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dream-a-little-bigger-x · 4 years

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A Long Way From The Playground | Charlie Gillespie

Requested by @faithie-brock-gillespie01: Can you make one where me and Charlie go out to hang out around the town and I get pinned to the wall by man who hasn’t left me alone all day (like he attacks me when Charlie just goes to the bathroom or something) and then all of a sudden Charlie comes back and saves me by pulling the guy off. They get into a small fight and he ends up growling “mine” and pointing at the guy as I pull him back and out of the place. After I pull him out and get him home. When home I patch him up (because he has a few cuts on his face) and he ends up confessing (after I ask why he did it) that he hates to see me get hurt so he saved me. We end up confessing to loving one another.*My name: y/nMy nicknames: sweetheart, sweetie, love, Princess, queen, angel, nugget (Or whatever you can think of. )*charlies nicknames: Char, King, Baby Boy, My Prince, My Prince Charming, My Love, Babe, Sweetheart, baby, love bug, sweetie, sweetheart, my prince, baby, baby boy, sweet cakes, babe, sweetie, or even Troy (like I use it as a funny thing to mess with him, because he’s kinda like my Troy), real life Luke (because it’s again a funny thing in the relationship or like because he acts like a real life one hence the real life part), (Or whatever you can think of. )

Pairing: Charlie Gillespie x Reader

Warnings: angst, sexual harassment, fight,

Words: 3,426

You’ve been friends with Charlie for ages. The first day at Kindergarten, a mean girl had pushed you off the swing during recess, and when Charlie saw this, he came up to help you. He pushed the girl off the swing she stole from you and then rushed to your side to help you up. He accompanied you to the school nurse and even stayed after the wound on your knee had been taken care of. The nurse had given both of you a lollipop and allowed you to wait in her office until recess was over. Ever since that day, you and Charlie had been inseparable. You went through life together, supporting each other’s decisions and helping out whenever the other was in trouble. It was really hard on you when Charlie went to LA to pursue his acting career, but you supported him nonetheless. This was his dream, and as a best friend, it was your duty to let him go and pursue that dream, even if that meant leaving you in Dieppe all by yourself. Your relationship never really suffered from the distance between the two of you. There were consistent FaceTime calls and constant texts, it’s almost as though he’s not even gone. The only thing that might cause disturbance is your feelings for him. You were eighteen when you first realized that you’d much rather kiss Charlie than hug him, when his otherwise platonic touches were felt everywhere. Everywhere. But, of course, you decided not to say anything because it might just ruin what you have, and what you have is really special. In 2019, Charlie asks you to come along with him to Vancouver where he’s going to be shooting Julie and The Phantoms, a Kenny Ortega project. You, being a big fan of the director and Charlie, decide to come along. You deserve a little break, and you’ve missed Charlie too much to pass up this opportunity. “Bubbaaaaa!” you shriek as you run up to him in the grand hallway of Vancouver International Airport, leaving your luggage somewhere along the way. He’s holding out his arms, ready to catch you as you jump up and into his arms, wrapping your legs around his waist, clutching onto him like a koala bear. Passengers leaving or arriving give you weird looks, annoyed at the disturbance in their day, but you don’t care. It’s been months since you’d last seen this man, and you’re way too excited to be in his arms again. “Hey Nugget,” he mumbles in your hair, inhaling the fresh scent of peonies, his most favorite. “Gosh, I missed ya.” He loosens his arms a little to put you back on your feet, but you don’t want to let go yet. A chuckle vibrates through his chest and travels all the way through yours. “I missed you too, Bubba,” you say back and then let go of him. You just needed a few more seconds in his arms. After grabbing your luggage where you left it, he takes you to the apartment he’s sharing with one of his cast mates, Owen, who’s sitting on the sofa as you arrive. The tall blonde man gets up and makes his way over to you with a wide smile on his face. “Hi!” he greets, opening his arms to give you a welcome hug. “I’m Owen.” “I’m Y/N, nice to meet you,” you say back when the two of you pull away. “I’m gonna show Y/N to their room and then we can maybe get some lunch together?” Charlie suggests to the both of you. After exchanging a glance, you and Owen nod agreeingly. Charlie then excitedly grabs your hand and leads you towards one of the rooms. “This is my room, but you can sleep here and I’ll sleep on the couch,” he explains softly. Your head snaps up at this, wondering if he’s serious about his suggestion of sleeping on the couch. He’s looking at you expectantly. He is serious about sleeping on the couch. “Dude… We used to sleep in the same bed during our sleepovers in Dieppe all the time. Just sleep in this bed with me, alright?” You almost sound angry at the audacity of him suggesting doing otherwise. “Right, yeah! Of course,” he utters, his eyes lighting up, “I just-- didn’t want to force you to sleep in the same bed in case things… changed…” You let out an airy laugh, shaking your head in disbelief whilst throwing your luggage onto the bed with a dull thud. “Nothing could ever change things between us, Char,” you mutter, but in your mind know at least one reason that could change between you. You hear him chuckle as you grab an entirely new outfit from your suitcase, wanting to change out of your disgusting airplane clothes. “Can I take a quick shower before we go to lunch?” you ask, and he simply nods his head and guides you out of the bedroom and to the shared bathroom. While you shower, you think of all the possible ways this week could go. You want to tell Charlie how you truly feel. You can’t just be friends with him anymore. It’s been three years since you figured it out. You’ve spent three years trying not to scream whenever his fingers left a burning trail on your skin or when his glances made you tingle everywhere. But now you’re done trying to pretend nothing’s going on. You’re done pretending not kissing him isn’t killing you. Though the multiple possible scenarios make for a bad movie, you’re willing to at least try and see what he’s going to say or do. This could go either way. Little do you know Charlie’s having the exact same thoughts, only he’s saying them out loud to Owen, one room over. “You gotta tell them, man. There’s no way you’re gonna be able to hold out much longer,” says Owen to his distressed friend, “This is making you crazy.” Charlie doesn’t disagree. It is making him crazy. Maybe this week might give him some clarity as to what to do about this entire situation. Once you’re ready, the three of you head out into Vancouver to grab some lunch. While Charlie and Owen bicker about which restaurant would be best to take you to, you give yourself the opportunity to look around, rewarding your eyes with the beauty that is West End Vancouver. The difference between Dieppe and Vancouver is fascinating, to say the least. It’s funny to you because wherever you go or turn in Dieppe, there’s a natural flair to the streets, while everything in Vancouver is made of brick. Or at least this street is. “What about sushi, Y/N?” Owen asks you, making you snap out of your thoughts. “Ooh! I love me some sushi!” you reply, your mouth already salivating at the thought alone. “Told ya, Char,” he says to Charlie, “Who’s really their best friend, huh?” Charlie playfully punches the blondie in the shoulder, inducing a laugh from him. “All right, kids, where’s this sushi place? I am hella hungry!” you exclaim, interrupting their banter. They both point to a building on your right. You’re now looking at a townhouse, all brown bricks and teal framework around the windows and balconies at the top, whilst the ground floor has a black finish and black canopy with the sushi bar’s logo on it in big, white lettering. Before you can say anything else, the two have pulled you inside already, finding a spot near the back. Charlie slides into the booth next to you while Owen takes the opposite side. The waiter’s quick on his feet and brings you a menu and asks what you want to drink straight away. All three of you order some sodas, and then the waiter leaves you to choose. While you’re scanning the menu for something you like, you can feel a pair of eyes burning your skin. You look up for a moment, locking eyes with a guy that doesn’t look that much older than you. Awkwardly, you shoot him a smile before turning back to the menu. You look up again every now and then because you want to check if he’s still looking, and every time, he is. By the third time, he shoots you this disgusting smirk that sends physical shivers down your spine, shaking your entire body from head to toe. “You okay?” Charlie asks, feeling you shiver. “Yeah, just got the chills,” you reply, not wanting to make this a dramatic thing. It’s just a man staring at you creepily. Nothing you haven’t experienced yet. That’s what you get for wearing such extravagant clothes. “I’m ready to order, what about you guys?” you change the subject quickly, more for yourself than anyone else. You need to focus on other things so as to not feel too uncomfortable. The three of you order your food, and you start to ask the boys some questions about their new project together, and you even ask Owen about his show Knight Squad. You did watch that with your younger siblings when it ran on Nickelodeon. All of it helps keep you occupied and not at all thinking about the creepy man that’s still there. “I gotta go in for a fitting, but I’ll see you guys at the apartment later, okay?” Owen says after lunch, scooting out of the booth. “Can you cover my part of the bill, Char? I’ll pay you back later.” The boy next to you simply nods his head. “Kay, thanks. See you later, Y/N,” he offers you a wave before leaving the joint and leaving you and Charlie by yourself. “Can we go?” you ask when you notice Creepy Guy again. “Yeah, sure,” Charlie replies and scoots out of the booth. “Are you okay? You’ve been fidgety ever since we got here…” Of course he’d notice your change of demeanor. The Creepy Guy’s eyes on you at all times has made you quite nervous. “Oh, no, yeah… I’m fine,” you try to smile as convincingly as possible. “I gotta go to the toilet real quick, I’ll be right back, okay?” You slowly nod your head, unsure if it’s such a good plan to leave you by yourself with Creepy Guy just a few feet away. At first, you can keep your nerves at bay by pulling your jacket on and tugging at your shirt to make sure nothing’s on show. Then, you decide to take your phone out and aimlessly scroll through social media. It’s not like you’re actually picking things up from the things people posted since you’re trying to listen if there are any feet approaching. Your ears betray you today as there’s a tap on your shoulder. Hoping and praying it’s Charlie, you slowly turn around, only to find Creepy Guy in front of you with that disturbing smirk on his face. Chills run down your spine again as your thumb blindly finds its way to your contacts in your phone. You know Charlie’s name is at the very top of your recent calls, ready to be pressed in case of emergencies. “Hello, Gorgeous,” Creepy Guy says, “Noticed your two boy toys left you all by yourself, thought you could use some company.” He’s shuffling closer and closer, his breath hot and foul on your lips as you’re backing away until you feel the wall behind you. You’re frantically looking around for someone to notice and help you. A waitress behind the counter has a phone pressed to her ear, and you’re praying she’s calling the police. “What’s wrong, Angel Face? Are you n--” he’s cut off and pulled away from you all of a sudden. You have to blink your eyes a couple of times before you could properly see again. The whole situation made you black out for a couple of seconds. But now, your eyes land on Charlie, punching Creepy Guy in the face and getting hit a few times in return. For a moment, you’re frozen to the floor. Firstly because seeing Charlie fuming and punching a guy is kind of hot, and secondly because you’ve got no clue what to do. “Charlie,” you finally manage to bring out and place a hand on his shoulder. He turns his head at you, dark and angry eyes softening at the sight of your scared expression. “Let’s go,” you whisper, and grab his hand. “Hey, are you okay?” the waitress asks when you pass her, “I just called the cops, they’re gonna be here soon.” You glance at Charlie, his face all beaten up and bloody from the impact of Creepy Guy’s fist. “They’re gonna want you to make a statement.” “Fine,” you sigh. You wished you could forget about this whole thing quickly, but the girl just wants to help. “Could I get your first aid kit to take care of him first though?” You point at your best friend’s face, and the girl nods her head. “You can do it in here,” she says, beckoning you to follow. She hands you the small box and then leaves the two of you alone as though she knows you need some privacy. You sit Charlie down on the chair and perch yourself on the table next to it whilst going through the first aid kit. It’s silent for a while as you’re cleaning up the cuts on his forehead and cheeks. “Why’d you do that, Charlie?” you mutter, frustrated that his hot-headedness got him into this mess. He hisses as the disinfecting product you’re dabbing on his wounds starts stinging. “I hate seeing you get hurt, Nugget. Seeing that man practically groping you sickened me to my stomach. It hurt me as much as it hurt you, Y/N,” he exhales sharply and grabs your wrist to stop you from undeliberately hurting him some more. “Babe, I need to clean out these wounds,” you grumble, trying to wriggle your hand loose. “I’m fine, Y/N. They’ll heal,” he tells you, though you know those wounds are hurting. “No, Char. They’ll infect if I don’t clean them out properly,” you cup his face on one side, softly rubbing your thumb against his cheek. “You’re gonna have to grin and bear it, baby. Let me take care of you, okay?” His eyes soften as does the grip on your wrist. You continue cleaning up the wounds in silence, only Charlie’s soft hissing filling up your ears. “There you go,” you whisper when you’re finally done, “You’re as good as new.” Charlie offers you a thankful smile, which you return quickly before getting off the table to throw the used gauze into the bin in the corner of the room. When you turn around to return to the table, Charlie’s right behind you, making you jump out of your skin as you didn’t expect him to be this close. “Jeez, Bubba, I didn’t hear you sneak up,” you say in a hushed voice while clutching your heart. He’s staring down at you, his twinkling eyes flicking from yours to your lips and back. “What?” you ask softly. Your brain is going a mile a minute and your heart is pounding out of your chest. Besides hugging him, it’s been a while since you’ve been this close to him. You’d almost forgotten what that did to you. “I just--” he visibly swallows a lump, and then a smile plays at his lips, “Remember that first day we met? When Jade pushed you off that swing?” Though you’re confused as to why he’d bring that up, you can’t help but smile. “I still have a scar on my knee from that fall,” you reply, remembering the day clearly. “I thought you were super sweet to stand up for me. I even found it a little funny when you pushed Jade off the swing in return.” A chuckle escapes from him. “Yeah, Miss Edwards didn’t find it quite as funny,” Charlie adds. “But I knew from that day on that you were gonna be special to me, Y/N. Gossipping at the nurse’s office about who we liked and didn’t like, our mutual love for coca cola lollipops and The Rugrats.... I just knew I never wanted to be friends with anyone else in my life.” Your lips turn up into a tender smile at his sweet words. “But things have changed, haven’t they?” Your smile disappears at this. Where is this going? “I’ve been trying to find the right words to say this, but I could never come up with anything that could even come close to how I’m feeling…” he lets out a shaky breath, his eyes scanning your face for any sign of help. “Charlie… What are you getting at?” you ask, the fear taking over your voice with a quiver. “I might totally ruin our friendship with this, but I have to tell you because it’s driving me crazy…” Your eyebrows furrow, worry growing within you. “Charlie, stop babbling and just tell me what you wanna say! This is kinda nerve-wracking!” you raise your voice a little as a nervous chuckle breaks up the words ever so slightly. “Y/N,” he scoffs, “I’ve been in love with you since we were eighteen, and no, I didn’t get that from a One Direction song, though I’m pretty sure that one would’ve been accurate to sing to you right now. So, I’m just gonna quote that…” Your breath hitches in your throat at his confession. The thing you’ve been so afraid of for years is something that’s been bothering him too. At the exact same time. “Long before we both thought the same thing,” he continues, still in his normal speaking voice until the musician in him comes up. “To be loved or to be in love. And all I can do is say that these arms are made for holding you, oh. I wanna love like you made me feel… When we were eighteen…” He stops singing and looks at you for any sign of reciprocation. You’re frozen to the floor in absolute shock. This is what you’ve been dreaming about for so long and now that it’s finally here, you’re not even saying anything. “Y/N? I-- I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said anything. I should’ve just kept these feelings to myself. I totally ruined everything now, didn’t I? I--let’s just forget about this whole thing, yeah? Just wake up tomorrow as if nothing ever happened. It’s okay, I--” You finally spring into action. But instead of saying anything, you simply grab him by his shirt and pull him into you, pressing your lips to his in a passionate kiss. He’s startled at first, but quickly melts into your lips and lets his hands find their way to your face. “I’ve been waiting for three years, scared you didn’t feel the same…” you whisper as you pull back, finally having found the words. “We’re both so stupid, Bubba.” He chuckles softly before kissing you again. “We literally could’ve been doing this for three whole years!” you exclaim, shaking your head in disbelief. “Yes, Princess, I know. Now, shut up and kiss me, we’ve got three years of this to catch up on.” A smile tugs at your lips as he removes the remaining space between your lips again. You’re a little too caught up into the kiss, you don’t even notice the knock on the door. “Guys, the--” you break apart, wide eyes staring at the door where the waitress stands with a sheepish smile. “Sorry… The cops are here,” she throws her thumb backwards. “Ugh, right…” you groan, but Charlie takes your hand and leads you out into the sushi bar again. During your statement, he stays with you at all times, holding your hand and watching you closely with a sad smile on his face. He hates the fact you have to go through all of that again as if you didn’t go through enough already. “That’s all we need from you, miss Y/L/N,” the officer says after a while. “You’ll hear from us soon. You can go home now. As for you, mister Gillespie, I’d do something about that anger of yours.” Charlie curtly nods his head before taking you out of the restaurant. The two of you head back home, and once there, you immediately head into the bedroom. There’s a lot of catching up to do from those three lost years. Your friendship has come a long way from the playground.

Taglist: @hannahhistorian92 @marinettepotterandplagg @thequirkybookaholic @bookdealer5 @tenaciousperfectionunknown @hemmingsness @iainttakingshitfromnobody @ifilwtmfc @angryknightstatesmantrash @kiss-themoongoodbye @rudysbay @thedarkqueenofavalon @caitsymichelle13 @calamitykaty @wiselight @parkeret @lukeys-giggle @gingerxarmy @lovesanimals @lolychu @perfectlywrongformend3s @luckylouiebug @camiladelrio98 @myfriendscallmebeans @kcd15

#julie and the phantoms #julie and the himbos #jatp #charlie gillespie #charlie gillespie fic #charlie gillespie x reader #charlie gillespie imagine #charlie gillespie au #Luke Patterson #reggie jatp #jeremy shada #alex jatp #owen joyner #julie molina #madison reyes #18 #One direction

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fakeikemen · 4 years

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The Roku/Sozin ancestry plot twist for Zuko

Like I’m sure this has been said before but the twist about Zuko being a descendant of both Roku and Sozin is actually a disservice to his character and his narrative as well? The way the narrative frames this reveal along with Iroh's dialogue, it backtracks on a lot of the story we are shown in Book 1&2 (and sometimes it even clashes with some dialogues in Book 3).

Iroh: “Because understanding the struggle between your two great-grandfathers can help you better understand the battle within yourself. Evil and good are always at war inside you, Zuko. It is your nature, your legacy. But, there is a bright side. What happened generations ago can be resolved now, by you. Because of your legacy, you alone can cleanse the sins of our family and the Fire Nation. Born in you, along with all the strife, is the power to restore balance to the world.”

1. This implies that there are equal amounts of good and evil in Zuko and his internal struggle is about choosing one of them.

The core qualities of Zuko as a character are empathy, compassion and kindness. A person who always gets upset when he sees or even thinks about other people in pain, a person who spoke out against powerful people to save lives that were being sacrificed needlessly, a person who shows mercy to people who don’t deserve it, a person who is willing to reach out a hand to save the life of the man who tried to kill him, a person who avoids fights when possible, a person who is willing to fight on behalf of a family he has known for only one night, a person who reaches out to sympathise after being yelled at— a person like this is definitely not struggling with equal parts of good and evil within them.

Zuko does have two selves, but they can be categorised as pre-scar and post-scar.

His pre-scar version is the version who was unabashedly kind and compassionate, who spoke his mind without thinking of consequences. But his post-scar version was a cover up of the pre-scar version. It was a lie that Zuko lived everyday. He convinced himself that this was how he had to be; because this was what Ozai wanted him to be and that there was no other way.

And yet, when the situation is dire and he is depending on his instincts or when he is given a free choice, we see the pre-scar Zuko spring into action. Because that’s who he really is. It’s not a struggle between good and evil within him, it is his supressed self making an appearance when he slips up and fails to maintain his facade.

Perhaps the line that describes his internal struggle the best is this:

Zuko, imitating Iroh: Zuko, you have to look within yourself to save yourself from your other self. Only then will your true self, reveal itself.

And while this dialogue was played for laughs, it is the most accurate description of how Zuko had to reach for his suppressed self, his real self, to save himself from becoming what Ozai wanted him to be.

2. It also implies that Ozai and Ursa had equal influence on Zuko's upbringing and that he struggled to chose between what was taught to him by Ursa (good) and Ozai (evil).

The idea that Zuko has equal amounts of good and evil inside himself goes hand in hand with idea that the good and evil traits in him have been passed onto him by Ursa and Ozai's upbringings respectively which are legacies of Roku and Sozin.

I don’t need to look any further than “Zuko Alone” to know that Ozai's impact on Zuko's upbringing was slim to none. The flashbacks that we see, are dominated by Ursa's presence. Ozai hardly gets any time onscreen. And when he does, he is shown as a silhouette and when he isn’t a silhouette, we only see him smile at Azula's display of skills and frown at Zuko's attempt.

Ozai was Zuko's father alright, but never in the ways that mattered. We know that Ozai abused Zuko. He constantly belittled him and compared him to Azula. Partially because Zuko lacked the natural talent that Azula had and partially because he lacked the ruthlessness and cruelty that Azula displayed even at her age.

Which made Zuko copy Azula's behaviour to get his father’s acceptance. But whenever Ursa noticed this, she immediately corrected Zuko and clearly told him that it was wrong.

Ozai is never shown to tell Zuko that whatever Ursa told him was wrong. Ozai personally never taught him anything (except that one time). He appreciated Azula's behaviour and encouraged her to keep it up but he just kept on expressing his disappointment in Zuko.

Ursa: Remember this, Zuko. No matter how things may seem to change, never forget who you are.

Zuko's innate kindness and compassion were protected by Ursa in the formative years when he was at his most pliable. And this is why no matter what happens, he never loses these qualities and is able to retain his real self even after he tried hard to suppress it.

3. It diminishes the extent of psychological damage and trauma caused by the scarring incident.

The one time Ozai did take it upon himself to teach something to Zuko:

Ozai: You will learn respect, and suffering will be your teacher.

(Notice that here too Ozai's form is silhouetted against the light behind him.)

The scar is so much more than just a scar to Zuko. It is the one lesson that Ozai taught him. The scar exists because of Zuko's innate compassion. It was put on his face in an attempt to burn out his compassion. It was put there to be a constant reminder of what would happen if he dared to do something that went against what Ozai wanted from him. The scar was Ozai’s brand on his face. It took away Zuko's autonomy to make decisions for himself. It was a constant reminder that Zuko’s opinions didn’t matter.

Post-scar Zuko is Zuko's attempt at supressing his real persona to become the person Ozai wanted him to be, because he learned the hard way that he didn’t have the choice to be anyone else.

In fact, the first time Zuko makes a deliberate choice to go against what was expected of him, (letting Appa go) he succumbed to a fever. His emotional turmoil of coming to terms with the fact that he didn’t need to listen to Ozai and abide by him; a notion that he had been force feeding himself, everyday, for the last three years, manifested itself physically in the form of a fever. That was how deep the psychological damage caused by the scar was. (I hate it when people call it an angst coma.)

Saying that Zuko was struggling with equal amounts of good and evil within him, oversimplifies the complex emotional trajectory he had about coming to terms with the abuse he went through and reclaiming his autonomy and his personal opinions and beliefs, into just a choice between two aspects of his personality.

Zuko: I wanted to speak out against this horrifying plan, but I'm ashamed to say I didn't. My whole life, I struggled to gain my father's love and acceptance, but once I had it, I realized I'd lost myself getting there. I'd forgotten who I was.

4. This implies that Zuko's destiny was pre-determined.

Iroh said in the dialogue that Zuko was born with the power to restore balance in the world and that only he could do it.

Zuko, the character who has always had to struggle to gain what he wanted is suddenly told of an advantage that he had just by the virtue of birth? Kinda defeats the purpose of: "Azula was born lucky; I was lucky to be born", if you ask me.

And even more importantly, he let go of the destiny that Ozai forced on him, only to take on another predetermined destiny; a destiny that was his to fulfil by the virtue of birth, and took steps to fulfil this other destiny, instead of making a destiny of his own and paving his own path to it by making the choices that he had been denied for so long because of Ozai. Which seems weird because all the other times Iroh talks to Zuko about this topic, he always emphasises on how it’s Zuko's choice to make his own destiny:

Lake Laogai:

Zuko: I want my destiny.

Iroh: What that means is up to you.

Lake Laogai:

Zuko: I know my own destiny, Uncle!

Iroh: Is it your own destiny, or is it a destiny someone else has tried to force on you?

Zuko: Stop it, Uncle! I have to do this!

Iroh: I'm begging you, Prince Zuko! It's time for you to look inward and begin asking yourself the big questions. Who are you, and what do you want?

Crossroads of Destiny:

Iroh: Zuko, I am begging you. Look into your heart and see what it is that you truly want.

Western Air Temple:

Iroh: You know Prince Zuko, destiny is a funny thing. You never know how things are going to work out. But if you keep an open mind, and an open heart, I promise you will find your own destiny someday.

5. It indirectly implies that the good™ in Ursa and Zuko exists because they are a part of the Avatar's legacy.

Making Ursa a daughter of a nobleman (as intended originally)* would’ve served a much better purpose for the message that the episode was trying to get across: “the Fire Nation isn’t inherently evil”.

Katara: You mean, after all Roku and Sozin went through together, even after Roku showed him mercy, Sozin betrayed him like that?

Toph: It's like these people are born bad.

Aang: Roku was just as much Fire Nation as Sozin was, right? If anything, their story proves anyone's capable of great good and great evil. Everyone, even the Fire Lord and the Fire Nation have to be treated like they're worth giving a chance.

Had Ursa not been Roku’s descendant, then there would've been people other than just Roku and his descendants, who were Fire Nation and good™. (Iroh is literally the only exception.)

Moreover, Azula is just as much a part of “Roku’s legacy” as Zuko is, and yet is completely overlooked when it comes to it. She isn’t shown to be struggling with equal amounts of good and evil. She isn’t gifted at birth with the capacity to bring balance back to the world. It appears as if she had inherited only “Sozin's legacy”.

So, not only does this Roku/Sozin twist go against Zuko's fundamental characterisation, but it also partially deconstructs the narrative that had been carefully set up for him over the course of 2 seasons.

*(I have been looking relentlessly for the post where I saw two screen caps of the two different characterisations of Ursa: 1. Ursa as we see her in "Zuko Alone"; 2. Ursa as Roku's descendant. And I can't find it now otherwise I would've linked it.)

#i saw a vid on atla's official yt abt zuko #and the way his entire narrative was shown to be hinged on #being roku and sozin's descendant #it pissed me off; so here's the rant #zuko #zuko meta #prince zuko #atla zuko #atla #atla meta #ozai #lady ursa #azula #roku #sozin #avatar #avatar the last airbender #ira's posts

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wigwurq · 3 years

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WIG REVIEW: THE UNDOING

You guys. Remember that time I said I was going to try to watch new movie releases and do more wig reviews in preparation for the weirdest Oscar season ever? Well instead I watched a lot of prestige TV. So. Here we are! Movies be damned, there are a lot of tv shows with women in bad red wigs and I watched them! The Undoing is one of those shows. Having already suffered through two whole seasons of Nicole Kidman in another David E. Kelley prestige HBO show (AND THE HORROR OF HER WIGS!) I wasn’t sure if I could stomach another one, but you guys - this one is TOTALLY DIFFERENT. It’s in NYC and her wig is curly not straight!!! Let’s discuss (and a whole lot more!) I will be going episode by episode...

Episode 1: The Undoing

First off, I love that this episode name is just the same name as the show. I can already tell we are in for some real creativity with this show! Anyway, we meet Nicole Kidman who probably has a character name but who cares! She is super rich and married to Hugh Grant which I absolutely love as a fan of the Paddington movies - she is the villain in the first one and he is in the second - and this show already feels like a villain supergroup movie because I definitely hate both of them. They’re both doctors, their palatial house looks like a magazine, and they have a seemingly well adjusted tween who doesn’t look like either of them (but he is the kid actor from A Quiet Place and Ford v Ferrari so ok I guess he can act?) Their one problem is that said kid wants a dog but they can’t have one because Nicole Kidman tells the kid that Hugh Grant once accidentally allowed his family dog to run into traffic and his family blamed him and that definitely sounds like a lie! A big little lie!!!

Speaking of which, Nicole Kidman’s wig. As we know from my harrowing journey through her Big Little Lies wig, David E. Kelley likes her as a redhead and I hate all her wigs. This wig harkens back to the 90s when she was still a scientologist and didn’t wear wigs all the time (what a different time!) Unlike back then, Kidman now has a new terrifying face to match her terrifying wigs. Truly, I don’t know what plastic surgeon she pissed off but her mouth is in a constant Joker grin and she is barely able to move parts of her face anymore? The wig is a tangled mess but the true horror is the seamwork - the part is from places not real and also imagined and the texture is something close to a Halloween fright wig.

Which brings me to the real theme of this show: Nicole Kidman’s addiction to midweight duster coats. She owns them all, y’all. We first see her in this green velvet number which looks like a robe, spans no seasons, and also carries you nowhere. BUT paired with this red curly mess, it does look like she is paying homage to Bette Midler in Hocus Pocus, and for that I say: amen. And also: PLEASE PUT A HEX ON THIS ENTIRE SHOW PLEASE.

Now to the plot??? Nicole Kidman sends her kid to a fancy schmancy private school and she is on some fundraiser committee with her only gal pal, Lily Rabe (praise be!) plus some other harpies that definitely won’t matter to the rest of this show at all. Also present is a new interloper of indeterminate ethnicity who has the audacity to be young, attractive, bearing curly hair WITHOUT a wig, and a small child who she has to feed from her own perfect bosom. THE HARPIES ARE SO PISSED BY BREASTFEEDING Y’ALL.

Anyway, this interloper chick is definitely weird and shows up at Nicole Kidman’s gym (where she does rigorous foot pointing exercises and somehow tames her wig back, kind of). The chick approaches Kidman in the buff with a combination of aggressiveness and openness that makes Nicole Kidman really uncomfortable though I definitely choose to believe that she’s mainly intimidated by bitch’s non-wigged hair.

Fast forward to the school fundraiser where Nicole Kidman switches up her midweight duster coat obsession for a friggin cape IF YOU CAN EVEN and all the harpies are present in their best dresses which could all definitely be worn to the Golden Globes and somehow the interloper is there also in a gown. HOW DARE SHE! THE HARPIES ARE PISSED! So is the vile Donald Sutherland (Nicole Kidman’s dad who just HATES Hugh Grant for reasons unknown).

But Hugh Grant leaves for a medical conference just as....dun dun dun....the interloper is murdered!!! ALSO NICOLE KIDMAN CAN’T REACH HUGH GRANT. Also he left his cellphone in a random junk drawer! I refuse to believe this magazine apartment has a junk drawer! Kidman’s wig magically stays halfway up without use of pins or elastics because that is just how horrifying this wig is! This show is so stupid!

Episode 2: The Missing

So Hugh Grant is fully on the lam and mainly NOT at that medical conference which may or may no exist but Nicole Kidman is not interested in googling it and that hot interloper remains to be murdered. Also Nicole Kidman’s wig is still a tangle of complete and utter nonsense AS IS THIS SHOW. Also this wig has two settings: dried out desert or oily sweat lodge. This episode starts on sweat lodge. Anyway, Nicole Kidman goes looking around for Hugh Grant and only finds more questions at his hospital and then goes to her job where she is kind of an ineffectual couples counselor. Also David E Kelley/Nicole Kidman prestige HBO shows I guess always require some couples counseling that is highly questionable.

ANYWAY! I forgot to mention that the lead investigator in this murder is Edgar Ramirez who is hot but also kind of shifty. He starts questioning Nicole Kidman about all kinds of crap involving Hugh Grant and then lays down some hard truths: HUGH GRANT SUCKS!!! He got fired from his hospital job curing children’s cancer after he got too close to one of his patients’ moms and DUH IT’S THE HOT INTERLOPER. Nicole Kidman has to gather a calming circle of midweight duster coats to even deal with this new development.

I really love that Hugh Grant is basically just starring as himself in the mid 90s (REMEMBER DIVINE BROWN?) and I’m kind of here for it. Regardless, Hugh Grant is now the prime suspect in this whole mess and Nicole Kidman’s beautiful magazine apartment is now being completely pulled apart and all she can do is look at her terrifying face and touch it with her terrifying talons and pack up all her midweight duster coats and get the eff out of there. BUT TO WHERE?!

DUH NICOLE KIDMAN OWNS A BEACH HOUSE OBVS. So she drives out there and is somehow able to braid her damn wig! HOW IS THIS POSSIBLE. THE WIG IS VERY UPSET ABOUT IT AS AM I. She and her tangled tiny braid (she has so much hair in that wig - why is the braid so small??) stare out into the ocean a lot and ignore her child. Also new coat alert and this one is PLAID!!!

And then Hugh Grant shows up and is super creepy and chokey. He tries to explain his actions and confirms his affair with hot interloper which is basically just all a plot synopsis of Fatal Attraction but says that he definitely did NOT murder her. WE SHALL SEE ABOUT THAT. Nicole Kidman calls 911 anyway.

Episode 3: Do No Harm

OMG GUYS THIS EPISODE STARTS WITH EDGAR RAMIREZ SHOWING UP AT NICOLE KIDMAN’S BEACH HOUSE IN A HELICOPTER. How much money is the NYPD really willing to spend on Hugh Grant? All of it? Anyway, Hugh Grant ends up in jail (which is not as fabulous as his prison time in Paddington 2) and we find out that he fathered that baby the hot (murdered) interloper had and willfully breastfed in front of those harpies in episode 1. THIS SHOW IS WILD AND ALSO STUPID.

Speaking of wild and stupid, Nicole Kidman visits Hugh Grant at Rikers and we are led to believe that Rikers Island has a COAT CHECK?!?!?! Look: she shows up in one of her millions of midweight duster coats and in the visiting room she has none. ARE YOU KIDDING ME, SHOW?!?!?! THIS ALSO HAPPENS TWICE BECAUSE THEY CHECK BOTH HER AND HER SON’S COATS THE SECOND TIME WHAT.

Hugh Grant maintains his innocence and somehow Nicole Kidman’s bent ass wig is convinced and they hire a fabulous defense lawyer which the vile Donald Sutherland is none too thrilled about paying for and spends lots of quiet time at the Frick Museum about it also WTF show you’re willing to pay for the Frick and not frickin wigs. Also Nicole Kidman is confronted by the hot interloper’s husband and it does not go over well. No social interactions in this show make any sense, also.

In the end, Nicole Kidman gets ANOTHER midweight duster coat, Edgar Ramirez questions Nicole Kidman AGAIN but this time with video surveillance footage of her walking outside the hot interlopers studio...the night she was murdered and YES IN THAT DAMN CAPE. WAIT WHAT?! Also even in surveillance footage, Nicole Kidman’s wig is a mess.

Episode 4: See No Evil

This episode introduces the idea that Nicole Kidman really likes taking walks. Long walks, nighttime walks, sleepwalks? Nobody knows, especially Nicole Kidman. When asked why she was walking near the murdered interloper’s studio, Nicole Kidman just kinda shrugs and says “I take walks!” AND EVERYONE BELIEVES HER!!! WTF IS THIS SHOW. It should be noted that this long walks are taken in her usual midweight duster coats (WHICH ARE SUBTLY DIFFERENT COLORS AND FABRICS FROM OTHER MIDWEIGHT DUSTER COATS SHE OWNS) and very not sensible boots. Her walks can last between 10 minutes and 10 hours and who is to say where she even goes and who she is followed by? Maybe the interloper’s husband follows her around or maybe it’s in her head? Maybe she murdered the interloper and didn’t quite remember it? Regardless: it’s a lot of walking and it is EXHAUSTING for us all and finally Nicole Kidman just passes out in Central Park after minutes or hours of walking around and a bunch of kids form a literal calming circle around her and my eyes rolled into the reservoir.

This episode is also all about money, hunny! Nicole Kidman has a lot of it - so much that it was revealed in the last episode she didn’t even notice that a lot of it was missing from that time Hugh Grant lost his job and didn’t tell anyone for a few months except the vile Donald Sutherland who loaned him $500K AND NO ONE KNOWS WHERE THAT MONEY WENT!!!! Well I hope you kept your check book out, Donald Sutherland because now you need to pay $2 MILLION DOLLARS to get Hugh Grant out of jail. Ok? OK. ALSO DO YOU JUST OWN THE FRICK MUSEUM????

So now Hugh Grant just lives in his old magazine apartment which has somehow returned to magazine status after Edgar Ramirez and a thousand cops completely ransacked it. Also now Nicole Kidman and the son live at the vile Donald Sutherland’s house so all is...well? Well no not really because Nicole Kidman STILL HAS THAT DAMN WIG.

AND THAT ISN’T EVEN THE MOST HORRIFYING PART OF THIS EPISODE! That came when Hugh Grant, now free from jail and left to his own devices, visits the interloper’s widow and children! WHAT IS HE DOING!! Somehow, interloper’s husband lets Hugh in and lets him hold the baby which he fathered. AND THEN HUGH REVEALS HE’S MET THIS BABY BEFORE AND OFFERS TO TAKE CARE OF IT! WHILST ON TRIAL FOR MURDER! THIS SHOW!!!!!

Episode 5: Trial by Fury

WHAT IS EVEN DONALD SUTHERLAND’S APARTMENT?!?! It has a balcony, and it seems to have a balcony cover because no one gets wet when they go out on the balcony and it’s raining. Rich people really live in a different climate zone than the rest of us garbage people. Regardless, Nicole Kidman’s frizzy wig is at PEAK FRIZZINESS on this balcony.

Anyway, the trial of the goddamned century is finally here!! And Nicole Kidman’s wig part still remains an elusive mystery. What is being kept in there? NO ONE CAN SEE ACTUAL SCALP OR ANSWERS. Another question: why did everyone bring their kids to the trial where they could see very upsetting pictures (that I didn’t even look at!) of the murdered interloper. CHILD ABUSE! ALSO! WOULD EVERY SINGLE GODDAMNED CABLE NEWS NETWORK REALLY COVER THIS CASE SO CLOSELY??? I guess it’s not an election year in this alternate reality.

Which makes this scene where the whole family dines out and no one bothers them at all the more improbable. Also completely insane? At one point, Hugh Grant just storms out of the dinner and into the bar area of the restaurant (omg remember restaurants?) and Nicole Kidman follows him there and they have a very intense conversation about family secrets literally in the entrance of a busy restaurant. WHAT REALITY IS THIS SHOW IN?!?!?! The family secret? Remember that time Nicole Kidman told their son that he couldn’t have a dog because Hugh Grant accidentally killed his family dog? IT WASN’T A DOG IT WAS HIS 4 YEAR OLD SISTER. WHAT IN THE DAMN HELL!!!!

Nicole Kidman attempts to corroborate this insane story that she has never ever heard before with Hugh Grant’s family who don’t return her calls but do facetime her out of the blue in the middle of the night. Sure! And who is Hugh Grant’s mom? TONY AWARD WINNING ACTRESS ROSEMARY GODDAMNED HARRIS. WHAT. Not only does she confirm that Hugh Grant definitely accidentally killed his sister, but he also was never ever upset by it! Sure looks like Hugh Grant is a sociopath! MMkay!

Oh and then in the final moments of this episode Nicole Kidman finds the murder weapon - a sculpting hammer - in her son’s violin case. THIS SHOW IS A FRIGGIN LUNATIC.

Episode 6 - The Bloody Truth

So at this point in this show, I have fully gone. I don’t even know what is real or fantasy at this point: all I know is that Nicole Kidman’s wig is my nightmare. ALSO! She has a new midweight duster coat and it is the absolute most outrageous - a silk embroidered number you can literally wear NOWHERE EXCEPT FOR THE MURDER TRIAL OF HUGH GRANT.

The main concern in this episode is how Nicole Kidman’s son happened to get ahold of the murder weapon. So he just found it....in the beach house fire pit?!?!?! WHAT A DUMB PLACE TO PUT A MURDER WEAPON WHEN YOU HAVE AN OCEAN INCHES AWAY TO FLING IT INTO! Even dumber: this show wants you to believe that this 12 year old kid would have the wherewithall to put this murder weapon through the dishwasher - TWICE!! Vulture and I both say NAH to that.

Anyway, Nicole Kidman’s wig which is somehow pushed back with clips unknown spends a lot of time in a robe (or a coat? WHO KNOWS AT THIS POINT) making secret phone calls to Lily Rabe (who I am happy is back because she’s kind of the only fun part of this show). WHAT IS NICOLE KIDMAN UP TO?!?!?!

Much like Big Little Lies season 2, it all comes down to Nicole Kidman taking the stand. BORING! Hugh Grant is all but gonna win this thing and then Nicole Kidman gets up there and totally backs him up...until she is cross examined by the prosecuting attorney (WHO IS OLD PALS WITH LILY RABE) and magically knows all about Rosemarry Harris’s facetime! Now everyone knows that Hugh Grant is a child murderer and sociopath! AND HE IS PISSED!

The final sequence of this show is just far too insane to even fathom BUT basically before definitely being found guilty, Hugh Grant texts his son and they meet for breakfast but then breakfast turns into a car chase upstate! It is never explained how Nicole Kidman would allow her son out of her sight OR how Hugh Grant wouldn’t already be tailed by cops but whatever! Also not explained: how Nicole Kidman is able to issue an Amber alert for her kid and then get into a GODDAMNED HELICOPTER and follow Hugh Grant north and then land on the very bridge he’s about to jump off of but WHO CARES!! THIS WHOLE SHOW IS WHO CARES BECAUSE IT TURNS OUT HUGH GRANT WAS THE MURDERER ALL ALONG JUST LIKE WE THOUGHT IN EPISODE 1 AND EVERYTHING ELSE HAS JUST BEEN A MIDWEIGHT DUSTER COAT FASHION SHOW!!! ALSO THE WIG SUCKED! GOODBYE YOU TERRIBLE STUPID SHOW!

Verdict: Doesn’t Wurq

#undoing #undoinghbo #nicolekidman #hughjackman #donaldsutherland #helicopters #edgarramirez #midweightdustercoats #nightmarewigs

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mnogorgannik · 4 years

Note

2 10 n 11 :)

this is basically an essay im so sorry. watch how hard i can infodump (ill put this under a cut hopefully it works bc sometimes tumblr decimates the keep reading things if theyre in asks)

2. Who’s your favorite of the Bound? What do you think of the different ideologies they have? Which of the factions are you most aligned with?

WE ALREADY KNOW THE ANSWER I AM A PETER LOVER THROUGH AND THROUGH!!!!!! oh baby i love that morally questionable architect. pretty early on in getting into pathologic (it’s coming up on a year now...) i thought about peter stamatin too hard and now i’m here. but really i find him to be such a fascinating character!

the thing about pathologic that i love is how almost every character can be as complex as you want. pathologic does an excellent job of implying a lot of character traits while only exploring some in further detail, which in some games is frustrating but patho does it so well! it consistently hints at traits and lets you fill in the details yourself. peter’s character is extremely interesting to me... and maybe a little more relatable at times than i want to admit lol.

i think i’ll talk about both stamatins though! their dynamic hurts me a lot. i’ll start with andrey bc i’ve been thinking about him lately. although i’ll bounce back and forth between both stamatins.

i’ve said this before but i’ll say it again.... andrey’s role as a protector who inadvertently hurts the people he cares about really gets to me. he is not a shield but, in his own words, a battering ram. and the problem is that battering ram has a recoil.

i have to wonder how that mentality of his came about, anyways. the implication is that it’s always just been him and peter, so did he take on that role because there wasn’t anyone else to do it?

in his efforts to protect peter from... military, i believe, he kills four people. which leads to daniil getting mistaken for andrey, which leads to daniil getting shot. and almost dying. he protects peter but to a smothering extent, peter even says he’s been suffering for ten years bc of andrey which is a LOADED line. he protects on a physical level but he kinda fucks up on the emotional.

there’s a horrible irony in peter and eva being the people he cares about the most and both attempting suicide. with eva once she’s missing he immediately goes running off trying to look for her, and . ahh i can’t remember right off hand what exactly he thought happened. but ik he was probably expecting a fight. with peter he says that after that he’ll never let peter leave his side, at least “as far as his knife can fly”... it sounds cheesy but the one thing he can’t save anyone from is themself.

and god the way andrey bases his ENTIRE sense of self worth on peter fucking hurts. they’re not peter and andrey, the architects. they’re Peter And Andrey, The Architect. (thinking about “one architect, two brothers” here.) andrey thinks he’s larger than life and all but he’s constantly living in peter’s shadow. their theatre of death positions come to mind here, with peter standing up, looking down at andrey. but andrey is on his knees in front of peter, arms limp to his sides.... separated by a wooden beam...

peter’s side of this dynamic is fascinating too. his dependency on andrey is. ow. leaving all practical matters and decision making to him... there’s this resentment (That’s Fine I’ve Been Suffering For Ten Years Because Of Him) and lack of communication that especially shows through for him.

while in p2 andrey completely crumbles if peter dies, peter doesn’t seem to care...... at all....?? which hopefully is elaborated upon in p2. he’s willing to talk to aspity about worrying if andrey is angry with him but he can’t bring it up with andrey himself. when he asks how andrey is doing he stops and says andrey is a “tough man” and can handle anything. in general, while it’s definitely there for andrey, themes of dependency are really glaringly obvious for peter.

one of my favorite peter things i’ve talked about before is still his ego!!! peter has a gigantic ego!!! he really does think that even though he’s hit the ceiling and can’t go any further he is still “a true architect” and “the rock upon which is built the stairway to tomorrow”. he has a blunt edge to him and he doesn’t ever tell you more than he thinks he needs to which i love. if he doesn’t want to tell you something he isn’t gonna do it. this is a character trait i think ppl miss which is sad because it’s so good and adds another layer of depth to him!

it really does hurt me how he’s valued for his mind alone (AHEM AHEM AHEM. GEORGIY) but it’s the thing nobody understands about him. i’m nowhere near as smart as peter lol but i do know that pain of feeling like none of your ideas can be understood because you just can’t express them the way you’d like, and then feeling like you’ll never be able to make it happen.

also, here’s a little thing i’ve picked up on. this connection probably doesn’t exist but i’m making it because the stamatins make me lose my mind and start becoming one of those people who looks for connections in everything i guess. peter standing in the theatre of death, andrey below him. peter’s loft being at a high point in the town, the broken heart being underground. peter’s loft is also higher north on the map but the broken heart is lower south. just smth interesting

i have more thoughts on them of course! but this is all getting awfully long. i feel like i’ve only just gotten to the tip of the iceberg even though i’ve written so much skfjskfjs this just feels quite surface level or. at least what is surface level for me who thinks about the stamatins so hard.

anyways i’ll keep my answers to the other two parts of this question quick! peter and andrey’s more creative vs practical mindsets are rly neat. especially because i would actually argue peter is a little more grounded in reality in certain aspects. not all, but certain ones...... their take on the utopian ideology is interesting. hot take: peter’s version of utopianism leans a tad towards humility. and andrey /does/ feel “straightforward utopian” but i think in certain regards? this man has a bit of a termite streak..... (hi al if you’re reading this). but i won’t get into that right now i’ve already gone on so long. saving that for later.

i think all of the factions kinda suck in their own way sometimes, honestly? although all of them are well written and have their pros and cons. were i in pathologic and i had to choose one i’d probably be a termite but everyone around me seems to think i’m a utopian. is it bc i love peter so much

10. What would you be like as a Pathologic character?

this question is a hard one! i did make a self insert once, mile-a-minute, but they’ve become their own oc by now. i think i’d be very...... very afraid...... probably isolating myself why does every pathologic character break quarantine???? also you could trade beetles with me :) thats about all i’ve got sorry this is real short

11. What is something you would change, writing-wise, about either game?

UGH i’ve been gushing about pathologic because. obviously i love this game so much. but the way it handles racism & such (in both games!) leaves much to be desired :/

i see a lot of the points it’s trying to make but i think the way they’re handled can be very messy. there are moments that work very well but. a lot that don’t. (i am aware that dybowski writes partially from his own experiences)

all too often the game “validates” the kin’s oppression and... at times paints them as oddly antagonistic? i don’t like how often as artemy you’re able to be like “i’m not one of those beasts” and i think there are better ways to touch on his internalized racism. in general the constant comparisons to animals is weird. you get big vlad who is obviously explicitly racist comparing them to animals, but then sometimes it’s like “ACTUALLY calling them animals is fine :)”

i think the herb brides are kind of. Hm. in their portrayal. also using parts of the buryat alphabet to denote an accent is weird. making odongh and herb brides inhuman is weird. connecting the kin to Magic is weird.

and, listen, i’d really like to not be playing Artemy Burakh Experiences a Microaggression Simulator every time i’m playing the haruspex route. hate that you either can’t call ppl out on their shit or if you can it ends the conversation/bars you from getting necessary information. glad you at least get to drag the vlads, i guess?

i also was talking about this but wrt peter specifically, and this issue is present throughout the game but it’s especially visible with peter, i don’t like how often you can mock him for his addiction.

he’s obviously in an extremely rough patch! being able to be just so plain cruel to him about the dependency on alcohol (and iirc in p1 hallucinogens, bc aglaya mentions it) he’s formed to cope with his mental illness & trauma just feels bad. especially because yes it is not a healthy coping mechanism at all but... it still is a coping mechanism, if that makes sense?

the way you’re able to constantly rub it in his face feels awful. peter is fully aware that it isn’t good for him and shows a desire to quit. even if he didn’t it would still be awful to say because. it’s just insensitive. like you don’t just go up to someone and keep being like HEY YOU DRINK A LOT YOU SHOULD STOP DOING THAT DO YOU KNOW WHAT WATER IS? feels really bad to keep harping on something that causes him pain and that he struggles with every single day.

however peter does have moments where he tells you Not to say that, or if you pry into why he drinks he’ll outright say he doesn’t remember you being his friend, which is better than nothing.

in p1 moreso than p2 i hate how you can be like oh he’s craaaazy he’s off his rocker he’s delusional!!!! that “why, i never... an architect of schizophrenia!” comment sticks in my mind because it’s just... so genuinely mean. especially because if i remember correctly that line is from when he’s planning on LITERALLY FUCKING BURNING HIMSELF ALIVE

i think if they were going to have all of this they should have gone more in depth on how it’s really. not good that he’s treated so poorly. and i do believe that’s what they were going for, a la the art book w/ the whole “not to be made into a drunken clown, this is a tragic character”, etc. but it just doesn’t land. i’m holding out for the bachelor and changeling routes in p2 to see if they expand upon any of it but i highly doubt i’ll be satisfied in this regard.

i stand by the One time it was really fucking funny to clown on peter being the time you can tell him little girls eat raspberries and earthworms and he just believes you

#asks #patho #GODDDDDD #i hope you wanted to read an essay today

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venus-says · 4 years

Text

Kamen Rider OOO Episodes 33-48 + Movie

And the Journey goes on.

Yes, I'm late. Things happened in the weekend that kinda slowed me down, I also still don't know how to properly write about endings so please bear with me. XD Since I'm posting this a little later I decided to include the movie already so it kinda makes up for the late upload.

This final point of OOO can basically be divided into two parts, the set-up for the end and the ending per se. So since there's this division I'll be dividing this review into parts as well, tackling first the movie, then the first "half", and the finale for last.

Starting with the movie, I think it was decent, it had nothing that made me overly excited about but it was quite entertaining. I don't have many reference points for Kamen Rider movies, but I think I liked OOO's movie more than I liked W's because it felt like something isolated but at the same time it felt part of the story, you know? Like, if this was split in a two-parter special and aired anywhere in between episodes 36 and 38 it would feel like part of the original progression of the story and not like an event that was completely isolated from the show. I don't know if I'm making myself understandable or not, but it was neat at least for me.

I don't think this movie had a message that it was trying to pass if they had I sure didn't pick up, but everything was so cool in it that I think it's more than okay. I liked the alchemist on her human form, her minions were quite fun, I also love the way she used her powers to gather cell medals, she was a good one-off villain. The movie-only power-up was decent, I like the design, I love that is very orange, and I like theme of the animals (I would love to see what GREED would come out of this medals), I think the Cobra powers were a little cringe and I still don't buy the backstory of this medals, but as a one-off power-up, it works.

For the things I don't like about this movie, I would say it's basically the action? I think it was very lackluster and a bit confusing at times. I really don't like the final fight, I think the alchemist worked better as a humanoid rather than a giant CG monster and I can't remember much of what happened there, I also think the whole thing of the GREED appearing to offer help is not very realistic to their characters, but it gives for a very awesome scene with all forms of OOO fighting together, I still don't think is something that would happen like that but it was cool as heck I can't deny it. The last point I don't like is Fourze, but I'll keep my points for the first Fourze review.

With the movie out of the way let's talk about the first portion of these episodes covering episodes 33 to 42. I think these are very interesting episodes, I have a few minor issues but overall is a good sequence of episodes and they give a proper build-up for the finale. What is more interesting to me is how the lore of the GREED was expanded on and how dark and sad GREED's lives are and how horrifying the process of becoming a GREED is. What hits me the most about the GREED transformation process is that this is happening to a character I like so much and seeing Eiji going through all of that really hurts because he's a precious boy and it hurts me to see him suffer. I also like having this new info because it gives us some explanation for why Ankh is such a jerk and why he clings to Shingo's body so much making him more sympathetic which they really needed to be able to pull off the ending in such a solid way as they did.

There are only two major things I don't like about these specific episodes. The first one is the GREED revive/reunion, when I first saw that Uva was trying to revive Mezool and Gamel I was very excited to see all GREED together again, but then they're revived and they do nothing relevant after it until their utter defeat. Their betrayal to Uva after their revival brought a very interesting point later on, but other than that the other Ankh and Dr. Maki were the only ones to do something relevant so it gave me that constant feeling of "why?" in the back of my head when thinking of them.

My other problem with it is Gotou becoming Birth. Gotou's arc has been all over the place and a huge roller-coaster with good and bad moments, but when it came the time for him to achieve his climax it was... lackluster. And I say that because they had a very strong build-up for it but they ended going by the easy route and it just felt weak in the end. I know I said I didn't want to see Akira go, but they had such a strong build-up for it, the bullet on his head starting to render him down and connecting that to his goal, he betraying the boys in order to get his money, and then he brings up that he wants the money not to be an altruist good guy but because he wants to do an illegal surgery to save his life???? C'mon this SO STRONG, SO POWERFUL, it could've been amazing if he had gone like that. But no, Akira is good, he really wanted the money to make that medical school, he didn't even die and made Gotou go through a horrible experience like a jerk. I can't stress enough how disappointed I was by that, yeah it was cool seeing Double Births later on but I was disappointed. At least Erika was more present in this part since now she works with Gotou and she was as amazing as ever so this plot wasn't as bad because of her.

The final stretch was both odd and very strong at the same time. I say it was odd because of the way GREED were getting "killed" one after the other especially after them not doing much since their revival. I really liked seeing Kazari being the first one to be defeated, and Mezool in her full power was very cool and strong. But it was kind of a let down for the most part. But even with that I enjoyed this final part concerning the GREED, seeing Ankh's betrayal was amazing, Uva becoming the "final boss" when he was the first villain we met was also very symbolic and it came to happen on a very good way, and while Maki's GREED form didn't last long it was still very cool.

My favorite thing about this ending was Eiji succumbing to his desire for power, which one wasn't something I didn't expect, and two was very well played out. When that Yummy with dream controlling powers attacked Eiji and what came out of it was Earth I though what Eiji's desire would be was something related to saving people, but I never expected it would go down to power, which is a very dangerous desire to have when you have purple evil coins inside you trying to turn you into a monster. I really like that fight between Eiji and Ankh in that beach where they were discussing a few of these points, it was so emotional and strong to me it was definitely the higher point of this finale.

The final two episodes are weird, both in the TV version and in the director's cut. There are things that are missing in the TV version that the director's cut fix, but there are still things in both versions that are "missing" to me. In the things the DC fix we have how more smooth the ending feels with added scenes that connect the events better, the DC also gives Gotou a better and more conclusive ending, Ankh has a better closure and they kinda make the fact than Ankh is just an arm have a deeper meaning that is missing from the tv version, so I'd say the director's cut is the definitive version of the ending.

However, as cool as seeing Maki getting thorn apart and being turned and consumed by a black hole was, there are things in this finale that it still lacks. I could come here and spent ages talking about how it was a Kougami Ex-Machina how those original medals came to be a part of the story, but that's not important my major problem comes from another aspect. My biggest problem with this ending is that it actually lacks an ending. I don't know, maybe it worked for other people, but to me, it felt like it was missing a more concrete conclusion. Like, I don't think it needed another scene to be added, but I think we needed at least a monologue from Eiji to settle things down for him, yeah we see that he finally overcome his trauma and is traveling again and that he's looking for Ankh, but we don't get to see the full scope of what that final fight caused him and I think it was an element that would help to make this ending feel more rounded.

Regardless of my complaints, this was a very good ending for a very good series. My first impression of OOO wasn't the best, but the show won me slowly with each episode making me like it more and more each time even though the problems I had at certain points, and now I really hold this series close to my heart... I dare to say I like it more than I liked W (Don't let Shotaro see this please XD).

And this was the end of OOO, how do you feel about this season? Have you watched recently? Let me know your thoughts in the comments. Since I'm behind schedule for this, today we'll have a double feature and later at night we'll have a second post going up for this week's episode of Zero-One so I'll (hopefully) see you all there. Bye, people. o/

#Kamen Rider OOO #kamen rider

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elizabethrobertajones · 6 years

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14x07 watching notes

In Which It Is Now Completely Apparent Which Of Buck And Leming Are Writing A Scene At Any Given Time

A Tale Of Lizbob Being Tormented By Toddlers

Hello it is 3:32am and I am awake from a dream of what the episode might have been (plus side: overt Destiel motel room sharing, downside: Jack accidentally killed Dean) because my tantruming toddler neighbour who just moved into the haunted house next door was screaming, and threw something at our adjoining wall. At 3am. So I'm not exactly well-rested and I'm kinda pissed, which isn't the best combo for a Buckleming episode, but when you wake up with a scream and a thump, you aren't going back to sleep for a lil while :P

Kudos to the rest of the writing team, we're 7 episodes in and I've thoroughly forgotten Nick exists. I've just been assuming he was caught, featured on a true crime program, and is already gone and locked up for the new murder and likely solving of a cold case.

Ahahahaaaa the opening of the recap is "when it comes to killing you, I'll be the one to do it" so that's ominous. As you might tell, my psyche is utterly wrapped around this whole Shakespearean tragedy of Jack vs Dean, and perhaps they're not gonna murder each other today but the constant reminders they're living in a murder or get murdered delicate thematic plot balance is exactly the sort of thing that we need to have hanging over their dynamic, as well of course as being the start point of their relationship to show how far they've come and how much they've changed and now love each other and how just last episode Dean got in his "fine i have a son now" episode a season or two later than everyone else and just in time for it to be "so now you bonded with him of course he's caught Doom because you can't have nice things for literally a single episode and this is your fault for bonding with him, Dean"

This recap is designed to wound me, a Jack fan and lover of how TFW loves their son

Ew, it's Nick. The first time in my life I've been tempted to skip at least a lil of the recap.

Imagine how tight it would have been to just do a 10 second "here's Jack" recap and cut to the action

and the action includes an episode without Nick stealing time from the boy

You know i spend exactly 0 time speculating on how Eugenie might write her personal fave bits of the episodes but if you had to throw together "nick is now a serial killer ritually murdering priests on a satanic bender" then that would have been a pretty close thing to what I could have come up with as distilled Buckleming essence. (gross)

There's a vague continued overlap of the human!Cas arc with the parallel to the open of 9x03 and the general aesthetic of season 11's Lucifer's satanic rampage bender thrown together but you know what that's more meta than this arc deserves and my boy is sick

OH NO CAS IS THE ONE WATCHING OVER HIM ABORT ABORT

His grace looks pathetic. Maybe he's trying not to wake Jack up. Maybe he doesn't have a whole lot left.

That's not helping, Cas

ANXIOUS PARENTS OUTSIDE HIS ROOM

I bet Cas sent them away because they were hovering

Dean this is not what happens to kids, stop trying to kid yourself that this is like having a regular demonic toddler

Man am I glad I do not have kids right now both because I don't have to worry about them and also because they scream and throw stuff at the walls at 3am

Dean angry at Cas cuz he's worried about Jack oh no oh no oh no look at these stressed parents. Cas is forced into the doctor role because he magic but he is just as stressed as they are and tensions are high, and then the boy starts convulsing

Oh my god they snapped, they are actually bringing Jack to an emergency room. This is horrifying and kind of a trip to imagine what they're going to tell any authority figures about who this guy is and what their relationship is to him.

Do they remember that he has barcode fingerprints and probably is gonna be Medically Weird just as default?

(Alex is 29 like me and Misha is early 40s and Jimmy is canonically a year older than Misha for some reason, so at a push Cas could be his dad and have made some very early mistakes but the boy is biologically only like 10 years younger than them on average... JACK looks another half that at times but this is a hospital so idk if "smiles like a toddler" "early teenage adorableness" is a good measure of age)

(I'm stress-typing)

"His full name, please"

All 3 dads look at each other baffled.

Sam goes with Jack Kline, which, a season and a bit later, is the first canonical use of it as Jack's surname

They're cautious about using Winchester, understandably, but it's a nice reminder that Kelly is family too and as the dead parent, naming Jack in tribute to her should have been something they were doing all along (like, season 13 all along), especially as he even visited the Klines earlier this season. Sam being the one who thinks to do this is nice because he's the most dad-aligned to Jack in a traditional sense when it's come to raising him (Cas got the pre-birth role as the traditional father role) and Cas obviously had the strongest connection to Kelly before that but this isn't a moment about her so much as these 3 stressed dads.

LOL Date of birth. Sam wins another point for knowing it, while Dean makes back and forth guesses on '99/2000, making Jack 19 or 20, which would at least mean any one of them could have fathered him and chopping 10 years off Alex's age to compromise between look and feel.

Given Jack's symptoms the nurse should have been a lil more concerned asking about trips to West Africa or other likely Ebola places lately. (This may be poor timing on the show's part but isn't there a fresh outbreak right now?)

(Oof I googled it and there's "Congo Ebola outbreak 2nd worst in history" articles dated 6 hours ago... Maybe a bad year to write haemorraghic diseases for fun and also how comes no one is talking about this in the news and it's all blah blah brexit... Have we just stopped fearing it now a few outbreaks have shown it mostly stays contained in African countries so now they can just suffer it on their own? I'm making a 4am donation to relief efforts)

*returns from the doctors without borders website* anyway back to the fictional sick white boy

And his very stressed dads

I have no idea how much of this is medically accurate but I feel like this is particularly dramatised to match hospital visits people have experienced which did not involve bringing in a stumbling, feverish, person who is having seizures and coughing blood

it's still objectively sad to see TFW lined up all stressed out and Cas and Dean holding hands while they stare through the giant window

The doctors aren't wearing masks even though he has been COUGHING BLOOD

sheesh this entire hospital is in quarantine now

Nick saying he was "getting hammered" the night of the murder isn't super subtle

Cas aggressively still trying to watch over Jack even though they won't let him in the room. Dean paces and talks about ghouls in the middle of the hospital to let off stress.

Cas goes to watch over him in person while Sam and Dean have a personal chat. This is awful D:

I appreciate the sentiment of busting Jack out before they pay the hospital bills because they're running out of medical options and need to turn to magic ones, a la every dramatic event ever in their lives except that one time Dean broke his leg and Sam was too out of it with the Hallucifers to sell his soul to make it better, but if Jack's in system shutdown wouldn't at least keeping him with state of the art equipment mean things like transfusion and machines that keep him propped up?

Mind you his bloodtype is probably, like, X evil negative or something Bucklemingy

It's in his DNA... He might be cute but he's still born of their episodes and wacky non con ideas... It was gonna catch up to him eventually D: You can't outrun it forever!!

I accidentally hit a button and 8x02 started playing on VLC

"DEEEAN" Cas shoves him through the portal out of purgatory, credits roll, this was officially the weirdest episode ever.

(No I didn't watch the whole thing, I was literally paused on the last shot from where I was about to gif it last night when I fell asleep)

Sam already called Rowena... Smart cookie

obligatory yell at Cas shedding the coat to put on Jack so they don't walk him out in a hospital gown

Oh my god Jack's so sick he's white as a sheet and being carried out by 2 of his dads and he still has a lil well of snark to be like "fine we're leaving" to the doctor.

"There's just no talking to him when he gets like this"

We're at the promo scene and I'm still not 100% sure after sleeping on it that Rowena definitely did not have the Book of the Damned, and that she hadn't been able to make off with it at the end of season 11, never for it to be seen again, because she was very much in the process of stealing the Black Grimoire in 13x22, but this does, I guess, make sense in regards to which book would serve Jack better, and Mittens tried her best to convince me that Rowena plausibly did not have it because the Winchesters did... I'm still suspicious because I really did just assume that she took it and the implication was we didn't see it because SHE had hidden it, and from a line in a Buckleming episode as well. And either way around her showing up with it makes sense that she had it but I'd have occam's razor'd it that she stole the obvious books at the obvious times and not that 13x22 became a BotD heist on top of everything else :P

Jack is up and about!!

He's using a more gravelly voice and it's actually a really hot voice and for literally the first time the Alex/Jack divide (gulf) in my head that one is my age and hot and the other is a 12 year old is a bit shaken. I mean Jack's canonically now supposed to be around 19-20? Which explains why he has a "wooo spring break" attitude when we see in the promo he snaps and wants to go to Vegas.

They grow up so fast.

Anyway considering he was in total organ shutdown a lil while ago it seems a night's rest has done him well if he's wandering around the bunker

Can't tell if we swapped writers or what... well, it seems like it's possible given Jack's fluctuating sickness, which of course could just be a plot thing but also a mark of the inconsistencies in Buckleming episodes. It's still odd to me that in the filming process it didn't occur to them that Jack might not at least sway on the spot at little, but he's really standing there like a little trooper, upright and talking confidently.

And betraying to Rowena that his dads like her and say nice things about her behind her back, which is catastrophic for them. How dare. You're damaging the foundations of their relationship.

*cough cough*

"Bollocks"

Yep, her heart has softened, Jack won her over in record time, and she's just thinking about that time she adopted a wee Polish lad and loved him as her own because Jack is genetically engineered to be a blank slate son version of a Mary Sue. You take one look at him and he is Your Son in whatever way will most harm you.

Good grief I wish Crowley was still around to see what HILARIOUS overlap with Gavin we'd have wrung out of Jack's main superpower.

Cas offering his grace to stabilise Jack on the spot. Halp. It's more important to him that his son lives by miles, that this isn't even an internal debate for him. In a way, obvious that Cas would be like this as a parent, in another, Cas just offered to give up his grace live on TV

Rowena shoots down the obvious solution (oh and thank god that for once the show actually even references obvious solutions) and starts talking about how we need archangel grace and as soon as she says that I think "oh, Michael" and Dean starts to come over weird with a wooziness that makes me wonder if that was timed for the audience "oh there's one out there right now" and why would DEAN be personally affected right thiiiiiis second..............................

When they go on spring break together we're getting right to the murderin

I mean SOMETHING is up and Dean's right now having his own weird moment as Rowena talks about how Jack will now have a fluctuating set of symptoms for the sake of the plot so

It's possible this is just his internal POV emotional reaction to bad news because this is what happens to me when I hear it but I suspect Dean is a lil more healthy than me in the first place so doesn't verge on passing out whenever a catastrophe happens regularly. And also Sam and Cas aren't similarly struck with physical symptoms at the news their son is dying.

Ya know, Buckleming, or probably Eugenie specifically which makes it all the worse, writing this woman taking a call in a dark alleyway, then not being terrified to be approached by a weird man and on top of that stopping and turning to invite him to join her in the club... this is the kind of thing where they're writing someone going against all natural instinct that it's bad characterisation for someone we've literally never met before just to put her in danger.

I mean at least they didn't make Nick stab a random woman (and a black woman at that to add to their overall awful stats)

I like how Jack's just decided Vegas or Tahiti are places you just kinda go to die... I mean I don't know what he's learned about them but it all has to be absorbed through the media in his most innocent way. I feel like there's something very sweet about whatever he thinks you do in these places of reputed sin and blaze of glory live fast die young lifestyles, but also utterly tragic. Consumptive tragic hero but with a twist of the reckless and dangerous later tropes of... It's 5am and I can't think but like. Vegas. Drugs and gambling high life style tropey films and books from the American tradition.

And of course it's Dean (who utterly fits into this trope and even has yearly Vegas trips with Sam since discovering his psychic powers back in season 1 and also lives a blaze of glory mindset) who brings him the deadly glass of milk (film trope about innocence but also like, people dying) and a sandwich loaded with salami. Dean went all out to make that for Jack - a couple of episodes after sending a woman off to "make him a sandwich" and regretting it as he spoke, we see the yank the cloth away reveal of Dean's nurturing side where he is the caregiver who shows affection through food and will go to the trouble of making his boy a delicious sandwich.

"Nice." See? He's Dean's son and Dean approves his choice of places to die. "You sure this is the best time?"

"Pretty sure it is," Jack says, backpack on, already almost out the door. He's found a brown corduroy jacket which is both unlike his beige jackets and suits from the rest of his life aside from the blue apocalypse world one, and also very very much like Sam's iconic season 1-2 brown corduroy jacket that he mostly stopped wearing although I think was the one Dean wore in 4x01 as one of its sporadic dwindling appearances, if I'm not wrong.

I probably am but either way, it's a change to darker colours, something Sam-associated to fit the gap of this smol dangerous dying kid Dean has to deal with, and puts Jack in thick earthier tones, thicker clothes to ward against the cold of death, and dressed more like TFW than normal as he usually has quite a distinct child-like version of their clothes.

Jack's concept of life and mortality is fucked, possibly because he was a functioning being after a day or two of gathering his thoughts and starting to come to terms with asking deep philosophical questions about himself, so in a way discovering he only has a couple more weeks to live is hardly anything. He's a fucking mayfly.

Ugh it's now solidly 5am and I am clearly not going back to sleep so I give up, I'm finally getting coffee. The rest of the notes will be maybe a wee bit more coherent :P

Anyway kettle thought: due to Jack and Dean's murder or be murdered relationship (lordy how is this the only way you relate to fatherhood, my guy?) I kinda suspect that Dean's about to abscond with Jack without even telling dad 1 or dad 2, because he is dad 3 and that's totally cool and he's a responsible adult, but, you know, woozy and doomed while Jack is also consumptive and doomed. BAD COMBO.

I charge you with grounds of diminished responsibility due to mutual murder narrative doom

"I'm done being special. Before my life is over, I want to live it"

Okay remember in season 1 episode 14 where Dean was like "LOL WE SHOULD GO TO VEGAS BECAUSE YOU ARE PSYCHIC"? and I referenced that like 5 minutes ago so you should, obviously I've only ever been able to headcanon the reveal of Vegas Week in season 7 (Dabb episode, take a shot) dates back to that and is one of their between episode activities which makes sense that since they only started travelling as adults together in the canon of the show (and Sam 1 year older than drinking age) that it might as well have been when they started the tradition?

Well Jack here is reacting like Dean would have if HE were the one in Sam's shoes in 1x14, and being the fun lil brother who actually would be like fuck it let's go to Vegas and see how psychic I am in the casinos! In the context of season 1 Sam is waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay too angsty and tragic to do anything other than come across as a stick in the mud who thinks Dean is joking and they're gonna carry on being tragic and hunting monsters instead. Dean in season 2, episode 9, also wanted to fuck off and go have fun when Sam's scary destiny got too much for him to carry, and that was when he was locked in the murder or save him vow from John's last words, which is a similar burden to the narrative bind he's in with Jack.

Jack, all of his fathers' son, finally shows up as the god damn first person to take his doom sensibly and actually want to fuck off to Vegas, and that's demon!Dean levels of fuck it.

Incidentally I half-suspect that Crowley, who has billions of dollars and once bid the moon in an auction (hi I watched 99% of 8x02 yesterday and 1% of it just now) probably was steering demon!Dean waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay carefully around the thought of wait a minute I have an extremely rich and powerful sugar daddy and no responsibilities... VEGAAAAAAAS.

Like, any time Dean started to form the thought, bam, naked triplets show up in their room.

Anyway Jack's busy being tragic, talking about wanting to get a tan (Beach now linked to something to do before death) or see a hockey game (oh shit we forgot Adam) or get a parking ticket (oh so that's why Dean murders him)

"And when it's all over... die."

Dean looks over his shoulder, mind made up to abduct the boy and take him joyriding

"So that's your plan, huh?"

"I don't want to waste time arguing"

"Did I say I disagree"

jack, this is Fun Dad

I know, the concept is completely radical and you've never seen Dean be fun but trust me.

Even with your very, very limited options, Sam has literally had 3 episodes about how he's Scrooge, and Cas is... Cas. But Dean is legitimately fun dad when you get him on a good day. Trust me.

No one's speaking to Rowena??? How wild.

Poor thing is never going to get her mega coven

Dean (who has rocked up already wearing his jacket) spaces out as Sam starts blahing on about the culturally appropriative shaman Ketch has located.

Same, buddy

At least Dean isn't lying to them about stealing Jack. Somewhat. Not the whole Vegas plan.

Jack smiles at Sam and Cas in a kind of way that somehow conveys in its entirety "this may be the last time you see me but I'm cool with you NOT seeing me die of coughing my lungs up and fun dad has this covered and we've always had a weird death cult about our relationship anyway so I'm okay with it and you guys were the best dads but now fun dad is going to take me out back and shoot me where you can't see and I love you bye"

"Why don't you drive?"

Jack is like ?!?!?!?!? D:

EVEN ON HIS DEATHBED he hadn't figured this would ever happen

It's the make a wish foundation :')

This is, of course, the ultimate sign of Dean loving you and caring for you in Dean's own special way of not telling you he does but showing it with a gesture of absolute confidence and letting you in, and in the vast annuls of the show dates back to the second ever episode where Dean let Sam drive at the end for all of 1 shot (seriously, they've swapped back by the long shot at the end of 1x02 where you can't see them in the car but the prop drivers are definitely doing a generic Sam in the passenger seat Dean driving routine for stock footage :P)

Anyway Dean loves Jack enough that he's letting a kid who does not know how to drive learn to drive in the Impala, like he and Sam did.

I can see Alex sweating bullets about being seated next to Jensen in the beloved Impala and having to mess up turning it on... never mind the fact that both Jensen AND Dean will murder him if he harms the car, and being murdered on both levels at once is spiritually unsettling and he will probably end up an unquiet ghost.

And yet, the glee at being behind the wheel of this legendary gal

TRAGIC NYOOOOOM

"It's like I'm you! :D"

"No, it's not! :D (but with implied murder)"

"THIS IS THE BEST DAY EVER"

Look if he survives this, you're creating a speed demon who will want his own classic car

And then you'll have to teach him how to maintain it

oh god

But yeah, non-toxic parenting in the John Winchester As He Could Have Been style.

At least as long as Dean is in the Make A Wish mode and not back to tragic murder mode

And that wooziness that he may or may not be associating with no sleep and too much stress suggests this isn't going to last as a Fun Day Trip For The Boy

"Cas are you sure you want to handle this alone?"

NO HE NEEDS A HUG HIS SON IS DYING

Sam, go hug him, you need a hug and your son is dying.

Also, of course, you mutually need each other in this instance and Sam is reaching out to Cas with presumably the intent that he wants to be in on it but is asking as if just concerned about Cas

Cas, being Cas, has somehow deduced that Dean is "taking this particularly hard" despite the fact all three of them are Concerned Dads and CAS WHAT THE FUCK are you doing being selflessly concerned about DEAN and sizing up his emotional state when all three of you are wrecked and your son is dying?

You literally have 3x the sitting at his bedside holding his hand moments of any of them and montaged the heck out of the concern at the start of the episode

I remember way back someone wankily made a chart of how often people talked to Dean about stuff and other people talked to each other about Dean, and Sam is now crying about Dean beating himself up over being mean to Jack at the start of season 13 and regretting it, so this entire conversation is Sam and Cas man paining at each other about how much man pain Dean is in.

I say with no wank in my heart, just sheer horrified amusement at this data point if they still are hate-watching the show and being horrified about how Sam never gets stuff for himself etc (I mean. He and Cas both have had extended chunks of seasons about them parenting Jack and this is Dean's time to come belatedly to what the two of them already had)

Cas finally says "son" a season and change after Jack was wandering around calling him "father" and Sam doesn't seem inclined to disagree that this is how it feels for all 3 of them.

Obviously he's crying about Jack and it was just the context above that made it look like he was crying about Dean and I always knew that, I'm not a monster, I'm just deflecting because owwwwwwwww this hurts

HUG EACH OTHER YOU DUMB FUCKS SO I FEEL BETTER

Cas walks off instead and Sam finally after 1000 years discovers how Dean feels when Cas does that when he was angling to come along and they miscommunicated and didn't say what they meant. Except Sam wanted to come out of mutual Dad Angst comfort while Dean normally wants to go with Cas places so he can hold his hand.

Jack's so proud of himself for being able to drive.

"Born with a wheel in your hand"

He literally stole the Impala from you when he was 7 months in the womb

Dean is like, we could get you laid? And Jack is like. Nah. I have a better idea.

No idea what right now but he still doesn't wanna bang anyone

Ugh a Nick scene. Tag yourself I'm the old tyre in the foreground

Is this the house from Family Remains aka the self-admitted worst episode of the show by Kripke and Carver's explicit design

I am going to puke Jack wanted to go on a fishing trip with his dad

There were spoilers about them doing this but I repressed it the fuck down and lied to myself that Jensen was randomly teaching Alex to fish on set because I didn't want to think about Dean doing this with Jack because oh my god someone has taken my heart and gouged it out with a rusty spoon.

Also: someone design Jack a t-shirt with a witty slogan about fishing rather than hook ups. Like, dude bro fishing culture but in a world where you're as likely to get dumb slogans about not wanting sex as you are for it making you a babe magnet

"I'd rather be fishin" is a thing people get on mugs for the workplace but we could start with this sentiment and play

ALSO AS I MENTIONED I WATCHED 8x02 IN THE LAST 24 HOURS AND DEAN NEAR RIVERS SUCKS. We also have 10x01 and Daniel the fishing angel (who was the pizza man from Monster Movie, see above: slogans about fishing, pizza man innuendo, we got a thing going here) who was happy on Earth just fishing and enjoying the planet and not wanting to go back to Heaven, in a very heavy metaphor for Cas to deal with, as the angel who once compared free will to teaching poetry to fish. Lots and lots to unpack here, when we turn this into a Dean and Jack father son bonding moment and throw in Dean's peaceful dream of fishing in 4x20 that Cas interrupted. Fishing is about peace and idyll and comes as a temporary respite in this show. Traditionally, also, of course it's a sport of patience, and a classic father son bonding activity as the long stillness allows for both manly silence and sharing beers in peace, but also talk if they want to open up a conversation.

For Jack, it's an overlap of both Cas and Dean parental stuff, Cas's issues with angelic nature, where he wants to be, WHO he wants to be (just OFFERING to give up his grace to save Jack) and then with Dean we have more classic human cultural tropes but none less painful for Jack's nature and relationships. Especially throwing in that this was his choice and Dean is indulging him completely here.

John may or may not have taught them to fish but I feel like it may have had a "so you are dying in the woods" aspect to it rather than for peace and bonding. BOBBY taught Sam and Dean some basic woodsmanship so he was more likely to be the father figure teaching them to fish if anyone did.

Okay so obviously I typed that just after clutching my heart at the reveal and hitting pause, as Jack immediately goes on to say that John DID teach Dean how to fish and that it was his happiest memory of him - and it comes as a surprise for the expectations (like, that the above paragraph now stands as what I would expect of canon if I was only taking from it and not as an actual writer of the show being allowed to insert new details in which challenge us about the characters, which is where I find the line between fan fic and original fiction really is when it comes to characterisation... Anything out of left-field and you have to tag it as an AU version or explain why instead of just writing it as taken for granted).

And it's unexpected in the sense that it is such a peaceful thing and above all I think the message is that Jack intuited from whatever Dean said about it that it WAS a happy peaceful memory of John which stood so much at odds with the rest of his life. Filed under as well the thing where Mary started talking about how nice John was to Sam and Sam recoiled in confusion until Mary clarfied it was her John, not theirs. Good memories of a gentle soft John are alarming, and yet perhaps this is a way to really confront and exorcise his ghost more than anything - the sort of funeral servive memorialising of the good with the bad and working through it to come to peace in a different sort of way that lets the wounds heal and the anger leave those scars.

"It was how you said it. I could tell." He's such a smart cookie and I think that often takes Dean by surprise in the sense that Jack has been very shrewdly watching him and learning from him and absorbing anything and everything he does, which unfortunately gives him the ability to cold read Dean like very few people do, seeing past the layers and bluffs and into Dean's core.

Jack just murdered Dean by saying if he doesn't make it he wouldn't miss Tahiti or the Taj Mahal or implied going to seedy bars and hooking up, he'd miss more time with Dean.

I mean that's not a literal way to kill someone but you should see Dean's face. He's been shot.

And again, it's a metaphor for what you want from life for DEAN to absorb, the prompt that his family is right here and he doesn't need to chase pleasure outside of them, that hook up bar nearby their home base where he never strikes out, that's irrelevant to the family he has built and it's been put in the subtext of what Dean goes after that's empty pleasure when he has this core family unit around him, by the way Jack has also rejected it and is explaining to Dean the real meaning of Christmas.

Of course, this all gets a bit weird unless you account for the fact he has an angel wearing a trenchcoat made of husband material waiting back at the Bunker because the chronic singleton life otherwise probably ought to account for an outlet for Dean like a hook up bar if his happy ending is a platonic family bond so, you know, end the show 10 minutes from now with everyone happy and alive and not dying, and all Dean's learned is they're 3 dads, one son, a mom and her AUBobby, but he still has unused romantic potential and for seasons and seasons they've been trying to close the door on him seeking out random hook ups in the subtext of what Dean WANTS vs what he thinks he can have. This frank conversation about what Jack wants from life before it's all over is once again ignoring fleeting human connection for the family bonds he values above everything.

"I've had a good life, Dean" the other reason they're having this sentimental conversation by a river is because Jack is a fucking mayfly and I hate this

@ Dabb please never make me see Cas driving this car ever again

Why are you irritating Cas like this. First boring holy fire oh it must be thursday followed by the indignity of making him sit on a pouffe? Listen, when Cas gets irritated he gets snarky and then people die because he snarked them to death. I saw it he did it to the Empty. And Lucifer in 13x12. And Kip.

I just feel sorry for Cas. Why can't he go on fishing trips with the boy. Oh no he has to sit on a squishy pouffe that won't let him be intimidating so that he can cure the boy even though Jack's already decided he's gonna die and will probably Ophelia himself into the river at the end of the fishing trip.

Sergei is basically like "Have you tried turning it off and on again"

Nephilim have a reboot button on the back of their neck, if you get a paperclip and poke it in there.

At least Sergei is so... whatever he is... I can't even tell who he is supposed to be offensive towards :P I guess with the name, I lean Russian, and then he has world esoterica and occult nonsense in his caravan...

The real question is how does he know anything about Nephilim and why hasn't Cas asked that already.

LOL he has a vial of Gabriel grace just lying around. Of course, because Gabriel was just offering it up to everyone.

Considering how he was exploited for it by Asmodeus there's a weird tinge of retconning his own abuse by saying he was going around giving it to everyone before Asmodeus ever bought him and started stealing it on the regular.

Still, it IS awfully tempting a fix to have Uncle Gabriel help Jack out from beyond.

/distantly: "I'm not dead!"

sometimes I can still hear his voice.

It's way more likely Shit Goes Down and this is lost but then Cas has learned what to do with archangel grace to fix Jack just so long as they can pin down Michael and grab his instead.

But I guess in that circumstance at least once again Gabriel gave them part of the answer from beyond the grave as he did in season 5.

("Still not dead!!")

shush Gabriel. The show wants us to think you're dead and my complete disbelief in that doesn't change anything for now.

Except that maybe Gabriel came back, is fine, but has been removing his grace and selling it in the here and now while claiming not to be Gabriel and that he just haaaappens to have it and because he has no grace he could just be any old guy who happens to have an endless renewable resource of archangel grace secretly on tap to sell to fund his life of laying low. Sergei even says HE got it as part of keeping Gabriel hidden.

I'm kind of assuming Sergei isn't Gabriel unless he offers Cas kielbasa

I mean unless later I get a bonus cookie for immediately assuming Sergei is Gabriel based on the holy fire he just happened to have prepared and how similar it looked to Gabriel being trapped in 5x08.

On the other hand this may be the first time this season but pointing at literally everyone and going, that's probably Gabriel, will get old and also dock me cookie points the more wrong guesses I throw out there. Still, this one has pretty strong evidence, from messing with Cas to making him say "Porn stars"

To, um, having Gabriel's grace

Okay so Sergei gives Cas all of this out of the goodness of his heart and a "you owe me" and I AM wondering if that's a Buckleming special because remember in 8x19 where they were like hi we need to go to Hell immediately, and Ajay was like sure, I will take you to Hell and this episode is even titled after me so clearly I am an important character who *stab stab reaper dying noises* wow look I guess we don't have a bargain after all despite me saying you owe me but then Crowley just maaaaagically made it so you never had to find out what a reaper would want in exchange for taking you to Hell off the books.

Also fuck you I never got to finish my pizza

While I've been typing some random ass justice for Ajay screed, Nick has revealed a flashback to 14x02 where it turns out his neighbour said it was a cop who he saw coming out of the house. I literally went back and checked the episode and that wasn't in it, so perhaps it's a new flashback for here, fleshing out that conversation and revealing more for us, and changing the narrative of what Nick's up to, but honestly who cares enough about all this... I was double zoned out for flashbacks I'd already seen for a side story i don't care about

Wow, Nick, demons killed ya family. Could have told you that.

Aw, Dean brought Jack home. No dying out in the wilderness for you, clearly Cas phoned up before Jack could work out his plan to fling himself into the river.

Also Nick has taken up too much of this episode so there's no room for complicated twists and turns, if Buckleming are banned from introducing too many of them.

It's incredible how subdividing them so Eugenie writes all the Nick stuff and Brad writes the rest has elevated the parts of the story we care about to pretty much passable, give or take whatever Sergei was and who he was offensive to aside from the whole concept of calling yourself a shaman because you travelled the world collecting occult stuff in a sort of Aleister Crowley way.

'cept you can't namedrop Aleister on this show because both Alastair and Crowley have stolen too much from him.

So you get a knock off Sergei instead.

Jack hasn't been having as many of the supposed fainting fits that had everyone dogpiling him as I thought - maybe that's next episode too. Could have had one at the start but that doesn't seem enough to be a repeated annoyance of Alex's life :P

Anyway I was just going to comment on his sweater but that thought hopped in there first wondering if the spell was about to knock him flat, as he's sitting on a chair instead of safely in bed.

All the more dramatic for flinging yourself around if the spell messes you up

(honestly if the spells don't work, and they took him out of the hospital, how much of a bizarre commentary is this on trusting modern medicine and vaccinating your nephilims?)

It's 7:20 and my neighbours are yelling again

At least being awake since 3 meant I got a bit more peace and quiet than normal. I feel gross but I may go to yoga just to not be stuck in this room with such awful screeching on both sides of me >.>

Oh I can tell Sergei is Gabriel, he put the grace in a gold container instead of the silver ones

I'm sorry for the expenses, Zerbe

I wonder if they use her products on the show and I'm gonna go on my dash and find her beaming about a specially commissioned shiny gold grace that she made for them :P

"Here, hold this bottle of your uncle's essence"

".... okay I understand how weird that sounded on hindsight"

I love the idea of Jack's grace now being fuelled by Nice Uncle Gabriel who felt kindly towards him, even if this can't be a permanent fix, it changes his internal make up just a bit so that he symbolically has his grace stolen by his shitty bio father but the power only came from him in the first place and there was all the hoo ha about if Lucifer as his father made him inherently evil. Now whatever happens to Jack, he's had a grace transplant from a suitable donor, very much like a parallel of say he needed a kidney transplant and his 2 viable donors were his shitty deadbeat dad who gave him the kidney condition in the first place and his nice dead uncle who happened to have been an organ donor and was the only other one with the same type (if Lucifer's was X evil negative, then I guess Gabriel's is like X tricksy negative which has enough receptors to be a compatible transfusion, while Cas has like, Z dumbass positive grace and no compatibility)

And Gabriel is a beloved character who proved his kind feeling towards Jack even if they had very little bonding overall, he clearly cared and there was an immediate sort of uncle-y kindness about him in relation to Jack (just the comment alone about identifying that Jack liked shiny things and magic tricks is very much how uncles view small children who they may watch and entertain but not in the end have parental responsibility for), which is hilarious to me because Gabriel deeply reminds me of all 3 of my uncles on my mum's side, who are all 3 different shades of trickster god in their own right, and he always has reminded me of them, and now the show has sort of made Uncle Gabriel his new legacy.

I mean. I love it to bits.

It's not a sacrifice FOR Jack like Cas would have given up his grace, but it's still a part of him passed on to Jack.

I am very very aware that like me running my mouth about John (ironically the name of one of my uncles) while hitting pause, I've stopped while Jack is looking up with glowing eyes and he's almost certainly about to spew a fountain of blood across the room and fall on the floor. But I like that the grace even interacted with him and lit up his eyes and unless he physically barfs out the grace to I'm sticking by that ramble.

Cas smiled!! That's the once per season and we already hit it at episode 7, woe betide us

This does look, however, like the scene where they were all looking on from the door so... blood spew in 5 4 3 2 1...

DOGPILE THE BOY

Er, I mean, help him

God I would not want Jared to dogpile me, the man weighs literally as much as an actual moose

Uhoh Sergei made Cas mad

I mean

he made him sit on a pouffe, this was always coming

What do you mean Eugenie can't let Lucifer go wow what a shock

*kicks a pebble*

Ah, here's the concerned dads scene. I'm just going to let that be a balm to my soul while Dean laments ever taking Jack out to have fun.

"You made him happy. You did more for him than any of us"

1 dude you tried, 2 you took him on hunting trips and had fun already this season so he got his Cas Time before he died like he wanted 3 just fucking abduct him wrapped in a duvet and go fishing in the dead of night if you have to, trust me, he'd love it and your family is such a mess he wouldn't even think it's weird.

I mean you've literally absconded illegally with him before, what's a trip up to that beach where he was born and some fishing gear really going to cost you with annoyance from Dean

"What can we do?" "Watch over him," Rowena says with Cas in the background, and continues to carve me out with a rusty spoon

"As he dies"

Nah he'll be fine shut up Rowena D:

*whimper*

Well that was a very good episode if you act like me and pretend that none of the Nick stuff happened at all.

#14x07 #season 14 spoilers #my stuff

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pilferingapples · 5 years

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Les Mis BBC: First Episode First Impression

Well, the actors are as excellent as I hoped they would be!

Cut for Spoilers or whatever term applies here

I really really really wanted to be wrong in all my misgivings about this series. I wanted to be blown out of the water by the whole thing, and have to make repentant posts about the error of my ways.

Alas, this is not a Repentant Post.

I liked some things! The set and scenery and props were all genuinely lovely. I enjoyed the animals everywhere? and the nigh-omnipresent beggars in Paris? Nicely done! And I really, genuinely, appreciate the constant background French; I know just enough to recognize it when I hear it and it does add something to the atmosphere of the piece.

The actors! What great performances! I want it clear that NOTHING I have to say in the way of character critique is down to them. Oyelowo is as good as I’d hoped he’d be, and that is saying a lot; Collins is doing a wonderful job with Fantine’s shyness and defiant hope; and the bit-part characters like Magloire and Nicolette are really standout.

I really appreciate the inclusion of the Pontmercy Family situation, and Gillenormand being placed in this first episode makes his social relevance more clear IMO; he feels less like random comic relief than he sometimes can. Really, the whole Pontmercy-Gillenormand family conflict is a standout in the episode; Gillenormand’s emotional manipulation of Tiny Marius and general domestic tyrannizing was very effectively shown (the scene with the toy soldiers!!!), and my heart was broken all over for Marius and for Georges. And Tholomyes is an amazingly perfect skeezeball; his PUA approach is clear and skin-crawling from the start.

*** Real quick Basic Plot Rundown: this episode covers roughly the era from Waterloo to Fantine being abandoned by Tholomyes. I say roughly because it weirdly changes the timeline of Fantine’s life to sync up more with Valjean’s;he gets released and goes through the silver theft with the Bishop when she’s getting dumped. The issue with that is of course that in the book Fantine is dumped in 1817 (the year 1817, when it was 1817); Cosette should just about be getting born around the year of Napoleon’s defeat and Valjean’s release, and now I guess she’s about a year old? This doesn’t necessarily have to be a big issue for chronology if the show’s just going to have Fantine and Cosette suffer for an extra two years (though: D:D:D:D: ) , and heaven knows Hugo is shifty on personal timelines, but...Les Mis *does* have certain unavoidable historical events it has to sync up with, so I’ll see how it plays out.

Besides Valjean’s last little while in prison and Fantine’s courtship and abandonment, this first episode covers the Georges-Gillenormand-Marius family situation, with Georges limping home from Waterloo only to be refused access to his son. The show cuts between the three ongoing stories so they all progress more or less in sync. We get far enough along to see Georges watching his son in church without Gillenormand knowing (thanks to Nicolette, who’s the only woman in the Gillenormand house so far), Fantine holding Cosette in their apartment and wondering what they’re going to do after Tholomyes leaves them, and Valjean curled up in the road after robbing Petit Gervais.

Okay, Actual Commentary time! Please assume a Personal Opinion disclaimer for things after this point:P

***

Several of the people I was watching with felt the constant cutting between scenes was jarring or hard to follow; I don’t know if that was the issue but I do think, overall, it just didn’t work as well as it might have. The individual scenes were very brief and the constant bouncing back and forth prevented them from building up any emotional momentum. I think..conceptually, I can see where it would be interesting to twine Valjean, Fantine, and Georges together, in many ways, but none of that thematic connection really came through either (Maybe most disappointingly to me, Valjean’s family is never mentioned, so the potential to connect all three of them as families torn apart by social inequality is lost). It really felt like just Three People Having a Bad Time in France. it really is hard to follow, because it starts to feel...kinda dull , just a collection of sad anecdotes for no purpose.

The dialogue doesn’t help. When the show leans heavily on Hugo’s writing (sadly, mostly with Tholomyes) , it’s fine, of course. But the original dialogue is clunky, pedantic, and weirdly flat throughout--and utterly lacking in nuance. It just aggressively clunks at points.

Valjean and Javert suffer the most for this. Javert basically states aloud his share of the Confrontation while lecturing a bound Valjean for ...reasons?? It’s never really clear. But hey, here you go, Valjean, have Javert’s entire backstory! ( I should say that Oyelowo almost sells it. He is incredible , and does a great job making Javert feel both his adamant self and humanly affected by the world around him. Just. some of this dialogue. Geez.) This is also one of those episodes with a weirdly more unpleasant Valjean; he doesn’t assault the Bishop, but he does much more consciously rob Petit Gervais, laughing as he scares the kid away and grinning as he first examines the coin. He also just...yells at people a lot? and argues with the Bishop and asserts his hatred of mankind very bluntly. I found it hard to believe this Valjean had any of the original’s internalized self-hatred or sense of being lower than a dog; he seems solidly outraged by his treatment, and confident of the injustice of it all. Which is definitely fair and all, but just...isn’t quite Valjean.

(Also, as I mentioned above, we don’t really get any of his pre-prison backstory; not an unusual adaptational move, but it sure doesn’t add anything to his motivation.) He seems both more casually violent and less emotionally deep than I’d expect a Valjean to be; I can’t believe , at least not yet, that he’s actually felt the Bishop’s forgiveness as a challenge in any way, even though the Gervais scene ends with him curled in the road--it just doesn’t feel connected.

Fantine does get more time--unfortunately, and unavoidably, much of that involves Felix:P . There’s also some brief conversation with Favourite about the general situation of grisettes. I think it’s a good addition, and puts in some useful context. (That said, I’m deeply uneasy about the attempt to portray Fantine and Favourite as actual friends-so much of Fantine’s story comes from her being really truly isolated. If she’d had real friends to help in the crunch, it would change things-- and if she thinks Favourite is a real friend and then Favourite fades on her, that’s even worse than canon and makes Favourite worse than in canon. Hence, Unease.)

Visually, there’s ..I won’t say nothing wrong, and certainly I can have fun for ages going over the details of this or that outfit or hairstyle (and I really do find the weird combos of Looks to be very distracting; if I knew less about the period it wouldn’t be,no doubt, but I do know a lot about How It Should Look and the fact that it doesn’t Quite sometimes makes it all feel like it’s happening in a generic Fantasy 19C) . But there’s no BIG thing wrong, it’s...fine?

It’s just ... it’s just fine. There’s no particular strong visual feel to it, nothing really striking-- unless you count the weird 60s-Acid-flashback-looking timeskip moment. It really does feel like LM 2012 in its more visually striking moments, and outside of that, it’s just very much a competently filmed period drama made in the last ten years--but that’s all. Without the specific characters, I don’t think there’s a single frame of it I’d recognize as being necessarily Les Mis and not any other random BBC Period Drama.

I guess this is really my problem with the characters and the story too-- it’s...Fine, it’s technically there , but too often there’s no sense of depth or specificity to it. Part of it’s the dialogue, part of it’s the weird pacing/ story jumps , part of it is because no one ever seems to be given a moment to respond-(Fantine crying for all of thirty seconds after being abandoned before the show decides we need her up and talking and dry-eyed was really actively jarring to me)--

There are a hundred little details I could go through but the overall effect for me was just a whole lot of Underwhelming. Yeah, there’s the Pee Scene and the (correct and fitting) visceral discomfort of Everything About Tholomyes (he ,at least, really is a Triumph of Skeeze). But the real problem so far is just that it feels like a visual outline of a story; it’s not pulling together into feeling like a lived world. It’s not taking my heart, even though, despite my surface grousing, I really want it to. It’s here, it’s fine, it’s Whatever; but all my really strong emotional reactions either Cringing or Cooing (over the very excellent babies). My heart didn’t break but the once, with Tiny Marius, and it really really should have been in pieces by the end of the episode.

I’m of course going to keep watching, as much of it as I can find a way to see; it’s Les Mis and I really am impressed with the actors. Maybe next episode, when the various stories start to come together a little, it’ll all feel more solid and more memorable. Right now, though, I’m sitting at a solid “ meh” about it.

#Les Mis BBC Talk #Les Mis BBC Spoilers #Long Post #Les Mis BBC Salt #this is not the Fun Outrage Post some people are probably wanting #it's an Actual Considered Reaction post #but Lighthearted Outrage shall no doubt be very present again soon:P

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curestardust · 5 years

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if you want: mediocre idol anime with a lot of missed potential

It had a promising start and a letdown of an execution.

The first episode is actually quite interesting. We’ve an idol group called “Ongaku Shoujo” aka Music Girls who’re quite unpopular. At one of their busking events in the airport, our main character Hanako runs into them. She is the daughter of two musicians who’re there for their Japan tour. After the girls do their performance they find out that Hanako has an extraordinary ability of learning dances just by seeing them once. However, when she gets on stage it turns out that she is absolutely shit at singing.

So you’re probably thinking: aaahhh, so she will join the group and work hard to improve her singing and then they get popular in the process? Well, no. Hanako is immediately shafted into a staff position and...that’s it. So what IS it about then?

The group getting popular. Obsviously, this is an often used schtick in idol anime but the way they went about it was horrible, you know why? Cause WE DON’T SEE IT!

Ongaku Shoujo has 11 members and this anime has 12 episodes. Each episode advances the “plot” a tiny, tiny bit while it also puts one or two of the members in the spotlight. This formula is fine. I can at the very least list one personality trait of each girl even if I don’t remember their name.

Back to the plot, we’re barely shown them getting popular. It’s obvious from the fact that they’re invited to shows ans given CF opportunities but besides a few moments it really doesn’t come off as them being a “popular”.

Even worse is the second main character of the anime, Ouri who is the leader and the center for the group. She has an incredibly annoying personality. Has a really short fuse, likes to shout at people and act on impulse and doesn’t discuss her problems with her members.

Aaaand the finale episode. Without spoilers: the biggest bullshit of a deux ex machina I’ve ever seen.

Technical side isn’t even worth talking about. Average to laughable art and animation and mediocre music, of which there’s few anyway.

So, yeah. The majority of the cast is kinda lovable but it’s really just. Lame. Not worth watching if you have any standards whatsoever. [4/10] (x)

BONUS: Ongaku Shoujo’s “origin” is worth a few words. A 25 minute long OVA by the same name aired at the Anime Mirai in 2015. And it’s pretty good! The animation is fluid and the artstyle is soft and nice to look at. They manage to fit all the highs and lows of the story, which IS a quite typical idol anime themed but it’s not too jarring. I honestly thought that the TV version was going to rework the story we saw here but unfortunately besides 2 of the characters resembling and having the same names as the 2 protagonists of the OVA, there is no further connection between the two. But if you want something short and sweet idol stuff, I’d recommend. [7/10] (x)

Recommend: HELL Yeah! | Yes | Eh??? | Nope | This anime killed my parents

if you want: family movie / interesting take on the flow of time

Mirai no Mirai is a movie with an interesting basis.

Our main characters are a family, the Ootas. At the start of the movie we find out that the mother has given birth to their second child, Mirai. We mostly follow around their first child, Kun.

The movie presents an idea: what if time was not linear but fluid where characters from other times could visit you and you could visit them? We’re shown this idea through Kun. He is goes through the many problems a boy his age would go through. Jealousy because of his new sister, the frustration of not being pampered 24/7, trying to learn new skills for the first time etc. Each time he dashes out into the yard out of impulse where the tree would light up and throw us into the fantasy side of the story. The first few times he meets the personified version of the family dog and her sister from the future but as the movie goes on these time jumps become more extreme. Kun meets multiple of his relatives in numerous points of their lives where he learns something related to the problems he is facing...or he is supposed to.

The idea of the movie is fascinating and was the reason I decided to watch it, but multiple problems plague Mirai no Mirai which can drastically take away from the enjoyment of the movie.

The most drastic one is Kun’s personality. Making an impulsive, loud, rebellious and rude 5 year old boy the main character of the movie was a questionable desicion. However, this wouldn’t have been as annoying if he showed improvement. Each time he comes back from the other world the tree took him to, he seems like he learnt a lesson. But when we cut into the next scene that’s all gone and he is acting as annoying as ever. It doesn’t really show that his meetings with his other relatives left any long-lasting impression on him.

The others are more technical. Many of the voice actors are rookies and it shows, especially on Kun which is another questionable decision, considering that we have to listen to him throughout the whole movie.

The animation and the art direction are both quite well done, with the background being expecially gorgeous. However, they used CGI with certain scenes and it’s quite obvious due to the different movements of those scenes. When used sparingly, they were fine, but there was a scene near the end with a HEAVY use of quite ugly CGI that didn’t really fit the tone or the look of the movie and it was...weird.

I’m pretty sure that I’m simply not the target demographic for this movie. People who could relate to the struggles of the parents trying to balance work and kids while also being able to find Kun and Mirai’s constant whining adoring would most likely enjoy this more. [6/10] (x)

Recommend: HELL Yeah! | Yes | Eh??? | Nope | This anime killed my parents

if you want:an amazing magical girl anime / one (1) actual healthy romance / nice cast of main characters

Haying reached another milestone, I yet again decided to rewatch one of my childhood favourites and this time I settled on Tokyo Mew Mew.

TMM, Mew Mew Power in English and Vadmacska Kommandó (Wildcat Commando) as I personally knew it, still holds up surprisingly well.

Having aired in 2003, Tokyo Mew Mew sticks to the magical girl themes mostly present at the time which is the story putting just as much emphasis on the romance as the magical girl aspects. The latter of which uses formulas that are still in use today: monster-of-the-week, colour coded characters, the Big Bad etc.

While we have 5 Mew Mews in the team but Ichigo, our leader and pink magical girl, gets the most airtime our of all of them. The other girls get a few episodes mostly focused on them here and there but it’ll be kinda a letdown for those who’re HUGE fans of one of the other Mew Mews.

Which is why it’d be quite a big problem if Ichigo was insufferable but she isn’t! She does have the usual tropes: ditzy, noisy and all-over-the-place. However, she is also loyal, kind, hardworking and strong.

Now I’d like to say a few things about the romance. It’s incredibly rare to get that right in magical girl anime. Almost every relationship I’ve seen was unhealthy or annoying. But not here, oh no! In the very first episode we find out that Ichigo has landed a date with the school’s most popular guy, Aoyama. This makes it so that we don’t have to suffer through the “will they, won’t they” and we arrive when their relationship begins to take root. They go through highs and lows but they support each other all the way and I just love them.

But as good as the Aoyama romance is, the others are....not so much. As usual the romances center around our main character, aka Ichigo. The 2 culprits are Ryou and Quiche. Ryou is the brain behind the Mew Mew Project so he’s sort of like Ichigo’s boss. He doesn’t outright pursue her nor seems too interested in her however he has a bad tendency of kissing Ichigo a few times and NO. I very much didn’t like that. However, while he kinda exists the picture toward the end we have the rapey romance aka Quiche. He is an alien aka the enemy. He become infatuated with Ichigo for seemingly no particular reason and is just generally uhhhh...rapey. Unfortunately, his character doesn’t really go through much of a development which is a shame.

Anyway, before I finish, let me bring up the transformations. U G H. Yes they are much more simple than the ones today but I’m still in love with them. My favourite was Minto’s. The fluidity of her movements, the angles used, the material of her clothes and the pure creativity....they’re just gorgeous.

So, my true score of this is a 9/10 but my nostalgia would kill me if I gave this anything other than a perfect score so there’s that, If you’re a magical girl fan, Tokyo Mew Mew is a MUST! [10/10] (x)

Recommend: HELL Yeah! | Yes | Eh??? | Nope | This anime killed my parents

#dusty reviews #Mirai no Mirai #Mirai of the Future #Mirai #Ongaku Shoujo #music girls #Ongaku Shoujo (TV)#Tokyo Mew Mew #Mew Mew Power

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hiddlesgirl · 5 years

Text

SH 313: Beati Bellicosi

Before we get into this review I just want to say that I am always honest when writing these, when I don’t like something I will always say it and explain why. I am stating this because there are several moments, scenes and content that I did not enjoy in this episode; and I will explain each one.

While I was a little disappointed and underwhelmed with this episode, there were several scenes and story points that I really liked. I really loved Izzy’s scene with Magnus, and her scenes with Alec; her storyline with the Clave looks to be like an interesting one. I enjoyed the Luke and Maryse scenes; and although it was sad I really liked the Simon and Maia scene, it was a very sweet, heartfelt and mature scene.

The first scene is one with Jordan and Heidi, I did not particularly care for any of the Heidi scenes in the episode (I will explain why as we get to each scene) but I can kinda understand where they are trying to go with the story. In this scene I find it a bit weird that a baby vampire can not only throw a dagger with pinpoint precision but that she escapes from what 4, 5 wolves? It seems pretty advanced for someone who has only been a vampire for a month tops, and the majority of that time she spent locked up and sedated.

I mentioned in my last review that I didn’t particularly like Simon biting Izzy (as to why is explained there) but I am glad that they aren’t just forgetting it or sweeping it under the carpet, they are showing that it has had an effect on her. I love Izzy so much because she will do anything for those she cares about including endangering herself; she also doesn’t want Simon to feel guilty because it was her choice to let him bite her which is why she makes the ‘drained’ joke. She knows that he will be beating himself up for triggering her addiction, especially because he knows how difficult addiction is as his mother suffers from it.

I love Simon because he immediately offers to leave if he is a temptation for her cravings; he knows that it is easier to recover if all triggers are removed and that for Izzy he is a potential trigger. He is so terrified of hurting people, and feels guilty enough for biting her, that he does not want to be the reason why she regresses and is willing to do whatever it takes to prevent that from happening.

I feel bitter and a bit cheated that we did not get to see a reunion between Luke and Clary, he is her father and if it weren’t for Luke they never would have suspected that she was alive. I really wanted that father daughter reunion, especially because they haven’t really had any moments like that in a while that was just about their bond and not other situations or problems. Also, I was so unhappy that we did not see her reunion with Magnus; they released promo pictures of their reunion so we were expecting it. Yes, I know that they are taken while filming and in the time since they were taken the episodes have been edited, but I just wish that the promo pictures were looked over before being released and that any from deleted scenes are removed and not released. All we saw of their reunion was them standing with each other in the wide shot when we hear Simon’s voice, very disappointing.

But I did really like Clary’s reunions with Simon and Izzy, to see the relief and joy on all three of their faces at being together again was so wonderful. For Simon doubly so, because not only does he have his best friend back but he has the reassurance of knowing that he didn’t kill her in the first place. My eyes misted up a bit at Simon’s line ‘That’s what family’s for Fray’; they all love and care about each other so much.

I know that some people thought that Magnus hitting the keyboard trying to get the computer to work was a sign that he was not competent with technology, but if you look at the screen he has already drawn the ley lines onto a map so to me it seems like the map crashed which is why he was getting frustrated with it.

I love that Izzy decides to go to Magnus for help, although it is mostly because she thinks he will have the root she needs it also shows that she trusts him. She knew that he would offer support and help, which he does. He knows how much courage it took her to not only allow herself to be bitten but to come to him afterwards. Unfortunately he doesn’t have the root and she shoots down his offer to ask another warlock, I’m not sure why she declines this; is it just because she doesn’t want to cause him any trouble or is it because she doesn’t want anyone else knowing about her addiction (which would be understandable because it is a very private issue)?

I do absolutely hate how Magnus’ face falls though because it is written all over his face how utterly useless he feels at not being able to help her, it is just another little slight reminding him how powerless he is now. Although Izzy did not mean it that way at all, it is just another reminder to Magnus that he can’t be as helpful or useful to those around him without his magic and that cuts him to the bone. With the Iris situation and all these small reminders it is no wonder he goes looking for a way to get his magic back; magic is part of his identity and to be without it is like losing a limb, he doesn’t really know how to function anymore.

We learn that in the stead of Luke leaving Russell has once again taken up the mantle of pack Alpha, what I don’t really understand is why Luke didn’t put someone in charge before he left. He knew how badly Russell wants to be Alpha and how terribly he behaves as one, so why would he not appoint someone or at least facilitate something so that Russell couldn’t just take over.

Maia has always shown great leadership skill and always has the best interests of the pack at heart; she knows that Russell is being completely unreasonable and that his power grab is not healthy for the pack. I am very excited to see her step into the Alpha mantle.

Simon wants to help Jordan apprehend Heidi because he feels responsible for her as her sire, even though his part in her turning was completely unintentional. He knows how much harm she has caused to him, his family and innocent mundanes; she cannot be allowed to stay in society as she is because not only is she a danger to mundanes but she is a danger to the secrecy of the entire Shadow World.

Jace wants Clary to take a moment to relax and take a break from her desperate search to learn all she can about the twinning rune; not only is he scared of her burning out but he wants to be able to have a quiet moment with her now. He thought he would never see her again and now that she is in front of him he wants to make the most of every moment, and to have time away from the crisis that is Jonathan to just be them.

Clary understands Jace but she feels that she can’t rest until she severs her link with Jonathan, he feels like a constant shadow hanging over her. That she is never going to be able to enjoy her life while she is connected to him because he is always going to be there in the background tainting all these little moments.

We find out that Magnus has told Alec about Izzy’s slight relapse and cravings because he is offering her candy which we have never seen him touch before. I really like this moment because we know that Magnus was honest with Alec and knew that this was too important to keep from him; after everything that happened the first time he cannot keep any information about her addiction from him again (even though the first time he really did not know what was happening until that last moment). It also shows the growth in their relationship; plus, Magnus knows that Izzy is going to need Alec’s support but that she probably isn’t going to ask for it herself.

Also, Izzy doesn’t get mad at Magnus for telling Alec; she knows how important honesty is in their relationship and that she couldn’t expect Magnus to keep something that important from Alec. She knows that Alec means well and just wants to help her, she just feel vulnerable because she doesn’t want to be seen as weak. I adore Alec’s line ‘I wish I was a strong as you on your weakest day’, to him she has always been the strongest person he knows and seeing her recover from her addiction only solidified that. He loves and admires her so much and he cannot bear to let her think that of herself.

You can see Izzy’s fear when she tells him that her addiction is never going to go away and that it will be a shadow hanging over her for the rest of her life; she hates that the temptation may always be there and hates the feeling of not being in control. Alec tells her that he has been researching the groups that she goes to; this shows just how much he wants to understand and help her, he wants to have as much information as possible to know how best he can help her through it. He wants her to know that he is going to fight it with her, she doesn’t have to do it alone and that she has people who care about her who will be there to support her every step of the way. Best big brother in the world. I’m not crying, I just have something in my eye.

Heidi encantos this woman she knew from school, again this seems way too advanced for her. We saw in Season 2A how difficult it is to master an encanto and it took Simon several tries to be able to accomplish it, so how the hell can Heidi successfully encanto a mundane off the bat? Surely Raphael wasn’t teaching her that.

I really enjoy seeing Maryse and Luke reconnecting because they are several things in common; they have both been exiled from the Shadowhunter community, lost their purpose in life and in the process of finding a new one, have relearned their opinions of each other, have both lost the person they thought they would spend the rest of their lives with (albeit in very different ways) and their sole focus in life is their children.

Maia goes to Luke for help with Russell because she doesn’t know what else to do, she doesn’t feel confident enough to stand up to him herself but something has to be done before he destroys the pack. She is surprised and confused when Luke says that she is the Alpha the pack needs, she has never seen herself taking on that role and doesn’t know how to be a leader. She feels like her own life is a mess, so how is she supposed to help others.

I liked this scene because Luke was showing his confidence in Maia and her abilities, even if she might not see it in herself; but I do feel like it ended quite dismissively when he said ‘you’ll figure it out’ and walked off. It just felt strange because we know how deep their bond runs that he would just completely leave her to her own devices, I know that he wants her to gain confidence and make her own path, but with her inexperience and their relationship I personally think that he should have said something along the lines of ‘I’ll be here if you need advice’ before walking away, giving her that reassurance that he is still there for her and that he can be there if she needs a little guidance.

I was so confused by this next scene, when the woman tells Jordan that she overheard Heidi’s conversation and her location why the hell did they not check for encanto immediately. I know that they are probably underestimating her because she is a young vampire, but they are the Praetor. Surely they have dealt with enough vampires that checking for encanto should be one of the first things they do with a mundane victim.

Plus, why would he not let Simon go with him? Why on Earth did he not let a vampire go with him to visit a clan of vampires to discuss another freaking vampire? Especially because Simon is a Daylighter who is respected or a little bit feared by the vampires, Simon is also very level headed so could prevent the situation from getting out of hand.

Of course the Praetor going to the Du Mort goes absolutely terribly, Jordan goes in completely hot headed and even pushes around the Head of the Clan. He completely lets his emotions and anger control him which he should not be doing as a member of the Praetor. It is just completely stupid and ridiculous that Jordan goes in and accuses the Head of the Clan on the word of mundane, especially knowing how tenuous the peace between vampires and werewolves is at the best of times.

I know that the Simon and Maia break up wasn’t well received by some and I am sad to see their relationship end too because I absolutely loved their bond, but I think that it was handled very well. In 311 you could sense the distance between them and the lack of intimacy not only physically but in the scene itself, something had definitely shifted in their relationship and that happens sometimes for no reason at all.

Maia clearly still has feelings for Simon but she has made the decision that the pack comes first especially because she wants to have a bigger role, she knows that it will need her full attention and commitment. That would force her relationship to take a back seat and her partner would come second to the pack; she doesn’t want that for Simon, she cares about him so much and sees so much good in him that he doesn’t deserve to come second. She wants him to have someone who can love him entirely and will be able to put him first, and she knows that she can’t do that right now or for the foreseeable future. She knows that the kindest thing for both of them is to let go now before they start hurting each other which would be inevitable if their relationship continued as Maia goes forward in becoming Alpha.

Simon understands her decision, he knows how important her pack is to her and doesn’t want to stand in her way; he can see the potential in her to be an amazing Alpha and doesn’t want to be selfish in holding her back from that. He knows that they have both felt this shift in their relationship too, so much has happened and changed over the course of their relationship that they have changed a little as people which has changed their relationship. They both feel that distance and that the spark has faded. It is a very mature conversation and decision on both of their parts to mutually agree to let go now and move back into friendship before they can hurt each other.

I really don’t understand how Heidi is able to completely manipulate and hoodwink everyone she comes across, and why is the Head of the Clan allowing a baby vampire to dictate his moves and push him into violent retaliation. It seems a bit like lazy writing to have this month old vampire have all these skills and cunning to move all these players into doing her bidding, I know that there is probably a bigger storyline they are heading up to (maybe the return of Raphael) but giving her all this influence is just ridiculous as a viewer.

Maruke is real! Luke and Maryse share a steamy kiss, Maryse showing that Alec gets his boldness from his mother as she moves in for a second kiss similarly to Alec in 112. They part quickly with Maryse seemingly embarrassed before she rushes off with a parting smile, it seemed very abrupt but it is probably the first time she has kissed anyone who is not Robert in a very long time.

I know that some think that they are moving too fast, and I slightly agree, but with a show like this the story moves so quickly that the emotional side has to move quickly along with it or it would be devoid of meaningful, emotional connections. The entire timeline of the show from Season 1 to now is about 4-5 months which is absolutely ridiculous, really you just have to forget about the timeline and enjoy.

I am very confused at the complete turnaround Clary has in attitude towards the twinning rune, only a few hours ago she was threatening to cut it out of her flesh and now she just wants to forget it’s their and enjoy the moment. I understand the journey and wanting to get her to this point but I think that her lines earlier were much too dramatic to have such a quick turnabout, if her lines in earlier scenes were a bit less severe then it would have made a little more sense.

I like the sweet Clace moment of them telling each other ‘I love you’ because they haven’t has many opportunities to have moments like this in a very long time, they keep getting separated. I also really like Jace’s line about loving in until he dies and in the next life, I think it’s from the books; but it really helps give you a sense of how deeps his feelings for her go.

Okay, the sex scene, oh boy. Don’t misunderstand me, I am happy they got one because let’s be honest it’s over due and I am happy for their development as a couple in taking that next step. But, I didn’t like how it was shot; it felt like too much and became uncomfortable to watch. First of all they jumped straight from gentle kissing to being naked which I felt was too quick for it being their first time, it would have been more intimate if they had shown them kissing while Clary was removing Jace’s shirt and then moving to being naked. You missed out on the newness to this sort of intimacy by jumping straight to being naked.

I felt that the kisses were shot too close to their faces, it would have looked much better if they had been a bit further away so that their entire heads were in the shot instead of just getting an entire frame of their interlocked lips.

And the lighting, holy fuck did I have an issue with the lighting which I know a hell of a lot of people did. The room was lit with just freaking candles but you could see everything. It was lit up so freaking well and that got me a little (okay a lot) mad because the majority of Malec scenes, especially the more intimate ones, you can barely see their fucking faces never mind their lips (I am sorry for all the swearing but I just get so riled up).

It is showing a complete double standard, that all of Clace’s kisses and even there sex scene is lit up like a freaking Christmas tree when the only Malec kisses that I can think of that were lit well was their first kiss, the one after their date in 206 and the one after their first ‘I love yous’ in 210. Three fucking kisses out of the many (I am too mad to have a think and count them all) they have had; their first time was lit ok but nowhere near Clace’s and Malec had the fucking lights on, even the training scene kisses were in darkness.

It may not seem like a lot to some people but it is such a kick in the teeth to all the LGBTQ+ viewers who look to Malec for healthy representation, don’t get me wrong I love Malec and their relationship. They have amazing representation, Harry and Matt are amazing, and I would not change a thing about the content of any of the Malec scenes because I love them the way they are. The issue is that the same sex kisses and sex scenes are shrouded in shadows and you can barely see their faces sometimes, yet the heterosexual couples are lit up so much you can see every strand of stubble and eyelash. It is not showing them equally because it feels that the same sex couple’s intimate moments are being hidden when the hetero couple gets put in the spotlight (literally).

I honestly do not intend to offend anyone and I do genuinely like Clace, it just makes me so frustrated that their intimate scenes get treated so differently especially when Malec is such a great healthy couple and representation.

We learn that the words the Clave guard muttered before he died means ‘Heavenly Fire’ which is a secret Clave program that very few people know about. Maryse tells Alec and Izzy to stay away from this and to drop their investigation, she is terrified of them being hurt or killed because they asked too many questions, especially because she can do absolutely nothing to help them now. She has no position in the society anymore, never mind within the Clave; if they get into trouble she can do nothing but watch, which would kill her.

Despite their mother’s warnings and worry there is no way that Izzy and Alec are going to let this drop, they have too strong a moral compass to let it be. They will not stand by while Downworlders are being tortured by the Clave, especially when they both have such strong connections to Downworlders. They cannot stand by while they know injustices are being carried out by the people that are supposed to lead them.

Clace is cuddling in bed which is cute (I need Malec bed cuddles okay, especially because we saw that Alec loves cuddles and was refused them in the last episode) but to me it looked like Clary was laid in a very unnatural position. I know that Kat was getting ready to sit up but surely there was a better way to lie that would have looked more natural. Jonathan goes Harry Potter and carves out ‘I miss you’ into his own arm so that Clary sees it, has he never heard of texting? No joke though, it was creepy as hell.

Jordan appears at the Jade Wolf to say goodbye to Maia, I am a little confused as to why Maia looks happy to see him and sad to learn that he is leaving. With everything that has happened between them it seems really strange, I thought that she might be a little less hostile with him but would still keep a distance; it just seems like a complete attitude change. I know she learned the truth about his behaviour but that doesn’t change what he did.

Also, he’s here telling Maia that he lost control and Heidi played him; why the hell has he not gone back to the Du Mort to apologise to the Clan leader? He knows he was in the wrong and that he acted inappropriately, I don’t understand why he hasn’t gone to apologise and explain Heidi’s actions that led to what happened.

Once again Heidi is manipulating Griff into doing what she wants, goading him and his clan into attacking the Jade Wolf while she stays out of the way. Again, it seems completely weird that she is able to persuade a clan leader into doing something he knows is reckless and will lead to all out war with the wolves, he knows that it isn’t a smart decision and he lets himself be led into it anyway. This whole storyline has just been a jumble of confusion and ridiculousness because a baby vamp should not have been able to do all this.

I make no qualms about saying I don’t like Jordan okay, Chai is a great actor, but I really dislike Jordan. Even after Maia let him say his piece in 3A he still persisted in trying to talk to her after she told him to leave her alone, he wouldn’t respect her wished even then. And now he is giving her this speech which seems a little self pitying to me saying that he is of no use to anyone and that there’s no reason to stay in New York. Plus, I don’t like that after he attacked her those years ago he didn’t seek help for his anger issues which he is clearly still dealing with; that even after the way he treated her and knowing he has control issues he still didn’t seek help.

I love seeing Maia being an absolutely badass taking out the vampire who was going to attack her, but I thought they would have been a little more prepared to put up more of a fight with the big speech Russell gave earlier in the episode. I also felt a little cheated in that we didn’t get to see Maia challenge Russell and earn the position of Alpha, instead now she is going to become Alpha in the wake of a massacre that killed the previous Alpha. I wanted to see her be confident enough to fight for it and win it from Russell because the pack had faith in her to lead them.

I understand that Maia wanted to hide somewhere secure because Jordan was hurt but I didn’t like that she locked them in the same room Luke locked her in during 209,210? We saw how drastically she reacted then and it just felt uncharacteristic for her to put herself in that situation again, even though I know it was because she is trying to protect someone else and in that instance she puts her own comfort second. But surely they could have found another storage room or gone out the back door and hid in a storage container instead? Maybe I’m just nitpicking.

Okay, that’s it for this episode, I know I did a lot of criticizing but as I said I have to be honest and this is just what I felt. I still enjoyed several aspects of the episode, but I hope that the rest of the episodes are a bit tidier and more polished.

As always, if you want to talk about anything I have (or haven’t) written about in my reviews my ask box is open and I welcome discussion.

In 314, Magnus goes to desperate measures to regain some magic, Maia is freaking out in the storage room and Clace go on a date. I heard that we’re also getting protective Alec, who’s ready?!

#SH 313 Review #Shadowhunters #Beati Bellicosi #SH 313 #SH 3x13 #Shadowhunters Review #SH313 #SH3x13 #finally getting into a better schedule #Shadowhunters 313 #Shadowhunters 3x13

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khrsecretsanta · 5 years

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To: Fueledbyfangirling (BB)

ARC 1 - Khrkin (Francis)

For BB! I wrote a lil drabble for you centered around Tsuna and Hayato. I hope you’re having a very merry holiday season!

Hayato has a little clear jar decorated in first-grade bright stars, it’s filled with carefully handled memories and fragile treasures, and he locks it neatly away in the more natural accessible part of his mind. For moments when he’ll need them most. About a third of the jar filled with Tsuna’s smiles, his kind looks, overall his everything. Every new expression is neatly stashed away to recollect fondly on days when maybe Tsuna doesn’t have a smile to give.

Hayato’s first Christmas, the one that felt to be full of all the holiday-cheer bullshit or whatever nonsense, consisted of paper snowflakes and a couple of cracked ornaments. And Tsuna’s laughter ringing loud and clear through the house like a happy trill. Even though he’d received a pair of socks with ugly mushrooms on them, Hayato had never felt so full in all of his years of pushing and pulling and fighting. At fourteen, he truly understood what it meant to enjoy the presence of family.

Which brings him to his most recent stumbling block, the twenty-seventh this week and it’s only Tuesday afternoon. It’s no secret that himself and Tsunayoshi are close or preferably in a romantic relationship, which good because of fuck anybody who tells them otherwise. But that makes Christmas a lot harder. Hayato isn’t very good at coming up with meaningful gifts, but for Tsuna, he’s more than willing to try. Only, Hayato isn’t exactly sure where to start.

What does he want? There’s the most frustrating step because Tsunayoshi is so stubborn in the ways that he'll insist on not wanting anything. “I have all that I could ever want,” sweet as those words are it makes Hayato want to nail him occasionally. He’s sure Tsuna is this close to duct taping him to the ceiling as well meaning they’re at an impasse.

The first question goes like this, they’re enjoying a rare moment of relaxation on the sofa that Tsuna insists they don’t need to replace due to one ketchup stain courtesy of Lambo, and Hayato can feel himself drifting off in Tsuna’s arms. The fingers are combing through his hair chasing promises of sleep. And then with a start, he realizes those fingers are shaking. “What’s the matter?” The words come out before his brain can catch up, spurred by concern and his constant act first and ask questions later. Tsuna seems to pause, and that’s when Hayato knows for a fact that he’s overthinking. “It’s okay, you can tell me.” He presses with a nudge of his shoulder.

“I was just thinking, I guess.” Tsuna looks a bit miserable all hunched over with his fingers still buried in Hayato’s hair.

“About what?”

Sighs are long, unsteady things often, their meanings can be dreadful. “It’s weird, but I guess I never expected to make it this far. Twenty-three is a big number, and I’m not sure where to go from there. It’s our ninth Christmas of me being unsure how the fuck all of these things happened. I think, I just don’t want to ruin this year.”

Hayato can barely think, “I don’t see how you would.”

They met on another dreary summer day, by the convenience store at Hollyhock and Maybrook. One wanted a Pepsi; the other wanted anything that could cure this goddamn headache. So when an unfamiliar boy manages to drop a whole two liter of Pepsi while looking miserable and obstructing his path, the two first got on like oil and water.

Gokudera grabbed Tsuna by the collar and Tsuna yelped, stomping on his foot hard and scrambling away, right out the automatic doors.

Hayato swore next time they met he would pummel that kid.

Coincidentally, their next meeting was at his transfer school. Hayato didn’t pummel him as planned, but he did kick over his desk with the kid still in it. Sawada looked shaken for days afterward, serves him right.

And then Christmas rolled around that first year in nowheresville Japan, Bianchi didn’t even stick around long enough for the cake, not that Hayato was lonely, not one bit. It was just like every year, and somehow that just sounded even worse, so he took a walk, not a drive, Bianchi has the car he reminds himself. Not that Hayato could drive legally, but since when did that stop anybody. He should’ve expected it to be cold as fuck but alas there are times when he doesn’t have a fucking brain. Nothing could contest to the rage over that one fact.

It’s funny in a real not amusing at all way how Sawada once again managed to drop soda on his foot! The boy in question flustered, “Hrgh, uh, sorry I guess?” Sawada stares pretty hard, and that makes his blood boil once more beneath his pink cheeks. “What do you mean ‘I guess,’ huh?” The words roll off his tongue just as sharp as Hayato meant them to be. Sawada ducked, waving his hands passively in front of himself like warding off his impending doom.

“I didn’t mean it like that! I kinda got lost in thought…” He trails off scratching his arm nervously, and Hayato represses the urge to roll his eyes before snatching the liter off its merry, albeit slow, way across the floor and shoving it into Sawada’s arms. “You’re thinking too hard. Isn’t it like Christmas or something? You’re the last person I expected to run into.” Hayato jingles his pocket, only three rolls left, shit. Sawada’s eyes blow wide, they’re huge, big as saucers.

“What’s that even supposed to mean?” Genuinely confused Tsuna cringes as the bottle nearly tumbles from his grasp, again. If that’s the case then shouldn’t Hayato be at his own home? “It’s not like I don’t frequent this convenience store or anything.” True that Miura who works the after-school shift often rings him up for another box of band-aids, and Kurokawa who works in the makeup aisle does recommend things to cover up the dark bags that quote on quote make him “look like you haven’t slept in a year,” but still, that has nothing to do with Christmas?

Hayato let out a long-suffering sigh. “Shouldn’t you be I don’t know, decorating cookies with your parents or something?” He punctuates his words with gestures, jerky at best.

“Nuh uh,” Tsuna hefted the bottle of pop up higher in his arms, one mitten sliding partway down his hand. “It’s just my mom and me. She’s at work right now, so I am- er- was going to bring back her favorite pop for when she gets home later. I mean, yeah if I could do that with my parents I’d probably be back at the house.”

Oh.

“Mood.” That’s the first time Hayato has been decent to one Sawada Tsunayoshi, and suddenly it’s as if the boy above received the moon, cliche as it is his eyes glow somewhat like the sun. “Hold this,” Tsuna says, and Hayato is about to say no because he isn’t a caddy boy, but the bottle immediately shoved into his hands, and there’s not much he can do but contemplate dropping it high enough for the cap to dent the pop to splatter and fizzle all over the floor. But then his shoes would get sticky too, wouldn’t they?

His thoughts of petty revenge are cut short by something wrapped around his neck, blue and soft and completely enjoyable. Without thinking one hand flies up to his neck, he pulls, a pretty blue scarf comes along with him. “You haven’t got anything, and it’s cold. Merry Christmas, Gokudera-kun! Be safe, a-and don’t you go catch a cold!”

Even when automatic doors ding, Hayato is still standing there red-cheeked, shell-shocked, sporting a matching hat and scarf. A forgotten bottle of Cola between his hands.

(Later when at home he opens it. Watching it explode all over the table Hayato barks his first real laugh in a long, long time. He finishes off the cake, a smile tugging at the corners of his lips.)

January rolls around, a new term. Hayato declaring his undying devotion both touches and terrifies Tsuna.

Hayato discovered the meaning of his words a few days later. Tsuna is nowhere within the base; he isn’t even in his usual place between the corner and stairs of the washroom sorting documents and hiding from Reborn for a missed deadline.

And then he’s gone. Tsuna is gone, and he’s dead, and he’s never coming back to laugh or cry or be the little spoon when Hayato wakes up plagued with nightmares about losing his family.

Hayato can’t believe it. No, he won't find it because there was never life in him before Tsuna stepped into the picture. He’ll never see the man he loved so dearly again.

He keeps three bottles of cherry pop inside the fridge but never drinks them.

That Christmas when they make a feeble attempt to celebrate it falls flat because Christmas isn’t the same without Sawada Tsunayoshi. It’s empty.

Those bottles will never empty, but Hayato does. He empties his stomach into the nearest toilet, abandoning their party.

Trivial things like gifts don’t matter so much anymore.

I have everything I could ever want!

They both did.

Their reunion is something fierce. All gnashing teeth and apologetic cries, latching on to one another and not letting go as Tsuna babbles incoherent apologies, unable to get close enough because nothing is close.

Hayato sobs like a child, not letting go with shuddering breaths because it can’t be, that Tsuna is back! He’s again and he’s living, breathing, crying! How many nights has he laid awake in an empty bed, thinking of what he might give just to hear his boyfriend do anything again?

“You owe me a Christmas.”

Tsuna stops abruptly amidst all of his babbled apologies, tears slipping down his bright cheeks. “Huh?” He says dumbly because there isn’t a better reaction. Hayato is digging his fingers into Tsuna’s forearms looking somewhat like a petulant child, albeit determined. Eyes are shining, nose running. His fringe looks all grown out and messed up from running his fingers through his hair so many times. “I said you owe me the best Christmas celebration you can fucking give, please.”

Well, if he says it like that. Mid-May be damned.

“I will! Right now, Chrome, please get out the decorations!” Desperate to soothe, she scrambles off with a nod.

Empty cola bottles are like reliving a pleasant memory.

They pretend it’s snowing. Tinsel on the doorways, a Christmas tree illusion in the great room. Beneath the fake snow their lips meet. And this time, many more holidays follow in good health.

Loving and loved in return.

ARC 2 - Trilies (James)

So fun story: I was in the middle of writing your gift when Tumblr rolled out with its absurd new changes! And, despite Tumblr saying it wouldn’t touch written things… Well, I didn’t have a lot of faith in them, tbh! So I’ve put your gift on another site: warmskies (dot) dreamwidth (dot) com! It’s under the title of “anchor”, and I hope you like it! It didn’t get as NSFW as I was hoping (the tumblr thing threw me off my game), but that can always change. I hope you like it!

#fueledbyfangirling

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dramayeoja · 6 years

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Goblin ❣︎ 도깨비

Kim Shin, an undefeated war general, is ultimately killed by a jealous young king named Wang Yeo. After death, Shin is revived by the gods—but his revival is by no means miraculous. He becomes a 도깨비 (dokkaebi, goblin), and is cursed. He will have to pay for all the lives he took in battle by living alone in immortality, witnessing everyone he's ever loved, die. Remaining lodged in his chest is the very sword that killed him. There is only person who can see that sword, and draw from his heart so that he can finally rest in peace: his bride... whom he's yet to meet.

Things get spoilery under the cut—you've been warned! ;)

Chipper, yeah? Haha so, right off the bat, the premises of Goblin remind me of like, a much more morbid version of the legend of King Arthur. You know, a man draws a sword from stone to prove himself the greatest king in all of Britain? Yeah. Just to be clear: this is a good thing (imo). Like, I personally think this is just such a cool idea for a drama 😍

Let's jump right in. I'm gonna be honest and say that, at first, I felt a little turned off at the female lead, Eun Tak, being nineteen (in the beginning of the show), meanwhile the male lead, Shin, is 900+ years old (but physically looks to be in his thirties). It just... rubbed me weird. But hey, the Twilight series (both the books and the movies) is exactly the same—high school girl, century-old man, bananas yet somehow romantic storyline... And I loved me some Twilight as a young adult. So I mean, I have no right to judge, really. Plus, Eun Tak soon turns twenty anyway. So that's an improvement I guess 🤷🏻‍♀️ We follow her character into her late twenties, nearly thirty. So things are definitely fine by then haha! 👍

Don't let that previous bit make you think I didn't enjoy Goblin—I LOVED it. That detail is just a lil funky to me, is all. Back during my Twilight obsession days, I was nearly twenty myself, and the thought of being pursued by an older man was exciting. Hell, I mean, it still is! But now that I'm two years shy of my 30th Birthday, I feel differently sometimes. I think, LAWD get that girl away from that man, she too young for him LOL. I am definitely getting old... Enough about Twilight now, apologies! I'm only using it for the sake of conveying similarities seen in Goblin 🙏 Let's talk cast!

Kim Go Eun as Ji Eun Tak and Gong Yoo as Kim Shin

Eun Tak is a bubbly young woman with limitless energy! While still in her mother's womb, Mama Ji was involved in a hit-and-run incident which, sadly, took her life. During Mama Ji's dying moments, she prayed to anyone above that her child's life be spared. Sat on a rooftop from afar, beer in hand (lol), Shin hears her prayers, as he is a god of sorts. He appears before Mama Ji, and shows mercy to her unborn baby. Eun Tak grows up with the ability to see/speak to ghosts. Said ghosts tell her constantly that she is the goblin's bride. How do they know? A strange birthmark on the back of Eun Tak's neck tips them off. Eun Tak unfortunately was taken in by her abusive bitch of an aunt, who jabs Eun Tak every chance she gets. Her cousins are assholes. Eun Tak's aunt really only keeps her around in hopes of collecting Mama Ji's savings (intended for Eun Tak) one day. Sad, right? I mean, isn't Eun Tak being born without her mother enough as it is? Life can be so cruel 😔

Lee Dong Wook as Grim Reaper/Reaper/Wang Yeo

This is Grim Reaper (or Reaper for short), portrayed by the handsome Lee Dong Wook. His character is just this strange, not at all tech-savvy man with a constant deadpan facial expression. Said facial expression provokes so many giggles during funny moments, and drives home the longing and desperation during sad times. We learn quite a ways in that he, in his previous life (again, just in case: spoiler), was Wang Yeo G A S P ! The young king that is essentially responsible for Shin's death, as well as all the misdeeds that were done to Shin's family. Again, this is something I don't want to spoil. Well, more, anyway 😆 You gotta see it!

Yoo In Na as Kim Sun/Sunny

Kim Sun, or simply, Sunny (she loves to spell her name for people lol, S-U-N-N-Y!) is the second female lead. Yoo In Na is so gorgeous that one look at her makes you feel like such a potato hahhah. 🥔 This fact about her beauty bleeds over into the show itself—every time another character meets Sunny, the camera does this slow motion pan into her lmao. She really is that pretty! Sunny's personality comes across so odd at first... Having watched all of the episodes now, I feel the intention of Goblin's creators was to make her seem like a soul searching for something it has lost in a previous life. idk if that makes sense, but yeah. She has this way about her, like she's disconnected from others, and is sifting through the haziness to find this thing she feels she's lost.

Yook Sungjae (my BtoB bias 😍) as Yoo Deok Hwa

Sungjaeeee ahhhh 💘💘💘 I had to gush, sorry! Hehe. Meet Deok Hwa: unofficial nephew of Shin. Deok Hwa is a third-generation chaebol (heir to a family-owned corporation) and spoiled man-child, always seeking his credit card hahaha 🤣 But I love him so much. Between Gong Yoo, Lee Dong Wook, and BtoB Sungjae? Man, I'm dying over here! Deok Hwa's true identity is revealed later in the show, which if you haven't seen it yet, I won't spoil it. Just watch. But his ending sucked. Like where did he go? Everyone else's endings got tied up neatly except for his. What gives, man? 🤔 Edit: I was actually reading an online conversation about what happened to Deok Hwa online—someone jokingly said he was reincarnated as BtoB Sungjae LOL 💯

Other various comments

AMAZING OST 😍😍😍

Good pace, episodes drag at times. A little confusing in the beginning, but you get there eventually. Maybe this is just me though, viewers who are a little more keen than I will likely catch on sooner ;) My mom was a little confused as well, and actually said at one point, "This should be called the 'what-the-hell-is-going-on' show," hahaha. Like I said though, we quickly moved on from this, and loved all the things. There are actually, I think, three (?) specials that were made to aid viewers in making sure they understand the complex events and relationships clearly. I haven't watched them yet, but want to!

Quite repetitive tbh, as there are unnecessary flashbacks often. Probably for two reasons: the obvious of reminding you what's what, but also to create suspense. Typical duration of most tvN dramas seems to be about 16 episodes, so it's possible these flashbacks and things are, for lack of a better word, filler. I don't know how rigid or lax tvN is about having a drama set at 16 eps, but I get the idea this is their preference. Seeing as so many of their programs on average last that long, I feel this must be what they want. Such has the potential to affect the writing, either positively or negatively.

A continuation of the previous bullet: I think Goblin's creators oversimplified the plot at times. I'm unsure if this is due to possible pressures to meet a specific requirement(s), or what. I'd rather forgo ALL restrictions and let creativity flow, let the story be told without pressure to fill a specific amount of time, etc. but TV production is weird. And contracts are weird. tvN might not to blame for these issues, could simply be that storytelling isn't always easy, man. I'm a writer myself, it's hard! I'M being redundant now lmfao! Anyway, yeah ~

Absolutely LOVED all the scenes that were filmed on location in beautiful Québec City, Canada 🍁 Tall, romantic trees, the fall foliage, historic buildings... sigh. Now all I need is Gong Yoo chasing me and we're all set! ;D

In addition to Shin being revived, my crush on Gong Yoo has been revived as well LOL. He fine 🔥 A classic K drama crush, can't go wrong with GY👌

Gong Yoo is always stellar at doing kiseu (kiss) scenes, and in Goblin, he does not disappoint. He really goes at it 🙈 which is preferred vs. the typical person kissing a stone statue that you see so often. He even did a lift kiss with Kim Go Eun that was reminiscent of THEE Coffee Prince kiss he did with actress Yoon Eun Hye! 😍

I never saw it coming, how the sword would wind up being removed from Shin's chest. I worried what the writers were going to do, how would they approach this, and just wow. The way things turned out is such a relief. It also told me that Shin's love for Eun Tak is true. I mean, I didn't need that scene to occur for me to know that, rather it just adds extra oomph that yes, Shin really does love Eun Tak. He didn't want her to suffer knowing she was responsible for his "death," so he thought quick and used her hands WITH his hands asdfghjkl. How dumb (bc noooo now you're gonna die) and amazing he is at the same time 💜

I love how Shin made his way back to Eun Tak after passing away, it was such a powerful scene. I could really feel his struggle, and kept yelling at my TV for him to stand up lol!

Devastated that Eun Tak died 😭 I really thought as many times as she'd cheated death before, she would somehow continue cheating death again and again for the rest of her days. But no... What a selfless person, Ji Eun Tak. Her being reincarnated as Park So Min gave me some closure. Not the closure I wanted, but closure.

The relationship between Shin and Reaper is ADORABLE. Whenever they interact with each other, they just have this great dialogue. Shin pings, Reaper pongs, Reaper pings, Shin pongs. It's great 😄 I still laugh about the slow-mo scene of them returning from the market with green onions HAHAHA 😂

I love Sunny & Reaper ~ However, their history as Kim Sun & Wang Yeo in their past lives is so very sad. I don't even know where to start RE: my feelings on this 💔 imo, their ending kinda sucked. I just wasn't satisfied with them having had this complicated, tragic story, only to be reincarnated in this fashion that I ultimately found to be just... idk, disappointing 😩 Again, closure, but not the closure I wanted.

I thought Reaper, the other grim reapers, the name cards, the depiction of what happens immediately following death with the brewing of the tea, the afterlife, etc. was all very creative. We really don't know what awaits us when our time comes—it's interesting to wonder if it's anything like it is in Goblin 🍵

Can't stop thinking about Goblin, even though I'm now watching Thirty but Seventeen & Mr. Sunshine! I'm emotionally cheating lol halp.

Photo credits: tvN & AsianWiki

Yo yo! I'm sorry I took so long to watch + write up this review! It's been a long couple of weeks for me, I wasn't always able to watch when I wanted. It was maddening 😆 But I have finally watched, and feel like the most accomplished person on the planet hahaha. xoxo 💜

#goblin #도깨비 #asian dramas #korean dramas #tvn

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multiply-xxx · 7 years

Text

Join our live chat with 'Social Network' stars Andrew Garfield and Jesse Eisenberg

PatrickDay: Hello and welcome to our live chat with Jesse Eisenberg and Andrew Garfield, the stars of "The Social Network"!

PatrickDay: This chat is moderated, so there will be a delay between your comments being entered and them appearing on the site.

PatrickDay: To keep things manageable for Jesse and Andrew, we may slow down the rate of questions as they appear in the chat.

Jesse_Eisenberg：Hello? andrew_garfield：testing eisenberg can you hear me?

Jesse_Eisenberg：I am here in space.

andrew_garfield: hello

andrew_garfield: so hows it going?

PatrickDay: Hey Jesse and Andrew! Thanks for joining us. One of the biggest questions everyone has is whether you two are in the same room right now...

Jesse_Eisenberg: We are in different rooms, but they look the same

andrew_garfield: i designed my room to look like his kitchen

andrew_garfield: the chicken got shorted

PatrickDay: Facebook has been in the news quite a bit since the movie came out. Developments with the Winkelvoss twins, etc. Have you two followed the latest or have you been busy with your own careers?

Jesse_Eisenberg: I follow the facebook news as a layman. I'm interested like everyone else is, and I don't feel that I have any special insight into their business.

Comment From Karen ：Congrats to both Jesse & Andrew on their brilliant performances & success in "The Social Network", Andrew, your performance in "Never Let Me Go" blew me away. As an acting coach you totally moved me. What type of preparation as an actor do you do to bring about such emotionally moving characters?

andrew_garfield: well karen thank you

andrew_garfield: i find it very difficult to be an actor to be honest. to access emotions on cue is an inhuman thing to achieve. so its never simple

andrew_garfield: i trained at a great drama school and had great teachers and i am constantly inspired by other people s performances

andrew_garfield: and if you are in a scene with a great actor opposite you your job is easier. like jesse was incredibly useful

Jesse_Eisenberg: i agree with Andrew; it is easier to act opposite someone who is good and taking it seriously. Performing can be such a strange and silly thing, but if you're working with people who treat it seriously and are thoughtful it can become wonderful and a lot of fun

Comment From Joan :Hi Jesse! How do you do?

Jesse_Eisenberg: Hi Joan, I am all right. how are you?

Comment From steve ：i loved the scene when you smashed the computer, how much did you enjoy that, spidey??

andrew_garfield: steve yes it was very fun.

andrew_garfield: i have a lot of rage as a person which i didnt realize i had

Comment From Brandon：hey hows spider man andrew

andrew_garfield: brandon spiderman is great fun thanks. and really tiring, but mostly fun as hell

Comment From Vik ：You guys are wonderful! what were your favourite movie of 2010?

andrew_garfield: vik i really loved the fighter, toy story 3, carlos, a prophet, how to train your dragon, the karate kid........many more

PatrickDay: Social Network seems to be a triumph for something people say was endangered in Hollywood -- the adult drama. Did you guys ever wonder while making it if there was an audience for this?

andrew_garfield: yes patrick constantly. we never thought anyone would watch it or see the point of it

andrew_garfield: maybe cos we were so close to it

Jesse_Eisenberg: To Patrick: While we were shooting the movie, I thought it was going well and would be good (the script was phenomenal) but I was actually a bit concerned that it might be too clever or too complicated/fast moving to be followed and enjoyed by many people

Comment From Simi ：Is there any special director you would like to work with that you haven't yet? Either of you?

andrew_garfield: simi i love ken loach, paul thomas anderson, mike liegh

Comment From Andrea ：Jesse, you said you listened to a lot of musicals growing up. What's your favorite musical?

Jesse_Eisenberg: To Andrea: I like Pacific Overtures, Floyd Collins. You?

Comment From Amy ：For Andrew: I recently rewatched a lot of Doctor Who episodes, and noticed you were in Daleks in Manhattan - what was it like working on Doctor Who?

andrew_garfield: amy, it was great fun, i love david tennant, hes so talented and i am a big fan of the show so it was just pure fun

Comment From Nora ：How are your cats, Jesse?

andrew_garfield: how are your cats jesse?

Jesse_Eisenberg: Hi Nora, my cats are weird

Comment From Mel ：Hey Andrew, how has it been working with Emma Stone so far?

andrew_garfield: mel she s very special. and hilarious and sweet. its been pretty great i really like her. you d get on i think

Jesse_Eisenberg: to Mel: the score perfectly suits the film and these characters. There is a strange and off putting musical buzz through a few of the tracks that coincides with mark's inner life -- never shutting down and a bit dark

Comment From teapot ：has there been any point where you've seriously reconsidered acting as your profession? i'm about to start uni this year, studying graphic design and have had a few doubts about starting a career in the creative world.

andrew_garfield: teapot. yesyesyesyesyesyesyesyesy all the time. i always have doubts about what to do everysecond of my life. read if you havent already, letters to a young poet by raine maria rilke

andrew_garfield: that helped me......a bit

Comment From Michelle :Hello, Andrew and Jesse! Would you ever consider co-starring in another film together?

Comment From Erica :Jesse, what is you favorite Andrew Garfield film? and Andrew, what is your favorite Jesse Eisenberg film? (My favorite is Red Riding and Adventureland!) =)

Jesse_Eisenberg: To Michelle and Erica: I would love to be in another movie with Andrew! It was a thrilling and challenging experience. I love andrew in everything I've seen him in

andrew_garfield: erica i feel the same way

PatrickDay: Fincher's talked about making actors shoot scenes until they flub up and create something spontaneous. Can you both give an example of a "flub" that made it into the movie?

Jesse_Eisenberg: To Patrick: We would do many takes of each scene, but it was more about being able to try many different things, rather than trying to screw up in an interesting way. We said every line in the script word for word, so there are no improvised lines and very few improvised moments.

Comment From Ally ：Were there any scenes you were scared to film or that were difficult for you guys?

andrew_garfield: ally i was scared to film the scene where i smash the computer, and the scene where brenda song goes down on me.

Comment From Jenina ：how many takes did the laptop smash scene take?

andrew_garfield: jenina, a bunch. all told in the 60 s probably???

Comment From Allen ：Hi guys, I was wondering if there were any paricular rituals you went through to get in the mindset of Mark or Eduardo while filming? What types of activities get you in the role or scene?

Jesse_Eisenberg: to Allen: I liked to listen to mark's voice during the day on an ipod. He speaks with such assurance and conviction that it helped me get into that mindset

andrew_garfield: allen, i danced alot. in my trailer before most scenes. and i listened to alot of samba music and the city of god soundtrack

Comment From Ali ：do you ever suffer from character bleed when filming? like fi you're character is in a bad headspace, that follows you out of the studio? or are you quite good at shutting off from your character?

andrew_garfield: ali, i find it hard to drop the scenes from the day, especially if we hadnt completed a scene and were gonna shoot the next day. that was hard.

Jesse_Eisenberg: to Ali, If you're spending so many hours a day trying to experience the character's life, it necessarily bleeds a bit into your life even though you know it's not real.

Comment From alice ：how your lives changed after the social network? I mean, you guys were famous already, but that was kinda huge.

andrew_garfield: jesse gets mobbed at whole foods now

PatrickDay: And playing off Alice's question: judging by the attendance in this chat, you guys have a lot of female fans. Have you noticed a lot more female attention in real life?

Jesse_Eisenberg: by my mother

Comment From Arline ：Have either of you done any theater and if so how does a film's stop and start (non?) momentum differ from the constant concentration of theater acting?

andrew_garfield: i prefer theatre acting, it is more of an extreme sport

Jesse_Eisenberg: to Arline: Theater has it's own difficulties, but gives you more opportunities (and more time) to try things

Comment From Lauren ：Andrew your American accent was brilliant! How much practicing did you have to do for it?

andrew_garfield: lauren thanks. my dads american so i cheated

Comment From Adriana ：will you guys be at the palm springs festival today?

andrew_garfield: adriana yes. will you?

Comment From Laura：what was the first and last scene you shot?!

Jesse_Eisenberg: to Laura: The first scene we shot together was exiting the Bill Gates speech (although it was reshot several months later). The last scene was the final deposition room scene.

andrew_garfield: laura my first scene was with the silly hat outside the carribean party, and my last scene was getting the phoenix envelope slipped under my door

andrew_garfield: jesse you lie!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Jesse_Eisenberg: i stand corrected

Jesse_Eisenberg: I'm now standing

Jesse_Eisenberg: its harder to type

andrew_garfield: hahahahaha

Comment From fede ：i have to ask this to jesse, How was shooting with flip flops?..it seems brutal with the weather

Jesse_Eisenberg: to Fede: running with flip flops is painful and dumb. my legs hurt for months.

Comment From Andrea ：Did you make up that little dance you did Andrew?

andrew_garfield: andrea, that was coreographed by the bolshoi ballet

Comment From Joanna ：Have you ever had any fan experiences that kinda made you go, "Hmm, I should install more locks on my door"?

Jesse_Eisenberg: i was stalked by a locksmith

Comment From karatesluts :Andrew, do you know that most of Tumblr refer to you as Bambi? How does that make you feel inside? Warm, I hope.

andrew_garfield: bambi? like the deer? cool

Comment From Jenina ：Who would you cast to play yourselves in a movie about your life?

andrew_garfield: jenina, i would cast fela kuti

Comment From anna ：Is JT actually that suave or is it all an act

andrew_garfield: anna, jt is the best.

Comment From Diana：andrew: congrats on that hair award you got from esquire!

andrew_garfield: diana thanks x

Comment From Jenny ：Andrew, did you get to learn anything about Brazil/Portuguese? And Jesse, did you learn anything about programming? Also, your opinions on Persian cats, please.

Jesse_Eisenberg: Hi Jenny, I tried to learn about computer programming, but it is very difficult. I stopped trying early on and just focused on mark's walking style, which is less difficult

andrew_garfield: jenny, i hung out with a bunch of brazilians in la before shooting, i went to some capoiera classes and learned a tiny bit of the language

Comment From steve ：how was it working with a guy who had to act as two people in the movie? how was that experience?

Jesse_Eisenberg: to Steve: Armie Hammer worked with another actor named Josh Pence to create the twins. They are both great actors, though Josh's face was replaced by a computer generated Armie's face. It was confusing a bit for me, but far more difficult for Armie and Josh

Comment From Patrickk ：Andrew, what was the fire scene with Brenda like to film?

andrew_garfield: patrickk, it was really fun. shes so adorable, and yet so terrifyingly intense, so my job was really easy. i just watched her

Comment From Stan ：Andrew, what's it like going from a film like Never Let Me Go, with a 15 million budget, to a film like Spider-Man?

andrew_garfield: stan. its not that different. only i feel alot of pressure and responsibility and i have never been this busy or tired. but im really enjoying the challenge

Comment From jennifer： Jesse, was it challenging being socially awkward and starring in a movie about social networking? How was that self-discovery process?

Jesse_Eisenberg: to Jennifer: mark does not fit easily into the normal social structures of school (and life) but because of his alienation, was able to develop the perfect insight into how other people want to interact with each other. It is not paradoxical or ironic -- it is totally fitting that he would create this site

Comment From starwarsfan013 ：what are your favorite books?

andrew_garfield: starwarsfan, i love catcher in the rye, amazing adventures of kavalier and clay. i am reading a book by elia kazan right now, which is great

Comment From Michelle ：What was it like filming the scene with Aaron Sorkin?

Jesse_Eisenberg: to Michelle: Aaron was very funny in his scene. he's a good actor and actually began his theater career as an actor.

Comment From Nora ：with great power comes great responsibility, andrew

andrew_garfield: nora, i know. i really know. it sucks

Comment From Anisha ：Andrew, how draining was it working on such an emotional movie like Never Let Me Go?

andrew_garfield: anisha, it was great actually. the extreme emotional scenes are fun once you ve shot them. you feel a sense of release and relief

Comment From Jennifer ：Is it hard to go from seeing your co-stars every day while filming and having that bond with them, to not seeing them after you wrap?

andrew_garfield: jennifer, i miss jesse

Comment From Nicka ：Do you guys find it weird watching yourselves on screen? I feel like that would take some getting used to.

Jesse_Eisenberg: Dear Nicka, it's very strange to watch yourself in a movie. Andrew says it's like hearing your voice on an answering machine times a thousand. I try to avoid it as much as possible. we have seen this movie one time.

Comment From Alice ：Gosh, Andrew, we have similar taste in books :)

andrew_garfield: alice, cool, maybe we should meet and get married

Jesse_Eisenberg: i also like those books!

Comment From Mel ：Andrew and Jesse, are you both excited for the Golden Globes and who would you like to meet while there?

andrew_garfield: mel, id love to meet christian bale. he blew me away in the fighter

PatrickDay: As the stars, are you guys usually privy to all the storyboards, plans, etc. Or does the final form of the film come as total surprise?

Jesse_Eisenberg: to Patrick: the final product of a movie is always different than I pictured it to be while filming, so it's a jarring thing to watch something you've seen a million times in your head in a completely new way

Comment From Sara Jabeen ：Hey, Andrew. :) Can't wait to see you in Spidey

andrew_garfield: sara, thanks i hope i do you proud

Comment From Deirdre ：Jesse and Andrew, who were some of your favorite actors growing up?

andrew_garfield: deirdre, michael j fox, daniel day lewis, tom hanks,

Comment From Charlotte ：Is it difficult to be working on a movie and promoting another? I can imagine it's strange being asked to talk about a film you completed a year ago.

andrew_garfield: charlotte, yes. its difficult for men to multi task

Comment From Vicki ：none of my comments are showing up and i am crying

andrew_garfield: vicki, dont cry. we are here for you

Comment From Shirley ：Andrew, hi! Can you reveal anything about the Spiderman plot yet? Like villains and such? Pretty please. Also, I love your work. Keep it up!

andrew_garfield: thanks shirley. of course i cant say nothin

Comment From NICOLE and chloe ：Andrew when I finished reading Never Let Me Go I watched it instantly after and your performance with Carey Mulligan and Keira Knightley had me in tears almost instantly. I have such love for the way you all portrayed the characters.

andrew_garfield: thanks nicole and chloe. i love your work too

Comment From Charlie ：Do you ever regret going into acting because of the publicity side etc?

Jesse_Eisenberg: hi Charlie, the public part of this is overwhelming and strange and uncomfortable. it makes me question several life choices that were made by a teenage me

Comment From Adriana ：Jesse, I'm a big fan of yours and my sister is a big fan of Andrew. We really hope to see you guys tonight in Palm Springs.

Jesse_Eisenberg: why does your sister not like me, Adriana?

Comment From lisa ：andrew, what is your response to people who say you are too old to be playing a high schooler version of Spider-Man?

andrew_garfield: lisa, my response is you are entitled to your opinion, and thanks for your thoughts. have a nice day, eat well, and get enough sleep to be effective in the life of your family and friends. and climb trees as often as possible

Comment From Patrickk ：Andrew, do you find an American accent hard?

andrew_garfield: patrickk. yeah i find most things hard.

PatrickDay: Hey everyone, some of you are upset that your questions and comments are not displaying. There are so many that we can't have all of them go through. But we'll do our best to make sure as many appear as possible.

Comment From Ray ：To both Jesse and Andrew: what made you decide to become actors?

andrew_garfield: ray, i wanted to pick up girls. then i realised acting can be a generous act

Jesse_Eisenberg: Hi Ray, I did children's theater when I was very young (8 years old) and found it to be a comforting way to avoid having to see friends on the weekends.

Comment From Paulette ：Andrew, just read and watched Never Let Me Go. Every aspect was perfect. I'm sure you'll be a great Spider Man

andrew_garfield: paulette thanks alot

Comment From teapot ：andrew, have you worked with rhys ifans yet? is he as awesome as he seems? :D

andrew_garfield: teapot, hes rad. so funny, and warm and talented

Comment From Kimmy ：any favourite perks of being an actor?

andrew_garfield: kimmy, you get to sit around alot

Comment From dan ：what is the one song that you guys jam out to in your car or at home?

andrew_garfield: dan, month of may, by arcade fire. and anythng by louis prima

Comment From Emily ：Are there any questions that you've wanted people to ask (while promoting a film or campaigning for awards) but never have been asked?

Jesse_Eisenberg: to emily, every question I wanted to have been asked was asked by the journalists in japan. without exception they asked the most probing and psychologically astute questons about the characters

Comment From Katy ：Jesse, can you do a british accent?

Jesse_Eisenberg: hi Katy, I'm doing a british accent right now, I am.

Comment From Allie ：Do either of you have any tips for people that want to become actors themselves, or any suggestion as to where to begin?

andrew_garfield: allie. find out why you want to be an actor maybe. and take some classes with a great teacher that suits you instinctively and study plays. read shakespeare and miller and chekov. read all the great playwrites.

Jesse_Eisenberg: hi Allie, my advice would be to try to be involved in as much as possible. local theater, friend's readings, improvisation groups, etc.

Comment From Tammy ：I'm really sick right now and being in this chat is making me feel better. I love both of you guys, never stop making movies.

andrew_garfield: tammy, get better

Comment From Linda ：Andrew and Jesse - Did you both do the commentary track for the DVD?

Jesse_Eisenberg: Andrew and I did a commentary track, but he recorded it from different rooms. He made his kitchen look like my bedroom

Jesse_Eisenberg: the early years

Comment From marilynmay ：Is there a person you'd love to portray in a movie?

andrew_garfield: marilyn may, id love to have a crack at portraying denzel washingtons life

Comment From Steph ：Besides each other, who has been your favourite co-star in your career so far? Who would you like to star alongside in the furute?

andrew_garfield: steph, i love jesse, peter mullan, robert redford, heath, tom waits, carey m

Comment From Amy ：So it seems both of you are into music (albeit, different genres); would you ever consider putting out a record or track (like how Carey Mulligan did a brilliant song with Belle & Sebastian)?

andrew_garfield: amy, we have been working on a rap album. neuroses based rap

Comment From Tom ：What is the one classic film you wish you could have starred in, and why?

andrew_garfield: tom, would have loved to have been in kes by ken loach

Comment From Yiannis ：Jesse, is Zombieland 2 happening?

Comment From alexis ：Any websites you guys go on daily...that are just your favorites

Jesse_Eisenberg: hi Yiannis, I really don't know. Hi Alexis, yes go to oneupme.com. i started this site a few years ago.

Jesse_Eisenberg: to Andrew: you would have been a great kes

andrew_garfield: jesse would have liked to to have played the eponymous kestral

PatrickDay: Jesse, in talking to people about Zuckerberg, have you found opinion split by age? (Younger find him admirable and exciting. Older find him selfish and petulant?)

Jesse_Eisenberg: the reaction to zuckerberg in the movie is all across the board. my mother said she wanted to slap me and then hug me. this has been the most common reaction. It makes me happy to hear that because it means people are invested in the character in a very real way

Comment From betsy j. ：do either of you plan on making a twitter account to please your large fanbase ?

andrew_garfield: betsy, i dont know about twitter

Comment From Kimmy ：Are there any personal favourite films you'd consider to be guilty pleasures?

andrew_garfield: kimmy, i love TEEN WOLF!!!!!

Comment From Emily :Andrew, can you come back and do another episode of Doctor Who please?

andrew_garfield: emily, i love matt smith so maybe

Comment From Diana ：To Jesse and NAdrew: Any favorite foreign films of yours? :)

andrew_garfield: diana, i love michael haneke, i love audiard,

Comment From Victoria ：TEEN WOLF is not a guilty pleasure! It is straight up pleasure!

andrew_garfield: victoria, hells yes

Comment From Kim ：Andrew, to prepare for your role as Peter Parker have you read Amazing Spider-Man comics that have been made in the recent years? J. Michael Straczynski's run is a really great read.

andrew_garfield: kim, ive been reading em all. i love it

Comment From Sara ：Can you both PLEASE give a shoutout to the people in Pakistan!?

andrew_garfield: sara, ok. i love pakistan!!!!!!!!!!

Comment From Michelle_E ：Have either of you seen any of Sorkin's other works? Thoughts? I'm particularly fond of Studio 60 and I felt I saw a lot of the same struggles in both

Jesse_Eisenberg: hi Michelle_E, I used to watch sports night all the time. I would video tape the episodes so i could re-watch them multiple times to catch all the wonderful dialogue. I think people have had similar reactions to this movie, going back to it multiple times.

Comment From Shannen ：Andrew and Jesse do you guys google yourself?

andrew_garfield: shannen, i try not to. cos people hate

Comment From Laura ：Jesse, I had the same reaction as your mother, I have to say.

Jesse_Eisenberg: thanks Laura, please do not slap me at a whole foods though

Comment From Stephanie ：Hi Jesse and Andrew :) Greetings from Peru!

andrew_garfield: staephanie, hey peru

Comment From Olivia ：How can a socially awkward person get involved in acting? Any tips?

andrew_garfield: olivia, i think being awkward helps greatly in being an actor, it means there is alot for you to discover with in yourself.

Jesse_Eisenberg: hi Olivia -- you are the perfect person to act! One of the wonderful things about acting is that it can allow someone who is a bit uncomfortable to take on a persona that is different from yourself. it's a nice respite from your ego

Comment From Justin ：Andrew, what's Marc Webb like? I'm really excited for you and Marc's version of Spider-Man! I'm a huge Spidey fan!

andrew_garfield: justin, marcs great, really talented and smart

Comment From Carolina ：Jesse, Andrew, are you Tarantino fans?

andrew_garfield: carolina, yes

Comment From nina ：are you going to be wearing peter parker glasses at all in spiderman, andrew? from the on-set photos i've seen i'm a bit dissapointed not to be seeing any four-eyed love...

andrew_garfield: nina, i hate to dissapoint you

Comment From Novus&kyle ：Jesse&Andrew : In Asia, you have so much fans. Please remember this.

Jesse_Eisenberg: In Asia, there are so many more people. It's just a numbers game

andrew_garfield: hahahahaha jesse made a funy joke

andrew_garfield: hahahahhahaha of all places

Comment From Raph ：what are you guys doing now besides this?

Jesse_Eisenberg: on the internet

andrew_garfield: good job jesse

Comment From Winona ：you guys are fast readers

andrew_garfield: winona, thanks alot

Comment From mary ：was the scene in the beginning of the movie hard, jesse? was all that shot in one take or was it split up?

Jesse_Eisenberg: hi mary, the opening scene was filmed 99 times, so there are lines and moments from many different takes.

Comment From steve ：jesse, i saw u on leno, what's up with the facial hair?

andrew_garfield: jesse wut up wit de facial hairs?????????

Jesse_Eisenberg: you dont

andrew_garfield: me dont like thems

Comment From Rivers :How do we know if you're really Jesse & Andrew?

Jesse_Eisenberg: how do we know if you're really rivers?

andrew_garfield: rivers, this is in fact justin timberlake and armie hammer

andrew_garfield: maybe im rivers

Jesse_Eisenberg: maybe rivers is in all of us

andrew_garfield: maybe jesse is an automated joke machine

Comment From Laurie :Andrew&Jesse: Do you guys still hang out? I mean, besides going to film festivals and the what-not.

andrew_garfield: laurie, no. jesse s disowned me

andrew_garfield: silence ensues

Comment From Lex :i have a feeling that if you guys aren't friends forever the entire world will explode.

Jesse_Eisenberg: thanks Lex!

Comment From Hannah :Maybe you guys should just talk to each other and we can sit back and watch the WONDERS UNFOLD.

Comment From Marisa :yeah you guys should have your own tv show or something

andrew_garfield: i want to do a richard pryor gene wilder thing

andrew_garfield: both me and jesse will play the gene wilder role

PatrickDay: Have either of you had a moment to relax or has it been go-go-go? Especially now that "awards season" is here?

andrew_garfield: patrick, i am not relaxed. i am working out as i am typing

Jesse_Eisenberg: we have been traveling a lot in the last few months to promote the movie. but it will be over soon.

andrew_garfield: doing deadlifts

Comment From Ted Mosby ：What are y'all most looking forward to in 2011?

andrew_garfield: ted, i wanna travel this year

Comment From sarahh ：my questions aren't showing up. so i'll just try again. what can i say to convince my friends, who don't value my opinion, to see the social network?

andrew_garfield: sarahh, their loss

Comment From Camillionaire ：Hello from New Zealand!!1! I love you both so much

andrew_garfield: camillionaire, is that really you????????

Comment From Kit-Kat ：Where do you want to travel?

andrew_garfield: kit kat, africa

andrew_garfield: or south america

andrew_garfield: or thailand

Comment From Katy ：Greetings from Israel :)

Jesse_Eisenberg: Hi Katy, thanks for logging on at 10:58

Jesse_Eisenberg: it is nearing the end of this discussion. many truths were unearthed and stories shared. thank you for waking up early to be here, except novus&kyle who are in asia and have just stayed up late.

PatrickDay: Thank you both for joining our chat!

andrew_garfield: we love you all like you were our own mothers and fathers.

andrew_garfield: good luck everyone.

PatrickDay: Thanks for joining our chat everyone! Apologies to those whose comments didn't appear.

Source

#Jesse Eisenberg #andrew garfield #the social network #man i will always remember this #jewnicorn shippers never cry #me

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zailyn26 · 6 years

Text

The Torture fic

also known as: The begining of all plot points and character development

TW: mild torture, graphic description (if explaining what happened counts, no actual description of injury from the methods or specific methods per se) Rough recovery, drug abuse, trauma, angst. kinda sweet and sour tbh

also this was suppose to be in my side blog but whatevs roit ? i'll just reblog myself that aint weird

>>>>>>>>>

Capturing the lot of us was never a problem. we were all capable enough to defeat nearly an army alone, what could a small group do ?

turns out, underestimating an adversary we knew nothing about brought about our downfall.

Zailyn, Joanna and I were captured separately, quick and quiet, no one knew anything had happened until Joan was unable to perform her morning duties and was found missing. What with her being the only one to actually go outside everyday.

They had taken you to somewhere you didnt know about. all kept in the same facility, but each area was specific to exploit our weaknesses. I was kept in a sealed room void of any moisture, with barely enough oxygen filtered through to keep me from fainting much less to create water. All those who attended me were golems, no flowing blood to speak of. Though breathing was arduous for me, I suffered through watching their treatment of Joan and Zai. Constantly at war on whether to use their blood to escape, possibly killing them, or just to succumb to the fact that I was going to be tortured.

Joanna, the most human of us, was beaten daily to prevent her from gaining strength, meals only given once every two days, and a half cup of water to last her three. after a while , we couldnt even sign at each other.

Nat was kept sealed like me. Only I knew she was breathing something other than air. her hands were caged in wrought iron gloves, fingers unable to cast anything. Not that it mattered. she couldnt form a single coherent thought. drugged up to the high heavens.

everyday we had to watch as the others were tortured infront of us. Screams of help and mercy reverberated in our brains so much we could hear them in our sleep. Joe probably had every bone broken, set to heal up, then broken again.

Zai had doctors injecting her with experimental magic concoctions, zapped til she forgot herself sometimes.

and I- golems would beat me. Homunculi would come in and torture me. I dont know how i survived without water. It felt like we were there for months. It seemed impossible for anyone to find us. Eren was gone, Everything was so bright there werent any shadows. Nat had a room with bright blinding light in all corners. I wouldnt doubt that the clear glass that we could see her though was mirrored just to torture her eyes more.

when they left us to recover, we tapped on our walls, speaking in morse. just constant ' are you ok?'s and 'hang in there's and 'your doing great's

But those were few and far between. every after session they would stuff us with ambrosia til we were burning up inside.

I saved every breath and pray that they hadnt gotten anyone else.

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else where Anabiel and Matt were frantic. No one had seen any of you in three weeks. there was no sign of struggle. No indication of foul play. You had thought they left for an emergency and forgot to leave a note. But Zailyn would have sent a quick message and now her familiar was clearly stressed and would refuse to let either of you rest til you found everyone.

It wasnt until a tall lithe man burst through a tree in your search baring news. speaking of the Roman daughter and her companions trapped somewhere they cannot escape. He spoke of how earthen spirits came to him to gossip about a beached water-child and her posey were screaming up a dissonant storm in the belly of the forsaken grounds.

He lead you to where they said you were but could not go farther, something about being bound to duty and such and such.

when you saw the state they were in, well, safe to say none but the five of you walked away that day.

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

The issue of recovery is another discussion entirely. the lot of us were placed in the ICU for numerous injuries, Joanna had to recover from her internal and external injuries; Zailyn had to have all the drugs flushed from her system which led to several close calls. they werent really sure they even got everything out, some early doses already did damage to her systems. a CT scan showed just how close she was from having her brain fried. And somehow I was left with a little mix of both.

This kind of cemented the need for weekly slumber parties, mostly because no one could really sleep without the other anymore. The lithe Man from the forrest shows up from time to time to take care of Zai's cat/child(?) she calls her her magic fairy child and not human child since she didnt technically go around for nine months bloated like a balloon. But whatever still her kid.

Matt finally talked to Zailyn about how he felt so theres that. But repercussions of the trauma still showed. None of us could stomach ambrosia anymore. Zai lost the ability to feel for magic, she says is because her barrier is cranked up to eleven for the foreseeable future, blocking nearly everything. No one has been able to physically touch her other than the god Apollo , her parents and the rest of us. Add that to sensitive eyesight she now cannot leave the safety of Matts home, most of her belongings moved to the ground floor. She says shes going to burn down her house one day.

Joann's nerves were shot, unable to feel anything. Apollo could have fixed her but the extent of her injuries would have left her with chronic pain so horrible it would have been mercy to just end her. Ana had begged otherwise, and apollo could not refuse the blessed one. Luna now goes everywhere with Joan, in both forms- to look out for her and make sure she knows when to stop training since 'pushing til it hurts too much' doesnt work anymore. Luna is now attached to her aunt who acts like wonder woman.

I had minor brain damage, so I had lapses in memory, and it showed in my speech pattern, simple words more often than not eluded me. writing is easier now though. but somehow between my brain and my tongue words just seem to get lost.

I spend most of my days in Eron's room at my home. being too far from water of any kind now fills me with anxiety.

Ana and Matt now often leave to hunt down the people who did this to us. Zailyn, Joanna and I are now unable to step foot outside the camp.

#original work #literature #writing #torture #pain #angst #starring : Me and friends #it gets better tho #but it gets bad first #characters are explaind? ish??#welp #not much exposition #i mean this is still the beginning of when my friends truely gave life to their characters #cuz nothing puts them to life more than torturing them #i think i made us cry with this #but hey good stuff happens in kther fics #because of this !! so is all good :D

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childofaura · 4 years

Text

Rating the anime I’ve watched in 2019: A really short list

Kinda just felt like doing this, 2019 has been a REALLY interesting year in anime. I didn’t watch a whole lot of stuff, but I wanted to kind of go over what I did watch. So I’ll talk about what I thought and rate it 1-10.

PLEASE KEEP IN MIND: THEY’RE RATED SOLELY ON MY OPINIONS, IF I DON’T FEEL STRONGLY ABOUT ONE PLEASE DON’T GET MAD. ALSO ALL OF THESE WERE WATCHED IN SUBS. ALSO SPOILERS AHOY.

1. Dororo.

The OP was AWESOME. The animation in the first half of the series was really smooth, but there was a slightly noticeable dip in animation later on. Not huge, but still there. Actors were FANTASTIC, and the little girl who plays Dororo is so cute! Characters were incredibly well written and varied, Hyakkimaru still struggled despite his honed reflexes and training, and Tahomaru was so morally divisive, it was great. Somber tones really bring out the nasty forbidden underside of the Shogunate’s “lasting peace”. Though the ending with Tahomaru, Hyakkimaru’s mother, and his father figure all dying in the fire was rather... disappointing, Hyakkimaru forgiving his father and Dororo deciding what to do with the large sum of money left behind, to use it for the greater good, wraps everything up.

Dororo’s a solid 8/10.

2. Rising of the Shield Hero

I ended up checking this one out after hearing all the controversy it was stirring up, because I wanted to see what it was. Like always, the “controversy” was a big tepid pile of nothing, and I got to experience an isekai that operates under a different mood with different dynamics. Animation quality is consistent and good, and there’s a LOT of female characters that are well rounded and strong, like Raphtalia, Melty, the Filolial Queen, Glass, etc. Scenery is beautiful, and Naofumi’s growth into trusting again is nice to watch. Also the soundtrack is so enjoyable, Kansas is my favorite song. Cons, though few, are still there: the pacing can be a little funky at times (Mainly what comes to mind is that AWFUL filler episode where they fight the Church from the molten pit, and don’t move AT ALL. Worst episode ever), the physical growth of some of the characters like Filo is jarring (In two days she grows horse sized, after they had that montage of taking care of her) even with an explanation. The last thing that rubs me the wrong way (It’s not really a con in general, just a con for me) is Raphtalia’s crush on Naofumi. It’s simply that they spend the first few episodes building their relationship as a father/daughter, then they try to shift to romance after establishing that first familial relationship.

Rising of the Shield Hero’s an 8/10.

3. The Promised Neverland

AAAAAAAH HOT DAMN I LOVED THIS ONE. It was completely out of my range of what I normally watched at the beginning of 2019, BUT I LOVED IT SO MUCH. The animation is eerie, especially the facial expressions and how smoothly they move. The children are so darling and thinking about how they might have possibly died in S1 broke my heart, as well as me hoping they didn’t, lol. Every episode leaves off on this wonderfully tantalizing cliffhanger, so binging the episodes are a must. Characters like Mama and Sister Krone are terrifying, though in the latter’s case I love how clever she was, and was sad when she died. Her Japanese actress definitely blew it out of the water and had a lot of fun with the character. I’d say the only (not really a con, but) thing that weirds me out is how close the characters’ mouths are to their faces, but that’s a stylistic thing and I won’t fault them for that. The children are strong and resilient and I can’t wait for the next season.

The Promised Neverland’s a 9/10.

4. Demon Slayer

I got into this one late, and I hate myself for getting into it late. But nonetheless, I’m so glad I watched it and I can say with confidence it’s up there with FullMetal Alchemist: Brotherhood’s level of excellence. Tanjiro is such a kind-hearted boy who constantly puts himself through physical torture for his only remaining family; Nezuko’s “hypnotism” to see humans as family feels more like placebo because she just genuinely has compassion for people, especially when she looks at Ms Tamayo and Yushiro as family when they’re also demons. All the characters are deeply involved in this story with either known or hidden (Zenitsu) strengths that allow them to conquer their struggles. The style is unique and the character designs are pretty, and HOO BOY THE FIGHTING ANIMATIONS, THE STYLIZED TECHNIQUES. MWAH! MUCH LOVE! I love the soundtrack so much, it almost reminds me of the Pokemon movies’ orchestra pieces. The story is well paced, and no issues with filler. Showing how even demons deserve compassion is a beautifully unexpected twist in this show.

Demon Slayer’s a 10/10

5. To the Abandoned Sacred Beasts

I do love this series dearly, and while the good outweighs the “meh”, I still have to address the issues. BUT FIRST, THE GOOD THINGS: Characters in this show are incredibly in-depth, even the soldiers. The designs of the Incarnates are fantastic, terrifying and imposing. Schaal is a strong young girl who sets off with just a suitcase and a rifle and, after meeting Hank, decides to get inside his mindset to see why he’s doing what he does, and why he had to kill her father. Hank is a man in constant suffering who has to see his best friends losing themselves to insanity, knowing that they’re not the people they used to be but questioning whether he’s really doing the right thing regardless. All the soldiers have their own focal point in the episodes they show up in, showing their unique traits and attitudes, and how it links to the monsters they are now. The concept of Incarnate soldiers is parallel to veterans with PTSD. While Liza’s a bit of a ridiculous fan-service character, there’s really no complaints because the fan-service in this show is balanced; they show Hank unnecessarily shirtless a LOT (Though honestly I’d be fine if they let him wear his shirts more). But the cons. There are a decent amount of them. Animation is clunky and lower budget. Pacing is not easy to keep up with, as the split between Hank’s mission and the main conflict with Cain interrupt each other quite jarringly. Schaal’s father seemingly rises as a zombie again to serve no other purpose other than Schaal’s character growth, as we could assume that a LOT of the other monsters like Keynes, with the fire of justice, would also come back to life. Liza doesn’t really seem to do much or contribute much as a character; she came close when she volunteered to take up the Incarnate Extermination Squad’s equipment by saying she knew how it worked but she literally. Just. Held up a shield for the commander (forgot his name, Cain’s little bro) to jump off of. She needs to do more. Love the series and I love watching it, but it’s a mixed bag.

To the Abandoned Sacred Beast’s a 7/10.

6. Fire Force.

Well... this one is definitely gonna be tough to deal with, because I only got maybe 8 or 9 episodes in before I had to break away. So I’ll break it down simply.

Pros: Animation is SOLID. ABSOLUTE. FLUID AND DYNAMIC. It’s literally Midoriya vs Todoroki, but in EVERY EPISODE. Some characters are fascinating and enjoyable like Shinra, Maki, Joker, and Hibana. The concept of Infernals, people who just burst into flames without warning, are a solid idea to run on. The OP is a banger. The soundtrack fits the mood perfectly.

Cons, and a lot of them: There isn’t a whole lot going on in terms of variety, it’s mainly fighting Infernals in the city. It picks up eventually, but slowly. While some characters were enjoyable, others were either flat or downright unbearable to deal with; flat characters like Obi (He’s not a bad character, but he feels... generic) and Iris (Also not bad, she’s strong in what she’s had to deal with and being kind regardless, but it’s just standard quiet girl.). Unbearable character is really just two so far: The lieutenant, who gets borderline abusive (both mentally and physically) with Maki (Like I get it dude, you had trauma with fire and Infernals but you don’t need to be an abusive shit), and Tamaki, ESPECIALLY Tamaki. She’s rude, screechy, treated Shinra like utter shit when they first meet, and respects almost no one outside of her district for no real reason. And she also falls into the next con: The one-sided fan-service. Now I will defend the right to fan-service with everything I believe in, but I’m still allowed to have my opinion on it, and the way it goes in Fire Force is just... so awful. Fan-service jarringly interrupts what are supposed to be heavy emotional or important scenes (Iris sitting on the ground with nothing but a towel, Iris getting her clothes burned off by Hibana, Tamaki sticking her butt out after getting hurt by her district partner, Tamaki’s clothes being burned up and being against the wall with that weird-ass kitty pose with her wrists, etc.), Tamaki’s “lucky lechery” is supposed to be funny somehow but it makes literally no sense, and oh cool she ends up sexually harassing the dudes with it, too. I could understand this level of fan-service if it was like a harem anime or a cheese-cake-ish anime or whatever, but it’s- it’s a shounen. There’s nothing that really shows you there’s gonna be this weird level of fan-service.

I respect everyone who loves Fire Force, but it’s just not my cup of tea. That’s all.

Fire Force’s a 6.5/10.

7. Vinland Saga

THIS ANIME. THIS ANIME IS PERFECT IN EVERY WAY AND YOU WILL NEVER CHANGE MY MIND. The first OP PERFECTLY encapsulates just how much of a hellish live Thorfinn is about to live. The animation (Being from the same company as Attack on Titan and Kabaneri of the Iron Fortress) is SUPERB where the characters move with weight and purpose. Seriously, have you seen how the characters jump forward? With their legs and arms forward? It’s a little detail but it’s so great. Characters are multi-faceted and it gives me strong feelings about how awful they are but how clever or strong or brilliant they are. The pacing of the anime is perfect; something plot-important happens in each episode, the characters travel long distances to give you a feel of movement, and there’s not a single episode that could really be considered “filler”. Dynamics of these characters work in fascinating ways at times. The actors absolutely own their roles; Askeladd’s actor nails that perfect nonchalance where he seems surprised but you know he’s truly not, Thorfinn’s older actor knows how to scream his lungs out in anger. The main star, though? Thorkell, hands down. That guy is absolutely having fun with his character.

Vinland Saga’s a solid 10/10.

#anime #spoilers #Dororo #Rising of the Shield Hero #The Promised Neverland #Demon Slayer #To the Abandoned Sacred Beasts #Fire Force #Vinland Saga #Vinland Saga's easily the best anime of 2019 for me and I'm sad that it doesn't have as much traction as other shows like Fire Force

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