The Shrieking Shack

Twilight/Midnight Sun chapters 'The Hunt' We ease into our new evening schedule with a check-in on the Peacock Box before discussing a truly electrifying chapter of our vampire romance novel(s). 75% of the way through the book, conflict is here! ...In the form of some French guys we've never heard of. How will Edward mind-read his way out of this one, and can he earn any boyfriend points along the...

Twilight/Midnight Sun chapter 'The Game' The Money Fandom is out of control this week and we check in with the aftermath of the latest round of WB/Discovery news and lament how close we might have come to Fantastic Beasts meeting a dark fate. Then we have a packed chapter to discuss: Billy is making veiled threats! Bella isn't understanding them! Edward is running really fast next to the freeway!...

Twilight/Midnight Sun chapter: Carlisle It's another no news week so far for us (knock on wood) so we spend our time at the anchor's desk goofing off and talking about private planes, Star Trek: Voyager, pricing errors, and movie lengths. Our chapters this week were incredibly short (Twilight's was 10 pages!) and maybe the most pointless content in both Twilight and Midnight Sun so far, but we hav...

Bella visits the Vampire Family. After a recent run of Shriekcast After Dark recordings, we record a little earlier to beat the heat! We chat about morning television and blockbuster adventure movies based on YA movies before moving on to discuss our chapters. Edward has decided it's time to introduce Bella to his family, but how will she react to his giant windows and chessboards?

Twilight chapter 14/Midnight Sun chapter 18 We convene a Late Recording to deliver a rowdy episode about a rowdy pair of chapters! Bella has invited Edward into her house, but what's going to happen when there's only one bed!? It turns out that they won't, naturally, but things will get incredibly weird, between Edward admitting that he has been watching Bella sleep and Charlie entering a game of...

Twilight chapter 13/Midnight Sun chapter 17 We've had a week (knock on wood) with precious little Potter or Twilight news, so we start this week's episode with another Maximum Ride check-in as a sort of Common-Room-Lite treat! Then we're off to the meadow to discuss Confessions, which is perhaps the origin of a huge amount of the popular criticism of Twilight from the mid 2000s. This chapter is eq...

It's a big one this week! After catching up with some updates on last week's news stories and checking in with Maximum Ride, we have four (!!!) chapters of Twilight and Midnight Sun combined to get to. Not much is happening, but there's a lot going on, not least of which is Edward's wardrobe. We've got so much Twilight content, in fact, that we have to take a little detour for our third segment an...

Twilight chapter 11/Midnight Sun chapters 12-13 Here we are! Safe from the heat with a late night recording, we cover the surprisingly ample amount of news from the past week and dig through a combined three (!) chapters of Vampire Content! This week, Edward and Bella have long, deep conversations about soda, Linkin Park, and much much more--all while watching movies in class and dodging shuttleco...

Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore Well, here we are. After actual years of filming delays, author controversies, and a theatrical release we didn't feel like spending money on, we've finally watched the third and hopefully final entry in the Fantastic Beasts series. Thankfully, for as predictably awful as it is, it's awful in some very unpredictable ways--and per tradition, we have an ep...

Twilight chapter 11/Midnight Sun chapter 12 Well, well, well! The money fandom is in shambles as two franchises race to the bottom of the box office. This week's chapters are the closest together these two books have been yet, so we have a fun time analyzing both characters' contributions to a very, very long conversation they have with each other about who loves the other more. Which one of these...

Twilight chapter 10/Midnight Sun chapter 11 (Theory) Well, the new Fantastic Beasts movie is on HBO Max now, so I guess we have to watch it... soon. This week, however, we have a strange pairing of Twilight chapters set almost entirely in a car going 80-100mph. We chat about Bella's confession, how enigmatic Edward truly is (and how Midnight Sun fiddles with that perception), vampire murder morali...

Twilight & Midnight Sun joint chapter (Port Angeles) Well, well, well! Harry Potter is back in the news thanks to a maddeningly vague line in a Wall Street Journal profile of the new Warner/Discovery media boss. Since we can't glean anything of substance from that, we dig a little deeper by examining a recently published poll comparing the franchise to other current blockbuster tent-poles. Can dat...

Twilight chapter 8/Midnight Sun chapter 9. This week features Bella storming off to her room to listen to Linkin Park (really!), getting so mad at Mansfield Park she slams her book shut, and Edward using vampire telepathy to read peoples' horny thoughts--and that's the easy stuff. There's also a pair of new evil vampires that Edward is worried might attack Bella, but not that worried? Oh, and we l...

Twilight chapter 6/Midnight Sun chapter 7 We're back with another pair of split chapters this week! Bella is off to the beach with her school friends and learns some disturbing facts about the Cullens; Edward, meanwhile, is at home with his weird family composing tunes and hunting mountain lions. We've got lots to discuss, and it's a real range: from prose and chess rules all the way to racism and...

Twilight chapter 5/Midnight Sun chapter 5 We're back! After a week's break, it's time to check back in with the money fandom again, now that the new Fantastic Beasts has been in theaters for nearly a month. More importantly, we've got a new pair of Twilight/Midnight Sun chapters to discuss! This week we see some of the most recognizable moments and traits of the series on display; for better and f...

We check in once more with the money fandom to see how Fantastic Beast's U.S. box offices numbers look before diving into a triple (!) helping of vampire drama. This week, Bella is free from the hospital and already back to gruffly monologuing about everything that bothers her--and this week, it's boys; both boys who aren't Edward, but perhaps Edward most of all. We've got tons of school drama, va...

Twilight Chapter 3/Midnight Sun Chapter 3 The money fandom is dying! We tally up Fantastic Beast 3's international box office numbers. How is it faring in the Season of Morbius? Speaking of vampires, we have some juicy character stuff to explore this week. How long will Edward's roguish charms and gatekeep-gaslight-girlboss vampire secret hiding routine stay charming, and how long can Bella succes...

Twilight Chapter 2; Midnight Sun Chapter 2 After a brief check-in with the advent calendar of bad PR events marring the countdown to the new Fantastic Beasts film release, we head back to Forks WA to hear more of Bella's adventures! This week... well, not much actually happens, but there's a lot to talk about! Meanwhile, Edward is in Alaska whipping his car around corners and ordering exclusive bu...

This week's episode is a fun surprise. :)

It's a big news week for the Shriekcast! We've got a loooong discussion of the State of Play gameplay reveal for HP Skyrim (or, from the looks of things, HP Fable) this week to make up for the fact that we are now free agents when it comes to reading! We have a lot to discuss, from our gut reactions to the game in a vacuum and the precarious, exhausting position it has forced itself into as a AAA...

Cursed Child stage play. We're in the big apple, baby! We took a plane/time machine into the past to see a performance of the Cursed Child in New York with the original London cast. We... had a surprising time! We dig into all of our detailed thoughts: what met our expectations, what surprised us, and what let us down. This 8th story has been a real roller coaster for us, and you might be surprise...

Cursed Child reading wrap-up episode! With our reading complete, we take some time to discuss our overall thoughts on the play before we embark on our Very Real journey to See It In Real Life! What worked? What didn't? What did other reviewers think at the time? We check in with a mix of coverage from our rogue's gallery, and then another article illuminating some of our questions about who worked...

Cursed Child act IV! This act was a bit faster-paced than the rest, so we ended up covering it all in one long go. The boys are back in time and there seems to be no other special time turners... what could possibly get our heroes out of this jam?! The answer might surprise you. We've got Blanket Plans, Smoke Rings, Demiguise Lore (!), Voldemort Styles, and much, much, MUCH more in this extra long...

Act 3 part two! The second half of the act 3 roller coaster is aimed directly at our asses. We have a Cool Villain Reveal, flying, a comedy Cedric performance (that's the guess, at least) and a whole host of other moments so over the top it's hard not to be delighted. We discuss how strange this all feels coming off of Deathly Hallows, how different Thorne's work feels from JKR's, and how the fand...

Cursed Child Part Two Part One (Act 3) Wowza! This act is A Lot, but we are not immune to its charms. In the world of Evil Hogwarts, only the campiest survive... and even then some of them don't! We chat about the refreshing return to the tongue-in-cheek lower stakes presentation of the early novels that this play provides, as well as the few odd moments where it fumbles by reminding us that the s...