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brewsbrownies · 4 months

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Theory: what REALLY makes a spider-man?

I don't know about you but ever since I watched across the spider-verse I've been curious about what makes spider man, spider man, if supposedly 'anyone can wear the mask.' It's obviously not appearance:

It's not whether or not you were bitten by a spider:

and we've already seen that it's not one's species or gender.

It's not 'destiny' either *cough*Spider-Man 2099*cough*

And I really don't think it's capability either

So what is it? I'm not sure since nothing is confirmed. I've tried to think about it but there is always something that contradicts whatever I come up with. I can't think of anything that makes perfect sense or has tons of proof but I do have a theory that I think makes the MOST sense and i hope it's good enough.

It's already been shown that every spider-person has a 'with great power comes great responsibility' moment at some point in some kind of way, whether they were directly or indirectly told or shown it.

Well, I think that kind of makes almost every spider-person have a mindset of 'I have to fix my mistake' even if there is quite literally no way they can fix it, not any kind of way to redeem themselves.

Even if they aren't told that it's their fault most spider-people already convince themselves it is. So basically I think it's their mindset. Every spider-person has an 'it's my fault, so I have to fix it' sort of mindset, even if it is their fault, there's never a way to fix their 'uncle Ben' moment.

They try to fix it but it never fulfills anything.

Some of the only solid proof of this is from a DELETED scene so I'm not sure how accurate it is.

in a deleted scene Miguel asks miles what makes a spider-man, miles answers and Miguel says his answer is wrong. That means that there is a right answer (in Miguel's mind) so any spider-person who the 'right' answer applies to immediately has the chance for miguel to ask them to join the spider society. This is what happened with gwen.

Miguel still doesn't want gwen to join even after he sees how capable she is, he doesn't want her to join still when her dad had a bad reaction to her identity reveal, he only decides to let her join right after she says something along the lines of "I don't how I can fix this." He replies with "join the club." And lets her join the spider society.

This leads me to believe that it has something to do with the mindset of the spider-person. If anyone knows anymore proof or has anything they want to add or prove wrong than feel free to say it.

Edit (I keep realising stuff AFTER I post theories): miles was never told in any kind of way "with great power comes great responsibility" he also never could come to that conclusion since when his 'uncle Ben' moment happened uncle Aaron told him "I let you down man" he also told him to "just keep going" and "you're the best of all of us" so miles never blamed himself instead he tried to improve, just keep going. this is one of the reasons he's considered an anomaly.

Some may make the argument that gwen never had a WGPCGR moment either or that she never blamed herself for peter's death, but when Peter died (her peter*) he told her that he wanted to be like her so gwen might've realised that peter did that because of HER and she technically killed him even if it was an accident it was still her. So peter sorta indirectly said that it was HER fault possibly still making her guilty.

#Across The Spider Verse #ITSV #ATSV #spider-verse theories #Across the spider verse theories #miguel o'hara #gwen stacy #spider verse #spider man theories #spider man #marvel

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a-witch-in-endor · 2 years

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I know tumblr isn’t really the place for nuance, but... considering the misinformation about Queen Elizabeth floating around, I think it’s worth keeping in mind that something can be ethically wrong (the concept of the monarchy) without everything about it being black-and-white.

And as Brit, a republican, a religious minority, and a POC, I don’t think we do anyone any favours with misinformation. All we do is allow ourselves to be criticised on that information instead of the much more important ethical issue underlying all of this.

So here are, I think, poor arguments levelled against the royal family:

1. “They cost the taxpayer money.” This is false, unless you’re ignoring that money comes the other way, too. To make the argument that we lose out here, one needs to ignore the crown estate revenue. In short, the family owns a bunch of land from which they surrender the income to the British government. This all came into play around the time of George III; he made a deal with the government which benefitted him in the short term, and parliament agreed because it benefitted them in the long term. To put that benefit into numbers, in 2021/2, it came to £312.7 million. In comparison, the royal family cost £86.3 million in that same period of time. We don’t get that money without a royal family, because it’s still legally their land. The royal family make us money, and that’s still not a good argument to keep them.

2. “The Queen is responsible for x, y, z politically.” This is almost certainly not true. The role of the monarch in British society is symbolic. Do I think the queen must have had political opinions? Yeah, of course. Do I know what any of those opinions are? No, I can only speculate. The woman is the head of the Church of England, and yet she didn’t weigh in one iota on same-sex marriage in this country, because... her job is predicated on not weighing in. She is to pass on power to the government, keep shtum, and not cause any issues. She didn’t support pretty much any stance publicly. That’s why we still have a royal family.

And as for whether she was secretly pulling strings behind the scenes: it’s technically possible, but it’s also how you piss off parliament and end up losing a kingdom, so I’m not sure conspiracy theories hold much weight here.

(As a note, I don’t think Charles is going to manage to handle that nearly so elegantly. His reign might actually spell the end of the royal family due to that fact.)

3. “She never acknowledged x, y, z.” This is true, but misleading. Like the above: her job was to not have opinions. If she acknowledged whatever it is you’re looking for, she would be having opinions.

3. “She was a coloniser.” This one isn’t accurate, but based on the fact that she was a living symbol, I think it’s understandable. I think we can probably assume she had pro-colonisation opinions, based on her upbringing, but... once again, her job has been not to influence things or let anyone know her opinions. Many countries gained independence through her reign (including my father’s homeland). Her job was to do symbolic things she was told to do, honour people she was told to honour, and say nothing about it. She did that pretty well. But while I think it’s silly to call her a “coloniser” on a personal basis, she was a symbol of the country, and the country is a complete nightmare, so I think this is understandable.

And things that are good reasons to criticise the late queen and/or the royal family:

1. She was likely personally racist. Buckingham Palace was exempted from laws about the hiring process and race. I think we all know that this must be the case for a reason, especially since it was not exempted from similar laws about gender.

2. She enforced customs that seriously affected the mental health of her family. The customs that enforced unwanted marriages (and blocked chosen marriages), which caused so much difficulty to members of her family and their wellbeing, have now been changed. But if they had been changed earlier, that would have saved a lot of heartache. And the queen was the one with that power. And as we saw with Meghan Markle, it seems there is a general air of “stiff upper lip, suck it up and deal with it” around mental health issues in general in that family.

3. She protected her family through scandals that should have ended in imprisonment. I don’t need to say more about that, because I think you know what I’m talking about.

4. And here’s the most important point. Even if points 1-3 weren’t true, it wouldn’t make a difference to the ethics of royalism. All that matters here is this: We should not have an untouchable class.

#queen elizabeth #british politics #misinformation hurts #republican #anti-royalist

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softxsuki · 2 years

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Hello! I saw your 1000 follower match up event and I wanted to participate lol. I hope you have a great day, and your friends and family is doing well❣️

I was going to go on annon but then decided that there's nothing embarassing about this, so... yea :D I'll begin then.

1- Gendered pronouns dont really exist in where I live but I'd say it's she-her.

2 - The fandoms I really like are Tears of Themis and Obey Me!.

3 - I'm fine with both Female and Male <3

4 - I like romantic match-ups more.

5 - I'm an INTP-T

6 - I'm a december sagittarius.

7 - Personally I value humour, realism and honesty. I cannot tolerate bullshit where it's a game of cat and mouse, or if they treat me as a disposable object just to make me "jealous". I feel sick to my stomach when I see that. It's fun when you're friends since nothing is ever seriousin a friendship, but a relationship or a flirt has to be kept to a proper level with set boundaries. I can't do casual relationships, though ironically, I'm very afraid of commitment...

8 - Hm, I don't really have a type. Just tall men and women in general, I like it when they hover over me. I also love pathetic men and women lol (not in a literal sense, more like a comical sense. Someone who gets crinkled up like a tissue paper whenever they are in an unfamiliar situation or something like that)

9 - I'm laid back. I dont really show that I care about things until it gets late and I start thinking about it on my bed. I get emotional easily, especially anger is one of the easiest emotions to show for me. People say that I'm hard to read me and call me weird. Also if I really like something, I want all variations of it. Like a specific clothing piece, a particular brand of sketch books, etc. I value money a lot too. Though I can't do math at all.

10 - I love drawing, anime-style games, listening to different types of music and writing. I also knit sometimes.

11- I'm still a student, getting ready for an important exam soon lol. I have a cat, and I feed and pet countless others outside. I love aquariums, though I can't visit them because they are so far away. I despise alcohol because it stinks. I hate cigarettes too. I'm really good at hiding my irritation towards a person when they are present. I like gossiping a lot, though I never call people names if they haven't hurt me or my friends. I also like drawing a lot, and making up stories. I also tend to daydream a lot. And I can't live without the brief moments of time where i just sit down in front of my computer to watch movies after a long day.

12 - I love scenerios where I'm the one that does the comforting. I'm awkward around people who are upset. So being able to take care of someone when they are down is something I desparately want to do, yet I find myself at a loss of what to do. I love scenerios where I see my favorite character get snapped in two like a glowstick, yknow. If that isnt clear enough, I want to see heavy angst with this character. Could be anything. Death (could be the reader/character/anyone thats involved in the character's life), being wronged and extremely frustrated because of it, having their life-long ambitions fail, things like that.

1000 Follower Event Matchup #6

My event is now CLOSED, but I will be doing more events like these in the future. You can checkout the masterlist for this event here.

Note: Hello! Welcome to my blog :D, I'm glad you found me. I'm just noticing your Artem PFP now and (spoiler) I'm a little sad that I didn't pair you with him, I felt like he could be a little too serious at times, and that wouldn't be too compatible based on what you asked for. SO I'M SORRY. I HOPE YOU STILL ENJOY THIS MATCHUP :( <3. I think both of these guys will compliment you very well based on how you described yourself along with the more technical aspects like mbti and zodiac sign (though I never base my matchups solely on those bc they aren't always 100% accurate, they just give me a starting point). Anyway I hope you enjoy!

I match you with LUKE PEARCE and SIMEON

Runner-ups were Vyn and Mammon (didn’t choose them though, because I think even though they’re both loyal to no end, they wouldn’t be 100% clear about their feelings for you)

Luke:

Technical: Your INFP and ISFJ connection is pretty great. You both communicate perfectly together and get along well. There’s never any miscommunication with you both. You each bring out a part of each other that you couldn’t without each other, and you work well as a team in lifting each other up. However, you could easily tire each other out with high highs and low lows, so make sure you take reasonable breaks from each other. Once you lay out your differences and accept them, your relationship will go a lot smoother from there. As for you both being Saggitarius’ get ready for a life of adventure together. You will both want to travel the world and see and experience as much as possible together. And while being too invested in only having fun and not being more realistic, I think you both have qualities that level you down so you don’t get too carried away, which could bring problems in the relationship. But you both would balance fun and seriousness well.

Personable: Luke is your perfect boy next door. He has all the qualities you’d ever want in a partner. He’s intelligent, adventurous, caring, loyal, honest, yet still humorous and he can be a realist I think. He would make you feel very secure in your relationship with him. You know he’ll never have eyes for anyone else and he buys you flowers and tells you how much he missed you when he comes back from work along with a hug and kiss. He makes it a habit to always greet you before leaving for work and when he comes back home. (if you live separately, then he calls or texts you every morning before work and does the same or tries to see you after he closes his shop for the day).

Luke would NEVER try and make you feel jealous. Even in the beginning before he knew you had feelings for him, he’d never try and get those feelings out by trying to make you feel jealous. He wouldn't want to hurt you if you did happen to have feelings for him. I’m not sure how tall you are, but Luke is pretty tall at 5’11 (180cm) so I think that’s a great height. MMM I think Luke also meets your ‘pathetic man’ requirement in that he’s a little awkward at the beginning of your relationship. So things like holding hands and kissing are still new to him and he’s never been in a real relationship before so he does get a little FNJEAFEA when thing like that happen in the beginning. But I think he’d always be partly a little blushy and shy around you even when he is 100% comfortable around you because he still can’t believe he’s with you!

I know Luke has a bad habit of lying to try to keep you safe, so he tries to show you his best self at all times and keeps you away from the dangerous part of his work, but he does this because he cares about you. I truly believe that over time in a romantic relationship with you, he’d learn to let you in more and let you see even the ugly parts of himself. So please be patient with him and speak your mind about how him hiding stuff makes you feel! That’ll encourage him to open up a little more, but be a little patient with him :3

He’s super supportive in terms of your studies and offers to help as much as he can if you need it! He’s very patient, but I don’t think he’d ever make you upset or anything serious like that. He respects any boundaries you put up and you'll have no issues with smoke or alcohol with him. He won’t drink or smoke, especially if you don’t like it, but I’m sure he doesn’t do those things anyway. You love aquariums? Well, Luke will definitely take you on many dates to one, even if it’s super far, you guys will make it into a day trip. As for your cat, he’ll love that cat as much as you do. Don’t be surprised if your cat goes to him for pets and cuddles first NFJEAFJKI. Overall, I think this relationship would blossom into something really healthy and beautiful. Just give it some time!

Comforting Luke After Someone Close to Him Passes Away

Warning: don’t read if you don’t like mentions of people passing away

I really think Luke is the type to not want to burden the people in his life with his emotions, so he tries to bottle his feelings up or isolate himself

So when he finds out that one of his older, loyal customers passes away before he gets a chance to see the antique Luke had repaired for him, Luke kinda shuts down

He closes the shop for a few weeks and tells his detective agency that he can’t go on any missions for a while. He’s just moping in bed and hasn’t called you very often

SO of course, you know something is up and so you let yourself into his apartment after walking through the store that was already starting to collect dust from being closed for a while

You open his apartment door with the spare key he made for you and see the mess inside his apartment as well

It’s dark and dusty, as if no one has been living in there for a while

You make your way to Luke’s bed, which he is lying in, and he doesn’t even flinch as you take a seat on his mattress at the end of his bed and poke him a bit

He knows you’re there, but he doesn't want you to see him in that state, so he stays facing the wall

So you just start talking; Luke had already told you about his customer passing away, but he brushed over the way it had made him feel when he texted you about it

You knew it would affect your soft-hearted boyfriend though, hence why you gave him his space to grieve, but you were now here to shake him out of his sadness before he rotted away

You get up from his bed and start tidying up for him; starting with opening the shades to let in some natural light, you get to dusting and cleaning up so at least Luke can be surrounded by cleanliness which might help him feel better

As you’re cleaning, Luke finally turns over and just watches you do your thing

Just seeing you there in his once dark, lonely apartment makes him feel a little better, but he still stays in bed, unmoving

He just needs times and some more talking from you to get back into his normal groove

Make him some dinner or order take-out, it doesn’t matter, just get this man eating quickly because we all know he probably has only been munching on whatever he could find in his apartment since he can’t cook

Only when he smells the food will he finally get up from his bed and join you at his small dining table, made for two

He becomes a little more verbal, talking about his memories of fixing thing for the old man who he grown fond of, as if he was his own grandfather

He holds your hand across the table the whole time he’s talking

Just let him talk everything out and be there to support him in the way you do best

Eventually he’ll rise from his slump and be back to his usual self, but in the meantime he just needs you to be there for him

Simeon:

Technical: Your INTP and ENFJ pairing with SImeon is interesting because you both don’t fully understand each other, but that seems to be what attracts you both to each other. Your relationship his very romantic and full of surprises (the good kind). Communication is great as well, there may be things you don’t both agree with, but you easily adapt and get used to the way you both think. This leads to expanding your perspectives together. You are a Saggitarius and Simeon is an Aquarius, together you make an ideal pair. His love for humanity and community can be a beautiful contrast to Saggitarius’ who usually seek for truth and knowledge. Together you’re unstoppable and compliment each other beautifully.

Personable: Again, Simeon is very loyal, of course and super kind. He would never lead you on and makes sure you know how he feels about you all the time. As the extrovert in the relationship, he probably approached you first and stated clearly that he liked you and wanted to be together with you, so nothing will change that. As someone who is very calm, Simeon would be great at keeping your emotions leveled. You’ll never get very angry at him, but if there is ever a moment where you are angry, he’d know how to calm you down quickly without making matters worse. He’s very passionate about his love for you, so he’s super touchy and affectionate with you at all times. However, if this does become overwhelming for you, he has no problem with respecting your boundaries, just let him know.

Simeon is very tall at like 6’3 I think (190.5cm?) so he would definitely loom over you unless you’re taller than that. As a writer, he’d probably come to you with his latest book (uh spoiler if you’re not up to the part where they reveal that Simeon is the author of this series) for TSL. He respects your opinion so he would love to know how you feel about the direction the series is going in. AND he'd love to read any of your own writing as well if you'd like to share it with him. I see him wanting to be tech-y and play video games with you, even though he’s horrible at using technology and can’t text to save his life, but he’ll try for you!

Loves your cat a lot! Even though he’s not part of the cat squad like Solomon, Satan, or Barbatos, he definitely loves all creatures. Therefore, he would enjoy going to aquariums as well and will travel to the human world so he can go to one with you. He understands you commitment issues and he’s fine with that. He’ll take your relationship as slowly as possible, and if you ever have any insecurities, he wipes those all away with his words and actions of love. He wants you to know that he’ll never make you uncomfortable or betray you. He’s all yours and you’re the only one he’ll ever want. He learns to read your body language so he can become an expert at all things about you, including your ‘hard to read’ demeanor. In no time he’ll be able to tell what you’re thinking by the smallest of actions or words. Most attentive boyfriend ever, 10/10 great relationship full of respect and love.

Comforting Simeon

I think Simeon is more open about his emotions, so when the cafe he tried to open up in the human world wasn’t going so well, he went straight to you about it

After all, he respects you so much and he’ll take any advice you give him to heart

He’s very broken, since he wanted to make a life for himself in the human world so he could be around you more often, but things were not going as planned

He wasn’t getting any customers, and in no time he’d have to close his business (ofc he’s against using any angel charm to try and get new customers. He wants an honest business, as an honest man)

I can’t imagine him being sad for long though, he’s very positive and happy all of the time, and deals with issues like these fairly well because he can see the bright side of things

So there isn’t much comforting you need to do

All he needs to know is that you believe in him and know that his business will be a success one day

And boom, he’s feeling more hopeful already

He probably invites you over to his cafe and asks for your help in decorating or any other ideas that you think might help him gain business

The only time I see him ever really going full dark angel mode is if anyone ever hurt you or if you passed away

I don’t know how he would react, but I know it wouldn’t be so easy to resolve as his cafe issues

EVENT REQUESTS ARE CLOSED

REGULAR REQUESTS ARE OPEN

Posted: 9/25/2022

#tears of themis x reader #tears of themis x mc #luke pearce x reader #luke pearce x mc #obey me! shall we date?#obey me x reader #obey me x mc #simeon x reader #simeon x mc #tears of themis matchups #obey me matchups

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unproduciblesmackdown · 1 year

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prompted by your tags on my [taylor singing] post, consider this a free space to discuss any and all concepts related to [taylor goes on a road trip], especially those involving them singing

oh hell yes, can go without saying nothing's concrete or comprehensive or like "wow i could present this concept So well at any moment," but when is it ever??? it's always time for the vague or brief or messy ideas and throwing them out there for fun, love A Prompt to do ofc when one can manifest and kind of provide general parameters as a springboard

naturally your quiz bowl au is an Inspiration for this realm, supposing there's a team carpool to events at other schools / locations, and those having to happen early enough to arrive on time, which sure throws [passengers might partake of a car nap] in the mix. like that maybe taylor is the driver and sings quietly to themself for fun when everyone else is seemingly asleep, whether that's accurate or not. or sings a little to help wake themself up more, whether driving or not, hopefully the latter, and perhaps after having had a car nap themself if the latter (and how maybe they're a little more unfiltered if they've just woken up & aren't quite firing on all cylinders yet). or to kind of get themself more In The Moment / shake things off in anticipation of being ready for the event, after perhaps studying/practice that is all well and good but now It's Game Time impends and also being a little more flexible is relevant, never know what you're gonna get out here. or that, being in college, ft. the idea they're still figuring out gender &/or just now abt to put having figured some things out into practice, & everything that they might have to be dealing with now / going forward involving that, and that rather what you might want to shake some stuff off about could stem from events re: that at any time. or b/c imagine something like the team made up some ritual like "oh we gotta sing [xyz song] before every quiz bowl" that isn't actually taken seriously but they reliably do it anyways & taylor gamely participates. or Just Because, Nbd, say, e.g. someone else on the roadtrip to the quiz bowl location sings along to smthing they especially like and taylor does too b/c they also like it, perhaps mild surprise from anyone else but nbd.

obviously another classic scenario, technically non au beyond [as attuned to our tastes & interests], being that like, Taylor Takes A Road Trip To Some Event For Which Winston Is Their Formal/Informal Plus One for practical support, company, emotional support, fun, any/all of these and/or more....like the idea that they take a trip to/through Wherever They're From hundreds of miles from water, and meeting up with / encountering family will occur whether that's the point of the entire trip, and whether or not this is post (probably post) disasters w/douglas that's always going to be a mixed bag / perhaps somewhat fraught at least at times. and they'll bring winston along. just endless possibilities, and singing could happen at any time....take it back to the [quiz bowl au] section and singing to try to be more In The Moment / shake something off, whether that's happening before or after any family time....

and Of Course. of course thinking of [winston is taylor's plus one / helping out on some trip/event] re: anything business and that means thinking of Your Manifestation of such a scene, hate that i'm failing to track down the post rn (unassisted by tumblr's Search of course) (edit: fuck yes this one), where taylor & winston go to a job fair and are checking in at a hotel (where they share a room...) and winston calls taylor comforting, to their surprise....an all-time classic, somewhat in the road trip genre lol

oh and before i forget, tbt the concept of a combo benston/tayston scenario wherein ben agrees to be this quasi chauffeur for the occasion of a Scenic Drive for the purposes of: so taylor and winston can fool around in the back seat =) which can perhaps feature some singing lol, if someone driving might need to partake of a distraction at all / shake some Tension off about knowing this will happen, and then is happening....

back to a Road Trip For Business: supposing that at any time it's possible there might be those trips like, here's a business event to go to, here's more of a vacation but you have to go for the fact of working here, or something in between. and maybe the presumption is like oh everyone simply flies out everywhere zzz, but fuck it, road trip. with any combination of people, but with taylor involved, let's please for all our sakes let the vast majority of ppl be tmc members or team ben (honorary members) or sacker (also honorary enough re: working w/taylor twice (already preceded by the concept that they should)) or philip (straightforward and/or honorary inclusion in any relevant scenarios of course) like others must be outliers here, the vibe / pace / tone must be set by these ppl w/more affinity/proximity re: taylor. any standard Sharing A Journey goings on may proceed. just the idea of the interactions that can unfold in ordinary little situations, pit stops, food stops, overnight stops, sightseeing stops....

though that prior scenario has been more of an axe cap thing....what if at any point there was a tmc trip and it was a roadtrip b/c at any point there's been five at them at most w/names & dialogue capabilities....wherein if it's a tmc event, presumably taylor doesn't have to just hope they're okay with the location and events, and certainly not be dragged along. if anyone else is taking the helm it's so taylor doesn't have to be literally driving things....which kind of overlaps with a particularly nebulous idea of like, people partcipate in a surprise vacation / trip For taylor lol. perhaps in a like "please take a break btw" way somewhat, probably always relevant, but some times more than others....easy enough to think of any and all tmc members getting behind that kind of thing / actively participating. unfortunately re: canon groupings and the way at any given time that configuration is kind of "[everyone else]......& winston, maybe" gotta get extra [the au of one's tastes & interests] to consider him Getting to get in on it at all & not just be stuck in the back listening to his headphones or being ignored, might have to whittle it down. but then you get to classic situations like "he's still kind of '......& winston, maybe'd when it's just him and literally one other person working for taylor" but yknow hey, winston & rian have worked together and talked and hung out all just out of frame, the consideration has always been there like, extra motivation to coordinate re: taylor (& that's somewhat manifested too lol, some of their most [a unit in this one] quantent being built around their alignment on some point vs taylor) like i think they could handle a road trip. and if the [being stuck in the same places / having to keep interacting] of figuratively and perhaps literally driving a road trip leads to any conflicts / negative tension then yknow, hey, feel free to kind of have unspectacular instances of arguing / manifesting that....much less hashing anything out / anyone learning anything for once in our lives lol....unsurprising if canon will have someone never heading in a more constructive direction re: things like [rian apparently having zero thoughts re: power differences besides that it's fine when they're in her favor & assuming they couldn't/wouldn't be leveraged when they're not] but winston is out here as this (accidental?) foil for taylor & tayloresque people who could be very helpful for them lol, he just doesn't get to be talked to / taken seriously / considered to have stakes........But What If He Did. and the thought of taylor gamely chilling in the back seat of some trip while this thread of [brewing conflict] spools betwixt your quants who are ignoring that / setting it aside atm to deal with traffic or a flat or sm shit rn and maybe mafee is also there like well i don't really know what's going on here but what else is new :I ....but there doesn't have to be any dramatic scenes or revelations either, you Will know a little more about each other by the end of some trip, you Will be more familiar w/each other, for better or worse. but so long as everyone manages it you will be rewarded w/the destination and goings on / further flexibility/opportunities there, too. taylor can have the aux especially if some trip is For them to any degree lol. whether that means singing ever or not....noticing the dynamic is weird but you can't walk away and get back to work within the next 50 sec? try going "oh hey, this song" and just....do that lol.

taylor also never has to be accompanied by anyone, like, of course Solo Road Trip is an option, for work, to visit anyone (including that [uh oh: their family] scenario again....), even for other things....and/or of course any one on ones where the other one isn't winston, but for as vague as all my ideas are, of course left entirely to my own devices it's even more like [uhhhh fuckin um. gimme a minute] with those. but considering that, of course, taylor isn't one of the likelier characters to comfortably (or at all) sing in front of others, the more Others there are, the less likely.

it's also fun if they just do it for fun, as Unlikelily as anyone could want; e.g. like, whatever grouping of people, in some unassuming moment, taylor Just sings a few lines or refrain of some song and then everyone can just roll with that like, oh, huh, well okay....they sure do sometimes just have a relatively more spontaneous moment of expressing themself, or, of course, when they put on a bit of a show

less fun but more [anything to say about that] would be like, taking it back to earlier sections, perhaps singing as a distraction from Whatever, where of course [whatever] can be something upsetting, and/or their already being upset. singing a bit as a [i'm busy doing this with my voice, so don't try to talk to me way]

more fun is how, of course, anyone who might feel particularly affectionate towards taylor (a requirement re: working for them (or being Honorarily [tmc] enough)) isn't just going to pay attention / have a Reaction, internal or external, re: taylor singing b/c of like wow how surprising i didn't think you have or would ever [cue things they'd surely have done or would ever do, like, of course] b/c you're so Weird, right, but where "well, i'm Taking Notice Especially b/c it's Them" has a whole different nuance there. tbt full circle to like, that first [quiz bowl au] section and taylor perhaps casually quietly singing a bit b/c any & everyone else is seemingly asleep, but are they really??? no one sitting upright like "whoa omg you're singing" b/c that's not the reaction they'd be moved to based on the experience they're having....anyone conscious perhaps having Been mostly asleep, now still with a leg over in [dozing off], feeling less filtered, w/a more freeform understanding of what's going on in general at all, even if totally alert aware that for one thing taylor's trying to not wake anyone so you'll give it another ten min of award-winning performance at least....

also would be fun if taylor ever like, spontaneously invented / tried out some harmonies. or otherwise followed along some other musical path in a song besides the [lead singer] part. tapping out a rhythm on their knee or a doorframe....neil....

#throwing things at the wall; a classic genre #winston billions #tayston #benston #nothing else mentioned w/enough specificity / granularity but anyone feel free to kiss whoever on these road trips....many combos

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nectaric · 11 months

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@kallistcs asked: 🥑 for Zeus (present day and past!) and 🍍 for both Zeus and Hades!

🥑 Do they pass for straight, or do people take them for gay at a glance?

zeus has always had a little bit of a fruity vibe, as far as i'm concerned. however, in the past zeus had a far more masculine appearance -- bigger beard, more traditionally masculine clothing, a reputation as a seducer of women and nothing more. so if you only saw zeus on occasion or knew him only based on reputation, it would be extremely easy to assume that he was straight. the fact that his wife is often with him also leads people to believe he's straight.

however, in more modern times, especially as zeus gets to play around with expression a little more, i can see it being possible to assume he's fruity. not that clothing is an indicator of sexuality, but he does tend to be more expressive with clothing, with makeup, with jewelry. he's more comfortable with femininity of course, and so that often leads people to believe he might not be straight, which is ofc accurate!

🍍 Has this muse's sexuality changed over the course of playing them?

the actual label's themselves haven't changed at all since i started writing them when dinosaurs still roamed the earth. zeus is still pan and hades is still bi (gender, on the other hand...) however, i can say that my understanding and interpretation of those sexualities has changed. i think many of us have been guilty of the "make everyone queer!" phenomenon mostly as a way of creating representation for ourselves where that can often be lacking, which of course is not a bad thing at all, just a tendency in the rpc -- i know i'm guilty of it. so when i first started writing these two i envisioned them as queer for that reason.

unfortunately, i think that meant that the nuances of their sexuality were fairly non-existent at the time. as i've written them (and grown myself), i've come to understand what being those things means to each of them individually. for example, zeus has very different levels and types of attraction depending on gender of his partner. and i don't think hades would ever actually define himself as bisexual, even if technically on paper that's probably what he is. he's mostly content with his wife and therefore doesn't think about sexuality very often at all. tl;dr is that, while they have always been the sexualities that i write in their bio, the complexity of that has become more apparent to me over time!

#kallistcs #zeus.#hades.

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quicksandblock · 3 years

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MCYT Demographic Survey Part 2 RESULTS

IT’S TIME!!!

Once again, thank you so much to everyone who participated! 1,654 people total responded to this - about four and a half times as many respondents as the first survey. It’s honestly incredible. I’m so happy the rest of you are as interested as I am in this stuff :D

The increased turnout is also why these results are being posted two days later than I’d intended. I want to give a HUGE thank you to my friend @quincepastey and my sibling @orestes-swimming for helping me out, and by helping I do mean they did basically all of the technical stuff for me, because my knowledge of spreadsheets was not up to the task. So thank you to Cupid for organizing all the data from questions 3 and 4 into something comprehensible for me, and thank you to Kal for making the charts! They are absolutely the MVPs and everyone reading this should go check them out. Thank you guys so much <3

Reblogs of this post are very appreciated. It would be awesome if the info about the results could reach everyone who submitted a response, so if you reblogged my first post about this survey, please consider reblogging this one as well!

For your convenience, here’s a link to the results of the first survey I did six months ago. Now - on to the results!

Question 1: What is your age range?

Compared to the results of the first survey, we can see that things have changed a bit! Specifically, the fandom has shifted just a little bit older. The solid majority of the fandom is still in the 15-17 year old range, but it’s gone down from almost half to closer to 40%. Almost a third of the fandom are ages 18-20, up from close to a fifth six months ago. 21-25 year olds have increased from about 10% to about 14%. And the youngest segment, 13-14 year olds, have gone from almost 20% of the fandom down to 12% - the sharpest change of all.

Finally, nearest and dearest to my own heart, there are now 26 whole people in the fandom aged 26-30 and 9 people aged 30+. Old Squad is growing, folks. We are... the 2% 😎 Special shoutout to the person who said their 15 year old kid got them into the fandom. I hope you know just how cool you are.

These results are interesting, but it’s also impossible to say how accurate the data is. This survey and the previous one were only posted on my blog, and they only reached a wider audience through the reblogs of my followers. So do these changes reflect actual changes in the demographics of the fandom as a whole, or is it just that my followers (and the people who follow them) have shifted older? To try to avoid this bias in the future, I may reach out to some well-known younger bloggers and ask them to reblog the next survey I do so that I can reach a more even audience.

Question 2: What is your gender?

Apologies for the small text, but there were so many unique write-in answers that I wanted to include them all. You may want to open the image in a separate tab for better quality.

In contrast to the age question, the gender spread of the fandom has remained pretty much the same. About half the fandom is still female, the nonbinary crowd has increased from 20% to 25%, 7% of us are male, almost 7% are genderfluid, and about 5% are agender. Just like last time, most of the write-in responses fell into the vague categories of either genderqueer or questioning.

No surprises on this one! The fandom continues to be overwhelmingly female and queer. Next time I think I’ll include genderqueer and questioning as options to try to catch some of those people into a formal category. All y’all are so valid, especially the person who wrote in their gender as “soup” <3

The results for questions 3 and 4 will be under a cut, because I don’t want to completely destroy people’s dashes.

Before I get into the last two questions, a couple notes. First, I want to explain how I came up with the list of creators, since a lot of people were either excited or disappointed by the fact that a few different people were on there.

On the last survey, this question was a write-in, and I had to transcribe and collate all the answers by hand to come up with the actual number of people who followed each creator. For this survey, I simply took the list that came out of the previous one and pasted it in! I also added a few people who no one wrote in six months ago but who are much more prominent now (Ranboo being the biggest example). So if you were excited to see your favorite small creator listed as an option, they were there because someone wrote them in last time! And if you wrote in your favorite small creator here, they’ll be an option on the next survey. The list is entirely crowdsourced and it will expand with each survey.

That said, the same also applies for more controversial creators. Specifically, I’m talking about CallMeCarson. Several people questioned my decision to keep him on the list - and to be honest, I considered taking him out. But in the end I decided to leave him in as an option for the sake of completeness and consistency with the previous survey. I want to emphasize that this is not me condoning his actions. But for the sake of the data, I felt that it was best to leave him in.

That said, let’s move on to questions 3 and 4!

Question 3: What creator(s) do you primarily follow?

So, it’s harder to compare with the previous survey on this one, and that’s purely because on the previous survey I didn’t have the help I did here. The chart I was able to make for the results back in October was frankly trash. Also, the fact that I split “followed creators” into two questions - primarily and casually followed - definitely throws things off. However, we can still do a certain amount of comparison!

The most obvious change is Ranboo. He straight up was not on the previous survey at all - I think he’d been streaming for less than a month at the time. Now, about 55% of respondents listed him as someone they primarily follow. The Dream SMP itself has also jumped dramatically. Previously, about 5% of people wrote in Dream SMP. That has increased to over half. Quackity has gone from less than 2% to about 30%. Karl has gone from 4% to 30%. Phil has gone from about 8% to a little under 50%. The SBI have jumped from 11% to over 40%.

Techno has gone from about 50% to over 60%. Tommy has gone from 45% to over 55%. Wilbur has jumped from 43% to 55%. Tubbo has remained steady at about 38%.

Dream has apparently dropped some of his following percentage-wise, falling from 50% to about 35%. However, George, Sapnap, and the Dream Team itself have all jumped from 10-12% to almost 30%.

I’m not going to go over the rest of the list, because that would just get way too long. However, I will drop a link to the spreadsheets of data for this survey and the previous one, so anyone who wants to can do some comparison of their own!

Question 4: What creators do you casually follow?

I won’t do as detailed of a comparison on this question, because there’s nothing to compare it to - this question wasn’t on the previous survey. However, it’s interesting to see how many more people follow Fundy, Nihachu, BadBoyHalo, Captain Puffy, Eret, Awesamdude, and Jack Manifold casually rather than as a primary favorite. Out of the top twelve, Karl, Quackity, Phil, and Tubbo are the only ones who don’t have a major discrepancy between the amount of people who follow them casually versus primarily.

I would be curious to hear people’s thoughts on why that’s the case! Personally, I would guess it’s a combination of each of their approaches to lore on the Dream SMP, the frequency and times of day that they stream, and the people they tend to make content with and be associated with by the fandom. I may go into that more later, but this post is already very long, so I’ll hold off for now. Here’s a link to this question’s spreadsheet for anyone who wants to take a closer look!

...And that’s a wrap! Good grief, this got long. Kudos to anyone who actually read the whole thing because I know my attention span would be challenged. I’m already thinking about the next survey - a couple people suggested that I add in questions about orientation and nationality, and while I want to keep the survey pretty tight in its scope, I am considering it. It would be even more data to process but it would be interesting to know!

I would love to hear people’s thoughts on these results! I’m only one person, so I know there’s interesting stuff I must have missed. Please, please feel free to reblog with your thoughts and observations! A lot of work went into this (both from me and from Cupid and Kal! Thank you guys again!), so I’m really hoping to hear what people think about it :D

I plan to reblog this and reply to some of the things people wrote in at the end, so stay tuned for that. And once again: thank you all for your interest in this project of mine <3 See you with another one in six months!

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x-reader-theater · 3 years

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Hey first I want to tell you that I love your blog and writing so thank you for writing and sharing it with us!!!

And I was wondering maybe a Spencer x reader or a team x reader and the reader got a high emotional intelligence and it's help on cases but they realize to do so the reader had to put a little bit of themselves like if the case really rough they're more tired and just angst cause of that but a fluffy happy ending please?

Thank love you take care and drink water 💙

This reader is gender neutral since a gender was not specified. Also this is purely platonic but if you want some PolyBAU at some point in the future I am so down. I really hope I did this justice!

Warnings: Mentions vomiting.

@mystic-writes I love you. That's all. Also they edited this. XD

"So, how did you know Grant?" you ask the woman sitting in front of you. "He was my boyfriend. We've been dating for three years…" the woman says and you can see the sadness in her watery eyes. You feel your heart clench for her. "I can't believe he's dead…"

JJ looks at you, concerned when you don't tell her your follow up statement, so she says for you, "Grant was murdered by an unsub who's been proving these men are unfaithful."

"What? Grant would- he wouldn't- you don't mean…" the woman trails off, and she puts her head in her hands as she begins to sob.

You feel your chest tighten and you suddenly feel like you can't breathe. You shut your eyes before wrenching them open and getting out of your chair, beelining it out of the small room. You run through the precinct and out through the front doors into the cold, winter air of New York City. What you hoped would be less stuffy is actually worse, and you look around for a trashcan.

Seeing one, you bend over it and vomit up your breakfast. Or what little is left of it.

As your body heaves, you feel a comforting hand on your back and Emily says quietly, "Shhh, it's okay…"

You cough a couple times as your body tries to expel anything else, but nothing comes up. Eventually, you're just panting over and spitting into the trash can every few seconds. You pull away and sigh deeply, taking the handed napkin and wiping your mouth with it.

"Are you okay?" Emily asks and you nod.

"Yeah. Yeah. I'm just not feeling very good," you say, and she nods, rubbing your back again.

"Let's get you back inside and I'll get you some tea…"

You wave her off. "I can go back in on my own."

She looks at you dubiously before nodding. "Alright. I get you one of those expensive Starbucks teas you like." You nod at her, thankful, and walk slowly back inside.

You make your way into the back where the team has been set up, and you sit in one of the uncomfortable chairs, putting your head in your arms. You hear the door open and looking up you expect it to be Emily, but you see Derek instead. You groan and put your head back in your arms.

"Woah, what's the matter with you?" He asks.

"Go away."

You hear the chair next to yours pull out and he says, "No, something's wrong. Are you okay?"

You look up at him and snap with a glare, "I'm *fine* Morgan. Leave me alone."

He frowns as well, though a lot less maliciously and says, "Okay, what we're not going to do is yell at each other."

You look over at Derek from your arms and mutter, "Sorry."

"So, what's wrong?" He places a hand on your shoulder and you sigh.

"I just don't feel very good. I think I had a panic attack…" you trail off, looking away from him. He squeezes your shoulder and you lean into the touch.

"Is there anything I can do to help?" You shake your head and he squeezes your shoulder again before letting go.

He goes to leave, but you call out, "Wait." He stops and looks back at you right as he's at the door. "Can you turn off the lights?"

He nods and smiles, doing as you ask, plunging you into near darkness. You're so incredibly thankful for the darkness. The headache that's pounding at your temples lessens slightly.

The door opens again and something is placed in front of you. Looking up, you see it's a hot Starbucks drink and you grab it, wrapping your fingers around it. It's too hot to drink, but it gives you some feeling in your fingers.

Emily quickly leaves the room, passing Hotch who enters next. He goes to flick on the lights, but at your very visible wince, doesn't. He walks over to the table and sits down in front of you.

"JJ said you ran out of your interview…" Hotch says calmly and you nod. "Is there a reason why?"

You pause at that, trying to pinpoint the exact thing that made you run out. But, it isn't just one thing. It's multiple.

"I just- she lost her boyfriend. They were probably going to get engaged, get married, and the whole time he was cheating on her. First she has to deal with the fact he's dead, and now that he's been cheating on her this whole time, and god! What if it isn't such a bad thing he's dead! I mean, what if he deserves it!" you exclaim.

"You don't mean that." Hotch says it as a statement, not a question, and it makes you pause.

You sigh. "No. I don't. I just- I feel her pain. And I'm just… overwhelmed I guess."

Hotch nods. "Go back to the hotel. We can handle the case. Take Reid with you. You're rooming together and he needs sleep as well."

You frown. "Are you sure? I'm able to help I-"

"I'm sure," Hotch cuts you off. "You need sleep. He does too."

And with that, Hotch gets up and leaves the room. You sigh and grab everything you need before leaving. You blink as the bright fluorescent lights of the station only help to aggravate your headache, but you walk over to Spencer and place a hand on his shoulder.

"We're supposed to go back to the hotel," you say.

He frowns. "I still have work to do. I'm in the middle of our geo-profile."

You shrug. "Hotch's orders. And besides. You only have two bodies. You'll need a third if that's ever going to be accurate. Come on. Get some sleep," you say, squeezing his shoulder and pulling him towards the door.

"Okay, okay. Let me get my stuff."

You nod and wait for him to put his files into his messages bag and slip it over his head, before walking over to you.

You leave the precinct and start the short walk to the hotel. Spencer bumps his shoulder with yours, his hands in his pockets, as he asks, "Everything alright?"

You nod and put your own hands in your pockets, the chill of the air biting into your skin. "Yeah. I just… this case is really difficult. And having to talk to the victim's families… I guess it's just too much this time," you explain. "I just feel too much and I don't want to. Usually I can tell what someone is thinking and empathize with them, even the unsubs, and it gets us out of plenty of scrapes, but today I just… don't care about the victim. Like, I feel like I don't care if they live or die. And… and that scares me."

You sigh as you pour your feelings out to Spencer, who reaches over and wraps an arm around you. He stops and pulls you into a hug, something he's only done once, and you wrap your arms around his middle.

"It's okay to be scared," he murmurs and you nod. He holds you for a few more moments before pulling away and smiling at you. "Let's get some dinner before we go to sleep. We could both eat, and we're not technically working right now…"

You smile and nod, squeezing his arm as he leads the way.

#bau x reader #bau x you #bau x y/n #bau x gendee neutral reader #criminal minds reader insert #criminal minds x y/n #criminal minds x reader #criminal minds #my work #my writing

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caswellprmanager · 3 years

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drawbridge

read it on ao3

Ship: Ricky Bowen/EJ Caswell

Summary: Snippets of EJ Caswell's life leading up to the mystery that is Ricky Bowen.

Notes: Hello. I decided to bite the bullet and post something here! This technically is in my Trans!EJ and Genderqueer!Ricky AU but I haven't properly written anything for it yet so consider this one to be the first official fic within that universe. Feel free to send some asks or other headcanons in my inbox about the AU! I'd love to hear what people think (but don't be unnecessarily mean. I will delete that very quickly.)

Disclaimer: I'm not an expert in all things transgender or genderqueer. I am writing from my own experience within the spectrum however so it's truthful to what I have been through, but will not represent everyone else's experiences. I also have friends within the spectrum who have given me great advice on how to go about these things but once again, it won't be accurate to everyone's experiences.

Warnings: Mentions of gender dysphoria, transphobia, and neglectful parents

People always told EJ that he had the picture perfect family.

His mom and dad were successful corporate lawyers, they lived in the wealthiest suburb in all of Salt Lake City, and he was the kind of child other parents would compare their own children to saying, "why can't you be more like EJ?"

But EJ knows that's farthest from the truth.

He doesn't have the picture perfect life or the paragon of White American families that people think they do. His parents are affectionate and supportive only when there are people around to comment on it. Most of the time, they're not even at home, leaving all of the child raising to their maids and other house servants. EJ spends more time at Ashlyn's house than he does at home because at least his aunt and uncle actually treat him like a son.

Because there are days his parents would forget they have a son. Sometimes they'd slip and call him their daughter, which makes EJ want to disappear from this world altogether. He supposes he should be grateful that they even bothered to pay for all the things he asked for — binders, testosterone shots, and regular visits to the doctor to check up on him throughout his transition. And he is grateful. He knows so many kids like him that can't even afford a decent sized binder without going bankrupt. He used to be that kid until he gathered up all his courage to come out to his parents.

But what they told him?

"Well, if you're gonna be our son, you will have to work twice as hard to make us proud now."

Yeah. It's a lot to process when you're 12 years old and scared shitless that you'd be disowned for "disrupting the natural order." But he figures things could be worse. So he sucks it up and vows to become the kind of son that his parents could truly brag about.

When EJ was a kid, he loved mysteries. His parents were the greatest mystery of them all. He's spent so much of his time trying to figure out what makes them happy, or angry, or sad. He's put the clues together and has a cork board of pictures and red string at the forefront of his mind whenever he so much as tries to interact with them. Soon, he sort of figured out what makes his parents smile at him — when EJ is excellent.

So, he became excellent at all kinds of sports, took up piano lessons, studied until his eyeballs burned with the lowlight of his desk lamp — all so that he could maybe get a pat on the back from his dad and a small smile from his mom. Their versions of "good job" or "keep it up." He drank that all in, craved it even, and worked his whole life until now to get even an iota of his parents' affection.

So, when he meets Ricky Bowen, the lanky and extremely clumsy skater who seems to live in the detention room, he was met with a brand new mystery to solve.

"Who's that?" EJ whispers into Nini's ear, who just seems to be irritated by the new person's presence.

"That's Ricky," she says with the barest hint of affection but with a whole lot of irritation. "My ex."

"Huh," He says, intrigued by the way Ricky's movements stutter like a half-finished stop motion film and how their wide doe eyes scan the room like — unironically — a deer in headlights. They looked nervous, confused, and all around terrified and EJ wants to reach out to them and tell them that this was a safe space. That they could be whoever they wanted to be in the theater.

He glances at Nini when Ricky starts singing a song that she seems to recognize. The immediate tensing of her shoulders and the way she subconsciously reaches out for EJ's hand for support tells him that this song... means something. Or meant something. EJ's not quite sure but he squeezes Nini's hand in silent reassurance, bringing himself to half-glare at the guitar playing skater just a few feet before him.

He met Nini during theater camp. A firecracker of talent with a voice that could melt the heart of even the coldest man on earth. She was beautiful in the spotlight and even more ethereal beneath the stars. She was kind, gentle, and a mystery that EJ solved quickly enough. She wore her heart on her sleeve despite it being broken because she believes that broken hearts can be mended with time and patience.

Nini was patient with him. She was patient with him when he took her up the little hill next to the campsite just to watch the stars on an old picnic blanket he stole from the camp counselors. She was patient with him when he couldn't keep up with the dance steps. Her hand was warm in his own and the flush of her palm by his neck was a grounding force that kept his head from going in the clouds.

She was especially patient with him when he took her to an empty tent and told her about his life. Nini was kind. Nini was patient. Nini was safe. And if she were to walk away and tell him that she wanted nothing to do with him after what he told her, he would have understood and learned to not associate kind brown eyes and ukulele calloused fingers to what could be barely described as home.

But she held his hand in her tinier ones, a smile on her face that radiated warmth that seeped into the depths of his soul, and told him that she was proud of him.

It was the first time that someone was proud of him... for just being him.

He cried into her arms that night, knowing he's got a lifelong friend within the kind brown eyes and ukulele calloused fingers of one Nini Salazar-Roberts.

"She thinks I'm a Chad?" He asks, less incredulously and more with a burning curiosity.

Nini rubs his arm comfortingly but he keeps staring at the cast list like it was going to burst into flames any second. "You're still a Troy understudy! You could still go on as him in one of the shows."

"Shows only run for three nights, Nini." He says with barely concealed frustration. Great. If he can't even get the role he was technically destined to play, how the hell is he going to explain himself to his parents?

You're not the lead? Oh, then we won't watch. If you're not onstage the whole time, why be there?

EJ grits his teeth and slowly brings his gaze to the person who has just taken away one more way for him to prove himself to his parents. Ricky Fucking Bowen, who stands there once again with their enormous brown eyes, gaping like a fish. EJ wants to deck them in the face. But Nini's hold on his arm grounds him back to reality and he lets out a long breath through his nose.

This is gonna be a long next few months.

"Look, I'm just trying to make the best out of a bad situation."

"Don't try," He ends up saying, still wiping at the blood caused by the basketball Ricky hit him with only moments ago. "It's painful to watch you do something you clearly don't want to do."

"What makes you think I don't want to do this?" Ricky asks with furrowed brows and EJ throws the wadded up tissue paper stained with his blood into the trash.

"You hated musicals before you auditioned. You landed the part of Troy without even fucking trying. And now you think you can get through rehearsals without fucking trying? It's tiring to work with someone who couldn't give two shits about this musical in the first place!" He says, every sentence rising in volume as he steps closer and closer to Ricky. "You also need to stay the fuck away from Nini."

Ricky scoffs then. "Why? Cause you're her boyfriend?"

"What? And you are?" He retaliates, which effectively makes Ricky click their mouth shut. EJ smirks. "Yeah. That's what I thought."

"Nini can choose whoever she wants to talk to." Ricky ends up saying with tense shoulders and a glare that could murder if EJ weren't already a person who doesn't fear death. "You can't tell me what to do."

"Well someone has to!" EJ throws his hands up in frustration, grabbing his jacket and zipping it up angrily. "Because you don't listen to Nini though, do you? Have you ever listened to her? Do you listen to anybody?"

"EJ I—"

"You better listen to me right now Ricky Bowen," he laces every syllable of Ricky's name with venom. "Stop trying to make things right. Stop trying to become a person you're not. If you actually cared about Nini or – god forbid – the musical, you'd stop trying and just get your shit together."

EJ doesn't even bother to look back at Ricky as he exits the bathroom, unaware of the look in Ricky's eyes when he walked away.

It isn't until Ricky approaches him one day after rehearsals that EJ was finally starting to unravel the mystery that was Ricky Bowen.

"Hey... EJ?" Ricky asks, looking at anywhere but at him and EJ would have been annoyed if it weren't for the way Ricky was holding themselves in front of him. They were tense, eyes glassy and unfocused whenever EJ caught a glance, and their fingers were gripping their bag straps so tightly that he was afraid Ricky was going to rip it apart if they weren't careful.

"Hey Ricky," He says with a softer voice than he's ever used with Ricky. "Is there something you need?"

Ricky's eyes dart around the still full rehearsal room, at the dangerously close proximity Miss Jenn was, at the stage managers that were just behind EJ who were reviewing the blocking notes, and finally at Nini who was engaged in a conversation with Carlos and Seb. Ricky's eyes lingered on Nini for a bit before they reluctantly settled on EJ's pristine white sneakers. "I would have normally asked Nini for this but – and you can say no by the way I'd completely understand – it's just..."

Ricky looks around again before leaning closer to EJ and shakily whispering, "Do you have any tampons?"

And just like that, the walls that were built around a certain Ricky Bowen were starting to crack. And EJ was allowed to see the smallest snippet of the kind of vulnerability that Ricky was capable of.

And it was the kind of vulnerability that he could relate to completely.

"My emergency stash is in my locker," He says, hastily packing up the rest of his things while Ricky continues to stand there dumbfounded. When EJ turns back to him with his own bag over his shoulder, he could see that there are a few unshed tears shining in Ricky's eyes. EJ softens for a second, knowing how difficult it must have been for Ricky to come to him for something so private.

"Come on. I'll even guard the bathroom for you." Ricky eventually follows him after a few seconds of just staring at his back and they fall in step around the corner. Ricky stays silent, fingers all fidgety and eyes still darting around like they'll be caught any second. EJ, instinctually, wraps a comforting arm around Ricky's shoulders. Ricky doesn't relax immediately but they do lean a little closer, somehow finding the weight of EJ's arm around them safe.

They eventually reach EJ's locker and Ricky smiles a bit because it's directly across from Sharpay's famous pink lockers. "Did you choose this spot specifically for Sharpay's lockers?"

EJ glances behind him and chuckles, rummaging through his stuff. "Oh yeah. If you say Ashley Tisdale three times in a row while touching her locker, you're guaranteed good fortune for at least a week."

Ricky looks at him with a smirk. "Have you tried that before?"

"Every year during finals week. I'm telling you, that shit works."

"Or maybe you're just really smart."

"Maybe," EJ says, finally locating his emergency stash of period essentials. "Or maybe it's just Ashley Tisdale bopping me to the top."

That's when Ricky lets out a laugh — an honest to god booming belly laugh that makes EJ pause just to stare at him. They look... nice like this. Without the worry lines and longing gazes at a girl who won't give them the time of day. They look just like a little kid, carefree and alive despite the world crumbling all around them, and EJ feels a weird surge of pride at being the person who made Ricky laugh like that.

He wants Ricky to laugh like that more. He wants to be the person who makes Ricky laugh like that more.

And so the walls around Ricky crack a little further, and the drawbridge is opened for one weary traveler to come in.

EJ doesn't notice the cracks on his own walls, nor the knowing little princess who watches from the east tower, smiling.

"Hey, what are your pronouns?"

Ricky doesn't look up from their practice skateboard, concentrating hard on their balance. "I don't have any. I'm just Ricky." They look up though, giving EJ a warm smile. "But go ahead and use any pronouns with me. I don't mind if it's you."

"So would you mind if I call you your majesty?"

EJ doesn't miss the flush on Ricky's cheeks at that and definitely doesn't miss the way they say "I'd like that very much." with the barest hint of embarrassment.

"Okay," EJ says with his chin propped up in his hands. "Your majesty."

Ricky falls off of their practice skateboard then, soon glaring up at a cackling EJ still with a blushing face.

EJ forgot his binder today.

And his body loved reminding him every time he took a step.

Thankfully, there wasn't going to be water polo practice today and he could get away with wearing multiple layers to school. But even with the sports bra, the t-shirt, the sweatshirt, and the letterman jacket doing a good job at making his chest look flat, he still felt his skin crawl looking at the mirror. His jeans hugged him a little too tightly, forcing him to notice the still feminine curve of his hips. His sports bra was a tad smaller than the last time he wore it, so the pinch at his chest doubled in size.

EJ resolved that he was not going to have a good day today.

But today was tech rehearsals and he couldn't ditch that. He was starting to really enjoy rehearsals now that he and Ricky are on good terms. Even the stage managers ask him to hang out with them time to time outside of rehearsals. EJ actually felt like... he really belonged somewhere now. And he wasn't going to let this ruin it for him. Not today.

"Hey EJ," He heard Nini say to him as he got out of his car. "What's with all the layers? It's pretty hot today."

"It's one of those days, Neens." He says with a heavy sigh and Nini just grabs his hand and gives it a reassuring squeeze. Ricky rolls up to them two seconds later, their head suspiciously missing a helmet.

"How many times do I have to tell you to wear a helmet when you're skateboarding, Ricky?" EJ tries to scold the junior despite this weirdly overwhelming fondness growing inside of him every time he even looks at Ricky now.

"Haven't gotten into an accident yet," Ricky shrugs, smiling politely at Nini and changing it into a cocky little smirk the second they look at EJ.

"Yet being the operative word here," EJ rolls his eyes and opens his trunk for Ricky to stash his board in for later. "I won't drive you to the hospital if you end up getting a concussion for not wearing a helmet."

"Yes you will." Ricky says, knocking their shoulders together. "You love me!"

EJ freezes for a bit but before he could even respond, Ricky is already catching up to Big Red and Gina, waving back at EJ and Nini with a wide grin. EJ stares at him for a few seconds, not quite sure how to process the last few moments, until Nini waves a hand in front of his face.

"Hello? Earth to EJ?"

"Huh?"

"Care to share with the class what's going on?" The little smirk on her lips says it all and EJ was not going to fall for that.

"Nope. There's nothing to share."

"Mhm," She says, looping her arm around EJ as soon as he closed his trunk. "Of course there isn't, EJ." Nini pretends not to see EJ staring at Ricky as they walk into school. EJ pretends to not notice that she's pretending to not see EJ pretending to not overtly stare at Ricky.

Besides, EJ has gotten pretty good at pretending.

Aaaannndd that's it for now. I hope you guys liked that! I really enjoyed exploring trans!ej and genderqueer!ricky through this au and it means a lot to me. Maybe next time I'll write something in ricky's pov but for now thanks for reading !!

#ej caswell #ricky bowen #nini salazar roberts #rj #hsmtmts #trans!ej #genderqueer!ricky #tw: gender dysphoria #tw: transphobia #tw: neglectful parents #cloud's writing now #hsmtmts fanfiction #they're not really together yet here but #ej is Definitely pining at the end tho #and nini is the best i will not tolerate nini slander in my blog #caswen #ricky x ej #ej x ricky

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astrovian · 3 years

Text

the official ranking of Claude Becker outfits

the official ranking of Daniel Miller outfits here

the official ranking of Adam Price outfits here

all Claude Becker outfits & rankings under the cut

we all know RA looks good in a suit, blah, blah, blah

after two of these rankings, this outfit is the physical embodiment of a yawn

I do appreciate the patterned tie to change things up a tad even if I’m not into the pattern itself. the intent is there, just not the execution

I will give props to the team for giving Claude a patterned dress shirt here (you have to squint a bit on the second image - more on patterned dress shirts later), but they really should have upped the game a little - change the tie & be less subtle with the shirt pattern

and I ask you, does Claude Becker not strike you as a man who would insist on at least a pocket square with his suits?? dream bigger stylists

3/10

@whoever stores old movie props if these weren’t disposed of immediately after filming i will pay you for a copy of one of these

putting aside the hilarious social commentary and fucking literal writing on this magazine cover done by some poor prop designer at 2am (”How to starve artists and other capitalist things”, as well as ”Claude Becker rolls up his shirtsleeves and unties his tie and puts on a vest and casually hangs his hands from his pockets” etc.), this is a nice change-up that made me question why we don’t have RA in just a waistcoat and dress shirt more often

also that tie pattern? fab. I love it. that is how to do a patterned tie. I hope we all know RA looks good in a suit, blah, blah, blah is paying attention

that being said, minimal points because we don’t actually see Claude wearing it in real life

4/10

where, oh where is my polo shirt? oh look, it’s right there

is there any RA character who is not afflicted with a polo shirt? not recently, apparently

I genuinely thought that it was a dress shirt for a moment which had me disappointed at the banality but then that turned into utter devastation as I realised we actually are looking at a long sleeve zip up polo shirt

the draping of the coat? phenomenal and what really brings this entire thing together

the long/three-quarter sleeves? the zip-up rather than buttons? better than one can normally expect from a polo shirt... and then they went and added stripes to the collar and sleeves?? regret

could be a lot worse but could ultimately also not be a polo shirt as well 4.5/10

could have tried harder during lessons but was a pleasure to have in class

I’m sure you all know my long-sleeve shirt obsession with RA but I made a promise to be honest with myself on these lists. the only feeling this outfit evokes is a ‘eh’

the equivalent of a middle slider 5/10

the Claude you’d actually have a fun day with

there’s something about RA in a hoody that just bangs. good lord I also have a weakness for those forearms

I also thought for a good moment these were dark jeans, but they disappointingly turn out to be sweatpants? however, it has made me think that we need to see RA in some darker denim shades more often

this Claude is could have tried harder during lessons but was a pleasure to have in class but with just a little more fun and class to boost it *just* outside of the ‘eh’ zone

5.2/10

now this is how we do a long-sleeved shirt

I think it’s been fairly well-established by now that loose, long-sleeved RA is my ultimate weakness, so it’s nice to see that Ocean’s 8 is also making a concerted effort to murder me

also Claude’s obsession with sweatpants is giving me life

this is the Claude you make pasta with. and that pasta would be damn tasty, too

5.9/10

come hither

just-woken-up Claude is made 100x better by the bed head hair and the sleepy gaze

this man needs to get back into bed for a snuggle (preferably with me)

I can’t decide if I’m into the loose boxers or missing the tighter Adam Price undies. either way, it’s definitely not a bad aesthetic. and it reminds me, like dad chic Adam Price, that we don’t get enough of RA in shorts

I feel bad assigning numbers to a a shirtless one BUT Claude does transform into being fully-clothed in this scene so I’m going with it 6.4/10

you can kiss my hand anytime

the blessing of this film is not only the visual assault of attractive actors from all sides and genders, but it also instigates in me the thought that RA is wearing printed dress shirts and I can’t remember the last time I saw this?? I never even realised how much I need to see a lot more of this kind of look on RA until we were blessed with this vision

look at those lil’ elephants!! adorable. I hope Claude has a closet full of these with different animals on them

this outfit was so good, RA even wore it in his behind-the-scenes interview

7/10 for a printed, suited dream

the Claude you take home to mom & dad

god, it’s even better without the suit jacket

this is my honest appeal to the powers that may or may not be to put RA in more printed dress shirts

7.6/10

sometimes I think I should be more ashamed of myself

I feel like I need to preface this one thusly: okay, but like hear me out for real this time

I know this is ultimate hipster white-dude look and RA plays into that character so fantastically with Claude here. I mean just look at his expression. something about this whole look makes me want to simultaneously punch this man in the face and also take him home with me

this is a man who you know is a mistake before you make it, but choose to follow through anyway. he’s that last shot of tequila or the 5th glass of wine. you know you would go for him too. don’t even try to deny it

is the high ranking because of the novelty factor? is it because I’ve never seen RA wear a beanie like that and honestly the infamous running Daniel Miller could take notes? is it because I can’t take anyone who wears a beanie like that seriously?

all we do know is that I also can’t believe this is so high on the list

7.8/10

the moment we all learned Claude is 100% a bottom

one of the most iconic Claude moments in the film. RA plays the ‘dumb horny idiot’ character so well in this scene

not so into the pinstriped suit jacket but the hoodie peeking out from underneath combined with the thin scarf makes it for me

8/10

question: how may teeny-weeny scarves does Claude own, exactly?

who could forget the iconic moment when Sandra Bullock nearly shivs RA?

we have another printed dress shirt and I am HERE for it. it even has birds this time!! nice to see that Claude is not just a land mammal sort of man

I will concede that this is the sort of pattern that few men can pull off but RA is making it work and I am living

8.7/10

I’m not sure I can make a comment on this one that is even remotely appropriate except for “I told you Claude is a bottom”

safety first, buy some proper restraints for the bedroom please Claude/10

modern royalty au Thorin

this is the moment that every single Hobbit fan went “hell yeah, now I have the perfect new aesthetic for my modern royalty Hobbit AU” (as an avid lotr/hobbit fan, I am not joking here)

RA looks like royalty here because he should be. please sign my petition to have RA usurp the British Queen

for real though, that baby blue sash is the 1000% perfect added touch to this suit and we love RA in a baby blue. a decent (and clearly successful) effort to match the faux Met Gala theme: European royalty. however, it is also pretty accurate re: the imaginative effort that most men have with altering their Met Gala outfits to fit that year’s theme

we need more RA in ‘modern royal’ roles for the #aesthetic and also so that he can dress like this more often

9.3/10 for a princely (or dare I say kingly?) figure

James Corden looks so gleeful running after Claude that it makes me happy. I get it, James. I get it

there’s really nothing spectacular about the general outfit here - except for the swagger RA is giving this

pants? shirt? boring, meh

check scarf? a brilliant switch up from Claude’s normal thin scarves.

the popped coat? now we’re cooking

the sunglasses and wind-ruffled hair that screams “I’m hungover but I still look effortlessly handsome”? delectable

the dogs?? the best set dressing one could ask for

the attitude and ‘I’m too cool for you’ swagger? priceless and what makes this the second-best outfit of the whole film

9.6/10 this man could punch me and I would be grateful

hot diggity dog, someone get me Claude’s handcuffs

from the front view, it could be argued that this outfit (well, technically it may not really be a separate outfit as it’s the undone version of modern royalty au Thorin), while fairly exceptional, does not first place make

however, someone had the idea to shoot RA from a side angle in this and for that I am eternally in their debt

it’s all about the tease with this one. the glimpse of the suspenders (and holy shit, RA in suspenders was not a look I had thought about before). the way the waist coat hangs off Claude’s chest like that, just enough to make its presence obvious. the cufflinks. the delicate pocket watch chain.

if previous outfits on this list have been all sex and swagger, this is the foreplay. the subtle strip tease.

10/10

#thanks for the responses to my photoshoot query y'all I think that is next #though it might be a two-parter given the volume of photoshoots #then thinking lucas north after that #hoping to get photoshoots pt. 1 done next week sometime anyway #but who knows because good ol' Boris Johnson is sending me back into an unsafe environment to teach germ-riddled teens very shortly #so I need to spend some serious time doing prep work for that over the coming week #let's pray I don't catch covid from the kids until I can get vaccinated in summer!!!#based on previous experiences I give it 1 & 1/2 weeks before us teachers start dropping like flies #ANYWAY #richard armitage #claude becker #ocean's 8 #ocean's eight #oceans 8 #oceans eight

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talking-bigender · 4 years

Text

Being Bigender- what it’s like.

I know there are already posts about being bigender and what it means, but I wanted to make my own so I could share some of my knowledge and experiences on being bigen.

Bigender: The Definition

Bigender is a gender identity described as being two genders- either simultaneously [both genders at the same time], fluidly [switching between the two] or partially [sort of like being a percentage/amount of each]. It falls under the nonbinary umbrella and is one of the many multigender identities out there.

Q- Do the two genders have to be "Girl and Boy"?

Absolutely not. This is probably the most common bigender-related misconception out there. A bigender preson could be a combination of a binary gender and nonbinary gender [example: girl and agender] or two nonbinary genders [example: androgyne and neutrois]. Bigender is not defined as only being man and woman.

Difference between Bigender and Genderfluid

Bigender and genderfluid overlap in definitions/experiences and can be used simultaneously as labels if you wish- but the main difference is that bigender is just defined as being any two genders, and it’s not a requirement to be fluid between them. Meanwhile, Genderfluid is shifting between multiple genders, and don't have to be limited to two.

Q- If you’re bigender, are you trans? Or half-trans or something?

Y’know, that’s just up to the bigender/nonbinary individual to decide. I don’t consider myself trans, and for a while I didn’t even consider myself nonbinary. I’m not cis, and I relate a lot to transgender experiences- so sure, I could technically consider myself trans. But it’s not something that appeals to me as a label, so I don’t really use it. You can just be you, and you don’t have to be a part of the trans community or even in the nonbinary community if you don’t want to.

You can also have surgery/ name change/ go on hormones if you’re bigender, it’s alllll up to you.

Presentation

There is no “right” way to present when you’re bigender. You do not have to look/dress like what is expected of both of your genders, or switch between clothing or whatever. Clothing doesn’t dictate your identity in any way. It’s just fabric. Wear it however you want!

Q- Do you have to be 50% / half of both genders to be bigender?

Nope. If the genders are not felt simultaneously or fluidly and are instead felt partially each, then the metaphorical “percentage” can be anything. A bigender person may feel 60% one gender and 40% the other, or someone else may be more 70% and 30%, or even 1% and 99%, etc.

If the amount of gender experienced can be at any percent, what’s to stop me from calling myself demigender instead of bigender?

[Demigender: feeling partially, but not fully a gender. Common labels are demigirl, demiboy, etc.]

The truth is, similar to how [bi]sexual/romantic, [poly]sexual/romatic and [pan]sexual/romantic are similar, these labels overlap and it’s really up to the person to choose which label they prefer.

ALSO. Demigenders don’t necessarily only experience two genders.

Q- Do you have to have separate sets of pronouns for each gender, or multiple names?

Nope. This isn’t a requirement. You can be bigender and have as many or as little names/sets of pronouns as you wish, and they don’t have to “match” your genders either. A boy/girl bigender could use only one name and use they/them, or an agender/boy bigender could be using two names and she/her + he/him, or neopronouns, or etc. The combinations are endless, so it’s up to the individual to figure out what they want.

And again, names do not have to “correspond” with your genders- by which i mean you don’t have to have a “boy” name or a “girl” name or a neutral name unless that’s what you want.

They/Them

They/them (at least in the English language) are considered THE neutral pronouns and the go-to for anyone. And they usually are, there’s nothing wrong with that- they’re good to use on strangers, people you don’t know the pronouns of, or people who just prefer those pronouns! However, I’d also like to point out that they are not applicable to those who you know don’t use them/ don’t have them listed as their set of pronouns. It’s not a good alternative to someone’s neopronouns, or multiple/fluxuating pronouns, or just to use on anyone who doesn’t want them used. Just don’t.

This applies to every gender identity, not just bigender.

Q- If I’m bigender, how does that affect my other orientations? Should I consider myself bi, gay, etc?

Unfortunately, currently popular lgbt+ terms [especially in relation to sexuality or romantic orientation] are not really suited for nonbinary people, so there isn’t really a good answer to this- you’ll just have to figure out what sounds best to you. Feel free to use pre-existing terminology, even if it isn’t 100% “accurate”, or just make your own!

What it’s like being bigender

Well for starters, no two bigender people are the same, nor have the same experiences. I am probably the most stereotypical example of a bigender person- I’m a boy/girl, I use he/him and she/her pronouns, and I even have a “masculine” name and a “feminine” name. As much as I’d like to share alternative bigender stories, I can only tell you mine, so keep in mind that this isn’t the universal truth for all of us.

For me, I’m simultaneously both of my genders- I’m not partially one or the other, nor am I fluid between the two. At all times, I feel 100% girl and 100% boy. “Isn’t that the same as androgyne?” Well, no. In the form of a visual, pretend there are two tinted lenses [say, yellow and blue] and stacking them on top of each other makes green, while still being separate physically. Androgyne would be more like just having a green tinted lens, without needing to stack anything.

Anyway, how’s it like? My insight to being bigender in the real world is well, uneventful, as I don’t pass, am extremely closeted and don’t intend to come out anytime soon. Most of my experiences happen internally. I sometimes get annoyed that people use only one set of pronouns for me, because although I don’t mind he or she, I would still prefer for both to be used at about the same amount. I feel comfortable around most gendered terms, although I lean towards masculine [ex: king, brother, etc]. I get uncomfortable when people consider me/refer to me as one gender [ex: calling me just a boy/girl, repeatedly]. I do have dysphoria, both social and physical. I plan on getting surgery someday. I discovered I was bigender sophmore year of highschool. That’s roughly my experience.

Q- How can I write a bigender character?

Read everything above, so at least you have some basic knowledge about the identity. If you have additional questions, my ask box/pms are always open. I’ll be glad to help anyone out with anything bigender related really.

Some other multigenders that are similar/relate to Bigender [for those who may want to look into them]

Trigender- Like bigender, but experiencing three genders instead of two

Polygender- experiencing multiple genders but not all.

Pangender- experiencing all genders [this however, does not include genders that aren’t within your experiences/ you’re able to claim, such as genders that belong to indigenous groups/ other cultures]

Demigender- feeling partially but not totally a gender.

Genderfluid- being fluid between genders [can be any genders, any amount of them and for any amount of time]

If you feel like I need to change anything about this post, then I’m open to suggestions/criticism!

#bigender #lgbt+#nonbinary #transgender #multigender #bigender masterpost

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aer-in-wanderland · 3 years

Note

hello! i see you're often dissatisfied with the official translations for tale of the nine tailed. i also always want to know exactly what the characters are saying and it saddens me to see changes in the translations. are there any translations of lee yeon/nam ji ah dialogue that you thought were particularly inaccurate? how would you render them?

Hello! I’m afraid you may have opened Pandora’s box with this one haha

First off, most (if not all) of the subs you’re seeing going around aren’t official translations but rather fansubs. Because fansubs go up as fast as possible there’s no time for review or editing, and this often means they leave a lot to be desired. As someone who has done a good amount of professional translation, I tend to put a lot of thought into ensuring that not only the content, but also the context and tone of my translations are accurate. It’s an art, not a science.

To answer your question, though, there are a few Yeon/Ji Ah interactions I can think of where the subs particularly bugged me.

The first is from EP05, when Ji Ah presses Yeon to tell her how Ah Eum died.

Yeon tells her, ‘It has nothing to do with you’ (or even more neutrally, ‘it’s unrelated to you’ but that’s an uncommon phrasing in English). The sub here was, ‘It’s none of your business,’ which is another way you could translate that, but it’s both less literal and also more callous than I felt Yeon was being here.

In response, Ji Ah insists she knows it does (have something to do with her). Yeon’s response was subbed, ‘At times, it’s better to be in the dark. So live your life as the clueless person you have been.’ This is taking a lot of license and not in a good way. I would have translated Yeon’s response as follows:

Yeon: At times...there are times when knowing something becomes poison. Please just keep living as you are now, not knowing.

First off, to my thinking there’s a big difference between ‘being in the dark’ and ‘knowledge can be poison,’ which is actually what he says. Second, he says absolutely nothing to the effect of ‘clueless person.’ He does literally say ‘not knowing anything,’ but I would have left out the ‘anything’ because it changes the tone of the sentence. It’s technically correct from a one-to-one translation standpoint, but ultimately wrong in terms of communicating what he means and how he means it. Finally, while he doesn’t literally say ‘please,’ what he does say (‘살아주라’) is the imperative form of the verb (to live) + ‘ju-da’ grammar pattern, which holds the implication that she is doing it for his sake.

The sub here really bugged me because it made it sound like Yeon was condescending to Ji Ah, saying that she should just keep on being ignorant, when in fact he was asking her very plaintively to trust him and accept not knowing. Overall, I thought it misrepresented his character in an unflattering light so it stuck with me.

Another example of a sub that bothered me is from EP12, when Ji Ah’s parents ask Yeon what he likes about Ji Ah and Yeon tells them being with her comforts him (paraphrasing). The translation of Ji Ah’s line that followed that was a bit problematic for me. The sub here read, ‘But Yeon made me realize...that we’re supposed to live in the shadows...of the people we rely on. I wanted to be that kind of person too.’ I would have translated this as:

Ji Ah: But I met Lee Yeon and came to understand: people live their lives in the shadow of someone they can depend upon. I have to become that type of person too.

You can see there’s not too much difference (other than the ‘supposed to’ and the ‘wanted to’ - not sure where they got that) and that’s because the main issue here is actually cultural. In English, if we say you’re living in someone’s shadow it’s a negative thing, but Ji Ah is actually making a reference to traditional Korean wedding vows, in which the groom pledged to become a tree and the bride his shadow. That’s obviously a carry-over from a more antiquated time in gender relations, but the image of the tree remains that of something that provides shelter from the elements. So, to live in someone’s shadow in this case actually means to live being protected and cared for by them. This is in direct contrast to her telling Yeon in EP06 not to be too good to her for fear that she’d come to depend on him. It shows character growth. And Ji Ah is saying that she also wants to be that someone for Yeon.

Since there’s no way to explain that context in the subs, though, I might have taken some creative license and changed ‘shadow’ to ‘shelter’ or something to that effect. It would be more of a departure from the literal, but somewhat closer to the intended meaning.

Another exchange that I felt could have been translated better was from the night scene on the beach in EP13 when Ji Ah asks Yeon if he remembers the first time he met her.

Yeon: Of course I remember. I spent my life working to catch others, but you were the first person who chased after me so ferociously saying they were going to catch me.

Ji Ah: At that time I should have just confessed ferociously. If I had, the time we could have spent being happy not knowing anything would've been just a little bit longer.

I don’t remember exactly what the sub said, only that it left out the word ‘ferocious,’ which they both used. I thought it was a very Ji Ah thing to say - that she should have confessed ferociously instead of chasing him ferociously, and you can see Yeon look at her when she says it.

Another thing that dropped out at times was the humour. One recurring joke they use plays off the word for ‘bastard,’ which translates literally as ‘baby dog’ or ‘child of a dog’ (kae-saekki). Putting ‘kae’ (dog) in front of anything turns it into a curse word actually. [Edit: It’s also used as an intensifier in modern slang similar to how the f-word is used in English]. As you might imagine, this gets a lot of mileage in relation to Rang, our resident 600-year old baby fox. So in EP03 when Yeon and Rang fight on the island, Yeon makes this joke:

Yeon: They say you’re supposed to raise wild children* with a firm hand (literally: hit them as you raise them), but I couldn’t do that, so I ended up raising a baby fox into a bastard (baby dog), didn’t I?

Rang: And who was the jerk who kicked that baby (saekki) to the curb? You treat me like a stray dog any chance you get.

Yeon: My little brother, I’ll have to gift you a muzzle this Christmas.

Because the dog jokes dropped out ‘muzzle’ became ‘mouthguard,’ which is less funny and also makes no sense out of context. [*Edit: Also, thinking about it again, I still would have used ‘muzzle’ since that implies that Yeon means to protect the world from Rang whereas ‘mouthguard’ is more about protecting Rang.]

[*Edit: the word used here is 호로자식, which many Koreans understand to mean something like a barbarian child, but the true origin, as it turns out, is a parentless child. It’s also used predominantly by grandpas/old men hehe]

Another funny moment came when Ji Ah asks Yeon for his phone number in EP04:

Yeon: Nice. Your character is very consistent.

Ji Ah: I get that a lot.

There’s no good way to translate Ji Ah’s line, but she literally says ‘I hear that curse (yok) a lot,’ implying that people say this to her and mean it as an insult/in a ‘goddamn you’ sort of way...to which Yeon nods as if to say, ‘makes perfect sense.’ haha

Finally, there were times when the subs were just straight-up wrong. When Yeon is telling Ji Ah about how he met Ah Eum in EP05, he says she was so cute he hit her once and then sent her on her way. Ji Ah prompts him saying, ‘And then?’ To which Yeon responds that she went down the mountain in tears but then returned to chase after him with her bow in tow. The subtitle said something like ‘she left and returned within the day,’ and I honestly can only assume whoever was translating it wasn’t sure what was said and just wrote something likely based on context because it’s such a loose estimation.

Sorry this is so long. It’s nowhere near an exhaustive list, but hopefully it gives you an idea of some of the things that catch my attention when I watch the subbed version. If there are specific scenes you’d like to see me translate, feel free to send me another ask. =)

#ask #tale of the nine tailed #korean language #korean translation #thanks for giving me the opportunity to vent haha #edited #totnt ask

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fedtothenight · 3 years

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this competition asked to write a short story in the dystopian genre and my entry's below - don't rb!

the sweetest fruit

The boy gasped, straining against the padded frame of the jeep just as the vehicle slowly came to a halt. ‘Look!’ he shouted, pointing at a spot about a hundred feet from the group. ‘Look, Mum! That’s so cool!’

Half-instinctively, his mother had already grabbed a fistful of his tank-top, ready to yank him back. She had spent the entirety of the trip sitting as still as possible, facing forward, eyes stubbornly fixed on the self-cooling top of the car in a pointless effort to fight her motion sickness: her patience was already wearing very thin without her eight-year-old personal safety hazard trying to get himself killed.

‘Ethan, for the love of God,’ she snapped. ‘I already told you to stop leaning over the frame! Do you realise how dangerous that is?’

‘No, Mum, you’ve got to look!’

‘Emma, darling,’ her husband whispered, a gentle hand on her shoulder. ‘You should really look at this. It’s magnificent.’

Whatever it was, even her fifteen-year-old daughter - who had spent the last thirty minutes texting her friends back home without so much as a glance at the scenery - was jaw-slacked, so she slowly got up on her wobbly knees and peered over her shoulders.

In the shadow of a tree, protected from the sweltering heat, two lions were feasting on a zebra. Perhaps belatedly, as it’d taken her a second to drink the sight in, she realised that the poor thing was still alive: writhing as blood, red and hot and pulsing, gushed out from where the bigger lion - the male - had bitten into its back.

The smaller one, the female, soundlessly sank its teeth into the dying animal’s neck, and the latter gave one last weak kick, finally falling limp. When the lioness stood again, it was almost impossible, from this distance, to see her eyes amidst the bloodied mess on her face.

‘Oh, my God, Matt,’ Emma said. ‘This is beautiful. Nature truly is beautiful.’

‘You don’t really get to see this kind of show anywhere else today,’ their guide said from the driver’s seat. He sounded proud, as if he’d hunted and fed the zebra to the lions himself.

Alberto wasn’t wrong, Emma reasoned. Given that they were parked in the middle of the privately-owned biggest North American savanna, he - or rather, his employer - was the one effectively feeding the lions. Like feeding mice to cats. She glanced at her children, glad they could have a window on a reality that was long gone. To think it would have taken a trip around the world to watch this spectacle - imagine the motion sickness then! If only, she considered wistfully, there could be a way of replicating glaciers just as accurately.

‘Honestly, it seems a bit unfair that they get to eat real meat,’ Ethan said at the dinner table a few hours later. He was picking at his plate, moving the fried grasshoppers they’d been served for dinner around, but not really eating any. ‘While we are stuck with insects and microprotein or whatever.’

Emma pinched the bridge of her nose. She was tired and sunburnt, her sensitive pale skin suffering under the blistering sun of the region, so different from the temperate weather back home North. She had a splitting headache, too. She was, yet again, at the so-called end of her tether. ‘Ethan…’

‘You should be glad you get to eat at all,’ her daughter said at the same time. ‘There’s a reason it’s illegal to eat meat. These animals are here for show, anyway. They were originally from Africa.’

‘Shut up, Becca,’ Ethan mumbled. ‘Everybody knows there are no animals in Africa. There’s nothing there.’

Becca’s cheeks were tinted pink, eyebrows furrowed. ‘Of course there were animals. There were animals everywhere before the Climate Crunch.’

‘Both of you, stop it,’ Matt interjected. ‘Ethan, your sister is right. You should be grateful that we are here in the first place. That said…’ He leant forward, voice down to a whisper: ‘I have a surprise for you. Or, well, Richard has a surprise for us. When he arrives tomorrow, he’ll bring us real meat. Bovine meat.’

‘But it’s illegal,’ said Becca.

‘It’s technically illegal,’ Matt acknowledged. ‘It’s not if you know how to get some and no one from Animal Conservation finds out. Do you think our president only eats insects? Please, Becca. Use that big brain of yours.’

‘Yes,’ Ethan snickered. ‘Use your brain, Becca.’

‘That is too generous,’ Emma said. ‘Inviting us here in the first place was, when even he hasn’t gotten here yet. Now this. I wouldn’t know how to repay him.’

Truly, all she felt was jealousy. Her guts twisted with the sheer force of it. Yes, she had known that Richard was comfortable. The gated, heavily guarded estate spanned for thousands of acres, comprised the 5000sqt villa they were staying at (five bedrooms, seven bathrooms, a cinema, marble floors and solar panels on the rooftop), an indoor swimming pool inspired by vintage photos of Amalfi, two indoor tennis courts, and the savanna they’d explored earlier in the day. ‘The biggest conservation area in North America since they repurposed the Midwest,’ he’d bragged in a video call, two weeks before. ‘You will love it. The holiday you deserve. Make yourselves at home.’

But meat? He could get meat?

Matt’s family had designed DeNuketify, which was basically the only effective way of purifying ocean water from whatever nuclear waste Japan kept spewing so that it could be used and, most importantly, drunk. They had managed to flee the continent with the last handful of greencards about the time her family did, too, taking their precious Queen’s accent with them to found Nova London. She was the governor of Nova London now, for God’s sake. The bloody queen herself was long dead but she was alive, and yet, yet - they had never had meat.

‘We don’t have to, Emma,’ Matt said. ‘We just need to remember how lucky we are to enjoy this meal, this house, this holiday. Look at that,’ and he nodded towards the TV screen again. ‘Actually, Alexa!, volume up!, I think the Italians have finally surrendered.’

The war correspondent’s voice grew louder. She - they, Emma reminded herself: Becca always told her not to assume anyone’s gender - was wearing a dust mask and reading from a bundle of documents. ‘The last military hospital in the island of Palermo was destroyed four days ago by a Canadian airstrike,’ they were saying. ‘The rebels surrendered soon after, followed by the group of extremists in the Nebrodi island. Etna had already surrendered last year.’

‘It’s important to remember that these actions were necessary to finally put a rest on the instability of the region,’ they added. ‘Canada will fund a complete restoration of the Southern archipelago. The remaining civilians will be provided with a shelter and then, when the time comes, a suitable job. Nova Italia will be the sixteenth Canadian state, the fourth offshore. There are also hopes to extract petroleum from the seabed of the sunken city of Gela.’

‘Watch them make it into a holiday hotspot,’ Matt commented. ‘The weather is still nice there.’

‘Ooh, I heard about this.’ Becca picked her phone back up and started furiously typing away. ‘There’s this journal entry soldiers found over there, under the rubble, that’s gone viral. It was translated into English. Wait, I’ll pull it up. Alexa, volume down.’

‘I’m not sure I want to hear it,’ Emma said, uneasy. ‘We’re on holiday. Should we not watch a movie? Something funny?’

Becca waved her away, as if she was an annoying fly. ‘It’ll be good practice for my drama class.’

Matt didn’t help—he simply shrugged, half-apologetic, as if to say: Let her do her thing.

Becca made a show of clearing her throat, too, before she started reading from her phone—her high voice now grave, studied, as if she were speaking to a larger audience: ‘I wonder what peas taste like.’

Right then, the scene on screen changed to footage of what looked like a destroyed village, something out of an apocalyptic movie. Emma found herself unable to look away.

‘Nonna used to say that her own great-grandmother grew them in her garden. Figs, too,’ Becca read. ‘They say they were the sweetest fruit.’

Emma wondered if this journal was actually written by a child or a teenager. It didn’t sound like an adult at all. She couldn’t help but picture a girl, a brunette, not much older than Becca, perhaps a rebel, or a trainee nurse on the sweet cusp of adulthood, holding this journal of hers, or perhaps a gun. It violently reminded her that her own daughter, too, would have to serve her time in the Forces in three years.

On screen, the Canadian soldiers walked among the ruins, zigzagging between torn up clothes and discarded weapons, surely looking for surviving rebels under the rubbles.

‘Isn’t it silly that we can hear the fighters overhead and that all I can do is think about food?’ said Becca. ‘I wish we could also eat figs and be happy.’

On screen, the camera zoomed in on a long-forgotten man's shoe, some crumpled photographs, on a pile of bodies in black bin bags.

‘Grandma - I miss her - left me a poetry book, too, from T.S. Eliot. I hope the book is with me when I die, so I can give it back to her when we meet again, afterwards. So I can tell her that T.S. Eliot was wrong.’

On screen, one of the soldiers approached and showed a little trinket to the camera: a bloody, heart-shaped locket that must’ve once been golden, hiding the miniature pictures of two brunette children that would never have a name.

‘That’s enough,’ Emma said. She closed her eyes, taking a deep breath. ‘Stop reading.’

‘The world may have not ended with a bang, but it didn’t end with a whimper, either: the world didn’t end at all. Sometimes,’ Becca finished reading, ‘I wish it had.’

‘What a load of rubbish,’ Matt scoffed. ‘Everyone should feel lucky to be alive. I bet this journal is a fake. Alexa, turn the TV off.’

As the screen faded to black, Ethan finally popped a grasshopper in his mouth. ‘I can’t wait to have meat tomorrow.’

#my writing #honestly dystopia is not a genre i'm interested in #lol #this was lazy and i wrote it in one morning while i was hungover on negroni

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kuronekonerochan · 3 years

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Random rant about Court Lady (ps: if you like the drama just don’t read it pls, or if you do, don’t @ me)

Disclaimer: I personally hate this drama and I almost never post about dramas negatively, just for the ones I like and ignore the ones I dislike. This one annoys me and I am aware that my criticism is probably only partially objectively valid and also partially nitpicks that irked me but are not “wrong” per se.

Also,just bc I don’t like it, if others like it, I have nothing to say about it except that liking it is as valid as my opinion and If you’re enjoying it, I’m glad and in no way judging bc in the end it’s just fiction and to each its own :)

I started watching this and dropped it at about ep8 bc I didn’t really enjoy it, despite the fact that I did find the production and technical aspects of the drama good and a bit different from the usual (including costume choices, etc). I even liked some of the characters like the Lu Daughter, the Pirate and the Princess (the one who hooks up with the ml’s brother). Mostly I liked Xu Kai, even as a bratty dude. Still, not enough stuff to keep my interest. After that I saw a random ep and realized the leads barely show up (and not even together) and that the screentime was dedicated to way too many secondary characters, none of them the least interesting or likable.

But then I got bored and watched the latest eps of court lady,and tho pirate, princess and enemy daughter all show up, it's still boring and although it has tons of characters, 99% of them are entitled psychopaths, and not even interesting psycho types at that, or masterminds that are enjoyable to watch. Nope they are all just annoying bullies and horrible ppl, men and women alike and what enjoyment can I get from this drama where the leads are almost never on scene together, there is a million subplots and characters yet almost no characters are likable and worth rooting for?

(Also, on nitpicking stuff, even tho they are probably historically accurate, I ended up really disliking those stupid male hats and that terrible female wig style updo that looks terrible on almost every actress, while also making most of them impossible to tell apart. Besides, I changed my mind about the costume design...it ended up being a mess (not bc I don't like it personally) but bc you have scholars, penniless retired pirates, nobleman and royalty all wearing the exact same type of clothes with no difference in fabric, or embellishments or accessories to tell apart their hierarchic rank. Truly, one of the royals was addressed as your majesty and I'm like "dude, your clothes seem cheaper than the extras and servants around you".)

I ended up watching one of the latest ep where the leads finally have decent screentime...and omg it's not only the 1000 side characters who are unlikable, the leads are awful too...why would anyone do a drama with just terrible people? I kind of wish them all the equivalent of period White truck of Doom ending (maybe a collective corpse bridge like 2ha or TGCF?).

And for final exit rant on the latest eps:

Idk what I was thinking checking this drama out again...seriously all the chars in this are either plain bullies, or that plus rapists (both genders, really...dudes all try to force themselves on the women and all the women take advantage of the men being drunk/poisoned, etc to sleep with them without them being able to give conscientious consent)...this might be the worse char ensemble drama I've ever seen. not a single relatable/likable char on sight, and they give us a million of them too.

This is truly bizarre... this type of behavior dramas usually give to their villains, so you know, of those actions they're showing are morally bad. In this one all the characters are bad doing shitty things but the drama itself is so blase about it it kind of treats all of this stuff as normal and okay?!

It's not as if I'm usually an sjw on fiction...I enjoy my bastard characters, but the whole vibe of this drama is...off, like completely disconnected from regular human behavior, as if they all got their moral compass set to fucking awful, so fucking awful became the new normal. It's very weird bc it's almost as they don't care if there isn't anyone worth rooting for.

And it's not just the actions of the characters...on some (much better) dramas/novels, the "heroes" are also just as morally grey as the villains and the only reason we root for them is because we're on their side (e.g. Joy of Life, Qi Ye, WoH, The Advisers’ Alliance, Ever Night S1), but usually on those dramas the characters have their own personal reasons for "ends justify the means" and from their perspective, whether doing bad or good stuff they don't think of themselves as villains, and likewise the “true” villains in those dramas also have their own narrative and reasoning which makes them somewhat relatable even if we disagree or hate them. In this ppl act shitty, fully aware that they are shitty and without remorse, for very weak reasons and honestly most of those actions are more bc they can than to serve a purpose. They are all amoral idiots. I'm weirdly fascinated by this drama's mindset.

Basically they are all that dude friend from To Rule in a Turbulent World on the first chapter beating Sanado to death just bc, but instead of giving him a context and character depth showing different sides to him (and I ended up really liking that character), the ppl in this drama just have their characters doing that shit again and again and never try to give any sort of dimension to them.

I am the Ryan Reynolds "but...why?" meme watching this.

PS: I am very aware of how repetitive and unfocused and messy this rant is, but this is a compilation of my watching experience at various stages blended into this one post and honestly this drama does not deserve me wasting my time to make this text any more cohesive, so rambly barely comprehensive mess it is.

#court lady #cdrama #cnovel #to rule in a turbulent world #qi ye #the advisers' alliance #joy of life #word of honor #word of honour #ever night #it's been a while since I made a ranty rant #cdrama rant #cdrama rambles #it just annoys me when I see a drama with a great production value wasted on a bad story plot and script #especially when the acting isn't bad either...the direction is super weird and the editing is sort of awkward but I don't dislike the actors #also this is based on a novel so i'm probably offending both novel and drama fans with this #the thing is sometimes a novel can get away with elements like this bc of how it's written and gives context and reasoning through #inner monologues to the actions of its characters #i never read the novel this is based on so it might just be a case of it translating poorly to live action #but that's on the show's adaptation and script to fix #for example I liked both the novel and the drama for Faraway Wanderers #but it did have some elements that could have translated badly to the live action #and I think the changes they did to the script while some being required bc censorship #others were helpful towards making the story better and with a bigger emotional impact for a live action format

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purplesurveys · 3 years

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1240

Are you better at cooking dinners or making cakes/biscuits/sweets? I can’t make any dish. I wonder when I’ll get my ass up and start learning...

Have you ever cut someone else’s hair? I wouldn’t dare; I have no skills in that department at all.

Who was the last guest in your house and what were they staying for? Angela and Hans came over so we can watch Sowoozoo.

How many long term relationships have you been in? One.

Do you sleep with all the lights out, or do you leave a lamp or even the television on? My default is lights out, but sometimes I’ll fall asleep with my night lamp still on and that’s fine too.

Who is one person you have forgiven, but still have not “forgotten” what they have done? I don’t really do forgiving.

Are you a fan of Lana Del Rey? No. I’ve tried listening to her songs but I find them too slow for my liking.

Do you know your blood type? It’s O but I keep forgetting what specific type.

Do you know your mother’s birthday? Yes.

Have you got your period at the moment? It’s on its last few days.

Have you ever been pregnant? Nopes.

How old were you when you first went on a plane? I was around 10 or 11, can’t remember exactly. But it was in 2009 and we headed to Boracay.

Have you ever had to take out a loan for anything? No. OMG, adult activity I don’t quite understand just yet hfdhfkdjfhdf.

Are both of your blood parents still in your life? Yeah they’re both grumbling right now just outside of my room because the power went out lmfao.

When was the last time you went apple picking? I’ve never done this. Apples don’t grow here.

Someone asked you what you wanted, what would you say? My pay for the last two weeks haha, but that’s not coming until Friday.

Have you ever been drunk at school or work? No, I wouldn’t dare. I’m pretty unpredictable when I get drunk, so I’d rather stay safe haha. I’ve worked while tipsy, but it had been outside of work hours.

How many bedrooms are in your house? 4. One for each kid, then my parents’.

Are you smart about computers? Nah.

Have you ever played Just Dance for Wii? We didn’t have the game on our Wii, but I’ve played Just Dance before, just at other peoples’ houses.

Do you own a Xbox 360? We were a Playstation household.

Would you ever do a sex tape for a million dollars? Erm, sure, whatever.

So, do you need a nap? I think I should be taking one for the sake of my health, but I won’t.

What would you rather be doing? I stumbled upon a Facebook post of this newly-opened store in Greenhills that exclusively sells photocards and I wanna head the fuck over there rn with Angela. That store concept is practically unheard of so it’s a big deal and I wanna go there as I’m 100% sure the BTS ones would sell out pretty fast. But they heightened the stupid COVID protocols yet again and we have to stay at home, so there’s that.

What sport are you the best at? Table tennis.

Do you have a little sister? What’s her name? Yeah but she’s turning 21 this year, so little wouldn’t be accurate anymore. We call her Nina at home but everyone else calls her by her full first name, Janina.

Do you complain a lot? I do complain a lot but I also do the thing that is causing the complaint right after so I can shut myself up lmao.

Would you rather go to an authentic haunted house or an ancient temple? Both sound fun but I’ll probably take the temple. Yay for learning something new about culture!!

Do you like fruity or minty gum? I don’t mind flavor when it comes to gum because they fade out anyway.

Are you looking forward to any day of this month? My company set another mental health break day this upcoming August 27th, so I’ll be thinking about that day throughout the month.

Have you ever gotten detention? We don’t have detention.

Is there a traumatic event that you’ve experienced that’s changed your life? Sure.

Do you buy a majority of your clothes from a certain store, or do you just pick out items of clothing you could see yourself wearing, not caring about the store it came from? The latter. < Same. I can be brand-conscious sometimes, but generally if I find something cute, regardless from where I found it, I’d grab it.

Have any of the artists you’re fond of released new albums recently? Technically yeah. It was a single album.

Would you ever keep your favorite animal as a pet? I already have two of them.

Ever cried so much you threw up? Possibly.

Who is your best guy friend? Hans.

What do you two do when you hang out? We usually eat out and have a drink or two.

What is a movie that you thought you would hate but you ended up loving? Spotlight, just because it looked boring at first glance. It turned out to be very riveting and the screenplay was fascinating as well.

Do you even like horror movies? Yes, but they’re best watched with other people.

Do you live in the country? Nopes.

What is your favorite accent? I don’t have one.

Have you ever had a boyfriend your parents didn’t like? No.

Do you drink Pepsi or Coke? I had the chance to try out Pepsi when we went to Taco Bell two weeks ago - it was my first time to have it and it was...actually pretty good??? The soda-hater in me was scandalized HAHAHA but it was good!!! I think I prefer Pepsi now.

What do you plan to do on your 21st birthday? My 21st birthday started out terribly because Gabie’s family didn’t want her to hang out with me on a Sunday (the day my birthday fell on), so we were in an argument the whole day. Angela saved the day when she planned out an impromptu dinner + arcade date for me, and that was the only good part of the day, really. I’d rather forget the rest of it.

Do you have any person in your family with an addiction to beer? I don’t think so.

Do you take a lot of pictures? I’m starting to, now.

What kind of face wash do you use? Good ol’ water.

Does drama always seem to follow you? Not these days.

Does anybody in your family race? Nope.

Are you closer to your mom or dad? Dad, I guess. But I wouldn’t particularly call myself ‘close’ with either.

How much money did you used to get from the ”tooth fairy?” I never received money from them.

How long do you want to live with your parents? Maybe up until my mid-20s? Late-20s at the latest. I’m not exactly in the position to move out yet. The money I make at the moment would probably just be enough to cover rent, and just rent. I’d end up starving to death hahaha.

Do you have a laptop or desktop? Laptop.

Do you like your parents? Sure.

Do you secretly like someone? I don’t.

Would you ever date your best male friend? No. I also wouldn’t do that to Angela.

What are you currently listening to? Moon by Jin! Such a comfort song.

Do you want to be single? Yes.

Did you go out or stay in last night? I stayed in and was knocked out pretty early since I had been up since 1 AM.

Have you pretended to like someone? No. I don’t see why I would have to that.

How is your heart lately? Just filled with nothing but Bangtan at this point haha. It’s doing well!

Are you wearing socks? No. Socks bother me for the most part; they make my feet feel a bit suffocated.

What do people call you? Robyn.

Do you get stressed out easily? Yeah, I’m quite the overthinker.

Have you ever been taken to the emergency room in an ambulance? No, I’ve never actually been inside an ambulance, whether it came for me or for another person.

What is wrong with you right now? I should probably cut back on the vaping, for one.

Do you own something from Hot Topic? No.

Would you rather sleep with someone else or alone? It’s hard for me to sleep with someone else. Even when I had been in a relationship, I usually only got to fall asleep an hour or so after my partner already dozed off.

Do you still talk to the person you last made out with? No, I cut ties at the start of the year and have been substantially better since then.

Have you ever seen your best friend cry? I honestly don’t think so. I’m the bigger crybaby between us.

Did you get any compliments today? My mom thanked me for covering for Cooper’s shots today since they ended up being quite costly.

Have you ever gone to a beach? Yes, it’s one of my absolute favorite places to be.

What would you say if someone asked you to get high right now? Pass up on the offer.

Do you believe that everything happens for a reason? Yes.

Have you ever done volunteer work just because you wanted to? I’ve never had the ample time to, so no. I’ve always wanted to volunteer at an animal shelter, though.

Do you have long nails? They’re not dramatically long, but they have started to grow out.

Do you like the gender you are? I don't like or dislike it, honestly. I'm just neutral. < Same.

Do you generally look nice in photos? I think this is the case these days, yeah. I’ve started feeling more confident and I think it’s able to translate in photos.

Have you ever had a stick insect as a pet? No.

What colour are your father’s eyes? Dark brown.

If I handed you a concert ticket right now, who would you want to be the performer? BTS DUH

Name three facts about your family? I come from a family of lawyers; many of us are big history buffs; and many are also fantastic cooks so I don’t know where that talent could have possibly gone when it come to my generation hah.

Would you ever get into a long distance relationship? If I’ve reached a certain level of investment in the relationship, I could probably handle it.

What’s the most thoughtful present you’ve ever received? A Punk shirt and Petals For Armor physical CD from Andi this last Christmas.

What’s your favorite hot beverage? Hot chocolate. < Yessssss!

Did you ever play an instrument? If so what? I don’t.

Would you rather carve pumpkins or wrap presents? Carving pumpkins sounds fun, especially since I haven’t tried it before.

Do you think you’re important? Idk. I don’t really like drawing attention to myself though, so that could probably answer your question.

What’s the best compliment you’ve ever received? Andi wrote a letter for me to accompany the aforementioned Christmas gifts they gave, and it remains to be my favorite letter I’ve received. They essentially reminded and affirmed me that I’m stronger than I think I am, and that I’ve been through a lot and have grown a lot, and that that growth is seen by people around me.

Have you been diagnosed with any mental disorders? No.

Have you ever moved to another state or country? If so, how did it feel to be new? Just to different cities, but considering how tiny my country is, the move is quite insignificant lol.

Do you know how to properly eat food with chopsticks? I’m 100% sure I don’t know how to properly hold chopsticks, but I have my own way and it works lol. Fake it til you make it.

Are you more of a leader or a follower? Definitely a follower, but I can step up in certain situations. < Same. I don’t mind leading, especially considering the control freak I can be lolol.

What was the first thing you ate today? I haven’t eaten anything today. I skipped breakfast since I brought Cooper to the vet, and by the time I got back the dining table had already been cleared. It’s fine though, I don’t feel too hungry.

If you could spend the day, doing absolutely anything, with anyone, anywhere, what would it be like? I’d be with Angela, Reena, and Hans at that insane new photocard store I talked about earlier. IDEALLY, we’d probably pick up a photocard or two if the ones we want aren’t sold out yet (lol a rarity), then we’d have some nachos and stuff right after and just talk about all things Bangtan lol with Hans cracking us up the whole time since he is just naturally hilarious.

If I were to ask you how you are doing, and you were only able to answer completely honestly, what would come out? Content. Happy. I feel warm and loved and surrounded by the best people.

What is the one thing that you have been avoiding that you should do? Learning how to cook is one.

Is there anything that you wish you could take back? Not really.

What, in your mind, could make you truly happy? Being in the purple ocean with my best friends.

If you could change one conversation in your life, what would you say differently? Would it have REALLY made any difference? A part of me wishes my final face-to-face conversation with Gabie had been a more solid closure, just so we could finally put a hard stop to that chapter. But at that time I thought we would continue talking, so there had still been some stuff lingering in the air when we called it a day and parted ways. So in a sense we never really got closure when I finally cut ties, which the ESTJ in me remains to be nagged by, but I try not to be bothered by it anymore considering how much better I am doing right now. We didn’t know the future at the time, so it’s okay the way things turned out, ultimately.

When is the next time you’ll change your hairstyle? Will you color it? I have no clue. It’s not really a priority.

Do people normally say you’re a fast typist, or are you rather slow? I’m fast.

Have you ever been considered the ‘smartest person in school?’ Nah.

How many drugs are in your system? Just caffeine.

What’s on your schedule for tomorrow? Werkwerkwerkwerk.

Do you currently have any bite marks/hickeys on your body? Nopes.

Do you call anyone baby? I don’t.

What’s your current mood? I’m prety neutral. I wish I could be out right now, but stupid Covid and stupid quarantine. But I don’t really mind staying at home, either, so. I’m just so-so.

Do you think you are a good person? I hope so.

What were you doing before filling out this survey? I watched Sunday mass with my family.

How late did you stay up last night? Around midnight.

When was the last time you cried really hard? I cried just a few days ago because period hormones, but the last time I cried hard? I’m not sure. April maybe?

Is your hair longer than your shoulders? LOL yes it’s soooooooo long already.

#survey #surveys

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lady-plantagenet · 4 years

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What hasn’t already been said: The Spanish Princess 2

Episode 2: SOdden (or Sod ‘Em depending on your persuasion)

(Dont know how long I’ll be able to keep these puns up)

Catherine, like this woman, does not really fit into this era. But while this woman seems dropdead cool and at least looks the part, Catherine just...

To all those of you keen enough to have come back for another segment of ‘what hasn’t already been said: TSP’, as opposed to have just been scrolling when you see this - welcome back! (Scrollers you too <3)

To anyone who’s seeing this for the first time: what this is a list of observations, jokes, reactions and criticism which occur to me upon a rewatch. I wait every week until Saturday to do this so that I have had my fill of scrolling through the tag and aggregating what has already been said. I tried doing a whole spoof (here where I gave up 10% in) but tbh a) I don’t know the history well enough b) it’s more time consuming than I thought and c) this series is just not as funny or as crazy as TWQ, so it’s untenable. Having said that: This is not a hatepost. I’m not hatewatching this series and nitpicking on purpose but expressing my honest views and trying to find the good in it as well as the bad.

Without further ado...

First Scenes:

The baby cloth lifting into the ceiling of the chapel had nice ‘myth of the demon countess of Anjou (ancestress of the Plantagenets)’ vibes. I am 100% that was unintentional. I get this impression by the cringiness of the baby’s screams (what’s up with those sound effects? It sounded like a zipper).

Henry gives me such softboi vibes? It’s pleasing to me because it’s making me attracted to him as a viewer, but no good in convincing me this is Henry VIII.

I think Catherine’s exposition about how she feels is pretty ok actually, it’s fitting that she would feel anger.

CHARLES’ FATHER IS NOT MAXIMILIAN, IT’S PHILIP (or rather it was). ~~ A quick wiki search guyz, a quick wiki search. Ughh

Again with the whole everyone acting like Catherine is Queen. Can they cut it out? Also while we’re at it, what was Catherine’s attendance in councils even like?

The music was nice

Post Child announcement phase:

Oof I hate to say it but I lowkey wanted de la Pole back in this mother. Mainly because it would mean more Margaret Pole and by this point I am scared her storyline will fade in prominence now that there’s no longer a Yorkist subplot (showhorned as it was, it was the crowning glory of last season tied with Arthur x Catherine).

More x Maggie Pole and all of it over Seneca and learning :’). I already know this will be the best part of the episode.

‘We certainly know stoicism in our family’ ~ I guess she’s referring to Reggie? Because our boi Clarence was no poster boy for stoicism. Though could she be making an ironic reference to her father~?

Edmund de la Pole Debacle:

Well this convo at least passed the bechdel test.

Maggie and Edmund’s interactions here are touching. I know this plotline was rushed but I think it was just right to bring us back here for 5 min as a mournful throwback to the bygone era to which Maggie Pope belongs to and now continues to do so alone. It is emotionless and you can just feel how the York cause was hanging on by a tired old threat by that point.

Maggie Pole is becoming matronly now and I like this transition.

What bothers me about a lot of fans of Margaret Pole is that what they don’t realise is that she wasn’t all like ‘I want nothing to do with my family I’ll stay low and obscure’. While far more cautious than the likes of her ancestors, she did engage in land disputes with Henry VIII and was an outspoken supporter of Catherine and Catholic. Having her be a woman woth dubious loyalties towards the Tudors is accurate.

Scotland with Meg and Jammes:

LMFAO it’s like they read my mind when I spoke of how much I laughed when Meg was like ‘Alexander Steward you pig!1!!’ last episode.

Nice reference to Aulde Alliance

I like James.

Henry and Catherine on the balcony:

Was she commander of the forces? Was Howard appointed that? Regent she was, ok.

Charlotte Hope’s new hairstyles really suit her!

‘Will you please stop cursing’ agahsjdk ahah

No offence to women (of which I am one) but this comparison between childbirth and war is just... wrong. I know Starz think they are being smart but childbirth is far less impressive than winning or surviving a battle - comparing the two diminishes the bravery of soldiers. YET ,having said that, childbirth is necessary for our society whereas war is almost always futile and by comparing them, it wrongly represents violence as something inherently as natural to us as birth and continuing of civilisation. overall not a smart, respectful or accurate parrallel to make.

Meg and prep for invasion + Catherine in her weird armour:

So Margaret dreams that her husband is dead and bloody in her bed. Ughh show you neeed to get more creative. But I did like the whole ‘dreams are how our ancestors talk to us’ line from Angus Douglas.

Re: Meg in her beret... Why is Meg dressed like me going to the London shops in October? Digging the aesthetic but not sure about the accuracy.

Rich of Catherine to bring up Edmund.

Why is Ursula Pole crying??? What is all this to her really?

Did Howard just call the guard... sonny?? Is this some WW2 crossover?

Catherine - James and the tent parlay:

Did Catherine just insult Meg’s intelligence??

Also lmao I’m going to miss James.

Re: Howard saying ‘I’m not going to get insulted by a man wearing a dress’ .. UMMM Starz, you do know that just thirty years ago men were prancing about in dresses and leggings (essentially). From around the middle of the 14th century to the beggining of 16th century (if not earlier), Englishmen were also essentially prancing about in ‘skirts’.

Am I getting a weird cooperation-partnership vibe between Meg and James?

The Battle:

Charlotte Hope looks so good with the helmet, she’d really suit an english hood! Such a shame they won’t give her one!

Ewwww he’s eating mud, why?

Just standard battle scene. They are all the same to me no matter which movie.

Aftermath:

Jesus, I find the whole Meg crying over James IV so heartfelt ‘you arrogant bastard’ for some reason just came out so full of emotion. Can someone please explain why the hell I ship them more than Henry x Catherine?? Like how ??

Awwww Linna is sooooo adorable ughhh. Also this whole Catherine going into armour among all the women crooning over the children gives this adorable sense of Catherine boyish and bloodying herself out to protect their peace, idk. All I have to say is that these series is less eager to pitt women against each other than the previous. I think that’s a step forwards.

Also, good to see Catherine being modest about her victory so Henry can save face. Finally starting to seem like the real Catherine.

‘Go on you dog’ arghh ahah he sounds like some public school rugby lad egging his mate on.

Re: Wolsey cock-blocker; the real Catherine would know it was uncatholic to have sex when you were pregnant. Also Catherine is not technically speaking in confinement if she’s wandering about.

It’s nice to see Catherine sticking up for Howard, she at least learned to respect him during the battle.

I foresee Oviedo having enough of this Christian stuff and wanting to return to the berber domains (I suppose Spain is out of the question)

Knighting Ceremony:

Apparently Margaret Pole herself was made Countess of Salisbury during this same ceremony... right? @houseofclarence

Also Maggie Pole being like: “being a rebel is in my blood, or so they tell me”... gahhh what’s with these shows and the Clarence erasure? Can’t they make one bloody reference to her dad or grandad Warwick? Ugh. Especially with lines like this. Actually? You know what? Ignore my previous comment about the stoic remark and it being an ironic reference to Clarence. I put such subtlety above this show’s writers.

Catherine has a habit of going to the coldest places possible to lose her children...

Haha @ Henry asking Bessie Blount (of all people) where Catherine is.

Conclusion:

6/10

What I’m happiest about is that Flodden got dealt with in one episode because warrior xena Catherine is not what interests me most about this show. Having said that, it was a true shame that James IV died because his were some of the best scenes. This whole show is starting to feel so historical fantasy-ish because the aesthetics are so confused. Granted it’s still pretty (not eyesore like Reign) but it doesn’t penetrate.

I am as always invested in the Poles (and More) but am also starting to get attached to Princess Mary whose actress exudes plenty of charm. This show remains confused with its feminist message because while it shows women being proactive there is so much emphasis on babies that what remains with the mind after watching is this womanish birthdrama, as opposed to a show about struggles which affect both genders.

You might tut at me and say I’m being ridiculous and that it is historically accurate to put so much emphasis on women’s babies and I say that’s swell. I would happily watch a show where that element is strong (most pre 1995 historical dramas are like that with traditionally feminine characters and I gulp them up like sustenance), but if a show promises feminism and women-men being partners I want it to deliver that properly. As I said in my previous post, why do we keep trying to make women engage in acts like war as if such an abhorrent act is the only way to take them seriously? I await the day where cunning, rationality and cool-headedness will be the traits portrayed as feminist ones.

There is nothing else to really comment on... the only potentially deeper message in this is the gender discourse. I am unsure about the accuracy so I can’t speak of the historical value of the interpretation. But what I will say is that though I remain excited for each new episode... I’m just not as invested as I was in TWQ (rewatch every year dont @ me) or TWP despite their many flaws. Some characters pull me in eg Maggie Pole (Carmichael is a bae), Thomas More etc but not the whole cast like TWQ. Anyway... would be interesting to see if anything happens with Lina and Oviedo tommorow as their storyline is conspicuously slow.

#the spanish princess #the spanish princess 2 #fool if you thought I wouldn't jump on the whole 'being a rebel is in my blood' opportunity to bring up Clarence #I was delighted last time when people left comments and stuff #rofl #so yeah #Please please I love discussions and do not think twice before sending me an ask or commenting !#lady plantagenet's series reviews #the dialogue remains a bit trite #the sugared grape counterpart for this episode was edmund's death and the whole ironic reference to Senenca and stoicism #not because the dialogue around edmund's death was particularly poignant but how conspicuously quiet and swift the whole affair was as #...as compared to previous york pretender plotlines left a mournful note #basically I feel like I keep focusing on stuff the show doesn't want me to focus on #and am projecting therefore

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