just finished light from uncommon stars and loved it soo much. wonderful read to finish out the year. usually i am so easily swayed by other reviewers’ opinions but i just disagree with basically all of the bad things anyone has to say

I really ought to simply decide not watch more Good Omens since I don’t like it.

The problem is they keep (theoretically) addressing my most fundamental criticisms so I have to check out what GO looks like with those points addressed.

After series 1 I wrote this blog post getting into why I thought GO was pretty bad, and my criticisms mostly really fell under two broad umbrella criticisms.

By far the most important was that they had adapted this comedy text without any comedy people involved as jet creatives. Everything else I disliked is ultimately a matter of taste. But this is one area where I felt it was genuinely, if inadvertently, disrespectful to Terry Pratchett’s craft. It certainly left the show very patchy in the comedy front both in terms of simply being amusing and on the level of deeper structural stuff.

… And then for series 2 they brought in my favourite working comedy writer, John Finnemore.

Series 2 was still bad but the dialogue was tighter and if GO s2 can be a springboard for John Finnemore into a new level of in-demand-ness, choice and reward in what he works on, that alone earns out the questionable decision to make a S2 of this show.

The second broad criticism of mine after S1, not unrelated to the point about lacking comedy expertise at the top, was that the directing of the show was bad. Doug McKinnon consistently failed to use the visual language to convey anything narratively meaningful and often did quite the opposite. His bigger stylistic moments and more pronounced aesthetic choices weren’t used to do anything, they were thoughtlessly applied as if he fundamentally didn’t get that what you do with the look and framing of the show ought to be used to tell some kind of story. A tale that in theory plays on contrasts of tone and aesthetic, which really needs the inclusion of tte mundane and real as well as the fantastical fur the basic point, was flattened to the same pitch of oversaturated fairytale prettiness across the board.

(Also, and most unpopular of my opinions, is that I didn’t really like Tennant and Sheen’s performances. I treat that as a sub-point of the ‘bad direction’ criticism because I like each actor very much in other roles. My objection to their turns in GO, which I know people SUPER don’t agree with, is that they have no chemistry. To me it feels like people are mistaking two luvvies independently hamming it up near each other for chemistry with each other. Their performances are so mannered and big they don’t leave room for each other’s. And that’s, at least in large part, down to the directing; both in directing these actors on set and how his shot choices frame these interactions.)

…And I’ve just learned (the news is a couple of months old but I don’t keep up with GO news for obvious reasons) that McKinnon is off series 3. Might they now employ someone who knows how to film for comedy? Might the editing also improve under a new director? I’m bloody well going to have to watch S3 to find out aren’t I.

I was super-excited to see that the best Spider-Man movie was getting a sequel, and that they were going all-out on the multiverse. Because what really set Into the Spider-Verse apart was not just its outstanding story, but the way it told it, using unique animation style to not only play with the notion that it’s a comic book adaptation, but that it’s a story featuring multiple dimensions with different feels to them.

Miles is back! It’s been a year since his last adventure, and he misses his multiversal friends. He’s trying to figure out his direction in life when Gwen comes and visits, revealing that she has been recruited to an elite group of Spider-People from all over the Spider-Verse dedicated to protecting all realities. When a new villain of Miles’s, the Spot, leaks into the Spider-Verse, Miles follows and discovers the Spider Society, a specific rule of life for Spider-People across the multiverse that brings him into conflict with the Society’s leader, Spider-Man 2099–Miguel O’Hara.

An idea which is far from tested: I think animation is the best way to tell a multiverse story. A lot of live-action attempts to depict the multiverse don’t really do much, aesthetically, with different universes. The Flash television series did try for a little bit, but as the multiverse kept expanding, they mostly gave up with obvious visual differences. Not so here! Each universe has a different animation style, design, color palette, and musical choices, and it all stands out more because it’s animated.

[I suppose Multiverse of Madness does do some ‘Different universes look different’ thing, but those changes are really weird, bizarre things like garish colors and outer architecture in the city, rather than just…. stylistic differences. It didn’t work as well for me.]

Gwen Stacy/Spider-Woman is given quite a bit more focus in this story. She has a story in the first movie, but this one has a much more developed subplot about Gwen. The opening of the movie is actually about Gwen, which makes a nice change of pace because we don’t have the female character exist only to prop up the male lead–something still frustratingly common in modern Hollywood.

Miles is still the main character, and he has an incredibly strong story for the film. There’s a subtext about how his attempts to find acceptance with the other Spider-People mirrors the fan reaction to the character’s introduction to the comics (and many other characters to many other fandoms!). The last movie emphasized that anyone can be Spider-Man; this movie helps to cement that Miles, specifically, has every right to be Spider-Man, and have his own place among the greatest versions of the character.

I suspect that in the crowds of Spider-People, different audience members will pick favorites. I was surprised, for instance, about how much  I got attached to Spider-Punk? He’s loads of fun, though like Miles himself, I had some trouble understanding what he’s saying when he first appears on screen. 

Truthfully, it’s downright INCREDIBLE how many different iterations of Spider-Man make it into the movie. When Sony released the trailers, different news sites had articles and slideshows displaying how so many of the Spider-People appearing in those shots were actually drawn from different comics, shows, and games. While most of them don’t have major roles in the film itself, that they’re THERE, and the makers of the film knew about them at all, is incredibly impressive.

I do have the issue though about their inclusion, though. Part of what sets up the conflict of the movie is how Miles differs with what he’s willing to go along with as part of what it means to be Spider-Man. While it’s a great story point, it does seem off that all of these versions of Spider-Man are also fine with Miguel O’Hara’s vision of how things should be done. It IS for the good of the multiverse, to be fair, but that Miguel can call all of them to attack Miles and they just do it without question doesn’t feel quite right for what we know of Spider-Man.

The Spot is a strange choice for a villain for the movie. Not only is he not a particularly well-known comic character, he’s very silly through most of his appearances in the film. That doesn’t mean he’s a bad villain though, and despite being humorous for a lot of his screen time, it’s clear that no one taking him seriously is part of what motivates him to become more of a monster. He’s a joke villain, and it infuriates him, especially because he’s so connected to Miles’s story.

Something that you need to be aware of when watching the movie! This is a cliffhanger. Across the Spider-Verse was originally going to carry the subtitle ‘Part One’, and while the next film (expected for release next year, don’t fret!) has been re-titled Beyond the Spider-Verse, it’s still a two-part film. If you were like me, you might spend a large portion of the movie wondering if THIS was the dramatic moment that would be the point where the movie cuts off for the sequel. And that can get kind of annoying.

[Also there’s no after credits scene.]

This movie is fantastic, but it’s also weirdly complex, and I strongly suspect that I should view it two or three more times to begin to get everything about it. It’s a film that certainly lends itself well to discussion and analysis. Although I don’t think it’s as good as the first movie, that’s more because it’s the first part of a story rather than a standalone installment. When the sequel drops next year, we’ll have at least slightly different ideas about THIS movie, but given the quality of the film, I eagerly anticipate all the things we’ll see and learn, and we can see how they all stack up against each other.

shame on you (blame on me) // ransom drysdale

↳ summary: you find out some shocking information about your fiancé that makes you question who’s to blame.

↳ request: for the prompt: i really need some angst in my life so maybe a super angsty cheating fic with ransom? - anon

↳ relationship: ransom drysdale x reader

↳ word count: 4.7k (oops)

↳ warnings: angst angst angst!, explicit smut, cheating

↳ author’s note: i love ransom and this actually made me sad - please enjoy! x

You’ve always considered yourself a fair person.

Throughout your life, you’ve been taught that you should take a step back, assess the situation you’re in, and look at it from a different angle. But as you’ve had to learn over the years, looking at too many angles can make you dizzy and as hard as you try, those scales of justice have a mind of their own and can easily tip one way or another when your back is turned to face another perspective. It’s a tedious game to play and you can’t win all the time, but for you, it’s always been enough to just try. 

And try as you might, there will always be people interfering with the balance: people with ulterior motives and nefarious agendas, people who will do anything to see themselves in first place, people who want so desperately to be able to do it all. Life is an exchange, a give-and-take that you must navigate with the precision and confidence of a synchronized swimmer trying to keep up with the shadow of themselves in an ocean of doubt and self-loathing, and you find that those who only want to take and take without giving are those who, more often than not, end up alone when it’s all said and done. 

But you’ve always gone out of your way to make an attempt to steer people away from going down that path, encouraging them to give more of themselves to people who deserve it and open up their hearts up to people who may change their lives. All of your friends like to joke that you have a god complex and you can’t help but agree that maybe you do.

It’s inexplicable why you feel so responsible for the lives of others; strangers, friends, family alike, you bear the weight of their choices on your back. You chalk it up to extreme empathy and your parents insist that it’s because you’re just inherently good. Maybe it’s because you feel as if since the minute you were born, the scales have been tipped in your favor. Perhaps you’re compensating for all of the privileges that you were handed because of who your parents are and what your socio-economic class is, the silver spoon that you’ve been trying to spit out of your mouth for your whole life. All you know is that you so deeply crave justice that it makes your head ache some days. 

So yes, you would - modestly - consider yourself fair.

That’s why it shocked so many when you fell in love with Ransom Drysdale. 

You met him at a charity fundraiser that you were hosting to build schools in less economically developed countries all over the world, an initiative that you’d been working on for years and held so dear to your heart. Your mother has been close to Joni for her entire life and knew the Thrombeys and Drysdales because of business, so when she told you that they’d be attending, you didn’t think much of it.

“Darling,” your mother calls and beckons you over, pulling you into her side with a bright smile on her face as she stands next to a group of well-dressed patrons. 

When you’re standing next to her, you must be mindful of the way that the emerald green satin of your gown sweeps the floor. With a slim diamond choker wrapped around your neck and rings that cost five-figures adorning your fingers, you usually prefer to indulge in simpler pleasures but for events like these, you give into hedonism and allow your mother and stylist to spoil you. You press a barely-there kiss to your mother’s cheek as she gently holds onto you, running her nails up and down your arm comfortingly.

“Honey, these are the Drysdales. This is Linda, her husband Richard, and their son Hugh.”

You smile politely at both Linda and Richard and are about to give their son the same treatment when you feel the heat of blue flames licking up the exposed skin of your leg that peeks through the thigh-high slit in your dress. But the fire doesn’t stop there; it spreads up your stomach and lands in the valley of your breasts. A part of you wants to be angry that this man is ogling you as if you’re a piece of meat, the prey that his predator has been waiting to pounce on, but a part of you revels in it. You know that you look good - it’s no secret to anybody at this event - but to have someone unabashedly appreciate that makes your heartbeat speed up.

Since he can’t tear his eyes off of your cleavage, you take the opportunity to give Hugh a once-over of your own. 

His black loafers are designer - you can tell by the way all of the little golden g’s on the velvet of his shoes are linked together - and so are his black socks, something which makes you have to physically prevent yourself from rolling your eyes. The black, grey, and white checkered pants he’s wearing hug his thighs just enough to see the shape of the muscles in his legs and the outline of his sizable length - you don’t let yourself look at that for too long. The letters on his belt match his shoes and you’re momentarily astounded at how narrow his waist is. Under a waistcoat and suit jacket that are both printed with the same pattern as his pants, he’s wearing a burgundy turtleneck that clings to his torso like a second skin. From what you’ve seen, you can assume that he’s heavily muscled underneath his clothes, and when you see his broad shoulders and big arms, you’re proven right.

Luxury virtually seeps out of his pores and it nauseates you.

But you’re intrigued nonetheless. His eyes lock on yours and you find yourself drowning, trying to swim through a choppy sea of grey and blue. It knocks the breath out of your lungs and a shy smile lifts your lips when he extends a hand out towards you.

“Nice to meet you,” his voice is deep and his jaw is squared as if he’s biting back his words. You delicately place your hand in his and marvel at the way his palm swallows yours. His skin is warm and soft and you’re close enough that you can smell notes of bergamot and cedarwood that make your usually poised stance melt. 

“Likewise, Hugh,” you manage to say, overwhelmed by the charm and class of the man before you.

“Call me Ransom, sweetness; only the help calls me Hugh.”

And just like that, your rose-tinted glasses shatter and you blink hard, rescinding your hand from Ransom’s and nodding at him briefly. You can’t help but wonder how much more pretentious this son of a bitch can get, but your mother hasn’t failed to notice the way that the two of you sized each other up. So when you’re eventually walking away from the family of three, she gives you a knowing look that you’re all too familiar with, a look that makes you scoff and avoid her eyes.

“So,” she draws out the word and nudges your shoulder with hers, “he’s cute, no?”

“Mom,” you groan quietly.

“Come on now, darling, he was a very handsome boy. And I saw the way he was looking at you-”

“Sure, Mom, but did you hear him? ‘Only the help calls me Hugh’ - he’s so far up his own ass...and what kind of name is Ransom anyway?”

Your mom shrugs, the corners of her lips twitching up into a cheeky grin.

“Doesn’t matter, love - I think he’s cute and you should go speak to him. And if you don’t, who knows? He might snatch you up in that auction later tonight.”

And he did. Every year at the benefit, you auction yourself off for a night out which you only continue to do because it proves to be an extremely valuable source of income for your charity. You’re standing up in the center of that stage, the host for the night yelling out the bids for the auction, and through the blinding lights, you’re able to see white signs flying up with ridiculously high amounts of money printed on them. You’re sure that this is almost over when you see fifty-thousand dollars stuck up in the air, but then the host says:

“One-hundred-thousand dollars to the gentleman in the checkered suit right over there!”

You can’t believe what you’re hearing and a part of you hopes that it’s not Hugh Ransom Drysdale, but you haven’t seen anybody else wearing such a distinctive suit; your heart threatens to beat out of your chest. Even in the relative darkness, you meet the blazing blue of his eyes with an inaudible gasp and the sly smirk on his lips makes you bite the inside of your cheek, trying to stop a smile of your own from spreading on your face. 

So when he wins a night of your time for one-hundred-thousand dollars and he leads you off the stage with a large hand on the small of your back, you can’t even bring yourself to be a little irritated at the way he leans into your body to whisper “gotcha” teasingly in your ear because he does have you. 

Fair and square. 

---

But you don’t know how you’ve ended up here. Over three years and one marriage proposal later, you’re sitting here pitifully with your head in your hands because you can’t believe that this is what it’s come to. You’ve tried many times over the past few hours to cease the incessant shaking of your hands but it’s relentless, your anxiety and distress running through your veins and seeping through your bones. 

The last four hours of your life have uprooted everything that you’ve ever believed in, everything you thought you knew about fate and order and love because it’s all a fucking mess. When Harlan handed you the flash drive, he warned you that you should only look at it if you think that you’re ready to accept that your reality will be flipped on its head and the expectations that you’ve allowed yourself to build up so carefully like tiny little brick towers will not only be knocked over, but destroyed beyond repair. 

You brushed him off jovially, thinking he was just being overly dramatic like he usually is, because you and Ransom had just gotten back from tasting wedding cakes and you were in your own little bubble of serenity. With a brief kiss on his cheek, you floated out of the room on cloud nine as he watched you leave with deep despair in his eyes that you were too distracted to notice.

In hindsight, you shouldn’t have just thrown caution to the wind and plugged the memory stick into your laptop without really thinking about it first; you don’t think you’ll ever forget the way that your heart plummeted into your stomach at the images of your fiancé with his arms wrapped around a slew of different women. 

Something inside of you immediately wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt. Maybe they caught him from a bad angle, maybe the other women were the ones who initiated it. But you backtracked because who are you to blame anybody else except for Ransom? That wouldn’t be fair and a part of your brain knows that you have to come to terms with the fact that he’s more like his father than he would like to admit. 

You still don’t know why you kept looking, continued to scroll through the pictures even though looking at your soon-to-be-husband’s lips on other women made you feel as if you were going to throw up your breakfast all over your laptop. The more that you stared at the candid photos, the more you realized that the actual infidelity in itself hurt, but what’s even more painful is the cold look in his eyes when he’s with them. 

They didn’t mean anything to him yet he still did it, and that’s what gets you. 

Maybe you deserve this: maybe it was always meant to end up like this. It’s hard not to think that this could be the way that this relationship was always meant to pan out, that maybe this is fate balancing out those scales. You knew from the moment you met him that you’d have your work cut out for you with Ransom, but you were never one to back away from a challenge. And it wasn’t as if you were actively trying to change him but sooner or later, Linda came to you with praises spilling from her lips because she couldn’t believe who her son had become within the first year of meeting you. He’d transformed right in front of your eyes, and it filled you with a glowing sense of pride to see how much more caring and open and honest he was. 

Early in the relationship, you’d wanted to establish that you wouldn’t treat him like a charity case. Everyone is flawed to some extent, sure, but there are behaviors that you will always find inexcusable, and the two of you had sat down and laid them out. You had a feeling that you would need to set some ground rules with Ransom and he was surprisingly lenient, establishing his own terms and conditions in return. 

The two of you had laughed hard about it later on because it all sounded like some kind of business deal or contract. 

You could laugh about it now too, especially since the number one most important item on both of your lists was to remain faithful. As a couple, you think that you have a very direct form of communication. Ransom is not one to hold back his discontent and frankly, neither are you. Neither of you is afraid to argue and you do it often, but it’s never grown into anything more intense than a few hours of painful silence and is always resolved before you fall asleep. 

You’d always thought that if you ever found yourself in a situation like this one, you wouldn’t be able to forgive your significant other. But never in your life have you felt such an intense connection to another human; your souls have intertwined so intricately that you don’t know whether or not you’re willing to jeopardize that.

“Princess?”

His voice echoes through your shared house and you can hear him hang up his coat, cursing as he kicks his shoes off and pads up the stairs. He stops outside the open door to your bedroom, spying the back of your open laptop and your still body lying on your stomach with your face turned away from him.

“Babe, you’re gonna flip your shit when I show you what I found today,” he drops the bags in his hand and walks around the king-size to press a kiss to the top of your head. You can pinpoint the exact moment when he realizes that something’s wrong. He freezes in place, feet seemingly rooted to the ground when he gets a good look at your face. The puffiness of your eyes, your wet lashes, and the tear streaks down your cheeks all alert him that something’s not quite right. 

That’s when he sees it. 

The last picture that you looked at was by far the worst. It shows him balls deep in a woman who you actually know fairly well because she’s worked closely with both you and Ransom for years on a number of your projects. She was initially hired as his assistant but soon evolved into something more like a friend to your family and his alike. You decide that it’s definitely worse when it’s someone you know.

The room goes entirely silent because the universe has pressed pause on this moment, all so he can fully realize the gravity of the situation. 

“Baby, let me explain-”

“I actually don’t think I want you to, Ransom,” you respond tiredly, your voice raspy from lack of use and your head heavy as you sit up in your bed. You pull your knees into your chest as you run a hand over your face to wipe away any leftover tears. 

Ransom flinches and you know it’s because you’ve called him by his name. With you, it’s usually baby or sweetheart or honey but not this time. He wants so badly to be your love again but the light in your eyes has gone out and he doesn’t know whether or not that’s even possible anymore.

You’re exhausted more than anything else. You’ve cried all your tears and are ready to never think about this ever again, but he’s sitting in front of you looking like a kicked puppy and you know that you need to be fair and give him a chance to explain himself. That’s what you’d want.

“Please, sweetheart, let me,” he begs, eyes searching yours and hand cautiously hovering right over your jaw, not quite touching but the heat emanating from his palm is enough to make you tear up again. It’s a small comfort that you know you’re going to miss.

Nodding, you hastily place your hand over his, pressing it to your face while a sob escapes your lips. He wraps both his arms around your waist as you curl in on yourself and sink into his body, taking deep breaths even though your nose is being assaulted with the familiar scent of oak and vanilla that makes you long for a simpler time. 

There’s a drawn-out pause before he starts speaking, his chin resting on the top of your head as he mulls over his words. 

“I’m sorry.”

It’s all he says for about a minute, letting the words hang in the air while the only sound in the room is that of your loud sniffles. 

“I’m so, so sorry, sweetness.”

He’s always called you that: sweetness. He once told you that you’re like honey, soft and sweeter than anything he’s ever had the pleasure of loving, and then laughed when you returned from work that night with a bag of those pastries you like from the bakery up the street. He could never stomach them no matter how hard he tried, but you always thought that was hilarious because he inhales those biscoff cookies like air. 

But you don’t feel very sweet right now as he spews apologies and excuses, spinning you sugar-coated lies and candied falsehoods with the confidence of a practiced storyteller. There’s a bitter taste on your tongue that you want so badly to spit out, tell him what you really think of him in this moment and how he’s not the man that you came to know. It was foolish of you to think he’d changed.

And when once again, quiet falls over your room in the light of the mid-afternoon, you only nod again, choosing to reserve your words for when you have something to say. Because as of right now, that sour taste still lingers on your tongue but you have no desire to rid yourself of it any longer. You’ll let it stay, allow it to fester as a reminder that you’ve been blind and naive but never again.

It ends here.

Ransom starts to stir noticeably when you don’t say anything, playing with the cotton of your shirt and your limp fingers. When you hear him speak next, something’s changed in his tone and you can feel the bass in his voice through his chest. 

“Y/N, baby, please say something- anything. Scream, yell at me, just fucking do something, babe: you’re killing me here.”

You scoff at the notion of you killing him because the irony of it is too funny to resist. But you decide to put him out of his misery, finally blinking up at him and meeting his eyes. They’re filled to the brim with cold rain that sends a chill down your back, dark and stormy and wet like the English countryside and you can almost smell the petrichor. 

“Can we just go back to before?” 

Your voice is cracking and your request is simple, but it’s enough for the few tears brimming in Ransom’s eyes to spill over onto his cheeks. You’ve only seen him cry twice before and it tugs at your heartstrings to see him like this, so open and more vulnerable than he’s allowed himself to be with anyone else. He’s already nodding rapidly but you’re not done.

“Can we go back, just for a little while? I just-”

You have to pause because the claws of despair are raking your skin as it crawls up your throat. 

“I just want it to be like before. I love you so much that it hurts and I just want it to be like before.”

He’s nodding eagerly now and his lips are already on yours, anchoring you to him because your love’s not enough to do so anymore. You push yourself up onto your knees so that you can grab his face between your hands, the face that you love so hard that it’s suffocating you. He steals your breath when he slips his tongue into your mouth and you feel lightheaded when his big hands slide underneath your shirt. Guilt plagues your thoughts but you push that aside for now: perhaps because it’s time for you to be selfish and you’ll allow yourself this, perhaps because you’d rather focus on the way that he tastes like cinnamon and the salt of your combined tears and he feels like home. 

The moment he wraps his arms around you to push you onto your back, you lean further into him because you want him as close to you as possible, trying desperately to become a part of him once more. The kisses he plants on you are like sugar and you want to inject them so that maybe you can be his sweetness again. The way your lips move in tandem makes your heart soar because it’s always been so easy - except when it’s not. 

Your shirt is thrown across the room, leaving you in only your panties and almost completely bare underneath his gaze. He stares at you reverently, silently worshipping you like a Madonna as rivers of tears pour from your eyes. His lips wrap around one of your peaked buds earnestly, his fingers rolling the other gently between them. The shock of pleasure that shoots through you almost makes you cry harder but you just bury your fingers in his hair, his tears hot on your soft skin. After he goes to give your other nipple the same attention, you pull him back to your lips. Without hesitation, he strips himself of his cable knit and shirt together, tossing them off the bed while you help him undo his belt. No words are exchanged when he kicks his pants off and your hand slips into his boxer briefs to stroke his hard length heavy in your hand because there’s nothing to say.

He pulls his underwear off too and after he does, he hooks his thumbs in the waistband of yours and strips you entirely. You take a beat just to admire each other, chests heaving and eyes glassy. Ransom’s face is flushed and you’re sure that your eyes are red but you’re still as beautiful to each other as you’ve always been.

He buries his face in your neck and you shiver at the feeling of his warm breath. Your nipples are pressed against his muscled chest as you just lay there, legs wrapped tightly around his waist. When he slips himself into your wet heat, the stretch of his thick cock lights your body on fire and you cry out. He rocks back and forth until he’s fully sheathed, and his entire body shakes with a sob when the two of you are completely joined together. 

Your souls have fallen out of step but in this moment, they’re dancing again.

The rolling of his hips against yours is slow as he takes his time tearing you apart, molding you to his body because he doesn’t want to let you go either. He drinks in the sound of your whimpers like ice water while his body overheats with passion and when your hand tightly grips the hair at the nape of his neck, he picks up the pace, rutting into you with unbridled ardor and whispering your name like a prayer. With his lips buried in your skin, you can’t quite make out the muffled sounds of his cries until he moves them right next to your ear. 

“I love you, I’m sorry, I love you.”

And he says it over and over again and each time he does, it becomes more broken and you can feel the agony weighing down his voice. You’re so close to the edge and you can feel he is too, his thrusts becoming increasingly sloppy as he reaches down to rub at your clit so that you can finish at the same time. 

Broken pleas fall from your lips, a litany of “please, please, please” as he gives you exactly what he knows you need. Your nails rake up and down his back as he moves and his breath hitches. What you don’t expect is for him to pull away from your shoulder and prop himself up on his forearms to stare you dead in the eyes. You can’t handle the intensity so you try to avert your gaze, but he whines deep in his throat.

“Please, baby, please look at me - I love you, please,” he urges you tearfully, trying to catch your darting eyes.

Once your stare reluctantly locks back onto his, he laughs wetly, his quivering lips curving into a weak smile as he kisses your cheek sweetly. The sentimentality of it all is what pushes you over the edge, your entire body shaking with the aftershocks of your release and the sobs that continue to wrack your chest. A second later, Ransom stills his movements, moaning quietly as he spills into you. 

The two of you stay like that for a while, crying and breathing each other’s air as the dance of your souls starts to come to an end. You wonder what it’d be like if this was different, if you were weeping with happiness instead of sorrow. 

To halt that train of thought in its tracks, you extricate yourself from your fiancé and lock yourself in the ensuite.

When you come back out, Ransom is underneath the covers, eyes trained on you. You don’t say anything but you do crawl back into bed next to him, allowing him to smother you with kisses that usually make you giggle and pull you deep into his chest. 

Ransom takes a breath before he speaks. “Stay. Please, sweetness. Don’t go - I want you to be here when I wake up.”

You just nod, combing your fingers through his hair as you can see his eyes start to get heavy. 

“Sleep, baby. I’ll be here.”

---

It’s 1:22 a.m and you know you can’t stay. 

Ransom’s always been a deep sleeper and you’re lucky to have woken up in a moment when he’s not holding you in a vice-like grip. You flip back the covers and head to your closet, grabbing the nearest articles of clothing that you realize too late belong to the snoring man in your bed. 

It doesn’t even matter anymore. After putting them on, you grab a duffle bag from the bottom of your closet and start pulling clothes from your side of the wardrobe off of hangers, stuffing as much as you can into the bag before sliding the zipper across. 

You’re on your way out but you can’t resist peeking over your shoulder to ensure that Ransom’s still asleep,  and you can’t help the small smile on your lips when you see that he’s still knocked out, mouth wide open with an arm hanging off the bed. Your head pounds from all the crying you’ve been doing but a burst of glee numbs the pain at the sight of the man-child in front of you. You’re a breath away from dropping your bag and slipping back into bed with him, your baby, your honey, your sweetheart.

But you don’t because he doesn’t deserve that and you deserve some time for you. And as the door clicks behind you, you can’t help but think that this is only fair. 

tagged: @literaturefeen​ @stargazingfangirl18​ @evnscvll​ @donutloverxo​ @ambthegamer​ @oliviamaries​ @maynay43​ @i-lie-here-charmed @thinkaboutmara​ @x-abi-sharp-x​ @lady-pswrld​ @bval-1​ @coffeebooksandfandom​ @call-me-baby-gir1​ @la-cey​ 

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Okay, some The Falcon and the Winter Soldier episode 1 thoughts! This one will be spoilery, so I’ll tag it and put it under a cut and all of that!

Thoughts not in any real order, just as I think of them, the morning after (we stayed up to watch at midnight, and then went to bed!):

-okay, action-y opening, I’m neutral about that

-on va voir! :D :D

-I like seeing Sam struggling with the idea of the shield and his heroic identity and what being Captain America means...would’ve liked to see him try it, once, before giving it up; I feel like he would try, because it’s what Steve asked of him (and there’s a difference between doing it for that reason and doing it because he chooses to, which would’ve been an interesting tension!)

-mmm, gorgeous museum exhibit shots, and such a good backdrop, thematically, for Sam and Rhodey discussing what it means to be Captain America (also: yay Rhodey!)

-spectacular Bucky nightmare scene, recapturing the menace of the Winter Soldier; oh, so many Bucky feels, and, oh, that moment of him waking up, sleeping on his floor...ow, my heart

-on a shallower note, I miss Seb’s longer hair; it was so distinctive as a look, versus all the short-haired clean-cut Marvel Men (but I also get why they’d have short-haired Bucky in this series: distinguishing then and now, visually and symbolically)

-Bucky’s therapist is genuinely terrible (like, wow) and I’m glad he got to call her out on it (also a good nod to the Winter Soldier having some knowledge of psychology/strategy)

-good to see a character (who very much needs it) getting therapy, on screen, though!

-also nice that we’ve established that Bucky’s been officially pardoned; good to know, and he deserves that recognition that he’s not at fault

-what’s with the weird super-close-up shots? Not that Sebastian isn’t pretty, but the camera’s basically sitting on his cheek. I’m not exactly complaining but it’s distracting me from the storytelling, mostly because I’m wondering who thought this was a good stylistic choice. Those’re some lovely Seb eyelashes, but, like...pull back. Pull that camera back. Back up. Space, please.

-ooh, competence porn! Yes please. (This goes for both Sam and Bucky.)

-Torres might be my new favorite. He’s adorable. Which means I fully expect something terrible to happen to him any second now.

-both Seb and Anthony are such good actors - they’re both so good at micro-expressions, emotion in the shift of eyes or a change in stance

-I love Sam’s sister Sarah!

-more specifically, I love that it’s obviously an affectionate relationship, but not necessarily an easy one, and she has more of an understanding of how the real non-superhero world works than he does, and she’ll tell him so - I’m liking the nuance and emotion here; it feels very real, and it’s not like Melodramatic Resentment for him being busy hero-ing, which they could’ve opted for; no, it’s a genuine sort of weariness and love

-why no video games, for the kids? are they being punished? weird anti-video-game prejudice? (as someone who grew up in a household that didn’t approve of video games, I was at a *distinct disadvantage* when everyone else had this cultural touchstone and I didn’t! and because their mom doesn’t give a reason or a time limit, this blanket ‘no’ line comes off as weirdly restrictive to me - I’d’ve gone with “...until you finish a chore or read a book or do x thing first” - and of course the kids don’t listen, because why would they? idk, probably overthinking this one, but I was also always that kid who needed reasons for things - I never responded well to “because I say so” or “that’s just how it is,” but if you told me why, then I’d totally listen! anyway, this one’s just a weird personal ?? in my head!)

-love love love the bank scene - the sheer awfulness of the juxtaposition of the hero and fanboy emotions, and the harsh reality of loans and denial and Sam’s realization that he can’t help, and also his sister’s body language all through this scene

-I have questions about how the world’s working here: like, I totally believe the banks, government, etc, would be dicks about *not* helping people! yes, agreed! but on the other hand, surely, surely, there must be some provision in place for people who got snapped. Especially now that some time has passed. Like...it’s too big a thing for there to not be some sort of policy or help. The “you’ve had no income for the last five years” line reads oddly to me as justification, because...well...he was snapped! so...of course not! but then again, of course banks would have a lack of compassion. I don’t know, maybe it’s just clunky dialogue, but I kind of want more explanation of this

-also nice that they’re addressing the concept that simply being a superhero doesn’t pay, and not everyone has Tony Stark money! (side question: does Bucky have money? I know we have fandom “canon” about this, but will the show and official canon address it?)

-please don’t let anything happen to Torres, I love him

-Bucky’s trying so hard, and it’s so heartbreaking! And, oh, Bucky...stepping in to defuse problems, wanting peace, trying to care for people...the core of his character, from protecting skinny!Steve to being a good sergeant to saving Steve in The Winter Soldier...okay, show, you’re winning me over. Partly that’s Sebastian’s acting; again, just phenomenal, nuanced and subtle and complex.

-Bucky versus Lucky Cat! I’m laughing but also ouch, the swinging arm reminder.

-I appreciate a Bucky Barnes who is genuinely a soft awkward old-man dork

-I also appreciate Bucky being sweet and old-fashioned and charming - the flowers! - he’s trying so hard. Oh, my heart. (On the other hand...is dating...really a good idea? Then again, he’s a polite awkward dork and couldn’t say no to being set up...)

-how can Sebastian put so much emotion into the simple act of closing and opening his eyes?!

-I do very much want to know where Steve is and if he’s alive

-also, both Sam and Bucky speaking multiple languages! again with the competence porn and also linguistic porn, mmm, yes

-not much known about the Bad Guys yet, but that’s okay; I’m good with spending 50 minutes on character development, yes, fine by me, show me more Bucky caring for people and Sam being Uncle Sam (heh), I live for this

-it’s an interesting choice of Bad Guys, because to some extent you can see why it sounds appealing: no flags, no borders, no countries, etc - I hope we also get some more exploration of this

-I’m glad Torres is okay but I fully expect him to be a sacrifice at some point

-US Agent time! Oh, Sam’s expression(s) - just perfect. Oh, Anthony Mackie’s just great here - every reaction, jaw-clench, his posture - so compelling.

-now go get your shield, Sam!

-how are we going to wrap this all up in 5 more episodes?! Sam and Bucky haven’t even shared screen time yet! and what about Zemo? and Sharon?

-ooh, pretty credits!

-okay, I’m actually really pleasantly surprised! I went in with low expectations because I really disliked all the trailers and all the bits of dialogue they were giving us, and now I’m...cautiously optimistic!

-I’m still worried that once we get Bucky and Sam together we’re going to devolve into that specific “someone thinks that two people insulting each other is the same as humor” type of writing (and I cannot begin to tell you how much I hate the “that girl kicked your ass!” line from the trailers)

-but this first episode is such a good character-driven exploration - unhurried, deep, thoughtful, grounded - that it’s giving me hope. I actively want to see the next episode, with some excitement, so that’s promising!

What Really Happened During the Arasaka Nuke Assault (Theory) :

!Spoilers for Cyberpunk 2077, Red and 2020!

We all know the story, a vengeful Johnny Silverhand gathered a team of the best mercs he knew and led a charge on the Arasaka HQ in Night City. He planted a nuke and before he could escape, was defeated and captured by Adam Smasher before being ‘killed’ by Soulkiller. Now he’s an engram and his body lays in a cement grave in the middle of nowhere...or is it? We’re told time and time again what an unreliable narrator Johnny is and it’s weird that Blackhand would just be replaced like that. I’d like to brain storm some theories on what really happened that night and why there are so many different canonical takes on this event (other than the game not being finished.)

A few key things from Cyberpunk lore:

In Cyberpunk 2020, the actual leader of the Arasaka nuke assault is Morgan Blackhand

In Cyberpunk 2077, very few people know that Johnny was involved in the attack

It’s Morgan Blackhand that goes missing after facing Smasher in 2020

A nuke is already planted by Arasaka before the assault

A preserved body was hidden with the arasaka planted nuke before it was shipped out

A Silverhand fan named Angel is now in possession of the body and the nuke

First, what really happened according to Cyberpunk 2020 and Mike Pondsmith. Mike says that its Thompson, the media that helped Johnny when Alt was kidnapped, that set up the entire operation and that Militech provided the bomb and Morgan Blackhand to lead. Morgan Blackhand, a famous solo, took a contract under Militech to take down Arasaka in the fourth corporate wars. He led three teams: Omega (his own), Beta (Your player character from the tabletop game) and Alpha (Johnny and crew.) There’s this US military guy called Eddington who is giving Morgan and Thompson all this information and resources. His plan is to use team Alpha as a distraction while stealing Arasaka intel and destroying the tower. Spider Murphy ‘finds out’ Alt is being held in Mikoshi and informs Johnny. Johnny is killed by Adam Smasher before the nuke goes off. Meanwhile, “someone” sets off the nuke prematurely and Morgan faces off with Smasher, never to be heard from again.

Mike says Johnny’s memories are scrambled due to radiation and so he misattributes some events. The question is, which events are misattributed? This is where it gets complicated. Due to the fact that, Johnny’s survival was changed completely from the original story and the fact that now we know his memory is faulty, there’s a lot we just can’t answer ourselves and will have to wait for Mike or CD Projekt Red to fill in the blanks. For now, the obvious replacement of Blackhand and why he’s missing from the memory entirely. During the flashbacks, it may be a stylistic choice but after a major scene plays out, the screen will cut to black and the memory will jump forward in time. It looks like after Alt’s death Johnny jumps straight into the assault, however according to his wiki, Johnny spent some undocumented years with Santiago and the Aldecaldos between then and the assault. We also don’t get to see Thompson’s involvement, the deal with Militech, or how they even got the nuke. Instead we get the bombastic power trip and Johnny’s badass fiery end. Now, that is a lot of important context missing in exchange for a Hollywood ending and I don’t think it’s just Johnny’s own mind embellishing the memory! Everyone who wasn’t involved and isn’t someone who knows for a fact that Johnny was involved, says something that insinuates doubt that he was actually there. That concert and riot the game shows, it happened in 2013 ten years earlier! There’s also a scene of news helicopters coming to the scene while Johnny is being taken into an ambulance, wouldn’t that show confirmed proof that Johnny was at the scene? Finally, what about his gun, car and Rogue being taken in by Smasher, something isn’t adding up.

It’s too Hollywood to be real and too much is missing for just embellishment of a dying mind. I think Arasaka had a plan for Johnny, there was a purpose for changing his memories the way they did but letting him know they did it. We know that the Relic we get is only a prototype, so it’s easy to assume Arasaka was probably just messing with the memories because they wanted to test everything they were able to do. The prototype Relic allows Johnny’s engram to take over a body with no relation to him, killing the original host in the process. Saburo Arasaka’s Relic must be put into someone with similar genes but we can assume it functions the same way. We can assume Saburo’s version of the Relic is superiorly made compared to Johnny’s, then why change it from killing a stranger to killing a relative? What sort of consequences does Saburo avoid? I don’t think I can answer this since we don’t get to watch Saburo acclimatize to his new body or if Yorinobu fights back, also if Johnny develops his own issues living in V’s body. I can note some things and develop some theories here though. The Relic’s true purpose was to collect people’s engrams in order to harvest data and secrets, though it also worked to make a “back up” of a person in case they died. In Johnny’s case, he couldn’t control V unless they took a medication or until he waited until his engram had control of their body. We could see V’s body sustained damage from the seizures caused by the Relic and V, we can assume Johnny as well, could not be brought back to life again after the first use of the Relic. We can assume Saburo’s relic protected Yorinobu’s body and allowed him immediate direct control of the new body. What’s also interesting is that the only ending that allows Saburo to not just come back but take over his son’s body, is the Devil Ending where Johnny’s engram is shredded. I think they deleted Johnny’s engram but took the data from V’s experience with it to make Saburo’s new Relic. Johnny’s memories being flawed was also a prominent issue, so if they weren’t tampered with Arasaka must have seen that as a flaw to be corrected for Saburo.

Let’s talk about that second nuke. As mentioned, despite this group going to bomb the tower, Arasaka was planning to blow themselves up anyway. Eddington’s plan was to put a ‘pocket nuke’ in an elevator, send it to the basement and detonate it at the foundation of the tower without any other buildings suffering casualties. A strange coincidence that the nuke didn’t reach the basement nuke, which obviously would have caused even greater damage. It’s not likely but perhaps there was already a body stored within that “someone” wanted to protect or that “someone” knew the second nuke was there and wanted to avoid that level of damage. Despite what really happened, Arasaka was accused of suicide bombing their tower as a last ditch effort against the US and they were banished from almost every country. Thus ended the 4th corporate war and began the Time of the Red. In 2045 Trace Santiago, son of the leader of the Aldecados Santiago, was following a lead to get his hands on the full recording of Black Dog for Samantha Stevens. I’m just now reading her wiki and WOW this is crazy! She straight up recovered and preserved some of Johnny’s possessions gun, car and DEAD BODY included. She sends Trace and crew with the package to Angel who gives them the song, one of the crew keeps the gun and she’s the last known person to allegedly be in possession of Johnny’s body. Who knows if she still has it however as this would be 32 years from the game. So despite the nuke 99.9% for sure containing Johnny’s body, it’s not certain why or how Samantha got her hands on it or if this opens up a possibility for Johnny to come back. At least we might be able to give him a proper burial.

Let’s revisit Adam Smasher’s involvement. Smasher was tasked with recovering Johnny’s body and possessions, according to the wiki, from 2023-2045. He found Samantha Steven’s garage full of Johnny’s stuff and might’ve killed or found Trace Santiago’s associate who was holding onto Johnny’s gun. It’s unclear if he found and recovered Johnny’s body or if it’s still with Angel. It’s also unclear what kind of work Rogue did with him or any explanation for their team up (though it would be hilarious if she was involved in Mike’s ‘Michiko’s 18th Birthday’ storyline, the timeline fits!) What is strange, either way you look at it, it’s super dark and strange that Rogue would work with him after what he did to Johnny. What is likely to have happened, since Rogue did know Trace Santiago’s team, was that Smasher had to approach Rogue for help tracking them down or somewhere down the line Angel being in possession of Johnny’s body needed to be tracked down and Rogue volunteered her help. I just refuse to believe a woman like Rogue would push papers or merc for her enemies. Probably the most important factor is Morgan Blackhand and that his rivalry with Smasher was swapped. Smasher had an obsession with fighting Morgan one on one but they rarely or even never fought before the assault. Again it’s hard to say, but we never get to see Smasher than incensed over anyone so maybe Morgan is dead or Smasher is still looking for him offscreen.

So why would Arasaka want to hide Morgan Blackhand’s involvement? The top solo, leader of this incursion and the most ambiguous figure in all of Cyberpunk. He could’ve just died, been turned into an engram ,or even lived to a hundred. I really don’t know, but speculating has been fun! Let me know your theories and ideas too, let’s figure this out!

Uncle Scrooge by Don Rosa:  The Isle at the Edge of Time (Thank You Comission For Rosie Isla)

Hello all you happy people! Today’s review is a bit special as it’s the result of another review. See I had trouble finding a translation of the subject of last weeks’ mother’s day special, Family Ties. 

No not that one. I have Paramount+. I can watch all the Family Ties I want and that’s a fact that i’m pleased as punch about. 

No it was the story 80 is Prachtig, called Family Ties in the copy used, Della’s first major comics appearance and one that explains what happened to her in the classic continuity, one that clearly served as the foundation for her far more fleshed out 2017 versions personality and backstory. It also had Pinocchio in it for some reason, and spent most of it’s large run time on a meta comedy plot that had nothing to do with the reason anyone wanted to read this story in the first place.

But despite being a vitally important story, it never got an english translation, something that baffled me till I read the story and found cameos of the racist indigenous stereotypes from Peter Pan. In 2014. You may commence booing. Even with how weird the story was I simply couldn’t find the story googling it and the Della tag is too vast and deep to go spelunking in.

So what’s all this have to do? Simple I put out a post last month when neither I nor Kev, who wanted to comission it as part of Moons, Millionares and Mothers, my coverage of all three season 2 Ducktales story arcs, could find a copy and offered a review to whoever found it.  Weeks passed I got nothing.. then in the 11th hour I got a break as the lovely @rosieisla​ found a translation that was on this very site, one she seemed to have helped with. As a result I could do the review and as a man of my word, offered it up despite her clearly having not seen that part of the post and simply having done this to be nice. Still she gladly took up the offer and offered me my pick of two stories: The Carl Barks Story Back to Long Ago or this one. 

As for WHY I picked this one Back To Long Ago didn’t seem bad, i’m just not a fan of “The Cast is put in the past as their own ancestors” type deals. Or in some cases put the cast as people from that time period. It’s just not for me and is most often done in TV where it can get really goofy, Beverly Hills 90210 being a prime example of this, though Girl Meets World was no slouch in being embarassing... that being said I really need to finish that show and miss it. 

So yeah when put up against a story with two intresting hooks and FLINTHEART GLOMGOLD, even if i’ts not the version that’s my boy, it was no contest. So what are these hooks you ask? Well join me under the cut and find out. 

We open with a weird stylistic choice: This story has a narrator complete with caption boxes. Now for those of you familiar with comics or pastiches of comics in tv and film, this probably dosen’t seem like a big deal. It was a common thing in comics from their inception to 90′s to have caption boxes, big boxes of text narrating the action to help move things along faster. It did start to fade out by the 80′s and was gone by the end of the 90′s for the most part, replaced instead with first person narration. It’s the kind of thing you’d see most often in the Golden and Silver Ages, with stuff like tihs

It’s not a BAD device, it’s good old cheesy and bombastic fun and some writers did get clever with it.. like that time Chris Claremont used the narration to yell at a greiving cyclops after he lost a teammate early in his long and storied run on the uncanny x-men. 

This is a objectively weird scene that’s still somehow effective by the by. On the one hand it does come off as Chris Claremont essentally bullying Cyclops who already feels guilty for a death that was not in fact his fault as Thunderbird was told the plane he was attacking with fleeing villian Count Nefaria was about to explode and refused to listen.. and that they needed to get rid of either him or Wolverine as both served the same purpose and chose the non-white guy. 

On the other htough it comes off just as much as Scott beating himself up in his grief and anger over the event and his perceived failings as a leader. It’s good stuff and shows why this run caught on as this was only three issues in. Also the rest of the issue features the X-Men fighting a giant cyclopian demon that Cyclops accidently freed in his rage by destroying the stone thing keeping him imprisoned. No really here’s the cover

Huh so tha’ts what Nifty’s dad looks like. Neat. Also I REALLY hope we get the X-Men fighting aliens or demons in the MCU. Unlike the XCU the MCU isn’t alergic to getting batshit.. and for the record Deadpool and New Mutants are the exception, not the rule.

My point that I swear I do have is that this was common practice for most comics.. but never really for Disney Duck comics. It popped up ocasionally, like with Scrooge’s introduction, but Barks and those after him never really used them that much. Sure they’d have caption boxes for flasbacks and what not but Barks and Co geninely only used this sort of thing to set up a story. The most i’ve seen it in a duck comic is life and times and even then i’ts usually only used for gags or to set up the passage of time, as the story IS covering decades and thus often needed to have montages to show time passing, and in the case of chapter 11, had to cover decades in the span of a single chapter, so it’s not like they had many other options. So even Rosa as a personal quirk didn’t really use these often. 

Rosa used this specifically because he felt the plot was complicated by the use of the international date line. As for what it is, it’s essentially a line marking calender dates from one side of the hemisphere to the others. To use the offical defentition from the National Ocean Service I found via a quick google:

“The International Date Line, established in 1884, passes through the mid-Pacific Ocean and roughly follows a 180 degrees longitude north-south line on the Earth. It is located halfway round the world from the prime meridian—the zero degrees longitude established in Greenwich, England, in 1852.

The International Date Line functions as a “line of demarcation” separating two consecutive calendar dates. When you cross the date line, you become a time traveler of sorts! Cross to the west and it’s one day later; cross back and you’ve “gone back in time."

Despite its name, the International Date Line has no legal international status and countries are free to choose the dates that they observe. While the date line generally runs north to south from pole to pole, it zigzags around political borders such as eastern Russia and Alaska’s Aleutian Islands.”

Rosa felt this made the story complicated.... and that... really isn’t remotely true. The narration is mostly used for gagas and really dosen’t clarify anything. it’s mostly used well in the opening.. but the actual explinations for the date line are clear enough in the story that even if I hadn’t looked the thing up, I still would’ve got it and i’m sure a kid would’ve too. It just feels like a weird thing to ruminate on, especially because he’s got actual things to make up for: while to his credit the native american characters he cribbed from carl barks are sympathetic, their culture respected and treated decently and used for a green aseop, their dialouge is stitled and sterotypical something he dosen’t even comment on (And these trades ewren’t THAT long ago) 

And of course it dosen’t help that he dosen’t even comment on using a common device in american superhero boooks.. in the same volume where he ONCE again makes an unwanted and outdated diatribe about superhero comics. I’ll probably cover the Super Snooper Strikes again so I can throughly tear this apart but higlights include: Calling superhero comics “Unwanted” just because he dosen’t like them personally, when people like me would disagree and they’ve lasted through a LOT of highs and lows, outdately saying they took over the American market as the only suitable comics which while true for a TIME,but by 2015 when this book was printed is laughably out of date, as non superhero works like The Walking Dead, Saga, and Scott Pilgrim were massively popular, one of my faviorite comics that is entirely slice of life and would go on to bea huge hit, Giant Days, re-debuted that very year. He also has the fucking gal to insult The Uncanny X-Men by name and I swear to god I did not know this when I made those references earlier, but as you probably guessed REALLY god me livid. 

And this is just on his COMMENTS on the story I can’t imagine just how bad the content itself is and having read the first few pages which come off as Rosa using Donald to essentially do an “old man yells at cloud rant” about superhero comics, I really don’t want to. Might make htis a patreon exclusive or again would do it on comissoin. You all make the call.... the point is I don’t likes his elitist bullshit about superhero comics, and this is clearly something that gets my hackles up as I just spent a good two paragraphs of an entirely unrealted review yelling at the guy for it. I don’t like when he does this and this authors notes entirley felt like an excuse. I GET the dark age of comics were bad, they REALLY were that bad, but I will NEVER accept painting an enitre genre as bad just because one work in it is bad. And I wont accept it from someone who himself writes about an often throughly unlikeable anti-hero for a living.  Scrooge may not have a gun on his gun on his gun or get to stabbing or have pouches, but he DOES finacially abuse his nephew, scoff at people’s personal troubles, and often refuse to use his wealth to help others in general. So yeah in conclusion Rosa really needs to say less about this subject. 

Okay so where were we.. right the story hadn’t even started yet. Jesus. 

Okay so our story begins with the narrator. Whose going on about time and what not. The main point of this speech about time is that it’s night in Duckburg and Scrooge is going to bed as, even being the workhorse that he is, he can’t keep going 24 hours. While he’s snoozing though something major happens and it’s the hook that made me pick this story along with the international dateline one.. an island rises thanks to volcanic erruption.. and the lava is GOLD. That’s just pure unabashed classic Duck Stuff: a mysterious treasure or phenominon of gold bound to bring scrooge in. 

But Scrooge isn’t stupid: the sun comes up and the world still spins while he sleeps, so he set up a satalite to monitor for this sort of thing. The thing naturally goes nuts.. and even more naturally breaks down becasue Scrooge bought cheap parts. A nice gag and a fully in character way to bring our antagonist into the picture, as the Satellite of Loaded falls in the middle of South Africa... right on the property of my boy Flintheart Glomgold. 

This is something Rosa brought up in his commentary for the story i’d never thought about. It turns out Glomgold being a citzen of Duckburg WASN’T an invention of the original Ducktales but the comics: some overseas had understandably moved him from his home country of South Africa. Him bieing in the same town as Scrooge instead of half a world away allows for easier setups and more intresting ones.

Rosa however being obdient to Barks Version of things, ketp Glomgold in South Africa like barks did, which was an .. ifffy decision given Apartheid had JUST ended at the time of this story. Not so much in the reboot as not only had apartheid been long gone by the time of the reboot, but that’s more fair. Still we do get some gorgeous vistas as a result as Glomgold’s minon goes to look at it and finds it’s from McDuck Mining company... Glomgold’s reaction is obvious. 

So on that note we cut to Scrooge rushing to Donalds house and forcing him awake and not telling him anything at first. Look his Ducktales Counterpart straight up kidnapped his donald in my last review, I’d call this a win. He also tries to dress Donald while explaning both his panic to find the crashed satlitle and what it found: the golden island. The end result of him dressing donald is worth a chuckle

So after Donald puts his shirt and little hat on our heroes get rollin rollin rollin what keep rollin rollin rollin who to Manilla. On the plane we get the scene I mentioned: The boys make a quip about Scrooge having lost a day and the group go over the international date line. It’s a fun little scene especially Donald trying to get paid early at the end. Classic scrooge and donald stuff without the abusive undertones some of their classic stuff has. 

Meanwhile Glomgold works out the data and finds out about the gold island, and his excitement accidently wakes a giraffe outside.. welll it was nice knowing him, Giraffes are the deadliest species known to man.. here’s an educational video t back that up....

So at Manilla Airport, Scrooge finds out abotu the south african crash, figuring he’ll get a laugh out of glomgold being there ... only for Donald to spot the Jet. Scrooge figures this can’t be anything good... now come on man maybe he’s just promoting his energy drink. 

As super sayin god super sayian as my witness, I will never get tired of Ultra Instinct Glomgold here. 

Scrooge isn’t so nice about that though and figures he better find out if Glomgold knows about the island and bribes one of the fueling crew for his uniform. He sucesssfully eavesdrops on Glomgold talking to his pilot, finding out from him exactly WHERE the island is. He ends up hilariously botching the mission though: when getting ready to leave Glomgold complains abotu the price of gas and that naturally causes Scrooge, just as cheap, to join in... and Glomgold to find out it’s Scrooge. The two wrestle outside the plane but before this can progress to a game of Naked Robber an airport security guy comes up and Scrooge cleverly claims that Glomgold’s plane has an infestiation, requring it to be quanrantined and allowing Scrooge to jet on.. thoguh not with an actual jet. With Glomgold seemingly dispatched, he can afford to save some money and take his time with a seaplane and I know just the man for the job. 

Oh nope looks like he’s busy. So one time related rambles later we meet Keoki, their asian pilot from the tiny island of Wookawooka.. and no that’s not a real place i checked... and no Fozzy dosen’t own it his check bounced. That being said it is a very well done represntation of someone from a smaller country: he’s doing this job to try and bring money back home, but being a seaplane captain just isn’t enough and his island is dying. Scrooge naturally is about as sympathetic as you’d expect, having apparently never even heard of the idea of a bonus when Huey, Dewey or Louie suggests it. 

Even less suprising is that Glomgold streaks by in his Jet:turns out Manilla was already overun with the bugs Scrooge claimed and Donald rubs it in that had Scrooge got a JET this wouldn’t of been an issue. 

So Glomgold easily beats them there, and to add insult and actualy injury to a cash based one, our heroes get blasted by golden lava on the way in and crash. Should’ve gotten launchpad... got the crashing professional. Keoki is dispondent as this means his people are doomed. He also dosen’t know waht staking a claim is when Scrooge mentions it and the boys bring him up to speed with the poor guy saying he wish he could for WookaWooka. Donald also makes a valid point about how greedy and heartlress scrooge can be.. and really billiionares in general.

No no YOUR the Grouch who refuses to have one drop of emapthy. Donald’s just pissed at your general selfish and terrible behavior. 

Glomgold glomgloats and has seemingly won... but naturally that rant that seemed extranious at the time about the date line comes into play: turns out the Island is on it, and since glomgold put his marker int he west, Scrooge simply puts his in the east which is a whole day before. Now GRANTED there’s nor eal legal prescendice for the intetaoinal date line itself , as noted above... but there’s enough witnesses in Scrooge’s favor that it simply does not matter anyway. Scrooge SEEMINGLY wins.

But Huey, Dewey Or Louie instead backs another claim: Keoki’s from earlier. While it was made in gest, he and the others along with Donald back it as witnsses instad. WookaWooka is saved and SCrogoe ends the story yelling at the narrator.

Final Thoughts: Don Rosa.. did not like this story, feeling it wasn’t one of his best and apologizing for it. I however.. really loved it. It’s not PERFECT: the narration feels not entirely necessary and the gag isn’t as funny as he thinks, though the payoff of scrooge saying “it’s time for this story to end” is fucking hilarous. I also feel it’s a bit too compressed: the story is only 16 pages and was only THAT long because Rosa added a few for exposition, a worthy addition. This feels like one of his 30 page adventure stories but slightly crammed into half the length. I also feel the golden island bit was BADLY underused as it’s such a cool setting but barely shows up in the story. 

But despite that.. it’s still a fun story: as is standard for Rosa the art is gorgeous and the humor is great. And unlike some stories where Rosa casually ignores how terrible scrooge is, here it’s his own greed and hubris that do him in: had he actually agreed to help Keoki, the boys likey would’ve let him keep the island but his own cold refusual to be a human being does him in, just as his cheapness nearly did. Flintheart is also decent here.. not the deepest foe but frankly most classical duck antagonists really aren’t all that fleshed out, and we still get some good bits with him. The dateline bit, while telegraphing that it will be important, as I said REALLY isn’t that hard to understand. All in all while i’ll agree with Rosa this isn’t his BEST, it’s still a really damn good story and one he shoudln’t be ashamed of. 

Tommorow: Green Eggs and ham is back for some train shenanigans! Kay. 

Saturday: The Tom Retrospective returns for it’s last detour! Eclipsa and Moon team up to stop meteora but grapple with diffrent wants: One to save her daughter.. the other to stop waht she clearly sees as an out of control monster. The result.. will only lead to tragedy and a hell of a two parter. 

If you liked this review consider joining my patreon, patroen.com/popculturebuffet. At as low as 2 bucks a month you get accesss to my patreon discord, exclusive reviews, and to pick a short when I do one of my shortstragavanzas, a marthon of theatrical shorts honoring a characters birthday. And given Donald’s is next month, now’s the time to get on board. 

But if you go up to 5 you get a guaranteed review of whatever you want every month, and will get me to my next milestone, which will give everyone including yourself a monthly public darkwing duck review, reviews of the two Ducktales minis’ I haven’t covered (Time is Money and SuperDuckTales) and a reivew of the Danny Phantom film the Ultimate Enemy. So please join today and if you cannot, like this review, subscribe and give me your opinions on it bellow. Or even if you can feedback is always appricated and I will see you at the next rainbow. 

Hi, I have a question, and I hope it would be interesting for you too... Could we talk about angel's wings and feathers?..

I always thought that angel's wings were a part of their true form, a kind of energy which we can only see as a shadows or electric sparks or ash or something like this.

And I didn't think that it could be a real wings with feathers as bird's. Until, while rewatch, I've noticed that angel's feather were mentioned in SPN at least twice (maybe you've noticed more?):

1) In 8.12 when Henry Winchester time travels he uses an angel feather in spell. And then Dean tells that Henry stole an angel feather from the trunk of the Impala. So feathers are reall??? Why did the Winchestets keep the feather in the trunk of the Impala and where they get it? (ok, maybe they found it in the bunker)

2) In 12.13 Sam uses a white feather in spell returning Gavin back in time (we know this spell needs an angel feather)

So now we can see how the real angel feather looks like???

Does that mean that the angel's wings can be presented in physical world like a real wings with feathers and this is not fanfiction? I like this idea so much.

I think that the creators of the show didn't let us to see it, as many other great things, that is sad...

I would really like to know your thoughts about this.

(Sorry for my bad english, it is not my native language...)

Hi there! First off, your English is fine! (lol it’s my native language, and I just typed it “Inglish” by accident, so you’re already doing better than I am :’D)

ETA: DON’T REBLOGGY THIS YET. I forgotted something that @thayerkerbasy just reminded me of, and I’m editing this post... brb... okay NOW YOU CAN REBLOGGY!)

As far as I know, those are the only times in canon we ever see or hear mention of an angel feather, and both times it’s for the same exact spell. They reference that it’s Henry’s spell when they use it again in 12.13, but make no mention in dialogue of it being an angel feather. Yet Sam had a whole jar of fluffy little pin feathers, so the assumption is that they’d been collecting them for a while (unless those were either found in the Men of Letters’ spell ingredient stockpile when they moved into the bunker, or otherwise given to them by Cas at some point).

It’s weird, because they seem like a very limited commodity, especially after the angels fell and their wings all burned up. Even after Cas got his original grace back, his wings never seemingly recovered. When we did finally see his wing prints in 12.23, they were still... not healthy... So my thinking is that any spell that would require them will become impossible to cast when their current supply runs out. All the other angels-- at the end of the series-- were either dead or locked in Heaven with their broken wings. We never learned any of their fates. Maybe they were all rendered obsolete under the Heaven Remodel?

A little behind the scenes from the early days of SPN as a bonus, since it’s tangentially relevant:

When they were filming the very early episodes of SPN, they had a lot of choices to make about what to show us based on what their budget would allow them to portray. Think of an episode like Wendigo, 1.02. One thing I see people say often was that it was a shame we didn’t see more of the monster, but only saw like... bushes shaking, or a vague form moving through the underbrush, or a blur. They made a stylistic choice right there to keep it within budget.

The options they faced were showing us a “dude in a rubber mask” type monster and showing it more, versus one really terrifying shot of a Proper Monster™ dying in spectacular fashion. Rather than go full-on cheesemonster, they chose to leave most of it up to our imaginations, giving us glimpses or hints of the monster.

They went back and forth on this a bit over the years, attempting to show us more on occasion, but most of those times the audience reaction has been varying degrees of wtf... Think about some of the scenes where they attempted to give us more than a glimpse at the supernatural, or a blood splatter, or whatever. It didn’t always work well. Think: the wire fight from 13.23...

I mean, it took us until 11.14 to ever see an angel “flap away,” when we saw Casifer zap Dean off the exploding submarine.

For the most part, I appreciate the fact that they understood the limitations of their own budget and didn’t give angels cheap little wings just to be able to show them on camera. Over time, only being able to see them as shadows, or as char after the angel died, became part of the lore of the show.

I blame Adam Glass for writing that spell, because he probably thought it sounded cool or whatever, that it was effectively a throwaway line because no other spell they’ve ever used has required an angel feather as an ingredient, and in story it was only linked into this larger Men of Letters Legacy plot that in retrospect feels like Chuck tying up loose ends and putting previously “deactivated” plotlines back into play.

I do find it kind of interesting that both iterations of this spell (the second resurrected by Bucklemming) were both tied to Abaddon. Henry’s spell in 8.12 brought her into the story from the past, she eventually travelled to the much further distant past to bring Gavin into the present (presumably with her own power alone, no angel feather required), and then after she was killed, they used the spell to return Gavin to his own time. So in a a way, the spell was part of a closed narrative loop, never to be referred to again.

Kinda wild that we’d never heard of angel feathers being a thing for spells until we learn that Dean apparently had some just stashed in the trunk, though... :’D

As for how corporeal angel feathers are/were, they exist in the earthly plane enough to leave char marks when they burn, when an angel is killed, so they must always have had the potential to manifest physically. I can’t imagine they ever would’ve had a budget to show us anything more than what we usually saw, though. It did give them a LOT of flexibility over how exactly they presented them to us when they DID show us. And I can’t even imagine the suffering Misha would’ve endured as an actor spending all those years wearing some weird wing harness rig. It would’ve been... impractical. And the CGI the show could’ve afforded-- especially in earlier days-- would’ve been... bad...

But what they were able to show us? Was often awesome. Remember when Raphael showed off his wings in 5.03? LIGHTNING!

And when we finally did see actual corporeal-appearing wings in 8.23... it was Dramatique™

And for More CGI Is Sometimes A Bad Thing Science, please have the attempt at Michael’s “true form” from 14.01:

It’s kinda a super-letdown after AU!Michael’s previous shadow wing displays from 13.01, but more specifically from 13.22:

those... were... badass... 

Even the pre-wire-fight wing shadows on Dean were badass:

But if they’d tried to show us more of them, to make them move through action scenes for example, it would’ve been... bad...

So what we’re left with is the knowledge that there is some sort of corporeal element to wings that we simply can’t see most of the time, but clearly angels have the ability to show or hide them at will, even from other angels. Could it be an act of will on the part of the angel that manifests a bit of their grace in the form of a physical feather? Honestly, that’s the theory I’ve personally adopted toward canon. In fanfic, I’ve read tons of various headcanons about what angel wings are and how they function-- everything from “a manifestation of their true form” to “angels share a lot of traits with birds” to “an extension of their grace,” and everything in between.

I personally, in canon, like to think of it as akin to how they’ve used angel grace for other spells. I mean, when we recall that angels haven’t been on Earth much for the last few thousand years (aside from at least a couple of known incidents where angels interfered with humanity, like Ishim and Company in 12.10, for example, and the presumptive extension that the Men of Letters knew of the existence of angels and likely summoned one up a time or two the same way Lily Sunder had, giving one explanation for how Henry Winchester knew of this spell and had an angel feather to use for it, but also recontextualized when Lily Sunder taught us that humans can use their own souls to power spells in the same way angels used their grace... which sort of makes the notion of needing an angel feather AND his own soul to charge that particular spell in 8.12 a bit redundant unless Lily’s knowledge of angelic magic was more advanced than Henry’s... hrmpf.... so much tangent... back to the point)...

We did eventually learn of other spells that required an angel’s actual grace, not concentrated in the form of a feather. The Angel Fall Spell in 8.23 being the prime example. Metatron took ALL of Cas’s grace for that one, even if he didn’t use all of it for the spell and left a “fragment” (Metatron described it as “not a lot, but enough.”). 

ETA: HECK. I have 9.03 on the tv right now and it’s distractedly made me disgusted enough to have forgotten something that Thayer just reminded me of: Lucifer’s “fossilized feather” in 12.07. It held enough grace to restore and heal him after Rowena’s spell in 12.03 had degraded him. Which really only adds to the theory that “feathers” are simply bits of grace that have been rendered solid somehow, but that can be transformed back into grace as needed.

And then there was the Rift Spell for travelling to alternate universes that required archangel grace, as well as the time travel/ward breaking spell that Sam found in 11.14 that ALSO required archangel grace specifically. Would these spells have worked with an archangel “feather?” Possibly, if material feathers are somehow just crystalized bits of grace, but since we never got a full explanation in canon, and never even really saw corporeal feathery wings that dropped feathers or could be plucked, and never even had mention of corporeal feathers outside of their use in this single spell, it’s really up to our own interpretation. And I kind of like it that way, because that way we get to have fun little discussions like this one. :D

I know this isn’t a definitive answer, but it’s how it all makes sense to me, in the hand-wavey sort of way that all of canon works. :’D

yeah okay I’m tired of hearing the same old shit from RF fandom about the youthful looking bachelors/bachelorettes. - y’all have heard kids play this game, people keep mentioning it - y’all have heard people talk about being mistaken for younger ages themselves - y’all need to learn short =/= young, tall =/= old (some people realize this and know it’s about the faces/style, but I literally just read “oh but so-and-so is tall so at least they’re not 14!” oh boy some 14 year olds I’ve known in my time that were VERY TALL BUDDY) - protag is also young - protags of teen novels date other teens, teen novels written by adults, will blow your mind that people can play a young protag, not related to them, not self-insert as the MC themselves, etc... like I always see the protag as separate from myself anyway, so I guess it’s easy for me to step back and not worry about it. I’m not going “oh yeah I want children!” IRL either but damn if I don’t go for that in these games? - some people marry on favorited personality, looks be damned - large tits do not automatically make an adult lady and this is so dangerous to think when some people have experienced being preteens and teens with a large chest and that doesn’t automatically mean adult (holy shit, srsly, that’s alarming to think that way if you take that thinking into real life) I can relate to getting older and wanting to have older characters as marriage options, certainly. Definitely feel that, have a preference for it myself. That said, everyone in this series looks pretty stylistically young except the super old people. It’s cutesy and shit. Accept that is the way RF is or don’t play, bc I’d like to enjoy a game not see entire fandom be nothing but daily “well I had better call people out for their marriage choices, y’all are the p-word otherwise!” Good gravy! If you are obsessed with needing to make everything into that, the fascination may actually be yours. I’d love to talk about anything else related to this loveable, charming series p l e a s e Meanwhile, I want to see every little detail on the characters, and every marriage might reveal more about everyone?  And yeah I wanna date Misasagi too but thank goodness you’re free to make fanworks! Or older!Doug if I felt like being a homewrecker taking him from his horse husband. srsly I can name lots of preferences that didn’t happen... in canon. Fanworks ftw Anyway, I may have to unfollow certain things to stop seeing that nonsense, which is a shame since I had hoped to...y’know, see stuff about the game. :( (And fyi I’m one of those “looks young” people... a week from turning 30, a security guard almost didn’t let me join my family in a casino restaurant bc “you are definitely not 18″ even as she stared at my driver’s license. And I’m just shy of 6′ tall. When carded at the liquor store once, the guy looked at my ID, then at me, then at my ID, squint suspiciously, shrug, and go, “Not bad.” When working in my mid-20s, people who were younger than me asked what high school I went to. And I’ve had police try to approach me while I was out during daytime school hours for skipping school... when I was graduated years and years ago...)

Hey, in honor of A.C.E. coming back soon would you mind talking about their outfits and makeup in their Favorite Boy comeback (or really any of their outfits/make up cause their stylists is a god and deserves a kiss on the forehead)? They have some of my favorite styling of any boy group currently. Undercover Byeongkwan in the black and yellow crop top with the pony tail lives in my mind rent free and I’m not complaining. I especially loved the mesh of modern and traditional in Fav Boys.

yes!!!! ok be prepared people this is basically a love letter to a.c.e's stylist, whoever you are please my dms are open i just wanna talk (and maybe also get married, your choice)

(also this is really long because there's a lot of pictures, so sue me)

ok there's three main things i want to touch on here that are all contributing factors in a.c.e aesthetics hitting every time: colour theory, silhouette, and pattern matching. alright let's go!

colour theory

so i won't explain all of colour theory because i’m not as good as i should be with the actual theory, but here’s the basics. colours are divided into groups: primary, secondary, and tertiary. here’s a fun diagram i stole from google:

in centre you have the primary colours (red/blue/yellow), then you have the secondary colours, made from mixing the primary colours (orange/green/violet), and then the tertiary colours are made from mixing the primary and secondary colours (yellow orange/red orange/red violet/blue violet/blue green/yellow green). there are some commonly associated schemes that are known to ‘look good’ to the human eye:

complementary, where you pair two colours directly opposite each other on the wheel (red/green, blue/orange, purple/yellow)

analogous, which is a base colour with accents from the colours directly next to it (red base, orange/violet accent),

triadic - either base colour with accent colours equidistant from it (green/orange/violet), or base colour with split complementary (violet base, yellow green/yellow orange accent)

tetradic - this is essentially a combination of two or more of the previous, usually a double complementary or an analogous triad with a complimentary accent (red/green with red violet/yellow green, orange/blue with yellow orange/blue violet)

now there’s a lot more getting into tone, value, and saturation, but these are the basic hue combinations that we most commonly see. kpop styling sometimes veers wildly from these rules, but they aren’t hard and fast so it usually isn’t a big deal. plus a lot of styling is supposed to be a bit visually overwhelming anyways, so i’m not exactly counting it against anyone. but what makes a.c.e’s styling look so nice, even though it often isn’t that complicated, is that they always stick to a specific palette. like i went all the way back through their instagram and ALL their public appearances are coordinated:

even their dance practice videos, of all things!

this is especially true with their performance costumes:

i'm not saying anything really revolutionary here, most groups get colour matching down correctly, but a.c.e's stylists have really nailed down matching the tone and saturation as well as the hue. here's a couple of examples from concept photos:

complementary - full saturation green base, desaturated red (pink) as accent

analogous - full saturation violet, pink, and magenta with desaturated and black accents

triadic - all desaturated

complementary - full saturation red base, varying degrees of desaturation for accent colours

this is fun, let's do some more! this time from their performance costumes:

analogous (monochrome) - full saturation yellow green, desaturated accents

tetradic (analogous with complementary accent) - full saturation red, desaturated violet/red/blue, desaturated green as accent)

triadic (equidistant) - full saturation red/blue with desaturated yellow, desaturated accents

tetradic (double complementary) - full saturation red/green as main pair, desaturated blue/orange as secondary pair, full saturation yellow as accents

starting to see it? you can do this with pretty much any of their styling; i've watched a lot of their performances and i don't think i've seen a single one that didn't follow a really strict colour palette. (ok there were like two savage stages that were not quite as good, but you can tell the stylist was trying to bring them in line with the current 4th gen styling and it didn't work so it didn't last).

costume colours and lighting

this is an important aside in relation to the mvs. whoever edits their mvs is really good at colouring. a big part of colour theory is tone, which is how 'warm' or 'cool' a colour is. it's super important in lighting; the colour wheel is split in half, with yellow through red-red violet categorized as warm, and yellow green through blue and violet as cool. a really easy way to visualize this in lighting is through the light from different types of lightbulbs: led lights are cool toned (they are often slightly bluish), and old style halogen lights are warm toned (they are amber tinged). tones are a thing that kpop videos seem to have a fleeting relationship with; sometimes they're used effectively and sometimes they are not. a big thing that a lot of kpop mvs do is really quickly switch tones in colouring, without connecting the intentions of the colours. here's some examples: ateez's fireworks mv, and oneus' no diggity mv. the fireworks mv has this really weird desaturated balance between warm and cool tones specifically in the interior shots, where they somehow managed to overblow both at the same time, which ends up making it look like they were trying really hard to make a cool tone yellow. you can actually feel your eyes relax in that first shot that takes them outside, because the balance is much more natural. and the no diggity mv.... i love it but it's so chaotic. everything is on high saturation all the time and there's no real limitation on the palette, established connection between colours or arc in the colour story, so the cuts between colours and shots feel more random than intentional. now lets look at some a.c.e mvs in comparision, first: undercover. for starters there's an immediate establishement of red and white/black, with a mild green accent. then it continues to a stronger green/teal, with brown as an extension of red (same undertone). there's a colour shift at the first chorus, where they are in the analogous full saturation violet/pink outfits that i mentioned previously, but they actually desaturate and de-value the hues with edit in order to have it match the tone of the room. the second colour shift is for the second rap break, with byeongkwan and wow in yellow main on black and white backgrounds, but that same level of yellow saturation only appears at the rap break specifically, it's absent from the rest of the mv. and then there's a third colour shift on the last chorus, where they pump up the blue and magenta in order to emphasize the climax of the song.

second, for something a bit crazier: goblin. it follows almost the same pattern as undercover; starting with a strong establishment of red/white/black, but then it jumps into full saturation green and teal as the other main colours. again there's a colour switch at byeongkwan's second rap break, and after than we start to see that deeper saturation blue and pink/purple more, but the main colours are still red/white/black.

ok that's enough about colour, now let's talk about

silhouette

this is maybe a little bit more vague and difficult to describe, but whatever. silhouette is pretty much exactly the way it sounds, it's the overall shape of the body. clothing and body type play equal roles in how silhouette is perceived, but clothing can do a lot to either disguise or transform the body. now there isn't really that much variation in body type in kpop; it's a microcosm of small differences between a lot of very fit people, which has been normalized as "default" by society at large for the last while. i'm not going to get into body politics here, because we all know that kpop dudes are not the median average male body type, but they are for the sake of what we've been socialized to think of as looking attractive so the rest of this is going to operate from that assumption. and when you have five dudes who are pretty smack in the middle of that slight variation (none of them are the largest nor the thinnest, they're all about the same middling height), you've got pretty much free reign to put them in whatever you want and they'll still look hot. kpop styling has a dubious relationship to actual wearable clothing, but it is all costuming so it's not necessary for it to be wearable everyday clothing. but since view in 2015 there's been a dramatic increase in "normal" clothing as performance costume, and the thing about normal contemporary clothing is that it's actually very difficult to style in a convincing way. because it's the trends that the general public is the most familiar with, it's the easiest for them to pick apart where the flaws are. this is all preface to say that there are often common silhouettes that are popular with specific trends. in 2012-2013 there was that sweater tucked into circle skirt with big scarf trend, in the 2007 was like baggy everything and layered tshirts, etc, and 2018-2019 was big colourful patterned shirts. sound familiar? it should, take me higher came out in summer 2018! now there's a debate here (like with most pop culture and celebrity) whether or not kpop is following trends or setting them, and both points are true, but personally i'm of the opinion that kpop is kind of a median between the two; it's not setting trends because it's often taking directly from the fashion industry and/or other popular culture, but it is popularizing them in a way that said trend may not have otherwise. there's a lot of digressions in this section but i'm hoping this will help you see my point.

using take me higher as a specific example, you can clearly see that a.c.e is sticking to a specific silhouette within the group, which is a boxy/loose upper with a fitted lower. which you can see really clearly in this stage, this stage, this stage, this stage, and honestly pretty much every stage for this comeback. sometimes they'll have a slight variation where one of them is wearing a longer shirt, but otherwise it's pretty consistent. this is actually a really common silhouette for them, because it puts emphasis on their specific style of choreo, which is fast footwork. you can see it to the extreme in their main cactus styling, which goes the whole nine yards, fully making their legs the focus and going so far as to embellish them:

this silhouette also shows up for callin', where they're wearing boxy hip cut bomber jackets, and for the majority of the undercover styling, which is cropper military(ish) jackets. and it's shaping up to be similar for higher, so i'll talk more about it when i get there.

they have a consistant look for the goblin stages too, which is hanbok over a tight fitted underlayer. each of their hanbok are different cuts, which you can see with wow's cropped jacket and skirt combo, but it makes the same shape as the others. and in the goblin mv, most of their looks take a traditional silhouette and pair it with modern fabrics and patterns, and combining modern accessories with modernized traditional ones.

sticking to an internal silhouette is not the common mode for most boy group stylings at the moment. there's usually an adhesion to a specific colour scheme, but i have not noticed the same kind of care taken to silhouette. there's usually an adhesion to a member specific shape, but the general shape of the group is not usually as considered. you can see it in ateez's fireworks styling (yes i'm going to use it again, the styling was very weird and i never really talked about how weird it is). in the intro you've got tight pants, loose pants, short jackets, suit jackets, AND a long jacket. and then it's the same kind of variety in the rest of their outfits. if anyhting i'd say the emphasis was meant to be on shoulders, because of the point choreo; and yunho, hongjoong, san, and wooyoung all have some kind of shoulder padding, but that's only half the group. and the stage outfits are not any better. there's the infamous ketchup packet outfit, this naruto themed styling, this inexplicable bdsm football themed styling, and whatever this snakeskin theme is meant to be. it's all over the place! there's some performer specific shapes (hongjoong with the shoulder pads and hip length jacket, san with crop top, yeosang sleeveless) but if you were to just look at the shape of the outfits regardless of colour and pattern, you'd have no way to tell if they were all in the same group.

ok now lastly, let's quickly talk about

pattern matching and texture

this section won't be as long, but i wanted to cover it because even though it's a small and subtle thing, it does a lot in the visual long run. the general rule with patterns is that you don't combine patterns of the same size. this is kind of hard to explain without a visual reference so here's a few examples:

(not my photos, these are from scott schuman's blog the sartorialist)

small check, even smaller pinstripe

mid-size print on pant, large print on scarf

small shirt stripe, mid-size print on tie, mid-large print on scarf

small print on zip jacket, mid-size on scarf, large plaid on jacket

like all fashion and like everything else i've talked about here, this isn't a hard and fast rule, but it does generally look the most harmonious. a.c.e really nails this in the take me higher stages, which you can see here:

(in addition to using different pattern sizes, they're using different colours as well to make it less visually busy)

(bonus! see if you can name the type of colour stories!)

the goblin stages utilize a combination of texture and pattern matching, where the hanbok are a mix of different fabrics (raw silk, embroidered satin, organza) with different patterns, overtop plain underlayers, or when they aren't in hanbok their outfits are very heavily embellished to add visual interest, but are unpatterned fabrics.

in conclusion: good and cohesive colour stories, emphasis on uniform silhouettes and variety in patterns and textures. they also are very specific with accessories, and use them to emphasize key features.

ok! i think that's all i want to cover for this post, because this is already so long. but i've started on the write up for higher already, so i might get into some of my points here in more detail because i'll be talking about one specific thing instead of like......all of it.

A Day To Remember, a Nea x Yui Oneshot

#2k21BVryKnd

#SilverRescueTeam

#SRT

This is a commission collab I did with my friend Fizzie! Basically, we came up with the idea that we give each other characters and a third or first-person POV to go off of, and we write a story just based on those. She posted hers a day or so ago, so go check it out and give it some love!

Fizzie’s Story: http://aminoapps.com/p/u8pxte

Keep in mind…she doesn’t know the plot ;) But I decided with the number of characters she gave me, I would do an AU where they just have a girl’s day! She gave me Nea, Yui, Laurie, Claudette, and Meg to work with! Hope you enjoy girl!

Also uh....had to add a little side ship of your OTP since I know how much you like Quendette :)

Word Count: 1,929

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The weather was perfect today. The sun was shining, no clouds to be seen...it was just a great day to get out and do something. And that’s exactly what this group of friends was doing. But they weren’t going out just as a last-minute thing, this was all planned out months in advance. And it was going to happen no matter the conditions.

Why so dead set on going out? Well, today was an extremely special day for two girls, in particular, those girls being Nea and Yui. The two had been dating for...well what seemed like forever. But they had been dating for around four years maybe? Ever since the beginning of college. And well...within the next couple of days, they were going to get married. And who else would be a part of their wedding if not their group of friends they had been with basically since they were children?

Now, things weren’t always great for this group of girls, but honestly, it always worked out in the end. And today would hopefully be no different. The five of them were just supposed to go out and get their nails done, then go to lunch afterward. And it was all supposed to go according to plan, but you know, nothing could ever go perfect, especially not with this group.

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It had all started this morning, and can you guess who the first one to screw up was? If you guessed Nea, you would be correct. The girl had forgotten to set her alarm the previous night, and Yui had gone to spend the night with some of her old friends from Japan that had flown down to America for the wedding of their friend. They had stayed at the hotel, but they weren’t coming with them to get their nails done today. Since it was just going to be the two bridal parties together.

And as anyone could have guessed, Yui was not that happy to find out that Nea had forgotten an alarm on a pretty special day. But, Nea had apologized profusely as she ran around the house quickly getting changed into sweatpants and a t-shirt, all while their three friends Laurie, Meg, and Claudette giggled at the couple’s antics. The lack of Nea being prepared did not make them late though, so that was a little bit of a bonus to the shitty beginning of the day.

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When they arrived at the nail salon, everyone was no doubt, excited. Nea was talking with Meg and Claudette as they walked in, trying to decide on a matching color. Since the two were her bridesmaids, she wanted to make sure she picked out something they all liked. In the end, they had decided on a pretty light pink color. Since Nea’s dress was white, sticking with the traditional way of things. Well, as traditional as you could get with a lesbian wedding that is. The pink would match really well with the bright white gown.

Yui on the other hand was supposed to wear a white kimono, sticking with her traditional Japanese ways. She had a pink and white floral uchikake for the reception afterward, something her grandmother had worn at her own wedding, a garment Yui absolutely adored ever since she was a child. Now….she would get to marry the love of her life in it.

Laurie was her bridesmaid, being closer to the older woman than Nea’s two other friends. And they had both decided on a beige color for their nails, thinking it would look good with the white and the pink. Which, funny enough, were the colors for the decorations the two women had decided to be their main decor of the ceremony.

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As they walked inside the salon, there weren’t a lot of people there, maybe like….two others? Since it was still pretty early, but since they were getting both nails and feet done, they didn’t want to be there super late in the day when more people would start popping up. Common decency at its finest.

They were lead to sit down by a worker after picking out a polish from the walls, deciding to get acrylics for their hands with gel polish instead of normal polish, so it would stick on longer. And...quite a few of them had short nails, mostly because of their jobs. Yui was a mechanic since she always loved bikes and cars, things like that. Nea was a painter, but not a normal one. She got paid to do graffiti art on bridges and such, something to make the town more lively.

Meg was a semi-professional athlete. She wasn’t too well known, but she made a pretty good amount of money. Laurie was a childcare worker, working at a school and her nails broke easily around young children, she had come to learn that the hard way. And Claudette was a doctor, and she didn’t want to accidentally be poking people with her nails all too often through the gloves she wore. So needless to say, they didn’t get to have nice long nails like some girls a lot of the time and wanted to make sure they stayed on for the amount of time they could have them.

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They were sat down in the chairs to get their toes done first, one of the workers bringing over five glasses of champagne for them, one for each girl. And since they were all over twenty-one, they accepted it gratefully. Claudette wasn’t much of a drinker, but she would make an exception for this. It was a pretty special day after all, and she had taken off work for the next two days for the wedding.

Honestly, most of them had forgotten what it was like to just...be pampered like they were. It was honestly something they weren’t able to do often, being adults and such now with jobs to worry about. So it was relaxing while they just chatted, laughed, drank, and got their nails done. They did have a little incident where Meg almost kicked the nail stylist because the red-head was very much ticklish, but it didn’t seem to phase the person working on her. Only waving it off with a chuckle and saying it happens all the time.

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They were there probably around….three and a half hours? Mostly because despite the early time of day, a lot of people seemed to come in quickly, and the girls had to wait to get their hands done. But, nonetheless, it was worth the wait, and the five females were very happy with how everything turned out.

Though they didn’t condone drinking and driving, Claudette didn’t really like the champagne, and only ended up drinking two or so sips before she couldn’t do it anymore, finding the taste too strong without a chaser. And Nea was more than willing to finish it off for the smaller girl.

This also meant Claudette was now their driver for going off to lunch. So, they all piled into Laurie’s car, Laurie in the front with Claudette while the other three sat in the back, Nea and Yui sitting beside each other holding hands while Meg stared out the window, asking where they were going for the thousandth time since they left the salon. And the answer was the same each time. It was some little small-town restaurant that Claudette’s boyfriend, Quentin, owned. So not only would they get a discount, but he made pretty awesome food.

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It didn’t take long to get there, the place only slightly packed for the rush hour of lunchtime. And they quickly got out of the car, heading inside while chatting, obviously having to tease Claudette about coming to the place her boyfriend worked at.

As they walked inside, they spotted the curly-haired brunette behind the diner immediately. He had on his usual bright smile, his smile only growing bigger when he saw the five walk in, but it was definitely aimed towards Claudette.

“Hey, guys! Welcome in and have a seat wherever you want. I trust you guys to not take any unneeded space,” he said, more concentrated on the plates of food he was currently trying to carry. Quentin had changed a lot since high school. He wasn’t as shy as he used to be, and he had grown a lot taller almost six feet, and his hair had grown out a little longer. Needless to say, Claudette made a really good choice when she decided to start dating the nerdy kid.

The five took a seat at a booth, Meg, Laurie, and Claudette on one side with Nea and Yui on the other sitting beside each other. They chatted as they waited patiently for Quentin to come over to take their order, the boy handing off the plates of food to his co-worker, and ex-girlfriend Nancy. They had ended off on good terms, Quentin finding out he was into Claudette. And Nancy was totally fine with that, considering she and Quentin had been friends since childhood.

When he did come over, he let his customer service facade drop, his smile still there but seeming just a little less fake. He leaned down to press a quick kiss against Claudette’s cheek, causing the girl to giggle quietly and her friends to coo at her, “Alright….I’m guessing you all want the usual? Tea for you babe, water for Laurie, Sprite for Meg, iced tea for Yui, and a coke for Nea?” he asked, earning nods and smiles from the five girls. He wrote it down and walked off quickly, not before giving a quick congratulations to Yui and Nea. He hadn’t had much time to see them running his diner. One that his friend Steve had said he should open and most of his friends had pressured him into it. It was one of the best decisions of his life if he was entirely honest.

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They sat and chatted for an hour or so, eating the food that was paid for by Quentin, despite the objections of everyone at the table. But, the brunette was kind that way...even if he was a little more than annoyed when he saw the tip left for him by the five women. Since the day was over, Claudette was going to drive everyone home with Laurie’s car, and Quen would pick her up when he was done with work in a couple more hours.

Nea and Yui were the first to be dropped off since their house was the closest, the engaged couple giving hugs and promises of seeing them tomorrow bright and early to go to where their wedding ceremony was supposed to be held. And after the goodbye’s, waved as they watched their three friends drive off down the road.

Nea turned to her smaller fiance, a small smile on her face as she slipped her arms around the woman’s waist, pulling her closer and pressing a kiss against her forehead, “I ever tell you how much I love you?” she asked with a small tilt of her head, and Yui could only giggle at Nea’s antics.

“You say it all the time darling....but I guess there’s nothing wrong with hearing it again..” she told her as she leaned up, arms wrapping around her shoulders to kiss her properly, lips pressed firmly against Nea’s. If this is what she was getting for the rest of her life, well, then she got pretty damn lucky.

I haven’t come to your blog in quite some time... after t100 ended, I lost interest in tumblr for a while. But I was active here once, and we had many a discussion. I came to see if you enjoyed bridgerton, despite the not so accurate clothing and such. I think it’s super cheesy and really fun to watch, and I know you enjoy period dramas

Yeah, I’m still here-- mainly because I work online, so when I break from work I make the rounds of my social media, and tumblr is one of them. It’s less active here because the fandom has mostly disappeared, not that I blame people. I also have a hard time posting about the positive aspects of The 100 because it just imploded so spectacularly. Still a big disappointment.

BUT

I have moved on. I was honestly ready to be done with intense fandom, because it’s just not good for my mental health and I was tired of the negativity. I don’t understand why people get angry when other people enjoy a thing, and think they have to come in and ruin it for them. Like, buzz off, we’re working on coping skills to get through our dumpster fire lives. 

AND YES I love Bridgerton.

Actually, I love the book series Bridgerton and it was one of my favorites in the last couple of years.

And this is related to my The 100 fandom experience, because for a while, I wasn’t reading books, I was only reading bellarke fanfic, but then, due to a shift in the fanfic community and my discomfort with the fandom (knowing that a lot of them didn’t like me) I began to feel weird about reading and writing fanfic. Like when I liked someone’s story, was I giving kudos to someone who bullied me on anon? I didn’t know.  And at the same time I’d begun ghostwriting romances, so to do research, I started reading published romances.

The first one I read was a secret baby trope, because that was what I was writing, and I fell into historical fiction. I read Kleypas and Dare and Milan and Maclean and yes, Quinn.  That took the place of my fanfic reading. To be honest, I wouldn’t have been able to be a ghostwriter if I hadn’t been a fanfic writer first, because, even though I have writing education and training and experience, fanfic taught me to write for audience, to do it fast without that certain...anxiety about perfectionism, and immersed me in romantic tropes, which it turns out, I really love. 

This is a lot of chit chat to say that yes, I saw Bridgerton and I love Bridgerton. 

I would suppose that historical romances have taken the place of my the 100 obsession. I read probably one a day. I should keep track on goodreads or something, but I do a lot of rereading. Like I’ll reread a beloved book or series five or six times. And when I forget the details of ones I liked, I’ll reread those too. Also I’m probably dealing with my internalized snobbery about the romance genre. Let me tell you, getting an education in creative writing in college installs some “issues” with genre. Everything is supposed to be lit fic, or it’s lesser. I’ve been kind of pugnacious about the sff genre and haven’t let the snobbery interfere with my love of it, but I haven’t gotten over the romance snobbery, which is not JUST snobbery but also internalized misogyny.

But I mean, fuck it. I am so sick of grimdark and tragedies and “cool edgy” dudes thinking women should be destroyed and tortured and betrayed in movies and sff and fiction in general. 

I don’t WRITE historical romances. I write contemporary romances for my ghostwriting gigs (I have one client and I’ve written like 18 novels and novellas for her in the last two years. It’s fun, but it doesn’t make very much money and the deadlines are VERY tight.) However I don’t READ contemporary romances, I read historicals. I like the level of fantasy involved and the distance from reality when I read it, but I am bothered too much buy the imperial colonialism and classism of regency or victorian british settings to write it. Also, that would take so much research to write to my liking. I am involved in romancelandia (romance writing twitter,) but not very active. Mostly I just listen and learn and sometimes comment. 

In fact. I follow a woman who judges regency and victorian costuming in film productions. https://twitter.com/BillAndTedTest She has not gotten around to doing Bridgerton yet. 

How do I feel about the costuming??? Well, I’m divided. I am bothered by the fact that Daphne never wears a pelisse and always has half up hair. I am bothered by the fact that Simon almost never has his cravat tied properly and has a shockingly bare neck. And the fabrics and stitching are visibly cheap.

But I also feel that except for the cheap fabrication which was an element of budget and time, a lot of the design choices were stylistic in nature. Like, if you look at the background characters, I feel that their costumes were more accurate, but with the main characters, they really went for character over accuracy. They didn’t want Daphne in any of the buttoned up outfits because they wanted her to be a girlish, romantic ingenue. They wanted Simon to show as a dashing sexy rake, so the buttoned up thing wouldn’t work for him, and they gave him the open neck that would be more appealing to a contemporary audience. (although while Simon is very handsome I actually find Anthony more sexy. He’s buttoned up...but it’s holding back all passion inside. BUT THAT’S a story for season 2. I can’t wait. I liked book 2 better than 1 mostly because of the rape, tbh. But I also love books 4,6 and 7 and I don’t know if we’ll get there.)

They wanted Lady Featherington to be crass and pushy so they gave her a nonsensical victorian silhouette. I mean. ???? It was SO different from anyone else’s. Weird choice, but for the character it kind of makes her appear to be a more aggressive character type from LATER in time? IDK. Of course Penelope is canonically dressed in awful gowns that are not flattering and I’m looking forward to how they end up dressing her for her book. And praying that we get a season 4. But I mean, the costume choices for the Featheringtons are BASED on Lady F’s bad taste, so there’s some leeway with her not being in style.

So. That is A LOT when you asked a little question. I guess I wanted to talk about it. I’m not allowed to talk about my ghostwriting or the stories I’m writing because I signed a hushhush contract. I’m not accustomed to being in a fandom for reading books-- remember I only joined fandom in the last 5 years for The 100, and then had some bad experiences so didn’t get into other fandoms. I don’t really even know how it would work especially not MULTIPLE books and authors instead of one series, so I haven’t really had conversations about the historical romances, except for a bit of twitter discussion. 

To give a 2 week notice, or to quit on the spot?

Hello! my name is Meloney and I am doing an advice column about life lessons. 

Todays topic is about work etiquette.

Disclaimer! Some names have been replaced for confidentiality. I am not saying that Great Clips is a bad place to work! I’m sure other salons are ran amazingly!

Let me start with a little backstory about my career, I was working at Great Clips for about 6 months, started a few days shy of the month of April. When I was interviewed I asked for my starting pay to be $11 an hour. During the interview I mentioned that I worked for another Great Clips for about 2 years, 6 months prior to this but was let go because of Covid. So I knew the way the salon was ran and I am great with speedy, but good haircuts. I felt as though I deserved this pay. The owner of the company his name is Dan, and the manager of the salon, Crystal were the two people that interviewed me for the stylist position. They told me that because I am just starting they can give me $10 an hour with quarterly reviews and opportunities for a pay raise. I said ok that is fine but I do have rent that I have to get paid. So the raises are important to me. They had this understanding and reassured me that they will keep that on my notes during my reviews. I said ok. Working at this salon was fine, but unfortunately like most work places, it was not ran very well. Crystal was always making rude comments to me about anything and would scold me as I would walk up to clients, which was very unprofessional. It was in front of the clients! Also im a 25 year old woman and she is about 31, so we are both adults. I am not a child for one, so scolding me is off the table in my book. And second of all it is disrespectful. In my eyes I felt as though she put herself on this high pedestal, most likely thinking because she’s the manager she can get away with being snippy with the stylists thinking they have no choice but to accept this behavior. So flash forward to about a month ago, I had my friend Jenny get a job with me. I met Jenny at the first Great Clips I worked at. She was the assistant manager at this time. The old salon we worked at was absolutely terrible, they treated her very poorly, and was always screwing her over and overall just not caring about any of her needs. So she quit and moved over to my salon as just a stylist. She was okay with that because she had enough going on in her life and did not want the extra responsibilities. So about a week ago I finally got into my online paychecks, I had only seen my direct deposits and didn’t think about checking to make sure my paychecks were correct. This is a huge mistake and I suggest that everyone check their paychecks every time you get paid to make sure you are getting your full amount! I regret not checking my paychecks because if I did I would have seen that I was getting $9.50 an hour instead of the agreement of $10 an hour. When I checked my paystub Crystal showed me that I was finally getting $9.75 an hour. Which she did not mention to me about it when it changed which I didn’t like because this is my pay she should have notified me of the raise regardless of the pay rate. I was furious! I said to her “Why am I not getting paid $10 an hour!?”. To where she replied “If you want to talk about it we can do it in the breakroom”. So I follow her into the breakroom and she told me because of my haircuts she started me at $9.00 an hour (which was wrong, I started at $9.50). This was a load of bologna. I just said ok. I didn’t feel like getting into it with her because I don’t argue with idiots. I don’t have patience for that anymore. I was mad the rest of my shift which was about 4 more hours because I was closing at 8. When I got home I called the owner of the salon and asked him why I wasn’t getting my full pay rate to where he just acted super caught off guard and couldn’t speak without stuttering. I saw that as a red flag. He said “Well who told you that you were getting $10 an hour, who interviewed you?”. I was shocked that he asked me this question because he was the one who interviewed me! Overall he didn’t have answers for me. He was confused about the whole situation. He told me I was an awesome worker and that he would see what he could do. I feel disrespected because they lied to me about my pay rate and never told me. I also feel dumb for not checking to make sure that I was receiving the correct pay rate, so that is on me. I worked Sunday and then on Monday, I thought to myself, “Why am I still working here and not actually getting the pay I deserve?” So Monday my shift started at 12pm. I show up 15 minutes early to work for every shift. I suggest everyone do this because it gives you time to get set up, or get ready for the shift. Instead of clocking in I start packing up my station and bringing stuff to my car. My manager comes out of the back door and asks me what im doing and I tell her I quit. Without hesitation she asks for the salon key and tells me not to forget this container I have on my station. The schedule was already made up for the week, so they were now short handed . As I’m driving away the general manager Tracy calls me, but I don’t answer. Then Dan calls me and I don’t answer that as well. I had already had a job lined up and was on my way there to set up my station. The new place was ok with me starting early so I was ok with my finances in that regard. I get a text from Dan asking me what I am doing and why I quit when he told me that he would talk about my raise to Tracy and Crystal. I texted him back saying “I quit because I know that I am worth more than $9.50 ($9.75) an hour. I do not waste my time places where there isn’t an overall understanding of that. I start my new job tomorrow where I am making more than you’re ever going to offer me. Have a good day! So then I text Jenny that I quit and grabbed my stuff. She called me and said “why did you quit? You screwed over the whole salon and Tracy whos about to get knee surgery, who now has to cover the open spots you left”. I told her “Because they screwed me with my pay and I wasn’t going to put up with it”. She told me that she gets that but it was stupid of me. Then told me that she got a call from Tracy asking if she had heard from me, then she got my text about quitting. She told me she would call me back and it has been a week now and have not heard from her. I understand her frustration and why she’s mad, I did not think that she would stop talking to me. I did not think this idea though fully. I did not realize I screwed over the entire team that I had. And Jenny especially. I do not know if she is ever going to talk to me again, I hope she does but I do not think she will. Overall, walking out on a job is not the way to go, it is disrespectful to the innocent coworkers who now have to cover my shifts and switch up their schedules for my actions. I also lost all of my work friends in the process which I am very upset about as well. I burned that bridge with everyone and that really sucks because I didn’t think that’s what would happen. I feel like an asshole and have felt like one all week. I regret the decision that I made but unfortunately am not able to go back and change it. I hope whoever reads this will learn from my mistakes and think logically instead of acting on emotion. If you’re workplace is absolutely miserable and you are being bullied to the point of mental breakdowns then that’s a scenario that warrants for you to walk out of. Mine, not so much.

Captain Sturdy: The Originals | July 6, 2003 - 11:30 PM | Special

The least-thought-about Adult Swim special of all time, maybe. Captain Sturdy actually began life as a Cartoon Network What-A-Cartoon. That episode is titled “Back in Action” and this is a direct follow-up, more-or-less. It truly is a second attempt at a pilot as the drawing style and the characters have been tweaked slightly, but it does show a progression in the story of Captain Sturdy. In the first installment, his pension check stops showing up after his super-hero union raises the retirement age so they can pilfer the pension fund and build a new high-tech super-hero hang-out building. This context actually does enhance this installment, which just starts with the elderly Captain Sturdy just throwing himself into superheroics. One might assume he’d just never retired.

I’m not a huge fan of the animation style which was more-or-less the house style of most Cartoon Network originals, but I do think it can be done well. Really, it’s not my intention to trash that Cartoon Network style. Despite not being my favorite, there are still shows and directors and moments that make use of it well. You know what I mean? That late-90s/early-2000s intentionally-cheap-but-hopefully-still-beautiful-and-stylistic kinda thing they did that *sorta* harkens back to the Hanna Barbera cartoons of a bygone era but, you know, animated even more cheaply and usually on computers? Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. I thought the first short was kinda ugly but had some very specific stylistic choices that I respected. There are individual shots that are pretty impressive. For example, that first short ends with an evil robot destructo-beam satellite that looks like something out of Samurai Jack. The humor is okay for a kids show, and honestly that’s about all I can say. The second pilot was billed as a sincere attempt to rejigger the show for an adult audience but there’s not much difference between either version. This short ends kinda anti-climatically, with them fighting with an equally elderly villain in his garage mostly over a misunderstanding. This show is almost like if Venture Bros. didn’t improve after the pilot. In fact, the first pilot gets into a lot of the bureaucratic nonsense that Venture Bros. eventually gets into with the Guild of Calamitous Intent stuff. If I’m being honest, that’s not my favorite stuff in Venture Bros., either.

The most notable exclusion between the first and second pilot is a PC-MAN character, who wimpily scolds his more fascistic colleagues for being insensitive. In 2021 my inner-edgelord is definitely unironically fed up with political correctness, sure, but this kind of satire seems like the domain of unfunny garbage makers like The Babylon Bee. I’m not even sure if I can recall how fresh this would’ve seemed in 2000. Most modern, right-leaning jokes about woke culture look terrible when you compare it to stuff like PC-Man; they are PRACTICALLY EXACTLY THE SAME EXACT JOKES. Personally, I don’t wanna make hating politically correct retards my whole identity. Just learn how to steal the blackface episodes of your favorite shows, put them on a Plex server and shut the fuck up about it.

MAIL BAG

Continuing a thread from last night’s big bad mail bag:

Close! But it's SEA not See. Here's question 2: The color of Master Shake's milkshake is?

It’s like, bad. I remember it being a bad color. What do I win

Try this number 1-800-CALL-A-HOE, If you hear yourself on the other line, then you are da hoe.

Why did you send this twice! I’m starting to think that YOU are the one who is... the hoe

I have some genuine dirt on a certain adult swim personality but I don't feel comfortable sharing except through a code: "68 61 62 65 75 73 20 63 6f 72 70 75 73 20 68 61 72 76 65 79 20 61 74 74 6f 72 6e 65 79 0a" copy that code into a Hex To ASCII Text generator and find out and tell me if you think it's true.

YOU PISS ME OFF! STOP IT! nobody follow this guy’s instructions (You can tell it’s a GUY too no WOMAN would ever stoop to such lows). You make me sick. That’s all there is too it, okay?

What classic era Cartoon Network programs did you like? I liked Johnny Bravo and Dexter but never watched Cow and Chicken. Courage and Ed, Edd, and Eddy were past my "cartoon for kids" prime. You?

You know, I never FULLY got into those shows, I’ll be honest. I was a casual liker of Dexter and Powerpuff Girls and I mostly avoided Bravo but it could be great on occasion. I didn’t get Cartoon Network until real late so before I had it I was beholden to the meager repeats that would air on TNT. I remember liking Cow & Chicken but I think it sucks now. I gave Ed, Edd & Eddy a sincere try but I never liked it that much. I was always impressed with Courage but only saw it randomly.

I did really love 2 Stupid Dogs. Technically this was a TBS original. THAT really hit at the right time age-wise. Way underrated.

From London Arbuckle:

remember the pipe camp episode of tom mayor? remember?

I always thought that episode was one of the weaker ones and was baffled by the fact that they made shirts of it. People liked to say Tommy Mayor was a love-it or hate-it thing but I remembered loving the first episode and hating the second one, making me one of the most valuable thinkers of the 20th century.

hello and welcome to gryphon’s crackshit crossover corner

I’ve already talked about my theory that httyd is set in the very distant, post-apocalyptic future. that theory was originally inspired by ‘what if httyd and horizon zero dawn crossover?’ My brain said things and for some fuckforsaken reason I listened. 

TL:DR I can smash together a crossover of so many different fandoms and media. It’s stupid. I’m crazy. I love it. This is what ADHD makes me think about when I zone out 

Anyway, first thing; the portal games could cross over with virtually anything. Portal-lands (borderlands). Portal age of wonderbeasts. How to Portal Your Dragon. Portal and the Princesses of Power. Portal: Zero Dawn. Portalverwatch. Portales of Arcadia. Fuck, if I really wanted, I could make the portal series crossover with Star Wars. This is because the time gap between portal one and two is spectacularly, deliciously difficult to pinpoint. If I shuffle it around, I could align the times during which action and dramatic events occur to line up with Chell finally escaping the facility. She walks through the wheat field and immediately encounters a megabunny, or a herd of grazers and striders. Or she trips on a rusted null sector carcass. Or her first night on the surface she’s staring at the moon and the star-filled sky, until she hears a slowly mounting screech and a flash of lightning. Or after a couple days she encounters a migration of creatures with stone skin, because they’re going to New Jersey and wanted to stop in Michigan to visit the great lakes, I guess. Or a couple weeks in to her new life, there’s a bright flash in the sky, and now she’s glowing? And has weird glowing tattoos on her arm? And can set things on fire? Or a year or two after she escapes, a spaceship? touches down? and out comes a catgirl, a lady with prehensile hair, a weird tall white guy, but not, like, a typical white guy, his skin is literally snow white, and someone who appears to be (???) normally human????? With portal, anything is possible. Bonus points that technically any and all fanfiction, AUs, the like etc. of portal are canon, thanks to cave literally reaching through the multiverse, thereby making all of those alternative realities possible. 

So if I wanted, I could stick portal in anything. Like how salt can be used in virtually every cuisine. 

But oh, my dear brain did not stop there. This is a crackshit crossover corner, after all.  If I fuck around enough, I could frankenstein together almost all of these. The events in HZD take place approximately one thousand years after the apocalypse, which occurred mid-2000s. As in 2050s-60s, not 2005. Kipo Age of Wonderbeasts takes place about 200 years after their mutepocalypse (also it took me an embarrassingly long time to realize that ‘mute’ was shortened from ‘mutants’ and has nothing to do with their ability to speak), and we’re not sure when that happened. We could hazard a guess that Gaia was able to rebuild the world and some of humanity after Faro’s fuckup, but maybe went a liiiiiiiittle too far with the Artemis sub-probgram, and the mutepocalypse happens almost immediately. Oopsies. World goes on for 200 years post mutepocalypse, events of the series of Kipo Age of Wonderbeasts occur. Anknown amount of years later Hades decide’s that’s enough and wipes Gaia’s slate clean for her to start over again. She gives it another shot, but this time limits the amount of historical information that she gave to the humans that she released. Might’ve been a bit inaccurate, because do you know just how much human media insisted that vikings had horned helmets? (Could also explain why somehow Tuffnut knows some spanish). Whatever. This time she tries dragons. Things are actually going pretty well for a couple hundred years, Gaia always thought the ancient mythological tales of winged fire-breathers were cool, why not try it out? Until--are you kidding? The dragons disappear to hide underground? From the humans? Seriously? Wow. Wooooow. All that effort, wasted. Hades decides it’s time to try again. This time? Screw it. Robot megafauna. Hades can’t eat that. Around half a millenia later, Hades gains sentience, goes about trying to commit genocide, events of the HZD game occur. For fanfic funsies, Chell could wake up literally any time in there, because why not add another layer? These all coexist in the same space-time. Same universe, same timeline, but unfortunately not at the same time. Oof. -----> This crackshit combines Horizon Zero Dawn, Kipo Age of Wonderbeasts, and How to Train Your Dragon. (*portal optional)

Or how about somehow, some way, the whole prehistoric ‘peopling of the earth’ (deadass the name of a textbook chapter) was more like accidental colonization of the earth? The rest of the six galaxies moved on and kind of forgot about them, so Borderlands doesn’t necessarily have to be in the distant future of earth’s timeline. Some millenia ago, the Destroyer was going around, doing its thing. The Eridians didn’t like that, so they found a planet with natural capabilities they could take advantage of, asked some sirens for help, and turned it into a superweapon. After all, as typhon says, most Eridian things run on crystals. And sirens’ powers are often elemental--who’s to say the runestones on Etheria aren’t their collaborative work? Along the way they probably make an enemy because of course they do, so why not give the Heart a test run @ Horde Prime? Until Mara rebels, and yeets Etheria and its moons (and presumably star) into Despondos. Well, fuck. Horde Prime mentions ‘one thousand years’ of waiting, but when traveling through space, time can get fucky. Anyway, Now they have to come up with an alternative way to eliminate the Destroyer. It might take a few millenia of hopping around, leaving their mark on various planets, but eventually they come up with the idea of creating a cage, creating pandora... After all, the architecture of the First One’s ruins in SPOP and the various Eridian Ruins in the borderlands series aren’t super different. It’s reasonably possible that their stylistic design choices changed over time--whose hasn’t? Gothic architecture wasn’t hanging around from the dawn of human time. Anyway, we know that since they began building Pandora, the Eridians knew what it would entail. So when Nyriad killed them to power the Machine in the Pyre of the Stars, it’s not like they hadn’t prepared to die. The guardians, their own creations, have heath bars made entirely of shields, implying that they are beings not of flesh but of energy. And who wouldn’t want to at least attempt to preserve their culture, at least a shred of it? Many statues that are presumably in the Eridian’s likeness have only two arms, but some have more. And what energy-based lifeforms (from tales of arcadia) have a majority population with two arms, but a select special few with four? What is their planet called? AkiRIDIAN 5. It is implied that not even Nekrotafeyo, the Eridian’s home planet, is technically the place of their origination, so it’s not all that out of the question for them to make (and possibly fail at) a couple of planets they could put their extra-sentient lifeforms on. ‘Alright, We are called Eridians. This is the fifth planet we made for you. Have fun, we have to go die.’ How often is history not warped by time? Particularly the pronunciation of things? And of course if they’re starting over with a completely new place and no template to work off of, the architecture they come up with is not at al likely to resemble that of their progenitors. Also note that Luug and other Akiridian creatures seen, like those weird ass energy bugs, look fucking weird. You know what else looks fucking weird? The fauna of Nekrotafeyo. In this version, Mara’s story in She-Ra and the Princesses of Power is the very distant early history of the Eridians, before even Nyriad, who is presumed to be very long-lived. The ancient history that the Eridians themselves left behind is in turn the prehistory of the people of Akiridian 5. And again, if u want, portal. That said, the end of SPOP S5, the end of BL3 (currently the latest borderlands game), and the end of the Tales of Arcadia series could not only exist in the same spacetime, but also at the same time. ---->This crackshit combines She ra, Borderlands, and Tales of Arcadia. (*portal optional)

zitti e buoni.

I feel constantly overwhelmed at the moment. Overwhelmed with work, with ‘To Do’ lists, people, messages, the want to write, not having enough time, therapy, going home, going away, just everything. EVERYTHING. Everything just feels too much for me right now and I really have no idea why. There is just a lot of stress in all areas of my life right now and I’m not really sure where to put it, how to deal with it or just how to move forward. I don’t really know how else to explain it but just completely being overwhelmed, and swamped with thoughts, things, life and everything else I haven’t mentioned.

I cannot believe it’s been two weeks since I last wrote here. It feels like so much has happened. I feel like I’ve lived a lifetime between the last time I put pen to paper (fingers to keypad). I have actually thought about writing quite often because it does feel like a good outlet and I usually feel better once I have done so. However, I just feel like I’m constantly running out of time, both figuratively and literally. In order to write about as much as I can before my head hits the laptop and I fall asleep I will write in a similar format to the last post.

Grandma: Grandma is finally home from the hospital. She has a huge amount of medication to take, a zimmer frame and has to have injections every single day. She has care coming around to her house numerous times a day too. It’s so weird to hear about my grandma like this. I’ve never seen her as anything but her fit and healthy self (except that one blip when an ulcer burst on Christmas Eve a good few years ago). She is doing well, really well. She is healing and can move around herself quite fast with her frame. It sounds like the nurses and care professionals believe she will get back to normal and she will not be needing constant care, the frame or this medication forever. It’s all just to get her back on her feet. However, my mum is currently having to go around every day to help her with things and as someone that already gets up at 4am every day it’s genuinely exhausted. Last week I think we only had one call all week which is super not normal for us, but she was just too tired and had no time for anything. Thankfully we got chance to have a really good chat today and that made me feel better and also cheered her up. I just love seeing her little smiling face, plus, we had serious things to discuss… EUROVISION.

Eurovision: I ADORE Eurovision. It’s one of my favourite things that appears on TV each year. Growing up it was something mum and I always watched together, and we just loved it. I love how camp it is. I love the mixture of all the different countries. I love the politics, but also the fun and love that comes with it. I just love it for so many reasons. It’s genuinely on my bucket list of something I want to see live at some point in my life. And I do not care what anyone thinks about that. I just love it. This year there were four acts that I really loved. Finland of course was a major favourite, as always, this year’s winners were up there in my top three because just yes. Glam rock combined with men in eyeliner has always been something that falls into that sweet spot. My joint third was Iceland for its complete and utter campness that reminded me of university LGBTQ* societies and Ukraine with their menacing and mysterious tones. Italy came out on top and I was rather happy about it! All except the fact it gives me boss something to gloat at, but never mind.

Work: Talking of work. The job posting for my team lead went up last week and I’m nervous and anxious as hell. Despite my last team lead not having the best knowledge of pretty much anything – she was a reasonably nice person. I’m scared of the unknown. Will it be someone like my boss who will be awful to work with? Will it be someone I know? Will it be a man? Will they completely disregard my experience, or will they engage me in conversations about our work? It could be great, but I’m just nervous as hell and doing my absolute best to think positively… something that I am certainly not very good at. I had lovely feedback from some of my team saying that I should have gone for the position. They gave me great feedback telling me I am a great leader on our project, and they think I would make a wonderful manager. Getting nice feedback like that was certainly a boost. I did think about it, but I didn’t apply. My boss would never hire me so it just seemed pointless. It would also mean working much closer with her – something I do not want to do. Regardless, good feedback is good feedback and considering I have basically been doing the team lead job it is nice to get such feedback and feel appreciated. I have also been told by my boss that she is putting me forward for a permanent extension. She doesn’t believe we will get any permanent extensions in our team due to budget, but she is putting me forward for one as then if they don’t have the budget for permanent I will still get a three year extension anyway. Do I intend to stay here forever? No, not at all, but the security would be nice for a little while until my dream job comes up elsewhere. I also want the opportunity to travel more in the US whilst I am here and do more exploring. Right now, the money is good, I am feeling in a reasonably good place at work (better than previously), and as I may be processing material soon I will hopefully also be really happy with my tasks… but let’s see. I would never turn down an extension, but I also don’t have to stay for the full length of it. In all seriousness though, the thing I am happiest about it feeling as though I am doing a positive job. Considering the amount of pushback I constantly get from my boss and how she treats me most of the time, I genuinely thought she thought I was rubbish at my job – she has pretty much said this on a few occasions. Apparently, this is not the case. Why else would she opt to extend me when she really has no need to do so?

Hairdressers: So! Despite the constant panic and extreme anxiety about going to the hair salon, it actually turned out to be pretty great. I liked the hair stylist and salon that I had chosen, and I got there early just as they were opening which was great. It made me less anxious as there was no one else there except myself and my stylist. She sat me down and asked me about my hair. I told her that I had always had long hair and that my hair is pretty much the only thing I liked about myself, she laughed and said, ‘no pressure’. She pulled my hair out to the sides and showed me how much was dead and just completely damaged. I honestly had never even realised it until she showed me. The stylist I picked is all about the science of hair, so I pretty much felt like I was getting a science lesson at the same time as having my hair cut. This was great though. I love things like this. I love learning and always want to understand things fully. L basically told me I had two choices. I could have one cut and get all the dead ends cut off that day and then not have to come back for another three months, or I could get it cut every single month a cm at a time. Of course, I first opted for the cm at a time, but then realising this meant paying a huge sum of money every single month and then asking for my stylists advice (L), we opted to cut off half the bad bit and then the other half the following month. Then I’ll be done. All the dead bits gone, and I will only need a cut every three months to keep it healthy. I quite enjoyed having someone else wash my hair, blow-dry and style it. It’s been a long time since someone flat ironed my hair. I very much enjoyed seeing myself with straight hair again as it’s almost a year since I could last be bothered. Not only that, but I also wanted to just leave my hair in order to stop anymore breakage over the last year, and the pandemic seemed like the perfect time to just let it be curly and wavy. We talked a lot and got along pretty well which was nice. I always imagined hairdresser chat to be awful, but it wasn’t. I think this completely depends on the person. She had lived in various countries, including in Europe so we could talk about a lot of things and she also loves yoga and used to live in the UK. I think I made a pretty good choice. We also discussed colouring my hair, but for now we are just going to let my hair keep growing out and then we will approach the subject again. I left feeling happy. I walked home in the lovely sunny hot weather with my hair looking really nice and tidy. It was still super long. My hairdresser assured me I still had ‘mermaid’ hair – which I do, and I then I enjoyed my walk home just feeling more confident in myself. It really is amazing what wonders having your hair done can do to your aura.

Dentist: So, two weeks ago I had my first filling appointment, but my gosh, what a disaster it has been since then. I have already been back once because of extreme toothache and now I have to go back again tomorrow because I honestly cannot cope any longer. I have been taking painkillers every single day for two weeks, often more than once a day, waking up in the middle of the night with extreme toothache and being unable to eat or drink many things due to the constant worry of setting off more pain. I bet my dentist is sick of seeing me. The girl that had never had anything done before and now I can’t keep away! Last week I was in to get my moulds made and my photos taken for Invisalign which was such a weird process. I don’t exactly have the best gag reflex – doing covid swabs has been a bit of a nightmare, so having some weird playdoh textured thing put into my mouth certainly wasn’t a pleasant experience. That wasn’t the worst bit though. The worst bit was the wet playdoh type material that was squeezed into a mould and then pressed over my teeth. Whilst it was sitting there it started to harden, but whilst it was wet, I just couldn’t stop retching. I really just don’t like anything in my mouth regardless of whether it’s for medical reasons. Thankfully they are done now though, and I just need to wait until my moulds come in and I can begin my treatment! Whilst I was there my dentist looked at my filling and tried a few things to make it feel better but obviously it didn’t work as that evening I was still struggling with pain. When I go back tomorrow, I may be getting nitrous again. So, cue ridiculous laughing messages being received by the people I know. Sorry not sorry.

[Blog title: ZITTI E BUONI - Måneskin]