[Still Corners - Creatures Of An Hour (2011)
Saija Grzegorek
Students in MSCH-P432 TV series were assigned to write an overview of an original hour-long streaming series. The overview was required to give an overall sense of the series so that a reader immediately sees the world, feels the tone and has a sense of the characters and their story arcs over the course of the season.
Drenched in rain where nightmarish monsters lurk around every corner, the tone of the series is dark and eerie, gothic and mystical. You never know what will be around the corner, but you know it could be either beautiful or absolutely terrifying. Or both. Naturally, with most of the internal conflict focused on a father-daughter duo, there are heart wrenching moments paired with well placed dashes of humor.
Visiting backwater towns, fighting airship pirates in the sky, and dodging ancient booby traps are just a handful of the problems Winona will face on her quest to find the true cause of the monsters. With the aid of her friends and the hesitant support from her father, Winona will do whatever she can to rid the world of the monsters and their black magic.
The series is serial in nature, with each hour-long episode consecutively following Winona on her journey to first piece together the Source then follow where it leads. The first season, comprised of eight episodes, is structured in three acts: Act I being episodes 1-2, Act II being episodes 3-5, and Act III being episodes 6-8.
This series is built upon its beautiful visuals. A mix of 2D and 3D animation in stunning stylized grayscale reminiscent of film noirs with vivid accent colors, namely blue and brown, the animation is both an artistic wonder and enjoyable to watch. Aesthetically, the world of the series is heavily influenced by steampunk and decopunk aesthetic styles, blending the roaring 20s, the Victorian era, and futuristic technology into an anachronistic masterpiece.
This series, at its core, is a classic action-adventure story, but reconstructed. Instead of a gruff, tough, male protagonist, a kind young woman is at the forefront. The inner struggles are familial (uncharacteristically seen in the third installment of the Indiana Jones franchise), which is uncommon in the genre. However, plenty of the staple dramatic fight and chase scenes are still present.
She strongly believes that Cleverness and kindness should be the first option before force, and that friendship and connection hold the same weight, if not more, than blood relation, a sentiment not shared by Montgomery, her father. Winona also is not fond of killing the creatures she encounters, but rather hoping to find a way to free them of their curse. However, she is reluctantly resigned to killing them against her better judgment until she can come up with something that can be called a cure. And while the Langston family is important, the protection of the people at large comes first.
As a small child, her mother was fatally injured while on a hunt with her father, and she perished before making it to a hospital. With this seared into her memory, Winona has vowed to extend the same hopeful outlook her mother had about the world to her work as a monster hunter and to find a way to end the creation of the monsters for good. Unfortunately, working as a monster hunter for years piles on the stress and trauma of losing her mother, yet she perseveres.
Once half of a map comes into possession, Winona fights to find the other half and use it to reach a tomb in the desert that could hold the First Creature, the oldest and most dangerous of them all. Winona wants to get there first, with her father in tow, and beat their rival archaeologist, Barnabas Harrison Beaumont, to have a shot at taking out the worst monster, and hopefully all the monsters afterwards. During her trek and its consequences, Winona will transform from the relatively secluded daughter into the champion of good in a fight against unimaginable evil.
When he was a young child, his father left him to fight a creature on his own to learn the importance of the family business, and he was left with a scar on his face and the idea that there is only one way to deal with these creatures. After the death of his wife, this was solidified. Violence sometimes is the only answer, and those you love must be sheltered at all costs. Because of this Montgomery falsely believes that the Langstons are the only ones who can keep the monsters at bay, and they must do it how they have been doing it for centuries.
She wants to know as much as she can about the elite of the City, presumably for blackmail, but she needs to connect with herself and let herself connect with others who could be genuine friends. She will go from a socialite who keeps her true emotions hidden to a good friend of the Langstons who seems to know exactly where to get what they need to stop the creatures.
She wants to leave the junkyard behind and make it as a mechanic on a working, flying airship, but she needs to learn to balance her bluntness and her timidness about advocating for herself to make it as a team player. She goes from just one of many scrappers at the junkyard to not only a mechanic, but one of the heavy hitters of the new and improved Langston Family Business.
At first, he wants to join the expedition to gain more experience (and get closer to Winona), but it quickly shifts to him wanting to get out of this mess alive, but he needs to learn how to stand his ground to do so. While he never becomes a fighter, he turns from a meek academic to a tried-and-true adventurer, who lets his curiosity take him where he needs to go.
The Langston Family Business takes place in a world similar to our own, full of almost-but-not-quites, with many social, artistic, and technological differences. Steampunk and decopunk aesthetics cross over, despite being based on the late 1800s and the 1920s, respectively, and bullet trains exist with steamboats and airships. The rules and aesthetics of the world are built upon anachronisms on purpose, so that the audience can both be immersed in its familiarity while also being pulled in by its uniqueness.
Manor Langston is the home of Montgomery and Winona. Passed down through generations of monster hunters, the stately manor has seen its fair share of wear and tear. Once occupied by a large family and their staff, only Montgomery and Winona remain. It is beautiful but eerie. Art of unknown origin peppers the walls, broken up by trophies of monster hunting expeditions. Since it is their home, the Langstons speak their minds here, and the echoing, dusty hallways are the perfect place to explore what legacy really means.
The Twins are, in essence, goddesses of balance: one of good, the other of evil. The Aether and the Nether. Constantly strategizing to conquer humanity but can never walk among them. The Nether offers power to those who serve her, but at the total cost of their humanity, turning them into horrid monsters. The Aether is more reserved in her gifts, but she watches over those who are kind, compassionate, and driven. She has been watching the Langston line for centuries, awaiting the return of magic to their blood.
A man of great ambition and greed, the Nether chose him to bring about destruction and ruin in her name, and he almost succeeded until the ancestors of the Langstons killed him and entombed his body in Egypt, far away from his origin, to make sure his memory is lost to the sands of time. His heart was also calcified into a sapphire and separated from his body. Devoid of blood, he remains in a corpselike, catatonic state. However, devotees of the Nether found the heart, inscribing a map to the tomb on it in the hopes of the Sapphire Witch finding it, for only her blood in his heart can make the Champion rise again.
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