dreadful as morning

“Moon Nights” Marvel Swimsuit Special: Brand New Beach Day (Vol. 1/2026), #1.

AZRAEL.

grow, shitbird

Cut up spandex/uniform artfully exposing skin underneath

^ bonus, skin covered in thin slices by the cuts

Uniform so tight the belly button indent is visible

Character tied down by chains/character tied up hanging by chains

Civillian clothes half-covering uniform

Half-dressed in uniform and nothing else

Uniform but no shoes and no cape

I’ve recently made a small update to my blog post about the Swedish game-related film “Livet i 8 bitar”. Specifically, I’ve added a link to a YouTube clip I’ve uploaded of what I personally consider to be the most memorable scene in the film, a scene that I think might have a very special meaning to a certain generation of Swedes. The scene in question is about the film’s protagonist, “J” (played by Sunil Munshi) talking to his psychologist (played by Staffan Westerberg):

I haven’t provided any subtitles in the clip, but here is an overview of what the characters talk about: The psychologist begins by asking J about the “computer games” he’s playing, and what he feels about them. J, irritated, corrects him that it’s “video games”, not “computer games”. The psychologist goes on to ask about the level of violence in the games, and asks J if he feels that he’s affected by it. J, still irritated, denies this, saying that he’s a grown man who can differentiate between fiction and reality. The psychologist then asks “is it really that simple?”, to which J screams “Yes, it’s really that fucking simple!”, before the scene shifts to the fighting game sequence, introduced with some English tough-guy dialogue. After this sequence ends, we cut back to the psychologist gently telling J that if he doesn’t want to talk about it, they can talk about something else.

Of course, the majority of the humor in this scene revolves around the obvious concept of J denying that games might make him violent, in a very violent way, and the image of a kindly old man transforming into a laughing video game villain, complete with an incongruous robot arm. The whole scene comes off like a game version of the classic “Are Comics Serious Literature?” But I think there might be another layer of meaning to the scene, that can only be understood if you know about the actor who plays the psychologist, Staffan Westerberg, and his presence in the Swedish popular consciousness.

Staffan Westerberg (born in 1934) has worked as actor, script writer and director. He is probably most famous for a number of different children’s television programs, usually involving fairly simple puppetry, that were produced during the 70s and 80s. The most well-known of these is “Vilse i pannkakan” (“Lost in the pancake”) from 1975, in which he plays the main character, a boy who discovers that an oversized pancake contains a tiny city with different curious characters, depicted with finger puppets. This program, and the other children’s shows he’s been involved in, have gained a reputation through the years for being strange, unsettling, perhaps even frightening to the children who saw them. There’s a half-serious joke about how “Staffan Westerberg ruined my childhood” that has been popular among Swedes who were children during the 70s and 80s, a joke that has been repeated to the point of becoming a worn-out cliché. In fact, when I searched on the web for information about Westerberg, I actually found far more articles defending him and his work in various ways, saying that the frightening or supposedly harmful aspects of his shows have been exaggerated. Westerberg has also defended himself many times, and generally comes off as a kind, well-meaning man who’s tired of hearing the same hurtful joke over and over again.

As for me, I’m a little too young to have seen “Lost in the pancake” when it originally aired, though I have seen one of his later shows (“Lillstrumpa och Syster Yster”) as a child. From what I remember, I found it interesting and engaging, though I have to admit that there was a somewhat strange quality to it that unsettled me a little. Then again, as a child I would get scared by all kinds of fairly innocuous things. I recently watched an episode of “Lost in the pancake” as an adult, and while it does have a strange, dream-like quality to it, it didn’t live up to its reputation as a childhood-ruining horrorshow. It might also be relevant to mention that Swedish public television at the time had a reputation for being politically leftist-influenced, especially regarding children’s programs that were supposedly indoctrinating Swedish children into socialism (unlike, of course, “normal” children’s television that certainly has no political agenda at all, no sir). Westerberg has been associated with this idea, since he is himself fairly leftist, but as far as I can tell, “Lost in the pancake” is actually one of the less overtly political shows from the time, seemingly focusing more on the dichotomy between childhood and adulthood, and how children doesn’t always understand the strange rules and ideas imposed upon them by their parents. It might even be possible to do a queer reading of the show (Westerberg has been happily married to another man for over 30 years as of this writing) regarding the desire to find your own identity, and your own will.