeking answers to her own rare disease and her family's mysterious history. Will her questions finally be answered at the eagerly-anticipated, flamboyantly spectacular Genetic Opera? Paul Sorvino and Paris Hilton co-star.

 

So back in the good old days, when Blockbuster was still a thing, my parents came home one day with a surprise collection of DVD’s and amongst them was Repo: The Genetic Opera.
Now a random fact is I keep wanting to call it; Repo the Generic Rock Opera.
This has nothing to do with my opinion on the film, it’s the same as me always wanting to say ‘Specific Rim’.
That means nothing to anyway, just a fascinating fact about Hell.
Anyway, one of my best friends happened to be over on the day they rented the film and we figured we’d hunker up in my room and give it a watch together, it’s always more fun with friends, right?

My initial reaction was one of awe, it was pretty awesome.

The scenery was beautiful, creating a typical dark future world with a colour palette that would blend in well with Evanescence’s Bring Me To Life video, it’s dark, gothic and seems to catch the aim it was going for.
The costumes were astounding, I especially like Graverobber and Blind Mag’s outfits, aside from all the make up slathered onto the former.
It goes without saying that some of the singers, once again Blind Mag, could blow you away with one note, and I’ve seen people online saying this isn’t even the actresses’ best performance!
After a few watches the novelty did wear off a bit, but it was still a good film.

Now I still really like the film, there are just a few performances I can be nitpicky about…okay, mainly one performance.

Despite not being a Paris Hilton fan, she did alright in her role in this film, maybe because she wasn’t supposed to be playing anyone with even a modicum of talent and plenty of self delusion, it fit her perfectly.
So this point isn’t about her, I just wanted to point out that aside from still not being able to sing or act, she did well here.
My main gripe is with Alexa Vega.
I refuse to look at this through nostalgia goggles just because she was in Spy Kids, which I loved as a kid.
Here you are, this amazing production full of such great talents, and Alexa sadly doesn’t even reach the standards of the others.

That isn’t to say that ALL other characters and actors were top notch and didn’t have their irritations, but honestly? It seems like they purposefully set out for them to be the way they are.

Shilo is just an annoying, bratty girl with a screechy voice who makes my ears bleed.
Was the intention for the character to be like this?
Perhaps.
Considering one of her songs consists of her jumping around, ‘rocking’, and telling her dad he’s basically an old fart who needs to get off, then it’s very possible that it’s the case.
That doesn’t, however, excuse the singing for me.
Each time a scene transitioned to her I inwardly groaned and prayed it would be a rare scene where singing wasn’t a thing.
Most of the time I was wrong.

The story isn’t the strongest out there, but it gets by with what it’s got honestly.

There are bits which are intriguing, I personally enjoyed the whole thing going on with Blind Mag, as well as the conflict of the Repo Man trying to juggle his grisly job whilst keeping his daughter inside for protection.
Unfortunately most of the story is just kind of blah, I don’t care about who will take over GeneCo and it was kind of obvious to see what the conclusion was leading to and I certainly didn’t care about Shilo’s ‘illness’.
I think the ending is ultimately a ‘screw you, because protagonist’ scenario, and those things piss me off personally, but all in all it was plain to guess where it was leading.

It’s kind of gory, it’s musical and sometimes unintentionally hilarious.

It’s worth a watch if you want to take your mind off life for a while, just don’t expect it to stick with you for too long.

My Monster by Hell.R.

I can’t move.

My body refuses to comply with the simplest of requests, even the twitch of a single finger seems impossible.

I can’t speak.

My tongue feels like it’s been torn out and replaced with a slab of felt, stitched in place to fool anyone around me that it’s real.

I can’t open my eyes.

My eyelids feel heavy, even getting them to flutter feels like a challenge in itself.

Even with my eyes involuntarily closed I can tell that I’m surrounded by nothing but darkness, I should be led in my bed and sleeping soundly, but this feels like something much deeper.

There are footsteps to my side, shuffling along the floor to my left, accompanied by the sound of a girl muttering and whispering. They don’t sound like the typical kind of footsteps, more like a light scraping as if they had to force their feet along the ground.

The voice doesn’t sound like a young girl, more like an adult mocking a child much younger than them in a crude imitation. It’s almost pantomime like.

Within mere seconds I feel them shift on top of me, legs placed either side of me and hands splayed across my chest.

They’re as light as you’d expect a child to be, but yet I still feel my breathing become restricted. Taking in the smallest amount of air becomes a tremendous task and within moments my lungs are begging me to draw in a deep breath.

Their weight begins to shift in a pattern and it doesn’t take long to figure out that they have started rocking, using me like some kind of toy horse.

“You left us,” she coos in that horribly saturated sweet voice.

I want to respond ‘Us who?’ but still can’t speak, all that comes out sound like slurred grunts of incoherent words.

It transpires that I didn’t need to be able to talk as she mockingly replies. “You know who ‘us’ is.”

I half expected to hear a giggle at the end of that sentence, it feels foreign and almost empty when she doesn’t.

The weight shifts again and I feel strangely textured hands running up my neck and along my cheeks, eventually halting as they rest there with the thumbs pressed against my lips.

With a lot of force I manage to shift my head to the side and try to dislodge the hands from the side of my face, instead she shifts my head back up.

My body is crying out for oxygen and I feel close to panicking.

“We didn’t get to finish our last game.”

I want to push her off but it takes so much will power to simply move one part of my body, after an intense struggle with desperation I feel only my right index finger twitch a little, brushing lightly against her soft leg.

That’s when the giggle finally filled the air and shrouded me with dread, it was a haunting sound as she took glee in my weakness.

I feel two of the fingers shift up to my eyelids and push on them ever so gently, she pushed until my eyes are opened half lidded.

Even in the pitch blackness of the room she seemed to be illuminated in an odd light, one that brought out all her features.

I recognised the grotesque, grey skinned and terribly thin ragdoll of myself, her eyes half lidded and staring into my own. Patchwork marks were strewn across her body leaving the closest thing to scars that could appear on her body, her clothes matched my usual shirt and jeans style except they were much more tattered.

Her head was tilted so her straggly, woollen hair tickled the side of my neck.

Her mouth was stitched into a lopsided smile.

“I missed you,” she whispers in a husky tone.

As if she just realised that she should have no free will her arms collapse from underneath her, she drops limply onto me so her head is resting against mine.

Despite no other signs of life aside from her movement, I can hear her breathing in my ear. Almost like she was bragging about the life she was taking from me.

As she lies with her head resting against mine, the stolen breath wafting over my face rhythmically, she reminds me of a child. Cuddling up to the mother figure for comfort and warmth, waiting for those soft words of protection, she closes her hauntingly dark eyes and lets out a sigh of contentment.

My mind starts racing as breathing becomes impossible, no air was leaving nor entering my body and the world around me was getting hazy. It’s a familiar feeling, one I’ve encountered a few times in my teen years when this monster first reared her head and dragged me away from everything.

I won’t let that happen again.

I was defeated once and overcame it all, as I finally make my right hand move with great difficulty, I vow to myself that I will be sure to fight it again, get my strength back and steal my life from back her once more.

Broken by Hell.R.

I’m broken.

Don’t look too closely, you won’t be able to see it.

I can pass people in the street easily and they would think of me no differently than anyone else they have passed that day.

I’ve heard countless times how I look fine, how there doesn’t seem to be an issue.

My problems have been passed over because I don’t look like I’d have problems getting around by myself, eating, drinking or dressing.

I’ve had a medical professional tell me I was a typical young adult when I expressed that I would struggle to get out of bed, I was dismissed as being ‘lazy’ despite my underlying condition.

It’s in the human nature to judge on first appearance, I firmly believe anyone who claims they don’t is a liar. Everyone has at one point and denying it won’t make it any less true, you can feel ashamed for doing it and it doesn’t have to be a regular occurrence, but it happens to us all.

People have given me disapproving looks, or ones of dismissal, when I say in basic conversations that I can understand or at least sympathise with them a little. I’ve lost count of the amount of times people try to joke it off because of my age.

“But you’re so young,” is a common comment.

Usually I try to laugh it off and joke around about how I don’t feel it sometimes, but I always regret not correcting them. I sometimes wonder if they think I’m being pandering or condescending, perhaps I’ve even insulted some.

If I did explain would it even matter? Would they continue to believe I can’t understand because I don’t look like someone who could sympathise with the situation?

Perhaps I’m just making excuses.

Being broken isn’t always a physical break, you won’t always see my cracks but I can assure you they’re there. I’ve just mastered a way to hide my struggles; I keep to myself and don’t make it a point to constantly push my problem in people’s faces.

If it’s ever felt to anyone that I have then I apologise, it was never my intention.

I tire of having to reserve myself so much at times.

I wish I could keep up with other people.

I’ve come to learn to deal with the fact that I won’t.

But I live a good life and get the support I need when I need it.
I can smile and be perfectly fine whilst worrying that my cracks will get larger and no one will understand because I look fine.

I don’t want pity.

I just want people to understand that I’m broken.

And there’s nothing wrong with that

The Ragdoll by Hell.R.

I’m sat in pure darkness; the only source of light is coming from the space underneath the thick wooden door across from me, the smallest slither that barely shone onto the wooden floor.

My back is slumped against the wall as my hands lie lifelessly by my sides, I want to move them but I can’t, I am no longer in control of my own body.

My head is slumped against my right shoulder, I don’t have the strength to hold it up by sheer will power, I tried for so long but gave up a while ago.

My legs are sprawled out in front of me, the limbs covered by long striped socks that do nothing to keep my feet from getting cold.

My dark eyes remain fixed on the door, only half open, waiting for any sign of movement from the other side.

Time means nothing here, I can’t even estimate how long I’ve been in here, days and weeks mean nothing anymore, it has all just become one big blur. The only way to tell the passing of night to day is when the light under the door disappears; it took a while to even figure that out.

I hadn’t seen any of my friends for so long, when had I become so useless to them?

When I couldn’t move to my own accord?

When I lost all free will and could only sit in a room?

Lifeless like a ragdoll.

No one wants to be around someone who can’t keep up with them, who offers no fun and who can only listen and respond when their throat was strong enough to allow this person to speak for a few sentences, before withering away into nothing but a rasp and that all still depended on if their mouth would move to form actual words.

If my voice worked I would be calling out for help, it gets so lonely in here. The only source of entertainment is my imagination but even that runs thin after a while, eventually you simply revert back to your memories of how everything used to be.

The further into the memories you get the more you begin to imagine all the ‘what ifs’, how life could have been had you never become like this. The restrictions of your new life as a ragdoll hit you full force and you begin to miss things you never realised you cared about before, the things you took for granted for years.

I can hear voices on the other side of the door now, gradually getting louder.

Images flashed into my mind of the last visit I had, a group of people in white and blue scrubs had come in and prominently opened my chest up. Something had been removed as a man reassured me that everything would be alright, the whole world was so blurry that I barely remember what happened but I know these people in white visited me often.

A loud click resounds around the room, there’s nothing to cushion the sound as I’m the only thing in this room. There are no decorations, ornaments or any form of personality in the room, just white walls and a dark wood floor.

Light soon floods inside, it’s blinding at first until blurry shadowed figures take up space in the doorway. At first the sudden brightness is blinding and causes my eyes to ache, it’s only a matter of seconds before they adjust to the light and see all too familiar faces decorate the blankness of the shadows.

I feel the corners of my mouth try to twitch into a smile as I stare at my family, my parents and my brothers, each giving me a reassuring smile themselves. Tears visibly pricked at my mum’s eyes as they roamed over my form, slumped against the floor.

In a few large strides my dad and eldest brother had come to either side of me, eagerly pulling me up to stand. They lifted me by the arms and held me there, so my feet lightly touched the floor but I didn’t have to put any weight on my weak legs, for now standing by myself was impossible.

My mum walked over and briskly brushed off the collected dust and dirt with her hand, looking up at me every now and then with a look of relief.

“Don’t worry, everything will be okay,” she said softly, soothingly.

And I knew it would be, with the love and help of my family and friends, I knew that eventually I could become more than a worthless, lifeless ragdoll and could become a real girl again.

Ragdoll Disease

Keeping in tune with the ragdoll theme that started with my review of a book called The Ragdoll yesterday, I feel like posting my own short story of the same name.
Before I do that I will give it a little background in the shortest way I can, it's a rather long story with all the details.
So the short version is that when I was twelve I caught a chest infection that developed into pneumonia and this eventually brought out a recessive neuromuscular condition I was diagnosed with called Myasthenia Gravis.
This is essentially a condition that affects the muscles and weakens them, it's rare that it effects women under the age of forty but anyone can have it and not realise until something brings it out. Some people have a lesser case where it'll just affect their face, others have it more severe where it can affect their whole body.
Unfortunately I had the latter.
Anyway many Prednisolone and Pyridostigmine  doses (among many other medication trials, an operation and a shock test) later my MG went into remission, I was about fourteen or fifteen at the time and I'm doing much better with very few slip ups.
Now Myasthenia Gravis is also known as The Ragdoll disease due to how it affects the muscles, and I always had this penchant for drawing and writing, not meaning I was great at it or anything but I just enjoyed it.
Usually I focus more on horror, myths and legends from around the world (and...Supernatural fanfiction...) but I wanted to do something that was kind of fairytale like but still a general account of my experience, and thus I came up with an idea to write a short story and drew a small picture to go with it.
This eventually led to a longer version with no picture, and I will share both here.
The picture and original story will go on here and I'll make a new post with the new, updated story.

The original ragdoll picture created in 2011:

 

 

The original story (as I know my handwriting is not all that readable!) :

 



There once was a young girl who was loved by many.
Young and innocent, she didn't have a care in the world, but innocence blinded her to the act fate was about to bestow on her.
With a cruel spell the young girl was turned into a ragdoll, although now eternally youthful she had lost all strength and relied on others.
Slowly people began to leave her, finding no use for something that could barely move.
As people left her behind there was nothing she could do but to stay in the dark room they had pushed her into, sitting alone she waits in the dark for someone else to come and play with her once more.