The Arcade Power Hour

I wake up

Eyes fuzzy, brain muddy

The world bombards each of my senses with noise

But as I calm

And I sit up from my rest

My empty grey room greets me

I look around

And there’s nobody in sight

Exactly like every day

I whisper to myself

My daily mantra

“What day is it, why am I here?”

But as if upon cue

Some streamers fall down

And noise fills my ears once again

Balloons hit the floor

A cake lands in my lap

And sparklers spin out from the walls

So I guess

I have something to celebrate

I dig into the cake

It tastes like cakes do

I have no complaints but no praise

But now that I’m done

And the sparklers have burnt

All of my interest has waned

As quick as they came

The decorations vanish

As if whisked away by a ghost

And now that I stare

Back at these grey walls

My heart sinks a little too low

I had gotten used

To the absence of colour

And the emptiness filled with just air

But now that I’ve had

That brief encounter with hope

It’s like I’m left back at the start

I don’t know when I’ll leave

Or when I arrived

But I know that I can’t stay for long

Or soon my eyes will

Adjust to the grey

And the streamers will look just like mould

@alwaysdearie answering this publicly in case anyone else had the same problem/question! first, thank you ❤️ on a/mazon and all the other streaming platforms I’m aware of, the series is divided into the pre and post-Barnabas episodes. which is somewhat confusing to anyone trying to watch from the beginning for the first time. as far as I know, this is because of how the series was originally released on VHS, which didn’t include the pre-barnabas episodes until much later. (and I believe syndication never had them) I suspect it’s still divided this way because of something about the licensing. inconvenient!

if you’re looking on a/mazon, the first 1-209 episodes are under the heading “dark shadows: the beginning”, while the barnabas and onward eps are just “dark shadows”

same thing with tubi:

additionally, these two (the haunting of Collinwood and the vampire curse) are not the whole series, just compilations of a particular story arc. but the covers are misleadingly similar!

it would be so awesome