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mattzerella-sticks · 2 years

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I have to say that the choice of Jason Todd and Kyle Rayner for this Justice League Green Lantern Dark Crisis special is... interesting.

I mean, from the synopsis and covers, it does feel like John Stewart's 'fantasy world' really is fantasy-like in that he is a knight and Kyle is a prophet (a blind prophet) and Jason... has a gun?

From what I'm thinking, maybe this fantasy world is like a Gotham City and John is its Batman? And the choice of Jason because of all the Robins Jason is the one whose expertise mirrors John's in a way (John was in the army, Jason is the only trained weapons specialist of the group).

It wouldn't be the first of these JL specials to mirror Batman, as the Superman special finds him in a world where his dream of having Jon be his official sidekick (in a Robin-inspired outfit) is the main premise. This also makes me wonder if all of these specials are variations of Batman themes and involve the Batfamily (because, though we are fatigued they ARE DC's bread and butter y'all).

AND thinking of this made me question the release order of the specials. Superman is #1 and Jon is supposed to be an homage to Dick Grayson. Green Lantern is number 2, and it features Jason Todd. I wouldn't be surprised if 3 and 4 (Wonder Woman and Green Arrow) feature Tim and Steph in some way, not to mention how the backpage stories might work and who will be woven in. And 5 would be Damian but this is also the Batman special, and I think it ends with him because in everyone's perfect world they're some sort of version of Batman, but in Batman's perfect world there is no Batman ("A perfect world would never create a Batman" very similar to when Clark told Earth-2 Superman a perfect world is one without Superman) so it's very much Wayne Family Adventures but with Damian and... either a baby or a grown woman Helena Wayne!

But I could talk about that in a whole nother post... as much as I could how both Bruce and Barry's idealized paradises are ones where they're just being domestic. But I digress...

So that might explain Jason, but what about the Kyle of it all?

There were a plethora of Lanterns to choose from that John has worked with AND are from Earth. We have to think about the character Kyle will be portraying and who would easily fill this role, then.

Hal and Guy are immediately out. No way could they ever be the kind of prophet this story needs. Plus they would overshadow the other characters in the story. Jason and Guy's characters will act to similarly and make the story one-dimensional. Hal would step too much on John's toes. So it has to be those who came after John in the Corps.

Of corpsmen, the three who come to mind are Simon Baz, Jo Mullein, and Kyle Rayner. Of the three, Simon and Jo have been present and featured in the storyline where John became the Emerald Knight, so it wouldn't be surprising if those two were chosen. Plus Kyle's been MIA for a long while since the latest GL series started. However, considering the third element - the Jason factor - they probably looked back to see who could be the perfect complement there to balance things out, and they landed on Kyle. It also helps that they both have history with Kyle as well. I expect Kyle to really lean into his artistic side in this one-shot.

Tl;dr the use of Jason might be more than just a crumb for JayKyle stans, it might hint at how the singular thread connecting the worlds in these is the Batman-ness of it all (especially since Nightwing seems to be leading the heroes and confirmed villains running amok after the DotJL are Deathstroke and Clayface, Batman villains). However, JayKyle has to be considered because choices are not made in a vacuum, especially character and story choices.

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studyvince-ebooks · 2 years

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I just finished reading The Starless Sea by Erin Morgenstern and wanted to ramble off some things i liked and stuff. spoilers ahead, yeah

I don't usually *intend* to read most books, merely stumble into them, and this book was no exception. Eerie, that I found a protagonist (Zachary) that mirrored me so exactingly: numbingly passive, a bookish hermit gamer, totally into silver-fox-likes. Double eerie, that Zachary stumbles into a book that mirrors him so well as well. Inception.

(In fact, that darkness portion in the book before Zachary meets Simon? Where Zachary almost sciccumbs to a retelling of his deepest insecurities? Hit just a bit too close to home. Get out of my head, Morgenstern)

Anyways, that's enough about me. As for the story itself, I adored its book-about-a-book themes. The interwoven stories that all came together like a patient thread pulled taut? The idea that everyone has a story they carry around near their heart? It's inspiring to see such an ode to the art of storytelling. And an ode to the natural world as well: animals in the story aren't just set pieces, but heralds of change (owls) and also just downright adorable (The Kitchen).

I feel that Dorian's and Zachary's romance had more potential for impact, in my opinion. Between Zachary doing fetch quests for most of the story's first third and Dorian either being drunk or poisoned for the story's second third, I feel like they could have more time to interact organically (although to be fair, I would also immediately fall in love with a smokey-voiced mystery man). I also think that the resurrection scene at the end could have more heartfelt moments in it. But I also get that it's best for the integrity of the story overall if they kept their romance to side-story engagement levels, because that's what it is: another story among many in the waters of the Starless Sea.

That being said, I'm also the kind of guy that enjoys the B-plots more in stories anyways. Kitchen, I love you and would read a whole nother novel about those silly little bees. Innkeeper. I would kill for an anthology of your chance tavern encounters. Simon and Eleanor's story being based around time-warp shenanigans was interestingly executed. et cetera et cetera

Overall, for this being my first Morgenstern book, it was a perfect first encounter. It renewed my appreciation for literature and I am always happy to be surprised by a gay romance, however contrived (affectionate). Maybe fantasy is a bit above my pay grade, or at least the way Morgenstern writes fiction, so I think I'll try to diversity my reading portfolio a bit more before diving back into her other work.

Anyways, here are some of my favorite quotes that I'll shore with you before you all wreck my face in the notes for my bad takes:

“All this has built up around it. One child's invented world has became another's , and another's, and so on until it is everyone's world.”

“’I think people came here for the same reason we came here,’ Dorian says. “In search of something. Even if we didn't know what it was. Something more. Something to wonder at. Someplace to belong. We're here to wander through other people’s stories, searching for our own.”

"You have no friends. And all of this is a fabrication. Your brain's feeble attempt to preserve itself. Telling itself a story with love and adventure and mystery. All of those things you wanted in your life that you were too busy playing your games and reading your books to go out and find. Your wasted life is ending, that is why you are here.”

“You are words on paper… be careful what stories you tell yourself.”

#bookblr #the starless sea #studyblr #long post #studyvince_ebooks

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johnnys-green-pen · 3 years

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Random E! Thoughts: S3E19 - The Hard Hours

Johnny seems impressed that Doc Early even got the squad’s hood opened.

The sheer amount of wonder on Johnny’s face because Joe Early somehow fixes up cars, too.

Also, I want the story of how Joe came by Cap’s clam chowder the first time around… though Joe does call him Hank at least once in Season 6 and the way they interact indicates that they know each other a fair bit better than their shared screentime would indicate, so who knows, maybe Joe hangs out at 51′s sometimes; that’d be cute.

This entire episode is so heart-breaking.

The way Kel and Dix just… slow down as they talk about that EKG and everything sinks in, and the sorrow and fear of maybe losing Joe gets almost too heavy to move.

Joe getting to analyze his own fucky EKG. Ouch.

He’s actually shaking when Dix comes to pick him up.

The way Dix is looking at Johnny and Roy like somebody’s already died is nothing short of terrifying.

The way Johnny and Roy turn in different directions after Dix wheels Joe away.

Every time I forget how strongly Johnny reacts to the whole thing. The way you can see him clench his jaw. The way his sentences kind of trail off near the end.

Also “you’d think I’d never heard bad news about anybody before” and “some people you just don’t get immune to” - something about that entire exchange just Gets me.

I also like that Joe kinda seems like Johnny’s Person at Rampart, like Brackett is Roy’s - it makes sense, too, that Johnny would get along with Joe, what with his warm, friendly personality and his tons of practice dealing with the patients who may need some more kindness than usual.

Plus, this episode shows once again how close Dix, Joe and Kel really are - sure, everybody at Rampart and at Station 51 is worried, but Dix and Kel are taking it to a whole ‘nother level.

I also really like the way they portray Joe here - his worry is a constant thread going through the entire episode, even though he tries to play it down with humor, because as much as he may be well-informed and in good hands, he’s also still human.

Also: “Everybody’s gone out of his way - who’d they think I am?” - “They know who you are, Joe.” Oof. Oof.

Also, so much Feelings Talk between Joe and Kel and I’ll never get tired of mentioning how much I love that.

Speaking of, Brackett trying to improve the father-son relationship of the Rocket Boy. Plus, him standing up for science-minded kids in particular is a bit of a running theme.

Cap doing his Approachable Captain thing is so fun to watch. Plus, I love that the shift is actually explicitly described as “kinda like a family”. Usually that kind of stuff is just very strong subtext; I can’t remember many other cases where the leader just goes ahead and says it. Also, the way he does it is just so adorable, deliberately approachable and all.

Also, Johnny being the one who explains what’s going on, and his eyes just flicking towards Roy for the briefest moment like he’s searching for confirmation that it’s okay to talk about it. Also, Johnny readily admitting to the emotional toll of the whole situation, and Cap just instantly understanding that they’d rather be at Rampart and being fully supportive of it.

… okay, Johnny seeing a naked girl and just Nope-ing out of there is hilarious, and Roy trying Extremely hard not to look is really charming, but I’m not entirely sure if her portrayal isn’t just a bit… skeevy, music and all, on a meta level.

Also, casual lockpicking by Johnny, lol. On one hand, I know a surprising amount of people who can pick simple locks like that, too, for no other reason than “it sounds cool”, but on the other hand, that IS an interesting skill to have, and I DO wonder how he came by it.

Brackett puttering about the base station doing nothing because he’s so on edge; same with Dix, though she’s a bit more graceful about it.

There’s something really fun about Cap directing the cutting of those power lines; we don’t get to see him actually coordinate things so clearly very often.

Brackett actually stroking Joe’s face is one of the stand-out scenes here, because that’s a whole lot more tenderness than we usually get to see between two male characters. I love that so much.

….. I’m not entirely sure what Joe’s reading in that last scene, but between him pulling it out from where he’d clearly hidden it under the blanket and what looks like a topless lady on the cover, I’m not sure I want to know.

#emergency!#e!analysis #s3e19

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silver-wield · 4 years

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Went to check out the reddit thread and it's a whole nother level of stupid in there. Props to all the Clotis in there though for their patience. Sad that logic doesn't work on someone who rejects canon material as "bad takes" and "reaches" while at the same time quoting fanfiction and effing game credits of all things as definite proof. Seriously though. The level of stupid to go into a cute cloti post and then try and pick a fight is just wow

That's Calli. I'm not on reddit so I had to go through her replies to see what she wrote and it was 2 pages of me reading like this

You'll notice she and all of the dumdums ignore us when we bring up the other dresses in the credits because they can't explain them without destroying their own "proof".

The credits are just the credits. As for why Aerith's resolution is in them, it's because most people got Tifa's first, so it's letting players know there's another because this is the canon route that's listed in the ultimania.

So, because this is the choice you're supposed to make first, for the narrative, then Tifa’s resolution is the one you see first, so naturally in the credits it's letting us know there's at least one other, so we go back and play again. Same with the dresses. By showing more than one it's saying there's other options for both Aerith and Cloud's outfits, but Tifa only appears in her canon dress because there's nothing else to do to get hers but follow the canon route, as explained above, which gets you alone at last so you already know how to change her dress.

It's really not as deep as some people try and make it.

The rest of her dumb claims are just shit she's said that isn't in the game or the ultimania or anywhere but dismantled or Maiden, neither of which are canon. Dismantled is a game guide released before the first ultimania for FF7, so there's info in it that directly contradicts the official source that came out after. Dismantled is retconned by the ultimanias that are currently out. Maiden is a fan fiction commissioned by SquareEnix and not written by Nojima. It's in the last part of an ultimania, so it's not like they can recall thousands of books to cut it out. It uses references from the game lore to make it in line with canon material, but it also contradicts canon and has never been confirmed by anyone at SquareEnix as part of the compilation or as a source for canon.

Not to mention in it Aerith compares Zack to Cloud and says he isn't as "simplistic and awkward" as Cloud.

Ouch. Thought she loved him? And Maiden doesn't say Cloud loves or loved Aerith. And as for her loving him, looks like another retcon to me. She spent 90% of that game comparing Cloud to Zack, including in her resolution where she thanks him and says he made her happy. Because she got to fool herself she saw Zack again because Cloud has adopted a lot of Zack's mannerisms as part of his soldier persona. Aerith isn't happy with Cloud because she doesn't know Cloud. She's happy she got to pretend she saw Zack again. And meet Tifa and have friends, but mostly she's deluding herself about a lot, which is why she shatters the illusion by informing Cloud he's not real. And he even says in the original JP that Aerith's confession/rejection is one sided, meaning he never felt that way. Which confirms what I said a whole lot about soldier Cloud not being interested in Aerith as much as real Cloud isn't interested in her. Neither personas want Aerith. They're united in their attraction to Tifa.

Which plenty of people can take very little time to search for the translations and see for themselves how Cloud isn't interested in Aerith.

And then she brings up Hollow and shows off her homophobia. I feel like I've done this exact post before lol

She can't accept that Cloud could be talking about Zack, despite the fact hollow cues at the site where Zack died and Cloud screamed his heart out before losing his true self, too.

The original title is "Empty cloud", which obviously refers to how Cloud loses everything dear to him. At this point in the story, Aerith is neither dear, nor lost, and I'm sick of backing away from saying this because dumdums think everything is shipping motivated.

Hollow is the theme for the game. It encompasses the entire story from Cloud's history until the point it cues.

What did Cloud lose?

His mom, hometown, Zack, his identity, sector 7, his new friends.

Those are confirmed losses. He also thought he lost Tifa because she was attacked in Nibelheim. He thought he lost Barret after seeing him stabbed.

He didn't think he lost Aerith. Because she wasn't lost. She didn't die, she was kidnapped. And he never embraced her and never wanted to. Otherwise that scene in the Shinra building they say is aborted because of Tifa would've included a hug because it's a game and every action is programmed by the devs.

If Cloud and Aerith were going to hug they would have. Because the devs would have done that. They didn't. Stop blaming Tifa for something the devs programmed. She's not a real person with autonomy. She only does what the devs make her do.

The devs didn't want Cloud to hug Aerith because Cloud isn't interested in Aerith. They did have him hug Tifa because Cloud is interested in Tifa.

Stop blaming Tifa for how the game is programmed.

Think that's everything she goes on about. I won't even touch on the translations because she thinks she's some kind of linguistics expert and she's not. She's an idiot with an inflated ego who went unchecked for 20 years because of a lack of information and ability to gaslight people in small groups so her dumbass rhetoric would spread. Remake is showing everyone she's wrong and everything she says makes her look crazy because she didn't understand the story, thinks everything is about ships and can't handle the fact she's not all powerful with new fans, who are ditching the ship to go make a less toxic, lie filled one.

I've said a few times she'll combust. Disc 2 should do the trick, since Aerith already lived past disc one, so that satisfies that condition they've always gone on about.

#Ship war #Reddit shenanigans

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damienthepious · 3 years

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what's your favorite theme in scattered?

ohhhhh hohohoh hmmmmm ohhhehehehe ehehe hoooohohohoh

okay

i mean i’m bad at favorites so i’ll just pick one of many at random

purely by accident this doesn’t have any spoilers past the recorder scene, i don’t think

okay so quite by accident, perspective became a big deal in Scattered, just by virtue of how i typically write? Which is to say, what i tend to think of as an over-the-shoulder perspective. Third person limited is the technical term, i believe.

What that meant for the story was, that characters kept having conversations and revelations off-screen, when it was someone else’s turn to hold the perspective torch. Again, this started entirely by accident, and then it just... became really fun? It’s a constant thread. You could take virtually any moment from Scattered with more than one character in it, and I could tell you what’s going on in the non-viewpoint character’s heads and how it differs from the vp character’s ideas on what’s going on. My FAVORITE of these moments is absolutely, no question, one hundred percent The Recorder Scene.

Because The Recorder Scene takes this perspective quirk-gone-theme and adds a whole nother meta layer to it. Not only are we in Rilla’s head, trying to puzzle out what’s happening in Arum’s head, but we’re also watching another moment in time, and not being told everything about RILLA’S perspective in the PAST, because she is, even internally, shying away from it.

We see the literal, precise, beam-of-sunlight MOMENT that Rilla realizes that she’s in love with Arum, and then we abstract it by like... three layers.

We did not SEE this scene directly, we do not have an exact placement in the fic for when Rilla had this revelation. She doesn’t even say it. Not even to her own private log. We don’t see her face, so to speak. All we have is her voice, and whatever small noises make it through on the recording, and what pieces of the memory Rilla is willing to revisit in the moment.

And Rilla-in-the-present is kind of hurting about this moment, too, because she’s decided that she cannot, morally, act on these feelings, because Arum is her patient, and because she thinks it will break Damien’s heart if he knows, and she loves him and can’t do that to him. So, she doesn’t think the actual word then, either. She detaches herself from it besides just using the moment as proof that she cares about Arum, regardless of the context.

And Arum? We have no idea what he thinks. If he has even the first inkling that she feels romantically towards him (at this point, i do not think he does. at best he would assume that almost criminally wishful thinking).

Unstated and understated revelations and turning points are kind of all over the place in Scattered. Another good one is probably the moment that Damien fully realizes begins to suspect that Arum is in love with Rilla, which coincidentally (lol) is the same night he starts to worry about his own feelings. That would be the Marc-visit, hand-wrapping, hair-braiding night. Lots of stuff going on there.

The reason WHY perspective became more than just a functional aspect of the fic was mostly, I think, because of how it let me play with each of the three of them looking at the other two.

A big, big part of Scattered is Arum falling in love with Rilla and Damien’s love, Rilla falling in love with watching Arum lower his walls and soften on the both of them, and Damien falling in love with Arum falling in love with Rilla and himself but he doesn’t catch that.

Damien watches Arum gently, carefully braid Rilla’s hair, watches him hesitantly lift a hand to caress that braid, watches him fold with nerves before he touches her. Damien watches Arum refuse to raise his voice or budge an inch for fear of waking Rilla up. And Damien sees that subtle affection and it makes his heart swell.

So. Perspective is a whole ass character in Scattered, like time is in On and On and On Again (If My Chest Don’t Cave In) or like death is in You Want To Live (When Life Is Achingly Unfair), and I’m pretty fucking enamored with that idea.

#LOTSA WORDS #thank u babes i love u #elle's fanfic meta #scattered meta #pinkpuffballdude #asks

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goliath-de-senfina-sango · 4 years

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Interior designer Danny Fenton! If you enjoy this please hit that reblog button!

Danny had been on somewhat of a hyper fixation spiral since Sydney had explained how Sanctuaries work in the Infinite Realms. You make one from the surrounding ectoplasm and it’s your place. Only assholes will invade your sanctuary without permission and you have every right to fight them over it. Danny acknowledged that ghosts were people, and like people, he didn’t want them just waltzing into his house because the only nearby door to Earth was in it.

So, Danny had taken a blank sketchbook, let some of that ghostly energy flow into his mind, and considered how he wanted his sanctuary to look. It took weeks of drawing, of looking up pictures of the ISS, going to that abandoned observatory at that one hill, going with Sam on a trip to a jungle (he’d learned that bugs were discouraged from being near him if he let out little pulses of energy) and his own hike through Amity’s woods. He found himself tugged and drawn toward so many places for inspiration it shocked him. He drew server rooms, a room for nothing but videogames, a movie theater, a bowling alley. The library, the arcade, that coffee shop Sam liked that sold weird books, the park, Danny filled his sketchbook up and up and up (it shouldn’t have this many pages in it but his life was so strange he didn’t even notice that).

A month after Danny had come up with this plan, he was in a pottery class, learning how the process of molding clay at your fingertips felt and worked. He had to leave to fight ghosts, yes, but he was learning and the art of turning a pile of mush into something new made something in Danny sing.

Walking through the portal always brought back the most awful memories, but he soldiered on because this? It was important. Danny sat in front of the portal on the other side, surrounded by dark void and glowing green, blue, indigo, and violet mist (it was those colors and more, it was all the colors human eyes could not see). He lay one hand on his sketchbook, closed his eyes, breathed in, and let his energy flow outward. Immediately the mists pulsed and ebbed and flowed and danced to the tune of his core and Danny imagined himself drawing and molding at the same time. His aura shone brighter and brighter, and around the portal formed steel and stone, which extended upward, downward, outward. For an age, Danny let himself get lost in the sheer art of creation and the world around him hummed and thrummed as it was pulled closer together and twisted and stretched and aligned just so.

As a favor to a boy they would not know personally for some time, she twisted the dilation of Time around the Fenton Portal relative to Earth. Thanks to him, an hour would pass in that material Realm while Danny was lost in an obsession he didn’t even know he had - creating. Ectoplasm and the Soul both were infinite and as such Danny wove together the most beautiful tapestry he could without pause.

When Danny finally opened his eyes and the burning power ebbed back into his still ringing core, he was inside of a room. It was his workshop back home, or a replica of it, instead of his parents’ lab, though the portal was right where it was in the lab of course. He let his feet rest on the smooth linoleum or at least what he thought might be linoleum, and hummed. He walked over to the stairs and ascended, noting that artifact storage and weapon storage were both there. The kitchen, however, was very different. It was like something out a professional restaurant, every surface looking beautifully clean with knives and spoons and measuring tools and bowls and everything one could wish for to cook a five-star meal with littering the place. Meals he cooked with his dad, disasters he’d helped his mom and sister either make or destroy, Tucker and his mom’s home cooking, Agatha’s wonders all came to mind and Danny grinned. There was enough room for all of them to work together on something here.

The living room had couches, beanbag chairs, and very well cushioned chairs everywhere, the carpet feeling like a soft moss under his toes when he took off his boots and the walls and ceiling covered in murals of a forest under a starry night sky. When Danny flicked his fingers, a holographic screen appeared in the air and he beamed. Scrolling around quickly showed that signals were caught rather easily through the portal and he could connect to the internet or to any version of a cable package on Earth. “Tucker will love this.” That thought, of course, led Danny deeper into the house, to the stairs and up them toward a room. Crisscrossing the room were lines like circuits, gold, green, and red the theme of the room. It appeared a cross between a lab and a living room.

The largest feature was a sunken area in the middle of the floor that housed a circular bank of computers, as well as a bolted and padded chair that spun in a circle to reach every screen. Over to one side was a table with a sewing machine, countless pieces of fabric off on a shelf nearby. To the other side was a table with an entire DnD map on it, miniatures laid out waiting to take form. To one side as well there was a cabinet next to a refrigerator and a freezer, all labeled ‘chemicals’, and wow, Danny should probably check what those were. He knew Tucker was starting to dabble in chemistry but anything made from ectoplasm was probably dangerous to go experimenting with. The dartboard in the visage of a computerized eye was, in Danny’s humble opinion, a nice touch on his part.

“Well, there’s only one other door here besides the entrance and I’m gonna bet that’s like, an extra bedroom. So, let’s see what else we’ve got here.” Danny floated down the halls and hummed when he found a door made of polished obsidian with streaks of thread woven around it. He pulled open the door and chuckled. “Wow. plants everywhere, spider silk all over the place, black and purple with rebellion posters. I wonder who this room is for.” Danny floated up to the ceiling when he caught an odd glint and raised a brow at the cameras hovering in a strange formation. But then he pulled back down and snorted when he realized they were arranged like the eyes of a spider. There was a door labeled dark room where only a red light could be seen and when Danny touched the floor with his hand he found that it absolutely was some kind of moss. “I wonder how alive anything I like, willed into existence around here, can be. Is this real moss feeding on the ambient energy in Realms or does it just look and feel like that cause I thought it was thematically appropriate?”

Deciding that was best left for later, Danny flew off down the hall and up the winding stairs once more, finding himself suddenly in a library that seemed to go on and on in all directions. Shelves upon shelves that towered twice his height littered this floor so far like a maze that Danny couldn’t tell if there was an end made of true walls or if that second floor ringed with a brass balcony was supported by yet more bookshelves. Couches and chairs and tables were scattered all around, and the carpet was a soft lilac with orange and blue eye patterns repeating all over it. “This doesn’t feel like Sam or Tuck… it feels like Jazz. Wow, the rooms really feel like them. Ok, Fenton, don’t get too wrapped up in that. Ghost stuff is weird and you’ve felt and seen what your friends’ aurae are like before. This is just a whole nother level of it, in your own personal afterlife home.”

Spinning around the spiral staircase once he found it up to the very top of the building found Danny in an observatory, to understate. There was a telescope that looked out and up into the void toward the dots and pinpricks of light that hinted at the spirits of stars shining in the distance. The walls were all made of glass - likely one-way glass - and each was a different color, each reflecting a different view of somewhere on Earth. Most of them showed Amity, the places he went to most frequently, and the places he had to protect most often, but there was also a view of the whole of NASA’s facilities, the night sky, the biggest planetarium in the world, etcetera. Danny felt tears rising to his eyes, blurring his vision. “This is beautiful…”

On one table was a map, shifting and changing like waves on the ocean, which showed all the places that Danny had been in the Infinite Realms. There was a door that led to a room filled with easels, canvas, paint, brushes, pencils, paper, everything he could ever crave for drawing and molding art from clay and ink and paper. A flick of his fingers brought up a hologram when he got close to some speakers and every song he’d ever listened to was there, somehow in full even when his memories had faded of the lyrics and names.

“Alright. Ok, I can’t- I can’t stay here or I’ll never leave. I have to bring Tucker and Sam to see this.” Danny looked out a window, this one opening up onto a balcony, and he gasped. Stretching out for at least a mile or three was violet stone under several buildings. It looked for all the world like a town surrounding his house, with a forest and wood surrounding that town. “Holy shit. Yeah, I gotta show Tucker and Sam.”

#Danny Phantom #Danny Fenton #Sanctuary #Lairs #Danny's Lair #fanfiction #phanfiction #phanfic #fanfic #fanphic #fanphiction #phanphiction #phanphic #Rexy Writes

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pastelastronomy24 · 5 years

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It’s Hard, But Not With You

Tony Stark x Plus Size! Reader (Pregnant!Reader)

Warnings: Absolutely none other than Fluff and about average writing lmao and it’s short

A/N: my first time doing a Tony x Reader. My knowledge of comic book character traits get to shine through my dialogue and it’s the thing that keeps me going ya know🤷🏾‍♀️🤷🏾‍♀️

“i was wondering if you could make me a plus size reader and tony and him helping you through pregnancy not being married? maybe idk.”

Requested by @lilacprincessofrecovery

You were born in a traditional home, with traditional parents, traditional holidays, and traditional everything.

Being the first pregnant Avenger (unwed at that) with Tony Stark as your baby daddy was way out the ball park of untraditional. You had been with Tony a year before you got pregnant and oh what a year it was.

You went from being a “solo artist” (your prophetic words for an ass kicking vigilante) to a full time Avenger, to a full time girlfriend to Anthony Stark and it just seemed like the adventures never stopped for you. You didn’t know you were pregnant for three whole months, but looking back maybe it should have been obvious.

You were a thicker girl, and the days of you being ashamed of that were mostly ages behind you, but a month before you found out you were pregnant, you started noticing some changes about your body. Of all things, the first noticeable difference was your already thunderous thighs had gotten bigger. That accompanied with your hips spreading lead to Tony not being able to keep his hands off of you or his mind either. You couldn’t walk by him without a smart ass comment, mostly of Tony comparing your new curves to a Tesla or a dirt road.

His favorite thing to do now (other than sex) is to just lay down with you, any place and anytime, to hold you. He loves rubbing your belly and kissing your temple.

Plus your butts bigger so spooning is on a whole nother level for Tony.

Tony was extra as hell through your entire pregnancy. He’d throw extravagant parties for each new trimester (by your third you were ready to hurl him into the sun.) Each trimester had a theme. The first trimester was in late February and he flipped the entire compound into soft winter decor. Gone were the heather grey couches, replaced with navy blue couches with snowflake details. This man even remodeled the bathrooms.

Tony gives amazing back rubs. Like, god like back rubs.

You’re hungry? Every single one of your cravings were on hand. You’re having trouble sleeping ? Your mattress was switched out for a state of the art high class memory foam mattress. All the sheets are interchangeable. 600 thread count for cold days and 200 for hotter ones. You’re experiencing any aches and pains? There was always a massage therapist on standby.

“Tony you don’t have to spend all this money on me, save it for the baby.” “Babe I’m a fucking billionaire. There will be no limit to my spending. Plus, spoiling mommy doesn’t mean I’m not gonna spoil baby. I made this baby too”

Through it all, Tony had your back. There were days where you couldn’t get out of bed, and he would be right there rubbing your feet and cracking god awful jokes.

“You’re amazing and your body is fucking incredible for nurturing and protecting our baby.”

“It’s you, it’s always been you and it’ll always be you.”

“I only hope our baby takes after you personality wise. They’ll be stronger than an Ox. Let’s hope they get my looks though”

#marvel #tony stark #tony x reader #tony stark x plus size reader #tony stark x reader #plus size reader #plus size imagine #plus size love #tony x plus size reader #tony stark x pregnant reader #pregnant reader #poc!reader #black!reader

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judesowndaughter · 4 years

Text

Roleplaying Profile Meme

PLEASE REPOST, DO NOT REBLOG! Feel free to add to any of your answers! The purpose is to tell your partners about the way you write! For the multiple-choice ones, BOLD all that apply and, if you want, italicize if it’s a conditional answer!

– B A S I C S –

NAME : Les

ARE YOU OVER 18? Yes / No

IS YOUR MUSE? Yes / No

ARE YOU SELECTIVE ABOUT WHO YOU WRITE WITH ON THIS BLOG? No (anyone) /Semi / Yes / Highly / Private

ARE YOU SELECTIVE ABOUT WHO YOU FOLLOW ON THIS BLOG? No (anyone) / Semi / Yes / Highly

IF YOUR MUSE IS CANON, HOW MUCH TO YOU ADHERE TO CANON? Not at all / A little / Somewhat / Mostly / Strictly / (OC) (I like to adhere to specific bits of canon with regards to the basic outline of Kate’s backstory, and her personality, but other than that? Kate is very headcanon-heavy. So it goes for minor characters.)

WHAT POST LENGTHS DO YOU WRITE? One Liners / Single-Para / Multi-Para / Novella (My words usually get ahead of me lmao.)

DO YOU USE ICONS AND/OR GIFS? No / Gifs / Icons / Gifcons (I oftentimes go iconless.)

DO YOU WRITE ON OTHER PLATFORMS? No / Yes (-ish. Discord and Wire, yes. Nowhere else, though.)

WHAT LEVEL OF PLOTS DO YOU WRITE? Unplotted / Open-Ended Plots / Semi-Plotted / Fully Plotted Epics (It’s highly variable, and while I am capable of improvising, I do prefer to plot stuff out.)

HOW QUICKLY DO YOU USUALLY RESPOND TO THREADS? Very Slow / Slow (4-6 Weeks) / Average (1-4 Weeks) / Fast (Less Than One Week) / Very Fast (Less Than One Day) (Largely dependent on my energy levels and schedule. The situation varies........so much.)

WHAT TYPES OF THEMES DO YOU LIKE? (feel free to add!) Fluff / Angst / Smut / Action / Tragedy / Domestic / Family / Conversational / Hurt-Comfort / Dark / Violence (No preference, really! Less focused on action, though, because Kate just isn’t very...action-y? Smut is also very rare for both personal and in-character reasons.)

WHAT GENRES DO YOU LIKE? (feel free to add!) High Fantasy / Supernatural / Science Fiction / Historical / Horror / Comedy / Romance / Drama / Action / Adventure / Espionage / Everything

ARE THERE ANY THEMES YOU’RE UNCOMFORTABLE WRITING ON YOUR BLOG? No / Yes (I have a list of things that I absolutely will not write, as described in my rules page. Although I do not shy away from heavy topics, I would prefer to discuss replies/threads beforehand if they cover certain themes. I want to ensure that I write heavy/sensitive subjects with care.)

DO YOU HAVE ANY TRIGGERS? HOW DO YOU REQUEST IT TAGGED? No / Yes (I have at least one trigger, but the latter is so incredibly hyper-specific that I have yet to see it discussed/broached in public or private. So...yes? But I don’t need anything tagged.)

– S H I P P I N G –

WHAT TYPES OF RELATIONSHIPS ARE YOU OPEN TO? Romantic / Platonic / Familial / Physical / Sexual (I am always a sucker for brotps and friendships...LOVE writing platonic bonding)

WHAT TYPES OF PRE-ESTABLISHED RELATIONSHIPS ARE YOU OPEN TO? Romantic / Platonic / Familial / Physical / Sexual (All of them...?)

DO YOU HAVE OTPS? No / Chemistry only / Yes (Discussing a ship is generally a must.)

DO YOU HAVE NOTPS? No / Yes / I don’t know yet (Obvious NOTPs are ships featuring Kate with much older adults and any of her teachers---especially Jefferson---but also my specific interpretation of Kate with any men, as I headcanon that she is a lesbian. Please note that this is not to ship-shame anyone who headcanons Kate as bi, pan, or straight. This solely applies to my version of the character.)

WHAT IS YOUR MUSE’S SEXUAL ORIENTATION? -

Heterosexual / Heteroflexible / Bisexual / Homoflexible / Homosexual / Pansexual / Demisexual / Sapiosexual / Asexual / Questioning

ARE YOU COMFORTABLE WRITING SMUT? No / Selectively (ships only) / Yes (Smut with Kate takes...a lot. She has body image issues, internalized homophobia, and a whole lot of trauma. Suffice to say that one-night stands just aren’t a thing for her, nor will they ever be. If we do write smut, I prefer that our characters are in a ship and have been in a relationship for some time.)

HOW EARLY IN A RELATIONSHIP DO YOU SHIP ROMANTICALLY? Autoship / During Plotting / After A Couple IC Interactions / Several IC Interactions / Slow Burn / Depends on partner & muse

ARE YOU OPEN TO TOXIC SHIPS? No / Selectively (platonic-only) / Yes (I know I put her through the wringer, but I just want Kate to be happy, man. Toxic romantic ships are just too much. Platonic / Friendship / Familial is a whole ‘nother ballgame, though. I will say that if we do pursue a toxic ship, there absolutely needs to be discussion beforehand.)

ARE YOU OPEN TO PROBLEMATIC SHIPS? (canon history, age difference, complicated, etc.) No / Selectively / Yes (Not down with age difference, but complex reasons and/or canon history are perfectly valid options when it comes to exploring problematic ships. Case in point: I am willing to write C.hasemarsh---and all of the messy context/history included---but only if the person and I plot it out together.)

ARE YOU OPEN TO POLYSHIPPING? No / Selectively / Yes (Personally, no. Muse-wise, Kate is mono, so she is not interested in a polyship.)

ARE YOU AN EXCLUSIVE SHIPPER? No / Sometimes / Yes

DOES CRACK SHIPPING EVER HAPPEN? No / Sometimes / Yes

DOES CROSSOVER SHIPPING EVER HAPPEN? No / Yes / Depends (Kate has a lot of AUs, so it’s bound to happen. I have at least one crossover ship right now, actually: Lane’s Ash from UD with my UD!AU Kate. I am also going to take a moment to shamelessly plug @odawns. Please love Lane and her wonderful A.shley Brown. She is so good.)

—–

tagged by: @pulitzerpanther tagging: whomst’ve’ever wants to do it---come get y’all profile memes!

#[[ i've been waiting to use that dabbing icon forever ]]#;;out of chai #;;confessional

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serendipitous-magic · 5 years

Note

Hey, I just wanted to ask, while we wait for the completion of the first chapter of the season we should've got, what is your primary reason for writing this project? Is is it because of the lack of certain relationship dynamics, or maybe presence of certain ships? Or is the writing quality of season 3 in gerneral just that subpar and poorly executed?

My primary reason for the fix-it rewrite is simply this: I do not believe that the S3 we got did justice to the story or characters at all. And I want the characters, the story, and the fans to have the S3 that the story should have gotten. (That sounds very pretentious, looking over this, and I’m not trying to be like, “Oh, I can write the story that we all deserved, no problem, let me just bust out my magical writing skills since I’m clearly the only one able to fix this mess (adjusts monocle and swirls a martini).” That’s not what I’m trying to say lol. I would simply like to try my damndest to give us that, whether I entirely manage it or not. And hey, shoot for the moon, right?)

Let’s just forget ships entirely for a second. Hell, let’s forget the audience entirely. Regardless of what fans wanted, let’s consider this: the canonical seasons (1 and 2) were fantastic. The characters were complex and well-developed, and they felt like real people. The plot was fascinating and the storytelling was top-tier, with enough complexity and symbolism and background details and authenticity to captivate a huge fandom. The acting was on point. The writing was great. The whole show (the canonical seasons, that is) felt real. It felt like we were watching real people struggle against real events, and that authenticity and emotional connection was, I think, a lot of what made the show so great.

My main reason for my rewrite, honestly - more than being for the fans or even for my own satisfaction - is that I feel like the characters and story that we all know and love deserved better. The characters themselves, as characters, deserved so much better than (gestures angrily) that. (I won’t go into a whole ‘nother rant, because y’all know what I’m talking about.) The story deserved better. The writing was just... bad. Like, straight-up, it was just bad writing all the way around. It all felt like an over-the-top, cheesy B-list 80s movie, and not in the good way. While the dialogue of S1 and S2 felt like we were seeing and hearing real people talk and interact and react to things, the writing of S3 felt like a stageplay written by 13 year olds. Nothing against 13 year olds - it’s just, a professional TV show that was that good in the first two seasons really should be better than that, you know? So much better.

There were so many loose ends that S1 and S2 left hanging that S3 just straight-up ignored. There were so many wonderful, authentic, intriguing relationship dynamics - positive and negative - that they could have explored. There were so many aspects to the characters and their lives and their struggles (as a result of the events of S1 and S2) that would have been so fascinating and emotionally impactful if they had taken the time to address and explore that. And they just... didn’t. S3 completely abandoned any and all emotional connection with the characters - both between us (the viewers) and the characters, and between the characters themselves. The entire plot was driven by empty drama and meaningless action, with very few moments of real emotional connection anywhere. I’ve said it a lot and I’ll say it again: S3 is not the same show as seasons 1 and 2. It’s a completely different thing. The atmosphere is different. The aesthetic is different. The themes and morals are different. The acting is different. The writing is different. The characters are completely different people (I’ve beaten the phrase “paper-thin caricatures” to death, and I shall continue to do so). The construction of the plot is different. It’s a completely different show. From a storytelling perspective, it really does seem like we never actually got a Stranger Things Season 3 - what we really got was a show of the same name, with characters loosely based off of the ones we know, but the thing we got? It wasn’t Stranger Things. It just wasn’t.

And speaking of, I’ll touch on ships now: yes, of course I’m completely dissatisfied with the treatment of... uh... all the ships in S3? I mean, that’s an entirely separate rant in and of itself, but I’ll just say: it’s not just byeler. Ofc I’m gonna be writing byeler into my rewrite, because (gestures at my blog) I’m a byeler shipper. So. Yeah, of course. But besides byeler, S3 treated all the ships so badly tbh - even the ones that were “together” during the season. Even mileven! I don’t ship mileven, but I was pretty disgusted with how S3 treated that relationship. They played mileven for empty drama, and they didn’t even do a very good job at writing their relationship. (Again: that’s another rant.) And Jopper? WTF was up with Jopper? Who wrote that? No, seriously, who wrote that script. I just want to talk. Even Lumax, who were arguably the most stable and better-written couple in S3 - even they were very snippy with each other and apparently broke up and got together like 5 times in the span of half a year, and... It just seemed like all the ships were written so poorly, even the ones we were supposed to root for.

So, yes: another reason I wanted to rewrite S3 was to give the ships what (I think) they deserved. A respectful relationship built on teamwork and friendship for Jopper (which is definitely heading towards romantic, though it’s stalled a bit by both of their stubbornness and by Joyce’s mourning for Bob). An arc for mileven which allows them to see the negative aspects of their relationship, both grow as people (especially El, who really needs space to develop as a person), and retain their (amazing!) friendship. An arc for byeler that acknowledges and addresses their lifelong friendship, the bonding they went through last season, Will’s sexuality, Mike’s sexuality, etc. And so forth.

Reason #3(ish): the plot of S3 felt sloppy, based on empty drama and action (as I’ve said repeatedly lol), and it did not address many of the interesting loose ends left by S1 and S2, and I would like to address that in my fix-it. What happened to all the (many, many) hints about Will having powers? What happened to the Mind Flayer being a terrifying and fascinating villain/monster (without turning into a goo-monster for CGI flexing)? That guy said that Brenner is alive - is he? What about that Party trying to grow up too fast to escape and leave behind what happened to them as kids (except for Will, who’s trying to cling to the childhood that was stolen from him)? (We got a little bit of that in S3 but it was like... never addressed? Never resolved??) What happened to the Upside Down - like, the physical place itself? Why did we need to introduce Russians (like, literally just “Russians,” as a vague, stereotypical concept) as a villain when they already had good, solid villains established? Why the sudden “MURICA, CAPITALISM IS GOOD, RUSSIANS AND COMMUNISM BAD, DID I MENTION MURICA??” theme? Why? Why did they drop all the interesting loose threads from the canonical seasons only to shove in completely unnecessary new villains and drama that frankly just bloated the plot and didn’t add anything to the story that had been established in seasons 1 and 2?

Look, I could go on and on and on.

TL;DR: My reasons for this re-write project are as follows:

1) I felt that the story and characters themselves deserved better, and so did we as viewers and fans. S3 did not even feel like the same show as S1 and S2, and I wanted to at least try to write a story that would do (better) justice to the story and characters.

2) All the ships were treated terribly in S3, in my opinion, mileven included, and I wanted to a) treat them better in my rewrite, and b) yes, make it gayer. A lot gayer. Because I’m gay and I can. So (throws confetti).

3) I wanted to address some of the interesting loose threads left by seasons 1 and 2, and cut out a lot of the bullshit that was shoved into the plot unnecessarily in S3.

#asks #anon #this got long sorry #i had a lot of Thoughts (TM)#the real season 3 #sts3 #season 3 spoilers

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homespork-review · 5 years

Text

Spork Introduction

CHEL: Hi! I go by Chel, they or she pronouns, and I’m the one spearheading this project. I still like at least a fair percentage of Homestuck, but after the ending disappointed me a great deal, I got bitter, and when Hussie pissed me off further by Godwinning himself, I decided to do something about it. I’m no longer angry about it, but I felt I’d benefit from picking out what I hate from what I love so I can focus on the latter without annoyance getting in the way, and also to benefit my own writing efforts.

BRIGHT: Howdy! I’m Bright, and I got into Homestuck fairly recently. After ploughing through the archive and digesting for a while, I realised that I was thoroughly annoyed by how something enjoyable had fallen apart so comprehensively. I am looking forward to the time-honoured practice of ripping the story apart to identify its weak points and shout at them.

FAILURE ARTIST: Hello, I’m Failure Artist (call me FA for short), she/her/herself pronouns, and I’m so old-school they burned the school down. I was introduced to Homestuck via Something Awful’s Webcomic thread. I checked the old mspadventures.com site and the latest update was [S] John: Bite Apple. After watching that bizarre piece of animation, I had to know what the hell happened before then. I found I enjoyed the wit of the comic though I didn’t really care much about the plot. It was only when Act 5 came around that I became a serious fan. I currently have 122 Homestuck works on Archive of Our Own. I have a lot of free time, you see. I am very disappointed in how Homestuck ended. Possibly there was no completely satisfactory way it could end but it still could have been better. I feel like Hussie was a juggler who threw a lot of balls into the air and ignored them as they fell to the ground and some fans think not catching them was a master move since you’d expect he’d try to catch at least one. Sadly, lots of the problems with the ending are embedded deep within the canon.

TIER: Hi hi. I am Tier, a very late newcomer to the wonderful world of Homestuck (2018 reader!) and average fan overall. I love this webcomic to bits, but the low points are deep and I enjoy seeking out what the heck went wrong. Not particularly analytical myself, hope that's cool!

CHEL: Cool by us! We’ve already done plenty of analysing before we started, as you may realise from my Tumblr’s “homestuck ending hate” tag (at @chelonianmobile).

FAILURE ARTIST: But let’s put that aside for a moment and talk about the good stuff.

Homestuck is incredibly innovative. It is the first true webcomic. It’s not just a print comic posted online. It uses not just still images and words but also animation, music, and interactive games.

Homestuck is the latest adventure in the series MS Paint Adventures. MS Paint Adventures started as a forum adventure. In forum adventures, the OP acts as a sort of Dungeon Master and other forum members give them prompts. Andrew Hussie’s previous works under MS Paint Adventures were Jailbreak (which is little more than Hussie dicking with the prompters in scatological ways), Bard’s Quest (Choose-your-own-adventure), and the actually-completed Problem Sleuth. Problem Sleuth lacks the music and animation and despite the weird physics shenanigans is a simpler story than Homestuck. The characters aren’t even two dimensional.

Homestuck (and the previous MS Paint Adventures minus Bard’s Quest) are set up like adventure games. Adventure games are where the player is a protagonist in a story and are usually focused on puzzle-solving though sometimes there’s combat. In the beginning, these games were purely text. The player would type what they wanted to do and the game would spout back text describing it - assuming the computer parser understood you.

CHEL: Oh god, I HATED that. I wasn’t around for the heyday but I’ve played a couple and

Pale Luna

was barely an exaggeration (horror warning).

FAILURE ARTIST: As graphics improved, adventure games started using them, but the commands were still in text. Only later was the point-and-click interface created and players didn’t have to guess what exact sentence the computer wanted them to type. Homestuck and the other MS Paint Adventures play with that frustration while paying tribute to the genre. The game within the comic uses RPG elements but the comic itself is set up like those good ol’ adventure games. In the beginning, Homestuck was guided by commands from forum members. Even after he closed the suggestion box, he used memes and fanon created by readers.

CHEL: How good an idea this was varies, as we’ll be showing.

We probably don’t need to describe Homestuck much more. Everyone here who hasn’t read it will doubtless have heard of it. Almost everyone with a Tumblr will have seen fanart, almost anyone at a convention will have seen cosplay. Shoutouts have been made to it in professional works such as the cartoon Steven Universe, and the Avengers fandom latched onto “caw caw motherfuckers” as a catchphrase for Hawkeye to the point that it’s now often forgotten it didn’t originate from there.

FAILURE ARTIST: The Homestuck fandom term “sadstuck” for depressing stories/headcanons somehow leaked into other fandoms. Using second-person is actually cool now and not just for awkward reader fics. Astrology will never be the same again.

CHEL: Now, in the interests of fairness, we will say that when Homestuck is good, it’s amazing, and it’s good often. The characters at least start out appealing and are all immediately distinguishable; even with the typing quirks stripped, it’s easy to tell who said what. The magic system is one of the coolest I’ve ever seen, who doesn’t love classpecting themselves and their faves? Hussie also shows a lot of talent for the complex meta and time travel weirdness, and it is fascinating to watch a timeline thread unfurl. And whatever else one says, it’s a fascinating story that’s captivated millions. I think it is deserving of its title as a modern classic.

However, as the years have passed, we have ended up noticing problems, big and small, and they nagged at us until we decided it had to be dissected. Our intention here isn’t to tear apart something we loathe entirely. It’s to take a complex work and pick out what works from what doesn’t. As I said, when Homestuck is good, it’s very very good. But when it’s bad, we get problems of every scale from various offensive comments to dragging pace to characters ignoring problems and solutions right under their noses to an absolute collapse of every theme and statement the comic stood for before.

The comic is ludicrously long; eight thousand pages, or thereabouts, to be specific. Officially one of the longest works of fiction in the English language, in fact. Naturally, we can’t riff that word by word in any timeframe short of decades, and we can’t include every picture, even if that was permitted under copyright law. Instead, as comics have been done here before, we’ll recap most of the time, and include sections of dialogue and pictures when particularly relevant to a point.

Here are the counts we’ll be using, possibly to be added to later if we find we forgot anything. Most of these counts will only start to climb post-Act 5, but we’ll be keeping track of them from the beginning. Most of them could have been fixed with a decent editor, which is sadly a hazard of webcomics, but still frustrating to read.

TIER: Note: we started this endeavor months before the thought of a "technically not but still we'll count it" set of canon epilogues were a twinkle in the eyes of the fandom. That is, by the way, a whole 'nother can of worms that will be dealt with at a later date if that ever comes around. We're judging Homestuck the Webcomic as a whole, so no after the credits stuff is to be noted for whatever reason.

ALL THE LUCK - Vriska Serket constantly gets a pass or gets favored over every other character. This count is added to every time she pulls some shenanigans with which others wouldn’t get away. ARE YOU TRYING TO BE FUNNY? - Sometimes it’s not entirely clear whether a thing is supposed to be taken seriously or not. We don’t require hand-holding through every joke, but when, for example, we’re supposed to take one instance of violence seriously while a similar case is supposed to be funny, this count goes up. CALL CPA PLEASE - Instances of creepy sexual behaviour (and perhaps particularly gratuitous acts of violence) from the thirteen-year-old cast. Now, mileage may vary on this one. We won’t pretend that thirteen-year-olds are perfect pure angels, especially thirteen-year-olds growing up in what is openly supposed to be a nightmarish dystopia. However, when full pages focus on said behaviour, there comes a point of it being very uncomfortable to read. Clarification: does not refer to cases where the adults do something heinous, this is strictly when the kids do. CLOCKWORK PROBLEMATYKKS - When an offensive joke or comment is made, particularly when not justified by the personality of the character involved, or presented in the narration as being okay. GET ON WITH IT! - When the pace drags. ‘Nuff said. Hazard of the format, but it makes archive bingeing very annoying. GORE GALORE - For unnecessary and/or excessive torture porn which is treated less seriously because it features troll characters, and therefore less “realistic” blood colours. HOW NOT TO WRITE A WEBCOMIC - When the comic does something mentioned in How Not To Write A Novel, and it isn’t justified by the webcomic format. HURRY UP AND DO NOTHING - Characters repeatedly neglect to do something about or even react to terrible happenings, either because they don’t care even if they should or they forget they have the capacity. Not necessarily anything to do with their magical powers, either - characters ignore personal problems that are right under their noses, too. IN HATE WITH MY CREATION - For reasons that are unclear, Hussie chose to create characters he apparently hated writing, or at least ignored in favour of others. Every time he’s clearly disrespecting one of his own characters, this goes up, whether it’s by nerfing their powers or changing their personalities. RELATIONSHIP GOALS? - Romantic relationships in particular get fumbled quite often. Ship Teasing is used with skill, but that skill tends to be lost when the characters actually hook up. Fumbled friendships and family relations can also come under this heading. SEND THEM TO THE SLAMMER - When characters other than Vriska get away with something morally questionable. Covers everything from sexual harassment to not trying to save people from the apocalypse. SOME OF MY BEST FRIENDS - Later on in Homestuck’s run, Hussie tried to make up for the offensive humour and casual -isms counted by Clockwork Problematykks above. How successful he was at this varied. This count goes up whenever an attempt at progressivism is waved in front of the reader but doesn’t stand up under scrutiny. WHAT IS HAPPENING?? - When the already confusing plot kicks it up a notch. Admittedly this is as much a selling point of the comic as it is an issue, but either way, we’re going to keep track. Points will be added to when it gets confusing, and taken away when a previous confusing thing is explained adequately. WHITE SBURB POSTMODERNISM - What is shown about Alternia repeatedly contradicts what we’re told about how different it is from Earth. For example, trolls still use heteronormative terms even after it’s established they reproduce bisexually, and the demonstration of the class structure doesn’t always add up. This count goes up every time that happens. It also goes up every time something happens which strongly implies Hussie was envisioning the human kids as white, despite his later claims that they were always supposed to be “aracial”, and every time their economic statuses don’t add up either.

#homespork #homestuck #review #literary critique #sporking #let's read #reread #homestuck meta

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missfinefeather · 5 years

Text

The following conversation has ADULT THEMES!

Wakraya

I want to point out

JaneGamzee was a rather popular ship

Since he appeared randomly as her guide

And had her staring at his codpiece.

Nora (fae/faer)

WHAT???

GhastlyGhifin

Eurgghhhh....

Nora (fae/faer)

...........................................

Wakraya

So this doesn't come ENTIRELY out of nowhere.

Nora (fae/faer)T

There's NO hope for this fandom

Solidad

I mean, I saw a few joke pictures but I didn't think people were serious about it(edited)

GhastlyGhifin

Ah, yes, of course. Gotta find every tiny sapling to put in this horrid forest.

Wakraya

Solidad

Why ???

Nora (fae/faer)

deep facepalm

adreamer

Urghh.

Solidad

How many are post-Epilogues ?

Wakraya

0NoBrandMinda

ahaha

GhastlyGhifin

HAH

Solidad

I don't know if that makes it better or worse

GhastlyGhifin

Your got your wish, guys, the ship's canon! Happy?

Wakraya

Oh wait noThere's at least one

Mistook the date

Nora (fae/faer)

WHAT

adreamer

of course..

Nora (fae/faer)

Burn it.Print it out and burn.

Solidad

Is it one the explicit ones ?

Nora (fae/faer)

Then burn the AO3 server.

adreamer

I don’t think so.

Wakraya

Nope. Actually it seems to be a fix-it fic X3

GhastlyGhifin

You can't fix something that was flawed from the start.

adreamer

Which is understandable but yeah...

Solidad

How do you fix Candy and still keep that relationship ???

How does that work ?

Wakraya

Ssssh X3

MissFinefeather

Heh, not too long ago, I came out as trans for my RP Forum. It received overwhelming support from it. I realized I had a semi-platonic blackrom with a guy when he responded to the thread...

Wakraya

Enough clowning around here.

Blackrom!

GhastlyGhifin

What in blazes kind of flirting is that?

MissFinefeather

My character has the power to store things in her stomach, so he would tell me that he would kidnap my character and turn her into his man purse

GhastlyGhifin

Who's this guy RP-ing as, Kraven the Hunter?

Solidad

That suddently makes a lot more sense

MissFinefeather

At the time, he was playing as Gannondorf

WakrayaT

Miss' character's power is vore.

Oh man, knotting, vore, Gamzee/Jane, today's just the gift that keeps on giving!

MissFinefeather

I honestly genuinely took his threats seriously at the time, and I shot back by threatening that I would sneak into his castle to shit on his bed

Solidad

So to review, we had during this conversation : Knotting, Gamzee sex, Troll penises and Vore(edited)

Nora (fae/faer)

Wasn't knotting yesterday?

Wakraya

It was also a few minutes ago

Solidad

we also had it todayI love this server

Wakraya

When Terezi canonically mentioned the innuendo

adreamer

Just a regular day in Miss’ server

Wakraya

Hey! Epilogues are tagged Mature.

MissFinefeather

Goddamn, this is going to be a long conversation to post...

Wakraya

By default, this chat is also Mature X3

Maybe you could post the conversations after?Rather than during.

GhastlyGhifin

Perhaps it's best left un-posted.

Wakraya

Perhaps that too

Nora (fae/faer)

Oh yea, and hide under a cut

Wakraya

Not bringing the GamzeeJane blight

NoBrandMinda

My server is slightly more innocent than this one, we actually did have to explain the knoting joke when it came up at this point lol

Nora (fae/faer)

Well, tbh I don't get it

That's an actual joke?

Wakraya

How old are you Nora

Solidad

This whole convo makes me wonder if there are any minors hanging around the server

GhastlyGhifin

And perhaps it's best it stays that way.

adreamer

How I almost wish we could infect it...

MissFinefeather

But yeah, me and Ganon ooc kind of developed a mutual antagonistic respect...

Nora (fae/faer)

I'm 18

Solidad

It's dog dicks

Wakraya

Feel free to poke me in Direct Messages and I'll-Or Solidad can drop it :V

MissFinefeather

Oh, you'll get poked in more that one way Wakraya

Wakraya

zdsfasfa

Solidad

This whole conversation is a mess

Nora (fae/faer)

...............

I guess if I still don't see connections I'm probably better off

GhastlyGhifin

Indeed.

adreamer

I love it though

MissFinefeather

Solidad

Let's knot get into the details

adreamer

sad violin noises

GhastlyGhifin

Keep that comparatively younger mind of yours free of our filth, Nora.

Nora (fae/faer)

"Free of filth" that ship has sunk long, long ago

adreamer

sinks into abo hell

Solidad

The image didn't load for a second and I was terrified of what you could have posted, considering the theme of the conversation

GhastlyGhifin

Pfff

Wakraya

I think, for the sake of Miss' copying and conversation pasting, we should halt the knotversation for now X3

NoBrandMinda

Gentlemen. It has been a privilege playing with you

Solidad

Why is this what I'm doing on a friday night ?

MissFinefeather

I'll put a content warning on the post, with a "read more" thing

Solidad

That's not what I expected my adult life to be like

adreamer

I’m doing it because I love Miss’ epilogue liveblog

Nora (fae/faer)

I'm just along for the ride

GhastlyGhifin

Frankly, this is exactly how I figured my first few years of adult life would go.

Solidad

I live for this whole trainwreck

GhastlyGhifin

Another server I'm in has gone on far more sordid tangents, believe me

MissFinefeather

I wonder if people used to think of me as an innocent type? xD

Wakraya

I did.

Nora (fae/faer)

Not after your reaction to Equius x Aradia

Wakraya

YEAH the Equius-Aradia reaction was the first kicker

Solidad

I thought so during the early days of the liveblog

GhastlyGhifin

There was probably a period of.....a month? Two? Where I was unaware of your less innocent side.

Nora (fae/faer)

I don't remember how early I joined

Solidad

I started reading during the first few days, that I remember

though the exact date is a mystery

Nora (fae/faer)

Before the first Rose x Kanaya interaction, bc you kept being distracted by Rose x Jade art

GhastlyGhifin

Ah, yes

God, how long ago it seems

Nora (fae/faer)

Y e a h

MissFinefeather

Oof, wow, my Rose x Jade thing

I think I was really desperate for lesbians

Wakraya

RoseJade is still a good ship

GhastlyGhifin

Yeah

Nora (fae/faer)

Isn't its name Guns'n'Roses?

GhastlyGhifin

At that time, your shipping pool was comparatively limited

And yes

Wakraya

Lmao yeah

MissFinefeather

Yep

NoBrandMinda

rofl

Solidad

So, I just checked through my browser history and I was literally there the day you announced you were starting your first liveblog

NoBrandMinda

The irony of being "desperate for lesbians" while reading HOMESTUCK is more than a little funny

Nora (fae/faer)

Pfft, true

Wakraya

Gay Singularity.We got the Gay AND the Singularity in the end.Ironic.

Solidad

Early Homestuck shipping is always wild

before you get to know the characters

Wakraya

Specially before Ectobiology gets to play.

GhastlyGhifin

Eugh, yeah...

Wakraya

It's always kind of fun seeing people get to the Veil and everyone being

CamTheWizard

I wasn’t there at the time, but I want to know what happened to the Dave and Rose shippers

Wakraya

"Whoops it's incest"

CamTheWizard

Lol

Solidad

Show of hand, who shipped Rose and Dave before the reveal

GhastlyGhifin

Luke and Leia all over again.

Nora (fae/faer)

I got spoiled on Rosemary, so not me

MissFinefeather

Liveblogger Nora had a pretty funny reaction to DaveRose being sunk

CamTheWizard

That was beautiful

Nora (fae/faer)

Ah, yes, the constant need to clarify which Nora we're talking aboutI don't think I've had this nickname anywhere close to long

seer

Got too many lesbian vibes when I first saw Rose's room to think about shipping them

Solidad

Before joining the server I thought you and Liveblogger Nora were the same person because of Miss' texts posts

Nora (fae/faer)

Just since "Familiar" SU episode

Yeah, I'm too into binging stuff to liveblog anything

Solidad

same

Nora (fae/faer)

Maybe I should change the nickname, I don't even use it anywhere else, it was only a joke about how I'm a lot like Steven

CamTheWizard

I find I do watch less stuff because of my liveblog

It does take a lot of time

MissFinefeather

I hear ya thereI've long been a fan of liveblogs, hence why I wanted to do one so bad

Solidad

I might start a liveblog one of these days but I'm way too busy with school right now

CamTheWizard

Homestuck ended in 2016 and I basically spent the next several months reading aaaaaaaall the homestuck liveblogs. Eventually I ran out and was like “welp, time to start one myself”

MissFinefeather

This'll be the head image when I put this conversation on the blog

Solidad

Nice

Wakraya

OH MY GOD

NoBrandMinda

GhastlyGhifin

fitting.

Nora (fae/faer)

PFFT

Fit 413%

Solidad

We did it people, we are now challenging and controversial material

GhastlyGhifin

I knew this day would come.

Wakraya

Day by day miss' blog becomes more 18+

Solidad

I'm proud of this community

NoBrandMinda

So does Nora actually understand the knot joke yet, or have we just been dancing around it too much lol

Nora (fae/faer)

I don't

MissFinefeather

Gamzee to Jake:

youtube

Wakraya

We explained what it relates to but didn't go in depth

Solidad

Who wants to describe a dog's penis

because I'm not in the mood

Wakraya

)0===>

Solidad

Classy

Nora (fae/faer)

Second half is just The Homestuck Arrow TM

Wakraya

Where 0 is called a knot

MissFinefeather

See when a boy dog loves a girl dog... or a girl dog with a penis love a girl dog...

NoBrandMinda

Several people are typing

GhastlyGhifin

As long as ducks, sharks, and echidnas stay out of the conversation, I'm good.

Solidad

Why does the animal world has to have so many weird penises ?

Wakraya

Man we really struck the lame end of genitalia in the animal kingdom

GhastlyGhifin

simple, but effective.

Solidad

And why do we know so much about said penises ?

NoBrandMinda

furry porn, mostly

Solidad

true

Nora (fae/faer)

Talk for yourself

Wakraya

Because we're all pervs

MissFinefeather

Bad Dragon

GhastlyGhifin

I learned about duck penises from TBFP and shark penises from Game Grumps.

Solidad

Despite all of my knowledge I'm actually not a part of the Furry community

Wakraya

We're all dorks

Solidad

True

Nora (fae/faer)

Try N3RDS

Wakraya

The joke is that a dork is another name for a penis

CamTheWizard

Nora (fae/faer)

...............................

GhastlyGhifin

wait, it is?

MissFinefeather

We're here to watch me liveblog, this is not a regular activity

Wakraya

Yep X3

Nora (fae/faer)

Yeah it's notAnd I wouldn't mind if it never became one.

MissFinefeather

Especially consider i'm not liveblogging right now due to be too engrossed in this conversation about dog dicks

Ydah

An avarage wakraya night.

Solidad

One day someone is going to see this conversation and all of us are going to have some tough questions to answer

GhastlyGhifin

Ydah, didn't you go to sleep like an hour ago?

Ydah

....Dont tell my brother

MissFinefeather

She never stays asleep

Solidad

I'll @ them, if you don't go to sleep

NoBrandMinda

(But yeah, in case Wak's emoji wasn't clear, dog penises have a bulge near the base, colloquially called a "knot" for the purposes of hanging on during sex)

(Bec was a male dog)

(Do the math)

Ydah

Oh shy goodnight

Solidad

Thanks Minda

GhastlyGhifin

I'd rather not go into detail about sharks and ducks.

Go down that path on your own time.

Solidad

You're the hero we need but not the one we deserve

CamTheWizard

Yeah I had completely missed the subtext of that

NoBrandMinda

CamTheWizard

The day after my liveblog of that page my inbox was full of a dozen different explanations of dog dick

GhastlyGhifin

Minda, your server is stuffed to the brim with night owls.

NoBrandMinda

lol, yup

Solidad

What better way to wake up than with detailed descriptions of animal genetalia in your inbox

CamTheWizard

GhastlyGhifin

Wakey wakey, eggs and don't google duck dicks

adreamer

Heh...

Wakraya

Please don't google duck dicks

Because

Solidad

I feel bad for female ducks

Wakraya

youtube

You could watch this instead.

Solidad

must be a though life

GhastlyGhifin

WAK NO

MissFinefeather

Educational

Nora (fae/faer)

I'm. Not going to watch this.

Wakraya

Educational

Nora (fae/faer)

It's past midnight and I want to be able to actually go to sleep

Solidad

I also feel bad for the people who aren't currently on the server who'll have to piece together this whole mess of a conversation

CamTheWizard

I’m just imagining Wakraya doing jazz hands there

Nora (fae/faer)

Want to see a thing that's actually sweet and not this, for a change?

MissFinefeather

Part of me wants to give up and make a NSFW channel, but I feel like there's a line being crossed there

GhastlyGhifin

Yes please.

CamTheWizard

What fun would that beIf there was a nsfw channel on this server, we would all be doomed

Nora (fae/faer)

(Picture of a cup full of red stuff. They’re name is on the cup.)

Wakraya

Solidad

nice

MissFinefeather

Is that tomato soup?

Nora (fae/faer)

Also I'm Russian, which is why you might not recognize the letters

And it's cocoaSo, sweet in multiple ways

Wakraya

Reminds me of the other day when I went to my doctor for the first time to talk HRT, and immediately scratched off every mention of my deadname and wrote my chosen name on top.

CamTheWizard

Nice

MissFinefeather

I've been thinking of changing my name soon or at least starting the process

Little hesitant because I don't look like a woman yet and I know I'm going to need a new Driver's License Photo that I'll have to live with for the next years...

Nora (fae/faer)

I'll go legally change my name this autumn

GhastlyGhifin

I'd say wait for a look you're comfortable with before setting it in stone, er, plastic.

MissFinefeather

To be honest, I was thinking of changing my last name to something shorter but... now I'm thinking of a name that'll be longer

Nora (fae/faer)

For me tbh any kind of transitioning is a distant dream

CamTheWizard

I just thought Finefeather was your chosen name

Nora (fae/faer)

Even though the only thing I really want is 80085 gone

MissFinefeather

That's it actually. I was thinking of going with Kelsie Finefeather

I think it would be symbolic to adopt it as my real name...

GhastlyGhifin

Eh. Sounds like a Duckberg resident. Might wanna go for something shorter.

MissFinefeather

You sure?

GhastlyGhifin

I mean, it's your choice, and certainly an option.

CamTheWizard

What’s a Duckberg

GhastlyGhifin

Ducktales, Darkwing Duck, etc.

CamTheWizard

I thought we had enough Ducks in this conversation

Wakraya

also sorry we're distracting you Miss X3

Nora (fae/faer)

Stop right there.

GhastlyGhifin

You know what, the name's actually kind of growing on me.

NoBrandMinda

I like Finefeather

Nora (fae/faer)

Me too

MissFinefeather

Nora (fae/faer)

Btw fun fact: closest thing to adapting my chosen name into English is Jean

GhastlyGhifin

Not bad!

Nora (fae/faer)

True, but ironic considering there's already sometimes a mixup between me and Nora the liveblogger, and there's also Jean the liveblogger

MissFinefeather

Hahaha!

NoBrandMinda

Also, you've gotten to the point of the conversation that finally helped me figure out Terezi and Vriska's relationship, and I can't for the life of me figure out why it took me so long to see it: They're sisters.

CamTheWizard

It is your fate to endlessly be confused with Homestuck livebloggers

Solidad

Jean is originally a french name but whatever

NoBrandMinda

They literally called themselves sisters from the very beginning, even though trolls don't have families as a concept

MissFinefeather

Oh! That actually makes sense!

GhastlyGhifin

Well, not outside the caverns, they don't.Hell, the name I've used for Vrisrezi (borrowed from Tealtang's exellent comics) has been Scourge Sisters for the longest time.

NoBrandMinda

That was the name of their Flarp team

GhastlyGhifin

indeed

NoBrandMinda

Also I love Terezi accidentally describing her EXACT RELATIONSHIP with John while describing what she's looking for in a kismesis

Nora (fae/faer)

I'll move the rest of the thing about names to general

Solidad

That would be an awkward conversation to have

"Hey ! our respective friends have adopted a genetic clone of the sister you've been looking for for goodness knows how long and kept the same damn name for her ! Btw how is that search coming along ?"

GhastlyGhifin

"Hey, could you delay your return by, say, another 18 or so years? What does that translate to out there?

adreamer

Hm.

MissFinefeather

Sorry for the long break

adreamer

It's okay.

MissFinefeather

I had dinner, and I got too engrossed in videos

GhastlyGhifin

It happens

MissFinefeather

Kubz Scouts playing through the first Phoenix Wright game

adreamer

How was the video?

MissFinefeather

The Silver Samurai case. So many twists and turns

adreamer

That's cool.

MissFinefeather

And Kubz Scouts is really into the game

adreamer

: ) I probably would be too.

adreamer

Do you wanna continue on?

MissFinefeather

Alright alright, I'll get back to work

Let's finish this page at least xD

adreamer

Yeah.

NoBrandMinda

Classic case

GhastlyGhifin

Just to clarify, John's son isn't Harry Egbert. John's son is Harry Anderson Egbert.

adreamer

Because of course it is.is so happy they chose roxy's color because <33

NoBrandMinda

Glad who chose Roxy's color?

adreamer

Or asked for it, yes.I'm just happy my color's pink. Which shouldn't matter but shrug

GhastlyGhifin

Better than mine, at least.

MissFinefeather

Yeah, mine would probably be pick too if I didn't go for the obvious tyranny joke

NoBrandMinda

I'm happy with mine

Wakraya

adreamer

Of course you are. ::::)

NoBrandMinda

The 8est part of 8a8y Vriska is it means I can unironically say Vriska did nothing wrong.

adreamer

jumps to case's stream from a long while ago where he did say vriska did nothing wrong and <33

Wakraya

I want to point out this is an adopted grub.

Either Rose or Kanaya had the idea of getting Rose hormones to incite milk production.

So that she could have a sharp-toothed insect-bodied baby from a species that doesn't even nurse naturally to drink from her.

adreamer

shudders in milk pile

Wakraya

This feels like a good moment to point out, story-wise.

Meat and Candy are the only things Cherubs really eat. With Calliope and Caliborn showcased as the narrative self-inserts of the Fandom, it's only normal they'd eat up these meta-narrative elements with gusto.

Specifically, though, Candy appears at its strongest embodied by a very particular Sucker.

It is not as dramatic and explosive and flashy as Trickster Mode.

But the way Candy goes off the rails... Really reminds me of it. That "Everything is right but everything is wrong" feeling.

MissFinefeather

Phew, feel much better

Damn nature and it's calling...That... I'm pretty sure that's exactly what Hussie was going for! : O

That was @Wakraya

He didn't plan my bowel movement...

that I know of...

Nefronis

Truely a mastermind, breaking through your mindStorytelling genius right there

NoBrandMinda

I'm pretty sure I did the exact same thing when I got to that page lol

"Should I keep going tonight?" [Sees Gamzee] "Nope."

MissFinefeather

XDDD

Gamzee is the worst

GhastlyGhifin

Concur'd

MissFinefeather

Welp, time to post this conversation...

#epilogues7 #Missfinefeather Liveblogs #Missfinefeather reads Homestuck #liveblog #homestuck liveblog #Homestuck #Homestuck Epilogues #Homestuck Epilogue #Homestuck Spoilers #blacklist Missfinefeather

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desperatelyreviewingdennis · 5 years

Text

Endgame

By basically any metric, Endgame was strictly inferior to Infinity War. It was a solid conclusion to he MCU, they wrapped things up nicely. But they really didn't meet the bar they set in the last movie. Visually, sound design, effects, all the technical aspects they nailed. As always. But the *story*? The plot, the meat and bones of it? Abysmal.

I don’t remember *exactly* how I felt leaving Infinity War. I know I did not like it as much as most, I felt they rushed too much into the one story, and they would have been better off with a trilogy [Guardians of the Galaxy 3 followed by Infinity War and Endgame]. I disliked Thor’s sequence in the film in particular, and thought the Snap was poorly handled because it was obviously going to be undone in the next movie so there was no emotional punch [although Peter Parker sure tried, even knowing he’s not really dead that scene stings]. Despite the flaws, though, I felt the movie was largely solid. The writers crammed too much into one film, but most narrative threads were fully realized and the ones that weren’t have a whole nother movie to wrap up. Upon a couple rewatches, my opinion has grown. The tightness of it all is much more apparent, and Thor’s sequence is now my favorite in the movie, despite basically being a retread of his arc in Ragnarok.

So maybe once I will reevaluate this once its on DVD. But I suspect my opinion isn’t going to change. The issues are more fundamental, and there’s no sequel planned to fix the problems. Honestly, I wonder how much of the writing team carried over, because this movie doesn’t feel like it was the planned sequel to Infinity War.

Also, it seems clear that there was some executive meddling in places that would suggest the problems of Ms Marvel are going to carry forward.

I don’t want to say its a bad movie. Ms Marvel was a bad movie. Iron Man 2 was a bad movie. For the first two thirds of the movie, it had its issues but nothing irredeemable. And the stuff it did right it did really really right. The last act, though, really dragged the whole thing down.

Spoilers abound after the break.

First of all, I never watched so much as a trailer for this movie. I wanted to go in completely free from assumptions. I'm glad I did, but I don't know what other people took from different scenes with that additional context.

Movie opens with Hawkeye's family getting dusted. I hate Hawkeye so that was immensely satisfying.

Next scene less so. Why did Tony and Nebula get on the damaged ship? What was their end game (no pun intended)? Not a huge deal but right off the bat I'm questioning character motives. Not a good sign.

Oh, it's because if they're on a ship it's easier for Ms Marvel to save the day. How did she find them? Was she specifically looking for Stark? Why? Nobody on Earth knew what happened with him. Was there a distress signal? Can she sense those now? Nobody knows, and we're not going to find out. The only thing we learn about Ms Marvel is that she didn't help out during the previous movies because she was busy on other planets. I mean, come on.

The sequence between Stark and Rogers back on Earth was spot on and I loved it. This will be a recurring theme, specific scenes being perfect with the surrounding material being crud.

They then kill Thanos and we time skip five years. That was actually pretty cool, and an unexpected turn of events. Take notes, Rian Johnson. My expectations were subverted but it didn't make me want to murder the Russo's. It does sort of abandon the child Gamora scenes from Infinity War. Everybody thought that was supposed to be her actual soul in the soul stone, but the Soul Stone is now destroyed so maybe it was just Thanos being crazy? Maybe it’ll come up later in the movie [Ron Howard: It won’t.]

Commence exposition. Couple thoughts. One, I hated Bruce Banner. The Hulk was a separate, unique personality. Banner killed him, and took over his body. We can debate the morality of it, but I just found it unsatisfying. It all happened off camera, and they never really explain why The Hulk refused to fight in Infinity War. I assumed it was because he was afraid, the Russo's claim it was because he was tired of being Banner's lap dog. Either way, that character was killed unceremoniously during a time skip and never mentioned again.

Two, Banner’s pretty confident in how Time Travel is going to work. Time Travel has never been a thing except with Dr Strange, and the two never sat down to discuss the subject before the later was turned to dust. So where is his confidence coming from? Their entire plan hinges on him being correct. What really bugs me about this is that, with about thirty seconds of actual discussion [rather than the comic relief listing time travel movies and Banner shutting them down], they could have reached the same conclusion. “Why don’t we prevent the snap from happening in the first place?” “Because that would be a paradox, and we don’t know how time responds to paradoxes. Maybe we all live happily ever after, maybe time itself implodes. But if we undo the snap in the present, we know exactly what will happen.” But instead he just knows. And, oh, also he’s wrong. We figure that out later in the movie, but never really address it.

Tony with his daughter was perfect and I loved it. It was a little unsatisfying that he just sort of tinkered with time travel for an afternoon and figured everything out, but that’s sort of his thing so it works.

Thor... less perfect. Look, this is the third movie in a row now that is about Thor losing everything then regaining his power. They did it in Ragnarok. They did it better in Infinity War. Do they really need to do it again in End Game? In fact, it occurs to me just now as I’m writing this that was the plot to the first Thor as well. So this is four times now that we’ve been in this exact situation. I’m just done with it, you know? The scenes were funny enough, and I certainly understand *why* the character is in that place, emotionally, but being understandable is no excuse for retreading old ground.

So now we’re time traveling. This was like 90% great, but the 10% really drags the whole thing down.

We’ll start with the Power Stone. Having Nebula reconnect to the interstellar wifi was inspired. Obviously they need Thanos to figure out the plan and move to stop it, otherwise there’s no climax. Obviously there’s no present day Thanos to do that, so it has to be past Thanos. This also wraps up one of the nagging threads from the first movie. Thanos has been hunting for these things for years, then just stumbles upon all of them in a couple months? It seemed a little convenient, but now they’ve shown that he had inspiration from the future telling him exactly where he could find them all. Just wow. Then having past Nebula take present Nebula’s place? I loved it.

Next, time stone. Remember my annoyance with Banner’s overconfidence earlier? Here Banner being told he’s full of shit, but they just sort of ignore it. Its not that you can’t change the past, its that when you change the past you create an alternate reality, and that alternate reality might be super shitty so you shouldn’t do it. But they hand wave it away with a promise to return the stones back to where they belong on the timeline, so that the timeline doesn’t “branch” and Banner ends up technically correct. So it works, I’ll put this in the 90% great category.

But here’s the 10% shit: how did The Sorcerous Supreme know how great Dr. Strange was going to be? She can’t see past her own death, but she knows how powerful Strange becomes after she dies? But she doesn’t know about the Snap, so they’re definitely sticking to the original rules, this isn’t a retcon. But Strange is dead, so how does he know everything works out? In fact, not only is Strange dead, the time stone is dead too. He used the time stone to go further into the future than the time stone itself exists. This would have been a perfect opportunity to close some loose threads, but they missed them.

Also the scene after they arrive in New York where Banner half heartedly destroys some stuff was pretty cringe. I think they were playing it as a joke, and people in the audience definitely laughed, but it really drove home the earlier point about how they killed off The Hulk and replaced him with a Green Bruce Banner.

Next up: Space and Mind Stones. Talk about important McGuffins. Studying the Tesseract lead to the creation of SHIELD and Hydra and Captain America and eventually Ms Marvel. Studying Captain America lead to the creation of The Hulk. The Mind Stone created Vision, Quicksilver, and the Scarlett Witch. Important stuff here.

But anyhow, 90% good. Everything was great right up until the end. The plan, the banter, everything worked for me. I even loved the bit about “America’s Ass.” I do wonder if that wasn’t a response to criticisms of Brie Larson’s ass in Ms Marvel? Or just commentary on comics drawing attention to asses in general? I’m not sure but I liked it.

10% shit: the plan goes sideways at the last minute, and Loki escapes with the Tesseract. Ok, now, its been a while since I watched the first Avengers movie, but I don’t remember Loki escaping with the Tesseract? Isn’t that exactly what Banner said can’t happen, and the Sorcerous Supreme made Banner promise he wouldn’t let happen? A branch in he timeline? That’s a pretty goddamn significant change in history. But whatever, we’re never going to comment on it. A rogue infinity stone, in the hands of a crazy person, NBD.

So Stark and Rogers go further into the past to steal the Tesseract from SHIELD before Loki could steal it from Rogers stealing it from Hydra stealing it from the Avengers. No complaints here, Some nice foreshadowing for Rogers, and Stark gets closure with his father. It was great.

Finally, Soul Stone. Look, I have always hated Hawkeye, since the first Thor, and love Black Widow so that’s all I have to say about that. Except that Nat doesn’t get the sort of closure Stark and Rogers do. Can’t really blame the writers on this one, they didn’t have a lot to work with, but its still disappointing. At least it wasn’t a pointless death and her and Barton got some time together.

Finally: the Ether/Reality Stone. This was just an extension of the previous “we’ve covered this already why is this here?” issue around Thor. Him getting Mjolnir was pretty tight, though, not gonna lie.

So now we’re back in the present, we have all the Stones and past Nebula has infiltrated the group. First of all: this would have been a great place for an Intermission. Like, seriously, There are literally no dangling story lines, everything’s come back together to one location, and you’ve got a couple minutes of downtime before the action starts anyhow. Just give people ten minutes to piss, please.

First of all, how did Past Nebula bring an entire fucking battle ship into the present? Like, they had just enough Pym Particles to get their team back once. Sure, they picked up some extras but she couldn’t have been expecting that, and the memories she got from Present Nebula should have made that clear. So what was her end game (no pun intended)? And if they could send a ship full of people all at once, why didn’t the Avengers do that? Take the entire team back at once, leaving themselves with eight more doses if they fail.

Moving on, the scene were they use the stone worked for me, given what they’ve done so far. Specifically, with respect to the Hulk. But bear with me here: what if they hadn’t fucked up the Hulk? Imagine a movie where Banner doesn’t kill a character off camera. He’s just a regular guy the entire movie. Maybe they ask him if he still has issues with Hulking out and he says “no, I guess he got tired of cleaning up my messes so now he refuses to come out even when I need him to.” Then, as Thor is about to don the glove, Banner transforms and everybody is certain he’s about to ruin everything when he puts the glove on himself and snaps his fingers. After, his body is still green but its Bruce talking. He doesn’t sense the Hulk inside him anymore. He sacrificed himself because he knew he could do it and Thor couldn’t.

Just a thought. As I said, the scene works as it is.

We establish the plan works, then suddenly THANOS. Opportunity #2 for an intermission. They launch the barrage of missiles, then fade to black, see you in ten minutes. Would have been epic.

So we get a nice, super satisfying scene with the three original Avengers fighting Thanos. Thor is fucking dual wielding, yes please. And the scene where Steve catches Mjolnir? I was literally hard. But Thanos is even more powerful than he was in Infinity War. Remember Infinity War, that movie a YEAR OLD written and directed by THE SAME PEOPLE? In that one, Stark went toe to toe with Thanos in control of the Infinity Stones and held his own. In this one, Thanos has no problem taking down a dual wielding Thor, and literally destroys Cap’s Shield without even the use of the Power Stone. Its just... blah.

Now, when things are at their worse: MAGIC. Literally, Dr Strange uses magic to save the day. Its not a complaint, its just what happens. Again, SUPER satisfying. But lots of things stick out. One, half the Wakandan army just woke up from being dusted. As far as they’re concerned its been like half an hour since Infinity War, but they’re all in pretty good shape. Even if you assume the Wakandan army was made up of survivors, they sure mobilized quickly. That’s impressive. Two, where did Valkyrie get a fucking Pegasus? They’re all dead, remember? Hela killed them thousands of years ago, it was kind of a big deal. Yeah, neat scene, loved seeing it, but it doesn't belong. Third, Pepper Potts shows up. She abandoned her five year old child to fight alongside Tony. I get there’s an end of the world argument to be made, but it still doesn’t seem in character. Both for her to do it, and for Tony to not call her out for it.

Still, nice satisfying fight scene. Things still kind of go south, though, they just can’t seem to beat Thanos’s army. Wouldn’t it be convenient if a flying god were to show up for no reason and destroy the battleship causing all the trouble? That would be convenient, but they’re better writers than that. [Ron Howard: they were not]

To add insult to injury, they literally divide the heroes by sex and have a scene where all the women are together launching an attack. It wasn’t even like a natural progression of the battle, where the women are thrown together. Just the one shot of all them showing up for no reason.

There was no corresponding scene with the male heroes.

But I’m sure that’s just a coincidence and they weren’t pandering for woke points.

At one point Thanos grabs the Power Stone with his bare hands and uses it to blast somebody [I think Ms Marvel but I don’t remember]. He doesn’t appear to suffer any ill affects,

Finally, Tony Stark’s big moment. People were literally weeping in the theater. I loved it so much. It was honestly perfect. Killing everybody wasn’t what I expected, I thought they’d be sent back to the past to preserve the timeline or whatever, but this way it mirrored the end of Infinity War so thematically this works better.

Everything after that was basically shit.

First of all, this movie suffers from a serious case of Return of the King Syndrome. There was like half an hour of movie left after Thanos died the second time. Christ.

Past Gamora might or might not still be alive in the present? She kicks Star Lord in the nuts then kind of vanishes. There’s no reason to assume Tony’s snap wouldn’t have killed her along with the rest of the past army, but they also didn’t resurrect Present Gamora so she probably survived for Guardians 3. Starlord is using the computer to search for her at the end, but Thor keeps trying to stop him because I guess he’s a prick now?

Also Thor retires. Just quits. Names Valkyrie Queen of the Asgardians. That’s the conclusion of his story. He just goes off to find himself, gonna spend some time with the Guardians of the Galaxy see where life takes him. Because that’s satisfying.

They still have to return the infinity stones, along with Mjolnir. Rogers gets to do the honors, and he makes it pretty clear to everybody that he’s saying his goodbyes. Somehow, nobody notices, and everybody’s super surprised when he doesn’t come back after. Apparently, he choses to return to the 40s and live out his life with Peggy. I liked this, it was a satisfying conclusion to his story. He found a way back to the love of his life. Nice.

Here’s what’s not nice. Bucky and Falcon see old Steve sitting near by. Bucky, Steve’s childhood friend who owes his life to the fact Steve never stopped believing in him, sends Falcon over to talk to him. Because...I don’t fucking know. Why didn’t they both just go talk to him? Why didn’t they call over Bruce, who was standing right there trying to figure out what went wrong? No, its Falcon’s time.

But more importantly: HOW IS STEVE THERE? You can’t change the past. Bruce tells us that. The Sorcerous Supreme shows us that changes in the past create alternate timelines leaving the original in tact. They pulled Thanos into the present and killed him before he could collect the Infinity Stones, but the snap still happened. Present Nebula shot Past Nebula in the heart but didn’t wink out of existence.

But somehow, when Steve goes into the past, he doesn’t create an alternate timeline where Captain America survives the war. He just inserted himself into the prime timeline, and waited until he had a chance to say hi to his old friend Falcon.

Oh, also he had a second Shield made at some point?

Look, I liked Steve’s story. I liked that they passed on the title to Falcon, a nice nod to the source material. I’m thrilled that Peggy got the dance he promised her all those years ago. But that scene ruined the core premise behind the entire movie. Time Travel stories are hard, but if you agree on how they work and stick to those rules its fine. This movie did neither.

Also: how did Steve return the Soul Stone? How shocked was he to discover the stone was guarded by Red Skull? Did he just drop it off the cliff and hope the ancient magic would handle the rest? Will Thanos still have to sacrifice Gamora or does Nat’s sacrifice still count?

There’s other issues. Ms Marvel and Wanda both just sort of vanish. Wanda especially should have gotten more story, but they just gave her one angry woman scene then she was forgotten about. They sort of gloss over the massive issues they’d have faced with half the population dead. They show one overgrown neighborhood, but by and large everything seems to be exactly the same as it was pre-snap. Just with everybody sadder. We never see Rocket meet a racoon. Hawkeye was in the movie. Nothing really huge.

So that’s all I have to say about that. Thank you for coming to my TED talk.

#mcu #endgame #movie

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dreadhaus-literature · 5 years

Text

{January Collection} #22

Ode to My Body

Tuesday’s Theme: Lyrics

“Welcome home, Harl. I’ve got a surprise for you.”

The purr of Pamela Isley’s voice slid over Harleen Quinzel’s skin like rose vines and the blonde giggled, bouncing up and down on booted toes with an excited clap.

“For me, Pammy? Ya shouldn’t have!”

The welcome kiss between the Sirens was brief but meaningful, deep. It had been a long day for them both, preoccupied away from each other which made their tasks seem more mundane and boring than they might’ve had they tackled it together. Harleen, known more infamously as Harley Quinn, slung her still wet bat over her shoulder, leaving it propped by the door in case she needed to grab it in a hurry, before she followed Pamela, aka Poison Ivy, deeper into their lovenest like an excited puppy offered a treat.

“Can I have it now?!” Harley all but begged, causing Pamela to smile.

“Hm, well I don’t know. Have you been a bad girl, today?”

“The worst,” Harley rested her chin on Pamela’s shoulder, grinning. “I was the worst gal in Gotham today.”

Pamela’s smile was one of pride, and it turned Harley’s heart over. It was so much easier to love someone who knew how to love you back...

...but Harley wasn’t above falling into her same old ways if she had a good reason to.

Good reason didn’t mean the Joker, oh no. Mistah J’s days of tormenting Harley were long gone, thanks in part to the support of Pammy. Harley was in a stable relationship for the first time in her life, if one didn’t count the dependability of the Batman showing up every time she broke the law. It was this safety and routine with Pammy that set Harley up for both success...and being taken off-guard the moment she ran into a pretty li’l girl on the sidewalk by the name of Monica.

Fate’s a funny thing, in Gotham. There’s nearly 10 million people who walk those streets, live in those buildings, drive on it’s roads. What are the chances of finding someone who just...does it for you? Harley may come across to some as a ditz but it was just an act; she’s sharper than a whip and those eyes have been trained to see everything. That day on Gotham’s snowy sidewalk, she had seen everything. Everything was wearing a black faux fur coat, coincidentally resembling hyena fur, which was the first thing that caught Harley’s curious gaze. Curiosity killed the cat when the wearer of the coat walked right past her, trailing expensive perfume that had Harley turning, walking backward just to keep the scent drifting beneath her nose. Satisfaction brought the cat back when Harley’s inquisitive gaze caressed a profile straight out of a magazine, and she recognized immediately she’d just passed the Heiress to the Alcari Family fortune and empire.

Monica.

Oh sure, everyone knew of her, but to see her? That was a whole ‘nother experience and it left Harley breathless but not speechless. Definitely not speechless. The moment she’d gotten home it was all she could talk about, telling Pammy everything, from the scent of her intoxicating perfume to the beautiful curves of her profile. Pamela had listened with only brief barbs of jealous jabbing at her like rose thorns, but that changed considerably when Harley insisted they find a way to see her again. Heiresses live their lives in the public spotlight, it’s just the nature of a culture obsessed with celebrities--it was just the first time Harley or Pamela had found themselves right alongside the enamored masses.

Obsession is not a funny thing, no matter where you are. Like roots of a tree it plants itself firmly and then grows, no matter how little it’s nurtured but if it’s given water, given sunlight, if it’s fed, like fire it will grow. Harley kept Pamela on the cold Gotham sidewalk outside the Alcari building for four nights before Monica finally walked past again and in that moment, Pamela understood. She understood why Harley had begun cutting out pictures of Monica from magazines and hanging them on their bedroom walls. Pamela understood why Harley insisted on stealing several bottles of Monica’s perfume from a high-end perfume counter--it was perfume Harley sprayed on their bed pillows at night before they slept. Sweetest dreams Pamela had ever had. There was just something about this girl that forced the two Sirens into unfamiliar territory--for Pamela, at least. Harley was no stranger to obsession, to devotion that consumed her waking hours and filled her nights with vibrating toys and beginning Pammy to pretend Monica was in bed with them, too. Now that Pamela had seen Monica, laid eyes on her, was close enough to touch her, she understood. Fuel to Harley’s fire and the two of them were burning together.

Plans began to take root in the apartment. Pamela asking the smart questions, wanting to know how Harley knew Monica wasn’t just another Mistah J. But Harley knew just what to say--

“You wouldn’t be this way about her if she was! You always was the smart one, Pammy.”

It was an argument that quieted the last and only one of Pamela’s concerns. Harley was prone to obsessive behavior, like a child she fixated on her favorite toy and didn’t want to let it go, even when the toy was dangerous, as it was in the Joker’s case. Pamela wanted to be concerned that Harley was repeating history, but she couldn’t find it in her to think such negative thoughts about Monica. The two Sirens had been following her, both physically and over social media, for weeks by this point and she knew the other woman well enough to know there was no real danger, here.

The Sirens didn’t need to be worried. Monica did.

“It’s in the bedroom,” Pamela gestured toward their open bedroom door, biting back a soft laugh as Harley nearly sprinted to it, so eager was she to find her gift.

“Oh, what is it? Did you steal more of Monica’s clothing?! I really wanted that bikini she wore to that yacht party, I bet those skimpy little bottoms she wore smell like Heaven.”

It was true, Harley had begun the ritual of stealing clothes and objects from Monica’s penthouse weeks ago, and even Pamela had broken in to steal a few things as well, but at Harley’s question, Poison Ivy shook her head.

“Even better.”

Harley’s tongue poked between her grinning teeth as she turned in the doorway and immediately let loose an excited squeal, disappearing into the bedroom to claim her surprise. Pamela all but sauntered over to rest in the doorway, watching Harley leap onto the bed, bouncing twice even as she wrapped her arms around Monica’s waist.

The Heiress was bound to the headboard, her wrists wrapped in vine with a promise Pamela wouldn’t use thorns unless she tried to escape. Monica hadn’t, and her reward was being presented to Harley Quinn as a gift.

“Oh Pammy, it’s perfect, she’s perfect!” Harley’s seeking, obsessive fingers could not get enough of touching Monica, tickling and pulling, grasping and tugging at every inch of her. “Can we keep her? Huh? Is she gonna stay with us, now?”

Pamela’s gaze nailed Monica to the bed even as she answered Harley. “She is, Harl. She’s ours, now.”

At the word ours, Harley began nosing kisses against Monica’s tear-stained cheek, over-exuberant mwah, mwah, mwah’s that meant as much as kisses were made to mean. Monica could feel Harley meant the affection, as if the two of them had been dating for years. She knew who these two women were; loving in Gotham it would be difficult not to, but never in a million years did she think she’d ever be abducted by them--and not even for a ransom! No, when she offered to buy her freedom, Pamela had all but snorted--though the noise seemed a little too undignified for the woman known as Poison Ivy.

“Do you really think this is about money? Darling pet, this is about you. It’s always been about you.”

Monica didn’t have all the pieces to the puzzle but she saw enough of herself strewn through this apartment to know Harley Quinn and Poison Ivy were fully expecting her to be theirs, now. There was possession In Harley’s touch, in her kisses, and Monica’s eyes fluttered closed as Harley tipped her head up to kiss her square on the lips. The kiss was burning in it’s possessive desperation, as if Harley had been wanting to kiss her for years.

“Oh, she tastes like candy, Pammy! See, I told you, this ain’t no Puddin’,” Harley drew back but only slightly, running her tongue along the seam of Monica’s lips. “Candy’s already sweeter than Puddin’ ever was.”

“Candy, hm?” Pamela crossed the room on long, elegant legs to sit on the edge of the bed. Delicate fingers slid up the bare skin of Monica’s ankle, circling possessively as Pamela continued to lock eyes with Monica. “Our little candy girl.”

Harley laughed, an excited, happy sound as she pulled Monica in for more kisses, drinking from parted lips already swelling from the force of Harley’s desperation.

“Let her breathe, Harl,” Pamela chided with a soft laugh. “We have all the time in the world, now, and she’s going to faint if you don’t give her a little space.”

Harley broke the kiss just to hear Monica gasp slightly, and she brought her hand up, running her fingers over Monica’s kiss-swollen lips, her other arm around Monica’s petite shoulders. Harley was in every inch of Monica’s personal space, threading their legs together so that her knee was grinding slowly against Monica’s barely covered cunt.

“We finally got our little girl, Pammy,” Harley turned to smile at Pamela. “AIn’t she the sweetest? I told you she was, didn’t I?”

“It’s true,” Pamela turned her smile to Monica. “She told me the first day she saw you.”

“We’re your Mommies now, Candy,” Harley tapped her nail against Monica’s nose. “You’re gonna be our spoiled, pampered little girl, yes you are!”

Monica felt the bed shift and turned from Harley to see Pamela crawling up the bed, her sheer robe parting to reveal she wore nothing beneath. Monica bit back a whine as Harley pushed more insistently against her slit, rolling her clit just to elicit another noise, turning with excitement toward Pamela anytime Monica did anything. Monica had no idea what was happening to her life of routine and normalcy but she knew it was over. Pamela’s hand slid around Monica’s waist and as Pamela claimed her lips, Monica felt her head spin and wondered if Pamela was drugging her, again. She’d done it before, that was how she’d gotten Monica here in the first place. Monica was aware of Harley’s lips on her neck, her desperate, seeking fingers slipping up Monica’s shirt as Pamela’s moved between her thighs, forcing Harley’s knee back so Pamela could split Monica’s folds cleanly with long nails. Monica cried out against Pamela’s mouth, and immediately Harley was there.

“I know it’s a little scary now, Candy, but you’ll see, it’ll be fun!”

“I promise, you’ll adjust,” Pamela spoke against Monica’s lips, finding them just as sweet and intoxicating as Harley had promised. “You’ll be a good girl for your new Mommies, won’t you, darling?”

Monica’s head was swimming, and she was vaguely aware she was nodding. Whether that was Pamela’s influence or if some part of her was responding to the sinful touch between her legs, against her breast, she couldn’t say. Pamela kissed her again, stealing her breath, and Harley clung on a little tighter to the body they’d been coveting for agonizing weeks, now.

Love’s a funny thing, in Gotham. You’d be surprised how many different shapes and sizes it comes in, but as they say--

Mommy knows best.

#{theme} : for monica #{character} : harleen quinzel #{character} : pamela isley #{collection} : january 2019 #{ went the obsessive route with this since it suits Harley SO well }#{ just hope i did them justice }#{ i'll hurl myself into the sea if i didn't }#{ they don't DESERVE TO BE BUTCHERED }

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