#I can only take it if it’s everyone in the show experiencing a gender swap. you can’t subject cas to the horrors like that | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

lailannajacobs · 4 years

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War of Hearts

Pairing: Loki x fem!Reader

Request: Hiya! Could you do a Loki X Reader body swap fic? AND Hey! Can you do a fix where Loki is doing some spell or magic and accidentally ends up switching his body with the reader. Sexual innuendos maybe? ;)

Warnings: Mostly fluff, maybe a tinsy, weensy pinch of angst?

Word Count: 2.9k

A/N: I’ve never written a body swap fic before, so to the two wonderful anons who requested this, I hope it’s at least a little bit close to what you had in mind! It was a fun challenge for me and I hope you guys enjoy! What love to know what you think! <3

Loki was bored. Absolutely, no doubt about it, going-out-of-his-mind bored. And everyone else - well, everyone he could tolerate to be more specific - had other, more important things to do. And Loki…well he was on house arrest. According to Captain Goody Two Shoes, disguising himself as a falcon and pecking the Bird Man with his dagger-sharp beak violated the terms of his agreement with the Avengers. Good behaviour meant he wasn’t their prisoner. Apparently bad behaviour meant house arrest. But really, it had all been in good fun. No one had gotten seriously hurt.

After an uneventful morning, Loki had thought that maybe he would have been able to convince the Spider Boy to spend the rest of the day sparring with him, but the child had a date. The moment Loki had seen that stupid little grin on his face, he knew there was no convincing the Spider Boy otherwise.

His first and best option, the Scarlet Witch, was mission bound for another day. It was no secret that she distrusted him, but at least she was powerful and had an inkling of common sense - unlike the majority of the other agents in this tower. She had gone off with YN, one of the few other people Loki didn’t mind so much.

Loki wandered down the halls, trying to find something to do. His book was predictable, he had already gone for a run, and he wasn’t tired. He was itching to get out and being cooped up on one floor did nothing to stifle the excess energy he had drumming under his skin. House arrest, without a single intelligent soul around, was proving to be an annoying punishment.

Before he realized where he was going, he found himself in the kitchen, scaring off new Shield recruits with nothing more than his presence. Loki smirked. Some things never failed to satisfy him.

But the feeling didn’t last long. Once again left to his lonesome, Loki began to play around with his magic, finding comfort in the familiar hum resonating through his body. He didn’t pay much attention to where the magic went as he made himself dinner, mindlessly letting it ebb and flow through and out of him, transforming it and drawing it back in. Although his body went through the motions, chopping carrots into tiny pieces, his mind turned inward, falling further into the abyss of himself and the soothing whirlwind of his magic.

Then the kitchen door banged open. Loki lost his grip on the magic, feeling it spiral out uncontrollably as it threw him to the ground and the world immediately went black.

The kitchen blinked back into view, but Loki couldn’t understand how he had landed so far across the room. He tried to move, but immediately knew something was wrong.

He looked down at his body; a body that wasn’t his own.

He was in a woman’s body. But the change in gender wasn’t what had let him know he wasn’t in his own body. After all, it wasn’t everyday he looked in a mirror and saw a man staring back. No, what had tipped him off was that he recognized this body. This body belonged to YN. But if he was in her body then that meant…Loki found his own body crumpled to the floor, the knife he had been using mercifully far from his body. He wasn’t sure how his body would have fared a stabbing with a mortal inside it.

Unfortunately, Loki wasn’t quite aware what the rules were for trading bodies. The only thing he was certain of was that she’d have to be the one to change them back now that she was in his body. He crawled over to her, not trusting himself to stand in this body that wasn’t his.

Cupping her face - his face - gently, he lifted her head from the awkward position on the floor, “YN. YN? Are you all right?”

She barely stirred and his heart began to race. Had he just killed her? His palms began to sweat, and he had the impression that his heart had lodged itself far up his throat. He wiped his hands on her combat suit. Stupid mortal body.

Shaking her with more force, he refused to admit that anything terrible had happened to her…well anything other than having switched bodies with him. When her eyes finally fluttered open, he let out a breath he hadn’t realized he had been holding in. Loki smiled when he noted that the colour was not the usual green he saw in the mirror. They said that eyes were the windows to the soul, and the soul in his body wasn’t his, which meant neither were those eyes.

When she registered what she was looking at, she panicked and backed into the kitchen counter, hands reaching for her knife. Little did she realize, it was jammed uncomfortably against his leg at the moment.

“YN, it’s me,” He blurted, then realized she probably had no idea who ‘me’ was. Just because she was one of the few people he tolerated here didn’t mean that she had any particularly good feelings towards him, “Loki.”

The silence seemed to draw on forever, but he knew she believed him when she narrowed her eyes dangerously, “Loki. What the hell have you done to me?”

He paused, not quite sure how to answer. Rather than try to, he backed away from her, figuring he was overcrowding her by being so close. She was alive. He had no reason to be there anymore. But now, he only felt cold and a strange pain in his arm.

“Loki, I swear I’m-” She stumbled as she tried to stand, and looked down at her body, then seemed to realize for the first time that she was in his, “Give me back my body. Now.”

She forced herself to stand, and although it was clumsy at first, she quickly found stability. He would have been disappointed if she hadn’t. Following suit, he stood, immediately hating that she was the one who now towered over him. As if sensing it, she smirked - the kind he used to terrify all the new recruits.

“So, this was an accident.” It wasn’t a question.

He crossed his arms over his chest and briefly noted that she had cut herself - himself? - across her forearm earlier, the dried blood caked across the gash on her sleeve, “You weren’t supposed to be back for another day.”

“What can I say?” She lifted her new fingers to the light, examining them with unimpressed curiosity, “Wanda and I are quite the pair.”

He rolled his eyes, though he had a feeling it didn’t quite convey the same amount of sass as it did in his own body.

“Enjoying what you see?” He crooned when her inspection had travelled from her fingers along her bicep to her new chest and torso.

Her head snapped up before her gaze could get any lower, black hair flicking back from her face, “It’s nothing new. I know what you look like.”

“But do you really?” He approached her, his lips spreading into a grin, “Because I think that’s a lie. I know for a fact that you’ve never gotten this close. I think both of us would have remembered that.”

“Who says I want to?” She countered, though he knew she was flustered.

Her tells were now his own and she had no idea how to hide them the way he did.

He tucked her - his? - hair behind her ear, watching her eyes widen as he did, “I do. You can explore if you’d like,” He purred, “I don’t mind.”

She shook her head, “Why would I want to do that?”

He looked down at himself, at the body that wasn’t his but that he was very much appreciative of, “How can you not be the least bit curious?”

“Are you?”

“Absolutely,” He answered candidly, relishing in the surprise on her face, “I always like to know what makes another person…tick. I wouldn’t be against a little exploration of my own.”

“And what makes you…tick, Loki?” She whispered.

He stepped a little closer, tilting his head back, “Would you like me to show you? Or would you rather discover it on your own? You can take your time, Agent, I’m in no rush.”

He watched his body shiver and satisfaction washed through him, knowing that even in this body he had gotten under her skin. Sucking in a deep breath, she jut out a hip, hand placed furiously on it. He smirked at the sight.

“What I want, is my body back,” She growled, eyes widening in surprise at her own tone.

He shrugged, “Well, that’s on you, mortal. You have my body.”

“And how,” She stared down at the body as if it was a prison, “Do you want me to do that?”

“I can’t explain,” He looked back down at his arm, annoyed with her that she hadn’t healed her own body properly, “It will come to you, I’m sure.”

She let out a long, annoyed sigh, “Any words of advice, Witch?”

“You’re the god now,” He corrected, “Focus on our bodies and our souls, and it will come to you.”

He ignored the deadly look she shot him and moved toward the sink to wash off the blood. When the water touched the scratch, he hissed. He looked back down in surprise. He had experienced scratches like this, and they had never affected his own body. He had seen her come back from missions much worse, and yet, her smile had never faltered. How fragile were these mortal bodies? How had he never realized that she could be in so much pain?

Loki looked back at her, trying to get a good look at the agent for the first time since they had met, but all he saw was his own body, his eyes shut and body tense with concentration. He gingerly cleaned out the wound and wrapped it tightly with the medical supplies from the kitchen drawer. There were a few other minor scratches that didn’t need much care, but that he took care of as well.

When he began to feel a tingle go through his body, Loki knew the transfer was about to happen. He laid down on the floor, waiting to black out. Before he did, he saw his own body crumple painfully to floor and he winced.

There was a ringing in his head when he woke, and Loki knew he was back in his own body. The magic had taken a toll on his body, and the fall hadn’t done him much good either.

YN was standing over him with her hands on her hips when he opened his eyes. She was furious.

“You’re an ass.”

“An Asgardian,” He corrected, unfazed, “At least I left your body in better shape than you left mine.”

“Am I supposed to apologize?” She demanded.

He raised a brow, “It wouldn’t hurt.”

She was about to say something else but seemed to notice her arm. Glancing down at the wound, then back at him, her brows furrowed. He attempted to stand and had to hold onto the counter to stop the swaying, ignoring her outstretched hand.

Something dawned on her, and he didn’t trust the way her face softened. Looking like she was about to say something both of them would regret, Loki shook his head to cut her off.

“Don’t worry about it, mortal. I can handle a little magic backlash and a fall to the ground,” He pushed past her, knowing he had to get out of the kitchen. She had used far more magic than necessary to reverse the switch, but the fatigue wasn’t the only reason he had to leave, “Consider us even now.”

“Loki?”

He didn’t turn around. He had gotten far closer to this mortal than he had wanted to and Loki was going to get away before he made another dangerous mistake.

One Week Later

Loki was finally off house arrest. What surprised him the most was that he had actually accepted his punishment when it would have been so easy to escape. But quite frankly, it would have been more trouble than it was worth.

It had taken a few days, but Loki’s skin no longer felt too tight, like it belonged to a stranger. He hadn’t seen YN since the little incident, but he preferred it that way. On his first official day of freedom, Loki knew exactly where he was headed and was ready to get there.

“You know, for someone so powerful, you’re awfully predictable.”

Loki jolted, not having heard YN approach. He smoothed down his shoulders and twisted to face her, rocking back on his heels. Raising a brow, he motioned for her to explain.

She narrowed her eyes at him, emotions brewing under the surface that he wasn’t privy to. When she said nothing, he figured it wasn’t worth staying in the hallway waiting for nothing.

He shrugged, “If that’s that, then I’m going-”

“To Time Square,” She finished for him, crossing her arms over her chest.

He cocked his head, trying to get a better look at her. It hadn’t been what he had been about to say, but it was exactly where he planned on going. There was something about the chaotic bustle of tourists and locals that he found calming, and after his miserable house arrest, he could use a little calm. But how she knew that was beyond him.

“How-”

“How do I know?” She asked, cutting him off once again. He wasn’t sure if she was doing it to annoy him or for another reason he couldn’t fathom, but she had enough of his attention for him to tolerate it. For now. “I know that most of us will avoid Time Square if we can help it. I also know you’ve learned to thrive in situations that break most people. Do you know how I know this?”

“Because you’ve read my file?” He asked dryly, though he found her words unsettling.

“I know this because, despite your past crimes, Tony has you on our most difficult missions. And the ones that throw our plans out the window have you at the front, adapting faster than the rest of us. There is a reason you’re not imprisoned, and not all of it has to do with your brother’s generosity.”

Unsure of what to say, Loki hardened his face, burying his emotions as far away as possible, “Do you expect me to be flattered?”

She shook her head, “No, because, like I said, you’re predictable. I also know you care about the people you get close to. I’ve seen you with your brother. I’m not blind. But I also know you don’t get close to anyone.”

“YN,” Loki forced a laugh, “I believe you’re reading too far into things. I didn’t think you were this naive.”

She smirked, “And there it is. Proof that I’m right.”

“And how would you know all this, YN?” He countered.

“I,” She paused, obviously not having expected the question, “I know all this because I’ve been watching you, waiting for you to try and escape. It was what I was tasked to do. And what I couldn’t understand before last week, was why you hadn’t tried to leave.”

He grinned dangerously, “And who says I don’t have a plan in the works?”

“I do,” She shrugged when he shot her a look of disbelief, “It turns out that watching someone and getting close to them means that you actually get close to that person. You’re not leaving, Loki.”

“You’re awfully sure.”

“You wouldn’t have patched me up if you were going to leave. It wouldn’t have mattered to you.”

“That’s circumstantial,” He snarled, starting to lose the grip on his emotions.

She took a step toward him, puffing up her chest as she got up in his face, “And then you avoided me like I was a danger to your sanity. I think you care, Loki. I think you realized it the same night I did.”

“I do not,” He punctuated each word, drawing in closer so that he was invading her space.

She looked up at him, a satisfied smirk on her lips, “Really? Then prove it. Walk away right now.”

He stared into her eyes; eyes that never seemed to dim or lose their fight even when they were trapped in another body. Loki knew he should turn away and never come back. That he should push past her and keep walking until he was far, far away.

But he couldn’t.

Annoyed with the victorious smile growing on her lips, he did the only thing he could think of. He smashed his own lips to hers, not caring about being gentle, and pulled her in tight so that their bodies couldn’t get any closer. Her arms wrapped around his neck, fingers curling into his hair and he moaned, his hands travelling down to the small of her back to line up their bodies. He was about to deepen the kiss when she pulled away. He didn’t let her get far.

“Feel better?” She asked, that infuriating smile on her lips.

“Not yet,” He growled, “You cut me short.”

She began to laugh, but the sound was cut off by his lips on hers.

#loki fanfic #Loki Laufeyson #loki fanfiction #loki x reader #loki x you #loki x female reader #body swap #body switch #marvel fanfiction #MCU fic #fan fiction #fanfic

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new-sandrafilter · 5 years

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True Romance: Saoirse Ronan and Timothée Chalamet on reuniting for Little Women

They may be posing in an airy lower Manhattan studio, but Timothée Chalamet and Saoirse Ronan have a way of making you feel right at home. “I made a little playlist this morning,” Chalamet announces to the room. He syncs up his cell phone to the sound system, his boyish grin widening as Marvin Gaye’s “What’s Going On” starts blaring. He returns to the camera, which snaps him and Ronan at a furious pace.

It’s their first joint cover shoot. He’s wearing a shimmery striped shirt with high-waist trousers; she’s rocking a shirtdress, fishnet stockings, and clear stilettos. He keeps cracking her up; she musses his hair with doting affection. During a break that follows, he wanders, gripping a paper bag stuffed with assorted bagels — from Tompkins Square Bagels, which Chalamet, a lifelong New Yorker, insists are the best in the city — and offering one to anyone in his path. He sings and dances — very Elio-in-the-town-square-like — to Bob Dylan’s “Tombstone Blues.” He creeps behind a distracted Ronan before spooking her with a yelp. “I didn’t even know you were there!” she exclaims, reddening from the fright but with a smile so lovingly at ease, you sense she’s used to the prank.

They’ve known each other, after all, for some time. About three years ago, Ronan, now 25, and Chalamet, 23, met filming Lady Bird, Greta Gerwig’s solo directorial debut, in which Ronan’s irrepressible heroine (briefly) romances Chalamet’s douchey amateur musician. They reunited with Gerwig last year, on the heels of Lady Bird’s Oscar-nominated success, for a bigger undertaking: a remake of the oft-remade Little Women (Dec. 25). Ronan and Chalamet slipped into the roles of tomboyish Jo March and buoyant Theodore “Laurie” Laurence, best friends who ultimately break each other’s hearts. Their courtship ranks among American culture’s oldest tales of unrequited love — made indelible by Katharine Hepburn and Douglass Montgomery, Winona Ryder and Christian Bale, and so many others — yet finds, in the hands of two of the most compelling actors of their generation, galvanizing new life.

That goes, in fact, for the whole of Gerwig’s Little Women. Her version certainly contains the snow-globe coziness of treasured adaptations past, but also carries a fizzy emotional authenticity and attention to detail. The film is remarkably lived-in, too: This take on Louisa May Alcott’s 1868 novel, which follows Jo and her three sisters pre– and post–American Civil War, feels plucked straight from the text in the best way, with siblings fighting like siblings, love and loss and hope and pain vividly experienced on screen.

Ronan and Chalamet’s charming big sister–little brother dynamic is not unlike the one that Jo and Laurie share in Little Women. Watch the actors play off one another, and the film’s tender realism clarifies itself: Their on-camera intimacy is just as palpable behind the scenes. Indeed, after shooting Lady Bird for a few weeks, the pair hung out regularly over the next year, making the awards-circuit rounds and scoring lead-acting Oscar nominations — Ronan for Lady Bird, Chalamet for Call Me by Your Name — before swiftly signing on to Little Women. In advance of filming in Concord, Mass. (the actual setting of the book), Gerwig and producer Amy Pascal gathered the large production’s cast and crew for rehearsals at a house just outside the town. For Ronan and Chalamet, the contrast between this and their early Lady Bird days was immense. “I felt very prideful… about how big it had gotten, how many people were there,” Chalamet recounts. “On Lady Bird it was, like, 25 people hanging out in a house!”

They fell back into each other’s rhythms instantly. “He keeps me on my toes — I’m never quite sure what he’s going to do next,” Ronan says. “That only progressed more and grew more. It helped that we do have a very natural rapport with each other…. These two characters physically need to be very comfortable with one another. They’re literally intertwined for half the film.” Chalamet adds: “In the least clichéd way possible, it really doesn’t feel like [I’m] acting sometimes [with her].”

Chalamet credits Gerwig, too, for establishing a playful, comfortable atmosphere. He thinks back to his first day of rehearsal: He reunited with Ronan. He introduced himself to Emma Watson (who plays the eldest March sister, Meg). He was guided into a third-floor conference room of a “random building” where, “all of a sudden, there was a full dance class going on.” He recalls fondly: “Everyone breaks down and becomes a little kid. This job is so trippy in that regard — you want to be serious, you want to be professional, and then it’s almost best when you’re able to be 12 years old. When it’s someone you’re actually friends with, it makes it easier.”

Ronan smirks, gearing up for a jab: “We’re not friends!” Delighted, Chalamet keeps the bit going. “We’re not friends,” he says, solemnly. For once, they’re not very convincing.

Greta Gerwig doesn’t remember a time before she knew Jo March. “[Little Women] was very much part of who I always was,” the writer-director, 36, says. “It was something my mother read to me when I was growing up. It’s been with me for a very long time.”

She joined Sony Pictures’ new Little Women adaptation when she was hired to write the script in 2016. Once Lady Bird bowed the next year, she emerged as a candidate to direct the film. “Greta had a very specific, energized, kind of punk-rock, Shakespearean take on this story,” Pascal says. “She came in and had a meeting with all of us and said, ‘I know this has been done before, but nobody can do it but me.’” She got the gig.

In her approach, Gerwig drew on her lifelong relationship with Little Women; beyond childhood, she discovered new, complex layers to the novel, and in turn to Alcott’s legacy. “As a girl, my heroine was Jo March, and as a grown lady, my heroine is Louisa May Alcott,” she says. It’s perhaps why Gerwig’s Little Women feels like the most adult — and modern — version of the story that’s reached the screen to date. The movie begins with the March sisters in adulthood — typically where the narrative’s second half begins — and unfolds like a memory play, shifting back and forth between that present-day frame and extended flashbacks to the childhood scenes etched in the American literary canon.

In that, Gerwig finds fascinating, fresh areas of exploration regarding women’s lives: the choices society forces them to make, the beauty and struggles of artistic pursuit, the consequences of rebellion. Jo’s journey as a writer anchors Gerwig’s direction; tempestuous Amy (Florence Pugh) gets more of a spotlight as she matures as a painter (and Laurie’s eventual wife); and Meg is realized with newfound nuance: “We felt it was important to show Meg juggling all her roles — a mother, a wife, a sister — whilst also celebrating her dreams, despite them being different to those of her sisters,” says Watson. But Gerwig doesn’t see herself as reinventing the wheel. “A lot of the lines in the film are taken right from the book,” she explains. “When Amy says, ‘I want to be great or nothing’ — she says that in the book! I don’t think we remember that, but she does say it.” Gerwig also loves one line spoken by the sisters’ mother, Marmee (Laura Dern), also revived in this version: “I’m angry almost every single day.”

Gerwig compiled a “bible” filled with cultural references: to Whistler tableaux of family life, to David Bowie–Jean Seberg hairdos that inspire the look of Jo’s mid-film cut, to Alcott family letters. “I wanted it to be footnote-able,” Gerwig says. “I wanted to point to it and say, ‘This is where this is from.’” She considers Alcott’s text sacred: “I wanted to treat the text as something that could be made fresh by great acting.”

Beyond those charged but less quoted Little Women lines are its famous ones — throw-pillow staples like Jo’s “Christmas won’t be Christmas without any presents,” that no adaptation is complete without. The actors rehearsed these “almost like a song,” pushing to move through them with a rapid musicality. “We [read] the book out loud,” says Dern. Gerwig expected the script’s words to be memorized precisely. “I knew I wanted them to get this cadence that felt sparkly and slightly irreverent,” she says. “I wanted to make them move at the speed of light.”

She poured the same love into iconic scenes, like Jo and Laurie’s ebullient dance that follows their first meeting. Here it goes on longer — and more vibrantly — than in any previous iteration. (Ronan says they filmed it at 3 a.m., to boot, adding, “We must have done it, like, 30 times.”) Then there’s the devastating moment when Laurie asks Jo to marry him and she rejects his proposal. Gerwig tasked the two actors to unleash here. “Emotions just bubble over,” Ronan says. “[Greta] just let us go with it, wherever it went, from take to take. What I loved about that scene is that every take would be different emotionally. It didn’t have the same trajectory.

“The two of us, it’s a relationship I have with no other director,” Ronan continues. “She makes me feel like I can try anything.”

As Ronan and Chalamet emerge from their photo-studio dressing area in impossibly chic new ensembles — she donning a form-fitting knit sweater, he a silky, ruffled top — their creative energy fills the space. They try out different poses, debating concepts and ideas with each other on the fly; at one point he wraps his arms around her waist, and she quips to no one in particular, “We’re expecting our first.” Camera snap.

They’re modeling a new brand of movie stardom — pursuing projects with a point of view, adamantly being themselves in the public eye, subverting gender norms. Their androgynous fashion performance here reflects their wardrobe shake-ups in Little Women: Gerwig and Oscar-winning costumer Jacqueline Durran (Anna Karenina) had the two actors swapping clothes throughout filming, to reinforce the masculine-feminine fluidity between Jo and Laurie. “They are two halves,” as Pascal puts it. “These are really bold characters that are really different than you’ve seen them before.”

And just as Gerwig expressed a need to direct Little Women, Ronan knew in her bones she needed to play Jo. She’d first encountered the story via the 1994 film when she was 11, and later read the book, feeling an immediate kinship with the young woman she’d come to portray. “When Louisa describes Jo, it felt like someone describing me physically: sort of gangly and stubborn and very straightforward, and went for what she wanted.” At an event for Lady Bird, she — in a very Jo kind of way — just “went at it” by approaching Gerwig. “I said, ‘So I want to be in Little Women, but only if I’m playing Jo.’” (Chalamet, for his part, was asked by Gerwig, “Hey, want to do another movie?” He responded: “Yes. Yes, please.”)

Over months of living in Concord with her castmates, Ronan discovered new depths within herself: “Jo’s ethos is ‘Everything everyone else is doing, I’m going to do the opposite.’ [I had] to try things that I’d never tried before. Be a bit messier with a performance.” Gerwig set up etiquette lessons for the cast; whatever the instructor said (“Don’t shake hands! Don’t gesticulate with your arms!”), Ronan made sure to ignore it. She speaks now of this as freeing, even transformative. “I felt like I had tapped into something I’d never gotten the opportunity to tap into before, or I just didn’t have the guts to tap into myself,” she says. “Finding that was just amazing.”

Shortly after wrapping Little Women, she filmed Wes Anderson’s next film, The French Dispatch — marking her third time costarring with Chalamet, who plays a central role. As for now? Ronan is taking a little break. “I’ll wait for the right thing to come along,” she says. “It’s lovely to be in a position at this moment where I can wait for the absolute right thing.” Same goes for Chalamet — he shot Netflix’s The King (out Oct. 11) right before Little Women and just completed production on Denis Villeneuve’s Dune adaptation. “It’s the first time in almost two years I’ve gotten a breath, so I’m savoring it.”

It’s been a long day. They’re back in comfy clothes; Ronan is taking a late lunch. It feels like both actors — as another whirlwind of acclaim and press and romance-shipping awaits — are at a kind of peace, exhausted but satisfyingly so. Little Women is the biggest movie either has done to date; more attention, as they inhabit such revered characters, is sure to follow. “I just haven’t thought about it that way,” Ronan admits. “Maybe because it’s just Greta — even though it’s on a much bigger scale, she wanted it to feel like Lady Bird.”

Ronan understands the timeless power of Little Women, of course: “It’s as important to tell Little Women right now as it would be at any point in our lifetime.” She points to this pop culture climate of “celebrating female friendships and sisterhood,” and continues, “It’s a story that’s full of love. That will always be relevant.”

She turns toward Chalamet, and you realize the love they brought to Alcott’s classic is what first blossomed between them on Lady Bird. “I love that in Lady Bird, you broke my heart,” she says to him softly. “In Little Women, I got to break your heart.” (Chalamet, ever the goofball, finds an obvious opening: “Yes, that’s true. Then I married your sister. Ha, ha, ha!”)

If this all sounds a little idyllic, well, neither actor — nor Gerwig, nor Pascal, nor the rest of the cast — can do much to convince you otherwise. Shifting back to Little Women’s timelessness, and reflecting on Ronan’s comments about it, Chalamet says, “I don’t know how to add to that.” Instead he turns back to his costar, his expression suddenly sincere, filled with gratitude. “But if I can add one little dose of information,” he says with a nervous laugh. “And not just because she’s sitting next to me.” He credits Ronan with bringing that “timeless energy.” He says “thank God” they were able to make the movie. “It’s so rare with Saoirse — I’m so f—ing grateful to get to work with her,” he says. “Whatever book I write for myself when I’m older, to look back on —” He stops himself. “Well, this is a bigger conversation.”

But Ronan, chuckling, doesn’t let him off the hook. “Will I have, like, a chapter?” And Chalamet laughs — another opening, another chance to act with his greatest scene partner, to see what journey of creation and discovery they’ll go on next. “A chapter of Saoirse,” he says.

At this rate, one chapter won’t suffice.

#timmy #timothee chalamet #saoirse ronan #little women

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shybones · 6 years

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What is Gender Dysphoria?

EDIT 12/24/2018

If you want to reblog the original version of the post without the edit, you can find it here. >> link <<

I wrote this post 10 months ago, and it’s gained around 3,500 notes in that time. It’s both helped a lot of folks, and gained a bit of controversy in the notes and tags, mostly due to some of my poor wording. The goal of this post was to help people put into words what dysphoria was, since many people toss around the word dysphoria without actually describing what it is in any sort of clear way. I’ve dealt with dysphoria for the past 13 years, working in all that time to put it into words, and talking to others with similar experiences, so I felt that this post would help others, specifically young teens, to do so.

People have questioned if i’m transmed/truscum. I’m not truscum. I’m transmed, but only in the sense I think there are trans people who benefit from medical help and need a very specific kind of activism that will be inherently different than the kind of trans people who do not experience medical dysphoria. I’m binary trans dude who experiences medically-defined dysphoria, so I wrote this post for binary trans people with medically-defined dysphoria, and I can’t claim to speak for non binary folks or people with social dysphoria. That form of identity and dysphoria just needs a different kind of activism and I’m not qualified to speak for it. Some folks have added some information onto this post about it, and i’m not going to link a specific one, because, again, I’m not qualified to figure out which one has the better information as I’m binary trans. However you can find it in the notes. You can also find some fair criticisms of my post in the notes if you’d like to read that.

My use of the word ‘tucute’ was a mistake that I regret. I was trying to describe people with social dysphoria that disagree with the gender roles unfairly forced onto them and didn’t have a better term for it, and ended up using that. I think that nonbinary and gender-nonconforming identities are valid and important. But, again, I’m not that. I wrote this post for binary dysphoria, to help folks figure out if what they are experiencing is the currently defined medical dysphoria that would most likely be helped by hormones and surgery, or if it’s of a nonbinary alignment.

I don’t believe in the True Trans discourse. I don’t care for it. People are people. I trust that nonbinary people know themselves, and I have deep respect for that. I cannot sit here and claim to know NB people better them themselves. That would make me a juvenile asshole. I think it’s wonderful that they have found an identity that brings them a sense of wholeness and peace, and I will fight for their acceptance.

However, I have seen more than one case of NB teens impulsively getting hormones and/or surgery and ending up regretting it due to very confusing definitions of dysphoria floating around online. And that’s understandable when most definitions for dysphoria are “when you feel your gender doesn't line up with your birth gender.” That’s far, far too vague.

Social and medical dysphoria are very different. Both are valid. But getting them mixed up has very real, harmful consequences on young folks that I have seen played out multiple times, and I am tired of it. My hope for this post was to reach young folks to help them understand their dysphoria further so they can better understand their options and paths in life. And it succeeded to a decent degree. I log on periodically to read the notes and tags, and I’m happy to see the people it’s helped, and I take the criticisms of the post seriously.

(And yes I know some NB folks can also experience medical dysphoria at the same time, I’m talking about specifically NB folks who don’t but due to the confusing nature of trans politics at the moment, a lot of people get confused about the various paths of what being trans means.)

Anyway, Happy Holidays.

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Something you’ll see asked a lot is what exactly gender dysphoria is (and isn’t), and, for good reason -- it’s something not a lot of people explain well. Please understand this is in no way a 100% comprehensive guide, and I am not a psychologist, but from my research and personal experience, this is the more common forms of manifestation, as well as the things commonly mistaken to be dysphoria but aren’t actually.

Before I can ever begin, I need to define two seemingly self-explanatory words that is often the ideological splitting point of confusion for people: Sex and Gender.

Sex: Two members of one species that are needed together to reproduce. One is dominated by Estrogen (Female) and the other Testosterone (Male.) Both sexes have both these hormones, but one more than the other. Hormones tell the body to put priority in certain features and growth in the body in order to prepare that body for reproduction. This is called sexual dimorphism. Sexual dimorphism isn’t artificial, there are very real biological difference between the male and female sexes of a species. This can be measured scientifically.

Gender: Originally interchangeable with “sex”, gender in relatively recent human history has come to largely refer to the social and cultural expectations put on each sex, known as Gender Roles. Gender Roles is the artificial, cultural tropes that have adhered itself to either sex, such as blue is for boys, girls like to wear dresses, etc. We know these are artificial tropes because those two examples used to be swapped (boys wore dresses in some time periods, blue was a feminine color). Because of the ever-changing definitions of the male and female gender roles, they cannot be measured scientifically -- they are entirely artificial.

So, there are two groups of people: One that believe sex and gender are the same thing and gender should never be used to refer to these sorts of tropes, and the other believes that sex and gender should be separate as sex is biology and gender refers entirely to gender role tropes. And this reluctance to collectively decide on a definition has brought about a lot of confusion about gender dysphoria.

People who are politically trans (”tucutes”) believe gender dysphoria is entirely about gender roles, even to a point they are denouncing the medical research as unproductive and harmful. Which would make sense if Gender Dysphoria was a political issue -- but it’s not, and shouldn’t be, because Gender Dysphoria has had decades of research and support from the psychiatric community.

What Gender Dysphoria Isn’t.

Liking clothing usually attributed to the opposite sex

Enjoying hobbies that are dominated by the opposite sex

Disliking sexism directed at your birth sex

Feeling as though people will take you more seriously as the opposite sex

Wanting to be allowed to do something that is seen only for the opposite sex, but will have you mocked if you try to do it as your birth sex (makeup, not shaving your legs, etc)

Feeling disconnected from your birth sex because none of the examples of your birth sex in your family, school, or work act like you, and you feel as though they are alien-like

Feeling like the opposite sex is better because all the examples of your same sex in your life are toxic, abusive, or unpleasant people

Feeling guilty for being or identifying as your birth sex because your peers told you your birth sex or you identifying as your birth sex is objectively harmful or undesirable

Hating the way you look.

Wanting to be able to play with toys that are associated with the opposite sex, but doing so gets you called a tomboy/sissy/etc.

As you may have noticed, many of these examples of what gender dysphoria isn’t have to do with political and cultural baggage revolving around gender roles for either biological sex, and the very real psychological discomfort they can cause. But all these things are about how you relate to the outside world.

When in reality, gender dysphoria is entirely about how you relate to yourself.

What Gender Dysphoria Is.

Gender Dysphoria, like any other medically defined condition, will vary in how the person experiencing the condition will display the symptoms. Some people are naturally more sensitive to some symptoms, and less others. Some people are not able to cope well at all and are a total wreck about them, and some manage to ignore and numb the symptoms to a point they don’t realize anything is wrong because they are so used to drowning the symptoms out.

You see this a lot with chronic pain -- some are very obviously in agony, while others have become so used to ignoring the pain that it only displays in ways that aren’t directly obvious: stress, anger, depression, etc.

The best analogy of how dysphoria often feels like is the trope of the trans person looking in the mirror, except in reverse. This trope often depicts the trans person standing in front of a mirror, the reflection showing who they REALLY are, while the viewer can see the trans person for what they really are in front of the mirror -- their birth sex. But to a trans person, this feels like the opposite. Subconsciously, we’ll feel like the sex we know we are, but when the world outside of us brings to attention that we’re not what we expect ourselves to be, it can result in varying levels of distress.

Gender dysphoria will not be experienced by everyone the same, but with all medical conditions, there are still certain things that will remain consistent, even if its expression can vary in intensity. Because of this, I will offer three levels of intensity for each dysphoria symptom to try and cover all degrees of intensity. And remember, these are just examples and should not be considered a play-by-play book for situations that you need to exactly adhere with.

Subconsciously feeling your body is “off.”

Low Intensity: You know, logically, this body is yours, but it doesn’t really feel yours. You’re not sure how other people are so confident in Knowing their body is theirs. You just don’t feel this innately.

Medium Intensity: You don’t recognize yourself in the mirror. You logically know this person is you, but it doesn’t *feel* like you. Unless you have an active reminder of your body, such as pain or a reflection, you forget you’re in it. You forget certain parts of your body exist. Maybe you have attributed it to sex by now, maybe you haven’t.

High Intensity: You look in the mirror, and it makes you angry. You know something is wrong, and when you finally realize what it is (your breasts, for example) you develop an intense hatred of them, a fear of them. You hate everyone can see them, see that they exist on you. They feel foreign, like an alien. They don’t register as yours. Worse yet, you know people are assuming things about your body from the fact they exist at all.

Feelings of distress at noticeable contrasts

Low Intensity: You notice the arm of someone of the opposite sex, and how different its features are from yours. It makes you uncomfortable, but you can’t really pin why. Or maybe you can. You try to ignore it.

Medium Intensity: You’re talking to someone, and you’re really put off by the difference between your voice and theirs. You find yourself wanting to sound like them. You may begin to avoid situations online where you need to use your voice, because you don’t feel like you sound correct.

High Intensity: You’ve become so sensitive to the contrasting differences between you and the opposite sex that you begin to entirely avoid the opposite sex all together. Surrounding yourself with the same sex feels counter intuitive, but it allows you to ignore the things off with your body much more successfully.

Noticing different expectations of gender roles, and having them amplified by already feeling your disconnected from your birth sex.

Low Intensity: When in school, your class is split up into male and female groups for the gym or for a class project. You feel alienated by this, even if you can’t pin why.

Medium Intensity: The clothing your sex is expected to wear at your age leaves you feeling exposed -- it accents the features you try best to ignore. And worse yet, it draws the attention of others to those features.

High Intensity: The idea of anything adhered to your birth sex revolts you -- you cannot stand being associated with it due to what it *says* about you... what others assume. Which sucks... because you like some of it. But it’s not worth the assumptions of others.

Feeling sexually awkward or inadequate due to subconscious expectations of your sexual workings

Low Intensity: You like the opposite sex, maybe bisexual or straight. But when you watch porn or fantasize about it... you find yourself placing yourself in the point of view of the opposite sex... Or you only like same sex porn of the opposite sex, yet still find yourself placing yourself in one of their point of view despite not being that sex. it just feels more natural.

Medium Intensity: You can’t masturbate the way your birth sex is “meant” to masturbate -- something about it just doesn’t feel natural. You find another way to get off, maybe you mime the action of the opposite sex’s genitalia, or get off by thrusting/humping a pillow like the opposite sex would during sex.

High Intensity: You know you’re not asexual, but you functionally might as well be. The fact your genitals don’t work remotely the way you feel they should work has defeated any libidio you would have otherwise had. Your sex life is awkward -- you find yourself focusing on pleasuring your partner, and politely declining when they offer to get you off. Using toys has prosthetics doesn’t really help either, sometimes it’s nice but more often than not it just results in you noticing your lack of the proper genitalia even more starkly.

In Conclusion

If you’re wondering if what you feel is clinical dysphoria and not just feeling hurt by the harmful tropes inflicted by gender roles, ask yourself this question:

You’re the last person on earth. There’s a button that, when pressed, will turn you into the opposite sex perfectly. You won’t get to choose how you end up looking, that’s decided by your genetics, and you won’t be skinnier or heavier either. There is no one around to judge you or treat you differently for either decision you make. There is no reverting the change.

Would you press it?

Why or why not?

#trans #ftm #mtf #dysphoria #mogai #truscum #transmed #tucute

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fuckyeahevanrwood · 6 years

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The Road Less Traveled: Westworld’s Evan Rachel Wood does nothing by the book

Evan Rachel Wood can ride a horse and shoot a rifle at the same time. She can’t tell you why she knows how to do that—while wearing a prairie dress, playing a character that is a robot, and galloping through the Utah desert for the HBO series Westworld, now in its second season. She just does it.

It’s the same with acting, in general, which the 30-year-old has been doing since she was 5. She can’t explain it. She does it.

“It’s an energetic thing, I don’t know. My senses are different,” Wood says over a lunch of scrambled eggs at a bar in Silver Lake. “I have terrible fine motor skills, but I can shoot a scene on a horse with a gun in one take. I have synesthesia, which means that I can hear color and feel sound. I thought everyone experienced the world that way. I’m fascinated by the way our brains work, and I was reading about psychology and learned about what synesthesia was, and I thought, ‘Wait. Other people don’t feel that?’”

Even if you haven’t seen her eerie performance as Westworld’s Dolores (which earned her both Golden Globe and Emmy nods), living a preprogrammed life in a sort of alternate-reality game where wealthy players get to act out twisted Old West fantasies among androids, chances are Wood has left a lasting impression on you from a different role. Starting with a few dramas on television (among them Once and Againand the original American Gothic) and her breakout role as a troubled teen in Catherine Hardwicke’s 2003 film Thirteen, Wood has had an intense, often smoldering and mature on-screen presence for two decades. She played Mickey Rourke’s daughter in The Wrestler, a promiscuous intern in George Clooney’s The Ides of March and the vampire queen of Louisiana in True Blood. In person, Wood does not present as a boldly provocative movie star. Wearing wide-leg faded jeans, a striped T-shirt, tortoiseshell glasses and Vans, her hair in a reddish bob, you might guess that she is a manager at Urban Outfitters. She looks younger than she is, which she credits to sunscreen (La Roche-Posay). And though she spent her adolescent years living and attending acting classes in the San Fernando Valley, she now prefers the vibe on the east side of Los Angeles, where she spends time with her friends, mostly fellow musicians (she’s a singer) and actors. And when she isn’t working here in town, or on the Westworld set near Moab, she calls Nashville, Tenn., home.

“Los Angeles can be too intense for me,” she says, explaining that she wants her son, who is 4 (his father is Wood’s ex, actor Jamie Bell), to have some space to be a kid, both literally and figuratively. “I feel like I’m always working here, even just walking down the street. Nashville is great because there are so many creative people there who are working and doing cool things, but nobody cares what you do. Or if they do, they’re lovely about it. I didn’t buy a farm or anything, but I have a yard and a guesthouse. There’s nature and a community. I wanted all of that for my son. I was just a couple of years older than he is when [my career] really started. And it’s weird to think about how short his life has been, and that is the only amount of time I had before I became an actor. I really like my life, the good and the bad of it, but I wouldn’t let my son do it.”

When you watch performers grow up on screen, you can see how their choices shape them, and see who they are becoming based on the roles they take. Wood was raised in a North Carolina theater that her father ran surrounded by a “melting pot” of cultures, personalities and sexualities, and she has been working steadily for 25 years. At first, with her long, straw-blond hair and fair skin, she was cast as a thoughtful, serious daughter. Then, as she matured, she understood that her tastes were more eccentric. (You may remember that she was in a long-term relationship with Marilyn Manson.)

“I’ve never wanted to go down the road everyone else was going down,” she says. “I wanted to go down the alleys and learn about the people who were different, talk to the weirdos and know their stories. I don’t always play dark characters. I mean, I’ve done comedies. But the darker roles are what people tend to remember.”

Her latest big-screen role is Laura, a psychologically complicated cleaning woman who has a tangled family life and intense sexual encounters with strangers, in a film called Allure. Laura is a woman who is hard to like, who manipulates, traps and tortures a 16-year-old piano prodigy with a difficult home life of her own. Originally, the role was written for a man, by Canadian writer-director team Carlos and Jason Sanchez.

“Then they gender-swapped it, which is when they approached me,” Wood says. “That was intriguing to me, that this role was now female, which you don’t really see, and it did explore these kinds of situations in a way that I hadn’t quite seen before—from the eyes of two women. My biggest fear was that I wasn’t going to be a believable abuser, because I didn’t want to traumatize anyone. I think because I’ve been doing this since I was a teenager, I become very protective of younger actors.”

Since Wood publicly came out as bisexual in 2011, she has embraced her voice as an advocate for LGBT civil and women’s rights. She writes essays for Nylon magazine and speaks frankly about changing social mores surrounding sexual identity in our culture. Wood received the Human Rights Campaign Visibility Award at the 2017 North Carolina Gala, where she gave a candid speech about the importance of “representing the underrepresented.” Recently, she testified before Congress about her own history with sexual assault, detailing some truly horrific experiences but refusing to name her assailants, to protect herself from potentially draining court battles.

She experiments with androgyny in her personal style, gravitating more toward sleek, tailored suits and what she calls a “futuristic,” modern aesthetic with stylist Samantha McMillen. She has also written a couple of screenplays and started exploring paths behind the camera, mainly as a director. In the meantime, Westworld is more than enough to keep an active brain like Wood’s occupied. (And, as of season three, she is receiving equal pay to her male co-stars.)

“You can watch the show and go along with it, or you can put your detective hat on and try to figure it out. That’s what I love to do. I have a pretty good idea what it’s about. But there’s no way to really figure out this season. I read the final script and I said, ‘I have a couple of questions. First, what exactly is this?’”

The questions the show’s creators, Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy, ask about the origin of consciousness, and the potential for artificial intelligence to outpace its human creators, are interesting enough to keep the cast (which includes Thandie Newton, Jeffrey Wright and Anthony Hopkins) and the audience on their toes. It doesn’t hurt that there’s plenty of nudity.

“It’s not even weird anymore,” laughs Wood. “We’ve all been naked so often that it’s just normal. I show up to work and say, ‘OK, I’m naked in a lab. And Anthony Hopkins is here.’ It’s so surreal there isn’t even time to bestressed.”

And now that Wood is 30, she’s no longer the “baby” in the group and there is less pressure for her to prove herself time and again. She has experience, but still feels like she has a lot to learn.

“People listen to me differently now,” says Wood, and she understands what her older colleagues have been trying to tell her all of these years.

“Growing up as a child actor, I heard about regrets a lot,” she says. “I had a lot of people telling me not to live with regret. They drilled into my head how short and precious life is, so I made sure I didn’t care what anyone else thought.”

And, like everything else Wood does with convincing ease, when she says this, you believe her.

#evan rachel wood #articles #c magazine #articles 2018

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frasier-crane-style · 6 years

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Tomb Raider (2018)

Spoilers.

This is probably the weirdest adaptation I’ve ever watched. It’s not that I’m overly fond of the 2013 game, which struck me as wrong-headed and cack-handed, a bunch of generic “grim and gritty” clichés paired with “origin story” tropes, but there was at least a baseline competence. TR18 adapts maybe fifty percent of that plot—albeit in a much less economical, yet also less complicated way that still manages to offer less spectacle—and then…

Well, that would be telling.

Okay, so we start off with what feels like a ton of backstory. The video game started with everyone already on the Endurance, the player was quickly brought up to speed on what they were doing, and then the shipwreck happened and we’re off to the races.

The movie spends thirty minutes or so on Lara being a hip young millennial with attractive multiethnic friends (hi Dutch from Killjoys!) who never show up again. They’ve apparently decided that Lara being a millionaire heiress is unrelatable, so now she’s a penniless delivery girl, all because she refuses to sign a document stating that her father was dead.

I had no idea that declaring someone dead was entirely up to a relative of theirs. Wouldn’t, I don’t know, the cops or some other authority do that?

You’re really telling me the financial situation is set up so Lara doesn’t get one red cent unless her dad’s declared dead? And it’s not a case of her being frozen out, since she was raised by apparently a high-ranking executive in the company. You’d think there would be a huge trust fund, or that she’d have stock in the company, or even that she’d get some do-nothing position there, since it really seems like bad publicity for the person your company is named after to be basically living on the streets.

Isn’t she still just a slumming rich girl? It’s been seven years. She could be responsibly using all that money to run charities and such, or at least spring for her friends’ groceries, but instead she pleads poverty to actual poor people, when she isn’t cheating them at bets (yeah, I consider her concealing her paint trail in the biking game to be against the spirit of the competition, and thus cheating. Also, why is there a bike race in a Tomb Raider movie?)

But still, so far so good. It’s providing backstory to the basic plot of the TR13 story, it’s taking elements that Rise of the Tomb Raider retconned in and inserting them here from the very beginning—although oddly they take Anna, who in the game was basically a surrogate mother to her, and here make her this bitch Lara seems to outright resent, which makes her betrayal… pointless?

Oh, and for some reason (padding), we’ll effectively get shown the same scene twice. Like, at the very beginning of the movie, we hear about this legend that the plot will revolve around. Makes sense, right? Then, not fifteen minutes later, Lara hears the exact same narration with a few added details. Why? Did they think we forgot?

We also get the standard scene where Lara is sitting on a rooftop, thinking of the last time she saw her dear departed father as a child, him saying he has to go, but he’ll come back, giving her a token to remember him by. Standard stuff, right? Only later, we get pretty much the exact same scene with Lara as a teenager saying goodbye to her dad again. So I guess he came back the first time and then left again and that’s the last time she ever saw him. Okay, why did you need to show us the first scene? Why not combine them into one scene? Did we need the second go-around to establish that she’s a great archer?

(Also, I find the whole “she’s not a superhero! She’s just an average woman!” thing hella amusing when they also establish that, oh, right, she also happens to have found time to exercise herself into an eight-pack, train in kickboxing, and learn to be a champion markswoman. It’s like, I don’t know, a version of Die Hard where Jet Li gets invited to Nakatomi Plaza. Sure, he’s never beaten up a dozen terrorists before, but it’s not like he doesn’t know how. Why not just have her be an outright badass from the get-go and tell the damn story?)

But okay, she finds a clue to her missing father’s whereabouts and goes to Hong Kong, where we meet her supporting cast: Lu Wen. Just… Lu Wen.

This character is like a Lovecraftian pox on my mind, because I cannot understand anything about him. Sure, we can assume the studio wants China Bucks, but surely, that can’t be the only reason he’s there… right?

See, because we get an elaborate introduction to Lu Wen, he and Lara have several lengthy dialogues, so you assume that this character is important, that he’s going to be a big deal. Maybe him and Lara will fall in love, maybe he’ll betray her and turn out to be the bad guy, Who knows? But they set up this character so thoroughly and then he basically disappears from the movie and gets replaced as male lead by Lara’s daddy, who isn’t dead. Until he does die, but this time he gets a big death scene where he tells Lara he’s proud of her, so he’s really dead.

Lu Wen could’ve been killed in the shipwreck, or Lara could’ve sailed to the island herself, and it wouldn’t have changed the movie’s plot one iota. So why is he there? Is it just because they want the movie to have a male lead? Well, they have Daddy Croft, so why do they need him? Are they trying to be socially conscious and have an Asian romantic lead? But he isn’t really in the movie much and he and Lara really don’t fall for each other, since in the part of the movie where they’d usually be developing feelings for each other, she’s with her dad and he’s probably in another studio. So is he just there to show that there isn’t a love story and Lara doesn’t need a man? Like, ‘hey, a man, look how much Lara doesn’t need him and isn’t in love with him!’ That seems pretty thankless.

Plus, for an action movie, they hired Daniel Wu and then never had him bust out the kung-fu. I mean, c’mon. It’s a fucking video game movie. Are they really trying to be high-minded with this “not all Asians know martial arts!” stuff when they hired a guy who does know martial arts and could easily perform an impressive fight scene? It’s like casting Taye Diggs in a musical and then not having him sing.

Also, I thought it was weird that they introduce Lu as this falling-down drunk guy, and then that never comes up again. I guess he’s addicted to alcohol but then he just… stopped? Or maybe it was supposed to set him up as some experienced, world-weary adventurer who would contrast with Lara’s naïve ingénue and he’d be gruff and roguish, she’d be a little prim and serious, they’d have a Han/Leia sort of dynamic… only not really, he’s just kind of a guy for the rest of the movie.

I guess they thought “we need a scene where the heroine meets a boat captain and hires him to take her where she needs to go” and decided to script that scene to be as clichéd as humanly possible for no reason. Seriously, they could’ve introduced this character making wind chimes, it at least would’ve given him a little personality. What does Lara having to sober him up by throwing him into the shower tell us about this character that isn’t immediately contradicted by how he acts from thereon out?

But never mind all that, they finally reach the island, Lara meets the evil Vogel, who works for Trinity, the vaguely defined villainous organization that will provide generic conflict for the next umpteen movies—seriously, say what you will about Quantum of Solace, but at least there was a bit more to QUANTUM than just Judi Dench saying “there’s an organization out to take over the world! Stop them!”

Lara manages to escape and makes her first kill with one of Vogel’s henchman, who is not rapey because art shouldn’t be challenging or provoke negative emotional responses, and then she finds her father, who, as I said, pretty much takes over as male lead with the movie halfway over.

This is also where the adaptation gets bizarre to me, because sometimes it’s almost a shot-for-shot remake of sequences from the game, then it has huge deviations from that plot involving the nature of the villain, the threat, Lara, Lara’s allies—pretty much everything. And then it’ll go and make a big deal of Lara using a climbing pick as a melee weapon.

I’m used to adaptations taking ‘moments’ from the source material and recreating them in original stories, or doing broad strokes adaptations of existing storylines, but this is such an odd Frankensteining of plots, like they squished several stories together to make one refurbished plot. It’s really distracting to me, and it seems like they should’ve just made a wholly original plot instead of bolting a bunch of new stuff onto the TR13 storyline.

This is also where I’m sympathetic to people complaining that they gave a gender-swap to Sam Nishimura, who in the game was an Asian woman of critical importance to the Himiko plotline whose friendship with Lara was widely interpreted as having lesbian subtext. So it looks like they freaked out about having any gay stuff in their shiny new franchise and made it as straight as possible.

Like, there’s no reason this boat captain character couldn’t be Sam. It’s not like Lara and Lu Wen have any real romance except for him kinda sorta making a pass at her and her kinda sorta rejecting him. And if they wanted to avoid the uneasy comparison of even a potential love interest having to be straight, it seems like it would be easy enough to make movie!Himiko into a completely different creature, since all you really need is an exotic and inaccessible location for Lord Croft to go missing in, with an ancient civilization advanced enough to semi-plausibly build a big trappy tomb. So why it has to be Japan and Himiko doesn’t make any sense to me, besides unthinking laziness.

The fact that Sam was so important to the villain’s endgame and, in the game, Lara’s father was long dead of suicide at this point makes a marked difference from the movie, where Lara’s quest to find her dad takes center stage and her ability to enter the tomb makes her pretty much the Chosen One. Again, more generic, more clichéd.

Oh, but they do kinda go back to being a super-faithful adaptation with Lara making extensive use of a bow and arrow instead of picking up one of the numerous guns her enemies drop. Which is weird, since it’s not like Lara is Hawkeye. In the game, she picks up more advanced weapons as she gets them. It’s like they keep that fanservice, but then they don’t really preserve anything else about the source material.

Anyway, Lara and company—pointedly not including Lu Wen, who is pretty much absent from the third act of this big Asian romantic lead movie—enter the tomb. To its credit, the movie now has more tomb raiding than the game ever did (like I said, I was lukewarm on it; give me Angelina Jolie in shorts any day). And we find another story has been smushed into this one, because now there’s a faith versus science plotline where Lara doesn’t believe Himiko is real, and Vogel doesn’t believe she’s real, but Daddy Croft is all about that. Really, this is a theme that’s only coming up now? The movie’s almost over!

Well, this movie’s Himiko turns out to be mundane, but such an exotic variety of mundanity as to pretty much be as implausible as anything supernatural. And, again, more clichéd, as the McGuffin turns out to be a creation kit for rage zombies. I didn’t like when Rise of the Tomb Raider ripped off the Uncharted games that way, and it’s even more embarrassing when the last two Uncharted games have shied away from that trope. Yet the big damn movie can’t think of anything better to do, and gives us one measly rage zombie that’s easily dispatched? Not a horde of eternally undead Nipponese for our heroine to battle through? Not a Japanese Jason Voorhees she has to take out? Just a monster of the week from Supernatural, and not even a good episode at that?

How disappointing. The game had a better final boss. It really speaks to the movie having a low budget, especially when heroes and villains start having gunfights on a dinky set, with their cover seemingly inches away from each other because the place was built so small.

I continue to report on this only because I made a note to myself to mention this stupidity. Lara is tasked with stopping Vogel from getting away with a sample of this zombie apocalypse. She gets into a fistfight with the injured, limping Vogel and seems to be doing well for herself, but midway through she decides to cut the bridge that would’ve allowed either her or him to get out. This despite knowing that Vogel has called for a helicopter to pick him up and that if he kills her, Vogel can just wait for those guys to find him, rig up a way for him to get out, and blah blah rule the world.

So Lara destroying the bridge accomplishes nothing but guaranteeing her demise if she does happen to win.

But, she’s the hero, so she gets a mulligan on that and escapes to reunite with Lu Wen, who then disappears from the movie for the last time. Seriously, they don’t say goodbye, they don’t have a big kiss, he doesn’t show up in the epilogue. What happens to this character? What’s his arc been? Who knows! He was in the movie and now he’s not.

Lara goes back home, declares her father dead, takes over the company and hands it over to Anna, who she has just started to like, but then immediately realizes is evil, so I guess there was no point to that. Stay tuned for when we do Rise of the Tomb Raider and it turns out that the Deathless Ones are all Ewoks, I guess.

#tomb raider

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jupitercentre · 4 years

Note

answer all the dnd asks, troglodyte! *walks at you like spy tf2*

50 d&d questions

1. What do you think your d&d race would be?

I would say I’d just be a human honestly.

2. What class?

Ok so it would be the homebrew class you made called Gunslinger. Essentially it’s a class that uses guns exclusively and, in certain subclasses, some spells.

3. What two feats would you have?

Alert and Duel wielding

4. What has been your favorite d&d character you've played? (NPCs count for DMs)

I’m still pretty new to d&d. Only been playing for a bit over a year actually. And I’ve only ever made one character. His name is Flynn and i’m not gonna lie. At first he was just the Doom Slayer but a little bit to the left. But then I actually wrote a backstory and made it my own character. I’m proud of what he’s become :3

5. Which of your d&d characters has been the most like you?

Well going off the fact that I’ve only ever made one character. Flynn has reflected my quite a but. In a lot of situations I actually see myself and not my character.

6. Which of your d&d characters has been the least like you?

I can’t really answer this honestly.

7. How do you go about making a character or NPC?

I start with a fundamental idea. And just for example purposes. Flynn’s idea was literally just The Doom Slayer. And my reason for picking him is because he’s my favorite character of all time. And then I just keep developing on that until I have a character!

8. What is the most memorable natural 20 you've ever experienced?

At one point in a oneshot our group played we were at the final boss and I was about to do the finishing hit. I got a 20+2 and it was so satisfying to completely destroy it in one hit.

9. Has one of your d&d characters ever died? How?

Flynn has never died. Yet

10. What is your favorite class to play?

The only one I’ve played. Gunslinger!

11. Have you ever fought a dragon?

We haven’t fought an actual dragon but If you want to count a dragonborn then yes. Yes we have

12. Have you ever fought a beholder?

I personally haven’t. But my group has while I was away.

13. Have you ever fought a mind flayer?

We have never touched a mind flayer. As both players and DM’s

14. Have you ever had a romance with an NPC or another PC?

Funny story actually. In Flynn’s backstory his dimension was overrun by demons and they killed everyone he knew and loved. So when he got to the current dimension were playing in. He had ptsd to say the least. (ok maybe not so funny but whatever) So ironically enough after a while I got the ingenious idea to romance a demon that we helped near the beginning of the campaign. And so far it’s been fun to say the least. They go together well :3

15. Do you prefer to DM or play?

Well considering I have little to no DMing skills. I’m required by law to say playing heheh.

16. What is your favorite D&D pod/vodcast?

I haven’t listened to any. I want to listen to the adventure zone but you won’t let me because you want to watch the show with me.

17. Who is your favorite "celebrity dm?"

Matt Mercer.

18. Do you use props/minis/terrain in your game?

I don’t dm yet. But I have plans too.

19. How did you discover D&D?

My friend @violettherainwing told me about it because you mentioned doing it. So now were here

20. If you run a homebrew game, give an out of context spoiler.

Initiate Sector Sweep

21. Drop a picture of a mini you painted (if applicable)

I don’t have one

22. Write a brief scene centered around one of your characters!

Ok i’m breaking the rules a little bit I’m gonna describe the interaction between Flynn and Binary.Flynn went up to the roof to just hang out and think but then Binary came up and they started talking about where they both came from and where they think they’ll end up. It’s my favorite interaction between the two and I hope we do it again sometime.

23. Do you have any art of your characters?

I don’t. Because i’m awful at drawing. And I just haven’t tried to.

24. Have you ever played any TTRPGs other than D&D?

I’ve played 7 seas with my girlfriends mom dming it. It was. And interesting experience to say the lease.

25. What is your favorite snack for d&d?

Toast honestly.

26. If you could have one potion from d&d, which one would you choose?

I don’t really want any of the potions honestly. So instead i’ll take an item. And that would be the ring of gender swapping. Reasons for that are, it’s a one time use thing, and also. I wanna change heheh.

27. If you could cast one spell from d&d, which would you cast?

Fabricate

28. What is the most memorable natural 1 you've experienced?

I got a natural 1 when I got in a drinking contest with Binary. Flynn got hammered so goddamn fast.

29. Have you ever been drunk playing d&d?

No but I have been high before.

30. Homebrew or prewritten?

Homebrew all the way.

31. Tell me about your current party!

Our party is the embodiment of chaos. We are all stupid. But that’s what makes it good.

32. Most memorable NPC you've encountered in a game you played in.

Karkat Vantis in our d&d campaign Dungeon More Like Fungeon

33. Do you listen to music while playing? What kinds?

I have. Usually it’s what the dm plays. But I occasionally vibe to Camellia, Monstercat or Half alive If i’m not up to what’s playing.

34. Favorite accent to do for characters?

I don’t really do accents because we play on a discord server.

35. Favorite classic d&d trope

Gay bard

36. What was your first d&d character you made?

Flynn was. And he will forever stay my favorite.

37. What is the most recent PC or NPC you've created?

I did have an idea for an npc for my campaign but I can’t say what it is because of spoilers

38. Goblins or Kobolds?

Kobalds. You don’t see them nearly as often.

39. Favorite villain you've defeated?

Flynn’s ptsd lmao

40. What d&d deity would you be a cleric of?

Apollo

41. Give an out of context quote from one of your games!

“I can die for a few hours”

42. Have you ever rolled turn into a potted plant on the wild magic table?

I haven’t done this no

43. Minis and terrain or theater of the mind?

A mixture of both actually. I like a general layout of the area and then the fine details I like making up in my mind

44. Mulligan, Mercer, Murphy, or McElroy?

Matt Mercer.

45. What is the longest session you've ever had?

We played for like 7-8 hours. Maybe even longer. It was fun though :D

46. What is the longest battle you've fought or run?

I don’t remember what it was but it lasted a few hours.

47. Have you ever played at level 20?

Yes I have. It was chaotic!

48. Does your DM say "How do you want to do this?"

All the time

49. Have you ever played an edition other than 5th?

I haven’t. I don’t think I will to be completely honest.

50. Who is your favorite member of your party aside from your own. God this is difficult. We have so many divers PC’s and NPC’s it’s really hard to come up with a favorite. But after thinking about it for a while. I’m gonna have to say Binary. His design and backstory is extremely unique and he reflects your creativity so well. I’m proud of you!

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metawitches · 5 years

Text

Review

Fox’s new science fiction series, The Passage, which is based on Justin Cronin’s trilogy of novels, got off to a great start this week. The pilot served as an appetizer to whet our taste buds for what’s to come in this series, giving us small bites of different aspects of the universe established in Justin Cronin’s books and the changes made in order to transfer it to the screen. So far, all of the important book elements are present (or on their way), and the changes make sense, given the different logistics required for books vs TV.

I enjoyed everyone in the cast, though I can’t say they’re all exactly how I pictured the characters in the book. That’s mostly because the show has done a great job of diversifying what was a very white, male cast of characters in the book version of Project Noah. This is a welcome change. The gender swaps have already made for some intriguing changes in character interactions.

The early part of the story depends on the chemistry and believability of the pseudo father-daughter relationship between Mark-Paul Gosselaar’s federal agent, Brad Wolgast, and Saniyya Sidney’s orphaned 10 year old girl, Amy Bellafonte. The two actors nail it. Individually, they are each talented, charismatic and charming. Together, they share an immediate warmth and light that makes it understandable why they’d bond so quickly. Both characters come into the relationship feeling like they are alone in the world and each is mourning a deep loss. Their chemistry allows them to slot each other into the holes in their hearts.

The virals (vampires) are suitably menacing as they lie in wait for their prey and use hypnotic psychological tricks to draw in their victims. The series has added the threat of a global avian flu pandemic, which kills its victims in 12 hours, to help explain the reasoning for the accelerated pace of the research on the virals, who were meant to cure all diseases.

Since TV doesn’t have the extended time frame of the books to show the doctors’ inner deterioration and it would be tedious to show their interior downward spirals, the urgency of a plague is a suitable trade off to explain the reasoning behind experimenting on a child. Not that the reasoning actually makes sense in the book or here, but the added desperation makes their self-indulgent decisions more comprehensible.

Just don’t examine any of the science too closely, or your head might begin to show large veins similar to what the virals exhibit when they feed. This story probably begins after a long period where the government has been run by people who don’t believe in science or intellectualism, but who do believe in heightened national security. Thus, even the scientists use sketchy logic, and the only way to get any science funded is to prove that it can be useful to the military.

Not naming names or states, but if you look around today’s world, it’s not an implausible scenario.

The Passage was developed for TV by Liz Heldens. It’s executive produced by Liz Heldens, Matt Reeves, David W. Zucker, Adam Kassan and Ridley Scott, with cinematography by Ramsey Nickell and Byron Shah. The Passage also stars Jamie McShane as Dr. Tim Fanning, Caroline Chikezie as Dr. Major Nichole Sykes, Emmanuelle Chriqui as Dr. Lila Kyle, Brianne Howey as Shauna Babcock, McKinley Belcher III as Anthony Carter, Henry Ian Cusick as Dr. Jonas Lear, Vincent Piazza as Clark Richards and Kecia Lewis as Sister Lacey Antoine.

Recap

The Passage is narrated by Amy Bellafonte, the orphaned ten year old who will one day save humanity, according to the show’s tagline. The first moments of the pilot show Amy at some later point in the story, when she is no longer a relative innocent. She tells us that she now knows that monsters are real, and they’ve changed everything. It all started with two old friends who wanted to do good in the world.

Flashback to 2015, and an expedition to the remote Bolivian Highlands, where Dr Jonas Lear and Dr Tim Fanning hope to find a legendary 250 year old man to use in their research, which is sponsored by the Department of Defense and the Centers for Disease Control. They are guided by a Bolivian native who doesn’t speak English and accompanied by Department of Defense representative Clark Richards, plus a security team.

After days of walking through the jungle, the guide shows them a cave at the bottom of a gorge. He stops at the top of the gorge and refuses to go any closer to the 250 year old man. They can see a boy carrying a bucket of blood into the cave. The rest of the expedition goes down into the cave to have a look around. They aren’t at all phased by the bucket of blood.

Where did my face palm emoji go?

They are, after all, American scientists with big American guns. Up until now, virtually everything in their lives has taught them that either the science, the guns or being American will win the day for them. Time’s up on those beliefs.

When they enter the cave, the boy with the blood is unlocking a cage holding the 250 year old man, so that he can put the blood inside. The American team doesn’t pick up on this, and wants to know why the man is caged.

The boy appears to miss noticing the expedition until they’re right on top of him. He opens the cage to give the blood to the 250 year old man. Meanwhile, Fanning is concerned about why the man is being kept in a cage and steps forward to question the boy. When the boy finally notices them, he tells them to leave, using the word “jararaca”, which one of the soldiers translates as “vampire”.

Tim gets too close to the cage. The vampire attacks him and goes straight for his neck. Richards finds a long wooden stake, conveniently left lying around the cave. He throws it, like a spear, at the vampire’s chest. The vampire is driven away from Dr Fanning and probably killed, since he doesn’t appear to come back to Project Noah.

Tim’s neck is bleeding profusely. Lear puts pressure on the bleeding, but it doesn’t look hopeful. Later, he sits and prays in a clinic waiting room. Fanning finds his way to Lear, removing the bandage from his neck as he walks. He’s healed remarkably quickly. Lear notices that Fanning’s mouth is bleeding. Just then, one of his teeth falls out.

Fanning tells Lear that he feels amazing and that they must have found what they’re looking for, a great cure all for disease. They’re going to help so many people. Only he says it in the creepiest voice possible, with a creepy intensity. He’s not at all bothered by his tooth falling out.

Normal people are bothered by these things. I’ve had recurring nightmares about losing my teeth since I was a child.

Henry Ian Cusick (Lear) pulls off a perfectly complex emotional reaction that shows he realizes they’ve just opened Pandora’s box and there’s no way he can close it. And part of him doesn’t want to. Jamie McShane (Fanning) manages to be terrifying, and all he does is stand there, looking like he’s just made an amazing discovery.

Amy tells us that Project Noah came out of the discoveries made in the cave. Then Project Noah led to everything else that happened.

Jump forward three years, to 2018, and Huntsville State Prison, in Texas. Two federal agents, Brad Wolgast and Phil Doyle, have been sent to convince a death row inmate, Anthony Carter, to join the research trials at Project Noah, in exchange for having his sentence commuted.

Once they sit down with Carter, Wolgast does most of the talking. He explains that Project Noah is a medical organization that’s working on a drug which would make people immune to all infectious diseases. Carter has the opportunity to join other infamous death row inmates who have already had their sentences commuted, in exchange for joining the drug trial, such as Martin Echols, John Baffes, and Shauna Babcock. They are all out in Colorado enjoying the scenery and the joys of becoming human guinea pigs.

Carter has reservations, and would like to talk to one of the other inmates who’s taken the deal. Doyle jumps in to remind him that it’s the drug trial or death. It sounds like a threat. This is why Wolgast does the talking. He sounds like he’s trying to convince Carter to go on vacation.

Wolgast takes back control of the conversation. He acknowledges how unusual the situation is, and assures Carter that he has a choice. But Carter is going to be executed. Wolgast is offering him time. “I can give you an ocean of time.”

In Telluride, Colorado, at Project Noah, Dr Major Nichole Sykes calls a meeting because word has just come through that the team needs to step up the pace of their experiments. An outbreak of Chinese avian flu has mutated and become an epidemic. It’s airborne, there’s no vaccine, and it has an incubation period of 12 hours. Patients are dead less than a day after exposure. There’s fear that it could become a global pandemic, with projections that it could reach the US in 3 months. The CDC feels that their research is the best hope for a vaccine.

This would be one of the areas where we’re just not going to examine the science, and we’ll all be much happier for it.

Lear points out that they haven’t gotten a subject safely through trials. They’re nowhere near close to having a vaccine ready. He suggests incubating in mammalian vero cells, but Dr Sykes shoots him down, saying that they’d need extended passaging with antitryptic activity.

Dr Pet jumps in and says that he has an idea, but it’s unorthodox, and it’ll be unpopular. Dr Sykes is willing to consider anything. Pet leads them down to the cells where the “patients” are kept.

He summarizes the trials so far. Fanning is Patient Zero. He was age 52 at the time of exposure and experienced a brief period of rapid healing, followed by a decline into a veinous, nearly catatonic, blood-sucking monster, who is, none the less, immune to disease.

Immortality comes with a price. Since they are scientists and eschew superstition, at Project Noah they are careful not to call the immortal blood-sucking patients vampires.

After Fanning, Project Noah began importing Death Row convicts to experiment on. John Baffes, Victor Chavez, Kathy Turrell, Rupert Sosa. They attenuated the formula in between patients, and each patient stayed healthy and human for longer, with fewer side effects, but they still turn into vampires in the end. They are getting closer to the right formula.

Echols, Martinez, June Reinhardt (a white supremacist), all reflected the improvements in the formula. The most recent patient is Shauna Babcock, Patient 11. She’s the best result they’ve had. It was 28 days before she began to decline, and she’s retained her human looks. She’s got both the disease immunity and the blood-sucking monster aspects of the virus, but it’s progress.

From all of this, Dr Pet has figured out that it’s not just the adjustments to the formula that make the difference. It’s the age of the subject, because the formula attacks neurons, and younger people have more neurons. “The more neurons, the less severe the decline.”

Anthony Carter is 25 and will arrive at the compound tomorrow. Dr Pet still wants to experiment on him, because, what the heck, why not? Wouldn’t want to ruin their track record of abusing inmates, which is, after all, a time-honored American tradition.

But what he really needs is a child, with billions and billions of innocent and untouched neurons waiting just for him. The child would react to the formula with zero side effects, like daddy’s perfect little angel.

He says this with near religious fervor, but there’s nothing pedophilic about it, really.

Sykes spends the day trying to find another way to solve the issue, but eventually she asks Richards, who is now the head of security for Project Noah, if he’d be able to find a child that no one would miss. Richards won’t have any problem locating and kidnapping one of the many children who fall through the cracks in the social services system on a regular basis. But he’s worried about how Sykes will handle this compromise.

She has convinced herself that she has to live with it, because the trade off is one child’s life versus millions of people. This conversation makes it clear that Richards and Sykes have grown close.

Which brings us to the introduction of Amy Harper Bellafonte, who is currently hanging around a fast food joint, arm wrestling other kids for cash. She stays at the restaurant until closing, long after the other kids have gone home for the night, then goes to find her drug addict mom at the fleabag motel where they currently live.

Her mom is dead, having OD’d sometime that day. The police are taking her body away. They bring Amy back to the station with them and arrange temporary foster care for the weekend, since it’s too late to call Social Services. Her paperwork can wait until Monday.

“I’m the girl from nowhere. The one no one will miss. That’s why they chose me. My name is Amy Bellafonte. This is how the world ends.”

Brad and Doyle deliver Carter to the Project Noah compound. A nurse meets them in the lobby of the main building, which used to be a resort hotel. She takes Carter downstairs in an elevator. When the doors close on his face, it feels very final. Doyle asks if Brad ever wonders what happens to the psychopaths after they drop them off. Brad says he doesn’t think about it. Doyle looks like he does. He also looks like he might potentially be one of the serial killers.

Richards greets them cordially, hugging Brad. They are old friends who served 3 tours in Special Ops together. Richards says that Brad taught him everything he knows, and that Doyle shouldn’t make Brad angry, because he’s dangerous.

Hopefully Brad has a few tricks up his sleeve that he hasn’t shared with Richards or Doyle. It pays to stay one step ahead of guys like that.

Richards hands Brad their next assignment, the folder with Amy’s information. There’s a moment of tension, as Richards wait to see if Brad will object to abducting a child. But Brad is loyal to his country and organization, and tells Richards, “No problem.”

When Brad and Doyle arrive at Amy’s foster home, she’s out back wrestling with a girl who stole her most prized possession, the copy of A Wrinkle in Time given to her by her mother. Brad explains that the government thinks that her mother died because she was exposed to a toxin, so they want Amy to see a specialist in Colorado to see of she was exposed as well. Amy tells him that her mother was a drug addict who died of a drug overdose. He continues with his script. She refuses to play along, but does cooperate when the foster mom sends her upstairs to pack her things.

It’s funny that Brad couldn’t alter his script to say that her mother’s drugs were laced with the toxin. Of course, then he wouldn’t be able to explain Amy’s supposed exposure.

Amy has her own plan anyway. She packs up her stuff in her backpack, tosses it out the window, jumps out after it, sneaks into the backyard and grabs her book, then runs away. Brad notices parts of this happening, but doesn’t react quickly enough. He and Doyle have to drive the car down the block to catch Amy. Doyle picks her up to carry her back to the car, with her fighting him the whole way. When he doesn’t like how hard she’s fighting him, he slaps her, hard enough to make her forehead swell.

Brad drives until they’re out of that neighborhood, then stops on the side of the road. He grabs Doyle’s neck and slams his face into the console, telling him that if he hits Amy again, Brad will shoot him in the face. Next, he checks on Amy in the back seat. She’s scared of him at first, but begins to trust him when he asks about her injury to make sure she’s okay.

Richards calls to make sure they got Amy. Brad tells him they got her, but it went sideways, with many witnesses. He thinks they should drop her somewhere and abort. Richards won’t hear of it, and orders Brad to follow their usual procedures to get back to Colorado. Richards warns Brad not to test him or the people they work for.

Amy gets car sick as they’re driving through a small town in Arkansas. Brad helps her and sends Doyle to the store for supplies. While they wait for Doyle, they talk about her book, A Wrinkle in Time. It was given to her by her mother. When they get back in the car, Brad gives Amy the front seat to help with the car sickness. Doyle looks like he sucked on a lemon.

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Lear stands outside of Fanning’s cell and stares at his old friend. He’s playing Fanning’s favorite song, Fleetwood Mac’s The Chain, hoping it will get through to Tim and cause a reaction. One of the custodians, Lawrence Grey, joins Lear, and asks about the song.

He tells Lear that he thinks Tim is still in there, because he comes to Grey in dreams. In the dreams, Tim says that he wants to go home, and he wants Grey to come with him. Grey confides that it’s not just him. Other guys on the staff are having nightmares, too. Grey asks if Lear is having nightmares.

Lear gives Grey a condescending smile and tells him that it’s just cabin fever. He shouldn’t worry about it.

Said the smug, rational character at the beginning of every horror movie ever.

A few cells away, in front of Shauna Babcock’s cell, Dr Pet tells Richards that playing Fanning’s song won’t do any good, because the virals have no higher brain function. The MRIs have proven it. They all have little quirks, like pacing or staring, but they’re just reflexes that don’t mean anything. He notes that Babcock likes to stare at Richards.

Richards hasn’t noticed. He thought she never looked at him. Dr Pet asks about Shauna’s crimes, so Richards tells him that she was in jail for murdering both of her parents.

Next up is feeding time. They have a trough feeding system set up that is literally a type used with farm animals. A sluice opens up, and blood pours into the trough. The patient uses their hands to scoop blood up into their mouths. When Shauna’s done eating, she has blood all over her mouth and chin, running down her neck. She walks right up to the glass to stare Richards in the eyes.

It’s a toss-up who should be eaten first, Richards or Pet.

Brad lets Amy watch cartoons on his pad while they drive. She teases him when he gets a text from his ex-wife, Lila. They quickly develop a teasing, natural rhythm to their banter. Soon, they drive by a sign advertising a local carnival. Amy doesn’t say anything, but her face shows that she’s excited by the idea. Brad decides they should check it out.

Once they stop, Doyle pulls Brad aside to loudly ask why he’s treating the cargo like a child. Brad is appalled, and tells Doyle that he and Amy are going inside for 90 minutes. Doyle can do what he wants. Brad doesn’t punch him, but it’s a close thing.

Doyle has clearly never taken a road trip with a child, cargo or not. Did he want her vomiting in the back seat the whole way? But then, he slapped Amy 5 minutes after he met her, so he’s at the top of the virals menu as well.

We find out just how close Sykes and Richards have grown when she finds him waiting for her in her room. She tells him that she doesn’t want to talk, and he agrees that’s not what he wants either. They fall into each other, then into bed.

Later, he tells her that Amy should be there in a day or two. He has confidence in Sykes’ interpretation of the science and that Amy will be okay. They kiss again.

Sykes turns into Babcock, who tells him she misses him and asks if he thinks about her. He tells her he does. She says that she thinks about him, too, but he shouldn’t have lied to her. She knows he’ll make it up to her later. Then she reveals her fangs and goes to bite his neck.

Richards wakes up from his nightmare. Sykes is asleep next to him.

Amy wants the giant stuffed unicorn that’s a prize for one of the carnival shooting games. She challenges Brad to win it for her. He easily makes the shot, then coaches her through making the second two necessary for claiming the unicorn. He’s a great teacher and supportive of her, even though other people are waiting.

While Amy’s waiting for her unicorn, Brad gets a call from his ex-wife Lila, who’s calling because she wanted to check in with him as their daughter’s birthday nears. Eva died three years ago and it hasn’t gotten any easier. Also, Lila’s new boyfriend, David, asked her to marry him. Since Brad isn’t getting over the loss of Eva, which he shouldn’t blame himself for, and coming home, she said yes. She needs to move on, and maybe have another baby.

These two are a mess.

The end of Amy’s childhood.

Amy has her unicorn, and asks Brad if he’s okay. Before he can answer, Doyle appears, ready to drag them back to the car, because he’s anti-fun. Brad says he needs to use the men’s room, but Doyle wants to go first, so Brad lets him. Brad follows Doyle a moment later and puts Doyle in a sleeper hold until he passes out.

When he gets back to Amy, he tells her that they’re ditching Doyle and not going to Colorado, because it’s a bad place. He starts to make a speech about why she should trust him, but Amy’s already ten steps ahead of him, literally and figuratively. They need to get to the car and leave, before Doyle wakes up, and she trusts him. She’s got no one else, and he’s a good guy.

At Project Noah, their escape is bad news. A disembodied voice reminds Sykes and Richards that, “Brad Wolgast earned a silver star in 2005 and was credited with 98 kills in Afghanistan. This is not the guy we want going rogue. We need this contained…He knows enough to make him a liability. Do what you have to do.” Richards tries to talk the voice out of an extreme response, with no luck. After that, Richards is resigned to doing his job.

Brad takes Amy to a wooded area next to a river. Before they get out of the car, he looks at a family photo of himself with Lila and Eva. Then he takes Amy to stand on the riverbank, and explains that he thought they could remember her mom here, since there wasn’t a funeral service for her.

He asks Amy to share some memories. At first, Amy is stuck on her mother’s drug addiction. Brad tells her anger is poison, and suggests she leave some of it there. Then Amy focuses on positive memories. She remembers when her mom made her a birthday cake out of donut holes and whipped cream. She let Amy lie in her bed to watch TV and was always nice when Amy got scared. And she always said that Amy was the joy of her life. By now, Amy is crying. Brad hugs her.

Anthony Carter waits in an examining room at Project Noah, until he’s joined by a doctor, who says he’s going to do a quick exam. We can’t see the doctor’s face. The doctor says that Carter seems healthy and will be a great addition to their research. Carter asks what the doctor’s name is.

Dr Tim Fanning is revealed, looking human again. Cater asks what’s going to happen. Fanning tells him that it’s going to be rough, then it’s going to get worse and worse, but Fanning will be with him the whole time. As he talks, Fanning looks less human, and his mouth begins to bleed. He tells Carter that it will get better, and when it does, “Oh brother, it’s gonna be glorious!”

Carter wakes up, still alone in the examining room. Down in his cell, Fanning smiles.

Apparently there’s more going on in the vampire’s heads than an MRI can show.

Brad stops at a convenience store to buy drinks and snacks, and sees that he and Amy are all over the news. They’re saying he abducted Amy. He calls Lila to warn her that the feds might be asking about him, but Richards is already at Lila’s house. Lila is on the ball, and pretends that Brad is a patient calling. She tells him that Richards has a tactical team with him. Brad tells her that he’s just trying to do the right thing, she was right about everything and he loves her. He never stopped.

He couldn’t tell her all of that when he wasn’t about to be killed?

Brad decides that since he’s not going to be able to get her across the border, they should surrender to the local cops, and try to get Amy on TV, so the feds can’t disappear her. He turns himself in, but the locals do everything wrong. He’s handcuffed to a chair when Richards shows up with at least two tac teams. He has Amy grab the keys and he unlocks the cuffs, then they try to make a run for it.

The local sheriff doesn’t understand what’s happening, until the feds shoot him instead of helping him. Brad has a shoot out in the police station with Richards and the tac teams. He really is a better fighter than everybody else, though, and Amy has good instincts from years of hiding out with her mother. Brad comes face to face with Richards, and tells him that he doesn’t understand why they need Amy so much. But Richards won’t explain why they need her. Instead, Richards shoots Brad in the side as they’re escaping.

They make it into a police car and drive away, with the feds in pursuit. Amy is close to panicking. Brad tells her to look at him. When she does, he says, “It’s gonna be okay. You understand? I’m not gonna leave you, I promise.”

Amy: “Of everything that happened, this is the part I think of most. Whatever was coming, we would face it together.”

Brad tells her to put her seatbelt on, now.

Strap in everybody, the end is nigh. It’s going to be a wild ride.

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Commentary

Dr Lear and Dr Pet

I don’t know where the series is going with that slight indication toward pedophilia they indicated with Dr Pet, but it was a huge theme in this part of the book. Dr Pet is a new character who was created for the series. So far, he seems to be the unethical side of Dr Lear from the book. My guess is that they split Lear’s personality into two people, one good, one ruthless, so that his/their motivations would be easier to understand. (Neither Lear nor Amy were involved in the pedophilia aspects of the story, but they could be transferring those aspects to different characters.)

Vipers and Vampires

Besides being a vampire, a jararaca is also a species of South American snake in the pit viper family. It’s a common snake within its range and is one of the major sources of snakebites in the area. It’s venom was used to develop ACE inhibitors, medications used for the treatment of hypertension and some types of congestive heart failure. The viral vampires do have a snake-like quality, sitting and staring for hours at a time, then leaping into action to feed. A formula from each has been used to extend life.

“Typical [jararaca bite] symptoms include local swelling, petechiae [a red or purple spot on the skin, caused by a minor bleed], bruising and blistering of the affected limb, spontaneous systemic bleeding of the gums and into the skin, subconjunctival hemorrhage [bleeding in the whites of the eyes] and incoagulable blood [blood that won’t clot]. The systemic symptoms can potentially be fatal and may involve hemostatic disorders [blood disorders involving difficulty clotting], intracranial hemorrhage, shock and renal failure.”–Wikipedia

It sounds like the early symptoms of viral vampirism are very similar to the symptoms of the jararaca bite. They both involve issues with bleeding and clotting. Causing victims to have an inability to clot would be useful for a vampire, for obvious reasons. Maybe it’s also helpful for the transition stages, to help the patient bleed out whatever is now unnecessary to the body.

The Jararaca and Karma

You can look at the expedition to the Bolivian cave in at least two ways. You could say that the Americans corrupted the indigenous guide into selling out his ancestors and their secrets, leading ultimately to the end of their people. Or you could say that he conned them out of their money and took them to the cave thinking that the jararaca could get a few tasty meals out of them, and the secrets of his ancestors would be protected. It was bad luck that the confrontation went the other way.

On a deeper level, there’s an element of Colonialism to the story, as the Americans feel they can go into the third world country, supported by their military, and remove whatever resources they find valuable. They feel free to murder the indigenous people at the first sign of trouble. They ignore the locals who try to explain the traditional wisdom surrounding the 250 year old man, assuming that indigenous people only traffic in superstition, while they will use their own superior form of science.

250 years gives many opportunities to test out theories using trial and error. Devices and lab coats aren’t required to do experiments.

When Europeans came to America, they brought with them diseases, such as smallpox, for which the indigenous people of the Americas had no immunity, causing massive epidemics and mortality. It’s only fitting that the Colonists’ descendants should bring about the end through a plague, started by underestimating the native culture.

The jararaca was 250 years old, yet he was a buried legend, even in Bolivia. The people he lived with had learned to take his power seriously and keep him under control. The people in the surrounding areas had learned to ignore the legend, because it led in a dangerous direction. It was only the scientists and the military, who thought they had conquered nature, that were foolish enough to bring the virus out into the world and experiment with it.

In that sense, the vampire virus is a metaphor for all of the stupid, self-destructive ideas humans pursue, while telling themselves that these are great ideas. We love to open Pandora’s box, even as others are trying to tell us why it’s a mistake.

If You Like The Passage:

Containment was a fun one and done CW series about an outbreak of a plague in Atlanta. It’s now on Netflix. The Rain is about the ongoing crisis following the spread of an engineered virus in Scandinavia, following a group trapped in a quarantine zone. It’s a Netflix Original with one season already available and a second season in the works. The Strain is another show which follows an outbreak of super creepy viral vampirism. It lasted 4 seasons/46 episodes on FX and is available on Hulu.

youtube

The Passage Season 1 Episode 1: Pilot Recap Review Fox's new science fiction series, The Passage, which is based on Justin Cronin's trilogy of novels, got off to a great start this week.

#FOX #Henry Ian Cusick #justin cronin #Mark-Paul Gosselaar #metacrone #Pilot #Psychological Thriller #recaps #review #Saniyya Sidney #science fiction #scifi horror #The Passage #viral vampires

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artcommentary · 6 years

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Blog Post 4

The first article, More Community Service Not Less, spoke about the budget cuts towards an already beleaguered corporation for national and community service. They oversee a lot of programs, the most popular one is AmeriCorps. Since the founding of this program they opened almost one million positions for Americans; teach for America, Red Cross, and boys and girls club. Not only is it just helping communities by allowing people to find careers in these positions. “The proposed cuts, which would reduce the federal investment in the community service corporation by about a third, would gut valuable programs and shut down others altogether. Beyond that, thousands of teachers, tutors and mentors would be withdrawn from low-performing schools across the country. That’s too big a price to pay for a savings so small that it doesn’t even rate as a rounding error in the national budget. Its up to president Obama to fight for the national service program and make sure it remains intact,”

This article, EDITORIAL: What I Said When My White Friend Asked for My Black Opinion on White Privilege

Was about how a woman was on Facebook and her friend posted:

“To all of my Black or mixed race FB friends, I must profess a blissful ignorance of this “White Privilege” of which I’m apparently guilty of possessing. By not being able to fully put myself in the shoes of someone from a background/race/religion/gender/ nationality/body type that differs from my own makes me part of the problem, according to what I’m now hearing. Despite my treating everyone with respect and humor my entire life (as far as I know), I’m somehow complicit in the misfortune of others. I’m not saying I’m colorblind, but whatever racism/sexism/other -ism my life experience has instilled in me stays within me, and is not manifested in the way I treat others (which is not the case with far too many, I know).

So that I may be enlightened, can you please share with me some examples of institutional racism that have made an indelible mark upon you? If I am to understand this, I need people I know personally to show me how I’m missing what’s going on. Personal examples only. I’m not trying to be insensitive, I only want to understand (but not from the media). I apologize if this comes off as crass or offends anyone.”

She then began her response starting with thanking him and the importance there is in him wanting to better understand what he doesn’t understand. She wants to answer because she has noticed that many of her white friends didn’t see how they benefit from white privileges and or the existence of white privileges, until they are with a friend with color to witness them being on the receiving end of prejudice and racism. She then goes to explain her encounters with the concluding lesson of the white privilege of each situation

1. the white privilege in this situation is being able to move into a “nice” neighborhood and be accepted not harassed, made to feel unwelcome, or prone to acts of vandalism and hostility.

2. if you’ve NEVER had a defining moment in your childhood or your life, where you realize your skin color alone makes other people hate you, you have white privilege.

3. if you’ve never been ‘the only one’ of your race in a class, at a party, on a job, etc. and/or it’s been pointed out in a “playful” fashion by the authority figure in said situation – you have white privilege.

4. if you’ve never been on the receiving end of the assumption that when you’ve achieved something it’s only because it was taken away from a white person who “deserved it” – that is white privilege.

5. if no one has ever questioned your intellectual capabilities or attendance at an elite institution based solely on your skin color, that is white privilege.

6. So if you have never experienced or considered how damaging it is/was/could be to grow up without myriad role models and images in school that reflect you in your required reading material or in the mainstream media – that is white privilege.

7. if you’ve never been blindsided when you are just trying to enjoy a meal by a well-paid faculty member’s patronizing and racist assumptions about how grateful black people must feel to be in their presence – you have white privilege.

8. if you’ve never been on the receiving end of a boss’s prejudiced, uninformed “how dare she question my ideas” badmouthing based on solely on his ego and your race, you have white privilege.

9. if you’ve never had to mask the fruits of your success with a floppy-eared, stuffed bunny rabbit so you won’t get harassed by the cops on the way home from your gainful employment (or never had a first date start this way), you have white privilege.

10. not having to rewrite stories, headlines or swap photos while being trolled by racists when all you’re trying to do on a daily basis is promote positivity and share stories of hope and achievement and justice – that is white privilege.

With his choice to ask and her choice to respond, we learn that a simple conversation can allow people to have a better understanding for one another. By the man taking action and asking, it seems that his morals are more intact than the average white person when having to question white privilege.

These types of beliefs are taught whether it is due to your socioeconomic status when growing up. You didn’t see the need for the “benefits” given to people in poverty or if it is a “heritage belief” or a “religious belief.” They also teach people to treat others with prejudice and racism.

Personally, I try to be as understanding as possible, learning to think before I speak or react. Having conversations about sensitive subjects or things I am emotionally invested in, no matter how small. For example, after the presidential election, I’ve known people who voted for trump, when asking why they did; they told me a lot of “facts” and possibilities. None of them ever answered with remarks with the border, his racism, or positive perspective of his bigotry and stupidity. Since I am not a supporter of him it is hard to look past all of his negatives. I think to myself, how can they look past it? Are they ignoring it? Secretly agreeing with it? I try to be as understanding as possible and have no choice but to e respectful to their thoughts and opinions. Who am I to tell someone they are wrong or even a bad person for supporting something they believe in.

I don’t identify with a religion. Once I was in the barbershop, and there was my barber a Christian, and another customer who was Muslim. We spoke on religion and God. It was supposed to be an objective conversation. I asked the Muslim, if he ever considered his religion to be the “wrong” to practice/follow due to the amount of religions practiced around the world. He answered, “i don’t go against anything in the Quran. I believe everything in the Quran.” I asked him again but this time I clarified that I am speaking on probability rather than a conversation about faith. He looked at me like I was crazy and responded with the same answer. I was shocked but his morals were too aligned with his religion to have an objective conversation on his religion. At a point I gave up on the conversation because of that.

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recentanimenews · 6 years

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Life After MMO Junkie: Our Top 10 Recommendations for Recovery of an MMO Junkie fans

With Recovery of an MMO Junkie coming to an end, many of you may find yourselves asking “where do I go from here?” We’ve put together a list of my top recommendations for the MMO Junkie fan looking for new material to consume. One aspect that made the anime truly unique was its focus on characters in their late 20s and early 30s, so many of these recommendations will involve more traditional high school age romances but I’ve tried to include something for everyone. Whether you’re looking for the gaming culture aspects of the story, the focus on Japanese work culture, or subversive gender themes, there should be something for everyone here. In no particular order, here are our Top 10 picks for fans of MMO Junkie!

MY Love STORY!!

One of the most feel-good romantic comedies in anime and potentially the planet earth, MY Love STORY is a great substitute for MMO Junkie’s relentless positivity. Takeo Goda is a tall, muscular high school student with thick eyebrows. He’s a romantic but his pursuit of love is constantly foiled by his best friend Sunakawa. Takeo’s size makes him intimidating to the girls of the school while Sunakawa’s legendary good looks attract everyone to him. That is, until Rinko falls in love with Takeo after he saves her from a groper in a train. What follows is the story of Takeo and Rinko awkwardly navigating love through mutual support and with the help of their friends. The series avoids many of the romantic comedy anime tropes, focusing on real-life challenges like first kisses and Valentine’s Day instead of romantic rivals and mysterious childhood promises.

Princess Jellyfish (manga)

Perhaps the most similar premise to MMO Junkie of all these recommendations for its focus on NEET culture and gender subversion. Princess Jellyfish is a romantic comedy telling the story of Tsukimi, an artist and jellyfish otaku living in the Amamizukan apartment building, a women's only dorm populated by NEET women. She has a fateful encounter with Kuranosuke, a beautiful woman who she discovers is actually the cross-dressing illegitimate son of a Tokyo politician. He takes an interest in the residents of the dorm, despite having to keep his gender under wraps to avoid violating their “no men” rule and offers aid when they find themselves fighting to keep their complex from being demolished for redevelopment. The manga won the Kodansha Award and has an anime adaptation with a live-action TV series on the way!

ReLIFE

Navigating modern work culture and the pursuit of personal happiness are a constant presence in the background of Moriko’s online questing and awkward romance. ReLIFE puts a laser focus on that struggle. It’s protagonist Arata Kaizaki quits his corporate job after 3-months and is unable to find new work besides a part-time position at a convenience store. He’s approached by a mysterious man who wants to make Kaizaki the test subject of a new government program known as ReLIFE, using a special medication that will regress his age 10 years and place him back in high school with the intention of allowing him to more successfully navigate that formative period of his life and fix what’s ailing him. The story has its share of surprises with other ReLIFE participants and some subversive elements looking a modern corporate culture in Japan that resonate with Moriko’s own falling out with her job.

Monthly Girls' Nozaki-kun

Another high school romantic comedy that plays with genre conventions, Chiyo Sakura has a crush on Umetaro Nozaki and, in the process of attempting to ask him out, ends up discovering his secret life as renowned shojo mangaka Sakiko Yumeno. Somehow she ends up working as his assistant filling in beta and reining back his outlandish story ideas while trying to sort out her feelings. This anime is a bit more slowburn, falling back on the “will they won't they” formula common in shojo manga with Chiyo’s struggles to confess her feelings to the oblivious Nozaki. For all that, it keeps things relatively stress free by putting you in the lives of a growing cast of eccentrics with some attachment to shojo manga, either as artists or real-life stereotypes.

Miss Kobayashi’s Dragon Maid

A less obvious candidate for MMO Junkie fans is this reverse isekai LGBT romance between a woman and her dragon who is also her maid. Miss Kobayashi’s Dragon Maid is the same kind of goofy, loosely animated romcom with an equally charming cast. Although Moriko and Kobayashi are outwardly dissimilar, with Moriko having quit work at the beginning of the story and Kobayashi intensely involved in her job to the detriment of her personal relationships, both have issues with intimacy and self-image that they struggle with in the face of unexpected romantic interest and overcome their own loneliness by discovering a place in a group of eccentrics. Dragon Maid is a heartfelt and happy story with moments of soft introspection that ground things, it's just a bit pervier.

Tsukigakirei

A sleeper hit of this year, Tsukigakirei is unusual romance for focusing on a mutual crush between two middle school students. Much like MY Love STORY, the story focuses heavily on firsts and discovering what love and being in a relationship really mean. The big MMO Junkie connection probably comes in the social anxiety experienced by the two leads, Kotaro and Akane. In addition to learning about relationships for the first time, the story observes their slow progress in learning how to communicate with one another and express affection. In the beginning, they’re only able to open up and be themselves over the chat application LINE but are overcome with awkwardness and uncertainty in person. It’s a story of discovery and reaching out to one another, motivated by love and the desire for self-improvement.

Chihayafuru

This may be my most unique recommendation and one I make precisely because it is so unique, much like MMO Junkie itself. Both josei series are difficult to codify using more popular anime storytelling tropes. Where MMO Junkie has its more middle-aged focus and quirky construct for introducing its romantic leads, Chihayafuru is part drama, part romance, part sports series. Chihaya Ayase is introduced to the traditional Japanese card game karuta. The story focuses on her quest to improve at the sport and rediscover the boy who showed her the world of karuta. This may be a bit of a stretch but both stories leave the feeling of coming from outside normal conventions of their genre.

Sword Art Online

Now let me explain. Although the conditions under which Kirito and Asuna meet in an MMO in Sword Art Online couldn’t be different than those of Hayashi and Lily, the two couples definitely have a lot in common. While the quests in SAO are life and death affairs, Kirito and Asuna have a mutually supportive relationship with both characters playing proactive roles and offering mutual support. It’s a good ship. If you’re into MMO Junkie for the gaming culture elements, there are plenty on offer in SAO. While the series movies into more action and intrigue-related subplots as it progresses, the first arc has a laser focus on Asuna and Kirito’s budding romance in a unique and deadly world. If you wanted an MMO Junkie with higher stakes, you’ve come to the right place!

Yamada-kun and the Seven Witches

If you love stories where everyone but the main characters are aware of their mutual affection, welcome to this quirky high school comedy featuring the protagonist Ryuu Yamada, a delinquent and outcast who finds himself in the middle of a magical conspiracy in his own school. Seven female students have magical powers that manifest when they kiss someone. He discovers this by accidentally kissing one of the school's top performing students, Urara Shiraishi and learning she has the power to swap bodies. He quickly discovers that, despite her achievements, his perceptions of her perfect life were way off base. The story explores themes of agency, loneliness, obligation, and the personal struggles and lives individuals people keep hidden behind their public face.

Sakura Quest

Although not a love story, Sakura Quest is an anime about working women that takes a deep dive into some of the social issues of MMO Junkie. Its cast is a group of misfits trying to hold up the failing economy of a town in rural Japan. Each harbors their own troubled past and personal struggles with the current economic environment and modern work culture. The anime offers an uncomfortable perspective of the victims of modern progress an all-too-real look at people who just aren’t sure what they can do to find meaning and prosperity in their own lives. The possible motivations for Moriko’s own rejection of modern work culture and retreat to the comfort of the virtual world play themselves out several times in this series. It doesn’t offer many solutions and may not be as upbeat as MMO Junkie, but is inspirational in its own way, showing characters trying, failing, and trying again.

I hope you’re able to fall in love with one or more of the series stories the same way we fell in love with Recovery of an MMO Junkie. If you find one of these filling that Moriko-shaped hole in your heart then please share it with others! If you’ve got your own recommendations, please share them below!

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Peter Fobian is an Associate Features Editor for Crunchyroll, author of Monthly Mangaka Spotlight, writer for Anime Academy, and contributor at Anime Feminist. You can follow him on Twitter @PeterFobian.

By: [email protected]

#Anime #News #Latest in Anime News by Crunchyroll!

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