#but speaking as someone who is watching through all 3 shows. 2012 is bad and by bad i mean like inconsistent. extremely inconsistent | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

roses-ruby · 4 years

Text

sinner;

Jungkook x Female Reader

Genre: Cop AU, An onslaught of Angst, Thriller, Mature

Warnings: Obsessive/Possessive behavior, Toxic relationships, Yandere, Stalking, Emotional and Physical abuse, MiSoGYny, Violence, Bad parents, Bad cops, Kidnapping

Word Count: 11,000

Summary: No matter where you run, the past will find you.

The dark clouds approached along the light blue fabric of the sky.

You watched them from your car window, dreading the downpour you’d have to drive home through tonight. With a sigh, you open the door and step out of your 2012 Hyundai Accent, planting your soles firmly onto the cemented parking lot. Your rustic car shakes with the loss of weight and the door creaks at the hinges once you slam it shut.

Somehow the old you had managed to entertain yourself with the thought that receiving a promotion would ultimately be able to afford you a better car, but no – you were stuck with the same failing engine, same worn out tires, same chipped paint aside the right headlight and occasional oil leaks.

Old you was a fool, you think, placing your hands in your coat pocket and walking towards the station in a swift, rigid pace. The air was chilly, and the strong breeze hit your face in unpleasant streaks. You kept your head down, arms clinging to the sides of your body to warm you up. There were barely any people outside the station, just a couple of men in blue quickly ensuring victims or witnesses. Years on the force had given you the eye to spot the differences between your average citizen and a perp with ease.

Perps always had an emptiness in their gaze. A vacant spot that erased their crime from their own mind. Defense mechanism they call it. You weren’t a stranger to that emotion yourself.

With no time to waste, you rush up the steps. As you pull the door of the station open, your ears are immediately filled with chatter, paper clatter and ringing phones. More importantly your body is filled with warmth. Like it was memorized in your head, you sift through the desks and file cabinets with ease, trudging past several rushing bodies on your way to a hallway down the right. Reaching the end of the corridor, you see the four men you were expecting through the clear glass window in front of their room. They were laughing at something one of them had said, a laughter that came to a full stop the moment you burst into the chief’s office.

All eyes were on you.

“There you are, detective! Right on time.” The chief, a charismatically aged character, calls out your last name as he leans back in his creaky leather chair.

“Not like she has anything better to do…” Hyun, the Sergeant’s younger partner, remarks underneath his breath.

“It’s my day off chief…this better be good.”

“Why? Did you have a date?” You catch Hyun’s sarcastic eyes before he bursts into a fit of laughter at your unamused face.

“Like you ever get laid.” Jimin scoffs at him with a raised eyebrow from the opposite side of the room.

“Motherfucker I got laid last night!” Hyun shouts like that was the funniest thing he’s said while Jimin holds back his growing smile.

“Yeah? Your asshole still hurt?” Sarge slams Hyun in the back as they all break out into mutual cackles. Hyun fights back by pushing his older partner into a cabinet while making derogatory remarks.

You try not to scowl at the suffocating testosterone in the air as you watch the boys play around.

“All right, all right, quiet down.” The chief shouts, rubbing his forehead wrinkles with his fingers and looking back at you like he suddenly remembered you exist. “___- uh…we got a little situation for you.”

He reaches to the left of his desk and picks up a file before throwing it up ahead on the table. There was a sudden coating of thick silence around the room as your eyes roam from the detectives scrutinizing you, back to the thick manilla folder thrown out in front of you. You carefully walk up to where the file laid, picking it up and examining the name on the small name card clipped at the top left.

“Jeon Jungkook?”

You question in surprise. Your orbs fly from the chief’s empty face to the white name card.

“How much do you know about Jeon?” The chief asks slowly. You recognize that tone of voice. That tone you’ve witnessed multiple times in interrogation with a suspect. The aura in the room felt strange.

You drop the file to your side so you can look the chief right in the eyes.

“What do you mean? I know that he’s the most accomplished assassin-for-hire to this date. I know that he has his dirty hands everywhere across the East. I know that he’s responsible for Asia’s most influential triad trade. I know that he’s taken down too many of our own and I know he should be jammed into a cage for the rest of his life, chief.”

The chief exhaled, some tension leaving his facial features as he leans further back in his chair and shuts his eyes. You studied the man in pity. Was this how you were bound to end up in a few years? Bald, stressed, only black coffee in your system, suspicious of everyone and everything with a failing marriage and kids who won’t speak to you?

Half of that was actually how you lived like right now.

“I’m sorry, ___. You know how many rumors there are of officers under Jeon’s thumb. Patrollers, lieutenants, even agents…they are all chummy with that bastard. I can’t help but be careful.”

“What do you mean? What does this have to do with me, chief?” You furrowed your eyebrows, still not understanding what was happening or why you were called in on your day off for an ‘urgent’ matter.

“We caught him.” Sarge interjects, “Tip came in this morning about a deal in the abandoned mill off the northwest. He surrendered as soon as we showed up, no casualties.”

You couldn’t stop your mouth from dropping. Did you hear that correctly? Jeon Jungkook, who had been on the world’s most wanted list for 6 years now just happened to be caught in your city, at the abandoned mill in the middle of the day? It was hard to believe but Sarge didn’t seem like he was joking.

“T-that’s great…w- is he in custody right now? Here?”

“He is. But we have a problem though…” You look back at the chief who was staring right at you. “He won’t talk.”

“I mean we expected that, right? He did the same thing in Hong Kong. Wha- is...is he pleading the fifth or-”

“That’s the thing, he surrendered but didn’t make any attempts to cooperate, he’s just been sitting stationary on his ass for 3 hours. The deputy had to phone it in as soon as he got here, so Kane’s bound to show up at any minute. They’ll take him away to some fucking facility and we’ll just have to stick out our tongues and wag our tails while the big boys do the real work. Damn! We couldn’t find jack shit when raiding the fucking mill!” The chief rambled, still massaging his forehead like he had a headache. “And that deadly weapon expert? All he had on him was an old handkerchief.”

He snorted but there was no amusement in his voice. But suddenly his vigor died down and his eyes stared off into the distance.

“…There’s only one thing he said the entire time he’s been in that interrogation room.”

“…What did he say?” You ask carefully, noticing the way everyone present was glaring holes into you.

“He said he’ll only speak to you.” The chief leans towards you, placing his elbows on his desk with his eyes slightly squinting and an unspoken question on his lips.

Suddenly the room turns cold and you feel like you were outside in that freezing chill once again. Your mind runs a mile a minute and your skin breaks out into goosebumps. It all makes sense just then. The threatening atmosphere, the stare downs, the discerning. They all had one question staining their mind. Why would the world’s most powerful hitman and black arms dealer want to talk to some random low-grade rookie detective?

Hell, you didn’t know yourself.

“Me? Why would he want to speak to me?”

“He said he knows you.”

You couldn’t stop yourself from scoffing. That was ridiculous. If you met someone like Jeon Jungkook before, you would remember it…wouldn’t you?

“Chief, I’m telling you, I don’t know what he’s talking about.”

“Then how could he know your full name?” Hyun interrupts

You glare at him from your position in the middle of the room. “How am I supposed to know dumbass?”

He smirks, his disgusting gaze sharpening. “Maybe he just knows how to sniff out the cunts.”

“Watch your fucking mouth Hyun.” Jimin steps between you both in a flash. He was facing away from you, but you could tell he was pissed by how he clenched his fists. Hyun scoffs, the corner of his lips picking up.

“I sniff two.”

It all happens in the blink of an eye. Jimin tries to leap at him but you barely manage to hold your partner back by the shoulder. Smart mouth also gets up from where he was leaning before Sarge rushes up to the younger. They both glare at each other like they were ready to kill while you grimace looking at each of their loaded holsters. The fact that these men were allowed to open carry was the most terrifying part.

“Enough!” The chief shouts, standing from his desk, “Hyun learn how to shut your yap hole for once, and Park, I need you to back off. There’s already a lot of tension in this room cause of Jeon…let’s handle that motherfucker first, officers.”

He warns Jimin to which you hold him tighter, whispering at him to let it go. Eventually the blonde simmers down – they both do, and you watch the way the chief exhales defeatedly.

“___, is there any reason at all- anything you can think of- and really think now, all the way back to before you transferred here- as to why Jeon Jungkook would want to speak to you? Why he would say he knows you?”

“None, chief.” You state calmly. There was nothing to think about, you didn’t know him.

The man stares at you for a moment before nodding. “Alright then, officer. I’ll need you in that interrogation room immediately. Maybe you can find an answer to this whole mess of a situation.”

“What the hell chief?” Hyun immediately complains, “I brought him in! I should be the one questioning him! You can’t just do that to me-” He growls, stepping up to the boss’ desk.

“Shut it!” Sergeant smacks the back of his big head while you breathe through your nose to keep calm.

Hyun always made his dislike for you obvious. It was difficult to pinpoint the exact reason he hated you because there were one too many. You were a stickler for rules and tradition, a woman (more specifically a woman who has made more arrests than him), and not the type to try and fit in. He hated how you didn’t fall in line and mostly kept to yourself – private and introverted. Whatever, you didn’t give a fuck about what he thought of you. Although you were used to Hyun’s moronic nature, it was still rarely this chaotic and tense in your station. Everyone seemed to be at one another’s neck. The most thrill you all had was capturing a local drug dealer a few years back.

But then again, Jeon Jungkook was far from your average criminal.

“You were in there for 2 and a half fucking hours with the captain himself, Hyun. What did you get out of it?” Chief groans

“I-I just need a little more time, just a li-”

“Time we don’t have!” The older man yells at the top of his lungs. “I know you’re the one who cuffed him and I’m real happy for that 20 second thrill you got but you can’t just get your panties in a twist when things don’t go your way. ___ here is just as capable of an officer as you. If she can get him to talk and we can gain some info on him and his little gang before those FBI pigs show up – just think of what that could mean for the team…”

Hyun scowled at the elder for a minute before contemplating on what was just said. Pursing his lips, he took a step back with a face that screamed defeat. “Yes, chief.” He mumbles.

“Good. Now ___,” The attention was once again placed on you. “We don’t have much time. Get out there and find out what that son of a bitch is thinking.”

“Yes, chief.”

“But listen, this man knows your name meaning it’s safe to say he knows your identity. He’s smart and he’s dangerous. Don’t get caught in any of his traps. We’ll be listening from the other side of the wall so if you feel like something’s off, signal us at any time, alright?”

His order had all the men in the room frowning for different reasons. Jimin had on his usual concerned face and even Sarge seemed worried. The thought of any stranger knowing your identity terrified you. But these were the last people on earth you would tell that to. You paid their disturbed expressions no mind as you nodded in determination, pulling your posture straight and holding your head up high.

“Yes, chief.”

You clench the file towards your chest.

There was an unsettling feeling you felt standing outside the door of interrogation room 4. Same one you had felt the first time you became a detective and were ordered to interrogate some big burly guy who had slashed his ex-girlfriend’s tires. Even though you thought you had left your past behind, here it was, surrounding you in an uncomfortable heat. This wasn’t just some petty thief who robbed a local convenience store or some middle-aged man who tried to choke his wife to death.

No. This was much, much bigger than that.

Jeon Jungkook, also known as JJK was a notorious hitman with several successful operations carried out around the world. In Washington, Libya, Hong Kong, Brazil and even Rome. He made the most wanted list when he was only 19 and was infamous for getting the job done. None of the men in his list survived…ever. Not only was he a perfectionist in his handiwork but also knew how to deal with the preparation.

A master of weapons; he could operate a H&K P7 in his sleep and take down 10 operatives with a single combat knife. His knowledge of artillery made him a big deal amongst the triads so setting up a little side business as a black arms dealer was a walk in the park for him. He was strong, fast, smart and feared. Not even the finest could catch him and at times months would go on by without a sighting.

Yet suddenly…he was just behind this door.

And who did he desperately want to see?

You.

By name.

Of all people.

Now you consider yourself a logical person. Someone guided by intellect before anything else. You did the math, worked on the equation, pondered on the systematics but nothing clicked. Nothing. There was absolutely no reason for someone like him to want to meet you but then again, the whole situation was the strangest fucking thing you’ve seen.

Surrendering at an abandoned mill in your jurisdiction would be the last place you’d think Jeon Jungkook would be captured. In your mind, his destiny was meant to end on a grander scale at the edge of the world. Some Hollywood theatrical-like bullshit where they would have him cornered on some rooftop with multiple choppers and snipers ready to take him down. This however – the threatening but anticlimactic atmosphere… it didn’t make any sense. Not for someone as careful and calculated as Jungkook.

For some reason, it just felt like he was waiting on something…something big to happen. A sensation of doom coursed throughout your body. Everything about today felt wrong. Like you and your colleagues were caught right in his talons.

By far, the most bizarre part about the situation was how he knew your name and you. You’ve always kept such a lowkey profile, it just didn’t make any sense.

“___?” The sound of your name startles you and you whip towards your side to see your partner dressed in his usual face of worry. “You alright?”

“…I’m good.” You choke out, trying to sound as lucid as possible.

It doesn’t seem to convince him however as he tilts his head and frowns at you.

“Listen, if you don’t want to talk to him, you don’t have to. Chief shouldn’t have pushed you into this bullshit – why do we even have to listen to what a criminal wants anyway? I-”

“Jimin, calm down. I’m fine.”

“Bu-”

“Your mollycoddling doesn’t help as much as you think it does, Park.”

Your words seem to have surprised him, his stubborn expression morphing into denial.

“That’s…I didn’t mean…”

You shut your tired eyes, feeling bad about the way you spoke to your only friend at the station. This is exactly why everyone thought you were way too rigid and unapproachable. Jimin however was too much of a nice guy, always going out of his way to make friendly with you. It always made you wonder – why would a well-liked, popular and talented guy such as Jimin want to hang around you or even ask the chief to be your partner? Maybe it was pity he felt for you.

That feeling was not something you desired. It left a nauseous impression down your throat. All you wanted was to do your job the best you could, go home, take your pills and sleep your days away. You didn’t want anyone’s kindness or company, you just wanted it to be over. Park Jimin’s sincerity was a hindrance.

“I’m sorry it’s just…I’m real tired of getting treated like this. I get it, I’m a woman and somehow that means I’m a less than, a cause for concern or just a fucking HR liability. I fucking get it without every single one of you reminding me every damn day.”

“You know that’s not what I meant, ___.” Jimin stares at you apologetically

“Then please, Jimin. Let me do my job.” You hold his stare until he eventually sighs, giving you a nod and retreating.

Once he walks away, you let out a shaky exhale, reaching towards the door handle with trembling fingers. Get it together, you whisper to yourself. After all the tough talk, the truth was you weren’t ready. You were scared shitless. Maybe Hyun was right about you.

Maybe your father was.

Drowning out every negative thought, you turn the door handle and push the door open.

You were immediately greeted by the usual silent man on the interrogation chair. His dark orbs were soundlessly watching the wall ahead of him. When you step into the room, he turns his head to look at you. Once he notices you, he instantly breaks out into a smirk. Clenching your file harder, you physically stop yourself from shivering.

You had seen him before, in blurry internet sightings and news coverages. But never up close and personal…and never smiling. It was like you entered a whole different world; the room you were pretty familiar with felt like a surreal fantasy. He was drop dead gorgeous. Lethal, you could say. His face was round, and features were sharp. A prominent nose, pink lips, sharp jaw and intense, smoldering eyes. Midnight black hair shyly covered his temple as he sat upright and confident in his chair.

He was dressed rather casually – a dark blue denim jacket that molded around his muscles and black top that covered his long neck. Tight fitted black pants that were ripped at the knees, displaying his thick, strong thighs and the heaviest leather boots you’ve ever seen. His hands were cuffed to the table so everyone can see them at all times. All he did was sit still but somehow commanded your whole attention. You gulped involuntarily at the sight before you.

You’ve never seen a man more comfortable in his own skin.

When he notices you ogling, he raises a brow in amusement. It alarms you, your eyes shooting to the large mirror on the other side of the wall. They were probably watching you…waiting for you to mess up.

Not wanting to throw them anymore bones, you clear your throat. Walking in and sitting down opposite to Jungkook. You don’t give him the time of day, pretend not to notice his bottomless orbs following your every move as you flip the file open a couple pages. As you continue to ignore him, you swear you could hear him tsk under his breath.

“So… Jeon Jungkook. Aged 23. Professional hitman. Side arms dealer. Wanted by the CIA, FSB, NSA and the Navy seals. Says here you’ve pissed off a lot of people, Jungkook.”

This was routine. The lighthearted police tone you always used. Very rarely would officers come off strongly when interrogating perps unless they were fucking morons. It was better if everyone just cooperated like this was an elementary school’s playground and none of the children got violent. Perps had to feel comfortable enough to spill it all. Being approachable, calm and levelheaded was normal for an efficient detective.

It was normal.

But it didn’t feel normal. You found yourself cringing at your voice, at the way you spoke. Your words felt so out of place and awkward. For some reason, you were hyper aware of everything you were doing. Maybe it was because you were under Jungkook’s extremely scrutinizing gaze or maybe because you knew Hyun was probably sounding out some sarcastic remarks about your abilities behind that mirror. Whatever it was, you didn’t feel good. Yet you continued on like everything was fine.

“You’ve been quite the busy boy, haven’t you?” You continue on, flipping through the file and swallowing the uneasiness.

“Like you wouldn’t believe, doll.”

His pet name for you stops you in your tracks. In the middle of turning a page that hung in midair. Slowly, you look up at him from beneath your lashes and he has on that same damn smirk. Stress-free posture and concentrated gaze. Looks like he was comfortable.

“…Really? Mind telling me about it?”

He continues to stare at you for a moment before letting out a humorous sigh. Jungkook leans forward, resting his elbows on the table and rolling his tongue in his cheek.

“What would you like to know?”

“Whatever you have for me.” You reply back, leaning in and using in the same low tone he used. Mirroring the suspect, playing the game. No matter how shaken you were, you knew how to do your job.

Another smirk appears on his face before he props back on his chair.

“Mhmm, I don’t know how much I can tell you doll. We all have secrets you see, we all got someone to fool. Like you right now.”

As his words settle in, you become confused. And by the way he chuckles, you know he can see it.

“That face you have on, that cute look of determination. Flipping through those pages like you’re learning something new about me. Something that I myself might not know. Like you didn’t already memorize it front to back, way before you came in here...those eyes that are desperately trying to win us over…like you have so much to prove still.”

You were thrown off. The way he unflinchingly delivered his speech in the most persuasive way. There was a certain way you had expected this to go in your mind, a certain power your brain gave you over him but now you realize all your thoughts were dust. In reality, you couldn’t comprehend what the fuck he was going on about which gave him the upper hand.

Thus, you looked into his eyes for an answer. Genuine eyes that shone as clear as day. It made you realize that he had nothing to hide. There was nothing he was trying to erase.

It left you speechless.

Your face must have been very obvious because next thing you knew, he was answering the question that lingered your thoughts.

“Your uncertainty gives you away. I guess it’d be present in anyone who’s constantly been made to feel inferior. All your life, you’ve had to go above and beyond to be considered half as good as your colleagues with dicks. No matter how much pain and humiliation you’ve endured, everyone expects more from you. It would drive anyone mad.” He moves in further, practically whispering at this point. “It could make anyone commit sinful acts.”

“…sinful?”

“My mother used to tell me about them,” He relaxes back in his chair, “…before she left that is. She was big on religion so she’d tell me all about these people who did bad deeds- sinner, she would call them. She’d go on and on about how they look and how they act. How they don’t have a place in this world amongst the good, non-sinners. We’d know exactly how to identify them, wouldn’t we doll?”

In the bright center of interrogation room 4, your pools were glued on the stranger that knew too much but let on too little. Jungkook was the one in cuffs, but you were the one who was starting to feel trapped.

“You don’t know me. We’re not the same.” You said out loud.

He turns silent for a moment, before grinning. “I think we’re more alike than you are aware of, detective.”

“Don’t fall for any of his traps.”

“W-” You swallow, “We’re not here to talk about me…”

You tried sounding as rational and self-assured as before, but your voice was barely above a murmur. And after you spoke, he smiled. His smile was way too innocent compared to who you knew he was.

“So, you want to know about me?” He chuckled “What do you want to know?

This was your chance, you thought, surprised at how easily he seemed to be ready to change the subject matter. You began flipping through the folder nonchalantly again, trying to get back on track.

“How about you start at the mill. Who were you meeting with so early in the day, Jungkook?”

Suddenly, his eyes darken and the look on his face becomes sinister, but that smile never falls. You couldn’t help but shift in your seat at his unexpected gaze.

“If you really want to know about everything that led up to this morning…then we’d have to look back quite a bit. Maybe back years ago…to a kid whose mother was never around and whose father beat the living shit out of him twice a day.”

He throws his head back and breaks out into a laugh at your unimpressed face. You were all ears but the last thing you wanted to do was spend an uncomfortable hour or two in here. The man creeped you out, so if he could just hurry up and get on with it, maybe you could go finish your nap and forget about today.

“Okay, okay, hah,” He sits back up straight, trying to conceal his laughter, “We don’t have to go that far back, but yeah this kid had it hard. But he was never one of those cucks. As he grew older, he couldn’t just sit there and take it. No…it wasn’t like that for him…he had to fight back, and he did fight for what he could, no matter what it took. He-”

“Open this fucking door you little freak!”

The door’s pounding shook the whole room. His anxiety was through the roof as he watched the weak wood quiver each time the monster banged against it. It could break at any moment now and he was afraid. He always, always acted tough. Always fought back the best he could. But the truth was that he was just a skinny teenaged brat.

He didn’t want to fight. He wasn’t built for it.

“Fuck off!” The kid tried to sound as menacing as possible, but it came out a pathetic whimper and only seemed to anger the man on the other side of the locked door even further.

It was hilarious really; the kid couldn’t help but leak tears. He hadn’t eaten in days, it was his 4th beating of the week – he felt lightheaded and his body was on fire. All he wanted in that moment as he clenched his fists over his ears inside the dark bathroom was for the door to stay strong. For anyone to help him.

But as the lock broke and the wood let out a heinous whine and he was hit with sudden light and a large shadow, he realized circumstances do not work in your favor when you stand there and do nothing. And the moment he understood that, was the moment his life was about to drastically change. More accurately, the very next week.

When you entered his life.

“So- Jeon Jungkook, age 16, failing high school student…written up 4 times, visited juvie twice. Now, tell me why you beat up that kid, Jeon?” You stood up straight, writing away mindlessly in your small notebook.

The kid did nothing but stare at you through his bruised eye and busted lip, while he sat on the edge of your desk. It wasn’t his first time dealing with the cops and something inside him always knew it wouldn’t be his last. When you didn’t hear his answer, you huffed, looking up at him from the pages between your fingers.

“Well? I don’t have all night you know. I could just lock you in.”

He smirked. It was easy to tell you were new, he noticed as soon as you walked in and were told to book him by the guy who arrested him. Your uniform had been pressed with great care, not one hair was out of place and your badge was polished and perfectly positioned. It felt like you just came out of one of those corny films about the ‘good’ cops; fighting crime for justice and truth. The kid was even younger than he was at that moment when he realized just how full of bullshit that trope was.

One glance around the room, at the other pigs in uniform and he knew you had just gotten the job. That your spirits hadn’t been crushed unlike these soulless bodies wandering the station’s premises.

That was the best quality about the kid, he had always been observant. A lot more than his peers or even the adults in his life. He could tell a great deal about you at one glance. You seemed jittery and nervous, trying to write as neatly as possible. It felt like you were trying to get someone’s attention – a high ranking older officer, who you kept observing from the corner of your eye. As the kid watched that man chortle with his equally dull colleagues, he thought there was a resemblance in you both, but that there also wasn’t.

“Then why don’t you?” The kid replied a bit too sarcastically, wanting this to be over with as quickly as possible so maybe he could get some sleep for the first time in 3 days. It would do him a lot of good actually, being away from that house for a little while. Subtly, he was pleading.

“Look kid,” You grimaced, “I know that guy you beat up, he’s a racist little shit. He probably did something to you, I’m sure or you wouldn’t carry so many self-defense wounds along your hands. There might be some way I could help you; I want to help you. But only if you tell me what really happened, alright?”

It was silent just then. He was silent.

“I want to help you.”

He was expecting you to reprimand him for his smart mouth and then lock him up. That’s what anyone who took one glance at his file did. It was filled with crap about him, shit that they peered their nose over because they were so much better than him. The kid never trusted adults; they never did anything for him. He was the child that everyone discriminated against to remind themselves how lucky they were. At least my child’s not like that, is what they all thought. No one cared about his side of the story. No one but…you.

Your answer was something that caught him off guard for the first time in years.

“Why do you want to help me? I’m a criminal.”

“Oh yeah, you got a record,” You reply casually, flipping through your notes, “I glanced over it, it’s all for stealing food.”

Suddenly you became quiet. Taking a step back, you begin to study him up and down from where he sat.

“Is… is your dad not feeding you?”

Your gaze shifted further into concern and he held his breath. He’s never seen those eyes before on anyone – never for him. Shit, his own mother never looked at him like that. Like she felt something for him. Not even when the bitch ran off with the neighbor and left him with that monster – young, weak and helpless.

Having someone worry about him made him feel strange, his whole body broke out into a quiver and his eyes watered. That kid could see himself in the reflection of your eyes that had widened dramatically at the change in his demeanor. And he tried to stop himself but for some reason, he wanted you to worry about him.

“Uh- I..wai- don’t cry-'' Flustered, you scrambled around, trying to find a tissue. You were new at the job and you weren’t used to people breaking apart yet. Everyone around you seemed so busy, hustling around the station like they didn’t see a teenage boy in the start of a mental breakdown…that or they didn’t care. Finally, you grab the handkerchief your mom had stuffed inside your uniform pocket and carefully hold it out for him.

But you drop it in a flash when you witness him get struck across the face the very next instant.

“YOU FUCKING TROUBLESOME BRAT!”

You flinched at the loud, unforgiving voice that resounded throughout the station. Everyone instantly went noiseless and it felt like the station just halted for the first time in years. All you could hear were the lingering ringing of phones.

“How many times have I warned you not to make trouble? You’re a disgrace!” The man spit into the kid’s face. He was tall, maybe 6’2, and muscular compared to the teenager but stood unevenly, favoring his left foot and walked with a limp. His face bore a scar on the cheek that was partially covered with a jungle of facial hair. His eyes seemed insane with anger and he reeked of hard liquor. You had to remind yourself that you had a taser in your holster.

Slowly, you looked back at the kid whose fringe covered his eyes. He hadn’t moved an inch since the man slapped his face. A large red handprint on his already wounded skin. It pulled at your heartstrings.

“S-sir?” You cleared your throat to which the crazy man turned his sneer towards you. But you couldn’t let that faze you. “You can’t just hit a child like that, I need you to back away.”

That was the best you could do at sounding confident, but your strength wavered as soon as the man took a step towards you.

“You trying to tell me how to raise my son, girlie?”

The scent of alcohol clouded your senses. You opened and closed your mouth like a fish. Your body started trembling, but you still tried to stand your ground until-

“Jeon!”

Another loud voice interrupts you. This time though, you recognized that voice. Your dad steps between you and the snarling man and you almost cry out of relief. You gape at both of the men in awe, staring one another down. The tension wraps around your throat and you worry for the kid behind all of this. If a brawl breaks out, he’s likely to get injured…

For a second you tried peeking back at your desk over your dad’s shoulder, until you hear sudden robust laughter in front of you.

What the fuck?

“You son of a bitch, how’ve you been?” Your father daps his hand with the terrifying man and your face morphs into confusion.

The demeanor and the whole damn atmosphere between the men changed, just like that. All the suffocating animosity had vanished in an instant as if it never existed, which left you dumbstruck and standstill.

“I’ve been good you dick. You’re a lieutenant now, I see. No wonder I haven’t seen you around the parlor much.” The guy cackles loudly, making you cringe at his rotten teeth and bad breath.

“Ahh~ You know, the old ball and chain.” Your father so kindly refers to your mother, “Heh, actually I’m a sober man now! My oldest just became an officer like her father a month ago.” He moves to your side to pat you on the shoulder. You freeze under his touch and your wide pupils flicker between him and Jeon who took a newfound interest in you.

In any other instance, you would have been ecstatic to have your father compliment you. But right now, your brain had a hard time processing everything and you kept glancing at the stoic kid.

“This one yours?” The man smirks, eyeing you up and down in a disturbing way. You almost tasered him then and there. “She’s a bit noisy, isn’t she?”

Your dad laughs louder than before while you clench your fist.

“Relax, she’s just a kid – a whole rookie. She doesn’t know how all this works yet.”

You try not to grimace at his words. Here you were hoping he would have believed in you a bit more if you received a perfect score on the academy’s exam.

As his laughter dies down, your dad looks off to the side, just behind the giant man and raises his eyebrow. “And I take it this one’s yours?”

Jeon sighs, ruffling his hair with his calloused fingers. “Sadly. The kid’s a lost cause, ___. They can’t all be like your pretty little daughter. Every damn day hurting someone, busting balls, messing with the other kids…stealing. Just…you know after his mother left…”

He becomes mute suddenly. Staring at the ground in great concentration like he just got too emotional. Funny, you saw that look in another man last week. A man who lied about not murdering his wife. You tsk under your breath and look back at the kid, almost jumping out of your skin when you catch him staring right at you from where he sat. No more vulnerability in his young eyes. They were once again making the same hardened expression you saw when he first walked in here. Something felt very off.

Your attention flies back to the taller men when you feel your father shift towards the older Jeon.

“I understand.” He states sympathetically, placing a hand on his shoulder for comfort. “Take him home…”

It took you a second to snap out of your mute state.

“But dad, he-”

“Let them go, ___. This man here,” He signals at the guy, “He used to be one of the greatest and most respected officers of his time. Spent his best years serving. It’s the least he deserves. It’s alright.”

“No that’s not- Dad!” You begin flipping through your notebook, trying to show your father your notes, “Look at the kid’s fingers and arms! His face! He looks malnourished and some of those wounds look old- and- and this man’s obviously drunk and agressi-”

“___!” Your father shouts in rage, effectively shutting you up. “This is a command from your direct superior! They’re leaving.”

“But-”

At that moment he menacingly leans in, close enough to breathe in your ear.

“Don’t embarrass me further, child.” He whispers with pure venom.

And just like that, all the fight in you leaves. Your shoulders slump and head falls to the floor. There were tiny needles poking you everywhere and your face felt hot – ashamed. His words ring inside your head like a mantra and you want to just run away and hide.

All you did was disappoint him.

Your dad apologizes for you and the next thing you hear is the man grabbing the kid by the arm and you couldn’t help but physically wince at how much pain he would be in at the moment. He staggers out of earshot and you do nothing but look at the ground. How could you possibly face the kid now? After you told him you’d help him.

Because of that you don’t notice anything. You don’t notice the fact that your handkerchief was no longer on the floor. Nor do you notice the kid’s eyes which stayed on you the whole time he was being dragged out of the building.

You sat there, speechless.

Jungkook tilted his head, softening his gaze at your shaken form.

“He looked at you the whole time after that. Only you…but you never noticed.”

You on the other hand couldn’t hear shit he was saying. All you could think about was that vague, really fucking vague memory you had of the moment he described. Your mind was everywhere, on your father, on his father, on that event that you ended up failing to recall somehow, at your conversation with the chief earlier.

“All he had on him was an old handkerchief.”

How does someone process this? How did you forget this? There were countless of cases you’ve dealt with before, so many unusual moments that you just began throwing them out of your head for your very own sanity. That was the truth, but would anyone believe you? Jeon Jungkook was from your old hometown. Jeon Jungkook was someone you almost booked before. Jeon Jungkook was not someone who could’ve been forgotten. You, no longer in control of your facial expression, glance over at the mirror in horror. Would the chief actually think you lied?

In the back of your mind, you knew the real reason you chose to leave all the memories of your past behind – suppress them down and drown them out. But that information wasn’t something you could reveal to anyone. Ever. The one thing you were told to do was not fall into his trap, yet here you are. Your mind was a mess, which meant there was no way you could have the advantage in this situation, and you were no longer fit to interrogate him. Desperate and anxious, you place your palm on your forehead like you were in deep thought. In reality, that was the signal. You wanted to escape this place.

Jungkook glares at the side of your face, getting angrier the more you ignore him. Today was supposed to be different, his one free day where he could finally get you to notice him. And there you sat, still not looking his way. Didn’t you know you didn’t need to worry about anyone else when he was right here?

“Doll.” He practically sneers but then simmers down and smiles when you finally turn back to him – all wide eyed.

“I wanted to thank you.” He continues, “Because that day changed me forever…”

You said nothing. Wondering why the men on the other side were taking so long. He took your silence as a chance to finish his story.

“I took my beating…took all of it and said nothing. Broke my rib and wrangled my neck but I said nothing. He was drunk, so I waited for him to tire himself out…waited till he passed out on that fucking couch. Then I strangled him…with that very piece of cloth you gave me.”

This has got to be some fucking nightmare.

“And it felt really good.” His voice slightly waivered, “To watch him turn red and struggle, to watch that bastard’s life leave his eyes while in return he saw me become his demise.” He stops rambling suddenly as if recalling where he was, “Within a span of 8 minutes…I became a criminal for killing the monster who tortured me every single day. I was a sinner. I hit rock bottom. And once you’re there, it takes a lot of blood, sweat and tears to climb back up to the top.”

As you heard him rant on, your mind started to drift off. For some reason, once you slowly start to remember that tethered kid, you felt something you haven’t felt for a while. Sympathy? Sadness? Or were you just reminiscing about who you were back then. The bright young woman who had a lot to offer the world. You shake your head, looking down at the table. That girl was dead, you chose to forget her and went along with whatever life threw at you.

Your father was right to criticize your soft heart and if he were alive today you were sure he wouldn’t be able to identify you. No longer were you that naïve child who stubbornly believed that there was good in this world – in its people. It didn’t matter to you the reasons why someone committed a crime – criminals were just labeled orange jumpsuits. Jungkook had met a completely different person back then, not you.

Then why did your chest ache this much?

“J…Jungkook…I…didn’t remember…”

“I know,” He states ensuringly, making you look back up at him, “You left your past behind, after all.”

Suddenly, all the color left your face. Your heart started beating faster and you broke out into a cold sweat. You faintly thought you heard a bang behind the mirror, but you didn’t care. For the first time since you got here, your whole attention was solely on Jungkook.

It made him so happy.

“W-what…”

“It hurt when you transferred, leaving a big hole in my already impoverished life. But I understood your reasons. How can someone stay after such an incident?”

He knows.

“H-H…How did you know…”

“Oh, I know everything about you, doll.” His sinister smirk reappeared as he relaxed back into his chair and you pursed your lips as you felt an oncoming panic attack.

He knows, he knows, he knows, he-

“I know your dad wanted a son. I know that it kills you inside to never get the respect you deserve no matter what you do and even the men who claim to respect you patronize you in subtly conditioned ways. I know what your favorite food is. I know how much you love whiskey. I know you’re wearing those red panties that I fucking love on you.” He takes a breath as you let out an involuntary gasp, “And I know it was an accident.”

The first tear fell down your cheek. Shock, anger, fear? None of it mattered anymore; it was useless to pretend. You knew he knew. It was over. He stared at you in pity, like seeing you cry made him hurt.

“How could he not want someone as beautiful as you, doll?” Jungkook whispers, as if he couldn’t believe it himself.

“I wanted…to be the best for him…I tried…” Your voice strains

“I know you did. I know. Which is why you had no choice…”

In an instant, it all comes crashing back.

You drove down the lane a bit too clumsily, as you took the long way home.

It was almost midnight and you were speeding past 80 on a two-way lane off a cliffside road, but you didn’t give a single fuck. Your smashed mind was preoccupied at the moment.

A whole year had gone by, but your dad still hadn’t given you an ounce of trust he had for the other officers. Your dad – the fucking police lieutenant. You told him – you warned him that the man was armed, but he still charged in blind, without back up. Almost got the rest of the family members killed by doing something so crazy and careless.

Then he blamed you for not following his lead when he came out.

The tears came out faster than you could wipe them. Growing up in that home was horror. Him being on the force somehow also made him a conservative, self-righteous douchebag. Berating you for the way you’d dress, the way you ate, the way you talked to the way you styled your hair. It made you sick.

You tried so desperately to win over your own father’s love and approval from such a young age and you had nothing to show for it. Deep down, you knew it was because he wanted a boy. A boy who could become a cop like him. And a part of you thought that maybe if you became a cop anyway – one as respected and admired as he was, then he would finally admit he was wrong. At the very least he could finally tell you how proud he was of you.

You went to such lengths to spend the year being the best damn officer your town had seen. 26 arrests, 1 successful drug raid, multiple successful testimonies and extensive gang knowledge. As a plus, you had become beloved in the community. That took the most effort – you had to look the prettiest even while overworking yourself with double shifts. Be traditional and confident but not an overbearing prude. And never let the ‘unnatural’ masculine traits your job gave you, overpower your ‘natural’ feminine ones. Sounds completely simple doesn’t it? Now everyone praised you right and left. It was record breaking; you were the shit.

Yet he still wouldn’t refer to you as detective.

It broke you apart. You were at the end of your wits. Out excelling every male peer in your force. But you had zero to show for it. Which means all your efforts were for nothing.

The pain in your chest got heavier by the minute which made you whimper. Tonight, you had drunk yourself silly but not enough to take away the ache. To help yourself along, you grabbed the half-empty bottle laying in the driver’s seat in a swift motion and popped it open. Your car entered the opposite lane without your knowledge.

You chugged down the last of the bitter liquor, smashing the bottle against the driver’s side window. The anger still remained as you wiped the remnants of alcohol away from your mouth. Your vision was hazy, and you felt so pathetic – dirty, disgusting, like you were rotting from the inside. All you ever wanted to do was earn your father’s acceptance, so much so that you lost sense of any individuality you had left in you.

For a second, everything was so still and quiet, that it felt like all would be okay. The night was dark but serene.

But that tranquility vanished the instant you witnessed two bright lights closing in on you.

It all happened too quickly. You immediately swerved to your right, a loud honking and the friction of tires blasting through your ears. Years of practice and one whole one of police chases makes your instincts faster than normal and you immediately apply the clutch as your foot floors the break and you grip the handle sturdy. Your car rotates haphazardly to the right, but you were able to come to a complete halt before your front engine crashed into a tree.

Yet it feels like you did just that as your body lunges forward and the sounds of a car smashing against shrubs pierces through your ears. You were thankful you had your seat-belt on so you didn’t go flying out the windshield, but all you could think about was the immense pressure against the front of your body. The whiplash left you in shock for a couple seconds.

“Fuck.” You breathe out in agony, bringing your arm up to your sprained shoulder.

As you gather yourself together, you finally remember your surroundings and your head whips to the opposite end of the road to where you finally spot the car you almost hit. In the disoriented dark, you really had to strain into the distance. The car hadn’t been as lucky as yours as it thrashed towards the cliff side of the road. Seemed like it was laid halfway out on the edge. A non-threatening, old compact SUV – most likely a family car. Possibly children present. You could hear them screaming.

Fuck.

You had to help them as quickly as you could. But the instant you tried stepping out, you saw the gleam of a bottle under the driver’s seat.

And just like that, your body fell limp. Because you were more sober now than you’ve ever been in any moment of your life, you barely remembered…you were drunk.

All of the pain in your body immediately changed into fear – your eyes became wide and your pores leaked sweat.

You were drinking.

If you get out to help them, they were bound to smell the alcohol. If they’re able to identify you…if the police are called-

Everything would end tonight. Your career would be over, your family’s name will be dragged through the mud publicly and your father-

Your father would never forgive you. He’d never speak to you again. You’d be disowned.

Don’t embarrass me further, child.

Don’t embarrass me further, c̴h̶i̵l̴d̶

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“NO!” You shout, covering your ears with your palm to drown out his scalding voice.

Jungkook finally stopped talking, watching you cave into yourself on the chair in front of him. He would’ve done something if his hands weren’t tied down to the table. You looked so fragile and pained, it reminded him of himself in those days. This was the very look you had on after your father whispered something to you all those years ago. As he thought, he was always right about you.

You both were the same.

“_-”

“Shut up!” You scream, clenching your eyes shut and trying to erase the image of the car from your mind. “Just shut the fuck up!”

“You had no choice, ___.” He continued, his voice softer than before, “You had to drive off.”

“No I…” You look back up at the man in front of you through hard blurry tears, trying not to choke on your words. “I didn’t mean it…I didn’t- I promise dad…I did- i-it was an accident…”

“___...I know. It was you father who broke your spirit. It was the world that crushed your soul. They drove you mad, doll. They made you a sinner.”

You say nothing as the tears continue to fall, getting lost inside his bottomless pools.

“You drove off and left the family there. But he didn’t.”

He?

“That kid you never noticed…the kid who would’ve done anything for you.”

His response further tethers you into confusion. You furrow your eyebrows, not understanding what he was trying to say.

“That kid who only looked at you. He was right behind you that night.”

You feel a shiver crawl up your spine.

The kid was only slightly older and less miserable that night.

He was involved with every bad name in that town, aka his late father’s acquaintances. They provided him a new shelter, transportation and a means to earn food, as long as he did their bidding. Crime was a lot more organized than he would have ever thought. It was a hard life, but he was learning to survive. Committing small acts here and there for big games. No longer was he some petty thief who stole in desperation, he was a kid with so much blood on his hands that he couldn’t even stand looking at them

There were nights where he would have these dreams about ruling over an empire, of being feared and respected and every time he took a life, those dreams seemed closer to his bloody grasp. Although he hated taking orders, he became obedient to the never-ending pain. There was nothing he wouldn’t do to move up the ladder, but it would be a while till he could see a light.

Throughout this struggling livelihood, he did have one small, precious source of sun in his life. You.

Anytime he could, he would come watch you. Sometimes just small glimpses to get him through the day. Watching you on a stake out, prance around town, or just lounge about in your room. It was the most dangerous thing he did since you were a cop. Every time he went to you, he risked everything, but he was extra careful. There were times where he almost got caught, like the time he was masturbating in your bushes as you walked around with a towel on – don’t look so disgusted, he was just a dumb kid – but thankfully you never did find him. On the contrary, you helped him build all the stealth he’d need for his future.

In some ways, he thought of you as the better half of him. A person whose existence was nothing but a cause for regret, yet you didn’t let that corrupt you, unlike him. You were better than him – righteous and kind. Deep down inside, you were who he wanted to be.

Now that he was free of that monster’s grasp, he would imagine walking up to you as a free kid man. Wondering if you would remember him. He didn’t know what he would say, if there was anything at all he could have told you. It was a yearning he didn’t understand, he was just too young and unsettled.

The kid was content with watching you from far away because he knew he wasn’t worthy of you. It still didn’t stop him from being utterly in love with the thought of you alone.

That night he saw you leave the station. He observed you outside the bar’s window getting wasted. There was a strange feeling he had that night as you left a drunk mess, stumbling towards your 2012 Hyundai Accent and rushing out of the parking lot. The kid would soon learn to always trust his instincts.

He was driving right behind you, making sure he kept his distance. You were one hell of an officer, no doubt. Nevertheless, you were too out of it that night to tell anyone was tailing you. It all happened too quickly. The clumsy driving, the crash, and the aftermath. His heart almost jumped out of his chest when he saw you skid, pressing his own break as hard as he could. But you were able to stop before you crashed into anything, much to his relief.

The kid was trying to think about what he could do. You weren’t too hurt, were you? Should he come out and help you? He didn’t even care about the other car, just observing you in the far distance. As he continued to think, he decided he would come out and see if there was any way he could help you.

And as soon as he clicked his door open, he watched you do something he never would have imagined.

He saw you drive off.

It took a minute to realize what just happened. And the kid had always been observant, so he knew exactly what you were thinking. For the first time that night, he looked over at the other car.

These people could destroy you. Everything you have worked so hard for. He knew exactly why you had to leave. But he couldn’t do something like that. The kid had to help you, just like you did for him at one point.

So, he did the only thing he knew how. He drove up to the edge where their car hanged halfway. There were people yelling from inside, he could hear children. The car began blaring their horn as soon as they saw him drive up.

He drove up really close, close enough that his bumper banged against theirs.

Your mind was a blank state.

“He pushed them off.” Jungkook finishes off calmly.

You let out the breath you were holding, your bottom lip quivering softly. “Is…is that why-”

“Yeah. That’s why when you came back a minute later…they were gone.”

They were gone. Everything was as clear as day. You remember driving off, rushing even harder than before as you cried your heart out. It was such a stupid and rash decision – so fucking stupid. Half a minute later, you stepped on the break once again. As your car came to a halt, all you could hear were your sobs and the immobile engine. Your body hurt, everything hurt so, so, so much.

Was it worth it? Is gaining your father’s love worth killing someone over? Slowly, you glanced at the rear view mirror. Looking at the girl with swollen eyes. She wasn’t someone you recognized. The promise to serve and protect rings in your ears. All you were in this moment, was a hypocrite. You didn’t deserve anyone’s praise if this was your reality, you didn’t deserve anyone’s pity.

It was really dark out, and you found the slightest comfort in the world’s shadow. You bit your bottom lip, trying to stop your tears. It didn’t work – it was useless. All worth nothing.

Which is why you screamed out on the top of your lungs, banged your fists against the wheel before turning your car back around.

No matter what happens…you had to save them.

And you tried to. Within a minute, you were back where you before. But once you got there, that one place you’d never forget – those shrubs, the cliff, that road – they were gone. You got out, looking around, hoping that the family survived. The cliff itself was too high and the night was too dark to see below. Pulling at the strands of your hair, screaming out ‘hello?’, you appeared mad.

Till this day you don’t know if it was your gut instinct or an entity bigger than you that gave you a sign, if not the newspaper a few days later, you just knew they were dead. You fell to your knees – a broken woman. Not having any idea of those dark eyes that cried along with you that damned night.

Not until now.

Jungkook was the one who killed them, but how much does that change, really? It was still you who drove off, still you who left them in his hands. You were so deep in thought that you didn’t hear the sound of the interrogation room’s door cranking open. The man opposite you kept his eyes unflinchingly on you, waiting for this all to come to an end.

The last thing you felt was something heavy against the back of your head before you fell unconscious.

“Shit- that was so hard you bastard, I told you to use the chloroform shit.” Jungkook shouts at the man holding the gun’s handle.

“I couldn’t fucking find it, I told you that at the house, kid. Besides, she’s a big girl, she’ll be fine.” The man puts the barrel back in his holster before ripping his badge off his belt and throwing it aside.

“Shut the fuck up and uncuff me, Jimin.”

The blonde sighs, grabbing his keys from his back pocket.

“Tells me to infiltrate a police department, forces me to befriend and stalk some random cop girl, makes me hang out with those pigs. Fucking prick.” Jimin murmurs under his breath as he paces over and unlocks the shackles on said prick.

Jungkook winces, grabbing his wrist and twisting it around to get some circulation going. Then he stretches his neck before standing up and dusting his pants. Fuck, this chair was uncomfortable. He points at some fresh blood staining the elder’s chin, prompting him to wipe it off.

“So, what’s the situation outside?”

“Me and Kane took care of all of them. We took our time with Hyun, like you wanted. Now Kane’s waiting in the van for us.”

“Good.” Jungkook nods, looks like everything went according to plan. He glances over at your limp form and walks up to where you sat insentient. With a huff, he got on his knees so he could see your face up close, like he’s always wanted to.

“I can’t believe this day is here.”

Jimin looks between you both. “What are you gonna do with her?”

The younger cups your cheek. “You know I was ecstatic that night. I was…fuck, I never thought you could be with me. But that night, you proved that you were meant to be mine. And I waited so long for this moment. This moment where I could introduce myself to you as your equal. It’s why I was out on that mill this morning, detective. I wanted to meet you so much that it hurt.”

…That wasn’t an answer to his question but Jimin knew not to further bother his boss. There probably was a lot he had planned for you, but he wasn’t going to say it. No one ever really knew what this kid was thinking, anyway. He was a cryptic bastard.

Jungkook turns towards Jimin and extends his free hand out to him. Without being asked, Jimin reaches into his front pocket and pulls out the old handkerchief. His boss usually didn’t go this long without holding it. He places it into the younger’s hand without a word.

Turning back around, Jungkook places the cloth right underneath your shut eyes. He gently wipes away the tears leaking out.

“No one will ever hurt us again, doll.” Jungkook whispers before standing back up.

He places the handkerchief back in his own pocket and moves in to pick you up bridal style. Safely tucking you in his arms.

“Lead the way.” He orders Jimin who nods before opening the door of interrogation room 4.

___

This is absolute trash :))) I hope ya’ll enjoy tho. Lemme know what you thought, srsly because this fic stepped out of a certain comfort zone for me. I am absolutely open to part 2 if ya’ll want. if there is something you’re curious about, ask away.

#yandere bts #yandere jungkook #bts angst #jungkook angst #jungkook x reader #bts x reader #bts #jungkook #R:SIN

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aestheticallyunaesthetic17 · 3 years

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100 questions and answers

Who is your hero? Probably future me, i want to be able to grow up and be the better person that i hope they are, and the only way of knowing that is by making it happen.

If you could live anywhere, where would it be? New Zealand, Canada or USA. I lived in TX for 3 months and loved it there and I have family in NZ and Canada.

What is your biggest fear? Wasps, 100%. Not being stung but the way they look scares me.

What is your favorite family vacation? When we went to Krakow in Poland.

What would you change about yourself if you could? My skin color. I hate it so much.

What really makes you angry? People hating others or stopping others from being themselves.

What motivates you to work hard? To make future me happier than I am now.

What is your favorite thing about your career? I want to be in cabin crew, so probably the traveling.

What is your biggest complaint about your job? Being away from family.

What is your proudest accomplishment? Getting through the shit 2020 brought me without killing myself.

What is your child's proudest accomplishment? No kids rn.

What is your favorite book to read? Noughts and Crosses by Malorie Blackman

What makes you laugh the most? My boyfriend.

What was the last movie you went to? What did you think? Freaks. I was a bad movie, a little like the scary movies franchise. My friend was scared at parts which was super funny to watch

What did you want to be when you were small? An actor. Typical Leo ;)

What does your child want to be when he/she grows up? They can be anything they want to be.

If you could choose to do anything for a day, what would it be? Visit Edinburgh alone.

What is your favorite game or sport to watch and play? To watch, American Football. To play, archery.

Would you rather ride a bike, ride a horse, or drive a car? Drive a car, it's peaceful and warm. I would blast music.

What would you sing at Karaoke night? no idea.

What two radio stations do you listen to in the car the most? Heart and Capital

Which would you rather do: wash dishes, mow the lawn, clean the bathroom, or vacuum the house? Dishes or vacuum.

If you could hire someone to help you, would it be with cleaning, cooking, or yard work? Yard work!!!

If you could only eat one meal for the rest of your life, what would it be? Tandoori Prawn curry.

Who is your favorite author? Jacqueline Wilson or JK Rowling (only her books, not her)

Have you ever had a nickname? What is it? Just Em. But id like to be called Millie.

Do you like or dislike surprises? Why or why not? Depends on the surprise tbh, I like to plan a lot.

In the evening, would you rather play a game, visit a relative, watch a movie, or read? Watch a movie.

Would you rather vacation in Hawaii or Alaska, and why? Hawaii. I was meant to go this year but covid and leaving the US fucked it up.

Would you rather win the lottery or work at the perfect job? And why? Work the perfect job, id get bored sitting around all day.

Who would you want to be stranded with on a deserted island? my boyfriend.

If money was no object, what would you do all day? Travel and see the world.

If you could go back in time, what year would you travel to? 2012. To see my Nana again.

How would your friends describe you? Stupid.

What are your hobbies? Traveling, photography, music and shopping.

What is the best gift you have been given? Forgiveness from myself.

What is the worst gift you have received? Sixe XXL jacket when im an XS

Aside from necessities, what one thing could you not go a day without? My macbook.

List two pet peeves. - Breaking trust - Bad table manners

Where do you see yourself in five years? Hopefully working my dream job, maybe moved to a different country and traveling the world.

How many pairs of shoes do you own? too many, roughly 16

If you were a super-hero, what powers would you have? Invisibility or teleportation.

What would you do if you won the lottery? build my own house

What form of public transportation do you prefer? (air, boat, train, bus, car, etc.) Train, its so relaxing. Then planes.

What's your favorite zoo animal? Lions or tigers.

If you could go back in time to change one thing, what would it be? My time in America.

If you could share a meal with any 4 individuals, living or dead, who would they be? - My nana - my bf - Princess Diana - Obama

How many pillows do you sleep with? 4, two on each side.

What's the longest you've gone without sleep (and why)? 26 hours, traveling to Texarkana from Edinburgh.

What's the tallest building you've been to the top in? Idk tbh

Would you rather trade intelligence for looks or looks for intelligence? looks for intelligence because then you can earn enough for plastic surgery.

How often do you buy clothes? 1/2 a month

Have you ever had a secret admirer? Idk I guess so.

What's your favorite holiday? Summer vacation Christmas for an actual holiday

What's the most daring thing you've ever done? Moved half way across the world and lived with strangers.

What was the last thing you recorded on TV? Nothing

What was the last book you read? 1984

What's your favorite type of foreign food? Indian

Are you a clean or messy person? Both, but relatively clean

Who would you want to play you in a movie of your life? Millie Bobbie Brown probably

How long does it take you to get ready in the morning? 1 hour

What kitchen appliance do you use every day? Kettle

What's your favorite fast food chain? Chick fil A (i know, i cant buy it now tho)

What's your favorite family recipe? Nana's bacon and egg pie

Do you love or hate rollercoasters? LOVE

What's your favorite family tradition? Opening gifts on Christmas Eve

What is your favorite childhood memory? I dunno really, Ive forgotten a lot of my childhood.

What's your favorite movie? Ferris Bueller's Day Off or Beautiful Boy

How old were you when you learned Santa wasn't real? How did you find out? Probably 7/8 but I dont remember.

Is your glass half full or half empty? Half empty.

What's the craziest thing you’ve done in the name of love? Said i'd come back one day.

What three items would you take with you on a deserted island? A boat and food. Yes i am that person.

What was your favorite subject in school? Scottish school, geography. US school, government.

What's the most unusual thing you've ever eaten? Haggis

Do you collect anything? Foreign coins

Is there anything you wished would come back into fashion? Skinny jeans, my ass looks gooood in them

Are you an introvert or an extrovert? introvert that likes being sociable

Which of the five senses would you say is your strongest? hearing

Have you ever had a surprise party? (that was an actual surprise) nope

Are you related or distantly related to anyone famous? my dad is well know in the whisky business. Has his own prime tv show

What do you do to keep fit? Walk a lot and swim.

Does your family have a “motto” – spoken or unspoken? nope

If you were ruler of your own country what would be the first law you would introduce? everyone is equal.

Who was your favorite teacher in school and why? Scottish School, my geo teacher. US school, my english teacher.

What three things do you think of the most each day? My bf, my mum and America

If you had a warning label, what would yours say? Sad, angry and anxious

What song would you say best sums you up? 17 again

What celebrity would you like to meet at Starbucks for a cup of coffee? Timothee Chalamet or Tom Holland

Who was your first crush? a boy called Finlay who i rode the bus with

What's the most interesting thing you can see out of your office or kitchen window? sheep or cows very often

On a scale of 1-10 how funny would you say you are? 5

Where do you see yourself in 10 years? kids, married, settled down and happy. moved countries 100%

What was your first job? never had one

If you could join any past or current music group which would you want to join? 5sos

How many languages do you speak? 1 - english

What is your favorite family holiday tradition? opening gifts on Christmas Eve

Who is the most intelligent person you know? my mum

If you had to describe yourself as an animal, which one would it be? a cat probably or a tiger

What is one thing you will never do again? trust people fully

Who knows you the best? my bf.

#100 things about me #questions #100 questions

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tillidontneedfantasy · 4 years

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A Track-by-Track Breakdown of Taylor Swift’s 8th Studio Album: ‘folklore’

Taylor Swift’s 8th studio album, folklore, starts off with the lie, “I’m on some new shit.” Perhaps to someone who hasn’t been paying attention this would seem to be true. But to those listening, folklore is the essence of her skill and success throughout her entire career stripped down for all to see, but more refined, enhanced, and impressive than ever.

Even prior to her pop-world domination with 1989 (2014), Taylor’s storytelling ability has always been her most compelling strength as a writer. In 2010, she released her third album, Speak Now, penned fully solo to prove to the cynics that she does, in fact, write her own music. And it’s damn good. Widely considered her best song, “All Too Well” from Red (2012) is a five and a half minute epic about love had and lost, all in walks through autumn trees, almost running red lights, dancing round the kitchen, and a scarf reminiscent of innocence, unreturned.

Yet her pop prowess over the last six years perhaps leads to her storytelling being overlooked to those more focused on the music. There is a particular genius in writing a successful pop song, let alone three successful pop albums, that still has hard-hitting lyrics underneath the synth. Take the excellent “Cruel Summer” from Lover (2019) for example. The song is just under 3 minutes, and the production is so enthralling and infectious that it can take such a hold on you, you might miss the tale being told along with it about a fraught summer relationship that was actually just the beginning of her own love story.

But without the pop production, her stories on folklore demand attention. Swept up by a strong wave of creativity and inspiration, Swift secretly wrote and produced this album in around three months with Aaron Dessner of The National, one of Swift’s favorite bands, and long-time collaborator and friend Jack Antonoff. A surprise album is a new endeavor for Swift, as she generally spends months meticulously planning an album rollout. It is refreshing, and as a dedicated, long-time fan of Taylor, it is thrilling. Due to the album cover where she is standing in the woods, and the genre of the album itself, there have been think pieces regarding the “man in the woods” trope and what it means that Taylor seems to be embodying it. As a result of over-exposure, people are unable to stop focusing on her image and the way she presents herself. It’s understandable, as she is a very smart and deliberate businesswoman, and clearly cares about how she is perceived. But with this album, it is clear that none of that was at play. We are in the middle of a pandemic. Her mother has been battling cancer for years. Isolate a creative person in a dangerous world and they will dream up an escape. She understands more than ever how precious each moment is, and does not want to waste another one. The woods being the landscape for the photo-shoot is most likely attributed to the fact that it is the safest place to have one under these circumstances. She’s not pretending she removed herself from society and became enlightened, she didn’t dabble into a more alternative sound to prove anything; she is just sharing stories she wants to tell that she is proud of, and nothing more.

Of course the music of the album is important, but the lyrics are the heart of it all, and I wanted to focus on them. Upon its release, Taylor explained in a foreword that the album was a mixture of personal and fictional accounts. The beauty of stories is that once they are shared, they never live one single life; each person who consumes a story interprets it uniquely, and the story becomes a multiverse, with different meanings and outcomes than what initially drove the pen to the paper. As explained by Swift in a YouTube comment prior to the album’s release, three songs on the album are all one story, which she has dubbed “the teenage love triangle.” The three points of the triangle are “cardigan,” “august,” and “betty.” But if someone had not seen her say that, they might not have figured it out. Maybe they’d interpret each song as their own story, and connect it to their own. Taylor knows this. It is why she loves storytelling and is why she is so good at it. The album itself is a mirror ball, shimmering with every version of the stories being told, reflecting a bit of each person who listens. These are my interpretations, but they can mean whatever you make of them.

1. the 1 The melody of this song helps set the scene; picture yourself skipping rocks on a lake, reminiscing on the one that got away. “the 1” is about learning to assimilate into a life without them, resentfully accepting that they might be moving on, too. She ruminates on what went wrong and what could have been. In a very Swift fashion, she puts the blame on herself when she sings, “in my defense, I have none / for digging up the grave another time.” Perhaps this song is fictional, perhaps it’s a revisit of a past feeling or relationship, but its relatability makes it feel real and present. She searches for explanations, restraining herself from asking, “if one thing had been different, would everything be different today?” But it’s good she didn’t ask, because she’d never find the answer, anyway. Best lyric: “We never painted by the numbers, baby, but we were making it count / You know the greatest loves of all time are over now.”

2. cardigan (teenage love triangle, part 1: betty’s perspective) “When you are young they assume you know nothing,” Swift sings in her smooth low-register on this Lana del Rey-esque single. “But I knew everything when I was young,” she asserts. They say wisdom comes with age, but there is wisdom lost, too, of what it felt like to be young; but she has held onto it. In this track, the narrator (Betty) is looking back on her relationship with someone she once loved (James, as name-dropped in “betty” later on in the album). Her insight on his character was always spot on; she knew he’d try to kiss it better, change the ending, miss her once the thrill expired and come back, begging for her forgiveness in her front porch light. As soon as she was feeling forgotten, he made her feel wanted, his favorite. The ending in question is unclear, whether she granted him her forgiveness or not. But what is clear is Taylor’s understanding of the pull of young love, the intensity, the immortalization of all the smallest of details, the longing to be someone’s favorite. It’s why we look back on it so often, read stories and watch films about it, even as we grow old. It’s the cardigan we put back on when we want to be Peter Pan and remember what it was like to fly with Wendy. Best lyric: “You drew stars around my scars / but now I’m bleeding.”

3. the last great american dynasty The story of Rebekah Harkness and her destruction of the last great American dynasty, Standard Oil, is documented in this track, as each verse covers a different part of Rebekah’s life, going from a middle class divorcee to one of the wealthiest women in America by marrying into an empire. Swift paints Rebekah as an outcast, the Rhode Island town blaming her for her husband’s heart giving out. Rebekah used her inherited fortune on her ballet company, throwing lavish parties with her friends who went by the “Bitch Pack,” playing cards with Dali (Yes, as in Salvador Dali. It’s not clear if they actually played cards together, but her ashes were placed in an urn designed by him), and feuding with her neighbors. Then, fifty years later, Taylor Swift bought that very house and ruined the neighborhood all over again, bringing with her the triumphant return of champagne pool parties and women with madness, their men and bad habits. It’s a note on how women will be blamed for tarnishing what is sacred to men rather than celebrated, specifically when its related to wealth and power. They will call them mad, shameless, loud. But just like Rebekah, Taylor learned to pay them no mind, and just have a marvelous time. It is also interesting to note that Rebekah went by Betty. Perhaps Taylor felt inspired by and connected to her and gave her a whole backstory, and thus the birth of “the teenage love triangle,” or maybe it’s just a coincidence; but that’s the fun of it all. Either way, this track is a standout showcase of how Swift has truly mastered her craft as a songwriter. Best lyric: “Holiday House sat quietly on that beach / free of women with madness, their men and bad habits / and then it was bought by me.”

4. exile ft. Bon Iver You know that feeling when your parents are fighting and it’s upsetting you but you can’t help but listen? That’s kind of what listening to this song feels like. Bon Iver’s Justin Vernon co-wrote the track, and he lends his gorgeous vocals to play a man who has been exiled by his ex who has moved on with someone else while he desperately tries to understand where it all went wrong. The bridge is particularly poignant, both proclaiming, “you didn’t even hear me out,” while talking over each other. He thinks he was expected to read her mind, but she is adamant that she gave him plenty of warning signs. Miscommunication is one of the most common downfalls of a relationship, and the emotion in Swift’s and Vernon’s voices really draws you into the argument with them, transporting you back into your own exile from people you once called home. Best lyric: “I couldn’t turn things around / (You never turned things around) / ‘cause you never gave a warning sign / (I gave so many signs.)”

5. my tears ricochet Taylor describes this song in the foreword as “an embittered tormentor showing up to the funeral of his fallen object of obsession.” If you know enough, you can put the pieces together that the tormentor is Scott Borchetta, the head of Big Machine Records, and the funeral is of their professional and personal relationship. Taylor was the first artist ever signed to Big Machine. Borchetta and Swift had to trust each other in their partnership for it to be a success, and oh, how it was. But prior to Lover’s release, Taylor announced that she would be signing to Republic Records as her contract with Big Machine had ended and Republic offered her the opportunity to own all of her masters moving forward and negotiate on Spotify shares for all their artists. It all could have ended amicably there, but then Scott Borchetta sold all of Big Machine, along with Taylor’s masters from every album prior, to Scooter Braun. Braun manages some of the biggest stars out there, and had previously managed Kanye West. Taylor publicly spoke out about this purchase, stating that she was not made aware of this before the announcement, and how much of a betrayal it was considering she had cried to Scott before about Scooter’s mistreatment of her. Taylor has continued to be vocal about this, and so she sings, “I didn’t have it in myself to go with grace.” There is a lot to unpack in this song, but the main takeaway is that this betrayal hurts him just as much if not more than it hurts her, because his career was built on her achievements. He buried her while decorated in her success, becoming what he swore he wouldn’t, erasing the good times for greed, all just to be haunted with regret for pushing her out and stealing her lullabies. The pain is palpable, and it is notable that this is song is placed at track 5, the spot generally reserved for the most vulnerable on the album; it shows that there are different types of heartbreak that can shatter you just as much as those from romance. Best lyric: “If I’m dead to you, why are you at the wake? / Cursing my name, wishing I stayed.”

6. mirrorball On Lover’s “The Archer,” Taylor expresses her anxiety over people seeing through her act, her own grief at seeing through it herself, wondering if her lover does and whether he would stay with her regardless. “mirrorball” is about the act, one of the more obviously confessional songs on the album. She talks about how a mirror ball can illuminate all the different versions of a person, while also reflecting the light to fit in with the scene. Taylor’s critical self-awareness is heart wrenching, and it’s clear that the anxiety that surrounds the public perception of her is still prevalent. She describes herself as a member of a circus, still on the tightrope and the trapeze even after everyone else has packed up and left, doing anything she can to keep the public’s attention. It hurts to hear the desperation in her voice, but there’s hope in the song, too. She is speaking to someone (we can assume her long-term boyfriend, Joe Alwyn) and thanking them for not being like “the regulars, the masquerade revelers drunk as they watch my shattered edges glisten.” In 2016, the height of Taylor’s fame and subsequently her farthest fall from grace, all the people who pretended to be her friends and attended all her parties celebrated her (temporary) demise, continuing to dance over her broken pieces on the floor. But he stayed by her side as she put herself back together. And so now, when no one is around, she’ll shine just for him, standing even taller than she does for the circus. Best lyric: “I’m still a believer, but I don’t know why / I’ve never been a natural, all I do is try, try, try / I’m still on that trapeze, I’m still trying everything / to keep you looking at me.”

7. seven Her voice gentle and haunting, Taylor recalls the freedom and innocence of her childhood in Pennsylvania. She asks to be remembered for how she was, swinging over the creek, before she learned civility when she would scream anytime she wanted, then letting out a very pretty one. She sings to her old friend soothingly about taking them away from their haunted house that their father is always shouting in, where they feel the need to hide in a closet, perhaps literally, or figuratively, or both. They can move into Taylor’s house instead, or maybe just to India, just be sure to pack their dolls and a sweater and then they’ll hit the road. She can no longer recall her friend’s face, but the love she had for them still lives in her heart, and she wants it to live forever through story. Just in the way that folklore itself blends reality and fiction, but the truth within it passes on, so will the purity of that love and friendship. Best lyric: “Please picture me in the weeds / before I learned civility / I used to scream ferociously / any time I wanted.”

8. august (teenage love triangle, part 2: the other girl’s perspective) If you had to assign the feeling of longing to a song, it’d be “august.” It’s when you’re teetering at the edge with someone, unsure of where you stand with them, clinging to anything they give you and doing anything just to raise your chances, “living for the hope of it all.” August, the last month of summer, its heat causing it to slip away the fastest in a haze before reality hits. This track is a display of how sometimes losing something you never had causes an even deeper ache than losing something that was yours, and Jack Antonoff’s signature production intensifies the emotion even more. It’s the story of shattered hope, and the longing for the days where it could still fuel you. Best lyric: “To live for the hope of it all / cancel plans just in case you’d call.”

9. this is me trying “this is me trying” is like a drive through a tunnel at night, hearing your loudest anxieties and insecurities echo all around you, caving in. The track is another apt insight into Swift’s struggles with her self-image, with the pressure she puts on herself, so much so that she sometimes pushes herself too close to the edge, her fears luring her out of the tunnel and down, down, down into her own cage, stunting her own growth and keeping those who care out of reach. She tells us how she was “so ahead of the curve, the curve became a sphere.” Every action has an equal, opposite reaction, meaning that she was pushing herself so hard, she rolled back to where she started, and now has to reset. This could be referring to the period between the end of the 1989 era and the release of reputation (2017), or a different time in her life, or just a general sentiment. It doesn’t really matter, though, because no one’s growth is a neat, straight line; growth is jagged. Just like any of us, Taylor will always have to face new obstacles, new pitfalls, new reasons to get back up. She sounds most vulnerable as she cries, “at least I’m trying,” and you feel comforted knowing someone so beautiful and successful has to push herself to try, too, and yet that motivates you more to try yourself. Best lyric: “They told me all of my cages were mental / so I got wasted, like all my potential.”

10. illicit affairs A quiet, slow-build testament of the passion, the tragedy, the secrecy, the inimitability of a romance that shouldn’t exist, “illicit affairs” demonstrates how you can ruin yourself for someone from just one moment of possibility or truth, quite like the narrator of “august” does for the hope of it all. An illicit affair can be many different things: infidelity, forbidden love, a love that can never be fully realized, a relationship that is inherently wrong but electrifying all the same. It’s a reminder of what so many of us would do just to see new colors, to learn a new language, even if the one moment of enlightenment destroys us forever. We might lose the iridescent glow but we don’t forget it; we carry it with us, but must be careful to remember its blinding effect, to remember how fatal the fall is from the dwindling, mercurial high. Best lyric: “Tell your friends you’re out for a run / you’ll be flushed when you return.”

11. invisible string Clearly the most outright autobiographical track, “invisible string” is the plucky pick-me-up needed. The song is like sunshine, as Swift endearingly links all the little connections between her and her boyfriend, Joe Alwyn, since before they even met. She compares the green grass at the Nashville park she’d sit at in hopes of a meet-cute to the teal of his yogurt shop uniform shirt, and gives a nod to her smash hit “Bad Blood” from 1989 with the delightful line “bad was the blood of the song in the cab on your first trip to LA.” She reasons these coincidences as a fateful, invisible, golden string tying them together since the beginning, always destined to meet at the knot in the middle. She thanks time for healing her, (a callback to “Fifteen” from Fearless [2008]), fighting through hell to make it to heaven, transforming her from an axe grinder to a gift giver for her ex’s baby (the ex in question, Joe Jonas, and his wife Sophie Turner, happened to have their first daughter two days before this album’s release). As she has on her previous two albums, she uses the color gold to illustrate how prized their love is to one another. It’s sweet to know in all the gloom that the string has not been severed, and the trees are still golden somewhere. Best lyric: “Cold was the steel of my axe to grind for the boys who broke my heart / now I send their babies presents.”

12. mad woman Throughout her entire career, Taylor Swift has defiantly defended female rage, all the way back from throwing a chair off a platform on her Fearless Tour during the impassioned “Forever & Always,” to her patient, vengeful reliance on karma in reputation’s lead single, “Look What You Made Me Do,” to her most recent tackling of the matter on Lover’s last and final single, “The Man,” where she explores society’s acceptance and encouragement of angry men yet disdain for angry women. “The Man” is catchy and upbeat, and a fun thought experiment into how Swift’s career would be perceived if she was a man, something that is even more interesting to think about now as she releases an album in a genre heavily dominated and lauded by males. But on “mad woman,” she further explores the creation and perception of female rage, though masked under a smooth, haunting piano melody, her vocals subdued, taunting. In the album foreword, she describes the inspiration behind this song as “a misfit widow getting gleeful revenge on the town that cast her out.” This could be the continuation of Rebekah “Betty” Harkness’s story at her Holiday House in Watch Hill, RI, and how she further alienated herself from the rest of the neighborhood as they cast stones at her for the collapse of the last great American dynasty. (Or perhaps Daenerys Targaryen’s descent as the Mad Queen played a part in the song’s inspiration, as Swift has spoken of her love for Game of Thrones and her character specifically.) Taylor herself could also represent the widow, her music and masters as her love lost, and the men behind the crime as the “town that cast her out.” In the first verse she sings, “What do you sing on your drive home? / Do you see my face in the neighbor’s lawn? / Does she smile, or does she mouth ‘fuck you forever’?” It’s the first f-bomb of Taylor’s career (though a much more playful one will come two tracks later in “betty”) and it speaks volume. Taylor has received a lot of condemnation for expressing her anger at their transaction, for calling out their greed for what it is. Some view Swift’s stance on the ordeal as petty and trivial; they see the men as orchestrating a good business deal, and Swift as the girl throwing a tantrum. Ask any woman, and they can tell you about a time a man told them they were crazy for being justifiably angry; it only makes us angrier. “No one likes a mad woman,” Taylor states, “You made her like that.” Swift underscores that here, how they will poke and poke the bear but then blame it for attacking, as if they had never provoked it at all, and how dare it defend itself. Just as they blamed Rebekah for her husband’s heart giving out, they somehow manage to blame Swift for not being allowed to purchase the rights to her own work. And yes, she’s mad, but the song is measured and controlled; she’s used to her anger now, and knows just how to wield it. Best lyric: “Women like hunting witches, too / doing your dirtiest work for you / It’s obvious that wanting me dead has really brought you two together.”

13. epiphany This is another track Swift provided some background on, stating it was inspired by her “grandfather, Dean, landing at Guadalcanal in 1942” during WWII. The first verse paints this image, while the second verse depicts a different kind of war, happening right now, fought by doctors and nurses. She speaks of holding hands through plastic, and the escape folklore has granted you suddenly lifts. Watching someone’s daughter, or mother, or anyone suffer at the hands of the COVID-19 pandemic, just as watching a soldier bleed out, helpless, is too much to speak about. As she points out, they don’t teach you about that vicarious trauma in med school. We are living in a tireless world with barely any time time to rest our eyes, but too much going on while we’re awake to make sense of any of it. “epiphany” is a cinematic prayer, pleading for some quiet in order to find an answer in all the noise. We’re still waiting for that glimpse of relief. Best lyric: “Only twenty minutes to sleep / but you dream of some epiphany / Just one single glimpse of relief / to make some sense of what you’ve seen.”

14. betty (teenage love triangle, part 3: james’s perspective) It makes sense that a song reminiscent of Fearless would exemplify some of the best story-telling on folklore. The final puzzle piece of the teen love triangle, “betty” is a song sung by Swift from the perspective of the character of her own creation, James, attempting to win back his true love, Betty, who he slighted in some way. He proclaims that the worst thing he ever did is what he did to her, without explicitly stating it. Though the infamous deed is unclear, here’s the information we collect from this song: James saw Betty dancing with another boy at a school dance, one day when he was walking home another girl (from “august”) picked him up and he ended up spending his summer with her yet still loved Betty, and though he ended things with his fling and wanted to reconcile with Betty, he had returned to school to see she switched her homeroom (James assumes, after saying he won’t make assumptions. Classic men). So in order to make it up to her, he shows up at her party with the risk of being told to go fuck himself (the second and charming “fuck” on the album! Which is repeated!). Upon his arrival, there is a glorious key change (ala “Love Story”) and all the pieces fall into place for the listener; we realize Betty is the girl singing in “cardigan” as he lists the things he misses about her since the thrill expired, like the way she looks standing in her cardigan, and kissing in his car. He’s 17 and doesn’t know anything, but she knew everything when she was young, and she knew he’d come back. The way I see their story conclude is that she led him to the garden and trusted him, but as they grew older they grew apart, but the love she had for him never faded completely. Listening to this song is like being back in high school, whether you were the person who did someone wrong or the person so willing to forgive in the name of young love, or Inez, the school gossip, you’re right there with them. The other great thing about this song is that it is sung to a girl, and though it is set up so we understand it is most likely from a boy’s perspective, it doesn’t have to be. It’s really great that girls in the LGBTQ community can have a song in Taylor’s voice to fully connect to without changing the pronouns or names (even James, which is unisex and is one of the names of the daughters of Blake Lively and Ryan Reynolds, Taylor’s close friends, mentioned in this song). That is the beauty of folklore: the infinite ways a story can be told, perceived, retold from a different perspective, and told again. Maybe you’ll hear it from Inez. Best lyric: “But if I just showed up at your party / would you have me? Would you want me? / Would you tell me to go fuck myself, or lead me to the garden?”

15. peace One of the most beautifully solemn songs of her career, “peace” echoes the same fears explored in “Dancing With Our Hands Tied” from reputation; will the person she loves be able to weather the ever-present storm that comes with the life of a superstar, but also dwells within herself? Will holding him as the water rushes in be enough? Will giving him her wild, a child, her sunshine, her best, be a fair consolation? Presumably another confessional track and about Alwyn, Swift puts him up on a pedestal, praising his integrity and his dare to dream. She proclaims that she would die for him in secret, just as she told him she’d be on her tallest tip toes, spinning in her highest heels, shining just for him in “mirrorball.” She highlights some of the greatest gifts of love, such as comfortable silence and chosen family. She knows what they have is special, but she also knows the value of peace, the ultimate nirvana, and does not want to deprive him of that. It is so deeply relatable- to me, at least- to feel like you can give someone so much of yourself but know it still may never be enough, and to fear either losing them or robbing them of something better. But looking at what they have together, maybe peace is overrated. Or maybe, she’s looking for peace in the wrong places. The calm is in the eye of the storm, and sometimes, there’s nothing more freeing than throwing away the umbrella and soaking in the rain. Best lyric: “I never had the courage of my convictions / as long as danger is near / and it’s just around the corner, darling / ‘cause it lives in me / no, I could never give you peace.”

16. hoax The truest enigma of the album, the closer, “hoax” is a devastatingly dark ballad about the uncertainty, or perhaps incredulity, of someone’s love for you, a love that is your lifeline. The lyrics are ambiguous, which gives way to a plethora of interpretations. Perhaps she is speaking about a hypothetical situation that has yet to happen (and hopefully doesn’t) in which someone she loves and trusts betrays her. Maybe she is talking about a relationship, real (hopefully not) or fictional, in which despite the torment it brings her she holds onto it for dear life. I’m most inclined to believe that the song represents her difficulty in accepting that someone is willing to love her through such dark periods, that their love must actually be a hoax, but she chooses to believe in it anyway and uses it as the motivation to rebuild her kingdom, to rise from the ashes on her barren land. And even through the downs that come at some point in every relationship, she can still see the beauty in it all. Yes, their love is golden, but waves of blue will crash down around any partnership, because life does not exist without them. So even when things are as blue as can be, she’s at least grateful it’s with him. Best lyric: “Don’t want no other shade of blue but you / no other sadness in the world would do.”

Although we still have yet to hear the deluxe track, “the lakes,” as a fan of Taylor for almost 12 years, it feels so obvious that this is her strongest work yet. The storytelling I fell in love with on Fearless as a teenager (which, much like folklore, was highly inspired by imaginary situations and real emotions) is even sharper now as we have both grown into adults. The music on this album might not be everyone’s speed, and that’s okay. But it allowed Taylor to dip back into what made Fearless such a success: using pieces of her own truth and the whims of her imagination to develop a multi-faceted narrative that becomes universal. During her Tiny Desk concert, before performing “Death By A Thousand Cuts” from Lover, Swift explained the anxiety she felt around the possibility of stunted creativity when people would ask her what she would write about once she was happy. Taylor has released an abundance of beautiful, fun, complex love songs since the start of her relationship almost four years ago now. But “Death By A Thousand Cuts,” which is a fan favorite, helped her prove to herself that she can still write a killer breakup song while being in a happy, fulfilling relationship; the song was the last track written for Lover and was inspired by the film Something Great on Netflix. And so it makes perfect sense that Taylor used folklore to continue exploring this new avenue for songwriting. All of her discography and all of her life experiences have culminated to the folklore moment: as all the best artists do, she will never stop finding inspiration in hidden corners of this dark, mystical, wondrous universe, and falling in love with new ways to share those wonders. And that love will be passed on.

DISCLAIMER - REVIEWER’S BIAS: I love Taylor Swift more than any person in my life, yes including my parents, they are aware and have accepted this fact long ago ❤️

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purplesurveys · 3 years

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1278

Social Media Survey

[joybucket]

What is your favorite social media site? Either Twitter or YouTube, though I never use YouTube as a social media site per se so I guess this round goes to Twitter.

Do you use...

facebook? myspace? twitter? snapchat? instagram? youtube? pinterest? bzoink? another site with message boards? tumblr? deviantart? xanga?

Facebook

Do you get on Facebook every day? Yeah pretty much all throughout the day. I used to never use it, like never ever; but back in college all announcements were coursed through Facebook so I was technically required to be on it regularly, and it was from there that I began to see memes and start to be more active. I’m a shitposter more than anything though and I rarely ever post stuff of my own. How many FB friends do you have? I have 679 at the moment but I want to get rid of like 500 of them; it’s just such a long list to go through so I never get to proceed with my unfriending spree lol.

Have you ever been on a deleting spree? HAHA I just mentioned that. I’ve always wanted to, but like I said 679 is already such an exhaustive list for me, and that’s considering I only started touching my Facebook in like 2019. I can’t imagine people who started Facebook in like 2009 and have 4000 friends aka most people I know.

Have you blocked a lot of haters? I don’t have haters; at least I’m not aware of any that I have. Not that it’s something I care about at this point.

Do you get bullied online a lot? No, but that’s also because I don’t really open the channels for people to send in hate. I don’t have Q&A handles like Curious Cat and I never pick out that option in Instagram where people can send in questions.

What's your favorite Facebook app? Oh I never use Facebook for their apps. Are those still even a thing...? Anyway, I mainly go there to be on the hunt for stupid memes I can reshare or to watch videos that are either funny or informative.

Are you a fan of selfies? I don’t mind if other people do it, but I think I’m honestly bad at selfies so I almost never take them. I’ve never figured out my angles or what filters look ok on me.

Has anyone ever called the police on you because they didn't like your status? No but I have had my posts reported because they were deemed ‘offensive.’ Which is weird because my posts that have been taken down are those that speak out against disgusting men, which says a lot about Facebook runs their shit more than anything else.

Are you in any facebook groups? I’m in nearly a hundred groups, both private i.e. for school purposes, and public.

Are you the admin of any groups? Nah. Too much time and effort needed out of me.

Do you report abuse to group admins whenever you see it? Yes. I report the post then leave the group.

What could make Facebook better? They could put more effort into detecting and banning troll farms.

What year did you start using Facebook? I made an account in 2012 because of a high school class that required us to upload this specific video-format homework onto Facebook (which in hindsight is such an insensitive homework considering that was nearly a decade ago when the Philippines was still severely behind in internet connection speeds?? Ugh). But I didn’t start actively using my account until around two years ago.

What is your current profile picture of? Myself, posing in front of the sunflowers in school during the recent graduation season.

Did you like the old Myspace better than Facebook? I was never a regular user of Myspace, so...

What are some of your favorite boards? I’ve never had a clue what the purpose of Pinterest was. I mean I have an account...but I’ve also never gotten the hang of it?? so I never touch it hahaha.

Have you ever done a craft you saw on Pinterest? Well no, because I’m terrible at arts and crafts anyway.

Do you have a Dream Wedding board? If so, what's on it? No.

If you have a Dream House board, what does your dream house look like? Ok fine this one I did start hahahah but I don’t even remember what I added on there anymore. I’m sure it was filled with modern-style houses with minimalist interior design.

Do you wish they'd bring the "like" button back? I’m not even aware of this option.

Do you have a Bucket List board? Not aware of this either.

Which do you like better: Just Girly Things or And That's Who I Am? The second one sounds less childish. < Same, and it sounds like it covers more.

Do you have a board for tattoos you like? If so, what are some of your faves? No. The only one I ever made was the house one, then Pinterest quickly became boring from there when I realized there wasn’t much else I could do besides making mood boards.

Do you have a "Random" or "Miscellaneous" board? No.

Have you ever reached the maximum number of boards? No.

Do you have any secret boards? No.

Have you ever had a Pin deleted because of copyright laws? No.

Do you have a Color board? No.

Do you have an About Me board? If so, what's on it? No.

YouTube

Do you have a YouTube channel? If so, what is it? Technically I do but I only have it so I can tailor video suggestions to my interests and so that I can like videos and subscribe to channels I like.

What kind of things do you post on YouTube? I’ve never posted any video on there, not even private ones. I’m also not the type to comment.

What do you like to watch on YouTube? These days YouTube serves as a stress reliever for me, which is to say I would typically go for humorous BTS-related compilations because there are sooooo many hilarious channels that make these great videos haha. Occasionally I’d go back to channels or series that I used to frequent, like Good Mythical Morning, Buzzfeed’s Worth It and Unsolved, Try Guys, Watcher, etc.

Are you subscribed to any channels? To so many.

Do you watch any vlogs? If so, what ones are your favorite? Hm probably Jiwoo’s, though her channel is called Mejiwoo. I find her content calming and conversational and basically fun to binge-watch when I’m not looking for anything super super particular to watch.

If you have a channel, how many subscribers do you have? 0. I’m just a lurker.

Will you subscribe to my channel? (msg me if you want a link!) Only if it’s really fit to my interests, I guess.

Do you watch music videos? Rarely; not a fan of MVs in particular. I only really ever put an exception for BTS.

Have you ever watched a TV show on youtube? Well no since their copyright team works hard and works fast lol. I do watch entire video game walkthroughs from time to time.

Have you ever worked out to exercise videos on youtube? No, I can’t care less about working out tbh.

Have you watched Amanda Todd's famous video? No. I’m scared that it might be too upsetting or triggering for me.

Have you ever looked up how to do something on YouTube? Not really, I prefer looking up articles that can teach me step by step in words.

Do you get a lot of hate comments on youtube? No, I’ve never posted anything on there.

How long have you been a youtuber? Never been.

Instagram

Do you post on Instagram a lot? I do 1-3 Instagram stories in a week, I would say. As for posts, I only have 4 in total and I don’t really feel the pressure to add more. I just post when I feel the want to.

Have you ever posted a poll on instagram? Nah, I’m not too sure if anyone would participate so I’ve never tried. If you don't have an iPhone, do you wish you could use Instagram? I’m pretty sure other operating systems can also use Instagram...

Do you have any followers? Around 50, I think.

Do you like Instagram filters? I’ll use them sometimes to make my stories appear prettier.

Twitter

Do you think twitter is stupid? Hehe show me at least one person who doesn’t think so. < Coming from someone who regularly uses Twitter, agree. It is crazy stupid but stupid is what I’m there for. Which is honestly not always such a bad thing to me - I like that people are more themselves, more stripped-down, vulnerable on Twitter. People always seem to want to show off their best selves on Facebook and Instagram, so I’m actually kind of grateful that there is at least one social media out there where people can just be their clumsy, goofy selves.

How often do you tweet? Probably a maximum of five a day. Nowadays I’m on there mostly to just scroll through my timelines.

Do you get on twitter every day? Yes, both on my personal and fan account.

Bzoink

Do you make a lot of surveys? I never make them but I try to take them as often as I can.

Do you take a lot of surveys? Haha sorry, was one step ahead of you. Yeah, I do.

Do you post in the message boards? Nah. I dunno if I’m even permitted to check the message boards on Bzoink considering I don’t have an account.

What types of surveys are your favorite? Categorized surveys like this one or countdown ones can be fun, but at the end of the day I like sticking to the classic random survey.

Do you have friends on here? Not on Bzoink, but here on Tumblr yes! There’s a number of people here I like keeping up with :)

Do you post all your secrets on here? Again, not on Bzoink; but yep I share pretty much everything here.

What type of survey do you think I should make next? Anything but basic/about me-themed ones that will ask for my name and eye color and weight.

Do you read peoples' answers to your surveys? I’ve never made a survey.

Do you think you are good at making surveys?

Do you try to make unique surveys?

What type of surveys do you want to see more of?

Random

This or That

Scattergories

Have You Ever

Are you like me?

About You

Personal, Deep Questions

Girly

Music shuffle

Would You Rather

Do you have this in your bedroom?

Long

Short

All About Your Crush

Fashion

Make-up

School

Music

Your health

Your friends

Confessions

Girl Confessions - how different is this from just confessions? Hahaha

R-Rated

Controversial topics

Myspace

Did you have a myspace when you were in high school? I started an account in like 4th grade when Myspace was ~big, but I didn’t find it fun and everyone my age was on Friendster anyway, so I was largely inactive.

Do you use myspace now? No. Is it still even around? I have no clue.

Do you miss bulletins? I didn’t get to join in on the fun so there’s nothing to miss.

Did you like customizing your profile with the old myspace? Not attributed to Myspace but I did have a lot of fun customizing my Multiply and Tumblr accounts back in the day. That was a period where I really got to learn and play around with HTML :)

Did you have music on your profile? Not on Myspace again but I did on Multiply! I had a cute little playlist that played the songs immediately as soon as you landed on my page hahaha.

Did you learn HTML when you used Myspace? Tumblr, yeah. I believe the skills are still there but I’ll definitely be a bit rusty.

Did you have a customized cursor? Oh, no. Wasn’t a fan of those as I found them a bit tacky.

Did you use glitter graphics? Also found those tacky haha no, I never used those.

Do you remember posting glitter graphics on friends' pages? Nope.

Did you make "dolls"? I don’t recall ever making those.

Did you use photo captions? Not sure what this is referring to so let’s just say no.

Did you have a photo slideshow on your profile? Hmmm nope, I don’t think so.

Xanga

Did you have a Xanga account back in the day? No. It wasn’t big here so I had never heard of it until I started taking surveys on here and heard people mentioning Xanga, actually.

Do you have a xanga account now? No.

Did you post photos and quotes on your xanga page? I never had any.

Snapchat

Do you use snapchat? I did; I was superrrrr active on there for a time. It kind of just got old at one point, though, and my feed got more and more dead until I too just left my account dormant altogether.

What is your favorite filter? There were a lot of cute ones on there that helped me be more confident with taking selfies but my favorites have to be the dog and flower crown ones.

Tumblr

Do you understand Tumblr? I had a better handle of it when I ran a fan account that required me to be more active; but now that I really just go on here to take surveys I just use the basic functions and nothing more. But yeah, I understand just enough to get by.

Do you use Tumblr? Yeah. Even on the days I don’t post surveys, I regularly go on here to keep up with friends I like keeping up with like Elisabeth, Lane, Steph, Lina, Julie :)

Other

What forum sites did you use to love that aren't around anymore? There was one message board I frequented for this girly/tween magazine I used to collect, but I won’t share the name.

Are there any other great social media sites that you recommend? I think this survey was able to cover all the main ones I use.

Do you use a photo editing site? If so, what? I use apps instead of sites to edit my photos.

Do you ever use BeFunky.com? Nope.

Do you use a video editing site? If so, what? Nah, I rarely have to edit videos in a super intricate, detailed way. Apple’s video editing features suffice for me.

Have you ever downloaded fonts? Very occasionally since it’s never necessary.

Have you ever used photobucket to upload an image? No but I remember going on there back in the day to look for images. I never uploaded any, though.

Do you use iTunes? Not anymore. I have an account on Spotify now.

Do you listen to music on Pandora? No, never used it.

#surveys #survey

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poi-bigbang · 4 years

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Art Claims

(Thank you @caviezeldaily for this amazing banner!)

Here are the remaining summaries up for claim in the POI Big Bang:

1. Title: Carbines and Capacitors

Relationships: Gen (Joss & Cheyenne, other Team Machine friendships); background John/Joss, brief Harold/Grace and Laskey/OFC, brief unrequited Shaw/Cheyenne, mention of past Joss/Cal and Cheyenne/Irene Travers, two staged scenes that are explicitly not preludes to romance Characters: (in order of appearance) Cheyenne Bodie, Joss Carter, Mike Laskey, Lionel Fusco, John Reese, Harold Finch, Bear, The Machine, Sameen Shaw, Zoe Morgan, Patrick Simmons, Raymond Terney, Genrika Zhirova, Timothy Sloan, Root | Samantha Groves, Peter Collier, Anthony Marconi, Carl Elias, Peter Yogorov, Grace Hendricks, Andrew Monahan, Alonzo Quinn, Fermin Ordoñez, Arthur Claypool, Tom "Sugarfoot" Brewster, Bronco Layne Rating: Teen Summary: A routine day for Team Machine turns into anything but when a cowboy from 1880 falls out of thin air and lands practically at Carter's feet. Getting him well and acclimated to life in 2013 is only half the battle. Computers are out of his line, but he does have other skills Finch can use… so the best laid schemes of Greer and Quinn are about to run into a 6'6" tank named Cheyenne Bodie. (Season 3 AU, crossover with Cheyenne, with cameos from Sugarfoot and Bronco)

(Wikipedia links: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cheyenne_(TV_series); https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sugarfoot; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bronco_(TV_series); Fandom wiki: https://cheyenne.fandom.com/wiki/Cheyenne_Wiki; IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0047720/) Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply; References to historical atrocities, uncomfortably timely conversations, canon-typical violence, canon-typical threats of violence, crude remarks by Shaw, Cheyenne comes from a 1950s Western and speaks/thinks/acts accordingly (but as in canon, he hates racism and injustice) Art Wishlist: Open to any media, although traditional/digital might be more suitable than manips because most available images of Cheyenne are B&W--as was the show, so vids and gifs might have the same problem. Podfic would be welcome, and the story is finished (and long!), but recording could be a challenge because Cheyenne's voice is lower than John's and because there are lots of footnotes and a few words in the Northern Cheyenne dialect, Dutch, Spanish, Sioux, Russian, and Hebrew. Cheyenne wears a very distinctive hat (brown with silver arrowheads around the band) that could be drawn as part of a still-life banner or divider, possibly with a Colt Peacemaker and a Desert Eagle (crossed?). Also, if you're interested in illustrating a scene, there are... rather a lot to choose from, but I think I'd go for one of Cheyenne with John, Joss, and/or Shaw. I will happily work with any artist to find what source/reference materials are needed--I don't know where Cheyenne is available to watch outside the US, but there are at least clips posted on YouTube.

2. Title: Spare Me Relationships: Lionel Fusco/John Reese Characters: Lionel Fusco, John Reese, Lee Fusco, Harold Finch, Bear, Root, Original Characters Rating: (use AO3 system) T (for a kiss and Fusco's bad language) Summary: (<100 words) "I don't need a genius to tell me that you're lonely." Fusco invites John to join the NYPD bowling league to give John something normal and fun to do for once. But soon Fusco realizes that John isn't the only one who's lonely. Warnings: (use AO3 system) None Art Wishlist: (what media you're open to, hoping for, any ideas) Anything is fine by me! I've never had someone make art for a story of mine, so I'm easy to please!

3. Title: Kingfishers

Relationships: Harold Finch/John Reese/Grace Hendricks

Rating: M at the moment, maaaybe E by the time I’m done

Summary:

One morning, a handsome stranger walks up to Grace Hendricks in a park and introduces himself. His name is John, and he likes her paintings.

That afternoon, Grace meets a wealthy insurance executive who offers her a sizable art commission. He’s intelligent, interesting, and easy to talk to. His name is Harold.

(A different-first-meeting story, in which Harold ignored the Machine’s attempts to set him up with Grace in 2006, only to receive her number in 2012 after he and John have been working together for over a year.)

Warnings: inexplicit references to child abuse and alcoholism

Art Wishlist: Grace’s paintings and sketches, and her feelings about the art and artists she admires, are pretty important to the story. There are passages where I describe pictures and paintings she’s created, or beautiful objects of various kinds that she and Harold both admire. An illustration of any of that stuff would be amazing, or maybe a kind of Pre-Raphaelite picture of the characters. Also, kingfishers are kind of thematically/symbolically important, and very beautiful, and would make lovely art.

Two requests: please don’t make art of Harold and John that excludes Grace, and please no NSFW art.

4. [Fic previously claimed! Should not have been here! Apologies!]

5. Title: More Than Words Relationships: John Reese/Harold Finch/Grace Hendricks Characters: John Reese, Harold Finch, Grace Hendricks Rating: General Audiences Summary: John and Harold have a lot in common. They've loved. They've lost. They've done their best to help people. And now they have a matching pair of soulmarks- tattoos bearing the first words your soulmate says to you. The marks aren't what bring John and Harold together. But they might end up tearing the two of them apart. Warnings: Choose Not to Use Archive Warnings (this fic should be tagged for some of John's suicidal ideation pre-season 1 and in the fic) Art Wishlist: Looking for visual media/graphic design. Since this is a soulmate/soulmark AU, I would be very happy if someone could design the tattoos I have in mind, in their medium of choice. I am willing to collaborate, or just see what they come up with. But while that is my ideal art pairing, I am open to anything!

6. Title: Untitled Relationships: Harold/John Characters: Harold, John, Bear, Shaw, Fusco, Carter, OCs, *possibly* an appearance by Root Rating: Teen & Up Summary: When a number goes wrong and Harold is stabbed, his entire life is thrown into disarray. Seriously injured, he's left with no choice but to rely on someone else as he recovers. He chooses John (or, rather, John chooses himself) and invites John into his home and his very private life as he slowly heals from the trauma and the wounds.

What happens when he realizes he wants John to stay close? Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply (additional warning for panic attacks and memories of a violent attack) Art Wishlist: I'd especially love illustrations (traditional or digital), but I'm game for anything.

7. Title: Bonds Not Broken - Maybe??? Relationships: John Reese/Harold Finch Characters: John Reese, Harold Finch, Sameen Shaw, OCs, Elias, Heralds of Valdemar characters, Rolan, Weaponmaster Hersch, King Jesse, Bear the dog, a cast of thousands Rating: Adult M/M Summary: An AU Person of Interest/Heralds of Valdemar crossover. John is not only a Herald, but the King's Own. The story begins with the death of the king, and this is John's journey to find his place in Valdemar. Warnings: Author Chooses None Art Wishlist: I like most styles of fanart except chibi. I love a good photo manip but really anything! If the artist is interested, I have an Instagram where I put pictures that helped me write this monster. The instagram is blackchaps with a Hawkeye icon, easy to find.

8. Title: Untitled (for now) Relationships: Harold Finch/Lionel Fusco, Lionel Fusco & Sameen Shaw, Harold Finch & Sameen Shaw Characters: Harold Finch, Lionel Fusco, Sameen Shaw, Bear, Leon Tao Rating: E Summary: One year after the death of Samaritan, Harold Finch returns to New York City and reunites with his old friends. Sameen Shaw and Lionel Fusco, who have believed him to be dead for the past 12 months, are not exactly eager to trust him again. As Harold handles mysterious cases on the outside of their new organization, he works to repair his relationships with both. Sameen, who doubts his commitment, will be hard to convince. Lionel, who bears deep emotional scars, will be impossible. Warnings: Canon typical violence, drug/alcohol use Art Wishlist: I’m super flexible re: medium. I’m very into the idea of space-centric or detail-centric art, as opposed to character-centric art, if that makes sense. Re: space-centric, a lot of the fic is about loneliness and puts the characters in empty, uncomfortable, or sad rooms and the vibe is very like these Edward Hopper paintings, I think. Alternatively, it’s Finch POV and he’s doing a lot of focusing on tiiiiiiny details and significant objects, and I’d love some fancypants studies or edits of those.

9. Title: Degrees of Separation Relationships: Gen (but the whole point of the story is that they’ve all been separated, so there are no relationships in action) Characters: John Reese, Harold Finch, Sameen Shaw, Root, Lionel Fusco, Bear Rating: Teen and Up (due to a limited use of common profanity) Summary: The lives of the members of Team Machine in their new identities during the first months of Samaritan’s full operation, from the separation of the team at the end of “Deus Ex Machina” through the events that take place in “Panopticon.” Warnings: Choose Not to Use Archive Warnings Art Wishlist: I am open to any medium. It would be great if the art focused on the separation that the characters are experiencing.

10. Title: If I Could Tell Him Relationships: Harold Finch/John Reese; Harold Finch & Root; minor Root/Sameen Shaw; past Harold Finch/Nathan Ingram Characters: Harold Finch, John Reese, Root, Nathan Ingram (mentioned) Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Summary: Harold manages to tap on the fourth wall of 4x17 “Karma” and has some thoughts about the mirroring of himself with the victim counselor vigilante Shane Edwards. He and John go on their walk with Bear, but Harold keeps what he’s feeling to himself. Years later, after all of Team Machine survives the defeat of Samaritan, Harold comes across Edwards and realizes he never talked with John about all of the emotions that number still fosters, specifically regarding Nathan. Root gives him some advice, and they all work on a happiness that encompasses the past, present, and future. Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Art Wishlist: I’m open to anything, from digital art to fanmixes and anything else, really. This is a rinch fic but it’s also basically a Harold character study (entirely from his POV and a lot of internal narrative) so any art could probably focus on him.

11.

Title: The Mysterious Human Heart in New York Relationships: Jessica/John, Harold and Jessica, Harold and John Characters: Jessica, John, Harold, Fusco Rating: Teen Summary: Agent Jessica Reese has managed to claw her way back from Ordos after being betrayed by her partner and the CIA. Gutshot and purposeless, she spends her days haunting the hospital in New Rochelle, watching her ex, John. John has his happily ever after: got his nursing degree, married a great guy, lives in a beautiful house. Jess is glad. He should be happy with Peter.

When she bumps into the mysterious Harold Finch, who knows too much about everyone, he tells her the unpleasant truth about John's dream marriage. Jess must face up to the fact that John needs her help to find safety and happiness. Warnings: Show level violence, some medical detail as John is a nurse. Art Wishlist: I am open to any medium except audio.

12. Title: To my God, I sacrifice Relationships: John Reese & Root, John Reese/ Kara Stanton Characters: John Reese, Root, Sameen Shaw, Hersh, Kara Stanton, Harold Finch (mentioned) Rating: Mature Summary: Former soldier and CIA agent John Reese has condemned himself to a slow death after being burned by the agency. After witnessing a strange woman answering a forgotten payphone, he suddenly finds himself entangled in a web of secrets, zealotry and violence. Warnings: Canon typical violence, canon typical torture, mentions of suicide and rape, abusive/unbalanced dynamics, alcoholism Art Wishlist: I don't have any particular requests in regards to the art, I'm curious about what will the artist choose to interpret. If I had to choose, a scene illustration or a cover would be very cool :)

If you’d like to make art for any of these fics, the sign-ups for artists are here:

https://poi-fanworks.dreamwidth.org/27461.html

And the claim post is here:

https://poi-fanworks.dreamwidth.org/31548.html

#person of interest #big bang #fanart #fanfiction

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iamthenerdqueen · 4 years

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And For A Short Time, She Was Mine.

Idol!Yoongi X Idol!Reader.

TW*** major character death, car accident, depression. ****

Thank you @babydoesntlikethis for the moodbaord

A/N: this is hot trash, but sad hot trash. NOT EDITED. NOT EVEN IN THE SLIGHTEST SO IM SORRY FOR BAD GRAMMAR.

To say the year 2019 had been bad for the kpop world was an understatement. It had seen many tragedies and scandals, but the world kept spinning. For the most part that was his montra, “The world keeps spinning and I keep moving,” it had gotten him this far. In all of the unexpected things he could’ve never guessed she would come into his life and become the center of his whole world, but she had and she made his heart beat louder, his world spin faster. They had met in late 2015 through none other than the maknae of his group, Jungkook. She was just a few months older than him and had a mutual friend, GOT7’s Yugyeom, as they were from the same company. Her group, consisting of four members, had debuted just a few months before Bangtan in november of 2012. Her and Jungkook had bonded over their experiences and being so young during their debut. Y/N’s personality was addictive and it didn’t take long before she was close with the whole of BTS. It seemed she was always there to offer any support she could and always had time to listen to his worries or talk him through his anxieties. He had fallen for her hard and fast, rules be damned. Her company had allowed her the privilege to date, but BigHit wasn’t as lenient then. They kept it secret from everyone, even their members, for as long as they could, but it was almost a year after they met that Namjoon put the pieces together in december of 2016. Things were changing for BTS big time and he wanted nothing more than to share all his happiest moments with her, so getting caught in a congratulatory kiss with her after winning their first Daesang by several of his members wasn’t ideal. The pressure started to build on both of them after that and they opened up to their companies who had differing opinions on the matter. It was a difficult conversation with Bang Si-Hyuk and after standing his ground, Yoongi kept both his job and relationship. The strain on their relationship didn’t stop there. Even though he had his company's permission, his schedules and hers made it nearly impossible for them to see one another for months on end. Things got easier after that as her group started getting less promotion as a group and started doing more solo endeavors. So many hours were spent with one another just plainly being with one another anywhere they could be even in the studio and in may of 2019 they released a track together, but made no obvious hints to their fandoms that they were more than close friends. It was a well known fact to ARMY and to her fans that she was close to the group, often being called their best friend, so other than the few fans who shipped him with anyone he made music for, no one put two and two together. The sun was shining so brightly on them, maybe too bright… and now the memories were like stones adding to the weight of the ring he had carried in his pocket everytime he was with her for six months before the accident and now that lies against his chest on a small hidden chain.

she was the only one who had the ability to make the world stop spinning as she had.

It was late at night when it happened. Just around 3:45am according to the first responders. That minute still haunted his dreams and it was almost like clockwork that he would jolt awake at that exact every night and turn to her side of their once shared bed to find that, no, it was not a dream. The bed really was empty to never be filled again. December 12th had now come to haunt him. Of all the things he could do with his fame and fortune, one of the few he couldn’t do was stop the car from hitting hers. She had been coming back to their shared apartment after a late rehearsal for her upcoming comeback with her group, G/N, for the first time in almost a year. The wind was blowing, but there was no rain and the night had been clear. It should have been an easy drive home, but there was just enough water on the road that the other car lost control. The cars collided head on.They promised him she had felt nothing, no pain. She was gone and her light had gone with her too. She had gone and taken the sun with her. He had gone numb to deal with it all. If he couldn’t feel anything he didn’t have to feel the pain of her not being there anymore, but it came crashing down on him almost a month after her passing. The 2020 Golden Disk Awards. Their collaboration from almost a year earlier had been nominated at almost every award show, but this was the only award it had won. He stood on the stage alone, holding a meaningless piece of plastic in his hands, looking out into the crowd who were hushed. The last month had been hard on all of those who had known her and her fans who had mourned publicly and through social media platforms. He couldn’t bring himself to speak and as he tried he was overwhelmed with his emotions finally hitting him. He began to sob unable to continue he muttered a low apology before turning to leave the stage and as he walked off he heard the clapping of the crowd, but it was in excitement. No, this applause was in solidarity for the loss of someone who added an irreplaceable brightness to the world. It was in those few moments he took to collect himself that he accepted things. He decided to let her memory guide him and while he knew it would be hard,but he would dishonor her if he didn’t keep going. The days got better, but many of them were still and he leaned on his members to get him through it. His fans helped him unknowingly by giving him the drive to write more and share his emotions through songs. His second mixtape was in the works and for the better part was finished. However there was one more track he had to add to the mixtape. He had discussed it with Bang Si-Hyuk and cleared it with Y/N’s former company head JYP. In her life they had never gotten the chance to share their love with their fans, but he would honor her and the love they shared in his music.

When the mixtape dropped along with the music video for the main track, ARMY blew up on the internet. It didn’t take them long to start talking about the last track on the release and the reactions were mixed,but more than anything else the fans shared in his heart break. He knew he would have to address it in his live when he discussed the mixtape and he was ready to let them in. The live was generally upbeat as they went through the tracks and he ignored the questions about the ending song until after it had played. The haunting sound bite at the end of the song, rendering him almost in tears as it played through his studio, her voice as through a voicemail, ended the song. “ I can’t wait to see you when I get home, even though I know you’ll be asleep before I get there. I love you, Min Yoongi.”

He took a deep breath before telling everyone watching their story, even answering some questions in a light hearted manner. He told them of how they had gotten scolded together by Namjoon after he had found out, but even after giving them a hard time he kept their secret until the other found out. He was drawing to the end of his live and was finishing his telling of their love story.

“ and for a short time, she was mine. She was mine to love and I will always love her. I just wish we had forgotten the forever I had planned for us.” as he finished his sentence he pulled the small chain he had hidden under his shirt out and the ring that hung from it glinted in the dim lights of the studio. Saying nothing more about the topic, he continued with the live and finished it as he always would.

He didn’t really bring it up again to the public like that, but more often than not you could always see the small silver chain around his neck with the engagement ring he never got to give proudly on said chain. He always put a hand to it when he or his group would win an award, almost like he could feel her when he touched it.

#BTS #bts imagines #SUGA #BTS suga #bts suga imagine #angst #suga angst #suga imagine #min yoongi #min yoongi imagine #min yoongi angst #bts sad #bts sad imagine #agust d #agust d imagine

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courage-a-word-of-justice · 4 years

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Still chugging away at these summer and spring anime...sorry for the delay...(LOL, that rhymed without me meaning to.)

Also, I’ve been on the fence about whether to keep Golden Kamuy, since almost no one I read the reviews of follows it now and it’s a week’s wait (when accounting for my AniList challenge)...so I’m putting it on pause so I don’t have to suffer later.

Deca-Dence 4

“…who possesses the will to fight.”

…Great. Kurenai is absolutely tethered to Kaburagi in a one-sided love. Just when I thought Natsume had an independent role model to look up to.

Maou-jou 2

Oh, this is from Shonen Sunday? Didn’t know that until now.

“Demon Shroud: A demon with 99 clans. A cloth demon that puts on airs that it won’t be used before it’s finished off, due to its wonderful fabric. It is full of beautiful ghostly power, so its skin is smooth. However, the hero (who commonly uses things he finds in his surroundings) caught one, so now the princess has zeroed in on them. The princess doesn’t need the hands or the head of these demons, so it’s a cycle of killing and taking revenge for them. Their fighting style is squeezing the life out of things.”

Apparently, the teddy is acceptable, LOL.

I like how the window stopped displaying text at one point.

I saw someone with a huge plait in the ED. The queen, maybe…?

I noticed the laughs dropped off significantly in comparison to last time, but it’s still good. I can flex my translation skills even if I can’t laugh at one part.

Fruits Basket 2 24 (49)

…jumping to the 2nd-last episode in a season is pretty unprecendented, but I’m going to watch this for the sake of Jon’s Creator Showcase…then again, I need to finish this anime anyway, so it’s just cutting and changing the order for something I already know the outcomes of.

I used to lose myself in movies so much that I would lose all sense of who I was and would have to “regain the bearings of myself”, so to speak. I would have to reconstruct who I was, even though I technically hadn’t “been broken” and I knew once I did that, it felt different. Like I’d travelled through time and past me would never be the same as present me. That’s why I kind of get what Machi means.

Oh, I didn’t listen to this OP much…probably because I’m emphasising bingeing the spring and summer series I left behind and now that I can skip the ads on most of my anime, I’m leaving behind the anime I’ll be slower on.

The manga was written when there weren’t as many cell phones around, much less smartphones.

Rin’s on bad terms with everyone…

…if I remember the year of the dragon correctly, the last one was 2012, then the one before that is 2000…around the turn of the millennium, huh? Froob is showing its age here, albeit unintentionally.

Now that I’m closer to the Musketeers’ age, I can kind of empathise with their scenes a bit more.

“If I always blame someone or something, I’ll never change.” – True. I realised I’ve been a bit too haughty lately (what with the HypMic anime going on and it being the first thing I could research extensively before the anime’s debut, my feelings are of course reaching fever pitch – combine that with continued COVID lockdown and you get me being all defensive of HypMic, for better or for worse) and so I may have acted like a jerk to someone, but since I only know them online and generally when I try to apologise to people online they don’t see the things I apologise for as things in need of apology, I know the fault lies with me to rein myself in. I guess this means changing yourself is the only way to move forward.

I wonder how Hatori did his doctor training while avoiding hugs from girls who aren’t Sohmas…?

Shigure vs. Gentaro (of HypMic, of course)…a writing competition! That would be fun.

…Crow’s note here makes sense (<- this is why I changed the order). Shigure was clearly asking a question there.

Come to think of it, HypMic and Froob have some similar characters. The stoic doctor is Hatori/Jakurai, the energetic smol one is Momiji/Ramuda, the teasing author is Shigure/Gentaro…that could make for some good fanfic material, really.

Magatsu 1

…that title is an absolute killer, man. Anyways, I’m here for the director, who also worked on Hataraku Maou-sama.

Is this a no guns thing, like IWGP is a no drugs thing?

…this OP has lyrics?! I just hear strange squeaky noises, the kind you hear on some autotuned sogs to make them seem more ominous (I can’t remember if there’s a similar sound in G-Anthem of Y City or Yokohama Walker, but one of the MTC songs has similar noises).

I kinda guessed Leo’s package was the one Schaake and her partner were looking for. I was right.

That CGI (on the truck) is…kinda conspicuous.

These backgrounds are gorgeous.

“The definition of in dubio contra reum is "in doubt, against the accused", meaning that, where there is doubt, the accused in a trial is not given the benefit of that doubt; they are assumed guilty.”

I wonder: how many protagonists start out as absolute wimps, unwilling to fight because they either know or don’t know their own power? It’s a pretty standard introduction for things with fights.

This battle track is nice. I listened to some of the Magatsu music under Masaru Yokoyama’s name on Spotify and it’s pretty cool, but since it’s background music, there’s not a lot of demand to listen to it (from me or anyone else, I don’t think).

Why is there only a single shield if they know the enemy has heavy artillery?

…what the heck is a Zeits? Update: You can see a “Zeits” (or however it’s spelt) in the credits list, suggesting Zeits is a character in this.

I knew this was my last premiere and this might have made or broken my entire watching schedule, but this is just a pretty down-to-earth premiere for a fantasy mobile game. While that cliffhanger compelled me to continue, I don’t think it’s good enough to beat its competition in the long run.

IWGP 2

I know I said Magatsu was my last premiere, but just to be sure, I’m watching this one.

This dance scene is beautifully orchestrated. The fact there’s no music means you focus entirely on the motion.

The OP seems to trade more in colour and spectacle than actual “cool factor”.

…wow, $2.90…? That’s some cheap food.

You know I hate 1st person cam with a passion, right? So…uh…

Eyyyyyyyy…this is basically McDonald’s, curry style.

I think I can almost see Ichiro of HypMic in how the G-Boys seem to mostly be reformed delinquents or actual delinquents.

…yeah, but what’s your name, random messenger guy? Update: We find out later his name is Isogai.

“It’s because I suck at working and communicating.” – Yep, that me.

Ikebukuro licence plate. I still have no idea exactly what places get licence plates in Japan.

There are actually 2 characters before “Hospital”, but no one confirms the reading of those characters…which is probably why they’re omitted.

…oh gosh, if this were a BL, Mitsuki and Masaru would be star-crossed lovers…*sigh*

Maybe it’s an unrelated 3rd party??? (In mysteries, you can never dismiss the work of a 3rd party.)

You can tell exactly which group is which based on the colours they wear. Makoto isn’t affiliated with anyone, so he’s wearing black and had yellow earlier.

I think an anime is cowardly – or trying to save budget – if they deliberately choose an angle where they can’t show the moment of impact clearly.

E! News, LOL.

Archangel, huh? So like a 2nd in command?

I think IWGP is moving in the direction of pushing the gangs against each other in the way Makoto describes in ep. 2.

As for what I think of it now, it's decent if you want something down-to-earth, but it seems to be missing some kind of "wow factor". Like it's afraid to commit to deeper characterisation, even though it has Makoto as the ostensible lead/viewpoint character.

Koi to Producer 11

“Cognitive Science Association” - I thought it was the Cognitive Psychology Association…? (Psychology is shinrigaku, science is kagaku.)

My boy (Lucien)…why must you be so evil??? Why do I keep falling for the tall but mysterious doctor??? (<- guilty as charged re: Jakurai)

…that’s some funky seatbelts.

What’s that look in Victor’s eyes…? Fondness, or something more…?

…ah, so there is “Science” in the place’s name. It was just being less loosely translated then.

Oh dang. Stuff escalated really fast, huh?

You actually set this in 2020, huh, staff? What happens ten years from now and people watch it, only to realise 2020 and 2030 aren’t so different? That’s what happened when people had the Y2K bug.

That yellow sign on the side says “exit”. It’s not of any use.

That’s not a recoloured Kiro, is it? It’s not Shaw, either (who I think we saw somewhere in the previous episodes)…so then who is it?

…geesh, they even changed Helios to Ares. I guess it makes sense: Helios is the god of the sun, but Ares is the god of war.

Koi to Producer 12 (FINAL)

I read on the wiki Lucien’s power is copying powers. No wonder I couldn’t get a solid handle on it!

So that Helios wasn’t a mistake in the credits list in the previous episode???

Can we even hear what Helios says when Protag-chan is pulled away? Based on the lack of subs, probably no, but I wanted to ask anyway. (Or maybe he said “Watashi”, since that’s the pronoun Protag-chan goes by?)

…so that really is Kiro, huh?

Military…what? When did Protag-chan’s father have a military squad???

LOL, at the very end you can see Gavin gesturing at Greenie (the pot plant, presumably a succulent). I logged on to the game 7 days straight (they have a Discord channel!) and got a Gavin R card with Greenie on it, which is how I know about it.

Anyways, that was a fun show. Not the best, but still fun.

HypMic 3

*snickers* Just look at my boi! He’s so tall, he has to bend down for kids! (I don’t mean that teasingly, I mean that endearingly, but lately I’ve been no good at expressing myself…Must be the lockdown.)

If TsudaKen was a guest last time, then Degarashi and Irihatoma could be voiced by guest seiyuus too…

What is Jakurai, hmm? (A Transformer, LOL?...I’m kidding, of course.)

All I knew about this episode going in was that it was an MTR episode. Maybe they’ll cover the stalker story from the manga…?

More literally, Hifumi’s sign says “will you monopolise me until morning?”. This reminds me of the MTR truck one of the servers I was in was talking about…it looked like a giant billboard.

“The most notable thing about Doppo is that he has no notable characteristics.”…and yet, he’s still one of the most popular characters of the series.

Suddenly, HypMic becomes a mystery…? I’ll take it!

Yup, “Doppomine” is now confirmed as “Doppo-chin”.

If all the mysteries I’ve consumed say one thing, it’s “never forget there might be someone out there with a grudge against you willing to pin a crime on you”…or alternatively, “never forget there may be an unrelated 3rd party who would be willing to pin a crime on you”.

These guys (Tom etc.) are just food critics, I swear…(LOL)

Oddly enough(?), googling “Shinjuku waffles” reveals there are several waffle places in Shinjuku…you wouldn’t expect so many waffles away from the home of waffles (probably Belgium), but there you go.

All the results on Shinjuku French toast point to this Café Aaliya (give or take an H at the end). Apparently, it’s so popular, people line up for it on weekdays.

Oh, so Tom’s a (street) photographer…what are Iris and Rex then?

The CGI on that car looks really bad, man. It may be dark to disguise it, but it still looks bad.

Jakurai’s dad car strikes again!...Was it white? I don’t remember, but I’m pretty sure it was a lighter colour than this.

I was quite worried about how much swearing they were going to throw in the MTC episode, but then…they kicked it down a week. So…start worrying about next week, folks!

I…thought he would call Jyuto for some reason. (giggles) I’ve never seen Samatoki look so happy in relation to Jakurai, but maybe that’s because he’s just chilling. (Or maybe he was meant to have a neutral but slightly happy face and they messed up the angle. I know I do that sometimes in fanart.)

There’s Jyuto, right on cue…LOL, that kick to the guts was so random it became epic!

Uwabami…what sort of snake is that, again? *checks* Giant snake. That’s no help. (That host could have a guest seiyuu too.)

Ooh, I’m fairly sure that’s an automatic car.

Jakurai went Jitsu wa kyoumi bukai desu ne?. “Fascinating” isn’t a wrong translation, but they did forget “In fact…” or “Really…” from the start and possibly the “?” at the end (depending on interpretation). Update: It might actually be Jitsu ni, but same deal.

They struttin’ down Kabuki-cho all fancy-like…Doppo sure does get a lot of punchlines, though.

This random guy at the club could also have a guest seiyuu…

…what’s with the random Tahoma?

…oh, hey. If Hifumi’s jacket acts as a security blanket of sorts against women and he gave it to Doppo for extra warmth (presumably), then…he’s trying to protect Doppo, even in his own sort of unique way.

Mimimi vs Hifumi? This is gonna get confusing…(hey, did they actually make a flourish noise when Hifumi put on his jacket? Does the distinction need to be that clear…?)

…see, never forget the presence of an unrelated 3rd party.Wait, so we have motive…what’s the relationship of Mimimi and the dude she killed? Who is that dude? Update: We find out later.

Notice Mimimi says “Hifumi-kun” – she’s still on an outside layer compared to Doppo, who just uses Hifumi’s name. Also, I noticed Mimimi called herself Hifumi’s “onna” – “woman” – explicitly, as if she belonged to him. The subs reflect that, but it seems to have less meaning in English because they outright translated it as such.

Well, they got to demonstrate Doppo’s snapping. I’m more than happy with just that. Also, Hifumi calls Doppo with a -kun here.

LOL, this song is gonna be known as “catchy”, ain’t it? Anything with an easy-to-sing-along chorus like “nananana” is. Update: Or maybe not even a chorus, it’s just lyrics.

Hmm…I noticed the “use Mr with me” line isn’t actually reflected in the subs, but the lyrics are so fast, I don’t know how they are reflected.

Did you notice the da in the lyrics in romaji?

…and s*** goes ka-blooey, as you’ve come to expect by now.

Mimimi-kun…?

Oh, so the background from Hypnosis Mics can get caught in photos? I never thought of that.

It’s almost as if they’re nodding at the Doppo fans through the 4th wall regarding his appeal.

It seems they’re not switching out this Buster Bros track, which is…okay, but I was hoping for an MTR ED. (Tofubeats was on this track IIRC and the anime website didn’t list a future ED, so that’s why I’m okay with it.)

…Okay, so Irihatoma is Mutsumi Iwanaka, who’s a rookie in the seiyuu world. *goes to consult Anime News Network*

Oh! Mimimi Hibakari! I get it! (It means “me, me, me all day” when written differently to her name.)

Uwabami was Shugo Nakamura and Degarashi was Mitsuaki Hoshino. I’ve never heard of these guys – except for Nakamura’s role as Teru in Idolm@ster Side M – so it’s interesting they contrasted TsudaKen with them…eh? Heilong? Whossat? (Probably the guy whose…parts…almost got crushed by Jakurai with a billiards cue.) This Hiroya Eto is even more underground than those guys.

A-hah! Today’s new song is “WELCOME U” (that’s how it’s spelt, don’t diss me for it!) by Kohei from SIMONSAYZ.

Update: I thought that kid at the beginning was Yotsutsuji, so it scared me for a second.

#simulcast commentary #Hypnosis Microphone #Hypnosis Mic #HypMic #ikebukuro west gate park #IWGP #deca-dence #Fruits Basket #maou-jou de oyasumi #sleepy princess in the demon castle #magatsu wahrheit #Koi to Producer: EVOL x LOVE #Chesarka watches Koi to Producer #Mr Love: Queen's Choice #Chesarka watches Furuba #chesarka watches deca-dence #Chesarka watches HypMic #Chesarka watches Maou-jou

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ms31x129 · 5 years

Text

Time for Chapter 5! Posting a little early & I had to make a another DJ! I felt compelled! I hope I have ideas for 2 more! @cultureisdarkbeer @monikafilefan @today-in-fic

Chapter 1 - Courage to Jump Tumblr LINK AO3 it is HERE.

Chapter 2: Luck of the Irish Tumblr LINK or AO3 it is HERE.

Chapter 3: Graffiti of the Heart Tumblr LINK or AO3 HERE.

Chapter 4: Leave Your Demons At The Door Tumblr LINK or AO3 HERE.

Chapter 5: Truth Is the Pain Inside Our Hearts (Click on the name for AO3) or if you like Tumblr just clickity-click on the Keep Reading link below.

{Summary:

Grab your Kleenex, because the forecast calls for angst with a few passing heartfelt admissions.

Jackson has left the bar and returned to the motel where his mind dares to tread back into the memories of Dana Scully at one of the most vulnerable times of her and Fox Mulder's life.}

“The greatest sacrifice is when you sacrifice your own happiness for the sake of someone else.” -Unknown

Jackson found himself stumbling back into his motel room what seemed like hours later. With his head already pounding, he peeled his soaked jeans off and nearly lost his balance as he tripped his way into the bathroom. His stomach tumbled with the jolt and he quickly felt around for the location of the toilet bowl in case he lost the rest of his liquor.

Jackson winced. “Ugh, shit!” Flicking on the lights was a bad idea. He groaned as he turned the shower on and watched the steam billow up around him. He hadn’t even realized he was crying until small droplets of hot tears crept down the swell of his cheeks. His veil of stoicism had finally fallen and everything he’d been holding back rushed to the surface.

The fact that he’d just scared the living hell out of several people in a bar—including a little kid—was not lost to him. In fact, for the first time in a long time, Jackson felt found.

He swiped away his tears of relief and realized that weight of resentment and anger had lifted. He’d been dealt a complicated hand in life, yes, but he had recently come to understand that his birth mother and adoptive parents had stacked the deck for him; not against. All he had to do was lay down his cards and play his final hand—to finish the journey he’d started when he ran away from the last two people who cared about him.

He stripped the rest of his clothes and stepped into the shower, letting the hot water pour down his face in rivulets as he finally broke down and mourned the life he left behind.

After the water ran cold, Jackson draped his soiled clothing over the shower to dry and donned a clean pair of pants. It was then that he remembered the letter tucked away in his jeans.

Frantic at the thought of losing the last tangible piece of his past, he rushed to carefully unfold the fragile paper. It was damp along the edges and a few of the more exaggerated letters at the end were bleeding into one another. Otherwise, the rest of the words written by Dana Katherine Scully were still perfectly legible and staring him in the face.

“I’m tired of not knowing,” he admitted, ready to accept what the past showed him. “I need to know more.”

Jackson sat on the edge of the bed with his elbows resting on his thighs as he stared intently at the next sentence written for him. He ran his tongue along his top lip while the letter shook between his fingers as one knee vigorously bounced up and down. “A nervous habit,” his mom would have to explain during every parent teacher conference at each new school as his teacher’s studied him from across the table.

He readied himself for another vision that he now expected to receive, embracing it. This time he read aloud…

“Chance embarking with this other on the greatest of journeys—a search for truths fugitive and imponderable.”

He felt it instantly: the burn and sting of his mind connecting to the past, delving into the memories of his birth mother as he was once again sucked into a world lived without him.

December 1st, 2012

Jackson paced the wooden floor within his mother’s body. She stared at herself clad in powder blue scrubs within the floor length mirror of a bedroom, playing with her Our Lady of Sorrows Hospital ID card that dangled from her lanyard. One slim finger traced along the address of 227700 Wallis Road, Farrs Corner, VA as Mulder’s shirtless figure loomed behind in the background.

“The timetable on something as radical as this, Mulder, is imponderable. Not only that, it’s improbable,” she spoke to the mirror in a tiresome tone resembling one she might use if she were debating on whether or not it would storm that night, or what to have for dinner.

She was resigned at the notion that Mulder would never hear her out and accept the fact that the pending alien invasion would in all likelihood, not happen at all. They were in a good place together—happily “married” while living life without darkness. Jackson felt a pang in her chest grow as she thought about the possibility of the man she loved so desperately falling off the edge if the invasion actually occurred and he could do nothing to stop it.

She watched in the reflection as Mulder ran a frustrated hand through his hair and scoffed. He took two purposeful steps forward and locked his driven gaze onto hers through the glass.

“Scully, It’s happening. It WILL happen. Why can’t you just believe it?”

Her patience fled instantly and Jackson felt her defensive walls fly up. He recognized the reaction and realized it was to protect herself from what she’s been hiding deep within her heart: guilt. Guilt surrounding his adoption flashed like fireworks in her mind and he could feel it eating her alive from the inside out.

She spun around and shook her head up at him. Her little body trembled with caged emotion.

“I don’t WANT to believe it, Mulder!” she cried and wrapped her arms around herself, as if that could soothe the shared pain they equally felt. “I… We sacrificed our son for a better, safer life and now you still want to believe in this?” She pointed to a calendar hanging on the wall with a red X through the number twelve. “Don’t you see goddammit? I can’t believe it!”

“Christ, Scully! I don’t want to believe this shit either,” he growled and grasped her hand gently. “Don’t you remember me not wanting to speak the words aloud to you in that hellhole of a jail cell? Fuck! My son—our little boy, Scully…” he choked.

“Don’t!” She jerked her hand out of his and sidestepped around him. Jackson could barely hold onto the vision with the powerful waves of anger, grief, and guilt that washed over her. “I fell in love with you because you never give up, Mulder, but please don’t say things we can’t change.”

His chin quivered as he shook his head. “We never talk about him… My son is living his life with another father, another family,” he rasped and followed her movements around the bed as she kicked off her shoes. “But he’s safe and loved and unharmed by the men who have harmed us!”

Tears burned down her cheeks and the lump in her throat threatened to choke her. “Mulder…”

Suddenly he was there, standing in front of her with his arms embracing her tightly as silent sobs wracked through her body. She melted into him and nuzzled her face into his warm chest. The love she felt for him was as fierce as the ache in her heart.

“You did the right thing, Dana,” he whispered into her hair and she whimpered, squeezing him closer. “But it doesn’t make it hurt any less.”

The intense moment overwhelmed Jackson too much, jarring him out of his mother’s mind and sending his back bouncing off the mattress.

“Jesus Christ!” he groaned and pinched the bridge of his nose.

He didn’t understand this feeling—the same feeling his mother had felt so fiercely. The same one that had slowly been rebuilding in his heart over the last year.

But asking the age old question to which he was sure no one held the answer to, was the only thing that he could think to say in response to witnessing something so powerful.

“Why does love hurt so much?”

Hours flew by in a blur for Jackson. The images from Dana Scully and the memories from his childhood that he’d witnessed tumbled through his mind on an endless loop. Seeing something once usually left a permanent imprint on his brain, like a fingerprint pressed into glass. The image may fade but it still left its mark on him forever. He recalled reading that same fact about Mulder in his dossier when he hacked into the FBI’s personnel records after seeing he was partnered with the woman who birthed, and raised him for almost a year. An eidetic memory and an IQ worthy of much more than a man labeled as a spooky ex-fugitive. Maybe he and Mulder had much more in common than he thought.

He held the letter in front of him. The things he’d seen and felt from just reading simple words scrawled onto a piece of paper would brand Jackson for life. Yet, his mother’s words weren’t simple at all. They held great meaning—possibly even a power to set in motion what fate had preordained for them all before he was even born.

With a shake of his head at his aptitude for physics, he couldn’t help but think of how Isaac Newton’s universal law of gravitation pertained to his life. The law states: every object in the universe attracts every other object with a force that is directed along a line joining them. What if the force directing him was the letter and the objects being slowly pulled together by the powerful connection they shared were he and his birth mother?

He tossed a pillow across the room in frustration as new questions arose. Was it all fate? Was his existence created through the laws of science, the experiments through Project Crossroads meant to be? Was he a miracle child born of a love so strong it withstood life’s ultimate tests like his mother had written? Were these people that he’s come to understand so deeply meant to suffer while living a life without him?

“How fucked up is that?” Jackson sighed and sat up to grab the bag of peanuts he had stored in his bag. The salt cravings that always seemed to strike during times of stress required him to carry a bag of peanuts or salt-laced seeds with him on his travels. As he popped a couple into his mouth, he continued his philosophical reflection.

Everything he had witnessed through his visions while flexing his pineal gland enlightened him as to the true sacrifice that was made by everyone. It burned and blistered beneath his own skin. Strangers that he knew only by looking within and now he couldn’t bear to live without. If he held the key to destruction and annihilation, perhaps they held the key to his redemption.

He wanted to know them now, in the flesh, as if his own DNA screamed for it. Maybe it wasn’t as much about who he was or why he was, but who he chose to be. After reading the lines of the letter, immersing himself within the emotions, possessing the suffering endured for their cause in his own soul, he now understood so much more.

It was time. Time to take that leap. To fight alongside the one that bore him and loved him in the beginning even knowing the possibilities. There might be a war raging, but it didn’t have to originate from him. He had to step from behind the shadows and free himself from the prison of his own mind.

Jackson thought of the words of his idol, Malcolm X: “ Nobody can give you freedom. Nobody can give you equality or justice or anything. If you're a man, you take it.” He needed to take back his heritage, embrace it, and allow it to set him free. It was time to stand for something and stand against the ones that meant to use him to feed the monster. Before, he had been asleep under others control; now it was for himself. There was no more avoiding, no more ignoring of the signs written out for him in ink.

He would claim the life he lost with the people who love him and understand. Most of all he would stop running and avoiding what was no longer calling, but screaming out into the world. If fear held him back, then their love could cast it away. Just maybe he needed that, too.

#xf fanfic #thexfiles #msr fanfic #msrfanfic #txf fanfic #the xf fanfic #the xfiles fanfic #xfiles fanfic #xf chimera #xffanfic

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thefloatingstone · 5 years

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Hey C-Puff! So I know I keep saying that I love your taste, but I'm curious, what would you consider essential scifi movie viewing?

Oof! (and thank you! 8DD) It really depends what kind of mood you’re in. Because “sci fi” is essentially a weird genre, because it can be mushed with literally any other genre and still work without straying too far from the ‘sci fi’ concept. Sci fi is a genre the same way fantasy is a genre or horror is a genre. You can make a horror-comedy or a fantasy comedy, but you can’t make a drama-comedy (At least without some major tonal dissonance). So it REALLY depends what you feel like watching or what mood you’re in or what tolerance level you have in some aspects.

I can list a few though which I feel are super essential viewing but are vastly different from each other. I’m not gonna give a full summary break down of each one because it’ll take me like 3 hours to write (these things take a while sometimes) but I’ll give a little indication!

Edit: oops…. I ended up spending 4 hours writing this….

1: Alien (1979)(Sci-Fi horror)

These days the Alien franchise seems to automatically = Xenomorphs. So it can be hard to remember the very first movie that not only started the franchise but literally changed sci fi as a genre, you barely see the Xenomorph on screen, and when you DO the film does its best to hide what it actually looks like with lighting, camera angles and editing. Because the first movie’s Alien costume was not really good, and the movie had a VERY small budget comparatively speaking. So it literally has the opposite goal of trying to show off the xenomorph as much as possible.

Originally sold as “Jaws but in space”, the whole idea of the film was “What if you were a bunch of truckers in the middle of space and nowhere to run, and something unknown started picking you off one by one. Where can you run? Who can you contact? What can you do?”

The original’s entire focus is on fear. From long sequences of Ripley running where it’s filmed facing her so you can’t see “behind you” as the audience to instill paranoia, to hearing what sounds like extreme amounts of gore off screen where you can’t see it, the entire film is designed to be terrifying.

It’s difficult to remember that with what the franchise is known for today.

Also noteworthy is that so much of what is Alien came from Jodorowsky’s “Dune” which was never made, but nevertheless still achieved Jodorowsky’s goal of changing sci fi forever.

2: Blade Runner (1982)(Sci-Fi Noir)

in 2012, Ridley Scott said in an interview; “30 years ago, I saw the future”.

As far as I am aware, the first movie to ask the question “where exactly does ‘being human’ start or end?” regarding robots. The original Blade Runner is filmed in a way to replicate a 1940s style crime noir story, complete with brooding detective and femme fatale. However, it is set in the FAR OFF FUTURE of 2019.

The story follows our detective, known as a “Blade Runner” chasing down a specific class of robot which is illegal on Earth (but used in off-planet labour deemed too dangerous for human work) after the model number started a riot on one of these off-world labour camps. Detective Decker is tasked in finding and “retiring” a group of robots recently landed in futuristic Los Angeles, especially since the robot group is tracking down and murdering the designers in charge of creating their line.

However, the further Decker investigates things, the more uncomfortable questions he finds himself asking. How are these robots so much more different than us humans? What are their motives? Are they really just machines gone berserk? Or is there something very very human they are trying to achieve.

A film that exploded in Japan and essentially caused every anime between 1982 and 1995 to be in some way a Blade Runner fanfic, it changed the genre even more than Alien did. This time letting philosophical questions and atmosphere do most of the work, as the cyberpunk aesthetic of future Los Angeles was as important a character to the story as any of the human players. It was the first time we truly saw Cyberpunk, and literally EVERYTHING we consider “Cyberpunk” these days came from this movie’s direction and cinematography.

Watch the Director’s cut. DO NOT watch the Theatrical version. The Theatrical version was forced to add narration to the long stretches of silence as the movie distributor thought audiences would be too stupid to handle a movie with so little dialogue in it. The Director’s Cut is how the film was meant to be watched, doing away with all the needless talking and letting the film’s visuals and music speak for itself.

3: Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977)(Sci-Fi Mystery)

Yes yes I’m biased because it’s my favourite movie. But even if it wasn’t it’s an essential film to watch in the Sci-Fi genre.

Some people will think E.T. holds this title, but E.T. came out 5 years AFTER Close Encounters and so, Close Encounters is one of the first movies if not THE first movie that came out and asked… “What if the Aliens came and were our friends?” Because up until this point, All the “Big-Eyed Grey Aliens in Flying Saucers” movies portrayed them as invaders trying to take over the planet. And the sci fi stories and movies that DIDN’T have this narrative, the aliens were always human looking (Star Trek, The Day the Earth Stood Still etc)

And so, this is one of the first movies that suggested that maybe the weird looking space aliens from another planet who look nothing like us could be our allies. Would want to speak to us. Would want to know us.

Not that the movie is full of love and friendship. in some places it feels more like a horror movie than anything else. But that’s because the film thinks its audience is smart, and it doesn’t have to have a character EXPLAIN things to us. We can understand what’s happening by WATCHING. And if something is strange and doesn’t make sense, it either will by the end of the film thanks to context, or it was never that important to understand anyway.

Also a giant part of the film’s power and influence comes from its visuals, but even more importantly, its soundtrack which I can’t communicate in a gif. And so I am left linking a trailer.

I think it says a lot that it was THIS movie, not Star Wars, that helped the first Star Trek movie to be made a few years later, and with that, helped give us Star Trek TNG. Not bad.

(You can watch any of the 3 cuts of the film. I’m most familiar with the Director’s Cut so that’s my fave and what I would recommend but I haven’t heard of any of the 3 cuts being “the bad one”)

youtube

4: Total Recall (1990)(Sci-Fi Action)

It was only a matter of time before Arnie showed up on this list, being in no less than 3 Sci-Fi game changers in the 80s and 90s.

What makes Total Recall Unique, however, is that we have Paul Verhoeven as director, who likes movies that have a little more to say than “Arnie shoots a bunch of bullets at things” (as great as that is, don’t get me wrong) And I think the fact that people will STILL debate this movie says a lot about it.

The story is set in the far future, where normal construction worker Arnie is bored with his normal life (which is weird considering he’s built like a truck and married to Sharon Stone but I’m not here to judge). He’s been having reoccurring dreams about going to Mars, as well as a strange woman he meets there. One day while traveling home on the subway, he sees an ad for a copany called “Rekall” who can use a sort of brain implant machine to give you instantaneous fake memories. Basically, you can take a vacation that lasts 6 months in your memories within the span of 10 minutes real time.

Arnie’s character decides to visit, and asks that his fantasy take place on Mars, and describes the woman he meets there. However, during the fake memory implant something goes wrong. VERY wrong. The machine drags up suppressed memories Arnie has of being a sleeper agent, put on Earth until needed, as well as images he’s been seeing in his dreams. The Rekall employees have to sedate him and send him home, refunding him for the poor experience.

However, Arnie can no longer just forget what the machine dragged up from his subconscious, and starts to question if his life really is his life. If his wife really IS his wife. (after all…. Someone who looks like Sharon Stone married to a construction worker who looks like Mr Universe living in a very cushy apartment? Something doesn’t add up.)

Arnie finds himself suddenly dragged into a massive conspiracy plot revolving around Mars, the corrupt governor running it, the rebellion and its mysterious revolutionary, as well as who the hell WAS he before he was who he is now?

That’s the movie’s plot at least. But as many people who watch the movie has pointed out, despite the movie itself never making a point of it, funny how all this adventure and conspiracy hits Arnie right after he’s plugged in to a fantasy machine at Rekall. Convenient.

Nobody to do with the film has given a straight answer as to how real the movie’s events are supposed to be, and film fans have been arguing to this day of it was all real as the movie shows it to be… or a meta narrative.

5: Robocop (1987)(Sci-fi Satire)

The movie that very almost got an X rating for its violence, also directed by Paul Verhoeven and even more biting in its meta-narrative than Total Recall.

The STORY of the movie is that future Detroit is a complete shithole so full of crime that the police force just can’t keep up. After a police officer named Murphy is blasted to fuck, his corpse is used by the CPO company to create a “robotic law enforcer” meant to be put on the street to handle crime. Robocop is his name, and if he proves to be effective, CPO is planning to mass produce them. During the course of the film, however, Murphy learns to regain his humanity through the help of his police partner, and uncover the scrupulous CPO company’s hand in the city’s crime wave.

So that’s the STORY of Robocop… but it’s not what Robocop is “About”.

Robocop is essentially an enormous criticism of Corporate America in a way that’s basically come true since the movie came out. Robocop is one of those rare movies that is BETTER now than it was when it came out.

OCP is essentially Apple or basically any current American company. Focused on rushing out products for the good press it’ll give them before ironing out the problems and bugs, and taking MASSIVE and inhumane shortcuts in development to meet a deadline, uncaring who gets hurt in the process.

This message is further highlighted by the fake commercials peppered into the movie, a very clear criticism of everything from America’s extreme focus on its military and racism of other countries, American manufacturer’s disregard for what is environmentally safe in favour of “Status Symbols” in its fuel guzzling cars, America’s obsession with defending people’s ownership through unethical violence, Medical and health advertised on television like a luxury product, as well as just the inane meaningless garbage that is/was American television.

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As a native of the Netherlands, Verhoeven pours so much cynicism and criticism towards American culture, both in the jokes as well as the core theme of the movie, that the film as a whole is less “Watch Robocop shoot his handcanon at bad guys” and more a dystopian nightmare, and finding humanity in it despite it all.

The only movie to top Robocop in its criticism of American culture would be “Starship Troopers” also directed by Verhoeven. But that movie is so depressing I almost can’t even reccomend it, despite it being GENIUS.

It’s the movie where the human race wins a war against giant bug aliens… and that’s the worst ending that could happen.

6: Enemy Mine (1985)(Sci-Fi drama)

*leans forward and smiles at you* hey there, friend. Do you like aliens? Do you like enemies to friends to lovers? Do you like found families? Do you like “Racism is bad” narratives? Do you like non-binary aliens who have no gender? Do you like romantic undertones between non-binary aliens played by a male actor and a cis white dude also played by a male actor?

Because BOY DO I HAVE THE MOVIE FOR YOU.

You think I’m joking with that description…. I am not. Not even a fucking little.

I very rarely see anybody talk about “Enemy Mine” and that’s a fucking crime because this movie is friggen AMAZING. The fact that it exists at all, let alone was made in the 80s is borderline absurd.

The movie takes place in the future. Humanity is in an intergallactic war with an alien race called the Dracs. Battles and skirmishes between the two races explode throughout the galaxy on various planets whenever the two species run into each other, and we follow our human main character Davidgewho, during a spaceship confrontation with the Drac, crash lands on an uninhabited planet, along with the Drac pilot named Jeriba Shigan.

The planet they crash on is a violent world battered by meteors and storms, which forces the two pilots to seek shelter in a cave near their crash site (and there was only one cave!). Despite them both needing shelter, the two absolutely despise each other, completely prepared to kill the other one the second they make a move. It’s a tense and paranoid stand off where each one waits for the other to move first. Neither of them do.

They find out that the planet is sometimes used by human miners for its rare ore (who use captured Drac as slave labour) but they only visit the planet periodically when the years- long bad weather settles. And so, Davidge decides to wait for rescue, despite knowing it may take several years before any human comes to the planet. Until then, he just has to survive and NOT get killed by the Drac he’s sharing the cave with.

So… the two wait. And a weird truce is called. And they wait… and time passes… and with literally no other life to turn to for company… well…. they start talking. First spitting and insulting each other. Then, slowly, learning more about each other. Then, slowly, sharing cultural information with each other, learning about their different species, learning about what each’s species have been telling them about the other. And well…. after several years… it becomes very hard to see the only living person you have been talking to for years as an enemy.

And then, after a while, Jeriba (nicknamed “Jerry” by Davidge) brings up a tiny problem.

He’s pregnant.

Davidge asks how the fuck that’s possible. Jerry explains his race has no gender or binary sex, and they produce asexually. So… ok…. Now you’ve got an alien you don’t FULLY trust who is pregnant and going to have a baby on this hostile planet.

…..oops.

Also, as time goes on another problem arises. The humans who will eventually show up to mine this planet use Drac as slave labour. This wasn’t ORIGINALLY a problem…. but it’s kinda become a problem now.

This movie is fucking amazing and nobody talks about it. Go watch it. Although be prepared for tears and feelings.

7: Galaxy Quest (1999)(Sci-Fi Comedy)

In modern day America (or rather 1999 America) there use to be a show called “Galaxy Quest” which DEFINITELY WAS NOTHING LIKE STAR TREK OK???

It was a very big show, but it eventually got cancelled. However, it is still considered a massively popular and influential tv show, enough to have its own conventions and dedicated fanbase. (AGAIN. IT’S NOT STAR TREK STOP SAYING THAT!)

The actors who starred in it many years ago now struggle to get work in other roles which they all deal with in different ways. Our Kirk Character played by Tim Allan is an egocentric selfish asshole who bathes in the “glory” of his role as the captain, despite it having been years, in complete denial that he’s a has-been and the fact that none of the other cast like him. Our Spock character is played by Alan Rickman who wants to know where his life went wrong. He use to be a REAL actor. He use to star in Shakespear plays. How did it come to this? He hates all of you. As well as Sigourney Weaver who had the important role of “Sexy Girl” in the show (a fact she resents) and a handful of others.

One day at a convention, they are approached by some super awkward and weird cosplayers, who ask them in-character if they could help their alien species, the Thermians, who are getting decimated by a warrior race lead by a General Sarris. As the Thermians are peaceful and have no experience in battles, they’ve come to ask the “Crew of the Starship Protector” to aid them. Alan Rickman agrees, believing it to be a promotional gig, and signs up his co-stars (only telling them after the fact which they resent him for)

The next day they play out their roles as they did on the show rather unenthusiastically, ordering the Thermians to simply shoot at General Sarris to defeat him, and then take them home.

Things turn complicated tho when the Thermians show up again and say “uhm… it didn’t exactly work. general Sarris is still alive and killing out people.”

And then our motley crew find out… the Thermians are NOT actors. They are in fact a real alien race. An alien race who are unfamiliar with the concept of “lying”. Their species had picked up the radio waves from the Galaxy Quest TV show and, believing it to be a historical record, modeled their entire civilization after the show. And now they need the crew of the “Protector” to help them in the face of this threat that could wipe them out as a species.

So our washed-out has-been actors find themselves pretending to really be their characters in a real space mission to save an alien race. Which is kind of a problem considering they have no idea what they’re doing at any point during this adventure.

8: Terminator 2 (1991)(Sci-Fi action)

I could have put the first Terminator movie on here… but I didn’t. Beause although both are excellent I personally prefer the second one. You don’t really need to have seen the first one to understand the second one either. I saw the second one first and it’s pretty easy to follow since the first movie’s plot wasn’t that complex.

10 or so years ago, Sarah Conner was visited by a time traveler who revealed he was from the future, and that in 1997 an AI known as “Skynet” would launch all the world’s nukes, causing the human race to almost become extinct. But Sarah Conner is the mother who will one day give birth to John Connor, the human rebel leader who will one day vanquish the machines. The machines know this, and Skynet sent back a robot called a “Terminator” to kill Srah Connor before she can give birth to humanity’s last hope.

Fast forward to this movie, Sarah Connor has been put in a mental institution (for rather obvious reasons) and her son, John Connor now 10 years old, lives with his aunt and uncle and is what we call a “problem child”. With no father figure in his life and his mom “going nuts”, John is a kid who smokes, steals bikes and is constantly in trouble. Then, one day, a robot from the future shows up to kill him. An advanced NEW kind of terminator sent by the machines, made of liquid metal, it is another attempt by the machines to kill John Connor before he can grow up to be the rebel leader.

This time however, Humanity has sent someone else to protect John. The exact same model of Terminator who tried to kill his mother, repurposed and reprogrammed to protect John from this lethal machine.

John, being a child, has to cope with the fact that not only is a killer robot trying to murder him, but ALSO his “nuts” mom turned out to be right. And he also starts developing a weird relationship with the robot sent to protect him. Looking for some kind of father figure to fill that hole in his life.

Although the first Terminator might have been more impactful in terms of visuals and ideas, the second Terminator is the one people remember as a movie. This is where “Hasta La Vista Baby” come from. This is where “Made from Liquid Metal” comes from. This is where THIS comes from

and where this comes from

and this

I don’t know if I can call it a BETTER movie than the first Terminator… …except it kinda is…. And one of the very few sequels where it ended up having more of a cultural impact than its predecessor.

9: Star Trek 2: The Wrath of Khan (1982)(True Sci-Fi)

One upon a time there was a show called “Star Trek”. It then had a movie which did kinda of ok at the box office but many thought was rather boring.

And then they made Star Trek 2.

Set several years after the original show, where all the main characters are off living different lives. Kirk is an admiral working on Earth behind a desk. Spock is a training instructor to students who will one day be pilots and crewmembers in the Federation. The rest of the Enterprise’s former crew are all scattered across the Federation, either on Earth or on other Starships.

Far off in space, a Federation ship is looking for a dead planet to test a brand new technologcal creation called the “Genesis Device”. While doing so, they find Khan and his crew, who 15 years ago were left on a lifeless planet by Kirk after they tried to take over the Enterprise for use in Khan’s mad plans revolving around Genetic engineering. Khan and his crew take over the ship and learn of this “Genesis Device” with its power to destroy all life when unleashed on a living plan. Khan only has one goal in his mind; Revenge.

While on a 3 week long training mission under Kirk and Spock, the Enterprise picks up a distress signal, and go to investigate.

This movie honestly has no right to be as good as it is. Even if you have 0 knowledge of Star Trek (as I did when I first watched it) it makes complete and perfect sense on its own, and its extremely easy to understand what’s happening and why. It helps if you’re familiar with the characters, but the film on its own portrays their friendships and relationships with each other so perfectly that you completely buy every scene with them together, and WHY they’re friends. And how LONG they’ve been friend, without having to watch seasons and seasons worth of episodes to catch up. You don’t even need to watch the first Star Trek movie.

The film is a story about revenge… but it’s main core theme is about grief. Grief in many forms. Khan’s grief over the death of his wife which he blames Kirk for and his burning fiery hatred. Kirk’s grief as an aging space captain, unable to cope with himself growing old and the fact that he never truly learned how to handle loss, as someone who ALWAYS believes there is a way to save the day. Grief over lost relationships with his ex-lover and a grown son he never knew about and lost an entire relationship with.

Despite being about spaceships in space shooting at each other and long drawn out tension filled scenes between Kirk and Khan, it’s a movie about mortality, and the need to face it.

10: The Last Starfighter (1988)(Sci-Fi Adventure)

I could have put many things down for “Sci Fi movie about having an adventure”. I could have put ET or Explorers or Flight of the Navigator, but I decided to put The Last Starfighter. Even though ET may be the better known adventure film, it’s also the movie most people will have already seen, and Flight of the Navigator might look better, but it’s story is far weaker. So Last Starfighter it is.

In backwoods tiny-ass American town there lives completely normal teenager Alex Rogan. He doesn’t have that much going for him. He lives in a trailer with his mom and younger brother and has just recently had a scholarship rejection. Frustrated with his life and with little else to do in the trailer park, Alex spends most of his time playing the only arcade machine called “The Frontier”. After a lot of play and effort, Alex manages to get the high score on the machine.

After doing so, he is approached by the creator of the machine called Centauri, who is there to offer him a ride in his fancy car as a prize for holding the grand score. Having been taunted by the other teens around the area, Alex decides to take Centauri up on his offer, only to get abducted. And not in the “Teenager kidnapped by a creep” kind of way, but the alien kind of way.

It turns out there is a very real intergalactic war going on between Rylan Star League and the Ko-Dan Empire. And the arcade machine had been placed on Earth as a sort of recruitment tool for new pilots to fly for Rylan Star League.

Given the chance to actually have something happen in his Life, Alex has to learn how to be a Starfighter with the help of Centauri who reveals himself to be an alien, and the rest is simpy fighting the Ko-Dan Empire and saving the day.

Most notably, The Last Starfighter’s space battles were all done using early CG and it has… .not exactly aged that well tbh.

But is still incredibly impressive for 1988 and helped paved the way for special effects, leading to their peak in Jurassic Park in 1993. But although the CG might be why the movie is important to the genre on a technical level, the reason most people remember this movie is nostalgia in its purist form.

Who wouldn’t want to be so good at a video game that aliens come and give you a spaceship and ask you to save the galaxy?

I personally find the scenes on Earth without the CG to be the better parts of the movie, but it does what it sets out to do. To be a sci fi adventure film for teenagers and kids to watch and enjoy and see the hero win. Uncomplicated, fun, and easy to digest as a movie.

I was gonna leave it at that but I gotta add one more

11: 2010: The Year we make Contact (1984)(pure Sci-Fi)

in 1968, a year before America landed on the moon, Stanley Kubrick made the groundbreaking movie “2001: a Space Odyssey”. The movie is a sort of horror movie in space, but also not quite. It tells the story of an enormous black rectangular monolith being found on the moon in the year 2001. Upon human astronauts touching it, it sends off a signal into space. Not long afterwards, another monolith, this one more than several kilometers in size appears orbiting Jupiter.

A crew of 5 men and an AI computer are sent to investigate. But the AI, called the HAL 9000 goes mad and kills off all the crew except for one, named David Bowman, who takes the HAL 9000 offline before leaving the spaceship and entering the Monolith.

The original movie is a masterwork of film, suggesting that the monoliths are responsible for jumpsarting human evolution. But it is also a very SLOW film. Famously taking 40 minutes before the first line of dialogue is spoken. And its horror of distrusting computers maybe be seen as rather old fashioned by today’s standards.

Then in 1984 they made a sequel. 2010 takes place 9 years after the first movie (obviously). Several American astronauts and scientists are approached and recruited for a secret mission joint sponsored by America and the Soviet Union. Their mission is to travel to the long abandoned space station, find what information was retrieved from the monolith, and try and discover what caused the HAL 9000 to malfunction. Time is of the essence as the abandoned space station will crash on Jupiter’s moon Io soon. The Soviets want to know what caused the disaster, but they need the Americans’ help to get into the space station, and an uneasy joint mission is formed, lead by Dr Floyd who was in charge of NASA when the original disaster occurred and had since been disgraced, but who would prove the best person to find out what happened to cause the disaster.

The movie, although perhaps slow by modern standards, moves at a much better pace than the original, and although you could say its plot is more basic, it’s also easier to follow and understand. There are moments of extreme tension from multiple areas. Reactivating the HAL 9000 and having to try and NOT repeat whatever it was that caused it to murder the original crew. The time limit before the space station is set to crash on Io, the mystery of what happened to David Bowman. The presence of the silent monolith orbiting Jupiter. And the seemingly unimportant political differences between the American crew and the Russian crew, despite being hundreds of thousands of miles away from Earth.

It also has some of the most incredible space cinematography I’ve seen in a film. Rather than the modern depiction of space in movies as a swirl of navy and stars and colourful nebulas, the space of 2010 is pitch black, with endless stars and enormous looming planets in the foreground, and nothing but a wall between you and the endless void.

Anyway those are my reccomendations.

Please consider donating to my kofi…. this took like 4 or 5 hours to write.

☕️Buy me a Ko-fi ☕️

#C-Puff answers #long ass post #Sci fi #movies #film recommendations #aurora-bloorealis

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tenchiforum · 5 years

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For the first time ever, the Toonami versions of OVA1/2, Universe, and Tokyo are available online! On their respective archive.org pages you can access each episode easily.

Watch now: OVA1/2, Tenchi Universe, Tenchi in Tokyo.

For users who keep up with contemporary anime communities, we also have an upload for the entire run available on Nyaa.

It’s been quite a journey in getting these episodes from analog to digital. If you’re interested in reading about the process of how these almost lost-to-time edits came into our hands and how we’ve gone about preserving them before the tapes rot, then sit back and enjoy the story below!

Part 1: Toonami – A Love Story.

Tenchi Muyo! and Toonami are tied together like the red thread of fate often times referenced in many East Asian myths. For those who aren’t aware, Toonami was a programming block on the Cartoon Network channel. Starting in 1997, it did one thing for anime that no other channel in the English-speaking world had ever done: showcased anime during “PrimeTime” (In North America at least, this was 4pm to 7pm Eastern Standard time). Before the internet, having this block of time meant having the most eyes on your product, meaning exposure was huge. Oftentimes whoever got on this block, regardless of the channel, was “made.”

However, it wouldn’t be until mid 1999, with a soft-rebranding, a new host, and an almost entirely anime-focused block, that Toonami would take over the world.

And on July 3rd, 2000, an entire generation was introduced to Tenchi Muyo! for the first time.

youtube

- The now legendary two minute Toonami promo.

Thanks to the efforts of Jason DeMarco, Sean Akins, Gill Austin, Sean Polinski, and the rest of the Toonami crew, the “Toonami generation,” still to this day, is the largest block of Tenchi Muyo! fans. Whether it was Toonami US, UK, or Australia. Tenchiforum is a testament to this fact. I personally would not be here were it not for Toonami, so to say that fans of Tenchi Muyo! hold Toonami in a high regard is an understatement.

I had always wanted to somehow, some way, get the Toonami version of Tenchi up for everyone to see again, but my old Toonami VHS recordings were long gone, and I figured trying to piece together the Toonami version from other people’s tapes would just be too hard with how many episodes were broadcast, that was until… 2012

In mid-to-late 2012, I found out that Pioneer actually released a home video version of what was shown on Toonami. It was simply released as “Tenchi Muyo!” in those big, white, clam shell VHS cases (that most people probably remember for old Disney movies). I felt as though I had struck gold! I was able to get a hold of the first two OVA, and was able to rip them to my computer.

- Vol. 1 & Vol. 5 of “Tenchi Muyo!” – No distinction was made that they were separate series.

Though I was high on my endorphin-induced nostalgia, I ran into a couple of unforeseen problems.

First and foremost, the equipment I was using was not great. I used an old StarTech composite to USB dongle and the software that came with it. While this isn’t necessarily bad at first glance (it doesn’t support Windows 10), I had no experience whatsoever in the field of digital transfer. While I think my rips were okay for the time, I knew even then that they were too low of bit-rate and the quality of the rips suffered for it.

Because I also had no VCR at the time that had S-Video output, I was only able to output from composite, which meant the whopping 240p equivalent VHS tapes look fuzzier than they probably should. (I realize that VHS is technically an analog format, meaning that a 1:1 equivalent digital representation is hard to pin down or that someone might argue that it did technically output 480i over composite, but basically it was 240p.)

Another problem was the software itself, I had no idea about Virtualdub, AmaRecTV, or other helpful capture software, so I only recorded at a lower bit-rate, again producing an inferior quality rip.

I also ran into the problem of showcasing the videos. Funimation (who now owns the vast majority of the Tenchi Muyo! franchise in North America) had finally started really cracking down on people uploading videos to Youtube. Even though my videos were not completely the same, the algorithm immediately flagged and blocked them. This led me to uploading the videos to Facebook. I had to cut them in half because of Facebook’s restriction to roughly only 12 minutes of video. Somehow in the process, some of the videos had audio drop out for a minute or two, and for some the audio dropped out completely.

Arguably the biggest blow though, was when I learned that this set of Toonami tapes was incomplete. Pioneer stopped producing the Toonami version for home video after they finished releasing Universe. Meaning, the only way to get the Toonami version of Tenchi in Tokyo, was hope that someone, somewhere, had taped it 11 years earlier.

While Tenchi in Tokyo has been getting more appreciation from fans as of late – thanks in part to most newer entries in the Tenchi OVA sucking harder than a vacuum – in the year 2000, it was the black sheep of the Tenchi Muyo! franchise. So expecting fans to have recorded any of it, let alone the entire series, was the long shot of all long shots. But even still, I made a post on the forum in 2013 asking if anyone knew anyone that might have anything.

Naturally, no one had any leads, and all of these previous problems meant that this project would, frustratingly, have to be shelved indefinitely.

Or at least, that’s what I thought.

Part 2: Deferred Dreams Don’t Die.

On April 5th, 2019, a person by the name of Talos dropped into our Discord server, and posted an introduction. Like so many, they had gotten into Tenchi through Toonami, but what would change everything, was this.

I couldn’t believe what I was reading, someone actually had it!

Instinctively, I reached out to Talos via PM to ascertain how to go about acquiring these tapes, and admittedly, to see how legit this claim actually was. Because the fact of the matter is, when you’ve been around Tenchi fandom as long as I have, you’ll quickly realize the best bullshitters in the world come from this fandom.

But Talos was more than the genuine article! They sent over pictures and an incredibly detailed analysis of the quality of their tapes, watching through them all again to prove to me that their claim was valid.

It can’t be said enough that this all would not be possible without Talos, their willingness to work with me and send me their own personal tapes that they’ve kept for almost two decades just goes to show how awesome they are and how much they care about the fandom.

So the deal was struck, and the dream that laid deferred for almost six years lived again.

- A time capsule from another era.

But with dreams from the past, come the demons that plagued them way back when. I still only had the setup I once had, and at this time I was really trying to be tight with my finances for a number of different reasons, but this opportunity was too good to pass up, I wasn’t going to let this dream go, even if it wasn’t perfect.

Talos’ tapes showed up, and I rolled up my sleeves.

So I put in the first tape, the first seven episodes of Tokyo, into the old VCR I used to originally rip the Pioneer tapes, a JVC HR-VP650U….

And static…

Or rather, a tape that would play for 3 seconds, then immediately drop to static.

This wouldn’t work.

I then tried my other VCR, a Sony SLV-N50 from the mid-to-late 90’s that I was able to “fix” by removing the old Android Kikaider tape that got stuck in there many years prior.

It worked!…..but…..not all that well.

While it did actually play the tape relatively smoothly, the colors were completely washed out in comparison to the JVC, and it had this weird color flickering that was particularly noticeable when black backgrounds were on screen. (This was not unique to this tape, it did it with everything I put in there.)

As much as it pained me, there was no way I was going to rip it with this setup.

So the hunt began for not just a replacement VCR, but one that was high quality and recommended among enthusiasts for digital transfer. Which meant research and long winding rabbit holes of non-answers and vagueness, and unfortunately, money.

Without a doubt, the de facto list of best VCRs for transferring comes from digitalFAQ.com. This list is not only informative but gives you a broad range of ones to look for in the event you can’t find an “elite” one. However, this list has also become the de facto list used by people who are hawking their sets on eBay to try and get every penny from enthusiasts and new-comers as possible.

After three frustrating weeks of losing bid wars on eBay, someone finally put up one of the good sets, the JVC SR-V10U. I quickly sent them what I thought was a reasonable but not bank-breaking offer….

And they accepted! The beast was finally mine.

Immediately upon unwrapping and testing it, the quality difference between what I had then and what I was looking at now was staggering. The SR-V10U had beautiful color, while having the incredible ability to stabilize the old tapes with its TBC (Time Base Corrector), as well as onboard Video Stabilization option. Combined with the ability to output video via the superior S-Video cable, I now had something that, despite its age and typical old VHS wear, was way better than I could have imagined.

Part 3: No Need for Nostalgia.

You’re probably thinking to yourself “Dagon, why go through the trouble? The OVA has a beautiful Blu-ray release, and Universe and Tokyo have pretty decent DVD releases. Why would you ever want to rip old VHS tapes of an inferior quality release that was in some cases censored?”

- The now famous Toonami “bikinis”.

Because this version of Tenchi Muyo! is a piece of history. Not only is it a piece of Tenchi history, but a piece of Toonami history as well. Being able to preserve this in the best quality possible is being able to point to future generations and say “This is why I’m here.”

For a lot of us it’s about taking us back to a simpler time, grade school, high school, university. Taking us back to a time before the internet was what it is today.

So now we can, after almost 20 years, re-watch the version of Tenchi Muyo! that brought so many of us joy and wonder.

#tenchiforum #tenchi muyo #toonami #toonami promo #cartoon network #tenchi universe #tenchi in tokyo #toonami tenchi muyo #anime nostalgia #90's anime #vhs #vhs anime

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jenniferladybug · 5 years

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Essay Wars - it’s a doozy

Last night my friend got in a texting debate about the story structure and character developments of Star Wars (a majority of it Kylo Ren). Well, what started off as my vigorous texting writing turned into full-blown essay responses.

Alright, let’s get into how this actually happened.

First, I was so excited about The Rise of Skywalker Final Trailer and I began to sing praises for Kylo Ren/Bendemption. My friend did not like that...so I whipped out the big guns.

I began to send scattered texts about certain things, mostly pertaining to:

Kylo Ren was turned to the dark side before he was even born via Bloodline, where Leia describes a dark presence over her womb.

Someone must be impersonating Darth Vader when Kylo goes to the Vader mask for advice.

Leia and Han were emotionally neglectful/did not know how to raise their son in the right way, mixed with brainwashing lead to Kylo Ren.

The Jedi are not good for the galaxy (yes, yes I know, but see my explanation down below...if you last that long)

Kylo wants to let the past die and start fresh with a new ‘order’, leave behind the Sith, Jedi, First order etc.

I also rambled on about a few other things in separate texts, but that is the gist of it.

So, in response to my scattered texts I received this from my friend Sammy, and oh boy was I ready:

So, let’s start with the story of Ben. The dark side since before he was even born thing is interesting and the fact that he’s been influenced his entire life by it is something they should have made much more clear in the films. That’s actually one of the problems I have with this new expanded universe- it just seems like damage control for the movies. The Previous EU EXPANDED everything, giving backstory to the characters we know and understand, in addition to secondary characters. Hell, they even gave us new characters as well but they never negated or changed the meaning of the films which is the bread and butter of the franchise, so if this super important info is coming from the book I think that’s just silly. You really shouldn’t have to read the novel iteration to understand what the movie did a bad job of interpreting. But I digress, that is some crucial info…

The Vader mask scene and the theory that it’s someone else like Snoke who has been pretending to be Vader is interesting, and I buy that, but like…Kylo didn’t know Vader was redeemed? Did Luke, Leia, Han, Chewy, Lando, Akbar, Wedge, or like literally anybody else form the Rebellion forget to tell him that? Big yikes.

IMO, feeling “misunderstood and neglected by his parents” isn’t a valid excuse for him to kill his own dad and being ok with his mom getting bombed to hell. Idk, you can ask why it’s ok for us to forgive Vader through his redemption arc but I think comparing his experiences to Kylo’s is like comparing apples to oranges. Vader was a BAD guy, but he ended up doing the ultimate GOOD thing in the end, and then the prequels fleshed out how he became bad intangible way, which to be fair, Kylo doesn’t have. But still, this is why most fans don’t take him seriously.

About the Jedi not being good- I challenge your credentials. “For a thousand generations the Jedi knights have been the guardians of peace and justice for the Old Republic”, then they were hunted down and everything turned to shit. And both in this canon and the previous one, it’s wildly considered that the few thousand years preceded the events of the movies things were super peaceful all things considered when the Jedi were in charge…and the Sith traditionally only operates in agents of 2. So how come everything was so peaceful for a thousand generations when there were a million Jedi and 2 Sith…ying yang in this case is bollocks.

And if Kylo really wants to “Start fresh”, why’d he start by becoming Supreme Leader of like the Star Wars version of ISIS? This is something we’ll need to find out in this next movie. I agree, his motive is to dismantle the Jedi and Sith way and create something else entirely, but the second Rey says “nah” he goes back to how he was. It’s not looking good.

The George Lucas rhyme thing lets not forget he’s talking about Episode 1 which was arguably one of the worst Star Wars movies made and he ended it with “hopefully it’ll work” and then grimaces…IDK bud lmao. And I doubt back in 1977 he knew there was going to be an episode 9 because he didn’t even know what he just made was Episode 4! It definitely was never a 9 episode arc from the get-go. Now, I know for certain after the prequels he had another trilogy in mind, and when he sold the rights to Disney he did hand them his drafts and notes, but even Bob Iger, CEO of Disney, admitted in his new book, they didn’t follow those drafts AT ALL. LIKE NOTHING. And he said that George felt betrayed. This idea of a new trilogy is something that was created in 2012, but I suspect they have been making this up as they went. After this last movie, Disney scrambled to get JJ Abrams back and figure out how they were going to get everything back on track. Daisy Ridley herself said JJ wrote a story for each of the 3 new movies, but Rian ended up created his own completely. I think that alone shows that production for these movies has been inconsistent, I don’t buy this was all part of some 9 series plan with a definitive beginning, middle, and end from the get-go.

Not sure what Rey’s lineage is, we’ll find out for sure in this next movie. I read one theory that Palpatine created her sorta through the force like many people think he did with Anakin.

So that was what I was up against.

Let’s take a brief moment to appreciate this:

Okay now that that is done...great.

My turn!

Now, I wrote my response (copied below) at top speed in about an hour, so maybe some of the things I say start sounding rushed or not as fleshed out as they should be. But I cracked my knuckles and gave it a go:

I am the first one to advocate for a film to have the ability to ‘stand-alone’ in any particular universe, whether it be Marvel, DC, Hunger Games, and Star Wars. By introducing a backstory for Leia’s pregnancy and hers and Han’s marriage in ‘Bloodline’, LucasFilm is doing just that: giving a backstory. In both The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi, there is proof that Snoke is the one pulling the strings when it comes to young solo. In the first film, Leia is quoted saying to Han, “There’s still light in him I know it! No. It was Snoke. He seduced our son to the dark side”, and in the second film Luke is quoted as saying, “Snoke had already turned his heart”. It is made apparent that ‘Kylo Ren’ is the production of Snoke, and Ren suffers abuse both mental and physical from his master. Though this changes when Kylo finally becomes free of the shackles Snoke once had on him when Ren slices him in half. The look of shock and release on Ren’s face when he realizes what he’s done says it all. Who are we to judge someone who is freshly out of the control of their captor? By just watching the films it is clear that Kylo Ren is not fully in control of his actions and he is being manipulated consistently as shown by the quotes above. When having that manipulation in conjunction with the neglect of a parental figure, then you get the full-blown reality that is Kylo Ren.

Feeling “misunderstood and neglected by his parents” is a valid excuse for turning to the Darkside in the world of a fictional fairy tale. Keep in mind we are not in a reality where this is okay, yet the world in which Star Wars exists allows such things to be redeemable and explainable. Take for example when Padme knew about Anakin killing younglings; she wanted him to still come home because she ‘loved’ him. If he had turned back to the light at that moment she would have most likely accepted him back. It is a danger of the force. They are not dealing with everyday normal emotions; the force, as well as the genre of the franchise, creates a heightened sense of urgency which is apparent throughout the forty-plus years Star Wars has been around (hell, as long as any fairy tale has been around). When you point out that Vader did the ultimate good thing in the end, do you mean to save his son and push Palpatine down a duct? If so, then this would be his redemption which occurred in the last of the original trilogies. If you are to treat Kylo with the same rules as Vader, then we must give him a chance to ‘do the right thing’, something which the filmmakers have been steadily building his character-arc for. Vader did numbers ‘wrong’ things, some of them much worse than Kylo has done. But yet the audience still chose to respect him, even before the prequels which fleshed out the story of Anakin Skywalker.

Now, you may be correct in that Ben Solo knew of Vader’s redemption, and I misspoke, to which I am sorry. He, in fact, learned of his heritage when he was training with Luke at his academy when he received a letter from his mother. The contents of the letter are unknown, though it is assumed she told him of his heritage when he was in his late teens. This was only because one of her rivals she was campaigning against in the senate threatened to leak the knowledge to the public that Leia was the daughter of the infamous Darth Vader. Ben had no idea before-hand though, so once again we assume that this had some type of impact. Imagine finding out your grandfather was Hitler. Would that be fun? But, since we addressed the fact that external material should not need to be consumed in order for a film to make sense, then we should disregard any idea as to how Ben Solo came to learn of his heritage. It is not mentioned in the films, but it is a widely held belief by many in the fandom that if Kylo Ren knew of his grandfathers’ redemption then he merely took this as a lapse in judgment in his late years (especially since it is hinted to in the films that Ren is speaking to someone via the Vader mask). Perhaps said mask has been telling Ren lies in lieu of the true story of the redemption. But that is speculation. What is not speculation is the line Ren utters in The Force Awakens, “Forgive me. I feel it again... The pull to the light... Supreme Leader senses it. Show me again... The power of the darkness... And I'll let nothing stand in our way... Show me... Grandfather... and I will finish... what you started.” What we can tell from the film is that Ren is in a constant struggle to stay within the dark, and through his words, it is expressed how this warrants forgiveness. The second half of the statement is even more worrying in the fact that Ren says ‘show me again’, referencing a previous time this ‘Vader’ has shown him what the darkness entails. Will we find out in episode nine if there was an imposter (Palpatine?) feeding more lies and brainwashing to Kylo Ren? That means not only was he getting terrible treatment from Snoke, but from his ‘grandfather’ as well. Perhaps this is why in the final trailer for episode nine we see Rey and Ren destroying said helmet. Until the film comes out, this will still be a mystery.

In coming to why I believe the Jedi are bad, I side with Luke Skywalker on this one. As he says in The Last Jedi, “ At the height of their powers, they allowed Darth Sidious to rise, create the Empire, and wipe them out. It was a Jedi Master who was responsible for the training and creation of Darth Vader.” To that, Rey points out that it was also a Jedi who saved him. Which is true! Yet, the rules surrounding the Jedi order are such that allowed for Anakin to search elsewhere for support. True, he was very conflicted, but the Jedi are so extreme that they do not welcome outside opinions or thinking. You are either all light or you’re bad. There is no intermediary. That is why the answer is grey Jedi. I know those exist, and what needs to happen is a yin and yang between the light and the dark. Working together fosters acceptance and love within the galaxy. Even the symbol in the pool of the Jedi Temple in which Luke tucked himself away had a figure in a yin and yang pattern. “Powerful light and powerful dark...a balance”. Yet, any dark whatsoever that the Jedi see they stamp out.

When Anakin says, “If you’re not with me, then you’re against me”, Obi-wan responds with, “Only sith think in absolutes!”. Well, can you see the issue there? Obi-wan is also thinking in absolute. Using the word only further segmented and cast aside Anakin, by labeling him a lost cause. Such a similar thing happened with Kylo Ren and the incident with Luke at the Jedi Academy. The momentary lapse which Luke expressed to Rey was the tipping point. In Ren’s eyes, even his Master saw him beyond saving. And since everyone around him insists on thinking in absolute, then he must be bad according to them, right?

Slowly, Ren is beginning to realize there is another way, something not presently defined within the Star Wars universe. It is not Sith, it is not Jedi, it is not the First Order: it is the ‘new order’ which he proposes to Rey. Yet, he is not ready for redemption yet. The entire point of the scene was for Rey to realize that Kylo Ren cannot be saved by anyone but himself. This is a very powerful message and I am quite looking forward to seeing how his self-realization occurs in Episode Nine. Now, keep in mind that he had banked everything on Rey saying yes, and in his mind, she is “Still. Holding. ON!”, which she is, and he is right that it is holding her back. How can you expect someone from a family of yelling, angry people to get it right the first time? In fact, Adam Driver had to ask Rian Johnson if Kylo Ren had ever kissed a girl before. Kylo is not experienced in this ‘love’ world. He did not receive much love language from his absentee parents, so the only relationship he’s known for most of his teen and adult life is that of Snoke and General Hux. At that moment in which he wakes up to realize she is gone is one of abandonment and rejection. He thought he had found his match, the answer to his loneliness, and she snapped his lightsaber in two. He is basically throwing a grownup temper-tantrum, which is blatantly apparent in the standoff with Luke. When Kylo threatens everything, even ‘destroying’ Rey, Luke claims that everything Kylo says is “a lie”. It is clear in the last few moments of the film when Kylo is defeated and on his knees holding his father’s die that the audience begins to realize his anger was all a facade. In that shot, he is merely a lost and lonely boy realising the path he has chosen is wrong. The final force-bond between Kylo and Rey exhibits every one of those notions. There is no anger in his face, not very ‘destroy-ee’ of him, and he looks up with her with an almost longing. But when she sternly shuts the door on him, once again he is left alone, the die slowly fading from his gloved hand.

If that doesn’t sound like poetry then I don’t know what is! George Lucas was quoted saying in the behind the scenes of the prequels, “You see the echo of where it all is gonna go. It’s like poetry, sort of. They rhyme.” Similar themes and sequences occur within the franchise, and they have kept that alive at Disney Lucas Films, especially in regards to the parallels drawn between Anakin/Padme and Kylo/Rey. They even designed their respective costumes in a similar fashion. Kylo has his mother and father’s anger and stubbornness. They had a rough idea of where it was all going to go. And in regards to JJ Abrams and Rian Johnson, JJ Abrams was an executive producer on Episode 8 and had a say in the general outline of the plot. JJ had set up the relationship between Kylo and Rey in The Force Awakens, and Rian continued along that path. He followed the skeleton needed to get the plot from 7-9. But think about it, Disney would not allow Rian to just veer off the path completely. Yes he had some creative license but within parameters. Sometimes I don’t think people understand the workings of a large corporation with creative decisions. On a project like Star Wars there is always input from the higher-ups. In addition, JJ Abrams auditioned potential Kylo Ren actors with the script from Pride and Prejudice (Mr. Darcy of course). This is made clear in the writing decisions and parallels which have been made for that particular character.

Lastly, would you really want George Lucas at the helm of this new trilogy? People thought the prequels were terrible and Lucas went back and digitally altered the originals against the will of fans. He is not technically the best when it comes to scriptwriting (Exhibit A: “I hate sand, it gets everywhere!”) Also, Mark Hamill was interviewed in the early ’00s and said, "You know, when I first did this, it was four trilogies. 12 movies! And out on the desert, any time between setups...lots of free time. And George was talking about this whole thing. I said, 'Why are you starting with IV, V and VI? It's crazy.' [Imitating Lucas grumble,] 'It's the most commercial section of the movie.'” Yes, the first film was a stand-alone, since they had no idea they would receive any further funding. But then the immense success allowed for Lucas to develop the franchise further.

What I think people tend to forget is that Star Wars is a fairy tale, and it is not supposed to be about ‘a mass murder’ who is going to jail. It is supposed to be about redemption at its very heart. George Lucus had expressed that he intended Star Wars as a series for “twelve-year-olds”. This explains things like Jar Jar Binks and other bizarre choices he has made as a creator. Though this explains a lot of why most of the people who hate the franchise now are angry adults online who live in an overly politically correct world judging a fictional character who is in the middle of a character arc. As JJ Abrams had said in the director's commentary of The Force Awakens, “We looked at it like […] a fairy tale. What are the elements that you’re going to see that makes it this genre, this specific genre? […] You’re probably going to have a castle, and a prince and a princess, if you’re looking at a fairy tale. We wanted to give these fundamental, not cosmetic, but prerequisite elements.”

Okay, I’ve talked too much. I am going to end it there for now. Thank you for coming to my Ted Talk.

Haha hope that was entertaining and that sparked some thinking and inspiration. I know I let my keyboard run away from me and please excuse the odd typo from time to time. Let me know your thoughts.

I mean just look at that beautiful man.

Love you all!

#reylo #star wars #kylo ren #rey #long reads #in defense of kylo #ben solo #george lucas #bendemption

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ograndebatata · 5 years

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My thoughts on some issues with Season 3 of Elena of Avalor

Disclaimer: This post is only an exposition of my personal opinions on what I think are bad aspects of a series that I overall like. It is not meant to reflect my thoughts on the series as a whole, on the show’s creators, cast members, or anyone else involved in its production. It’s also not meant to reflect my thoughts on fans of the show who don’t find any problem with the things I’ll be pointing out.

However, while I will do my best to go about it politely, said opinions are still about ‘less good’ points of the series.

I’m not saying any of you has to agree with everything I said, or even with a word with it. And I’m also not saying I posted this because I wanted to start an argument. I just happened to find enough issues with the series in too few episodes that I wanted to put forth my thoughts on them.

All those who feel curious as to what those are, feel free to read on.

Introductory words

This one is a first for me.

To the best of my memory, I never actually wrote such a lengthy piece of text offering criticism on any kind of media, be it a book, a video game, a TV series, or anything else.

But despite how little my Tumblr may or may not reflect it, I am a fan of various TV series and book series and film series, and many books and films that aren’t part of any series as well.

Two shows that I can safely say I am a devoted fan of are Sofia the First and Elena of Avalor. Yes, it may sound odd that a guy my age likes TV shows meant for preschoolers (at least regarding Sofia the First, as I have seen some debate on whether Elena of Avalor actually is for preschoolers) but both of them, in my opinion, are good for all ages.

To those who might be dropping in out of nowhere and are at a loss on what I’m talking about, I will offer some context, in case you’re interested in reading more about this. However, I strongly recommend you watch both series before diving in, especially because this will contain spoilers for recent episodes.

Sofia the First is a series that aired on Disney Junior from 2012 to 2018 (in the USA, at least, as other countries had different release dates), about a princess whose widowed shoemaker mother falls in love with a king. As a result of her mother’s eventual marriage, Sofia gains a new father and two new siblings, but also the responsibility of learning to be a princess, even though she doesn’t become the crown heir.

It was a fun show, with lots of good elements, such as likable characters, fun adventures, defiance of gender stereotypes (both from girls and from boys) and occasional cameos from various Disney Animated Canon characters, such as Snow White, Mulan, and Olaf. I strongly recommend it.

Elena of Avalor started airing in 2016, and takes place in the same universe as Sofia the First, with its intended premiere actually being a spin-off of Sofia the First called Elena and the Secret of Avalor, meant as a backdoor pilot to the series, but which eventually became an episode with a framing device in present day added in. It premiered on Disney Channel, but it was eventually reclassified as part of Disney Junior.

In my opinion, it is even better than Sofia the First. Besides including the same kind of likable characters and fun adventures, it also focuses on elements like family relationships, dealing with trauma, mourning deceased loved ones (with onscreen murder of the protagonist’s parents actually being committed by the show’s starter villain), and a few characters that can’t be so easily labeled as heroes or villains. It also has character growth from the leading characters, which by itself makes it stand out. I recommend it even more strongly than Sofia the First.

However... I do feel both series have their points where they seem to show lack of work put into them, for lack of a better description.

For Sofia the First, I feel those started in the fourth and final season, when the series became more serialized. And coincidentally or not, they seem to be starting in Elena of Avalor in its (so far, at least) final season (in this case, its third), which has also been said to feature a single, largely serialized arc.

This is, by and large, my attempt at laying out the current on that front in Elena of Avalor, and my general feelings on them.

I will give from the get-go that the bulk or even the entirety of these are bound to go over the heads of the target audience, which is not made up of adults like me. However... I am someone who likes consistency and continuity in the media he consumes, and while I don’t mind some wiggle room, I find that there are limits. And while things like action and humor and the like aren’t handled the same way for all audiences, I feel that general attention to detail should be applied with the same rigor whatever the target demographic.

Anyone is welcome to read, but once more, people who didn’t watch the series are bound to have no idea what I’m talking about, and will get spoiled in case they decide to watch either series later.

To use somewhat of a stereotypically stern sentence... don’t say I didn’t warn you

Overview of Season 3 so far

Let me make one thing clear. Just because I’m speaking of negative points in Season 3 of Elena of Avalor, it doesn’t mean I hate the season. It’s not horrible, or even bad.

It already showed a lot of strong points, of which I will list a few.

- We get to see interesting new locations, both within Avalor itself (like Xotep and the Sunbird Temple) and outside (like the Grotto Metamo in the realm of Vallestrella and the Kingdom of Norberg)

- Old characters that haven’t been seen in a while return, such as the noblins, Princess Valentina, and the sunbirds Lama, Qapa, and Hool.

- We got to meet fun new characters, such as Queen Abigail and Princess Chloe of Norberg, and the vulture-humanoid imp Zopilote.

- We’re seeing more character development, both for heroes, like Elena, Isabel and Migs, and for villains, like Victor Delgado, Carla Delgado, and King Hector.

- The animation is still overall great, despite minor goofs here and there.

But overall, I do find this season ‘less good’ so far when compared to the previous ones, as well as indicative of a certain sloppiness from the creators. And the main reasons why are below.

Just where is the source of all magic?

In Sofia the First, a plot-point that has been accused of being tacked-on is the element of the Mystic Isles, a floating magical archipelago which forms an important plot-point of the series’ fourth and final season, and was only introduced in said season’s first episode.

Overall, I see where that statement is coming from. While there was nothing before that directly contradicted said place’s existence, it did suffer from a lack of foreshadowing.

Granted, one thing many shows end up falling into is having to come up with new plot points for upcoming seasons if a series lasts longer than expected even though the creators had been planning to wrap everything up before. And sometimes, that’s difficult.

And despite it seeming relatively out of nowhere, the Mystic Isles had fun elements (like Sofia’s general exploration of the Mystic Isles), interesting characters (like Chrysta, Sofia’s trainer as a protector) and lessons relevant to the target audience being taught (such as being accepting of differences).

However, in Sister of Invention, the premiere of Season 3 of Elena of Avalor, we are introduced to the concept of Tacaina, which is said to be the source of all Maruvian magic, and a place that supposedly can be found through a special map which is only obtained via the cracking of a special puzzle.

Fans who never watched Sofia the First most likely will not notice this element, but as someone who did watch it, I’m a little confused. After all, both shows are set in the same universe, with both series referring to the world they’re set in as the Ever Realm. And in Sofia the First, the Mystic Isles were specifically said to be the source of all magic, period.

I will give it is possible that said information was give by someone, shall we say, not fully informed on the matter (in Sofia the First, it’s given by a painter seen at the Conjurers’ Conference in the Season 4 premiere). But in Sofia the First, the Mystic Isles seemed to be enough of a widespread secret there that wizards knew about them and what they were. So I’m not sure how likely this is.

Overall, some kind of actual confirmation on this would be nice, if one is to determine what is specifically canon.

Otherwise, it’s a plothole, although one that’s admittedly hard to spot.

What makes a villain?

One thing that has been praised, and fairly so, is how most villains in Elena of Avalor are not only fun to watch, but well developed enough to have some kind of motive. Those motives may be simple, but they do exist. Troyo wanted to be King of the Jungle, Fiero wanted revenge for not having been Royal Wizard, Victor and Carla want respectively respect and an escape for loneliness, and the list could go on.

The only two villains which were so far shown to have a complete lack of a motive (going only by what we see on the series) are Shuriki and Zopilote. The former was an evil old hag who wanted to oppress, the latter is an evil old creep who wants to destroy.

Adding to that, many villains were shown to be dead serious and had genuinely unsettling vibes even for an adult audience. Shuriki committed onscreen murder and oppressed a kingdom for 41 years, Fiero could have left a whole ballroom’s worth of people petrified for eternity, and Marimonda could have killed thousands or even millions with her magical gardening if her rampage had continued.

For Season 3, we have Ash Delgado, who despite being tamer than other villains in the show, already proved to be a threat to be wary of, having come almost as close to killing Elena as Shuriki (although I do still think Shuriki is scarier).

But... there are things about her which don’t seem to add up.

For one, in her first villain song, The One And Only, she claims that Zopilote took everything he wanted from her town, including her two pet mice, and that the deed made her realize that the most wicked always wins and caused her to say goodbye to goodness.

A bit simple, but I think it still serves its purpose, especially if those pet mice were, for some reason, the only family she had.

But then, she tracks down the very same malvago that took her pet mice from her and wants to learn magic from him specifically.

It seems odd.

There’d be other malvagos as well for sure. Why would she want specifically that one? After all, supposedly she would hold a grudge against him for taking what she had. Yes, she specifically alluded to saying goodbye to goodness, but... even from a practical sense, it doesn’t seem like a good decision. After all, there were all sorts of inherent risks.

Could this actually be some kind of long game at revenge? Or was losing her pet mice just an excuse to be a shit, which she actually always was from day one after all?

I’ll give it’s the kind of thing that we can get actual confirmation on later in the series, but... it’s still a bit of a confusing setup.

When are we again?

One thing that I personally always found strong in Elena of Avalor, and which I loved since it was first implemented, is the general attention to continuity. While some episodes, most notably Realm of the Jaquins and Two Left Fins, did have their first airings out of order, they were somehow conveyed to be out of order, and could be retroactively fit into their right place in an appropriate way.

Overall, it largely seemed like there was a clear timeline of events, despite a few minor hiccups.

But now, things are just getting confusing there.

First, Sister of Invention seems to show a sort of graduation/end of the year diploma for Isabel after she finishes her stint at college. However, the bulk of indications suggest that said stint should have ended months before, given the duration of the average school year.

Yes, it’s possible that the school year in Avalor is one of those that goes from February to December, like those in the Southern Hemisphere in the real world. However, going by the very long vacation Isabel took in Nueva Vista, it doesn’t seem likely, unless the time we saw her in Return of El Capitán was some kind of temporary leave to attend Dia de los Muertos with her family.

Which is a possibility, especially given how the upcoming Carnaval episode (which has to be set in either February or March) will take place shortly after Season 3 begins, but it’s another kind of thing that would be nice with some concrete indication.

Second, the episode The Incredible Shrinking Royals has a feast of friendship somewhere between January and March. Season 1 showed it to be somewhere in July or August (given how Party of a Lifetime was specifically said to take place in July, and Masks of Magic seems to have taken place either afterwards or not very long before), but now we have it in February or March.

Fair enough. Maybe this year’s Feast of Friendship happened earlier... but then there is another problem that comes from a line of dialogue in the episode. It’s when Elena tells Doña Paloma that it was she who told her that what matters is what people do when they arrive where they want to be... at the previous year’s Feast of Friendship!

Which I’m sorry, doesn’t add up.

Between Masks of Magic and The Incredible Shrinking Royals, there was one Dia de Los Muertos in The Jewel of Maru, and another in Return of El Capitán. By that reckoning, more than one year has passed between the two. And also, Doña mentions that the feast in the latter episode will be her thirteenth, when it should be her fourteenth. Yes, maybe there wasn’t a Feast of Friendship on that missing year for some reason, but still, the Feast of Friendship on which Doña told that to Elena would have been two years before not the previous year.

This one is actually a repeat of a prior error, as in All Kingdoms Fair Julio told Doña that she helped them build their float last year and they had a parranda. Granted, things could have happened exactly that way in the Christmas we didn’t see, but well... it just seems more like a goof.

How much time to traditions?

I will admit, this one is largely nitpicky.

But it’s still something I noticed, and thus I felt it should be included.

In Father In Chief, Chief Zephyr briefly sits down on what seems to be some kind of magical stone that makes his statue, which in turn is inside the Commander’s Rock, which we first saw in Shapeshifters. Skylar calls it a jaquin tradition. Which on itself, seems fair.

But in Shapeshifters, Chief Zephyr specifically mentioned that it was Alacazar who built the Commander’s Rock. Alacazar, who was King Raul’s Royal Wizard, less than fifty years before. Yes, Alacazar could have been the Royal Wizard for longer than that, but given how long-lived jaquins seem to be (King Verago has ruled for over fifty years and still looks fairly youthful), Alacazar would have to be very long-lived to have built the Commander’s Rock long enough ago for all those jaquin chiefs to exist. Which doesn’t seem likely, given how in Elena and the Secret of Avalor he seemed to largely age at the rate of a regular human.

Yes, I will plead guilty to wizards in my fanfic continuity also being more long-lived than non magical humans, so I can’t fault canon for doing the same, but.. by that much? It just seems... well, unnaturally rushed.

I will give it’s also possible that the jaquin statues and the plaque that makes them were elsewhere before and were moved to the Commander’s Rock later... but again, it seems something that could have had more of an explanation in canon.

If love really is in the air, it started floating a bit suddenly

If the page about him on TV Tropes is anything to go by, Craig Gerber isn’t big on romance in the series he conceives, at least between the main characters.

That said, for a series where romance isn’t the main focus, he and his team overall do a very good job of portraying nice romantic relationships in it, whether they’re between couples that have been married for decades (such as Francisco and Luisa, who in their time together are clearly shown as very much in love after all these years) couples that fall in love at first sight (like Charoca and Charica, who were just adorable) or what appears to be a sum of both (like King Pescoro and Queen Camila, who look like they fell in love at first sight, but have nurtured that relationship over time and been together for around twenty years, if not longer).

And if Elena and Mateo end up becoming a romantic couple, I can say without exaggeration that it will be the best progression from friends to lovers that I have seen in recent television.

Still... I can’t help but think they kind of dropped the ball in the most recent relationship they have apparently introduced.

I will give I may be unduly biased, given my shipping preferences for the characters... but I promise I’m trying my best not to be.

In a recent Twitter post, I called it a romance that seemed out of nowhere.

In a more recent Twitter post, I said it seemed less out of nowhere, but still an abrupt leap.

And well... as I write this, I still stand by the latter statement.

I’m sorry, but I feel that, on a canon level, if Gabaomi is really meant to be portrayed as romantic, it got the short end of the stick on portrayals of couples in Norberg Peace Prize.

Maybe it has to do with different expressions of affection across cultures, as well as with my personal views on affection. I mean, I hug my best friend when we meet after we don’t see for a while, and we’re both guys and hetero. And it’s not at all unusual here in Portugal for friends of different genders to greet each other with hugs and cheek kisses. On a familial level, it’s also common for mothers and children of both genders, as well as fathers and children of both genders, to greet each other with cheek kisses.

So to me at least, mere hugs between two friends, even if of a different gender, don’t exactly scream ‘ROMANCE!’.

I will give that Gabe and Naomi had subtle moments so far that could be interpreted as romantically coded, such as their dance in My Fair Naomi, their hug in Song of the Sirenas, and their hug in Naomi Knows Best. But... well, again, it doesn’t exactly shout like there was a romantic relationship upgrade.

I also know it’s a Disney Junior show, and that there possibly is some form of rule against explicit romance, at least between younger characters, in the series. But unfortunately, I feel that only makes the whole thing even more confusing.

Is it romantic, or is it not romantic?

If it’s not... then perhaps this is all a mountain made out of anthill.

If it is... it does feel a bit sudden, despite those subtle moments. I feel there should have been some kind of ‘more overt’ display between Naomi Knows Best and Norberg Peace Prize. As is, it feels a bit too sudden of a leap.

At least to me.

I have no idea what lies in store on that front. It’s possible that this was never romantic to begin with. It’s possible that this ends up being a relationship that doesn’t work. And it’s also possible that this is it.

Either way... well, the whole plot point doesn’t outright have me go ‘EW!’, but it does have me a fairly bit puzzled.

Again, maybe it’s something else that will turn out to be clearer as the show goes on.

But if the current status of things is really it, period, then I have my doubts.

Full sum

To reiterate the point I made in the beginning, Season 3 of Elena of Avalor still has a lot of good things going for it.

To add a few to the list I made above:

- The cast members’ performances are as good as always, like those in the scene where Elena and Esteban have their... tense moment after Esteban admitted he sabotaged the Feast of Friendship hosted by Julio.

- There are plenty of hilarious moments, such as the antics between Queen Abigail and King Hector.

- The action scenes so far, such as the battle in Sister of Invention, are great.

Once more, the list could go on.

But despite that, if Season 3 already has so many issues in so few episodes (and I’m not even including things like animation goofs in these things I point out) I feel it’s not presenting the best image of itself so far.

Yes, individually, each of these things is fairly small, but when all of them add up and one keeps in mind that the average is basically one issue per episode... well, being as gentle about it as possible, it doesn’t exactly give as good an image of the series as it once had.

It’s not an awful series for sure, but I do feel sad that it started to show so many signs of ‘less effort’ in a row.

That said, it’s true things can still improve on the remainder of the season. And being a fan of the series, I hope they do.

Thank you to all those who actually made it to the end of this essay. I look forward to knowing your thoughts on this, whatever they are.

Peace out.

#elena of avalor #elena of avalor spoilers #eoa spoilers #spoilers #essay #my opinion on a few things

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