#and surprised how low my score was (60s)
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꩜ ﾟ˖ ENHYPEN AS COMMON TROPES
◟﹙ 🎧 ﹚enha ﹕oneshot ﹙ @woonova ﹚
ʚɞ ﾟ˖ written to a new kind of love by frou frou
ʚɞ ﾟ˖ genre fluff
ʚɞ ﾟ˖ synopsis relationships with the enhypen members portrayed by common tropes
ʚɞ ﾟ˖ warning ....
ʚɞ ﾟ˖ wc 1.6k
rin's notes ! this is my first time writing something like this and also my longest work, i hope you like it!!
— tumblr’s algorithm works best with reblogging so plz consider reblogging and liking my posts ! —
✧ L.HS | (희승)
⋆ brothers bestfriend !
you had never payed any extra attention to any of your brothers friends, finding them quite noisy and annoying. but everything changed when your brother came home one day with the usual loud laughs and playful actions surrounding him and his group of friends, and you took this as a sign to pack up all your supplies and return to your room - deciding to finish your homework at a later time. you stayed quiet as they entered the family room, scanning over every familiar face as their greeting simultaneously arrived at your ears, until you got stuck on an unknown visual, among the noisy group.
fluffy dark coloured hair, covering bright doe eyes and pretty pink lips that instantly pulled up into a even prettier smile, when sharing introductions, made you feel as if you were on cloud nine, had your brother always been friends with pretty boys like this? maybe you would have to start paying more attention to the company your brother kept around him although, you were sure only one boy would end up taking your attention.
✦ P.JS | (제이)
⋆ best friends to lovers !
you and jay had always been there for each other, it didnt matter if he had a club meeting on the same day of your volleyball match or if you were busy with practices on the day of his fashion club's runway show, you were always there waiting for the other. so imagine how you were feeling now, thoughts of jay's disappointed face as you explained to him that you couldnt miss another day of practise - which would lead to you missing his most important show of the year, clouded your mind. the thought made you sick to your stomach, you didnt want to tell him, you couldn't.
so you didnt and instead opted for the option of going in early on a weekend to complete your full 4 hours of practise before rushing to the shows venue without even bothering to change out of your uniform. but in the end it was all worth it, your 15 minute run with sore legs, waking up at 8 instead of 10 on a saturday and your now damp hair filled with sweat, because you were able to catch the gleaming smile of your best friend as he bowed at the end of his show, proud of his work. and his smile grew brighter, deep brown eyes lighting up at the sight of you clapping in union with the crowd. and at this sight you knew it was definitely worth it.
✧ S.JY | (재윤)
⋆ tutor x classmate !
everyone knew you were failing physics, thanks to your teacher unregretably calling out your score with a disappointed expression and tone of voice. it was safe to say you held a secured spot within the single digits, it was that bad. you were ashamed to admit how bad it had gotten when you locked eyes with the class' top student, jake who looked at you in shock, probably surprised one could even get a grade that low. and you returned that same shocked expression when he later offered to tutor you for your upcoming exams, his bright expression contrasting with yours greatly.
it wasnt that bad, you'll admit. jake was a pretty good teacher and in turn you tried your best to be a good listener, which, admittedly wasnt hard as jake often gave information in fun and interactive ways, which had you reciting formulas in a few days. he was also kind, well kind enough not to mention your infamous grade in the last examinations as the others did, often bringing it up as a joke or a sly comment, instead he aimed to help you as much as he could. and when your average leveled up to a 60% the progress almost made you cry tears of joy, and you figured it wouldn't hurt to have a few more sessions. it also wouldn't hurt to sit beside a pretty boy for 2 hours after school everyday, would it?
✦ P.SH | (성훈)
⋆ rivals to lovers !
you and sunghoon had been rivals since childhood. it was always about who could run the fastest, score the highest, or surround themselves with the most friends. it continued all the way through middle school peaking at the start for your respective figure skating careers. now it was all about who could jump the highest, have the better performance, and collect the most fans. so imagine your surprise when you were both informed you would be given a spot in the annual club expo as a duo piece.
your conversations were mainly filled with sly remarks and annoyed expressions, but this one was different. it consisted of inaudible murmurs and shy expressions as you went over the overly romantic moves, of your collab item. you could feel his warm hands on your waist as he spun you, and when he pulled you closer with that annoying smirk, you knew it wouldn't take long for this rivalry to end.
✧ K.SN | (선우)
⋆ grumpy x sunshine !
if given the oppurtunity you would describe sunoo as seemingly the happiest person alive and if given the opportunity you were sure he would describe you as seemingly the grumpiest person alive. sunoo was sure he had never seen you smile in all his years sitting at your shared desk. no matter what you always held a blank expression, never distracted form the tasks you seem to always be completing. he had made the move to talk to you on several occasions, which always ended in you shutting him down before he even got his full sentence out, returning to your work as if you didnt just crush his spirit - but he would never show that. so today he tried a different approach.
you almost got away from the peppy boy, who had been waiting for you to exit the almost empty classroom - having already completed his quiz and had been sent out by the teacher as a precaution for cheating. you made the move to pass by him, but he didnt let you holding on to your arm with a firm grip, and inviting you out with a smile so bright you were sure you would become blind if stared at it any longer. albeit, you didnt really have a choice so you went along with him, having sunoo lead you out the school gates and into the best night you've ever experienced in your life. you couldnt help but let a small smile escape your blank exterior and it only grew by the second after hearing sunoo gush at how much he loved your dimples that only show up with your pretty smile.
✦ Y.JW | (정원)
⋆ fake dating !
yang jungwon was an enigma to you, he was a quiet studios boy who never seemed to be the cause or center of any issue and was always to himself. so when this mysterious boy came up to you, greeting you with a big smile and an almost bone crushing hug, desperately pleading with you through hushed whispers to help him with his plan, you found it hard to say no. so you stood beside jungwon and watched as he apologized to the poor girl who had asked him out just a few minutes earlier, as he pretendedly wrapped a confident arm around you. the girl who had been recently hanging on jungwon's every word turned to you with this action, eyes pleading for a confirmation, to which you nodded hoping you didnt spoil this plan by showing your slight hesitation.
sighs of relief were released and an obvious distance was placed between you both as soon as his admirer disappeared behind the corner. it was obvious he was nervous as he explained that he just just trying to get the girl off his back and not knowing how to say no, he quickly made up this plan to throw her off. you watched him with amusement as he continued to let out apologies disguised as low murmurs, and that same amusement was evident as you reminisced on your unexpected meeting a few hours later, hoping you would meet again under different circumstances. or not. you didnt really mind.
✧ N.RK | (りき)
⋆ enemies to lovers !
niki was a pain in the butt. there was never a calm moment with him, peaceful moods being ruined by his nonstop nagging and teasing. it was as if he personally studied every way he could upset you, carrying out his test everyday in the form of pranks and nasty comments. at first you were confused, you had no clue what you had done to make niki act this way towards you, and over the years the confusion faded and anger arose within you growing everytime you viewed that smug expression on his face, oh how you just wanted to wipe it off. with your fist. and it finally happened, though not in the way you hoped, it still happened and that was all that mattered.
it was a bad morning for you the dark circles under eyes served as proof, and unfortunately it was also the perfect bait for niki's sly comments. but you werent in the mood and you were sure niki realized that after his fifth try to get a reaction out of you, of course failing just like his previous attempts. and when he opened his mouth for a sixth time you were surprised to hear a genuine question falling from his lips, slowly looking up to find his sharp eyes looking at you concern swimming in the deep brown colour. you werent sure what shifted that day in your relationship, but you were sure it could only get better from here.
© https://...woonova | 2023
#🖇 . ࣪ my works ݁!⠀͡꒱#hyfenet#k labels#enhypen#enhypen fanfiction#enhypen fluff#enhypen headcanons#enhypen imagines#enhypen ff#enha x reader#enhypen heeseung#enhypen jay#enhypen jake#enhypen sunghoon#enhypen sunoo#enhypen jungwon#enhypen niki#enha scenarios
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My Old Nick hc's, interpretation, analysis, and other odd bits PT.2
Part 1
I really did not expect to have this much to say about him but I'm also not surprised
Read the previous part because I'll be building off the first one here
Only TW is broken bones and lightish body horror but then again its just kinda bleak
Playing off the hc that Nick its literally just slowly rotting away, thats why i typically draw him with like frost bite wounds, and for a reason why his physical condition fluctuates every time i draw him is that his physical condition and power is directly related to how popular/ feared/ believed in (yes i am aware of the irony of having his power be tied to popularity considering that no-one besides me and like 2 other people give a shit about him, i think its funny)
I'll flesh the whole popularity=power thing later as per usual
Nick is physically very weak and frail and if it weren't for his magic coughing on him could probably kill him tbh
His bones are just disturbingly frail and I imagine as a bit of a twist on like the question of "how would Santa get in if you didn't have a chimney?" And I was like what if Nicks just broke his own bones to get into places, like horribly twisting and and breaking his body to get to you (Kinda played around with this idea in Kidnapping PSA, but would love to go harder with it in the future)
Nick is also severely underweight for his height of 7ft, and not for his own doing he just can't put on much weight. He hates how skinny and physically weak he is without magic.
His clothes work to make him look much larger and imposing than he is, like how prey a animals stance up to make themselves scarier to predators
He has an abnormally low body temperature, he is physically cold to the touch, he's very temperature sensitive and will pass out if it goes above 60°
You just know his skins dry as hell....
Imperceptibly shivers, very minor and you can't really see it if he's moving around but if he's just sitting down reading you can see it; he really hates it because it makes doing anything with very fine detail very hard
Cannot image Nick many- if any friends
and his ex-husband doesn't count, like he might have business partners but those aren't people you see outside of a meeting or a business dinner. Like the only person who really tolerates him like that is Merasmus.
There divorce was honestly pretty amicable, don't mean Nick doesn't regret it, because i don't think he's gonna find another person who tolerates him like that again
He's probably like super lonely but will never ever emit to that, but like with most things you can tell...
Nick does not shut the fuck up- like at all. He will have nothing to say, but he sure will just keep saying words.
Very much overshares like so often, you could just be taking his order at the register and he will be on about how much he misses his ex for like 30 minutes and you just have to awkwardly cut him off and ask if he wants ketchup or not
Oh speaking of ordering food, Nick totally heckles any poor waiter or cashier that have the misfortune of encountering him. He wants to speak to your manger right now.
He is just so inconceivably petty... The slightest disrespect to him and he's doing some ludicrous shit to you. Scuff his shoes? he's signing you up for the military. Spill your drink on him? He's ruining your credit score.
I image the lay out and construction of his mansion is just strange, a majority of it is under ground to avoid the arctic winds and prevent damage. But the internal lay out is this Winchester like maze, halls that lead to nothing, tall narrow stares into darkness, no windows, empty useless rooms that no-one has entered in over century- maybe even forgotten. I think even he gets lost some times, know one really knows why he just keeps building and adding on, but he keeps just doing it.
Someone smarter than me can probably write up some dissertation/ comparison about how Sarah Winchester kept building out of guilt and fear of the spirits of the people who where killed by her family's weapons.
He can play piano quite well but he just hasn't played in a while...
He has the vibe of that horribly toxic theater kid you knew from high-school who makes that time they got lead role in a play there whole personality
Gets super red in the face for like any reason, angry? red. embarrassed? red. Bashful? red. Drunk? red. its so funny and he probably gets so embarrassed about it
Im going to assume you read through this and the first part so thank you for reading my stupid ramblings, here have this as a reward.
-> Playlist
have some old silly doodles i don't think ive posted here
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A Royal County Day
Today was our first day of golf and what a day it was! RCD lived up to all expectations. The course was very challenging and everything you would expect from a links course of it’s reputation. Some things I found particularly surprised by was how fast and rolling the greens were and how some of the tougher holes had domed shaped greens that gave you very little landing area for your approach shots. The front nine of RCD has had endless articles written about it as being the best nine holes of golf ever designed. I’m not a golf expert but from my point of view it was a beautifully difficult test of golf!!
We had outstanding caddies, Patrick and Lenny. They knew the course well and one was a story teller and the other offered the inside gossip of the club. The course itself had huge heathered mounds that were flowering with a bright yellow type of gorse which made the scenery even the more dynamic. The deep blue sea running alone side the course, the mountains of Mourne forming a striking background and the variety of greens of the golf course itself sprinkled with the brown sand traps and the mounds of bright yellow gorse. Truly picturesque.
On the tenth hole, I thought our golf trip was going to come to a quick end as I scaled the side of huge green side mound or should a say almost a cliff, which was only suitable territory for a mountain goat, to attempt to deliver a spectacularly executed flop shot from a ball buried knee deep in the heather. I know, brilliant idea! After a swing and advancing the ball three feet further down the side of the mound. I made a second attempt and that was one attempt too many as I temporarily lost my balance and started to go over backwards but being the finely tuned athlete I am...not... I managed to catch myself and gingerly scaled down the mound of my hands, knees and feet!! That was Kim’s first I told you so moment of the trip! I hate when she’s right!!!
One of the interesting bits of info we found out during the round was that Eli and Peyton Manning had bought the five star hotel located a block or two away from the course. We were unable to get a room there because it was going through a major renovation which the Mannings are, of course, funding.
Some stats from the first round. I will being keeping a running total throughout the trip: (Kim prefers keeping hers to herself:-)
Score 97
Yardage Played - 6297
Lost Balls - 2
No. of Pars, Birdies, Eagles - 3 pars (I wouldn’t dare share the number of bogeys, double bogeys and worse:-) Remember I’m an 18 hdcp!
Steps - 14,389
Miles Walked - 6.2
Green Fee - $375
Caddie Fee - 60 pounds plus tax (These last two stats are a little tacky but I know you’re curious on what it’s going to cost you when you take your Irish Golf Vacation!!)
After the round, Kim and I headed to Quinn’s, a well known pub in Newcastle for a pint or two of Guinness and bar food! The atmosphere was what you would expect from a weathered old Irish pub. - Great vibe, good food and the friendliest people you’ll find anywhere!
Then back to The Briers for our last night stay before moving on to Portstewart. I think we’re close to shaking the jet lag which means tomorrow we’ll probably go low at the next course we play, Ardglass Golf Club. BTW Low means lower than the 97 I shot today!
Stay tuned!!
gb
PS - The pictures posted just don’t capture how rolling and massive some of the mounds are but they still give you an idea of the experience.
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Don't be suspicious: Group Stealth Checks in Critical Role - Mighty Nein edition!
Have you read this post? If not, I recommend at least glancing at it before looking at this one, because I am not going to re-explain everything I'm doing here.
But to quickly summarize for those of you who do not want to click the link: this is the second part of a our part series looking at group stealth checks [stealth checks made by four or more party members] in critical role, this time focusing on the Mighty Nein. Everything in the series will be tagged #don't-be-suspicious and #cr-stats for your convenience. All charts and graphs are mine, but a lot of the data was gathered by @critrolestats.
Got it? Good, then let's begin!
Over the course of the campaign and the Mighty Nein Reunited two-shot, the Mighty Nein made a grand total of 100 group stealth checks, with 99 of them being in the main campaign. Nice! Their overall average is 19.96291.
Let's see how each individual party member did, shall we?
You will note here that Molly and Kingsley are grouped together. This is because they use the same base stats, and also because I didn't want to make a new column on my chart. Again, it's of no surprise that the party's rogue has the highest score, and Molly/Kingsley has the lowest due to having the smallest sample size with most of those samples at a very low level. In fact, none of the purple tiefling's checks had Pass Without Trace on.
Speaking of, here's how often they cast Pass Without Trace.
A beautifully round number, a perfect 60/40 split! So it's important to keep in mind moving forward that they more frequently didn't cast it.
Now, let's see the comparative averages for when they did and didn't cast it. Can we get a perfect 10 point difference?
Not quite! It's very close though.
And now it is time to see how many people participated in these group stealth checks.
Unlike Vox Machina, they never quite reached having 8 or 9 participants in a check, and also unlike Vox Machina, their most frequent number of participants is the highest!
But this doesn't mean that they didn't have guests! In fact, they had 14 group stealth checks with guests present, 3 of them with more than one guest! They simply didn't exceed the 7 participants as this was during the arc where half the party was kidnapped.
The Mighty Nein had a total of 6 guests participate in a group stealth check, which is all of their guests! Yes, all of them! What was that strange splatting sound I just heard? Anyway, let's see all of their individual averages!
Pretty solid averages! Once more it is worth noting that some of these rolls had Pass Without Trace, although most did not.
And with that, the Mighty Nein's checks are done, so please stay tuned for the Bells Hells edition and the final post which will compare all three campaigns, all of which you can find under #don't-be-suspicious or #cr-stats on my blog.
#don't be suspicious#critical role#cr stats#critical role stats#mighty nein#the mighty nein#again all of these should have ID in ALT text#if theres a problem please feel free to notify me
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My (now more scientific) Doctor Who series ranking:
If there’s one thing I love more than Doctor Who, it’s data analysis! Just quickly, how I did this was I looked at my full episode ranking, added up the scores of each Series 1 episode and divided that by the number of episodes. Then I repeated that for each series. Here are my findings, in reverse order of preference:
No surprises that Flux comes in last place, since I lumped the whole series into one story and dumped it second from the bottom of the ranking (just above The Timeless Children). Flux comes in 12th place with an average episode rank of 150/151.
Next up is Series 11, again not very surprising. Series 11 comes in 11th place (fittingly), with an average episode rank of 126/151. This means the average episode in this series is of the same quality as Revolution Of The Daleks.
Series 7 is next, again no change from my non-scientific ranking. Series 7 comes in 10th place, with an average episode rank of 108/151, meaning the average episode in this series is of the same quality as School Reunion.
Next up is Series 12 in 9th place, with an average episode ranking of 102/151, meaning the average episode in this series is of the same quality as Army Of Ghosts.
The first surprise was Series 10 falling so low – I know a lot of people love it, and maybe I got caught up in the hype. I blame ‘Extremis’… not for hyping me up, just for being really bad. Series 10 comes in 8th place, with an average episode rank of 85/151, meaning the average episode in this series is of the same quality as Hide.
Now for the first of the RTD era, Series 2, which is not too surprising. Series 2 comes in 7th place, with an average episode rank of 77/151, meaning the average episode in this series is of the same quality as Spyfall Pt. 2.
This next one was a bit of a surprise, as I usually rank it a bit lower. Beating Series 2 by a margin of only 3 points, Series 6 (aptly) comes in 6th place, with an average episode rank of 74/151, meaning the average episode in this series is of the same quality as Fugitive Of The Judoon. When you put it like that, it doesn’t sound so impressive…
Into the top 5 now, Series 8 is next up, again beating its predecessor by only 3 points. Series 8 comes in 5th place, with an average episode rank of 71/151, meaning the average episode in this series is of the same quality as The Sontaran Stratagem/ The Poison Sky.
In a shock upset, there’s a joint ranking between Series 5 & Series 9. This is especially strange as I usually rank Series 5 as second from the top, while Series 9 languishes in the middle with the other Capaldi series. If I had more time, I’d check my maths. Series 5 & 9 come in joint 4th place, with an average episode rank of 60/151, meaning the average episode in this series is of the same quality as The Curse Of The Black Spot.
Beating the last two by a single point(!), Series 1 comes next. Series 1 comes in 3rd place, with an average episode rank of 59/151, meaning the average episode in this series is of the same quality as The Girl Who Died/ The Woman Who Lived.
In second place is Series 4, one of the usual favourites. Series 4 comes in 2nd place, with an average episode rank of 51/151, meaning the average episode in this series is of the same quality as The Girl Who Waited.
And finally, as per my original series ranking, with a clear margin for victory comes my absolute favourite: Series 3. Sanity has been restored. Series 3 comes in 1st place, with an average episode rank of 37/151, meaning the average episode in this series is of the same quality as Listen.
I really hope that was interesting.
#my post#doctor who#ranking#russell t davies#steven moffat#chris chibnall#Christopher Eccleston#david tennant#matt smith#peter capaldi#Jodie Whittaker#ncuti gatwa#doctor who series 1#doctor who series 2#doctor who series 3#doctor who series 4#doctor who series 5#doctor who series 6#doctor who series 7#doctor who series 8#doctor who series 9#doctor who series 10#doctor who series 11#doctor who series 12#doctor who series 13
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BSA humbled me.
For the last 9 months, I felt nothing but shame. Despite the achievements that I post on my social media, I am nothing but a fraud.
Writing this letter while ugly crying is truly such a surprise for me. I thought I'll excel here. I thought this would come off as natural to me. I CHOSE to be here. I PRAYED to be here. But then why is it hurting me this much? Why am suffering so damn much? Maybe I became too confident. Maybe I'm not really smart, I'm just *masipag* and that's it. I don't have the brains to survive in this program. Hell, 2nd semester and I'm already failing. 1st sem wasn't a breeze, though. I remember not having the energy to even wake up in the morning to attend classes. I felt doomed. It wasn't like when I was still in UB, where I felt excited to go to school. But here in DLSL? I dreaded it. There were moments where I could rather die than attend Confras and Finacre. The irony is, this institution was my dream school. This course was my dream course. I prayed for this. I really did. At 13, all I can think about is "De La Salle Lipa". I took pride in being a "Lasallian" and a "BSA student" just for those two to be the things that I hated most about myself. I couldn't see myself doing this for another 3 years. Hell, I just want this to be over with. It's so hard. I don't know what I'm doing wrong. Am I dumb? Am I really *that* dumb? Or is it the course? Is it the school? Is it the professor? Is it the lack of support system? Or is it just me?
Or maybe because I kept comparing DLSL with UB? Is it because I miss UB? I miss my home? It's just so weird. I hated UB with my whole guts but now I crave it. I wish I could just crawl back into it and cry and let the ambiance hug me and nurture me and tell me its okay. Is it my friends? Do I miss them? I mean, I have friends in DLSL but it isn't really a factor that I wanna even consider. Is it the competition? Fuck, it's like competing with 10000x Roberts in here. It is physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually draining to even breathe in here. I don't like it here anymore. I wanna go home. But I'm scared of the judgment. I don't wanna be labeled as a failure.
I've been crying a lot for the past few weeks. I don't know if it's because of my period or because of my grades- could be both though. It's my first time experiencing scoring 29/60 in an exam. A fucking exam. And my quizzes are flunking out too. A 32/45 on a quiz? Fuck that. Fuck me. Fuck everything. Why is it so hard to be just as good as I was in high school? I know I'm not dumb. I'm not stupid. I may have gotten a bit lazy, but that couldn't have been it. I'm not dumb. It hurts how I have to repeat that multiple times a day. I'm so dumb. I'm so fucking dumb I hate myself.
I remember crying about not having 1 point to be considered "With Highest Honors", and now look at where I am. I'm begging to pass. *Pass*. All that in one semester. Last semester, I had second honors. Wow, right? I even assured myself that I might just survive in this program, that I might even do better than I thought I would. But fuck that. I'm failing. Do you even understand how embarassing that is? From being the top in your class, to being a mid in class? I'm just pretending that I have my shit together, but in reality, I do not.
I've reached a new low, where I wish I could just wake up and I'm 40 years old and I'm suddenly halfway through life and I only have a few years left until I die. Yes. That's a new low. I thought that the worst it could be is not seeing yourself 5-10 years from now. Turns out it could be worse. Sometimes, I find myself hoping that I'll get sick, or I could get caught in the accident so I can be confined and finally have the time to rest. Yes, it was that bad. For the first time in years, I silently prayed that I could seriously just die. Come on, let's end it. What's the point? It was that bad. I need help more than ever but I don't know how to ask for it. Hell, I don't even know what to do right now.
No, it wasn't because of the heavy workload. It was more of the emotional and mental fatigue. Unlike in UB where I'm bombarded with tasks, here you are bombarded with self-hatred, and jealousy, and confusion, and 99% of the time, I don't know what I'm doing. I'm just good at acting like I know what I'm doing.
It was painful to wake up every morning, realizing what the day is gonna be. I hated how I hated where I am right now. I know I should be grateful and stuff, but honestly, I don't wanna lie to myself right now. I hate it. I fucking hate it. Why does it have to be so hard? I wish I had a single answer to any of these questions that I have in my head. I wish I could answer even just one of them.
No, I don't regret being in accountancy. I don't regret choosing ABM. I don't regret going to DLSL. I don't regret not staying in UB even if I had the chance. Because I know that I tried. What I would regret more is if I didn't try. As much as I love to take Psychology, I just don't see myself pursuing that long-term. However, I also do not see myself pursuing accountancy. So why am I still here? I don't know. Is it the ego? Probably. I'd probably just transfer to UB if shit goes south here in DLSL. Sure, I'll miss JPIA and PFC, but it's better than studying AIS and losing a scholarship. In UB, I could still try and apply for scholarship. I might lose the scholarship for 2nd year, but hopefully, I'll be a full scholar by 3rd year to 4th year- less financial burden to my parents. It just sucks that I have to here in this position right now. It sucks. Everything sucks. Just kill me at this point.
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Quantic Gamer Type for sachi: BOUNTY HUNTER
Gamer Type Motto: "High-Octane, Solo World Exploration."
Your primary (dominant) player type is the Bounty Hunter.
Bounty Hunters are solo, action-oriented explorers who want game worlds that they can make their own through customization and discovery. They also enjoy power progression and unleashing mayhem.
Spontaneous, Independent, Deeply Immersed, and Creative
Your profile consists of your percentile rank across a broad range of gaming motivations. Your scores are based on how strong your motivations are relative to other gamers. In this customized report, we’ll explain how to interpret these scores and what motivations we measured.
The Action Components (55%)
Gamers with high Action scores are aggressive and like to jump in the fray and be surrounded by dramatic visuals and effects. Gamers with low Action scores prefer slower-paced games with calmer settings.
Destruction (60%): Gamers who score high on this component are agents of chaos and destruction. They love having many tools at their disposal to blow things up and cause relentless mayhem. They enjoy games with lots of guns and explosives. They gravitate towards titles like Call of Duty and Battlefield. And if they accidentally find themselves in games like The Sims, they are the ones who figure out innovative ways to get their Sims killed.
Excitement (49%): Gamers who score high on this component enjoy games that are fast-paced, intense, and provide a constant adrenaline rush. They want to be surprised. They want gameplay that is full of action and thrills, and rewards them for rapid reaction times. While this style of gameplay can be found in first-person shooters like Halo, it can also be found in games like Street Fighter and Injustice, as well as energetic platformers like BIT.TRIP RUNNER.
The Social Components (34%)
Gamers with high Social scores enjoy interacting with other players, often regardless of whether they are collaborating or competing with them. Gamers with low Social scores prefer solo gaming experiences where they can be independent.
Competition (28%): Gamers who score high on this component enjoy competing with other players, often in duels, matches, or team-vs-team scenarios. Competitive gameplay can be found in titles like Starcraft, League of Legends, or the PvP Battlegrounds in World of Warcraft. But competition isn’t always overtly combative; competitive players may care about being acknowledged as the best healer in a guild, or having a high ranking/level on a Facebook farming game relative to their friends.
Community (45%): Gamers who score high on Community enjoy socializing and collaborating with other people while gaming. They like chatting and grouping up with other players. This might be playing Portal 2 with a friend, playing Mario Kart at a party, or being part of a large guild/clan in an online game. They enjoy being part of a team working towards a common goal. For them, games are an integral part of maintaining their social network.
The Mastery Components (7%)
Gamers with high Mastery scores like challenging gaming experiences with strategic depth and complexity. Gamers with low Mastery scores enjoy being spontaneous in games and prefer games that are accessible and forgiving when mistakes are made.
Challenge (12%): Gamers who score high on Challenge enjoy playing games that rely heavily on skill and ability. They are persistent and take the time to practice and hone their gameplay so they can take on the most difficult missions and bosses that the game can offer. These gamers play at the highest difficulty settings and don’t mind failing missions repeatedly in games like Dark Souls because they know it’s the only way they’ll master the game. They want gameplay that constantly challenges them.
Strategy (11%): Gamers who score high on this component enjoy games that require careful decision-making and planning. They like to think through their options and likely outcomes. These may be decisions related to balancing resources and competing goals, managing foreign diplomacy, or finding optimal long-term strategies. They tend to enjoy both the tactical combat in games like XCOM or Fire Emblem, as well as seeing their carefully-devised plans come to fruition in games like Civilization, Cities: Skylines, or Europa Universalis.
The Achievement Components (54%)
Gamers with high Achievement scores are driven to accrue power, rare items, and collectibles, even if this means grinding for a while. Gamers with low Achievement scores have a relaxed attitude towards in-game achievements and don’t worry too much about their scores or progress in the game.46%46%62%62%020406080100CompletionPower
Completion (46%): Gamers with high Completion scores want to finish everything the game has to offer. They try to complete every mission, find every collectible, and discover every hidden location. For some players, this may mean completing every listed achievement or unlocking every possible character/move in a game. For gamers who score high on Design, this may mean collecting costumes and mounts in games like World of Warcraft.
Power (62%): Gamers who score high on this component strive for power in the context of the game world. They want to become as powerful as possible, seeking out the tools and equipment needed to make this happen. In RPGs and action games, this may mean maxing stats or acquiring the most powerful weapons or artifacts. Power and Completion often go hand in hand, but some players enjoy collecting cosmetic items without caring about power, and some players prefer attaining power through strategic optimization rather than grinding.
The Creativity Components (70%)
Gamers with high Creativity scores are constantly experimenting with their game worlds and tailoring them with their own designs and customizations. Gamers with low Creativity scores are more practical in their gaming style and accept their game worlds as they are.55%55%75%75%020406080100DiscoveryDesign
Discovery (55%): Gamers who score high on Discovery are constantly asking “What if?” For them, game worlds are fascinating contraptions to open up and tinker with. In an MMO, they might swim out to the edge of the ocean to see what happens. In MineCraft, they might experiment with whether crafting outcomes differ by the time of day or proximity to zombies. They “play” games in the broadest sense of the word, often in ways not intended or imagined by the game’s developers.
Design (75%): Gamers who score high on this component want to actively express their individuality in the game worlds they find themselves in. In games like Mass Effect, they put a lot of time and effort in the character creation process. In city-building games or space strategy games, they take the time to design and customize exactly how their city or spaceships look. To this end, they prefer games that provide the tools and assets necessary to make this possible and easy to do.
The Immersion Components (93%)
Gamers with high Immersion scores want games with interesting narratives, characters, and settings so they can be deeply immersed in the alternate worlds created by games. Gamers with low Immersion scores are more grounded in the gameplay mechanics and care less about the narrative experiences that games offer.92%92%89%89%020406080100FantasyStory
Fantasy (92%): Gamers who score high on Fantasy want their gaming experiences to allow them to become someone else, somewhere else. They enjoy the sense of being immersed in an alter ego in a believable alternate world, and enjoy exploring a game world just for the sake of exploring it. These gamers enjoy games like Skyrim, Fallout, and Mass Effect for their fully imagined alternate settings.
Story (89%): Gamers who score high on Story want games with elaborate campaign storylines and a cast of multidimensional characters with interesting back-stories and personalities. They take the time to delve into the back-stories of characters in games like Dragon Age and Mass Effect, and enjoy the elaborate and thoughtful narratives in games like The Last of Us and BioShock. Gamers who score low on Story tend to find dialogue and quest descriptions to be distracting and skip through them if possible.
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Personality on the Internet: Unit Twelve
Personality, Tuesday August 2nd
My intention of this journal article is to reflect on personality tests.
Have you ever taken a personality test? Not the superficial online personality tests, but the real Big Five Personality Test? Click that link and try it out not if you haven’t.
First, I want to reflect on online personality tests you see on our beloved Buzzfeed, or Facebook. They typically ask questions like “Choose an image that reflects, and we will tell you about your personality” and they are beach photos or rainforest trails. I learned that these types of tests aren’t really all that accurate. They are most for entertainment and grouping people into a certain type of group, like Harry Potter houses.
They also aren’t based on scientific research or other people that take the test too.
I have taken a personality course before, and I learned a lot out these types of personality quizzes. While taking them, individuals are influenced by the Barnum effect. Basically, when individuals are presented with information, true or false, they have the tendency to believe it is true and make connections to their lives. It’s really easy to do this with the results from personality quizzes.
If you wanted to get a more accurate result about your personality type, try The Big Five Personality Test. Instead of asking you to pick from images or hypothetical situations, it rather asks you how well it describes you, on a 5-point scale of very inaccurate, neutral, or very accurate. Rather than having a set answer, there is a range of options. For example, “I feel comfortable around people”
In the end, the result of this test explains how they would rate your personality in five different categories: extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, neuroticism, and openness. The results come from a pool of thousands of other individuals who also took the test, and values are places on a continuum.
In this course, we were asked to take two personality tests and my results both concluded I was high in each category besides neuroticism. My results from the “Big Five Personality Test” indicated that I scored high on Openness (98%), Conscientiousness (73%), Extraversion (73%), Agreeableness (98%), and low in Neuroticism (25%).
Before I reflect on my results, I want to quickly share an article that explains what each of the personality traits mean. Check it out here!
I would agree with most of my scores, but I am surprised that my values are close to the extremes of each. I think I would rate myself lower on conscientiousness because my life isn’t completely structured and organized. Sometimes I have a hard time completing tasks and motivating myself to do homework. Also, I would rate myself lower on extraversion, maybe 50-60% because I get overwhelmed by too much social stimulation and I appreciate times when I am alone. Also, I find that I am most creative when I can be comfortable in my own space.
I think that introverts should be more appreciated! Watch Susan Cain’s Ted Talk “The power of Introverts” She brings up a lot of good points that I don’t think a lot of people realize. There should be a balance between extravert and introverts, especially in society and the work force. I like the point Susan Cain makes that, without introverts, the world would be at a loss for creativity and leadership.
Society pushes the idea that people should always be social and active, but really, I think spending time in calmer places with low stimulation is beneficial.
To conclude, I think everyone can benefit from taking a personality test and it is fun to learn more about yourself. With that in mind, if something doesn’t match up in the results that’s okay to not take it as a reflection of your personality. Also, ratings can be bad or negative, and I think everyone would benefit from a balance of both extremes.
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Anime I Watched This Summer
Summer 2020 has officially come to a close. It’s fall in Animal Crossing and the trees are beginning to turn. Much like quarantine, I spent a lot of my free time watching anime when I wasn’t stressing over starting college. Now that the school year has begun, I thought it would be nice to reflect on everything I’ve watched!
These Anime were seen between 6/14 - 8/31 (my Birthday!) and are listed in chronological order.
They will be rated on a 1-10 scale; 1 meaning complete garbage, 10 meaning masterpiece. I will offer my thoughts on what I did/didn't like about each show!
1. Bakemono no Ko - 8/10
This was such a great way to start out the summer! I love the dynamic between Kumatetsu and Ren. Overall its a little cliche, but it’s also very wholesome. It’s by the same studio that made Wolf Children (which I loved!). so I knew it was going to be good. My favorite aspect of this movie was its backgrounds and world building!
2. Wan Sheng Jie - 9/10
Oh my gosh! I know that this is technically a donghua, but its on MAL, so it counts. This show quickly became my favorite slice of life of all time. I adore the art style and all of the characters. The comedy, plot, and design blends so well together. Everything in Wan Sheng Jie feels warm and comfy. It’s also confirmed for a second season! After seeing its cliff hanger ending, I’m so anxious for what comes next!
3. Dororo - 7/10
I’ll be honest, I’m a sucker for studio MAPPA. I really liked the historical aspects of Dororo. From the outfits to the ways characters behave, its grounded in the constraints of feudal Japan. I would have given this show a higher score if it was a little more grounded in science. I feel like more time should’ve been given to the demons and antagonists of the show. Our MC was so over powered, which made the final fights of the series more lack-luster. I think its less of the anime’s fault and more because the original source material is from the 60s. That being said, I loved this show! It was cute and action packed. Though it isn’t perfect, it holds its own.
4. Bungou Stray Dogs - 5/10
The concepts and action are misconstrued in Bungou Stary Dogs. This is one of those shows that I chose to watch because it was all over Tumblr. The powers themselves are cool, but I can’t understand why this series is so praised. At it’s core its predictable and basic. The fights seemed low stakes and low energy. None of the humor really felt like it belonged. It tried too hard to be something it isn’t. I don’t think I’ll watch beyond this first season.
5. Kami no Tou - 4.5/10
First off, fuck Rachel, me and my homies hate Rachel. I really really had high hopes for Tower of God. It paves the way for Webtoon adaptations in the future. Its such a shame that this adaptation SUCKED. I have not read the source material, I’m going solely based on the anime. It wasn’t good? It was horrible. I hate Bam, I hate Rachel. I think all the characters expect Rak were awful. Please don’t make a season 2. Please. If you’re interesting in Tower of God, just read the webtoon.
6. Gekkan Shoujo Nozaki-kun - 7/10
Shoujo anime is my guilty pleasure. I especially liked the way Gekkan Shoujo tackled Sakura and Nozaki’s relationship. Besides just the main characters, even the side characters were enjoyable! It was a fun and creative show. My only complaint is how dense Nozaki is, but I also absolutely love that part of him.
7. Jojo no Kimyou no Bouken (Parts 1-2) - 6.5/10
Jojo is not the saving grace of shounen anime. It isn’t something super revolutionary and it certainly will never be a 10/10. Part 1 was so slow and boring. Jonathan was just mediocre at best. I definitely liked Joseph a LOT more than Jonathan. Part 2 overall was much easier to watch than part 1. The fights are good, but there’s just something about Jojo that I can’t get behind. Although I’m completely bashing this series, I’m going to keep watching it. At this point, I wanna know what a stand is.
8. Clannad - 5.5/10
I was expecting Clannad to be sad, but instead I got a cute, slice of life, romance. It wasn’t unenjoyable, but it was also a pretty slow-burning show. I loved watching Nagisa and Okazaki slowly fall in love with each other. It was funny at times and sad at other points. I am currently watching Clannad: After Story (which I’ve heard is heartbreaking), so I’m hoping to get some catharsis out of that.
9. Otome Game no Hametsu Flag shika Nai... - 6/10
This show is only 12 episodes, and yet it still has filler episodes for some reason? I’m a person who doesn’t typically watch isekai because the genre is so over done. However, when it’s done in a very specific way it’s really fun to watch! This show was definitely a lot of fun, it’s also cute and has so many interesting character-character interactions. The ending is painfully cliche, but I think it adds to this shows charm.
10. Kaguya-sama wa Kokurasetai: Tensai-tachi no Renai Zunousen - 8/10
I loved Love is War so much! I love their weird romantic dynamic. I love the characters, and I love the animation. It’s over the top and executes it humor masterfully. The entire show fills you with anticipation for the two main characters. Kaguya is my favorite character. Although I haven’t seen season two yet, I most certainly will! I’m so upset I hadn’t seen this show sooner.
11. Great Pretender - 8.5/10
This show is so colorful and bubbly. The animation is so smooth and they are able to tackle so many different kinds of things given its plot. The whole show itself just feels like summertime. It came out not to long ago, so some people may not be familiar with it. On top of the show itself, the music is great, with a Jazzy OP and and ED that features Freddie Mercury
12. Steins;Gate 0 - 8/10
I loved the original Stein;Gate so much! So it’s no surprise how much I liked the second season. It builds significantly off the first season in a sort of “off shot” OVA kind of way. The events of Steins;Gate 0 don’t actually happen, but that doesn’t stop it from being meaningful. The big “twist” was predictable and a bit of a let down, but I still enjoyed this. Granted, I’m bias.
13. Seishun Buta Yarou wa Yumemiru Shoujo no Yume wo Minai - 9.5/10
I sobbed. So much. This movie was phenomenal, it was such a trip. Having watched the original series, this tore my heart apart. It gets a high score for being able to take the characters I love and creating a wonderfully emotional experience. If you haven’t seen Bunny Girl Senpai, please watch it, and then watch this movie. You won’t regret it!
14. Hotaru no Haka - 6/10
Grave of the Fireflies made me stop watching anime for a while. Studio Ghibli created something grim, something that leaves the viewers feeling hollow. Its a movie about WWII from Japan’s perspective. As an American, all I could feel while watching this was immense guilt. I will say though, that some of the movies main plot could have easily been prevented if the main character had swallowed his pride. His younger sister was also my least favorite character. I get that she’s a kid and that kids are fussy, but you would think that during wartime, she’d be more understanding and at least try to eat the things she dislikes.
15. Yagate Kimi ni Naru - 9/10
This was a great way to end the summer. This is more that just GL romance, its a love story. Its about growing up and learning to understand your feelings. I related to Yuu so much, which made this more emotional than I expected. It’s really unlike another romance anime I’ve seen. I hope it gets confirmed for a second season. If not, I’ll be reading the manga.
Seasonal Shows: (Things that are still airing as of 9/5/2020)
1. The God of High School 7.5/10
Another thing done by studio MAPPA. Are you surprised? I absolutely love the action in GoH. The plot however, is all over the place. The story seems fragmented and hard to follow. Like Tower of God, it was poorly adapted. I’m giving it such a high score, because it’s SO much more enjoyable then Tower of God.
2. Enen no Shouboutai: Ni no Shou - 4/10
My thoughts on season 2 are about the same as my thoughts on season 1. The only difference is that this season has more Jojo references. I’ve rated it lower because its so repetitive. I’m so sick of watching it, but I’ve got to see it through the bitter end.
3. Re:Zero kara Hajimeru Isekai Seikatsu 2nd Season - 8.5/10
All I’m going to say about Re:Zero is that I love it. I can’t give an accurate review of it because I’ve been hyping this season since it was announced. If you’re into non-typical isekai, watch Re:Zero, its so enjoyable!
#anime#summer#anime recommendation#review#bakemono no ko#the boy and the beast#wan sheng jie#All Saints Street#dororo#studio mappa#bungou stray dogs#bsd#kami no tou#tower of god#gekkan shoujo nozaki kun#monthly girls' nozaki kun#jjba#jjba part 1#jjba part 2#jojo no kimyou na bouken#jojos bizzare adventure#clannad#kyoto animation#otome game hametsu flag shikai nai akuyaku reijou tensei shiteshimatta#my next life as a villainess#Kaguya sama#kaguya sama wa kokurasetai#love is war#Great Pretender#Steins;Gate
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episode 9 baby!!! dear lord that was a lot!!
frankly, i'm still in shock that i full on manifested an opera stage, AND it was a rock opera stage at that! plus i got a jazz stage AND a taemin stage??? if they’re pulling out all my favourites now then what on earth are they gonna do in the finale??? this was a very overwhelming crop of stages, i thought i was going to be prepared, but oh no i was not prepared. i'm just going to get right into it because this one is gonna be long and i have many words. i'll discuss in airing order first, and then put my personal rankings for this round at the end.
btob
costume
changsub, you absolute king. spectacular. stunning. incredible. zoot suit riot playing in my brain on repeat. will i finally get the zoot suit revival of my fucking dreams instead of this current drab ill-fitting suit trend? for those who are wondering why in the fuck changsub is dressed like that and what on earth i’m talking about, the specific cut of suit that he’s wearing is called a zoot suit, which were popular in mexican, black and italian american communities in the 30s and 40s, until they were outlawed by the united states war production board as a fabric rationing method as part of the war effort in 1942. there was a huge amount of mob violence surrrounding the wearing of them (there were actual zoot suit riots) as they were direct counter culture fashion to the predominant drab trends of white americans at the time. i'm actually very impressed they got a proper (modernized) cut of zoot suit instead of just putting him in an oversized one; there are actually specific structural differences. the pegged trouser legs, large should pads, and knee length single breasted jacket are key features, and they were often in much more flashy fabrics than a pinstripe, but they get points for effort. i wish they had put all of them in zoot suits but he’s playing the ‘lead’ actor so i will begrudgingly forgive them.
eunkwang those are the stupidest sleeve garters ive ever seen i love them never take them off. they’re like someone decided to repurpose a suspender in the worst way. excellent. i do love that they’ve got three of them in oxford saddle shoes, another great touch.
love the three piece and the fedora* on peniel. it's also in a relatively close period cut; waistcoasts (vests) were generally cut much higher in the neck pre-war, we only start seeing the neckline slide down in the 60s (i think? i don’t remember when exactly). also love to see a proper sleeve and jacket length, it's good practice to have at least a finger’s width of sleeve cuff visible ahead of the jacket sleeve when hanging at rest. also looks like there’s french cuffs on everyone, which is also great.
minhyuk in his slutty lowneck shirt....thank you. in addition to the zoot suit revival i would also like a revival of those ultra low necklines on mens’ shirts from like 2010-2011. i don’t think those are the same boots from the backdoor stage but those are some beautifully cut boots. i also loved the little details of his crewmember look, especially the chunky watch and the string bracelets; those are super realistic, i know so many crew with them and i had several for many years. and who doesn’t love a visible button fly?
none of any of the other costumes are period in any way shape or form but i’m forgiving it because there’s several layers of meta in this stage, and they explicitly based it on la la land, even though we don’t respect la la land in this house. do i wish they had gone more strictly period with at least the jazz club ‘actors’ a little more? absolutely, but i'm not mad about it.
set
again we’ve got a good delineation of the two different ‘stages,’ there’s the club itself in the smaller stage and the soundstage set in the larger space. you can pretty clearly see all the ‘pieces’ of the set on the soundstage, especially the obvious set painting techniques on false prosc frame and the window facade from that first little scene. also the you can see the castors (wheels) on all the setpieces too, which is another nice little versimilitudinous** (triple word score!) touch, as old hollywood movies were made still using theatre stagecraft techniques.
i love how the visual shorthand for ‘this is a set wink wonk’ is just...leaving a ladder on stage. i see it all the time and it's so funny. it doesn’t always make sense because as soon as there’s actors on set the ladders are the first thing cleared because actors cannot be trusted, but yes there are always ladders, so. also psa ladder safety is no joke, please be careful on ladders.
nice streamline of the mnet deco into the club. i’m consistently surprised at how well the designers have been able to mask it or use it to their advantage, because in the normal kingdom stage lighting it is SO obvious and stylistic that it always sticks out.
i'm going to ignore the fact that they implied changsub and miyeon were drinking wine out of martini glasses.
lighting
no complaints, it does its job. everything is visible and super clear. love that the ‘scene’ changes are made through the lighting, it's a really simple and effective device to change atmosphere. purple/blue/amber are the most flattering colours on human skin and that’s why you see it so commonly in stage lighting. also blue/lavendar is the best way to show nighttime/moonlight.
really nice and subtle projection work, especially with the billboard bit and the blue moon sign in the club. despite being obviously meta/’world breaking’ it’s actually very seamless and fits well into the flow of the stage.
sound
i love love love the big band feel in the intro, combined with the piano lead. very duke ellington, as all things should be.
no complaints. i love big band. i love eunkwang’s voice. i have nothing else to say.
staging
i LOVE this movie within a movie within a performance meta nonsense! it's such a fun concept and it is exactly what i wanted ikon’s first round stage to be! i also love to see btob consistently coming up with concepts that are inventive and fun and allow them to showcase their technical performance skills without the aerobics the younger groups are putting themselves through. it provides a really lovely variety and it just goes to show that you can make impressive, dramatic stages without having to be serious or ‘dark.’
i do wish they had leaned into the band director/lead singer with eunkwang a bit more; this could have been a really excellent place for a tap number a la the nicholas brothers or an homage to cab calloway. i know i know this was meant to be la la land themed but la la land is a cheap and whitewashed version of jazz and look me right in the eyes and tell me this isn’t the greatest tap routine of all time. i know i’ve typed this out somewhere before but la la land is just a conglomeration of old hollywood tropes and so stylistically cheap that this would have such a better visual core if they had actually looked back at the real old hollywood musicals like stormy weather. even singing in the rain and an american in paris have such phenomenal visuals and are really beautiful examples of the scope you can pull off with a limited technical capacity and sticking to these old techniques.
now that i'm thinking about it, oh my GOD i would DIE for a lindy hop routine in kpop PLEASE. i know it would never happen because kpop doesn’t like partner dancing and not a single kpop boy has the chops but oh you think fourth gen has too many acrobatics?
this got off track but i think you see my point.
---
ateez
costume
these are really sharply cut suits. and the detail work on the beading??? so beautiful. i'm disappointed that they gave me a rock opera stage without the true ridiculousness of rock opera costuming, because they could have pushed this a lot farther if they really wanted. a tragic lack of gay little outfits, seonghwa’s lace choker is just not enough! two favourite suits: hongjoong’s and yunho’s.
that being said i do actually really like these. this stage is actually very modern opera with a kpop twist and i'm a little surprised by that? i continue to be impressed by the ateez team who are clearly doing their research.
i'm absolutely not going back through their stages to check all the choreography but i wonder if you can track all the ‘wound’ placements to places they’ve been ‘hit.’ i wouldn’t put it past them to have put that thought in but also i’m not expecting that much either.
who is this white grim reaper bdsm executioner chain arm man. where did he come from. i have no idea and i love it.
why is honjoong blindfolded. it was such a fast beat, if youre gonna blindfold someone give it a little longer and some more obvious narrative weight!
seonghwa does that quickchange, runs across that massive stage to the smaller set, and gets into places in like 45 seconds. it's not the hardest quickchange in the world but still, under a minute is fast for any quickchange, especially when there’s travel time involved. i think the fastest, most complex quickchange i ever did was in university which was a 50s cocktail dress into a flannel and culottes with a shoe, hair, and jewelry change in 35 seconds. and that took three dressers. quickchanges are always impressive. the added bonus of this review being later is that i can specifically reference that you can see him book it the fuck off stage in the full cam!
cute moment with the backup dancers dressed in costumes from the previous stages. i'm assuming this is a time travel reference? i'll get more into my thoughts on this in the staging section. regardless, love to see that iconic seonghwa moment again.
set
this is such a restricted space! they really pared down their dancing space with those staircases and ....arms? honestly i have NO clue what these are supposed to be. the only thing i can maybe think of is flying buttresses??? but why?? i mean, i'm 90% sure theyre just there for drama and i agree but i do still have questions.
there’s a lot of moving parts in this set? the buttresses, and the upstage centre staircase. i don’t think the staircase is totally automated because i spotted some dancers securing it in place, but it’s still a moving part. i do really like that we get that expanding upwards energy, because it's really tough to get functional level movement in this kind of a performance, mostly because of its length and because it moves so quickly. so seeing the downward vertical movement and then the upward movement was actually a really nice visual contrast that made use of how tall those fucking ceilings are, and the fact that they had less horizontal space. in sort of similar way to sf9’s jealousy stage, using long, narrow vertical lines really makes it feel like a castle space. the interiors of castles, especially the really old ones, are a lot smaller than you think they would be.
i’ve actually seen that type of small house/tent/thing several times in various types of performances before, but i think this is the first time i’ve seen it used as a time travel device (other than in the say my name mv). aesthetically it's a bit incongruent but i dont really mind because i'm used to watching rock operas that look a lot weirder than this.
lighting
there is so much happening. i have NO clue what the projections are doing. i dont hate it though, so that’s a plus? there’s a clear-ish colour arc even if it does get a bit funky in the middle, which is why the projections dont feel as insanely distracting as some of the other stages we’ve seen.
the climax is a perfect example of how to light a busy stage with primarily red but still maintain clarity on the performers. a little bit of red goes a long way; the spark stage from last week would have looked so much better if they had done what the ateez designers did here.
sound
i know it's only ode to joy, but answer already gets my motor running and then i get so gassed by the guitars and then by the time those vocals come in i'm inconsolable. i don’t know why i wasn’t expecting a rock opera stage but i'm so glad i got that surprise because i genuinely love rock operas so much. it's two of the most dramatic genres in music, what more could you possibly want?
staging
the choreo for answer is so goofy that I'm kinda glad this was mostly terrible mnet boom shots. i love it, but you can't deny that it's goofy. i spotted a couple of moves from their other choreos as well?
choreographing dance fights is just as difficult as choreographing real fights and i think they did a fairly good job here. i think it was a solid mix of dance and conflict that erred on the side of dramatic rather than accurate and i prefer that over trying to be ‘realistic.’ i’ve only ever seen one truly realistic fight scene on stage and that was for a deeply naturalist play (boring and a waste of the medium), but the best fight scene i’ve ever seen was in the prague national ballet’s adaptation of kafka’s the trial where three ballet dancers beat the absolute snot out of the main character with the most beautiful leg extensions. that whole show was probably one of the best pieces of dance i’ve ever seen, holy fuck it was so good.
despite how insane the music and the visuals were going, i actually really liked how sedate this was, on the part of ateez’s performance. there was a really sophisticated and resigned energy from them that is very different from what we’ve previously seen and i think that was a pretty admirable risk to take. reaching the top and then throwing away the crown? especially in a competition where every other stage has involved stealing crowns or royalty and there’s a group competing that got here through that very concept? that shows a real maturity, peace of mind, and foresight that i did not at all expect from a bunch of 22 year olds.
here we come to a very interesting comparison. both ateez and tbz are very heavily leaning on previously established group lore. we all know my thoughts on why it isn’t working for tbz, but here’s why i think it is working for ateez: it's because it doesn’t matter to the audience’s understanding of the stage. i had absolutely no fucking clue what was going on the first time i watched this, but that didn’t stop me from enjoying the music and all the weird shit they were doing. i totally believed that they understood what was going on. there’s a loose enough established conflict right at the beginning that draws us in, and really it doesn’t matter who they're fighting because they win in the end. the key here is that they’re so earnest. they believe 100% in every move they make on that stage. there’s no winks to camera, there’s not a drop of irony. they really deeply care about the ridiculousness of it all and that’s what makes it work. i sure as fuck dont know what’s going on, but i can see that they do, and i trust that. this is what i meant when i talked about convincing the audience you belong on stage in my stage presence post. i’ve never once believed that juyeon was anything other than an idol. he’s talented and very beautiful and he may occasionally stand on that stage like he owns it but it's always as juyeon. as an idol. but when hongjoong flaps around in that gigantic fur coat i 100% believe he’s a pirate captain. I believe he’s a punk rebel leader. i believe him a resigned king. there’s always a level of irony you have to fight as a performer because we all start from a place of disbelief. acting is not just lying to the audience, it's lying to yourself too. and if you succeed in convincing yourself? well, you’re already halfway to convincing us.
i checked it out because i wanted to see if they did the blindfold how i expected them to and was genuinely surprised by hongjoong’s fancam. the boy is EMOTING even when he knew the camera wasn’t on him; that’s a real dedication to craft.
ok i'm finished talking about this stage, this is over two pages in my document, there’s so many things i have not covered here but that’s fine, i'm quite sure any further thoughts will end up out there at some point.
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sf9
costume
let’s get it out of the way......crop top. crop top? crop top. crop top.
ok, besides the crop top, i think i might actually like the backup dancer outfits more...? i find mannequin adjacent looks really fascinating and i thought there was a lot more they could have done here in connecting the two thematically. i actually think a change of costume on the boys would have been very interesting, especially because there was a lot of inference and direct reference to changes of colour.
ALL the backup dancers are wearing the same wig and i LOVE that.
special mention zuho’s.....jacket? the right idea but it absolutely should have been one of those extreme french cut bodysuits, you COWARDS. don’t come at me with this ‘male version of venus’ if you don’t have your whole torso out! come on!
set
not sure if this is meant to be a department store, a factory, or a white cube gallery. honestly you could make the case that they’re all the same place anyways. more on this later.
i loved the movator and wish they had used it more! that sequence was so good and they could have done some more interesting repetition sequences to further highlight the ‘sameness’/the breaking of that sameness.
i feel like the set could have been used more as a whole? i would have loved to see some mannequin interactions with those boxes, because all they did was dump colour everywhere.
....why did they feel the need to include the rain bit? i know it's likely because it's in the mv and at the 2018 dream concert taemin does perform move in the rain, but with the standing still and the box walls with the words it just looks like a department store ad. which i...dont think is what they were intending?
lighting
nothing really to say here. it has a similar feel to the mayfly rap stage, which is fine because the lighting for that was good. i could tell what was going on all the time and that’s the most important part. notable standouts are the lips sequence, that's fun use of pop iconography and very effective, and the scanning lasers at the beginning.
the repeating sequence in the edm dance break is actually done pretty simply, it's just what happens when you point a camera that’s livestreaming to a monitor directly at that monitor. it's a very cool effect and it was neat to see it used intentionally, especially with the handheld leds.
actually i also really liked the lightbox tables, those were cool.
sound
the remix was fine for the most part, it was about what i expected it to sound like. i did however greatly dislike that unnecessary edm break in the middle. what was the point of that? it didn’t add anything to the overall sound or arc of the stage because it was SO out of place. there was no connective tissue around it.
oh i was also not a fan of the effect on zuho’s mic. no one else had a discernible vocal effect so it felt a little out of place. also for some reason his cadence and tone right at the end made me think of some of the voices that bo burnam uses for his vocal masque sketches/songs, especially repeat stuff, weirdly? took me right the fuck out of it. i listened to it again after i slept and i’m still getting it, so maybe i’m just going insane so best ignore this part.
staging
loved the mannequin tree, not a clue why it was there.
do actually think this is a successful cover because it does what i was hoping it would, which is take move completely out of the taemin context and put it into an entirely new one. however, i’m really struggling to figure out what exactly that new context is? and what theyre trying to say with it?
obviously they went for a ‘show your own colours/individuality’ vibe, like i said in the set section, where exactly is this supposed to be? from the start i get factory/mechanized environment, which is fine and grand because mannequins and making repetitive motions and products and all that, makes sense. but then there’s stacked shelving type units happening and curtains and that combined with the mannequins give me pretty big department store vibes, which is also fine, because that’s still a comment on commercialization and the mass production of product. but then we get to the movator and the repetitive movements of the dancers say pretty clearly factory, but the lighting and projections are very pop art referential, plus combining that with the white set, just makes me think of an art gallery. so now is this a comment on the commercialization and commidification of contemporary art? are they making a statement about being ‘real’ artists among the others who have lost the critical understanding of why pop art was even a thing in the first place? and then the rain bit at the end literally looks like a department store ad, so are they then making another statement that they still are that packaged product? maybe the episode has more clarity in it but i’m genuinely a bit baffled by what the underlying statement is here.
i suspect it is not as deep as i'm making it, but i did say that i was likely to be hyper critical of this stage AND i am a grad student, so here we are.
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tbz
costume
ok of all the ‘fourth gen’ style costumes we’ve seen, i actually like these ones more than most. i'm not entirely clear on the theme but i'm assuming it's meant to be post apocalyptic, and i'll take that.
backup dancers in black!!! we’re beyond this!!!
this will be a running theme with this stage, but i’m disappointed these don’t have more depth.
set
compared to every other stage, the set here seems especially plain. there’s so little set dec that it's disappointing. i do like the movement of the pieces themselves combined with the blocking; that first slide underneath the arches was slick and i would have liked to have seen more of that.
yea ok the big snake was cool and also a fairly complex build, but the transitions around it were a bit awkward for my tastes. especially the turn around, why did they even show that at all? you have control over what the audience sees, you can totally not show scenic transitions. skz were super smart about hiding theirs in last week’s episode.
also if you have a bigass puppet like that, i wanna see some more movement from it! it doesn’t have to be complex, we literally just saw a kraken balloon arm wave around aimlessly, but at least there was movement! that snake had a long ass body, why didn’t they at least take a pseudo dragon dance movement with it, that would have been such fun to watch with the iridescent scales. there was a lot of opportunity here!
lighting
i don’t hate it but also.... not a lot to say about it on the whole.
there were two really smart ideas here, the first being the front projection section, which i was SO glad to see! i explained in a previous review, but the projections in kingdom are not actually projections per se, because they’re actually massive led screens. there are two common types of projections in performance, rear projection and front projection. rear projection is when the projector is behind the screen, and front projection is ‘normal’ projection. rear projection can produce a crisper image because you have full control of the light values, because the projector is in a separate room from the performance space. but the downsides are that the projector has to be in a separate room from the performance space. so if you’re short on real estate, it's not ideal. front projection is much more common, because the tech is a lot cheaper and easier to access, especially now, and it requires less real estate because you can ceiling mount about the audience (you can move a projector wherever, this is just the most common spot in commercial theatres). but! in order to get an actually crisp image, you have to be really careful with your light bounce. it’s exactly the same principle as how you kinda can't see a projected screen when you have all the lights turned on, but when you turn them off it's a lot clearer. front projection works best in pitch dark, so when you use it in a theatre you gotta be smart about it. i use front projection a lot in my personal art practice as a singular light source, and that’s what tbz did here in that traveling/snake intro sequence. it’s a really fun technique that they used as a good gimmick because it’s not something we’ve seen before, and you get some great shadow effects because the projector is throwing light directionally at the performers (they have it set up close to the floor, it’s probably on a wheeled cart of some kind). however i did not like the snake intro. a bit too cheesy and out of place, especially because the asset quality didn’t match the rest of landscapes that we have been seeing.
the second smart idea, which is partially also a set and blocking thing but whatever, was that final image of the eclipse within the circle architecture with all the members standing in front of it. it was a great shot and a great ending pose, but it felt like a concept photo. like someone had that image as the idea that they then built the stage around, instead of a narrative first and then imagery after.
sound
this remix had SO much promise! those first two minutes were SO GOOD. i love that dirty discordant strings bit, it's gross and right up my alley. but it really fell off in the back half and i'm sad about that.
staging
i'm sorry tbz but.....what did you actually do differently than exo here? with the exception of the continual game of thrones references? nothing here felt transcendentally different from the original monster. and especially coming RIGHT after sf9’s move, which did go beyond its original context. this feels more like an awards show stage cover than a stage at the level of the others we’ve seen just this episode.
again like with the skz stage, there’s no conflict here. no tension. yes they do a great job covering the dance but it just isn’t enough! this is obviously personal preference and i'm sure lots of people liked the fact that it was uncomplicated, but even just a hint of narrative tension could have pushed this into more engaging territory. and if they didn’t want to do that, i would have loved to see them make up for that with extra visual spectacle. this is the no limits round! ikon is putting a full jungle on stage and these are grey cubes!
i think this is a perfect example of what i talked about at the end of my tbz section in my episode four review; this is a good performance, there are good elements at play and good ideas at their genesis, but the core of the issue is that nothing about this is transformative. all of the ideas here are just exaggerations of the original song. fuck, the snake was even IN the mv! and they didn’t even include the best part which is the lip chains! ive said before and i'll say it again; being a good artist has two steps, the first is understanding the material and its context, and the second is elevating the material from that context and synthesizing something new. tbz are really good at the first step, but terrible at the second.
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ranking
btob - the cleanest and the most fun of the round. everything i wanted.
sf9 - fun and a good cover, despite being conceptually baffling.
ateez - very extra dramatic nonsense with an unexpected dose of sincerity. and it’s rock opera, of course i love it.
skz - fun, with some good thematic devices but generally lacking in arc. also australian accents, that’s an automatic ding.
tbz - honestly the first two minutes of the remix and the costume are holding this above 6th. it just wasn’t fully formed.
ikon - aesthetically this is a great set design and although i do love the opening and closing moments, everything else scrapes me the wrong way. super personal preference here, i’m not expecting anyone else to agree with me.
i feel like my rankings were probably pretty easy to guess if you’ve been around reading the reviews for long enough. i do have very specific tastes after all. i know sf9 ranked first in the episode but i have no idea what the other slots are. i’ll find out when i watch the episode in a couple of days, but i think yea a first for sf9 is fair. i do think its mostly because it’s a taemin song and you have to do something horrendous in order to fuck up a taemin song, but there is a lot of thought and work that went into that stage.
ok i'm done now, sorry this was later than usual, but i was busier and there were four stages that i had to review. also technical difficulties because tumblr is a garbage platform and nothing works properly. comments/questions/opinions always welcome, i know i didn't expand on a couple of points that i could have so hopefully y'all have some thoughts too!
* the type of hat that ~society~ has told you is a fedora is actually a trilby. what peniel is wearing is a real fedora, i felt the need to correct this unjust hat malignment.
** meaning ‘the appearance of being true or real.’ you do sometimes hear it used by normal people, but it’s more commonly used as a descriptor in film and theatre. it’s also one of the five rules of neoclassical theatre, which are: versimilitude, purity of form, five act structure, decorum, and purpose. the most prominent playwrights from that era are moliere and racine if youre interested in what those look like in an actual text.
#kingdom#kingdom review#btob#ateez#stray kids#the boyz#sf9#tumblr is so broken it would NOT let me save this as a draft#does my constant hyperlinking make you angry tumblr? too bad im gonna keep doing it#i played in a jazz band in school for seven years#which is another indicator as to why i am like this#one of the first songs i remember learning was zoot suit riot#i have very strong memories of yelling RIOT during performances#i will however forever question the logic of our band teacher making us learn a song written by 'the cherry poppin daddies'#christ on a bicycle this is TEN pages#and it took a full eight hours last night and then i did like two hours of editing after i woke up#maybe i should go back to bed#ah i forgot to tag ikon again lmao#ikon#kpop analysis#text#if there are any spelling errrors do not tell me im tired of reading this#im pretty sure this is my longest review so far i decided to hate myself and did a wordcount#its 5.2K you're welcome you better get a snack for this one#i hope this is an interesting read for people ive lost all objectivity at this point#pls enjoy my semi-comprehensible word vomit!
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I continue my message. I love Swans and fairy tales about swans. So I love tales as Six Swans, Seven Ravens, Wild Swans? do you love them? I know Czech movie Seven Ravens from Raza, it's very good. You know it? I think it's a popular tale so probably there are also others adaptation. Do you know more? I know all days I ask you something and I hope I don't bother you. I really appreciate too much this website and your knowledge about old stories and European cinema and it's good to discuss with u
Oh, anon, I LOVE the Wild Swans/Six Swans/Seven Ravens type of tale! It has a strong, active heroine, positive relationship between siblings and an engaging romantic subplot (when done right)! (btw: if you enjoy reading fairytale retellings, you might want to check out Daughter of the Forest by Juliet Marillier; it's not an easy read /tw: sexual violence/, but overall very emotionally satisfying)
As for the film adaptations!
THE WILD SWANS (H. Ch. Andersen)/THE SIX SWANS (Brothers Grimm)
To start with H. Ch. Andersen's Wild Swans: there is a made-for-TV Czech adaptation of the same name – The Wild Swans ("Divoké labutě", Czechoslovakia, 1988). It's a part of Fairytale Tree ("Strom pohádek") series, so parts of it are retold by a narrator and parts are acted out.
You can watch it on YouTube here.
But honestly: it's not very good, you can safely skip this adaptation altogether. And it's so low budget that they never even show the princes as swans, LOL.
Not-Czech alternatives: Märchenperlen series has a pretty great adaptation of Brothers Grimm's Six Swans from 2012 that is very much worth watching if you haven’t already!
It's available for streaming on ZDF website and you can watch it with ENG subtitles, I described how to do so here. Although, the automatic subtitles might be a little funny sometimes :).
(I also still remember the Russian animated adaptation from the 60's based on Andersen’s version, I've seen it as a kid on TV and it left a deep impression in me, but I guess you know it already :)).
THE SEVEN RAVENS (Božena Němcová)
Note: Brothers Grimm have a fairytale of the same name but it’s very different from the Czech version collected by Němcová.
There are 3 Czech live-action adaptations of The Seven Ravens:
1) The Seven Ravens (”Sedmero krkavců”, 1967)
You can watch it on YouTube here.
Directed by Ludvík Ráža, this is a made-for-TV film from 60′s, when Czech fairytale TV films were just starting and directors were trying out different ways to make the TV fairytales engaging and atmospheric even with a limited budget. This adaptation definitely does not lack dire atmosphere, but it’s also extremely theatrical/over dramatic, it looks more like a filmed stage play than a fairytale for children. It’s interesting for archival reasons and for its stellar cast, but probably not attractive for foreign fans.
2) The Seven Ravens (”Sedmero krkavců”, 1993)
You can watch it on YouTube here. (The YouTube upload is very low quality, if anyone really wants to watch this movie – without subtitles! – I can send you a download link via private message)
Directed again by Ludvík Ráža, who probably wanted to make a larger budget version of his take from 1967, The Seven Ravens from 1993 is legendary for its dramatic script and creepy villains – seriously, the heroine Bohdanka and her Prince play a second fiddle to the villainous duo of the Prince’s evil sister and her henchman called Hound. Btw - the evil sister is played by Ivana Chýlková who later starred as a titular evil character in The Queen of the Lake I talked about in the previous ask. This film version of the Seven Ravens is not my cup of tea, but it definitely scores points for creepiness!
3) The Seven Ravens (”Sedmero krkavců”, 2015)
Available on Magdalena’s google drive with ENG subtitles here. (please support this amazing blogger, she makes many Czech and Slovak films and fairytales available for foreign fans!)
I still remember that when this film was announced and even when the shooting was taking place, the Czech public in general was rather sceptical about it. After all, director Alice Nellis has never made a fairytale film before. Also, the casting was kind of controversial: Martha Issová, who was 33 yrs old at that time, was considered too old and too “plain” to play a fairytale heroine. Lukáš Příkazký as the Prince was also a surprising choice, as he was also deemed too old and not “manly” enough to star in a fairytale. And while the cast consisted of established actors, there were no big names, no huge stars that would draw the crowds into movie theaters. Many people also expressed the sentiment that it’s “unnecessary” to shoot The Seven Ravens again, when the 1993 version aged so well....
I am saying this to give you some idea how the film was initially not in a favorable position to become a hit and then...it was released to generally positive reviews and became one the best rated Czech fairytale films of the past 20 years. (it has 75% on Czech movie database - that’s a big success for a fairytale film)
Personally, I consider it one of the best Czech fairytale movies of all time and very much worth the watch. Also, I am a fan of Martha Issová and I think she did AMAZING in the main role (she expresses herself non-verbally for like 90% of the film and it’s such a joy to watch)
pictured: Martha Issová as Bohdanka in promotional picture for The Seven Ravens (2015)
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[CN] Shaw’s 2020 Birthday R&S
🍒Warning: This post contains detailed spoilers for an R&S which has not been released in EN!🍒
[Prologue]
The birthday event begins with MC in an antique store, in search of a moderately priced antique. She had asked Shaw for help since she’s been having difficulties finding one
Unexpectedly, Shaw gives her the keys to an antique store the next day, telling her to take whatever she wants
Even though MC knew early on that Shaw used to have a mentor who owned an antique store, she still feels strange about it - she’s unable to associate antiques, which are filled with rich history and culture, with Shaw
She wonders if Shaw visited this antique store regularly in his childhood
She notices that a drawer is open:
There are several yellowed exercise books lying inside, and “Shaw” is written on the bottom right corner of the covers in pencil.
MC: Could these be Shaw’s exercise books when he was young?
Curious, I take out these “major discoveries” from the drawer, my mind whirring with countless questions.
At the back of my mind, I have a feeling that this place has a special meaning to Shaw.
MC: Maybe, for Shaw’s birthday…
While I’m thinking, something else in the drawer attracts my attention.
There are three copper coins, the colours antique, under sheets of writing paper. Covered in dust, they seem to be calling out to me voicelessly.
~
[Chapter 1: Exam Results]
At 4pm on a Friday afternoon, the math teacher wraps up her final point and closes the lesson plan.
The black board is decorated with the homework for the weekend. The teacher pushes up her spectacles. There is a big stack of exam papers on the table. “Last week’s exam scripts have been marked. Come and take them when I call your name.”
“This time round, most of you have improved. Only one student did not pass.” She takes up the exam script at the very top, flips it open, her eyes sweeping across the last row of the classroom, stopping at the seat at the very corner.
“Shaw.”
Hearing his own name being read, Shaw unwillingly stuffs the interesting comics underneath the table, taking his time to stand up. At the same time, the whole class cannot help but turn around and look at him evenly.
Sensing the surprised and teasing looks in their eyes, Shaw instead raises his head high and walks forward, stuffing a hand into his pocket with a devil-may-care attitude.
Taking the exam script from the teacher, Shaw stands in place, flipping through the script to look at the questions he got wrong.
Well, he did get more questions wrong than expected…
But math itself as a subject is annoying. It’s fine if he doesn’t do well.
He folds the exam script, folds it again, and again, before stuffing it into his pocket, turning around to return to his seat.
The teacher’s eyes unhappily trail behind Shaw, before she once again talks in a serious tone. “This time, everyone has to have their parents sign the exam script. I’ll check them on Monday afternoon.”
Shaw raises his eyebrows in mild disdain. It’s just a signature after all.
The old man copies the calligraphy of the Tang and Song dynasties so perfectly that even experts cannot tell. A mere signature wouldn’t be difficult.
He retrieves the stack of comics from underneath the table and puts them into his bag. With sufficient preparation for the end of school, he waits for the end-of-class bell to sound.
~
[Chapter 2: After School]
Entering June, the cicadas grow increasingly chirpier.
Over 60 years old, the antique shop shopkeeper sits on a rocking chair, fanning himself while checking Shaw’s homework. The prescription of his reading glasses is too shallow, and he has to squint. “The way you write this… Why does it look like a dog crawling. It’s so crooked.”
Shaw takes an eraser to erase a sentence he has copied wrongly. He cleans it till there is not a trace of it left. In an elevated volume, he answers, “It doesn’t matter if the words look ugly as long as I didn’t write it wrongly.”
While saying this, he feels through his pockets and takes out two exam scripts. “My teacher says this one needs a signature.”
Taking the script from him, the shopkeeper laughs until he rocks back and forth. “Kid, it’s fine if you don’t score well, but your luck couldn’t be any worse. Even if you take wild guesses, you couldn’t have gotten such low marks.”
He sits upright, sighing a few times. He folds up his fan and takes out a ball-point pen from his front pocket. With a practiced motion, he signs them.
He sighs deeply. “Shaw, since I’m not your parent, I shouldn’t be teaching you anything.”
Shaw had just closed his pencil box with a “pa”. Hearing his mentor sigh, he takes out his exercise books from his bag again, before returning to a state of studying. “All right, all right, I know what you’re going to say…”
“I won’t talk about big life lessons. Your school teacher would have talked about it more than I have. From today onwards, apart from the homework your teacher has given you, you are to write two pages worth of math questions, and copy a short essay every day. Only after you’re done will I teach you my craft.” He stands up, holding a tea cup and walking towards Shaw. “Whether you agree or not, give me an exact answer.”
Shaw doesn’t make a sound but merely furrows his eyebrows.
The shopkeeper laughs. “Just look at your capabilities - even a math question can stump you. If you can’t handle this small difficulty, how can you think of yielding something big?”
“I’ve never found math difficult. I simply don’t like math.” Shaw sets aside his exercise paper and takes out a brand new sheet. “Next time, I’ll let you sign an exam script that has 100 marks.”
“Wow, look who’s ambitious.”
“Hmph, this is nothing.”
~
[Chapter 3: After School]
There is only one class on Wednesday afternoon. After school, Shaw carries his bag and runs towards the shop.
Once he enters, he sees his mentor eating some kind of medicine – small white and yellow pills in his palm.
“Why are you here at this time? Oh it’s… I forgot, it’s Wednesday today.” The shopkeeper talks while he turns around to walk into the kitchen. “Put down your bag and wash your hands. I bought a big watermelon!”
Shaw knows the old man has high blood pressure, some heart issues… He doesn’t have a concept of these things, but knows that it isn’t something good.
Without a sound, he puts his bag down and takes out his exercise books and practice questions.
“Don’t rush to do your homework, come eat some watermelon first.” The shopkeeper puts half a watermelon into Shaw’s arms and guides him to the outside of the store, bringing two small stools over for them to sit.
The watermelon, which was just taken out of the fridge, glistens with water droplets. The red flesh has a spoon stuck in it. Shaw scoops a big chunk from the middle. It’s very sweet.
The shopkeeper is also holding half a watermelon, but eats very slowly. Noticing Shaw staring at him, he sighs and shakes his head. “I’m old, so I can’t just eat these cold things…”
While saying this, he looks towards the drawer inside the store. “Your mentor is 62 this year.”
“When people become old, they love to talk about reason. They don’t want you to walk the crooked path they have because it’s a waste of time. You’re still young, so you think you have a lot of time to spare, so you don’t notice. I want to teach you that this is wrong. You need to spend the time of walking down a crooked path to do other things.”
After saying this, he points towards the whole street lined with antique shops. “You can’t just look at these. Learning calligraphy and painting today, and tomorrow jade, and thinking you’re living a serious life. Spending months and years to take care of this palm-sized shop – You can’t live like this. You are my disciple, and I will teach you all my skills. But apart from this, you still have to learn other things. Whatever you can learn, learn it all, and learn it well.
“You have to look at the big world, craft a career, aim higher, be more forward looking…”
He looks at Shaw affectionately. “Put in more effort, learn all my skills, and then get out of here!”
Shaw turns towards the watermelon and lets out a glum “humph”. “You’re old, but I’m still young. I still can’t differentiate plus minus multiply and divide. You’re old so you should be the one putting in more effort to live for a long time, so I can take my time to learn all these things.”
It’s summer, so the night comes late. The clock already signals the time as 6pm, but the light has not yet dispersed.
Shaw puts a brush back into the drawer, takes off his gloves and wipes the sweat off his forehead. “Old man, I’m hungry. Why not let me join you for dinner?”
In the kitchen, the shopkeeper is washing vegetables. He takes out a small box from the fridge, pulls back the curtains and returns to the shop.
“I didn’t cook your portion, but you can eat this if you’re hungry.” He removes the cover of the small paper box, and Shaw’s eyes widen.
“What, you think I wouldn’t remember your birthday?” The shopkeeper retrieves a cake from the paper box, and removes the plastic surrounding it. “Once you’re done eating, go home quickly!”
Shaw takes a spoon, muttering in a small voice, “It doesn’t matter if I go home late anyway.”
“Today is different. A child’s birthday is the same day as a mother’s suffering… But you’re too young and still can’t understand this. On other days it’s fine, but today is different…” The shopkeeper holds up his tea cup and goes to the counter.
[Note: The actual phrase is: “儿子生日母亲的苦日”, which doesn’t have a direct English translation. The meaning is that the day a child is born is also the day the mother suffers in childbirth to bring him into the world]
“I don’t know why adults don’t have an issue with you hanging out here all the time. But I can tell that you wear clean clothes every day, and that your shoes are polished. These are because of your parents. Let this old man add one line of reason – if you’re angry with your parents, you’ll regret it eventually.”
Shaw lowers his head, biting the spoon and says evasively, “No one’s angry with them.”
“You don’t call this being angry? It’s not that I’m picking on you, but boys should manage their tempers better. If you’re unhappy, you have to say it straight out, don’t just keep it boiling in your heart without a sound and then wait for someone to come coddle you. With your personality, in future, you’ll become a person who never speaks from the heart. Even when you’re with someone you like, you’d put on a front – That wouldn’t be good.”
“Old man, what are you thinking all day long?” Shaw retorts, not bothering to clean his mouth which has been dirtied with cream. “I will never have someone I like. I play soccer with a few guys in class, and they spend the entire day talking about who they like. It’s so annoying.”
The shopkeeper laughs at how Shaw says this with an air of righteousness. “Which is why I say you’re still young.”
Shaw digs into his cake and lets out a “hmph”. “I’m not young. I just haven’t grown taller.”
The shopkeeper sips his tea. “Guys do take longer to grow. Maybe you’ll be taller than me in two years.”
“Two years is way too long,” the plastic spoon dangles from Shaw’s mouth. “The best thing would be to wake up one day and suddenly be taller. Mm… I want to grow to this height. No.”
He stands on a chair, using his hands to gesture until he is satisfied. “At least here.”
The shopkeeper responds with a sweeping gaze, “That’s 180cm though.”
“180cm is very good.” Shaw sits back on the chair contentedly. “I’ll make a wish to grow to 180cm.”
~
[Chapter 5: Fate]
The shopkeeper looks at the clock on the wall, and slowly puts down his teacup.
“Since it’s your birthday, I’ll read your fortune.” He pulls open the drawer and takes out three old copper coins.
Shaw finishes up the last bite of cake and throws the packaging into a bin. “You’ve already read my fortune many times and the results are always the same. Yet you’re doing it again?”
The shopkeeper looks slightly down, but his voice remains calm. “I have nothing else to do anyway.”
The first throw, one heads and two tails.
The second throw, one heads and two tails.
The third throw, two heads and one tails.
…It’s really not much different from the last reading.
The shopkeeper shakes his head, his hand ready for the fourth throw. The copper coins fall on the table with a jingle, and a combination which has never been seen before appears – all three are negative.
“Wow, there’s a change!” The shopkeeper says in a higher pitch than usual.
In the middle of downing his drink, Shaw almost falls off his chair at the shopkeeper’s sudden outburst.
The jingles from the copper coins continue. The final two throws are no longer the same ones as before.
Shaw looks at the coins. “What does this mean?”
“It means that in the future, you will definitely not always be alone.” The shopkeeper rubs Shaw’s head with a bright smile on his face. “I was always worried about what would happen to you, with such a stubborn personality, if I weren’t around anymore…”
“Of course I wouldn’t always be alone. I’m not alone now.”
Shaw puts the three copper coins in his hands, looking like he doesn’t take the reading to heart – He has his family, pretty good friends, a few friends from the neighbouring class who buy tidbits with him. His life will continue this way.
Even though it’s a little boring, but he wouldn’t be alone.
“Also, old man, you won’t have any problems, and will definitely live for a very long time.”
Shaw speaks, and softly repeats the sentence, “You will definitely live for a very long time.”
The dusk has begun to settle outside. The shopkeeper holds the copper coins between his fingers, and gently sighs. “That’s why I say you’re still young.”
~
[Chapter 6: Birthday Present]
After packing his bag, Shaw looks at the clock on the wall – he should reach home by 7pm, just in time for dinner.
“You’re leaving already? You don’t want your birthday gift?”
The shopkeeper appears from behind the counter, tossing his gaze to the cupboard. “It’s been there for a whole day and you still haven’t found it yet.”
Usually displaying antiques, the drawer now has within it a box wrapped in colourful paper. Shaw curiously walks over and rips off the packaging, revealing a small wooden box.
A dark brown Rosewood bracelet rests in his hand.
In his eyes, this is something only an adult can have.
At his age, he would have received books, stationery, toys or models – none of which he likes.
He is always treated like a child, but he has grown up since a long time ago.
“This bracelet isn’t something expensive, it isn’t that much of an antique, but it is made of quality Rosewood.”
“If you’re bored, you can play with this, and learn to manage your temperament. You’re still young, so it’s fine if you’re still impatient and stubborn. But if you continue with this little attitude of yours, you’d lose out eventually.”
“In this line of work, you need to have patience. One, only when you manage your emotions would you remain focused. Two, good things come to those who wait.”
“The change in your life is also something you will have to wait for.”
These words completely fly over Shaw’s head. He puts the bracelet onto this wrist, coils it around multiple times until it can stay on.
“In future, no matter what you face, you have to be calm, and be patient.” The shopkeeper gently taps Shaw’s head, and frowns. “Have you committed all this to memory?”
Shaw rubs his head, his eyes still trained on his present, completely engrossed with it. “Ahh – yes I remember, I remember!”
“What do you remember?”
“Remember… that I have to hurry home for dinner!” Shaw turns around and grabs his bag, disappearing out of the shop. Before that, he raises the hand that dons the bracelet and waves.
The stars flicker, and the light is reflected in Shaw’s eyes. His eyes are smiling.
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Every episode of Camp Camp ranked: A very (non)objective list
It's well past the time of year when Season 5 of Camp Camp would've dropped. I fully understand and support it not coming out; the crew's health and safety are much more important than a comfort show.
However . . . man, would it be nice to have some comfort right now.
So I'm reliving the entire series! I've been known to share with the world a whole bunch of Spicy Hot Takes, but I've never really sat down and talked about my feelings about the show as a whole.
And what's the best way to do that? Well, just ask Jenny Nicholson: a numbered list! That is, here's the series ranked from worst episode to best, because I want to get the negativity out of the way early and focus on everything I love (and because people enjoy complaining, so let’s frontload all that).
The takes will be hot. The feelings will be intense. The post, I'm assuming, will be largely unread.
Let's do it!
Oh and duh, there are spoilers. I tried to keep it pretty chill, but you’ll want to have watched the whole show or just not care about spoilers before going forward.
Also slashes in the middle of “naughty words” are meant to prevent this from being kept out of the main tags. Who knows if it’ll work? I don’t.
60. Who Peed the Lake? (Season 4, epis/sode 3)
Ah, good ol' Pi/ss Lake (or as @hopefullypessimistic84 calls it because she's funnier than any of us will ever be, “Pis/s Fe/tish Dot Com”). Terrible, one of the few I’d consider nigh unwatchable. I actually kind of love this episode for being such great shorthand for "the absolute worst one."
Who signed off on an entire episode centered around Sherlock Holmes meets a bad om/o joke? Give me names and addresses: I just want to talk.
59. Reigny Day (Season 1, episode 6)
And nobody was surprised.
I'll admit I'm more willing to defend this episode than many people, but it's not . . . like, good. It seemed okay when there were only 11 other episodes to compare it to, but now that there have been so many bangers, this comes across as extremely weak.
And let’s just say the Na/zi jokes hit a lot differently in 2020 than they did in the summer of 2016.
I’m overall happy with the direction the showrunners have moved Dolph’s character in, and I can’t totally blame them for using a kind of humor that was fairly common in the pre-Trump era, but yikes, this has aged like milk. And it wasn’t even very funny at the time, so it aged like milk that was already pretty bad to begin with.
58. Squirrel Camp (Season 4, episode 10)
This is a dumb one.
Not much else to say; it’s just kinda stupid and lame.
57. Fashion Victims (Season 4, episode 13)
I love Sasha, but this is filler. Which isn’t in itself a bad thing -- I have a couple episodes near the top that could reasonably be called filler, and a valid argument could easily be made that “filler episodes” don’t actually exist in a show with no plot -- but as much as I adore the Flower Scouts and enjoy the handful of good moments we get in this episode . . . who cares? Does anyone really give a sh/it about anything that happens here? Does anyone get their life from this one?
I didn’t think so.
56. Foreign Exchange Campers (Season 3, episode 3)
I know, I know, your Russian waifu came from this episode. Why do you think it’s so low on this list?
Okay, for real: this is . . . fine. It’s fine. It’s fine? I’m not mad at it, it just feels tonally incongruous and not very memorable beyond the fact that the fandom got really weird and kinda gross about Vera. But the episode itself? There’s some cute stuff with Neil and Nikki being jealous, but for the most part it’s a big hunk of white bread with some super mild white cheese that’s kinda soggy from sitting in a bag for too long and getting all condensation-y.
That is to say: it’s fine.
ETA: Space Kid does say “fu/ck.” I can’t decide if that’s a point in the episode’s favor or against it.
This is the last of what I’d call the “bad” episodes. Everything after this ranges from mediocre to mind-blowingly amazing. But whatever our failing tier of Camp Camp episodes is, it stops right about here.
Onto the good stuff!
55. Night of the Living Ill (Season 2 Halloween episode)
I keep switching this with “Eggs Benefits,” which probably means they should be tied. But whatever, this is my list and I am in charge and I’ve finally decided, after like 5 changes, that I like this one a little bit less.
It’s a fun Romero parody with nothing I’d call bad. Really this one’s only so low on the list because I think it’s kinda icky, and looking at those green snotty faces makes me queasy. If you think this is a bad reason to put it near the bottom of the list, then make your own post.
54. Cameron Campbell Can't Handle the Truth Serum (Season 4, episode 11)
I . . . don’t remember this at all. I initially had it a bit higher because I tend to love things with Campbell in them, but then I realized that nothing about this episode stuck in my brain even a little bit.
Oh, this is the “Dolph has autism” episode that made everyone either extremely happy or really mad? Okay. I guess that’s the most remarkable thing about it. Neato.
Cam, I love you, but this was just not the best use of your sleazy charm.
53. Eggs Benefits (Season 2, episode 9)
This is one of those episodes with enough cute moments and good ideas to save it from being totally unmemorable, and I mostly enjoy rewatching. Platypus being a mom is a fabulous idea, and pairing the campers the way they did was mostly really interesting and fun.
The Preston-Nurf stuff takes it down several pretty significant notches, though. It’s what the kids would call problematic, and while I normally enjoy how the show doesn’t skew away from darker themes and jokes, it didn’t really fit either of their characters and just . . . isn’t fun to watch. It’s not especially funny, it’s not especially tragic, it’s just uncomfortable.
52. Camp Campbell Wants YOU! (Season 1, episode 0)
Honestly, this would be a lot higher if it was a full-length episode. It’s funny.
The next 5 or so episodes fall under the “cute but not very memorable” umbrella:
51. Nikki's Last Day on Earth (Season 3, episode 4)
I love the ensemble episodes, so this was always going to score higher than any of the single-character “meh” eps. I didn’t see the twist coming, though I know a lot of other fans did. Textbook example of “cute but not very memorable” -- the Platonic ideal of that concept.
50. The Candy Kingpin (Season 3, episode 9)
A clever idea that plays on Max’s worst characteristics and then calls him out for them, while also giving Dolph some much-needed character development. Unfortunately, I don’t feel like it really picks up until the last third of the episode, leaving the rest just kind of sitting there.
49. Campfire Tales (Season 4, episode 13)
Who doesn’t love campfire stories?
That’s all I got. They’re campfire stories.
ETA: OH SH/IT THIS ONE HAS THAT REALLY SCARY STORY! Where David’s all like . . . Slenderman’d. Fu/ck, I didn’t remember that until I was writing out my thoughts for #35 or so. That definitely elevates it, but I’m too tired to try and re-decide where this should go, so just tie it with “New Adventure!”
48. New Adventure! (Season 4, episode 4)
New trio! Focusing on these 3 was a definite risk, and I think it really paid off. While the “plot” itself isn’t anything special, there are a handful of really great side gags (hi, Dirty Kevin!!!!) and it’s fun to see these three interact. They all get some nice character beats. It’s a good time.
47. Something Fishy (Season 3, episode 8)
This might’ve hit me harder if I’d actually seen The Shape of Water, but the send-up works fine without having more than the seen-the-trailer level of understanding. Gwen dresses pretty, which I love; Max sucks, which I also love. What drags this one down is mostly feeling like the surreal aspects of the comedy go a bit too far into the “what the fu/ck am I looking at?” territory without really . . . making an actual joke beyond “look! Wacky!"
Why is David at the opera with a bird? Why??
46. City Survival (Season 3, episode 11)
Literally do not remember a single thing about this episode except David getting mugged and being called a “homeless twi/nk.” That should probably rank it lower on the list, but David being a fluttery mother hen saves it for me -- as does the fact that it leads directly into one of my favorite episodes, and the single best story arc of the series.
Next set of episodes is what I’m going to arbitrarily call “okay! but like the good kind of okay, not the bad kind.”
45. Bonjour Bonquisha (Season 2, episode 7)
Max and Sasha masterminding a scheme is really fun; their dynamic is great (though it won’t be fully realized until Season 4), and heartbroken David is so tragically cute it actually makes my heart explode out of my chest.
Also I can’t resist a good “3 kids in a trench coat” gag.
44. Anti-Social Network (Season 2, episode 2)
Neil is very relatable and I don’t have much else to say about this one. It’s fun to see an episode that more heavily focuses on our nerdy science boy, and Max and Neil teaming up to save Nikki was really charming and sweet and set my Makkiel ship out to sea.
43. A Camp Camp Christmas, or Whatever (Season 2 holiday episode)
Why does this episode have a musical number? It’s not good.
Okay, that was mean. This is fun and cute and Gwen wears a pretty purple sweatshirt and Space Kid gives her a present and it’s really sweet. But that musical number is an instant fast-forward for me, sorry.
42. Preston Goodplay's Good Play (Season 4, episode 7)
We get some Preston character development! Awesome!
It’s done in a really trippy and surreal way that totally fits his character and heightens the drama of the episode! Awesome!
David has an apparently-tragic history of being a French mime! Not a good call!
Next tier: Some good sh/it! (Tbh, these could all be put in just about any order; they might as well be one massive tie.)
41. Cookin' Cookies (Season 2, episode 11)
I love the Flower Scouts. I love Dirty Kevin. I love the idea of accidentally starting a dru/g empire. Another weird, borderline experimental one focusing on side characters, and I think it works better than “New Adventure!” because the scale of the melodrama is just so over-the-top.
The fact that this is in the bottom 20 but I have nothing but good things to say about it illustrates how dang good this show is. It’s only getting better from here, folks!
40. Romeo & Juliet II: Love Resurrected (Season 1, episode 7)
Preston is a terrible playwright. This makes sense, because he’s like 11, but he’s the kind of hilariously bad I wish I’d been as a preteen, because his play is absolutely bonkers. Max fucking with David is great, Tabii vs. Bonquisha is great, Bonquisha in general is a giant amazonian goddess and I want to be swept up into her giant arms. Neil is . . . a robot, for some reason?
So much fun!
39. Camp Cool Kidz (Season 1, episode 4)
I don’t love Ered’s characterization in this one, but there are a lot of wacky hijinks in this episode that I think make it really enjoyable. Max’s wide-eyed revolutionary naïveté is a fun change from his usual dour pessimism, and Nikki’s loyalty to Ered is both very gay and very charming. Plus we get to learn a bit more about how the camp operates (and fails to operate), and it’s a nice way to better establish the campsite as its own setting.
(Definitely think “Cool” should’ve been spelled with a K though. But whatever, I don’t write for the show.)
38. Scout's Dishonor (Season 1, episode 3)
The birth of Neeancy! The introduction of the Flower and Wood Scouts! Neil saying “cu/nt” -- one of the first and only truly shocking uses of profanity in the entire show! ZUKO!
I don’t know if my fondness for this one is rooted mostly in nostalgia or if it was actually really fun, but I enjoyed the he/ll out of it. Not as highly-rated as some other episodes mostly because it doesn’t really do anything, character or story-wise, but not every episode needs to be a massive game-changer that drowns us in feels. Sometimes it’s enough to have a fun romp, and this is very that.
37. Ered Gets Her Cool Back (Season 3, episode 2)
Awww, Ered. I have a soft spot for her, because I love the archetype of a spoiled bit/ch clearly still figuring out how to be a person and have friends. You really get the sense of her as a teenager trying to sort her shi/t out in this episode, which I would love to see more of. Her interactions with Nerris are top-tier, and I like that it’s a continuation of how her character’s been softening since Season 1 into this kind of big-sister figure.
Also, all the female campers in this show are lesbians. I do not make the rules.
36. Attack of the Nurfs (Season 4, episode 2)
I feel like this is a pretty underrated episode. But then again, I feel like Nurf is a pretty underrated character, so maybe that’s just my own personal bias.
I really enjoyed all the different iterations of Nurf, and I think Blaine did a killer job giving each one its own personality and life. It’s a fun episode that plays hard with cartoon physics (a 3D printer printing people! I love it!) and has a surprisingly moving ending.
At least, that’s what I think. Most other people seem to find this one pretty forgettable. Again: make your own da/mn list. I liked it.
35. Mascot (Season 1, episode 2)
This entire episode is memorable for so many things, but a few of my favorites:
David is established as kind of a di/ck.
Platypus arrives and kicks all the as/s.
Quartermaster is the best.
Nerris, Harrison, and Space Kid all get little moments to show off how cute they are.
Neil and Nikki bonding.
This:
34. Quest to Sleepy Peak Peak (Season 2, episode 3)
I love watching Nerris and Harrison bicker, and Neil and Nikki fit really well into their group. It reminds me of being a kid, and of playing Dungeons & Dragons (as an adult, because I’m so cool), and of summer . . . which is a really good thing for this show. There are a lot of funny one-liners, and it’s just a good dang time.
33. Quartermaster Appreciation Day (Season 2, episode 6)
I don’t think this one is all that well-loved, but I thought it was funny. There are literally zero important plot or character moments, but it made me laugh a lot, and that’s all I need a Camp Camp episode to do.
I love QM, and the more we learn about him, the more confused and disturbed we end up being. What a fu/cking champion.
32. Arrival of the Torso Takers (Season 3 Halloween episode)
I lowkey hated this one when it came out, because I knew the Daniel stans were going to be exhausting. And they kind of were? But looking back, it’s a great way to reintroduce this motherfu/cker. He’s a lot scarier than he was the last time around -- but also less competent, which is a great way to kick him in the proverbial ba/lls -- and while I wish it had a lot more Gwen in it, it’s a clever and creative Halloween episode.
31. Operation: Charlie Tango Foxtrot (Season 3, episode 10)
Charlie . . . Tango . . . Foxtrot . . . CTF . . . OH! Capture the Flag! I never got that before. Oh, that’s neat. I love this show.
Listen, every time the writers decide to take a risk and do something bizarre and creative, I’m going to be here for it at least a little bit. An entire episode told from the POV of the Woodscouts, explaining how hard they failed in all directions? A great gag where everyone in Petrol’s story talks in grunts? The return of Jermy Fartz?! Fantastic.
30. Panicked Room (Season 4, episode 16)
Listen. I’m a sucker for my trash grandpa; anything Campbell-centric is probably going to be pretty good (except #54), because he’s just one of the most consistently funny and engaging characters. Good times are had whenever this terrible man is on the screen, and giving him a romantic backstory? A tragic romantic backstory full of mistakes and emotional damage?? One where he waited 17 YEARS for the love of his life???
We have no choice but to stan.
29. Party Pooper (Season 4, episode 15)
I’m so predictable. If you put Gwen in something, I will be happy. If you make an entire episode about how Gwen is under-appreciated and overworked and just trying to do her best despite the circumstances, I will dedicate my firstborn child to you.
Anyway, this episode is really sweet, and I liked the unexpected direction the writers took her relationship with her dad. He seems like a nice guy, they seem like they have a nice relationship, and . . . well, an episode about how hard it is to be an adult millennial hit pretty hard. Plus this was just a really pretty episode -- and not just because Gwen was in so much of it! Seriously, that night sky was a thing of beauty.
Also if you say a fuc/king word about Max and that godda/mn dog I will choke you out with your own intestines. Few things are more hilariously, annoyingly ironic than the fact that the entire fandom ignored and failed to appreciate Gwen . . . in the episode all about how everyone ignores and fails to appreciate Gwen.
28. Culture Day (Season 3 holiday episode)
Now, would it be arrogant to point out that I had the idea for a Culture/Heritage Day back in September 2018? Yes, especially since I don’t think the writers ever read fanfiction and it has literally nothing to do with this episode. Will that stop me? He/ll no it will not! I am a creature of ego! Read my stuff!
Anyway, this is a really fun look at Neil’s background, personality, and relationships. Max looking out for him is just . . . oh my god, I cannot, I’ve written like 30 of these and my brain is starting to melt, but these two are so cute. I love arrogant Neil, and I love protective Max, and I love QM and Gwen fuc/king over the Flower Scouts to save the day. Everything about this episode is lovely.
27. Cameron Campbell the Camp Campbell Camper (Season 3, episode 7)
This should not be ranked so high (even if these are all essentially tied). This is a dumb episode based on a really, really dumb premise.
But . . . I don’t know what to tell you. “Samboy Kidwell,” Max realizing he and Campbell are disturbingly similar and not liking what his future could look like, David’s “I’m not mad, I’m disappointed” face . . . this episode happens to hit all of my favorite things. It had a really good balance of heavy-handed moralizing and goofs, it was part of the most graceful lead-up into a finale the show has ever had, and I’m just all about it.
Excellent job, Samboy. Count Olaf would be proud of your disguise.
There ends the “some good sh/it” tier. We’re starting to get into the really excellent stuff now!
26. Parents' Day (Season 2, episode 12)
I know. You want this to be higher. I hear you.
Honestly I’m kind of shocked it’s this high; it’s my least favorite of the season finales so far, and I had to push past a lot of prejudice to actually rank this where I think it deserves to be, as opposed to somewhere in the like mid-40s. Mostly because it gave fuel to the raging inferno of “Max has terrible parents and David should adopt him” headcanons, which I’ve detailed my problems with extensively in the past (in a post that, statistically speaking, none of you have read).
But, trying to be objective: is this episode actually any good?
Well . . . yeah, it really is.
So much work was put into giving each of the campers families that make sense with their characters and bounce absurdly well off of them, ranging from wholesome and adorable (Nerris’s family) to quietly tragic (Harrison’s parents), and they’re all designed so well; they’re fun to look at and fun to watch interact with the kids and each other. (The only exception is Dolph’s dad, who is both kinda lame and misattributes the cause of the weird Na/zi thing because it did not come from Germany, I assure you. But things with Dolph are always a little off, and I don’t really know how you would give him a backstory that actually works with the character, so they were caught between a rock and a hard place there.)
The drama of David having to choose between the man he considers his father and the camp he considers his home is really touching, and him and Gwen choosing to take a sad camper out to get pizza instead of covering for their boss’s a/ss is such a beautiful moment for both of them that I can’t really blame the fandom for losing their mind over it. Campbell’s arrest leading into the arcs of the next two seasons was great as well, and the finale left us all with this weird sense of foreboding because we didn’t know what was going to happen next; it was the only finale that actually ended on something close to a cliffhanger, while still being satisfying enough to keep us all from melting down.
Plus, it’s funny. Carl and Candy are really funny and the idea of Neil and Nikki’s parents boning is funny in a horrible way. The joke about Quartersister is funny. It’s a good episode.
Should this be higher? Maybe, but I can’t bring myself to put it above the rest of these episodes. Again: make your own list.
25. Mind Freakers (Season 1, episode 10)
The episode that launched a thousand ships. Assuming those ships are all Harrison/Neil, anyway.
It’s hard to talk about these Season 1 episodes because they feel so classic. Like, what is there to say? You’ve all seen it a couple dozen times; I’ve seen it a couple dozen times. Harrison is a di/ck, Neil is possibly an even bigger di/ck, and magic may or may not be real. (Though spoilers for literally every season: yes, magic is definitely real.) It’s so much fun watching these two smug as/sholes snipe at each other in an almost literal playground hair-pulling way that could very easily be read as flirtation.
And the fandom did most certainly read it that way, at least for a little while.
24. Gwen Gets a Job (Season 2, episode 8)
It’s Gwen. What, was I supposed to not put it this high?
This was the first Gwen-centric episode, and it absolutely slaps. She’s pushed to the breaking point and responds by being a cold-hearted BAMF, and it got her some pretty significant hate from fans but I don’t give a fu/ck, I loved it. We got to see her all dolled up, and then we got to see her all disheveled, and both of those looks were gorgeous. David gives her a tiny fragment of the love and validation she deserves (I don’t know if this is when gwenvid started taking off -- I think it wasn’t really until “Parents’ Day,” or even Season 3 -- but I ate that s/hit up).
Also, again: job hunting post-2008. It’s a bad time, y’all. Camp Camp gets it.
23. Follow the Leader (Season 4, episode 6)
Yeah, I was kind of surprised at how high this landed, too. I guess I’m just a sucker for unlikely companionships, and these three have a great chemistry. The combination of competitiveness, sass, and reluctant admiration make their interactions a lot of fun. Their motivation of doing petty errands for Campbell for the sake of getting at the Box of Illegal Contraband is a great framework too, with high enough stakes to justify all sorts of wacky shenanigans without causing actual anxiety.
I want to see these characters forced to spend more time together. Please, RT, make that happen.
22. Escape from Camp Campbell (Season 1, episode 1)
In terms of numbers, this feels so low, but considering everything from about #45 on is ranked as at least decent, this is actually a pretty high rating. There are 21 episodes I’d call better than this, but these decisions were all pretty painful.
This introduces us to everyone! The main trio, the counselors, Mr. Campbell; we get a snapshot of the major personalities running around the camp, the major points of conflict (Max vs. David, primarily), the major building blocks of future episodes, setting, and relationships . . .
Again, I don’t know how much of my love for this episode is nostalgia -- there’s a lot of squeeing at familiar faces and gags; this is the first time David gets hit by a bus!!! -- but it was a fun and funny introduction to a series that’s ended up being so important to me, and I’m so grateful this wonderful, quirky little show with its wonderful and quirky little premiere.
Of all the episodes, I really can’t look at this one objectively. It’s too important.
21. The Fun-Raiser (Season 3, episode 1)
David and Gwen scheming is my ki/nk. They very rarely scheme together, but every single time their teamwork makes the dream work (or, more frequently, makes the dream fail horribly and have disastrous consequences) my soul flies out of my body and takes to the stars, where I write another 500 first chapters to gwenvid fanfics I’ll probably never finish.
This is a great follow-up to “Parents’ Day,” where we immediately see the consequences of the previous season finale and what happens when the one adult in the camp disappears. Mr. Campbell was a terrible adult, true, but at least he was smart enough not to steal QM’s hook. Like . . . whose plan was this? It was so bad. These two are hilariously incompetent sometimes -- often when their bad ideas are feeding off of each other, actually, a la this and “Space Camp Was a Hoax” -- and watching them frantically try and keep all their balls in the air is so great.
The ending is satisfying, too; a bit graphic, in keeping with a show that tends to keep the violence limited to periodic spurts of bloodshed 1-2 times a season and mostly pretty mild the rest of the time, but between Max stepping up and fixing everything while still being his shi/tty self to our dear dumba/ss counselors getting their dumb as/ses handed to them (deservedly so, if we’re being honest) . . . it’s such a great note to begin a new season on.
20. Journey to Spooky Island (Season 1, episode 5)
A classic.
We get to meet our spooky boy Jasper, we get to watch the comedy trio play off each other and continue to sketch out the general contours of their friendship, and we get to see the Quartermaster with a big purple dil/do for a hand. What’s not to love?
19. The Butterfinger Effect (Season 4, episode 17)
CONTROVERSIAL HOT TAKES! GET YOUR CONTROVERSIAL HOT TAKES HERE!
I’ve already gone into some pretty intense detail about why I think this one is actually really good and carries the theme of embracing change that everything about Season 4 was centered around, but none of y’all read that so here it is in short: this episode is super funny, almost all of the campers’ transformations work really well as extensions of their characters while still being strange and surprising, and the fact that Nurf creates all of these problems by trying to solve them is deliciously fun to watch in a karmic sort of way.
Or maybe it’s just because any Nurf-centric episode is going to rank pretty highly for me. That is also possible.
18. Space Camp Was a Hoax (Season 2, episode 10)
Our camp counselors being bad people: it’s my drug of choice.
We get Space Kid tripping balls in what might be one of the funniest sequences in the show, the entire camp coming together to try and pull off the stupidest, most impossible task (and kinda maybe almost nailing it???), and once again the fun of watching Gwen and David scramble to keep from getting caught in their boss’s shit/ty lies is so great. And Lindsay’s voice acting is absolutely killer, even more so than usual.
17. Jermy Fartz (Season 2, episode 4)
I get the sense this might be a somewhat controversial one.
I’ve written before about why I think this episode is a lot of fun, but it mostly boils down to two things: watching the campers try (and fail) to be nice to the most bully-able person on the entire planet, and the essential likeableness of Jermy.
No, really.
I think a lot of people were put off by Jermy’s general grossness, because . . . my god is he disgusting, but he’s also polite and good-natured, and seems totally self aware of how difficult he is to be around, without letting it make him depressed. He’s cheerful in a weirdly downbeat way that’s impossible to understand until you see him in action. He’s so matter-of-fact about his own awfulness in a way that I found entirely endearing. I don’t think I’d want him at my camp, either, but get that kid to a good dermatologist and gastroenterologist, teach him some basic hygiene and social skills, and you’ll have quite a little gentleman there.
I do however find it hilarious that apparently David got the type of tree wrong when making fun of Jermy. Not only is that a great moment for reveling in David being an as/shole, but he didn’t even have the right wood. F/ucking idiot. I love him so much.
These last ones are my favorites! (Well, duh, that’s how this whole ranking thing works.) Maybe not perfect, but just really good and with limitless rewatch value.
16. St. Campbell's Day (Season 4 holiday episode)
They Grinch’d Camp Camp. Those brilliant bast/ards, they really pulled it off.
Ignoring the fact that David is truly frightening-looking for most of the episode, this is a great bookend to Season 4, following up on the theme established in the first episode about how David is a flawed and selfish human being despite trying his best not to be.
This is another one I was surprised to find so high on the list, but the more I thought about it the more I realizes how good it is. David being a jerk is always one of my favorite storylines, and the fact that the trouble comes from him trusting Mr. Campbell too little instead of too much is a nice twist on the usual formula. Gwen coming to help him out despite a blistering hangover gave me aggressive shipping feels, yes, obviously.
Between a lot of really funny little gags like QM’s failed satanic ritual and the genuinely touching moral about the importance of spending time with the people you love, it’s just a really lovely episode that gets just the right amount of maudlin for the holiday season.
15. Jasper Dies at the End (Season 2, episode 5)
I kept switching this and “Dial M for Jasper”; it was a really difficult decision to make, figuring out where these two belonged. I think in the end, while the John Dies at the End reference was very, very good, this one loses me a little bit by being told from David’s perspective. Now, normally the more David is in an episode the more I’ll be likely to love it (see my #1 for proof of that), but his blinders when it comes to the camp and Mr. Campbell result in a really funny story, but one without the same emotional heft as hearing about what happened from Jasper’s point of view.
That doesn’t mean it’s not perfect for what it needs to be: each Jasper episode builds on the previous ones, and having the same intensity of “Dial M for Jasper,” where we learn how he died and how his relationship with David fell apart, would be weird and heavy at this point. In Season 1 we just found out he’s a ghost (and eagle-eyed viewers realized he’d been a camper with David); in Season 2 we find out how David views their friendship and time at camp; and in Season 3 we get Jasper’s perspective. It’s an absolutely wonderful raising of the stakes (for lack of a better term), but the one that packs more of an emotional punch is going to rank a bit higher than the one that’s mostly just for laughs.
That being said: there are plenty of laughs in this one. Everyone -- Griffin, Miles, Travis, the animators -- nailed this one, and it gets funnier every time I watch it.
14. Camporee (Season 1, episode 11)
AKA the episode where Forest realized she was in love with Gwen.
What a great idea for an episode, seriously. Every coming-of-age story has a talent show or a competition or a big game -- something where the kiddos can show off their improved skills and teamwork to beat their bullies or whatever. And this show has both kinds of bullies: the popular girly girls and the violent muscleheads. What a great moment to pull everyone together and show how friendship can help us accomplish anything!
Except . . . of course that’s not what happens. Of course they’re absolute garbage, and of course teamwork isn’t the answer. Gwen is the perfect foil for David here, being the anti-teamwork, anti-Camp-Campbell adult who can perfectly and effortlessly undermine David’s relentless optimism. David wants so badly for his campers to live in the same coming-of-age summer movie he did as a child, and their staunch refusal to do that leads to a really heartbreaking closer to the episode, as well as lead into the next one. Everything about this, from the challenges to the setup to Gwen shouting “we are winning this FUC/KING trophy!” is just gold.
13. David Gets Hard (Season 1, episode 9)
We have David. We have Nurf. We have Gwen. We have Max trying to be helpful in the shi/ttiest way possible.
We have all the makings of a da/mn good episode. And they deliver. Not a very emotionally intense or moving one, but so, so funny.
12. Dial M for Jasper (Season 3, episode 5)
This isn’t the fate any of us expected for Jasper, and it’s not the fate of a lot of people wanted. But godda/mn it, it worked. The constant bait-and-switch the episode keeps playing with, where you keep waiting for something really dramatic and tragic to happen . . . and then the reality is that Jasper died because Mr. Campbell was stupid and careless, and it was all just a horribly sad accident.
It’s anticlimactic, but in a way that suits the series, both as a comedic counterpoint to all the hype throughout the episode and as a way to establish that Cameron Campbell is a bad man first and foremost through selfishness and laziness, not Daniel-esque sinister evil. Jasper’s death was totally avoidable and totally Campbell’s fault, and while that’s sad, it also adds a weird sort of lightness to the episode. David didn’t do something terrible to kill his best friend, Jasper didn’t kill himself, and without having actively chosen to murder a child (well, not this time), the door remains open for fans accepting Campbell’s later pseudo-redemption. It was just an accident, and Jasper was “haunting” David to tell him that he was sorry for how their friendship ended. That’s really sweet, actually.
I think it’s the best way this reveal could’ve gone, and I’m so impressed with how they pulled it all off.
11. Into Town (Season 1, episode 8)
This might actually be the only flawless episode in the entire show. I mean, I call a lot of them flawless, and I mean that on an emotional level -- “I love this so much I cannot see anything wrong with it” -- but this one is a masterpiece of storytelling. All the technical jumbo I’m bad at, like planting and payoff and tension and all of that, is just perfect.
I feel like this is the kind of claim that needs to be backed up with a long-as/s essay full of citations and video clips and references to, like, Joseph Campbell or something, but this is my 49th entry in the list so I am not going to be doing that. Besides, I don’t think my English degree qualifies me to critique film/animation; I don’t even entirely know half the terms I’ve used to compliment this episode. Someone else please explain why this is such a good one.
10. The Quarter-Moon Convergence (Season 4, episode 5)
I’ve mentioned in other entries that the weird, surreal humor sometimes doesn’t work; it feels too much like being odd for its own sake, and sometimes gets so distracted in being surreal that it forgets to include anything funny or meaningful.
This . . . is not one of those.
Putting Harrison and QM together is a stroke of genius; the two of them are literally the most magical beings in the entire show, and using them as the conveyance for this great Lovecraftian horror-comedy was such a good idea. I don’t know if we’ll ever see these two interact in another episode -- honestly, this felt a bit like lightning in a bottle, and I have a hard time imagining what could possibly bring them together again -- but if this is the only episode we get, it is such a fantastic one.
Harrison makes a really good everyman, despite his powers; he’s just the right amount of confident and insecure to pull off that wide-eyed apprentice to QM’s grizzled wise mentor. (The fact that QM is objectively a terrible mentor is beside the point.) I still don’t entirely know what the two of them accomplished, but it feels baffling and momentous, with the perfect amount of gravity to make things extremely tense all the way through to the end.
Also, I guess God is an octopus? That’s kinda cool. I like octopuses.
9. Camp Corp. (Season 3, episode 12)
Another unpopular opinion? Oh ho ho, I am so contrary! I am Not Like Other Fans! I am the Ebony Dark'ness Dementia Raven Way, refusing to have the same opinions of all you prepz.
I know this wasn’t the most well-loved episode, but I think it did a really great job tying together story threads woven throughout Season 3: Max’s selfishness leading to him hurting other people, his growing realization that he cares about his friends and the camp itself, the parallels between him and Mr. Campbell (and the fact that they both get this redemption moment in the finale).
This is the most Max-centric season, focusing on his flaws and character growth, and they pulled it off in a really organic way that felt faithful to his character, touching without being too maudlin. The fact that his feelings about the camp are echoed in Gwen, Neil and Nikki, the other campers, and even Mr. Campbell drives home how important the camp -- and David -- are to this strange little family.
Each season, Max reluctantly becomes a better person, without changing the fundamental core of who he is. That’s a really hard putt for the writers and Michael, and I’m blown away every finale by how they so consistently nail it.
8. Time Crapsules (Season 4, episode 18)
Gwen-centric? Check.
Max learning how to be a better person while still being the bratty kid we know and love? Check.
Looks at one of the most under-appreciated character dynamics in the entire show (i.e., Max and Gwen)? Checkity check-check-check.
I don’t really have much to say about this one, which I should: it was considered a pretty serious letdown to a lot of fans, and I’m not sure how to explain why I loved it so much.
Comparing Max from “The Order of the Sparrow” to Max from this episode is wild. It’s not like 2 different characters: they’re still very obviously the same cynical, self-absorbed 10-year-old trying to survive summer camp. But he’s become a more considerate friend and decent version of that kid, and it’s great to watch. The moment where he and Gwen go too far and immediately regret snapping at each other is still painful (on my god, the VAs in this show, they’re so talented), Nikki and Neil both get nice subplots about how they’re also growing up, and the ending is fuc/king hilarious, perfectly breaking the tension from Campbell’s speech, which is both beautifully done and important to hear, especially if you’re in a period of uncomfortable transition (like, say, in your late 20s, or living through about 5 different national and global catastrophes).
And okay, I found that speech on the wiki for this episode and it made me deeply emotional, so here:
Here's the thing: you've got to take your failures and make something out of them. Take Camp Campbell for instance: a lot of poor decisions went into making this place what it is today. Sure, somewhere along the line it maybe strayed from its path, not living up to the camp it wanted to be. At some point, the camp realized that the camp would never reach the end of its path until it was ready or until it gave up. So, if the camp wanted to keep embezzling money and dealing with foreign powers, so be it! But, at some point, it didn't anymore. I never saw this coming, but I'm starting to think this camp is the best it's ever been.
If this is the last episode of Camp Camp we ever get -- and for at least a little while, it looks like it’s going to be -- I can’t think of a sweeter, funnier, and more lovely bittersweet note for this show to go out on.
7. The Lake Lilac Summer Social (Season 3, episode 6)
And again: No one was surprised.
This is the longest non-finale episode of the show, and it uses that time perfectly. Rather than having some big emotional moments and character arcs -- which are great, don’t get me wrong -- the writers use the extended time to build a series of shenanigans as complicated as Gwen’s matchmaking web, and watching her try to set up a series of dominos (with David, for once, being the responsible, level-headed one) is almost as satisfying as the catastrophic results.
Neil and Snake steal this episode, even from someone as in love with Gwen as I am, and for an episode that’s largely about making fun of shippers, there hasn’t been one that launched nearly as many ships as this. Neil/Snake? Tabii/Erin? Max/Nikki? GWENVID?! It’s all here, and I am here for it.
It was also fun to get a traditional episode setup in a very non-traditional show. I assume this means the beach and/or hot springs episode is forthcoming. (No, Pis/s Lake doesn’t count. Obviously it doesn’t count.)
6. Keep the Change (Season 4, episode 1)
Again, this is an episode I’ve said a lot about in the past -- and I was pretty uncharitable toward Season 3, which in retrospect was very unse/xy of me -- but I stand by a lot of my opinions then: this is a fu/cking great episode.
David is an as/shole, Max is an as/shole, Campbell is an as/shole. No one escapes the as/sholery. David schemes, Max catches him in the scheme, Campbell gets drunk and kind of gay . . . I’m 54 entries into this list and I don’t have much to say anymore: it’s just really good and fun and I love it.
5. Camp Loser Says What? (Season 4, episode 9)
This is another one I kind of hated when it came out, and again for fandom-related and personal-grudge reasons.
Fu/cking Daniel. That motherfu/cker. He shows up for 12 minutes and Tumblr bursts into flames. Every single time.
However, it’s really hard not to love this one. Daniel-as-Trump is a clever but subtle -- I mean, for this show’s definition of subtle -- allegory, and it’s amazing how much this slimy freak and the Woodscouts slot into it. David is a bise/xual disaster with the absolute worst taste in men, Dirty Kevin and Daniel are onscreen together for all of 2.5 seconds and the kevdan shippers lost their minds, and Xemug looks like Megamind for some weird reason.
My only minor complaint is that the ending is a bit anticlimactic, but it plays on Daniel’s stupidity and the value of teamwork, so it’s a very small nitpick in an episode that mostly works like gangbusters.
4. Cult Camp (Season 2, episode 1)
Duh. There’s a really good song and we’re introduced to a charismatic, sinister, and totally dumba/ss villain. What’s not to like?
I don’t think I even need to say anything about this episode. Season 2 started off the summer by throwing a lit firecracker directly at the viewer’s face, and ignoring the fact that we as a fandom proceeded to eat each other, it’s impossible not to get caught up in the episode’s wild energy.
And dude, that song. Fabulous. Fu/ck Daniel, but thank god he’s around to be such a prickly little pri/ck.
Now for the top 3: Literally perfect, wouldn’t change a single solitary thing.
3. After Hours (Season 4, episode 8)
I’m not sure anyone loved this episode as much as me. But this is my list, and I will put this up at the top if I want to and you cannot stop me.
It’s much easier in a lot of ways to talk about the episodes I hated than the ones I love this much. What do I say besides “literally everything about this fills me with joy and my life is better because it exists”? I don’t know. The counselors are my favorite characters, and between Gwen and QM having the weirdest bonding experience, Gwen getting to meet up with people who care about her silly fanfiction, Mr. Campbell being the trash grandpa of my dreams, David getting in way over his head . . . it’s the episode I always wanted, and they made it work so well.
Also, I just discovered that “Gwen Isn’t Your Mother So Stop Asking Her to Rinse Your Dishes” is an actual song and I am overwhelmed with delight. Here, I’m embedding it as well as linking because it’s so good:
youtube
God. This show. What the fu/ck even is up with this amazing, weird-as/s show.
2. The Order of the Sparrow (Season 1, episode 12)
Duh.
The entire first season is a great time (except “Reigny Day”), but it’s a pretty low-stakes kind of great time. There isn’t much in terms of emotional depth until the very end of “Camporee,” despite some hints at darker themes in one-off jokes and quick asides, so this episode comes a bit out of left field, tonally speaking.
But that’s not a bug, it’s a feature; if the show had been this overtly emotional from the outset, this finale wouldn’t hit as hard, and the rest of the season wouldn’t be as funny.
This manages to serve as a capstone to the conflict of the first season, building on episodes like “Into Town” and “Escape from Camp Campbell” in a way that feels totally natural for both David and Max’s characters while revealing new sides of them. It works because it’s so unexpected, but it doesn’t come across as incongruous with their personalities. It’s the first and only time David swears in all 4 seasons, and that line -- I don’t even need to say it, you know exactly what I’m talking about -- still gives me chills.
Also, Gwen sings the camp theme song. Impossible not to cherish.
1. The Forest (Season 4, episode 12)
I’m not sure if this one is a surprise or not. It might be the obvious first place, or it might be a bit of an oddball for some people.
I had a really hard time choosing between this and “The Order of the Sparrow”; I switched their places half a dozen times, and the difference in quality between the two is razor-thin. I think part of that is because it accomplishes a lot of what “Order of the Sparrow” does: puts David in a situation where he’s pushed to his absolute emotional and physical capacity, crushes every shred of hope he has left, and sees what he’s actually made of when you strip everything away. It’s much more dramatic this time around, but it’s the same basic concept.
And just like in the Season 1 finale, what we see is a man who’s determined to do good even when he isn’t rewarded for it, even when he’s actively punished for it. Who wants to love nature, and life, and make the world a better place -- despite his faults, his selfishness and thoughtlessness and anger, David proves that he is fundamentally kind. He’s not nearly as deludedly optimistic as he seems; he just refuses to stop trying.
Because somebody fuc/king has to.
I’ll admit, some of what puts this one in first place is that I’m a sucker for whump, and David really goes through the ringer. However, I also think it’s important to acknowledge the risk Joe Nicolosi took with writing this episode: it’s all centered around a single character, it’s darker and more viscerally bloody than any other episode in the show’s history, the art is focused on these grand sweeping backgrounds that must’ve taken forever to paint, and there’s very little talking in a show that runs 99% on clever dialogue. This could have so easily backfired -- and for some fans it did -- but it was brave and beautiful and breathtaking.
I’ve actually only watched this in full once. It’s really hard to get through; it’s just so intense and even disturbing. But if there’s one episode I'll remember for the rest of my life, even when I’m 80 years old and haven’t seen the show in years, it’ll be “The Forest.”
It’s funny how such a sharp departure from the format and style of the rest of the show somehow manages to perfectly capture the heart of it. Talk about a fuc/king achievement.
So what have we learned?
I don’t entirely know what the purpose of this whole exercise was. I think it was mostly to get myself a nice Camp Camp fix that came from something other than slogging through 20 different fanfic WIPs, and to remind myself of what a strange and fun ride the last 4 summers have been.
I also wanted to take a moment to acknowledge what Camp Camp means to me. This show has been hugely important to me on a personal level: I met two of my best friends through this fandom, and I’ve never been more connected to a community or readers than I have with CC. I know I bi/tch about this fandom a lot, but it’s a big extended internet family, and I’m so happy to be a part of it. Going through all these episodes, getting the chance to ramble about the things I liked and the things I didn’t, was a great way to reconnect with a series and community that I love.
So . . . what have we learned?
1. Season 4 was all over the place.
Some of this has to be due to the sheer volume of episodes, but when I sat down and organized everything into tiers:
There isn’t a single category Season 4 doesn’t have at least one episode in. I was surprised to see how high a lot of them ended up; it really was the best and worst of the show so far.
For the fun of it, I decided to give a number to each placement -- 60 points for the #1 episode, 59 for #2, etc. -- and see how each season broke down. Because that’s that kind of thing I think is worthwhile, apparently. And . . .
2. Seasons 1 and 4 are really good, actually.
Well, I don’t think anyone’s surprised to see how well Season 1 stacked up; it was amazing. But I was surprised to see how much I ended up enjoying Seasons 3 and 4, when if you’d asked me before this little project, I would’ve said they were the most underwhelming. Maybe I messed up the numbers a bit -- I’m no mathmagician -- but not only are they all really close, but Season 4 was one of my favorites.
3. This entire show is really good, actually.
One thing that really struck me when I put it all together visually is how most of the episodes sit in the “good,” “really good,” or “amazing” categories. The amount of episodes that are memorable, fun, and/or emotionally resonant is crazy. I don’t now how many other tiny cult-hit web series can say the same, honestly, and all of the writers, animators, directors/producers/other people whose jobs I don’t really understand, and voice actors should be commended for their outstanding talent and hard work.
4. Thank you, Camp Camp.
It was a real pleasure to relive all of these episodes again and think about what they meant to me. It won’t be the last time I sit down and watch this show -- and it certainly won’t be the end of my being a shrieking fangirl over it -- but with this break, where we have to get through a blazing, extremely difficult summer without a new season to fawn over, it’s nice to stop and appreciate what a precious gem of a show this is.
I hope everyone involved with Rooster Teeth is taking a much-deserved rest and prioritizing their health and well-being. Thank you for creating something truly special, and I can’t wait to see what happens next.
#campcamp#camp camp roosterteeth#thank you RT Animation for giving me my life these past 4 years#cc david#cc max#cc gwen#i'm not tagging all the characters#campcamp masterpost#i really hope this doesn't get hidden from the tags but#guys this was a super intense labor of love please check it out#but also reading it is also a super intense labor so i get it if you don't XD
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GASP I GET TO SEND A PROMPT TO MY FAV FIC WRITER?? Score! Okay okay, my brain is functioning low capacity rn so i can't come up with anything very good to request, but hows about this: Reader gets a fancy new 60s dress and shows off to Otto... 😳
AYEEEE, ITS DONE ANON! ❤️ also, fuck mobile Tumblr, its dumb 🙄
It was silent in the house as you looked at yourself in the mirror, grinning. Yes, this would definitely work. They would be arriving any minute now...
The front door opened, revealing only Otto as he strode in quickly, smiling to himself as the cats flocked around his feet. You could hear him gently speak to them in Swedish, bending down to pet a couple before pulling him coat and boots off.
“Y/N?” He called, making you smile to yourself, feeling butterflies in your stomach at your dastardly plan. You waited, pretending you were busy in your room, hearing his heavy foot falls on the carpet.
“Yes? Im in my room!” You called out, practically shaking with excitement.
Otto turned and saw you, tilting his head with a smirk as he looked at you, cleaning.
“Hardly the attire for cleaning, älskling.” He said with a chuckle, crossing his arms playfully.
It was a beautiful dress, flowing against your thighs, dark green and black lace at the bodice, hugging your body in the right places. He tried to look away as he felt his face heat, wondering if you would be offended at his ogling.
“Oh you know, wanted to look nice! Come, sit down, I want to show you something that you’ll like.” You said with a smile, looking over your shoulder at him as you patted the bed. He did as asked and sat, watching as you rounded him, standing closer then he expected you to, your confined chest practically in his face. Eyes darted away, cheeks blazing as he heard you laugh, placing your hands on his shoulders softly.
“Ill never get enough of the way you blush at the simplest things.” You whispered, hands lowering to push against his chest, forcing him to lay down. He couldn’t help the strangled noise that escaped his throat as you sat directly over his hard member, eyes wide as you lifted your beautiful dress, revealing that you were wearing nothing else under.
Never had he ever been turned on in such a short amount of time, arm lifting to hide his eyes as he bit his lip, trying to calm down. Your lithe fingers didnt help, already at work on his shirt and pants, giggling over him like a succubus.
“Oh, don’t like my surprise? Its okay Otto, don’t wor-“ you tried, yelping as he flipped you over, your back against the bed as he made quick work of his pants and shirt, leaning back to shut the door with a bang.
You moaned as he rubbed your clit, watching him lean his tall form over you, watching your every movement.
“Kärlek, so so ready for me already. How long were you waiting for me like this?” Otto moaned, leaning down to kiss your neck. He was right, he knew it, you had been wet all day thinking of his return, all too happy to see that he had arrived alone. He was fingering you now, getting you ready for his massive length.
The beautiful bastard, he only chuckled at your visible struggle to form words, only withdrawing his hand after you started to beg him to fuck you.
“Fuck me Otto, I need you, fuck me now or Ill do it myself all alone.” You cheekily replied, loving the way he held your thighs harder as he wrapped them around his hips, your words sending a shiver up his spine. He lifted your dress and held it as he entered you, watching you closely.
He loved the way your teeth bit your lip, the way your hands rose to hold onto his forearms, the way your eyes squeezed shut. He loved the way your green dress stuck to your chest, watching your breasts move under it with his movements. The gasp you let out only fueled him further, holding your thighs as he started a faster rhythm, fucking you harder.
“God, you fuck me so good Otto, I love how rough you can be for me, ughhhh.” You moaned, smiling as it was your turn to make him blush, one of his hands leaving your skin before briefly slapping your thigh softly, stormy eyes pinning you down.
“Such a naughty mouth kärlek.” He moaned out in response, bringing a hand between the both of you to rub your clit, smirking.
“Keep going, little Y/N, I want to hear it.”
��I love to way you fuck me! Hmm, harder Otto, fuck me like you mean it!” You held onto him until the very end, moaning louder as he went faster, bringing you over the edge, your heart thudding loudly as he moaned, pulling out quickly grabbing his shirt, finishing onto it.
He lay beside you, pulling the blanket over the both of you, catching his breath.
“So, do you like the dress?”
Otto laughed, a pure and unadulterated sound, leaning towards you to kiss you softly.
#otto x reader#the swedes#ikea mafia#the swedes x reader#tua swedes#tua otto#umbrella academy swedes#JossamBird Fic#smut
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In 2021, Anyone Can Make $ Playing Video Games!
I grew up playing games like Risk, Monopoly, a little Chess... and still remember buying my first computer somewhere around 1986 solely to play a computer game on. It was an Apple IIc, and that first game was some type of Pirate Adventure. I wish I remembered the name. It wasn’t all that good, but still, I was hooked!
Since that first adventure, I’ve spent thousands of hours as well as dollars playing just about every type of digital game that has followed! PC games, Atari, Wii, mobile games... you name it, I play it! I’d always generalize the cost (to myself at least) thinking “some guys play golf 3 days a week at $100 a round... I play computer games”.
That’s my story, and I’m sticking to it! However, the story has changed...
“Pay to Play” has become “Play to Earn”!
If you would be to search terms like “crypto games”, “blockchain games”, “make money playing video games”, and others, you’d find some really incredible statements. Today, quotes like the ones below are becoming more and more common!
“I made $400 last week playing a computer game” “I just sold my RPG character for $200 profit”
“I was offered $1k for a skin for my laser rifle of doom” (I made up the “laser rifle of doom” part)
“I bred my pet thingamajig yesterday and sold the baby!” (it’s digital, for those of you wincing)
In 2021, thanks to the blockchain, there’s a growing community of gamers who are making real dollars daily, mining, fighting, shooting, jumping... all while playing the same type of mobile and PC games that you had to PAY to play just a short while ago...
...but let’s start at the beginning.
You paid $172,000 for a what!?
Yes... all the way back in 2018 a CryptoKitty named “Dragon” was sold for an incredible $172,000. (300 ETH) Don’t be too surprised, it’s justified! It’s an adorable digital image, or “NFT” of a cat, after all.
It’s a lot of money, but for NFTs and blockchain gaming, flipping a Kitty today may as well be considered the stone ages. It’s still a record, but while you can still get started collecting these digital felines for as low as a couple of dollars, big-dollar trades still happen daily.
On the flip side of mortgaging your home to buy a digital picture of a CryptoKitty, Bored Ape, or CryptoPunk, you may feel better if you begin your adventure into making crypto (it’s real money, dear!) by playing a video game where you can “make money” instead of spending it.
I’m not saying owning a CryptoKitty or any of a plethora of “Avatar NFTs” we see popping up on various exchanges isn’t one way to do it... I’m saying to me at least, as a life-long gamer I’d much prefer playing a mobile, console, or PC game to collecting pictures in a digital wallet.
So what the heck is an NFT?
I could go into a long explanation... but since this article is about gaming and not cryptocurrency, I’ll tell you an NFT is a “non-fungible token”, and leave you google it if you really want to dig in deep. I do want to share more, so I’ll ‘splain it as simple as I can for you Lucy!
A CryptoKitty, as stated above, is a type of image called an NFT. (the collection is called “CryptoKitties) It’s a digital picture of a cartoon cat. There are thousands of different ones that have different shapes, colors, expressions and traits. (kind of like a real cat, but eats less)
The difference, is only one of each design is actually a legitimate “CryptoKitty”. (or a legitimate whatever type of image it happens to be) To be clearer... each NFT is a “one of a kind”, so if you’re thinking “but can’t I just make a copy?”, nope you can’t.
I mean... you “can” make a copy of it if you really dig the design and want it on your desktop, but it would only be a copy of that particular NFT, not the real McCoy! Ok... so what makes one real, and the rest fakes? The blockchain.
Now, I’m going to be true to my word and keep my promise of not making this an article about crypto or the blockchain, so just know this: the difference between an image that is an actual NFT, and a copy of one, is there is an underlying digital code that designates the real thing.
So real in fact, that artists are creating or importing their paintings and creations to the web as NFTs, numbering them as they would a lithograph, and selling their entire collections. So if you are an art fan, check with your favorite creators... you may be surprised to find all of their “works of art” on an online marketplace!
NFTs are viewed on certain marketplace websites and digital wallets where the copies cannot be displayed, so that is how we know one is real, and the others are not! Having said that, sure, there’s more to it, but just know that there’s a 100% secure way of knowing an image is a real NFT.
In addition, there can be more than one NFT with the same identical image. However, each has a unique underlying code, so even if they look exactly the same, they are not! Look at it like the playing cards or comic books of old... there may be 1,000 created (or “minted” as it’s called in NFT land) but they will each be numbered 1 to 1,000.
And guess which is more valuable.....? I knew you’d get it!
And these NFT’s make money how?
You’re getting warmer! There are a lot of different types of games coming out these days where you can make money playing. There are RPG’s, MOBA’s, Shooters, games in first person and in third, dungeon crawls... you name it!
If you’re thinking “how did I not know this!”, I was the same until recently! I have been gaming almost daily since I stepped into Ultima Online back in 1997, and I can’t even begin to tally how many hours and/or dollars I’ve invested into gaming.
Now, our hobby pays!
After 30-something years, my wife still thinks I’m bonkers... but I got a totally different look from her a few days ago when I told her I sold my game character for well over $200. Legit. I sold two more yesterday, and another this afternoon.
Some of these only cost me $10 or $15, some much more. Some are free. I sold another NFT character last week for $1,950, and it was sold on the game’s website, not on the black market.
So not only can an NFT be a picture of an Ape, Vegetable, Duck, or Stripper on a pole (we’ll leave it at that) but it can be a character in a game, a weapon, a mount, armor, or more.
One game is giving away free pet turtles with each character. For the uneducated on “pets” in computer games, it’s not the kind you keep in a bowl in your bedroom. It’s a companion that fights with you in an online game and may shoot fire from its eyes, heal you, or similar.
Soon after being handed out for free, they’re now selling for around $60 each.
So an NFT can be an image, a video, music, a meme... or even a shirt or shoes! But we’ll leave the NFT clothing explanation to another article. ;)
Remember that rare skin you paid out the nose for a year ago in Apex? Or the L33T character you built up in Fortnite or Warcraft? If you’re no longer playing that game, it’s money under the bridge. And you don’t own the bridge!
In this new breed of blockchain games, you could have LEGALLY sold that character, skin, weapon, land, house, mount, or whatever it was when you tired of the game. For a profit. Maybe for a LARGE profit.
Yes, in the past we were able to find ways to get around the system and dump our pixels from time to time. We’d sell the account on the black market, or cut a deal with someone like a drug dealer on a Chicago Street corner. Then we’d over who went first...
“You give me the account and weapon first!” “No you give me the money first”. Sometimes the deals even went through. Others well... let’s just say half of the parties walked away happy.
I made good money when after 4 years of daily playing I sold my Ultima Online account for somewhere around $2,000, but I needed to find a trustworthy “go-between” to broker the deal. Even then, I was sweating it!
With today’s crypto games, not only do the games provide the platform to buy, sell, or trade your character and items, but it’s encouraged, and done with good old U.S dollars! I’ve made $ playing 4 or 5 different games already this week, as well as flipping (buying low and selling higher) NFT characters!
How else can I make money playing games?
The way you earn varies from game to game, but each week seems to reveal another new strategy, platform, or idea. Many are new strategies, and while some have “triple A” 3D animation and graphics, others are simpler and use basic one-dimensional graphics for the gameplay.
Some of these games are actually tied to a token on the blockchain. The game developer creates their own token, not too unlike Bitcoin or Ethereum, and it can be bought or sold on the open market as well as used in the game as currency.
Could you imagine if back in League of Legends, Guild Wars or Final Fantasy, when you were ready to move to a new game, you could sell or easily convert your gold to cash? Some of today’s blockchain games encourage it!
Not only can you now buy and sell characters and weapons, the gold in the game can be traded, bought, sold, or saved like real currency, stocks, crypto, or collectables. Never have I been as excited about PC and mobile gaming as I am today!
As an example, I am doing some work for a new game that will launch soon called Pepper Attack. Pepper Attack has its own token or coin... called MYTE. It can be used in the game as currency, but also be traded like Bitcoin. A lot of today’s blockchain games offer this same benefit.
Hi ho, hi ho, it’s off to mine I go!
Just by owning an NFT from the game, you can login on a daily basis and click “mine” earning real-value tokens passively. Your Pepper goes to work like one of the 7 Dwarves mining MYTE, and later on you can convert it to other tokens or cold, hard cash.
There's more to do in this particular game as well. Like any good RPG or MMORPG, each pepper has a unique combination or skills like attack, defense, evade, hit points, and more. As an example of the possibilities, if you have a high attack score, other characters will be able to pay you in MYTE to “train” them, raising their score as well.
In addition, these NFTs have unique physical traits, some are common and some are very rare. This game in particular have toons that look more like anime-ish elves with weapons and a stem... I have to admit the artwork is really spicey! (see what I did there?) Other games are of course totally different.
Some people will simply collect these NFTs/characters as an investment, like playing cards or comics. Others will use them in the game, and still others will do both. Either way, they can be held, or sold for a profit!
Unlike the games of the past, when you’re ready to move on you don’t walk away and lose all the $ you have spent for characters, skins, weapons, potions, and other items. When you’re done, you’ll be able to sell your character and items... possibly for a profit... maybe a lot of profit... and move on.
These are not your father’s computer games!
As we move ahead in the genre, we are seeing AAA studios coming out with big-dollar productions, like Blankos, Mist, Illuvium, Ember Sword and others. Some of these games actually let you buy the land you build on!
Did you have your own house in Ultima Online, Star Wars Galaxies, or Archeage? What if you could have used It as a shop and been paid in dollars for your wares, rented it to another player, or sold it for cold hard cash at a huge profit down the road?
In many of today’s games, not only is it common, but extremely hard to come by, and quite expensive. Not only are people paying thousands of dollars for a plot in some of the games that have land, but they’re paying it many months before the game is even released.
They do it, because in many cases they know that they can easily 2X, 10X, or even 50X their investment a short piece down the road. Seriously? Seriously... and the early bird catches the worm!
Other games with lesser budgets are more graphic-based, but have super earnings potential as well, and are just as fun to play. These include Splinterlands, (a card game like Magic!) Crypto Blades, Axie Infinity and more.
Regardless of if the new blockchain game of your choice is a RPG, MOBA, a card game or racing game... the fact that you can put some coin into your pocket playing adds a whole new element. It’s heckafun making money playing a game!
The early nerd catches the worm!
In many cases, if you can catch a game before it releases, the land, characters, weapons, and other items... in most cases all NFTs... can be grabbed at a tiny fraction of the future value.
Of course, always check out the game details and team first, and be confident it’s a good place to put your money. Not all games are made the same.
If you’re lucky enough to find out about and partake in an early sale, for example, like grabbing a character NFT or two in “Pepper Attack” before the late September launch date, you may be in for a real treat!
There are plenty of new titles coming down the pipe that look to be fun, have great communities, and offer earning opportunities. A web search will find services and websites that will keep you on your toes and alert you of upcoming blockchain game releases, marketplace opening, and more.
As we look forward, the future of gaming on the blockchain is really, really exciting! Not only are the games getting better and more fun, but they’re getting better at making the economics work more smoothly as well.
The games are not without challenges, as they need to be made to sustain themselves economically over the long haul. In addition, they need to have higher levels of security (thanks blockchain!) and of course, work without becoming “pay to win”. Thankfully, the new breed of developers have risen to the challenge!
The next time you look for a new game to add to your phone or desktop, or just want a change of pace, look to a game that pays to play! Your wallet might thank you.
Another perk, is your husband or wife will appreciate it as well! Instead of hearing “are you going to play that stupid game all night again?”, you may start to hear things like “I’ll put the kids to bed tonight sweetheart, so you can get online and play”.
One can only hope...
Author - Nick Cifonie
Nick is a lifelong gamer, who cut his teeth at the local Chicago arcade playing Tetris as a teen. Better known as Znick or Deacon Z, Nick became a Game Master in Ultima Online in 1997, ran a large multi-game guild for 15 years, and now spends his time in the “play to earn” arena. Professionally, Nick is a writer and 4-decade marketer working with the Pepper Attack team, as well as others. Nick is also a Catholic Deacon.
#nftart#nft marketplace#nftdrop#nftgallery#nftnews#nftcrypto#cryptoart#nftcommunity#nftartist#crypto#blockchain#nonfungibletokens#nft games#nft
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