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sunphroggy · 3 years

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alright I have an au idea that im about to badly explain but it's a little strange so stick with me.

I call it: 'The Parent Trap but Opposite' au

So picture this: Tommy is Phil's only child, right. His mother died in childbirth so for his entire eight years of life its just been him and Phil. And that's fine, that's great, he loves it. Tommy doesn't want another addition to the family, it would only screw everything up.

That being said, Phil is lonely. Don't get him wrong, he loves his son and loves spending time with him, but he misses the feeling of being in love. He misses his wife.

Enter, Kristen.

They meet on a blind date, set up by a friend from Phil's work, and hit it off instantly. Months pass and Phil wants to propose.

One problem though. He hasnt told Tommy about it. He hasn't even introduced Kristen to him.

So what better way to merge both families that a holiday?

(I should probably say here that Kristen also has children. Take a wild guess who they are.)

Tommy is all for a holiday. Two weeks at a fancy ass hotel with room service, an arcade and a pool? Sign him up!

That is until, he finds out that Kristen and her boys will be joining them.

Enter, Wilbur and Techno.

(They're about fourteen. Their parents are divorced and, unlike Tommy, they knew Kristen was seeing Phil. They alse know that Phil is gonna propose - well, it's just a hunch)

Phil, god bless him, tries his hardest to get Tommy to warm up to Kristen, Wilbur and Techno. He plans all these activities and takes them all shopping, to the beach, to waterparks ect. But Tommy just won't take to them; he doesn't mind Kristen but Wilbur and Techno are weird, they keep making these cryptic comments about how they're going to be seeing eachother a lot in the future and Tommy just does not understand.

That is, until they decide to let Tommy in on the obvious.

Tommy, as expected, is in denial. Because there's no way his dad would do something like that without telling him first. Besides, Phil doesn't need to get married, they're perfectly happy just the two of them.

There's just no way.

Right?

Wrong.

Because Tommy is a curious little shit and he ransacks his and Phil's hotel room in search for the ring. He doesn't find it, of course, because Phil is used to Tommy's little raccoon tactics and hid it properly. But when he comes back from dinner with Kristen to a destroyed room and a confused Tommy, he decides to tell him the truth.

Needless to say Tommy has a fit. One moment, he's happy; just him and dad, living life. And then this lady and her shitty sons come along and fucks that up

(I imagine the conversation being something like:

Phil: Yeah im gonna propose Kristen

Tommy, inhaling deeply: *screams*

And then it would proceed to reinact that once scene from Steven universe with ruby and sapphire like-

phil: he'll eventually tire himself out :'D

Tommy, making even more of a mess than he already has: that's what you think! I am an eternal flame baby!! >:(

Yeah.)

Tommy, ever the drama queen, storms to Wilbur and Techno - who are like "we told you so :/" - and the three of them (because Techno and Wilbur also do not want this little racoon gremlin hybrid in their home either) team up and plan to ruin the proposal. The only problem, they don't know when Phil is gonna actually propose.

And this...this is where the hijinks and shenanigans ensue.

They just like, constantly ruin Phil and Kristen's date nights with their dumb shit.

(I'm thinking shit like the three of them stacked on each others shoulders in a trench coat pretending to be a waiter at the hotel restaurant Phil and Kristen are eating at and constantly spilling drinks and food of them whenever it looks like Phil is about to pop the question; following them on walks under the stars, hiding in bushes with binoculars and making birds attack them; tackling Phil into the pool ect. ect. ect.)

But, plot twist, while pulling off these epic plans, the three of them...bond! Dun dun dunnnnn!!! Wilbur and Techno actually grow to like Tommy and think "Hey, maybe this kid ain't so bad" so they back out on the plans and try to convince Tommy to do the same. He won't.

(Meanwhile, Phil is just wondering why all his proposal attempts have gone so fucking wrong like???)

Anyways, fast forward. Its the last day of their holiday the two families go out for dinner. Its nice, they're having a good time, Kristen is chatting away to Tommy about Minecraft and Tommy is happy to tell her all about his favourite game. And then, Phil clears his throat.

He starts talking about Kristen and how happy he makes her, and Tommy can tell what's coming the moment Phil reaches into his jacket pocket and pulls out a small black box. And, in a final attempt to keep the life he has, Tommy snatches the box out of Phil's hand and fucking runs.

He runs right out of the restaurant, ignoring everyone calling after him, and doesn't stop running until he's on the beach, where he hides. And he cries. He cries because his dad is gonna replace him with Techno and Wilbur, and he misses his mum even though he never met her, and because this he knows that stealing a ring and running away isn't gonna stop this proposal from happening, and because the only family dynamic he knows is going to change and he isn't ready for that. And it's just a big angst moment.

And then some fluff.

Kristen finds him hidden by the rocks, and Tommy quickly pretends he wasn't just crying bc he's a big man and shit like that. He half expects her to immediately call for Phil and then for Phil to disown him, but instead she sits with him.

She asks if he's OK and when he doesnt answer her she just goes on talking about random things as if Tommy didn't just ruin their entire holiday (about shit like how she thought the cake at the restaurant was too dry and about the stars and different constellations and she even continues asking him about minecraft) and Tommy, after a while, talks back to her.

They talk for a while, arguing about the best Minecraft block (Tommy wholeheartedly defending cobblestone like his life depends on it) until eventually Kristen asks why he did what he did. And Tommy explains everything (that can basically be summed up in "I'm scared of change")

It's just a wholesome moment really. They're just sitting behind a bunch of rocks, Tommy is spilling his guts and Kristen is just listening. And at then end of it she's there to give him a big hug.

(I imagine Tommy saying that one cliche line "please don't hurt my dad" and Kristen being like "I wouldn't dream of it" and then Tommy gives her the ring box)

But yeah, happy ending! Phil proposes to Kristen on the beach and it's all happy and nice and cool and Tommy, Techno and Wilbur watch and Techno starts crying a little bc he's so happy for his mum.

...

I came up with this last night when I couldn't sleep.

#sbi #sbi headcanons #sbi au #sleepy bois inc #sleepy bois family #tommyinnit #technoblade #wilbur soot #philza #dadza #mumza

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iamnmbr3 · 3 years

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I keep thinking about the DB Cooper scene and how little sense it makes. Thor knew remarkably little about Earth in Thor 2011, he didn't even recognize it as Earth without being told where he was. He couldn't have come up with this scheme. I think it was a scene that someone wrote as a pitch for wacky time travel hijinks Loki goes on, but they couldn't figure out how to fit it into the narrative but couldn't bear to trash the scene entirely.

That’s basically what happened. So the “somebody” who had the idea was, surprise surprise, Mike. According to him the DB Cooper scene was, for inexplicable reasons, one of the first things he thought of when he took the job. He apparently just decided that Loki had to be DB Cooper because he thought it was funny or something. And it was one of the first ideas he had. And as we established he almost certainly never watched Thor 2011 and just skimmed a summary so he didn’t know that the joke would completely conflict with that movie (not that he would have cared if he did). Also Loki’s explanation conflicts too bc this took place in the 70s but he says he and Thor were young when it happened even though for him the 70s isn't that long ago as he and Thor are both about 1500 years old. So yeah just another dumb unfunny bit of sloppiness from Mike.

And of course, it wouldn’t be the Loki Series without some contradictory statements. So in addition to saying that it was one of his first ideas `and that he thought it would be funny and cool Mike also gave a different interview where he said this which is a slightly different but still similar origin story:

“People, I think when they heard about this show, they always thought, ‘Okay, it’s Loki traveling through time influencing historical events. So we’re gonna see Loki riding with Paul Revere and doing the most basic, PBS sort of stuff.’ And I got excited about, what is the deep cut, really fun stuff that we can imagine? And I just love DB Cooper. It’s a great piece of American folklore and now it’s canon.”

This basically sounds like “yeah so we wanted to trick people into thinking Loki was gonna be doing cool time travel stuff.” And THEN in yet another interview he said this, which conflicts with the first 2 explanations above (and also makes no sense):

“I needed just an example of what is a time that you might think the TVA should have intervened in his life but didn’t. We wanted to have a few examples of historical events and everything but nothing too obvious. That just felt like that kind of sweet spot deep-cut to drop in.”

Why he thinks the audience would assume the TVA wouldn’t allow that I don’t know. Because Loki didn’t time travel to be DB Cooper.

#asks #loki tv series #loki show #loki 2021 #loki tv show #loki series #loki series negativity #Loki Series critical

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iclaimedtobethebetterbard · 2 years

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Ok, so I absolutely love the concept of Remus working for Logan! I'd love to know more about what their work relationship is like, and what kind of antics Remus gets up to in the lab? Does he often do mischievous things out of boredom or anything? Also, how often does Janus visit Remus at work? And what is Janus' friendship with Logan like?

storm ilysm /p thank you vv much for enabling me yet again

[ask me questions abt the backstories/lore for my if you're going my way, i'll go with you fic]

rambling about all the answers to ur questions under the cut:

1) logan and remus’s work relationship: it is very very good!!!! they both have developed a lot of trust in each other and have a very strong bond. logan feels very protective of remus bc:

a) he is familiar by now with remus’s work habits; remus has adhd that he has a very hard time managing, and is extremely prone to hyperfixating on tasks he is given, and then often forgets to stop and do basic life maintenance things like feed himself/sleep/etc. like, remus has even forgotten to go home at the end of the work day before—he told logan he was going to stay and finish the thing he was working on, and then just kept going without thinking about it until he dozed off at his workspace at about 4am, then woke up like maybe 3 hours later and then kept going with what he was working on until logan arrived. logan was obviously horrified and sent remus home with the day off to sleep and recover, and nothing that drastic has happened since then.

b) because of how much remus trusts logan, he has shared some stuff about his past with him, which more or less had the emotional impact of making logan go “um. that’s horrifying. what the fuck. anyway this is My Kid Now i guess” and also s t r o n g l y recommending that remus go to therapy, and connecting him with emile for that purpose (whose therapist specialization is treating supers, but who was happy to take on a client referred to him by logan) (we are going to see this in the fic too, it just hasn’t come up yet).

remus, meanwhile, looks up to logan as a mentor figure and thinks the world of him!!!!! he would honestly do just about anything for logan. his quality of life has greatly increased because of logan’s impact on him, seeing the faith that logan puts in him really motivated him to try and improve himself as much as he can in as many areas as he can. he really really wants to make logan proud of him. he also thinks logan’s very dry deadpan type of humor is absolutely hilarious. and he absolutely adores working with him. he loves having someone to look up to who he can trust (and logan has more than proved his trustworthiness to remus). just. ugh. they respect each other so much and they work really well together and their relationship is so good and functional and!!!! i love them. im excited for a plot development that is happening soon (starting in the next chapter) that will have a v nice positive effect on their relationship too.

1a) lab mischief: see. see logan is very particular about his Branding as a Very Professional Superhero who is a Good Leader and who is Calm and Collected At All Times. all of which is very true obviously. however. he can still be chaotic lol. he actually fucking loves all the stuff remus gets up to and absolutely encourages him in it (and sometimes participates) (which is remus’s favorite). he also likes having remus as a second pair of eyes when he is brainstorming/testing things, bc remus is like. not nearly as capable as logan, due to less life experience and not having powers etc, but he still provides a fresh perspective that logan can bounce ideas off of, which logan finds really helpful.

where remus really shines, though, is just like. being given old projects that logan abandoned halfway through for one reason or another, and being told to see what he can do with them. hijinks ensue, and about half the time something he does will give logan an idea for something new he can do with the project. remus also is great for testing how a non-supergenius will react to different things logan invents, which logan is usually good at predicting but not always so it is very useful to be able to test it out and confirm.

remus does not actually get up to mischief out of boredom very often, because logan is good at keeping him busy + interested, and remus really likes the work he’s doing anyway. however, he does like to just. experiment. with random supplies from the lab. whenever he has some spare time. this can take a ton of different forms, from chemistry to engineering to physics and more. he usually remembers to double check that it’s okay to use the supplies he wants first, but he’s got enough of an understanding of logan’s system to be able to guess pretty well which things he’s better off not using.

2) janus visiting remus at work: dskjfhdj she actually does this. frequently. much to logan’s half-joking despair. logan’s lab is the one place in the heroes’ headquarters that janus feels really comfortable in (bc that’s where both of her favorite people are), and because of how close they are with logan, it is easy for her to forget/ignore that work boundaries should be different than friendship ones. also janus has a bad habit of ignoring rules he dislikes anyway. so sometimes he just. shows up to chat with logan and flirt with remus. kind of whenever they have some time to kill. (if whatever logan and remus are working on at that time is really important and/or time sensitive, janus does respect logan telling her it is Not A Good Time, but for the most part she just shows up and vibes and is obnoxious in a fun way and sometimes kisses remus.) logan eventually decided to work with this and was like “okay you can keep doing this as long as 1) it does not interfere with any of the three of us actually getting all our work done every day 2) you have to do field testing for any new invention i ask you to” and janus like was very dramatic about that but also was like “yeah that’s fair” lol.

3) janus and logan’s friendship: CRIES SO HARD. I LOVE THEM. they are very close with each other!! their relationship originally was very mentor/mentee structured, because janus was a teenager when they began working together and was logan’s apprentice. logan provided a lot of support for them during this period, more so than would typically be expected from a super to their apprentice, because of patton and the strain that janus’s relationship with their parents was undergoing.

however, as janus went through college, and began to transition from an apprentice to a fully-fledged superhero, his life began to settle down and he began being able to support himself and not need to rely on his parents, and because of all that a lot of the stress they were under all the time began to go away for them, and they matured A Lot. the removal of so many of the big stressors in their life allowed them to just kind of. calm down and chill out and not feel a need to act out or anything anymore. this kind of drastic shift in her personality and temperament definitely helped both her and logan to transition away from a mentor/mentee relationship to a friendship based in a more equal distribution of power, bc so many things were changing anyway, so changing the structure of their relationship felt much more natural. now janus and logan hang out lots outside of work bc they care abt each other so much and enjoy hanging out together!!!!

janus kind of has the “nobody except me is allowed to be mean to you” sibling-type attitude towards logan, they snark at him a lot but if anyone else so much as looks at logan wrong they are in for a Bad Time. and janus does Not forgive Or forget lol.

logan also is the one who introduced janus to the trans community and he helped him figure out the words that felt best to describe herself and what pronouns they like <333 im pretty sure janus is the Only super (other than virgil but that’s different) who logan is out to as trans.

janus often runs errands for logan and does things like grocery shopping etc for him, especially when he knows logan’s working on a new invention that he’s excited about, so that logan can focus on his projects. they also use their shapeshifting for him a lot, from things like showing up in his place to meetings he doesn’t want to go to, to helping him prevent any scares about people discovering his identity by making it look like his alter ego and his super identity are doing different things at the same time, to disguising herself as random minions and spying on different villains to help logan get intel that makes the heroes more effective at protecting the city, to covering for heroes who are injured or sick or whatever so that logan doesn’t have to pick up that slack as the leader of the heroes’ guild.

logan has also invented Multiple very impressive breakthrough inventions specifically for janus, including a saliva test that can detect superpowers before they manifest in a child (hahaha there is a very owie angsty flashback scene that will eventually be in the fic, about Why janus wanted him to invent this and what went down after he did), and also the shapeshifting technology that is what makes their supersuit function for them with their abilities and allows them to fully disguise themself in any situation. while logan makes a lot of his inventions available to the general super community in one way or another, these two particular ones he keeps private because he feels they have higher potential for misuse than many of his inventions; nobody even knows about the saliva test one’s existnece. however, he is willing to make shapeshifting supersuits for any shapeshifter who would like one. he just won’t make the technique available to be replicated.

janus is also willing to listen to logan ramble about pretty much anything at pretty much any time. which isv nice for logan bc he really likes to talk, it helps him organize his thoughts. does janus always understand what logan is talking about? no. is he very supportive and full of commentary designed to make logan laugh anyway? absolutely.

logan also often babysits patton which is always just. so fucking cute i have no words. (he absolutely has on multiple occasions encouraged patton’s frog-power-based instinct to eat bugs, For Science.)

basically!!!! they are besties!!!!!! and they love each other sm!!!!! they are a lil found family <333

#peregrin answers #star tag!!!!#if you're going my way i'll go with you #peregrin said a thing #iygmw lore

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disorganizedkitten · 3 years

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Surprise reminder I am not in fact dead. Happy whatever. I’m brainspewing a bunch of aus, mostly DC/batfam and Harry Potter atm and wanted to share some of my favorite moments from the HP planning sessions. These are... sort of from the same story? It’s evolved enough that I could split it into multiple stories based off which update/version it’s from.

Welcome to my Regulus Black Survives and ends up Raising Harry au that eventually melted into a very fun Twin Au that I hope I finish.

Harry: I CAN DESTROY HORCRUXES BY BLEEDING ON THEM

Reg also sends him with a communication mirror because it's been four or five years, he's not going to be so callous as to deny he loves his kid.

So they, being 12 and dumb, end up going in after her/him.

Upon seeing Riddle leave the diary, Harry and Theo, who were raised by a Black and a Nott respectively, freaked. Theo didn't know what it was for sure, but could tell it was Bad, and Harry saw 75.9% sure it was a horcrux because really. What else can a person materialize out of?

Riddle proceeds to monologue about how he hadn't expected this, Slytherins and Gryffindors working together? And aren't you a Nott? I wonder how your forefathers would feel. Etc. While Harry and Theo dodge the curses and continue to try to destroy the diary.

"How can you be so powerful if you were defeated by a baby?!"

The Basilisk ends up trying to listen to both of them, and then Connor tries to help, and Riddle tries to kill Harry w/ Ukri and Connor tries to take Riddle down, and Theo is darting around and tripping Ukri and Riddle up, while Ron has given up on his wand and is trying to wrestle Riddle, which leaves Harry again to take the diary.

When Sirius breaks out, Harry makes a lot of comments about just… cutting off his left arm. After all, no dark mark, no loyalty to the cause. Crippled, even if he was a loyal follower before. This is also his first elective year, which means that Reg sends him an old prosthetic to unravel for Ancient Runes. Draco screams when Harry gets an arm in the mail.

Also Theo gets kidnapped by Sirius summer of 95 after he runs away to escape becoming a baby Death Eater. It's in broad daylight and causes so much panic

("I was wondering what that unholy shriek was" "a horcrux dying,")

This leads to all sorts of hijinks because due to it being accidental, young, and without due process or practice, Fay is essentially an inferi. Except she still has a soul. It's weird. The necromancy-gone-sideways means that they're bonded.

Neville Longbottom and the Suspicious Letters - the Godbrother letters begin!!

“I thought my brother was supposed to be raising you.” “I can go?” “Absolutely not, someone has to keep you alive.”

Regulus is a panicked box of nerves who accidentally acquired a child who should by all rights be his brother’s, and now he has to keep him

Harry grew up around Reg who has Very Dangerous Magic™ all over the house, and has the time of his life watching things blow up

“Harry you’re going to singlehandedly give me grey hairs”

“Honestly if it wouldn’t get more attention than I need I’d just kidnap you, they’re such horrid guardians. And I’m a Black, so that’s saying something!

(The Black Family Madness isn't inherited, it's learnt)

Adrian is a mortician because I really liked the idea of a murder basement except no one has ever actually died in the basement.

Fay Dunbar vs the natural order

Neville Longbottom and the wallflower society

Charlie and Ginny Weasley are Parselmouths bc it makes me happy

Happy Hogwarts day, Harry! Or should it be Happy Hogwarts Hour, Harry? Since you like alliteration? (I clearly remember Mass-Machete-Murderer). I’m sad there’s no chance of running into you in diagon today, but hey! Hogwarts is coming soon! And then we can hang out whenever, right? Well, maybe not whenever. I guess we’d have to attend classes and make more friends. But otherwise! No more sneaking around! Unless you're a Slytherin. Then there might be some sneaking. But not as much! (Have we talked about that yet? I’m pretty sure I’m a shoe-in for Gryffindor, but… yeah. If you’re not, that’s completely okay!) (^letter between Harry and the Other Potter Twin(tm) )

Hey, Harry. Mum just learned you’re a wizard (forgot to ask how, sorry, I’m sure she’ll tell you later) and has decided you need to come live in the wizarding world with us. I didn’t tell her anything. You and your Axe-bear uncle need to figure something out and fast. I’ll see what stalling I can do. XX, your lovely brother. (On the upside, we get 2 c e/o b4 Spt1!) (^Another actual letter from version 2-3 of this au)

"You know," Theo says to Conner at one point. "It's a bit like Harry was raised by a Black." Conner shrugs. "He was raised by an ex-death eater with one arm. Close enough." Theo does research and pretty much just figures that whenever Harry says he was raised by a dead man, he means legally. Theo puts his money on Regulus Black early on.

Theo’s a very smart cookie

Harry also writes letters to Regulus using a constantly changing code which is really just pop culture references.

We have a bunch of parselmouths this generation. See: Charlie Weasley, Ginerva Weasley. Henry Potter/Peverell. Connor Potter. Fay Dunbar/Black. (Also, Theo Nott, Neville Longbottom, Hermione Granger, and a few others learn it for the sake of keeping up with them). Bry is… one of those groups.

Bryony becomes a Basilisk Breeder

There are five prophecy children bc I can

‘Tuney rushed out “He's not here." No duh, Connor thought but didn’t say. He hoped the adults had a plan for this, because if Harry and Connor had to come up with stories on their own (lie to their parents) there was no way it would end well. Three years of letters and visits and Connor still didn’t have a name for Harry’s adult figure. He wondered morbidly if that was going to change today.’

‘Connor decided with a new thread of despair that yep, the adults were going to be lying to each other for the foreseeable future. Ugh.‘

‘When Reg catches Barty, the only one who does, neither of them attack. "Why, Barty?" "What else can I do?" "Join us?" "That won't be safe. Won't be fair. I'm trying to send one of those boys to their death." "You're also helping keep them alive. Let me get you out." Barty switches allegiances that night. The moment he has a choice.’

There are a lot of people who are willing to step away from Voldemort but don’t know how. They got in over their heads decades ago and now they’re stuck.

That doesn’t mean they’ll sit around and watch their kids make the same mistakes.

#Aus #planning #jaymeow writes #Hp aus #Harry Potter #Chaos and Children #This au is also known as the one where half the cast is dead but everything is good anyways

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unearthcd · 3 years

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kristine froseth, cis woman + she/her | you know august james pettersen, right? they’re 25, and they’ve lived in irving for, like, eighteen years? well, their spotify wrapped says they listened to all these things i’ve done by the killers like, a million times this year, which makes sense ‘cause they’ve got that whole handwritten notes, messy ponytails, spontaneous midnight excursions thing going on. i just checked and their birthday is january 1, so they’re a capricorn, which is unsurprising, all things considered. ( tessa, 24, pst, she/her )

hey, babes! i’m tessa (24, pst, she/her) and i’ve been rp’ing on this blue website for way too many years. i’m stuck in this wonderful gossamer and wouldn’t have it any other way. anyway, below is august’s bio—she’s a newish muse, so i’m running with the vibe (for lack of a better word) and we’ll see how this goes! always feel free to message me to plot or chat here or on discord (swamp rabbit#1745). okay, let’s do the damn thing!

name: august james pettersen nicknames: aj, aug, a, james, etc. age, birth date: 25; january 1, 1996 hometown: irving, north carolina occupation: model sexuality: pansexual

growing up in irving

august james petterson is the daughter and only child of jameson and erik petterson. she’s the product of surrogacy, the men having sought out and found a lovely woman to help them have a child back in massachusetts where they previously lived. the hoops they went through to have their daughter and both legally be considered her parents were plenty, but with successful careers in architecture and publishing (think founder and editor and chief of something architectural digest-esque) they were able to commit the time and money to make it happen.

not a year after her birth, the three of them relocated to irving, north carolina to be with two of her grandparents whose health was rapidly deteriorating. having packed up their things and taken the short flight, they piled into the elderly couple’s sprawling home on aquila drive. ah, old money. sadly, they’d end up passing a few short years later, just before august started school. the family inherited great wealth and was left the house.

always a fairly quiet kid, august wasn’t the most social student in school. in fact, she spent much of her time with a small group of friends and, after branching out a small bit in high school, in the theatre department. long story short, she wasn’t a very popular person. in fact, with her apparent wealth and quiet demeanor, it wouldn’t surprise me if she was considered aloof, stuck up, or strange by her peers (but i’ll leave that UTY if they attended school together!). in earnest, she was just an observer and never enjoyed talking just to make noise. she liked having an intimate group and just doing what she enjoyed.

at the same time, the lack of a bursting social life and hijinks à la grease and clueless fed her early onset senioritis. she dreamed of and planned for getting out of irving. and when the time for college came, she did!

leaving home

we’d like to congratulate the senior class of 2014! that fall august moved to—drumroll please—new york city for college. what can i say, she’s an east coast babe. she got into NYU and studied english, thinking maybe she’d get into publishing down the line, because she’d always loved reading. truth be told, she wasn’t married to the idea. in fact, she wasn’t married to her education in the slightest. she’d chosen NYU purely based on location and, honestly, who can blame her (’:

her sophomore year of university one of her friends got it in her head to attend a modeling agency open call and, not wanting to go alone, convinced august to go along. while they weren’t interested in the friend, they did take an interest in her. and you know what? it made her feel special and wanted and admired. so she went with it and, with practice, became pretty damn good. her jobs, however, started interfering with her studies. so, without much convincing, she dropped out of school. she was making enough money to rent an apartment with a couple roommates in the village and made modeling her full-time gig. over the next few years her career began to take off a bit, with clients like for love & lemons and victoria’s secret pink (bc we have the real content, so why not use it?). probably a beauty campaign here and there. you know, commercial work etc. etc.

cue “dorothea,” you'rе a queen sellin' dreams, sellin' makeup and magazines

quiet, small town girl is on her way to making it big! whoo! right? well, there came a point where she became a total workhorse. august wanted to please—she wanted to find her place, her people—and, convinced this was it, she did everything in her power to keep moving up. she was a stray cat, she was looking to be taken in by anyone, praised and cared for for anything.

but that isn’t sustainable, and after a while she cracked a bit. ended up letting off steam by partying with so-called friends, picked up a small smoking habit she’s since been trying to kick since. befriended a band at some point (shout out to beau) and groupied the east coast leg of their tour for a couple weeks, because the front man asked and was charming and looked at her like she was exceptional. then the magic faded and she left to go back to her little apartment and next booked job. really, she was just going where she felt people wanted her and everyone kept telling her it was great! everything’s fine!

coming back // present

she realized after that that she’d fallen into this entire thing and, while she was grateful for much of it, she had to wonder if she even liked it. it really hit her one day smack in the middle of a job. that evening she went home, once again packed up her things, and flew home. a special kind of subtle chaos. a not-at-all-adventurous eat, pray, love.

i want to say her agents aren’t the worst people in the world and, while angered by her abrupt departure, realized she needed a break. like, a month-long visit home. it was the holidays and her birthday, after all! lol, oh, no. bets on when they start calling her like, ‘hey, where the hell are you, what’s the deal’?

now, after dropping out of school and putting her career on pause (?), she’s back living with her parents, probably looking at her savings account and wondering if she has enough $$$$ to rent an apartment or room [potential connection idea?] until she decides wtf she’s doing. she’s stuck between feeling like she’s backsliding and feeling like she needs to take the time to figure out what she wants.

personality // fun facts

+ lively, spontaneous, passionate, humorous (or so she likes to think)

- lost, impulsive, insecure in many ways

tiktoks for the vibe: 1, 2, 3

being an adult is a scam

*calls u dude and babe in the same sentence*

she wasn’t bored, she was just restless between adventures

the first person to laugh at herself.

let’s-screw-around-and-talk-about-nothing-for-hours-until-it-inevitably-turns-into-something-deep.

“i always feel like, when i meet people, they have a bigger impact on me than i maybe do on them.”

very honest. the girl isn’t messing around (unless she totally is)!! will ask you out as soon as the thought occurs to her, like, “hey, uh, we should go out sometime. (:” :slight_smile:

very, very dreamy, but head not empty, head filled with the same bit of film dialogue on repeat over and over for, like, a week. head still processing the end of a book she finished two weeks ago. head making up prose about the faint freckles on the bridge of your nose and the way your hand’s moving about.

big music person, be it modern, classical, live, vinyl. attaches a lot of emotions and memories to songs. 98% chance you’ll find her at the nearest bar hosting live music, right up front.

her penmanship is beautiful, thanks to a love of the written word. she’d rather stick a post-it note on your door than shoot you a text. loves letters, postcards, etc.

does want to whisk you away on fun, spontaneous adventures, but will go by herself if for whatever reason you’re not available or up for it.

#did i proofread this? no #irvingintro

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one-leaf-grimoire · 4 years

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Spoilers for Black Clover: Phantom Knights

JUST SAYIN’, no need to incorporate this into the story because I have no idea if the game is treated as canon. Either way honestly I just wanted a chance to talk about the game’s story because nobody else ever seems to talk about it?? And learning a bit about Julius is great?? This will probably be a pretty ass review of events, but here we go!

basically as of at least ten years before current events, Julius had a Vice Captain named Jien Du. I’m not too sure on his actual magic because he uses relics (BIG relic nerd) a lot? Wiki says transcription magic allows him to copy others spells to his staff, but not sure if that’s a more modern thing or if his staff was always a go-to back in the day. People hated on him because he was a peasant Vice-Captain, of the Grey Deer especially. ANYWHO, ten years ago before the events of the game (game is before elf invasion? Idk Julius is an adult and Asta is around during the game’s events) Jien Du was actually executed because he was conspiring with the Diamond Kingdom over something about a relic and reforming the Clover Kingdom. BASICALLY like Julius he was v v passionate about fixing the social and economic disparity within the kingdom, but wanted progress ASAP even if it meant war, also and uh oops I mean the king doesn’t like the idea of him being taken out and conspiring over forbidden relics and the Diamond a kingdom is a no-no, so yes he gets executed. HOWEVER, Julius my angel omg we don’t know how exactly, but he got him out of the execution?? I don’t know, he was executed and somehow Julius bibbity bobbity booped him back to life or helped fake his death. In the ten years between his execution and the game, Julius lets him chill deep in some forest and hits him up for relic info and magic nerd times every now and again. Julius went for a long ass time following the incident without a Vice-Captain because of the incident. :( very sad Capt. Julius, I mean who is he gonna wear matching outfits with now (fact) :(

Fast forwarding to the actual game’s plot (ten years after the incident and now back in reg BC times), Julius asks the black bulls to investigate a dungeon, they find a relic, Julius sends asta+co. to Jien YAMI NEVER WOULDA LET THEM GO IF HE KNEW THE RELIC GUY WAS JIEN HE WOULDA DIMENSION SLASHED A BITCH (Yami and probably William? were in the Grey Deer during the incident). Anywho, after some story hijinks and stuff Jien comes back to society and is literally FUCKING UP THE KINGDOM and trying to kill anyone in his way because he’s still after the mega huge anti-monarchy thing. He just controls a bunch of people (Clover citizens) using some rainbow butterfly phantom Relic and masks man it’s some crazy shit.

that last bit ok I just wanted to share that because fuck Julius is gonna be heartbroken. I’m going off-topic here, but Julius is gonna blame himself for letting that bitch live and for being betrayed by someone so close to him. This man cares too much about the kingdom ok he’s going to DESTROY himself :(( I’m sorry julius just needs a hug ok. the game’s story has only gotten up to Jien’s attack on the kingdom, so nothing on Julius and Jien having a confrontation yet.

Ok that’s my info-vomit, have fun. Regardless of whether or not you use anything because it’s your fic and we all bend canon 24/7, I hope it was still cool to read up on some shit and stuff.

being Julius’s Vice-Captain after a Vice-Captain dry spell though 🤔

--------------------------

OH MY GOD THIS IS INTENSE LOL. I never knew Phantom Knights had this type of story... this is so interesting, I’m definitely going to keep some of this in mind. I was planning on this new fic being set actually before Julius becomes captain, but there’s still some stuff to work with here... thank you!!!

#phantom knights #submission

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keyofjetwolf · 4 years

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GIFTENING Bonus Rounds

For each category, I included a “bonus round” question. YOU GUYS KILLED IT. I loved all the answers, but listed below are some of my particular favourites.

Haruka Tenoh is trapped in the wrong anime! Which would you have her visit next?

I want her to earth shake Kyubey out of existence, please and thank you

My bride is a mermaid. She can relate. :P

i think she would THRIVE in bodacious space pirates. gay teenage space pirates whose job is to dress up, be Dramatic, and rob the wealthy??? that shit is RIGHT up her alley

Hamtaro

Princess Tutu - where the world is finally as dramatic as her

PGSM (and Michiru is trapped with her, for REASONS)

Pokemon because everyone deserves to be happy

Any moe-style series so hijinks can ensue at her being baffled by everyone's ages

1960's Speed Racer

is is this a captcha or something i missed oh god

Free! so she can be indifferent to all the hot men and slightly uncomfortable because she still can't swim.

Stick Haruka in a Gundam!

Dump her in Pretear or one of the Precures! It would be hilarious! She's never in the genre she wants to be!

Revolutionary Girl Utena, so she can be offended by misuse of roses.

Initial D, she will out-drive and out-drift all those guys and steal all their girls.

Evangelion. I would feel bad to watch her suffer, but it would be so, so funny for her to be the comparatively most normal person around.

Yakitake Japan! SO SHE CAN HAVE A SNACK OF DELICIOUS RIDICULOUS BREAD BEFORE THE NEXT INTERDIMENSIONAL ANIME STORM WHISKS HER AWAY.

The Holograms or the Misfits? DISCUSS

Holograms

both? both. BOTH IS GOOD

misfits bc Evil Ladies Hot

Steven and the stevens

Misfits. How dare you make us try to think about anything in our lives.

Both, you mad fool. Those combined songs were the best.

The Misfits, their songs are better

The Misgrams: A group of girls who form a singing telegram start up company, but constantly deliver the telegrams to the wrong people.

kimber & stormer

Neither. Limp Lizards all the way. BROKEN GLASS.

I do not know what these things are

Misfits because guitar motorcycle

The Isle of Misfit Holograms

Holograms is just arguably better

I mean, I’m told the Misfits’ songs are better, but my true answer is the band Kimber and Stormer made in that big gay episode you liveblogged (checks) almost four years ago.

I've no idea what these words mean and I hope this does not make me TOO uncool.

this is about jem, right? right?? im hip i swear

Misfits, because Jasper is a member apparently

I don't know from Jem, but I mean...I certainly prefer holographic material to Glenn Danzig? So I guess there's your answer ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

The Stingers

LIMP LIZARDS FOREVER

Senshi Band

You can make me liveblog a full series of any show you want! You also hate me. What do you have me watch?

Pick a GoT rip-off, any GoT rip-off

The Bachelor?

The Bachelor :(

depends on how much i hate you, but....probably the bachelor. quantity AND lack of quality

Critical role, it would take forever

If I were a horrible person who sought only malice? Big Bang Theory. Entire series.

Toddlers and Tiaras

The Mandalorian - Disney would come after you and kill keyofjetwolf just as dead as keyofnik. We would all be very sad, you would have to go through a second round of restoring things to a new tumblr account, and your organizational heart would weep over adding yet another hosting site out of chronological order.

You are liveblogging Eva, and must discuss in full detail Shinji's emotional state at all times.

Hannity & Colmes

The Kardashians. And all of their spin offs. *kisses*

The price is right

the bachelor

Probably something with lots of romance and no friendships. Soap operas are like that, right? My college roommate used to watch General Young Light Restless Hospital of Our Lives (which one had Like and Laura?) And it was torture.

One Piece, because it's over 900 episodes so you could maybe do 10% before you die, also you will hate how the women are treated most of the time.

Fushigi Yuugi. Not only do you hate it but it also comes with you squirming when you admit to watching the whole thing. ;)

Plus belle la vie. It's an ongoing French soap opera that has been airing five days a week since 2004, they're nearing their 4000th episode and there's no end in sight. Imagine all those hours upon hours submerged in French drama, mwahahaha!!

The Bachelor. Or the Bachelorette, maybe - more straight dudes in that.

The Young and the Restless - IT IS THE LIVEBLOG THAT NEVER ENDS. IT WOULD OUTLAST THE INTERNET.

The entirety of the Bachelor franchise.

You can only play one game for the rest of your life. Which game would it be and why?

Kingdom Hearts Complete Collection. A) I love them. B) I beat the system and get like 10 games instead of one.

Gemcraft. This game actually takes a lifetime to finish.

Hatoful Boyfriend. It is the best game ever created. Feel it in your heart.

that's a mean question and you can't make me answer it

Pathfinder, which you could play for the rest of your life and still never finish.

Civ VI , so I can rule the world without leaving my house.

I am legitimately perturbed by this question and refuse to answer it.

Pokemon Go. I would have nothing else, but I would catch them all.

The Elder Scrolls Skyrim: I'll never run out of side-quests.

Mass Effect--it's the only way I'll get full completion.

The dinosaur game on Chrome when the internet doesn't connect because my life is monotonous and it's a welcome relief.

Stardew Valley. Peaceful farmer life and turning my children into doves when I'm bored with them.

Crabs Adjust Humidity

Oh my! A number of things come to mind, not one of them fit for print. Just, you know...*gestures vaguely* sex shit.

I can't even stick to the ones I play now.

This is the worst of all possible things and I refuse to answer.

Monopoly, I hate myself :(

Probably Minecraft! I haven't gotten into it because I know if I start I will NEVER STOP. Who would do things like build a hundred foot tall statue of Mako-chan? A-THAT'D BE ME.

the game. Of LIFE! *shrug emoji*

I don't believe I'll tell you, because I AM a salty little fish and it was HARD to cut that 11th choice off my vote.

Holligay and I are going to be the leads in a new buddy film. What's the premise? How does it end?

Be gay do crimes. Thelma and Louise. Duh. :P

I have no idea but only just surviving disaster is how it ends.

You break down in a small town during a roadtrip- your stay is full of hijinks and ends with you teaching the townsfolk the true meaning of friendship.

Doctor Holligay, Esquire, PhD, renowned Jewish femme of many talents, is assigned one Operative Jet Wolf as her bodyguard on a foreign diplomatic mission/vacation/culinary tour of the world ("same difference, shut up, narrator"). One problem: Operative Wolf needs a bodyguard herself, as the good doctor discovers when in one night her toilet is destroyed ("IT WAS A SECURITY THREAT") and Operative Wolf nearly breaks a leg falling down a small set of stairs ("THEY PUT A CLIFF OUTSIDE THE DOOR"). Worldwide shenanigans ensue as Holligay and Operative Wolf learn the true meaning of friendship, and also how to take care of themselves... by taking care of each other.

I’m not sure about the premise, but DEFINITELY it ends in murder.

Someone posted a major spoiler during one of your liveblogs. The two of you track them down seeking revenge. It turns out it was the original creator of the series trying to stop you. For some reason Holligay is a CGI badger.

It's clearly a buddy cop movie, and like all good buddy cop movies, it ends with Doc almost dying, and you saving her, and slapping her wound in the hospital as the credits roll.

It ends as it began: with Holligay roasting you.

A straight detective and her lesbian partner have to solve the case of the missing cinnamon buns. It ends with nobody getting the guy OR the girl and you drive off into the sunset together, perps behind bars sans cinnamon buns.

I don't know what it's about but I know it will be the only movie that ever existed.

Holligay is the lesbian chief of staff to you somehow being elected President and she's basically running the country while you're the charming face of the administration

Nerd and cowgirl meet at a bar, justifyingly murder some gross dude, go on the run from the law and have a life-changing road trip, on the way Nazis are punched

carrying a delicate object through a forest after your helicopter goes down

Thelma and Louise, but instead of dying, your deaths are clearly faked and you live on a ranch in Montana with your respective spouses and animals. One time a cop comes by the restaurant/bar you joint own with Doc and says, "You look familiar." Doc, in perfect lesbian, answers, "Jet's just got that criminal look, on account of how much she'd love to steal my cheesecake recipe. More pie?"

Queer Eye with a Straight Goy. The two of you do the show but in your own special ways.

Doc Holligay is the wild-west no-nonsense sheriff. Jet Wolf is the all-fun cyberpunk cop from the future. They punch nazis and argue about food. It ends as a tv series ala B99.

Your lives are already a buddy film, don’t get greedy.

Hands and socks. You know how it ends.

See Grumpy Old Men for details. How does it end? Badly.

I can't imagine the premise, but I'm pretty sure the planet explodes.

A Coen Bros film. It ends poorly.

Wait? You're not already living this now?

REI HINO

Sure. Why not?

HINO REI

<3<3<3<3

REI HINO!

Rei who? ;)

REI HINOOOOOOOOO

Plush Is being hugged by Zoisite in your banner.

MINAKO AINO

MAKOTO KINO

The best

SOCKS

MICHIRU KAIOH

It's time tooo.... REI! THAT! HINO!

sponsored by Here! curry

LOVES USAGI LOVES REI LOVES USAGI LOVES REI LOVES USAGI LOVES REI LOVES USAGI LOVES REI LOVES USAGI LOVES REI LOVES USAGI LOVES REI LOVES USAGI LOVES REI LOVES USAGI LOVES REI LOVES USAGI LOVES REI LOVES USAGI LOVES REI [THIS REPEATS A LOT A LOT AND IS GLORIOUS] [...] LOVES USAGI LOVES REI LOVES JETWOLF

(THE REAL ONE)

Isn't how you spell Makoto Kino!

THE REAL ONE™

obviously

IS NOT A RHINO

In conclusion: Rei Hino

Rei Hino is giving this Giftening finger guns

BEAUTIFUL, STUNNING, SHOW-STOPPING, TALENTED, AMAZING, WONDERFUL

Hot stuff, lights my fire, blazes it regularly. I am out of fire jokes.

PASSION FLAME, SAILOR MARS

These hot feelings are C'EEEEEST LAAAAA VIIIIIIE c'mon rei-chan why aren't you singing along

IS THE BEST (I know who I'm talking to)

Ara!

DID DOCTOR HOLLIGAY PHD NOMINATE THE OPTION OF TALKING ABOUT MICHIRU KAIOH FOR 6 HOURS!!

If Hot Pocket were to plan One Last Heist, what do you think would be his objective? What would be Mina's role in his master plan?

Master Hot Pocket seeks BREAD. His friend and loyal companion, Mina-pup, acts as a distraction, as he has learned the humans are easily distracted by cute. While she does her sworn duty as Best Friend and Cutest Goodest Girl, probably with lolling tongue and glee at all the pets she receives, he picks the locks on the newly childproofed pantry, and Master Howard H. Pocket FEASTS AS NO CAT HAS BEFORE.

Every bag of flour in Montana; Mina runs distraction with her adorable puppy eyes

Open every container, leave none unmarked. Mina is the lookout who greets whoever comes and is completely ineffective at her job.

TAKE ALL THE FLOUR. Do it straight from the source: FlourCo Inc. What does a 10-pound cat do with eighty thousand tons of flour? If you can't figure that out, there's a reason he's the brains of this outfit. Mina would obviously be the bumbling lovable distraction to security or other people.

Bread. Mina is The Face who provides distraction to the Keepers of the Bread by walking up to them and being herself. Mina has absolutely no idea that Hot Pocket is using her in this manner because Hot Pocket is that Machiavellian, but Mina is a pocket full of sunshine in canine form and probably would just be happy to help out.

Hot Pocket knows that no mammal of the floor believes in flour anymore. It went away a long time ago. It doesn't exist. But what he also knows is that they're wrong. A lack of opposable thumbs won't hide the truth from him. He'll find the stash, and when he does, he'll stick his paw in it. Mina, with her limited climbing skills, will lick its remains from his claw and prove his discovery. As well as provide a warm place to curl up on for the aftermath of their adventure.

His goal is to sample every edible thing he can get his teeth on. Mina pulls triple duty as step stool, distraction, and scape goat

The Silver Crystal. Mina would play the role of Sailor V.

He is getting ALL THE FLOUR. Mina is a lovable distraction.

Looting all the carbs in the pantry. mina is distraction.

mina's role would be the "dopey" but talented best friend who it looks like HP is going to betray for the sake of the plan but then it all comes together when HP mounts a dramatic rescue. i dunno i'm still in film mode from that last one.

The Holy Bread Locked Within the Cupboard. Mina would be the distraction, but she'd forget what she was supposed to be distracting from and end up leading you to him.

I am the Void. I am the Night. I am the Darkness with no hope of dawn. The Flour trembles before me in it's bleached fluffiness. It shall not escape my chaos, which will descend upon it like the Terrors of the Deep, claws and teeth and gnashing. It will howl at my claws. It will scream for my teeth, sharp and white, stars in the night of my fur. I shall tend and tear and -- Dammit, Dog-thing! How am I supposed to be terrible and terrifying with you wagging your tail and panting at me!? Oh, you found a good warm sunbeam? I guess I can stalk stuff later. I am the Void. I shall absorb the Sun's light and warmth and bring it into my Darkness where it cannot escape...

I'm new here and don't know all the complex lore of Jetwolf(fairly sure Mina is dog), so I'm going to assume that Hot Pocket is an actual hot pocket and his heist is robbing Fort Knox using Mina as his loyal stead/get away car. Then he explodes a microwave or something.

i lik the bred

Mina as the distraction while he takes one last tastes of EVERYTHING

objective--stealing more chips; Mina--surprise betrayal

The scene: Mama Jet's pantry The Objective: the bag of cake flour Aunt Doc made Mama Jet buy but she's never used Mina: confused but excited escape vehicle and/or scapegoat

RAIDING THE KING ARTHUR FLOUR FACTORY. Mina is of course adorable and keeps everyone's attention while Hot Pocket swan dives into the flour like Uncle Scrooge

Hot Pocket would definitely try to steal a monument, Carmen SanDiego style. Mina, of course, is the multi-talented and super cute face of the operation.

I have no idea who Hot Pocket is

HP would try to scale the tallest building in the world. Not to steal anything, just to be up there. Mina would be the adorable diversion.

It would be to get whatever food you've left on the counter. Preferably bread. He would tell Mina that he'll give her some of she acts as a distraction. She's a good dog so she does. He's a cat so she gets no food.

Truly, truly, THE GIFTENING winner is us all.

#THE GIFTENING 2019 #THE GIFTENING 2019 admin stuff #long post for ts

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ladyloveandjustice · 5 years

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Winter 2019 Anime Overview

I enjoyed every single one of the five anime I watched this season: Dororo, My Roommate is a Cat, Mob Psycho 100 II, The Promised Neverland and Kaguya-sama: Love is War.

So here are my reviews! I’ve cut back on the anime overview a lot, so these are shorter reviews than usual (though not quite as short at I’d like. someday I’ll be able to restrain myself)

Since I liked all of the shows, these aren’t in a strict worst-to-best order or anything, but the ones I found most impressive ARE nearer to the bottom. So let’s dig into last season’s anime.

My Roommate is a Cat

Premise: An antisocial writer in his early 20s adopts a cat and they both get their worlds expanded as they bond.

My take: Much like the kitty it centers on, this show is super cute, sweet and fluffy. If you’re a cat-lover and want to bask in some kitty adorableness, I encourage you to check it out. At first, I was afraid the main character Subaru’s grumpy misanthropy might be too much- I could certainly empathize with being socially isolated and avoiding people, but the way he was just rude toward others was grating. Fortunately, his character development is swift, so he quickly went from misanthrope to anxious-introverted-mess-who-awkwardly-muddles-through-social-interaction-for-the-sake-of-his-kitty, which I found EXTREMELY relatable. Subaru is coping with the loss of his parents and the fact he took them for granted while they were alive as well, so there are quite a few heart-string tugging moments.

The show’s central gimmick is that events will be told from Subaru’s point of view and then we’ll get his kitty Haru’s side of things. Yep, the cat narrates part of the show, which is how I knew I was in it for good. And Haru’s a very good cat! She’s adorable without being cloying, and at least realistic in how most of her thoughts revolve around food. Seeing her warm up to her hopeless human is just as sweet as seeing Subaru warm up to her. As a former stray cat, she has a rough backstory, so if even a restrained depiction of kitty death is too much for you, look out for that part. This show isn’t afraid to bring the feels, but it keeps things positive overall. Subaru’s friends are supportive and help a new pet owner out, and we even get a cute doggie in the mix. Overall, if you want a relaxing, nice watch with a simple, sweet story, you could do a lot worse than My Roommate is a Cat.

Dororo (Episodes 1-12)

Premise: Thanks to his father making a deal with demons, Hyakkimaru has to wander Japan and fight monsters to get his body parts back. He meets up with a young thief named Dororo.

My take: Dororo is a very loose adaptation of the 1960′s manga by Osamu Tezuka, who’s known as the godfather of manga. I was familiar with Dororo thanks to watching the live action movie for an article when I worked at epicstream (it must not have left an impression bc I remember very little) so I was curious to check this out. I ended up reading the manga too, and overall, I find it pretty impressive as an adaptation. It does a lot to make a really dated and incomplete-feeling manga more palatable and cohesive for a modern audience. Maybe I’ll do a full post expanding on those thoughts sometime, because the changes really are worth examining.

Dororo is definitely not for everyone- it’s a grim, dark show with lots of death and destruction.The story is especially not kind to women, who tend to die or be demons. The exceptions to this (such as a lady demon actually being presented as sympathetic) are mainly anime-original. Actually, while the anime eschews the original manga’s cartoon-y, jokey tone to be more serious, it actually has a much lower body count and more hopeful tone than the original, a contrast I find pretty interesting. But “more hopeful” is still not very hopeful. The story has pretty strong anti-war undertones and criticism of how authority exploits people, and there’s a lot of “these are the horrors of war” scenes and even a scene where Dororo witnesses a woman engaging in unhappy, reluctant sex work.

The premise of the story, a guy made up of mostly prosthetics on a quest to get his body parts and senses back, is also a dicey one in how it treats disability. The anime does at least make updates to the manga that lend the story a little more complexity on that front. In the manga Hyakkimaru can basically hear and speak through telepathy already and he’s portrayed as simply joyous whenever he gets a body part or sense back, despite not having a practical need for them.

The anime wisely jettisons the telepathy thing, meaning that Dororo and Hyakkimaru have some difficulty communicating, something that adds an interesting layer to the story. It means we find out about Hyakkimaru’s personality in bits and pieces alongside Dororo, going on a journey of discovery with him. And Hyakkimaru getting senses back is treated in a more realistic mixed-bag way- when he gets his hearing back, for instance, he has difficulty adjusting to it and experience serious sensory overload. It’s not really clear how he feels about a lot of things, much less the changes he’s going through.

Dororo himself is the heart of the show, really, and I find him to be really endearing and engaging as a character. His boundless energy and chattiness balance out the aloof Hyakkimaru, but he never gets overbearing or obnoxious. He’s been through a lot himself, and has a good heart. One thing worth keeping an eye out going forward is how Dororo’s gender will be handled. Dororo is afab, but in the original manga very vehemently lets everyone know he’s a boy. The anime also lets you know Dororo’s afab halfway through, but hasn’t really done much otherwise in exploring Dororo’s gender identity. I do think it’s unlikely we’ll get a handling of it as bad as the manga’s final chapters (Manga Hyakkimaru had a lot of strong, intrusive opinions about what Dororo “really” is that I think his anime version is unlikely to have based on his restrained characterization so far), but who knows.

Overall, Dororo is a nicely animated and well put-together dark action series so far. I’m not sure I would have ended up watching it if I wasn’t so interested in examining it as an adaptation, but the ride’s been pretty okay and worthwhile.

Kaguya-sama: Love is War

Premise: Miyuki Shirogane and Kaguya Shinomiya are the top students at their prestigious school, and heads of the student council. They also have a crush on each other, but both are too full of pride (and nerves) to make the first move, so they come up with schemes to trick the other into confessing. Hijinks ensue.

My take: Kaguya-sama is a wildly funny rom-com about two idiot smart kids who don’t know how to say how they feel. It’s mostly a really good time. There’s a lot of laugh-out-loud moments. The characters are a lot of fun, especially Kaguya’s friend Chica, who is pure chaos in human form and has some of the best lines in the show. The animation and direction of the show are also impressive and lavish, elevating already good gags into greatness. The finale also does that thing where it’s all suddenly surprisingly emotional and hits you really hard with all the feels, showing a little depth and true friendship among all the characters involved.

However,there are a few “yikes” moments, and the most uncomfortable one and likely the biggest deal breaker was the “Kaguya gets sick” arc, which happens roughly the last half of episode 9 and the start of 10. In it, we’re treated to tropes that are both really tired and really uncomfortable, like Kaguya being sick and her friend, for some reason???, tacitly encouraging Miyuki to take advantage of her in her weakened state. Miyuki does not, but Kaguya pulls him into bed and he falls asleep due to sleep deprivation (which is admittedly relatable) and when they wake up she believes for a time he did assault her and throws shit at him, at which point he whines about being villainized even though he “held back”.

During the next episode, Kaguya is ~secretly kind of upset he didn’t assault her because doesn’t he find her appealing~, a trope that really needs to die bc the myth girls “really want to be assaulted” is dangerous. There were a couple okay moments in the whole thing, like Miyuki deciding he should have shut the whole thing down more firmly and apologizing for an infraction, and since Miyuki didn’t cross a significant line it doesn’t ruin their relationship or make them impossible to root for or anything, but the whole thing is tired and gross and unnecessary and not all that funny. I was able to handle it because I got warned ahead of time, but it was a chore of an arc, so here’s my warning.

The Promised Neverland

Premise: Emma and her friends Ray and Norman are orphans being raised in the happy, idyllic Grace Field House. They’re never been outside it though, and there’s a wall they’re never supposed to approach. When Emma discovers the truth behind the orphanage, a tense thriller begins.

My take: I was looking forward to this one based on word of mouth, and mostly it doesn’t disappoint! The writing hooked me enough that I’ve picked up the manga to continue the story. This a rich story. It’s an intense game of cat and mouse between genius kids and unscrupulous adults where the stakes are super high. Emma and her friends pull out all the stops to outwit and escape the ones holding them captive, and the twists and turns of the narrative are delivered well. There’s also some social commentary buried under its horror to add some bite. This essay goes into how it comments on forced societal gender roles, for instance.

A thrilling plot can only shine thanks to its characters, and Emma is great protagonist. Her determination to save her family and unpredictable nature make her fun to follow. She’s a rare and refreshing example of a female shonen protag, and she sells that power of friendship stuff pretty well when she has the brains and skills to back it up. The three main kids balance each other well, with Ray’s cynicism and pragmatism contrasting Emma’s stubborn idealism, and Norman stands in the middle as someone who’s inclined to think like Ray but WANTS to be more like Emma. Despite the many conflicts and differences between them, these kids are ride and die, and the show does a good job selling their familial-friendship. A lot of the moments between them are truly heartwrenching.

The story has a big glaring flaw, though, and that’s Sister Krone and the racism regarding her. It’s not my lane, so please read Jackson P. Brown’s essay here for more info. The anime not only replicates the problem with her design but makes things arguably worse than the manga by making her personality a caricature as well. The anime portrays Krone as far more unhinged and exaggerated than her vindictive but more controlled and canny manga counterpart, even adding this weird thing where she rants at and beats up a doll. This review on episode 8 talks about the author feels the anime failed with sister Krone and his feelings on Krone as a black character well, it’s definitely worth a read.

While I have those issues with the anime’s choices, I was impressed with how the last few episodes were directed. They hit it out of the park, leaving me breathless, emotional and wanting more. Thanks to that, I’m now reading an enthralling adventure manga! This anime was definitely flawed but I can’t deny I’m interested in seeing how the second season will shake out.

Mob Psycho 100 II

Premise: Season 2 continues to tale of Mob, a ridiculously powerful psychic middle schooler. He’s in the employ of Reigen, a con-artist who has fooled many (Mob included) into thinking he has legitimate psychic abilities.

My take: Holy wow. Mob Psycho’s first season had some incredible animation, atmosphere and direction, but season two fires on all cylinders. I’m glad I caught up in time to experience the show with everyone else these last few weeks, because it was always a treat- a visual feast full of heartpumping action and lots of sincere emotion.

Mob Psycho is an animation extravaganza, with some sequences that wouldn’t feel out of place in a high budget movie, dripping with atmosphere, artistry and aplomb. But the story and characters are really solid too and it has some nice themes and messages at its core. Mob is one of the goodest good boys in all of anime and he grows a lot throughout this season. At the core of the show is the idea that no one is worthless and also no one is more “special” than anyone else, that having power doesn’t give you the right to put yourself above others, that no person is inherently superior or inferior to any other, that even if you’re born with some super talent, you still need to try to improve yourself, value other people and the things they can do that you can’t and work hard to live a balanced life. Being powerful or born with a talent doesn’t mean you have the answers or know better-so it’s all about striving to make good, compassionate choices and taking control of your own life.

There’s a lot of stories that pay lip service to themes like these without really doing much to back it up, but this show sells it with an earnestness that few manage. Mob is a quiet and gentle boy, and you genuinely believe it when he says he doesn’t like fighting or using his powers on other people, and when he breaks down in tears because for all his power he can’t figure out how to set someone on the right path this time, your heart aches. The fact that Mob actually has difficulty coming up with the right answers and will sometimes gets overwhelmed by emotion and loses control, but keeps striving for honest communication, makes his approach come off as a lot more believable than the typical shonen-hero-converting-bad-guys-with-a-confident-friendship-speech bit.

The character relationships in the show are also good stuff, particularly the relationship between Mob and Reigen, which develops a lot this season with Reigen having to grapple with how yeah, he’s been kinda terrible and dishonest, especially with this kid he cares about and there’s a point where people have enough of it. There’s a lot of nice growth there.

All together, Mob Psycho is just Good with capital G. I do wish there were more girls in it, and there is a dark skinned character who’s caricature-ish in his design (he barely shows up in this season iirc), but otherwise it’s a quality rec and breathtaking example of the truly transcendent heights anime can reach.

#winter 2019 anime #anime overview #Mob Psycho 100 #my roommate is a cat #the promised neverland #dororo #kaguya sama love is war #kaguya sama: love is war #kaguya sama wa kokurasetai #my reviews

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thegeminisage · 5 years

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ON THE SUBJECT of the s4 finale (major spoilers ahead)

i DID like:

arthur getting mortally wounded again. partially bc i was still angry at him, partially because it’s always good fun to see him staggering around half-dead and fueled only by determination

merlin shooting a crossbow was great. it’s so nice to see him non-magically hold his own in a fight

gwaine “singing for his supper” was pretty badass. i love that fella

i feel a way about arthur observing that everyone in his life betrays him sooner or later. under one hand: bad time for a pity party, bud, and since i was mad at him at the time i felt merlin’s subsequent ep talk/praise was a bit unwarranted. under the other hand it’s like...really fucked up actually that a lot of people DO lie to arthur (going back to 2.08) in particular because of his station or because of things uther has done - in a way, even merlin lying to arthur is a result of uther’s choices. arthur’s not a bad person, most of the time, unless the writers want to torture gwen, but he’s surrounded by quite a lot of bad people and uther’s genocide is partially arthur;s legacy too whether he likes it or not because it was arthur’s birth that triggered it. it’s just fucking sad to me that he can’t seem to fight his way out of the ugliness he came from and was born into

MERLIN CALLING DOWN A MOTHERFUCKING DRAGON TO AMITE AN ARMY FOR DARING TO FUCK WITH HIS LIL HOMETOWN...BABE...WHAT A BADASS. HE CAN COMMAND A DRAGON

in fact love merlin getting to be a badass so much i put up with his old man merlin guise for it but JESUS FUCK that was so much more than i ever expected. he DECIMATED an ARMY with a few words! if merlin had half a mind to be evil he’d be fucking unstoppable and instead he uses his powers to polish armor and heal battle wounds

arthur’s very long look after merlin leaves to go “create a diversion” aka perform more badass sorcery without having to worry about being seen

I WAS SOOO HAPPY TO SEE AGRAVAINE DIE LIKE FUCK YOU DUDE LOL

oh man. you could see it on his face. a very long pause where merlin’s counting up his enemies, calculating his move, pros vs cons, can he take them all out at once, will there be survivors enough to tell his secret

i realized what he was gonna do about a split second before he actually did it and i YELLED OUT LOUD and spent the entire section laughing like a maniac

he fucked them all up without moving a muscle. he just stood there and his eyes glowed and he toppled nearly a dozen men. i. was. LOSING IT

merlin really is the bravest character on this whole show. when arthur thought he was gonna die he was bugging but merlin faced down both morgana and an army without one little bit of fear. totally cool and calm. i LOVE this, who he is, when he’s really pressed down to the wire, and lets himself be seen. he’s grown up so much and he’s so GOOD

doubly impressive: agravaine is so SHOCKED by what merlin truly is he’s delighted and laughing and impressed, in spite of the fact that merlin just killed maybe a hundred of his soldiers and is about to kill him too. it’s a bruce wayne/batman situation. i know i complained about merlin keeping it too close to the vest before but now i’m actually impressed with how his cover is SO good his enemies are delighted to find out his secret

arthur taking time out of his escape to go back and look for merlin and merlin REALIZING WHAT HE’D DONE and arthur going “you’re my only friend”

THEY ARE FRIENDS! NONE OF THIS “WE COULD HAVE BEEN FRIENDS” THEY ARE FRIENDS

THE SWORD IN THE STONE THING look i can’t believe after all arthur angsted about being lied to merlin would then lie more to him but OH MY GOD no matter how they did it i was always going to love it. i died. arthur went full legend of zelda

and like. ok. merlin tells this whole dumb story and arthur argues with him the entire time and THEN merlin finally goes “are you calling gaius a LIAR?” and arthur says “no im just calling YOU an idiot” and merlin says “oh yeah? what’s that then?” and arthur stops dead in his tracks and gives that sword the llllooongest look and the muted piano comes in and sldkfgjhlsdfkjhlsdjfghsldfjgh

the timing. the drama. the cinnamon topography. i hate the word epic but it was epic. i’m such a fan for swords in stones. i’m so glad they gave it some nice fanfare

i do also feel human emotion about merlin’s like...faith in arthur. somehow all of merlin’s onetime flaws have become good character traits for him - him saving uther seems like weakness and then strength, him keeping his secrets close seems cold and then clever, and now his belief in arthur, which at first seemed blind faith but has since sort of matured into true devotion...arthur doesn’t always deserve it but since it’s coming from someone so WISE the more merlin says it the more i believe it. in season 1 it’s like “someday arthur will be a great king” and you’re like “yeah whatever” but NOW it’s like “holy shit he really might be” and it’s nice that arthur can believe merlin even when he doesn’t believe in himself

merlin’s one-man mission to sneak into the castle in the middle of the night as old man merlin just to sabotage morgana’s magic was like...also really badass tbh. he REALLY used that braincell

GWEN WITH A SWORD

the knights reunion: “elyan! oh thank god! are you alright?!” “well, i have been locked up with gwaine for a week”

merlin is SUCH A BADASS him blocking morgana’s magic ON THE SLY with ALL THOSE PEOPLE LOOKING god god god

GWEN IS QUEEN NOW AND GOOD FOR HER! i really hated their breakup and reconciliation but whatever she looked so good in her dress it’s everything she deserves

i did NOT like:

that will-bending, make-someone-compliant spell. that is skeevy as shit and i hate that they introduced something like that into canon. angry as i was with arthur it made my skin crawl the entire time. especially unfun when they played it for laughs...like...the amount of agency lost...it’s not funny. any normal person should feel terrible about doing something like that

furthermore, arthur even in his right mind having to pretend to be stupid is like...what? this is the season finale. this is NOT the time for hijinks

WHY are we still torturing people LEAVE elyan alone

you know? fuck morgana. like. it’s not her fault. the writers dropped the ball. i understand that & will always be angry on her behalf about it. but between this and turning gwen into a deer to be SHOT at...i’m like. really done having sympathy for her character or rooting for her to succeed. i don’t like that feeling but there it is

HOW did gwen not see merlin using magic to save her also WHY is she forced to see morgana who has hurt her more than anyone

speaking of gwen, they did not have time to do That Plot and reconcile arthur and gwen all at the same time. it was SO badly paced. i’m not talking about the gwne thing bc i will black out from rage but wow

don’t like tristan and isolde mostly because he looks WAY OLDER than her. although i did soften up a little when she was like dying and she was just lying in his arms and all she wanted was for him to hold her.........That’s Sad. i did feel human emotion

#personal #merlin blogging #only one season left...im afraid #liz's meta #liz's merlin stuff #liz makes stuff

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comicteaparty · 4 years

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November 20th-November 26th, 2019 Reader Favorites Archive

The archive for the Reader Favorites chat that occurred from November 20th, 2019 to November 26th, 2019. The chat focused on the following question:

What main character do you relate to the most? How relatable does a main character have to be for you to like them?

Capitania do Azar

You know, relatable is simultaneously a very strong and very week word to describe how I see main characters. Sometimes, the MCs I like the most are those I can't relate to in any way, when their actions are so out there and wild that I cannot for the life of me seeing myself doing (regardless of weather I understand their motivations or not). I tend to find secondary characters much more easier to relate to, since they're not so much under the spotlight and get to have personalities that are often less directly connected to the plot, and creators get to have more freedom. That said, on the top of my head, one of my favorite protagonists is Trigger, from Ghost Junk Sickness, https://www.ghostjunksickness.com/, who I cannot, for the life of me, relate to, but whose horrible decisions I find absolutely amusing.

Now, for side characters who I can definitely relate to, I'm gonna go with Aaron from XIIComic, https://xiicomic.com/magic-and-muses/, because that one was love at first sight, eheh(edited)

FeatherNotes

I agree with @Capitania do Azar-- For me, main characters are the ones who would be written with the themes, and the backstory that make them unique enough for a singular experience so i would often find it most difficult to 'fully relate' to them. That said, characters don't have to be very much relatable at all for me to like them , and that most MCs with flaws that are beyond me are who i mainly like bc of their potential complexity! Secondary characters are my go to's, and i relate to them much more quickly! With that said, i def have vibes with Sanna and Dizzy from Startrip http://www.startripcomic.com/cast

Phin (Heirs of the Veil)

I rarely find main characters "relatable", but if they are well-written enough I can like and root for them no matter if I think they are relatable to me personally enough. @Capitania do Azar and @FeatherNotes made really good point as to why this is the case. Anyways a character I still really relate to is Rafael from Superpose (https://superposecomic.com/). Painful gender feelings, people being dismissive of ones gender, the overall feeling of being stuck and not knowing what the future will bring really speaks to me, so reading Superpose I got especially invested. Another character would be Nikita from O Sarilho (http://sarilho.net/en/) and he's very interesting to me because there is a lot about him that feels deeply relatable and familiar but then so many things that are absolutely alienating. I think that makes him an especially alluring character to me.

Cronaj

I agree with the everyone else. I don't really need to relate to a main character to like them. In fact, I just realized on my search through the webcomics I read/enjoy that I don't relate to pretty much ANY of the characters. This might have to do partly with the fact that I read a lot of fantasy, sci-fi, and historical comics, so the issues the characters face are very different than the ones I personally face. That being said, there is one comic where I relate to one of the main characters so much, I actually cried. This is the character Taesoo from the webtoon The Lady and Her Butler. (https://www.lezhin.com/en/comic/ladyandbutler) He is a struggling artist with low self-confidence and the after-effects of a bad relationship with someone who didn't appreciate him. His scars from this situation have remained with him and made it difficult for him to love again. I know this sounds like something straight from a drama, but this legitimately happened to me. (On a side note, I relate to my own characters, but that's because I subconsciously created characters a lot like myself.)

Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios)

Like others have said above me, I don’t really need to relate to a main character to like them. If they’re well written and receive good development, I’ll probably like them on some level. I do tend to gravitate more towards roguish and morally ambiguous characters, and my favourite is usually an outrageous villain. As for my own characters, I put a bit of myself in all of them, but probably none more so than Anor from Children of Shadow. I hadn’t meant to mirror so much of myself in him, but my characters tend to act and grow independently of me. He struggles with depression, PTSD, feelings of isolation, and has a similar queer experience / identity as me. He isn’t me, however, and differs in a lot of ways, too. But I can identify with him probably more than any other character I’ve written.(edited)

Batichi

I feel kinda narcissistic saying so, but the character I do relate to is my own protagonist, mainly because the point of the character was to have one that was more like me I guess. Low energy, unable to feel like they progress, never knowing if points of trauma are growing or hindering being a full person. I never intended a 'full insert' but a lot of their personal journey I feel gets pulled out of my own head since it's where I can pull from. I don't know if that counts or not xD I don't need a character to be relatable for me to be interested in them, but I do need to understand them. 'Defined' feels like too broad of an answer, but when I can be interested in both heart of gold protagonists and drug dealing warlords that's the best I can come up with.

spacerocketbunny

I may not need a character to be relatable to like them but it definitely does make me soft when I can. I think a character I can relate to would be Satinder from Shaderunners http://shaderunners.com/ I think she's a lot more outgoing than me and generally just more jovial and sweet but I relate to her struggle with her relationship with Ivo the most. Pining for someone who doesn't want to settle and just wants to move on bigger and better feels pretty real to me! Other than that I'd say Vic from Inhibit http://www.inhibitcomic.com/ while again I don't relate to his personality or much of his situation, I feel for his struggles SO MUCH. Stuck in that awkward, can't do anything right and just exists in the mediocrity of his situation just gets me all the time.

eli [a winged tale]

I think I relate with main characters who are competent in their own way but FLAWED, and are shown in the story to be facing a struggle. They may not have to make the right decisions or be the most clever, but their reasons are justified (via history, development, relationships). So ultimately it really comes down to the creator’s execution. I’ve been thinking about this question for a while and I think the best example is liking Kushana more than Nausicaa in Miyazaki’s graphic novel (you’ve watched the film, now go read the epic graphic novel!). She is presented as an antihero and a foil to Nausicaa and we see her struggle against how she was raised to the ideal way of dealing with the world presented as a possibility. Edith is also one where you see her being put together on the surface, but hiding deep insecurities inside. Yet she continues to grow, face her fears and maybe make the mistake of being on the wrong ship I jest, but working hard to solve her problems. I find static, good influence characters to be a little bit harder to relate to but if the story is good, I can invest in it.

GGY

Most of my characters stem from small pieces of my personality and experiences. Some of those personalties are exaggerated a bit to drive the plot and explain a few things going on with the characters. I don't have to relate to a character to like them but it is always interesting to see that side of a character that the other characters don't get to see as often or its not apparent. Not that the character is leading a double life or anything but that there are reasons why characters act the way they do and those reasons are either presented in a back story or from that character's perspective of the world. Anyways if I had to bottle it down to one character I think I relate a lot to would be one of my main characters Bridget Killigan of Over 8 Miles mainly because she runs by her own logic of how things go wether or not they are wrong. However this is only because of the result of circumstance, which I can relate to all too well XD(edited)

DanitheCarutor

I don't pay attention to relatability when reading a comic? Like I have no idea what characters I can relation to outside of my own since mine were sorta made to vent my experiences and issues. It's like gender and sexuality, as important as those details can be, I don't actually notice those things unless they're blatantly pointed out. Given that, not a whole lot of people can relate to me personally (I'm a weird person with weird opinions and views), so relatability in characters isn't totally possible and isn't important. Sometimes they can relate in life experiences, or a mood, but that's about it. Character(s) who are fleshed out, growing, and/or who are interesting is what matters most. So I guess I'm kinda parroting what other people have already said.

AntiBunny

Relatable? That's a bit of a tough one. I can care about a character without relating to them. In fact to answer last week's question, having characters I can care about is probably the most important thing to hook me into a webcomic. But relating to a character is different than caring about them. I would at one time say Riff and Torg from Sluggy Freelance, a couple of irresponsible guys getting into hijinks, but I've changed as a person over the years.

I suppose the most relatable character, might be Rhea from Slightly Damned. I say that because she's the one who has to be the responsible one now. She's the oldest of the 3 main characters, but still basically a kid herself. She has to protect and guide these two oddball teenagers, even though she's not even sure of her own place in the world.

I guess as you get older, people start looking to you as a protector, and as a guide, even though you still very much feel like a child wearing an adult suit. So Rhea is someone I can relate to in that regard. She's from http://sdamned.com/

Akreampuff

Sometimes I find I relate to elements of a character - Like when they comment or express an opinion on something - But having a character resonate with me isn't something that really happens often. I can't remember the last time it did. For me to like a character though, they just have to not be a shitty person. Flaws are fine - Flaws are great - But if they are just a horrible person or a flat bleh character then I lose interest very quickly.

kayotics

Karkat Vantas

RebelVampire

One character I relate to immensely off the top of my head is Shy from Radio Silence http://www.radiosilencecomic.com/ There have been a lot of moments in that comic, especially related to social anxiety, where I have cringed super hard along with Shy because I knew exactly what it was like to feel what he was feeling. It actually makes the comic difficult for me on occasion just cause it brings flashbacks. In terms of the second part, that's a difficult question. I feel like it's super easy to relate to at least small portions of every main character, since people are complex and have a million different sides to them. So, for me at least, I can always find at least a little something I can relate to. But overall, that usually doesn't determine if I like them or not. I'm more concerned about whether I'm invested in their goals and want to see them succeed or suffer for their pursuit of those goals. To me that's what makes a character likeable. So in the end, it's not a question of how much, since I'll always relate in some way. It's just also not important.

#ctparchive #comics #webcomics #indie comics #comic chat #comic discussion #comic tea party #ctp #reader favorites

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leejrdans · 5 years

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you can try to conceal your heart with red and gold titanium, but you can never truly hide from your demons.

Merlin’s beard, what is ( LEE JORDAN ) doing out at this hour? For a ( HALF BLOOD ) who is ( 19 ) years old, ( HE ) really ought to know better. You know, I hear that they’re aligned with ( THE ORDER ), but that could be just a rumor. I do know that ( HE ) is ( A CIS MAN ) and a ( GRYFFINDOR ) alumni though. They’re very ( FORTHRIGHT ) and ( CAPTIVATING ) but also quite ( IRREVERENT ) and ( BIASED ), which could be why they remind of ( LAUGHING TO FEEL ALIVE AND SPEAKING UP TO STAY ALIVE, A RESTLESS FEELING IN THE PIT OF YOUR STOMACH THAT ALWAYS DEMANDS MORE MORE MORE, HONESTY AS YOUR NATIVE TONGUE ). Some people say they’re the spitting image of ( TREVOR JACKSON ), but I’ve never heard of them.

LINKS: pinboard. stats page. wanted plots is COMING.

CHARACTER PARALLELS: will be added one day when my brain does work

HEY GUYS, it’s mar again. lee is a new muse. as in NEW. completely fresh. i am Nervous! but i love 1 man!!! note: lee is quite a Social Man, so i kind of went ahead and assumed some stuff about his position at hogwarts ( like, popularity & how the slytherins receive his biased commentary ) but i’m not trying to generalise at all and say that THIS IS HOW YOUR CHARACTER SHOULD FEEL bc i hate that LMAO take it all w a grain of salt its just how i?? ig imagine things went but if they went differently that is Okie

history.

lee is born in st mungo’s, to a halfblood mother & a muggleborn father. they’re not married. hell, they’re barely in love, but she still squeezes his hand during it all, and he cries, and for a moment they think that - maybe - they can be happy. ( someone should have told them that a child is never the solution, that it doesn’t work like that. )

lee’s mother moved into his father’s place -- a tiny flat, in peckham, but it was bigger than her own place -- and brought only two suitcases and a backpack ( warning sign one ). they tried, hard, for a while. lee’s father worked and his mother was at home, most of the time, looking after her son and making empty wine bottles appear ( warning sign two ) and then staying away during weekend nights ( warning sign three ).

she leaves for the first time when lee is nearly one, taking one of her suitcases and her backpack and slipping away in the death of night. lee’s father is lost -- for a while, but finds help in neighbours and sisters and his mother, mainly. and that’s how it went for years --- his mother coming back, and leaving, and coming back, until she didn’t come back again, not really. lee’s dad said it was enough, one day, and lee’s mother retreated to her own place. his father tried to get full custody and got it, eventually and then there was his mother, not cut from his life completely, but only semi-there, appearing when she could and - most importantly - wanted to.

he doesn’t really get it, in all honesty, as he’s five when his father tells her mother she can’t live with them any more, and most of his life after that is him and his dad and his aunts and his grandmother. plenty of family --- plenty of reasons to be happy, but an inexplicable gap, still.

lee grows up in peckham, london, and attends muggle elementary there. he goes to diagon alley on afternoons after school and weekends, with his dad, and later alone. he likes gazing at brooms ( wistfully ) and hanging out with fellow wizarding kids and magic, magic, magic. there’s magic at home too, of course, but his grandmother and aunts are all muggles, so there’s not much, but in diagon alley there’s so much of it. he likes the muggle world, sure ( especially video games & music ), but it’s nothing compared to the wizarding world.

i mean --- it’s not like he’s bored, because everything is excitable for young lee, and there’s fun to be found in everything, but there’s just more in the wizarding world - more mystery and excitement and ways to wreak havoc. because that he does love --- pranks, innocent and less innocent, hijinks and shenanigans. getting on his teachers nerves with bad jokes and cursewords.

lee doesn’t grow up with a lot of the things that some might consider crucial -- financial stability, a stable family life, a nice neighborhood. but it’s good and it’s whole in its own way. there’s plenty of people lee loves and plenty who love him back and it’s good, and when he’s off to hogwarts he’s both mad excited and secretly a bit scared and sad to leave his fam behind.

hogwarts, though, is a BLAST. lee is sorted in gryffindor ( because where else? ) and finds friends, fast. in his own house, outside of it, in his teachers, kind of ( he personally is convinced that minerva mcgonagall adores him, despite her disapproving glares ). he’s okay at his classes -- he has the skills, sure, but not the concentration and focus -- and better at everything else.

lee starts commentating on quidditch matches after he doesn’t make the team. he’s not broken up about it, in all honesty --- he sees how hard the team has to work and laughs at his mates who have to sweat while he gets to sleep in. commentating is more fun, anyway. it gains him some popularity, some enemies in slytherin, maybe, because he’s not very unbiased in his commentary. he loves his time at hogwarts, in all honesty, even more when he gets that gig.

his father meets his current girlfriend when lee is in his fifth year. they marry in the summer after his sixth year and have their daughter -- zoe -- about a year later. lee loves them. he’s conflicted at first, but he’s happy for his dad, and his baby sister is CUTE AF.

lee jordan is a rebel. in tiny, fun-loving ways ( pulling pranks, cracking jokes, being a bit of a class clown ), but also in a political, angry way. it doesn’t show in his earlier years, but as the war starts, and he grows older, too, he finds his priorities shifting. lee knows injustice. he’s dealt with prejudice his entire life --- at muggle school, at hogwarts, even. and as prejudice and bigotry gains the upper hand in the wizarding world, he grows angrier. restless.

the DA is a way to rebel more effectively, he supposes. protesting when he’s not in school. cracking open history books when he’s supposed to be practising for his NEWTs ( and he is not taking history ). lee looks at the world and he’s angry, he’s restless, he wants to do something but he does not know what---- because where do you start when so much is wrong?

right now.

lee has graduated hogwarts ( believe me when i say that those last months without fred & george were fucking boring, but he at least got to focus a bit more on his NEWTs ) by now and he’s floundering around. i like to think that he’s working for/with the twins, helping with inventing stuff and marketing kind of things for the www, but if this doesnt mesh with any potential fred/george players, i can 100% alter this skjsdf.

he wants to do something more, though. tell stories. speak up. journalism has always pulled at him --- not written, but on the telly or radio. he likes music too, of course, and the truth, especially --- and an idea is starting up in his mind. he’s slowly working towards setting up an underground radio, gathering equipment and figuring out ways to organise it. potterwatch is coming, and once the ministry is taken over ( if -- of course, that’s where this rp’s plot takes us ) it will be there, the urgency bigger. i don’t know exactly --- i’ll probably discuss this w sarah too but i think right now potterwatch is just an untitled work in progress.

lee’s not an official order member, but i do think he’s alligned, in one way or another. he’s willing to do what’s right, keeps his DA coin on him because of it, but also tries to take the world with a grain of salt, still. laughter is what makes him feel alive, and everything else he does to stay alive, to still make this world a livable place.

rebel boi.

personality & tidbits.

lee is a dank meme lordt who would be an icon on social media, if we had it. he just likes dumb ass humour. a bit of a class clown --- he just likes attention, but he also likes making people laugh and having a good. fucking. time.

lee is hilarious and it’s the truth.

he rly loves his fam!! is worried abt them!! he still lives at home its a blast but he wants to move out tbakjdsf.

his mother doesnt rly ... idk he does think of her as his mother but not rly as part of his family, bc family is not blood anyway. he’s had a few good talks w her since he’s grown older tho but it’s a sore, complicated spot.

lee loves music a Lot. hip hop, trip hop, some punk here and there ... bonus points if it’s a political bop!!

has the mouth of a sailor and now that he’s out of school he doesnt even try to fight it. no mcgonagall around to tell him off after all!!!

enjoys smoking pot & drinking beers w his buds. just -- letting go, having a laff and relaxing to the fullest. likes watching muggle tv when high especially, such a hobby!!!

idk!!!!!!!!!!!! will add more mayhaps???

#potter intro #YEET

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teawiththegods · 5 years

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paranormal anon- oh you've invited So Many Messages bc i get into some shit -- 1. when i was younger we had a house with a fair amount of doors that would slam open and shut without any breeze affecting them,,, my brothers and i would just ignore it,, you know what later in the same house we found a drawing on the mirror in toothpaste that no one did,, weird 2. a few years later we lived where there was a forest behind out home and my little bro and i went p far back to explore (1/?)

and found a fort made of tires but my dad said that it has a lot of bear tracks so we cant play there,, same forest i found a rib bone right behind the house and brush line and we dont know where it came from, i have the bone somewhere but not with me rn 3. a dif house later had three stories but was rly narrow and when we had to clean it out we found like used needles and a bong lmao but anyways,, i lived on the first floor and my parents and brothers on the second floor (2/?)and i was going up to my parents room and a creepy withered Thing rounded the corner of the staircase from the third floor and Stared at me,,, yeah i went in my parents room and slammed the door,, there was a crawlspace to an attic on the third floor but i never went on the second let alone third floor again. 4. dont remember when but i used to have a house with a closed off well in the backyard where snake skeletons kept appearing,, weird (3/?)5. i used to live out in the Country when i was 13 ish and there was a cute neighbor kid who asked if me and my little brother wanted to see something cool in the woods,, not weird at all lmao, anyways we went on a tiny path in the woods behind my house and eventually found a road but went right back into the woods and we found a dilapidated playground surrounded in barbed wire that we did play in for a bit the swings were p cool, (4/?)Anyways we eventually left and walked down a dirt road in the woods before finding one of those big cattle gates (idk how to describe them) that had a no trespassing sign and he said 'this is it' so we go down the road, obvi trespassing lmao, and he takes us to this old kinda falling apart house and tells us this is where he goes when he's mad, looking back Red Flag anyways we stay and break some windows and we also climbed a latter to look into the hayloft that the house had,, (5/?)we just went home after but it was fine,,, that house also had a tiny cabin in the backyard that our neighbor said his uncle died in but we didn't believe him 6. i used to commonly see apparitions in a few of my houses,, there were enough to fill up a good amount of pages in a notebook that my friends once found and were creeped out by bc the entries were a bit,,, detailed,, its bc they were full-body apparitions tbh 7. now that im in a paranormal club there are more things (6/?)like the psychic of the club saying that theres something attached to me that follows right behind me (understandable bc for some reason the back of my neck is oddly sensitive,,),, weve gone on a few investigations where my odd knack of sensing emotions and areas of power come in handy and its freaky,, we went to an old graveyard and i told you about the creepy trees and the old jail but more in depth i may have mocked a ghost,, or a few,, and then i was talking about them with my roommate (7/?)and her string lights started to flicker and they consistently responded when i asked them questions,, lmao yikes anyways i called on dionysus and hermes when that happened and my roommate had some crystals,, i dont think theyve left but i dont think that theyre bad,, or like harmful (due to this event her family thinks im a danger,, it wasnt on purpose tbh),, also recently there has been a red double ended noose appearing outside of our window that freaked us out (8/?)(coming clean i was the hermes chthonius anon from a bit ago and this was the event from the ask) and we dont know if it was a sign or not but the noose has the correct knot and bc of where it is it couldn't have been thrown?? man idk i dont care anymore but my roommate still doesn't like it 8. my family has also had some experiences bc ghost shit runs in families lmao,, anyways my dad once lived in like the maryland area and one time he was at a subway station and it was empty except for (9/?)a businessman with like a briefcase who said to my dad 'im late' and then disappeared but since work waits for no ghost my dad just got on his subway and went to work lmao,, my mom also had an experience when she was a teen and she couldnt see her bedroom door from her bed due to the room shape but she was alone with only her dogs, the dog wouldnt stop staring at the doorway for a while and then my mum woke up in the night to a strong presence of a person above her but she stayed still (10/?)until it left and then she turned on every light and locked everything,,, anyways im a fucking demon and ghost magnet lmao,, this is all that i can remember rn but there is prob more lmao,, hope you enjoyed my stupidity bc tbh i still lowkey mock some paranormal entities and dare them to mess w me which is a Bad Idea but i do give the restless dead offernings so they dont murder me ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ (11/11)paranormal anon - dont worry about subsequent paranormal club investigations,, theres a girl who is going to stay with me (bc i love wandering off by myself of course) and make sure i dont get into hijinks,, funnily enough shes not sensitive At All to paranormal stuff and shell be with me the Paranormal Hotspot

Yoooo you just took me on a journey!! Is it bad that part of me is kind of jelly right now?? I mean i say that but also the part of me that has built my entire manual of survival from watching horror movies is like “Oh hell no! We follow the rule book so we DON’T end up with stories like this!” lol! Though I would so watch you host a paranormal show! Thank you so much for sharing all this! What an exciting and also extremely terrifying life you live!

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tevotbegotnaught · 5 years

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“The conductor…in the power he has over others…it is in his interest as a human being, as well as that of his musical achievements, to resist the temptation to misuse it. Tyranny can never bring to fruition artistic-or for that matter human- gifts; subordination under a despot does not make for joy in one’s music-making. Intimidation deprives the musician of the full enjoyment of his talent and proficiency. Yet I should certainly not want to impugn the employment of earnest severity or even the occasional borrowing of the Bolt of Zeus; the latter if the hand knows how to wield it, can in exceptional situations bring surprisingly good results. Severity is a legitimate even indispensable means of dealing with people...”

Bruno Walter

In my Summer of 42 (years), I was a college freshman…again. With neither Mexican weed nor dormitory hijinks to distract me, I worked through the full Brooklyn College Core Curriculum and a handful of music courses. My degree plan also required an ensemble each semester. When the Assistant Dean interviewed me, he looked over my CV and immediately suggested their Jazz Band. After hearing them, I chose a contemporary music ensemble founded by a composition professor. Fall semester, she was on sabbatical and a trumpet prof, Juilliard guy and veteran freelancer, ran the class. To begin, he sat everyone in a circle and asked us to play “Happy Birthday" in hocket. Most of the class was unsure of the melody and some also thought it a stupid idea. With our nonstandard instrumentation, we massacred Second Viennese School composers for the rest of the term.

Spring term, the founder returned. She was just over five feet tall, brown-skinned, with narrow shoulders and mineshaft dark eyes. When she listened, her head nodded while bottomless eyes fixed on you. Raised in a distressed country, her life moved from prodigy to conservatory-trained professional with impeccable musicianship: piano, score reading, solfege, conducting, improvising, composing. Then, she came to the US, with zero money and English and rebuilt her career from scratch. At BC, she conducted the orchestra until politics pushed her out. Now, she gave composition lessons and led this ensemble.

Our roster still read as spare parts: three singers, three pianists, two flutes, violin, saxophone, clarinet, guitar; some highly skilled, others not. For most, English was a second or even third language. Our professor's first assignment: list your colleagues’ instruments, find pieces for a subset of our forces, select only pieces written after 1960, bring scores/parts for audition.

The following week, we presented our finds. First, someone showed her a John Cage duet. As she turned pages, Maestra’s face went blank .

“Why did you get this?”

A mumbled answer.

Maestra closed the score. “You got eet because eet looks easy. Didn't you? First of all, it’s a short duet. Three, maybe four minutes of music. Nothing to do on a real pro-GRAM. Not serious. Not serious at all.”

More mumbling.

“Get something else. Thank you.”

She jabbed the score into their hands, then addressed the class.

“Nothing about John Cage. John is extraordinary. When you choose music, don’t just take a name you theenk you know. Read the score. You are musicians …supposed to be….”

Next, one of the singers produced a folio. Its font, ornate and oversized. I winced. Maestra saw it was a Puccini aria with piano accompaniment and recoiled.

“After nineteen-sixty? Thees? You are kidding me!”

Again, she faced us.

“Thees is NOT opera work-SHOP. I know some of you did not make it there. I'm very sorry about that. Please find some other music to sing. There are so many good theengs. I hope you will find out. Music does not end with Verdi, Puccini.”

So it went. Gratefully, she anticipated our poor choices and suggested some pieces.

Meastra spoke Spanish to some students, aware of the terrain they navigated and supportive. Jorge, a Mexican pianist, was one of her projects. He was a skilled player, an enthusiastic and warm colleague. His giggle often broke up the class. In our third meeting, we rolled the piano front, Jorge sat on the bench. While he longed for mama's home cooking, he wasn’t missing any meals in Brooklyn. His midsection expanded well beyond his tight-waisted pants, straining shirt buttons. Maestra questioned him on preparation: “you’re playing the second movement, what about the third?”

Unaffected by the prodding, he began to play. A minute in, she said, “stop”.

He continued, eyes closed.

She shouted, “Stop! I’m telling you, STOP"

He looked over.

“JORGE….WHAT…ARE…YOU….DOING?”

It wasn’t meant as a question. Jorge smiled and gently shook his head.

“Why are you smiling? Look at you!”

Her voice leveled.

“This is not ready. It’s better, but it's not ready.”

She shifted.

“I am very worried about you. Look..at…your…STOMACH. You need to take better care of yourself. You know, pianists perform in pro-FILE. Theenk what you show to the audience.”

Jorge wasn't smiling. He put his hand on his belly.

“Everyone should con-see-der an exer-CISE pro-GRAM. I am forty years, Dio mio! Almost FEEFTY years older than some of you. Take care of yourselves.”

She dismissed him with a sweeping gesture.

“Ok, who is next? Anna, where is the list? Geeve it to me!”

Her assistant, a brilliant, tiny, Yankee grad student, always cleaned up.

Maestra partnered Jorge with another pianist for a Gyorgy Ligeti duo. Its ingenious architecture, a complex cycle revealed one beat at a time. In Yogi Berra's construction, half the score was ninety-nine percent rests. The players needed infallible inner time. While they played, Maestra leaned over the piano, right hand supporting her, left turning pages. She nodded her head slightly in tempo. The pianist's hits charged toward and away from each other like Pacman's gobbling goblins.

“You are late!” she slammed her left hand down. They went back. Another hammer blow. Back again. The piece never made it to the program.

At the end of the initial class, she approached me about Milhaud's “Le Creation du Monde", a chamber work for winds, including alto saxophone. We didn’t have the other winds, of course, but a young woodwind quintet, in residence for the year, would help out.

“Le Creation" story moves from brooding chorale to a raggy bolero where the winds pass around jumpy tunes, then strut them all, polyphonically, in a joyous finale.

At the first of four rehearsals, we were less than half personnel. Maestra had been enthusiastic about the quintet, encouraging us to meet, hear and study with them. But they were collaborating with major artists and appearing all over the world. Their residency, now in name only. No one in the group even bothered to return her emails. Our conductor was livid. (Later, the assistant assured us that Maestra never returned emails, either.) In rehearsal, the music just marked time. In long stretches with no tune and no landmarks, I fell into a hole and missed my entrance.

“What are you DOING! Counting! Count-ting! I can’t do everytheeng for you.”

Concert day was the first we all sat down to play. In the midst of my disciplined colleagues, I was a bellowing hippo. During the chorale, my slow descending notes were either out-of-tune, out-of-time, the wrong dynamic, or all three.

The baton came down hard “NO..NO..NO. WHAT ARE YOU DOING?"

“How can you be late. It's jazz. Jazz! You play jazz? Right? You know who is John Col-TRANE? Play it like Col-TRANE! Why should I have to tell YOU this. Come on!”

I wore other hats that night: soprano, clarinet. Still, my mind remained fogged through the Milhaud finale.

The quintet players all demolished their solos. With a huge smile, Maestra gave each well-deserved bows. When they were done, she flashed her eyes at me, scowling. Then, jerked both her hands upwards, like she was flipping a pool toy. I stood up and stared straight down.

Next semester, a composition student brought a score. It was mostly squiggles and arrows, notation designed to move the music forward without defining functional harmony or conventional melody. She conducted a circle for each “bar”. We could gauge the length of each gesture and respond in time. Simultaneously, she sang the gestures using their pitched start/end points, conducted, turned pages and offered substantive commentary. If one of us was even a second late, her glance immolated them.

I became friends with some of her students. Waiting outside her office, they often heard shouting. When the door opened, students walked out in tears. Some planned to work closely with Maestra toward their Master's or DMA. Those plans would change...

An alumni couple created an endowed chair for Maestra, protecting her from political games. To celebrate, students accompanied her to the donors’ Connecticut home for a musicale. We loaded two vans with the usual music school suspects: waifish Asian virtuoso string players, an Eastern European sturm und drang pianist, a diffident “difficult” composer, and bit players like me.

Both donors were in their eighties and fabulously rich, earnest, lefty intellectuals. The wife wore a gas mask-like apparatus, its hoses attached to a whirring box on her back. I strained to understand her speech, but her eyes shone with love and curiosity. The couple warmly welcomed us to a large room packed with guests.

I was part of a quartet: oboe, flute, clarinet and piano, playing a student work. The composer, a young Dominican guy, rising star in the program. A Caribbean undergraduate writing skilled takes on contemporary European music. His piece used the difference-tone clusters of Gyorgy Ligeti: loud, high notes, staggered and longheld, producing acoustic anomalies: window-fan undertones and piercing oscillations. Bathing in timbral waves and madly counting beats, I couldn’t find the piano part, though we made it to the end without requiring oxygen or a conductor. The composer took a awkward bow and disappeared.

With Maestra as Maitre’d we served up a baroque cello sonata, Beethoven piano music and some Sondheim. Then, our little foursome loudly dropped a turd on the buffet table.

The donor husband was one of those ruddy-faced white guys who wear baggy corduroys and turtle necks over their barrel physiques. He sought me out, towering above me as I packed up my clarinet.

“What did he mean with that piece?"

“Sir, I…I wouldn’t want to represent the composer, he never said anything about..”

“Now, you must know something.”

He was an important man accustomed to getting answers, fast and in full.

“I know my part and how it fits with the others. The woodwinds are playing difference tones, Stravinsky used...”

“Why didn’t HE explain that to us? We go to concerts all the time. Conductors explain new music. They give examples, give context. You can’t just write something like that and expect people to automatically understand it.”

Gulp....“Of course.”

“It’s his responsibility to help the audience understand the music”

I looked over. By the buffet, the composer was holding a plate, one of the string players laughing next to him. Mrs Donor approached me, extending her hand. The box on her back hissed and clicked. Above the mask, searching eyes, below, a voice from a radio in another room. Was she talking about the quartet? It was too uncomfortable. I interrupted.

“Thank you so much for your hospitality and the opportunity to play for you. You and your husband are so generous.”

She squeezed my hand and leaned in, radio transmission drowning in static. Her husband came to her side.

“My wife is saying we've been to many, many concerts of new music. Starting way back, with Lenny Bernstein. He taught us there’s always something to learn. He introduced us to many extraordinary artists”

He put his hand lightly on her back. Over her shoulder, Maestra was listening to a guest, head level with their sternum, eyes searchlights in reverse. The radio faded and its whirring submerged in the din.

We got back very late. Our vans parked by the gatehouse and turnstile on the east side of campus. A few yellow lights glowed in the music building. Maestra thanked us. We said goodnight.

Drifting on an acoustic sea, our ancestors explored sound, harnessing the waves. Between foaming peaks and psychic undertow, they found power. From our African beginnings, to the stars, every lineage counted on those who navigated, who mastered instruments, who carried in them songs and stories. They became the music, while it lasted.

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mushairaandchill · 6 years

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hiii im interested in getting into bollywood and indian films, could you rec some of your faves and anywhere they might be with english subtitles? thank you

Hey there :D

Honestly, I lean more on the 'artsy' / parallel cinema side of things lol, but I'll try my best to make a balanced list. This is sort of semi-divided by theme/tone, director and genre but not rly organized. I'm providing the best links I can find, otherwise Netflix and Amazon might have these available to stream too.

Raavanan (a modern adaptation of the Ramayana that sort of reverses who is the protagonist and antagonist, but you don't really need to know that story for this to make sense. The wife of a cop is kidnapped by an anti-government tribal leader, and although she at first hates and fears him and his community, she begins to realize that her own husband and the police force he works for have done far worse.)

Vishal Bhardwaj's entire Shakespeare Trilogy:

Maqbool (adaptation of Macbeth, moves the story to Mumbai's criminal underworld)

Omkara (adaptation of Othello, moves the story to gangland Uttar Pradesh)

Haider (adaptation of Hamlet, moves the story to Kashmir during a period of extreme turmoil and violence under Indian occupation)

Kaminey (estranged twin brothers, each with a different speech impediment, live markedly different lives in Mumbai. One is a thug who dreams of running his own betting establishment, one is a college student and social worker who tries to live honestly but has gotten himself into trouble after impregnating a gangster's sister. Fate fucks with them so hard that their stories converge again)

7 Khoon Maaf (a woman marries, and then murders, seven men. They all deserved it)

Gangs of Wasseypur Part I and II (a rather graphic and relentlessly violent multi-generational saga of gangsters and politicians who are indistinguishable from another. In the 1940s, bandit and hired thug Shahid Khan starts a feud with the Qureshis and Ramadhir Singh that far outlasts him.)

Black Friday (a film that deals directly with real life events. After bomb blasts throughout Bombay kill hundreds of people, police begin a manhunt for those responsible. What they find is a rabbithole, full of gangster involvement, communal violence, religious extremism, and the greatest depths of human despair. It's a film that honestly emotionally disturbs me, so even tho I'm recommending it lol I'd say be careful if you watch it)

Ishqiya and Dedh Ishqiya (Two conmen/criminals, who happen to be uncle and nephew, steal money from their boss and go on the run. Along the way they run into rather dangerous women, fall in love, get in further trouble. The female characters in these movies are fuckin amazing)

Bajrangi Bhaijaan (an Indian man helps a little Pakistani girl find her way back to her country. It's a moving and incredibly heartwarming film omg)

3 Idiots (two college friends go on a roadtrip to find another college friend who mysteriously left during graduation and never contacted them again. Throughout it, they reminisce over college-era hijinks while getting into hijinks in the present day too)

Main Hoon Na (a profoundly campy film that nevertheless is one of the best films I've seen in my life. A soldier goes undercover as a student at his estranged half-brother's college to protect an army general's daughter. Along the way, he tries to connect with his brother and stepmother, without letting them know who he really is. He falls in love with a teacher who's actually his age so it's fine lmao There's a India-Pakistan plot going on, a rogue former army general is planning havoc, a million Hindi cinema tropes are lovingly lampooned as well as played straight. It's great)

Jab We Met (a straight laced, joyless man, depressed after being rejected by the girl he loved, boards a train intending to throw himself off it. A bubbly, extremely talkative woman saves him from doing so. They end up stranded after the train leaves without them. They go on a journey that changes them both. I LOVE this movie lol)

Mughal-e-Azam (the first sweeping epic of Hindi cinema, it's passed into legend in the decades since it first played in theatres. During the reign of Emperor Akbar, a dancing girl named Anarkali and the emperor's son, prince Salim, fall in love but their relationship is opposed by the Emperor, which leads to tensions and violence between father and son, threatening the very foundation of the Mughal Empire.)

Meera (a young woman faces great obstacles and scorn because of her deep spiritual love for and devotion to Lord Krishna. The story explores the various restrictions, responsibilities and burdens society places on a woman in the framework of spirituality and religious devotion.)

Baahubali Part I and II (AMAZING fantasy/action films set in ancient India about a young man who discovers that he's actually the heir to a kingdom that his uncle acquired through cheating, and who then sets out to reclaim it and avenge the wrong done to his family. Completely shattered box office records in India when it came out)

Jodhaa-Akbar (another film that takes place during Emperor Akbar's reign, but this time focuses on Akbar's relationship with Jodhaa Bai (irl Maryam-uz-Zamaani), Salim's mother and a Hindu Rajput princess. Their marriage is arranged for political reasons, but they eventually take a liking to each other. Unfortunately, many obstacles stand in their way to happiness)

Bajirao Mastani (a Maratha general and a Muslim princess fall in love, even though the general is already married. She's hated and discriminated against because of her religion by his household, but she pursues the relationship anyway. It's an indescribably beautiful movie - visually. But plot-wise there's a lot left to be desired lmao)

Devdas (from the same director as BM but with a slightly better script lmao. A man devolves into alcoholism after his childhood love is married off to someone else. A courtesan falls for him, but he can't forget his first love. It's one of the most visually stunning films ever made.)

Here's some older movies that I really love but idk if them being old would be off-putting:

Pyaasa (Honestly one of the best films ever made, and that's really a widely held opinion among both critics and viewers. A poet struggles in a world that devalues his work and his humanity. The only person who understands him and appreciates his poetry is a prostitute, herself an outcast in society. The film examines the world through the lens of an idealist whose worldview crumbles with every blow he's dealt. I'm terrible at describing it lmao it really needs to be watched to be understood)

Kaagaz Ke Phool (a sort of spiritual successor to Pyaasa, this film is about a director who falls from grace as his personal life disintegrates. It also sort of defies easy description ;v;)

Sahib Bibi Aur Ghulam (a country boy newly arrived to the city begins an unlikely friendship with the sad, neglected wife of a land-owning aristocrat and has to watch as she is slowly to lost to her despair and alcoholism)

Guide (a tour guide falls in love with a married dancer and throws himself into building her career, but gradually becomes hedonistic, self-absorbed and jealous as she becomes a star.)

Shree 420 (an honest and idealistic young man is lured into a world of gambling, conning and exploitation after he comes to the city and finds it difficult to get by on his values and education. This movie is socialist propaganda and I love it)

Mandi (centers on the inhabitants of a brothel as they're caught up in puritanical political outbursts against their profession and an effort by the state to evict them from their home. Sounds dramatic but is actually mad satirical and a dark comedy)

Jaane Bhi Do Yaaro (two hapless photographers get caught up in a tangled web of real estate corruption and politics after they accidentally photograph a murder)

Aandhi (a politician runs into her ex-husband and it opens a floodgate of memories for them both. A really good depiction of a woman's struggle to reconcile her career with all the expectations and responsibilities foisted on her as a wife and mother.)

Rajnigandha (a young woman is torn between her fiancee and her college boyfriend after she reconnects with the latter during a trip to Bombay. Honestly one of the most poignant films I’ve ever seen.)

I’m gonna end this here bc I’ve gone on waaay longer than I intended to lmao ;_; Sorry that this got so longwinded! Anyway, I hope this helped you, I tried to provide concise summaries so you could decide whether the premise appeals to you but I might just have made things more confusing? xD I hope not!

#indian cinema #bollywood #recs #i should really make a masterlist of my fave films w/links sometime #Anonymous

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regalia-of-wisdom · 6 years

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Why Vanitas and Marluxia can come back if they want to and Nomura didn’t retcon.

‪Ok so on twitter I said that I wasn’t gonna write this bc I didn’t wanna be called a KH3 apologist but then my friends were like “you’re a kh3 apologist anyways just do it” so I did it. I love KH and theorizing and analyzing everything and it’s great, but also it’s 2 am, and also Nomura really needs to consider writing these things down somewhere before releasing these games. Also stop recycling villains, dammit.

Sorry that I can’t line break. I’m writing on mobile rn :/ it’s a long post.

‪Ok I’m too lazy to go on the wiki or something and re read these but on the very first KH (or maybe it was in the Secret Ansem Reports in KH2...?? ANYWAYS IN ONE OF THOSE) it is stated that, according to the metaphysics of the Kh universe, a person is made up of a body, a heart‬, ‪and a soul. Bc the main lore of kh doesn’t mention it much not many players seem to remember or know what the “soul” is, especially since it’s clearly not supposed to be the same thing that westerners think of as a soul (that would be a heart in KH-metaphysics)‬.

‪So all we ever get in the series is people losing their hearts, which is synonymous to someone going fucking catatonic and emotionless bc they don’t have a soul (think Kairi in KH1), or just overall disappear bc of darkness related hijinks that cause complications.‬

‪Like, Kairi in KH1 was alive, y’all. She had a breathing pattern and open eyes and everything, she just didn’t have a heart. She’s the only example we have of this (unless you want me to include Aurora in BBS lol), because she’s the only one whose body wouldn’t react to darkness related hijinks (Darkness, as you all know, is quite annoying).‬ This means that, clearly, not having a heart doesn’t mean you’re a corpse. It’s probably more like you going in a coma. Nobodies in Org XIII aren’t walking corpses. They’re just ppl without a soul. (AKA a heart). They’re like, psychopaths? Sam in that one season of Supernatural? you know, just a bunch of ppl that don’t have to deal with pesty issues like guilt or ethics.

(If you’re wondering why Kairi’s catatonic body in KH1 isn’t a Nobody it’s bc Nobodies are dependent on Darkness. Only hearts that have turned to heartless (darkness) create Nobodies, and Nobodies are born with the ability to open dark corridors and control heartless and do whatever they want. Like, they technically have access to both light and dark (and. Void? I guess?) but they’re very obviously leaning more towards the side of darkness. Not that they’re inherently dark creatures, but that they are just yet another life form in KH that owes its existence to Darkness. Kairi, as we all will never forget, has no darkness bothering her and complicating her life. Sora’s the one that had enough darkness and body and soul to spare to create two nobodies out of thin air. What the fuck dude.)

Of course if you played DDD you’d be like “uh, but Xemnas said that Nobodies can grow hearts uhhh” and id be like yeah he did and it makes a lot of sense especially if you had watched/Played Re: Coded and payed attention to the juicy lore bits instead of the main plot like I’ve been saying forever. However unimportant the plot is, Re: Coded’s storyline literally exists to say that anything with a Body and a (what KH calls a) Soul (Like, say, the person made out of data that you’re playing as throughout the game) has the ability to grow a heart and become a person. The entirety of Jiminy’s Journal becomes a world a la Winnie the Pooh, obtaining its own heart. Like, it’s a book and it was made and it’s kind of fake but it developed its own sense of self, and developed a heart. Like, it was literally pointed out to us. Data Sora lives beyond his programming (just like, hey, Tron.) bc he developed a sense of self. A personality. A heart. He even makes his own Keyblade, that’s how much heart he mad. With a lesson like that being thrown at us, why wouldn’t the Organization XIII Nobodies eventually be able to develop their own sense of self? To go beyond what they thought their “original” selves were like, and become able to feel? Not to say they do, mind you. I think a lot of them, or all of them, like Axel in the beginning of Days, were so stuck on what they thought their original self was like that they were just following through the motions and doing what a data program would consider its “programming”. Axel only began to grow a heart once he stopped trying to be Saïx’s friend, and started to go beyond what his memories were telling him he should act like and do what he felt like he needed to act like.

Anyways now at this point you’re probably like, “what does this have to do with Villains in KH always coming back…” and I’m gonna get to that jeez hold on a minute, I just felt like I needed to explain what a heart was for this to be clearer to people. What are the functions of a heart, and what it ultimately serves. I needed to explain this, because losing a Heart does not mean you are dead, losing your Soul does.

The Soul in KH should probably be referred to as Spirit, as I think it reflects the idea better, while keeping basically the same word. (Unfortunately we already have things called Spirits in KH, and they’re adorable darkness creatures, so.) It’s supposed to be the energy that makes something move. It’s the Will to Live. The fact that the soul seems to be synonymous with will is important, bc only people with a “Strong Will”, that become heartless, create Nobodies. The Will in this case is clearly the energy source that provides a body with sustenance. With life. Pinocchio was given a soul by the blue fairy so he could move (the heart, I think, he made himself due to Geppetto's own feelings). The love of children give the toys in Toy Story a will to protect, love, and be played with. Terra’s will was so damn strong, it reanimated his armor. Terra’s Will to live makes his armor move on its own. Look, it’s even called The Lingering Will. What does this mean? That only a body and a heart that has lost its soul, that loses its energy source (its lifestream, I suppose) undeniably dies.

No one, absolutely no one in KH, has lots their soul. Ok, not true, obviously there are some exceptions, particularly regarding the Disney villains, but I’m talking abt the story original characters that Nomura loves to recycle so much. No one has lost it bc pretty much almost no one we fight is ever a complete human being. They’re always missing vital parts of themselves. Ansem the Seeker of Darkness was humanoid Heart walking around. Xemnas and the Organization were a few bodies and souls walking around with maybe a mini heart or two. Vanitas is literally the most incomplete being I can think of. He’s literally half a heart, half a body, and half a soul. The dude is a mess. Master Xehanort… MX is clearly using loopholes and luck to keep himself surviving this long. By now, he’s made a complete and utter mess of Terra, who got literally split into 3 entities for 10 years, while he himself is really only a floating heart and a soul ruining everything. Young Xehanort is a complete being that should probably watch out for decapitation or something, but we can certainly rule out that Riku would kill him because I mean. Y’all have met Riku, right? Also he’s just obviously alive lmao.

The fact that these beings are incomplete is important bc the keyblade, our weapon of choice, is a mysterious artifact that serves very specific functions. It opens and locks anything, specifically the hearts to a world and the pathways that lead to other worlds. It seems to exist to bring balance and stability to… anywhere it’s at, really. It’s a magical item with magical intentions. Now, I’m not gonna sit here and say what I’m about to say as if it’s proven fact that I read in an interview or deduced myself or something, I will admit that my next point is in theoretical territory, but that doesn’t make it any less likely or probable. And that is that the Keyblade can not kill people. That is to say, it can not kill a soul. It can only break apart, or reunite parts of a person, but not destroy them. “Killing” heartless restores them to their original state: a heart, and killing nobodies does the same. Xehanort and Sora stabbed themselves to get their hearts out of their bodies and created heartless and nobodies in the process. It’s like the laws of thermodynamics or something. It seems to me that that is the nature of a keyblade.

So, inclusion, nobody has died in KH. The end. This is unnecessarily long but I get like that sometimes. There is one last point that I have to address but I might do that tomorrow, if anyone gives a shit by then. Good night!

#KH #Kingdom Hearts III #kh3 #kingdom hearts meta analysis #long post #why do i always have something to rant about #all the time #GOD

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